Podcast With Claudia Rosett

Mitch and I had a blast today talking with Claudia Rosett about the latest shenanigans at the United Nations, including Kofi Annan's valediction and Ban Ki Moon's inauguration. I've broken the two segments into separate podcasts:

Segment One
Segment Two

Hope you enjoy listening to the interview as much as we did conducting it!

Claudia Rosett On NARN Today!

Mitch and I go on the air today at 1 pm CT for our regular NARN broadcast, with a special guest to discuss the changes at the UN. Ban Ki Moon still remains a relative mystery to most Americans. Who is this new leader, and will he make the UN relevant again -- a force for freedom and liberty, rather than a tool of dictators and kleptocrats? In order to find the answers, we will have the intrepid Claudia Rosett on the Northern Alliance Radio Network this afternoon at 2 pm CT/3 pm ET. Be sure to tune in at AM 1280 The Patriot or listen to the station's Internet stream as we ask the media's best expert on the UN and its surrounding scandals how Moon can change the culture at Turtle Bay and who he has been until now. You can pose your own questions by calling 651-289-4488 during the show.

We'll also tackle lots of other topics in our first hour, so be sure to tune in for it all!

UPDATE: Claudia Rosett has her own Pajamas Media site, too.

Ghouls In Search Of A Story

After suffering a stroke and surviving surgery, Senator Tim Johnson has begun his recovery and appears to be improving. Reports have him conscious and communicating with family and doctors, which indicates that he will recover significantly from the incident. No further surgeries are expected, according to the medical staff.

One would think that all of the above would have ended the speculation about replacing Johnson and affecting the partisan balance of the Senate. However, the New York Times simply cannot stop itself from journalistic ghoulishness in pursuing an increasingly remote chance that any of that will be necessary:

In the tornado of talk about Senator Tim Johnson’s political future after his surgery to stem bleeding in the brain, one man has stayed mostly out of sight and mostly silent but for conveying his prayers through spokesmen.

Gov. Mike Rounds, a Republican whose duty it would be to appoint a replacement for Mr. Johnson, a Democrat, if that becomes necessary, finds himself in his most unlikely political role yet: the single person, potentially, to decide the partisan split of the United States Senate.

Besieged with questions about whom he might select, Mr. Rounds has declined to address the topic, his aides denouncing the inquiries as premature and beyond impolite and a subject that Mr. Rounds would not have given the first thought to.

Mr. Rounds had no public appearance on Thursday or Friday, instead attending private meetings in Pierre, his aides said. “Our concern is for Senator Johnson’s health,” Mark Johnston, his spokesman, said. “That’s South Dakota.”

Actually, that's America outside of the offices of the Paper of Record, where editors just ache to find Republican leaders scheming to steal Johnson's seat. Unfortunately, they find none, but that doesn't stop them from speculating endlessly about Rounds and his political ambitions. The Times gets a few South Dakota Democrats to speculate on a Rounds appointment that will never happen in an attempt to cast him as an opportunist.

The Gray Lady needs a grip. The only two developments which will create the situation on which they speculate is Johnson's death or Johnson's resignation, neither of which appears pending. In fact, if one could point to any time to have a medical crisis, this would be the season. Congress is out of session, no votes are pending, and Johnson has a few weeks in which to recover ... if the Times lets him.

The pursuit of this story even after Johnson's successful surgery and the start of his recovery suggests that the desperation can be found at the Times, and not with the Republicans. Can the ghouls please disappear until Halloween, please?

On The Whole, I'd Prefer 'Happy Holidays' (Updated)

Many people get exercised about the reluctance of retailers and politicians to say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Chanukah" of late, and cringe when they hear "Happy Holidays" instead. Critics see this as a secular erosion of the religious nature of the holiday, and some of the more militant advocates refer to it as the Christmas War. I don't find the secular greeting offensive, but I do appreciate the acknowledgment of Christmas when it occurs.

Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen has decided to up the ante, however, in his choice of imagery for his official Christmas cards:

Gov. Phil Bredesen has given an unusual twist to his family's Christmas card: He is marking a Christian holiday with a card depicting a Muslim girl.

The card's cover is a print of a painting by the governor of a young woman he met when he toured Afghanistan in March.

"May the peace and joy of this Christmas season be with you and your loved ones throughout the coming year," the card reads.

"While it may seem odd to put a portrait of a young Muslim woman on a Christmas card, this Season reminds us that He loves His children most of all," Bredesen stated on the back of the card.

If Bredesen thought this would mollify those who want more religion in their Christmas, he's going to be sorely disappointed. Christians want religion in their holiday, all right -- but they prefer it to be Christianity. We know God loves all his children, but Christianity has plenty of its own imagery for the holiday; we hardly need to borrow from Muslims for holiday greetings, especially these days.

And it hardly pacified the Muslims, either. I don't think they'll appreciate the Governor's concluding thought that Christmas should bring peace to Afghanistan, for one thing. The image itself will prove troubling for devout Muslims as well, which the spokesman for the Nashville Islamic center points out. The woman's face is uncovered and her hair shows, which might look beatific to Bredesen but offends conservative Muslims.

It's hard to understand what Bredesen was thinking with this choice, except for mindless political correctness. The message from Tennessee this holiday appears to be, "Have Yourself A Dhimmi Little Christmas." I'll pass. (via CQ reader Jim Brown in TN)

UPDATE: I forgot to include a link to Power Line, who's also linking to this. Commenters are making the argument that Bredesen is emphasizing the effort that Christians should make to love their enemies, but since when do we define Christianity through those who oppose it? I don't recall the use of Communist imagery for Christmas cards during the Cold War, for instance, especially in 1981 when Bulgaria's secret police tried to assassinate John Paul II. I'd prefer that Christmas references to religion focus on the birth of Christ and Christianity, and I don't think that's asking too much; I'd expect Chanukah references to focus on Judaism, not Christianity or Islam in the same measure. If that's too much to ask, then use Frosty the Snowman.

I should note that Bredesen is a rather good amateur artist; he painted this himself.

UPDATE II: Perhaps Bredesen will reciprocate by using imagery of Jesus for Ramadan next year. Any bets on that?

UPDATE III: A couple of commenters note the striking similarities between Bredesen's portrait and National Geographic's Afghan Girl from 1985. The similarity is rather striking, especially in the facial expression and the unusual eye color -- one of the keys they used to find her twenty years later.

Not Our Problem Any More

Anders Gyllenhaal will leave the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in March to take the reins at the Miami Herald, another McClatchy-owned newspaper. His departure ends a rocky period of the local paper in which his editorial guidance appeared to include the willful ignorance of two major stories regarding local Muslims:

Anders Gyllenhaal, editor and senior vice president for news at the Star Tribune, is leaving the job he has held for nearly five years to become executive editor of the Miami Herald.

Gyllenhaal, 55, will replace Tom Fiedler in Miami starting in March. Both the Star Tribune and the Herald are owned by the McClatchy Co. The Herald, Florida's second-largest newspaper, was acquired by McClatchy earlier this year as part of its $6 billion purchase of Knight Ridder Inc. ...

Gyllenhaal has supervised a newsroom of 380 people and also has been responsible for news content for the 15th-largest newspaper in the country. The Star Tribune has a daily circulation of 358,887 and a Sunday circulation of 596,333. Gyllenhaal serves on the board of the Pulitzer Prize and has been a longtime advocate for press freedom, serving at one time as chairman of the Freedom of Information Committee for the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

I can't say that I'm sorry to see him go. The Strib has some fine reporters, but the paper's editorial direction leaves much to be desired. Gyllenhaal's editorial control of the news at the Strib has always been contentious, but it became the focus of two stories over the past few months.

The Strib refused to report in depth on the political history of Keith Ellison, the Nation of Islam acolyte who ran for public office just eight years ago, campaigning for less police involvement on the streets of Minneapolis in favor of having the NOI provide patrols instead. Rather than give Minneapolis readers a serious accounting of Ellison's involvement in this virulent anti-Semitic group, it mouthed the Ellison campaign's denials that their candidate ever had anything to do with the NOI after the Million Man March in 1995 despite the ample public record.

It fell to Scott Johnson at Power Line to do the research, investigation, and reporting that Gyllenhaal refused to perform. Even worse, they decided to run a smear campaign on Ellison's Republican opponent, Alan Fine, by digging up unsubstantiated charges of spousal abuse by his ex-wife. They ran information completely out of context and refused to include highly exculpatory information, later claiming that space limitations forced them to drop all of the facts that showed the charges to be bogus.

Following closely on the heels of that editorial disaster, the paper again refused to do much investigation in the case of the Flying Imams. Again, Gyllenhaal's editorial direction led the Strib to mindlessly repeat the charges leveled by the imams against US Air without making much of an effort to report the actions that led to US Air's refusal to allow them to fly. Instead, opinion columnist Katherine Kersten has had to use her space to report all of the facts and context that should have been reported by the Strib's news desk.

And while the Strib brags about those circulation numbers, it once again does so while channeling George Orwell. Gyllenhaal lost them 4% on daily circ and 6% on Sunday circ over last year. That's a higher rate of decline than the national average, which the Strib fails to mention as well.

Gyllenhaal has proven himself one of these media executives that claims to support aggressive reporting, but in practice only uses it for politically correct purposes. His tenure here in Minneapolis cannot end quickly enough, and I send my condolences to Miami Herald readers who will now have to experience his agenda-driven journalism. Unfortunately, knowing the Strib and its management, we will probably not get anyone better than Gyllenhaal as a replacement. (via future victim Brant at SWLiP)

A Conspiracy To Defraud

I have not written much about the Matt Nifong debacle unfolding in Durham, NC over the past few months. Other bloggers like Jeralyn Merritt and Tom Maguire have done an excellent job in covering the fiasco, and I've enjoyed keeping up with their work. Today, however, the local Raleigh paper exposes a conspiracy on the part of Nifong to commit prosecutorial misconduct and keep exculpatory evidence from the defendants:

The head of a private DNA laboratory said under oath today that he and District Attorney Mike Nifong agreed not to report DNA results favorable to Duke lacrosse players charged with rape.

Brian Meehan, director of DNA Security of Burlington, said his lab found DNA from unidentified men in the underwear, pubic hair and rectum of the woman who said she was gang-raped at a lacrosse party in March. Nurses at Duke Hospital collected the samples a few hours after the alleged assault. Meehan said the DNA did not come from Reade Seligmann, David Evans, or Collin Finnerty, who have been charged with rape and sexual assault in the case.

Meehan struggled to say why he didn’t include the favorable evidence in a report dated May 12, almost a month after Seligmann and Finnerty had been indicted. He cited concerns about the privacy of the lacrosse players, his discussions at several meetings with Nifong, and the fact that he didn’t know whose DNA it was.

Under questioning by Jim Cooney, a defense attorney for Seligmann, Meehan admitted that his report violated his laboratory’s standards by not reporting results of all tests.

Meehan then confirmed that he and Nifong had intentionally made the decision to keep the information from the defendants in the rape case. This was information that the defendants were entitled to have -- in fact, it's evidence that Nifong was required to give them, by law. Failure to do so violates the laws governing discovery, and conspiring to commit an illegal act with Meehan constitutes a criminal offense.

I doubt that Nifong will arrest himself for criminal conspiracy to violate the Duke lacrosse players' civil rights, but perhaps the Department of Justice might decide to do so. It's become obvious that Nifong has gone out of control on this case, and someone will have to step in and stop him from doing any more harm to either the defendants or the community of Durham. Nifong has shamed himself, his department, and the state of North Carolina. At the least, he should lose his ability to practice law ever again.

And someone had better drop the charges against those college students ASAP. I suspect that the attorneys are busy working on those motions right now.

The Book Closes On Judith Regan

Last month, HarperCollins and its Regan imprint shocked and angered the nation by announcing the publication of a book by OJ Simpson titled If I Did It. The firestorm of criticism surrounding that decision eventually caused HarperCollins to cancel the publication and the Fox Network to cancel its two-part interview with imprint executive Judith Regan and Simpson. Now the other shoe has dropped:

O.J. Simpson's would-be publisher, Judith Regan, was fired Friday, her sensational, scandalous tenure at Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. ending with the tersest of announcements.

"Judith Regan's employment with HarperCollins has been terminated effective immediately," HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman said in a statement. "The REGAN publishing program and staff will continue as part of the HarperCollins General Books Group."

Regan's firing comes less than a month after Murdoch's cancellation of Simpson's hypothetical murder confession, "If I Did It," a planned book and Fox television interview that was greeted with instant and near-universal disgust when announced.

An industry force since the 1980s, when she produced best-sellers by Drew Barrymore and Kathie Lee Gifford for Simon & Schuster, Regan has been labeled a "foul-mouthed tyrant" and the "enfant terrible of American publishing." She is also widely envied if not admired for her gift of attracting attention to her books and to herself.

The driving force behind Jenna Jameson's "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star," a book made rather redundant by the actress' extensive video demonstrations, obviously made few friends during her career in publishing. She packed up for Los Angeles to get away from personality conflicts, when the heart of publishing remains in New York. It sounds like the Simpson debacle gave HarperCollins a perfect opportunity to ditch their albatross, and they took advantage of it.

She'll probably return to publishing, but a little wiser the next time. Or, if not, we can look forward to a book by Robert Blake about how he would have murdered his wife, too.

Two States Suspend Executions

California and Florida suspended executions today after controversy erupted from a botched lethal injection earlier this week. While the officials who implemented the moratoria in each state said the stoppage should be temporary, it might create pressure to rethink executions in both states:

Gov. Jeb Bush suspended all executions in Florida after a medical examiner said Friday that prison officials botched the insertion of the needles when a convicted killer was put to death earlier this week.

Separately, a federal judge in California extended a moratorium on executions in the nation's most populous state, declaring that the state's method of lethal injection violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled in San Jose that California's "implementation of lethal injection is broken, but it can be fixed."

In Florida, medical examiner Dr. William Hamilton said Wednesday's execution of Angel Nieves Diaz took 34 minutes _ twice as long as usual _ and required a rare second dose of lethal chemicals because the needles were inserted clear through his veins and into the flesh in his arms. The chemicals are supposed to go into the veins. ...

The governor said he wants to ensure the process does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment, as some death penalty foes argued bitterly after Diaz's execution. Florida has 374 people on death row; it has carried out four executions this year.

Most people saw this coming, although having Jeb Bush issue the order in Florida does surprise me. Bush apparently wanted to take the heat for Charlie Crist before the new governor takes office, and it's the right call. The execution of Diaz once again creates doubt about Florida's ability to properly conduct executions, and they need to demonstrate that they can avoid the errors they made with the injections, or else this method will go the way of Old Sparky after it set its execution target on fire.

The California situation has different issues. In this case, the judge believes that the proper execution of the lethal injection still causes undue pain and suffering in its target. It will be hard to prove any new process does not have the same problem since the proper use of the process leaves its subject dead. The judge says that the procedure does not necessarily have to end, but he's set up a tough threshold to clear.

As well he should. Long-time CQ readers know that I oppose the death penalty for a number of reasons; it doesn't get applied equally, DNA evidence has proven some of those condemned innocent, and the long periods between sentencing and execution (especially in California) expose the entire process as a sham. Mostly, the government should only take life when imminent danger to innocent life exists, and that clearly is not the case when the government has the convict in custody for over 20 years at a time.

In truth, the more rational and clear path is to sentence the convicts to life imprisonment without parole. It removes all of the death-row notoriety from the convicts and forces them to live out their natural lives as anonymous drones in a cage. It provides closure at a much earlier date, and it keeps scum like Mumia Abu Jamal and Stanley "Tookie" Williams from getting lionized by death-penalty protestors.

In Florida, the death penalty has too much popular support to disappear, at least for now. California citizens might take advantage of this opportunity to rethink their use of executions. (via elrod at TMV)

UPDATE: Lew asks a good question in the comments:

[H]ow is it possible for a lone justice, wrapped in his robes and perched in spendid solitude above the fray, to decide that ANTHING is cruel and unusual. This would seem the penultimate case of isolated elitism, looking down its nose with condescending contempt at the common folk and preaching its own gospel. In fact, no lone person can ever determine what "usual" means, much less a lone person even more isolated by virtue of his being a judge.

Well, the problem with that argument is that the restriction against "cruel and unusual punishment" gets explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, specifically Amendment 8 in the Bill of Rights. Even a supporter of judicial modesty, a strict constructionist would allow that the courts have jurisdiction to determine that question based on the explicit text of the document.

But for me, it's not about the Eighth Amendment. I just think that the death penalty is a mistake, even if it passes Constitutional muster, which I believe it does.

UPDATE II: Is DNA exoneration of death-row inmates a "canard", as SonnyJim claims in the comments? No:

Earl Washington: Sentenced to death in 1984 for rape and murder in Virginia after the police got a confession from him. DNA proved him innocent of the charge in 1993, but because of evidentiary laws in Virginia, it took seven more years for him to be freed.

Robert Miller: Convicted in 1988 of murder and rape; DNA testing proved another man had done the crime, and Miller was released after nine years.

Frank Lee Smith: Convicted in Florida of murder and rape in 1986, Smith was finally exonerated in 2000 by DNA testing that proved another convict had done the crime. Unfortunately for Smith, he had died in prison a few months before being exonerated.

HostGator Will Not Stand Up For Clients' Free Speech

Stop the ACLU and My Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy have a disturbing story for those of us who defend freedom of speech through our blogging; a hosting service has shut down a blogger for voicing a controversial satire. HostGator has suspended the Right Wing Howler for linking to and excerpting an "editorial" at IMAO, a well-known source of biting (and excellent) political satire. Vilmar's offending web page has been cached by Google here.

To no one's great surprise, HostGator locked Vilmar out of his blog following a complaint by CAIR:

The Tampa, Fla., office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Tampa) is calling on an Internet web hosting company in that state to drop a hate site that supports calls to "kill all Muslim kids."

Under the headline, "Love Your Kids? Fear For Their Future? Kill All Muslim Kids," the Web site's owner, who lives in the Tampa area, wrote: "Makes sense to me. After all, if Muslims are raising their little crumb- snatching, curtain climbing, ankle biting rug rats to strap on bombs in order to kill us, it is logically correct to assume that in order to stop that from happening we need to kill all Muslim kids. Starting now." ...

In a letter to Boca Raton-based Hostgator.com LLC, CAIR-Tampa Executive Director Ahmed Bedier wrote: "While we respect an individual's right to freedom of speech, we oppose hate-filled speech that calls for violence against innocent people...It's clear that (the website is) in violation of your company's 'Terms of Service' agreement which states: '...Any material that, in our judgment, is obscene or threatening is prohibited and will be removed from our servers with or without notice.' The agreement also clearly defines 'hate sites' under 'Examples of unacceptable material.'"

Bedier asked Hostgator to stop hosting the site. He noted that CAIR had raised concerns about the anti- Muslim site at a local forum on hate crimes in November.

First, the offending first piece didn't even originate with Vilmar, as I noted above. Second, it was satire, as one look at IMAO would have demonstrated, complete with the hilariously thoughtful pose of Frank J. If anyone at CAIR knew how to follow a link, they would also have seen this droll paragraph as a dead giveaway:

Finally, some think that the scope of this plan is too limited since Iran is a big supporter of terrorism but they're not Arab and thus don't have Arab children. I frankly don't understand that. If Iranians aren't Arabs, then what are they doing in the Middle East? That doesn't make sense. I'm quite sure Iranians are Arab and anyone who says otherwise is probably just confused.

So the people at CAIR have no sense of humor and apparently no knowledge of satire. Jonathan Swift once wrote a powerful political satire titled "A Modest Proposal", in which he suggested that the English eat Irish children to improve the lives of their parents. While Frank J's satire might not appeal to all tastes, it's hardly a serious call to genocide. And as far as a second passage that CAIR quotes from Vilmar's site, readers can easily surmise that Vilmar meant that war was coming to Americans and that they should prepare themselves.

CAIR, which has joined the effort to intimidate airlines into ignoring provocations from Musims, now wants to intimidate the blogosphere into silence. We can blame CAIR for this action, and it certainly reveals them as humorless and autocratic twits, but the real culprit here is HostGator. One would expect a service that hosts blogs to take the First Amendment rights of their clients a little more seriously than this. Instead of dialoguing with Vilmar, or better yet telling CAIR to pound sand, they abruptly took Vilmar's site down.

Do they have the right to do that? Of course -- it's their service. However, other HostGator customers should take notice and start arranging to take their business elsewhere, such as my provider, Hosting Matters. HM hosts many prominent bloggers and has a track record of defending our right to be heard in the political marketplace of ideas. Bloggers should spread the word that HostGator is a Quisling, a backstabber that will do nothing to defend its clients against bullying tactics of terrorist apologists like CAIR. HostGator can be reached through this link, for those who want to complain directly to the source.

The best remedy for bad speech is more speech, not prior restraint and silencing techniques. People who try to shut down bloggers have no interest in freedom and liberty.

UPDATE: Frequent CQ commenter Lexhamfox asks a very good question:

While generally agreeing with you that there should be more free speech rather than less... do we extend this courtesy to those who support terror or promote peadophilia?

I would say that a hosting provider should limit their actions to speech that is already recognized as illegal, such as incitement to riot, incitement to terror, or child pornography as examples. While Frank's satirical editorial might be viewed as tasteless by some, it doesn't amount to incitement to terror, riot, or murder, no more than did Swift's essay amount to incitement to cannibalism.

I should also note that the First Amendment applies to government action, not that of private companies. However, any blogger hosting service should understand and support the full range of political speech -- and if not, bloggers should abandon such services as soon as they discover that a service will cave to special-interest groups on every imagined slight or offense in a blogger's political essays.

UPDATE II: Vilmar has decided to shut down the blog, telling readers that he planned to quit at the end of the month anyway. He also tried to take some of the heat off of HostGator, noting that its owner finally called him to ask about the situation. I'm not impressed. HostGator should have called or contacted him prior to suspending his account. However, we wish Vilmar the best and hope he rediscovers his passion for blogging at some future date. (via the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler)

UPDATE III: Apparently, the bloggers at Pandagon have a reading disability. I know that Jonathan Swift was Irish, I know that he didn't want the English to eat Irish children -- which is why I described A Modest Proposal as effective satire. It's one of my favorite political satires, in fact. I didn't claim it was the exact analog of IMAO's entreaty, just that it serves as an example of calling for violence as a satirical method, not as a serious incitement to murder. Furthermore, it's pretty damned obvious in the context I use it above. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees!

As If They Need An Excuse

The deteriorating health of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the "blind sheik" imprisoned for his role in planning the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, has touched off a terror warning by the FBI:

The health of terrorist cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman, known as the Blind Sheik, is deteriorating renewing fears that his death in prison could trigger an attack on the United States, officials said Thursday.

There is no credible indication that an attack on the U.S. is imminent, said several law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the situation. ...

Officials said the bulletin served merely as a reminder that Abdel-Rahman had called for retaliation by terror sympathizers if he died in prison. It cited a May 1998 news conference in which al-Qaida members distributed his last will and testament, in which Abdel-Rahman pleaded for followers to "extract the most violent revenge" should he die in U.S. custody.

The FBI did right by reminding people of the risk involved, but let's not kid ourselves. We took that risk when we put him in prison -- indeed, when we resolved to fight back against radical Islamists in any form. Ayman al-Zawahiri called for Muslims to attack America because of Abdel-Rahman's imprisonment, so his death really won't change much.

Besides, these calls have gone out many times over the last five years, and so far the terrorists have not succeeded in their plans to attack us. Why exactly is that? It's because we have not sat back on defense, waiting to parry whatever thrust comes at us from whatever direction it might. Our decision to fight a forward strategy against terrorists in their backyard rather than ours has crippled their ability to use their own forward strategy.

People scoff at this and claim our actions have created thousands of more jihadis, but that disregards the stunning losses the jihadis have taken over the last few years. Just last month, the Pentagon reversed its previous policy against releasing estimates of enemy losses in Iraq; we found out that the US had captured or killed almost 6,000 combatants in less than three months. That kind of pressure forces radical Islamists to recalculate their strategies to keep the US from gaining traction in the Middle East, and the result is that they're too busy defending their own territory to effectively strategize against our own.

Also, the engagement in their region allows us to gather more intelligence on their operations. That primary battlefield contact gives us an advantage in understanding their networks and their capabilities. It also puts them in contact with our military rather than our civil defense agencies like the FBI and local law enforcement, where we have the advantage in resources and capabilities. That allows our civil agencies to focus on prevention and investigation based on the intelligence we gather overseas. When this strategy is allowed to work as it should, it forms a formidable defense against the jihadis.

Events like the pending death of the blind sheikh should remind us of the threat, but don't believe for a moment that the jihadis will suddenly find new inspiration to penetrate our defenses because of it. They have tried and failed for over five years, and that failure is no coincidence.

A New Era At The UN ... We Hope

The long international nightmare of the Kofi Anna era ended yesterday when his successor, Ban Ki Moon, took his oath of office. He started his Secretariat with a joke about the daunting nature of his mission to restore faith and trust in the United Nations, and he continued by distancing himself from his predecessor's outbound remarks:

Ban Ki-moon of South Korea was sworn in Thursday as the next secretary general of the United Nations, and he pledged to rebuild faith in an organization that has been tarnished by scandal and riven by disputes between rich and poor nations.

“You could say that I am a man on a mission, and my mission could be dubbed ‘Operation Restore Trust’: trust in the organization, and trust between member states and the Secretariat,” he said.

He added, “I hope this mission is not ‘Mission: Impossible.’ ”

After praising Annan for his work at Turtle Bay, Moon noted that Annan's remarks about American foreign policy reflected Annan's own personal opinion and should not be considered part of the UN's approach to the US. In fact, he acknowledged that the UN and the US had worked at cross purposes and that he needed to rebuild trust with the American people.

It's not a bad start for the new leader of the UN. He seems to have more of a sense of humor than Annan; Fox News had a clip of him from a reception earlier this month spoofing himself by singing "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" but replacing Santa's name with his own. A man who does not take himself with deadly seriousness is one with more potential to handle criticism and accountability.

He made one slip yesterday that might play well in the Anglosphere. When asked a question in French by a Canadian journalist, Moon had to request that the reporter translate the question into English as he had difficulty in understanding the language. The question, as it turns out, was about Moon's understanding of the importance of keeping French as the second official language of the UN -- a reference to the French insistence that any UN Secretary-General be fluent in their language.

On a more serious note, he spoke out against the recent bout of Holocaust denial in Iran. Calling such efforts "not acceptable," he also criticized Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call to have Israel wiped off the map. Annan had done much the same in the waning days of his last term of office, and the continuity will make it easier to keep Iran on the hot seat. (Annan had actually criticized the Holocaust denial while in Teheran earlier this year.)

Ban Ki Moon still remains a relative mystery to most Americans. Who is this new leader, and will he make the UN relevant again -- a force for freedom and liberty, rather than a tool of dictators and kleptocrats? In order to find the answers, we will have the intrepid Claudia Rosett on the Northern Alliance Radio Network tomorrow afternoon at 2 pm CT/3 pm ET. Be sure to tune in at AM 1280 The Patriot or listen to the station's Internet stream as we ask the media's best expert on the UN and its surrounding scandals how Moon can change the culture at Turtle Bay and who he has been until now. You can pose your own questions by calling 651-289-4488 during the show tomorrow.

Scandal On The Edge Of Tomorrow

Barack Obama has enjoyed a boomlet in the opening days of the 2008 Presidential campaign, becoming the not-Hillary of the moment. He has positioned himself well for at least a shot at the VP slot on the ticket, and despite his lack of experience and youth (two years in national office and 45 years old) has become a serious contender for the top position. He generates crowds and energy, and the money will not be long in following.

However, he has a potential scandal that has nibbled on the edges of political consciousness for the last few months. John Dickerson in Slate brings it a little closer to the center of debate for the 2008 race, wondering if it will prove damaging enough to Obama's hopes that it stops him:

The Chicago Tribune broke the story back in November. It begins in 2004 with Obama's $1.9 million book advance for The Audacity of Hope. In June 2005, Obama used the money to purchase a $1.65 million Georgian revival home on Chicago's South Side—$300,000 less than the asking price. On the very same day, Rezko, a Democratic Party fund-raiser and developer, bought the adjacent empty lot at the asking price from the same owner (the house and the lot were previously owned by the same person). Rezko, who had raised money for Obama and known him since the senator attended Harvard Law School, did not develop the empty lot. In January 2006, he sold a 1,500-square-foot slice of it to Obama for $104,000, a fair sum in that market.

Here's the question: Did Rezko orchestrate his same-day purchase of the lot at full price so that the seller would give Obama a break on the price of the adjacent house? Was Obama in on the deal? And did Rezko never intend to develop the lot, giving Obama a nice roomy side yard, a favor which he'd call in later?

Since the sale, Rezko's business practices have made headlines in Chicago. Right now he faces a 24-count federal indictment for corruption, specifically in arranging kickbacks for government contracts he helped facilitate. Rezko reportedly has started cooperating with the feds, and Dickerson wonders whether that will include information on Obama's coincidental purchase.

Obama, for his part, has shrewdly skipped the stonewalling for mea culpas. Obama says he learned a lesson, which is to avoid doing business with political supporters, especially in real estate. So far, no one has proven any quid pro quo from Obama to Rezko, and if that doesn't change, then this will most likely get chalked up to a rookie mistake. As Dickerson also points out, Hillary Clinton will not dare to make questionable real estate ventures a campaign issue -- not after Whitewater and the Rose Law Firm records scandals.

The issue for Obama is the vulnerability he has to scandal. His trump card will be his outsider status and his candor. Obama represents the hope of a change from business as usual in Washington, a uniter instead of a divider -- the kind of meme that elected the last two Presidents, of course, and we have seen the resultant increase in partisan rancor over the last 14 years. If Obama's relationship with Rezko gains any traction, it threatens to hurt Obama's greatest strength.

Bagman, Terror Man, Beggar Man, Chief

Ismail Haniyeh got stopped at the Gaza border yesterday for attempting to smuggle as much as $35 million in cash into the sanctions-hit territories. The border stop pushed tensions to the breaking point, and Hamas lashed out at both Fatah and the Egyptians on both sides of the line:

In a bizarre standoff that lasted more than seven hours on Thursday, Israel barred the Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya, from returning home to the Gaza Strip, saying he was carrying tens of millions of dollars in cash that could be used for terrorist attacks.

Mr. Haniya was finally allowed to cross from Egypt into the southern Gaza Strip late Thursday night, but only after leaving the money with Hamas officials who stayed behind in Egypt.

During his lengthy wait, dozens of angry gunmen from his Hamas movement shot up the Rafah border terminal, clashing first with Palestinian security forces on one side of the border and later with Egyptian security officials on the other side. At least 15 Palestinians were hurt, and most were believed to be from Hamas.

After Mr. Haniya reached the Gaza side, another round of shooting broke out and one of his sons was wounded and one of his bodyguards killed.

Hamas has little choice but to attempt this end run around the sanctions imposed by Western nations. The banking systems will not do business with Hamas for fear of getting tainted by the association with terrorists. Instead, Hamas has become a cash business, and not a successful one at that. While they have had some limited successes with their smuggling, the $150 million a month tab cannot possibly be serviced by muling cash across the border, not even using one of the Palestinian Authority's biggest asses.

Clearly, Haniyeh has created more problems than he solves, a fact that should become apparent even to the most dense Palestinian. He just went on a hat-in-hand tour of the region and got $250 million in pledges -- not even enough for two months of salary for PA employees. Of that $250 million, all he had with him was $35 million, and he couldn't even smuggle that effectively.

A civil war may break out in Gaza and the West Bank soon, thanks to the depraved assassination of three children of a Fatah leader earlier this week. The series of reprisals since then have brought all factions into the streets. However, if Haniyeh cannot get cash inside Gaza where Hamas has formed its largest political base, he will have more to fear from his own people than from Mahmoud Abbas.

UPDATE: Hamas has wrested control of the Rafah crossing from Fatah-led PA security forces:

Hamas gunmen seized control of the Gaza Strip's border crossing with Egypt on Thursday in a ferocious gunbattle with Fatah-allied border guards after Israel blocked the Hamas prime minister from crossing with tens of millions of dollars in aid. ...

Thursday's gunbattle at the border erupted after Hamas militants, angry that Israel was preventing Haniyeh from returning, stormed the Rafah terminal, which is controlled by the pro-Fatah Presidential Guard under the watch of European monitors.

The Presidential Guard opened fire, setting off a gunfight. Terrified travelers ran for cover, some carrying their luggage. Crying women and children hid behind walls and taxis, while the European monitors who police the crossing fled. Two Hamas militants were among those wounded.

The Hamas militants, chanting "God is Great, let's liberate this place" took over the arrival hall, and border guards escorted the European monitors to safety. Two loud explosions rocked the area, and security officials said militants had blown a hole in the border fence about a half mile from the terminal.

This will not help Hamas in lifting the sanctions against it as a terrorist group, as even the EU recognizes that it has to react to an attack on a position it monitors. Hamas and Haniyeh have spent a lot of time and effort in trying to convince European nations to end the economic sanctions and restore aid to the PA, an effort which some claimed had shown signs of success. Now that will set Hamas back to square one, showing them as diplomatic incompetents all over again.

How Not To Establish Media Credibility

The first rule of Media Club is don't make things up. The second rule of Media Club is that if you break the first rule, don't create such a fantastic hoax that its collapse enrages an entire nation. The third rule of Media Club is that if you break the first two rules of Media Club ... start your own Internet news service.

You think I'm kidding? Ask the executives at RTBF, the French-language Belgian broadcaster, who may find themselves with plenty of time to go the full Eason Jordan after their latest stunt:

Thousands of Belgians were thrown into a panic by news that the Flemish half of the country had declared independence. A two-hour live television report on the break-up of the nation showed images of ecstatic Flemish nationalists waving flags on the streets and queues of French speakers heading for the “border”.

The panic turned to anger after RTBF, the French public broadcaster, admitted 40 minutes into the show that it was a hoax designed to dramatise tensions between Flanders, in the north, and French-speaking Wallonia, in the south.

Thousands of viewers called the station during the broadcast, some of them in tears over the “death of Belgium” and reports that the King had fled. ...

Fadila Laanan, the minister responsible for TV in Wallonia, forced the station to confess to the hoax after receiving an alarming number of phone calls and text messages during the programme.

Wow -- sounds hilarious! Of course, there's simply no better comedy that that which attempts to convince people that a massive effort at ethnic cleansing has just begun in their country. It's especially funny when it exploits real tensions between communities. Tres bon, mais oui!

Comparisons have already been made between this hoax and the Orson Welles broadcast of War of the Worlds, but there are two major differences. First, Welles actually had a disclaimer to start the show, which most people still don't know; it was the people who tuned in late who freaked over the "invasion". Secondly, it was an adaptation of a well-known piece of fiction by a band of radio performers who regularly did such dramatizations at that scheduled time.

This hoax, by comparison, got conducted by a news agency without any disclaimers whatsoever. It's difficult to understand how they thought faking a civil war would give them the credibility to speak on the tensions in Belgium. Instead, RTBF destroyed the credibility of the real journalists who staged this fiasco and its own as well. Who would trust anything they report now? If they staged a civil war with some believability, who knows what else they have staged?

However, they shouldn't feel too bad. If current events prove anything, the producers and the journalists who conspired to stage the Belgian civil war will be running an Internet news aggregator about internal Belgian politics in less than two years.

UPDATE: The original Times report was unclear about this, but RTBF is a French-language Belgian broadcaster, not a French broadcaster. Thanks to CQ commenter obsrvr for the correction.

The Legend Of The Bactrian Gold

Do you enjoy Indiana Jones films, Humphrey Bogart mysteries, and patriotic fervor? No, I'm not writing another film review -- I'm talking about a real-life story that has more drama than any showing at the local cinema. It's the story of the legendary Bactrian gold, and how we owe its existence today to the bravery of seven men, including one very unlikely hero:

It was a mystery of legendary proportions. When a 2,000-year-old treasure trove went missing from Afghanistan's National Museum in the 1980s, the rumors abounded: Did the Soviets take it? Was it looted and sold on the black market? Were 22,000 pieces of gold, jewel-encrusted crowns and magnificent daggers melted down and traded for weapons?

As it turns out, none of these plausible scenarios ever happened. Instead, a mysterious group of Afghans had stowed the so-called Bactrian gold underground and guarded its secret for over two decades of war and chaos. This month, some of the artifacts are on display at the Guimet Museum in Paris.

The group, the so-called "key holders," held the keys to the underground vault where the treasure was kept underneath the presidential palace grounds. They are believed to have hidden the treasure sometime after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. They diligently kept their secret throughout the civil war of the 1990s and the period of Taliban rule all the way up through the 2001 American-led invasion.

Der Spiegel lays out the story in broad strokes, but fortunately I saw a History Channel special on the Bactrian discovery. The treasures of the Bactrian period had long eluded archeologists, and some had assumed them to be nothing more than legend, or the victim of graverobbers over the centuries. However, a Russian archeologist named Viktor Sarianidi finally discovered a trove of golden treasure at a burial site in eastern Afghanistan. The discovery made news around the world, but world events conspired to keep Sarianidi from fully exploring his find and properly cataloguing his treasure.

The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in the following year, touching off a decade-long resistance. Partisan bands formed and the area of Sarianidi's discovery became treacherous. Increasingly, the war encroached on the area, and Sarianidi feared not only for his life but for the priceless treasures he kept discovering. If the rebels got their hands on the gold, they could melt it down and get millions for weapons and other necessities. After sticking it out as long as he could, he finally ended work at the site and took the treasures to Kabul and the Soviet-propped government.

The government first had the treasure displayed in an Afghan museum, but by the end of the 1980s and the Soviet withdrawal, the situation got too dangerous to leave them in the open. Mohammed Najibullah, the Soviet puppet in charge of Afghanistan, had the Bactrian gold locked in the most secure place in the country -- the Central Bank. The facility had a hidden vault, deep below the surface, with seven locks and seven keys. Najibullah distributed the keys to trusted officials, all of whom pledged their lives to guard the secret of the Bactrian gold, even while the Najibullah government teetered on the edge of collapse.

A while afterwards in 1996, Kabul fell to the Taliban. Soon they found out about the Bactrian gold and the other treasures hidden in the Central Bank and attempted to open the safe. When they could not break it, they captured Najibullah and tried to torture the solution out of him. Everyone knew that the pre-Mohammed artwork would never survive exposure to the Taliban, who had already destroyed much of the art and treasure still left in Afghanistan's museums; they would have melted it all down for the value of the gold. According to the History Channel special, the Taliban killed Najibullah because even under torture he would not reveal the names of those who held the keys to the safe. They strung him and his brother up outside the presidential palace and mutilated their bodies, but they never found the keys to the treasure.

After the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the retreat of the Taliban from Kabul, the keyholders sought out Hamid Karzai and told him of the treasure. In disbelief, the men opened the safe and discovered not just the Bactrian gold, but also a number of other treasures, as well as the gold bars from the Afghan treasury. Najibullah, a puppet who had run the secret police in Afghanistan for his Soviet masters, proved himself an Afghan patriot in the end, at least in this small measure.

It's an amazing story, and if it appears again on the History Channel, be sure to catch it.

A Little Link Love For A Cold December Night

... except it's not so cold out here right now, and maybe I just jinxed it. We had an unseasonably warm day for mid-December, getting into the high 40s on a sunny day -- a rare pleasure. Unfortunately, I worked through most of it, but took a quick drive at lunch with the window rolled down to enjoy it, sans jacket. The First Mate and I finished up the Christmas shopping, for the most part anyway, and enjoyed it until the rain started to fall.

Now I'm back and catching up on a few things, including rest. However, I want to hit a few links before getting down to more serious work. First, speaking of serious, Thinking Right has an interview with a National Guard soldier currently serving in Iraq. Jim gets that all-important boots-on-the-ground opinion of the war, and you might be surprised about what you find.

Next, we have elections on the mind. Not the midterms, not the 2008 Presidential campaign, but the Weblogs. David Schraub currently sits at second place in his category, and he wants to at least finish there. Debate Link deserves a look, even if David is a Carleton liberal; we're hoping to convince him to become a conservative after he graduates. In the meantime, he's an excellent blogger, so consider casting a vote for him. For a right-thinking blogger who deserves a vote, check out The Anchoress. She lists her selections for the awards -- with a very nice mention of yours truly -- and you can vote for her here. She's picking Shakespeare's Sister for Best Liberal Blog, but I think the category suffers from the missing Talk Left. Jeralynn's in the Top 250 category, but so is Beth at My VRWC, who has to get my vote.

Brant at Strange Women Lying in Ponds covers Bill Nelson's tete a tete with Bashar Assad. As a Floridian, he has the best perspective on the idiocy of Nelson's dumb attempt at circumventing the foreign policy of the Bush administration.

John at Stop the ACLU has a good post about the tug of war between the DoJ and the ACLU over a classified memo the latter acquired. The Bush administration has decided to take the ACLU to court in order to determine who leaked the secret information. I'm sure you can guess which side John takes.

Bruce at Democracy Project has his own take on Eason Jordan's return to journalism, and his chosen topic.

John at Power Line has an open letter to President Bush about what to do next with Iran. He uses the Battle of Little Round Top, the Cuban missile crisis, and Detective Columbo to convince Bush to take military action against Iran for supplying the munitions that kill American servicemen in Iraq. It's interesting, it's provocative ... it's classic John Hinderaker, and you can comment on it in the Power Line Forum.

Back later ...

UPDATE: And go visit Sissy Willis, because otherwise I'm toast. And if you're casting multiple votes for the Top 250 category, try to spread the love between her and Beth.

Guess Who's Back In Business?

After the meltdown of Eason Jordan in 2005, we expected him to disappear into academia. After almost two years, though, Jordan has returned with his own small news organization. Iraqslogger, named after one of Donald Rumsfeld's remarks, promises to aggregate all of the news stories that others miss, as well as providing original reporting from Iraq:

For the past four years there has been no shortage of news and views on Iraq and the long-running war there. What’s been missing: a one-stop-shopping clearinghouse for nonpartisan information, including material coming out of Iraq itself from natives of that country, not from foreign correspondents.

Now that need is finally being addressed in the form of IraqSlogger, in Beta at www.iraqslogger.com, but due to be officially launched next week. Its director is the former CNN news division chief, Eason Jordan, who quit that post suddenly in 2005 after 23 years with the company. The name of his new venture, he says, was inspired by a Donald Rumsfeld reference to this war being a “long, hard slog.”

You have to read the Editor & Publisher column by Greg Mitchell to believe it. He makes one mention of Jordan's departure from CNN in February 2005: "He exited CNN in the wake of the uproar over his off-the-record comments (which he insisted were misinterpreted) at a Davos meeting concerning U.S. military involvement in the accidental deaths of several journalists in Iraq." That's not what Jordan said, and Mitchell knows it. Jordan accused the US military of deliberately assassinating journalists in Iraq:

During one of the discussions about the number of journalists killed in the Iraq War, Eason Jordan asserted that he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by US troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted. He repeated the assertion a few times, which seemed to win favor in parts of the audience (the anti-US crowd) and cause great strain on others.

Due to the nature of the forum, I was able to directly challenge Eason, asking if he had any objective and clear evidence to backup these claims, because if what he said was true, it would make Abu Ghraib look like a walk in the park. David Gergen was also clearly disturbed and shocked by the allegation that the U.S. would target journalists, foreign or U.S. He had always seen the U.S. military as the providers of safety and rescue for all reporters.

Eason seemed to backpedal quickly, but his initial statements were backed by other members of the audience (one in particular who represented a worldwide journalist group). The ensuing debate was (for lack of better words) a real "sh--storm". What intensified the problem was the fact that the session was a public forum being taped on camera, in front of an international crowd. The other looming shadow on what was going on was the presence of a U.S. Congressman and a U.S. Senator in the middle of some very serious accusations about the U.S. military.

To be fair (and balanced), Eason did backpedal and make a number of statements claiming that he really did not know if what he said was true, and that he did not himself believe it.

Later, of course, we found other Jordan statements of the same nature, always outside the United States, and always without any supporting evidence. CNN refused to allow the Davos forum to produce the video of Jordan's remarks, which would have cleared up any misunderstandings of Jordan's accusations. A CQ investigation into the incident revealed other CNN executives with histories of such unsupported accusations against Western militaries, and CNN never bothered to respond to any of the information that the blogosphere found.

You can find all of my reporting on this subject here.

It's interesting that Jordan chose Iraq as the subject for his return. After all, Jordan admitted to selling out CNN to Saddam Hussein to keep its Baghdad bureau open. He had his reporters read talking points written by Saddam's henchmen as independent news stories. Mitchell doesn't bother to ask about this, even though it goes straight to the question of Jordan's credibility on any reporting he does on Iraq.

Jordan's return proves that anyone shameless enough can push his way back into the national spotlight after destroying his credibility. E&P made itself an unwitting pawn in this manipulative stunt, and it abandoned any sense of journalistic ethics in running this puff piece on a discredited partisan.

Jules Crittenden has a good roundup on this, and Jordan's offering a free trip to Michelle Malkin.

Flying Imams A Campaign Stunt

The obvious nature of the provocation made by six Muslim clerics on a US Air flight last month has people wondering what purpose it served for them. Did the imams intend to make a name for themselves in the Muslim victimhood campaign? Did they want to test the security procedures of the airline to determine their capabilities? Kathryn Kersten has a different answer in today's Star Tribune column -- and it's one that encompasses many of the guesses:

On Dec. 1, a curious report on the grounded-imams incident at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport appeared on the website of the Iranian Quran News Agency. The report quoted extensively from Madhi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation. The foundation is the American arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, "the world's most influential Islamic fundamentalist group," according to the Chicago Tribune.

Bray's initial statement about the incident had an all-American, see-you-in-court ring. He demanded "large financial compensation for the imams," adding, "We want US Airways and any other airline displaying this type of behavior against Muslims to be hit where it hurts, the pocketbook." ...

But the report on the Iranian website, which has appeared on a variety of Muslim websites worldwide, had a larger primary focus. After the imams incident, it quoted Bray as saying Muslims want "new, broad-sweeping legislation that will extract even larger financial and civil penalties for any airline that participates in racial and religious profiling."

The report is optimistic that Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, will lend his support to new legislation. Ellison, it says, has expressed his opposition to "such racial and religious profiling." Ellison, through a spokesman, declined to comment.

One piece of legislation in the works is the End Racial Profiling Act. It is an important priority of Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, whose district includes one of the largest Muslim populations in the country. Conyers introduced the bill in 2004 and 2005, but it went nowhere. Now the alignment of forces may be changing. Conyers will probably be chairman of the House Judiciary Committee when the new Democratic-controlled Congress convenes next month.

Have you heard of the End Racial Profiling Act? I had not until now, and that seems to have been the problem The bill has been introduced in both the House and the Senate (by Russ Feingold) and goes back to before the 9/11 attacks. ERPA has gone nowhere since then, languishing on the fringes of politics. In order to get it into the center of debate, its backers needed a high-profile incident.

Enter the Flying Imams. It seemed suspicious to many that this incident took place at the end of a Muslim political action conference here in Minneapolis. The incident seemed too pat, too much of a set-up to just be a coincidence. No one has a transcript of the conference, but one might speculate that such a conference might have ERPA on its agenda. Given CAIR's support of ERPA and their involvement in this case, it seems more than just speculation that the deliberate provocation had this in mind.

It's no surprise that the Muslim Brotherhood and its American political arm wants an end to profiling in airport security. They do not want Muslims singled out for scrutiny. Given the Brotherhood's consideration of religious minorities in nations where they have political clout -- Egypt, Syria, and the like -- that stance is unlikely to spring from a sense of liberal altruism. The Brotherhood has a long history of supporting terrorism as a political tactic, and they would like nothing better than to leave American airliners vulnerable to exploitation.

And that's exactly what ERPA would do. It places the burden on the airlines and TSA to prove that they were not acting in a discriminatory fashion whenever they single anyone out for closer scrutiny in security checks. That means anyone can sue for discrimination and have the presumption of truth in court, a situation that would cripple flight security. With that environment, airlines and TSA would shrink from singling out anyone deemed suspicious unless their actions were so overt that they would overcome that presumption in court. It's a recipe for abject surrender on airline security, fueled by CAIR's new "flying while Muslim" hotline. Only trial lawyers and terrorists benefit from ERPA.

Now that the Democrats have taken control of both chambers of Congress, we can expect ERPA to rise again. CAIR and the MB want Keith Ellison to sponsor it, apparently, since he is the first Muslim to win a seat in Congress. The Flying Imams staged this event in his backyard, another suspicious "coincidence" that followed his election by less than a fortnight. If ERPA flew under the radar before, we had better make sure it gets plenty of attention if the new Democratic leadership tries pushing it through the 110th Congress. (via Power Line)

Egypt Rounds Up Muslim Brotherhood

Speaking of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian government has decided that the Islamist group has overstepped itself once again and has arrested scores of its leaders. One of the detainees is a top lieutenant to MB leader Muhammed Akef:

One of the top leaders of Egypt's opposition Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, has been detained.

Police also rounded up about 10 other prominent members and dozens of students in dawn raids.

Khairat al-Shatir is one of two deputies to Brotherhood leader Muhammad Akef, and was taken from his home in north-eastern Cairo, the capital.

The group is officially banned, but its supporters make up parliament's largest opposition group and it is tolerated.

This reminds me of the joke about mixed feelings, which involved seeing one's mother-in-law going over a cliff in one's new Cadillac. Having Cairo crack down on an opposition political group is not good news, except when it happens to the political wing of terrorist groups and sympathizers.

The problem in Egypt is that the Brotherhood represents so many Egyptians. Hosni Mubarak's long, dictatorial reign has nurtured the radical reaction, predictably, and moderates and democratic activists have been put at a double disadvantage. The mass arrests will probably enrage Brotherhood supporters and cause even more unrest, creating a situation that could produce even more terrorism.

Egypt needs to nurture the creation of a moderate political center. Thus far, they're doing a poor job of it. If they combine the new offensive against the Brotherhood with liberalization of their political processes and clean elections, they could turn the effort into a net positive for Egyptians. Otherwise, this will result in more of the same dynamic we have witnessed in Egypt for decades.

Is McCain Inevitable?

Robert Novak sees the beginnings of a GOP effort to consolidate itself behind one candidate for 2008 even this early in the primary process, paralleling similar efforts in 1996 (Robert Dole) and 2000 (George Bush). In this case, the "corporate" choice might be John McCain:

Some 30 invited corporate representatives and other lobbyists gathered at the Phoenix Park Hotel on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning to hear two senior mainstream Republican senators pitch the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain. They were selling him to establishment Republicans as the establishment's candidate. Nothing could be further from McCain's guerrilla-style presidential run in 2000, which nearly stopped George W. Bush.

Invitations to Tuesday's event were sent by Trent Lott, the newly elected Senate minority whip. Over coffee, Lott and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) pushed McCain, though neither previously was seen as a McCainiac. They were not for McCain in 2000, and neither were the assembled party activists.

It is beginning to look like "McCain Inc." -- that is, party regulars, corporate officials and Washington lawyers and lobbyists moving toward John McCain, the man they feared and loathed eight years ago. The GOP, abhorring competition and detesting surprises, likes to establish its presidential nominee well in advance.

The problem with the corporate choice, in Novak's history, is that it tends to favor the Rockefeller Republicans. Gerald Ford, Dole (Ford's running mate in 1976), and Bush all came from the moderate wing of the party, which this year would be more associated with Rudy Giuliani than John McCain. The only conservative candidate Novak mentions is Ronald Reagan. Novak says that the corporate interests pushed Reagan, but that's not how I recall it; Reagan made his nomination inevitable despite the Rockefellerians. They had no choice, especially after Ford flamed out and the Nixon/Carter economic policies drove the US into a mind-boggling fiscal crisis.

I tend to doubt Novak'a analysis in this case. The previous corporate choices, if they can truly be known as such, had one particular quality even above their political moderation: consistency. No one doubted where Dole or Ford or even Bush stood, and they performed pretty much as expected. Corporate thinkers value that above almost all else. McCain, on the other hand, has spent the last several years nurturing his reputation as a maverick. He has waffled on tax cuts, opposing them for most of the time since they got enacted in 2002-3 until deciding to run for President. He has been unreliable on judicial nominations, and reliably bad on free speech.

I'm sure McCain's backers would love to create the impression that he is inevitable. The function Novak describes undoubtedly had that intention. However, even Novak notes that McCain holds the conservative position in the race thus far only by default, and that other, more reliable conservatives might still enter the race. In the meantime, Giuliani has made his own inroads into the GOP power structure:

Mayor Giuliani has tapped the political director of the Republican National Committee to head his presidential exploratory committee, making his second national campaign hire in the second week of his battle for early support among top GOP operatives.

Michael DuHaime, 33, headed political operations for the RNC this year after serving as a regional political director for President Bush's re-election campaign in 2004. He also has served as executive director of the state party in New Jersey.

Known for keeping a close circle of advisers during his years as mayor, Mr. Giuliani is expanding his team as he considers a run for the White House. Last week, he selected a former top financial official from the Bush re-election campaign, Sandra Pack, to run the finances of his exploratory committee.

Giuliani is expanding his reach outside of New York and into Washington. He may not have McCain's experience as a presidential contender, but he's both more reliable and more typical of Novak's corporate choices in the GOP. I'd say that the race is still wide open and that the party machine has not yet decided to repel boarders at the moment.

Judge Upholds Detainee Law

In an important victory for the Bush administration, a Clinton appointee to the federal bench upheld the new detainee law that bars Guantanamo prisoners from using American civil courts to challenge their detention. The same judge, James Robertson, first ruled against the Bush administration in 2004, necessitating the new law Congress passed this year and upheld in this latest decision:

A federal judge dismissed yesterday a challenge from Osama bin Laden's driver over his more than four years of detention at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, saying a new anti-terrorism law approved by Congress this fall removes the lower court's jurisdiction in the matter.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson is the first to rule on the controversial Military Commissions Act (MCA), which authorizes military trials of alleged enemy combatants and removes their right to try to bring their cases before federal judges.

Robertson dismissed Salim Ahmed Hamdan's petition because he said Congress clearly intended to keep such cases out of the federal courts. And he held that, as a foreigner with no voluntary ties to the United States, Hamdan has no claim to a constitutional right to habeas corpus.

Robertson himself created the need for the MCA when he ruled two years ago that Hamdan should have access to the American civil legal system, as Congress had not explicitly granted the executive with powers to handle detentions of unlawful combatants during the war on terror. The Bush administration fought that decision all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that a nation at war had no obligation to open its civil court system to what used to be considered spies, saboteurs, and terrorists. The Supreme Court disagreed and threw the issue back to Congress.

Robertson has given the first verdict on Congress' solution, but it won't be the last word. Hamdan and his allies will once again challenge the ruling all the way back to the Supreme Court, which will have a different composition than in its last look at Osama bin Laden's driver. John Roberts recused himself from the last case because of his involvement as an appelate jurist in the original case. That no longer applies, as this is an entirely different challenge. Not only that, but the Court will have to rely on its earlier ruling, which told Bush to get the authority from Congress -- and he did.

However, the White House had better hope it gets to the Supreme Court soon. Patrick Leahy has already indicated that he wants to modify the MCA, apparently to restore habeas corpus to Hamdan and other Guantanamo detainees. Robertson questioned Congress' solution in his opinion as well, but made clear that Hamdan has no right to habeas corpus in the terms of the law or the Constitution. Leahy might try to explicitly grant habeas corpus in legislation, but the rest of the Democrats won't be stupid enough to follow suit. No one will elect them in 2008 if they spend the next two years granting rights to captured terrorists. Leahy can do plenty to muddy the waters enough for more trouble at the Supreme Court, though, if he succeeds in modifying the MCA.

The folks at Justice spent the day celebrating their victory today, but they'd better enjoy it while they can.

Pray For Tim Johnson (Updated)

Tim Johnson, the senior Senator from our neighbor South Dakota, has taken ill and may have suffered a stroke:

Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S. D., has been hospitalized with symptoms described as stroke-like. The seriousness of his illness has not been disclosed. ...

Johnson became disoriented during a call with reporters at midday, stuttering in response to a question. He appeared to recover, asking if there were any additional questions before ending the call.

Johnson spokeswoman Julianne Fisher said he had walked back to his Capitol office after the call with reporters but appeared to not be feeling well. The Capitol physician was called and Johnson was taken by ambulance to the George Washington Univeristy Hospital in D.C. for evaluation.

A statement released by Johnson's office said, "Senator Tim Johnson was taken to George Washington University Hospital this afternoon suffering from a possible stroke. As this stage, he is undergoing a comprehensive evaluation by the stroke team. Further details will be forthcoming when more is known."

MS-NBC then goes into detail as to what this might mean politically, which I will not even mention. Strokes are no longer always the catastrophic event that people think, and "stroke-like symptoms" can appear even without actually having a stroke. It could come from an acute diabetic attack, or from what is known as a TIA or transient ischemic attack.

The First Mate had one the week before her last kidney transplant, and it scared the hell out of me -- it looked exactly like a stroke. However, she recovered within a couple of hours, although the hospital kept her under observation for a few days. Harry Reid also had a TIA, in August 2005. He also fully recovered within days.

So skip the calculations and the political fallout from Johnson's ailment. Let's just pray he'll fully recover and continue his representation of his constituents in the Senate. If that's not the case, we can do the math when it becomes necessary.

UPDATE: Better news -- looks like doctors have ruled out a stroke. They still don't have an explanation of the event yet, but hopefully it will be nothing more serious than an allergic reaction to something in the environment.

UPDATE II and BUMP: Bad news; the situation was more serious than people initially let on. Johnson had to undergo surgery overnight, which tends to indicate a serious stroke:

Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson underwent surgery after being hospitalized with symptoms of a stroke just weeks before his party, with only a one-vote majority, was to take control of the Senate.

The nature of the surgery or the South Dakota lawmaker's condition was not known early Thursday.

There was no formal announcement of the operation, which lasted past midnight Wednesday and was disclosed by an official who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitive nature of the subject.

This became known a little while ago, and so far we have no report on the results of the surgery. Keep the family in your prayers.

A Saudi Split

The abrupt departure of Saudi ambassador Turki al-Faisal indicates deep divisions within the Saudi royal family, according to the Times of London. Turki flew out of Washington not to prepare for changes at home, but because King Abdullah wanted a change in Washington:

Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the United States has returned to Riyadh after resigning abruptly because his posting was not renewed by King Abdullah. ...

Prince Turki’s resignation also hinted at splits within the ranks of the secretive Saudi Royal Family. The Times has learnt from Saudi sources that he resigned because King Abdullah had not renewed his four-year service contract, which is the normal condition for all serving Saudi ministers and ambassadors.

The King’s unusual decision was seen as a diplomatic way of disguising what was, in effect, the Ambassador’s dismissal. But Prince Turki was warned that his term would not be renewed, and so took the initiative himself in deciding to return to Riyadh.

It is unclear whether the King had lost confidence in the country’s most senior ambassador, who is the brother of Prince Saud al-Faisal, the longserving Foreign Minister. But it is understood that Prince Turki did not feel comfortable with his working conditions in Washington.

This comes as a bit of a surprise, but perhaps it shouldn't. After all, the Saudis have not been happy with the US recently, and Turki has not succeeded in improving the Saudi image here in America. It hasn't been for lack of effort, but his public relations offensive has not put Americans at ease with Saudi Arabia.

Speculation had Turki succeeding Saud as the foreign minister after a long career in intelligence and diplomacy. The Times report makes that much more unlikely. However, Abdullah might want to recall the wisdom of Lyndon Johnson, who famously preferred his political opponents "inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in" (a specific reference to J. Edgar Hoover). A "retired" Turki back in Riyadh may be more trouble than having him in Washington DC -- and that kind of split at home could result in the unraveling of the public unity of the Saudi royal family.

Another possibility exists. Abdullah may have decided to put Turki back to use in the intelligence field, given the situation in Iraq and the vacillation of the US at this time. That instability would force the Saudis to step up their own missions in Iraq, and it would require someone with connections to Sunni radical forces -- connections that cost Turki his intelligence post in 2001.

Whatever the case, clearly not all is well in Riyadh. They have picked a tough time to have a family squabble, and Turki doesn't seem like the kind of man who would take retirement well. If Abdullah wants him out to pasture, he may have to take more forceful action than just providing a gold watch.

Saudis: Don't Leave Iraq

The Saudis have warned the United States against pulling out of Iraq, telling American officials that a retreat would set off a bloodbath. In fact, the Saudis feel so strongly about it that they told the US that an American withdrawal would prompt them to fund a sectarian arms race to protect the Sunni minority:

Saudi Arabia has told the Bush administration that it might provide financial backing to Iraqi Sunnis in any war against Iraq’s Shiites if the United States pulls its troops out of Iraq, according to American and Arab diplomats.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia conveyed that message to Vice President Dick Cheney two weeks ago during Mr. Cheney’s whirlwind visit to Riyadh, the officials said. During the visit, King Abdullah also expressed strong opposition to diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran, and pushed for Washington to encourage the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, senior Bush administration officials said. ...

The Saudis have argued strenuously against an American pullout from Iraq, citing fears that Iraq’s minority Sunni Arab population would be massacred. Those fears, United States officials said, have become more pronounced as a growing chorus in Washington has advocated a draw-down of American troops in Iraq, coupled with diplomatic outreach to Iran, which is largely Shiite.

“It’s a hypothetical situation, and we’d work hard to avoid such a structure,” one Arab diplomat in Washington said. But, he added, “If things become so bad in Iraq, like an ethnic cleansing, we will feel we are pulled into the war.”

In one sense, it's difficult to take the Saudis seriously on this topic. Their own government has contributed to the spread of radical Islamism around the world, only of the Sunni variety, while the Shi'ite strain has taken the upper hand in Iraq's sectarian violence. They opposed our invasion in 2003, mostly because they saw Saddam as less of a threat than Iran at the time, and they were happy to have us spend billions keeping him that way every year. Now they see their Sunni brethren as an endangered species without the American umbrella of security in Iraq, and they do not want to see either an annihilation or a massive refugee flood into their kingdom.

However, the advice is correct in this case. The result of an American withdrawal would be catastrophe for the region. Either the surrounding nations would have to use the sectarian groups to fight proxy wars with each other or they would have to actually send troops into Iraq to stop the violence, perhaps all the way to Baghdad. In that case, the various factions would pull Iraq apart, and Iran would gain valuable oil resources in the south and nearly surround the strategic nation of Kuwait. That would put tremendous pressure on another American ally and raise the stakes for control of the Persian Gulf.

The Saudis understand that the only power that can enforce some sort of coordinated security and keep Iraq from flying apart is the United States and its strategic allies in the Coalition. Our disappearance would fulfill all of the gloomy prophecies being offered as analysis now, and will create a vortex in the region that could easily touch off the war that critics want to avoid.

Iranian Provocation

The end of the two-day Holocaust denial convention in Teheran gave Mahmoud Ahmadinejad one last opportunity to provoke the Israelis, and he did not allow it to pass unfulfilled. In language that has become too familiar from Iran, Ahmadinejad repeated his assertion that Israel would not long survive:

A two-day gathering of Holocaust deniers and white supremacists ended Tuesday with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad meeting participants and telling them Israel would not survive long.

“The Zionist regime will disappear soon, the same way the Soviet Union disappeared,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said, according to ISNA, a government-financed news agency. Thus, “humanity will achieve freedom.”

Iran has transformed into quite the Orwellian experience over the last three decades. Humanity will achieve freedom through the annihilation of the Jews -- in favor of radical theocracies that oppress their subjects and spread terrorism throughout the region. The Islamic Republic has become nothing more than a clanging gong, hitting the same note over and over again and trying to convince everyone that they have created a symphony.

Even the Los Angeles Times recognizes the sinister repercussions of a sovereign nation so gripped with hatred that it refuses to accept history and reality, although they make a mush out of it:

Although it's tempting to shrug off a gathering of fourth-rate intellects who seethe with contempt even for each other (did Duke discuss his theories about white racial superiority?), the conference illustrated a present and growing danger to the international community: Iran is on the path to becoming a nuclear power. Any promise to "remove" its neighbors from the map must be taken seriously.

Ahmadinejad's rejection of the thousands of written and oral testimonies of Holocaust survivors, reams of scholarship, films, photographs, diaries and detailed Nazi archives has nothing to do with evidentiary standards and everything to do with playing to the extremists in his regional audience. To Ahmadinejad, attacking the legitimacy of the Holocaust allows him to attack the legitimacy of Israel, which was created by the United Nations as a result of the Holocaust. If the first act didn't happen, then the second act wasn't necessary.

The Iranian president wrapped his hateful nonsense in the false mantle of free speech. Conference delegates, he said, were breaking free from the powerful opposition to critiquing the Holocaust narrative and finally being allowed to say what they pleased.

That's not quite the real danger, either. The real danger in this effort, and the real provocation, is the promotion of old myths through the rejection of recent historical fact. If the Holocaust never occurred, as Iran and Ahmadinejad insist, then why does the myth exist? Who benefits from a Holocaust fraud? Why, it's the Jooooooos, of course -- who secretly run everything and are therefore dangerous. And if they represent that kind of power and danger, then what will Iran do about them?

That's the reason why all of this talk about wiping Israel off the map has to be taken seriously, even apart from Iran's nuclear program. When nations repeatedly talk about wiping other nations off the map, history shows that they usually follow through. Stoking anti-Semitism through bogus symposiums starring such hatemongers as David Duke fans the political fires they need to eventually take action to match their rhetoric.

With Ahmadinejad's popularity dropping, he may feel pressed to take that action sooner rather than later. Do we know how we will react to an Iranian attack on Israel?

A McCain-Pawlenty Ticket?

Jim Geraghty looks at the dynamic between Senator and presidential hopeful John McCain and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, and reaches a conclusion that I suggested almost two weeks ago. Pawlenty's early commitment to endorse McCain and his work on McCain's exploratory committee looks like a partnership meant for larger purposes -- and McCain himself seems to hint that Pawlenty could be his running mate in 2008:

Mr. Pawlenty's presidential buzz was silenced by his political near-death experience this year. Despite the St. Paul Pioneer Press declaring: "Gov. Tim Pawlenty was a Republican rock that withstood a Democratic tidal wave washing across the state and nation Tuesday," talk of his presidential aspirations abruptly ended.

In the meantime, the Republicans committed to holding their 2008 convention in St. Paul. The early contours of the GOP's 2008 strategy suggest that it wants to win over the remaining blue parts of the Upper Midwest — Minnesota, Wisconsin, and maybe Michigan — the way it grabbed Iowa and expanded its hold on Missouri in 2004.

Earlier this month, National Review Online reported that Mr. Pawlenty will support Senator McCain's bid for the White House and is actively engaged in the senator's exploratory committee. Though no evidence exists that the Minnesota governor's early support represents a pitch to get on a McCain-Pawlenty ticket, it's hard to believe the thought hasn't crossed either man's mind.

In the final week of the November election, Mr. McCain made several appearances with Mr. Pawlenty and his words of praise would suggest the Arizona senator sees in the governor a potential future vice president."I know of no one who will make a greater contribution to the future of America than this great leader," Mr. McCain said at one stop."This is the kind of leadership that I'd like to pass the torch to."

Normally, candidates look for running mates that will balance them both in geographic and political terms. For the former, Pawlenty would be a traditional choice, marrying the Mountain West with the Upper Midwest. Politically, it's less clear, but that's partly because McCain has been all over the map on occasion. McCain wants to run as the GOP's base conservative candidate, but his speech-limiting campaign-finance reform and his Gang of 14 stunt with judicial nominations that kept key candidates off the bench make that connection tenuous at best. Pawlenty first won office as a staunch conservative, but since the last election has started triangulating on universal health care.

However, Geraghty is correct about one item, and that's the lack of ready talent for the VP slot. Unless the nominee takes one of the challengers as a running mate after the convention, the pickings are slim, especially at he gubernatorial level. Pawlenty managed to win re-election, and other than Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mike Huckabee, no other GOP governor has made much noise on a national level -- and Arnold's ineligible for the ticket.

Pawlenty's opening-round endorsement at the Governors Conference surprised many people, including me. I thought he'd keep his options open and look for a shot at #2. He passed that opportunity up early, and that makes me think that McCain and Pawlenty have more going on than just a mutual admiration society.

Feds Raid Swift

The Department of Homeland Security raided six Swift processing plants yesterday in an effort to end the theft of legitimate Social Security numbers by illegal immigrants. The meatpacker complained bitterly about the raids, but sounded defensive over an issue for which they have no blame:

Federal officials raided six meatpacking plants across the country Tuesday in the culmination of a 10-month investigation triggered by allegations that illegal immigrants were using the stolen identities of U.S. citizens.

The raids, all at plants operated by Swift & Co., resulted in arrests of workers on immigration violations and some existing criminal warrants, with charges of aggravated identity theft possible at a later date, officials said. The number of arrests was not immediately known. The company was not charged.

The action targeted the use of legitimate Social Security numbers by illegal immigrants -- what Jamie Zuieback, spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, called "a massive identity-theft scheme."

"We believe hundreds of U.S. citizens were affected," she said. "We do see this as a new trend, and the scope of it is very large, and that makes it significant."

The company faces no charges because they acted in good faith. They used the Basic Pilot system to check on the credentials of their workers, and the system reported that the SSNs were legitimate. No one designed the system to defeat identity theft, though, just to flag forged SSNs assigned to no one at all. However, that did not keep Swift from angrily denouncing the raids and Basic Pilot as ineffective, a position they took at Congressional hearings this summer.

No one expected Basic Pilot to catch this kind of fraud; it was designed for a different fraud, one that illegal workers use still. It has its value, and Swift should recognize it from yesterday's raids -- it kept the company from criminal liability. Their reliance on the government program has thus far granted them immunity from the charges it would normally face for employing illegals in its plants.

However, it still means that Swift will take a huge hit to its production if enough of their workers stay away from their plants. They sell more than $10 billion in beef and pork products each year, and more than 75% of its production capacity just went off line. Swift has no stockholders -- it's a private company -- and so it will not face the investor crisis that another firm might in similar circumstances. Still, they have to pay their other employees and pay their bills, which includes a supply line of smaller firms that could get wiped out if Swift cannot reopen its doors soon.

The government has let private industry off the hook for their use of illegal immigrants for too long, and it's good to see that change. However, we had better be prepared for the economic damage this could cause. With unemployment running around 4.4%, Swift will probably not get enough workers to replace the ones they lost today in the near future. The problem will multiply with every company that gets raided, and the next ones might have stockholders, and those stockholders will include retirement investors ... people like you and me.

UPDATE: Am I a whiner? Michelle says yes.

They're Getting The Message

Potential witnesses to the murder of Alexander Litvinenko have suddenly begun to make themselves scarce. As more and more agencies involve themselves in the probe, fewer and fewer people remain to interrogate:

Key witnesses in the Alexander Litvinenko investigation are missing, with their families claiming that they fear for their lives.

The sudden disappearance of a number of leading figures linked to the affair will make it even harder for British detectives, whose inquiry has now spread across five countries.

Interpol joined the hunt for the murderer yesterday, saying that it hoped to exchange information coming from Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Russia.

Scotland Yard was struggling to gain access to vital witnesses with former associates of Litvinenko claiming that they are too scared to come forward.

Evgeny Limarev, who told the former KGB officer that he was on a death list just hours before he was poisoned, was reported to have fled his home in the French Alps, where he was under police protection. Before his disappearance, he said that British detectives wanted to question him about the origins of a hitlist that included Litvinenko’s name among the targets being hunted by a team of former Russian agents working across Europe.

If, as widely believed, the Litvinenko assassination occurred to send a message to dissidents and asylum seekers, then it succeeded. Limarev even dashed away from police protection, an odd choice under the circumstances. His sources have also gone to ground, as the Times puts it, and that makes the trail very chilly indeed.

Once again, this points towards Moscow and Vladimir Putin. What else besides the FSB under Putin's heavy hand would strike this kind of fear into witnesses? Certainly not MI-6, which might end up detaining some of the people but wouldn't attempt to kill any of them. They want witnesses, not dead bodies and missing dissidents. If the threat was Chechen terrorists, then these witnesses would flock to MI-6 and the CIA for protection. They wouldn't dream of doing so while the two agencies continue to cooperate with the FSB, though.

It really doesn't matter at this point. British and European agencies will never capture the real mastermind behind this assassination because he supplies the Continent with a great deal of their energy resources. He's got diplomatic immunity, and he knows how to run black-bag ops in such a manner as to make a very public point without officially dirtying his hands. The West has little choice but to continue to work with Putin, and so he has put himself out of their reach, for all intents and purposes.

And that's why all of the witnesses know they have to disappear -- before Putin makes them do so on his bloody terms.

Day By Day: Too Sexy For My Blog?

I have run the Day By Day cartoon by Chris Muir for around two years at Captain's Quarters, and I constantly receive e-mail on the strip. It's about evenly split; I get equally passionate missives about its content in either direction. Yesterday, however, Chris depicted the 40ish female character Sam in nothing but a thong and a come-hither look, which brought an especially impassioned set of e-mails from CQ readers.

I correspond with Chris on occasion, which I enjoy immensely; he's a great guy. He contacted me earlier this week because another blogger denounced me for displaying DBD, calling me a phony conservative. Chris wanted to find out my state of mind and explain what he wants to do with his creation, and I appreciated the contact.

Obviously, Chris wants to push boundaries with DBD, and I think he does it well and intelligently. Normally that's a good thing. Conservatives have a reputation for stultifying puritanism, and Chris wants to make conservatism provocative and help it to compete by breaking down stereotypes. Not every conservative comic has to be Mallard Fillmore, and not every conservative has an issue with provocative imagery.

As for yesterday's entry, I think Chris went over the top. That won't keep me from supporting Chris and his comic strip nor cause me to rethink my association with it. I don't agree with every post at Power Line, for instance, and I know plenty of people who have an issue with their coverage of beauty pageants and bathing-suit competitions. That doesn't bother me, and our occasional disagreements couldn't possibly cause me to sever my support for what they do (in fact, truth be told, the disagreements often make it that much more fun for John Hinderaker and me). Chris is a quality person and a dedicated conservative who rides the edge in order to get the conservative viewpoint to a larger audience, and I'm happy to be part of that effort.

The reason for my post is to give commenters a thread in which we all can debate this. The CQ community is the best in the 'sphere, bar none, and it would be wrong of me to fail to provide a forum on this topic when I know so many of you have opinions you would like to express.

The Rosett Rewrite

When Kofi Annan penned a column for the Washington Post yesterday in advance of his valediction at Turtle Bay, I wrote that his article read like a parody written by Claudia Rosett. Instead, the tireless researcher and critic of the United Nations and Annan rewrote Annan's speech for the pages of National Review. Rosett tries something that Annan avoided -- the truth:

Thank you for that generous introduction. I don’t deserve it. Please hold your applause until you hear what I have to say. This is not false modesty. I am quite serious — I don’t deserve the honor of speaking here today. At least once in every life there comes a moment of honesty, and for reasons I cannot fathom — perhaps the shock of looking back at just what a self-serving failure I have been — this is mine.

During my decade as secretary-general, and indeed for some time before that, I have indulged in more than my share of half-truths, quarter-truths, cover-ups, immoral inanities and staggering hypocrisies. I have shuffled paperwork while ignoring genocides, I have rushed to shake hands with tyrants while deriding democrats; I have suffered from memory gaps while adroitly recalling just enough to know what needs covering up. I took office promising to reform the U.N., and instead produced a record that deserves to be summed up by such phrases as peacekeeper rape, procurement bribery, and Oil-for-Food.

I have praised a “reformed” Human Rights Council that functions as a complete farce. I have demanded “peace” deals and pushed for a brand of morally blind diplomacy that has paved the way for a terrorist takeover of Lebanon, worsening turmoil in the Middle East, and a nuclear-armed Iran. In contradiction of the U.N. charter, which describes my role as the U.N.’s “chief administrative officer,” I have styled myself, in my own phrase, as “chief diplomat of the world,” setting up a vast array of opaque trusts, projects, partnerships, and programs which have massively expanded the U.N. beyond any provisions for oversight, while providing me with opportunities for patronage, and places to park my cronies. At the same time, while entrusted with a budget of billions, and a world stage, I have shirked all responsibility for my own failures, shifting blame especially to the United States.

Readers will get less laughs from this one, and a greater sense of what was lost during the Annan era. If global justice exists, this should serve as the epitaph to the outgoing Secretary-General's term in office. With any luck, it will serve as a warning to the incoming leader, Ban Ki Moon, as to how to proceed. (via CQ reader Charles R)

The Secretly Gay Crop

Last month, I warned CQ readers about the reliability of World Net Daily, a wire and pundit service that aims for conservative readers. In that case, their news report claimed that illegal immigrants committed as many as 12 murders a day, which would make them responsible for over 25% of all non-negligent homicides committed in the United States. Today, we find out from one of their regular contributors that a crop known for its low price and health benefits will turn red-blooded American men into fashion designers and interior decorators:

If you're a grownup, you're already developed, and you're able to fight off some of the damaging effects of soy. Babies aren't so fortunate. Research is now showing that when you feed your baby soy formula, you're giving him or her the equivalent of five birth control pills a day. A baby's endocrine system just can't cope with that kind of massive assault, so some damage is inevitable. At the extreme, the damage can be fatal.

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because "I can't remember a time when I wasn't homosexual." No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can't remember a time when excess estrogen wasn't influencing them.

Doctors used to hope soy would reduce hot flashes, prevent cancer and heart disease, and save millions in the Third World from starvation. That was before they knew much about long-term soy use. Now we know it's a classic example of a cure that's worse than the disease. For example, if your baby gets colic from cow's milk, do you switch him to soy milk? Don't even think about it. His phytoestrogen level will jump to 20 times normal. If he is a she, brace yourself for watching her reach menarche as young as seven, robbing her of years of childhood. If he is a boy, it's far worse: He may not reach puberty till much later than normal.

While this article is an opinion column and therefore slightly less egregious than the news article from last month, it uses some of the same tricks seen in that WND exclusive. It references vague 'studies' without ever naming them or providing links to them. It assumes that a food element consumed for thousands of years in Asia in signifcant amounts without turning it into a large version of Fire Island has suddenly begun feminizing Americans.

A quick perusal of the Internet about this subject turns up many sites that want to help men enlarge their equipment, with compounds that ironically include soy proteins. It also brings up a similarly hysterical paper on the topic by the Weston A Price Institute, an organization apparently dedicated to restoring animal fats to human diets. Johns Hopkins has a more rational description of the study at hand, which did not study the ingestion of soy by humans but the effect of soy proteins on the offspring of gestating rats. It quite clearly includes this disclaimer:

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health report that male rats whose mothers were fed diets containing genistein, a chemical found in soybeans, developed abnormal reproductive organs and experienced sexual dysfunction as adults.

While these findings do not indicate that genistein has a similar effect in humans, researchers say the increasing popularity of soy and soy-based foods, such as tofu and some infant formulas, may warrant further research to determine if genistein exposure in the womb and during breast-feeding influences human reproductive development.

The paper also clearly states that the researchers considered their findings preliminary, and the report states that more research would be necessary to draw any conclusions. A quick Google search does not produce any further developments on this hypothesis, but does include a few examples of the health benefits of soy, such as pain relief and cholesterol reduction. WND includes none of that information for its readers, but instead provides its typically breathless warnings about chemical castration that it knows will gain it the maximum exposure.

WND reminds me of the National Enquirer. It sometimes gets stories right, and most of the time has at least some elements of truth. More often than they should, WND relies on hyperbole and outrageous exaggeration to draw attention to its political agenda. Readers who know this can pick their way through the chaff -- but those readers know better than to waste their time at WND.

Rick Moran and Allahpundit have more fun with this topic.

UPDATE: Should be World Net Daily, not World News Daily. Thanks to CQ reader John R for the correction.

No Reduction In Troops: Military

President Bush heard from his military experts about the situation in Iraq and the way forward to win the war. While they agreed with the Iraq Study Group's report on the current woes of the mission, they disagreed strongly with the ISG's recommendations for resolving them:

President Bush heard a blunt and dismal assessment of his handling of Iraq from a group of military experts yesterday, but the advisers shared the White House's skeptical view of the recommendations made last week by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, sources said.

The three retired generals and two academics disagreed in particular with the study group's plans to reduce the number of U.S. combat troops in Iraq and to reach out for help to Iran and Syria, according to sources familiar with the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the session was private.

The White House gathering was part of a series of high-profile meetings Bush is holding to search for "a new way forward" amid the increasing chaos and carnage in Iraq. Earlier in the day, Bush met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other high-ranking officials at the State Department, where he was briefed on reconstruction and regional diplomatic efforts in Iraq.

The military experts met with Bush, Vice President Cheney and about a dozen aides for more than an hour. The visitors told the officials that the situation in Iraq is as dire as the study group had indicated but that alternative approaches must be considered, said one participant in the meeting. In addition, the experts agreed that the president should review his national security team, which several characterized as part of the problem.

The new review takes a narrower approach to Iraq, focusing primarily on the military and security issues and avoiding the political problems the ISG included. That might mean that the White House will adopt many of the ISG recommendations that pertained to internal Iraqi politics, such as oil revenue and job creation. Many of those deserve serious consideration, and they comprised the best part of the ISG effort.

The Bush team wants to come up with a new plan that will be obviously distinct from what they have done thus far in Iraq. However, unlike the ISG, they do not want to retreat and leave the field to the Iranians, Syrians, and terrorists. Bush understands that leaving Iraq as a failed state will create even more of an impetus for terrorism, both within Iraq and around the world. The oil revenue alone would cause an exponential increase in terrorist activity, and eventually we would have to return to Iraq once more in force to confront it.

One point brought unity among the speakers, and that was the need to replace the current national security team. The Washington Post interprets that as the dismissal of General Peter Pace as chair of the Joint Chiefs. It might mean something else entirely, however. With Donald Rumsfeld out, that may have been an approving reference to Robert Gates, as well as a call to clear out the other members of the National Security Council. It could also refer to the current National Security Advisor, Steven Hadley. The word "team" implies a higher level of concern and a broader selection of positions.

They demonstrated the one key difference between themselves and the ISG -- they're focused on victory, not retreat. Their recommendations are aimed at helping the US succeed in the war and to help the Iraqis secure their freedom, rather than some notion of retreat with honor. Abandoning the mission and our allies in Iraq will bring us no honor and will cripple our efforts to work with other nations to defeat radical Islamist terrorism in the future.

Is Saud A Goner? Or Abdullah?

The Washington Post reports that Saudi ambassador Turki al-Faisal has abruptly left the United States and ended his 15-month tenure at the embassy. He left so quickly and with so little notice that none of the niceties of diplomatic protocol could be observed -- and with no explanation offered:

Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, flew out of Washington yesterday after informing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and his staff that he would be leaving the post after only 15 months on the job, according to U.S. officials and foreign envoys. There has been no formal announcement from the kingdom.

The abrupt departure is particularly striking because his predecessor, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, spent 22 years on the job. The Saudi ambassador is one of the most influential diplomatic positions in Washington and is arguably the most important overseas post for the oil-rich desert kingdom.

Turki, a long-serving former intelligence chief, told his staff yesterday afternoon that he wanted to spend more time with his family, according to Arab diplomats. Colleagues said they were shocked at the decision.

The exit -- without the fanfare, parties and tributes that normally accompany a leading envoy's departure, much less a public statement -- comes as his brother, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the highly influential Saudi foreign minister, is ailing.

How strange is this departure? Turki had been conducting a goodwill offensive as late as last week, attempting to put a fresh and open face on US-Saudi relations. Sunday, Jonathan Curiel noted it in his San Francisco Chronicle column:

Everywhere he goes -- whether it's a lecture hall at Harvard University or the Lower Ninth Ward of the Crescent City -- Saudi Arabia's new ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal, is connecting to audiences in ways that are uncharacteristic for a diplomat from the Arabian peninsula. Public displays of humor, wit and empathy are not trademarks of Saudi society, but Turki has been thrust into a difficult position: Be the U.S. face of Saudi Arabia at a time when Americans still closely associate the nation with Osama bin Laden, the Sept. 11 terror attacks and unrelenting Islamic fundamentalism. ...

In person, Turki is the antithesis of Bandar. Where Bandar was brash, Turki is coolheaded. Where Bandar relished being the center of attention, Turki seems to go there as needed. In fact, for as long as Bandar was Saudi Arabia's high-profile ambassador in Washington, Turki was the country's behind-the-scenes foreign intelligence chief -- someone who, mostly out of public view, oversaw Riyadh's security dealings with the United States, France, Afghanistan and other countries.

Soft-spoken (at least compared with Bandar) and avuncular, Turki, 61, has a reputation for making visitors feel at ease despite his aristocratic title and upbringing. Called his royal highness by Saudis and visitors who follow strict protocol, Turki is the son of the late Saudi King Faisal. Turki, says Seznec, could one day be king himself.

"I've been straightforward" with Americans, Turki says in an interview with The Chronicle as he sits behind the desk at his ambassadorial office, surrounded by photos of the Saudi monarchy. "And I must say that Americans have been very hospitable in receiving me but also have listened graciously to what I've had to tell them."

Saud has been in poor health for a few years. He has something akin to Parkinson's, according to the Post's report of chronic "tremors". Last year he fell in the shower and fractured his shoulder, and the questions regarding his health have only become more insistent. Turki has long been the rumored successor, and his sudden recall for family reasons sounds like something bad has happened at home. The Saudis consider the Washington assignment their most critical diplomatic post, and the quick departure signals something deeply wrong has happened.

Why would Turki need to rush home, if Saud has become incapacitated? The security and diplomatic situation in the region is obviously tense, and the Saudis need to have an actively engaged foreign minister close to home. They could have one of the other Saudi princes take the job temporarily, but that might lead to other problems, perhaps even with Turki. Given the precarious state of their relations with Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Iran, the Saudis need their first stringer in the game.

What does that mean for the US? First, it means we will get another ambassador from the House of Saud, and that means another reconsideration of the relationship between the two nations. Turki has presented a pro-Western stance in his assignments in the US and the UK, but whether that continues will depend on the whim of King Abdullah, no spring chicken himself. They face increasing pressure over the American involvement in Iraq as well as their cooperation in the general war on terror. Their policies are likely to remain consistent, however, if for no other reason than their fear of Iranian hegemony over all else.

One other possibility remains. Abdulllah himself may have fallen ill or died, and Turki may have returned home quickly to establish himself as the best choice of successor. The sudden death of Abdullah after a little more than a year on the throne could generate more instability in Saudi Arabia and a further inspiration to al-Qaeda. It would be important to have the successor in place before the announcement was made of a royal death.

Keep an eye on Saudi Arabia; we have not heard the last of this.

Coming Home To Roost

Golda Meir once said, "Peace will come only when the Palestinians love their children more than they hate Jews." Unfortunately, Hamas has apparently decided that they hate Palestinian children almost as much as the Jews -- if the children belong to Fatah officials. Three children died in a deliberate assassination at the hands of Hamas, a murder that has shaken the territories:

Fatah supporters blamed their rivals in the Hamas movement for the murder of the three children of a senior intelligence officer.

Hamas denied responsibility and promised an investigation, but Fatah activists were unconvinced. As they attended an emotionally charged funeral for the children in Gaza City they shouted slogans blaming the Islamic movement for the killings.

Coming a day after the Hamas interior minister survived an assassination attempt, the killings are expected to prompt more tit-for-tat violence between the two main Palestinian factions. ...

In a region supposedly inured to bloodshed, the unprecedented assassination of children caused widespread shock. There can be no doubt that the children were the target as the car that was attacked was only ever used to drive them to and from the Greek Orthodox School in Gaza City and was never used to drive their father.

Although no group claimed responsibility for the attack, Mr Balousha, 34, is known to have made many Hamas enemies when he took a leading role in Fatah's attempt to crack down on the militant movement in the late 1990s. Mr Balousha, who survived two assassination attempts in recent months, said he could barely describe his feeling at losing all three of his children.

Even by Palestinian standards, the deliberate targeting of children for assassination goes beyond the pale -- well, unless we're talking about Israeli children. The Israelis have seen a number of their children murdered in attacks on school buses and on streets by Palestinian terrorists. The outrage and revulsion felt by the Palestinians at this assassination demonstrates the monstrous hypocrisy of terrorists.

That being said, this really marks a new low by either side. They have reversed Meir's well-known standard to show their contempt for their own future by murdering their own children. In this case, they have gone beyond the last-ditch, seed-corn approach of arming their children to considering them fair game for hostilities, armed or not. For a culture that has set previous records in cowardice in their repeated attacks on civilians, this represents the nadir of the Palestinian experience.

Mahmoud Abbas has tried several times over the last few months to form a unity government with Hamas. This might have two different results. Either it will shock all so badly that the civilians will force an end to internecine hostilities, or it will explode both Gaza and the West Bank into full-blown civil war. I'm predicting the latter, given the Palestinian history of missed opportunities. It looks like Golda Meir was more correct than even she could have imagined.

UPDATE: It looks like my analysis might be proven true faster than I imagined:

Hamas gunmen opened fire on demonstrators from the rival Fatah movement in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, wounding four people in the first factional violence following the fatal shooting of three children of a Fatah loyalist, officials said.

The demonstration was organized to protest the deaths of the children, whose car was riddled with bullets as they were driven to school Monday morning. Fatah officials have accused Hamas of being behind the shooting. The children's father is an intelligence officer who is considered an enemy of Hamas.

Saleh Hammad, a local Fatah leader, said the demonstration was peaceful, though he acknowledged that some children had provoked the Hamas militiamen by throwing rocks at them.

The wounded received treatment at a local hospital. The report doesn't say whether the medical facility gets its funding through that well-renowned charitable organization .... Hamas.

Governor Moonbeam Becomes AG Sunbeam?

When Californians returned former Governor Jerry Brown to statewide office, this time as Attorney General, pundits around the nation waited in anticipation for any hint of a return to his old ways, which earned him the nickname Governor Moonbeam. It apparently didn't take long, as everyone at the California Department of Justice discovered yesterday when they opened their e-mail. Brown wants the staff to clearly understand his priorities as chief law-enforcement officer in the Golden State. CQ's inside source sent over the full text of the e-mail (emphases mine):

To everyone within the Department of Justice:

I am very much looking forward to joining you on January 8, 2007, as your new Attorney General. These are busy weeks, as I wind up my work as Mayor of Oakland and get ready to assume office. Bill Lockyer and key members of his executive staff have been extraordinarily helpful in smoothing the way. I am deeply impressed with the breadth and complexity of your work and consider it a privilege to be given the opportunity to lead a group with such important responsibilities.

Two matters of immediate concern will be to strengthen and focus the Department's law enforcement capacity and to implement--in a practical and effective way--California's global warming legislation. Obviously, there will be many more issues to tackle and I look forward to working with key staff in setting the agenda for the coming year. I hope I can count on your candid observations and enthusiastic support.

I am reviewing a number of organizational issues. One important decision I have made is to appoint the current Chief of the Civil Division, Jim Humes, to the position of Chief Deputy Attorney General for Legal Affairs. This is the position currently held by Robert Anderson, who has told me he is retiring. Many of you have worked with Jim, and know that he is an able administrator and skilled attorney. I am confident that he will bring to this position both the necessary continuity and an openness to change and innovation.

I have not made a decision yet on the position currently held by Steve Coony. Over the next few weeks, I will decide how to staff this position or how we might otherwise structure these functions. Some of you may have noticed my wife Anne accompanying me as I have made the rounds of the various offices. I find her advice pretty invaluable and very practical. She had the stressful and rather harrowing job of running my statewide campaign. Prior to that, Anne worked in private practice before serving as General Counsel and then Chief Administrative Officer at the Gap.

I am excited about working with all of you and know that our success depends on real collaboration and mutual respect. Let's make this a great four years.

Jerry Brown
Attorney General-Elect

Note that of all the priorities for law-enforcement facing California, Brown selects global warming as the most pressing. I guess issues like gang warfare, insurance fraud, and other crimes that cost Californians their lives and millions of dollars each year come in a distant second to ecopolicy. Californians might have gained the false impression that they elected an Attorney General instead of an environmental lobbyist.

Actually, it looks like they elected two Attorneys General. It's not often that the new boss introduces himself in his first official communication to the staff by essentially informing him that his spouse will be checking on them. Brown certainly can choose his own staff, and Anne sounds qualified for the job -- but it's never a good idea to have the boss' wife in the chain of command, at least not for the working environment of the staff.

All in all, it looks like an auspicious start of Brown's tenure, at least for pundits, if not Californians. Instead of Governor Moonbeam, my native state elected Attorney General Sunbeam.

Seattle Restores Christmas Trees

Here's one small victory for Christmas:

The nine Christmas trees at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport were supposed to come down quietly over the weekend, in an attempt to avoid litigation and publicity. But it didn't quite work out that way.

"We've created quite a national media sensation," said Seattle Port Commissioner John Creighton, whose agency ordered the trees removed after a rabbi threatened to file a lawsuit unless the airport displayed a menorah, as well as the trees, within 24 hours.

Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky, with the Seattle chapter of Chabad-Lubavitch, had requested that the Port of Seattle include an electric menorah as part of the airport's holiday display this year.

But authorities decided to remove the trees, rather than be subject to accommodating all requests. Now, because of publicity and public outcry, the trees will soon be back.

This is actually a defeat for small-minded bureaucrats rather than any explicit animus towards Christmas. When Rabbi Bogomilsky sent the letter threatening a lawsuit, he didn't want the trees removed; he wanted a response to two months of requests to include an electric Menorah display for Chanukah. He had been asking since October and had been roundly ignored by airport management.

Instead of responding to Bogomilsky, the commissioners took the predictable knee-jerk action -- they canceled Christmas. That created a wave of anger among airport employees, who apparently waited a few nanoseconds before leaking the decision to the press and to bloggers. By Monday, the commissioners had a flood of e-mails and phone calls protesting the removal of the nine trees. Bogomilsky, who only wanted some response to his requests, told the commission that he would not file any lawsuits and wanted the trees reinstated, and the commissioners retreated.

Is this a lesson for those who insist on stripping Christmas from the holiday season? Of course it is. It shows how the attempts to dilute the religious nature of Christmas have given rise to widespread frustration and offense among customers and constituents. However, this particular case is more of a lesson about customer service and bureaucratic overreaction. Had someone just talked to Bogomilsky in the first place, this never would have happened -- and how difficult would it have been to include a lighted Menorah to honor Chanukah, anyway?

Insert Dick Cheney Joke Here

For those who do not know, the First Mate is totally blind -- no sight whatsoever. Nevertheless, she handles lots of tasks that people might assume she would find impossible. She's an accomplished cook -- as anyone who sees me would immediately assume -- and takes care of all the household tasks. She gardens when she's healthy, and she sometimes works in a church day-care center. She hates it when people say it, but she's amazing.

However, even as amazing as she might be, I'd be hard pressed to put a gun in her hands and expect her to hunt for our dinner:

The blind will be able to go hunting if a Texas Bill becomes law.

They would have to be accompanied by a sighted hunter, who would help to guide their shots, and carry proof that they were legally blind. The law will also allow them to use a laser sight — a device forbidden to sighted hunters.

Edmund Kuempel, a State Representative, who introduced the Bill, said: “This opens up the fun of hunting to additional people, and I think that’s great.” The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which regulates hunting, has no definition for what constitutes a legally blind hunter. The Bill would give it until January 1, 2008, to come up with a definition.

I'm not aware of a massive movement by the blind to go hunting. They have plenty of other obstacles and assumptions to overcome, and this seems a little low priority to me. It also seems somewhat south of safe for other hunters in the vicinity. All in all, it just seems like a bad idea.

I'd like to hear from hunters in the CQ community. Does this make sense to you? Would you feel comfortable out in the field with a blind hunter in the blind?

Kennedy Backs Away From Kerry

John Kerry took another body blow to his hopes for another presidential run in 2008. With almost no one but John Kerry taking the idea seriously, Ted Kennedy strongly hinted that he has read the writing on the wall:

Senator Edward M. Kennedy Monday dropped his public commitment to support Senator John F. Kerry in a 2008 presidential race, saying that he won't wait "indefinitely" for Kerry to declare his intentions while the Democratic primary field takes shape.

Kennedy said he doesn't currently plan to endorse another candidate and still might support Kerry if Kerry decides to run. But in an hourlong interview with the Globe's Washington bureau, Kennedy offered strong praise for two of Kerry's possible presidential rivals: senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, calling them "formidable figures" who are connecting with rank-and-file Democrats.

Kennedy said his oft-stated commitment to support Kerry again was based on the assumption that Kerry would state his intentions by early 2007. Since Kerry pushed back his decision in the wake of following an election-eve "botched joke" that damaged his public standing, however, Kennedy said he has informed Kerry that he may get behind another Democrat for president.

Kerry owes his political career to Ted Kennedy, and the senior Massachussetts Senator has long championed his protege. Kennedy put his efforts behind Kerry in 2003, helping to push the junior Senator with the wafer-thin legislative record into the 2004 nomination after Howard Dean melted down in Iowa. Kennedy has apparently had enough, however, as has ... well, everyone but Kerry.

Will this convince Kerry to end the fantasy? That's the problem with the obsessed -- they don't know when to quit. If losing to a vulnerable George Bush didn't convince him that he's unelectable, then Kennedy's wavering probably won't do it, either.

Kofi: I Learned Projection

Kofi Annan has an op-ed column in today's Washington Post that must be read to be believed. The column, which serves as a valediction of sorts, talks about what Annan has learned from his time at the United Nations. If his rule hadn't resulted in such worldwide misery and despair, it would be one of the funniest pieces of opinion journalism so far this year.

The laughter reaches its apex here:

My fourth lesson, therefore, is that governments must be accountable for their actions, in the international as well as the domestic arena. Every state owes some account to other states on which its actions have a decisive impact. As things stand, poor and weak states are easily held to account, because they need foreign aid. But large and powerful states, whose actions have the greatest impact on others, can be constrained only by their own people.

That gives the people and institutions of powerful states a special responsibility to take account of global views and interests. And today they need to take into account also what we call "non-state actors." States can no longer -- if they ever could -- confront global challenges alone. Increasingly, they need help from the myriad types of association in which people come together voluntarily, to profit or to think about, and change, the world.

How can states hold each other to account? Only through multilateral institutions. So my final lesson is that those institutions must be organized in a fair and democratic way, giving the poor and the weak some influence over the actions of the rich and the strong.

Accountability? Accountability? This comes from the man who presided over the biggest fraud in history, the Oil-For-Food Program. His son and his cronies dipped their beaks in a program that put billions of dollars into the pockets of Saddam Hussein and spread corruption throughout the world, all the while with Annan scolding the US and the UK for their efforts to bring accountability to Saddam. After the exposure of the OFF scandal, Annan spent his time ducking any accountability at all for the debacle.

Come on, WaPo -- level with us. Claudia Rosett wrote this as a spoof, right?

There's plenty more laughs in Annan's goodbye screed. He tries to use Hillary Clinton's outline for It Takes A Village by telling readers that we are all responsible for each other's security, and that we are all responsible for each other's welfare. I'm sure that the people dying in Darfur will take great comfort in those words, in which the outgoing UN chief invokes them alongside the word "genocide" but manages to avoid applying it directly to them. Rwanda's victims also would second Annan's words, if any of them remained alive.

He then goes on to mention the rule of law and the need for states to play by the rules. However, in his quest for accountability, he fails to mention what consequences should come from failures to do so. We wanted to hold Saddam accountable for twelve years of intransigence in relation to 16 UN Security Council resolutions -- and Annan opposed the effort. We want to hold Iran accountable for its defiance of the non-proliferation treaty -- and Annan has little to say about that as well.

Accountability. Annan. Not exactly two terms one would tie together in UN history. This laughable attempt by Annan to do so will not succeed in anything except providing a much-needed laugh to Post readers.

A Rough Start For Mahmoud's Festival Of Ignorance

Pity poor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Here he goes to all the trouble of serving up some prime red meat to the Jew-haters of Islam, and they treat him like ... well, like an ignorant and dangerous dictator. In the opening moments of the Holocaust Festival of Ignorance in Teheran, during which he called the Nazi genocide a "myth", students made it clear that they weren't buying what Mahmoud was shoveling:

ran on Monday opened a conference on the Holocaust, saying it would not be an attempt to deny the World War II genocide but merely to discuss it in an unrestricted atmosphere.

However, the conference was initiated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has described the Holocaust as a "myth" and called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Students from a Teheran university cut off Ahmadinejad as he addressed the conference, shouting slurs like "corrupt," "liar," and "death to the dictator."

The interruptions came in response to the intensified surveillance at the universities since Ahmadinejad came to power.

The Iranian president responded by accusing the hecklers of being "American."

Oooh .... now that's going to leave a mark.

The Iranians, which denied entry to an Israeli Arab, somehow found room for an extremist sect of Jews known as Natorei Karta. This group is virulently anti-Zionist and highly critical of the modern practice of Judaism, apparently. This must be what passes for balance in Iran -- which the students there know only too well.

Mahmoud's off to a bad start. However, the various participants in this global joke will no doubt perk up his spirits in the coming days with their blame-shifting of all the region's woes to the yahouds. Too bad that more of them do not have the same courage and integrity as the Iranian students, and as an American, I take Mahmoud's reaction as a particularly effusive compliment. (via It Shines For All)

Obama Campaigns In New England

The coyness continues from Barack Obama, who took his "aw, shucks" campaign to New Hampshire this weekend. In two appearances, he appeared humble and somewhat mystified about his sudden popularity -- but he used it to attempt to move the debate to the left:

Senator Barack Obama came to New Hampshire for the first time in his life on Sunday, selling a message of hope while proclaiming himself wary of the wave of hype that surrounded his visit.

His visit gave Democrats in two sold-out halls a chance to inspect the man who has emerged as their party’s strongest alternative to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as a presidential contender.

“It is flattering to get a lot of attention, although I must say it is baffling,” Mr. Obama said here late Sunday afternoon.

“I think to some degree I’ve become a shorthand or symbol or stand-in for a spirit that the last election in New Hampshire represented,” he said, referring to the losses of two incumbent congressmen here in November. “It’s a spirit that says we are looking for something different — we want something new.”

What New Hampshire saw was a first-term senator from Illinois who offered a strong condemnation of the way politics have been conducted in Washington and who positioned himself as someone who could strongly appeal to the more liberal Democrats who tend to dominate primaries. In two speeches and a news conference, Mr. Obama called for universal health care — the issue with which Mrs. Clinton, the New York Democrat, was once closely identified — a battle on global warming and a timed redeployment of troops from Iraq.

Obama wants to position himself as a liberal alternative to Hillary Clinton, a prospect that seems rather daunting, given her history. Even more dangerous to Hillary, he embodies a desire across the political spectrum for change -- changing the last name in the White House to something other than Bush or Clinton. His entire approach in both appearances was focused on the need to change the tenor of politics in Washington, finding ways to approach policy in non-ideological ways to get things accomplished.

He may have put on a naive persona in doing so, claiming mystification at the extension of his 15 minutes of fame, but this points out a real naivete about the nature of politics on a federal level. Ideological differences spring entirely from the notion that the federal government should solve everyone's problems. Take universal health care as an example. The nationalization of that industry would represent a fundamental policy change for the United States, which has always championed private industry and a competitive marketplace over government solutions. Ideology plays a significant role in the tension over this issue. Of course the debate will get ideological -- that's why we elect representatives to go to Washington!

Obama would be on firmer ground if he spoke about mindless partisanship. That kind of tribalism, where party trumps policy, really does become destructive. It results in ossified politics, where the only point in the effort is to count Rs and Ds at the end of the day. Nothing gets done except for the aggregation of personal power. That kind of politics the American people should eschew.

I'm looking forward to reading Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, which I ordered on audio CD this weekend. From the little I've seen, it casts him as a superficial policymaker, but perhaps there is more to him than just a self-effacing, clever political personality. If he presents any kind of challenge to Hillary, that book will get dissected in the media quicker than one can say Al Gore, and it will be a good idea to have a grasp of the material.

So This Was Our Intel Priority In The 1990s?

The Observer dropped a bombshell yesterday when it revealed that American intelligence had Princess Diana bugged and under surveillance the night of her death. It adds yet another strange aspect to the freak show that her demise has inspired, but opens some questions about American priorities:

The American secret service was bugging Princess Diana's telephone conversations without the approval of the British security services on the night she died, according to the most comprehensive report on her death, to be published this week.

Among extraordinary details due to emerge in the report by former Metropolitan police commissioner Lord Stevens is the revelation that the US security service was bugging her calls in the hours before she was killed in a car crash in Paris.

In a move that raises fresh questions over transatlantic agreements on intelligence-sharing, the surveillance arm of the US has admitted listening to her conversations as she stayed at the Ritz hotel, but failed to notify MI6. Stevens is understood to have been assured that the 39 classified documents detailing Diana's final conversations did not reveal anything sinister or contain material that might help explain her death.

Scotland Yard's inquiry, published this Thursday, also throws up further intelligence links with the Princess of Wales on the night she died. The driver of the Mercedes, Henri Paul, was in the pay of the French equivalent of M15. Stevens traced £100,000 he had amassed in 14 French bank accounts though no payments have been linked to Diana's death.

In 1997, the United States had suffered attacks by radical Islamists in Khobar Towers and at the World Trade Center. Osama bin Laden prepared to transfer his operations to Afghanistan. Clinton administration officials have told us for the past five years that terrorism occupied their primary focus.

So what the hell were we doing spying on Diana?

This undercores the impression that America didn't take security seriously in the 1990s. Diana had zero interest to our national security. The only interest America had in Diana was commercial; she sold truckloads of magazines. Besides her work opposing the use of land mines, which the US wants to continue using in certain situations, she had almost no impact on politics at all here, let alone security.

Someone needs to explain our activity regarding Diana. Nine years after her death, we need to know why American intelligence chiefs found Diana so fascinating that we put her under surveillance without notifying our closest allies -- and why that mission seemed so critical while our deadliest enemies built their capabilities out of our sight.

GOP Straw Poll For December

GOP Bloggers has their monthly Presidential Straw Poll running again, square in the middle of voting season here on the blogs. Once again, blog readers can cast their votes from their favorite blogs in order to allow analysis from each blog about their readers' choices. It looks like the latest entrants into the race have been added this time:

Speaking of voting, John Hawkins has the results of his Warblogger Awards for 2006. CQ gets a few honorable mentions, for which I thank the judges, so be sure to check out the winners. And, as long as we're talking about voting, don't forget to cast your ballots for your favorites in the 2006 Weblog Awards. CQ is running in third place for Best Conservative Blog. The folks at The Moderate Voice have repeatedly boosted my blog for the awards, but they seem to have decided to end their own run for Best Centrist Blog, which seems a shame; they should win it in a walk. If so, then don't forget that TMV writers have their own blogs in the running, too.

Holocaust Scholars Are Not Welcome In Iran

The Iranian regime hosts its Holocaust denial conference this week, the long-promoted effort of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian president says he wants an unbiased look at the evidence of the Nazi genocide of European Jews during World War II, and he's inviting every nutcase in the Northern Hemisphere to attend the conference. However, one Palestinian has found his invitation withdrawn:

An outspoken Palestinian lawyer was hoping to challenge Holocaust deniers during a provocative conference that opens in Iran today. The international gathering will question whether six million Jews were actually slaughtered by the Nazis in the Second World War.

But yesterday Khaled Kasab Mahameed learnt from the Iranian Foreign Ministry — which had invited him to speak — that he would not receive a visa. No reason was given.

Mr Mahameed suspects that it was because he has an Israeli passport. It may also have been because he has made clear what he intended to say.

“I’m bitterly disappointed,” Mr Mahameed, who studied at a British university, told The Times. He was seeking a personal audience with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, to tell him that denials or questioning of “such huge, monstrous horror” harmed the Palestinian cause.

Mr Mahameed lives in Israel, where he has established the Arab Institute for Holocaust Research and Education, the Arab world’s first Holocaust museum, in Nazareth. He believes that the “study, analysis and acknowledgement” of the Holocaust by Arabs is important for a durable peace between the Palestinians and Israel. “It’s not enough to curse these Holocaust deniers as foolish. We have to convince them the Holocaust did happen,” Mr Mahameed said.

Originally, Mahameed's attendance figured to class the joint up a bit. With the invitation list leaning heavily towards flat-earthers, the presence of a scholar such as Mahameed would have allowed the Iranians to claim that they gave all sides an opportunity for a hearing. Instead, the appearance of a single person with a connection to reality, no matter how tenuous, has given the Iranians the, er, heebie jeebies.

So who's on the A-list in Teheran? David Irving was rumored to have planned to appear, but the Austrians tossed him in prison for his repeated denials of the Holocaust. That's a bad idea, as I wrote last February, but Irving hardly deserves much sympathy otherwise. Australia didn't keep Frederick Toben from gaining a visa, and probably hope he decides to relocate to Iran permanently. Lady Michele Renouf, who championed Irving and a variety of far-right nuttiness, will also appear in Teheran. Ahmadinejad brags that 67 such "experts" from over 30 countries will attend his convention.

Truth, alas, will not make an appearance.

Cat's Out Of The Bag In North Korea

After years of regime propaganda, North Koreans have started discovering just how poor they are in comparison to their cousins in the South. The London Telegraph reports that refugees now understand their economic position in the world before they flee Kim Jong-Il and his worker's paradise:

Many North Koreans are now aware of the poverty of their country and are voicing discontent after years of near-starvation, according to the fullest study yet conducted of refugees from the Stalinist dictatorship.

While the popular image of North Koreans is of a nation living in blissful ignorance of the outside world and unquestioning loyalty to the leadership of Kim Jong-il, refugees interviewed while in hiding in China reported that there were increasing signs of dissent.

Eighty per cent of those questioned said North Koreans no longer believed official propaganda that living standards were better than in capitalist South Korea. In reality, income per head is 20 to 30 times higher in the South.

Kim and his father have managed to keep the North benighted enough to believe that they lived as well as anyone else. That happened for a couple of reasons: the regime controlled all the methods of communication, and the Chinese lived at about the same subsistence level as the North Koreans. Both have changed over the past few years. The Chinese have embraced Western economies and has raised its standard of living considerably as a result, which the North Koreans have gone backwards. Meanwhile, revolutions in communication have allowed the reality of their poverty to finally seep into the national consciousness.

The Chinese revealed that Kim weathered three coup attempts over the last fifteen years, apparently with the help of Beijing, after Kim tested his nuclear weapon this fall. The unrest that has begun may herald another coup attempt, one that China may have little interest in stopping. In fact, the Chinese may want to assist in pulling down the Kim regime if it keeps a flood of refugees from swamping out the Chinese north of the peninsula. That flood may begin soon, if the starving victims of Pyongyang decide to act on their desperation.

And their desperation will only get worse. Thanks to the nuclear test, Kim will get less aid to get him through this winter. Less aid means less food for the people, which means even more unrest and anger towards Dear Leader. This will quickly develop into a vicious cycle, one that Pyongyang will not easily control, let alone reverse.

Kim's days are numbered. Either his army will get him out of the way, or the Chinese will arrange a long vacation at a Pacific Rim resort to save his life. Once the blinders come off of millions of impoverished and starving North Koreans, the outcome will not be in doubt.

Connecting A Few Dots With The Flying Imams

Kathryn Kersten decides to do what her employer has thus far refused through its news division and report on the terror connections of the Flying Imams. In her latest Star Tribune column, Kersten notes the affiliations of the six imams who got booted from a US Air flight for their suspicious behavior:

Who are the parties involved here, who seem so interested in linking airport security with racial bigotry?

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the imams' legal representative, is an organization that "we know has ties to terrorism," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in 2003. And the Muslim American Society, which is also supporting the imams? It's the American arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to the Chicago Tribune, which called it "the world's most influential Islamic fundamentalist group."

How about Omar Shahin, the imams' spokesman and also president of the North American Imams Federation? He is a native of Jordan, who says he became a U.S. citizen in 2003. From 2000 to 2003, Shahin served as president of Islamic Center of Tucson (ICT), that city's largest mosque.

The ICT is well known. The mosque has "an extensive history of terror links," according to terrorism expert Steven Emerson, who testified about terrorist financing before the Senate Banking Committee in July 2005.

The Washington Post described these links in a 2002 article. "Tucson was one of the first points of contact in the United States for the jihadist group that evolved into al Qaeda," the Post reported. And the ICT? It held "basically the first cell of al Qaeda in the United States; that is where it all started," said Rita Katz, a terrorism expert quoted by the Post.

Kersten has plenty more. What seems so strange about Kersten's column is that these facts didn't get reported by the Strib's field reporters. In fact, the Strib has seemed strangely willing to accept the imams' stories at face value as well as their purported moderation without lifting a finger to check their affiliations.

The more one digs into this story, the worse it looks. It seems very apparent that the imams wanted to provoke a security reaction, and that they succeeded in doing so. Their insistence on taking seats not assigned to them, the seat belt extenders they placed under their seats, and their interference with boarding are all explicit acts that would set bells off in any airport.

At first, the provocation seemed designed to promote Muslims as a victim class. With the kinds of connections that Kersten details, it looks more like a serious attempt to force a retreat on airline security that would allow terrorists to conduct another attack. The Star Tribune's refusal to do actual reporting on this subject and their abdication of their journalistic responsibilities to their local columnist do a disservice to their Minneapolis readers and to the nation as a whole. Be sure to read Kersten's attempt to make up for both. (via Power Line)

The Hidden Granddaughter

We spent this afternoon getting a little Christmas spirit with the Little Admiral. She took part in a church Christmas show, for which she had practiced the last two weeks. Grandpa took the video camera hoping to get some memories on tape, but the Little Admiral decided that she wanted to hide behind the other kids. I did manage to get a few cute shots; in this clip, she's singing "Away in a Manger":

I've been meaning to play around with YouTube for some other blogging projects; this was as good of an excuse as any other.

Maliki Out?

It appears that events have begun to pick up pace in Iraq. First a broad agreement seems to have coalesced around revenue sharing for Iraq's oil production, and now it looks like Nouri al-Maliki might be getting the heave as Prime Minister:

Major partners in Iraq's governing coalition are in behind-the-scenes talks to oust Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki amid discontent over his failure to quell raging violence, according to lawmakers involved.

The talks are aimed at forming a new parliamentary bloc that would seek to replace the current government and that would likely exclude supporters of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who is a vehement opponent of the U.S. military presence.

The new alliance would be led by senior Shiite politician Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, who met with
President Bush last week. Al-Hakim, however, was not expected to be the next prime minister because he prefers the role of powerbroker, staying above the grinding day-to-day running of the country.

Back in March, the thinking was that by allowing a Sadr ally to form the government, it might encourage Sadr to end his efforts to gain power through violence. That has obviously failed, and failed badly. As I wrote earlier today, it torpedoed the efforts to get the Sunni and Ba'athist insurgents to end their campaigns, and Sadr has only gotten worse ever since.

Maliki needs to go, and go soon. Engaging Sadr doesn't work, and the US should return to our previous policy of targeting him and his Mahdi army lieutenants if they refuse to disarm. Thanks to Maliki, he has infiltrated the Interior ministry, so he will present a difficult opponent if he chooses to fight it out. However, Sadr makes a better power broker than a general, as he has proven several times now. Without Maliki running interference, he will be more exposed than ever.

And guess who has apparently given his blessing to the change? Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. We have not heard much from the widely respected Shi'ite cleric since Sadr's star rose, but it looks like he's coming out of his de facto retirement from national politics.

The Iraqis have tired of the lack of progress even more than we have. It looks like they have formed a coalition of groups large enough to shut down Maliki and Sadr in the National Assembly, which means that even the Shi'ites have had enough. Keep an eye on this over the next few days.

Lactose Intolerance

Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. Ralph Waldo Emerson's advice has informed American self-perception of their economy: inventive, individualistic, and dynamic. However, milk apparently gets different treatment than mousetraps, as Dutch immigrant and dairyman Hein Hettinga just discovered:

In the summer of 2003, shoppers in Southern California began getting a break on the price of milk.

A maverick dairyman named Hein Hettinga started bottling his own milk and selling it for as much as 20 cents a gallon less than the competition, exercising his right to work outside the rigid system that has controlled U.S. milk production for almost 70 years. Soon the effects were rippling through the state, helping to hold down retail prices at supermarkets and warehouse stores.

That was when a coalition of giant milk companies and dairies, along with their congressional allies, decided to crush Hettinga's initiative. For three years, the milk lobby spent millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions and made deals with lawmakers, including incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).

Last March, Congress passed a law reshaping the Western milk market and essentially ending Hettinga's experiment -- all without a single congressional hearing.

"They wanted to make sure there would be no more Heins," said Mary Keough Ledman, a dairy economist who observed the battle.

The long Washington Post article should be required reading for anyone interested in national politics and economics. Members of both parties have vested interests in keeping farm and dairy subsidies in place, and the government-run system has developed over the decades into a syndicate that protects itself rather ruthlessly. The American consumer and taxpayer pays for it all, with every glass of milk and every bite of cheese.

In this case, the threat that Hettinga represented came to the attention of an unlikely pair in the US Senate -- Jon Kyl and Harry Reid. Both have worked to assist dairies in Nevada to avoid the federal combine pricing; both have worked to make sure Hettinga couldn't do the same. It's a classic case of how cronyism winds up at the heart of every government-run program, and how political contributions act to directly distort what should be open markets.

As for Hettinga, he was not exactly a babe in these political woods, and he has decided to fight the system in the usual way. He's suing the federal government, which promises to do nothing except add a level of judicial activism to the federal interference with the price of milk. It's hard to see any solution to this that includes federal control of the dairy markets.

Murphy's Law

In my experience, any time one goes to work for the government, it conducts a proctological background check that takes weeks or months to complete. They ask for every piece of information that one could possibly imagine, including all of the places one has lived for what seems their entire life, the names of neighbors and co-workers, and the nature of all the positions one has held. That kind of check gets conducted for entry-level positions where any kind of security clearance is required; it gets more involved the higher the clearance gets.

So it comes as a rather large and unpleasant surprise that the White House and the Pentagon had no idea one of their top lawyers had been disbarred in Texas:

A top Air Force lawyer who served at the White House and in a senior position in Iraq turns out to have been practicing law for 23 years without a license.

Col. Michael D. Murphy was most recently commander of the Air Force Legal Operations Agency at Bolling Air Force Base in the District.

He was the general counsel for the White House Military Office from December 2001 to January 2003, and from August 2003 to January 2005. In between those tours, he was the legal adviser to the reconstruction effort in Iraq, an Air Force spokesman said.

Murphy later served in 2005 as commandant of the Air Force Judge Advocate General's School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala.

He was relieved of his command at Bolling on Nov. 30 after the Air Force learned that he had been disbarred for professional misconduct in Texas in 1984 but hadn't informed his superiors, according to Air Force Times, an independent newspaper that first reported the action. It said that his status was discovered in the course of an unrelated review.

What gives? In the intervening time, Murphy had won promotions and access to the highest levels of government. He served two tours at the White House, and commanded the Air Force JAG School. In all of that time, no one did a routine check on his legal credentials -- the very reason for his service.

I don't care which party occupies the White House. Responsible vetting of those with access to command positions and the White House is an absolute requirement. Heads should roll over this embarrassment.

Greenwald Pounds Emanuel

In the wake of the final Ethics Committee report on the Mark Foley scandal, we have discovered what we expected -- that the Republicans shrugged off the scandal until it blew up in their faces, and that the Democrats knew about it long before the October Surprise release (in September, in this case) prior to the midterms. It shows both parties in a poor light, both of them sublimating ethical concerns and the safety of the pages to electoral interests. On page 76 of the report, the Ethics Committee makes clear that the Democratic House leadership had copies of the e-mails as early as October 2005 -- and withheld them.

Today, no lesser liberal blogger than Glenn Greenwald blasts the Democrats, and especially Rahm Emanuel, for lying about their involvement in the scandal:

At the height of the Mark Foley scandal in October -- when Democrats were pounding Denny Hastert and company on a daily basis for having taken no action despite knowing about the emails sent by Foley to at least one page (and for lying about their past knowledge) -- Democratic Congressman (and DCCC Chair) Rahm Emanuel went on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos (along with GOP Rep. Adam Putnam). I haven't been able to find a full transcript, but the full video is here, and this article provides an account of the segment.

All week long, Republicans had been insisting that the Foley scandal was a Democratic "dirty trick," speculating that Democrats -- specifically the DCCC of which Emanuel was the Chair -- were just as aware of the Foley e-mails as various GOP House Leaders were, and they accused Democrats (with no evidence) of being responsible for engineering the story. ...

Emanuel would likely say that he did not "lie," because each time he was asked whether he was "aware" of the e-mails -- which he plainly was -- he never denied being "aware" of them. Instead -- he would likely argue -- he changed the subject by denying that he ever "saw" the e-mails, a fact which appears (based on what we know) to be true (or at least not demonstrably false). Therefore, in the narrowest and most technical way, an argument could be constructed that Emanuel did not actually "lie" in his responses.

But that argument, ultimately, is nonsense. If you listen to the video, there is little doubt that Emanuel was lying in every meaningful sense of that word. He not only denied having "seen" the e-mails, but also interrupted Stephanapolous's first question about whether he was "aware" of the e-mails with an emphatic "no," and at least on one other occasion, denied not only having seen the e-mails, but also having been aware of them. Those denials were just outright false (i.e., "lies").

Independent of the question of whether Emaneul "technically lied" -- and far more important -- is the fact that Emanuel was clearly and deliberately misleading. Any reasonable person would have come away from that interview (as I know I did) with the strong impression that Emanuel was completely unaware of any e-mails sent by Foley to the pages, and that he had no reason to know anything was amiss with Foley until ABC broke the story.

Please read the entire post, as Greenwald has lots of citations and an excellent argument to tie them altogether into a damning indictment of Emanuel. I don't think anyone was terribly surprised by this development, but the chutzpah of Emanuel might set a few new lows for Washington in this regard. Emanuel, Greenwald reveals, relied on a Clintonesque rhetorical dance to deliver the impression that he had no knowledge of the Foley matter before ABC News broke it and Foley resigned -- which Greenwald rightly suggests amounts to a flat-out lie.

Will Emanuel pay any price for his dishonesty? It's doubtful; by the time of the next election, this will be old news that neither party will want to revisit. Still, kudos to Glenn for getting tough with his own party on dishonesty and political cynicism of the highest order.

Tories Pass Accountability Act

It took almost a year, but the Tories in Canada have made good on their campaign promises to clean up government. IThe Federal Accountability Act survived an attempt by the Liberals to delay it past a contribution deadline, a maneuver that brought condemnation from the NDP:

The House of Commons passed on Friday the Conservatives’ much-touted Federal Accountability Act.

The Tories promised during the last election to bring ethics and accountability to Ottawa, and the bill was the first piece of legislation introduced by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The omnibus bill was brought to the House of Commons in April and was then scrutinized by the Senate throughout the summer and fall.

The Conservatives accused Liberal senators of holding up the legislation so the party wouldn’t be subject to new donation rules during its recent leadership campaign.

This was the fruit of Adscam, the corruption of the Sponsorship Programme that stuffed millions of government dollars into Liberal Party coffers and the pockets of its supporters. The scandal eventually dethroned the Liberals and allowed Stephen Harper and the Conservatives to come to power. The Grits spent most of two years running scare campaigns about Harper's "secret agenda"; now Canadian voters understand the desperation of the Liberals a little more clearly.

Unfortunately, the Liberals themselves don't get it. Their attempts to delay the act's passage show that they have not learned much from Adscam; they have once again handed the issue of clean government to Harper and the Tories. The NDP underscored this in Pat Martin's statement, calling their objections "smoke and mirrors" intended to deflect the new regulations.

The bill will get reviewed and updated, and it does seem that there is more work to be done. Campaign-finance restrictions should be rethought, although as with here, it's the easiest method to make it look like campaigning has been reformed, but in the end it just limits political speech for no real benefit overall. It's still an excellent start on ensuring that a single party in their parliamentary system can't just start raiding the treasury for their own partisan purposes. (via Newsbeat1)

The Freezer Money Wasn't Needed, Apparently

In a sign that people will vote for crooks as long as they consider them a member of the team, William Jefferson has won re-election to the House of Representative. The Louisiana Democrat won 57% of the vote in a runoff against a fellow Democrat despite having been caught with $90,000 cash in his freezer during a federal corruption investigation:

Voters looked past a federal bribery investigation of Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.) and reelected the eight-term congressman in a runoff election Saturday.

Jefferson grabbed a commanding lead over state Rep. Karen Carter, a fellow Democrat, almost as soon as the polls closed in the New Orleans district. With 44 percent of the precincts reporting, Jefferson, had 61 percent of the vote.

Louisiana's 2nd District was one of the nation's last unresolved midterm races, and the runoff election put Jefferson in danger of becoming the only Democratic incumbent to lose this election year.

In her concession speech, Carter embraced family members and pledged to work with Jefferson, particularly on the area's recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

"I guess the people are happy with the status quo," she said.

If people are happy with the status quo of corrupt politicians, they can only come from New Orleans, one of the most corrupt cities in the US. Let's recall that Jefferson not only kept scads of cash in his freezer, but also hijacked National Guard rescuers to help him clean out his house in the middle of the Katrina evacuation. He took valuable resources away from the very people who just re-elected them in order to get special privilege on salvaging his personal property while the citizens of New Orleans begged for help.

And they elected him anyway. What a disgrace.

My first thought was that the Democrats should refuse to seat him, but that wouldn't be the right thing to do. The voters elected the crook, and the crook should take his seat, until he's convicted of his corruption. The new Democratic leadership should not take a page from Denny Hastert, however, and act to protect Jefferson from completely legal searches of his offices. Democrats and Republicans alike should demand that Nancy Pelosi drop all efforts to keep the FBI from reviewing the material seized during that search, and encourage the FBI to continue its work in fighting corruption.

And then when he's convicted, the House should refuse to seat a replacement. The Democrats don't need the seat for their majority, and both parties should make it clear that consequences will follow from knowingly sending a corrupt politician back to Congress. That might discourage the "he's our crook" thinking in the future.

So Much For Negotiations With 'Insurgents'

The Times of London reveals that the American consulate in Iraq spent two months in high-level negotiations with the insurgencies in Iraq, including some groups previously thought to be associated with al-Qaeda. The talks collapsed earlier this year when Nouri al-Maliki, sympathetic to Iran, formed the government -- a move which the insurgents saw as a betrayal:

SECRET talks in which senior American officials came face-to-face with some of their most bitter enemies in the Iraqi insurgency broke down after two months of meetings, rebel commanders have disclosed.

The meetings, hosted by Iyad Allawi, Iraq’s former prime minister, brought insurgent commanders and Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq, together for the first time.

After months of delicate negotiations Allawi, a former Ba’athist and a secular Shi’ite, persuaded three rebel leaders to travel to his villa in Amman, the Jordanian capital, to see Khalilzad in January.

“The meetings came about after persistent requests from the Americans. It wasn’t because they loved us but because they didn’t have a choice,” said a rebel leader who took part.

The Iraq Study Group included in its recommendations that the Americans hold such talks with all insurgent groups excepting al-Qaeda. Apparently, they didn't ask whether or not George Bush had already tried that tactic, because Zalmay Khalilzad's effort seems very comprehensive indeed. In fact, it included Ansar al-Sunnah, a group known to at least coordinate with al-Qaeda in Iraq when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was alive. Ansar al-Sunnah killed American soldiers, including 22 in a suicide attack in a Mosul Army base in 2004.

So what happened? Khalilzad initiated the contacts in an attempt to do exactly what the ISG proposed for a resolution of internal conflicts in Iraq. This was one of the recommendations that actually made some sense, along with the recommendations on oil revenue, constitutional modification efforts, and the like. After pressing in late 2005 to get a meeting with the insurgent leaders, they finally agreed to meet once with the American diplomatic corps in Amman.

Khalilzad built some trust, based on common ground among the insurgencies: Iran. The Sunni and secular insurgencies all feared the rise of the Iranian hegemon in Iraq, apparently mostly centering on Moqtada al-Sadr. All sides recognized their mutual interest in keeping Iraq from falling into the Iranian orbit, and talks proceeded apace towards resolving enough of the issues to get the insurgencies engaged in the political process. It all ran aground, however, when Khalilzad offered to hold talks with Iran in March of this year, and when Sadr's ally Maliki became the US choice to form the new government. The insurgents saw this as a betrayal of the weeks of work between themselves and the Americans, and broke off all contact.

With the Times story as background, I don't see how another spin with the insurgents will work. They would not likely trust us enough even to take a meeting, given our work with the Maliki government this year. Even if we put some distance between ourselves and Maliki -- which, given the Shi'ite majority in Iraq, would probably be another mistake -- our entreaties would not likely move the leaders of these groups. After all, the ISG just told the world that we should turn the future of Iraq over to a regional conference, a group that would be dominated by Syria and Iran. That would be an even worse situation that Maliki taking the reins in Baghdad.

The ISG panel didn't note any of this. Khalilzad comes up once in the ISG repot -- in a listing of embassy personnel. Ansar al-Sunnah gets zero mentions. It seems that we keep discovering how little their contingent actually discovered during their study period, and how useless their slate of recommendations are.

UPDATE: Changed an "Iraq" to "Iran"; thanks to Peyton in the comments.