Trimming The Tree

My sister flew into town on her way from New York to California for a couple of days, so we spent the day doing Christmas decorating with the Little Admiral. I put together the Christmas tree, always a frustrating business and more so today since the built-in lights didn't work. I started to inspect each of the bulbs to see if I could find the problem, but then I realized I could fix it with $5 at Walgreens tomorrow with a couple of new strings instead of spending the next three hours figuring it out.

I took a few pictures of the action, and here's my granddaughter with a new ornament from her aunt:

We only got part of the way through the tree-trimming, though, because we decided to watch our collection of Christmas television specials, which we got on DVD last year. These still have plenty of charm for younger viewers and nostalgia for us, but they definitely come from another era. At more than one point, the adults all remarked about the ways in which the shows struck us as odd.

No matter. We enjoyed the rituals and the fun of decorating, something we didn't do to any extent last year because of the First Mate's illnesses. We're aiming for festive this year, and we're off to a good start. Hope you are as well!

Northern Alliance Radio Today

Mitch and I will be on the air at 1 pm CT for the Northern Alliance Radio Network. We'll be discussing the remarkable reform efforts of the Democrats as they prepare for their new majority status in Congress, the Flying Imams, Keith Ellison's use of the Qur'an for his oath of office, and perhaps even the cultural implications of the Britney-Lindsay-Paris Axis of Beavil. Be sure to tune into AM 1280 The Patriot, or listen to the Internet stream from the station if you're outside the Twin Cities. Call us to join the conversation at 651-289-4488.

Postponing The Immaterial

The Boston Globe reports that John Kerry has decided to postpone the decision on his expected run for the presidency in 2008. Sources claim that the fallout of calling servicemen lazy idiots has stunned him:

Senator John F. Kerry's election-eve "botched joke" about the war in Iraq -- and the fierce denunciations his comments drew from fellow Democrats -- has led him to reevaluate whether to mount a run for the presidency in 2008 and has led him to delay an announcement about his decision, according to Kerry associates.

The Massachusetts Democrat is now leaning toward waiting until late spring before declaring his intentions, even as other candidates jump into the race and begin building organizing and fund-raising teams in early-primary states. Before the joke derailed his comeback, Kerry had signaled that he would decide whether to run by the end of January.

Kerry -- who had methodically resurrected his political standing after a tough loss to President Bush in 2004 -- was stunned by the swift, angry reaction to his Oct. 30 statement that underachieving students would end up "stuck in Iraq." Aides and friends say the senator was particularly stung by the fact that so many Democrats had joined Republicans in rebuking him.

The incident laid bare to the senator the lingering skepticism and resentment of him two years after he failed to unseat Bush, according to Kerry advisers who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Oh, please. This is just more spin from Kerry's crew. What the incident revealed wasn't "lingering skepticism and resentment" from his incompetent campaign against Bush in 2004. Fellow Democrats hardly bother to hide both even to this day. What got the Democrats angry, except for Charles Rangel, is that it fed into the image of Democrats as elitist snobs that sneer at the military and the men and women that comprise it. He tried to pass it off as a joke about George Bush, which didn't make any sense since (a) Bush has an MBA and obviously pursued his education, (b) he got slightly better grades than John Kerry did as an undergraduate, and (c) both of them volunteered for the service.

And thanks to Rangel, the damage isn't done yet. Rangel insisted on extending the damage during his Fox News appearance last week, in which he claimed that anyone with any potential for a career wouldn't dream of enlisting in the armed forces. Democrats reacted in milder tones to Rangel's statement, probably because Rangel isn't running for president.

Besides, the entire idea of another Kerry run at the White House is its own botched joke. Kerry, who got selected in the aftermath of Howard Dean's primary meltdown because of his supposed electability, turned out to be an absolutely atrocious candidate. He never reconciled his Winter Soldier days of accusing American troops of being the equivalent of the soldiers in the army of Genghis Khan, the testimony that launched his political career. Kerry tried making Bush's Air National Guard service an issue in the campaign, and then screeched like an old woman when his own service record came under scrutiny. That he came within 4 points of Bush only demonstrated the opportunity the Democrats had to retake the White House, had they nominated someone even marginally competent at campaigning.

Kerry only postpones the immaterial in this delay. The Democratic Party wouldn't nominate him again even if he was the last Democrat in the nation. The longer he pretends otherwise, the more pathetic he becomes.

Muslims Want Prayer Room At Minneapolis Airport

The fallout from the US Air decision to bar six Muslims from a flight last week continues. Now local Muslims want Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport to provide them with a room for their prayers in order to keep other passengers from seeing them as a security threat. MSP officials might agree to a non-denominational "meditation space" as a compromise:

Area Muslim religious leaders have asked for a prayer room at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport after six Muslim leaders were escorted off a plane last week because of security concerns.

The local imams, who prayed on the mezzanine level before meeting with airport officials Friday afternoon, said a prayer room is essential because of the need to pray several times a day. The act itself is nonintrusive, they said.

"We as Muslims, we are part of this country," said Abdulrehman Hersi, a Minneapolis imam. "You have to pray wherever you are. Our prayer ... we believe that we talk to our lord. It does not make harm to anyone."

Airport director Steve Wareham said it would be possible to accommodate their needs, possibly in the form of a "meditation room" like those available at other airports. Such a room would be interfaith, he said.

This is another attempt to obfuscate the events that occured in Minneapolis last week and to paint the incident as bigotry run amuck. The passengers and flight crew did not remove the imams for merely offering sunset prayers, as implied in this statement. They carried on loud political conversations about their opposition to the war on terror, they took seats which were not assigned to them, they interfered with boarding of other passengers, and they requested seatbelt extensions for their supposed girth. I outweigh all of these men, and I've never had a problem using a standard belt.

Now they want to continue their victim act by demanding that the airport commission grant them their own secluded space for the practice of their religion. Bunk. All travelers have the same accommodations in airports, regardless of religion or race, and that's the way it should stay. Catholics and Jews and Hindus and Buddhists have prayed in MSP over the years and suffered no problems for it, and I daresay so have Muslims before these acts of deliberate provocation.

I pray every time I get on a plane, and usually at least once during the flight. I somehow manage to constrain myself to praying silently and doing a sign of the Cross. I don't insist on being disruptive, calling attention to myself, or conducting deliberate provocations. I don't get out of my seat during the boarding process to confer with other Catholics about the war on terror. Given the nature of my prayers, I don't loudly pray to Jesus that he keep the plane from crashing in the gate area of the airport.

If I did those things, I would also expect the airport to set aside a special room for me. It would be called a holding cell, and I'd deserve it. Maybe the local Muslims ought to consider that when they make this request.

Mowergate?

The latest story on Mitt Romney has the appearance of an early opposition attack on his presidential hopes, and in this case a rather silly attack. Echoing the travails of Kimba Wood, Bill Clinton's first nominee for Attorney General, the Boston Globe reported yesterday that Romney employed illigal immigrants as landscaping workers:

As Governor Mitt Romney explores a presidential bid, he has grown outspoken in his criticism of illegal immigration. But, for a decade, the governor has used a landscaping company that relies heavily on workers like these, illegal Guatemalan immigrants, to maintain the grounds surrounding his pink Colonial house on Marsh Street in Belmont.

The Globe recently interviewed four current and former employees of Community Lawn Service with a Heart, the tiny Chelsea-based company that provides upkeep of Romney's property. All but one said they were in the United States illegally.

Wood had to withdraw her nomination when reporters discovered that she had not paid her nanny's Social Security taxes as required by law. Now the Globe somehow stumbles across information that Romney, who opposes illegal immigration, dodged the law in favor of his lawn. However, the two aren't the same, and Romney's response points that out:

Responding to a report in Friday's Boston Globe, the governor's communications director said Friday that Romney was unaware that several of the landscapers who kept up his suburban Belmont property were in this country illegally.

"Gov. Romney has no information or knowledge to corroborate the Globe's allegations," Eric Fehrnstrom said Friday. "He hired a legitimate lawn service company and he knows the owner as a decent, hardworking person who is a legal resident."

Romney hired a firm to maintain his landscaping, by all accounts a legitimate firm that also does business with public agencies in Massachussetts. Romney had no input on their hiring decisionsm, and he had no obligation -- and no right -- to demand "papers" from the employees of the firm when they arrived on his property. He naturally assumed that Community Lawn Service with a Heart had followed the law when it hired its workers, given their references.

Let's think about the reverse for a moment. Had Romney demanded that the workers present proof of eligibility to work before allowing them on his property, how would the Boston Globe have reported that? Would they have hailed him as a paragon of steadfastness against illegal immigration? Or would they have reported him as a racist who just assumes all Hispanics must be in the country illegally? Instead of interviewing the three or four illegals in the firm, the Globe would have found three or four proper citizens just trying to make a living that felt Romney's supposed racism.

Romney has no reason to apologize. He relied on his contractor to follow the law. If people want to hold Romney accountable for that, then I suggest that the Boston Herald start interviewing the Boston Globe's janitorial staff and landscaping services to determine whether their contractors have the same issue. After that, some enterprising blogger could follow the executives of the Boston Globe (owned by the New York Times) to see at which restaurants they eat and at which golf courses they play to determine whether they have carefully scrutinized all of these places to ensure no illegals work there.

Movie Review: The Nativity Story

One of the more anticipated films for us this season has been The Nativity Story, which the First Mate had first known from listening to Relevant Radio. New Line Cinema, which produced Lord of the Rings, goes for another epic story, but in this case they focus less on the epic nature of the Nativity and more on the human story behind it.

The story starts with Herod's order to slay every firstborn male child in Bethlehem, and the images are grim, chaotic, and dark. Herod, played with some ferocity by the outstanding Ciaran Hinds (Rome's Julius Caesar), makes it clear with almost every syllable that he will not brook a rival to his power, prophecy or no. He intends on ruling his adopted people -- Herod was an Arab, not born a Jew -- until his final breath, as his son Antipas notes.

After that, the film returns us to one year prior to the genocidal command of Herod, where Mary lived as a poor girl helping to keep her family afloat while Herod collects more taxes, and more callously. One of her friends gets carted off by the Roman soldiers for a tax debt of the girl's family, which points out the grim times in which Mary lived. When her father arranges her marriage, she does not erupt with happiness, but she will shortly get a holy vision that instructs her of her future. The movie then gradually catches up to the beginning, walking us through the lives of Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth, Zechariah, and the three Wise Men who begin their journey to Judea when they realize the meaning of the sign that they have been given.

Catherine Hardwicke takes a different approach to the material, although she does stick fairly close to the Gospel in the relevant facts. Her focus on the hardships of life under Roman oppression give real urgency to the hope of the Israelis for a Messiah. She also does not shy away from the hardships of the social life in the poor village. Mary at one time had everyone for a friend, but when she returns to Nazareth from visiting Elizabeth notably pregnant before the consummation of her marriage to Joseph, she gets shunned by almost everyone except Joseph and her family. When the call for the census comes, it almost seems like a relief -- so much so that Joseph jokes with Mary as they leave Nazareth about how much they'll be missed.

Nativity succeeds in its mission, which is to make the Nativity real and human enough to make it accessible to all of us. It's brilliant, and really only has one minor flaw, and that's Keisha Castle-Hughes as Mary. She seems too passive, too quiet to hold anyone's interest. Castle-Hughes does a fairly good job otherwise, but given Hardwicke's efforts to humanize everyone else, Castle-Hughes gives us an ethereal Mary that doesn't ever seem all that affected by the events unfolding around her. It's the same complaint I have with Robert Powell as Jesus in Jesus of Nazareth. However, Castle-Hughes does have a genuine quality and a charm that will help audiences overlook this one slightly flat note in a masterpiece.

The movie gets lots of help with that from the rest of the cast. Oscar Isaac is a revelation as Joseph, giving a brilliant portrayal of a man whom the Nativity sometimes shortchanges. It's probably the best and most well-rounded portrayal of the courage and dignity of an ordinary man whose sainthood comes not so much from his visions but from his innate goodness and mercy. Shoreh Aghdashloo as Elizabeth is also outstanding, as is Stanley Townsend as Zecharia. The three Wise Men give the movie a little bit of comedic relief at times, but the laughs grow out of the bonds of deep friendship and respect that shine through the dialogue. Star Trek alum Alexander Siddig makes brief but memorable appearances as an approachable archangel Gabriel, the kind of apparition that one could believe would give comfort to Mary and Joseph. Hinds comes close to stealing the movie away from Isaac in his portrayal of Herod.

One notable decision made by Hardwicke is to underscore the sense of place by hiring Arabic looking actors for all of the parts, including Mary. No one in the movie looks out of place; we see no blond-haired, blue-eyed Mary. Many of the actors are Arab or Persian, in fact. The places look authentic and the hardscrabble scenery lends credibility to the movie.

We left the theater highly impressed by The Nativity Story. It will make a perfect movie for the family this Christmas season, although I would caution people to leave the younger children at home, especially for the scenes of the Bethlehem slaughter (which is not graphic but disturbing nonetheless) and a number of crucified bodies throughout the movie that remind us of the turbulent era in which this story takes place. Eventually, this will grace family shelves alongside copies of Jesus of Nazareth, The Ten Commandments, and other well-made films based on the Bible.

A Long Chat With Peter

Normally I like to do the interviewing, but last week during my vacation I spent a little time with Peter at Hi-Wired .... actually, a lot of time, close to an hour. Peter had asked me some time ago to get together for an interview for the blog, and I took the opportunity to do it while the First Mate was in dialysis. Originally it was supposed to last about 20 minutes, but I think both of us had too much fun to shut it down that quickly.

We covered a wide range of topics in this interview, and I have to say it was one of the most interesting I've done. Peter has it posted on his site, as well as through iTunes. He also lifted a picture of me from the first month I was blogging, when I went as Zorro to work on Halloween. Hope you enjoy the talk as much as I did.

Why Haven't We Done This Yet?

We have long since understood that heightened security is a requirement in the post-9/11 world. What we want, however, is effective security, especially at airports, not just silly procedures that do nothing to reveal real threats. Instead of time-consuming and random patdowns, we would want something more efficient that will check everyone for contraband in an efficient manner. According to USA Today, we have had this capability for almost four years now, but have not deployed it because of privacy concerns:

The federal government plans this month to launch the nation's first airport screening system that takes potentially revealing X-ray photos of travelers in an effort to find bombs and other weapons.

Transportation Security Administration screeners at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport will test a "backscatter" machine that could vastly improve weapons detection but has been labeled a "virtual strip search" by the American Civil Liberties Union. Backscatter can show clear images of nude bodies.

At Phoenix and another yet-to-be-decided test airport, the machines will blur or shade images to obscure body parts and medical devices. The TSA also will look at using the machines in subways.

"It's time to get them out and get feedback from [screeners] and the traveling public," said Randy Null, TSA assistant administrator. The TSA has been considering the machines since 2002 while struggling with privacy issues.

The backscatter systems can detect weapons that would not set off the metal detectors in use today. Ceramic knives and explosive materials can be hidden under clothing and brought undetected onto airplanes, and would only be caught if the TSA suspected the individual enough to pat them down. Rather than wait for this opening to get exploited by terrorists, we should have been working to provide better and more comprehensive security checks.

In fact, we have them, but we seem to be more concerned that the outline of our bodies will be visible on a security monitor than we are about terrorist attacks. In less critical circumstances this would be funny, but it's no laughing matter for a nation at war. The ACLU, predictably, has led the charge against backscatter systems claiming that they violate the privacy of travelers. They get hysterical about the propogation of backscatter images on the Internet, raising the spectre of unsuspecting travelers appearing on porn sites.

This is ridiculous. The images might have titillation value to anyone who for some reason can't access the Victoria's Secret catalog, but that's about it. They aren't recognizable as individuals, and the only image one can see is a ghostly outline that can be recognized as a male or female, but that's about all the definition of soft tissue that one can get. (If CQ readers want an idea what one can see, this site has a couple of examples.) The notion that these will become the prurient hit of the Internet in an age of Britney Spears crotch-flashing and the wide variety of much more well-defined porn is simply hilarious.

People complain that the government has not asked us to sacrifice much for the war effort, and so have not built wartime morale in the populace. Maybe that's because when the government does ask us to support common-sense solutions to provide more complete security, we start obsessing about becoming unwilling porn stars. Let's not wait until the next disaster to adopt the security processes that could save lives for a minimal amount of effort on our part as individuals.

Another Example Of Democrats Reforming Congress?

Justin Rood at TPM Muckraker asks whether Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats will have another corruption issue in caucus leadership. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) served as ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Science, State, Justice, Commerce and Related Agencies and under normal circumstances would take the chair from Frank Wolf, the current Republican chair. However, Rood points to an ugly conflict of interest that would immediately present itself if he does:

The FBI's probing Mollohan for possible violations of the law arising from his sprawling network of favors and money which connects him to good friends via questionable charities, alarmingly successful real estate ventures, and hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarked funds.

The investigation appears to be active and ongoing. We're told that the Feds continue to gather information on the guy. Yet the Democrats look poised to make Mollohan the chairman of the panel which controls the purse strings for the entire Justice Department -- including the FBI. ...

"Mollohan should definitely be recusing himself from all appropriations decisions regarding the Justice Department, including the FBI," said Melanie Sloan, director of the left-leaning D.C. watchdog, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). For Mollohan, there is the danger of even appearing to manipulate the Justice Department's budget in response to its probe. For the FBI, it creates possible charges of soft-pedaling their investigation in exchange for favorable funding, Sloan said.

Pelosi ran on the winning message that Democrats could clean up corruption in Congress better than the Republicans. Yet even before the new session of Congress begins, the Democrats have repeatedly demonstrated that reform takes a back seat to the acquisition of power. Pelosi herself has been the worst of the lot, backing porkmeister and Abscam-tainted John Murtha as Majority Leader, followed by her support for Alcee Hastings as Intelligence Committee chair despite his impeachment and removal from the federal bench for corruption.

It's not as if Mollohan flew under the radar before the election. The FBI investigation has been widely reported, and the issues appear rather serious. It hasn't received the kind of coverage that William Jefferson has, but then again, the FBI hasn't found $90,000 in cash in Mollohan's freezer. In any event, the appointment of Mollohan to any leadership position would show a distinct pattern of corruption in Democratic leadership.

If Mollohan is allowed to chair the subcommittee that handles the budget for the law-enforcement agencies that have him under investigation, that pattern will become breathtaking. Rood mentions the potential for mischief on both sides; Mollohan could act to choke off funds to the FBI to pressure them to drop the investigation, or the FBI could pressure Mollohan for budgetary favors in exchange for a lower priority on their investigation into his actions. The former seems much more likely than the latter, and the subcommittee should be concerned about the FBI's ability to accuse them of malfeasance with every unfavorable ruling they deliver to the Department of Justice.

Mostly, though, the arrangement stinks, and everyone aware of the situation will realize that. Nothing would demonstrate the emptiness of the Democratic pledges of clean government than putting the target of a criminal investigation in charge of the budget of the Department of Justice. If the Democrats do not remove Mollohan from the panel entirely, they will have made a collosal political error. If they allow him to chair the subcommittee, they will show themselves complicit in corruption, and we will have to expect more of the same for the next two years.

Get A Piece Of The Rock

The British have a crisis in prison capacity, as their Treasury has refused to finance construction of badly-needed new facilities. Their prison population topped 80,000 in England and Wales, and they have no more cells in which to put new prisoners. Instead of levying new taxes to pay for new prisons, the Labour government has proposed an investment scheme for citizens looking to build a rental-property portfolio that has little risk of extended vacancies:

The public may be able to purchase shares in new prisons under a "buy to let" scheme being considered by the Home Office.

With the prison system in crisis and inmates being held in police stations as jails overflow, Home Office finance directors hope to persuade private investors to pay for the urgently needed cells. The new jails would then be rented out to private prison operators, providing a guaranteed return from the rental income. ...

"We are looking at many means of funding", a spokeswoman said. "We have not ruled in or ruled out Real Estate Investment Trusts and we are still evaluating many options."

A Home Office source told Building magazine: "The public could buy a share in a prison REIT, taking advantage of the steady rental income." The government and contractor could then sell on their stakes in the REIT to recover some of the costs of building the prison.

Perhaps for some Britons, it could be sold as a time-share. Stuck for a vacation idea? Instead of a B&B, take a week off in the Big House.

All kidding aside, the idea has some merit. Forming corporations to provide the funding for new prison construction could eliminate some of the NIMBY considerations that often delays such projects. Instead of being seen as a liability for communities, it could become a profit center. Private investment could also guarantee better civil oversight of prison management.

However, it does seem a little unsettling that rental rates could become a factor in how the public addresses crime and punishment. Would prison investors work harder to limit parole and for longer mandatory sentences, not for public benefit but to bolster their rental income? Would the public be more inclined to increase the reach of criminal law if the occupancy rates did not meet expectations? It would certainly introduce a profit motive to those aspects of incarceration that did not exist beforehand.

It's an interesting proposal, one that merits some serious thought, and plenty of caution before it's attempted.

Poaching? Maybe Just A Little

The Republican Governors Association meeting attracted attention from a wide range of people ... even presidential aspirants who have never served as governor. While many expected the RGA meeting to serve as another platform for outgoing Massachussetts executive Mitt Romney for his presidential bid, John McCain raised a few eyebrows by spending heavily on receptions and leaning on his personal connections to steal a little of Romney's thunder:

Last anyone checked, Senator John McCain of Arizona is not — and has never been — a governor.

But no matter. Mr. McCain turned up on Thursday morning at the Doral Golf Resort and Spa here for a guerrillalike visit to the annual meeting of the Republican Governors Association. That is a group headed by Mitt Romney, the Massachusetts governor who is widely viewed as Mr. McCain’s chief rival for their party’s 2008 presidential nomination.

As Mr. Romney gamely presided over the morning session of the meeting, Mr. McCain commandeered a room at the Doral Resort for eight hours of meetings with nine Republican governors, including Gov.-elect Charlie Crist of Florida, according to Republicans familiar with his schedule.

On Thursday evening, many of those at the conference were bused to an elaborate reception, courtesy of Mr. McCain, at a resort hotel in Miami Lakes. Somehow, no reception rooms were available for him here.

Mr. Romney has hoped, like George W. Bush in 2000 and Bob Dole in 1996, to use the overwhelming support of the Republican governors as a springboard to the presidential nomination. Mr. McCain served notice with his incursion that Mr. Romney could not take them for granted.

McCain even managed to get one very early public endorsement, and this one had to sting Romney just a little. Tim Pawlenty, who will preside over the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minnesota, gave McCain more than just one lift when he drove McCain to the reception. Pawlenty told an interviewer that he would endorse McCain if the Senator decided to run, which as a man who might get some attention as a VP candidate makes an interesting start to the campaign season.

This appears to be part aggression and part anxiety arising from Romney's ascendancy as a candidate. McCain could have been pardoned for feeling that he would represent the conservatives in the race, but clearly Romney has created a lot of excitement on the Right. As Adam Nagourney notes, Romney has built a lot of credibility with Republican governors due to his efforts in the midterms to help them campaign for office, and his high-wire act in winning two terms as Governor in Massachussetts has some believing that he can attract the independents and the centrists that left the GOP in the midterms.

McCain just served notice (and a lot of shrimp and booze) that he will fight for the nomination anywhere and anytime. He could have ceded this ground to Romney, especially since some of his own allies tried to paint the Governor as exploiting the RGA for his presidential ambitions. Instead, he charged into opposition territory and made sure that he matched Mitt step for step -- and even walked away with an important endorsement and possibly a running mate. McCain will be tough to discourage in 2008.

The 2008 Lineup Looks Pretty Centrist So Far

My friend John at Power Line has an interesting look at the Republican contenders for the presidency in 2008, and wonders where the conservatives might turn. It's a little too long to excerpt to any good effect, so be sure to read it in its entirety.

Conservatives appear to have some slim pickings, at least thus far. John McCain, who could reasonably compete as one, instead had better hope for independent and centrist support after his campaign reform legislation curtailed political speech, and his Gang of 14 shenanigans derailed more than a couple of fine judicial nominees. John refers to his willingness to sell out the Republicans in order to feed his own self-interest, and that's certainly the perception. Even if I was not willing to go as far as John, and I probably am, he's certainly proven himself fairly unpredictable, even on core issues such as tax cuts.

Romney looks good at the moment, but he's had to win twice in Massachussetts, and conservatives just don't do that. He's made nice with NARAL on occasion in order to keep himself in power. Now he wants to run as a pro-life candidate, and that might convince enough conservatives to keep an open mind, but he may turn out like McCain: too unpredictable to trust.

Giuliani doesn't play games with his beliefs. He's a pro-choice Republican who follows in the Rockefeller tradition of the party. Conservatives have every reason not to like him, and yet he attracts the most interest so far. Why? He acts like an executive. He makes decisions and sticks to them, and he projects strength better than either Romney or McCain. He had his detractors in New York, and like Romney he had to make a lot of compromises with a very liberal constituency. However, he still managed to clean up Times Square, lower crime, and when the catastrophe struck on 9/11, put the city and the nation on his shoulders and carried us until we could carry others.

People crave leadership as opposed to management. Giuliani exudes it in a comfortable and approachable way that tends to disarm other considerations.

But, as I said, he's not a conservative. So far, the only real conservative in the race is Newt Gingrich. John dismisses Newt as a candidate who "carries more baggage than Northwest Airlines", which makes me laugh and has more than an element of truth. However, 2008 seems to be shaping up as the Year of the Baggage. Rudy has had a messy personal life in office, as well as a bout with prostate cancer. McCain will be 72 in 2008, and has the Keating 5 scandal in his past. Romney, unfortunately, has to answer a bunch of childish questions about Mormon garments from people who style themselves as the sophisticates among conservatives. And on the other side of the aisle, Hillary has Bill, as well as the Rose law records scandal, the travel office firings, Peter Paul's legal troubles from his fundraising on her behalf, and so on.

I disagree with John about Newt being an accident waiting to happen on the campaign trail, though. McCain has a much bigger problem with keeping his foot out of his mouth than Newt ever did. Newt's a pretty sharp politician and could have sat out long enough at this point to have his personal peccadilloes and his political missteps forgiven, at least for the primaries. He's unassailably conservative, so far the only one even close to being in the running. He also engineered the 1994 Republican revolution, and he might be the man to refocus the GOP back to the same core reform principles that led to that surprising victory.

It's a long way to 2008, but conservatives might want to start thinking of at least one more credible conservative with national impact to draft into the race.

Mehlman: Don't Try To Out-Democrat The Democrats

Outgoing RNC chair Ken Mehlman waxed valedictory tonight in a speech to Republican governors. He told the audience, at least one of whom has presidential ambitions for 2008, that the GOP abandoned the core principles that once had voters trusting them to clean up Washington DC:

The sting of Republican electoral defeats still fresh, the GOP chairman suggested Thursday the party has strayed and challenged it to refocus on core principles and reform.

"We work for the people," Ken Mehlman, the outgoing chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in a speech to a meeting of GOP governors. He reminded the crowd that "good policy makes good politics — and, for Republicans, this must be a time for self-examination when it comes to our policy." ...

"Our nation is stronger and better when Republicans are the party running the government. But, ladies and gentleman, our party should never be the party of government, of Washington, of earmarks, of bureaucracy," Mehlman said, implying that's what the GOP had become at times — or at least what voters perceived on Nov. 7.

Mehlman captures a large part of the problem in this speech. When the Republicans took power from the Democrats, it happened in the midst of scandal and profligate spending. Newt Gingrich carried the banner of Ronald Reagan and his belief that government causes more problems than it solves and re-energized Reagan's vision of Western conservatism, forged earlier by Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley. Their message, that a growing federal government constituted a threat to liberty and fiscal solvency, resonated with voters.

So what happened? Shortly after an ill-advised showdown with Bill Clinton over the budget shut down the federal government, the movement appeared to lose steam. Instead of reforming Congress, the Republicans adapted themselves to the same mechanisms for retaining power that Democrats had used, and in some cases "improved" them. Gingrich left, and the leadership that followed did nothing to continue the small-government philosophy to which voters responded so well.

In fact, the Republicans tried to out-Democrat the Democrats in suddenly perceiving government as the solution to all of their pet policy issues. They grew the Department of Education by leaps and bounds rather than abolish it, as the GOP had long demanded. They expanded government in every category in an explosion of both entitlement and discretionary spending that started as soon as they took the White House. Republicans who once rightly decried the use of pork as a corrupting influence turned it into an art form, shamelessly adding thousands of line items to bills in an attempt to keep the Party going as long as possible.

Mehlman privately foresaw the result of the binging before the midterms even arrived, and predicted the hangover that followed. Now he has a message for Republicans who want to reverse their defeat this month: get back to basics. The GOP once stood for individual liberty, limited government, fiscal responsibility, and a strong national defense. They have to find their way back to those First Principles, transferring power away from Washington DC and giving it back to the people.

Unfortunately, as we have seen, that takes a special kind of leadership. Otherwise, the power begins to resemble the One Ring from Lord of the Rings -- something so precious that politicians cannot bear to part with it.

Does This Mean War?

Someone at the Pentagon has let the cat out of the bag -- and apparently, it's a Persian. Citing "US officials", ABC News reported earlier today that the US has smoking-gun evidence that Iran has supplied the insurgents in Iraq with sophisticated weaponry used to attack American soldiers:

U.S. officials say they have found smoking-gun evidence of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq: brand-new weapons fresh from Iranian factories. According to a senior defense official, coalition forces have recently seized Iranian-made weapons and munitions that bear manufacturing dates in 2006.

This suggests, say the sources, that the material is going directly from Iranian factories to Shia militias, rather than taking a roundabout path through the black market. "There is no way this could be done without (Iranian) government approval," says a senior official.

Iranian-made munitions found in Iraq include advanced IEDs designed to pierce armor and anti-tank weapons. U.S. intelligence believes the weapons have been supplied to Iraq's growing Shia militias from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is also believed to be training Iraqi militia fighters in Iran.

Evidence is mounting, too, that the most powerful militia in Iraq, Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, is receiving training support from the Iranian-backed terrorists of Hezbollah.

I find the timing of this revelation very interesting. We know the James Baker-led Iraq Study Group has prepared its recommendations, because they've been busy leaking them a week ahead of the deadline. We know that they will urge the Bush administration to reverse almost thirty years of foreign policy and engage Teheran in direct negotiations regarding security for Iraq. We also know that the Joint Chiefs have already decided to oppose the main thrusts of the ISG.

Now, suddenly, ABC News finds out that the Pentagon has found the Imam Label on insurgent weapons. Does it appear to anyone else that someone at the Department of Defense has decided to pre-empt the ISG and its call for negotiated surrender to state-sponsored terrorism?

We heard the rumor last week that Hezbollah had been training Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, perhaps hosting as many as 2,000 militia fighters. ABC adds to that as well, revealing that the Pentagon believes Sadr to have over 40,000 fighters in his irregulars, much higher than anyone supposed before this. The Iranians have built up quite a force in Iraq, and now that we're on the verge of hearing from the ISG, we now find out that the Iranians have been conducting a proxy war against us. Not that the news surprises those who have followed the situation, but the extent of their success is worrisome.

This may be the backlash of the generals against the so-called realists. No one in the command structure wants to see the US retreat from Iraq; even the retired generals who have hurled so much criticism at Donald Rumsfeld made it clear that we have to prevail in Iraq. This puts the White House in a huge bind; with this in the open, the US has to respond to the Iranians, and a summit would be seen as a massive capitulation. On the other hand, the ISG's long-awaited report raised expectations of a change in near- and medium-term strategy, expectations that will cause political repercussions once dashed.

If the report is true and the Iranians have been directly supplying the insurgents with the materiel that has killed and wounded many American soldiers, then we have to finally acknowledge that the war on terror has evolved into a confrontation with terrorism's leading state sponsor. The Bush administration has spent a lot of effort in denying this, working through the UN Security Council and the EU. It cannot ignore it any longer, and in the end, we knew that we would have to confront Iran and Syria in some fashion if we wanted to put an end to state-sponsored terrorism.

Does that mean a shooting war? I hope not; it's one of the worst options, although not the worst. We have other options, including economic and diplomatic pressure. We can also go after the weak sister in the Axis, Syria, as a means of isolating Iran even further, and Syria with its string of assassinations has provided a lot of the necessary provocations for that.

One fact seems certain: we cannot engage Iran as a partner in Iraqi security while it arms the people killing our troops. And that appears to be the motivation for this latest revelation.

The UN -- Model Of Consistency

Almost from the first days of this blog, I have noted the continuing scandal of the United Nations peacekeeping efforts and their chronic sexual abuse of female refugees, many of them young girls. Despite over two years of these stories, the UN still has done nothing to purge itself of the disgusting practices of sexual exploitation and extortion. The BBC reports today that yet another peacekeeping mission has turned itself into a pimping expedition:

Children have been subjected to rape and prostitution by United Nations peacekeepers in Haiti and Liberia, a BBC investigation has found.

Girls have told of regular encounters with soldiers where sex is demanded in return for food or money.

A senior official with the organisation has accepted the claims are credible.

Credible? Try inevitable. With its lack of top-down discipline and a political structure that guards against accountability, no one should expect any different result. Despite physical evidence of these rapes and molestations, the UN has done nothing to punish those responsible, instead shipping the accused back home to their countries and ignoring the victims. The sexual abuse continues unabated, and why not? The UN has only offered training and more monitors who stand around and do nothing when confronted with violations.

This rot starts at the top. Kofi Annan, who headed the peacekeeping unit before becoming Secretary-General, set the tone for the most corrupt UN administration in its history by refusing to take any responsibility for the Oil-For-Food scandal. He used his office as a means of personal enrichment for his friends and family. He has focused on his own aggrandizement while atrocities raged unabated in Rwanda and Darfur, and has not lifted a finger to end the abuse described by the BBC.

How long will it take before member nations understand that they bear responsibility for these crimes through their funding of the UN? The only method left to demand reform of the organization is to immediately cut off their funds and padlock the doors until they take action to end sexual slavery in the peacekeeping missions. Let the UN operate out of coffee shops and libraries until they get their act together. When the money gets cut off and all of the bureaucrats stop receiving their graft, perhaps they will suddenly find enough motivation to make the necessary changes to bring accountability into the UN.

Or perhaps not, and the doors will stay closed forever. Given what we've seen for the past few years, either state will be an improvement. (via Hot Air and It Shines For All)

And We Can Make It Smaller, Cheaper, And More Efficient

Japan rattled a significant saber yesterday in its parliamentary session. In a debate clearly intended for the Chinese rather than the Japanese audience, Foreign Minister Taro Aso told a security committee that Japan could easily and quickly begin production of nuclear weapons:

Japan has the technological know-how to produce a nuclear weapon but has no immediate plans to do so, the foreign minister said Thursday, several weeks after communist North Korea carried out a nuclear test.

Foreign Minister Taro Aso, who has called for discussion of Japan's non-nuclear policy, also asserted that the pacifist constitution does not forbid possession of the bomb.

"Japan is capable of producing nuclear weapons," Aso told a parliamentary committee on security issues. "But we are not saying we have plans to possess nuclear weapons."

Thus far, the Japanese Prime Minister has refused to consider adding nuclear weapons to the country's defense. However, Aso and several other ministers in the government have made it clear they expect the question to receive serious consideration. They want others to understand that all of the options are now on the table.

Which outsiders? Obviously Kim Jong-Il is one target, but realistically, Japanese nuclear weapons will probably not deter Kim, not without a demonstration of the will to use them. The Japanese know that as well. They're targeting China with this debate, because Japanese nuclear weapons would undermine the hegemony that Beijing wants in the Asian Pacific. China is the one nation that can put enough pressure on North Korea to dismantle the nuclear-weapons program Kim has begun, and in fact may already have decided that Kim's nukes have become more of a liability than an asset at this point. Their hand can be seen in Kim's return to the six-party talks, and it's no coincidence.

Should Japan arm themselves with nuclear weapons? They should at least consider it ... very publicly.

A Strange Consensus On Iraq

The James Baker-led Iraq Study Group has found consensus around a set of policy goals, and in the best traditions of Washington DC, they have decided to leak it to the press a week prior to releasing it officially. A review of this consensus in the New York Times proves that when a group of politicians gather on any sticky policy issue, we can expect them to act like ... politicians:

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group reached a consensus on Wednesday on a final report that will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal, according to people familiar with the panel’s deliberations.

The report, unanimously approved by the 10-member panel, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, is to be delivered to President Bush next week. It is a compromise between distinct paths that the group has debated since March, avoiding a specific timetable, which has been opposed by Mr. Bush, but making it clear that the American troop commitment should not be open-ended. The recommendations of the group, formed at the request of members of Congress, are nonbinding.

A person who participated in the commission’s debate said that unless the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki believed that Mr. Bush was under pressure to pull back troops in the near future, “there will be zero sense of urgency to reach the political settlement that needs to be reached.”

The report recommends that Mr. Bush make it clear that he intends to start the withdrawal relatively soon, and people familiar with the debate over the final language said the implicit message was that the process should begin sometime next year.

The report leaves unstated whether the 15 combat brigades that are the bulk of American fighting forces in Iraq would be brought home, or simply pulled back to bases in Iraq or in neighboring countries. (A brigade typically consists of 3,000 to 5,000 troops.) From those bases, they would still be responsible for protecting a substantial number of American troops who would remain in Iraq, including 70,000 or more American trainers, logistics experts and members of a rapid reaction force.

The "two distinct paths" show themselves rather obviously in the final result. The ISG clearly weighed the competing visions for Iraq, withdrawal and commitment, and came up with something that satisfies no one. They suggest the gradual withdrawal of American troops, but won't say whether they should stay elsewhere in Iraq, in a neighboring country (if any would host them), or sent home altogether. The ISG wants to put pressure on Nouri al-Maliki, but apparently not by applying any specific timetables.

Will this satisfy anyone? Hardly. The Left wants an explicit withdrawal with firm timetables to prevent any dallying by the Bush administration. They do not want 70,000 American troops left in Iraq as "trainers", nor do they want combat organizations left in the quieter regions of Iraq. Supporters of the Bush foreign policy goals in Iraq will find themselves aghast at some of the more ludicrous explicit stands of the ISG. In the only area where they climb out onto a limb, they insist on direct negotiations with the two terror-sponsoring nations in the region, Iran and Syria, to assist in the security of Iraq -- the clearest case of the fox guarding the henhouse since Daladier and Chamberlain put the Sudetenland in the care of Adolf Hitler.

In the end, the ISG will turn out to be a footnote in the policy battles over Iraq. This conclusion marginalizes the panel and its members by its own lack of honest evaluation and commitment to freedom over expediency.

Justice Is Blind, But This Is Ridiculous

The scourge of judicial activism raises its silliness quotient just a little higher this week with a ruling that found American currency discriminatory. US District Court Judge John Robertson declared that the venerable greenback puts blind people at such a disadvantage that it violates the Constitution, and ordered the Treasury to revamp its currency offerings forthwith:

The Treasury Department on Wednesday began considering its response to a federal court ruling that ordered changes to paper currency so each denomination could be easily identified by blind and visually impaired people.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge James Robertson came in a lawsuit filed against the department by the American Council of the Blind, a Washington-based advocacy group. The group argued that the government's failure to differentiate among denominations amounted to illegal discrimination, and Robertson agreed.

"We are still reviewing the court order, and the government has made no determination as to what its next step will be in this matter," said Charles Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department's civil division.

The Treasury Department has 10 days from Tuesday's ruling to decide whether to appeal.

In his opinion, Robertson ordered the Treasury Department to consider such options as changing the size and color of banknotes for each denomination and adding tactile differences, such as foil, raised numbers or perforations, to the bills.

For my report, I decided to interview a blind person to discover her reaction to the news that Judge Robertson had freed her from the bonds of discrimination. The First Mate's initial response is hard to quote, because I don't know how to properly transcribe a snort and a peal of laughter.

There are two major problems with this ruling. First, all due respect to the American Council for the Blind, we don't really see that a problem with the currency exists. My wife has been blind for almost three decades, a good portion of that time as a single woman or a divorced mother, and for the majority of those periods used currency almost exclusively. The Braille Institute taught her some simple techniques in handling paper currency that allows her to this day to organize it properly. It's a point that the National Federation for the Blind, a much more representative group for the visually impaired, makes in response to the ruling:

"We believe in solving real problems of discrimination — not in doing gimmicks that look like they solve a problem and could make things actually worse," James Gashel, executive director for strategic initiatives at the National Federation of the Blind, said Wednesday. "For a federal court to say that we are being discriminated against is simply wrong."

Even worse, the ruling simply abuses the position of the federal courts. It's ludicrous on its face to believe that US currency represents a deliberate attempt to discriminate against blind people, who make up one percent of the population, according to the LA Times story. Even if one can argue that changing the bills in the manner Robertson demands would help blind people cope better with cash, that's a policy question and not a Constitutional issue. That argument belongs in front of Congress, especially since the solution will cost hundreds of millions of dollars at the outset and cause confusion for years to come.

The US has never invalidated any of its currency, unlike most nations; American bills do not expire or get canceled. Even if the Treasury were to complete refit all of its machinery in order to have different sizes or shapes of various denominations with all of those retooling costs, we would still have the regular sized denominations in circulation for years. In fact, both sets of currency would circulate simultaneously, causing all sorts of issues with retail businesses, especially vending machines. Most of them now have the ability to accept paper currency, and all of them would have to be retrofitted to accept both sets of currency with their differing sizes.

Judge Robertson just made himself the poster boy for judicial activism in this ill-advised ruling. Blind people do not need judicial activism in order to operate in the world today. They have a long history of independence in all areas of their lives, including decades of proven expertise in handling cash. They do not require the condescending nature of paternalism, nor do any of us who supposedly benefit from judicial overreach.

Another Campaign Pledge Bites The Dust

In the wake of Nancy Pelosi's backing of John Murtha and Alcee Hastings for key leadership positions in the new, supposedly clean Democratic-controlled Congress, one might think the Democrats would avoid the stigma of breaking another campaign promise before they even officially come to power. The Washington Post reports that they don't appear to care, though, now that they won the midterm elections, as they prepare to back away from a widely-publicized promise:

It was a solemn pledge, repeated by Democratic leaders and candidates over and over: If elected to the majority in Congress, Democrats would implement all of the recommendations of the bipartisan commission that examined the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

But with control of Congress now secured, Democratic leaders have decided for now against implementing the one measure that would affect them most directly: a wholesale reorganization of Congress to improve oversight and funding of the nation's intelligence agencies. Instead, Democratic leaders may create a panel to look at the issue and produce recommendations, according to congressional aides and lawmakers.

Because plans for implementing the commission's recommendations are still fluid, Democratic officials would not speak for the record. But aides on the House and Senate appropriations, armed services and intelligence committees confirmed this week that a reorganization of Congress would not be part of the package of homeland-security changes up for passage in the "first 100 hours" of the Democratic Congress. ...

It may seem like a minor matter, but members of the commission say Congress's failure to change itself is anything but inconsequential. In 2004, the commission urged Congress to grant the House and Senate intelligence committees the power not only to oversee the nation's intelligence agencies but also to fund them and shape intelligence policy. The intelligence committees' gains would come at the expense of the armed services committees and the appropriations panels' defense subcommittees. Powerful lawmakers on those panels would have to give up prized legislative turf.

I've never been very impressed with the panel's recommendations, anyway. Most of them did nothing but expanded the bureaucracies that created most of the interference that kept intelligence analysts from connecting the dots, as the panel repeatedly said, prior to 9/11. The major recommendation accepted by Congress and the White House -- the new National Intelligence Directorate -- has turned into an exercise in empire-building. Congress had to threaten its funding when it swelled to over 1,000 employees in order to put two more layers of bureaucrats between intelligence collection and the decision-makers. The real reform came from the Patriot Act, which finally allowed law enforcement and intelligence agents to share data without fear of destroying criminal prosecutions.

However, the Democrats ran on a platform of full acceptance of the recommendations, and held that out as a key part of their electoral efforts. John Kerry did the same thing in 2004, to less effect. Now that they have won, they have raised the expectations of their supporters and the backers of the 9/11 Commission. Even before their majority has taken the oath of office, they will dash those expectations and set themselves up for a round of recriminations.

People should take note of the reforms that the Democrats wish to pursue in this next session of Congress. They want to clear out the Republicans from the levers of power, but offered John Murtha for Majority Leader, along with his pork-barrel extortive politics and the legacy of Abscam. They promised a tough and competent effort on national security, but offered a disgraced and impeached former judge to run the Intelligence Committee. Democrats pledged to take immediate action on all of the Commission's recommendations, but they will balk at any meaningful reform that limits the power of their master appropriators, including Murtha himself.

In other words, the Democrats plan on using Intelligence budgets the same way that both parties have used them in the past: as a means to perform favors for powerful friends. Those who believed they voted for change in the midterms might find themselves vindicated; it looks like Congress will change for the worse, and in record time at that.

More Demonization Of Illegals At WND

I'm in favor of tough border enforcement stopping illegal entry into the US. That comes from a solid concern about national security and support for legal immigrants who take the time to follow the law when they move to our nation. People who disrespect our laws at the outset of their relationship with Americans should not profit from their lawbreaking.

Many conservatives oppose illegal immigration on those grounds, and that opposition doesn't limit itself to the Right, either. However, what drives me batty are the unsubstantiated claims that a handful of militant immigration hawks use as scare tactics in an attempt to gain more support. Those claims usually get reported at some point by World News Daily, a hardline conservative news service, which doesn't usually miss an opportunity to relay the latest wild-eyed claim. Today, WND reports that Rep. Steve King (R-IA) put out 'statistics" that illegal immigrants murder over 4,000 Americans every year:

While the military "quagmire" in Iraq was said to tip the scales of power in the U.S. midterm elections, most Americans have no idea more of their fellow citizens – men, women and children – were murdered this year by illegal aliens than the combined death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan since those military campaigns began.

Though no federal statistics are kept on murders or any other crimes committed by illegal aliens, a number of groups have produced estimates based on data collected from prisons, news reports and independent research.

Twelve Americans are murdered every day by illegal aliens, according to statistics released by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa. If those numbers are correct, it translates to 4,380 Americans murdered annually by illegal aliens. That's 21,900 since Sept. 11, 2001.

Let's ponder this for a moment before I get to some real statistics. WND and King acknowledge that no one has done any real study on murders and their perpetrators, and yet somehow they have figured out that illegals murder 12 people a day. That's murder, the deliberate act of killing someone else, as opposed to negligent homicide. We know that because King and WND claim that an additional 13 Americans a day perish as a result of drunken illegal immigrants driving on our roads.

They just know it, because some other groups have anecdotal evidence of it.

Well, let's try a little reality. The FBI, which actually does collect statistics on crimes, reported that 16,692 murders took place in the US in 2005. This is down from a high of 24,703 in 1991, which would indicate that it doesn't follow illegal immigration, since the latter is a cumulative progression over the last 15 years (in other words, we have a lot more illegals here now than then).

If King and WND have their numbers correct, that would mean that illegals commit 26.2% of all murders in the US. However, they only comprise less than 7% of the American population, even if one accepts the figure of 20 million illegals here now. Doesn't that seem just a bit strange to anyone? Given that only 3 million illegals were here in 1986 when Congress and the Reagan administration passed the amnesty program, comprising 1.25% of the American population, then we should have seen dramatically fewer murders that year.

Unfortunately, the FBI shows that 1986 saw over 20,000 Americans murdered that year -- 23% more than 2005.

In fact, the FBI does not categorize Hispanics as a separate racial group in its statistics, but instead includes them with Caucasians. Even so, the numbers demonstrate rather clearly that King and WND are talking out of their hats. Of all the people arrested for murders in 2005 (10,083), only 4,955 were white/Hispanic, and that includes all arrests in that racial category. In order to believe King and WND, every single one of these people would have to be illegal aliens.

Asinine hardly begins to describe this report. Conservative decry junk science; bad statistics are just as bad. It took me all of 10 minutes to check this data, something that Rep. King apparently couldn't bother to have his staff do, and a standard fact check that WND declined to perform. It seems that some people will believe almost anything as long as it can be used to demonize illegal aliens.

We need better border security and a plan to end illegal immigration. What we do not need are easily-debunked memes like this floating around, discrediting proponents of border enforcement and painting all of us as benighted haters. Rep. King did us all a disservice and WND once again proved itself more useful for hysterics than truth.

The Shorter Ahmadinejad: It's The Joooooooos

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided to take a page out of Ronald Reagan's playbook and talk directly to the people of his enemy -- us, the Great Satanettes. In a letter to the "Noble Americans", the Iranian president informs the benighted American electorate that all of our problems have a single source. Guess who that is? Actually, you don't have to guess for long, because Ahmadinejad is somewhat less than subtle in his identification:

We, like you, are aggrieved by the ever-worsening pain and misery of the Palestinian people. Persistent aggressions by the Zionists are making life more and more difficult for the rightful owners of the land of Palestine. In broad day-light, in front of cameras and before the eyes of the world, they are bombarding innocent defenseless civilians, bulldozing houses, firing machine guns at students in the streets and alleys, and subjecting their families to endless grief. ...

For 60 years, the Zionist regime has driven millions of the inhabitants of Palestine out of their homes. ...

You know well that the US administration has persistently provided blind and blanket support to the Zionist regime, has emboldened it to continue its crimes, and has prevented the UN Security Council from condemning it. ...

What has blind support for the Zionists by the US administration brought for the American people? ... What have the Zionists done for the American people that the US administration considers itself obliged to blindly support these infamous aggressors?

Yes, the yahouds have their sinister tentacles into our government, and that's why we're the Great Satan .... er, the Little Satan ... um, whatever.

I know this has been the talk of the news shows today, but this is nothing new. Ahmadinejad has talked out of both sides of his mouth since he began his campaign for the Iranian presidency. Let's not forget, in all of his mellifluous language of American nobility, that this is the same man who convened a conference to imagine a world without America as well as Israel. He didn't seem terribly concerned about our nobility then when he exhorted his followers to rid the world of the United States.

This letter follows the same rambling, barely coherent pattern of his open letter to George Bush earlier this year. In it, he attempts to deflect attention from the intransigence of his own regime in their pursuit of nuclear weapons by continuously blaming the Jews for all the ills of the world. They talk about the American elections and how the Democrats will now have to take responsibility for the actions of our government while Ahmadinejad spends five pages avoiding it himself.

Mahmoud might have done better as a comedy writer than a politician. He's killing us -- or rather, he'd like to be.

Gingrich: First Amendment Is Dispensable (Update)

Note: Important update and bump after post.

Newt Gingrich has tried to position himself as the premiere conservative candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential primaries, a mission made easier by the list of front-runners already in the race. However, he may have taken a stumble yesterday when he posited that freedom of speech may have to be curtailed in order to win the war on terrorism:

A former House speaker, Newt Gingrich, is causing a stir by proposing that free speech may have to be curtailed in order to fight terrorism.

"We need to get ahead of the curve rather than wait until we actually literally lose a city, which I think could literally happen in the next decade if we're unfortunate," Mr. Gingrich said Monday night during a speech in New Hampshire. "We now should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of if it weren't for the scale of the threat."

Speaking at an award dinner billed as a tribute to crusaders for the First Amendment, Mr. Gingrich, who is considering a run for the White House in 2008, painted an ominous picture of the dangers facing America.

"This is a serious, long-term war," the former speaker said, according an audio excerpt of his remarks made available yesterday by his office. "Either before we lose a city or, if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people."

Gingrich has an odd sense of place for his new campaign crusade. At a dinner that honored people who took risks to maintain our First Amendment freedoms, he basically told them that their work was in vain. To add even more confusion, Gingrich also took the opportunity to bash John McCain for his own attack on political speech with the BCRA -- and rightfully so.

Gingrich left the specifics out of the proposal, which makes this somewhat vague. Does Newt propose limiting political speech that supports radical Islamists? Does he want to restrict the exercise of religion by Muslims in radical mosques? Could he be proposing both? Until we get more specific about the restrictions, specific criticism will be difficult to stage, and perhaps that's his intent.

However, it isn't difficult to defend the First Amendment in principle, and we need to do that now. The First Amendment has always had an exception for speech that incites a movement to violently overthrow the government of the United States, and I'm all for enforcing that. However, if Gingrich believes that we can win the war by silencing American citizens, then he is fighting the wrong war on behalf of the wrong principles. All he is doing is replacing one bogeyman (political corruption) for another (terrorism); in essence, he's no different from McCain.

The remedy for bad speech is more speech. The solution to radical mosques is to enforce immigration laws and to tighten visa requirements to keep radicals from entering the US. If people want to advocate for terrorist attacks and the violent overthrow of our elected government, then they have already broken the law, and it requires no sacrifice from Americans to prosecute such people. Free speech and religious freedom did not cause terrorism; in fact, the lack of both causes it. If Gingrich wants to offer the hair of the dog as a solution, then he will find himself very lonely on the campaign trail for the next two years.

UPDATE AND BUMP: I received a number of e-mails today cautioning readers about taking the NY Sun account as an accurate rendition of Newt's remarks. I e-mailed Newt's staff for a clarification, and they dispute Josh Gerstein's characterization of Newt's remarks. They have a selected excerpt on their site, as well as the full audio of the speech. I haven't had a listen to the full remarks yet, but from the excerpt, it looks like Newt's office has a point:

This is a serious long term war, and it will enviably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country, that will lead us to learn how to close down every website that is dangerous, and it will lead us to a very severe approach to people who advocate the killing of Americans and advocate the use of nuclear of biological weapons.

And, my prediction to you is that ether before we lose a city, or if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us.

This is a serious problem that will lead to a serious debate about the first amendment, but I think that the national security threat of losing an American city to a nuclear weapon, or losing several million Americans to a biological attack is so real that we need to proactively, now, develop the appropriate rules of engagement.

If that's all Newt said, it doesn't seem all that outrageous to me. However, it would have been helpful to get a complete transcript of his speech, to be fair to the Sun and to Gerstein, both of whom normally do terrific work and are highly reliable. I'll try to listen to the entire speech later tonight, but as things stand at the moment, I think Gerstein may have blown this out of proportion in his reporting.

Stephen Bainbridge has more.

Syria Planned Wave Of Political Assassinations In Lebanon

The Lebanese newspaper Al-Mustaqbal reports today that Lebanon has uncovered a network of assassins in their nation, trained and funded by Syria, that targeted three dozen Lebanese lawmakers. To no one's great surprise, the network exploited Palestinian refugee camps as training centers and had connections to a Fatah splinter group (via It Shines For All):

The Lebanese security forces exposed a network which planned to assassinate 36 senior anti-Syrian Lebanese officials, the Lebanese newspaper al-Mustaqbal reported Wednesday morning. ...

According to the report, the investigation revealed that the network trained in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and planned to execute a plot initiated by the Syrian government to assassinate 36 senior Lebanese officials.

According to the newspaper, the Syrian intelligence appointed a group belonging to the Fatah-Intifada organization to implement the plan. ...

The detainees, a Syrian and a Saudi, noted that they were part of a 200-member network which planned to execute the plan. The two were arrested by Lebanese security forces after they were suspected of a criminally-motivated murder at the al-Badawi refugee camp. According to the report, the investigation revealed that the Syrian government, through this plan, carried out the most blatant violation of United Nations Resolutions 1559 and 1701 and interfered in internal Lebanese issues.

The newspaper reporting this belongs to the Hariri family, the same as Rafiq Hariri, assassinated by the Syrians. Without a doubt, the Hariris have a pressing interest in assassinations, and this may help save lives, if proven out. The capture of the two operatives of the network, a Syrian and a Saudi, tends to bolster the report.

Syria has a big problem now. They had the benefit of Hezbollah's survival against Israel for some momentum in their efforts to twist internal Lebanese politics. However, Nasrallah's power play over the last two weeks and the assassination of Pierre Gemayel have the Lebanese outraged over interference from Damascus. They have already marched in the streets, and now with this covert operation exposed, Lebanese democracy activists will once again have the momentum to go after Hezbollah and end Syrian hegemony.

This once again shows the folly of engagement with the Syrian regime. They have been one of the biggest supporters of terrorism for many years, as their relationship with Hezbollah clearly demonstrates. Now they have been caught trying to assassinate dozens more Lebanese officials, an act of war for which Syrian should suffer severe consequences. What exactly do we have to discuss with these evil dictators, except the terms of their surrender?

Perhaps Olmert Is Learning, And Maybe We're Not

A day after offering a broad, if familiar, view of a path for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the Olmert government now signals that they will stop offering any more concessions until Hamas returns Gilad Shalit from captivity. All of Israel's offers of opened commerce and prisoner returns will remain on hold until they have Shalit:

There is unlikely to be any additional progress in the suddenly rejuvenated diplomatic process until Cpl. Gilad Shalit is released, a senior diplomatic source said Tuesday, on the eve of a visit by Egyptian Intelligence chief Omar Suleiman.

Suleiman met last week in Cairo with Damascus-based Hamas head Khaled Mashaal, who Israel believes holds the key to Shalit's fate.

The official hinted that expanding the cease-fire from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank would also be dependent on the release of Shalit, who has been held since June 25.

"Until the Shalit issue is solved, it will now be difficult to move forward with any confidence-building steps with the Palestinians beyond the decision Sunday to move the IDF out of Gaza," the official said.

According to the official, the Palestinian failure to release Shalit is holding up a large release of Palestinian security prisoners and other steps that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert mentioned in his Sde Boker address Monday, such as removing road blocks, allowing more freedom of movement and opening border crossings. Olmert said in his speech that he would even release prisoners "serving long-term sentences."

This new tenacity comes a little late. Apparently, Olmert has agreed in principle to allow the Badr Brigade to return from Jordan to Gaza to assist Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah gain some control where Hamas has its power base. Washington gave its support to the plan when Olmert visited the US two weeks ago, which will allow 1200 "troops" formerly under the command of Yasser Arafat to operate within the territories.

I'm not sure why the US wants more terrorists in Gaza, but it seems we do. The thinking must be that Abbas is a partner for peace ... and therefore he needs more terrorists in order to prevail over Hamas and the gang war in progress in Gaza. Perhaps we believe that Fatah represents a much better hope for a negotiated peace, but so far, that has not been demonstrated by any evidence at all. In fact, we have seen this week that Fatah continues to actively participate in terrorism against Israel by shooting Qassams from Gaza into Sderot, giving Islamic Jihad a break from its launcher duties.

Is this more Baker-Scowcroft realpolitik? Or is it just another case of wishful thinking on the capacity for peace from current Palestinian leadership? If we've reduced ourselves to having to choose which flavor of terrorism we'll tolerate, we have dramatically lowered our expectations on the war against terrorists, probably to the point of losing entirely.

Olmert, for once, provides an example of firmness on the issue. He will not allow the Badr Brigade to move into Gaza nor any of his other offers to take effect until the Palestinians return Shalit, unharmed. That might be the start of a more realistic look at the futility of appeasement, a lesson that the West needs to learn all over again, it would seem.

NSA Program Has Impressive Safeguards

After all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the last year regarding the NSA's warrantless surveillance program on suspected terrorists abroad and their calls into the United States, the agency has now formally briefed the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board on the program. Members now claim that the government has worked hard to protect the privacy of American citizens:

After a delay of more than a year, a government board appointed to guard Americans' privacy and civil liberties during the war on terror has been told the inner workings of the government's electronic eavesdropping program.

Members say they were impressed by the protections. ...

Board members said that they were impressed by the safeguards the government has built into the NSA's monitoring of phone calls and computer transmissions, and that they wished the administration could tell the public more about them to ease distrust.

"If the American public, especially civil libertarians like myself, could be more informed about how careful the government is to protect our privacy while still protecting us from attacks, we'd be more reassured," said Lanny Davis , a former Clinton White House lawyer who is the board's lone liberal Democrat.

The hysteria surrounding this program might finally start receding, as long as these remarks get some significant play. After all, having a former Clinton aide wish he could reveal more about a secret program to reassure people of the good work done by it rather than to torpedo the Bush administration should raise some eyebrows among the paranoid. Former Reagan counsel Alan Raul went even further, telling John Solomon that he believes that the public underestimates the level of concern and dedication for civil liberties in the federal government.

Once again, the public's support for a tough but necessary program has been reinforced by its careful execution by the NSA. This should not surprise anyone, as even the New York Times acknowledged that they had no information that the agency broke any laws or violated anyone's civil rights when they broke the story. All they had were "concerns" about the program's legality from their anonymous tipsters.

We Love You Alcee, Especially When You Leave

It looks like House Democrats have convinced Nancy Pelosi that appointing an impeached federal judge to chair the Intelligence Committee gives them a rather bad start on cleaning up Dodge. Alcee Hastings did not care much for Pelosi's decision to pass him over for the slot, vowing to "haters" that he'll be back:

In a decision that could roil Democratic unity in the new House, Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi passed over Rep. Alcee Hastings Tuesday for the chairmanship of the Intelligence Committee.

Hastings, currently the No. 2 Democrat on the panel, had been aggressively making a case for the top position, supported by members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Critics pointed out that he had been impeached when he was a federal judge and said naming him to such a sensitive post would be a mistake just as the Democrats take over House control pledging reforms.

"I am obviously disappointed with this decision," Hastings, D-Fla., said in a statement thanking his supporters. "I will be seeking better and bigger opportunities in a Democratic Congress." ... In a sign of the bitterness that has surrounded the debate, Hastings closed his statement by saying: "Sorry, haters, God is not finished with me yet."

The Congressional Black Caucus has not given any comment about the matter as yet, but they will not be happy with Pelosi's backpedal on the chair assignment. Three members of their caucus have sewn up chair assignments to committees, most notably Charles Rangel on the powerful Ways and Means Committee. That will not mollify them, as they have publicly backed Hastings for this slot, and already had some issues with Pelosi over her request to William Jefferson to step down from his committee assignments while under investigation by the DoJ for corruption.

They could threaten to abstain from the vote for Speaker, which would give the GOP an opportunity to win the gavel as the minority. The CBC has enough votes to strip the Democrats of their majority. It would be a bad idea for all concerned, though. A Republican speaker might give the GOP a thrill, but it would be a headache for the House, and would touch off a session of recriminations and backbiting that would dwarf the nastiness of the last three electoral cycles. We saw this in California when Willie Brown kept the gavel through some machinations with the razor-thin GOP majority, and this would be worse.

As for Alcee, we can only laugh at his suggestion that "haters" kept him from the chair. His own party is the one who impeached him, with members of the CBC fully supporting the action, especially founder John Conyers. When they ran on a clean government platform, he had to know that offering a disgraced judge removed for bribery for one of the important leadership positions would -- or should -- be a non-starter. No one hates Alcee ... we especially love him when he leaves.

UPDATE AND BUMP: It won't be Jane Harman either, according to the Washington Post (via Michelle Malkin):

House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has decided against naming either Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee, or Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (Fla.), the panel's No. 2 Democrat, to chair the pivotal committee next year.

The decisions came despite lobbying by conservative Democrats on Harman's behalf and a full-throttled campaign by Hastings to overcome the stigma of the 1988 impeachment that drove him from his federal judgeship.

The fight over the top spot on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has exposed the kind of factional politics that bedeviled House Democrats before they were swept from control in 1994. Harman, a moderate, strong-on-defense "Blue Dog" Democrat, had angered liberals with her reluctance to challenge the Bush administration's use of intelligence. Hastings, an African American, was strongly backed by the Congressional Black Caucus but was ardently opposed by the Blue Dogs, who said his removal from the bench disqualifies him from such a sensitive post.

Complicating the matter was Pelosi's relationship with black Democrats. Earlier this year, she enraged the Black Caucus by removing one of its members, Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), from the Ways and Means Committee after court documents revealed that federal investigators looking into allegations of bribery had found $90,000 in cash neatly bundled in his freezer.

Instead of picking Harman or Hastings, Pelosi will look for a compromise candidate, probably Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.), but possibly Rep. Norman D. Dicks (D-Wash.), a hawkish member of the Appropriations defense subcommittee, or Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.), a conservative African American with experience on the intelligence committee. To entice Harman to run in 2000 for a House seat she had vacated for an unsuccessful bid for the California governorship, the Democratic leadership shunted Bishop off the committee -- another perceived slap at black lawmakers.

First, we should acknowledge that the decision to pass over Hastings is one of the few smart moves the Democratic leadership has made since winning the midterms, as Liberal Goodman suggests in the comments. However, just as with Pelosi's endorsement of John Murtha in the leadership elections, the failure of Hastings puts a big dent in her perceived authority within the caucus and also still calls her judgment into question for letting the situation spiral out of control. Now she has a bigger problem on her hands, facing a revolt from two different factions of her caucus without ever having put her hand on the Speaker's gavel.

Reappointing Sanford Bishop to the committee and having him take the chair would appear to be the best possible solution. He's a member of the CBC and, at least according to the Post's description, ideologically compatible with the Blue Dogs. It would give Pelosi a way to assuage bruised feelings within both factions.

The Post article contains more information about Hastings and the acquittal in the criminal trial than the press reported before the elections. The House impeachment found that Hastings lied repeatedly at his trial, misrepresenting the facts about phone calls and other key evidence which later were exposed as falsehoods. That played a key role in the impeachment effort, as Conyers told the Senate as he presented the case for removal that the civil-rights effort did not exist to exchange one form of judicial corruption for another. It makes for fascinating reading, and had the Post bothered to report these details before the election, it's likely that Pelosi would never have remained as obstinate about Hastings as she did.

As for Harman, she won't get the chair under any circumstances. The whispers around the campfire paint her as a harpie who drove away good staffers from the Intelligence committee. That follows the aborted attempt to cast her as a target of a federal corruption investigation, an allegation proven false. However, it indicates that Harman probably doesn't have the support of enough Democrats to force Pelosi to retreat entirely.

Bush Can't Designate Terror Groups: Judge

A federal judge barred the Bush administration from specifying organizations that support terrorism for the purpose of freezing their assets and keeping funds from terrorists. US District Court Judge Audrey Collins blocked the administration from freezing the assets of the PKK and the Tamil Tigers, two rather obvious terrorist groups:

A federal judge struck down President Bush's authority to designate groups as terrorists, saying his post-Sept. 11 executive order was unconstitutionally vague, according to a ruling released Tuesday.

The Humanitarian Law Project had challenged Bush's order, which blocked all the assets of groups or individuals he named as "specially designated global terrorists" after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

"This law gave the president unfettered authority to create blacklists," said David Cole, a lawyer for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Constitutional Rights that represented the group. "It was reminiscent of the McCarthy era."

The case centered on two groups, the Liberation Tigers, which seeks a separate homeland for the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, and Partiya Karkeran Kurdistan, a political organization representing the interests of Kurds in Turkey.

U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins enjoined the government from blocking the assets of the two groups. The same judge two years ago invalidated portions of the Patriot Act.

Collins, a Clinton appointee, gained notoriety two years ago when she became the first federal judge to strike down provisions of the Patriot Act. Interestingly, she found that act, passed by Congress, also to be too vague to be constitutional. In that case, one of the plaintiffs was -- the PKK again, which got its terrorist designation not from the Bush administration under the Patriot Act or this executive order, but by Madeline Albright's State Department in 1997.

Nor was that the first time Collins has had a problem with anti-terrorist legislation. During the Clinton administration, she struck down the 1996 anti-terrorism law passed by Congress in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing. Collins seems to have trouble reading the law, finding all counterterrorism legislation too vague to be understood. Perhaps the problem lies with Collins more than the laws themselves.

John Stephenson wrote about this ruling at Collins' cheerleaders earlier today:

I should really just stop right there. The ruling is praised by a lawyer for terrorist sympathizing, Center For Constitutional Rights! The Center for Constitutional Rights is openly anti-American and pro-terrorist. Groups suspected of ties to terrorism give money to CCR. The granddaughter of the executed Communist spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg works there! At its 2004 annual convention, the CCR honored attorney Lynne Stewart, an open supporter of terrorism, indicted by the Justice Department for abetting the terrorist activities of her client, the “blind sheik,” Omar Abdel Rahman.

A lawyer from this organization praising this decision says just about all we need to know about the ruling.

As the song says, you can tell the man who boozes by the company he chooses. This pig needs to get up and quickly run to the Court of Appeals, where we can hope for a few jurists who don't have terrorists' interests at heart.

Some Of His Best Friends Were Jewish

Just when it seemed that Michael Richards couldn't embarrass himself any further, he now has to explain his claim of Jewishness. Apparently, neither of Richards' parents were Jews and he has not converted, yet he has long claimed to be Jewish:

Just when it seemed Michael Richards was about to leave the most troubling incident of his career behind, his publicist is having to explain how the comic could consider himself to be Jewish.

Last week, crisis-management expert Howard Rubenstein acknowledged that Richards had shouted anti-Semitic remarks in an April standup comedy routine well before his appearance earlier this month in which he harangued hecklers with the n-word. But he defended Richards' language about Jews, saying that the comic "is Jewish. He's not anti-Semitic at all. He was role-playing."

As Rubenstein's assertion circulated, Jewish organizations and commentators pointed out that the man who played Cosmo Kramer on "Seinfeld" has not converted to Judaism and neither of his parents are Jewish.

Which makes him …

A goy who shouts anti-Semitic and racist insults on stage, that's what it makes Richards.

I recall meeting with some rabbinical students on a flight a few years ago. They had asked to borrow my newspapers and we struck up a conversation. I explained that my grandfather was Jewish, and we talked about mixed marriages and religion. They talked openly about their perspective on Christianity and Judaism, and it was an interesting conversation, but they were clear on one point: I could not be considered a Jew, as my mother adopted her mother's Catholocism. I would have to formally convert to be a Jew, and that would be true in any form of Judaism.

Apparently, the N-word rant was no isolated incident of uncontrolled rage for Richards. He apparently has a history of hate speech in his comedy act, such as it is. One has to wonder how Richards kept this quiet for so long. He's not done a competent job of addressing it now that it's in the open, certainly. His suggestion that his latest invective would help rally the "Afro-American" community is of a piece with his associative Judaism -- it's an excuse and a dodge.

CQ On The Air Tonight

I'll be appearing on The World Tonight with Rob Breckinridge on Calgary's CHQR this evening at 9:30 CT. I've been on Rob's show a number of times, and he's one of the best interviewers I've had the pleasure to know. Tonight we'll be talking about the flying imams -- or the non-flying imams -- and other topics. If you're not in Calgary with your radio tuned to 770 AM, then be sure to listen on the station's Internet stream. Rob takes calls during the show, so don't be shy about using the number on the site!

Hardly Innocent

We have experienced the birth of a new phrase in victimology -- flying while Muslim. The six imams kicked off of a US Air flight here in Minneapolis have gone on tour with this phrase at the ready, doing a "pray-in" at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington DC yesterday. However, details from the airline and its other passengers point towards a much different conclusion, one that understandably worried all involved:

Witnesses said three of the imams were praying loudly in the concourse and repeatedly shouted "Allah" when passengers were called for boarding US Airways Flight 300 to Phoenix.

"I was suspicious by the way they were praying very loud," the gate agent told the Minneapolis Police Department.

Passengers and flight attendants told law-enforcement officials the imams switched from their assigned seats to a pattern associated with the September 11 terrorist attacks and also found in probes of U.S. security since the attacks -- two in the front row first-class, two in the middle of the plane on the exit aisle and two in the rear of the cabin.

And here's some information that the national news media seems to have missed -- the men sat in seats not assigned to them, including the first-class seats that the imams claimed to have acquired through an upgrade:

The imams who claimed two first-class seats said their tickets were upgraded. The gate agent told police that when the imams asked to be upgraded, they were told no such seats were available. Nevertheless, the two men were seated in first class when removed.

That would normally be enough to get any flight delayed while the seating arrangements got straightened out, especially if passengers deliberately take seats other than those assigned to them. However, the men kept interfering with the boarding process by going back and forth to talk amongst each other. Their seating pattern -- again, not that assigned by the airline -- positioned them at every egress point from the aircraft.

And those seat-belt extenders? Once they received them from the flight attendants, the imams put them under their seats, and not on the seat belts that purportedly would not fit them. Anyone who saw that would understandably wonder why the imams requested them in the first place, especially the flight crew, which has primary responsibility for flight security.

Small wonder, then, that US Air kicked them off the flight. Two pilots from other airlines confirmed that they would have done the same thing under the same circumstances. One pilot indicated that the repositioning of the group within the plane has been identified as a terrorist probe technique.

The imams did not intend on conducting a terrorist attack. Instead, they have conducted an attack on American security protocols, first by staging this ridiculous event to heighten their status as victims, and second to expose the kind of activities that airlines view as suspicious. In doing so, they have created an environment where the airlines will second-guess their own security procedures, becoming hypersensitive to political correctness instead of focusing on suspicious behaviors. The imams will have made us all less safe if their act becomes a hit.

Unfortunately, members of Congress seem more intent on pandering to the victimology rather than supporting the airlines for doing their job. Sheila Jackson-Lee and newly-elected Muslim Keith Ellison both took the time to acknowledge how humiliating it had to be for the six men ejected from the flight, rather than how stressful it must have been for the passengers and crew of the US Air flight that the imams used to gain their notoriety. I guess they figure that it's better to be sorry than safe.

Hezbollah Training The Mahdi Militia?

For those who see the situations in Lebanon and Iraq as a continuum of the same Islamist efforts for regional control, it will come as no shock to learn that Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army receives training from Hassan Hasrallah's Hezbollah. It might come as more of a shock that the New York Times actually reports it, as well as the role Iran plays as a facilitator between the two:

A senior American intelligence official said Monday that the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah had been training members of the Mahdi Army, the Iraqi Shiite militia led by Moktada al-Sadr.

The official said that 1,000 to 2,000 fighters from the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias had been trained by Hezbollah in Lebanon. A small number of Hezbollah operatives have also visited Iraq to help with training, the official said.

Iran has facilitated the link between Hezbollah and the Shiite militias in Iraq, the official said. Syrian officials have also cooperated, though there is debate about whether it has the blessing of the senior leaders in Syria.

So what have the Hezbollah "trainers" taught the Mahdis? The usual: "weapons, bomb-making, intelligence, assassinations, the gambit of skill sets," all of the basics for creating the kind of stable, secure Iraq that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised Nouri al-Maliki on his trip to Teheran yesterday.

Quite obviously, Iran and Syria (who also figures prominently in the Hezbollah-Mahdi arrangements) do not have any interest in moderation and democracy in the region. The Syrians want to control the Mediterranean side of Southwest Asia, and the Iranians want to promote radical Islamist fervor -- preferably of the Shi'ite flavor, rather than the Wahhabi al-Qaeda strain. Their every step indicates that they want to see the nascent democracy in Iraq undermined for the same reasons we want it to flourish: a successful democracy in Iraq will mortally destabilize their own regimes and their grip on power.

That is why notions of engagement with these two notorious terrorist-supporting states should be a non-starter. Nothing they have done indicates that they see the Middle East in terms other than completely hostile to our interests or the interests of liberty and self-determination, even where one might make an argument that the two diverge. The only items that Iran and Syria want to discuss with us regarding Iraqi democracy are the terms of our surrender and retreat. So-called "realists" want to endorse diplomatic engagement with Iran and Syria but fail to acknowledge that reality in any manner, making them even more Utopian than the so-called neocons who want to work towards the ultimate goal of ending Iranian and Syrian hegemony through terrorism.

At one time, we decided to fight the war on terrorists and their state sponsors in order to end the use of terrorism as a technique for extortion. Now many want to acquiesce to Iranian- and Syrian-sponsored terrorists in order to more quickly surrender.

Homeland Security Chair: Don't Act On False IDs In Workplace

The incoming chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, Bernie Thompson, has sent a letter to a major industrial uniform provider warning it not to terminate hundreds of employees who gave invalid Social Security numbers when hired. Cintas received the list of "no-match" employees from the Social Security Administration as a part of President Bush's efforts to get employers to help identify illegal immigrants, but the chair of the committee responsible for immigration matters threatens legal action if they do so:

A Mississippi Democrat in line to become chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee has warned the nation's largest uniform supplier it faces criminal charges if it follows a White House proposal to recheck workers with mismatched Social Security numbers and fire those who cannot resolve the discrepancy in 60 days.

Rep. Bennie Thompson said in a letter to Cintas Corp. it could be charged with "illegal activities in violation of state and federal law" if any of its 32,000 employees are terminated because they gave incorrect Social Security numbers to be hired.

"I am deeply troubled by Cintas' recent policy change regarding the Social Security Administration's 'no match' letters," Mr. Thompson said in the Nov. 2 letter. "It is my understanding that hundreds of Cintas' immigrant workers have received these letters. I am extremely concerned about any potentially discriminatory actions targeting this community."

In June, President Bush proposed new guidelines concerning "no-match" letters from the Social Security Administration, saying he wanted to make it easier for employers to verify workers' eligibility and continue to hold them accountable for those they hire.

Cintas did not plan to immediately terminate the employees anyway. They sent their own letter to the people identified by the SSA explaining that Cintas has an obligation to verify that all of their employees have a legal right to work in the US, and gave them 60 days to update their records. If the don't do so within that two-month period, then they face indefinite suspension.

It's difficult to comprehend the problem. Businesses have to have SSNs from new employees in order to verify their eligibility for employment. The SSA has the information available to double-check the information for accuracy. If it doesn't match, this employer has given them 60 days -- two months -- to correct their records. Only if the employees, identified by the SSA and not chosen at random, fails to comply do they get suspended as ineligible to work. That sounds like a rational and non-discriminatory system. The affected employees are a self-selecting group, having given incorrect information on their own to their employers, verified by the government.

Only a Democratic committee chair could turn that scenario into something that would "violate ... non-discriminatory provisions." Thompson acts as if Cintas has wanted nothing more than a government report that could force them to shut down their production, when in fact the entire strategy intends on forcing businesses to police themselves better so that they do not knowingly continue to employ illegal workers. Let's please recall that the hiring of illegal workers is illegal, both for the worker and for the employer. That's why all of us have to submit all that paperwork at the beginning of our employment. Doing a cross-check on that paperwork to identify bogus documentation -- otherwise known as forgery -- is not discriminatory, unless one considers criminals a protected class under EEOC regulations.

If anything, Cintas should get plaudits for its efforts to comply with federal regulations on labor. They have taken steps to show that they want to comply with immigration law rather than blithely ignore it. For some reason, and I suspect we know what it is, the Democrats want them to continue breaking the law. This gives us a pretty clear idea what the Democratic agenda on immigration "reform" will contain -- penalties for enforcement and a general amnesty, exactly the same as the 1986 debacle that led us to where we are today.

UPDATE: Just for the record, Cintas is a supplier to the federal government, with $625,000 in contracts for 2005.

Christmas, As Sponsored By Secularists

One would expect that the new movie coming out this holiday season, The Nativity Story, to spend quite a bit of money on advertisements. Where might we see these ads? Television viewers will probably notice them on holiday specials and perhaps news shows; certainly they will appear in malls and shopping areas for those looking for Christmas presents. Perhaps some might even show up on bus stops and billboards around town.

One place Chicago residents won't see the advertisements will be, ironically, at the city's Christmas celebration:

A public Christmas festival is no place for the Christmas story, the city says. Officials have asked organizers of a downtown Christmas festival, the German Christkindlmarket, to reconsider using a movie studio as a sponsor because it is worried ads for its film "The Nativity Story" might offend non-Christians.

New Line Cinema, which said it was dropped, had planned to play a loop of the new film on televisions at the event. The decision had both the studio and a prominent Christian group shaking their heads.

"The last time I checked, the first six letters of Christmas still spell out Christ," said Paul Braoudakis, spokesman for the Barrington, Ill.-based Willow Creek Association, a group of more than 11,000 churches of various denominations. "It's tantamount to celebrating Lincoln's birthday without talking about Abraham Lincoln."

This decision is so stupid, it's difficult to get angry about it. Exactly which sensitive attendees of a Christmas celebration will the city be saving? If ever a target market ever existed, it's the Christkindlmarket. People go there to celebrate Christmas, and while the holiday may not have much religious significance for many of them, they can't be offended by a reminder of its religious roots -- especially since many of the displays will reflect just that.

Their excuse? Mindless multiculturalism, meaning that they reject one culture in order to keep from offending others. The festival will have displays that reflect other religious traditions, which it should, but apparently having The Nativity Story as a sponsor of the event twisted the delicate balance that the city believes it must strike in order to legitimize their involvement. Apparently, they want to keep too much Christmas from invading Christmas.

Rational multiculturalism means accepting everyone's culture, not keeping scorecards and points about how much of one we get at the expense of the other. Irrational multiculturalism has governments trying to protect the tender feelings of a handful -- if that -- of overly sensitive critics who will find any excuse to complain about everything, no matter what effort gets made. Anyone who worries that there's too much Christmas in Christmas has defined himself as a practitioner of the latter.

Olmert Offers Peace, Fatah Responds As Usual

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave what had been billed as a major policy speech, but to little practical effect. Olmert urged Palestinians to agree to end hostilities in order to negotiate for a long-term peace and offered mass prisoner releases as an incentive, but the Palestinians responded with rocket attacks from Gaza:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, trying to build on a shaky cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, on Monday offered Palestinians a series of incentives, including negotiations and a prisoner release, if they turned away from violence.

The offer was made in what was billed as a major policy speech, but it contained little that was new. The timing was important, though, because Mr. Olmert and the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, are eager to bolster their own political positions, begin a serious dialogue and stop a bloody cycle of violence. ...

In his speech, Mr. Olmert appealed to Palestinians to turn away from militant resistance and make a commitment to peaceful negotiations for an independent state. “You, the Palestinian people,” he said, “are standing in these days at an historic crossroads.”

If the Palestinians can form a new unity government that satisfies international standards and release a captured Israeli soldier, Mr. Olmert said, he will respond by immediately meeting with Mr. Abbas, releasing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, reducing checkpoints and moving toward a further withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the occupied West Bank.

He promised that Israel would also then release to the Palestinian Authority the $50 million a month in taxes and duties that Israel has collected for the Palestinians but withheld — more than $500 million so far this year — contending that Hamas, the governing Palestinian faction, is a terrorist group.

Unfortunately for Olmert, Hamas isn't the only terrorist group in the territories. The new rocket attacks on Sderot did not come from Hamas or Islamic Jihad, but from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. The AAMB belongs to Fatah, the same faction that Mahmoud Abbas leads -- the same Abbas that Olmert praised as a partner for peace. Either Olmert has seriously deluded himself on Abbas' intentions, or he's picked a really weak sister for his plans to end the hostilities.

None of the Palestinian factions gave Olmert much of an audience. Hamas complained that Olmert wouldn't commit to the 1967 borders, even though Hamas has repeatedly said that wouldn't convince them to recognize Israel anyway. They also rejected the proposed prisoner releases as inadequate. No one knows how the Islamic Jihad leadership took the speech, although they appeared to take a day off and gave the rocket launchers to AAMB terrorists instead.

Although Olmert stayed close to other public offers, his office hinted at more movement from the Israelis. They characterized the 2002 Saudi proposal positively, a first for the Israelis, even though it also calls for a return to the 1967 borders. The so-called "right of return" also will be a no-sale to Israelis, although Olmert explicitly called for land swaps to resolve the issue. The effort and enthusiasm for peacemaking appears striking; Olmert seems rather suddenly eager for a peace settlement. Has he decided that the US might not be so reliable in the next couple of years, given the pressure here to pull back from our commitments in the region? Or does he think that the only way to remain in office is to achieve something that has escaped Israeli leaders for the last 58 years?

Whatever Olmert's motivation, he hasn't been rewarded with any movement from his enemies. Given their history, we can expect the Palestinians not to miss this opportunity to miss another opportunity.

The Informant Retreats

Five days ago, I wrote about the no-knock warrant that resulted in the death of a 92-year-old woman and the wounding of three officers in a drug raid gone bad. I questioned the facts as the police laid them out, when they claimed that they had announced themselves and waited for a response, but that the woman had shot the three officers as they approached the house. Now we hear today that the informant on whose information the warrant was issued has changed his story:

The confidential informant on whose word Atlanta police raided the house of an 88-year-old woman is now saying he never purchased drugs from her house and was told by police to lie and say he did.

Chief Richard Pennington, in a press conference Monday evening, said his department learned two days ago that the informant — who has been used reliably in the past by the narcotics unit -- denied providing information to officers about a drug deal at 933 Neal Street in northwest Atlanta.

"The informant said he had no knowledge of going into that house and purchasing drugs," Pennington said. "We don't know if he's telling the truth."

The search warrant used by Atlanta police to raid the house says that a confidential informant had bought crack cocaine at the residence, using $50 in city funds, several hours before the raid.

Let's review why "no-knock" warrants exist. They get issued most regularly for two reasons: to pre-empt any violent reaction to the police officers and to keep suspects from flushing evidence down the toilets and sinks inside the domicile. Only the first reason has any validity for overwhelming force being employed by the police, as the destruction of evidence does not put any lives in danger. As this raid shows, a sudden invasion of a private home can have deadly consequences for all when the homeowner has guns with which to defend herself -- a rational expectation in a neighborhood infested with violent drug dealers.

These warrants should not get banned, but judges should only issue them when demonstrable risk of violence can be established. Strictly speaking, the police have no right to enter anyone's home without their permission, and the legal system should resist any kind of forced entry such as we saw in Atlanta except under the most exceptional circumstances. That's just common sense. It's also common sense to find out who lives in a house before charging through the door, a task that all indications show the police failed to attempt. She lived there for seventeen years, after all. People would have known her.

And what major crime did the Atlanta police believe was committed at Johnston's house? The purchase of $50 worth of crack. It's a legitimate crime under the laws at present, but it hardly warranted a smash-down entry by the police. This wasn't a case of national security, or the lair of a serial killer; it was a house in a bad neighborhood that may or may not have been fingered by an informant as a retail location for narcotics.

On top of all this, it now looks like the police may have lied about their information, or the informant lied and they didn't do any homework to verify his story. If the police lied, then they need to be arrested and charged with the woman's death; if the informant lied, he needs to face similar charges. The FBI, which has opened its own investigation, might find that the police violated Johnston's civil rights in either case.

One fact remains: a ninety-two year old woman got shot to death in her own home by the police, protecting herself against what she believed were armed intruders into her home. There really are no excuses possible for that fact.

It's A Flopping Aces Scoop

Would the media use terrorist apologists over and over again as their news sources on stories of faked atrocities?

It would appear so.

This is fine work by Flopping Aces. Read the whole thing.

Will The UK Try Partition For Itself?

The United Kingdom has had a long history of imposing partitions in its former colonies, including Ireland, India, and the entirety of the Middle East, all of which has spawned wars in the following years. Now a new poll conducted on behalf of the London Telegraph show that the British might want to try out partition for themselves. A solid majority of Brits support the full independence of Scotland and a more clearly English Parliament (via Instapundit):

A clear majority of people in both England and Scotland are in favour of full independence for Scotland, an ICM opinion poll for The Sunday Telegraph has found. Independence is backed by 52 per cent of Scots while an astonishing 59 per cent of English voters want Scotland to go it alone.

There is also further evidence of rising English nationalism with support for the establishment of an English parliament hitting an historic high of 68 per cent amongst English voters. Almost half – 48 per cent – also want complete independence for England, divorcing itself from Wales and Northern Ireland as well. Scottish voters also back an English breakaway with 58 per cent supporting an English parliament with similar powers to the Scottish one.

The poll comes only months before the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union between England and Scotland and will worry all three main political parties. None of them favours Scottish independence, but all have begun internal debates on the future of the constitution.

The dramatic findings came as Gordon Brown, the favourite to succeed Tony Blair as Prime Minister, delivered an impassioned defence of the Union at Labour's Scottish conference in Oban yesterday.

In an attack on the Scottish National Party, against whom Labour will fight a bitter battle for control of the Edinburgh-based parliament next May, the Chancellor claimed: "We should never let the Nationalists deceive people into believing that you can break up the United Kingdom."

England did not start colonialism, but it might be its last real practitioner. The natural end of that era would have come from the dissolution of ties between Northern Ireland and the UK, which might have been the UK's least successful partition in that it never resulted in the severing of their responsibilities in their colony on Ireland. Scotland, however, has been part of the kingdom for centuries. Its loss would spell a clear end to the idea of a "united kingdom" and press for a much more English Britain.

It seems that Gordon Brown and Labour might find themselves on the wrong side of history. Defending the definition of Britain to include Scotland when neither the Scots nor the British believe it any longer puts Labour in the uncomfortable position of being de facto royalists, normally the position of the Tories. One would expect that the tradition of iconoclasts in Labour to inform a position closer to the apparent tenor of the populace, and that it would remain for the Conservatives to plead for the notion of a kingdom. If, as the Telegraph reports, none of the political parties support complete devolution as of now, one of them soon will, and Labour might have blown a chance to lead that effort.

What would the dissolution of the UK mean for international relations? One would have to expect that Britain -- or England, if Wales becomes independent -- would have less to offer militarily and diplomatically. After all, they would speak for fewer people, and their military assets would assumably get distributed to the newly-independent nations that would have paid for them over their history as part of the core kingdom. It might call into question their permanent seat on the UN Security Council, although Russia inherited the Soviet seat with little difficulty. It would almost certainly leave the US with a less vigorous partner in global relations.

Freedom might mean a new era of explicit significance for the Scots, and perhaps the Welsh and Irish, depending on how far devolution goes. It might just as easily usher in an era of decline for all of the components of a former empire that has spent the last century in contraction as their relevance could wink out entirely, ending the twilight of British influence on world culture. Considering all of the ills and benefits that have come from the remarkable history of these island peoples, that would be a tragedy both for themselves and for the world today. One hopes they choose their next steps wisely.

A Little Muscovite Salt In Old Wounds

Russia has released files from its Soviet era that purport to show that the West agreed to have Moscow to occupy the Baltics as a proper method of de-Nazification, a move Latvia decried as a method of undermining NATO unity ahead of its summit. According to the war-era memos, the Allies allowed the Baltics to become vassal states in the interests of stabilization:

Latvia said on Friday Moscow's release of documents stating the United States and Britain gave tacit approval to Soviet occupation of the Baltics was an attempt to sour NATO relations ahead of next week's summit.

Russia's foreign intelligence service SVR this week released declassified files and said in a statement the West regarded the removal of pro-German influences from the Baltics and occupation by Soviet forces "a necessary and timely step." ...

The subject of the Soviet occupation of the Baltics, in 1940 and resumed again in 1944 after the Germans were driven out, is an emotionally-charged one in the region.

Never let it be said that Vladimir Putin passed up an attempt to appear heavy-handed and hypocritical. The Russians do not care much for the idea of NATO expansion, and clearly the West had that in mind when it scheduled its first-ever summit on former Soviet-controlled territory. Latvia has welcomed its NATO partners and relish their freedom and independence, and recognize this as a typical dog-in-the-manger ploy by Putin.

However, his attempt to put a damper on NATO's summit only underscores the continuing relevance of the alliance in Europe. Putin has gradually attempted to reconstitute Russia as a regional threat, if not a global power, and the events of the past week clearly show that he has succeeded in some measure. The assassination of Alexander Litvinenko with polonium-210, the latest in a series of suspicious deaths of Putin's critics, demonstrates the ruthlessness of Putin's regime. The worst elements of personal power from the Soviet days are making a comeback under Putin.

Under these circumstances, NATO becomes more necessary than it has been since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Europe and the West need to remain vigilant against a return of Stalinism in Moscow, and the poisonings of Litvinenko and Viktor Yushchenko as well as the mysterious deaths of other dissenters show that as a real possibility. Freedom made significant gains in eastern Europe and central Asia over the last fifteen years, and NATO has to ensure that those gains do not suffer a rollback.

The Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia know that better than anyone else at the NATO summit. All three have rejected this threadbare attempt at wedge-driving by Putin on the eve of the meeting, knowing that their own freedom relies on the strength of the alliance. They can stand a little Muscovite salt in old wounds as long as they feel assured that it constitutes the entirety of what Putin can do to them.

We Gotta Draft 'Em Because They're So Dumb

Charles Rangel has decided to take up where John Kerry left off, only this time he's not kidding about our military men and women being a collection of lazy dolts. The proposed chairman of the House Ways and Means committee and therefore one of the most powerful Democratic leaders in Congress told Fox News that only those with no options for a decent career would enlist in the military. Here's the video from Power Line:

I want to make it abundantly clear: if there’s anyone who believes that these youngsters want to fight, as the Pentagon and some generals have said, you can just forget about it. No young, bright individual wants to fight just because of a bonus and just because of educational benefits. And most all of them come from communities of very, very high unemployment. If a young fella has an option of having a decent career or joining the army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq.

Rangel has insisted that we restart the draft to fill the gaping enlistment shortfall in military recruiting ever since the war in Iraq began, as well as the staggering drop in re-enlistment rates. Oh, wait ... never mind. I guess it's to solve the overrepresentation of the poor and urban in the military. Oh, wait ... never mind.

I guess it's just to feed the Left's bigotry about the military. Bingo! This is just another method of infantilizing soldiers and sailors. Their efforts to cast them as children pushed into the service by their parents didn't work, so now Rangel wants to pick up Kerry's notion that they have little choice but to join the military through lack of other economic options, a fallacy that has been repeatedly disproved. It's all part of the Left's overarching philosophy that choice really doesn't exist for individuals, and therefore government exists to make all the choices for the citizenry. It's another form of victimology, and a rather offensive form at that.

I hope Rangel keeps appearing on television for the next two years. It'll make it easier for the Republicans to recapture the majority and the White House in 2008.

Bomb Parts Found In Rental Car At MSP Airport

Early yesterday, an Avis employee found the makings of a bomb in a returned rental car in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport, triggering an FBI investigation on one of the busiest travel days of the year. The device contained shrapnel, wires, and tubing, but fortunately no explosives:

A bomb-like device was found in a rental car Sunday morning at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, shutting down part of the Lindbergh terminal parking ramps for about two hours.

The Bloomington police bomb squad examined and blew up the device. FBI agents interviewed the man who rented the car after he arrived on the West Coast on Sunday. He said that the device was not a bomb and that he didn't mean to leave it behind, said Pat Hogan, airport spokesman. ...

An Avis service employee, who was doing routine cleaning and checks of the car after it was returned about 9:30 a.m. Sunday, found the device in a cargo compartment in the trunk of a hatchback car. The worker called the airport police because it looked suspicious.

The device, which was loose in the compartment, included tubes, wires and shrapnel, airport officials said.

My first thought is that I'm glad I heard about it this morning rather than yesterday afternoon, when we boarded a flight back home from our vacation in Southern California. My second thought is that the person who rented the car and left the device in the trunk had better hope that he has a dozen or so character witnesses that can testify to his stupidity, rather than any malice. It seems rather implausible that anyone would be dumb enough to bring a rental car back to an airport with bomb parts in the trunk, but it's impossible to underestimate the foolishness of people in general.

By the time we arrived, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Traffic was lighter than usual, if anything. I saw no signs of increased security, and I usually notice when they beef it up. If the FBI is still investigating, they apparently had not found anything to make them more nervous about securing the airport.

NOTE: I should add that posting will be limited today due to my late-night return from California yesterday.

Guess Who Financed The Insurgencies?

The New York Times reports on the financial underpinnings of the insurgencies in Iraq, showing that they have developed well-oiled mechanisms for generating millions in funding for their operations. A significant portion of those funds come from their abduction industry, and the major donors to that program have been France and Italy:

The insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, connivance by corrupt Islamic charities and other crimes that the Iraqi government and its American patrons have been largely unable to prevent, a classified United States government report has concluded.

The report, obtained by The New York Times, estimates that groups responsible for many insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities. It says $25 million to $100 million of that comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry, aided by “corrupt and complicit” Iraqi officials.

As much as $36 million a year comes from ransoms paid for hundreds of kidnap victims, the report says. It estimates that unnamed foreign governments — previously identified by American officials as including France and Italy — paid $30 million in ransom last year.

First, let's acknowledge that the Times has managed to blow more classified data into the open. This time, they manage to refrain from directly exposing a clandestine operation, but this data had to come from somewhere, and the US will find it harder to get this information again if this report uncovers any of their sources. Data gets classified for very good reasons, and no one elected the Gray Lady to make declassification decisions.

Moving beyond that for now, the report shows that whether we like it or not, we have to focus more effort on Iraq as a part of the war on terror. Terrorists have become so adept at raising money that they now run surpluses that go outside of Iraq for other terrorist groups. Iraq's insurgencies have begun to spread through the region, a major reason that the Bush administration insisted that we remain engaged in Iraq until we stamped out the terrorist networks.

If we are to succeed, we need to get a cleaner set of leaders in Iraq. Part of the financing comes from Iraq's rebuilding oil industry, perhaps the extorted payments to stop terrorist attacks on the pipelines. Enough of the production gets hijacked to put tens of millions of dollars into terrorist pockets, and that will increase as Iraqi oil production improves. That access comes via corrupt or intimidated officials at the Iraqi oil ministry. If the Iraqis want to stop the violence from the insurgencies, they will have to start with themselves.

One other interesting point gets made by John Burns and Kirk Semple in their report. The Ba'athists have mostly left the field in Iraq, convinced that they will not return to power. Their assets have been successfully frozen, and the remainder of their liquid funds now support them in comfortable lifestyles rather than paramilitary attempts to restore the Ba'athist regime. The insurgencies operating in Iraq now mostly consist of radical Islamists or sectarian militias, the kind of terrorists we want to face and beat in their territory rather than ours.

Oddly and out of character for the NYT, Burns and Semple try to pour cold water on this report. They note that unnamed intelligence experts call the report -- which the Times publishes -- guesswork intended on supporting Bush's efforts in Iraq. They call the NSC-generated report "political cover", but that doesn't make a lot of sense. If the Bush administration wanted this for that purpose, they could have simply declassified an executive summary from the report, rather than leak it through the NYT, as Burns and Semple imply. The paper didn't seem nearly as incredulous with other leaks it published on its front page in the past.

We're seeing the beginnings of a terror-exporting state in Iraq. We need to stop it now, rather than engaging in a retreat that will only force us to return later at greater loss of life. We also need to get our erstwhile buddies in Europe to quit financing it by ending ransom payments for abductions by terrorists.

Triangle Offense Returns In Record Time

Last night, I noticed that the Israelis had once again agreed to a cease-fire and withdrawal from Gaza, reaching the accord with Hamas and Fatah. The Guardian reported the "hopes for peace" late last night, and I intended on writing a cautionary post about it this morning. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas had told Ehud Olmert that all factions had agreed to the deal:

Palestinian militants have agreed to stop firing rockets into Israel in return for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a halt to targetted killings, it emerged last night.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, telephoned Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, and told him that all Palestinian factions had agreed to a ceasefire from 6am this morning.

Olmert replied that if there was no rocket fire from Gaza, Israeli forces could stop their operations and begin to withdraw from Gaza. The ceasefire could bring an end to a spate of violence which has seen the death of more than 100 Palestinians in Israeli operations and two Israeli civilians killed by Palestinian rockets within the past month.

I figured I'd wait until the morning to remind everyone that the modus operandi of the Palestinians in the past had two of the three major factions agreeing to cease-fires while one continued to attack Israel. In this way, the Palestinians could be both peacemakers and provocateurs, and let the Israelis suffer the attacks for as long as it took to get them to finally act to end them. At that point, the Palestinians could run to their Western apologists and sob about the mean Israelis who keep violating cease-fire agreements.

Unfortunately for me, the Palestinians couldn't wait for even a day to put their triangle offense into action:

Israeli troops withdrew from the Gaza Strip as a last-minute cease-fire deal took hold Sunday morning, but two major Palestinian militant groups, saying they had no intention of stopping their attacks, fired volleys of homemade rockets into Israel.

The ongoing rocket attacks by Hamas and Islamic Jihad tempered hopes for a lasting truce, which was meant to end five months of deadly clashes. The rockets landed in open fields and caused no injuries.

The USA Today headline mirrors the fecklessness of the entire enterprise. It reads, "Gaza cease-fire takes hold, attacks continue," a headline that practically defines oxymoron for all practical purposes. A cease-fire takes hold when all sides cease firing. If one side keeps firing, then there is no cease fire. One would think that journalists, headline writers, and diplomats would have at one time looked in their Websters for the definitions of cease and fire and have this figured out.

In this case, we have two out of the three major factions violating the agreement before the ink dried on paper. Both factions acknowledge their continuing attacks, Hamas says they'll keep firing rockets at Israeli civilians until the IDF leaves Gaza, and Islamic Jihad says they'll keep going until the IDF leaves the West Bank as well. In other words, there will be no cease fire at all, ever, until the Palestinians agree to the two-state solution or the Palestinians annihilate the Israelis.

Abbas could have his cease-fire in a heartbeat if the former came to pass, but no one will have peace until the Palestinians give up their morbid fantasies of the latter. Israel should quit listening to their fair-weather friends in the West and resolve to give the Palestinians the war they want until they get sick enough of it to negotiate in good faith for a solution of co-existence. Cease fires with one-sided attacks make a mockery of any diplomatic efforts with a group of people who can't keep their word for even an hour.

Actually, I Had A Fabulous Time ...

... marred only by the butt-kicking that came at the end of the day. As CQ readers know, I went to USC -- to enemy territory -- to watch the Fighting Irish get swamped out by a charged-up Trojans football team that may have an outside chance at the national championship, and might just deserve it. If you watched the game, you'll already feel my pain, but let's just say that the Irish have executed better on both offense and defense, and that these Trojans may not.

But a funny thing happened to me in my incursion into enemy territory -- I made a few friends. My uncle and I spent all day at USC and the Coliseum, wandering around campus and taking in the sights. We watched the Trojan band practice at the track & field stadium for about an hour or so, went to the sports awards hall, and basically wandered around the campus for over three hours. My Irish jersey and cap got lots of attention, but the teasing was all good-natured and friendly, and often followed by welcoming chats. Other Irish fans said hello, apparently looking for the moral support we would need in the evening.

When we returned to the van for some tailgating, we sat on our own for a while, eating a couple of Subway sandwiches I picked up, until we needed to move our stand-alone awning to free up parking space. We were going to pack it up and watch TV in the van until the game started, but the family behind us insisted that we join them and bring the awning. Mike, Dina, Sharon, and Don also insisted that we share their food and drink, and we spent more than two hours doing just that, enjoying Don's barbecued ribs and shrimp and Dina's candied apples. We had nothing to bring ourselves, but they didn't mind sharing a bit, and we had a wonderful time shooting the bull and teasing each other about the game. Sharon and Don do a little traveling now and play golf, while Mike and Dina went to my alma mater, Fullerton State, a few years after I did. (They did better than me -- they graduated and went to law school.) We exchanged pictures of our kids and talked about our families, and let me tell you, I enjoyed every last minute of it.

Everyone we met was there to have a good time and enjoy one of the classiest rivalries in college football, and that's exactly what we all did. Someone had to lose, and this time it was us ... but something tells me everyone won in the end.

Here's a picture of our new friends:

And here's a picture of my uncle and me at the game. The man who took the shot told us that we should have paid him for it, and even though he was joking, now I see why; it's one of the best pictures I've taken in years: