Movie Review: Amazing Grace

We're in the middle of the biggest snowstorm of the year, perhaps of the last few years, but I wanted to make sure I saw the film Amazing Grace as soon as it opened in our area. I had heard almost nothing about the movie before its opening last night, except that it purported to tell the true story of hymn that I love. I had some familiarity with the story of how the song came to be written and thought it would make a grand story for the screen.

However, I was wrong -- about the plot of the film. The genesis of the song is mostly ignored for the more gripping story of the man who fought slavery in Great Britain over the long course of his life, and if anything, this seems more fitting than my original notion. The film succeeds in combining faith, history, politics, and biography into a compelling narrative that surpassed my expectations.

William Wilberforce fought slavery as a Member of Parliament for most of his public life. He and his friend, the young William Pitt, tried to stop the slave trade as a means to choking off the entire institution. Called seditionists and worse, the entrenched interests of the slavers fought Wilberforce for years, but could not quell his desire to put an end to the trade. It took more than twenty years for Wilberforce to finally beat the slavers, and he died 28 years later as Parliament finally emancipated the slaves of the British empire.

Ioan Gruffudd plays Wilberforce with the earnestness that he brought to the Horatio Hornblower series. In some respects, Gruffudd overacts just a bit, but the part requires his energy to keep viewers engaged. His passion ignites the screen, and one can overlook the few times he seems to be trying a little too hard. Others in the cast give impressive performances, especially Benedict Cumberbatch as Pitt. Cumberbatch has only a four-year filmography, but plays Pitt in his younger and older incarnations brilliantly. Michael Gambon takes a break from his Harry Potter duties to play Lord Charles Fox as a daunting and somewhat mischievous politician, whose support makes the difference over the long haul. Toby Jones and Ciaran Hinds distinguish themselves as supporters of the slave trade who gradually lose to the determination and tenacity of Wilberforce and the inevitable shame that slavery brings upon the British.

But by far the most moving and unforgettable performance is given by the amazing Albert Finney as John Newton, the man who wrote the song. Soul-sick over his participation in the slave trade, Newton turned to God and became a minister after writing perhaps the most well-known hymn in history. The movie catches Newton in his later years, as old age gradually turned him blind and his passion for the abolitionist cause came to the fore. Finney makes the most of the part, expressing a self-loathing and a burden of guilt so tangible, viewers can almost hold it in their hands. His anger and frustration matches Wilberforce's, but Finney projects it onto both characters with such force that it wrenches the heart.

And the heart is where this film lives. The ghastly subject pulls us into late 18th century politics, where the revolutions in America and France has poisoned the atmosphere for dissent, and also awakened the truth that Africans are just as human as Europeans. Amazing Grace as a hymn tells about how one man went from blindness to sight, and Amazing Grace as a film tells how the British made the same journey. It will inspire audiences with this journey, and people of faith will understand how Wilberforce could have persevered for so long against interests so entrenched that they relied on the crown for their support.

Without a doubt, go see this movie. Albert Finney's performance alone is worth the price of the ticket, but there is much, much more to Amazing Grace than just the lyricist.

Addendum: I was struck after the film at how the British managed to end slavery without falling into a civil war, although the film hints at such an outcome along the way. Unfortunately, we did not follow the same path as the British, to our shame and to our detriment, and the effects have lasted for more than half the life of this nation.

... And Brigham Young's Great-Great-Great-Grandson Won A Super Bowl

Are the media really this desperate to find some dirt on Mitt Romney? I guess they must be:

While Mitt Romney condemns polygamy and its prior practice by his Mormon church, the Republican presidential candidate's great-grandfather had five wives and at least one of his great-great grandfathers had 12.

Polygamy was not just a historical footnote, but a prominent element in the family tree of the former Massachusetts governor now seeking to become the first Mormon president.

Romney's great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, married his fifth wife in 1897. That was more than six years after Mormon leaders banned polygamy and more than three decades after a federal law barred the practice.

Uh, okay. So? What exactly does that have to do with Mitt Romney and the race for the presidency? According to the Nosey Parkers at Cal State Fullerton -- my alma mater, natch -- it shows that it was an essential part of the Romney family experience:

B. Carmon Hardy, a polygamy expert and retired history professor at California State University-Fullerton, said polygamy was "a very important part of Miles Park Romney's family."

Hardy added: "Now, very gradually, as you moved farther away from it, it became less a part of it. But during the time of Miles Park Romney, it was an essential principle of the Romney family life."

Oh, sweet Lord. Yeah, if you move farther away from it, it becomes less important, as in not at all. The last polygamist in Romney's ancestors was three generations earlier. My paternal great-grandfather was a drunkard; does that disqualify me from driving, too?

I guess we have the layers of editors and checks at the Asinine Press to thank for this story, as well as chief political busybodies Jennifer Dobner and Glen Johnson. Unless Mitt's running on the "legalize polygamy" platform, what in the hell does this have to do with anything?

UPDATE: I decided to wander over to Memeorandum to see who else might be writing about this low blow from the AP, and found good posts by Outside the Beltway and Iowa Voice. (Actually, Brian at Iowa Voice did the same thing.) And Kevin Hayden has, er, succinct advice to the media from the left.

Who's The Dumb One?

This YouTube and assorted photos from the shot have been whipping around the Internet, which purports to show the supposed idiocy of Israeli defense minister Amir Peretz. He's so stupid, he can't even tell when he has caps on his binoculars!

I have no idea if Peretz is an idiot or not, but I'm pretty sure he can tell when the binoculars have their lens caps still affixed. It appears to me that these aren't caps at all, but filters to keep sunlight from reflecting off the lenses.

Flashes off of binoculars gives one's position away to the enemy, and filters would keep that from happening, as well as reducing glare in very sunny conditions. If you look closely at the video, those "caps" appear to be some type of fabric, not plastic.

I could be wrong, but I think Peretz can still tell sunlight from dark, and that this incident isn't at all what people think it is.

UPDATE: If this looks familiar, it might be because it happened to Bill Clinton. Read this Snopes entry. (h/t: McGehee)

The Lateral Transfer, NATO-Style (Updated)

Tony Blair's decision to draw down British forces in Basra after handing security responsibility to Iraq gave critics of the war in Iraq some dubious ammunition with which to attack it and the Bush administrations new surge strategy. However, the British troops won't be cooling their heels in London or anywhere else in the UK. Blair has to send the same number of troops he's drawing out of Basra into Afghanistan, thanks to a failure of our NATO allies to reinforce the effort to defeat the Taliban:

An extra battle group of up to 1,500 British troops is to be sent to Afghanistan to take on the Taleban over the next few months, the Government will announce on Monday. The extensive reinforcement, bringing the number of British troops in Afghanistan to about 7,000, has been agreed with Nato after alliance partners failed to offer more infantry units to fight in the south.

General Bantz Craddock, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (Saceur), had appealed to all Nato members to come up with additional troops during a defence ministers’ meeting in Seville this month.

Whitehall sources said that, apart from “a few bits and pieces”, no one had offered fighting troops. “We felt we couldn’t wait any longer because it would risk unravelling all the achievements we have been making in the south, so we have offered another battle group,” one said.

The deployment of up to 1,500 more troops, with armoured vehicles and extra helicopters, will be timed for when a British general takes command of the southern region in May. Major-General Jacko Page, whose 6th Division headquarters will be in Kandahar, had specifically asked for more.The new battle group will be formed into a reserve force that can be sent to any part of southern Afghanistan, not just Helmand, where 5,000 British troops are based. A further 500 are in Kabul, the capital.

Britain and the US have received years of criticism for the foray into Iraq to resolve the 12-year standoff there rather than commit more troops to fight the terrorists of the Taliban. However, when the subject of that fight comes up, the defense ministers of the NATO alliance suddenly find a lot of excuses as to why they cannot contribute troops for the mission. Liam Fox, the shadow Defence Secretary, puts it rather bluntly: “Too many of our European partners are now pocketing the Nato security guarantee but leaving UK taxpayers and the UK military to carry the cost."

NATO currently has 35,000 troops in Afghanistan. The US provides 27,000 of them, followed by the existing British contingent of 5,500. That leaves around 2,500 troops contributed by the rest of our partners in the war on terror, many of which have placed restrictions on their deployment in combat areas. That's less participation than we had during the invasion of Iraq.

Perhaps we should end our NATO alliance and look for more suitable partners for security. The Eastern European nations appear more rational about the threat to freedom coming from Southwest Asia these days. The traditional NATO nations, save the UK, appear to have decided that the doctrine of unity among members has little to do with them. The US should pull itself out of Western Europe altogether and let them provide for their own security, paying their own bills and organizing their own policies rather than continue subsidizing ennui.

UPDATE: Some commenters point out Canada's contribution and dispute the numbers. The confusion comes from the fact that there are two separate operations in Afghanistan, ISAF and Operation Enduring Freedom. Here's a map of the deployments:

Bear in mind that almost all of the combat occurs in RC(S) and RC(E). Which flags do we see? American, British, American, Canadian, American, Australian, the Dutch, and ... uh ... American. Most of the nations in the north have restrictions on the use of their troops for combat missions, leaving the Anglosphere with almost all of the front-line duty.

NARN, The Apologize-Or-Else 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 I'm sure we'll be talking about Hillary Clinton's feud with Barack Obama, as well as more of the siller notions floated by the Democratic presidential hopefuls in their non-debate debate this week. We're certainly going to talk about the Democrats' latest efforts to lose the war in Iraq through another Congressional effort to handcuff the White House.

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

Buyer's Remorse Replaces Bugler's Delight

Great Britain celebrated when they won the 2012 Olympics over the French in 2005, hailing it as a triumph of Cool Britannia and a chance to underscore the importance of the UK. The Parisians sulked in grand fashion. Both may want to reconsider their reactions in the face of the mounting costs of conducting the Olympics:

It has been reported that the cost of the 2012 London Olympics could soar to £9 billion, almost four times the original estimate.

The BBC has reported that the Treasury and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport are discussing the price, up from the £2.35 billion set out in London's bid document.

The Government reportedly believes construction alone could cost £3.3 billion, with an extra £2 billion allocated as a contingency fund. The £9 billion figure also includes regeneration costs of £1.8 billion and a £1 billion VAT bill.

Given the state of the world at the moment, it should surprise no one that it also includes a £900 million bill for security. London seems particularly challenging in that regard. With Muslim extremists attracting more and more followers in the ancient city, the Olympics seems a rather tempting target for radical Islamist terrorism, even as far off as these Games still are.

Nine billion pounds equates to $17.7 billion at today's rate of conversion. By comparison, the Salt Lake City games -- conducted in 2002 in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks -- cost $2 billion. Atlanta, which was marred by domestic terrorism, cost $2.4 billion in 1996, at that point a record amount. Sydney's 2000 summer games cost $2 billion. However, London isn't far off from the bill generated by Athens, which ran to $14.6 billion in 2004.

I've heard of inflation, but this is ridiculous. You could feed Africa on what Athens and the UK will have spent on two summer Olympics. In 2006 dollars, we spent $17 billion developing and building the command and service modules for the Apollo project that put a man on the moon; in fact, the London Olympics -- which lasts less than three weeks -- will spend over 12% of what we spent on the entire Apollo program in today's dollars.

The Olympics have turned into the most self-indulgent, overblown human endeavor in history. The peoples of the world should refuse to hold these events until the amount of publc funds spent on them start to have some relationship to their actual benefit.

Investigators: Florida Voters Still Can't Read A Ballot

An investigation by Florida election officials into an 18,000-vote gap in a 2006 Congressional district last November has concluded that the voting machines worked properly, but that Floridians once again could not comprehend the ballot. The conclusion by a blue-ribbon panel of university researchers will likely doom efforts of the Democratic runner-up to get a new election:

Florida election officials announced yesterday that an examination of voting software did not find any malfunctions that could have caused up to 18,000 votes to be lost in a disputed Congressional race in Sarasota County, and they suggested that voter confusion over a poor ballot design was mainly to blame.

The finding, reached unanimously by a team of computer experts from several universities, could finally settle last fall’s closest federal election. The Republican candidate, Vern Buchanan, was declared the winner by 369 votes, but the Democrat, Christine Jennings, formally contested the results, claiming that the touch-screen voting machines must have malfunctioned.

Legal precedents make it difficult to win a lawsuit over ballot design, but a substantial error in the software might have been grounds for a new election.

The questions about the electronic machines arose because many voters complained that they had had trouble getting their votes to register for Ms. Jennings, and the machines did not have a back-up paper trail that might have provided clues about any problems. The report said some voters might have accidentally touched the screen twice, thus negating their votes, while most of the others probably overlooked the race on the flawed ballot.

Needless to say, voters in the district seem a little unhappy with the conclusion that thirteen percent of them are so incompetent that they could not properly cast their votes. However, the independent panel ran the machines and their software through the wringer and could not find any malfunctions. Further, they said that any such problem would have affected more than one race, and no evidence of severe undervoting arose from the other races on the ballot.

The positioning of the Jennings-Buchanan contest appears to have caused the problem. The two-person race got stuck between multiple-candidate lists, making it difficult to pick them out. The electronic ballot, which used pictures and touch screens, did not highlight the race in the same way as it did others, making it easier to miss. Eighty-seven percent of Sarasota-area voters managed to find it, of course, but not the rest.

What next? Jennings wants another investigation, but this should drive a stake through the heart of the effort. If there was no software malfunction that actually changed votes, then there is no reason for a special election to revote between Jennings and Buchanan. The House could unseat Buchanan and seat Jennings in his place, but that seems rather unlikely, given the results of this investigation. It doesn't affect the balance of power, and if no malfeasance can be found, it would prove highly inflammatory in a session that already has enough to inflame it. Jennings will have to wait until next year and try again to win the seat.

Once again, however, this shows that jumping into solutions in a panic just creates more problems down the road. Before Florida started buying voting systems after the 2000 Presidential election embarrassment, they should have stopped to consider what they wanted in balloting systems -- and a paper trail probably would have been near the top of a list generated by a rational process. In the end, however, it makes little difference what balloting system is used when the ballot itself is poorly designed, a lesson that also should have been learned from 2000.

MINOR CORRECTION: The investigators ran them through the wringer, not the ringer, although the image of Quasimodo as a beta tester has its humor. Thanks to CQ reader Kirk H for the note.

Who's Carrying The Hatchet At Justice, And Why?

Another US attorney has resigned, apparently forced from her job by the Department of Justice, making a total of eight since the beginning of December. Since one normally sees this kind of turnover in the fast-food or housekeeping industries, it does not seem too nosy to ask what the hell is going on at Justice:

An eighth U.S. attorney announced her resignation yesterday, the latest in a wave of forced departures of federal prosecutors who have clashed with the Justice Department over the death penalty and other issues.

Margaret Chiara, the 63-year-old U.S. attorney in Grand Rapids, Mich., told her staff that she was leaving her post after more than five years, officials said. Sources familiar with the case confirmed that she was among a larger group of prosecutors who were first asked to resign Dec. 7. ...

Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty told senators earlier this month that all but one of the prosecutors were fired for "performance-related" reasons. McNulty said that former U.S. attorney Bud Cummins of Little Rock was removed so the job could be given to a former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove.

Nearly all of the dismissed prosecutors had positive job reviews, but many had run into political trouble with Washington over immigration, capital punishment or other issues, according to prosecutors and others. At least four also were presiding over high-profile public corruption investigations when they were dismissed.

In three month's time, almost ten percent of the entire set of US Attorneys have been pushed out the door. That seems rather significant, and not coincidental. The Washington Post makes gender its first hook in this story, but that's really not significant; women make up 17% of the positions and 25% of those apparently dismissed.

Only one of these prosecutors had less than a good job review in their previous evaluations. If they performed well, why have they been asked to leave? We have been told little, except that Justice cleared one position in order to make room for a Karl Rove aide. McNulty says that the prosecutors have been removed for performance issues, but that's going to be difficult to sell considering the hosannas some of these people have received since their dismissals as well as their previous reviews.

One prosecutor's case got more publicity after her resignation. Carol Lam had driven the case against Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the Republican Congressman from San Diego convicted of taking millions in bribes and of corruption going back years. While DoJ sources told the San Diego Union-Tribune that Lam got the axe because she hadn't prosecuted enough gun and border cases, Lam had made it a higher priority to target the leaders of immigrant-smuggling organization rather than the coyotes who did the foot work.

However, critics of Lam did have one strong point: prosecutions in her office declined by 38 percent in the first four years of Lam's tenure. Has that been the case with all of the eight prosecutors pushed out the door over the past three months? If so, then let's see the data. The Attorney General should be making the case for its ten-percent solution publicly, because most of these prosecutors got appointed by the Bush administration. If they're incompetent, then let's find out how they managed to get good evaluations up to the time they got pressured to resign their posts. If they're not incompetent, then I think we need a better explanation why they have been pushed out the door than just some vague reference to "performance".

UPDATE: Mac says there's nothing to see here except politics as usual. He quotes Andy McCarthy -- always a wise move -- in comparing this to the first days of the Clinton administration:

One of President Clinton’s very first official acts upon taking office in 1993 was to fire every United States attorney then serving — except one, Michael Chertoff, now Homeland Security secretary but then U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, who was kept on only because a powerful New Jersey Democrat, Sen. Bill Bradley, specifically requested his retention.

Were the attorneys Clinton fired guilty of misconduct or incompetence? No. As a class they were able (and, it goes without saying, well-connected). Did he shove them aside to thwart corruption investigations into his own party? No. It was just politics, plain and simple.

True enough. However, these aren't the first days of the Bush administration, and these firings did not come as a result of his re-election, either. Most, if not all, have been Bush appointees, including Carol Lam. A system of political spoils doesn't explain the turnover occurring at the DoJ.

At Least He Gave It His All

If anyone doubts the ridiculous nature of the 2008 Presidential election cycle, the capitulation of Tom Vilsack eleven months before the first caucus gathers should confirm it. In a race where everyone expected Hillary Clinton and John Edwards to have high-profile campaigns, Vilsack withdrew because he hadn't raised enough money ... by February 2007:

Former Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa ended his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on Friday, saying the crowded field had made it impossible for him to raise enough money to remain competitive in an accelerated coast-to-coast campaign.

After making his announcement, Mr. Vilsack spent the afternoon taking calls from former rivals. They sent their best wishes, even as they began seeking his endorsement in Iowa, where the caucus early next year will kick off the process of selecting a nominee.

“I’m not thinking about that today,” Mr. Vilsack said in a telephone interview, pausing for a moment after juggling a string of calls from a variety of suitors, including Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

Candidates also issued statements praising his candidacy.

For some reason, people had talked up Governor Vilsack ever since 2004, when John Kerry had apparently considered him as a VP candidate. This attention owes more to Vilsack's status as the Governor of the first state to hold its caucuses rather than any innate political qualities in Vilsack. He proved yesterday that the press overestimated the power of his candidacy, overestimating his impact and his staying power.

And while many of us continue to point out how ridiculous these early declarations and campaign starts have become, it's much more ridiculous to have capitulations a year before the primaries begin in earnest. So much for campaign finance reform; now candidates have to line up the checkbooks a full year before primary and almost two years before the election. Only James Carville and a raft of political consultants could take pleasure in this development; Carville was the architect of the perpetual campaign, and 2007 is his vision writ large.

The scene captured by the New York Times photographers almost reaches the level of satire. Vilsack stood at a podium, surrounded by his family and supporters while the cameras clicked away, as if this was a concession speech on Election Night. Memo to candidates: if you can't stick it out until the first election, go away quietly. This season of silliness is bad enough without the lip-biting finales being conducted before the race even starts.

Blair Wants Missile Shield In The UK

Tony Blair stunned observers on both sides of the Atlantic by revealing his efforts to have the American missile shield system installed in the UK. Backbenchers of his party worry that Blair will try to lock them into a partnership on a system whose costs may not be known, and the Tories apparently feel slighted about not having been consulted:

Downing Street yesterday confirmed it had asked the US to consider Britain as a possible launching pad for US missile interceptors as part of the Bush administration's proposed "son of Star Wars" anti-ballistic defence scheme.

The government had previously played down such reports and the admission that talks were under way came only after The Economist reported that Tony Blair was lobbying the Bush administration

A Downing Street spokeswoman said: "Discussions with the US have taken place at various levels. Decisions on additional support for the missile defence system are at a very early stage and no decisions have been taken as to whether any element of that system would be based in the UK or where they might be based in the UK. We welcome plans to place further missile defence assets in Europe." ...

Both Labour backbenchers and the opposition complained that the government had not raised the issue with MPs at any point. It has been suggested the US would want work to begin in 2008 with the anti-missile system in place by 2012. Such a scheme would be controversial and raise the spectre of a return to Greenham Common-style mass peace protest.

Gordon Brown is understood to be aware of the discussions - and the financial implications - but not to have played an active role in them. Several Labour MPs expressed concern that Mr Blair might be attempting to cement Britain's close ties to the US before standing down.

This will pull the rug out from under those here in the US who want to put an end to the missile-shield program. Blair has legitimized the program in a way that George Bush could not. Blair's push to get the UK considered for the European sites shows that people outside the Bush administration takes it seriously, and the effort indicates that Blair thinks it will work.

However, that seems to be the very problem that causes Blair's party such consternation. Western Europeans have little enthusiasm for the embodiment of the Reaganism they abhorred twenty years ago, until it proved effective. While the US and its Eastern European allies point to the rising threat of Iran and its missile program, their Western counterparts want to keep Vladimir Putin and Russia appeased. At the very least -- and this seems like a reasonable objection -- they expect to be consulted on any moves by the Prime Minister to enter into a program that has the potential to unsettle the political status on the Continent.

As far as "cementing" Anglo-American ties, I had no idea that the notion would create such unease. The alliance between the USA and the UK has always extended to the deepest cooperation on strategic and military concerns. If the US develops an effective missile shield, the UK would be one of the first we'd trust with it, and one of the first we'd want working with us on its deployment. Even beyond the missile shield, Americans believe the British to be their best friends in the world. Why would Labour MPs feel concern about Blair ensuring that those ties stay strong before he leaves office?

Giuliani Wins The Election! (Of February 2007)

There's nothing more predictive than a hot, breaking poll less than 90 weeks before an election, so let's be sure we give this Rasmussen poll the attention it deserves. Okay, we'll give it more attention than it deserves, but we'll just say we're doing it for the practice.

Snark aside, Rasmussen's new head-to-head polling on general election matchups shows an interesting phenomenon ... a strong streak of opposition to Hillary Clinton. That shines through the results of a Giuliani-Clinton matchup that may incentivize Hillary's Democratic primary opponents (via Hot Air):

In a match-up between the early 2008 frontrunners, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) leads New York Senator Hillary Clinton (D) 52% to 43%. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Giuliani’s lead growing in recent months. His current nine-point advantage is up from a six point lead in January and a four-point lead in December.

Giuliani has solidified his title as the most popular candidate of Election 2008—his favorability ratings have inched back up to 70% ...

Clinton is viewed favorably by 50% and unfavorably by 48%. The last four times that Rasmussen Reports has polled on a Giuliani-Clinton race, Clinton’s support has remained unchanged at 43%.

While both candidates draw reasonable levels of support from within their own party, Giuliani has an enormous 64% to 27% advantage over Clinton among unaffiliated voters.

Hillary's negatives have been known for quite some time. The Democrats believed that she would overcome them once she began to campaign nationally, but that hasn't happened. In fact, this week she showed herself as an insecure crank, or at least her campaign made her seem uptight and insecure.

Giuliani exposes her as an albatross for the Democrats. Despite having near-universal recognition, she can only muster 43% against Rudy. Her Democratic opponents do not fare much better in terms of their support against Giuliani, but more people seem willing to be undecided regarding them than they do with Hillary. Edwards and Obama score in the mid-40s, but they also pull Giuliani into the same range, especially Edwards.

Is that Giuliani? It seems more reflective of Hillary. She has a large bloc of voters who will vote against her regardless of her opponent. Edwards and Obama get more benefit of the doubt.

What does this mean for Hillary? It means that she'd lose the election, if they held it today. It serves more as an early-warning system for the Democrats; Hillary comes with some serious electability limitations, and if that doesn't start shifting in the next few months, she can kiss that nomination goodbye. Assuming, of course, that nothing changes for the next 20 months.

Addendum: I forgot to note that John McCain also beats Hillary by 5 points, just outside the margin of error. However, he doesn't break the 50% mark as Rudy does against Hillary. Hillary had tied McCain in Rasmussen's January poll, but she slid back to the trailing position in February.

A bit more interesting is the favorability quotients of the Republican candidates. Giuliani has the largest positive rating by far, with a +43. McCain still surprisingly comes in second with +16. The rest of the pack has a quotient of less than 10 points, including Mitt Romney with a +4 (but 34% undecided). Sam Brownback, Newt Gingrich, Chuck Hagel, Mike Huckabee, and Duncan Hunter all have negative quotients, but most of them have large undecideds as well -- except for Gingrich.

Giuliani: Consistency Trumps Pandering

The London Telegraph has an interesting profile of Rudy Giuliani, using a South Carolina campaign stop to spotlight the paradoxes of his run at the Republican nomination. While the Telegraph describes Giuliani somewhat hyperbolically as refusing to kowtow to the GOP's conservative base -- Giuliani never says anything like that in the article -- it does point up Rudy's consistency as his greatest asset on the stump:

Whereas his rivals John McCain and Mitt Romney are engaged in attempts to disavow previous statements and recast themselves as social conservatives, Mr Giuliani's pitch is that "for most it's never about one issue" and consistency is preferable to pandering.

"I believe you've got to run based on what you are, who you really are," he told The Daily Telegraph. "I find if you do it that way even people who disagree with you sometimes respect you."

Mr Giuliani noted that his pro-choice abortion position had not changed in nearly two decades. The former mayor declined to draw the contrast himself, but Mr McCain supported the Roe versus Wade abortion ruling as late as 1999 [see update below] and Mr Romney was pro-choice in 2004 but now declares himself pro-life.

"I'm just telling you the most honest answer to the question, which is the same answer I gave in 1989," Mr Giuliani told The Daily Telegraph. "I would advise my daughter or anyone else not to have an abortion. I'd do anything I could to help and assist with an adoption. I would like to see it ended but ultimately I believe a woman has a right to choose."

That quality of leadership will be very appealing to Republicans of all stripes when the primaries arrive. Many of us wish that a conservative with Giuliani's national standing and mien will arise between now and January, and some of those hopes rest on Newt Gingrich. Gingrich will not make any commitment until at least September, making clear that he sees this long campaign as a ridiculous attempt to achieve full employment for political consultants.

The Telegraph also noted the difference in tone between the Democrats and the Republicans in the primary campaign. The Democrats have begun feuding openly, while on the surface the GOP has remained courteous. Giuliani told the Telegraph that he would not comment on any of the other candidates in the race. "We've got some terrific people that are running," he replied when invited to go negative on other Republicans.

Let's hope that this attitude will start filtering down to the lower levels of the campaigns. Bloggers are getting bombarded with negatives from most of the campaigns. Given that we have so much time before voters have to make up their minds for the primary, the candidates and their campaigns should be making the positive cases for their election. Instead, we are already seeing too much of the oppo research filtering through the blogosphere into the media, with YouTubes and clippings of flip-flops bubbling up all over the place. People seem oblivious that damaging all of our contenders at this point will make it more difficult for them to get elected in November 2008, not just the primaries.

I'd like the opportunity to vote for someone rather than against someone else, if the GOP campaigns will allow it.

Be sure to read all of the Telegraph's reporting on Giuliani. The British take on Rudy is intriguing.

UPDATE: Patrick Hynes says the Telegraph got it wrong on McCain and Roe, calling it "manifestly untrue" in an e-mail earlier. The reference to 1999 comes from this statement made during the run-up to the 2000 primaries:

Aides to McCain said perhaps he could have been clearer in comments he made to the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN, but that he had not wavered from his long-term opposition to abortion or his belief that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, should be repealed.

"I'd love to see a point where it is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary," McCain told the Chronicle in an article published Friday. "But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations."

On Sunday, on CNN's "Late Edition," McCain reiterated that he would not have an abortion "litmus" test for a running mate or Supreme Court nominees. He added that while he ultimately favors repeal of Roe, "we all know, and it's obvious, that if we repeal Roe v. Wade tomorrow, thousands of young American women would be performing illegal and dangerous operations."

In context, it seems that McCain tried and failed to be nuanced on the issue. He opposes abortion, but doesn't want Roe repealed (or didn't at the time) because an abrupt end to the decision would supposedly shut down abortion clinics. If that was his thought, he still got it wrong; a repeal of Roe would not make abortion illegal at all. It would allow legislatures to pass new laws regulating, restricting, or protecting abortion as they see fit, but until they passed laws against abortion, it would remain legal even after the end of Roe.

I don't think the Telegraph report was "manifestly untrue", but it did take McCain out of context.

Who Wins In The Democratic Feud?

The eruption of hostilities between the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns this week potentially creates an opening for another candidate to exploit to match or best the two front-runners. Josh Gerstein makes the case that John Edwards will gain the most traction from a Hillary-Barack feud, relying on a man with unfortunate experience in campaign meltdowns:

As the dust settles from the first showdown between the presidential campaigns of Senators Clinton and Obama, political analysts are wondering who will benefit from protracted wrangling between the two top contenders for the Democratic nomination.

A former senator of North Carolina, John Edwards, is emerging as one potential beneficiary of the spat that broke out over critical comments from a Hollywood supporter of Mr. Obama, David Geffen.

Mr. Edwards "is clearly adept at letting two other candidates go after each other and slipping up the middle," a Democratic campaign adviser, Joseph Trippi, said.

As campaign manager for Governor Dean in 2004, Mr. Trippi witnessed such a scenario firsthand. After leading in Iowa polls, Dr. Dean and Richard Gephardt got into a war of words and television ads, allowing Senator Kerry of Massachusetts and Mr. Edwards to surge into first and second place on caucus day.

Analysts said the scuffle over Mr. Geffen's comments does not necessarily portend months of fighting between the camps of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama. However, Mr. Trippi said such exchanges can become self-perpetuating, as each campaign struggles to get the last word. "When it does something you may not want, or you want to break the embrace, you can't," he said.

I tend to think that Hillary's crankiness will last longer than most analysts think, partly because I believe it to be deliberate. Democrats complained loudly after the 2004 election that John Kerry had lost because he had not hit back at critics such as the Swift Boat veterans. That questionable bit of analysis has blossomed into an axiom among Democrats, who now tend to value combativeness over coherence and policy.

If anyone doubts this, just look at the reaction to Edwards when confronted with Amanda Marcotte's rather blatant anti-Christian writings. Instead of encouraging Edwards to do what most campaigns do when they make a bad hire -- cut the person loose -- the netroots and activists within the party threatened to withhold their support unless Edwards showed he would fight back against the right-wing noise machine. Edwards backed away from firing Marcotte, only to get stung again when she made more anti-Christian comments on her personal blog days later.

For that reason, I don't think Edwards really benefits from the Hillary-Barack feud. The one person who benefits most so far is Barack Obama. He has parried the Clinton campaign's barbs with classy demurrals and a steadfast refusal to allow her to dictate how his supporters speak publicly. Obama had no real standing against the Clinton machine before this, but he has shown that he won't get flustered when under attack from one of the biggest media machines in American politics. Hillary is the one looking flustered.

Other than Obama, my guess is that Bill Richardson will win a few points if he can keep his lips off of Hillary's posterior long enough. While all of the neophytes continue to demonstrate their lack of experience by tangling with each other so soon in a ridiculously extended primary season, the Democrats may soon look for a more experienced political hand to take the reins. Richardson doesn't need to make his move now or for another six months. If the Hillary and Obama campaigns continue to operate like the Hatfields and the McCoys until the fall, Richardson could then start rising above the fray and demonstrate leadership, maturity, and experience -- and leave the kiddies in the sandbox where they belong.

And if that happens, the Republicans will find themselves in a tough general election. Richardson has the best resumé in the race from either party, and he will attract a large number of moderates and independents, especially if he faces a movement conservative in November 2008.

Getting Serious About Employer Enforcement?

The Bush administration completed another high-profile investigation into the employment of illegal immigrants, this time by a nation-wide services company with clients in 17 states. The raids hit 63 businesses and arrested over 200 illegal aliens, but it also resulted in heavy felony indictments of the employer:

Three top executives at a nationwide cleaning service were named in a federal grand jury indictment unsealed yesterday, charged with conspiracy, fraud and tax crimes in an ongoing investigation that has netted more than 200 illegal aliens who worked as janitors.

The illegal aliens, all of whom were employed by Florida-based cleaning contractor Rosenbaum-Cunningham International Inc. (RCI), were arrested in 17 states at 63 locations -- including the Hard Rock Cafe, ESPN Zone, Planet Hollywood, Dave & Busters and the House of Blues restaurants.

Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Julie L. Myers, who heads U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said RCI co-owners Richard M. Rosenbaum, 60, of Longwood, Fla., and Edward Scott Cunningham, 43, of West Palm Beach, Fla., and the firm's controller, Christina Flocken, 59, also of Longwood, were named in the 23-count indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, Mich.

The White House seems rather motivated to burnish its credentials as tough on illegal alien employment, one of the key concerns of the conservative base. Over the last year, while immigration reform got debated and eventually derailed in Congress, the ICE has conducted three major raids that netted almost 3,000 illegals and resulted in employer sanctions. They practically cleared out Swift's meatpacking plants after the feds determined that thirty percent of their workforce used fraudulent identification to gain employment. At IFCO Systems NA, seven executives face criminal prosecution for their conspiracy to use illegals to save a few bucks.

Why all of the effort now? The Bush administration wants comprehensive immigration reform, not the exclusive border-security approach favored by conservatives. In order to demonstrate that a comprehensive approach will work, the White House wants to demonstrate that it can wield effective disincentives on the employment side that will curtail illegal immigration. Bush wants to work with the Democratic Congress to get a solution in place this year, before the 2008 election cycle for Congress heats up too much to allow moderation to win the day on either side.

Unfortunately for Bush, Congress isn't playing to the moderates on this issue. Ted Kennedy, who partnered with presidential aspirant John McCain last year for a compromise package on immigration reform, has fashioned a different approach this year -- one that more aggressively opens opportunities for citizenship to those already here illegally. The Democrats have refused to work cooperatively with the Republicans on this bill, with one exception: John McCain. That hasn't filled conservatives with much confidence that any of their concerns will be addressed in the final bill.

John McCain had better take care at this juncture of his career. He wants to paint himself as the real conservative in the GOP race for the Presidential nomination. He already has big credibility problems with the base. If he winds up endorsing an amnesty bill with Ted Kennedy's name on it, he can absolutely bid his Presidential aspirations farewell. All of the frog-marches currently being conducted by the Bush administration won't mean spit if illegals get a free ride to citizenship in this Congress with his midwifery of an amnesty bill.

And Now, A Word About Our Sponsors

I don't support Hillary Clinton. I wouldn't allow my son to have a high-powered laser pointer when he wanted one as a teenager. There's nothing I like better than a good steak for dinner.

If people thought that my advertisers represented my beliefs, they would be surprised by the above statements. In fact, I continue to get e-mail about the sponsors who choose to support CQ through advertising on this site. Yesterday, I received a very nice and polite note from a beef producer in the Midwest objecting to the PETA ad on my Blogad strip -- the one with the picture of the rare steak on a plate. (I prefer mine medium rare, actually.)

Earlier this year, the topic of advertising arose when Hillary bought blogads on a number of conservative blogs, including mine, to advertise webcasted "conversations" that launched her campaign. As I explained then, the purchase of advertising on this site does not constitute an endorsement by CQ. In fact, the opposite is true; by putting money in my pocket, these advertisers are endorsing CQ.

My general policy has been to allow pretty much any legitimate advertising to appear on CQ. I've tried hard not to discriminate. As long as the advertisement does not feature nudity or use foul language, and as long as it doesn't support violence against the US government or patently illegal or obviously immoral purposes, then I don't see a need to reject it. After all, CQ readers are adults, and do not have to click through on ads that oppose their sensibilities. Undeniably, I have a profit motive for this position, but then again, I'm a free-market kind of guy -- and this blog has been rather clear about that, too.

Mu aunt and cousins read this blog, and they run a cattle ranch in California, a beautiful spot of land I have visited far too infrequently over the years. While they may also object to the PETA ad, I suspect they find it amusing that I manage to buy myself a good steak dinner on its revenue. I don't write my copy or adjust my thinking to suit the advertisers, and in the end, I'd rather have them spending their money to support my speech than that of others.

Democrats Try Binding Resolutions

Democrats have not given up on attempting to micromanage the war in Iraq despite their loss in the Senate last Saturday. A new effort has begun to rewrite the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, with Democrats claiming that the existing AUMF is obsolete -- rather than admit that they want to end our deployment altogether:

Senate Democratic leaders intend to unveil a plan next week to repeal the 2002 resolution authorizing the war in Iraq in favor of narrower authority that restricts the military's role and begins withdrawals of combat troops.

House Democrats have pulled back from efforts to link additional funding for the war to strict troop-readiness standards after the proposal came under withering fire from Republicans and from their party's own moderates. That strategy was championed by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) and endorsed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

"If you strictly limit a commander's ability to rotate troops in and out of Iraq, that kind of inflexibility could put some missions and some troops at risk," said Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Tex.), who personally lodged his concerns with Murtha.

In both chambers, Democratic lawmakers are eager to take up binding legislation that would impose clear limits on U.S. involvement in Iraq after nearly four years of war. But Democrats remain divided over how to proceed. Some want to avoid the funding debate altogether, fearing it would invite Republican charges that the party is not supporting the troops. Others take a more aggressive view, believing the most effective way to confront President Bush's war policy is through a $100 billion war-spending bill that the president ultimately must sign to keep the war effort on track.

The blowback from Democratic moderates came after John Murtha made the mistake of being honest about his intentions on an anti-war website. He wrote that the only purpose of his so-called readiness requirements was to cripple the President's ability to deploy troops into and around Iraq, which started making the rounds through the blogosphere and into the mainstream media last week. Murtha's "slow bleed" plan would have forced the Pentagon to either undersupport the troops in the field, including sending fresh replacements for exhauted units, or to surrender altogether -- two options that infuriated Democrats already facing tough questions back home about the influence of the hard Left on their party.

Now the Senate wants to introduce a replacement for the existing AUMF that would limit the use of troops in a different way, but with similar results. It forces an end to the deployment of combat brigades by March 31, 2008, the date proposed by the Iraq Study Group, and afterwards restricts American operations in Iraq to training, border security, and counterterrorism. It would require the White House to certify that any offensive operation in Iraq directly targeted al-Qaeda rather than sectarian Iraqi militias or insurgencies -- and would set up a potential impeachment scenario if the President failed to make the case before any operation began.

This is a textbook case of micromanaging a war. Instead of taking the one option open to Congress -- defunding the war effort -- they have decided to override the Constitution by setting themselves above the President in the chain of command. They understand that a defunding effort would unmask them as defeatists and retreatists while American troops face the terrorists, especially in Anbar. Even Joe Biden understands that much.

Nor are they opting for an honest method of floating this unconstitutional nonsense. The Democrats plan to attach the reworked AUMF as an amendment to a Homeland Security funding bill rather than allow an up-or-down vote on it in the Senate. They want to dare the Republicans to filibuster the spending bill or Bush to veto it if it passes with the new AUMF intact. They're playing games with the funds necessary to secure the nation during a time of war -- and they expect to be taken seriously on how to conduct one?

In the House, the Democrats plan to offer a different plan after the collapse of the Murtha strategy, but it will be just as transparently partisan. They will propose a more straightforward funding bill for the war, but will include a waiver on any deployment readiness restrictions by allowing the Secretary of Defense or the President to certify that unprepared troops will be deployed into battle. It's a silly and blatantly partisan mechanism, but that matches the Democratic Congress perfectly.

It Was The One-Armed Leftists!

The fall of Romano Prodi's government has Italians furious with the center-left coalition he formed after the elections last April. None have received more scorn than two Communist Senators who made a point of not voting in support of Prodi's pro-American foreign policy, and none have backpedaled with more energy:

THEY'VE been branded "traitors" and "bastards" and worse. But the two left- wing senators who brought down Italy's prime minister, Romano Prodi, on Wednesday night say they didn't mean to do it.

"Maybe if I knew my vote was so fundamental, I would have reflected a bit," said Fernando Rossi, a 60-year-old communist, sounding apologetic.

He and the other senator, a Trotskyite with the Communist Refoundation Party, tried their best yesterday to deflect blame. But with left-of-centre newspapers screaming headlines like: "They betrayed 19 million voters", it was a hard sell.

"First off, I didn't vote against it. I abstained," said a defensive Franco Turigliatto, who says he will quit the Senate. "Second, it wasn't me who was the determining factor."

Until last April's election, Italy's Left had been in the wilderness for five years while Italy's richest man, Silvio Berlusconi, a conservative media mogul, ran the country with a pro-US foreign policy that included Iraq peacekeeping.

Mr Prodi accelerated the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, but angered senators like Mr Rossi and Mr Turigliatto by not ending Italy's participation in an Afghanistan peacekeeping mission.

The foreign minister, Massimo D'Alema, told the press that Italy was a "country of madmen," lamenting the Trotskyites in the Italian Senate. A former Communist himself, he rather angrily denounced the contingent, saying that this kind of betrayal is hardly unexpected and could have been worse still. An Italian political analyst noted that Italy may be unique in the depth of its anti-American political sentiment and that Prodi should have expected the reduced cooperation with America to still be too much for them to support.

This may still be good news for Prodi. He can still attempt to reforge a center-left coalition, and the Communists will not have anywhere else to go. Facing another stretch of years with a center-right ruling coalition governed by Silvio Berlusconi, the Communist defectors will face tremendous pressure to stop acting out and remain loyal to the Prodi coalition.

Prodi might seek to teach them a lesson by holding another round of elections, too. That would force Rossi to defend himself, while Turigliatto quits rather than explain how his grandstanding didn't contribute to the fall of Prodi's rule. Perhaps they can find the One-Armed Leftist to blame for the thin margin of failure, but from the tone of the Italian media, I doubt the voters will buy it.

Our Ethiopian Partners

Ethiopia just finished off the radical Islamists who attempted to seize control of Somalia, but that has just been their latest efforts to thwart Islamist terrorism. The US has worked closely with the Ethiopians to combat the spread of al-Qaeda in Africa, or at least we did until the New York Times reported it this morning:

The American military quietly waged a campaign from Ethiopia last month to capture or kill top leaders of Al Qaeda in the Horn of Africa, including the use of an airstrip in eastern Ethiopia to mount airstrikes against Islamic militants in neighboring Somalia, according to American officials.

The close and largely clandestine relationship with Ethiopia also included significant sharing of intelligence on the Islamic militants’ positions and information from American spy satellites with the Ethiopian military. Members of a secret American Special Operations unit, Task Force 88, were deployed in Ethiopia and Kenya, and ventured into Somalia, the officials said.

The counterterrorism effort was described by American officials as a qualified success that disrupted terrorist networks in Somalia, led to the death or capture of several Islamic militants and involved a collaborative relationship with Ethiopia that had been developing for years.

But the tally of the dead and captured does not as yet include some Qaeda leaders — including Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam — whom the United States has hunted for their suspected roles in the attacks on American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. With Somalia still in a chaotic state, and American and African officials struggling to cobble together a peacekeeping force for the war-ravaged country, the long-term effects of recent American operations remain unclear.

It has been known for several weeks that American Special Operations troops have operated inside Somalia and that the United States carried out two strikes on Qaeda suspects using AC-130 gunships. But the extent of American cooperation with the recent Ethiopian invasion into Somalia and the fact that the Pentagon secretly used an airstrip in Ethiopia to carry out attacks have not been previously reported. The secret campaign in the Horn of Africa is an example of a more aggressive approach the Pentagon has taken in recent years to dispatch Special Operations troops globally to hunt high-level terrorism suspects. President Bush gave the Pentagon powers after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to carry out these missions, which historically had been reserved for intelligence operatives.

The Bush administration had been careful to distance itself from the Ethiopian efforts in Somalia. They did not want to give the impression that the Ethiopians acted on behalf of the US in Somalia or elsewhere in Africa; in fact, at one point, they encouraged the Ethiopians to use some restraint in their pursuit of the UIC. Why? Somalia still is a touchy subject in the US, and another involvement there would not have been well received, especially with the tough situation in Baghdad.

The White House decided to give its support to the Ethiopians after the UIC appeared to gain control over the Somalian capital of Mogadishu but refrained from playing an overt role in their departure. The administration preferred to support the Ethiopians with intel and wait to see how far they could get against what looked like an entrenched Islamist movement. The lightning success of the Ethiopians surprised everyone, including the US, which had more modest hopes of just flushing the al-Qaeda elements into the open.

After the rout began, the US acted to take advantage of the flight of the Islamists. We sent special forces into the region and attacked Ras Kamboni in coordination with the Ethiopians, and we got two of our targets. Aden Hashi Ayro, a young military commander trained in Afghanistan, likely died in the attack, and another of the Islamic council’s senior leaders, Sheik Ahmed Madobe, nearly died in a second attack. He was later captured by the Ethiopians. We appear to have missed Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the mastermind of the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

It is an example of the success achieved by the Bush administration that the Ethiopian partnership put to flight an Islamist terrorist-based regime in Mogadishu. Will there be more? Not if the New York Times keeps exposing them on their front pages. Not if members of the administration keep leaking them to the New York Times, either.

Did Hillary Buy More Endorsements In South Carolina?

On Monday, I posted about the curious relationship between the Hillary Clinton campaign and Darrell Jackson, an African-American state legislator from South Carolina who had surprised some by endorsing Hillary over John Edwards and Barack Obama. Robert Ford, another black legislator in the same state, joined Jackson in dumping Edwards for Hillary, and explained that an Obama-led ticket would get killed in a general election. However, it turned out that Jackson had more mercenary motives for his endorsement of Hillary -- namely, a $10,000-per-month consulting contract.

Today, Hillary faces new questions about other South Carolina endorsers who also will benefit from the same consultancy:

Two more black South Carolina lawmakers endorsing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton have ties to a media consulting firm hired by the White House hopeful.

However, both the lawmakers and the campaign said Thursday their support has nothing to do with any business dealings.

Clinton's campaign announced this week that state Reps. David J. Mack III of North Charleston and Terry Alexander of Florence, along with several other black politicians, had endorsed Clinton for president. ...

Mack and Alexander operate offshoots of Sunrise Communication of Columbia, which is owned by influential state Sen. Darrell Jackson. The connection was first reported by The (Columbia) State in Thursday's newspapers.

Jackson said last week he would endorse Clinton, and then revealed that his firm was being paid $10,000 a month to help her South Carolina operation. Both Jackson and the Clinton campaign have denied a connection between his endorsement and the contract.

The legislators all assure their constituents that their enthusiasm for Hillary has nothing to do with the fact that she's stuffing their pockets full of cash. They claim that they believe Hillary will be the best candidate for the Presidency. One of them offered as an explanation that he had "been following her for a long time," as if Hillary had been difficult to find.

It's hard to come up with any explanation other than payoffs. Politicians issue endorsements all the time without getting hired as consultants; they wind up working as figurehead "chairs" of campaign committees, which allows them to extend their own influence in the party. They don't get hired as paid consultants, which brings up all sorts of potential conflicts of interest.

Rarely has bagman politics been played out so publicly. It's a measure of the Democratic Party that Hillary feels comfortable enough to think she will get away with it.

UPDATE: It appears that Obama tried playing bagman politics, too, but didn't have the bigger bags necessary.

CQ Radio Tonight!

I'll be hosting another edition of CQ Radio tomorrow evening tonight at 9 pm. Be sure to join us at the above link, and by calling the show at (646) 652-4889. Topics: I want to take a look at the Democratic presidential contenders. The contretemps today between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama exposed some insecurities from the former First Lady, and that may open the campaign up not just to Barack Obama but to some others more starved for attention.

Who will benefit from a Hillary stumble? Which candidate should the Republicans fear most? Let's talk about the answers to those questions and more, tomorrow tonight at 9 pm CT.

Addendum: Please join me in wishing a welcome home to longtime CQ reader Deb R, who just got released from the hospital after a dog attack. Fair skies and clear sailing, Deb -- you're in our prayers.

BUMP: To top. We should have some fun with the aftermath of the Democratic debate last night!

Syria Arming Up

Syria has embarked on a program to bolster its military after the war last summer in Lebanon, Ha'aretz reported this morning and repeated by the AP. They have begun acquiring heavy weapons from the Russians and the Iranians, including medium-range missiles that threaten just about every possible target in Israel:

Damascus has large numbers of surface-based missiles and long-range rockets, including the Scud-D, capable of reaching nearly any target in Israel, the report said, and the Syrian navy has received new Iranian anti-ship missiles.

Haaretz also said Russia was about to sell Syria thousands of advanced anti-tank missiles, despite Israeli charges that in the past Syria has transferred those missiles to Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

Syrian officials did not immediately comment on the Israeli reports, but President Bashar Assad said in a television interview immediately after the fighting that Syria was preparing to defend itself. Israeli defense officials confirmed that Syria had ordered new stocks of the anti-tank weapons after noting Hezbollah's successful use of them against Israeli armor in last summer's fighting in south Lebanon.

Syria also ordered new supplies of surface-to-sea missiles after Hezbollah used one to hit an Israeli warship, killing four crewmen, off the Lebanese coast last July, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The two nations remain at war, although they have not fought it for decades. The Syrians want the Golan Heights back, and the Israelis want the Syrians to stop funding and supplying Hezbollah. The new weapons systems, in fact, seem ideal for that kind of arms transfer, the kind specifically prohibited by UN Security Council Resolution 1701.

It comes as no great shock that the Iranians have begun supplying Syria with more materiel. After all, the Iranians need the money, and they have a tight military alliance with Damascus. Both of them run Hezbollah as a joint project, and the eventual destination of these systems can hardly be doubted.

More surprising, or at least disappointing, is the Russian participation in Syria's distribution channel to Hassan Nasrallah. After all, they signed off on 1701, and they have to know who will benefit from these weapons sales. It appears that Putin once again has determined that the enemies of the West are his friends, despite the Islamist connections to the insurgencies in the Caucasus. It's really not much of a surprise to see Moscow taking the side of terrorists and totalitarians, although it should embarrass the Russians themselves.

Bashar Assad recently told Diane Sawyer that the US should engage with Syria to establish a peaceful Iraq. This is the same peace he has in mind for Lebanon and Israel. Until Syria stops being a mule for terrorists, they have no business at the table of a serious peace conference, and neither do Iran and Russia.

The Democratic Non-Debate

Talk about an accelerated campaign cycle! The Democrats rushed into their first debate almost a year before the first primaries, and did so in a format that took the debate out of the debate. Instead, the Los Angeles Times describes a round-robin press conference where most of the argument took place in the hallways after the event:

The format, with contestants appearing one after another, was not a debate. Eight speakers — all the announced candidates except Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois — took turns giving set remarks and answering questions. Many were submitted by members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which hosted the forum.

The closest public encounter between participants came as Clinton swept out of the Carson City Community Center to a clatter of camera shutters while Edwards stood talking to reporters about 10 yards away. Neither could see the other. ...

The locale, with the snowy Sierra as a backdrop, was intended to steer the discussion toward regional issues, such as water and land use. But it was the war that dominated nearly two hours of talk by the Democratic hopefuls.

The candidates' determination to air their differences — despite a cumbersome format and their repeated calls for a positive campaign — underscored the unusually early and intense nature of the race.

Bloggers from the port side of the 'sphere faulted Obama for skipping this first get-together. Obama claimed that he had no room in his schedule, a strange excuse given the lead time for the event and the acceptance of all the other candidates. However, Obama gets enough press attention at this point in time to take a chance on differentiating himself from the pack, especially since he is rather untested in high-profile debates.

The rest of the pack spent their time trying to set themselves up as the quickest policy implementers in history. Tom Vilsack insisted that Congress had to cut off funding for the Iraq war now -- "Not six days from now. Not six months from now. Not six years from now." Vilsack didn't talk about how to handle the aftermath of an immediate bug-out, leaving Joe Biden to sound the one rational note by asking later in the debate whether anyone considers the fact that a collapse in Iraq would likely send "generations" of Americans to fight in the Middle East.

On health care, the Democrats played another round of The Quick And The Dead. Hillary Clinton insisted that she would again push universal health care if elected, although it would take until her second term to get it fully implemented. That seems rather arrogant, considering she hasn't won the party nomination for her first general election. John Edwards, apparently believing the debate to be based on Name That Tune, told the press that he could implement universal health care in one term, which not coincidentally is the same number of terms in public office that he has won in his lifetime.

However, Democrats seemed slow to identify where all of the monies for universal health care could be found. Vilsack suggested that the money spent in Iraq could get redirected to pay for single-payor plans. He didn't announce how the $300 billion spent over four years could pay for an expansion of the already-bloated Medicare system, which spends more than that in a single year to provide its existing coverage. Bill Richardson demurred om taxes, believing that he could find enough money in government inefficiency to pay for more government inefficiency in health care.

Afterwards, Edwards entertained the press by insisting that true leadership comes from repudiating one's previous positions, a thinly-veiled attack on Hillary Clinton. "It's time for a different kind of leadership in this country," Edwards said, calling for a president "who will tell the truth when they've made a mistake." What Edwards fails to mention is that he sat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and had one of the most informed positions on Iraq prior to the war -- or would have, had he attended the committee hearings on a regular basis. Instead, he had the worst attendance record on the committee during his tenure, alomost all of it post-9/11, which seems an odd threshold for national leadership.

Obama may have had the right idea. The event appears to have diminished everyone who attended it.

Read Their Lips?

The two Republican frontrunners have not yet signed a no-new-taxes pledge, despite the adoption of the pledge by rivals in the campaign. John McCain and Rudy Giuliani so far have not answered the query sent by the Americans for Tax Reform, usually an automatic for GOP nominees:

The two front-runners for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination -- Arizona Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani -- have not signed an anti-tax-increase pledge that has been embraced by several of their rivals.

The reluctance of the party's two leading candidates to sign the pledge, which has been signed by every Republican presidential nominee since 1988, raised concerns among conservative tax cutters about Mr. McCain's and Mr. Giuliani's commitment to reduce tax rates at a time when all of the Democratic presidential contenders have vowed to raise income taxes if they are elected. ...

The pledge, which asks the candidates to sign a statement declaring they will "oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates," could become an issue for both men as they vie for the support of their party's economic conservatives -- especially for Mr. McCain who was a foe of President Bush's tax cuts until he began actively running for president last year.

The Arizona senator, who has been aggressively reaching out to the conservative base of his party to secure the nomination, was one of only two Republicans who voted against Mr. Bush's $1.35 trillion across-the-board tax cuts in 2001. He also opposed accelerating the tax cuts in 2003, but changed his mind last year and voted to extend the tax cuts, including those on stock dividends and capital gains.

Mr. Giuliani has yet to fully set forth his views on tax policy, but, like Mr. McCain, has said that the Bush tax cuts, most of which are due to expire in 2010, should be made permanent.

It's early yet and both candidates may yet sign the pledge, but their names will appear down the list somewhat. Mitt Romney has already signed the ATR pledge, as well as Sam Brownback and Jim Gilmore. Mike Huckabee and Chuck Hagel have also not affixed their signatures to the pledge, although Hagel has signed it in his previous Senate campaigns.

How big of an issue will this be? For McCain and Giuliani, probably more so than the other candidates, except perhaps Hagel, who has no chance of winning even a respectable showing anyway. Conservatives have issues with both front-runners, and the ATR pledge is almost an entry fee to the caucus. It's the bare minimum for conservatives who want to see smaller government and fiscal discipline, and that cuts across most factions of the Republican Party. One does not reduce government by increasing its funding, after all.

McCain seems particularly vulnerable on this score. Giuliani hasn't tried to make himself into a die-hard conservative, preferring to rely on his leadership skills and record of executive effectiveness, while emphasizing those parts of his record that conservatives can support. McCain wants to run as the GOP's true conservative in this race, but he voted against the Bush tax cuts when they first came through Congress and until recently argued against making them permanent. A failure to sign the ATR pledge will call that commitment into question.

The ATR and the conservatives won't wait forever for the campaigns to make a decision, either. The pledge has been around for over 20 years and has the signatures of all major Republican presidential aspirants on it from that time, including the one who lost the base after he said, "Read my lips -- no new taxes!" It's no mystery to be unraveled, and it's a basic question on which conservative support rests. Do McCain and Giuliani commit to fighting tax increases if elected President? We're waiting to read their lips on this question.

Blair: We'll Go Back If Needed

Critics of the Iraq war have painted Tony Blair's decision to draw down the British troop levels as a repudiation of the war and an end to the Coalition in Iraq. Democrats wasted no time in pointing out the supposed incongruity of a British withdrawal in the south and an American surge in the west and center of Iraq. However, the man who made the decision to draw down the British contingent said today that he would send them back if the situation warranted higher troop levels:

The UK is to withdraw 1,600 troops from Iraq but Mr Blair said numbers could increase again "if we're needed".

He told MPs on Wednesday that the remaining 5,500 troops would stay until 2008.

However, when he was asked about reversing that decision on the Today programme, he said: "I don't want to get into speculating about that because we have the full combat capability that's there. So, if we're needed to go back in any special set of circumstances we can, but that's not the same as then increasing back the number."

That's a far cry from giving up on Iraq. The White House pointed out yesterday a fact that should be obvious to anyone with a map and a clue: Basra is not Baghdad. The British sector is and has always been almost homogenously Shi'ite, and the level of violence in that area has remained much lower throughout the post-invasion period. The Iraqi government has readied itself to take over the security of that area, and the British have followed the set plans to transfer responsibility to the Maliki government. The British have been doing this all along, reducing their troop levels from a high of 40,000 to the 7,000 they have in Iraq now.

Blair also made another important point. When challenged about the difficult security situation, he emphasized that the violence should be blamed on the violent. Blair absolutely rejected the notion that the Coalition created the conditions for the insurgencies by disbanding the army and police. He told the BBC that both organizations had served as Saddam's instruments of terror, and that the Coalition could not have left them in place after the invasion, even if they hadn't mostly melted away by themselves.

This flies in the face of all the analysts yesterday who stumbled over themselves to characterize the drawdown as a rejection of George Bush and a repudiation of the Coalition plans for peace. Blair has followed those plans to the letter. Once Iraq has the ability to take responsibility for a province, the Coalition needs to allow them to do it, remaining behind in enough strength to support them during the transition. This is no secret -- Bush and Blair have made this clear over and over again. In fact, under those conditions, a high troop level would be destabilizing. That isn't the case in Baghdad or Anbar, where Iraq isn't ready to handle the security by themselves for very obvious reasons.

In the end, this is how the United States will exit Iraq, too. Once Iraq is ready to handle security in Baghdad, Anbar, and Diyala with decreasing support from the US, we will draw down troops and pull back to bases to remove ourselves from everyday security tasks, remaining nearby for occasions where we are needed. That is, we will follow that plan unless Jack Murtha and Nancy Pelosi manage to screw up the straightforward plan that Tony Blair has managed to follow with no difficulty at all.

Police Support Draining From Mugabe?

Robert Mugabe may get a very unpleasant birthday gift, if this Times of London report is correct. After having decreed a ban on political protests over the next few weeks, it appears that Mugabe may not have enough police remaining loyal to enforce it:

In the clearest sign yet of government alarm at the deepening public discontent over the country’s economic collapse, it invoked the three-month prohibitions under the draconian Public Order and Security Act.

The Act was brought into effect for the first time because existing regulations were “insufficient to prevent public disorder,” officials said. ...

Witnesses cited unprecedented boldness by opposition supporters and timidity by police during encounters at demonstrations last week. In Bulawayo, Mr Mutambara stormed through the ranks of riot police to lead a march through the city without being hindered. Under normal circumstances he could have expected a beating and spent several days in police cells.

“[The Government’s] intelligence is showing them that levels of anger are higher than they have ever been,” said Mr Coltart. “They also know that the levels of anger and frustration in the police are very high.”

Dictators have to have strong police and military loyalty to maintain power, and mutineers usually get treated ruthlessly as an example to others. The fact that police in Zimbabwe feel disenchanted enough to allow protestors to organize publicly indicates that Mugabe may have trouble ahead in his effort to make it alive to his next birthday. He's planning a big celebration in Gweru and dunning the starving Zimbabweans to foot the bill, but they may have some other kind of party in mind.

You know the kind -- bring your own rope, and play Hoist The Dictator on His Own Gallows. The Italians taught it to the Romanians, who taught it to the Iraqis, and so on.

The Birthday Boy of Gweru may not have the juice to keep the police in line any more. If history provides any guide, we may start seeing purges of the police and military as the strength of the opposition increases. With any luck, Mugabe may be fleeing for his life just ahead of the candles and party favors.

Italian Left Government Sabotaged By The Italian Left

In a strange development from Italy yesterday, the center-left government of Romano Prodi disintegrated when the Senate voted down key aspects of Prodi's foreign policy. What made it strange was that the defeat came from an effort from Leftists in Italy and not the Right. Prodi resigned as Prime Minister and no one knows whether he will get the chance to form another or whether elections will have to be held:

Romano Prodi resigned last night as Italy's prime minister after his government had suffered an unexpected defeat in parliament over its alliance with the United States and its role in Nato. Giorgio Napolitano, who as Italy's president oversees the making and breaking of governments, is to open consultations on the political future today.

It was not ruled out that Mr Prodi could be asked to form a new government, and a grouping of core parties in his coalition said last night that they were prepared to back him again. But his spokesman said: "He is ready to carry on as prime minister if, and only if, he is guaranteed the full support of all the parties in his majority from now on."

That support was signally lacking in the senate a few hours earlier, when the government sought a vote of approval for its foreign policy. Discontent on the left of his sprawling, nine-party coalition over the extension of an American military base and Italy's open-ended commitment to the Nato-led force in Afghanistan lay behind a two-vote defeat. Since he had not lost a formal confidence vote, Mr Prodi was not obliged to stand down.

This exposed the hypocrisy of the European Left when it insisted its anti-war activism only applied to Iraq, and that the Afghanistan effort had its support. The basis for this breakdown came from an American request to expand its facilities in Vicenza, which conducts support operations for the Afghanistan mission. This would normally have received a fairly straightforward approval, but in this case the Left wanted to use it as a wedge to end Italy's deployment with the NATO forces in Afghanistan.

It would have failed except for a bit of dramatic betrayal by one of Prodi's ostensible allies. Giulio Andreotti, a former PM himself, promised Prodi that he would support the government and vote for the motion. At the last moment, he abstained instead of fulfilling his promise, and Andreotti's example is believed to have convinced enough of the others to pull the rug out from under Prodi.

They may not have anticipated his reaction. This was not a confidence vote, at least not explicitly, and Prodi could have acted as though the loss meant nothing for the credibility of his government. Prodi apparently felt the sting of this betrayal a little too keenly to just sit back and take it, and instead resigned. That puts the Left in a tough spot. If they want to be part of the government, they have to back Prodi -- otherwise, they either have to win the next election or watch the Right take Italy back.

In either event, this just serves as confirmation that the Italian Left, and probably most of its European cousins, will have no staying power in a war against terrorism. Given the chance, they will run away from the hard work of fighting and beating the terrorists before they can organize into larger and deadlier organizations that will attack Europe for its fecklessness before it attacks America for its strength. Italians should consider the transient courage of their Left when the next elections are held.

Le Pen: Dresden = 9/11

French right-wing extremist Jean Le Pen raised the ire of British veterans of World War II when the presidential candidate said that the bombing of Dresden was the equivalent of the 9/11 attacks. Le Pen called both attacks the work of terrorists, which might come as a shock to the Allied pilots who lived through the London Blitz:

The French presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen provoked outrage among British veterans yesterday when he compared the September 11 attacks on the United States to RAF-led bombing raids during the Second World War.

The National Front leader said both were "terrorist acts as they expressly targeted civilians to force military leaders to capitulate". Mr Le Pen, 79, also dismissed the al-Qa'eda atrocities in 2001 as a mere "incident".

He told the Roman Catholic newspaper La Croix: "Three thousand dead — that is how many die in Iraq in a month and it's far less than the deaths in the Marseille or Dresden bombings at the end of the Second World War."

Praising those Muslims who condemned the attacks on New York and Washington, Mr Le Pen said: "The September 11 event, or one could say incident, prompted a certain number of people to distance themselves [from Islamic extremism] to avoid falling under the barrage of accusations that was unleashed."

Funny how the nationalists in France suddenly feel so much concern for the Muslims, a subset of France for which they have no use otherwise, when it comes to scoring points off the Americans and Brits. Le Pen heads an anti-immigrant, far-right fringe political group that would be happy to see an ethnic cleansing of France under most circumstances. He has influenced the last couple of national elections in France, but has not won office himself, mostly because of his extremist policy views.

The British are outraged, and rightly so. While the indiscriminate bombing campaigns of WWII have come under some historical criticism, the context of Dresden and other bombing operations includes plenty of provocation from the Germans, a fact Le Pen somehow fails to mention, perhaps out of sympathy to the fascists. The Germans opened their war against the British by indiscriminately bombing London and other cities to soften up the British for an expected invasion. When the British managed to embarrass Adolf Hitler (and especially the arrogant Hermann Goering) by bombing Berlin in reprisal, Hitler insisted on escalating the scale of German bombing to insane levels, breaking his Luftwaffe on the grit and courage of the Royal Air Force.

Dresden, in fact, followed the deployment of Hitler's V-bomb attacks. By the time of the February 1945 attack, Hitler had launched thousands of V-1 buzzbombs at British civilian centers and hundreds of the V-2 ballistic missiles as well. Dresden was no mere residential suburb, either. It held a vital railway center that the Allies wanted destroyed to cut off German movement of arms to the Eastern Front. It also was an important industrial center that manufactured critical parts for the Nazi war machine.

In comparison, the people of the World Trade Center had built no bombs, nor had they oppressed the Muslim extremists that attacked them. Neither had the people on the airplanes they used as guided missiles. The Pentagon would be considered a legitimate military target for anyone wishing to make war on the United States -- but again, they used civilian airliners with civilian passengers to conduct the attacks.

Any comparison between Dresden and 9/11 is the sign of a deranged and inadequate mind. Jean Le Pen has certainly made the case for that in the past, and in comparing British and American WWII pilots to Mohammed Atta and his band of terrorists, he has done so again.

UPDATE: Er, the British bombed Berlin and not Britain. Thanks to CQ reader Ross H for that correction. (Must ... have ... coffee!)

It's Her Party, And She'll Cry If She Wants To

It's difficult to figure out what Hillary Clinton hopes to gain with her spectacular temper tantrum today, directed as it is against the wrong man. After Maureen Dowd briefly achieved relevancy by relating some tough criticisms of Hillary by Hollywood mogul David Geffen, the Democratic front-runner blamed Barack Obama for his newfound Geffen support. And make no mistake, Geffen drew blood:

Maureen Dowd's column in The New York Times today, in which she quoted former Bill Clinton supporter David Geffen offering a few caustic comments, has incited a strong Hillary Clinton campaign attack on Geffen -- and the candidate he now favors, Sen. Barack Obama.

Then Obama's team fired back.

"Everybody in politics lies, but they [the Clintons] do it with such ease, it’s troubling,” Geffen had said.

Geffen said more than that, and most of it underscores the Democratic Party's unease with her rise to presumptive frontrunner for the 2008 election. Geffen raised $18 million for Bill Clinton's two Presidential campaigns, but stopped being a fan after Bill pardoned Marc Rich and left Leonard Peltier imprisoned for killing two FBI agents. Geffen now believes that Bill Clinton is a fundamentally reckless man who provided his enemies with the ammunition they needed against his presidency. Geffen also painted Hillary as a product of her advisors, and endorsed the idea that she will be the easiest of the Democratic candidates to beat in the general election.

Hillary's campaign came out swinging -- but at Barack Obama instead of Geffen, who just finished a fundraiser for the neophyte Senator. Linking to an ABC story on Obama's expressed distaste for "slash and burn politics", Team Hillary demanded that Obama cut Geffen from his campaign, return all of the funds raised by Geffen, and apparently take monastic vows and give himself a Britney Spears haircut:

"While Senator Obama was denouncing slash and burn politics yesterday, his campaign's finance chair was viciously and personally attacking Senator Clinton and her husband.

"If Senator Obama is indeed sincere about his repeated claims to change the tone of our politics, he should immediately denounce these remarks, remove Mr. Geffen from his campaign and return his money.

"While Democrats should engage in a vigorous debate on the issues, there is no place in our party or our politics for the kind of personal insults made by Senator Obama's principal fundraiser.

Well, the short answer is that Obama didn't make the remarks, and Geffen didn't say anything out of bounds about the public character of the Clintons. Bill did pardon Marc Rich, a financier whose wife gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bill's library fund, despite a negative recommendation from his own Department of Justice and the lack of any remorse on the part of Rich. He didn't pardon Peltier -- not that Peltier deserves one -- after Geffen lobbied Bill to do so. She's tried to maintain a ridiculous pose on the Iraq war, one that certainly seems enough like lying to make Geffen's complaint reasonable.

The longer answer is that Hillary looks about ready to self-destruct. She got rattled by the loss of her exclusive connections to Hollywood, which has made clear that they will not commit solely to her. With Obama scoring big in his Tinseltown debut, Hillary understands that a major portion of her husband's contributions has just dried up. Instead of redoubling her efforts to woo the celluloid titans back to her side, she blew her stack and demanded ridiculous penance from a competitor who hadn't sinned against her.

In fact, Obama has decided to allow Hillary to look as bad as she can, issuing a classy response this evening:

My sense is that Mr. Geffen may have differences with the Clintons. That doesn’t have anything to do with our campaign… I’ve said I’ve had the utmost respect for Senator Clinton. I consider her an ally in the Senate. And will continue to consider her that way throughout the campaign…

Hillary apparently felt that the 2008 primary campaign would be little more than a coronation, and the general election a Restoration. Instead, she finds herself in the first tough election of her life, and she's starting to crack under the pressure. This reaction seems very much like the disillusionment of arrogance.

UPDATE: Most links via the indispensable Memeorandum. Also, if you want to get a good read of Geffen's comments, be sure to read Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice.

NRSC Gets It

Yesterday, I scolded the National Republican Congressional Committee for not dumping the $15,000 it had received from a man who used a false identity to contribute funds to the GOP. Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari used the name Michael Mixon to become one of the NRCC's high-profile donors until the US government indicted him this week on terror-financing charges and investor fraud. They wanted to wait to see what happened at trial with Alishtari before deciding whether to part with his money.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has more sense, even if they have less cents to show for their wise decision. Rebecca Fisher e-mailed me that the NRSC will donate its share of Alishtari's largesse to charities aimed at supporting our military and their families:

In light of the recent charges filed against a former donor, the National Republican Senatorial Committee will donate the sum total of the former donor’s contributions to a charitable organization. The money will go to an organization that benefits our military men and women and their families.

Alishtari apparently donated around $20,000, according to Fisher. That came in 2003, when the Republicans extended their Senatorial majority to 55-44-1. I asked Fisher if the donations came from the Mixon identity or under Alishtari's real name, and she promised to check that out.

However it happened, the NRSC took funds from a shady character, one who allegedly had links to the very terrorists we fight against to this day. They made the smart decision that the honor of the GOP and the United States is worth more than $20,000, and they sent the funds where they will counteract some of the damage that Alishtari's financing allegedly caused our military. Kudos to Rebecca Fisher, and perhaps someone can show this to the NRCC so that they can buy a clue.

Ending The Nomadic Life

We finally got to sleep in our own beds last night, as the plumbers worked quickly to replace our failing polybutylene piping. Originally, we asked them to get one bathroom working for us so we could stay out of the hotel last night, and they agreed to have one running by noon. Instead, they put two men on the job and finished installing the new pipe by the time I left the office. We still have a few holes in the wall -- I'll post pictures later -- but the plumbing is in and working fine.

We did not install copper as I originally intended. Instead, we went with PEX, a more proven plastic technology that has been in use for 30 years and has not had the kind of problems that PB has. Copper would have cost about three times as much and would have taken at least twice as long. The PEX is manufactured by a local company, Uponor, and has a 25-year warranty. If I have a problem with it, I can tool down to Apple Valley and find the manufacturer. The plumbing company highly recommended it especially as a replacement. We'll see.

For this job, I used Benjamin Frankling Plumbing, which is one of the sponsors of my radio station, AM 1280 The Patriot. They did a very nice job, and their plumbers took a lot of time explaining the issues and options to me. They did more than a professional job; they did a personal job. I've also had a great experience with State Farm Insurance, which does not cover the plumbing but will take care of all the damaged walls in the house from the break and the replacement. They have walked me through the process carefully, calling me a few times just to make sure that everything is progressing well for us.

Finally, I appreciate those CQ readers who have hit the tip jar over the last couple of days. I'll send notes out later this week, but the donations over the last couple of days have covered the hotel bill, which the insurance didn't cover. The First Mate and I both appreciate it. Also, thanks to those who tipped us off to the Spencer settlement on the PB piping, both this week and last summer. I think we may qualify, and if we do, we could get all of the plumbing expenses reimbursed. I'll let you know.

As I told a co-worker yesterday, I must have been on vacation -- we stayed at a hoteil, I had to rent a car, and we spent thousands of dollars! This is one vacation I'm happy to see end.

Ruth Marcus, Arbiter Of Pro-Life Authenticity

Ruth Marcus takes a spin at the flip-flop of a Massachussetts politician on an important national issue. No, it's not John Kerry, but Mitt Romney, and she sets the stage by recalling an interview Romney did with Washington Post reporters two years previously:

Precisely two years ago, Mitt Romney, then the governor of Massachusetts but already eyeing a 2008 presidential bid, sat in the coffee shop of a Washington hotel, doing his best not to explain his views on abortion.

Romney was speaking to a few of us from The Post, and my colleague Dan Balz noted the similarity between Romney's expressed views on abortion rights and the stance of another Massachusetts politician, Sen. John F. Kerry: Both men said they were personally opposed to abortion but did not support making it illegal.

From there, Romney proceeded to expound one of the odder positions I've heard in years of listening to politicians talk about a subject most would prefer to avoid: "I can tell you what my position is, and it's in a very narrowly defined sphere, as candidate for governor and as governor of Massachusetts," he said. "What I said to people was that I personally did not favor abortion, that I am personally pro-life. However, as governor I would not change the laws of the commonwealth relating to abortion.

"Now I don't try and put a bow around that and say what does that mean you are -- does that mean you're pro-life or pro-choice, because that whole package -- meaning I'm personally pro-life but I won't change the laws, you could describe that as -- well, I don't think you can describe it in one hyphenated word."

Well, he's describing it in one hyphenated word these days: pro-life. Conservatives have questioned his commitment to this position for all the same reasons Marcus does in this article. When running for political office in the 1990s and as late as 2002 when he won election as Governor of Massachussetts, Romney positioned himself as a de facto pro-choice candidate. At times he did so explicitly, promising never to change access to abortions once in office.

Romney now says he was in the middle of a transition on abortion in 2005. He came to believe that life begins at conception and that abortion was wrong except in cases of rape, incest, and when the mother's life is in physical danger. That aligns nicely with the mainstream of the pro-life movement, perhaps a bit too nicely for the conservatives who vote in the primary. They have a sensitivity to people who evolve on this issue, especially when they evolve at the precise moment for maximum political benefit.

Marcus makes this point rather well, and includes Romney's shift on gays in the military and his odd explanation for his Tsongas vote in 1992. However, it seems a little odd that conservatives would take Ruth Marcus' advice on the authenticity of pro-life sentiments among the candidates. She sounds a bit like a woman scorned in this column, and I wonder if she would be anywhere this cynical had the evolution of Mitt Romney been reversed. If Romney had been pro-life as a governor of Utah and then decided to run as a pro-choice Republican for the presidency, would she be hailing his progress as a liberated candidate -- or would she be scolding him for his inconsistency?

Inconsistency has to be considered in evaluating the candidates as the primary season progresses through 2007, but we have to be careful not to create a purity standard that none can meet. One of the purposes of the pro-life conservatives in engaging the political process is to win converts, just as it is with any political movement. It seems more than passingly strange to pursue conversions and then to persecute the converted -- and that seems to be what a few conservatives have done with Romney. If all that conservatives value is consistency, then let me introduce you to President Rudy Giuliani -- or President Dennis Kucinich.

This is one of the reasons that Newt Gingrich called the extended primary race this cycle an "absurdity". Mitt has been in the race for a little over a month, and we're already chewing over all the inconsistencies in his record. We don't need a full year of this to understand Mitt Romney or any of the candidates. Instead, these early commitments will do nothing but allow both parties to rip all of their most viable candidates to shreds as their supporters do their best to kneecap their opponents. In the end, both major-party nominees will come to the general election as damaged as any candidates have been in long memory.

Whither Sadr City?

The US has a decision ahead of then with the new surge strategy that could either help drive out the Shi'ite insurgents or lose them the entire city of Baghdad. The joint Iraqi-American forces have cleared and held Shi'ite enclaves around Sadr City, but have not yet entered that power base of the Mahdi Army. They must determine whether and when to do so, and the credibility of the US forces and the Iraqi government depends on their next moves:

U.S. and Iraqi forces have moved aggressively in the last week to combat Sunni Arab insurgents in neighborhoods across the capital and to establish a stronger presence in religiously mixed districts long plagued by sectarian violence.

But as the new security crackdown enters a second week, they face their most sensitive challenge: whether, when and how to move into the Shiite-dominated slum of Sadr City, stronghold of the Al Mahdi militia.

Political pressure has mounted to crack down on the Baghdad neighborhood that harbors the militia loyal to radical anti-American cleric Muqtada Sadr. Sunni Arabs, who make up the backbone of the insurgency, have long accused Shiite Prime Minister Nouri Maliki of allowing Sadr City to remain a haven for the militia to keep the support of Sadr's followers. ...

U.S. troops took heavy casualties when they tried to storm Sadr City in the spring and summer of 2004. For the Americans, the grueling street fights with black-clad teens holding AK-47s while running down the streets represented a nadir few want to relive.

Rather than crush the Al Mahdi, the U.S. wound up bolstering Sadr's street credibility and undermining the popularity of then-Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who was pro-American.

Part of the reason that the 2004 effort backfired was because of the lack of commitment by the interim Iraqi government to see the operation through to its conclusion. Allawi, dependent on the same Shi'ite factions that support Nouri al-Maliki today, lost his nerve as that support collapsed. The US have a stronger force now than then, and better intelligence, while the Mahdi leadership has mostly fled the enclave for Iran. Maliki has also given the green light for these operations after pressure from the White House convinced him that the rules of engagement had to change.

It will be politically impossible to bypass Sadr City and the Mahdis, both here and in Iraq. The Sunnis will never accept the government if it does not extend the same protection and the same enforcement to both Sunni and Shi'ite communities. Only when the government acts Iraqi and not Shi'ite will the Sunnis feel safe enough to engage and participate in the government, especially around Baghdad. The US will see any avoidance of the Mahdis as a failure to address one of the more destabilizing elements in Iraq and question even further the use of additional troops in Baghdad. The surge, to be seen as successful, has to neuter Sadr more effectively than previous attempts.

American evaluations of the Mahdis have changed since the surge started. Prior to the commitment to the new strategy, analysts warned about a push into Sadr City. In a paper that two of the surge's architects wrote for the American Enterprise Institute in early January, General Jack Keane and Frederick Kagan warned that such a push would force a confrontation with the Mahdis and unify the splintered Shi'ite political factions against the US. Now, however, Kagan says the initial reaction to the surge shows that he and Keane overestimated the strength and staying power of the Mahdis, and perhaps underestimated Moqtada al-Sadr's political adroitness.

In order for the Iraqi government and the US surge to retain credibility as a liberating and non-sectarian force, they both have to address the Shi'ite militias in the same manner as the Sunni insurgencies. The US has to enter Sadr City to ensure an end to militia operations there and to help secure the growing economic strength in its neighborhoods. If the US succeeds in Sadr City, they can win all of Baghdad and perhaps end the worst of the sectarian violence in a shorter period than first believed.

Mugabe Not The Retiring Type

Robert Mugabe, who has managed to plunge Zimbabwe into ruin and famine during his 27-year dictatorship, promises his people that he will continue to afflict them for the foreseeable future. Mugabe warned those who eye his spot that they resort to "nonsense" when they muse on his replacement:

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has repeated in a televised interview to mark his 83rd birthday that he has no intention of stepping down.

Mr Mugabe criticised colleagues who have been debating when he will retire and who should replace him.

Mr Mugabe, who retains an iron grip after nearly 27 years in power, said they were resorting to nonsense.

The state-run Herald newspaper devoted 16 pages of pictures and messages to Mr Mugabe in their Wednesday edition. The same newspaper also announced that police have imposed a three-month ban on political rallies and protests in townships to try to calm tensions, following violence at the weekend.

Dictators have to rely on bans for political speech. Tensions would not require calming if Mugabe didn't take steps like banning rallies and nationalizing agriculture, or like burning down the houses of the poor in the capital. If his people weren't starving for both food and freedom, Mugabe would have nothing to fear from them.

Instead of allowing people to gather to determine their own governance, Mugabe has decided to throw himself a birthday party. He'll allow Zimbabweans to gather together for that. In fact, Mugabe is so generous with his celebration that he wants Zimbabweans to pay for the celebration in Gweru. His agents have begun collection "donations" for the party already.

Like most dictators, Mugabe either lies about the state of his country or has no connection to reality about it. He told his interviewer that he disagrees that the economy is "sinking", even though inflation in Zimbabwe has reached 1,600% annually. He admitted a decline in the standard of living, which the BBC noted would give slight comfort to those whose poverty has reached famine status.

Mugabe noted that the men looking to succeed him at the moment were "high-ranking, ambitious people who were looking at themselves". Perhaps the Birthday Boy Of Gweru wants to assure his citizens of a smooth transition of power.

Somalia Gets AU Forces, UN Next

The UN has approved the deployment of 8,000 troops from the African Union to Somalia, replacing the Ethiopian contingent for peacekeeing now that the Union of Islamic Courts has been driven from the country. The Security Council also will consider a contribution of peacekeepers under their own flag:

The United Nations Security Council has approved the deployment of an African Union peacekeeping force to Somalia.

Somalia has been beset by the heaviest fighting between insurgents and government troops since the withdrawal of Islamist militias last year.

The 8,000 strong force has a mandate to help stabilise the situation, but only 4,000 troops have been pledged so far.

A resolution has urged all AU member states to contribute troops. Moreover, a UN force may arrive in six months.

The fighting erupted again yesterday, as the Washington Post reports:

Mortar rounds and rockets hit Somalia's capital early Tuesday in a series of attacks that killed 15 people and wounded more than 40, doctors and witnesses said.

The violence was among the worst since a two-week war in December, in which Ethiopian troops helped government forces drive out an Islamic militia that had taken over much of the country. Somalia's weak interim government then moved into the capital.

The Ethiopians still remain in Mogadishu, hoping to wait for their AU replacements. Unfortunately, the AU has taken its time pulling together the necessary troops, which is why the UN Security Council pushed them yesterday with its resolution. The exchange between the Ethiopians and the UIC remnants was serious enough to prompt Ethiopians to use artillery on their positions, a significant engagement.

It won't take much more for the Somalians to lose confidence in the transitional government. With Ethiopia's help, it broke out of a small pocket of control in Baidoa last December to capture Mogadishu and take control of most of Somalia. The transitional government holds the best prospect for establishing some sort of representative government, but it needs troops to hold its gains and to gather enough strength to fend off the UIC and the warlords in the Somalian free-for-all.

AU deployments will help in that regard. UN peacekeepers will likely do more harm than good. They will not engage as the Ethiopians have done. Their history shows that they will either sit and do nothing, or run and do worse, Even when they do nothing militarily, they tend to molest young women under their protection thanks to a systemic lack of discipline. Perhaps the UN's consideration of a deployment is meant to send a signal to all sides of the conflict that further fighting will result in terrible consequences.

Iran Balks At The End

Iranian negotiators refused to consider the necessary step of suspending their uranium enrichment program, and so the efforts to avoid a negative IAEA report to the UN Security Council have failed. The UNSC will need to decide whether the global community can retain its uncertain unity long enough to escalate the sanctions against Iran:

Iran will today be declared in violation of a UN resolution calling for a halt to its enrichment of uranium, after last-minute negotiations in Vienna failed to reach a compromise in the nuclear stand-off.

Ari Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, emerged from talks with Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), insisting that Iran had a right to pursue a peaceful nuclear programme and warning against any use of force to stop it. ...

The gathering crisis over Iran's nuclear programme, however, will become more intense today with the expected publication of an IAEA report stating that Iran has not complied with UN demands to stop uranium enrichment. Nor has it met the nuclear agency's own demands for greater transparency about its nuclear programme.

IAEA officials said the report was due to be delivered to the UN security council at the same time as the agency's board, but added there was a small possibility its publication could be delayed until tomorrow.

The report is likely to trigger a new security council debate over tightening sanctions on Iran and intensify the debate within the Bush administration over whether to take military action aimed at slowing down Iran's nuclear programme.

That's putting it lightly. Vladimir Putin has given every indication that he will take the opportunity to allow Iran off the hook, unless he still finds Teheran in arrears for the money owed on the Bushehr facility. China, which has helped build a template of what it and Russia wants for agreements in North Korea -- which is to say nothing too useful -- will probably balk as well.

That leaves the US and Britain to go it alone, perhaps even among their Western allies. The Europeans have had nothing but lukewarm support for efforts against Iran, perferring to use public condemnations as a sole defense against Iranian nuclear armament. Eastern Europe has agreed to host portions of a missile shield against the Iranian threat, but for the most part the EU has already begun calculating a nuclear Iran into its worldview.

Not so the Anglosphere. Both the US and the UK have sent more naval assets to the Persian Gulf to put pressure on Teheran to comply with the UNSC resolution. The rest of Europe will probably agree to added sanctions, although they may not stick around long if Russia and China balk. If the US makes clear that sanctions will be the only course of action that will preclude targeted US strikes on Iranian nuclear-development sites -- still a bad idea in my opinion, but rapidly becoming the only option left -- then they may pursue sanctions with more gusto.

The Iranians could still agree to Mohammed ElBaradei's "time-out" scenario. That would allow them to declare a temporary suspension in order to restart talks on the overall program, but that would likely be best used as a dodge for more covert work. It would put the US and UK in a bind for weeks and could prompt a postponement from the UNSC, which would play into Iranian hands. Are the mullahs that smart? Sor, it appears not, although it also appears unnecessary.

British Troops To Leave Iraq

Tony Blair will announce the start of force reductions in the southern, Shi'ite regions of Iraq. Blair will tell the UK that their mission to train the native Iraqi security forces and transfer responsibility to them had succeeded, and that their presence is no longer required:

Tony Blair is preparing to announce a major reduction in British troops in Iraq as a result of a successful operation to improve security in the southern city of Basra.

Downing Street indicated tonight that Mr Blair could make his promised statement this week on Britain's future strategy in Iraq, He will be in the Commons tomorrow for his weekly Prime Minister's questions session

Reports circulating in Whitehall tonight suggested that Britain's 7,000 contingent in Iraq could be cut to around 4,000 by the early summer. ...

Mr Blair said on Sunday that Iraq's own armed forces and police were now in the main frontline control of security in Basra. Operation Sinbad - to transfer the lead role to homegrown forces - was complete and had been successful.

Thousands of British troops have been involved in operations with the Iraqi army against rogue police units, local militias and al-Qaeda groups. But once that is is finished large scale military patrols will end.

This makes some sense, in that the southern provinces have always presented less trouble than the Sunni areas in the center and west of Iraq. The population is much more homogenously Shi'ite, and the new Iraqi Army fits better there than in Baghdad, Diyala, and Anbar. Other provinces in the south have already transferred to Iraqi control, and Basra follows, as it should.

However, there is no doubt that the transition comes at a difficult time for George Bush and the US. While Blair will allow the British forces to reduce through the end of fresh rotations into Basra, the US has started to send three times as many troops into Baghdad than what the Brits have in the entire country now. The progress in Basra will get overshadowed by the surge and the battle where the sectarian insurgencies meet in the Iraqi capital.

This is the natural denouement of the Iraqi campaign, however. As the Iraqis can take over security responsibilities for their provinces, the Western powers will pull back and pull out, although the British forces will remain in smaller numbers to provide assistance to the Iraqis. The US will do the same when Baghdad and Anbar come under better control. The Brits have succeed in their mission, and they now can shift their forces accordingly.

UPDATE: The Guardian reports that the British reductions will only amount to 1,000 this year. They will pull back to their main Basra base, instead of leaving altogether. (via Hot Air)

Rush To Judgement?

The National Republican Congressional Committee took donations over several years from someone representing himself as Michael Mixon. Mixon donated over $15,000 to the NRCC before his actual identity as Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari became known -- and before Alishtari got indicted as a terrorist financier. Now the GOP campaign group has to decide what to do with the money, and so far, they seem to be getting it all wrong:

A New York man accused of trying to help terrorists in Afghanistan has donated some $15,000 to the House Republicans' campaign committee over three years.

Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari pleaded not guilty Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to charges that include terrorism financing, material support of terrorism and money laundering.

From April 2002 until August 2004, the man also known as "Michael Mixon" gave donations ranging from $500 to $5,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to Federal Election Commission reports and two campaign donor tracking Web sites, and Jessica Boulanger, a spokeswoman for the NRCC, said if Alishtari is found guilty, the organization would donate the money to charity.

"We are extremely concerned and disturbed by these charges, but we need to be careful not to rush to judgment as the judicial process moves forward," Boulanger said.

Well, that's just not going to cut it. The NRCC should have acted immediately to distance itself from Alishtari, just on the basis of his deception. Assuming a false identity while making campaign contributions is illegal, and that should be enough for the NRCC to determine that the $15,000 won't cover the damage to its reputation.

The fraud doesn't appear limited to the NRCC, either. The indictment also details investment fraud, allegedly bilking investors in what appears to be some sort of Ponzi scheme. That could have helped produce the money that he transfered to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is not exactly the kind of guy one wants to have next to the party's candidates during fundraisers.

The NRCC has to take action now. Their return of the money, or better yet donation of it to a charity, will not reflect on the court case of Alishtari nearly as much as its retention will reflect on the values of the NRCC.

Comments And An Open Thread

Yesterday I deleted a comment that was off topic, and the commenter -- a long-time and valued member of the CQ community -- objected to the decision. He thought that I should have covered a different topic and took it upon himself to open a thread on the matter, within an existing thread on satellite radio, and then objected to my calling it a "hijack". However, that is precisely the term used when commenters attempt to inject a completely unrelated topic on an existing thread, and my policy has been to delete comments that do that.

As to my editorial decisions on covering events, I plead guilty to posting on topics that interest me. I post a number of threads a day, and I write about those topics that generate a response in me. It takes hours each day to produce the output here at CQ, and I love doing it -- but I'm not going to try to cover every single news thread. I'm also not going to apologize for missing a story out of the several I publicize here every day. If I've missed something, that's an opportunity for someone else to blog about it.

The topic that I was faulted for not addressing was the Walter Reed story, which took some bad experiences by a few of our soldiers and turned it into an indictment of the entire facility. I can tell you from extensive personal experience with hospitals over the last 13 years that anyone can find a dozen or so people who believe that a particular hospital is the worst example of medical care. On occasion, I'm one of those people with the medical facilities we use. I'm not all that interested in anecdotal reporting, and on that day, I had other topics that interested me.

On the other hand, I never offer open threads, preferring a structured debate on issues. Maybe that's a little too structured, so consider this an open thread -- any topic that interests you, post it here. Let's see how the debate develops.

Did Chavez Lose His Elections?

Supporters of Venezuelan president and ardent socialist Hugo Chavez point to his past two elections, one of which was a recall effort, as measures of his popularity. However, a group of analysts in Caracas contend that Chavez rigged both elections by making wholesale changes to the voter rolls:

Hugo Chavez may have lost both the recall referendum in 2004 and the December 2006 presidential election, according to studies conducted by a distinguished multidisciplinary team in Caracas, Venezuela. The team includes the rector of Universidad Simon Bolivar, Frederick Malpica, and a former rector of the National Electoral Council, Alfredo Weil.

Astonishing as it may seem to Americans who believe the contention by Mr. Chavez that he won both elections by a landslide — 58% to 42% in the recall and 61% to 39% in the presidential election — the studies show that since 2003, Mr. Chavez has added 4.4 million favorable names to the voter list and "migrated" 2.6 million unfavorable voters to places where it was difficult or impossible for them to vote.

None of these additions or migrations to the voter-register has been independently audited in Venezuela. Instead, the votes have been electronically counted by Chavez cronies. So when Mr. Chavez announces a landslide, there has been no way to prove otherwise, even though exit polls and other data have consistently shown that half the voters of Venezuela or more oppose Mr. Chavez.

It's worth noting that Jimmy Carter vouched for the results of both elections. Michael Rowan and Doug Schoen want an accounting of his methodology. More importantly, they want an accounting of the favorable treatment Chavez gets from the Left, as well as from 17 Congressmen who have oil subsidized by Chavez delivered to their districts.

Chavez is another banana-republic ruler whose threats to nationalize industry and impose socialism by imperial diktat would (rightfully) raise screams if they happened in Zimbabwe or Russia. Why is Venezuela different?

Cuban Doctors Defecting From Venezuela

For the last few years, Cuba has sent its doctors to Venezuela to provide free health care for impoverished citizens of its ally in the region. Hugo Chavez has welcomed the Cubans as a means of bringing closer ties between the two countries and to augment his nation's health-care system. However, the physicians defect in increasing numbers by crossing the border with Colombia, disillusioned with both Cuba and Venezuela:

Ariel Perez was, like thousands of fellow Cuban doctors, a devoted soldier in Fidel Castro's most important overseas mission -- providing medical care to the poor in oil-rich Venezuela, Cuba's most vital ally. But last year, Perez and two Cuban companions, carrying rucksacks with a few belongings and holding just $1,300 among them, sneaked across the Colombian border and promptly defected. ...

Chávez and other government officials have declared the program, called Inside the Barrio, a success. But a Venezuelan medical association critical of the Chávez government has expressed reservations about the Cuban doctors' qualifications, and political opposition leaders have criticized the program for its lack of transparency. Cuban doctors are not permitted to talk to foreign journalists or diplomats. They must seek permission to travel outside of their assigned municipalities, and doctors who have defected say Cuban and Venezuelan intelligence operatives kept close tabs on their whereabouts.

The doctors in Bogota spoke of the pride they felt delivering care to the poor in the name of their small country, which has made health care a priority since Castro took power in 1959. But they also talked of being terrified working in Venezuelan neighborhoods buffeted by crime.

Most jumped at the chance to work overseas, seeing it as an opportunity to earn far more than the $15 a month they were paid in Cuba. But the workload was heavy -- from early morning until night, sometimes seven days a week. And the pay -- around $200 a month -- quickly evaporated in a country with high prices and double-digit inflation.

The Bush administration has tried to keep the information from becoming public. The process of granting asylum takes a significant period of time, and the applicants are in a precarious position during that time. Host countries also would prefer not to get involved in defections, and the lack of publicity allows everyone to look the other way.

It's a fascinating story nonetheless. Cuba has long pointed with pride to its health-care system, which it touts as cutting edge, and which Castro's government provides free for its citizens. The reality of their facilities tells a different story, as I posted two years ago. Pictures of Cilinico Quirigico's emergency room restroom give a better indication of the dangers of Castro's health-care system:

Doctors forced to work in these conditions understandably thought that a trip to Venezuela might provide an improvement. It certainly improved their salaries, which increased 1,400% percent. While the difference in buying power turned out to be significantly less than they imagined, it also gave them the opportunity to get out from under Castro's thumb -- and to a country that they could leave much easier that Cuba.

Many of them have left. Estimates range to 500 or more health-care professionals and their dependents who have fled both Chavez and Castro by either applying directly to our embassy in Caracas or by flight over the border into Colombia. A large number of them still await adjudication of their applications, in part because the US wants to ensure that no spies for either Castro or Chavez wind up with asylum.

Hopefully, the Bush administration can expedite the process and allow more of these freedom-seekers to realize their dreams.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, tourists defect from Cuban hospitality (via Babalu Blog):

A FAMILY are suing Thomas Cook after their dream trip to Cuba became the holiday from hell. Elaine Old, 44, claims their luxury hotel made the family sick.

She arrived at the resort only to find dirty beds, her toilet overflowing with human waste and food covered in flies.
Just three days into the four-star luxury break at the Brisas Guardalavaca Hotel, Holguin, Elaine and her family were left ill with a serious stomach bug.

But things turned from bad to worse when their elderly mother, Dorothy, 76, was left needing emergency hospital treatment after she slipped on the wet hotel floor and broke her leg.

The Sunderland Echo includes a video taken by the family that records some of the gastronomic surprises that awaited them in Cuba. Hint: those aren't capers in the mashed potatoes. It appears that some of the seasoning adds itself in the open servings.

Putin Pitches Fit Over Missile Shield

The decision of eastern European nations to base portions of a missile shield intended to protect Europe from Iranian attack has drawn the ire of Vladimir Putin. The Russian autocrat has threatened to aim Russian missiles at Poland and the Czech Republic for its participation in the missile shield program:

Russia threatened to train its missiles on Poland and the Czech Republic yesterday after the two countries signaled they would host a controversial US missile defence shield despite vehement objections from the Kremlin.

The warning came hours after Czech prime minister Mirek Topolanek and his Polish counterpart Jaroslaw Kaczynski told a press conference in Warsaw that their response to the US proposal, made last month, would "most likely be positive."

The Pentagon has asked to deploy 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic — two former Warsaw Pact countries that are now EU and Nato members — as part of the first global integrated missile defence shield in Europe.

Yesterday Gen Nikolai Solovtsov, commander of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces, warned that the proposed locations of the defensive shield would be targeted if Poland and the Czech Republic accepted the proposal.

He also repeated a threat to pull out of a Cold War treaty restricting the production of intermediate range missiles capable of striking Europe.

Putin has clearly decided to push the West into a new cold war. He wants to go back to a Kremlin that asserts its power on its western frontier by threats and intimidation. As he gets closer to the end of his official term in office, he almost appears eager to find arguments with NATO and the EU, perhaps as a straw man for an excuse to retain his grip on power.

The idea that the missile shield somehow targets Russia is absurd. The Russian Army would not be held back by any such defense, and they have plenty of divisions to send across the Poland-Belarus border if Putin so chose. Russia already has thousands of missiles to shoot at Europe and elsewhere. The treaty on mid-range missiles did not dismantle existing rockets but proscribed production of replacements. Putin will find that an abrogation of that treaty will result in production of plenty new missiles in Europe, and Europe is a lot closer to the Kremlin than it used to be.

One has to wonder what game Putin has decided to play. After a long period of Russian engagement with the West, Putin seems determined to return to the traditional Great Game nonsense of Russian emperors. He has courted terrorist states such as Iran and Iraq, actively protecting them from the consequences of their instransigence towards the global community. He has played games with energy deliveries to Europe in barely-veiled threats that lacked any kind of subtlety about his projection of power. Days ago, he gave a speech so belligerent that Defense Secretary Robert Gates had to explicitly state that one Cold War was enough.

Putin wants to make a case for his ascension to Emperor, in fact if not in name. In doing so, the old spy seems to care little if he touches off another generation of brinksmanship between the Kremlin and the West. He should note that the brink is about a thousand miles closer to Russia in this generation.

Addendum: Interestingly, none of the major American newspapers have covered this in today's editions.

UPDATE: I missed this Los Angeles Times story on the threat:

The United States' multibillion-dollar defense system is designed to counter missiles that might someday be fired by what Washington calls rogue states — Iran and North Korea, for instance.

Russia has ridiculed the U.S. military logic and views the plan as a threat to its national security that would distort the post-Cold War balance of power in Europe. ...

In the early 1990s, post-Soviet Russia said its missiles were no longer targeted at NATO countries. Analysts said then that the announcement, which could not be independently verified, was a purely symbolic gesture ending the Cold War hostility.

Spitzer's Slush Fund

The transition from reformer to corrupt politician is an old topic in American culture. It drives efforts to "clean house" as happened in 1994 and 2006 in Congress, and it played an instrumental role in establishing term limits in state offices, especially in the legislatures. Part of that archetype involves a long exposure to political pressures and temptations that come with power, usually over a decade or two.

In New York, it appears that the process takes three months:

Governor Spitzer is planning to funnel millions of dollars in borrowed state money to Senate Democrats, who have been secretly asked by the administration to submit their wish lists for local capital projects, according to lawmakers.

The move marks the governor's boldest effort to solidify his influence over the Democratic conference, whose support he is counting on in the short term to give him an edge during negotiations, and in the long term to play an instrumental role in pushing through his governing agenda.

For the past month, Senate Democrats have been submitting the paperwork for tens of millions of dollars in grants unbeknownst to most other lawmakers. There is no written agreement between Mr. Spitzer and the conference; the administration discussed the possibility of funding Senate Democratic projects with Minority Leader Malcolm Smith, who passed on the message to conference members at a private meeting.

News has slowly leaked out, as Senate Democrats have discussed the money with potential grantees and legislative colleagues. The New York Sun learned of Mr. Spitzer's plan from a Democratic member of the Assembly who heard a Democratic senator talking about a $1 million grant that the senator assumed was in the pipeline.

That didn't take long! After all, Spitzer got himself elected Governor after his term as a crusading Attorney General, looking to tackle corruption on Wall Street and elsewhere. (He missed the entire mess with Air America and the Gloria Wise school, but a guy can only do so much ...) That reputation as a hard-charging reformer made him unbeatable and gave the Democrats the executive office in New York for the first time since Mario Cuomo retired.

So much for reform. Now that he has barely warmed his seat in Albany, he has shifted his game to that of old-time politician and spoils master. He wants to pass a budget of his liking, and he's going to buy as many of his party colleagues as he possibly can to ensure it. After running a campaign that pledged Spitzer to a course that would change "politics as usual", he seems to have discovered an affinity for slush funds in record time.

I'd suggest term limits as a mechanism for New Yorkers to protect themselves from Governors whose long exposure to power makes them corrupt -- but two months seems a little ridiculous. Perhaps New Yorkers might feel the same way about the newly-minted porkmaster they just elected to that position.

Game On

After a period of quiet after the US and Iraq started implementing their Baghdad security plan, the insurgents have decided to start pushing back. While America still has troops in transit, terrorists struck a US base yesterday, killing two and wounding 17:

In a rare coordinated assault on an American combat outpost north of Baghdad, suicide bombers drove one or more cars laden with explosives into the compound on Monday, while other insurgents opened fire in the ensuing chaos, according to witnesses and the American military. Two American soldiers were killed and at least 17 were wounded.

The brazen attack, which was followed by gun battles and an evacuation of the wounded by American helicopters, was almost surely the work of Sunni militants, most likely Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, according to American and Iraqi officials.

It appeared to be part of a renewed drive by insurgents in recent weeks as more American and Iraqi troops flood the streets of Baghdad and thousands of marines head to western Anbar Province to try to stem the violence. Hundreds of Iraqis have died in a recent wave of car bombings in Baghdad and elsewhere.

Insurgents have been able to shoot down more helicopters through coordinated assaults, captured documents suggest, and American and Iraqi military officials say they are concerned that militants are moving to areas where the American troop presence remains thin.

This attack was unusual in a couple of aspects. First, insurgents do not usually conduct frontal attacks on established defensive positions. This is not because they're not suicidal, because some of them clearly are, but because such attacks do not usually succeed. In this instance, they had to conduct a sort of stacked attack of suicide bombers to breach the defenses, having two car bombs set the stage for a penetrating third blast.

Tarmiya, where this attack occurred, has seen its share of difficulties, thanks to al-Qaeda in Iraq. The local police force bailed out on Tarmiya after an extensive intimidation campaign by AQI drove out not just the police, but also the Shi'ites. The Americans took over security in Tarmiya in order to confront AQI, and it used the abandoned police station as its base. The surge strategy would almost certainly have served to bolster the American contingent in this part of the greater Baghdad area, and AQI knew that it had a short window in which to conduct this attack.

So, this may have more than just a little hint of desperation to it. The US contingent in Tarmiya had made it clear that they intended to do a clear-and-hold operation targeting the AQI elements that had terrorized the community. Fresh troops and an expanded command would certainly arrive within the next few weeks. AQI terrorists had to strike now, rather than wait for the Americans to start attacking them first.

It looks like the US fended off the attack in rather good fashion. The Times reports farther down into the story that the Americans have quarantined Tarmiya. Marc Santora mentions this by way of discussing the fears of residents that needed supplies will be cut off, but it demonstrates that the US retained the initiative after the attack and managed to cut off AQI inside the city.

The surge strategy will result in battles against our enemies, and AQI is one of the highest-priority enemies we face. Battles such as Tarmiya will be the norm rather the exception, and frontal assaults by AQI and other insurgent groups give us the best opportunity to defeat them. It plays to our strengths and attrits their forces in high percentages -- exactly the kind of battle we prefer.

Five Years Went By Fast

Remember when people kept assuring us that Iran was at least five years from developing the technology to produce a nuclear weapon? Well, time apparently flies, because the IAEA now says that Iran may be as close as six months from producing the fuel for a nuke. Given their earlier access to the AQ Khan network, that could make Iran a nuclear power by the end of summer:

Iran could be as little as six months away from being able to enrich uranium on an industrial scale, having mastered the technology since last August, the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog warned in an interview published today. However, Mohamed ElBaradei, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general, stressed that Iran was still years away from developing a nuclear weapon.

"The intelligence, the British intelligence, the American intelligence, is saying that Iran is still years, five to 10 years, away from developing a weapon," he told the Financial Times in an interview on the eve of Wednesday's deadline for Tehran to suspend its enrichment work. But Mr ElBaradei said he expected Iran to ignore the deadline.

He said Iran could install a network of 3,000 centrifuges - enough to begin producing fissile material for a bomb - within months. "It could be six months, it could be a year," Mr ElBaradei said. However, he added, "there's a big difference between acquiring the knowledge for enrichment and developing a bomb".

Since August last year Iran has been using centrifuges at a pilot plant in the town of Natanz to enrich uranium. It has refused to halt this process, insisting its purposes are purely peaceful.

It's true that building a centrifuge cascade does not lead directly to a nuke. Even building the centrifuges themselves in bulk can be a high hurdle for developing nations. Iran has had its share of problems with this stage, and the Guardian has reported on more than one occasion that the Iranian claims of progress may have been overstated.

However, ElBaradei apparently believes they have surmounted their production difficulties, including the ball bearings that they had difficulty manufacturing accurately. A cascade of 3,000 centrifuges could quickly produce enough material of high enough enrichment for nuclear weapons. In fact, it would be designed with that in mind. Nuclear power stations do not require a high enrichment value, and such a large cascade would either have an application for generating fuel for a large number of commercial power stations or fuel for a few bombs.

The Iranians only need to master the technology to produce the fuel. The rest of the technology had been available in the region for years, thanks to Pakistani nuclear designer AQ Khan. The Iranians benefitted from Khan's largesse and have the design for nuclear weapons. They need to produce the other elements of the device, but the toughest hurdle was the centrifuge cascades, which they apparently have resolved, according to ElBaradei.

Five years sure passed quickly, didn't they?

Bratz Girls Damage Self-Image Of Young Girls

The American Psychological Association reaffirmed what most people of sense and taste already know -- that overly sexualized advertising aimed at young girls pressures them into objectifying themselves sexually. The Bratz Girls dolls and accessories come in for specific criticism:

Advertising and media images that encourage girls to focus on looks and sexuality are harmful to their emotional and physical health, a new report by the American Psychological Association says.

The report, released Monday, analyzed some 300 studies over the past 18 months. It included a variety of media, from television and movies to song lyrics, and looked at advertising showing body-baring doll clothes for pre-schoolers, tweens posing in suggestive ways in magazines and the sexual antics of young celebrity role models.

The researchers found such images may make girls think of and treat their own bodies as sexual objects. ...

The panel defined sexualization as occurring "when a person's value comes only from her/his sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics, and when a person is sexually objectified, e.g., made into a thing for another's sexual use."

The report cites Bratz dolls, in particular, for "sexualized clothing such as miniskirts, fishnet stockings and feather boas."

"Although these dolls may present no more sexualization of girls or women than is seen in MTV videos, it is worrisome when dolls designed specifically for 4- to 8-year-olds are associated with an objectified adult sexuality," the report says.

As the grandfather of a 4-year-old little girl, this isn't an academic exercise to me. I understand that sex sells, and when the product is aimed at adults, that's no problem. Sex is a choice that adults make, and adults have a more settled sense of themselves and comprehend the profit motive behind the advertising. Teenagers have less confidence in their own identity, and while they have the intellectual capacity to comprehend the profit motive, these advertisements take advantage of their natural insecurities.

Preteens and little girs do not have any sophistication in defending their own identity and values, and dolls like the Bratz Girls model the kinds of behavior that lead to teen pregnancy, the spread of STDs, and the general devaluation of women and their role in society. Bratz Girls are not liberated in any practical sense of the word. They consign girls and women to the role of sexual toys, selling girls who have no sexual development on the lifestyle of sluts before they have a chance to understand its negative aspects. Worse, it creates peer pressure among their friends to buy into the Bratz image.

MGA Entertainment isn't the only offender, of course; retailers like Abercrombie & Fitch and popular music and videos also objectify and overly sexualize young people, especially women. The solution won't and shouldn't come from governmental regulation. Parents need to take command of these influences on their children and stop putting money into the cash registers that float this nonsense. We have to ensure that we build a future for our children, especially our young girls, that aims somewhere above the belt line.

Perfect End To Today

Just to recap, this weekend I've had to have my car serviced, which forced me to get a rental until this afternoon. My pipe burst, which forced me to shut off my water. The plumber has to replace all the pipes in the house because the builder used cheap polybutylene instead of something more substantial 20 years ago, which forced me into a hotel for two nights. What could possibly top that?

How about a fire alarm at 11:20 at night, forcing us to evacuate from the third floor down to the lobby in our robes?

How about forcing us to listen to three teen-age boys conduct the most insipid conversation outside of Air America, allowing a roomful of people who know better to learn how they would fix the world if they had the chance?

How about being sent back to our rooms without so much as an apology from our Marriott Hotel-brand clerk?

Yeah. This fits juuuuuuuuuuuust right.

The Best Endorsements Money Can Buy

The surprise endorsement of Hillary Clinton last week by two prominent African-American politicians in South Caroline raised eyebrows for one's statement that a black nominee would doom the Democratic ticket across the nation. Robert Ford's odd diatribe might have been the lighter part of the story. Earlier today, the AP challenged Hillary to explain a $10,000-per-month consulting contract with Darrell Jackson, the other state legislator who eschewed Barack Obama to endorse Hillary:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday denied that her campaign traded money for an endorsement from one of South Carolina's most influential black politicians.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Clinton responded to questions about the consulting contract her campaign negotiated with state Sen. Darrell Jackson, who last week endorsed her candidacy rather than of top rivals John Edwards or Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

"Senator Jackson was someone who was involved in my husband's campaigns. He was someone we turned to for political advice and counsel and I'm proud to have him on my team," Clinton told the AP.

Soon after the endorsement, Jackson acknowledged that his media consulting firm had negotiated a $10,000 per month contract with Clinton's campaign. Jackson has said he turned down more lucrative contracts from other candidates.

This comes courtesy of the political party that ran on a platform of reform and "draining the swamp". Now it appears that the Democratic frontrunner has positioned herself as chief alligator. The green certainly has flown around the campaign trail, if this is any indication.

Two people have to answer for this arrangement. First, Darrell Jackson has to explain to his constituents why he literally sold out to the Clintons, rather than stick with John Edwards or considered Barack Obama. Considering the shocking statement of his partner in the endorsement -- Ford had also said that he would not "kill himself" by endorsing Obama -- the consultancy gives a ready explanation why Jackson so blithely followed suit.

More importantly, Hillary has to explain this better than the fact that Jackson had been involved in Bill's presidential campaign in 1992 or 1996. It doesn't take a $10,000 per month consultancy to advise Hillary on political matters in South Carolina or to conduct outreach. It looks and smells like a payoff, and given the history of the Clintons in politics, it smells particularly bad.

The immediate question should be this: how many other paid consultants are higher-profile politicians who have endorsed Hillary? How many other politicans has Hillary bought in this stage of the primaries? And perhaps the Democratic Party can explain to us once again how they represent clean government and political reform -- because from the grandstands, it looks like Democrats have put themselves up for the highest bidder, and that they're willing to bid rather high themselves.

Dogs And Cats Living Together?

The only two subscription radio services in the US have agreed to merge, hoping that the plethora of platforms for content will convince antitrust regulators to ignore the deal. Sirius and XM will combine their offerings as well as their operations, hoping to save as much as $7 billion:

Satellite radio operators Sirius and XM are expected to announce their long-awaited merger today, according to a source familiar with the deal.

The two sides were locked in negotiations over the weekend trying to hammer out a final agreement with an eye toward going public with the merger today in Washington, D.C., where XM is based, this source said. ...

Combining Sirius and XM would result in a single satellite radio operator with more than 12 million total subscribers. A deal would also marry Sirius content, such as Howard Stern, Frank Sinatra and Nascar with XM's Oprah Winfrey, Bob Dylan and Major League Baseball.

More important, analysts widely predict that a deal would also save the two companies nearly $7 billion annually.

Can the two companies possibly spend $7 billion a year between them? That number seems very high. Twelve million subscribers at $10 per month -- what I pay for XM -- comes to $1.44 billion in revenue. The New York Post may need to recheck its figures.

I wonder how they will get past the regulators, though. The Post reported that the two companies feel they had a short window to announce the merger in order to make it through the 15-month closing process. It sounds as if they believe the Bush administration's Justice Department will take a more laissez-faire attitude towards the deal than whatever follows after the 2008 election. That could be true, but it will be hard to ignore that a market with two providers suddenly only has one. While that may be all right with its subscribers as long as the rates stay low, it will make it tougher for content providers to crack the lineup and put them at a stark disadvantage in negotiating their compensation.

For those who have worked with the two companies in the past, compensation is already a problem. Taking the market away will not improve it.

On the other hand, I'm inclined to like the merger. Not only will I get more content, but now I can have the pleasure of turning off Howard Stern again. I missed that when he left the airwaves to go to Sirius, and his presence there helped inform my decision to choose XM. Now I can truly boycott him again.

Judge Paruk, CAIR, And Due Process

Judge Paul Paruk made headlines last October after dismissing a lawsuit brought by a Muslim woman when she refused to remove her niqab during her testimony. The case resumes on Wednesday through the reciprocal lawsuit brought by the car rental company for the damage to the vehicle, but an exchange from the earlier case has come to light. In October, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) attempted to inject itself into the case by sending this letter to Judge Paruk on October 31st, from CAIR's executive director in Michigan:

Dear Judge Paruk,

The Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN) is deeply concerned with the incident that took place in your court with Ginnah Muhammed on October 11, 2006. The 31st District Court in Hamtramck violated Ms. Muhammed's civil rights by refusing to hear her case unless she removed her religious face veil. As you know the case has drawn international media attention, but in the midst of it all, the case has remained unresolved.

We would like to set up a meeting with you to discuss this issue. Hopefully with everyone's cooperation, we can resolve this. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to schedule a meeting. Thank you.

As you might imagine, Judge Paruk thought that he had resolved the issue entirely by dismissing the charges when Muhammed refused to take off the veil. Furthermore, since CAIR was not a party to the suit, it seems especially arrogant for CAIR-MI to request a meeting to force a resolution. Judge Paruk gave this polite but firm response on November 9th, in part:

Dear Mr. Walid,

In your letter to me of October 31, you stated that "The 31st District Court in Hamtramck violated Ms. [Ginnah] Muhammed's civil rights by refusing to hear her case unless she removed her religious face veil." You further stated that "the incident remains unresolved." I must respectfully disagree with both of those statements. To my mind, the "incident" is indeed resolved by my ruling, and I absolutely did not violate Ms. Muhammed's civil rights. If Ms. Muhammed disagrees with my decision, she can certainly pursue her legal remedies; that is her right. But I cannot allow a third person, one who is not involved in the case that was before me, to attempt to get me to change my position. ...

You stated that the Michigan chapter of CAIR is "deeply concerned" by my decision. I too am concerned about that case, but for a different reason: my responsibility to the justice system, which includes identifying individuals, assessing the credibility of witnesses and being fair to all parties. ...

Ultimately, however, my concern has to be, not with what Islamic law requires, but with the laws of the United States and Michigan. I would not permit any other witness to testify with a covered face. I cannot have one law for the community and another law for Ms. Muhammed.

I'd say that just about covers it. Judge Paruk has it right; we cannot have separate laws for the Muslims and the rest of us. If Ms. Muhammed and the folks at CAIR want to live under shari'a law -- which according to Judge Paruk would still have required her to remove the niqab while testifying -- then they need to move to a nation that operates under shari'a.

Judge Paruk's response in full is here. h/t: CQ reader Martin K)

Iranian Nuclear Plant Falls Prey To Collection Agency

The Russians have decided to delay their assistance to the Iranians on the construction and operation of the Bushehr reactor that has the West infuriated with both nations. Moscow has not come to its senses about giving radical Islamists the nuclear cycle, however. They're just refusing to work until the Iranians catch up on their bills:

Russian officials have warned work on an Iranian nuclear plant may be delayed because Iran is late with payments. ...

Under the Bushehr deal, Russia would have started fuel shipments by March, launched the plant in September and begun to generate electricity by November.

Russia's Federal Nuclear Power Agency spokesman Sergey Novikov said the "launch schedule definitely could be affected" by the delay in payments.

One unnamed Russian official told Associated Press Iran was blaming "technical reasons" for the delay. Iran has not commented officially.

Officially, the West dropped its objections to the Bushehr deal when Russia agreed to the sanctions regime regarding uranium enrichment in Iran. However, the US and its allies have found the deal problematic and potentially dangerous. Russia demanded that Iran return the spent fuel to ensure that it could not be used in developing nuclear weapons, but the West disputes whether any effective verification of Iran's performance to that clause exists.

The delay in payment for the reactor and Russian services seems puzzling. The Iranians produce plenty of oil, although at decreasing levels as their facilities age. Given the high profile of the Bushehr plant, one would expect Teheran to ensure that it stays on schedule. This would seem to indicate significant economic problems for the Islamic state, perhaps significant enough for them to try another round of Let's Make A Deal.

At any rate, we have finally discovered what it takes for the Russians to seriously consider security: a late payoff. Maybe we can arrange more of those.

Making Their Runs To The Right

John McCain and Mitt Romney spent their weekends jogging -- to the right. McCain made his clearest statement yet on abortion, and Romney backpedaled from his previous stand on allowing gays to openly serve in the military. Both men appear to understand that the primaries will require significant support from social conservatives in the GOP, a group both men have eschewed at times during their careers.

McCain's statement will probably end his reputation as a Republican maverick:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, looking to improve his standing with the party's conservative voters, said Sunday the court decision that legalized abortion should be overturned.

"I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned," the Arizona senator told about 800 people in South Carolina, one of the early voting states.

McCain also vowed that if elected, he would appoint judges who "strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States and do not legislate from the bench."

Later, he appeared at an abstinence rally, talking to teenagers about making the right choices in life. McCain told them that he had made poor choices in the past, although it wasn't clear whether he meant the Gang of 14 or not. McCain led the Senate caucus that effectively took the power of judicial nominations out of George Bush's hands when Bush nominated the kind of judges that McCain now endorses. As a result, a few strict constructionists like Henry Saad got thrown under the bus by McCain and his Gang.

Will McCain now endorse Brett Cavanaugh and William Haynes? Will he renominate Henry Saad? It seems that the moment may have passed for a McCain endorsement of strict constructionists.

McCain received an important endorsement from Frank Keating, however. The former Oklahoma governor has been considered a conservative stalwart and had been thinking about a presidential run of his own. He also picked up Phil Gramm as a supporter, another conservative heavyweight. Keating called McCain a "true-blue Ronald Reagan conservative," a description that some may greet with incredudility, considering the BCRA.

Romney, meanwhile, did a little reverse jogging of his own. On record as supporting gays to serve openly in the military, Romney declared yesterday that the timing makes all the difference. Appearing on ABC's This Week, he said that a change should not come in the middle of a conflict:

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R), who once advocated allowing gays to serve openly in the military, said yesterday that he does not think the Pentagon should change its "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the midst of the Iraq war.

" 'Don't ask, don't tell' has worked well. We're in the middle of a conflict. Now is not the time for a change in that regard, and I don't have a policy posture as to allowing gays in the military to serve there openly," Romney, a presidential candidate, said on ABC's "This Week."

That seems rather convenient. We're likely to remain in a conflict with radical Islamist terrorists for years, which means that he won't have to address his previous position even if elected for two terms. Instead -- and this is really rich -- he now runs to the right by endorsing a Bill Clinton policy meant to transition to a more liberal standard. At the same time, he says he opposes discrimination of gays and lesbians. If that doesn't make heads spin, I'm not sure what will.

Romney also confirmed his support of the surge in Iraq as "the right thing to do". He has supported the surge since its pre-announcement debate; this just answers the foolishness in Congress last week. Romney also insisted that he now takes a pro-life stand on abortion despite running as a pro-choice candidate in 1994. In this, he relies on federalism, claiming that abortion should be left to state legislators and not to Congress or the courts. However, he also supports a federal Constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman, which seems a little inconsistent for a federalist.

This is what's wrong with a long primary campaign. It doesn't give us any better look at the candidates, and it puts far too much pressure on them to be all things to all people. In this environment, a man like Rudy Giuliani will do better just by remaining in one spot and not trying to be a chameleon for all of the different factions of the GOP. It also leaves open the possibility that Republicans will find everyone so tiresome at the end of a year of campaigning that it will look outside the current group when the primaries actually begin.

Someone, say, like Newt Gingrich?

Can Oil Save The Sunnis?

The Iraqi government faces many issues, but perhaps none as intractable as oil revenues. The proper division of monies from oil production has plagued the National Assembly and sectarian relations since the end of the Saddam Hussein tyranny. The Kurds and the Shi'ites, freed from Saddam's grip, want to use the oil revenue from their sectors to directly benefit themselves. The lack of such resources in Sunni-controlled territory fuels the Sunni insurgents, afraid that they will be left destitute in a federal system.

Now, however, it appears that the Sunnis may have more resources than first thought. The New York Times reports that Western engineers have discovered significant fields of oil and natural gas in Anbar:

In a remote patch of the Anbar desert just 20 miles from the Syrian border, a single blue pillar of flanges and valves sits atop an enormous deposit of oil and natural gas that would be routine in this petroleum-rich country except for one fact: this is Sunni territory.

Huge petroleum deposits have long been known in Iraq’s Kurdish north and Shiite south. But now, Iraq has substantially increased its estimates of the amount of oil and natural gas in deposits on Sunni lands after quietly paying foreign oil companies tens of millions of dollars over the past two years to re-examine old seismic data across the country and retrain Iraqi petroleum engineers.

The development is likely to have significant political effects: the lack of natural resources in the central and western regions where Sunnis hold sway has fed their disenchantment with the nation they once ruled. And it has driven their insistence on a strong central government, one that would collect oil revenues and spread them equitably among the country’s factions, rather than any division of the country along sectarian regional boundaries.

So far, the geologists and seismologists have not found anything comparable to the huge petroleum stores in the north and south of the country. They have found a series of smaller fields strung across western Iraq that would produce significant revenue, if the Sunnis could exploit them. It would take years to develop the infrastructure in Anbar and other Sunni regions, but once in place, it could provide the Sunnis with a significant revenue stream.

This discovery has importance far beyond the oil industry. The Sunnis have had little good economic news after Saddam's fall. The desperation has fueled the insurgencies, and their terrorism has plagued operational production facilities in the Shi'ite south. If the Sunnis have their own oil resources, the insurgents could be convinced to lay down arms and instead build the necessary infrastructure to generate the revenue -- a task that the US would only be too happy to assist.

That would marginalize the al-Qaeda elements even further in Anbar, where they face increasing tribal animosity thanks to their bloodthirsty track record. Oil revenues could convince the former Ba'athists and other native insurgents that they can survive in a federal system -- in fact, may do better in a federal system than in a unitary system where they would always be a minority. They would not be destined for poverty, dependent on the questionable kindness of their Shi'ite and Kurdish cousins. It would also remove one of the stickiest issues facing the assembly and allow them to reach accord on constitutional decisions.

If the US and Iraqi government can convince the Sunnis to shift focus from their self-perceived victimhood and terrorism to oil production and relative wealth, oil could become Anbar's miracle crop.

AQ Making A Comeback In Waziristan, Part II

Following up on the story I posted below on Condoleezza Rice's "disappointment" with Pakistan over its truce with tribal leaders in Waziristan, the New York Times reports on how that truce has allowed not just the Taliban but also al-Qaeda to make a comeback. A series of blows to AQ by the US and its allies had relegated Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to mostly inspirational roles among jihadists. Now Zawahiri, at least, has become much more operational, thanks to the breathing room provided by the Musharraf deal:

Senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once-battered worldwide terror network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan. Until recently, the Bush administration had described Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri as detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of Al Qaeda.

The United States has also identified several new Qaeda compounds in North Waziristan, including one that officials said might be training operatives for strikes against targets beyond Afghanistan.

American analysts said recent intelligence showed that the compounds functioned under a loose command structure and were operated by groups of Arab, Pakistani and Afghan militants allied with Al Qaeda. They receive guidance from their commanders and Mr. Zawahri, the analysts said. Mr. bin Laden, who has long played less of an operational role, appears to have little direct involvement.

Officials said the training camps had yet to reach the size and level of sophistication of the Qaeda camps established in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. But groups of 10 to 20 men are being trained at the camps, the officials said, and the Qaeda infrastructure in the region is gradually becoming more mature.

Counterterrorism experts analyze the stability and robustness of AQ in part by reviewing the frequency and timeliness of its broadcasts to the world. In 2006, the number of messages from bin Laden and Zawahiri doubled over the previous year, and the messages referred to events in a more timely manner -- sometimes within days, rather than several weeks as before. It demonstrates an ability to move tapes via courier much faster than before, which indicates a more stable network surrounding what American officials call "core al-Qaeda".

Western intelligence and military agencies are unsure how to proceed. American military strikes on these bases will violate Pakistani sovereignty, but Musharraf has not been willing to take on the task himself. The West cannot allow AQ to operate so easily, and the Bush doctrine certainly would apply here. However, if people thought Iraq was such a "meatgrinder", as one CQ commenter recently put it (and later retracted), it would be a walk in the park compared to an invasion of Waziristan and an occupation of that region. It would almost certainly pull down the Musharraf government in Islamabad, and its replacement would almost certainly be Islamist. Its army and intelligence services would immediately begin to attack American positions in the mountainous country, and we would then be at open war with a nuclear power. Plus, the lines of communication would make it difficult to resupply our troops even if that war went reasonably well; we could not hope to hold Waziristan for a significant period of time.

Besides, given the nature of AQ, even targeted American strikes could not guarantee that they could be "surgical", ie, not create collateral damage to civilian populations. We also could not be sure that we had destroyed the core AQ targets, although the camps would be enough for now. Escalation of the war in Afghanistan would have to get NATO's buy-in, and it would open up the White House to more attacks from Congress, including another defunding threat.

We face a daunting task and an irrevocable threat in Pakistan now, and the situation has to change in one direction or the other. Afghanistan, by comparison, was easy. The Taliban government had been nothing more than a paper front for terrorist groups, not a large military threat. Now that the Taliban and AQ have taken refuge in Pakistan -- and that Musharraf seems unwilling to do what it takes to eject them -- we have a much bigger problem on our hands. If we go to war with Pakistan over AQ, we could pull in India and Iran and perhaps the entire region in a nuclear standoff that has few positive outcomes possible. (via Hot Air)

Rice: US Disappointed By Waziristan Truce

Spring in Afghanistan usually means another Taliban offensive, and NATO forces expect an unusually energetic effort from the radical Islamists this year. The truce given by Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf to the tribes of Waziristan has given the Taliban more latitude in building up their forces for the offensive, a situation that Condoleezza Rice finds disappointing:

Fears that Taliban militants are preparing to launch a spring offensive from Pakistan's tribal areas are straining relations between President Pervez Musharraf and his US-led allies.

American officials are increasingly vocal about the dangers of Taliban safe havens inside Pakistan and in particular North Waziristan, one of Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal agencies, where General Musharraf struck a controversial peace deal last September. American generals say cross-border incursions have soared since then.

On Friday Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, spoke of "problems and disappointments" with the situation in Waziristan.

Pakistan is hitting back at the criticism with irate impatience. On Friday Ali Jan Aurakzai, the governor of North West Frontier Province, accused western allies of scapegoating Pakistan for their own failures in Afghanistan.

In comments sure to needle Nato, he described the Taliban insurgency as a "war of liberation" fought by disaffected tribesmen and which enjoys broad public support. Pakistan accounts for just "five, 10 or 20%", of the problem, he said.

That kind of rhetoric won't help matters, either. The Pakistanis have sacrificed in making themselves allies of the US, and Pervez Musharraf has weathered two separate assassination attempts for his decision. However, the agreement Musharraf made with the Waziris has allowed the Islamists to double and treble their attacks on Afghanistan, whether Musharraf wants to acknowledge it or not.

And even that deal has broken down. Pakistan claims that they have 90 checkpoints along the border in that region, but the truth is that the tribes simply aren't keeping the bargain. They are allowing Taliban elements to infiltrate in greater numbers than ever, and they are not cooperating with the Pakistanis tp capture them as they promised.

The Taliban have begun to overwhelm the Waziris themselves. They now levy taxes and run shari'a courts in Waziristan. Worse yet, they have used Waziristan as a power base to conduct terrorist attacks in Pakistani cities. The recent bombing of a courthouse in Quetta, which killed 16 people, originated among the Islamists in Waziristan.

Rice has it right when she calls the situation disappointing. None of us understood why Musharraf would have trusted the Taliban and signed off on an agreement like this with people who want him dead. Everything we've seen since confirms the original diagnosis.

Hatred Fails To Derail Friendship Express

Terrorists bombed the Friendship Express, a new train service between Pakistan and India commemorating their peace treaties, killing 64 and wounding many more. Two blasts tore through two passenger cars, leaving a trail of destruction:

Explosions aboard an Indian passenger train bound for Pakistan killed at least 64 people and wounded 50 early Monday, and explosive devices have been found, according to railway officials.

Two blasts ripped through two passenger coaches, as the Samjhauta Express passed through Panipat, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of New Delhi, said Northern Rail spokesman Rakesh Saxena.

Three unexploded bombs were found near the train tracks, Saxena said.

The train eventually continued to Pakistan without the two destroyed cars. The bombers may have killed dozens of people, but they could not stop the Friendship Express. With any luck, this will serve as an analogy for the entire war on terror.

The Nomad Life

This weekend did not go so well as I'd hoped. It began with the maintenance light flashing on my car on Friday afternoon, and it's ending with the two of us in a hotel. The car will be fine; it turned out to be nothing more than routine work, but I had to rent a car for the weekend to get by.

We're not so lucky with the house, unfortunately. A month or so ago, I wrote about a pipe failure near the water heater, and about six months ago another pipe failure within the wall. Our house has the polybutylene plumbing that has been the subject of class-action lawsuits, and after twenty years, it has apparently run out of life. Another pipe spouted a pinhole leak this morning, and we had to shut down the water. We've decided to bite the bullet and replace all of the PB pipe, but it will cost us thousands of dollars we had hoped to use for a vacation.

We're fortunate, though, to have the money and the ability to fix the problem. It could be worse, and at times, it has been for us.

It's a bummer in more ways than one. Not long ago, I wrote about my frustration with Linksys wireless network products and my new D-Link router. It's worked very well, and the Network Magic software makes it much easier to manage the network. It has worked so well that I bought a D-Link wireless print server (before the car and plumbing problems) and installed it this week. It worked like a charm, only taking about 30 minutes to have it installed and running. I have two USB printers, and it detected and installed them with no problem at all. I can now print from anywhere in the house without having to lug the laptop to the printer and connect it.

Of course, I have to be at the house to use the printers, so that will be out for a while.

Anyway, we're going to be putting up at a nearby hotel for the next couple of days -- at least. It may make a difference in my ability to blog, but I do have a nice connection here and not much else to do. I hope that I managed to absorb all of the bad luck this weekend in the CQ community and that everyone else had a better time than we did.

Do Americans Want To Cut And Run?

Investors Business Daily reports on a poll they conducted earlier this month that appears to contradict the conventional wisdom that the midterms were a referendum on the war. In fact, the IBD poll shows that sentiment has actually built towards a commitment to victory in Iraq, and they angrily denounce John Murtha and the defeatists (via Power Line):

There's a reason the founders of this country designated a single commander in chief and placed the responsibility to wage war in the hands of the president. We saw recently the futility of having 100 commanders in chief when the Senate tried to pass a resolution of disapproval of the war in Iraq and couldn't agree on the terms of our surrender.

Now it's the House of Representatives' turn, led by Rep. John Murtha, who believes the fine young men and women we send to defeat terror and our sworn enemies are cold-blooded killers. While the House works on its own nonbinding resolution, Murtha has bigger plans and considers such a resolution only a prelude to the real battle in March over appropriations for the war. ...

Murtha plans to stop the Iraq War by placing four conditions on combat funds through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. The Pentagon would have to certify that troops being sent to Iraq are "fully combat ready" with training and equipment, troops must have at least one year at home between combat deployments, combat deployments cannot be longer than a year, and extending tours of duty would be prohibited.

"We're trying to force a redeployment not by taking money away, (but) by redirecting money," explained Murtha.

IBD doesn't give any of the raw data on the poll in this editorial. It was taken a week ago and surveyed 925 adults, and would probably have around a +/-4% margin of error. It shows that the numbers of people believing victory in Iraq important have actually increased since the midterms -- in both parties. The number of people hopeful for victory has remained fairly constant, and even among Democrats, 43% say they are hopeful that the US and the Iraqi government will prevail.

If the Democrats in Congress think that forcing failure will help them in the next election, they may be in for a shock.

Is It Nuts To Worry About Children's Literature?

An award-winning children's book faces a boycott for including the word "scrotum". The book, The Higher Power of Lucky, tells the story of a 10-year-old orphan whose scrappy spirit is intended to encourage young readers. Librarians have objected to the vocabulary:

The word “scrotum” does not often appear in polite conversation. Or children’s literature, for that matter.

Yet there it is on the first page of “The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron, this year’s winner of the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in children’s literature. The book’s heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum. ...

The book has already been banned from school libraries in a handful of states in the South, the West and the Northeast, and librarians in other schools have indicated in the online debate that they may well follow suit. Indeed, the topic has dominated the discussion among librarians since the book was shipped to schools.

Pat Scales, a former chairwoman of the Newbery Award committee, said that declining to stock the book in libraries was nothing short of censorship.

“The people who are reacting to that word are not reading the book as a whole,” she said. “That’s what censors do — they pick out words and don’t look at the total merit of the book.”

Scales may have some literacy problems herself. Failing to purchase a book does not constitute censorship. Censorship involves an authority silencing a speaker or an author; in this case, it would be some sort of government action preventing the publication of the book. One would hope that a woman so deeply involved in publishing would know the difference.

Censorship has not happened -- it's just that th intended consumers have rejected the material as inappropriate. Libraries are not required to purchase every book to which the Newbery committee gives its awards. Librarians and educators are expected to be discriminating in their book-purchasing decisions, and that includes their determination of whether material is appropriate for their readers. They don't buy Playboy for high-school libraries, even if the fiction in the magazine happens to be first rate or the interview has special resonance for eductaion.

I don't think that the word "scrotum" is really all that big of an issue. If the book had been aimed at a little older readership, it would be no issue at all. "Scrotum" is an actual medical term of male genitalia, and not at all titillating. By the time girls reach middle school, they should already have had sex education that included the proper terminology for male and female plumbing.

However, one has to wonder at the author of this book for including the word. The New York Times reports that Susan Patron declares herself mystified by the entire controversy. She says the passage is based on a true story involving a friend's dog. Almost in the same breath as she declares herself innocent of ulterior motives, she then says that she wanted to teach children about language and body parts, and that "[t]he word is just so delicious." If so, then why complain if librarians and teachers don't want to teach that particular word to that age group?

Dana Nilsson, a teacher and librarian from Durango, Colorado, put the issue in its proper perspective. "[Y]ou won’t find men’s genitalia in quality literature -- at least not for children.” True, unless the author and her allies want to pick a fight about censorship.

Hillary: Sound Retreat In 90 Days, Or Else

Hillary Clinton, stung by attacks from the Left on her vote to authorize the war in Iraq, has heeled around and now demands an immediate end to the effort. A video on her campaign web site demands that the US begin its retreat in 90 days, or else Congress will force a Constitutional showdown with George Bush:

U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the early front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has called for a 90-day deadline to start pulling American troops from Iraq.

Clinton, the wife of former President Bill Clinton, has been criticized by some Democrats for supporting authorization of the war in 2002 and for not renouncing her vote as she seeks the U.S. presidency in next year's election.

"Now it's time to say the redeployment should start in 90 days or the Congress will revoke authorization for this war," the New York senator said in a video on her campaign Web site, repeating a point included in a bill she introduced on Friday.

I hadn't heard that she made this demand on Friday, but it is a completely irresponsible statement. More than anything else the Democrats have done before this, it tells our enemies that they can wait a short period of time before beginning their bloodbath. This kind of ultimatum is, I believe, completely unprecedented in American history and serves as a new low for an out-of-control Congress.

The worst part about it is its nakedly political purposes. Hillary has come to regret her run to the center during her Senatorial career, and now wants to suck up to the International ANSWER set that runs the Left of the Democrats. In order to establish her bona fides and compete with Barack Obama's demand for a phased withdrawal by March 2008, she just bumped the timetable up by nine months.

It's not even clear that such a demand would be Constitutional. Congress can suspend the funding for the troops, but Congress has never actually revoked an AUMF before while hostilities continued. An attempt to do so would probably meet a Presidential veto, which Congress would be unable to override. Even if it did, the White House would sue the Congress and demand a Supreme Court decision on the legality of such a move -- which would take weeks, at the least, during which our troops would find themselves in limbo. At that time, our enemies would pounce, and create a huge political firestorm over whether we should retreat under fire.

And she wants to run to fill the role of Commander-in-Chief?

Again, watch for Joe Lieberman on this issue. He has made it clear that his loyalty to the Democrats ends at a bug-out. Hillary's demand, if pushed, may change the entire calculation in the Senate and leave Harry Reid with the title of Minority Leader. The line Lieberman drew in the sand now approaches, and Hillary apparently wants to push the Democrats far past that and over a political cliff -- and take our entire efforts against terrorism with them.

CBS Poll: Giuliani Up 50-21 Over McCain

I guess if we're going to have to have an early primary race, we'll have to have early primary polls. CBS indulges us with its latest poll of Republican primary voters, although in the end that sample seems very small. CBS News polled 1142 adults, only 314 of which were Republican primary voters, too small to make a substantial national correlation.

For what it's worth, then, here's how CBS sees Republican primary voters swinging:

Senator John McCain of Arizona and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani – two of the front-runners for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2008 – both enjoy favorable views from both Republican primary voters, a new CBS News poll finds, but early on in the race, voters favor Giuliani in a head-to-head match up.

Views of Giuliani are especially positive among both moderates and the conservatives that he and McCain are courting. ...

If the GOP nomination battle came down solely to McCain versus Giuliani, Republican primary voters would pick Giuliani by a wide 50% to 29% margin. In that hypothetical scenario 13% would still favor someone else. Both moderates and conservative primary voters today say they would prefer Giuliani.

In fact, self-identified conservatives would select Rudy over McCain 48-21, a wider split than the overall number. Moderates give a majority to Rudy but the split is a little smaller, 55-37. Nineteen percent of conservatives would vote for neither candidate in the primary if the race only included those two choices.

On questions of temperament, both men score majorities among the GOP for sharing their values and having the temperament to serve as President. On temperament, Rudy outscores McCain 76-59, and on values McCain prevails by a thin margin, 60-57.

The poll starts to falter once they include all respondents, once again because the polling sample gets skewed towards the Democrats. The poll oversamples Democrats -- again -- and then weights the results even father towards the Democrats -- again. MS-NBC reported on a National Journal story that shows the GOP slipping in party identification, with the Democrats at 34.3%, independents at 33.9%, and the GOP at 30.4% for 2006.

However, in the CBS poll, the numbers vary widely from this model. The weighted sample puts the GOP at 27.5%, while the Democrats get 35% and independents get 37.6%. They have created an alternate universe with their weighting system, and the rest of the analyses suffer as a result. It looks like we are going to be in for the same kind of shenanigans with the CBS poll for the 2008 cycle that we have seen with the 2004 and 2006 cycles.