Can You Help Gladys Reyes?

Gladys Reyes is a young girl that attends my son's old middle school in West Saint Paul, where my son's mother-in-law teaches Gladys and many other students. Gladys, however, is not in school at the moment. The sixth-grader instead is in the hospital after being the victim of a horrible traffic accident:

A fund has been set up to help an eleven-year-old West St. Paul girl who was struck by a van and dragged nearly 500 yards.

The accident left Gladys Reyes badly injured and forced doctors to amputate her right arm. She remains in critical condition at Regions Hospital.

The alleged hit-and-run driver, 33-year--old Mauricio Sanchez, of St. Paul, has been charged with two counts of criminal vehicular operation resulting in great bodily harm. Bail is set at 100-thousand dollars, and he could face five years in prison.

Reyes is a sixth-grader at Heritage Middle School in West St. Paul. Principal Chris Hiti says her family has no insurance.

Sanchez apparently refused to stop the car, even with his friend pounding on the window trying to get him to hit the brakes. If this is true, he deserves as much as the legal system can throw at him, and will probably get it.

However, that will not help Gladys. She needs financial support to pay for the long stretch of medical assistance she will need, and her family needs the support of the community. In that effort, the Airport Hilton will hold a benefit tomorrow for the Reyes family; Gladys' mother Maria Galindo works for the hotel. Here is the press release for the benefit:

TWIN CITIES OF MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL, MN – The Hilton Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport – Mall of America will host a luncheon & silent auction benefit to help Gladys Reyes and her family. Gladys Reyes, age 11, was struck by a car as she crossed a West St. Paul street and was dragged nearly 500 yards before being freed from the front wheel. Today, Gladys remains in serious condition at Regions Hospital in St. Paul.

“Gladys’ mother, Maria Galindo, has been employed at the Hilton since August of 2005. Maria is a great associate and plays an important role in the success of our department,” said Oscar Castellanos, Executive Housekeeper, Hilton Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport – Mall of America. General Manager, Michael Brunkow, stated, “Hosting this event is our way of being able to help Maria and her family offset some of the medical expenses incurred as a result of this terrible accident. We look forward to welcoming Maria back to work and hope Gladys will be returning home soon.”

The Gladys Reyes Luncheon & Silent Auction Benefit
When: Sunday, February 18, 2006
Time: 11 am to 2 pm
Menu: Salad Bar, Pasta Stations, Dessert Station
Price: $9.95 Adults, $5.95 Children Ages 5 and up
Address: 3800 American Boulevard East, Bloomington, MN
Phone: 952-854-2100

*Silent Auction & Raffle items include gift certificates for vacation getaways.*
*All proceeds raised will be donated to the family of Gladys Reyes.*
To learn more about this event or to donate an item for the silent auction/raffle, please contact Shawn Anderson, Director of Sales & Marketing, at 952-548-0977.

If CQ readers want to add to the efforts to help a little girl recover, make sure you contact the number above. If you can't help out financially, please add the Reyes family to your prayers.

Cloture Vote In Process

The Senate is holding their cloture vote as I post this. So far, the Democrats have gotten four Republicans to cross the aisle -- John Warner, Chuck Hagel, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins. Joe Lieberman crossed from the Democratic caucus, making a net of 3 for the Democrats -- and they need a net 10.

Norm Coleman crossed. Dems +4. This surprises me; Coleman told us specifically that he supported the surge in Anbar, and this resolution makes no mention of supporting that portion of the operation. It's a major disappointment.

1:19 PM CT - Cloture fails, 56-34. The resolution has been withdrawn by Harry Reid.

UPDATE: The AP reports this as "Republicans foiled a Democratic attempt to rebuke President Bush".

UPDATE II: Allahpundit has this update:

The only Republicans to vote with the Dems last time were Coleman and Susan Collins. Joining them today: John Warner, Olympia Snowe, Arlen Specter, Chuck Hagel, and Gordon Smith. Not voting: McCain, who was out campaigning, Lisa Murkowski, Bob Bennett, Thad Cochran, Bob Corker, Kit Bond, John Ensign, Jon Kyl, Orrin Hatch, and of course Tim Johnson, who’s still recuperating from his stroke. All are Republicans except Johnson. Reid was hoping to get Lamar Alexander and Larry Craig to cross the aisle, since both are up for reelection in two years and were rumored to be wavering, but he couldn’t pull it off.

I was having a tough time following the vote during my radio prep, and I missed Specter and Smith. I'd like to know where the other Republicans were today, but in truth they couldn't have helped, and could have thrown in the towel with the rest of the White Flag Republicans.

The Proper Way To Celebrate The Oscars

As CQ readers know, I like to watch the Oscars just to keep up with the outrageous commentary and the silly politics that always accompany the awards. I've live-blogged the ceremonies the last two years, mostly just for the fun of indulging in some snark.

This year, however, I have a better option -- and so do you. Michael Medved will come to the luxurious Saint Paul Hotel for a banquet dinner and running commentary for the Oscars on Sunday, February 25th. I'll be live-blogging from the hotel, but if you're in town, you should join us there for the best possible Oscar experience. Tickets are on sale now at The Patriot at the above link -- and they will go fast.

And, for those of you who read down this far into this post, I have a surprise. We will give away a pair of tickets on the show this afternoon to the listener who can give us the best punishment for the White Flag Republicans. You have to be one of the first four callers when we launch the contest, which will be in the second or third segment of the first hour. Be sure to call us at 651-289-4488!

Washington Post Spanks Murtha

The unbelievable cynicism of John Murtha's "slow bleed" plan to end the war in Iraq has not gone unnoticed by the Washington Post. The editorial board excoriates Murtha in no uncertain terms not just for his plan to elevate the Democrats on the backs of the troops in Iraq, but also for his ignorance on Iraq (via Instapundit):

Mr. Murtha has a different idea. He would stop the surge by crudely hamstringing the ability of military commanders to deploy troops. In an interview carried Thursday by the Web site MoveCongress.org, Mr. Murtha said he would attach language to a war funding bill that would prohibit the redeployment of units that have been at home for less than a year, stop the extension of tours beyond 12 months, and prohibit units from shipping out if they do not train with all of their equipment. His aim, he made clear, is not to improve readiness but to "stop the surge." So why not straightforwardly strip the money out of the appropriations bill -- an action Congress is clearly empowered to take -- rather than try to micromanage the Army in a way that may be unconstitutional? Because, Mr. Murtha said, it will deflect accusations that he is trying to do what he is trying to do. "What we are saying will be very hard to find fault with," he said.

Mr. Murtha's cynicism is matched by an alarming ignorance about conditions in Iraq. He continues to insist that Iraq "would be more stable with us out of there," in spite of the consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies that early withdrawal would produce "massive civilian casualties." He says he wants to force the administration to "bulldoze" the Abu Ghraib prison, even though it was emptied of prisoners and turned over to the Iraqi government last year. He wants to "get our troops out of the Green Zone" because "they are living in Saddam Hussein's palace"; could he be unaware that the zone's primary occupants are the Iraqi government and the U.S. Embassy?

It would be nice to believe that Mr. Murtha does not represent the mainstream of the Democratic Party or the thinking of its leadership. Yet when asked about Mr. Murtha's remarks Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered her support. Does Ms. Pelosi really believe that the debate she orchestrated this week was not "the real vote"? If the answer is yes, she is maneuvering her party in a way that can only do it harm.

Has John Murtha ever been anything more than incoherent on Iraq? He talks loudly but says next to nothing other than reiterate the need to declare defeat and bug out of Iraq. He can't even get his facts straight despite having spent the better part of two years making himself the leading Democratic voice on the war. Even the Washington Post can't help but notice that this Emperor has no clothes.

Despite this, Pelosi insists on following his leadership on Iraq policy. The Democrats have made the case yet again why they cannot be trusted with national security. They use bad information, faulty logic, and underhanded tactics to exploit it for partisan political purposes. John Murtha represents everything that is wrong with the Democrats on this debate. They are ill-informed and incoherent, unable to formulate a plan for victory but willing to sabotage American efforts anyway.

It's going to be a long two years.

Rice Flies To Baghdad

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an unannounced trip to Baghdad to personally observe the start of the new surge strategy. Rice told reporters that she's "pleased" with the initial implementation, and that the increased American troops will have a big impact on the city's security:

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived Saturday in Baghdad to assess the security crackdown there, she told reporters traveling with her on the unannounced visit.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and Rice will discuss security and reconstruction in various provinces across the war-ravaged nation. She will meet with U.S. and other Iraqi officials, an embassy spokesman said.

The secretary is scheduled to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories after the talks in Baghdad.

Rice said she had been told the Iraqis are "doing the job alongside their coalition counterparts and they are off to a good start."

The military command has taken a very cautious public stand on the significant drop in violence since the US and Iraq implemented the new security plan. They do not want to inflate expectations too soon in the operation, and believe that the hard-core jihadis will wait for a while to get a feel for the new tactics before conducting offensives. Rice acknowledged this as well, but also remarked that she would be satisfied if they decided not to confront security forces at all.

Rice will meet with Maliki later today to review the security situation. Her presence will remind Maliki that the US will not countenance any backsliding on his commitments to the new strategy. At the moment, he has plenty to gain from a drop in violence in the capital, and we can expect him to maintain his tenacity. When the jihadis begin their counteroffensives, Rice will probably have to make more trips to Baghdad to underscore the Bush administration's insistence on the new rules of engagement and the end of political cover for Shi'ite militias as well as Sunni insurgencies.

Trouble For McCain At Home?

John McCain enjoys wide popularity in Arizona as one of the two Republicans it sends to the Senate, the other being Jon Kyl. He regularly gets 70% or above in approval ratings, and has made himself almost as much of an institution as Barry Goldwater there. However, trouble has been brewing for his Presidential aspirations as Republican organizers in Arizona have begun planning some unpleasant surprises for their favorite son:

No doubt about it, Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who would like to be president, is a popular man in his state, having won re-election in 2004 with about 76 percent of the vote.

But a vocal slice of the state’s most conservative Republicans, reflecting concerns about Mr. McCain held by some conservatives nationwide, are agitating against him in a way that they hope might throw off his incipient presidential campaign.

In a recent telephone poll by Arizona State University, 54 percent of the state’s Republican voters who were queried favored Mr. McCain in a presidential primary next February, a small enough majority to incite his critics and encourage some Republican rivals. ...

Meanwhile, disgusted with Mr. McCain’s position on proposed changes to immigration laws (he advocates legalization that would not require illegal immigrants to leave the country), with what some see as wavering on the issue of gay marriage (he lent his name to a state ballot initiative to ban it but did not support a constitutional amendment), and with the campaign finance act that bears his name, some Arizona Republicans are making trouble for Mr. McCain.

They have elected local party leaders whom he opposes, criticized his policy positions and thrown early support to other potential primary candidates — all in the hope of tripping up Mr. McCain on his own doorstep.

In an age of razor-thin Electoral College results, every state is a key state, but McCain has to regard a home-state revolt with some concern. He still has a majority in the polling, but one would expect the same electorate that gave him 76% of the vote in 2004 to support his Presidential bid. The loss of 22 points reveals some trepidation among Arizona Republicans to give McCain the executive reins.

He lost one significant endorsement already. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a gadfly and curmudgeon but a wildly popular man in and out of Arizona, has endorsed Mitt Romney for the position instead. Maricopa County, which is Arpaio's jurisdiction, includes Phoenix and its suburbs, and McCain cannot afford to lose the Golden Valley and still hope to win his home-state primary.

Even more stinging, Arpaio has a reputation as a maverick that outstrips anything McCain might want for himself. He has made a national reputation by defying court orders to release prisoners from overcrowded jails by building tent cities in the middle of the Maricopa County desert. Arpaio stopped prisoners from stealing county-jail underwear by dying them pink. His tough, no-nonsense approach appeals to Republican law-and-order stalwarts ... the kind of voters McCain has to retain. Arpaio's endorsement of Romney will hurt, especially since Arizona already has a strong LDS community which would naturally gravitate to Romney anyway.

It's a long primary season -- too long, as Newt Gingrich stated forcefully on Thursday night's CQ radio. McCain has plenty of time to shore up his base at home. He'd better not take too long in addressing their hesitancy, however.

Anbar Tribes Continue Turning Against Al-Qaeda

With all of the focus on Baghdad and the surge, the second portion of the President's new strategy has gotten little attention. Four thousand Marines have begun arriving in Anbar, the power base for al-Qaeda in Iraq, in order to clear the province of these terrorists. They may find their job a little easier than first thought, as the savagery of AQI has turned many tribal leaders against the extremists:

Sunni tribes in troubled Anbar province have begun working closely with U.S. and government forces, contributing nearly 2,400 men to the police department and 1,600 to a newly organized tribal security force, authorities say.

U.S. troops are training and equipping the new tribal forces, which are called Emergency Response Units (ERUs), and are charged with defending the areas where they live, according to the local U.S. commander.

By a U.S. count, 12 of the Ramadi area's 21 tribes are cooperating in the security effort, six are considered neutral, and three are actively hostile. That is almost the reverse of the tribal posture last June, when three were cooperative and 12 were hostile.

In the tradition of Arab tribes, the Anbar chiefs played both sides against the middle. They cooperated with both sides to get an idea where their interests would lie in the future, as well as to see which side would have the most staying power. The tribes had mostly remained hostile to the US -- understandable, as the Sunnis lost a great deal of power with the fall of Saddam -- until al-Qaeda made the mistake of killing one of the tribal chiefs and then hiding the body. The tribe could not bury him in the Muslim tradition, a scandal that infuriated Sunnis in Anbar and drove many to the US.

Since then, they have started a movement called The Awakening. Last fall, I posted about their pact with the US to hunt down AQI terrorists within the limits of Iraqi law. The Los Angeles Times reported that the tribes had coordinated efforts with American forces to kill one of the provincial AQI leaders, demonstrating their newfound commitment to counterterrorism in Anbar.

That commitment has become even more substantial. Since then, the tribes have contributed thousands of men to security forces specifically operating in Anbar, split between the Iraqi police and a tribal security force that coordinates with the Iraqi government. This seems especially meaningful, as the Sunnis of Anbar have little other incentive to work with the Shi'ite Maliki government. Their contributions to the police means that they have placed their young men in the control of the Interior Ministry, which the Iraq Study Group decided was so infiltrated with Shi'ite militia sympathizers that the police should be stripped from the ministry.

The surge allows the US to demonstrate its commitment to the tribes which have demonstrated their loyalty to us and to a terror-free Iraq. It shows that we are not the weak horse, and that they did not make a mistake by opposing our enemies in their back yards. We have an opportunity to discredit AQI and the assorted radical Islamists in Anbar if we remain dedicated to fighting the terrorists rather than finding ways to cut the resources to the front lines.

Next Stop -- The Senate

After the House approved the non-binding resolution calling the surge strategy a failure before the military implements it, the Senate prepared a rare Saturday session to vote on the bill. Harry Reid wants to have no debate or alternative resolutions and will force a cloture vote around 12:45:

Determined to check President Bush, Democratic critics of the Iraq war hope a strong House vote critical of the administration's troop buildup will pay dividends in the Senate. But Republicans are insisting on an alternative that rejects any reduction in troop funding, making it unlikely Democrats will prevail in a test vote Saturday.

"Americans deserve to know whether their senator stands with the president and his plan to deepen our military commitment in Iraq, or with the overwhelming majority of Americans who oppose this escalation," Majority Leader Harry Reid said Friday on the eve of the Senate showdown. ...

Earlier this month, Senate Democrats tried to push their own measure but failed when Republicans blocked debate. Republicans wanted members to be able to vote on a separate proposal by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., that promises not to cut off funds for troops in combat.

"That remains a demand of Senate Republicans," said Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "We think it's fundamentally fair and totally relevant to the issue at hand."

They won't even get all of the Democrats. Joe Lieberman will certainly vote against cloture on the House resolution. He gave an impassioned speech earlier this week about the destructive nature of the non-binding resolutions, and explicitly promised to vote against cloture.

The AP's Anne Flaherty reports that "several" GOP Senators will support the legislation, but that will probably only happen if the bill passes cloture. Reid once again will not allow competing amendments to come to the floor, especially not the Gregg bill, which pledges no unilateral Congressional decrease in funding for the Iraq war during this session. That bill splits the Democrats more than it does the Republicans, which is why Reid fears it. The Majority Leader said yesterday that even a failed cloture vote will put Senators on record. However, that's exactly why he won't allow a vote on the Gregg bill; it will put Democrats on record as supporting the war and reveal the split between the anti-war activists and the moderates, and it will put at least two Democratic presidential contenders in a tight spot, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Watch Lieberman carefully. He has no love for Harry Reid's leadership after the last election, and he has made clear that the Democrats have angered him with their political grandstanding. He threatened to bolt the Democratic caucus if they started pressing for a cutoff of funds, but he may tire of his peers well before that stage, especially with this Saturday session.

UPDATE: CQ reader and Huffington Post contributor (and my Blog Talk Radio friend) James Boyce e-mails to correct me that Lieberman is an Independent, not a Democrat. True enough, although he has caucused with the Democrats, and calls himself an Independent-Democrat, to be exactly accurate. The Democrats should consider just how Independent they want to force Lieberman to be.

NARN, The Non-Binding 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.

Today Mitch and I will certainly be discussing the House non-binding resolution, along with Jim Ramstad's aisle-crossing to support the Democrats on declaring defeat. We'll also be watching the Senate, which will take up the House resolution today in a rare Saturday session. We may also play parts of the Newt Gingrich interview I conducted on Thursday, the entirety of which can be heard on my CQ Radio show stream -- which also plays from my right sidebar.

Be sure to call and join the conversation today at 651-289-4488.

CQ Media Alert

I'll be joining Rob Breckenridge on CHQR's The World Tonight at 9 pm CT. We'll be discussing the presidential campaign as well as Al Franken's announcement for the Minnesota Senate. I imagine that today's vote in the House might get a mention, too. Be sure to tune in on the Internet stream if you don't live in the Calgary area.

UPDATE: As always, I had a lot of fun with Rob. We did two segments tonight, and we covered quite a bit of territory. The best part, though, was being able to say, "I talked with Newt Gingrich yesterday, and he said ..."

Democrats Pass Resolution While Surge Goes Into Effect

The Democrats passed the House resolution objecting to the new surge strategy in Iraq even as American soldiers began to apply it in earnest. House leadership had predicted a wave of Republican support for the non-binding proposal, but in the end they could only get 17 Republicans to cross the aisle -- and managed to lose two of their own:

After four days of emotional debate over the extent of presidential powers in wartime and the proper role of Congress, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution today denouncing President Bush’s plan to send more American troops to Iraq.

The 246 to 182 vote in favor of the non-binding but nevertheless important measure set the stage for a crucial Senate debate on Saturday on how to debate the administration’s Iraq policy, or indeed whether it should be debated at all.

There had been virtually no doubt about the outcome in the House today, given the Democratic majority in the chamber and the fact that a significant number of Republicans had also signaled their backing for the resolution, which expresses support for American troops but not for their commander-in-chief.

Seventeen Republicans voted for the resolution. Two Democrats, Jim Marshall of Georgia and Gene Taylor of Mississippi, voted against it. Mr. Marshall is the son and grandson of Army generals and was wounded in combat in Vietnam, according to The Almanac of American Politics. Mr. Taylor has a generally conservative voting record and is “strongly pro-defense,” the almanac says. Six representatives cast no vote.

This was an unprecedented move by Congress to interfere in the command of American troops during wartime. Congress has threatened to cut off funding before to end conflicts and deployments, but no one can find an example of Congress scolding the President over a specific strategy while the military implements it. It declares a military operation in its opening stages a defeat before it has a chance to succeed, a mind-boggling statement, and one entirely performed for partisan purposes.

Seventeen Republicans voted for the resolution. A new joint project, the Victory Caucus, lists the GOP Representatives who voted to declare a defeat before the Army and Marine Corps have entered the field in full. One of them comes from Minnesota -- Jim Ramstad, who can be reached at 202-225-2871 or by e-mail here.

Why are we listing these members? The Victory Caucus wants to ensure that we find suitable primary opponents for them in 2008. If you live in their districts, we need your help to find people who either support the mission or do something tangible to end it, and not to sit on the sidelines and try to run a war by complaints.

One point lost in today's vote is that the surge strategy has had an immediate impact on the situation in Baghdad, although the US underscored the fact that the operation is stil in its preliminary stages:

A total of 10 corpses were collected off the streets — apparently all victims of the city's lawless jumble of gang justice and sectarian payback. The daily body tally recently has often been 40 or more, excluding major bombings, said Brig. Gen. Qassim Moussawi.

This was the basis for an upbeat message by Moussawi, a spokesman for the joint U.S.-Iraqi security sweep that began this week and has so far faced limited resistance. But his American counterparts remain much more guarded.

"I would say that it is way too early to establish any trends," said Lt. Col. Chris Garver, a U.S. military spokesman. "We've just started to focus our operations. We have months to go to see if we are going to succeed or not."

Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, attributed the reduction in violence not only to the increased security presence but also to an apparent decision by the militias and insurgents to lay low for a while.

"But make no mistake, we do not believe ... that's going to continue, and we do expect there are going to be some very rough, difficult days ahead," Fil said. "And this enemy knows how — they understand lethality and they have a thirst for blood like I have never seen anywhere before."

The fact that the militias knew to lay low points to the reason for the surge. When we engage in strength and for a significant period of time, the terrorists know that they cannot hope to beat us. Instead, they have faded away and will watch us to gauge our level of commitment. If we remain in the neighborhoods that we clear, they will either keep out of our way or die trying to take back their turf. Either way, the residents of Baghdad will gain confidence in the security of their communities and begin to support their own security forces to maintain peace.

Unfortunately, the House just sent a huge signal to the terrorists that waiting us out is a winning strategy, one they will not have to endure for very long. I don't believe that the politicians who voted for this resolution are traitors or Quislings, and in fact I strenuously reject that characterization. I think they're idiots and fools, though, and idiots and fools can be almost as dangerous.

UPDATE: Gary Gross has Sam Johnson's speech in opposition to the resolution -- a must read:

The grim reality is that this House measure is the first step to cutting funding of the troops…Just ask John Murtha about his ’slow-bleed’ plan that hamstrings our troops in harm’s way.

Now it’s time to stand up for my friends who did not make it home, and those who fought and died in Iraq, so I can keep my promise that when we got home we would quit griping about the war and do something positive about it…and we must not allow this Congress to leave these troops like the Congress left us.

Today, let my body serve as a brutal reminder that we must not repeat the mistakes of the past…instead learn from them.

There's much more, and Gary has all of it.

Kurtz On Malkin

Howard Kurtz profiles Michelle Malkin in today's Washington Post -- if you'll forgive my pun -- and, as usual, Kurtz writes a balanced and interesting article on one of the most intriguing New Media figures. The portrait of a committed, passionate, and tough voice matches with my own experience with Michelle:

Is this merely how the war of ideas is waged in an anything-goes digital culture? Or is Malkin an especially inflammatory practitioner, torching her targets with such books as "Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild"?

Over lunch at a Filipino cafe at Union Station, Malkin, who has two young children, is charming one moment and pugnacious the next. She says she loves the intellectual freedom of the blogosphere, where "you can respond, you can reveal people to be the liars and slanderers they are."

Between bites, though, you can catch a glimpse of amazement that "a small-town girl from South Jersey," as she puts it, can have such an outsize impact. Even if she makes plenty of enemies in the process.

If she makes enemies, it's only because they can't deal with the unvarnished truth-telling at her web site and in her columns. Instead of attacking her facts, her enemies attack her personally, the first sign that they have conceded on the merits of the argument. Michelle writes to get a reaction, and so the tenor of the debate will always be hot when she's involved, but the balance of vitriol in those exchanges always tilts heavily against Michelle.

Readers of this blog know that I consider Michelle a friend, and just as with any of my friends, I speak out when they get attacked unfairly. She obviously can take care of herself (and me, on occasion), so it's not that she needs other people to leap to her defense. It's just that when you meet Michelle and get to know her a little, she's so likable that the personal attacks seem, well ... unhinged.

Kurtz' article does her on-line persona justice. It's not really his job to go beyond that, but he gives readers a glimpse of what makes Michelle special for those of us fortunate to know her. Be sure to read it all.

UPDATE: I have to link to Kurtz' other column this morning, too. He links to former NBA star Tim Hardaway's despicable comments about gays, but adds something intriguing:

NBA star Tim Hardaway says he hates gay people. And all the league can do is ask him not to speak on its behalf? That's pathetic. You'd think, in exchange for the millions he gets, that Hardaway could keep his prejudices to himself.

We often think the same thing about Hollywood celebrities, too. Perhaps Kurtz should read Laura Ingraham's Shut Up And Sing.

Dollar Bill On Homeland Security?

William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson, under investigation for corruption, has been assigned to the House Homeland Security Committee, the Washington Post reports. The Congressman's last brush with security was having subpoenas served on his office and FBI agents raiding it, after earlier finding $90,000 in his freezer:

Rep. William Jefferson, the Louisiana Democrat who's facing an ongoing federal corruption probe, is being granted a spot on the Homeland Security Committee, according to Democratic aides.

The appointment will be announced Friday, according to one aide who requested anonymity because the decision isn't yet official.

Jefferson was removed from his seat on the Ways and Means Committee, one of the most important panels in Congress, by Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) last summer in an attempt to show how seriously Democrats viewed the allegations of corruption.

But the move by Pelosi, who was still minority leader at the time, infuriated members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who said Jefferson shouldn't be punished unless he is indicted; federal prosecutors have yet to bring an indictment, despite an FBI raid 18 months ago on his home that yielded $90,000 in cash in his freezer.

I suppose this should come as no surprise. Nancy Pelosi, who campaigned on cleaning out the swamp in Congress, allowed Alan Mollahan to chair a subcommittee that has responsibility for Department of Justice appropriations -- despite being under investigation by the FBI for corruption. Now we have the symbol of Democratic corruption being assigned to Homeland Security.

So much for cleaning up Congress.

Jefferson will have no oversight over the DoJ or the FBI, but that's hardly the point. Two of Jefferson's aides have already been convicted of corruption and bribery directly involving Jefferson himself, and the FBI found almost a hundred thousand dollars in his freezer. That may not be enough to remove Jefferson from Congress -- his constituents did not think so, unfortunately -- but that doesn't mean that the Democrats have to put him on a committee with such grave responsibilities for the defense of the nation. Billions of dollars flow through that committee; how much of that will wind up in Dollar Bill's freezer in this session of Congress?

Pelosi and the Congressional Black Caucus, who obviously pressured the Speaker for this assignment, have gambled that the FBI will not be able to indict Jefferson. If an indictment comes down, the entire group will have to answer for this assignment -- and the Republicans will have a great example of Democratic hypocrisy in 2008.

Less Than 10% Is A 'Broad Swath'?

The Washington Post needs better headline writers. Today's story on Republican defections to the anti-surge resolution in the House implies that a massive revolt has taken place in the GOP over the war. Instead, we find out that around 6.5% of the caucus will vote with the Democrats:

Broad Swath of GOP Defecting on Iraq Vote

From the moderate suburbs of Delaware to the rural, conservative valleys of eastern Tennessee, House Republican opponents of President Bush's latest Iraq war plan cut across the GOP's ideological and regional spectrum.

Numbering a dozen or more, these House Republicans have emerged as some of the most prominent opponents of the plan to increase troop presence in Iraq. They admit to being a ragtag band, with no scheduled meetings and little political cohesion.

"We aren't organized at all," said Rep. Jim Ramstad (R-Minn.), whose district includes suburbs of the Twin Cities. "It's about as diverse a group as is possible."

Borrowing time from House Democrats, these Republicans have gone to the floor to condemn the latest attempt at stabilizing Iraq, which they see as mired in civil war, and have vowed to support a Democratic-driven resolution condemning the buildup.

The conventional wisdom on Capitol Hill has been that those Republicans facing the most tenuous political hold on their seats would be in open revolt against Bush's unpopular decision to send more troops into Iraq. But the lion's share of GOP opponents of the Bush plan come from comfortable to very safe congressional districts.

Thirteen seats among 200+ does not a "broad swath" make. It's newsworthy, but the group still comprises a small minority in the Republican caucus. Both the headline and the story sell this as something much larger than it is, but the headline presents the most misleading take.

The Post plays heavily on the fact that some of these Representatives come from "safe" districts, but they also report that some who barely survived the midterms will oppose Nancy Pelosi's non-binding resolution. Christopher Shays, not exactly a dyed-in-the-wool conservative -- he co-authored the House side of McCain-Feingold -- opposes the resolution. So does Heather Wilson, who had to survive a recount to remain in her seat.

One of the baker's dozen claims that the resolution will gain somewhere between 30-50 Republican votes. Perhaps, but even at that, it comes to just less than 25% of the caucus at the highest. Right now it represents a blip, not a "broad swath", as everyone except the Washington Post understands.

Keep An Eye Out For This

Scientists have made the first practical eye prosthetic that restores vision, the London Telegraph reports. Six patients have been able to distinguish light patterns and even recognize shapes after the implant of the Argus II system:

A bionic eye that can restore sight to the blind could be on the market within two years, according to scientists.

The first six patients to try the revolutionary devices have learnt how to detect light, distinguish between objects and perceive direction of motion.

American scientists were this week given approval to test a more advanced version of the electronic retinal implant on up to 75 subjects.

The breakthrough offers new hope to millions of people around the world who have lost their vision to degenerative eye diseases, particularly those with macular degeneration - the most common cause of blindness in western countries. Up to 15pc of over-75s are affected by the condition.

It will also help those with retinitis pigmentosa, a group of incurable inherited eye diseases that cause the degeneration of the photoreceptor cells whose job it is capture and process light. The device takes the place of the photoreceptors.

The system combines an implant in the brain and another in the eye with glasses that contain an embedded camera to produce a display of light dots that form shapes. Researchers hope to improve the resolution within seven years to make it possible for patients to recognize faces. Presumably, the technology wll follow the same trajectory as computer displays and cameras, with miniaturization allowing for higher-quality displays.

At the moment, the Argus II is limited to those who have functional optic nerves. The science may eventually move past that, which would allow the long-term blind and those who have had their eyes removed to see again. The First Mate had one of her eyes removed and a vitrctomy in the other eye 27 years ago, so this system would probably not work for her. It's encouraging, though, that scientists have come this far, and with more perseverance, they will make even greater leaps soon.

FIRST MATE ADDS: This sounds like it might be great for other people. When I was losing my sight, though, the shadows and shapes that I still could make out were maddening. My brain kept wanting to see more, and it was very frustrating to experience that. Once I completely lost my sight, I learned to visualize based on input from my other senses, and returning to that transition state does not appeal to me.

US To PA: No Sale

The latest attempt to end the sanctions that have crippled the Palestinian Authority appear to have failed. The White House informed Mahmoud Abbas that all Palestinian Authority Cabinet ministers would have persona non grata status until the new unity government complies with the Quartet demands to recognize Israel and reject violence:

American officials have told the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, that they will boycott all ministers in a new coalition cabinet unless the government meets international conditions, including recognition of Israel, Palestinian officials said yesterday.

The warning indicates the extent of Washington's unease at the agreement reached in Mecca last week between the rival Palestinian groups, Hamas and Fatah. It comes just before a meeting in Jerusalem on Monday between the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and Mr Abbas.

The boycott means that any Fatah leaders who join the new government will be shunned by US officials, and suggests that Monday's meeting is unlikely to produce a breakthrough.

However, the US will continue to talk to Mr Abbas and his office, Palestinian officials said. An official told Reuters: "The Americans have informed us that they will be boycotting the new government headed by Hamas. Fatah and independent ministers will be treated the same way Hamas ministers are treated."

Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian negotiator who met US officials last week to prepare for Monday's meeting, said: "The Americans reiterated the position that their relations with the government will depend on the government's compliance with the Quartet's principles."

Congratulations to the White House, which could have bent to European instincts and attempted to cough up some money to endorse the Mecca accord. Too often, people try to cheer agreements for the sake of agreements without looking closely enough at the context and the details. Certainly, the Bush administration has felt that pressure.

And the context and details of Mecca show that the unity government is no progress at all. It's questionable whether it will even end the civil war in the territories, but there is no doubt that it utterly fails to address the Israeli security concerns that halted aid to the PA in the first place. Hamas refused to make that commitment, which was at the heart of the Quartet's objection to the previous Hamas government. Slapping a coat of Unity Paint on that arrangement makes no difference to Israeli security, and in the long run no difference to Palestinian security, either.

The US needs to remain tough on the Palestinians on this issue. If they will not accept a two-state solution, then they should receive no aid from the US. The White House made the right decision on keeping the diplomatic channels open with Abbas, but we should also halt the $83 million for his personal security services until the PA as a whole accepts Israel as a neighbor and a partner for peace.

Tim Pawlenty On John McCain, Part I

Below is the transcript of the interview I conducted of Tim Pawlenty, broadcasted yesterday on my CQ Radio show. I've broken it up into three posts. Be sure to listen to the podcast on my site for the live interview and my commentary.

Ed Morrissey: This is Ed Morrissey and I'm welcoming Governor Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota Governor and National co chair of the John McCain for President campaign. Welcome Governor Pawlenty.

Tim Pawlenty: Well thank you Ed and of course at this point I'm just co chair of the exploratory committee because Senator McCain hasn’t yet announced his candidacy. But we are hoping that he will soon.

Ed Morrissey: That's a good point to make. And that brings me to actually my first question. It seems to me that the presidential cycle has really been expended and accelerated in this particular 2008 campaign. Does it seem that way to you and what do you think is driving that?

Tim Pawlenty: Well it's interesting, I think it probably has something to do with all these primaries moving up or probably moving up if you look at the probable or likely schedule of primaries, it appears that by February 5th of 2008, over half the states in the United States will have conducted either a caucus or a primary and by February 6th 2008, both parties will likely already have chosen or in effect chosen their presidential nominees. And so we are within the sight of 12 months, you know, we are 11 months away from that likely kind of reality and so I think it has been accelerated and I think it has been much more aggressive than in past, in part because people keep moving up the primaries and the caucus (audio break) rather the lesser known candidates I think want to use -- getting in early as a way to get some attention and some name ID.

Ed Morrissey: Do you think that the accelerated schedule tends to favor national figures? I mean, in years past we've seen dark horse candidates come out -- the regional candidates, Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992 for instance. Do you think that the accelerated schedule is going to play against that type of emergence of a surprise candidate?

Tim Pawlenty: I think the prevailing -- short answer yes, I think the prevailing wisdom is when you fund and load primaries and caucuses it tends to favor more well known or more well established or more well financed candidates because they are more likely to be able to spread their message out across many states simultaneously rather than focusing on just one or two early states with modest amount of money.

Ed Morrissey: Well that brings me to talking to Senator McCain. You committed to Senator McCain pretty early, really right at the start of the -- at the primary campaign even in these early stages. What made you decide to endorse him so quickly?

Tim Pawlenty: Well, several reasons. First, just -- it's personal, I've known Senator McCain, I first met him in the late 1980s. And as you know Ed, his life story is compelling. And I love that old quote that says that the best sermons aren't preached, they are lived. And he has lived a life not of a rhetoric, not of promises, not of speeches but of enormous valor, you know, patriotism, courage, strength, conviction and just experience, you know, so you feel -- you know, the story, I won't go to at all but he shot down in -- over Vietnam and when he was ejected from the cockpit his -- one of his shoulders is broken, I believe one or both of his arms were broken, one of his legs I think was broken. He was beaten on the ground, parachutes in to the lake, they drag him out of their -- break his other shoulder, bayonet him, he is a prisoner of war for five and a half years there. His courage and leadership as a prisoner of war, you know, is a stuff of epic -- he is an epic story. And it's also a real life story -- they hang him upside down, they beat him mercilessly, they smacked his teeth out of at the jaw line, they broke numerous bones, they tortured him. And at every turn when he could have taken the easy path or the hard path, he took the hard path out of patriotism and courage and strength. And then that's the same kind of his fearlessness that he has exhibited throughout his career. And I know that sometimes people get little frustrated because he is strong on -- and they should have -- they may not wholly agree with, and I don't always agree with him even on everything either but I have such a profound respect for him as a person and as a leader.

I think he is in a league of his own relative to the field on these personal characteristics or strength and courage and conviction and experience. So that's number one. Number two, he is the only leading candidate in the race who has bona fide international affairs, national security and military experience. And we live in an era where -- in this moment in history, that's so very, very important. We need a steady, strong, seasoned, experienced hand on the throttle in those issues areas and he is the only leading candidate who offers that and does so I think in a very dramatic fashion. Third, he is a conservative, you know, there are some folks who have been questioning that over the years, but if you look critically at his record, it is simply not rational to say that John McCain is not a conservative. He is a commonsense conservative. If you look at the credible groups that rate kind of the fiscal behavior of members of congress, he has been at or near the top of every, you know, ranking of being a fiscal hawk for not just months but years and decades on the spending side, I mean nobody really even dispute that. On the tax side he has been a tax -- certainly holding line on tax, he has been in favor of tax reductions, he is on the wavering on his commitment to pro-life issues. And he supports and defends traditional marriage. So he is a conservative. And then lastly as you look in terms of the future, in terms of the vision for the country, both the country and our party need somebody who can actually win the election, you know, be both -- be true to our principals and our values but also win the election. Otherwise all of this is just a debating society and I think he is a person who can not only get the support of the republican base, but he can also attract a significant amount of independent voters and conservative democrats which we are going to need to win.

If you look at the map, the electoral map, you know, not that many states that are really implied if assume Ohio, it's no longer automatically in the republican column like it used be, that it's definitely in play and may be even tilting a little to the democrats. In order to actually win you need a republican candidate who can pick of some states or win in the upper Midwest and some states in the northeast and few other places and I think Senator McCain can do that. So those are just some of the reasons that kind of give you at least three or four of the leading reasons why I support him.

Ed Morrissey: Sure. Now you mentioned taxes, and actually that brings me to something that I was going to ask little later on but -- this has more to do with how you are going to be able to interact here with the national campaign. I mean you are facing a tough term here, in Minnesota I mean, we lost the bottom support in the legislature and you are going to be faced with an aggressive PSL who is going to -- want to raise taxes to pay for new programs. Are you going to feel extra pressure to hold the line on taxes here in Minnesota and spending as well being representative or Senator McCain on the national stage?

Tim Pawlenty: No, those things aren't connected at all. And you know, I'm going to -- I've my own responsibilities and duties here as Governor of the state of Minnesota and I'll aggressively and fully fulfill those. But I -- you know, it's no secret that I have been and will continue to be opposed to tax increases in Minnesota, we've one of the -- we are a highly taxed state in the nation, although we've made some good progress in dropping that ranking in recent years, our revenues coming into the state without a new tax increase at all are growing at about nine percent for the upcoming two year budget cycle. And you know, that's for two years, I think that's enough. You know, the state needs to live within it's means just like families and businesses have to do and so my position is going to be that Minnesota needs to live within it's means and we don't need tax increases. But that's unrelated to anything I would do on behalf of the McCain campaign. One other thing and if I might just go back to --

Ed Morrissey: Absolutely.

Tim Pawlenty: You know, the other thing about this basis you have to evaluate each candidate not in the context of, you know, against somebody's view of the ideal, but against the field. And you know, if my friends are going to try to disqualify Senator McCain on any one issue -- you are going to have to apply the same standard to all the other candidates and if you do that they all would be disqualified. I mean there is no leading candidate amongst republicans that doesn’t have some strange thing in their record that might concern -- not strange but something in their record that might concern some other republican. So you have to -- all I ask is that people be fair as they assess Senator McCain not against their idea of the perfect but also against the rest of the field.

Tim Pawlenty On John McCain, Part II

Ed Morrissey: Well lets talk a little bit about the couple of issues that have -- conservatives concerned about John McCain's campaign.

Tim Pawlenty: Sure.

Ed Morrissey: That would be Campaign Finance Reform, which he pushed in 2002 and got passed the BCRA and integration reform which he partnered up with Ted Kennedy on last year, it didn't go through but it's certainly probably going to go through this year.

Tim Pawlenty: Yeah, on Campaign Finance Reform, you know, you have the -- a lot of conservatives who are concerned about it from a first amendment standpoint. I think it is fair to say that some reforms were in order because you have interest groups who were -- you know, yielding so much cloud and leading to -- I think -- back in old days number of scandals, that some cleaning up of the process or with improvement in the process was in order. I don't agree with all the aspects of you know, the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform and a lot of conservatives don't either but that should be, you know, put and the context of all the other things that he is conservative on and I think -- you know, McCain-Feingold does have some good -- some of the elements of McCain-Feingold are good. I think it just over reached in several ways.

Ed Morrissey: Well, do you think that Senator McCain would address those over reached, those positions that over reached and roll back some of that in the BCRA, do you think he would be in favor of doing that?

Tim Pawlenty: I've not heard him speak to that or say that. And so I can't comment on that. But he is not, to my knowledge, is indicative that he would do that?

Ed Morrissey: Well how about immigration reform? This is a tough question, because even conservatives are -- split on this. Immigration reform, Senator McCain favored comprehensive immigration reform, which was a plan to do order security and to resolve the status of 12 million roughly, illegal immigrants here inside, already inside the United States, as part of a package plan. Some conservatives are calling that amnesty; some are in favor of doing both as long as border security comes first. Where do you Senator McCain and how do you address the concerns of border security conservatives?

Tim Pawlenty: Well I think from conservatives' standpoint the order of business should go something like this. First of all secure borders, and that both physical why in terms of fences and technology but also virtually, so secure the borders number one. Number two, we need to make sure that we have a penalty that is significant for employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, because lets face it, a vast majority of illegal immigrants are coming here to take employment and the system that we've now is severely flawed because it's very difficult for employers to check or verify the legal status of immigrants that present a document which in many cases look real but are fake and short of conducting a international investigation, there isn't easy way to -- for employers to verify the legal status of immigrants but, which is my next point, I'll get to in just a minute, but we need to have a significant and upgraded penalty against employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants and if you start doing that against employers a lot of this illegal immigration will dry up. But then the third thing you need is, you need a tamper proof, fraud proof identity document for immigrants. You know, not for our citizens but for immigrants so that we know how long -- who you are, and we should have by the way biometric in it, who you are, how long you are supposed to be here and what's your legal status -- that can be instantly scanned by an employer or by Federal officials to make sure that your status is current and it's legal.

If you do those three things a lot of the illegal immigration will be addressed. Beyond that we've this issue of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants who are currently in the country. I don't know of many even hardcore conservatives, there are few, but not many in congress who are advocating for rounding up 12 million people and throwing them out of the country.

Ed Morrissey: There are a couple.

Tim Pawlenty: There are a couple but -- even amongst the bulk of conservatives and then the other presidential candidates by the way as well, the issue isn't how do we round 12 million people and throw them out. The issue is how do you either get them some sort of proper identity and temporary legal status and what penalty should they pay, so it's not amnesty, everybody agrees, I mean most conservatives agree, we are not -- we shouldn't have the amnesty. So really what we are talking about is what is the proper penalty or punishment for those who came here illegally, so it's not amnesty. And Senator McCain has been working on this with members of congress as have others; but for those who criticize it and say well he is going to allow some sort of temporary legal status or may be even a pathway to permanent legal status and that's amnesty -- and that's what all the other candidates, that's what most -- most of the conservatives are actually saying, they are only really arguing about what is the degree or lever of penalty so that it's not amnesty and -- so I don't think that's out of step with -- that general line of debate, it's not out of step with where most republicans are. There you -- you see you are hard pressed to find many who are saying lets throw 12 million, lets mount a military offensive, identify 12 million people and round them up and throw them out of the country, it's not where even most of the republican members of congress are at. They are just talking about -- like I said the severity of the penalty for having come here illegally and Senator McCain agrees with that approach and we are just -- now we are working out the details.

Ed Morrissey: Do you see an issue with may be the length of delay in getting them their ability to achieve citizenship, I mean usually when we have immigrants who come to the United States, they've to wait for a few years to apply for citizenship.

Tim Pawlenty: I think you -- and each bill in congress is a little different but I think you have to do these other things first so that you would only just have a re-flooding of the country with illegal immigrants.

Ed Morrissey: Right.

Tim Pawlenty: So you know, sequencing this -- my hope is that as a nation we would focus on border security. Then making sure that those employer penalties are beefed-up in place, because if they are not, you know, you are just re-inviting another wave, and then third in order for the employer penalties to be reasonably beefed-up you have to have a tamper proof, fraud proof identity document. So when somebody present themselves to you an employee you can instantly scan or verify whether they are legal or not. And then if you go ahead and knowingly hire and illegal immigrant then you should go to jail or face the severe and significant penalty. And if you do that a large majority of illegal migration will drop because they won't have -- they won't be incentivized by the main reason they are coming, which is to get a job. And then as to the people who are already here, I don't think they should jump in front of the line and neither do Senator McCain, and they should wait a period of time before they are eligible for any sort of path way to permanent status.

Tim Pawlenty On John McCain, Part III

Ed Morrissey: What do you see, going back to the election here, what do you see as John McCain's toughest hurdles in winning the nomination and how do you see yourself as being part of the solution to help him overcome them?

Tim Pawlenty: Well I think Senator McCain is going to do very well in this process because people are going to -- you know, evaluate him again not just in a vacuum compared to their idea of the perfect, but they are also going to -- and I think he is, like I said in my view, a once in a generation leader. Someone who is I think right for the time both for the nation and for our party.

But I think his biggest challenge is going to be to make sure that that his message of commonsense conservatism actually is heard by republican activists and republican voters and republican primaries. Because sometimes the press says well he is -- or I should say his critics, not the press, his critics say well he is not conservative and if you look critically at this whole record, not just Campaign Finance Reform but his whole record on spending over the years, taxes over the years, pro-life over the years, traditional marriage over the years -- it is not rational to say John McCain is not conservative. I mean he may not be perfect on every issue in the mind of every critic. But his record over all is a record of being a bona fide conservative.

Now the upside also, though he is somebody who appeals, has traditionally appealed the independence and -- we need that to win the election. If you are going to win in places like Minnesota and the upper Midwest you can go out and get every republican in Minnesota, every one of them, you know, in a good year you will get 35 percent of the vote. And so you got to make sure you get, you know, you can't have a candidate who normally is exciting to republicans, but also has the ability to get some independent votes. They all will say that they can do that, but he has actually demonstrated an ability to do it.

Ed Morrissey: Well, I know you are a busy man here, so I just really --

Tim Pawlenty: That's all right.

Ed Morrissey: I just have one question -- I've to ask and I'm pretty sure I know what the answer is going to be but, you have been considered a high potential candidate for national office before and you have won two terms in a tough state for republican. There has been rumors of course that -- may be not rumors, but speculation is a better way of saying it, that you would be a good candidate for John McCain's running mate if he wins the nomination. Is that something that you would consider?

Tim Pawlenty: Well as you said I had been asked that many times and I repeat it. My interest in helping him is just as a volunteer and I want to stay governor in the state of Minnesota. I ran you know, for a four-year term and I intent to fill up that four-year term. And if I can help Senator McCain as a volunteer along the way to help get him elected as the next President of United States on my free time -- on weekends and stuff, I'm happy to do that and that's what I'm going to do. But my main focus is to be governor and I want to stay governor of the state.

Ed Morrissey: Well, once again I just asked.

Tim Pawlenty: I understand.

Ed Morrissey: Well thank you --

Tim Pawlenty: The only other thing -- even your question a few -- two questions ago you asked -- I bring to help Senator McCain, I can just help I think -- I told them at (indiscernible) literature, you know, I'm going to do if anything I can to help him. I think one way I can bring some perspective is, you know, what does it take to win in a state like Minnesota or the upper Midwest or the northeast where you know, they tend to be at best purple but really, you know, not dark blue at least light blue --

Ed Morrissey: Sort of a royal blue.

Tim Pawlenty: You know, and we used to think Minnesota was purple and evenly spread but the truth of the matter is it still tilts. The democrats still have a kind of a built-in advantage at least in the statewide races where the districts aren't carved up to favor one side or other. And so I think I can speak to -- you know, what is it -- what kind of candidates do we need to win in the upper Midwest and places like the upper Midwest that aren't deeply -- you know, that aren't forgoing conclusion blue or forgoing conclusion red.

Ed Morrissey: Well let me just ask you one follow-up question on that. One of the issues that I think he is going to run into here in Minnesota and possibly -- for Midwest is his adamant support for the war or terror and the face of it in Iraq. Now that probably is not going to play well here in Minnesota. How do you plan to reconcile his stand on the war with a state that seems to have turned against it?

Tim Pawlenty: Well it's a principled position, it kind of gets back to what I said earlier at the very onset. You know, Senator McCain is a person of such strength and such courage and such principle that even though he know something is unpopular, if he believes it's right, he will charge ahead and charge forward. And so he knows the war is unpopular nationally and it's particularly unpopular in the upper Midwest. But he has taken a principal position that he believes is right. So even though many people may not agree with that, I think they will respect his principled stand on it. He also talks eloquently about the consequences of failure and what it means and, you know, unlike Vietnam the terrorists will actually follow us home in this war. And so he is concerned about that and also the stabilized that we would leave the Middle East in and likely join us back in and are much more complex and much more difficult situation. So that's a long wanted way of saying I think while many people may not agree with his position on that, they will respect it because it's based on principle.

And I'll just close with this, there are so many people in politics who -- you know, don't follow their heart or don't follow principle or positions, I just think he is so unique and that he is courageous, he is fearless and he does things based on his view of what’s right and principle and -- again whether it's Campaign Finance Reform or something else, people then look at and say, well yes but he is not perfect or -- you know, hundred percent conservative on this issue, that may be the case -- here or there an issue, but overall he is conservative and I also again emphasis if you are going to -- anyone, not you, but anyone is going to disqualify Senator McCain for you know, not being fully conservative on one or two issues, then please apply the same standards to every one of these leading candidates in the race and if you do that we will have no one left. Because none of them can pass a hundred percent test in that regard.

Ed Morrissey: Well Governor Pawlenty, thank you very much for talking with me today.

CQ Radio: Newt Gingrich And Tim Pawlenty

As I have promised this week, we will have a blockbuster program tonight on CQ Radio, my BlogTalkRadio show at 9 pm CT tonight. During this week, I have conducted interviews with former Speaker Newt Gingrich and current Governor Tim Pawlenty. Pawlenty talked with me about his efforts as national co-chair of John McCain's presidential exploratory committee, discussing the points of conservative discontent with the Senator. Pawlenty is engaging and thoughtful, and his perspective on the campaign is intriguing.

Newt Gingrich may have been one of the most challenging interviews I've ever conducted. Brilliant, outspoken, and with an excellent sense of history, Gingrich pulls no punches in this conversation. He analyzes the midterm elections, calls conservatives to arms to make a positive case for the agenda, and castigates the presidential candidates for jumping the gun on the electoral cycle. Our first topic is the critique he released today on the agreement with North Korea earlier this week:

* This agreement does not immediately address North Korea’s suspected highly enriched uranium (HEU) program—only its plutonium. North Korea has reportedly made a verbal promise addressing HEU, but it was not included in the text.

* This agreement does not require North Korea to turn over its existing plutonium and any warheads it may have—hence it does not “denuclearize” the peninsula.

o North Korea’s negotiator reportedly said the nuclear weapons material was in the hands of the military and beyond his control, implying that the material cannot be covered in an agreement negotiated by the civilian foreign affairs ministry.

* This agreement is very similar to the 1994 Agreed Framework (see below), and in effect rewards the bad behavior of the North Korean regime. Therefore, this agreement will serve to encourage, not deter, other rogue states in pursuing WMD.

He discusses these objections in very strong terms during the first part of the interview. Gingrich also talks about his new project, American Solutions for Winning the Future, to pursue non-partisan solutions that go beyond sound bites and petty politics. He announced a new YouTube contest for 120-second videos on why taxes should not get raised.

Don't miss this show. We'll have time for some phone calls at 646-652-4889.

Al-Qaeda In Iraq Leader Captured By Iraqi Forces

See updates -- NBC backing away from capture.

Eight months ago, American forces killed the founder of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who had run the organization since the American invasion three years earlier. Tonight, the Iraqis have his replacement in custody (via Hot Air):

The leader of al-Qaida in Iraq was wounded and an aide was killed in a clash Thursday with Iraqi forces north of Baghdad, the Interior Ministry spokesman said.

The clash occurred near Balad, a major U.S. base about 50 miles north of the capital, Brig. Gen Abdul-Karim Khalaf said.

Khalaf said al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri was wounded and his aide, identified as Abu Abdullah al-Majemaai, was killed. Sources tell NBC News that al-Masri is in custody.

The new surge in Baghdad and Anbar intended on making the lives of terrorists more difficult. It seems to have succeeded in the case of the two leaders of large terrorist organizations in its opening days. Moqtada al-Sadr took off for Iraq, and Masri finds himself in the hands of a government he hated.

What will Congress do now? David Petraeus has a huge scalp on his belt and his enemies are fleeing before him. Is this the time for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to demand passage of resolutions that claim that no victory is possible in Iraq?

UPDATE: Allahpundit at Hot Air says that NBC has quietly edited out the capture from its story without noting the change. Hmmm.

Giuliani Announces, Mostly, And Bashes Bush On War Strategy

See lengthy update.

One of the more tiresome aspects of Presidential campaigns is the Kabuki dance performed by the candidates regarding their status. Rudy Giuliani has come in for more criticism than most, although he has shown clearly that he intends to run for the Republican nomination. He made it even more clear on the Larry King show last night on CNN:

Mr. Giuliani has behaved like a presidential candidate for months, forming an exploratory committee, raising money, building a campaign staff and making appearances around the country. But until now, he has repeatedly stopped short of a definitive statement of his intentions — even joking about his nondeclarations in recent days.

Republican activists and consultants, citing his early withdrawal from the 2000 Senate race, said he needed to put to rest fears that he might not follow through. But in characteristic fashion, Mr. Giuliani said he would do things on his own timetable.

But on “Larry King Live” on CNN yesterday, Mr. Giuliani twice said, “Yes, I’m running,” according to a transcript provided by CNN before the interview was broadcast. Asked if he would make a formal announcement of the kind favored by other candidates, he said, “I guess you do.”

Mitt Romney staged an elaborate event from which to formally announce his candidacy. John McCain has yet to thake that final step. Barack Obama also made his announcement part of a campaign stop, and Hillary announced through videoblogging. If this was Rudy's announcement, it appears pretty casual -- although that might turn out to be the least pretentious of the bunch.

Rudy didn't just stop at those three words. He took the opportunity to scold George Bush on his war management, asserting that he went into Iraq with inadequate forces and dismantled too much of the Iraqi infrastructure:

On the issue that looms largest over the campaign, Iraq, Mr. Giuliani used the interview to offer a harsh assessment of the Bush administration’s decision-making. His comments more closely aligned him with his chief rival in Republican primary polls, Senator John McCain of Arizona, who has supported the war, as Mr. Giuliani does, but has criticized its conduct.

“I would remove Saddam Hussein again,” Mr. Giuliani said. “I just hope we’d do it better and we’d do it in a different way.”

Most important, he added, the United States, which has had 120,000 to 160,000 troops at a time in Iraq, should have gone in with “maybe 100,000 to 130,000 more.”

In addition, “I would have us not disband” the Iraqi military or purge the government of Baath Party members, because “that meant getting rid of the entire civil service,” he said, adding: “The country had no infrastructure.”

“There was a real doubt as to whether we could do this nation building,” he said, and as it has turned out, “we’re not going to do it.”

It seems as though Giuliani may want to put more space between himself and President Bush. Earlier in the campaign -- meaning last week -- he praised George Bush and his decisive leadership style. This doesn't negate his earlier remarks; he told King that every wartime president made their share of mistakes, which is true. It does indicate that Giuliani might have decided to tone down his public admiration of a President who polls in the low 30s.

Even more significantly, Giuliani offered a more pessimistic view of the surge strategy, which he still supports. “I’m not confident it’s all going to turn around,” he told King, but said the consequences of failure were such that the US had to try a more robust security strategy in Baghdad.

What does this mean for a Giuliani primary campaign? It sounds like Rudy is setting the table for a general election debate rather than the Republican primaries. He wants to go on record early about his differences with Bush on the war, and make the case that he would make a better commander-in-chief. He's going over the same ground as McCain in this regard, which will allow him to convince national-security conservatives of his stalwartness on the war in the primaries, a key McCain argument.

UPDATE: Here's the CNN transcript. Giuliani made it clear that he didn't want to blame anyone:

GIULIANI: ... maybe 100,000, 150,000 more. I would do it in a way in which we didn't disband the army, which we've learned. This is all -- you know, this is all Monday morning quarterbacking, but you Monday morning quarterback in order to play the next game better, right? Monday morning quarterbacks who just want to criticize is cheap stuff. Monday morning quarterbacking so that next Saturday or Sunday you can play better is absolutely right.

I would -- I would have us not disband the army. You wouldn't de-Baathify. See, de-Baathify sounds like the right thing to do because you're getting rid of all the old Saddam guys. But that meant getting rid of the entire civil service. The country had no infrastructure.

KING: So are you -- are you -- who do you blame?

GIULIANI: So you learn from these things.

KING: Do you blame Rumsfeld?

GIULIANI: No, I don't blame anybody.

KING: You don't blame any -- somebody's got to...

GIULIANI: No, no, no. You don't do it that way.

KING: Nobody's to blame?

GIULIANI: You don't do it that way. That's why you don't make progress. Just like I don't blame people for not figuring out September 11 before it happened. What I do is, I kind of look at what happened, so you learn for the future.

KING: But there were mistakes.

GIULIANI: Of course there were mistakes. Lincoln made mistakes. Roosevelt made mistakes. Eisenhower made mistakes. The Battle of the Bulge was the biggest intelligence failure in American military history, much bigger than any in Vietnam or now. We didn't know that the Soviets were moving 400,000 or 500,000 troops. We missed it.

KING: Shouldn't they be blamed for not explaining it well enough?

GIULIANI: Learn from it. Learn from it. Don't blame them.

That's the attitude we should have had after 9/11, but the bitter partisanship in the aftermath of the Clinton impeachment and the 2000 election made it impossible. The New York Times should have tried to include a little more of this in its article for better context.

Why Is This Man Smiling?

Perhaps Norm Coleman just read the polling taken by KSTP-TV in the wake of Al Franken's announcement that the former Air America host will run for his Senate seat. The local ABC affiliate decided to test the waters in Minnesota for Franken, and they found that only 3500 of the 10,000 lakes feels warm enough for a Franken dip:

U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman would win easily if he ends up facing comedian Al Franken in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race in 2008, according to an exclusive 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS/SURVEY USA poll.

The popular comedian announced that he would seek the seat Wednesday on the last episode of his radio show.

The poll shows Coleman getting 57 percent of the vote and Franken getting 35 percent.

The poll also looked at a possible matchup between Coleman and attorney Mike Ciresi, who is also expected to seek the DFL nomination. Coleman also wins that match by a margin of 57 to 34.

The margin of error on the poll is +/- 3.9 percent; 632 registered voters were polled on Feb. 12 and Feb. 13.

About the only positive note that Franken can take from this result is that he fares just as well as Cerisi. Both of them lose to Coleman in double digits despite the DFL's edge in voter registrations, which points to a tough 2008 attempt to wrest the seat from Coleman.

Franken even fails in the Twin Cities metro region, normally a place of strength for the DFL and progressives. He actually scores worse there -- 32% -- than he does in the state as a whole. He also has a tough time attracting Democrats to his cause, with only 66% of the DFL selecting Franken over Coleman. The Senator, on the other hand, has the support of 94% of all Minnesota Republicans.

Moderates make a big difference in Minnesota politics. Here again, Coleman smacks Franken down hard. Coleman gets 54% of the moderate vote, compared to 37% for Franken. Even in the Iron Range, another point of strength for the DFL and its union legacy, Franken can barely muster a majority, 51%-37%.

In demographics, Coleman hits a home run as well. Coleman gets at least 50% in all age groups, while Franken never crosses 40%. In Generation Y voters, Coleman gets an astounding 74-19 win. (KSTP reported it in reverse, but the SurveyUSA data shows Coleman winning the youth vote.) Coleman also gets a majority of black voters, while Franken wins a bare plurality of Hispanics (37-34). Again, the numbers for Cerisi look almost identical.

So one can forgive Coleman a surreptitious grin at Franken's announcement. This poll shows Franken and Cerisi as anklebiters and pretenders.

Federal Spending Database On Track For January 2008

Since I'm kicking back at home nursing a case of the creeping crud, I had an opportunity to participate in a conference call with officials at the Office of Management and Budget regarding the status of the federal spending database and website. The site, which has an interim announcement and commentary page, resulted from the efforts of Tom Coburn and Barack Obama in the previous session of Congress to create accountability for federal spending, and Congress mandated that it be operational by January 2008.

Clay Johnson, Deputy Director for Management, Office of Management and Budget, and Robert Shea, Associate Director for Management, addressed a few of the bloggers who helped push the project last year. NZ Bear and Robert Bluey joined me for the update. Both men gave an optimistic view of the project, but wanted help in determining how the final project should look. They have made the wise decision to gain inspiration from the joint OMB Watch/Sunlight Foundation site, fedspending.org, but also want to hear more about how the database should be structured.

I believe all of us felt comfortable with their direction. NZ gave some good suggestions about ensuring that the site could provide detailed files for those who want to do a great deal of their own number-crunching while still making the site useful for casual research. The OMB officials felt that they could have something preliminary up for this year, and are open to using selected bloggers as a beta-test group to ensure proper functionality.

I don't think OMB provided any surprises today, but it's good to see that they have not allowed the project to fade away after the midterm elections.

Bush At AEI

Since I'm under the weather today, I figured I'd watch President Bush give what's billed as an "important address" in the global war on terror to the American Enterprise Institute.

9:07 - He invokes Jeane Kirkpatrick and endorses the policy of the "universality of freedom". I'd say he will return to the focus on democratization ...

9:10 - He says he welcomes debate on wartime strategy, but that we should all agree that it is better to fight terrorists overseas on their turf rather than here on ours. Bush also went into a review of the cells discovered in other nations, and that those examples should prompt us to recognize that terrorists have not given up.

9:12 - Bush chose the surge strategy because it provides the best chance of success in Iraq. He's arguing why success is important, but that may no longer be the operative question. His critics have claimed that success is impossible, and Bush needs to make the argument that success is not only possible, but attainable.

9:16 - He makes the point that Congress has spent the last few weeks endorsing the new commander for the theater and then opposing the commander's strategy for victory. It sends an odd message, certainly, although Bush endorses their right to publicly dissent from his plan.

9:18 - He's turning to Afghanistan now, and this is probably why the White House has underscored the importance of this speech. Bush has been criticized for making Afghanistan a forgotten theater after the Iraq invasion. Bush says that it's important to ensure that terrorists do not gain a toehold anywhere.

9:21 - Hamid Karzai appointed a woman as a regional governor. That's interesting; I missed that front-page story from the New York Times. Oh, wait ...

9:23 - Our enemies struck back in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon; they're going to strike out wherever they find freedom and liberty on the march. It's a good point, and it recalls that we are in a war, not a series of police investigations. Enemies have offensives, too.

9:27 - Five key goals: Increase Afghanistan's security forces. Improve human intelligence networks. Where were the other three?

9:30 - I'm not sure why this speech got so much attention. There's nothing much new here, and it's one of Bush's poorest performances on the stump. He sounds like he's ad-libbing a great deal of the speech, and he's not a good enough speaker to do it.

The Evolving Clinton Position On Military Force

Eli Lake makes an important point in today's New York Sun about Hillary Clinton's zeal to restrict the military options of President Bush against Iran. When Hillary pronounced that Bush would have to come to Congress before launching any sort of attack against another country, specifically Iran, she seems to have forgotten the precedent set by her own husband eight years ago, and defended by her in October 2002:

"It would be a mistake of historical proportion if the administration thought that the 2002 resolution authorizing force against Iraq was a blank check for the use of force against Iran without further congressional authorization," Mrs. Clinton said. "Nor should the president think that the 2001 resolution authorizing force after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in any way authorizes force against Iran. If the administration believes that any, any use of force against Iran is necessary, the president must come to Congress to seek that authority."

That position is at odds with President Clinton's unilateral decision to bomb Serb military targets beginning on March 26, 1999, when America and NATO launched a war to stop Slobodan Milosevic from cleansing the province of Kosovo of ethnic Albanians.

Twenty-six members of Congress later sued the Clinton administration on the grounds that the bombing campaign constituted a violation of the War Powers Act. Mr. Clinton's Justice Department argued at the time that the War Powers Act not only gave the president the authority to drop the bombs on Belgrade — over two congressional votes rejecting a declaration of war on Yugoslavia — but that he was not required to seek congressional approval because Congress had appropriated the funding to launch the air offensive.

Mrs. Clinton defended the Kosovo campaign in a speech on October 10, 2002, before casting her vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq. "We and our NATO allies did not depose Mr. Milosevic, who was responsible for more than a quarter of a million people being killed in the 1990s. Instead, by stopping his aggression in Bosnia and Kosovo, and keeping on the tough sanctions, we created the conditions in which his own people threw him out and led to his being in the dock being tried for war crimes as we speak," she said in the 2002 speech. Milosevic died in prison in the Hague in 2006.

Personally, I think an attack on Iran would be a mistake at this time, and the White House has given indications that it agrees. However, if Iran has conducted military operations in Iraq and provided materiel, intelligence, and training that resulted in the deaths of American soldiers, then the US has the obligation to recognize that Iran has joined the present war as a combatant -- and to secure the theater to protect our soldiers. The President has to have that kind of authority during wartime, or else anyone could join in the battle in support of our enemies, knowing that it would take Congress weeks to authorize a response, if they ever got around to it.

And bear in mind that the conditions between 1999 and 2007 are completely different -- and argue against Hillary's new position. In 1999, Clinton attacked Yugoslavia despite Congress having rejected a declaration of war -- twice. The US had no ground involvement in Kosovo at the time, and the only attacks from Yugoslavia on American forces were normal air defense volleys. This wasn't a case where an attack came as a consequence of an attack on American forces engaged on a front, but a case where Clinton wanted to accelerate pressure on Slobodan Milosevic by expanding the scope of the war.

I might also point out that Kosovo, Bosnia, and the entire Balkans conflict was another example of a civil war going back for centuries into which the Democrats had no problem jumping, even though it had little to do with any strategic American interests. Now we hear all about how Iraq is a civil war and that means we should cease working for democracy and liberty in a region where we have vital national interests. That standard seems to have changed with the Clintons, too.

If Hillary wants to stand on convention at this point, she will have to explain why two Congressional rejections of the use of force in Kosovo did not present a legal impediment to her husband. She gave a hint as to her answer, which is an ends-justifying-means point that has nothing to do with the Constitutionality of a military strike in a war that certainly provides more justification for one than anything ever did in Kosovo.

Iraq Government Confirms Sadr In Iran

The controversy over the whereabouts of Moqtada al-Sadr has ended. An advisor to Nouri al-Maliki confirmed on the record that Sadr is in Iran, as the US reported earlier (via Michelle Malkin):

An adviser to Iraq's prime minister said Thursday that radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is in Iran, but denied he fled due to fear of arrest during an escalating security crackdown.

Sami al-Askari said al-Sadr traveled to Iran by land "a few days ago," but gave no further details on how long he would stay in Iran. A member of al-Sadr's bloc in parliament, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals, said al-Sadr left three weeks ago.

"I confirm that Muqtada al-Sadr is in Iran on a visit," said al-Askari. "But I deny that his visit is a flight."

Sadr's supporters insist that he is still in Iraq, but no one has seen the non-reclusive Shi'ite firebrand in weeks. If Sadr remains in Najaf, as his mouthpieces claim, all he has to do is show himself. He could call a press conference or hold a rally; the US wouldnt stop him from either activity, and it would prove that he didn't tuck tail and run from the new US/Iraqi security program for Baghdad.

Askari never spoke to why Sadr went to Iran, nor why most of his Mahdi command went with him. Iraq has plenty of space for such meetings, and the southern third of the country is sympathetic to the Shi'ite political cause. What could Sadr and the Mahdis do in Iran that they could not in Najaf or Basra? Perhaps they could not count on unfettered access to Iranian counsel and protection outside of Iran, now that the US has stepped up its action against Iranian agents in Iraq and Maliki withdrew his political protection from Sadr City.

Skeptics have claimed that Sadr's flight was an American fantasy, and that the Mahdi command's move to Teheran was sheer speculation. Now the Iraqi government has confirmed Sadr's bug-out. Will that convince people that the new effort to secure Baghdad and the center of Iraq has had a serious impact on one of the primary targets of the surge strategy?

UPDATE: Random Numbers channels Monty Python.

The Inimitable, Inevitable Al?

Al Franken gave his listeners an expected going-away Valentine yesterday by announcing that he would seek the Democratic nomination for Norm Coleman's Senate seat. Franken had plowed the ground for this move since the 2004 election, and spent most of last year raising money for the DFL (Minnesota's Democratic Party) in order to bolster his credentials as a serious candidate. However, even some in the DFL apparently consider the comedian a bad joke as a candidate:

As he announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate Wednesday, Al Franken confronted the central question he may face in the early going -- whether a lifelong comic should be taken seriously.

"Minnesotans have a right to be skeptical," Franken said in a video message on his campaign website that declared his run for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Republican Norm Coleman.

"I want you to know: Nothing means more to me than making government work better for the working families of this state," Franken said. "And over the next 20 months I look forward to proving to you that I take these issues seriously."

Even for a state with a progressive streak, Franken borders on the extremist -- and not just in terms of policy. He has a nasty temper and has displayed in publicly on more than one occasion. I have related in the past that he tried to start a fistfight with Laura Ingraham's producer at the Republican National Convention in 2004, and he assaulted a protestor at a John Kerry event that same year.

Despite being a Minnesota native, he seems far too obnoxious to gain a following in this state. People here talk about Minnesota Nice, where people remain pleasant and mind their manners even when they encounter unpleasantness. Franken is the opposite, attacking his political opponents in mean-spirited, schoolyard epithets. That might sell in New York, where Franken lived most of his adult life, although he seems a little too strong even for the Big Apple, but that kind of temperament will only appeal to the most hard-core, left-wing voters in this state.

He faces a tough primary opponent in Mike Cerisi, although Cerisi has a similar private reputation as Franken for unpleasantness. Cerisi has another public reputation as the man who beat Big Tobacco in the state, winning around $7 billion in a settlement -- for which he made over $440 million in fees. That pays for a lot of campaigning in a state of 6 million people, especially since half of them live in the seven counties comprising and surrounding the Twin Cities.

Cerisi has been a player in DFL politics for a lot longer than Franken, and assuming Cerisi plays it smart and runs as a moderate, he should be able to trash Franken in the caucuses, where party endorsements are won. Franken pledged to abide by the endorsement process and not force a primary election battle if he fails to win. That plays into Cerisi's strengths as an organizer, and it seems unlikely that the DFL apparatchiks will select a foul-tempered comedian over one of the party's biggest local boosters.

Franken's announcement was inevitable, but his nomination seems far from assured. In the end, I think the DFL will think twice before hitching their wagon to an emotionally unstable extremist who would almost certainly constitute a missed opportunity to grab both Senate seats.

UPDATE: Be sure to read Scott Johnson's post yesterday about the Franken announcement.

That Hudna Didn't Last Long, Either

Remember the wedding between Hamas and Fatah, and the big reception held by the Saudis in Mecca? It seems that the bride and groom have started consulting lawyers already:

In another sign of tension with Hamas over a possible national unity government, the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah faction, canceled a televised speech scheduled for Thursday night, his aides said Wednesday.

In the speech, Mr. Abbas was to have told Palestinians about his talks with Hamas leaders in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. But those talks, which ended last Thursday with a proclamation of success, left many details unresolved, including who would fill key posts like interior minister, which controls the Hamas-dominated parallel police force, known as the Executive Force. The details of a political program for the new government are also unclear. ...

Reuters reported that another Abbas aide, who was not identified, said: “Hamas has made several unacceptable conditions that cannot be implemented. The Mecca agreement cannot be reinterpreted and must be implemented immediately without any conditions.” This aide said that Hamas was putting new conditions on who will fill the jobs of interior and foreign ministers, which are supposed to go to independents approved by Hamas.

That truce seemed doomed from the start. Abbas tried to get Hamas to incorporate itself into Fatah in order to short-circuit the sanctions that have crippled the Palestinian Authority. That would have forced Khaled Mashaal to answer to Abbas and accept the two-state solution, and so it failed. Instead, the two factions declared their unity for the five-millionth time, and this time was shorter than most.

Hamas will not eschew violence, nor will it recognize Israel. The failure of the unity government to meet those two points will mean the continuance of the sanctions, which will eliminate the entire basis of their hudna. Once they realize this, the truce will end and civil war will continue, until one faction or the other gains control of the PA, or until the Palestinians finally get sick of war and produce leadership that will bring real peace.

Baghdad Welcomes The Surge?

The new surge strategy has hit the streets of Baghdad, and thus far, it seems the Iraqi street has not hit back. The AP reports that the Shi'ite neighborhoods on which the new surge has concentrated has either welcomed the soldiers or shrugged at their presence:

The Baghdad neighborhoods targeted by the Americans — Shaab, Ur and Baida — lie north of the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City, which had been off-limits until Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki lifted his protection of the notorious Mahdi Army, the largest Shiite militia.

Last year, U.S. soldiers came under intense sniper fire in those neighborhoods from Mahdi Army militiamen who were expanding into Shiite areas outside Sadr City.

This time, however, Iraqis watched in curiosity as some 2,500-3,000 troops — or an entire Stryker brigade — fanned out in the area, going house-to-house looking for weapons or suspected militia fighters as part of what it called "Operation Law and Order."

The increased security measures drew a mixed response from Iraqis — some angry over the inconvenience, others embracing any effort to stop the rampant violence.

"My friends and I who are the old women of the neighborhood went to the soldiers and welcomed them and prayed that God would help them to defeat the terrorists," said Um Sabah of the Mashtaal area in eastern Baghdad. "Although, the presence of army and vehicles is not very comfortable, we welcome it because it is for the sake of Iraq."

There was little if any resistance. Soldiers even teased one young girl about her taste in music after they found her doing homework on a couch, wearing white and pink socks with a poster of Shakira on the wall.

Some people left their doors open as the troops arrived, and little evidence of hostilities turned up other than some pictures of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, an illegal bolt action rifle and a heavyset man watching an insurgent propaganda video that he said had appeared while he was channel surfing.

So far, so good. With the Mahdis running out of the capital, the new security efforts appear to be getting almost no resistance. It also seems to be gaining acceptance and even appreciation from the residents in Sadr City. If the insurgents stay away long enough, Baghdad's residents will get used to this -- which will make their return all the more difficult.

More Confirmation On Mahdi Flight

While the debate rages over the location of Moqtada al-Sadr, the Guardian (UK) reports that the upper command structure of the Mahdi Army has also bugged out to Iran. A senior official in the Iraqi government tells Michael Howard that they have left Iraq to "regroup":

Senior commanders of the Mahdi army, the militia loyal to the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, have been spirited away to Iran to avoid being targeted in the new security push in Baghdad, a high-level Iraqi official told the Guardian yesterday.

On the day the Iraqi government formally launched its crackdown on insurgents and amid disputed claims about the whereabouts of Mr Sadr, the official said the Mahdi army leadership had withdrawn across the border into Iran to regroup and retrain.

"Over the last three weeks, they [Iran] have taken away from Baghdad the first and second-tier military leaders of the Mahdi army," he said. The aim of the Iranians was to "prevent the dismantling of the infrastructure of the Shia militias" in the Iraqi capital - one of the chief aims of the US-backed security drive.

"The strategy is to lie low until the storm passes, and then let them return and fill the vacuum," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Tehran authorities were "playing a waiting game" until the commanders could return to Baghdad and resume their activities. "All indications are that Moqtada is in Iran, but that is not really the point," he added.

As some have noted, this calls into question the cooperation promised by the Maliki government. If they warned off Sadr and the senior Mahdis, then he has not done anything except get the Shi'ites out of the way while the Iraqis and Americans beat up the Sunnis. However, this seems like a stretch. Thanks to a long public debate here in the US, Sadr didn't need Maliki to warn him of the new surge strategy. He also knew that Maliki would have to cooperate or face a crippling withdrawal of American support. Maliki didn't have to draw him any pictures.

That makes this "regroup" effort significant evidence of a retreat. The Mahdis could well collect themselves in Teheran and plan for their eventual return. However, the Mahdis do not lead a popular movement, but instead have acted as a gang of thugs, enforcing their will on the streets among frightened residents who mostly wanted them to go away. Once gone, and with the US holding the neighborhoods they once terrorized, they will have to fight their way back into their old territory.

This, by the way, is why a "phased withdrawal over an event horizon" is just a fancy way of saying "retreat". The Mahdis will have to pay for the same territory twice, and they will have the disadvantage of trying to dislodge a vastly superior force already in place.

And again, the Mahdi convention in Teheran shows that the Iranians have been supporting Sadr and his terrorists all along. If the Iranian government didn't have any connection to the Mahdis, they would never have allowed them to convene in their capital. Sadr has revealed the Mahdis as nothing more than an Iraqi Hezbollah, only with more incompetent management.

Nothing shows the power of an American military force than the retreat of its enemies, especially once they understand that the gloves have come off. The Mahdis didn't choose to regroup in Basra or Najaf -- they went to Iran. That speaks volumes about the courage of the Mahdi "army" and the opportunity to end their terrorist grip on Iraq's capital.

A Slow Bleed To Defeat

As the new Democratic majority took control of Congress, bloggers across the spectrum generally agreed the Democrats had three options to satisfy their anti-war base and stage a meaningful objection to the war in Iraq. First, they could end all funding for the war, which would leave them with the responsibility for everything that followed afterwards. Second, they could issue no-confidence motions in an attempt to humiliate George Bush into withdrawing from Iraq. Third, they could run so many investigations into war management that it would force the Pentagon to use its resources on fighting political battles rather than wage war.

Unfortunately, none of us considered a fourth option -- a slow bleed of funding that will allow Democrats to defund the war while blaming the White House for mismanaging the remaining resources:

Top House Democrats, working in concert with anti-war groups, have decided against using congressional power to force a quick end to U.S. involvement in Iraq, and instead will pursue a slow-bleed strategy designed to gradually limit the administration's options.

Led by Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., and supported by several well-funded anti-war groups, the coalition's goal is to limit or sharply reduce the number of U.S. troops available for the Iraq conflict, rather than to openly cut off funding for the war itself.

The legislative strategy will be supplemented by a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign designed to pressure vulnerable GOP incumbents into breaking with President Bush and forcing the administration to admit that the war is politically unsustainable.

As described by participants, the goal is crafted to circumvent the biggest political vulnerability of the anti-war movement -- the accusation that it is willing to abandon troops in the field. That fear is why many Democrats have remained timid in challenging Bush, even as public support for the president and his Iraq policies have plunged.

Murtha and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have decided that they must take the lead in pressuring not only Republicans but also cautious Senate Democrats to take steps more aggressive than nonbinding resolutions in challenging the Bush administration.

It comes as no surprise that John Murtha leads this effort. The war critic has schemed for the last two years to find a way to end American deployment in Iraq. He learned from the lopsided shellacking he took in 2005 when Republicans proposed his demand for a vote that Americans will not countenance a bug-out. He has instead tried to shift the blame to the Republicans while slowly boxing the White House into a retreat.

How one sees this depends on how one sees the war, I imagine. My friends on the starboard side of the blogospere are aghast at Murtha's conniving. They see it as an underhanded way to end a war. Those who hate the war see it as a big win, because it will both eventually end the war and put the onus on the collapse afterwards on the White House. The portosphere hails this new strategy as the realization of the true message of the midterms.

Perhaps both are correct, although I believe the anti-war impulse had less to do with the midterm results than with Republican arrogance in ethics and spending. Regardless, the Murtha slow-bleed plan will wind up sacrificing American soldiers in order to protect the Democratic Party. If Murtha wants an end game of a complete withdrawal, then that's what he should propose. Instead, he wants to steadily decrease the level of support for American troops in a theater of war, putting them increasingly at risk by starving them of resources, including reinforcements.

That may help the Democrats avoid responsibility for the ultimate collapse -- although I doubt Americans or historians will buy that -- but it does so via a deeply cynical political mechanism. Say what you will about the war in Iraq, but it had the best of intentions from the start: freeing the Iraqis from oppression and giving a region of tyrannies and kleptocracies an example of how liberty could free them and allow Arabic culture to blossom into modernity. The Murtha slow bleed offers no vision except defeat, retreat, and humiliation, all paid with the sacrifice of unsupported American troops.

That's what makes this so reprehensible, and that's why the GOP has to unite to stop it.

Be My (Political) Valentine

National Review asked a number of political junkies to identify their political "Valentines" as a celebration of Valentine's Day today. Top-drawer conservative writers such as Mona Charen, Lucianne Goldberg, and Kathryn Jean Lopez all contribute to the symposium, and were kind enough to include me as well. I don't think CQ readers will find themselves shocked at my choice:

One never forgets their first love, and it serves as a comparison for those that follow. For me, politics has been no different. While I have appreciated political figures over the years, such as Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, and John McCain (who I supported in 2000), none have ever had the same effect on me.

Perhaps, someday, another Reagan will appear. Until then, I’ll remember the man who inspired my love of politics.

Interestingly, this was the only Valentine received by the Gipper. Lady Margaret Thatcher got three of them, including one from my friend Paul Mirengoff of Power Line. Be sure to read them all.

Addendum: I'm glad I decided to forego my initial urge to make it a satirical piece and feature Amanda Marcotte.

Also, via Michelle, my real valentine:

Newt Gingrich On CQ Radio

He's acknowledged as the philosophical leader of the conservative movement, and led the Republican revolution of 1994 to start a 12-year run of GOP control of Congress -- a period that ended in last year's midterm elections. Now he's rumored to be considering a Presidential campaign and consistently scores highly among blog readers, even though he insists that he wants to focus on his ongoing, myriad projects. Newt Gingrich continues to be one of the most intriguing figures in American politics, and I will be interviewing him for tomorrow's CQ Radio show at 9 pm CT.

Barring any last-minute schedule conflicts -- and those things happen -- the former Speaker and I will discuss the state of conservatism today, and its prospects for the 2008 election. We'll also catch up with his projects, which include a new 527, American Solutions for Winning the Future, as well as an event with former Governor Mario Cuomo later this month.

Combined with the interview of Tim Pawlenty, this will be a must-catch edition of CQ radio. Be sure to join us!

France Rounds Up AQ Suspects

France has conducted a series of raids overnight that have netted eleven suspected al-Qaeda terrorists. The investigators followed the men over the last few months as an off-shoot of a wider counterterrorism mission:

French counterterrorism police arrested 11 suspects as part of efforts aimed at dismantling an alleged al-Qaida-linked recruiting network to send radical Islamic fighters to Iraq, police officials said Wednesday.

Nine suspects were detained in and near the southern city of Toulouse before dawn Wednesday, following the arrest of two others at Orly airport in Paris who had just been sent home by Syrian authorities, police said.

Two of the suspects, mostly aged in their 20s, had sought to enter Iraq through neighboring Syria, but were detained by police there and remanded into French custody, police said. An investigation was continuing.

This ring did not just work to send jihadis to Iraq. They also found evidence that the suspects had plotted to bomb French supermarkets. Given the large Muslim population in France, such a terrorist spree could have had an inflammatory effect on the banlieues and their relation to the general population.

Syria's expulsion of two of these men also seems noteworthy. Iraq has closed the border with Syria, which would have made it impossible for them to cross the frontier through normal border checkpoints. Normally, one would think terrorists with dodgy paperwork would have avoided the normal channels, but they apparently did not feel enough concern to take alternates routes into Iraq. One has to wonder how easily terrorists traverse this border under normal circumstances.

It also demonstrates another truth: al-Qaeda in Iraq is very definitely part of the same al-Qaeda network that we consider our enemy from 9/11. It is not just a handy designation for native Sunni insurgencies. We are fighting against the same terrorists in our war on terror that we would have to fight elsewhere if we pulled away from the front lines in Iraq.

We don't hesitate to criticize France for their failures, but this shows that they've remained on the ball against radical Islamist terrorists. Hopefully this success will also produce some actionable intelligence to allow the West to uncover more recruiters for the Iraqi jihad.

The Giuliani Papers, Redux

Confidential campaign documents have again surfaced from the Rudy Giuliani campaign that will embarrass the candidate and provide fodder for his opponents. A month after a recent campaign strategy book fell into the hands of the New York Observer, a private evaluation of Giuliani by his mayoral campaign in 1993 wound up on The Smoking Gun yesterday:

Sometimes in politics, the most damaging accusations come from your own staff.

Rudolph W. Giuliani learned that lesson again yesterday when a "vulnerability study," including warnings about his "weirdness factor" and other perceived liabilities, surfaced from his second campaign for New York mayor, 14 years ago.

Last month, the New York Daily News obtained a secret blueprint for Giuliani's expected Republican presidential bid that detailed concerns such as his liberal views on social issues and his messy divorce from his second wife, Donna Hanover.

The 1993 report by two aides in Giuliani's mayoral campaign was obtained by Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett for a book on Giuliani and was posted on the Smoking Gun Web site. Giuliani went on to defeat incumbent David N. Dinkins (D) in a rematch that year and won a second term four years later.

Candidates routinely map out real and perceived liabilities in order to have strategies in place if and when opponents attempt to exploit them. It keeps candidates from getting broadsided on the stump, which can be more damaging than the revelation itself. Just recall Dan Quayle's reaction when Lloyd Bentsen sprang that silly criticism of not being JFK on Quayle during the VP debate; it defines Quayle to this day.

Some of this material is pretty tawdry, though, and it will cause Giuliani some discomfort over the next year, and longer if he wins the nomination. Most of the damage comes from the evaluation of his personal life, which contains data not widely known outside of New York City. Giuliani's divorces have been discussed among conservatives as a potential issue for family-values voters, but the issue of his attempt to annul one of the marriages on the basis of consanguinuity -- and hence the "weirdness factor" -- will be an unpleasant underscoring of this concern.

There's also another potential draft-dodging issue in his deferment on medical and occupational deferments in 1969. That seems somewhat less problematic, since the Air Force apparently initiated the termination of his ROTC program based on his hearing deficiencies. In a general election against Hillary Clinton, that will not be much of an issue anyway; she'll hardly be anxious to bring up draft dodging, considering that her main qualification for the Presidency comes from her time as First Lady to a real draft dodger.

The two leaks should have Giuliani campaigners wondering whether they have a spy in their midst. Both leaks reveal some pretty sensitive strategic evaluations, and both have reinforced some of Giuliani's more sensitive personal vulnerabilities. Giuliani may need to do a bit of mole-hunting to ensure that more of his confidential documents don't wind up on the front pages of the nation's newspapers.

North Korea Pact Has Its Critics

... and they come from across the political spectrum. From conservative hard-liners such as John Bolton to Bush critic and Presidential wanna-be Joe Biden, the White House has come under heavy criticism for different aspects of the deal:

The deal that could lead North Korea to shut its main nuclear reactor came under criticism from both ends of the political spectrum immediately after it was announced on Tuesday.

From the right, hardliners argued that the United States should have held out until North Korea agreed to fully declare and dismantle its entire nuclear program. From the left, Democrats argued that the deal was no better than one they said the United States could have gotten four years ago, before North Korea tested a nuclear bomb.

If the agreement holds — pacts with North Korea have a history of falling through — it could put the United States and Japan on a path toward normalizing relations with the isolated nation, which President Bush identified as part of an “axis of evil” in 2002, and which tested a nuclear device just four months ago.

Under the pact, North Korea agreed to freeze its production of plutonium at its five-megawatt nuclear facility in Yongbyon, and to allow international inspectors to monitor and verify its compliance. In return, the United States, China, South Korea and Russia agreed to provide North Korea with food and fuel aid.

The pact kicks down the road three much tougher issues: complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula; a complete declaration from North Korea of all its nuclear activities; and the future of North Korea’s existing plutonium program.

It's not the perfect solution, as I wrote on Monday when details started to leak about the agreement. The pact leaves North Korea with enough fuel to build a half-dozen nukes, if they have not built them already. It also leaves complete denuclearization for a later conference, while giving Kim Jong-Il badly-needed fuel aid and possibly an end to some economic sanctions.

Democrats complain that the Bush administration could have had this deal four years ago, before Kim tested his nuclear device. That complaint misses a couple of points. It was in 2002 when Kim announced he had nuclear weapons, so closing the barn door at that point pretty much would have left us where we are now. We are no less safe than we were when Kim revealed that he had nuclear weapons -- or before he revealed them/

Secondly, the time between has allowed Bush to forge a regional alliance to force Kim to end his nuclear program, an alliance that makes it much more difficult for Kim to renege on the agreement. The value of a bilateral agreement was demonstrated when Kim defied the 1994 Agreed Framework and used the eight years afterward to build his nukes.

One could also argue that the nuclear test may have accelerated the agreement. North Korea's test was widely considered a flop, and it followed two embarrassing failures of Pyongyang's missile programs. Kim may have concluded -- belatedly -- that he couldn't overcome the technical gaps in his program, and that he needed to cut a deal while he still had the rest of the world nervous. That would explain why North Korea suddenly seemed eager to reach an agreement in the multilateral forum it detested.

Under the circumstances, we have few good options. We could have pressed for everything we wanted, but only if we wanted the talks to fail. Compromises mean that everyone gets only a part of what they wanted. We could have gone to war, but we would have lost China at that point, and possibly started a wider war than just on the peninsula. Continuing the sanctions would have been an option, which could have resulted in a coup d'etat -- or, as it did with Saddam Hussein, merely entrench Kim's power.

The new agreement has the endorsement of one person that will make conservatives nervous: Gary Samore. Samore, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, served with the negotiating team that constructed the 1994 Agreed Framework, which Kim used to hide his nuclear program until 2002. Samore believes the Bush administration decided on a pragmatic approach, which has limited benefits but much more manageable risks.

It seems like the best deal we could have expected, given the time, our partners, and the leverage we could exert. Anything more would have required a war similar to the Iraq war to topple Kim Jong-Il, and I don't think we would have had the stomach to engage in more nation-building.

Leftists Terrorists Rounded Up In Italy

The Italians prevented a literal blast from the past when they arrested 15 remnants of the Red Brigades overnight. The group may have seemed defunct, but apparently at least one cell remained operational, and it planned to attack their "capitalist" target, a Milan newspaper, in the near future:

It began with the chance discovery in a Milan basement of a very unusual bicycle. Chief Superintendent Giuseppina Suma described how, following a tip off, police had examined the bike and found "a minute camera in the front light and a radio transmitter under the saddle".

It was the start of a three-year investigation that led this week to more than 80 raids in four Italian cities and the arrest of 15 people for alleged offences that seemed like echoes of an anguished past.

Italians opening their newspapers yesterday could be forgiven for thinking they had fallen into a time warp and spiralled back to the days of flared trousers, Zapata moustaches, Bee Gee hits - and murderous far-left terrorism.

One of those arrested declared himself a "political prisoner". The media reported on clandestine newsletters solemnly assessing the "current political condition of the masses". And Italy's interior minister, Giulano Amato, said the combined operation, involving police and officers of the civil intelligence service, SISDE, showed that the last embers of the Red Brigades, founded 37 years ago, had yet to be stamped out.

Why has the group survived for so long? Perhaps because their radical Leftism hasn't fallen out of favor, even with the collapse of the Soviet regime they admired so much. Germany has decided to parole its Baader-Meinhof prisoners despite the one having collected five life sentences. This kind of nostalgia seems to run deep within European circles.

Indeed, it runs right through to the Italian ruling coalition. Italy's new prime minister, Romano Prodi, found out to his embarrassment that several of the people arrested in the raids belong to the trade-union federation that forms the core of his support. The group had targeted Prodi's political opponents, including former PM Silvio Berlusconi and media figures more aligned with the center-Right. Prodi had nothing to do with them and pursued the investigation after he took over the government from Berlusconi, but it points out how easily left-wing extremists can engage in the European political climate.

Hopefully, Italy will not learn from Germany's latest example and will treat these people as what they are: terrorists, plain and simple. Those who would use violence to intimidate duly elected governments, regardless of philosophy, are no different from those who would commit violence to impose their religion on unbelievers. It's all terrorism, and it all requires a tough and unyielding response.

Black Politician Says Black Nominee Would Drag Down Democrats

Two prominent black politicians from South Carolina endorsed Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama yesterday, but one of them Bidenized himself by declaring the Democrats losers if they nominated a black man for President. Robert Ford told the Associated Press that he wouldn't "kill himself" by endorsing Obama:

Two key black political leaders in South Carolina who backed John Edwards in 2004 said Tuesday they are supporting Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

State Sens. Robert Ford and Darrell Jackson told The Associated Press they believe Clinton is the only Democrat who can win the presidency. Both said they had been courted by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama; Ford said Obama winning the primary would drag down the rest of the party.

"It's a slim possibility for him to get the nomination, but then everybody else is doomed," Ford said. "Every Democrat running on that ticket next year would lose — because he's black and he's top of the ticket. We'd lose the House and the Senate and the governors and everything."

"I'm a gambling man. I love Obama," Ford said. "But I'm not going to kill myself."

Ford came up with this formulation after getting phone calls from both Hillary and Bill Clinton, trying to talk Ford into endorsing Hillary. While Ford never mentioned either of the Clintons as the author of this interesting prediction, one has to wonder exactly how Hillary managed to convince him to back her -- and exactly when he concluded that a black nominee would torpedo the entire Democratic ballot in November 2008. The juxtaposition seems a little suspicious, and Hillary has seemed rattled lately by Obama's entrance into the campaign.

Ford later apologized for his remarks, but the Obama campaign was not amused. Jesse Jackson, Jr, a Congressman from Obama's home state of Illinois, called Ford's comments "reprehensible" -- which, of course, they were.

Lost in the melee was John Edwards, who just watched two of his previous endorsements go away. His campaign insisted that they would still win South Carolina, but then again, they insisted last week that they would keep their two controversial bloggers, too. Darrell Jackson, asked about his previous support for Edwards, replied: "I feel as if he's had his opportunity."

That's gonna leave a mark.

It Was The One-Armed Arms Dealer

The capture of more than a hundred sniper rifles in Iraq that had previously been sold to Iranian police agencies had the manufacturer backpedaling yesterday. The London Telegraph reports that the Austrian government and the Steyr corporation both denied any responsibility or knowledge of an arms transfer from Teheran to Iraqi insurgents:

Austria yesterday washed its hands of any responsibility after it was revealed that powerful sniper rifles it sold to Iran had been acquired by insurgents in Iraq.

The Daily Telegraph revealed yesterday that American troops had recovered more than 100 Steyr HS50 Mannlicher rifles, part of a consignment of 800 sold to Iran by Austria last year, during a series of raids in Iraq.

Astrid Harz, a spokesman for the Austrian foreign ministry, said yesterday that the sale had been "checked very thoroughly" and what happened to the rifles after they were delivered to Teheran ostensibly for use by border police was not the responsibility of her government. It was the responsibility of the Iranians, she said.

Franz Holzschuh, Steyr's chief executive, said the company had not been contacted by anyone officially to verify the serial numbers on the rifles. He said it was possibile that the weapons were copies.

In other words, the Austrians now say that the weapons are copies. And if they're not copies, then they have no idea how the weapons wound up in Iraq. Oh, except for the fact that they sold and delivered them to the Iranians despite warnings from the US and Britain that they would wind up being used to kill American and British troops.

I'm sure the US will gather the serial numbers to check them against the records at Steyr, but why would the Austrians have overlooked the obvious connections between Iran and at least the Shi'ite insurgencies in Iraq? The EU had worked on negotiations to end the Iranian drive towards nuclear weapons for the past few years; in fact, the EU had the lead on those negotiations. Shouldn't Steyr had considered that those negotiations might break down, and that European soldiers might have to face those weapons in the not-so-distant future, even outside of Iraq?

So now the Austrians have to rely on the slender hope that American military officials cannot tell the difference between a highly specialized Steyr sniper rifle and a knock-off. When that fantasy collapses, perhaps they will spin another to avoid the public-relations disaster their arms trade with millenial Islamists in Teheran will rightly bring upon them. Perhaps they will claim that the dog ate the Anglo-American warning.

The Republican Runner Round-Up

Today brings news from all three major Republican primary candidates in the 2008 Presidential race. It started with a formal announcement from Mitt Romney of his candidacy for the nomination, followed by an unusual endorsement for Rudy Giuliani, and winds up tonight here at CQ with a preview of an in-depth interview I conducted with Governor Tim Pawlenty, John McCain's national co-chair of his exploratory committee. I'll be playing the entire interview on my Thursday night talk show, CQ Radio:

TP: On campaign finance reform, you have a lot of conservatives who are concerned about it from a First Amendment standpoint. I think it is fair to say that some reforms were in order, because you have interest groups that were wielding so much clout, leading to so many scandals that a cleaning up of the process, or at least an improvement of the process was in order. I don't agree with all the aspects of the McCain-Feingold reform, and a lot of conservatives don't either. That should be put in the context of all the other things he is conservative on. I think McCain-Feingold has some good -- I think some of the elements of McCain-Feingold are good, I just think that it overreached in other ways.

EM: Well, do you think that Senator McCain would address those overreach -- those positions that overreached and roll back some of the BCRA? Do you think he would be in favor of doing that?

TP: I have not heard him speak to that or say that, so I can't comment on that, but he has not to my knowledge indicated that he would do that.

Governor Pawlenty spoke with me for about 25 minutes and did not duck any of the issues I pursued. It's a good interview with a man who has a big future in national politics in his own right. He discusses his early decision to support McCain, policy disputes between McCain and conservatives, and why Pawlenty thinks McCain is the most authentic conservative in the race. Be sure to tune in Thursday night at 9 pm CT to hear all of the interview.

Romney started the day off today by making his candidacy official. He chose his home state of Michigan for the announcement, where his father served three terms as Governor and briefly flirted with a Presidential run himself. He positioned himself as an innovator and a manager with proven executive success:

We have lost faith in government, not in just one party, not in just one house, but in government.

We are weary of the bickering and bombast, fatigued by the posturing and self-promotion. For even as America faces a new generation of challenges, the halls of government are clogged with petty politics and stuffed with peddlers of influence.

It is time for innovation and transformation in Washington. It is what our country needs. It is what our people deserve.

I do not believe Washington can be transformed from within by a lifelong politician. There have been too many deals, too many favors, too many entanglements ... and too little real world experience managing, guiding, leading.

I do not believe Washington can be transformed by someone who has never tried doing such a thing before, in any setting, by someone who has never even managed a corner store, let alone the largest enterprise in the world.

It seems like Romney has decided that his toughest competition will come from McCain instead of Giuliani. This makes sense. Giuliani will run as the moderate with a tough mien for securing the nation, and Romney wants to run as the banner-carrier of the conservative wing of the party. The little digs about someone who hasn't run a corner store as well as the "outsider" remarks clearly reference McCain. He wants to bump McCain to the side of the road by reminding Republican conservatives of all the compromises and aisle-crossing McCain has done in over twenty years in Congress.

It's a smart move, but Romney may have his own issues with aisle-crossing. His position shifts on abortion and taxes will leave conservatives guessing as to which candidate they can trust more (or less).

Giuliani picked up an interesting endorsement. Ted Olson, the Solicitor General of the Bush administration in the first term and a longtime colleague of Giuliani, publicly endorsed the former mayor today:

The support of Olson should help Giuliani in his quest to win over social conservatives who remain skeptical of his pledge to appoint strict constructionist judges.

"I've known him for 26 years and we've talked about this many times," Olson said. "He feels very strongly that people like Justice Scalia, Chief Justice Roberts, Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas, are the type of people that he would put on the court…I'm quite convinced that this is a genuine viewpoint that he has."

When asked about differences conservatives have with Giuliani on issues such as abortion and gay rights, Olson said: "Rudy's views on many, many issues are going to be very compatible with people in the conservative political community and the political legal community. Nobody's going to be able to find a candidate with whom they agree with 100 percent on every issue. Overall, Rudy's strength of character, his capacity for leadership in a time when a strong executive is important, his energy level, his ability to provide the kind of leadership that Ronald Reagan did -- I think that is going to be very persuasive with conservatives."

Olson also lost his wife, Barbara Olson, in the 9/11 attacks. She was a passenger on the flight that hit the Pentagon, and had a following from her appearances on television talk shows. Olson has persevered through the loss in a dignified manner and has built tremendous respect among conservatives. This endorsement may help bridge the gap between the Republican Right and the moderate, pro-choice Giuliani.

It's been an interesting day for Republicans, and lots of food for thought. The interview on Thursday night will provide even more -- and it may not be the only interview I have for that night. Stay tuned!

ABC: Sadr Bugs Out

Well, so much for the whole 72 virgins thing and the radical Islamist desire to die in martyrdom:

The story tonight in Iraq is not the arrival of more U.S. troops, but the departure of one of the country's most powerful men, Moqtada al Sadr and members of his army.

According to senior military officials al Sadr left Baghdad two to three weeks ago, and fled to Tehran, Iran, where he has family.

Al Sadr commands the Mahdi Army, one of the most formidable insurgent militias in Iraq, and his move coincides with the announced U.S. troop surge in Baghdad.

Sources believe al Sadr is worried about an increase of 20,000 U.S. troops in the Iraqi capital. One official told ABC News' Martha Raddatz, "He is scared he will get a JDAM [bomb] dropped on his house."

Sources say some of the Mahdi army leadership went with al Sadr.

This couldn't have come at a better time. Congress has tied itself in knots trying to opine on what a disaster the surge will be, and before they can vote on a resolution scolding George Bush for wasting resources, he's already chased one of the worst actors out of Baghdad. Nancy Pelosi will be holding a debate to disapprove of a strategy that has already demonstrated success.

And as for Sadr, this will destroy him and his Mahdi Army. ABC reports that Sadr wants to try to run the Mahdis from Teheran, but his credibility as a jihadi just tanked. Who's going to fight for someone who won't stand up for himself?

And the Iranians surely have to be thumping their foreheads over his bug-out. The US had just demonstrated that the Iranians had backed the insurgencies, which the Iranians disputed, and the chief of the Shi'ite militias announces that he's going to become a remote-control general from their turf. It's going to be very difficult for anyone to pretend that Iran has not actively fueled the insurgencies while Moqtada directs his armies by long-distance telephone calls.

This demonstrates that the US forces have seized the initiative in Baghdad, and that the Maliki government has apparently completely abandoned Sadr. It's a tremendous victory in the preliminary stages, and it sets the table for an end to the hottest part of the insurgencies in the Iraqi capital. (via Power Line)

UPDATE: His supporters claim Sadr is still in Iraq:

An Iraqi government official said al-Sadr was in the Shiite holy city of Najaf Tuesday night, when he received delegates from several government departments. The official, who is familiar with one of those meetings, spoke on condition of anonymity because he has no authority to disclose information on his department's activities.

The denials came after a senior U.S. official said Tuesday that al-Sadr left his Baghdad stronghold some weeks ago and is believed to be in Tehran, where he has family.

That should be pretty easy to confirm. Let him hold a press conference in Najaf -- he's safe enough doing that. He's not exactly been a shrinking violet in either Najaf or Baghdad, and if he's still in Iraq, he can confirm it rather quickly.

Iranian Smoking Guns Found ... Literally

The Telegraph reports this morning that rifles imported from Austria by Iran have surfaced among insurgents in Iraq. Steyr-Mannlicher exported 800 of its high-powered HS50 models, capable of piercing body armor, to the National Iranian Police Association for their anti-narcotics efforts:

Austrian sniper rifles that were exported to Iran have been discovered in the hands of Iraqi terrorists, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

More than 100 of the.50 calibre weapons, capable of penetrating body armour, have been discovered by American troops during raids.

The guns were part of a shipment of 800 rifles that the Austrian company, Steyr-Mannlicher, exported legally to Iran last year.

The sale was condemned in Washington and London because officials were worried that the weapons would be used by insurgents against British and American troops.

This appears to aubstantiate the findings of the Department of Defense, presented this weekend, that Iran has actively supplied weapons to the Iraqi insurgencies, and that those weapons have killed American troops. The DoD focused on the EFPs, explosive devices that can destroy vehicular armor, and counted 170 American deaths from the super-IEDs. The HS50s have also killed Americans, and seem designed to do so. The first American to die from the HS50 was shot 45 days after the Iranian police received their shipment.

US forces have captured over a hundred of the HS50s from the Iranian police shipment. That amounts to over 12% of the total number of rifles imported by Iran to fight drug dealers, a dodge that has grown more threadbare ever since the invasion of Iraq. The Iranians have not claimed -- yet -- that they managed to lose one-eighth of all the new rifles intended for their police, and the Iranian government was clearly the recipient of the arms. In fact, Austria defended the sale on that very point.

Pardon the pun, but this is literally the smoking gun. We can trace these weapons from its manufacturer directly to the Iranian government. The quantity in which they have been found in insurgent bases precludes any explanation that a few just got mislaid; they obviously have been transferred from an Iranian state organization to the terrorists in Iraq. It's the clearest evidence of Iranian involvement in attacks on Americans. The involvement of the mullahcracy is undeniable, and it is a direct retort to those who keep claiming that Iran has no stake in Iraqi instability.

Has Osama Died?

Hot Air noted a new message from al-Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, which pledges allegiance to Mullah Omar and the Taliban. He urges Muslims to unite behind Omar, but makes no mention of his AQ chief Osama bin Laden, who has gone silent for a long period of time:

In a message released Monday, al Qaeda's No. 2 leader called on Muslims to unite under Taliban leader Mullah Omar, stop trying to form secular governments and instead follow strict Islamic Sharia law.

The message from Ayman al-Zawahiri, the top aide to al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, appeared on an Islamist Web site. ...

Al-Zawahiri pledged allegiance to Mullah Omar and called on all his followers to reject animosity and differences and come together under Mullah Omar's banner.

Mullah Omar is the elusive, shadowy Taliban leader who slipped away in the early days of the war in Afghanistan. The Taliban held Afghanistan with an ultra-conservative government and sheltered al Qaeda.

Arabs tend to speak in flowery language, especially regarding politics, but this pledge of Zawahiri's allegiance sounds like a man without a leader. It has been more than a year since the last tape from bin Laden, one of his longest silences since 9/11. One might have expected an Osama tape crowing about Bush's midterm setback, or about the surge strategy in Baghdad, or perhaps the failure of the previous Baghdad security strategy.

Zawahiri has been more active, sending out a message every few weeks, trying to rally what's left of his organization. Usually they include statements of loyalty to Osama and urging the faithful to rally to bin Laden, not Mullah Omar. His focus on driving followers to Omar's banner in this latest message might indicate that bin Laden has reached room temperature, or less likely, been captured.

Osama hasn't stopped making news, even if he has stopped making tapes. The Washington Post has a lengthy description of the November 2003 series of bombings in Istanbul, which the Post reports as the last AQ terrorist attack personally authorized by bin Laden:

About a week before Sept. 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden sat down to a breakfast meeting in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. His Turkish guests had arrived with a plan for a spectacular terrorist strike, but according to accounts two of the visitors later gave investigators, there was no talk of business over the meal.

Instead, bin Laden held forth for an hour about the injustices Muslims were suffering at the hands of Israel and the United States, standard motivational remarks tailored slightly for the occasion: He told the visitors that one of his grandmothers was Turkish.

Afterward, outside the one-story house guarded by high walls and men with Kalashnikov rifles, it was al-Qaeda's military commander who gave the visitors $10,000 in cash and crucial words of guidance.

So began a plot that ended in November 2003 with the staggered detonation of four powerful truck bombs in Istanbul, Turkey's largest city. The attacks, which killed 58 people and wounded 750, may have been the last terrorist strikes specifically authorized by bin Laden. Two months after breakfasting with the Turks, bin Laden was making for his base at Tora Bora as U.S.-led forces attacked across Afghanistan.

Like so much of radical Islamist expression, Turkey invited it for their own purposes. In the 1980s and 1990s, Turkey used extremist groups to attack Kurds in their eastern region as part of a civil war that has raged for some time. Like any parasitical infestation, the native Islamist extremists grew, outstripping their portfolio with the government in Istanbul and reaching out to like-minded organizations -- like al-Qaeda. The Turks brought this attack on themselves to a large extent.

These days, though, it is difficult to apply for AQ support, since the leaders have fled into the hills of Waziristan or its environs. Zawahiri now directs applicants to Mullah Omar instead of bin Laden. It seems likely that Osama's only contribution to that effort now is strictly as inspiration to the suicide bombers who want to meet him, up close and personal, after they carry out their missions.

Going 14-2 Wasn't Enough?

Fans of the NFL might have figured that any coach with a 14-2 record in the regular season would have had no worries about his employment in the 2007 season. For most teams, that would have been true, but apparently not in San Diego. Marty Schottenheimer finds himself unceremoniously dumped by the Chargers after one of its best seasons:

Marty Schottenheimer performed well enough to go 14-2 last season despite what team president Dean Spanos called a "dysfunctional situation" between the coach and his general manager.

Less than a month after San Diego's NFL-best 14-2 season was wrecked in a home playoff loss to New England, Spanos said the exodus of assistant coaches -- the two coordinators became NFL head coaches and two assistants became coordinators -- contributed to an "untenable" situation that resulted in the coach being fired. Schottenheimer is due more than $3 million for the final year left on his contract.

While confirming he had no working relationship with Smith, Schottenheimer seemed puzzled that Spanos made the coach take the fall for his assistants leaving.

"That is absolutely unfair in my view," Schottenheimer told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "We had no control over two guys who became head coaches in this league. We gave two guys an opportunity to be coordinators in this league. We've added a couple of guys that people should be very pleased with. The future coach will be very pleased, as well."

It's a strange situation. Smith let Drew Brees go after a shoulder injury at the end of last season, only to see Brees once again become one of the league's most effective quarterbacks. While Philip Rivers has turned out to be a pretty good QB on his own, Brees' experience would have been helpful in their playoff game against the New England Patriots.

Besides, Smith hardly quaifies as legendary material, even as a GM. The fact that Schottenheimer produced two head coaches from his staff speaks pretty clearly about his value in developing talent, not as some sort of disqualification. This sounds like a very silly excuse to fire Schottenheimer for not taking them to the Super Bowl, a complaint that would have resulted in 28 dismissals last week had the rest of the league followed the Spanos example.

Schottenheimer will find another job. I'll bet that Jerry Jones is kicking himself for hiring Wade Phillips in Dallas a few days too soon. Spanos will have a tough time finding a coach of Schottenheimer's stature and talent, and the next head coach will have to wonder how secure his job will be if he loses two games early in the season.

The Last Refuge Is The Scoundrel

Hillary Clinton apparently feels the heat from Barack Obama already. Campaigning in New Hampshire, where her husband won the nickname of Comeback Kid with his second-place finish in 1992 after the first of the bimbo eruptions, she hid behind Bill's, er, skirts to pump up her own candidacy:

As she made her first outing to New Hampshire as a presidential candidate last weekend, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton left her husband at home, yet she tried to tap his old political magic at nearly every turn.

Mrs. Clinton, Democrat of New York, mentioned Mr. Clinton at least eight times on Saturday — at one point talking about “Bill’s heart surgery” to illuminate her own travails with health care bureaucracy — and a few times on Sunday, most memorably when she said of Republicans, “Bill and I have beaten them before, and we will again.”

For the first time in her bid for the White House, Mrs. Clinton directly laid claim to the legacy and popularity of former President Bill Clinton — and did so in a crucial primary state where her husband showed his resiliency in 1992, when he finished second despite weeks of troubles. ...

This latest chapter in the Clinton political relationship is still a work in progress. Twice as a candidate for the Senate, and during her six-year term, Mrs. Clinton has kept a measure of professional distance from her husband, partly to keep the spotlight on “the politician in the family,” as he has called her. Where the two have appeared together — for example, at the funeral of Coretta Scott King last year — his skills as a speaker have overshadowed hers.

Now that Mrs. Clinton is a presidential candidate, however, her advisers say it would be folly to minimize Mr. Clinton’s role in her life: as a potential first gentleman, as her “full-time political counselor” (as she called him on Saturday) and as a source of emotional support.

That should work out very well indeed. After keeping Bill on a short leash and a high shelf ever since leaving the White House in 2001, now Hillary wants to push him out onto the stage -- to demonstrate his "emotional support". Would that have been the "emotional support" that he has shown her in the midst of the bimbo eruptions of his campaign and his Presidency?

Notice, too, that Bill didn't actually appear at this rally, nor does the campaign plan for any joint appearances in the near future. All Hillary wants to do is speak of Bill and not have him around to demonstrate her mediocrity as a campaigner. A senior campaign advisor would only tell the Times that Bill would eventually get around to joining her on stage, but had no timetable for the live demonstration of "emotional support".

Hillary can't have Bill on the stage with her because he overshadows her. She can't have him campaigning separately because it gives the impression that she is nothing but a straw man (or woman) for a third Bill Clinton term as President. They had hoped to keep him at home, apparently, but Barack Obama has created a charisma deficit for the front-runner -- and now she has to evoke Bill at her campaign events to make up the difference.

The Times report shows that it hasn't completely worked. Some found the casual references to her husband off-putting. Others, reminded of her victimization by her philandering husband, expressed frustration that she hadn't simply left him after Bill left office, and campaigned as her own woman. Even the praise she received for the reference seemed weird. After making a reference to Dunkin' Donuts, a state legislator noted that Hillary likes Bill "as much as we do" -- a strange statement about a wife's affection for her husband. Shouldn't she like him a little more?

As Obama gains strength, look for Hillary to run behind Bill's shadow more and more.

Squatter Madrassa Tests Musharraf's Mettle

In his on-off-on campaign against radical Islamist terrorists, the actions of Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf sometimes call into question his tenacity against militant Islam. He faces another such moment in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, as hard-line imams have build a madrassa illegally on public land. They have threatened a wave of terrorism if Musharraf dismantles it, drawing a line in the sand at the heart of Pakistan:

A children's library in Pakistan's capital Islamabad has become the frontline of a tense standoff between President Pervez Musharraf's government and Islamist extremists.

Scores of burka-clad female students are occupying the public library in protest at plans to demolish Jamia Hafsa, a religious school that houses 7,000 students but was illegally built on public land. The protesters, aged between seven and 30, have threatened to violently resist any police operation to end their sit-in; some have threatened to become suicide bombers. ...

The madrasa is run by Abdul Rashid Ghazi and his brother Abdul Aziz, clerics who have met Osama bin Laden and openly call on Muslims to participate in an anti-western jihad during Friday sermons. Security forces raided it after the London bombings of July 2005.

Musharraf wants a negotiated end to the conflict, but that seems unlikely. Even though the government has taken care to treat the school with caution -- they usually toss unlicensed street peddlers aside without much consideration at all -- the extremists have not acquiesced. The imams have declared the government attempts to dismantle the madrassa a "sin", language that will not allow for cooler heads to prevail.

Of course, Musharraf has no one but himself to blame. He used the extremists to grab power, and for a while made sure they stayed happy. Musharraf helped created the Taliban government that oppressed Afghanistan and hosted Osama bin Laden, until 9/11 made those alliances too expensive to maintain. Now these radical Islamists want to ensure their perpetuation, and Musharraf finds himself stuck in the middle of his own conundrum.

He can't afford to ignore it, either. The conflict over Jamia Hafsa has acquired too high a profile to simply walk away. Musharraf has to take some kind of action, or cede forever the government's authority over the placement of madrassas of any stripe, especially those hosting radical teachers in the mold of al-Qaeda. Seven thousand students at Jamia Hafsa will not go quietly if evicted, and Musharraf will have to rely on his security forces -- which may have more sympathy with the madrassa than with their commander.

It's a delicate situation, and one that could either undo Musharraf or find him walking away from the war on terror.

Cuba's Classless Society

The London Telegraph takes a look at the reality behind the rhetoric that surrounds Fidel Castro's Cuba and sees a simmering tension between the haves and the have-nots on the island. Far from being a worker's paradise free from class distinctions, the Cuban currency games have created an underclass that breeds resentment:

In the hushed tones that all Cubans adopt when they talk about their ailing leader Fidel Castro, who six months ago was forced to hand over the reins of power to his younger brother Raul after undergoing emergency surgery for intestinal bleeding, Carlos explained the continuing frustration of a nation still firmly under Communist rule.

"Fidel has starved us," he whispered. "Yes, there is a lack of food but it is more than that. We are starving for information, for opportunity, for freedom. We want to enjoy the same things as those people over there," he said as a fresh batch of tourists spilled out of the doors of a tour bus.

Cubans struggle to survive on an average wage of less than £10 a month to supplement the state rations which provide them with basics such as rice and beans and either one small bar of soap or tube of toothpaste a month.

Visiting foreigners can spend almost double that on a taxi ride to the airport or a meal in one of Old Havana's state-run restaurants.

Fidel is not the only dying principal in Cuba. Those unlucky enough to have no access to the convertible currency that Cuba launched after the end of the Cold War to boost tourism have sunk further into poverty. Workers at tourist traps get paid in the CUC rather than the peso, which gives them exponentially more buying power, creating an inequality that grates on Cuban nerves.

As one dissident told the Telegraph, Cuba has created a system where taxi drivers and bellhops get more compensation than professionals such as doctors and teachers. With pesos next to worthless, engineers have to starve as waiters become relatively wealthy. In such a system, no one has any incentive to work in the professions, and the brain drain threatens Cuba with a professional collapse.

Castro has even indulged in gentrification to build the tourist business. He has displaced families from run-down tenements in order to renovate them into high-priced hotels and restaurants. The poor can no longer afford to even eat where they once lived, instead dependent on their weekly ration of rice and beans.

Who funds this deterioration? Tourists do, and they come from everywhere but the United States, which still enforces a decades-old economic embargo. The US comes in for plenty of criticism for its refusal to engage with the Cubans on trade, and perhaps for good reason -- but this demonstrates that Castro is most responsible for the sad state of the Cuban economy. He has done what he once castigated Fulgencio Batista for doing: prostituting Cubans for the sake of rich touristas that exploit their misery, wittingly or unwittingly.

The Telegraph quotes Cubans as hoping that Raul Castro will bring in some economic reforms. They'd be better off praying that both Castros end their days soon, and that they can create a democratic government that allows Cubans to direct their own destinies. Perhaps they can also pray that tourists find someplace else to spend their money, rather than fueling Castro's ego and filling his pockets.

Marcotte Quits, Sun To Rise In East In The Morning

Amanda Marcotte resigned her position in the John Edwards presidential campaign today after spending the last week defending her past essays on her group blog. Having weathered the initial storm, Marcotte apparently decided that the controversy would prove too distracting for the Edwards campaign:

One of the chief campaign bloggers for Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards quit Monday after conservative critics raised questions about her history of provocative online messages.

Amanda Marcotte posted on her personal blog, Pandagon, that the criticism "was creating a situation where I felt that every time I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign." Marcotte said she resigned from her position Monday, and that her resignation was accepted by the campaign.

Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, confirmed that Marcotte was "no longer working for the campaign." She declined additional comment. ...

"No matter what you think about the campaign, I signed on to be a supporter and a tireless employee for them, and if I can't do the job I was hired to do because Bill Donohue doesn't have anything better to do with his time than harass me, then I won't do it," Marcotte wrote Monday night.

It's hardly a story anymore, as Edwards missed his opportunity to distance himself from Marcotte's earlier tirades about Christian doctrine such as the conception of Jesus, which she described as the Lord "filling her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit." Rhetoric like that created a firestorm of criticism about her hiring, and despite Marcotte's valediction, not all of it came from William Donahue and right-wing bloggers. As I noted last week, Politico quoted a press release from Brian O'Dwyer, the leader of the National Democratic Ethnic Leadership Council that called Marcotte a bigot. The Democratic Party organizer also called Edwards' decision to retain Marcotte "not only wrong morally – it's stupid politically."

I'm actually surprised that she quit, and at this point rather than last week when it might have meant something. As Daniel Glover and I discussed on CQ Radio last week, the story was just about over. It seemed unlikely that anyone would find more insulting language on Marcotte's blog than already produced, and the decision by John Edwards appeared to tamp down the topic.

And let's face it -- this story would not have had much more momentum in any case. Democrats were unlikely to anger the netroots by openly using it against Edwards, for two reasons. One, the eventual nominee will need these activists after the primaries, and secondly, Edwards is no threat to either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama anyway. By next week, no one would have bothered following the Edwards' campaign blog to check for signs of a meltdown.

Instead, as a number of bloggers have noted, Marcotte decided to take the opportunity to play the victim. Contrary to her assertion that we "right wing shills don’t respect that a mere woman like me could be hired for my skills," we Catholics drew attention to the fact that she engages in vituperative and demeaning attacks on religion and that Edwards appeared to have endorsed that by hiring her. Along the exact same lines, I would have criticized a Republican dumb enough to hire Fred Phelps as a spokesperson, as would Marcotte herself. She simply refuses to accept the fact that she wrote incendiary and bigoted essays about Christians and embarrassed Edwards by agreeing to work for him after doing so.

UPDATE: Patterico points to a review Marcotte wrote about the movie Children of Men this weekend that may have given Edwards a reason to push her off the bandwagon:

The Christian version of the virgin birth is generally interpreted as super-patriarchal, where god is viewed as so powerful he can impregnate without befouling himself by touching a woman, and women are nothing but vessels.

That's actually fairly tame, comparatively speaking, but it does point to a certain tone-deafness after the eruption last week. (She liked the movie a lot more than I did; my review is here.) She didn't post it on the Edwards blog and it has nothing to do with the campaign, but it still reflects on Edwards' decision to hire her and what that says to moderate and liberal Christians to have someone with such overt hostility on his campaign.

UPDATE II: Bryan at Hot Air reminds me that a Republican would never hire Phelps as a spokesperson ... because Phelps is a Democrat.

UPDATE III: Longtime CQ commenter Keemo has a suggestion for Marcotte -- record her blog posts as a book, and she'll almost certainly win a Grammy.

Splitting The Difference

The six-party talks on North Korean nuclear disarmament have apparently reached a breakthrough. The Chinese offered a new agreement that appears to have won over all six nations, and a fresh resolution could be signed as early as tomorrow:

There is new hope that North Korea may be nearing a nuclear disarmament agreement. A compromise was reached that would give North Korea one million tons of fuel oil and electricity, ABC News' Martha Raddatz has learned.

The major sticking point in the six-party-talks in Beijing had been North Korea's demand for an energy package. The country had requested two million tons of fuel oil and two million kilowatts of power before it would agree to begin shutting down its nuclear program.

While the deal gives North Korea half of what it initially demanded, it's twice as much fuel oil as was offered to Kim Jong Il during the Clinton adminstration's 1994 U.S.-North Korea disarmament agreement. That deal would have sent 500,000 tons of fuel oil a year to North Korea, but it was squashed five years ago when North Korea was accused of conducting a secret uranium enrichment program.

It's now been four months since the country conducted a nuclear test, leading to the urgency of the current negotiations.

Several obstacles remain. First, the inspectors have to structure a regimen that allows the US and its allies to verify the shutdown of the North Korean nuclear program, a problem that the Clinton administration left unresolved, allowing Pyongyang to build its present program. Next, the fuel deliveries have to get timed with the shutdown of their nuclear plant.

More importantly, the Japanese may not be completely satisfied with this resolution. They had counted on linking the nuclear issue with their demands for a full accounting of the abduction of its citizens by North Korean spies. The accounts of the agreement do not mention any resolution of this point, and the Japanese may well tank it for that reason.

Lastly, of course, no one believes that Kim Jong-Il will have suddenly seen the light, and so no one knows whether he's honestly agreeing to denuclearize or if he's playing another on his diplomatic games. The agreement appears to demand the end of the nuclear fission at Yongbyon, but it doesn't address the nukes that Kim has already built. That may come in a separate agreement, but it still would leave a handful of nukes under Kim's control. That would almost certainly preclude another nuclear test -- a key consideration -- but it would also mean that he still has the ability to proliferate on a small scale.

And let's face it ... it only takes one nuke to ruin your day.

We'll know more tomorrow, but it's good progress to have even reached the temporary agreement. If it holds past tomorrow, the Bush administration will have won an important diplomatic victory.

GOP Straw Poll For February

Once again, the folks at GOP Bloggers take the temperature of the conservative blogosphere in another straw poll of primary candidates. Results will be reported by state and blog, which gives CQ readers a chance to see where the candidates stand with our own community. Obviously this is not scientific, but it's always interesting to see the results:

Giuliani On Non-Binding Resolutions

Well, this is about as pithy as it gets:

Several potential Republican presidential candidates, including Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as well as Giuliani, have supported Bush's plan to add more than 20,000 troops to U.S. forces in Iraq.

The major Democratic candidates have opposed the move. Several are senators who have advocated a nonbinding resolution condemning the buildup.

"In the business world, if two weeks were spent on a nonbinding resolution, it would be considered nonproductive," Giuliani told the lunch crowd, setting off a burst of laughter.

He called the concept "a comment without making a decision." America, he added, is "very fortunate to have President Bush."

"Presidents can't do nonbinding resolutions. Presidents have to make decisions and move the country forward, and that's the kind of president that I would like to be, a president who makes decisions."

That's the difference between legislators and leaders. Leaders have to make decisions, not engage in self-indulgent whining about them. Giuliani, McCain, and Romney all understand this. Too bad more GOP Senators do not.

Iran: Can We Talk?

In a sign that the international sanctions have begun to bite, Iran has softened its tone and reached out to European diplomats for a new round of talks. They're not offering anything but that softer tone as a carrot, however:

Facing the prospect of broader international sanctions, Iran's president and national security chief on Sunday offered to resume negotiations over their country's nuclear program and eased up on some of the contentious rhetoric of the past, including threats to destroy Israel.

In Munich, Ali Larijani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, briefly met with European diplomats for the first time since talks collapsed in September and said Iran was willing to return to formal discussions.

He also said his country had "no intention of aggression against any country," adding that Iran "posed no threat to Israel" in particular, despite past vows from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to wipe Israel "off the map."

Meanwhile in Tehran, Ahmadinejad also said that Iran was willing to resume negotiations, although both he and Larijani rejected a condition for talks set by the U.N. Security Council that Iran first freeze its uranium enrichment program. "We are prepared for dialogue but won't suspend our activities," Ahmadinejad said.

The fact that Iran wants to restart talks shows that the sanctions have begun to work. Iranians have started wondering why Ahmadinejad needed to act so clumsily in pushing for nuclear "power". The mullahs appear somewhat nonplussed by the UN scolding, fueled in part by the anti-Israel rhetoric used by their handpicked president. Now Larijani has been sent out to defuse the situation, but a little late for protestations that Iran has no animus towards Israel.

Iran still wants to manipulate the West, however, as Ahmadinejad's declaration demonstrates. If they do not want to consider an end to their efforts to enrich uranium, then the UN has nothing to discuss with Teheran. They have already laid out the conditions for lifting the sanctions and offered a generous package as an incentive to do so, which includes the delivery of safe nuclear power to Iran. The Iranians know what it will take to restart negotiations, but refuse to take the necessary steps.

We need to keep the pressure on while leaving the door open. When Iran wants to engage seriously with the UN, we should make it clear that we're ready to listen -- but not at the expense of our allies in the region, and not by acceding to their demands to become a nuclear military power. When they comply with the UN Security Council resolutions, we can have the conversation they're urgently requesting now.

Obama Goes After Hillary

The Democrats can forget about the 2008 primary being a love-in. The same weekend that Barack Obama threw his hat into the ring, he also aimed a few brickbats at the front-runner over her vote on the war in Iraq. Obama wants to make a clear delineation between himself and Hillary Clinton as the obvious standardbearer for the Left:

Senators Obama and Clinton banged heads over the Iraq war yesterday, marking their first dustup since the start of the presidential campaign.

Just a day after officially announcing his candidacy in Illinois, Mr. Obama took aim at Mrs. Clinton's vote to authorize the war, saying, "I think the war was a tragic mistake and it never should have been authorized."

Mrs. Clinton's vote is the one issue that has been dogging her thus far in the campaign. Otherwise, enthusiastic crowds have been giving her standing ovations on her proposals covering everything from health care to energy dependency. Mr. Obama told reporters that his early opposition to the war is proof positive that "it was possible to make judgments that this would not work out well" and that it speaks "to the kind of judgment that I will be bringing to the office of president."

"I am not clear on how she would proceed at this point to wind down the war in a specific way," Mr. Obama told the Associated Press in an interview. "I know that she's stated that she thinks the war should end by the start of the next president's first term. Beyond that, though, how she wants to accomplish that, I'm not clear on."

Obama has plenty of company on this point, albeit from the primary's peanut galleries. Joe Biden also has described Hillary's position on the war as incoherent, and he's the leading Senate authority on incoherence. Hillary can expect more of the same from every candidate in the race who didn't serve in Congress in October 2002, because it's an easy shot and one that pays dividends with the Left-leaning activists, especially on line.

Six months ago, Hillary seemed so inevitable that people wondered whether she would face much competition for the nomination at all. Now the party seems intent on kneecapping Hillary to the extent that she may not recover for the general election. In fact, the growing split between the antiwar activists and their quest for authenticity in their nominee may well presage their move to a third-party candidate if Hillary does win the nomination. Ralph Nader may look very attractive after a primary defined by Hillary's Iraq War vote.

Predictably, Hillary attempted to turn her campaign towards Bush-hatred instead of answering Obama. She claimed that she wanted to run a positive campaign, but immediately followed that by telling her audience that she knows what high-ranking Republicans, including Karl Rove and Tom DeLay, say in private conversations about her. She told supporters that the GOP fears her candidacy most of all.

I'd say they viewed it as an inevitability, but the GOP certainly would fear an Obama campaign more than Hillary. She comes with too many negatives, and she will find it easier to win the primaries than to convince enough people to support her in the general election, even outside of her Iraq War vote. Obama presents a more difficult target for Republicans -- a warm, likable cipher who can define himself due to his thin political resumé. They would be smart to fear Bill Richardson, who has a more impressive track record than Obama and Hillary put together and who has much more attraction for moderates and centrists.

But the one thing the GOP most feared was a coronation season for the Democrats rather than a contested primary. That fear appears unfounded.

A Response From Team McCain

Yesterday I wrote about the Washington Post article that reported on the financial alliances John McCain has begun to build with financiers he previously criticized for their involvement in 527s. Later that evening, I received a note from the McCain campaign complaining that the Post article had been unfair in its treatment of McCain, and I offered an opportunity for a rebuttal. I had planned to add it to the original post, but it makes more sense to offer it as a separate thread for CQ readers:

The story's headline and central premise are inaccurate. This notion that there is a wide gulf between McCain the reformer and McCain the candidate is not borne out by the facts. Sen. McCain recognizes that if the FEC and Congress do nothing on 527s then Democrats and Republicans alike will use them. This is hardly an endorsement of 527s and the article would have you believe. Sen. McCain is not raising money for or taking money from 527s. He is successfully recruiting people to join his fundraising team who have also given to 527s. This doesn’t comes anywhere near substantiating the article's premise. That Mr. Perenchio and other large donors support Sen. McCain is a testament to his appeal as a candidate.

I have a couple of thoughts on this response. One, it's technically correct -- the campaign has brought these financiers aboard as direct fund-raisers, not for their connections to 527s. The Post article does report that, but it's not done clearly. Second, though, part of McCain's appeal for the BCRA is that campaigns shouldn't have large donors, and that the money corrupts the politicians by pressuring them to bend to the will of these large donors.

Under the rules as they exist now, McCain has done nothing illegal, and he should have the leeway to take full advantage of legal channels for contributions as any other candidate. However, we still have to consider his efforts to make these rules, the effect they have had on the campaign system, and on political speech when we evaluate him as a candidate. We also have to consider what kinds of changes he may make if given the power of the executive. As President, he would appoint commissioners to the FEC. How long before those commissioners start restricting political speech even further than they have at present?

Leftist Terrorist Gains Early Release

My, how quickly five lifetimes fly by! The notorious Baader-Meinhof terrorist Brigitte Mohnhaupt has won parole from Germany and will be released shortly. Despite involvement in nine murders and being sentenced to five life terms, a German court has decided that she poses no risk to society:

A former member of the Baader-Meinhof gang is to be freed on probation after serving 24 years for her involvement in kidnappings and murders in the 1970s.

A German court ruled that Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, qualifies for early release after serving a minimum proportion of her five life sentences.

The group, also known as the Red Army Faction, were behind kidnaps and killings in West Germany. ...

The BBC's Steve Rosenberg, in Berlin, says she was once described as the most evil and dangerous woman in West Germany.

Well, that was back at the tail end of an era that still believed in archaic concepts as evil and punishment. The point of five life sentences was not just to keep society safe, but also to exact justice for the nine lives she took in her murderous spree. As the son of their most prominent victim testified to the court that granted her five years' probation -- five years! -- none of the Red Army faction terrorists ever expressed remorse for their killings.

One suspects that the reason Mohnhaupt and her twisted colleagues receive such mercy is that the German establishment has sympathy for their original aims. The radical Leftists had plenty of fellow travelers in the 1970s, when many of them agitated for the kind of socialism exemplified in East Germany. Some of those went into politics, others into academia, and still more into the legal system. Baader-Meinhof was just a more violent expression of a movement that many supported, and that many still do.

However, one had hoped that the advent of Islamist terrorism would have stripped the romance from the Baader-Meinhof thugs. They slaughtered civilians to make themselves important, giving it a patina of Marxist revolution by spouting political manifestos that had grown tired even at that time. They're no different than al-Qaeda suicide bombers in London, Morocco, Turkey, Madrid, or at the World Trade Center; they just used a different ideology as an excuse for the same mass and serial murders. Not only has Germany made a mockery of life sentences, they have shown that they do not understand the message that this sends to terrorists -- the kind that used Hamburg as a base to kill almost 3,000 Americans on 9/11.

The rest of the Baader-Meinhof gang still in prison will likely join Mohnhaupt soon. Germans can then expect lecture tours around their nation and throughout Europe by these terrorists, scooping up fees and book deals like good capitalists, explaining why the West is decadent and needs a revolution -- a violent revolution. When that happens, Germans can then ask why their court believed them to be no threat to society.

An Unfortunately Fitting Transition In Turkmenistan

The death of Saparmurat Niyazov gave Turkmenistan an opportunity ti shake off decades of rule by personality cult and to allow Turkmen to make a step or two towards democracy and self-rule. Unfortunately, the results show that the cult leaders remain in control, as the vote appears rigged to elect Gerbanguly Berdymukhamedov, a Niyazov confidante, as his replacement:

Turkmenistan held the first officially contested presidential elections in its history on Sunday, conducting a carefully choreographed vote almost certain to be won by a confidant of the reclusive Central Asian nation’s former autocratic leader, who died seven weeks ago.

The election was organized by the tightly controlled state after Saparmurat Niyazov, the only president in the nation’s 15-year history, died on Dec. 21. It was not formally monitored by international observers, who sent small teams of experts that are not expected to make any public statement about the government’s conduct.

But the election was being closely followed by the West, Russia and China for signs of whether the expected result could be the start of changes in a country with gas reserves that are among the largest in the world. Any changes in its foreign and trade relations could have a deep significance for world energy markets, and especially for Russia and its gas monopoly, Gazprom, which relies in part on Turkmen natural gas to meet its obligations to customers. ...

The initial reports of voter turnout, released hours after polls closed at 4 p.m., indicated that nearly 99 percent of eligible voters had cast their ballots, a number so high that the opposition in exile said the vote had been flagrantly rigged to ensure an overwhelming victory for Mr. Berdymukhammedov, and to give his victory the patina of legality.

The election would have made Niyazov, known to his countrymen as Turkmenbashi or Father of all Turkmen, proud. The opposition claims that as little as 10-12% of the eligible voters actually cast ballots, which would have made the election invalid, according to Turkmen law. The transitional government simply cast ballots for those who declined to participate, apparently understanding their intent to keep the strange tyranny in place. Western observers agree with the opposition in exile, calling the announced results "implausible".

Turkmenistan has strategic value, especially for Vladimir Putin, who can hardly afford to lose control of the gas fields that Niyazov opened to Russia. He needs the supply in order to exploit European demand for his own purposes. Putin also needs that supply to pressure Ukraine and now Belarus to remain in the orbit of his influence. He cannot afford to see Turkmenistan fall into the hands of the West-leaning opposition.

However, the West seems to be taking a more cautious approach than with Ukraine and Georgia earlier, even before the elections. They have not used aggressive diplomatic tactics to push for democratic reforms. Even in the face of a fraudulent election, the response has been muted and careful, even from the Bush administration. Berdymukhamedov has promised some reforms from the total oppression of the Niyazov regime, including universal Internet access and student exchange programs. In return, the West hasn't even sent formal election observers to Turkmenistan, avoiding the messy issue of reporting the election as a fraud.

Perhaps this caution is appropriate. However, if the West is afraid to speak out against election fraud in Turkmenistan and press for true democratic reform when it counts, when and where will they bother to do so in the future? Turkmenistan probably elected another 20-year dictatorship over the weekend without a peep from the West. It appears as if Europe has understood the message of energy disruptions from Putin, and have sacrificed Turkmenistan as a result, and the US has followed suit.

Here Comes The Sun

The proponents of man-made climate change want to force an end to the debate over the causes of global warming. Some want to treat skeptics as if they were Holocaust deniers or heretics of old. However, some scientists still have their doubts about whether global warming is real, and whether man has any impact on it at all:

Twenty years ago, climate research became politicised in favour of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers. And while the media usually find mavericks at least entertaining, in this case they often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported.

Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.

So one awkward question you can ask, when you’re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is “Why is east Antarctica getting colder?” It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming. While you’re at it, you might inquire whether Gordon Brown will give you a refund if it’s confirmed that global warming has stopped. The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.

That levelling off is just what is expected by the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the sun drives climate changes more emphatically than greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago.

In a way, anthropogenic climate change speaks to an impulse within humans whenever contemplating catastrophes, real or imagined. In something between arrogance and fear, people cannot believe that they have no control over the origins of events that shape their lives. This causes people to look inward for root causes, and the larger the problem, the greater this dynamic grows. Hence we have people blaming the West for radical Islamist terrorism and believing that a greater dialogue with Muslim absolutists will end it.

Global warming seems of a piece with this. Despite conflicting data and incomplete models, environmentalists insist that the Earth has begun an unstoppable global-warming cycle due to the massive release of carbon for energy over the past century. Evidence to the contrary gets shouted down and those who would challenge this new orthodoxy get shouted down and treated as a greater danger than terrorists in some circles. The problem, assuming it exists, simply has to be caused by mankind -- because it frightens some to think that we have no control over it at all.

I've written before that I think the use of hydrocarbons for energy has outlived its usefulness. It pollutes the air, not because of its carbon dioxide release but because of carbon monoxide and other pollutants. I grew up in Los Angeles and know a little about that. The extraction of crude has become a critical national-security problem. We need to apply our technological advantages to developing alternatives to crude oil for energy production -- but we have to do it rationally, without encumbering our economy due to irrational hysteria.

Rudy Pumps Up California GOP

Can Rudy Giuliani inspire the Republicans in the bluest of regions but with the reddest of blood? He seems to have answered that question in Sacramento, where the enthusiasm for his speech contrasted sharply with the polite but tepid response to one given earlier by the Republican Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger:

Rudolph W. Giuliani came west to learn whether his brand of Republican politics has a chance among party members significantly more conservative than himself. By the time he had received a fourth standing ovation Saturday at the California Republican Party convention, the answer seemed clear.

Equating the U.S. fight against terrorism with the Civil War and the Cold War, Giuliani told about 750 of his party's faithful that failure in Iraq would turn that country into a "massive headquarters for terrorism."

"Having had a job where I didn't have any choice but to make a decision," the former mayor of New York said, "prepares you as best you can be prepared to be the president of the United States." ...

Many in the audience said they are aware of the gaps between their views and Giuliani's. Nonetheless, several who were interviewed seemed willing to give him a break.

"I'm a Christian, and his views on a lot of social issues are to the left of mine," said Larry Stirling, a retired state superior court judge from San Diego. "But if you have to make a trade-off, I'll make the trade-off for Giuliani. He's been through a trial by fire. He's got gravitas. The first thing a president has to do is protect us. The rest is a secondary consideration."

Giuliani's speech "hit the right tone and the right messages," said Kevin C. Eckery, a Sacramento-based Republican political consultant. "He managed to be true to himself and connect with an audience that is more conservative than he is. It shows he can do it."

Well, it's still pretty early, and the enthusiastic response may have had to do with a couple of issues that relate to potential support for Rudy but don't equate to it. First, Giuliani has a mastery of oratory that may be unmatched among Presidential candidates in this cycle. I have not heard Mitt Romney live, but he gets fairly good reviews on delivery, if not always on content. McCain struggles to occasionally be eloquent, but does journeyman work on the stump.

Giuliani is in a class of his own, as I can attest from personal experience. I have heard him speak live, first at the Republican convention in 2004 and again in 2005 here in Minnesota. He commands a room like few others can, and he does it by the force of his personality as well as the content. Giuliani knows to stay on point about national security, which has become his strength early in the cycle along with demonstrated leadership. He discusses his less-popular positions, but has learned to do it in a non-confrontational style that delivers a message that the Republicans can and should have a big tent, rather than a narrow ideological focus.

However, it's precisely his ability to call for consensus that unnerves so many Republicans. After having waited for fiscal responsibility and more advancement on the social issues near to the hearts of so many in the GOP for the past six years, another compromise candidate does not sound particularly exciting. Many in the party, like Giuliani himself, think George Bush has done an excellent job protecting the nation, but squandered conservative credibility on budgetary and small-government issues. Giuliani, thus far, has not alleviated concerns over those same principles, and his positions on abortion and other social issues will seem like a step backwards from where we are now.

All of that is clearly understood by the Giuliani campaign. He offers the GOP a chance to remain firm on national security and a charismatic leader to lead Republicans in a charge for the center at the same time. He could challenge the Democrats for their death-grip on the coasts if he can help the GOP hold the center and South -- if Republicans can trust him not to betray them on guns and abortion. Giuliani presents Republicans with a tough choice indeed.

McCain Backing Away From Campaign Finance Reform?

Conservatives have mistrusted John McCain for five years, ever since he teamed with Russ Feingold to pass the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. The pair intended on ending checkbook politics by restricting the rights of groups to advertise their political arguments while mentioning incumbents in the final 60 days of a campaign, among other restrictions.

Well, time has a way of changing things. The Washington Post reports today that McCain has reversed himself in fact if not in policy by actively pursuing some of the same checkbooks the BCRA supposedly excluded from politics:

Just about a year and a half ago, Sen. John McCain went to court to try to curtail the influence of a group to which A. Jerrold Perenchio gave $9 million, saying it was trying to "evade and violate" new campaign laws with voter ads ahead of the midterm elections.

As McCain launches his own presidential campaign, however, he is counting on Perenchio, the founder of the Univision Spanish-language media empire, to raise millions of dollars as co-chairman of the Arizona Republican's national finance committee.

In his early efforts to secure the support of the Republican establishment he has frequently bucked, McCain has embraced some of the same political-money figures, forces and tactics he pilloried during a 15-year crusade to reduce the influence of big donors, fundraisers and lobbyists in elections. That includes enlisting the support of Washington lobbyists as well as key players in the fundraising machine that helped President Bush defeat McCain in the 2000 Republican primaries. ...

McCain the reformer worked unsuccessfully through Congress and the courts to try to stop nonprofit political groups known as 527s from using unlimited donations to run political ads and fund other activities aimed at influencing voters in the run-up to elections. He reintroduced legislation last week to end 527 donations, but there appears to be little appetite in Congress to pass it.

McCain the candidate now expects Republicans to use the same big-money 527 groups in the 2008 elections to beat Democrats, if the groups remain legal. "The senator believes that both parties should be subjected to an even playing field. If Democratic organizations are allowed to take advantage of 527s, Republican organizations will, too," said Mark Salter, a senior McCain adviser. The senator declined to be interviewed.

On one hand, McCain can argue that he wants a equal playing field in partisan politics, and he will have a point. If 527s remain legal, the Republicans should make as much use out of them as the Democrats. Both parties should work within the law to vigorously pursue their policy goals, and neither should be expected to forego legal funding mechanisms unilaterally. It would not serve their constituencies properly to do so.

However, this seems more than a bit hypocritical on the part of McCain personally. He wants to run for President partly on the basis of his political cleanliness, part of which comes from his attacks on people who contribute through the same mechanisms he now employs for himself. Six out of his eight finance co-chairs have used 527s and soft money to build campaigns since 1998, amounting to over $13 million. These include fundraisers for George Bush in campaigns past, whom he included in his criticisms over fundraising.

In the case of Perenchio, he appears to represent everything that McCain opposed with the BCRA. He has given millions of dollars to groups like Progress for America, which helped George Bush win re-election in 2004. McCain's reformist allies took the FEC to court to stop 527s, citing PFA as one of the offending organizations. McCain and Feingold filed an amicus brief in favor of the plaintiffs complaining about a PFA commercial that featured the daughter of a 9/11 victim, and demanding more regulation to stop PFA and other groups from engaging in political speech.

Now, a couple of years later, McCain welcomes Perenchio's money with open arms. What changed? McCain needs the money to run for President -- and perhaps enact a few more "reforms".

This is the reason that conservatives mistrust McCain. He's not doing anything illegal, but only because McCain failed to convince Congress and the FEC to make it illegal. He has spent the last few years decrying the very actions he takes now as a corrupting influence on the body politic. Apparently, he wants us to trust that he's not corrupted by the checkbooks, but that other politicians have been.

This is ridiculous, and completely unnecessary. If McCain wants to end corruption, then quit creating Byzantine mechanisms to channel and hide money -- and stop limiting political speech. If that solution is good enough for McCain the candidate, then it should be good enough for McCain the Senator.

Even Our Friends Should Butt Out Of Our Politics

Am I the only conservative with misgivings regarding John Howard's proclamation about Barack Obama? Howard, the Prime Minister of Australia and a great friend to the United States, wants to wage an aggressive war against al-Qaeda and radical Islamist terrorists. Australians have been brutally targeted twice in Bali, with hundreds of them dead from suicide bombers, and their proximity to Indonesia makes them well aware of the dangers of appeasement to Muslim extremists. However, I think Howard went too far today in involving himself in the next American election:

Australia's conservative prime minister slammed Barack Obama on Sunday over his opposition to the Iraq war, a day after the first-term U.S. senator announced his intention to run for the White House in 2008. ...

Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a staunch Bush ally who has sent troops to Iraq and faces his own re-election bid later this year, said Obama's proposals would spell disaster for the Middle East.

"I think that will just encourage those who want to completely destabilize and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and a victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for an Obama victory," Howard said on Nine Network television.

"If I were running al-Qaida in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory, not only for Obama but also for the Democrats."

Howard certainly had a point regarding Obama's policy stands on Iraq and the war on terror. Had he limited his criticisms to just the policies, Howard would have made a great argument for tenacity and will. However, he stepped over a line when he claimed that al-Qaeda should pray for an Obama victory.

We have a long tradition of demanding outside governments stay out of our elections, even rhetorically, and that they should allow the American electorate to make our own decisions about leadership. Granted, we have not always been good neighbors about doing that ourselves, and Australian elections in particular came in for some heavy-handed CIA interference in the 1970s. (It was this interference that initially created the impulse of Christopher Boyce to start selling secrets from TRW to the Soviets when he inadvertently stumbled onto coded intercepts from CIA stations overseas.) This kind of rhetoric, though, would be beyond the pale for mainstream domestic politics, let alone from the leader of another nation.

Predictably, however, the Obama campaign managed to make itself look even worse. Spokesman Robert Gibbs managed to insult the Australians in kind by implying that the Aussies hadn't sacrificed in the war:

"If Prime Minister Howard truly believes what he says, perhaps his country should find its way to contribute more than just 1,400 troops so some American troops can come home," he said. "It's easy to talk tough when it's not your country or your troops making the sacrifices."

That shows why the inexperienced Obama needs to spend another ten years or so getting some seasoning. The Aussies have been one of our strongest friends in the world over a long period of time. They have contributed troops and suffered losses, just as we have, while the Islamist threat sits a lot closer to their nation than it does to ours. Perhaps Obama's entire campaign flunked geography, but someone had better send them a globe and point out the proximity of Indonesia to Australia -- and Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and so on. The Aussies are very isolated in that corner of the world, and they need to protect themselves as well as assist us in Iraq.

I have tremendous admiration for John Howard, and I understand the concern that drove his commentary. It's still inappropriate, regardless of the stupidity of Obama's response. I wouldn't want our allies commenting on Republican candidates, and they shouldn't comment on Democratic candidates, either.

UPDATE: Fixed a couple of typos. Also, read the two posts at TMV for the perspectives of Joe Gandelman and Michael van der Galien.

The Liberal Case For Strict Constructionism?

Imagine my surprise when the New York Times ran an op-ed yesterday on the evils of an overly large federal government and the wisdom of following the Constitutional framework for sovereign states united in common defense. Gar Alperovitz writes approvingly of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest speech comparing California to the nation-states of Athens and Sparta, and warns that America is getting too big to be a "functional democracy", recommending regional interstate alliances on such issues as health care and environmentalism:

SOMETHING interesting is happening in California. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seems to have grasped the essential truth that no nation — not even the United States — can be managed successfully from the center once it reaches a certain scale. Moreover, the bold proposals that Mr. Schwarzenegger is now making for everything from universal health care to global warming point to the kind of decentralization of power which, once started, could easily shake up America’s fundamental political structure.

Governor Schwarzenegger is quite clear that California is not simply another state. “We are the modern equivalent of the ancient city-states of Athens and Sparta,” he recently declared. “We have the economic strength, we have the population and the technological force of a nation-state.” In his inaugural address, Mr. Schwarzenegger proclaimed, “We are a good and global commonwealth.”

Political rhetoric? Maybe. But California’s governor has also put his finger on a little discussed flaw in America’s constitutional formula. The United States is almost certainly too big to be a meaningful democracy. What does “participatory democracy” mean in a continent? Sooner or later, a profound, probably regional, decentralization of the federal system may be all but inevitable.

A recent study by the economists Alberto Alesina of Harvard and Enrico Spolaore of Tufts demonstrates that the bigger the nation, the harder it becomes for the government to meet the needs of its dispersed population. Regions that don’t feel well served by the government’s distribution of goods and services then have an incentive to take independent action, the economists note.

Scale also determines who has privileged access to the country’s news media and who can shape its political discourse. In very large nations, television and other forms of political communication are extremely costly. President Bush alone spent $345 million in his 2004 election campaign. This gives added leverage to elites, who have better corporate connections and greater resources than non-elites. The priorities of those elites often differ from state and regional priorities.

If this sounds familiar, it should -- to anyone who studied American history. The structure of the United States has from its beginnings mistrusted a large central government, and not just in terms of its impact on individual liberty. The notion that a government situated in a central position hundreds of miles from most of its citizens could understand and address their needs was as ludicrous then as it is today, actually even more so considering the speed of communications.

James Madison understood this, although Alperovitz focuses more on Madison's concern over the size of a nation as regards its geographical size instead of the size of its government. He quotes Madison as saying that an overly large nation would allow its central government to divide and conquer the citizenry and impose tyranny. In fact, his Constitutional model was intended to ensure that didn't happen regardless of the geographic footprint the nation would eventually assume, and the concern was over the size of the center, not the physical boundaries of the nation.

Consider the model Madison created. Each state retained its sovereignty, except in a few key areas. The federal government had the responsibility to provide for the common defense, to provide a common currency, conduct foreign policy, and regulate interstate commerce. The states retained the ability to govern in all other areas, and nothing in the Constitution prohibited them from working in concert on anything except that which the Constitution proscribed the states from doing individually. Amendments to the Constitution allowed the federal government the responsibility to enforce the Constitutional prohibitions against civil-rights violations in the Bill of Rights and the 13th-16th Amendments, but that is the extent of federal power ... at least as enumerated in the Constitution.

The problems pointed out by Alperovitz all spring from an impulse to grow the federal government to address issues where the states have resisted change. The interstate commerce clause has been repeatedly abused, mostly in the 20th century, as an excuse to grant federal jurisdiction where Madison never dreamed. Health care, education, welfare, and all sorts of programs became federal programs instead of under the control of the local communities as Madison intended -- and the result has been in each case a bloated federal bureaucracy that loses touch with the communities they supposedly serve.

It makes little difference what size the nation is; it's the size of the center that creates the problems. And the Constitution isn't the problem, it's the solution.

What Alperovitz proposes is nothing new. He describes nothing more than a return to federalism as Madison envisioned it. The "devolution" of power that he notes in other countries, notably Britain, would be a simple return to Constitutional structure in the US. All of the ills he describes in this piece are easily solved by that solution. End all of the federal programs that exist outside the powers granted to the central government in the Constitution and force the states to assume responsibility for them instead. The money saved in federal taxes would assuredly get captured by the states, where individual citizens have more power to determine how the money gets spent. That will allow the sovereign states to make their own decisions on environmental issues, health care, welfare -- just as Alperovitz recommends.

It's amazing, but I think we've just heard the liberal case for strict constructionism.