Another Terror Attack? (Update & Bump)

UPDATE II: ABC News reports that the US warned the UK of an imminent attack at Glasgow two weeks ago. That makes today's incident a likely case of Islamist attack:

U.S. law enforcement officials received intelligence reports two weeks ago warning of a possible terror attack in Glasgow against "airport infrastructure or aircraft," a senior US law enforcement officials tells the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

The intelligence reports also warned that airports and aircraft in the Czech Republic could be the targets of al Qaeda-connected terrorists. ...

A US official told ABCNews.com that the intelligence reports led to the assignment of Federal Air Marshals to flights into and out of both Glasgow and Prague.

If the US had picked up intel on this attack, it shows that we have our ear fairly close to the ground -- and that AQ has lost a lot of its competence and capability. The same sources tell ABC that the US has nothing specific about attacks here in the US, but airport security here is being beefed up just in case.

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Original post follows:

Reports from Glasgow say that a car in flames crashed into the front of Glasgow Airport, resulting in two arrests and speculation that the attack may be tied to two London car bombs discovered yesterday. If so, it's a bad week for jihadists:

Witness James Edgar told Sky News he was in the airport during the incident.

He said a four-wheel drive, believed to be a Cherokee Jeep, tried to drive into the building, but was stopped by security barriers.

"I was in the airport booking a holiday, suddenly people were running as if they were missing their flight, but then we were told to get out of the airport," he said.

"A four-by-four had rammed into the building and caught on fire.

"Police were scuffling with a gentleman."

If this is tied to a campaign of terrorist attacks against the United Kingdom, it's off to a poor start. All that Jihadi U has managed to muster from its Class of 2007 are two failed bomb designs and a torch job with no damage. They've also allowed their operatives to get identified, with a good possibility of having their cells rolled up and future operations scuttled.

It's a great week's work for The Flaming Anuses at Jihadi U. If this continues, they may lose their accreditation.

UPDATE: Is there another terrorist situation in Belize? Lance at TMQ-2 says a Continental Airlines jet has been isolated on the tarmac due to a bomb threat. Most of those, however, turn out to be stunts and have nothing to do with Islamists. We'll update as more details become available.

NARN, The Lost Cloture Patrol 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 Brodkorb have The Final Word from 3-5. If you're in the Twin Cities, you can hear us on AM 1280 The Patriot, or on the station's Internet stream if you're outside of the broadcast area.

Today, Mitch and I will review the rather momentous week that conservatives had. We'll talk about the failure of the immigration bill, and the impact that will have on George Bush and the candidates to replace him. We'll also discuss the two Supreme Court decisions that trimmed government efforts to impose race-based policies and curtail political speech. The demise of the Fairness Doctrine will certainly get a gleeful obituary as well.

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

BUMPED to Top, 12:53: We're on in a few moments!

Mel Wants A Solution

Senator and RNC chair Mel Martinez apparently had a temper tantrum yesterday in his home state of Florida after the collapse of the immigration reform bill. He angrily challenged the bill's opponents to come up with their own plan, saying the "voices of negativity" had to start offering solutions (via TMV):

The Chairman of the Republican Party on Friday lambasted Democrats and Republicans who helped kill an immigration bill in the Senate and challenged them to come up with a solution beyond ``just build a fence along the border.''

``The voices of negativity now have a responsibility to come up with an answer,'' RNC Chairman and U.S. Senator Mel Martinez, R-Fla. said.

``How will you fix the situation to make peoples' lives better? How will you continue to grow the economy? How will we bring people out of the shadows for our national security and for the sake of being a country that is just?'' he demanded.

The answers seemed very clear to everyone outside of the Senate chambers for the past four weeks. Instead of offering a repeat of 1986, fix the underlying problems that allow for lousy border and visa security, as Congress has repeatedly promised, before saying "Trust us!" How difficult is that to comprehend?

For decades, we have encouraged people to illegally cross into the US, both through a lack of effort in securing the border and then even less effort to enforce the laws even when police discover them living in the country. Many of them have spent most of their lives understanding that Congress and each succeeding administration shrugged off the hypocrisy. We created this situation, and I would probably find myself in agreement with Martinez that we can't just lay all the blame on those who took advantage of our own hypocrisies. We should find a way to normalize the status of those who have put down roots, lived lawfully, and want to assimilate into the US in a manner which treats them humanely but gives them no advantage over legal immigrants.

But we can't do that until we have fixed the problems on the border and in the visa program. If Martinez finds himself offended that Americans look at the last several decades of deceit and hypocrisy of Congress and the executive branch and come to the rational conclusion that we don't want to get fooled again, then he should grow a thicker skin and learn to listen a little more carefully. We have tried one amnesty with a message from Congress that "the check's in the mail" for real border security and visa management. Pardon us if we can't quite bring ourselves to play the Three-Card Monty again.

Secure the borders. Fix the broken visa system. Do that before creating an underresourced bureaucratic nightmare, and creating entire new classes of visas while the existing system remains an embarassing and dangerous failure. In other words, take responsibility for the decades of failure from the political class and build some credibility with the American voter.

That's the solution, Senator Martinez. We've been saying this for years. Perhaps the problem is that you refuse to listen.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin notes that some Floridians have begun a movement to recall Martinez. In my opinion, that's a short-sighted mistake. This is a man who gets a 100% from the National Right to Life Committee, a 70 from the National Taxpayers Union, a 100 from National Federation of Independent Businesses, and a 100 from the Gun Owners of America. Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Shelton Takes On Tenet

Two months ago, former CIA Director George Tenet offered his side of the Iraq war story in his memoirs, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA. In that book, Tenet tried to attack Douglas Feith and other backers of action against Iraq, partly by micharacterizing one key player's presentations and her background in intelligence. At the time Christina Shelton issued a brief statement in rebuttal to Tenet on both points. In today's Washington Post, Shelton gives a much more detailed account of her role and Tenet's lack of truth:

On Aug. 15, 2002, I presented my part of a composite Pentagon briefing on al-Qaeda and Iraq to George Tenet, then CIA director. In his recent book, "At the Center of the Storm," Tenet wrote that I said in opening remarks that "there is no more debate," "no further analysis is required" and "it is an open-and-shut case."

I never said those things. In fact, I said the covert nature of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda made it difficult to know its full extent; al-Qaeda's security precautions and Iraq's need to cloak its activities with terrorist networks precluded a full appreciation of their relationship. Tenet also got the title of the briefing wrong. It was "Assessing the Relationship Between Iraq and al-Qa'ida," not "Iraq and al-Qa'ida -- Making the Case." ...

Tenet's response to my presentation was to attempt to denigrate my credentials. I was not a "naval reservist," as he wrote in his book, assigned to the Pentagon for temporary duty. In fact, I was a career intelligence analyst for two decades, and I spent half of that time in counterintelligence. I did not draw conclusions beyond the reporting, as he suggested. I addressed the substantive material in the reports.

Tenet claimed that the body of reporting did not prove an "operational" relationship existed. I never said it did. The use of the caveat "operational" became a convenient -- albeit transparent -- way to discount the credibility of the 1990s reporting and the relationship as I had described it. In his book Tenet maintained that there was no evidence of Iraq's having "authority, direction, and control of al-Qa'ida operations." I don't recall anyone inside or outside the intelligence community ever making that claim.

It's odd that Shelton waited two months to publish this rebuttal. The first reviews of the book appeared in the last week of April, and the book hit the stores a week later. As I wrote at the time, even before its publication, the book's excerpts got panned for their inaccuracies. Afterwards, the criticism turned into a flood, with former high-ranking CIA officials as Michael Scheuer and Tyler Drumheller essentially calling Tenet a liar after they read the book.

Shelton provides a straightforward deconstruction of the charges Tenet leveled at her in his book. She makes it clear that Tenet at best told a lot of half-truths, most of them intending to paint his subordinates as radicals and all of them self-serving. She also points out information that Tenet left out of the book -- such as his own assertions to Congress that Iraq and al-Qaeda had some operational ties and those would likely increase whether we took military action or not.

Be sure to read it all. It comes late in the debate over Tenet, his book, and his tenure at Langley, but not so late as to be at all irrelevant.

A Fred Of Two Tales

Fred Thompson paid a visit to New Hampshire this week, his first as a certain presidential candidate -- and he got a taste of what media coverage would be like from this point forward. One reporter from McClatchy did his best to pour cold water on Fred's appearance, while the New Hampshire Union-Leader's editorial page editor pronounced it a rousing success.

First, McClatchy's Steve Thomma focused on the brevity that was the soul of Fred's wit:

When Fred Thompson made his debut on the presidential stage here this week, he left some Republicans thinking he needs more work before his nascent campaign matches the media hype it's gotten in advance.

The former Tennessee senator with the baritone drawl showed up Thursday in New Hampshire, the site of the first primary voting, and gave a speech that lasted only nine minutes, skipping over hot-button issues such as Iraq and immigration to invoke platitudes about freedom and strength.

He left more than a few Republicans disappointed.

"Platitudes about freedom and strength..." No loaded language there! Thomma quotes one attendee about his disappointment with the short speech, and characterizes another quote by the same person as having been said "dismissively". It's a strange news article; it reads more like an op-ed column.

If readers want an op-ed column, they may be better served by going to the state's most well-known paper and its editorial page editor. Andrew Cline noticed that Fred didn't just make a nine-minute stop in New Hampshire but had campaigned there all day. Cline has a different opinion of the brief fund-raising appearance, too:

Before the evening event on their behalf, Thompson made the rounds like an experienced presidential candidate.

He hit the New Hampshire Union Leader, where he met with publisher Joe McQuaid before touring the newsroom, had a tuna sandwich at the Merrimack Restaurant in downtown Manchester (where all candidates seem to be required by the secretary of state’s office to eat at some point) and stopped for a chat at a Hooksett gun shop.

Thompson’s evening speech at the Wayfarer Inn was timed at all of nine minutes. It was enough to give N.H. Republicans a taste and touch on the usual conservative topics: smaller government, lower taxes, federalism and winning the war against terrorists.

But Thompson added his own twist in this state where registered independents outnumber Republicans: “I think we can form a new coalition of Republicans and independents and some Democrats. If we do the right thing, we'll be a magnet for people of all beliefs about all kinds of issues, but [who] basically [hold] their country's issues first and foremost, and that's the thing that we'll have in common.”

Well, that sounds quite a bit more substantive than the actual news report from McClatchy, doesn't it? Fred spent the day touring the Granite State, meeting people and conferring with the state's largest newspaper. He then appeared at a benefit for state GOP candidates -- not for his own candidacy -- and talked about shared values and how we could build a coalition of New Hampshire voters to support them.

Maybe McClatchy should ask Cline to handle their actual reporting in the future, and send Thomma back to a less-biased beat.

Losing Momentum?

The presidential campaigns have a deadline approaching for announcing their second-quarter fundraising numbers, and they have already begun jockeying to manage expectations. Hillary Clinton surprised pundits by announcing a firm number early -- $27 million -- and then telling everyone they could that they expected Barack Obama to do better than that. Now Mitt Romney's campaign has started to get the word out that fundraising efforts had dropped off from their impressive Q1 totals:

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who led Republican candidates in money raised during the first three months of the presidential race with $21 million, told top fundraisers yesterday that his campaign will bring in less during the second quarter and that he continues to lend money from his personal fortune to ensure that more voters hear his message.

"This tells only part of the story given this cycle's unprecedented nature, and the competing needs of less well-known candidates, such as Governor Romney, for both fundraising dollars and political exposure," said the memo to fundraisers from senior campaign adviser Alex Castellanos and top lawyers Benjamin Ginsberg and Katie Biber Chen.

"Our total will reflect the campaign's strategic decision to include more political travel days in this quarter than in the first," they explained, noting that Romney spent a total of 20 days in the early primary states of New Hampshire and Iowa between April and June, double the time he spent there in the first three months of 2007.

This doesn't bode well for the Romney campaign. He made a seven-figure loan to the campaign last week to keep up with the other candidates, which sounds as though fundraising has seriously flagged in this quarter. Romney has done well in Iowa and New Hampshire in gaining some momentum, but a significant drop in fundraising may signal to voters that Romney has peaked already.

The other GOP candidates, meanwhile, appear poised to show more consistent performance, if not breakout numbers. According to the Post, Giuliani has turned in a strong Q2. In Q1, he raised $17 million, but most of that was in the final two months. With three months of steady fundraising, Giuliani could top that number. John McCain, despite having a tough Q2 with immigration, still expects to get close to or beat his previous $13 million. Romney can run well under his $23 million and still beat them, but the perception will not be that of victory.

And Republicans should feel concerned about the disparity between their candidates' fundraising and that of the Democrats. Hillary and Obama will have somewhere between $55-60 million just between them, and that could outdo all three GOP frontrunners combined. In terms of primary efforts, the money difference won't create problems for Republicans, since primaries are mostly closed systems. However, if that fundraising disparity continues into the general election, the GOP may be in serious trouble regardless of the candidates involved.

Romney's strength in the campaign thus far has been his organizational skills, which his national poll numbers have not reflected. Many expected that his support would begin to reflect the organization. If his numbers fall too low, many might think that the reverse has happened.

Subtle As A Brick

I see the AP has continued its glorious tradition of objectivity, as reproduced in the Washington Post. Ben Evans writes a profile of Senator Jeff Sessions, who led the charge against the immigration bill, which starts off by informing readers that his parents named him after Confederate generals -- a not-terribly-subtle insinuation of racism (via Hot Air and Ace o' Spades):

When President Bush's "grand bargain" on immigration fell apart, Jeff Sessions, the Republican senator from Alabama who is named after a pair of famous Confederates, was very proud.

Maybe one of the AP's layers of editors can explain the necessity of including that factoid in the first sentence of a news article about the immigration bill. Apparently Evans and his editor think that a story on opposition to the comprehensive reform bill has to have a racist angle -- even if they have to make it up.

Evans actually tries this twice. He explains Session's heritage again, in a paragraph that has no connection to anything else in the article:

His deep Southern roots are evident in his full name: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, a family name handed down from his father and grandfather after the former president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, and General P.G.T. Beauregard, who fired on Fort Sumter in 1861 to open the Civil War.

Deep Southern roots. Named after the Confederate president, and the man who touched off the Civil War. You know, those guys who wanted slavery in America.

Aha!

I'm sure that Senator Sessions is proud of his heritage, and that has absolutely nothing to do with his opposition to the immigration bill -- unless Evans wants to also use that kind of innuendo about people like Max Baucus and Jon Tester of Montana, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Tom Harkin of Iowa, all of whom voted against cloture on the bill along with Sessions.

Nice Pathetic try.

In The Mail: The Prince Of Darkness

One of the ironies of my new job is that I get a number of books for review purposes -- and hardly any time to read them. Over the weekend, I plan on posting about three new books just hitting the bookstores, and one from a prominent blogger. However, this afternoon I received what looks like one of the more intriguing selections I've seen in a while -- the memiors of Robert Novak, titled Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting In Washington.

According to the promotional material, Novak tells the full story of the Valerie Plame scandal for the first time -- but that's hardly the only draw for readers. It promises to be a fascinating look both inside the Beltway and into the life of a man whose glowering visage has dominated political reporting for decades.

I'll write more after I have a chance to read it. You can be sure that I'll make some time for this book.

Car Bomb (Dud) In London (Update: Jihadists Had Spree In Mind)

UPDATE III, AND BUMP TO TOP: ABC News reports that Germany has arrested two men who came from the Pakistani camp that served as Jihadi U, and believe that they have also been targeted. Also, authorities say this bears all the hallmarks of an Al-Qaeda operation:

Last year, al Qaeda operative Dhiren Barot was convicted by a British court for a plot to use limousines to carry similar bombs as those defused today to similar targets as the nightclubs allegedly targeted today.

In his own personal manual, Barot described how the cylinders, "if carefully orchestrated can be as powerful as exploding TNT," and "are easily available to the general public," designed for a "synchronized, concurrent (back-to-back) execution on the same day and time." Videos posted on al Qaeda Web sites also show in full detail how to rig propane and butane cylinders as powerful bombs.

And today's explosive devices -- composed of five or six propane and butane cylinders as well as 33 gallons of gasoline, all rigged to detonate with calls to two cell phones -- followed Barot's manual and the al Qaeda videos closely. Officials say the cell phones failed to initiate the explosions, even after each phone had been called twice, preventing a shrapnel-filled fireball from launching and killing people in the surrounding area.

Hmm. Looking more serious all the time, isn't it?

UPDATE II: It looks like London narrowly averted two bombings, perhaps more, as London police found a second rigged vehicle. The cell-phone detonaters failed despite multiple attempts to blow up the bombs:

Police in London's bustling nightclub and theater district on Friday defused a car bomb that could have killed hundreds after an ambulance crew spotted smoke coming from a Mercedes filled with a lethal mix of gasoline, propane and nails. Hours later, police confirmed a second explosives-rigged car was found nearby.

The first car bomb, found near Piccadilly Circus, was powerful enough to have caused "significant injury or loss of life" at a time when hundreds were in the area, British anti-terror police chief Peter Clarke said.

Clarke said Friday evening that the second car — another Mercedes — was originally parked illegally on nearby Cockspur Street, but had been towed from the West End to an impound lot near Hyde Park.

"The vehicle was found to contain very similar materials to those that had been found in the first car," he said. "There was a considerable amount of fuel and gas canisters. As in the first vehicle, there was also a quantity of nails. This like the first device was potentially viable."

And it looks like the Islamist terrorists had celebrated a little too early, according to CBS:

Hours before London explosives technicians dismantled a large car bomb in the heart of the British capital's tourist-rich theater district, a message appeared on one of the most widely used jihadist Internet forums, saying: "Today I say: Rejoice, by Allah, London shall be bombed."

CBS News found the posting, which went on for nearly 300 words, on the "al Hesbah" chat room. It was left by a person who goes by the name abu Osama al-Hazeen, who appears regularly on the forum. The comment was posted on the forum, according to time stamp, at 08:09 a.m. British time on June 28 -- about 17 hours before the bomb was found early on June 29.

Al Hesbah is frequently used by international Sunni militant groups, including al Qaeda and the Taliban, to post propaganda videos and messages in their fight against the West.

The police already know who they seek in the first incident. Security cameras -- London is full of them -- got a clear picture of the man who left the first Mercedes, and it's someone they know well. In fact, he's been arrested before for suspicious activity but released for a lack of evidence (via Hot Air):

British police have a “crystal clear” picture of the man who drove the bomb-rigged silver Mercedes outside a London nightclub, and officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com he bears “a close resemblance” to a man arrested by police in connection with another bomb plot but released for lack of evidence.

Officials say the suspect had been taken into custody in connection with the case of al Qaeda operative Dhiren Barot, who was convicted of orchestrating a vehicle bomb plot involving targets in London, New York, Newark, N.J. and Washington, D.C.

NBC reports that the British authorities now seek three men from Birmingham in connection to the day's events, which indicates a conspiracy for this attack. Both US and British intelligence have concluded that this is a plot by organized radical Islamists, who didn't know enough to get the air/fuel mixture correct in constructing the bombs. They won't repeat that mistake, I'm certain.

Bonus question: how long before we start hearing that this is the work of incompetents and that the media is blowing the story out of proportion?

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Original post follows:

Police discovered that a car that left outside a London nightclub had been intended as a car bomb -- one that failed to detonate, fortunately. While authorities attempt to find the person or people responsible, the proximity to the anniversary of the July 7 bombing attacks two years ago seems more than just a coincidence:

A car bomb left in London's West End would have caused "significant injury or loss of life" if it had not been defused by police.

The explosive device, consisting of gas cyclinders and nails, was discovered at 2am outside a packed nightclub in The Haymarket, near Piccadilly Circus. ...

One witness said that door staff at the nightclub Tiger, Tiger alerted police after the car was driven into bins last night and the driver ran off.

The witness said the large silver saloon car was being driven "erratically" before the minor crash. The driver was not stopped.

So far, the size of the device is under dispute. Jack Straw, the new Justice Secretary in the Gordon Browne government, called it "big" in an interview today. The Telegraph reports from its police sources that the device actually was small -- but with the nails and the shrapnel the car would have created, it could have been very deadly regardless.

For now, details will be sketchy. Londoners, though, will wonder what comes next for a city that has always embraced multiculturalism.

UPDATE: Was this a graduation requirement from Jihadi U? ABC News reports on an interesting, but necessarily compelling, correlation:

The discovery of a massive car bomb set to detonate in central London comes just three weeks after what was described as an al Qaeda graduation ceremony of suicide bomb teams to be dispatched to Europe and the United States. ...

On the tape, the leader of the British team speaks of the mission in broken English, "Let me say something about why we are going along with my team to tell a suicide attack in Britain."

That was just 20 days ago, and the existence of the tape first reported by ABC News put British and German security experts on edge.

It's interesting and provocative, but as a theory it has at least one major flaw -- no suicide. The driver of the car ran off, which makes this look like either a bad bomb design, a failure of will, or most likely a remote-detonation scheme that failed. Either that, or grade inflation has struck Jihadi U.

Hillary's Baggage Bigger Than Previously Thought

Hillary's reign at the top of the polls for the Democratic primary has always worried party activists, knowledgeable of her negatives in a general election. The sense of her inevitability has been tempered with the recognition of the high hurdles between winning a nomination and winning a general election with a large number of voters hostile to her candidacy. Now NBC reports that a new poll puts that number at a majority:

According to a new Mason-Dixon survey, given exclusively to NBC/MSNBC and McClatchy newspapers, Clinton is the only major presidential candidate -- either Democrat and Republican -- for whom a majority of likely general election voters say they would not consider voting. In addition, she's the only candidate who registers with a net-unfavorable rating.

In the poll, 48% say they would consider voting for Clinton versus 52% who say they wouldn't. By comparison, majorities signal they would consider voting for all other major presidential candidates or possible candidates: Giuliani (64%-36%), Fred Thompson (62%-38%), Bloomberg (61%-39%), Obama (60%-40%), Edwards (59%-41%), McCain (58%-42%), Biden (57%-43%), Richardson (57%-43%), Huckabee (56%-44%), and Romney (54%-46%).

Moreover, 39% say they recognize Clinton favorably, while 42% say they recognize her unfavorably. By contrast, every other candidate has a net-positive favorable rating: Giuliani (43%-17%), Obama (36%-21%), McCain (33%-28%), Edwards (32%-28%), Thompson (25%-12%), Romney (24%-20%), Biden (21%-20), Bloomberg (20%-18%), Richardson (19%-15%), and Huckabee (16%-12%).

Will the Democrats nominate someone demonstrably unelectable in this primary? Or will these numbers have the party desperate for a white-knight, eleventh-hour bid from an established national figure -- like Al Gore? Has anyone ever gotten elected to significant office with numbers such as these?

Which Candidate Benefits From The Immigration Bill's Demise?

Now that the comprehensive immigration reform bill has died, analysts have looked at winners and losers of the contest. Almost certainly, one of the main losers has to be George Bush, who pushed hard publicly and privately for its passage. US News says, "Bush Sinking Along With Immigration Bill," a fairly clear conclusion based on the extensive roundup they provide. He put his credibility on the line for this bill, and in the end could not even get a majority of his own Senate caucus to support him.

But which of the candidates to replace Bush gained the most from the bill's failure? The Politico argues that could be John McCain:

While his office put out the requisite statement expressing disappointment that the immigration compromise failed, a McCain aide I talked with sounded more relieved that the issue was off the table.

While lamenting that its failure was "bad for the country," this person indicated that they were looking forward to getting past an issue that had been the focus of the campaign for the last six weeks.

"We talked about it at every town hall meeting, we did talk radio, we did O'Reilly, we did regional press conference calls, we gave a speech in Florida on it," the source pointed out. But having fought the good fight for what was recognized as a political loser, this person said they would use the summer to do grass-roots campaigning and seek to shift the focus onto "core economic issues" such as taxes, trade and spending.

This sounds counterintuitive, but Jonathan Martin may be right. First, no one who knows John McCain can honestly say that this bill changed their opinion of him. He introduced and vociferously championed a worse bill last year, and he has made no secret of his preferences on immigration. In many ways, he conducted himself in a more positive manner last year; his tone was intended to be as inclusive as possible, after lashing out a couple of times last year in frustration.

In a season of gotcha games on flip-flops, McCain may (eventually) get some credit for standing on principle. Senator Tom Coburn, who opposed the immigration bill, wrote an essay in National Review praising McCain for his political courage:

As the American people, elected officials, and commentators reflect on the heated immigration debate that came to a temporary close in the Senate this week many will ask, and have asked, why U.S. Senator John McCain (R., Ariz.) staked out a position that may, in retrospect, be seen as devastating to his presidential ambitions. I hope the American people, at least, step back from the obsessive play-by-play pre-season election analysis and reflect on Senator McCain’s actions for what I believe they were: One of the purest examples of political courage seen in Washington in a very, very long time. ...

I opposed Senator McCain in this immigration debate. I believed the policies he advocated were wrong for America and I used every tool at my disposal to defeat his position. However, the way Senator McCain conducted himself represented the essential qualities of leadership the American people deserve.

Senator McCain didn’t speak in generalities. He spoke in specific terms. He didn’t take a position and change his position when he came under withering fire. He didn’t pander. He didn’t equivocate. He didn’t demean his opponents in the Senate or insinuate we harbored base motives or secret prejudices. He was motivated by principle. He believed he was serving his country. He was not inspired by political strategists who foolishly believed they could use this bill to grow the Republicans party, and did not lecture his colleagues about why those strategists were smarter and wiser than 80 percent of Americans.

When Senator McCain lost this battle he didn’t express self-pity or bitterness. Instead, he said he would carry on and offered a unifying message that is beyond debate, saying, “The American people will not settle for the status quo — de facto amnesty and broken borders.”

Whether you agree with him or not, Senator McCain’s actions demonstrated the qualities we rarely see in Washington — courage, character, honor, and dignity.

McCain's numbers have drifted downward since the beginning of this debate, as voters get reminded of his position on immigration. However, now that the topic is off the table, he may start winning back some of those voters, who had to have known his position in January when he ran neck-and-neck for the lead in these same polls. As Dr. Coburn notes, he stayed firm in his convictions and gracious in his tactics, and some may reconsider him on that basis.

Some may not, too, and I suspect that McCain will find it difficult to recover the lost ground. Like Dr. Coburn, I'm not making endorsements, and I have disagreed with McCain in immigration, the BCRA, and on his actions in 2005 regarding judicial nominations. He takes positions and almost always tries to lead the national debate, sometimes to the extent that some feel he's chasing the media when he parts with the GOP on policy. When a politician does that, he's going to annoy a lot of people, sometimes rightly so.

However, and I have mentioned this more than once in my radio shows this week, there are few men who have given as much to his country and lived. A man who spent 7 years being tortured as a POW doesn't deserve to be called a "traitor" over sincere policy disputes. McCain has made mistakes and may not be a good choice for the presidency, but he's a man who deserves respect and an opportunity to make his case -- and, like Dr. Coburn says, a man whose courage did not end with his return from Viet Nam.

We may not like the policies he promotes with such tenacity -- but in an age where politicians too often change positions to suit fashion, one should at least respect fidelity when they see it. McCain may or may not benefit from the end of the immigration debate, but now that the debate has finished, hopefully we can at least give him the benefit of the doubt about his intention to do what he thinks is best for the nation.

UPDATE: Some people believe I'm "kissing up" to John McCain, which seems a little silly. Did Dr. Coburn "kiss up" to McCain? I admire the man for his service to our country, I'll admit that, and in my limited contacts with him, he has struck me as a pretty nice guy overall. It doesn't mean I'd vote for him or support his actions on immigration, the BCRA, or other issues, and I've been pretty critical of his politics. I don't think treating an ex-POW as though he acts on honorable motives is unreasonable, outside of solid evidence to the contrary.

Coleman, Thune To Block Fairness Doctrine In Senate

Yesterday, Mike Pence won bipartisan approval for his amendment blocking the FCC from reinstating the Fairness Doctrine. That amendment is attached to the appropriation for the agency, which requires a companion amendment in the Senate. Just a few moments ago, Senators Norm Coleman and John Thune announced that they have proposed an identical amendment in the Senate:

In an effort to prevent Democrats from suppressing the right to free speech for talk radio and other broadcasters, Senators Norm Coleman (R-MN), Jim DeMint (R-SC) and John Thune (R-SD) today introduced the Broadcaster Freedom Act of 2007 (S.1748). The bill would prevent the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine, which would require the government to monitor political views and decide what constitutes fair political discourse. Identical legislation was also introduced by Congressman Mike Pence (R-IN) in the House of the Representatives.

“At its core, this is about the right to free speech. Our founders put the first amendment first for a reason. It protects all Americans’ right to free speech, regardless of political affiliation or views. The Democrats’ attempt to regulate and stifle ideas is a grave threat our liberties,” said Senator Coleman. “Since the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, talk radio has flourished due to free market ideas. We mustn’t put the government in control over the political views expressed on the public airwaves. I applaud Congressman Pence for being a leader on this issue. Senators DeMint, Thune and I will continue working with our colleagues in the Senate to pass this critical legislation.”

“Here they go again. Democrats showed in the immigration debate they will once again try resurrect the so-called 'Fairness Doctrine', which is nothing more than an attempt to muzzle the free speech of conservative Americans. If liberals had their way, this unfair doctrine would give the heavy hand of government control over talk radio. We must act now to preserve all American's first amendment rights,” said Senator DeMint.

Power Line noted today that Dick Durbin and Dianne Feinstein have inadvertently given the Republicans an opportunity to rehabilitate themselves with their base after the immigration debacle. Attacking talk radio and threatening regulation of political content doesn't just resonate with conservatives, but with everyone concerned about government meddling with political speech. The GOP sees the opportunity to champion free speech while painting the Democrats as afraid and unable to respond to debate.

If Harry Reid and the Senate Democratic Caucus have an ounce of sense, they'll take a lesson from Jose Serrano and allow the amendment to prevail.

CQ Radio: What's Next Edition

Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we have a great roundtable retrospective on the series of conservative wins this week. Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor of The Examiner, joins us to discuss his celebratory post on this week. He and I will also discuss my partial rebuttal, while Winfield Myers takes the position of his Democracy Project partner, Bruce Kesler.

Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! Also, you can subscribe to CQ Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link:

The Stickings' New Blessing

Congratulations to my friend on the other side of the political fence, Michael Stickings, and his wife. Two weeks ago they welcomed a new addition to the family, Emily, which has explained his absence at The Moderate Voice. Congratulations to the entire family on the new arrival!

Gore Clears His Schedule? (Update: Gore Says No)

A blurb in the Taipei Times may telegraph a shakeup in the Democratic primary race, which has settled into a contest for the second spot already. Hillary Clinton may have a tougher fight on her hands, as a cancellation in Al Gore's schedule portends a presidential bid by the former Vice President (via Power Line and The Corner):

■ ENVIRONMENT Al Gore visit postponed Former US vice president Al Gore will not be able to make it to Taiwan this September to address the issue of global warming, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) said yesterday. Tien, who invited Gore to visit Taiwan to promote awareness on global warming, told reporters yesterday that she received an e-mail from the Harry Walker Agency, which has the exclusive right to arrange Gore's speeches, saying that Gore had canceled all his scheduled events in the next six months. The visit to Taiwan had been postponed to next year, she added. Tien said the reason for the cancelation was that Gore was considering a presidential bid.

If this is accurate, it's the best indication that Gore will challenge Hillary for the top spot on the ticket. He has made it his mission to campaign worldwide against global warming, as well as making a living from at least some of his appearances. Cancelling six months of commitments clears him throught at least the start of the primary elections next year.

Of course, this could just be Gore's way of dumping the Taiwan appearance in a way that doesn't burn bridges. He could have decided not to irritate backers who want to concentrate on wheedling Beijing into changes, and a Taiwan appearance by Gore may have bruised some feelings in mainland China. The politics in that region have become very strained, and Beijing may have resented a challenge from Gore from the disputed island.

We should keep our eyes and ears open for other cancellations. If a rash of them suddenly appears, I think we will have our answer. Given the mood of the activists in the Democratic Party, Gore could give Hillary a real problem in the primaries -- and she might wind up at the bottom of the ticket.

UPDATE: Lowell at Raising Kaine (and a BlogTalkRadio host) called Gore's office and got a loud guffaw in return:

It is completely and utterly false.

1. He never accepted an event in Taiwan
2. We have loads of events on the schedule in the next six months

I don't know how to spell bubkus but there's no credibility to this whatsoever.

It's spelled bupkis, and it looks like that's what Gore has in mind for this presidential cycle, at least at the moment. Hillary can breathe a sigh of relief ...

Top Of The World, Ma!

Vladimir Putin has spent the last few years attempting to expand his influence throughout Eastern Europe and central Asia, mostly by threats and economic extortion. He has accused the US of acting as an imperialist power while he tries to knit the old Russian empire together in almost every direction on the compass. Now, we can say every direction, as Putin has made a bold bid for the North Pole:

Russian President Vladimir Putin is making an astonishing bid to grab a vast chunk of the Arctic - so he can tap its vast potential oil, gas and mineral wealth.

His scientists claim an underwater ridge near the North Pole is really part of Russia's continental shelf.

One newspaper printed a map of the "new addition", a triangle five times the size of Britain with twice as much oil as Saudi Arabia.

Currently, the nations bordering on the Arctic have a 200-mile region each closest to their territory. Canada, Greenland, the US, and Russia control the outer rim of the Arctic while the center has been considered an international reserve. The basis for this UN-sponsored agreement has been the fact that the Arctic has no connection to any of the continental plates, and therefore belongs to no nation established on them.

The Russians now claim that they have discovered a ridge from Asia to the Arctic. If true, it would undermine the geological basis for the agreement, although certainly not the political basis. On the strength of this unconfirmed claim, Putin says almost half of the Arctic belongs to him -- including the mineral rights. He plans on exploiting the Arctic in a manner that makes the ANWR request look like a child digging holes on a beach in the summer, as well as claiming a significant strategic edge at the top of the world.

It's not surprising that Putin would make such a naked grab for land, oil, and gas, The question will be whether the US and Canada will do anything to stop him. It may sound esoteric, but this is just one more step in Putin's slow offensive against the West, attempting to return Russia to the status of a Great Power. Controlling the top of the world will provide material and emotional support for that status if he succeeds.

Only Half The Battle Has Been Won

My friend Mark Tapscott reviews a week in which he feels that conservatives won battles on several important fronts. He hails the end of the McCain-Kennedy immigration plan, Supreme Court decisions on race and political speech, and the end to the Fairness Doctrine movement in last night's vote in the House. While Mark is correct to celebrate these events, with one exception they do not really represent victories for conservative governance as much as reprieves from the alternatives:

Winston Churchill once remarked that God takes care of drunks and the United States of America and so it seems to be as we approach the end of a remarkable week in which milestones of success for the conservative movement have come one after another.

I must confess I didn't expect a week such as this. Between Bush's various expansions of Big Government, the GOP congressional majority throwing away of its position and the desperately blind opposition of the Washington Establishment to earmark and other common sense reforms, I was mulling a post asking if the time had come to declare the conservative enterprise a failure.

Yet, we have just been blessed with three signal victories.

I've learned two lessons in life that help keep me sane. Events are rarely as bad as they seem, nor are they as good as they look. Had Mark written that column on the death of the conservative movement, I would have advised him with the former -- and now I'll have to invoke the latter instead.

While all of these events rightly please conservatives, we have to be congnizant that we haven't really won any battles for conservatism in them. All of them amount to little more than significant holding actions against statist policies. None of them represent a victory for conservative policies, because conservative policies haven't been applied in most of the cases.

This is most true for immigration. Before the bill's defeat, we had a bipartisan effort to ignore the border and visa system. The bill's failure acts to extend that. That's not a victory for conservatism. Conservatives will win when they force the federal government to secure the borders and fix the broken visa system. In other words, we haven't enacted any policy at all at this point; how can that be victory?

The two Supreme Court decisions also fall into this same status. The BCRA remains in force, along with at least some of the restrictions on political speech. Racial preferences may have suffered a body blow, but we still have not succeeded in pushing market-based solutions to resolve the vestiges of the government failures to enforce the 14th Amendment for 100 years. I agree that these represent opportunities for conservative action to implement positive policies and solutions, but that's all they represent -- opportunities, not victories in and of themselves.

The single exception was the Pence amendment barring implementation of a new Fairness Doctrine by the FCC. That represented a legislative success against statism and the curtailing of free speech It's a victory for conservative policy, not just a barricade to leftist overreach, although it was that, too. It used the representative process to show that conservatism is the best defense of personal liberty -- and when properly introduced, has a wide range of support. Over 110 Democrats voted for the Pence amendment.

We need to focus on real victory, which comes when conservative policies get adopted and succeed. If we want to celebrate the Supreme Court decision striking racial preferences, we should do so by introducing policies that positively counter the remaining effects of official government racism. If we celebrate the demise of the immigration bill, we need to ensure that we do something to secure the borders and fix the visa system.

We had a good week, but it's way too early to pop the champagne corks.

UPDATE: Another good friend in the blogosphere, Bruce Kesler, tries to bridge the gap:

Mark is correct to point at the Internet as an embodiment of that civic discussion, serving to remind otherwise imperious legislators. Ed is correct to bemoan the extent of intrusion into our daily affairs by such legislators and seek their reversal.

Mark and Ed are invaluable resources in those struggles. Both, however, miss that it is process that matters more than results. Rich Lowry, of National Review, reminds us that, “Now, there is really no such thing as an "inside game" anymore, since bloggers make sure it gets "outside." Both the right and the left will take advantage of this, for good and ill policy ends. But it's clearly an enhancement of democracy.”

I don't think process matters more than results; I think both are important, but in order to truly see conservatism ascendant, we have to produce positive results with the process. Otherwise, we have New Math, which as Tom Lehrer delightfully skewers in his song of the same name, getting the right answer matters less than understanding the process. Here's the Professor at his mathematical best, animated and lip-synched brilliantly by RonfarZ3 and Benjamin Z W at YouTube:

Here's another by Phasmidan which is pretty clever as well:

Court Ruling Offers Paradigm Shift, Not All Buying It

The Roberts court made its first stamp on the volatile area of race relations yesterday in ruling that most state education plans that considers race as a basis of assignment are unconstitutional. Critics have howled that the court has thrown back desegregation efforts by decades, while supporters wonder why it took so long for a court to apply the Fourteenth Amendment.

There are two issues here that compete with each other in an ironic manner. The American people want a color-blind society, but the abject failure of the federal government to enforce the 14th Amendment for 100 years created the problems we face now. At Heading Right, I take a look at the competing interests, and why government intervention of the kind ruled unconstitutional yesterday hasn't delivered -- and what direction we should try next. (via Memeorandum)

Obama: Forget Impeachment, Concentrate On Elections

Barack Obama may have made some of the more radical elements of his party angry yesterday by eschewing impeachment in the next eighteen months, but only because he injected a sense of rationality to the partisan struggle. Obama argued that impeachment should be reserved for "grave" crimes, and that elections provide the most cleansing agent to poor government:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama laid out list of political shortcomings he sees in the Bush administration but said he opposes impeachment for either President George W. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney.

Obama said he would not back such a move, although he has been distressed by the "loose ethical standards, the secrecy and incompetence" of a "variety of characters" in the administration.

"There's a way to bring an end to those practices, you know: vote the bums out," the presidential candidate said, without naming Bush or Cheney. "That's how our system is designed."

Obama has this correct, not just legally but also strategically. First, although many people like to claim that impeachment is a political tool, the Constitution makes it clear that the remedy should only apply to actual criminal conduct. "High crimes and misdemeanors" makes it plain that the founders didn't want a Parliament that removed an executive for a simple loss of confidence, but an independent executive whose election should only be nullified for actual and provable criminal conduct.

Strategically, it's difficult to understand why anyone still argues for impeachment -- but the fact that Obama has to address this shows they do. George Bush and Dick Cheney have 18 months left in office, and sixteen until the next election. Even if the Democrats started impeachment now, it would probably take that long to gather enough evidence for a win in the House, let alone the two-thirds in the Senate needed for removal, which would be the entire point.

They would risk a huge backlash from moderates and centrists who would see this as a stunt, much the same way the Republicans did in 1998 -- only this time, it would come in a presidential election cycle instead of the midterms. It might be the one event that could restore George Bush's flagging approval ratings, and it would be political suicide for a Democratic Congress that has done nothing in its first six months.

Finally, Obama understands that such a move only guarantees to poison political debate over the next decade. He told the constituent breakfast that he'd rather attend to policy than foolish attack strategies. In the sense that Obama represents the future of American politics, it offers some hope that the acid partisanship of the last generation may give way to something more practical and ennobling, and I say that as someone who disagrees with Obama on almost every policy position.

Will he get credit for this among his allies? Try taking a read through the comments on the USA Today story, and decide for yourself.

Giuliani Claims Centrist Position

Rudy Giuliani either has given up attempting to sound conservative or has forgotten that all presidential primary politics is national in today's media environment. While trying to woo Californians, Rudy claimed that he would govern in the same manner as Arnold Schwarzenegger has in the Golden State -- a promise that may not thrill Republicans in or out of California:

Mayor Giuliani is telling California voters wondering what kind of president he would make that they need to look no further than their popular Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"I governed very much like your governor does," Mr. Giuliani said as he described his tenure as mayor of New York from 1994 to 2001. "I got results and I want people to look at that and say that's the way I would govern as president of the United States. I would get results," he said.

In a deft bit of political footwork, Mr. Giuliani managed to declare himself simpatico with the governor without actually specifying any of the issues where the two men hold similar views. Some of those stances, such as support for abortion rights and gay rights, antagonize large swaths of the Republican base in the Golden State and across the country.

Rudy has spent a lot of time and effort to burnish his conservative credentials on the campaign trail. He has tried to argue that his position on abortion represents a small area of disagreement in comparison to a wide range on agreement with conservatives, with middling success. Giuliani argues -- and George Will supports him on this point -- that Giuliani provided the most conservative government possible in New York City, and he's almost certainly correct.

However, Rudy threatens to undermine that by hitching his wagon to the Governator. Arnold has done very well for himself in California, but no one confuses him with a conservative, not even the state's GOP. He has opted to work closer with the Democrats and has become the same kind of big-government Republican that many accuse George Bush of popularizing.

In California, as in New York City, that's the only kind of Republican that can get elected to an executive office. That doesn't mean that the rest of the Republicans around the country want to elect them, however, and Rudy may be making a mistake by reinforcing the impression that he's so far out of step with conservatives in the party. He could find himself positioned well for a general election that he'll never reach.

Addendum: The Democrats have decided to really get personal and nasty early in this campaign. Josh Gerstein reports that a group of them protested outside Rudy's event -- by pointing out that Rudy married his second cousin. They couldn't even get within six months of a primary without getting classless.

Coleman: I Didn't Trust The Government, Either

One of the questions heading into today's cloture vote on immigration was how Senator Norm Coleman would vote. Coleman had voted in favor of bringing the bill back to the floor, perplexing the bill's opponents and putting Coleman squarely in the middle of the drama today.

Coleman voted against cloture today, joining seventeen other Senators in sending the bill back to the grave, this time apparenly for good. What changed? Coleman explains in his statement today that the process itself convinced him that the bill would never improve enough to support:

Today I voted against moving the immigration bill forward. It became increasingly clear that there were still too many problems with this bill and not enough time to correct them. Throughout this debate, the American people did not trust that the Congress or the President had the resolve to secure the border. In the end, their suspicions rang true, as we were unable vote on amendments to strengthen the border and workplace enforcement mechanisms, as well as ending the practice of so called “sanctuary cities”.

From the beginning, this bill was hastily put together; it skipped the committee process, and was rushed to a conclusion on the floor. In the end, we must find a way to bring the more than 12 million illegal immigrants out of the shadows. However, we must do so in a way that determines who is living inside our country, secures our borders, and restores the rule of law to our immigration policies and enforcement. I remain hopeful that we can successfully address this issue sometime in the future, because we must.

Congress lost the trust of the people and of a significant number of its own members through its failure to act, and its failure to properly develop the bill in such a way that Senators could fix its fatal flaws. Coleman had had enough, as had most everyone else.

Bush has announced that he will not return to this bill, instead focusing on the upcoming budget debates. Congress still needs to address border security and visa reform, however, and they had better do so soon. If Congress and the White House want some credibility in the future to pursue normalization, they have a chance now to start building it with real action and above-board legislation.

Two House Votes For GOP

Two House votes in the last few minutes offer some insight into the workings of the lower chamber. The first, on an amendment by Rahm Emanual, would strip funding for the office of the Vice President, a snarky swipe at the assertion by Dick Cheney's counsel that the Vice President isn't part of the executive branch. That motion failed, but only by seven votes, 217-210 -- and produced a round of catcalls at the end.

The second is the Pence amendment to forbid the FCC from re-enacting the Fairness Doctrine. I live-blogged the debate on this amendment earlier today, and the voice vote at the time was said to carry Pence to victory. He wanted a recorded vote and got it. The final result: an overwhelming rejection of the Fairness Doctrine, 309-115, with 1 vote present. The Democrats split almost exactly, while all voting Republicans voted for the amendment.

Not a bad day's work for the GOP today. The immigration bill got killed, for the moment at least, and the Fairness Doctrine got stopped before the Democrats could get it started.

The White House Gets Tough With Congress, And Vice Versa

For only the second time in six years, the Bush administration invoked executive privilege after Congress issued subpoenas for documents and testimony in the case of the fired prosecutors. This sets up a showdown in the courts for the two branches to determine the limits of oversight the legislature has over the executive branch -- and an escalation of bitterness just in time to fuel the presidential primaries:

For only the second time since taking office, President Bush has exercised executive privilege and refused to hand over documents to Congress. The first time Bush invoked privilege was in December 2001, when Congress asked for documents from the administration of his predecessor, Bill Clinton. ...

Congress’s subpoenas also directed former White House counsel Harriet Miers and former political director Sara Taylor to testify, which the administration has made clear they will not do. Asked whether the earlier offer for closed-door interviews with White House players—but without the transcript that Congress insists is necessary—still stands, [Tony] Snow replied: “All the offers are off the table. If the subpoenas come off the table, the offers go back on the table.”

Snow went on to take a shot at Congress, which had a popularity rating lower than the presidency in a recent Gallup poll. He said that since members of Congress “have been unsuccessful in passing key legislation,” they are trying “to do what they can to make life difficult for the White House.

This still strikes me as a scandal in search of any real wrongdoing. Despite having chewed on this for months, Congress has found only incompetence. No one thinks that the President or the Attorney General can't dismiss prosecutors, regardless of how badly they did it. Critics of the administration want to find nefarious plots to cover up the administration's supposed crimes, but even the terminated attorneys don't claim that. One, David Yglesias, alleges that Pete Domenici (R-NM) got him fired for not aggressively pursuing corruption charges against two Democrats, which might be more properly pursued in the Senate Ethics Committee.

So far, though, incompetence and cronyism is all they've found, and they have no probable cause to pursue executive-branch materials or testimony. That won't stop them from trying to get it, and the case law isn't crystal-clear in this regard. Most of the relevant court decisions regarding executive privilege date back to Watergate, and the precedent seems a bit daunting for the White House. Executive privilege has been upheld, but so also has Congress' check on executive power, and this may be close enough to the mark to lose a challenge.

And in the second set of subpoenas, their case may be even worse. Personnel issues in the DoJ clearly fall within presidential power, but the NSA warrantless surveillance program touches on potential violations of law -- and the bypassing of the judiciary. A court challenge to those subpoenas may find even less sympathy from the Supreme Court, which is where both cases will eventually wind up. The response from the White House on those subpoenas has been more measured, and I suspect they may be worried about trying to make an executive-privilege claim there.

The Bush administration could run out the clock with some court challenges -- but that would play very poorly in the next campaign cycle. The Democrats certainly understand this. Snow is right that it will distract people from the lack of accomplishment in this Congress, but that won't matter in the long run. The Democrats want to see a bloody Constitutional fight between Congress and the White House, and most of all they want to hang it on every GOP candidate for national office over the next sixteen months.

It will probably work, at least for a while. However, if they get their wish and find nothing at all, they'd better be prepared for a significant backlash.

CQ Radio: The Politico's Mike Allen

UPDATE: Mike and I had a great conversation about Fred Thompson and immigration -- be sure to listen to the podcast! Just a couple of Cerritos boys talking shop ...

Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), Mike Allen of The Politico joins me to talk about Fred Thompson's statement from yesterday, today's rejection of the immigration compromise and what it means in Washington, and the effect it may have on the GOP's chances next November, and more.

Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! Also, you can subscribe to CQ Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link:

The live player will start automatically if you click on the link to the extended entry. You can also listen from the player on the sidebar.

Also, Silvio Canto will have National Review's Mario Loyola on his show today, so be sure to catch that live on

Pence Amendment On Fairness Doctrine: Live Blog

I have heard from Rep. Mike Pence's office that debate on his amendment to bar the FCC from reinstating the Fairness Doctrine will begin shortly, perhaps around 1:30 ET. It should last 40 minutes, and I'll live-blog it. This is an important amendment, and I suspect it will not survive -- but we need to keep the heat on Congress to keep them from making the federal government the arbiter of the content of political speech.

Keep checking back!

Democrats say they will accept the amendment. Read below.

12:56 CT - Well, the House has debated a number of issues so far, but none of them Pence's amendment. I'll have to start show prep soon, but I'm hoping that the debate will start shortly. We'll see ...

1:00 - Pence is coming to the podium on his amendment now. 40 minutes of debate ...

1:02 - Pence notes that the Fairness Doctrine had a chilling effect on public debate. Broadcasters simply wouldn't risk their licenses in order to air public debate, because of the onerous burdens it placed on second-to-second management of content.

1:04 - Pence says that people claim that his amendment is unnecessary, but that within the last 48 hours, three senior Democrats have talked about reinstating the FD: Durbin, Kerry, Feinstein. Good, short speech.

1:07 - David Obey completely ignores the statements from three Democratic Senators and says no one in Congress has talked about resurrecting the FD. He then confuses broadcast media with the rest of the mainstream media. However, this seems a moot point, since the Democrats apparently will concede the amendment; even Obey shrugged it off.

1:10 - Jeff Flake rebukes Obey, in a friendly manner, by reading Durbin's quote.

1:10 - Dennis Kucinich now says that it's a non-issue -- even though he himself called for a return of the FD! He then talks about how the FCC "controls the airwaves".

1:14 - Kucinich darkly referred to future administrations resurrecting the FD -- and Pence sys that's precisely the point of the amendment. Diane Watson mischaracterizes everyone's argument, and then says only six corporations have control over public debate. Huh? We have the most open public debate in American history -- and part of that came from the removal of the federal government as arbiter of the content of broadcasts.

1:19 - Roy Blunt says market forces should prevail in public debate, rather than top-down government management of political content.

1:21 - Shorter Jose Serrano (D-NY): Trust us, the government will just put moderates on the air! He wants to know why the GOP wants to fix what's not broken, and the obvious answer is that we don't want the FCC and the Democrats to break it.

1:26 - Greg Walden: "It's not my fault that Air America couldn't find an audience!" He also reminded Congress that the courts have warned in the past that the FD was likely unconstitutional.

1:33 - A number of Republicans have made the point that the FD came from an era when the US had few broadcast stations, and few options for informing the public. Even if one accepted that the FD didn't violate free speech, today's society hardly requires the government to force broadcasters to carry speech for balance.

1:40 - It looks like the Democrats mostly gave up arguing about the amendment. It looks like they have yielded most of their time to the Republicans.

1:42 - I spoke too soon. David Obey quotes Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address to scold "yap-yap TV" and talk radio for not demanding a Fairness Doctrine -- so we can get a balanced media. Is Obey ill? Does he not understand that the FD didn't apply to newspapers?

1:46 - Obey says, "I want to let Rush be Rush!" He says Rush is discredited and he wants to keep it that way. I think he's making this up as he's going along.

1:50 - The ayes had it, but the roll-call vote will be postponed. It looks like Pence wins.

Now What?

The immigration bill is dead, yet again, after the Senate rejected cloture by fourteen votes. In the end, the compromise could not even gain a majority in support of what conceptually may have been a passable compromise, but in reality was a poorly constructed, poorly processed mass of contradictions and gaps. Many of us who may have supported a comprehensive approach to immigration found ourselves amazed and repulsed by both the product and the process of this attempt to solve the immigration problem.

So what should happen now? The problems of immigration did not disappear with the failure of the cloture vote a few moments ago. Congress needs to act to resolve them -- but they need to do so in a manner that respects the processes of representative democracy, and in a manner that builds the confidence of Americans rather than fuel their cynicism.

They need to address border security and visa-program problems immediately. Congress has left these problems simmering for over 21 years. Their failure to address the issue over two decades has demonstrated that Washington does not consider those issues a very high priority, and the Senate's insistence on tying them to normalization underscores that. Poll after poll shows that Americans don't believe Congress when it says it will do something -- and so Congress needs to demonstrate their competence first before we take a flyer on creating another vast bureaucratic nightmare.

Secure the borders. Fix the visa program. Do those tasks by using the proper legislative processes in both chambers, allowing for real debate, honest and open amendment opportunities, and quit using clay pigeons and other parliamentary tricks to hide the bill and railroad it through Congress.

In other words, act responsibly, instead of trying to pull a fast one on the American public.

UPDATE: Some people argue that the failures of enforcement come from the executive branch, not the legislative. Certainly the executive branch shares the failure, but Congress has never allocated the resources for proper border enforcement, nor have they funded the visa overhaul. They have also created new bureaucracies (DHS) that actively impeded progress on these issues. The issue starts in Congress, and they need to act to provide the proper resources for these priorities.

Cloture Call: Live Blog

I'll be watching and reporting on the cloture process this morning, and the opponents of the immigration bill seem to be off to a good start. John Ensign, the chair of the NRSC, has announced that he will vote against cloture to kill the bill. That puts them at six conversions from Tuesday, either announced or heavily leaning, which should be enough to reject cloture.

9:27 CT - Lots of bloviating at the moment. Dick Durbin is talking about a "nation of immigrants" and "how many more can we take?" Well, that's true as far as it goes, but that's not the issue at hand today. What we're talking about (everyone but Tom Tancredo) is illegal immigration, not legal immigration. Almost no one has a problem with legal immigration, but we want the borders secured. It's not about diversity, it's about security and confidence in the system's ability to control immigration rationally.

9:31 - Well, no one bloviates like Ted Kennedy. It's more of what Durbin said, but just louder. However, I had to laugh when Kennedy said, "Year after year, we've had the broken borders." Yes! Exactly! Let's fix that before we start worrying about normalization! "This bill is strong; it's fair and practical." It's also about 20 hours old, and most of us haven't had the opportunity to review it properly -- including most of Kennedy's colleagues.

9:38 - It looks like the cloture vote itself will come at 9:50 am CT, or about 12 minutes from now ...

9:41 - Arlen Specter believes that people who call and e-mail Senators do not represent America. Not coincidentally, only 14% of American people think Congress represents America.

9:44 - "We have a foolproof method of determining whether an employee is illegal." We do? When did that arrive, and why hasn't it been implemented yet?

9:48 - Chutzpah alert! Specter is complaining about "cynicism" and machinations on the Baucus amendment on a bill where leadership has maneuvered to kill real debate and amendment. You have to be kidding me. For cynicism, nothing tops a clay pigeon.

9:53 - Harry Reid, victim of hatred and obloquy. He complained that he got a hate letter from his hometown over the immigration bill, and that talk radio has had a "field day" with its "simplicity". Reid also evokes the Senate's reputation as the world's greatest deliberative body at the end of a process in which he blocked true deliberation.

10:04 - Cloture vote begins. Does Reid have a couple of Democrats ready to switch from Nay to Yea? He'll need them.

10:11 - Webb votes against cloture, and I count 22 so far overall against, with 20 for.

10:15 - Landrieu votes no, another Democrat against, although that's not a switch. Rockefeller stayed as a no, as well.

10:19 - Bernie Sanders and Tom Harkin voted against cloture, as did Nelson of Nebraska. Robert Byrd stayed a No, while Olympia Snowe stayed an Aye. Mark Pryor voted against cloture. Sam Brownback switched to No -- very interesting.

10:20 - Norm Coleman voted against cloture. Wow.

10:26 - A majority, 53 Senators, have rejected cloture. It's dead ... again.

Continuing ..

The Quiet Man

The immigration debate has brought a number of Republican Senators to the forefront, especially Jeff Sessions, Lindsey Graham, Jim DeMint, and James Inhofe. The man who some might have expected on the front lines, however, has taken an ever-lower profile during the fracas Mitch McConnell, the highly effective Minority Leader, has unexpectedly transformed into a wallflower:

With his caucus bitterly divided and the Senate descending into procedural warfare, Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) stayed away from the Senate floor as the most sweeping overhaul of immigration laws in 21 years hung in the balance.

Facing the biggest challenge of his leadership tenure, McConnell has largely chosen to work behind the scenes and instead allow a bloc of conservatives to spar with Republican supporters of the bill. ...

Since the bipartisan negotiators and the White House reached a deal on the bill last month, opposition on the right has been growing. That has put Republicans who are up for reelection, including McConnell, in an uncomfortable position as the White House has launched an all-out push to give President Bush a major victory in his final months in office.

McConnell’s absence from the fight highlighted his lukewarm feeling on the bill. He is neither an advocate nor a staunch critic of the bill, and has not said how he would vote on the underlying bill. The senator voted against efforts to shut down debate earlier this month, but voted Tuesday on a motion to proceed to debating the bill. Last year he voted for the measure that passed the Senate but failed to clear Congress.

Publicly, McConnell has tried to limit talking about the issue. Reporters who pepper him with questions about immigration legislation often are greeted with silence. And recently he cut short a news conference on energy issues once questions turned to the immigration bill.

The newfound stoicism has its merits, on at least two bases. McConnell has to run for re-election in conservative Kentucky next year, and as the song says, it doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. He wants to leave his options open, and he's doing a good job of it by confounding anyone who wants to know where he actually stands on the bill.

On the political side, it's almost certainly genius. He has worked with the White House, as his job requires, to assist them in getting their policy onto the Senate floor. That's as fas as he's going to go publicly for either George Bush or Harry Reid. The Majority Leader complained about getting the blame for the arrogant and unprecedented process being used for the immigration bill, telling people that McConnell agreed to it beforehand. That may be true, but it isn't McConnell on the Senate floor trying to defend forcing a vote on a bill that hadn't even been correctly published yet. McConnell has hung the process firmly around Reid's neck.

Unfortunately for McConnell, he's going to have to choose sides today. While one more procedural hurdle could trip the bill after this cloture vote, today's opportunity holds the most promise for actually killing the bill. The Quiet Man will have to speak up and be counted.

Surprise! Bipartisan Consensus!

Pundits constantly remind us that American politics is more polarized than ever. The politicians of both parties increasingly resort to hard-line negotiating tactics rather than attempt to find common ground for agreement on behalf of the American people. Anger and bitterness, usually blamed on bloggers and talk radio, keep the two tribes of Washington politics from conducting positive work on public policy.

Poppycock, says I. Rubbish! Our boys and girls in Washington can come to bipartisan consensus ... when it benefits themselves:

Despite low approval ratings and hard feelings from last year's elections, Democrats and Republicans in the House are reaching out for an approximately $4,400 pay raise that would increase their salaries to almost $170,000.

The cost-of-living raise endorsed Wednesday evening gets lawmakers back on track for automatic pay raises after a fight between the parties last year and again in January killed the pay increase due this year. That was the first interruption of the annual congressional pay boost in seven years.

The blowup came after Democrats last year fulfilled a campaign promise to deny themselves more pay until Congress raised the minimum wage. Delays in the minimum wage bill cost every lawmaker about $3,100 this year.

On a 244-181 vote Wednesday, Democrats and Republicans alike killed a bid by Reps. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, and Lee Terry, R-Neb., to get a direct vote to block the COLA, which is automatically awarded unless lawmakers vote to block it. The Senate has not indicated when it will deal with a similar measure.

How about that for a bipartisan consensus? Congress managed to come together to ensure positive public policy for the American people -- well, okay, 535 of them, but they're still Americans, right?

They're going to get their 2.6% cost-of-living adjusment. Coincidentally, that may also be their approval rating by the end of this session.

The Failure Of Super-Bureaucracies

The Washington Post reports that the Department of Homeland Security has spent millions of dollars on no-bid consultant contracts since its inception, far beyond their budget. Booz Allen benefited from an overreliance on their firm to win contract after contract, eventually billing for over $70 million in contracting services. Many of the jobs Booz Allen filled should never have gone outside the agency in the first place, according to the Post's Robert O'Harrow.

At Heading Right, I explain that all of this could easily have been foreseen at the creation of the DHS -- and, in fact, it was. The creation of superbureaucracies do not increase accountability but diminish it, and resource allocation suffers from institutionally-imposed incompetence. If Congress wants to unleash its venom, they should spare Booz Allen and the DHS, and instead target themselves.

I'm So Glad The Media Hired Wonkette

When Ana Marie Cox went from Wonkette to Time, we hailed it as an important recognition of the power of the blogosphere. Bloggers had taken a significant step towards establishing themselves as credible journalists and pundits, and we looked forward to gaining respect from our senior colleagues in the media as a result. At least, that's what bloggers hoped ... until yesterday, when Cox decided to hit the dogs**t beat in order to conjure up a chickens**t hit piece on Mitt Romney:

The reporter intended the anecdote that opened part four of the Boston Globe's profile of Mitt Romney to illustrate, as the story said, "emotion-free crisis management": Father deals with minor — but gross — incident during a 1983 family vacation, and saves the day. But the details of the event are more than unseemly — they may, in fact, be illegal.

The incident: dog excrement found on the roof and windows of the Romney station wagon. How it got there: Romney strapped a dog carrier — with the family dog Seamus, an Irish Setter, in it — to the roof of the family station wagon for a twelve hour drive from Boston to Ontario, which the family apparently completed, despite Seamus's rather visceral protest.

Massachusetts's animal cruelty laws specifically prohibit anyone from carrying an animal "in or upon a vehicle, or otherwise, in an unnecessarily cruel or inhuman manner or in a way and manner which might endanger the animal carried thereon." An officer for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals responded to a description of the situation saying "it's definitely something I'd want to check out." The officer, Nadia Branca, declined to give a definitive opinion on whether Romney broke the law but did note that it's against state law to have a dog in an open bed of a pick-up truck, and "if the dog was being carried in a way that endangers it, that would be illegal." And while it appears that the statute of limitations has probably passed, Stacey Wolf, attorney and legislative director for the ASPCA, said "even if it turns out to not be against the law at the time, in the district, we'd hope that people would use common sense...Any manner of transporting a dog that places the animal in serious danger is something that we'd think is inappropriate...I can't speak to the accuracy of the case, but it raises concerns about the judgment used in this particular situation."

Wow -- what a scoop! Twenty-three years ago, Romney made an error in judgment about his dog's accommodations on a long trip. This is what passes for news at Time Magazine these days; a lengthy exposition on the statute of limitations for dog carrier violations, complete with opinions from SPCA and PETA.

I'll grant that strapping the carrier to the roof of the vehicle was rather foolish and not particularly wise. When the dog got sick, Mitt should have pulled off the road, cleaned up, and figured out another plan for Seamus. At the least, he should have made sure that he wasn't flinging dog feces on the cars behind him.

And while deconstructing the relative options in this 23-year-old incident might make for a mildly amusing blog post, can someone explain why this story has so much weight that Time Magazine ("in partnership with CNN") considers it important enough to publish, even as an Internet article? Is this the result of those multiple levels of editorial control? Will Time Magazine start dropping into candidates' back yards to inspect dog droppings, ensuring the safety and good treatment of family pets of both parties? There will be voters casting ballots in this election who weren't even born when this incident occurred.

Besides, the woman who promoted Washingtonienne should be the last person to criticize someone leaving a trail of s**t.

Auditioning For Second Fiddle?

Bill Richardson has failed to gain much traction in the Democratic primary race, remaining mired in single digits. A majority of respondents have never heard of Richardson, the two-time Governor of New Mexico and the owner of perhaps the best resume in either primary campaign. Dana Milbank reports that Richardson has the look of a candidate who's hoping for second best:

Running for the vice presidency is a delicate operation, but Bill Richardson seems to be getting the hang of it.

The New Mexico governor is running for president, of course, but should that fail he has already mastered the first responsibility of the running mate: Don't overshadow the top of the ticket. This trait was in evidence yesterday when Richardson gave a lunchtime foreign policy speech in Washington at the exact moment Hillary Clinton was giving one of her own.

Leading a detailed, hour-long discussion about Iran in which words such as "fissionable" and "Abrahamic dialogue" were invoked, Richardson demonstrated why he is running a distant fifth for the Democratic presidential nomination, and why, in a CNN poll released this week, 54 percent of respondents had either never heard of him or had no opinion of him.

Clinton's speech was in a gilded ballroom of the Willard hotel, where waiters served roasted chicken and orzo salad at tables decorated with blue hydrangeas coordinated with the candidate's blue pantsuit. The Post's Anne Kornblut counted more than a dozen television cameras vying for the best angle.

Richardson's speech was at the National Guard Memorial Museum, where attendees balanced on their laps plastic boxes containing tuna sandwiches and bags of potato chips. Two television cameras had the place to themselves.

Milbank sounded an interesting note, considering his newspaper's latest series of attacks on the current Vice President. After reporting a challenge from an audience member to Richardson to make his foreign-policy "sexy" on the stump, Milbank writes that for a VP candidate,"weighty is sexy". Apparently Milbank must differ from the official Post line; their Dick Cheney series has done nothing but talk about how frightening it is to have a VP with so much influence -- mainly on foreign policy.

Otherwise, Milbank essentially captures the moment perfectly. Richardson would present the Republicans with a nightmare if he won the nomination. He has 27 years of experience in both the legislative and executive branches, as well as in international diplomacy. He may be the most qualified presidential candidate, in that sense, in my lifetime -- and instead, the Democrats are about to nominate someone whose highest qualification for the office is her previous residency in the White House.

Richardson would probably take the bottom of the ticket, too. After all, he has nowhere to go after he finishes his current term in office except back to Congress. He would have a high visibility, and could lend his talents to a Clinton presidency with a minimum of adjustment, having worked closely with Bill Clinton throughout the 1990s. It would lend a certain gravitas to Clinton's candidacy that it lacks, and Richardson's call for full-out retreat from Iraq will help her hold the anti-war activists who dislike her at the moment.

However, can anyone see Hillary allowing Richardson more than a short leash? She runs whatever she has, and the Presidency will certainly be no exception. Given the attacks on Cheney's influence and her own somewhat lightweight experience, she's not about to give anyone the impression that she's being run by a cabal behind the scenes consisting of the two Bills.

If elected as VP, Richardson will likely be attending a lot of funerals and VFW events -- returning to the traditional second-fiddle role of the American VP.

Who Sires The Dead Duck?

Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan, the saying goes. In the case of the immigration bill, it appears that an parents are dropping like flies, and the Democrats have begun a paternity claim naming George Bush as its father. If he can't deliver 20 votes for cloture this morning, they say the bill's failure will rest on his shoulders:

Just two days ago, 64 senators voted to revive the bill, with many saying they wanted to give the Senate a chance to improve the bill through amendments. But after a messy day in the chamber yesterday, with dozens of objections, arguments on the floor and five amendments defeated, at least a half-dozen senators said publicly or privately that their patience has run out.

"The way this has been handled, I'm not going to take a leap of faith," said Sen. Richard M. Burr, North Carolina Republican, who voted to advance the bill on Tuesday but said the way Democratic leaders ran the floor yesterday left no room to "take a bad bill and make it better." ...

Democratic leaders have said they can deliver about 40 votes for the bill and called on President Bush and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to deliver at least 20 votes. Democrats said if the bill fails, Mr. Bush will get the blame.

That sounds like wishful thinking. Certainly the sense one gets from those Senators looking to divorce themselves from the bill now isn't that they're abandoning it because of a lack of White House pressure. The process has disgusted several of them, and the blame for that goes to Harry Reid, not George Bush.

Let's recap, shall we? The bill came to the Senate originally through a self-appointed committee of Senators, bypassing the normal committee process where Senators can debate and amend proposals in a sane and rational manner. The "Masters of the Universe" wanted only four days of debate, but under pressure, Reid gave it eight -- but refused to allow more than a handful of amendments. The bill lost on cloture by 15 votes, a clear rejection of the arrogance of Reid's process.

So what did he do this time? He decided on an even more arrogant process, demanding that the Senate vote on a bill that had not even been provided to them. Reid used an unprecedented procedure, the "clay pigeon", and then set up the rules so that no one could offer any further amendments. He turned the world's greatest deliberative body into the In-N-Out Debate Society, a railroad job so complete that the only rational option to punish him for it is to shoot down cloture and embarass him publicly for it.

It looks like more Senators have come to the same conclusion. He needs 20 GOP Senators to join 40 Democrats to endorse his historically bad leadership, and I'm not sure he'll get either number. If anyone fathered this dead duck, it's the man who spawned the clay pigeon.

Cloture Cometh

It looks like the Senate will attempt to pass cloture on the comprehensive and incomprehensible immigration reform package tomorrow morning. Thanks to an unexpected failure to kill an amendment, the cloture vote will most likely come in the morning, perhaps as early as 10:30 am ET:

The Senate's revived legislation to legalize millions of unlawful immigrants faces a critical test Thursday after surviving potentially fatal challenges.

Attempts from the right and left to alter key elements of the delicate bipartisan compromise failed Wednesday, including a Republican proposal to deny illegal immigrants a path to citizenship and Democratic bids to reunite legal immigrants with family members.

The Senate killed, by a 56-41 vote, an amendment by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., to provide more green cards for parents of U.S. citizens. By a 55-40 margin, it tabled a proposal by Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., to give family members of citizens and legal permanent residents more credit toward green cards in a new merit-based points system.

A make-or-break procedural vote was set for Thursday, however, as the Senate plowed through amendments that supporters hoped would address waverers' concerns.

Jeff Sessions has taken to calling Harry Reid and the backers of the compromise "Masters of the Universe" for their high-handed tactics in shoving this bill through the Senate in an unprecedented fashion. Members didn't even get the bill until around 2 pm ET today; John Cornyn literally had it handed to him as he complained on the floor about its absence. Now they have to decide whether they want to close off debate on a 400-page bill that they've had for less than 24 hours to review.

Ironically, their efficiency in keeping amendments off of the bill may wind up killing its chances. A number of Senators voted for the initial cloture necessary to bring this bill off the table on Tuesday with the thought that they could amend the bill significantly enough to make it palatable. However, the moderates saw their amendments fall by the wayside -- Kay Bailey Hutchison, Norm Coleman, Jim Webb, Kit Bond, and others. Only five votes for the previous cloture need to change to No for this cloture in order to tube the bill again, and as National Review has documented, it looks close now.

Bloomberg reports that the bill is in real peril:

The fate of U.S. immigration legislation was cast into doubt when at least six senators who helped revive the proposed overhaul said they either oppose or are leaning against a move to permit a vote on final passage. ...

Republicans Richard Burr of North Carolina and Christopher Bond of Missouri and Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska said they oppose permitting a vote on final passage. Virginia Democrat Jim Webb and Republicans John Ensign of Nevada and Pete Domenici of New Mexico said they were leaning that way.

I'll be covering the cloture motion live tomorrow morning, and you can bet your bottom dollar that Michelle Malkin will be all over it. In the meantime, you can sign Senator Inhofe's Secure Borders Now petition at this site, if you want to send a message to the waverers. And if you want to see Senator Inhofe's argument for yourself -- well, here it is:

Stay tuned. My prediction? Cloture fails, 57-42.

CQ Radio Scoop: Fred Thompson Statement

In an exclusive scoop at BlogTalkRadio, Fred Thompson will make a statement at 3:30 pm CT today through an additional show for CQ Radio. Be sure to listen live, or catch the podcast that will follow.

If you want to embed the player on your own site for this show, go to the extended entry and copy the code there. Just replace the () characters with the open-close brackets normally used for HTML scripts!

UPDATE: Here's the link to my show, where I played the statement twice -- and if you want to stream it separately, you can do that here.

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CQ Radio: Matt Lewis, NZ Bear ... Plus A Surprise Guest?

Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we'll throw the show open to our callers. What do you want to discuss? The forum will be wide open, and we'll debate anything you like. Want to talk about clay pigeon sausage? Energy policy? The Fairness Doctrine?

UPDATE: We may get Matt Lewis of Townhall during the hour, talking about his provocative column today regarding the four lessons of the Bush administration.

Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation!

The live player will start automatically if you click on the link to the extended entry. You can also listen from the player on the sidebar.

Watching The Sausage Being Made From Clay Pigeons

I'm watching C-SPAN 2 at the moment, a fascinating exercise in official boredom. Today, however, the lunacy outweighs the ennui. As Michelle Malkin notes, the clay pigeon had to fly back to its coop this afternoon after a rushed reading by Senate staffers found a plethora of mistakes and at least one serious omission. That leaves the Senate debating a bill that no one has read, and that no one has put in its final form, which means that everyone on the floor has blathered about nothing at all. It's almost as ironic as Seinfeld -- and we're paying for it.

Brian Darling appeared on CQ Radio yesterday to talk about the outrageous back-room maneuvering this bill has taken already. Today he e-mails Kathryn Jean Lopez at The Corner to revise and extend those remarks:

Someone once said not to watch how sausage or legislation are made. Today especially I prefer to be at the sausage factory.

As if the Senate floor situation could get any worse, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s staff is now rewriting the Clay Pigeon amendment behind closed doors. It is the intent of the Majority Leader to bring this new unread Amendment up without the Republicans seeing the language. Yesterday Senator Reid did not have his massive 373 page amendment ready when he started debate on it and mistakes were made in the initial drafting. This fact was not discovered until Republicans objected to waiving the reading of the bill, and the Senate Clerk had nothing to read. Shockingly, Reid scrambled around, put the floor in morning business for a few hours, and then allowed Kennedy’s staff make final changes to the amendment. The language was finally made available around 5:30 pm and Reid “graciously” gave Republicans the night to go through it before moving to it this morning.

This morning Republicans announced that Reid’s amendment did not include the Sessions EITC provision in the touchback section, despite the fact that all previously passed amendments were supposed to be incorporated in the bill and the Clay Pigeon amendment. This oversight is the only mistake so far found, yet there may be other mistakes and intentional omissions in the 373 page amendment. This morning Reid put the floor back in morning business and sent his staff off to rewrite the mega amendment once again. Today, “the most deliberative body in the world,” is left to debate legislation that they do not have a copy of…

Thus far, the finest deliberative body has voted on two amendments, one from Kay Bailey Hutchison and the other from James Webb. The former has been tabled, which in the US means it's dead, and the latter appears well on its way there. Hutchison voted against cloture yesterday, but Webb voted to bring the bill to the floor.

Webb lost on his amendment, 79-18. Will that move him to a Nay on the next cloture vote?

API Conference Call On Energy IQ (Update: Take The Quiz!)

I joined a conference call conducted by the American Petroleum Institute (API) on an "energy IQ" survey they recently conducted, and their overall energy policy. The API represents the energy providers in the US; they effectively help shape the public debate over energy policy on behalf of their members.

In this call, the API argues that the policymakers and opinion leaders don't have a firm grasp on the facts on energy, and more worrisome, neither do the consumers. They used Harris to survey consumers to find the gaps in knowledge that create misunderstandings and unreasonable expectations. This was an Internet study of 1,333 adults in the US, weighted for region, age, ethnicity, and economic strata.

Two conclusions emerged, according to the pollsters. First, most Americans "know very little about where energy comes from," and even less of distribution issues. In fact, they seemed unwilling to hazard guesses, opting for "not sure" in larger proportion than expected. Last, when they got answers wrong, they got them wrong to the largest extent, indicating not just ignorance but flat-out misinformed.

Only one in 10 correctly identified Canada as our largest importer. Most overestimated the imports from the Middle East by a factor of 3-4 times reality. People also overestimate the profits of energy companies; 42% guessed that the oil companies 12-16% profit margin, instead of the correct 9.5% profit margin. They seriously underestimated the amount of reinvestment into their companies.

Most of the details aren't all that significant. After all, oil is a fungible market, and it makes only a little difference where our supply originates. A shutdown of any source, even one we do not utilize, would create havoc in the global market and spike oil prices. The API acknowledges this, but want to show how misconceptions can affect energy policy -- and I suspect that they're most concerned about tax policy most of all.

The API made a comment about how energy independence would be an unrealistic expectation "for several decades to come". One reason is the energy infrastructure in the US. How do you distribute the new forms of energy? Ethanol can't use pipelines, for instance, and mass transportation eats into its efficiency. It will take decades to actually build the coal-liquefication facilities, and so on. The API supports nuclear energy, and it can tie right into the existing grid, but construction and storage still puts this years out.

UPDATE: Here's the survey by Harris. Take the quiz yourself and post your answers in the comments -- or check your energy IQ against the answer sheet at Energy Tomorrow. The questions are in the extended entry!

1. What percent of the world’s 10 biggest oil and natural gas companies are owned and operated by foreign governments?

1 25%
2 50%
3 75%
4 100%
5 Not sure

2. Where does ExxonMobil, the largest U.S. oil and natural gas company, rank in size among the world’s largest holders of oil reserves?

1 Among the top 3 oil reserve holders
2 Among 4th to 6th oil reserve holders
3 Among 7th to 10th oil reserve holders
4 Not among the top 10 largest oil reserve holders
5 Not sure

3. What percent of the world’s proven oil reserves do U.S. oil companies control?

1 0% to less than 10%
2 10% to less than 20%
3 20% to less than 30%
4 30% to less than 40%
5 Not sure

4. According to 2006 projections, what percent of global energy demand in 2030 will be met by fossil fuels, such as oil, natural gas and coal?

1 21%
2 41%
3 61%
4 81%
5 Not sure

5. What percent of U.S. domestic energy needs are currently met by imports?

1 10% to less than 25%
2 25% to less than 40%
3 40% to less than 60%
4 60% to less than 80%
5 Not sure

6. In 2006, how many cents did the U.S. oil and natural gas industry earn in profit on every dollar of gasoline sales?

1 1 to 5 cents
2 6 to 10 cents
3 11 to 15 cents
4 16 to 20 cents
5 Not sure

7. What percentage of U.S. oil companies’ stocks are owned by pension plans and retirement accounts?

1 0% to 15%
2 16% to 30%
3 31% to 45%
4 46% to 60%
5 Not sure

8. On average in 2006, what percent of your gasoline dollar went to the following factors? Please select each response only once.

1 Price of crude oil
2 Refining, distribution and service station costs
3 Federal, state, and local taxes

Write which factor above goes with which percentage below

1 56%
2 26%
3 18%

9. Current government policy restricts access to what percentage of potential offshore U.S. oil and natural gas development sites, off the coasts of the lower 48 states?

1 25%
2 45%
3 65%
4 85%
5 Not sure

10. From 2000 through 2005, U.S. oil and gas companies invested how many billions of dollars on emerging energy technologies in North America (such as biomass, wind, solar, alternative fuel vehicles, gas-to-liquids and oil shale)?

1 $1 to less than $25 billion
2 $25 to less than $50 billion
3 $50 to less than 75 billion
4 $75 to 100 billion
5 Not sure

11. According to Oil and Gas Journal, at 2006 production rates, how many years will the global “known reserves” of oil last?

1 20 years
2 40 years
3 50 years
4 60 years
5 Not Sure

12. According to 2007 data, what percentage of U.S. energy use is currently supplied by renewable sources?

1 0% to less than 10%
2 10% to less than 20%
3 20% to less than 30%
4 30% or more
5 Not sure

13. According to 2007 projections, what percentage of U.S. energy use will be supplied by renewable sources by 2030?

1 0% to less than 10%
2 10% to less than 20%
3 20% to less than 30%
4 30% or more
5 Not sure

14. What percentage of gasoline used in the U.S. would be replaced by ethanol, using current corn-based production technology, if every acre of corn was used for ethanol production exclusively?

1 0 to 10%
2 11% to 25%
3 26% to 40%
4 41% to 55%
5 Not sure

15. What percentage of cars on the road today are designed to operate using the fuel E-85 (a fuel mixture that is 15% gasoline and 85% ethanol)?

1 0% to 5%
2 6% to 10%
3 11% to 15%
4 16% to 20%
5 Not sure

16. In 2030 what percentage of the U.S. light-duty car fleet will be made up of flexible fuel vehicles able to run on E-85 (a fuel mixture that is 15% gasoline and 85% ethanol)?

1 0% to 6%
2 7% to 10%
3 11% to 15%
4 16% to 20%
5 Not sure

17. In the history of the world, the energy industry has produced about a trillion barrels of oil and developed about another trillion into proved reserves for future production. How much recoverable conventional oil does the U.S. Geological Survey estimate remains to be discovered in the future?

1 About half of the oil that has already been produced
2 Between 1 and 2 times the amount of oil that has already been produced
3 Between 3 and 4 times the amount of oil that has already been produced
4 Between 5 and 6 times the amount of oil that has already been produced
5 Not sure

18. In 2006, which of the following countries was the largest U.S. supplier of oil?

1 Saudi Arabia
2 Canada
3 Venezuela
4 China
5 Not sure

19. In 2006, what percent of oil the U.S. consumes came from the Persian Gulf countries?

1 Less than 15%
2 16 to 30%
3 31 to 45%
4 46 to 60%
5 Not sure

20. In 2006, the U.S. imported what percent of its oil?

1 20%
2 40%
3 60%
4 80%
5 Not sure

Mike Pence, Fairness Doctrine Live Blog

Rep. Mike Pence met with a number of bloggers this morning about the effort just starting to develop to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. He's offering legislation to oppose that in the House by stripping the FCC of any ability to dictate content. His bill will be filed at the end of this week, and he will team with Jeff Flake and Hensarling to offer an amendment to the FCC's appropriation that forbids any use of funds to enforce the Fairness Doctrine, if revived.

Pence says it represents an "existential threat" to the conservative movement, and believes that the aim isn't for "fairness" but for the silencing of conservatives. The problem is that the threat is that government retains this ability, either by legislation or executive order. We have to very aggressively explain that the high legal and administrative costs of the FD would simply choose not to carry any political talk radio at all.

Pence points out that the FCC actually has the authority on its own to reinstate the FD, without any action from Congress or the Presidency. They have chosen not to do so, but if the FCC wants to, they could reinstate it tomorrow. The judiciary may have a say in this eventually, but Pence's bill would strip the FCC of that ability altogether. That doesn't mean that Congress can't pass future legislation to do it, but it would have to do so openly.

The American public likes fairness, but we defend freedom. We don't want government determining what political speech can be conducted where and when, and we don't need them interfering in a free market. We need to defend freedom rather than making government the arbiter of the content of political speech.

The Veep Digs Deeper

Dick Cheney seems determined to do more damage to himself than the latest Washington Post profiles could ever do. While that series has revealed Cheney's influence, it hasn't even come close to demonstrating any wrongdoing on his part. Unfortunately, his latest response on the OVP's refusal to comply with an executive order on the handling of classified material will provide more material for Cheney's critics -- and for no obvious benefit.

At Heading Right, I review this latest argument for non-compliance and wonder why Cheney's bothering. Even while Ruth Marcus rightly calls this the $400 haircut of administration controversies, the benefits of refusing audits have never been explained by Cheney's office, which relies on a series of legal arguments rather than explain why they don't want to have the National Archives audit their performance in handling classified materials. Can it be yet another example of what happens when people forget the First Rule of Holes?

Fairness Doctrine Showdown Coming

The hue and cry over talk radio continues, as two senior Democrats in the Senate have vowed to pursue regulation of broadcast content, and one Republican in the House will announce legislation opposing it. Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin both argued that government should determine content on radio broadcasts in order to force listeners to hear both sides of an argument:

“It’s time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). “I have this old-fashioned attitude that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they’re in a better position to make a decision.”

The Fairness Doctrine, which the FCC discarded in 1985, required broadcasters to present opposing viewpoints on controversial political issues. Prior to 1985, government regulations called for broadcasters to “make reasonable judgments in good faith” on how to present multiple viewpoints on controversial issues.

Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she planned to “look at the legal and constitutional aspects of” reviving the Fairness Doctrine.

“I believe very strongly that the airwaves are public and people use these airwaves for profit,” she said. “But there is a responsibility to see that both sides and not just one side of the big public questions of debate of the day are aired and are aired with some modicum of fairness.”

That presumes a number of questionable conclusions, all of which can easily be contested. First, it assumes that the only place anyone hears debate is on talk radio. That's patently absurd; television has far more reach than radio, and that's just one medium among many. Never in our history has the average citizen had so many options for information and debate -- broadcasts such as terrestrial radio and television, narrowcasts such as satellite radio and TV, newspapers, and most of all, the Internet, with its text, video, and audio. Anyone who wants to hear a counterargument can access it with ease.

That's the second fallacy. Forcing radio stations to start "balancing" their content won't mean that listeners will have to hear liberal talk radio. Many of them will tune out altogether. Just the notion of having to force people to listen to the liberal arguments on talk radio shows a certain amount of desperation on the part of Durbin and Feinstein, to say nothing of the implications of government dictating who gets to speak, and when.

That brings us to the most absurd point of all -- NPR. The government owns and operates its own radio stations in every market of the nation. In fact, they have over 300 stations nationwide. Do they practice a Fairness Doctrine there? No. The spectrum of hosts and shows at NPR range from centrist to very liberal. If Durbin and Feinstein want to impose a Fairness Doctrine on radio broadcasts, let them start with NPR first.

That's what makes the report on the supposed imbalance in talk radio from the Center for American Progress so laughable. Their study looks at a grand total of 257 talk-radio stations owned by five broadcasters, which amounts to less than 15% of the 2,000 talk radio stations overall and less than that of NPR alone. They don't even describe the entirety of the broadcast schedule, deleting mention of shows that they claim to be non-political. One such show, the Tom Leykis syndicated show, cannot possibly be considered anything but liberal talk radio -- and yet CAP fails to include Leykis in its study. They also fail to list Michael Jackson, who appears on a Los Angeles talk-radio station owned by Clear Channel.

Take a look at the hours calculated by CAP in its report. Citadel owns 23 talk stations, and yet they only account for a little over half of the broadcast hours on those stations. What's on the rest of the day? CAP doesn't tell you. Same for Cumulus, where CAP accounts for less than half of its broadcast hours. Is this how the Fairness Doctrine will be applied as well?

Rep. Mike Pence plans to stop the push towards government intervention in political speech. He will introduce legislation in the House today that will block implementation of the Fairness Doctrine. His remarks today will include the following:

"Bringing back the Fairness Doctrine would amount to government control over political views expressed on the public airwaves. It is a dangerous proposal to suggest the government should be in the business of rationing free speech.

"Congress must take action to ensure that this archaic remnant of a bygone era of American radio does not return. There is nothing fair about the Fairness Doctrine.

"During my years in radio and television, I developed a great respect for a free and independent press. Since being in Congress, I have been the recipient of praise and criticism from broadcast media, but it has not changed my fundamental belief that a free and independent press must be vigorously defended by those who love liberty. It is with this in mind that I will introduce the Broadcaster Freedom Act.

"The Broadcaster Freedom Act will prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from prescribing rules, regulations, or policies that will reinstate the requirement that broadcasters present opposing viewpoints in controversial issues of public importance. The Broadcaster Freedom Act will prevent the FCC or any future President from reinstating the Fairness Doctrine. This legislation ensures true freedom and fairness will remain on our radio airwaves, and I would encourage my colleagues to cosponsor and support this bill.

"John F. Kennedy stated, 'We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.'"

The Fairness Doctrine proposes to fix a problem that doesn't exist by silencing political speech that disfavors the current partisan majority. It's a breathtaking overreach, and it needs to be stopped.

Working With The Mob: Your Government Dollars At Work

The CIA has started its release of hundreds of documents revealing illegal activities during the Cold War, the so-called "family jewels" that cast the agency in its poorest light yet. Not only does this release demonstrate violations of the laws forbidding domestic spying by Langley, it also shows how inept the agency was at times. The multiple attempts at assassinating Fidel Castro are a case in point:

The CIA recruited a former FBI agent to approach two of America's most-wanted mobsters and gave them poison pills meant for Fidel Castro during his first year in power, according to newly declassified papers released Tuesday. ...

The documents show that in August 1960, the CIA recruited ex-FBI agent Robert Maheu, then a top aide to Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, to approach mobster Johnny Roselli and pass himself off as the representative of international corporations that wanted Castro killed because of their lost gambling operations.

At the time, the bearded rebels had just outlawed gambling and destroyed the world-famous casinos American mobsters had operated in Havana.

Roselli introduced Maheu to "Sam Gold" and "Joe." Both were mobsters on the U.S. government's 10-most wanted list: Momo Giancana, Al Capone's successor in Chicago; and Santos Trafficante, one of the most powerful mobsters in Batista's Cuba. The agency gave the reputed mobsters six poison pills, and they tried unsuccessfully for several months to have several people put them in Castro's food.

The best that can be said about this idiotic notion was that the CIA eventually got the poison pills back. Otherwise, this had to be one of the most inane and self-defeating plots ever cooked up by any federal agency. Remember that this is just a couple of years after Appalachin, when the FBI finally had to admit that the Mafia existed. These men, Sam Giancana and Trafficante, ruled various parts of the US through murder and intimidation. (Trafficante controlled the Gulf Coast region of the US, not just Cuba.) They weren't benevolent despots, but men who corrupted government officials, ran drugs, and pimped for a living.

And why did the CIA essentially hire these guys? To commit an assassination that was illegal, on behalf of a government that wouldn't dirty its hands by operating aboveboard to stop Castro themselves. Even a year afterwards, when Kennedy authorized the Bay of Pigs invasion, he changed his mind at the last moment and aborted the air cover necessary for the mission, stranding thousands of brave Cubans and leaving them at the mercy of Castro.

If it wasn't true, it would be a comedy. In fact, even part of the truth serves as a bitter comedy. Giancana got his payback from the CIA by having the agency bug his girlfriend, singer Phyllis McGuire, to see if she was having a sexual affair with comedian Dan Rowan. Momo turned the CIA into a grubby private detective service.

Other documents show that the CIA had few scruples about violating its charter and spying on Americans, and that it didn't start with Richard Nixon:

Historians have generally concluded that far from being a rogue agency, the C.I.A. was following orders from the White House or top officials. In 1967, for instance, President Lyndon B. Johnson became convinced that the American antiwar movement was controlled and financed by Communist governments, and he ordered the C.I.A. to produce evidence. ...

The C.I.A. undertook a domestic surveillance operation code-named Chaos that went on for almost seven years under Presidents Johnson and Nixon. Mr. Helms created a Special Operations Group to conduct the spying. A squad of C.I.A. officers grew their hair long, learned the jargon of the New Left, and went off to infiltrate peace groups in the United States and Europe.

The agency compiled a computer index of 300,000 names of American people and organizations, and extensive files on 7,200 citizens. It began working in secret with police departments all over the United States.

Why is this so bad? I imagine that some will argue that the nation was at risk for Communist infiltration at the time, and that we needed a strong defense against it. I won't dispute that at all. However, that clearly fell under the jurisdiction of the FBI at the time, not the CIA, and for very good reasons. The FBI has to follow certain rules in gathering information on American citizens inside the US in order to protect our civil rights, whereas the CIA has no such restrictions on its operations. We don't impose those restrictions on their operations because they're not supposed to be spying on Americans inside the US.

That didn't stop them during this period, and even more egregiously, it didn't stop Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon from ordering them to do it. The poltical class didn't just fail to stop the abuses, they encouraged them. That's rather disappointing, to say the least, and a point to consider when we think about limits on power, even during wartime.

Gas Rationing The Last Straw?

Thanks to OPEC and a series of domestic-policy blunders by the Carter Administration, I spent a significant portion of my first year with a driver's license waiting in long lines to get gasoline for the family car. Now an OPEC nation has to ration gasoline, and its citizens have reacted in a different manner -- by burning down the gasoline stations in protest. Iranians may have reached the tipping point with the mullahcracy and the international sanctions they have brought upon the people:

Angry Iranians have torched petrol stations in protests against the sudden imposition of fuel rationing in one of the world’s most oil rich nations.

The rationing was announced on Tuesday only three hours before it was due to begin at midnight, leading to long queues at service stations as Iranians rushed out to fill up before the clampdown kicked in.

In the capital, youths set a car and petrol pumps ablaze at a station in the residential Pounak area of northwestern Tehran, throwing stones and shouting angry slogans denouncing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who came to power in an election based largely on his promises to improve the Islamic republic’s faltering economy.

In 1979, Americans faced a similar kind of rationing, directly and indirectly imposed by the government. Thanks to asinine windfall-tax schemes and economic penalties for development as well as OPEC pressures, the oil industry could not produce gasoline in enough abundance to fill the pumps, and we had to limit our purchases. California and other states imposed an odd-even rule based on the last numeral in the license plate; even numbers could only purchase gasoline on even-numbered days, and odd on odd-numbered days -- and usually one could only buy eight gallons or less.

This created long morning lines as people had to make more return visits to gas stations, and the stations themselves would frequently run out of product within a few hours. Waits of two or more hours were not unusual, but the most fascinating aspect was the lack of violence or significant protest. For the most part, they were friendly affairs, generating a sense of camaraderie. The only exception in my experience came when one idiot tried to jump the line by forcing his van between two cars that had been in place for over an hour. Several men raced out of their cars and tried to overturn the van, but the driver managed to race off before they killed him.

Not so in Iran, apparently. Although the ruling clique approved the rationing three months ago, they hadn't announced when it would start, apparently hoping they could avoid it at some point by beating the sanctions. They waited until a few hours before it began to announce the start of the rationing program, infuriating the people. They also have imposed a ration-card system but haven't fully distributed the smart cards that allow the pumps to operate, cutting off the supply altogether to many drivers.

It's not just the sanctions, either. The Ahmadinejad government has refused to raise the subsidized price of gasoline from 19 cents per litre, or roughly 75 cents per gallon. That creates more demand than supply, and advocates of the free market have urged Ahmadinejad to allow the prices to go up to balance the equation, but Ahmadinejad's populist platform won't allow it. Instead, he has rationed gasoline to the point where individuals can only purchase 26 gallons per month, and taxi drivers are limited to 211 gallons.

The schadenfreude of seeing an OPEC nation with half-mile-long gas lines is rather compelling. It's only surpassed by the hope it brings that the Iranians may finally have tired enough of the mullahcracy to make the changes necessary to restore Iran to some semblance of sanity, and to send the radical Islamists packing.

Doing What Clay Pigeons Do (Updating Through The Evening)

Michelle Malkin has the "clay pigeon" legislation in PDF format on her site right now. I've just downloaded it and started reviewing the document. I'll spend the evening perusing it after dinner, and I'll update the post as I find items of interest.

One point I find interesting -- it's a searchable PDF. That will make it easier to find key points to see what changes have been made. I'd encourage CQ readers to read through the document and list your concerns, along with page and line references, in the comments. Let's see whether we can outdo Congress in reading legislation.

POINT 1: Page 21, lines 12-16, apparently reinstated the 24-hour limit on probationary background checks. Remember when they promised to fix that so that no one would get a probationary card without passing the full background check? I guess they broke that promise.

POINT 2: Page 29, lines 12-end: The Z-visa has unlimited 4-year terms. I don't think this is a change, but shouldn't the immigrant at some point actually immigrate?

POINT 3: Page 33, lines 19-25: Z-visa non-immigrants over the age of 65 are not expected to maintain employment in order to remain eligible to be in the US. Again, why would they be here if they're not working and not applying for a regular immigration status?

POINT 4: Page 48, lines 8-14: Interesting method here to ensure that Z-visa non-immigrants don't get preferential treatment. The regulations set up a timing mechanism so that no Z-visa immigrants can file for permanent residency until 30 days after eligibility for those who applied for normal immigration on May 1, 2005. That means that illegals can't "cut in line" ahead of anyone who applied on that date or before, but can be put ahead of legal immigrants who applied in the last two years.

POINT 5: Page 61, entire page: The language has changed in this section to allow access for all law-enforcement activity to the data gleaned from applications. Before, it was restricted to just immigration enforcement and national-security activities.

POINT 6: Page 67, lines 7-11: 80% of all penalties paid by the applicants will come through installment plans. I understand the need for this, but it puts the federal government on the hook for managing a payment system for 12 million new people, along with all of the other mandates in this bill.

POINT 7: Page 69, line 20: The DREAM Act, providing scholarships for the children of illegal immigrants, still exists in the bill.

POINT 8: Page 89-90, lines 22-04: The 24-hour limit on background checks still holds within the Ag Workers section (the temporary guest worker program). If it takes longer than 24 hours, they get their credentials. (h/t: commenter Redherkey)

POINT 9: Page 92, lines 14-15: Do I read this correctly? The new limit on guest-worker visas is now 1,500,000 -- not counting dependent Z-A visas? Wasn't this originally 400,000 and reduced by half later?

POINT 10: Pages 169-170: The employer fines seem rather daunting. The first tier fine for employing an illegal will be $5,000 per occurence. If an employer has been fined in the past for employing an illegal alien, it escalates to $10,000, and on up to $75,000 per occurence. If the ICE decides to enforce the law on employers -- still a rather open point -- it could get very expensive. I wonder if that applies to corporations as a whole, or each location separately.

POINT 11: Pages 227-8: The temporary worker program gets fleshed out more specifically here, and it appears to have a limit of 180,000 for "Y-visa nonimmigrants." If so, what are the Z-A visas, and why do they have a cap of 1,500,000?

POINT 12: Page 276: This is an amendment that forces any probationary status to wait until after the security triggers have been met. It seems to me that this is another example of the many cross purposes of this bill, and it will serve to confuse both backers and opponents of this bill.

I'm done for the evening. If you want to take a look through the bill, check with NZ Bear, who has a searchable HTML version up at his site.

CQ Radio: James Joyner, Robert Bluey, Brian Darling

Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we have a busy show in store for you. In the first half of the show, we'll have James Joyner from Outside the Beltway to discuss the Sally Quinn column in today's Washington Post. She thinks that Dick Cheney will get forced out of office in favor of ... Fred Thompson. In the second half of the show, Robert Bluey and Brian Darling of the Heritage Foundation join us again to talk about the Top Ten Defects of the amnesty bill, and the 'clay pigeon' tactic that will allow the legislation to return to the Senate floor.

Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation!

UPDATE: I forgot to link to this earlier, but Dr. Helen Smith has a new advice column blog, and it looks very interesting indeed. It's part of the Pajamas Media empire, which seems like a fitting place for the Instawife!

The live player will start automatically if you click on the link to the extended entry. You can also listen from the player on the sidebar.

Immigration Cloture I: Live Blog (Update: Cloture Passes)

11:29 am CT: So far, it looks like cloture will pass on the motion to retrieve the immigration compromise bill back to the floor, in the "clay pigeon" maneuver. Both parties have votes for and against cloture, and in that sense it's the most bipartisan effort we've seen in the 110th Congress. Notable GOP voting for cloture include John Warner and Norm Coleman; notable Democrats against include Max Baucus and Robert Byrd. It's going to be close.

11:35 - John Ensign voted for cloture. Interesting, and somewhat disappointing. It passed 64-35, with only the ill Tim Johnson not voting. Sam Brownback also voted for cloture. I'll have more on the yeas and nays when the roll call vote gets posted.

This is the first of two key cloture votes. It's possible that some of the yeas may turn to nays when the final list of amendments gets promulgated -- but I'd call that a long shot.

11:41 - Did Bush call this bill amnesty? ABC News says so, but this seems like a rhetorical misstep rather than an admission:

"You know, I've heard all the rhetoric -- you've heard it, too -- about how this is amnesty. Amnesty means that you've got to pay a price for having been here illegally, and this bill does that."

Tony Snow has this correction, which pounds on the official White House line:

"This has been construed as an assertion that comprehensive immigration reform legislation before the Senate offers amnesty to immigrants who came here illegally. That is the exact opposite of the president’s long-held and often-stated position.

"President Bush has noted repeatedly that the comprehensive reform he supports is not an amnesty bill. Amnesty means forgiving wrongdoing without imposing punishment. The immigration reforms passed in 1986 granted amnesty. The legislation under consideration this year does not. This measure imposes significant punishments on those who came to this country illegally between 1986 and the beginning of this year. In fact, the White House website addresses the myth that the measure is amnesty."

Actually, the 1986 measure (Simpson-Mazzoli) imposed a $1,000 fine for amnesty applicants. This bill requires the same for the temporary Z-visa application and scalable fines to $5,000 for those who seek citizenship, but it's actually more similar than different regarding fines.

The NRSC Tackles Big Labor Payback In The Senate

See update on cloture.

Last week, I wrote about the Democrats' plan to end secret balloting in union elections, forcing workers to make their choice publicly. That enables intimidation from both unions and management, which the struggling labor movement will force people to organize. The unions will reap large increases in dues -- which will wind up in the coffers of the Democratic Party.

The NRSC has put together a new YouTube ad that matches the rhetoric of leading Democrats with the funding they have received from Big Labor, as well as some refutation of their assertions:

If the Senate passes this worker-intimidation bill, then we have to press the President to veto it If secret ballots are the standard for our political elections as a safeguard against government intimidation, they should be the standard for union elections as well.

UPDATE: Cloture just failed on this one, 51-48. I'm not sure they're going to even get this a floor vote in this session of Congress. It looked like a straight-up party-line vote, but I'll check the record in a bit.

Visiting Misery On The Twin Cities

The anarchists and anti-globalists have already started organizing for next year's Republican National Convention, according to the Star-Tribune. Have they started getting signs printed and policy position papers ready to engage in an intellectual challenge to the GOP? Not quite:

Anarchists and antiwar organizations preparing for the Republican National Convention are planning dozens of traffic blockades, are targeting perceived vulnerable spots in the Twin Cities metro area and are readying to spring from Internet promises to real-world action.

An online posting by a group called Unconventional Action notes "the narrow on and off ramps" of Interstate Hwy. 94 and that Minneapolis and St. Paul are "12 miles apart, separated by a wide river spanned by 5 bridges and connected primarily" by I-94.

"For these and other reasons, many believe that the RNC presents strategic vulnerabilities unique to any trade summit or party convention of recent years," the posting said.

Basically, they intend on being a huge pain to residents of the Twin Cities, disrupting traffic and creating law-enforcement nightmares for our town. And not just in the late summer of 2008, either -- they want activists to conduct a dry run this Labor Day weekend. Apparently, they need to rehearse for maximum efficiency as asses.

The group, which has dubbed themselves the RNC Welcoming Committee, isn't exactly a model of open discourse in any sense. They have banned the media from their organizing meetings while they promulgate their pre-convention tasks. Among those, the Strib reports, are instructions to "[m]arch through St. Paul and gather information, take measurements, check drain covers, etc."

Take measurements? Check drain covers? I wonder why they need that kind of information. What kinds of protests do they plan on holding? Drain and sewer covers have no bearing on normal, peaceful protests; it sounds like they plan on using the drain system to gain access to restricted areas.

Federal and state authorities have kept track of the Internet traffic, but they also remind the Strib's readers that the larger security risks come from those groups that keep silent about their intentions. In other words, it's going to be a long, long year.

The Hillary-Carmela Connection

Did Hillary Clinton inadvertently underscore the ambivalence felt by some Americans over her role in her husband's scandals in a humorous campaign ad last week? Margaret Carlson believes that Hillary made a mistake in playing the Carmela role in her Sopranos spoof, and that voters may see her in a similar light to Edie Falco's compromised and enabling wife:

The ad touches close to the mother lode of Hillary's vulnerability among some women. When you ask them why they don't like her, they say it's because they don't understand why she makes goo-goo eyes at a guy who broke her heart multiple times and humiliated her daughter. After that, pretending to be a teenager in love makes them wonder what else she might be faking.

The Carmela-Hillary juxtaposition has been made before by others, and not in Hillary's favor. For staying with a repeat philanderer, Carmela got to live in a McMansion, wear expensive jewelry and wield derivative power as Queen Bee of the mob families. Hillary got to be first lady with a good shot at the White House.

If Hillary's hoping we'll be kinder to her than Chase was to Carmela, it's hard to see why she would tempt the comparison herself. The only possible rationale is that every time voters are reminded how bad Bill is, her numbers go up. She might not be the senator from New York were it not for Monica Lewinsky.

At first, I thought the ad was rather clever, and good politics to boot. After all, nothing sells like self-deprecation. Hillary had to know how a large number of American voters see her, as a calculating and conniving woman who clung to her philandering husband strictly for political gain. The ad skewered this perception a little, had great cultural resonance at the moment, and tweaked David Chase by actually providing a straightforward ending.

Carlson's point is worth considering, though. The ad clearly aimed at people who watched the final Sopranos episode, but these are people who have steeped in Carmela's denial and sellout for eight years. That same exact dynamic appeared throughout the Clintons' terms in office but especially after the Lewinsky affair in 1997. After sending his wife out as an attack dog, allowing her to accuse people of lying to torpedo her husband, Bill had to appear on national TV to admit everything of which he was accused.

Inexplicably, this created a short burst of sympathy for Hillary -- which quickly receded when her appearances reminded people that she isn't terribly sympathetic. She stuck with Bill and, as Carlson mentions, put on an act in front of cameras that made the two look like teenagers in school defiantly daring teachers to give them referrals for PDAs. (If you're over 35, you'll know what that means.) Clearly she knows what she gets with Bill, and the rational conclusion is that she's sticking around for some reason that benefits her, and given his serial indiscretions, those reasons don't appear marital. Voters inclined to distrust her for these reasons alone may find those reservations reinforced, and others reminded of a certain lack of authenticity that has been the hallmark of the Clintons all along.

She may have scored a few points for hipness with this ad. In the long run, though, equating Bill with Tony Soprano and herself with Carmela may have a kind of resonance that she'll regret as her campaign progresses.

Great Cheney Switch, v7.0

I'd like to have a shot of what Sally Quinn's drinking. In today's Washington Post, Quinn tells us that Republicans have decided that Dick Cheney has to go, and will start devising plans to force him out of an office to which he has been twice elected. Quinn believes that this has reached the Goldwater-to-Nixon scenario in the summer of 1974, only this time Cheney stands accused of hurting the GOP's chances in the next election rather than any lawbreaking.

At Heading Right, I discuss this latest version of the Great Cheney Switch, a parlor game for Republicans and pundits for the last three years. While previous contestants for Cheney's position have included Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, Quinn has someone else in mind now, a man undoubtedly intelligent enough to run screaming from the job offer she makes.

UPDATE: Rick Moran responds at Heading Right, and I test a help-wanted ad for the Post. Also, I meant "a shot of what Sally Quinn is drinking"; thanks to Michael Ledeen for the correction.

Afghanistan's Turn

The defeat-and-retreat chorus that won control of Congress in last year's midterms told America that we needed to withdraw from Iraq in order to fight "real terrorists" in Afghanistan.. They derided the Bush administration's policy to fight terrorists in Iraq, claiming that the fighting there served as a distraction from the true war on terror being fought against the Taliban. They pledged to focus on the latter and destroy the terrorists that attacked America.

Well, that was then. This is now:

When they won control of Congress in November, Democrats pressed their case to withdraw troops from Iraq and refocus on Afghanistan, but some are growing impatient with U.S. operations in Afghanistan as well.

A few congressional Democrats go so far as suggesting that the Pentagon should pull out of Afghanistan now, while others say that troop withdrawal will be addressed after the military is out of Iraq.

Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), a senior defense authorizer, wants the U.S. out of Afghanistan immediately, calling operations there “futile” in trying to effect political change in a country with a tangled history.

Unsurprisingly, John Murtha may lead this charge as well. The Hill quotes Murtha as saying that "we would have been out of Afghanistan" by now if we had not invaded Iraq. I'm not sure how Murtha figures this. Does he mean we would have invaded Pakistan had we not invaded Iraq? We had plenty of opportunity to do that between November 2001 and March 2003, but few would have supported that proposal, which would have lit the entirety of south Asia on fire.

The Taliban fled into Pakistan. The only way we would have beaten them is to cross the border and conduct war throughout Waziristan. Such an attack could very easily have led to a nuclear exchange with Pevez Musharraf. Is that what Murtha endorses now?

We could have kept a lot more troops in Afghanistan, but it wouldn't have done much good. The NATO contingent should be larger than it is now, but it consists mostly of American forces now. The problems in Afghanistan have much more to do with tribal conflicts, and the mix is more diverse than Iraq.

The real story is that Democrats do not have the stomach to fight wars to victory. They will eventually start undermining the war in Afghanistan the way they have in Iraq, issuing defeatist analyses to prove that we're losing, that America cannot defeat its enemies, and that we should admit defeat and retreat to Okinawa, or perhaps even further away this time. This time, the Democrats couldn't even get past six months in power before their senior leadership started running up the white flag against the "real" terrorists.

North Korea Says It Will Shut Down Reactor

Now that the US has released the $25 million in frozen funds sought by North Korea, the Kim Jong-Il regime will start shutting down its Yongbyon reactor in accordance with the six-party agreement. That process starts next week, when a hastily-arranged conference with the IAEA begins next Tuesday, assuming that the North Koreans throw up no further roadblocks to the process:

North Korea said Monday that its dispute with the United States over $25 million frozen in a bank in Macao had been resolved, and that it would begin to carry out its much-delayed promise to shut down its main nuclear plant.

The first test of the North Korean commitment to stop and seal its main nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, south of Pyongyang, the capital, and an adjacent fuel-reprocessing plant, will come when officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency begin five days of negotiations on Tuesday in North Korea.

The agency, the United Nations’ nuclear monitoring arm, and North Korean officials will discuss a timetable for shutting down the reactor and technical details of monitoring and verification. Ever since the first suspicion of a North Korean nuclear weapons program surfaced in the early 1990s, the agency and North Korea have bickered over how much access the agency should have to nuclear facilities and data in the isolated country.

This could represent a major foreign-policy victory for the Bush administration, if it goes according to plan. Certainly the White House could use some good news, and if it can verifiably end operations at Yongbyon and close out Pyongyang's plutonium program, it will deserve the credit. They stuck to a multilateral formula that appears to have produced real results with verification, an improvement over previous efforts.

This agreement still leaves questions about North Korea's reported highly-enriched uranium program, questions which US negotiator Christopher Hill left open last week:

If Hill raised the ticklish issue of North Korea's highly enriched uranium (HEU) program in any detail, he was not letting on. And if he came up with a proposal for the US simply to buy up North Korea's nuclear inventory, as widely reported in South Korea, he was not about to confirm or deny anything to that effect.

Hill did, however, appear anxious to convey the impression of having talked about highly enriched uranium without actually using the term. It was, after all, the HEU issue that torpedoed the Geneva agreement of 1994 when his predecessor, James Kelly, alleged after visiting Pyongyang nearly five years ago that a top North Korean had indeed acknowledged the existence of a secret HEU program.

"We did discuss the need to have a comprehensive list of all nuclear programs," said Hill. For good measure, he added, "And, of course, all means all."

Did we buy up Kim's nuclear inventory as part of the deal? That wouldn't have been a bad idea, as long as we could verify that he didn't produce any more nuclear material to use in a later extortion scheme. It would have provided Pyongyang with some needed hard currency and perhaps a little face-saving dodge to soothe the humiliation of giving up his nuclear program under pressure from the entire Pacific Rim.

The US sweetened the deal in two subtle ways. First, we sent Hill to North Korea for some direct negotiations, which Kim wanted to establish the DPRK as a significant entity, at least in his own mind. Hill apparently allowed the North Koreans to set the timing and the agenda to show even more deference. Secondly, when we did release the frozen funds, we did so through North Korean bank accounts to establish their bona fides in the international banking system. Both efforts appealed to what seems like the biggest case of an inferiority complex outside of radical Islam.

If these efforts pay off in a denuclearized North Korea, they amount to a cheap price to pay indeed. If they do not, we have not lost much in the transaction, and we can continue to pressure Kim to change, or the DPRK to change leaders.

Did Iran Invade Iraq?

The blogosphere has buzzed since last night about a report that Iran has invaded southern Iraq and stunned the British contingent there. If true, it would provide a cassus belli for Coalition partners, including the US, to respond with military force against the mullahcracy in Teheran. However, the sourcing on this story leaves something to be desired (via Memeorandum):

Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces have been spotted by British troops crossing the border into southern Iraq, The Sun tabloid reported on Tuesday.

Britain's defence ministry would not confirm or deny the report, with a spokesman declining to comment on "intelligence matters".

An unidentified intelligence source told the tabloid: "It is an extremely alarming development and raises the stakes considerably. In effect, it means we are in a full on war with Iran -- but nobody has officially declared it."

"We have hard proof that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have crossed the border to attack us. It is very hard for us to strike back. All we can do is try to defend ourselves. We are badly on the back foot."

The Sun said that radar sightings of Iranian helicopters crossing into the Iraqi desert were confirmed to it by very senior military sources.

If the Sun has it right, it would probably force Britain to stay in southern Iraq far past their announced withdrawal date. They would almost have to respond, given the criticism over the capture of their 15 sailors and Marines a few months ago, and that would require them not only to stay but to broaden their forces in the region first. It would also require the US to assist them in that response, or possibly to take charge of it. And since the Coalition has UN backing for its operations in Iraq, it would force the UN to at least sanction Iran for its attack.

That's why this makes little sense. The British will leave southern Iraq shortly. Iran doesn't need to chase them out, and as the above scenario demonstrates, they have more to lose than to gain in an invasion anyway. Why commit their military to touching off another border war with Iraq, in the region most sympathetic to them anyway, and undermining the Shi'ite government in Baghdad that has remained friendly with Teheran?

In reading the story, the issue becomes clear -- the Sun reported it. For those who don't know the British press, the Sun is a rough equivalent to the National Enquirer here in the US. They get some stories right, but far too often, they blow things out of proportion or just get entire stories completely wrong. It's not a reliable media outlet, except for those whose primary purpose in buying the paper is to see scantily-clad women, a market in which they excel.

The Sun could have gotten this word from senior British military officials, as they report, but consider this point. If you were a senior British military official who wanted to warn the nation and the world of the Iranian hordes streaming towards your positions, would you pick up the phone and call the Sun -- or would you call the Times of London?

I'll wait for better confirmation, myself.

Touchback Amendment Goes In The Wrong Direction

Congress appears to have a hearing problem. Oh, they have heard the uproar over the immigration reform bill, but they still seem to be deaf to the actual complaints that have fueled the opposition to it. As a result, the backers of the bill will add an amendment today that not only fails to address the chief criticisms of the bill, but actually degrade one of its benefits:

With a crucial test vote scheduled for today, Republican supporters of a sweeping immigration bill threw their weight yesterday behind a significant change to the legislation that would force illegal immigrants to return to their home countries to apply for legal status. ...

Perhaps the most significant shift came from three of the bill's Republican architects: Sens. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) and Mel Martinez (Fla.). Under the current legislation, virtually all of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants would be granted provisional legal status immediately, provided that within 18 months they pay a fine, cover processing fees and submit to a criminal background check to get a new five-year "Z Visa." If they wanted legal permanent residence, heads of illegal-immigrant households would have to return to their home countries to apply for a green card.

Kyl, Graham and Martinez had already put together an amendment to secure $4.4 billion for border enforcement, create a tracking system to keep tabs on guest workers and permanently bar workers who overstay their visas from returning. Those measures would augment provisions already in the bill to tighten border security and clamp down on employers of illegal immigrants.

Yesterday, the three senators added a provision that would force illegal immigrants to return to their home countries to apply for Z Visas, not just their green cards. With the architects of the bill behind it, supporters predicted that the amendment would pass easily.

In other words, they want to expand the "touchback" provision to come at the beginning of the process. In order to "step out of the shadows," as the bill's backers like to put it, illegal immigrants will have to go back to their country of origin first and apply for the probationary Z-visa. If the bill follows its previous pattern, that will only apply to the heads of households, forcing 4-6 million people to leave the country within a short period of time after the bill's passage -- no mean feat itself.

That sounds like it solves the issue of those who want people deported for their illegal entry, but it doesn't. In the first place, it removes the incentive for self-reporting, the only real benefit of the Z-visa program offers. A significant percentage will just remain in the shadows, and the national-security aspect of the Z-visas will never get realized. Also, it doesn't do much to force the illegals to the "back of the line" on immigration approval, which is the greater issue for many who oppose the normalization process offered in this compromise. It just puts the touchback in a spot where every head of household has to do it, regardless of whether they want permanent residency here or not.

The Senate still hasn't heard the message about the lack of trust the people have in them to secure the border and fix the broken visa system before creating the bureaucratic mess that their normalization proposal will require. The people want to see Congress and the White House successfully start clamping down on the border. The so-called virtual fence has missed its deadline already -- for just 28 miles of it:

Known as Project 28, for the 28 miles of border that the towers will scan, the so-called virtual fence forms the backbone of the Secure Border Initiative, known as SBInet, a multibillion-dollar mix of technology, manpower and fencing intended to control illegal border crossings.

If successful, hundreds of such towers could dot the 6,000 miles of the Mexican and Canadian borders.

But glitches with the radar and cameras have forced the project to miss its June 13 starting date, just as Congress focuses anew on border security in the Senate measure to overhaul immigration law.

Officials at the Homeland Security Department insist that Boeing, which has a $67 million contract to develop the project and others, will soon put it back on track, though they are not providing a new completion date.

This comes 21 years after the last time Congress promised to secure the border. People haven't forgotten that promise, and the failures of both parties to honor it. We don't want to buy normalization a second time as part of the promise that should have been honored by eleven subsequent Congresses and four different Presidents.

Secure the border. Fix the visa program, and the passport system as well. When those tasks have been completed, then we can talk about how best to normalize those remaining in the US and how best to incentivize them to come forward. Once the main problem has been resolved, Washington will have built up enough credibility to gain our trust on flexible solutions.

Democrats Fret Over Fred

How do Republicans know when a good candidate has entered the primary race? If the Democrats start launching attacks before his official entry, that's a good indication that they're worried about him. Today they opened up on Fred Thompson, painting him as a lobbyist who has no qualms about whom or what he represents:

Even before his expected July announcement, Fred Thompson's all-but-declared entry into the Republican presidential stakes has prompted the Democratic National Committee to attack him as a potential GOP front-runner and to use his prospective candidacy to raise money.

Democratic strategists say Thompson's populist style and show-biz allure could prove extremely appealing in a general election at a time when voters are so down on Washington. So the party has launched a preemptive campaign against him that includes a DNC fundraising e-mail branding Thompson, "The inside-outsider."

"Remember the Republican culture of corruption?" the letter asks. "The revolving door of Republican politicians moving in and out of top political offices and Washington, D.C., lobbying firms? That's Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson. For years, acting wasn't the 'Law & Order' star's profession -- it was a hobby. In the real world, Thompson has made a fortune in a decades-long career as a Washington lobbyist. And just this month, as part of his role as the ultimate Washington insider, Thompson offered to host yet another fundraising event for Scooter Libby's legal defense fund. Thompson has been vocal in his support of Libby, saying that he would 'absolutely' pardon him. As he runs for president, he'll try his hardest to hide the truth from the American people. And we need to stop him. Support our efforts to get the truth out about Fred Thompson."

Some serious fact-checking needs to happen here. Fred made around $1.3 million as an attorney in his lobbying activities ... over a twenty-year period. For a top-notch lawyer with his connections in Hollywood and DC, $65K per year doesn't exactly equate to either a fortune or an intensive lobbying career.

Some critics have already started picking apart Fred's client list. Power Line has an interesting dissection of the criticism, which is long on innuendo and short on facts. They point out that half of Fred's lobbying money came between 1975 and 1993, when he first ran for the Senate, and that the other half came from a single client that Fred represented in 2003. Nothing in the criticism even comes close to suggesting that Fred acted unethically in representing his clients, and if the Democrats hope to win on this case, they're going to be bitterly disappointed, especially as they continue to suck up to lobbyists as Uncle Chuck Schumer does.

The next attack consists of complaining about Fred's lack of legislative product. I'm not sure how many bills Fred authored during his eight years as Tennessee's junior Senator, but it seems like an odd argument for the Democrats to make. After all, their last candidate for the office authored all of six bills in 20 years of Senate work. If Fred authored two, it would at least match John Kerry's relative output.

This scattergun approach to denting Fred's popularity will reveal much more about the Democrats than it will the former Senator and reforming attorney from Tennessee. It reeks of fear, and Republicans might give Fred high marks just for prompting that reaction.

UPDATE: Fred authored more than two bills during his term in office. A Thomas search, using their nifty new beta engine, turns up close to 100 entries for bills and amendments where Fred was the primary sponsor. Included are:

* S.3040 - Privacy Commission Act
* S.3030 - Amending Title 31 to provide for audits in executive agencies
* S.2805 - Federal Property Asset Management Reform Act of 2000
* S.2752 - Accountability to Congress for Nuclear Transfers to North Korea Act of 2000
* S.2645 - China Nonproliferation Act
* S.2306 - Government for the 21st Century Act
* S.1993 - Government Information Security Act of 1999
* S.1991 - Amending the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to enhance criminal penalties for election law violations
* S.1503 - Office of Government Ethics Authorization Act of 1999

That's just a quick rundown of Fred's legislative record, and far from complete. He wasn't sitting around collecting a paycheck.

UPDATE II: I should mention that all of these were from one session of Congress -- the 106th.

Rasmussen: Likely Voters Likely To Oppose Immigration Compromise

As backers of the compromise immigration bill move to resuscitate it on the Senate floor, the American voter remains overwhelmingly opposed to it. In the latest Rasmussen poll conducted this weekend, only 22% of likely voters supported the bill, and a majority outright opposed it:

As the Senate prepares to resume debate the “comprehensive” immigration reform bill, the legislation continues to face broad public opposition. In fact, despite a massive White House effort, public opinion has barely moved since the public uproar stalled the bill just over two weeks ago.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 22% of American voters currently favor the legislation. That’s down a point from 23% a couple of weeks ago and down from 26% when the debate in the Senate began. Fifty percent (50%) oppose the Senate bill while 28% are not sure.

It's bad news all the way around. A majority in both parties oppose the bill, and 48% of independents as well. Self-described liberals oppose it, 54%-32%. A plurality believe that no bill would be better than the current proposal, 45%-32%. A strong majority mistrusts the security triggers in the bill, with 71% of voters believing that it will require more legislation to secure the border and reduce illegal immigration.

In fact, those who believe that the bill will reduce illegal immigration are even fewer than supporters of the bill. Only 16% think this compromise will address the problem it purports to solve. Forty-one percent believe it will make illegal immigration worse than before. That means a quarter of the people who support the bill do so while believing it won't do anything to solve illegal immigration.

When we say that Congress lacks credibility, this is what we mean. When was the last time Congress worked so hard to pass legislation that so few supported, so many of which supported it because it won't work, and whose opponents hated it so badly? Certainly not within my memory.

UPDATE: A big welcome to readers of The Corner!

UPDATE: Rational liberal Ron Beasley at Middle Earth Journal wonders what happened to the supposed majority of moderates in the US electorate. They're there, Ron, but they don't like the bill either, because it won't work.

CQ Radio: Talk Radio Economics

Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), I'll be talking with my friend and former talk-radio partner King Banaian of SCSU Scholars. We'll review the economic arguments in the Center for American Progress report on talk radio, and since King is chair of economics at St. Cloud State University, he'll bring more light than heat on that topic. We'll also talk about our friendly debate on whether journalists should be barred by their employers from participating in politics, one of the subjects of Howard Kurtz' column today.

Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation!

UPDATE: Thanks to Chris Muir for the very cool mention in today's Day By Day! (h/t: The Populist)

The live player will start automatically if you click on the link to the extended entry. You can also listen from the player on the sidebar.

Baqubah: The Noose Tightens

Michael Yon gives us another update from Operation Arrowhead Ripper, and he tells us the US and Iraqi forces have come close to liberating Baqubah. Yon also reports that the Iraqi Army has performed well in the operation, but that the Iraqi police leave a lot to be desired:

For security reasons, the Iraqi Army (IA) was not included in the initial planning of Arrowhead Ripper, yet with each succeeding day the IA has taken a larger role in the unfolding attack. The Fifth Iraqi Army Division is considered an increasingly competent group of fighters, and from the limited scope of 5th IA that I personally witnessed, that judgment seems correct. The 5th is committed to battle. Whereas the Iraqi Army is coming into the fight, and playing increasingly critical roles, the local police force is less impressive.

On the night of the 23 June, for instance, a police checkpoint called in to say they were under heavy small-arms attack. The same checkpoint then called frantically saying they were under RPG attack. The next even more frantic call was about a mortar attack. Yet when a Shadow UAV and Apache helicopters were dispatched, they saw no activity in the immediate area. Colonel Steve Townsend, commander of 3-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team, brought this up to a senior Iraqi officer at a meeting on Sunday the 24th, and the Iraqi officer answered with some disgust that those particular police panic at the sound of two shots, and that each member of that police detail needs two Humvees protecting them in order to feel safe.

The lack of intestinal fortitude of the police aside, the operation appears to be exceeding expectations. As in Anbar, the residents of Diyala have had their fill of al-Qaeda, if not the native insurgencies. AQI has alienated the populace by acting, well, like al-Qaeda. They've killed children, beheaded civilians, and imposed a Taliban-style morality police on the populace. In their zeal, they have destroyed their credibility in Iraq.

For instance, they have a new smoking cessation program that is reminiscent of Stephen King's short story, Quitters, Inc. The shari'a court of AQI approved the amuptation of the two "smoking fingers" as a permanent punishment for polluting one's body with tobacco. That's actually the lenient punishment; others have been murdered for their nicotine habit.

Even more oddly, AQI has begun punishing people for carrying vegetables suggestively:

Other AQI edicts included beatings for men who refused to grow beards, and corporal punishments for obscene sexual suggestiveness, defined by such “loose” behavior as carrying tomatoes and cucumbers in the same bag. These fatwas were not eagerly embraced by most Iraqis, and the taint traveled back to the Muftis who sat in supreme judgment.

Read the entire post, and don't forget to drop a few dollars into Michael's tip jar to defray his expenses.

The BCRA Loses In Supreme Court Decision

The Supreme Court has struck one aspect of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act, forbidding issue ads in the final 60 days before a general election. On a disappointing one-vote margin, the court ruled that participation in the electoral system outweighs considerations of undue influence:

The Supreme Court loosened restrictions Monday on corporate- and union-funded television ads that air close to elections, weakening a key provision of a landmark campaign finance law.

The court, split 5-4, upheld an appeals court ruling that an anti-abortion group should have been allowed to air ads during the final two months before the 2004 elections.

The case involved advertisements that Wisconsin Right to Life was prevented from broadcasting. The ads asked voters to contact the state's two senators, Democrats Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl, and urge them not to filibuster President Bush's judicial nominees.

While this is a good start, it does not eliminate the BCRA's restrictions altogether. It ruled that issue ads do not equal partisan campaign ads, and that the Wisconsin groups ads did not amount to a challenge to an incumbent. It does, however, make it much easier for outside groups to encourage voters to "contact their representatives" and identify incumbent Senators and Representatives in the final days of an election.

Unfortunately, only three justices appear ready to throw out the broader restriction on campaign advertisements, and therefore on free political speech. Unsurprisingly, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas argued for the broader ruling, but both John Roberts and Samuel Alito opted for a more careful approach. However, the surprise came from Anthony Kennedy, the moderate and now the swing vote on most matters, who sided with Scalia and Thomas.

Roberts probably wanted to gain a stronger consensus before declaring that portion of the BCRA unconstitutional. However, it represents a lost opportunity to gut the worst attack on free political speech in America since the Sedition Act of the first World War. Roberts -- and the rest of America -- may have a long wait before getting another opportunity to remind Congress of the explicit language of the First Amendment.

The AQ Seal Of Approval

Al-Qaeda's second in command endorsed the Hamas coup in Gaza today, calling Muslims around the world to support the establishment of shari'a in the Strip and terrorist attacks against the US and Israel. It represents a shift for AQ, which has criticized Hamas in the past for its engagement in the Palestinian Authority, but Hamas has already started to distance itself from Ayman al-Zawahiri:

Al-Qaida's deputy leader called on Muslims worldwide to back Hamas with weapons, money and attacks on U.S. and Israeli interests, urging the Palestinian militant group on Monday to unite with al-Qaida after its takeover of Gaza.

The Internet audio message from Ayman al-Zawahri, who is Osama bin Laden's top deputy, marked a major shift by al-Qaida, which in the past criticized Hamas for joining a government with the U.S.-supported Fatah faction.

The audiotape appeared aimed at exploiting Hamas' gains and could fuel fears among Arab countries that Hamas-run Gaza will become a breeding ground for armed extremists.

But Hamas appeared unconfortable Monday with al-Zawahri's approach. The Palestinian group has been cool in the past to attempts to link it with al-Qaida, saying its conflict is with Israel and that it has no plans to attack targets abroad. Also, Hamas does not want to alienate powerful Arab countries, such as Egypt.

Actually, the message serves as both endorsement and warning to Hamas. AQ has had some limited success infiltrating Gaza, which had been reported before the Hamas coup. Zawahiri "encouraged" Hamas to enact shari'a in order to "implement God's word on earth," with the clear subtext that they will work towards the same ends if Hamas does not.

Zawahiri has plans for Gaza, and it's not hard to see why. If he can redirect money and fighters to the crowded territory, he will have his closest access to his dearest enemies. Not only will AQ have a foothold (with lots of human shields) on Israel's doorstep, he can also reach out to his Islamist brethren in Egypt. AQ also would get an opening on the Mediterranean, with which they could afflict Europe and North Africa to a greater degree than they already do.

He probably wants to influence the meeting at Sharm el Sheikh today, which Egypt called to attempt another shock treatment to the moribund peace process. Zawahiri would like it derailed permanently, but Hamas just blew the best opportunity for doing that. As long as they belonged to the PA, they could kneecap any attempt to engage Israel in a serious fashion. Now that they have literally isolated themselves in Gaza, they no longer have the ability to influence the direction of peace talks involving Abbas and the West Bank -- which means that they may well be more isolated than ever before.

Zawahiri sees the Hamas putsch as a means to an end. The residents of Gaza may soon see it as the end altogether, especially if AQ becomes active there.

Symptoms, Not The Illness Itself

Howard Kurtz looks at the NBC report on political donations by journalists with a rather withering critique of his colleagues in the media. He called the rationalizations offered in the story "lame-sounding excuses" and defended the policies at most media outlets forbidding political activities by employees:

Some of these folks remain in denial. When you become a journalist, you give up the right to back political candidates or parties with your checkbook. And in this age of federal disclosures, it always comes out.

The news outlets that don't ban donations seem to regard them as a matter of personal preference, like joining the PTA. But they seriously underestimate the public distrust of journalists, which is only fueled by such practices. Those who work for opinion magazines or are employed as commentators have a stronger case that their views are no secret. But there is still an important distinction between rhetorically supporting a candidate and helping bankroll one.

The scorecard -- 125 of 144 donations to Democrats -- provides fresh ammunition to those who say the press has a liberal tilt. It's hard to argue you don't favor one party when you've just coughed up cash for that party.

When the story first came out, I wondered what Kurtz would write about it. I find his column a daily must-read regarding the state of both traditional journalism and the New Media, and I expected an intriguing argument from his column. He delivered on that expectation, but I believe he's wrong, and wrong in two significant ways.

Contrary to media management's belief, political contributions do not create political bias. Donations reveal political bias, as Kurtz himself notes. It's hard to argue that one doesn't favor one side or the other when Open Secrets can tell readers where the reporter's money goes -- and it seems that the ability to argue for objectivity transcends the need for truth. Rather than argue for openness, Kurtz and the industry argues for maintaining a secrecy that seems both hypocritical and a denial in and of itself, the same condition that Kurtz accuses journalists of having.

More importantly, I have to take issue with Kurtz' admonition that journalists have to accept a ban on political activity as a condition of working in the media. Journalists, just like any other Americans, should have no restrictions on their political activity imposed on them by their employment. It's a right that defines us as a nation, and the demand that journalists must forego it as a condition of employment again does nothing to address the real issues of bias, but imposes a cover-up that masks truth. A truly voluntary abstention from political activity would have a sense of nobility, but not an enforced ban.

From campus speech codes to the BCRA to forcing journalists into political darkness, it seems that America has fallen in love with top-down solutions to hide political differences. Wouldn't sunlight be easier, more effective, and far less costly?

Don't Bet On It

The Times of London lost track of the calendar yesterday in their analysis of the presidential campaign. Sarah Baxter claims that John McCain may drop out of the race after the latest fundraising numbers come out next week, as pundits predict another lackluster quarter for McCain's campaign. Did they notice that it's still only June?

THE former presidential front-runner, John McCain, may drop out of the 2008 race by September if his fundraising dries up and his poll ratings continue to drop, according to Republican insiders.

The speculation, vigorously denied by McCain’s camp, is sweeping Republican circles after a disastrous few weeks in which the principled Arizona senator has clashed with the party’s conservative base on immigration and also alienated independent voters by backing President George W Bush’s troop surge in Iraq.

Randy Pullen, chairman of the Arizona Republican party, said: “He’s a battler, so I’d expect him to carry on, but everyone is waiting to see what his new fundraising totals are. That’s pretty critical. If he doesn’t have the money, he won’t be able to run.” ...

Dan Schnur, McCain’s communications director during the 2000 presidential campaign, said it was “possible” that he could drop out: “There are all sorts of challenges McCain is facing, from fundraising to Fred Thompson and the Iraq war, but the biggest single boulder in his path is the immigration issue.”

Given the state of the race, I find these predictions rather odd McCain's support may have dropped over the immigration bill, but his position on immigration has always been widely known in the GOP. His numbers have drifted to the low double-digits, but he still remains in the top tier for Republican candidates, and with Rudy dropping, the race has widened, not narrowed.

McCain probably decided to push the bill now precisely to give himself more time to recover from the hit he knew he'd take with it. McCain wouldn't be alone in that regard, either; everyone on Capitol Hill wants this off the table one way or another before they have to start running for re-election, too. That's why the backers wanted such a rush on debate, and the opponents have slowed it down to increase the pressure on waverers to move away from the compromise.

We have almost seven months before the first primary. That's longer than the campaigns have operated thus far in 2007. No one has even reached the half-way wark, and one major candidate (Fred Thompson) hasn't even entered the race yet. McCain has plenty of time to regroup and attempt to make up lost ground.

Even more obviously, seven Republican candidates would kill for McCain's position in the race at the moment. None of the second-tier candidates have dropped out yet, nor have they given any indication of doing so. Why would McCain drop out when he's still outpolling and outraising Duncan Hunter and Mike Huckabee, let alone lesser lights such as Tom Tancredo, Jim Gilmore, Tommy Thompson, Ron Paul, and Sam Brownback -- combined?

I don't think McCain will get the nod, but he's not finished yet. McCain has weathered tougher situations than a mid-campaign slump. Anyone expecting him to quit while polling 11% nationwide in June is indulging in earlyitis. (via Memeorandum)

States: Immigration Front Line

The Washington Post reports that anti-illegal immigration legislation has more than doubled this year in state legislatures, and likely will increase even faster throughout 2007. State efforts to control illegal immigration do not get many headlines, but several states have enacted or are considering strong measures to deter illegals from remaining inside state borders, if not national.

What makes the states so anxious to pass such laws? The states have to bear most of the short- to medium-term costs of illegal immigration -- and they have grown tired of waiting for Washington DC to fix the problem. At Heading Right, I review the different efforts and discuss why the states may add their considerable influence in the immigration fight on Capitol Hill this week.

Chavez Wants A Guerilla War Against The US

Under normal circumstances, Hugo Chavez would get diagnosed as a run-of-the-mill paranoid and treated with proper medication. Unfortunately, as dictator of Venezuela, the paranoia gets combined with oil revenues to produce real problems for the US, neighboring countries, and the Venezuelans themselves. Chavez has begun a spending spree on arms and now threatens to conduct a guerilla war against the US:

President Hugo Chavez urged soldiers on Sunday to prepare for a guerrilla-style war against the United States, saying that Washington is using psychological and economic warfare as part of an unconventional campaign aimed at derailing his government.

Dressed in olive green fatigues and a red beret, Chavez spoke inside Tiuna Fort — Venezuela's military nerve-center — before hundreds of uniformed soldiers standing alongside armored vehicles and tanks decorated with banners reading: "Fatherland, Socialism, or Death! We will triumph!"

"We must continue developing the resistance war, that's the anti-imperialist weapon. We must think and prepare for the resistance war everyday," said Chavez, who has repeatedly warned that American soldiers could invade Venezuela to seize control of the South American nation's immense oil reserves.

U.S. officials reject claims that Washington is considering a military attack. But the U.S. government has expressed concern over what it perceives as a significant arms build-up here.

The only development that could possibly cause us to make war against Venezuela would be an attack from Chavez on the US. No one here has any interest at all in storming Caracas for any reason. We don't need the land, and we don't need the hassle, and we have plenty of other sources for oil. The US could drill its own, higher-quality reserves before spending billions on a fight for Chavez' sulfuric crude.

Unfortunately, the increasing irrationality of Chavez may touch off a war regardless. The US and the rest of Latin America cannot help but wonder what a lunatic like Chavez might do with all of this military equipment he's buying. Chavez may be talking defense, but submarines are not a defensive weapon. They exist primarily to provide an attack force against surface fleets in open waters, and his consideration of those systems along with his other purchases indicates that he has something else in mind than just defending Venezuelan territory.

Like most other dictators, Chavez wants to stoke fears of war to keep people from rising up to depose him from power. He also wants to buy off the military to keep them from executing a coup d'etat. At some point, when Chavez has emptied the treasury in arming himself to the teeth, his credibility will fail unless he gets the war he's using to frighten Venezuelans now. That's when Chavez will be most dangerous, and Venezuelans will have to act before that moment arrives if they want to avoid the catastrophe that will follow.

Hegseth Vs Levin

Pete Hegseth, who just completed a tour in Iraq as an officer in the 101st Airborne a year ago, has some issues with the anti-war rhetoric he has discovered in the time since his return. Now serving in the New Jersey National Guard -- and a native of Minnesota -- Hegseth focuses on recent statements from Senate Armed Services chair Carl Levin (D-MI) to rebut the arguments repeatedly made by those who want an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. He takes the three basic charges apart in today's Washington Times:

· A deadline for withdrawal is an incentive for Iraqi political compromise. Levin thinks we ought to pressure Iraq's government with a warning tantamount to saying: "You better fix the situation before we leave and your country descends into chaos." He should consider the more likely result: an American exit date crushing any incentive for Iraqi leaders to cooperate and instead prompting rival factions to position themselves to capitalize on the looming power void. ...

· We can bring the war to a "responsible end" but still conduct counterterrorism operations. ... What is "responsible" about the large-scale bloodshed that would surely occur if we left the Iraqis behind with insufficient security forces? What is "responsible" about proving al-Qaeda's thesis that America can be defeated anywhere with enough suicide bombings? ...

· We are "supporting the troops" by demanding an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. ... But what kind of "support" and "unequivocal message" do the troops hear from leaders in Congress who call their commanders "incompetent" or declare the war "lost"?

Such statements provide nearly instant enemy propaganda to every mud hut with a satellite dish in Iraq and throughout the Arab world. These messages do not spell support, no matter how you spin them. And they could inspire insurgents, making the situation more dangerous for our soldiers and Marines.

Hegseth has fought back against these efforts to undermine support for the war since his return. He launched Vets for Freedom, an organization dedicated to supporting the war effort and to convince Congress to keep the military deployment fully funded. He began his effort before he set foot back in the US, starting with e-mails to Power Line from Samarra last June. He's dedicated himself to the mission.

As that e-mail shows, he's seen the issues on the ground. Samarra has been one of the tough neighborhoods for the Iraqi government and the Coalition, but it has steadily improved. It was the center of sectarian violence in February 2006, when the bombing of the Golden Mosque set off a low-grade civil war between Sunnis and Shi'ites. Hegseth saw improvement in the situation last summer, and his analysis has been confirmed in the repeat of the bombing last week, when reaction was limited to a couple of revenge attacks and a peace march through the town.

Levin chose to quote Abraham Lincoln in his op-ed piece in arguing that the war is just too tough to win. Hegseth found this odd, as Lincoln faced a much more difficult, grueling, and incompence-laden war, one that many urged him to negotiate as a draw. Lincoln knew that the war had to be fought to some sort of conclusion, if for no other reason than that a draw would encourage more rebellion and more bloodshed later. He found a general who grasped the correct, if bloody, strategy and had the courage to apply it unceasingly against the Confederacy, and Lincoln ended the war.

Hegseth argues that Bush has done much the same with his appointment of General Petraeus. He has found the right strategy and the right general to apply it. With America's enemies claiming Iraq as the central front of their war against us, and with a withdrawal doing nothing but guaranteeing further war on their terms rather than ours, the correct choice is to fight and beat the terrorists facing off against our military right now, rather than wait for them to attack American civilians later.

Iranian Morality Police Crack Down On Dissent

Michelle Malkin, Gateway Pundit, Ali Eteraz, and Iran Focus have joined forces to publicize the brutality of the Iranian regime on dissenters -- and not just politcal dissenters, either. They're cracking down, literally, on people who dress in non-Islamist dress, including soccer shirts on men.

As a show of solidarity with the Iranian people, I'm joining these other bloggers in carrying some of the images of the brutality. In this video, you hear and see a woman getting beaten on the street:

Here's a clip of the morality police dragging a man through the streets with his hands bound behind him, beating and kicking him as they do:

Here's an Iranian version of Candid Camera, except these meddling women aren't kidding, and they have police to back then up:

People accuse bloggers of stoking the fires of war with these images. That's not the case. If the Western media did their jobs and put these images in front of the world on a regular basis, it would undermine the nonsense that people believe about the mullahcracy in Teheran. It might embarass the Iranian government into reforms, it might not -- but it would leave absolutely no doubt about the nature of the oppressive theocracy and the need to challenge it to change.

War will come, as it usually does, because the West seems to remain in willful ignorance of the nature of its enemies. We want to rely on our Enlightenment ideals and believe that the leaders of radical Islam, such as the Iranian mullahcracy, have as much good intention as we do, and all we need to do is reach out in love to them to gain a just peace. That's been our experience in ending war between Western powers, Germany excepted, over the last 130 years or so, and Westerners think the same dynamic can work with Iran.

The trouble is that the Iranians in power now aren't rational people, nor are they essentially good people. They brutally oppress their own people and export terrorism around the globe. They aren't interested in peaceful co-existence, but instead in global domination in the name of their radical version of Islam. Until we finally understand the nature of our enemies, we will continue to falter before them -- and until the media starts reporting on these events fully and properly, the West will continue its benighted status.

Sessions: Immigration Compromise Losing Steam

According to Senator Jeff Sessions, the momentum for the controversial immigration compromise has begun to stall. He told George Stephanopolous on ABC's "This Week" that the bill would likely fail if returned to the floor, and he hoped it would create an opportunity to find a solution that respects the rule of law:

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a key opponent to the bipartisan immigration bill that will be taken up again next week, said Sunday that support for the legislation “continues to erode.”

Sessions noted that some of the senators that had supported the compromise in a series of votes when the bill was first discussed are now beginning to shift their position.

“We’re going to use every effort to slow this process down and continue to hold up the bill and read it to the American people and show them that even though they may favor the ideals of the legislation that the legislation won’t get us there,” Sessions said. “And we’re going to need a national commitment from the president through the Congress, really a mindset change, in which we say, ‘We can make this system lawful.’”

Sessions, one of the strongest of the conservative voices in the Senate arrayed against this bill, struck a more conciliatory note regarding the 12 million illegal aliens already inside the US. He told ABC that deportation on that scale is not an option. Instead, he wants a system that recognizes the roots that many have put down here, but one that does not give them the same set of benefits as lawful immigrants, let alone better -- such as the DREAM act and other social programs within the immigration bill.

The bill's backers know they have to shore up support They have had some difficult moments over the last week, as a half-dozen GOP Senators previously on the fence have publicly announced their intention to vote against cloture, denying the bill a vote. Two Democrats have joined them as well, and more may come this week as the rushed debate process almost guarantees to rub some Senatorial nerves raw.

Ted Kennedy, on the other hand, said on the same show that he thinks he has enough votes to get past cloture. Whether that comes from whipping or from wishful thinking will become clear later this week.

Steyn: We Haven't Learned A Thing

Mark Steyn follows Tim Rutten's excoriation to their punditry brethren in today's Orange County Register, making Southern California the champion of free speech by default. Steyn looks back on the success of the radical Islamist strategy of intimidation and wonders why the West still can't buy a clue:

This is where we came in two decades ago. We should have learned something by now. In the Muslim world, artistic criticism can be fatal. In 1992, the poet Sadiq Abd al-Karim Milalla also found that his work was "not particularly well-received": he was beheaded by the Saudis for suggesting Muhammad cooked up the Quran by himself. In 1998, the Algerian singer Lounès Matoub described himself as "ni Arabe ni musulman" (neither Arab nor Muslim) and shortly thereafter found himself neither alive nor well. These are not famous men. They don't stand around on Oscar night, congratulating themselves on their "courage" for speaking out against Bush-Rove fascism. But, if we can't do much about freedom of expression in Iran and Saudi Arabia, we could at least do our bit to stop Saudi-Iranian standards embedding themselves in the West.

So many of our problems with Iran today arise from not doing anything about our problems with Iran yesterday. Men like Ayatollah Khomeini despised pan-Arab nationalists like Nasser who attempted to impose a local variant of Marxism on the Muslim world. Khomeini figured: Why import the false ideologies of a failing civilization? Doesn't it make more sense to export Islamism to the dying West?

And, for a guy dismissed by most of us as crazy, Khomeini made a lot of sense. The Rushdie fatwa established the ground rules: The side that means it gets away with it. Mobs marched through Britain calling for the murder of a British subject – and, as a matter of policy on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity, the British police shrugged and looked the other way.

Steyn paints a depressing picture of Western letters either unaware or in denial about the existential threat to themselves and the concept of free speech. He notes that Sir Salman Rushdie initially went into hiding, but then rejected that approach and instead chose to challenge the Islamists instead. He didn't want to accept a certain kind of dhimmitude for the crime of putting pen to paper and writing fiction that dared to question aspects of Islam.

Unfortunately, few of his Western compatriots have joined him in his intellectual defense of free speech. Too many are busy scolding Islam's critics as "insensitive" and as borderline bigots, while millions of Muslims fill streets calling for the murder or writers and cartoonists. Be sure to read the entire essay.

Thought Police Arises In Oakland, Bolstered By The 9th Circuit

Oakland has banned a group of African-American Christian women from accessing a government e-mail and message board system because it considers them bigoted and interested in conducting hate speech. While the same systems regularly carry political statements from gay-rights groups, the city has banned the women because of the loaded language in their communications -- words such as marriage and natural family. George Will explains:

Marriage is the foundation of the natural family and sustains family values. That sentence is inflammatory, perhaps even a hate crime.

At least it is in Oakland, Calif. That city's government says those words, italicized here, constitute something akin to hate speech and can be proscribed from the government's open e-mail system and employee bulletin board. ...

Some African American Christian women working for Oakland's government organized the Good News Employee Association (GNEA), which they announced with a flier describing their group as "a forum for people of Faith to express their views on the contemporary issues of the day. With respect for the Natural Family, Marriage and Family Values."

The flier was distributed after other employees' groups, including those advocating gay rights, had advertised their political views and activities on the city's e-mail system and bulletin board. When the GNEA asked for equal opportunity to communicate by that system and that board, it was denied. Furthermore, the flier they posted was taken down and destroyed by city officials, who declared it "homophobic" and disruptive.

The city government said the flier was "determined" to promote harassment based on sexual orientation. The city warned that the flier and communications like it could result in disciplinary action "up to and including termination."

Gee, I wonder how that happened? It couldn't be that our high degree of sensitivity has caused us to treat dissent as a crime, and act hysterically when offended, could it?

Of course it did. We have been marching down this road for several years now, starting with campus speech codes in the 1980s to campaign-finance reform and hate crimes legislation that makes motive a worse offense than the actual crime itself. Free speech used to have more defenders than attackers, but not any more. And once we decided that the content of speech should get evaluated and suppressed if found wanting, it has opened the door to greater expansion of thought-police activities.

In this case, the thought police got a large boost from the joke of the appellate courts, the Ninth Circuit. Amazingly, they determined that the GNEA's "vanishingly small" speech interest wasn't worth protecting. They approved of non-neutral content exclusions by a government agency that allows them to approve certain political speech while excluding others -- setting up Oakland's government as an arbiter of acceptable political beliefs.

Expect the Supreme Court to pin their collective ears back on appeal. Oakland could have avoided the entire issue by forbidding any use of their systems for anything other than job-related communications. Failing that, they have to show how using the terms marriage and natural family present any kind of threat to anyone in the workplace. They obviously cannot, but they apparently want to ban both concepts from the workings of the city anyway.

We have entered a dangerous stage for free speech. It's fine to take offense at speechm, and to protest it when we do. Commercial actions such as boycotts work within the free speech market, although some may be overwrought. Demanding government interaction to silence groups like the GNEA, P-FLAG, NRA, NARAL, and so on is a demand for an end to free speech. If the Ninth Circuit can't figure that out, then thank God for the Supreme Court.

Chemical Ali To Hang

Another of Saddam Hussein's genocidal henchman will swing from the gallows. His cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, better known as "Chemical Ali", received the death sentence for murdering thousands in Halabja, and scores of thousands more throughout Kurdistan, in the late 1980s:

Two decades after Iraq's military laid waste to Kurdish villages, the Iraqi High Tribunal on Sunday sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali," and two others to death for their roles in the bloody campaign against the restive ethnic minority.

Al-Majid, a cousin of executed former President Saddam Hussein, was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for ordering army and security services to use chemical weapons in an offensive said to have killed some 180,000 people during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. ...

Two others sentenced to hang for anti-Kurdish atrocities were former defense minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tai and Hussein Rashid Mohammed, a former deputy director of operations for the Iraqi armed forces.

The Kurds in Halabja gathered today to celebrate that they lived to see justice done to the perpetrators of the worst chemical-attack atrocity in decades Unfortunately, 5,000 of their fellow Kurds didn't live to see it. That's the estimate of the men, women, and children killed by Saddam and Ali in their chemical-weapons attack on unarmed civilians, part of their campaign to kill off the entire Iraqi Kurd population.

It took Ali less than an hour to kill the 5,000, and leave 7,000 injured and maimed.

It took 19 years and the American invasion to bring him to justice.

Fatah Wants To Wipe Out Hamas

According to the London Telegraph, the civil war in the Palestinian territories will get even hotter over the next few days. Mahmoud Abbas plans to shut down private organizations that support Hamas or act as front groups. Fatah militias may not bother to wait for that review, and have already started attacking Hamas assets in Islamist strongholds such as Nablus:

It is just 12 days since Hamas fighters staged their putsch in Gaza, routing Fatah security forces and forcing the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to declare an emergency, sack the Hamas-led unity government and appoint a new one without the Islamists.

Since then, the Fatah party has embarked on settling the score with its Islamist rivals in the West Bank, its commanders vowing to eradicate Hamas.

Many fear that the showdown will further radicalise the Palestinian territories, and risks triggering a renewed wave of suicide bomb attacks against Israel. Hamas launched dozens of attacks against the Jewish state, killing hundreds of Israeli civilians, but has largely abided by a ceasefire for the past two years. ...

Although Fatah is the dominant force across much of the West Bank, Hamas still has strongholds - not least Nablus - where its candidates won enough votes 18 months ago to propel it to power.

In the past week, Hamas-controlled city councils, including that in Nablus, have been disbanded by decree of militant Fatah members.

It seems that all of the hatred and malice that has stewed in the territories and usually directed at the Israelis have been turned inward. Each side has started to "disappear" their opponents, and the situation in the West Bank may turn as grim as that in Gaza, at least for the moment. Fatah militias, whose control by Abbas may be questionable, have begun their own purge of Islamists, furious at their betrayal in Gaza.

The Israelis may find the situation temporarily just as bad. Hamas has threatened to start terrorist attacks in Israel again, ostensibly because Israel is backing Fatah in this civil war. The real reason may be an attempt to get ordinary Palestinians back on their side to force Fatah into talks. Hamas made the claim yesterday that they didn't want to run Gaza, but to end disruptions by rogue Fatah militias -- an odd claim for a group that attacked Palestinian Authority security installations and Abbas' Gaza compound. They're trying to win a PR war that they lost in their insurrection.

Abbas, however, sees an opening for his own ambitions. Mostly free from having to appease the Islamists, he can pursue normal relations with the West and with the moderate Arab nations that dislike Hamas almost as much as Israel does. He can once again get his hands on aid monies in hard currency and use it to prop up his failing political fortunes.

The only way to do that, though, is to make progress in peace negotiations, and this time Egypt and Jordan will demand real action from Abbas, unlike in the past. They see Hamas' rise as an Iranian attempt at encirclement in the region, and they want to end the conflict which allowed Hamas to gain that kind of power in the first place. They can't afford to act like bystanders any longer, which is why both of them demanded that Abbas come to Sharm el Sheikh with his pencils sharpened.

Will it be enough? Abbas has certainly talked tough, claiming that Hamas would never be allowed back into the government, but that's easier said than done. Egypt tried the same thing with Hamas' parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, which just went underground instead -- and gets its candidates elected as independents. The coming catastrophe in Gaza may be enough to finish Hamas politically, however, especially if Abbas can cut a deal with Israel that brings an end to military occupation peacefully and with prosperity for the West Bank. For the first time, Abbas has more incentive to do that than to continue Yasser Arafat's suicidal policies of the past. Let's see if Abbas has the brains to realize it.

You Go, Boyfriend!

Guess whose ex-GFs think he's all that -- and a cowboy hat? According to the Times of London, Fred Thompson has attracted the beautiful women, and the beautiful women still appear charmed by the chivalrous Tennessee lawyer years later:

IN the battle for the women’s vote, Fred Thompson has a secret weapon against Hillary Clinton - the legions of former girlfriends who still adore him and who want him to be president.

The Hollywood actor and former Tennessee senator racked up an impressive list of conquests during his swinging bachelor days in the 1990s, but he appears to have achieved the impossible and kept their friendship and respect.

Lorrie Morgan, a country singer who dated Thompson and considered marrying him in the mid1990s, told The Sunday Times: “I couldn’t think of a bad word to say about Fred if somebody put a gun to my head.

“Fred is a perfect example of chivalry. He’s the kind of man little girls dream about marrying, who opens doors for you, lights your cigarettes, helps you on with your coat, buys wonderful gifts. It’s every woman’s fantasy.”

I think the First Mate's fantasy involves honey-do lists that actually get done, but we'll put that aside for the moment. When one remains a sought-after bachelor active on the Washington and Hollywood social scene for over 15 years, one usually collects former girlfriends and bad gossip in equal proportion. Not only has Fred avoided that, even his ex-wife intends on campaigning for him at some point.

Part of that may come from the women with whom he chose to spend his time. Most are well-known in their own right, women who have their own lives and wouldn't have bothered to waste a moment on a boor or a bore. Besides Lorrie Morgan, Thompson also dated Margaret Carlson, a well-known columnist and someone I met briefly last year, a delightful and gracious lady who still thinks the world of Thompson. She's quoted as saying that Thompson "sounds like a President," besides confirming his charm and intelligence.

Even more helpfully, Thompson dated GOP fundraiser Georgette Mosbacher between Morgan and the woman he eventually married, Jeri Kehn, and she has some insight into his potential political charm. Mosbacher explains that Thompson knows how to listen -- a trait not exactly widespread among men on the dating scene -- and he treats people with respect when they speak. Traditional women will, she says, abandon Hillary Clinton to vote for the true gentleman.

All joking aside, these recommendations may carry some weight. If a man can move through the dating scene in DC and Hollywood without picking up any baggage at all, he's probably got the chops for high-stakes diplomacy, too. At the very least, it shows something about his character that will reinforce his image as a straight-shooting good guy.