Northern Alliance Radio On The Air!

Just without me, that's all. Our broadcasting day starts at 11 am CT and goes to 5 pm CT, with the three shows of the Northern Alliance. Mitch will soldier on without me from 1-3 pm, and rumor has it that he will have James Lileks on at some point -- so be sure to tune in on AM 1280 The Patriot. If you're not in the Twin Cities, listen to the show via the Internet stream at the station's web site. Join the conversation at 651-289-4488. Tell Mitch I say hello ...

Read Between The Lines (Updated And Bumped)

Reuters reports that the closing storm season in the Atlantic missed expectations of increasingly violent weather -- by a wide margin. Read the story carefully to find out what Reuters failed to include in its story:

Before this year's Atlantic hurricane season started, Gray and his protege, Philip Klotzbach, predicted that it would be well above average. Instead, it has been slightly below average as the Nov. 30 end of the season draws near -- and a mere whimper compared with the destruction caused by monster hurricanes such as Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005. ...

The Colorado State team was not alone in predicting that 2006 would be more active than an average year, in which the Atlantic can be expected to spawn 10 tropical storms, of which six will strengthen into hurricanes.

No one foresaw what happened in 2005, when 28 storms swarmed out of the Atlantic, and 15 became hurricanes with winds of at least 74 mph. Among them, Katrina killed 1,500 people along the Gulf Coast and swamped New Orleans, while Wilma became the strongest Atlantic hurricane ever observed.

Long-range hurricane forecasting, as with all long-range weather predictions, remains a complex and error-prone task, experts say. Yet hurricane experts also say that the failure of 2006 to live up to expectations left them scratching their heads.

Reuters reporting left readers scratching their heads, too. It just seems like the story missed something familiar, right on the tips of our tongues ....

Oh, yeah. Global warming.

Last year after 28 storms formed in the Atlantic and two of them wreaked devastation on the Gulf states, experts crowed that the increased activity proved the global warming theories that have been floated over the last two decades. (Before that, scientists insisted we were heading into another ice age.) Experts and partisans insisted that we had turned a dangerous corner, and that we would see a continuing increase in violent weather from the Atlantic, a price for having ignored their warnings about greenhouse-gas emissions.

Even the Colorado team didn't go that far last year. They predicted a more modest storm season; 17 storms, nine of which would develop into hurricanes. Even that didn't materialize. Only nine tropical storms formed at all, five of which became hurricanes -- none of which hit American shores.

And yet Reuters never mentions the two little words that accompany every story about the weather these days. The only use of the word "warming" comes in a description of an El Nino event that they had not predicted. This, and "sub-Saharan dust" in the atmosphere over the Atlantic get the blame for the bad predictions. Not once does Reuters acknowledge the dire predictions made last year by global-warming advocates about the radical effect of incremental fluctuations in temperature on weather, even though that hypothesis got wide dissemination after the hurricanes last year.

There's a lot of hot air, to be sure ... but it isn't coming from the Atlantic, and it disappears conveniently.

UPDATE: Mat says in the comments that I'm lying about the predictions of an Ice Age more than twenty years ago. Either he's too young to remember or too busy to check before saying that. Just a few weeks ago, Newsweek even mentioned it:

In April, 1975, in an issue mostly taken up with stories about the collapse of the American-backed government of South Vietnam, NEWSWEEK published a small back-page article about a very different kind of disaster. Citing "ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically," the magazine warned of an impending "drastic decline in food production." Political disruptions stemming from food shortages could affect "just about every nation on earth." Scientists urged governments to consider emergency action to head off the terrible threat of . . . well, if you had been following the climate-change debates at the time, you'd have known that the threat was: global cooling. ...

How did NEWSWEEK—or for that matter, Time magazine, which also ran a story on the subject in the mid-1970s—get things so wrong? In fact, the story wasn't "wrong" in the journalistic sense of "inaccurate." Some scientists indeed thought the Earth might be cooling in the 1970s, and some laymen—even one as sophisticated and well-educated as Isaac Asimov—saw potentially dire implications for climate and food production. After all, Ice Ages were common in Earth's history; if anything, the warm "interglacial" period in which human civilization evolved, and still exists, is the exception.

And if that doesn't convince Mat, then perhaps this Time Magazine article from 1974 will do so:

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.

Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.

Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds —the so-called circumpolar vortex—that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world. Indeed it is the widening of this cap of cold air that is the immediate cause of Africa's drought. By blocking moisture-bearing equatorial winds and preventing them from bringing rainfall to the parched sub-Sahara region, as well as other drought-ridden areas stretching all the way from Central America to the Middle East and India, the polar winds have in effect caused the Sahara and other deserts to reach farther to the south. Paradoxically, the same vortex has created quite different weather quirks in the U.S. and other temperate zones. As the winds swirl around the globe, their southerly portions undulate like the bottom of a skirt. Cold air is pulled down across the Western U.S. and warm air is swept up to the Northeast. The collision of air masses of widely differing temperatures and humidity can create violent storms—the Midwest's recent rash of disastrous tornadoes, for example.

And let's not forget that scientists blamed the exact same mechanisms for global cooling in 1974 that they do for global warming now in 2006:

Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.

Before tossing around theories about radical cooling and warming, scientists should recognize that a few decades or even a couple of centuries do not make for much of a trend at all. And before tossing around accusations of lying, Mat should seek to educate himself first.

UPDATE II: And they still haven't stopped predicting an Ice Age. At Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, they're saying it might be here in 10 years:

Such frigid settings were commonplace during a period dating roughly from 1300 to 1850 because much of North America and Europe was in the throes of a little ice age. And now there is mounting evidence that the chill could return. A growing number of scientists—including many here at Curry's base of operations, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod in Massachusetts—believes conditions are ripe for another prolonged cooldown, or small ice age. While no one is predicting a brutal ice sheet like the one that covered the Northern Hemisphere with glaciers about 12,000 years ago, the next cooling trend could drop average temperatures 5 degrees Fahrenheit over much of the United States and 10 degrees in the Northeast, northern Europe, and northern Asia.

"It could happen in 10 years," says Terrence Joyce, who chairs the Woods Hole Physical Oceanography Department. "Once it does, it can take hundreds of years to reverse." And he is alarmed that Americans have yet to take the threat seriously. In a letter to The New York Times last April, he wrote, "Recall the coldest winters in the Northeast, like those of 1936 and 1978, and then imagine recurring winters that are even colder, and you'll have an idea of what this would be like."

A drop of 5 to 10 degrees entails much more than simply bumping up the thermostat and carrying on. Both economically and ecologically, such quick, persistent chilling could have devastating consequences. A 2002 report titled "Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises," produced by the National Academy of Sciences, pegged the cost from agricultural losses alone at $100 billion to $250 billion while also predicting that damage to ecologies could be vast and incalculable. A grim sampler: disappearing forests, increased housing expenses, dwindling freshwater, lower crop yields, and accelerated species extinctions.

They make the unique claim that global warming will cause the next Ice Age, which apparently inspired the filmmakers of The Day After Tomorrow. I guess we can forgive them for Dennis Quaid, but I'm not sure they can be forgiven for Jake Gyllenhaal.

Hydrogen Isn't Green

BMW unveiled its new hydrogen-gasoline hybrid automobile, the Hydrogen 7, and the reviews thus far are less than stellar. If you want to drive an internal-combustion vehicle that only gets 17 miles to the gallon and have its fuel go bad in less than ten days, then the H-7 is the car for you:

And so, in creating the Hydrogen 7, BMW is announcing a future of putatively clean, full-throttle driving. The new car caters to the pleasing fantasy of customers spoiled by high-horsepower engines: That they can conform to ecological standards without making any sacrifices, burning "clean" fuel to their heart's content. Advertizing images display the Hydrogen 7 against a backdrop of wind turbines and solar panels.

But the image is one of deceit. Because the hydrogen dispensed at the new filling station is generated primarily from petroleum and natural gas, the new car puts about as much strain on the environment as a heavy truck with a diesel engine. Add the loss of environmental benefits involved in the production and transportation of the putatively clean fuel to the consumption of the car itself and you get an actual consumption corresponding to considerably more than 20 liters (5.3 gallons) of fossil fuel.

The environment isn't the only loser: Customers will also have to shell out a lot of money for their deceptive display of ecologically responsible driving. The current standard price for liquid hydrogen is 57 euro cents (0.73 US cents) per liter (0.3 gallons). And the price tag on a 100 kilometer (62 mile) drive in the Hydrogen 7, at a comfortable speed, is about €30 ($38).

The decision to base the H-7 on an internal-combustion engine, rather than an electric motor based on hydrogen fuel cells, causes most of the problems noted above. The hydrogen has to be stored at -253 degrees Celsius, or near absolute zero, and it has to be vented occasionally, making the tank technology very challenging. The 12-cylinder engine drinks hydrogen or gasoline in equally greedy measure, and the hydrogen will not last more than nine days in the tank without losing half of its ability to fuel the car.

Der Spiegel points out a problem noted by CQ readers in the past; the hydrogen car, like the fully electric car, doesn't really do much to save the environment. Hydrogen has to be produced using a lot of energy at some point, which means either a normal coal- or petroleum-burning plant or nuclear energy. Essentially, one trades the emissions at the tailpipe for emissions at the smokestack, and given the high efficiency of most internal-combustion engines and their anti-pollution systems, that's a bad trade.

BMW appears to have produced the worst of both worlds, thanks to its pandering to a muscle-car mentality. Fuel-cell cars use hydrogen much more efficiently and actually could prove cost-effective if the hydrogen could be produced from nuclear plants rather than oil refineries. It doesn't produce very dramatic power for the vehicle, however, and BMW apparently doesn't want to trade performance for economic or environmental benefits.

At least they picked their initial target market shrewdly. They plan to sell the first one hundred H-7s to "celebrities", the only people silly and rich enough to bother with the vehicle.

Banning The Burqa?

The Netherlands has introduced a bill that would ban the wearing of burqas in public places, including schools, courts, and transportation. The law aims at a pretty small target, the BBC reports, as only a handful of the one million Dutch Muslims wear the complete covering garment:

The Dutch cabinet has backed a proposal by the country's immigration minister to ban Muslim women from wearing the burqa in public places. The burqa, a full body covering that also obscures the face, would be banned by law in the street, and in trains, schools, buses and the law courts.

The cabinet said burqas disturb public order, citizens and safety. ...

An estimated 6% of 16 million people living in the Netherlands are Muslims. But there are thought to be fewer than 100 women who choose to wear the burqa, a traditional Islamic form of dress.

Actually, there's some debate about how traditional the burqa has been to Islamic history. Women have a variety of head coverings in Muslim socities, and all but the most oppressive usually cover only the hair. The burqa and its close cousin the niqab only expose the eyes, and the burqa puts a netting in front of those. The Taliban forced women to wear them in Afghanistan, and thanks to ongoing efforts by the radicals to terrorize the population, many still do for their own safety. In any event, the burqa and the niqab appear to be more of a development of the radical Islamists in history rather than a requirement from the Qur'an or the Hadiths, which stress the more general concept of modesty in women.

Interestingly, even Muslim nations have banned burqas and niqabs in a similar manner as the Dutch proposal. Turkey, Tunisia, and Egypt have all outlawed the wearing of the ultraconservative garments in public, and since there is no reason to wear them in private, they presumably have no currency at all in those nations. Turkey is an interesting case in point. The only stable and functional Muslim democracy in the Middle East, Turkey has a strong secular policy in its governance, instituted by the national hero Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. All three nations have a ban for the same reason that the Netherlands is considering it -- to suppress radical Islamism.

It seems like a bit of overkill, however, for the Netherlands. The burqa at the moment doesn't really present that much of a threat to the Dutch. I can agree about a ban on face coverings in court, but outlawing them altogether makes little sense. Michael van der Galien, who lives there, thinks differently, but I find it hard to square Western values of individual freedom and liberty with a burqa ban for someone who is merely riding a bus or walking down the street. If the women were operating the buses or driving cars, there would be a public safety issue, certainly. This appears more as a payback for the murder of Theo Van Gogh by a radical Islamist than a serious public policy.

The Los Angeles Times points out how silly this seems in context:

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE, euthanasia, drug use, prostitution — in the Netherlands those are perfectly fine. But the one thing the Dutch apparently will not tolerate is what they perceive to be intolerance. In defense of their cherished tradition of gedogen — which loosely translates as "to live and let live" — the Dutch are ready to force the assimilation of conservative Muslim immigrants, who are deemed intolerant of fabled Dutch tolerance and must therefore no longer be tolerated. Got that?

If Dutch women can choose prostitution for themselves -- a libertarian position that has its merits -- then why can't they choose the burqa? If they can freely choose to inject addictive substances into their veins and inhale it into their lungs, then why can't a few of them decide to cover themselves from head to toe in public? Which of these choices are more destructive to the individual and to society?

The Dutch have the right idea but the wrong target. If they want to start getting tough on radical Islam, they should start with the Saudi-funded madrassas, as the Times suggests. That's where terrorism starts in this age -- not inside a burqa or niqab.

When No One Has It Right

Members of the Quartet, the association of nations attempting to resolve the Palestinian problem, have objected to an apparently new plan by the Bush administration to arm Fatah so it can compete with Hamas. America's partners want to support a national unity government to lift the sanctions and do whatever they can to avoid a civil war in the territories. Unfortunately, no one has the right idea about how to proceed towards a two-state peace plan:

AMERICAN proposals to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian security forces with additional guns and fighters have alarmed other Western nations, who argue that it is tantamount to supporting one faction in a potential civil war.

Fearing the strength of Hamas in Gaza, some US officials have urged that the moderate President Abbas should be given “deterrent capability” so that his Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority forces can confront the Islamist group if talks on a national unity government fail.

The divisions have led to a stand-off over the past month, with US officials saying that the unity government proposal had “no legs”. Other members of the “quartet” of international mediators — made up of the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia — say that it should be given a chance instead of arming one of the Palestinian factions. ...

Opponents argued that the international community had accepted the participation of Hamas in elections and should therefore look to support a national unity government. Hamas won elections last January but instantly became international pariahs. Sanctions and an aid freeze have left the Palestinian Government broke and unable to pay 160,000 civil servant salaries.

The Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, announced a new Middle East peace initiative with France and Italy yesterday. Central to the plan were an immediate ceasefire, a prisoner exchange, talks between the Israeli Prime Minister and the Palestinian President, international ceasefire monitors and a national unity government. Israeli officials dismissed the overture.

That's because the Israelis, who have to live with all of these factions, have a much better sense of how things work on the ground. Neither of these directions will lead to peace.

The Bush administration wants to arm Fatah in order to confront Islamic terrorism, but that's only trading one form of terrorism for another. Fatah has its own terrorist group, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which has been active not just against Hamas but also against Israel. Giving Mahmoud Abbas a thousand guns for street battles in the West Bank and Gaza will eventually find the bullets heading towards Israelis more than other Palestinians. And honoring Abbas' other request, to allow 1,000 exiled Badr Brigade terrorists to return to the territories, is practically begging for more attacks on Israel. Why do the territories need an infusion of terrorism? Don't they have enough?

The Quartet has proven itself just as unrealistic. They're correct that the West shouldn't arm one faction over another in the hope that a civil war starts. However, their solution is just as pie-eyed utopian as the American plan is cynical. They want to cajole Fatah and Hamas to form a unity government so that they can restart aid payments. However, the aid payments got suspended not because Hamas controlled the legislature and a weak executive, but because the Palestinian Authority reneged on its earlier agreements and refused to recognize Israel. Nowhere has Abbas or Hamas promised that a unity government would address those problems, and in fact Hamas has insisted that any unity government would continue the same policies as the Hamas-led PA.

So what you have here is an ironic choice between guns and money -- both of which would be used to fuel terrorism, both inside the PA and against Israel. Neither solution makes any sense at all.

So what should the Quartet do? Stop getting caught up in the internal political struggles of the Palestinians. Insist on full compliance with their previous agreements and the recognition of Israel, regardless of who runs the show. Make clear that any terrorist activity supported by the PA will result in even more sanctions, including the curtailing of travel by PA officials, trips that usually produce suitcases stuffed with cash for surreptitious support by friendly countries in the region.

If that means civil war, then let the Palestinians fight it out without assistance to one faction or another. In the end, we don't care which brand of terrorist runs the PA; we want them all out. The Palestinian people have to create some fresh leadership if they want to emerge from the ruins of their plight, brought upon themselves by decades of disastrous decision-making by the world's worst leadership.

CQ On The Road

I'll be traveling to Southern California for the week of Thanksgiving. I've been packing and preparing for the flight tomorrow, and posting has been ... non-existent tonight. It will be light tomorrow as well, although I'll probably do a little in the morning. We leave for the airport at midmorning, and we land in the early afternoon.

I'll be bringing the laptop and will be blogging during the week, but at a little slower pace than normal. I'm hoping to relax and visit some old stomping grounds, as well as old friends and our families. I'll post some pictures along the way as well.

How Conservatives Can Set The Agenda For The GOP

Over the last week, I have written several posts on the meaning of the midterm debacle for the Republicans, and how their approach to leadership selection underscores their inability to understand it. While Democrats attracted centrists and independents who stopped trusting the GOP to deliver on their promise of fiscal responsibility and clean government -- promises which won them control of Congress in 1994 -- the GOP has continued to promote the same leadership that led them to the midterm debacle. In some cases, that may make tactical sense, but the symbolism of these choices communicates an unwillingness to change from past strategies that led them to embrace big government, bloated budgets, and pork-barrel politics, all of which inevitably brings corruption and defeat.

The ascension of Trent Lott as Minority Whip seems especially significant in this regard. Many tried to excuse this by saying that the GOP needs infighters, or that Lott somehow was less egregious than Lamar Alexander on pork, but those are just excuses. Lott has attacked people who want to reform government abuses of taxpayer money and derailed reform legislation intended on exposing the use of earmarks by individual members in order to show taxpayers how influence is bought and sold on Capitol Hill. It's a sorry display of expediency over principle, and every Senator who voted for Lott has underscored the cluelessness of the post-midterm GOP. If Lott truly was the lesser of two evils -- and I don't think he was in this race -- then the GOP has a personnel problem that needs fixing immediately.

Several CQ readers objected, however, when I suggested that Mark Tapscott had a point when he opined that conservatives could not prevail within the GOP and should look for other outlets. With a war upon us and the coming economic catastrophe of entitlements waiting just out of sight, readers told me that the last thing this country needs is to have conservatives abandon the field to the liberals and the Rockefeller Republicans. It would take a generation for such an effort to have any success if it ever did, and by that time, we might not be able to reverse the damage done during our walk in the wilderness.

These are all good points, most of which I've made here in the past as well. However, if conservatives are to stay within the GOP to effect change, then we have to start now. That means we need to pursue a formula of first principles that will have broad appeal and eliminate those political pursuits that significantly narrow our reach. We have to determine what will satisfy us as a group in the next ten years. If we can actually shrink the federal government, eliminate pork and earmarks, confirm judges that will stop legislating from the bench, protect private property, eliminate the levers of corruption in government, and secure the nation from infiltration and attack, then conservatives will have won a generational achievement -- and those are the issues on which we should focus.

In order to do that, we need to solve the personnel problem in both chambers of Congress. Given that our choices of leadership have become so constrained that Trent Lott represents the lesser of two evils to some, then it is incumbent on conservatives to start finding better choices for these offices. Over the next few weeks, I'll be dusting off my Not One Dime More domain and developing some initiatives designed to do just that. I'm tentatively calling this the First Principles Project, and I'll eventually need plenty of help from the CQ community.

Right now, though, here's your task: find viable candidates for House and Senate seats. That process has to start now. We waited too long to develop and champion challengers in the midterm cycle; we need to start finding the men and women who will follow the First Principles and use them to build broad coalitions and charge into office in 2008. I'm hoping to set up a new clearinghouse for these potential candidates where CQ readers can get to know them and their positions and start supporting them early enough to make a significant difference. I'm hoping to partner with other bloggers on this project.

If you have suggestions or comments, for now just leave them in the comments section of this post. I'll be setting up a new e-mail and website for this project if it generates enough interest. If we can't create our own political party, then conservatives can remake the Republican Party, one candidate at a time.

All Eyes On Harman And Hastings

Nancy Pelosi managed to lose a major battle and a good portion of her prestige as Speaker before she even ascends to the position. Yesterday her caucus rebuffed her attempt to purge her longtime partner in caucus leadership, Steny Hoyer, based on personal animosities going back to the 2001 caucus leadership race -- which she won. Now the new Speaker may have to reconsider her other notorious exile threat, Jane Harman:

House Democrats chose Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland as their new majority leader on Thursday, rejecting the choice of the incoming speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and straining the unity of the new majority party.

In an indication that rank-and-file members would be willing to break from Ms. Pelosi, Democrats chose Mr. Hoyer over Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania by a decisive vote of 149 to 86. Mr. Hoyer overcame a concerted push by Ms. Pelosi on behalf of Mr. Murtha, a combat veteran who became an influential spokesman against the Iraq war. ...

Ms. Pelosi’s party problems are not all behind her, as she faces a tough decision on selecting a chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

On the one hand, she is under pressure from black lawmakers to promote a committee veteran, Alcee L. Hastings of Florida, a federal judge who was removed from the bench by Congress after a bribery charge in 1989, though he was acquitted in a criminal case. At the same time, some more conservative Democrats who supported Mr. Hoyer have been stepping up their campaign for Representative Jane Harman of California, who is the senior Democrat on the panel but has clashed with Ms. Pelosi.

The New York Times wants to bury the story of Harman and Hastings at the end of their report on the row, but the Los Angeles Times editorial board puts it front and center. Calling her support of Abscam-tainted Murtha "bizarre", the LAT editorial board scolds Pelosi for even considering Harman's ouster in favor of the only living impeached federal judge:

That embarrassing experience should induce Pelosi (D-San Francisco) — who appeared chastened before reporters Thursday — to reconsider another ill-advised promotion: Her apparent intention to bestow the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee not on the panel's ranking Democrat, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), but on Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.).

Hastings, like Murtha, seems an unlikely choice for a leadership role in what Pelosi has been advertising as "the most honest, the most open and the most ethical Congress in history." Hastings was impeached as a federal judge and removed from office in the late 1980s (although he was acquitted of bribery in a criminal trial in 1983).

A litany of explanations have been adduced to explain why Pelosi would bypass Harman, an expert on intelligence matters who has won the respect of both parties while criticizing some of the Bush administration's excesses in the war on terror. None of them is persuasive. Harman has earned this chairmanship.

After the vote yesterday, almost every Democrat went out of their way to say that the election of Hoyer did not indicate any damage to Pelosi's standing in the caucus. However, that simply won't fly. Even the NYT understood the significance of the revolt against Pelosi's purge; it shows that the back benchers will not fear Pelosi or her ham-handed threats to strip them of committee assignments. For a caucus with a slender majority, this disunified start portends a season of difficult whips, especially since she's hardly invincible to revolt.

The caucus faces the same problem with the selection of Alcee Hastings as chair of the Intelligence committee, only worse. Murtha never got charged with bribery despite his failure to report the Abscam attempt to either the FBI or his own Ethics committee, and only the intervention of Tip O'Neill saved him from it. Hastings did not get so lucky. Although prosecutors failed to win a criminal conviction against Hastings, Congress impeached him of corruption and conspiracy charges, and the Senate removed him. He's the only living ex-judge removed from the bench by Congress, and Pelosi prefers him for the chair over Harman -- whose only crime, like Hoyer, is to have run afoul of Pelosi's wrath.

Democrats know that these decisions reflect on the entire caucus. Unlike the situation with Hoyer, they cannot directly affect the chair assignments. However, they will have to find a way to pressure Pelosi into reversing course on Harman. She's even lost the Los Angeles Times' editorial board, which takes some doing for a Democrat, and her continuing flacking for corrupt pols will mean electoral disaster in 2008.

UPDATE: She's also managed to lose the New York Times editorial board:

Nancy Pelosi has managed to severely scar her leadership even before taking up the gavel as the new speaker of the House. First, she played politics with the leadership of the House Intelligence Committee to settle an old score and a new debt. And then she put herself in a lose-lose position by trying to force a badly tarnished ally, Representative John Murtha, on the incoming Democratic Congress as majority leader. The party caucus put a decisive end to that gambit yesterday, giving the No. 2 job to Steny Hoyer, a longtime Pelosi rival.

But Ms. Pelosi’s damage to herself was already done. The well-known shortcomings of Mr. Murtha were broadcast for all to see — from his quid-pro-quo addiction to moneyed lobbyists to the grainy government tape of his involvement in the Abscam scandal a generation ago. The resurrected tape — feasted upon by Pelosi enemies — shows how Mr. Murtha narrowly survived as an unindicted co-conspirator, admittedly tempted but finally rebuffing a bribe offer: “I’m not interested — at this point.”

Mr. Murtha would have been a farcical presence in a leadership promising the cleanest Congress in history. Ms. Pelosi should have been first to realize this, having made such a fiery campaign sword of her vows to end Capitol corruption. Instead, she acted like some old-time precinct boss and lost the first test before her peers.

Will she still put personal debts and petty animosities above the security of the nation by selecting Alcee Hastings as Intel chair? If so, she'd better enjoy the majority while she still has it, because it won't last long.

Iranian Arrest A Harbinger?

The American press hasn't covered this story until now, but British intelligence has detained a former Iranian diplomat on terrorism charges at the request of the US. Newsweek reports that Nosratollah Tajik allegedly attempted to procure night-vision goggles for Hezbollah:

The arrest of a former Iranian diplomat in Britain is the latest reminder of complications that could arise if the Bush administration turns to Iran to help solve the escalating violence in Iraq. In a development that so far has received no press coverage in the United States, Nosratollah Tajik, who served as Iranian ambassador to Jordan and has been previously linked to terror attacks in Israel, was arrested by British authorities last month at the request of U.S. Justice Department, a spokesman for Scotland Yard said this week.

Two U.S. law-enforcement officials, who asked not to be identified talking about nonpublic matters, confirmed to NEWSWEEK that a sealed indictment filed by federal prosecutors in Chicago charges Tajik with seeking to purchase night-vision goggles for delivery to Iran from U.S. companies, in violation of U.S. export-control laws. A former top FBI counterterror official said it is likely that the equipment was ultimately destined for Hizbullah—the Lebanon-based group that is heavily financed and armed by the Iranian government. ...

The Tajik case could bolster hard-liners' arguments that the Iranian government—which the State Department has labeled "the most active state sponsor of terrorism"—cannot be trusted and will continue its backing of terrorist groups and clandestine weapons procurement regardless of what its leaders and diplomats might say publicly. The incident is all the more sensitive because Tajik, who holds an honorary fellowship at England's University of Durham, has been previously accused by Israeli security officials of being involved in the recruitment and financing of Palestinian terrorist operations in Israel.

Tajik's out on bail at the moment, but he's no stranger to American authorities. He served as Iran's ambassador to Jordan, where he called George Bush's remark about the "Axis of Evil" a product of "satanic Zionist circles". Now he has to face off against the Bush administration, and probably quite soon in light of the UK's new expedited extradition processes. In the same year, Tajik attempted to recruit potential jihadis for Iran among Palestinians injured during the intifada, according to testimony heard last year in Congress about Iran's history of terrorism sponsorship.

American intelligence executed a classic sting operation on Tajik. Posing as arms dealers, they offered Tajik a deal on the night-vision equipment for Iran, a violation of American sanctions. The sting took place after Tajik attempted a number of contacts with American manufacturers of the equipment, with Newsweek characterizing him as "quite persistent". The companies notified the Department of Homeland Security, which set up the scam.

No one knows how far Tajik's operation went. So far, the DHS has offered no comment on the case, and Newsweek doesn't have much information on the scope of Tajik's ring. in August, however, Israelis discovered that British night-vision goggles ended up going to Hezbollah through Iran; Britain does not have the same sanctions on trade with Iran. Presumably, Tajik wanted to expand their sourcing in order to broaden the distribution.

The US wants Tajik to account for his actions here in the US. The British tabloid Daily Mail has adopted Tajik as a cause in its efforts to overturn the fast-track extradition process for terror suspects between the US and the UK. We need to press for Tajik's extradition, and fast. We have a lot of decisions to make about Iran, and Tajik has some critical information about the mullahcracy's strategies and tactics that could undermine any thought of rational talks with the dangerous Teheran regime.

India Pact Approved

The Senate easily ratified what had been a controversial pact with India that allows nuclear cooperation between the two democracies for the first time. Republicans stopped a series of amendments that would have watered down the agreement, considered a historical tie between two nations that have rarely seen eye to eye on anything:

The Senate gave overwhelming approval late Thursday to President Bush’s deal for nuclear cooperation with India, a vote that expressed that a goal of nurturing India as an ally outweighed concerns over the risks of spreading nuclear know-how and bomb-making materials.

By a vote of 85 to 12, senators agreed to a program that would allow the United States to send nuclear fuel and technology to India, which has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The agreement, negotiated by President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India in March, calls for the United States to end a decades-long moratorium on sales of nuclear fuel and reactor components. For its part, India would divide its reactor facilities into civilian and military nuclear programs, with civilian facilities open to international inspections.

Critics have been unwavering in arguing that the pact would rally nations, such as North Korea and Iran, to press ahead with nuclear weapons programs despite international complaints and threats. Opponents of the measure also warned the deal would allow India to build more bombs with its limited stockpile of radioactive material, and could spur a regional nuclear arms race with Pakistan and China.

India, despite its strong traditions of democracy, has historically aligned itself with Third World nations and even the other Asian powers of Russia and China over the West. Some of that springs from its history in its eventual departure from the British Empire, but also relates to India's attempts to counter Western influences in the Eastern hemisphere.

This treaty comes as a coup for George Bush. He has managed to ally himself with both Pakistan and India in the middle of the war on terror, not an easy feat. The agreement allows India to start a massive effort to shift significant amounts of its energy needs from oil to nuclear power, relieving pressure on world markets as India ramps up its manufacturing and knowledge-based industries. More importantly, a strategic alliance with India puts diplomatic pressure on the other Asian powers, a counterweight to both Moscow and Beijing and their plans to spread their own hegemony through the region.

India had gone nuclear years before, and has refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty -- the same one that the US accuses Iran and North Korea of violating. Critics have pointed to this agreement as a form of diplomatic hypocrisy, but the truth is that India is a much different country than the other two. India has a stable democracy and a responsible and open government. Neither Iran nor North Korea can make that claim, and the US needs strong allies in the region to help maintain leverage against hotspots of terror, such as Indonesia and, of course, Iran.

India can be trusted, and the Bush administration showed good judgment in pursuing this treaty. The Senate showed a rare instance of bipartisanship in ratifying it. Perhaps that might herald a new period of cooperation between the parties on foreign policy, a development long overdue on such matters in the middle of a war.

Did Schroeder Attempt A 'Coup' Against Merkel?

The German magazine Stern, covered in Der Speigel, reports that former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder attempted a "palace coup" against Angela Merkel when her party won a narrow victory in the last German elections. The former German head of state, now working for Russia's Gazprom, tried to finagle a betrayal by Merkel's own party in order to allow him to return as Chancellor:

Schröder is claimed to have approached the chairman of Bavaria's Christian Social Union, Edmund Stoiber, with a clandestine proposal to oust would-be chancellor Merkel, the head of the CSU's larger sister party, the Christian Democratic Union. The weekly news magazine Stern reported on Thursday that Schröder approached Stoiber at a televised debate between Germany's party leaders on the eve of the election, saying only that they "needed to talk." Shortly afterwards, Stoiber received a phone call from a middleman who apparently was not involved in politics. Citing anonymous sources in Stoiber's inner circle, Stern claims Stoiber then received Schröder's emissary in Munich three days later, on September 21.

The mysterious emissary made what Stoiber is said to have described as an "indecent proposal." He wanted nothing less than a coup d'état against chancellor-elect Angela Merkel. Stoiber would enter Schröder's coalition cabinet as "the [Christian] Union's top man," and the CDU/CSU would overthrow Merkel and elect a new party leader.

Sources close to Stoiber say he refused the offer, according to reports in Stern and the Munich-based daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. Although the CSU has so far refused to comment on the affair, both Stern and the Süddeutsche claim to have spoken to party officials who said Stoiber affirmed Merkel as the Union's candidate.

Schroeder has denied the allegations, and he had some unflattering words for Stoiber in his recent memoirs. He also doesn't mention this particular effort in the book. However, at least two other German newspapers are reporting the same or similar stories through different sources, which makes it sound pretty credible.

The former Chancellor has given Germans enough embarrassment by becoming Vladimir Putin's mouthpiece on energy in Europe. Now it looks as though he tried undermining German polity, arrogantly disregarding the will of the voters who sent him packing. That decision by Germans looks better and better as time passes, both here and in Europe.

Bruce Willis, Call Your Agent

It sounds like a story right out of the movie Armageddon, but without the bad dialogue and the mind-numbingly bad love story between Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler. NASA wants to start building spaceships and training crews to attack killer asteroids from outer space:

The US space agency is drawing up plans to land an astronaut on an asteroid hurtling through space at more than 30,000 mph. It wants to know whether humans could master techniques needed to deflect such a doomsday object when it is eventually identified. The proposals are at an early stage, and a spacecraft needed just to send an astronaut that far into space exists only on the drawing board, but they are deadly serious. A smallish asteroid called Apophis has already been identified as a possible threat to Earth in 2036.

Chris McKay of the Nasa Johnson Space Centre in Houston told the website Space.com: "There's a lot of public resonance with the notion that Nasa ought to be doing something about killer asteroids ... to be able to send serious equipment to an asteroid.

"The public wants us to have mastered the problem of dealing with asteroids. So being able to have astronauts go out there and sort of poke one with a stick would be scientifically valuable as well as demonstrate human capabilities."

A 1bn tonne asteroid just 1km across striking the Earth at a 45 degree angle could generate the equivalent of a 50,000 megatonne thermonuclear explosion. Attempting to break it up with an atomic warhead might only generate thousands of smaller objects on a similar course, which could have time to reform. Scientists agree the best approach, given enough warning, would be to gently nudge the object into a safer orbit.

The so-called "planet killer" scenario seems somewhat unlikely, although not out of the question. Obviously asteroids have hit the Earth in the past, and have significantly changed the environment as a result. Unfortunately, at the moment we have neither the technology to get to an asteroid in time nor a clear idea about how to keep one from hitting the planet. Many theories abound, but none have any real testing, and a test failure near the planet could inadvertently send one towards Earth that otherwise might have missed.

That's not the big story here, however. NASA wants a big new project to capture the public's imagination. Bush announced a new lunar challenge in January 2004, an announcement that produced more yawns than dollars. A moon shot has been done, after all, and many skeptics wonder what purpose would be served by going back except to say we did. Just as in the days of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, taxpayers don't see any short-term benefits in either a lunar mission or an expedition to Mars, and so have no reason to spend a trillion or so dollars in pursuing them. After all, it's not as though we have extra money laying around these days.

However, everyone understands what it means to save the planet. Bruce Willis died to save us all, as did the movie itself. Morgan Freeman had to run a country considerably narrower than the one he was given in Deep Impact. Killer Asteroids from Outer Space (or KAFOS, as I like to call 'em) outweigh moon rocks not just in mass but in publicity. This kind of mission could find much more political support and might expedite the development of a true space plane, a project on the boards since the Space Shuttle first began its missions. The training and tactics could help develop more exploration projects in the future. And the money will roll back into NASA.

My father, the Admiral Emeritus, worked on the space program from Mercury to the Shuttle, and it's always been a source of great pride not just for him but for the whole family. That was a wonderful mission, and it produced techological innovations that greatly improved American lives. I'm in favor of space missions that make sense, and believe space exploration will be a large part of our future. If KAFOS gets us there, then great -- but let's make sure we're tailoring the budget and the mission to the real threat, and not some hysterics intended to sell books and buy tax money.

A Chat With Mitch McConnell

The new Senate Minority Leader spent a little time between votes chatting with a few bloggers, including myself, this afternoon. I took my lunch on the conference call, which Senator McConnell's staff arranged to address questions and concerns about the change in leadership in the Senate as well as their strategy for the next session of Congress.

McConnell spoke mostly extemperaneously. He made a couple of points in a short statement at the beginning of the call, mostly reminding people of the challenges and benefits of being in the Senate minority. "49 is not irrelevant," he pointed out, noting that it only takes 41 to block undesirable legislation. As we have experienced in the majority, the filibuster threat allows the minority to have a lot of influence in shaping legislation. McConnell organized the last old-fashioned filibuster in 1994, "going to the mattresses" in an overnight session to block an egregious bill that would have made the government finance all political campains. This occurred six weeks before the 1994 elections that delivered Congress to the Republicans for the first time in 40 years, so McConnell made his point that obstructionism sometimes pays.

And it seems that McConnell is not going to shy away from obstructionism as a strategy and a tactic. He expressed hope that the Democrats would exercise bipartisanship and that Republicans could fix salvageable legislation. However, he seems ready and willing to use the slender difference between the two caucuses to grind the Senate to a crawl if it keeps Democrats from getting too far from the center.

Otherwise, McConnell remained somewhat vague about his plans for the next session. He said that he thought the extension of the tax cuts would be the most important domestic issue, but since they don't expire for another four years, it's unlikely to come up until after the presidential election. He's looking towards shaping the Republican platform for the post-Bush era, but it's far too early to discuss preliminary efforts to do so.

I asked McConnell about rebuilding trust with the reformers in the party. He said that he thought the leadership of the GOP caucuses in both chambers would work on spending reforms, but he seemed strangely passive about it. He wants to wait to see what the House produces before deciding how best to proceed. At that point, he apologized and left for a vote that had been called in the Senate, and we thanked him for his time.

McConnell strikes me as a man who has the experience at political infighting to remain tenacious for the Republican cause -- but gave us only a vague idea what that might be. He was adamant on the war that he would allow no defunding, and he could create a lot of legislative mischief if it came down to a trenchfight on that issue. He seemed eager to use the divided government to pressure for better fiscal discipline, but gave us few concrete points to consider. Once again, I'm reminded that the GOP really has not decided on who it is after the midterms, and while McConnell was a lock for Minority Leader (no one ran against him), it would have been far better for the Republicans to discover themselves before holding these leadership elections.

If the Republicans want to win back control of Congress, they will need some philosophical direction. I have some thoughts about how to accomplish that, and I hope to have more on that tomorrow.

'Government Changed Us'

Earlier today, I posted my thoughts about the potential candidacy of John McCain for the presidency and the conflict between his track record and his rhetoric on conservatism and the way forward after the midterms. In response, his staff sent me an advance copy of the speech McCain will deliver tonight to GOPAC, part of his opening efforts of the 2008 presidential campaign. The entire speech will be in the extended entry.

It's a good speech, and I think McCain correctly diagnoses the problems facing the GOP, not from the midterms but the problems that caused the midterms. He succinctly makes the point in this passage:

Americans had elected us to change government, and they rejected us because they believed government had changed us. ...

Hypocrisy, my friends, is the most obvious of political sins. And the people will punish it. We were elected to reduce the size of government and enlarge the sphere of free and private initiative. Then we lavished money, in a time of war, on thousands of projects of dubious, if any, public value. We responded to a problem facing some Americans by providing every retired American with a prescription drug benefit, and adding another trillion dollars to a bankrupt entitlement. We increased the size of government in the false hope that we could bribe the public into keeping us in office. And the people punished us. We lost our principles and our majority. And there is no way to recover our majority without recovering our principles first.

McCain's analysis is, I think, the best offered by any elected Republican in national office thus far. He takes the GOP to task for its profligacy, noting that Ronald Reagan once vetoed a bill for having 152 earmarks -- and that the highway bill that Congress passed last year had 6,371 "special projects" that cost over $24 billion dollars. And it's not just Congress, either; the White House hasn't vetoed a single spending bill despite the explosion of earmarks and pork barrel spending.

However, it still seems to me that this is the right message from the wrong candidate. McCain has been tough on spending -- and yet, according to Roll Call, he supported Trent Lott for the position of Minority Whip, despite Lott's blocking of the very reforms McCain urges. It's doubly disappointing that Tom Coburn did as well:

Lott defeated Alexander 25-24 on a secret ballot vote within the Republican Conference after running a late-starting, below-the-radar campaign. Alexander had claimed to have sufficient commitments to take the post and worked furiously to hold those votes, but an informal whip team including backers such as Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) put Lott over the top. Lott launched his bid after the defeat of Whip candidate and current Conference Chairman Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) at the ballot box on Nov. 7.

McCain invokes Reagan often in this speech. However, one has to wonder how Reagan would have viewed the BCRA, McCain's brainchild. Reagan eliminated the Fairness Doctrine and allowed for the maximum possible political debate, while McCain's BCRA criminalizes the criticism of incumbents by independent groups within 60 days of an election. Freedom of speech is a conservative value that McCain doesn't applaud. Hypocrisy, indeed.

John McCain is not a bad man, just a seriously misguided one, and his speech tonight is excellent and should get broad dissemination. It would have had more impact if the Senator had championed these values throughout his career. He has charted the correct path for Republicans to take in order to recapture the trust of the electorate. I hope a credible candidate can be found to follow his map to the Presidency in 2008.

“Thank you for this opportunity to talk about the future of our Party and our country.

“The voters obviously wanted to get our attention last week. While I would have preferred a gentler reproach than the one they delivered, I’m not discouraged nor should any of us be. Democrats had a good election night. We did not. But no defeat is permanent. And parties, just like individuals, show their character in adversity. Now, is the occasion to show ours.

“The election was not an affirmation of the other party’s program. Try as hard as I could, I couldn’t find much evidence that my Democratic friends were offering anything that resembled a coherent platform or principled leadership on the critical issues that confront us today.

“Nor do I believe Americans rejected our values and governing philosophy. On the contrary, I think they rejected us because they felt we had come to value our incumbency over our principles, and partisanship, from both parties, was no longer a contest of ideas, but an ever cruder and uncivil brawl over the spoils of power.

“I am convinced that a majority of Americans still consider themselves conservatives or right of center. They still prefer common sense conservatism to the alternative. They want their government to operate as their families operate, on a realistic budget, with an eye on the future that spurns self-indulgence in the short term for the sake of lasting prosperity, that respects hard work and individual initiative, and that shows no favoritism to one group of Americans over another. Americans had elected us to change government, and they rejected us because they believed government had changed us. We must spend the next two years reacquainting the public and ourselves with the reason we came to office in the first place: to serve a cause greater than our self-interest.

“Common sense conservatives believe in a short list of self-evident truths: love of country; respect for our unique influence on history; a strong defense and strong alliances based on mutual respect and mutual responsibility; steadfast opposition to threats to our security and values that matches resources to ends wisely; and confident, reliable, consistent leadership to advance human rights, democracy, peace and security.

“We believe every individual has something to contribute and deserves the opportunity to reach his or her God-given potential. We believe in increasing wealth and expanding opportunity; in low taxes; fiscal discipline, free trade and open markets. We believe in competition, rewarding hard work and risk takers and letting people keep the fruits of their labor.

“We believe in work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility. We believe in the integrity and values of families, neighborhoods and communities. We believe in limited government in a federal system, individual and property rights, and finding solutions to public problems closest to the people.

“We believe in the rule of law and equal justice under the law, victim’s rights and taxpayers’ rights, and judges who interpret the Constitution and don’t usurp, by legislating from the bench, the public’s right to elect representatives to write our laws.

“Common sense conservatives believe that the government that governs least governs best; that government should do only those things individuals cannot do for themselves, and do them efficiently. Much rides on that principle: the integrity of the government, our prosperity; and every American’s self-respect, which depends, as it always has, on one’s own decisions and actions, and cannot be provided as another government benefit.

“Stand up for these values. Argue our principles for our country’s sake and not just ours. We are the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan. Take on the big problems. Don’t hide from hard challenges. Act on principle. Show Americans there are things that matter more to us than our incumbency. Do the right thing, and the politics will take care of itself.

“Hypocrisy, my friends, is the most obvious of political sins. And the people will punish it. We were elected to reduce the size of government and enlarge the sphere of free and private initiative. Then we lavished money, in a time of war, on thousands of projects of dubious, if any, public value. We responded to a problem facing some Americans by providing every retired American with a prescription drug benefit, and adding another trillion dollars to a bankrupt entitlement. We increased the size of government in the false hope that we could bribe the public into keeping us in office. And the people punished us. We lost our principles and our majority. And there is no way to recover our majority without recovering our principles first.

“In 1987, Ronald Reagan vetoed a highway bill because it because it had 152 earmarks. Last year, a Republican Congress passed a highway bill with 6,371 special projects costing the taxpayers twenty-four billion dollars. Those and other earmarks passed by a Republican Congress included fifty million for an indoor rainforest, $500,000 for a teapot museum; $350,000 for an Inner Harmony Foundation and Wellness Center; and 223 million for a bridge to nowhere. I didn’t see those projects in the fine print of the Contract with America, and neither did the voters.

“A century ago, Teddy Roosevelt took on the special interests. Let the party of Teddy Roosevelt take the lead in cleaning up Washington today. Let’s start with pork barrel spending and corporate welfare; eliminate all earmarks; pass the line item veto; employ honest budget accounting; and end emergency spending bills for non emergencies as a way around budget limits. Let’s ban all gifts from lobbyists to lawmakers, and keep lobbyists off the floors of the House and Senate.

“We have more significant priorities ahead of us than finding new ways to spend money unwisely. When Social Security was established, forty-one workers supported a single retiree; today it’s three. Health care costs add more to the cost of a new car manufactured in the U.S. than steel. By 2045, spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, along with interest on the national debt, will consume 84 cents out of every federal dollar.

“We can leave these difficult problems to our unlucky successors, after they’ve grown worse, and harder to fix. Or we can bring all parties to the table, and hammer out a principled solution that makes the difficult choices necessary to support the needs of retirees, promote high quality health care at lower costs, protect the future security of workers; and restores the bonds of trust between the generations.

“We can do the same on the issue of immigration. I understand the magnitude of the problem. We can do all that is possible to defend our borders from illegal immigration, and affirm the rule of law. When we have made these improvements, we must still recognize that job opportunities here and poverty elsewhere in the world will still attract immigrants desperate to improve their lives, and who will use increasingly desperate measures to do so. We can devise a rational and fair process, which protects our security and affirms America’s promise as a land of opportunity.

“My friends, change is coming at Americans faster today than ever before. Fifty years ago, we produced and sold almost entirely for our domestic market. Today, we compete in a global marketplace against 1.3 billion Chinese and 1.1 billion Indians.

“Over the last two decades, because we have expanded free trade and open markets, the number of people living in extreme poverty dropped by more than 700 million in China and 200 million in India. As their economies grow, developing nations offer not just competition – but vast new consumer markets for American goods and services. And raising hundreds of millions of people from poverty is the best shield against the attraction of extremism.

“Thanks, in part, to Republican economic policies, America still has the most productive, flexible and energetic free economy in the world.

“But for many Americans – behind the positive macro-economic statistics – once reliable bedrocks like pensions, health care plans and even middle class jobs no longer feel secure. And with science and technology the key to high wage jobs, many parents fear their children won’t have the same opportunities they had.

“In the global economy what you learn is what you earn. But today, half of Hispanics and half of African Americans entering high school will never graduate. By the 12th grade, U.S. students in math and science score near the bottom of all industrialized nations. As Bill Gates said” “This isn’t an accident or flaw in the system. It is the system.”

“We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward superior teachers, and have a fair, but sure process to weed out incompetents.

“When Ronald Reagan took office, a blackberry was something you used to make jam; today it is a vital link in a wireless communication network that spans the globe. The broadband revolution is transforming every facet of communications from the internet to entertainment to telephone service to the delivery of health care services to supply chain management. Yet over the last decade, America has dropped from 2nd in the world to 19th in broadband development and connectivity. In the real world of global competition if we don’t reverse those trends, we will risk our prosperity and leave many Americans in rural areas far behind the rest of us.

“The dogmas of the quiet past,” Abraham Lincoln said, “are inadequate to the stormy present. As our case is new, we must think anew. We must disenthrall ourselves.” Across the generations, those words still ring true.

“To keep our nation prosperous, strong and growing we have to rethink, reform and reinvent: the way we educate our children; train our workers; deliver health care services; support retirees; fuel our transportation network; stimulate research and development; and harness new technologies. Let that challenge be the new Republican calling. Let’s invite a genuine contest of ideas within our party and with the other party. For conservatism, as Ronald Reagan told us “is not a narrow ideology.”

“When I drive home at night, I pass people waiting at a bus stop, and imagine their lives. A woman of Hispanic heritage, maybe thirty five, with three kids, is waiting for a bus on a cold street in the middle of the night so she can start her job. While you and I are home relaxing with our families over dinner, she and thousands like her are working late into the night in the offices we left, emptying waste baskets, cleaning up kitchens, scrubbing bathroom floors. She – like first generation Americans before her – is sacrificing so her children can climb the ladder of American opportunity.

“When we debate simplifying the tax code – which we must do -- I want us to remember that admirable woman, and ask ourselves have we done all we can to remove obstacles for her and millions like her to climb the next rung on the ladder.

“I want us to remember the worker in Michigan, in his fifties, who served a tour in Vietnam, married, four kids, two in college, who worked over thirty years at an auto parts plant, and never took a day of sick leave. Last year his plant downsized and his job was eliminated, and he felt as if a trap door had opened beneath him and he and his family had fallen through it.

“America is the greatest trading nation in the world. Competition keeps us strong, and most Americans know that building a moat around America is a formula for stagnation. I am proud of our party’s leadership on free trade while the Democrats embrace the siren song of protectionism. But we are not a nation of Social Darwinists, who believe only in the survival of the fittest. Work in America is more than a paycheck; it a source of pride, self-reliance and identity.

“I want our party to say to that worker in Michigan, and thousands like him: when you work hard; play by the rules, serve your country and community; and the burden of change arrives suddenly on your doorstep, you and your family are not just forgotten or disposable.

“Our most important obligation, of course, is to protect Americans from the threat posed by violent extremists who despise us, our values and modernity itself. They are moral monsters, but they are also a disciplined, dedicated movement driven by an apocalyptic religious zeal, which celebrates martyrdom and murder, has access to science, technology and mass communications, and is determined to acquire and use against us and our allies weapons of mass destruction. The institutions that sustained us throughout the Cold War and the doctrine of deterrence we relied on are no longer adequate to protect us in a struggle where suicide bombers might obtain the world’s most terrifying weapons.

“The war against terrorism is part of a larger struggle around the globe between the forces of integration and disintegration, between builders and destroyers, between modernizers and those who would shackle humanity, especially women, in a feudal theocracy. The question facing us is not whether America will play a large and shaping role in that struggle, but whether we will play it well or badly. We cannot afford to take a holiday from history.

“To defend ourselves we must do everything better and smarter than we did before. We must rethink, renew and rebuild the structure and mission of our military; the capabilities of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies; the purposes of our alliances, the reach and scope of our diplomacy, and the capacities of all branches of government to defend us against the peril we now face. We need to marshal all elements of American power: our military, economy, investment, trade and technology. We need to strengthen our alliances, and build support in other nations, which must, whether they believe it or not, confront the same threat to their way of life that we do. And we must marshal the power of our ideals.

“Some on both the Left and Right argue that our advocacy of democratic values in Iraq and elsewhere is reckless and vain; that freedom only works for wealthy nations and Western cultures. But a world where our political and economic values had a realistic chance at becoming a global creed was the principal object of our foreign policy in the last century. We conservatives were its most effective advocates, and it must remain our principal object today. We understood that our security interests and the global advance of our ideals are inextricably linked, and we surely didn’t accept the notion that freedom was the product of our power and wealth. Our wealth and power are the product of our freedom.

“We must appreciate the security implications of every policy debate. When we debate energy legislation, for instance, we must recognize that the oil tankers stretching from the Persian Gulf to our ports also channel petrodollars to oil dictatorships -- dollars used to buy centrifuges to enrich uranium and build ballistic missiles; to finance Hamas, Hezbollah and al Qaeda; and to fund the madrassas that train the next generation of terrorists.

“Leading our allies in an international effort to reduce our mutual dependence on oil, employing the services of the brightest, most creative and accomplished scientists, business leaders, military and government officials, could do as much to defeat the terrorists as any other policy decision we make, and would make American businesses and workers the leaders in developing new technologies. And, obviously, increased and accelerated development of nuclear energy is an important part of the solution.

“We must also prepare, across all levels of government, far better than we have done, to respond quickly and effectively to another terrorist attack or natural calamity. I am not an advocate of big government, and the private sector has an important role to play in homeland security. But when Americans confront a catastrophe, either natural or man-made, their government, across jurisdictions, should be organized and ready to deliver bottled drinking water to dehydrated babies and rescue the aged and infirm trapped in a hospital with no electricity.

“Now, I would like to speak briefly about the issue that is uppermost on the minds of Americans. I’ll make another trip to Iraq in the coming weeks, and will speak more extensively on the subject when I return. But, let me make a few observations here.

“Good and patriotic Americans disagree about the wisdom of the original decision to remove Saddam Hussein. I supported it and still do. And clearly the country is divided on the question of how we proceed from here. But I believe all Americans agree on this: to treat this war as a partisan issue for the advantage of either party would dishonor the sacrifices of the young men and women who have fought in it so bravely.

“We have made a great many mistakes in this war, and history will hold us to account for them just as the voters did last week. The situation in Iraq is dire. But I believe victory is still attainable. And I am certain that our defeat there would be a catastrophe, and not only for the United States. But we will not succeed if we no longer have the will to win.

“Americans are tired of Iraq because they are not convinced we can still win there without an intolerable loss of additional lives and resources. I understand that. But in no other time are we more morally obliged to speak the truth to our country, as we best see it, than in a time of war. So, let me say this, without additional combat forces we will not win this war. We can, perhaps, attempt to mitigate somewhat the terrible consequences of our defeat, but even that is an uncertain prospect. We don’t have adequate forces in Iraq to clear and hold insurgent strongholds; to provide security for rebuilding local institutions and economies; to arrest sectarian violence in Baghdad and disarm Sunni and Shia militias; to train the Iraqi Army, and to embed American personnel in weak, and often corrupt Iraqi police units. We need to do all these things if we are to succeed. And we will need more troops to do them.

“They will not be easy to find. The day after 9/11/, we should have begun to increase significantly the size of the Army and Marine Corps. But we did not. So we must turn again to those Americans and their families who have already sacrificed so much in this cause. That is a very hard thing to do. But if we intend to win, then we must.

“It is not fair or easy to look a soldier in the eye and tell him he must shoulder a rifle again and risk his life in a third tour in Iraq. Many of them will not want to. They feel have already suffered far more than the rest of us to win this war. Their families will be even more upset. And they will be right. It is a hard thing to ask of them. But ask it we must – if, and I emphasize if, we have the will to win. As troubling as it is, I can ask a young Marine to go back to Iraq. And he will go, not happily perhaps, but he will go because he and his comrades are the first patriots among us, and he will fight his hardest there for his country to prevail. Of that, I have no doubt. But I can only ask him if I share his commitment to victory.

“What I cannot do is ask him to return to Iraq, to risk life and limb, so that we might delay our defeat for a few months or a year. That is more to ask than patriotism requires. It would not be in the interest of the country, and it surely would be an intolerable sacrifice for so poor an accomplishment. It would be immoral, and I could not do it.

“My friends, before I leave, let me again say that though we suffered a tough defeat last week, we will recover if we learn our lesson well and once again offer Americans enlightened, effective and principled leadership. In 1977, after Republicans lost the presidency and Democrats held large majorities in Congress, Ronald Reagan offered precisely that kind of leadership, and led us to victory in just three years time. We can do it again if we lead and inspire as he did.

“That was not my first experience with President Reagan’s wisdom. When I was their involuntary guest, the North Vietnamese went to great lengths to restrict news from home to the statements and activities of prominent opponents of the war. They wanted us to believe that our country had forgotten us. They never mentioned Ronald Reagan to us, or played his speeches over the camp loudspeakers. No matter. We knew about him. New additions to our ranks told us how Governor and Mrs. Reagan were committed to our liberation and our cause. They were among the few prominent Americans who did not subscribe to the then fashionable notion that America and the West had entered our inevitable decline.

“We came home to a country that had lost a war and the best sense of itself; a country beset by serious social and economic problems. Assassinations, riots, scandals, contempt for political, religious and educational institutions, gave the appearance that we had become a dysfunctional society. Patriotism was sneered at. The military scorned. And the world anticipated the collapse of our global influence. The great, robust democracy that had given its name to the century appeared exhausted.

“Ronald Reagan believed differently. He possessed an unshakeable faith in America’s spirit that proved more durable than the prevailing political sentiments of the time, and he became President to prove it. His confidence was a tonic to men who had come home eager to put the war behind us and for our country to do likewise. His was a faith that shouted to tyrants, “tear down this wall.” When walls were all I had for a world, his faith in our country gave me hope in a desolate place.

“It was the faith he shared with my friend, Mike Christian.

“Fellow Americans, we can achieve whatever task we set for our country, and whatever task we set for our party, as long as we remember why we came to Washington in the first place. We came to honor Ronald Reagan’s and Mike Christian’s faith in America, the greatest nation and greatest force for good on earth. If we remember that then all will be well for our party and our country.

“Thank you and God bless you.”

Whither The GOP?

After the midterm elections, many of us hoped that the Republican Party would return to conservative First Principles in an attempt to recapture the energy that propelled them to majority status in 1994. Refocusing on the bedrock principles of limited government, fiscal discipline, strong national defense, and ethical governance would allow the GOP to reconnect to voters that grew to mistrust the Republicans after the last six years of big-government bloat and pork-barrel politicking.

Unfortunately, the leadership elections show that Republicans have not listened to their constituents, both present and former. Both House and Senate caucuses have chosen to support an old guard that led them back into the wilderness last week. At least in one case, John Boehner, some Republicans can justify that decision by noting that Boehner was in the wrong place at the wrong time, since he only served as Majority Leader since January, when Tom DeLay resigned. However, any pretense of reform was lost when the Senate caucus elected Trent Lott as its Minority Whip. Lott showed himself to be another iteration of the arrogant, out-of-touch old-style pol that manipulates federal dollars for political gain, and who doesn't cotton to criticism of his game-playing.

A truly conservative party would not celebrate that kind of behavior. A truly conservative party works for limited government and smaller federal budgets, because conservatives understand that the more money the federal government gets, the more power it aggregates to itself -- and the more politicians like Lott can use that power to secure their own lifetime sinecures at public expense.

Obviously, the GOP offers little in legislative leadership to inspire conservatives. What of the party's leading presidential candidates? The front runners are Rudy Giuliani, an admirable leader but definitely not a conservative, and John McCain, who just opened his exploratory bid. McCain wants to campaign for those First Principles conservatives, as the AP reports:

"We departed rather tragically from our conservative principles," McCain lamented recently, offering his take on why the GOP fell from power in Congress. He urged a return to what he called the foundation of the Republican Party — restrained spending, smaller government, lower taxes, a strong national defense and family values.

Fifteen months before the first 2008 presidential nominating contests, McCain is positioning himself as the Republican standard-bearer while President Bush takes on lame-duck status and dispirited party faithful search for a road to recovery. The election cycle was sobering, with GOP candidates losing at all levels of government.

The four-term Arizona senator will deliver back-to-back speeches Thursday to organizations considered conservative cornerstones of the Republican Party — the Federalist Society and GOPAC. He will discuss the current and future state of the GOP.

Unfortunately for conservatives, the one candidate who espouses those First Principles is the one who famously betrayed them four years ago. McCain thought big government worked just fine when he sponsored the BCRA (McCain-Feingold), which curtailed political speech and protected incumbents from attack ads in the guise of taking money out of politics. A conservative would never trade free political speech for a top-down solution to any ill, let alone political advertisements. Never. Anyone who does simply cannot be trusted to implement limited-government solutions to any problem, ever.

Outside of Newt Gingrich, even the second-tier candidates offer nothing but the same kind of big-government Republicanism that has characterized the George Bush terms in office. Gingrich could make a comeback, but he has some unfortunate personal issues that will handicap him, and given what happened in the late Clinton years, there are questions about his tenacity on these First Principles as well. We have no Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater on the horizon, at least not yet, and the GOP is moving away from that direct at light speed in the new Congressional leadership races -- at least so far.

It may be time to take Mark Tapscott's advice, offered over the summer, and look outside the GOP for alternate methods of pursuing conservativism. All we find there is a nest of those who want to manipulate federal power as an engine for their own agendas, instead of reducing its reach and its intrusiveness. We have at least a year to see whether we can be more effective outside the party -- because the Republicans seem intent on proving that we have no place inside it any more.

The Return Of The Blue Dogs

Nine of the 28 seats gained by Democrats in the midterm elections came from the success of "Blue Dogs", conservative Democrats who convinced voters in previously Republican districts to trust them with reform. The Los Angeles Times now counts 44 of the faction in the House Democratic Caucus, and reports that they have begun to bark for their conservative policies:

They helped propel the Democrats to victory in last week's election, and now the "Blue Dogs" want their reward: a decidedly conservative fiscal policy that begins with a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget.

The coalition of moderate and conservative House Democrats on Wednesday introduced nine members who were newly elected to Congress, bringing its numerical strength to 44. That's more than enough, if all 44 join with the Republican minority in January, to block the initiatives of the more liberal House leadership headed by Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco). ....

Blue Dog Co-Chairman Jim Matheson of Utah said neither party could take the support of the coalition for granted. "Blue Dogs believe in partnership and not partisanship," he said.

Mike Ross of Arkansas, another Blue Dog leader, said the Democratic Party owed its success in the midterm election to the conservative Democrats who won many seats formerly held by Republicans. "Republicans did not lose their seats to liberal Democrats," Ross said. "Republicans lost their seats to Blue Dog Democrats, to conservative Democrats."

This parallels the problem Harry Reid has in the Senate, primarily with Joe Lieberman but also with Jim Webb. The Republicans have had the same problems in the past with Lincoln Chafee, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and a host of GOP Representatives. Razor-thin majorities amplify the importance of factions such as the Blue Dogs, and they intend to take advantage of it.

They've already had an impact on the platform, but it's an easily-manipulated entry. They insisted on a pay-as-you-go provision for appropriations, forcing Congress to find new revenues for every new appropriation or tax cut. That's not a conservative position, but it's at least somewhat moderate and responsible. The conservative position -- which the Times apparently doesn't know -- is that every new dollar spent should have a balancing cut in other expenditures. Conservatives don't want to take more money out of the private sector to fund government expansion, and Blue Dogs apparently can't see the difference.

Some pundits have disputed the notion that conservatism remained strong after the midterms; some even declared it dead as a political philosophy. However, the fact that one-third of all Democratic gains in the House joined the Blue Dogs shows that the philosophy has appeal that extends to independents. The Blue Dogs will prove a tough stumbling block for the more ambitious programs envisioned by the Democratic majority -- and if they don't, the GOP has those districts in thier sights for 2008.

EU To Put Green Tax On Intercontinental Flights

The EU wants to start charging airline passengers for the pollution caused by their transportation. The draft legislation would affect all carriers coming in and out of Europe, effectively taxing American airlines without any opportunity to debate the fees:

AIRLINE passengers would pay up to £27 extra for a return ticket to cover the environmental damage caused by their flights, under European Commission proposals to address climate change.

Draft legislation to be published next month would require all flights arriving or departing from European Union airports to buy permits to cover their carbon dioxide emissions. ....

This will infuriate the United States and many other countries because it would affect all flights into and out of Europe, regardless of their origin or destination. US airlines would have to buy permits to cover their emissions on their European routes.

The Association of European Airlines (AEA) said that the proposal could provoke a trade war between the US and the EU, and raise the risk of flight restrictions and sanctions on European goods.

The commission previously appeared to favour a scheme that covered flights only starting and ending within the EU. But the document concludes that an intra-EU scheme would be far less effective, reducing CO2 emissions by 44 million tonnes compared with 183 million tonnes if all arriving and departing flights were included.

The election of the Democrats to Congress has generated many predictions of an end to free trade. Apparently the EU wants to start early on this process. The imposition of a tax on transcontinental flights by the EU will almost certainly prompt new fees on European carriers wanting to land in the US. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security has had a number of conflicts with the EU on airline security arrangements, and the US might decide to ban carriers who don't fully comply with American demands in the future.

The EU claims that the tax will lower the amount of emissions from the airline industry by forcing them to buy new planes. However, the EU subsidizes its airlines and Airbus, its airplane manufacturer. That allows European companies to have newer fleets, which reduces their emissions and would allow them to get less expensive permits. All airlines would have to start a new accounting regimen for their emissions, subject to EU oversight, which points to even more taxes and fees down the road.

This is an obvious protectionist racket. Charging the fees would not force carriers to upgrade their planes; in fact, it would take money out of their hands that might otherwise be used for that purpose. In the competitive US market, an extra $40 or so might price a few customers out of the European trips, but the bigger impact will be the accounting cost for the new reporting. The EU wants American carriers to lose any competitive edge. It's basically the opening salvos of a trade war.

Free trade may be a quicker casualty of the new political paradigm than first imagined. Don't expect this to end with the airlines. Agricultural tariffs will expand next, and after that, the field's wide open.

Are The House Democrats Revolting?

... against Nancy Pelosi, that is? According to Robert Novak, the impending Speakership of Nancy Pelosi has a number of them gravely concerned, and for the same reason that I pointed out on Monday. With her unexpected endorsement of John Murtha's challenge to Steny Hoyer and her demotion of Jane Harman on the Intelligence committee, Pelosi has made clear that her rule will find its basis on personal whim rather than any concern over the philosophical direction of the party:

The damage to her was irrevocable when she wrote her colleagues Sunday urging them to pick Murtha over Rep. Steny Hoyer. Close associates of Hoyer say her letter stunned him, and he was not alone. While Pelosi had made it clear that she would vote for Murtha, the public endorsement was unexpected.

Although Pelosi's apologists had stressed that this was not a public campaign, but a pro forma endorsement, she began actively campaigning for Murtha on Tuesday. Even before that, the letter itself was taken seriously within the Democratic caucus, including by Hoyer and his close associates. A speaker's written word cannot be taken lightly. ...

Pelosi's personal pique was evident in her opposition to her rival diva from California, Rep. Jane Harman, as chairman of the House intelligence committee. In line to replace Harman is Rep. Alcee Hastings, who was once impeached as a federal judge on bribery charges.

For a party that effectively stressed a Republican climate of corruption in the recent campaign to consider placing Murtha and Hastings in its leadership astonishes a wide range of Democrats. They do not believe Murtha can defeat Hoyer, but the imminence of Hastings stuns them. Well-placed Democrats have told Pelosi she cannot permit this to happen. What they hesitate to contemplate is what lies ahead based on Pelosi's performance before she has taken the oath.

As mediocre as Denny Hastert proved as Speaker, his management of the House did not revolve around his personal connections and relationships. Hastert made his decisions based on party concerns, perhaps to a fault; he would not allow legislation to come to the floor unless a majority of Republicans supported it, a policy that infuriated the Democrats, who argued that they had no voice on policy as a result.

Pelosi apparently wants to prove herself as worse than mediocre before taking the gavel from Hastert. I called Murtha an unforced error on Tuesday, and the more Murtha speaks publicly, the more obvious this becomes. Murtha is almost incoherent when on camera; he makes a terrible public face for the party. Murtha's power comes from his legendary ability to maneuver pork as rewards for allies and punishment for opponents, the exact kind of politics that Democrats claimed to oppose in the midterms last week.

And then there's Alcee Hastings, the man Pelosi wants to replace Harman as Intel chair. I started writing about Hastings in June, when his name first got floated as the potential chair for this committee, and I've mentioned him a few times since. Murtha might represent old-fashioned pork politics, but Hastings actually was corrupt enough to get impeached and removed from the federal bench -- by a Democratic Congress. If Murtha was an unforced error, Hastings is an embarrassing example of Pelosi's judgment. She needs the support of the Congressional Black Caucus to get elected Speaker, and they want Hastings to succeed Harman, if Harman doesn't get the chair. Pelosi can't afford to alienate them any further after she had the audacity to ask William Jefferson to resign from his committee assignments after the FBI found $90,000 in his freezer. (Jefferson won re-election, too.)

Steny Hoyer and Jane Harman have proven themselves capable party spokespeople, and have a record for independent thinking. Pelosi opposes them both strictly for personal reasons. She doesn't like Harman, feeling that her fellow Californian hasn't been partisan enough in her role on the Intel committee, and Hoyer ran against her for Minority Leader in 2001. For those personal reasons, Pelosi wants to turn to a corrupt ex-judge and a bumbling porker for party leadership positions, making a mockery of her promises of reform.

Democrats are in a bad position. They can't afford to throw Pelosi under the bus after promoting her as the first woman Speaker in American history. They can't afford to have Hastings and Murtha in leadership positions and then face the voters in 2008 who wanted reform and change. They can't afford to undermine her authority and openly campaign for the reversal of Hastings' appointment and the failure of her Murtha endorsement.

Days after their electoral triumph, Pelosi has led the party into a dead end, and they have two more years of her leadership to endure. Democrats will have to do one of the above tasks and resolve their conundrum, but any way they move, they damage their standing. An open revolt might be the best option for them at this point, perhaps led by Hoyer himself.

The Final Push?

Fresh on the heels of the New York Times interviews with retired generals opposing the cut-amd-run/phased deployment strategies of the Democrats, the Guardian (UK) reports that the White House will propose a concentrated effort to stamp out the sectarian violence in Baghdad. The new plan calls for an additional 20,000 American troops for the Iraqi capital and a renewed mandate for aggressive action against the militias and death squads:

President George Bush has told senior advisers that the US and its allies must make "a last big push" to win the war in Iraq and that instead of beginning a troop withdrawal next year, he may increase US forces by up to 20,000 soldiers, according to sources familiar with the administration's internal deliberations. ...

Point one of the strategy calls for an increase rather than a decrease in overall US force levels inside Iraq, possibly by as many as 20,000 soldiers. This figure is far fewer than that called for by the Republican presidential hopeful, John McCain. But by raising troop levels, Mr Bush will draw a line in the sand and defy Democratic pressure for a swift drawdown.

The reinforcements will be used to secure Baghdad, scene of the worst sectarian and insurgent violence, and enable redeployments of US, coalition and Iraqi forces elsewhere in the country.

Point two of the plan stresses the importance of regional cooperation to the successful rehabilitation of Iraq. This could involve the convening of an international conference of neighbouring countries or more direct diplomatic, financial and economic involvement of US allies such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Simon Tisdall quotes his anonymous source as saying that the plan can be described in a nutshell: "lower the goals, forget about the democracy crap, put more resources in, do it."

Lowering the goals makes more sense than running away, but depending on the extent of the abandonment, it risks making the entire effort pointless. The reason why the US insisted on engaging in the Wilsonian task of nation-building after toppling Saddam was twofold. Democracy should allow more rational outlets for political aspirations instead of allowing them to fester in tyranny, thus eventually reducing the impulse towards terrorism. The second follows from the first, and that was to seed Southwest Asia and North Africa with democracy, with its roots in Iraq.

Forgetting about the "democracy crap" means that all of that long-range strategy has just disappeared. Instead, the US presumably would put a strongman or military junta in place in Baghdad, probably secular, as a way of achieving stability. The new junta would likely attract the Ba'athist elements that have operated the majority of the insurgencies in Iraq, helping to end one form of terrorism in the country -- but putting the terrorists back in charge again. The Iraqi people, who turned out in force for three elections and who want democracy to work, would essentially be sold back into some form of authoritarian executive by the US.

Pardon me, but I hardly see how this strengthens us in the Middle East. If we send 20,000 troops to Baghdad in order to stand up a strongman, why would anyone in the region support democracy? Why would anyone trust us if we promised to back their activism for freedom and liberty?

I know the situation in Iraq is tough, and that more resources are needed. However, we should send more resources to establish freedom and to fulfill the promise we made to the Iraqi people. Hopefully the Bush administration plans on doing that, and not sticking around long enough to stand up another dictator in Saddam's place. We shouldn't send 20,000 American troops for that kind of mission; in fact, we shouldn't send a single one. I have to believe that George Bush would feel the same way, and I look forward to seeing what the White House has to say once the ISG report has been released.

Demeaning Everything That Touches Him

I lived in the Los Angeles area in 1994, when Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman got butchered to death at Simpson's Brentwood home. I watched OJ as he drove his white Ford Bronco all over the area, and I lived through the subequent trial, acquittal, lawsuit, and conviction. When the larger community split along racial lines on OJ's guilt or innocence, I lived through that as well.

All I can say is that a lot of those people will have to eat their words after OJ's new book gets published, but the thought of it brings no satisfaction. Any time OJ makes the news, it demeans anyone connected to the case and the coverage, and this time it comes courtesy of Regan Books:

O.J. Simpson created an uproar Wednesday with plans for a TV interview and book titled "If I Did It" — an account the publisher pronounced "his confession" and media executives condemned as revolting and exploitive.

Fox, which plans to air an interview with Simpson Nov. 27 and 29, said Simpson describes how he would have committed the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman, "if he were the one responsible."

Denise Brown, sister of Simpson's slain ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, lashed out at publisher Judith Regan of ReganBooks for "promoting the wrongdoing of criminals" and commercializing abuse. The book goes on sale Nov. 30. ...

"This is an historic case, and I consider this his confession," Regan told The Associated Press.

It's not a "historic case", it's an ongoing circus, and now Regan wants her thirty pieces of silver. The only possible rationalization for giving OJ a podium for his story would be to explain his supposed innocence. Instead, Regan gave OJ a megaphone to play games with the truth and the pain of the victims he left behind when he butchered two human beings in Brentwood.

The premise of the book has OJ describing how he would have killed Nicole and Ron -- had he done it himself. Never mind the question of OJ's guilt or innocence; what reputable publisher would put out a work that purports to critique the technique used in a bloody double murder? Who cares how anyone would have slaughtered Nicole and Ron?

But of course, we can't set aside OJ's involvement in the murder. Daniel Petrocelli, who successfully sued OJ on behalf of Fred Goldman and forced OJ to tell one ridiculous lie after another on the witness stand, proved without a doubt that OJ did it and that the blood evidence could not possibly have been faked. OJ himself now wants to sell his confession, since the coward now has no money and no potential for legal repercussions over his admissions, especially couched in this laughable hypothetical.

Unfortunately, Regan hardly stands alone in her greed to exploit the deaths of two innocent people in this ghoulish literary effort. Fox News will air Simpson in not one but two interviews in the last week of November. NBC turned down the offer, much to its credit, but the NewsCorp network apparently couldn't resist the lure of a Sweeps Month finale.

Undoubtedly Fox and Regan will attract a huge audience, but it won't include me. They can relive the OJ embarrassment, hauling out Geraldo, Greta, and all of their talking heads to dissect the case yet again, but thinking people should refuse to contribute any more to the celebrity of a double murderer. Hopefully, Harper Collins will rethink its relationship to ReganBooks in the same manner that readers will also do.

Quick Hits On Ethics

Well, it's certainly been a fine day for ethics in government. Trent Lott returned to Republican leadership by 25-24 vote of the now-minority GOP caucus:

Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott, ousted from the top Senate Republican leadership job four years ago because of remarks considered racially insensitive, won election to the No. 2 post Wednesday for the minority GOP in the next Congress.

But Lott deferred to newly elected party leader Mitch McConnell when asked whether he feels vindicated by the 25-24 secret ballot. "The spotlight belongs on him," Lott said of his Kentucky colleague, unanimously chosen to succeed Sen. Bill Frist as the top-ranking Senate GOP leader.

But Lott's comeback-kid victory was generating the most buzz in the Capitol hallways. Lott, who was pressured to step down from the Senate's top spot more than four years ago, returned to the center of power by nosing out Sen. Lamar Alexander, who had made an 18-month bid for the post.

Earlier today, I endorsed Lott's opponent Lamar Alexander for the post. I only wish I'd known earlier that the Senate would vote today on these positions. In a series of e-mail messages between several members of the Porkbusters coalition, some argued that Lott may have been the lesser of the two evils, as Alexander also has an affinity for pork. All I can say is that if Trent Lott represents the lesser of two pork evils in the GOP Senate caucus, then we're going to lose more elections, and probably deservedly so.

However, not all is bleak. The Democrats have apparently adopted a strategy to make themselves look even worse than the GOP. John Murtha appeared on Hardball to declare his new Speaker's ethics legislation "total crap":

“Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) told a group of Democratic moderates on Tuesday that an ethics and lobbying reform bill being pushed by party leaders was ‘total crap,’ but said that he would work to enact the legislation because Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) supports it,” John Bresnahan reports for Roll Call.

“Even though I think it’s total crap, I’ll vote for it and pass it because that’s what Nancy wants,” Murtha said, three sources at the meeting told the Capitol Hill newspaper.

Hot Air has plenty more at this post. It seems that both parties are attempting to win a dumb-off, as Dean Barnett commented earlier today. I'm not sure which party will win, but the American taxpayer will be the loser no matter what. Unfortunately, neither party recognizes the damage they've done to themselves before the next session ever starts.

So what can we use to lift our spirits? Bill of INDC gives us a reason to believe. He's going to embed with the Marines in Iraq on behalf of the Examiner (to which I also contribute) and his own blog:

Starting in very late December, I'll be traveling to Western Iraq to embed with the Marines, publishing both independent blog items and op-eds for the Washington Examiner. Specific destinations (thus far) include Ramadi, Habbaniyah (the headquarters of the Iraqi First Army and several IA boot camps), Fallujah and Baghdad. Prioritized is an embed with Military Transition Teams advising First and Seventh Iraqi Army units[.]

Bill joins a robust cadre of embedded reporters dedicated to bringing America the true stories of combat and nation-building from the front lines. Bill's addition will bring the number of embedded journalists to a grand total of ... 10. Bill needs some assistance in getting the equipment he needs, so please visit and throw a few dinars his way. It's the one piece of good news that I've heard today.

Profiles In Courage, Democrat Leadership Version

Charles Rangel on Monday:

"My kind of politics is, if you do your job, you are supposed to be rewarded ... I think Steny [Hoyer] has done his job. I cannot think of any reason why this [John Murtha's challenge] is happening."

Charles Rangel on Tuesday:

Pelosi called incoming Ways and Means Committee chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) yesterday morning just hours after he had told the New York Sun, “I think Steny has done his job. I cannot think of any reason why this is happening,” prompting the paper to run the headline “Rangel Backs Hoyer for Leader.”

“I don’t know what article she had seen, but she had thought it was an endorsement of Steny,” Rangel said.

Rangel told her it was not an endorsement but reiterated his earlier statement that “nobody had given me any reason not to support Steny.”

Golly, what will Charles Rangel say today?

Let's make sure we have this correct. Rangel's idea of politics is that if you do your job, you keep your job. Unless, of course, the Party demands that you vote for someone else, in which case your judgment is overruled. Is that what Rangel says now? Daniel Freedman at It Shines For All notes that Rangel apparently was for Hoyer before he was against him, a dynamic that we have seen Democrats embody frequently.

Hail The (Re)Conquering Hero!

Guess who's the most popular belle at the Democratic ball in DC? None other than Joe Lieberman, who had to run as an independent after party activists defeated him in the primaries with neophyte Ned Lamont. After having to endorse Lieberman's opponent, and in some cases campaigning against their long-time colleague, Democrats now line up to shake his hand ... or kiss it:

“It was all very warm, lots of hugs, high-fives, that kind of stuff,” said Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado.

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon marveled, “One senator after another kept coming up and shaking his hand.”

And Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas noted, “I gave him a hug and a kiss.”

Mr. Lieberman received a standing ovation at a caucus luncheon after Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, who is poised to become the majority leader, declared, “We’re all family.”

I'm tempted to ask where exactly Lincoln kissed Lieberman, but at least symbolically, every Senate Democrat has their lips pursed and aimed directly at his nether regions. Why? Lieberman himself gave them reason this past weekend on Meet The Press when he told Tim Russert that he would stick with the Democrats ... for now.

The Independent from Connecticut holds the Democratic majority in his hands, and they're praying he has a short memory. Hillary Clinton actively campaigned for Lamont, even if it appeared less than enthusiastic at times. He could help derail her presidential ambitions by making her politically irrelevant for the next session. His home-state colleague, Christopher Dodd, could find himself without a committee chair if Lieberman thinks too hard about Dodd's appearances on Lamont's behalf.

His son keeps the long memory at hand. Matthew Lieberman warned his father's former friends who "left him by the side of the road" that a reckoning might occur in the future. So far, Lieberman seems unready to lower the boom on the Democrats, and perhaps his elevation to Pope might forestall it. One has to suspect that at some time, Lieberman will find a way to deliver just a little payback, just enough to make it sting for the Democrats.

Lamar Alexander For Minority Whip

Captain's Quarters has no hesitation in endorsing Lamar Alexander for the position of Minority Whip in the next session of the Senate. While I have regard for Senator Alexander, this decision has far more to do with his competition than with the Tennessean himself.

Opposing Alexander is none other than Trent Lott from Mississippi. Lott had been Majority Leader until an unfortunate remark at Strom Thurmond's birthday party caused a political firestorm. That's not the problem with his candidacy for Whip; he's been punished for his carelessness in hailing Thurmond's Dixiecrat presidential run. My opposition comes from Lott's attitude towards pork, and especially his attitude about the people who oppose pork spending.

One of the major legislative reforms that came out of the last session of Congress was the Coburn-Obama spending database. Bill Frist managed to expertly get that through in the last days of the legislative calendar. However, that dextrous performance only became necessary because Trent Lott used an arcane Senate rule to kill the database back in March. Tom Coburn and Barack Obama offered the database in an amendment to a lobbying reform bill under consideration, and he invoked Rule 22, which stripped the amendment from the bill for its supposed irrelevance to lobbying reform.

This naturally inspired a lot of criticism from the blogosphere, which has focused on earmarks (especially secret earmarks) as a point of entry for corruption in Congress. In response to this criticism, Lott told an AP reporter that "I'll just say this about the so-called porkbusters. I'm getting damn tired of hearing from them."

Memo to Senator Lott: porkbusters are taxpayers, and we have every right to question how our money gets spent. The fact that the question came in response to a $700 million project to relocate rail tracks in Mississippi that we had just spent $300 million repairing makes the point even more clear. Lott belongs to a generation of politicians that believe that they are above the criticism of their constituents, and that we should just shut up and let our betters decide what to do with us.

Republicans need to show that they have learned a lesson from their midterm drubbing. They lost their majorities because voters perceived that they had lost touch with the electorate on policy as well as attitude. We sent Republicans to clean up Congress, not to clean up for themselves in porkfests that rival anything that came before them. Trent Lott represents the worst of that class, and the mere idea that he remains in consideration for a leadership position after his commentary this year proves that the GOP hasn't listened hard enough.

If the Senate Republicans want us to take them seriously, then they need to send Trent Lott to the back bench where he belongs. Any Republican Senator who supports Lott in leadership needs to have their head examined.

And Now It Seems Withdrawal Is ... Bad

After leading the charge to retreat from Iraq and declare victory with our backup lights lit, the New York Times now discovers that most military experts -- including critics of the Busg administration's handling of post-war Iraq -- believe a drawdown will touch off a civil war, not avoid one. While Carl Levin and Jack Reed try to fine-tune a Senate resolution so that retreat doesn't sound like retreat, Anthony Zinni and John Batiste point out that lowering the security forces in Baghdad will make violence increase, not decrease:

One of the most resonant arguments in the debate over Iraq holds that the United States can move forward by pulling its troops back, as part of a phased withdrawal. If American troops begin to leave and the remaining forces assume a more limited role, the argument holds, it will galvanize the Iraqi government to assume more responsibility for securing and rebuilding Iraq.

This is the case now being argued by many Democrats, most notably Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who asserts that the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq should begin within four to six months.

But this argument is being challenged by a number of military officers, experts and former generals, including some who have been among the most vehement critics of the Bush administration’s Iraq policies.

Anthony C. Zinni, the former head of the United States Central Command and one of the retired generals who called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, argued that any substantial reduction of American forces over the next several months would be more likely to accelerate the slide to civil war than stop it.

John Batiste, a retired Army major general who also joined in the call for Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation, described the Congressional proposals for troop withdrawals as “terribly naïve ...There are lots of things that have to happen to set them up for success,” General Batiste, who commanded a division in Iraq, said in an interview, describing the Iraqi government. “Until they happen, it does not matter what we tell Maliki.”

We didn't hear from Zinni and Batiste until this week. Why not? Apparently, even though the Gray Lady touted Iraq as the most critical issue for the midterms and urged a plan for rapid withdrawal, it didn't find the time to actually interview the generals about the realistic options for success until after the election.

Putting that aside, the two generals cannot be painted as apologists for the Bush administration's policies on Iraq. Both have made their criticisms public, especially regarding Rumsfeld in Batiste's case. Clearly, they want to see a change in the tactics used in Iraq, but just as clearly they do not want to retreat before the mission is accomplished.

The efforts by Democrats to shift into reverse are based on two arguments: that the US is creating the impetus for violence simply by being present, and that Nouri al-Maliki could solve the problem if we scared him into taking action on his own. Both Zinni and Batiste dispute these assumptions, and for good reason. The forces arrayed against the Iraqi government and Coalition forces consist primarily of native radicals who will not abide democratic institutions, but instead want dictatorships based on sect and ethnicity. A smaller but significant portion are foreign terrorists who have flocked to the al-Qaeda franchise, led now by Abu Hamza al-Muhajir.

Neither of these types of factions will lay down weapons once the US leaves. They have other plans for Iraq besides democracy and representative government. The natives want to break Iraq into gang turf for their radical imams, and the foreigners want Iraq's oil reserves to fund worldwide terrorism independently. Those goals will not fade with an American withdrawal, but only become closer to reality.

Zinni and Batiste know this. Both scoff at the notion that Maliki could stop the violence at his current strength levels, although both agree he could do more politically. Zinni and Batiste agree with John McCain that the US needs additional troops in Baghdad and a better strategy for weakening and destroying the militias. This week, American troops started going after Moqtada al-Sadr's forces in the capital, reversing an earlier decision to abide by Maliki's demand to leave them alone. More of that kind of thinking will help, and that will certainly put the kind of political pressure on Maliki that might some changes to his policies.

Before the elections, Democrats insisted that the White House and especially Donald Rumsfeld needed to listen to the generals rather than remaining married to their own strategies and assumptions. Now that the election is over, the Democrats need to do the same. Will they? It's doubtful, and for one very strong reason: they ran on forcing a change of policy in Iraq. Their voters were led to believe that a Democratic majority in Congress would lead to a withdrawal, and in short order. If the Democrats do not make good on that promise, they will have to accept some responsibility for Iraq from this point forward -- and they will lose the anti-war Left that currently fuels their activism.

Nevertheless, at least we've finally heard the entire story from these generals on the pages of the New York Times. Perhaps that might signal the Democrats that victory is the best strategy after all.

Pawlenty Shifts Leftward

Tim Pawlenty has decided that his second term as Governor in Minnesota will feature bipartisanship and accommodation with the new DFL-controlled legislature. In the first move of his new term, Pawlenty embraced universal health coverage for children underwritten by the state and demanded changes in the medical industry, while incongruently decrying government "meddling" in health care:

In a sweeping policy departure that aligns with a top agenda item of the newly elected DFL legislative majorities, Gov. Tim Pawlenty called Tuesday for extending health care access to up to 90,000 uninsured children as a step toward coverage for all Minnesotans.

"We all, I think, can chart a path toward universal coverage," he said in a luncheon speech to a health reform conference in Minneapolis. "We're going to have to move in stages. ... We should start with covering all kids."

Pawlenty also peppered his remarks with broad criticism of the nation's current "tattered, outdated, inefficient" health care system and hard shots at health maintenance organizations (HMOs), prescription drug advertising and political meddling in health policy.

Let's focus for just a moment on this last statement, which is so ludicrous as to be mind-blowing. Pawlenty and the DFL (the Minnesota Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party) want government to fund health coverage and demand that HMOs change their policies in some vague manner ... but don't want "political meddling" in health policy? What Pawlenty proposes constitutes political meddling. Having the state take on the burden of insuring all children distorts the market. It also puts the government in the position of having enormous market power to demand all sorts of changes in health policies and pricing. Does Pawlenty want us to believe that Minnesota won't use that power?

The DFL says we can insure the 90,000 uninsured Minnesota children for $46 million, or about $511 per year per child. That sounds a little high, but not out of the ballpark. However, what exactly does this cover? Are we talking about wellness visits, or full hospitalization, or something in between? If the state is the payor, it would probably be the latter by default, and the cost will be significantly higher than $500 per year per child.

Pawlenty also appears to have surrendered to the victim mentality prevalent with the DFL. He blames HMOs for obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Why? Because these have increased over the years, and apparently HMOs hold all of the responsibility for it. That's ludicrous. Each one of those issues, insofar as they can be mitigated at all, have to be addressed by the individuals involved. All health-care companies have this information readily available, and in fact their business model improves as their clients get healthier. It's always been in their financial interest to reduce heart disease, obesity, and avoidable diabetes. HMOs can only give their clients information on diets and exercise -- they can't regulate their food intake and force them onto treadmills.

Republicans used to stand for personal responsibility, not corporate demonization. They also used to rely on the open market approach, not government intervention models. Apparently, Pawlenty has decided to drop all of the reasons Republicans voted for him and address all of the reasons Democrats did not. It's a disturbing start to the first Hatch term second Pawlenty term.

UPDATE: Scott Johnson reminds people of the cynical adage that advises people to vote for their oppostion, because they have no one to sell out to but you. He also finds fault with Pawlenty's attack on pharmaceutical advertising, another example of treating adults like children. Be sure to read his whole post.

Hollywood Only Likes One Kind Of Green, Baby

When UCLA started researching Southern California polluters by industry, one would have expected the usual suspects to rise to the top of the list. Certainly, the oil refineries rank as the worst aggregate polluter in the greater Los Angeles area, as most would guess; I grew up near them, and it's no great shock. However, can anyone guess which SoCal industry managed to beat aerospace manufacturing, hotels, and semiconductor manufacturers for second place? The Guardian has a surprise for Californios and movie lovers:

The city of Los Angeles is principally famous for two things: glittering movies and suffocating smog. Now researchers have found that the two are not unconnected. A study by the University of California Los Angeles shows the film and television industry to be the second largest polluter in the Los Angeles area. Only the region's oil refineries pump more pollutants into the air, it says.

While Hollywood has a reputation for pumping out unregulated quantities of hot air, the research is the first to quantify the industry's emissions. The two-year study estimates that the industry emits 140,000 tonnes a year of ozone and diesel particulate emissions. ...

"Our overall impression is that, with a few notable and inspiring exceptions," said the study's authors, "environmental considerations are not high on the agenda in the film and television industry, and that more could be done within the industry to foster environmentally friendly approaches."

Huh. And here we thought all they did was pollute people's minds.

This has to come as an embarrassment to the entertainment industry, but it's not unexpected. The phrase "limousine liberals" springs from the Hollywood tendency to scold others about their purportedly bad habits while continuing to indulge in their own. We have listened to lectures from glitterati -- and not just from traditional Hollywood -- who scold us about greenhouse gases, global warming, and the like, only to watch them leave in their gas-guzzling SUVs.

As the Guardian notes, most people think of Hollywood as an industry in economic terms, but not in a physical sense. Their product usually resides in ethereal media, such as television and movies, and so the concept of production has a different meaning to most people. However, the effort to produce the entertainment eats up a lot of resources: primarily energy, but that comes in the form of both electricity and transportation. There are also sets to be built, lots to maintain, and all of the normal office tasks that any corporation has to use to manage their business.

In truth, cutting the pollutants from all of these production tasks will present tough challenges to Hollywood, and Southern California hardly wants them to pack up and leave. But that's just the point. It's costly and difficult for all industries to reduce their pollution profiles, and the costs have to be borne somewhere -- usually with the consumer. Hollywood and its political activists have never acknowledged that, preferring in their demonstrations and in their movies and TV shows to demonize entire industries for their supposed environmental indifference or outright hostility.

Perhaps this study will cause Hollywood to gain a little humility on this subject and cut back on the preachy global-warming nonsense, like The Day After Tomorrow (whose producers paid an offset for their polluting production activities). More likely, Hollywood elites will bankroll a new film that paints UCLA pollution researchers as the head of a conspiracy to destroy the Earth's climate by silencing the film industry.

Plutonium Found In Iran, And Everyone's Surprised?

The IAEA found traces of plutonium and enriched uranium in Iran, it stated yesterday, and also noted that the Iranians have not cooperated with nuclear inspectors. And in other breaking news, the sun will rise in the East this morning:

New traces of plutonium and enriched uranium — potential material for atomic warheads — have been found in a nuclear waste facility in Iran, a revelation that came Tuesday as the Iranian president boasted his country's nuclear fuel program will soon be completed.

Tuesday's IAEA report, prepared for next week's meeting of the agency's 35-nation board, did little to dispel concerns.

Beyond detailing the new plutonium and enriched uranium findings at a nuclear waste facility, it also faulted Tehran for lack of cooperation.

"The agency will remain unable to make further progress in its efforts to verify the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran" without more cooperation from Tehran, the report said.

The U.S. ambassador to the
United Nations, John Bolton, said Ahmadinejad's comments and the IAEA's latest discoveries "both demonstrate the urgency for the Security Council to act on Iran."

"Sanctions are obviously the only means to get Iran's attention," Bolton said.

None of this comes as any surprise, does it? Is anyone shocked that Iran had traces of plutonium at its waste site? How many readers really thought that Iran was cooperating with the IAEA?

Iran wants to build nuclear weapons as well as nuclear power plants. No one has any doubts about this at all. However, we have to continually listen to UN officials tell us that it's raining while the Iranians p*** on our heads. The AP report contains exactly this kind of quote from one of its Turtle Bay sources. Both traces could be explained as byproducts of peaceful nuclear research, the unnamed UN official assured people. Just because the uranium was enriched to a higher level than needed for nuclear power generation doesn't necessarily mean that the Iranians were trying to make weapons-grade fissile material.

Don't believe me?

A senior U.N. official who was familiar with the report cautioned against reading too much into the findings of traces of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, saying Iran had explained both and they could plausibly be classified as byproducts of peaceful nuclear activities.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the report publicly, said that while the uranium traces were enriched to a higher level than needed to generate power, they were below weapons-grade.

We're playing games, folks. When the world gets serious about denying Iranians their weapons programs, then we'll see the West shut down Iranian economic contacts. Right now, all we see is that the US may have the will to face down Teheran, but Europe, Russia, and China have all decided to throw in the towel. Even the UK wants to hold talks with Ahmadinejad and the Guardian Council to discuss terms, rather than show some tenacity and demand sanctions for their continued defiance of the IAEA and the UN.

We know war is a bad option -- in fact, it would be a disastrous choice -- but economic isolation works. We need to rally the West and bully the East into a shutdown of the Iranian economy. The Iranian people already have made their displeasure known at the increased hardship this standoff has caused them; if we can completely cut them off, they may do more than just complain about it. That's why Ahmadinejad took pains to tell Iranians that they had almost completed their nuclear efforts, even though they haven't even produced enough reactor-grade uranium to start Bushehr. The mullahcracy wants to convince the populace that the standoff will be over soon.

That's a chink in the armor. Smart leaders would recognize it as such and press their economic advantage home. Unfortunately, we seem to have a shortage of those at the moment.

Abramoff To Turn On Democrats Next?

The Jack Abramoff probe may turn on the same Democrats who tried exploiting the scandal for electoral advantage this year. ABC reports that federal prosecutors have taken statements from the disgraced lobbyist that implicate, in Abramoff's words, "six to eight seriously corrupt Democratic senators":

Convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff is scheduled to report to federal prison tomorrow, over the objections of federal prosecutors who say they still need his help to pursue leads on officials he allegedly bribed.

Sources close to the investigation say Abramoff has provided information on his dealings with and campaign contributions and gifts to "dozens of members of Congress and staff," including what Abramoff has reportedly described as "six to eight seriously corrupt Democratic senators."

The sources say Abramoff was about to provide information about Bush administration officials, including Karl Rove, "accepting things of value" from Abramoff.

The Rove mention seems a little odd. After all, Rove has no legislative power, nor any direct impact on policy or spending. Abramoff may well have provided Rove with some gifts, but what would Rove be able to get Abramoff in return? He could have acted as an entree to Republican lawmakers, but that's hardly illegal, and from all of the evidence we have seen, Abramoff hardly needed any help in throwing money at Senators and Congressmen.

So who could Abramoff have been referencing? Well, the first guess would be the new Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid. CQ has covered Reid's connections to Abramoff and his clients in detail in the past:

June 2005: Abramoff Was Ecumenical In His Lobbying, It Seems

This is when we first found out how much money Abramoff directed to Harry Reid, as well as to his predecessor, Tom Daschle. Both received in excess of $40,000 from Abramoff clients. Abramoff also hired Edward Ayoob as one of his lobbyists, stealing him from .... Harry Reid, for whom Ayoob worked as a legislative aide. Ayoob also conducted a fundraiser for the new Majority Leader in Abramoff's offices.

November 2005: Haven't Heard About Abramoff In A While?

In that post , I reviewed the evidence that Reid conducted at least two interventions on behalf of Abramoff clients that closely coincided with $10,000 in donations. We also found out that Reid received more than $66,000 from Abramoff clients between 2001-4.

February 2006: When Harry Met Jack

The AP, which has done a good job of covering Reid's Abramoff connections, revealed that Reid intervened on at least five occasions for Abramoff clients. He collected donations from them "around the time of each action."

I don't think that there's any doubt that Reid will be one of the lucky six to eight Democratic Senators smoked out in this prosecution. The question will be who the others are or were. If enough of them sit in the next Senate, the Democrats may find themselves in trouble for holding their majority. If Reid has to leave, the Governor of Nevada would have to appoint his replacement ... and Jim Gibbons just won the seat for the Republicans.

UPDATE: Allah's got the roundup.

UPDATE II: John Hinderaker counsels some skepticism on whether Abramoff has anything at all. It's not a bad point, but with Ney pleading guilty to the Abramoff-linked charges this fall, we've at least seen something besides smoke.

Exciting Blog News!

We have two exciting developments in the blogosphere this evening. First, the folks at Wizbang! have launched the 2006 version of The Weblog Awards. Blog readers made CQ the Best Conservative Blog in 2004, and I was honored with a nomination for Best Blog in 2005. Be sure to check out all of the categories and make your own nominations in the comments of each thread. Voting begins shortly, and I'll keep an eye on how that goes as well.

In the second development, another mainstream columnist has joined the ranks of bloggers. This time, we welcome Jules Crittendon, one of the strongest conservative voices in the mainstream media. Glad to have you with us, Jules. Just don't forget to maintain the proper dress code while blogging .... pajamas.

Lungren's Record

Earlier today, I wrote about Rep. Dan Lungren being a good option for Republican Conference Chairman. Commenters and e-mailers then sent conflicting information about Lungren's track record on abortion and gun control. Unfortunately, I was at the office and then at the hospital (long story, but nothing wrong) and could not do much more than advise readers to be careful.

Now, however, Lungren has issued a statement to bloggers about his record, and some research has developed a more specific picture of his positions on these two important issues:

As someone who supports the sanctity of human life and a definition of marriage which has served as a foundation for our society, it is my belief that the transformation of the judiciary into a third policymaking branch presents unparalleled challenges to the notion of the Separation of Powers. If unchecked this trend threatens to turn the political branches into little more than a lounge act if for no other reason than the Supreme Court claims to have the right to the last say. The recent practice of some Justices in relying on legal authority outside of the United States further erodes any notion of accountability and is in conflict with the Supremacy Clause which provides that the Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof: and all Treaties made...shall be the Supreme Law of the Land.

As the former Attorney General of the State of California, who has argued before our nation's highest Court I have had to craft arguments on complex issues and to be able to articulate our rationale in a manner which could be understood by the general public. It is essential that the Minority be able to present our case in a clear and winsome manner to the public. This must become a major priority of the next Chairman of the House Republican Conference.

Our Minority status will require us to return to a playbook which is once again driven by ideas. We have been here before and we must not forget the path which once led us to leadership. We understood then and must once again affirm that our policies must be driven by our principles. I look forward to serving your interests as Republican Conference Chair in the 110th Congress.

And in fact, Lungren gets a big fat 0% from NARAL-Pro Choice America. He has fought against abortion for his entire Congressional career, and NARAL must be disappointed in his re-election. However, his stance on gun control has been spottier. The NRA has opposed Lungren in the past, due to his support for the Brady Bill and his vote for the legislation that would have required a federal 7-day waiting period on the purchase of handguns. He also teamed with David Roberti to expand the reach of California's Assault Weapons Control Act (AWCA) in 1993. On the other hand, Common Dreams considered Lungren one of its Dirty Dozen on gun control issues in 1998, when the NRA supported Lungren against Gray Davis for Governor, apparently making a pragmatic choice between the lesser of two evils.

It's an interesting record, and one that Republicans will want to peruse at length.

UPDATE: The National Taxpayer's Union gives Lungren a 63% and a grade of B on tax issues. He's ranked 69th in this last session of Congress. Jack Kingston gets a 61% and a rank of 83rd, and that's typical over Kingston's terms in office. Marsha Blackburn, on the other hand, gets a 74% and a rank of 12th.

Who came in first? Jeff Flake, with a 91% rating.

Pence, Shadegg, For Leadership

Republicans have to make some changes in order to rebuild trust with the American electorate. We have to understand who we are, what makes us Republicans, and how best to build a platform that will focus on those qualities and make them relevant for the largest possible number of voters. We need to agree on a set of First Principles that unite us and allow us to defend liberty, property, and our nation.

Under rational circumstances, we would have that debate and then select the leadership that would allow us to champion those policies. However, the Republican House leadership has decided to go backwards by selecting leadership first, on Friday, November 17th. Even stranger, the GOP has the same leadership that allowed the party to fritter away its majority in the lead for re-election to leadership.

John Boehner and Roy Blunt have been loyal Republican Congressmen. However, as the Club for Growth has noted, both men have been part of the efforts that have separated the GOP majority from its 1994 reformist roots. When Jeff Flake offered a score of anti-pork amendments in this session, both men voted to defeat all of them. Both men voted to approve the pork-laden Highway and Energy bills. Boehner has a better track record than Blunt; he opposed the BCRA in 2002, for instance. However, he has appeared ready to shift positions away from conservative principles for political expediency (on 527s, as CFG points out), not exactly the stalwart defenders of party policy that one expects from leadership.

Captain's Quarters endorses Mike Pence and John Shadegg for Minority Leader and Minority Whip. Both men voted for Jeff Flake's anti-pork amendments, and both men have a long track record of courageous defense of conservative principles. Both men opposed pork-laden appropriations, a stance that could have saved billions of dollars had the rest of the caucus followed suit. They will provide a new direction in leadership, one that leaves the failed and flawed leadership of the past behind and provide a new passion for reform in the Republican minority.

Republicans have a tougher choice to make for Conference Chair. All three candidates offer a chance for renewal. Jack Kingston has made it his mission to engage the blogosphere and to support reformist principles. Dan Lungren has long been a conservative stalwart from California, a difficult place for conservatives, as I well know. Marsha Blackburn has worked well as an assistant to Roy Blunt as Majority Whip, which comes with its own drawbacks. Either Kingston or Lungren would be good in this important position.

We need to offer voters a reason to rethink their disaffection from the Republican Party in 2006. While current leadership has performed competently at the day-to-day tasks, Republicans have to consider the significant symbolic value of our leadership choices. Re-electing the same leadership that lost the majority and dissipated the conservative mandate in an orgy of spending and lobbyist influence will send a message that the GOP wants to maintain business as usual. I do not believe that message will influence anyone to return to the GOP in 2008.

UPDATE AND BUMP TO TOP: As I wrote earlier, I have not had time to do much research on Lungren and Kingston. One commenter from California says that Lungren supports abortion rights and gun control, which would definitely throw my support to Kingston, if true.

UPDATE II: How important is replacing current leadership with fresh faces and reform-minded Republicans? Think Harriet Miers squared. Make no mistake about this -- the GOP had better be prepared to make changes, or they will retreat farther into irrelevancy in 2008.

You Are Not Free To Boogie Across The Country

In all my years, I have never understood the supposed charm of the Mile High Club. In modern jets, the seats are far too cramped, and the bathrooms are worse. The flight experience produces physical reactions closer to a hangover than sexual arousal, and anyone who thinks that mutual sexual gratification can take place under such circumstances probably spends too much time reading Penthouse Forum than this blog. However, apparently the dream remains alive:

A California couple are facing federal charges after they refused to stop "overt sexual activity" during a flight to Raleigh, authorities said. Carl Warren Persing of Lakewood, Calif., and Dawn Elizabeth Sewell of Huntington Beach, Calif., are accused of interfering with flight crew members during a Sept. 15 Southwest Airlines flight from Los Angeles with a stop in Phoenix. ...

According to court documents, flight attendants saw Persing and Sewell kissing, embracing and "acting in a manner that made other passengers uncomfortable" while the plane was stopped in Phoenix. Persing was observed kissing Sewell near her breast and was also observed with his face pressed against Sewell's lower body.

A flight attendant asked them to stop. They obeyed initially but resumed the behavior during the flight from Phoenix to Raleigh.

When the flight attendant again requested them to stop, Persing allegedly told the flight attendant: "I'm going to give you one warning to get out of my face."

Don't you just love that clinical description from AP? I wonder if the reporter had to resist the urge to write, "Persing was rounding third base and heading for home," which would have told the story a little more clearly.

People seem to have forgotten that interfering with a flight attendant is a federal offense, and not one that authorities take lightly, especially after 9/11. Threatening a crew member in that manner certainly qualifies the randy passenger for a stay at Club Fed. One wonders if Persing will be as enthusiastic about joining sex clubs there as he was on the Southwest Airlines flight.

Before I entered the call-center industry, I drove a cab for a couple of months in the LA area. One of my fares was a very drunk couple who wanted to go to Las Vegas to get married, shortly after leaving a bar. I drove them to both of their houses so they could collect a few things, and had to listen to the most insipid romantic dialogue I've heard outside of certain thrash-metal songs. "I f*****g love ya," followed by "I f*****g love ya, too" at some point (after a half-hour or so) gave way to a strange silence. I looked in my rear-view mirror and noticed they had disappeared -- and then I saw that they had started removing clothing laying half-off the bench seat in back. I ran over a few Botts dots and swerved briefly, which kept them from consummating the pending nuptials in the back seat of my cab.

They had asked to go to John Wayne Airport, and so I took them there -- at 3 am. They didn't bother to tip me, which relieved my guilt as I left them at the closed airport -- and the last thing I heard from the man was "Hey, where's all the f****g people?" Hopefully, they slept off their hangover before deciding to get married.

It doesn't surprise me that alcohol was involved in the Southwest Airlines incident. It's the only lubricant that could possibly convince people to embarrass themselves in public in such a manner.

Pelosi's Unforced Error

Nancy Pelosi has won few plaudits for her first major decision as presumptive Speaker of the 110th Session of Congress. Throwing her support to John Murtha over Steny Hoyer has caused an eruption of criticism and indignation from within her own political coalition, who wonder how a party leader could campaign against corruption and then support one of the biggest porkers in Congress for a leadership position. Rather than attract support for passing over Hoyer, Pelosi has inspired public opposition to her decision -- the latest from Charles Rangel, her choice to chair the Ways and Means Committee:

Some of Mr. Hoyer's backers in New York are asking why the likely new speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, has endorsed Mr. Murtha rather than the Maryland congressman, who is the minority whip and the second-ranking Democrat.

Rep. Charles Rangel of Harlem, who called Mr. Murtha "a friend" and received support from him in 2004 in his push for the reinstitution of a military draft, said yesterday that Mr. Murtha would make a good majority leader. But Mr. Rangel is going to vote for Mr. Hoyer.

"My kind of politics is, if you do your job, you are supposed to be rewarded," Mr. Rangel, who was one of 105 co-sponsors of Mr. Murtha's resolution to redeploy American troops in the Middle East in 2005, said. "I think Steny has done his job. I cannot think of any reason why this is happening."

We saw the seeds of this split five months before the election, when Murtha first announced his candidacy for the Majority Leader position. At the time, we noted Pelosi's impotence in controlling her caucus and wondered whether it would doom her leadership. That, however, was when she made the wise decision to remain neutral on the question of leadership positions in the next Congress, a wisdom that has escaped her in the past week.

Rangel is, in fact, correct -- a statement rare at CQ. Just as the Republicans are foolish for supporting the same leadership that led them to electoral disaster, the Democrats have no real reason to switch horses after such a significant victory. Murtha hardly needs the title in any case -- given his track record at Appropriations, chairing the committee will provide him all of the power he could ever want. If the Democrats punish Hoyer for his success, as Rangel notes, then why would anyone bother making the effort if all of the power will go to Pelosi's cronies as a result?

Pelosi made an unforced error on this question. The decisions on leadership reflect directly on the fitness of a Speaker, and her decision to involve herself in the party selections puts this as a test of her support within the caucus. While it's not exactly a no-confidence vote, legitimate question will be asked of her ability to manage a potentially fractious caucus if Murtha loses. Whipping votes by nature involves the threat of leadership displeasure, and if Pelosi proves herself impotent on this question, that threat looks increasingly empty.

When Murtha shivved Hoyer in June with his announcement, we noted the hubris of Democrats squabbling over leadership positions that they had not yet earned. Now we see the hubris of a Speaker-elect who thought she could re-order her political caucus without considering the views of other members. She's already less than popular with the Congressional Black Caucus (which also may explain the decision by Rangel and Maxine Waters to support Hoyer), and she can hardly afford to alienate many more Democrats if she expects to win election as Speaker.

Iran Politicking For Control Of Al-Qaeda

While Tony Blair signaled a new interest in dialogue with Iran, the mullahcracy has conducted negotiations with al-Qaeda to promote pro-Iranian leadership, the London Telegraph reports. In truth, neither development represents much of a change in policy:

With the British and American governments looking for an exit strategy from Iraq, the Prime Minister admitted that they needed Iran's co-operation to prevent the country descending into civil war and to secure an overall Middle East peace settlement.

But the revelation that Iran is working hard to establish a closer relationship with bin Laden's fanatics, who provoked the war against terrorism with the attacks on September 11 2001, is likely to undermine severely Downing Street's attempts to effect a rapprochement. Iran is also suspected of arming insurgent groups in southern Iraq – many of which have links to al-Qa'eda – that have been responsible for many of the roadside bomb attacks against British troops.

But intelligence officials have been most alarmed by reports from Iran that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is trying to persuade al-Qa'eda to promote a pro-Iranian activist to a senior position within its leadership.

The Iranians want Saif al-Adel, a 46-year-old former colonel in Egypt's special forces, to be the organisation's number three.

Al-Adel was formerly bin Laden's head of security, and was named on the FBI's 22 most wanted list after September 11 for his alleged involvement in terror attacks against US targets in Somalia and Africa in the 1990s. He has been living in a Revolutionary Guard guest house in Teheran since fleeing from Afghanistan in late 2001 [emphasis mine -- CE].

Iran has allowed elements of AQ leadership to remain within their borders, hosting them in order to help promote Islamist terrorism. This should come as no surprise to anyone; for a while, Osama himself was rumored to be in Iran, and Iran has not made much effort to conceal their guests. The Iranians claimed that they were detaining the terrorists, but they have never produced them for extradition or offered to do so.

And why should they? The Iranians are pragmatists within their own Islamist bent. They support Hamas and Hezbollah despite the Sunni and Shi'ite natures of the two groups, respectively. Teheran has less interest in denominational differences at this point than in winning the overall clash of civilizations. They want to drive the West from the Middle East and make themselves the center of the new Caliphate. At some level, the Guardian Council understands that a new Caliph will have to work with Sunni, Shi'a, and Sufi alike in order to gain control of the ummah.

Blair's speech has much less significance than first reactions suppose as well. What Blair actually said differs little from public pronouncements by the US and UK for the last several years. He told the Iranians that Britain wants open dialogue -- but only after Teheran makes fundamental changes:

“It is a perfectly straightforward and clear strategy. It will only be defeated by an equally clear one: to relieve these pressure points one by one and then, from a position of strength, to talk.

“Offer Iran a clear strategic choice: they help the Middle East peace process, not hinder it; they stop supporting terrorism in Lebanon or Iraq; and they abide by, not flout, their international obligations.

“In that case, a new partnership is possible. Or alternatively they face the consequences of not doing so: isolation.”

In other words, abandon terrorism and their support for terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, shut down the nuclear-weapons program, and then the West will treat Iran as a strategic partner in the region. That's hardly a policy shift -- it's the carrot we've been offering Iran for years. We have offered full diplomatic relations, a large amount of technical aid, open trade with the West, and economic assistance in exchange for their eschewing of terrorism and nuclear weapons, and assistance in normalizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That offer goes back to the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration made the same offer formally over the summer, an offer the Iranians have mostly ignored.

This speaks to no great policy shift. If the Iranians stopped being radical Islamists, or at least radical expansionists of radical Islam, what Western country wouldn't engage with Teheran? And if that came to pass, they would certainly be in a position to offer positive assistance in stabilizing Iraq.

And pigs might fly, too, because the mullahs have no intention of moderating their Islamism, not for guns or money.

The Blair speech makes perfect sense in its context, and it provides no conflict or change from previous policy decisions. The Iranian effort to take control of AQ makes perfect sense for their worldview, and might succeed, given the state of AQ leadership and their need for vast reserves of funds. It's just a little more open than it was before -- and that may be a good development for the US. It might remind people that all of the elements of radical Islam are more than willing to combine efforts to fight the West, and that Iran will always be the epicenter of the movement.

Crystal Meth Destabilizing The Euro ... Literally

Investigators have puzzled over a strange new phenomenon -- the increasing disintegration of Euro notes. A chemical analysis of the bills suggests sulfuric salts have combined with human perspiration, and German authorities believe they know the source of the chemical:

Criminal investigators are following a new lead that could resolve the recent mystery of the disintegrating euro bills. And it may lead directly into the crystal meth lab.

Complaints of the mysteriously dissolving euro notes began accumulating in late October. An initial investigation revealed that "the destroyed bank notes came in contact with sulfuric acid, which led to the observed disintegration," the mass-circulation Bild newspaper reported on November 2. It is believed that the bills were somehow coated with a sulfur salt, which would have formed a potent acid in combination with perspiration from a person's hands, causing the bills to decompose.

But where did the sulfuric acid come from? In a recent twist, chemists are now speculating that it may have come from an impure batch of the synthetic drug crystal methamphetamine, also known as "crystal meth."

The sulfuric salt, according to the analysts, comes from an impure process. Chemists use the salts to "cut" the meth, making it less pure but cheaper to produce. The resulting mixture leaves the impurities on the notes when the users snort the crystals through them, and subsequent handling causes the chemical reaction that destroys the bills.

Not everyone buys into that theory. Some aren't even sure that sulfates cause the erosion they have seen on the bills. However, German authorities believe it to be true, as it correlates to a recent upsurge in the use of crystal meth on the Continent. No one has come up with a competing theory, at least according to Der Spiegel.

Wouldn't investigators expect to see disintegrating noses at some point?

The Fugitive, Captured

The US got embarrassed last year when four captured al-Qaeda terrorists escaped from a military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan. The leader, Abu Nasir al-Qahtani, has been rumored to have appeared all over Southwestern Asia. Tonight the BBC reports that American forces have recaptured Qahtani, near Khost:

US and Afghan forces say they have captured a high-ranking al-Qaeda figure in eastern Afghanistan.

The man - named as Abu Nasir al-Qahtani by unidentified US officials and a Pakistani newspaper - is said to have been captured in the city of Khost.

US military officials said last week that a known al-Qaeda operative had been arrested in Khost.

Mr Qahtani escaped last year from the US prison at Bagram in Afghanistan with three other suspected militants.

The American military captured five other terrorists along with Qahtani in Khost, the BBC reports. US forces will not publicly confirm the identities of their detainees, but their sources confirm Qahtani's capture.

An Underwhelming Choice For RNC

The Republican National Committee selected its new chairman to replace Ken Mehlman. Instead of Michael Steele, who made his interest clear, the GOP selected Senator Mel Martinez -- a choice that has underwhelmed conservatives:

Sen. Mel Martinez, the first-term lawmaker who previously served in President Bush's Cabinet, will assume the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, GOP officials said Monday.

Martinez, 60, will replace current chairman Ken Mehlman, who will leave the post in January at the end of his two-year term, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting a formal announcement.

Martinez will remain in the Senate. Mike Duncan, the RNC's current general counsel and a former party treasurer, will run the day-to-day operations at the party's Capitol Hill headquarters.

Martinez was tapped in 2001 as President Bush's secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He resigned in 2003 to run for the open Senate seat created when incumbent Democratic Sen. Bob Graham decided not to seek another term. Martinez was elected with 49 percent of the vote _ a slim margin that was credited to Bush's win in that state.

Mel Martinez? Well, since the Republicans are in the minority, I suppose the extra work won't interfere with his legislative duties, but it's hardly an inspiring choice for conservatives. Martinez himself has an exceptionally inspiring biography, of course; he fled Castro's Cuba at 15, without his family, who followed four years later. He taught himself English and put himself through college and law school. He served as a county party chair for three years and helped deliver Florida -- barely -- for George Bush. After that, Bush tapped him to run HUD, and he won his current seat in 2004.

Conservatives have problems with Martinez over his moderate position on immigration most of all. Martinez supported the McCain-Kennedy comprehensive reform plan, as did Bush. For those who see that as a major problem in energizing the base, choosing him as RNC chair seems like putting out a fire with gasoline. Even his decision to remain in the Senate irritates them, because a resignation would allow Jeb Bush or Charlie Crist to nominate a replacement, one more inclined to champion the conservative cause on immigration.

This makes Steele more likely to get an offer to join the Bush Cabinet, perhaps in Martinez' old job at HUD. It still seems like a bad choice for Steele, who might want to keep his options open in Maryland instead. Spending two years in a lame-duck Cabinet hardly seems to be a career-builder, especially at HUD.

CBS Misleads Readers On Hagee Interview

CBS News has an interview on their website with Marine Corps Commandant General Mike Hagee, which it promotes with the headline, "Top Marine: No Plan For Post-Saddam Iraq". The article that fronts this interview makes the claim that Hagee admits that the Pentagon had no plan at all for security in the post-invasion period:

As Commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force during the lead-up to the war, Hagee was in charge of planning for the Marines' original push to Baghdad. So I asked him about one of the enduring mysteries of the invasion — why there was no real plan for running the country once Saddam Hussein fell from power.

Unfortunately, Hagee's comments only deepen the mystery. He says he was deeply concerned about who would take charge of major Iraqi cities, like Najaf, as the Marines pushed through them on their way to Baghdad.

Hagee says he asked his boss again and again who would take charge of those cities. He wanted to know what the plan was for Phase IV — military terminology for the phase that follows the end of major combat operations. Phase IV is, in other words, what comes after "mission accomplished." Hagee says that he sent his questions up the chain of command, as they say in the military — and never heard back.

Well, that sounds pretty damning -- but that's not what Hagee says in the portion of the interview that CBS has, a 7:27 segment in which Hagee explains what happened. The connection is poor and no transcript is provided by CBS (what a shock!), but be sure to watch the video for yourselves. CBS and David Martin misrepresent Hagee in this superficial web report.

Hagee commanded Marine forces that spearheaded the invasion thrusts all the way to Baghdad. Hagee tells Martin that the Phase IV plans were to have the Marines release the towns as they "uncovered" them, ie, freed them from Saddam's control, and that other security forces would replace them. During the preinvasion planning, Hagee asked the then-Commandant who exactly that would be, and he got no clear answer. At the time, no one was sure -- as Hagee points out during the interview -- whether the Iraqi Army would simply surrender and switch sides, or whether they would disappear.

In the event, however, Coalition forces came behind Hagee and secured the towns as they moved forward. Hagee makes this very clear in the actual interview. Hagee also says that other aspects of Phase IV planning were rather unclear, but that Paul Bremer took command of those issues when Coalition forces took over the towns.

Hagee also gives the time frame of his assessments; he talks about his forces being removed by July 2003. What Hagee discusses is the immediate aftermath of the collapse of Saddam's government, not the three years afterwards. CBS makes it sound like Hagee is talking about the entire post-invasion effort and sticks words in his mouth. In their blurb below Hagee's picture, they caption it with a "fast fact": Gen. Michael Hagee says he asked his boss again and again who would take charge of major Iraqi cities, such as Najaf.

In fact, Hagee never mentions Najaf during his interview. He mentions Fallujah, though, and points out that a year ago it took 3,000 Marines to secure the town. Now only 300 Marines are stationed there, because the Iraqi security forces have taken over most of their function. He tells Martin that he considers the transition to Iraqi forces a qualified success, although CBS doesn't bother to make any mention of it.

CBS wants to play fast and loose with their "fast facts". Readers should slow down and listen to Hagee rather than Martin's misleading characterization of the interview. (h/t: CQ reader PN)

The Definition Of Political Insanity ...

... is electing the same leadership after an embarrassing failure and expecting a different result. Robert Novak explores this weird psychosis that will apparently afflict the Republican House caucus this week, as it prepares to return John Boehner and Roy Blunt to their current leadership positions, now in the minority:

The depleted House Republican caucus, a minority in the next Congress, convenes at 8 a.m. in the Capitol Friday on the brink of committing an act of supreme irrationality. The House members blame their leadership for tasting the bitter dregs of defeat. Yet, the consensus so far is that, in secret ballot, they will re-elect some or all of those leaders.

In private conversation, Republican members of Congress blame Majority Leader John Boehner and Majority Whip Roy Blunt in no small part for their midterm election debacle. Yet, either Boehner, Blunt or both are expected to be returned to their leadership posts Friday. For good reason, the GOP often is called "the stupid party."

Denny Hastert retired from party leadership, ahead of the presumptive Republican posse that would have strung him up -- figuratively speaking, of course. Now Republicans have to wonder whether Denny would have gotten the nod as well, had he campaigned for a specific position. Despite the common wisdom that the GOP threw away its majority in an orgy of federal spending and lobbyist influence, the caucus appears unwilling to part from those ways.

First off, the Republicans are holding this election much too soon. The party needs to digest the loss, the data that resulted from it, and determine how best to recover its majority. Holding a leadership election before that process amounts to putting the cart before the horse. New leadership eliminates the possibility of having that debate in any meaningful fashion. Instead of electing leadership that will support the new, revamped agenda, we will get an agenda that meets the requirements of the new leadership -- two very different propositions.

If they insist on holding these elections so quickly, then Republicans should understand that they have no choice but to jettison their current leadership. Re-electing Boehner, Blunt, and the entire slate will be tantamount to an endorsement of the same failed policies that lost the GOP the midterms. They're not bad people, but they failed to protect the Republican majority. Even worse, they failed to protect the legacy of 1994, and at least stood by while the party gave up reform for naked power grabs, through earmarks and sleazy deals with lobbyists.

Is that the leadership that Republicans will trust to lead them to victory?

A number of bloggers have created a slate of questions for the leadership candidates at The Truth Laid Bear, along with a list of the candidates themselves. These are the questions that the entire caucus should be asking themselves before electing any leadership at all. We'll have to settle for them being asked of the candidates instead, and hopefully we can cure the caucus of this strange, masochistic affliction before the damage becomes permanent.

Palestinian Coalition Talks Get Serious

It looks like Fatah and Hamas may have made progress in their talks to form a coalition government in an effort to end the crippling sanctions that followed Hamas' electoral victory this year. They have gone far enough to discuss leadership positions in the revamped Palestinian Authority, and the name discussed for Ismail Haniyeh's replacement may sound familiar to West Virginians:

A U.S.-educated professor with ties to both Hamas and the rival Fatah Party is the leading candidate for Palestinian prime minister in the emerging unity government, officials said Monday.

The militant Hamas group and Fatah have agreed that Mohammed Shabir, 60, formerly the head of Gaza's Islamic University, should head the new government, Moussa Abu Marzouk, a top official at Hamas' Syrian headquarters, told The Associated Press.

Fatah and Hamas have been discussing the idea of a coalition government for months, but have been unable to reach a deal. Agreeing on a new prime minister marks an important sign of progress.

Shabir did not deny he was being considered, but said he has not been officially designated. Shabir, who has a doctorate in microbiology from West Virginia University, is considered to be close to Hamas but not an active supporter.

Respected economist Salam Fayyad, meanwhile, is being considered for the post of finance minister, a job he held until the Hamas-led government took office early this year. Fayyad was credited with fighting mismanagement and cronyism, and his return to the treasury would likely go far in lifting a crippling international aid boycott.

The Palestinians hope that a Cabinet of pragmatists and technocrats will convince Israel and the West to end the sanctions regime that has disintegrated the Palestinian economy. The formation of a coalition government, especially one free of terrorists such as Haniyeh, will make a good first step towards meeting the demands of aid-providing nations. However, the money will not start again until the PA agrees to abide by past agreements, including the recognition of Israel as a legitimate nation.

This progress has more significance than just an attempt to restore aid, however. The Palestinians have produced the worst leadership possible for the longest stretch in history. Terrorists have represented their interests for decades, and the Palestinians have shown little inclination to change directions. This has led them to the brink of a civil war, with Hamas and Fatah starting gunfights in the streets, while Israel continues to respond to rocket attacks from Islamic Jihad. They need a starting point for more rational leadership, statesmen who will lead them from the debacle of street gangs to real governance.

Hamas and Fatah have resisted that change, and for good reason; it will put them out of business. Now, however, circumstances have forced them to find credible and non-violent representatives in order to engage the nations that can rescue them from their collapsed economy. It gives a small opening for the Palestinians to develop a responsible polity, one not dependent on street gangs but on rational policy. Once that tradition takes root, it could compete with the terrorists for control. If nothing else, it will show Palestinians the range of possibilities.

The Politics Of The Personal

Nancy Pelosi surprised political analysts by injecting herself into an intraparty fight over the House leadership position. Despite Steny Hoyer's efforts to win the midterms as Minority Leader, Pelosi endorsed John Murtha to replace him in the majority. Her first effort as Speaker-elect gives a preview of Pelosi's leadership style and the importance of personal relationships over political pragmatism:

House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) endorsed Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) yesterday as the next House majority leader, thereby stepping into a contentious intraparty fight between Murtha and her current deputy, Maryland's Steny H. Hoyer.

The unexpected move signaled the sizable value Pelosi gives to personal loyalty and personality preferences. Hoyer competed with her in 2001 for the post of House minority whip, while Murtha managed her winning campaign. Pelosi has also all but decided she will not name the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) to chair that panel next year, a decision pregnant with personal animus.

Pelosi had been outspoken about her frustration with Murtha's declaration that he would challenge Hoyer, currently the House minority whip, for the majority leader post long before Democrats had secured the majority. Many believed she would remain on the sidelines, just as Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) did earlier this year when three Republicans vied for the post of House majority leader.

But in her first real decision as the incoming speaker, Pelosi said she was swayed by Murtha's early stance for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Her letter of endorsement yesterday made clear that she sees Iraq as the central issue of the next Congress and that she believes a decorated Marine combat veteran at the helm of the House caucus would provide Democrats ammunition in their fight against congressional Republicans and President Bush on the issue.

It's a mistake for Republicans to consider this a battle between liberals and moderates. Murtha wants an immediate withdrawal from Iraq and has the backing of the netroots, but he supports gun rights and opposes abortion. Hoyer wants to keep the Democrats from being the party of retreat, but he supports the more liberal planks in the Democratic platform. Ideology has much less to do with this than personal ties between Pelosi and Murtha, which seems to have trumped the normal detachment that Speakers at least attempt when it comes to party politics.

That personal relationship springs from Pelosi's own bid for party leadership, but isn't limited to it. Murtha ran her campaign for Minority Leader, lending her his prestige and his legendary power gained through years of work in the Appropriations committee. That power also gave Pelosi a more substantial remuneration, as Roll Call noted last year (via The Astute Blogger):

Republican lawmakers say that ties between Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and his brother's lobbying firm, KSA Consulting, may warrant investigation by the House ethics committee...

According to a June 13 article in The Los Angeles Times, the fiscal 2005 defense appropriations bill included more than $20 million in funding for at least 10 companies for whom KSA lobbied. Carmen Scialabba, a longtime Murtha aide, works at KSA as well. KSA directly lobbied Murtha's office on behalf of seven companies, and a Murtha aide told a defense contractor that it should retain KSA to represent it, according to the LA Times.

In early 2004, Murtha reportedly leaned on U.S. Navy officials to sign a contract to transfer the Hunters Point Shipyard to the city of San Francisco, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. A company called Lennar Inc. had right to the land, and Laurence Pelosi, nephew to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was an executive with the firm at that time.

In other words, Pelosi owes Murtha for the boost to family fortunes. She's merely repaying the debt. This should raise eyebrows on both sides of the aisle, especially since Pelosi successfully ran an election by decrying the "culture of corruption" in Republican ranks. The power of earmarks to distort American politics raises its ugly head once more, and voters who somehow thought they elected a cleaner government will understand that they put porkers in charge of the trough once again.

And the shift makes no sense at all, following as it does a successful midterm election. Hoyer provided the leadership for that victory, at least in part, and Murtha probably presented more of a drag than a sail. Pelosi's openness to change in this instance undermines the argument for electing her as Speaker. If pre-election leadership doesn't carry any significance for post-election leadership positions, then why make Pelosi speaker? Why not select someone who represents the centrists that gave Democrats the majority rather than the Bay area liberals that Pelosi represents?

Pelosi should have stayed out of the fray. It may turn into a Pandoa's box that she would have been better advised to leave closed. If she loses, she's damaged goods right from the start.

Gates Not Likely To Back Down On Iraq, Terror

The Washington Times' Rowan Scarborough, who has had good contacts within the Bush administration, reports today that the new nominee to replace Donald Rumsfeld will have the same goals in Iraq and the war on terror, but bring a new management style to improve the chances of success. The White House views Robert Gates not as a dramatic shift but as a course correction:

Defense Secretary-designate Robert M. Gates is not expected to rein in the aggressive global war on al Qaeda started by predecessor Donald H. Rumsfeld or reverse the transformation of the Army, but instead focus on how to win in Iraq and get American troops home, current and former Pentagon officials say.

"He definitely is not seen as someone wimping out on the global war," said a Pentagon adviser. "How he does it, and what tools, and who he entrusts with them, that's a whole different issue."

Mr. Gates, once confirmed by what Republicans hope will be a December floor vote, will arrive at the Pentagon needing to replace a number of senior aides to Mr. Rumsfeld who set policy on intelligence, special operations and the war itself.

Some other officials Mr. Rumsfeld eyed for senior posts may be discarded because they would not get through a Democrat-controlled Senate, Pentagon officials said.

One particular point that people need to remember is that Donald Rumsfeld didn't set policy, either. That came from George Bush, and Bush remains in charge of foreign policy. Rumsfeld acted as the public face of that policy when it came to war and defense, and Rumsfeld had the responsibility for implementing it at the Pentagon -- but he didn't create it. Rumsfeld acted as a lightning rod, pulling some criticism away from the White House, and suffered the same fate as any other political appointee when the policies proved unpopular.

Gates will operate in a similar fashion, and should allow Bush a little breathing room to recalculate the specific tactics and personnel assignment changes that have to be made. Gates won't get much of a honeymoon, but it will take some time for Democrats inclined to demonize him to realize any success at doing so. The personality differences between Gates and Rumsfeld should also delay that kind of polarization as well, and in the meantime, Bush will continue to push forward with his policies.

Other worries have arisen, outside of specific policy, about Gates' nomination. Jed Babbin, who also worked in the Bush 41 administration at the Pentagon, notes that Gates has no experience or reputation as a military strategist or innovator, given that most of his career was spent at the CIA. Gates provides high-level management experience, but won't be a visionary like Rumsfeld. However, that should give people a reason to believe that Gates will not make changes to Rumsfeld's plans to reinvent the American military. Given the lack of vision that Babbin describes, he's less likely to alter the course of Rumsfeld's plans. As far as military strategy goes, Gates will likely lean more heavily on ranking generals for strategy and tactics, something that Rumsfeld earned a reputation for avoiding, fair or not.

I'm inclined to give Bush the benefit of the doubt on this appointment, at least until we see what Gates has in mind. Bush has a history of appointing tough-minded and talented Cabinet officers, and we have no real reason to suspect that he failed in this instance.

Jumpin' Joe?

Joe Lieberman fired a warning shot across the bow of the Democrats in his Meet the Press appearance this morning. When asked whether he would consider following Jim Jeffords' example and switch parties, Lieberman pointedly left his options open:

Sen. Joe Lieberman on Sunday repeated his pledge to caucus with Senate Democrats when the 110th Congress convenes in January, but refused to slam the door on possibly moving to the Republican side of the aisle.

Asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" if he might follow the example of Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont, who left the Republicans in 2001 and became an independent, ending Republican control of the U.S. Senate, Lieberman refused to discount the possibility.

"I'm not ruling it out but I hope I don't get to that point," he said. "And I must say -- and with all respect to the Republicans who supported me in Connecticut -- nobody ever said, 'We're doing this because we want you to switch over. We want you to do what you think is right and good for our state and country,' and I appreciate that."

This should have the port side of the blogosphere in a dither this afternoon. Lieberman got elected partly through the efforts of Connecticut Republicans, who turned out in force to support the incumbent Democrat. No one openly asked Lieberman about crossing the aisle at the time, although plenty of speculation existed during the campaign, even among Lamont supporters.

Until I heard this quote from a CQ reader earlier today, I didn't believe that Lieberman would seriously consider it. He has a long track record in support of the Democratic platform. In fact, that's one of the reasons so many of us were surprised that the Leftroots tried to unseat him. Lieberman is no Lincoln Chafee in relation to his caucus (who, by the way, told someone on Election Day that he would not remain a Republican for long).

This underscores the importance of Lieberman to the control of the Senate. If he switches parties, he delivers control of the Senate to the GOP for the next two years, and makes Dick Cheney a very busy man. It forces the Democrats to carefully consider Lieberman when determining policy, especially on the war. It might force the Democrats to escalate efforts to get a Republican to cross the aisle, which would neutralize Lieberman. After the loss of Chafee, though, the pickings would be slim. Democratic leadership also has to consider Jim Webb, the Buchananite that ran as a Democrat, on everything else but the war.

Harry Reid will have his hands full over the next two years.

UPDATE: Forgot to credit The Scottish Right for the link.

You Can't Fall In Love With The Data

Newsweek reports on the first electoral disappointment for Karl Rove in four cycles and tries to dissect why he wound up so incorrect in his forecasts. Rove, who had famously insisted that news organizations had inferior polling data late in the campaign, saw his predictions of marginal losses explode in an election-day meltdown that those same polls had predicted for weeks:

How did the man they call Bush's brain get it so wrong?

Rove's miscalculations began well before election night. The polls and pundits pointed to a Democratic sweep, but Rove dismissed them all. In public, he predicted outright victory, flashing the V sign to reporters flying on Air Force One. He wasn't just trying to psych out the media and the opposition. He believed his "metrics" were far superior to plain old polls. Two weeks before the elections, Rove showed NEWSWEEK his magic numbers: a series of graphs and bar charts that tallied early voting and voter outreach. Both were running far higher than in 2004. In fact, Rove thought the polls were obsolete because they relied on home telephones in an age of do-not-call lists and cell phones. Based on his models, he forecast a loss of 12 to 14 seats in the House—enough to hang on to the majority. Rove placed so much faith in his figures that, after the elections, he planned to convene a panel of Republican political scientists—to study just how wrong the polls were.

His confidence buoyed everyone inside the West Wing, especially the president. Ten days before the elections, House Majority Leader John Boehner visited Bush in the Oval Office with bad news. He told Bush that the party would lose Tom DeLay's old seat in Texas, where Bush was set to campaign. Bush brushed him off, Boehner recalls. "Get me Karl," the president told an aide. "Karl has the numbers."

It's hard to be too tough on Rove. He had, after all, called three straight electoral cycles more accurately than most of the media, using the same metrics that apparently betrayed him this time. He spent years developing an innovative GOTV activist model that transformed political ground games, and he has built reporting structures that glean data from every stage of the process.

And that's the problem. I use data models on a daily basis in my regular job, and it's very possible to fall in love with the data before determining whether it really tells you anything. Building predictive models takes a number of successes and failures before an analyst can tell what the reports communicate -- or whether they communicate anything at all. Elections by their occasional nature do not provide the repeating tests necessary to substantiate analyses for years.

Rove apparently saw a correlation between organizational efficiency and electoral victory. If one reads the Newsweek description, Rove's measurements showed an organization operating at near-peak efficiency. Republicans got their voters to early-voting options in bigger numbers than before, and more volunteers made more calls than ever. He believed, based on previous experience, that those numbers meant that the GOP would pull more voters to the polls than the Democrats.

Unfortunately, that came from essentially undertested hypotheses, and it failed on two points. First, it failed to account for an improved Democratic GOTV effort, one that borrowed from Rove's own genius. His analysis assumed a static level of Democratic turnout, but a second-term midterm and the Iraq war should have informed Rove that the situation had changed and the Democrats would likely turn out in heavier numbers than before. Second and more important, it assumed a strongly causal relationship between voter contacts and Republican votes, rather than a somewhat correlative relationship.

Put simply, it does make a difference how many people volunteer for the effort and how many voters they contact. However, that does not translate directly into votes in a reliably predictive manner, and the 2006 midterms proved it for the first time. Rove understandably did not see that as clearly as he should, because he had no real data showing that dynamic over the last three cycles. However, it points out the dangers of relying on predictive models without having sufficiently tested them.

What next? This hardly invalidates Rove's GOTV model. Metrics provide important information on any organizational effort. In this case, it showed that the Republicans did not lose because of a failure by the organization and their ground game. They lost because the voters simply wanted to elect someone else. That's outside of the control of Rove and his GOTV structure, and it shows Republicans where they need to put their efforts for 2008.

The Cheese Stays Put

Russ Feingold has announced that he will stick with his current office of Senator from Wisconsin and forego a run for President in 2008. He told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that he didn't have the fire in the belly necessary for a grueling national campaign:

Sen. Russ Feingold will not seek his party's presidential nomination in 2008, the Wisconsin Democrat told the Journal Sentinel on Saturday.

"I never got to that point where I'd rather be running around the country, running for president, than being a senator from Wisconsin," Feingold said in a phone interview from Madison.

Feingold, 53, conceded that he faced long odds of winning the nomination.

"It would have required the craziest combination of things in the history of American politics to make it work," he said.

But Feingold said waging an underdog campaign appealed to him. What didn't appeal to him, he said, was "the way in which this effort would dismantle both my professional life (in the Senate) and my personal life. I'm very happy right now."

This gives the Left/Progressives a bit of a blow coming into the 2008 cycle. Feingold said that he'd be glad to see Al Gore or Barack Obama run instead, and would support any anti-war candidate, but in all likelihood Iraq will not be the issue in 2008 that it is now. Gore is a tired entity who threw away his credibility by openly succumbing to Bush Derangement Syndrome. Obama is a comer -- but he's only going to have served four years in any national office by 2008, and has no real track record except for the anti-earmark effort with Tom Coburn. Feingold at least has a long track record in national politics and some legislative successes to garner appeal from the Left.

He spent the last year traveling and campaigning for other Democrats hoping to discover a burning passion for the office, but it never materialized. He certainly got his share of attention from activists who attempted to inspire it. In the end, neither he nor his family felt like putting themselves through the meatgrinder, probably because of the long odds of even becoming competitive for the nomination.

That sounds ominous for the MoveOn wing of the Democratic Party that had hoped to get Feingold as their banner-carrier. His withdrawal bookends that of Mark Warner's on the Democratic political spectrium, and it leaves the field to Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Obama, Gore, John Kerry, and Tom Vilsack, the Iowa governor that just announced his candidacy. The only attractive candidates among this bunch for the Left would be Edwards, Gore, and Kerry. Two of them have already lost Presidential elections, and the other served served a single term in any public office and wouldn't have won re-election if he had tried.

It seems as though the Democrats have begun to slowly weed themselves out of the way of the Hillary juggernaut. Feingold was a dark horse, but not insignificant. His withdrawal may well influence other potential candidates to reconsider their entry into the campaign.

Return To First Principles

In the aftermath of the midterm election loss, which stripped power from Republicans in both chambers of Congress, supporters wondered what went wrong and how to recover from the blow. Why did voters reject the GOP after twelve years in power, and how do Republicans convince them to return to power in 2008? Mitch and I discussed this at length on our show yesterday, and we had all four inbound lines lit for almost the entire two hours.

One common thread among all of the calls was that the Republicans had forgotten why voters gave them a majority in the first place. The 1994 revolution brought a mandate for reform. Voters had tired of a Congress that passed laws that they refused to apply to themselves, of a federal government that kept growing, and a perception of the legislature as corrupted by a murky appropriations process and lobbyists ready to exploit it. They had their fill of Democratic leadership that considered power their birthright and the arrogance that springs from a lack of accountability.

For a while, Republicans acted on their mandate for change. In a dramatic session, Newt Gingrich forced through the changes in vote after vote minutes after gaining the gavel from Dick Gephardt. They tried to hold the line on spending, but made a political mistake in shutting down the federal government in an attempt to beat Bill Clinton. Until he left office, though, they kept spending under control and carried through procedural reforms intended on reducing corruption.

That changed under the Bush administration. Bush, who has always been less conservative than most of his critics understand, started to implement a vision of big-government Republicanism, ironically just a few years after his Democratic predecessor declared the death of big government. Discretionary spending rose in all categories, and even worse, Republicans adopted the same earmark routine that had locked Democrats into power for 40 years. Voters grew more and more disenchanted with the profligate former reformers, and with the pressure of a difficult war, they lost confidence in Republicans to lead, and elected Democrats instead -- and in some cases, rather conservative Democrats.

What lesson can we learn from this? Machiavelli pointed out that power corrupts centuries ago, but we can see a definite correlation in this example between the belief in big government and its corrosive influence. Once one starts building bureaucracies to run the lives of its citizens, it has to pull more and more money away from those citizens to fuel it. The money attracts special interests and lobbyists, which creates all sorts of opportunities for corruption, both petty and grand. Big government and the resources it requires fuels corruption, even apart from its drain on economies and the curtailing of personal freedoms and choice.

How do Republicans return to power, then? They need to return to the first principles of conservatism:

1. Limited federal government
2. Strong national defense
3. Support of private property and free markets

These principles have wide acceptance among conservatives of all stripes, and that's one of the points of identifying first principles. In order to enact our agenda and to fight the big-government solutions of liberals, we need to attract enough of a following to achieve a majority, especially in the House. The more we add to these principles and insist on achieving, the fewer people will feel at home in the big tent. Most policies will be informed by these three principles, and that which falls outside probably belongs in the purview of state legislatures.

This formula will win elections on a large scale. We know this because it won the 1994 midterms, and to some extent it won elections this year. Voters have already made their preference for limited government clear, as I wrote on October 30th. A CNN poll showed a majority of voters felt that government tries to do too much, and only a third of all voters think government should do more. It's no accident that Democrats actively recruited conservative-leaning candidates this year to regain their majorities.

If the Republicans want to regain that majority, they need to regroup around their first principles. Keeping the nation strong and reducing the power of the federal government's intrusion on private property and private lives is a message that will resonate in 2008 and beyond.

UPDATE: It was Lord Acton who provided the quote, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," as several CQ readers have pointed out. However, Machiavelli also said that total power corrupts, and he also gives a good explanation why well-structured democracies limit corruption.