Who Is Dr. Preisser?

Dr. Eileen Preisser has come up several times in the past few days as a key analyst in the Able Danger project. Originally unnamed in Col. Tony Shaffer's assertions of the determinations of the project, he said that a female PhD reminded him that Mohammed Atta and three of the other 9/11 hijackers had been identified from their data-mining as potential al-Qaeda operatives within the US over a year prior to the attacks. This week, Shaffer supplied the name that had remained elusive until now.

So who is Eileen Preisser? Currently, she works within the Department of Homeland Security, or did at least in 2002 as the head of the group preparing first responders to terrorist attacks. She described herself as a cross between Xena, Warrior Princess and Joan of Arc. She has also been described as the director of the DoD's Homeland Defense Technology Center and a key advocate for aggressive IT approaches to counterterrorism:

Eileen Preisser, director of DOD's Homeland Defense Technology Center, said the ultimate success or failure of the Homeland Security Department will be determined by the intelligence and IT plan that's proposed and the person selected to lead that effort. Preisser spoke at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's TechNet International 2002 conference in Washington, D.C.

"The kicker that will determine if it succeeds or fails is the intelligence and IT plan that's prepared," Preisser, a congressional fellow who also advises the Executive Office of the President on technology, told Federal Computer Week.

"There has to be a [chief information officer or chief operating officer]-type person to bring together all the disparate capabilities that exist and create a new and exciting virtual information environment that will set the pace for everything else in government," Preisser said. "If you hire a 65-year-old to do it, it will fail. If you hire former military, it will fail."

One has to wonder about the last two admonitions in this analysis. This article came out a year after the Able Danger project was shut down by older military leadership, and Preisser sounds like she's talking from experience. Again speaking from experience, Preisser gets even more specific:

Preisser said she fears that the new department will just add more bureaucracy to a system already overloaded with red tape. She added that agencies were just beginning to move "horizontally over the last nine months, and forcing them to go back will be the hardest cultural shift."

An interagency organization can be successful as long as the various parts are united by their mission and outfitted with the "same standard suitcase and equipment, and put in the field together," she said, adding that the interagency operational security (OPSEC) group is a prime example of one that works.

Able Danger was an example of this kind of interagency operational security group. Preisser sounds as if her experience in these matters gave her confidence in it as a model -- which would again tend to bolster the contention that Able Danger not only functioned well but produced usable data. She expressed no hope that an expanded DHS would alleviate the issues with sharing the data, however, as an expanded bureaucracy would only intensify the obstacles for such sharing, not break them down.

Does this sound familiar, and does anyone see why the 9/11 Commission might have wanted to avoid talking with Preisser? Oddly, for someone already working in this field for the DHS, the Commission never bothered to talk to her about the issues involved in data sharing while the commissioners publicly ridiculed two administrations for failing to connect the dots. Her name appears nowhere in the "final' report.

The same cannot be said of Congress. As I posted earlier this week, the National Security subcommittee in the House spoke to Preisser in closed session exactly one month after the attacks. No one knows what was said during that session, but Rep. Christopher Shays gave a summary the next day during an open hearing (the transcript misspelled Preisser's name):

Mr. Shays. In a briefing we had yesterday, we had Eileen Pricer, who argues that we don't have the data we need because we don't take all the public data that is available and mix it with the security data. And just taking public data, using, you know, computer systems that are high-speed and able to digest, you know, literally floors' worth of material, she can take relationships that are seven times removed, seven units removed, and when she does that, she ends up with relationships to the bin Laden group where she sees the purchase of chemicals, the sending of students to universities. You wouldn't see it if you isolated it there, but if that unit is connected to that unit, which is connected to that unit, which is connected to that unit, you then see the relationship. So we don't know ultimately the authenticity of how she does it, but when she does it, she comes up with the kind of answer that you have just asked, which is a little unsettling.

It looks like Preisser wanted to tell someone about Able Danger within a month after the attacks, and perhaps did so. Perhaps she still wants to talk about her work and the results she got from her expertise in data mining. The public record on Preisser, which appears to stop in 2002, gives every indication that this expert should have been central to any investigation of the gathering and analysis of intelligence on terrorists. We need to hear from her now.

Even The Vatican Has Leaks

A leaked diary from a Catholic cardinal who took part in the conclave that elected Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI demonstrates that secrets have a short shelf life in modern society. Under threat of excommunication, cardinals have always kept the machinations of such conclaves as quiet as the grave. That changed with the election of the second-straight non-Italian pope after 450 years of Italian hegemony over the Church, and an Italian cardinal appears to be the source:

A cardinal has broken his vow of secrecy and released his diary describing the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, revealing in an exceedingly rare account that a cardinal from Argentina was the main challenger and almost blocked Benedict's election.

Excerpts of the diary, published Friday, show Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger led in each of the four ballots cast in the Sistine Chapel during the mystery-shrouded April 18-19 conclave. But, in a surprise, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a Jesuit, was in second place the whole time.

It took four ballots to elect Ratzinger, as already generally known. However, he did not garner a huge amount of support. He only received 85 votes, well below what the last two Popes are believed to have received from their conclaves. The information will likely undermine to some extent the idea of a massive mandate for conservative counterreform within the Church, especially a rollback of post-Vatican II changes that brought the Catholics closer to other Christian denominations in common practices.

It also noted that Bernard Cardinal Law, the former Boston prelate that got banished back to Rome for his handling of the sexual abuse scandals, received a vote for Pope on the final ballot.

The Italian journalist who published the diaries hinted to the AP that his source "spoke Italian", which probably means that the cardinal who wrote the diaries represented Italy. The conclave had 20 Italian cardinals, including Cardinal Tettamanzi, who was considered a front-runner as the conclave opened nine days after John Paul the Great's death. The numbers in the diary show that the Italians themselves either didn't consider Italianness to be a deciding factor or split their vote too many ways for it to become a factor. However, given their half-millenium claim on the papacy, this sudden leak about a secret conclave, one with grave repercussions if caught, that motivation cannot easily be discounted.

Whatever motivated the cardinal in question, it comes as a sad commentary that even the princes of the church cannot be trusted with secrets any longer, except those which specifically benefit themselves.

Frist Has Some Explaining To Do

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist faces a serious investigation into his finances after apparently directing the sale of stock while his assets supposedly remained in a blind trust -- and dumping family-business stock just before the bottom dropped out. Today's Page One story in the Washington Post reports that Frist specifically ordered the divestiture of family shares of the family business:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is facing questions from the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission about his sale of stock in his family's hospital company one month before its price fell sharply.

The Tennessee lawmaker, who is the Senate's top Republican and a likely candidate for president in 2008, ordered his portfolio managers in June to sell his family's shares in HCA Inc., the nation's largest hospital chain, which was founded by Frist's father and brother.

A month later, the stock's price dropped 9 percent in a single day because of a warning from the company about weakening earnings. Stockholders are not permitted to trade stock based on inside information; whether Frist possessed any appears to be at the heart of the probes.

The AP reports this morning that far from being a completely blind trust, Frist knew exactly how much HCA stock he had in his portfolio, and issued misleading statements about it:

Frist sold his HCA stock from several blind trusts this summer, at a time when insiders in the company also were selling off shares worth $112 million from January through June. Frist aides say he sold his stock to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest.

Frist, asked in a television interview in January 2003 whether he should sell his HCA stock, responded: "Well, I think really for our viewers it should be understood that I put this into a blind trust. So as far as I know, I own no HCA stock"

Frist, referring to his trust and those of his family, also said in the interview, "I have no control. It is illegal right now for me to know what the composition of those trusts are. So I have no idea."

Documents filed with the Senate showed that just two weeks before those comments, the trustee of the senator's trust, M. Kirk Scobey Jr., wrote to Frist that HCA stock was contributed to the trust. It was valued at $15,000 and $50,000.

The documents filed by the trustees of Frist's blind trusts were obtained by The Associated Press on Friday.

If the documents prove to be authentic -- and we all know how important it is to verify that -- then Frist has landed himself into a world of trouble. As insiders started dumping HCA stock, Frist jumped in along with them, having illegal knowledge of his portfolio. Compound that with possible insider information and Frist may have serious legal problems over the next few years, the kind that lands corrupt politicos into Club Fed for extended vacations.

These charges seem rather specific, and if the AP did their homework properly (a big if, of course), the evidence gives at least some credence to the charges. It seems appropriate, with this kind of investigation going on, for Frist to step down as Senate Majority Leader and allow another Republican to take the reigns. We have too much at stake to have a distracted leadership in the upper chamber let the agenda go adrift. We need a strong Majority Leader who can keep the Democrats on the hot seat for their obstructionism and also keep a spotlight on Chuck Schumer's own emerging scandal. I'd prefer to see George Allen step into the #1 slot.

In the meantime, Frist needs to do some explaining to his home state constituents. They sent him to Washington, and they need to know whether they made a mistake.

Hamas Blows Its Load, Israel Blows Its Top

Hamas learned yesterday and this morning that it plays a dangerous game with damgerous weapons. During a triumphal celebration of the end of the Israeli occupation in Gaza, a number of their homemade Katyusha rockets exploded, killing 15 and wounding 80 in the crowd, mostly children. Hamas and their partners, Islamic Jihad, also lobbed a few over the border into Israel, which caused Israel to mobilize its ground forces and promise a "crushing response".

First, the New York Times reported on the explosions at the Hamas rally:

A pickup truck carrying rockets exploded on Friday at a large Hamas rally as the group paraded its weapons through a densely packed refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. At least 15 people were killed and dozens were wounded, Palestinian medical officials said.

The powerful blast sent a plume of white smoke into the sky and unleashed pandemonium in the sprawling Jabaliya refugee camp, a Hamas stronghold just north of Gaza City. Body parts were scattered on the ground as ambulances rushed to the scene, and people in the crowd wailed in grief. The casualties included a number of children.

The blast appeared to be accidental, and the Palestinian Interior Ministry issued a statement that called on Hamas to "shoulder its responsibility" for the explosion.

Hamas shouldered the responsibility by claiming it uses duds for parades and that the Israelis must have fired on them from above to cause the explosion. Israel, which has no problem acknowledging such attacks, denied having had anything to do with the explosion. The homemade Katyushas have a notorious reputation for unreliability and instability, and taking them into a large crowd like the one seen in the AP photograph amounts to criminal stupidity.

Even more criminally stupid would be the continual launching of rockets from Gaza into Israel. The very event that Hamas celebrated -- the end of the occupation -- makes attacks against Israel an act of war, not a quasi-legal exercise of the so-called right to fight against occupation. Hamas and Islamic Jihad didn't take that into their calculations yesterday when they launched their missiles towards Sedarot, which all missed badly. IJ claimed responsibility for some as a retaliation for a raid on the West Bank town of Tulkarm, while Hamas insisted its attack answered the parade explosion that they claim was caused by an Israeli attack.

Israel promises a "crushing response," and they should. After pulling out all their troops and forcibly removing all Jewish settlers in Gaza, they no longer occupy that territory, taking away the radicals' last excuse for such attacks:

"We have to make it clear to the Palestinians that Israel will not let the recent events pass without a response," Mofaz said in a statement, referring to the Hamas rocket fire. "The response needs to be crushing." ...

Mofaz decided to deploy troops on Israel's border with Gaza after meeting his security chiefs, an official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the meeting. Thousands of soldiers received call-up notices, and their leaves were canceled.

The Palestinians may soon learn about the flip side of self-determination. When given that opportunity and using it to make war, a non-occupied country could find itself in a war which would result in their complete destruction.

Able Danger Foxtrot VI: The Pentagon Backstep Redux

Earlier today, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that it had an agreement with the Pentagon to allow the five witnesses to testify in open hearings on the Able Danger project and its identification of the four lead hijackers of the 9/11 attacks. Now the AP reports that the Pentagon may yet block that testimony again, and that the only certainty at this point is continued uncertainty:

On Friday, the Senate committee announced the Pentagon had reversed its position and would allow the five witnesses to testify at a new public hearing scheduled for October 5.

The Pentagon denied anything had changed, despite behind-the-scenes negotiations to reach a solution agreeable to both sides.

"Our position has not changed," Defense spokesman Bryan Whitman told Reuters. "This is a classified program and there are still aspects of it that are not appropriate for an open hearing. And that's what we have told the committee."

Not so, responded William Reynolds, the judiciary committee's director of communications.

"The Pentagon has agreed to make five witnesses available. Although there was no talk at the time when they made that offer, the assumption was that it would be in an open committee hearing," Reynolds said in an interview.

"If the Pentagon has issues with that, they need to let us know," he added.

Arlen Specter has hinted at bringing charges against Pentagon personnel for obstruction of a Congressional investigation, and others in the Senate have talked openly of a DoD cover-up on 9/11. It seems better for the Pentagon to act now to demonstrate openness and cooperation before Specter starts issuing subpoenas not just for the five witnesses he wants, but for people like Shelton and Schoomaker as well.

Several CQ readers point out in comments and e-mail that the Pentagon represents many entities, some of them competing with each other. Of course this is true, but the political leadership handles the relationship with Congress. That starts with Rumsfeld and works its way through his staff. This constant back-and-forth with Congresss shows that the indecision exists in the political section of the DoD. No doubt they have received contradictory data from other factions, but the lack of consistency has to be laid at the feet of the Secretary.

He'd better correct this soon, too. The dance routine has started to look more like a burlesque stall tactic.

Able Danger Foxtrot V: The Pentagon Backstep

The Pentagon has reversed itself -- again -- in the Able Danger soap opera playing out in Washington DC. After agreeing to provide witnesses to the Senate Judiciary Committee, then forbidding them to testify on the eve of the hearings, the Pentagon now says it will allow all five Able Danger team members to provide public testimony on October 5th about the program:

The Defense Department on Friday reversed its earlier decision to bar key witnesses from testifying about just how much information the U.S. government had on the Sept. 11 hijackers before they led the attacks that killed 3,000 people.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has therefore scheduled a second hearing for next week on the formerly secret Pentagon intelligence unit called "Able Danger". ...

The Senate Judiciary Committee said in a statement Friday that the Pentagon now will allow five witnesses to testify. Among those are Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott and defense contractor John Smith.

I wonder what happened to cause this change in attitude. It appears that the heavey-handedness of the last-minute change caused some problems even among those Senators inclined to support the White House, such as Arlen Specter. More likely, the Pentagon and White House may have underestimated the visibility that Able Danger has achieved over the past month.

We can surmise a couple of items from this reversal, especially given the hostility that Shaffer showed towards the Pentagon as a result of the initial cancellation. First, the gag order had little to do with ongoing operational security. It would take much more time than 72 hours to secure personnel and intelligence, and if the Pentagon still had those assets in operation, the witnesses would remain gagged. That means the Pentagon pulled the witnesses for some other reason.

Anyone want to guess what that reason might be? Whatever the reason, they have made clear that the Pentagon fears the truth coming out about Able Danger. Many have speculated that the program showed connections between the Clinton Administration and China, and that caused the Pentagon to hush up Able Danger. Perhaps, but that cannot explain the actions this week in pulling the witnesses off the stand at the last moment. The Clinton Administration has come and gone, and even a possible Hillary administration would come no sooner than almost four years from now.

The reason, therefore, has to involve people at the Pentagon right now. It seems to me that the Pentagon has the most to lose if speculation that it deliberately withheld cooperation from the FBI when it could have stopped 9/11 is true, and that it has to answer for the destruction of the materials if the witnesses testify as expected. Those decisions could involve high-ranking brass, such as Hugh Shelton (ret.) and Pete Schoomaker, and perhaps even Donald Rumsfeld. Or perhaps they just involve second-tier leadership - which is why the Pentagon decided to reverse itself after seeing the public reaction to the aborted hearing Wednesday.

October 5th should be pretty interesting. Expect to see three new names pop up, including Dr. Eileen Preisser, who seems to hold a central role in Able Danger and the analysis that found the terrorists a year before the attacks. If so, the 9/11 Commission will be the first casualty, but not the last. This story will not go away soon.

UPDATE: Corrected spelling of Dr. Eileen Preisser. The wrong spelling did lead me to this transcript the other day, so the mistake was not entirely unproductive.

Terror Arrest In Manchester?

London police had to Taser a suspect at Manchester's airport after attempting to detain him following suspicious activity with a mysterious package:

A man has been arrested under terror laws at Manchester Airport after the discovery of a suspect package. Greater Manchester Police used a Taser gun after the suspect resisted arrest. ...

Police had been called to the airport at about 8.30am after a man was seen acting suspiciously on the airport apron close to stand 26.

"Police attempted to arrest the men who struggled with officers. A Taser was then used to detain the man," police said in a statement.

"The army bomb disposal unit were called to examine the package which was found on the apron...."

The London Telegraph reports that the police will treat this as a terror investigation. More details will likely come later today.

Sistani Backs Constitution

The most influential of Shi'ite religious leaders in Iraq urged his countrymen to vote in support of the newly proposed constitution next month when the plebescite will take place. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani gathered his aides and ordered them to campaign on his behalf to get people to the polls to vote "yes" on the referendum:

Two officials in the Shiite Muslim hierarchy in Najaf said Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called senior aides together and told them to promote a "yes" vote among the faithful during the Oct. 15 national referendum on the constitution. ...

In Amman, Jordan, about 150 Iraqi Sunni clerics and tribal leaders called for the rejection of the constituion, warning the charter would lead to the fragmentation of Iraq. The local leaders from Iraq's insurgency-torn Anbar province, the country's Sunni heartland, met for a a three-day conference in the Jordanian capital for security reasons.

Having Sistani on board for the constitution will certainly help influence the Shi'ites to come to the polls. Whether his efforts will help among moderate Sunnis is a tougher question. The mobilization of the millions of Shi'ites in Baghdad, however, will help ensure that the province will not reject the constitution by the two-thirds needed for overall failure, and could make the victory a lock.

Meanwhile, if the Sunnis who had to meet in Jordan for "security" purposes really intended on keeping the country together, they would put less effort into voting "no" on a constitution that has fairly obvious political support -- and one which can later be amended to repair any basic faults -- and put more effort into breaking the Zarqawi network of terrorists. These Ba'athist remnants want their privileged position in Iraq back again, and they have no problem fomenting a civil war to get it. This group will settle for nothing less than the rule of another Sunni strongman, and as long as they remain so inclined, we should do our best to ignore them and speak directly to their constituencies.

Articulate Means Racist?

I wasn't aware that "articulate" constituted some sort of racist smear, but apparently Oliver Willis writes his weblog to set us all straight. When I wrote that Michael Steele, Maryland's lieutenant governor, had that particular quality, it must have made Oliver rather angry. Paying a compliment to an African-American in his mind means that one assumes the rest of the population lacks the quality noted in the one.

Fortunately, here in the sane world, paying one person a compliment doesn't denigrate anyone else, because most of the people here understand that good qualities such as articulation don't amount to some strange zero-sum game. The rest of us recognize that when someone else gets complimented, only the small and terribly insecure believe it has anything to do with themselves and anyone else.

Politics has many inarticulate boobs in office and out; all one has to do to understand this is to tune into a Congressional hearing to find them. Last week, we had Ted Kennedy repeated clichés like "a hand up, not a hand out" ad nauseam and relying so badly on a script that he could not respond to answers to his own questions. Obviously, the blogosphere has its share as well.

Sobek skewers Oliver in this post.

UPDATE: Thank you, Jeff. I have never heard the word "articulate" used in any other context than complimentary, and quite frankly, I still fail to see the point of it as an insult.

Rita Weakens To A 4, Galveston Emptied, Houston Braces For Impact

Hurricane Rita weakened to a Category 4 earlier today as Galveston evacuated in an orderly but necesarily slow manner as the storm draws ever closer. Houston is bracing for an impact that will put the evacuees of Katrina through a second attack of catastrophic weather in a month:

Cars clogged Texas highways with more than a million people fleeing Hurricane Rita on Thursday as the storm roared through the Gulf of Mexico on a potentially catastrophic course.

Rita weakened to a Category 4 storm with winds at 150 miles per hour but remained extremely dangerous, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in an afternoon update.

It forecast the storm would hit near the Houston area, the heart of the U.S. oil industry, as a dangerous hurricane of at least Category 3 intensity early Saturday.

Heavy traffic jammed highways from Corpus Christi in southern Texas into Louisiana as coastal residents, heeding the lessons of Hurricane Katrina, headed inland to escape what has become one of the most intense storms on record.

As Rita neared, Exxon Mobil said it was closing the biggest U.S. oil refinery in Baytown, Texas and another in Beaumont, 90 miles east.

The closings, combined with earlier shutdowns due to Rita and Katrina three weeks ago, raised to at least 12 the number of U.S. refineries out of commission. Together, they had nearly 20 percent of U.S. refining capacity, raising the specter of serious gasoline shortages in the days ahead.

After the emergency of Rita dissipates and the repair work has begun, this country needs a frank discussion about the status of our refining capability. We have not added a new refinery in 30 years, thanks to a number of efforts by environmental activists to shut down the oil business and the normal NIMBYism that arises when discussing infrastructure needs. Forcing our friends in the Gulf to carry that burden on their own for this long puts the nation in a highly vulnerable position, and we are all about to see the results of that shortsightedness. If we cannot get our capacity back on line at 100% in the next month or two, we may have people freezing to death this winter in the north because of fuel shortages.

First, though, let's focus on the safety of the people in the area. The Duke of DeLand has family fleeing the Galveston area; his daughter, son-in-law, and two beautiful grandchildren (as a grandparent, I know they're all beautiful) have taken to secondary roads to get out of the storm path. Pray for them and keep up with their progress at his website.

Speaking Of The Usual Suspects

The groups that will gather in Washington DC for a major anti-war protest this weekend have financial ties to major leftist fundraisers like George Soros and Theresa Heinz Kerry, and beyond them to communist organizations and radical left-wing groups, the Washington Times reports today. The conduits for the rallies appear to be the ubiquitous front groups International ANSWER and the UPJ:

The groups gathering in Washington this weekend to protest President Bush and the war in Iraq have ties to radical left-wing groups and communist organizations and have enjoyed the support of the left's biggest financial supporter, George Soros. ...

The leaders of ANSWER, founded three days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, are connected to the Workers World Party, a Marxist group that has expressed support for such dictators as North Korea's Kim Jong-il, Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic and Iraq's Saddam Hussein. The latter two have been ousted from power and jailed.

Other groups associated with ANSWER are the Free Palestine Alliance, U.S.-Mexico Solidarity Foundation and the Muslim Student Association of the U.S. and Canada.

UPJ, founded by liberals who say they were concerned about the radical tactics and smorgasbord of issues trumpeted by ANSWER, says it organized the "S24," or Saturday (Sept. 24) protest first, but Mr. Dobbs said there's "a big overlap" between the protests and "the major point is that we're in D.C. to stop the war in Iraq."

None of this comes as a shock to those who have followed this anti-war movement. The funding for the so-called grass-roots groups show remarkable complexity and opacity, but as John J. Tierney points out, most of them do receive at least some of their funding through the Tides Foundation and Soros' Open Society Institute, the latter of which also indirectly funded John McCain's Reform Institute as well. ANSWER has a long history of supporting repressive and brutal regimes such as Kim's and Saddam's, and have positioned themselves as neo-Stalinists as a result.

That doesn't mean that everyone who attends these rallies lacks sincerity in the message. It should warn them, though, that continued association with such groups will eventually destroy their credibility. Apologists for dictators do not have any moral standing for protesting American foreign policy. When groups like that discount 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq having the ability to select their own leaders and laws and would consign them to suffer under the brutality of strongman rule once more, they show themselves as the self-congratulatory, reactionary anti-Americans that they are.

Feinstein Goes No On Roberts

Dianne Feinstein will vote against confirming John Roberts to the Supreme Court in today's Judiciary Committee tally and again in the full Senate, she announced. Roberts failed to convince her that he would meet her abortion-rights litmus test and therefore lost her support:

Feinstein, the committee's only woman, said her vote was decided after Roberts refused to fully answer her and other Democrats' questions in his confirmation hearing last week.

"I knew as little about what Judge Roberts really thought about issues after the hearings as I did before the hearing. This makes it very hard for me," said Feinstein, an abortion rights supporter.

"I cannot in good conscious cast a 'yea' vote. I will cast a 'no' vote," she said.

That may play well in California, but it underscores that the Democrats play politics with the Supreme Court, and not the GOP. The President did not nominate a litmus-test abortion opponent, like perhaps Michael Luttig, who has written on the poor jurisprudence of Roe v Wade (a view with which liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has publicly agreed). Feinstein's announcement provides further proof that the Democrats seek to impose unpopular policy through judicial fiat rather than through legislation, and that they represent the true threat to the Constitutional checks and balances that keep power in the hands of the people.

No one believes that this will cause any risk to Feinstein's seat in California, where the GOP still operate in such disarray that they will not likely field any candidate that could possibly unseat Feinstein even if she retired first. However, the declarations of Reid and Feinstein opposing such an impressive and obviously qualified candidate like Roberts will provide grist for campaigns in red-state contests, where at least five Democratic Senators will need to defend themselves and their party against the clear trend towards radicalism and knee-jerk partisanship. The more Democrats that fall into this trap, the easier that argument gets.

Schumer Staffers Get Free Vacation For Privacy Violation

Senator Chuck Schumer, who runs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, has long decried the potential for identity theft and the loss of privacy in the marketplace. In April of this year, Schumer introduced legislation to create an entire new bureaucracy for "data merchants", the Schumer-Nelson ID Theft Prevention Bill. What penalties does the Schumer-Nelson bill prescribe for violations? A thousand dollars per violation, for starters, and repeated violations probably would get escalated.

So what did Schumer and the DSCC do with two staffers that got caught with Lt. Governor Michael Steele's (R-MD) credit report? Apparently gave them a two-month vacation with pay, according to the New York Post:

Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Schumer-headed Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said two staffers were instantly suspended — with pay — in July after admitting they obtained the credit report of Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who is running for Senate.

Sources familiar with the situation said the committee's head of research, Katie Barge, and a deputy, Lauren Weiner, got the credit report by using Steele's Social Security number, which they say they obtained from public documents.

Records obtained by The Post show the two continued to be paid by the Democratic committee at least through Aug. 31.

Katie Barge has quite a resumé as a researcher. She worked in that capacity for Media Matters, and before that for the John Edwards presidential campaign. In fact, she did opposition research for Edwards according to Common Dreams, which touted her as a key player to David Brock at Media Matters.

It seems that Ms. Barge got hired by the DSCC for exactly the purpose for which she got suspended. It seems telling that the Senator who wants to impose a new licensing and compliance bureaucracy on so-called data merchants hires people like Barge and then expresses outrage when they perform the tasks that made her such an attractive candidate for their position.

The DSCC's suspension with pay -- such a painful scolding! -- earns Schumer the Captain Louis Renault Award, a recognition of hypocrisy so transparent that its existence serves only to entertain us. When Schumer starts treating his staff the way he proposes that the government treat the taxpayer, we'll alert the usual suspects.

Air America: Blanche DuBois Returns

Brian Maloney extends the excellent blog-coverage that he and Michelle Malkin have provided on the Air America financial scandal. Today he looks at the desperation strategy that Air America has adopted -- begging for cash from its listeners:

Resembling an online PBS or NPR pledge drive, the site offered paltry "benefits" for cash "gifts" to the liberal talk network. Is Air America unintentionally a not-for-profit enterprise?

For $50, they'll send three "official" bumper stickers, while $100 gets a "stylish" tote bag thrown in. The sucker who has everything might choose the $250 version, including the above and an on-air thanks from one of Air America's talk hosts.

Tote BagAnother option: send "any amount", for which they'll be "grateful". Only you can prevent the next Boys & Girls Club financial raid. Send a buck, save midnight basketball in the Bronx.

In fact, they're selling NPR-class 'memberships' at AAR. What do you get as an AAR member?

* We'll send you a monthly Associates insider email with the backstage news from our shows and our headquarters.

* When we take Air America Radio on the road, we'll invite you to meet our hosts and progressive leaders in your community.

* And for gifts of $50 and up, we've got FREE STUFF to send you. See the items on the right-hand side of this page.

In other words, members get e-mail spam, advertisements for Air America events (for which they will get charged a fee), and $50 bumper stickers -- the kind that most radio stations give away for free. And, as Brian reminds us, unlike NPR, Air America is a for-profit corporation -- which means that none of those membership fees can be considered tax-deductible donations. And I love the notion that by sending AAR $50, listeners get "FREE STUFF!" Only a liberal hack would buy that argument. It's the same argument that they swallow when arguing that government should provide services for "free".

If con men want to find the easy marks in town, just look for the cars sporting the bumper sticker that boasts, "I'm building Air America Radio".

This recalls to mind the famous last words of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, who told people on her way to the nuthouse that, "I've always relied on the kindness of strangers." Most corporations inherently understand that their customers expect more for their "kindness" than a bumper sticker, tote bag, or the novelty of hearing their name on a talk-radio station -- especially when the first two come free at radio promotions and the third anytime simply by calling the station and joining the debate. On the other hand, given the nature of Air America's listenership, perhaps they have their market pegged correctly. Let's see how many cars wind up proclaiming their owners' gullibility in the few weeks remaining in Air America's lifespan.

Just When South Dakota Looked Safe ...

Look who might stage a comeback attempt in politics -- the former obstructionist and Senate Minority Leader, Tom Daschle. According to the AP, Daschle has quietly organized a new political-action committee and will start making policy speeches, the first in Iowa:

Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle's interest in public office isn't necessarily latent: he has set up a new political action committee and plans a Jefferson-Jackson Day speech in the politically pivotal state of Iowa. ...

Steve Hildebrand, director of the new committee and Daschle's former campaign manager, said the well-known Democrat from South Dakota "is not going to rule out opportunities to play important roles in public service."

"It could be president, it could be vice president, it could be something else," Hildebrand said. "It could be nothing."

He said Daschle's Iowa speech, scheduled for the state party's annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner Nov. 5, will probably be his most political since last year's election.

Hildebrand insists that Daschle wants to speak in Iowa to "help his friends" there and not to stage a bid for the Presidency in 2008 or any other "higher office". Daschle must feel quite generously towards his pals in Iowa, if the AP reports this correctly. Daschle transferred half a million dollars into his new PAC and promptly started to hit the hustings for people like Robert Byrd, who might face the same kind of upstart campaign that dethroned Daschle after his long tenure in the Senate.

He told the FEC that he would not plan to run against John Thune in 2010, after his spending triggered an inquiry into his status as a potential national-office candidate. Thune's work in saving Ellsworth AFB removed the last argument Daschle had for convincing the conservative South Dakotans to keep him and his liberal voting record in the Senate, and they're not likely to send him back under any circumstances. Nor will Daschle content himself with a seat in Congress, not after the years he spent in the Senate.

He's aiming higher, not lower, and all of this fundraising and campaigning is meant to remind Democrats of his ability to build the party and deliver the money. Daschle would be the darkest of dark-horse candidates for the top slot in 2008, but he could make a good VP candidate if other combinations don't mesh well. Hillary-Daschle? It could happen. If not, he might well receive a Cabinet position or an ambassadorship if the Democrats win the White House in 2008.

We'll soon find out if Daschle learned anything from the 2004 elections. My guess is that Daschle goes the Al Gore route and tries to tap into the energy on the radical Left.

UPDATE: So far, it looks more like Daschle will swing towards the center. Today he endorsed the confirmation of John Roberts for the Supreme Court, according to the Argus Leader and South Dakota Politics, undermining Harry Reid's leadership in the Senate and the obstructionism Daschle once promoted.

Able Danger: Hide In Plain Sight?

The Pentagon has decided to play games with the Able Danger story, virtually confirming the worst suspicions of just about everybody by first acknowledging that five of its team members recall identifying Mohammed Atta as a potential AQ terrorist a year prior to the attacks, and then forbidding these five witnesses from telling the Senate Judiciary Committee about the program. The only thing that Donald Rumsfeld has accomplished with this strategy is to introduce real bipartisanship to the Judiciary Committee, which broadly scolded the DoD for pulling the witnesses from the hearing at the last minute:

The complaints came after the Pentagon blocked several witnesses from testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee at a public hearing on Wednesday. The only testimony provided by the Defense Department came from a senior official who would say only that he did not know whether the claims were true.

Five men and women in a highly-classified program, a status one only reaches by faithful and excellent service, tell the DoD that the program identified al-Qaeda's lead terrorists over a year prior to the attacks, and they're not sure whether it's true? That may be the most pathetic spin I've heard yet on Able Danger. If almost half the analysts in an intelligence group such as Able Danger cannot be trusted to remember something as significant as that, then the Pentagon has more problems than anyone realizes.

A Pentagon spokesman had said the decision to limit testimony was based on concerns about disclosing classified information, but Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said he believed the reason was a concern "that they'll just have egg on their face."

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, accused the Pentagon of "a cover-up" and said, "I don't get why people aren't coming forward and saying, 'Here's the deal, here's what happened.'"

Biden, as usual, speaks with equal disingeniuty. He understands perfectly well, at least in general, why the DoD won't produce the witnesses. It has little to do with specific intelligence exposure. After all, if the Senators want to discuss how the identifications worked, they would gladly go into closed session for that testimony. What the Committee and the rest of us want is open testimony about what they found in relation to 9/11 and the known hijackers, who they identified, what they did with that information -- and who insisted on covering it up, both at the Pentagon and on the 9/11 Commission.

None of that comes under the heading of national security -- it falls into the category of covering some high-ranking ass.

Another reason for the sudden bipartisanship is the timeline of events, especially with the sudden stealth mode of Rumsfeld et al. The identification of the AQ operatives came in 2000, and the initial destruction of the data came in April 2000, as Eric Kleinsmith testified. That would tend to point to the Clinton Administration as an obstructor. However, the program continued, allegedly predicting the USS Cole attack three weeks before it happened. Shaffer kept extensive files until February 2004, when they mysteriously disappeared after a dispute over a cell-phone bill with the DoD. That sequence happened on Bush's watch, and so does this ill-thought brinksmanship with the Senate.

The American people suffered the worst attack on our soil four years ago. We deserve answers about how that attack could have been prevented. The Pentagon has five witnesses that speak directly to that issue who have been prevented from speaking to the representatives of the people. Arlen Specter needs to subpoena those five witnesses, all of the senior officers in the chain of command for Able Danger, and Donald Rumsfeld himself to answer for why the Pentagon will not cooperate. Four years of hiding Able Danger is long enough.

Dividing The Dems

In a bit of a surprise, Senator Pat Leahy announced his qualified support for the confirmation of John Roberts to the Supreme Court. Not only does Leahy join a handful of his caucus members for the final vote, but his committee vote ensures some bipartisanship on Judiciary that has recently lacked any at all:

Chief Justice-nominee John Roberts, his confirmation secure, picked up support from fractured Senate Democrats on Wednesday as President Bush met lawmakers to discuss a second vacancy on the Supreme Court.

The Senate Judiciary Committee's senior Democrat, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, announced his endorsement shortly after leaving the White House. That guaranteed bipartisan backing for Roberts in Thursday's scheduled vote by the committee.

But Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, liberal stalwarts Barbara Boxer of California and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, former presidential candidate John Kerry of Massachusetts and New Jersey Sens. Jon Corzine and Frank Lautenberg all are opposing Roberts. Their stand is evidence of the split among the Senate's 44 Democrats about whether they can or should mount even symbolic opposition to the successor to late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.

Leahy will head a block of Democrats that will likely number less than 20 who oppose the knee-jerk opposition espoused by the party leaders. It makes Democrats look as though no Bush appointee has any prayer of getting bipartisan support. On the other hand, Leahy's turnaround gives the base an opportunity to calm its rhetoric and start acting like adults rather than petulant children who still haven't gotten over the losses the electorate dealt them in 2002 and 2004. As Power Line notes, that healing hasn't quite begun on the fringes:

Leahy's decision was "inexplicable and deeply disappointing," said Ralph Neas, head of People for the American Way. ... "When John Roberts becomes Chief Justice and votes to erode or overturn longstanding Supreme Court precedents protecting fundamental civil rights, women's rights, privacy, religious liberty, reproductive rights and environmental safeguards, Senator Leahy's support for Roberts will make him complicit in those rulings, and in the retreat from our constitutional rights and liberties."

Go get the posse, Little Joe; Littler Ralph wants to round up Leahy for complicitly allowing an elected President to have the presumption of selecting his own nominees for the federal bench, his Constitutional power and responsibility. The fact that Neas actually does alert the media about this shows how inattentive Neas truly is to the entire notion of Constitutional authority and the meaning of elections.

The Captain Gets High

As many of you already know, I have blogged this week from Canada, appearing at a conference hosted by the Canadian Journalism Foundation last night at the University of Toronto. I had the pleasure of joining Andrew Coyne on stage, along with Jesse Hirsh and Julian Porter, to discuss whether bloggers are "shamans or shams". Afterwards, I met a number of fine Canadian bloggers for the first time -- RightGirl, Wonder Woman, Stephen Taylor, Brent Colbert, Bob Tarantino and Greg Staples of Blogging Tories, and John from Newsbeat1. Here's a shot of all of us at the conference:

The conference itself provoked a wide-ranging Q&A. In fact, we overran our time, but none of us noticed it -- I know I had a great time answering everyone's questions. Canadians have a marvelous sense of hospitality and grace, and even those who had no inclination to support an American right-wing blogger treated me with friendliness and respect.

After posting on some issues this morning, the First Mate and I took the day to go on a tour of Niagara Falls and the surrounding countryside. Neither of us have never been to Niagara Falls on either the American or Canadian side, so the opportunity proved too enchanting to pass up when Toronto is so close to it.

We signed up for a guided tour that took us right from the hotel to Niagara on the Lake, a small village that had plenty of history about the War of 1812. It used to house the provincial government of Upper Canada (renamed Ontario), but when war threatened, the British wisely moved it to York (renamed Toronto). The Americans captured Niagara on the Lake, and burned it to the ground when the British recaptured it from us. They returned the favor later in the war when they sacked Washington DC and burned most of the government buildings in retaliation.

So, if nothing else, we had time enough to learn about karma in Niagara on the Lake.

After we left, the tour took us to the helipad for an optional aerial tour of Niagara Falls. Anyone who knows me knows that I would not get onto a helicopter unless someone threatened my life, and even then I'd have to think about it. I have a tremendous fear of heights that usually would petrify me just thinking about such a trip. Neither the First Mate or I expected me to get aboard ... but the opportunity to see the falls from the air proved too attractive.

We flew in a Bell long-range helicopter, which gave us a spectacular view of the entire Niagara area. I picked out the two best shots I got of the falls, and even used my digital camera to take some quick video of the Horseshoe Falls (watch here). The ride turned out to be fantastic, which was good, because the taped guided tour -- the only way the First Mate could enjoy the ride -- turned out to be in French, a mistake by the flight company. After pointing out that her very expensive ten minute flight amounted to nothing, they put us both back up in the air immediately, for free, with an English-language tape instead ... which meant I took my second helicopter flight moments after my first.

After a delicious buffet lunch at the Sheraton, we went to the Maid of the Mist for an up-close look at the falls. I've included a couple of shots of the tour, a spectacular view of the American Falls and one of Horseshoe Falls that doesn't come close to capturing the experience. The water, the pounding, the mist; it all feels so primal and so awe-inspiring that neither words nor pictures do it justice.

We returned late this evening, and we immediately came back to the amazing JetBlue story and the news of tornado touchdowns in Minneapolis. That came before an interview for Canadian radio CHQR for The World Tonight with Rob Breckenridge, who always has a great show. It's been a busy day, and I have plenty to write tomorrow before going out to see more of Toronto for our last full day in Canada on this trip. (Don't get me started on the resurgent Canadian dollar, which is killing us!) I plan on blogging more tomorrow, so keep checking in, and make plans to see Niagara Falls as soon as possible if you haven't yet been here.

Signifying Nothing

My recap of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the confirmation of John Roberts appears in the Daily Standard, "The Sound And The Fury". It points out that the Democrats have reduced their credibility on judicial appointments to almost nil, thanks to a clueless effort to outargue one of the foremost legal scholars during the nationally televised debate:

FROM THE FIRST DAY, the strategy of the opposition was clear: get Roberts to refuse to answer questions about specific cases and paint him as unresponsive. Unfortunately for the Democrats, Roberts had prepared several candidates for hearings such as these. He refused to say how he would rule when presented with specific cases and hypotheticals based on issues that will probably come before the Court--but each time he explained in detail why he could not answer, and then instead talked about the process he would use to approach cases such as those outlined by the senators. He didn't sound unresponsive; rather, Roberts came across like a law professor giving a lecture in Jurisprudence 101 to a group of inattentive freshmen.

In return, the Democrats acted like . . . inattentive freshmen.

Just to prove that the Democratic performance on the committee didn't amount to a fluke, their leader Harry Reid managed to botch up the post-hearing strategy as well. Today's Washington Post editorial notes Reid's ill-advised language in announcing his "no" vote on Roberts:

IN ANNOUNCING his opposition yesterday to the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to be chief justice of the United States, Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) made a remarkable statement: "The president is not entitled to very much deference in staffing the third branch of government, the judiciary." Leave aside the merits of the Roberts nomination, which we support; if Mr. Reid regards Judge Roberts as unworthy, he is duty-bound to vote against him. But these are dangerous words that Democrats will come to regret. ...

Republicans may still be in the majority the next time a Democratic president nominates a justice. Is it now okay for them to vote against a person who -- as Mr. Reid put it of Judge Roberts -- is "an excellent lawyer" and "a thoughtful, mainstream judge" who may make "a fine Supreme Court justice" simply because the nominee doesn't represent their ideal? When that day comes, and Democrats cry foul, remember what Mr. Reid said about how little deference he believes he owes Mr. Bush concerning Judge Roberts.

Not to worry. Reid, Schumer, Kennedy, and Biden have done all they can to ensure a permanent minority status for Democrats that will take a generation of work to undo.

Levee Failure Unexpected: Louisiana Engineers

Contrary to the media narrative of the past several weeks, the levee failure that flooded New Orleans should not have occurred with the storm surge that accompanied Hurricane Katrina. In fact, the debris pattern shows that the waters never overtopped the levees but that the levees collapsed before they met the thresholds of stress for which they were designed, according to state experts who have inspected the gaps:

Louisiana's top hurricane experts have rejected the official explanations for the floodwall collapses that inundated much of New Orleans, concluding that Hurricane Katrina's storm surges were much smaller than authorities have suggested and that the city's flood- protection system should have kept most of the city dry.

The Army Corps of Engineers has said that Katrina was just too massive for a system that was not intended to protect the city from a storm greater than a Category 3 hurricane, and that the floodwall failures near Lake Pontchartrain were caused by extraordinary surges that overtopped the walls.

But with the help of complex computer models and stark visual evidence, scientists and engineers at Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center have concluded that Katrina's surges did not come close to overtopping those barriers. That would make faulty design, inadequate construction or some combination of the two the likely cause of the breaching of the floodwalls along the 17th Street and London Avenue canals -- and the flooding of most of New Orleans.

Perhaps this explains why authorities appeared to relax the initial day after landfall, Monday, August 30. After all, the brunt of the storm, had turned east, and the calculations for a Pontchartrain surge would have shown a decrease in the potential for catastrophic overtopping. Their models show that the only overtopping that should have occurred was the one that flooded St. Bernard's Parish and the Lower 9th Ward, and that one due in part to the existence of a little-used Army navigation channel than amplified the design flaw in that area.

However, the evidence now shows that the north levee breaks that did most of the damage to New Orleans should not have occurred, given the level of the water and the pressure it generated. No one knows whether the failure came from the design or the construction, but these experts say that the north levees definitely should have easily held back Pontchartrain.

Perhaps that's why in those first few hours, federal and state authorities said that no one expected the levee failures ... because the storm turned out to carry an impact that the design should have contained, according to their data. Instead of a sign of ignorance or cluelessness, it may have been the truth.

Dem Dirty Tricks In Maryland?

Maryland Democrats opposing Michael Steele's possible run for the Senate seat opened up by the retirement of Paul Sarbanes apparently got hold of his credit report, a violation of privacy laws. Two staffers have resigned, and the FBI apparently will investigate the campaign:

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said Tuesday that two of its employees obtained the credit report of Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, a potential Republican challenger next year for the Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Paul Sarbanes.

Phil Singer, spokesman for the committee, said in a statement issued in Washington that the two employees have resigned. He said the credit report was not used or disseminated to anyone, and the incident was reported to the U.S. attorney's office.

"While the DSCC did not authorize the employees to access Mr. Steele's credit report, we regret that this incident occurred and apologize to Mr. Steele," the statement said.

Singer would not expand on the statement.

Paul Ellington, Steele's chief of staff, said in a statement that "this is a serious legal issue, and a criminal investigation is under way. We have been advised by the FBI to not comment and will honor their request."

The DSCC website contains no mention of this incident or Singer's press release, although they have no problem expressing their glee over the arrest of David Savafian. Note the odd passive voice in the second paragraph of the excerpt: "... and the incident was reported to the US attorney's office." That obviously intends to imply that the DSCC or Democrats in general reported the violation, but it could also mean that the feds got tipped off by someone else and it forced the resignation of two political scapegoats.

As one of a handful of prominent black conservatives coming up through the ranks, any election involving Michael Steele will have a high priority for Democratic opposition. I had the good fortune to see Steele speak in person to the Republican convention in 2004, and the man will provide Democrats with nightmares on the stump. Articulate, knowledgeable, passionate, and humorous, he embodies the communication skills of a Ronald Reagan with a keen grasp of policy. He may need more seasoning before making a run for national office perhaps, but not much more. Apparently, the Democrats agree.

Hillary 'Endorses' Blaming Bush For 9/11 Terrorism

One of the lessons a politician learns is to be careful what she autographs. According to the New York Sun, Hillary "endorsed" a protest placard that blamed George Bush for the 9/11 attacks:

Mrs. Clinton concluded her remarks yesterday by saying, "We are better than this," and lamenting the "disgraceful treatment of the people left behind in the Gulf Coast." While departing the event, she was asked to "endorse" a sign held by a demonstrator blaming President Bush for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Iraq war, and the devastation wrought by Katrina. Mrs. Clinton autographed the poster.

I doubt that Mrs. Clinton did this completely out of oversight, either. While she has made strides in reinventing herself as a Democratc moderate, helped in no small measure by her political party marching over a radical-Left cliff over the past few years, she needs to stay connected to that extremist part of the base in order to retain energy and draw funding for her re-election to the Senate and presidential run. That means she has to appear to buy into some of the looniness coming from the Left, including blaming Bush for the weather and the fact that hurricanes cause damage.

The event at which this occurred only illustrates this more. As oil supplies tighten and our normal resources in the Gulf throw us out of our normal balance, the US needs to start looking at domestic production of crude and especially an expansion of refining capacity, to which the country has not added since the 1970s. Instead, Hillary spent the day literally beating the tom-toms to protest the "diversion" of Hurricane Katrina as a reason to defeat the environmental lobby on ANWR and drilling:

Over the din of beating tom-toms, surrounded by activists wearing antlers and dressed as polar and grizzly bears, Senator Clinton yesterday dismissed high gas prices and the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina as a "diversion," cautioning that proponents of arctic drilling were exploiting recent crises to make their case for a long-term anti-environment agenda. ...

"Some might say, 'Well, senator, we have gas prices going up - don't we need to drill in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge?'" Mrs. Clinton said. "And of course the answer is that we do not. The answer is that that is a diversion. The answer is that we need to break our addiction to foreign oil."

As John Lennon once said, we'd all love to see the plan, Senator. Hillary has had four years in the Senate and her husband had eight years in the White House. Exactly what plan does Hillary have in mind to break that "addiction"? What legislation has Hillary introduced in the Senate to replace oil as the nation's primary energy source? I doubt that she has convinced the Kennedys to allow that windmill farm to obstruct their view, nor do I believe we've seen her ally du jour John Kerry invest the family fortune in hydrogen cell technology.

The only ways at hand to break the addiction to foreign oil are either to produce more oil domestically, or to switch to nuclear power for our electricity needs. George Bush has proposed to do both and has actually introduced legislation to make it happen -- legislation passed by Congress after four years of Democratic obstructionism, an opposition strategy helped in no small part by Hillary Clinton. Perhaps we could take her more seriously if she spent less of her time beating drums and more of it in the Senate, putting some effort where her mouth is.

Able Danger: Pentagon Spikes Witnesses While Shaffer Reveals New Source

The New York Times reports this evening that the Pentagon has blocked its military witnesses from testifying on Able Danger at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings tomorrow. Senator Arlen Specter registered his surprise but plans on holding the hearings anyway (h/t: AJ Strata):

The Pentagon said today that it had blocked a group of military officers and intelligence analysts from testifying at an open Congressional hearing about a highly classified military intelligence program that, the officers have said, identified a ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks as a potential terrorist more than a year before the attacks.

The announcement came a day before the officers and intelligence analysts had been scheduled to testify about the program, known as Able Danger, at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. ...

Mr. Specter said his staff had talked to all five of the potential witnesses and found that "credibility has been established" for all of them.

"There are quite a few credible people who are prepared to testify that Mohamed Atta was identified long before 9/11," he said. "Now maybe there's more than one Mohamed Atta. Or maybe there's some mistake. But that's what we're trying to find out."

The Pentagon might think that withdrawing its witnesses will keep Able Danger from breaking wide open, but they will find themselves sorely mistaken. This only demonstrates that the program found something that the Pentagon still wants hidden. If that includes a finding that their program not only found Atta and other AQ terrorists over a year before the attacks, but also predicted the USS Cole attack three weeks before it happened, and that the Pentagon shut down the program anyway, eighteen Senators will want to know why.

In fact, the withdrawal of the witnesses clearly shows that the story has substance and isn't a case of mistaken identity. Had this just been an identification of a second Mohammed Atta, as Specter postulates, the Pentagon should have no problem putting its witnesses on the stand. Nothing about a mistaken identity would create a classification problem for the hearing tomorrow.

QT Monster has a transcript from tonight's interview of LTC Tony Shaffer on the Jerry Doyle radio show. Shaffer says Donald Rumsfeld himself gave the order to stop the witnesses from appearing at the Judiciary Committee hearing:

JD: Well, when you say DoD, where's this coming from at DoD? Is this instructions to DoD from higher ups? Is this people in DoD who are afraid of what information gets out? I mean who is the person who's making this happen?

AS: What I will tell you is I was told by 2 DoD officials today directly that it is their understanding that the Secretary of Defense directed that we not testify tomorrow. That is my understanding.

However, Shaffer says that former Major Eric Kleinsmith, now a civilian contractor, will still testify at the panel. Kleinsmith received the orders to destroy the Able Danger database. Specter's insistence that the hearings go forward probably hinges on Kleinsmith's ability to testify to the information that got destroyed, who ordered its destruction, and why. From that point, the committee could unravel an entire command sequence that will uncover how Able Danger got missed by the 9/11 Commission.

Another interesting fact got mentioned in Shaffer's interview. He spoke about a Dr. Eileen Pricer. One of the more mysterious potential sources of the Able Danger story involved a female PhD that could corroborate Shaffer and Phillpott, the woman who actually developed the Atta identification in the first place. I Googled Eileen Pricer and got just one hit -- but it's a doozy.

It turns out that Dr. Pricer testified before a closed session of Congressional subcommittee on national security exactly one month after 9/11. That testimony isn't available, but Rep. Christopher Shays mentions her on the record in the next day's public testimony:

Mr. Shays. In a briefing we had yesterday, we had Eileen Pricer, who argues that we don't have the data we need because we don't take all the public data that is available and mix it with the security data. And just taking public data, using, you know, computer systems that are high-speed and able to digest, you know, literally floors' worth of material, she can take relationships that are seven times removed, seven units removed, and when she does that, she ends up with relationships to the bin Laden group where she sees the purchase of chemicals, the sending of students to universities. You wouldn't see it if you isolated it there, but if that unit is connected to that unit, which is connected to that unit, which is connected to that unit, you then see the relationship. So we don't know ultimately the authenticity of how she does it, but when she does it, she comes up with the kind of answer that you have just asked, which is a little unsettling.

Unsettling? Christopher Shays described Able Danger thirty-one days after the 9/11 attacks. What else did Eileen Pricer tell the Congressional subcommittee on national security on October 11, 2001? Did Pricer tell Shays that the information no longer existed but did at one time?

Senator Specter should invite Christopher Shays to have a seat on the witness bench, and he should also start issuing subpoenas for the witnesses that the Pentagon wants to silence. We need answers, and we need to know that our country will fight terrorism with every tool at its disposal.

Reid To Senate: Partisanship Wins Over Substance

Confirming that the Senate Democratic leadership plans to offer nothing but knee-jerk opposition to judicial appointments from the Bush administration, Harry Reid today announced that he will vote to oppose the confirmation of John Roberts to the Supreme Court:

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid announced his opposition to Chief Justice-nominee John Roberts on Tuesday, voicing doubts about Roberts' commitment to civil rights and accusing the Bush administration of stonewalling requests for documents that might shed light on his views. ...

"I have reluctantly concluded that this nominee has not satisfied the high burden that would justify my voting for his confirmation based on the current record," the Nevada Democrat said on the Senate floor.

Reid did signal that he will oppose any effort to filibuster the confirmation or to delay the vote, an improvement over the past two sessions of Congress but still far short of the recognition given Clinton's nominees (Breyer and Ginsburg) in the bipartisan approval they received for their confirmations. The continued complaining about the lack of documentation amounts to a thin cover story for the entrenched partisanship displayed by the Democrats over executive appointments. Even their own former Solicitors General told the Senate that the material they requested should be considered privileged material, but it's the only excuse that Reid has for his intransigence.

This sets the Bush administration free to pursue its own ends in its next nomination. If Reid can't cast a vote for John Roberts, one of the most uniquely and undeniably talented and qualified prospects for the Supreme Court at hand, then Reid and the Democrats who follow him will never cast a vote for any Republican nominee. Reid gives no incentive whatsoever to negotiate or to consult with the Democrats on selections in the future; no matter what happens or how well qualified the nominee, they will oppose him or her.

The Democrats keep bringing up Bush's promise to be a uniter, not a divider. However, they have played impossible-to-get for far too long for the act to fool anyone into thinking that they have any sincere desire to unite with Bush under any terms but his abject surrender. The hearings proved that Democrats will go to any lengths to smear people and misrepresent their views with out-of-context quotes and illiterate readings of memos. Their credibility on appointments has completely eroded.

Bring on Janice Rogers Brown next. Let them try to tangle with someone of her toughness and mental agility -- again. When they trot out a filibuster, the Byrd option will come back to the table and they will then discover that the Roberts nomination gave them their last opportunity to retain any leverage at all in this process ... and they tossed it away.

UPDATE: How difficult was it to figure out the political calculations of this? Not very; even the LA Times did so in their editorial today urging the Senate to confirm Roberts:

IT WILL BE A DAMNING INDICTMENT of petty partisanship in Washington if an overwhelming majority of the Senate does not vote to confirm John G. Roberts Jr. to be the next chief justice of the United States. As last week's confirmation hearings made clear, Roberts is an exceptionally qualified nominee, well within the mainstream of American legal thought, who deserves broad bipartisan support. If a majority of Democrats in the Senate vote against Roberts, they will reveal themselves as nothing more than self-defeating obstructionists. ...

One reason Democratic senators are struggling to reach a verdict on the Roberts nomination is that President Bush has yet to announce his nominee for the second vacancy on the court. They are trying to figure out how their vote on Roberts will influence Bush's next choice. This is silly; Roberts ought to be considered on his own merits. But even if one treats this vote merely as a tactical game, voting against an impressive, relatively moderate nominee hardly strengthens the Democrats' leverage. If Roberts fails to win their support, Bush may justifiably conclude that he needn't even bother trying to find a justice palatable to the center. And if Bush next nominates someone who is genuinely unacceptable to most Americans, it will be harder for Democrats to point that out if they cry wolf over Roberts.

Apparently, no one in Reid's office has the level of common sense of even the LA Times ... and that's a damning indictment.

Can We Look For Experience Over Expedience?

Count me among the many bloggers who have a bout of head-scratching over the appointment of Julie Myers to head the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency within the DHS. Since the GOP base has become increasingly restless anyway about the Bush administration's lack of focus on the southern border, one would hope that the President would at least have appointed someone who had experience and knowledge of the subject matter for him or herself, even if the topic does not interest Bush -- perhaps especially if the topic does not interest him.

Apparently not.

Instead, the White House proposes to put a 36-year-old bureaucrat with no immigration experience, no experience leading any organization this size, and whose last assignment consisted of being Bush's HR specialist.

What gives?

And get this -- for an HR specialist, she appears oddly ignorant of nepotism issues. She just married Michael Chertoff's chief of staff, the same Michael Chertoff to whom she will report, presumably through her new husband. Add in that her uncle, General Richard Myers, is just finishing up his tour as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and we have all the makings of an episode of All In The Family. What we don't have are the ingredients for a professional and focused approach on immigration enforcement.

I suspect that Karl Rove has either found other work that keeps him occupied these days, or that the master may have been overrated somewhat. After the debacles of Michael Brown at FEMA and Bernie Kerik's nomination to Chertoff's position, one would hope that the White House would have taken this position more seriously. Unfortunately, it looks like people in the administration have not learned the painful lessons of hack appointments.

See Michelle Malkin for a linkfest of annoyed conservatives.

FBI Porn Squad: The Gonzales-For-SCOTUS Trojan Horse?

Today's Washington Post reports on a new priority given to the FBI by the Department of Justice and its chief, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Instead of counterterrorism, the FBI will now focus on adult porn as a threat to families, using its resources to pick cases that could meet the community-standards threshold of obscenity for prosecution:

Early last month, the bureau's Washington Field Office began recruiting for a new anti-obscenity squad. Attached to the job posting was a July 29 Electronic Communication from FBI headquarters to all 56 field offices, describing the initiative as "one of the top priorities" of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and, by extension, of "the Director." That would be FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III. ...

Federal obscenity prosecutions, which have been out of style since Attorney General Edwin Meese III in the Reagan administration made pornography a signature issue in the 1980s, do "encounter many legal issues, including First Amendment claims," the FBI headquarters memo noted.

Applicants for the porn squad should therefore have a stomach for the kind of material that tends to be most offensive to local juries. Community standards -- along with a prurient purpose and absence of artistic merit -- define criminal obscenity under current Supreme Court doctrine.

It might appear crazy in the middle of a war on terror to suddenly ask for volunteers among a group of already overextended professionals to join what looks to be the Adult Publication Of The Week Club to troll for possible prosecution. Such an effort may seem wasteful when we see resurgent activity among Islamofascist groups in London and Egypt, where bombings have killed dozens. The Porn Squad, even under normal conditions, ordinarily would look silly next to the publicized priorities of the FBI, which are (in order) terrorist attack, foreign espionage, cyber-based attacks, public corruption, civil rights, and organized crime.

Appearances, however, can deceive -- especially when the AG might want to brush up his conservative credentials while the Supreme Court has an opening. Barton Gellman notes that Gonzales needs a bit of kiss-and-make-up with the GOP base:

But Gonzales endorses the rationale of predecessor Meese: that adult pornography is a threat to families and children. Christian conservatives, long skeptical of Gonzales, greeted the pornography initiative with what the Family Research Council called "a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general."

Perhaps adult porn does do the kind of damage that these groups fear, but if so, it's self-inflicted and doesn't present a national priority. Congress funds a special squad of 10 agents for this task already. That should give sufficient priority to the enforcement of those laws and allow the rest of the FBI to pursue the real, existential dangers that could kill Americans by the thousands, instead of flipping through consensual filth for minimal benefit.

Doing this just to pander to the base is bad enough. I suspect that the pandering has another purpose, however -- to convince social conservatives that Alberto Gonzales will make an acceptable Supreme Court nominee, if not for O'Connor's seat, then for the next opening. Otherwise, reshuffling FBI agents to this purpose in the middle of a war makes no sense at all. Whoever came up with this plan should have his head examined. All this demonstrates is that Gonzales has no sense of priority.

Let's dump the Porn Squad and get back to business at the FBI.

Gray Lady Gives Grudging Credit On North Korea

On the week where the Paper of Record hid its editorial columnists behind the $50 firewall that virtually ensures they will go unread, its editorial board also admits to victory for the Bush administration for its insistence on their policy for North Korea:

For years now, foreign policy insiders have pointed to North Korea as the ultimate nightmare, the ongoing worst-case scenario for an international crisis: a closed, hostile and paranoid dictatorship with an aggressive nuclear weapons program. Very few people could envision a successful outcome. And yet North Korea agreed this week to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, return to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, abide by the treaty's safeguards and admit international inspectors.

Diplomacy, it seems, does work after all.

The agreement signed yesterday, if faithfully carried out, is a huge win for the United States as well as a fair deal for North Korea. Its achievement became possible when Washington abandoned the confrontational tactics and name-calling associated with its former top antiproliferation official, John Bolton, and gave serious negotiation a chance. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice deserves most of the credit for that switch, which was made with exceptional skill by America's top negotiator at the talks, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill.

Diplomacy, it seems, works after all -- especially when the other side understands that the US has the will to go outside of diplomacy if necessary to secure its national interests. If the New York Times wants to pretend it doesn't understand the purpose of our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Kim regime does not have that luxury. They understood that the Bush administration would not send Rice to Pyongyang to dance cheek to cheek with Kim, a la Madeline Albright, but to deliver an ultimatum that would result in his destruction. After testing the Bush administration several times and finding it unwilling to waver, even after a number of Bush's political opponents (such as John Kerry) fell for his tricks, Kim knows that Bush has him diplomatically isolated and left with no choice but compliance or war.

Diplomacy works, after all, but only when your enemy understands that you have not limited your options to diplomacy. The Gray Lady kids herself in thinking that John Bolton was part of the problem. Bolton provided a key part of the solution, and did so well that the Bush administration wanted to make sure Bolton could get the widest possible application in foreign policy. Going from non-proliferation specialist to UN Ambassador isn't a demotion, after all, as even the Times should be able to figure out.

The Times should be commended for giving credit where due, even grudgingly and incompletely. Unfortunately, they still don't demonstrate that they have learned anything from the results.

North Korea Tosses In Late Demand

The path will never go easy with the Kim regime in Pyongyang. The US already knows this, but now the Chinese have had a taste of it after making the official announcement of an agreement on disarmament with the North Koreans, only to have Kim Jong-Il publicly add a demand for a nuclear reactor afterwards:

North Korea insisted Tuesday it won't dismantle its nuclear weapons program until the U.S. gives it civilian nuclear reactors, casting doubt on a disarmament agreement reached a day earlier during international talks.

Washington reiterated its rejection of the reactor demand and joined China in urging North Korea to stick to the agreement announced Monday in which it pledged to abandon all its nuclear programs in exchange for economic aid and security assurances.

North Korea's new demands underlined its unpredictable nature and deflated some optimism from the Beijing agreement, the first since negotiations began in August 2003 among the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia. ...

China, North Korea's closest ally in the talks, urged Pyongyang to join the other negotiating partners in implementing the commitments in "a serious manner." ... Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang was asked in Beijing whether North Korea might have misunderstood the order of commitments laid out in the statement Monday.

"The common statement was adopted by all six parties and I don't think North Korea has any misunderstanding," Qin said.

Again we see the wisdom of the six-party negotiations and why bilateral talks would do no good with the Kim regime. In this case, even the Chinese sound embarrassed by Kim's prevarications and would like him to politely shut the hell up. If this had happened in bilateral talks, Kim would face no pressure to meet his signed obligations. Now, with the Chinese risking their diplomatic prestige to an even greater degree than the US, they will not likely put up with much nonsense from Pyongyang, giving Bush more leverage in enforcing some compliance from North Korea.

None of the other nations believe that Kim actually takes this seriously, and that the November meetings to plan for the reintroduction of the IAEA and verifiable compliance will still take place.

Never Forget Simon Wiesenthal, 1909-2005

Simon Wiesenthal, the man most responsible for forcing the world to confront the horrors of the Holocaust and living the pledge, "Never forget!", has passed away in his sleep. Wiesenthal was 96 years old, or about 60 years older than the Nazi animals who once held him captive planned:

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre which continues his work, said: "Simon Wiesenthal was the conscience of the Holocaust.

"When the Holocaust ended in 1945 and the whole world went home to forget, he alone remained behind to remember. He did not forget.

"He became the permanent representative of the victims, determined to bring the perpetrators of history's greatest crime to justice. It was a job no one else wanted.

"The task was overwhelming. The cause had few friends. The Allies were already focused on the Cold War, the survivors were rebuilding their shattered lives and Simon Wiesenthal was all alone, combining the role of both prosecutor and detective at the same time."

Wiesenthal provided an example of how the human spirit could triumph over evil and suffering, finding meaning in the unspeakable barbarity he barely survived. He would not allow the world to overlook the millions of dead, those killed with ruthless industry by the Nazis and others in the coldly efficient machinery of Heydrich's Final Solution. Wiesenthal transformed himself into an instrument of remembrance, encouraging other survivors to testify to their experiences and to the many others they knew who died at the hands of Hitler and his henchmen.

To say that the world owes Wiesenthal a debt of gratitude may be an insult. I would say that humanity owes Wiesenthal for the opportunity he gave us to recover our collective soul. Thank you, Simon, and Godspeed. You have earned your rest, and may those of us you leave behind find ourselves a tenth as worthy.

Air America: Goodfriend Says Piquant Strongarmed Him

The New York Sun's David Lombino continues to put his cross-town rivals to shame in covering the scandal at Air America. Today, he reveals that David Goodfriend has submitted an affadavit in the Metro lawsuit seeking $1.5 million in back fees from Piquant that states the former executive objected to the "fraudulent conveyance" of Progress Media's asset sale to Piquant, and received threats from Air America owners as a result:

A Clinton administration official who served as a top executive of Air America, the politically liberal radio network, says he was "sickened" to his core by the thought that the network was funded by money taken from a Bronx Boys & Girls Club.

The former White House official, David Goodfriend, said that Air America's investors created a new company soon after discovering the transfers. They were motivated, he said, in part by a desire to avoid the $875,000 liability to the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club. ...

Mr. Goodfriend said in the deposition that when investors found out about the money from the Boys & Girls Club, "They hear this and hear about other liabilities and conclude, I think we better just form a new company clean of any old liabilities."

Mr. Goodfriend, now a Washington based lawyer, said in the sworn deposition that he refused to sign an agreement that transferred ownership and assets of Air America to a new company, Piquant LLC, from Progress Media because he believed it constituted a "fraudulent conveyance."

Goodfriend, who worked as an assistant press secretary for the Clinton administration, also has a connection to the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club, from which Air America took $875,000 to keep the liberal netlet afloat. Evan Montvel Cohen arranged to have Goodfriend join the advisory board of the non-profit at the time Cohen started to bleed the charity of its funding. Goodfriend makes the third such connection between GW and AAR; former CFO Sinohe Terrero also worked at GW prior to the illegal transfers.

Goodfriend also testified in his affadavit that Charles Rosen approved the transfers to Progress Media. Why is that important?

Goodfriend discovered that Progress Media attempted to float other businesses at the same time that debt threatened to drown it altogether. Jacob Rosen, whose brother Charles ran Gloria Wise, wrote checks against Progress Media's bank accounts to fund a venture shortly after applying for and being denied a loan by GW's board. After Goodfriend left Progress and just before the asset sale to Piquant, Jacob Rosen told Goodfriend that Cohen had offered to invest in his businesses on behalf of Progress, but the checks had all bounced, and Rosen needed Progress to make good to save his ventures from failing; he wanted Goodfriend to intercede on his behalf.

What does this mean? It looks like Progress/Piquant wasn't the only shell game in town. Jacob Rosen goes to GW for a loan, and the board turns him down. His brother, who runs GW, then approves a massive "loan" to Progress Media/AAR, run by his friend Cohen. Cohen then agrees to "invest" in Jacob Rosen's businesses, but the money disappears. By May, Jacob wants his money, Cohen doesn't have it, and Goodfriend finds out about all of it. When the rest of the Progress ownership figures it out, they decide to pull an "asset sale" to distance themselves from the embezzlement at GW.

In order to do that, they have to have several of their internal creditors and executives sign off on the transaction. Al Franken, for instance, does so, as does a clueless Lizz Winstead. David Goodfriend refuses, and receives threats as a result:

Mr. Goodfriend said he was threatened with lawsuits when he refused to comply with the demands of several current investors, including entrepreneur Doug Kreeger and a Florida attorney who currently hosts a radio program on Air America, J. Michael Papantonio.

"I was told my life would be made very difficult if I didn't sign the document," Mr. Goodfriend testified. "I understood it to mean that they are all a lot richer and than I and could afford lawyers and could sue me whether they had a case or not. And that I would lose a lot of money as a result or that they would try to get the government to prosecute me or something of that nature."

The deeper one looks into this mess, the wider it becomes. Now we have two possible fraudulent conveyances of sorts, one involving Progress/Piquant and the other a money-laundering conspiracy involving the Rosen brothers and Evan Cohen. And yet, this still doesn't interest the New York Times at all.

Liberals Back To 2000? Not Quite

A new Leger survey shows that the Liberal Party has fully recovered the standing it held in 2000, when it sailed to a majority government, despite the damage done this spring by the Adscam scandal. Martin has gained strength in Western Canada, a troubling development for the opposition Tories, whose numbers dropped by eleven points since their peak in the spring:

The federal Liberals had the support of 40 per cent of respondents in a new poll - virtually the same level of backing they received in rolling to their majority government in 2000.

The Leger Marketing survey, conducted Sept. 6-11, pegged Conservative support at 24 per cent, while the NDP stood at 15 per cent and the Bloc Quebecois at 13 per cent. ...

Marois said the poll revealed strong growth for the Liberals in Western Canada, including a jump of 16 percentage points in Alberta in two months and an increase of 14 percentage points in British Columbia.

In Ontario, the Liberals outstripped the Conservatives by a 46-27 margin, while the Bloc Quebecois continued its dominance in Quebec, leading the Grits by a 55-34 score.

The only odd part of the Leger survey comes from a "redistribution" of the 20% of their respondents that selected Undecided. Nowhere does the CTV article explain that process, but a look at the raw data makes it look rather suspicious. The Liberals gained eight points in the transformation (32% to 40%), while the Tories only gained four (20% to 24%). In April, the redistribution favored the Conservatives by a single percentage point, but here it favors the Grits by four.

How does Leger "redistribute" the undecided? It simply removes the numbers for those respondents who claim not to know who they support, who claim they will not vote, and those who refused to respond. It then "redistributes" the remaining responses and comes up with a number. In effect, Leger redistributed decided voters. Running the numbers through an Excel spreadsheet, the figures come almost but not exactly even with their claims. The Liberals get 40% of those who claim a preference -- a much more accurate way of describing the data -- but the Tories get 25%, not 24%, while BQ winds up at 12.5%, which gets rounded to 13%.

The raw numbers make more sense than the redistribution. The Tories lost seven points, which show up directly as seven points gained by the Liberals. BQ and NPD actually both lost ground. For Alberta, where the Leger survey claims large gains for the Liberals, they don't even publish the undistributed raw numbers as they did in the spring. They also only have a sample of 108 voters, hardly a reliable basis for making this kind of prediction. In four years of surveys, Leger has never used such a small sample for Alberta. The same holds true of their data for British Columbia.

Undoubtedly, Martin has recovered some of his support nationwide. However, the polling samples and the methodology of redistributing surveyed voters should cause Canadians to take this survey with a very large grain of salt.

Steal Big, Risk Little

The first sentencing from the Adscam political scandal came from the Quebec Superior Court this afternoon, and the lesson the court taught Paul Coffin apparently amounts to audacity pays. Despite pleading guilty to 15 counts of fraud and the theft of over $1.5 million in Sponsorship Programme funds, Coffin will not serve a single day in prison:

Advertising executive Paul Coffin was sentenced Monday to a conditional sentence of two years less a day, to be served in the community, for defrauding Canadian taxpayers of $1.5-million. Coffin pleaded guilty earlier this year to 15 fraud charges.

Justice Jean-Guy Boilard of Quebec Superior Court said he allowed Mr. Coffin to avoid jail after considering his clean record, his repayment of $1 million to the federal government and his remorse.

“Mr. Coffin is genuinely contrite but unfortunately he cannot turn the clock back,” Judge Boilard said.

Am I missing something? If my math holds up, it looks like Coffin made a profit of $500,000. How could that add up to suspending his sentence? I may not know much about the Canadian system of justice, but I feel reasonably sure that any average accountant that scammed that kind of money off of his client would get the 34 months the Crown requested that Coffin serve for his crimes.

This does not bode well for future Adscam prosecutions. When Jean Brault and Chuck Guité defend themselves in court, will they also get a pass after raiding the Canadian taxpayers and laundering money for the Liberal Party? If they plead guilty and make a two-thirds restitution, they can claim that they fulfilled the same qualifications as Coffin and deserve the same treatment. Since these three comprise the entire set of Adscam players facing legal action of any kind, Canadians may not see anyone serve a day in prison over the worst embezzlement and money-laundering scheme in their history.

Canadians must ask themselves if the message that they want to send to those who commit crimes is to steal big in order to risk little. Not only will such criminals serve no time if caught and feign remorse, but won't even be forced to give back all of the money. That hardly seems like a deterrent.

Winging To Toronto

The First Mate and I will wing our way to Toronto this morning to visit Canada for her first time and my second. I will speak at a journalism conference on Tuesday night, but we decided to spend the week in the city to see some of the nation about which I wrote so extensively this past spring and summer. Canadian politics has quieted down some since the Gomery inquiry stopped hearing witnesses, and I'm hoping to reconnect to Canadian story lines while I'm visiting.

I'll be blogging from Toronto and other points in the area as we do some sightseeing and getting some needed R&R. Perhaps we'll run into a couple of CQ fans along the way. If you see a middle-aged guy with a navy blue captain's hat, that just might be me!

UPDATE: It's 3:30 pm in Toronto, and no one's arrested me yet. I must be safe! We had a wonderful flight through Air Canada, whose flight attendants take their job title seriously. They gave the First Mate personal attention throughout the flight; we were actually a bit overwhelmed with their friendliness and hospitality. I'd recommend them highly if you travel to Canada.

We're staying downtown at the Sutton Place, a beautiful hotel and we're unpacking at the moment. (Actually and obviously, I'm goldbricking at the moment.) More later ...

UPDATE II: My outbound e-mail seems to be blocked, although I can receive e-mail and post at my blog just fine. I think it's got more to do with the e-mail servers than the network here. I'll keep working on it.

Journalists, Pollsters Missed German Electoral Meltdown

Angela Merkel may not be the only casualty of the latest round of German elections. German journalists and pollsters who proclaimed the inevitability of her win at the expense of Gerhard Schroeder now wonder how they missed the story so badly:

This was the election outcome no one expected. Not the CDU's politicians, not the pollsters and not the journalists. At shortly before 6 p.m. local time, the representatives of the various media got together on the second floor of CDU headquarters in Berlin's Adenauer building.

Here, the party set up a buffet for guests in one of its conference rooms, but by early evening, most had lost their appetites. Already, everyone was predicting that the black and yellow (CDU and the liberal Free Democratic Party, or FDP) coalition would fail to capture a majority. Some were already predicting that the CDU would only garner 35 percent of the vote. "If that happens," said a journalist for a daily newspaper, "both we and the pollsters might as well call it a day." A fellow journalist suggested that everyone take off on a six-week vacation and "just get the DPA (German Press Agency) printouts." Everyone was stunned by this election campaign, which ended up producing the most unexpected of results.

It seems that the American media does not find itself alone in losing touch with its readership, although this disconnect seems exceedingly strange. In this case, the press overestimated the impact that Merkel's pro-American economics and politics would have on German voters. That seems odd, given the nanny-state expectations that kept Schroeder from implementing any kind of meaningful economic reforms over the past two years or so, but that apparently accounted for the sudden shift in support over the two weeks prior to the election.

Now they have no idea what to report. No analysis will likely have any accuracy until after the by-elections, which will determine which coalition can sustain a government. Perhaps the German media really will forgo analysis as a result, which will only improve the accuracy of their reporting.

Afghanistan Elections A Smashing Success

The Afghanis have conducted yet another successful election, with millions of its citizens casting votes despite the threats of violence from former Taliban remnants. In fact, security held up well for the voting, with only a few isolated incidents of violence:

Afghans embraced democracy by the millions yesterday, with voters undaunted by weeks of violence and threats of terrorist attacks to cast ballots for the first elected parliament in decades.

The vote went smoothly, with only a handful of incidents involving gunfire or militant attacks at the 6,200 polling stations. "We are going to vote for the people who will do something for the country, not just for us," said Yosof Khan, dressed in the traditional loose-fitting garb and turban donned by members of his nomadic Kuchi tribe for centuries. Mr. Khan gestured to a throng of bearded men who nodded in agreement outside tents pitched amid desolate mountain peaks east of Kabul.

With more than 12 million voters registered, election officials said 80 percent to 85 percent cast ballots -- an unheard-of turnout in Western democracies.

Our last national election elicited a 60% turnout, considered extraordinarily high over the past few decades. Americans did not face the credible threats of violence that voters in Afghanistan faced yesterday, either. According to some political leaders, a handful of long lines induced Americans to forego their right to vote, "disenfranchising" themselves. Afghanis went to the polls even though they had been threatened with death for doing so.

Can anyone doubt that democracy has taken root in Afghanistan, and that its appeal truly crosses all cultural and economic lines? People willingly face death for the right to control their own nation and the leaders who have power over them. Only hope accounts for the massive march to polling stations in the face of fear, and only an honest democracy brings that hope. Contrast this with the wan response to the rigged Egyptian election, which only attracted less than 20% of eligible voters despite a lack of any threats of violence. People know the difference.

Perhaps, as Vladimir Putin told Chris Wallace yesterday and a number of pundits have claimed since 9/11, democracy cannot be imposed at gunpoint. However, freedom can be established under force of arms, and tyrants toppled by determined armies of liberty. Democracy arises when the liberated hope for a better future and use that hope to jealously guard their right to self-determination. George Bush gave the Afghanis that opportunity, and they took it for themselves.

Media Just Discovers That New Orleans Was Poor

One of the points George Bush made in his speech that garnered both praise and criticism was his acknowledgement that the enduring poverty of New Orleans caused the poor to suffer more proportionally in the flooding of the city in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath. Bush proposed a number of efforts to rebuild the city in such a way that the poor get an opportunity for renewed economic engagement and ownership of their homes and businesses. His recognition of the problems of poverty, race, and class won Bush some applause from the media, but most of them wondered why it took a hurricane before he addressed the problem.

Howard Kurtz, however, notes that the media hardly has room to squawk about the poverty issue. The two premier East Coast newspapers have barely written 1,000 words in a decade about poverty in the Big Easy, and a cover story on Newsweek has local columnists scoffing at the sudden national interest:

The fact that most of those left behind in the New Orleans flood were poor and black is being treated by the press as a stunning revelation -- "A National Shame," as Newsweek's cover put it.

But not exactly a national secret.

"Apparently none of these ace reporters has ever set foot in Washington's Anacostia district, or South Central Los Angeles, or the trailer parks of rural Arkansas," writes Los Angeles Times columnist Rosa Brooks.

A Sept. 12 Washington Post story was headlined "Katrina Pushes Issues of Race and Poverty at Bush." An equally apt headline would have been, "Katrina Pushes Issues of Race and Poverty at a Media Establishment That Has Largely Ignored Them."

A database search of The Post for the past decade found one story that prominently mentioned the poor of New Orleans: a 2002 piece on a campaign to boost the minimum wage that cited the city's "40 percent poverty level." Far more typical of the Mardi Gras media was a 1995 Post story on how "the city's black neighborhoods come alive" with Sunday parades in the fall.

New York Times ombudsman Byron Calame found a similar record at his newspaper, unearthing only two articles about New Orleans in 10 years that "contained a few paragraphs on poverty and race."

Kurtz shows fine form today as a media critic. He also notes that the media that has picked former FEMA chief Michael Brown's bones clean over his lack of experience never bothered to report on that experience when Bush appointed him to the position. Only the Denver Post did so, and they considered him experienced enough due to his tenure as the #2 man at the agency.

Kurtz wants to know why these stories don't get news coverage -- stories like poverty and race, and political appointments gone awry. I think he already knows the answer: most news media do not have the energy or resources to devote to stories that complex or long-term. Even newspapers, which supposedly exist to give more depth and analysis to the news, too often only go after the most superficial of stories, because those can get efficient handling. A reporter can quickly go over the details of the extant issue and then drop it for the next big issue of the day. Poverty and race have too much complexity for any serious treatment, and lower-level political appointees bore readers until they screw up. Columnists supposedly should take up the slack, but the columnists have the same problem as the newspaper regarding the subject matter and a much larger obstacle in terms of resources.

How will this resolve itself? The blogosphere will probably provide the solution. People who find these subjects fascinating will devote themselves to researching them and documenting their findings, and journalists might use the blogs themselves as resources. Beltway blogs already give closer scrutiny to midlevel appointees than the media does, and again, reporters with a sense of survival will eventually learn to nurture that kind of research and the blogger who performs it.

In the meantime, however, the holier-than-thou reaction to the supposed novelty of Bush addressing race and poverty looks more like hypocrisy coming from the nation's newsrooms. If poverty has slipped off the radar screen, they need to start reporting honestly and intelligently on the issue.

Don't Be Shy -- Tell Us What You Really Think

After a devastating electoral defeat caused Mark Latham to resign as leader of the Australian Labor Party, he took some time to reflect on the issues that caused his downfall. Apparently, as much of the Australian public also determined, Latham hung out with the wrong people. Now he has published a book that does what it can to reduce the credibility of the remaining Laborites and to vent Latham's spleen on his former colleagues:

The Latham Diaries is a 429-page tome packed with such vitriol that it has caused disarray within his party and left many of its key figures shocked at the scale of his betrayal. Few escape his venom, particularly Kim Beazley, who replaced Mr Latham as Labor leader after his overwhelming defeat by John Howard in last October’s general election. Mr Latham accuses Mr Beazley of waging a six-year campaign to undermine him.

“Beazley has been successful in conveying an impression of public decency, but my experience with him has been very different,” he says. “He is in bed with the worst elements of the party, manipulative and opportunistic, yet publicly he’s seen as an avuncular and decent fellow . . . Politics can be a dirty business, but our caucus is infested with sewer rats of the movement.”

In pre-publication interviews Mr Latham, 44, continued to turn the screw on the current Labor leader. He said: “I wouldn’t make him the toilet cleaner at Parliament House, let alone the Leader of the Opposition.”

After his defeat in last year’s election Mr Latham’s diaries became even more critical of his colleagues, blaming everybody but himself for the rumour and innuendo that continued to haunt him. December 4, 2004 is typical: “My mood: complete and utter despair. I expect shit from the Tories and their Dancing Bears in the media, but why does the worst stuff, the bits that maim, always come from our side? Over the years I ’ve believed too much in this show, that’s why the personal crap hurts and bewilders me, cuts me to the core. The Australian Labor Party is the worst. Eating its own children. The so-called party of compassion, living off the spears it puts into people . . . a secret society of slurs and personal attacks.”

The Tories must have dozens of staffers writing new political commercials for any upcoming elections based on Latham's book. One revelation, widely suggested during the last campaign, is that the Labor Party's endorsement of the American alliance was insincere and might not have been continued had John Howard lost to Labor. That will severely undermine the credibility of Labor politicians for years to come.

The Laborites must have lawyers coming by the truckload to file libel lawsuits against Latham, but he apparently does not care any longer about the damage he causes. Most of the damage will fall on Latham himself, anyway. As deliciously nasty as the book may be and for all the sales it will garner, Latham will have not just discredited the existing Labor Party but himself as well. How could his conscience allow him to lead such a party of "sewer rats", a "secret society" that "eats its own children"? Latham urged Australians to put these very people in charge of the government, after all.

Latham, in the end, will fall to either oblivion or create a legacy as one of the most memorable sore losers in politics.

North Korea Gives Up Its Nuclear Program

In a stunning foreign-policy victory for the Bush administration, North Korea has publicly agreed to forego its nuclear weapons program entirely without getting a nuclear reactor from the West in return. The six-nation talks just released its first-ever joint statement announcing the agreement:

North Korea pledged to drop its nuclear weapons development and rejoin international arms treaties in a unanimous agreement Monday at six-party arms talks. The agreement was the first-ever joint statement after more than two years of negotiations.

The North "promised to drop all nuclear weapons and current nuclear programs and to get back to the (Nuclear) Nonproliferation Treaty as soon as possible and to accept inspections" by the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to the agreement by the six countries at the talks.

"All six parties emphasized that to realize the inspectable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is the target of the six-party talks," the statement said.

George Bush needed a big win on the international stage, and this surely qualifies. He has stuck to his strategy of using multilateral negotiations instead of bilateral talks with Pyongyang, the strategy that produced the last failed agreement. The only concession made by the US was an affirmation that we had no nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula and no plans to attack North Korea.

The agreement should allow the US to focus much more attention on Iran, once a compliance team gets on the ground in North Korea. We will also find out how good our intelligence on Kim's nukes have been, and that might give us an idea about how we can improve it for Iran. More importantly, it gives the Bush administration a boost in credibility for negotiating for non-proliferation, just when the EU-3 has utterly failed with Iran to get an agreement. Look for the Bush administration to leverage this win to take over the Iranian stalemate and push it towards the UN.

Stalemate In The Bundestag

As I predicted earlier today, the election in Germany has produced no clear winner. Instead, the Bundestag will have five parties represented, and neither Angela Merkel nor Gerhard Schroeder have a clear path to the Chancellery as a result:

As Sunday turned to Monday in Berlin, preliminary election results gave little indication as to who might be Germany's next chancellor. According to the results, released by German news agency DPA, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Social Democrats (SPD) received 34.3 percent. Conservative challenger Angela Merkel, chancellor candidate for the so-called "Union" -- made up of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) -- got 35.2 percent of the vote.

An unofficial forecast by German public broadcaster ZDF predicted that Merkel's Union would thus have 224 seats in the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, against 221 seats for Schröder's Social Democrats. Another forecast made by public TV station ARD gives the SPD 222 seats. Given Germany's voting law which allows voters to vote both for individuals in their districts and for political parties on a state level, the SPD could add up to 10 more directly elected seats -- so-called "overhang mandates" -- against three such mandates for the Union.

In the end, as David at Medienkritik notes, it comes to 225-222 in favor of Merkel's Union, but it isn't enough to form a government, not even in minority. For Merkel, the news could get worse. Schroeder's SPD still could gain as many as 10 seats in by-elections, while the Union only might gain three -- which would put them back in a slim minority to Schroeder after all.

It will likely take a trio of parties to form a ruling coalition, a rather unwieldy proposition. The Greens will not support Schroeder, but they won't ride to Merkel's rescue either. Neither will the two leading parties combine, as both Merkel and Schroeder covet the Chancellery and neither seem likely to surrender.

The only certainty in Germany is the gridlock that will ensue under these circumstances. Germans will likely blame Merkel, who had the election well in hand, or at least appeared to control it until the last couple of weeks. She let the momentum slip away and now must explain why the Union slipped several points in the home stretch. That failure will probably keep Merkel out of the Chancellery, and it might sideline Germany internationally for the foreseeable future as the Germans try to figure out how to form a government without having a new set of elections.

German Exit Polling Shows Race Too Close To Call

A number of bloggers have followed the lead of the news media in declaring Gerhard Schroeder the loser in German elections today, but based on the exit polling, it's hard to make that case just yet. The latest AP numbers show a margin that falls inside the margin of error, a result that a couple of weeks ago seemed unlikely:

Exit polls showed conservative challenger Angela Merkel's party leading in German parliamentary elections Sunday, but falling short of the majority she needs to form a center-right coalition even as voters ousted Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government.

Still, Merkel claimed her party had received a mandate from voters to form a new coalition government, and she would talk to all parties with the exception of a small left-wing group as she tried to become Germany's first female chancellor.

"What is important now is to form a stable government for the people in Germany, and we ... quite clearly have the mandate to do that," she said.

Left Party leader Oskar Lafontaine ruled out forming an alliance with Schroeder's party, shutting out the chance of an all-left coalition.

American bloggers in particular would like to see Schroeder and his anti-American campaigning get consigned to the dustbin of history, but it doesn't look that we can wave goodbye to Gerhard just yet. Merkel's CDU numbers in exit polling come to 35.9% as opposed to Schroeder's 33.6%. A difference of 2.3% in exit polling really means a dead heat, as it falls within any normal margin of error. More to the point, those results show significant momentum for the incumbent over the last couple of weeks. Merkel had not polled below 40% prior to the election, and I believe Schroeder had not polled above 30%.

It may well be that Merkel pulls off the plurality. If so, she will get first shot at forming a government, but that momentum towards Schroeder in the final days may play hell with her ability to build a ruling coalition. Assuming she does, that coalition will likely to remain brittle and fragile. I think, though, that rather than relying on exit polls -- especially after the American experience with them -- we had better wait for the actual results to come in before popping the champagne corks.

UPDATE: Keep checking in with Medienkritik, the on-site experts. Now the gap between the SPD and the CDU has closed to 1.2%, and they have not yet counted the votes. Schroeder might still pull this off, either through an outright plurality or by convincing a triumvirate of political parties to keep him in the Chancellery.

Look Who Endorsed John Roberts!

After a strange campaign on its news pages against the nomination of John Roberts, the Washington Post editorial board issued a strong endorsement of his confirmation as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court today.

JOHN G. ROBERTS JR. should be confirmed as chief justice of the United States. He is overwhelmingly well-qualified, possesses an unusually keen legal mind and practices a collegiality of the type an effective chief justice must have. He shows every sign of commitment to restraint and impartiality. Nominees of comparable quality have, after rigorous hearings, been confirmed nearly unanimously. We hope Judge Roberts will similarly be approved by a large bipartisan vote.

Why did this come as such a surprise? Perhaps because of the history of the paper's coverage of John Roberts during most of the pre-hearing period. Instead of focusing on his record as a jurist, where he has written over fifty opinions in two years, they covered a wide range of questionable topics and out-of-context writings that had little to do with his ability to serve on the Court. Among them:

* Using his connections to the Federalist Society to paint him as a closet reactionary: "Through the years, the Federalist Society, which has a $5 million budget, has also received substantial financial backing from a network of foundations that has supported a diverse menu of conservative causes, including promoting school vouchers and investigating the personal life of former president Bill Clinton. These include the John M. Olin and Charles G. Koch foundations. Conservative activist Richard Mellon Scaife is also a major benefactor."

* The efforts of the Bush administration to vet potential Court candidates before the opening occurred, hinting that initial contact between Roberts and the administration was inappropriate: "[T]he White House did not previously disclose Cheney's role in questioning Roberts more than two months before he met Bush."

* Critiquing the way the Roberts family dressed their children for his announcement as the nominee: "In a time when most children are dressed in Gap Kids and retailers of similar price-point and modernity, the parents put young master Jack in an ensemble that calls to mind John F. "John-John" Kennedy Jr. Separate the child from the clothes, which do not acknowledge trends, popular culture or the passing of time. They are not classic; they are old-fashioned. These clothes are Old World, old money and a cut above the light-up/shoe-buying hoi polloi."

* Accusing Roberts of misogyny for opposing the intellectually bankrupt notion of "comparable worth": "Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. consistently opposed legal and legislative attempts to strengthen women's rights during his years as a legal adviser in the Reagan White House, disparaging what he called "the purported gender gap" and, at one point, questioning "whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good." ... In internal memos, Roberts urged President Ronald Reagan to refrain from embracing any form of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment pending in Congress; he concluded that some state initiatives to curb workplace discrimination against women relied on legal tools that were "highly objectionable"; and he said that a controversial legal theory then in vogue -- of directing employers to pay women the same as men for jobs of "comparable worth" -- was "staggeringly pernicious" and "anti-capitalist." "

* John Roberts, Confederate-loving redneck: "A fastidious editor of other people's copy as well as his own, Roberts began with the words "Until about the time of the Civil War." Then, the Indiana native scratched out the words "Civil War" and replaced them with "War Between the States." ... While it is true that the Civil War is also known as the War Between the States, the Encyclopedia Americana notes that the term is used mainly by southerners."

* Taking a quote out of context to accuse him of calling the EEOC "un-American", when he was responding to that charge from a letter-writer: "We should ignore that assertion in any event," Roberts said, "as well as the assertion that the EEOC is 'un-American,' the truth of the matter notwithstanding. I have drafted a deliberately bland response for your signature." [The "truth" Roberts questioned was whether Reagan had promised to disband the EEOC during his campaign, not whether it was "un-American".]

Now after this string of embarrassing articles by its staff and the demolition of Democratic opposition during the televised hearings this week, the Post decides to endorse Roberts after all. Perhaps at some point in time, the Post can explain their endorsement in light of their almost-unrelenting attack journalism on Roberts, an especially personal attack that at times seemed coordinated with the NARAL and PFAW campaigns.

It's good to see the Post change their minds. Let's hope they learned a lesson this time that they can apply to the coverage of the next nominee. Eating one's own words makes for a bad diet for any newspaper.

Iraq Parliament Approves Constitution

Tiring of unending demands for change from its Sunni minority, the Iraqi National Assembly approved the proposed constitution with a few added amendments intended on attracting Sunnis despite the intransigence of their representatives:

Iraq's parliament signed off on revisions to the country's draft constitution Sunday as a leading lawmaker declared that acceptance of the new charter was a matter for the people, not the parliament.

Hussain al-Shahristani, deputy National Assembly speaker, said the new text was given to the United Nations, which will print 5 million copies and distribute them to Iraqis before the Oct. 15 national referendum on the new basic law.

The original draft was not voted on by parliament, and al-Shahristani did not call for legislative approval of the amendments.

"The vote on this ... is the right of the people, not their representatives," he said.

The changes to the document included an apparent bow to demands from the Arab League that the charter describe Iraq as a founding member of the pan-Arab organization and affirm that Iraq is "committed to its charter."

Other changes included holding the federal government responsible for managing water resources and the creation of two deputy prime minister positions for the Cabinet.

The Kurds and Shi'ites finally decided that the Sunni representatives would never offer an endorsement of a federal constitution, instead obstructing until the prevailing temporary rules forced parliament to prorogue itself and start over from scratch. Recognizing that Iraq belongs to the Arab League and should remain within its charter certainly will rankle the Kurds, for whom the Arab League has done little over the decades. Placing water control at the federal level rather than provincial promises more issues in delivery and prioritization, but doesn't appear to create the insurmountable problems that nationalization of oil revenue would have brought to the politics of Iraq.

Will those changes be enough for the constitution to avoid an electoral veto? Sunnis have an overwhelming majority in two provinces and a thin majority in the third, with Baghdad as its center. The constitution would have to lose by two-thirds vote in at least three provinces to fail overall, and the Sunnis have ironically started a massive voter-registration drive to block democratic reform. However, the numbers make it clear that Sunnis can only carry two provinces in enough numbers to block the ratification -- and that only if they remain united in a bloc. The effort to get out the vote tacitly endorses the entire notion of democracy, and that may prove habit-forming for the Sunnis despite their leadership.

The Kurds and Shi'ites waited as long as they possibly could to get the Sunnis to engage. The Sunnis will once again find themselves on the outside looking in, thanks to their insistence on dominating political life in Iraq despite their minority status.