Democratic Lobbying Reform: More Middlemen

Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats won their majority in part on the promise to clean up Congress. In particular, they railed against the influence of lobbyists and their ability to curry favor with legislators through free trips and other perks. The new majority passed a slew of new rules that supposedly ended these abuses, but as it turns out, all they did was require more featherbedding:

The 110th Congress opened with the passage of sweeping new rules intended to curb the influence of lobbyists by prohibiting them from treating lawmakers to meals, trips, stadium box seats or the discounted use of private jets.

But it did not take long for lawmakers to find ways to keep having fun while lobbyists pick up the tab.

In just the last two months, lawmakers invited lobbyists to help pay for a catalog of outings: lavish birthday parties in a lawmaker’s honor ($1,000 a lobbyist), martinis and margaritas at Washington restaurants (at least $1,000), a California wine-tasting tour (all donors welcome), hunting and fishing trips (typically $5,000), weekend golf tournaments ($2,500 and up), a Presidents’ Day weekend at Disney World ($5,000), parties in South Beach in Miami ($5,000), concerts by the Who or Bob Seger ($2,500 for two seats), and even Broadway shows like “Mary Poppins” and “The Drowsy Chaperone” (also $2,500 for two).

The lobbyists and their employers typically end up paying for the events, but within the new rules.

Instead of picking up the tab directly, lobbyists pay a political fund-raising committee and, in turn, the committee pays the lawmaker’s way. The prices listed are for lobbyists with political action committees. And the lobbyists usually pay for their own travel and hotel rooms, too.

Lobbyists and fund-raisers say such trips are becoming increasingly popular, partly as a quirky consequence of the new ethics rules. By barring lobbyists from mingling with a lawmaker or his staff for the cost of a steak dinner, the restrictions have stirred new demand for pricier tickets to social fund-raising events. Lobbyists say that the rules might even increase the volume of contributions flowing from K Street, where many lobbying firms have their offices, to Congress.

All the new rules have done is to bar direct payment for such extravagances. It hasn't ended the freebies -- they just have to work harder to launder the money. And that means that we will have an even more difficult time in discovering which lawmaker benefits from which lobbyist at any given time.

Doesn't this sound a lot like campaign finance reform, and doesn't it sound just as effective?

Adscam May Lead To Perjury Charges

Just when Liberal politicians thought it safe to go into the water, it turns out that Adscam still may lie beneath the calm surface of Canadian politics. The National Post reports this morning that Adscam witnesses may have lied to either the Gomery Inquiry or to a Parliamentary committee, and some in the Commons want to pursue perjury charges (via Newsbeat1):

MPs went behind closed doors Wednesday night to decide whether to pursue perjury charges against half a dozen politicians and bureaucrats who said one thing at the Gomery inquiry and another when they testified before the Commons public accounts committee.

The MPs on the committee were confronted with the decision when they received a report that compared "discrepancies" in the testimony of key witnesses.

The witnesses appeared first at the committee's hearings into why the sponsorship program went off the rails in 2003 and were later called to testify at the inquiry headed by Justice John Gomery. ...

House of Commons lawyers advised MPs that perjury charges are a "tricky" and "tortuous path" and would be a long-shot. If MPs decide to turn the case over to Ontario's attorney general to pursue, it would be a first in Canada's history.

Another option, favoured by many MPs, is to report to Parliament with a recommendation that those who are unable to explain the differences in their testimony be found in contempt of Parliament.

It seems a little bit late, but apparently someone finally started reviewing the transcripts from both inquiries and found stories that didn't match. The Gomery inquiry resulted in no charges being offered but became an important factor in the collapse of Liberal political support and the historic win of the Conservatives last year. Stephen Harper owes his position as Prime Minister in part to the exposure of Liberal corruption in Adscam.

Liberals had hoped that Adscam had become old news since the nadir of their fortunes in January 2006. They had reason to believe that their fortunes had improved. An SES Research poll taken earlier this week put them in a dead heat with the Conservatives on a national level, with both parties polling at 33%. Earlier, they trailed by only two points. That's a significant decrease from five years ago, when the Grits had almost a majority, but a four-point improvement from last winter.

Now it looks as if the Commons will have to dredge it all back up again, and the Liberals will have to weather another tour of its darker days. The witnesses that allegedly perjured themselves in one inquiry or the other are very unlikely to be Conservatives or from the NDP, after all, and it could lead to an expansion of the inquiry that would involve even more Liberal politicians. Hundreds of millions of dollars still remain missing from the Sponsorhip Programme, and Canadians might take an interest again in finding them.

UPDATE: I've taken out references that the witnesses may have been MPs, although the story does say "politicians". As Mark in Ottawa points out, the article doesn't specify the offices held by the politicians.

Obama Makes It Official

He only has two years of national office under his belt, and has not even faced a credible opponent. He has few legislative accomplishments for his resumé, and no executive experience at all. For the Democratic Party in 2008, that apparently makes Barack Obama the #2 candidate for the Presidential nomination behind Hillary Clinton, a position Obama assumed with his official announcement of candidacy a few minutes ago:

Democrat Barack Obama declared himself a candidate Saturday for the White House in 2008, evoking Abraham Lincoln's ability to unite a nation and promising to lead a new generation as the country's first black president.

The first-term senator announced his candidacy from the state capital where he began his elective career just 10 years ago, and in front of the building where in another century, Lincoln served eight years in the Illinois Legislature.

"We can build a more hopeful America," Obama said in remarks prepared for delivery. "And that is why, in the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln once called on a divided house to stand together, where common hopes and common dreams still live, I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for president of the United States."

Obama did not mention his family background, his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia or that he would make history if elected president.

Obama made a number of references to Abraham Lincoln in a subtle attempt to address the critcisms of his lack of experience. Lincoln also had a lack national political experience and no track record as an executive, and went on to become perhaps America's greatest President. That happened in the context of a civil war, though, and Lincoln's greatness came from standing up to secessionists and ignoring demands for an end to the war and a political compromise that would have split the nation.

Obama, on the other hand, wants to inherit the mantle of Lincoln while essentially arguing for everything Lincoln opposed. He wants to assume the leadership of the new Copperheads, who believe that the present war cannot be won and that America should withdraw forthwith. Obama seems closer to George McClellan in this regard, who lost against Lincoln in 1864 after getting fired by Lincoln as commander of the Union Armies.

The world has changed since 1864, and the United States is a very different nation. In 1864, when Lincoln ran for President, the nation was an agrarian state just beginning to industrialize in a serious manner. The federal government had much less power and impact on the lives of everyday Americans, who usually only had contact with their local government except in extraordinary circumstances. Executive experience meant less in those days, especially since the party that won swept out the existing federal workers in a spoils system that later was replaced by the bureaucracy-cementing civil service system. It's so different as to be an apples-to-oranges comparison.

No one can doubt that Obama has charisma beyond anything seen on either side of the political divide at this time, and he's no dummy, either. He lends an aura of gravitas to every debate in which he participates, and his confidence will attract plenty of support in the primary cycle. However, he's only 45 years old and has almost no track record on which to run. Even John Kennedy, one of the nation's youngest Presidents, had fourteen years in Congress and a Vice Presidential run on his resumé when he ran for the Presidency at 43. Obama has won one national race, and that one was against the carpetbagging Alan Keyes, where Obama didn't even have to break a sweat.

He's rushing towards his destiny, instead of patiently building the experience that would make him irresistable. It's a mistake, but apparently one he refuses to acknowledge. The American electorate will hopefully see it more clearly.

Double Insanity

When the US invasion of Iraq deposed Saddam Hussein, it ended the very tangible support for terrorists provided by the Iraqi tyrant: payment for Palestinian suicide bombers. Saddam paid families of suicide bombers $25,000 each after a successful attack against Israeli or Western targets, a kind of life insurance for the terminally unstable. Now a leading Arab bank appears to have picked up where Saddam left off, and is issuing life insurance policies for suicidal jihadis. Der Spiegel reports on what happened after a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up in a Jerusalem bus:

A few weeks after the suicide bombing, the phone at the home of Bassam Takruri's parents rang. On the other end of the line was a representative of Muassafat Usar al Shuhada, or "The Organization of Martyr Families." He told Bassam's mother that the family had received money, but that they would have to open an account at the Arab Bank in order to withdraw the first deposit. The Takruris were puzzled, but they did what the man said. Shortly thereafter money was transferred to the new account. From then on, Bassam's family received $200 (€152) each month for more than a year.

The Arab Bank is one of the largest and most important financial institutions in the Arab world. The Jordan-based private bank, of which 40 percent is still held by the founding Schuman family, is active in 28 countries. The Jordanian monarchy even awarded Abd al Hamid Schuman a medal for his achievements and services to the country.

But the bank has long been suspected of directing money used to finance terrorism in the Palestinian Territories. And accounts at its Palestinian branches are also supposedly used to pay a type of life insurance to the families of youthful suicide bombers, who blow themselves up with the aim of killing as many Israelis as possible. The blood money paid for a son turned murder is 20,000 Saudi riyal -- roughly €4,000 or $5,000. The funds take a circuitous route to the accounts of those families that prove the death of their son by showing a death certificate at the Arab Bank branch in the Palestinian Territories. Then monthly deposits are made just like in Takruri's case.

Suicide bombers with foresight can take care of all the necessary paperwork before they blow themselves to smithereens. A so-called Martyr Kit includes everything from a death certificate from the Palestinian Authority to an account card at the Arab Bank.

The May 2003 attack killed seven people and wounded a score more, including police officer Steve Averbach. Averbach took the bus that morning and noticed Takruri when the bomber boarded the bus dressed as an Orthodox Jew. Takruri's beard looked strange, and Averbach immediately noticed the bulge beneath Takruri's clothes. When medics found Averbach, his finger was still on the trigger of his gun, having pulled it a split second too late to stop the terrorist attack.

Averbach took weeks to recover from his injuries and remains maimed for life. Instead of plotting his own attack againt Palestinians, he hired a lawyer in the United States to sue the Arab Bank for its support of Takruri and other terrorists through its insurance program. Gary Osen represents over 200 victims of terrorist attacks, and he plans on vigorously pursuing the claims against Arab Bank and any other financial institution which supports terrorism. A 1996 law allows such lawsuits in the US.

The US has already had enough of Arab Bank. Federal authorities shut down its Madison Avenue branch for technical violations on internal controls for money transfers. They cannot conduct business in dollars any longer, and had to pay a $24 million fine from the Treasury Department two years ago. However, they continue to operate in the US, at least for the time being, and Osen wants to put an end to it.

He also wants to put an end to the money flowing into the bank's insurance program. Authorities believe the financing comes mainly from Saudi Arabia. Prince Nayef, the country's Interior Minister, runs a charity called the Saudi Committee for the Al-Quds Intifada -- the holy war for Jerusalem. Nayef and the Committee deny funding terrorism, but Der Spiegel notes a pair of advertising campaigns that explicitly invited the families of specifically named suicide bombers to go to the Arab Bank and receive payments.

Osen and other attorneys attempting to shut down this terrorist subsidy program should receive enthusiastic support from the US. However, the US should also demand an end to the Saudi Committee for the Al-Quds Intifada and hold the royal family to task for its operations. If we have not done so already, we should also isolate the Arab Bank from the global financial networks until it ends this death insurance program.

Look For The Mullah Label

American officials have begun to get closer to revealing the evidence of Iranian involvement in attacks on US troops in Iraq. Several sources within the Pentagon have talked with reporters about the issue, informing them of the details, including the manufacture of specific weapons found on insurgents. The New York Times leads with the story this morning:

The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran.

The assertion of an Iranian role in supplying the device to Shiite militias reflects broad agreement among American intelligence agencies, although officials acknowledge that the picture is not entirely complete.

In interviews, civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies provided specific details to support what until now has been a more generally worded claim, in a new National Intelligence Estimate, that Iran is providing “lethal support” to Shiite militants in Iraq.

The focus of American concern is known as an “explosively formed penetrator,” a particularly deadly type of roadside bomb being used by Shiite groups in attacks on American troops in Iraq. Attacks using the device have doubled in the past year, and have prompted increasing concern among military officers. In the last three months of 2006, attacks using the weapons accounted for a significant portion of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq, though less than a quarter of the total, military officials say.

The Times reports that some of their sources have previously voiced skepticism over linking Iran directly to the insurgencies. They have now changed their minds and spoke in depth about the connections between Teheran and the terrorists in Iraq, and the deaths they have caused directly or indirectly to American troops. These intel sources also claim that Hezbollah has been active inside Iraq in at least a support role for the Shi'ite militias and insurgents, another fingerprint of Iran and the mullahcracy.

So far, all of this information has been closely held by the Bush administration. The Times reports that this will change this weekend. The White House plans on presenting evidence gleaned from the controversial raid in Irbil of the active support Iran has given terrorists in Iraq. That support comes in the forms of training, financing, and manufacturing of the weapons themselves. Iran smuggles the materiel across the border at night and Iranian agents apparently handle the distribution. The raid on Irbil intended to disrupt this distribution channel for Iranian control of the insurgencies.

Iran has denied any involvement in the insurgency activity, and protested the Irbil raid and the purported capture of an Iranian diplomat last week in Baghdad. They claim that they have no interest in destabilizing Iraq and only want to normalize relations between themselves and their neighbors. However, Teheran understands that the Bush administration wants to wage a total war against radical Islamist terrorism, and that eventually such an effort will confront Iran. The mullahcracy wants to make each step along that path as expensive as possible for the US in an attempt to tire us out before that confrontation comes.

The Iranians understand the political climate here at home better than we think. As long as the violence rages in Iraq, they know that pressure will increase on the Bush administration to withdraw from the country. It doesn't make a lot of difference to Iran what form the violence takes, although they'd certainly be happy if the Shi'ites wiped out the Sunnis and the Kurds, as unlikely as that would be. They know that the Shi'ite majority will control Iraq in any case, especially while sectarian gang wars roil the capital. All they want to do is to exhaust American tenacity so that the war on Islamist terror fades before it reaches radical Islam's primary authors.

The White House needs to make its case and present as much of the evidence as possible, under the circumstances. There will be skeptics, and they will ironically call for a review of the intelligence in much the same manner that the White House asked for the same from Douglas Feith. If Congress authorizes it, it should get done, but they should acknowledge that they're doing the same thing that Carl Levin so angrily denounced yesterday. In any event, nothing should delay the national understanding of our true enemy in Southwest Asia.

Faster, please.

Even John Edwards Can't Appease The Trial Lawyers

The Washington Post reports on an odd development in the 2008 Presidential primary race to acquire endorsements early in the cycle. The populist personal-injury attorney turned politician, John Edwards, had locked up the backing of the American Association for Justice in 2004 when he ran for President. Now, however, the litigator's group has decided to keep an open mind, and even bypassed Edwards for the keynote speech in favor of Joe Biden:

In the last presidential election, John Edwards had the powerful support and deep pockets of the nation's trial lawyers behind him. But when the lawyers gather for their winter conference today in Miami Beach, it will be Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) delivering the meeting's keynote speech.

Edwards, a trial lawyer who became a senator and now a presidential candidate, will be there, too. But the North Carolina Democrat no longer has a lock on the backing of the lawyers. This time around he will be battling it out with others in the Democratic field, who are seen as sympathetic to plaintiffs and their attorneys.

"John is certainly respected by every trial lawyer in the country," said Joseph W. Cotchett, a lawyer from the San Francisco area who helped raise more than $33,000 for Edwards in the 2004 cycle. "Many people though are looking at the bigger picture here."

Thomas V. Girardi, a Los Angeles personal injury lawyer who helped raise more than $230,000 for Edwards as finance co-chairman of his 2004 bid, agreed. Girardi hosted a luncheon last month for Biden and said he intends to do the same for Edwards and for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

In the last election, Girardi said, "Senator Edwards was a much better candidate for the issues we care deeply about." Now, Edwards, Biden, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Clinton "all are very positive in terms of the philosophical view," he said. "So you have a different situation with respect to our support."

It seems strange indeed that the AAJ doesn't consider one of its own for the keynote speech, even if they have decided to hold off on an endorsement. Edwards had a successful practice as a personal-injury attorney, and he parlayed that into a single term in the Senate. Most of the people the AAJ now considers as on par with Edwards were hardly less well known than Edwards even in 2004, with the exception of Barack Obama.

And what does it say about the AAJ's attitude towards Edwards that they selected Joe Biden as their keynote speaker? Joe Biden has been in the Senate for the better part of three decades, and he has already kneecapped his 2008 campaign on the day he launched it. The only surprise that Biden could provide over his long track record as an empty suit will be if he manages to insult other ethnic groups than African-Americans and Indian-Americans who own convenience stores. Biden is a walking punch line whose candidacy is only taken seriously by Biden himself .... and apparently the AAJ.

Edwards' spokeswoman, Jennifer Palmieri, has been kept busy this week. After the Marcotte/McEwan blogging fiasco, she had to address the snub of Edwards' own natural constituency. The Post quotes her as assuring them that Edwards will get plenty of support from trial lawyers. In 2004, he got $10 million from attorneys, impressed with the $152 million Edwards won in 63 lawsuits in the twenty-odd years before he ran for the Senate in 1998.

Now they have started looking for a better deal, noting that Edwards did next to nothing in his 4 years of semi-active work in the Senate. That, of course, will come up again and again in the primary; the only candidate with less national experience in the race is Barack Obama, and at least Obama held state office for seven years before winning the Senate seat. And the AAJ's kiss-up to Biden has less to do with the presidential race as it does with Biden's position on the Senate Judiciary Committee -- a position from which Biden can perform many favors for the AAJ and its members, especially now that the Democrats control the agenda.

Biden won't get far in this primary, but Edwards won't either if he can't even convince fellow attorneys to commit completely to him early in the primary cycle. He will find it difficult to attract the kind of money that the trial lawyers can put in his pockets -- and he's certainly not going to get Catholics to pony up the difference.

UPDATE: I know, Senators are elected for six-year terms, but Edwards stopped bothering with his day job two years before his term expired. He spent the last two running for President.

Hamas Wins In New Unity Government

The Mecca accord which appears to have halted the slide towards civil war in the Palestinian territories -- at least momentarily -- has not produced any movement towards peace with Israel. In fact, it appears that Hamas has won a victory for its policy on Israel, which means that even the weak prospects for peace under Mahmoud Abbas appear dead:

Officials from Hamas and Israel dashed hopes yesterday that a Palestinian unity deal reached in the Saudi holy city of Mecca would end a crippling economic embargo or lead to a resumption of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.

"Our battle with the Israeli enemy is still on," Fathi Hamad, a Hamas leader in Gaza's Jebaliya refugee camp, told thousands of supporters.

He urged militant groups to resume attacks on Israel and denied that Hamas would respect past peace deals with the Jewish state -- a central element of the accord between Hamas and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas brokered by Saudi diplomats Thursday.

"We will be the spearhead of jihad ... to defend Palestine and Arab and Muslim nations," Mr. Hamad said, according to an Associated Press dispatch from Gaza.

It's no surprise that Hamas would win out in its quest to annihilate Israel. Their entire organization unites around that concept, and no faction within Hamas would produce a leader that would reverse it. On the other hand, Mahmoud Abbas has plenty of people within Fatah that also want to see the peace of genocide rather than co-existence, and Abbas -- if he truly wants co-existence at all -- probably represents a minority within his ranks.

The Mecca accord basically ratifies the election of thirteen months ago. It places Hamas in control of a majority of ministries, and Khaled Mashaal in charge of the Palestinian Authority through the proxy of Ismail Haniyeh. That means that Bashar Assad, Mashaal's patron, pulls the strings from Damascus, and now the entire PA can act as a Syrian proxy, rather than just the Hamas faction.

That assumes that the Mecca accord will hold. It has the appearance of strength, as the agreement goes beyond the normal cease-fires and hudnas by implementing a long-term power sharing arrangement. The Arab world hailed the partnership and demanded an end to the embargo that has crippled the PA. However, if they do not adopt the agreement signed by the PLO and accept the two-state solution as a permanent arrangement for peace, Western nations will not likely restart the aid which has kept the PA afloat before 2006, and the economic impact of that will almost certainly result in new tensions between the factions. Even with aid, the long history of conflict between Hamas and Fatah will be difficult to overcome in the short term.

France, of course, has taken the lead in the West by demanding the return of aid to the PA. Phillipe Douste-Blazy, best known for his idiotic statement last year that Iran is a force for stability in the region, assumed that the participants in the accord actually meant what it said when it adopted the language about respecting prior agreements. Tioday's statements from Hamas make it clear that French naiveté continues to keep abreast of Palestinian duplicity.

NARN, The Balmy Weather Edition

The Northern Alliance Radio Network will be on the air today, with our six-hour-long broadcast schedule starting at 11 am CT. The first two hours features Power Line's John Hinderaker and Chad and Brian from Fraters Libertas. Mitch and I hit the airwaves for the second shift from 1-3 pm CT, and King Banaian and Michael Broadkorb have The Final Word from 3-5. If you're in the Twin Cities, you can hear us on AM 1280 The Patriot, or on the station's Internet stream if you're outside of the broadcast area.

Last week, we had the Oh Crap I Live In Minnesota edition. This week, it's the Balmy Weather edition -- you have to be balmy to be out in it. It's -9 now, but the weatherman promises it will be +11 at some point today ... probably while I'm in the studio.

Be sure to call and join the conversation today at 651-289-4488. We'll be discussing the Edwards campaign tempest in a Blogspot, as well as the IG report from the DoD, McCain's outreach to the blogs, the end of the Senate non-binding resolution efforts, Joe Lieberman's veiled threat to pull a Jumpin' Jim Jeffords, and much more.

A Fun Fundraiser Tomorrow

One of the great parts about doing the Northern Alliance Radio shows on Saturdays has been the terrific people I have met during our three-year run. One of the nicest is Matt Reynolds, our crack producer for the last few months. Matt and his wife Amber have entered into the adoption process to add a baby from Guatemala to their young family, but as anyone who has knowledge of international adoptions can attest, it costs a lot of money to successfully complete an adoption.

Tomorrow night, we will attend a fundraiser for Matt and Amber at the Maple Grove Evangelical Free Church from 6-9 pm. Chipotle is donating the catering, which means we will have some excellent and healthy Mexican food for attendees. Here is Matt's description of the festivities:

Fundraising Fiesta for Hezekiah is on Feb 10th from 6-9 pm with a silent auction and a Mexican dinner. If people are interested in attending or donating they can check out our website at www.kiahskapers.8k.com or email us at kiahskapers@gmail.com. Or if they prefer they can make a tax deductible donation online through Life International at http://www.lifeintl.org/donation.html, then click the “make donation” button and it goes to PayPal. For a donation to go to our specific account, they need it to say “Mathew and Amber Reynolds” in the “payment for” box. Thanks for your support and help.

Mitch Berg, the First Mate, and I will be there to support Matt and Amber and to meet NARN listeners. I may even try to live-blog the event, if possible. Be sure to meet us in a good cause -- and if you can't make it, consider a contribution to a very worthy cause on behalf of some very fine folks.

CBS News On McCain Outreach

CBS News interviewed me after the conference call hosted by the John McCain campaign, involving several prominent conservative bloggers, including myself. David Miller interviewed Power Line's Paul Mirengoff as well, and wrote an interesting article about the intersection of political campaigns and independent bloggers -- a timely piece, given the controversy over John Edwards and his recent hires. Miller asked me what I thought the campaign hoped to accomplish by engaging with bloggers who had expressed serious criticism of their candidate:

Republican John McCain's campaign faces a different problem: Despite leading in polls of GOP primary voters, many conservative bloggers don't like him and don't trust him.

In particular, they take issue with the campaign finance overhaul law he co-sponsored in 2002. A frequent complaint on blogs is that the measure curtails free speech and — hitting closer to home — contains provisions that threatened to severely restrict the activity of political blogs.

McCain also took heat from blog readers when he joined a bipartisan group to prevent a Senate rules change that would have ended filibusters on judicial nominees, and many are wary of him because, they say, he is too friendly with the "MSM" — mainstream media.

"I'm not going to say I'll never support the guy, but he would really have to convince me," Ed Morrissey, who writes for Captain's Quarters, told CBSNews.com. "I know, though, that some of my readers have already written they would stay home or vote for the Democrat if the Republicans went with McCain." ...

The conference call bore little resemblance to one between a campaign and traditional journalists. Many of the bloggers showed minimal restraint in telling Nelson and Weaver where they parted ways with the early GOP front-runner.

McLaughlin said the campaign went into the conference call with no illusions of persuading bloggers to support their candidate. "I don't think it was as much to smooth things over as to open up a dialogue," he said. "I don't think we can necessarily say what our expectations are."

I think they kept their expectations realistic, and I think they had a better idea what they wanted than this demurral indicates. They wanted to sound out the bloggers to get an idea whether we would keep an open mind about McCain, and whether they could expect a fair shake from us. None of what they did attempted to change our minds about our issues with the Senator; instead, they asked us for our advice on how they could engage with our readers.

Paul and John commented on this article briefly yesterday in a post wryly titled. "Overrated But Not Necessarily Inconsequential". Both of them made the point that while blogs such as ours tend to carry some weight within the blog community, including the readers, it doesn't necessarily follow that we have that much influence outside of that. Miller and I discussed the same point when we talked about the disparity between McCain's polling in the blogosphere and in the general population. Miller captures my thoughts in the final paragraph:

"The thing is, is that I think what they're afraid of is the fact that people who know and follow politics can influence people who don't," Morrissey said. "If you pick up a reputation among the people who are hyper-interested in politics of being a jerk, they're going to tell their friends and it's going to turn up in water cooler conversations."

My belief is that we act as opinion leaders, to some extent, by engaging with readers who take time to inform themselves on politics and current events. That represents a small percentage of the overall population -- between 8-12%, depending on the study and the year. Most will vote in elections, maybe comprising 15-20% of all voters, still a minority but definitely influential. However, the most influence we have will be indirect. People who feel the civic impulse to vote but don't find politics interesting will search out knowledgeable sources among family and friends, and the blog readers are natural resources for the undecided.

They Were For Dissent And Alternative Analysis Before They Were Against It

The acting Inspector General of the Defense Department has issued a long-awaited report on the intelligence analysis provided by Douglas Feith during the period between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. According to Thomas Gimble, Feith and others did not violate laws or policies at the Department of Defense, nor did they mislead Congress -- but Gimble still concludes that their activities were "inappropriate":

A Pentagon investigation into the handling of prewar intelligence has criticized civilian Pentagon officials for conducting their own intelligence analysis to find links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, but said the officials did not violate any laws or mislead Congress, according to Congressional officials who have read the report.

The long-awaited report by the Pentagon’s acting inspector general, Thomas F. Gimble, was sent to Congress on Thursday. It is the first major review to rebuke senior officials working for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for the way intelligence was used before the invasion of Iraq early in 2003.

Working under Douglas J. Feith, who at the time was under secretary of defense for policy, the group “developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and Al Qaeda relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers,” the report concluded. Excerpts were quoted by Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who has long been critical of Mr. Feith and other Pentagon officials.

The report, and the dueling over its conclusions, shows that bitter divisions over the handling of prewar intelligence remain even after many of the substantive questions have been laid to rest and the principal actors have left the government.

In a rebuttal to an earlier draft of Mr. Gimble’s report, Eric S. Edelman, the under secretary of defense, said the group’s activities were authorized by Mr. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz. They did not produce formal intelligence assessments, and they were properly shared, the rebuttal said.

It's difficult to understand the objection of the IG. If the activity broke no laws and violated no policies, what is inappropriate about having competing sets of analysts looking at intelligence to get alternative viewpoints? One of the criticisms made by Bush administration critics is that the White House relied on stovepiped intel analysis for the WMD question -- which came from the official CIA analysts and directed by George Tenet.

In this case, the Secretary and Undersecretary of Defense wanted an investigation of intel to determine whether Iraq had operational ties to al-Qaeda, a reasonable question given the circumstances. The CIA -- which the Democrats believe got it wrong on WMD -- didn't believe that radical Islamists would cooperate with the supposedly secular Saddam Hussein. Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz authorized Feith to review the intelligence to see if evidence existed for a different conclusion, and Feith found enough contacts between Saddam and AQ to at least challenge the notion that they would have never considered a partnership.

Instead, the IG scolded Feith for not following the consensus, and then not following the procedures for "rare" disagreement. That differs rather dramatically from the scolding given to the intel communities by the 9/11 Commission and enthusiastically supported by the same elements in Congress that now want a piece of Douglas Feith for daring to disagree and to do so publicly. Back then, dissenters got celebrated as visionaries who had the courage to try to wake up the decisionmakers. Now Congress wants to punish someone who essentially did what Congress demanded during those reviews.

None of this has anything to do with the war or its intel analysis. Feith and Wolfowitz have served as targets for Democrats for years, and now that they have returned to power, they want to use whatever they can to finish them politically. Carl Levin and Jay Rockefeller can't wait to start holding hearings on the matter, even though the IG explicitly states that no laws were broken and the effort was properly revealed to Congress. This is just another venue for political payback, and nothing more.

Siniora Standing Up To Hezbollah?

Critics of the agreement that ended the Israeli campaign against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon last summer pointed out that Hezbollah appeared free to re-arm itself without much interference. The UNIFIL forces that were supposed to keep the peace wound up explicitly stating that disarming Hezbollah fell outside of their mission, and that responsibility lay with the Lebanese Army. At the time, that force made it clear that they would not start a civil war by stripping Hassan Nasrallah and his organization of its arms, but would instead concentrate on moving back into the sub-Litani region with as little conflict as possible.

That appears to have changed, possibly spurred by Nasrallah's attempts to bring down Fuad Siniora's government. The Lebanese authorities have seized a shipment of weapons meant for Hezbollah, and they do not intend on giving it back to them:

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has said a lorry intercepted by the authorities was transporting weapons for its fighters.

Hezbollah has demanded the return of the lorry and the arms.

Lebanese government officials said that a vehicle had been stopped in Beirut after travelling from the Bekaa Valley, in the east of the country.

They said the lorry had been taken away for further examination and are refusing to return it.

This comes amid tumult and portents of a new civil war. Nasrallah has demanded a new Cabinet and veto powers for Hezbollah over any government action, a demand that Siniora has rejected. The impasse resulted in massive demonstrations that attempted to shut down Beirut, which started to turn into a riot. Nasrallah ended it to avoid an all-out war that he cannot win, at least not at this time.

Seizing and holding the weapons appears to be Siniora's answer to Nasrallah. He will instead redirect the arms to the Lebanese Army, underresourced in comparison to Hezbollah anyway, using the recent border skirmish with Israel as an excuse. Siniora knows that Hezbollah's arms could soon be turned against the government, and he'd be a fool to release them to Nasrallah now.

This will undoubtedly raise the stakes for Lebanon. However, any state worthy of that status has to control the military forces within its own borders, or it will eventually fall. The problem in Lebanon is that no one faction is strong enough to take control, and the only manner in which to govern is to find coalitions among enough of the groups to hold power. While Siniora allows Nasrallah to go unchallenged, Hezbollah gains political strength by attracting more of the factions to their banner. Siniora appears ready to show some exercise of strength to counter that, and perhaps that may reduce the aura of inevitability that surrounds Nasrallah and Hezbollah.

Haven't We Heard This Before?

The warring factions in the Palestinian Authority have declared their impasse at an end, as Hamas leadership reached an agreement with Fatah president Mahmoud Abbas for a power-sharing agreement. PM Ismail Haniyeh and Hamas' international leader Khaled Mashaal agreed to split the ministries, but the endorsement of prior treaties signed by the PLO and recognition of Israel may not follow from that -- which means aid will likely not be restored:

The two main Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, reached "full agreement" on a national unity government that will include ministers from both groups during crisis talks yesterday in the holy Islamic city of Mecca.

But while the decision on the cabinet posts represented progress, there was no agreement on persuading Hamas to accept existing peace treaties with Israel signed by earlier Palestinian administrations.

Acceptance by Hamas of these accords, with their explicit recognition of the right of Israel to exist, is one of the key demands from the international community if it is to end its financial boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian government.

Abbas apparently offered to absorb Hamas into the PLO and make Mashaal his deputy within the organization. That would have brought Hamas into agreement with the PLO's treaties with Israel without having to explicitly endorse them, saving a bit of face for Mashaal and Haniyeh. Instead, Hamas issued a vague promise to "respect" past agreements after rejecting more specific language renouncing violence and recognizing Israel.

That should sound alarms for the West. The net result of this agreement does not appear to have moved Hamas towards legitimacy, but instead pushed the Palestinian Authority towards more extremism. In this case, the blend will increase the strength of the radical Islamists, the people whom Israel understandably believes will never make peace with their state. And without a specific renunciation of violence and terrorism, we can expect more of both with the combined forces of the Islamist and semi-secular terrorist groups in the territories.

The news is not all bad. The cessation of internecine violence in the territories may keep pressure on the new government to expand the peace, but the history of the region shows that to be a long shot. Usually, a period of unity for the Palestinians results in stepped-up violence against Israel. More promising is the split of the ministries. Three or four of the positions, depending on the report, will wind up in the hands of independent parties, which could help develop leadership outside of the terrorist paradigm, depending on who winds up with the ministries.

Overall, though, this will not provide the panacea that the West believed, and Israel and the US are both correct in acting cautiously. The West needs to remain firm in its insistence that the PA has to recognize Israel and renounce terrorism and violence before restarting aid and moving forward in the peace process. At this point, all this agreement does is to slap fresh paint on a death machine.

CQ Radio & Friends

If you didn't catch the installment of CQ Radio tonight, you missed the best show yet. Daniel Glover from Beltway Blogroll joined me for the entire hour to discuss the John Edwards controversy in the blogosphere, and Sean from The American Mind spent the last 30 minutes making it a round table. Be sure to listen to it on podcast from Blog Talk Radio, or on my sidebar, just above the Blogads.

Edwards Backs Down

We'll be discussing this on CQ Radio at 9 pm CT tonight, with Daniel Glover of Beltway Blogroll. Be sure to join the conversation by calling 646-652-4889.

John Edwards had to pick between two bad choices today in order to contain the damage from the controversial prior writings of two bloggers hired by his campaign as liaisons to Internet activists. The former VP nominee, stuck between offending Christians and angering the progressive community that the two bloggers were hired to engage, made the best possible lemonade from the lemons handed him by Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan. He announced that, while he was "personally offended" by their attacks on Catholic and Christian belief, he would keep them on the staff:

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said Thursday he was personally offended by the provocative messages two of his campaign bloggers wrote criticizing the Catholic church, but he's not going to fire them.

Edwards issued a statement and answered questions about the fate of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, two days after the head of the conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights demanded they be fired for messages they wrote before working on the campaign.

"I talked personally to the two women who were involved. They gave me their word they, under no circumstances, intended to denigrate any church or anybody's religion and offered their apologies for anything that indicated otherwise. I took them at their word," Edwards told reporters during a campaign stop in Charleston, S.C.

It seemed more apparent that he took the activist leaders in the liberal blogosphere at their word. After someone in the campaign leaked to Salon yesterday that the Edwards campaign would cut loose Marcotte and McEwan, outrage erupted through the Leftosphere. Many excoriated Edwards for capitulating to the "right wing attack machine", and the one niche in the political Left that could sustain his campaign threatened to revolt. Edwards apparently reversed himself as a result, showing the power of the progressive activists.

It's a smart move for this moment in the campaign, and probably the only one he could possibly make. He has dropped behind Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in public perception anyway, and he can't afford to lose the few friends he has left. His Democratic opponents will not likely make too much of the controversy; after all, Hillary will need these activists when she wins the nomination, and Obama has too much of an affinity for this portion of the base. The only real risk to Edwards for keeping the bloggers comes if he manages to win the nomination -- a long shot now more than ever. By that point, Edwards can bank on the issue being old news.

However, it's difficult to give much credence to Edwards' explanation. He says that both bloggers have "assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone's faith," but given the quoted material, it's almost impossible to reach any other conclusion. Calling Christians "misogynists" for their beliefs on the nature of life and the Virgin Birth, and that their opposition to abortion aims to force women to produce more tithing Catholics, certainly qualifies as intentionally malignant. It's a convenient dodge, as were the "apologies" from the pair for having been misunderstood.

Contrary to the opinions of some well-intentioned bloggers, this never had anything to do with free speech. It had to do with the judgment of the Edwards campaign in hiring two incendiary bloggers known in part for their hostility to Christians. It's really no different than the eruption of attacks from the Left after Spocko went after KSFO and its incendiary talk-show hosts. He and other bloggers organized campaigns to scare advertisers away from the station and its shows after their own "hate speech" offended him.

Spocko and the rest of his allies had the right to object to the speech of KSFO's hosts and pressure advertisers to abandon them. However, as soon as the shoe is on the other foot and their own allies commit the hate speech, they object to the exercise of free speech and holding Edwards responsible for hiring the pair. Had John McCain hired one of the KSFO radio hosts as his press secretary, can you imagine the screams we would hear from the Left?

Right now, the bloggers who defended Marcotte and McEwan are congratulating themselves for protecting their jobs with the Edwards campaign. They have not yet considered the fact that they have rendered Edwards unelectable in November, even if he managed to limp his way to the nomination. His campaign blew a basic hiring decision on a couple of bloggers -- and voters will not likely trust him with any hiring decisions for more important positions.

UPDATE: Leftosphere, not dextrosphere. Maybe I should stick to "port" and "starboard"! Thanks to Malclave in the comments for the correction.

UPDATE II: And as I predicted yesterday, liberal Christians find themselves marginalized and insulted by the party who claimed to want them in the Democratic big tent:

"We have gone so far to rebuild that coalition [between Democrats and religious Christians] and something like this sets it back," said Brian O'Dwyer, a New York lawyer and Irish-American leader who chairs the National Democratic Ethnic Leadership Council, a Democratic Party group. O'Dwyer said Edwards should have fired the bloggers. "It's not only wrong morally – it's stupid politically."

O'Dwyer e-mailed a statement to reporters saying: "Senator Edwards is condoning bigotry by keeping the two bloggers on his staff. Playing to the cheap seats with anti-Catholic bigotry has no place in the Democratic Party." ...

“I thought his explanation was not satisfying," said Cornell's Penalver. "It's obvious that they did mean to give offense."

"You imagine a similar kind of comment directed at the Jewish community or at the gay community – something at this level of intentional offensiveness -- and I have a hard time believing it gets resolved in the same way," he said.

So much for the outreach to religious moderates.

CQ Radio On The Air Tomorrow Tonight!

Don't forget that I'll be back on my Blog Talk Radio show again tonight at 9 pm CT, ready to take your calls and discuss the issues of the day. Topics usually will be a game-time decision, but I'm definitely interested in discussing the contretemps over the John Edwards bloggers, as well as the John McCain outreach to the blogs and what that means for McCain and other candidates. Be sure to tune in, and join the conversation by calling 646-652-4889!

BUMP: To top. Hope to talk to you this evening! I'll be joined by Beltway Blogroll writer Daniel Glover, who has covered this controversy since it started. Also, James Boyce will be on the air with Chris Bowers at 1 pm ET for his BTR show Heading Left, and the topic will almost certainly come up there as well.

Stop The Presses!

The New York Times has a hot scoop on the 2008 Presidential campaign that will blow all of us away. It's a secret that may undo the efforts of Mitt Romney to challenge for the nomination. In fact, the news may wind up challenging American ideals of political access and religious tolerance in ways we have not seen in decades.

Are you ready for this big scoop? Can you handle the truth? Well, okay, here it is -- Mitt Romney is a Mormon:

As he begins campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, is facing a threshold issue: Will his religion — he is a Mormon — be a big obstacle to winning the White House?

Polls show a substantial number of Americans will not vote for a Mormon for president. The religion is viewed with suspicion by Christian conservatives, a vital part of the Republicans’ primary base.

Mr. Romney’s advisers acknowledged that popular misconceptions about Mormonism — as well as questions about whether Mormons are beholden to their church’s leaders on public policy — could give his opponents ammunition in the wide-open fight among Republicans to become the consensus candidate of social conservatives.

Mr. Romney, in an extended interview on the subject as he drove through South Carolina last week, expressed confidence that he could quell concerns about his faith, pointing to his own experience winning in Massachusetts. He said he shared with many Americans the bafflement over obsolete Mormon practices like polygamy — he described it as “bizarre” — and disputed the argument that his faith would require him to be loyal to his church before his country.

“People have interest early on in your religion and any similar element of your background,” he said. “But as soon as they begin to watch you on TV and see the debates and hear you talking about issues, they are overwhelmingly concerned with your vision of the future and the leadership skills that you can bring to bear.”

Still, Mr. Romney is taking no chances. He has set up a meeting this month in Florida with 100 ministers and religious broadcasters. That gathering follows what was by all accounts a successful meeting at his home last fall with evangelical leaders, including the Rev. Jerry Falwell; the Rev. Franklin Graham, who is a son of the Rev. Billy Graham; and Paula White, a popular preacher.

Uh, okay. Didn't the New York Times remember to write about this in November, when everyone else did? I'm a little stumped as to why this is a front-page, above the fold story at this stage of the campaign -- especially when the Times couldn't find a single substantive voice among evangelicals to state that they had issues with Romney on the basis of his faith.

Yet not only does the Paper of Record give this the top-line treatment, they also include a separate reader comment thread on the front page of their website. In their effort to drum up a controversy where none exists, the Times forgets to mention that the Senate has at least two Mormons, one on each side of the aisle, and yet no one is asking whether the Republic can handle an LDS member as Senate Majority Leader. Their readers spend most of the comment thread yawning at this huge political story, with one of them asking, "Didn’t we work this all out with JFK?"

We certainly thought we had. Apparently, the New York Times missed that story, too.

Imus Endorses Tancredo?

According to Kathryn Jean Lopez at The Corner, Don Imus and Tom Tancredo should take a meeting. Imus, while speaking with guest Mary Matalin, suggested that bombing Mecca might make for a good strategy:

Imus this morning just suggested on his radio show that bombing Mecca (among other places) would send a message to the enemy — a true enough (it would send some message, though I'm not sure a war-ending one) but not at all advisable statement. ... Expect a CAIR press conference scheduled before noon.

We've been through this before. Almost two years ago, Tom Tancredo offered the same strategy as a response to a nuclear terrorist attack in the US. Neither Tancredo nor Imus apparently realize that reprisal attacks against civilian areas is now considered a war crime. Unless Imus can point to a war-related activity occuring near the Black Stone, such an attack would be not just illegal, but extremely inflammatory to the Saudi government and Muslims around the world -- all for a negligible military effect.

Matalin was apparently stunned by this statement. She recovered enough a moment later to ask Imus what exactly he disliked about Dick Cheney, given Imus' impulse. Apparently, the current administration just hasn't bombed the right targets.

Seven GOP Senators Demand Complete Debate

After the failure to approve cloture on the single amendment allowed to reach the floor by Harry Reid, it appeared that the Democrats had decided to allow the effort to pass a non-binding resolution to die on the floor -- and blame Republicans for supposedly ending the debate. Seven Republican Senators have decided to push back against that decision, demanding that GOP and Democratic leaders reach some level of accommodation for a full debate on all proposals, a surprise that Reid attempted to ignore when it arose during yesterday's session:

Senate Republicans who earlier this week helped block deliberations on a resolution opposing President Bush's new troop deployments in Iraq changed course yesterday and vowed to use every tactic at their disposal to ensure a full and open debate.

In a letter distributed yesterday evening to Senate leaders, John W. Warner (Va.), Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and five other GOP supporters of the resolution threatened to attach their measure to any bill sent to the floor in the coming weeks. Noting that the war is the "most pressing issue of our time," the senators declared: "We will explore all of our options under the Senate procedures and practices to ensure a full and open debate."

The letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was not more specific about the Republican senators' strategy for reviving the war debate. But under the chamber's rules, senators have wide latitude in slowing the progress of legislation and in offering amendments, regardless of whether they have anything to do with the bill.

The letter began circulating yesterday evening after it became apparent the Senate was deadlocked over the war resolution and Reid was prepared to move on to other matters. McConnell and many in his party have aggressively defended their decision to block the bipartisan resolution as an issue of fairness because Democrats would not agree to GOP procedural demands.

This is going to get painted as a rebuke to McConnell, but it in fact is targeted at Reid's refusal to allow consideration of two other proposals. The Republicans had offered to allow an up-or-down vote on the Warner-Levin resolution as long as the Democrats allowed the same for two other proposals, one from John McCain and Joe Lieberman explicitly supporting the surge and the other proposed by Judd Gregg that simply declared that Congress would not defund the pre-surge commitment in Iraq. Reid refused, as the Democrats did not want to get put in the position of voting -- and almost certainly losing -- on the Gregg resolution.

Instead, Reid and the Democrats found it easier to claim that the GOP had blocked debate on the surge. In this, they found allies in the media that seemed very willing to paint the cloture vote in that manner. However, a failure of cloture keeps debate open by blocking a call for a vote, and the Republicans had offered a vote on all three with no conditions.

The seven Senators have issued a declaration that demands acceptance of the Republican position, and puts Reid in a box. After two days of crying that the GOP minority would not allow a debate, Warner and his allies have stated emphatically that they want a "full and open debate", and not one limited by the procedural efforts of the Senate majority leader. And Reid knows exactly what they mean, because he already rejected it through his spokesman, Jim Manley. He told Republicans that they should have voted for Warner-Levin while they had the chance -- and that he has no intention of returning to the issue at this time.

I'm no great fan of any of these resolutions, first and foremost because they're essentially useless and have the intent of damaging the President with the equivalent of a no-confidence vote. Rather than wait to see whether the new strategy works -- a strategy demanded by Democratic leadership throughout most of the midterm elections as a criticism of Donald Rumsfeld's small-footprint strategy -- they want to switch positions for strictly partisan purposes. General Peter Pace told Congress yesterday that their debate will have little effect on troop morale, and he'd know that better than me, but it has the effect of kneecapping Bush from seeking extended support for our efforts with other nations. Why would a head of state risk anything to support our strategies when Congress is so intent on humiliating the White House over them.

However, since Reid and the Democrats have made such an issue of having a debate, the Senate Republicans would like to offer one. They just expect a real debate, and not a railroaded directed vote. I'd prefer that the Senate drop the matter, but this serves some purpose of setting the record straight.

Baghdad Surge Targets Political Figures

The US and Iraqi forces have not limited the new full-court press in Baghdad to just the foot soldiers of the insurgencies and independent militias, but also to those who give them political cover. The arrest of a near-Cabinet-level official in a raid specifically targeting the minister shows that the surge aims higher than expected:

US and Iraqi forces in Baghdad have arrested the deputy health minister during a raid at his offices. The minister, Hakem al-Zamili, is a key member of the political group led by radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr.

He is accused of aiding Shia militiamen and using ambulances to move weapons, a ministry source told the BBC. ...

Iraqi officials say US and Iraqi troops broke down doors in the ministry's offices in central Baghdad in their search for Mr Zamili.

The minister and some of his guards were arrested.

This seems very significant. Certainly few people expected the new military strategy to have this wide of a scope. In fact, Moqtada al-Sadr, who recently welcomed the surge strategy, strenuously objected to his ally getting caught in its net. Some speculated that Sadr supported the surge as a means of purging his own ranks of uncontrolled elements, but if so, it's not going according to plan. He accused the US of deliberately provoking a confrontation with his organization.

The arrest calls into question Nouri al-Maliki's alliance with Sadr as well. The cleric had helped carry Maliki into the position of Prime Minister when it appeared he would not have the votes to win it. He has provided political and military cover for Sadr, insisting at one time that the Americans abandon their efforts to attack Mahdi Army elements in Baghdad. Now he not only has unleashed US and Iraqi forces, he has allowed -- for the moment -- the arrest of a high-ranking minister selected by Sadr as the spoils of the political victory.

If nothing else, it shows that Maliki took President Bush seriously when Bush warned him of dwindling American patience for the Iraqi internal violence. That must have been some conversation in November, and now we understand why Sadr was so bitterly opposed to Maliki's meeting with Bush at the time. He must have known what the meeting would produce.

Will Maliki remain firm? He really has little choice. If he tries to stop the surge now that it has begun, he will lose his American support. Even if Bush didn't order the withdrawal himself for reneging on their agreement, the US political situation would force Bush's hand. A withdrawal of US forces from Baghdad will devastate the Iraqi government, and the first victim of that would be Nouri al-Maliki. His best bet for survival is the success of the US operation in Baghdad, and he needs to hang on until the end of the ride.

Maliki knows it, and so does Sadr. Regardless of whether the US intended a direct confrontation with Sadr, we'll probably get it. A success here will leave Sadr severely weakened, if not arrested or dead, a message we sent with the arrest of Zamili today.

Florida Shines For Giuliani

The 2008 primary campaign still seems pretty young to lend much weight to state by state polling -- but we won't let that stop us from having fun with it anyway. Quinnipiac released its results for Florida, a key state for both parties and a must-hold for the GOP. Rudy Giuliani came out on top in the poll, besting Hillary Clinton within the margin of error, the only Republican to do so:

In an early look at the 2008 presidential race in Florida, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has a razor-thin 47 - 44 percent lead over New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, while Sen. Clinton edges Arizona Sen. John McCain 47 - 43 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

These results are close to those in a January 30 poll of Ohio voters by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll, where Clinton squeaks past McCain 46 - 42 percent and edges Giuliani 46 - 43 percent. ...

Giuliani gets 29 percent of Florida Republican primary voters, with 23 percent for McCain, 14 percent for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and 6 percent for Romney.

"Rudolph Giuliani runs very well in Florida, which is considered to be a socially conservative state, despite his support for abortion rights, gay rights and gun control," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "Whether that is because they don't know about his stand on those issues or don't care will be the key question as the campaign unfolds."

Head-to-head results are probably the least reliable in surveys at this stage of the race, especially general-election match-ups. Primary race polling may have a little more value, but part of the problem is that Republican voters don't know some of the candidates well enough to form an opinion of them, which makes their predictive value low.

A better indicator of the race is the favorability quotient of each candidate. Giuliani comes out on top here as well, with a +40 and 20% who don't know him well enough, the latter a moderate surprise, given Giuliani's high public profile and the number of New York transplants in the state. Even more interesting, Giuliani has a +4 quotient among Democrats, and a +39 among independents, which indicates a lot of strength at the center.

Hillary has problems there. She's only at a +12 in Florida with 10% not having an opinion, and among Republicans, she's a -62. Independents have her at a break-even for favorability, a huge disadvantage for her against Giuliani. Barack Obama gets a +19 overall, with 44% needing more information, and John Edwards has a +17 with 27% still looking to make up their mind. That points to a wide-open Democratic primary, with Obama having the most opportunity to steal a state from Hillary.

Two politicians scored negatively on overall favorability. Al Gore has a -1, but Newt Gingrich had the toughest time in Florida, with a -22. That seems rather surprising, as Florida has a reputation for conservative voters and politics. That could also result from the wait-and-see strategy adopted by the former Speaker, but if he decides to enter the race, he'll have to spend a lot of time in this state.

One more interesting note: Mitt Romney is a massive cipher in Florida. More than 75% of respondents need more information on Romney, which gives him an opportunity to establish a political identity on his own terms to a greater extent than any other candidate. If he can tailor his message to the center-right electorate in Florida, he could challenge Rudy Giuliani for this critical state.

Jordan, The Knights Of Justice, And Days Of Skepticism

The Guardian has an interesting look into Jordan's efforts to fight radical Islamist terrorism from the rather unique position of a Muslim monarchy. After a deadly attack on a hotel killed 60 people, mostly from a wedding reception, Jordan formed a task force with the dramatic name, The Knights of Justice. Their mission is to find and destroy al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups operating in Jordan, but they may have a tougher mission in convincing Jordanians of the necessity of the task:

In November 2005 events provided proof that Jordan was not immune to the fallout of the war next door. Three Iraqi al-Qaida suicide bombers slaughtered 60 people, many of them wedding guests, in coordinated attacks on three hotels. It was the worst terrorist atrocity the country had ever suffered. A fourth Iraqi, a woman, was captured with her bomb's trigger mechanism jammed. She has been sentenced to death.

The Knights of Justice emerged soon afterwards, the Arabic name a clever piece of branding that combined the macho feel of a Hollywood action movie with a vaguely religious resonance. "It is natural that fighting Islamists they chose a name with a Muslim ring," says Mustafa Harmarneh, a political scientist.

Operating under the Mukhabarat intelligence service, the unit's brief is to penetrate, neutralise or wipe out jihadist or so-called takfiri groups.

It was credited with helping the US hunt down and kill the notorious Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, last summer. Shortly before that, its agents captured an Iraqi named Ziyad Qarbouli, who provided vital leads about Zarqawi's whereabouts. Qarbouli is awaiting trial for the murder of a Jordanian driver and two Moroccan diplomats.

The group has had a series of successes against terrorists, perhaps to the point of making it look too easy. The Arabic Jordanians appear as susceptible to conspiracy theories as Arabs in other nations. Many of them dismiss the most famous of the thwarted attacks, the plan to attack Amman with chemical weapons in 2004. Jordan's Mukhabarat, in which the Knights operate, took credit for smashing an AQ ring and capturing the materiel for the attack. Although the evidence got wide dissemination around the world, some Jordanians believe it to have been manufactured by the Mukhabarat.

Ian Black opens his story by reporting on the death of a terrorist in a KoJ operation in Irbid. The KoJ apparently dropped the house on top of his head after an hours-long gun battle with the terrorist barricaded inside. The Jordanians took one man alive and captured weapons, explosives, and computers that should keep their intel units occupied for the next few weeks. Even with that evidence, Jordanians in Irbid express skepticism that terrorists would have chosen their town as an organization center.

Jordan's King Abdullah and his government have proven to be a critical ally in the war against radical Islamist terror, especially after the hotel bombing. However, a good portion of his people seem more likely to blame the CIA, Mossad, and Abdullah's Mukhabarat than the group of religious fanatics who love death more than life. The impulse for conspiracy theories has not excepted Jordan, and where that kind of fantastical thinking exists, extremism is not usually far behind.

Israel, Lebanon Exchange Fire At Border

Israeli and Lebanese Army troops exchanged fire on the border near Maroun al-Ras, the first shots fired since the cessation of hostilities last summer. A wayward bulldozer apparently sparked the incident, and the UN has started deploying peacekeepers in the area (via Israel Matzav):

Shooting erupted across the Israeli-Lebanese border last night for the first time since last summer's war, when Lebanese troops opened fire on an Israeli bulldozer that apparently crossed the UN-demarcated boundary.

A Reuters correspondent at the scene and Israeli security sources said the clash began after the Lebanese troops shot in the air as an Israeli patrol crossed a security fence to search for explosives planted by Hizbullah. Israeli troops responded with tank and light weapons fire, Israeli security officials said.

The exchange, the first since a ceasefire ended a 34-day war last August, broke out near the Lebanese village of Maroun al-Ras in the central sector of the border. There were no casualties.

This should give UNIFIL forces something to do besides watching Hezbollah terrorists replenish their weapons stocks. The presence of UN troops will certainly make the Israelis stop firing, and perhaps the Lebanese Army troops, too. If nothing else happens to exacerbate the tension, that should be enough to defuse it.

One has to wonder whether Hezbollah might not take advantage of this situation. They could start conducting missions in the Maroun al-Ras area to create another flashpoint for an IDF-LA battle, one with more impact and more damage. Hassan Nasrallah needs the Lebanese Army on his side if he ever decides to tangle with the IDF again, and staging a provocation might do the trick.

Nasrallah has more than enough problems at the moment. He admitted last week that he had miscalculated Israel's response last summer to his last provocation, and less than six months later, he can hardly afford another mistake. If he wanted to start a war, though, he could do so rather easily -- as a simple mistake proved yesterday.

Missing The Point Twice Over

The apparent firing of two bloggers by the John Edwards campaign has generated a predictable debate in the blogosphere. Those who find themselves in sympathy with Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, either because or in spite of their inflammatory attacks on Christians in general and Catholics in particular, claim that the Edwards campaign surrendered to right-wing attacks.

Some go further and try to pass off the entire incident through some weird filter of relativism. Alex Koppelman and Rebecca Traister at Salon claim that the "right-wing blogosphere has gotten its scalps", and try to pass off Marcotte's earlier writings as the equivalent of Michelle Malkin's on the latter's blog -- although neither can apparently come up with an example. Media Matters has leapt to Marcotte's defense by going through the writings of Patrick Hynes, John McCain's new media coordinator, and discovering that he called Chelsea Clinton "ugly". Somehow, the writings of Malkin and Hynes don't appear to be on the order of this Marcotte gem on the virgin birth:

Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?

A: You’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology.

Now Marcotte's sympathizers complain that mean conservatives have tried to silence Marcotte and McEwan and intruded on her right to free speech, which is ludicrous. Neither of them have their hands tied, and I'm sure both can access their blogs. No one has argued that they didn't have a right to publish their rather rancid opinions, and I'd be the first to defend their right to do so. What commentators questioned was the decision by the Edwards campaign to associate themselves with political activists that demonstrated that much hostility to a large sector of the electorate that Edwards supposedly would like to court.

Chris Bowers and a few others make a good point about the initial hiring decision. If the Edwards campaign hired them for their bombast and inflammatory rhetoric, knowing full well of their history of attacking people for their religious beliefs, then the Edwards campaign really did take a cowardly way out of their own stupid decision by firing the two bloggers. However, it seems much more likely that someone in the campaign hired them on the basis of their name recognition without doing much research into their blogs.

The outrage misses two points. Free speech includes the right to criticize religious beliefs, even when the criticism goes from rational debate to mindless hatred. It also includes the right for others to criticize that speech and the politicians that appear to support it, as many on the Left manage to do whenever they get up on their high horse about Pat Robertson, a nutcase who retains a dwindling following among conservatives.

The second point missed is that campaigns exist to get people elected. The Edwards campaign needs to convince as many people as possible to support his populist campaign, and Catholics are a significant bloc. Catholics tend to skew Democratic by a thin margin, mostly for the kinds of social-justice issues that Edwards champions. Absent Marcotte on the payroll, he might expect to attract a large percentage of the Democrats in that bloc for the primaries -- but he can kiss it goodbye while a high-profile member of his staff keeps referring to the Holy Spirit as ejaculate.

Bottom line: if it costs a lot a votes, campaigns get rid of it. Marcotte had the potential to do that, and she should never have been hired in the first place if Edwards wants to attract Catholic voters. If Edwards wanted to promote an anti-religious, anti-Catholic theme and chose her specifically for it, then she shouldn't have gotten the axe today. Based on what the Edwards campaign did, I'd say the former is more true than the latter.

Edwards Campaign Reconsidering Blogger Hires

The campaign of John Edwards, hailed for hiring two progressive bloggers for his 2008 Presidential campaign, has now said they will reconsider that decision in light of the blogging history of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan. The episode reveals the lack of vetting done by the Edwards campaign before hiring the two bloggers, and sets back the ability of bloggers to mainstream themselves into traditional political roles:

Two bloggers hired by John Edwards to reach out to liberals in the online world have landed his presidential campaign in hot water for doing what bloggers do — expressing their opinions in provocative and often crude language. ...

The two women brought to the Edwards campaign long cyber trails in the incendiary language of the blogosphere. Other campaigns are likely to face similar controversies as they try to court voters using the latest techniques of online communication.

Ms. Marcotte wrote in December that the Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to the use of contraception forced women “to bear more tithing Catholics.” In another posting last year, she used vulgar language to describe the church doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. ...

Ms. McEwan referred in her blog to President Bush’s “wingnut Christofascist base” and repeatedly used profanity in demanding that religious conservatives stop meddling with women’s reproductive and sexual rights. Multiple postings use explicit and inflammatory language on a variety of issues.

The New York Times gives a rather dispassionate description of the posts in question. In the case of Marcotte, her anti-Catholic screeds would make Jack Chick blush with embarrassment; the woman is an anti-Catholic bigot. Her posts on Catholicism venture far from rational opposition to its dogma and policies into screeching, obscene hatred. The examples given by the Times for McEwan appear to be of the same tenor.

As a Catholic, I'm less offended by the likes of Marcotte and McEwan than I am surprised that no one in the Edwards campaign thought it was a problem for their candidate. Catholics have overcome bad weather that had more impact on our faith than either blogger, but Edwards wants to court the Catholic (and Evangelical) impulses for social justice and peace to bolster his populist campaign. Surely someone on his staff had the responsibility to actually read the bloggers' previous work to see if it matched the tone Edwards wanted to set with the on-line community and voters in general. That someone should be fired right along with Marcotte and McEwan.

Unfortunately, we can expect this incident to make it harder for bloggers to make the transition into traditional political roles on campaigns. We already have a Wild West reputation for shooting off our mouths and thinking later, which I believe is mostly undeserved; the media will use this to reinforce that impression of the blogosphere. The truth is that the Edwards campaign didn't work very hard to keep a couple of Catholic-haters out of their payroll, and while the media will also report that, that will get missed for the more sensational story of those bloggers and the liability they represent.

The blogosphere features many talented and rational writers on both Right and Left, and even in between. It's incumbent on the campaigns that hire bloggers (and media outlets, too) to distinguish those from the frothing lunatics at all points on the political spectrum. Their failure to properly vet bloggers reflects much more on the values and competence of the campaign than it does on the blogosphere in general.

Did Plame Initiate The Niger Investigation?

One of the accepted facts of the entire Valerie Plame scandal has been that Plame suggested her husband, Joseph Wilson, for the Niger investigation after Dick Cheney requested the research into Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium in Africa. That timeline paints Plame as responsive to the VP's office and not an initiator of action on the "sixteen words" controversy. Byron York, who has followed the Scooter Libby trial for National Review, reports that the timeline has been proven incorrect, casting doubt on the tenor of Plame's request and Wilson's assignment:

The accepted version of events is that Vice President Dick Cheney got things started when he asked for information about possible Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium in Africa. After that request, CIA employee Valerie Plame Wilson suggested sending her husband to look into the question, and after that, the CIA flew Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate. But the new documents suggest that Mrs. Wilson suggested her husband for the trip before the vice president made his request. In other words, Joseph Wilson’s visit to Niger, which everyone believes was undertaken at the behest of the vice president, was actually in the works before Dick Cheney asked his now-famous question. And if that is true, our current understanding of the chronology of events is wrong. ...

A CIA official told the committee that Mrs. Wilson “offered up [Joseph Wilson’s] name” for the job, and the Senate report quoted the e-mail written by Mrs. Wilson saying, “my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.”

According to the Senate report, Valerie Plame Wilson sent her e-mail on February 12, 2002 — the day before the vice president was briefed on the African uranium matter. The discrepancy between the two dates seems glaring, but was not included in the Senate report. That is because, according to a source familiar with the committee’s investigation, the CIA did not include the document in the materials it turned over to the committee. Senate investigators apparently never knew the exact date of the vice president’s request, so they never knew it came after Plame’s e-mail.

What does the new information mean? On February 12, 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency released — inside the government, not publicly — a report covering the Africa uranium issue; its title said that Niger had “signed an agreement to sell 500 tons of uranium a year to Baghdad.” CIA officials told Senate investigators the report spurred requests for information from both the State Department and the Department of Defense. Knowledgeable sources speculate — and they stress, they are speculating — that those inquiries from State and Defense were made on the 12th, the day the Defense Intelligence Agency report was sent around, and that Valerie Plame Wilson, in suggesting her husband be sent to investigate, was reacting to those requests, and not to the vice president’s question, which came the next day. In this new version of events, Dick Cheney was the last guy to request more information, not the first; the notion that his request started the whole affair seems wrong.

In his book, Wilson claims that he had been asked to take the assignment on February 19th, a week later and after Cheney's request for more information. However, another memo entered into evidence suggests that Wilson had already accepted the assignment by February 14th, when a CIA message to Cheney states that the agency had "tasked our clandestine source[s] with ties to the Nigerien Government and consortium officials to seek additional information on the contract."

Wilson, the man who received that assignment, would almost certainly have been that clandestine source. He had, as the memo describes, "ties to the Nigerien government," which he himself has argued as the reason why his wife promoted him for the job. In any case, he was the one who went to Niger and reported back that the Nigerien PM believed that the Iraqis had indeed attempted to smooth the way for uranium sales in the future. The memo of the 14th would apply to few men outside of Wilson.

I've written at length about the lack of credibility Wilson has on this topic. He has misrepresented his own findings for political purposes, a conclusion that this trial has reinforced. Now it looks like he has lied about the nature of his assignment from the beginning. It did not come from a request by Cheney, but apparently as an independent initiative of his wife in reaction to intelligence developed outside of her discipline -- which calls into question the motives of both parties from the beginning.

We're More Equal Than You Are

Betsy Newmark offers an interesting comparison of the late suffragette movement and the sudden Momminess quotient in politics today, and argues that women have gone backwards in their attempt to gain political ascendancy. Instead of arguing equality between the genders, politicians such as Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Barbara Boxer appear to argue that giving birth creates a difference between themselves and others (in Boxer's case, even between women) in such a manner that would create a huge backlash against anyone arguing that the difference might make them worse candidates:

And if women are going to use their status as mothers as a qualification for higher office, should voters then ask about their parenting skills and which candidate raised better children? After all, running as a mom means that their mommy skills are now part of the political calculus.

Why should gender matter in politics today? Have we returned to the arguments from a century ago that women are more moral and will clean up politics? In the 2006 campaign, Pelosi argued that it might take a woman to clean out the House of Representatives, unconsciously echoing a 1912 cartoon showing a giant woman voter sweeping away corrupt politicians. What happened to all the feminists’ slogans about how there was no difference between women and men? Wasn’t it questioning just this idea that got Larry Summers into trouble?

Women can’t have it both ways. Either men and women are essentially the same, or each gender has certain strengths that the other lacks. If women are going to claim that they bring special gender-based skills to politics, men can start claiming that they, too, have particular strengths as leaders.

Of course, no male politician would be so crass as to say that openly, but you can bet that voters, faced with a woman candidate for president, will be wondering exactly that. And, in a time of war, do women really want to start that discussion?

This is the problem with identity politics in general. Instead of focusing on the issues, people get caught up in easy, obvious, and essentially pointless visual qualities of candidates when voting. Ever wonder why we haven't had a bald president since the advent of television? Or, for that matter, a female or dark-skinned President since ... well, ever?

Women have a tough time overcoming that human failing, and it's natural that they would want to turn the disadvantage into an advantage if they can, and the same can be said for all of those who belong to underrepresented groups based on gender or appearance. However, it only buys into and endorses the mechanisms that have kept them locked out of leadership positions in the past. If they want to argue that their gender makes them superior, it leaves open the argument that it could make them inferior as well.

Identity politics eventually leads us to these kinds of dead ends. It overwhelms the discussion of the actual issues, and that is its intent: to discredit certain voices on key issues. We need to argue equality and put aside momminess quotients, regardless of the attraction these kinds of arguments have. It seems that almost a century after the triumph of the suffrage movement, we still haven't learned that lesson.

Republicans Want To Like Rudy, If They Can

John Podhoretz explains the surprising popularity of Rudy Giuliani in the early stages of the 2008 presidential primary campaign, writing that Republicans want to like Rudy -- if he'll let them. In his New York Post column, Podhoretz notes more than a few of the hurdles that Giuliani faces, but insists that neither conservatives nor Giuliani want to go to war over them:

Republicans not only like Rudy, they want to like him. Conservative Republicans want to like him. Socially conservative Republicans want to like him.

In this respect, he represents a momentous change from prior candidates hailing from outside the party's socially conservative wing.

Past "liberal" GOP candidates and would-be candidates have sought the nomination by taking strong stands counter to the views of the party's conservative base - like Elizabeth Dole opposing handguns in 2000. Those candidates, that is, were engaging in battle against the social conservatives. They were fighting a culture war within the GOP, trying to rally the party's more socially liberal elements - women and suburbanites in particular - to defeat the hard-line element.

Even John McCain, with a sterling Senate voting record on such matters, ran for president in 2000 by criticizing social conservatives when it came to abortion for what he called "the polarization that has existed and continues on this issue."

Rudy, by contrast, is trying to convince social conservatives that he's their friend. They disagree on certain matters, he'll say, but on the key issue of our time - the struggle of the West against Islamic extremism - they'll never have a better or more staunch ally and leader.

And while his personal views on some issues may differ from theirs, he'll appoint judges in the manner of Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito - which is, in the end, most of what a president can do to support the ideas in which social conservatives deeply believe.

Podhoretz may have provided the key element of Giuliani's broad appeal within the GOP. The Republican moderates that have challenged for leadership of the party have almost seemed as though they were on a mission to combat the conservative elements within the party. At different times, all of the various flavors of conservatism seemed under attack in that manner -- social, fiscal, and national-security conservatives have all received more than their share of blame for electoral difficulties, real and imagined.

One of the arguments for supporting a moderate is that moderates have a better chance of winning general elections. Hillary Clinton knows that, which is why she antagonized the left-wing activist base of her party to build centrist credentials during her term in the Senate. They generally have a tough time in the primaries, however, because of real or perceived indifference or outright hostility to the party base. In Rudy's case, we haven't seen that kind of hostility, unlike John McCain in some instances where his frustration with conservatives got the best of him. Rudy doesn't apologize for his positions, but he casts them in such a way as to build a consensus for leadership as the overriding consideration in the primaries.

In short, he's the safe moderate, or that's how he wants to position himself. Republicans so far seem willing to buy into it. However, conservatives still would prefer a genuine conservative who champions their issues more closely than Rudy has over the years if they can get one. If a conservative in the mold of Newt Gingrich (but without the baggage) had a credible shot in the primaries, they would respect Rudy but switch allegiance fairly quickly.

That's why we see people supporting Duncan Hunter as an alternative to Rudy: respected, sincere, intelligent, and reliably conservative on the issues most dear to the conservative causes. And Hunter is running, although without the star power and the fundraising capabilities of Giuliani. We haven't elected a president directly out of the House in long memory, and usually those campaigns are little more than vanity tours (Bob Dornan comes to mind here). However, Hunter is much more thoughtful and credible than most, and if he could find a way to break into the top tier, he probably would garner the base support that would undo the triumvirate of Rudy, Romney, and McCain. Mike Huckabee might be another such candidate.

Failing that or some other spectacular Reagan-like figure making a Deus ex machina appearance in the primaries, conservatives will have to decide between the three leaders as we see them now. Podhoretz's analysis makes Rudy a tough man to bet against.

North Korea Agrees To De-Nuclearization?

American nuclear expert David Albright, a former UN inspector on the North Korean impasse, has told the AP that he believes North Korea is ready to shut down its nuclear program for an end to the Korean War and "massive" energy shipments. Pyongyang will also insist on an end to the sanctions that shut down the Macau money-laundering operation connected to its counterfeiting ring:

Chief North Korean disarmament negotiator Kim Kye Gwan told Albright and Joel Wit, a former State Department official, that nothing would happen until the U.S. agreed to the construction of light-water reactors that Washington promised North Korea under a 1994 deal to freeze Pyongyang's nuclear program.

That deal, which also included an annual supply of half a million tons of heavy fuel oil until the reactors were built, was scrapped in 2002 when North Korea admitted it had restarted its atomic program.

Albright said the North emphasized that it now wanted either electricity shipments or more heavy fuel oil than was promised in the 1994 deal.

Albright said North Korean officials "acted as if it was going to be settled. They were pretty optimistic."

Interesting timing. The North Koreans will re-enter the six-nation talks tomorrow in Beijing. That usually prompts Pyongyang to create some dramatic pretense of a crisis, allowing them to stamp their feet and walk off in a huff. It seems the opposite is happening now, with sudden flashes of cooperation.

Why now? Kim Jong-Il set off his nuke, and the Yongbyon reactor has produced enough nuclear fuel for at least a dozen more devices. However, the test last summer did not go well by all accounts, and Kim may not have enough cash to do more than that initial test. The extended economic sanctions have stung Kim, focused as they are on his own luxurious habits. With the one nuke test hardening the line against him in the region, Kim may feel the time is ripe for a return to diplomacy.

If so, the US had better insist on a verification regime this time around. Kim has proven himself unreliable in regards to nuclear-weapons development, and the six-nation talks must result in enforcement of the terms of whatever deal arises from the talks. Otherwise, we will all be here again in the near future, only the next time Kim will have 50 nukes - minus the ones he sold to terrorists for hard currency.

Iran Not Exactly Denying Accusations

The US has accused Iran of fomenting the Shi'ite insurgencies and supplying materiel and weapons to an even broader range of terrorists in Iraq. Recently, the US has captured five Iranian agents in Irbil as part of the wider rules of engagement for the pacification of Baghdad and Anbar, an action protested by both Iran and Iraq. Newsweek interviewed Iran's ambassador to Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, and asked him to respond to these American accusations, among other topics -- and he didn't exactly deny them:

American military officials have accused Iranian agents of supplying technology for "shaped charge" explosives to militants in Iraq. This was an explosive that Hizbullah used in Lebanon.

If this was the case it would have become known. I pointed out before, that we suffer if there's insecurity in Iraq. The Islamic Republic of Iran plays a protective role. After the fall of the regime, Iran was the first country to recognize the Iraqi government. Many people criticized us and said this is an American government. We said no, these are the same leaders from the opposition. We want security and stability. We want a popular and strong government.

What is the relationship of the Iranian government or its representatives with [Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr’s] Mahdi Army? American officials say Iran is passing weapons to militant groups.

We have repeatedly said: give us the proof. With regard to the accusations that Iran is supplying weapons or supporting armed groups, if there is any evidence then show this evidence. Why do they keep repeating these accusations? The government of America has 150,000 troops here. It has its security and intelligence services in Iraq. And there are other services who are helping them. If Iran was involved in actions against Americans, they should have discovered the evidence. We're against any action that adds to insecurity here, whether in Baghdad or Basra.

Note the odd construction here. Qomi, responding to accusations that Iran supplies shape charges to insurgents, says, "If this was the case it would have become known." He doesn't deny the charge directly, as he does when asked about the supposed Iranian involvement in the Karbala attacks. When Newsweek asked him about that, the first words out of his mouth were, "We don't have a role in any of these kinds of actions."

The same careful parsing of language comes in the last answer, too. When prodded about the connections between the Iranians and the Mahdi militia, Qomi again plays word games. Instead of denying the existence of any connections, Qomi demands to see the proof from the American government. That doesn't sound like a denial at all, but a challenge to the Bush administration to expose its intel sources. It sounds like guilty knowledge, like a bluff intended to attempt to bully the US into either taking action or backing away from the accusations.

Qomi does make an interesting admission early in the interview. When asked about the two Iranian agents arrested last month that the Iraqis protested were diplomats, Qomi clarified their status. The two agents, he said, are "diplomats from the security branch" -- in other words, spies. The US made that same accusation at the time but released the pair under pressure from the Maliki government. Apparently, Qomi is now admitting that the US had it right from the start.

One cannot dismiss the cautious answers given by the Iranian to Newsweek. He has no problem directly denying certain accusations, but tiptoes away from direct answers on others. For a man who makes a living out of choosing the right words, this seems very significant indeed.

Playing Keep-Away With Hamas Costs A Lot

When the Palestinians elected the terrorist group Hamas to lead the proto-state government, the Western nations all agreed to suspend all aid payments to the Palestinian Authority to keep from funding terrorists. Eventually, frightened of domestic public opinion about the collapsing PA economy, the European Union initiated a program of direct payments to Palestinians through bank transfers, intending to play keep-away with the money to ensure that Hamas could not get it. However, the only people getting rich on this program is the bank itself, which has racked up over three million euros in the months that the program has operated:

More than €3m (£2m) of EU aid for Palestinians was spent on bank charges last year in an effort to bypass the Hamas-run government, Oxfam said yesterday. The money was spent between August and December under the temporary international mechanism, a system run by the European commission that delivers directly to Palestinians and avoids supporting the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.

Oxfam described the mechanism as an "aid fiasco" and said it should be scrapped. But the EC said it was the "most direct and most efficient" means of delivery.

In those five months, about €110m was delivered directly into the bank accounts of 140,000 Palestinians and another €40m was spent on supplying fuel. The money was intended to tackle a growing economic crisis brought about in large part by the decision of Israel to freeze $60m (£30m) of monthly tax revenues it usually passes to the Palestinians.

Oxfam said the money was passed through the HSBC bank every month at a charge of €8 for each transfer.

Oxfam wants the program ended and direct aid to the Palestinian Authority restarted. That's unlikely to happen under any circumstances in which Hamas can control the money. The group conducts terrorist attacks, including the abduction of Gilad Shalit that started a war with Israel in Gaza and still has Shalit as a hostage to Hamas' demands.

The US and Israel would adamantly oppose any such restart for financing, especially now. The PA has dissolved into a civil war, exposing the two factions with any power at all as competing terrorist groups. The West prefers Fatah as they are slightly less lunatic and somewhat less Islamist, but in truth neither group will ever make peace with Israel, let alone each other. Once aid starts flowing directly to the PA again, it will end up in the hands of one or both gangs and will only fuel the war between the two.

The EU would be better advised to stop sending any money at all. A termination of aid to either side, and a blockade of any support from Iran or Syria, would send a stern message to the Palestinians that Western patience with their endemic love affair with death has finally expired. This group of leaders from either side have no interest in peace, either with Israel or with each other, and funding them in any way only perpetuates their blood-drenched grip on power. That goes double for American efforts to fund Mahmoud Abbas' presidential guard, which has been implicated in several attacks over the last few weeks themselves.

Only HSBC will regret the end of the money transfers. The money is nothing more than gasoline on the fire in the territories at this point, and we need to step back and let the flames run their course.

Mary Katherine On McCain

I linked to David All's live-blog of the conference call several bloggers held with the John McCain campaign earlier today. Mary Katherine Ham also participated in the call, and has a somewhat different take on the effort to engage conservative bloggers:

Here's the deal. McCain wants to start a friendlier relationship with us bloggers, right?

Now, when a man goes to his angry wife or ticked off girlfriend and says, "Baby, let's work this out. What's wrong?," what does she do? She yells at him, gets some things off her chest, maybe cries a little about how little he truly cares about her, right? We got that far on the call. I'm not gonna tell you who cried.

But what's the next step? When you're talking to your girlfriend, even if you think she's being crazy and unreasonable (which I, for the record, do not think conservative bloggers are being), you have to act like her feelings are valid in order to get in good again, no? You have to say, "Baby, I know that hurt your feelings and I'm really sorry. I'm gonna try my best not to do that in the future."

What you don't say is, "But, baby, remember that one good thing I did do for you a couple months ago? Remember how we went to dinner that time? That was so sweet of me."

She will then just stare at you, tissue in hand, mascara running down her face. Favor is not won.

In my earlier post, I decided not to talk too much about McCain the candidate, but focused more on the professional campaign staff that I believe has done well by the Senator. However, MK has a good point in this analogy, and I think this is what separates McCain from Rudy Giuliani for conservatives.

Putting Mitt Romney to the side for a moment, one might expect conservatives to flock to McCain's banner for his stated positions on issues of import to our cause, and shy away from Rudy for his publicly stated positions on the same issues. Instead, in the early stages, it appears to be the other way around, and I'm sure McCain's campaign must be a little frustrated by that. The reason is the lack of constancy on McCain's part and the credibility that Rudy's consistency has built.

John McCain has a record of courageous stands on behalf of the war on terror and on spending, two key issues for conservatives in the 2008 cycle. However, as MK points out, he has not taken a market-driven approach on campaign finance reform, instead relying on intrusive government control of political speech. How committed will he be on free markets as President in any sense, if not in political speech? He now sings the conservative tune on tax cuts, but we still remember McCain the Maverick opposing them when George Bush pushed them through Congress -- and his part in blocking the efforts to make them permanent.

So far, we're not hearing how things will be different with a President McCain than they have been with a Senator McCain. Perhaps we won't, because the campaign staff will tout McCain's long service and the fact that he has engaged as a high-profile warrior in most of the public policy debates of the past decade or more, a reputation that makes him the anti-Kerry for 2008. They will see this as an asset, but conservatives will not. What they fear is the McCain of 2001-2006, and a pledge to remain that will definitely create a lot of opposition from the conservative bloggers who met today.

We shall see. So far, we have not heard much from the candidate himself, and it's going to be a long campaign. He may well wind up as the best of the choices that present themselves during this long campaign season, and I would encourage open minds and ears for the next year. However, until McCain either makes a case for government oversight over political speech that convinces conservatives or pledges to reverse the BCRA, I don't see him winning many converts, no matter how expert his campaign staff is -- and they are certainly working their hearts out early for McCain.

The Impact Of Blogger Outreach

Earlier today, I had an opportunity to participate in a conference call involving the John McCain campaign and several prominent bloggers. David All live-blogged the event, in which the McCain staff solicited our unvarnished opinions regarding McCain, his campaign efforts, his prospects for promotion through the blogosphere, and what we felt we would need from his campaign.

I won't attempt to recreate David's excellent coverage, so I'll give you my overall evaluation of the event. It shows that McCain and his staff understand the need to address the skepticism (and in some cases, outright hostility) of the conservative blogosphere. Even though McCain enjoys a substantial level of support among voters at the moment, his numbers among blog readers have been abysmal. One person on the call noted that a recent straw poll put him at the same level as Fred Dalton Thompson, who is closer to running for an Emmy than for President.

In prior elections, none of this would have mattered much. Bloggers had been seen as little more than hobbyists, people whose opinions made an inconsequential impact in the larger scheme of political campaigns. That has changed after the experience in the midterms, apparently. The presidential campaigns seem especially interested in bloggers as a direct conduit to voters, especially those with established credibility. That recognition appears universal even at this early stage of the primary campaign, as all three leading GOP campaigns have hired "new media" liaisons and aggressively courted coverage of their candidates.

All of this is good news, not just for bloggers but for the American political scene. One of the staffers on the call predicted that this will be the most transparent presidential campaign in American history, and he's correct. YouTube, Blackberries, and instant podcasting will mean every appearance has potentially national implications, and no matter how intimate the venue, the message from it can have the widest possible broadcast. He referenced bloggers as the "referees" in this process, and to some extent that will be true -- which means that the campaigns will want to stay close to us throughout the next two years.

That said, we have to make sure that the blogosphere understands its role. Already we have seen a blizzard of gotcha moments zipping into our e-mail boxes. Position points and contrasts are always welcome, but other tips seem more intended towards a darker, more negative tilt, and not simply from the campaigns themselves. If the blogosphere wants to maintain a position of credibility, then we cannot be seen as the mud factory of the elections, especially in the primary. Campaigns (for President or anything else) that want to use blogger credibility as a channel to reach the voters need to be careful of using bloggers to bubble attack memes up to the surface.

Bloggers have their best opportunity yet to shape and influence the debates that make up a presidential campaign. We have to remain vigilant about remaining credible if we want to make the most of it. If we want a campaign about issues and philosophical direction, then we have to have the discipline to focus on those topics, and to eschew anything that detracts from it. If successful, we can make this the most transparent and responsible election in memory.

Shifting Blame

It has been amusing to see Democrats in Congress attempt to explain away their votes for the war in Iraq over the past year. Most of them have settled on the excuse that the Bush administration deceived them in October 2002 into authorizing military force based on the exact same intelligence that moved them to declare official American policy of regime change in 1998. The Democrats won a majority in the midterms by stoking Bush Derangement Syndrome, but for 2008 they face a daunting task -- winning elections without using the retiring George Bush as a bogeyman.

John Edwards has found a solution by shifting blame yet again, and in the process exposing the "Bush lied" meme as a hypocritical dodge. In his Sunday appearance on Meet the Press, Edwards attempted to excuse his vote on the AUMF by blaming Clinton administration officials for confirming the intel coming from the Bush administration (via McQ at QandO, emphases mine):

MR. RUSSERT: “ A grave threat to America,” do you still believe that?

SEN. EDWARDS: No.

MR. RUSSERT: Why were you so wrong?

SEN. EDWARDS: For the same reason a lot of people were wrong. You know, we—the intelligence information that we got was wrong. I mean, tragically wrong. On top of that I’d—beyond that, I went back to former Clinton administration officials who gave me sort of independent information about what they believed about what was happening with Saddam’s weapon—weapons programs. They were also wrong. And, based on that, I made the wrong judgment. ...

MR. RUSSERT: But it seems as if, as a member of the intelligence committee, you just got it dead wrong, and that you even ignored some caveats and ignored people who were urging caution.

SEN. EDWARDS: Well, I, I, I would—first of all, I don’t want to defend this. Let me be really clear about this. I think anybody who wants to be president of the United States has got to be honest and open, be willing to admit when they’ve done things wrong. One of the things, unfortunately, that’s happened in Iraq is we’ve had a president who was completely unmoving, wouldn’t change course, wouldn’t take any responsibility or admit that he’d made any mistakes. And I think America, in fact the world has paid a huge price for that. So I accept my responsibility. I’m not defending what I did. Because what happened was the information that we got on the intelligence committee was, was relatively consistent with what I was getting from former Clinton administration officials. I told you a few minutes ago I was concerned about giving this president the authority, and I turned out to be wrong about that.

Edwards, having discovered that George Bush cannot run for a third term, needs to find another excuse for his vote to invade Iraq, a vote which his progressive base abhors. He can't just explain it away by saying he was too stupid to see past the web of Bush lies -- after all, he sat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and had access to the classified information that formed the basis of Bush's case for military action. At the time, he was one of the more vocal Democratic supporters of action.

So now he's blaming members of the Clinton administration for lying to him as well. That's certainly convenient. After all, Hillary Clinton is his biggest competitor for the nomination, and shifting blame to her husband for the Iraq war would suit his needs perfectly. He can now argue that he was no sap -- he checked on the information and got the same answer from the previous Democratic administration.

However, this opens up a completely new problem for Edwards and the rest of the Democrats. They have claimed for at least the last two years that Bush Lied (TM), that the entire basis of the war was based on his deceptions about the intelligence. Their campaigns have created an impetus for impeachment in some Democratic circles based on this supposed set of lies. Now John Edwards, years later, claims that Clinton administration officials gave him essentially the same analysis about WMD in Iraq -- exposing the Democrats as liars and smear artists themselves.

All of this results from the lack of political courage by Democrats in Congress. They voted for the war based on the same intelligence that fueled American policy well before George Bush took office. When that intel turned out to be incorrect, or at least out of date, they panicked and tried to shove all the responsibility off onto the Bush administration, calling him and Dick Cheney liars and whipping up anti-war sentiment to cover for their own responsibility in the decision to go to war. In the process, they have made it almost impossible for the White House to exercise any flexibility in the war strategy to ensure a positive outcome from the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Edwards has proven himself to be a craven, whiny opportunist. He's also exposed many of his colleagues as having similar character flaws.

Iranian Diplomat Abducted In Baghdad

Iran blames the United States for the abduction of a diplomat by men in the uniform of the Iraqi Army, according to state news agency IRNA. ABC reports that Iraqi police captured two men involved in the incident, who got transferred immediately to the custody of the Iraqi Army:

Gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms seized an Iranian diplomat as he drove through central Baghdad, officials said Tuesday. Tehran condemned the abduction and blamed U.S. forces in Iraq.

One Iraqi government official also said the diplomat was detained Sunday by a special Iraqi army unit that reports directly to the U.S. military. But a military spokesman denied any U.S. troops or Iraqis that report to them were involved.

"We've checked with our units and it was not an MNF-I (Multi-National Forces Iraq) unit that participated in that event," military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said, adding he could not confirm the diplomat was seized.

Jalal Sharafi, the second secretary at the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad was seized Sunday by gunmen who "operate under the supervision of the American forces in Iraq," the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran strongly condemns this aggressive act which is in violation of international law," IRNA quoted Hosseini as saying. "Iran holds American forces in Iraq responsible for the safety and life of the Iranian diplomat."

This sounds a bit fishy. The Iraqi police have not exactly been the model of unbiased enforcement; the Iraqi Army has had to oversee their work and in some cases replace them to bring order. It's certainly possible that the police got the drop on a more-disciplined IA unit, but it doesn't seem terribly likely.

It's also possible that some group has collected enough IA uniforms and equipment to masquerade as a patrol in order to carry out this abduction, assuming it actually happened -- which is still an assumption. The Iranians themselves are suspected of conducting a similar operation against American forces in Karbala last month, killing five Americans in retaliation for the capture of five Iranian agents in Irbil. And yet another possibility is that the abduction really was a covert mission by the US, although the public nature of the abduction makes that a stretch.

If rogue elements of the IA did really abduct an Iranian diplomat, the US will have to answer for the incident. The IA is too closely tied to the US to shrug it off or to claim no responsibility for their actions. However, and this seems pretty critical, the IA is mostly comprised by Shi'ites tied to the Nouri al-Maliki government, which has sought better relations with its neighbor to the East. Shi'ite factions would have little interest in abducting Iranian diplomats, especially since Teheran provides their political leaders with money and weapons.

It's an intriguing situation, if it happened at all, which bears watching over the next few days.

A Carbon Tax?

Anne Applebaum offers her solution to global warming, one that she claims any nation serious about the issue can apply without waiting for international accords to come into force. She favors a carbon tax, applied at every level, in order to create incentives for innovation and conservation:

The much-vaunted treaty [Kyoto] creates a complicated and unenforceable system of international targets for carbon emissions reduction, based on measurements taken in 1990. Critics of the American president have condemned him for failing to sign it, conveniently forgetting that the Senate rejected it 95 to 0 in 1997, a margin that reflects broad bipartisan opposition. At the same time, few of the Asian and European signatories are actually on track to meet their goals; those that will meet the targets, such as Britain, can do so because their economies rely less on industry than they once did. Canada and Japan aren't even close to compliance; China and India, whose emissions rates are growing most rapidly, are exempt altogether as "developing" countries -- which, given their economic strength, is absurd.

None of which is to say that reduction of carbon emissions is impossible. But the limiting of fossil fuels cannot be carried out with an unenforceable international regime, using complicated regulations that the United Nations does not have the staff or the mandate to supervise, with the help of a treaty that effectively penalizes those who bother to abide by it. I no longer believe that a complicated carbon trading regime -- in which industries trade emissions "credits" -- would work within the United States either: So much is at stake for so many industries that the legislative process to create it would be easily distorted by their various lobbies.

Any lasting solutions will have to be extremely simple, and -- because of the cost implicit in reducing the use and emissions of fossil fuels -- will also have to benefit those countries that impose them in other ways. Fortunately, there is such a solution, one that is grippingly unoriginal, requires no special knowledge of economics and is easy for any country to implement. It's called a carbon tax, and it should be applied across the board to every industry that uses fossil fuels, every home or building with a heating system, every motorist, and every public transportation system. Immediately, it would produce a wealth of innovations to save fuel, as well as new incentives to conserve. More to the point, it would produce a big chunk of money that could be used for other things. Anyone for balancing the budget? Fixing Social Security for future generations? As a foreign policy side benefit, users of the tax would suddenly find themselves less dependent on Persian Gulf oil or Russian natural gas, too.

I'm an agnostic on global warming. The temperatures of Earth have waxed and waned over the millenia, and even in the last few centuries we have seen significant shifts that have made a large impact on human habitation, prior to any massive releases of carbon into the atmosphere. At one point, Vikings farmed Greenland until a mini-Ice Age struck the northern hemisphere and the land got swallowed up by ice. It's part of a natural cycle that we don't fully understand. I also have great suspicion of environmentalists acting like Chicken Little, and worse, demanding that dissent from their orthodoxy be squelched. That indicates a hysterical approach to science that masks a great deal of insecurity over the actual data.

However, massively releasing carbon into the atmosphere certainly cannot be viewed as a positive thing to do. It pollutes the air, and the means necessary to retrieve the carbon in the forms of oil, coal, and natural gas tend to pollute the earth as well. Given the location of much of the Earth's oil reserves, dependence on that for our energy creates national security problems and long-term instability in our economic viability. Even if one doesn't buy into the global-warming hysteria, these concerns should press us to leverage our technological leadership to create alternatives.

Unfortunately, that will not come through a "carbon tax", which would shift resources away from the innovators and leave the money in the hands of bureaucrats. Applebaum means well, but the solution she has in mind would cripple the private sector and create a bureaucracy that would rival anything considered under HillaryCare. It would require every household with a heater to file a carbon-impact equivalent of a 1040 every year. Think of the notion of having an IRS for carbon use, and one gets a very ugly picture indeed.

Besides, we already tax gasoline by significant percentages, and that has hardly had the impact that Applebaum predicts. It hasn't slowed the demand for gasoline; that has risen in relation to the growth of the population and the economy. Only a small percentage of energy taxes go to innovation. Most of them go to general funds, feeding bureaucratic growth.

The idea that this can be done on an ad-hoc basis undermines the entire argument for action, anyway. Global warming does not just occur over those countries that fail to become enlightened, as defined by environmentalists. Britain will not impose such a tax on its economy if the rest of the world refuses to follow suit, because they know it will cripple their ability to compete on the global market. That was why Kyoto came into existence -- to get broad agreement to jump into tough regulations immediately. They made the mistake of excluding China and India, among others, two nations rapidly becoming the leaders of carbon releases and challenging for economic leadership as well.

If Applebam wants innovation, then set up incentives that don't require massive bureaucracies to get it. NASA put men on the moon not by taxing everyone to death for living on Earth, but by offering government contracts for innovation as part of a shared mission. Create breathing room by allowing the oil companies to get their product from American reserves over the next fifteen years in exchange for benchmarked progress on making oil an obsolete commodity for energy. It will relieve us of a national-security nightmare in the Middle East, starve our enemies, and use our economic strength to solve the problems created by carbon-release energy. Instead of growing the government, we will create a stronger -- and cleaner -- private sector in energy.

Reid's Dilemma

Harry Reid has a dilemma on his hands. His control over the Senate rests on a single vote; even if Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota recovers enough to return to the Senate, the loss of one member of Reid's caucus will allow Dick Cheney to cast the deciding vote on control of the upper chamber. While this isn't news, an article posted yesterday by the New Yorker reveals that the debate on Iraq may push the Senate's only independent to rethink his loyalty:

Iraq is the reason that Lieberman calls himself an “independent Democrat.” Democratic voters in Connecticut abandoned him in last year’s primary, favoring the antiwar candidate Ned Lamont. Lieberman ran as an independent, and beat the ineffectual Lamont in the general election in large part because Republicans voted for him. In the campaign, Lieberman said that he would join the Democratic caucus if elected, and his victory was the deciding one that gave the Democrats control of the Senate. But he told me recently that his attachment to the Party is based in some measure on sentiment, and should not necessarily be thought of as eternal.

“A lot of Democrats are essentially pacifists and somewhat isolationist,” he told me. He had particular problems with Senator Edward Kennedy’s proposal to deny the President funding for a troop surge, and with an idea recently raised by the senior senator from Connecticut, Christopher Dodd, to cap the number of American soldiers in Iraq. Lieberman was not willing to say whether he would remain a Democrat if the Party cut off funding for the war. “That would be stunning to me,” he said. “And very hurtful. And I’d be deeply affected by it. Let’s put it that way.”

Lieberman’s Democratic colleagues know that if he switched parties they would lose their majority, and so they tend to indulge him, unless they are speaking to reporters off the record.

This puts Harry Reid in a serious bind. His party came to power on an anti-war platform, a fact that several in his caucus have noted in the debate on the various resolutions that have been proposed. Their activist base has already made it clear that non-binding resolutions aren't what they had in mind when they pushed for the Democratic majority in the midterms, and a lack of progress on stopping the war in Iraq could lose them their majorities in either or both chambers in 2008.

Unfortunately, unless Reid can get a Republican to switch caucuses, he has no choice but to limit their efforts to meaningless non-binding resolutions. Lieberman, smarting over the support given to Ned Lamont by Democrats he believed were his friends, now says that his loyalty to them has suffered serious damage. His "sentimental" attachment to the caucus extends only to the point of cutting off funding for the fight in Iraq. Not only would such an effort fail in the Senate -- it would require 60 votes to overcome the filibuster -- but it would effectively hand over control of the Senate to the GOP and Mitch McConnell.

Republicans such as John McCain have dared the Senate Democrats to take an action with real meaning in opposition to the war, claiming correctly that "sense of the Senate" votes do nothing to end the war on any terms but instead embarrass the White House and demoralize the troops. Unfortunately, anything else more substantive in the next two years will require them to relinquish their slender majority -- and the Democrats do not appear willing to make that sacrifice. (via Memeorandum)

Media Gone Wild

A Minnesota family has reeled from the impact of a double homicide in Waseca this weekend in which a father and son lost their lives and the mother has barely managed to survive. Hilary Kruger managed to give a description of the murderer to police, who arrested farmworker Mike Zebawa, who claimed that he accidentally shot three people with a shotgun, using multiple shells:

When the first officer arrived in response to Alec's 911 call about 3:20 a.m. Saturday, a shotgun was leaning against a bedroom door, shells littered the upstairs hallway and the odor of gunpowder permeated the air.

The officer heard Hilary's faint voice and found her on a bed, next to Alec. Her husband, Tracy, was nearby, dead on the floor. ...

After her husband was shot, Kruger told her son Alec, 13, to call 911, the charges said. The intruder went downstairs, came back upstairs and shot mother and son, she told the officer.

The 41-year-old Kruger was in critical but stable condition Monday at North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale.

According to the charges, farmworker Michael S. Zabawa said he accidentally shot the three family members in their home.

The first question that springs to mind -- how the hell could a shotgun go off accidentally multiple times? -- brought a grim chuckle from the county sheriff investigating the shooting. Zebawa has a track record of public drunkenness and theft, and when they arrested him for the murder, a stolen truck belonging to a neighbor of the Kruger family was found nearby. Investigators believe he stole the Krugers' SUV in an attempt to pull his own vehicle out of a ditch but ended up getting the SUV stuck as well.

Understandably, the family has been in shock since this grisly murder, and their primary concern is the health of Hilary Kruger. They have congregated at the hospital in Waseca in order to comfort each other, mourn the loss of their family members, and pray for Hilary's recovery. She remains in critical condition, but has stabilized.

However, according to one family member, the local media has done all it can to intrude on the grief of the victims. Jerad Hoff, the husband of Hilary's cousin, sent me this e-mail last night to describe the ghoulishness of local reporters in search of comment from the immediate family:

Tracy Kruger was my wife's cousin. She is, like the rest of her family, in complete shock over the brutal murder of Tracy, Alec, and the attempted murder of Hilary. It's a difficult situation that nobody could be prepared for. Unfortunately the media is actively adding to the misery and suffering of a family that's trying to come to grips with this tragedy.

Members of the esteemed fourth estate have been tailing family members, calling into the waiting room at the hospital, and the latest atrocity is the money that's being offered for a picture of the grieving family together.

I know it won't help, but I'd like to issue a challenge to every TV anchor and newspaper editor: Tonight on on your newscast and tomorrow in a editorial, emphatically state how your news organization would never allow employees or freelance reporters to gather news using these tactics. Hopefully the public would choose who to get their news from based on who remains silent and who agrees to be a civilized member of society.

This is an important story that needs to be told. All the media needs to do is allow the family time to heal and reach a place in their grieving process where they can describe what an enormous loss the world suffered on that Saturday morning.

The word vultures comes to mind here, as well as worse epithets. This isn't some Hollywood celebrity family, although that wouldn't excuse the ghastly behavior described in this e-mail. This is a family which has seen two of its members brutally murdered and a third attempting to survive the unprovoked attack, and yet the reporters Jerad describes have no compunction about exploiting them in order to sell a few more newspapers and/or to get a scoop for the 10 o'clock news.

Shameful doesn't begin to describe it.

Our Hats Are Off -- To Africa

At the end of a big championship game, the winners appear within minutes wearing T-shirts and caps proclaiming themselves as the champs. Obviously, these pieces of clothing have to be manufactured in bulk before the game in order to make that kind of deadline, and that means that half of the orders -- the ones proclaiming the wrong team as the winners -- never see the light of day. Did I say never? Well, that's overstating it, because the shirts and hats actually do wind up in the hands of those who can use them:

After the final moments of the Super Bowl, when the Indianapolis Colts' coach was showered in Gatorade and hoisted atop his burliest players' shoulders, the winning players engaged in another time-honored ritual and immediately tossed on championship hats and shirts, which seemingly appeared out of thin air.

These are official Reebok-sponsored, NFL-approved hats and shirts that declare to the world that the Colts are the Super Bowl winners.

But how does that work, since the winner is not known beforehand? Reebok makes two sets of Super Bowl Championship gear — 288 shirts, hats and other assorted paraphernalia for each team. So there are also 288 hats and shirts that claim the Chicago Bears are the Super Bowl XLI Champions.

But before the first speck of confetti hit the AstroTurf at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Sunday night, the Bears' gear was locked away, never to be seen again on American soil, not even on eBay.

Thanks to World Vision, a relief organization that helps provide food, clothing and shelter to developing nations, residents of preapproved towns in Uganda, Niger, Sierra Leone, Romania and other struggling countries will receive these coveted championship leftovers.

The NFL makes World Vision ensure that the gear goes to remote villages, never to return to the United States. They do not want the clothing used to mock the losers of the Super Bowl. The charity makes sure that each family only gets one piece and that they truly need the clothing. That way, it will not wind up on e-Bay and the 288 shirts and caps truly assists the needy.

It's not a bad plan. It's better than burning the extras, and it allows a select group to benefit from the need for immediate gratification that the shirts and caps provide to the winning team. If the NFL had to pick a partner for this project, they could hardly do better than World Vision. If you'd like to contribute to World Vision in order to help provide more assistance to poverty-stricken people, please follow the link. You can be a champion every day, even if you never get the shirt or cap to show it.

The Really Wrong Stuff

Even in a program full of American heroes, some oddities will emerge, and usually in the most embarrassing circumstances. Such is the case with the space program and three of its astronauts, one of whom has been arrested for plotting the murder of the second in order to secure the affection of the third. Shuttle astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak drove a thousand miles to murder Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman after discovering that her paramour, astronaut Bill Oefelein, had two-timed her:

Nowak -- who was a mission specialist on a Discovery launch last summer -- was wearing a trench coat and wig and had a knife, BB pistol, and latex gloves in her car, reports show. They also found diapers, which Nowak said she used so she wouldn't have to stop on the 1,000-mile drive. Reports show that after U.S. Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman's flight arrived, Nowak followed her to the airport's Blue Lot for long-term parking, tried to get into Shipman's car and then doused her with pepper spray.

Nowak, 43, is charged with attempted kidnapping, battery, attempted vehicle burglary with battery and destruction of evidence. Police considered her such a danger that they requested she be held without bail in the Orange County Jail, reports show.

A married mother of three, Nowak told police that she was "involved in a relationship with," Bill Oefelein, another NASA astronaut, which she categorized as "more than a working relationship but less than a romantic relationship," according to the charging affidavit.

Oefelein, who piloted the most recent shuttle Discovery flight in December, could not be reached Monday night at home in Houston.

She found out Oefelein was involved with Shipman and planned a trip to Orlando to talk to Shipman about their relationships with Oefelein, reports show. She also told police the BB gun "was going to be used to entice Ms. Shipman to talk with her."

Nowak, the first Italian-American woman in space, flew to the International Space Station last summer on a twelve-day mission to restock the ISS and test some of its systems. She attended Annapolis and has reached the rank of Captain as a pilot, logging 1500 hours as a test pilot on more than 30 aircraft. One might think that all of that experience would have taught her the virtues of a mature and stable outlook on life and its travails, but apparently she valued former Top Gun pilot Oefelein more than her career and her liberty.

This may sound funny, especially the arrangements she made to skip restroom breaks on her way to meet Shipman, but Orlando police aren't laughing. They consider her dangerous enough to ask for a no-bail arraignment. If convicted of the initial charges, she could spend several years in prison, and it will certainly spell the end of her military and aeronautical career even if she gets the charges lowered to misdemeanors. With the knife and the gun in the car and the 1,000-mile, Huggies-powered drive to confront Shipman, that doesn't appear terribly likely at the moment.

Every human endeavor attracts a range of characters, and the space program has had its share of colorful individuals. This, however, appears unprecedented, and NASA will have some work to do to deconstruct all of the ways in which this trio managed to embarrass the program in such a tawdry way. They'd better be quick about it, though, because this is the most eligible story for TV moviedom since a cheerleader's mom tried to find a hitman for the mother of a rival.

UPDATE: I should have gone for Brant's headline, instead. Long, but more descriptive.

Rudy's In, Mostly

Rudy Giuliani ended most of the speculation by amending his exploratory committee papers today to include a "statement of candidacy". It moves him closer to the eventual commitment to run, but Giuliani all but made that tonight on Hannity & Colmes on Fox News Channel:

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who became a national hero for his response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, suggested Monday that a formal presidential announcement was a matter of when, not if.

"Today we just took another step toward running for president," the Republican said, hours after filing a so-called "statement of candidacy" with the Federal Election Commission, which moved him closer to a full-fledged campaign.

"It's a big step, an important one. Quite honestly, we're probably ahead of schedule," Giuliani told reporters in Long Island while campaigning with a state Senate candidate. "We still have to think about a formal announcement and how to do it, but this is a pretty strong step."

Later, in an interview on Fox News' "Hannity & Colmes," Giuliani was more direct. "I'm in this to win," he said. "My campaign is going to be about the future."

Giuliani had not fully committed to running in 2008 in his public statements, even though his campaign committee had begun serious work in the days after the midterm elections. The hiring of prominent on-line liaison Patrick Ruffini last month had the bloggers convinced, and the polling has shown Rudy at the top of the heap for the last several weeks. An announcement almost seems like an anti-climax at this point.

Let's forget the fact that Rudy used the same phrase as Hillary did in her non-declaration declaration. The statement provides some hope that the Giuliani campaign will start acting more aggressively in courting voters. While John McCain and Mitt Romney have already started their campaign mode, Giuliani has been more stand-offish, less engaged in the kind of efforts made by Romney and McCain to reach out to voters and organizations. Romney has also made it clear that the early start has its benefits by conducting a massive fundraiser in early January to kick off the campaign.

He will find the Republicans an open-minded but cautious group. Rudy gets high marks for leadership and action, two characteristics that have not been found in much quantity in the GOP field. He gets yellow flags for his positions on abortion and gun control, and the Republican Party wants to hear him square the circle on those points before taking him seriously as their banner-carrier in 2008. Sean Hannity already has him working on that, and he gave a fairly nuanced answer -- opposing Roe but supporting a legal right to abortion:

HANNITY: That might get you in trouble. That's the first campaign gaff. Let's talk about the controversial issues. You will be asked about them. Where does Rudy Giuliaini stand on abortion? And do you think roe v. wade is a good law or bad law.

GIULANI: I oppose it. I don't like it. I hate it. I think abortion is something that is a personal matter I would advise something against. However, I believe in a woman's right to choose. I think you have to ultimately not put a woman in jail for that. I think ultimately you have to leave that to a disagreement of conscience and have to respect the choice that somebody makes. So what I do say to conservatives because then you want to look at well okay what can we look to that is similar to the way you think. I think the appointment of judges that I would make would be very similar to if not exactly the same as the last two judges that were appointed. Chief Justice Roberts is somebody I work with, somebody I admire. Justice Alito, someone I knew when he was US attorney, also admire. If I had been president over the last four years, I can't think of any-- that I'd do anything different with that. I guess the key is and I appointed over 100 judges when I was the mayor so it's something I take very, very seriously. I would appoint judges that interpreted the constitution rather than invented it. Understood the difference of being a judge and a legislator. And having argued a case before the Supreme Court, having argued in many, many courts is something I would take very seriously.

And on guns:

HANNITY: You inherited the gun laws in New York.

GIULIANI: Yeah. And I used them to help bring down homicide. We reduced homicide I think by 65, 70%. And some of it was by taking guns out of the streets of New York City. So if you are talking about a city like New York, a densely populated area like New York, I think it's appropriate. You might have different laws other places and maybe a lot of this gets resolved based on different states, different communities, making decisions. We do have a federal system of government in which you have the ability to accomplish that.

HANNITY: So you would support the state's rights to choose on specific gun laws?

GIUILANI: Yeah. A place like New York that is densely populated or maybe a place that is experiencing a serious crime problem like a few cities are now. Thank goodness not New York but some other cities. Maybe you have one solution there and in other place more rural, more suburban, other issues you have a different set of rule.

HANNITY: Generally speaking do you think it's acceptable if citizens have the right to carry a handgun?

GIULIANI: It's part of the constitution. People have the right to bear arms. Then restrictions have to be reasonable and sensible. You can't just remove that right. You got to regulate consistent with the second amendment.

Interesting, and this plays to both Rudy's strengths and weaknesses. He is not going to change his beliefs to win the nomination, a position that will build both respect and opposition for his campaign. On the other hand, he shows that he has a thoughtful position on these issues, not ones that fall easily into pigeonhole slogans. Will it be enough to convince enough Republicans to support him for the nomination? If so, he could easily beat Hillary Clinton in a general election, and especially in a debate. I'd pay to see that one.

Via Rudy's campaign staff, I have the entire transcript in the extended entry.

HANNITY: I'm Sean Hannity. We get to our top story tonight. Earlier today former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani filed a statement of candidacy papers. Mayor Giuliani joins us for "Hannity & Colmes" exclusive. Congratulations or condolences?

GIULIANI: A little of both. Mostly congratulations. It's wonderful thing to be organizing and putting together and it's very humbling to think that running for president of the united states is-- for a kid from Brooklyn, it's quite a step

HANNITY: you are then officially running to be the next president of the United States.

GIULIANI: Well. We still have to formally announce and do a few more things. But this is about as close as you get. We did everything you have to do I guess legally then you still have to make a formal announcement and things like that

HANNITY: Are you in it to win it?

GIULANI: Gosh yeah. That's the only reason to do it. First thing you have to do is say to yourself what can I bring to it, what can I do that's different and how can i make the country better? how can i improve it? i think the experiences that I've had as mayor of New York city, united states attorney, all of them very, very strongly kind of in the executive area where you have to have leadership and organization and focus and having dealt with a city that was really bad shape when I took over and I had to kind of turn around, i think it gives you the background to approach it and feel pretty comfortable that you can make a difference

HANNITY: Democrat were predicting this back in November. November 14th as a matter of fact. They said it's unclear whether or not Rudy Giuliani will be able to explain away the fact he has consistently taken positions completely opposite to the conservative republican base on issues they hold near and dear. That is accurate?

GIULIANI: I don't think anyone has campaigned much more than I have for republican candidates going back to 1998. I've been in 45 states on behalf of 200 candidates. All republicans. different-- sometimes differences on issues here and there. but same basic philosophy of strong foreign policy being on offense against terrorism, smaller government, lower taxes. And in my case those are things that I did. Those things I just mentioned are not just things I believe in. I lowered taxes in New York. I reduced the size of government in New York. I took a $2.4 billion deficit and turned it into a $3.2 billion surplus. And I reduced taxes over 23 times.

HANNITY: That's pretty good.

GIULIANI: Those are very conservative. On the issues-- sometimes there are disagreements. You never agree with any one candidate 100%. You don't even agree with me 100%. And I agree with you almost 100%

HANNITY: That might get you in trouble. That's the first campaign gaff. Let's talk about the controversial issues. You will be asked about them. Where does Rudy Giuliaini stand on abortion? And do you think roe v. wade is a good law or bad law.

GIULANI: I oppose it. I don't like it. I hate it. I think abortion is something that is a personal matter I would advise something against. However, I believe in a woman's right to choose. I think you have to ultimately not put a woman in jail for that. I think ultimately you have to leave that to a disagreement of conscience and have to respect the choice that somebody makes. So what I do say to conservatives because then you want to look at well okay what can we look to that is similar to the way you think. I think the appointment of judges that I would make would be very similar to if not exactly the same as the last two judges that were appointed. Chief Justice Roberts is somebody I work with, somebody I admire. Justice Alito, someone I knew when he was US attorney, also admire. If I had been president over the last four years, I can't think of any-- that I'd do anything different with that. I guess the key is and I appointed over 100 judges when I was the mayor so it's something I take very, very seriously. I would appoint judges that interpreted the constitution rather than invented it. Understood the difference of being a judge and a legislator. And having argued a case before the Supreme Court, having argued in many, many courts is something I would take very seriously.

HANNITY: So you would look for a Scalia, Roberts, Alito.

GIULIANI: Scalia is another former colleague of mine and somebody I consider to be a great judge. You are never going to get somebody exactly the same. I don't think you have a litmus test. But I do think you have a general philosophical approach that you want from a justice. I think a strict instruction would be probably the way I describe it.

HANNITY: Is Roe bad?

GIULIANI: I think that's up to the court to decide. There are questions about the way it was decided and some of the basis for it. At this point it's precedent. It's going be very interesting to see what Chief Justice Roberts what Justices Scalia and Alito do with it. i think they're probably going to limit it rather than overturn it. In other words, they'll accept some of the limitations that different states have placed on it or the federal government has placed on it.

HANNITY: Partial birth?

GIULIANI: I think that's going to be upheld. I think it should be. as long as there's provision for the life of the mother then that's something that should be done.

HANNITY: There's a misconception that you support a partial birth abortion.

GIULIANI: If it doesn't have provision for the mother I wouldn't support the legislation. If it has provision for the life of the mother I would support

HANNITY: Parental notification.

GIULIANI: I think you have to have a judicial bypass. I think the court-- I mean that's the kind of thing i think the court will do with abortion. The other thing I should emphasize is while I was the mayor there's a column just written about it, abortions in New York wept down and adoptions went way up. Because we work odd adoptions as an alternative. so it would be a real choice. So that ultimately you respect a woman's choice. But it should be a real choice. adoption or if they make that choice I don't think the criminal law can deal with it.

HANNITY: I think conservatives would be happy with choices of Roberts, Scalia and Alito but there will be a disagreement on abortions.

GIULIANI: There are always disagreements. And then some people just won't be able to vote for you. You got to live with that. Reality is you got to be who you are. You got to be honest with people. If your views change you got to be willing to express it. When I was mayor my views changed. I began as mayor thinking I could reform the school system. After four years I became an advocate of choice, of scholarships and vouchers and parental choice because I thought that was the only way to really change the school system. When I started as mayor, I didn't believe that. When I went through three or four years of experience, that's what it taught me. I think you have to be willing-- you have strong ideas, strong views. but then you have to be willing to look at experience.

HANNITY: The issue of guns has come up a lot. When people talk about mayor Rudy Giuliani New York city had some of the toughest gun laws in the country. Do you support the right of people to carry handguns.

GIULANI: I understand the second amendment. People have the right to bear arms. As mayor of New York I took over at a very, very difficult time. We were averaging—

HANNITY: You inherited the gun laws in New York.

GIULIANI: Yeah. And I used them to help bring down homicide. We reduced homicide I think by 65, 70%. And some of it was by taking guns out of the streets of New York City. So if you are talking about a city like New York, a densely populated area like New York, I think it's appropriate. You might have different laws other places and maybe a lot of this gets resolved based on different states, different communities, making decisions. We do have a federal system of government in which you have the ability to accomplish that.

HANNITY: So you would support the state's rights to choose on specific gun laws?

GIUILANI: Yeah. A place like New York that is densely populated or maybe a place that is experiencing a serious crime problem like a few cities are now. Thank goodness not New York but some other cities. Maybe you have one solution there and in other place more rural, more suburban, other issues you have a different set of rule.

HANNITY: Generally speaking do you think it's acceptable if citizens have the right to carry a handgun?

GIULIANI: It's part of the constitution. People have the right to bear arms. Then restrictions have to be reasonable and sensible. You can't just remove that right. You got to regulate consistent with the second amendment

HANNITY: How do you feel about the Brady Bill on assault ban.

GIULIANI: I was in favor of that as part of the crime bill. Because I thought it was necessary to get the crime bill passed and also necessary with the 2000 murders or so we were looking at, 1800 to 2000 murders that I could use that in a tactical way to reduce crime. And I did.

HANNITY: Let me ask you about gay marriage. What do you think about the definition of marriage? Should it be between a man and woman.

GIULIANI: Marriage should be between a man and a woman. here is exactly the position I've always had. It's the same-- I feel the same way today that I did eight, ten years ago when i signed the domestic partnership legislation. Marriage should be between a man and woman and should remain that way. we should be tolerant, fair, open and understand the rights that all people have in society I. thought the best answer was domestic partnership as a way of dealing with that. so that you are recognizing the rights of people who are gay and protect them.

HANNITY: How do you feel about the borders? It's one of our most important security issues. There's talk about building a fence. Do you support that? Do you support amnesty? Do you support guest worker?

GIULIANI: I support security at the border. I think its enormously important in the post September 11th period. We have to know who is coming into this country. We have to be able to identify them and figure out who they are. I do think that with the fence-- the fence honestly has to be a technological fence. The head of my party, the new head, Mel Martinez who is a Senator from Florida, a great guy, he was being interviewed and they asked him about a fence. Do you think a fence should be put up. He said sure. He said except the only people that will pull put it up will be the illegal immigrants. I thought what the point that Mel was making was we need a technological fence. We need to be able to photograph people, see them, know who is there, record them. And then I think there has to be regularization for the people that are here. There's got to be a program to regularize the people that are here as you establish security at the border. And I would add to many of the proposals-- because there are a number of them in the house, senate and president as put forward. I would add to that at the end of the road if somebody's going to earn citizenship with-- citizenship with whatever other hurdles put in the way, at the end of the road they should be able to speak English, read English and have some knowledge of American history. Particularly if you are going to regularize somebody who in an undocumented status.

HANNITY: Does that mean amnesty.

GIULIANI: It means earning it. Here's the experience. I said I learn add lot from being mayor of New York city. We had a tremendous amount of crime. We did a survey. We figured out there are about 400,000 illegal or undocumented immigrants in New York city. The impact service deported 1500 a year that. Was the most they could deport. So I figured out I had 398,000. Now how do you handle that? What do you do with it? And then what we would catch drug dealers and criminals we'd turn them over to the immigration and naturalization service and say put them at the head of the line. get rid of the drug dealers and criminals first. They were dealing with somebody's maid and somebody who maybe was teaching at a college and just didn't have the right papers or somebody who was working in a restaurant and-- well that's all an issue. But the drug dealers and the criminals and now the terrorists are an issue. And if you have a law that isn't working, and you have thousands and thousands and millions of people, then the terrorists hide among them. We have to have a law that makes sense. and that's why I think you've got to come up with a solution that says much more security at the border, register people, document them, have english at the end of the line, but then have a system to regularize people as well.

HANNITY: You got a lot of conservatives coming on board. Latest one is George rowe. Let me put up what he said about you. Is that true? Are you ready for that?

GILUIANI: Yeah I'm as ready as anybody could be. I guess maybe more ready than some because I've—I mean I've lived through crisis. September 11th is the obviously biggest one that I've lived through. But being mayor of New York was a crisis a week and emergency every other day. You get use to it. I mean you get use to being able to keep focused, toe take advice, understand that you can't get too excited on any one situation. you got to remain very focused and remain optimistic about the result. And you got to communicate with people.

HANNITY: Let me ask about Iraq. You have been very supportive of the president and the Iraq war. Is there anything you would have done differently? Do you think there's been any mistakes made?

GIULIANI: Sure. The president has explained mistakes made.

HANNITY: If were you the president.

GIULIANI: I think he could go back and as we develop positions and explain things i think it's quite appropriate to explain well I might have done it this way or more troops, I might have done it some other way. But here's reality. We're at war. And when we're at war because they're at war with us. I mean sometimes when you listen to these debates in congress and listen to politicians debating you get the impression the they we're in control of whether we're at war or not. it doesn't matter what we think. They want to come here and kill us. And they did on September 11th. And they did a long time before September 11th. Way back in 1993 they came to this city and killed people. So we've got to put Iraq in the context of a much broader picture than just Iraq. And getting Iraq correctly, in other words, getting stability there is real important. And I support what the president has asked for support to do and what general petraeus has asked for support to do. Not because there's any guarantee it's going to work. There's never a guarantee at war. But if we can come out with a correct solution or better solution that iraq it's going to make the war on terror go better. We got to get beyond iraq.

HANNITY: Have people forgotten?

GIULIANI: It's natural. i mean, you have a terrible attack like September 11th, 2001, right in the aftermath of it there's tremendous unity. We understand that we have to be on offense against terrorists. That we have to make it bipartisan. This isn't about being a democrat or republican, it's about being an American. Now you get further away and that lesson isn't as vivid. and all wars have that happen. This is a difficult thing to do. But we've got to start getting beyond Iraq. We got to be thinking about Iran. We have to think about Syria. We have to be thinking about Pakistan and Afghanistan and making sure that the transition in Afghanistan goes correctly. We have to be ready for the fact that whatever happens in Iraq, success or failure-- success will help in the war on terror. Failure will hurt. But the war is still going on. They want to come here and kill us.

HANNITY: If you are president the baker report recommends taking down with ahmadinejad.

GIULIANI: I thought you almost can't put it up front. The minute you put it up front you give them all the leverage add take all the leverage away from us. That recommendation would have been better delivered secretly. Then you-- then through back channels you find out. Can achieve something with ahmadinejad? Can I achieve something with syria? Right now it doesn't look that way. Better thing to do Iran is to put pressure on them and let them know that we will not accept their being a nuclear power. The nightmare of the cold war was nuclear weapons in the hands of an irrational person. I don't want to live through that nightmare.

HANNITY: We're almost out of time. Who is the bigger Yankee fan, you or Hillary?

GILUIANI: We could do a debate on Yankee trivia and find out. [laughter] .

HANNITY: Your thoughts on Hillary, Barak Obama, John Edwards.

GILUIANI: I think they're 'all worthy people and going to fight it out for the democratic nomination. Right now it looks like Hillary. All you can do is look at polls. Right now she is ahead. But it's long way away. None of these races are over yet.

HANNITY: Senator McCain, Newt Gingrich.

GIULIANI: All good men. I respect all of them. I think I've campaigned with each one of them. I campaigned for mitt when he became governor of Massachusetts. I campaigned many, many times together with senator McCain. He's campaigned for me.

HANNITY: If you get the nomination do you have any doubt you would beat Hillary Clinton?

GIULIANI: I'm in this to win it. have no idea who is going to get the nomination. But you do this because you believe that you can win the nomination of your party then you believe that you are the strongest candidate to win the election for your party.

HANNITY: Name three people you would think of for vice president.

GIULIANI: Can't name vice presidents right now. I just told you three worthy people. Three great men. You can't be thinking about vice president at this point. It's enough to think about how to put this together, how to get it organized, how to get it announced, how to put together together the fundraising, what the major issues are and how to best articulate them to the American people to show leadership and strength. my campaign is going to be about the future. I mean the past is what we have to learn about how to direct America to the future. America to the future. The whole purpose of doing this is because you can make this country better.

HANNITY: As mayor of New York, I can't wait. If you were president it would be interesting. I don't think anyone's seen a press conference until they've seen a mayor Rudy Giuliani press conference.

GIULIANI: I told Tony Blair once it reminds me of the same thing he would go through every week with the question-and-answer period in the parliament. Combative. It means every single day you have to know what the heck is going on. if you don't there are at least two or three members of the press that will make you look like a fool.

HANNITY: Best of luck to you. Thank you for being here.

GOP Blocks Cloture On Surge Resolution

The Republicans welcomed Harry Reid to Senate leadership today, filibustering the Warner-Levin amendment on the surge strategy in Iraq when Reid tried to push it through without allowing alternatives or amendments to come to the floor. The Democrats could not even get a majority to approve cloture, let alone the 60 votes needed, and Reid's efforts sank into failure -- at least for now:

Republicans blocked a full-fledged Senate debate over Iraq on Monday, but Democrats vowed they would eventually find a way to force President Bush to change course in a war that has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 U.S. troops.

"We must heed the results of the November elections and the wishes of the American people," said Majority Leader Harry Reid. Reid, D-Nev., spoke moments before a vote that sidetracked a nonbinding measure expressing disagreement with Bush's plan to deploy an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq. The 49-47 vote was 11 short of the 60 needed to go ahead with debate, and left the fate of the measure uncertain.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (news, bio, voting record) of Kentucky described the test vote as merely a "bump in the road" that could possibly be overcome within hours. GOP lawmakers "welcome the debate and are happy to have it," he said, adding they were insisting on equal treatment for an alternative measure expected to draw strong support.

The Republicans insisted that the debate on Iraq include two competing resolutions. The first, the McCain-Lieberman resolution, approves the surge strategy but establishes benchmarks with which to measure its success. The second, proposed by Judd Gregg, takes no position on the surge but instead declares that the Senate does not favor cutting off funding for the efforts in Iraq.

Reid and the Democrats insisted on blocking any consideration of alternatives and demanded an end to debate -- which makes Reid's complaint that the GOP would not allow debate on the issue somewhat mystifying. Cloture is an end to debate on the floor, a limitation to allow a vote on the question before the Senate. The filibuster provides for unlimited debate, which the Republicans appear ready to provide. Dick Durbin accused Republicans of running from the debate, but in truth the Democrats tried to shove Warner-Levin down the GOP's throat in order to demand that the US run from Iraq. It's a strange accusation to make that a political party exercises cowardice in not allowing the other to demand retreat -- a position that some Democrats clearly want to make.

Not Joe Lieberman, however. In a stirring speech to the Senate tonight, Lieberman made clear his distaste for the efforts to force a non-binding op-ed through the upper chamber:

For the Senate to take up a symbolic vote of no confidence on the eve of a decisive battle is unprecedented, but it is not inconsequential. It is an act which, I fear, will discourage our troops, hearten our enemies, and showcase our disunity. And that is why I will vote against cloture.

If you believe that General Petraeus and his new strategy have a reasonable chance of success in Iraq, then you should resolve to support him and his troops through the difficult days ahead. On the other hand, if you believe that this new strategy is flawed or that our cause is hopeless in Iraq, then you should vote to stop it. Vote to cut off funds. Vote for a binding timeline for American withdrawal. If that is where your convictions lie, then have the courage of your convictions to accept the consequences of your convictions. That would be a resolution.

The non-binding measure before us, by contrast, is an accumulation of ambiguities and inconsistencies. It is at once for the war but also against the war. It pledges its support to the troops in the field but also washes its hands of what they are doing. It approves more troops for Anbar but not for Baghdad.

We cannot have it both ways. We cannot vote full confidence in General Petraeus, but no confidence in his strategy. We cannot say that the troops have our full support, but disavow their mission on the eve of battle. This is what happens when you try to wage war by committee. That is why the Constitution gave that authority to the President as Commander in Chief.

Lieberman joined the GOP in voting against cloture. Unfortunately, two Republicans failed to heed Lieberman's wisdom and voted to end debate and proceed to a vote on Warner-Levin. One, Susan Collins of Maine, could hardly have come as a surprise. However, Norm Coleman provided the other Republican vote for cloture, a deeply disappointing development for our Senator who has been so stalwart on the war.

Coleman has been open about his opposition to the surge, at least as it pertains to Baghdad, and was widely expected to vote in favor of the Warner-Levin resolution if it reached the floor. However, the bill does not distinguish between the surge in Baghdad and Anbar, opposing as it does the entire "`plan' to augment our forces by 21,500" (the word plan is offset in scare quotes in the Warner-Levin text); Coleman has gone on record in support of the Anbar surge. On that basis, I would have hoped that Coleman would have demanded a rewording of the text, which then inexplicably demands "vigorous" operations in Baghdad. I would also have expected Coleman to recognize the hypocrisy of the Senate leadership demands for debate while seeking to limit it and to limit the consideration of alternatives.

Instead, Coleman sided with the railroading Reid and the effort to send a vote of no-confidence as our troops begin their mission. It's highly disappointing, and Coleman needs to explain himself if he expects us to take him seriously on this question in the future. (via NZ Bear)

Please, Please, Please Say You'll Run

Ralph Nader has not gone quietly into that good night, and instead might consider another round of rage against the dying of the political light. He refused to rule out another run for the White House, and punctuated it with a pithy deconstruction of the current Democratic Party front-runner:

Asked on CNN's Late Edition news program if he would run in 2008, the lawyer and consumer activist said, "It's really too early to say. ... I'll consider it later in the year."

Nader, 72, said he did not plan to vote for Clinton, a Democratic senator from New York and former first lady.

"I don't think she has the fortitude. Actually she's really a panderer and a flatterer. As she goes around the country, you'll see more of that," Nader said.

On whether he would be encouraged to run if Clinton gets the Democratic nomination, Nader said, "It would make it more important that that be the case."

So who would Nader consider endorsing if he doesn't run? Oh, a good moderate like ... Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich can add that to his endorsement from 2004 by Grandfather Twilight. Nader has more impact than imaginary fairy-tale characters ... but not by much.

It would be fun to see Nader make a run as this generation's Harold Stassen. At least he has a sharp wit and a willingness to use it against both parties.

UPDATE: I notice that Kucinich has removed any references of the Grandfather Twilight endorsement from his new campaign web site. Perhaps the old gentleman may be reconsidering his support for Kucinich?

Bill Ardolino On A Nighttime Raid In Fallujah

Bill Ardolino, having completed his embed mission in Iraq with American forces, has begun to write about his experiences at length. His latest essay tells about his experience on a nighttime raid with US Marines and Iraqi Army forces, and presents the difficult routine of these missions:

A fifth stop was another dry hole, but occupants told the Jundi that the house of the man they were looking for was a block away, so the soldiers immediately splashed down a sewage-filled side street on foot, leaving the cordon, the convoy and its crew-served heavy weapons behind. We chased them down the darkened alley, Lt. Kim struggling to communicate with the IA's about their ad hoc plan of action. The move was poorly planned but ultimately successful, as a blindfolded man was led from the quickly targeted house with no shots fired.

This chaotic initiative highlights one of the strengths and weaknesses of the fledgling Iraqi security forces in Fallujah, particularly the Iraqi Army. Their aggression bordering on recklessness signals problems with command and control: planning, coordinated execution and battlefield communication. The marines think that this proclivity signals a need for more training, as well as results from cultural differences - one American remarked that "when your entire life has been spent fearing death, your concept of planning and self-preservation is a bit different."

"Insh'allah," as they say: "if God wills it."

On the plus side, they’re motivated and brave. Lt. Col. Fisher believes that this is one of the better problems to have, citing the old Marine saying, "it's better to have to reel them in than have to push them out the door."

He has plenty of pictures of the efforts in Fallujah as well. Be sure to read the whole post, and drop a few dollars in the tip jar to help him defray the enormous personal expense of his trip.

UPDATE: Chris Muir of Day By Day is also embedding this month; his comic strip will go into a "Best Of" mode for the next few weeks.

Also, I haven't had a chance to mention it, but please read Scott Johnson's post about the invocation at the Democratic National Committee meeting last Friday by an imam who called for the end of "oppression and occupation", the traditional language of Muslims who want an end to Israel. Robert Spencer has more. I'll try to return to this subject later.

Nice Guys Finish First

We've all heard the Leo Durocher saying, "Nice guys finish last," a tenet by which Durocher lived his life as manager of both the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants. Too often in sports (and business, and politics, etc etc etc) we celebrate the successes of the sharks -- those people whose drive to win pushes them past any sense of ethics and humanity, and the lesson always seems to be that only the obsessed win in life. That's why it becomes so important to tell the stories of those who reach the pinnacle without leaving their humanity behind -- and such is the case with Tony Dungy, the soft-spoken man who persevered and won a Super Bowl:

Sportswriters cover so many jerks, egomaniacs and sometimes even criminals that when a person of such high quality as Dungy finds success we can't help but enjoy it.

Dungy is fair, he is candid, he is helpful, he is genuine. He is a man who repeatedly talks about his Christian faith without seeming overly preachy, nor hypocritical. He lives his life exactly according to the values he espouses.

"You see that soft-spokenness," Dungy's wife, Lauren, said. "The calmness, the humbleness, the man that's in control, a man that has a job and wants to do it and do it well. Not necessarily to get credit for it, it's a family coming together to make a championship team.

"The way he has done it, that's to play a game with intensity, to play without compromising. To go out and play on the field and not have to compromise with the cussing and carrying on that often happens, we often see with coaches."

In the twisted world of the NFL, those qualities were sometimes seen as detrimental, that he wasn't tough enough or mean enough or inspirational enough to get his team to the Super Bowl. A string of playoff disappointments were all it took to make the case, a mediocre 7-8 postseason record in Indianapolis and Tampa Bay.

It should be noted that many of these same qualities also resided on the other side of the field in Lovie Smith, the Chicago Bears head coach. It seems that this could have been called the Super Nice Bowl. It may have been the first Super Bowl to feature two African-American head coaches, but it also might be the first in some time to feature two head coaches with such overt Christian faith informing their leadership of their respective teams.

J.A. Adande writes a good column on Dungy, covering his commitment to live his life by his faith and to treat his players with respect at all times. He misses one point that perhaps Adande wanted to leave out on purpose, but it bears noting as an example of Dungy's commitment. One of Dungy's sons committed suicide in December 2005, a tragedy that could have shaken Dungy's faith and transformed him into a bitter man. Instead, he considered it a "test" and one to overcome, and he did so painfully but keeping himself as grounded as anyone could possibly be under the circumstances.

The better team won the game last night, but more importantly, one of the best men in the league finally got his due. Congratulations, Coach Dungy, and thank you for the example and the challenge you have set for all of us. Nice guys can finish first -- they just have to work hard and be true to themselves to do so.

Surge Delay Is Deadly: Iraq

Both Shi'ite and Sunni Iraqi leaders want the US to accelerate the deployment for the new surge strategy in Baghdad. Shi'ites blame the US for not filling the power vacuum quickly enough after the Mahdi Army started to flee the capital, leaving them exposed for the Sunni bombing that killed 135 people this weekend. The Sunnis want the US in place to keep the situation from deteriorating even further:

A growing number of Iraqis blamed the United States on Sunday for creating conditions that led to the worst single suicide bombing in the war, which devastated a Shiite market in Baghdad the day before. They argued that slowness in completing the vaunted new American security plan has made Shiite neighborhoods much more vulnerable to such horrific attacks.

The chorus of critics said the new plan, which the Americans have barely started to execute, has emasculated the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia that is considered responsible for many attacks on Sunnis, but which many Shiites say had been the only effective deterrent against sectarian reprisal attacks in Baghdad’s Shiite neighborhoods. Even some Iraqi supporters of the plan, such as Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister who is a Kurd, said delays in implementing it have caused great disappointment.

In advance of the plan, which would flood Baghdad with thousands of new American and Iraqi troops, many Mahdi Army checkpoints were dismantled and its leaders are either in hiding or under arrest. With no immediate influx of new security forces to fill the void, Shiites say, Sunni militants and other anti-Shiite forces have been emboldened to plot the type of attack that obliterated the bustling Sadriya market in central Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least 135 people and wounding more than 300 from a suicide driver’s truck bomb.

“A long time has passed since the plan was announced,” Basim Shareef, a Shiite member of Parliament, said Sunday. “But so far security has only deteriorated.”

That's not much of an argument, but it does point out the effectiveness of the Mahdi Army in terrorizing the Sunni population in Baghdad. Had the Mahdis wanted to play a constructive role in Iraqi security, they could have allowed Iraqi Army units to take over their positions, along with the American troops already in Baghdad. However, their attacks on both forces over the last year meant that they knew they would be targets themselves, which is one of the reasons they had to flee when the new strategy was announced.

Sunnis, meanwhile, want a dominating outside force to hit the ground in Baghdad to force an end to the war that has broken out between the factions:

Iraq's Sunni vice-president has urged Washington to speed up the deployment of extra US troops to stop what he called "round the clock" killing.

Tariq Hashimi told the BBC that previous security drives had failed because they had too few combat troops. ...

Mr Hashimi, Iraq's most senior Sunni politician, said if promised troops did not materialise soon, the situation could deteriorate even further.

He was also scathing about the Iraqi government's own response to the violence, saying it was slow and unprofessional, while he blamed the increase in attacks on Iran, arguing that the recent bombings were so large a government had to be involved.

Both sides of the sectarian divide now believe that the surge strategy not only can work, but is the only one that has a chance of ending the sectarian violence wracking the capital. However, thanks to an extended Senate debate, the movement of those troops may yet be in jeopardy. While the Bush administration has pledged to move forward even in the face of a no-confidence resolution, Congress may yet suspend the funds necessary to carry it out.

These reports demonstrate why the Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, did not create Congress as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, especially during wartime. With the Mahdi Army disappearing from view, the time is ripe to drop an overwhelming force of American and Iraqi forces (especially the latter) into Baghdad to start clearing and holding territory and establishing some trust in the rule of law. The delay only makes that latter task more difficult as it encourages second-tier groups to fill the void left by the Mahdi retreat and the Coalition delay.

Hesitation causes the worst problems in wartime. Once a strategy has been announced, one's enemies will start adjusting immediately to it, which is one reason why announcing intentions is not a good idea in the first place. However, the political situation here in the US dictated that the Bush administration go public with its plans. Congress needs to get out of the way so that we can implement that strategy before it's too late for it to have any chance of success. Even both sides of the sectarian divide in Iraq see that much.

A Split On Al-Qaeda

The classified portion of the National Intelligence Estimate downplays the effect of al-Qaeda in Iraq, declaring them to be a small minority of the Sunni terrorists. However, four of the sixteen intelligence agencies dissented from this view, including the intel units of the two forces fighting in Iraq. They believe that the Sunni insurgencies have been almost completely co-opted by AQI:

In a division reminiscent of the intelligence debates before the Iraq war, America's war fighters and satellite imagery experts have issued a formal dissent on one of the National Intelligence Estimate's most important judgments.

Disputing the view that Al Qaeda plays only a small role in the overall Sunni insurgency in Iraq, four of America's 16 intelligence agencies have obliged the Directorate of National Intelligence to provide a formal dissent to the 90-page classified Iraq assessment issued last week.

Those agencies include the Treasury Department's Office of Intelligence and Analysis, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the military intelligence bureaus of the Army and Marines.

According to two sources familiar with the addendum, the dissenters argue that the Baathist wing of the umbrella Sunni terrorist group has ceded authority to Abu Ayoub al-Masri, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq who replaced Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The majority view, endorsed by the CIA, the National Security Agency, the State Department, and others, holds that a majority of the Sunni insurgency is still comprised of Baathists and Sunni nationalists.

The unclassified NIE had only the barest hint of this internal dissent on AQI. The group, which pledges itself to the leadership of Osama bin Laden, only gets two mentions in the nine-page document, but both are prominent highlights of examples of terrorist groups. The first equates AQI with the Mahdi Army in the ability to keep sectarian violence stoked, while the second mentions AQI as primary among Sunni factions in the complex stew that comprises the overall violence.

The dissenters rely on a new assessment of the Mujahideen Shura Council, an umbrella group that at one time had AQI as a component. This group models itself on Hamas in its attempt to provide social services to the Sunnis in Iraq as a means of gaining political power. The Army and Marine Corps, as well as the other two dissenting agencies, believe that the MSC has been taken over completely by AQI, granting al-Qaeda leadership over all Sunni terrorist factions, including the Ba'athist remnants of Saddam's former regime. Marine Colonel Peter Devlin warned that AQI had won control of the MSC as part of its takeover in Anbar in September 2006, in the testimony that the Washington Post at the time said had told Congress that Anbar was close to being lost.

This is no mere academic exercise. If AQI has taken over control of the Sunni terrorists, then it gives strength to the Bush administration's argument that Iraq remains a central front in the war against al-Qaeda. If not, that argument has less direct evidence and has to rely on painting Iraq as a central battlefront in the overall war against radical Islamist terrorists of all stripes. That difference is as subtle as the dissent within in the intelligence community, but likely to have a grave impact on American resolve in Iraq.

Talk About A Reach

Super Bowl commercials generate a lot of foolish analysis, perhaps as much foolishness as contained in the advertisements. This year provided plenty of that in several varieties, reflecting the efforts of ad agencies to make the biggest impression in their greatest competitive event. However, none of it comes close to matching the idiocy of the analysis provided by the New York Times, whose ad analyst blamed the war in Iraq for making commercials more violent:

No commercial that appeared last night during Super Bowl XLI directly addressed Iraq, unlike a patriotic spot for Budweiser beer that ran during the game two years ago. But the ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface of many of this year’s commercials.

More than a dozen spots celebrated violence in an exaggerated, cartoonlike vein that was intended to be humorous, but often came across as cruel or callous.

For instance, in a commercial for Bud Light beer, sold by Anheuser-Busch, one man beat the other at a game of rock, paper, scissors by throwing a rock at his opponent’s head.

In another Bud Light spot, face-slapping replaced fist-bumping as the cool way for people to show affection for one another. In a FedEx commercial, set on the moon, an astronaut was wiped out by a meteor. In a spot for Snickers candy, sold by Mars, two co-workers sought to prove their masculinity by tearing off patches of chest hair.

There was also a bank robbery (E*Trade Financial), fierce battles among office workers trapped in a jungle (CareerBuilder), menacing hitchhikers (Bud Light again) and a clash between a monster and a superhero reminiscent of a horror movie (Garmin).

It was as if Madison Avenue were channeling Doc in “West Side Story,” the gentle owner of the candy store in the neighborhood that the two street gangs, the Jets and Sharks, fight over. “Why do you kids live like there’s a war on?” Doc asks plaintively. (Well, Doc, this time, there is.)

Oh, for Pete's sake. Did any of the commercials feature IEDs or suicide bombers? How does a face slap equate to the battle against religious fanatics in Baghdad? How do two hitchikers holding beer, an axe, and a chainsaw evoke the street-by-street battles in Anbar?

The answer is that they don't. Commercials have used cartoon violence or hints of it for years. Cartoons have used it for decades. Stuart Elliott uses a reference (West Side Story) that comes from over forty years ago, when the US wasn't involved in any war, to illustrate his point -- even though nothing we saw last night even approaches the warlike violence in the play and movie.

His stupidest -- and that's not too strong a term -- argument comes from the Prudential commercials, which asked "What can a rock do?" Prudential has been singing "Get a piece of the rock" for as long as I have been alive, and the obvious reference was to their longtime icon and not Baghdad. Anyone arguing a connection between "a rock" and "Iraq" reveals much more about their own biases and agendas than that of these innocent commercials.

Where does the Times find these writers? Do they just troll the crowds at International ANSWER rallies, or do they have to advertise to find such inanity? (via Hot Air)

Gee, You Think?

The New York Times reports that the Palestinians have begun to sense what a public relations disaster their civil war has become. At the same time they demand recognition as a state, they have proven that they cannot hold one together. Of course, Palestinian academics always know who to blame for their culture of death:

The fierce internal clashes between Palestinian factions have shocked many Palestinians and Arab governments, who fear that the continuing bloodshed is damaging the Palestinian image before the world, Palestinians say.

“This fighting affects everyone’s morale,” said Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian analyst who teaches at Al Quds University here. “We always felt we had this one big asset, our social unity as Palestinians, but to see it shredding, with lives being shed without much concern, is horrible. We’ve lost a lot of sensitivity to these deaths, to those killed by the Israelis and ourselves.”

Even as the Bush administration has moved in its second term to try for significant progress toward peace, Palestinians say their own infighting is making it too easy for Israel to argue that the time is not right to promote a Palestinian state.

Did you get that? Their insensitivity to death comes from all of the Palestinians killed by Israelis, rather than the countless men, women, and children killed by Palestinian terrorists since Yasser Arafat first formed the PLO. Their culture of death comes from the Israelis and not their own twisted culture that lionizes lunatics who blow up pizzerias and falafel stands.

Kuttab doesn't even have the excuse of ignorance for these comments. The scholar noted that the violence increased exponentially when the Israelis did what the Palestinians demanded -- withdraw from Gaza. Instead of taking the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to govern, they showed themselves incapable of any sort of self-control, and the only leadership that they have created are terrorist warlords.

They have made their own bed over five decades of terrorism and self-immolation. They have no one to blame but themselves.

British Jews Repudiate Israel

Claiming that they cannot abide the occupation, Jewish academics in Britain have decided that they value the human rights of Palestinians above the right of Israel to exist. At least, that's the question as they see it:

A group of prominent British Jews will today declare independence from the country's Jewish establishment, arguing that it puts support for Israel above the human rights of Palestinians.

Independent Jewish Voices will publish an open letter on the Guardian's Comment is Free website calling for a freer debate about the Middle East within the Jewish community. Among the more than 130 signatories are Stephen Fry, Harold Pinter, Mike Leigh, Jenny Diski and Nicole Farhi, as well as leading academics such as Eric Hobsbawm and Susie Orbach.

"We come together in the belief that the broad spectrum of opinion among the Jewish population of this country is not reflected by those institutions which claim authority to represent the Jewish community as a whole," the letter says. Jewish leaders in Britain, it argues "put support for the policies of an occupying power above the human rights of an occupied people" in conflict with Jewish principles of justice and compassion.

The statement does not name the institutions it is criticising. But one signatory, Brian Klug, an Oxford philosopher, writing an accompanying article on Comment is Free, singles out the Board of Deputies of British Jews for calling itself "the voice of British Jewry" while devoting "much of the time and resources of its international division to the defence of Israel".

That's a false comparison, and these academics should know better. The reason Israel occupies that land is because the Arabs twice used it to attack Israel, and Jordan lost it the second time. The Israelis would love to have it off their hands, but the Palestinians refuse to negotiate with them for a state while recognizing Israel's right to exist. Instead, they have conducted over a decade of terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians inside and outside of the occupied territories, a rather good example of "human rights" violations.

It's not difficult to see where the sympathies of this group lies. One of the members proposed to the board of the Institute of Jewish Policy Research that they demand the creation of a single state, eliminating the right of Jews to return to the new non-Israel and rejecting the Jewish nature of the nation. This isn't just a declaration of specific criticisms against Israeli policy; it's a rejection of Israel's right to exist.

I would agree that some critics of Israeli policies get unfairly labeled as anti-Semites. However, those who want to destroy the state of Israel can't complain about earning that label, no matter their own religion or ethnicity.

Super Bowl XLI: Live Blog

Since I'm going to watch the game and check on the latest in the news, I figured I'd do a bit of a laissez-faire live blog. I'll update it during the pre-game, game, and post-game, but on a low-intensity basis. The opening Gloria Estefan number and its wretched excess convinced me I had to make at least a few comments. This should be a lot of fun, especially since I don't have the pressure of having the Steelers in the game ... which is a transparent effort to put the best possible face on the 8-8 season Pittsburgh had this year.

4:58 CT - I'm not sure what the point of the Estefan act was, but has anyone seen a weirder looking routine? I'm guessing that the theme was that even though we're rooting for different teams, we're really all the same ... spectators, I guess.

4:59 - Today's the First Mate's birthday. We went out for a nice brunch, but since the wind-chill factor this weekend has hovered around -30, she has decided that we'll celebrate another time.

5:10 - Non-XLI item: So how good is John Edwards' vetting squad? Apparently, they need a little work. Hiring a blogger that has this much in the Google cache says something about the competence of Edwards' campaign management, and that something isn't Good Job.

5:25 - The NFC has won the coin flip ten years in a row now, but they've lost 7 of the 9 games played in that span. I'm sticking to my prediction of 31-24 Colts ...

5:27 - "This game is brought to you on HDTV." Well, not to me! I spelled HDTV C-P-A-C this year ...

5:28 - Hester hits the runback jackpot on the first pull. You suppose Indy will kick it directly to him the next time?

5:34 - Not a great start for Indy, is it? A special-teams breakdown and an interception.

5:47 - Did Chicago forget to cover Reggie Wayne? It looks like they did, and Peyton hung in there to get him all alone. However, it still looks like Indy's snakebit: they blew a PAT. Not exactly championship play here. Now, will they kick it to Hester?

5:50 - Did Chicago not think to put their hands team on the kick return? I guess not. Oops!

5:52 - Jeez, these are the two best teams in the NFL? It looks like Keystone Kops Take Miami.

5:59 - The Carlos Mencia commercial so far looks the best, although one has to give props to Oprah and David Letterman. I miss Uma, though ...

6:06 - No one wants a piece of the rock, tonight. Both defenses are hitting hard!

6:09 - You absolutely punt under those circumstances. There's no gray zone here. It's a ground-position game.

6:15 - This is why Indy punted. They have the field position advantage now. It was a crazy first quarter, but I'd expect Indy to settle down now, and get back to ball control offense.

6:18 - Is it just me, or are most of these commercials old news? Even the new Go Daddy commercial is just the same old crap. They're not exactly my favorite sponsor anyway -- a lot of spammers get their domains from Go Daddy, and they won't exercise any control over them.

6:24 - The Garmin commercial so far is the worst. Power Rangers? Pul-leeze.

6:29 - Colts defense looks pretty good so far.

6:33 - You think that all of these foggy, wet lens shots have HDTV viewers really pissed off?

6:34 - Indy takes the lead for the first time by going to the run. Dominique Rhodes shows that Indy can play hardnosed football, too.

6:45 - Indy's playing pretty tough on both sides of the ball. They're about to control the last few minutes of the first half, and after the opening kickoff, it's been pretty much all Indy. Manning's been looking solid, even though Grossman has avoided the big mistake so far.

6:50 - Turnover! That'll kill the big Mo.

6:51 - Not if Grossman has his way. Ball back to Indy, and back to the Colts' grinding offense.

6:56 - Vinatieri missed a field goal! Yikes! Call Mike Vanderjagt! That may give the Bears a lift, but it won't change the domination that Indy put on them in the first half.

7:07 - So I guess Prince couldn't even spring for a hair stylist for his big Super Bowl moment, huh? And how smart is it to have hundreds of fans run onto the field when the Colts and Bears have another half to play on it?

7:13 - Prince is doing a great job as the halftime entertainer, much better than I would have expected.

7:32 - Indy back in the same groove, making the plays to extend their drives and keep the Bears D on the field.

7:37 - I didn't know that they could challenge for the number of men on the field. Maybe Dungy should have remained ignorant of it, too.

7:39 - Indy gets a field goal and makes it a five-point lead. If the Colts defense can get another three-and-out, the Bears are in deep guano.

7:47 - Deep, embarrassing guano. Rex runs a Riegel -- twice -- and gives the ball back to the Colts in good field position.

7:53 - Indy ran it down the Bears' throats, but for some reason started throwing it from the 10-yard line twice instead of sticking with what's working. They're going to have to kick the FG instead.

7:55 - The Bears almost gave them four more downs from the 1. Their discipline is breaking down ...

7:57 - The Charles Barkley commercial was pretty good. I lived in Phoenix when he played with the Suns, and he owned that town.

7:58 - Indy's discipline needs a little work, too. Also, if they're going to kick it that short, why not just kick it out of bounds and have it on the Chicago 40?

8:04 - So the Bears got it on the Colts 40, and only could move it 14 yards. Not exactly impressive. They're not going to get those kinds of chances much in this half.

8:19 - The Bears got hit with their first painful penalty -- a holding call that wiped out a nifty run.

8:21 - Grossman Strikes Again! He throws it at the wrong jersey and gives up six, the first TD scored in over 30 minutes of game time. Chicago will challenge it, but they're going to lose it and be left with one time out left.

8:32 - Grossman Strikes Again ... Again! He hung one up when he had the Bears moving, on a first-down play. Dumb play, and that's why I thought Indy would beat the Bears.

8:43 - Indy needed to score on that possession, and the Bears have moved the ball since the punt. They have to face a 4th-and-8 in order to stay in the game.

8:46 - The Bears lost their opportunity to win the game on that dropped 4th-down pass. Grossman put it where it needed to be, but Clark just couldn't come down with it.

8:48 - Who gets the MVP if the score stays the same? Peyton? Rhodes? Either one would do.

8:54 - Huh. 4th down at the 17. Should Indy try for the field goal?

8:58 - Peyton finally gets off the schneid, and so does Dungy. The Colts dominated the Bears, and not just because of Rex Grossman. We'll see who gets MVP. I'm betting Rhodes.

9:10 - I think Shula was the last Colts coach to win the Super Bowl, too. Interesting ...

9:13 - "There's also social significance to this victory ..." Dungy had a great answer, saying he was more proud that two Christian coaches could win "the Lord's way".

9:14 - Peyton gets the MVP, and he gets the Caddy, too.

9:16 - Andy corrects me in the comments; Shula took the Colts to Super Bowl III and lost it to the Jets. He wasn't with them when they won Super Bowl V.

9:17 - Fabulous game, and I'm not surprised to see the Colts prevail. Their defense really jelled in the last few weeks, and Peyton is too good a field general to lose to Rex Grossman. This game was won in Indianapolis, in the second half of the Patriots game.

Thanks for sticking around all night -- hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!

Muslims For Peace - Women Need Not Apply

Progress:

Some 3 million Muslims put aside their country's violent struggle with political corruption and Islamic extremists and raised their hands in prayer for global peace at one of the world's largest religious gatherings.

The final prayer Sunday capped a three-day Islamic gathering on the sandy banks of the River Turag in a small industrial town just north of Dhaka, Bangladesh's capital.

Pilgrims, many of whom left work early to join the prayer, streamed into the site stretching 190 acres along both banks of the river. As the crowd overflowed the space, people arrived at the site on packed boats or climbed onto the rooftops of nearby buildings.

The annual gathering shuns politics, which have become increasingly bloody in Bangladesh, and focuses on reviving the tenets of Islam and promoting peace and harmony.

Or, not so much:

Female Muslims, with the exception of high-ranking officials, were not allowed to attend, but hundreds gathered in nearby villages to take part in the event.

The effort should be applauded and noted. Muslim moderates exist, and it's about time we see them take to the streets to demonstrate for something other than death to editorial cartoonists. It's even more impressive to see this kind of demonstration in a country with as much political tension as Bangladesh.

However, the exclusion of women keeps us from taking it too seriously. If moderates truly want to gain control of Islam from the lunatics, they have to free their wives and daughters.

Is This Five Years Too Late?

George Bush went into the lion's den yesterday, addressing the new Democratic Party majority in Congress in a closed-door meeting intended to help smooth the way for bipartisanship. By all accounts, Bush did well, using self-deprecating humor to defuse the tension between the White House and Congressional Democrats. The meeting may come too late, though, to bridge the partisan gulf on the war:

President Bush, forced by circumstance to reach out to some of his strongest adversaries, appealed directly to House Democrats on Saturday to work with him to reform the immigration system, limit the cost of Social Security, curb the consumption of gasoline and balance the federal budget.

Visiting the Democrats' annual retreat for the first time since 2001, the president told lawmakers there are "big things" they could accomplish by working together and sought to defuse any bad blood with self-deprecating humor. He opened his public remarks with an allusion to his tendency to mispronounce the name of the rival party by calling it the Democrat Party, seen by many party activists as a calculated insult.

"I appreciate you inviting the head of the Republic Party," Bush said to laughter. He drew scattered applause a few moments later when he used the correct name in calling on the "Democratic Party" to work with him to address the mounting future liabilities of Social Security and Medicare.

Democrats rose to politely applaud Bush before and after the speech, a sign of the outwardly cordial and respectful nature of the day's session.

Democrats had a rare opportunity to question the president directly, using a private session after his speech to press him on Iraq, immigration, global warming, the deficit and the absence of Hurricane Katrina and veterans' issues in his recent State of the Union address. While Bush asked Democrats to keep the conversation private, some people present said he gave no ground on his basic position on the war but was upfront in talking about its impact on the populace.

The results of the meeting appear mixed. Democrats welcomed the President politely, and appreciated his humor, and Nancy Pelosi said afterwards that she hoped for consensus and engagement in three areas -- energy independence, immigration, and jobs innovation. While the latter sounds like the kind of fluff that provides little more than grist for self-congratulatory stump speeches (because the private sector generates more innovation than bureaucracies), the other two issues are significant and important considerations that relate to national security.

However, the primary issues of national security have not been bridged by this meeting, nor does it appear the White House wanted to press for that in this meeting. Pelosi threatened to block any effort by the administration to use military force against Iran, although it is not at all clear that the White House wants to do so anyway. She also wants to pursue a "no-confidence" vote in the House on the surge strategy to match the resolutions currently under debate in the Senate.

While that would have no legal effect in the US, both will have a massive impact on Bush's ability to hold his international coalition together. Parliamentary democracies know full well what a no-confidence vote means; it means that the Bush administration has no political reservoir of strength, and nations inclined to hesitate on Iraq, Iran, and Syria know they can outlast the Bush administration. It's a recipe for two years of stalling while Iran gets its nukes.

Clearly the Democrats want to play to the anti-war activists that helped them win their majorities. However, the White House bears some responsibility for this as well. After 9/11, the Bush administration should have made appearances at these caucus meetings each year, at least as a show of unity in the face of war. Unlike almost all of Congressional leadership, which represents the interests of the caucus, the White House represents the interests of the entire nation. (The Speaker is somewhat analogous in the legislative branch.) In the aftermath of the worst attacks on American soil, the President should have actively engaged the Democrats as a means to keep channels open and to pursue bipartisanship on the war -- making it an effort of all Americans and not just the responsibility of the Republican Party.

Would the Democrats have responded? At least some of them might have, although certainly not all of them. We would find ourselves with at least somewhat more resolve to face the enemy in their backyard, and while it might have meant altering some of the policies that the administration put in place to fight the war, the commitment to it would almost certainly be stronger than it is today. At the very least, it would have made clear where bipartisanship failed had the Democrats failed to respond to the President.

I think this meeting made a lot of sense, and I commend President Bush for going with grace to meet with his political opponents. It should have happened in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006. It may be too late for the war, but at least we can hopefully make some headway on other matters of national security.

Iraqi Official: Half Of Violence Comes From Syria

While the US focuses on Iran as a fomenter of the violence wracking Baghdad and its environs, Iraqi officials have begun pointing west instead east as an explanation. After the worst single bombing in the last four years took 135 lives yesterday in a Shi'ite section of the capital, an Iraqi official angrily accused Syria of allowing "Saddamists" to flow freely across the border:

A senior Iraqi official has said half of all insurgent attacks in Baghdad are carried out by militants from Syria. Ali al-Dabbagh said the Iraqi government has provided Damascus with evidence to back up this claim. ...

Speaking on al-Arabiyah television, Mr al-Dabbagh said many of the insurgents emanated from neighbouring Syria.

"Fifty per cent of terrorism enters Iraq from Syria, and we have evidence" to prove that, the Associated Press news agency reported.

"The Interior Ministry and the Ministry of State for National Security gave them [the Syrians] evidence about those who are conspiring and are sending car bombs. We gave them the numbers of their apartments and the buildings where they live," he said.

If the Iraqis really do have that kind of intelligence and they have confronted Syria about it, then perhaps it is time for the Coalition to raise the temperature a bit with Syria. There seems to be some indirect corroboration for what Dabbagh says. The Iraqis last week halted flights to and from Syria and started closing some border crossings, in what had been analyzed as preparation for the surge strategy. However, it may have had more to do with unmet demands by the Nouri al-Maliki government for the end of Syria's support for the Ba'athist insurgency.

The recent NIE mentions the issue with Syria, and notes that Syria "continues to provide safehaven for expatriate Iraqi Bathists and to take less than adequate measures to stop the flow of foreign jihadists into Iraq." In other words, they're supplying a conduit for both the Saddamists and the al-Qaeda fighters that have tormented Baghdad, Diyala, and Anbar. Iran, Syria's military ally, has supplied training and materiel at the least to the Shi'ite factions it supports. This paints a strange picture of two military allies fighting a proxy war in the center of Iraq, apparently just for the destruction it will wreak on Iraqis -- and therefore the damage it will do to the US.

Perhaps Iran is too tough a nut to crack with a military solution. Its topography certainly makes any action risky, much more risky than Iraq, and military strikes there will damage the pro-Western democratic activist movement already building there. However, none of that applies to Syria. Maybe we should keep economic pressure on Iran but start using military pressure to bring Syria to heel. That would solve problems for us in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories as well as reducing the flow of terrorists into Iraq.

If Dabbagh and the NIE have it correct, Iran and Syria have Iraq in a vise grip. The best way to beat that is to eliminate one side of the vise.

AQ To British Cells: Let The Beheadings Begin

Britain's latest success against radical Islamist terror may have heralded the beginning of a major offensive by al-Qaeda against the West. Cells in the UK have received instructions to start kidnapping victims, make tapes of them pleading for their lives, and behead them:

ISLAMIC terror cells in Britain have been instructed to carry out a series of kidnappings and beheadings of the kind allegedly planned by the nine terrorist suspects arrested in Birmingham last week.

The “strategic” assassination instruction was issued by Al-Qaeda’s leaders in Pakistan and Iraq to dozens of their followers in this country. It was uncovered by MI5 last autumn, senior security sources say.

As a result police are on standby for multiple attempts by terrorists to kidnap and then behead people across Britain. MI5 is conducting a counter-terrorism surveillance operation to prevent such an attack.

The alleged attempt to kidnap and behead a Muslim soldier or soldiers in Birmingham was just the first of a series of planned attacks, security sources say.

The revelation explains the recent deployment of a permanent SAS unit to London. The unit has been placed on 24-hour standby to respond to a terrorist attack in the capital. It would aim to carry out a hostage rescue mission within minutes of being alerted.

The British have not stood idly by while this message has filtered out to the terrorist cells with their nation. They have conducted special-ops drills since the fall, aiming to prepare for the Beslan scenario, in which terrorists gain control of a school or a public facility. The plots have marked similarities to the Toronto cell uncovered by Canadian authorities. That cell had planned to take over the Canadian Parliament and eventually behead PM Stephen Harper.

Radical Islamists have not conducted a major operation against a Coalition member since the London bombings in 2005. The kind of intelligence work demonstrated in this operation is one of the reasons why. The British may have gotten enough of a head start to foil these plots. Let's hope this turns out to be another AQ pipe(bomb) dream. (via Hot Air)

The Momentum Of Reform Slows

Nancy Pelosi got a Democratic majority in the midterm elections by promising to clean up Congress, to drain the swamp of corruption in Washington, and especially to disconnect lobbyists from legislation. That reform appears to have been derailed, as the Washington Post explains in an editorial, by Democrats more interested in keeping fundraising from lobbyists than in draining swamps:

DISTURBING, though not particularly surprising, rumblings are emanating from the House of Representatives to the effect that some Democrats are balking at requiring lobbyists to disclose the campaign contributions they arrange or collect for lawmakers.

This important requirement was included in the lobbying and ethics package that recently passed the Senate; Reps. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.) have introduced the same measure in the House and want to see it included in the lobbying legislation that the House plans to take up in the next few months. A similar provision was overwhelmingly approved by the House Judiciary Committee last year but unceremoniously disappeared from the final version of the legislation, which never became law in any event.

The Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call reported last week that some Democratic House members, egged on by K Street lobbyists, are agitating to have the provision removed. That can't be allowed to happen. Mr. Van Hollen, who's responsible for helping to raise big money from K Street and elsewhere as the new head of the House Democrats' campaign arm, nonetheless understands that providing accurate information about the real influence of lobbyists is a critical piece of reform.

Don't get me wrong on this. The Republicans had total control of the levers of power -- or as much as one can get short of 60 votes in the Senate -- and never bothered to implement this change, either. They came to Congress on the reformist impulse twelve years ago, and allowed themselves to get co-opted in the process by the lobbyists and the contributions they raise for incumbents. And at least one Republican leader in Congress, Tom DeLay, aggressively courted that relationship in order to hang onto power.

The Republicans discovered in November that the bill eventually comes due. Apparently, the Democrats intend on learning that lesson the hard way as well. A party cannot run on the reform platform and then adopt the mechanisms of corruption without people noticing. And voters have twice in this generation tossed a party out of power for forgetting their promises once given control of Congress.

It may sound like good news that the Democrats are getting this wrong and setting themselves up for a payback in 2008. However, as an American, I would cheer whichever party manages to dismantle the incumbent protection systems built by past Congresses and the lobbyists that bought them. I would have preferred that the GOP had done it and allowed us to take credit for the accomplishment, but I'd settle for applauding the Democrats for it if necessary. If they don't, the Republicans had better take it seriously when they return to power -- and learn the lesson of their last failure if their opponents do not.