Fred Thompson, Redstate, Red Meat

Fred Thompson, who has flirted with the notion of entering the Republican presidential primary race as a conservative savior, has his first blog post on Redstate today. He digs right into the war on terror and national security, the focus of GOP voters in this primary season, by going after the Iranian mullahcracy:

Tony Blair doesn't appear to be in much of a mood for celebrating. I don't know how he could be, given the troubling spectacle of British soldiers shake the hand of their kidnapper as a condition of release. In the old days, they would have kissed his ring -- but wearing Iranian suits and carrying swag more appropriate to a Hollywood awards ceremony may have been as embarrassing. Ironically, Blair's options are fewer by the day as his own party moves to mothball the British fleet, once the fear of pirates and tyrants the world over.

Some in the West seem part of Iran's propaganda war; claiming that the release of the hostages was a victory that proves the Iranian dictatorship can be reasoned with. To misrepresent unpunished piracy as a victory is as Orwellian as the congressional mandate banning use of the term "the global war on terror." What are we — Reuters?

Ahmadinejad must be particularly pleased to see "deep thinking" journalists making the case that American actions in Iraq were the true cause of the kidnappings. To believe this, all you have to do is ignore the history of the Iranian Revolution, which has been in the extortion business ever since it took power. Between the 1979 American embassy crisis in Tehran and the seizure of Israeli soldiers last year by Iran's Hezbollah proxies, there have been more than a hundred other examples.

The Pirates of Teheran comes as close as anything I've heard to accurately describing the ruling clique in Iran. They started off their revolution by kidnapping dozens of Americans in 1979, and either they or their Hezbollah and Hamas proxies have continued doing the same ever since, as well as deliver continual terrorism and destruction. And why not? The West paid the ransom in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan sent arms to the mullahs, and in the 1990s when Europe made a point of trading with the Iranians, and in this decade with this impotent dance around their nuclear program.

Read all of Thompson's post, and ask yourself this: could he have picked a better way to enter the race, as far as the conservative blogosphere is concerned? If Thompson really still had not made the decision to throw his hat in the ring, he would not bother posting at Redstate. It's not a one-off by a Hollywood star, because Redstate is not the Huffington Post. This is a clear indication that he has heard the calls from conservatives and will shortly start working on an exploratory committee.

Watch for more Thompson missives in the next few weeks, and I predict that they will start hitting the broad spectrum of conservative issues: Iraq, taxes, reducing government, and abortion. If we start seeing a variety of essays like that, Fred's running.

And kudos to Redstate for the scoop!

The Unfriendly Skies

We Minnesotans have a lot of experience with Northwest Airlines, as they own 70% of the gates at our international airport. We rely on them for almost all of our non-stop service, thanks to the hub-and-spoke system -- and for the most part, they provide reasonably good service. However, it seems that if a pilot lands more headlines than airplanes, it's usually an NWA pilot. We've seen pilots arrested for drunken operation of aircraft and a plane that landed at the wrong airport ... well, actually, a military base, to be exact. Now it appears we have the first case of potential air rage:

A Northwest Airlines flight was canceled because the pilot was yelling obscenities during a cell phone conversation while people were boarding, and cursed one passenger, a federal official said Saturday.

The pilot of the Las Vegas-to-Detroit flight was apparently in a heated cell phone conversation in the cockpit, then went into a lavatory, locked the door and continued the conversation, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said Saturday.

"Passengers who were boarding the aircraft could hear his end of it," Gregor said.

Las Vegas police were sent Friday to McCarran International Airport to investigate, Gregor said. Authorities were told that the pilot cursed one passenger who confronted him, Gregor said.

Someone had a bad day, and it sounds like it will get worse. This little temper tantrum forced Northwest to arrange alternate routing for 180 passengers from Las Vegas to Detroit. For those who could not be accommodated, NWA had to pay for hotels, meals, and possibly front row seats at the Folies Bergere. (The Admiral Emeritus told me about the latter. Really.) The airline also found alternate routing for the pilot in question, returning him to his Detroit base for further investigation into the incident. I don't think the conversation will focus on the in-flight magazine or the $5 snack box.

Pilots are just like everyone else -- they have bad days, and on very rare occasions, let their professionalism slip. However, flying is a stressful situation for passengers, especially these days, and the flight crew needs to reduce the stress, not amplify it. I don't blame the passengers for reporting this incident, and the pilot needs to go through some anger management counseling before flying again.

Almost all NWA pilots do a terrific job in customer relations. I especially found amusing the one who thanked us by noting that "We know you could choose any number of bankrupt airlines, and we're happy you chose this one." They do a tough job with humor and grace 99% of the time. Let's hope that this one pilot just had one bad day and can turn it around quickly.

Not Time To Panic For McCain

John McCain's campaign will try to re-establish itself after a tough first quarter, the Wall Street Journal reports, and as the WSJ notes, he needs the re-set. His fundraising hasn't met expectations, and McCain's efforts to support the war has apparently alienated some of the moderates he hoped to attract:

In short order, John McCain has gone from Republican presidential front-runner to political death watch. On Wednesday, the Arizona senator kicks off a month of high-profile events, seeking a resurrection of sorts.

He badly needs it. Mr. McCain just reported raising $12.5 million for the first-quarter -- behind Republican rivals Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, as well as Democrats Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. Most analysts won't go so far as to bury Mr. McCain, citing his Republican rivals' own baggage: Both Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani are suspect among social conservatives for their records supporting abortion and gay rights, and gun control. But the one-time GOP front-runner clearly had a very bad week.

It began with reports of the heavily guarded senator shopping at a Baghdad market and declaring "things are better," and it ended with a New Hampshire poll showing Mr. McCain, the longtime leader in that first-primary state, now in a dead heat with Mr. Romney. Sandwiched in between were the stories of his money woes.

All of that makes next week -- and the next month -- critical to the survival of his candidacy. Mr. McCain's campaign scheduled three policy speeches in consecutive weeks, culminating April 25-27 with his "official" announcement tour through early nominating states of New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina and finally to his home state of Arizona. Wednesday's first speech, at the Virginia Military Institute, will showcase Mr. McCain's "commitment to winning the war in Iraq."

I'm not sure that McCain's been on a "death watch". If anything, his support of the war effort may have helped shore up his credentials among conservatives who found themselves off-put by Rudy Giuliani's rhetorical fumble on abortion this week. The campaign has known it would come up short on fundraising for the last couple of weeks -- but even that needs to be put in perspective, as $12.5 million far outstrips George Bush's $7 million from 1999 Q1.

McCain's problem is that he has assumed the mantle of the Iraq war in this election, whether by accident or design. That may work well for him in the primaries, as the other GOP candidates do not have the same access to policy that he does as a sitting Senator on the Armed Services committee. However, if Petraeus does not make continued progress over the next few months, McCain will start feeling the weight of the campaign even in the GOP primaries. If he gets the nomination, the Democrats wil make him their Bush proxy in the general election.

It's still early, and McCain has access to the national stage like few other candidates. He can right his campaign as long as his team doesn't panic. They may be a little back in fundraising, but they have plenty of time to make the necessary adjustments.

An I-Pod For Every Airhead

I know CQ readers often complain about the lack of i-Pods for kids today. This community has always understood the relationship between i-Pod users and the world around them, and how educational these devices are when worn in a teaching environment. That's why I know CQ readers will fully support Michigan lawmakers when they propose to buy an i-Pod for every student, despite a $1 billion state budget deficit -- just like the editorial board of the Detroit News, who titled their editorial, "An iPod for every kid? Are they !#$!ing idiots?":

We have come to the conclusion that the crisis Michigan faces is not a shortage of revenue, but an excess of idiocy. Facing a budget deficit that has passed the $1 billion mark, House Democrats Thursday offered a spending plan that would buy a MP3 player or iPod for every school child in Michigan.

No cost estimate was attached to their hare-brained idea to "invest" in education. Details, we are promised, will follow. ...

Their plan goes beyond cluelessness. Democrats are either entirely indifferent to the idea that extreme hard times demand extreme belt tightening, or they are bone stupid. We lean toward the latter.

More bread and circuses from the Democratic policy establishment, it seems. They also want to raise taxes in an already-stressed economy, which will guarantee that the dwindling capital for investment in Michigan will now dwindle faster. Despite this, the Democrats want to buy i-Pods for students while hiking the tax burden on their parents.

I guess it makes sense if the kids vote, but it looks like the children are already in charge in Michigan.

US Offered Military Assistance To UK During Hostage Crisis

The Guardian reports that the Bush administration offered a series of military options to the Blair government at the beginning of the hostage crisis, but the British asked the Americans to hold off on any response. The exact list remains classified, but it included one option of "aggressive patrols" over Revolutionary Guard locations:

The US offered to take military action on behalf of the 15 British sailors and marines held by Iran, including buzzing Iranian Revolutionary Guard positions with warplanes, the Guardian has learned.

In the first few days after the captives were seized and British diplomats were getting no news from Tehran on their whereabouts, Pentagon officials asked their British counterparts: what do you want us to do? They offered a series of military options, a list which remains top secret given the mounting risk of war between the US and Iran. But one of the options was for US combat aircraft to mount aggressive patrols over Iranian Revolutionary Guard bases in Iran, to underline the seriousness of the situation.

The British declined the offer and said the US could calm the situation by staying out of it. London also asked the US to tone down military exercises that were already under way in the Gulf. Three days before the capture of the 15 Britons , a second carrier group arrived having been ordered there by president George Bush in January. The aim was to add to pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme and alleged operations inside Iraq against coalition forces.

At the request of the British, the two US carrier groups, totalling 40 ships plus aircraft, modified their exercises to make them less confrontational.

It explains the muted response from the Bush administration during the crisis. Except for demanding the release of the 15 sailors and Marines and endorsing a strong response from the UN, the US stayed rather quiet during the fortnight. The Navy moved a second carrier group into the Gulf, but those orders had come in January and they were expected to arrive at that time.

The report also explains why the Revolutionary Guard captured British personnel rather than Americans. The Guardian's source within the RG admitted that detaining Americans would have led to war, and the RG apparently wanted to push the line to somewhere short of that. It bolsters the case that the capture was ordered locally by an RG commander acting more or less unilaterally, who put the nation in a crisis its senior leadership hadn't sought, but who intended to make the best use of it once it occurred.

International pressure, including a note from the Vatican, seems to have played a part in Iran's release of the sailors, although the subsequent release of an Iranian agent captured in Iraq may have been a part of a wider deal. The Iraqi government also won consular access to the five Iranian agents captured in Irbil in January, which could signal their release sometime soon. If so, it will be hard to conclude anything other than the hostaging of the British sailors was a successful strategy by Revolutionary Guard commanders to get their own people released from American custody.

NARN, The Deja Vu Edition

The Northern Alliance Radio Network will be on the air today, with our six-hour-long broadcast schedule starting at 11 am CT -- but it will be a "Best Of" broadcast through all six hours. We are taking our traditional Easter weekend break and replaying some of our previously-recorded material. I'll be listening on AM 1280 The Patriot, or on the station's Internet stream if you're outside of the broadcast area. If you've missed some of our recent shows, it's a great chance to catch up to the hijinks of the NARN.

We'll be back next week with live programming. In the meantime, happy Easter to all of our readers and listeners!

Alternative Energy Hurts The Poor?

Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro have joined in criticizing the United States for its efforts to find alternative fuel sources. They claim that ethanol and other biofuel technologies take food out of the mouths of the poor:

Cuba and Venezuela have launched an offensive against biofuels, warning that the US-backed rush towards ethanol will worsen global hunger and poverty.

Fidel Castro has written two newspaper articles in a week voicing alarm at the prospect of countries boosting sugar and corn crops to make ethanol, a fuel that can be used an additive or a substitute for petrol.

By diverting crops to feed cars rather than people, the price of food would rise and the world's poor would go hungry, Mr Castro wrote in the Communist party's official newspaper, Granma. ...

Mr Castro's ally, the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, also attacked biofuels in a sharp U-turn that put the two leaders shoulder to shoulder against Brazil and the US, the two big ethanol champions.

The two socialists had at one time favored ethanol and biofuels. They had even planned joint production plants with Brazil, whom they condemn in their latest statement. That changed when Bush started endorsing biofuels last month, especially as a method of reducing American dependency on foreign energy sources. That apparently changed the mind of Chavez, who sells the US a large chunk of its oil production each year.

The two aren't alone in their criticism, however. Many environmentalists fear the impact of biofuels on agrarian landscapes as more land gets devoted to a narrower number of crops. Since the same crops feed livestock and create ethanol, the increased demand for the produce will probably raise the price of meat. Increaded need for irrigation could also stress clean-water supplies. However, when The Economist partially endorsed Catro's criticism, they bought into his scare tactics as well -- like claiming that 3 billion people would die of thirst from ethanol production.

It's odd how their enthusiasm for making money off of biofuels never considered its effect on the poor until George Bush found the potential as lucrative as Venezuela and Cuba. Three billion dead people never entered into their calculations then. The reversal demonstrates the depthless, knee-jerk anti-Americanism of Latin America's two old-school socialists.

UPDATE: Maybe Castro and Chavez should focus more on khat production as a threat to drinking water supplies:

Sitting high up in the rocky mountains of northern Yemen, the country's capital Sanaa is finding that its dwindling water supply may not be able to sustain the ancient settlement. ...

The country imports most of its food, largely because it has too little water to feed itself. Yemenis have about one-fiftieth as much water per head as the world average.

And, to confound confusion, insupportably large amounts of water go on a non-essential crop - khat. ...

Moralising apart, khat is having a baleful effect on Yemen. Of the country's scarce water, 40% goes on irrigating khat - and khat cultivation is increasing by 10% to 15% a year.

I can hardly contain my anticipation while waiting for the socialists of Latin America to scold Yemen for its khat production.

Indonesia On The Brink?

Der Spiegel reports that Indonesia's ostensibly secular government faces increasing pressure from the Islamists in their midst. The Muslim nation may start down the road towards a Taliban-Lite government as radical Islamists gain more seats in their assembly and demand a greater imposition of shari'a law:

With 221 million inhabitants, of which 194 million are Muslims, the island nation is not only Southeast Asia's most populous country, but is also home to the world's largest Muslim population. And that population looks to be growing increasingly devout. Significantly more women wear the headscarf today than a decade ago, and the number of Indonesians making the pilgrimage to Mecca grows year after year. Alcoholic beverages are disappearing from the shelves of supermarkets, and in some places those who violate the Islamic ban on alcohol already face public whipping -- a brutal spectacle that is even broadcast on local television stations.

Since two bombs killed 202 people, most of them Western tourists, at the Kuta beach resort on the island of Bali in the fall of 2002, Islamist terrorists have repeatedly attacked Western targets at the same time of the year, prompting Indonesians to refer to autumn as "bomb season." Al-Qaida, which is clearly allied with local extremists, has identified the country as a battlefield of the future.

While the country's secular president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, may be tough on terrorists, there is little he can do to stop the Islamists from gaining political ground. The winner of the struggle between proponents of a secular state and radical imams calling for a theocracy stands to capture a valuable prize -- one of the world's most strategically important countries. All major shipping routes connecting Europe and East Asia pass through the waters off this island nation. It is precisely here, in this archipelago between the Straits of Malacca and the Celebes Sea, that a new front in the battle of cultures is emerging.

The reference to shipping lanes seems rather significant. Not long ago, the History Channel produced a show on modern pirates -- men who do a lot more than just shout "Aaaargh!" The new pirates have attacked shipping all over the world, but have especially concentrated their efforts in the waters of Indonesia. They have even, at least once, hijacked a ship just to learn its operation, maneuver it for a while, and then escape from it without docking it. On that occasion, they also stole all of the technical manuals but left the cargo with the terrorized crew, which survived the incident.

It looked like a dry run for an attack similar to 9/11, but using shipping rather than commercial airliners. With 95% of the world's oil transported by sea -- and even worse, a large percentage of its highly explosive liquid natural gas transported by tankers -- the shipping lanes of Indonesia seem very susceptible to that tactic by a group with al-Qaeda's organization.

That is one reason why the radicalization of Indonesia has such dire consequences for the entire world. If AQ and its religious allies can create a Taliban-like state there, the security implications could be catastrophic. Certainly, Australia would face the most direct threat, but with control of the shipping lanes falling into the hands of a terrorist-supporting government, that threat will go global in an instant. It would require a much larger naval presence by the Western powers in that region and probably some sort of convoy arrangement that doesn't exist at the moment for the marine trade.

The shipping trade might find other routes through the Indian Ocean and bypass Indonesia. If that were possible, it could reduce the threat -- but it will hasten the collapse of Indonesia. With the radical Islamists targeting Western assets every fall (referred to by the locals as "bomb season"), foreign investment has dropped by over a third last year alone. Instead, capital has shifted to Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam, causing a collapse of the Indonesian economy. The poor have been easy recruitment targets for the radicals, especially living on $2 per day, and a further shift of foreign investment will hasten that process.

The West will face a crisis soon in the world's largest Muslim nation. We had better pay attention to what happens in Indonesia, because al-Qaeda has already highlighted it as a future battleground for its war on the West. We cannot afford to let it slip away.

Major Surprise On Jobs

The economy continues its growth under the stewardship of the Bush administration. Unemployment fell to 4.4%, a five-year low, as the nation added 180,000 jobs last month. Wages also rose faster than inflation in March, indicating continuing strength and real gains for workers:

It just keeps going.

The job market showed little sign of losing its vigor last month as wages climbed and job growth rose, the Labor Department reported yesterday.

Economists said the numbers were consistent with an economy that was being supported by strong consumer spending, with considerable hiring in businesses like restaurants, bars, department stores and educational services.

In all, the Labor Department said that employment outside the farming sector grew by 180,000 in March. And in another sign of the job market’s resilience, employment growth in January and February was stronger than the government first reported.

The national unemployment rate also edged down last month to 4.4 percent, from 4.5 percent, matching a five-year low that it reached briefly in October.

What has kept the economy moving? According to the New York Times' Jeremy Peters, "the tireless American consumer." With wages continuing to rise in real terms, consumers spend more money, creating more energy and expansion.

The average wage rose to $17.22 per hour. Overall compensation over the last year rose 3.2%, outstripping inflation and arguing against the notion that employment increases come from so-called McJobs. The overall ratio of working Americans rose as well, from 63.2% in February to 63.3% in March, which again shows real growth for employment.

All of these show good signs for continued, moderate economic growth -- the kind that will keep inflation at bay while creating more and more opportunities for Americans to prosper. The Bush tax cuts continue to do their job by keeping capital in the market and earnings in the pockets of earners. The repeal of those cuts will take that capital out of the market, where it creates jobs, growth, and wealth, and stick it in the coffers of the federal government, where it does nothing but allow politicians to use it for pork projects and expansion of entitlement programs.

Will the Democrats learn the lesson of Reagan, Kennedy, and Bush, and keep the lower taxes that have fueled this expansion? Somehow, I doubt it. But if they don't, hopefully the voters will allow them to cut in the front of the unepmployment lines they will create.

Another Case Of Provocative Behavior

Michelle Malkin notes another case of provocative behavior in an airport that recalls the Traveling Imams incident here in the Twin Cities. Two women, one of whom was on probation for waving a fake grenade, have been arrested for suspicious behavior near Dallas' Love Field:

Dallas police and federal terrorism officials are investigating two women, both dressed in camouflage pants under their traditional Muslim robes and scarves, who were seen conducting what appeared to be surveillance and acting suspiciously at Dallas Love Field.

One of the women, Kimberly "Asma" Al-Homsi, 42, of Arlington, who is on probation for a 2005 Garland road rage incident involving a fake grenade, is said to have long-range assault rifle and explosives training, according to a Dallas police intelligence bulletin issued March 5.

"I'm a trained sniper and proud of it," Ms. Al-Homsi said in an interview Thursday after first refusing to comment on whether she has any terrorism ties. She then said no. ...

On the afternoon of Feb. 25, Ms. Al-Homsi and a friend who could not be reached for comment, Aisha Abdul-Rahman Hamad, 50, of Irving, were spotted at Love Field wearing Muslim robes and camouflage pants and "acting suspiciously," the bulletin states. The surveillance video shows one of the women walking back and forth, apparently pacing off distances.

When confronted, the women told officials they were looking for the Frontiers of Flight museum. They left in a red Honda. Descriptions of the incident and the car were circulated at the airport.

Two days later, the museum executive director was leaving for the evening when he noticed the Honda parked facing the runway. A woman, later identified as Ms. Al-Homsi, was sitting on the hood, looking through binoculars at the airplanes. He told the women the museum was closing, and they left.

Once again, we have intentionally provocative behavior, conducted by Muslims in a very overt manner at or near an airport. In this case, one of them already has a criminal record of making threats with fake explosives near the same airport. The ostentatious nature of this behavior and the track record of the one woman makes it pretty clear that they want attention.

But for what? The arrest of the two individuals seems designed to provoke a law-enforcement or security response, just as the Traveling Imams did. While the imams did not get arrested, their behavior -- refusing to take their correct seats and defying the flight crew -- certainly could have had that result. This has the appearance of deliberately pushing the envelope to get arrested, and to give CAIR and its supporters another reason to file lawsuits, perhaps against the John Does who reported them to security.

Watch to see if CAIR or any other organizations step forward to protest the treatment of the two women. While you're waiting, be sure to listen to this interview I conducted with Debra Burlingame of 9/11 Families for America about the John Doe lawsuit and its intended effect.

Blaming Bloggers For Discussing The Issues?

Did Rudy blame bloggers for his tough week after his remarks on abortion and federal funding? Some apparently believe so, including Matt Lewis , who read Roger Simon's report for The Politico. Roger asked Rudy about whether he realizes how tough the race will get, and he got this response (via The Corner):

Has it crossed your mind that this may be an extremely rough primary in 2008? I asked him.

"It has, and it will be," Giuliani replied. But he also said he did not think the attacks would come directly from other Republican presidential candidates.

"I think more of this comes from the atmosphere in the blogging atmosphere, in the instant news atmosphere, and the minute analysis atmosphere," he said.

If Rudy spoke in reference to the abortion debate this week, then I would agree with Matt. It's hardly an "attack" to discuss the policy positions of the various candidates. Giuliani said that he supported public funding for abortions, a policy that puts him outside almost the entirety of his party. It would seem strange if it didn't get debated.

However, from reading the entire article, it's not clear at all to me that Rudy's response referenced his bobble this week at all. The Mayor provided that answer in the context of all the commentary about his personal life -- three marriages, two divorces, the last a messy and public affair during his term in office. The abortion debate comes after this statement in the article, where Rudy insists that he will not change his views on policy just to get elected. "Better off you vote against me than I change who I am," he replied, and many would see that as rather refreshing, regardless of policy differences.

I think Matt's off base here. While it's clear that Rudy fumbled the ball this week, he wasn't blaming bloggers for discussing his policies. Indeed, he made it clear that he wants the debate to remain focused on the issues, and not his personal life, as it should be.

The Nature Of Political Appointments -- And Opposition

Jules Crittenden scores a bulls-eye today in a post regarding the recess appointment of Sam Fox as Ambassador to Belgium. After all the screeching from Democrats about firing prosecutors over their politics, John Kerry and his allies attempted to deep-six Fox for his engagement against Kerry in 2004, and Jules wonders where the Democrats draw lines:

If it’s wrong for the president to fire political appointees over their politics, doesn’t that make it wrong for senators to oppose political appointees over theirs? Wait a minute. I’m getting confused. The president fired them over their performance, but the Senate only gave a damn about Fox’s politics. So much crap flying around these days, its hard to sort out what’s what. But I think the Dem Cong might need to start holding hearings about itself.

But when I see moves like this, I realize I’m starting to really enjoy the Dem Cong.

I don't think firing the prosecutors was a wise or desirable move, especially in the current political environment, and I think Alberto Gonzales has handled it incompetently. Nevertheless, the President has the plenary power to appoint and dismiss them, just as he does with ambassadors, for every purpose he desires except the obstruction of justice.

And the Senate Democratic Caucus has proven this point with Fox. They don't have to confirm Fox, and they can use any reason they want, or none at all. It leaves them open to fair criticism for their efforts, as did Gonzales' termination of the federal prosecutors. It also shows that they have no problem playing politics with presidential appointments when it suits their purposes. That takes a lot of steam out of their moral outrage over the administration's insistence on finding federal prosecutors who will follow their policies.

Romney Fundraising A Spook Story For The NYT

The New York Times appears willing to damn Romney for being rich and both using his own money for his presidential campaign and not using his own money for his presidential campaign. In seeking to explain Romney's success at fundraising, David Kirkpatrick doesn't give Romney much benefit of the doubt in an article headlined, "Romney Used His Wealth to Enlist Richest Donors":

Mitt Romney, the multimillionaire founder of a giant private equity firm, knew he did not need other people’s money to mount a presidential campaign. But as they began planning a campaign more than two years ago, Mr. Romney and his advisers wanted to avoid the fate of two other millionaires, Steve Forbes and Ross Perot, whose self-financed campaigns went down as quixotic indulgences.

“By Mitt or anyone else self-funding, you don’t have a lot of people making investments in you,” said Spencer Zwick, 28, the campaign’s fund-raising director and a close aide whom the candidate sometimes calls his sixth son. “To be credible, you have to show that you have raised resources from around the country.”

Instead of tapping his own money directly, Mr. Romney embarked on an effort to leverage his personal fortune into donations to his Republican primary campaign. ...

Mr. Romney’s financial support is deep but narrow. He amassed $20 million from fewer than 33,000 donors, according to figures disclosed by his campaign. By comparison, Mr. McCain raised $12.5 million from nearly 50,000 donors while Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, raised $25 million from more than 100,000. Their average contributors each gave about $250; Mr. Romney’s gave more than $600.

All of this is true. However, Romney didn't have the advantages of McCain, Obama, or Hillary Clinton in fundraising. McCain has served in the Senate for 20+ years and has made himself one of the GOP's highest-profile politicians. Barack Obama has had the media fawning all over him ever since his eye-opening speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. Hillary Clinton has Bill Clinton and 15 years of dominating headlines.

Romney, by the Times' own admission, had little name recognition at the start of the campaign. Like Steve Forbes and Ross Perot -- and John Kerry -- Romney loaned his campaign a significant amount of money to get started. Unlike Forbes and Perot, he recognized the pitfalls of self-funding a presidential campaign, which eliminates any buildup of loyalty among followers. He organized well and began his campaign by building on his existing political relationships, amassing a prodigious amount of cash in the very first quarter.

Kirkpatrick compares the number of donors unfavorably to Obama and McCain, which is silly. Obama's 100,000 donors speaks well of his ability to connect to the grass roots and makes him a formidable force in the election. Putting that aside, Romney's 33,000 donors compares rather favorably to the 50,000 each for Hillary Clinton and John McCain. With little name recognition, he manages to tap two-thirds as many as the two high-profile politicians on both sides of the primaries. That sounds like a rather significant victory for Romney, not an indictment of his "deep and narrow" draw in the race.

Kirkpatrick also gets a little paranoid about the religion of Romney's donors. One-quarter of those who have contributed the maximum to his federal PAC come from Utah, and half of the top eight donors are Mormon. Why would this surprise anyone? Romney worked wonders for the Salt Lake City Olympics, turning a corrupt, collapsing effort into a success by cleaning out the graft and righting the committee financially. Romney is a Mormon, and Mormons will be likely to support his candidacy.

The entire article makes it look like the Times has begun to fear Romney's success. He has expanded his attraction from a narrow group of supporters to a broad band of donors, reaching to two-thirds of the donor lists of his most media-friendly opponents. That looks like a good start to me, and not a narrow base for a vanity candidate.

Red Light On Photo-Cops

Minneapolis will have to end its use of cameras to ticket and fine drivers who run red lights and commit other infractions of traffic regulation. The state Supreme Court shut down the system in a decision yesterday, ruling that state law overrides the city's decision to use the cameras (via Mitch Berg):

The state Supreme Court agreed Thursday with the lower courts that the city's so-called PhotoCop cameras at a dozen intersections are preempted by state law and therefore illegal.

State law puts liability for traffic offenses on the driver, while the city ordinance fined the owner of a car caught running a red light.

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak vowed to press on for the legalization of the cameras.

"We've proven that this makes streets safer," said Rybak, who pointed out that accidents were down 31 percent at intersections with cameras during eight months of operation. "Too many people are getting in accidents and too many pedestrians' lives are being threatened."

While a bill at the Legislature tried to resolve the conflict between state law and the city ordinance, that bill appears to be dead for this session.

That has been one of the problems with the PhotoCop system -- it penalizes car owners rather than the driver of the vehicle. Most of the time, that will be the same person, but not all of the time. Car owners have the responsibility to maintain their cars properly and register them with the state, and violations of these laws, if caught by cameras, would be more appropriate to the system. Owners should not be held responsible for moving violations committed by others, and PhotoCop cannot make that distinction.

The Supreme Court left another, more compelling argument on the table. The PhotoCop systems bypass the entire notion of innocence until proven guilt by forcing alleged violators to pay fines without having any means to confront their accusers. Normal traffic court process allows the accused to demand a trial for the offense, with the opportunity to cross-examine the witness(es). PhotoCop removes that possibilty, conferring a presumption of guilt that goes against the basic philosophy of our system of justice.

Rybak's argument of fewer accidents and deaths should be taken seriously. The solution should be a higher investment in traffic enforcement with dedicated officers patrolling the city to clamp down on violators. That would force Rybak and his city council to rethink budget priorities, rather than warping the justice system to escape that responsibility.

No Change In Iranian Position After Release

The US has determined that the release of 15 British Navy personnel reflects no great change in the Iranian diplomatic posture. The New York Times reports that the White House believes that the order for the capture came from lower levels, and the decision to release them came only after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrung as much publicity as he could without any negative consequences:

The Bush administration said Thursday that the release of 15 British sailors and marines held by Iran for two weeks created no new openings in dealing with Tehran, and it urged American allies to return their attention to enforcing new sanctions against Iran.

In public statements and background interviews, White House and State Department officials said that they saw no indications that the release indicated a change of attitude by Iran’s leadership. Neither did they see any more willingness to discuss suspension of its enrichment of uranium — the requirement that President Bush has said Iran must meet before he is willing to accept talks with the country.

One senior official, who like some other officials who discussed the issue spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing internal assessments of Iran’s motivation, said that the administration’s internal assessment of the episode, while incomplete, suggested that the seizure of the Britons was “probably not directed from the upper reaches government.” The official said that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided on the release because “he understood that they had exploited whatever they could from the incident” and that “declaring them guilty and letting them go was the cleverest way to get out of it.”

We have heard a lot of explanations of the Iranian decisions involved in this crisis, and this is probably as good as any of them. The Iranian government has competing factions within it, and is stressed by a populace that largely, if weakly, opposes their foreign policy. The poor economy and its momentum in decline have also created more cracks in the political landscape, and confidence in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad keeps ebbing away, or so reports have it.

That would explain both why Ahmadinejad acted so quickly to exploit the situation and why he acted rather quickly to end it. Nothing fires people up like humiliating the former colonialists of the region. In that sense, the televised antics seen on Iranian TV -- and then rebroadcast around the world -- equates to the Roman circuses of old. Ahmadinejad got a chance to boost his sagging political fortunes on the cheap, thanks to the British. When it both got old and started to provoke the British, he dropped the entire project on his own terms rather than being forced to do so on British terms -- or American terms.

The British have begun investigating these televised interviews, which were clear violations of the Geneva Convention, a pact that all signatories pledge to follow in any conflict, whether declared or not. The sailors and Marines have indicated that "psychological pressure" came from their captors to make those videos, which could be yet another violation of the GC, depending on its form. More significantly, the British have suspended all boarding operations in the Persian Gulf, which means that the waterways into Iraqi ports could open up once more to terrorists -- a situation that benefits the Iranians most of all.

How To Apologize

A Texas radio host made a Texas-sized blunder during a debate about a bill in the state legislature that would issue a formal apology for slavery. Michael Berry, in an attempt to apply the apology efforts elsewhere to oppose it, wondered why Native Americans should get enormous welfare benefits after getting "whipped in a war". I suppose it might have made sense if (a) Indian tribes actually got enormous welfare benefits, and (2) that had anything to do with apologizing for slavery.

Berry came to the same conclusion after checking his facts -- and he manned up immediately afterwards:

A Houston City Council member and conservative radio host has apologized for saying taxpayers are paying large amounts of welfare to American Indians who are "whining" about having been "whipped in a war."

Michael Berry said Thursday that he posted the apology on his station's Web site the night before "not because I offended people but because I was wrong."

"My facts were wrong, and the basis of my facts was wrong," he said.

Berry said on his KPRC-AM talk show March 27 that Indians do not deserve the "incredible" amount of federal assistance they receive.

As many of his listeners and critics pointed out to Berry, Native Americans do not receive disproportionate amounts of welfare. In fact, for those of us who have lived near a reservation, it becomes patently clear when passing through them that the tribes have almost nothing -- no money, no good land, and no prospects for improvement. The reservations of Arizona when I lived there rivaled Third World countries for poverty. The conditions on the reservations shocked me. Gambling has provided revenue sources to some of these tribes since then, but welfare has done nothing for them.

However, Berry did the right thing. He acknowledged his error and apologized for being wrong, and not just for giving offense. We can compare that to the non-apologies offered by John Kerry for inferring that stupid people wind up in the military, Dick Durbin for comparing Guantanamo Bay to Nazi death camps, and Newsweek's apology for not doing anything wrong in the Qur'an flushing story. Instead of offering excuses and arguments, Berry simply apologized for his error and acknowledged his fault.

It's refreshing. Hopefully, it will be instructive as well.

Keeping My Religion

Today is Good Friday, the remembrance of the sacrifice of Jesus of Nazareth which Christians believe redeemed all of us from sin. On Sunday, we will celebrate His resurrection, which promises new life and victory over death for those who believe. Two billion people will join in this millenia-old celebration of faith -- but some will see this as a continuing decline towards an abyss of intolerance and genocide.

One of my favorite center-left columnists, E.J. Dionne, tackles the neo-atheists in an excellent Washington Post piece by pointing out that these aggressive anti-religionists seem as attached to dogma as those they criticize:

The new atheists -- the best known are writers Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins -- insist, as Harris puts it, that "certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one." That's why they think a belief in salvation through faith in God, no matter the religious tradition, is dangerous to an open society.

The neo-atheists, like their predecessors from a century ago, are given to a sometimes-charming ferociousness in their polemics against those they see as too weak-minded to give up faith in God. ...

Argument about faith should not hang on whether religion is socially "useful" or instead promotes "inhumanity." But since the idea that religion is primarily destructive lies at the heart of the neo-atheist argument, its critics have rightly insisted on detailing the sublime acts of humanity and generosity that religion has promoted through the centuries.

It's true that religious Christians were among those who persecuted Jews. It is also true that religious Christians were among those who rescued Jews from these most un-Christian acts. And it is a sad fact that secular forms of dogmatism have been at least as murderous as the religious kind.

Let's not kid ourselves here. The 20th Century demonstrated that atheistic systems could be every bit as deadly as theocratic systems, and far more efficient at it. Communism resulted in tens of millions of deaths in its decades of bloody reign across Asia. Stalin himself has the responsibility of massive deaths through deliberate and neglectful starvation, and thousands more murders from his whims. Mao and the Chinese governments that followed from him force women to abort babies and have also starved millions through mismanagement and malice. On smaller scales, the Communist governments in Cambodia and Vietnam conducted massive genocides on their own people.

In the short period of time of human history when atheistic systems that force an end to religious activity have been allowed to rule, the results have been horrific and immensely bloody. And yet the neo-atheists insist that religion is the primary cause of human suffering. Hmmm.

This doesn't mean that atheists are genocidists, any more than ugly examples like the Spanish Inquisition mean that Catholics are torturers. The fundamental flaw of the neo-atheist argument is that faith inherently creates Inquisitions, which is ridiculous. It is the accumulation of unrestrained power -- and the fear of its loss --- that creates both the Inquisition and the Cambodian killing fields. Power corrupts, and it corrupts the secular and the religious alike.

That is why the best forms of government keep power in the hands of the governed and set checks and balances against the abuse of power. They also allow for the free expression of religion for two reasons. First, faith is a personal choice, and any government that forbids or significantly restricts that choice will not stop its thought police at just religious choices for long. Second, societies with free access to religious faith do not create the impulse for religious totalitarianism.

The plan that neo-atheists want would impose a new belief system on people in an oppressive way that rivals any that they claim religions cause. Dionne chooses in his column to struggle through his own questions and doubts to continue to believe in God and retain his faith. As I would keep my freedom, so do I.

CQ Radio Tonight

We're going to have a great show tonight on CQ Radio. Debra Burlingame, one of the founders of 9/11 Families for America and the sister of murdered pilot Charles "Chic" Burlingame, will join me tonight at the top of the show. We'll be discussing the John Walker Lindh demand for a reduced sentence, but will focus more on the John Doe controversy involving the Traveling Imams and their attempts to sue people who report suspicious activity.

After that, we will either have another guest or discuss the stories of the day. We can talk about the resolution to the Iranian hostage crisis, Rudy Giuliani's conflicting messages on federal funding for abortions, Nancy Pelosi's shadow presidency, and more.

Be sure to join the debate! You can call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation.

UPDATE: James Boyce and Nathan Wilcox have done a nice job revamping Heading Left for the port side of the blogosphere. Starting on April 16th, I'll be doing something similar for the starboard side.

UPDATE AND BUMP: We'll be starting soon -- be sure to join us!!

Giuliani On Federally-Funded Abortions, Take 3

It appears that Rudy Giuliani, intelligent man that he is, understands the damage he did to his efforts to connect with conservatives in his CNN interview yesterday. As Kathryn Jean Lopez posted at The Corner, Giuliani has started to climb down from his support of funding abortions with tax dollars:

MAYOR GIULIANI: What I said yesterday is what I've been saying throughout, I think in the last number of months publicly and privately for quite some time, which is I'm against abortion, I hate it, I wish there never was an abortion and I would council a woman have an adoption instead of an abortion but ultimately I believe an individual right and a woman can make that choice. I also, on public funding or funding of abortion said I would want to see it decided on a state by state basis. And what that means is I would leave the Hyde Amendment in place. It's been the law now, 17, 18 years, it's part of the constitutional balance that I talked about yesterday and the Hyde Amendment leaves the funding issue largely to the states. They have to decide how they're going to do it. And same thing on the issue that you're giving me now, which is I believe that the state should decide. And that's largely my approach not only in the area of abortion but in the area of guns and other things. I think these things are best decided on a state by state basis and would have as limited a federal role as the law requires. (Mayor Giuliani, Press Availability, Columbia, SC, 4/5/2007)

That tends to take us back to status quo ante. We knew that Giuliani supported choice while arguing for judicial restraint on the federal bench. When he started talking about abortion as a right and the requirement to fund abortions, that flew in the face of judicial restraint and fiscal conservativism. He has the date of the Hyde Amendment wrong (1976, 31 years ago), but if he will not act to end it or expand abortion funding past its limits on the federal level, he may have an argument that will mollify at least some of the people he angered yesterday.

Does this make it any better for CQ readers? I'm going to keep an open mind and open ears, but his interview stunned me yesterday with its tone-deafness.

The Welcoming Void

The New York Sun reports that recent polling has encouraged Fred Thompson to seriously consider a run for the Republican Presidential nomination. Jim Geraghty, the blogger behind NRO's HillarySpot, says that Thompson fills a void left by the unexpected loss of George Allen in last year's midterm elections:

When George Allen fell to Jim Webb in the Virginia Senate race, it opened up a slot in the upcoming Republican presidential primary: the role of the reliable longtime lawmaker who has no serious disagreements with the conservatives who make up the party's base.

That slot is moving closer to being filled by a former senator of Tennessee, Fred Thompson. The potential candidate is about "50–50" on running "because the polls have caught his eye," a source close to Mr. Thompson told National Review. The AP suggested this week that a bid by the former "Law and Order" actor would be hindered by "a shrinking pool of campaign professionals" not yet affiliated with GOP candidates.

But a longtime Thompson associate said the former lawmaker has received many calls from veteran Republican campaign staffers expressing interest in working with him if he decides to run. At least one high-level staffer of another Republican presidential candidate has expressed concern about running against Mr. Thompson, citing a long personal connection to him. And last week, Alex Castellanos, a press strategist for a former Massachusetts governor and Republican White House hopeful, Mitt Romney, was seen with Mr. Thompson at a restaurant in Alexandria, Va.

With Rudy Giuliani defending federal funding of abortions, that opening may have widened considerably in the last 24 hours.

Max Boot: McCain Was Right

Max Boot writes from Iraq of his surprise over John McCain's comments regarding the Iraqi security situation. While he acknowledges that McCain wore body armor and had armed personnel guarding him, Boot points out the obvious -- that McCain makes a good target, but that other assumptions should not be drawn from it. Boot also tells his readers that McCain was right:

Though only three of the five extra brigades scheduled to be deployed have yet arrived in Baghdad, the offensive has already paid big dividends. A semblance of normality is returning in some neighborhoods, markets are reopening, sectarian murders and ethnic cleansings have been dramatically reduced. The situation still isn’t great, but at least the downward trend has been stopped. There have been a few big suicide bombings lately that obscure this improvement, but most of these have been outside Baghdad, where the current security operation is focused. Needless to say, coalition forces can’t magically pacify the entire country overnight—and that can’t be the measure of success or failure.

The fact that McCain was able and willing to walk around the Shorja market indicates that things are getting better, even if Iraq remains a war zone. Of course McCain had heavy security; he’s an especially attractive target for insurgents. But the market was functioning normally while he was there, and he wasn’t surrounded by bodyguards. He walked around freely without a helmet (though he was wearing body armor), and mingled with Iraqis. So did the other members of his delegation, as well as General David Petraeus, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq.

Boot makes a couple of more points worth considering. First, we have allowed the situation to deteriorate over a period of years; we cannot expect it to rebound entirely within six weeks. The trends support McCain's observations, something ABC's Terry McCarthy independently confirmed earlier this week.

Second, we haven't even fully deployed in the new security strategy. Two entire brigades have yet to arrive. Yet neighborhoods have begun returning to normal, businesses have reopened, and barricades and curfews have been abated. All of this comes in the first weeks of General Petraeus' new rules of engagement and tactics without even having all of the men he requested on the streets.

Of course, this nuance gets lost when media sources operate from an agenda. Boot has his agenda as well -- he works for McCain as an advisor. Terry McCarthy doesn't seem to have one, though, and the numbers show that the surge is having a positive effect on Baghdad -- and will in Mosul when the Maliki government extends the security plan to that city. Hopefully, the media will report it in more depth as the situation continues to show improvement.

American Taliban Wants Reduced Sentence (Updated)

Johnny Walker Lindh wants the Hicks treatment, his lawyer announced today. Lindh, whose capture in Afghanistan after 9/11 made headlines, pled guilty to lesser terrorism charges rather than face charges that could have resulted in the death penalty. Now that the Australian at Guantanamo Bay, David Hicks, got a better deal, Lindh wants a second bite at the apple:

The lawyer and parents of American-born Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh asked President Bush to commute his 20-year prison term, citing the case of an Australian man who was sentenced to less than a year for aiding terrorism.

Lindh, 26, was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 by American forces sent to topple the Taliban after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He was charged with conspiring to kill Americans and support terrorists but pleaded guilty to lesser offenses, including carrying explosives for the now-defunct Taliban government.

Lindh's lawyer and father said the lighter sentence given to Australian David Hicks should be reflected in Lindh's case.

"It is a question of proportionality. It is a question of fairness, and it is a question of the religious experience John Walker Lindh had," attorney James Brosnahan said. "And it was not in any way directed at the United States."

No -- why would we assume that Lindh's assistance to a terrorist group that had already attacked American interests and killed Americans was treasonous? He just had a "religious experience", as Brosnahan states. And that religious experience only coincidentally included jihad against America and infidel Westerners.

Lindh admitted to being a part of al-Qaeda and not just the Taliban, although that would have been bad enough. Lindh also escaped during a prison break that included the murder of his interrogator, Mike Spann, and hid for seven days until the Northern Alliance found the escapees. After his family launched a public-relations crusade to make their son into a victim of American mistreatment, the Department of Justice offered him a plea bargain that traded the consecutive life sentences he would surely have received for a twenty-year stretch and his explicit dropping of any claims of abuse, now and in the future. And Lindh accepted it.

Lindh's lucky he got the 20 years he's serving. He agreed to the deal. If he has buyer's remorse because someone else got a better deal, tough.

UPDATE: Let's recall what Robert Pelton, the CNN journalist who was the only reporter to interview Lindh after his capture, has to say about this poor, mistreated, unfortunate soul:

Quite simply in my opinion, Lindh was a terrorist, a member of what we call al qaeda and a man who chose to stay with killers even though he was afforded numerous opportunities to separate himself from his murderous associates. Twenty years in jail may be a blessing compared to how many of his friends have been dealt with since.

Frank Lindh cannot be blamed for the emotions behind his need to reinvent history or doing what he can to get his son out of jail. But he is lying. His son did not “love America”, he fought for bin Laden against us, his son is not “honest”, he lied to his parents and others. His son is not a “decent” young man; he trained to be a murderer. His son went to kill strangers in a stranger land. A spiritual quest? What part of grenades and AK 47’s can be described as spiritual? What part of patriotism is eating bin Laden’s food, listening to Usama’s droning hate-filled speeches against America and sitting obediently within strangling distance of our greatest single enemy? To
think that the American public is that stupid is an insult.

John Walker Lindh was an Arab speaking member of bin Laden’s terror legions. He called it Al Ansar (the correct term) we call them al Qaeda. He was never a member of the Taliban. Why because Lindh only spoke Arabic and English he would have been useless in a combat situation among Pashto or Dari speaking troops. I have seen Taliban ID cards and spent time with bin Laden’s “055 Brigade, “al Ansar” members and al qaeda. Lindh was exactly the person we were trying to kill in Afghanistan and now around the world. An educated, idealistic young Muslim who chose murder of innocent people as his path in life. He is no different that Mohamed Atta, Zarqawi or thousands of other terrorists that come from nice middle class families.

Lovely Parting Gifts Included

The 15 Royal Navy personnel held captive by the Iranians for a fortnight returned home today on a British Airways flight. Less than 24 hours after their "pardon" from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the sailors and Marines flew business class, with parting gifts from the Iranian mullahcracy:

Fifteen Royal Navy personnel detained at gunpoint in the Gulf were heading home to Britain today, seated in business class on a British Airways flight from Tehran with shiny new suits and goody bags filled with traditional Iranian gifts.

The eight sailors and seven Marines were released yesterday in a stunning piece of political theatre by President Ahmandinejad, who brought a bizarre but welcome end to a 13-day stand-off that had held out the possibility of violent escalation. ...

But despite widespread relief at their release, the group may face questions as to their behaviour in captivity.

Colonel Bob Stewart, who became famous as a hard-hitting commander of British peacekeepers during the Bosnian war, said today that he had been "disquieted" by the captives' TV appearances.

"In the old way we didn't used to say much when were taken as a captive - name, rank number, date of birth," Colonel Stewart told BBC Radio 4's Today programe. "I know things have changed and I know they were not prisoners of war, but I'm a little disquieted about it."

The British will face a number of questions at the end of this crisis that they have studiously avoided (and rightly so) during it. Least among them will be the deportment of the detainees themselves, although it will arise shortly, if the Times of London is any indicator. Not only did they participate in televised programs designed to humiliate the UK, they then engaged in what can only be called tourist behavior, apparently with some enthusiasm. Soldiers, sailors, and Marines of any nation are expected to handle detention with a little more aplomb than that.

It would be churlish, though, to spend much time criticizing the detainees when the focus should be on those who allowed their capture in the beginning. Despite its proximity, the Cornwall did nothing to intercede on behalf of its crew when threatened by a hostile force. That demonstrates a lack of loyalty from the top down on that ship, which certainly excuses any from the bottom up. Those who conduct military patrols have every right to expect that their leadership will act to protect them against hostile forces, and British command failed to do so.

Afterwards, Tony Blair did the best he could to sound tough at first, but the cat was long out of the bag by that point. Iran, as the Telegraph notes, had already succeeded in humiliating Britain and exposing them as paper tigers:

First, there is the apparent incompetence of the Royal Navy in providing insufficient protection to lightly armed inflatables, at a time when relations between Iran and the West were particularly volatile following the imposition of UN sanctions. Second, the seized personnel lost no time in admitting to having trespassed and in apologising for their mistake. The old military practice of giving name, rank and number, and no more, has obviously been abandoned.

Third, the dénouement of this crisis showed Mr Ahmadinejad in the most favourable of lights, whether in "pardoning" the 15, pleading on their behalf with Mr Blair, admonishing this country for separating a mother, Leading Seaman Faye Turney, from her child, or shaking hands and chatting with the newly besuited Servicemen after his press conference. ...

This bodes badly for the West's relations with Teheran over a number of acutely difficult problems during the coming months: its defiance of UN sanctions imposed because of a refusal to halt uranium enrichment; its heightened meddling in Iraq; and its continued support for terrorist movements - Hizbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and elements of Fatah - vowed to Israel's destruction. During the recent crisis, Iran has yielded not a jot on any of these matters. Rather, the approval it has enjoyed on the Islamic "street" for humiliating an old enemy is likely to make it even more intransigent.

The British will likely spend the next day or so celebrating the return of its Navy personnel. It will spend the next several years regretting the loss of their credibility.

UPDATE: McQ has a few questions, too.

UPDATE II: Syria claims it acted to end the crisis:

Syria played a key role in resolving the standoff over the 15 British sailors and marines held by Iran, two government officials said Wednesday.

“Syrian efforts and the Iranian willingness culminated with the release of the British sailors,” said Information Minister Mohsen Bilal.

He said Syria had been asked “to help positively in the issue of British” crew members since their March 23 seizure by Iran in the Persian Gulf.

He did not elaborate.

Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem told reporters that “Syria exercised a sort of quiet diplomacy to solve this problem and encourage dialogue” between Britain and Iran.

Yeah, sure. You could probably find a couple of Syrian government officials to claim that they assisted in getting the sun to rise in the east, too. (via TMV)

UPDATE III: Jules Crittenden has a good round-up of links.

Giuliani Transcript On Abortion

After Rudy Giuliani's surprising statement on federal funding for abortions yesterday, several commenters expressed reservations about the credibility of CNN to report what Rudy said honestly. Here is the transcript from the relevant portion of the interview, so that we can see the remark in context:

BASH: There's something on -- you know, on YouTube from 1989. It's flying around the Internet. It's -- it's a clip of you.

[tape]GIULIANI: There must be public funding for abortions for poor women. We cannot deny any woman the right to make her own decision about abortion because she lacks resources. [applause] I have also stated that I disagree with President Bush's veto last week of public funding for abortions.

BASH: Is that also your -- going -- going to be your position as president?

[live]GIULIANI: Probably. I mean, I have to reexamine all those issues and exactly what was at stake then. It is a long time ago. But, generally, that's my -- my view. Abortion is wrong. Abortion shouldn't happen. Personally, you should counsel people to that extent. When I was mayor, adoptions went up. Abortions went down.

BASH: So, you...

GIULIANI: But, ultimately, it's a -- it's a -- it's a constitutional right. And, therefore, if it's a constitutional right, ultimately, even you do it on a state-by-state basis, you have to make sure that people are protected.

BASH: So, you support taxpayer money or public funding for abortion in some cases?

GIULIANI: If -- if it would deprive someone of a constitutional right, yes. I mean, if that's the status of the law, then I would, yes.

The Giuliani campaign sent this link from The Corner to me yesterday, as an explanation of Giuliani's remarks. It contains a statement by Giuliani that he will not attempt to reverse the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding of abortions. It also reprints Giuliani's response to this question last month -- but a careful reading reveals he never answered the question about using federal funds to pay for abortions.

If Rudy wanted to make clear his support of the Hyde Amendment, he could have done so without this clumsy two-step.

Pelosi's Pratfall

Nancy Pelosi's amateurish fumble in Syria left the Washington Post less than impressed. In an editorial titled "Pratfall in Damascus," the Post doesn't stop at scolding Pelosi for demonstrating why egotistical Representatives should not insert themselves into diplomacy. It also questions her motives and accuses her of attempting to create a shadow presidency:

Ms. Pelosi was criticized by President Bush for visiting Damascus at a time when the administration -- rightly or wrongly -- has frozen high-level contacts with Syria. Mr. Bush said that thanks to the speaker's freelancing Mr. Assad was getting mixed messages from the United States. Ms. Pelosi responded by pointing out that Republican congressmen had visited Syria without drawing presidential censure. That's true enough -- but those other congressmen didn't try to introduce a new U.S. diplomatic initiative in the Middle East. "We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace," Ms. Pelosi grandly declared.

Never mind that that statement is ludicrous: As any diplomat with knowledge of the region could have told Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Assad is a corrupt thug whose overriding priority at the moment is not peace with Israel but heading off U.N. charges that he orchestrated the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The really striking development here is the attempt by a Democratic congressional leader to substitute her own foreign policy for that of a sitting Republican president. Two weeks ago Ms. Pelosi rammed legislation through the House of Representatives that would strip Mr. Bush of his authority as commander in chief to manage troop movements in Iraq. Now she is attempting to introduce a new Middle East policy that directly conflicts with that of the president. We have found much to criticize in Mr. Bush's military strategy and regional diplomacy. But Ms. Pelosi's attempt to establish a shadow presidency is not only counterproductive, it is foolish.

The Democrats, led by Pelosi, have tried to undermine Bush for years. Now that they have the majority in Congress, they can give full vent to their schemes. The efforts of the past couple of months show that the Democrats want to turn the Constitution upside down, strip the executive branch of its power, and make Congress the supreme power in the American system.

Well, sorry, but that's the British system. Perhaps Pelosi would be more comfortable there or in Canada, but here in the US, the elected President has all of the Constitutional authority to conduct foreign policy and command the military. That remains true even when Congress dislikes the policies in both areas. If the Democrats want a new foreign policy, then let them nominate someone who can articulate one that the American people support, and stop nominating appeasers and vacillators.

The founders understood that America has to speak with one voice abroad in order to keep our enemies from exploiting our domestic divisions and to allow our allies to rely on our consistency. Pelosi managed in her trip to screw that up for two nations, the US and Israel. She proclaimed Damascus as the "road to peace" just months after Syrian-supported terrorists attacked Israel, and while they still hold two Israeli soldiers captive. The supposedly peaceful man with whom she met probably ordered the political assassination of Rafiq Hariri and other Lebanese politicians who want a closer relationship with the West.

Pelosi's "foreign policy" apparently has no problem with these kinds of betrayals ... another reason Americans don't trust Democrats to conduct the nation's business abroad. Where is Robert Byrd and his pocket Constitution when the Democrats need them?

The Politics Of The Petty

Senate Democrats are outraged over the recess appointment of Sam Fox by President Bush, just a few days after the White House withdrew his nomination for Ambassador. Fox, who contributed to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign in 2004, ran afoul of John Kerry on the Foreign Relations committee:

President Bush, defying Senate Democrats, gave recess appointments yesterday to three controversial nominees, including, as ambassador to Belgium, Republican donor Sam Fox, who had contributed to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group whose ads helped doom Sen. John F. Kerry's 2004 presidential bid.

Kerry (D-Mass.), who grilled Fox about his $50,000 contribution to the group during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February, had complained that Fox never disavowed his actions and that he should not be confirmed. "It's sad but not surprising that this White House would abuse the power of the presidency to reward a donor over the objections of the Senate," Kerry said in a statement yesterday.

The outrage is misplaced. Despite Mary Ann Akers' unsupported assertion that the SBVT campaign "smeared" Kerry, no one has been able to refute the substantial evidentiary and testimonial record of their charges. Oh, people claim that the 250+ Swift Boat veterans have been discredited, but the best they can do is to dispute one detail in one particular battle with opposing testimony. Kerry, who made his combat service an issue in the 204 campaign as a way to cheap-shot Bush's service in the National Guard, created entire fantasies about Christmas in Cambodia, a magic hat, and allowed at least one man to deliver speeches about his personal experiences with Kerry during battles in which the man could not possibly have participated.

All of this happened three years ago. Sam Fox made a legitimate contribution to a group of veterans whom Kerry angered by publishing their photograph and implying they supported his presidential bid. Rather than focus on Fox's qualifications, or even pretending to do so, Kerry and his cohorts demanded explanations for Fox's political views on a race long over, a breathtaking bit of narcissism and more than a little Orwellian.

Before the current crop of Democratic leadership in the Senate, Presidents had been allowed the benefit of their selections for political appointments, especially those which expire at the end of the presidential term. Actually, to be fair, that started changing in the Clinton Administration, when Republicans tubed James Hormel's ambassadorship for being openly gay. And, by the way, Clinton gave Hormel a recess appointment afterwards -- and he did it in June 1999, when Congress was on a break similar to the one they're enjoying at the moment, and not during an explcit recess.

Barring Fox from taking the position was petty and vindictive, just the kind of games Democrats have played with presidential appointments for the past six years. They tried it on John Bolton, and got the same answer from the White House then. Now they want to screech with outrage, but the Senate Democratic Caucus has created this situation by ignoring the concept of presidential privilege for the entire time Bush has served in office.

Iraq To Expand Security Plan

The new surge security plan in Iraq has performed so well, the Iraqi government will now expand the strategy to Mosul, where Petraeus first conceived it. The results in Baghdad have Iraqi officials optimistic enough to start ending curfews and removing concrete barriers:

Iraq says it is extending the current security drive beyond Baghdad to areas outside the capital.

Efforts to bring the security plan to the northern city of Mosul began on Tuesday, officials said, and Baghdad's outskirts would also be targeted

Officials have expressed optimism about reduced sectarian violence in Baghdad, and have decided to ease the curfew.

How well has Petraeus's plan performed? Moqtada al-Sadr fired two of his deputies for not leaving a banquet when Petraeus arrived. Salam al-Maliki and Qusai Abdul-Wahab represented Sadr's faction in the Iraqi National Assembly, at least until they broke bread with the American commander.

Petraeus used some of the same strategy and tactics in Mosul during the initial months of the war, which makes the expansion of his new strategy to the city somewhat ironic. Mosul citizens protested when Petraeus rotated out of Iraq, and their concern was well-founded. Without his counterinsurgency genius, the city fell prey to a lower-intensity version of the sectarian warfare that has plagued Baghdad.

People don't expand failures, at least not on purpose. The new strategy has made inroads against the insurgents, and the Iraqi government has recovered the momentum. The only thing that can stop them is an American Congress more invested in failure than success.

Why Foreign Policy Belongs In The Executive Branch

The Jerusalem Post notes that the Israeli Prime Minister's office had to issue a "clarification" after Nancy Pelosi attempted to deliver a message from Ehud Olmert to Syria's Bashar Assad. The PMO's statement contradicts Pelosi and points up the problems when amateurs attempt to involve themselves in sensitive diplomacy:

The Prime Minister's Office issued a rare "clarification" Wednesday that, in gentle diplomatic terms, contradicted US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's statement in Damascus that she had brought a message from Israel about a willingness to engage in peace talks.

According to the statement, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert emphasized in his meeting with Pelosi on Sunday that "although Israel is interested in peace with Syria, that country continues to be part of the Axis of Evil and a force that encourages terror in the entire Middle East."

Olmert, the statement clarified, told Pelosi that Syria's sincerity about a genuine peace with Israel would be judged by its willingness to "cease its support of terror, cease its sponsoring of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations, refrain from providing weapons to Hizbullah and bringing about the destabilizing of Lebanon, cease its support of terror in Iraq, and relinquish the strategic ties it is building with the extremist regime in Iran."

Pelosi somehow forgot the part about ending support for terrorism when she met with Assad. She told the Syrian dictator that Israel was ready to meet with Assad on a peace proposal, which only told part of the story. In delivering only part of the message, Pelosi not only arrogated to herself the role of American foreign policy director -- which Condoleezza Rice has as Secretary of State -- she did the same with Israel's foreign policy as well.

Not a bad night's work for an incompetent.

When diplomats meet with enemies, they make sure to get their positions coordinated with their allies and execute strict message discipline. They do not "wing it" -- they check with their elected governments when any questions arise about the directions of talks. Only someone with an ego in inverse proportion to her talent would start making stuff up as she goes when dealing with the Syrian-Israeli relationship, one of the most explosive in the world.

Several blogs condemned Pelosi for wearing a scarf to a mosque. That didn't bother me; I considered it a form of basic etiquette when visiting someone else's place of worship. I would have no problem donning a yarmulke if I went to a synagogue, for instance, especially if I had been asked to do so. I just wish Pelosi would have worn the scarf differently -- as a gag. It would have helped her do less damage to American and Israeli foreign policy. (via Hot Air and Gateway Pundit)

Where Rudy Lost His Groove

What a shame; Rudy Giuliani had been doing so well in convincing conservatives that he could represent them even while differing on social policy. He had advanced the argument that he would appoint strict constructionist judges to the federal bench, relying on textual references for Constitutional debates rather than "living document" notions that have driven conservatives up the wall. All of that work appears to have flown out the window with this CNN interview today:

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told CNN Wednesday he supports public funding for some abortions, a position he advocated as mayor and one that will likely put the GOP presidential candidate at odds with social conservatives in his party.

"Ultimately, it's a constitutional right, and therefore if it's a constitutional right, ultimately, even if you do it on a state by state basis, you have to make sure people are protected," Giuliani said in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash in Florida's capital city. ...

When asked directly Wednesday if he still supported the use of public funding for abortions, Giuliani said "Yes."

"If it would deprive someone of a constitutional right," he explained, "If that's the status of the law, yes."

This is an absurd statement on two levels. First, while Roe v Wade acts as precedent for the Constitutionality of abortion, nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the government must provide its citizens with what it allows. If that were true, the federal government would be required to arm every citizen. After all, the Second Amendment explicitly states that citizens have the right to bear arms, in language that actually appears in the document. If Giuliani's logic prevails, he should be arguing for a government plan to disperse guns, rifles, and ammunition -- as any impediment to access to a Constitutional right becomes the government's job to overcome.

On the second level, it is precisely this kind of judicial overreach that has put conservatives in a position to demand strict constructionists that will leave legislation to the legislature and to the states. Did Giuliani think that Republicans want to end judicial activism just to enshrine its idiocy of the past? Even conservatives who adopt the more libertarian position on abortion as a personal choice object to the government funding of those procedures under any circumstances. Personal choice does not equate to government financing -- which makes each abortion so funded a public policy by definition.

It's hard to see where conservatives of any stripe -- social or fiscal -- can support Giuliani after this assertion. He won't do anything to reverse abortion, and he wants to use tax money to fund them. If someone can find the conservative in there, as Giuliani argues, they must have to stare very hard into that abyss.

Did Iran Blink?

The Iranians apparently caught everyone by surprise when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unexpectedly 'pardoned' the 15 British sailors and Marines they captured in Iraq waters two weeks ago. The Times of London reports that the sudden concession by the mullahcracy springs from a victory of pragmatist factions over hardliners, and that the Iranians saw no benefit from the further isolation a prolonged battle over the detainees would bring:

The extremists wanted to put the British on trial or at least hold them as a bargaining chip for the release of five Iranian officials arrested by US forces in Iraq in January who are still in custody.

The more moderate elements advised the opposite. Iran is already reeling from sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council and in all likelihood faces further measures this year if it is does not halt its controversial nuclear programme.

The British might not have been in a position to use force against Iran but they did demonstrate that they could muster powerful allies around the world willing to take up the cause of the captured British sailors and marines. Iran’s economy is already weak, further action could damage the Government’s power base.

The UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for an end to the crisis. A tougher worded statement came from the European Union. Key Middle East regional powers, like Turkey, Syria, Saudia Arabia and Iraq also took up the cause and bombarded Iranian leaders with calls to free the British.

Perhaps. I think this analysis overstates the positive effects of both the UN and EU statements. The UN only wound up deploring the situation; it was the weakest possible option open to the Security Council. Getting anything out of the Islamist-friendly Russians and Chinese might be considered a victory of sorts, but it's pretty thin gruel. The EU response was even more embarrassing, refusing to even allow Britain to boycott Iranian trade.

If one believes the Iranians blinked, that probably came from the significant amount of military assets the US began deploying in the Gulf over the last two weeks. The US conducted war games within sight of the Iranian military, a none-too-subtle reminder that America had the firepower to make life uncomfortable for the Iranians, even if they thought the UK did not. With many believing that George Bush wants a reason or even an excuse to go after the Iranian mullahcracy before he leaves office, the incident seemed too provocative by half, especially for more cautious Iranians.

All of this is predicated on the belief that Iran got nothing for its concession. If that's true, then Iran lost some mojo in this crisis, but somehow I don't see that as a possibility, given the political situation in the region. If Blair had the nerve to order an attack, he would have done so almost immediately. Instead, the Brits used the language of de-escalation and compromise, especially over the last few days, signaling that they were ready to bargain. Would Ahmadinejad have dropped the issue with a potential victory so close at hand? It seems highly unlikely.

I hope the Times of London has it right, but it looks like a rather desperate attempt at spin for the moment. (via Hot Air)

Newspeak For Pork: 'Unrelated Items'

One of the more annoying tendencies of modern culture is to elevate euphemisms to daily usage in order to diminish the unpleasant. Problems became "issues", and "issues" became "opportunities", and so on. The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman introduces a new euphemism to help us feel better about pork-barrel spending, while noting its universality. He calls them "unrelated items":

To President Bush, they are "pork-barrel projects completely unrelated to the war," items in the House and Senate war-spending bills such as peanut storage facilities and aid to spinach farmers that insult the seriousness of the conflict and exist only to buy votes.

But such spending has been part of Iraq funding bills since the war began, sometimes inserted by the president himself, sometimes added by lawmakers with bipartisan aplomb. A few of the items may have weighed on the votes for spending bills that have now topped half a trillion dollars, but, in almost all cases over the past four years, special-interest funding provisions have been the fruits of congressional opportunism by well-placed senators or House members grabbing what they could for their constituents on the one bill that had to be passed quickly.

"Frankly, I don't see a lot of vote-buying here. And if that was what they were after in some cases, it didn't seem to work," said Scott Lilly, who was a longtime senior House Appropriations Committee aide and is now at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress.

The president's own request last year for emergency war spending included $20 billion for Gulf Coast hurricane recovery, $2.3 billion for bird flu preparations, and $2 billion to fortify the border with Mexico and pay for his effort to send National Guardsmen to the southern frontier.

Yes, those items were in the previous supplementals, and they were bad enough then. However, Weisman misses a couple of critical points in his reporting. Last year, Congress had already passed a budget and did not have any other mechanisms to provide for Katrina and the bird flu, both which were -- at the time -- emergent situations. That's what supplementals bills are supposed to fund. Normal spending should get funded through the normal budgeting process, which then counts against the deficit.

No one can pretend that the items included in this supplemental arise from emergencies. In the first place, Congress still worked on the normal funding bills for the budget while they put this together. Everything in this bill, including the funding for the Iraq war, could easily have been folded into the normal budget process. And while an argument could be made that the surge should have gotten special funding given its controversial nature, the fact is that we have been in Iraq for four years now, and we should at least fund existing operations through the Defense Department appropriation process and not through supplementals.

None of the other initiatives come close to emergencies. Nor do they have anything to do with national security. The ratio of pork to necessities also puts this bill beyond the pale, and the process used by Democrats to adopt the two versions of the supplemental makes it very clear that the pork was used to buy votes. That should alarm all Americans, who have to watch their tax dollars used to grease the skids for a bill that demands a surrender of American fighting forces abroad.

Obama Right Behind Hillary

Barack Obama has raised $25 million for his presidential bid, coming in only a million behind Hillary Clinton's record-breaking performance. What makes it even more impressive is the number of donors who contributed to the total:

Sen. Barack Obama raised at least $25 million for his presidential campaign in the first quarter of the year, putting him just shy of Sen. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, who made a splash with her announcement Sunday that she had drawn a record-breaking $26 million.

Obama (D-Ill.) appears to have surpassed Clinton in several ways: He raised $6.9 million through donations over the Internet, more than the $4.2 million than Clinton (N.Y.) raised online. He reported donations from 100,000 people, double the 50,000 people who gave to Clinton.

And of Obama's overall receipts, $23.5 million is eligible for use in the primary contests. Clinton officials have declined to disclose how much of her cash is available for the primaries -- rather than designated for the general election and therefore blocked off unless she wins the nomination -- raising suspicions that she raised less for the primaries than Obama did.

I believe that fundraising numbers do not directly relate to electoral success, but they do indicate support more reliably than polls, especially when looking at the number of individual donors. Obama and Romney both managed to reach out to a lot of people, and a lot of people responded. The average Obama donor gave $250 in Q1, which makes it look like Obama has done a good job of organizing the grassroots support that he will need to beat Hillary in the primaries. Her money seems to have come from more establishment sources.

In contrast, John McCain has a problem with his organization, a fact noted by the New York Times today. It's hardly fatal at this stage, and McCain has started making changes to address the problem. It shows that fundraising numbers function as a temperature gauge on campaigns; it can give an early indication of dysfunction that should get immediate attention.

People point to Howard Dean's meltdown in 2004 and Phil Gramm's stillborn candidacies to show that fundraising doesn't equate to success, and that's true. However, the problem in both cases rested with the candidate and not the organizations. A good organization can't overcome a poor candidate, but a poor organization will doom any candidate. The Obama totals show that he has at least built a requisite organization for a serious run.

Hey, I Could Get Used To This!

As some of you have probably surmised, I've stayed home to take care of the First Mate today. I expected her to come home later in the week, when the Admiral Emeritus and his wife will be here for a week to help us out. Unfortunately, I didn't get anyone committed to being here while she's recuperating today and tomorrow, so I'm working from home the next couple of days in the meantime.

Of course, this is great preparation for April 16th, when I start my new job as Political Director for Blog Talk Radio. More announcements will be coming about a new, daily slot for CQ Radio, as well as other exciting developments. As you can see, I'm hard at work acclimating myself to the rigors of the job:

Actually, I am multitasking here. The left-most laptop is from my current job, for which I'm running some analytical databases today. The Sony laptop on the right is the workhorse of CQ, and the monitor into which I'm staring is attached to the spare Gateway, which I'm using for blogging today. You'll also notice that I've cleaned the home office somewhat. Two months ago, you couldn't see the floor in here.

The FM feels pretty punked out today, so I'll be bopping in and out. However, it's nice to be able to get up late (by my standards) and still have a productive day on the blog. I'm going to enjoy doing this full time -- and I have all of you to thank for that.

Why Tom Tancredo Is Not A Serious Candidate

Tom Tancredo announced his intention to run for President this week, which initiated the question of credibility. After all, Tancredo is mostly known for his hard-line views on illegal immigration and his threat to bomb Mecca, and most candidacies of sitting Congressmen have amounted to little more than vanity tours. Tancredo appears to have answered that in an interview with Hugh Hewitt and his reaction afterwards:

Of over 25 radio programs that Tancredo was on yesterday, it was Hugh Hewitt Show that had the chance to illuminate an issue that millions of Americans support us on, but instead he chose to educate Tancredo about the merits of supporting an illegal alien amnesty bill.

After talking with Congressman Tancredo he told me his response to Hewitt's show: "Why would we come back on his show? I know it makes good radio to be engaged in an hour for a yelling match with him, but it is not a good use of our time. We will not come back on the program."

Yow! I've listened to Hugh for years, and Hugh doesn't yell. He's not Michael Savage, who actually is probably closer to Tancredo politically. Hugh asks tough questions of his guests, and he presses when he believes them to be evasive, but he never loses his cool.

Here's the part that got Tancredo steamed:

HH: ... [L]et me move on. GOP question, just two years and three months ago, Tom, you endorsed an American Independent Party candidate over the Republican nominee in a special election out here in Orange County. Is that material to a campaign for the GOP nomination, that you threw the Republican overboard just two years ago?

TT: Well, I’ll tell you, I’ve said this before, that issues matter to me greatly. And you know, I have been a Republican all of my life, Hugh. And I mean, back in high school, when we had a…I remember a mock election with…this is in 1960, at Holy Family High School, had a mock election for president of the United States, and this was in a Catholic school, okay?

HH: But Congressman, that’s nice, but two years ago, you went AIG.

TT: …surprise…well…

HH: You threw the Republican overboard.

That sounds like a fair question, especially since conservatives have pounced on Mitt Romney's 1992 endorsement of his friend Paul Tsongas. It's a lot more recent than the Tsongas endorsement, and Tancredo had to go way out of his way for the AIG candidate; Tancredo represents Colorado, which is not exactly close to Orange County, CA, where I lived most of my life. Someone who wants to lead the GOP to the White House needs to answer why he kneecapped the Republican candidate in an election in 2004.

The reaction afterwards speaks more to Tancredo's seriousness than his answer on the show. If Tancredo can't work with a man like Hugh Hewitt, exactly who can he handle? I can understand refusing to appear on Keith Olbermann's show or on Hardball, but Hugh Hewitt? Where does Tancredo think he can win enough votes to capture the nomination?

If Tancredo can't stand the little bit of heat he got from Hugh, then he'd better stay out of the kitchen, the hallway, the living room, and the foyer. (via CQ reader Kal Rez)

Times Apologist Gets Media Criticism Award

In a strange version of Newspeak, the Penn State College of Communications has transformed the ombudsman role into that of media critic, and awarded Byron Calame its Bart Richards award. Calame made headlines when he reported that his own bosses refused to speak to him about the paper's role in blowing a national-security program designed to intercept communications between terrorists abroad and potential sleeper cells in the US, which won him the award:

The Bart Richards Award, presented annually by the College of Communications at Penn State, recognizes outstanding contributions to print and broadcast journalism through responsible analysis or critical evaluation. The award is intended to recognize constructively critical articles, books and electronic media reports; academic and other research; and reports by media ombudsmen and journalism watchdog groups.

This year’s award honors work produced during the 2006 calendar year. It will be presented Thursday, May 24, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

In the series of six columns Calame submitted for the award, he examined specific issues with reporting and stories that appeared in the Times. Among his submissions was a Jan. 1, 2006, column that reported that Times executive editor Bill Keller and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. refused to respond to Calame’s questions regarding the content and timing of a Dec. 16, 2005, article about an eavesdropping conducted by the National Security Agency. His columns touched on a variety of topics as he focused on how Times reporters and editors did their jobs.

Calame may or may not have done well as the Gray Lady's "public editor", the title they created when they eschewed the industry term "ombudsman", but that doesn't equate to media criticism. An ombudsman reacts to reader complaints about the reporting and editorial decisions of a newspaper; he or she doesn't go out and do a lot of original reporting. They do not review other media outlets and write criticism in the classic sense. Rather, they take complaints to the editors of the paper and report what they are told, adding their own opinions to their reporting.

In this case, Calame and PSU neglects to mention that the ombudsman initially whitewashed the issue. It took Calame eight months to respond to the complaints NYT readers had about this story, both about the decision to publish the data and the timing of the publication. What was the Bart Richards Award winner doing for those eight months? Mostly ignoring the story, and when he did address it, backing the Times' decisions.

That's not the only case where Calame had to recover from flacking for Bill Keller. When the Times exposed the Swift banking surveillance, Calame enthusiastically supported the decision to publish the story. Only after three months passed and it became clear that the Bush administration had not broken any laws in their efforts to track terrorist financing did Calame issue a lame, late, and buried criticism of his paper. And let's not forget his weak assertion that the Times' failure to report the scandal between Air America and the Gloria Wise foundation came from the fact that the story was still "unfolding" -- as it was everywhere except in the Times.

Calame isn't a bad ombudsman, but he's no media critic. Calame has only found his courage late in a story, when it offers little discomfort to his bosses at the Times. If Calame represents the best of media criticism, it explains why the blogosphere has mostly taken that role from the mainstream media.

Brownstein Waxes Nostalgic

I had to read Ronald Brownstein twice today to make sure the Los Angeles Times had not started a new satire section. The Times' political analyst writes an entire column decrying the lack of intimacy in the 2008 Presidential primary race, and blames ... well, everybody:

And yet the size, scope and speed of the 2008 race are transforming the process of picking the president in discouraging ways. Intimate events aren't extinct; Democratic contender Barack Obama, who has drawn the largest crowds, heard impassioned and sometimes wrenching pleas for a single-payer healthcare system at a forum limited to 100 people in Portsmouth on Tuesday afternoon.

But even in Iowa and New Hampshire, the traditional citadels of person-to-person politics, such opportunities for close encounters with a candidate are diminishing. Just as important, the top candidates are losing the chance to spend quiet time listening to the problems and concerns of voters in rooms smaller than an auditorium.

The enormous expansion of media devoted to the race is widening this disconnect. Cable television networks, radio talk shows, on-line political tout sheets, blogs on the left and right — to say nothing of the mainstream media — have converged into a mammoth machine for inciting controversies, collecting gossip, pursuing scandal and measuring the candidates' viability on a daily, if not hourly, basis. The media are stoking the race's breathless tempo yet acquiescing as most candidates move slowly to unveil their policies (with Edwards a prominent exception).

This week, the political world pored over the presidential candidates' first-quarter fundraising totals as if they were evidence in a murder trial that would decide who would live and who would die. Fundraising genuinely matters, but some of the commentary suggested that the insiders are determined to decide these candidates' fate long before voters get a chance. "It feels like nobody wants to let this thing happen," complained Tom Rath, a veteran New Hampshire Republican activist. "Everybody wants to be smarter than the other guy and know the answer before the game is played."

Well, let's try to work backwards and see how this national catastrophe began. Blogs on the left and right (including CQ) started discussing Q1 fundraising totals because analysts on television and radio had already done so. They chewed over the details because the national media made them front-page news. And they did that because the campaigns themselves spent their entire day flacking the results.

So who's to blame for the overwhelming coverage that Brownstein laments? Primarily, the candidates themselves. They want to build buzz and momentum, and they are leveraging the media to do it -- and that means all of the media, New and Establishment alike. People like Ed Morrissey, Jonathan Singer ... and Ronald Brownstein.

And why does the media respond with so much coverage? Because people are engaged in the process like never before. People want to know about Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. They want to hear what the candidates have to say on policy. What's wrong with that?

I agree that the primary season has become too extended this year, but that isn't the fault of the media. The candidates themselves decided to kick off exploratory committees and start holding town halls, both real and virtual, to get themselves into the papers. If they burn out their supporters during this marathon primary, they have no one to blame but themselves - not the media, and not "big money".

Brownstein waxes nostalgic for the initimate events of bygone years, mostly in New Hampshire and Iowa. This reminds me of men who have a irrational obsession with virginity in their dating life; they value it so that they can be the ones to end it. So it also seems for this supposed value of intimacy in the early primaries. What did that do for candidates? Supposedly it allowed them to define themselves outside the pressure of massive appearances, and allowed voters to connect personally to them as well. However, even if it did that, it only worked for a handful of voters in two states that hardly represent the nation as a whole. And what good did it do to define oneself when only 100 people were around to see it?

This looks much more like a whine from a political reporter who has seen the "intimate" access of the press disappear from the early campaigns. It cannot be a bad thing to have the candidates speaking to the broadest possible audiences, except for those reporters who were accustomed to having the power to shape the candidates' messages for that broader audience early in the process.

Iran 'Pardons' Captured British Sailors, Marines

Well, talk about making lemonade out of lemons. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced a "pardon" for the 15 British sailors and Marines just a few moments ago, and promises to have them flown out of Iran within the next couple of hours:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says Iran will pardon and set free 15 British sailors and marines being held in Iranian custody.

"I declare that the people of Iran and the government of Iran -- in full power to place on trial the military people -- to give amnesty and pardon to these 15 people and I announce their freedom and their return to the people of Britain," Ahmadinejad told a news conference.

He said the Britons would be taken to the airport after the news conference. The action was a goodwill gesture for the Iranian new year which began last week, he said.

A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Tony Blair said: "We are looking at what has been said."

Ahmadinejad makes the most out of the reversal. Facing the threat of a blockade if Iran pressed this any further, he gets to look magnanimous while still maintaining the notion that he could have tried the sailors for espionage, even while dressed in uniform. It's a net win, allowing the Iranians to feel as though they won a tactical victory while avoiding having to back up their rhetoric with action.

Whether this is a win for Tony Blair remains to be seen. He stuck with negotiations and got the 15 back, and he didn't have to apologize for a violation that never occurred. On the surface, it looks great -- an end to the crisis without a shot being fired. It's what happened below the surface and behind the scenes that will determine how Blair fared against Ahmadinejad. What did the British have to give up in order to get their personnel back?

UPDATE: Allahpundit smells some quid pro quo:

Iranian state media reported Wednesday that an Iranian envoy will be allowed to meet the five Iranians detained in January by U.S. forces in the northern Iraqi town of Irbil. ...

"A representative from the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad will meet" the detained Iranians, the official Islamic Republic News Agency said.

U.S. troops detained the five Iranians when it raided their office in Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish autonomous zone, on Jan 11. The troops also confiscated computers and documents.

So far, CENTCOM says they have no information regarding this meeting. It's possible that the Iranians have planted the story in their state-run media to give themselves cover for what could be seen as a retreat from the confrontation that the Revolutionary Guards provoked. That would also explain the invocation of Mohammed as part of the reason for the release. Even if it turns out to be true, it doesn't seem like much of a concession on the part of the US and UK.

Chertoff: 'Clean-Skin' Terrorists The Big Threat

Michael Chertoff tells the London Telegraph that the US and the West has to do more to protect themselves from "clean-skin" terrorists -- those born in the West who become disaffected enough to align themselves with radical jihadists. He also insists that the US has "every right" to toughen its visa policies, a move that has been unpopular in Europe:

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Michael Chertoff, who arrives in Britain tomorrow for talks with John Reid, the Home Secretary, said the US was determined to build extra defences against so-called "clean skin" terrorists from Europe.

"We need to build layers of protection, and I don't think we totally want to rely upon the fact that a foreign government is going to know that one of their citizens is suspicious and is going to be coming here," he said.

Mr Chertoff insisted that the US required additional information, including email addresses and credit card details, to vet European passengers and rejected "the idea that we're going to bargain with the European Union over who's going to come into the United States" under the visa waiver scheme.

"We have an absolute right to get this, in the same way that if someone wants to be a guest in my house I have a right to ask them who they are and get identification."

The July 7 tube and bus bombs nearly two years ago had shown that Britain had a problem with its Muslim immigrant population that America did not share, he argued.

Well, to be fair, Britain didn't know it had a problem with its Muslim immigrant population until the July 7 bombing either. Canada didn't know about its native Muslim problem until the capture of the Toronto cell. Some in the national-security apparatuses of both countries probably tried to track it, but the nations by and large did not recognize the threat until it appeared.

The same could happen in the United States. Muslims in the US have integrated better into society than in Britain, which insisted on the kind of multiculturalism that tends to Balkanize nations. Economically and socially, Muslims have made themselves Americans, with a few exceptions. It doesn't take many of those, however, to generate the kind of disaffection and hatred that can result in a devastating terrorist attack. The 9/11 plot succeeded with only 19 primary actors.

Does the phrase "clean skin" seem a little un-PC? "Clean" infers an opposite of "dirty", an inference that's likely to raise a few eyebrows in the non-white populations of both Europe and the US. That's not Chertoff's intent; later in the interview, he defines "clean skin" as "a person whose documents are completely legitimate, are not forged," but surely one can come up with a better term -- especially when trying to make a point about how egalitarian we need to be in our suspicions.

Was McCain Right?

John McCain took a lot heat this week for asserting that the security situation has improved since the beginning of the surge. Michael Ware at CNN especially ridiculed his comments, and scenes of McCain touring Baghdad with a heavy security detail brough more derision. However, Terry McCarthy at ABC News reports that McCain may have been correct after all:

CHARLIE GIBSON: Our man in Baghdad, Terry McCarthy, noticed that the troop surge is having a large and positive effect.

TERRY MCCARTHY: It's been about seven weeks since the US troop surge into Baghdad began, and so far about half of the 30,000 troops have arrived. ...

The locals told us that things are getting better. Children's playgrounds are filling up, shopping streets are busier, and people have time to drink a cup of tea, or eat an ice cream.

McCarthy shows a couple of unfortunately familiar scenes of attacks and violence, and he notes that as foreigners, he and his crew did not stay in one place too long. However, he included plenty of footage showing the Iraqi people in Baghdad returning to normal life. An amusement partk has reopened, and families have started filling it up, bringing their children and enjoying the day. Ice cream shops have prepared for a busy summer with new confidence in security.

Does this make Baghdad safe? No, but it makes it safer, and the momentum appears on the side of the Iraqi government. The remarkable change has come even with half of the surge troops yet to arrive. What's the difference? Strategy and rules of engagement. General David Petraeus has made a big difference already, and given enough time, could leave us with a stable and functional Iraq.

McCain may have overstated the progress, but not by much. None of the people in this video walked around with Kevlar vests, including McCarthy. They apparently see the same kind of progress McCain saw.

So what will Congress do when the surge actually works? It will expose Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and the Democratic caucus as Chicken Littles who have little tenacity when it comes to fighting for American interests -- the exact problem that emboldened Islamist terrorism in the first place.

FM Update: Home Again

The First Mate has returned home this evening after her kidney transplant, about two days earlier than I expected. She has done so well that the doctors had nothing more to add to her therapy at the hospital, and told us she could recuperate better at home. For anyone who has spent any time in a hospital, this is not hard to imagine.

She's tired and weak, but much healthier than any time in the past year. She'll rest at home but may be well enough for a family dinner on Easter. We have a lot of work to do to make sure she stays healthy, but it's a lot more satisfying than the efforts we had to make before to just keep her from getting worse.

She wants to thank everyone for their prayers and good wishes. For that matter, so do I.

Kerry's Magic Veep

Jonathan Singer at MyDD published an interview with John Kerry today that has sent ripples through the blogosphere. In the interview, Kerry claimed that John McCain approached him about being Kerry's running mate in the 2004 election, contrary to a number of published reports at the time:

Jonathan Singer: There's a story in The Hill, I think on Tuesday, by Bob Cusack on the front page of the paper talking about how John McCain's people -- John Weaver -- had approached Tom Daschle and a New York Congressman, I don't remember his name, about switching parties. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what your discussions were with him in 2004, how far it went, who approached whom... if there was any "there" there.

John Kerry: I don't know all the details of it. I know that Tom, from a conversation with him, was in conversation with a number of Republicans back then. It doesn't surprise me completely because his people similarly approached me to engage in a discussion about his potentially being on the ticket as Vice President. So his people were active -- let's put it that way.

Singer: Okay. And just to confirm, you said it, but this is something they approached you rather than...

Kerry: Absolutely correct. John Weaver of his shop... [JK aswers phone]

Jonathan notes that McCain's loyalty has long been questioned by Republicans, and this on top of The Hill story last week could doom his presidential bid. If the story was true, it would certainly put an end to McCain's leadership in the party -- and deservedly so. Jonathan is certainly correct in his analysis of the situation.

However, Jonathan gives far too much credit to Kerry for honesty. Kerry has a long track record as a fantasist. One only need recall the stories about Christmas in Cambodia and the Magic Hat to recall his sometimes distant relationship with reality. He has a habit of rearranging the truth to shine the best possible light on himself. McCain has many faults, but not this one, and one can expect more personal honesty from him than from his erstwhile running mate.

Matt Lewis interviewed John Weaver today about this subject, and Weaver categorically denies it -- and gives detail on why McCain rejected any notion of teaming with Kerry on a unity ticket, especially after Kerry offered to allow McCain to also act as the Defense Secretary:

According to Weaver and Salter, each time, McCain rejected the offers, and each time, the offer got sweeter.

As Salter told me, “In our minds (the offer to run the Defense Department and be VP) was constitutionally dubious.” Weaver described it as “beyond the pale.”

According to Weaver, Kerry personally called him, begging for McCain to change parties, saying it would, “change the country.” Weaver noted that it would be ridiculous for McCain to join the Kerry campaign because they disagreed on foreign policy.”

Kerry’s overtures did not end with approaching McCain. According to Salter, one night: “Kerry woke me up from bed, pleading with me to get McCain to change his mind.” Salter says that Kerry told him: ‘Everything is hypothetical, so that if I’m ever asked about this, I’ll have plausible deniability.” Salter says he answered: “Well then hypothetically, I don’t think it will work.”

That runs much closer to the reporting at the time, as Newsweek explained it in November 2004:

Kerry was too cautious, too set in his ways, to fundamentally change his speech patterns and delivery. But in one important area, he was willing—even desperate—to try something bold. He badly wanted Sen. John McCain to be his running mate. As far back as August 2003, Kerry had taken McCain to breakfast to sound him out: would the maverick Republican run on a unity ticket with Kerry? In the mid-'90s, the two Vietnam combat vets had forged a friendship, a brotherhood, while trying to calm down veterans groups obsessed over rumors about POWs and MIAs still alive in Vietnam. Kerry knew that McCain was still bitter over the dirty tricks played on him during the 2000 campaign by Bush mudslingers, who spread rumors that McCain had fathered a black child by a prostitute. Here was a chance for payback against Bush that would change history—not just a chance to get even, but much more grandly an opportunity to bridge the Red State/Blue State divide, break the Washington logjam and bring the country together.

McCain batted away the idea as not serious. But Kerry was intent, and after he wrapped up the nomination in March, he went back after McCain a half-dozen more times. "I can't say this is an offer because I've got to be able to deny it," Kerry told his friend. "But you've got to do this." To show just how sincere he was, he made an outlandish offer. If McCain said yes, he would expand the role of vice president to include secretary of Defense and the overall control of foreign policy. (The deal was reminiscent of the so-called co-presidency offered to Gerald Ford by Ronald Reagan at the 1980 Republican convention; the suggestion fell apart of its own weight.) McCain exclaimed, "You're out of your mind. I don't even know if it's constitutional, and it certainly wouldn't sell."

So why have the Democrats tried so hard to sell this notion? Jonathan Singer got a good scoop out of it, but one has to wonder why Kerry went to the blogs with this tale. If he wanted to tell the truth about this famous incident, he has a number of sympathetic media outlets to publicize it. Why not appear on Don Imus, or Bill Maher, or Chris Matthews? Keith Olbermann would have killed for the exclusive, and one has to believe that Katie Couric would have committed at least one of the other mortal sins. It could have reached millions and completely buried McCain.

I'm not a McCain supporter (although I'm still keeping all my options open), but this is hardly believable even it came from the best of sources -- and John Kerry absolutely does not qualify. This sounds like a contrived fantasy designed to work as a low-level smear against John McCain, perhaps intended to boost the fortunes of two has-beens like John Kerry and Tom Daschle.

The UN Hid North Korean Counterfeits

The United Nations faces another embarrassing scandal, as the New York Sun's Benny Avni reports today. Despite its earlier denials, UN officials not only knew about North Korea's counterfeiting operation -- it helped Pyongyang hide the evidence in Turtle Bay safes:

As federal investigators examine how the leading U.N. agency in North Korea illegally kept 35 counterfeit American $100 bills in its possession for 12 years, documents indicate that more officials were aware of the existence of the fake currency — and earlier — than the agency has reported.

Spokesmen for the United Nations Development Program have said top officials at the agency's New York headquarters learned in February that their safe in Pyongyang contained the counterfeit bills and immediately reported it to American authorities. But several documents shown recently to The New York Sun indicate that higher-ups knew much earlier that the safe held counterfeit money. ...

One "safe contents count record" — shown to the Sun with the stipulation that the paper omit such details as the exact issuing date, which was before February — confirms that fake money was in the safe in Pyongyang. According to a source familiar with the system, this and similar records were filed with UNDP headquarters twice a year.

Internal UNDP communication shown to the Sun also indicates that in at least one incident, a Pyongyang office manager reported the existence of the counterfeit money to his successor. Similar reports were filed with the seven managers that have served in North Korea since 1995. Some of these managers have returned to UNDP headquarters since then and now serve as top officials there.

In this case, the familiar refrain of "follow the money" applies literally. The UN's own documentation shows that their leadership had clear knowledge of the criminal enterprise conducted by the Kim Jong-Il regime. They were required to inform the US of it and to provide the evidence for our investigations. Instead, they aided and abetted Kim and Pyongyang in undermining our currency.

Not surprisingly, the Treasury Department takes a dim view of this activity. The Secret Service wants to talk to at least 13 officials in the UN Development Program to determine their complicity in the counterfeiting ring. So far, the UN has not lifted immunity for those individuals, and they're not talking about when it will happen; a "senior UN official" told Avni that the UN and the Secret Service are "working out the modalities".

If federal prosecutors can return an indictment and confirm this activity, the UN will face a much tougher time in the US than it did in the Oil-for-Food Programme scandal. In that case, they turned a blind eye and enabled Saddam Hussein to enrich himself through a vast kickback scheme. If the UN helped hide North Korea's counterfeiting ring, that is a direct insult to our sovereignty, as well as our hospitality.

It would be an insult that we cannot afford to let pass. If the UN does not immediately fire everyone involved in this scandal and revoke their immunity, then we must cut off all funds for the UN and create a timetable for withdrawal from this thoroughly corrupt organization. We have no need of a debating society whose members transform refugee camps into seraglios, who stuff the pockets of dictators with money meant for those they oppress, and who actively assist other nations in undermining our currency. If the UN fails to cooperate, it's time to push Turtle Bay into the water and bid adieu to the last of the Cold War anachronisms.

The Flip Side Of Orange

This blog wrote extensively about the Orange Revolution in late 2004 and early 2005, which propelled pro-Western Viktor Yushschenko to power after a sham election had denied him his rightful place as Ukraine's leader. At the time, the reformers held all the momentum, and the Muscophiles led by Viktor Yanukovich found themselves in political retreat.

However, two years later, disunity and betrayal have plagued the reformers, and now Yanukovich is the one banging on the doors of the Ukrainian parliament:

Thousands of Ukrainian protesters streamed into the capital Tuesday in the most serious confrontation between the prime minister and the president since the two men faced off during the Orange Revolution.

Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych's supporters set up a tent camp outside the parliament, presenting a scene not unlike the 2004 street demonstrations that propelled Viktor Yushchenko to the presidency — and cost Yanukovych the office.

The president's supporters responded by announcing plans to hold counter-rallies in Kiev's main Independence Square.

It looks like a replay of the Orange Revolution, but in reverse. This latest crisis hit critical mass when Yushchenko attempted to dissolve the assembly and call new elections. This act hinged on an interpretation of the Ukrainian constitution, which does not allow individual legislators to opt out of coalitions, and which 11 of them did in an attempt by Yanukovich to grab a majority.

The parliament acted quickly to deny Yushchenko his new election. They fired the election committee, making it difficult to stage a poll, especially on the timeline Yushchenko wants. They have also refused to adjourn, setting up a constitutional crisis that only the nation's supreme court will be able to unravel -- and that might take months.

Meanwhile, Russia is looking at the situation as an opportunity to regain its lost influence. The Kremlin has had no official comment yet, but an analyst with connections to the Putin regime warned that Russia would not abide chaos in Ukraine for long. He said that Putin would be eager to provide the "intermediary role" denied him during the Orange Revolution.

I bet he would.

The elections would not solve much for Yushchenko in any case. His party lags far behind Yanukovich's, and even his former partner, Yulia Tymoshenko, winds up in second place in most polls. An election may wind up giving Yanukovich and his pro-Moscow party control of Ukraine yet again, making the Orange Revolution nothing more than a speed bump in Leonid Kuchma's efforts to keep Ukraine in the Russian orbit.

Reid Wants To Play Chicken A Little Longer

Barack Obama assured America that the Democrats would fund the troops in Iraq if the White House vetoed the current supplemental two days ago. Speaking with the AP in Iowa, he said that the Democrats would not "play chicken" with the troops and would drop the mandatory timetables in the next supplemental. Apparently Obama forgot to tell Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid about this strategy, because he announced that a veto would bring a defunding bill to the floor:

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid yesterday endorsed the Senate's toughest antiwar bill yet, a bid to cut off funding within a year, sending a clear signal to President Bush that the Iraq debate will continue in Congress regardless of whether he carries through on his veto threats.

Reid (Nev.) announced that he had teamed up with Sen. Russell Feingold (Wis.), one of the Democrats' strongest war critics, on legislation to set a deadline of March 31, 2008, for completing the withdrawal of combat forces and ending most military spending in Iraq.

Reid's decision came as House and Senate Democrats were just starting to deliberate a compromise war spending bill. The package is likely to include language at least calling for troop withdrawals to begin, but the Feingold plan would go much further, essentially giving Bush a year to end most U.S. military activities before the money dries up.

Not only did Reid backtrack against Obama's statement, he backtracked against his own. On November 30th, just after the Democrats took control of Congress, he also assured Americans that the Democrats would not defund the troops in the middle of a war. He said this: "We're not going to do anything to limit funding or cut off funds." That sounded categorical at the time, and yet three months after taking the reins, Reid and the Democrats have started to threaten what they insisted they would not do.

At least this threat falls within their Constitutional authority. Their previous efforts have all encroached on the President's authority to command the troops, setting up a 535-member committee as a replacement for the Commander-in-Chief. The Democrats have been loath to use this tool, however, for two reasons. One, it is unprecedented for Congress to abort funding while American troops remain engaged with an enemy. And two, it makes Democrats responsible for the results of such an unprecedented surrender -- and there is no other military term for a withdrawal from a theater in which an army is engaged with an enemy.

This almost certainly amounts to a big bluff on Reid's part. He doesn't have the votes to carry this off. Republicans would almost certainly filibuster, but even if they didn't, Reid would fall short of victory. He barely carried off the last vote with the mandatory timetables, and he had to pork it up with over $20 billion in earmarks to squeeze out a bare majority. A Congressional surrender bill would lose the Republicans and a few of the Democrats as well.

It might also lose Reid his majority. Joe Lieberman has spent the last two months warning that his loyalty to the Democrats would end with a forced surrender in Iraq. Reid might believe he could get a Republican to cross the aisle to balance it out, but it's unlikely that Reid could get one to do so in support of a surrender bill. The current rules in the Senate preclude a leadership change even if the majority switches, but don't expect that rule to last too long after Reid loses control of the upper chamber.

Let Reid try to declare surrender from Capitol Hill. He will destroy the Democrats on foreign policy and national security for a generation if he does so. This is one game of chicken where discretion would be the better part of valor.

Florida Is Rudy Country

The key state in the last two presidential elections has been Florida, and pollsters have focused more attention on the Sunshine State the last few years to test the electoral mettle of candidates declared and presumed. Quinnipiac takes the latest look at Florida's political temperature, and it finds Rudy running hot:

Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has opened double-digit leads over top 2008 Democratic presidential contenders in Florida, beating either New York Sen. Hillary Clinton or former Sen. John Edwards 50 - 40 percent, and topping Illinois Sen. Barack Obama 52 - 36 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

This compares to a 47 - 42 percent Giuliani lead over Sen. Clinton in a March 7 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University. ...

In this latest survey, Giuliani leads the Republican pack with 35 percent, followed by Arizona Sen. John McCain with 15 percent, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 11 percent, former U.S. Senator and actor Fred Thompson at 6 percent and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at 5 percent.

With 36 percent, Clinton keeps her lead among Democrats. But former Vice President Al Gore has moved up to 16 percent, followed by Sen. Obama at 13 percent and Edwards at 11 percent.

Rudy has expanded his draw in a state that has produced only thin Republican wins of late in presidential races. The expansion of his margin over Hillary Clinton indicates that he has begun to win over centrists and independents, a constituency that the Democrats cannot afford to lose. Interestingly, the doubling of the margin -- and the attainment of 50% -- comes at a time when Hillary had started to push back against Barack Obama, and issues about Giuliani's marital woes had supposedly begun to bite.

Rudy's numbers against Barack Obama are even more interesting. Obama has recently suffered some criticism for his lack of policy detail and his focus on fuzzy, make-nice themes. That seems to have hampered him in Florida, where he barely gets the Democratic vote in a two-way race against Giuliani. Rudy gets a clear majority against Obama, and a virtual majority against Hillary and John Edwards, who might have expected more of a bump after his decision to stay in the race.

Where does this leave the Republican field? So far, sailing into the Keys. Rudy lapped all of the other candidates with his 35%. John McCain and Newt Gingrich fall within the margin of error of each other at 15% and 11% respectively, showing that McCain is still hanging tough in second place. Romney comes in fifth at 5%, behind two undeclared candidates (Gingrich and Fred Thompson), which cannot be good news after the full-court press Romney has conducted in 2007.

Rudy has managed to overcome his reputation for meanness that critics hung on him during his terms as Mayor. His favorability in Florida, a state with a significant number of New York transplants, exceeds everyone else in the race on both sides of the ticket. His +40 compares to a +2 for Hillary, a +22 for Obama, +25 for Edwards, and +23 for McCain. In fact, Rudy has the only favorable rating above 50%. The only question marks are Romney and Thompson, about whom voters have not yet learned to form a significant opinion.

Rudy seems to have maintained the momentum in Florida. The state's primary doesn't come early in the race, but its influence could be felt from the beginning. If the GOP holds fast to its tradition of lining up behind the frontrunner early, Rudy could have clear seas to the nomination.

New Kuwaiti Minister Shuns The Hijab

Nouriya al-Sabeeh became the second female minister in Kuwait history, after Maasuma al-Mubarak's appointment followed the May 2005 grant of full political rights to women. Today al-Sabeeh became the first to forgo a head cover, causing consternation among the men of Kuwait's parliament:

Kuwait’s new Education Minister Nouriya Al-Sabeeh took the oath in Parliament yesterday amid protests by some lawmakers that she was not wearing a head cover or hijab.

As Sabeeh began reading the oath, MP Daifallah Buramia, supported by a few others, shouted out that she should not be sworn in unless she complied with Islamic regulations.

“She should not be allowed to take the oath without complying with Sharia regulations,” Buramia shouted as Speaker Jassem Al-Khorafi refused to allow him access to the microphone. ...

Sabeeh appeared unbothered as she completed taking the oath to applause from some 50 women supporters in the public gallery, most of whom were not wearing the hijab either.

However, most of the Islamist and tribal MPs, who control the 50-seat house, did not join the protest. Nasser Al-Sanae, an Islamist MP, played down the importance of the incident. “This issue is no problem for the government. These are individual opinions. It is her own decision,” he said after the assembly was dissolved.

During and after our liberation of Kuwait, Americans pointed out that Kuwait hardly qualified as a democracy. Its women had no suffrage, and the conservative Islam practiced by the emirate contrasted with our professed intentions of freeing the Kuwaitis, except in the narrow context of freeing them from Saddam Hussein. The Bush (41) administration countered that by claiming engagement would bring the best results of reform.

It took a while, but we have begun to see the fruits of that policy. Kuwait has not only allowed women to vote, but has seen two women take ministerial roles in the government. With Sabeeh's example, women now have the ability to determine whether to wear the traditional garments of Arabic Islam or to adopt more moderate dress instead. And even though the uncovered head of Sabeeh generated yells in Parliament, it also generated even more calls for individual choice and freedom.

Liberty sometimes needs time to find root in a nation. The Kuwaitis have taken a while to reach this point along their development, but the momentum is on the side of freedom, and in a peaceful transition. It couldn't have happened under the thumb of Saddam, and it couldn't have happened without Western engagement and the gentle pressure of three American administrations.

Call Us When It's Over

For those who have been waiting for the Palestinians to stop supporting terrorism and to accept a two-state solution, good news will come your way. The Palestinian Authority's foreign minister told French newspaper Le Monde that Hamas is ready to change:

Hamas is undergoing a massive transformation and is "ready to change," the Palestinian Authority foreign minister said in an interview published in a French newspaper Monday.

Ziad Abu Amr, on a three-day visit to France, met Monday with French counterpart Philippe Douste-Blazy and was holding talks Tuesday with Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. ...

Abu Amr, an independent, said he thought Hamas was willing to change its ideology in order to remain a political player.

"I must admit I'm both surprised and impressed with the speed and the magnitude of Hamas's transformation," he is quoted as saying. He cited Hamas's willingness to accept a future Palestinian state contained within territory Israel occupied in the Six Day War as an example of the movement's ideological shift.

How does this work, exactly? Does a terrorist group pledge to change its ways, and that takes the place of actually making the necessary changes? Does Jerry Lewis hold a telethon for these pledges? And does it count when someone else does the pledging for them?

Abu Amr wants money, and he's willing to say whatever he can to get it. Abu Amr is Fatah, not Hamas, and doesn't speak for the group, so he can hardly make commitments for them, despite his insistence that the West treat the PA as a single entity. That's a convenient configuration, given that both factions in the unity governments are terrorist organizations whose members continue to conduct attacks on civilians.

If Hamas wants to reject terrorism and agree to a two-state solution, then let Hamas make that announcement, in Arabic and English. Until they do that, and agree to abide by previous agreements made by the PA, then all the rest is just noise for financial gain. Have Hamas call us when they have decided they love Palestinians more than they hate Israelis, and renounce terrorism. Then, we will have something to discuss.

Retreating On Robinson

ABC News interviewed Hall of Fame baseball player Dave Winfield on an intriguing question: what has happened to black baseball players? After Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, African-American children wanted to follow in his cleat steps, and many of them did. As ABC and Winfield note and the latter laments, that has not been the case for decades now. After peaking at 27% in 1974, the percentage of blacks among major-league ballplayers has fallen to a paltry 9%.

So what happened? The children have moved to football and basketball, but ABC and Winfield miss one of the most important reasons why:

Baseball is no longer the sport of choice for America's children. Gone are the days of sandlot pickup games and summer afternoons filled with playing catch and home run derbies. Kids — especially in urban areas — today dream of dunking like Shaquille O'Neal, throwing the winning touchdown like Donovan McNabb, and signing a multimillion dollar deal at the age of 19 like 2003's No.1 NBA draft pick LeBron James. ...

Winfield, who batted .283 in 22 Major League seasons, attributes the dwindling number of blacks in baseball to "myriad factors," including lack of field space in urban areas, the availability of local leagues, the cost of equipment and improper instruction.

"There are a lot of socio-economic factors," said Winfield. "Society has changed. There used to be open spaces, and people said, 'Hey, let's play, let's go outside.' Stick ball, stoop ball, home run derby -- in the urban areas, you rarely see that anymore. There are very few spaces that developers haven't taken advantage of and, on the other end, other sports -- specifically basketball and football -- have [attracted] the great athletes in urban areas."

Without a doubt, Winfield names some of the reasons why the game doesn't capture the imaginations of black children in the same way it did earlier. Cities have less room for baseball fields, and families have less time to allow children to play it. Basketball courts fit perfectly into city environments, and football gets plenty of support from the schools, as also does basketball. With crimes against children getting serious attention, the days of allowing them to hang out in the streets unattended has started to pass -- and when they do, predatory gangs afflict those neighborhoods, replacing any thought of organized ball.

The one major change they miss, though, is the amateur draft. The modern amateur baseball draft started in 1965, and one of my favorite players, Rick Monday, was the first player drafted. The draft forced all amateur baseball players from the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico to enter into it in order to get placed with a major-league organization. It excludes players from other countries -- and that's the problem.

In the decades before the modern draft, teams scouted the country to look for hidden gems in the heartland. They encouraged children to play ball, in rural and urban areas, in order to broaden the pool. The scouts lived to find prospects who could play ball and whom other scouts had never seen, and to sign them for their own organization. The teams spent plenty of money doing that, until the draft.

Now they spend tons of money on player development, but they do it in places like Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela. The teams want to get a direct benefit from their development dollars. In the US, that's been impossible for 42 years; they can't sign kids they discover, but can only encourage them into the draft. In these other countries, they can sign the players themselves and recoup the investment directly.

What has happened is that the demographics of major-league baseball players has turned decidedly international. There's nothing wrong with that, either; MLB wants an international audience for its game, and it has to get players from around the world to build that kind of interest. This is another part of Robinson's legacy in breaking the color barrier. However, it means that African-Americans get a smaller share of the pie than they do in other sports, and as a result, they feel less engaged with the sport in their youth.

It's no accident that the peak of African-American participation came nine years after the draft; it takes that long for most of the people in the minors to work their way to the big clubs. After the draft started changing the demographics in the minors, the majors were certain to follow suit.

Baseball can certainly change that by investing more time and money in building urban programs to get children interested in the game. However, they may want to rethink the draft and the impact it has had on the sport's competitive interest in American ballplayers.

Two Years Until Iran Goes Nuclear

It seems that those darned Iranians just keep surprising people with their plucky can-do attitude. For years, Iran managed to fool everyone into thinking that it had no nuclear program at all. Once we discovered that those rascals had been burning the midnight oil to study up on applied nuclear physics, we figured that they could never master the mechanics. Even after Pakistan extended a helping hand by selling them prototype centifuges and weapons designs, Informed Experts told us to relax -- the Iranians would need 5-10 years before they could enrich enough uranium to actually build the bombs.

Well, those enterprising little devils have managed to surprise us again!

Iran has more than tripled its ability to produce enriched uranium in the last three months, adding some 1,000 centrifuges which are used to separate radioactive particles from the raw material.

The development means Iran could have enough material for a nuclear bomb by 2009, sources familiar with the dramatic upgrade tell ABC News.

The sources say the unexpected expansion is taking place at Iran's nuclear enrichment plant outside the city of Natanz, in a hardened facility 70 feet underground. ...

The addition of 1,000 new centrifuges, which are not yet operational, means Iran is expanding its enrichment program at a pace much faster than U.S. intelligence experts had predicted.

"If they continue at this pace, and they get the centrifuges to work and actually enrich uranium on a distinct basis," said David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, "then you're looking at them having, potentially having enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 2009."

Previous predictions by U.S. intelligence had cited 2015 as the earliest date Iran could develop a weapon.

Well, shucks! Looks like we underestimated those darned Iranians once again. Who knows how they'll surprise us next? Perhaps a mushroom cloud on the Hudson, or a series of them around Tel Aviv ...

Blogger Gets Bounced From Parliament

Stephen Taylor, one of my blogger pals from our northern neighbor, has covered the Canadian parliament for quite a while, and has built a well-deserved reputation for professionalism in Canada. He requested and received access to several secure areas of Parliament Hill in order to interview various MPs from the Speaker of the House. While exercising that access by speaking with and taking photographs of his subjects, members of the Canadian press decided that they had had enough of an upstart blogger -- and had him removed, passes and all:

I left the hallway outside of the foyer and walked over to the railway room to interview some 'stakeholders' of the budget. This went off without incident and during that time, I cheerfully chatted with some reporters that were in the same room.

Having completed my interviews with the stakeholders, I left and headed on over to the Rotunda where I had a friendly chat with Jack Layton. Elizabeth May and her assistant were also hanging around chatting when I saw Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc walk by. Having heard that his party was the lone opposition party supporting the budget, I asked him for an interview. He agreed. After the interview something ugly happened.

An official from the Press Gallery walked over and informed me that he had received "complaints" about me. "Thompson?" I inquired. "Complaints", he seemed to acknowledge. I pointed out that we were currently in the Rotunda of Parliament and that my pass allowed me to be there. "But you have a camera" he informed me. He called over a security guard to escort me from Parliament. ...

Yes, the Parliamentary Press Gallery, with no powers granted to it by constitution or statute, used security to remove somebody who had the right to be present on the Hill granted to him by the Speaker of the House.

I'm not familiar with the rules for press access to Parliament in Ottawa, but I'm certain that the Speaker must be. If his office granted Stephen a pass to the areas in which he operated, it seems more than a little strange that the press liaison would have him ejected, especially for bringing a camera. Has the Parliamentary Press Gallery never heard of photography? Do they draw pictures for their newspapers instead of printing pictures?

I have had the pleasure of traveling twice to Canada and meeting the bloggers of the North. They told me at the time that the Canadian blogosphere was not as well established as the American blogosphere, but it wasn't from lack of talent. I wonder if the Canadian press has started to fear the rise of Canada's bloggers and have decided to use petty tricks to kneecap these independent journalists and pundits. If this is an indication of the professionalism of the PPG -- and I hope it isn't -- then they should fear the bloggers.

Romney Racks It Up

In a surprising turn, the biggest fundraiser in the Republican primary race turns out to be Mitt Romney. Earlier today, the Romney campaign announced that they had raised $23 million in the first quarter of 2007, far outstripping frontrunner Rudy Giuliani, who didn't get his money machine into full swing until last month:

Republican Mitt Romney reported raising $23 million for his presidential campaign during the first three months of the year, shaking up the GOP field and rivaling the total reported a day earlier by Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Meanwhile, the Republican front-runner in the polls, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, said his donations totaled $15 million — including more than $10 million raised during March alone.

Both Republican numbers blew away past party presidential fundraising standards, while Romney's figure put the former Massachusetts governor in competition with Clinton, the Democratic front-runner. The New York senator on Sunday reported raising $26 million between Jan. 1 and March 31.

Undoubtedly, Romney needed this kind of showing. In the latest Gallup poll, he had slid backwards into the second tier, dropping from 8% to 3% and into a tie with Sam Brownback. Despite a positive appearance at CPAC, Romney was in danger of losing steam and credibility. He had to show some sign that he could compete on the national stage, and Romney delivered it in his fundraising ability.

Meanwhile, Giuliani didn't do badly. He came up short of Romney's numbers, but $17 million looks pretty good. Even though Giuliani has had his exploration committee running for several months, it seemed as though Team Rudy really didn't get started until about halfway through 2007 Q1. A $10 million March indicates that Rudy's campaign can also compete.

This makes John McCain the odd man out. He raised $12.5 million in Q1, perhaps a bit higher than expected, given McCain's efforts to lower expectations last week. That puts him $5 million behind Rudy and almost lapped by Mitt. For a man who believed that he would lead the pack in the early going, that will not bolster confidence. It's not disastrous either, but if McCain can't do better than a distant third in Q2, he's going to start losing credibility.

What's encouraging is that both Rudy and Mitt look very competitive against Hillary. For Rudy, that has been a given. For Mitt, it might be a revelation -- and it might be enough to propel his numbers sharply upward.

Hillary Smashes Fund-Raising Record (Caption Contest!)

Hillary Clinton has announced the results of her fund-raising efforts for the first quarter of 2007, and it smashes the old record for contributions in the first quarter of a year prior to an election. Of course, many candidates will be able to say that this year due to the unprecedented early start of the 2008 primaries, but Hillary did pull in an impressive amount:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination said Sunday that it had raised $26 million during the first quarter of this year, about three times as much as the previous record at this stage of a presidential race.

Officials from several other Democratic primary campaigns voluntarily announced their fund-raising totals as well, just hours after the quarter closed at midnight on Saturday night.

Former Senator John Edwards raised over $14 million, about twice what he raised in the same quarter for his 2004 presidential race. Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico raised $6 million. Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut raised $4 million. Senator Joseph R. Biden of Delaware raised $3 million.

The campaign of Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, Mrs. Clinton’s biggest rival for Democratic donors, said it was not ready to disclose its results, suggesting he may have a big announcement in store. The leading Republican candidates declined to disclose their results as well.

In comparison, George Bush held a commanding lead in March 1999 for his primary bid with only $7 million in contributions, apparently the old record. That would only bring a second-tier rating for the Democrats this year. It would put Bush with Bill Richardson, and only slightly ahead of such luminaries as Chris Dodd and Joe Biden.

The Edwards campaign had a serious case of checkbook envy after the totals were announced. They claimed that contributions are not an indicator of future success, and in any case, the $14 million Edwards gathered isn't exactly peanuts. However, that barely exceeds half of what Hillary pulled in this quarter, and Hillary added another $10 million from her Senate campaign on top of the $26 million. That leaves Edwards ... in the dust, at least for now.

How does Hillary do it? She has the highest negatives of anyone in the Democratic primaries, and yet people keep giving her their money. Does she convince them with reason, or win them by charm? This picture from CQ readers Peyton and Deb may speak to an otherworldly power:

The picture, Peyton tells me, originally ran in 1996. The Houston Chronicle ran it yesterday for a story on Hillary, apparently, bringing it once again to Peyton's attention, and our amusement. Let's have a caption contest, judged by Peyton and Deb, and have a little fun with this extended primary season. The deadline for entry will be whenever the First Mate comes home from the hospital, and all entries have to be submitted as comments to this thread. Enter as often as you like, no purchase necessary to win, void where prohibited by the BCRA.

Iran, The New South Africa

Missouri took the first steps among the states to divest their portfolios of any foreign corporations doing business with Iran, a move they started last year. Now eight other states have begun to follow suit, and the latest state may make the biggest impact of all. California has just passed legislation that would transfer billions of dollars away from foreign investments:

It is the kind of political movement that fits handily on a bumper sticker: Divest Iran.

Over the past year, one state, Missouri, has opted to do just that, while several others, including New Jersey, have also begun to write or to consider legislation to divest.

But the nascent movement took on decidedly more weight last week with the preliminary success of a bill in the California Legislature. The measure would force two of the nation’s largest pension funds — devoted to the state’s public employees and its teachers, with combined holdings of nearly $400 billion — to remove their money from any foreign company doing business in Iran. American companies are already barred from such dealings.

The author, Assemblyman Joel Anderson, a Republican from San Diego County, said the bill was meant to protect the $24 billion he estimates the two funds currently have invested in international companies with ties to Iran. Mr. Anderson said his concern was Iran’s potential economic instability, not its current standoff with the West.

“They’ve got a president that is talking one day about having nuclear bombs and saying he’s not the next day, and taking hostages,” he said on Friday, referring to the Iranian capture of 15 British sailors and marines. “I’m not saying that we should take a foreign policy stance; I’m saying it’s not a good place to invest our money.”

I'm not going to knock this idea, because I think it sends an important message of American unity. After all, we have made it US policy to restrict business with Iran; American corporations cannot trade with the mullahcracy as a result. Having state funds invested in foreign corporations that can take advantage of restrictions on domestic rivals seems significantly less than patriotic, and the states who have corrected that should be commended.

However, why now? We have had restrictions on Iranian trade ever since 1979, when the current government held our diplomatic personnel hostage for 444 days. Iran has consistently backed terrorists that attacked Americans and American assets. Their proxy group, Hezbollah, abducted several Americans in Lebanon, killing at least one for his connection to the CIA. They have supported radical-Islamist terrorists ever since Ruhollah Khomeini seized power in February 1979.

It took 28 years for the states to realize that Iran is a threat to American security? While many of these same states demanded divestment from South Africa for their apartheid policies, they continued to invest in companies that did business with one of America's enemies. Now they want a pat on the back for divesting from those who deal with the mullahs more than five years after 9/11.

Well, OK. Congratulations on finally catching up with reality.

Addendum: You have to love the argument given in the article to oppose divestment:

William A. Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, with offices in New York and Washington, which filed suit against the Illinois law, said divestment bills — while morally laudable — could sabotage diplomatic efforts to isolate Iran.

“The companies that would be divested would be European and Asian companies,” Mr. Reinsch said. “It sticks a stick in the eye of the very people and the very countries we are trying to get to cooperate with us.”

Uh, yeah. That would be those same European countries that declined to impose sanctions on Iran after the mullahcracy abducted 15 British sailors and Marines, right?

Democrats To Widen Their Offensive

Now that they have settled into their offices, the Democrats now want to focus even more on their main enemy. They plan to challenge the Bush administration on a host of issues, most of which have direct correlation to key special interest groups that form their base:

Even as their confrontation with President Bush over Iraq escalates, emboldened congressional Democrats are challenging the White House on a range of issues -- such as unionization of airport security workers and the loosening of presidential secrecy orders -- with even more dramatic showdowns coming soon.

For his part, Bush, who also finds himself under assault for the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, the conduct of the Iraq war and alleged abuses in government surveillance by the FBI, is holding firm. Though he has vetoed only one piece of legislation since taking office, he has vowed to veto 16 bills that have passed either the House or the Senate in the three months since Democrats took control of Congress.

Despite the threats, Democratic lawmakers expect to open new fronts against the president when they return from their spring recess, including politically risky efforts to quickly close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; reinstate legal rights for terrorism suspects; and rein in what Democrats see as unwarranted encroachments on privacy and civil liberties allowed by the USA Patriot Act.

"I suppose there's always a risk of going too far," said House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), "but the risk of not going is far greater."

Backed by a unified party and fresh from a slew of legislative victories, Democratic leaders appear to believe there is hardly any territory they cannot stray onto, a development that has Republican political operatives gleeful and some Democrats worried. Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, warned of a "political price" at the polls: "If they let their constituents and their ideology drive them past the point where the American people are comfortable, they will find how quickly the voters will react."

Can they overshoot? Most definitely, and when they do, they will hand on silver platters opportunities for Bush to look presidential. Leon Panetta understands the danger. The Democrats have yet to prove they can govern, and they need to stick to their basics before rushing into the entire national-security panoply. He advises them to stick ti health care, immigration, and social programs and build a record of success there first.

It's good advice. The Democrats are about to retreat on Iraq war spending, after giving Bush an opportunity for an easy veto. It's bad enough that the Democrats played a game of chicken that they couldn't possibly win the last two weeks. They compounded the error by larding the final bills up with so much pork that Bush can now easily justify the veto on the grounds of containing corruption -- and make the Democrats look as if they will only fund the troops if they can get their own snouts into the trough as well.

Now they want to force the government to allow unionization for TSA workers, which will impact the agency's already uneven efforts to provide security for transportation centers in time of war. The Democrats also want to close Guantanamo Bay's terrorist detention center, allowing the detainees to have access to the American civilian justice system. These combined together show an ambition to remake the entire national-security apparatus -- one that has kept the US safe from additional terrorist attacks for the five-plus years since 9/11.

George Bush will be warming up his veto pen and preparing for battle himself. The Democrats don't have the votes to override him on any of the important issues, and may wind up making the same mistake Newt Gingrich made in 1995.

The Friends Of Dollar Bill Jefferson

The case of William Jefferson continues, although the media has not given it much attention of late. The Louisiana Congressman who hid $90,000 in his freezer until an FBI raid discovered it, still fights the subsequent raid on his House offices as unconstitutional. In this effort, Jefferson has attracted a number of strange bedfellows:

Embattled Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), the target of a two-year public-corruption probe, is finding himself with strange bedfellows these days.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), former House minority leader Robert Michel (R-Ill.) and Scott Palmer, former chief of staff for Rep. J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), are among those who have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, backing Jefferson's argument that the controversial FBI raid on his office last May was unconstitutional.

"These former leaders of the House had concerns about the integrity and independence of the institution, and therefore they decided to file this joint brief," said lawyer James Hamilton, who filed an amicus brief on behalf of Gingrich and Michel as well as former House speaker Thomas Foley (D-Wash.).

But Jefferson's Democratic colleagues, most notably House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), have been conspicuously quiet as the constitutional fight over the FBI raid continues.

This is nothing short of insane. Republican leaders, including Newt Gingrich, want to argue for some Constitutional haven for corruption on Capitol Hill, even where Democrats get cold feet. Nancy Pelosi decided against further involvement in this case after current House Republican leadership wised up and listened to their constituencies and refused to join her.

The FBI has a duty and a right to investigate corruption, and to follow that evidence where it leads them. If the FBI got a valid search warrant, that means that a member of another branch of government reviewed their application and found it valid. Congress has no built-in immunity from being investigated for malfeasance, whether at their homes or in their offices, as long as the executive branch has followed the law in obtaining and executing search warrants.

I don't know what Gingrich can be thinking. We just lost a national election thanks to Republican corruption in the form of Randy "Duke" Cunningham and others. The last point the GOP needs to argue is that Congress has some sort of immunity to outside investigation. It simply isn't true, and it hardly builds trust to see potential Presidential candidates jump into bed with Dollar Bill Jefferson.

Barone: Nation Shifts Democratic

The invaluable Michael Barone takes a look at the latest polling and sees trouble for the Republicans in 2008. Over the last five years, party identification in the US has shifted in favor of the Democrats. Part of it, Barone says, comes from a lack of demonstrated competence on the part of the administration, which erodes one of the GOP's key arguments for Republican rule. Will this allow the Democrats to sweep the 2008 elections? Barone looks at a similar situation in Britain and thinks not:

In the early 1990s, Britain's Conservatives were regarded as nasty but competent. Then, Britain was forced to devalue its currency. Mortgage payments shot up, and the Conservatives' reputation for competence vanished. The result: Tony Blair's Labor Party won huge victories in 1997, 2001 and 2005.

The scenario here would be for Democrats to enlarge their congressional majorities and sweep to a 40-state presidential victory in 2008. The Republicans' reputation for competence was damaged by Iraq and Katrina. Under the Blair scenario, they would go further downhill, especially if Iraq is still seen as a losing cause.

Why it won't happen: Labor won only after Tony Blair rebranded the party as New Labor, with moderate policies. If the Old Labor-party leader John Smith had not died suddenly in 1994, to be replaced by the 41-year-old Blair, Labor might have lost or won only narrowly — or so the British political experts I trust believe.

Here, Democrats don't seem to be rebranding themselves as "new Democrats," as Bill Clinton did successfully in 1992. As for competence, Republicans will have a new leader in 2008, and the candidates now polling the highest — Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mitt Romney — can plausibly claim that quality.

To the list of perceived incomptencies, one has to add the mess at the Department of Justice. The firings of the eight US Attorneys, the process used, and the absolutely self-immolating manner in which they were handled has done nothing to bolster confidence in Alberto Gonzales or the administration. Barone is right in that these will come into play in 2008, but the lack of any administration official in the race will minimize the impact.

The Democrats have missed an opportunity, at least thus far. With the GOP floundering a bit, they have a chance to aim for the moderates and the centrists. Instead, however, their leading presidential contenders are spending most of their time pandering to the anti-war base. Hillary may be the only candidate who has shown willingness to defy them, but only occasionally. No Democrat wants to get outflanked on their left in this race so far, and that will leave the center unattended.

What does this mean? It bolsters the argument for Rudy Giuliani or perhaps John McCain. If the Republicans can woo back the center for 2008, they may be able to hold onto the White House even if they cannot win back majorities in Congress. With the party affiliation numbers coming up the way they are, Congress looks more and more like a long shot.

Roll Tape

One of the fired US Attorneys got ousted for protesting an FBI policy that forbids taping interrogations of suspects in most criminal investigations. According to the New York Times, Paul K. Charlton tried to demand taped interviews before filing criminal charges in his district in order to press the agency to change its policy. Instead, after a couple of high-profile plea bargains, Charlton found himself out the door:

Paul K. Charlton, the United States attorney in Arizona, was ousted after spending months protesting a Federal Bureau of Investigation policy that, for practical purposes, forbids the taping of almost all confessions, in stark contrast to the practice of many local law enforcement agencies in Arizona and other locations across the country.

Mr. Charlton blamed the F.B.I. policy for the resulting plea bargain in the Navajo reservation assault case, as well as the acquittal of a defendant in a child sexual abuse case and a suspect in a prison murder indictment.

Eight states, by law or court action, mandate taping of interviews with suspects in at least serious felony cases, turning a tape recorder or video camera into an important tool in convictions, like DNA tests, fingerprints and ballistics. More than 450 law enforcement agencies in major cities and smaller jurisdictions also require the taping of certain interrogations.

The F.B.I., a division of the Justice Department, has strenuously resisted the practice unless special permission is granted by supervisors, under the theory that it may discourage suspects from talking and expose juries to interrogation methods that the department would rather not highlight.

But the inability to tape suspects, especially those accused of sexual abuse and domestic violence, can seriously compromise a case, Mr. Charlton and other prosecutors said.

This isn't the first time the FBI policy has generated controversy. In the trial of Terry Nichols for the Oklahoma City bombing, the failure to tape Terry Nichols' interrogation caused the jury to openly question the policy, and may have contributed to their decision to give Nichols consecutive life sentences rather than the death penalty. In the plea-bargain case that Charlton cites, a Native American man attempted to kill his girlfriend. The FBI got a confession, but the defense raised objections based on his potential intoxication and questioned his ability to understand English. A taped interrogation, Charlton claims, would have answered both questions. Since he had none, and since the victim would not cooperate and had a history of suicide attempts, Charlton had to get a plea bargain.

It sounds like a strange excuse in any case. The FBI says that the tapes would possibly offend juries who heard legally acceptable interrogation techniques, and that may be true. However, most juries expect these interviews to be taped, and when disputes arise as to what was said, would find it more than a little odd that an organization like the FBI would not have recorded it.

The agency also told the Times that it would be expensive to have a broad tape-recording system and that suspects might not offer their confessions if they knew they were being recorded. Those sound like excuses. Local and state agencies don't seem to break the bank by installing audio and video recording systems. Some local police and sheriff's offices even install them on their patrol cars to record traffic stops. And it's hard to imagine that a suspect would spill his guts to an FBI agent, but then balk because a tape deck is running.

I suspect that the FBI won't change its policy because of the inherent obstinacy of bureaucracies. If they've never done it before, it would be hard to overcome the organizational inertia to change the policy. This is one policy the FBI should seriously rethink.

Transplant, Day 3: It Gets Better

The First Mate has made remarkable progress in the last 24 hours. Yesterday, she had little energy and felt exhausted, but today she was a bundle of energy. It's a good thing, too, because the donor and his family came down from the floor above hers to spend some time with us. The Little Admiral finally got to visit her grandma, and the FM was delighted with the company.

Today they removed her NG tube, which allowed her to start on a liquid diet. She tolerated that well, so we're hoping she will move to solid food tomorrow. She got out of bed and sat up in a chair for part of the morning, and tomorrow will begin walking. Her creatinine levels had been over 10 before the surgery, which is very bad. Yesterday they were down to 4, and today it came in at 2.2. We're hoping for a normal range (0.6-1.3) before her expected release on Wednesday.

Thanks again for all your support. I've gotten kind wishes from people outside of the conservative blogosphere as well. John Amato at Crooks and Liars put his kind regards on his site tonight, not normally one where I get many links. John and I met at the CNN Election Night bash, and besides being a nice guy, he proved again tonight that it's possible to disagree without being disagreeable. It's much appreciated.

Obama: Senate Will Abandon Timelines After Veto

Barack Obama made clear that Senate Democrats will wind up voting for an Iraq supplemental without the mandatory timetables for withdrawal. Saying that the Democrats would not "play chicken" with the troops, he told the AP in Iowa that the entire exercise was designed to pressure Bush into changing policy:

If President Bush vetoes an Iraq war spending bill as promised, Congress quickly will provide the money without the withdrawal timeline the White House objects to because no lawmaker "wants to play chicken with our troops," Sen. Barack Obama said Sunday.

"My expectation is that we will continue to try to ratchet up the pressure on the president to change course," the Democratic presidential candidate said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I don't think that we will see a majority of the Senate vote to cut off funding at this stage." ...

Given that Bush is determined to veto a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, Congress has little realistic choice but to approve money for the war, Obama said.

"I think that nobody wants to play chicken with our troops on the ground," said Obama. "I do think a majority of the Senate has now expressed the belief that we need to change course in Iraq.

"Obviously we're constrained by the fact that a commander in chief who also has veto power has the option of ignoring that position," Obama said.

Interesting. If Obama speaks for the Senate Democrats, then we should see a new supplemental after the spring recess, when Congress will go into conference to resolve the differences between the two bills. That would put the new spending bill at least three weeks out.

We can expect Obama to take a major hit from his base on this statement. He has pushed the anti-war base to the forefront in the coming election, and he has made significant inroads into Hillary's support. They will not take kindly to a maneuver they will see as a retreat from his opposition to the war in Iraq.

But that's the risk Obama ran with his gamesmanship. The Democrats knew all along that they could not win by enough to override a veto. They also realize that they cannot withstand the political fallout that will ensue if the troops do not get their funding. They have no place left to go -- and so they will provide the funding Bush needs without to timetables he will refuse to adopt. After having taken the base to the mountaintop, Obama and the rest will now lose their credibility in the end.

Tommy Thompson Hits The Hustings

Add another entrant to the 2008 Republican Presidential Sweepstakes, and another Thompson. Former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson has entered the primary race, declaring himself the "reliable conservative" in a race that has seen a few candidates claim that mantle:

Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson on Sunday joined the crowded field of Republicans running for the White House in 2008 and proclaimed himself the "reliable conservative" in the race.

Thompson, who was health and human services secretary during President Bush's first term, also said he is the only GOP candidate who has helped assemble both a state and federal budget.

Since announcing last year he was forming a presidential exploratory committee to raise money and gauge support, Thompson has lagged behind better-known rivals.

Thompson, 65, has focused his strategy on Iowa, which holds the nation's first caucuses for presidential nominees. He has made weekly visits to the state and sought to make the case that it will take a candidate who can carry the Midwest to win the nomination.

Thompson has several built-in advantages. First, as a popular governor in the Upper Midwest, he will have plenty of pull in Iowa. A good start there -- perhaps a third-place finish would be enough -- could give him enough credibility to push into New Hampshire and the February 5th Super Tuesday.

Can THompson push his way into the top tier? Perhaps. Thompson could be the doppleganger for Bill Richardson in the Democratic race. He has plenty of executive and legislative experience, serving 14 years as Governor of our neighboring state. During that time, he championed school choice, a point which conservatives will love.

Thompson served four years as Secretary of Health and Human Services, not exactly known as a center of conservative thought, but he did some work that could allow him to lay claim to a broad swath of the electorate. Thompson pushed for increased organ donations -- obviously a topic of great interest for my family -- and he pushed to allow the government to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical manufacturers in the Medicare expansion of 2003. He lost that battle, but has some credibility among centrists and independents on health care.

He has the best resume of any Republican in the race so far. With fourteen years of executive experience, he has more than Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mitt Romney combined. He has a national presence, and his continuing popularity at home in a purple state cannot hurt him, either. John Kerry barely won Wisconsin in 2004, and Thompson won four gubernatorial elections there by wide margins. He has the CV to make a run at the top tier, if he can campaign effectively.

UPDATE: Michael Stickings has a very interesting rebuttal from the left on Thompson's chances at TMV. Here's a sample:

It is very likely that the Democrats will select a “celebrity” candidate, that is, a candidate with enormous name-recognition and national popularity: Obama, Clinton, Edwards, or perhaps (just perhaps) Gore. With this in mind, I cannot see the Republicans going into the ‘08 election with a non-celebrity candidate, even one, like Thompson, who has a great deal of experience and local/regional popularity. If presidential elections were about competency, then, yes, by all means, Thompson would be a leading Republican candidate, just as Richardson would be a leading Democratic one. But they’re not. They’re about image — about style, not substance. Even if Thompson manages to rise into the top tier, which is hardly likely, he is too lackluster a candidate, with too lackluster a personality, to secure the nomination. This isn’t fair, but it’s the way it is.

What’s more, Republicans rarely select non-celebrity candidates to run for the presidency. Think about it. Democrats have gone with non-celebrity candidates five times since World War II — Clinton in ‘92, Dukakis in ‘88, Carter in ‘76, Kennedy in ‘60, and Stevenson in ‘52 — but how many non-celebrity Republican candidates have there been during that span?

Be sure to read the whole post. Michael is one of the best writers on the Left, and this shows why.

Republicans Join Pelosi In Undermining Foreign Policy

Three House Republicans paid a visit to Bashar Assad today to open up their own diplomatic channels. strengthening Syria's hand against the US and providing cover for Nancy Pelosi's attempt to do the same:

U.S. House members meeting with President Bashar Assad Sunday said they believed there was an opportunity for dialogue with the Syrian leadership.

The U.S. House members, who included Virginia Republican Frank Wolf, Pennsylvania Republican Joe Pitts and Alabama Republican Robert Aderholt, also said they had raised with Syrian officials the issue of stopping the alleged flow of foreign fighters from Syria to Iraq.

In a statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, the congressmen said they had talked about "ending support for Hezbollah and Hamas, recognizing Israel's right to exist in peace and security, and ceasing interference in Lebanon."

"We came because we believe there is an opportunity for dialogue," the statement said. "We are following in the lead of Ronald Reagan, who reached out to the Soviets during the Cold War," it added.

Perhaps they missed this one particular difference, but Ronald Reagan was President and the Constitutional determiner of American foreign policy. Congress doesn't have the authority to conduct negotiations on behalf of the United States, just as they do not have the authority to take command of the military. If these three stooges want to shape American foreign policy, then let them run for President. In the meantime, they should stick to legislating.

When politicians conduct these unauthorized negotiations, it reduces the bargaining power of the President. In Nancy Pelosi's case, that's her explicit goal, because she wants to force Bush out of Iraq to deliver on campaign pledges. In the case of these loose cannons, the motivation seems to be self-aggrandizement more than anything else.

Jimmy Carter and to a lesser extent Jesse Jackson have made a career of screwing up international relations. Nothing good has ever come of it. I found this type of thing distasteful when it happened to Bill Clinton as well. The President, regardless of the party to which he belongs, needs to present American policy as a united front. It's bad enough when the opposition party undermines that credibility; it's astoundingly idiotic for the President's own party to destroy it.

Does This Sound Familiar?

Tony Blair had better dust off his study material about the Jimmy Carter presidency. It looks like the Iranians have begun another embassy standoff:

About 200 students threw rocks and firecrackers at the British Embassy on Sunday, calling for the expulsion of the country's ambassador because of the standoff over Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and marines.

Several dozen policemen prevented the protesters from entering the embassy compound, although a few briefly scaled a fence outside the compound's walls before being pushed back, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.

The protesters chanted "Death to Britain" and "Death to America" as they hurled stones into the courtyard of the embassy. They also demanded that the Iranian government expel the British ambassador and close down the embassy, calling it a "den of spies."

The British say that the police presence has kept the compound secure, but that supposedly was the case in November 1979, too. As then, Iranian clerics fuel the violent protest and have attracted Iranian youths to demonstrate. This fellow here with the rock is an Iranian imam.

Given the rhetoric from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it doesn't appear as if the mullahcracy wants to de-escalate the crisis on the ground. It will not take long before the police allow themselves to be overwhelmed by the anger of the mob -- and then the Iranians will find themselves in possession of yet another Western embassy. They have seen no reason not to allow its "students" to capture the British compound, certainly not by the EU's embarrassing show of moral cowardice last night. All of this "reasonable" talk has encouraged Ahmadinejad to bolster his own domestic position by turning Britain -- Iran's trading partner and interlocutor with America -- as its new Great Satan.

A CQ reader, Lee A, posed an interesting question in response to my earlier post on this subject. Britain belongs to NATO, and even if the EU can't find the testicular fortitude to stand up to Teheran, NATO has to do so if Iran commits an act of war against a member. The capture of the sailors and Marines qualifies as such, and the capture of an embassy puts the matter beyond all doubt.

What happens if Blair goes to NATO? If NATO refuses to respond, then NATO is finished. However, the US will do its best to keep it together, and that means the US has to come to Britain's assistance. If Congress tries to block it, the Democrats will have destroyed the alliance that they insisted the Bush administration use for its efforts in the Middle East.

This could get very, very interesting.

More Counterintelligence Computers Missing

An internal audit has discovered that twenty computers have disappeared from a critical counterintelligence agency tasked with protecting America's nuclear secrets. Fourteen of the computers contained classified material, marking yet another in a string of embarrassments for the Department of Energy:

The office in charge of protecting American technical secrets about nuclear weapons from foreign spies is missing 20 desktop computers, at least 14 of which have been used for classified information, the Energy Department inspector general reported on Friday.

This is the 13th time in a little over four years that an audit has found that the department, whose national laboratories and factories do most of the work in designing and building nuclear warheads, has lost control over computers used in working on the bombs.

Aside from the computers it cannot find, the department is also using computers not listed in its inventory, and one computer listed as destroyed was in fact being used, the audit said.

“Problems with the control and accountability of desktop and laptop computers have plagued the department for a number of years,” the report said.

The White House fired Linton Brooks in January for the security problems noted in this report. Earlier audits had revealed over 140 computers which investigators could not find. The National Nuclear Security Agency got its start because of the DoE security breaches of the 1990s, including the Wen Ho Lee scandal, but it appears just as plagued by incompetence as the DoE was back then.

Only two months have passed since the departure of Brooks, and these problems will not be solved overnight. However, one would hope that the NNSA could conduct an accurate inventory of its computers, especially considering the kind of material stored on them. Most likely, the discrepancies come from paperwork errors, but that gives little confidence in the ability of the NNSA to secure the nation's secrets.

The new management at NNSA should improve this immediately. The new Congress will not be shy about hauling managers into committee hearings, if the protection of our nuclear secrets does not provide enough incentive itself during a war on terror.

Risky Business

The Iraqi government will start relocating Arabs from Kirkuk, where Saddam Hussein put them in an effort to dilute Kurdish claims to the city. The move could create a flash of ethnic violence, as the provenance of the oil-rich area has implications for Kurdish autonomy and the unity of Iraq as a nation:

The Iraqi government will soon begin relocating Arabs who were moved to Kirkuk under an edict by Saddam Hussein to force Kurds out of the disputed northern city, officials said Saturday.

The controversial step for the oil-rich city could help determine whether it becomes part of an autonomous Kurdish region, but critics warned that it would stoke sectarian tensions.

Iraq's cabinet on Thursday endorsed a committee's recent recommendation to compensate eligible Arabs who voluntarily leave the city, said Sadiq al-Rikabi, a political adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Those who choose to move will receive about $15,000 and a plot of land in their home town. Officials will soon accept applications to determine eligibility, he said.

The Kurds will vote on their policies towards autonomy in a Kirkuk referendum soon, and the relocation could help the pro-autonomy advocates win the election. That might create a problem with the Sunnis, who want Kirkuk within their sphere of influence in order to gain the oil revenues. The recent passage of legislation that shares oil revenue on a national basis may ease the loss of Kirkuk, but it will not eliminate the tension altogether.

Saddam Hussein conducted ethnic cleansing against the Kurds in several ways. He gassed the residents of Halabja in the most infamous of his campaigns, but he conducted more subtle operations, too. He destroyed thousands of Kurd villages and drove them into the moutains. Saddam also transplanted Shi'ites from the south to Kirkuk, an effort that had a dual payoff. He could dilute the Kurds in the north and the Shi'ites in the south in one fell swoop, and at the same time set the Kurds and Shi'ites against each other in the competition for land in Kirkuk.

The latest effort by the Shi'ite-dominated government has not gone without its consequences. The Justice Minister resigned his post Thursday after the approval of the plan to offer voluntary relocation. Ayad Allawi, a Shi'ite but secular in his outlook, has tried to garner a new governing coalition to replace Nouri al-Maliki, but so far with little success. The Arabs in Kirkuk, who have been there now for years, staged public protests that could destabilize the security situation there eventually.

Maliki's plan makes sense, at least theoretically. The government will provide financial incentives for Arabs to voluntarily move back to their home towns. Those incentives appear rather significant; $15,000 goes a long way in Iraq, and the plot of land would be very valuable in a nation that now recognizes private property, depending on its size. The question for the Arabs is how "voluntary" this program will become, especially with the Kurdish security forces in the region ready to enforce a government policy they enthusiastically support. Many of them have married into the local culture, and a forced relocation would tear apart their families.

It's a difficult situation, and Maliki shows some courage and confidence in addressing it now. If the Iraqi government can deliver on this plan without any large-scale violence breaking out in Kirkuk, they will have shown some real mettle and perhaps the most significant independent governing to date. If it doesn't work, Maliki will have a meltdown on his hands.

EU To Blair: It's A YP, Not An OP

The European Union declined last night to provide any substantial support to Britain in its standoff with Iran over the captured sailors and Marines. While the European foreign ministers called for Iran to release its captives, they refused to offer any sanctions on the Iranians:

European foreign ministers failed last night to back Britain in a threat to freeze the €14 billion trade in exports to Iran, as the hostage crisis descended into a propaganda circus.

Tony Blair could only issue a new statement of disgust as Iran tormented him with another sailor’s video confession and a fresh letter from the young mother detainee. ...

EU foreign ministers meeting in Germany called for the sailors to be freed but ruled out any tightening of lucrative export credit rules. The EU is Iran’s biggest trading partner. British officials are understood to have taken soundings on economic sanctions before the meeting but found few takers.

France, Iran’s second-largest EU trading partner, cautioned that further confrontation should be avoided. The Dutch said it was important not to risk a breakdown in dialogue.

Well, what a shock to see the French bail out on an ally for commercial gain! Once again, Europe shows that it has no sense and no courage. That fourteen-billion-pound trade with Iran will come in handy when the mullahs get the bomb. Perhaps they'll wait to invade Europe last. They have told Blair and the Brits that the Iranians are their problem, not Europe's.

George Bush stood up with the UK yesterday, after keeping a low profile on the crisis. Referring to the captives as "hostages", Bush emphatically supported Britain's assertion that Iran invaded Iraqi waters to carry out the capture:

Bush said the sailors had been operating legally in Iraqi territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, as the British have insisted, and not in Iranian waters, and he offered support for British Prime Minister Tony Blair's efforts "to resolve this peacefully." But he rejected any "quid pro quo" trade of Iranians held by U.S. forces in Iraq and ducked a question about whether military force would be justified to free the captured sailors.

"The Iranians must give back the hostages," the president told reporters at a brief question-and-answer session at Camp David after a meeting with the visiting Brazilian president. "They're innocent, they were doing nothing, and they were summarily plucked out of the water. As I say, it's inexcusable behavior."

The Telegraph has concluded that Europe is useless as a foreign-policy partner as well:

It is one thing to be disliked; quite another to be despised. Iran would not have kidnapped our Servicemen without having considered our rules of engagement, our diplomatic isolation and our likely military response, and made a rough calculation of how likely they were to get away with their piracy. ...

There is also, perhaps, a feeling of impotence: if we can't invade Iran, what else can we do? Plenty of things. We can, of course, pull diplomatic and economic levers. This will involve going through Brussels, not so much because we need a favour as because we have no independent trade policy: the only way that Britain can impose sanctions on Iran is if the EU does so. At the same time, we could be seizing Iranian assets. Longer term, we could be putting pressure on the regime by sponsoring its opponents. We could launch tactical strikes at Iranian military installations.

We could even, in extremis, impose the kind of armed siege, complete with no-fly-zone, that paralysed Saddam in the years between the two Iraq wars: we already maintain large coalition garrisons on both Iran's flanks. Limiting ourselves to trivial resolutions will be treated by the ayatollahs as a sign of weakness. If they hate us, let them also fear us.

All of a sudden, those "large coalition garrisons" look pretty strategic, don't they? I'm always amazed by the people who claim that we screwed up the war on terror by going after Iraq rather than Iran. If people could learn to read a map, they could see what we have attempted -- a military and political encirclement of Iran that no one could have dreamed six years ago. Why do people think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pulled this stunt? He wants to drive the UK out of the coalition in order to break that encirclement.

It may finally dawn on Britain that the failure to have an independent trade policy has hamstrung them politically and militarily. Iran attacked a British ship, and yet Britain cannot stop trading with Iran because Brussels controls their trade policies. When one gives up sovereignty, these are the consequences.

If Britain wants their people back, they have two choices. They can either submit to Iran, or they can escalate the conflict to the point where it damages the mullahcracy. They had better commence deciding between the two. (links via Memeorandum)

Dowd Bails On Bush

I have met Matthew Dowd, Bush's chief electoral strategist, on two occasions. The first time we met came at the Republican National Convention, when he briefed the bloggers on the first day, talking about campaign strategies and how the GOP would eventually prevail over John Kerry. After that, we met briefly during the Alito hearings, when the Senate Republican Caucus invited bloggers to cover that from within the Hart building. He has always struck me as a straight shooter and a reasonable man, someone whose loyalty to the Bush administration rested on rational rather than emotional bases.

For that reason, the New York Times article on his disaffection both surprised and disappointed me (via TMV):

A top strategist for the Texas Democrats who was disappointed by the Bill Clinton years, Mr. Dowd was impressed by the pledge of Mr. Bush, then governor of Texas, to bring a spirit of cooperation to Washington. He switched parties, joined Mr. Bush’s political brain trust and dedicated the next six years to getting him to the Oval Office and keeping him there. In 2004, he was appointed the president’s chief campaign strategist.

Looking back, Mr. Dowd now says his faith in Mr. Bush was misplaced.

In a wide-ranging interview here, Mr. Dowd called for a withdrawal from Iraq and expressed his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s leadership.

He criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war, failing to reach across the political divide to build consensus and ignoring the will of the people on Iraq. He said he believed the president had not moved aggressively enough to hold anyone accountable for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that Mr. Bush still approached governing with a “my way or the highway” mentality reinforced by a shrinking circle of trusted aides.

“I really like him, which is probably why I’m so disappointed in things,” he said. He added, “I think he’s become more, in my view, secluded and bubbled in.”

The man whom I believed so rational turns out to have run on emotion. He talks about how he "fell in love" and then got disappointed when Bush as President didn't meet his emotional needs. A large part of his dissatisfaction came from the Iraq War, which he had no trouble backing until his son went off to it, and from Bush's refusal to see Cindy Sheehan, even though Bush met with her once before and she had used that to start a tour of radical-left speeches around the country. Dowd also felt betrayed because Bush had not acted like the uniter he was when he governed in Texas.

As much as I like Dowd, and he is a very likable man in person ... boo hoo. I can't believe this Dowd is a grown-up. I think there are plenty of issues on which one can disagree with the Bush administration, but don't blame the Bush administration for sticking to policies that one has spent most of his term supporting. Bush hasn't changed direction during his terms in office, and as close as Dowd was to Bush, it's not like he didn't understand who Bush is.

So Bush didn't act as a uniter. Neither did the Democrats, who spent most of the first term calling Bush the "Commander-in-Thief", constantly undermining his authority. Bush, one should recall, tried reaching across the aisle on legislation like No Child Left Behind and expanded discretionary spending on a wide scale, attempting to find common ground with the Democrats. Bush used the same intelligence that Democrats had used for years to call Saddam Hussein and Iraq a threat to our national security and both sides using that intel, developed mainly by the Clinton administration and other Western agencies, to authorize the war. When it turned out to be faulty on WMD, Democrats wasted no time calling Bush a liar who misled them into war, despite their own rhetoric on WMD going back to 1998.

Under those circumstances, no one could act as a uniter, and Dowd should understand that more than anyone.

“That it’s not the same, it’s not the person I thought.” Perhaps, but not meeting with Cindy Sheehan -- the event which produced this lament -- has to be the lamest reason for coming to that conclusion. Bush had already met with Sheehan, a point that Dowd never manages to mention in this interview. She came to Crawford seeking attention and credibility as an anti-war activist. Bush wasn't obligated to give it to her, and subsequent events bore him out. Shortly afterwards, John McCain met with Sheehan in an attempt to tweak the White House, and Sheehan returned the hospitality by pronouncing him a "warmonger" in a press conference immediately afterwards. After that, she began her political love affair with Hugo Chavez.

Did Dowd seriously believe that Bush should have enabled that kind of nuttiness? If so, he's not as smart as I thought.

The Times article has more, including Dowd's disappointment that Bush didn't fire Rumsfeld in January 2004 after Abu Ghraib. Plenty of people thought Rumsfeld should have stepped down then, but can come up with no rational reason. The Army had already begun its investigation into the incident long before Time Magazine reported it, and had started the disciplinary process. Rumsfeld didn't order the torture, and the unit commanders who allowed the slack discipline that created the problem got cashiered. George Marshall didn't step down during World War II when American war crimes came to light, and for good reason: he didn't authorize them and had no reason to quit over them. The perpetrators got their just punishments, and the war continued under his management.

Dowd engages in one long, petulant rant, consumed by his disappointment at Bush's failure to change when Dowd changed. I'm sorry for Dowd's disappointment, but this says much more about Dowd's emotionalism than it does about the Bush administration.

Dafydd ab Hugh has more thoughts.