When Irish Eyes Are Blinking In Disbelief

After the drubbing Notre Dame took from Michigan at home last week, we wondered how the Irish would respond on the road against Michigan State tonight. For the first half, the answer was: more of the same. The Irish could not move the ball and the smaller defense could not stop the Spartan offense. Michigan State put up 17 in the first quarter while the Irish stalled repeatedly, and had the same lead at halftime when Brady Quinn began to find his rhythm again, 31-14.

However, Charlie Weis sent his troops back onto the field with something ringing in their ears, and from the way the Irish played in the second half, I doubt it was Have A Nice Day. Notre Dame suddenly started playing ferocious defense and Quinn's offense gained real traction. After trading touchdowns in the third quarter, the Irish scored 19 unanswered points in the fourth, one off of the first of two interceptions, to stun the Spartans, 40-37.

This comes a year after the Spartans spiked their flag into Notre Dame's field after a tough win in South Bend. Today, the Irish ruined the remembrance of the '66 Spartans victory tie with ND and the retirement of Bubba Smith's jersey. The emotional boost for the Spartans didn't outlast the halftime break.

The Irish refused to panic, even if I started reaching for my remote after Quinn threw one interception for an easy TD. Quinn wound up throwing 5 touchdowns and going 20-for-37 for 319 yards, with only the one pick. They only rushed for an anemic 44 yards, although some of that came from the need to pass in the second half. The defense may have come of age in the second half, stiffening against a Spartan rushing attack that gained 247 yards, almost all of it in the first two quarters.

The Irish made the adjustments they needed and shook off the embarrassing loss from last week. They didn't quit, not even when the Spartans answered their first TD in the third quarter with one of their own. Notre Dame remembered who they are in the second half, trouncing the Spartans 26-7 in the final 30 minutes. They are now 3-1 and looking at a schedule that they can run, at least until they play the #3 Prophylactics in their final outing at USC. They have an excellent chance to win a BCS bid, especially if they start playing up to their potential. The comeback win in East Lansing should give them the confidence they need to mow through the rest of their opponents this year.

UPDATE: Yes, that '66 game was a tie. Sorry -- don't know what I was thinking; I must have been giddy from the comeback. As pointed out in the comments, this was the notorious tie that Ara Parseghian took rather than try one more drive to win the game. His strategy was rewarded with a national championship, but Ara took a lot of flack for that decision. And it's East Lansing, not Battle Creek. Yeesh. Should have finished my victory Guiness before posting!

UPDATE II: Tyrone Willingham has quietly turned Washington around, starting 3-1 with a victory over UCLA tonight. I like Ty, and I hope he can make the Huskies tough in the Pac-10. Looks like he's well on the way.

NARN On The Air

I forgot to post this , but we are on the air now at AM 1280 The Patriot. Mitch and I will go from 1-3 pm CT, while King and Mike will go from 3-5. Listen to the Internet stream if you're outside the Twin Cities, and call us at 651-289-4488 to join the conversation!

UPDATE: If you want to keep an eye out for conservative activists and their latest efforts, La Shawn Barber is live-blogging the Values Voters Summit.

Abbas: Back To Zero On Unity Government

Mahmoud Abbas will have to wipe the egg off of his face after his stunning announcement at the UN proved false. He now says that all efforts to form a unity government for the Palestinian Authority have returned to the drawing board when Ismail Haniyeh and the rest of Hamas refused to join if they had to recognize Israel's right to exist (h/t CQ reader Cynic):

Efforts to form a Palestinian government acceptable to the West have gone "back to zero," Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Saturday, a day after Hamas said a coalition government that recognizes Israel is unacceptable.

The Islamic militant group has ruled alone since March, but this month agreed to share power with Abbas' moderate
Fatah Party in hopes of ending a crippling international aid boycott of the Palestinian Authority.

The Hamas-Fatah coalition deal sidestepped recognition of Israel. Instead, it said the government would seek to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel, which implies recognition. However, the U.S. and Israel demanded a clear commitment from Hamas on the subject, and Abbas was forced to revisit the issue.

At the United Nations on Thursday, Abbas indicated a national unity government would recognize the Jewish state. But Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh from the Islamic militant Hamas group declared the next day that he would not lead a coalition that recognizes Israel.

The announcement on Thursday seemed very odd, but Abbas appeared very confident in the message. As I said at the time, it went beyond the usual offers of hudna and promised a permanent shift in the goals of the Palestinians from the annihilation of Israel to a two-state solution. Either Abbas would become a historical figure or he was history when he returned to the West Bank.

It seems the latter is more likely now. Either Haniyeh betrayed him or he seriously misjudged his ability to push that kind of solution onto Hamas. They have no reason to bend, after all, since they won the last elections. Hamas wants the aid spigots turned back on, but they've refused to bend on their goal of destroying Israel to restore the aid payments. Even with the promise of Western support, Hamas still will not promise to live in peace.

Abbas has done us a favor, although it certainly wasn't his intention. He showed yet again that engagement with the Hamas terrorists is an exercise in futility, even for other Palestinians. The Israelis have no partner for peace in the territories, and Abbas is nothing more than an empty suit at the moment. It will take a civil war among the Palestinians before responsible leadership can emerge that will have the mandate to reach a peaceful co-existence with Israel, and perhaps the best solution is to get out the way and let the Palestinians finally go to it.

We'd Like Faith-Based Programming, Easy On God, Please

Christian families have made the "Veggie Tales" video series very popular with young children, with their ebullient mix of Biblical stories and the light, humorous touch of such characters as Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber. We bought a couple of these videos for the Little Admiral, and we enjoy watching them with her, especially since the videos emphasize the message that God loves us all. The sales of the videos attracted the eye of NBC programmers, who recently signed the series' creators to use the characters into a cartoon on the network.

However, NBC seems a little confused about what made the series popular in the first place. CNN reported last night that network executives have pressured the producers to tone down the religious nature of Veggie Tales:

Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber always had a moral message in their long-running "VeggieTales" series, a collection of animated home videos for children that encourage moral behavior based on Christian principles. But now that the vegetable stars have hit network television, they cannot speak as freely as they once did, and that has got the Parents Television Council steamed. ...

Two weeks ago, NBC began airing 30-minute episodes of "VeggieTales" on Saturday mornings. The show was edited to comply with the network's broadcast standards, said NBC spokeswoman Rebecca Marks.

"Our goal is to reach as broad an audience as possible with these positive messages while being careful not to advocate any one religious point of view," she said.

"VeggieTales" creator Phil Vischer, who was responsible for readying episodes for network broadcast, said he didn't know until just weeks before the shows were to begin airing that non-historical references to God and the Bible would have to be removed.

I wish I could claim surprise, but this is the level of cynicism that we've come to expect from the entertainment industry, as well as intellect. What rocket scientist decided to spend millions on a new show while stripping the main element of its built-in popularity out of the final product? The Veggie Tales series has its charm, but without the Biblical episodes and the mild Christian message, the series has nothing particularly singular to recommend it. The nature of their episodes does not give Bob and Larry striking individual personalities; they mostly goof at playing characters from the Biblical stories they retell, such as Jonah or Joshua.

NBC knew this when it bought the series. It also should have realized that its fans would expect NBC to allow Veggie Tales to remain in its ouevre, and one has to wonder why the network feels so threatened by a cartoon that basically makes an average Sunday School lesson a bit more fun. It doesn't teach jihad or crusade, nor does it delve into topics like the Immaculate Conception or review the oft-misunderstood doctrine of papal infallibility. It retells stories from the Bible that rank pretty low on the controversial scale, when one considers other young-child entertainments such as Bratz Girls and the like.

The network executives who bought the rights to Veggie Tales misrepresented their intentions not just to Phil Vischer, but also to the viewers it attracted when it announced that they would air VT episodes. Those viewers expected NBC to actually air episodes in the same style and substance as Vischer's videos. Instead, NBC has insulted those viewers by treating their faith as something shameful and attempting to transform the openly-Christian entertainment into a neutered secular cartoon. Perhaps they might want to review the tale of Saul on the road to Damascus for themselves. Vischer could make a video that explains it in small words NBC programmers can understand.

Typhoid Osama? Well, Maybe

A leak from French intelligence hit the wires late last night and spread rapidly around the world. The information: Osama bin Laden died in a cave of typhoid last month. However, questions about the reliability of that intel have already prompted the French to admit that they have no confirmation of Osama's death:

France said a report that Osama bin Laden died this month of typhoid was unconfirmed, and launched an inquiry into how a preliminary intelligence brief detailing the assertion was leaked.

President Jacques Chirac stressed to journalists that "this information is in no way confirmed."

He added Saturday that he was "surprised" that the French newspaper l'Est Republicain had published an excerpt from a French secret service note relaying information from Saudi Arabia's intelligence service. ...

The note by the DGSE service, dated September 21 and published Saturday by l'Est Republicain, stated that Saudi intelligence officials "are now convinced that Osama bin Laden is dead."

It said that "information gathered by the Saudis" from a source they considered reliable indicates that bin Laden "might have succumbed to a very serious case of typhoid fever resulting in partial paralysis of his lower limbs while in Pakistan on August 23, 2006.

"His geographic isolation provoked by constant fleeing is believed to have made medical assistance impossible (and) on September 4, 2006, the Saudi security services received preliminary information of his death."

What we have is a rumor coming from Saudi intelligence to the French, and a note reporting the rumor got leaked to the press. AFP now says that European and Pakistani intelligence services that have tried to track Osama consider the intel unreliable. It's single-sourced data and unconfirmed by any other information, although Saudi intelligence has tried to get concrete evidence, such as a burial site.

We've been down the "Ding, Dong, Osama's Dead" path before. Analysts convinced themselves of Osama's room-temperature state in the past, only to sputter excuses when he showed up on a new video or audio tape. When they can prop up the body for the cameras or when AQ admits he's gone to his 72 virgins, then I'll bite. Until then, color me skeptical about unconfirmed rumors from either Saudi or French intelligence.

UPDATE: Apparently, Daily Kos diarist Mark Adams can't read. What part of "color me skeptical" doesn't he understand? But then again, why actually read what I write when he can just make it up for the Kossacks?

Let's Give It A Rest

Earlier today, Fox News released a clip from an upcoming interview with Bill Clinton on Fox News Sunday. Chris Wallace taped the interview this week, discussing Clinton's new global initiatives, but also asked him about the controversy arising from the ABC movie, "The Path to 9/11". As Hot Air reported earlier, Clinton's angrily responded to the suggestion that he had done little to take out Osama bin Laden in the years of his presidency by noting that the "right-wingers" (as he called them) hadn't done anything in the eight months prior to 9/11. "I failed, but I tried," he fumed at Wallace.

We can argue for years about how much he tried, and for what reasons. In fact, we have -- for five years -- and it's time to give it a rest.

The rise of Islamofascism didn't occur just on Clinton's watch, and his presidency was not the only one that demonstrated weakness and fecklessness to the jihadists. One can (and should) pick out examples from the three preceding administrations. Jimmy Carter undermined the Shah and allowed Ruhollah Khomeini to seize power in Iran, and then did nothing but demonstrate impotency when Khomeini had our embassy in Teheran seized -- allowing the crisis to drag on for 444 days as Khomeini's followers held 51 Americans hostage. Ronald Reagan retreated from Lebanon after a Hezbollah attack killed hundreds of Marines, and then negotiated with them when they took hostages. George Bush kicked Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait but let him off the hook with the road to Baghdad open because he didn't want to alienate the moderate Arab regimes that had given tacit support to the invasion.

Clinton added to the list, of course. He failed to follow up on the Iraqi ties to the first World Trade Center bombing. He did little after the Khobar Towers attack. The twin bombings of the African embassies, an early hallmark of al-Qaeda's coordination of attacks, resulted in a missile attack on a training camp that barely missed Osama bin Laden. Given intel that a Sudanese aspirin factory had produced chemical weapons, later found questionable, Clinton attacked it with missiles to neutralize the threat. He failed to respond to the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole -- but neither did the Bush administration that replaced him.

Nor can we argue that the Bush administration took much action in the preceding months to guard against the threat from AQ, although they gave it about the same level of attention as the Clinton administration did, and mostly with the same players. Just before 9/11, a new policy on Iraq had been promulgated which recommended stricter control of the sanctions on Saddam Hussein, not military action, and he had already informed everyone that he had no interest in "nation building", making a democratization campaign a remote possibility. Most analysts talked about cyber terrorism as the next big intelligence problem, including Richard Clarke, regardless of what he says now.

For five years, we have rehashed this long and embarrassing history of American cluelessness. It is a bipartisan history, with both Republicans and Democrats arguing at various times that administrations used terrorism as an excuse for their political benefit. All it does is poison the atmosphere and allow hyperpartisans to play gotcha games with political opponents.

The time has come -- it has long since come -- for that history to become just that: history. None of us can pretend that Bill Clinton could ever have declared war on al-Qaeda in the manner Bush did without having a 9/11-type event as a catalyst. Not only would the Left have screamed much as they do now, albeit without the Hugo Chavez-type conspiratorial thinking, Republicans would have never given Clinton the kind of support needed to send American troops into Afghanistan. The political climate had been thoroughly poisoned by the time of the African bombings and Congress would never have put aside its deathmatch with Clinton to unite in a war effort, especially against a band of terrorists most Americans didn't know existed.

All of this is prologue to 9/11, and none of the debate changes the fact that two decades of leadership dropped the ball on the rise of Islamist terrorism. Blaming one without blaming them all has solved nothing and teaches nothing. More to the point, it divides the nation for no purpose, and five years after 9/11, it's time we stopped allowing it.

We have all the investigations and tell-all books we will ever need. We have all formed our opinions. None of us will have them changed at this point. What we need to discuss now is what we do from here, a much more pressing debate that has actual real-world consequences, and we can't have that debate successfully until we stop the useless sniping about pre-9/11 failures.

UPDATE: Ace has other thoughts. I'm not disagreeing with his analysis, but as a nation we need to end this argument if we want to get some consensus on engaging the enemy, and the enemy is not Bill Clinton.

UPDATE II: Some CQ commenters want to convince me of Clinton's knavery, as if I needed convincing. I'm not defending Clinton as much as I'm asking for some perspective. Let me ask this: (1) Will further argument about Clinton's track record on terrorism change any minds? (2) Will further argument about Clinton's track record on terrorism make the nation any safer? The answers, in my opinion, are (1) no, and (2) it's putting the nation even more at risk because we're focused on the past rather than the present. If so, then why are we still having this argument five years after 9/11 when it keeps the political environment polarized, it's not changing any minds, and it has nothing to do with the tough questions about how we keep the nation safe now?

Lounging At The LSC, Plus Other Heritage Posts

It's been such a busy week here at CQ, I forgot to highlight some of the Heritage Foundation blogging I've been doing. Today's post talks about the never-ending requests for cash coming from the Legal Services Corporation, the federal agency that provides legal assistance to low-income Americans who cannot otherwise afford it. Now that is an honorable mandate for any organization, although one can certainly debate whether the federal government should provide it instead of private foundations. (This is separate from public defenders, which the government must and should provide for those accused of criminal activity.)

However, LSC has been less than honorable in its efforts to carry out that mandate. Instead of using their budget for representation, they've spent it on tony Georgetown digs, and managed to get screwed on the lease arrangement -- to the tune of at least $1.5 million. Their large and comfortable space has plenty of room to host large conferences, but instead they go elsewhere for their meetings ... like San Juan, Puerto Rico. They take chauffered limousines instead of cabs in Washington DC and buy extravagant desserts on the company tab. They have a history of massively overreporting their caseloads -- in 1999, they did so by 86% -- in order to justify more money from Congress.

There's more, and trust me, you want to read it.

Earlier this week, I also sounded a note of caution on reform of Senate rules. Trent Lott has launched an initiative to eliminate holds, and while that sounds like a good idea, you may be surprised at his motivation. We've railed against abusing the holds and still believe that holds should enter the public record, but eliminating them might make it a lot easier to get pork passed before anyone can stop it.

That goes hand in hand with my first post this week, which celebrates a new era of open government. I linked articles by Mark Tapscott and John Fund discussing this, and with the federal database bill due to be signed next week, it's a long-overdue victory for honesty and probity.

I hope you enjoy the posts, and as always, the link to the Heritage Foundation Policy Blog appears in my right column.

Citgo No Go?

Up until yesterday, I was unaware that Citgo is wholly owned by Venezuela's state-owned PDVSA. After Hugo Chavez' lunatic rantings about Bush being Satan and smelling sulphur at the UN podium at Turtle Bay this week, some CQ readers might find that fact ... interesting.

(image created by The Man at GOP And The City)

Mark Tapscott says that we might want to buy our gasoline elsewhere. My radio partner Mitch Berg notes that the Left wants us to buy all of our gas from Citgo.

I'm not much on boycotts, especially with gas providers, because like any commodity, the market is fungible. I have to buy it from someone, and the supply follows the demand and prices follow both, so the only one who usually loses are the independent station owners. However, in this case, it's not a protest about gas prices in general but against a business owner (Chavez) who went out of his way to personally insult our Head of State, from which all Americans should take offense. For me, BP Amoco and SuperAmerica look better and better all the time.

The Dishonesty In The Deficit

Rep. Jim Cooper writes today about the misleading government figures used by all parties when discussing the federal deficit. In today's Examiner, Cooper wants to know if voters understand the difference between $8.5 trillion and $46 trillion:

Ask a congressman what the national debt is, and he will say $8.5 trillion. That’s a lot of money, but it completely ignores our two largest and most important government programs, Social Security and Medicare. If you include the promises made by those programs to workers who are already paying Social Security and Medicare taxes, the national debt jumps to $46 trillion.

So which number is correct? Do we face a mountain, or a Mount Everest, of debt? If you believe that Congress was just kidding about your retirement or health care benefits, we owe $8.3 trillion. If you think America is serious, the total is $46 trillion.

If you look closely at the annual letter you receive from the Social Security Administration, you will see that the benefits you’ve been buying with your payroll taxes are only “scheduled.” That’s a fancy word for maybe. The federal government can revoke them at will, according to the 1960 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Fleming v. Nestor. Wait a minute! Most people, including most politicians, think that America has at least a moral obligation to pay every nickel of those benefits.

This has been the dirty secret of the political class for decades. It's why all of the talk about "lockboxes" for Social Security made economists laugh out loud, and why conservatives have pointed to the rising debt load for entitlement spending with increasing alarm.

The government decided long ago that it only had to report those liabilities for which it had no choice but to fund. Many Americans would have expected that their Social Security benefits would be included in that accounting, since they have paid into the fund all of their working lives. Medicare recipients paying premiums also might be forgiven for believing that Washington is obliged to provide funding for their programs -- but as Cooper pointed out, the Supreme Court took DC off the hook for that decades ago. The decision allowed Washington to continually expand nanny-state benefits with no accounting for its future obligations.

The expansion of the reported deficit has been bad enough. That came from higher spending, every year more than the last, even with the Republicans in charge. Instead of exercising fiscal discipline and trimming the size of the bureaucracy, the GOP has pushed for its expansion in every category during the Bush administration.

However, the announced deficit amounts to peanuts compared to the disaster of entitlement spending, which Cooper calls the Category 5 of political and economic storms, waiting to strike my generation and succeeding ones. Although the government claims it can cancel all benefits at any time and therefore has no obligation to spend the money, any government that reneges on entitlement payouts will get run out of DC on the nearest rail, and the only part of the economy that will thrive will be the commodities markets for tar and feathers.

People expect some benefits to be paid, especially as they near retirement. Many of the generation now approaching that status structured their financial situations on the assumption that these government programs would provide at least some basic support, especially in health care. Why did they do that? Because their elected representatives have told them for decades that those benefits would never be taken away or reduced, and they never told us about the gigantic budget shortfall they built into the system. Anyone who proposed reform got painted as a Scrooge and a danger to seniors all over the nation.

We are about to pay for the dishonesty of successive Congresses and administrations stretching all the way back to the Eisenhower era. Both parties share the blame for this massive deception. The Bush administration at least attempted to address the problem (after worsening it with the Medicare prescription-drug benefit) on the smaller-scale Social Security deficit, but Democrats continued to tell Americans that the problem didn't exist and that we shouldn't worry about what might happen in the future.

Are we still going to buy that explanation? Or are we finally going to realize that the free lunch has never really existed and that we have to come to grips with the problem sooner rather than later? We need a Congress that will have the courage to start fixing the problem now rather than continuing to add to it, and one with the honesty to admit that we are facing a catastrophe.

UPDATE: While Congress continues to promise pensions without providing concrete funding or even acknowledging the liabilities on their books, the federal government continues to prosecute other fund managers for basically emulating Congress' approach on entitlements. Is the Congressional approach copyrighted? Because it's hard to understand what San Diego city officials did that differs in any substantial way from what DC has done for decades.

Columbia Disinvites Ahmadinejad

After his strange speech at the United Nations, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expected to take a brief speaking tour in the US to shore up his image. One of the venues for that effort was Columbia University, which invited the Iranian president to speak at its World Leaders Forum at the request of its dean of international and public affairs, Lisa Anderson. Yesterday, however, Columbia president Lee Bollinger canceled the invitation:

In a statement issued yesterday afternoon, Mr. Bollinger said he canceled Mr. Ahmadinejad's invitation because he couldn't be certain it would "reflect the academic values that are the hallmark of a University event such as our World Leaders Forum." He told Ms. Anderson that Mr. Ahmadinejad could speak at the school of international and public affairs, just not as a part of the university-wide leader's forum.

Ms. Anderson's assistant cited an inability to arrange for proper security as the reason for the cancellation.

Mr. Bollinger told Ms. Anderson that while he finds Mr. Ahmadinejad's views "repugnant," she has the "right and responsibility to invite speakers whom she believes will add to the academic experience of our students."

The invitation sparked heated debate and outrage on campus and elsewhere because Mr. Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier and the head of a state that sponsors terrorism. The brouhaha over Mr. Ahmadenijad's invitation has also spotlighted the confusion of many regarding if and how standards should be applied when universities decide whom to welcome to their campuses.

A professor at the school of public health, Judy Jacobson, said Ms. Anderson "didn't see what line she was crossing." When asked to clarify the substance of that line, Ms. Jacobson paused. "Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier and inciter and I think that causes him to go far over the line," she said.

Bollinger's cancellation sent a mixed message, even for those who opposed Ahmadinejad's appearance at the university. By resting his objection on the specific forum, Bollinger didn't really take much of a stand on Ahmadinejad at all. Anderson still could have him speak on campus as part of a separate event at another time, a move that will probably mollify those who will see this cancellation as a threat to free debate in academia.

If Columbia's students and faculty believe that, then perhaps they will take the time to discuss freedom of speech in Iran with Ahmadinejad before they extend the next invitation. The Iranian government has begun closing dissident newspapers in the Islamic Republic, Reporters Without Borders announced less than a fortnight ago:

Reporters Without Borders today firmly condemned the closure of three leading reformist newspapers for an indefinite period. “This wave of censorship is totally unacceptable,” the press freedom organisation said. “Political repression is now compounding the judicial harassment that Iran’s journalists have been undergoing in recent weeks.”

The closure of the reformist daily Shargh and the monthlies Nameh and Hafez was ordered yesterday by the Commission for Authorising and Monitoring the Press, an offshoot of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.

The commission claimed it had sent Shargh 70 warnings calling for its managing editor, Mehdi Rahmanian, to be replaced, but Rahmanian denied ever receiving the warnings in an interview for the German public radio station Deutsche Welle.

The closure was also reportedly prompted by a cartoon of horse and a donkey on a chessboard. As the donkey was outlined in white, it was seen as an allusion to a comment by President Mahmud Ahmadinejad in which he said he had felt himself surrounded by light when he addressed the UN general assembly last year. The authorities therefore saw the cartoon as an unacceptable portrayal of Iran’s debate with the western countries about its nuclear programme.

Columbia, which houses one of the world's leading schools for journalists, might want to consider carefully the implications of inviting the leader of a country that oppresses its media and intimidates them into silence. That kind of leadership falls short not just of the World Leaders Forum but of university life in general, and Bollinger should have made that plain. Free speech does not hinge on inviting every millenial lunatic and tyrant to one's campus to give speeches and receive plaudits. Sometimes people have to take stands to tell oppressors that their crimes have consequences, even small ones such as becoming persona non grata in places where free speech is valued most of all.

Speaking of reporters and free speech, Eliana Johnson covered this story for the Sun, and Eliana is the daughter of Power Line's Scott Johnson, my good friend. She shows great promise as a journalist, with a straightforward style and engaging topics.

Even The British Can Diagnose Democratic Fecklessness

The fading fortunes of the Democratic Party in the run-up to the midterm elections have become common knowledge even thousands of miles away. Only a few weeks ago, Democrats confidently discussed the chair assignments in a House run by a Speaker Pelosi instead of a Speaker Hastert. Now that confidence has deflated, and even the Times of London can diagnose the bumblings of a national party with no real agenda:

AFTER months of near-euphoria among Democrats and a growing certainty among pollsters that the party will win control of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate in November’s midterm elections, doubts are beginning to creep in. ...

To the dismay of Democrats, still scarred by the way that Mr Bush used the spectre of terrorism — and their perceived weakness on the issue — to win re-election in 2004 and gain seats for Republicans on Capitol Hill in 2002, the President’s approval rating has jumped to 44 per cent, according to the latest survey by Gallup.

More troubling for Democrats, terrorism has shot up the list of voters’ concerns, with Americans more likely to vote for candidates who support Mr Bush on terrorism, 45 per cent to 28 per cent.

For the first time since last December, a majority of Americans did not believe that the Iraq war was a mistake. In an ABC News poll, a majority of Americans — 53 per cent — say they believe Iraq is part of the broader War on Terror.

Although 60 per cent surveyed by Gallup said that Mr Bush did not have a clear plan for Iraq, two thirds of Americans do not believe that Democrats have a plan, a political reality that is one of the party’s greatest vulnerabilities. ... Bruce Jentleson, a former official in the Clinton Administration and a professor of public policy at Duke University in North Carolina, said that just criticising Mr Bush on Iraq without offering an alternative could cost Democrats their chance of winning the House. While nearly all Democrat candidates criticise the President’s handling of Iraq, few present their own alternative and the national party has presented no plan to end the war [emphasis mine -- CE].

The Times underscores this last point by contrasting 1994 and 2006. In the year that Republicans gained a whopping 53 seats to wrest control of the House from the Democrats, the GOP published its Contract With America, a clear delineation of its policy objectives that they would pursue if they gained control. In 2006, however, the Democrats have issued their seventh version of the party's electoral platform, enitled A New Direction For America.

Why can't they take advantage of the opening that the Bush administration has left them in these midterms? It's because the Democrats have no clear policy goals or even political vision. All they have managed to gin up after six years in the wilderness is Bush Derangement Syndrome, a malady so powerful it leads them to attack members of their own party -- members with solid voting records and a history of party leadership.

Perhaps the Republicans went through this phase in the 1950s after losing the House the last time, where they spend years bitterly accusing their opponents of every crime under the sun, although no one has ever produced any evidence of it. The Democrats have done little else in the last six years. They have actively avoided revealing their policy goals, assuming they have any, in order to keep all criticism directed at the Republicans. We don't have any policy goals, they have said, because we have no way to get them implemented. Only after voters give power back to the Democrats will they agree to discuss their solutions for Iraq, the economy, terrorism, national security, and so on.

They have discovered that Americans do not like buying pigs in a poke. Even the British have begun to wonder why the Democrats want power when they have no clear idea what they will do with it. The upswing in Republican fortunes at this point in time reflects a growing understanding that the Democrats have no answers, only complaints, and that the GOP has managed to grow the economy and keep the country safe through five very perilous years.

They should prepare for the situation to get even worse. After the lunatic rantings of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez at the UN this week, Americans will understand better than ever that the Democratic insistence on deferring to international leadership that applauds these nutcases make Democrats even loonier than the Mutt & Jeff of petrotyrants. It will also remind voters of how dangerous the world is at this time, and that only the GOP seems to comprehend it. At this rate, the Republicans might even pick up a few seats at the midterms.

Edsall's Retirement

Hugh Hewitt has a fascinating interview posted with Thomas Edsall, who recently retired from the Washington Post and most recently held the position of senior political writer. Edsall has a new book in the stores, Building Red America, as well as new gigs at the Columbia School of Journalism and the center-left The New Republic. Edsall discusses politics and the media in a surprisingly forthright way, at one point asserting that Hugh underestimates the ratio of Democrats to Republicans in newsroom across America.

I met Edsall once, although I'm certain he wouldn't remember it. When I went to Justice Sunday II in Nashville, Edsall covered the event for the Post, and the reporters and bloggers shared the same hall. Edsall was in front of me in the buffet line and I tried to engage him in a little conversation, but he clearly wasn't terribly interested in it. It wasn't snobbery; I got the impression that he wasn't much of a talker and that he wasn't all that thrilled with the event in any circumstance. Later, however, he saw me and chatted me up a little bit, and I enjoyed the opportunity to speak with him.

I may have to check out that book -- as soon as I get through the mountain of tomes backlogged on my desk at the moment ...

Why, Some Of My Best Friends Are Descended From Pigs And Monkeys!

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thinks that he has been misunderstood. He told the press covering the United Nations that he doesn't hate Jews at all, and that he actually respects them:

Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said he is not an anti-Semite.

"Jews are respected by everyone, by all human beings," he told a news conference at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

The remarks come months after Mr Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be wiped off the map - and described the Holocaust as "myth". ...

"No, I am not anti-Jew," he said. "I respect them very much."

Of course! Why, many people openly argue for the destruction of Israel and call the Holocaust a conspiracy theory of Jews to control the world through guilt. Some of his best friends are Hebrew ... or would have been, if his country hadn't chased over half of them out after the 1979 revolution.

I could spend all day reviewing the Internet for examples of Ahmadinejad's rantings against the Jews, although he prefers the term "Zionists". I'll just leave CQ readers with this one example:

Today, it has been proven that the Zionists are not opposed only to Islam and the Muslims. They are opposed to humanity as a whole. They want to dominate the entire world. They would even sacrifice the Western regimes for their own sake.

Well, OK, one more, from last month, after Israel responded to Hezbollah's attack:

"They have no boundaries, limits, or taboos when it comes to killing human beings. Who are they? Where did they come from? Are they human beings? 'They are like cattle, nay, more misguided.' A bunch of bloodthirsty barbarians. Next to them, all the criminals of the world seem righteous."

But he respects Jews, of course, and besides, he's a snappy dresser!

Armitage Threatened To Bomb Pakistan

Richard Armitage, it turns out, has a big mouth. We found out this month that he leaked the information on Valerie Plame's identity to Robert Novak and Bob Woodward, a fact that destroyed the myth that Bush allies leaked it to the pair as a vendetta against Joe Wilson. Now it turns out that Armitage told Pakistan that the US would bomb them "back to the Stone Age" if the former Taliban ally did not accede to American military demands in the aftermath of 9/11:

The Bush administration threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age" after the September 11 attacks if the country did not cooperate with America's war on Afghanistan, it emerged yesterday.

In an interview to be aired on CBS television this weekend Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, said the threat was delivered by the assistant secretary of state, Richard Armitage, in conversations with Pakistan's intelligence director.

"The intelligence director told me that (Mr Armitage) said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the stone age'," Gen Musharraf was quoted as saying. The revelation that the US used extreme pressure to secure Pakistan's cooperation in the war on terror arrived at a time of renewed unease in the US about its frontline ally.

Despite considering this "rude", Musharraf apparently smelled the coffee percolating and decided that discretion was the better part of valor. The Guardian (UK) details a number of demands made by the US, including allowing US overflights and intelligence coordination with the Americans, to which Musharraf agreed. He refused to allow the US to conduct border-control operations out of Waziristan and to allow American access to Pakistani army bases. He also says that the US wanted him to put an end to any anti-US demonstrations, which sounds like a strange request for an intelligence service; better to have demonstrations aboveground where agents can spot people than to drive them underground entirely.

Armitage, for his part, denies that specific language in his formulation. Musharraf insisted to CBS that his intel chief specifically quoted Armitage, and Armitage does not deny communicating the general feeling. It seems that the deputy to Colin Powell had no problem threatening war against a nation that had not attacked the United States, a war of total destruction, if the nation did not cooperate fully with us. And understandably so, as we wanted to take out the Afghan government that had sheltered and supported the terrorists who had just attacked us and wanted to make sure their patron provided them no succor, although the fact that Pakistan has nuclear weapons didn't appear to give Armitage any pause.

Given all of that, one then has to wonder why Armitage so bitterly opposed the Iraq war in 2003 and afterward. After all, we had been in a state of war with Iraq for a dozen years at that time. Saddam Hussein refused to cooperate with the US, and in fact with the UN, defying 16 Security Council resolutions. He continued to light up American and British aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones with fire-control radar, itself an act of war and a violation of the cease-fire agreement. In fact, he had often shot missiles at American and British patrol aircraft, by any definition an attack on the two nations.

One cannot explain this away by proposing that a war with Pakistan would have been easier than one against Saddam's Iraq. Even aside from the nuclear weapons, Pakistan's mountainous terrain would have given the Americans fits, as would the logistical problems of invasion. Even a bombing campaign would have been difficult, especially since we wanted to destroy the Taliban and flush al-Qaeda from their caves and could not have committed the resources needed to do both effectively. Plus, Pakistan has a serious military equipped with excellent, modern materiel -- which the US mostly provided.

Either Armitage got a bad case of pacifism in 2003 or he has been strangely inconsistent on war policy. The latter seems much more likely. It looks like Armitage simply detested the Bush administration and by 2003 disagreed with policy for the sake of disagreement, creating a strange track record that borders on incoherence.

New Boss, Same As The Old Boss?

When the Democrats had more confidence about winning control of the House, they openly discussed committee leadership positions in the new power structure. One of the most important chairs, Appropriations, would move from Jerry Lewis (R-CA) to John Murtha (D-PA), who also covets the Majority Leader position. Lewis is currently under FBI investigation for his dealings with lobbyists, and the Democrats wanted to make an argument regarding corruption as a reason to put people like Murtha in charge. However, Paul at TPM Muckraker demonstrates that the new boss would be much the same as the old boss:

Lewis had former aides Jeffrey Shockey and Letitia White lobbying out of the D.C. firm Copeland Lowery, run by Lewis pal Bill Lowery. The firm's clients showered Lewis with donations, and he showered them right back with millions in contracts.

Murtha has aides in at least two firms.

Paul Magliochetti, a ten-year appropriations staffer with Murtha, now runs the defense lobby powerhouse PMA Consulting. At least one other former Murtha aide, Julie Giardina, also works at PMA. Even at a time of heightened scrutiny, the firm wins millions in defense earmarks for their clients, and those firms are regularly among Murtha's top campaign donors.

In 2006, for instance, five of Murtha's top 10 contributing companies were PMA and its clients. That year, PMA won over $95 million in earmarks for its clients, at least in part with Murtha's help.

Carmen Scialabba, a 27-year veteran of Murtha's staff, is now a lobbyist winning defense appropriations for clients with KSA Consulting. And alongside him at KSA is Robert "Kit" Murtha, the congressman's brother. (The firm's web site does not list him as an employee -- but a Google search returns his profile still active on the site, and a call to KSA's office confirmed he is still connected to the organization.)

Together, they have roped in clients looking for defense earmarks, bringing in contributions to Murtha and hauling out taxpayer dollars with Murtha's assistance -- over $20 million in 2005.

This would not be Murtha's first time in the corruption spotlight. The FBI targeted Murtha in its Abscam probe almost 30 years ago, but Murtha didn't bite -- much. He turned down the suitcase full of cash, which was more than some of his colleagues managed to do, but he then attempted to get the "sheikh" to invest in his home district, apparently not concerned with the ethics of the attempted bribery, and not necessarily rejecting them for himself in the long run:

Congressman Jack Murtha (D-PA) was indicted but not prosecuted because he gave evidence against Murphy and Thompson. The FBI videotaped Murtha as saying, "I'm not interested. I'm sorry... at this point."

CNSNews.com, a Division of the conservative Media Research Center, reports the full FBI video reveals Murtha later stating on the tape, "You know, we do business for a while, maybe I'll be interested, maybe I won't."

Murtha has never been shown to have taken a bribe, unlike Randy "Duke" Cunningham. However, as Paul reports, his relationship with lobbyists and their connections through his aides look very similiar to the types of relationships that have Lewis in hot water -- and the end result is that millions in government contracts flow from earmarks by both men into the pockets of contributors and connected contractors.

Read all of Paul's post.

Deal Reached On Terror Interrogations

The White House reached agreement on language that will allow the CIA and military intelligence to interrogate captured high-value terrorists using techniques proven to work while complying with the Supreme Court's Hamdan mandate to bring all such detentions in compliance with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. The agreement allows Republicans to push through the new legislation as a united group and to bridge differences between the Senate and House. It caps a four-day effort to meet three dissenting Republicans in a compromise all could support:

The White House and rebellious Senate Republicans announced agreement Thursday on rules for the interrogation and trial of suspects in the war on terror. President Bush urged Congress to put it into law before adjourning for the midterm elections.

“I’m pleased to say that this agreement preserves the single most potent tool we have in protecting America and foiling terrorist attacks,” the president said, shortly after administration officials and key lawmakers announced agreement following a week of high-profile intraparty disagreement.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, one of three GOP lawmakers who told Bush he couldn’t have the legislation the way he initially asked for it, said, “The agreement that we’ve entered into gives the president the tools he needs to continue to fight the war on terror and bring these evil people to justice.”

“There’s no doubt that the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved,” McCain said, referring to international agreements that cover the treatment of prisoners in wartime.

None of the press releases and media reports have many details on the agreement, but it seems clear that the White House got what it wanted. George Bush had insisted that he would not sign any legislation that left the parameters of legality so vague that it would place interrogators in jeopardy of a subjective interpretation that would make them unwitting war criminals. The administration had to give up text that proclaimed existing standards of cruelty in US law sufficient for determining legality, to which the trio objected as a re-interpretation of CA3. In its place, the three agreed to provide clear definitions of war crimes, and that the new definitions would not block the kind of interrogations that helped the US stop at least eight terror attacks on the US.

At first blush, without seeing all of the specifics, I'd say that the administration won this battle, although it may have done so more publicly than they wanted. I doubt John McCain would cave on the topic of torture -- his principles on this point have been all too clear for the past two years -- so the victory may have amounted to nothing more than convincing McCain that the language would still ban torture. Regardless, the pressure that Bush personally put on this negotiation by assuring the balking Senators that the CIA program would end without Congressional support had to have an expediting effect on the talks.

Where does that leave Democrats? McCain's endorsement leaves them twisting in the wind. They have built him up as the conscience of the GOP for the last two years, especially on the topic of torture, due to their perception of him as a gadfly to the White House. Having established his credibility on the subject, they will find themselves ill prepared to gainsay him on his own negotiated settlement for interrogations.

If the Democrats are smart, they will just let the legislation pass quickly through Congress. They have seen the Republicans rise from the dead in the polls approaching the midterms, and it doesn't take a mathematician to put two and two together on the effect the national security debate has had on their fortunes. Opposing a program that has saved America from eight separate terrorist plots with some belly-slapping and loud music will not convince voters that the Democrats will keep the nation safe during a time of war. They should keep the focus on Iraq, rather than give Bush any more opportunities to remind the nation that the same programs that kept terrorists from attacking us will disappear with a Democratic Congress.

Palestinian Government To Recognize Israel?

MS-NBC is flashing a banner announcing that Mahmoud Abbas has stated that the new unity government of the Palestinian Authority will explicitly recognize Israel. So far, no wire service has a story, but I will keep my eyes open for fresh reporting on this subject.

Stand by! ....

UPDATE: Allahpundit sends the link to the AFP wire story. Mahmoud Abbas told the UN General Assembly that any new Palestinian government would recognize Israel's right to exist:

Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas told the UN General Assembly that any new Palestinian government would recognise Israel.

"I would like to reaffirm that any future Palestinian government will commit to all the agreements that the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority have committed to," he said in a speech to the assembly.

Abbas referred in particular to letters exchanged by Palestinian and Israeli leaders, Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, in 1993 which contained mutual recognition of the two sides.

Abbas, who has been negotiating with the Hamas group over a national unity government, said: "These two letters contain a reciprocal recognition between the PLO and Israel, reject violence and call for negotiations to reach a permanent settlement with the creation of an independent Palestinian state next to Israel."

This will be a neat trick. Hamas has repeatedly stated in the last few months that it will not recognize Israel, and since they hold a majority of seats in the Palestinian assembly, Abbas' ability to deliver on this promise appears problematic at best.

One has to assume that Abbas hammered that deal out during the negotiations. If so, then Hamas won't kill him when he returns. However, the rank and file of Hamas may start wondering whether to turn on its own leadership, especially those who have lost relatives foolish enough to conduct suicide-bombing missions. And Hamas is not the only problem. Islamic Jihad has never joined in Palestinian self-government, preferring to remain unsullied by the stench of compromise and negotiation. Other smaller groups with less formal leadership will present Abbas with even more difficulties in enforcing this new policy.

Of course, the cynics among us may remember past Palestinian cease-fires, and wonder if we're not seeing a higher-stakes version of the Palestinian triangle offense. If the jihadists continue attacking while Fatah and Hamas keep stalling on formal recognition, then we will know that they have just reworked the old playbook all over again.

Perhaps Abbas did get the rest of the Palestinians to recognize the folly of their intifadas, even if they balked at recognizing Israel for the past sixty years. That may have been the reason George Bush went out of his way to receive Abbas and call him a "man of peace" earlier this week, a statement that raised eyebrows around the nation, given Abbas' history. It would certainly provide a singular event in the long history of Palestinian futility and perhaps give the region its first chance for real peace in decades, if not centuries or millenia. We will have to see the Palestinians cease their terrorist activities before we can rely on their word.

The Rally That (Almost) No One Covered

One of the most well-known philosophical questions known to popular culture asks whether a falling tree makes a noise if no one witnesses it. Now we can add whether a rally attracting tens of thousands of supporters for Israel outside the UN exists if no newspapers bother to report it. Fortunately, the New York Sun and Power Line manage to outdo the rest of the media in informing readers:

As world leaders convened for the second day of the United Nations General Assembly, tens of thousands of supporters of Israel gathered across the street from United Nations headquarters to protest President Ahmadinejad of Iran and to call for the unconditional release of the Israeli soldiers kidnapped on July 12. The international and national leaders who stepped up to the podium also challenged the United Nations to take preventative action against the Iranian leader who threatens the Jewish people with genocide.

The National Solidarity Rally, sponsored by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Jewish Community Relations Council, sent a message of solidarity with Israel and support for the war against global terrorism and its state sponsors.

"This is a message to the leaders of the world that we reject Ahmadinejad and his message of hate and the immorality he represents," the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents, Malcolm Hoenlein, said.

Speakers at the rally included Foreign Minister Livni, Ambassador Bolton, Governor Pataki, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, and Professor Alan Dershowitz.

Just the combination of speakers involved in the demonstration should have attracted a few headlines. How often will people see Alan Dershowitz and John Bolton on the same stage -- or for that matter, George Pataki and Dershowitz? That combination alone should have rated a mention at the Paper of Record, but a scan of their headlines this morning shows no interest at all.

The speeches also had some grist for media coverage. Elie Wiesel called the UN invitation to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shameful and said he should have been excluded from the international community. Dershowitz announced the launch of an effort to indict Ahmadinejad for attempted genocide, which he said would challenge the legitimacy of international bodies to enforce international law. He said he wants to see whether they can act before a genocide occurs, rather than just form committees to build memorials afterwards. I'm pretty sure I know how that will turn out.

At the least, though, the rally and its speakers has solid news value. Too bad most of the media thundered after Hugo Chavez following his sulphuric speech at the General Assembly. (via It Shines For All)

Democratic Nonsense On Allen's Heritage Made Clear

Today's Washington Post explodes the myth that Senator George Allen hid his Jewish heritage from voters out of shame or fear of the reaction from Virginia voters. After a whispering campaign by Allen's political opponents regarding the religion of his grandfather Felix Lumbroso, whom the Nazis jailed in Tunis during the African campaign, Allen finally confronted his mother last month about the rumors, when she confirmed that she had been raised as a Jew in North Africa. Michael Shear went to the source, interviewing Etty Allen herself:

Henrietta "Etty" Allen said Wednesday that she concealed her upbringing as a Jew in North Africa from her children, including Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), until a conversation across the dining room table in late August.

She said Allen asked her directly about his Jewish heritage when he was in Los Angeles for a fundraiser. "We sat across the table and he said, 'Mom, there's a rumor that Pop-pop and Mom-mom were Jewish and so were you,' " she recalled, a day after Allen issued a statement acknowledging and embracing his Jewish roots as he campaigns for a second term in the U.S. Senate.

At the table in Palos Verdes, Calif., Allen's mother, who is 83, said she told her son the truth: That she had been raised as a Jew in Tunisia before moving to the United States. She said that she and the senator's father, famed former Redskins coach George Allen, had wanted to protect their children from living with the fear that she had experienced during World War II. Her father, Felix Lumbroso, was imprisoned by the Nazis during the German occupation of Tunis.

"What they put my father through. I always was fearful," Etty Allen said in a telephone interview. "I didn't want my children to have to go through that fear all the time. When I told Georgie, I said, 'Now you don't love me anymore.' He said, 'Mom, I respect you more than ever.' "

Not only did Etty Allen keep it a secret from the entire family, excepting only her husband (legendary football coach George Allen), she begged her son to keep the secret even after she told him. Etty told Shear that she insisted that Allen not tell his brothers and sisters, not even his wife, about her heritage. She told Shear that the hysterics surrounding her heritage in the last few days justifies her decision to keep her heritage a private affair.

It's difficult to disagree with Etty. One would presume that since she's not running for office, her philosophies and religion have nothing to do with the upcoming election for Virginia's Senate seat. In fact, most of us would say that Allen's religion would have nothing to do with his election, either. However, a growing collection of prurient busybodies forced Etty to go public as if she were some kind of criminal, against her will and embarrassing her children who had to find this out in the press and through gossip.

Some could blame Etty for keeping it secret from her family for so long. My grandfather was Jewish and it was no problem at all for my mother's family, and I've always treasured that part of my heritage -- but then again, I wasn't a child in Tunis watching my father getting dragged off by Nazis for his faith. Nor did I live in a post-war America that often marginalized Jews and kept them from social acceptance, apparently still an impulse in some political circles.

Regardless, Etty made the decision to keep that history between her and her husband, and since it really was nobody else's business outside of the family, that's where that information should have remained. Only the most bigoted of people could have imagined that her Jewish heritage would have any affect on national policy decisions confronting the next three sessions of Congress. All the ex post facto rationalizations in the world cannot justify the ridiculous inquisition that Allen has experienced over the last week about not his faith, but that of his mother. It should shame everyone associated with this attack on Allen's family, which has no precedent in the last thirty years in which I've followed politics.

It won't, of course. I'm sure that the comments thread to this post will fill with more rationalizations questiuoning Allen's honesty and forthrightness, but none of them will answer the question of what Etty Allen's faith history has to do with the policy decisions of the next three Congresses.

UPDATE: Jon Henke, Allen's New Media coordinator, notes some of the anti-Semitic slurs thrown at Allen recently.

Hurricane Hugo Hits Turtle Bay

A tropical wind blew mightily through the halls of the United Nations General Assembly yesterday, launched by Latin America's biggest blowhard and an apparent candidate for Paxil. Claiming that George Bush was "El Diablo", Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez claimed he could still smell the sulfur at the podium from Bush's appearance the night before, delighting the usual crowd of tyrants and kleptocrats:

President Hugo Chavez, the combative Venezuelan leader, denounced President Bush in a U.N. speech Wednesday as a racist, imperialist "devil" who has devoted six years in office to military aggression and the oppression of the world's poorest people.

Speaking from the lectern where Bush spoke a day earlier, Chavez said he could still smell the sulfur -- a reference to the scent of Satan. Even by U.N. standards, where the United States is frequently criticized as the world's superpower, Chavez's remarks were exceptionally inflammatory. They were also received with a warm round of applause. ...

"Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world," Chavez told the chamber of international diplomats. "I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday's statement made by the president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world."

Chavez apparently thought he could adapt Cindy Sheehan's protest rhetoric to impress New Yorkers, but it takes more than warmed-over Chomskyisms and a dash of religious hallucinations to shock people in the Big Apple or the United States. Unfortunately, the gathered representatives of governments around the world are more easily impressed by lunatic rantings -- or perhaps just more amused.

Chavez did more harm than good despite the resounding applause given to his speech. Venezuela has been strong-arming Latin America to get its seat on the Security Council. Up until yesterday, Chavez had made inroads with his neighbors, some of whom share his distaste for the Bush administration if not his paranoia. After his performance yesterday, though, analysts stated that Venezuela had little chance of allowing such a diplomatically inept regime control their representation.

It did more extensive damage than that. Chavez' rant went a long way to prove conservatives correct about endemic anti-Americanism in the United Nations. Even other nations appeared stunned by the ferocity of the remarks, such as China's foreign minister, who had to ask for confirmation of his remarks out of disbelief. The warmth of the reception of these remarks provided a stunning look at the hostility that the non-democratic nations have for the United States, especially in the General Assembly. It will add fuel to the fire for conservative skepticism of the body's effect on spreading freedom and liberty around the world, which is supposed to be one of the UN's core missions.

Instead, we see that the organization has increasingly been hijacked by petty petrocrats and hallucinating dictators as a vehicle for hatred and obloquy. When the leader of one sovereign nation uses the UN dais to issue thinly-veiled demands for the annihilation of another nation, and gets followed by a circus act that makes him look like a moderate, then we know that the inmates are running the Turtle Bay asylum. Yesterday, Chavez proved that all the UN is missing is enough straitjackets to go around.

The Futility Of 'Clarifications'

The Pope offered yet another clarification of his comments at the University of Regensburg, attempting to ease the rage of Muslims around the world following his criticism of violence in religious conversion. The repeated attempts to appease Islamists have begun to create a different reaction from non-Muslims, as the New York Times' Ian Fisher reports from Rome:

Three days after saying he was “very sorry” about the reaction to his remarks, delivered last week in Germany, Benedict sought to clarify them again.

“This quotation, unfortunately, was misunderstood,” he said, alluding to protests and attacks on churches by offended Muslims. “In no way did I wish to make my own, the words of the medieval emperor.”

“I wished to explain that not religion and violence, but religion and reason, go together,” he said. He added that he hoped he had made clear his “profound respect for world religions and for Muslims.”

But in the crowd here, and around much of the world that is not Muslim, there were voices like Mr. Corbetta’s, saying the pope did not need to keep explaining himself.

Perhaps, some of them said, he should have been more diplomatic in his choice of quotations in his speech, in Regensburg, Germany. But some Catholics and other non-Muslims say that Benedict has distinguished himself from other world leaders in these tense times by speaking about violence and Islam — and that the violent reaction to his remarks simply proved his point.

Count me among this group. With every new apology or "clarification", Benedict gives more power to the violent demonstrations and the terrorists making threats against his life. The speech itself hardly gives any reason for any kind of remonstration, but even if one can honestly be offended by the rehashing of 600-year-old comments, Benedict's first apology/clarification should have been more than sufficient. The threats of violence and assassination that followed the Regensburg address more than proved the point Benedict made in any case.

Ian Fisher quotes a number of people in this article, including myself. He called me from Rome to do a short telephone interview after reading my open letter to the Pope, which he accurately describes as "anguished". Fisher accurately quotes me and gets the gist of our conversation exactly correct, a much-appreciated result. Fisher also includes quotes and analysis from non-Muslims who feel the Pope did not go far enough with his apologies. Overall, however, his story reflects what appears to be a growing consensus that Catholics may have reached their limit of enforced sensitivity to Muslim concerns over crtical thinking applied equally to all religions.

At the least, as Fisher also notes, the Pope's speech shoud stand as a message to Islam that Christians would start insisting on reciprocity in the name of ecumenical understanding. Benedict and his predecessor John Paul the Great have spoken at length about the need for tolerance for opposing religious faiths, specifically Islam. John Paul the Great raised eyebrows throughout Christendom when he kissed the Qu'ran. Since that gesture, Islamic countries have actually gone backwards in their forbearance of Christians, and the Church has to eventually demand reciprocal respect. Benedict's speech could send that signal, if he would quit backing away from it.

Assisted Suicide: It's Not Just For The Ill Anymore

Over the last decade, Americans have debated whether to legalize certain forms of assisted suicide. Proponents focus on the terminally ill, those people whose prognoses hold no hope whatsoever for recovery, pain-free living, and dignity in their last days. Opponents have warned of slippery slopes and speculated that social acceptance of the act would lead to expanded use.

The Times of London reports that Switzerland has proven the slippery-slope argument. Dignitas, a Swiss right-to-die organization, has announced that it will press legislators to allow the chronically depressed to choose assisted suicide as a permanent cure:

BRITONS suffering from depression could soon be legally helped to die in Switzerland if a test case in the country’s Supreme Court is successful next month.

Ludwig Minelli, the founder of Dignitas, the Zurich-based organisation that has helped 54 Britons to die, revealed yesterday that his group was seeking to overturn the Swiss law that allows them to assist only people with a terminal illness.

In his first visit to the country since setting up Dignitas, the lawyer blamed religion for stigmatising suicide, attacking this “stupid ecclesiastical superstition” and said that he believed assisted suicide should be open to everyone.

“We should see in principle suicide as a marvellous possibility given to human beings because they have a conscience . . . If you accept the idea of personal autonomy, you can’t make conditions that only terminally ill people should have this right,” he told a fringe meeting at the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton.

“We should accept generally the right of a human being to say, ‘Right, I would like to end my life’, without any pre-condition, as long as this person has capacity of discernment.”

Those of us who opposed assisted suicide for precisely this reason will soon get the opportunity to say "we told you so". This organization wants to turn suicide into an industry, apparently akin to abortion. Just as with the gateway arguments about life-and-death decisions for killing a fetus led to laws and court decisions creating a right to abortion on demand for any reason, assisted suicide is now being cast as a "choice" that only "stupid ecclesiastical superstition" would oppose.

Human society developed limits on actions over millenia for reasons tied to the survival of the society. In the case of suicide, most civiliations understand this as a blow to the community, not just the family, and those "superstitions" existed to ensure that human life could sustain itself. At the heart of the issue, it springs from the value of human life and its sacred nature. When societies stopped believing in those concepts, life became just another commodity measured on its convenience to those around it.

The effort by Dignitas seems especially cruel. The chronically depressed need treatment, not an easy way to deliver what they often attempt without assistance. Freeing them from societal constraints against taking their own lives will certainly put a lot of money into the pockets of clinic owners. It will also allow men and women to end treatment that could eventually make them whole and healthy -- or avoid trying treatment at all.

It would devalue humanity and human life to that of a throwaway consumer product.

We have been down this road before. Those of us who believe in the spiritual value of human life have predicted this development for some time. Eventually the limits our ancestors applied in their wisdom will disappear, and assisted suicides will start claiming hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands each year as we are scolded to respect a person's "right to choose". And then what happens? When the government keeps increasing health-care benefits to its citizens, when does it start to take the decision for "suicide" out of the hands of the chronically depressed and impose it upon them, using the excuse of non compus mentis?

Rightroots Hits The Mark While The GOP Ascends

The Rightroots campaign succeeded in its project to collect 100 contributions for each of its candidates. John Hawkins announced last night that we rode the momentum that had gathered over the weekend into a big burst at the finish line:

Moreover, in the process we raised a nice chunk of change. The official count that ABC PAC gave us for the moment we started the challenged was $50,250.12. As of this moment, we have raised $112,618.46. So, we raised more than $62,000 during the challenge and, because of our success, the RNC has agreed to send out a promotional email on our behalf to their mailing list, which consists of millions of Republican voters. Furthermore, our totals don't include the $14,000 that Jack Kingston's PAC has given to our candidates for meeting a previous challenge.

Consider that 10 weeks ago, Rightroots wasn't even an idea in my head yet. 9 weeks ago, we had our first meeting via email. 7 weeks ago, we went public.

In that short period of time, we've raised 6 figures for our candidates, been endorsed by the Senate Majority leader and the RNC, and we've shattered the conventional wisdom, which has always been that right-of-center bloggers can't raise money. That's not bad for a grassroots effort put together on the fly by a bunch of bloggers -- and, it's worth noting that we're not done yet ...

It's amazing what a handful of people can do when they refuse to listen to others telling them they can't. Your contributions have helped get significant resources to campaigns that all sides agree will be critical for control of the Senate and Congress.

Republican fortunes appear on the upswing in a number of different ways. Our fundraising has met with great success, but perhaps that's not occurring in a vacuum. A recent Gallup poll shows that the generic Congressional ballot is now tied, 48%-48%, which represents a huge comeback for the GOP. Republicans trailed in that poll earlier this year by almost twenty points. Perhaps even more significantly, Gallup reports that a "sizable minority" of Democrats are more motivated by anti-GOP emotion than in support of their own candidate.

Congressional Quarterly now predicts that the GOP will keep control of the House. In their analysis of safe and leaning seats, CQPolitics now predicts that the GOP will hold at least 220 of the 435 districts, while 12 are too close to call. One of those seats belongs to Mark Kennedy, the Rightroots-supported candidate for Senate in Minnesota, and another Rightroots candidate is trying to hold the seat for the GOP -- Michele Bachmann.

We've got a long way to go before the midterms are here. Keep up your support of these fine candidates, and thank you for your support of the Rightroots initiative!

CNN Found Saddam-AQ Connection In 1999

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence appears to have missed some intel in their evaluation that no ties existed between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden. Perhaps they can be forgiven for missing information produced by another organization outside of the American intel community -- but one would think that at least one member of the committee watched CNN in 1999 (via CQ reader Stoo Pid):

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against the Western powers.

Despite repeated demands from Washington, the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden after the August 7 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, demanding proof of his involvement in terrorist activities.

However, in recent weeks, both the United States and Britain have renewed their pressure on the Taliban to expel bin Laden.

It's an interesting article, one that has drawn a bit of attention since the odd analysis provided by the SSCI. Twenty-two bloggers managed to find and note this report from seven years ago. Yet, the SSCI only mentions one report by CNN, on the existence of active WMD programs in Iraq, which it dismisses.

If Saddam Hussein offered asylum to bin Laden, it would certainly indicate a willingness to ally himself with AQ, as well as the intent to partner with them against the US. Saddam wouldn't have made that kind of an offer to a group already responsible for a string of attacks against American interests just for the pleasure of their company. Sheltering Osama would hardly have demonstrated his willingness to abide by international law or to live peacefully with no ill intent towards the US.

It's just another piece of intel that the SSCI managed to miss in its haste to render judgment. I wonder what else they forgot to review.

The Return Of CMPC-2003-001488

Two months ago, almost to the day, I posted about a translation of a captured IIS document, CMPC-2003-001488, that described intelligence that the IIS garnered from one of its Afghan contacts regarding ties between Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and Saddam Hussein. I also noted in that post that the memo had been translated by Iraqi blogger Omar at Iraq the Model and at Pajamas Media last March. Tapscott's Copy Desk notes that blogger Fix 4 RSO has now also discovered this memo, which appears to put lie to the notion that post-war intel failed to show any operational ties between Saddam Hussein and AQ.

Here's the memo as I posted it in July:

Office of the Presidency Intelligence Service M5/3/9/2

The Honorable Mr. General Director Manager M5
Subject: Information

Our Afghani source numbered 11002 had provided us with the information on the denotation paper number -1- )
The Afghani Consul Ahmad Dahstani (the information on the denotation paper number (2)) had mentioned in front of him with the followings:

1. Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban Group in Afghanistan were in touch with the Iraqis and that group of the Talibans and Osama Bin Laden had visited Iraq.
2. The United States of America has evidence that the Iraqi government and Osama Bin Laden's group expressed cooperation among themselves in bombing targets in American.
3. In case Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban were proven to have been involved in carrying out these terrorist operations, it could be possible that the United Stated will attack both Iraq and Afghanistan.
4. The Afghani consul heard about the connection between the Iraqis and the Osama Bin Laden group during his stay in Iran.
5. Upon what has been presented we suggest writing to the Intention Committee with the above information.

Please revise…Your recommendation …. With appreciation,

Obviously, the case worker for this source at M5/3 (the directorate for North Africa and East Asia) was very concerned that the US had information that exposed an operational link between Iraq and AQ. It doesn't mention any specific tie to the 9/11 attack, but it states that the Afghan source believed that we had proof of their intent to bomb American targets. The IIS was very concerned that the information he believed we already had would lead the US to attack both Afghanistan and Iraq -- and this memo was written four days after 9/11.

This didn't get treated like speculation, either. The case worker directed this memo to the head of M5, responsible for counterintelligence, for his immediate attention. It also got copied to the "Intention Committee President", apparently a separate review process for intel. The IIS considered this important data.

However, as I pointed out, it's hardly new. It's been in the open for at least six months, and the government translation for two. All of which casts even more doubt on the Senate report that claims no additional evidence of connectioned between Saddam, Osama, and the Taliban came to light in the post-invasion period. Has the Senate even bothered to look through the FMSO documents?

Rightroots Homestretch

We're coming into the home stretch for the Rightroots 15-day project to get 100 contributions for each of the candidates on our slate. We still have candidates who have a little way to go to meet the goal, but we have pushed five of them over the century mark. Diana Irey has received 146 contributions in the last two weeks for her contest against John Murtha, for instance, and all but one of our Senatorial candidates have met the goal.

This morning we topped the $100,000 mark for Rightroots, a pretty astounding effort for a project only about six weeks old. With the midterms approaching, these Republican candidates can use all of the assistance you can provide. Help keep Congress in Republican hands by making your contributions to these campaigns. You can hear John Hawkins of Right Wing News explain the program to Mitch and me on our Northern Alliance Radio Network last Saturday at this link.

Lord Carey Delivers The Real Thing

For those who insist that Pope Benedict XVI delivered an insult to Islam by pointing out the evil of violent conversion in the use of a single quote from a 600-year-old text, Lord Carey will send them into hysterics. The former Archbishop of Canterbury told an audience at Newbold College that Islam itself is creating a clash of civilizations and praised Benedict for his efforts to bring the conflict to the surface:

THE former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton has issued his own challenge to “violent” Islam in a lecture in which he defends the Pope’s “extraordinarily effective and lucid” speech.

Lord Carey said that Muslims must address “with great urgency” their religion’s association with violence. He made it clear that he believed the “clash of civilisations” endangering the world was not between Islamist extremists and the West, but with Islam as a whole.

“We are living in dangerous and potentially cataclysmic times,” he said. “There will be no significant material and economic progress [in Muslim communities] until the Muslim mind is allowed to challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions and even their most cherished shibboleths.” ...

Lord Carey, who as Archbishop of Canterbury became a pioneer in Christian-Muslim dialogue, himself quoted a contemporary political scientist, Samuel Huntington, who has said the world is witnessing a “clash of civilisations”.

Arguing that Huntington’s thesis has some “validity”, Lord Carey quoted him as saying: “Islam’s borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”

Carey's words will not have the same impact as Benedict's Regensburg speech, but Carey goes much farther than Benedict in his challenge to Islam. He notes -- correctly -- that Islam's totalitarian approach to rhetoric and debate regarding doctrine has set it in opposition to reason, and that growth will never occur until Muslims go through a Reformation process that sets their faith apart from their governance. The indictment of the status of Islamic states uses the truth of their instability and their egregious human-rights abuses gives credence, in Carey's mind, that extremism cannot explain all of the ills and all of the points of conflict with the West.

This address gives support to the much milder and less specific challenge from Benedict, which he aimed at people of all faiths. Carey's speech does not intend to engage Muslims as much as warn the West about the nature of its opposition. It does not have the same academic tone taken by the Pontiff, but instead serves as an apologia for Benedict's decision to acknowledge the intellectual and rhetorical failings of Islam.

Carey may find himself somewhat alone in the next few days, however. The Times of London reports that Benedict plans on giving another speech as a follow-up to Regensburg, and the Vatican statement hints of retreat. They announced that Benedict will explain why he has been “misunderstood”. The pontiff should explain that the misunderstanding sprang from an inability to read the entire speech, but I suspect Benedict will take a more humble approach when challenge is more appropriate to the time.

Unfortunately, the New York Times still hasn't figured it out. In its second editorial entry into this controversy, the Gray Lady demonstrates yet again its ability to get the moral issues completely incorrect:

In offering his regrets, the pope said that in its totality, his speech was intended as “an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect.” In living up to that, he and other top Vatican officials will have to accept that genuine communication cannot occur on their terms only.

Yes, because it was the Pope who demanded that no one criticize the Catholic Church and Jesus Christ, and encouraged their followers to engage in "Days of Anger" over the merest hint of dissent. It was Catholics who rioted worldwide and promised to assassinate the Mufti of Jerusalem at almost every demonstration. Have the Times' editors ever actually read their own newspaper or any newspaper?

Lord Carey should hold his next talk in the offices of the New York Times. It wouldn't do any good, but it would at least keep the editors occupied and avoid laughably inept conclusions like this for at least a day.

Bad Judgment

The Iraqi Prime Minister fired the judge at Saddam Hussein's trial that refused to control the defendant and then assured the man who wielded absolute power until his 2003 fall that he was not a dictator. Predictably, a number of human-rights activists have erupted in outrage at this "interference" in the trial of the genocidal tyrant:

The firing was condemned by human rights advocates as improper political interference by Mr. Maliki’s government, which is dominated by Shiites and Kurds persecuted during Mr. Hussein’s rule. Human Rights Watch said the firing “sends a chilling message to all judges: toe the line or risk removal.” ...

But international human rights groups said the firing undermines the tribunal’s credibility and could influence other judges to favor the prosecution. They also questioned whether the tribunal’s procedures for handling allegations of judicial bias and misconduct were followed.

“This shows the court is not immune from political interference and may be open to being manipulated by public opinion or politicians,” said Hanny Megally, director of the Middle East and North Africa program for the International Center for Transitional Justice, which is an observer in the tribunal.

What the human-rights advocates fail to mention is that Judge Abdullah al-Amiri owes his job to Saddam and his regime, and probably should not have been on the panel at all. Amiri was one of the judges used by Saddam to dictate his rough brand of justice, but apparently Amiri must have convinced the new Iraqi government of his rehabilitation. That dissipated in the bright lights of the most important trials in the Middle East, and his bias towards his previous employer became too obvious to ignore.

Under Iraqi law, the government can remove a judge for any reason it sees fit. Unlike the previous regime, however, the government actually accounts to the people for its actions, and Iraqis can vote them out if they feel Maliki abused this privilege. For the vast majority of voters in the new Iraq, little fault will be found in the expulsion of any jurist who smiles deferentially at their former oppressor and assures him that his bad reputation came from hanging out with the wrong kind of friends.

Why this has human-rights activists tied in knots is beyond me. In any fair trial, both parties should have judges who enter the case with no bias towards either in the case and at least a passing connection to reality. Amiri's big wet kiss to Saddam showed that he had neither, and he deserved to be ejected. Maybe these activists can save some of their outrage for Saddam instead of the democratically elected government that managed to refrain from finding the nearest high tree when this bloodthirty monster came into their custody.

The Arab Nuclear Race Begins

The Iranian pursuit of nuclear power (at the least) has spurred interest across Southwest Asia in keeping up with the Persians. Der Spiegel reports that other states in the region that had spurned interest in nuclear research have now openly debated its value:

As Iran tries to buy time in its dispute with the international community over its nuclear program, the Arab world's interest in atomic energy is apparently growing.

The secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Abdul Rahman al Attiyah, recently called on the "Arab nation" to work "together on a nuclear program," to prevent being left behind as others in the region -- namely Iran, which is Persian and sometimes at odds with its neighbors -- pushed ahead with atomic research.

Attiyah's call points to a shift in policy. Arab governments in the past have criticized both Iran's nuclear ambitions and Israel's (officially nonexistent) atomic program, while arguing for a nuclear-free Middle East and swearing off plans to pursue the bomb.

The Arabs have had little need for civilian power outside of the abundant oil reserves on which they sit. In that manner, they are in the same position as the Iranians. Their pursuit of the nuclear cycle at least has some explanation in their lack of refining capacity, which forces Iran to import its gasoline and them subsidize it to keep the prices down for their people. This very problem makes them particularly susceptible to economic sanctions, if the global community could ever unite long enough to impose them.

That does not apply to the rest of the Arabian states, and a new rush to the nuclear cycle has less likelihood of an innocent explanation, as unlikely as it is with the Iranians. One has to recognize that this destabilizing influence did not come from the Israelis, although Der Spiegel mentions it as a potential cause. While the Israelis have long been rumored to have nuclear weapons, the Arabs -- apart from Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddafi -- never seemed all that interested in them. They preferred to do business with the West, and part of that trade meant eschewing nuclear weapons.

Now that dynamic has changed, and it's changed because of Iran and not Israel. This seems a tacit admission that the true threat to Arab nations doesn't come from the Israelis after all. The Sunni Arabs that mostly control the petrostates in the region understand the existential threat of a nuclear-armed Shi'ite Iran. They abided a nuclear Jewish state for at least two decades, if not more. They comprehend the Iranian threat better than the West, and if we do not stop Iran, they will take steps to make sure Iran stays put.

Mahmoud Goes Conspiratorial While Bush Tries Warmth

George Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tried two completely different tactics yesterday at the UN, with both confounding expectations. Instead of attacking the United Nations as many of his supporters would have predicted, Bush instead used his address to speak directly to the peoples of terror-sponsoring states. Iran's president used his turn at the podium not to plead his peace-loving credentials so much but to level harsh criticism of the very body that cannot bring itself to punish his nation for its defiance.

Bush got the first slot at the podium earlier in the day, and he spoke about the need for democracy and its positive effects in the region:

Imagine what it's like to be a young person living in a country that is not moving toward reform. You're 21 years old, and while your peers in other parts of the world are casting their ballots for the first time, you are powerless to change the course of your government. While your peers in other parts of the world have received educations that prepare them for the opportunities of a global economy, you have been fed propaganda and conspiracy theories that blame others for your country's shortcomings. And everywhere you turn, you hear extremists who tell you that you can escape your misery and regain your dignity through violence and terror and martyrdom. For many across the broader Middle East, this is the dismal choice presented every day.

Every civilized nation, including those in the Muslim world, must support those in the region who are offering a more hopeful alternative. We know that when people have a voice in their future, they are less likely to blow themselves up in suicide attacks. We know that when leaders are accountable to their people, they are more likely to seek national greatness in the achievements of their citizens, rather than in terror and conquest. So we must stand with democratic leaders and moderate reformers across the broader Middle East. We must give them voice to the hopes of decent men and women who want for their children the same things we want for ours. We must seek stability through a free and just Middle East where the extremists are marginalized by millions of citizens in control of their own destinies.

He also emphasized that America's conflicts in the region are with oppressive governments and not the people they rule:

To the people of Iran: The United States respects you; we respect your country. We admire your rich history, your vibrant culture, and your many contributions to civilization. You deserve an opportunity to determine your own future, an economy that rewards your intelligence and your talents, and a society that allows you to fulfill your tremendous potential. The greatest obstacle to this future is that your rulers have chosen to deny you liberty and to use your nation's resources to fund terrorism, and fuel extremism, and pursue nuclear weapons. The United Nations has passed a clear resolution requiring that the regime in Tehran meet its international obligations. Iran must abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions. Despite what the regime tells you, we have no objection to Iran's pursuit of a truly peaceful nuclear power program. We're working toward a diplomatic solution to this crisis. And as we do, we look to the day when you can live in freedom -- and America and Iran can be good friends and close partners in the cause of peace.

To the people of Syria: Your land is home to a great people with a proud tradition of learning and commerce. Today your rulers have allowed your country to become a crossroad for terrorism. In your midst, Hamas and Hezbollah are working to destabilize the region, and your government is turning your country into a tool of Iran. This is increasing your country's isolation from the world. Your government must choose a better way forward by ending its support for terror, and living in peace with your neighbors, and opening the way to a better life for you and your families.

Bush also emphasized his support for a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and outlined our efforts to bring that solution to fruition. He spent some time reviewing the details of situation, and even sounded a hopeful note that Hamas would give up its "extremist agenda" and pursue peace after its election to power. Most surprisingly, he didn't challenge the UN on its performance as he did in his last appearance at Turtle Bay, choosing to note only that the UN was formed to help spread freedom and that they have a responsibility to fulfill its mission in that regard.

Ahmadinejad had much more to say to the United Nations about its performance. In an angry speech laced with the kind of conspiracy-theory thinking that plagues Southwest Asia, the Iranian president castigated the UN as a tool of the US and UK and demanded a complete restructuring:

The abuse of the Security Council, as an instrument of threat and coercion, is indeed a source of grave concern.

Some permanent members of the Security Council, even when they are themselves parties to international disputes, conveniently threaten others with the Security Council and declare, even before any decision by the Council, the condemnation of their opponents by the Council. The question is: what can justify such exploitation of the Security Council, and doesn't it erode the credibility and effectiveness of the Council? Can such behavior contribute to the ability of the Council to maintain security? ...

The question needs to be asked: if the Governments of the United States or the United Kingdom who are permanent members of the Security Council, commit aggression, occupation and violation of international law, which of the organs of the UN can take them to account? Can a Council in which they are privileged members address their violations? Has this ever happened? In fact, we have repeatedly seen the reverse. If they have differences with a nation or state, they drag it to the Security Council and as claimants, arrogate to themselves simultaneously the roles of prosecutor, judge and executioner. Is this a just order? Can there be a more vivid case of discrimination and more clear evidence of injustice?

Regrettably, the persistence of some hegemonic powers in imposing their exclusionist policies on international decision making mechanisms, including the Security Council, has resulted in a growing mistrust in global public opinion, undermining the credibility and effectiveness of this most universal system of collective security.

The entire speech is one long harangue about the supposed abuse of the UN and especially the Security Council as a stalking-horse for the "hegemonic powers" of the US and UK. Ahmadinejad gets his facts wrong -- he claims that the Security Council didn't bother to produce a cease-fire in Lebanon, when it did within a month of hostilities breaking out. He also claims that Iran is a member in good standing with the IAEA when the agency itself has noted many violations of the non-proliferation treaty by Teheran, including its hiding of those violations throughout the 1990s, when Iran developed its nuclear program in secret. Ahmadinejad's speech is full of these prevarications, and rather bald ones at that.

We have come to expect a less-than-truthful approach from the Iranians over the years, especially given their background with the IAEA, and Ahmadinejad delivered on another expectation with surprising candor. He rails about the "blanket" support for Israel's existence in the UN, which would certainly surprise the Israelis. Ahmadinejad doesn't even refer to the Israelis by name, calling them instead the "regime occupying Al-Qods Al-Sharif". He obliquely argues for the destruction of Israel at the body that created it, calling Israel (inaccurately) a result of guilt from World War II and the need to relocate survivors of the Holocaust -- but oddly, never refers to the genocide and therefore leaves the entire notion unsupported.

Without a doubt, the Iranian president has given the world a clear view of the hatred and insecurity that lies at the heart of the mullahcracy. The two leaders had the opportunity to reveal the natures of their governments yesterday at Turtle Bay. Bush spoke about democracy and the transformative power of freedom. Ahmadinejad spoke of conspiracies and ancient hatreds. If the world wants to see why they must keep Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, the US could not have asked for a better demonstration.

Funny, She Doesn't Look Reporterish

One of the strangest moments in the recent history of political debates took place yesterday in Virginia, where former Reagan aide James Webb is challenging incumbent George Allen for the Senate. Instead of asking a question about issues that Senators will address in future sessions of Congress, a television reporter decided to ask Allen whether his mother has Jewish blood:

At a debate in Tysons Corner yesterday between Republican Allen and Democrat Webb, WUSA-TV's Peggy Fox asked Allen, the tobacco-chewing, cowboy-boot-wearing son of a pro football coach, if his Tunisian-born mother has Jewish blood.

"It has been reported," said Fox, that "your grandfather Felix, whom you were given your middle name for, was Jewish. Could you please tell us whether your forebears include Jews and, if so, at which point Jewish identity might have ended?"

Allen recoiled as if he had been struck. His supporters in the audience booed and hissed. "To be getting into what religion my mother is, I don't think is relevant," Allen said, furiously. "Why is that relevant -- my religion, Jim's religion or the religious beliefs of anyone out there?"

"Honesty, that's all," questioner Fox answered, looking a bit frightened.

"Oh, that's just all? That's just all," the senator mocked, pressing his attack. He directed Fox to "ask questions about issues that really matter to people here in Virginia" and refrain from "making aspersions."

Many people have criticized Allen for reacting angrily to the question, as well as equating a suggestion of Jewish heritage to an "aspersion" in the heat of the moment. However, the Senator can be forgiven for his shock at having to answer for his mother's ancestry in a political debate in America.

The notion that any political candidate has to answer for their religious or ethnic heritage on the political stump is anathema to a nation that founded itself on the notion of equal treatment under the law, even if we often fell short of that ideal during our history. Those failures include our treatment of Jews in public and private, who often found themselves on the outside of social and governmental circles. Our Constitution specifically rejects religious tests for public offices, and we have worked hard ever since to ensure that people of all faiths can access our systems of power.

Having this question posed at a political event is bad enough. Having it posed by a member of the media is an embarrassment. Fox's response that she just wanted some "honesty" is a bad dodge for a monumental insult to our traditions of religious tolerance. What possible difference would it make if Allen's mother had Jewish ancestry or not? What difference would it make whether Webb had Irish ancestry? We don't elect leaders on the basis of their mother's faith, let alone their own. Fox knows this -- and so questioning Allen on his purported Jewish ancestry had a particular point, and that point wasn't a test of Allen's honesty.

The only person who should be questioned on motivations is Fox, and perhaps her apologists in the blogosphere, including Dana Milbank in this linked story. He seems to think that Allen got angry because Jewish ancestry "wouldn't play well in parts of Virginia". I'd say that Allen got angry at a reporter -- who, after all, operates under the freedom of the Constitution -- for attempting to inject his mother's choice of faith into his election and setting up an ad-hoc religious test. Allen got angry at the reporter for violating one of our deeply-held tenets regarding tolerance of faith in politics. And most of us wonder why Milbank and the rest of the people making excuses for Fox don't understand that.

UPDATE: More bad news for the Milbank Shame Theory, as pointed out by CQ commenter JenOnTheWeb -- Eric Cantor won his seat in the House in 2004 with 76% of the vote, a fact of which I'm certain Allen is aware. Virginians don't have a problem electing Jews to Congress, even if the Virginia media seems to have a problem tolerating them. I guess Milbank didn't bother to check that out.

Well, Who's Slapping Whom?

I looked forward to E.J. Dionne's take on the latest outrage to spread through the Muslim world regarding the exercise of Western free speech and criticism, with both of us being Catholic but coming from different perspectives on the world. He weighs in today in a column that surprisingly blames Benedict for his rhetorical selections and blaming him for "slapping" Islam:

What went wrong here? First, if you read his intellectually interesting lecture, you'll see the passage on Islam was not truly essential to the pope's argument. Indeed, he argued at least as strongly against a liberal Christianity in which "the subjective 'conscience' becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical" and in which Jesus is reduced to being "the father of a humanitarian moral message." (Those quotation marks around the word "conscience" reflect the pope's skepticism of individual moral choice unguided by the church's teachings.) But then why did Benedict take his shot at Islam? And why didn't he pause to acknowledge that at various moments in history, Christians, including Catholics, have themselves been guilty of inappropriate uses of violence? ...

Benedict's defenders have a point when they question whether his comments fully justify the explosion against him in the Muslim world. A significant number of Muslim religious leaders have said some harsh things about Christians, Jews and Western secularists in recent years. Would that all of Benedict's Muslim critics were as critical of anti-Christian or anti-Jewish statements from their own side.

But that is precisely why all who are hoping for a liberalized Islam should take Benedict to task, and why he needs to use that great intellect of his to move this discussion in a different direction. ... It's true that Westerners who reject religion altogether may have trouble opening an authentic dialogue with Muslims. But religious dialogue will not progress very far if it starts off with a slap in the face.

Although we do not agree on much, Dionne is a must-read for me as he provides the best intellectual distillation of liberal thinking and usually makes challenging arguments regarding base assumptions. However, in this case, E.J. is just plain wrong, and considering the role freedom of criticism plays in his job, somewhat shockingly so.

Dionne argues that the dialogue between Manuel II and the unnamed Persian was not necessary for Benedict's point. He may be correct in that, but when I read the speech, I took from his example that the controversy over violence in religious conversion is nothing new. Far from Islam and Christianity being at "sword point" at that time because of mutual martial impulses, by that time Christendom had been reeling backwards for centuries from waves of Islamist expansion. The question is nothing new.

Perhaps Benedict could have chosen less inflammatory quotations to set the table in this manner, but that misses the point of the speech and the controversy. Benedict did not isolate Islam from other religions in historical impulses for violent conversion in any other part of the speech, but spoke about it more broadly. Even Dionne acknowledges this. However, one cannot escape the contemporary context of this speech, and that reflects that only one world religion still uses violence for expansion and conversion -- which is why Isamists became so irate about the speech. They haven't been insulted, they've been exposed, and they don't like it.

Dionne argues that everyone who craves a liberalized Islam should scold the Pope for inciting riots. However, that's exactly backwards. Any liberalized version of Islam has to afford people the right to criticize Islam without resorting to intimidation and violence in response. How can Islam reform when the entire world enables its temper tantrums? Does appeasement ever work? One would hope that a newspaper columnist, operating under the freedom of the First Amendment, would understand that. To reframe the issue on Dionne's terms, does he believe that silence in the punditry would result in a more open government, or a more oppressive and abusive one -- and if he believes the former, then why does Dionne bother to write his column?

I agree with Dionne that religious dialogue does not do well when it starts with a slap in the face. However, sometimes a slap is exactly what it is needed to geta hysteric to understand reality. Besides, when one side is busily bombing and shooting your churches and demanding your execution or assassination, and when they have increasingly oppressed religious minorities in their midst, one has to note that a slap is hardly the extant problem. When Muslims start flooding the streets around the world demanding an end to suicide bombings and terrorism, then we can hope for a liberalized Islam. One cannot start a dialogue with an adversary who refuses to allow one to speak.

UPDATE: Anne Applebaum gets it right.

War On Rome?

Muslim extremists continued to offer threats and violence in response to a speech by Pope Benedict XVI that warned against violent conversion. The Washington Times rounds up the most notable developments from thre previous day, in which Muslims around the world followed the Prophet Cartoon playbook almost to the letter:

Elsewhere, Iran's supreme leader called for more protests over the pontiff's remarks and protests broke out in South Asia and Indonesia, with angry Muslims saying Benedict's statement of regret a day earlier did not go far enough. In southern Iraq, demonstrators carrying black flags burned an effigy of the pope.

In London, police increased patrols near churches and began an inquiry into remarks by Anjem Choudhary, a well-known extremist who had called at a rally outside Westminster Cathedral on Sunday for the pope to be "executed."

The 39-year-old lawyer also had organized a rally earlier this year sparked by cartoons in a Danish newspaper at which some protesters carried placards declaring "Behead Those Who Insult Islam."

"Non-Muslims must ... understand that there may be serious consequences if you insult Islam and the prophet," Mr. Choudhary was quoted as saying on Sunday by the Daily Mail. "Whoever insults the message of Muhammad is going to be subject to capital punishment."

In Iraq yesterday, the extremist group Ansar al-Sunna challenged "sleeping Muslims" to prove their manhood by doing something other than "issuing statements or holding demonstrations."

"If the stupid pig is prancing with his blasphemies in his house," the group said of the pope in a Web statement, "then let him wait for the day coming soon when the armies of the religion of right knock on the walls of Rome."

Al-Qaeda's response had to win the prize for Muslim cluelessness. They called the Pope a "cross worshipper", a rather silly insult for the head of a religion that uses the cross as a symbol of Christ's victory over death. More widely reported was their assertion that the Pope and the West were "doomed", recalling Janeane Garofalo more than Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Not all Muslims have reacted with such immaturity. President Bush met with Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and tried to smooth ruffled feathers, to some effect. The spokesman for the National Security Council stated that Badawi had accepted Bush's explanation, while Malaysia's foreign minister had proclaimed Benedict's explanation insufficient.

Other than that tepid attempt at rational thinking, though, the Muslims staged a disappointing day yesterday. They continue to insist on the strange contradiction that their religion is both supreme and a victim without even a hint of the irony that contains. Radicals staged demonstrations calling for war and assassination in protest of the implication that Islam has not eschewed violence in its proselytization. Unfortunately, as these swelling protests show, the radicals represent much more than the lunatic fringe of global Islam, and they have received the response they wanted -- a series of scoldings from the West towards Pope Benedict for stating what everyone knows is the truth.

Unfortunately, one has to take seriously the call for war on "Rome". We can expect suicide bombers and other usual suspects of terrorism to put the Vatican and churches around the world in the crosshairs of radical Islam. People in the West will continue to blame Benedict for stirring up trouble, ignoring the warnings of Pastor Niemoller's exhortation about the creeping nature of oppression, rationalizing that the Muslims have only come for the Jews and those who failed to exercise the proper multicultural understanding of the plight of Islam. When Muslims have intimidated other voices into silence, who will remain to defend freedom of speech and rational thought?

When Human Rights Watch Calls You Anti-Israeli ...

In an embarrassing development for the United Nations, Human Rights Watch has issued a public scolding of Turtle Bay's Human Rights Council for its obsession for criticizing Israel. The successor of the Human Rights Commission has learned little from the failures of its predecessor, according to the international organization not exactly known for its Israeli sympathies:

Human Rights Watch on Monday criticized the new UN Human Rights Council for its one-sided attacks on Israel and disproportionate attention to the Middle East.

The New York-based human rights organization issued a statement urging the council to "expand its focus beyond the Middle East" and address other crises, such as those in Darfur and Sri Lanka.

The statement also pointed out that in the meetings that have occurred since the council was created in March, it has adopted three resolutions on "human rights abuses and violations of humanitarian law" by Israel. But, the organization noted, it "has ignored the responsibilities and roles of other parties in the Middle East, including Hizbullah and Palestinian armed groups, who have committed violations."

It continued, "In taking a one-sided approach, the council failed in its duty to act to protect the rights of all citizens in the region."

When the UN launched its revamped human-rights panel, many warned that the "reform" involved little more than changing the letterhead on the paper that got pushed at Turtle Bay. HRW has confirmed our suspicions. Once again, just as with the Commission, the member nations of the HRC spend more time and effort devising resolutions decrying Israel than they do investigating the crimes and abuses of Israel's enemies.

HRW has little reputation as a shill for the Israelis, either. Most of the criticism of Israel's war tactics came from HRW and from Amnesty International, which only last week acknowledged that Hezbollah actually committed war crimes during the last conflict. In fact, Israel's NGO Watch didn't think much of the accusation, claiming that HRW helped create the atmosphere for the anti-Israeli attitude at the UN.

The UN has had a number of opportunities to clean up its human-rights panels. Instead, it allows members such as Cuba, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and other abusers to obsess on their bigotry and turn the effort to protect human rights into a joke. When HRW calls out the global community for its anti-Semitism, people understand just how bad that gets.

Union Shifts To Lamont After Primary

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has switched its endorsement from Joe Lieberman to Ned Lamont in a curious about-face after the primaries. Before Lieberman lost to Lamont, AFSCME had enthusiastically supported the incumbent with his long record of union-friendly votes. Somehow that became less of a concern to AFSCME leadership in the five weeks since:

The switch by the union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, is the biggest labor boost Mr. Lamont has received since winning the Democratic primary last month.

The support of the union, which represents about 35,000 members, shows that Mr. Lamont has chipped away at enough of Mr. Lieberman’s union support to make it most likely that the state A.F.L.-C.I.O., the umbrella group of state labor organizations, will stay neutral in the Senate general election.

Both Mr. Lieberman and Mr. Lamont had lobbied the municipal union for its endorsement, speaking to the union delegates personally on Friday. News of the endorsement was reported Monday in The Hartford Courant.

This seems pretty curious. After all, in the short period of time since the primary, Lieberman hasn't had much opportunity to cast votes on anything, let alone union issues. Sal Luciano, the union's leader, says that Lieberman's independent bid indicates to the union that Lieberman will not fight the Bush agenda -- but once again, Lieberman has hardly backed the Bush agenda on anything except the war.

Luciano's move looks a lot like partisan politics than in representing the union's interests. That's not illegal, but union members might question whether Luciano's actions might come back to haunt the union if Lieberman wins re-election. After all, the union exists to protect the interests of its members in the workplace, not the interests of the Democratic Party as a wholly-owned affiliate of the DNC. The only thing that changed after the primary about either candidate was their endorsement by the Democratic Party -- and that was enough to make AFSCME change its endorsement.

Luciano will have to answer to his membership for his unprompted switch. Unions in general will once again have to answer to American voters for electoral strategies that appear in lock step with Democratic leadership.

French Retreat On Iranian Suspension

The French, who have remained surprisingly firm on the requirement for uranium-enrichment suspension until now, have retreated on it now. Jacques Chirac now says that Iran would not have to stop its enrichment program to get talks on an incentive package started, but could wait until talks were underway, and that's not even the retreat that matters:

In an effort to jump-start formal negotiations between six world powers and Iran over its nuclear program, President Jacques Chirac of France suggested Monday that Iran would not have to freeze major nuclear activities until the talks began.

Over the years, Mr. Chirac has consistently taken an extremely hard line against Iran both in public and private. But his remarks in a radio interview could be interpreted as a concession to Iran, whose officials have said they will not suspend their production of enriched uranium as demanded by the United Nations Security Council.

“Iran and the six countries together, we must first find an agenda for negotiations, then start a negotiation,” Mr. Chirac told Europe 1 radio. “During this negotiation I propose that on the one hand, the six refrain from referring the issue to the Security Council, and that Iran refrain from uranium enrichment during the duration of the negotiation.”

In New York for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, Bush administration officials insisted that the American position had not changed: that the United States would not join the talks until Iran suspended uranium enrichment. They said that the Europeans and Iranians might hold preliminary talks on suspension, and once Iran verifiably suspended enrichment, America could join those talks.

It's a small but significant erosion in the unity of the West, which has had its problems holding a firm line prior to this. Not only did Chirac suggest that negotiations could begin while Iran still operated its enrichment program, he also eschewed sanctions as a solution to Iranian intransigence. "I am never in favor of sanctions," Chirac told a reporter, stating that he's never seen them succeed.

Officials insist that the Bush administration knows about the delicate dance regarding negotiations and enrichment suspension. The White House understands that negotiators want to provide a face-saving way to get everyone to the table, including the US. They want to create a situation where Iran can claim that negotiations started before they stopped their uranium enrichment and also allow the US to claim that they didn't talk to Iran until it stopped. Those are not quite mutually exclusive states, and the diplomats want to find that narrow slice of real estate so that everyone feels satisfied that prerequisites have been met.

Whether this exercise has any use whatsoever is debatable. What isn't debatable is the French collapse on sanctions. It appears that France has joined Russia and China in opposition to enforcing UN resolutions, and has done so in betrayal of an agreement with the US. It's an almost picture-perfect replay of the run-up to the invasion of Iraq at the UNSC, and it signals that the same triumvurate that enriched itself at the Oil-For-Food feast will once again cave on enforcement with Iran and its nuclear program.

Once again, the Security Council cannot find the will to enforce its own resolutions. If Iran fails to comply, they know that the UN will huff and puff and perhaps issue a strongly-worded memo. Chirac has already signaled that the mullahs will face no real consequences from the UNSC if these negotiations produce no settlement, and one has to wonder why they'd even bother now to join talks on the subject. The US and UK need to look to other strategies to end the mullahcracy's grip on power in order to ensure that nuclear weapons do not fall into the hands of millenial lunatics likely to use them.

What will this mean for the UN? After this effort collapses, expect the US to start taking a much harder line with Turtle Bay. They will have proven themselves of little use -- once again.

Spain Gets Realistic About Gibraltar

The Spanish government has lifted travel and communication restrictions on the 28,000 residents on the British enclave of Gibraltar, effectively retreating from its efforts to impose its sovereignty on the Rock:

In an agreement the Foreign Office described as "historic," many of the day-to-day restrictions Spain had imposed on the 28,000 inhabitants of the rock will be lifted.

While the central issue of sovereignty remains untouched under the agreement, diplomats pointed out that talks held in the Spanish city of Cordoba are the first time the Spanish government has agreed to talk directly to Gibraltar's political leadership.

"For the first time, all three parties have negotiated together and have reached agreement together. This is ground-breaking in itself. And it demonstrates that constructive dialogue and co-operation is possible," said Geoff Hoon, the Europe minister.

The restrictions on travel and communication left only the sea as Gibraltar's reliable access. Francisco Franco sealed the land border in 1969, forcing residents and workers to run a labyrinth of security checks to get into or out of Gibraltar. Gibraltar's phones would not connect to the Spanish network, and airplanes had to avoid Spanish airspace to fly into and out of Gibraltar -- a dangerous trick.

The Socialist government that took over after the Madrid bombings has apparently decided to quit while behind. Gibraltar has staged two plebescites, and both affirmed the residents' desire to remain under British control. The Spaniards may regret the concessions offered by the government to Gibraltar, but in the end, they had little choice -- and their insistence on retaining sovereignty of their own enclave on the Moroccan side of Gibraltar doesn't give Spain much moral authority to continue its efforts to take back the Rock.

Border Fence Vote Upcoming

Bill Frist posts that he will push for a vote this week on the border fence proposal currently under debate in the Senate. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 will authorize the construction of 700 miles in border barriers as well as higher-tech methods of security:

One of the most important and most effective ways that we can stop illegal immigration is through the construction and proper maintenance of physical fences along the highest trafficked, most commonly violated sections of our border with Mexico.

Take the case of San Diego. According to the FBI Crime Index, crime in San Diego County dropped 56.3% between 1989 and 2000, after a fence stretching from the Ocean to the mountains near San Diego was substantially completed. And, according to numbers provided by the San Diego Sector Border Patrol in February 2004, apprehensions decreased from 531,689 in 1993 to 111,515 in 2003.

That’s why I strongly support the Secure Fence Act of 2006 … and that’s why I’m bringing this crucial legislation to the floor of the Senate this week for an up-or-down vote. By authorizing the construction of over 700 miles of two-layered reinforced fencing along our southwest border and by mandating the use of cameras, ground sensors, UAVs and other forms of hi-tech surveillance, this legislation would help us gain control over every inch of our borders – once and for all.

I have predicted exactly this move several times since my interview with Frist, and the effort makes political sense. It will force the Senate to vote on an issue that many people see as critical to our national security , and the bill provides a common-sense solution to the chronically porous border in the American Southwest. Those who vote against it, and especially those who attempt to filibuster it, will have to answer why they insisted on linking national security to normalization for illegal immigrants. It also has the ability to fire up a dispirited conservative base and generate enthusiasm for midterm GOTV efforts.

It's a win-win, which is why I knew that Frist would never leave this on the shelf to gather dust.

However, a number of CQ readers noted that the bill does not contain the funding for the border barrier. I exchanged e-mails with a senior Hill staffer earlier this evening and asked about the funding. He told me that the DoD appropriation contains $1.8 billion for 370 miles of the fence. Frist supports more funding for the project, and authorizing the construction will put pressure on Congress to produce the necessary funds -- which by my estimate will take another $1.5 billion, more or less. More appropriations will come through in this final portion of the Congressional session, and perhaps the GOP can get that attached to another bill.

Keep an eye out for the fence's vote later this week. I'm guessing that supporters of comprehensive immigration reform will attempt a filibuster, but it will be tough to go home and explain why Congress can't build a border barrier as a first step towards that end.

A Date To Remember

Today marks two important events in my life, and I hope CQ readers will indulge me a short post to note both. First, today is CQ commenter Vayapaso's birthday. Since Vayapaso also goes by "Mom" around the house, it's safe to say that she's the one commenter most responsible for the blog's existence. Happy birthday, Mom, and hope you have a wonderful day.

Coincidentally, this is also the seventeenth anniversary of the day I met the First Mate. (Apparently I had something else going on other than Mom's birthday in 1989.) Needless to say, September 18th is a pretty damned good day for me, and I'm lucky on both counts.

Just Another Quixotic Monday ....

Perhaps Porkbusters may have another issue to press in the cause of open government. Jeffery Birnbaum reports in today's Washington Post about an exception to election rules requiring immediate electronic filing of political contributions, rules that allow voters to determine to whom politicians may be beholden before casting their votes. Not to worry, though -- the exception only affects 100 offices:

In the next few weeks leading up to Election Day, money will pour into candidates' coffers and voters will be able to see which lobby groups are trying hardest to buy their lawmakers' favor.

Except if the candidates happen to be running for Senate. ...

As it is, almost all senators and Senate candidates deliver their reports on paper (even though those reports are written on computers). The paper filings are laboriously scanned and then key-punched into an electronic system, a procedure that often takes six weeks to finish and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.

After the reports are submitted to the Secretary of the Senate (often well past published deadlines), they are placed onto the Federal Election Commission's Web site in a page-by-page format. The listings are not searchable, which makes it almost impossible for anyone to glean useful information. Think of the process like rummaging through thousands of disorderly papers in a very large box.

The net result: Senators have insolated themselves from criticism that stems from their very important, end-of-campaign donations because they have denied voters accessible information when it would be most useful.

Birnbaum describes this exception as a "quirk", but this hardly seems accidental. As he mentions, this system gives Senators and their challengers a big advantage in the elections, and I suspect it protects incumbents far more than challengers. Controversial contributors can hold off their donations until the final couple of months when the money is critically needed for last-minute attack ads, and voters have no way to determine where politicians got the cash until well after the election ... when most will have lost interest in the provenance of contributions.

How did this exception get created? The Senate has obviously approved tough disclosure rules for House and presidential campaigns, and rightly so. However, the upper chamber has never addressed openness in its own dealings with contributors, and apparently has no plans to do so now. A bipartisan group approached Trent Lott in July, sending a letter requesting that his Committee on Rules and Administration address this hypocrisy, signed by the seven Republicans and four Democrats and spearheaded by Lott's Mississippi colleague Thad Cochran and Russ Feingold. The eleven elicited no better response than did Birnbaum, who got stiffed by a Lott staffer when trying to get a comment for his article.

Now that we have successfully lobbied for searchable databases for the federal budget and for public identification of earmarks, we need to pursue electronic filing of Senatorial election contributions. For some reason, Trent Lott and a number of our elected representatives in the Senate want to keep us from accessing that information in a timely manner. Usually that means they either have something to hide or see the clunky, slow process currently in use as a hedge for their incumbency. We need to remind them that they serve at our pleasure, and that playing games with full disclosure does not please us in the least.

My friends, I spy another windmill that requires our attention!

UPDATE: Meanwhile, our last project is about to cross the finish line, and the Examiner celebrates a new era.

AP Prefers Anecdotes To Real Data

As we approach the midterms, the media will attempt to kneecap Republicans on one of the issues where they can point to real success: the economy. Over the last three years, as the last of the tax cuts came into force and provided more incentive for investment, the economy and job growth have both erupted, resulting in one of the biggest booms over the last twenty years -- and this just after the 9/11 attacks designed to crush our capacity for growth. In doing so, media sources will avoid talking about real data and go on a search for individuals experiencing hard times, arguing a standard that no economy can be good for the nation as long as a few individuals have not prospered from it.

Meet Liz Sidoti, who takes that approach in a release today from the AP, one that will no doubt be reprinted in thousands of client newspapers by tomorrow. Her piece, titled "GOP talk of vibrant economy rings hollow," follows this tired and dishonest playbook to the letter:

FALMOUTH, KY - Used boots fetch $3 and old salt-and-pepper shakers bring in a buck at a makeshift flea market along Highway 27, presumably not what President Bush and Republicans have in mind when they herald a vibrant economy.

Times are "very good for the rich and very, very bad for the poor" who "can't afford to live," laments Larry Mitchell, 43, a now-and-then merchant peddling his wares recently in a submarine sandwich shop parking lot. He says the middle class is "having a hard time."

In the Ohio River Valley, where people decry high gas prices, stagnant wages, lost jobs and factory closures, many don't buy the claim that the economy is humming along.

Seven weeks before the midterm elections, the gulf between Bush's perceptions and that of voters form the political backdrop across the country as well as in a region with several competitive House races. This area typically gets left out of national boom times and usually feels the pinch more than others during slowdowns.

Here and elsewhere differing views on the economy could hurt the GOP's efforts to retain control of the House and Senate this fall, and give voters reason to put Democrats in charge instead.

Sidoti at least relates some of the true economic data, even if she does so dismissively. She reports the 5.7 million jobs created over the last three years, making hash of the argument that Democrats used in 2004 of a "job-free recovery". Remember that canard? That doesn't get a mention in Sidoti's article. She also notes that unemployment is down to its lowest level in almost ten years and that wages are rising, although she claims that inflation takes a big chunk out of them. She also states ominously that economists predict "subdued" growth but most don't expect a recession.

Interesting, then, that she chooses to lead with such a distorted sense of the economy in the first five paragraphs of her piece. If Sidoti's job is to report the news, then why doesn't she do so until halfway down the piece, and why did the AP headline writer create such a misleading banner for the story?

The Bureau of Economic Analysis has much better information than the AP provides. The annual rate of growth for 2006 hummed along at 2.9% in the second quarter, down from a more spectacular 5.6% in Q1 but still respectable growth. Disposable income is up 2.5% over the same month as last year in real terms as of July, the last month the BEA reported the data. It went up 0.5% over the previous month, again the latest in a string of increases.

By all measures, the economy has grown substantially and broadly, and it continues to do so. Instead of reporting the real effects of the economic policies of the last few years, the media seems determined to distort the record by highlighting the exceptions and eschewing real data for anecdotes. Unfortunately, Sidoti's approach will surprise no one familiar with the media's political biases.

Robert Mugabe's Helpful Touch

Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has earned a reputation as one of the leading thugs of Africa. The leader of Zimbabwe has turned a once self-sufficient nation into a starving wasteland in which a very few elites garner all of the wealth to themselves. Those who oppose his efforts to enrich himself at the expense of the millions of starving Zimbabweans get treated to a painful form of government attention, as the London Times reports:

THE beating stopped as the sun began to go down. After two-and-a-half hours, the fourteen men and one woman held at Matapi police station in Mbare township, Harare, had suffered five fractured arms, seven hand fractures, two sets of ruptured eardrums, fifteen cases of severe buttock injuries, deep soft-tissue bruising all over, and open lacerations.

The 15 included Wellington Chibebe, the leader of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), and senior officials of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

“As a case of police brutality on a group, it is the worst I’ve ever seen,” a doctor who helped to attend to them said.

President Mugabe’s security agencies are notorious for violent assault, but this was the first time that the top strata of the Opposition had been subjected to severe physical attack.

Some of the victims spoke for the first time yesterday about the assaults that took place after police broke up an attempted protest by the trade unions against the Government’s ruinous handling of the economy.

The savagery of the attacks is seen as indicating the jitteriness in the Government over its hold on power amid the desperate poverty into which President Mugabe has sunk Zimbabweans. “It was carried out as a deliberate, premeditated warning, from the highest level, to anyone else who tries mass protest, that this is what will happen to them,” a Western diplomatic source said.

Zimbabwe has a long and twisted history, as do many of the African nations in the post-colonial period. Formerly the British colony of Rhodesia, it first gained independence by fiat in the mid-60s under white Prime Minister Iain Smith. Britain refused to recognize Smith's declaration and pushed UN sanctions on the country. A civil war erupted, which threw Mugabe and fellow rebel Joseph Nkomo to power and brought South African troops to Smith's aid. The war continued until 1979, when all sides agreed to a democratic form of government and independence for the new nation of Zimbabwe.

This supposedly showed how colonial masters could be overthrown; Stevie Wonder sang that "peace has come to Zimbabwe", but it came in the form of Mugabe, the first PM of Zimbabwe and later its first (and only) "executive president". Mugabe started a program of kicking out the white farmers, who had remained in Zimbabwe and produced enough crops to feed the nation, and giving the land to other interests. These other interests did not have much interest in -- or talent for -- farming, and Zimbabwe had to import more and more food, falling further and further into poverty.

Mugabe has broken the agricultural back of the nation and created massive inflation. He has destroyed the economic system of Zimbabwe. His political supporters have rigged elections and rewritten the nation's laws to keep themselves in power. The only organized civil opposition has come from the labor unions, which have pushed to get free elections in order to push Mugabe out.

It comes as no surprise that Mugabe's use of force has escalated into the open, but it is a worrisome development, at least in the near term. It indicates that Mugabe either feels so secure that he can openly beat the opposition leadership, or his position has become tenuous enough that he feels he has to do so. Both conditions indicate that Zimbabwe will experience a great deal more violence in the near future, and the former portends more than the latter.

Has Socialism Started Retreating In Europe?

Two weeks ago, I wrote about Nicolas Sarkozy's electoral strategy to run against the "60s mentality" in France and support market based reforms of the French socialized economy and government. Yesterday, Europe's most socialistic government fell as economic moderates beat them in national elections, promising to scale back the nanny-state programs that have created widespread unemployment and malaise:

SWEDEN’S centre-right alliance won a narrow general election victory to end 12 years of Social Democrat rule last night after a campaign dominated by the future direction of Europe’s most generous welfare state.

Fredrik Reinfeldt, the youthful right-wing leader likened to David Cameron for the way he dropped traditional policies to modernise his party, saw off the veteran Göran Persson, Europe’s second longest- serving Prime Minister.

Mr Reinfeldt, 41, based his appeal around reforming rather than overhauling Sweden’s social welfare system, with plans to cut the sickness benefits that account for 16 per cent of public spending.

His attack on Sweden’s hidden unemployment among the long-term sick, the early retired and those on pointless government schemes struck a chord with younger Swedes struggling to find work.

Mr Reinfeldt’s campaign was watched closely by centre-right parties across Europe, who will have been buoyed by the way that he beat the left on their home territory of popular state-funded health, education and social care services.

After a generation of socialism, Europeans may have discovered the benefits of investment and personal responsibility. Of all the European nations, only Norway can afford their nanny-state structure, which floats on an ocean of oil revenue. All of the other highly-socialized nations survive on deficit spending despite restrictions on red ink from the EU. France and Germany reneged on fiscal-responsibility requirements, and the rest of Europe didn't do much better.

The Swedes apparently want a new direction. Reinfeldt's opponents, the Social Democrats, offered new taxes to pay for the expensive programs that have stultified the Swedish economy. Their leader, Goran Persson, didn't learn any lessons from the election, promising to generate a "powerful opposition" to stop "right-wing welfare shifts". Swedes voted for just that -- a modernisation and scaling down of their creaky social welfare programs.

Sarkozy and Reinfeldt may herald a new direction for Europe. If France and Sweden start retreating from socialism, the rest of the Continent may rethink their love affair with cradle-to-grave welfare structures that take money out of the marketplace and hand it to bureaucrats, stripping culture of any production incentives. If the Europeans seriously embark on this kind of reform, the EU could seriously compete against the US economy.

Would More Troops In Anbar Help?

The New York Times takes a look at a question that has plagued the Iraq mission from the beginning, and which continues to stir debate to this day. With the latest alarming reports coming out of Anbar, Thom Shanker asks whether more troops would improve the situation -- and gets a mixed response:

IN the lawless villages and empty deserts of Anbar Province, the Sunni heartland that provides safe haven for indigenous insurgents and foreign terrorists, what could an American commander do if more troops showed up?

This tantalizing “what if?” is being debated with renewed intensity after it was revealed last week that a Marine Corps intelligence assessment said Anbar’s dire security situation could be improved only by injecting more economic aid and a division’s worth of troops to reinforce the current 30,000-strong coalition contingent. ...

The answer is, they would help, in the short term. But many military analysts also warn that sending in another division — anywhere from 12,00 to 15,000 troops — could create more problems. An extra division could flood the zone in Anbar, a province the size of Louisiana stretching from the west of Baghdad to the Syrian border.

Currently, the American military is continuing its “clear, hold and build” policy: pushing insurgents from key towns, sending in Iraqi and coalition forces to maintain security and trying to rebuild local governments and businesses. Despite the return of some insurgents, the military points to successes in cities like Falluja. But troops can’t begin to secure other important towns like Ramadi, Haditha and Hit.

In my debate at Macalester College last week, the same question got asked of the panel, and I had no ready response. In the beginning, the light, fast-moving force that toppled Saddam Hussein appeared perfectly designed for the mission. We left a small footprint and moved like lightning into Baghdad, surprising Saddam and his henchmen and crushing his regime in three weeks.

Since then, the numbers have not appeared strong enough to maintain law and order, especially in the beginning. Many wondered why the US disbanded the Iraqi Army, but in truth the army disbanded itself; they deserted as soon as the Coalition cut them off. Saddam's police also disappeared, leaving the cities and towns in a state of chaos, a situation that the Pentagon anticipated but in smaller scope.

As a result, the Coalition forces wound up policing Iraq as well as fighting an ongoing insurgency, and that has stretched the forces in Iraq farther than anyone desired. The US had no choice but to train new security forces, recruiting from the people oppressed by Saddam Hussein before the invasion, a process that necessarily takes a long time to accomplish. Three years after the end of Saddam's reign, the elected Iraqi government and the US has finally begun to field enough Iraqi troops to start securing entire provinces.

Not Anbar, however, and Shankar reports that adding another division would create as many problems as it would solve. At a point in time where the Iraqis expect to see fewer Americans and more Iraqis on patrol. They could help in securing the Syrian border, a particular problem in Anbar, and perhaps do more rebuilding in some areas. It could also help hold down the insurgency in cities such as Ramadi.

The US wants to have its end-game strategy in place, and adding new troops -- even if we could find them -- would not appreciable alter what the Pentagon and the Iraqi government see as the trajectory of the mission. The key remains the training and deployment of native Iraqi forces. The US can clear areas, but it takes the Iraqis to hold them, and adding more troops will not alter that fact. A larger deployment in the beginning would have made the job easier, perhaps, but not at this point.

What will likely happen is that US forces freed from assignments elsewhere will go to Anbar and Baghdad instead of coming home immediately. Iraqi forces have taken over one province entirely and are poised to replace Coalition forces in three or four more before the end of the year. American troops in those areas will almost certainly get shifted to the hot spots in an effort to play the string out a little longer while Iraqi security forces come up to speed. As Anbar commander Maj. General Richard Zilner tells Shanker, the ultimate solution will have to come from the Iraqis.

UPDATE: This news helps, of course:

Nearly all the tribes from Iraq’s volatile Sunni-dominated Anbar Province have agreed to join forces and fight Al Qaeda insurgents and other foreign-backed “terrorists,” an influential tribal leader said Sunday. Iraqi government leaders encouraged the movement.

Twenty-five of about 31 tribes in Anbar, a vast, mostly desert region that stretches westward from Baghdad to the borders of Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, have united against insurgents and gangs that are “killing people for no reason,” said the tribal leader, Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi.

The Times tries to pour a little cold water on the announcement, questioning how much enthusiasm will accompany their efforts, but the public nature of the agreement carries a lot of weight. It looks like Zilner has made quite a bit of effort to fulfill his own prophecy by winning support from the tribal leaders.

The Icognito Victory Lap

Hassan Nasrallah wants to celebrate Hezbollah's "victory" with a massive rally in Beirut, in the suburbs that have served as a Hezbollah stronghold for decades. That apparently won't be enough for Nasrallah, however, as he will not commit to appearing at his own victory rally:

Hizbullah's leader on Sunday called for a massive rally in Beirut's bombed out southern suburbs to mark the militant group's "victory" over Israel during the monthlong fighting this summer.

Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said the rally, to be held Friday evening, would show Hizbullah's "absolute commitment to our right to recover our land and prisoners and defend our nation, its dignity, freedom, sovereignty and real and full independence in the face of [Israeli] occupation."

"I call on all of you to participate in this victory rally," he said in a brief, televised speech broadcast on Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV station.

Nasrallah, who went into hiding on July 12, the start of the 34-day war, and has not been seen publicly since, did not say whether he would take part personally in the rally. He has hinted in interviews that he would appear at some point, possibly at a rally, but did not say when.

Nasrallah has to be the best stand-up (or ducked-down) comic in Lebanon. He wants to stage a massive victory rally -- only the second such demonstration for Hezbollah in that area -- but cannot show up to it himself for fear of the people who he supposedly beat in the war he's celebrating.

Memo to Hassan: The grand marshal of victory parades generally show up for their round of approbation. When they can't make it, it's not because their enemy has so much reach that the victor can't show his face in public.

There is a word for people in Nasrallah's position: loser.

Rightroots: The John Hawkins Interview

Yesterday, Mitch Berg and I had the pleasure of interviewing John Hawkins regarding the Rightroots initiative on our Northern Alliance Radio Network show. John, the proprietor of Right Wing News, put together this effort on behalf of the conservative blogosphere to raise funds for key races that we feel are critical in holding onto Republican control of both chambers of Congress. This gives people living in districts that do not feature competitive races or states that have no Senate seat at risk to put their contributions where they will have the most impact.

As of now, we have topped the 100-contribution mark in this 15-day spotlight effort days before the deadline. The rest of the candidates have more than half of their contribution goals, and we have raised over $38,000 in ten short days. That gives us a total of almost $90,000 for these fine candidates, none of whom have the advantage of incumbency. They all have good shots at winning their races, but they need your assistance to ensure their victory.

The podcast of our interview with John is here. John's a great guest and we're going to have him back soon to discuss more about this year's election. Listen to John and break out your wallets for some excellent candidates.

An Open Letter To Pope Benedict XVI

To His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI:

I went to church angry today for the first time in quite a while, perhaps since 9/11. We are called to humble ourselves when we worship God, and while I'm far from being the world's best example of Catholicism, I usually prepare myself by recalling my sins and my flaws before Mass begins -- not usually a difficult task, I'm afraid to say.

Unfortunately, today my anger got the best of me, and I struggled through an otherwise excellent service by our pastor.

Why should this be so? Before I went to Mass, I read about the senseless murder of Sister Leonella Sgorbati, who got shot three times by Islamists in Mogadishu, where she worked as a volunteer nurse to the Somalian poor. The shooting came in response to the outrage and violence that sprang from protests over your speech last week at the University of Regensburg. Christian Churches have been firebombed and taken gunfire, and we will probably see even greater escalations of violence until you meet their demands to withdraw your remarks about the irreligious nature of violent conversion.

I'm angry about the fact that a speech given by you has been manipulated by Muslims into rationales for their violence. I'm also angry because your apology this morning -- which at least did not extend to withdrawing your main point of the speech -- seems to give credence to their rationales.

In this, you appear to have withdrawn at least partially from your main point -- that the rejection of reason and dialogue amounts to a rejection of God, within whom reason and faith finally meet. You bravely attempted to open a Socratic dialogue with Muslims on this very point, inviting them to move away from violence and extortion in the spread of their faith and encouraging them to use rhetoric and reason to support their doctrines.

They answered you by murdering one of your flock, and if we're lucky, we'll only lose one.

If Islam is ever to peacefully co-exist with other faiths in the manner that Christendom finally learned how to do, then it has to start abiding questions and criticisms without resorting to violence. Islam has to learn to persuade and to attract people through reason, not through forced conversions and coexistence through violent supremacy. Muslim leaders around the world still believe that our faith can only exist at their sufferance, and any question of their doctrinal beliefs has to be met with violence or demands for apologies, not with rhetoric, facts, and reason.

We cannot enable that to continue. We must demand that they renounce violence and intimidation. When you apologize and retreat, they understand that as a triumph for their religion, a victory won with force and threats rather than through intellectual engagement. This encourages more of the same. The West had the opportunity to stand up to the same angry hordes earlier this year during the controversy over the Danish editorial cartoons that depicted Mohammed, and many of us gave into the threats and violence rather than stand up for the freedom of speech, religious practice, and editorial commentary. In both cases, Muslims ironically proved the point of the criticism leveled at them.

Do not apologize for speaking the truth. Stand up to the threats and violence and make the world understand that no one of any faith or of no faith at all has to be cowed or intimidated into silence. Your predecessor, John Paul the Great, risked his life by providing a beacon of courage against the might and will of Communism, and he outlived it in the end. We won't outlive the violent nature of radical Islam, but we can provide the basis for Christianity's survival by standing against it now.

As always, we hold you in our prayers and recognize the awesome responsibilities on your shoulders as the defender of Christianity. We pray that the Holy Spirit strengthens you in this most difficult mission.

Your brother in Christ,

Ed Morrissey

MIchelle Malkin notes that messages of support can be sent to Benedict XVI at benedictxvi-at-vatican.va. I will send this as a message to him, and I encourage CQ readers to send your own thoughts to Benedict as well.

UPDATE: Misspelled "Catholicism" earlier, as Amy Proctor noted in the comments. D'oh! Well, just another item on my long list for my next confession...

The Religion Of The Peace Of Surrender

In what could only be described as a depressingly predictable escalation, Somalian Islamists shot an elderly Catholic nun in the back three times, killing the woman who had served as a nurse to Mogadishu's poverty-stricken people. It came as Pope Benedict XVI offered an apology for using inflammatory language while Muslim activists and leaders around the world proclaimed it insufficient:

An Italian nun was shot dead at a hospital by Somali gunmen Sunday, hours after a leading Muslim cleric condemned Pope Benedict XVI for his remarks on Islam and violence.

The nun, who was not immediately identified, was shot in the back at S.O.S. Hospital in northern Mogadishu by two gunmen, said Mohamed Yusuf, a doctor at the facility, which serves mothers and children. The nun's bodyguard and a hospital worker were also killed, doctors said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, and it was not clear if it was directly linked to the pope's comments. Two people had been arrested, said Yusuf Mohamed Siad, head of security for the Islamic militia that controls Mogadishu.

Earlier Sunday, a Somali cleric criticized the comments the pope made in a speech last week for offending Muslims. The pope had cited the words of a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, Islam's founder, as "evil and inhuman."

News agencies around the world have tripped over themselves to emphasize that any connection between this cowardly murder by so-called men and the lunatic anger gripping Muslim hordes around the world over one sentence in a speech given earlier this week is somehow "unclear". Well, let's see ... what would an old nun, serving as a nurse in Mogadishu, have done to get shot in the back three times? And besides, even if they were unconnected, why have we not seen the level of rage and rhetorical anger coming from these same Muslim leaders over her death -- which after all, is somewhat less ephemeral than a speech referencing a dialogue from 600 years ago?

Benedict's apology hasn't managed to quell that rage, either. After issuing his second apology in three days for upsetting Muslims who apparently can't read, they continue to demand a more clear submission to their rage:

Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday that he was "deeply sorry" about the angry reaction to his recent remarks about Islam, which he said came from a text that didn't reflect his personal opinion.

"These (words) were in fact a quotation from a Medieval text which do not in any way express my personal thought," Benedict told pilgrims at his summer palace outside Rome. ...

"At this time I wish also to add that I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims," the pope said Sunday.

How did that go over? The former leader of Cairo's most influential mosque retorted that "It is not enough. He should apologize because he insulted the beliefs of Islam. He must apologize in a frank way and say he made a mistake." A Saudi professor told his television audience that Benedict "is evading apology" and refuses to admit he was wrong. The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, on the other hand, advised Muslims to keep up their rage for only a limited time, because "many Europeans are not following (the church) so what he said won't influence them."

What should influence Europeans and the West is this repetition of the Prophet Cartoons ugliness all over again. The Muslims are not interested in a Socratic dialogue, such as the kind proposed by Benedict in his speech, if one actually bothered to read it. They completely reject any notion of critical thinking when it comes to their doctrines, their laws, and their beliefs. They can make all the comments they want about Jews being descended from pigs and monkeys and the "polytheism" of Christians, but if anyone utters a word of scholarly criticism about Islam, the murders begin until someone admits that Islam is better than any other faith.

This drips with irony -- because Benedict spoke about precisely this impulse in his speech. It's conversion or submission by the sword all over again.

The West has to determine when they will quit enabling this impulse among the barbarians of the Middle East, and I use that term deliberately. This goes far beyond the idea of a lunatic fringe; it is representative of at least a significant part of the Islamic culture around the world, as any cursory glance at their media will demonstrate. This second outrage reminds me once again of the escalating series of terrorist attacks on American assets in the 1990s. The Islamic world is telling us once again that they consider themselves at war with the West, and as with the Prophet Cartoons, it's not just a handful of terrorists . We're simply refusing to recognize the declaration of war. Instead, we're offering apologies that would satisfy Western rhetoricists while the Muslims specifically reject reason in its entirety.

We're not even talking the same language, and we're not recognizing the threat to our civilization. These people want to silence us, and they will use murder and terrorism to do so. It's not about oil; what oil does the Vatican buy and pump in the Midde East? It's about supremacy and Islamic triumphalism. Either we win this struggle or we lose it, but we cannot escape it. Muslim leaders around the world will not allow us to remain on the fence between freedom and the submission of dhimmitude.

UPDATE: Keep an eye on Michelle Malkin for updates to this story. Unfortunately, there will be many more over the next few days, and no one will cover it like Michelle.

UPDATE II: Dafydd has late-breaking updates of Muslims speaking out against the irrational rage and hatred. Funny, but we've heard the same exact responses after other examples of Muslim outrage.

UPDATE III: I forgot to hat-tip CQ reader/commenter Keemo for some of the links. Keemo's been around since the beginning of the blog, I believe.

Jefferson's Corruption Goes Beyond Bribery (Bumped)

When the FBI found $90,000 of cash in William Jefferson's freezer and raided his office on Capitol Hill, many observers believed that law enforcement suspected the Louisiana Congressman of the usual pedestrian corruption -- taking money from special interests and shooting federal money into their pockets, as well as his. However, as Christopher Drew reports in the New York Times, Jefferson had a much more far-reaching abuse of power in mind. Instead, he had conspired to wrest control of iGate from its founder, Vernon Jackson, and exploit the company for the benefit of his family:

For nearly five years, the inventor and the congressman had carried the message that Mr. Jackson’s company, iGate, could help close the “digital divide” by delivering high-speed Internet access to poor blacks around the world.

They had flown to Africa to seek business opportunities, and they had talked up iGate to potential partners at the Kentucky Derby and the United States Open tennis tournament in New York.

But now, with iGate starved for cash, Mr. Jackson was convinced that Mr. Jefferson, his “friend on the Hill,” was about to betray him, Mr. Harper recalled.

Over breakfast at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, the congressman had made a proposal that, in Mr. Jackson’s view, was tantamount to theft: in return for a quick infusion of cash, Mr. Harper said, Mr. Jefferson and his investors would take control of iGate and its promising broadband patents while easing Mr. Jackson aside and cutting off most of the company’s creditors.

Unbeknownst to the two men, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been monitoring their dealings. Less than three weeks later, agents raided Mr. Jefferson’s homes, in Washington and in New Orleans, and found stacks of cash stuffed in a freezer.

Jackson has pleaded guilty to bribing Jefferson, spending $400,000 to get assistance from the man who later would try to steal his company. While I have extremely limited sympathy for Jackson, who seems to have reaped a little rough justice with his attempt to buy influence, the description of Jefferson's infiltration of iGate is nothing short of breathtaking. One disturbing element of the story is Jefferson's acquisition of 30 million shares of iGate -- about one quarter of the company.

This goes beyond corruption. This is a gross abuse of power, and it sheds some light on why the FBI was so adamant about raiding Jefferson's office. Read all of Drew's report.

UPDATE and BUMP: I'm bumping this into Sunday because I want to make sure that people get a chance to see this. It occurred to me later in the day that Drew's excellent reporting came out on the least-read newspaper day of the week. Saturday is a graveyard for news items, and this seems too explosive to get buried. Why didn't the Times wait until Monday, and shouldn't this be front-page news?

Let's tak a look at the Jefferson tentacles in iGate:

* His wife, Andrea, had a marketing contract with iGate.
* His eldest daughter did legal work for the company.
* Andrea's brother-in-law was iGate's chief engineer.
* His wife and five daughters formed a consultancy that acquired 31 million shares of stock -- a 25% interest in iGate -- at no cost.

Drew gives a great look at the consultancy, which got formed just as Jefferson told Jackson that he could no longer provide assistance to iGate. ANJ Consulting comprised a university chancellor (Andrea), a lawyer and four college and high-school students (his daughters). For this expertise, ANJ got $7500 a month, a commission on sales and investments, and stock options in the company, an unusual arrangement for a consultancy, although not illegal.

It's really too long to excerpt here, so once again I urge people to read all of Drew's excellent article. It underscores the extraordinary corruption in play at iGate and Jefferson's offices.