75,000 Isn’t Enough

Have the Democrats settled on an Estradification of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts? It certainly appear so. The White House offered to release 75,000 pages of documents relating to Roberts and his tenure at the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations, but the Democrats don’t find that number acceptable:

“This in no way satisfies any potential document request,” said one Democratic aide, generally reflecting the sentiments of Senate Democrats. “The White House has artfully made it look like they are saying yes to our requests, when they are actually saying no.”
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote President Bush late yesterday saying they are “disappointed” in the decision to cut off access to “important and informative documents written” by Judge Roberts. Those documents, they said, may be necessary to “evaluate Judge Robert’s judicial philosophy and legal reasoning.”
The White House has refused to release federal Judge Roberts’ papers from his time as deputy solicitor general in the first Bush White House, saying that doing so would violate attorney-client privilege and set a dangerous precedent for judicial nominees. The Solicitor General’s Office is the federal government’s lawyer in cases that come before the Supreme Court. …
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, responded to the offer by saying the Senate — not the White House — will decide what it needs.
“If the White House announcement is intended to begin a dialogue about documents, I welcome it,” he said. “If it is intended to unilaterally pre-empt a discussion about documents the Senate may need and is entitled to, then this is a regrettable beginning.”

Despite the protests of all living former Solicitors General, including several Democrats, against the release of privileged material to the Senate or anyone else, the Democratic leadership will continue to press for these documents in open disregard for attorney-client confidentiality. To call these documents red herrings gives them too high a status. The internal memoranda that the Democrats demand to see will reveal advice given by the SG office on specific cases which the former administrations fought in the federal appellate courts. The SG does not create policy; it merely represents those that do, and in order to do so effectively, they must discuss the ramifications of policy with the administration. Unless Roberts actually worked in the administration in a policy-development position, then these writings don’t have any relevance whatsoever. Roberts wasn’t even the Solicitor General, just one of the deputies.
So why do the Democrats demand to see these documents? Primarily because they know their release would be inappropriate. They can therefore paint the administration as secretive and uncooperative in the confirmation process and hope to build enough public support to get a filibuster through without triggering the Byrd option. Frist and the Republicans should make it clear that this is a pipe dream. Any fail to reach cloture should result in a rule change eliminating the filibuster in all future judicial confirmations as promised in the spring.
It won’t happen, of course, because the centrist Democrats realize that this will result in losing their last bit of leverage in the process. The confirmation will continue on track, with a few delays for bloviating, but in the end any filibuster will fail and Roberts will get around 70 votes for confirmation. The only question will be how long it takes to get there.

IRA To Renounce Violence

Eighty years after the founding of an independent Ireland and thirty-five years after the start of the Troubles in Ulster, the IRA will finally disavow violence and embrace electoral politics exclusively, according to an American businessman acting as a liaison between the IRA and the American government. The New York Times reports on this historic development, which may revive home rule in Northern Ireland if the IRA follows through:

The Irish Republican Army has given up its armed struggle for a united Ireland, agreeing to turn solely to political methods, an American businessman said yesterday after being briefed on a statement expected from the guerrilla group later this week.
The agreement, if borne out, would be a historic turning point in the violent history of Ireland and Northern Ireland. But there is still widespread official skepticism about I.R.A. promises, particularly when it comes to the issue of disarmament.
Indeed, it was not immediately clear whether the I.R.A. would address how several tons of arms, hidden in bunkers across Ireland, would be disposed of, according to the businessman, Niall O’Dowd, who brokered talks between the I.R.A. and American officials that helped lead to a cease-fire in 1994. The continued existence of those weapons, which were to have been destroyed under an agreement reached after the cease-fire, contributed to the collapse of the Northern Ireland government in 2003.

In truth, this won’t be the first time the IRA and Sinn Fein has tried this tactic. It agreed to political action exclusively in 1994 for the Good Friday Agreement, but failed to meet its obligations to disarm. The assembly in Belfast continuously tried to pressure Sinn Fein to press for verifiable disarmament, but the IRA refused, preferring to use that as a political negotiating chip, until it eventually sunk home rule altogether and Britain had to step in once more.
The signs and portents appear more promising on this go-around. After having been exposed as IRA commanders, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness, high-ranking officials of Sinn Fein, have resigned from the IRA along with other SF officials. Irish PM Bertie Ahern has rushed back to Dublin from his vacation, and the Canadian general in charge of disarmament has also come back to Ireland. This does not look like a whimsical statement but a coordinated effort by SF to finally meet its obligations.
Bear in mind that this comes after two huge public-relations debacles that nearly sunk SF as a force in Northern Ireland’s peace talks. The IRA pulled off a huge armed-car robbery, taking in more than $20 million but exposing itself as a criminal enterprise instead of a political-action group of freedom fighters. Even worse, their thugs brutally murdered a Belfast man and attempted to cover it up through threats and intimidation. Two SF politicians present at the murder refused to cooperate with the investigation. The brave efforts of the victim’s sisters — ironically sympathetic to the IRA — to hold the paramilitary group responsible caught the attention of the world and turned the IRA and its Sinn Fein supporters into persona non grata around the world. That meant a huge drop in American donations to the cause, a welcome development and long overdue. Last month, the Belfast police finally arrested two men in connection with the murder, a sign that the IRA had stopped intimidating witnesses into silence.
Now the IRA wants to announce its intention to end forever the political terrorism it has conducted for decades. These recent events make such a renunciation more credible, but only when they reveal and destroy their arms caches should anyone accept their pledge. They have proven themselves untrustworthy in the past and must go the full mile to convince the world of their sincerity now.
UPDATE: I’m getting some heat from my readers about being one-sided in debating the IRA. (This is one of the reasons I avoided this topic for so long.) For the record, I think both sides have their nutcases, and the record more than demonstrates that. Ian Paisley is no peacemaker, and he represents the worst of the other side of the equation in Northern Ireland.
However, Paisley does not come to the United States to collect millions in funding from benighted Irish-Americans, or anyone else. Paisley’s group has not (recently) committed armed robbery and covered up murders. Americans who believe that the IRA has some moral standing above that of the PLO, with whom they identify, need to hear more about the true nature of their activities. That’s why I have been blogging more about their issues than the quasi-Protestant thugs who provide their mirror image.
I do understand that both sides have behaved very badly in the past thirty-five years, and I will endeavor to present that more clearly in the future, if those incidents continue to occur.

Air America Took Money From Poor Kids & Alzheimer Patients

Radio Equalizer and Michelle Malkin have followed a scandal in New York that, given the involvement of the nationally-broadcast Air America, should have received national media attention by now. It turns out that the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Clubs almost had to shut its doors following a funding shortfall despite receiving a half-million dollars in grant money and much more in city contracts, getting rescued at the last moment by other independent groups. The $500K in grant money had been loaned out — to Air America:

The nonprofit Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club and its affiliate Pathways for Youth found their city contracts, running into the millions of dollars, abruptly ended last month by the city Department of Investigation. …
He said he and other elected officials are still in the dark over the exact nature of the probe.
In its initial announcement, the DOI said it was probing allegations that program officials “approved significant inappropriate transactions and falsified documents that were submitted to various city agencies.”
According to published reports, the allegations involve Charles Rosen, the founder of Gloria Wise who has stepped down as executive director, investing city contract funds in Air America Radio, the liberal talk radio network.
Evan Cohen, Air America’s former chairman, had served as Gloria Wise’s director of development.

Evan Cohen appears to have sold Gloria Wise a bill of goods in its investment in Air America. First, given AA’s performance, anyone putting that kind of money into it and expecting to even see the principal ever again has to be out of their minds. Second, the grant money involved was earmarked for Alzheimer’s patients, senior citizens, and a mentoring program. Even if AA sounded like a brilliant investment, earmarked grant money has to go to the specific programs it intends to fund, not a flyer on some hot stock tip.
Evan Cohen’s involvement on the board of Gloria Wise and his position at AA makes this decision a massive conflict of interest. Cohen had struggled to maintain his position with the netlet after it became clear that the enterprise had not captured much audience even in the more liberal areas it served. Advertising revenues remained very weak and the corporation barely eked out an existence on donations, making it a poor (and badly-behaved) cousin to NPR. If Cohen used his position on the board at Gloria Wise to misdirect government funds, then AA needs to cough up the money immediately, and any ties Cohen has to other non-profits should be thoroughly investigated.
Has Air America paid back the loan, or even made preliminary payments? We don’t know; AA hasn’t issued a statement, and more curiously, the national media hasn’t asked them. The only papers covering this story are the New York Daily News (but not in its national paper) and the Gotham Gazette, a local newspaper for New Yorkers covering the borough beat. It seems to me that if Salem Radio or Clear Channel had taken money from poor children and Alzheimer’s patients to stay on the air, we would hear about that from all major media outlets within nanoseconds of it coming out.
So why haven’t we heard about this scandal from the Exempt Media?

Egypt Got Tip On Bombing

The Scotsman reports tonight that Egyptian authorities had received a warning about the bombings at Sharm el-Sheikh that killed 88 people and injured hundreds more. Security officials misunderstood the intended target of the al-Qaeda terrorists, however, leaving the hotels unprepared for the attack:

THE Egyptian authorities received information about an imminent terror attack in Sharm el-Sheik days ahead of the devastating weekend bombings, security officials revealed yesterday.
But they believed it would target casinos, so security was increased around those sites, said two officials. …
The officials, who have knowledge of the investigation, would not say where the tip came from, but said security had been put on alert in the resort on the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula several days before the pre-dawn attacks on Saturday.
Instead of casinos, the bombers, in two explosives-laden lorries, targeted hotels just after 1am on Saturday morning. One ploughed into the Ghazala Gardens reception area, levelling the lobby. A second headed for another hotel but got caught in traffic and detonated before reaching its target.

Egyptian authorities will have some questions to answer about why they limited the security to just the casinos; perhaps the tip was too specific, or else plans got changed at the last minute. However, if they took the warning seriously, one should expect that a heightened alert would have gone out to all tourist businesses and transport systems in the area. Al-Qaeda routinely targets such high-profile assets, as it did in Britain, Morocco, Madrid, Turkey, and of course America.
Egypt also has the first forensic evidence linking the bombings to AQ. The remains of the suicide bomber have been identified as a man with known ties to Islamist terrorists. The second bomber still hasn’t been identified, but since the Egyptian chapter of Tawhid and Jihad (the same name as Zarqawi’s group in Iraq) has already claimed responsibility, stating that Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri ordered the attack, investigators can safely assume that the partner will have had similar ties.

Roe Open For Reversal: AG Gonzales

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will likely create more controversy than the Bush administration wanted for the upcoming confirmation hearings of John Roberts to the Supreme Court. In an interview with the AP, Gonzales raised the possibility that Roe v. Wade could get reversed by a succeeding Supreme Court:

The legal right to abortion is settled for lower courts, but the Supreme Court “is not obliged to follow” the
Roe v. Wade precedent, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday as the Senate prepared to consider John Roberts’ appointment that would put a new vote on the high court.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Gonzales said a justice does not have to follow a previous ruling “if you believe it’s wrong,” a comment suggesting Roberts would not be bound by his past statement that the 1973 decision settled the issue. …
“If you’re asking a circuit court judge, like Judge Roberts was asked, yes, it is settled law because you’re bound by the precedent,” Gonzales said.
“If you’re a Supreme Court justice, that’s a different question because a Supreme Court justice is not obliged to follow precedent if you believe it’s wrong,” Gonzales said.

Although Gonzales certainly has his legal analysis correct, perhaps it isn’t the best time to debate the virtues and vices of stare decisis. Everyone understands that the Supreme Court can, and often has, reversed its own precedent. During a confirmation fight over a more explicitly originalist nominee, such commentary would not make much difference. In John Roberts, though, it appears that the Bush administration wants to present the least possible profile for partisan attacks while still ensuring a conservative replacement for Sandra Day O’Connor. Gonzales’ comments only stir up more suspicion that Roberts and Bush have presented this nomination in a dishonest manner.
However, one cannot fault Gonzales for his analysis. After all, had all Supreme Courts relied solely on stare decisis, we never would have had Brown v. Board of Education, which explicitly rejected the Plessy v. Ferguson precedent of almost seventy years. That’s more than double the amount of time that has passed since Roe, showing that reversals of even long-standing precedent can be highly beneficial and desirable. Less desirable for opponents of judicial activism is the example discussed by Power Line in Lawrence v. Texas, which discovered a right to sodomy in the text of the Constitution (not strictly homosexual sodomy, as John noted). The court reversed a precedent of less than twenty years in that case, Bowers v. Hardwick, one that some of the current court members helped decide.
Liberals love both decisions, and both explicitly reject the concept of stare decisis, and over a wide range of time gaps. The notion of requiring a Supreme Court nominee to some blood oath to “settled law” shows more than a little hypocrisy. If pressed, Roberts should point out that the Supreme Court has a long history of poorly-decided cases, such as Dred Scott and Plessy, which succeeding courts had a duty to reconsider free of any slavish devotion to stare decisis. What matters most is the Constitution and the proper separation of powers it sets out. That may not prove terribly popular with the fringe in the Senate, but its honesty cannot be challenged.

Iraq Issues Ultimatum To Syria

The new government of Iraq apparently feels sufficiently established to flex its muscle with one of its more intransigent neighbors. Clearly fed up with the uninterrupted flow of terrorists into the Sunni Triangle, the new Iraqi defense minister warned Syria that its interference in Iraq could create a volcano that would flow lava over Damascus:

Iraq’s defense minister criticized Syria on Tuesday for ignoring Iraqi demands “to stop the infiltration of terrorists.”
The official, Saadoun al-Dulaimi, singled out Iraq’s western neighbor as among states that are slack on stopping the flow of militants into his country.
“When the lava of the exploding volcano of Iraq overflows, it will first hit Damascus,” al-Dulaimi warned during a news conference to discuss an upcoming nationwide security plan.
He said militants are coming into Iraq from Syria via three routes, with the intent of targeting the Baghdad region.

Syria claims that it is trying to stem the flow of the terrorists, but the United States shares the skepticism of Baghdad. Ever since the fall of the Ba’athis regime, we have known that Bashar Assad provided dead-enders from Saddam’s inner circle the sanctuary to conduct their insurgency from inside Syria. Last February, Assad got the message, albeit briefly, when he coughed up Saddam’s half-brother. Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan funded and directed the ex-Baathist insurgency, but the Zarqawi network apparently still has its Syrian connections.
The fact that Iraq feels strong enough to publicly challenge Damascus tells us two things. First, Baghdad has increasing confidence in its ability to deal with Syria as equals. Second, Baghdad considers Damascus as a much lower threat than it would have before the Syrian retreat from Lebanon. Baghdad hopes to continue to increase its prestige by pushing Assad into further retreat — and with American backing, that looks pretty realistic. It could be yet another victory in the war on terror — the isolation of the Assad regime in Damascus.

Democrats Offer (Non) Social Security Option

The Washington Post says that the Democrats have prepared a counterproposal for Social Security reform intended on competing with that of the Republicans. However, after reading the report by Mike Allen, it sounds as if the Democrats want to reform Social Security by ignoring it altogether:

House Democrats intend to propose a retirement-savings plan today that will be their first leadership-backed alternative to Republican plans for a broad retirement-security package, which includes changes to Social Security.
The Democratic plan, called AmeriSave, would increase incentives for middle-class workers to participate in 401(k) retirement accounts and individual retirement accounts. It would also create tax credits for small businesses that set up retirement accounts for their employees. …
The AmeriSave announcement is designed to partially preempt Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), who plans to focus on retirement security in September. Bush had proposed adding individual accounts to Social Security for younger workers, but the idea did not win public support. He has now started talking about his plan as “senior security.”
Thomas has long said that he wants to deal with Social Security as part of a comprehensive retirement package that would cover savings, pensions and Social Security.

Notice, though, that the plans have no component of reform for Social Security. They only adjust existing programs to allow for increased savings and give a few more tax incentives for small businesses to create their own retirement plans. While these goals may have their merits — they appear to make sense to me at first blush — neither have anything to do with the problems facing Social Security in the next generation.
In fact, by emphasizing the importance of wholly-owned personal accounts and vested retirement plans, the Democrats underscore the President’s efforts to grant some ownership of the funds that Social Security drains from workers and employers each week. Pension plans and 401Ks rely on private management of retirement funds and have the benefit of developing real equity, a major flaw in Social Security, and one which Bush’s limited privatization cures. Why not put that same principle to use for Social Security funds, if it works with the rest of our money? The Democrats don’t explain that.
The Democrats have taken a lot of criticism for talking about the coming crisis in Social Security financing for a decade before Bush came to office, and then suddenly pretending it didn’t exist. When Bush presented his plans to reform Social Security, they tried to convince people that reform was unnecessary, which no one believes, and then deliberately decided to offer no alternative, which no one appreciated. Now they attempt to offer “retirement security” by focusing on the money the government doesn’t confiscate without addressing the funds that it does.
Maybe this wan attempt will take some political heat off the party for its obstinate refusal to engage on Social Security. It shouldn’t. It looks like yet another attempt to change the subject by ignoring the main problem.

Dafydd: ab Hugh’s Universal Rules of Intelligence

Thinking about the terrible shooting of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, shot to death in London by police who mistook him for a suicide bomber, recalls some rules of intelligence and analysis that we should always keep in mind:
1. The Law of Imperfect Precognition: Sometimes there is no “right choice.” Throw the dice.
2. The Law of Imperfect Postcognition: Not even hindsight is ever really 20-20.
3. The Law of Colliding Interests: Five different people can each make a rational decision and still wind up in a melee.
4. The Law of the Rational Onion: There is always another layer of analysis that contradicts everything you’ve already concluded. At some point, you just have to stop.
5. The Law of Models: There is a real reality out there, whether you can see it or not. And it bites.

Pointing To A Failed State

An independent study on the effectiveness of official Palestinian security forces show them to be understaffed, outgunned, ineffective and corrupt. The BBC reports on the unsurprising results, which the Dutch and Canadian governments funded, that point to the folly of granting sovereignty to the Palestinian Authority:

The lack of equipment includes shortages of ammunition, of means of communication beyond mobile phones and of all-terrain vehicles.
Other problems include the continuing power of personalities and clans, which often create alternative, informal chains of command and weaken the authority of the man in overall charge, Palestinian Authority Interior Minister Nasser Yousef.
BBC Jerusalem correspondent Nick Thorpe says the problems are closely tied to the history of the conflict in recent years – the destruction of the Palestinian police infrastructure by the Israelis since the start of the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, in 2000.
Continuing attempts to streamline the forces are praised by the report, but the overall picture is disturbing. It says the Palestinian forces are caught between far better equipped Palestinian militant groups on the one side and the Israeli army on the other.

The Israelis had to “destroy the police infrastructure” after 2000 because the Palestinian Authority used them to assist groups like the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in carrying out attacks on Israelis. Had Arafat and the Palestinians used their police infrastructure for law-enforcement purposes instead of another terrorist gang, then Israel would not have needed to crush it. The Oslo accords and every negotiation since then has attempted to get the Palestinians to accept responsibility for maintaining peace on their own, and they continually subverted their police for war and terrorism instead.
Now that the years of corruption and co-optation have taken their toll, no one should express surprise that the police force that the Palestinians have left have no real influence or power, or that clan affiliations carry more weight with the rank and file than the corrupt government that misused them for years. Before a police force can enforce the law, the government which promulgates it has to value the law. Perhaps Abbas does, or maybe he just pretends better than Arafat, but either way those “police” who managed to make it this far without getting killed did so by not having much illusion as to their mission under Arafat and Fatah.
Under these conditions, without a strong and credible independent force capable of taking on the various militias and gangs that outshoot government representatives, the entire Palestinian enterprise will roll downhill faster and faster towards a Somalia-like conclusion. Warlords and gangsters will rule the West Bank and Gaza territories, while the ineffectual central government holes up in Ramallah. Laws will be issued, but the “police” and government security forces will remain thoroughly infiltrated and under the regional and local influences of clan affiliation and gang leadership.
And into this stew of chaos and gang warfare, al-Qaeda will establish itself as a player, just as it did in Somalia. Osama bin Laden will not resist building a significant organization within easy reach of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, as well as the open waters of the Mediterranean.
Until the Palestinians reform their security forces and start to seriously address the militias and gangs, granting sovereignty to Abbas will create a failed state right where it will strategically and tactically do the most harm. Either we need to keep the lid on the West Bank and Gaza or we need to have someone replace Israel as an admnistrator until we see results.

Dafydd: The Tancredo Threat

I cannot believe that this controversy is still roiling within the blogosphere. The newest argument I’ve seen is that threatening to bomb or even “nuke” Mecca is just the same as MAD, the Cold-War strategy of threatening massive retaliation in response to a Soviet first-strike on the American homeland.
But it’s not. And there is a very good reason why it is not analogous.
The reason that MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction, worked is that the Soviets were modernist dictators; they were a modern, industrial society run by atheists who believed that this life was the only life, and who were motivated not by a transcendent religion but rather by an ideology of absolute temporal power. They took seriously the threat to destroy their realm and kill the leaders themselves.
Now, I realize it seems crazy to postulate a group that literally believes that the fastest way to paradise is to die killing the infidel. It sounds insane to imagine a group that would embrace — oh, for an impossible example, some sort of suicide bomber as a holy martyr assured of his seventy-two one-eyed virgins, or whatever it is. And it feels utterly ridiculous to worry that the leadership of such a group themselves might really believe those ideas, believe them to the point where they extrapolate the martyrdom concept to a planetary-wide “suicide bombing,” actually trying to bring about global annihilation in order to precipitate the Millennium.
Alas that this “insanity” is the reality of the enemy we do, in fact, face today, right where we are sitting now.
The Tancredo Threat assumes that the militant-Islamist terrorists are rational and temporal human beings, concerned more with life and temporal power than they are with the death-cult religion they profess. But what if they are not? What if at least some of them are really what they appear to be — irrationals concerned not with this world, but only with the next?
What of the Tancredo Threat then? Mecca is only significant in this world; it is the temporal link between humans and Allah. But if Allah has returned and is ruling in person, then what need of Mecca? Even if it were a glassy, radioactive plain, if the all-powerful Allah actually wanted it — wouldn’t he simply rebuild it himself?
People, this is the fire you’re playing with, this is the lightning that Tom Tancredo thinks to bottle. You think that in the end, the Islamists will act as rationally as the Soviets did, and the Great Threat will succeed. You’re playing Islamist Roulette, but you have the barrel pressed against the head of civilization itself.
“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.” Because if you are, then God help our world.