The Marriage Encounter Weekend

I will be away this weekend, working on another Marriage Encounter retreat. We have 20 couples who are looking for a way to build their relationships and become closer to one another, and we appreciate your prayers and thoughts in support of our efforts. I will return to blogging as soon as I return on Sunday evening.

In the meantime, please keep checking my blogroll for the latest activity on the finest of the blogosphere -- and keep a prayer line open for the Iraqi people as well.

Lastly ... go Irish -- beat SC!!

UPDATE: I was initially encouraged to find 22 comments about the Marriage Encounter, and then disappointed that a normally substantive poster decided to use it to issue a series of stupid posts about the supposed racism of Michelle Malkin, instead of using his own blog to do so. Those comments will be deleted, and the commenter will get banned if it happens again. This isn't the first time he's been warned.

A Suggestion For Governor Pawlenty For MN Supreme Court

I listened to the Hugh Hewitt show last night when Hugh interviewed Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty about the opening for Chief Justice of our state Supreme Court. It turned into a reverse interview, of sorts, when Hugh threw his hat into the ring for the position. Of course, with Hugh's track record in constitutional law, numerous publications on the judiciary, and his status as an eminent professor, he would normally be an excellent candidate for the position -- but as the transcript shows, Governor Pawlenty wisely chose to treat his application a bit on the light-hearted side.

I would like to ask the Governor to consider another candidate more seriously. Among our brethren, we have a candidate who has a broad public presence, a long history of courageous writing on judicial philosophy, and the humility and outlook necessary for this position. I refer to my friend and blogosphere associate Scott Johnson at Power Line. Scott has a long track record as a Minnesota attorney and as a businessman in the community. His character is impeccable and his intellect is incomparable. No one would consider Scott a stealth candidate; his wealth of writings make his viewpoint quite clear, and he has the strength of character not to allow the position to change him for the worse once sworn into office.

I expect Scott to immediately eschew this possibility, but if Governor Pawlenty wants to select a person of integrity, intellect, and truly originalist philosophy, he need look no further. I urge Minnesota CQ readers to contact Governor Pawlenty to ask him to consider Scott Johnson for this position.

John Hinderaker would make a pretty darned good selection as well, Governor, for all the same reasons.

Islamists Fail To Take Nalchik, American Media Fail To Recognize Enemy

The Washington Post reports that the "rebels" attacking Nalchik in a coordinated offensive yesterday and today have failed to hold any territory in the city and that Russian troops have taken the upper hand in the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria:

Early Friday, Russian special forces stormed a police station in southern Russia where eight militants were holding five hostages. The hostages, including police officers, were freed and all eight militants were killed as they tried to flee in a van, Russian officials said.

Around 8.30 a.m. local time Friday, another three gunmen were killed in a downtown Nalchik souvenir store where they had barricaded themselves with two hostages on Thursday. The Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported that two hostages were freed. Russian officials said the militants in the store refused to talk to the security forces that had surrounded them.

The exact death toll remains unclear, but may top 100 dead. A spokesman for the local Interior Ministry said Friday morning that 68 militants had been killed. The Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported that 24 security officers and police had died, and there were other reports that between 12 and 24 civilians had died

The raid followed the killing of at least 85 people in street fighting in Nalchik on Thursday morning after large groups of gunmen assaulted government buildings, telecommunications facilities and the airport. Chechen rebels asserted responsibility for the attacks.

The American media seem reluctant to report this story accurately. The forces who attacked Nalchik are Islamist terrorists, nominally aligned with al-Qaeda -- Mohammed Atta wanted an assignment with them when he got the 9/11 operation -- and Nalchik isn't in Chechnya in any case. In fact, two other provinces separate Nalchik from Chechnya. While Chechens often strike elsewhere in the Russian Caucasus, that has to do with their motivation on Islamist grounds rather than a desire to just free one small province in the region from Russian rule.

The British media don't have any problem reporting the true nature of the terrorists in Nalchik. Even the leftist Guardian leads their story with a complete description of the terrorists the Post and other American newspapers call "rebels":

Dozens of Islamist militants launched a coordinated wave of attacks on the spa town of Nalchik in southern Russia yesterday, triggering gun battles in which up to 60 people died, bringing unrest to a previously peaceful area of the north Caucasus. Police buildings, the telephone network, the airport and the security services building were among eight targets attacked by militants in a day of violence that began at 9am. Residents cowered at home as police cordoned off gun battles that intensified throughout the day. ...

The attack is the most daring so far by Islamic separatist militants in Kabardino-Balkaria, a Muslim republic in the north Caucasus. It will raise fears that the militancy once confined to Chechnya has spread across the region. It comes just over a month before the Kremlin holds parliamentary elections in Chechnya in a bid to tighten its grip on the government.

That analysis seems rather silly, as the Islamists have often staged attacks outside of Chechnya. Their two most well-known operations, the theater in Moscow and the downing of two Russian commercial planes, took place in the heart of Russia. The massacre at Beslan took place in North Ossetia, which is two provinces to the west of Chechnya. Again, this shows the nature of the "insurgency" in the Caucasus -- fueled by Islamists, not by nationalism or a drive for independence based on freedom from the undeniable Muscovite autocracy.

Why do the American media continue to miss this crucial aspect of the story? Could it be that they do not want to show Islamism as a specific threat based on its own nihilism instead of a false perception of it as a rational response to American foreign policy? For those Americans who do not access foreign news services for their information, they may be tempted into cheering for a movement that directly relates to the same people who killed 3,000 of our own citizens.

Michelle Malkin has more.

More Sunnis Accept Constitution And Pay An Immediate Price

The new agreement on the Iraqi constitution gained momentum in Sunni circles late yesterday on the eve of the plebescite for approving the bedrock law of the permanent government. The Sunni split had immediate consequences, as terrorists attacked the political offices of the latest Sunni party to endorse the new constitution for tomorrow's polling:

A day after Iraq's parliament approved the final version of the country's draft constitution, and two days before Iraqis were to vote on it in a nationwide referendum, members of the Sunni Arab minority were as divided as their leaders Thursday over what to do: vote yes, vote no, or not vote at all.

Since changes were still being made to the document as late as Tuesday night and no revised copies had been distributed, "I have no idea what the main benefits of the new constitution are," said Waad Shakir Mahmoud, 45, owner of a supermarket in Adhamiyah, Baghdad's largest Sunni Muslim neighborhood. "How am I going to vote on something I don't have any idea about?"

But others in his neighborhood -- where a banner on the local mosque declared "No to the constitution, no to the occupation, and no to deceiving the people" -- said they would vote in favor of the constitution. They said it offered the best hope for curbing rampant violence, ending foreign occupation and preserving Iraq's unity.

"This country is wounded, and we have to heal the wounds, despite what is being said about the constitution," said Aqil Naji, 30, the owner of a nut shop.

The new changes get to the minimum needed to bring the Sunnis into the political process -- leave them an opening for later modification, no matter how small that chance might be. The amendment process existed in the prior draft, but the new agreement eases some of the hurdles that face the minority Sunnis in getting such proposals to a vote. Any significant proposals would likely face defeat anyway, as the reality of their third-place status in terms of demographics would indicate in any democratic process. The act of meeting the Sunnis halfway on this issue, and so publicly, still shows that they will not lack power to affect public policy.

This hope will drive them to support democracy, or at least that seems to be the conclusion of the Anglo-American led coalition. That analysis apparently matches that of the Zarqawi-led terrorist lunatics, as they quickly added the Sunnis to their target list -- perhaps intending to convince them to embrace their fanaticism but more likely convincing them that the insurgency has to go:

Insurgents determined to derail this weekend's referendum bombed an office of Iraq's largest Sunni Arab political party on Friday, after the group dropped its opposition to the draft constitution.

No one was wounded by the roadside bomb outside the Iraqi Islamic Party office in Fadhal, a district of central Baghdad. The attack was rare in that it targeted Sunnis, the ethnic group behind the insurgency, and appeared aimed at punishing the party for deciding to end its "no" campaign. ...

"This attack by insurgents against the Islamic Party was expected because of its new stand toward the referendum," Iraqi army Maj. Salman Abdul Yahid said in an interview. "Insurgents had threatened to attack the group and its leaders to get revenge."

A senior party official, Alaa Makki, condemned the attack, saying it won't stop the group's efforts to "use the political process to fight terrorism and promote stability in Iraq."

The attacks, which had spared Sunnis for the most part, will likely backfire on Zarqawi. US forces expect a spate of them over the next few days, as ballots get cast in the plebescite and have to get collected and counted by hand, which creates all sorts of vulnerabilities. The same kind of security as in the last election will go into effect starting today, with private vehicles banned over the next few days.

This election has more security resources, however. The Iraqis now have over 200,000 trained forces available to protect the polling stations and communication lines, up 50% from January's elections. That will allow the Iraqis to take even more national control over their own democratic processes, moving the Americans into more of the secondary support task that we envision as the next stage of development in Iraq. Thanks to the numerous operations staged between the Iraqis and the Americans over the past few months to clear out terrorist strongholds, those troops have much more battle experience than they did in January -- and they know what to spot to prevent the attack from doing its maximum damage.

My prediction is that the constitution will only lose in the Baghdad province, and otherwise find overwhelming acceptance nationwide with a voter turnout of over 10 million.

More On Miers' Character, But Nothing On Her Philosophy

One of the last places one would normally look to find a defense of a George Bush nominee to the Supreme Court is the New York Times. However, Matthew Scully, the author of Dominion and former speech writer for George Bush, writes a rather caustic and sarcastic defense of Harriet Miers in today's op-ed section. At least half of Scully's defense consists of his playing offense against the critics of Miers' nomination, and the other half seems rather off-topic:

When you know Harriet Miers, it's funny to think of her as the subject of such controversy. Yet already her notoriety is such that even the most innocent of virtues can be thrown back at her as inadequate - "not even second-rate," as a National Review Online posting said, "but third-rate." She's a detail person. Diligent and dependable. Honest, kind, modest, devout and all that. A real mediocrity.

Her qualities are disappointing only in comparison, of course, to all those perfectly credentialed lions of the law we keep hearing about. Her critics couldn't run to the TV studio and expertly discourse about her. Therefore, she must be a nobody.

My friend David Frum expresses the general complaint when he asks, in his blog, when did Harriet Miers "ever take a risk on behalf of conservative principle? Can you see any indication of intellectual excellence? Did she ever do anything brave, anything that took backbone?" To translate: When all the big-thinkers were persevering year after year at policy institutes and conferences at the Mayflower Hotel, or risking all for principle in stirring op-ed essays and $20,000 lectures, where was Little Miss Southern Methodist University?

If four years observing the woman is any guide, the answer is she was probably doing something useful. But whatever she was up to, it's not good enough. Harriet Miers, says Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, is undoubtedly a well-meaning person, but he was expecting "brilliance," and her selection signaled "weakness" and "capitulation." Mr. Kristol also suggested how the Miers nomination could be withdrawn. In the tone of Michael Corleone laying out some general instructions, he said that with Ms. Miers out of the way, "the president's aides would explain that he miscalculated out of loyalty and admiration for her personal qualities," adding, "and he could quickly nominate a serious, conservative and well-qualified candidate for the court vacancy."

It goes on in this vein throughout most of his essay. The gist of Scully's argument lies within the character of Miers, which he holds in high esteem while he practices character assassination on her critics. Perhaps some of those acerbic attacks can be justified, but I hardly think that it helps his case as a character witness for a public servant (and as a former public servant himself) to describe pundits as Mafia gangsters ordering a hit when discussing the politics of the potential withdrawal of a nomination -- and it looks especially incoherent or insincere to call that pundit "well-meaning" in the same breath.

In all, though, Scully makes a good argument as that kind of character witness, once all of the bile drains from the newsprint. He obviously feels very loyal to Miers based on their work together, and thinks highly of her work. However, Scully remains vague on exactly why he thinks so highly of her. His main points appear to be that she works hard, remains humble, and pays close attention to task and detail -- traits that certainly speak well of Miers but hardly vault one to the top of the class. He includes an anecdote about her spending her own time, pro bono, to prepare the will of a terminally ill 27-year-old colleague, which again certainly speaks to character but also again doesn't explain why that qualifies her for the Supreme Court.

We understand that Miers has character, and we can appreciate that. Millions of people in this nation have the traits Scully extols, and some of them are even attorneys. (No, really.) That doesn't qualify them for the Supreme Court ahead of people who have heavy litigation experience, especially at the appellate level, or heavy judicial experience, or have spent the better part of their careers studying and publishing on judicial philosophy -- or a combination of all three. That is rather obvious to almost everyone outside of the White House these days. Perhaps Scully can tone down his normal scathing counterattack in his next outing to use his space more wisely and present a better picture of Miers and any remarkable accomplishments in those areas instead of ludicrous comparisons of commentators to fictional gangsters.

The Free Fall That Wasn't

Dan Froomkin wrote a breathless column for today's web edition of the Washington Post that should have been pulled. Instead, the Post allowed it to remain on the site with a buried nugget that negated the entire thrust of his article. Titled "A Polling Free-Fall Among Blacks", Froomkin related the findings of an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that supposedly gave George Bush a 2% approval rating among African-Americans:

In what may turn out to be one of the biggest free-falls in the history of presidential polling, President Bush's job-approval rating among African Americans has dropped to 2 percent, according to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.

The drop among blacks drove Bush's overall job approval ratings to an all-time low of 39 percent in this poll. By comparison, 45 percent of whites and 36 percent of Hispanics approve of the job Bush is doing.

Given that George Bush got 9% of that vote in 2000 and 11% of it in 2004, a nine-point drop in real support among this single demographic doesn't sound like a spectacular surprise, especially given the terrible media performance surrounding Hurricane Katrina. Froomkin makes sure to stage it as dramatically as possible, however:

A few months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found Bush's approval rating among blacks at 51 percent. As recently as six months ago, it was at 19 percent.

Wow. Now that sounds pretty impressive, but only if the reader has no sense of electoral history or common sense about polling immediately after the real and imagined frustrations surrounding the catastrophe response. Froomkin gets a quote from a professional pollster who says he's never seen such a dramatic plunge in any subgroup.

Well ... there may be a reason for that. In the ninth paragraph, Froomkin finally gets around to discussing the methodology of the poll. It turns out that the entire sample consisted of only 807 adults -- not voters or likely voters -- only 89 of which were African-Americans. Froomkin notes, with apparently no sense of irony whatsoever, that the "margin or [sic] error" on this pathetic sample would be ... "considerable".

In other words, it's ludicrous and simply folly to use it for a report. Bear in mind, however, that Froomkin wasn't alone in spouting it to the world. Tim Russert repeated it on Wednesday night's NBC network news show with Brian Williams.

But it gets better -- or worse, depending on your point of view -- if the reader holds out to the fourteenth paragraph. The Post updates the story thus:

[Late Update: The Pew Research Center is just out with its latest poll, which has a larger sample, and it finds Bush's approval rating among blacks at 12 percent, down only slightly from 14 in July. Here are those results.]

So the biggest free-fall in history has George Bush losing 2 points among a demographic which proportionally voted for him in reality one point lower last November than where he shows now. All of the numbers in the Pew poll fall within the margin of error -- which means Bush hasn't fallen at all among African-Americans.

No self-respecting blogger would leave a post up like that, at least not without a bold-type disclaimer at the top of the text directing readers to the latest update first. That must show what all those levels of editors and fact-checkers get readers of the Washington Post.

UPDATE: CQ reader and night owl Kyle H. just saw Conan O'Brian use the 2% polling number on his show. Welcome to the birth of an urban legend, yet another one from the fertile womb of Katrina.

And I Thought Conservatives Were Going Nuts Over Miers

I had a back-to-reality moment this evening that I wanted to share with CQ readers tonight, and I haven't had a chance until now. Earlier this afternoon, I got a call from a New England radio station looking for a conservative commentator to discuss the Harriet Miers controversy. This talk show skews a bit liberal, I presume, but the producer and I have had a couple of great discussions on issues in the past and she and the show want to have an open forum for debate. So far, the timing hasn't worked out, but I hope to join them for a broadcast.

Not tonight, though. We discussed the nomination and some of my concerns about the President's selection, and the producer kept pressing me for more. We got around to discussing George Bush's declaration that Miers' faith provided a reason for his selection, which I still think is a mistake. That's when I found out what the concept for the show was going to be.

They wanted to argue that Harriet Miers was a harbinger of the coming theocracy under George Bush.

Now, I don't know how seriously they really intended that to be, but I laughed out loud. The producer seemed surprised by my reaction, arguing that the impulse to fill the spot with Miers seemed intended to solidify the Christian right under Bush. I pointed out two things: first, the Pew poll showed that Miers actually polls worse among evangelicals (41%) than among conservatives in general (54%).

And second, Harry Reid originally suggested Miers for the nomination.

I don't know if they pursued that argument on their show, but it gave me the first good laugh of the entire Miers brouhaha. I would have loved to have taken part of that debate, but I understand why my input probably wouldn't have worked for them.

Painful Admission Of Progress At The Gray Lady

Part of the limited amount of enjoyment one gets from reading the New York Times editorial page comes from seeing how they acknowledge what should be celebrated as good news. During Republican administrations, that usually means a healthy dose of caveats, irrelevancies, and redirected credit intended on convincing people that the good news amounts to little more than potential bad news, and if it doesn't turn out badly, it all happened in spite of the Republicans in charge. Today's acknowledgement of the success in establishing a democratic political dynamic in Iraq provides a delightful case in point:

It has been hard to make sense of America's involvement in Iraq for a long time now. Arguments that our soldiers are risking their lives to protect the United States from terrorism, or deadly weapons of mass destruction, have come to nothing. The only logical basis for staying the course has been the hope that in the end, Iraqis can be put on the road to a stable, inclusive government. That hope has come close to extinction many times. But today it seems a little more substantial.

Just days ahead of Saturday's vital constitutional referendum, representatives of rival religious and ethnic communities in Iraq hammered out their most significant political compromise. With American diplomatic prodding, the dominant Shiite and Kurdish parties agreed with a section of the Sunni Arab leadership on changes that should make it easier for Sunni voters to accept a badly flawed draft constitution because they offer assurances that it can be drastically amended a few months later.

Note the construction style in almost every paragraph; only the second paragraph, excerpted here, and the fourth stray from the mold. Each paragraph starts out with some gloomy statement on what the Times sees as reality. Each statement relates back to American efforts to create this democratic environment, either directly or indirectly; The absence of even this minimal basis for consensus before now had made it difficult to take the whole American-orchestrated constitutional exercise seriously. That combination is a blueprint for national fragmentation and prolonged civil war.

My personal favorite is this little non-sequitur: Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It isn't? Since when?

The torturous process of actually saying something meaningful about the Iraqi agreement on a new constitution in the days ahead of the vote grinds on through eight paragraphs written in this stultifying prose, as like a bad pop song with an unrelenting, unchanging bass line. It takes that long for the Times to admit that the developments this week give greater hope for unity after the plebescite and for greater Sunni participation in democracy thereafter. The editorial approaches masterpiece status for sour grapes and for burying the lede. Even its title, "A Flicker Of Hope In Iraq", makes this major step forward seem little more than a mere footnote in an encyclopedia of misery.

Cheer up! We liberated 25 million people from a genocidal dictator, helped them create a National Assembly, watched as over 8 million of them voted freely lasy January, and now see them peacefully negotiating the laws under which they will govern themselves. Perhaps the Gray Lady finds democracy too distasteful for her scrubbed hands, but the rest of us find these developments very pleasing and reason for hope of eventual unity and peace.

Or if you can't cheer up, at least hire someone who knows how to write an honest editorial.

The Poor Bureaucrats Of Washington DC

The Washington DC Dept of Human Services tasked with assisting the poor of the nation's capital have apparently found an easy way to identify them -- they all work for the DHS. The Washington Times reports this morning that DHS employees account for half of all bonus money paid out by the city administration, where almost 400 employees took home a half-million in extra cash:

The D.C. government employees tasked with providing care to the city's poor have taken home nearly half of the more than $1 million in bonus money awarded by the District during the first half of fiscal 2005.

Nearly 400 employees in the D.C. Department of Human Services (DHS) received approximately $479,000 in extra money in their paychecks from Oct. 1, 2004, to March 31, 2005, according to D.C. Office of Personnel records. ...

During the past year, however, department officials have noted several improvements, including a reduction in teen-pregnancy rates and a recent award from the federal government for management of the city's food-stamp program.

But the department also has been criticized for the closure last year of a homeless shelter in Southwest. And a D.C. Auditor report in September 2004 sharply criticized the department's management of subsidized child-care programs.

The report said a lack of oversight "fostered wasteful use of District and federal funds."

Ask the people of DC whether they feel that the issues of poverty have been so relieved over the six-month period for which these bonuses were received that it warranted spending an extra half-million on bonuses for bureaucrats. From what I can find, poverty continues to increase in the District, not decrease. So why did these people get department-wide bonuses?

The City Councilman responsible for DHS promised an investigation into the payouts, noting that the agency doesn't have a sterling reputation for smooth operation in the first place. Adrian Fenty wants a "full scrubbing" of the department he oversees -- and one hopes he completes that before his upcoming mayoral campaign takes flight.

Another Katrina Media Myth Down The Drain

Remember the "toxic soup" that flooded New Orleans, the one that the media widely reported was so polluted that mere momentary exposure could burn the skin and create potentially mortal illness for Katrina victims? As with the widespread gunfire, rapes, and murders, the toxic soup turns out to be another media myth. The Washington Post reports that an extensive look at the floodwaters reveals that its composition appears equivalent to floodwaters anywhere else:

The floodwater that covered New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was not unusually toxic and was "typical of storm water runoff in the region," according to a study published yesterday.

Most of the gasoline-derived substances in the water evaporated quickly, and the bacteria from sewage also declined over time, the scientist leading the study said. The water's chief hazard was from metals that are potentially toxic to fish. However, no fish kills have been reported in Lake Pontchartrain, where the water that once covered 80 percent of the city was pumped.

"What it most looks like is the storm water that is present in New Orleans every time it rains," said John H. Pardue, an environmental engineer at Louisiana State University, who headed the team whose research was published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. "We still don't think the floodwaters were safe, but it could have been a lot worse. It was not the chemical catastrophe some had expected."

Of course, this is good news for the people of New Orleans who had to suffer from exposure to the water, but other than that, it makes little difference. The damage caused to structures comes from the water itself, as well as the mud and silt that come along with it. The rot that sets into structures throughout the basin will likely require total or near-total reconstruction efforts.

It does, however, demonstrate the toxic combination of hyperbolic media and sensational events. Not content with reporting the news that happened before their eyes, media outlets had to reach beyond the news to report events that never happened, all without doing even basic research to determine the veracity of their reports. How difficult would it have been for NBC or the New York Times to get a test of the water before unleashing reports on the so-called toxic soup? How about getting reporters to verify accounts of rapes and murders by the score before airing such rumors to a repulsed nation?

How many people did these reports turn away who might otherwise have offered assistance?

Laughably, the media gave itself a big pat on the back within days of the Katrina disaster, declaring themselves vindicated after a year of CBS memo debacles and Eason Jordan embarrassments. Only much later can we see that they learned nothing over that past year and have moved themselves even closer to the National Enquirer in terms of credibility. Instead of congratulating themselves, the media needs to eliminate the hysterics that drive the news coverage during unfolding catastrophes to make sure that they don't contribute even more damage to the victims and the nation.

Another Day, Another Flub From White House

It seems like the Bush White House has suddenly acquired a tin ear for politics over the past fortnight. Just weeks after Republican Senators angrily asserted that religion should have nothing to do with the confirmation of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, the White House has openly embraced religion as a key qualification for the nomination of Harriet Miers, creating a new controversy for the new nominee:

President Bush prompted criticism from the right and the left on Wednesday after he said White House officials had told conservative supporters about the religious beliefs of his latest Supreme Court nominee, Harriet E. Miers, as part of an "outreach effort" to explain who she is.

"People ask me why I picked Harriet Miers," Mr. Bush told reporters in the Oval Office. "They want to know Harriet Miers's background, they want to know as much as they possibly can before they form opinions. And part of Harriet Miers's life is her religion."

Mr. Bush made his comments only weeks after some conservatives declared that any discussion of the religion of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. should be off limits in his confirmation process and that questions about his views amounted to an unconstitutional "religious test" of his faith as a Roman Catholic.

The president spoke on the same day that James C. Dobson, the founder of the conservative evangelical group Focus on the Family, said in remarks broadcast on his organization's radio program that Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, had assured him that Ms. Miers was an evangelical Christian and a member of "a very conservative church, which is almost universally pro-life."

I find nothing wrong with nominating religious people to the Supreme Court, or any other court. As long as one keeps their religion separate from the law, no one has any complaint. The entire point of judicial restraint focuses on judges relying on the literal text of the law and the Constitution to render judgment, and therefore keeping their personal feelings from creating precedents that turn into legislation.

However, when religion becomes the reason that someone gets a nomination to the Court, the reasonable assumption is that the nominee wants to apply their religious values to the cases which they will hear. That creates judicial activism, not judicial restraint, even if it is activism that many would prefer over the activism of the past 40 years. The irony is that such a prerequisite isn't necessary for that kind of result. An athiest operating under true judicial restraint and originalism will find no bar to religious expression in the public square, because the First Amendment does not truly outlaw such expressions.

Using religion as a test for a nomination gets us into dangerous territory, not to mention provides more than a dollop of hypocrisy for this administration. We do not want Congress opening a debate on people's religious beliefs and how that affects their approach to the job. It will create a mini-Inquisition on Capitol Hill for each nominee, who will be required to disavow their faith before proceeding to nomination. It's the kind of act that this administration has often decried, and for good reason.

The only motivation for using this as a public strut for the Miers nomination is because the White House clearly has no plan to market Miers to a skeptical public. They have run out of a short list of talking points, having done little or no homework on Miers before announcing her nomination. It's the one point on which most people can agree.

I'm With Stupid

That may be the only campaign slogan left for John Kerry as he picked up an endorsement for the 2008 Presidential campaign -- even though he hasn't declared whether he'll run again. Ted Kennedy has decided to volunteer as anchor for the Kerry bandwagon by declaring his support for his fellow Bostonian three years in advance:

Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) said Wednesday he would back fellow Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 — even if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton also pursues a White House bid.

"If he runs, I would support him," Kennedy told The Associated Press in an interview at his Boston office.

While Kennedy has frequently entertained the New York senator and her husband, former President Clinton, he said his loyalty is to Kerry. Early polling shows Clinton and Kerry among the favorites for their party's nomination in 2008, but neither has said for sure whether they'll run.

The funniest part of the AP story? "The White House had no immediate comment." That's because Ken Mehlman can't stop laughing long enough to write a statement for the media. Why would someone have asked the White House press office for a statement about one Democrat endorsing another for an election the current President can't contest?

Someone needs to remind Senator Kennedy that three years separates us from 2008, and perhaps it's best not to tie oneself to a particular candidate. It hardly comes as a surprise that Kennedy would back his protege anyway, but at least he should know better than to tip his hand so obviously. However, it does tend to indicate that the Hillary victory lap that everyone assumes the Democratic primaries will become may not be such a slam-dunk. Kerry could make it difficult for Hillary in the northeast, although she would probably carry just about every other primary. His candidacy could force her from her centrist positions early, giving some hope for the GOP.

Under normal conditions, Kerry wouldn't stand a chance in 2008 -- but the Democrats have become so unhinged by Bush Derangement Syndrome that he could still get significant sympathy support. With Al Gore backing out of the race today and Bill Clinton's wife leading the polling so far, they certainly seem intent on the nostalgia campaign for 2008.

The Miers Telecon

I took part in the teleconference today with Ken Mehlman and Patrick Ruffini this afternoon on the Harriet Miers nomination, although I could not blog about it at the time. It lasted about a half hour, and the process worked quite well; I think everyone appreciated the effort Patrick and Ken put into reaching out to the blogs to shore up support for Miers' nomination. They put on the best case, in positive terms, that the White House has made thus far. It's long overdue, and perhaps a harbinger of better thinking at the White House on the work needed for conservatives to accept Miers' confirmation.

That said, I'm still less than impressed with Miers as a nominee.

Ken and Patrick drove home the new message that nominees have to have two overriding qualities: the right philosophy and the right character. They argued that her track record in her pioneering role as a managing partner and as the president of the Texas Bar Association, as well as her long association with George Bush, should provide ample evidence of her character. On that argument, I tend to agree, or at least I can agree that the track record shows that kind of evidence. It shows that she doesn't shrink from a fight, that she has loyalty, and that she has a toughness that will come in handy for her confirmation hearings. She isn't going to get bossed around by the likes of Biden.

On the other hand, in terms of evidence of her philosophy, the bottom line remains, "trust me." And that's about as good as it will ever get.

I'm a little concerned about the use of statistics as evidence of widespread conservative support for Miers. The GOP wants us to believe that outside of the punditry, the base loves Miers, and they used the Pew polling as an example. However, the Pew poll shows something quite different; only 54% of self-described conservatives support her confirmation, and the numbers get worse as one crosses the spectrum. Moderates only give her 43% and independents 32%. Before his confirmation hearings, John Roberts -- who also had conservatives wondering -- had 72-52-40 numbers, respectively. That seems like a significant comedown.

Even evangelicals split, 43-41 on the question.

The questions from the bloggers made the thinness of the Miers nomination even more apparent. When asked to provide any written evidence of her judicial philosophy, the answer was to wait for the hearings and her testimony on how she would approach judicial decisions. Stephen Bainbridge emphasized this point. The question on my mind was the message that a Miers nomination sent to those conservative jurists and scholars with the courage to write and publish their philosophies; didn't this discourage them, making it clear that they could never get picked for the highest court? The two pointed out, quite accurately, that Bush has nominated -- and even renominated -- several such courageous conservatives, but felt Miers best filled this slot.

I'm still not convinced that she's an excellent candidate, or even a very good candidate, for this slot. I'm pretty sure that she will not slide into Souterville, and she might even stick to Bush's expectations and wind up more conservative than even Roberts. But unlike with a number of better candidates, we still have nothing more than a "trust me" to come to that conclusion.

Despite the idiotic response from the White House prior to this telecon, I'm inclined to support Miers. I don't believe she'll be a disaster, and I think she'll at least improve on O'Connor. I also don't believe she'll get pushed around, but I have to be honest and say I get that impression more from what Hugh Hewitt and Beldar have argued and presented than anything the White House has bothered to do on their own behalf. I've come to the conclusion that spanking Miers over the clumsiness and incompentence of the White House doesn't make a lot of sense.

In the future, Ken and Patrick should be put in charge of getting the word out to the conservative base, and whoever has been running the PR campaign thus far from the White House should get fired immediately.

UPDATE: Other bloggers included Lori at PoliPundit; Mark Coffey at Decision '08; Pat Hynes from Ankle-Biting Pundits; Eric Pfeiffer from The Buzz; Erick from RedState; and Thomas Lifson from the American Thinker. There are a wide variety of impressions among the bloggers who participated, so be sure to read everyone's opinions on it. I think we all agree that the process was very positive, however.

Politics Abhors A Vacuum

In my Daily Standard column this week, "The Sounds Of Silence", I point out that the White House has done little to help its own cause for the Harriet Miers nomination. The strategy of "trust me" has obviously failed, and it looks like the staffers haven't yet come up with a Plan B:

DURING HIS PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS, Bush promised to nominate conservatives to the Supreme Court in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Now the bill has come due, and the response the president's supporters have received has been: "trust me." Some have noted similarities between this nomination and the last "trust me" Republican nomination to the Supreme Court, David Souter. Bush the Elder told conservatives that Souter would be a "home run."

In the past few months, Bush has had two opportunities to fulfill his own election pledge. The president instead selected a brilliant, but largely untested, Rehnquist acolyte and his personal attorney. Conservatives want to know how Miers fulfills his election pledge. Instead of getting any clear evidence of a conservative scholar or action in support of conservative judicial initiatives, the Bush administration has kept its lips silent after demanding trust.

If the White House wants to get more support for Harriet Miers, then we need more information on what makes her a potential jurist in the mold of Scalia and Thomas -- and by that, we need actual evidence of such juridical philosophy, not a "trust me" from the President. He advanced Miers ahead of a number of better-known quantities; we want to know why. If the Bush administration has no position to articulate, it would certainly explain the silence.

And The Applause Meant ... ?

Gerhard Schroeder told a union audience today that he would not take part in the new "grand coalition" government formed by Angela Merkel, apparently declining any ministerial position whatsoever just days after insisting that Germany could not form a government without him. After the negotiations form the new executive, Schroeder apparently will return to a private life:

Schroeder's Social Democrats lost last month's parliamentary elections to conservative Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, and Merkel struck a power-sharing deal Monday to become Germany's first female chancellor.

"I will not belong to the next government, definitely not," Schroeder said to loud applause. ...

Schroeder hinted Tuesday evening he did not want to take a Cabinet post in the new government. Eight posts in Merkel's government will go to Schroeder's party.

It sounds as if Schroeder has decided to take his ball and go home, rather than serve in a ministerial post to smooth the transition for his SPD party, which now finds itself in the minority. That seems par for the course for the now-former Chancellor whose egotistical pronouncements belied the fact that he had lost the election and his party their steady plurality, having eroded it over a period of years in which he antagonized his American allies and dithered over German economic decline.

A question: Did the "loud applause" signify respect for Schroeder, or delight at his retirement?

Rice Gets Surprise Agreement On Central Asian Base

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has managed to surprise Central Asia and reverse the momentum of base closings in the region by changing Kyrgyzstan's stance on its American military base. The New York Times reports that Rice convinced the new Kyrgyz government to allow the US to continue its operations for as long as we need to maintain operations in Afghanistan:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, meeting with the new leaders of Kyrgyzstan, reached agreement on Tuesday on long-term rights to maintaining an air base here for servicing military aircraft on missions to Afghanistan.

The United States and allied forces may continue to use the base, adjacent to the international airport here, "until the situation in Afghanistan is completely stabilized," President Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev said at a news conference.

Last July, Kyrgyzstan, along with three other Central Asian states and Russia and China, issued a statement calling on the United States to evacuate all its bases in this region. A short time later, the Kyrgyz defense minister told Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld that the United States could continue to use the base.

At issue for the Krygyz was the manner in which the lease payments had been spent under the former Akayev government, which fled under a popular uprising last summer. The arrangement for the US base involved no payments to the government, but instead a guaranteed level of spending in the local economy for fuel and other supplies. To no one's great surprise, the new government believes that money got sucked up by the Akayev government, and they wanted the US to replace it. The report gives no indication that we agreed to do so.

Even if we had to repay part or all of the money in question, this would still represent a great and unexpected diplomatic win for the Bush administration. Kyrgyzstan sits in a strategic spot in Central Asia and creating an alliance with the new, democratic government puts America in the middle of a number of political and military dynamics. That not only includes Islamofascist terrorists and a significant line of communication for them, but also the proximity of the Russians and Chinese and their political efforts in the former Soviet republics. Given the difficulty and pressure that the Bakiyev government faces from the two giants at or near its borders, the agreement speaks to Rice's expertise in negotiation and toughness.

Will The Changes Be Enough?

The Iraqis followed their pattern of thirteenth-hour breakthroughs on political issues yesterday by reaching agreement with some Sunni groups on additions to the proposed constitution that goes to the voters on Saturday. However, confusion arose overnight as to whether the National Assembly needed to approve those changes and how to inform the voters of the new text of the measure that they will approve or reject:

Iraqi political leaders said they had agreed to an important last-minute change in the draft constitution on Tuesday evening in exchange for a promise by some prominent Sunni Arab leaders to give public support to the document in the nationwide referendum on Saturday.

The change would create a panel in the next parliament with the power to propose broad new revisions to the constitution. In effect, the change could give the Sunnis - who were largely shut out of the constitution-writing process - a new chance to help redraft the document after elections in December.

The agreement was a major victory for American officials, who had spent weeks urging Iraq's Shiite and Kurdish leaders to make changes that could soften Sunni opposition to the charter and forge a broader consensus. The Americans had voiced fears that if the constitution passed over strong Sunni opposition, more would turn toward violence. ...

The constitutional change would need to be approved by the National Assembly, which will convene on Wednesday for that purpose. That is likely to be a formality, as the lawmakers generally follow their party leaders.

However, the National Assembly had dispersed for Ramadan, and may not get reassembled in time to form a quorum. They had attempted to do so earlier this week to strip a former defense minister of his immunity from prosecution so that he could stand trial for misappropriating a billion dollars in reconstruction aid. Given the importance of the constitutional change, the motivation will increase for the representatives to return to Baghdad, but it's not as easy as it sounds. They need to also return to their homes in time to vote in the referendum, and a round trip during a period when Zarqawi's terrorists plan to be especially active creates a difficult logistical problem.

Not all of them believe the trip is necessary for the changes to take place anyway:

Meanwhile, It also was not clear whether the lawmakers who do attend the session would be asked to approve a final version of the draft constitution incorporating Tuesday's last-minute compromises, or simply to discuss it. Either way, the legislative session could simply be a formality since the lawmakers generally follow their party leaders.

"We do not know whether we will be voting on the deal reached by the leaders of the main parties, or (are) just being informed about it," said Shiite lawmaker Khalid al-Atiyah. "The special session has been scheduled to begin at 7 o'clock tonight to give lawmakers in the provinces the time they need to return to Baghdad," he said in an interview.

It seems that a ruling on this point might be helpful, but the time has almost run out. If it requires approval from the National Assembly, then it could create a post-plebescite trap in which the Assembly might reject an agreement that one could argue still wouldn't negate an approval at Saturday's polls, since the referendum itself could arguably rely on the original constitutional text. If that happens, the Sunnis would likely walk out on the Assembly.

Right now, the agreement has borne hopeful fruit. At least some Sunni groups have called for approval of the latest text, assuming that the Assembly doesn't hang it up. Not all of them have fallen in line, but any division among the Sunnis works towards the favor of the constitution. The question remains as to whether enough Sunnis come aboard to seriously derail the insurgency. Will 10% be enough? Will 20% be enough?

The Iraqis do seem to have caught on to democracy. Perhaps in the future, they can work on their timing. In the meantime, keep your fingers crossed for a big turnout and an overwhelmingly positive response to the new text.

Further Notes On "Sexism"

Yes, I have read the transcript from Dafydd at Big Lizards of the Matt Lauer interview. Yes, I know that Matt Lauer is not the greatest interviewer nor a friend to conservatives -- which calls into question why the Bushes bother to do an interview on Today in the first place. But I think that parsing the interview to claim that Laura Bush didn't agree with Lauer's contention that the criticism came from "sexism" is at best Clintonesque, and silly beyond belief:

Laura Bush: That’s right. And I know Harriet well, I know how accomplished she is, I know how many times she’s broken the glass ceiling herself. She’s a rol[e] model for young women around our country --

Lauer: Some are suggesting --

Laura Bush: Not only that, she is very deliberate and thoughtful and will bring dignity to, uh, wherever she goes. But certainly to the Supreme Court, she will be really excellent.

Lauer: Some are suggesting there’s a little possible sexism in the criticism of Judge [sic] Miers.

Laura Bush: That’s possible. I think --

Lauer: How would you feel about that?

Laura Bush: That’s possible. I think she is so accomplished that... I know, I think that people are not looking at her accomplishments and not realizing that she was the first elected woman to be the head of the Texas Bar Association, for instance, and all the other things. She was the first, uh, woman managing partner of a major law firm. She was the first woman hired by a major law firm, her law firm.

So, what was possible? What else could Laura Bush meant? She answered Lauer's question twice. And then she started talking about how critics refused to look at her accomplishments, which also sounds like a soft way of saying that we're hung up on her gender.

Give me a break. And Dafydd should not put words in my mouth -- I am not calling Laura Bush a "liberal", I'm saying that the White House has reached a point of desperation where they've fallen back on the liberal tactic of false victimization in order to stifle criticism -- and this isn't the first example. Ed Gillespie did the same thing last week with the exact same charge. Don't kid yourself into thinking that it's a coincidence.

It's been 24 hours since the Lauer interview. Has the White House backed away from the "sexism" slander? Have they issued a statement saying that the First Lady -- or Ed Gillespie -- were misunderstood?

Addendum: More from the New York Sun, a newspaper normally sympathetic to the administration:

According to several prominent conservatives, the initial White House reaction to outrage over the nomination of Ms. Miers was stunned silence. The administration did not expect the backlash, they said, and was not prepared to mount a defense. But as anger spread, conservatives said, Mr. Bush and his deputies appeared to have dug in against many of the people who have been their closest allies. ...

Mr. Miranda singled out a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ed Gillespie, who has been used by the White House as an ambassador on its judicial nominees. Conservatives first turned on Mr. Gillespie at a weekly off-the-record meeting last Tuesday conducted by the founder of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, when he suggested that criticism of Ms. Miers had the "whiff of sexism."

"I think Ed Gillespie is way out of his league," Mr. Miranda said. "He's running this as if it's a campaign."

First lady Laura Bush stoked conservative anger yesterday by picking up the same line of defense during an interview yesterday with NBC's Matt Lauer. When asked if she thought the critics of Ms. Miers were motivated by sexism, Mrs. Bush said, "That's possible. I think that's possible." Rush Limbaugh expressed alarm at the persistence of this view on his daily radio program yesterday.

No one else, including the White House, claims that Gillespie and Laura Bush meant anything else.

White House Pours More Gasoline On The Fire (Updated)

It's either feast or famine at the White House with the Harriet Miers nomination. Given the chance to lay out a positive, substantial case for her nomination to the Supreme Court, the Bush administration has remained largely silent. However, given an opportunity to smear the base that elected them, the administration has seized practically every opportunity to do so. The latest comes from the normally classy First Lady, who again promoted Ed Gillespie's barnburner accusation of sexism among the ranks of conservatives:

Joining her husband in defense of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, Laura Bush today called her a "role model for young women around the country" and suggested that sexism was a "possible" reason for the heavy criticism of the nomination.

"I know Harriet well," the first lady said. "I know how accomplished she is. I know how many times she's broken the glass ceiling. . . . She's very deliberate and thoughtful and will bring dignity to wherever she goes, certainly the Supreme Court." ...

Asked by host Matt Lauer if sexism might be playing a role in the Miers controversy, she said, "It's possible. I think that's possible. . . . I think people are not looking at her accomplishments."

Perhaps people haven't looked at her accomplishments because this White House has been completely inept at promoting them. We have heard about her work in cleaning up the Texas Lottery Commission, her status as the first woman to lead the Texas Bar Association, and her leadership as the managing partner of a large Texas law firm. Given that conservatives generally don't trust trial lawyers and the Bar Association and are at best ambivalent to government sponsorship of gambling, those sound rather weak as arguments for a nomination to the Supreme Court. If Miers has other accomplishments that indicate why conservatives should trust Bush in her nomination, we've yet to hear that from the White House.

Instead, we get attacked for our supposed "sexism", which does more to marginalize conservatives than anything the Democrats have done over the past twenty years -- and it's so demonstrably false that one wonders if the President has decided to torch his party out of a fit of pique. After all, it wasn't our decision to treat the O'Connor seat as a quota fulfillment; that seems to have originated with the First Lady herself, a form of sexism all its own.

Besides, conservatives stood ready to enthusiastically support a number of women for this nomination:

* Janice Rogers Brown has a long run of state Supreme Court experience, got re-elected to her position with 78% of the vote in California, and has written brilliantly and often on constitutional issues. She is tough, erudite, and more than a match for the fools on the Judiciary Committee, and would also have made minced meat out of any arguments about a "privileged upbringing", one of the snide commentaries about John Roberts in the last round.

* Edith Hollan Jones has served on the federal bench for years, compiling a record of constructionist opinions. She is younger and more experienced than Miers, and has been on conservative short lists for years.

* Priscilla Owen has a record similar to Brown's on the Texas bench and has demonstrated patience and judicial temperament that would easily impress the American people to the detriment of the opposition on the Judiciary Committee.

* Want a woman who litigates rather than one from the bench? One could do worse than Maureen Mahoney, who has argued over a dozen cases at the Supreme Court, clerked for Rehnquist who also later named her as Chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Commission, has been recognized as one of the top 50 female litigators by National Law Journal, and even worked on the transition team in 2000-1 for George Bush.

How does endorsing that slate of candidates equate to sexism in opposition to the unremarkable Miers? It doesn't, but as with those practiced in the victimization smear, the facts really don't matter at all. This kind of argument we expect from the Barbara Boxers and the Ted Kennedys, not from a Republican White House.

It's enough to start making me think that we need to send a clearer message to George Bush. The White House needs to rethink its relationship to reality and its so-far loyal supporters.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin notices this, too.

UPDATE II: Dafydd ab Hugh at Big Lizards thinks we were misled by the Post's reporting. He has a transcript that tends to support that -- but to me, it hardly seems like she's disassociating herself from that "possibility", either. Let's not forget that the same White House sent Ed Gillespie out with this same message just a few days ago.

After Gillespie made that accusation, the White House has had ample time to disavow his statement. So far, I haven't seen a retraction or an apology. I'm not prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt at this point.

The Dishonorable Stamp Of Approval

I have insisted that the Democrats will not allow the Harriet Miers nomination to go down to defeat, inasmuch as the alternatives look too politically unpalatable. The Gang of 14, those "moderate" Senators who hijacked the confirmation process last spring, have made that outcome more likely than ever by issuing an endorsement of Miers, the Hill reports in today's edition:

The Gang of 14’s centrist Democratic and Republican senators met and gave preliminary approval yesterday to Harriet Miers as President Bush’s nominee to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court.

Emerging from a meeting at the offices of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said, “This nomination didn’t set off any alarm bells with any of us.”

The significance of this provisional endorsement, though presented in a low-key fashion, could be huge, for it means that unless damning evidence emerges during the Judiciary Committee’s as-yet unscheduled confirmation hearings the nominee is unlikely to be filibustered, and a party-line vote would mean confirmation. A party-line vote is far from assured because conservatives have not welcomed the nomination.

In essence, this endorsement means much more. The endorsement primarily reflects an inability to filibuster Miers, but the timing shows something completely different. Why would the Gang of Idiots go out on a limb to endorse Miers at this stage, with all of the attendant controversy among Bush's base? It would make much more sense for them to withhold any judgment, pro or con, until after the hearings. They run the risk of endorsing a candidate who could conceivably melt down during the confirmation process.

This endorsement sends a signal that they find Miers not just acceptable, but as good as they can expect. The Republicans of the Gang want to simmer down the opposition building within their own party and assure the President that Miers will get confirmed no matter what. Their Democratic counterparts want to support Harry Reid's initial suggestion to nominate Miers and to send a signal to their caucus that opposition to Miers will only help the conservatives.

As I have warned, Miers will get confirmed unless she stumbles so badly during her hearings that the Senate has no choice but to reject Miers or for the Administration to withdraw her name. Apart from the unlikelihood of such a collapse, the confirmation has clearly become an almost certainty, and the Democrats will guarantee it to avoid Brown, Luttig, and McConnell. Conservatives should satisfy themselves with their loudly expressed disapproval and recognize that this choice has an equal chance of working to our benefit as it does of working against it.

CQ Does The Washington Post Webchat

Since I'm down with the flu anyway, I'll be participating in the Washington Post webchat at 1 pm ET today, discussing my piece yesterday on the Harriet Miers nomination and the split it caused in the conservative base. I hope you get a chance to jump in and participate, or at least enjoy the debate.

Jumping in now to prepare ...

Harriet Not A Hit Inside The Beltway

The Bush White House may find itself in the unusual position of relying on the opposition party to pass one of its nominees, according to the Washington Times. Almost half of the Senate GOP caucus has refused to publicly endorse Harriet Miers' confirmation to the Supreme Court, expressing either reservations or skepticism over her qualifications. Meanwhile, Arlen Specter and Pat Leahy have criticized the critics, with the former casting the naysayers as a "lynch mob:

Nearly half of Senate Republicans say they remain unconvinced that Harriet Miers is worthy of being confirmed to the Supreme Court, according to a survey conducted by The Washington Times.

As with the nomination of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the vast majority of senators say they will not announce their final decisions about the nomination until after Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, which are expected sometime next month.

What's troubling for President Bush, however, is that 27 Republican senators -- almost half of his party's members in the chamber -- have publicly expressed specific doubts about Miss Miers or said they must withhold any support whatsoever for her nomination until after the hearings.

The Times misses the point in this article, however, in deducing that this lack of GOP support puts Miers' confirmation in doubt. First, most of these Senators just want to show the base that they don't just accept nominees at face value. More importantly, they're keeping their options open. With such an unknown quantity as Miers, smart politicians won't commit to her without seeing her in action. Most of these will declare her testimony a rousing success once it's complete, regardless of her performance, hewing closely to the administration.

But even more, the Democrats may want to rescue Harriet Miers from the clutches of the Republican base. They're delighting in the civil war that has erupted in the conservative ranks since her nomination, but the majority of them should realize that Miers will be the best nominee they can expect from George Bush. She may be a cipher, but she has some history of flexibility on affirmative action during her political and legal career. Her lack of credentials also means that their normally apoplectic support base will not go crazy over her confirmation. Faced with replacements such as Michael Luttig, Michael McConnell, Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen, and Edith Hollan Jones, they'll take Miers.

If 27 Republicans team up with 34 Democrats, not only will Miers win confirmation but also could stop any filibuster. Half of the Democrats voted for John Roberts, a choice with which they clearly were unhappy. This confirmation will only get stopped by a withdrawal or badly-botched testimony at the Judiciary Committee hearings -- both of which would severely damage the GOP and George Bush.

Addendum: Both Pat Leahy and Arlen Specter get quoted in the article, dismissing conservative criticism; Specter calls it a "lynch mob". Did Specter make that kind of observation about media criticism when the AP suggested that John Roberts was a racist because his parents bought a nice house in the 1960s that didn't have a covenant deed disallowing the sale of the property to minorities? Did Leahy defend Roberts when the Washington Post insinuated that Roberts was a racist because he once referred to the Civil War as "The War Between The States"?

I understand why Leahy delights in the opportunity to slam the GOP base; I'm not clear why Specter wants to join him, nor am I impressed with the entire administration's response to their conservative supporters. Dismissing us as a sexist, elitist lynch mob will wind up losing this administration one or both houses of Congress unless they shut their yaps really quickly.

Gerhard's Gone, Angela Arrives

After almost a month of backroom wrangling, the Germans finally have a government. Thanks to a hair's-breadth victory for the center-right, Gerhard Schroeder will step down as German chancellor after seven years, allowing Angela Merkel to become the first female German chancellor in history. Her allies had to cough up a number of ministerial positions to get her there first:

The way has been cleared for Angela Merkel of the conservative Christian Democrats to become Germany's next chancellor. But the Social Democrats are also expected to come out of talks strong -- garnering as many as eight key ministerial posts, including the foreign ministry.

Germany's conservative Christian Democrats have reached an agreement with the center-left Social Democrats to create a grand coalition government with Angela Merkel as the country's first-ever female chancellor, the news agency DPA is reporting. ...

The Social Democrats, meanwhile, are expected to lead eight key ministries out of a total of 13. They include the foreign ministry, the finance ministry, the justice ministry, the labor ministry, the health ministry, the transportation ministry, the environmental ministry and the development ministry.

The Christian Democrats, meanwhile, would lead the defense, economics, education and research, interior, agricultural and consumer protection, and family ministries.

The direction created by such a coalition will have markets buzzing for a while. Merkel ran on a reformist platform, promising some fundamental free-market based changes in the way Germany operates. Her narrow plurality cannot carry that kind of legislative change on its own, and now that they have created a supermajority with the alliance between the CDU/CSU and the SPD (Schroeder's party), that outcome looks even less likely.

The SPD wound up with more ministries than Merkel's coalition, but Merkel may have held onto the most critical ministries for her reform package. Der Spiegel reports that the CDU has retained the Economics Ministry and the Interior Ministry. Undoutedly, that will help Merkel move forward with sensible and long-overdue changes to reduce the burden of the nanny-state in Germany. However, most of the changes will require Bundestag approval, which might prove difficult to push through without a clear CDU/CSU majority.

Merkel may have won the battle, but clearly she has yet to win the war. Gerhard Schroeder undoubtedly lost, as he didn't even make the list of ministers, especially the foreign minister slot he reputedly offered as a settlememt the last couple of days. His anti-American rabblerousing will not be missed on this side of the Atlantic.

UPDATE: First female German chancellor in history. Thanks to CQ reader Bill for the correction.

The Weather's Fine, But I'm Under It

Normally by this time, I'd be done posting for the morning ... but I've got a touch of the flu. I'm sticking around the house for the day, so posting will be slow but steady all day long, I presume.

The First Mate will be thrilled, to say the least, to have my voice croaking at her all day long.

Wetterling Joins Race For Dayton's Seat

Patty Wetterling has decided to bypass another attempt at the sixth Congressional district seat she lost in last year's election against Mark Kennedy to take on the same opponent in the race for the Senate seat that Mark Dayton's retirement will leave open. The political novice lost a tough battle against Kennedy last year in which she showed a thin skin for politicking and plenty of inexperience and indecision on policy. She has to convince Democrats that she can more effectively challenge Kennedy than Hennepin County DA Amy Klobuchar, a much more experienced DFL politician who has already declared her candidacy:

Last year, she lost a bruising battle for Congress to U.S. Rep. Mark Kennedy, who is now the Republican candidate for Senate.

Although Wetterling was a political novice at the time, her name was recognizable to many Minnesotans.

She became one of the country's foremost child-safety advocates after her son Jacob was abducted at gunpoint in 1989. He has never been found.

Wetterling said she "learned a lot about herself" in her previous (and only) run for office, which was marked by a series of Republican ads that characterized her as soft on terrorism, high on taxes and too liberal for the Sixth District's conservative voters.

"I'm stronger now," she told reporters Sunday. "I refuse to let anyone else define me that way again ... with those nasty ads."

Those "nasty ads" amounted to nothing more significant than the normal policy-comparison ads run during any normal election, but the Wetterling campaign pitched a hue and cry over the supposed meanness of Kennedy in running them. Wetterling tended to bring this on herself, however, as I noted last October. She shifted her position on abortion with less than a month to go before the election, one she lost by eight points. She went through the entire election campaign saying she opposed abortions after the first trimester, and then suddenly shifted, saying that she would not vote against late-term abortions.

Most politicians, I noted, go into elections wanting to win so that they can support policies in which they believe. Wetterling appeared to campaign on the notion that once she won, she'd figure out what she believed afterwards. She ran as a Chauncey Gardener figure, someone on whom voters could project their own hopes and desires without ever having to actually take a firm stand on anything.

I doubt she'll get her rematch against Kennedy, however. Although she has better name recognition than Amy Klobuchar, the DA has a much better track record in elections and a better sense of herself. Klobuchar has already received the Emily's List endorsement that provided Wetterling her only lifeline in last year's contest. The only impact Wetterling might have on the race will be to force Klobuchar more to the left in order to beat her in the primary, which might make it tougher on Klobuchar to face off against Kennedy in the general election.

Kennedy will have his work cut out for him in either case. He won two elections to Congress in blue-state Minnesota, but in a district known for its more conservative tendencies. Kennedy will need to broaden his appeal somewhat in order to garner the necessary margin needed to win Dayton's seat. If Wetterling can make the primary tough on Klobuchar, Kennedy could take advantage of the opening.

Three-Part Disharmony

Earlier this week, the Washington Post asked me to write an analysis of the conservative reaction to the Harriet Miers nomination, after a recommendation from Michelle Malkin. It took up a bit of my evenings this week, one of the reasons my output may have seemed a bit slow, but CQ readers should appreciate the result. My essay appears in today's Outlook, titled "How Harriet Unleashed A Storm On The Right":

The president's surprise pick to replace Sandra Day O'Connor has ignited a massive debate among his former loyalists, especially in the blogosphere, where I spend a fair amount of time. Wails of betrayal are clashing with assurances of the president's brilliant strategic thinking. Meanwhile, the heavyweights of punditry drop columns like artillery shells into what already may be a conservative civil war. ...

Bush himself ran on the promise that his election would guarantee Supreme Court nominations in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. But when he finally got an opening on the court -- whom did he pick? An unknown quantity named John Roberts. After an initial round of puzzlement over this selection, conservatives backed the nomination, even though Roberts never gave any solid indication of whether he agreed with the philosophy of judicial restraint.

It helped that we expected a second opening, which came all too quickly with Chief Justice William Rehnquist's death. But now Bush has presented us with even more of a cipher, one with no demonstrable constitutional scholarship or judicial record, and whose best qualification appears to be proximity to him.

The analysis has the conservatives breaking up into three factions -- the Loyalist Army, the Rebel Alliance, and the Trench-Dwelling Dogfaces. I'm hoping that a lighter touch will help cool down the tempers on all sides and provide Post readers with a taste of the conservative blogosphere when it debates its own. The folks at the Post allowed me to write in any style I wanted, and did a fine job of editing this down to a manageable length.

I will also participate in an hour-long webchat at the Post's site on Monday, 1 pm ET to discuss the article, the nomination, and the blogosphere. I hope to see a few friends as part of that webchat, and I'll update this with a link as soon as I get it. Hope everyone enjoys it!

UPDATE: Bruce Kesler says he's a Dogface, too.

UPDATE II and Bump: Big Lizards -- big-time Dogface, with several links to prove it:

What hurts a party -- indeed, weakens it -- is when it has a strong majority and it still loses a nomination fight. Bush and the GOP were all right during the filibuster wars, but that was because of the wide perception among Republican voters that the Democrats were using improper and unfair tactics, where 41 senators could stop 59 senators from confirming a judge. The GOP repeatedly made the point that if those nominations had actually gone to a vote, each of them would have been confirmed: "we're not losers," the Republicans were saying; "the Democrats are cheating!" In fact, not a single confirmation cloture vote during Bush's presidency has failed to get a majority; each confirmation was blocked by a minority, typically even less than the entire Democratic caucus.

Americans hate cheaters.

But if the anti-Miers camp succeeds in sparking a revolt among six or seven of the most conservative Republican senators, leading to the rejection of Miers despite a strong GOP majority in the Senate, this will put the mark of Cain on the GOP, the scarlet-L for LOSERS. And that, much more than grudging acceptance by the Senate, is what will depress turnout.

How does that work, depressing turnout? The core of the base will vote; they always do; that's part of the definition of "core." But that only accounts for 38% - 40% of the total vote. So where does the other 11% - 13% come from to get to (say) 51%, as Bush got in 2004? It comes from what I call "sunshine voters." These are not party stalwarts but cast their votes depending on how they feel that particular day. This is not the same as "independents," because most of the latter have more-or-less consistent leanings but are unwilling to declare themselves members of either major party. I'm talking about the folks who truly switch their votes from election to election.

If the GOP comes across as Losers, it will be the sunshine voters who vote Democratic, vote for a goofy third-party candidate, or just stay home. They supported Bush in 2004 because he seemed like a winner, in contrast to Kerry, who seemed like a whiner. Americans hate losers just as much as they hate cheaters.

Dafydd has much more on Miers at Big Lizards.

UPDATE III: Brant at SWLiP has a couple of questions for Miers' comfirmations, based on the song, "Yes, We Have No Bananas". (Okay, I was kidding about the song, but he wrote the second question just to torment me.)

UPDATE IV: Hugh has a long, thoughtful, and impressive response, which surprises no one. The only major point of disagreement I have with it is the idea that religion should play a role in selecting a nominee. If that is the case, then Hugh argues for a de facto religious test -- and it is somewhat hypocritical then to complain when others like Schumer use the same test in reverse.

UPDATE V: Michelle Malkin has a great roundup of reaction and further commentary on Miers. Mark Tapscott wants a fourth category.

Could NOAH Have Stopped The Flood Of Terrorism Before 9/11? (Update with Correction)

One of the bloggers that has kept an eye on Able Danger updates, AJ Strata, notes an editorial in today's Washington Times written by F. Michael Maloof. Maloof reveals that Congress at one point wanted a national network of cross-functional centers doing work pioneered by the Able Danger team and its mother program, LIWA, but that the Pentagon wanted to pursue its own program instead. Maloof argues that the failure to push NOAH into existence lost us our best shot at stopping the 9/11 terrorists:

Mr. Weldon first sought help from Eileen Preisser, who ran the Information Dominance Center at the U.S. Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) at Fort Belvoir, Va. He then asked this writer to work with Ms. Preisser to see how the Army initiative could be expanded into a national effort.

As Mr. Weldon envisioned it, the national collaborative center would have been comprised of a system of mini-centers or "pods" of some 34 entities from the U.S. intelligence community and law enforcement agencies to function in a common operating environment.

It would not have been just another analytical unit. The effect of data-mining information that had already been analyzed was to game-plan particular issues and offer options to policymakers and national commanders to deal with them.

Who is Maloof and where does NOAH fit into the counterterrorist effort, pre- or post-9/11? Don't bother checking the 9/11 report. It mentions neither, even though the Stratasphere seems to have had no troubles tracking this man down. Strata found out that Maloof worked with Richard Perle, and after 9/11 received an unusual assignment: to find out if Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks specifically, or with al-Qaeda in general. As one of Strata's links note, his work on this assignment appears to have angered some at the DoD:

A veteran Pentagon employee who was a key player in the effort to find links between Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida has been stripped of his security clearance, according to senior U.S. officials.

The employee, F. Michael Maloof, is associated with a Lebanese-American businessman who is under federal investigation for possible involvement in a gun-running scheme to Liberia, the West African nation embroiled in civil war. The businessman, Imad El Haje, approached Maloof on behalf of Syria to seek help in arranging a communications channel between Syria and the Defense Department. ...

Maloof is on administrative leave and hasn't been charged with wrongdoing. Those close to him contend that his clearances were pulled in retaliation for challenging the official assessment that there were no operational terrorist links between al-Qaida and Iraq.

Maloof was part of a two-man team created at the Pentagon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to find such links. The team was a predecessor to the Pentagon's controversial Office of Special Plans.

Maloof and David Wurmser, who's now an aide to Undersecretary of State John Bolton, claimed they had found evidence that Sunni and Shiite Muslim groups, as well as secular Islamic countries, cooperate to harm the United States despite their many differences.

The excuse for pulling Maloof's security clearance was his contacts with Imad el-Haje, a Lebanese contact that tried to concoct an arrangement between Saddam and the US to avoid war. In May 2003, Maloof had his security clearance revoked for contacting el-Haje. By November, the US had acknowledged that the contact represented a legitimate attempt on our part to resolve the impasse short of military action:

Early this year, a Lebanese-American businessman, Imad El Haje, relayed word that Saddam would allow U.S. experts and troops into Iraq to verify that he had no weapons of mass destruction, said the officials, who requested anonymity.

El Haje sent his message through a Department of Defense official, F. Michael Maloof, who was involved in a Pentagon effort to find links between Saddam and Osama bin Laden, and Richard Perle, the head of a Pentagon advisory panel who was a leading advocate of invading Iraq.

U.S. officials said none of the approaches went anywhere. They were deemed either fraudulent or attempts by Saddam to stall for time to allow international opposition to a U.S.-led attack to build, they said.

"They were all non-starters because they all involved Saddam staying in power," said a senior administration official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because intelligence matters are classified.

Maloof also has an attorney -- Mark Zaid, the same attorney as Lt. Colonel Tony Shaffer. Interesting, and somewhat coincidental that both figures have the same legal representation. (It would be interesting, if true, but it isn't -- Mark Zaid was just quoted for reaction to the article. He doesn't represent Maloof, per his e-mail to me. My apologies for the error.)

Be sure to read all of AJ Strata's analysis. However, I have a couple of questions myself. It seems as though the DIA likes to pull clearances on people with interesting testimony to give on issues like 9/11 and the war on terror. Is that why Maloof never gets mentioned or even interviewed by the 9/11 Commission, as far as can be told? If not, what other reason could there be? Maloof has a different opinion on the resources used by the al-Qaeda plotters for 9/11 based on his direct investigation, one of two people who went back and officially looked into the issue.

How could the 9/11 Commission have missed Maloof as a witness?

It's yet another glaring gap in the process used by the supposedly thorough and authoritative "independent" investigation into the terrorist attacks.

Catch-And-Release Program Should Only Apply To Fish

The Yemen government doesn't seem to take terrorism quite as seriously as we do, according to the London Telegraph. Their idea of handling terrorism goes even less further than the notorious law-enforcement approach that the United States tried during the decade prior to 9/11. Yemen takes a debate approach instead -- and it's about as effective as one might think:

A pioneering scheme to fight Islamist terror by encouraging jailed extremists to rethink their grasp of the Koran is under fire after claims that some of its "converts" have taken up arms again.

The project, launched in Yemen three years ago by an Islamic scholar, Judge Hamoud al-Hitar, has been followed closely by the British Government, which has twice invited him to lecture senior anti-terrorism officials at Scotland Yard.

The effectiveness of his technique - a theological "duel" in which he and the prisoners quote Koranic texts at each other - is in doubt, however, after reports that some al-Qaeda militants freed under the scheme have been caught fighting coalition forces in Iraq.

Among those released is the former chief bodyguard of Osama bin Laden, Nasser Al-Bahri, who has admitted that his sessions with Judge al-Hitar did nothing to diminish his belief in the leader of al-Qaeda. Instead, he suggested that many militants simply pretended to repent to gain quick release from jail.

No -- tell me it isn't so! The Yemenis and the Brits can't possibly mean that hardened terrorists, trained to resist Western interrogation techniques as well as Eastern torture, might lie about their intentions in order to get out of prison. Who could have seen that coming?

One would think that the Brits would not be so naive as to promote this kind of a program, especially after the June 7 bombings, but some apparently are. It's the same people who think that hatred consists of nothing more than a misunderstanding, and that a nice, friendly conversation cures evil. It's bad enough that we allowed this philosophy to turn our justice systems into a joke in the late 60s and 70s; now a new generation of naifs want to apply it to national security, at least overseas.

The key to understanding terrorists is to accept that evil exists. Those who target non-combatants for death because they are non-combatants just to make a political/religious point use their hatred to do evil. Having a chat and showing them the door does not transform them into peaceful debate-society denizens. Lock them up and throw away the key.