What Does The Right Want?

The New York Times asks this question in its Sunday edition after the rejection of Harriet Miers as a Supreme Court nominee. The Bush administration has signaled that it will announce its replacement for the seat opened up by Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement, and the Times wonders what kind of nominee will satisfy the conservatives who objected so strenuously to Miers -- and whether such a nominee can find confirmation in the Senate:

In his two choices for the Supreme Court so far, President Bush has tapped what some conservatives called "stealth" nominees: jurists without a clear record of legal opinions on abortion rights or other contentious social issues.

But with the announcement of a third nominee to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor expected as early as Monday, prominent conservatives said they were confident that this time would be different. They argued that the reaction against the nomination of Harriet E. Miers had proven the perils of such an approach, even though some also acknowledged that the failure of the Miers nomination may have weakened the president if the next nominee sets off a battle.

"To the degree that Bush was enamored of a stealth strategy, I have got to believe he has learned there is a real downside," said William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and one of the first conservative thinkers to call for withdrawal of the Miers nomination.

But if the next nominee provokes a fight with the left instead, Mr. Kristol added, "it is tougher having made a mistake with Miers."

Elisabeth Bumiller makes the common mistake coming from most media outlets. Conservatives haven't asked for a consistent record opposing abortion or demanding a reversal of Roe v Wade, although I suppose either would delight most of us. What we have first asked and lately demanded are candidates that have a public record of originalist scholarship or jurisprudence, justices who not only will vote conservatively but push the transformation of the Supreme Court from its current status of a superlegislature to that of an arbiter of the Constitutionality of actions taken by the Legislature, Executive, and lower courts -- based on the actual text of the Constitution and nothing else.

We want candidates who understand that the Supreme Court, or any other court, did not spring into existence to tell legislatures that they have to legalize gay marriages. We hope to find nominees who have publicly demonstrated a commitment to separation of powers, either by way of scholarly writings, jurisprudence, or a long history of legal work. Furthermore, we want a Republican president and a Republican Senate to quit feeding into a perception that this represents some fringe thinking, instead of a return to the original use of the judiciary as intended by the framers of the Constitution. That means that we find stealth candidates utterly inappropriate, given that Republicans control the White House and the Senate and both were won on the basis of an election in which this issue received plenty of debate on both sides.

We won the election and increased the GOP majority in the Senate based in large part on that issue. That shows a mandate for change.

For those who argue that the Senate GOP does not have the will to confirm such candidates, that may unfortunately be true. It has nothing to do with the Democrats, however. The GOP has all the tools it needs to confirm anyone they want; if the Democrats want to abuse the filibuster yet again, this time on an eminently qualified and scholarly Supreme Court nominee, the GOP can eliminate the use of teh filibuster with little effort.

If the so-called Gang of Fourteen wants to stall that option, we need to remind them of their commitment to presidential prerogative on highly qualified candidates during Bill Clinton's term -- and Ruth Bader Ginsburg supplies us with the perfect example. Ginsburg had impeccable credentials as a scholar and an attorney; she had practiced law and written many treatises on her view of Constitutional law. Her views coincided nicely with the elected President of that time, Clinton, and he exercised his prerogative in nominating her. The GOP helped confirm her to the bench, despite her rather extreme liberal viewpoint, on the basis of her clearly sufficient scholarship and understanding of the law.

Of the present Gang of 14 Republicans, the vote went as follows:

Lincoln Chaffee: Yea
John McCain: Yea
John Warner: Yea

Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Mike DeWine, and Lindsay Graham did not hold seats in the Senate at the time. Other so-called squishes in today's upper chamber did, including Chuck Grassley and Arlen Specter. If these men could vote for Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the basis of Clinton's prerogative, then they had better find themselves capable of defending it for a J. Michael Luttig or Samuel Alito, or even Janice Rogers Brown.

(Before anyone starts arguing about Presidential prerogative and Harriet Miers, I'll remind you that that was the only basis on which I supported her nomination until the speeches came out. After that, my first and primary objection to her focused on her lack of scholarship and apparent mediocrity in expressing herself, along with an almost-complete lack of any record of public thought on Constitutional law and philosophy. Even then, I had no problem with her getting her hearing and up-or-down vote, but opposed her confirmation and thought that a withdrawal made much better political sense.)

Given the names floating out from the White House this time around, I'm a lot more confident that the administration now understands what the Right wants. The Times just hasn't been listening, a problem that we resolved with the Bush administration earlier.

Arab States Wanted Iraq War

A news report from The Australian and Al-Arabiya indicates that the United States had negotiated a peaceful exit for Saddam Hussein from Iraq -- but that the Arab League torpedoed the deal, leading to the Iraq War in March 2003 (h/t: Daily Scorecard):

Deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had secretly accepted a last-minute plan to go into exile to avert the 2003 Iraq war, but Arab leaders shot the proposal down, Al Arabiya television reported today. UAE President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan made the proposal for Saddam to go into exile at an emergency Arab summit just weeks before the US-led war began in March 2003.

But the 22-member Arab League, led by Secretary-General Amr Moussa, refused to consider the initiative.

"We had got the final agreement from the different parties, the main players in the world and the person concerned – Saddam Hussein – within 24 hours," Mohammed bin Zayed, deputy head of the UAE armed forces and crown prince of Abu Dhabi, told the UAE-based channel in a documentary.

The Al-Arabiya documentary includes remarks from Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak that indicates the Bush Administration would have accepted a permanent exile for Saddam's government in exchange for a peaceful transition. The Arab nations apparently refused to accept Saddam's exile, and for some reason that sank the agreement at the last moment.

Why would the Arab League reject the deal? Probably because the surrender of Saddam Hussein would result in the deconstruction of the largest military force in Southwest Asia facing the US and Israel. Up to the final moments, they hoped that Saddam could lead the Arabs out of their also-ran status against the West. They also may have hesitated to host the notorious al-Tikriti clan, whose tastes ran from the cruel to the bizarre, and who could have garnered a following for an political uprising. As I read the article, though, it appears that the UAE was prepared to take that risk.

Does the Arab League bear ultimate responsibility for the war, and did the US almost finesse Saddam out of Baghdad? We may never know for sure, but if this report is accurate, it would show that the Bush administration was willing to accept a solution short of war that removed Saddam and his sons from Iraq.

UPDATE: Daily Scorecard, not Daily Pundit -- I had the link correct but not the name. Sorry!

UPDATE II: This is what the League said shortly after the invasion:

Amr Moussa, the league's secretary general, said: "I salute the Iraqis and wish them victory."

Moussa, Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmood Hamood and others at the meeting say the war is an example of renewed Western imperialism.

They say the war is part of a long-term plan is to change the Middle East map and remove national leaders such as Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

It looks like the Arab League didn't want national leaders removed even if they agreed to leave, regardless of the crimes they committed on their own people. They must have felt that (a) the Bush Administration was bluffing, and/or (b) Saddam could beat the Coalition in the field. Maybe they can explain to the Iraqis who have died in the war that followed exactly why they called Bush's "bluff" with Iraqi blood. It certainly seems, with al-Arabiya's latest reporting, that the Arab League represents the dictatorships at the expense of the Arabs -- not that that should come as any surprise.

India Rocked By Terrorist Explosions

Islamic terrorism appears to have visited India, a nation that has had traditional tensions with Muslims on and within its borders but has championed Palestinian cause, in the form of several bombings today. Reuters reports that more than 50 people have died in the attacks, and that the United States had issued a warning to its citizens in the country shortly beforehand about potential al-Qaeda attacks:

Three powerful bombs ripped through New Delhi markets packed with families and shoppers on Saturday ahead of the biggest Hindu and Muslim festivals of the year, killing over 50 people and wounding scores more. ...

At least 51 people were killed in the blasts which occurred within minutes of each other, said an aide to Delhi state Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit. Fifty-four people were injured, the aide said.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared it an act of terrorism, while adding it was too early to speculate who was responsible.

It may be early to assign blame, but an earlier warning from the American embassy seems too close to be coincidental. American and Indian authorities had chased a suspected AQ terrorist to India and had predicted attacks within days based on their intelligence. Since the Hindus have a religious holiday on Tuesday, it would appear that AQ wanted to make a big statement to the infidels.

Again, this shows that AQ and Islamism wants to control the entire subcontinent and recreate the medieval Caliphate -- and through that, control the world via the oil supply in the region. They do not want to just be "left in peace" -- they want the peace of Islam, meaning that they want to run the world as a theocracy in the mold of the Taliban.

These lunatics put themselves beyond understanding. The only understanding that will solve this problem will be the long-term strategy of denying them the desperate and the hopeless recruits that come from the oppressive tyrannies and kleptocracies in the region and spreading democracy. That's why Brent Scowcroft and his decades-long pursuit of stability diplomacy in the Middle East is terribly wrong and in fact created the sitution in which we find ourselves. We allowed massive oppression in the name of "stability" ever since we discovered cheap oil under Arab sands. All that has brought is misery and radicalism.

Scowcroft and his version of realpolitik have consigned themselves to the ashheap of history. Scowcroft just won't recognize it.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin notes that Islamists continued their other tradition in terrorism, beheading infidels. This time, they set their sights on unarmed teenage Christian girls, targets apparently considered worthy of the level of courage found in the mujaheddin of Islam:

Three teenage Christian girls were beheaded and a fourth was seriously wounded in a savage attack on Saturday by unidentified assailants in the Indonesian province of Central Sulawesi.

The girls were among a group of students from a private Christian high school who were ambushed while walking through a cocoa plantation in Poso Kota subdistrict on their way to class, police Major Riky Naldo said.

I'm sure these big, brave men with knives must have quaked in their boots when squaring off against children such as these, given the craven nature of Islamofascists in general. Let's hear more about how we should offer our understanding for their cultural issues and feelings of hopelessness and negotiate for peace with such slime.

Islamofascists are cowards. They attack unarmed civilians precisely because they know they cannot succeed with their activity any other way. Anyone who would plan and carry out this kind of crime has no sense of humanity, honor, or worth. The only rational response is to find them and kill them before they attack more children for their sick and twisted motives.

FM Says [Cough, Cough] 'Hello' To All

Just a quick update before I go to the hospital this morning -- I spoke to the First Mate, and she wants me to thank everyone who has kept her in their prayers and thoughts. She still has a fever, but it's down just a bit to 101.1, and her cough unfortunately remains bad. I'll be there in an hour and will update this post throughout the day. I plan on taking some DVDs with me so that we can watch movies off the laptop instead of the college football games she, er, loves so much.

More later ...

UPDATE: Well, it looks like pneumonia, but it's controllable and it doesn't appear to have affected the transplants. She'll be in the hospital for at least a couple of days while they run all the necessary tests. They have her in a private room, but it's on the far side of the hospital where the wireless connections are all proprietary (locked out from weaselly folks such as me!). The guest lobby has a signal I can use, so I'll be updating irregularly as I can.

UPDATE II, 3:00 pm CT: I should note that the diagnosis is somewhat preliminary, but they're pretty sure about it. It's not critical; they don't have the FM in Intensive Care or on a respirator, or even an oxygen feed. They want to do a bronchoscopy to make sure of the diagnosis later today, but we're still waiting. In the meantime, she's drifting in and out of a nap this afternoon, so I'm watching football after all.

UPDATE III, 4:47 PM: She's going in for her bronchoscopy now, after getting the first of two units of blood. Her hemoglobin level was down to 7.8 (13.5 is considered the lower end of normal). Even with the serious anemia, though, her oxygenation level looks good. They want to confirm the diagnosis and find the specific bug that's causing the pneumonia. I'm eating an early dinner and staring out the window in the lobby where the signal seems passable.

UPDATE IV, 5:11 PM - I'll have Mitch know that I'm not wearing the Irish jersey today -- Notre Dame has a bye week. So there. But I appreciate his thoughts and prayers.

While I'm updating, I'll throw in a minor bleg - if anyone knows how I can get a login for the Fairview University wireless networks, it would be mucho appreciado.

Islamists Smuggled SAMs, WMD Into France

According to the London Telegraph, European counterterrorist agencies now hunt a group of Islamofascist terrorists with "links to al-Qaida" that successfully smuggled surface-to-air missiles as well as chemical and biological weapons into France. The missiles, they fear, will serve as the next phase of terrorist attacks on commercial air service, possibly outside one of the major French airports such as Orly:

French and Algerian extremists with links to al-Qa'eda bought the Russian SA-18 Grouse missiles from Chechens in 2002 and smuggled them via Georgia and Turkey, according to French anti-terror sources quoted in Le Figaro.

Both missiles and several of the extremists are reportedly still at large.

French anti-terrorism investigators learned of the missile terror plan while interrogating a Jordanian al-Qa'eda operative close to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of the Islamic terror group in Iraq.

Adnan Muhammad Sadik, alias Abu Atiya, is now being held by the Jordanian authorities.

Sadik has quite a terrorist pedigree. He apparently arranged a purchase of Russian SAMs from the Chechens while training new al-Qaeda terror cells throughout the Caucasus. He also has worked closely with Zarqawi in Iraq. Sadik's resume shows the intertwining of these varied "insurgencies" and how they all relate back to al-Qaeda and the coordinated Islamofascist attack on the West. These are not isolated nationalist movements, but a region-wide effort by Islamists to re-establish the Caliphate or to end the world trying to do so.

One has to wonder, when seeing Sadik's list of chemical and biological materiel he admits to sending into Europe, where al-Qaeda managed to get it. He told the Jordanians that he sent ricin, botulin, and cyanide with the SAMs. All three will kill with great efficiency, but ricin is especially deadly and not exactly difficult to produce. However, it seems unlikely that AQ has a stable enough shelter system to have its own production facilities. If it doesn't, the WMD had to come from somewhere -- either the Russians, who deny having any, or one of the countries which AQ has infiltrated, perhaps even Iraq.

The Europeans now have a new terrorist crisis to face. This could, of course, be a hoax or a disinformation campaign. If not, the French might find themselves the next target of AQ violence after the Americans, Spaniards, and British. If that happens, how will the French government explain this to their people? They have appeased the Islamists at almost every turn; they actively undermined the effort to topple Saddam Hussein and still refuse to cooperate with the Coalition in establishing a democracy there. Just the fact that AQ has targeted France shows the emptiness of the argument that AQ only attacks America because of our policies in the Middle East. If any country could have avoided attack because of appeasement, it would be the French; and yet, now they not only have to protect against two SAMs but also track down these deadly chemical weapons before they get unleashed against the French people.

Will this change minds about the nature and span of this conflict? Doubtful, but the extent to which people ignore it will be telling.

CQ Media Notes

I will appear on tonight's "On The Story" on CNN, chatting with Abbi Tatton and Jeralyn Merritt about the Harriet Miers nomination and the effect of the blogosphere on the mainstream media. Jeralyn did a fine job on the Libby indictment, which doesn't surprise me -- she's one of my favorite liberal bloggers (and I do read blogs on the left). It runs at 7 pm ET tonight, and at 1 pm ET on Sunday.

While most television appearances require guests to drive into town and get to a television studio with a satellite uplink, CNN tried something different with OTS during its taping last night. They shipped out a basic Mac box and a webcam, and I hooked it up directly to my DSL modem to initiate a webchat. What you see when I appear on camera is not a set, but the inside of my home office -- although I had the good taste not to point the camera towards my messy desk. For a real trivial point, the map on the wall behind me is in Irish, but I doubt anyone will make it out. I didn't have time to change from my casual clothes, so I'll look a bit relaxed for CNN, I think. My father, the Admiral Emeritus, will recognize the shirt as one he bought me from the Galapagos Islands, but fortunately the camera didn't pick up the I LIKE BOOBIES logo, with an embroidery of the blue-footed booby just above it.

I think it went very well, and even though we had to rush through the initial setup, I got the hang of it pretty quickly. CNN and especially Abbi and Josh the technician were just wonderful with us; if anything, Abbi is even nicer than she comes across on TV, and she is a big fan of the blogs. They've asked me to keep the equipment handy, so I hope I will get a chance to make more appearances on CNN.

The next time, though, I'll wear a different shirt.

The Return Of Hospiblogging

Looks like we'll be hospiblogging this weekend, at least at some point. The First Mate has a respiratory infection that now looks like it needs immediate intervention, along with a nagging fever that has the transplant staff concerned. Blogging may be a bit light, along with other efforts this weekend, although I may have a few surprises up my sleeve.

Keep her in your prayers. This is nothing life-threatening, but it's a serious development any time for a double-transplant recipient, even more so during flu season. We both appreciate it.

UPDATE: The FM is waiting for a bed to open up at the hospital, which we think will happen in about 90 minutes. Her temp had been as high as 103.1F (39.5 for my friends in Canada and Europe), but now it's down slightly to 102.4/39.1. We're not sure what she has going on, but she's going to the right place to take care of it. More later ...

UPDATE II, 9:00 pm: The FM is resting comfortably at the hospital, and her fever has dropped down a bit more. I spoke with her an hour or so ago, and she wanted to just get some sleep. She thanks all of you for your prayers. I'll spend the day with her tomorrow.

Fitzmas Drizzles One Solid Indictment

I've had an opportunity to read through the indictment of Scooter Libby while waiting at the clinic with the First Mate. As I predicted, Libby resigned as soon as the indictment was made public:

Friday's charges stemmed from a two-year investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald into whether Rove, Libby or any other administration officials knowingly revealed the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame or misled investigators about their involvement.

In the end, Fitzgerald accused Libby of a cover-up — lying about his conversations with reporters. He was not charged with outing a spy.

"Mr. Libby's story that he was at the tail end of a chain of phone calls, passing on from one reporter what he heard from another, was not true. It was false," the prosecutor said. "He was at the beginning of the chain of the phone calls, the first official to disclose this information outside the government to a reporter. And he lied about it afterward, under oath, repeatedly." ...

Libby, 55, resigned and left the White House.

In this case, it looks like Libby lied for fear of getting caught up in a political scandal, or he didn't understand that he had not committed a crime until the FBI showed up to interview him. If the indictment has its information correct, Libby acted foolishly in trying to spin a story about how he learned of Wilson's wife. Perhaps he thought everyone else would stonewall Fitzgerald and the FBI, too, but it looks like he was very much mistaken.

What this does show is that (a) Fitzgerald can't make a case for conspiracy to out a covert agent, mostly because (b) he can't prove that anyone knew of Plame's status at the CIA. In fact, he doesn't bother in the indictment to establish that Plame fully qualified under the statute that originally started the investigation, just that her status was "classified". In his press conference, live-blogged by Michelle Malkin, Fitzgerald went out of his way to emphasize that he had indicted no one on the original reason for the investigation.

So where does this leave us?

It leaves us with one very foolish senior administration staffer who apparently decided to even up the playing field as Joe Wilson leaked information to whomever would print his anonymous allegations. Part of that came from the misreporting done by Nicholas Krystof and Walter Pincus, both of whom implied or stated categorically that Dic Cheney had ordered Wilson to go to Niger, when the entire idea came from inside the CIA and was mostly orchestrated by Wilson's wife. It doesn't leave us with some vast conspiracy by the administration to punish Plame for her husband's big mouth (and serial falsehoods).

Lying to FBI agents and grand juries will get one in a lot of trouble, and five counts make it difficult to argue that he simply got misunderstood. He deserves a fair trial before anyone judges him, but if the indictment truly describes what happened, the VP is better off without him.

Of course, one wonders what Libby might prepare for a defense. He may turn around and tell prosecutors that he was ordered to find this information on behalf of Cheney. However, Libby hasn't done that so far, despite apparently having been given a chance to explain himself. More likely he will argue the timeline of events with Fitzgerald and try to recast what he knew when, and how.

In my inexpert opinion, having gone down to this level of detail to get an indictment against Libby but not producing any other indictments, I doubt Fitzgerald has anything left in the holster. It also shows that Fitzgerald didn't feel particularly pressured to come up with indictments or to avoid them -- in other words, it looks like he did his job. While the prosecution of Libby proceeds, more indictments may result as more evidence gets uncovered, but it looks like absent of some unforeseen epiphany, this is as much as Fitzgerald will produce.

A mighty thin Fitzmas indeed. Anyone celebrating this as more significant than the fruits of stupidity needs to develop more outside interests, like philately or cycling.

Ahmadinejad Responds, 'And The Horse You Rode In On'

Newly-appointed Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad showed no remorse or signs of retreat after making a demand that Israel be "wiped off the map" at an Islamist conference in Teheran earlier this week. Instead, after facing near-universal condemnation even in Arabic countries, Ahmadinejad rejected the criticism as "invalid":

Iran's president has defended his widely criticised call for Israel to be "wiped off the map".

Attending an anti-Israel rally in Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his remarks were "just" - and the criticism did not "have any validity."

Last Wednesday's comment provoked world outrage. Israel has called for Iran's expulsion from the United Nations.

Egypt said they showed "the weakness of the Iranian government". A Palestinian official also rejected the remarks.

In fact, Saeb Erekat said on behalf of the Palestinians that they had already accepted Israel's right to exist and that the extant question should be about adding Palestine to the map. In the UK, Tony Blair hinted about military options for the first time in conjunction with Iranian intransigence on nuclear disarmament, and in the background, the US presence in Southwest Asia looms as an ever-present threat. Ahmadinejad might delight the Iranian mullahcracy and its thin band of supporters with his genocidal rhetoric, but all it has done is to remind the international community why nuclear technology should be removed from Iran.

Even Kofi Annan rebuked Ahmadinejad.

If democratic activists in Iran ever intend on doing something about their present state and government, now would be the time. Their position vis-a-vis the radical Islamists that Ahmadinejad appears to be inviting to Iran will only get worse over time. As Iran continues to provide both provocations such as Ahmadinejad's speech and the refusal to comply with nuclear treaties, Western nations get closer to military options to stop the Iranians from getting a nuclear bomb. They will find it more difficult at that point to maintain their credibility in the debacle that will inevitably occur if it comes to that.

We can help, but the push should come from within. As Michael Ledeen says, "Faster, please." We stand ready.

Why Miers Tanked

We need to set the record straight on why the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court failed. This failure didn't start with David Frum putting together an ad-hoc committee to pay for television advertising, and it didn't start with the blogosphere opining on Harriet Miers' birthday-card greetings. It started in the White House, where another poor job of vetting a candidate came back to bite the Bush administration -- not for the first time in this term.

The White House selection process that produced Miers can be boiled down to one sentence: Bush liked her, and no one bothered to check her out properly. The Washington Post has more:

For Harriet Miers, the "murder boards" were aptly named. Day after day in a room in the Justice Department, colleagues from the Bush administration grilled her on constitutional law, her legal background and her past speeches in practice sessions meant to mimic Senate hearings.

Her uncertain, underwhelming responses left her confirmation managers so disturbed they decided not to open up the sessions to the friendly outside lawyers they usually invite to participate in prepping key nominees.

It was clear that Miers was going to need to "hit a grand slam homer" before the Senate Judiciary Committee to win confirmation to the Supreme Court, as one adviser to the White House put it. "Her performance at the murder boards meant that people weren't confident she'd get the grand slam."

By nearly all accounts, the 24 days of the Miers nomination was hobbled by a succession of miscalculations. President Bush bypassed his own selection process to pick Miers, his onetime personal lawyer and White House counsel since February. His aides ignored warnings by some of the administration's closest conservative allies that she would prove difficult to confirm, and took for granted that its base would ultimately stick with the president.

And in perhaps the biggest misjudgment, Bush assumed that Miers would somehow shine in a Washington klieg light she had never before faced.

George Bush has many admirable qualities, but understanding what his base wants in terms of philosophy and temperament from a Supreme Court justice isn't one of them. It's true that his team has selected many fine nominees to the bench -- but all of them have had demonstrable track records as conservatives, originalists, jurists, and scholars of law. Harriet Miers, as described in another Post article this morning, is a fine attorney and genuinely nice person, but she doesn't have those kind of qualifications.

This failure started at the top, and as more came out about Miers and her shifting positions on potentially important Constitutional issues and legal scholarship, that failure became more obvious. Even early ally James Dobson realized that he had made a mistake in supporting Miers out of the gate, although the White House still hasn't figured out that promoting her religion as a qualification was a huge mistake, one that cost them the bipartisan edge she might otherwise have had.

My good friend Hugh Hewitt feels as though the Right has made a terrible mistake in speaking its mind about the actions of the Bush administration. He goes to the New York Times this morning to scold the Right for using the tactics of the Left in beating up what he sees as a qualified nominee:

OVER the last two elections, the Republican Party regained control of the United States Senate by electing new senators in Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas. These victories were attributable in large measure to the central demand made by Republican candidates, and heard and embraced by voters, that President Bush's nominees deserved an up-or-down decision on the floor of the Senate. Now, with the withdrawal of Harriet Miers under an instant, fierce and sometimes false assault from conservative pundits and activists, it will be difficult for Republican candidates to continue to make this winning argument: that Democrats have deeply damaged the integrity of the advice and consent process.

The right's embrace in the Miers nomination of tactics previously exclusive to the left - exaggeration, invective, anonymous sources, an unbroken stream of new charges, television advertisements paid for by secret sources - will make it immeasurably harder to denounce and deflect such assaults when the Democrats make them the next time around. Given the overemphasis on admittedly ambiguous speeches Miers made more than a decade ago, conservative activists will find it difficult to take on liberals in their parallel efforts to destroy some future Robert Bork.

What Hugh sees as a Borking, however, was the natural reaction from a conservative base that has seen Souter after Kennedy after Stevens, "trust me" candidates that later turned into lifetime-appointment nightmares -- and who still comprise a third of the Supreme Court. Even O'Connor has mostly disappointed those who believe, as Hugh does, in originalist thinking. Republicans have named seven of the nine sitting justices on the Court, and four of them have proven themselves to be superlegislators.

If Hugh wants to debate the meaning of the 1993 speech to the Executive Women of Dallas, a speech he repeatedly admitted on the air was "terrible" and not just "ambiguous" as he writes here, he knows he loses. That speech turns out to be the only documentary evidence of Miers' judicial philosophy that emerged from this candidate. The White House never bothered to produce anything, or more likely had nothing to produce, to counter it, other than George Bush's "trust me" based on a nonexistent vetting process.

Republicans made clear after David Souter turned south in a hurry what it expected the next time a Republican nominated a Supreme Court justice. We wanted someone who we could see -- through experience, writing, and erudition -- had the proper philosophy and temperament to not just cast a vote but to reverse decades of overreaching by the Court, turning themselves into an American version of the Iranian Guardian Council. Originalists, and most Republicans, don't want the Supreme Court making abortion illegal any more than they want the Supreme Court making abortions legal. They want the Supreme Court to stop making law altogether and focus on the strict meaning of the Constitution -- allowing the people's representatives, the Legislature, to make those decisions.

Instead, the Bush administration gave us the biggest cipher possible, one whose meager public record reflected quite a bit of sympathy for abortion rights at one point, and asked us to believe that she had the requisite philosophical viewpoint and would never change it from this point forward. The White House should have known better than to make that argument. In this case, the Times editorial board gets closer to the truth of the Miers debacle in its entry today:

The Supreme Court is the one branch of government whose members do not have to answer to the voters, ever, so they derive their authority from their credibility. Ms. Miers's career and her bumbling after being nominated suggested that she did not rise to that level. Mr. Bush did not have to listen to Edward Kennedy or Dianne Feinstein to get this message. It also came from the Senate Judiciary Committee's chairman, Arlen Specter, and from other, more conservative, Republicans who share Mr. Bush's views on the role of judges and abortion but would not rubber-stamp such a poor choice.

A poor choice, indeed. Now we have an opportunity to make a wise choice. And while Hugh continues talking about the one case in which this delay might allow O'Connor to cast a vote, I'd rather have her cast one more vote and get a McConnell or Luttig on the bench than have another mistake casting votes for a generation of cases such as Casey.

Pretending that Bush made an adequate choice in Miers only compounds the political damage Hugh and others decry. Some people need to admit that Bush can make mistakes -- and we don't need to send another mistake to the Supreme Court.

ADDENDUM: This point from the Washington Post editorial board shouldn't get lost, either:

Ms. Miers's solid and serious professional history did not deserve the derision it received. But it did not look much like the resume of a Supreme Court justice either, even to people who agree -- as we do -- that great justices need not come from the ranks of federal appellate judges. Her personal lawyering for Mr. Bush, her minimal public record and her failure to reassure senators in early interviews raised legitimate anxieties among liberals and conservatives. Particularly compared with John G. Roberts Jr.'s sterling qualifications to be chief justice, the combination of thin credentials and apparent cronyism was glaring. Even in a polarized country, people of both parties want a Supreme Court made up of jurists of distinction and independence. ...

While many conservatives were understandably troubled by Ms. Miers's professional credentials and lack of a known judicial philosophy, others were simply unsure she would be a reliable vote on their issues. It was to reassure such people that the White House took the degrading steps of advertising her church attendance and getting friends to vouch for her antiabortion views, steps that have undermined its ability to argue that such topics are off-limits for liberal interest groups or Democratic senators.

Had the White House nominated a distinguished originalist jurist, scholar, or even practicing attorney with an established track record of supporting such a philosophy, they would not have had to advertise Miers' faith as a dispositive reason to support her -- and most of us, at that time, pointed this out. Too bad they didn't listen then.

UPDATE: Want to cast a vote among a few of the most-mentioned candidates for the open seat? Go to Reasoned Audacity, where the lovely and gracious Charmaine Yoest hosts a blogpoll on the topic. At the moment, I see that Janice Rogers Brown has a commanding lead among the so-called sexists who opposed the Miers nomination. Charmaine even provides links to PFAW's "endorsements" of each candidate. Maureen Mahoney doesn't make the poll, but she has received at least one write-in vote.

The Fitzmas That Fizzled?

The Left has spent the last two weeks crowing about "Fitzmas" -- the day special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald climbs down the chimney of good little Leftist boys and girls and leaves copies of indictments against Bush administration officials. Since Fitzgerald's grand jury expires today, I imagine a number of these hopeful dreamers spent at least last night with very little REM sleep.

Unfortunately, if the New York Times has its story correct, they may find themselves sorely disappointed. It looks like only I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby will get served today:

Associates of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, expected an indictment on Friday charging him with making false statements to the grand jury in the C.I.A. leak inquiry, lawyers in the case said Thursday.

Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, will not be charged on Friday, but will remain under investigation, people briefed officially about the case said. As a result, they said, the special counsel in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, was likely to extend the term of the federal grand jury beyond its scheduled expiration on Friday.

As rumors coursed through the capital, Mr. Fitzgerald gave no public signal of how he intends to proceed, further intensifying the anxiety that has gripped the White House and left partisans on both sides of the political aisle holding their breath.

Needless to say, an indictment is not a conviction, but given the generally professional manner in which Fitzgerald conducted this investigation and his reputation as a straight shooter, indictments will have a big impact on their targets. The White House will have to act quickly to separate itself from anyone indicted, which will mean at the least indefinite suspensions, if not resignations. I don't think firing people for indictments would send a good message -- everyone, including Libby and Rove, deserve their day in court before being treated as guilty -- but I expect that either or both of them would quit on their own without being asked.

Meanwhile, our friends on the Left can celebrate a scaled-down Fitzmas, hoping that Fitzgerald extends the grand jury to get more indictments later on -- perhaps The Twelve Days of Fitzmas? Given that this investigation has lasted almost two full years, it seems unlikely that another week or two would produce anything substantial past the expiration date today. If the Times has its sources correct, they can celebrate the second indictment of a Bush administration official.

That only puts the Bush administration 59 behind the Clinton administration, by the way. And that was while he was still in office -- that apparently does not count Sandy Berger's stealing of code-word classified documents from the National Archive and destroying them during the 9/11 investigation.

Danish Plot Uncovered -- Has Bosnian Ties

Denmark arrested four Muslims tonight in an investigation of planned suicide bombings in Europe -- a plot that has ties to Islamofascists in Bosnia. The Danes rounded up over two dozen people as part of the conspiracy, but only kept the four in custody:

Police arrested four Danish Muslims Thursday on suspicion of belonging to a terror network planning a suicide attack in Europe, officials said.

The suspects, all males between 16 and 20 years old, were ordered held in jail while police investigate the allegations, police spokesman Joern Bro said.

He said at a news conference that the network had planned to carry out the suicide attack in Europe.

"It seems the plan was going into a closing phase," said Bro, declining to provide further details.

The Danes linked this investigation to an unnamed Balkans ring of terrorists; the arrest of three other terrorists in Sarajevo appears more than just coincidence. Danish authorities believe that the four Muslims planned to conduct their suicide mission in the near future.

Remember how we in the West rescued the Muslims in Bosnia from a genocidal dictator? Does anyone also recall that outpouring of gratitude and respect the West receives for its efforts?

Neither do I.

CQ Media Notes

I will do two interviews tonight on the Harriet Miers withdrawal, among other things. The first will be with Open Source around 6 PM CT, or thereabouts. The second will be with Rob Breckenridge on CHQR's The World Tonight at 8 pm CT. Both should be lively -- I'm new to Open Source, but I will be joined by Glenn Reynolds, Paul Mirengoff, Arianna Huffington, and Megan McArdle. I've appeared several times on Rob's show and enjoyed it every time. Be sure to tune in.

UPDATE: If you want to call in to Open Source, the phone number is 877-673-6767.

UPDATE II: Open Source's producers and host made this a very pleasant experience. Christopher Lydon obviously comes from a completely different perspective, but he treats his guests with respect and encourages intelligent debate. I enjoyed the conversation, and listened to the entire hour with considerable interest. I thought everyone got their chance to speak their mind, including Lydon.

No Time For Celebration

No conservative or Republican should feel like gloating over the withdrawal of Harriet Miers today, although perhaps a feeling of relief would be understandable. Bush made a mistake in nominating Miers, but it wasn't Miers' mistake -- and she acted honorably in withdrawing her name once it became clear that her nomination enjoyed little support among Republicans in the Senate and elsewhere. She apparently will remain on Bush's staff as White House counsel, which is where she should have stayed.

On the other hand, let's also not engage in sniping at each other further now that the Miers nomination has ended. We need to focus on the nomination ahead, and how best to engage the full Senate caucus to line up behind a candidate that reflects GOP control of the Senate. That requires not just a demonstrably originalist thinker who can help transform the Court from its activist impulses and return it to its traditional and balanced role, but also a unified base that can put as much energy into supporting such a candidate as we put into the debate over Miers.

Hugh Hewitt has some good ideas on how to go about this on his site today. We're hearing that the White House expects to name a replacement soon, perhaps by the end of the weekend. They need to select someone who will unite and excite the base, someone that doesn't need to hide an originalist juridical temperament under a bushel. We've had enough stealth candidates, and I think the White House and the Republican caucus in the Senate may finally understand this. We control the process, or at least we should -- let's start acting like it.

Janice Rogers Brown would still be my favorite selection, but Bush has a number of excellent choices ahead of him. He could pick J. Michael Luttig or Michael McConnell for their years of experience and their courageous writing on behalf of originalist and conservative jurisprudence. Brown and Priscilla Owen have both recently been vetted and interviewed by the Senate, and their recent passage would make it difficult for the Democrats to stage a defense -- and Brown, at least, would make minced meat of the Judiciary Democrats who attempted to debate her on the law. For those who want a practicing lawyer, Maureen Mahoney still remains an open pick -- the "female John Roberts" who has litigated over a dozen cases at the Supreme Court and has excellent credentials as a candidate. Maybe someone could persuade Miguel Estrada to take another swing at the Senate, too.

What should the White House avoid? Attorneys who could easily be perceived as cronies or political hacks. Alberto Gonzales would be the former and not the latter, but he's too close to the President and his nomination would bring up executive privilege yet again. Conservatives stand for more than just originalism -- we want to see excellence in executive nominations, something sorely lacking lately in nominations such as Miers, Julie Myers, Michael Brown, and Bernard Kerik. Those nominated had better have impressive resumes and bring high-quality erudition and encyclopedic knowledge. If we can get that from a night-court judge with a law degree from Cal State Northridge, that's fine, but that had better include a high degree of excellence in communication skills, both in oral and in written presentation.

We want the best candidate for the job this time around, not just the most politically expedient. The conservative/libertarian coalition worked damned hard to provide the Republicans with the White House and a significant majority in the Senate. If they can't take advantage of it, they will see it slip away as their base loses faith in the party leadership. Each Supreme Court nomination amounts to the Super Bowl for that unity, and the White House should start to act as though it understands that.

The Krauthammer Option Wins Out

Miers withdraws her nomination, and the President "reluctantly" accepts:

Confronted with criticism from both the left and right, Harriet Miers on Thursday withdrew her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a statement, President Bush said he “reluctantly accepted” her decision to withdraw, after weeks of insisting that he did not want her to step down.

Bush blamed her withdrawal on calls in the Senate for the release of internal White House documents that the administration has insisted were protected by executive privilege.

The face-saving withdrawal option presented by Sam Brownback and Linsday Graham took only a matter of days to get recognized by the White House. Good for them. It won't save them from some criticism, but it will make this into the nine-day wonder it should always have been.

Now can we nominate a candidate whose qualities and track record presumes we control the Senate?

Send Miers To The Floor, If She Dares

Hugh Hewitt has brought out another argument for supporting Harriet Miers this morning -- that conservative calls for Miers' withdrawal will undercut efforts to bring later nominees to a full floor vote:

Now, however, a big slice of conservative punditry has decioded that the long march back isn't worth the risk that Harriet Miers isn't who the president and her close associates say she is. On the basis of a very thin set of papers --some of them distorted, and all of them cherry-picked-- and with an absolute refusal to entertain any of the many arguments and testimonies on her behalf, this caucus has seized on the very tactics most conservatives have long denounced in order to do what?

To deny Harriet Miers a hearing and an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.

That's absurd. No one recommends "denying" her a floor vote. In my post, I specifically say she should get one, if that's what the President wants. I suspect that Bernard Kerik would have gotten a full up-or-down vote in the Senate, had his nomination not been wisely withdrawn by the White House. We're saying that we urge Bush to pull her nomination before she gets a humiliating defeat in the Judiciary Commitee and the full Senate, and that we think she's a bad selection for the Supreme Court in the first place.

Since when did the hearings become the be-all, end-all forum for qualifying for the Court anyway? Candidates used to have impressive track records of judicial or legal work that made their fitness and desirability plain, even those who had little or no judicial experience. Only when a complete cipher gets nominated does that argument fly -- and that reflects on the lack of wisdom in the choice.

How can Hugh complain about "cherry-picked" documentation when the White House has provided next to nothing except personal testimonials about what a great lawyer Miers is? That "thin set" of documentation represents everything the Bush administration has produced on her behalf. If Hugh has a problem with the sample size, then he should take that up with the White House and not the critics. As far as her skills as an attorney and White House bureaucrat go, I find those arguments too weak for Hugh's normal rhetorical excellence. The world is full of great lawyers, just as it's full of people who have served five years in the White House. I wouldn't put Andy Card on the Supreme Court, and I wouldn't put Karl Rove on the Supreme Court either. I wouldn't put Bruce Lindsay there. Would Hugh?

If the White House wants its floor vote, it can have it. Hugh knows that by prior arrangement, any candidate for the Supreme Court automatically gets that regardless of whether the Judiciary Committee recommends rejection or confirmation. Nothing but wisdom will keep Miers from a floor vote which increasingly appears to hold no hope for success. Why spend all that political capital just to pretend that this entire nomination hasn't been a huge mistake from its inception?

White Sox End Curse, Win Series

Baseball has its second curse-ending World Series in a row in another sweep. This year's newly-unjinxed champs are the Chicago White Sox, who had not won a championship since the unmasking of the most notorious gambling scandal of all professional sports in 1919:

It was the third title for the White Sox, following wins in 1906 and 1917. And it was the first since "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and the "Black Sox" threw the 1919 Series against Cincinnati.

In the Windy City, where the Cubs have long been king, Chicago's South Side team for once trumped its North Side rival, no small feat for the Sox.

Congratulations to the White Sox for an excellent season and decades of perseverance. When the Cubs win the World Series, however, we will all be consulting the Book of Revelation to start looking for the signs of the impending Apocalypse.

Signs Of The End For The Miers Nomination?

Two overnight developments in the embattled Harriet Miers nomination point towards either the collapse of the effort to confirm Miers or a politically devastating siege mentality at the White House. First, the New York Sun reports that at least two GOP Senators will announce their opposition to Miers based on the speeches released earlier this week if the Bush administration refuses to withdraw her nomination. The Washington Times also reports that a key figure that had been working to support the PR campaign for Miers has suddenly quit to return to the Federalist Society, which Miers once disparaged and which has remained absolutely silent on her nomination.

Brian McGuire reports that the Miers speech to the Executive Women of Dallas has forced conservative Republicans in the Senate to consider her confirmation as an unnecessary gamble:

The two speeches, first reported late Tuesday by the Washington Post, angered conservative groups that had been maintaining a wait-and-see approach to the nomination. At least one such group, Concerned Women for America, announced yesterday that it had decided to call for a withdrawal. Others, including the American Conservative Union, were making preparations to do so. ...

"I think this will increase pressure on a withdrawal and lead to more pointed questions. I think with the documents that came out today and the speeches she gave will likely lead to at least a couple senators calling for a withdrawal. The things she said are just outrageous," said the staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "This is the proof of all our deepest fears."

It even leaves Charles Schumer unimpressed (from the Wash. Times):

"But the $64,000 question remains: Who is Harriet Miers? In some ways, the more we hear, the less we know. Recently released speeches by Harriet Miers only further confuse and confound," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat.

"She spoke favorably of the importance of 'self-determination' in cases involving moral issues such as abortion and prayer, yet four years earlier, when running for Dallas City Council, she filled out a questionnaire from a pro-life group stating her support for a constitutional amendment banning abortion. And even more confusing, one year before that, she gave $1,000 to the Democratic National Committee," Mr. Schumer said.

McGuire also notes that the fact that Miers and the White House missed a deadline for the submission of her answers to the questionnaire do-over has the Judiciary Commitee rumbling again about her readiness for her hearings. The speeches, though, have hurt the most. Two important conservative groups -- the Concerned Women for America and the American Conservative Union -- have either proposed or are considering open opposition to the confirmation.

They won't get an argument from Leonard Leo, who went back to his VP slot at the Federalist Society rather than continue to provide liaison between the White House and conservatives. Charles Hurt and Ralph Hallow provide the details:

Leonard A. Leo, who had been on leave from the Federalist Society to be chief conduit between the White House and conservatives, said last night that he has returned to his full-time job as executive vice president of the conservative legal group.

The move, which surprised even Republicans working closely with Mr. Leo, came as the Concerned Women for America called for the nomination to be withdrawn in part because of reports of a 1993 speech in which Miss Miers appeared to agree with some of the grounds for the legal right to abortion.

This appears to have great significance in the Miers fight. Leo had been held as a standard around which movement conservatives could rally their trust and enthusiasm. That standard appears to have dissipated, leaving the White House with no political cover at all on their right. Thanks to their ham-fisted exploitation of Miers' evangelical faith, they have little cover on their left either. What they have is an increasingly hostile Judiciary Committee and almost no political base on this nominee with which to overcome it.

In short, the debacle has almost reached its nadir. All it will take to get there will be the public denunciation of the Miers nomination by just a handful of Republican Senators before the embarrassment becomes complete. Will that happen before the committee hearings? Perhaps, although if Miers and the White House can't get the new questionnaire completed and submitted soon, those hearings will probably get delayed -- the longer to drag out the damage.

Gray Lady Likes A Quagmire When The UN Is In Charge

In a strange editorial this morning, the same New York Times editorial board that has consistently demanded a withdrawal of America from a supposed quagmire in Iraq apparently wants to continue one in Kosovo. The Times decries the idea of settling the open question of the province's final status before the Kosovars demonstrate their ability for self-government -- and want to continue the same kind of Western occupation that it supposedly finds so objectionable in Iraq:

We have argued that Kosovo is neither prepared for nor deserving of independence. Its Albanian majority has shown no tolerance toward the Serbian minority and little capacity for self-government. Kosovo has no army, only a fledgling police force and powerful mafias. ...

The Security Council would be foolish to use the Ahtisaari mission to extract itself from a bad situation as soon as possible. Even with the best of intentions, an independent Kosovo will require international forces and strong oversight for a long time. In the Balkans, the default mode is violence.

The entire problem with the Balkans has been the shoot first, ask questions later policy that the Times wants to continue, even after almost seven years of stagnation. In contrast, Iraq has moved from a terrorist-supporting genocidal dictatorship to a constitutional democracy, with a budding security force that will one day become strong enough to allow its civilian government to control its own territory and defend itself -- and it has taken one-third of the time of the Kosovo occupation. The difference? The Coalition had a long-range plan for the liberation of Iraq, and that planning came from nations committed to democracy. The UN, unfortunately, had no strategy for Kosovo and no such commitment. Neither, apparently, does the New York Times.

Kosovo should embarrass everyone who participated in its separation from Serbia. No doubt that the Milosevic reign of terror caused great hardship for the Kosovars, but its severance from Serbia created an expectation of independence from the start. The UN and NATO should have realized that before they interceded in what had been a civil war along ethnic and religious lines, and prepared a long-term strategy rather than a repeat of the Korean War.

Now the Times wants this quagmire to continue without any resolution until the Kosovars prove themselves worthy of liberation and freedom. Not only is that a recipe for perpetual occupation, it might be one of the most elitist sentiments ever issued by a supposed voice for liberal thought. Human beings qualify for liberty and freedom on the basis of their humanity, not their politics, at least until they can individually show that they cannot handle it. Condemning the entire region to essentially martial law on the basis of their ethnicity betrays the same kind of arrogance that led to Kosovo's mindless occupation in the first place.

What Victory Against Terror Looks Like

The Sunnis of Iraq have increasingly decided that the time has come to enter the political process and to give up violence as a means of political change, the Washington Post reports this morning. Ghath Abdul-Ahad follows the path of a former Ba'athist insurgent, Abu Theeb ("Father of the Wolf") as he transforms himself into somewhat of an evangelist for democracy:

For weeks before Iraq's constitutional referendum this month, Iraqi guerrilla Abu Theeb traveled the countryside just north of Baghdad, stopping at as many Sunni Arab houses and villages as he could. Each time, his message to the farmers and tradesmen he met was the same: Members of the disgruntled Sunni minority should register to vote -- and vote against the constitution.

"It is a new jihad," said Abu Theeb, a nom de guerre that means Father of the Wolf, addressing a young nephew one night before the vote. "There is a time for fighting, and a time for politics."

For Abu Theeb and many other Iraqi insurgents, this canvassing marked a fundamental shift in strategy, and one that would separate them from foreign-born fighters such as Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian who leads the group al Qaeda in Iraq.

Two years of boycotting the process had only seen Sunnis marginalized while Iraqi's Shiite majority gained power. And Abu Theeb's entry into politics was born partly of necessity; attacks by Shiite militias, operating inside and outside the government security apparatus, were taking an increasing toll on Sunni lives.

Abdul-Ahad spent five days with the former guerilla fighter, following him on his door-to-door campaign against the proposed constitution but promotion of the democratic process that would decide its fate. He includes many interesting anecdotes, including one that shows less distinction between the Ba'athists and the foreign terrorists of the Zarqawi network than we'd like. At one point, he convinces two low-level al-Qaeda terrorists as security for his polling place, a moonlighting job that surely would see the pair tightly strapped into the next suicide car bomb if their identities became known.

Allowing Abu Theeb to run that polling station may have been a small mistake:

Men of the village trickled in. Guerrillas soon realized that the women of this deeply conservative Tigris River hamlet were not ready to leave their homes to cast ballots. So each man who came with his identity card received a stack of ballots to take back to his family.

"Nine ballots to Haji Abu Hussein," shouted the registration official, a local villager the government had certified as an election worker. Another local, also deputized by the government, handed Haji Abu Hussein a sheath of forms.

Ignoring the voting booth set up for privacy in a corner, Haji Abu Hussein stood at the table, checked "no" boxes against the Shiite-led government's proposed constitution, folded the ballots and chucked them into the ballot box.

By midday, as the flow of voters slowed, Abu Theeb's men decided to chuck the formalities as well.

Setting a ginger-bearded man at his own table, they assigned him the task of checking "no" boxes on all the ballots they could find. As they exhausted the ballots of the village's 1,500 registered voters, they telephoned Baghdad for 20,000 more ballots. Government officials sent over about 5,000.

Theeb has kidnapped perceived collaborators, attacked Americans throughout Iraq, and at one time worked within the Zarqawi network -- and although he supports the main aims of the twin insurgencies, he has broken with the Islamists over their tactics and their religious fanaticism. His family has paid a high price for their violent opposition to the occupation, with several of them dead, including one who killed himself accidentally while building IEDs. Mostly, however, Theeb understands that starting a civil war that the AQ fighters want would result in a massacre of the Sunnis, as the Kurds and Shi'ites would vastly outnumber and outgun the surrounded Sunnis.

Politics, even with a minority status, gives the Sunnis a way to continue having influence in the new Iraq. Theeb sounds a theme similar to Ecclesiastes when he counsels his fellow Sunnis that the time for violence has passed. Perhaps Theeb might well wind up running for office himself if he successfully transforms the village and surrounding areas into a democratic model.

This is how democratization beats insurgencies, and how it beats terrorism -- it takes the Abu Theebs and turns them into politicians and political organizers, replacing the gun with the ballot.

I'm Moving Off The Fence

I took what little time at work (on my lunch break) that I could to read through the speech given by Harriet Miers to the Executive Women of Dallas in 1993, and wound up re-reading three more times tonight. I would encourage everyone to read this speech carefully, as it sheds quite a bit of light onto the skills and outlook of the nominee selected by George Bush.

It's quite unsettling.

The first quality that comes across when I read this speech is its mediocrity. I assume Miers wrote it herself, because no one would pay for something written this poorly, just on a mechanical level. It's full of incomplete sentences, poor grammar, conjugation errors, and the like. I understand that this isn't an essay for print, but it is a speech that was written in a format for verbatim delivery.

"I think the last week of the Senatorial Ads with Senator Krueger's ads for the first time focused upon just Kay Hutchinson was not an accident."

"I have enjoyed my year at the helm which is about to be over."

This speech is chock-full of clumsy, unskilled writing, and it doesn't just apply to the written form, either. Try saying these aloud, along with most of the speech, and you will quickly understand how tin-eared it truly is. Supreme Court justices need to write with clarity and precision; they need to not only explain their decisions, but the better justices write to convince others of their wisdom as well.

Mechanically, this speech reveals a mediocrity in composition that is truly disturbing. What about the content? Unfortunately, that doesn't improve the picture much at all, either. Miers wrote the speech for executive women the year before her first official campaign position with George Bush. She doesn't seem to share much of Bush's political views at this time, which belies the notion that she represents some rock, impervious to prevailing winds. For instance, on abortion, we get this declaration:

"The ongoing debate continues surrounding the attempt to once again criminalize abortions or to once and for all guarantee the freedom of the individual woman's right to decide for herself whether she will have an abortion."

Does that sound to anyone like someone committed to opposing abortion, or even allowing the issues to be decided by the legislatures? She gets even more incoherent on racial issues, declaring that "[t]here is no question that Dallas is basically a segregated city and that there is a great need for the development of housing around the city where amenities exist. However, the placement of low income housing around the city is very difficult." In other words, she wanted to have government force desegregation through confiscation -- think Kelo -- and the building of low-income housing. She never questions that government should force a solution on people through public takings; she merely questions whether that should be done by the legislature or the courts, but sounds as if she's prepared to have either one do it.

What about enterprise zones? What about tax breaks to get better incentives for investment in the "segregated" areas (which, while deplorable, did not come from government imposition)? What happened to market-based programs that could have not just created more racial diversity in Dallas' inner city but also could have created wealth for the minorities that remained committed to the community?

Not only that, but her other proposal to fix the racial imbalance in schools hardly measures up to the Bush philosophy; she suggested a new statewide income tax to gain control over school spending. Not a single word about school choice, voucher programs, magnet schools, or reforming tenure and demanding pay-for-performance in public schools.

That isn't centrist. That's very liberal, and it should make everyone wake up to the threat Miers represents. In fact, this speech gives so mamy reasons to oppose Miers that it's a wonder she hasn't already repudiated it as a youthful indiscretion. There's hardly a passage in here that gives any credence to the notion of Harriet Miers as an originalist, or even a conservative.

I'm off the fence for good now. I oppose the Miers nomination. I have no objection to allowing Miers her day in front of the Judiciary Committee; if the Bush adminstration wants to subject itself to that kind of political damage, let it. The quality of her prepared speech strongly suggests that the White House will deeply regret that decision, but quite frankly, that will be their problem. The Judiciary Committee should reject her, as should the Senate, once her nomination hits the floor.

But if the White House has any sense left, they'll quickly withdraw her from consideration and spare itself further embarrassment.

NOTE: Hugh points out that this was written twelve years ago. Twelve years ago, Miers was a 48-year-old woman who headed the Texas State Bar and had run a large law firm; she wasn't a twenty-something greenhorn fresh out of law school. If her views on abortion and affirmative action can change that dramatically, then that demonstrates rather clearly that a few years on the Supreme Court could just as easily find her just as flexible. While it is possible that her writing could have also improved in that period, I'd find it unlikely.

Also, based on the page numbering of the document, it looks like the White House produced this document in support of her nomination. If so, then they must not have much else to balance it out. Can they produce other speeches written by Miers herself which demonstrate (a) any skill at written communication, or (b) significant rethinking of the positions she appears to take in this paper?

Hugh wants us to rely on intangibles in the face of hard evidence. I'll trust myself to the hard evidence we have, in the absence of any that the White House has produced.

That Didn't Take Long

One could easily predict that nutcases on the far Left would start peppering the Michael Steele campaign with increasingly personal attacks, thanks to his status as a conservative African-American. However, this must represent a world record reaction time, even for the lunatic Left.

Steve Gilliard, who runs the News Blog, has a new post called "Simple Sambo wants to move to the big house," an echo of the oft-tossed 'house slave' epithet that black conservatives get. Gilliard includes a photo-shopped image of Steele depicting him in minstrel-show blackface. Gilliard excuses this racist imagery as acceptable given his own status as an African-American leftist.

Disgusting is disgusting, regardless of whoever puts it up on their web site. All this proves is that racism has many faces, including those who insist that people of a particular ethicity must all think alike in order to be "authentic". I doubt that Gilliard will feel any remorse over this post, but it does help illuminate the viciousness that conservatives face when they dare to defy groupthink.

Do Conservatives Know How To Dissent?

My Daily Standard column, "Family Squabbles", addresses the Harriet Miers debate and the vicious tone it has taken in the conservative punditry and blogosphere. I ask the questions: have we paid too much for our unity, and has our disinclination to engage in vigorous debate on policy created such a harbor of resentment that we can no longer disagree agreeably even among fellow conservatives?

If we are to govern in the majority, we had better learn how to handle ourselves better when our interests conflict. We got to this position of controlling the levers of power through the efforts of people like Hugh Hewitt, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, George Bush, Ken Mehlman, Tom DeLay, and the various bloggers and grassroots organizers weighing in on vital policy issues every day. Calling each other "pimps", "shills", "hysterics", and other names may make for memorable rhetoric but it will undermine our own credibility in the future. We need all these same people in 2006 and 2008.

I'm not arguing for an end to the debate; I'm arguing for a return to civility while we're conducting it. What do you think?

Iran Calls For Terrorism

Iran's new president and nominal head of state has wasted no time in publicly supporting terror. He made an explicit call for attacks on Israel as part of his address to an Islamic forum in Teheran today, calling into question whether the time may have come for stronger measures to eliminate the threat coming from the Islamic Republic's mullahcracy:

Iran’s hard-line president called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” and said a new wave of Palestinian attacks will destroy the Jewish state, state-run media reported Wednesday.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also denounced attempts to recognize Israel or normalize relations with it.

“There is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will wipe off this stigma (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world,” Ahmadinejad told students Wednesday during a Tehran conference called “The World without Zionism.”

Ahmadinejad wants to touch off yet another intifada, which shows how idiotic Iranian Islamist thinking has become. The previous intifadas have done nothing for the Palestinians; in fact, they lost most of what they could have gotten without firing a shot in the 1990s from Ehud Barak. They haven't exactly done wonders for Iran, either. Israel has emerged diplomatically stronger, with developing ties to a number of nations through the Arabic world, while Iran finds itself more and more isolated by its pursuit of nuclear technology.

The Iranians need to learn a lesson about explicit calls for terror attacks on another sovereign nation. Perhaps the Israelis will teach it to them, if the EU-3 and the US can't find the time or the nerve to do so. We already know that terrorists such as Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, get most of their funding through the Iranian mullahs. Do we need to wait until they respond to Ahmadinejad's overt signals to attack before we do something about it?

Steele For Senate

As expected, Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele announced yesterday that he will run for the US Senate seat left open by the retirement of Democrat Paul Sarbanes. In a speech given little attention by the media, Steele highlighted his personal success story as a motivator for his efforts in politics:

Steele, 47, launched his campaign Tuesday with a 20-minute speech, evoking lessons he learned growing up in a poor household that he said was "rich in turning hope into action."

I think Steele has a big future in the GOP, but he has to win this race to fully realize it. His ability to command an audience, combined with his relaxed and warm public persona and grasp of public policy show flashes of both Ronald Reagan and freshman Senator Norm Coleman. Kweisi Mfume may not admit it, but Steele could certainly peel enough of the African-American vote to make the difference in a general election, especially if the Democrats wind up sending someone other than Mfume to oppose him there; Mfume is the only black Democrat running in a primary field of six candidates, while Steele has the field all to himself on the GOP side.

Look for Steele to use the primary to introduce and define himself to Maryland voters while the Democrats eat each other alive. If Steele faces Mfume, it might be a close election, but if he squares off against anyone else, he should win handily.

Has anyone heard from Chuck Schumer's office recently about Steele's credit score?

Lindsay Graham And Mike DeWine, Super Geniuses

Senators Lindsay Graham and Mike DeWine should learn from the well-worn proverb that instructs one to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool rather than open it and remove all doubt. Yesterday, in defending Harriet Miers from the growing opposition against her confirmation within the GOP, both claimed that the grass-roots effort to publicize their disapproval would only have the opposite effect on Republican Senators -- because apparently voters have now become a "special interest":

Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, said that if Ms. Miers withdrew now she would only hurt Republican senators who are uneasy about her nomination. It would suggest that special interest groups control the nomination process, he said. Mr. Graham said the nominee can't withdraw for this reason alone and that the hearings will go forward as planned.

"If she withdraws, that means that we, the party and the president, have given in to special interest politics who want to shake up the process," Mr. Graham said in an interview. "So I am dead set against her withdrawing, especially now. I don't want special interest groups on the right or the left to hijack the nomination process." ...

"Enough is enough," Mr. DeWine said. "If I pick up one more paper and read about one more group that I've never heard of saying they're for Miers or against Miers -- it just doesn't matter at this point."

Manuel Miranda, who has helped organize much of the opposition to Miss Miers, said this battle will not be forgotten by the Republican base.

"Mike DeWine is going to lose in Ohio, and he should be more aware of grass-roots sentiment," Mr. Miranda said. "Mike DeWine doesn't have a great deal of conservative support in Ohio and ham-fisted remarks aren't going to help with that."

Since when did voters get defined as a "special interest"? This isn't the NRA generating the ads, or the National Education Association, or PFAW or the ACLU. The groups funding and running these efforts, whatever one thinks of them, consist of ad-hoc coalitions formed specifically in response to the nomination of Harriet Miers. It is feedback from the electorate -- which suddenly signals its representatives to do the opposite?

The message becomes doubly irritating coming from these two wind-twisters. Had it not been for DeWine, Graham, and the other five Republicans in the Gang of 14 this spring, we wouldn't have Harriet Miers nominated to the court in the first place. Their political cowardice in refusing to stand up to Democrats running amok with the filibuster created the environment where the White House must have felt that only stealth candidates had a chance to win confirmation. Having them turn around and scold Republicans for exercising their right to free speech by criticizing the candidate their surrender created not only represents a continuation of that surrender but a further revelation of their disregard for the people who elected them to their current positions.

In response to this provocative slam from the pair, several other GOP Senators made it clear that listening to voters makes a little more sense to them. George Allen took the lead, countering the waffling duo and scolding them that they discounted public sentiment at their own risk:

"There are people who care a great deal about this particular vacancy on the Supreme Court and they're expressing their views," Sen. George Allen, Virginia Republican, said very carefully. "You listen to all people who have a point of view."

DeWine, for his part, continued with his cluelessness:

Mr. DeWine said Republican senators facing challengers in the 2006 election -- such as himself -- need not worry that their positions on the nomination will be held against them.

"This is not a factor," he said yesterday. "People are not having a big discussion back in Ohio. It's not a huge issue."

Really? Hey, Ohio. Love to hear from you on this one. Maybe Mike DeWine would, too.

Meanwhile, on other Miers-related fronts:

* Hugh Hewitt continues his sincere but increasingly desperate efforts to convince people to support Miers. I found his defense about the affirmative action issue particularly unconvincing, as did Roger Clegg, who supported his opposition to Miers particularly well in the interview. And Dale Franks at QandO answers Hugh's questions with ease.

* George Bush achieved the almost-impossible in nominating Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court -- he made Barbara Boxer look like a genius:

It may come as a surprise to many of her constituents, but for seven years California Sen. Barbara Boxer has been moonlighting from what she calls her "day job" — as an elected official from the state that boasts the free world's fifth or sixth largest economy — to write a novel. "A Time to Run" is a for-whom-the-bell-tolls story of a liberal blue-state senator who braves the political mud wrestling in Washington for the sake of her ideals. It is, of course, co-written, with San Francisco author Mary-Rose Hayes.

In Boxer's fictional world, a liberal California senator with views very much like hers goes to bat to defeat the Supreme Court nomination of a woman whose most conspicuous qualification for the job seems to be her conservative credentials — a plot twist Boxer said she added a year and a half ago.

But don't miss the review of the rest of the plot written by Boxer. The Supreme Court issue apparently took all of Boxer's literary genius, because the rest of it sounds like nothing more than self-congratulatory hokum. One might be reminded of the literary efforts of Saddam Hussein, who also routinely cast himself as the hero of his fictional tales.

* The AP gets back to Republican-bashing business on Miers by once again running stories on where the parents of Supreme Court nominees decided to buy houses. Here's the lead:

Harriet Miers spent her teens in an all-white high school far removed from the racial and social upheaval of the early 1960s, consumed instead with academics, tennis and even a stint as the school newspaper's assistant sports editor.

Hmmm ... I wonder at what Matt Slagle might be hinting here?

Thank You, SD41

I want to pass my thanks along to the Republicans of Senate District 41, who invited me to speak at their monthly meeting tonight. After treating me to a lovely dinner and meeting State Senator Geoff Michel, I had the opportunity to talk about blogging, politics, the media, and the intersection of all three in the coming election cycles. I met many new friends there like the two Tonys and Jerry, as well as old friends such as Laura and Ken.

Brien Martin wrote up a nice blurb about the event in their newsletter announcement earlier, and I understand they will review the evening's festivities in their next one. Here's my review: I had a blast talking with real grass-roots, politically involved Republicans who have enthusiasm for their political goals and beliefs. With luck, I'll be able to do it again sometime soon.

Iraq Constitution Passes

The Iraqi people select their constitution via direct democracy -- the first Arabic people to do so in a free and fair election:

Iraq's landmark constitution was adopted by a majority of voters during the country's Oct. 15 referendum, as Sunni Arab opponents failed to muster enough support to defeat it, election officials said Tuesday.

Results released by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq showed that Sunni Arabs, who had sharply opposed the draft document, failed to produce the two-thirds ``no'' vote they would have needed in at least three of Iraq's 18 provinces to defeat it.

Nationwide, 78.59 percent voted for the charter while 21.41 percent voted against, the commission said. The charter required a simple majority nationwide with the provision that if two-thirds of the voters in any three provinces rejected it, the constitution would be defeated.

More Iraqis voted in this second election since the fall of Saddam than did so in the first, and thanks to the controversial nature of the election, the electorate was more diverse -- and yet almost 80% of Iraqis approved the final version of their new constitution. In the end, only three provinces rejected it, with only two of them reaching the required two-thirds vote for official repudiation.

And in the end, an armed insurgency ended up watching helplessly as millions of Iraqis repudiated them and marched bravely to the polling stations to take ownership of their own government. That is the largest victory of all, and the kind that will win the war on terror in the long run.

Will Gray Lady's Attacks On Miller Stop Indictments?

Josh Gersten at the New York Sun reports today that the ongoing attacks on the credibility of Judith Miller at her own newspaper may have an unintended, ironic effect on the grand jury investigation headed by Patrick Fitzgerald. Given that her testimony and writing has been central to the efforts to tie Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to an alleged conspiracy to discredit Joseph Wilson, the continued disparagement of her truthfulness might well result in an inability to use her in support of any prosecution:

Attorneys closely following the case said the sharp criticism Ms. Miller has received from her editors and colleagues may discourage the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, from bringing perjury charges against Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby.

According to Ms. Miller and others who have testified before the grand jury investigating the leak, Mr. Fitzgerald has shown significant interest in whether Mr. Libby or other White House officials testified truthfully about their involvement in an alleged effort to discredit a vocal critic of President Bush, Joseph Wilson IV, by disclosing that his wife is a CIA employee. ...

"If it's going to be a perjury case, he's got a hard case because his key witness is Judy Miller," a former federal prosecutor, Paul Rosenzweig, said. "She has some issues as a witness."

Last week, the Times published a lengthy story containing unflattering anecdotes about Ms. Miller, including a claim that she referred to herself as "Miss Run Amok." On Friday, the newspaper's managing editor, Bill Keller, sent a memo to his staff asserting that Ms. Miller "seems to have misled" the paper's Washington bureau chief, Philip Taubman, regarding her knowledge about Mr. Libby's alleged campaign against Mr. Wilson. On Saturday, a Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, questioned Ms. Miller's candor and suggested that she no longer be allowed to write for the newspaper.

Mr. Rosenzweig, who worked on the independent counsel investigation of President Clinton, said the attacks on Ms. Miller would complicate any attempt to present her as a witness. "Can you imagine a defense attorney saying, 'So, I understand they call you Miss Run Amok?'" the ex-prosecutor said.

One could try to make the argument in court that Miller would testify against interest in order to build some credibility for her testimony, but while that makes a fine theoretical argument, it would hardly outplay "Miss Run Amok" with a jury. Perjury convictions require proof beyond a reasonable doubt. If it comes down to Miller's word against Rove or Libby, it will be tough to hold Miller up as a paragon of virtue when her own employer calls her a liar in print.

In its zeal to indict Miller for using her extended contacts with the White House to get scoops inaccessible to the rest of the industry, the Exempt Media and most of the punditry have probably crippled a portion of Fitzgerald's work, regardless of whether he has garnered more information elsewhere. He obviously considered the Miller connections at least moderately important to his investigation. If he issues indictments that rely on her testimony, he may as well resign himself to the fact that the administration's opponents will have made it almost impossible to ever get a conviction.

This almost appears too unthinkingly foolish, even for the Gray Lady. I wonder if Bill Keller thinks that Fitzgerald might be aiming at another Times source instead of Scooter Libby, leading him to go out of his way to discredit Miller now. Perhaps these memos and editorials mean to protect Joseph Wilson instead?

UPDATE: John Podhoretz notes the strange strategy of the New York Times in his latest column for the New York Post:

Previously, when newspapers have taken their own work to task, it has resulted from one of two causes. A reporter was caught committing outright acts of plagiarism or fabrication — as with The Washington Post's Janet Cooke or the Times' Jayson Blair. Or the paper needed to clear the name of an innocent person whom the newspaper had effectively tried and convicted of a serious crime — as the Atlanta Journal and Constitution did to Richard Jewell, falsely accused of the 1996 Millennium Park bombing, and the Times did to Wen Ho Lee, falsely accused of spying.

THE issue that has ostensibly caused this unprecedented character assas sination is Miller's involvement in the public exposure of CIA operative Valerie Plame. And in this case, no one at the paper is accusing Miller of making anything up — because she never published anything on the subject. Nor can anyone accuse Judith Miller of harming the reputation of an innocent — because, again, she never published.

So what is it she supposedly did wrong? The paper's managing editor, Jill Abramson, says Miller didn't get permission from her editor to pursue the Plame story. If true, that's hardly cause for someone to have her name dragged through the mud — and it may well not be true at all. Miller says flatly that she did get her editor's permission and that her editor, in this case, was Jill Abramson.

It's almost as if they want to create a huge distance between Miller and credibility -- and I doubt they're doing it to benefit Rove, Libby, or the Bush administration, although that may wind up being the overall effect. They want to discredit the WMD reports themselves, of course, but those have largely been discounted before now. So why this full-court press on Miller by her own paper?

Will Bush Take The Honorable Option Out Of Miers Fiasco?

George Bush appeared to go out of his way yesterday to address the issue of executive privilege and the Harriet Miers confirmation hearings, setting up a contest of wills between the White House and the Senate Judiciary Committee over her nomination. It could mean that Bush intends to push Miers through while revealing almost nothing about her work at the White House, which he has claimed as the major qualifications for her selection. It might also reveal that Bush wants to keep open the option for an honorable withdrawal:

President Bush refused on Monday to turn over documents requested by Republicans and Democrats related to Harriet E. Miers's work in the White House, setting up a potential confrontation with the Senate Judiciary Committee over her confirmation to the Supreme Court.

"It's a red line I'm not willing to cross," Mr. Bush told reporters after a cabinet meeting, referring to the presidential right of executive privilege. "People can learn about Harriet Miers through hearings. But we are not going to destroy this business about people being able to walk into the Oval Office and say: 'Mr. President, here's my advice to you. Here's what I think is important.' "

In recent days, two Republican senators, Sam Brownback of Kansas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have publicly called on the White House to release the documents.

Brownback and Graham became the first two Republicans to call for the release of a range of documents from the White House that comes perilously close to setting a precedent that might fatally weaken executive privilege for the Presidency. Bush notes in his counterattack yesterday that he has a responsibility to fight for that privilege, not just for himself but for future presidents as well.

However, the problem for George Bush is that he nominated someone whose most remarkable qualification for the rarified position for which she seeks confirmation is her work as the President's counsel. Bush himself has made that argument a number of times, saying that their close work together convinced him that she has the requisite understanding of Constitutional theory and judicial erudition to sit on the Supreme Court. If that remains the primary reason for her nomination, it would seem fair for the Judiciary Committee to get as much documentation of that work as possible in order to demonstrate it -- but since most of what Miers has done for Bush involves privileged communications, he would have to allow the weakening of executive privilege to give that to the committee.

This, by the way, is why Presidents who truly care about protecting the concept of executive privilege should refrain from promoting their own attorneys directly to the appellate courts, especially the Supreme Court, unless they had a track record of judicial work prior to their arrival at the White House.

It almost seems too easy at this point for what the media now calls the Krauthammer Option to get played out. Brownback and Graham can either vote Miers down in commitee, claiming that the White House has not provided enough evidence of Miers' qualifications. Sending her to the Senate floor with a recommendation against confirmation will end almost any chance of her confirmation. Brownback sounds as if he means to do so, and after Graham's participation in the Gang of 14 stab, his constituents probably want him to hold the line against Miers now. If Bush wants to protect executive privilege, he will have to withdraw Miers before she gets defeated and he suffers the political damage of trying to push her through a Senate debate that will likely take weeks.

It's so easy that I'm almost certain now that Bush won't take this way out. He will remain stubborn and dare Republicans to vote against him openly. He will find out that some of them are now quite prepared to do so, having given them what they see as a sub-par nominee, which will turn what could have been a nine-day wonder into a lasting breach on the Right. This is why I wrote yesterday that I hope Bush withdraws Miers, but that if he insists on pushing her through, she surprises us all and demonstrates convincingly that she is the originalist that we all wanted. It's about the only way I see this playing out positively at all.

March To War Had More Than Miller For A Drumbeat

Reading the news about Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame these days, one would come away thinking that if not for Judith Miller, the United States would never have gone to war with Iraq in 2003. The New York Times reporter gets routinely pilloried for her close ties to administration officials and the way they supposedly used her to put false stories into the mainstream media. She gets almost no credit or sympathy from her own industry for spending three months in jail for defending a principle that all of them see as critical to their profession, that of the protection of confidential sources as key to a free press. Instead, people at her own paper (who have their own legitimacy and truthfulness issues) call her names and sneer at her work.

However, Robert Kagan reminds Washington Post readers that Miller hardly started the WMD-in-Iraq reporting. In fact, that theme began in a number of influential media sources, including the Times pre-Miller, and it didn't start with the Bush administration, either:

There is a big problem with this simple narrative. It is that the Times, along with The Post and other news organizations, ran many alarming stories about Iraq's weapons programs before the election of George W. Bush. A quick search through the Times archives before 2001 produces such headlines as "Iraq Has Network of Outside Help on Arms, Experts Say"(November 1998), "U.S. Says Iraq Aided Production of Chemical Weapons in Sudan"(August 1998), "Iraq Suspected of Secret Germ War Effort" (February 2000), "Signs of Iraqi Arms Buildup Bedevil U.S. Administration" (February 2000), "Flight Tests Show Iraq Has Resumed a Missile Program" (July 2000). (A somewhat shorter list can be compiled from The Post's archives, including a September 1998 headline: "Iraqi Work Toward A-Bomb Reported.") The Times stories were written by Barbara Crossette, Tim Weiner and Steven Lee Myers; Miller shared a byline on one. ...

From 1998 through 2000, the Times editorial page warned that "without further outside intervention, Iraq should be able to rebuild weapons and missile plants within a year" and that "future military attacks may be required to diminish the arsenal again." Otherwise, Iraq could "restore its ability to deliver biological and chemical weapons against potential targets in the Middle East." "The world," it said, "cannot leave Mr. Hussein free to manufacture horrific germs and nerve gases and use them to terrorize neighboring countries." ...

Another Times editorial warned that containment of Hussein was eroding. "The Security Council is wobbly, with Russia and France eager to ease inspections and sanctions." Any approach "that depends on Security Council unity is destined to be weak."

In fact, the Clinton administration had made a big case about Iraq's WMD capabilities as part of its policy of continuing military expenditures in maintaining containment of Saddam Hussein. Russia, China, and France wanted to end the sanctions on Iraq in order to resume their lucrative oil contracts within the country. Anti-war activists had shifted their focus from spotty military action to the sanctions, claiming that Clinton's policies were killing 5,000 Iraqis a month through starvation. The Exempt Media at the time responded by writing many such stories -- Kagan offers more references in his column -- in order to support the Clinton policy of engagement.

The result, as Kagan notes, was that the media and public accepted the Clinton intelligence on Saddam's WMD capability as definitive -- and it matched that of Germany, France, and a number of other countries as well. Bush inherited the same information and the same conclusions, and during the first nine months of his term, continued the same policies as Clinton on Iraq. When 9/11 happened, he and Condoleezza Rice had almost completed what they called "super sanctions" as their new Iraq policy, but what amounted to a small modification in the old policy to attempt to close a few loopholes.

People keep forgetting how much 9/11 affected the calculus of thought in the administration. The surprise attacks showed that superpowers could not expect to see attacks coming in a frontal manner, or even with any warning at all. A handful of terrorists -- or foreign agents of other kinds -- could sneak into the country and wreak any kind of havoc. The US had only two strategies for stopping them: wait until they came here and arrest them, or stop the threats before they got here through military action. Given that the WMD everyone knew Saddam had withheld could be used by Saddam or his terrorist associates for devastating sneak attacks, and that he had refused to meet the terms of both the Gulf War cease-fire and sixteen UN resolutions, it now seemed much more prudent to remove him and use a strategy of democratization in the Middle East to pre-empt such attacks.

That history has been forgotten by the Exempt Media whose extensive Clinton-era reporting on the massive and imminent dangers of Saddam's WMD programs has gotten conveniently overlooked in order to condemn Judith Miller and the Bush administration. The Times need look no further than their own archives and by-lines to see that Miller had ample reason to trust what her sources told her. After all, the Paper of Record had consistently reported the same thing and the editorial board had urged stronger action in response for years before she began to get her own bylines there.

That's the New York Times, though -- the paper that has ever been ready to rewrite history in order to meet its own peculiar needs.

Galloway Falls Into Perjury Trap

After appearing before a Senate panel earlier this year, British politician George Galloway boasted that he had cleaned the floor with Senator Norm Coleman during a debate on the Oil-for-Food program. Now it appears that the banty Scot should have simply kept his mouth shut, as witnesses have appeared to contradict his testimony and corroborate evidence that Galloway took kickbacks and bribes from Saddam Hussein in the months before the invasion of Iraq:

An anti-war British lawmaker gave false testimony to Congress when he denied receiving U.N. oil-for-food allocations from deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, a Senate investigative panel said Monday.

Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., chairman of the subcommittee, and his investigators presented evidence that they say shows British lawmaker George Galloway's political organization and his wife received nearly $600,000 from the oil allocations. ... Coleman, a critic of the
United Nations, said his panel's evidence shows that Galloway personally solicited and was granted oil allocations totaling 23 million barrels from 1999 through 2003. Those allocations could be sold for a profit.

The report also alleges that Galloway's friend, Jordanian businessman Fawaz Zureikat, funneled money from the oil-for-food program to Galloway's wife, Amineh Abu-Zayyad, and to the Mariam Appeal, a political organization that Galloway established in 1998 to help a 4-year-old Iraqi girl with leukemia.

Coleman said his investigators confirmed their evidence in interviews with former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, a friend of Galloway's, and former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan.

Perhaps Galloway didn't expect Tariq Aziz to spill the beans on him, or maybe he figured the US would go after bigger fish in the scandal -- such as Kofi Annan, whose familial connections make him highly suspect as well. Thus far, Annan has had the sense to keep his mouth shut around investigators, something Galloway appears purely incapable of doing.

Will the British extradite him? Tony Blair has no particular allegiance to Galloway. Of course, the Brits might not like the notion of one of their MPs getting a prison sentence in the United States for his blunt, foolish, but well-regarded (in Europe, anyway) testimony. However, no one can possibly argue that Galloway did not bring this on himself, and he should face the consequences of his ridiculous bloviations. Galloway fell into the most basic of prosecutorial traps: find someone who loves to talk, and give him enough rope and time with which to hang himself.

What To Ask Miers?

Dafydd ab Hugh issues a challenge to the blogosphere, calling on bloggers from all sides of the Harriet Miers nomination to come up with questions for Miers' confirmation hearings. I think this is an excellent idea, especially for those who continue to view this nomination with skepticism. What questions would relieve our doubts? What kind of answers would confirm them?

I'll start off with a couple that address my reservations with Miers as a Supreme Court candidate. I may add to this as I think through the challenge a bit more, so keep checking back for updates.

As the chief executive officer of a state agency, you once endorsed set-asides as a means of affirmative action. Do you still believe in that remedy as a Constitutional method of achieving diversity? Do you think that the Constitution addresses the concept of "diversity" as an overriding state concern?

This really has been the one documented part of Miers' past that gives me the most trouble. It shows that Miers either cannot support a claim for a solidly conservative outlook, or else she can easily find herself manipulated by those around her. I want to know how she can reconcile her supposed philosophy of restraint and humility with her actions as president of the Texas State Bar. The argument may well exist; I'd like to see her make it.

Do you believe that the Constitution has an explicit right to privacy? Please explain how the precedent of Griswold applies here, and whether that case was decided correctly.

I don't expect an answer here on Griswold, but I'd like to hear how she approaches the demurral. I imagine every Democrat is ready to ask this one.

Give us your interpretation of judicial restraint as opposed to the concept of the living Constitution. Have you written or spoken in public about these competing points of view in the past?

I don't know that she has ever expressed much interest in judicial originalism. If she has, I'd like to know. If she hasn't, I'd like to know why she hasn't had much to say. It's been a pressing issue for conservatives for decades now. If she gives an overly facile answer, I'd be less likely to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Do you think that stare decisis should drive the overall judgment process of the Supreme Court, given the social disruption that overturning precedent can cause? Do you believe in the concept of "superprecedents"? Please explain Brown against Plessy to illustrate your answer.

Brown, of course, represents judicial originalism as an antidote to the judicial activism of Plessy. In the latter, the Court determined that it would be too difficult to eliminate Jim Crow and simply fit the law around the existing systems of apartheid. In the former, the Court took the appropriate look at the text of the 14th Amendment and original intent of Congress in passing it to reverse not just Plessy but dozens of following decisions that established "separate but equal" as at least the same kind of superprecedent that Roe has become.

Maybe I'd even ask her if she believes in a hand up, not a handout -- just so I could pre-empt Kennedy.

Andy Card, "Serial Souterizer"

John Fund notes a couple of surprising revelations ahout the Harriet Miers' nomination to the Supreme Court in his recap of the lessons that should be learned from the damaging nomination. Most interesting is Fund's connection between the Miers bid and that of David Souter, with the conjunction being Andy Card:

The botched handling of the Kerik nomination was a precursor of much that has gone wrong with the Miers nomination. This time, the normal vetting process broke down, with Mr. Card ordering William Kelley, Ms. Miers's own deputy, to conduct the background checks--a clear conflict of interest. ...

Another reason for conservative suspicion is that it was Mr. Card, a former moderate Massachusetts state legislator, who pushed the Miers choice. "This is something that Andy and the president cooked up," a White House adviser told Time magazine. "Andy knew it would appeal to the president because he loves appointing his own people and being supersecret and stealthy about it." Conservatives still recall that in the White House of the first President Bush, Mr. Card was deputy chief of staff to Mr. Sununu, the prime backer of Judge Souter. Mr. Card told me on Friday that "it would be a complete exaggeration to say I played a role in the Souter selection. I merely supported his nomination as I did all presidential appointments."

Ed Rollins, the GOP consultant who at the time headed the House Republican Campaign Committee and who was Mr. Card's boss in the Reagan White House, remembers it differently. "Of course Andy played a role," he told me. "He was Sununu's top aide." Two other aides who served with Mr. Card in the White House told me he was an enthusiastic backer of the Souter selection. "Now that he's brought us Miers we worry that 15 years later Andy is playing the role of a Serial Souterizer," one said.

No doubt John Fund has opposed the Miers nomination from nearly its first announcement, but this really does point towards history repeating itself. Card must be filling in for Karl Rove now that Rove has gotten preoccupied with his own legal troubles over the Plame case. If so, then this shows that the President needs better and more consistent advice from his inner circle. He may have felt that his personal knowledge of Miers was enough to prevent another Souter situation, but so far, events have shown that hasn't been the case.

Take, for example, the question of affirmative action. Miers not only came out in favor of it, she actively supported set-asides at the Texas State Bar, a state agency. She didn't just apply that to the agency itself, or just her law firm; as President of this state agency, she urged law firms in the state to follow its example, and later said that this policy was more than just an aspirational goal but a policy to be met.

This revelation has created a weird counterargument from the people who still support Miers' confirmation. On one hand, they have argued that Miers' evangelicalism and prior support for a Constitutional amendment to ban abortion should reassure us of Miers' conservative political bent. On the other hand, her active and apparently enthusiatic action of supporting set-asides while running the Texas State Bar is supposed to give us no clue as to how she will vote on affirmative action when she gets seated on the bench. We have heard people arguing that ConLaw is so easy that any competent attorney can fully grasp the entire discipline in a brief flash of study, and yet the questions surrounding Miers' support of affirmative action are so complex that unless we've spent years studying the precedents of Brentwood and other case work, we're not competent to question her reasoning.

When even the most erudite and trustworthy supporters of the confirmation start displaying self-contradiction, it's a sure sign that no good argument exists for her confirmation except presidential prerogative -- which should have been good enough for a true ConLaw conservative with a track record of courage and outspokenness about their outlook to get nominated. In this nominee and the confused and incoherent White House promotional effort on her behalf, the Bush administration has given everyone a reason to reject her.

If George Bush pushes her through the hearings, I hope she does well and we're all proven incorrect. However, based on her limited track record of public action, I don't think she's anywhere near the conservative that Bush and his supporters believe her to be. And since that's all we have to go on besides the "trust me" that we've heard all along, I'm hoping that Bush and/or Miers decide to withdraw her nomination before those hearings begin and replace her with someone whose public record does not include using a state agency to endorse set-asides.

A Moment Of Clarity

Fifteen votes out of a hundred.

I haven't written much about the failure of the Coburn Amendment until today, although it has been the topic of some excellent writing in the blogosphere. Start with Mark Tapscott and work your way outward. The only demand that Tom Coburn made of his fellow Senators was to redirect a couple of pork projects from a list of 14,000 towards the rebuilding of New Orleans, rather than go out and look for new revenues -- in other words, new taxes.

What happened when Coburn asked this sacrifice of the Upper Chamber? Hissy fits and threats. As John at Power Line remarked to me in a conversation, whenever Patty Murray and Ted Stevens find themselves on the same side of an issue, the only thing that it can be about is money. Murray stood up and threatened any Senator who dared to vote to kill a couple of pork projects would have their state stripped of any federal programs she and the Appropriations Committee could find. Stevens got up on the floor and bombastically threatened to resign - as if that would be some great loss, with his focus on how to shower Alaskans with federal largesse.

Neither one of them recognized the ghoulishness of insisting on building a $228 million bridge that will service 50 people -- fifty people who already use a ferry to cross to the mainland now -- when we need money to rebuild bridges destroyed in New Orleans that get much more use now than 50 people living voluntarily on an island.

The GOP, which has campaigned on financial responsibility and reining in government spending, should have used this as their moment to take a stand for common sense and a reduction in the government's bite. We asked them to do support the Coburn Amendment to show us that they haven't forgotten that pledge.

What did we get? Fifteen votes out of a hundred. Twleve votes out of 55 Republicans. Of the GOP presidential hopefuls, only George Allen supported Coburn. The rest either couldn't be bothered to show up (McCain) or outright voted against it (Frist, Coleman, Reed, Dole).

We worked our butts off to get a GOP majority in both houses of Comgress for better fiscal management -- and yet in one simple test, only 12 of them vote to support their supposed party platform.

So now we have GOP majorities and capture the White House but can't cut pork, can't confirm conservative attorneys on the Supreme Court, and open up new entitlement programs worth billions of dollars for prescription medication?

Talk about a moment of clarity.

Levee Design Fatally Flawed, Teams Agree

Three teams of engineers studying the collapse of the New Orleans levee system agree that the design and construction of the protective girdle around Lake Pontchartrain caused the catastrophic flooding after Katrina passed through the city, and not the storm itself. Katrina only had Category-3 status when it hit the city, and the Army Corps of Engineers reported that the levees could withstand a hit of that magnitude, leading state and federal workers stunned when the walls collapsed anyway:

Investigators in recent days have assembled evidence implicating design flaws in the failures of two floodwalls near Lake Pontchartrain that collapsed when weakened soils beneath them became saturated and began to slide. They also have confirmed that a little-used navigation canal helped amplify and intensify Katrina's initial surge, contributing to a third floodwall collapse on the east side of town. The walls and navigation canal were built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency responsible for defending the city against hurricane-related flooding.

The preliminary findings -- based on physical evidence, Corps documents and hydrodynamic models run through a Louisiana State University supercomputer -- are the work of three teams of engineers and forensic experts conducting separate probes. The investigations are shedding light not only on the cause of the failures but also the scale of the rebuilding effort: The discovery of major flaws in the design of the city's levees and floodwalls could add billions of dollars to the cost of New Orleans' recovery.

Investigators already have rejected the initial explanation offered by Corps officials in the hurricane's aftermath that massive storm surges had overtopped and overwhelmed floodwalls on the 17th Street and London Avenue canals on the north side of town. The new findings for the first time point to a human role in all three of the major floodwall failures that left about 100,000 homes underwater and caused most of Louisiana's approximately 1,000 hurricane deaths.

Experts now believe that Katrina was no stronger than a Category 3 storm when it roared into New Orleans, and Congress had directed the Corps to protect the city from just such a hurricane.

"This was not the Big One -- not even close," said Hassan Mashriqui, a storm surge expert at LSU's Hurricane Center. He said that Katrina would have caused some modest flooding and wind damage regardless, but that human errors turned "a problem into a catastrophe."

Once again, this goes against all of the initial reporting in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding. I covered this earlier when it first got raised as a possibility at the Washington Post, and it received only a small amount of attention in the Exempt Media. Now the Post reports again that the initial hypotheses by Louisiana State University researchers have been largely borne out by the physical evidence at the site of the collapses.

The bad news: the Corps of Engineers apparently knew better than to rely on the levees. They have had warnings over the years that the bases of river silt and peat could saturate under moderate conditions and weaken the levee structures, but have done little to address the situation. Since the newer levee systems simply got added to the top of older levees twenty years ago, some in the CoE have questioned whether their engineering models guaranteeing protection to Cat-3 hurrican strength actually applied. Eleven years ago, the question of soil composition and design flaws became the subject of a lawsuit -- one that was dismissed without ever addressing this issue.

Also, as reported earlier, the Post notes that the navigation canal along the levee system acted as a funnel, speeding up the water flow and allowing the water to eat away at this unstable base much more quickly than first thought. Again, the CoE understood the MRGO navigation channel could weaken the levees in a strong storm, but no effort has been made over the years to mitigate that.

Instead, everyone on site expected the levees to hold through a Cat-3 storm -- and when Katrina passed over New Orleans at that level, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. No one but the CoE expected to have problems with that level of storm, and apparently the CoE didn't tell anyone of their reservations.

Caption Contest Winners!

Uncle Saddy wants to send his appreciation for the 228 entries he got for his saucy little pose in CQ's special Caption Contest. He wants to assure all of you that he appreciates your tongue-in-cheek jokes about his present situation ... although he did mention something about removing your tongues from your cheeks if he "ever gets out of this *&^%^% place," or words to that effect.

Knowing what a fair kind of guy Uncle Saddy is, I'm sure he'd like to visit each of you personally, but Peyton Randolph has selected the ones who will be at the top of his list. Just think -- the winners could find this on their doorstep one day, ringing their bell:

Without further ado, here are Peyton's picks:

Best Political Link:

I'm innocent, I tell you. At the time those crimes were committed, I was at a Kinko's in Abilene, sending some faxes.

Posted by: Dave at October 19, 2005 08:33 PM

Best and First With a Great Idea:

"Not only are we going to Ramadi, we're going to Falluja and Tikrit and Najaf and Karbala and Al Hillah and we're going to Dialya and Sulimaniya and Arbil. And we're going to Kirkuk and Arbil and Qut and Basra. And then we're going to Baghdad to take back the Palace. Yeeeaaaaarrgh."

Posted by: Eric Akawie at October 19, 2005 09:27 PM

Best and First With Wardrobe Advice:

"You're going to like the way you look, I guarantee it!"

Posted by: jc at October 19, 2005 10:51 PM

Best Nepotism Award:

Saddam: Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be brief. The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our female party guests - we did.

Posted by: CopperBeech (Peyton’s lovely bride) at October 23, 2005 07:56 AM

Captain's Award - Best Overall Caption:

"...And I would have succeeded, too- if it wasn't for those nosey kids in their 'Mystery Machine', and that weird dog of theirs!"

Posted by: ERNurse at October 22, 2005 06:59 PM

So ERNurse gets the overall Captain's Award! Congratulations, ERNurse. Send me your contact information, and I will send you a copy of the Weekly Standard's anniversary compendium of essays. Great job, Peyton, and thanks again for your help and your inspiration for this contest.

Thanks to everyone who entered, and congratulations to the winners! Remember, here at CQ, everyone's a winner -- just some of us have higher winning percentages than others. Comments on this post will remain open, as usual, in order for the winners to gloat, the others to disparage my intellect and/or my parentage, and for any other entries submitted just for the sheer enjoyment of amazing your friends and confounding your enemies.

Big Thanks To Canadian CQ Readers

I want to thank the many Canadian readers who participated in Kate's poll at Small Dead Animals, one of the best Canadian blogs in the 'sphere, who voted CQ as Best American Blog, Best American Political Blog, and my first Gomery post, "Canadian Corruption Scandal Breaks Wide Open," as Best Blog Post. Steve J at Angry in the Great White North won in three categories as well, most deservedly, including Best Canadian Blog.

CQ readers make this possible, and I thank you for your continued contributions to our community.

My, We're A Welcoming People

After 9/11, we asked ourselves how nineteen Islamofascist terrorists could have made their way into the United States and infiltrated our society. We found out that our visa system had so many holes in it that we could not begin to guess how many more may have set up residence in America, just waiting to attack us from within. Sixteen of these terrorists came from Saudi Arabia, the last three of which didn't even need to go to an American facility to get their visas; instead they received the key documents from their travel agents under the Visa Express system.

After 9/11, we demanded an end to such programs, especially with Saudi Arabia, which supplies an inordinate amount of the Islamist radicals to the al-Qaeda cause. This supposedly has been the American policy since the attacks, and as far as any public statements, that policy has never been reversed.

Or has it?

According to London-based Asharq Al-Awsat, the Saudis expect to send over 10,000 new students to the US in the coming year and 21,000 over the next four as part of a program based on the relaxation of visa requirements with the US (h/t: CQ reader Michael):

More than 10,000 Saudi students will travel to the US to attend university as part of a government-sponsored program following the adoption of new measures by the Ministry of Higher Education aimed at facilitating travel procedures for Saudis. In total, 21,000 Saudis are expected to take part in the program in the next four years.

Prospective students can submit their applications to the Ministry of Higher Education through a Ministry special office or its website for nine different specializations and will be able to benefit from assistance with their visa applications at the US embassy and its diplomatic missions throughout the country. ...

Half of the prospective students will be sponsored by Saudi businesses to further their knowledge in a given field making use of bilateral treaties offering Saudis a number of opportunities in U.S. universities across the country.

Well, well. It appears that the Saudis have received a bit more flexibility -- and we will be hosting more of them in our communities as students. Perhaps if they pass strict scrutiny and maintain registry and security requirements, that may help reduce the radicalism of the Saudi youth. Unfortunately, that's what we used to think before 9/11, too.

Has something changed? The Saudis have taken terrorism more seriously since the May 2003 bombing attack in Riyadh by al-Qaeda, of course. However, the royal family still supports the Wahhabist strain of Islam that gave birth to the Islamofascist movement AQ represents and Osama bin Laden leads. It's hard to imagine that the Saudis will promote the overseas education of young people who seriously dissent from its Wahhabist teachings or the oppressive government that enforces it as law in Saudi Arabia.

I think we need to ask the State Department if we've relaxed entry requirements into the US, especially with our Saudi "friends", and if so, who decided to do that.

Live Blogging The Vikings - Packers Game

I thought it might be fascinating to live-blog a grudge match between two 1-4 teams that coincidentally find themselves only a game out of first place in the worst division in professional aports. This is usually a terrific game, one that generates a tremendous amount of spirit and energy in the Twin Cities. Not this year; the Vikings Love Boat Cruise has taken what little wind the fans had out of their sails.

12:37 - I start watching the game; I figured I'd emulate both teams and take the first quarter off. The score is 0-0, so I obviously made the right choice.

12:40 - Ferguson makes a great catch for the Pack, and hyperextends his knee coming down. I don't think he'll be coming back; it really looks bad on the replay.

12:41 - Oh, look -- the Vike defense just gave up a TD to Favre. What a shock! 7-0 Pack.

12:50 - The Vikings wake up a bit, but Culpepper's slide started too soon for the first down. When you slide feet first... They'll go for it -- and they fumbled the ball. Daunte blows the rock again. Another shock!

12:55 - Green Bay looks better on offense than they have all season, but they run a reverse on a team that isn't exactly known for its wild pursuit. At least the mediocrity balances out on both sides of the field.

12:56 - Donald Driver just showed that at least 4 Vikes can't tackle, even when they all converge together. Fred Smoot kept Driver out of the end zone.

1:00 - Favre hits another TD. Now he's 11-11 with two TDs, not one good defensive play on a Favre pass. They haven't even forced him to throw one away. This is a team that went 1-4 before today!

1:03 - Great return gets the Vikes to the Packer 23. Hmmm -- maybe that will spark the home team!

1:06 - Mewelde Moore coughs up the ball. Holy freakin' crap, man. That's snakebit.

1:09 - Two-minute warning already? Must be a side benefit of two lousy teams squaring off against each other -- the game really moves.

1:12 - Favre finally threw his first incomplete, mostly because the receiver was so wide open that he got too excited. Driver now has over 100 yards in receptions this half. Favre has them moving down the field again ...

1:19 - The Packer mediocrity catches up to itself with a series of stupid holding penalties, but they get close enough for Ryan Longwell to kick a 50-yard FG for a 17-0 halftime score.

1:40 - Back in play. The Vikes come out with a good runback to the mid-30s and get a first down conversion on a 3rd-and-moderate ...

1:44 - Getting a good drive down to the 15, with some crisp throws and timely running. It looks like Tice might have woken them up in the halftime break ...

1:46 - It stalls at the 9, but at least they hang onto the ball and get a FG out of it. 17-3 Pack.

1:51 - Here's a new drinking game for everyone -- take a chug every time these fools in the press box say, "There's no defense against a perfect pass." I've heard it at least a half-dozen times in this game. Besides the fact that a perfect pass can't get to a perfectly covered receiver, the defense is supposed to disrupt the quarterback's rhythm so that he can't throw the "perfect pass" -- let alone a half-dozen of them or so.

1:53 - A nice defensive series forces the Pack to punt ... Big Mo coming around?

1:57 - Culpepper has picked up the pace. He's running and throwing deep, stretching the defense and shaking up the Pack. The Vikes finally look like they have their heads in the game ...

2:03 - Now that's a drive, folks. A nice TD pass caps a long drive in which the Vikes played confidently and aggressively, pushing the ball downfield. 17-10 Pack, but the Vikes have the Mo.

2:14 - At first, the Vikings D looked fired up - but a draw by Ahman Green and a holding penalty by Smoot has them back on their heels a bit while the Pack drives ...

2:17 - Q3 ends, Pack up 17-10 and driving to the Vikings 20. When we come back, it'll be 3rd and 10. Favre has to be careful; Longwell has a sure shot at a 38-yard FG from this spot.

2:23 - Big Mo stays with the Vikes -- Longwell misses a FG try from41 after a Pack fumble on 3rd down costs them three yards. Ready to believe?

2:25 - Vikings driving again ...

2:27 - Pack blows a sack with a personal foul face mask ...

2:29 - Another good drive stalls inside the 10-yard line, but they get another FG. They're within 4, and they've scored on three straight possessions. The Pack looks confused and desperate. If Favre can't get a good drive going quickly, they may well lose this game.

2:35 - Ahman Green goes down holding his knee on the second play after the kickoff. That doesn't bode well for the Pack. I don't see what happened on the playback; it looks like a normal tackle to me. He's getting carted off. He may have twisted it stepping on someone's foot.

2:40 - How can you tell Ben Roethlisberger is back in the lineup for the Steelers? They're pounding the Bengals, 27-6.

2:41 - The Vikes are driving again ...

2:45 - Unbelievable -- the Vikings have come from 17-0 at the half to take the lead on a pass to Mewelde Moore. They're up, 20-17, thanks to what looks like a completely different football team after the halftime break. Whatever Tice said to them must have worked. It looks like the play calling changed significantly to me -- the Vikes stretched the defense a lot more and opened up the box. Favre will get it back on the 23 with three minutes left in the game ...

2:52 - Favre's moved the ball to the Vikes' 38 by the two-minute warning -- he has 34 comeback wins, and he's looking for #35...

2:58 - Longwell lining up to tie the game with a 39-yarder and 30 seconds left on the clock ... made it.

3:02 - The Vikes may have enough time to get a quick hit on the sideline and kick a field goal. They could also shoot for the end zone ...

3:03 - They're lining up for a 56-yarder to beat the Pack with two seconds left in regulation ...

3:04 - CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? A team-record 56-yarder on a BAD SNAP wins the game against the Green Bay Packers! The Vikings come back twice to win the game! The kick itself could have gone another five yards easily.

As bad as the Vikings have played this season, they played a brilliant second half today. Coaching, offense, defense, and special teams all came together for the first time since their playoff win last year, really. That was an amazing game, even against a depleted Pack that has been a shadow of its glory-day teams.

Tomorrow may bring Mann Act indictments, but for 30 minutes, Minnesota actually had a professional football team. Amazing.

Another Katrina Myth Explodes

In the aftermath of the hysterical ranting of the news media during the Katrina coverage, we have found a number of memes that have collapsed when seriously examined: rampant rapes, cannibalism, and the toxic flood that kills by its very touch. Now we can add to that the virulent race- and class-baiting that claimed from almost the moment the levees broke that poor blacks got left to die while the rich strolled out of the Big Easy:

The city's two worst-hit neighborhoods, the data show, were the Lower Ninth Ward, the predominantly black, working-class community east of the French Quarter, and Gentilly, a fast-gentrifying area where homeownership rates among middle-class blacks had been rising before the storm. Each neighborhood accounted for 31 to 75 deaths, according to the mapping data, which assigned a range of deaths for each region of the city, rather than an exact figure.

More surprising were the high death figures in upscale neighborhoods once considered less vulnerable to flooding deaths because residents had the means to escape, particularly along Lake Pontchartrain in Lakeview, a predominantly white neighborhood where 21 to 30 bodies were recovered on streets where homes routinely sell for $1 million. Nearly all of Lakeview is uninhabitable, and several thousand residents, most relocated to neighboring cities or states, gathered Saturday in a church parking lot to seek answers about a recovery process expected to take years.

Without a doubt, the Ninth Ward got hit hard by the levee break, but from the previous media coverage, Americans had the impression that the poor of New Orleans comprised the only demographic of the dead. We heard nothing but how the hurricane had pulled back the sheet on the deep secret of American poverty and how the government doesn't care about its poor citizenry. Now what are we to believe -- that they don't care about the rich either? Will Shep Smith cry in the Louisiana rain about the unfairness of the high death rate among the wealthy of Lakeview, too?

I'd like to issue a challenge to the Exempt Media. Someone tell me, other than the position of Hurricane Katrina, what significant part of the story the media got right during the first two weeks of the coverage, especially regarding the effects on the city of New Orleans. I doubt we'll come up with a single point, despite their self-obsessed celebration of their reporting shortly after the catastrophe.