Don Ho, RIP

The legendary singer of "Tiny Bubbles" died this morning of heart failure at the age of 76:

Ho entertained Hollywood's biggest stars and thousands of tourists for four decades. For many, no trip to Hawaii was complete without seeing his Waikiki show a mix of songs, jokes, double entendres, Hawaii history and audience participation.

Shows usually started and ended with the same song, "Tiny Bubbles." Ho mostly hummed as the audience enthusiastically took over the song's swaying, silly lyrics: "Tiny bubbles/in the wine/make me happy/make me feel fine."

"I hate that song," he often joked to the crowd. He said he saved it for the end because "people my age can't remember if we did it or not."

The son of bar owners, Ho broke into the Waikiki entertainment scene in the early 1960s and, except for short periods, never left. Few artists are more associated with one place.

I remember first hearing the song when I was a young child, and even then, the fun of the song was in its cheesiness. What I didn't know much about was Don Ho. The relaxed crooner had starred as a football player, winning him a college scholarship in Massachussetts until he got homesick for Hawaii. After graduating with a degree in sociology, Ho flew for the Air Force during the Korean War. He began his career as a singer because his father's bar had started to struggle after the war and the business needed entertainment. It turned into a sensation that would last for decades.

He entertained millions in a gentle style. Don Ho will be missed.

NARN, The Credibility Edition

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

Today we will be playing the promos The Patriot recorded for each of us that highlights the credibility we all bring to the NARN. I posted mine on Thursday. Today I can assure you that I will be wearing a jersey, as well as covering the week's hottest topics. Mitch and I will assuredly talk about Don Imus, the ongoing debacle at Justice, the Green Zone bombing, the legal battle between our two daily newspapers and why it won't result in better service to anyone, and probably some Fred Thompson talk. And man, nothing says credibility like Fred Thompson.

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

UPDATE & BUMP: A few people haven't listened to the clip and don't understand that the "credibility" plug is intended as a joke. In one of them, The Patriot makes the argument that King's back hair gives him his credibility. It's hilarious -- well, in King's case, it may be true, but it's still hilarious.

Upcoming On CQ Radio This Week: Bernard Goldberg, Duncan Hunter & More

On Monday, I start my new daily show at Blog Talk Radio, and we're going to start with a bang. We will have Congressman and presidential candidate Duncan Hunter to start the first show, and he will be taking your calls for the first half of the show. On the second half, Fausta will discuss immigration and her own BTR show.

Tuesday, we will spend all day with Bernard Goldberg, media and cultural critic as well as journalist for HBO after a long career at CBS News. His new book, Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right: How One SIde Lost Its Mind and the Other Lost Its Nerve, hits the bookstands on Tuesday, and you can pre-order it now. I interviewed him today and will play highlights of the conversation during the show. He has plenty of thoughts on Don Imus, about whom he presciently wrote as part of his book, as well as Al Sharpton. He explains why he thinks firing Imus was a mistake, and he tees off on liberals as well as Republicans who betrayed their conservative ideals.

Be sure to join us at 2 pm CT weekdays, and join the conversation by calling 646-652-4889!

What Happened To 'Follow The Money'?

It gets disheartening defending the obvious pre-9/11 connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda when the White House seems unmotivated to do so, but Thomas Jocelyn and Andy McCarthy haven't been chased off the story by Senator Carl Levin and the Washington Post. When both asserted that no one had found connections between Saddam and AQ, they both reminded readers to follow the money:

But Levin's story, which was simply repeated without any real investigation by the Post or even the inspector general's office, relies on a false dichotomy. The senator now pretends that the CIA and other intelligence outfits had reached a rock-solid conclusion that there was no noteworthy relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in 2002, but Feith's shop improperly pressed on. The Post summarized the inspector general's report as saying: " the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials and had said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups."

This is simply revisionist history at its worst.

Although there were certainly disagreements between the CIA and Feith's shop, both argued in 2002 that there was a relationship between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda. George Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, stated the CIA's position quite clearly in an October 7, 2002 letter to then head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Bob Graham (D-FL). Tenet explained, "We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade." Iraq and al Qaeda "have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression." Tenet warned, "We have credible reporting that al-Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al-Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs." And, "Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians, coupled with growing indications of a relationship with al-Qaeda, suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent US military action."

Andy picks up on one very important connection between Iraq and AQ -- money:

Forgetting all of these circumstances, among others, Tom also recalls, as Steve Hayes, myself, and others have for some time, that in 1998, "Ayman al-Zawahiri was in Baghdad ... and collected a check for $300,000 from the Iraqi regime." I would add, for context, that this was in the same time frame as bin Laden and Zawahiri's infamous fatwa calling for the murder of Americans — which, if you read it, argues that American actions against Iraq are a big part of the justification. It also came just a few months before al Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in east Africa, the Clinton administration bombed a Sudanese phramaceutical factory because intel indicated it was a joint Iraqi/Qaeda chemical weapons venture, and Clinton counter-terror honcho Richard Clarke fretted that "wily old Osama would boogie to Baghdad" — of all places — if the U.S. made things too hot for Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Sure, maybe all this is just a big coincidence. But, given that al Qaeda is a 24/7 terror operation whose main target is the U.S., I've always wondered for what earthly purpose Senator Levin and other connection naysayers figure Saddam Hussein gave Ayman Zawahiri 300K?

The money came to Zawahiri right before the attacks on two American embassies. Sure sounds like Saddam funded, at least indirectly, attacks on American assets that resulted in the death of Americans. Does Carl Levin think that doesn't represent a connection?

Traveling Imams Want Kramer And Costanza

James Zumwalt, a former Marine and an anti-terrorism activist, calls for legislation protecting ordinary Americans who report suspicious behavior, regardless of whether their information uncovers a terrorist plot or not. His New York Times opinion piece references the TV show Seinfeld as an example:

IN an echo of the final episode of “Seinfeld,” which involved a violation of a “good Samaritan law” that required a witness to a crime to come to the victim’s assistance, a recent lawsuit in a United States federal court demands consideration of a related law — with real-life application — to protect good Samaritans.

The incident that gave rise to the claim occurred last Nov. 20 at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Six Muslim religious leaders, or imams, were removed from a domestic US Airways flight after fellow passengers and airline personnel became concerned about what they deemed suspicious behavior. ...

While the imams may or may not have suffered an injury, the harm these John Doe claims can cause will go far beyond what the defendants themselves will suffer by being dragged into litigation. It is clear this lawsuit seeks to warn Americans against voicing similar concerns. For if they do, they run the risk of opening themselves up to liability and incurring enormous legal defense costs. The effect this would have — discouraging Americans from playing an active role on the home front in fighting the war on terrorism — is chilling.

Some security experts suggest the imams’ conduct may have been intended to identify aviation security weaknesses. Their John Doe lawsuit tends to support this theory, as such a complaint can also serve to manipulate our legal system to silence those who might otherwise report suspicious activity.

The analogy isn't perfect, as Zumwalt notes. One cannot impose a requirement to act on free citizens when they see someone in danger -- but we can make it safe for people to do so. Allowing suits against people who provide information to authorities about potential crimes and terrorist attacks only degrades our ability to prevent or limit either.

Zumwalt mentions an aspect of this that I believe most people miss. Many people have remarked that the Traveling Imams incident seemed designed to test security procedures, as a kind of intelligence mission against the Transportation Security Agency and the airlines, as well as making the security apparatus question and second-guess itself unnecessarily. The threatened lawsuits seem of a piece with that effort. Forcing people to hire attorneys because they tipped authorities to suspicious behavior will keep the next set of people from doing the same -- and that benefits only the terrorists who want to find ways around the security that has kept them from perpetrating another attack with human-filled cruise missiles.

In the wake of 9/11, one of the points that got broad agreement was that we had been far too complacent about our security in an era when radical Islamists had expanded their attacks on Western assets around the globe. Now their representatives here in the US want to force us back into another form of complacency through the threat of legal intimidation. Just as with whistleblowers, Congress needs to state categorically that the legal system will protect tipsters, the very people we need engaged to help bolster our security against the terrorists. To the extent that the Traveling Imams and their CAIR supporters want to eliminate this front line against terrorism, it demonstrates which side has their sympathies.

Slow Loading Resolved

The incredibly slow loading of CQ has been resolved. The culprit? I had old Blogads code on the site that utilized their proxy servers, rather than their 2.0 platform. Thanks to CQ commenter ForNow and Instapundit, I've fixed the problem and the site loads much more quickly.

I will also probably look into reducing the graphics load on the site in order to make it even more responsive. After hearing the response to the removal of the Technorati and Digg widgets from the main display page, I'm going to leave them off. I'm keeping Sphere because I find it personally useful, and because it does a good job of finding related posts both within CQ's archives and around the blogosphere. All of the widgets will remain on the individual post displays, where they will have no effect on page loading.

Is Fred 'Someone Else'?

The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes takes a look at the Fred Thompson phenomenon in the Republican presidential primary race and concludes that he embodies None of the Above, at least for the moment. Make no mistake, Hayes warns -- he won't play that role for long. If conservatives find themselves disheartened by the passive (or nonexistent) conservativism of the Bush era, Thompson promises a more assertive, robust form that could hearken back to Ronald Reagan:

The presence of the cigars and the absence of a press chaperone were clues that Thompson is taking a different approach to his potential candidacy. A campaign flack would have insisted on hiding the cigars--Senator, how did you get those Cuban cigars? Isn't there a trade embargo?--and might have dampened Thompson's natural candor. On subjects ranging from Social Security to abortion, the CIA and to Iran, there would be lots of candor over the next several hours.

And by the end of the conversation, two unexpected realities had emerged. If he joins the race for the Republican nomination, and if he campaigns the same way he spoke to me last week, Fred Thompson, a mild-mannered, slow-talking southern gentleman, will run as the politically aggressive conservative that George W. Bush hasn't been for four years. And the actor in the race could well be the most authentic personality in the field. ...

There is considerable talk among the other Republican campaigns that the Thompson boomlet is driven by little more than celebrity. Maybe. But history suggests that Thompson may actually be underpolling right now. As was the case when he ran for office in Tennessee, he has a very recognizable face but his national name identity is actually quite low.

Gallup conducted a survey in late March asking respondents an open-ended question: "What comes to your mind when you think about former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson?" Sixty-seven percent of Republicans responded that they had no opinion of Thompson or were not familiar with him. And yet he shows up in the top three choices of potential Republican nominees in most of the polling that includes his name. As voters come to associate that name with a familiar and well-liked face, and if they get to see the personable Thompson on TV, Thompson strategists assume those polling numbers can only go up.

Hayes took a well-considered break from his work on a biography of Dick Cheney to interview Thompson, and he gives Thompson a chance to set the record straight on his record from the beginning. For those who doubt his pro-life credentials, he reminds people that he received a 100% rating from National Right To Life, an anti-abortion advocacy group. His rating at the American Conservative Union for eight years in the Senate is 86%. He supports federalism and small government, even to the point of opposing the formation of the Department of Homeland Security as the kind of large bureaucracy that does most tasks poorly. Later, he worked to keep unionization and civil-service protections from applying to DHS personnel, to keep the bureaucracy from bloating any further.

Hayes, who knows a thing or two about intelligence matters, gives a verbatim response from Thompson that defends the White House better than the White House defends themselves. In part:

The irony here is that intelligence services had consistently over the years understated the capabilities of enemies and potential enemies. Now, here there was unanimity among the intelligence services, some of whom are supposed to be better than ours. . . . People don't understand intelligence. They don't understand. It's seldom clear. It's often caveated. It's sometimes flat-out wrong. Different people often have different ideas. That's what a president is faced with. And some today would say that politically a president has got to have unanimity before he can make a choice. And then they say that if he has that unanimity, the president has to make that choice--at the same time talking about how deficient our capabilities are. But if those deficient capabilities produced a recommendation, the president of the United States and leader of the free world has to take that recommendation.

Perhaps the most prescient and revealing statement in Hayes' article comes in the beginning, though. Hayes had expected to meet an unpaid aide to Thompson for an interview about the prospects for his candidacy. Instead, as Hayes says, "Fred Thompson showed up."

That's what Republicans hope Fred does for the primary race -- and if Fred does, he's likely to be received warmly and with enthusiasm. (via Power Line)

North Korea And The Big Mo

North Korea missed its deadline to shut down the Yongbyon nuclear reactor, as widely expected after Pyongyang refused to act until its funds in Macau were unfrozen. The failure led the chief US negotiator to explain that momentum has dropped from the efforts to resolve the nuclear standoff:

The deadline for North Korea to shut down it main nuclear reactor passed Saturday with no action taken by the communist country, leaving the top U.S. nuclear negotiator to surmise that the momentum had escaped disarmament talks.

Saturday's missed deadline marked the latest setback for an agreement that when reached in February offered the prospect of disarming the world's newest declared nuclear power. North Korea successfully exploded a nuclear bomb in October.

"We don't have a lot of momentum right now. That is for sure," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told reporters before meeting his Chinese counterpart, Wu Dawei.

The disarmament plan, reached after nearly four years of arduous negotiations, laid out a timetable for North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programs. The plan was unexpectedly disrupted by a dispute over frozen North Korean funds in a Macau bank that Washington said this past week was finally resolved.

The US did unfreeze the funds during the week after a long and complicated process finally ended. The Bush administration's investigation had taken a life of its own and proved highly effective at pressuring Kim Jong-Il's regime, but it also proved tougher to end than to begun. The North Koreans still say they have not confirmed the release, but they also say that they will meet their obligations under the agreement when they do.

Those involved knew all week that the DPRK could not possibly meet the deadline. It takes several days to safely scuttle a nuclear reactor. The process could take as long as a couple of weeks to verify its closure, which means we will have to push this out until the end of April. If the DPRK does not have Yongbyon shut down by that time, it means that Kim has pulled a $25 million three-card Monty on the US, Japan, and the other six-nation partners.

Hill makes clear that he has no patience beyond that. "Another month is not in my constitution," he told reporters. Right now, though, the North Koreans have little incentive to move fast. It took the US longer than the 30 days it pledged to resolve the banking issue, and they can point to that slipped milestone as an excuse for their own. We can hold up the delivery of fuel oil, and probably will, but other than that we have as much leverage as momentum at this point.

Another Document Dump, Another Misleading Statement

The Department of Justice executed another Friday-afternoon document dump -- that time-honored method for politicians to avoid press coverage of their peccadilloes -- and uncovered yet another refutation of earlier statements by its senior officials. This time, the documents disprove the testimony given repeatedly that the replacements for the fired attorneys had not been selected before the termination of the prosecutors:

The attorney general's former top aide identified five Bush administration insiders as potential replacements for sitting U.S. attorneys months before those prosecutors were fired, contrary to repeated suggestions from the Justice Department that no such list had been drawn up, according to documents released yesterday.

E-mails sent to the White House in January and May of 2006 by D. Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, name potential replacements for U.S. attorneys in San Diego, San Francisco, Little Rock and Grand Rapids, Mich.

The disclosures contrast with previous statements from Sampson and other Justice officials. They have said that only Tim Griffin, a former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove who was later appointed the top federal prosecutor in Little Rock, had been identified as a replacement candidate before the dismissals of the sitting U.S. attorneys. ...

Sampson's attorney and a Justice spokesman said yesterday that the candidates listed were only tentative suggestions and were never seriously considered. Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the list "reflects Kyle Sampson's initial thoughts" and "in no way contradicts the department's prior statements" about the lack of a candidate list.

Sampson told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that on Dec. 7, when seven U.S. attorneys were sacked, "I did not have in mind any replacements for any of the seven who were asked to resign."

So first we have Alberto Gonzales telling us categorically that he was "not involved in any discussions" with Sampson about the presidential appointees that his aide was about to fire. After a document dump put him in the meeting where the final decisions were made about the termination, Gonzales said that he meant that he had no discussions on the selection of the prosecutors, just on the process for notification. That produced a huge round of skepticism; the names had to be part of the process in that meeting, and the notion that a "CEO" of Justice (as Gonzales described himself) would be completely disinterested in the presidential appointees his staff planned to fire either demonstrated incompetence or complete disinterest in the job.

Now we have Sampson playing similar word games. At least two of the people on that list besides Tim Griffin later received postings as US Attorneys. Both of them worked at Justice before their appointments in DC and Alabama. Very clearly, Sampson had other candidates in mind and had taken the time to draft a list of potential replacements as part of the process. By any reasonable reading, that contradicts the essence of his sworn testimony to Congress. His attorney told the press that Sampson's state of mind was such that he had not seriously considered replacements, and therefore his testimony was accurate.

Why did Sampson hide the list that he himself had drawn up -- and sent through his e-mail to the White House? Why did Gonzales try to back away from the process? It's all to avoid what everyone knew about the terminations: they were politically motivated. So what? They're political appointees. Had Gonzales simply stood up in January and said, "These fine attorneys simply didn't follow our policy direction and we replaced them with people we thought would do that better," all of this would have simply blown over in less than a week. Instead, we have people lying, changing their testimony, and playing word games where "no involvement in any discussions" includes sitting in on meetings where final decisions were made, and "I did not have any replacements in mind" covers the compiling of a list of replacements and e-mailing it to the White House.

Enough already. If President Bush doesn't act to fire everyone involved from Gonzales on down for the sheer incompetence and deception, then he deserves every moment of televised committee hearings he gets from this molehill that Gonzales & Co built into Mount McKinley.

ACLU To Defend Nazis Again

The ACLU lost a number of members in 1977 when they defended the American Nazi Party when they wanted to stage a demonstration in the town of Skokie, Illinois -- a city where a number of Holocaust victims and their families had settled. Over 30,000 ACLU members staged a demonstration of their own when they marched out of the organization, even after the ACLU won the case, and even though the Nazis never did march in Skokie.

Thirty years later, the ACLU proves that they have not learned their lesson. The Ohio chapter has agreed to represent the American Nazi Party again in a conflict over a demonstration permit, this time in a predominantly black neighborhood in Cincinnati. Holly at The Moderate Voice shares the e-mail:

On April 20, 2007, the American National Socialist Workers Party of Roanoke, VA—a neo-Nazi group—plans to march through the predominantly African-American neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati. The city initially issued a permit to the group for its march, but the permit was soon revoked and prohibitions were added by city officials limiting the group’s demonstration to a three-block area. Believing their constitutional rights to free speech and free assembly have been violated, the ACLU of Ohio will be defending the demonstrators.

The ACLU condemns violent action and supports its prevention. Yet we also believe that our government must allow citizens their unhindered right to free speech. The City of Cincinnati should stand behind this basic freedom while taking steps to ensure a peaceful demonstration.

As in previous cases where the ACLU has come to the defense of people or groups with whom we disagree, our position is rooted in certain fundamental principles. While we in no way endorse the views of the American National Socialist Workers Party, we believe that the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and press would be meaningless if the government could pick and choose the persons to whom they apply.

I agree that the government should not be in the business of determining the acceptability of political speech. I would not want to have to get permission to hold a public assembly that hinges on the political content of the speech for myself, and I would want government have the same approach for others as well.

However, that isn't what has happened in Over-The-Rhine, at least judging by the ACLU's description. The city did revoke their permit, but then apparently issued another that gives them three blocks in which to demonstrate. That does not sound like an overwhelming burden for the Nazis to meet, and it does not keep them from conducting their protest. They're not being stopped from demonstrating; they want to complain because of the boundaries placed on their protest, even though such permits routinely impose boundaries on demonstrations.

The ACLU will put themselves in the position of arguing that the city of Cincinnati has no authority to determine the geographical boundaries for a protest -- on behalf of a group that would, if given the chance, strip everyone of the right to demonstrate in any form at all. They do so even though they have no requirement to represent Nazis; the Nazis could hire their own lawyers to handle this case, and unfortunately they can probably afford it, too. The ACLU has determined that they can get a lot of publicity for their flacking on behalf of Nazis, and have climbed into bed with racists as a result. They're doing nothing more than unnecessarily enabling the Nazis.

Indiana Jones once said, "I hate these guys." In this context, it would be difficult to determine which group he would have meant.

The Law Of Unintended Consequences

Don Imus started a brushfire of criticism for the latest in a series of racially insensitive remarks last week, ultimateky costing him his broadcasting platforms at CBS and NBC. Much of the demand for his termination came from the efforts of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, two former Democratic presidential candidates (2004 and 1988, respectively), who fired up demands for boycotts against Imus' sponsors. Their success may present a problem for their party, however, as Democrats routinely used Imus to access independent white male voters who comprised a large part of his audience:

They came by the hundreds that hot August day in tiny Johnson City, Tenn., gathering on an asphalt parking lot to meet Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. It was not just that he might become the state's first black senator. More than that, even in Republican eastern Tennessee, the Democratic congressman was a celebrity — a regular guest on Don Imus' radio show.

And today, with Imus' career in tatters, the fate of the controversial shock jock is stirring quiet but heartfelt concern in an unlikely quarter: among Democratic politicians.

That's because, over the years, Democrats such as Ford came to count on Imus for the kind of sympathetic treatment that Republicans got from Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. Equally important, Imus gave Democrats a pipeline to a crucial voting bloc that was perennially hard for them to reach: politically independent white men.

With Imus' show canceled indefinitely because of his remarks about the Rutgers University women's basketball team, some Democratic strategists are worried about how to fill the void. For a national radio audience of white men, Democrats see few if any alternatives.

Thus starts the hangover from the celebration of knocking off perhaps the only center-left radio talk show host with national reach. Silent up to now, Democratic organizers for people like Bill Bradley now point out that the departure of Imus has closed any access to that crucial voting bloc. Only Ed Schultz might have similar reach, but Schultz doesn't have a national television simulcast nor the crossover appeal of Imus.

Who appeared with Imus over the last few years? Men like Ford, John Kerry, and Barack Obama. Chris Dodd recently appeared to announce his candidacy for the presidential race. Kerry made a few appearances during his presidential bid in 2004, and undoubtedly the Democrats planned to have their eventual nominee do the same next year. Without Imus, the options for talk radio run to whatever's left of Air America -- and Al Franken doesn't work there any more.

Imus may have deserved his termination; he certainly deserved his national humiliation. It seems clear that the Democrats will suffer the most from his departure. Expect to see Imus find a new broadcast deal soon, and then expect to see the Democratic parade begin again.

Addendum: Republicans have appeared on Imus as well, including current presidential candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain. They have plenty of other places to go now that Imus is gone, however.

It's The End Of The World As I Know It ...

... and I feel fine!

I will go to the day job as a call center manager for the last time today. On Monday, I start my new full-time position with Blog Talk Radio as Political Director and will provide full-time commentary through my blog and my new daily BTR show. The phrase "dream come true" is hackneyed, but in this case the cliché applies.

I have worked in the burg/fire alarm industry for eighteen years, starting in late 1988 as a night shift operator at a Honeywell central station. I took the job after working at Hughes Aircraft in Anaheim Hills as an editor and tech writer for the Technical Publications group for almost four years. It had been my first career, and I loved the work -- even if the writing was dry and repetitive. It allowed me to build my skills, and I would have cheerfully done that work for as long as they let me.

Unfortunately, glasnost took its toll on the defense industry, and I was invited to explore exciting new opportunities ... like unemployment. After trying to land a new gig for a couple of months with no success, I drove a cab for a couple of months in Orange County, CA. It took me two months to decide that I'd rather live, so I took the job at Honeywelll only until I could find my next technical writing gig.

That's why I've often referred to my work in call centers as my accidental career. I moved up quickly at Honeywell and went into management less than four years later. In 1997, I left Honeywell to run the call center for Medical Eye Services, which was a mistake on the part of both parties. Within six months, I left Medical Eye Services and California to run the central station for my current employer. It turned out to be the best move I could have made, and the 9.5 years I spent there was a blessing for me and my family. They have treated us wonderfully and with generosity.

So why leave? I finally get to make a living out of writing -- and not just creating and editing operator manuals and repair procedures, but my own writing on my own topics. I have the opportunity to work with a great new company with an exciting product, and I can work with other writers and bloggers to help grow both BTR and the New Media which has already democratized the American debate. Even my current bosses -- two of the most reasonable and ethical men with whom I have worked -- told me that I could hardly pass up this chance.

Why not name the company? I have always wanted to keep a bright line between my politics and their operations. Customers might have issues working with someone who strongly advocates any kind of political point of view, and I don't want them to suffer for my passion. Also, I had tried to steer clear of any political discussion at work, and discouraged any conversation about my blog or radio work. The most gratifying moments of my final weeks have been when two co-workers asked me, after the announcement of my departure for political commentary, which party I supported and whether I was a conservative or a liberal. It meant that I had succeeded in that separation.

So today I close out a long and positive chapter in my life, and on Monday I open a new chapter. I'm thrilled to have the opportunity, and I'm grateful to all of the CQ community who makes it possible. I will tell you, though, that I will miss the old job, mostly for all the great colleagues and fascinating challenges we have faced. It's been a great ride for a temporary gig.

Speed Demons We're Not

Yesterday, I received a number of messages from CQ readers noting significant slowdowns in page loading. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to work on it much until this morning, when it has taken most of my time investigating. The culprits appear to be the outside content providers for CQ, notably Technorati and Blogads.

The Technorati tags on each post now take longer to load than before, which causes the content column to load much more slowly -- because I usually have 25-35 posts on the main page. I have removed the Technorati and Digg tags from the main page posts, but they still remain on the individual-post pages, where people go to read and add comments.

The Blogads proxy server appears somewhat slow in responding, too. That doesn't cause as much of a problem, though, because the content loads first, and people can continue reading while the ads load. I'll check with Blogads to see whether they will be able to fix the issue.

In the meantime, the content should load faster today. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Exit polling question: How many feel that the Technorati, Digg, and Sphere tags add to their CQ experience?

Vaporware

It seems as though the firing of eight federal prosecutors and the bumbling manner in which the administration handled the fallout has no bottom in sight. Like a thread that, once pulled, continues unraveling an entire garment, the situation continues to generate embarrassment and expose poor management -- at best. The latest form that the scandal has taken is the acknowledgement from the White House that some political aides may have used the Republican National Committee e-mail servers for official government business, and that some of the missing e-mails may have pertained to the termination of the US Attorneys:

The White House said Thursday that missing e-mail messages sent on Republican Party accounts may include some relating to the firing of eight United States attorneys.

The disclosure became a fresh political problem for the White House, as Democrats stepped up their inquiry into whether Karl Rove and other top aides to President Bush used the e-mail accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee to circumvent record-keeping requirements.

It also exposed the dual electronic lives led by Mr. Rove and 21 other White House officials who maintain separate e-mail accounts for government business and work on political campaigns — and raised serious questions, in the eyes of Democrats, about whether political accounts were used to conduct official work without leaving a paper trail.

The clash also seemed to push the White House and Democrats closer to a serious confrontation over executive privilege, with the White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding, asserting that the administration has control over countless other e-mail messages that the Republican National Committee has archived. Democrats are insisting that they are entitled to get the e-mail messages directly from the national committee.

First, let's acknowledge one danger presented by the investigation into the termination of the prosecutors. Congress, led by Henry Waxman, now threatens to subpoena the internal communications of the minority party. That would not just expose whatever the Democrats claim the messages contain about the firings, but the political strategies of high-level Republican Party activists. The government has no business snooping in those deliberations; in fact, it would be the Congressional equivalent of the Watergate break-in.

If the federal government can force political parties to divulge those deliberations for anything less that an explicit criminal investigation, then Big Brother has arrived -- and we still have no underlying crime for this investigation. All we have is a very questionable decision to fire US Attorneys and a Keystone Kops follow-up to the ensuing criticism. The internal deliberations of political parties should remain shielded from the subpoena power of Congress or the executive branch for issues as petty as what we have here, lest we do permanent damage to our freedom of political action.

That being said, the Bush administration invited this by allowing its staff to operate in both systems for its staff that holds positions in both the government and the RNC. It appeared to understand the problem as early as 2005, when they took action to keep Karl Rove from deleting e-mail messages from his RNC account. At that point, the White House should have taken action to eliminate the use of the RNC e-mail system for any official government purposes. Unfortunately, they did not, and at least one of the previously-released documents shows that e-mail went to the "gwb43.com" domain, owned by the RNC.

Now they have to open those files for Congress' inspection in order to demonstrate that they have complied with the 1978 Presidential Records Act, a law that comes straight out of Watergate. Once again, the White House has shot itself in the foot, and as a result, they have put the privacy of political activity at risk.

Congress should tread carefully, regardless. It should create a process which vets the provided material for just messages that pertain to the already-lame issues at hand in the investigation, and screen the rest from unnecessary exposure. In the long run, the independence of political activity for all parties outweighs the petty principles in play over the termination of the US Attorneys.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald notes a number of occasions where the White House has had document deficiencies. He provides a number of links to contemporaneous reporting of them as well. It may well be that all of these involve nothing more than simply poor maintenance procedures, but even so, it hardly builds confidence in the administrative competence of the executive branch.

Twin City Tussle

When a metropolitan area has more than one decent-size daily newspaper, the competition can be fun to watch. The publishers will do everything from juggle the comic-strip lineup to conduct give-aways for subscriptions in order to beat each other. Sometimes it gets uglier than that, and lawyers get to make as much money as the publishers. The two Twin Cities newspapers will make a few more lawyers rich with a new lawsuit after the Star-Tribune supposedly enticed former Pioneer Press executives to break a non-compete contract and share proprietary information:

The St. Paul Pioneer Press sued the Star Tribune on Thursday, claiming that Par Ridder, the newspaper's new publisher, violated an employment agreement with the Pioneer Press. The suit asks that he be removed and barred from working for the Star Tribune for at least a year. ...

The civil lawsuit accuses Ridder and two executives he recruited from the Pioneer Press in recent weeks of sharing confidential budget and advertising information with their new colleagues.

The lawsuit, which asks the court to prevent the Star Tribune from using that information, calls the consequences of the alleged theft "both devastating and irreparable" for the Pioneer Press.

What happened? On March 7, two days after the Strib hired Ridder, he e-mailed confidential spreadsheets containing advertiser and subscriber information, according to the Pioneer Press. When the smaller newspaper confronted Ridder about it, they claim that Ridder told them he just wanted to show the Strib the format of the files, which he wanted to use in his new job.

They also let Ridder keep his laptop for a short period after his departure. According to the lawsuit, the Pioneer Press hired a computer expert to examine the laptop when they got it back, and he determined that the information on it had been copied to another computer. Now the Pioneer Press wants access to all of the Strib's computers to determine what use their bigger competitor has made of the PP's proprietary info. They also claim that they have a version of a speech he wrote on the laptop in a password-protected document that shows that the Strib had arranged Ridder's move in secret six months before -- and that Ridder stuck around that long to glean as much information as he could before he split for greener pastures.

The Strib claims innocence. They claim that Ridder, whose great-grandfather owned the Pioneer Press, did not steal any information from the newspaper. Ridder also defends himself against accusations that he broke his pledge not to entice PP executives to follow him, saying that the agreement only covered the day he left. The former publisher denied that he had offered Ridder his job in September or had any conversations with him about leaving the Pioneer Press during the upheaval of the Strib's sale.

So whom should we believe? I have to believe that the Pioneer Press has some basis for its lawsuit; it can't afford to waste a lot of money on legal fees, and the Ridder assertion that an agreement to refrain from stealing executives only covered a single day is pretty laughable. They're already operating from a credibility gap, and the PP included a copy of the speech notes in the lawsuit.

If nothing else, it beats the telemarketing calls we would be getting in a normal subscription war. All we can do at this point is buy plenty of popcorn and enjoy the show.

It's Time To Play Family Feud!

The situation in Waziristan has become so complicated that one needs a scorecard to know the players. Now the Pakistani government says their army has allied themselves with Taliban-supporting tribes in their fight against al-Qaeda elements in the mountains -- even though AQ supports the Taliban in its fight with the Afghan government:

President Pervez Musharraf made a tacit admission yesterday that the Pakistani military has entered into a marriage of convenience with pro-Taliban tribesmen.

The tribesmen have been fighting foreign militants linked to al-Qa'eda, who are resident in the country. Pakistani military officials had denied direct involvement in fighting between the tribesmen and the foreigners, who have taken shelter in the lawless area of South Waziristan.

However, during a visit by The Daily Telegraph to the region this week Pakistani commanders made it clear that they support local militants who are fighting Central Asians, mainly Uzbeks.

All of this springs from tribal tensions among the jihadis. The Uzbeks who figured that the war on the West assumed that they would be welcomed by their Muslim cousins, the Pashtuns. That turned out to be a faulty assumption, as we've noted before. Tribal tensions increased after an escalating series of incidents until the local tribes declared a fatwa and went to war with the Uzbeks.

Now Pakistan has a foreign force in their border area conducting a shooting war against Pakistani tribes. They have little choice but to align themselves with their own citizens against the foreign terrorists, but they've decided to spin this into a fight against al-Qaeda. The problem with that narrative is that Musharraf has aligned his forces with tribes that support the Taliban with fighters and resources.

Western nations noticed this case of strange bedfellows, and the media pressed Musharraf and the Pakistanis for an explanation of their alliance with the Taliban. The army commander's response was that the warlord, Mullah Nazir, was wearing his tribal hat in the fight to clear the Wana Valley of Uzbeks, not his Taliban hat. Unfortunately, when Nazir wears that Taliban hat, he wears it as the chief commander of the Waziri Taliban -- appointed by Mullah Omar and reporting directly to him.

Pakistan may want us to believe that their involvement in this jihadi Family Feud shows their commitment to fighting terrorism, but instead it looks like they're just choosing sides between various brands of jihad.

Gitmo Ex-Detainee Undermining Afghan Government

One of the captured Taliban detained at Guantanamo Bay has returned to Afghanistan -- and appears to be taking up where he left off. Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef got handed to the US by Pakistanis after the fall of the Taliban government, and now that he has returned to Afghanistan, he wants Hamid Karzai toppled and a "unity government" installed:

Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, has been released from Guantanamo. Though under close observation by the government, he's already creating a stir in Kabul.

The black-bearded mullah's expression betrays disgust and rage. "The people don't want (President Hamid) Karzai's government, and they don't want foreigners here in Afghanistan either," says Abdul Salam Zaeef. ...

Zaeef has in no way renounced the teachings and attitudes of his former companions. Why shouldn't chopping off hands and the public execution of women in stadiums be acceptable forms of punishment, when those punished are thieves and murderers? Who in the West, he asks, is seriously bothered by the application of sharia laws in Saudi Arabia, a Western ally? "Today we have no sovereignty here, no security, no national unity and stability," the mullah lectures with growing fervor. "Instead we have crime, corruption and foreigners inside the country who behave like an occupying force."

The Afghans must be given the right of self-determination to choose the form of government and society that is appropriate for them, argues Zaeef, a member of the Pashtun ethnic group. "The majority wants the Islamic system," he says. "You'll achieve nothing here by means of violence. Do you want to shoot an entire people dead?"

Small wonder why Karzai's government watches him like a hawk. They must be so happy that we released a Taliban activist and sent him right back to Kabul. Now he can hold lectures and do some rabble rousing right in the center of the capital -- while Karzai and NATO attempt to beat back Zaeef's compatriots.

Zaeef promises that a unity government, formed without the elected representatives of the Afghan people, will never allow terrorists inside Afghanistan. Zaeef and the dictatorship that would cut off heads and hands of those who violate their religious strictures would never hobnob with their co-religionists who cut off heads and bomb people who violate their religious strictures. He tells Der Spiegel that once the democratically elected government hits the road and his idea of government replaces it, the "faranji" can leave with all their worries magically addressed.

Maybe he forgot about what happened on 9/11 -- but we haven't.

Imus Gets The Boot

Don Imus will no longer appear on CBS Radio. A day after losing his MS-NBC televised simulcast of his show, CBS president Les Moonves terminated Imus and left him unemployed a week after his offensive remarks about the women's basketball team at Rutgers:

CBS brought the tumultuous weeklong crisis over racially insensitive remarks by the radio host Don Imus to an end late this afternoon when it canceled the “Imus in the Morning” program, effective immediately.

The move came one day after MSNBC, which has simulcast Mr. Imus’s radio program for the past 10 years, removed the show from the cable network’s morning lineup. The two moves together mean that Mr. Imus, who has been broadcasting his program for more than 30 years, no longer has a home on either national radio or television. ...

In a statement, Mr. Moonves said, “Those who have spoken with us the last few days represent people of goodwill from all segments of our society — all races, economic groups, men and women alike. In our meetings with concerned groups, there has been much discussion of the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society.”

He added, “That consideration has weighed most heavily on our minds as we made our decision, as have the many e-mails, phone calls and personal discussions we have had with our colleagues across the CBS Corporation and our many other constituencies.”

The market spoke in a very loud voice, and both CBS and NBC heard it. The advertisers heard it from their customers, and made clear that they would not endorse Imus' show any longer. CBS couched it in progressive language, but the bottom line is that they were worried about the bottom line.

I have no real problem with that resolution. Had this been Imus' first time at the dance, a suspension and an apology would have probably sufficed. Had Imus directed that comment at a political figure -- say, Condoleezza Rice -- he still would have his radio show. The combination of the offending remark and the choice of target doomed Imus.

I do think that a two-week suspension probably would have sufficed as well, though. Imus will return if he wants. Satellite radio brought back Opie & Anthony after they encouraged people to have sex in St. Patrick's Cathedral as a stunt, and they will have channels and timeslots for someone who can bring that number of listeners with him. Firing him from CBS just puts him back on the market, and after a few weeks off, he will almost certainly return with advertisers enough to make a good living at it. In the end, a suspension is what Imus will have received, in practical terms.

Now that Imus got scalped, temporarily, maybe we can talk about the pimp chic that our culture has produced and its effect. Imus didn't come up with that formulation out of thin air. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded an Oscar to a song that promotes that culture in "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp". The so-called mack daddy posturing and pimp chic glorifies the nearest thing we have to slavers in our country. Pimps used to be considered the lowest form of life until gangsta rap started glamorizing them, transforming women into "bitches" and "ho's" to be owned and exploited for the benefit of the pimp or pimp wannabe.

That's what we should discuss, once we've satiated ourselves on Imus' well-deserved public shaming.

UPDATE: Michelle gets called a "ho" on national TV. Well, actually, "political prostitute" by New Black Panther Party leader Malik Shabazz. Michelle knocks points off for skipping the obligatory ping-pong slur, and in the process shows how people can choose not to act as victims of idiots.

CQ Radio Transition

Normally, I'd be preparing another installment of the weekly CQ Radio show. However, I'm presently working to transition CQ Radio to a new daily show. We launch on Monday, April 16th, at 2 pm CT. The show will air at that time every weekday as part of my new position as Political Director of Blog Talk Radio. I'll be interviewing bloggers, authors, and political players and introducing new Blog Talk Radio hosts. Tuesday, I'll have a taped interview with author and journalist Bernard Goldberg, who has a new book out: Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right: How One Side Lost Its Mind and the Other Lost Its Nerve, which launches the same day.

I'll be off the air tonight while I prepare the transition. But since you have an extra hour, why not check out some of the other Blog Talk Radio shows? BTR chief Alan Levy interviews CL Gammon on Politics One at 7 pm CT. The New Media Journal talks about the black vote tonight at 8 pm. Shaun O'Mac will discuss the Imus firing at 8:30 pm. Eric Dondero has Wisconsin state rep Pettis on Libertarian Politics Live at 9 pm. (All times Central)

LA Times Poll: Fred Gains As McCain Drops Back

The Los Angeles Times reports on its latest polling for the Republican presidential primaries, and the only one who should be smiling is the scowlin' Volunteer, Fred Thompson. Rudy Giuliani polls at less than 30%, while McCain drops behind his good friend into a distant third place:

Sen. John McCain, once considered the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, has fallen to third place in a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, and is running behind Fred Thompson, an actor and former senator who has not even entered the race.

Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani leads the crowded field of announced and potential contenders with support from 29% of probable Republican primary voters surveyed, followed by Thompson with 15% and McCain with 12%. Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and a fundraising powerhouse, had 8%.

The Arizona senator's showing in the poll is his lowest in any national survey to date, marking a new benchmark in his flagging fortunes. The surge of interest in Thompson is a sign of conservative dissatisfaction with the established field of candidates and underscores just how unsettled the Republican race remains.

Allahpundit notes that this is more bad news for John McCain. He's scaling back the staffing in his campaign, which is never a good sign, and it reflects a general retreat in his support. Fred Thompson has vaulted past him, although the polling took place before Thompson's announcement on his health,

It seems strange that McCain's numbers within the party would decline as they have. Those who feel uncomfortable with McCain have felt that way for a few years; if anything, McCain's party-line campaign should gain him some traction, not lose it. However, the LA Times finds the reason for McCain's fade and the strength of Rudy Giuliani's front-runner status:

The survey also shows significant Republican desire to move beyond the George W. Bush era: 61% of Republican voters surveyed said they wanted the next GOP nominee to campaign on a platform of moving in a new direction. Only 30% said the nominee should call for continuing Bush policies.

For better or worse, McCain has come to represent the GWB establishment among Republicans since he chose to become the most energetic supporter of the war in Iraq. While the other GOP candidates all support the surge, none of them have the personal attachment to the war that McCain has forged. It's a courageous stand -- I genuinely admire McCain for taking it -- but it's costing him dearly.

Thompson, in the meantime, seems poised to fill the white-knight role. He scores well among Christian conservatives, outpolling all other candidates, including (unsurprisingly) Rudy Giuliani. He hasn't even announced yet, and at least in the LA Times poll, he has become the number two candidate for the Republicans. If he renounces the BCRA, he'll probably open within a few points of Rudy nationwide.

The results for the Democrats held few surprises. Hillary Clinton continues to outpace the field, while Barack Obama has cemented his status as her most significant challenger. Obama has taken some of the working-class vote away from John Edwards, who has not improved his position much at all. Obama still trails Clinton in the black vote, another longer-term trend that does not appear to have changed between different polls. The biggest surprise? Despite the national-security focus of the GOP candidates, the Iraq war is more important to Democrats than Republicans in selecting their candidate.

NARN Credibility?

It seems like a slow day on the blogs, so the time is right for some lunch-hour fun. AM 1280 The Patriot has recorded a series of commercials promoting the credibility of the various Northern Alliance hosts for our Saturday programs. Download and listen to mine, and just feel the credibility that this builds.

And just to underscore the message -- I'm not wearing a Notre Dame jersey today. You have been warned.

Minnesota Dhimmitude Continues Apace

Katherine Kersten reports in today's Minneapolis Star-Tribune that the state of Minnesota bars Christians from any expression of their faith on state- and city-run colleges -- but are ready and willing to create prayer facilities for Muslims. The addition of foot-washing basins for their daily ablutions contrasts with their heretofore stringent policy of promoting or favoring religions:

Separation of church and state is clearest at the college during the Christmas season. A memo from Cusick and President Phil Davis, dated Nov. 28, 2006, exhorted supervisors to banish any public display of holiday cheer: "As we head into the holiday season ... "all public offices and areas should refrain from displays that may represent to our students, employees or the public that the college is promoting any particular religion." Departments considering sending out holiday cards, the memo added, should avoid cards "that appear to promote any particular religious holiday."

Last year, college authorities caught one rule-breaker red-handed. A coffee cart that sells drinks and snacks played holiday music "tied to Christmas," and "complaints and concerns" were raised, according to a faculty e-mail. College authorities quickly quashed the practice. ...

Muslim prayer is an increasingly controversial issue. Many Muslim students use restroom sinks to wash their feet before prayer. Other students have complained, and one Muslim student fell and injured herself while lifting her foot out of a sink.

Some local Muslim leaders have advised the college staff that washing is not a required practice for students under the circumstances, according to Davis. Nevertheless, he says, he wants to facilitate it for interested students. "It's like when someone comes to your home, you want to be hospitable," Davis told me. "We have new members in our community coming here; we want to be hospitable."

So the college is making plans to use taxpayer funds to install facilities for ritual foot-washing. Staff members are researching options, and a school official will visit a community college in Illinois to view such facilities while attending a conference nearby. College facilities staff members are expected to present a proposal this spring.

College officials claim that the additions do not promote Islam or its practice, but merely make the campus more hospitable to Muslims. MCTC didn't worry about hospitality during Christmas, although they want credit for offering fish in the cafeteria during Lent. As Kersten asks, would MCTC have offered to build baptismal fonts if Christian evangelists had injured themselves anointing people in bathroom sinks as well?

It's difficult to see this as an isolated incident here in the Twin Cities. In the space of a few months, the burgeoning Muslim community has demanded that the residents here accommodate them in strange ways. The Traveling Imams stunt produced a demand to the Metropolitan Airport Commission for a special "prayer room" for Muslims, which the MAC eventually rejected. Muslim cabbies demanded to know whether airport travelers had alcohol in their baggage and refused to service those who did. Muslim cashiers at Target refused to check out products containing pork.

To all of these requests, the answer should have been: get over yourselves. If Muslims don't want to touch pork products, then they should not work as cashiers in grocery stores. Foot washing should be done at home, if one does not want to risk injury by putting their feet in the sinks of public bathrooms. We are not required to accommodate personal religious practices in the workplace -- especially when the same facilities refuse to even acknowledge the existence of every other religion in their environments.

In the meantime, I look forward to the installation of holy-water fonts and mezuzahs to the walls of MCTC, so that they can facilitate the prayer rituals of all faiths.

Explosion In Green Zone Kills Two

This will bode ill for supporters of the war in Iraq. An apparent suicide bombing has killed two members of the Iraqi parliament within the Green Zone as they ate in the Assembly's cafeteria:

A bomb exploded in the Iraqi parliament's cafeteria in a stunning assault in the heart of the heavily fortified Green Zone Thursday, killing at least two lawmakers and wounding 10 other people.

The blast in the parliament building came hours after a suicide truck bomb blew up on a major bridge in Baghdad, collapsing the steel structure and sending cars tumbling into the Tigris River, police and witnesses said. At least 10 people were killed.

The bomb in parliament went off in a cafeteria while several lawmakers were eating lunch, media reports said. In addition to the two dead, state television said at least 10 people were wounded.

The bombing came amid the two-month-old security crackdown in Baghdad, which has sought to restore stability in the capital so that the government of Iraq can take key political steps by June 30 or face a withdrawal of American support.

According to initial reports, the bomber may have made it through Iraqi security force checkpoints. One Iraqi parliamentarian reported seeing the severed legs of the suspected bomber in the hallway outside the cafeteria, and decried the security provided by the Maliki government. This comes less than two weeks after the US Army discovered suicide vests within the Green Zone, which means that this attack has probably been planned for quite a while.

The indiscriminate nature of the attack suggests, as Khalaf al-Ilyan told Iraqi reporters afterwards, that the bombers were less concerned about faction and ideology in their target than in attacking representative government altogether. The attacker went to a fairly quiet spot in the Assembly building; had he made it into the general meeting area, he could have killed many more people.

This will probably create an almost insurmountable problem for Nouri al-Maliki and his government. Already, Iraqi politicians have declared the new security plan a failure. They will not allow this attack to go without some accountability from the government and perhaps an abandonment of the new joint Iraqi-US plan put in place earlier this year. That would put the Bush administration in a difficult position; if the Iraqis declare the new Baghdad security plan a failure, his domestic political support for the war will collapse entirely.

The next few days will be critical for Maliki and Bush. This could wind up as this war's version of the Tet attack on the US Embassy in Saigon, an event that provided the tipping point for American patience in a foreign war.

Hoffa: We'll "Blow Up" Denver For Dem Convention (Updated)

The Democrats may stage an homage to Chicago 1968 in Denver for their 2008 convention. The AP reports that the party's union base objects strongly to the selection of the right-to-work city for the convention and are threatening to disrupt the proceedings if Denver doesn't start using closed shops:

The Democrats' choice of Denver to anoint their presidential nominee in 2008 has stirred up angst among unions, one of the party's core groups, because of Colorado's reputation as an unfriendly place for organized labor. ...

Last month, the AFL-CIO threatened to force Democrats to abandon Denver after Colorado's Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter vetoed a bill making it easier to set up all-union workplaces. "Unless we can be assured that the governor will support our values and priorities, we will strongly urge the Democratic Party to relocate the convention," said the AFL-CIO's executive council.

Teamsters President James Hoffa chimed in last week, injecting himself into a conversation between Ritter and Sweeney at a Washington, D.C., dinner to say they would "blow up" Denver with picketing and protests if union issues didn't get worked out.

Howard Dean has his work cut out for him. Ritter vetoed the bill last February, long after Dean and the DNC selected Denver for their convention. The bill would have made it easier to set up closed shops in Colorado by eliminating the need for a second vote on how dues get imposed after a workplace votes for union representation. It takes 75% to vote in a closed shop on the second ballot, which the bill would have eliminated.

That would have addressed the concerns the unions expressed last year, when the two parties announced their selections for the 2008 venues. Both parties gave much consideration to the Twin Cities, which does have decent union penetration and a protective political climate. The Republicans closed the deal first, and while the Democrats could also have staged theirs here, they also still had union-friendly New York City as a finalist. Instead, the DNC made the unusual choice to ignore its base and attempt to expand its reach to moderates in the interior West.

Now they may wind up alienating both constituencies. The unions feel betrayed by Colorado's Democratic governor and want to start strong-arming both the DNC and Colorado into forcing the state to accept liberalized union policies. Western moderates, who don't cotton to getting strong-armed by outsiders at all, will most likely react poorly to the effort. That leaves the party, its base, and its selected city on a collision course for 2008.

This has all the makings of a fiasco. If the unions follow through on Hoffa's threat, any hope of winning the general election may dissipate the same way it did forty years earlier, and they could frighten off moderates not just for the presidential contest but all the way down the ticket.

UPDATE and BUMP: Will these threats have the effect of bolstering opposition to the proposed changes in labor laws? I'm betting that James Hoffa will have done the Republicans' work in underscoring the potential damage to Colorado's business climate.

And Then What?

Joe Biden wants American troops to intervene in Darfur in order to prevent the genocide that is occurring there:

Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a Democratic presidential candidate, called Wednesday for the use of military force to end the suffering in Darfur.

''I would use American force now,'' Biden said at a hearing before his committee. ''I think it's not only time not to take force off the table. I think it's time to put force on the table and use it.''

In advocating use of military force, Biden said senior U.S. military officials in Europe told him that 2,500 U.S. troops could ''radically change the situation on the ground now.''

''Let's stop the bleeding,'' Biden said. ''I think it's a moral imperative.''

Interesting. Is this the same Joe Biden who wants to pull out of Iraq and let similar forces conduct their own version of ethnic cleansing?

I'd like to know why we would want to retreat from Iraq and enable terrorists there to conduct genocides just so we can insert a ridiculously small force in the middle of a real civil war to supposedly stop a genocide there. The same Democrats who have insisted that Iraq is in the middle of a civil war, as an argument for our withdrawal, undermine that argument with demands for our military engagement in Darfur. What's so special about that civil war as opposed to the one in Iraq?

The 2,500 American troops will make no difference whatsoever if they get sent by a nation that refuses to see a difficult mission through to the end. The same radical Islamist forces in Darfur will take the lesson Biden will teach with his and his party's insistence on retreat in Iraq: we will withdraw if we get a big enough bloody nose, and we will abandon the people who trusted us to protect them. The moment we start taking significant casualties, we will see the same body-count websites and International ANSWER demonstrations insisting that the US is fighting to control Sudan's oil fields.

Let's stop the terrorists in front of us and show some tenacity and commitment. If we do that, then terrorists might take us seriously in places like Darfur.

What Happened To The 'Invisible Hand'?

Daniel Henninger lends his normally rational, free-market voice to the matter of blogger civility in today's Opinion Journal -- and opts for the communal approach. Henninger wants a code of conduct imposed on the blogosphere, even voluntarily, to reverse the tide of uncivility in modern discourse:

And so it came to pass in the year 2007 that a little platoon came forth to say unto the world: Enough is enough.

Two leading citizens of the Web, Tim O'Reilly and Jimmy Wales, have proposed a "Bloggers Code of Conduct." The reason for this code is the phenomenon of people posting extremely nasty verbal comments about other people on Web sites devoted to political and social commentary. For Mr. O'Reilly, a publisher and activist for open Web standards, the last blogospheric straw involved a friend whose suggestion that it was OK to delete offensive comments from Web sites earned her a backlash of vitriol on several sites, with one posting a photo of her alongside a drawing of a noose.

It is appropriate that this line should be drawn in the ether of the World Wide Web, whose controlling ethos up to now has been that speech and expression should remain free, unfettered and--the totemic word that ends all argument--"democratic." As it developed, too many of the Web's democrats, for reasons that have provided much new work for clinical psychologists, tend to write in a vocabulary of rage and aggression.

Henninger is wrong. It is convenient that the line should be drawn in the blogosphere. Otherwise, people might be tempted to draw lines in the press. Would Henninger agree to a speech code for his newspaper in order to restore civility, if tempers flare and people acted less than politely on the opinion pages? How about on television, where Geraldo Rivera and Bill O'Reilly acted mightily uncivil last week? Keith Olbermann on MS-NBC's Countdown? Jack Cafferty on CNN?

Speech codes don't work, especially voluntary speech codes. Henninger asserts in his conclusion that "an angry battalion of bloggers counterattacked, crying "censorship"." Some might, but the rest of us were more amused than angry, and we cried "pointless". The bloggers causing the problem wouldn't sign onto the speech codes, and the ones that would don't cause the problem. After the adoption of this speech code, we will still have buttheads in the blogosphere who pull the same juvenile stunts, use the same juvenile name-calling as a substitute for argument, and refuse to take control over their comments section, as always.

Why not let the market work instead? Discerning readers stay away from the dish-throwers. Advertisers will avoid abusive sites. That approach seemed to work well with Don Imus, whose latest reprehensible bout with uncivility has drawn rather serious financial consequences. The broadcast industry didn't need the National Seal of Civility for those consequences to arise. Isn't that what the Invisible Hand of the marketplace is supposed to do?

Let the readers decide what they support. Genuine threats should be referred to law enforcement. Insults and infantile tantrums are best ignored, not used to tar the entire blogosphere. Most of us don't need Henninger and other self-appointed nannies to demand our civility.

In an increasingly statist world, we have plenty of voices advocating top-down solutions for pseudo-ills of society that remove individual choice and responsibility. Guilds and unions don't solve problems based on immaturity. I would expect the arguments presented here from the New York Times, but not from a Wall Street Journal publication.

Another Great Argument For School Vouchers

CQ reader Mr. Michael, a Seattle resident, noticed that the city's school district has expanded its curriculum to include a particular seminar for the first time. Knute Berger reports at Crosscut Seattle that the district will send students to a "White Privilege" conference at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs next week, first noted by our old friend Stefan Sharkansky at Sound Politics. What would a conference on "white privilege" teach those Seattle students fortunate enough to attend? Let's see:

The annual White Privilege Conference (WPC) serves as a yearly opportunity to examine and explore difficult issues related to white privilege, white supremacy and oppression. WPC provides a forum for critical discussions about diversity, multicultural education and leadership, social justice, race/racism, sexual orientation, gender relations, religion and other systems of privilege/oppression. WPC is recognized as a challenging, empowering and educational experience. The workshops, keynotes and institutes not only inform participants, but engage and challenge them, while providing practical tips and strategies for combating inequality.

I'm not ignorant of this nation's history and its impact on society today. Culturally and in general, whites have held a privileged position in the US for almost all of its history; that is undeniable. White culture enslaved Africans for generations and oppressed them for a century after the Civil War freed them. White culture also conquered the native peoples of the continent and oppressed them for generations afterwards. Those dynamics deserve serious study and the ill effects require rational efforts to reverse.

This, however, hardly looks to fit the bill. First, take a look at the laundry list of the topics. I understand the inclusion of diversity and racism, which fits the topic of white privilege. But what about religion? Does a public school system that probably doesn't allow Christmas celebrations or Easter decorations now want to start teaching about the oppression of religious groups on Americans? Is sexual orientation an issue only among whites? This isn't a workshop about the specific effects of white privilege in American history and current events; it's a conference on political correctness.

It also appears to have serious competence issues. For an educational program given by a university for the eighth year in a row, the material is poorly edited:

Q. Is this about proving how bad white folks are?

A. Our attempts to dismantle dominance and oppression must follow a path other than that of either vilifying or obliterating Whiteness... Whites need to acknowledge and work through the negative historical implications of 'Whiteness' and create for ourselves a transformed identity as White people committed to equality and social change. Our goal is neither to defy or denigrate Whiteness, but to difuse [sic] its destructive power.

To teach my white students and my own children that they are 'not White' is to do them a disservice. To teach them that there a [sic] different ways of being White, and that they have a choice as White people to become champions fo [sic] justice and social healing, is to provide them a positive direction for growth and to grant them the dignity of their own being.

Gary Howard
We Can't Teach What We Don't Know: White Teachers, Multiracial Schools

Gary Howard apparently can't teach spelling and proofreading, and neither can the University of Colorado. Perhaps spending more time on English would produce students better able to challenge white privilege in American society. Besides, how can one "difuse" the destructive power of Whiteness but not denigrate it? Does one normally oppose something that isn't subject to vilification or obliteration?

And while I agree that white privilege exists, racism and all the other ills described and decried in this program do not spring from the color of one's skin, but the nature of the heart and soul. Other cultures in other nations have problems with racism, sexism, religious oppression, and the entire panoply of human afflictions. We see this playing out across the Middle East, Asia, and Africa today. Darfur has managed to become a killing field of racism and hatred without the assistance of white people to make it so. Focusing on the pale seems a bit beyond the pale for those who want to truly learn about racism, sexism, sexual orientation, and diversity.

As Mr. Michael says, this seems like a great argument for school vouchers. Seattle parents may want to closely monitor the curricula offered by their school district even outside of the White Privilege Conference next week.

Doubling Down On Sleaze

A husband and wife, struggling through unemployment, place a resumé on line, and a placement firm notices it and invites the couple to an interview. The husband completes an application and a first interview, and everything seems fine. However, when the placement firm calls back, they want the wife to accompany the husband for the second interview, which seems rather strange -- until the "counselor" gets to the point at the end of the presentation. After regaling the couple with tales of how difficult it is to find placement, and how traditional headhunters (who get paid by the employer) eat into the compensation plan offered by companies, the placement firm tells the couple that for just over $4,000, they are 90% sure they can find the husband a job.

Sound like a scam? That's what Katherine Coble thought, too, and she blogged about her experiences with Tennessee placement firm JL Kirk Associates. Shortly thereafter, however, JL Kirk sent the Cobles a different kind of proposal -- to shut up or else:

I am being ordered to take down all of my blog entries pertaining to JL Kirk & Associates. If I don’t, they will so me for tortuous interference and other damages.

In a subsequent conversation with the attorney, Alan Kopady of King & Ballow Law Offices, if I do not take down the blog entries they will contact my Internet Service Provider, Comcast, to have my internet access shut down.

I have until April 13th to comply with the demands of the letter.

Here's the relevant text of the letter:

This firm represents JL Kirk Associates. In the February 27, 2007, posting to your blog “Just Another Pretty Farce” you made the following false and defamatory statements about JL Kirk Associates:

1. JL Kirk Associates “…was formerly Bernald Haldane before it was purchased by Mr. Kirk Leipzig.”
2. That JL Kirk Associates personnel “use fear to motivate” potential clients to pay for services “without question and without the possibility of a refund.”
3. That, during your interview with your husband, there were questions “designed to help [you] as the insecure wife put more economic pressure” on your husband.
4. That the amount you were asked to pay “neatly” coincided with your tax refund “which is a matter of public record.”

In addition, a number of statements made in you posting conve a meaning that is clearly injurious to the reputation of JL Kirk Associates.

Under Tennessee law, any malicious publication expressed in writing intending to injure the character or diminish the reputation of a business is libel. Moreover, even if statements are literally true, the publisher of those statements is subject to monetary damages where “the meaning reasonably conveyed by the published words is defamatory.” Memphis Publishing Comany v. Nichols, 569 S.W. 2d 412 (Tenn. 1978)

As the “publisher” of your blog, you control, and are responsible for, the content appearing in it. References by persons posting to your blog to JL Kirk Associates as “crooks” and its services as a “scam” are equally false and defamatory as your own.

Well, now we have both sides of the story. I have no direct knowledge of which side is telling the truth. Coble could be lying and perhaps defamed JL Kirk Associates. However, let's ask a couple of questions about this:

1. Are you, the CQ reader who looks at both communications, likely to believe JL Kirk or Katherine Coble? Given the nature of both communications (read Katherine's posts!), which sounds more likely to be true?

2. Given that even a fairly moderate criticism (even if unreasonable) of JL Kirk prompted this 16-ton legal approach, would any of you be tempted to do business with them?

3. Did anyone at JL Kirk or King & Ballow, JLK's legal representatives, ever consider that issuing this kind of threat amounted to throwing gasoline on a lit match? Did any of them understand the blogosphere at all? And given that level of cluelessness, would CQ readers do business with either firm?

If Coble misunderstood the nature of JLK's offer, perhaps JLK would have been better advised to contact her directly rather than run to their lawyers. Only six weeks passed between the post and the certified letter, and it probably took them five weeks just to notice the blog post at all. Companies that quick to sue over a public complaint, even with inflammatory language like "crooks" and "scam", generally turn out to be guilty of being both.

Most laughably, K&B includes this pithy little passage:

Moreover, even if statements are literally true, the publisher of those statements is subject to monetary damages where “the meaning reasonably conveyed by the published words is defamatory.” ” Memphis Publishing Comany v. Nichols, 569 S.W. 2d 412 (Tenn. 1978)

That may or may not be true in the legal sense, but what does it mean in practical terms? It means that her description of the event was literally true, but it damaged them, and they don't like it. That tends to make me see Coble as even more credible, and JLK as suspiciously hysterical.

Coble may have to take down her posts. Her family already has to struggle through unemployment and assuredly cannot afford to fight JL Kirk Associates and King & Barrow. However, their ham-handed efforts have ensured that the rest of the blogosphere will have created a long trail on the Internet for future researchers to discover, which will cost them much more than whatever K&B charges JLK for truly foolish legal -- and practical -- advice.

UPDATE: They should have hired Bill Hobbs.

Sarkozy Denies Chirac Deal

Nicolas Sarkozy leads the field for the first round of voting for the presidency of France, but the current Elysee occupant presents him with a problem. The endorsement of Jacques Chirac has fueled speculation that Sarkozy agreed to protect the incumbent from a prosecution that has waited for his term of office to end. Sarkozy denied that he has cut that deal:

Nicolas Sarkozy, the favourite to become France's new president, denied allegations yesterday that he had struck a deal with the outgoing president, Jacques Chirac, to protect him from prosecution in return for his support.

After weeks of speculation, a report in the Paris-based satirical magazine Le Canard Enchaîné claimed that Mr Sarkozy agreed to help Mr Chirac, so long as he backed him as his successor.

Mr Chirac, who became president in 1995, has been linked with a number of scandals, but presidential immunity has protected him throughout his two terms.

Quoting sources close to the president, the weekly magazine alleged that "in exchange for Chirac's support for his candidacy, Sarkozy made a commitment, if he wins, to avoid any judicial backlash for Chirac".

This sounds like the rumored deal between Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon. The principals all denied that any deal had been struck, but after Nixon appointed Ford and resigned, Ford granted Nixon the full pardon that put him outside the reach of law enforcement and Congress. It probably ended Ford's political career, although the WIN buttons and denying that Poland was a Soviet vassal state didn't help, either.

Sarkozy's supposed deal has more subtlety to it. According to sources, Sarkozy will introduce a statute of limitations on corruption cases. The potential charges Chirac faces all date back to 1995 and before, and such a limit would exclude Chirac from any prosecution after he leaves office. That caused two of Sarkozy's opponents to pledge not to interfere with the investigations into Chirac, directly or indirectly, if elected president. Sarkozy strongly denied the report of the deal, but so far has not joined the centrist and the Socialist candidates in the pledge.

In general, these rumors usually turn out to be generated by political opponents and have little foundation. However, as an associate of Chirac, Sarkozy may need to get a little more explicit about his intentions towards the investigation of his fellow UMP leader.

Duke, Don, & Fred: The Omnibus Post

Let's take a moment to update three stories from today after the major developments that occurred in all three. First, the Attorney General of North Carolina dropped all charges against the Duke lacrosse players as expected, but he went much farther than that. Roy Cooper did everything but confirm that Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong committed prosecutorial misconduct:

We believe that these cases were the result of a tragic rush to accuse and a failure to verify serious allegations. Based on the significant inconsistencies between the evidence and the various accounts given by the accusing witness, we believe these three individuals are innocent of these charges.

We approached this case with the understanding that rape and sexual assault victims often have some inconsistencies in their accounts of a traumatic event. However, in this case, the inconsistencies were so significant and so contrary to the evidence that we have no credible evidence that an attack occurred in that house that night. ...

The eyewitness identification procedures were faulty and unreliable. No DNA confirms the accuser's story. No other witness confirms her story. Other evidence contradicts her story. She contradicts herself. Next week, we'll be providing a written summary of the important factual findings and some of the specific contradictions that have led us to the conclusion that no attack occurred.

In this case, with the weight of the state behind him, the Durham district attorney pushed forward unchecked. There were many points in the case where caution would have served justice better than bravado. And in the rush to condemn, a community and a state lost the ability to see clearly. Regardless of the reasons this case was pushed forward, the result was wrong. Today, we need to learn from this and keep it from happening again to anybody.

Obviously, Cooper wants to correct a terrible wrong done to these three young men, but Reade Seligmann made a better point in his reaction. He noted that the DA and the police had felt comfortable enough to smear three men with enough resources to defend themselves -- and wondered what they do to those who cannot. The North Carolina Bar will be asking the same question. One has to believe that Cooper's public excoriation of Mike Nifong will put enormous pressure on them to act severely towards Nifong in his upcoming hearing.

Don Imus had a bad day, too. Sponsors of his radio show and televised simulcast spent today running away from him and his insulting remarks towards the Rutgers women's basketball team, and MS-NBC just reacted by cancelling the simulcast:

MSNBC said Wednesday it will drop its simulcast of the “Imus in the Morning” radio program, responding to growing outrage over the radio host’s racial slur against the Rutgers women’s basketball team.

In a statement, NBC News announced "this decision comes as a result of an ongoing review process, which initially included the announcement of a suspension. It also takes into account many conversations with our own employees. What matters to us most is that the men and women of NBC Universal have confidence in the values we have set for this company. This is the only decision that makes that possible." ...

The network’s decision came after a growing list of sponsors — including American Express Co., Staples Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., and General Motors Corp. — said they were pulling ads from Imus’ show for the indefinite future.

Did he deserve to get cancelled? Entertainers have lost their jobs for less. If this starts impressing on shock jocks that their audiences have had enough of their vitriol, then so much the better. CBS has not announced whether it will keep Imus on the radio waves, but says they are "closely monitoring" the situation. Translation -- stay tuned.

Finally, Fred Thompson appeared on Sean Hannity's show earlier today to discuss his illness and his presidential aspirations. Hannity asked him if he reads the blogs, and Power Line has the answer:

Thompson just made favorable mention of several blogs, including Power Line. He says he's reading PL and others (Red State, Captain's Quarters, and Instapundit -- apologies if I missed anyone) as he considers whether to run for president. Hannity told him not to read blogs because "sooner or later you will be attacked." What blogs has Hannity been reading?

FURTHER UPDATE: Thompson's appearance with Hannity is over now. He went on to say that his announcement about his medical issue is part of the process of deciding whether to run for president. He doesn't think it should affect any such bid, but wants to see what the reaction of others is. He also is still trying to determine whether he's "the guy for these times." I get the impression he thinks he probably is.

Fred, if you're reading this, stay healthy -- and jump in whenever you're ready. We'd love to see what you can offer.

The Educational Value Of Junkets

A few days ago, I wrote about the bill proposed by Michigan Democrats in the state legislature to buy an i-Pod for every Michigan student, supposedly for educational purposes. The plan would cost an already-strapped state government an additional $36 million, adding to their billion-dollar deficit, causing many observers to wonder where Democrats Matt Gillard and Andy Dillon came up with the idea.

Today, the Detroit Free Press answers that question. It turns out that Apple paid for their travel to visit their corporate offices in California:

Two state lawmakers backing a controversial plan to buy iPods for every schoolchild in Michigan were among a group of politicians who made a trip to California that was paid for at least in part by Apple, the maker of iPods.

The 2 1/2 -day trip earlier this year covered a range of issues and interaction on topics related to Michigan. It included a visit to Apple in northern California, where the politicians discussed classroom technology and educational uses for the popular audio and video players, said Rep. Matt Gillard, D-Alpena, one of the legislators who made the trip.

House Speaker Andy Dillon, D-Redford Township, also made the trip to San Francisco and nearby Santa Clara County.

The $36-million iPod proposal was unveiled last week at a news conference called by Dillon to discuss the state's budget crisis and House Democrats' plans to address it.

The lawmakers insist that the i-Pods would benefit grade-schoolers in their education. Students could download lectures, they claim, which should prompt even more questions. How many lectures do first-graders get? Sixth graders? How would they download these lectures, and what makes the politicians think that any elementary- or secondary-school students would actually use the i-Pods for that purpose? Would the state replace them if they got lost, too, and continue to buy them as children moved from kindergarten to the first grade?

Those questions get overlooked, and reasonably so, when people wonder why Gillard and Dillon want to put $36 million into Apple's coffers while the state faces an economic crisis and a breathtaking budget deficit. Even if they wanted to increase spending on education, why would i-Pods make the best investment? Wouldn't more schoolrooms, better materials, and a few more teachers have a more positive effect than an MP3 player?

Gillard and Dillon apparently aren't concerned with those questions. They're more concerned with the well-being of Apple than with Michigan students or the state economy. They defended their trips by claiming that Republicans have taken similar trips at Apple's expense -- but the GOP retorted that Republicans weren't dumb enough to propose this kind of pork as a quid pro quo. (h/t: CQ reader Michael J)

Fun Facts About The 110th Congress

The Democrats won majorities in both chambers of Congress in part by promising that they would change the way Congress conducts business, both in terms of ethics and productivity. Calling the Republican-led 109th a "Do-Nothing Congress", Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid promised more action, longer work weeks, and a blockbuster first 100 days.

How has that worked out? Not particularly well. The 110th has managed to get all of two bills passed into law by the end of their first 100 days:

McCain: I Blame Rumsfeld For Iraq

I took part in a blogger conference on my lunchbreak today with Senator John McCain on the topic of Iraq. McCain, who gave a speech on Iraq at the Virginia Military Institute earlier today, wanted to reach out to New Media sources for his perspective on the progress of the war, the critical nature of our effort there, and the need to persevere until we succeed.

McCain did not pull many punches in this call. Speaking as bluntly as I have heard in some time, he acknowledged the credibility deficit of the Pentagon and White House on the war. Saying that “too often, we misled the American people in the past” about deadenders, mission accomplished, and so on, McCain said that the press has become too reluctant to report actual progress in Iraq. He feels that bloggers and radio hosts can help get real information to the American people and help encourage the nation to remain tenacious.

Who does he blame for the credibility gap? McCain pointed out that President Bush has to accept the ultimate responsibility for that as well as for the faulty strategy used up to this year in attempting to pacify the insurgencies. The Senator says that he is pleased with the direction the White House has taken this year and the energy with which they have pursued it. He faulted the White House for not having regular press conferences dedicated to discussing the progress in Iraq in clear and objective terms, which McCain feels would have disarmed much of the criticism, especially this year.

Ultimately, though, he blames Donald Rumsfeld for shrinking the military and using too light of a footprint in post-invasion Iraq -- a position McCain has consistently maintained for over three years. He also blames Generals Casey and Sanchez for their roles in supporting Rumsfeld's strategies. He believes that General Petraeus, a "charismatic" commander, has the right approach and the skills to succeed in Iraq. McCain also praised Rumsfeld's replacement, Robert Gates, and told us that Pentagon morale has increased substantially since Rumsfeld's departure.

Progress has been made in Baghdad and Anbar since the surge, McCain insisted. Tribal sheikhs have lined up with the US for several reasons. Chief among them, al-Qaeda in Iraq has used "brutal and cruel" tactics in the region to fight their war without regard to the native Iraqis. Anbar tribes see the US attempting to rebuild Iraq and AQI as attempting to destroy it, and they see their interests with the West rather than with the jihadists.

I asked the Senator whether Moqtada al-Sadr's new orders for the Mahdi Army to attack American forces could cause a collapse of the Maliki government. McCain thinks Sadr is mostly bluffing; he waited too long and has not made a personal appearance for too long, and a defeat at the hands of the American and Iraqi forces would finish him. Joking that he was "digging for the pony here," he predicted that Sadr would back down as he has in the past rather than take that big of a gamble.

We will know within a few months whether the surge will succeed, McCain told us. By that time, we can see whether Maliki has the political strength and will to make the necessary adjustments. If the US cannot succeed in Iraq, McCain believes that David Petraeus has the strength of character to tell that to the President and then to the American people. Petraeus believes we can prevail, McCain told us, and that we must.

Final observations: McCain does well in this format. He speaks with a disarming humility that might surprise some, and with an honest passion that impresses. He should try to do more of these in the future.

Fred Has Manageable Cancer (Update: Fred's Showing His Hand)

See below for updates.

Fred Thompson, whose potential entry into the 2008 presidential race has him already third in Republican polling, announced today that he has a manageable form of lymphoma:

Republican Fred Thompson, the actor-politician who is considering a bid for president, said Wednesday he has lymphoma, a form of cancer.

In an interview with Fox News, the former Tennessee senator said he is in remission and the diagnosis shouldn't affect his life expectancy.

Thompson, 64, told Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto that he has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, but hasn't been ill or had any symptoms. ...

Some of these subtypes are termed "indolent," meaning they typically respond well to treatment — patients often go into remission for long periods, but the disease is not cured and may need to be battled back again periodically.

This may throw some cold water on the Thompson boomlet. Some voters have expressed reservations about the health of John McCain after his battles with skin cancer. Similarly, Rudy Giuliani has battled prostate cancer, although he has been clear for about six years.

Lymphoma sounds more serious, even if it may not be. It will cause some people to think twice about supporting Thompson with this condition even if it is manageable.

UPDATE: I think Hot Air is right -- the release of this information indicates that Thompson is clearing the decks for a presidential run. I'm just not sure whether he can overcome it.

UPDATE II: Of course, our prayers go out to Thompson and his family for health and strength; sometimes we forget to prioritize these issues properly. Mea culpa.

UPDATE III: Bill Frist -- Dr. Bill Frist -- seems to confirm the "clearing the decks" theory:

In my view, this disclosure indicates his seriousness as a potential candidate. He's a dedicated public servant with true conservative credentials, extraordinary communications skills and a devotion to his principles.

I hope you'll continue to post your statements encouraging Fred to run so that I can share them with him and other supporters across the country.

UPDATE IV: I've made a few calls on my lunch break, and here's the scoop. Fred's had this for almost three years now, and he's not missed any work or slowed down at all during that time. He and his wife had a child during this period, which gives an indication that he has plenty of stamina; after all, shooting schedules for weekly television programs are not known to be kind to cast and crew.

Why is he announcing this now? Word is that he wants to make sure that his supporters feel comfortable with the issue before proceeding, and he's interested in the commentary. He's a straight shooter and he didn't want this to be a surprise during a campaign -- he's laying his cards on the table. For Fred supporters, that thought process should be very encouraging.

The Empty Suit Parade

Katie Couric's ascension to Dan Rather's seat promised a change in mood, if not an improvement in substance over the man who continues to insist that the Bill Burkett memos were genuine. It turns out that Couric also produces memos and articles that lack genuineness, as a plagiarism scandal exposed her as ghost-written on her own "notebook":

Katie Couric did a one-minute commentary last week on the joys of getting her first library card, but the thoughts were less than original. The piece was substantially lifted from a Wall Street Journal column.

CBS News apologized for the plagiarized passages yesterday and said the commentary had been written by a network producer who has since been fired.

The CBS anchor "was horrified," spokeswoman Sandy Genelius said. "We all were."

The "Katie's Notebook" items are distributed to CBS television and radio stations, including WTOP (103.5 FM and 820 AM) in Washington, and posted on the news division's Web site. Genelius said it is "very common" for the first-person commentaries to be put together by staffers without Couric's being involved in the writing, but that she does participate in topic selection. Her recent commentaries have ranged from the Iraq war and the paucity of female columnists to the movie "300" and many girls discarding dating for "hooking up."

I'll bet they're horrified. As Howard Kurtz points out, the "Notebook" piece originally accompanied a video of Couric talking about her memories of that first library card, which makes it clear that Couric participated at least indirectly in the plagiarism. It certainly qualifies as a deception, as she knew that the words were not hers, and the folksy reminiscence was clearly phony.

Plagiarism is the secondary scandal here. CBS has apologized for lifting the material, and the Journal has graciously accepted it. The primary scandal is the marketing of Couric as a journalist, attempting to boost her credibility and her likability with these articles written by staffers. They want to prop her up as a replacement for Rather, who despite his many faults actually worked as a reporter for many years before the anchor gig.

The irony comes from the fact that even with all of these efforts to build Katie into a reporter, the public still finds Couric and CBS less than credible. Her ratings tanked shortly after joining CBS as the anchor as the Tiffany Network switched to softer news on her arrival. Now that the plagiarism has pulled back the green curtain, Couric is exposed as an empty suit -- emptier even than her colleagues on network news broadcasts. She's the new gold standard for phoniness.

Next Up: Disbarring Nifong

ABC News reports that the North Carolina Attorney General will drop all charges against the Duke lacrosse players originally accused of raping an exotic dancer at a party over a year ago. After the DNA produced no matches for the students and the victim kept changing her story, prosecutors belatedly discovered that they had no case:

The office of North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper will announce that he is dismissing all charges against three Duke Lacrosse players, ABC News has learned from sources close to the case.

The three players, Reade Seligmann, David Evans and Collin Finnerty, were facing charges of first degree kidnapping and first degree forcible sexual offense. The charges stem from an off-campus party on the night of March 13, 2006. ...

The reasons that will be cited for the dismissal are not yet known, though the case has been riddled with criticism and colored by controversy since its early months. Defense attorneys released documents showing the accuser changed key details of her story in the weeks and months after the alleged assault.

Legal analysts and forensic experts have criticized what they call a critically flawed photo identification lineup — a lineup that led to the identification and indictment of Evans, Finnerty, Seligmann. No DNA evidence was found matching any lacrosse players with samples from the rape kit, while DNA from unidentified men was found on the accuser's body and clothing.

This case has been a travesty since its start. The district attorney, Mike Nifong, made his case in public right from the start, acting very inappropriately and inflaming local passions against the accused. Later, it turned out that Nifong knew about the exculpatory DNA results but conspired with the lab to keep the results from the defendants -- an act that likely violated the law and the civil rights of the defendants, and certainly violated any sense of legal ethics.

The North Carolina Bar already has Nifong under investigation for his many questionable acts in this case. Nifong wanted to ride the Duke players all the way to re-election, and he managed to do that. The state Bar should make sure that Nifong does not profit from his unethical and potentially illegal misconduct. Disbarring him would force Nifong to resign his office, the least punishment he should receive for his actions in a year-long nightmare for three falsely-accused students.

La Shawn Barber has covered this case from the beginning, and has more thoughts on the matter, as well as links to Durham bloggers who have also covered the case.

Stem Cell Controversy And Bad Timing In Congress

The Senate will once again attempt to loosen the restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, applied in September 2001 by the Bush administration. They expect to gain a veto-proof majority for the upper chamber, but the House will likely split much more closely, and Bush has pledged to veto the legislation once it gets to his desk:

Launching an emotional political and ethical drama that is widely expected to climax with the second veto of George W. Bush's presidency, the Senate yesterday began a two-day debate over the use of taxpayer dollars for embryonic stem cell research.

The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, to be voted on late today or tomorrow, would loosen Bush's Aug. 9, 2001, ban on federal funding for research on stem cells that were isolated from human embryos after that date.

The House passed a nearly identical bill in 2005, as did the Senate in 2006. But Bush vetoed it, saying it crossed a moral line since human embryos must be destroyed to obtain the medically promising cells.

What has changed since lasty year? Majority control of Congress has shifted to the Democrats, and they perceive Bush to be even weaker than he was when he issued his first and only veto of his presidency. The science hasn't advanced for hEsc development at all. Researchers still have not implemented a single therapy from embryonic stem cells. One of the proponents of the bill, the firm Geron, says it will start the first US human tests of hEsc-based therapy "soon".

This time, the Senate will allow an alternative bill to get a floor vote. Sponsored by Norm Coleman and Johnny Isakson, it proposes to use stem cells from clinically dead embryos, hoping to bypass the ethical and moral dilemmas that have kept hEsc research from getting federal funds. Some researchers scoff at the proposal, saying that such cells would almost certainly be suspect even if still alive when extracted, but Coleman and Isakson argue that the alternative will never pass into law anyway.

Perhaps that's because stem-cell research continues to show that hEsc is not as promising as other techniques. The Los Angeles Times reports that human trials have shown that stem cells taken from the blood of diabetics can cure the disease:

Researchers have demonstrated for the first time that the progression of Type 1 diabetes can be halted — and possibly reversed — by a stem-cell transplant that preserves the body's diminishing ability to make insulin, according to a study published today.

The experimental therapy eliminated the need for insulin injections for months or even years in 14 of 15 patients recently diagnosed with the disease. One subject, a 30-year-old male, hasn't taken insulin since his stem-cell transplant more than three years ago, according to the study in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

The study suggests a new avenue for treating the intractable disease, in which the immune system destroys insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. Without insulin, patients can't metabolize sugar and run the risk of developing nerve damage, cardiovascular disease, kidney failure and blindness.

When hEsc advocates demand federal funding for their research, diabetes is one of the top arguments they make. Now it looks like medical science can coax the correct stem cells from the patients themselves, without having to grind up human embryos for a cure. Of course, one has to go through two-thirds of the Times' article to discover this, as Karen Kaplan takes her time in reporting the actual process in which the doctors derive the stem cells.

Congress is about to embark on an argument which has almost been made moot already. The presidential veto will only serve as the crowning moment for a Congress which insists on pursuing junk science as wedge issues.

The Market Is Not Censorship (Updated)

Don Imus has created a firestorm of criticism for his comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team last week, in which he called them "nappy-headed ho's". Many critics have called for CBS and NBC to fire Imus for his remarks, while some feel that terminating his show would go too far for the offense given. Michael Meyers, the former head of the New York Civil Rights Commission and an officer in the NAACP, even calls such demands an infringement on free speech:

Defending Don Imus's on-air racial idiocy is impossible -- but defending free speech, even in the form of sick humor, ought to be considered anew in the wake of a storm of protest from censorious activists who are demanding that Imus be fired.

There is an audience out there that is hungry for the ribald and the offensive. It is an audience that will not go away and cannot be boycotted. Does labeling those listeners and the shock jocks they adore and emulate as racial dunces or "un-American," and making the shock jocks unemployable (for daring to say what they think), advance the dialogue about racism or sexism? I don't think so.

Ours is supposed to be a nation that prides itself on free speech -- let a thousand tongues wag, we say, and the truth will be uncovered. But the censors and activists who are so readily offended by idiocy on radio have discovered still another truth: that the First Amendment does not apply to radio shock jocks. And so they want the advertisers and networks to ban the I-Man and toss him off the air. They don't want to hear from Imus, and they don't want anybody else to hear him, either. If the censors and pressure groups succeed, what will become of our culture of free speech, especially with such gabbers as Al Sharpton curiously demanding action from the FCC?

On the final point in the excerpt, I agree with Meyers. The FCC should not take any action against Imus. He said nothing that objectively violates FCC rules, with which I have some familiarity as a part-time broadcast talk show host here in the Twin Cities. The government should not make value judgments on content that does not break rules for obscenity, which are fairly clear and for the most part easily followed.

Outside of that, Meyers tries to make a First Amendment case where it does not apply. Except for the perpetually obtuse Sharpton, no one is asking the government to take Imus off the air. The protestors have pressured CBS and NBC to fire Imus -- and they comprise what both networks would consider their potential audience.

Boycotts are a perfectly acceptable form of free-market protest. If a corporation offends its market in some manner, their consumers will take their business elsewhere. Those consumers can organize to attempt to change the behavior of the vendor in some manner, and that action has complete legitimacy in the marketplace as long as it isn't for illegal purposes. Especially in entertainment, the consumers have few other options available to effect change without organizing in some kind of manner.

Boycotts get used across the political spectrum, and the NAACP should understand that better than anyone. It was a boycott of the Montgomery bus system in 1955-6 that launched the modern civil rights movement. The NAACP has threatened or staged other boycotts since for various purposes and with varying degrees of success, and have often criticized the entertainment industry for its portrayals of black Americans and at least threatened boycotts as an extension of their protests. These boycotts didn't violate free speech or free association; they merely brought market forces to bear on a protest.

Imus has the right to say what he did. For that matter, the Ku Klux Klan has the right to say what they do, as long as it doesn't foment violence. That doesn't mean that the First Amendment requires CBS and NBC to give either of them a platform for it. Free speech does not include a right to commandeer someone else's press or microphone without their permission.

Meyers should know all of this better than anyone. CBS and NBC have a market decision to make, and they'll probably conclude that Imus' audience will not dissipate over this piece of rank stupidity. They will almost certainly be correct in this judgment, which says plenty about Imus' audience. The two-week suspension will at least exact some kind of consequence for what Michelle Malkin accurately described as Imus' "verbal diarrhea".

Addendum: Here's the crux of the matter: media stars shouldn't attack kids, regardless of the nature of the attack. It's bullying, and nothing turns off people more than a bully. Imus either forgot this, or never learned it before now.

UPDATE: The Admiral Emeritus and I debated this story today. He points out the hypocrisy of university officials complaining (rightly) about Imus calling their female athletes "ho's" when similar officials allow their students to call guest speakers and fellow students "Nazis" and worse. It's a good point, but I'd be disappointed if the university officials hadn't defended the basketball players from that insult, and once again, all the women did to earn Imus' scorn was to play basketball expertly. To argue for the opposite winds up at a Duke standard, which is worse than the hypocrisy, practically speaking.

UPDATE II: The market has begun to make its impact felt. Three major advertisers have pulled their money from Imus, leaving CBS Radio "reeling" (via Hugh Hewitt):

At least three advertisers associated with Mr. Imus's program on either radio or television -- including the nation's biggest marketer, Procter & Gamble -- suspended their ad support amid a growing controversy over racist remarks he made about the Rutgers women's basketball team last week. ...

The advertisers' reaction suggests fallout over Mr. Imus's remarks could persist. Marketers aren't saying whether their pullouts are permanent, and they are likely to watch carefully to see if the fuss dies down. But the withdrawal of more advertisers could potentially undercut support for Mr. Imus returning to the air. Civil-rights groups such as the NAACP have called for him to be fired, while the Rev. Al Sharpton is calling for advertisers and guests to boycott the program.

P&G was the 10th largest advertiser on MS-NBC's morning programs, and because of the rotation of ads throughout the broadcast schedule, P&G withdrew all of its ad money for the morning show. The move will put pressure on General Motors and the other top 10 advertisers on the morning shows to explain why they still endorse Imus.

The Kind Of Porkbusting I Can Support

Peter Brixtofte won lavish praise for his unique ideas on socialism, which included free vacations for retirees and personal computers for schoolchildren. He served as mayor of Farum, Denmark for 16 years as a result of his beneficence and popularity. Now he gets to serve two years as a guest of the state for using the city's bank accounts to pay for all of those wildly popular programs:

A free-spending Danish mayor who became hugely popular for offering free vacations to retirees and computers to school children was convicted Tuesday of abusing his office and sentenced to two years in prison.

Peter Brixtofte, who was once hailed as a visionary for his unconventional welfare programs in the small town of Farum, was widely discredited after town coffers ran dry due to his lavish spending.

The city court in Hilleroed, north of Copenhagen, found Brixtofte guilty of fraud, and said he abused his position by implementing his programs and taking loans without the backing of the town council.

Brixtofte proved an old truth: it's easy to be popular when you have someone else's checkbook. He did what most politicians do, which is to use taxpayer money to redirect it for his own political benefit. He just shortened the pork process, made it more personal, and snowed the fine folks of Farum.

Not that they remain blameless in this story. As long as the free vacations and the computers kept coming out of Brixtofte's office, Farum residents never bothered to ask where Brixtofte found all the money for his largesse. They happily scarfed the pork that they were fed. Only when they found out that Brixtofte had left them with nothing did they finally discover the real price of his beneficent socialism.

Who's more to blame -- the con man or his willing victims? Who is more to blame for the same kind of foolishness here in the US ... the politicians who bring home the bacon or the victims who keep supporting their pork-barrel Brixtoftes?

The Taliban Offensive: Red On Red

The Taliban had promised that their 2007 spring offensive would have the West's forces reeling backwards and out of Afghanistan. Someone's reeling, but it isn't NATO or Pakistan. The Taliban has a different fight on its hands -- more like a civil war:

When spring came and the snows began to melt in the mountains of Waziristan, Pakistani troops braced themselves for the seasonal upsurge in fighting along the porous border with Afghanistan.

But, when it came, Pakistani soldiers were surprised, and relieved, to see the Taleban loyalists and the militants linked to al-Qaeda who seek sanctuary in this lawless region firing rockets and mortars not at them but at each other.

For the first time since 2001, the Waziri tribesmen who probably harboured Osama bin Laden and remain loyal to the Taleban are fighting against the foreign militants in their midst.

In the past two weeks an estimated 250 people have been killed in fighting between the tribesmen and militants, who are mainly from the former Soviet Central Asian state of Uzbekistan.

The spring thaw has apparently created a meltdown among the jihadis. The Waziri elders have issued a fatwa against the Uzbeks who have come to the Pashtun region. They have gone so far as to call out the lashkar, a religious militia; any man able to bear arms must join or have his home destroyed. They will have their hands full, as the Uzbeks have a reputation for ferocity that outstrips that of the Waziri Pashtuns.

No one could be happier than Pervez Musharraf. When he inked that deal with the tribal leaders in Waziristan, he received condemnation from his partners in the West. Musharraf argued that the deal would not compromise border security for Afghanistan, a claim that Hamid Karzai has hotly disputed, and for good reason.

Now Musharraf can point to this internecine warfare between the different al-Qaeda and Taliban factions as a benefit of the deal -- and he could be right. Leaving them alone together during a long winter has apparently unfrozen historical tensions between the tribal cultures of central Asia. They have crippled the Taliban's plans for major offensive operations against the Karzai government, and could destroy the two organizations in bloody infighting.

That won't bring peace to Afghanistan and Pakistan, of course. The two long-term results will either be that one side prevails against the other, or that they eventually work out some sort of peace between the factions in Waziristan. When either of those happen, the operations against Afghanistan's elected government will resume -- but the extra time will allow Karzai to strengthen himself and Afghanistan's security forces.

Some Are More Precious Than Others

The Italian government endured international criticism for freeing five Taliban fighters last month for one of its journalists after his abduction. When Romano Prodi got Afghanistan to deal for Daniele Mastrogiacomo's release, Prodi defended their actions by noting that "the life of a person is very precious," and that the exceptional circumstance "will never happen again." The Italians proved they were as good as their word by apparently leaving Mastrogiacomo's translater behind -- for the Taliban to murder:

The government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi came under fierce attack on Monday after the Taliban said it had killed an Afghan hostage who was a colleague of the Italian journalist freed last month in a prisoner swap.

That journalist, Daniele Mastrogiacomo of La Repubblica, was freed on March 19 in exchange for five Taliban fighters released by the Afghan government. Italy had lobbied Afghanistan to make a deal. At the time, the Italian government spokesman said, “We think that the life of a person is very precious.”

But on Sunday, the Taliban said it killed Mr. Mastrogiacomo’s translator, Ajmal Naqshbandi, after failing to arrange another prisoner swap. Taliban fighters had already killed the men’s driver.

At the time, the Italians insisted that they were only following the policies of the Silvio Berlusconi government before it. However, a charity group now claims that Prodi paid the Taliban $2 million to release another Italian journalist in October. That makes the claim of a "special case" for Mastrogiacomo somewhat less credible. The Italians will pay ransoms, and so the Taliban keeps kidnapping Italians as a result.

This has caused Prodi some political problems back home. Not only are they unhappy about enabling kidnappers, but they object to the rather callous decision by Prodi not to insist on including the journalists' co-workers in the deal. The opposition claims that the Prodi government rushed to free an "A-league" hostage but left the 'second-class" victims to their fate.

It probably didn't hurt that the Italians in question both worked as journalists. Berlusconi made the same decision with reporter Giuliana Sgrena in 2005, widely considered to have been freed for ransom. The Italians hid the deal from the American military in Iraq and tried to run past a checkpoint, and their intelligence chief, Nicola Calipari, wound up dead from a sentry's shot into the car.

Both Berlusconi and Prodi seem to favor ransoming reporters; can anyone guess why? Whatever the reason, Ajmal Naqshbandi didn't have the same precious value.

UPDATE: Wrong pronoun -- Mastrogiacomo is a male, not a female. Thanks to CQ reader Turner for the correction.

Edwards' Neighbor On Blog Talk Radio

Yesterday, Elizabeth Edwards made headlines by declaring that she would treat her "rabid Republican" in an uncivil manner, despite never having met the man. Tonight, you can do what Elizabeth Edwards refuses to do -- meet her neighbor. Eric Dondero will have John Montgomery on his Blog Talk Radio show tonight:

You may have caught this story yesterday. It made AP nationally. Seems Dem Presidential Candidate John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth have a slight little problem. They hate their neighbor. He's a gun-toting, property rights advocating, root 'n tootin' libertarian Republican. My Co-Host Andre Traversa called him up last night. And this guy is a hoot! He's country to the core. John Montgomery will be on our show tonight "Libertarian Politics Live" to discuss his "slight little problem" with the Edwards.

Be sure to tune in at 9:30 pm CT tonight!

The Tragedy Of Consistency

I'm an avid reader of E.J. Dionne, not because I sometimes agree with what he writes, but because he writes one of the most reasoned liberal columns. Today, Dionne looks at what he sees as a tragic transformation of John McCain, and laments McCain's missed opportunity to tell truth to power:

There is another tragic element: McCain suffered mightily during the 2000 presidential primaries at the hands of George W. Bush's political machine, which smeared the senator on everything from his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam to the racial identity of his adopted daughter.

Yet McCain is being dragged down now by his loyalty to the very same Bush and his policies in Iraq. Earlier in the war, McCain was a fierce critic of the president's strategy and tactics. But those criticisms count for little now. Bush destroyed McCain's candidacy by design the first time and is smothering him by association this time.

McCain had hoped that this week would mark the beginning of his comeback, but it got off to a difficult start. Coverage of his Sunday appearance on "60 Minutes" was dominated by his apology for talking about how safe parts of Baghdad were -- even as CBS footage showed that McCain's stroll through a market was peaceful only because of the formidable military presence around him. Later this week, he'll give the first in a series of major policy speeches.

But even the best speeches and op-ed pieces cannot free McCain from the consequences of his choices. It turns out that no matter what he does to court, soothe and pamper the right, many in its ranks will never abide him. He spoke out too forcefully in 2000 for campaign finance reform and against "the demands of big-money special interests." He condemned the "self-appointed" leaders of conservative groups -- a rather influential constituency -- and singled out Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as "the agents of intolerance." People in politics have long memories.

I was a little surprised to see Dionne use the Iraq war as an example of McCain's transformation. McCain did criticize the Bush administration and Donald Rumsfeld earlier, but because he insisted that the Pentagon had not committed enough resources to get the job done. He criticized Rumsfeld for clinging to his paradigm of a smaller, lighter force despite what McCain saw as clear needs for a heavier presence in Baghdad, as well as Rumsfeld's management of the Abu Ghraib scandal.

What changed? Bush replaced Rumsfeld with Robert Gates, and then replaced General Casey with General Petraeus. With those changes, Bush took McCain's advice and added more brigades to secure Baghdad and put in broader rules of engagement to handle the insurgencies. Bush took McCain's advice; McCain didn't change at all.

McCain has engaged more with conservative activists, notably Pat Robertson, than he did in the previous campaign. I'm no fan of Robertson either -- I described him yesterday as the "embarrassing old uncle" of the GOP. However, Dionne shows no evidence that McCain has changed his policy stands in regards to this new outreach. He snubbed CPAC this year, which shows that McCain still feels uncomfortable with "self-appointed leaders" of the movement, although CPAC has a long track record of leadership for conservatism. He hasn't backed away from campaign-finance reform, either, even though he might win back a lot of conservative support if he did so.

If anything, McCain's tragedy can be found in his consistency, or rather his obstinacy, on issues like the BCRA. It's no small irony that his campaign has fallen far behind that of Mitt Romney, a more obscure candidate until just recently, on raising money. The record amount of fundraising this early in the campaign has completely discredited the McCain-Feingold approach to reform; checkbooks are busier than ever, making the free-speech sacrifices a waste.

When I see John McCain, I don't see a man who has changed at all, on policy or in character. I have my beefs with McCain, but inconsistency isn't one of them. My friend Paul Mirengoff at Power Line has more thoughts along the same lines.

UPDATE: I meant to say that I sometimes agree with what he writes, so I rewrote my opening sentence, which made no sense in context. Also, if you missed his interview with Hugh Hewitt tonight, the transcript is here. I think one can get a sense of the genuine, decent nature of Dionne -- and that's not just because he reads CQ.

Gallup Polling: The Rich Get Richer ...

... and the challengers fall back. According to Gallup's latest surveys on the presidential primaries, Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton put more distance between themselves and their nearest challengers, despite missteps by both candidates since the last polling. The results tend to contradict some of the analyses published since the first-quarter fundraising numbers got released last week.

First, the GOP:

The April 2-5 Gallup Poll finds 38% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents favoring Giuliani for the 2008 nomination, well ahead of his closest pursuer, McCain (16%). Two unannounced but potential candidates -- Gingrich and Thompson -- tie for third at 10%. The remaining 10 candidates tested in the poll all score below 10%, led by Mitt Romney at 6%.

Romney had drawn the most money out of Republican donors in the last cycle, while McCain had finished weakly, but it has not changed Romney's relative position at all. Despite his $23 million, Romney has not bounced back to his previous high-water mark of 8%. Leading the second tier might sound nice, but it isn't what the Romney campaign should have expected after all of their efforts in Q1.

McCain's results, though, reflect the mild disarray of his campaign. His disappointing fund-raising numbers seems to track with the arc of his support in the Gallup polling. He has now come almost within the margin of error of Fred Thommpson's support -- before Thompson even forms an exploratory committee. Giuliani has lapped McCain at this point, and even with the abortion bobble last week (in the middle of the polling) appears to have achieved cruising altitude. The rest of the Republicans can't beat the No Opinion mark.

And so far, it looks like a Subway Series as the other New Yorker (cough) has distanced herself from her energetic challenger:

Sen. Hillary Clinton remains the dominant presidential front-runner among Democrats nationally, with twice the support as her nearest challenger. Sen. Barack Obama, former Sen. John Edwards, and former Vice President Al Gore are tightly bunched in second place, with all other candidates in low single digits. If Gore is removed from the ballot and his supporters' second-place choices substituted, Clinton's lead becomes even more dominant, with Obama and Edwards tied far behind.

These data were collected April 2-5, just as reports of Obama's first-quarter fundraising success were made public. The survey results suggest that while Obama may have had a great deal of financial momentum in the past quarter, it was not matched by any increase in voter support.

Well, ouch. It does come at the same time that many have questioned Obama's substance, however. His lack of policy depth and his inexperience has begun to show through the charm offensive that Obama has made into a presidential campaign. Even Edwards outdoes him on policy on the stump, and more people have begun to notice. Obama's support has drifted back down to the level he had when he first announced his entry into the race in January, while Hillary has rebuilt her support almost to its February peak.

Interestingly, Gore has also declined in the last two surveys. Many thought he would get a huge boost from the Oscars, where his documentary won an Academy Award at the end of February. He peaked at 18% then, but now has dropped to 14%. Edwards managed to dig himself out of a mid-quarter hole to finish about where he began it. Similar to the GOP, the rest of the pack can't beat No Opinion.

What does this mean? It gives an aura of inevitability to the Madison Square Garden general election, and that does not bode well for Hillary. Her high negatives will not do well against Rudy's low negatives, and the Democrats can expect to lose the middle in a head-to-head matchup. It's a long way before November 2008, but her high negatives have not decreased at all over the last couple of years, and she's unlikely to become more likable as a national campaign wears on her.

Democrats Fear Fox, Part II

Democrats have once again gone running in fright from Fox News Channel for a political debate -- or more accurately, have run from fear of their anti-war base. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama join John Edwards in refusing to appear on Fox for a debate sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus:

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) yesterday joined former North Carolina senator John Edwards (D) in deciding to skip a debate scheduled for September that Fox News is co-sponsoring with the Congressional Black Caucus.

Liberal activists, particularly the online group Moveon.org, have called for Democratic presidential candidates not to participate in debates by Fox, which they say is biased against Democrats. Clinton campaign aides said she would participate only in the six events sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee and two other events she had already agreed to. Several candidates, including Edwards, last month withdrew from a debate that Fox was co-hosting with the Nevada Democratic Party and would have taken place in August in Reno.

Aides to Obama, Edwards and Clinton said the candidates will participate in a debate that the Congressional Black Caucus is co-sponsoring with CNN in January in South Carolina.

Hmmm. I wonder why these courageous Democrats only feel free to speak when appearing on CNN. I mean, the Congressional Black Caucus doesn't seem to feel the same fear as the candidates. They had their 2004 debates on Fox, and they survived the ordeal -- twice. Those debates included Edwards on both occasions, and he wound up on the ticket for the Democrats.

Once again, I will ask this question: how can we expect these candidates to face off against America's enemies when they can't bring themselves to face Fox? Do they expect that this demonstration of cravenness to actually impress anyone but the radical defeatists of MoveOn?

Some will suggest that the Republicans boycott CNN in response. That would be a huge mistake. First, the choice of venue for these debates, especially in the primary, is almost meaningless. Second, we don't need both parties to act like shrieking little children at the sight of a mouse. The eventual President represents the entire nation, not just a party -- or in this case, a faction of a party -- and the candidates who model that in the primaries and the general election will have the greatest chance of success. Besides, CNN didn't do anything in this case to earn Republican enmity except be the unfortunate cave in which these courageous Democratic candidates chose to hide.

But hey, it's still early in the campaign. Perhaps by the time the primaries arrive, Democratic presidential candidates might even have the stones to make appearances without MoveOn's permission.

Competence And The Mayor

John Podhoretz, who has supported Rudy Giuliani since he wrote Can She Be Stopped? about Hillary Clinton early last year, wants to brace America's Mayor after a tough two weeks. John writes an open letter to Rudy in today's New York Post, making it clear that Giuliani has to show his normally encyclopaedic grasp of issues and details and demonstrate a high degree of competency if he hopes to win conservatives in the Republican primary:

So where is it now?

The vision seems to be there. But not the competence. ...

[T]he answer to your pro-choice difficulty with social conservatives on the matter of abortion isn't to blather about how much you "hate it" and then ruminate on whether the government should be responsible for helping pay for one. That's what you did last week, and you must never, ever do anything like it again - if, that is, you actually want to become president.

The answer to dealing with the abortion question is to do what you did as mayor - to master the issue the way you mastered the weird particulars of zoning law in Manhattan.

By which I mean, all the jurisprudence. All the arguments. The history of legislation on the matter. The history of court rulings. Immerse yourself in it and then argue your point from a position of strength, rather than relative ignorance.

I'm not as concerned as John about Rudy's stumble. It was bad, but it happened early, and he eventually recovered from it. This would have been much worse had it happened in December, and he's got plenty of recovery time -- and time to master the jurisprudence, legislation, and arguments, as John advises.

However, it does highlight the fragility of Rudy's unlikely campaign from the Rockefeller wing of the party for the nomination. The most important value Rudy offers Republicans is competency. He governed New York City as a moderate Republican and made it wildly successful for himself and the city. He broke the back of the Mafia in New York, again showing brilliance, organizational ability, and plenty of courage. He needs to sell Republicans on the notion that competency and courage should be enough in an age of terrorism, and he may be right.

That makes any missteps on the campaign trail a question about the basic premise of his campaign. Rudy will have the toughest time of any serious presidential contender, and not just because of the differences Rudy has with the GOP base on social issues. Conservatives already understand that Rudy is a pro-choice, pro-gun control politician with some nuances on both positions, but thus far seem willing to be wooed on Rudy's terms. When Rudy botches it like he did last week, he does double damage to himself -- both on policy and on competence. He cannot afford to look as though he's struggling for answers, not as the Competence Candidate.

Team Rudy should heed John's advice. Rudy should understand that the social issues will continue to be the focus for nervous conservatives and media outlets looking to trip him on the way to the nomination. Better preparation will benefit the Mayor.

Moving Immigration Reform To The Right

George Bush launched his 2007 campaign for comprehensive immigration reform, and as the Los Angeles Times reports, has aimed it at conservatives in an attempt to get a broader coalition. Bush himself remained vague on the details, but subsequent briefings by White House officials shows a plan that would put more hurdles in place for citizenship and limiting access to workers only, a move that will lose some of his support from the Left:

Although the president was vague about the details of his new effort, proposals being discussed among White House officials and GOP lawmakers seem designed to bring recalcitrant Republicans aboard.

For instance, one plan would require illegal immigrants wishing to remain in the United States to return to their country of origin first and pay a $10,000 fine to obtain a three-year work visa. The visas would be renewable, at a cost of $3,500. Also, illegal immigrants who were in the U.S. before June 1, 2006, who paid various fees and fines and who met other criteria, including learning English, eventually could seek to become citizens.

These conditions for visas and citizenship are more stringent than provisions in a Bush-supported bill that the Senate passed last year. But it remains uncertain whether tougher conditions will overcome the objections of those who consider it amnesty to provide any path to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.

Bush said in his Monday speech — as he has throughout the immigration debate — that he opposed amnesty, which he defined as "the forgiveness of an offense without penalty."

He said he was working with the Democrats who now control Congress and Republicans "to find a practical answer that lies between granting automatic citizenship to every illegal immigrant and deporting every illegal immigrant."

Good luck with that, Mr. President. At this point, it seems almost impossible to strip out the emotional responses and find something practical and workable that will satisfy business interests, humanitarian needs, and bolster a long-weeping hole in our national security.

Bush thought he could press forward on comprehensive reform after the Democrats won a majority in Congress, an interesting and unique reversal of the normal political dynamic. His previous effort, cast in the McCain-Kennedy bill from the last session, foundered on the objections of House Republicans, who wanted a border-first bill and refused to move their version of McCain-Kennedy. One might think that a Democratic majority would have overcome that problem, but the new Democrats represent the same districts that refused to support any hint of amnesty. As a result, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have made it clear that they can't deliver immigration reform without Republican support -- and that means the bill has to take Republican concerns into account more honestly.

Let's just mull that over for a moment ... a Democratic majority forced the White House to take Republican concerns on immigration more seriously. It's a strange old world, sometimes.

One point on which this may cause even more problems is that of family relations. Immigrants can get their families into the country on special visas once they have established themselves in the US. Republicans want that ended or curtailed when it comes to normalizing illegals currently in the US, and want a policy that focuses on the labor needs of the US rather than the family needs of the immigrants. Democrats will almost certainly object to that kind of policy change, which would make passage -- or even a floor vote -- a more remote possibility.

In the end, though, we have to start taking steps to resolve at least the national-security aspects of the problem. That means closing the border first, which Bush says has already started to happen. Crossings have dropped and surveillance has increased via high-tech systems designed to discover and track border crossings.

Once we have confidence in our border security, we have to identify those illegals in the country and determine whether they are a threat. That becomes a lot easier if we have a system in place for illegals to self-report and normalize. In order for that to happen in a short time frame, we have to be willing to incentivize it through some kind of legal residency, using a process that acknowledges their illegal status and paying a penalty for it. If we can make that happen, then finding the few who really represent a threat to the US will be much easier and would make much more efficient use of law-enforcement resources, without threatening the civil liberties of citizens and legal residents.

We need to start getting more rational about the potential risks of the current system, and start looking for the kinds of rational mechanisms that will make us secure in the quickest manner possible. We should have done this six years ago, and every day we waste is a day where our enemies may find a way to exploit the opening we have left them.

Rethinking McCain

Jonah Goldberg warns conservatives not to ignore John McCain in the presidential primary race in his latest LA Times column. Conceding that McCain has angered the Republican base on a number of occasions, he also advises that McCain has a long track record of supporting most of the conservative agenda. And on the all-important issue of terrorism and the war, Goldberg asks which of the present candidates has put more on the line to support it than Barry Goldwater's successor in the Senate:

In the eyes of his conservative detractors — among whom I've long counted myself — McCain has a maddening habit of proving his political independence by winning accolades from the New York Times editorial board. On campaign finance reform, global warming and opposition to tax cuts, the "maverick" has too often racked up points by scoring against his own team. Sometimes he stands to the right of the GOP, sometimes to the left, but always he seems to relish breaking ranks for its own sake.

It's an annoying habit, but conservatives should consider their other options. By any measure, Rudy Giuliani is the more liberal candidate — indeed, the most liberal serious candidate Republicans have fielded in decades. But because Giuliani made the right enemies — chief among them those vexatious New York Times editors — conservatives respect him, even though they disagree with him on almost everything. And they give the cold shoulder to McCain, who agrees with them on most of the important things.

McCain's been a consistent pro-lifer (which distinguishes him from pretty much everyone else in the race so far). Until recently, Giuliani argued passionately for partial-birth abortion as a constitutional right. McCain has voted to confirm every conservative Supreme Court nominee, including Robert Bork. He voted "guilty" in Bill Clinton's impeachment trial. He campaigned for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, even after Bush beat him. Giuliani says he was ideologically simpatico with Clinton, and he endorsed Democrat Mario Cuomo for governor of New York.

My point isn't merely to make invidious comparisons between McCain and Giuliani (heck, to liberals they're not invidious at all). I'm actually a fan of Giuliani, and I think the GOP and the country could do worse in a president and Republican standard-bearer. But the double standard on the right seems more than a little self-indulgent.

Goldberg misses a few controversies that have dogged McCain in his efforts to win conservative support for his campaign. His work in forming the Gang of 14 is the lesser of the problems, but it underscores the feeling of mistrust that McCain engenders. Instead of fighting to support conservative jurists, McCain bailed out, and did so while grabbing plenty of headlines for it. A few good judges got tossed under the bus as a result. Even if it allowed passions to cool somewhat, it endorsed the Democratic notion of filibustering nominations to the federal appellate courts, something that had only been done once before, and for non-partisan reasons.

McCain also sits to the left of his party on two key issues: immigration and free speech. McCain has backed away from his partnership with Ted Kennedy on comprehensive immigration reform, but his efforts last year to give citizenship to millions of people who entered the country illegally did not do much to bolster his conservative credentials. On that score, though, I can understand his policy and believe it to have more national-security benefits than most of his other detractors. His efforts to curtail political speech in the form of the BCRA, however, are a blight on American politics, and one for which McCain offers no apologies.

That all being said, Goldberg has a point. Giuliani supported the BCRA as well, and so did Mitt Romney until he didn't. Fred Thompson, the potential White Knight, voted for the BCRA, one of only eleven Republican Senators to do so. Even McCain now supports a border-first security plan as part of immigration reform. McCain has been far more conservative than his two fellow front-runners over the course of his career. Is the anti-McCain sentiment among Republican conservatives an immature grudge, as Goldberg argues here, or a reasoned final position?

The Tortured Logic Of Simon Jenkins

The apparent reversal of the British Navy on the sale of stories from their 15 sailors and Marines captured by Iran undoubtedly pleased many, but maybe none so oddly as The Guardian's Simon Jenkins. Jenkins decried the tabloid bidding war not primarily because of its impact on military discipline, but because stories of abuse and torture would make it harder for Britain to conduct diplomacy with Iran. No, really:

We need dialogue with Iran. By pumping up the propaganda war with the sale of captives' stories, that only becomes harder

The Royal Navy's decision to let its personnel sell stories of their failed military operation beggars ever more belief. Even the most ardent student of government openness must wonder at the thought processes involved. The navy may no longer rule the waves, but it waives the rules when it sees the glint of money. Last night it appeared to admit it was wrong, or at least a minister did. Are any of these people really in charge of British military operations? ...

As long as the Iraq occupation continues, Iran is bound to treat Britain and the US as hostile intruders. The west is fighting counterinsurgency wars on Iran's eastern and western borders. Iranian politics is awash with sympathisers for the insurgents. Moderate leadership is blighted by daily atrocities to coreligionists in and around Baghdad. While Tehran has no interest in the Taliban in Afghanistan, it has emotional and religious attachment to the Shia cause in Iraq. No government can stand aloof from the invasion and occupation of a neighbouring state by a foreign power. To expect otherwise of Iran is naive.

Hence the one silver lining that might have emerged from the affair of the captive 15. As a result of the efforts required to free them, some new points of contact might have been opened with those in Tehran who want their country to come in from the cold. Iran is too big, proud, rich and unpredictable a nation to be susceptible to the usual neoconservative swagger. Whatever the import of President Ahmadinejad's boast yesterday, it is clearly on the brink of acquiring substantial nuclear capability. It is not another petty Muslim state of the sort that features in the crusader fantasies of George Bush, Tony Blair and their circle. If ever Blair hoped to carry his "western values agenda" on a white charger to the gates of Tehran, that hope vanished in the mire of Iraq.

This screed bounces all over the place -- from Iraq to neocons to "mad mullahs of the quarterdeck", Jenkins tries mightily to place blame everywhere but on the country that committed the act of war. Jenkins claims that Iran is too big, rich, proud, and unpredictable, apparently to be held accountable for its own actions. And because of that bigness, richness, and unpredictability, Britain and the US have to overlook the act of war Iran committed in shanghaing the sailors and Marines in international waters, as well as the Geneva Convention violations they committed by forcing the detainees to issue humiliating public statements on Iranian TV.

And why does Jenkins hysterically blame everyone but the mullahs? Because we have to keep channels open to the political establishment that supposedly opposes the nuclear buildup and Iranian military aggression. Jenkins declares that American policies of "ostracism, containment, and regime change" have been counterproductive. Jenkins fails to mention, though, that the European policy of diplomatic and economic engagement have proven just as unsuccessful for Iran, which continues to push its nuclear program forward despite years of talks with Britain, France, and Germany.

So what's left? War? Jenkins also rejects this path, and for at least a few good reasons, including the size and terrain of Iran and the generally (but mildly) pro-Western bent of the average Iranian. He never mentions the consequences of talking for too long without any resolution to the nuclear crisis, even though Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made clear his intention of wiping out Israel and forcing the West out of the Middle East.

The West cannot conduct an all-out war against Iran, but we can't afford to just keep talking at them while they cheerfully enrich uranium and develop nuclear weapons -- not while they continue to sponsor terrorists and publicly pronounce their plans for genocide. The one policy we know has failed has been diplomatic and economic engagement; all Britain got from its years of engagement was a national humiliation. Perhaps a blockade might get better results.

Update On Trackbacks

Earlier, I had removed the URL for trackback pings because of heavy spamming recently. All of the spam had been caught in my filter, but a few legitimate pings get caught in the filter as well. I have been rescuing legitimate pings from the junk process up to now, and I wanted to stop the flood of actual spam pings in order to approve the others.

It didn't work out the way I planned. I couldn't quite get the descriptions correct, and pings went to the wrong posts. I've restored the display of the trackback URL, so that problem should be eliminated.

However, I will no longer check the junk filter for legitimate pings, and will force them to delete in 24 hours after detection. Almost without exception, the trapped pings get flagged because of a mismatch between the IP address in the ping and the IP address for the domain URL, or an unspecified inability to resolve the latter. If your pings do not appear on the blog, be sure to check your outbound pings to verify that the IP address resolves back to your domain.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Iran: We're Industrious

Once again, the analysts that predicted a 5-10 year development period for Iran before the mullahs could produce a nuclear weapon have underestimated the industriousness of the Islamic Republic. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced today that Iran has 3,000 centrifuges on line and producing fissile material -- a cascade that could produce weapons-grade material in less than two years:

Iran announced Monday that it has begun enriching uranium with 3,000 centrifuges, defiantly expanding a nuclear program that has drawn U.N. sanctions and condemnation from the West.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at a ceremony at the enrichment facility at Natanz that Iran was capable of enriching nuclear fuel "on an industrial scale."

Asked whether Iran has begun injecting uranium gas into 3,000 centrifuges for enrichment, top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani replied, "Yes." He did not elaborate, but it was the first confirmation that Iran had installed the larger set of centrifuges after months of saying it intends to do so. Until now, Iran was only known to have 328 centrifuges operating.

Iran can build a nuclear weapon by the time 2009 rolls around, and potentially sooner than that if the Iranians add more centrifuges to the cascade. Over the last couple of years, we have repeatedly heard that it would take the mullahs five years or more to master the technology and produce enough highly-enriched uranium. That story started falling apart eight weeks ago, when the IAEA abruptly changed its story on Iranian progress. Now the Iranians themselves have confirmed it.

The time frame for action to stop radical Islamists from developing nuclear weapons has collapsed. If diplomacy will do it, then the West needs to calculate the correct formula for ending Iranian research on nukes. If diplomacy won't do it -- and the EU-3 have tried it for years now -- then we need to start considering other options. Allowing the mullahcracy and Ahmadinejad to possess nuclear weapons with their publicly stated goal of wiping Israel off the face of the planet will be nothing short of suicidal.

Addendum: One of the reasons I linked to the USA Today article was its insipid headline: "Nuke program majorly expanded, Iran says". Majorly? Like, totally tubular, dude. I first thought that they pulled the term from a quote, and wondered when the Iranians had hired Valley Girls for spokespeople. Time to send the headline write back to English classes in order to improve his or her gnarly vocabulary. Grody.

Imus' Tone Deafness Nothing New

Don Imus, the national radio talk-show host for NBC, got himself into some hot water last week when he used racially derogative terms to describe a women's college basketball team. Calling them "nappy-headed ho's", Imus compared them unfavorably to a supposedly "cute" and predominantly white competing team. Today, Imus attempted to apologize to Al Sharpton on the latter's own radio show, but Sharpton didn't let him off the hook:

Don Imus said on his nationally syndicated radio show today that he was a “good person who said a bad thing” by way of explaining his comments about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team that many critics have called racist. ...

Later in the day, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has been calling for Mr. Imus’s resignation, upbraided him on his own radio show, “Keepin It Real,” as the two discussed his comments.

“This is not about whether you’re a good man,” Mr. Sharpton told Mr. Imus, who was a guest on the show. “This is about setting a precedent that allows racist language to be used on mainstream, federally regulated television and radio.

“What you said is racist,” he said.

I'm amazed that Imus still has a show after these comments. After all, Howard Cosell got kicked off of ABC for referring to a black running back as a "little monkey," even though (a) he often called his grandchildren the same thing and didn't intend it as a racial insult, and (b) Cosell had worked tirelessly to support Mohammed Ali during his career. Jimmy the Greek got bounced from CBS for suggesting that the dominance of African-American athletes came from breeding decisions by slave owners. Al Campanis, a man who had worked hard to boost black baseball players, got forced out of the Dodgers organization for voicing some strange ideas about why there weren't more black swimmers.

At least two of these three men did more for racial equality than Imus has ever done, and gave much less reason for offense than Imus. Yet Imus gets to hold onto his job -- at least, so far.

I'm not saying Imus should get canned for one rather offensive and somewhat malicious offense. But it's not the only time Imus has demonstrated a tone deafness on race, either. Next week, I will be interviewing Bernard Goldberg for the release of his new book, Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right: How One Side Lost Its Mind and the Other Lost Its Nerve, his latest look at the political scene. It has not hit the stands yet, but I have started reviewing the proofs -- and Goldberg has a chapter just for Don Imus and his cluelessness on race. Titled "Don Imus and St. Charles", Goldberg recounts another conversation where Imus managed to insult most of the civil-rights movement:

On this particular day he was talking to Charles Barkley, the retired basketball star, whose book about race in America -- Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man? -- had just come out in paperback. They started out by talking about the death, the night before, of Coretta Scott King. Sir Charles, who grew up in Alabama, told Imus how much she and her husband, Martin Luther King, Jr., had meant to him.

This gave Don an opening to tell Barkley that, "In my view, just as a white man, it doesn't seem to me that a lot has changed since those marches in Selma."

Not much had changed? At the time of Selma (1965), most black people in the South couldn't vote, let alone hold public office as many do now. Jm Crow laws still segregated public facilities, and civil rights workers were still getting attacked by law enforcement with the tacit approval of state governments. Plenty changed in 42 years -- and it was people like the Kings who made them change. That isn't to say that more work isn't needed, but only an oaf would insist that nothing had changed since the march from Selma to Montgomery.

Charles Barkley would have none of it. He told Imus that he was wrong, and then talked about what the African-American communities needed to do now, rather than feed into some ignorance how no progress had been made by the civil-rights movement. Goldberg calls Imus a "sissy", but in reality, Imus thought he would pander to his preconceived notion of Barkley's state of mind -- and Barkley called him on it.

Imus spent today pandering as well, it seems. Sharpton wouldn't have any of it, either. Maybe he shouldn't lose his job for making a couple of really bad mistakes, but perhaps these kinds of incidents demonstrate that Imus is very overrated.

Michelle Malkin and Hot Air have more.

UPDATE: Regarding Campanis, here's the Wikipedia entry on the controversy:

Campanis' infamous remarks took place on the late-night ABC News program Nightline, coinciding with the 40th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's Major League Baseball debut (April 15, 1947). Campanis, who had played alongside Robinson and was known for being close to him, was being interviewed about the subject. Nightline anchorman Ted Koppel asked him why, at the time, there had been few black managers and no black general managers in Major League Baseball. Campanis' reply was that blacks "may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager, or, perhaps, a general manager" for these positions. Elsewhere in the interview he said that blacks are often poor swimmers "because they don't have the buoyancy." Koppel says he gave Campanis several opportunities to clarify ("Do you really believe that?") or back down on his remarks but Campanis dug himself in deeper with his replies. A protest erupted the next morning and he resigned two days later.

UPDATE II: Stuck on Stupid and Confederate Yankee have more thoughts. Fox News' Brit Hume announced a short time ago that NBC is suspending Imus for two weeks, which seems appropriate.

Why Is The Media Obsessed With Mormons? (Bumped)

The New York Times features yet another editorial by yet another journalist giving yet another slate of advice for Mitt Romney to address his "Mormon problem". This time Newsweek's Kenneth Woodward, their reporter on religion, offers all of the reasons that Americans are apparently hysterical about the prospect of having an LDS president:

IN May, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and 2008 Republican presidential hopeful, will give the commencement address at Pat Robertson’s Regent University. What better opportunity for Mr. Romney to discuss the issue of his Mormon faith before an audience of evangelicals?

When John F. Kennedy spoke before Protestant clergymen in Houston in 1960, he sought to dispel the fear that as a Catholic president, he would be subject to direction from the pope. As a Mormon, Mr. Romney faces ignorance as well as fear of his church and its political influence. More Americans, polls show, are willing to accept a woman or an African-American as president than a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It isn’t just evangelical Christians in the Republican base who find Mr. Romney’s religion a stumbling block. Among those who identify themselves as liberal, almost half say they would not support a Mormon for president. Although with 5.6 million adherents Mormonism is the nation’s fourth-largest denomination, 57 percent of respondents to a recent CBS poll said they know little or nothing about Mormon beliefs and practices. Mr. Romney needs to be their teacher, whether he likes that role or not.

In my opinion, Romney should use the occasion to explain why he's speaking at Robertson's college at all. Robertson serves as the embarrassing old uncle that can't control his mouth at family reunions. His long history of political lunacy should have marginalized him years ago in the GOP, but candidates like Romney keep propping him up. Perhaps Romney can address Robertson's charges that federal judges are more dangerous than the 9/11 terrorists, or that the US should assassinate Hugo Chavez, because appearing at his venues keeps his media access alive for insane pronouncements like those.

Instead, though, Woodward tries to tell us all why we fear Mormons and why Romney has to spend the next eighteen months explaining an aspect of his life that will have almost nothing to do with his job as President. According to Woodward, Mormons scare us because:

1. They spend a lot of time with other Mormons.
2. They spend a lot of time with their families.
3. Mormons hire other Mormons.
4. Mormons expect their members to volunteer at their churches.
5. Mormons have different beliefs than other Christian religions.
6. The head of the Mormon church is in charge of the Mormon religion.

What earthshaking revelations that Woodward provides us in this article! It's not as if Catholics are expected to perform service in the church and volunteer for duties. Spending time with one's family at the expense of building a country-club clique must somehow undermine society in some way. And as for the fact that Mormons have a different faith than Episcopalians, that revelation truly shakes me to my core.

All of this drivel serves only to perpetuate Mormon bigotry. I could care less what Romney's conception of God is, as long as it doesn't involve strapping on suicide vests or inducing hundreds of people to drink poisoned Kool-Aid. Mormons have lived and thrived in this nation for over a century, and except for a few lunatics who no longer belong to the main Mormon church and insist on polygamy and child marriage, cause no more problems than anyone else. We're not electing an American Pope, we're electing a President, and Romney's choice of religion is neither debilitating nor exotic.

Woodward couches this wretched laundry list of Mormophobia as advice to Romney on how he can assuage the fears of bigots. My advice to Romney is to ignore it altogether and refrain from enabling that kind of debate. He won't convince the bigots anyway, and the rest of us are astute enough to understand that his religion presents no more bar to meeting Presidential responsibilities than did the Deism of our founders, or the Catholicism of John F Kennedy. Maybe if he shows that the people obsessed with his faith mostly consist of journalists looking for a cheap shot at him, the Times and other publications will stop offering their inane "advice".

UPDATE: Why didn't the Times think to offer this "advice" when Harry Reid, also a Mormon, became Senate Majority Leader? And as Hugh Hewitt points out, would the Times have allowed this column to appear on its pages if Woodward had produced something similar during the 2000 election, changing the word "Mormon" for "Jew" and directing it at Joe Lieberman?

Reid Vs Levin On Troop Funding

Carl Levin and Harry Reid seem to be on different pages in the battle over funding and withdrawal timetables for the war in Iraq. Just a couple of days after Harry Reid threatened to defund the war effort if Bush did not accept mandatory time triggers for troop withdrawals, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee insisted that the Democrats would not follow the Majority Leader's lead on funding:

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Sunday that the Senate would not cut off funding for the Iraq war but would keep pressing President Bush for a settlement among Iraqi leaders to end the violence.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), appearing on ABC's "This Week," disagreed with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who said last week that he would co-sponsor legislation to cut off almost all money for the war in Iraq by next March.

"Well, we're not going to vote to cut funding, period," Levin said. "Even Harry Reid acknowledged that that's not going to happen."

That isn't what Reid said a week ago. Responding to Bush's call to rid the funding bill of both the timetables and the pork that Democrats had drenched over the supplemental, Reid made it clear that no funding at all would come without either. He even co-sponsored a bill with Russ Feingold that would explicitly defund the effort, and said at the time that he would "work to ensure this legislation receives a vote in the Senate in the next work period" if Bush vetoed the current supplemental.

Levin apparently didn't ask Reid about that bill. He did make it clear on "This Week" that efforts like the Reid-Feingold bill would be used to keep political pressure on the White House to change course in Iraq. However, Levin didn't explain how the Reid-Feingold bill would pressure Bush if he and Barack Obama kept publicly insisting that the Democrats would not defund the war effort.

Jon Kyl and Arlen Specter both defended the war effort and chided Congress for its impatience. Specter allowed that his own patience had begun to wear thin, but that he sees signs of improvement. Kyl asked why Congress would pull the rug out from under the Iraqis and the US forces just as they had started implementing a successful strategy. Carl Levin's statement about using the supplemental for politics answers that quite nicely, and it shows that the Democrats perhaps need to quit playing games and start taking their responsibilities to keep the troops equipped a little more seriously.

Does The Blogosphere Need A Speech Code?

The New York Times reports on an effort that has percolated in the blogosphere over the last couple of weeks to clean up the on-line debate. Spurred by threats made against a female blogger over the propriety of deleting abusive comments, the new standards would more or less compel bloggers to eliminate offending comments and to discourage anonymous comments:

Chief among the recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by visitors to their pages and be able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship.

A recent outbreak of antagonism among several prominent bloggers “gives us an opportunity to change the level of expectations that people have about what’s acceptable online,” said Mr. O’Reilly, who posted the preliminary recommendations last week on his company blog (radar.oreilly.com). Mr. Wales then put the proposed guidelines on his company’s site (blogging.wikia.com), and is now soliciting comments in the hope of creating consensus around what constitutes civil behavior online.

Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Wales talk about creating several sets of guidelines for conduct and seals of approval represented by logos. For example, anonymous writing might be acceptable in one set; in another, it would be discouraged. Under a third set of guidelines, bloggers would pledge to get a second source for any gossip or breaking news they write about.

Bloggers could then pick a set of principles and post the corresponding badge on their page, to indicate to readers what kind of behavior and dialogue they will engage in and tolerate. The whole system would be voluntary, relying on the community to police itself.

This is one of those well-intentioned but doomed reform efforts that sound reasonable but will have no chance of changing anything. Before the reform leaves the dock, it has already split into several "standards", which will cause confusion on which logo means what rules and under which circumstances. Bloggers and commenters will have to look for logos, and then will endlessly argue over each individual post or comment as to whether it meets the guidelines.

Who would police this structure? What would be the penalty for violations? Being stripped of the logo will hardly lose a blogger much of his or her readership. Any other penalty would have to be self-imposed, and if that worked, we wouldn't need Tim O'Reilly or Jimmy Wales at all.

If a blogger gets threatened by an on-line commenter or another blogger, then the FBI should get called to investigate. If a blog has an out-of-control comment section where abuse and vitriol rule the day, simply stop reading that blog -- or even better yet, start another blog and criticize it. As for me, I find that writing in a non-inflammatory manner generally produces a calmer atmosphere in the comments. I use Typekey for registration to keep out drive-by abuse in that section and to hold commenters responsible for their behavior -- and we have the best community in the 'sphere as a result.

Most of us came into the blogosphere to get away from editorial restrictions imposed by others. We allow our own judgments and values to guide our publications. That may result in some bruised feelings from time to time, but our readers make the decision as to whether we have met their editorial guidelines, and that should be good enough in a free market.

Bush To Launch Immigration Campaign Today

George Bush will start working on the one issue where he finds sympathy from the Democratic majority Congress -- immigration. The new campaign starts in Yuma, Arizona, where Bush will speak near the Mexican border about the need to both secure the frontier between Mexico and the US, as well as resolve the status of millions of illegal immigrants:

In his speech in Yuma, Bush will stress four elements that he has to see in an immigration bill: more border security; better enforcement of immigration laws in the interior, especially laws against the hiring of undocumented workers; a temporary-worker program to address labor shortages; and "resolving without amnesty and without animosity the status of the millions of illegal immigrants that are here right now," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

A recently leaked White House presentation, devised after weeks of closed-door meetings with Republican senators, suggests some hardening of Bush's positions, however.

As spelled out in the presentation, which White House aides describe as ideas for debate, undocumented workers could apply for three-year work visas, renewable indefinitely at a cost of $3,500 each time. To get a green card that would make them legal permanent residents, they would have to return to their home countries, apply for reentry at a U.S. embassy or consulate, and pay a $10,000 fine.

In a new twist, more green cards would be made available to skilled workers by limiting visas for parents, children and siblings of U.S. citizens. Temporary workers could not bring their families into the country.

Democrats may not provide as much help as Bush thinks, however. The freshman class has a strong conservative streak, as I have noted before. Many of them had to become more conservative than the Republicans they replaced on immigration, and they understand that their districts will send them packing in 2008 if they approve anything that even sounds like amnesty.

House Democrats want to replace the McCain-Kennedy bill of the last session, the one that most closely represented the White House's policy preferences, with another bill co-sponsored by porkbusting Republican Jeff Flake. That would include a "touchback" requirement for illegals -- a brief return to their home country, with re-entry under legal processes. It cuts off illegals who entered the US after June 1, 2006, and those who meet that qualification would have to pass a security check and pay a two-staged fine to get permanent residency, and eventually the opportunity for citizenship.

Pelosi wants the Senate to go first, in order to provide some cover for the conservative Democrats and crossover Republicans who support Flake's STRIVE Act. Ted Kennedy and John McCain had started working on the Senate version at the beginning of this session of Congress. However, McCain dropped out of the effort recently, as his presidential campaign had suffered some blowback for his partnership with Kennedy last session on the issue. McCain shifted the effort to his protege, Lindsay Graham, but thus far the partnership has not produced a bill. Graham, who has his own credibility issues with conservatives on this issue and the judiciary after following McCain onto the Gang of 14, will not be any more likely to sell STRIVE to the GOP base.

Bush may want to get rolling on immigration reform, but at the moment, neither the House nor the Senate have any wheels on which to ride. Until both the White House and Congress focus on border security first -- on which the Blue Dog Democrats insist, reminiscent of last year's House Republicans -- the campaign will stall in the Yuma desert.

Should The Sailors Sell Their Stories?

The British government has overridden its own rules and granted the 15 Royal Navy personnel released by Iran this week permission to sell their stories to the media. The move comes as the detainees face criticism over their cooperation with Iranians and comparisons to earlier generations of sailors, who only gave name, rank, and serial number:

Two days after they were paraded as heroes with a story to tell, some of the 15 British sailors and marines captured and released by Iran seemed Sunday to have decided they have a story to sell.

In a highly unusual decision, Britain’s Ministry of Defense — normally tight-lipped, to say the least — acknowledged Saturday that it had agreed to permit them to offer their experiences for sale to newspapers and television stations.

Such transactions are common enough among civilians, some of whom have traded the rights to their stories for considerable sums of money. But the notion of active military service members making a profit from their exploits — particularly when thousands of others serving in Iraq and Afghanistan face daily peril and sometimes death — has reinforced the criticism of the 15 Britons’ seemingly pliant behavior toward the Iranians holding them.

“Our armed forces are, I think, the most respected institution in the country pretty much, and they deserve to be after the job they have done in very difficult circumstances in Iraq and in Afghanistan,” William Hague, the opposition Conservative spokesman on foreign affairs, said in a television interview.

“But if, whenever people have been in a difficult situation, they are going to be allowed to sell their story quickly after that, then I think we are going to lose steadily that dignity and respect for our armed forces.”

This is a tough question. I think that Hague has a point. If the British military allows every active-duty member to sell stories about their experiences in the military, the potential exists for a breakdown in discipline and unit cohesion. Men and women in the military hew to the chain of command for communicating their issues, not the media, and the involvement of others in these stories will not go unnoticed by those in their units who may not like how they get portrayed.

However, these particular 15 sailors and Marines find themselves in a unique situation. They have appeared on television, been identified as individuals, and now face public criticism over their actions in Iraq. They should have the opportunity to respond under these circumstances, and some control over the message they want to deliver to the British public. Without the bargaining power that the British military has granted them, they would not have any control over how their words got published.

The best solution would have been to keep their identities a secret from the beginning. The Iranians made that almost impossible through their violations of the Geneva Convention restrictions against using detainees for public humiliation, and the British offered no consequences to Iran for those violations. It wouldn't have happened at all if the British Navy had not left them vulnerable to a few Iranian gunboats without any significant defense. Now that they have been splashed on front pages across their nation for weeks, against their will, they have little choice but to defend themselves in the same manner.

What say CQ readers? Does this bode ill for discipline in the British Navy, or should the sailors and Marines have the right to defend themselves in the most effective way possible?

Newt: Gonzales Should Spend More Time With His Family

Newt Gingrich became the latest and most high-profile Republican to call for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign. In an interview with Fox's Chris Wallace, Gingrich assailed for mishandling an "artificial" crisis and wondered aloud how Gonzales could remain an effective force for the Bush administration:

Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, today became the latest Republican to criticize Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales for the controversial dismissals of eight United States attorneys and said Mr. Gonzales should consider stepping down.

“This is the most mishandled, artificial, self-created mess that I can remember in the years, in the years I’ve been active in public life,” Mr. Gingrich said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“You know, the buck has to stop somewhere, and I’m assuming it’s the attorney general and his immediate team,” Mr. Gingrich went on. Asked by the interviewer Chris Wallace whether Mr. Gonzales should resign, Mr. Gingrich replied, “I cannot imagine how he is going to be effective for the rest of this administration.”

“I think the country, in fact, would be much better served to have a new team at the Justice Department, across the board,” added Mr. Gingrich, who is rumored to be considering a run for the presidency.

This will not help Gonzales and may hasten his departure. Up to now, the people who had called for his resignation had mostly been Democrats, or Republicans with lower national standing among conservatives. Gingrich represents the heart of the conservative movement within the party, which changes the dynamic for Gonzales' immediate future.

Plenty of people have the opinion that a resignation from Gonzales, whether demanded or not by George Bush, would weaken the administration. The argument goes that such a resignation would embolden Democrats to seek even more heads from the administration. However, Gingrich himself is no shrinking violet to partisan warfare, and he apparently doesn't worry about the domino effect on Bush's cabinet.

Gonzales will appear at the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 17th to explain himself. He will have one final shot at tying together all of the contradictions between his previous statements, the testimony of his aides, and the paper trail, all of which to this point have produced a few diametrically opposed explanations of the process used to evaluate the federal prosecutors, the decision-making behind the selection of those Gonzales and his team terminated, and the involvement of the AG in a fairly high-profile effort to fire presidential appointees -- something that one would have expected the so-called CEO of Justice to have had under better control than he has shown thus far.

It may be too late. With at least one aide contradicting Gonzales on his involvement in what should have been only a mildly controversial decision and another taking the Fifth rather than testify, his credibility seems pretty shot already. The only question is why the Bush administration wants to drag this embarrassment out any further than they already have. Perhaps with Newt's endorsement, the White House will act to clear the decks and get a fresh start at Justice.

Dodgers Find Their Footing At The Best Possible Time

The Los Angeles Dodgers had started off the season with two straight losses, and fans -- even out here in Minnesota -- wondered how they could climb off the canvas against their most hated rivals, the San Francisco Giants. The team rebounded in the road series, taking Barry Bonds and the Bay Area for a sweep this weekend:

Luis Gonzalez hit his first two home runs in Dodger Blue and Randy Wolf gave the Dodgers a third straight standout pitching performance to pull off a three-game sweep of the San Francisco Giants during a 10-4 victory this afternoon.

Gonzalez connected for a solo shot and three-run homer in his 26th career multihomer game, and Wolf (1-1) outpitched $126-million fellow left-hander Barry Zito in the Dodgers' eighth consecutive victory in San Francisco.

Matt Kemp had three hits, two RBIs and scored twice for the well-rounded Dodgers, who have dominated in the Giants' waterfront ballpark since their last loss there on Aug. 18 of last year. Jeff Kent scored three runs. ...

San Francisco has only started 1-5 twice before since the club moved west from New York in 1958, in 1967 and 1980 -- not the kind of start the franchise wanted for its All-Star season.

It's a long season, and the two teams will play plenty of baseball between now and October. However, for long-time Dodger fans like myself, we will take a sweep against the Giants any time of the year. Taking the set from them in San Francisco is especially sweet.

The Dodgers now move to 4-2 and face off against the Colorado Rockies in another divisional series. The Rocks are a game behind the Dodgers, while LA is just half a game back of the Arizona Diamondbacks, who have had a good start this season. With this sweep behind them, the Dodgers have to be feeling pretty charged up coming back to LA. Let's hope they can keep the momentum -- and the four-game winning streak -- alive.

Johnny Hart, RIP

Comic strips used to be one of my passions. I learned to read from Peanuts strips and books, and ever since, my subscriptions to the newspapers in the various places I have lived had as much to do with the comics section as the op-ed pages and news articles. In a way, the comic strips created the passion for news that has led me to becoming a full-time blogger.

One of those comic strip artists I particularly enjoyed was Johnny Hart, who wrote "B.C." and co-wrote "The Wizard of Id". Hart passed away yesterday at 76:

Cartoonist Johnny Hart, whose award-winning "B.C." comic strip appeared in more than 1,300 newspapers worldwide, died at his home on Saturday. He was 76.

"He had a stroke," Hart's wife, Bobby, said on today. "He died at his storyboard."

"B.C.," populated by prehistoric cavemen and dinosaurs, was launched in 1958 and eventually appeared in more than 1,300 newspapers with an audience of 100 million, according to Creators Syndicate, Inc., which distributes it.

Hart used his characters in both strips, set in the past, to skewer the foibles of modern people and governments. He especially liked to poke fun at the egotistical and self-important. His consistent theme was the primacy of the common man.

In later years, Hart showed his courage by allowing his faith to enter his art. Charles Schulz did that decades earlier in gentle ways, while Hart tended towards more confrontational and controversial uses. Some claimed him as a triumphalist, but Hart tried to show what he felt was the importance of Christianity to Western civilization, and he never apologized for incorporating his faith into his work.

It seems especially fitting that Hart went to his Lord on this Easter weekend, and passed away at the storyboard. May the Lord accept Hart with open arms. Godspeed, Johnny, and thank you.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has some fitting words and remembrances of Johnny Hart. Be sure to read the whole thing.

UPDATE II: Check out Hart's entry for today. "It is finished." What a wonderful valediction for Hart. (h/t: CQ reader Brian K)

UPDATE III: I missed this in the article the first time, but Hart passed away yesterday, not today. My apologies, and I've made the corrections above. Thanks to Bill Peschel in the comments for the correction.

He Is Risen!

The First Mate and I wish all CQ readers a blessed and happy Easter. We hope that you all have the opportunity to spend it with friends and/or family, and that the blessings of our Lord, Jesus Christ, shower down upon you all. For those CQ readers who do not belong to the Christian faith, we hope that this day brings fellowship and rest.

Today, we are blessed to have the Admiral Emeritus and his wife with us, who are helping the FM to recover this week as I finish my last week at the present day job. All of us will spend time with my son's in-laws, a wonderful family that has opened their arms to us every day we have known them, but especially on holidays, as our families are in California. We're going to take it easy and make sure that the FM doesn't overdo it, but we want to take advantage of the almost-miraculous recovery she has had since the kidney transplant nine days ago.

If you think about during your prayers today, offer some for the donor and his generous family. They are my greatest blessing this Easter.

Sadr: It's On

Moqtada al-Sadr has decided to finally acknowledge that the surge strategy in Baghdad will undermine the basis of his power in Iraq, and has ordered the Mahdi Army to resist American and Iraqi forces trying to put him out of business. In a missive to his forces today, Sadr told his minions to focus their attacks on American forces where possible in order to keep from losing all political standing in Iraq:

The renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr urged Iraqi forces to stop cooperating with the United States and told his guerrilla fighters to concentrate their attacks on American troops rather than Iraqis, according to a statement issued Sunday.

The statement, stamped with al-Sadr's official seal, was distributed in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Sunday — a day before a large demonstration there, called for by al-Sadr, to mark the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. ...

In the statement, al-Sadr — who commands an enormous following among Iraq's majority Shiites and has close allies in the Shiite-dominated government — also encouraged his followers to attack only American forces, not fellow Iraqis.

The orders come from a diminished Sadr, who still has yet to poke his head above ground in Iraq since the beginning of the surge. At first, he fled to Iran supposedly to hold strategy meetings with senior Mahdi Army commanders and to consult with his Iranian allies, but most suspected he bugged out before the Americans could seize him and his most loyal followers. Sadr had apparently hoped that the Americans and the Nouri al-Maliki government would be satisfied in helping Sadr purge his more fractious members, but fighting over the last week made it clear that the entire Mahdi Army would have to go.

The Mahdis have a big problem, though, and that is that they relinquished momentum to the US and Iraqi forces several weeks ago. They have been pushed farther to the margins in Baghdad, and the residents there do not want to see them return. Sadr's flight and apparent refusal to return publicly makes them look weak and craven. The Iraqi forces present an even more difficult problem politically, as they are primarily Shi'ite and have growing support from the populace -- and no matter what Sadr orders, it will be difficult to attack Americans without engaging the Iraqis as well.

Sadr has proven himself an adept politician, but a lousy general. Having him switch back into that role is a victory in itself for the American forces. Najaf residents recall the disastrous campaign Sadr staged there earlier in the Iraq war. His declaration in that city will likely result in more skepticism than enthusiasm, especially since Sadr keeps mailing in his orders from Iran.

Successful Strategies Usually Get Repeated

If anyone expresses shock over the latest report from The Telegraph, they expose themselves as having no sense of history. The British newspaper reports that the Iranians plan more hostaging as a result of the successes they scored during the crisis over the last two weeks (via Memeorandum):

Hardliners in the Iranian regime have warned that the seizure of British naval personnel demonstrates that they can make trouble for the West whenever they want to and do so with impunity.

The bullish reaction from Teheran will reinforce the fears of western diplomats and military officials that more kidnap attempts may be planned.

The British handling of the crisis has been regarded with some concern in Washington, and a Pentagon defence official told The Sunday Telegraph: "The fear now is that this could be the first of many. If the Brits don't change their rules of engagement, the Iranians could take more hostages almost at will.

"Iran has come out of this looking reasonable. If I were the Iranians, I would keep playing the same game. They have very successfully muddied the waters and bought themselves some more time. And in parts of the Middle East they will be seen as the good guys. They could do it time and again if they wanted to."

People keep insisting that the Iranians didn't win anything in this confrontation. The Telegraph quotes other British sources that conclude that the Iranians lost ground with other nations that may have supported their right to the nuclear cycle. That analysis figures that Iran may have a more difficult time making enriched uranium if more nations disapprove of the mullahcracy.

That's simply ludicrous. Iran committed an act of war on the United Kingdom. It then violated the Geneva Convention on several occasions. For these acts, it received no negative consequences whatsoever. Britain pressed the US to reduce its military profile in the Gulf, and the British themselves stopped their interdiction patrols. In return, Iran released the hostages and made themselves look like moderates in doing so, and strengthened the political position of the hardliners at home.

Did the Iranians earn the disapproval of the global community? Hardly. Even the EU, of which Britain is a member, refused to stop trading with the Iranians. The UN offered a finger wag at Teheran and nothing more, and even that took a Herculean effort by Tony Blair and the US. Has anyone stopped trading with the Iranians as a result of their act of war and GC violations? Has any nation taken a new position against Iran's nuclear program?

People who think Britain won anything in this standoff need to re-read Winston Churchill's first volume of The Second World War and the first half of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer. The West has given the hardliners in Teheran a tremendous boost in their reaction to this hostaging, and they can expect more of it in the future.

The Friends Of Asma Al-Homsi

Dallas police have begun investigating Amsa al-Homsi and Aisha Abdul-Rahman Hamad for allegedly provocative acts at and near Love Field airport in Dallas. Security cameras captured both women, dressed partly in camouflage, acting suspiciously in the airport, apparently deliberately pacing off distances inside the terminal. Later, al-Homsi was seen watching aircraft take off with binoculars near the runway at an air museum, sitting on the hood of her car.

Currently on probation for threatening people with a fake grenade, al-Homsi has other, more significant connections that creates some suspicion for her motives in these incidents. It turns out that one of her close friends was Osama bin Laden's personal secretary:

One of the subjects of a Dallas police intelligence bulletin, Asma Al-Homsi, says she's known convicted terrorist Wadih el Hage and his wife for more than two decades.

Mr. el Hage, a former Arlington resident and naturalized U.S. citizen, was the personal secretary of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden before he was sent to prison.But Ms. Al-Homsi said she still considers him and his wife to be close friends. ...

Just months before the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. el Hage was convicted of taking part in a worldwide conspiracy that included the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The bombings killed more than 200 people and injured thousands. Mr. el Hage was given a life sentence.

"I don't know the circumstances," Ms. Al-Homsi said, declining to comment on the bombings.

Al-Homsi says that she stands behind her "brother" and his wife "110 percent". El Hage, known as The Manager, ran an al-Qaeda cell until the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, which killed over 200 people. The US and Kenya raided his Nairobi residence and found information linking him to the AQ network, including people later connected to the 9/11 plot, such as Mamoun Darkazanli. A jury convicted him of perjury and conspiracy connected to the embassy bombings and he currently serves a life sentence at a supermax facility in Florida.

This makes the actions of Homsi more clear, although the motives may be darker than first thought. She claims that she is the victim of "racial profiling", which indicates that she intends to use her actions to fight the police and security who have her under investigation. With her personal connections to a convicted AQ planner, though, one has to wonder whether that was going to be the final goal of Homsi's efforts. A self-professed sniper and a suspected explosives expert, she may have been testing the security protocols in the hope of actually launching an attack, and not just to hobble security efforts for others to exploit.

In either case, Homsi needs a lot more scrutiny, as do others who purposefully provoke security responses in or near airports. The Traveling Imams and their attempts to launch the John Doe lawsuits are of a piece with Homsi's actions in Dallas. The American public must not allow our national security to be compromised because malevolent people like Homsi attempt to embarrass us with bogus accusations of bigotry. (via 9/11 Families For America)

US Approved North Korean Arms Sale To Ethopia

After demanding sanctions for months and years on North Korea -- and finally getting the UN to acquiesce, in some fashion -- the US allowed North Korea to sell exactly the kind of war materials we wanted sanctioned. The customer makes the difference, the New York Times reports, as the US needed to ensure that the Ethiopian military had enough materiel to assist in the war against radical Islamists:

Three months after the United States successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on North Korea because of the country’s nuclear test, Bush administration officials allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from the North, in what appears to be a violation of the restrictions, according to senior American officials.

The United States allowed the arms delivery to go through in January in part because Ethiopia was in the midst of a military offensive against Islamic militias inside Somalia, a campaign that aided the American policy of combating religious extremists in the Horn of Africa.

American officials said that they were still encouraging Ethiopia to wean itself from its longstanding reliance on North Korea for cheap Soviet-era military equipment to supply its armed forces and that Ethiopian officials appeared receptive. But the arms deal is an example of the compromises that result from the clash of two foreign policy absolutes: the Bush administration’s commitment to fighting Islamic radicalism and its effort to starve the North Korean government of money it could use to build up its nuclear weapons program. ...

It is also not the first time that the Bush administration has made an exception for allies in their dealings with North Korea. In 2002, Spain intercepted a ship carrying Scud missiles from North Korea to Yemen. At the time, Yemen was working with the United States to hunt members of Al Qaeda operating within its borders, and after its government protested, the United States asked that the freighter be released. Yemen said at the time that it was the last shipment from an earlier missile purchase and would not be repeated.

Rock, meet hard place. The US could not sell the necessary arms to Ethiopia, either because of trade restrictions or because of the higher cost. The North Koreans specialize in cheap knock-offs of Soviet-era equipment, which fits the budget of Ethiopia at the moment. Until they can either afford to pay more or find another source for their systems, the Ethiopians claimed they had little choice but to buy from North Korea.

Assuming this report is the complete truth -- an assumption one makes with the Times at one's peril -- the Bush administration will have some explaining to do to its partners in the Korean crisis. The issue appears to have started at the State Department, which apparently pushed for the sale on behalf of its Ethiopian contacts. John Bolton scolded State for allowing this shipment, and warned against "clientitis" at Foggy Bottom, the tendency to sympathize too much with the clients in other nations at the expense of American policy.

Other nations will rightly ask where to draw the lines on these sanctions. If the trade had come as part of an overall solution to the Korean crisis, then that might have made it tolerable. In January, though, Kim Jong-Il was still dragging his heels about coming to the table. Even now, the North Koreans refuse to budge until we unfreeze the $25 million in funds that relate to North Korea's counterfeiting operation. It does not appear that the sale to Ethiopia pushed Pyongyang in any appreciable direction towards resolving the nuclear standoff.

If we break the sanctions we ourselves demanded for our own strategic purposes, then we leave the door open to other nations to do the same for their own purposes. It's hard to complain about other nations breaking the rather weak sanctions when we arrange for violations ourselves. The Ethiopian sale is a mistake, as John Bolton said, that should not be repeated, and should be repudiated.