Back At Home

We just returned from facilitating the Engaged Encounter weekend, and once again, we're exhausted but happy to have been of service to a group of fine young couples and helping to build families. The First Mate and I plan to do nothing but relax around the house tomorrow, and that means I'll get a chance to catch up.

That doesn't mean that The Anchoress has to sail off quite yet. She's posted some excellent articles here today, and hopefully she will continue tomorrow. Maybe we'll have a blog-off or something ...

I just got done reading the comment thread on the Trek post -- great responses from all of you. Dafydd at Big Lizards wrote me a lengthy e-mail about the post, and I'm hoping he'll either post it at Big Lizards or let me post it here. Fascinating, as Spock might say.

For now, however, I'm calling it a night. I think I'll try to catch some video of the latest Notre Dame escape act against a tough UCLA defense, and then dream of BCS bowl bids.

Don Giovanni Swept into Hell - Updated

Ah, here's the stuff! Someone has uploaded the chilling Commandatore scene of from the 2000 Metropolitan performance of Don Giovanni, with Bryn Terfel as Giovanni, the wonderful Ferruccio Furlanetto as Leporello and Sergei Koptchak as the Commandatore.

Some might be familiar with this scene as it was depicted in Milos Foreman's film, Amadeus. This is the part wherein the evil and unrepentant rakehell/rapist/murderer Don Giovanni, having flippantly invited the ghostly statue of the Commandatore (whom he had killed in the opening scene, after trying to rape his daughter) to sup, finds the statue has accepted. The chilling being is an entity Giovanni can neither charm nor best, and it challenges Don Giovanni to face up to his life, repent of his sins and embrace his last chance for salvation.

I don't know how the good Captain feels about embedding stuff from youtube, so the link is here.

Don Giovanni is wearing a large cross recently bestowed upon him by the foolishly besotted Donna Elvira who, also worried for his soul, had interrupted his gargantuan meal to plead her case. He repays Elvira for her love and concern by attempting to force himself upon her - on the dining table - before Leporello rescues her and escorts her away. Thence comes the Commandatore. Leporello cowers, the Commandatore makes a non-negotiable offer and Don Giovanni, after his initial shock at seeing his victim come forth a terrifying a supernatural spectre, proceeds to mock the being, his offer, the notion of salvation, and so forth.

Then, of course, he gets sucked down into hell. Terfel is wonderfully cold, imperious and intense.

Some prefer more post-modern, less literal adaptations. I've seen a few, and was unimpressed with a blue-jeans clad Giovanni eating McDonalds before a hungry Leporello. I rather like this tradition depiction - the sets by Franco Zeffereli are terrific and so are the costumes. Enjoy...for as long as the thing is up, anyway!

Update: Someone has just posted a less intense moment from Don Giovanni; his attempted seduction of the new bride Zerlina, as Terfel and Hei-Yung Hong sing La Ci Darem La Mano.

And because it is one of the best parts of this production, you have to check out Ferruccio Furlanetto singingLeporello's Catalogue Aria to a dismayed Donna Elvira - enumerating and expounding on his master's many sexual conquests, (In Spain, 1003!) while an amused Don Giovanni listens in. It's delicious, and while Furlanetto barks some of it, he's still great!

Crossposted at The Anchoress Online.

Fallaci gifts pontifical school

The headline is deplorable (she deserves to be named) but I knew immediately that they were writing about the great Oriana Fallaci, here: Atheist gifts pontifical school in will

An Italian journalist and self-described atheist who died last month has left most of her books and notes to a pontifical university in Rome because of her admiration for Pope Benedict XVI, a school official said Saturday.

In one of her final interviews, Fallaci told The Wall Street Journal: "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true."

You'll want to read the whole article, it's pretty good.

Fallaci was a fascinating creature and I think the left is making a cowardly mistake in distancing themselves from her because of her ardent writings on Europe and the rising threat from Islamofascists. In decreeing Fallaci insufficiently tolerant, the left has been slowly but surely throwing away one of its most interesting and honorable legends. I love this story about her:

Forced to wear a chador while interviewing the Ayotollah Khomeini, Fallaci asked a more insolent question: “How do you swim in a chador?” Khomeini snapped, “Our customs are none of your business. If you do not like Islamic dress you are not obliged to wear it. Because Islamic dress is for good and proper young women.” Fallaci saw an opening, and charged in. “That’s very kind of you, Imam. And since you said so, I’m going to take off this stupid, medieval rag right now.” She yanked off her chador.

That the fierce, passionate and relentlessly cerebral Fallaci, a former resistance fighter against true fascists, is shunted aside and called a "fascist" by know-it-all collegiate bookstore clerks while feminist clowns rule the day is a sad reflection of our dumbed-down era and the devolution of genuine, "classically liberal" thought.

It's alright. In 20 years, we'll still be talking about Oriana Fallaci. I doubt we'll be able to name her detractors. Her most recent books translated to English were The Rage and the Pride and The Force of Reason. Both are brilliant, thoughtful, passionate, maddening and moving and whether you agree with her or not, she will challenge you to think. When or if the third book in that trilogy will be translated to English is anyone's guess, given the times. I'm not even sure of its title.

While Fallaci was dying of cancer, she couldn't eat, so she drank champagne, instead. I love that. She lived a life.

Crossposted at The Anchoress Online.

There's an art to good politics

Peggy Noonan wrote a column in this week's WSJ that touched on the artlessness of our current crop of politicos, none of whom seem to posess the deft and graceful footwork of presidents and legislators of the past. She wrote:

The dance is where you see the joy of the joust. It's a gifted pro making his moves. It's a moment of humor, wit or merriness on the trail; it's the clever jab or the unexpected line that flips an argument. It's a thing in itself and is so much itself, so distinctive, that whether you are left, right or center, red team or blue, you can look at the moves of a guy on the other side and say with honest admiration: "Man, that was good."

FDR, of course, could dance. He gets caught breaking a vow he'd made in Philadelphia when first running for president. What to do? He and his aides agree. "First thing, deny we were in Philadelphia!"

She is correct, of course. The most successful politicians (or at least the most faithfully beloved) had among their gifts the ability to laugh at themselves (as W manages to do from time - to - time, and Bill Clinton did very well) and to even mock their opponents with well-placed, humorous parry that draws a little blood but leaves both standing, even as the rest of us smile and mutter, like Osric, "a hit, a very palpable hit."

A terrific example of Noonan's point has just played out on the political stage this week, involving Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Senator John Edwards, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the wife of our former president.

In a nutshell, Mrs Edwards - speaking off the cuff - managed to put her foot into it by declaring that while she and Mrs. Clinton are both women of a generation, she, Mrs. Edwards, thought she might be a bit more joyful than Hillary. Which, while perhaps not the greatest thing one can say about another, is not exactly awful, either. Then came, of course, within a 24-hour newscycle, Mrs. Edwards' humble apology to Mrs. Clinton, along with the standard, responsibility-deflecting excuse:

"Unfortunately, large portions of the material released by (Ladies' Home Journal) as quoted statements by me were erroneous and nearly all the statements, either because of significant omissions, or editing, or error, give a misimpression about what I said," Edwards said. "This is particularly true with respect to my comments about Sen. Clinton, who holds a serious and demanding public office while I am largely home, joyfully I must admit, with two lovely children."

Edwards also said she has "great respect" for the senator.

This reminds me of two amusing scenes: One is First Lady Hillary Clinton's excuse for kissing Suha Arafat after listening to Mrs. Arafat proclaim in a speech that Israel was targeting women and children and poisoning the Palestinian water supply. Called on the kiss, Mrs. Clinton's excuse was that she didn't realize what Arafat had said. She had a "bad translation" of the speech. Everyone else got the accurate translation, but the First Lady and Wife of the American President got...you know...the bad copy of the translation. She couldn't be held responsible!

This Edwards/Clinton brouhaha also brings to mind the Trial of Clevinger in Joseph Heller's Catch-22. In Mrs. Edwards tortured attempt to insure her apology is sufficiently broad and groveling she sounds like Clevinger, finally understanding what a prosecutor wants from him and - drawing a deep breath - delivering the line: I always never said you couldn't defeat him, sir.

I always never said you weren't joyful, Hillary!

The whole episode has been artless and humorless and it has squashed anything like thoughtful commentary from either side. Mrs. Edwards it seems, was being not malicious but merely thoughtful when she made her comparison - her comment was clearly a stream of consciousness moment, an unfinished thought. Mrs. Clinton made no public comment but perhaps she should have. If Mrs. Clinton had the political acumen of those who've gone before her - or of her husband - she might have thought back to moment during last year's State of the Union address during which President Bush made a gentle joke about Bill Clinton's growing relationship with the Bush parents and the cameras showed Hillary glaring while everyone else in the chamber managed a chuckle. Having remembered that, she might have made a thoughtful and, if not self-deprecating, at least gracious statement, herself. Something along these lines:

"Mrs. Edwards has survived treatment for breast cancer, and it is not surprising that, coming out the other side of such an ordeal, she has managed to find real joyfulness in her life. That's a blessing. I'm both happy for Elizabeth and grateful that she has reminded me - reminded all of us - that every life has its share of gifts and burdens, and that if we must endure the burdens, we ought to try to remember to find the joy in the gifts. Indeed, joyfulness is something I need to work on, myself. And, hey, I can feel some joy coming on...for all of us...on November 8th!"

It's not really that difficult. It takes a willingness to drop the imperiousness, think a thing through and be a little warm. Instead, Hillary did the silence, then the apology-acceptance, but she left us all with the same sense we've always had of her: Joyless, humorless, entitled, Godfather-esque. Kiss the ring and back out. Very good. You can go back to your little life, now, Mrs. Edwards, and when I need you, you'll be there for me.

A shame. Hillary had a chance to be "human Hillary" and she blew it. And to my way of thinking Elizabeth Edwards blew it, too. She could have done so much better than, "the magazine quoted me badly, I adore Hillary, of course I didn't mean that!"

She could have said. "Yes, that's exactly what I said, but I meant nothing negative. I think Mrs. Clinton is smart enough, herself, to know what I'm talking about, and that she'd be the first to say she is often working too hard, and not smelling enough roses."

That would have been refreshing. And artful, too. Just my opinion, but I think America would hae been keenly interested and grateful to see either woman allow this small episode to play out differently - less predictably and defensively - than it did.

Crossposted at The Anchoress Online.

Was Star Trek Fascist?

I wrote this earlier in the week and teed it up for the weekend.

As long-time CQ readers know, my nickname came from my love of the various incarnations of Star Trek. It started in the 1970s, when I started watching the original series on re-runs, which inexplicably drove my father (the Admiral Emeritus) up the wall, considering he spent almost 30 years of his life working on the space program (Gemini, Apollo, and the Shuttle). I cheered when the movies came out, grew addicted all over again with The Next Generation, and finally ran out of enthusiasm somewhere in the middle of Deep Space Nine. I never attended the conventions, for a variety of reasons, and now catch a rerun or two occasionally.

Even when the various shows were must-see for me, though, I always had some discomfort with the future that ST presented, especially on The Next Generation. It didn't take long to discover that hardly anything existed outside of Star Fleet or academia as far as Earth was concerned, and the various alien societies always contrasted against the sterile functionocracy of humanity in the 24th century. No one seemed to do anything but research or enlist in the military, which was made to appear as the pinnacle of all human endeavor -- even as the writers pressed their anti-war messages to the fore.

This week, I stumbled onto an essay by Dr. Kelley Ross of Los Angeles Valley College in Van Nuys that cuts to the heart of the dissonance I felt then and now about Star Trek -- and the cluelessness of Utopianism in general. In the essay "The Fascist Ideology of Star Trek", points out the inherent contradictions in the Star Trek philosophy:

Star Trek typically reflects certain political, social, and metaphysical views, and on close examination they are not worthy of the kind of tribute that is often paid to Star Trek as representing an edifying vision of things.

In a 1996 newspaper column, James P. Pinkerton, discussing the new Star Trek movie (the eighth), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), quotes Captain Picard saying how things have changed in his day, "The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force; we work to better humanity." Perhaps Picard never stopped to reflect that greater wealth means greater material well being, which is to the betterment of humanity much more than any empty rhetoric. But this is typical of Star Trek. A first season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode called "The Neutral Zone," has Picard getting up on his high horse with a three hundred year old businessman who is revived from suspended animation: The businessman, naturally, wants to get in touch with his agents to find out what has happened to his investments. Picard loftily informs him that such things don't exist anymore. Indeed, poverty and want have been abolished, but how this was accomplished is never explained. All we know is, that however it is that people make a living, it isn't through capitalism as we know it. Stocks, corporations, banking, bonds, letters of credit -- all these things seem to have disappeared. We never see Picard, or anyone else, reviewing his investment portfolio. And those who still have a lowly interest in buying and selling, like the Ferengi, are not only essentially thieves, but ultimately only accept payment in precious commodities. In the bold new future of cosmic civilization, galactic trade is carried on in little better than a Phoenician style of barter, despite the possibilities of pan-galactic banking and super-light speed money transfers made possible by "sub-space" communications. ...

If daily life is not concerned with familiar economic activities and the whole of life is not informed with religious purposes, then what is life all about in Star Trek? Well, the story is about a military establishment, Star Fleet, and one ship in particular in the fleet, the Enterprise. One might not expect this to provide much of a picture of ordinary civilian life; and it doesn't. One never sees much on Earth apart from the Star Fleet Academy and Picard's family farm in France -- unless of course we include Earth's past, where the Enterprise spends much more time than on the contemporaneous Earth. Since economic life as we know it is presumed not to exist in the future, it would certainly pose a challenge to try and represent how life is conducted and how, for instance, artifacts like the Enterprise get ordered, financed, and constructed. And if it is to be represented that things like "finance" don't exist, one wonders if any of the Trek writers or producers know little details about Earth history like when Lenin wanted to get along without money and accounting and discovered that Russia's economy was collapsing on him. Marx's prescription for an economy without the cash nexus was quickly abandoned and never revived. Nevertheless, Marx's dream and Lenin's disastrous experiment is presented as the noble and glorious future in Star Trek: First Contact, where Jean Luc Picard actually says, "Money doesn't exist in the Twenty-Fourth Century."

So what one is left with in Star Trek is military life. Trying to soften this by including families and recreation on the Enterprise in fact makes the impression worse, since to the extent that such a life is ordinary and permanent for its members, it is all the easier to imagine that all life in the Federation is of this sort. Not just a military, but a militarism.

Dr. Ross manages to put together all of the nagging elements of Star Trek that so irritated my father on an instinctual basis. Politically and economically, it operates outside of the realm of science fiction and into fantasy. Nothing in its universe explains how human society manages to build the massive ships that comprise Star Fleet, nor the brilliant technology that enables them. Who builds these things -- and how and why? It's all well and good to say that money no longer exists, but people have to be compensated in some manner -- otherwise, the Star Trek society is based on benevolent slavery. The reference to "Imagine" is particularly appropriate; this view of human nature seems particularly flaccid, where all creative impulses have been subordinated and all enterprise has been discouraged, pun particularly intended.

After reading this, I thought about the movie Serenity, as Dr. Ross holds it out as the anti-Trek (along with its TV series basis, Firefly), and why I enjoyed it so much. The ultimate message in Serenity warns us about a human race that tries to transform itself into people who generate no conflict, no passion, and eventually no desire to live. Not only does the Alliance resemble Star Fleet, but their ambitions appear to be the evolution of their society into a Trek-like Brave New World -- only it turns out much more closely to Huxley than Roddenberry. The key character in Serenity, The Operative, is exactly the kind of deluded true believer that is perfectly willing to do tremendous evil in order to save humanity from itself by removing all of the choices and motivations that come naturally to free people. It's an impulse that has proven massively deadly in our history, and we still see it today in places where freedom and choice get stripped from people by true believers who intend to bring about their own Utopia, whether secular or not.

In Trek's defense, though, the limiting factor of this essay is that we don't see Earth in its 24th century form. We're looking at the future through the eyes of a military organization, and as such, Star Fleet seems pretty relaxed -- lots of fraternization, no salutes, little military decorum of any kind, a plethora of officers and a dearth of enlisted men and women, and so on. It's hardly a fascist military environment, and in fact it lacks most of the proper military discipline to keep a far-flung Navy in operation. Disobeying orders is practically a favorite hobby for the commanders in the Trek universe. Only Kirk ever got disciplined at all for it, and then only to give him back the next version of the vessel he stole from the Federation and deliberately destroyed.

The lack of context is the fault of the writers themselves, who leave us with few clues to human society outside of Star Fleet. We know that a President runs the United Federation of Planets, presumably elected to the position, although we never see any evidence of elections. It's possible to believe that the normal economic and political activities occur in the civilian worlds of the Federation, and that it's so unremarkable that the writers never bothered to portray it. If so, Trek can hardly be fascist, but we simply don't know much about it, and the message instead focuses on almost nothing but the military/exploration aspects of life in the Federation ... and their pronouncements that money has no use in the future.

Calling Trek fascist overstates the problem; its biggest flaw is the unexplained and unexplored Utopianism that nevertheless informs almost everything about the various shows and movies. One might have expected that after a half-dozen TV series with countless episodes and eight full-length movies, the writers might have finally explained how we got to this Promised Land of human interaction. Instead, it's just assumed, and that seems a rather unworthy intellectual choice.

I still enjoy the series, the characters, and the story lines of Star Trek, but now I understand much more clearly why I have always had an issue buying into its environment. Some may rightly claim that I'm taking ST too seriously, but its die-hard fans certainly do so -- and many more people hold out the Trek philosophy as the ideal for our future. Read all of Dr. Ross' excellent essays on this subject.

I have the Conn!

I recall in the film Jerry Maguire, Cuba Gooding Jr's character talked about "having the Quan," which had something to do with self-confidence and positive thinking.

I however, have the Conn - thanks to the good Captain, Ed Morrissey. This apparently means I am at the helm of his fine vessel. Now that I'm here, I don't know what the man was thinking! I don't know a rudder from a...you know, the thing that shifts a sail? Ah, well. Expect no sea-faring metaphors for this weekend.

Ed has graciously handed over control of Captains Quarters Blog to yours truly until sometime Sunday. I was very thrilled and flattered to be asked by Ed to do some guest posting for him while he and his First Mate go help young couples find their sea-legs on an Engaged Encounter Weekend. Ed is my first and favorite Blogfather, a first-rate writer and researcher, even-handed and generous. He's also very kind. I hope I can do well by him and his blog. Certainly I have very big shoes to keep moving.

I will be cross-posting between here and The Anchoress Blog, particularly if I write anything halfway decent. But if you have no idea who I am (and that's quite likely the case) and would like to get a sense of what I'm about, here are some blasts from my past:

Wealth Porn and Cognitive Dissonance at the Grey Lady

It Starts Not with a "Give Me" but with a "Please Take"

Faith and Reason and Forced Conversions

Prod Mary

Tina Brown, Our Lady of the Air Kiss

Bill Clinton's Captive Heart

Oriana and Rosie; Two Women of the Left

We'll not see the like of RFK Again, to Our Detriment

Media Whores and their Creators

"Whatever," he smiled

The Essential President Bush

"Breeders" infected with "Feeders"

Let's cast off, then!
The Anchoress

The Instapundit Surprise

Earlier this week, Glenn Reynolds posted a "pre-mortem" analysis on the GOP and why they may have trouble motivating voters to the polls. Many criticized Glenn for engaging in defeatism (and not just Glenn), but many do not realize that Glenn has never been much of a Republican. He's more a thinking Libertarian -- what Jon Henke calls neo-Libertarians -- who has voted with the GOP because of their strong national-security stance. I've been reading Glenn for years and understood that, but can also understand those who lacked that context for their reactions to his long post.

Those who faulted him for his early analysis might want to take a look at Glenn's latest on the subject. He voted through an early-voting effort in Tennessee, and of course the big race for Volunteers is the election to replace the retiring Bill Frist. Glenn had interviewed Harold Ford and offered praise for him as a solid moderate ... but in the end, Ford couldn't close the sale:

That's pretty much how it was in my mind, too. I liked Harold Ford, Jr. when we interviewed him, and I wouldn't shed any tears if he were elected; he'd raise the caliber of the Democrats in the Senate. But when push came to shove, I voted for Corker. I liked him, too, and ultimately the combination of Ford's "F" rating on gun rights and the sleazy "outing" behavior of the Democrats was such that I just felt I had to vote Republican in this race. (In our interview, Corker said he'd look favorably on federal legislation to require states to recognize each others' gun-carry permits.)

As I mentioned before, the Republicans don't really deserve my vote -- though as Bob Corker hasn't been in Washington that's not really his fault -- but nonetheless the Democrats have blown it again. Not long ago I was thinking that a Democratic majority in Congress wouldn't be so bad; but the sexual McCarthyism from the pro-outing crowd, coupled with the Dems' steadfast refusal to offer anything useful on national security, has convinced me that they just don't deserve a victory with those tactics. That's not Ford's fault, either, really. But I just don't think the Democrats are ready for a majority right now. We'll see how many other voters agree.

Interesting. Glenn really seemed ready to go for a change in Congressional leadership, but in his case the Democrats pulled defeat from the jaws of victory. Given Glenn's lack of partisan bearing -- he voted for Democrat Phil Bredesen for Governor -- that might signal a general reconsideration about the direction of this race. At the very least, it shows that Glenn's analysis was meant in the proper spirit.

Note: Yes, I know I said I wouldn't post anything more today, but I had a few minutes to kill before bed ...

The Anchoress Has The Conn

Many CQ readers know that the First Mate and I volunteer our time at Twin Cities Marriage Encounter, both as the president couple of the board and as weekend facilitators. This weekend, we will help stage an Engaged Encounter for affianced couples looking for a head start on communication skills. We've not done a weekend in over a year due to our health problems, but we felt that the shorter EE weekend format would work well for us.

That means that I will not be blogging again until Sunday, although I may unleash a prepared essay on Saturday just to keep things lively. However, I want to make sure that the CQ community doesn't miss a beat, so I have invited one of my favorite bloggers to take over the ship in my absence. The Anchoress excels at long-form political essays, analysis, and Catholic theology. Most CQ readers probably already know her blog, but if you don't, you'll get a chance to see how talented she truly is. She'll be posting all weekend, and we may overlap a bit on Sunday.

One final note about TCME: we have been told by our landlord that we will have to leave our facility next spring, after over 30 years at the ME Center. This isn't as bad as it sounds, as the fixed cost associated with the facility had been an ever-increasing burden on our solvency. The transition will be difficult, though, and any donations CQ readers feel inspired to make will be much appreciated and properly used. TCME is a registered non-profit, and all donations are tax-deductable. The PayPal link is below.

Thank you, and be sure to make The Anchoress feel welcome!

CAIR Execs Defend Ellison Against Their Endorsement

Keith Ellison, the DFL candidate for Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District, has had his connections to CAIR and to the Nation of Islam criticized on Twin Cities blogs such as mine and especially Power Line, and CAIR's executives have had enough. The Minneapolis Star Tribune, which has done nothing to cover Ellison's connections to both groups, runs an op-ed piece by CAIR executive director Nihad Awad and CAIR board chair Parvez Ahmed that basically calls us racists:

There has been much sound and fury in certain circles about the American Muslim community's support for Keith Ellison and his campaign to represent Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District.

A handful of right-wing bloggers, agenda-driven commentators and political operatives have used scurrilous smear tactics in an attempt to derail his campaign and to marginalize American Muslim voters. These smears and distortions send an un-American message of intolerance and bigotry.

We are proud of our personal donations to Ellison's campaign. He has proven himself to be an effective legislator and his commitment to social justice is worthy of admiration. We believe his election will send a powerful message to the world about America's commitment to religious inclusion and tolerance. ...

At the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), we are proud of our record of promoting interfaith understanding. We are also proud of our commitment to peace and our repeated condemnations of terrorism in all its forms, whether carried out by individuals, groups or states.

Their idea of interfaith understanding appears somewhat weak. As Scott Johnson notes in his tireless effort to inform the voters of MN-05, CAIR has many links to groups that hardly promote interfaith understanding. Nihad Awad has spoken publicly of his support for Hamas, the same terrorist group that has staged terrorist attacks on Israel. Likewise, Awad appeared on stage with the banner of Hezbollah in April 2002, a picture of which Scott posts at Power Line today. Ahmed, for his part, supported that famous interfaith activist Sami al-Arian, the Florida professor who admitted to providing assistance to terrorist groups and got deported.

Ahmed and Awad want to stress their pride in CAIR's participation in American democracy. However, they seemed pretty secretive about it last weekend, when Ellison flew to Florida in the home stretch of his Twin Cities election bid to address a major CAIR event in Pembroke Pines. The meeting took place in a public venue, but CAIR blocked outsiders from hearing what the speakers had to say, including Ellison, even while they videotaped a protest outside. Why the secrecy? If they want to stop the supposed "Muslim bashing" they decry in this article, why did they keep their doors shut when they gathered together in Florida? If they want us to believe that they have nothing in mind but interfaith understanding and full support of the American way, one would have thought this meeting would have provided the perfect opportunity to prove it.

The two CAIR execs attempt to use 9/11 as a standard for Americans to trust their motivations. They quote from their press releases, pointing out their "Not In The Name of Islam" petitions. However, they fail to mention that their collections of donations for 9/11 victims got redirected to the Holy Land Foundation, a terrorist front group that existed primarily to fund Hamas. According to Wikipedia, the Holy Land Foundation served another purpose: it created CAIR as well.

CAIR serves as an apologist and fundraiser for terrorists; in fact, it was founded for that purpose. Their track record puts it in the same category as the German-American Bund in the late 1930s. Their activity on behalf of a Congressional candidate, especially one who sneaks off to speak at a secret session of their organization, has rightly caused people to scrutinize both the candidate and the organization more closely, and screeching "racism" is just another ploy for these radicals to hide themselves, this time behind a shield of political correctness.

Speaker [Fill In The Blank]?

One of the Republican nightmares of these midterm elections can be expressed in two words: Speaker Pelosi. If the GOP loses control of the House, Nancy Pelosi would move from Minority Leader to the Speaker's chair, and assume the third position in line of succession to the Presidency. Republican candidates have spoken about the need to keep the San Francisco Leftist from that position and hope to inspire conservatives to turn out on Election Day to prevent it. However, the Washington Times reports that Democrats might not elect Pelosi as Speaker if they gain a thin majority:

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's prospects for becoming the nation's first female House speaker depend not only on a Democratic victory in November but also on her ability to prevent any Democrats from voting against her -- primarily centrists opposed to her liberal stances.

At least one Democratic House candidate has pledged not to support Mrs. Pelosi, and others in conservative districts have refused to commit their support -- potentially leaving Mrs. Pelosi shy of the 218 votes required for the chamber's top post.

Democrat Charlie Stuart, who hopes to unseat Republican Rep. Ric Keller in Florida, already has said he opposes Mrs. Pelosi and would prefer Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, the more conservative No. 2 Democrat in the House whose strained relations with Mrs. Pelosi have been well-chronicled on Capitol Hill.

"He's a centrist," Stuart spokeswoman Sultana Ali said of the Florida Democrat. "His values really are more in line with Steny Hoyer than Nancy Pelosi."

At least three other Democrats contacted by The Washington Times refused to commit their support to Mrs. Pelosi, whose San Francisco district is far more liberal than the districts that are up for grabs in this election.

This seems like a stretch, both on the part of the Democrats contacted by Charles Hurt and by Hurt himself. Pelosi has survived a couple of challenges to her leadership in the past, and these revolts have focused on moving Hoyer to the leadership. However, in order to believe that her position is in serious risk, one would have to believe that Democrats would willingly risk committee chairs and leadership of the House just to jettison Pelosi after she led them to victory in the midterms, assuming that happens.

I've seen this happen before, however, so it's not impossible. When the Republicans took control of the state Assembly briefly in the 1990s, the party celebrated the end of Willie Brown's long speakership. (My uncle, Jim Morrissey, was one of those freshman Republicans, representing Anaheim.) They celebrated too soon, as their one-vote majority disappeared when Brown manipulated one Republican into supporting him. Brown got the last laugh in that session.

However, Denny Hastert isn't Willie Brown, and while that's mostly a good thing, it does mean that Hastert doesn't have the Machiavellian talents necessary to twist Democratic arms into supporting a Republican speaker from the minority party. It seems especially doubtful that Republicans have any hope of derailing Pelosi after a successful election. Hoyer, who just had an embarassing moment in the Maryland Senate race, shouldn't be ordering any new stationery with the Speaker's title anytime soon. And the Democrats might discover that these kinds of disputes look very silly in hindsight when a party fails to win a controlling majority in the election.

Hezbollah Used Cluster Munitions Against Israel

Israel has taken worldwide condemnation for its use of cluster munitions in the war against Hezbollah this summer. Human Rights Watch esitimated that as many as 4 million bomblets got shot ino Lebanon by the Israelis, a quarter of which have yet to be cleaned up and which cause casualties every day. However, HRW didn't disclose until yesterday that both sides used cluster munitions:

The Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah fired cluster munitions during its 33-day war with Israel last summer, in strikes that caused one death and 12 injuries, according to a report released this week by the New York-based Human Rights Watch. The group expressed alarm over the rising supply of these controversial weapons to non-state armed groups.

"We are disturbed to discover that not only Israel but also Hezbollah used cluster munitions in the recent conflict, at a time when many countries are turning away from this kind of weapon precisely because of its impact on civilians," said Steve Goose, the Washington-based director of the Human Rights Watch Arms Division. "Use of cluster munitions is never justified in civilian-populated areas because they are inaccurate and unreliable," he said. ...

Israeli police told Human Rights Watch they had documented 113 cluster rockets that were fired at Israel during the fighting, which started July 12 and ended with an Aug. 14 cease-fire, the group reported. It said Israeli officials did not disclose the estimated rate of duds among the smaller munitions released from these rockets.

Hezbollah reportedly fired Chinese-made Type-81 122mm rockets, the first known use of that weapon in the world. Each of those rockets carries smaller munitions that can shoot out hundreds of 3.5mm steel spheres.

Once again, imbalanced reporting led to a serious misrepresentation of the war. And while Israel should be held accountable for its use of cluster munitions in areas populated by civilians, the global community has not even bothered to scold Hezbollah for making Israeli civilians its primary target for the attacks they launched.

Why are cluster munitions unacceptable, especially in areas where civilians live? They have no accuracy and kill indiscriminately. The bomblets released by the rockets that do not detonate immediately wind up laying around for months and years, detonating far after the combatants have left the theater. One could make an argument for them in a concentrated infantry battle where the bomblets would hit obvious combatants, but the residual effects of cluster munitions make them a poor choice if the attacking force plans on occupying that space later.

Israel should not have used cluster bombs, for tactical as well as moral reasons; they're not terribly effective against a dispersed enemy. However, Israel at least targeted Hezbollah, and the extent that they hit civilians comes as a direct result of Hezbollah's hiding themselves among civilians while staging their own attacks. Hezbollah deliberately launched their missiles and rockets at Israeli cities and towns, attacks that served no military purpose but instead intended to spread terrorism. In fact, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad have conducted these kinds of attacks against Israeli civilians for months and years, and Human Rights Watch has not bothered to hold these groups accountable in splashy press conferences in the same mannner they have approached Israel.

Human-rights groups have always held Israel to a double standard, removing all context from their pronouncements against the Israelis. In this case, we have heard about the Israeli use of cluster munitions for weeks before HRW finally admitted that both sides used them, and still without failing to note the deliberate targeting of civilians as a matter of policy by Hezbollah. That's why Washington Post readers found this story on page A18 instead of on A01.

China To Cut Off Kim's Oil

China has begun to consider an energy embargo on North Korea, a step that almost certainly would cause the Kim regime to face serious domestic pushback in Pyongyang. If Kim does not return to the six-party talks, North Korea will start getting darker than that satellite picture making the rounds:

China is prepared to step up pressure on North Korea in coming weeks by reducing oil shipments, among other measures, if the country refuses to return to negotiations or conducts more nuclear tests, Chinese government advisers and scholars who have discussed the matter with the leadership say.

If Beijing does take a tougher line on its neighbor and longtime ally, the action is likely to bolster its relationship with the United States. Washington has urged Chinese leaders to use all the tools at their disposal to put additional pressure on Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader.

Among the most potent of those tools is oil. China provides an estimated 80 to 90 percent of North Korea’s oil imports, shipped by pipeline at undisclosed prices that Chinese officials say represent a steep discount from the world market price. Any reduction in that aid could severely hamper North Korea’s already faltering economy.

Several leading Chinese experts said senior officials had indicated in the past week that they planned to slap new penalties on North Korea going beyond the ban on sales of military equipment imposed by the United Nations. But they would be likely to hold off if Mr. Kim agreed to return soon to multilateral talks North Korea has boycotted since September 2005. Years of talks have produced meager results.

The Chinese have taken Kim's nuclear test more seriously than people first predicted. This could still be an act intended on currying favor with the US, but the humiliation appears to be real. Beijing thought they could use Kim to show the world that they had the most influence in east Asia and the western Pacific. Instead, they got surprised when Kim thumbed his nose at them.

If China implements an oil embargo on Kim, they will put the North Koreans on the edge of collapse. They have little enough energy now, and their armed forces use most of that. Their ability to defend themselves depends on Chinese energy. It will do more in a shorter period of time to disarm Kim than an arms embargo.

Why does China want to cooperate with the US, which it sees as a rival in the Pacific Rim? For one thing, they do not want to see the region nuclearize, especially Japan, and China understands that America is the only nation that can keep that from happening. They also do a lot more business with America than they do with North Korea. North America is one of the biggest markets in the world. They can't afford to antagonize us too much, and they know it.

Kim ignored their warnings twice already this year. The Chinese may be mad enough to do something about it. The Bush administration sees this opening and is determined not to let the opportunity slip from their grasp. Notice that the White House has quit talking about naval interdictions for the moment; they know the Chinese won't go for any overt military confrontation. If Beijing will seriously consider cutting off energy to Pyongyang, the interdictions will probably be unnecessary.

House Intel Leaker Found?

A number of CQ readers pointed out a report last night in the Los Angeles Times that indicates that the House Intelligence Committee may have found the New York Times' source for their national-security scoops. An unnamed Democratic staffer to the commitee has been suspended pending an investigation:

House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra has suspended a Democratic staff member because of concerns he may have leaked a high-level intelligence assessment to The New York Times last month.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press Thursday night, Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., a committee member, said that an unidentified staffer requested the document from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte three days before the Sept. 23 story about its conclusions.

The staffer received the National Intelligence Estimate on global terror trends on Sept. 21.

"I have no credible information to say any classified information was leaked from the committee's minority staff, but the implications of such would be dramatic," LaHood wrote Hoekstra, R-Mich., late last month. "This may, in fact, be only coincidence, and simply 'look bad.' But coincidence, in this town, is rare."

It's not just rare, it's almost non-existent. The NIE was the latest in a series of intelligence leaks that found their way onto the front pages of the NYT. It started last December with the revelation of the warrantless surveillance on international communications, and came up again in the spring with the Swift program exposure. The Department of Justice had pledged to investigate the leaks, but at this time it looks as if Congress may have solved the mystery.

With the election pending, the temptation would be to look at this as an electoral issue, but it's not going to have that kind of impact. Leaks do not generally come from one party or the other; they do usually have political motivations, though, and it's always been more likely to have been a Democrat than a Republican for a number of reasons. Democrats have been shut out of the oversight process and would be more likely to lash out in this manner. Their opposition to the programs, at least after their exposure, also provides another motive. However, I doubt that people will consider the staffers when it comes time to vote for their representatives.

If this turns out to be true, the staffer should face several years in prison. After all, the Congressional committees have to protect national-security information, and the American people have to trust them to do so. Politicians have often been careless with classified material, but this will be the first time in recent memory that anyone involved in the committees have been identified as a deliberate leaker. That cannot go without serious consequences, or else politicians and their staffers from both parties will manipulate exposure of secret information for political purposes at their whim.

In fact, it's hard to see how this could have been anything but that kind of manipulation. Critics of the Bush administration have assumed that the leak came from people within the programs, nonpartisans who objected to the orders they were given. If this turns out to be true and he or she was the source for all the leaks, the leaks are anything but non-partisan. The staffer worked for the committee that conducted oversight on these programs, which means that Congress had full knowledge of the programs.

Hopefully, the DoJ will take over this probe immediately, and give us the answers to which we are all entitled as to how our secret efforts to defeat terrorism wound up on our newstands.

Economic Hypochondria

George Will has an excellent column in today's Washington Post that touches on the most frustrating aspect of national election coverage -- the economy. He uses a perfect phrase, "economic hypochondria", to describe the irrational gloom that pervades the coverage of a massive economic expansion:

"Worst economy since Herbert Hoover," John Kerry said in 2004, while that year's growth (3.9 percent) was adding to America's gross domestic product the equivalent of the GDP of Taiwan (the 19th-largest economy). Nancy Pelosi vows that if Democrats capture Congress they will "jump-start our economy." A "jump-start " is administered to a stalled vehicle. But since the Bush tax cuts went into effect in 2003, the economy's growth rate (3.5 percent) has been better than the average for the 1980s (3.1) and 1990s (3.3). Today's unemployment rate (4.6 percent) is lower than the average for the 1990s (5.8) -- lower, in fact, than the average for the past 40 years (6.0). Some stall.

Economic hypochondria, a derangement associated with affluence, is a byproduct of the welfare state: An entitlement mentality gives Americans a low pain threshold -- witness their recurring hysteria about nominal rather than real gasoline prices -- and a sense of being entitled to economic dynamism without the frictions and "creative destruction" that must accompany dynamism. Economic hypochondria is also bred by news media that consider the phrase "good news" an oxymoron, even as the U.S. economy, which has performed better than any other major industrial economy since 2001, drives the Dow to record highs. ...

President Bush's tax cuts were supposed to cause a cataract of red ink. In fiscal 2006, however, federal revenue as a share of GDP was 18.4 percent, slightly above the post-1962 average of 18.2. And the federal budget deficit was $247.7 billion, just 1.9 percent of the $13.1 trillion GDP. That is below the average for the 1970s (2.1), 1980s (3.0) and 1990s (2.2).

The deficit numbers Will uses are suspect, but in a bipartisan manner. Neither party has acknowledged the massive entitlement burdens that exist in current policy, because neither party wants to have to address them either through taxation or reduction of benefits. The deficit calculation Will uses is the one Washington has consistently used, which makes his comparisons valid for his point. However, the real deficits should cause concern, and that certainly would not be economic hypochondria.

That aside, however, Will hits the nail on the head. Taxes have declined, and wages have grown, in real dollars. Tax revenues have increased through more substantial investment and massive job growth, with over 6.6 million jobs added to the economy in the last three years. Oil prices, which spiked upwards during a perfect storm of Middle Eastern instability and two Gulf Coast hurricanes that dented American refining capacity, have driften down significantly, and the discovery of a massive Gulf Coast reserve promises more stability in pricing in the future.

Do we hear much about that? No. Instead, as Will points out, we get treated to breathless coverage of Democratic complaints. Bill Clinton told British audiences that America outsourced college-education jobs to India, but the coverage failed to explain that American unemployment among college gradutes is two percent. That, as Will notes, should tell people to stay in school and get their education, not despair at the thought of graduation. Pelosi and the Democrats have run three elections on the notion of an economic stall, and that seems to be getting the most media traction in the one election it applies least.

Welfare-state proponents cannot stand prosperity, in a very real sense. The more prosperous a nation becomes through capital investment and reduction of federal burdens, the more desperate they become to sell gloom and doom to end it. Their raison d'etre disappears when market economies are allowed to function normally. They sell dependence on managed economies, and in order to survive politically, they have to paint the worst possible picture of economic success that comes outside of central management.

In a rational world, this desperation would be considered satire. Unemployment has dropped to near record lows, and all the Democrats can do is to treat the economy as if it were the Second Coming of the Great Depression. The reluctance of the media to respond with the economic facts turns this from satire to farce.

UPDATE: Speaking of satire, Scrappleface has its own unique take on the election.

Clinton Has Company

A day after Alan Dershowitz noticed a profound double standard on the debate over limited use of torture, it turns out that neither Dershowitz nor Bill Clinton represent an extreme in thinking on its use. A new BBC/PIPA study shows that a third of people worldwide believe that torture should be an option when interrogating terrorists in certain circumstances:

Nearly a third of people worldwide back the use of torture in prisons in some circumstances, a BBC survey suggests.

Although 59% were opposed to torture, 29% thought it acceptable to use some degree of torture to combat terrorism.

While most polled in the US are against torture, opposition there is less robust than in Europe and elsewhere.

More than 27,000 people in 25 countries were asked if torture was acceptable if it could provide information to save innocent lives.

Some 36% of those questioned in the US agreed that this use of torture was acceptable, while 58% were unwilling to compromise on human rights.

The data seems pretty remarkable. In polling people in nations that have signed the Geneva Accords, a ban on torture only has the support of 59%. The percentage of people willing to leave torture as an option increases in relation to the perceived threat of terrorism. For instance, Israel has the highest percentage, with 43% open to torture under "certain circumstances". Not surprisingly considering their continued victimization by terrorists, Israel is one of only four nations where opposition to torture does not gain a majority; Russia, China, and India round out the list.

The BBC says that the percentage of Americans willing to consider the option is one of the highest in the world. However, looking at the data, that's a stretch. At 36%, we're in the upper third. However, eight other nations have a higher percentage of those willing to explicitly agree to leave the option open, and India has 45% unwilling to commit one way or the other. When one combines the undecideds with the permissibles, the US comes in 13th most likely to support the strictest interpretation of the Geneva Conventions regardless of circumstance. In a sample of 25 nations, that hardly makes us the most likely to support torture.

Bill Clinton supports the use under certain circumstances, as he said on NPR and as reported by Alan Dershowitz. However, the Bush administration does not. It specifically limits interrogative techniques to the McCain Act, a limitation that even John McCain doesn't wholeheartedly endorse; he assumes that interrogators will break the law he himself wrote when necessary.

What this study shows is a lack of confidence in nations that try to treat terrorists as lawful combatants, and that lack of confidence increases in direct proportion to the threat. India, where only 23% of people support a complete ban on torturous interrogations under all circumstances, has the least amount of confidence in the Geneva Convention approach -- and they know and understand Islamist terrorism in India. Critics of the US policy towards interrogation and detention of terrorists claim that we are out of step with the rest of the world. It seems as though we are no outlier at all.

UPDATE: Hot Air has the Clinton audio from his NPR appearance last month.

Rush: I'm Not At War With Bloggers

Rush Limbaugh spoke at length yesterday on his show, explaining his criticism of Glenn Reynolds for the "pre-mortem" that gave the Instapundit a rare long-form post this past weekend. Rush says that his motives have been misunderstood:

Now, I got a couple of e-mails I was checking here during the break from people who say, "Oh, no, Rush! Don't get in a war with conservative bloggers. If the media rips you guys apart, it's all over." I am not at war with conservative bloggers. I quote countless posts from many blogs on this program. I use them as resources. I'm referring to one blog post, and I don't even know who it is. This all got started when I cringed when I saw the use of the term "premortem" on a blog site called Insta-Pundit. It hurt me; it irritated me as much as when Tom Davis, congressman from Virginia, goes on Face the Nation and starts speculating to Bob Schieffer or whatever it was, and starts counting up the number of seats his party is going to lose.

I watch it and I say, "Well, that's really helpful." I don't see the Democrats out there even when they know they're going to lose talking about how bad it's going to be and how many seats they're going to lose. I just don't see it. I've been in this game a long time, and I've played a lot of competitive sports, and I've worked for competitive sports teams, professionally, and I've never seen anybody want to lose, as a means of advancing.

I certainly got my share of criticism for my response to Glenn, and I understood it as coming from the same motivations as Rush shared on his show today. Neither of us wants to see Republicans lose, as Glenn has said in response to the criticism. I don't think we will lose, at least not in the manner predicted by the media at this point, but that doesn't mean that criticism is unwarranted.

However, I also have seen the dynamic Rush attacked on his show earlier, and it hasn't come from Glenn. I get e-mails from people who believe that electing Democrats will improve the Republican Party. Today I received one calling Ohio moderate Mike DeWine a "traitor" to conservatives and encouraging the Right to vote for Sherrod Brown -- on the basis of DeWine's moderate position on immigration! I'm not a big DeWine fan ever since the Gang of 14, but any conservative who votes for Sherrod Brown on the basis of immigration has to have his head examined.

When people are dissatisfied with an incumbent in their own party, the time to address that is the primary. Lincoln Chafee is a good example of this. I supported Stephen Laffey because Chafee's voting record put him closer to the Democrats than the Republicans. Laffey wasn't even all that conservative, but he was a big improvement over Chafee, who couldn't even endorse his own party's candidate for President in 2004. However, Chafee won the primary, and now I support Chafee for re-election -- because he caucuses reliably with the GOP, and in that way is an improvement over the Democrat. I'm not supporting Lincoln Chafee as much as I'm opposing Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy and Intelligence Chair Jay Rockefeller, not to mention Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Elections are about choices. Responsible voters have to recognize not just their rights, but also their responsibilities. A vote for a Democrat is a vote for their caucus control and all of the policies that will bring, which is responsible if you support those policies and that particular candidate. (I've voted for a handful of Democrats before, although none lately.) If that vote gets cast for the purpose of scolding Republicans, that's not just irresponsible, it's a waste. Parties do not necessarily improve by being cast out of power -- and if one wants to see an example, just look at the Democrats today compared to the Democrats in 1994 in terms of policy and tone. Sitting out in a fit of pique is even less responsible; it just allows the voter to feel vindicated that their non-choice alleviates them from any blame for what follows afterward.

Rush hears all of the arguments for protest votes and election-day boycotts, and he gets as frustrated as any of us. He wants to see more unity of purpose among conservatives, and as a man who has advanced conservatism more than most, his analysis should at least get some respect. In this case, I agree with him, although I still think that criticism of the party's mistakes helps in ensuring that the candidates understand why Republicans have lost some enthusiasm in their support of the candidates.

Note: Rush had some kind remarks for me, which I appreciate immensely.

BBC: Al-Qaeda Back, Aiming At Britain

Some have speculated that the al-Qaeda terror network has dissipated, spent after a series of attacks on Western capitals and financial centers and the American destruction of their proxy state in Afghanistan. However, security sources tell the BBC that AQ has managed to reorganize itself and reorient their strategy to make the UK their primary target -- and they're training on the home team's turf:

Al-Qaeda has become more organised and sophisticated and has made Britain its top target, counter-terrorism officials have told the BBC.

Security sources say the situation has never been so grim, said BBC home affairs correspondent Margaret Gilmore.

They believe the network is now operating a cell structure in the UK - like the IRA did - and sees the 7 July bomb attacks "as just the beginning".

The cell-structure organization is nothing new; AQ used the same organization in Europe and the US before 9/11. It's terrorist operating procedure, and it does have its basis in the history of groups as diverse as the IRA and the French Resistance.

Interestingly, this report talks about a real change in strategy on the part of AQ. Instead of targeting mosques as recruitment centers, the terrorists have decided to start recruiting from colleges and universities in Britain. The UK has had some success in expelling the most radical imams from their country, and this has put a dent into their efforts to find and train new terrorists, especially ones that will blend into Western society better than the Saudis, Pakistanis, and Yemenis they currently have. It's a sobering realization to have -- al-Qaeda considers Western universities a better place to find radicals than mosques.

The July 7 bombings did not sate the blood lust of radical Islamists in Britain. Al-Qaeda has not disappeared and has not transformed itself into a mere ideology, as some would believe. They continue to find ways to re-invent themselves and target Western civilians for murder and mayhem, and if Britain happens to find themselves in the crosshairs for the moment, that target will inevitably focus on America before long.

A Little Judicial Restraint Bites The GOP In Florida

A Florida judge exercised judicial restraint and deference to the legislature in an election ruling yesterday, but don't expect the GOP to jump with joy over it. Leon County judge Janet Ferris ruled that polling places cannot post signs explaining that Mark Foley's votes will count for Joe Negron in the midterm election November 7th:

A judge on Wednesday barred election supervisors from posting signs in polling places explaining that votes cast for former Representative Mark Foley would go to the substitute candidate.

The judge, Janet E. Ferris of Circuit Court in Leon County, issued her decision days before voters can begin casting ballots under the early voting system of Florida.

Judge Ferris, ruling on a complaint by the Florida Democratic Party, said the Legislature had not authorized such postings in its law on replacement candidates. The law requires the original candidate’s name to be the ballot if the change is made after the primary results have been certified.

“The court is not at liberty to question the Legislature’s decision or its judgment in enacting the statute,” the judge wrote. “And there can be little doubt that it understood the confusion likely to result where voters know that the person reflected on the ballot is no longer seeking the position.”

Interpreting the statute “as permitting the proposed intrusion into the polling place,” the judge added, would be “an extrapolation far beyond the Legislature’s words.”

Unfortunately, this is almost certainly the correct decision. When the Florida legislature passed the law mandating the primary as the deadline for ballot changes, it clearly had to know that they risked voter confusion if a candidate had to be replaced for any reason -- death, disqualification, or in this case, withdrawal and resignation. The legislature did not provide any remedies for this, and for good reason. They apparently wanted to eliminate the possibility of a Torricelli Option, where a bad candidate can get swapped out at the last minute by his or her party for a better one, one that voters have no time to vet before the general election.

Where does that leave the GOP in Foley's 16th District? Probably not in bad shape. The disastrous publicity surrounding the Foley scandal has also informed voters in the district of Negron's candidacy and the automatic application of Foley votes to Negron. Campaigners in the district will assuredly park themselves at the nearest perimeter allowed by law to inform voters of the rule, asking them to cast votes for the GOP. Foley's district has proven reliably Republican, and Negron should at least remain within striking distance of the race.

Florida's legislature should revisit this law, however, when it returns to session. If they insist on locking names on the ballot at the primary, then they should allow some sort of explanation at the polling station to inform voters how their votes will count when a candidate has been replaced for any reason. It sounds like a series of regulations passed at different times, and legislators didn't understand the impact each had on the other. Their intention of avoiding the kind of mischief pulled by the Democrats in New Jersey in 2002 is laudable, but the result hurts voter ability to understand how best to select their representation.

And Judge Ferris did get this right -- it's the legislature's job to fix the problem, and not the court's prerogative to modify laws to suit the purposes of the court. Republicans might be disappointed, but this is the kind of judicial restraint that we support.

Hugo's Planes A No Go

Venezuela's air force will find itself a dozen planes short after Spain cancelled a sale to Hugo Chavez last night. The deal got scotched through US intervention after Washington refused to allow American technology to be transferred to Chavez:

The US has stopped Spain selling 12 military aircraft to Venezuela by refusing to allow American military technology to be used in the planes.

Venezuela planned to buy the aircraft from the Spanish company Eads-Casa but US determination to prevent Hugo Chávez building up his armed forces wrecked the deal, according to the deputy president, José Vicente Rangel. ...

Mr Rangel said replacing the US technology with French or Israeli parts had made the €500m (£335m) deal too costly. Miguel Angel Moratinos, Spain's foreign minister, confirmed that what would have been his country's biggest arms deal was now just a sale of naval vessels.

Spain had also refused to support Venezuela's bid for the Security Council seat for Latin America, making Chavez a two-time loser with Madrid. One has to wonder why Spain thought the US would allow the technology transfer to a clearly hostile Chavez, and why the US had to explain it to Spain after they made this deal.

As for Chavez, his big UN speech continues to pay dividends to the Venezuelans. In case he can't recognize this aroma, it's the smell of isolation. If enough of his countrymen start noticing the stink, they might do something about replacing him.

Guest Blogger: Senator Rick Santorum

Please welcome Senator Rick Santorum as a guest blogger to Captain's Quarters. I asked the Senator to give me his analysis of his race and his look at the tone of the election. As you can see from his post, Senator Santorum responds quite clearly on all counts. He's figured out the blogging style as well, and perhaps we can get him to join us again soon.

The Fight – We Must Keep It Up

The debates are over, and I’m feeling great. Yet, I can’t deny that the heat is on to ensure voters understand the choice they’re making before they go to the polls in 20 days. And campaigning hard we are … yesterday I was in Philadelphia for several events and today I’ll be spending dusk ‘til dawn campaigning back home in Southwest PA.

Those reading this blog hopefully understand the stakes in this year’s Election (Btw: Thanks Ed for allowing me to post here today).

But just in case you need a reminder, here goes:

If you want to keep your taxes low, defeat the Islamofascist threat to our freedom, and restore sanity to our judicial system by appointing judges who won't re-write the Constitution every chance they get ...

...then my victory in Pennsylvania will help protect you and your family from the radical left seeking to seize control of the United States Senate this November.

Is that important to you? I believe it is. If you think that four years of steady economic growth hasn't been important to our country...

...if you don't want a repeat of Bill Clinton's massive tax hikes...

...and you don't like the idea of any of our troops in harms way, but you know in your heart that we cannot cut and run from Iraq...

...then you understand fully why I must be re-elected in November. All of this, plus the Supreme Court nominees and other judicial nominees are at stake, truly at risk, and you know from my record that I not only stand up for what’s right, I fight for it.

As I told Pittsburgh-area radio host Fred Honsberger today, “bizarre” is a good word to describe our campaign for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania this year. I’ve never been involved in a campaign like this one where someone felt so entitled to winning an office simply because they have a famous last name. And that someone I refer to is Bob Casey, Jr.

He’s running a cookie-cutter campaign, repeating the same canned phrases time and again. His latest talker -- calling me desperate. My response: it’s not desperation, it’s exasperation. My opponent, Bob Casey, Jr. is trying to make this entire campaign a referendum on Rick Santorum and the Bush Administration. He’s giving the people NO reason to vote FOR him.

He’s refused to engage in substantive debate. In every debate, even the moderators or panelists felt compelled to point out that he avoided giving a straight answer to their questions. It’s been like pulling teeth to get him to respond to questions. And in almost all cases, he didn’t answer them all together.

It can be exasperating. But I have a lot of faith in the people of Pennsylvania, and those across this country who have been so supportive. They’re going to take a look, and they’re going to see someone who works hard, and worked hard to get the job; someone who works hard when he’s in the job, compared to someone who feels he is entitled to this job. I think when you feel like you’re entitled to something, you don’t work very hard after you get it.

I have earned my support because of what I’ve done, what I believe in, and the vision I present. That vision includes cutting taxes to keep the economy growing and create jobs, securing our borders without providing amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, taking strong action against Islamic fascists who want to kill us, and working towards energy independence so that we’re not dependent on the same people who want to kill us for oil.

I will talk about, and work on addressing, those issues all day long. My opponent avoids talking about those issues at all costs, and he doesn’t come close to offering solutions.

You think I like answering every question. I don’t. I get questions about my family and personal matters. But no matter the question, I answer because I believe the people of Pennsylvania and America deserve to hear from me.

I feel humbled to serve the people of Pennsylvania in the United States Senate. It is not a job that’s ever been coming to me, but it’s one that is worth every minute because of the difference I’m able to make in people’s lives, and the opportunity I have to help secure our country for the long-term – economically, culturally and physically.

I look forward to continuing this conversation throughout the campaign and when I’m re-elected to the Senate, with your support.

Thank you, and God Bless.

Rick Santorum

Mitch Berg, Editor Extraordinaire

My radio partner Mitch Berg takes on the task of editor for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a job that apparently became obsolete several years ago at the Twin Cities newspaper. In our interview with Rochelle Olson regarding her October 7 article on Alan Fine, the reporter declared that all of the facts that provided the proper context for Fine's arrest could not fit within the space limitation of the article.

Considering that the article ran to a length of 1,214 words, this seems like such a silly argument that neither Mitch nor I could believe she used it. A newspaper leaves out key facts out of a 1200-word article because they don't fit the paper's view of the story, not because it won't fit into that kind of essay length. To give readers a sense of what that kind of space means, most of the op-ed columns I write have a 700-word limitation for print space.

Mitch decided to rewrite the article within that space limitation to show how easily the Strib and Olson could have presented the proper context for the story. At the end, Mitch concludes:

I've managed to clip 281 or so words - a bit over eight column inches - to make way for about 1.25 inches needed to get the two key facts of the story, the kind of thing journalists and editors are supposed to want to get into the story...into the story! I mean, take out any 45 or so of those words, keep the other 240-odd words, and put the two simple facts into the article...the whole story, or at least a more complete condensation of it, is told!

So if a moron like me can take ten minutes to rewrite the article to include the two other facts important for the reader - especially the CD5 voter - to really know the whole story, then why couldn't the Strib editors?

More importantly why didn't they?

Because, to paraphrase Hugh Hewitt, the Star Tribune covers politics like I cover the Notre Dame football -- as a fan and a partisan. The Strib went looking for a hit piece on Alan Fine, and Rochelle Olson and Paul McEnroe delivered it.

The Non-Confrontational Approach To Sanctions

Condoleezza Rice wants to make sure that the application of sanctions do not create an opportunity for unnecessary confrontation, hoping to avoid provoking North Korea into a military response. In what might be a sop to China, Rice has asked nations to inspect North Korean goods on their own territory rather than stopping shipping or attempting to bar material at a border:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will urge the countries of northeast Asia to create a strict system of radiation monitoring and inspections to prevent North Korea from smuggling nuclear materials into or out of the country, a senior State Department official said Tuesday.

But in what appears to be an effort to cajole China to enforce the new United Nations sanctions against North Korea aggressively, the United States will ask the countries to focus their efforts on conducting inspections in their own territories, including ports, and on suspicious ships, trucks and aircraft rather than every piece of cargo.

China has been concerned about taking too harsh a stance against North Korea, and its ambassador to the United Nations has said it will not interdict ships.

China has reportedly taken the sanctions fairly seriously. They continued to construct a border barrier between themselves and North Korea, and started stopping trucks at the checkpoints for inspections. That's more than most thought China would do, and they made sure that everyone can see the effort they make towards applying the sanctions.

While the application of the sanctions has a great deal of importance, the request for nuclear detection equipment shows that the real issue is an illicit transfer of nuclear material outside of North Korea. Kim Jong-Il has a reputation as a proliferator of conventional weapons, and with his nuclear program able to generate weapons-grade material, Rice wants to stop that particular export before it starts. Radiation detection sensors could flag such cargo before it falls into the hands of terrorists. That equipment hardly qualifies as provocative, and the US can reasonably expect nations such as China and Russia to comply with the request.

No one wants a war on the Korean peninsula, and Kim knows that. Rice, however, wants to get compliance in terms that will give Kim no grounds for claiming an infringement on his sovereignty. Absent a provocation, Kim cannot launch a war against anyone without a potentially career-limiting reaction by the Chinese. China, as I have written on a number of occasions, holds the key to the entire issue. China could snuff out Kim's regime, and probably Kim himself, with just a few well-placed calls to the DPRK Army leadership. If Kim goes too far off the reservation, that's exactly what will happen.

Rice wants Kim boxed into compliance or abdication. As long as we keep the Chinese engaged, we can make it work. That's why bilateral talks with Kim is such a ridiculous suggestion. Kim doesn't want American security guarantees; he wants a free hand in the region, and the Americans won't leave. He wants China to drive us off, which they would have done with delight, but they know we won't leave with Kim's nuclear ambitions unchecked. Kim has turned into a liability, which both Beijing and Kim himself now understand.

Mullahcracy: Fast Internet Connections Threat To Islam

The Iranian mullahcracy has made some strange decisions regarding access to information, but if they wanted to alienate their younger generation, they may have hit on the perfect way to do so. Iran's government has banned Internet access speeds above 128 kilobytes per second, roughly equivalent to twice the speed of dial-up, in order to keep Western culture from polluting the Islamic Republic:

Iran's Islamic government has opened a new front in its drive to stifle domestic political dissent and combat the influence of western culture - by banning high-speed internet links.

In a blow to the country's estimated 5 million internet users, service providers have been told to restrict online speeds to 128 kilobytes a second and been forbidden from offering fast broadband packages. The move by Iran's telecommunications regulator will make it more difficult to download foreign music, films and television programmes, which the authorities blame for undermining Islamic culture among the younger generation. It will also impede efforts by political opposition groups to organise by uploading information on to the net.

The order follows a purge on illegal satellite dishes, which millions of Iranians use to clandestinely watch western television. Police have seized thousands of dishes in recent months.

The latest step has drawn condemnation from MPs, internet service companies and academics, who say it will hamper Iran's progress. "Every country in the world is moving towards modernisation and a major element of this is high-speed internet access," said Ramazan-ali Sedeghzadeh, chairman of the parliamentary telecommunications committee. "The country needs it for development and access to contemporary science."

Iran already has an impressive array of assets that block access for their citizens to Western influence. They have more Internet filters than any nation outside of China. Teheran banned satellite dishes recently as well, and had goons patrol the city smashing them wherever they found them. Iran has declared war on information and enlightenment, and this new regulation opens another tactical front on that conflict.

Eventually, people will get frustrated by the oppressive nature of this government, and the younger generation most of all. They did not grow up experiencing the secular autocracy of the Shah; all they know is the mullahcracy. They have seen their access to information slowly choked off. For someone who has grown accustomed to fast access to the Internet, nothing gets more frustrating than a return to dial-up; it will be a constant reminder of their intellectual shackles, and add that much more motivation to free themselves from the rule of the mullahs.

The front line of this battle will be Iranian blogs. Those who have spoken freely about the oppression of the Guardian Council will no doubt have plenty to say about this attempt to silence them through a slow connection.

Technocracy In Palestine?

Mahmoud Abbas may appoint a new Cabinet of technocrats to replace the Hamas government that has drawn economic santions from former benefactors in an attempt to get money flowing to the Palestinians. Instead of appointing politicians and faction leaders to the ministries, Abbas wants to handpick Palestinian professionals for the jobs:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday promoted the idea of a Cabinet of technocrats as a way to ease crippling Western sanctions, but pledged not to force it on Hamas, who reacted coolly to the idea.

Abbas addressed reporters for more than an hour at his headquarters in Ramallah on Tuesday evening. In his strongest endorsement yet of the technocrat idea of a Cabinet made up of professionals instead of politicians, he said it should be "considered seriously" as a way out of the current deadlock. ...

The idea was endorsed earlier Tuesday by a group of academics, politicians and professionals representing all walks of life in Palestinian society, who called for the establishment of a transitional government consisting of independent figures to resolve the crisis between Fatah and Hamas.

The call, which was made at a press conference that was held in Ramallah under the title "Appeal for the Sake of Palestine," comes amid growing fears that the Fatah-Hamas dispute could spill over into civil war.

Unlike most of the proposals from Abbas, this idea has a great deal of merit. The pressure of the sanctions has opened a huge rift in Palestinian polity, and that has started descending rapidly into a hot civil war. Their differences have become so profound that the notion of a legitimate authority in the territories has dissipated. All is faction, and no ground for anything but violence appears to exist.

An appointed and reasonably non-partisan technocracy could take the mantle of authority and allow members of all factions to recognize it. The caretaker government could settle disputes about power transfers and police force composition. They could create enough of a barrier to terrorist activity to restart economic activity, and perhaps build enough confidence to generate some support for honoring past commitments, allowing aid to flow back into the terrirtories.

Mostly, such a structure could lead more quickly to the rise of a responsible ruling class in the Palestinian territories. Right now, the violence gives no room for sober and rational leaders to come to the fore. The competent administration of technocrats could persuade the Palestinian people to cast aside both the corrupt legacy of Yasser Arafat and the lunatic Islamism of Hamas. A civil war would throw up only violent leadership, which the Palestinians have had in spades for the last decade and more.

Only the rise of moderate and rational leadership will save the Palestinians and bring an end to the conflict between them and the Israelis. Abbas' technocracy has the potential to deliver that in the near term, instead of having that class forged in the crucible of a lengthy and destructive civil war between two factions of dedicated terrorists.

Where Have All St. Cloud's Men Gone?

Here in the Twin Cities, we have gotten used to the rich fantasy life of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's Minnesota Poll. I covered the folly of the MinnPoll last July, showing that the poll has consistently and significantly underrepresented Republican support. In fact, over the last twenty years, its final analysis prior to an election has underestimated Republican support by an average of over seven points. In only one race in 20 years has the MinnPoll overestimated the Republican votes.

My good friend King Banaian at SCSU Scholars dissects the problem in the latest "analysis" from the Star Tribune's polling. Earlier, they had shown DFL candidate Patty Wetterling ahead of Republican Michele Bachmann by eight points in Minnesota's 6th District, a district that had voted for Bush by 57% two years ago. How could the district have shifted that much?

Apparently, it came from an exodus of men. The Star Tribune's sample for the district consisted of 58% women. King notes the demographic problems:

# Comparing demographics of the poll (see the StarTribune's pretty pictures) with the 2000 Census would indicate either many more college graduates vote or respond to polls, or that the sample has too many relative to the district. The poll reported 39% of respondents being either college graduates or having post-graduate education. The Census in 2000 reports less than a quarter of area residents over 25 years old have earned a bachelor's degree or more.

# And lastly, 58% of respondents were female. In all previous polls that Jeff and Larry mention, there has been a female advantage in the poll for Wetterling, so the more females in your sample the more likely you'll find a Wetterling advantage. The Sept. SurveyUSA poll was 49% female, the October SurveyUSA poll was 50% female, and the Majority Watch robopoll was 53% female. Now why hasn't anyone noted this? The only way this can be representative is if you thought that if the election were held today, 58% of voters would be female. Why would you believe that?

The MinnPoll has a long and inglorious history of skewed results, and the skewing always goes in one direction. King took the time to check the crosstabs, and discovers one of the methods used by the Strib to generate that skewing.

Dershowitz Experiences The Clinton Double-Standard First-Hand

Alan Dershowitz, writing in the New York Sun, complains of a double standard applied by the media to him and Bill Clinton. Dershowitz elicited a wave of criticism and outrage when he argued that American law should set up a narrow exception to the laws against torture in order to allow accountability for it. However, when Bill Clinton made the exact same argument during an NPR interview, the media never bothered to report it:

In a recent interview on National Public Radio, Mr. Clinton was asked, as someone "who's been there," whether the president needs "the option of authorizing torture in an extreme case."

This is what he said in response: "Look, if the president needed an option, there's all sorts of things they can do.Let's take the best case, OK.You picked up someone you know is the No. 2 aide to Osama bin Laden. And you know they have an operation planned for the United States or some European capital in the next three days. And you know this guy knows it. Right, that's the clearest example. And you think you can only get it out of this guy by shooting him full of some drugs or water-boarding him or otherwise working him over. If they really believed that that scenario is likely to occur, let them come forward with an alternate proposal.

"We have a system of laws here where nobody should be above the law, and you don't need blanket advance approval for blanket torture.They can draw a statute much more narrowly, which would permit the president to make a finding in a case like I just outlined, and then that finding could be submitted even if after the fact to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court." ...

For suggesting this approach to the terrible choice of evils between torture and terrorism, I was condemned as a moral monster, labeled an advocate of torture, and called a Torquemada.

Dershowitz makes his astonishment clear. Clinton argued not just for a legal opening to authorize torture -- not abuse, not coercive techniques, but the legal ability to "work over" terrorists -- but also to allow the executive to cover itself with an ex post facto warrant from the FISA court. That would allow the President to conduct torture illegally but then cover him/herself afterwards by getting FISA judges to provide cover. Dershowitz didn't go that far in his own argument; in the "ticking time bomb" scenario, he would still have required the warrant to be secured before the torture.

The Harvard law professor complains about the double standard applied to the Clintons, and worries that the silence means the debate on torture has closed. On the first score, all this conservative can say is: welcome to the club. After all, this is the same President and political party that pushed for excessively burdensome sexual harassment legislation that allowed for all sorts of unreasonable discovery, taking political advantage from the aftermath of the Clarence Thomas smear campaign, and then howled loudly and successfully when Paula Jones applied it to him. This is the same President who has convinced a majority of Americans that his impeachment for perjury, a crime against the Constitution, represented a historical defense of it.

But thaty's hardly the end of the hypocrisy. After all, Congress just passed a bill, signed by President Bush yesterday, that explicitly authorizes the tough interrogations of terror suspects that has stopped at least eight terror attacks on America and American assets. It does not authorize torture and requires interrogators to adhere to the McCain Amendment which prohibited torture.

How did Senator Hillary Clinton vote on that bill? She opposed it, along with 32 other Democrats. Bill Clinton's party screamed loud and long about how the bill enabled torture and departed from the Geneva Conventions. Russ Feingold described this legislation as "a stain" on our history, one we would regret, and soon. Yet none of these Democrats had anything to say when their last occupant of the White House not only endorsed torture but also a protocol for covering one's butt after the fact.

Double standard? We've been dealing with it for years. Welcome to the club, Alan. The T-shirt is on its way.

The Left Hates Gays?

Apparently, the Left hates gays and believes that private sexual preferences belong on the front page. BlogActive, a site known for outing closeted gays in politics, now claims that Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) has engaged in homosexual activity in the bathrooms of Union Station. Michael Rogers writes:

I have done extensive research into this case, including trips to the Pacific Northwest to meet with men who have say they have physical relations with the Senator. I have also met with a man here in Washington, D.C., who says the same -- and that these incidents occurred in the bathrooms of Union Station. None of these men know each other, or knew that I was talking to others. They all reported similar personal characteristics about the Senator, which lead me to believe, beyond any doubt, that their stories are valid.

He'd better hope they're correct, or he will have one hell of a lawsuit on his hands. Patterico has been following this story and he notes that Craig has denied the entire BlogActive allegation:

Senator Craig’s office flatly rejected the claims. "The Senator says this story is absolutely ridiculous – almost laughable," said press secretary Sid Smith. “It has no basis in fact.”

People wonder why we don't attract a wider range of qualified candidates for public office. Michael Rogers sets himself up as Exhibit #1. The personal and degrading attacks convince many people to skip the trouble, and the people who do dare to run for office usually wind up experiencing the ruination of their reputations in one form or other. It comes from all sides to some degree, but this ghastly mudslinging really marks a new low.

These kind of slimy allegations have no way to be proven or disproven, leaving Craig with limited options to clear the air. How does one disprove a sexual orientation? He has three children with his wife Suzanne, and nine grandchildren. That seems to be proof that he has a heterosexual orientation, but Rogers and the scandal brigade will argue that Craig's just in denial. It's a no-win argument, and its use of anonymous sourcing is especially egregious and despicable. Rogers wants to ruin Craig politically, and yet he doesn't produce a single source for his allegations to go on the record.

Once again, the Left shows its obsession with sexuality, but it's really more than that. The Left obsesses over identity politics in all forms, and that obsession comes out in pathological terms. Rogers reveals this in his blog post, demanding that gay staffers on the Hill identify their orientation publicly, or else he will do it for them. Sexual identity is everything to him, and the concept of sexual privacy has no value to him at all. He wants to humiliate gays who prefer to keep their sexual activity private, forcing them to wear the virtual pink triangle against their will to experience obloquy and castigation.

However, the obloquy and castigation seems to only come from Rogers and his ilk. I couldn't care less whether Craig is attracted to men or women; it's really none of my business, and none of Rogers' either. As long as he's not importuning minors, then it makes no difference to anyone except Craig and his family, and that's f the allegations have any basis in fact. The only time it becomes a public issue is if Craig insisted on an official government status of a same-gender relationship, which as a policy issue should be decided by the people. Most conservatives, moderates, and liberals share the same conviction that sexual orientation is a private matter. Only extremists like Rogers allow themselves to get worked up over it.

The only bigot who should be ashamed of himself is Rogers. And if he's a libeler, he better get himself a damned good lawyer. (via Hot Air)

What's At Stake In North Korea

Some people have begun to claim that further opposition to North Korea's nuclear weapons programs is pointless and advise acceptance and containment as an ongoing policy. That might make some sense in a vacuum, especially if no one wants to perform the tough tasks ahead in enforcing sanctions on the Kim regime. However, the AP reminds us of the stakes involved in this question, and that North Korea's defiance hasn't taken place in a vacuum at all:

The head of the U.N. nuclear agency warned Monday that as many as about 30 additional countries could soon have technology that would let them produce atomic weapons "in a very short time," joining the nine states known or suspected to have such arms.

Speaking at a conference on tightening controls against nuclear proliferation, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said more nations were "hedging their bets" by developing technology that is at the core of peaceful nuclear energy programs but could be switched to making weapons. ...

ElBaradei did not single out any country but was clearly alluding to Iran and other nations that are working to develop uranium enrichment capability, such as Brazil.

Other countries, including Australia, Argentina and South Africa, have recently announced that they are considering developing enrichment programs to be able to sell fuel to states that want to generate electricity with nuclear reactors.

Canada, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, Taiwan, Spain, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Lithuania are among nations that either have the means to produce weapons-grade uranium if they choose, could quickly assemble such technology, or could use plutonium waste for weaponization. All are committed to relying on conventional weaponry, and there is no suggestion they want to use their programs for arms.

The countries named above represent no real threat. All of them, as the AP notes, abide by the non-proliferation treaty and have no interest in seeing nuclear technology or products wind up in the hands of terrorists. The nations that should concern us get mentioned at the end of the article:

Other countries considering nuclear programs in the near future are Egypt, Bangladesh, Ghana, Indonesia, Jordan, Namibia, Moldova, Nigeria, Poland, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam and Yemen, U.N. officials say.

How would a nuclear Egypt sound? After all, the Muslim Brotherhood that spawned al-Qaeda through men like Ayman al-Zawahiri has gathered considerable political power in Egypt and could easily follow Mubarak's secular authoritarian regime to rule the nation. Should we also prepare for acceptance of their hands on nuclear technology? How about Indonesia, where a significant amount of the population approved of the two Bali bombings as a defense of Islam? Could we contain Jordan if the Islamists take over nuclear technology in Amman? And if they do in Egypt and Jordan, how long before Syria gets the bomb?

The world watches North Korea to understand whether the West has given up on nuclear non-proliferation. Kim's defiance informs the entire global community, and many states wait on the precipice. If we shrug our shoulders in acceptance and fall back to a containment strategy, we will have to employ that strategy in a dozen more places within a dozen years or less. A failure to remain firm on the North Korea will give a green light to a new arms race, and this one will eventually result in terrorists getting their hands on the bomb.

Will we shrug our shoulders then, too? Or will we find our resolve far too late to stop the atrocities that will follow?

March 2001: Iraqi IIS Wants To Attack American Assets

Joseph Shahda has continued his excellent work at the Free Republic forum in translating captured documents from the Iraqi government. He has taken a close look at document CMPC-2003-006758, translating it from the Arabic and revealing the intent of Iraq to attack American interests. The memo from the IIS complains about the election of "Bush the Son" and talks about the need to exhort terrorists to attack America:

In the name of God the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate

The Presidency of the Republic

The Intelligence Service

Mr: The Respectful Assistant Director of the Apparatus Operations.

Subject: The New American Policy Toward Iraq

Aside is a notice for the 10th Directorate and attached is a note from the respectful Mr. Director of the Apparatus on 24/3/2001 that your Excellency and the two gentlemen directors of the 4th Directorate and 10th Directorate to study in what is issued on the 10th Directorate memo and which includes:

1. The available signs indicate the intentions of America under the presidency of Bush the Son that aim to damage the political leadership in the country, and among it is their seeking to apply what it called the smart sanctions and it summarize as:

A. Allow the importing of humanitarian goods to Iraq without prior approval and this aim to make the leadership in Iraq responsible for the starvation of the Iraqi people and not the responsibility of the United Nations.

B. The return of the Inspectors.

C. The massing of the World opinion around the special procedures to contain Iraq.

D. Travel prohibition for the Iraqi officials and the freezing of their special accounts.

2. The 10th Directorate suggested the following to encounter what was mentioned above.

A. Prepare a public relation plan that aims to clarify the rights of Iraq, and bring up what is related to the Palestinian cause, and the call to strike the presence and interests of America.

B. Work to commit some nations like France, China, Russia and Japan to economical agreements that make the implementation of the smart sanctions to have negative effect to the interests of these nations.

C. Strengthen our embassies with new remarkable staff that is can go toward new windows in the international relations.

D. Make a list of the citizens including those who are in the Apparatus that have in their names foreign accounts and do the procedures to protect these accounts from any enemy action.

E. Insist that that Iraq money will stay local.

Notice the Presidency of what was mentioned above.

Please review and please consider the opinions of the 4th Directorate, the 5th Directorate, and the 40th Directorate in regards to what was mentioned above… with regards.

Signature

Director/ S. A. AA.

28/3/2001.

Interestingly, the Iraqis met success on almost all of these efforts. They managed to get three of the four nations mentioned to undermine the sanctions regime and argue for its end even more vociferously after Bush took office. Only Japan demurred from enabling the Iraqis to break what little containment still existed. The IIS tightened its grip on Iraqis within Iraq; they had a fearsome reputation regarding expatriates already. And as history proved less than six months later, terrorists attacked America while the Palestinians danced in the streets.

The timing of this memo seems significant. Recall that just two weeks prior to this memo, Air Brigardier General Abdel Magid Hammot Ali called on the pilots under his command at Ali Bin Abi Taleb Air Force Base to volunteer for suicide missions. That memo used language strikingly similar to this: "... we ask to provide that Division with the names of those who desire to volunteer for Suicide Mission to liberate Palestine and to strike American Interests ..." As I wrote last April:

Obviously, the terror missions could not be conducted under the color of Iraqi military or get traced back to them, otherwise the American forces -- especially under George Bush -- would almost certainly attack Iraq with everything we could muster. Saddam would also not be able to rely on his clandestine partners on the Security Council to wield their vetoes, as even France and Russia would have to acknowledge the right of the US to defend itself once Saddam initiated this kind of attack. So how would he hide the nationality and identity of these volunteers? He would have to "launder" them through another organization, one that would not necessarily immediately point back to Iraq -- like al-Qaeda.

That doesn't prove in a legal sense that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. It does show that they wanted to inspire others to attack American interests, and again that they actively recruited for these missions in their own military. That amounts to a policy to conduct a proxy war against the US, both at home and abroad, certainly a good cause for the US to pre-empt it. (h/t: CQ reader Jeff R)

How Dare You Attack Me, And By The Way, Here Are A Couple More Disclosures

Harry Reid went on offense yesterday ... of a sort. Claiming that his failure to properly disclose his partnership with Jay Brown -- an attorney with ties to a zoning-commission bribery case and reported links to organized crime -- amounted to a Republican plot to make him look dishonest, Reid filed amended disclosures five years after the fact to note the transfer of his properties into his and Brown's LLCs. His big offensive ground to a halt, though, when he revealed two other land transactions that had never been disclosed, and another mini-scandal erupted involving his use of campaign funds:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has been using campaign donations instead of his personal money to pay Christmas bonuses for the support staff at the Ritz-Carlton, where he lives in an upscale condominium. Federal election law bars candidates from converting political donations for personal use.

Questioned about the expenditures by the Associated Press, Mr. Reid's office said yesterday that he was personally reimbursing his campaign for $3,300 in donations he had directed to the staff holiday fund at his residence.

Mr. Reid also announced he was amending his ethics reports to Congress to more fully account for a Las Vegas land deal, highlighted in an AP story last week, that allowed him to collect $1.1 million in 2004 for property he hadn't personally owned in three years.

In that matter, the senator hadn't disclosed to Congress that he first sold land to a friend's limited liability company back in 2001 and took an ownership stake in the company. He collected the seven-figure payout when the company sold the land again in 2004 to others.

Let's get this straight. Reid's failure to follow the Senate rules on disclosure in 2001, when he sat on the Ethics Committee, somehow got set up by the Republicans. Reid's connection to an attorney involved in a bribery case that directly related to zoning decisions in Clark County, where they both owned property, was a Rovian plot set in motion in 1998. And now Reid's new disclosures of property in an area where he has taken an intense legislative interest somehow relates to Republicans, when no one even mentioned the parcels in question -- because Reid failed to disclose them during his entire time as Senate Minority Leader, while he has castigated Republicans for alleged ethical lapses.

The only reason he's coming clean is because the AP caught him breaking the rules earlier, and it pointed out the extensive connections between Reid, Nevada land developers, and the legislation he has championed that has benefitted all of them.

As far as the Christmas bonuses go, it pales in significance to Reid's land deals and rule breaking on personal finances, but they still have some significance as an indicator of Reid's indifference to the rules. No one much cared how the money wound up in the hands of the hotel staff, so the "clerical error" explanation makes some sense. In Reid's organization, the rules don't apply, and this rule means a lot less to the taxpayers than Reid's manipulation of federal land deals. I doubt many will begrudge staff their Christmas party, but for a man who likes to demand strict compliance to regulations from his opponents, he has a strange allergy to adhering to them himself.

Besides, the man made $700,000 in profits in 2004 on that one sale of land that, according to his disclosure statements, he didn't even own at the time. He couldn't even part with $1200 of it from his own pocket in gifts and a Christmas party for his staff? He had to stick his contributors with the bill? Perhaps he figured it all came from the same source and didn't make much difference.

UPDATE: The bonuses were for the hotel staff, not Reid's staff -- which makes the petty book-cooking even more laughable. Apparently Reid can't tip from his own pocket. Thanks to CQ commenters for the clarification.

How Unhappy Are The Chinese?

Apparently, Kim Jong-Il's nuclear surprise last week didn't just upset the various democracies in the Pacific. The Australian reported yesterday that Beijing has begun to consider a move that would have outraged the world fifteen years ago, but which might get tacit support now that North Korea has gone nuclear:

THE Chinese are openly debating "regime change" in Pyongyang after last week's nuclear test by their confrontational neighbour.

Diplomats in Beijing said at the weekend that China and all the major US allies believed North Korea's claim that it had detonated a nuclear device. US director of national intelligence John Negroponte circulated a report that radiation had been detected at a site not far from the Chinese border. ...

The balance of risk between reform and chaos dominated arguments within China's ruling elite. The Chinese have also permitted an astonishing range of vituperative internet comment about an ally with which Beijing maintains a treaty of friendship and co-operation. Academic Wu Jianguo published an article in a Singapore newspaper - available online in China - bluntly saying: "I suggest China should make an end of Kim's Government."

"The Chinese have given up on Kim Jong-il," commented one diplomat. "The question is, what are they going to do about it?"

They may decide to throw their weight behind the reformists that Kim fears most. Beijing has information on a budding reform movement, one that would replace the personality cult of the "royal family" with an authoritarian but rational government based on post-Communist states in Eastern Europe, especially Romania. These reformers, considered Sinophiles by the Chinese, would bring stability to the region and allow for the economic growth that would stem the flow of refugees into China.

In fact, the Chinese have begun talking about three attempted coup d'etats that Kim weathered between 1996-9. Two of the three attempts involved the DPRK Army, and the third involved two government ministries. One of the Army revolts came in reaction to the famine that killed more than a million Koreans in the North. Up to now, Beijing has appeared content with the devil they know rather than the devil they don't. Now that their devil has grown nuclear horns -- and may be inspiring more of the same from South Korea and Japan -- the Chinese government may decide to throw the dice on a different ruling class.

It's not just the Chinese hedging their bets, either. The Australian notes that Chinese real-estate agents have reported a suddenly booming business in Wang Jing from North Korean officials looking for alternate housing. It appears that the rats have begun to leave the ship, or at the least have begun practicing their diving technique.

It's this last dynamic that might press China into ending Kim's regime. They cannot afford to allow the DPRK to suddenly collapse. They might "invite" Kim and his family to leave Pyongyang; his eldest son already lives in exile in Beijing. Failing that, they may work with the Sinophiles to succeed where the Koreans could not in the late '90s. Kim, who already fears the Ceaucescu treatment, might want to make travel plans soon.

How Key Is Immigration In The Midterms?

Many people have derided the Republican efforts to establish tough border security and hard-line policies on illegal immigration as simple election-year rhetoric. Critics have called it fear-mongering. Democratic candidates, however, have increasingly embraced the supposedly right-wing position in this year's midterms:

In Washington, the Democratic leadership in Congress has maintained a united front on immigration, demanding legislation that would legalize illegal immigrants and create a guest worker program to ensure a reliable legal flow of foreign workers. ...

The vast majority of Democrats in Congress support their leadership’s call for legislation that would grant legal status to illegal immigrants and toughen border security. And politicians of all stripes go against their party leaders, on occasion, to address regional concerns. But the appearance of some candidates vying to be tougher than Republicans on border security, particularly in tight races in conservative states, shows how divisive the immigration issue remains.

The tough border security message is carried mostly by Democrats in the South and the Midwest, where a surge of Hispanic immigration is transforming small towns and cities. In such communities, some candidates are deriding legalization as amnesty, proclaiming border security as their priority or criticizing Republican challengers as failing to stem the tide of illegal immigration.

This stance has fueled an outcry from immigrant advocacy groups, including the National Council of La Raza and the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, which have accused some Democrats of abandoning their principles. They warn that Democrats and Republicans who demonize immigrants risk alienating Hispanic voters, who are expected to constitute a powerful bloc in coming years.

For a right-wing partisan bone-tosser, immigration suddenly has gained a lot of political luster after the passage of the Secure Fence Act. Harold Ford, running for Bill Frist's open seat in Tennessee, has positioned himself to the right of the GOP Senate caucus. Former NFL quarterback Heath Shuler has pledged to oppose any hint of amnesty if elected to Congress from North Carolina. John Cranley, opposing Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH), accuses him of supporting the amnesty that had been the Democratic Party position on immigration reform.

What changed? The Democrats did some polling, and discovered what Frist knew already. Middle-class voters don't like illegal immigration. Regardless of party affiliation, they also don't approve of granting citizenship to people who broke the law to get here. The Democrats found out that their platform on immigration was a loser.

Suddenly, Democrats in tight races have become more Catholic than the Pope on immigration. Amnesty? Never heard of it! Their consultants have told them that the best way to beat Republicans is to cast them as incompetent on border enforcement, a charge that GOP procrastination on this issue has enabled to some degree. However, it's worth noting -- in big, bold letters -- that the Senate only passed the SFA in the last days of the session after the Democrats and a few Republicans threatened to filibuster any attempt at securing the border that didn't include a rapid track to citizenship for the lion's share of the 12 million illegals already in the US.

Voters who buy the election-eve conversions of Ford and other Democrats into immigration hawks will be in for a huge surprise. Ford voted against more border agents while in Congress. Tessa Hafen in Nevada castigates Republican Jon Porter for backing Bush's comprehensive strategy for immigration, but then sheepishly admits to favoring legalization herself. Immigrants-rights activist David Lubell isn't fooled; he talks about the "disconnect" between party policy and the rhetoric of Democratic candidates in tough elections.

Don't get fooled. If the Democrats had supported robust enforcement of immigration law, we would have had this issue resolved in 1986, 1988, 1990, and 1992. Had the Democrats valued border security, the Clinton Administration would have built the barriers on the southern border, and the Democrats wouldn't have blocked GOP efforts to address the security issue by itself after 9/11. We can criticize the GOP and the Bush administration for not getting tough enough on immigration, but don't believe for a second that the Democrats have suddenly discovered their inner Tom Tancredo.

Weldon Under Investigation, Names Leaker

Rep. Curt Weldon, who had championed the investigation into the Able Danger project and had been a strident critic of the 9/11 Commission, faces a grand jury investigation into allegations of corruption involving his daughter and a Russian energy corporation. FBI agents raided the houses of his daughter and a close political ally, while Weldon insisted that the investigation was politically motivated:

Federal agents raided the homes of Rep. Curt Weldon's daughter and one of his closest political supporters yesterday as part of an investigation into whether the veteran Republican congressman used his influence to benefit himself and his daughter's lobbying firm, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

The investigation focuses on actions the Pennsylvania congressman took that may have aided clients of the business created by his daughter, Karen Weldon, and longtime Pennsylvania political ally Charles Sexton, according to three of the sources. ...

The investigation focuses on Weldon's support of the Russian-managed Itera International Energy Corp., one of the world's largest oil and gas firms, while that company paid fees to Solutions North America, the company that Karen Weldon and Sexton operate.

The congressman, for example, intervened on Itera's behalf when U.S. officials canceled a federal grant to the company. He also encouraged U.S. companies to do business with Itera at a time when its reputation had been sullied by accusations of Russian corruption.

Weldon told reporters yesterday that all of this had been reviewed by the House Ethics Committee two years ago, and he had been cleared of any wrongdoing. The Congressman, in an appearance at the University of Pennsylvania last night, claimed that an associate of John Conyers and Chuck Schumer had campaigned for this investigation to be opened by the FBI during the election. Melanie Sloan now heads CREW, the same outfit that had its fingers on the infanous Mark Foley instant messages, and Weldon says she's leaked the information on the story to the press.

CREW originally filed the complaint in 2004, after a Los Angeles Times article on the murky ownership of Itera and its connections to Solutions North America. Karen Weldon and Charles Sexton run Solutions North America and they registered as lobbyists for the Russian firm in 2002, severing the relationship in 2004. SNA wanted to help Itera pursue federal contracts for gas and oil products. In this they appear to have been unsuccesful; the FedSpending.org database lists no awards to Itera from 2002-2004.

Weldon apparently complained about this lack of success to the Trade and Development Agency, accoridng to the Washington Post. He hailed Itera as a "great source" for partnership on energy projects while visiting their offices abroad, and attended the opening of their American headquarters. Only the first action raises any eyebrows at all, and it depends on the nature of the communication to TDA. If he threatened legislative action, then Weldon has a big problem. The Post, however, does not point to any actual legislative action or official intervention conducted by Weldon, and it fails to specify the nature of the complaint. Itera executives donated $8,000 to Weldon, but so far it looks like all they got was a handshake and a photo op at their North American offices. In fact, Weldon got Itera to drop its attempt to collect a $90 million debt from the former Soviet republic of Georgia and got the gas turned back on for the Georgian winter, which doesn't appear to have been terribly beneficial to the Itera executives.

If the FBI finds evidence of Weldon using his office to shovel taxpayer money into Itera's pockets and to benefit his daughter at the expense of the American taxpayer, then he should be prosecuted, and I'll cheer the jury that convicts him -- but we're not even close to that with the information in this story. The lack of any grant or contract for Itera seems to indicate that Weldon didn't do any such thing. If that had happened, it would have been while Itera still employed Sexton and his daughter as lobbyists, between 2002-4. With the evidence presented by the Post, this looks like a hit job by an organization that seems intent on building a reputation for them.

The Failure Of Local Media On The Ellison-Fine Race

Over the weekend, we had an opportunity to interview Rochelle Olson from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, who wrote a rather amazing article about the Republican candidate for Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District, Alan Fine, a little over a week ago. The interview exposed the thinking behind the editorial decisions of the local media, in the stories they cover and the stories they do not, and the facts they decide to publish and those they do not. We'll come back to that story in a moment.

Today's Front Page Magazine article provides an example of the sins of omission in the local media on this race. Over the weekend, DFL candidate Keith Ellison attended an event sponsored by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Pembroke Pines, Florida. One might wonder why a politician from Minnesota running for Congress in Minneapolis would take a weekend off less than a month before the election, and Joe Kaufman tried to find out:

At the beginning of this month, I received an e-mail about a lecture that was taking place on October 14th at the Southwest Focal Point Senior Center, located in Pembroke Pines, Florida. The event was being sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Keynote Speaker was listed as Keith Ellison, a candidate for United States Congress from Minnesota and a man that has raised thousands of dollars through CAIR. Our group, Americans Against Hate, planned to be there and welcome him in protest. All was fine, until we attempted to sit in on the event.

When I received the e-mail concerning the lecture, I wanted to corroborate the information to make sure that it was correct. I searched the Internet. I found nothing. I went onto CAIR’s and CAIR-Florida’s websites – nothing. I went onto Keith Ellison’s campaign website – nothing. Details about this event were nowhere to be seen. It wasn’t until I spoke with someone from the Pembroke Pines Police Department that I found out the information was indeed accurate. Questions popped up in my head: Why is this event being made a secret? Why is a Congressional Candidate from Minnesota campaigning in South Florida? And right before the election? ...

We obtained the permit, and the protest went on as planned. What we were protesting was the fact that Keith Ellison had accepted campaign donations from CAIR officials. We were also protesting Florida Gubernatorial Candidate Jim Davis for doing the same. Ellison had taken money from CAIR’s National Executive Director Nihad Awad, CAIR’s National Chairman Parvez Ahmed, and CAIR’s Government Affairs Director Corey Saylor. Jim Davis had accepted money from CAIR-Florida’s Communications Director Ahmed Bedier. Given CAIR’s ties to the terrorist organization Hamas, given the fact that four CAIR representatives have previously been charged by the U.S. government with terrorist activity, and given the fact that CAIR is being sued for its role in the attacks on 9/11, we believed our case was strong.

Kaufman and his group held their protest outside the public-owned senior center, videotaped by a CAIR operative, while Ellison gave the keynote speech to the CAIR conference. Despite the center's status as a public forum, Kaufman was denied access to the CAIR event. No one knows what Ellison had to say to CAIR, but one can readily suppose that he wasn't criticizing their connections to terrorist groups. After all, he could have done that from here.

No one in Minneapolis knew about this meeting, because the Minneapolis Star Tribune didn't have the curiosity of Joe Kaufman. They don't believe that a Congressional candidate's support for a group connected to Hezbollah and Hamas merits any news coverage, even when the candidate sneaks out of town less than four weeks before the election to give the keynote speech at the group's conference.

So what is newsworthy to the Strib? A story about an eleven-year-old arrest for a domestic disturbance that never resulted in an indictment, let alone a conviction, against Fine. During our interview on the radio this weekend, Mitch and I tried to get Olson to explain two decisions: the editorial assessment of this as a valid news story and the decision to leave out the fact that Fine was never indicted nor convicted for any kind of assault. The Strib also left out of the initial reporting that Fine's ex-wife got arrested twice later on suspicion of abusing their son and that a protection order had to be taken out against her on the son's behalf. In a state that tilts hard against the efforts of fathers seeking custody, Fine has joint custody of their son and had sole physical custody for a significant period of time.

All of these facts, which provides a much different context than that supplied by Olson, got left out of the story on October 7th. When asked about this, Olson replied that the Strib had space limitations and had to decide which facts would make the editorial cut. Every mitigating fact about Fine was edited out of the story, and every salacious and sensational allegation was included, no matter how little evidence supported it.

So we have Ellison meeting with terrorist sympathizers, a description by no less of an authority than Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, and the Strib sniffs. We also have a gossipy and unproven allegation made by an ex-wife and her father (a Family Court judge), and the Strib rushes that to print, stripped of all context and exculpatory information.

That's the local media here in the Twin Cities. That's the editorial incompetence of the Star Tribune. That's why voters in MN-05 have to consider their vote carefully three weeks from now. If you think that reading our local press has informed you of the candidates in this race, think again. You owe it to yourself to read Power Line, where Scott Johnson has done the work that the Star Tribune should have been doing all along.

Tomorrow, Townhall will have the podcast of our second hour available so that you can listen to our series of interviews on this subject. We interviewed Rochelle Olson, Scott Johnson, and Alan Fine, and our listeners got a much better grip on this story as a result. We'd love to have Ellison on our show, but we'd have to tear him away from his power base ... among Florida's terrorist sympathizers.

Why The War On Terror Can't Be A Law Enforcement Action

Today's sentencing of Lynne Stewart, who turned herself into a conduit for an Islamic terrorist who had already conspired to attack the United States once, demonstrates the fecklessness of pursuing terrorists through the civil courts. A federal judge sentenced Stewart to 28 months in prison for assisting Omar Abdel Rahman in activating his terrorist network while the US held him in custody -- and then temporarily released her on her own recognizance:

A firebrand civil rights lawyer who has defended Black Panthers and anti-war radicals was sentenced Monday to nearly 2 1/2 years in prison — far less than the 30 years prosecutors wanted — for helping an imprisoned terrorist sheik communicate with his followers on the outside. ...

The judge said Stewart was guilty of smuggling messages between her client and his followers that could have "potentially lethal consequences." He called the crimes "extraordinarily severe criminal conduct."

But in departing from federal guidelines that called for 30 years behind bars, he cited Stewart's more than three decades of dedication to poor, disadvantaged and unpopular clients.

"Ms. Stewart performed a public service, not only to her clients, but to the nation," Koeltl said.

The judge said Stewart could remain free while she appeals, a process that could take more than a year.

This woman sent messages to Rahman's followers in Egypt that instructed them to begin terrorist activity. She knew exactly what she did -- after all, she had defended Rahman and had seen the evidence against him -- and turned her back on her country and her humanity in order to suck up to a man who plotted the murder of tens of thousands of Americans. Stewart's actions could easily have led to the deaths of many innocent civilians.

The government took this case to the appropriate venue; Stewart is an American citizen and committed a grievous crime. However, Judge Koeltl showed why the law-enforcement model will never defeat terrorism. Here we have an important part of a communication chain meant to instigate murder on a global scale, and the judge sentences her to 1/15th of the possible sentence. Koeltl waxed on about Stewart's previous good works, all of which would have amounted to zero comfort to anyone lost in a terrorist attack she enabled. In fact, we still don't know that there hasn't been an attack based on that communication.

Koeltl sent a message today that certain people can commit or enable acts of terror, as long as they have the correct political background. Stewart will do a few months at a minimum security work camp, and with her illness will probably avoid the work part of it. When she gets released, she will once again become the toast of the hate-America circuit, where she will once again claim she did nothing wrong and that the real terrorists are the people who have tried -- and succeeded -- to keep this country safe for the last five years.

It's a pathetic display, and Koeltl should be ashamed of himself.

John at Stop the ACLU has more.

Do We Have Another 9/11 Figure?

Reuters and a Spanish newspaper have claimed that the US has another 9/11 conspirator in custody. Mustafa Setmarian allegedly trained the 9/11 attackers in Afghanistan and helped plot the Madrid bombings, and El Pais reported yesterday that he has been transferred to US custody:

A suspected Al Qaeda leader accused of being involved in the Sept. 11 attacks and planning the 2004 Madrid train bombings has been imprisoned in a secret U.S. jail for the last year, Spain's El Pais newspaper reported Sunday.

Mustafa Setmarian, 48, a Syrian with Spanish citizenship, was captured in Pakistan in October 2005 and is held in a prison operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, Pakistani and European security service officials told the newspaper. ...

The capture of Setmarian, the alleged founder of Al Qaeda's Spanish network, was reported in May of this year.

The Spaniards would like to get their hands on Setmarian, and the release of the information about Setmarian's detention might be a government ploy to force the US to give him up. American interrogators undoubtedly want to continue their work with Setmarian, as his long association with al-Qaeda should provide a cascade of information on current plots, terror cells, and the location of higher-value terrorists. The US needs to stay firm and continue its exploitation of Setmarian, and then try him for his part in the vicious mass murder ot 2,996 people in the United States.

Meet The Proposed House Leadership, Part I

If the Democrats take over either or both chamber of Congress, the commitee chairs will obviously switch, in most cases to the existing ranking member of each panel. For the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which determines tax policy, a Democratic majority would place Charles Rangel in charge. Robert Novak gives Chicago Sun-Times readers a taste of what people can expect from a Rangel-led committee:

Republican-oriented tax lobbyists are interpreting late-campaign solicitations as a requirement for a ticket to enter the office of Rep. Charles Rangel as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in a Democratic-controlled House. Both free-lance and corporate lobbyists have received telephone solicitations for Rangel's leadership PAC (political action committee), which distributes funds to Democratic congressional candidates who need them. Rangel is virtually unopposed in his Harlem district. The lobbyists, who give almost exclusively to Republicans, are told that the contribution would be ''a nice gesture for Charlie.''

Rangel has already told people what we can expect from his committee, if he takes the chair, in terms of policy: a string of tax increases, as the Democrats undo the Bush tax cuts. Unfortunately, those cuts came with a sunset clause, meaning that they will disappear without explicit reauthorization from Congress. The Republicans couldn't get that done before the election, and Rangel says he won't allow it afterwards -- and the resultant increases would be immune from a presidential veto.

Now we can see what we can expect from a Rangel-led committee on an ethics basis as well. Those who pay their tribute to Charles' PAC will be viewed with favor; all others can take a number. It's a bit more blatant than Americans prefer, and another reason to be sure that Rangel never gets into that position.

And let's not forget who will get the largesse that Rangel intends to take out of our hides if he takes charge of tax policy.

The Taboo Has Lifted

For decades after the end of World War II, no one dared mention the acquisition of nuclear weapons in Japan. This taboo came from having suffered the only use of nuclear weapons in wartime as well as a revulsion to any offensive military capability after the atrocities Japan perpetrated in the first half of the 20th century. However, with Kim Jong-Il rattling his own nuclear saber, the taboo has begun to lift for the Japanese:

Shoichi Nakagawa, chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party's policy research council, said he believed Japan would adhere to its policy of not arming itself with nuclear weapons but added that debate over whether to go nuclear was necessary.

"We need to find a way to prevent Japan from coming under attack," Nakagawa told a television program, referring to what Tokyo should do following North Korea's reported nuclear test.

"There is argument that nuclear weapons are one such option. I want to make clear that I am not the one saying this, and Japan will stick to its nonnuclear principles, but we need to have active discussions," he said.

Nakagawa also said the constitution does not prohibit the possession of nuclear arms, adding that having such weapons might reduce or remove the risk of being attacked.

The Japanese haven't yet come to the point where anyone will overtly support going nuclear -- not yet. Nakagawa framed this very carefully. Japan will remain non-nuclear ... but only after we discuss it a while. The topic will advance incrementally until the Japanese feel comfortable discussing it in real terms.

And who is the intended audience for this incremental approach? Certainly the Japanese electorate, so that the taboo will eventually disappear altogether, but I'd say they're not the primary target for this announcement. Nakagawa and the ruling party wants Kim to understand that they will inspire an arms race in the region that they cannot possibly win with their economic woes. More importantly, the Japanese want the Chinese to understand the same message.

If Japan does decide to go nuclear and take the shackles off their military, it will transform the balance of power in the region in a profound manner. Right now, the Chinese have begun to expand their blue-water navy in order to eclipse the American supremacy in the western Pacific. The US has allowed them to get a head start, and we still have no responded with new orders for expanding the Pacific Fleet. However, if Japan decides to become a full partner in the region, they won't content themselves with building nuclear weapons -- they may well revive their own navy to vie for control in the Pacific, partnering with the US on a new level for regional security.

People rightly wonder whether the Chinese will bother to enforce the sanctions on North Korea, but that's really a secondary consideration. The US and Japan want China to yank on Kim's choker chain and disarm his nukes. The sanctions are one such tool, but the sanctions alone won't do it. Only China can force Kim to end his nuclear flirtation, and Japan is playing all the right notes to motivate them.

New York Times: House, Senate Races A Toss-Up

The New York Times has a new election-projection site that covers the Senate, House, and governor races from all around the country. Dan at Riehl World View points out that the Gray Lady seems to have a much different analysis than what we've seen from conventional wisdom, and that the GOP seems to be in the thick of it yet.

In the Senate, the NYT shows that the GOP has 47 solid seats with two leaners: Virginia and Arizona. That might come as a surprise to Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, where he has held a solid lead on Jim Pederson the entire campaign. Rasmussen has Kyl with a double-digit lead in its last two polls. Democrats only have 40 solid seats, with eight leaners, including Minnesota. The latest MinnPoll shows Klobuchar up by over 20 points, which is laughable, and even the NYT understands that. Other leaners include Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Montana, all of which have credible Republican incumbents. Only three states are toss-ups, according to the Times, and those look suspicious to me. Missouri is one of the states, and Jim Talent has started to pull away from Claire McCaskill.

The House looks just as tight despite the supposed tidal wave of blue poised to roll across America. When one counts the solids and the leaners, the Democrats have a one-seat edge (210-209) with 16 seats in play. All 16 have Republican incumbents, including Curt Weldon, who has strong national-security credentials. It seems unlikely that any group of incumbents will wind up with only a 50% success rate for re-election, which makes it seem at least probable that the GOP could hold the majority after the midterms -- albeit a much smaller majority.

We may wind up seeing a much smaller correction than first anticipated. Keep your eye on the Times projections as we get closer to the election.

Stewart To Claim Uncontrolled Emotion Defense

Lynne Stewarts faces sentencing today for acting as a conduit for terrorist Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the "blind sheikh" who helped organize the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. She transmitted his commands to his followers while in an American prison, helping to launch a terrorist network, and Stewart got convicted for providing material support. She has spent most of the intervening time traveling the nation and speaking out against the government, claiming she did nothing wrong and that the Bush administration wanted to silence her. Now, however, the New York Sun reports that she will change her tune significantly for her sentencing hearing:

The New York lawyer who was convicted of material support for terrorism after carrying messages for her client, terrorist sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, is scheduled to be sentenced today to as much as 30 years in prison.

She and her allies are pinning their hopes for leniency on a strategy that argues she became so emotionally involved in the sheik's case that she acted irrationally — a strategy that is underpinned by a sealed letter to the court from a psychiatrist.

A psychiatric report submitted to the federal judge in Manhattan who will decide the sentence, John Koeltl, claims that several emotional events in Stewart's life suggest her actions were motivated by "human factors of her client and his situation" and not by politics, according to portions of the psychiatric report.

The psychiatrist, Steven Teich, points to 11 emotional events that he claims prompted her to want to take action on Abdel Rahman's behalf, Stewart's attorneys say. Among the events that make Dr.Teich's list are her experiences seeing Abdel Rahman incarcerated and the 1995 suicide of a drug defendant named Dominick Maldonado, whom Stewart had once represented.

It's certainly a new position for Stewart, who has also claimed innocence through a lack of mens rea, the explicit decision to commit a criminal act. She says that her motivation was to ensure that Rahman did not lose any political ground while held by the US because she thought he would get deported instead of imprisoned. She has told the court that her "tragic flaw" is that she cares too much for her clients.

In other words, Stewart wants the court to take pity on her because she's a woman and can't control her emotions.

Nonsense. In the first place, one has to wonder why Stewart "cares" so much for an Islamist dedicated to killing her fellow Americans. Provide him an honest defense, of course, but an attorney who falls in love with a hate-monger and terrorist isn't lacking emotional discipline, she's lacking any values whatsoever. She now wants people to believe that she was blinded by the Blind Sheikh's pitiable circumstances, apparently incapable of accounting for the six people who died in the WTC attack and the terrorism she enabled with her communications to his radical followers in Egypt.

Stewart wants to play the patsy. However, patsies don't spend the lengthy time between her conviction and her sentencing appearing at numerous left-wing anti-war rallies, undermining the war effort and claiming to have been persecuted. Patsies don't tell crowds that they would do the same thing all over again under the same circumstances. The only saps involved in this case come from the multitudes who bought that story, and they're about to discover how gullible they've been.

Stewart faces as much as 30 years in prison for her promotion of terrorism during a time of war. She should get every last day of it.

Getting Reid Into The Mainstream Media

The New York Post runs a column I wrote this weekend covering the Harry Reid land deal that has exposed his murky connections to Nevada developers and the legislation that he sponsors to benefit them. Titled "Reid's Smelly Windfall: Back-$cratching With Developers", it brings a wider audience to the controversy:

Reid has now told the Senate Ethics Committee that he'll amend his past disclosure statements to for the first time cover the business relationships that AP has exposed. But he calls the amendment "technical" - which suggests it won't explain why his original "disclosures" misled the public on the nature of a partnership that made him a $700,000 windfall. ...

What Reid failed to disclose was his 2001 transfer of ownership of two parcels of land to Patrick Lane LLC - an entity in which he was partnered with one Jay Brown.

AP notes that Brown is a lobbyist, with reported links to organized crime. And he figures prominently in a federal criminal case - which concerns the bribery of members of the Clark County (Nev.) Zoning Commission by developers seeking changes to permit retail development on land they owned, vastly increasing its value.

As it happens, in 2001, the Clark County (Nev.) Zoning Commission approved a zoning change that allowed commercial/retail development on the land that Reid owned with Brown.

Then, the next year, Reid introduced and pushed into law the Clark County Conservation of Public Land and Natural Resources Act of 2002. The senator heralded this as vital in protecting the environment near Las Vegas. In fact, however, the law forced the Department of the Interior to sell off 18,000 acres of land around Las Vegas, spurring development and boosting the value of real-estate investments in the region. (Not what anyone normally associates with "protecting the environment.")

We need to keep pressing this forward until the Ethics Committee opens a full investigation -- and not just in this deal, but encompassing Reid's legislative activity that kept providing federal land to developers who hired his sons has lobbyists. The Reid family, one of whom now serves as a Clark County commissioner in charge of zoning decisions, has made quite a living off of Senator Reid's land swaps. In this case, Reid appears to have benefitted from the developments that he helped make possible.

If nothing else, it appears that Harry Reid's business in the Senate has a lot more to do with enriching the Reid family than representing the needs of the American people. More people need to know that, and each column inch helps to inform more of us.

US Keeping Pressure On China

The US, fresh from its Security Council victory, has now begun to ensure it maintains its success in isolating North Korea. John Bolton told the UN that China had a "heavy responsibility" to police their joint border and inspect all shipments crossing it, while Beijing complained that those expectations are too high:

In an unusual show of regional unity, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia lined up to back the US-drafted measures, which aim to punish Pyongyang for its claimed nuclear bomb test last Monday. ...

China called for calm and emphasised that the UN resolution did not permit military force. Academics said Beijing is reluctant to check all cargo crossing its long land border with North Korea or to take any step that might lead to a collapse of its neighbour and an exodus of refugees. "China will carry out the decision of the security council," said Zhou Yongsheng, professor at China's Foreign Affairs University. "But full inspections along our land border are unrealistic."

John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, said yesterday China had a "heavy responsibility" to influence North Korea's behaviour. As the North's major ally and supplier of crucial food and energy, if it were to cut that support, Mr Bolton said, it "would be powerfully persuasive".

North Korea continued issuing petulant rants, after walking out of the UN session that produced the sanctions. Bolton's North Korean counterpart accused the UNSC of being gangsters and again stated that further US pressure would be considered an act of war. No one knows for sure what Pyongyang means by that statement, but one can certainly suppose that the US would have to take out the next Taepodong-2 missile that they put onto a launch pad, regardless of whether they call it a test or not.

China doesn't want to be put in the position of enforcing sanctions against a brittle regime that could easily collapse and cause a flood of refugees into its own country. However, the US isn't about to let China off the hook. We know we will not get complete cooperation, but we want to start seeing the noose tighten on the Kim regime, and that will require Beijing to cooperate.

Why would they cooperate? They're keeping a close eye on Japan. Shinzo Abe wants to impose unilateral sanctions on North Korea, and has already begun doing so. They have proposed partnering with the US in seizing North Korean shipping and conducting searches for contraband, a move that would undoubtedly start a war that China wants to avoid. Abe may well also decide to start acquiring nuclear weapons if Kim will not disarm, and Beijing wants that even less than a North Korean collapse.

That's how the Kim regime will disarm peacefully, if it ever does. Their chief sponsor has to slap them down for any hope of success in stripping Pyongyang of its nukes. Some people wonder why we will not engage bilaterally with North Korea, but they cannot ask anything of us in head-to-head talks that they can't ask in multilateral negotiations. The North Koreans want the Chinese taken out of the discussions because China is the one country that has the greatest leverage.

The Bush administration understands this well, and they know to hold China's feet to the fire as well as North Korea. When we have motivated the Chinese enough, Kim will disarm -- or China will simply roll down to the 38th Parallel on their own to end the entire issue.

Patriot Rally

The Northern Alliance Radio Network will be attending the Patriot Rally this evening in the Twin Cities. Hugh Hewitt will host an evening that intends to rally Republicans and to review the issues at stake in the mid-term elections. The Patriot will have Senator Norm Coleman as a special guest, plus the potential for a couple of surprise guests. I'll try to live-blog from the event, and I'll have the camera along with me.

UPDATE, 7:30 PM: I just got a connection to the Internet here at intermission. I'm here with a lot of terrific people from the MOB, including Brad, The Lady Logician, the Buddhist Republican, and many more, including my NARN compatriots.

We've just heard a great slate of Republican candidates, including Mark Kennedy, Alan Fine, and Michele Bachmann. Michele had a tremendous motivational speech reminding us of the stakes involved in the election; she's always inspirational on the stump, and even better in smaller groups. Fine did a great job reminding us Keith Ellison's connections to CAIR, and Mark talked about family and the importance of economic and national security. Senator Norm Coleman ended the first half of the evening with a characteristically engaging speech, reaching across the broad spectrum of American political history to tie some key themes to this election.

Now Hugh is taking the stage again, and I'll be live-blogging the second half.

7:35 - Opening with an anecdote about meeting Ronald Reagan after the 1976 GOP convention, taking off his jacket. He's setting up the Q&A that will start 30 minutes from now.

7:36 - Wants us to thank Eric Black for engaging his critics, sincerely. If more reporters would do that, it would shake the scales from their eyes on their bias.

7:39 - Polling news. Pollsters are like golfers, and the Strib still hasn't posted a handicap. "I just don't believe them ... they've been consistently wrong for the last six years." The polling is not nearly as bad as the MSM tells us, Hugh says.

7:41 - North Korea has changed the story lines, and it will take a couple of weeks to see the effect.

7:43 - Successful governors do not lose re-election bids, and Tim Pawlenty is one of the four most successful governors in the nation ...

7:44 - Hit jobs on Alan Fine show that the Strib is worried about Keith Ellison as a candidate. Political communication has become so quick that people cannot stay fooled for long. The voters know about Ellison's connections to CAIR and the Nation of Islam, and the Strib can't stop it.

7:47 - Hugh: "Most political reporters cover politics the way I cover sports ... as a fan."

7:48 - Be wary about polls that go against the "feel". Pawlenty is one example.

7:48 - Republican candidates have increasingly returned to the winning agenda: Win the war, confirm the judges, secure the border, and so on.

7:49 - "Our base is not stupid. They're not going to stay home." Bush hasn't even gotten into the fray, and he's the best closer that the GOP has had in long memory.

7:52 - Three examples of sixth-year midterms. In 1958, the GOP lost 49 seats. In 1974, they lost 49 again, giving the Democrats 299 seats. In 1986, they lost five House seats. The Senate GOP caucus got narrowed to 35 in 1958, and lost seven seats in '86. He feels the trendlines are much better now.

7:54 - He's an optimist about politics because he's a pessimist about the world. The lunatics running the asylums in Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea require strong leadership.

7:57 - How many people would vote for Speaker Pelosi and Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy because of Mark Foley? (None raised their hand.)

8:00 - We are going to focus like a laser on two things: the war and the court. Four Supreme Court justices could retire in the next few years.

8:02 - Hugh called me out from the podium to dispute my characterization of him as an eternal optimist. He says he just knows what it's like to really lose, having seen 1974 and 1986.

8:05 - Col. Joe Repya gave one of the first questions, after having gotten a standing ovation. He tells us that the Lancet study is out of left field, and he's spent the last two years in Iraq. Hugh says, "Where are the bodies?"

8:09 - Laura Hemler asks a great question about campaign fatigue. They're having a tougher time getting volunteers, and wants tips on how to enthuse people again. Hugh says it is exhausting. We have systematic advantages in money and the fact that we're correct, but having to win every single race every single time wears people down. He reminds us that we've experienced nothing compared to the people facing the real bullets, and we should keep that in mind.

8:15 - #1 issue is national security, above all things.

8:17 - Another questioner points out that he's seen few Keith Ellison signs in south Minneapolis. Fine says it shows a DFL in disarray, and he thinks Sabo has put out the word that he's supporting Tammy Lee. Fine thinks that will give him an opportunity to take the seat.

8:18 - What effect have the blogs made in this election? Hugh says it's huge. He got us up out of our seats for a nice ovation, but he believes the Saturday radio shows have made a big impact on local politics, Fine says the Internet has been a tremendous tool for democratization. "Thank God we've got the blogs."

8:22 - A good question from a high-school senior about how to get young people to consider the conservative point of view. Hugh warned about the creeping cynicism of the Daily Show crowd, and told the student to get his friends to volunteer for a campaign just for the fun of it

8:27 - Hugh says we won't get much mileage out of the Reid land-deal scandal because it's just too complicated for an election cycle. It may blow up later. We'll see.

8:30 - Mitch Berg gets the last word at the question (actually, there were two more), but miscounts the syllables in "mariachi". He wants to know how much shelf-life national security issues, and will we have to give on social issues to win the White House. Hugh took a quick poll of the audience, and Mitt Romney took about 90 votes, Rudy 60, Frist a dozen or so, and McCain only eight. (Tancredo, thrown in as a last-minute addition, got three very vocal votes and a big laugh.)

8:38 - Hugh says the primary is over, and it's time for the GOP to pull together to support their candidates. He also empahsized that Democrats are our opponents, not our enemies, and that he has no desire to be the mirror image of Michael Moore ... but then, who does?

This event is typical of those Hugh has staged in the past. It's a lot of fun, some great political rhetoric, a good deal of humor, and fantastic engagement with the audience, He's on his way to Colorado to continue boosting Republican candidates, and warns us to start working on supporting our own.

Low Blow

Looking decidedly un-Presidential this weekend is Hillary Clinton and her camp, after Maureen Dowd related a quote from one of the Senator's advisors that belittled John McCain for a tape his North Vietnamese captors forced him to make while a POW. The Daily News blog pointed out the quote on its site yesterday:

Privately, Hillary’s camp was not overly upset by the McCain swipe because it suspected he was doing the bidding of the White House and that he ended up, as one adviser put it, “looking similar to the way he did on those captive tapes from Hanoi, where he recited the names of his crew mates.”

The "McCain swipe" was McCain's reaction to Hillary blaming the North Korean nuclear test on the Bush administration. McCain pointed out that the Kim regime had been violating the Agreed Framework signed by the Clinton administration as far back as 1997 according to American intelligence estimates, and that the nuclear capacity of North Korea sprang from that failed policy. Hillary and her team reacted by besmirching McCain's courage under fire.

No one on this blog will mistake me for a McCain apologist, but this is a low blow indeed. McCain endured torture during his years in captivity, and he has nothing about which to feel shame. I may disagree strongly with his politics, but his service to his country is beyond reproach ... unlike the Clintons.

Godspeed, Michael Monsoor

Whether or not one agrees with the war in Iraq, no one can dispute the courage and honor of the American citizen soldier/sailor/airman, the volunteers that serve our country and defend liberty and freedom around the world. The latest example of the selflessness that these men and women demonstrate comes from Michael Mansoor, a Navy SEAL who gave his life to save his comrades. When an Iraqi insurgent tossed a grenade into a position occupied by Mansoor and four others, Mansoor instinctively dove -- on top of it:

Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor had been near the only door to the rooftop structure Sept. 29 when the grenade hit him in the chest and bounced to the floor, said four SEALs who spoke to The Associated Press this week on condition of anonymity because their work requires their identities to remain secret.

"He never took his eye off the grenade, his only movement was down toward it," said a 28-year-old lieutenant who sustained shrapnel wounds to both legs that day. "He undoubtedly saved mine and the other SEALs' lives, and we owe him."

Monsoor, a 25-year-old gunner, was killed in the explosion in Ramadi, west of Baghdad. He was only the second SEAL to die in Iraq since the war began.

Two SEALs next to Monsoor were injured; another who was 10 to 15 feet from the blast was unhurt. The four had been working with Iraqi soldiers providing sniper security while U.S. and Iraqi forces conducted missions in the area.

CQ readers will recall that I have a friend in the SEALs, also named Mike, who has served in Iraq. I know the kind of character and quality that SEALs have, and I'm not surprised by Mansoor's instinctive heroism. We should make sure that the rest of the country understands the kind of Americans we have on the front lines -- brave, selfless people who want to make the world a better place.

Godspeed, Michael Mansoor. You have the thanks of a grateful nation, and we know you have just landed on a better shore. (via CQ reader Stoo)

A Mild Rebuke From The Home Town Paper

Harry Reid's financial shenanigans have caused a bigger stumble than he first thought. After hanging up on an AP reporter who asked about the undisclosed transaction that hid his partnership with a controversial Las Vegas attorney, Reid has sounded a much more humble tone. He now promises to cooperate with the Ethics Committee on the Patrick Lane LLC land deal that netted him a 175% profit on his six-year investment in real estate, during a time when he pushed hard for freeing federal land in Clark County to spur development.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal sounds unconvinced in its editorial today:

The Associated Press on Wednesday reported that our own Sen. Reid may have violated Senate rules by failing to report the 2001 transfer of land he owned "to a partnership in which he maintained a personal stake."

Three years later, Sen. Reid made $700,000 when the partnership sold the real estate.

To make matters worse for the senator, the deal was apparently put together by a longtime friend and casino lawyer whose name has come up previously in organized crime investigations and a political bribery trial this summer. ...

All this raises the question: How does a savvy political operative such as Sen. Reid make a bush-league error and find himself ankle deep in the manure pit? For the past few years, Sen. Reid has been railing about a Republican "culture of corruption" -- and has eagerly sought to exploit the Foley mess for his party's political gain. Oops.

Perhaps after Sen. Reid scrapes the dung off his shoes, he'll tend to the egg on his face.

He has more to explain than just this land deal. He should account for all his efforts to strip away federal land in Nevada, pressuring government regulators to bypass environmental laws, in order to allow developers to get their hands on the land -- developers who coincidentally hired lobbying firms that prominently employed Reid's sons. At least, Reid wants us to believe in that coincidence.

This story has not yet run its course. Reid's partner, Jay Brown, had some involvement in a bribery case that resulted in two convictions for corruption for Clark County commissioners, and the same commissioners voted earlier to allow commercial/retail development on the Patrick Lane LLC properties. Reid purchased the properties from Fred Lessman, Daniel Kramer, and Dale and Isaac Sigal in two chunks for the $400,000 initial investment. Lessman, the president of Perma-Built Homes and an obviously interested player in residential real estate, was a big supporter of Dario Herrera in 2001, Herrera being one of the two corrupt commissioners convicted in the Jay Brown case, and 2001 being when the zoning decision was made that benefited Patrick Lane LLC. Daniel Kramer also contributed money to Herrera in 2001 and early 2002. Herrera got 50 months in prison for his corruption. (The Sigals apparently have never made political contributions.)

That's a lot of coincidences surrounding the zoning decision that enriched Harry Reid. The Ethics Committee should be looking into all of those dots surrounding the corruption on the Clark County Board of Commissioners and Harry Reid's reluctance to reveal his business relationship with Jay Brown. I'll have more to say on this tomorrow.

UPDATE: Patterico is disappointed with the LA Times' coverage on this story. It's a shame, because the LAT has done excellent reporting on Reid in the past, as late as last August.

South Koreans Have Had Enough Engagement

The South Koreans have pressed for engagement with North Korea and the Kim Jong-Il regime for decades. They have protested against the American military presence in their nation and tried to appease their northern neighbor into playing nice on the peninsula. Kim's latest nuclear test appears to have finally demonstrated the folly of that approach. In less than a week, public opinion has shifted profoundly towards a hard-line policy and even arming the South with nuclear weapons:

In less than a week since North Korea claimed to have tested a nuclear weapon, public opinion in the South has turned sharply against a South Korean policy of engaging the enemy in the belief it will eventually bring peace on the divided peninsula.

A JoongAng newspaper poll, several days after the reported nuclear test Monday, found 78 percent of respondents thought South Korea should revise its policy, and 65 percent said South Korea should develop nuclear weapons to protect itself.

Protesters have held nightly candlelight vigils, and some have burned North Korean flags.

That's a switch from the American flags that used to get burned regularly in South Korea.

The ruling party has seen its popularity plummet to 11%, barely a blip on the radar, after the collapse of Roh's "sunshine policy" of engagement. Even President Roh acknowledges that the test has neutered his policy, but that realization comes too late to undo the damage. The opposition GNP now has 40% support, and they have no desire to see the sunshine policy rise again. They want an end to joint industrial and tourism projects, including a resort complex built by Hyundai in the blighted North.

South Korea got a dose of reality this week, and to their credit, they've recognized what many do not: appeasing dictators does not produce security. It only kicks the can down the road. Roh and his mentor Kim Dae-jung still believe in appeasement, which means that South Koreans have a choice to make about their own government and their own security -- and they know that time has almost run out.