December 1, 2005
American Intervention Creates Balkan Islamists?
The Left has long held up the Balkans intervention as a model for American intervention -- low footprint, low investment, and practically ignored, although like the Iraq War, also unsanctioned by the UN and actively opposed by Russia and China. They claim that the use of overwhelming force in Iraq has created a "training ground for terrorists" and that American troops only add to the recruitment of more terrorists. I expect, then, an explanation of how this differs from the recruitment and training of mujaheddin in Bosnia, where Islamists have built cells specifically to infiltrate heavily Caucasian nations for terrorist activities: In particular, Islamic radicals are looking to create cells of so-called white al Qaeda, non-Arab members who can evade racial profiling used by police forces to watch for potential terrorists. "They want to look European to carry out operations in Europe," said a Western intelligence agent in Belgrade, the...
And By The Way, Nixon Resigned
The House condemns the government for its arrogance in refusing to compromise with the opposition parties over the timing of the next general election and for its 'culture of entitlement,' corruption, scandal and gross abuse of public funds for political purposes and, consequently, the government no longer has the confidence of the House. The above words finally brought down the Liberal government in Canada on Monday evening, a stunning indictment by all three opposing political parties of Liberal involvement in the Sponsorship Programme scandal and its various attempts to dodge responsibility for corruption and abuse of power. While the no-confidence motion itself sounds surprisingly harsh – originally, the parties agreed on simpler language that just expressed a loss of confidence – the fall of the Liberal government comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed the developments in Canadian politics over the past month. Unfortunately, that doesn’t include the...
New Ipsos Poll Puts Canada In Dead Heat
A new poll by AP-Ipsos, based on a survey done during the debate over the no-confidence motion, shows that the Liberals have dropped into a dead heat with the Conservatives on a national basis. This data has not received wide release -- in fact, I had to buy a membership at Ipsos in order to see the data. Based on a sample of 1,000 adults -- a sampling type that normally would overreport Liberal support -- the results surprisingly mirror those of the private Robbins Research poll taken earlier this month. Both parties get 31% of the national vote, and NDP picks up 18%. BQ gets 14%, all of it from Quebec. However, the details have to disturb Liberals who hope to return to power in the next Commons. Their support base in Ontario appears to have seriously eroded. Earlier polls show that the Liberals once enjoyed a double-digit lead...
The Merry Christmas Project
My good friend Kevin McCullough has a great idea going at his blog. Since the ACLU seems intent on taking Christmas out of the holiday season, he wants to get as many bloggers to promote his idea to teach them what the season really means. His idea? Have as many readers as possible send Christmas cards to the New York office of the ACLU: We are excited to be launching the opportunity today...between now and Christmas we are asking you to send the ACLU direct "MerryChristmas" cards. And we aren't talking about these generic "happy holiday" (meaning nothing) type of cards... Go get as "Christmas" a Christmas card as you can find... something that says.. "Joy To The World", "For Unto Us A Child Is Born", but at least "Merry Christmas", put some of your own thoughts into it, sign it respectfully and zip it off in the mail to:...
The Folly Of Propaganda
Sincerity, filmmaker Samuel Goldwyn once said, was the most important quality for an actor; once one learned to fake it, everything else came easy. Unfortunately, in real life credibility is a commodity that cannot withstand fakery once exposed. The question for the Pentagon in the past day is whether Army and/or Marine Corps brass have paid off Iraqi newspapers to carry articles written by American servicemen under false pretenses as news stories for the Iraqi public, trying to spin the war to American advantage: As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq. The articles, written by U.S. military "information operations" troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials...
December 2, 2005
Senator Shameless
A former solicitor general lashed out at Chuck Schumer yesterday for his attack on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito based on a memo that should never have been released in the first place. Charles Fried, who represented the Reagan administration during Reagan's second term in office and who now teaches at Harvard Law School, said that the memo written by Alito not only provided nothing more than casual advice but also qualified as a privileged document that should have remained sealed: The former U.S. solicitor general who authored a Reagan-era brief against the abortion ruling Roe v. Wade lashed out yesterday at one of the Democratic senators who will be voting on Judge Samuel Alito for saying the Supreme Court nominee should have told senators about work he did on the brief. Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School and President Reagan's lead attorney in front of the Supreme...
Democrat 'Unity' Unravels On Iraq
The supposed unity of the Democrats on Iraq continued to unravel further yesterday, with more Democrats speaking out in favor of the cut-and-run strategy favored by Jack Murtha, while others insisted that none of them supported running away from the fight. The Post gives a pretty good scorecard for the confusion which once more bolsters the national perception of a party unworthy to hold responsibility for national security. Nancy Pelosi's wholehearted defection from the lawyerly constructions emanating from the Democratic caucus in the Senate has exposed the Democrats' disarray on an issue which seemed to resonate so well for them until the GOP forced their hand in the House two weeks ago: For months now, Democratic leaders have grown increasingly aggressive in their critiques of President Bush's policies in Iraq but have been largely content to keep their own war strategies vague or under wraps. That ended Wednesday when Pelosi...
Celebrity Death Row Spotlights
It doesn't come up often at CQ, but most long-term readers know that I do not support the death penalty. I respect the enactment of it by the legislatures and feel that the penalties should not be subject to excessive legal and extralegal machinations, however, until such time as the people finally decide to get rid of executions altogether. Up to now, I've left the Tookie Williams controversy to those with more passion about carrying out his sentence, but Eugene Robinson wrote an excellent column for today's Washington Post that sums up my feelings on the subject. Titled "No Special Break For Tookie", death-penalty opponent Robinson lashes out at the celebritization of a thug and murderer by entertainment elite: Big-time Hollywood stars, including Jamie Foxx, Snoop Dogg and Danny Glover, are leading a high-profile campaign to persuade another big-time Hollywood star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to save the life of a convicted...
The Referendum On Harper
My new Daily Standard column comes out today, titled "Morning In Canada?", in which I argue that the new elections will stand or fall as a referendum on Stephen Harper. The task for the Tory leader is to go over the heads of the media, a la Ronald Reagan, and deliver a campaign reminiscent of the "Morning In America" effort that won Reagan a landslide: How likely is a return of Liberal rule after the Gomery disaster? After twelve years of Liberal control, first as a majority and then as the plurality in the Commons, the Tories bear the burden of convincing Canadians to cross the aisle--and Gomery alone may not be enough to break the Liberal hold on power. Stephen Harper, the Conservative leader, has to convince voters that Tories offer more than just a gainsay of Liberal policies. Harper needs to deliver a "Morning in Canada" agenda, one...
December 3, 2005
Just Doing Business The Iraqi Way (Updated And Bump)
The military has come forward to explain its actions in the so-called propaganda scandal that erupted earlier this week, the AP reports in a late-breaking news item on ABC. Army spokesman LTC Barry Johnson told Congressional leaders and later the media that the program described in separate articles in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times had not intended for the articles in question to be offered clandestinely under anyone else's by-line. Instead, the contractor, Lincoln Group, had been tasked to pay for advertising and editorial space -- apparently the practice in the nascent Iraqi press -- and offer the articles openly as written by American military personnel to get their stories out to ordinary Iraqis: Military officials for the first time Friday detailed and broadly defended a Pentagon program that pays to plant stories in the Iraqi media, an effort the top U.S. military commander said was...
Another 72-Virgins Moment In Pakistan
The Pakistani army reports that one of Osama's lieutenants has hit his jackpot of 72 virgins Thursday after getting blown up with four of his colleagues in North Waziristan. Abu Hamza Rabia, a co-equal of Abu Faraj al-Libi in the AQ executive and rumored to be the fifth-highest ranking member of AQ, ran international operations for Osama bin Laden: Abu Hamza Rabia, an Egyptian credited with heading al Qaeda's international operations, was among five militants killed in an explosion at a house where they were hiding in North Waziristan on Thursday. Musharraf, arriving in Kuwait on an official visit, confirmed Rabia had been killed. "Yes indeed, 200 percent. I think he was killed the day before yesterday if I'm not wrong," Musharraf told reporters. While officials said the blast was caused by explosives stored in the house for bomb-making, residents said a helicopter fired rockets into the house at a...
The Flypaper Strategy Sticks Around
Kevin Brock, the Deputy Director of the new National Counterterrorism Center, told the AP that al-Qaeda has not established a "significant operational capability" in America since 9/11 -- and the only attempted AQ operation since then fell apart due to the incompetence of its cell leader. Brock also said that while the American effort to secure itself must remain vigilant due to the changing nature of the Islamist threat, the actual effort of terrorist operations have been directed elsewhere: Brock said he doesn't believe the invasion and war in Iraq can be blamed for the threat reports that come into his center each day. "That would be too simplistic," he said. "There is too much of a diverse nature to these threats." Had the U.S. not invaded Iraq, Brock said, terrorists would still carry out attacks. "But now they are mostly carried out in Iraq. That is where most of...
Northern Alliance Radio Today
We're on the air already -- and we're talking about the necessity of getting the White House to push its successes on a more consistent basis, as well as other topics. If you're in the Twin Cities, tune us in at AM 1280 The Patriot, and if you're outside of the area, you can tune in on our Internet stream at the link. Join the conversation at 651-289-4488! Tomorrow, I'll be appearing on CNN's Reliable Sources at 9 am ET, talking about the coverage of Bush's Iraq speech and the kerfuffle over the information campaign in Iraq....
December 4, 2005
Rice To Europe: We're At War, You Fools
Condoleezza Rice will confront European queasiness with covert operations head-on during her tour of EU nations this week, according to the London Telegraph, by staunchly defending American transit of suspected terrorists on CIA chartered flights that sometimes refuel in EU nations. The revelation of such flights and secret detention centers in Eastern Europe caused some consternation among Europeans, who have protested the practice: Condoleezza Rice, the United States Secretary of State, will urge European governments to back off in the continuing row over alleged secret terrorist detention camps in Eastern Europe and clandestine CIA "prison plane" flights. Dr Rice, who begins a four-country European tour tomorrow, is preparing a "robust" defence of American treatment of terror suspects, as Washington belatedly comes out fighting on the controversy, senior European diplomats told the Sunday Telegraph. Although Dr Rice is keen to improve diplomatic relations with Europe, she will use her visit to...
Bush Softening Stance Towards Iran?
According to the London Telegraph, the American ambassador to Iraq received administration authorization to review border status with the hard-line Iranian government in an attempt to stabilize the long eastern border between Iraq and Iran. Zalmany Khalilzad will also discuss supressing the Iraqi insurgency and stopping the flow of explosives and weapons from the Islamic Republic, which seems as futile as asking Saddam to remove his army from Kuwait was in 1990: The American initiative, a further indication that the secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's more moderate diplomacy has replaced the hardline foreign policy of Mr Bush's first term, follows another recent shift of tactics towards Iran. For the first time, America is offering active support to European and Russian officials in their efforts to end the deadlock with Iran over its nuclear programme, after previously adopting a hands-off approach - to the alarm of prominent neo-conservatives who back regime...
CQ Media Notes (Updated - With New Appearance!)
I will be on Howard Kurtz' Reliable Sources today at 10 am ET, talking about the so-called propaganda scandal that already seems to have lost steam this weekend and coverage of George Bush's speech on Iraq. I may have given the wrong time yesterday, so be sure to re-check your times. I'll be on with John from Americablog, so we should have some fun with each other. Also, it looks like my trackbacks might be working again, so give it a shot. UPDATE: Just got home and watched my segment on the TiVo. Not too bad, I think, and the people at CNN treated me very well. Howard Kurtz gave me plenty of time to talk. As it turned out, John Aravosis and I didn't really disagree that much on the topics involved (I thought John did a good job as well, although I didn't know he was in studio...
Politically Correct Christmas Carols
Okay, I had planned on mostly staying out of the Christmas Wars this season, a madness where "Happy Holidays" has now reached the status of a war cry. However, while the First Mate and I went out for our first whack at Christmas shopping, we stopped for lunch at Applebee's. They had a music channel on that rotated through various holiday songs, mostly pleasant if forgettable pop covers of the classic carols. One, however, couldn't be forgotten if we tried. Right in the middle of the last chorus of the song, the singer paused and added "Happy Kwanzaa" in the pause. The song? Incredibly, it was "The Christmas Song" -- you know, the one that starts, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." I don't know the artist who provided this cover, but the irony and the stupidity made me laugh out loud, while the FM's jaw dropped, aghast. Here's the...
The Irish Say 'Olé!'
The BCS has announced the game lineups for the major bowls this season, and the big news isn't that the USC Trojans will meet the Texas Longhorns for the national championship; that merely fulfills a foregone conclusion after yesterday's results. No, the big news is the return of Notre Dame to the ranks of the major bowls with an invitation to the Fiesta Bowl to face the Ohio State Buckeyes on New Years Day: In his rookie season as Notre Dame coach, Weis has the Fighting Irish (9-2) in the BCS for the first time since they lost the 2001 Fiesta Bowl 41-9 to Oregon State. They automatically qualified for a spot by finishing sixth in the BCS standings. "I think it's a great tribute to our coaching staff and our players that they were able to turn it around that fast," Weis said. While some complain that Notre Dame...
2005 Warblogger Awards (Update On 2005 Weblog Awards!)
John Hawkins has announced the results of the 2005 Warblogger Awards at Right Wing News. A stellar cast from the blogosphere has reviewed the bloggers under consideration, and CQ ended up in the top ranks in a couple of different categories. Thanks to all the bloggers who voted for CQ! (And a big thanks to John Hawkins for creating and hosting this set of awards.) UPDATE: I have been nominated for Best Blog in the 2005 Weblog Awards at Wizbang. This poll allows voters to cast their selections for their favorite blog once every 24 hours. Check out the competition -- I'm up against some brilliant bloggers -- and make your selection every day until the 15th. And drop Kevin Aylward a note thanking him for all his work in setting up the Weblog Awards....
December 5, 2005
Navy Ends Retreat On Ship Inventory
The Navy has determined that it must start expanding its shipbuilding immediately, after years of drastic reductions in the post-Cold War era has left the service at half of its peak strength. The New York Times reports that even a modest increase in ship-building may not get the necessary funding from Congress, however: The plan by Adm. Michael G. Mullen, who took over as chief of naval operations last summer, envisions a major shipbuilding program that would increase the 281-ship fleet by 32 vessels and cost more than $13 billion a year, $3 billion more than the current shipbuilding budget, the officials said Friday. While increasing the fleet size is popular with influential members of Congress, the plan faces various obstacles, including questions about whether it is affordable in light of ballooning shipbuilding costs and whether the mix of vessels is suitable to deal with emerging threats, like China's expanding...
Saddam Trial: A Fit A Day
The trial of Saddam Hussein picked up where it left off, with yet another disruption from the defense team and Saddam himself, a development from which observers could practically set their watches. In this case, the entire defense team walked out when the court initially ruled that Ramsey Clark had no standing to address the court in session, and Saddam chanted Arab slogans in protest of the court's decision: The court reversed an earlier decision not to allow Ramsey Clark, the former US Attorney General and member of the defence team, to make a statement challenging the legitimacy of the trial. Rizgar Mohammed Amin, the judge, said that only Saddam's chief lawyer could address the tribunal under laws established by an elected Iraqi government, which led the defence team to walk out of the court room. But after a 90-minute recess, Mr Amin allowed Mr Clark and another of the...
Will India's Government Fall Over OFF?
The Indian government, under the Congress Party, may fall due to connections described in the Volcker Report on the Oil-For-Food program. The AFP reports that a key minister faces parliamentary ire for his corruption by Saddam Hussein, and that the ruling party's blocking of parliamentary procedure may create a backlash among MPs: India's opposition piled pressure on the government in parliament over new charges that the former foreign minister and the ruling Congress party joined a scam to profit from the UN oil-for-food programme in Iraq. Trouble erupted within minutes of parliament assembling as MPs belonging to the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) jumped to their feet to demand the resignation of ex-foreign minister Natwar Singh, now serving as cabinet minister without portfolio. Speaker Somnath Chatterjee said the opposition could discuss later the new charges that Singh and the Congress party received special vouchers to purchase oil cheaply from...
John Kerry: American Soldiers Are Terrorists
John Kerry appeared yesterday on the CBS talking-head show, "Face The Nation", to discuss the war in Iraq with Bob Schieffer. Just as in his speeches on the Viet Nam War, Kerry has slipped into deep Left-speak in an attempt to gain national traction for his pose as a party leader. In fact, in language reminiscent of his infamous "Genghis Khan" speech before the Senate in April 1971, he yesterday referred to American soldiers as terrorists -- and then suggested that we leave terrorism to the new Iraqi army. From page 3-4 of the CBS transcript, emphasis mine (h/t:CQ reader Dave Z): SCHIEFFER: All right. Let me shift to another point of view, and it comes from another Democrat, Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. He takes a very different view. He says basically we should stay the course because, he says, real progress is being made. He said this is...
December 6, 2005
What The Media Ignored In Its DeLay Reports
Yesterday, Tom DeLay won an impressive ruling from Judge Pat Priest in his trial on money-laundering and conspiracy charges surrounding the transfers of cash between local and national GOP organizations three years ago. Priest dismissed the original indictment of DeLay, the grand jury bill in which prosecutor and DeLay's personal Jauvert Ronnie Earle felt so confident that he immediately went out and burned through two more grand juries to get a different indictment just to be sure he could get something that stuck. However, if one reads the Washington Post and the New York Times this morning, it would appear that DeLay lost yesterday -- because both papers leave out a significant portion of the story. Both papers get this much correct: A Texas judge dismissed one charge against Representative Tom Delay on Monday but let stand two more serious charges, complicating Mr. DeLay's hopes of regaining his post as...
What The Media Ignored From Howard Dean
Yesterday, the leader of the major American opposition party called the war in Iraq "unwinnable", compared the supposed scandal over intelligence -- the same intel that Congress had seen since the Clinton administration -- with Watergate, and issued a demand that Bush immediately withdraw half of the forces in Iraq -- and yet the major newspapers could not be bothered to write their own articles about the story or include it in their print versions today. Neither the NY Times nor the Washington Post gave any kind of comprehensive report to Howard Dean's shrieking for retreat and surrender, nor to his ridiculous notion of how to fight against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as told to WOAI radio in San Antonio: Saying the "idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean predicted today that the Democratic Party...
Back To The (Meat) Grinder
The trial of Saddam Hussein resumed yesterday after numerous disruptions from the defense threatened to derail the proceedings. The first of the witnesses offered their testimony after a 90-minute pout by Saddam and his defense toadies, now apparently led by American leftist and supposed idealist Ramsey Clark, who then had to listen while witnesses described the horrors inflicted on the townspeople of Dujail after an assassination attempt in 1982: Ahmed Hassan Mohammed was the first witness to testify in the murder and torture case against Saddam, highlighting an emotional day in which the former dictator repeatedly yelled at the judge and the defense team briefly walked out in protest over the proceedings. ... Mr. Mohammed was 15 when hundreds of families from his village were tortured and killed after an assassination attempt against Saddam. The witness said his family was among the hundreds taken to a Baghdad jail. "I swear...
Is Harry Doomed?
The Daily Mirror dishes out some Harry Potter gossip that will likely have fans buzzing for the next year or so while they wait for the final installment of the Potter series to apparate at their local bookstores. Jim Dale, who provides the voice of Harry Potter for American audio books, claimed that author JK Rowling has tired of the Potter phenomenon and wants to kill off the character in the final installment (h/t: Hugh Hewitt): HARRY Potter may die in the next book in the series because author JK Rowling wants to kill him off, it was claimed last night. Actor Jim Dale - the voice of the teenage wizard in the US audio books - believes the seventh and final instalment will spell the end for Harry. He made the astonishing claim after meeting with the writer to discuss his characterisation of the parts. The revelation will shock...
An Honor To Compete (Means -- I Wanna Win, Dammit!)
The voting continues at the 2005 Weblogs Awards, and so far it looks like the Daily Kos will run away with the Best Blog award, the category in which CQ competes this year. Many fine blogs have been nominated for this honor, and it's terrific just to be mentioned in the same category as them. I don't want to get too far into recommendations for specific awards -- I have a lot of friends in the blogosphere, and some of them compete against each other this year. However, I'd like to at least draw your attention to a few: Best Canadian Blog - Near and dear to my heart this year. Be sure to check out Small Dead Animals, Angry in GWN. Best New Blog - All Things Beautiful; Alexandra is a class act all the way. Best Conservative Blog - Jeez, I love all these guys. Vote for a...
December 7, 2005
Saddam Keeps On Manipulating
Apparently not satisfied with the results of his constant interruptions and disrepectful outbursts in court, Saddam Hussein has decided to escalate his manipulation of his trial and the media coverage by refusing to attend. The trial found itself at a standstill this morning when the former dictator refused to go into court, leaving the nonplussed judges wondering what to do next: Saddam Hussein's trial was delayed Wednesday after the ousted president refused to attend the session, court officials said. Defense lawyers huddled with the judges in hopes of resolving the latest test of wills in the often-unruly trial. An angry Saddam threatened at the end of the Tuesday court session to boycott the next day's proceedings after complaining that he and the seven other co-defendants had been mistreated by the "unjust court." Court officials on Wednesday said Saddam was sticking by his vow, and the judges were trying to decide...
Have They Forgotten The Mission?
A few CQ readers sent me a surprising story this morning regarding a decision by some "megachurches" to close their doors for Christmas. The AP reports that pastors at these large, non-denominational Christian houses of worship have decided that one of the more holy days for Christians should give way to secular celebrations instead: This Christmas, no prayers will be said in several megachurches around the country. Even though the holiday falls this year on a Sunday, when churches normally host thousands for worship, pastors are canceling services, anti-cipating low attendance on what they call a family day. Critics within the evangelical community, more accustomed to doing battle with department stores and public schools over keeping religion in Christmas, are stunned by the shutdown. ... Cally Parkinson, a spokeswoman for Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., said church leaders decided that organizing services on a Christmas Sunday would...
Babs Discovers Editors
Barbara Streisand discovers why we bloggers mistrust the Exempt Media and write for ourselves. She's miffed because she wrote a letter to the Los Angeles Times and they had the audacity to edit her letter when they published it. Babs presents the letter as written on her website, and then reproduces the resulting publication. I won't excerpt it here; you should read it for yourself. I have to admit that she has a point about the hack editing job done on her letter. Unfortunately, she wrote a hack letter in support of a hack columnist (Robert Scheer) who should have been terminated years ago. Be that as it may, the resulting edit removed the key point of her letter -- that she felt strongly enough about the Chicagoization of the LA Times that she had canceled her subscription. It shows that people on both the right and the left have...
Hillary Facing Challenge From The Left?
Just when it appears that the GOP's efforts to unseat Hillary Clinton have collapsed with District Attorney Jeanette Pirro's wobbly candidacy for the Senate seat, Clinton may face even more challenge from the Left. Another anti-war candidate has announced his intention to run against Clinton, and this one has some union clout: A longtime labor advocate launched his challenge to Senator Clinton's reelection while another anti-war Senate hopeful yesterday suggested the two join forces against Mrs. Clinton in the 10-month lead-up to the Democratic primary. A former head of the National Writers Union, Jonathan Tasini, announced his bid in a 20-minute speech to supporters and members of the press at the W Hotel in Union Square. The address largely focused on his opposition to the Iraq war: He said Mrs. Clinton and other Democrats who voted for it "abdicated their responsibility to the American people and to the values of...
Shelton: Able Danger My Idea
General Hugh Shelton confirmed that the Able Danger program had backing from the highest levels of the military and that he had at least two personal briefings on the progress of the program tracking al-Qaeda prior to 9/11 -- again raising the question as to why the 9/11 Commission ignored this program entirely in its supposedly thorough look into American preparedness for a terrorist attack: In his first public comments on the initiative, which some former intelligence officers now say was code-named Able Danger, Shelton also confirmed that he received two briefings on the clandestine mission - both well before the Sept. 11 attacks. "Right after I left SOCOM (Special Operations Command), I asked my successor to put together a small team, if he could, to try to use the Internet and start trying to see if there was any way that we could track down Osama bin Laden or...
The Brown Pants Party
In my latest Daily Standard column, I argue that the Democrats have in their desperation finally come up with a war strategy -- only they had to reach back 140 years to find it. "Rally Round the (White) Flag, Boys!" notes the discomforting and embarrassing similarities of the Democrats' current stance on the war in Iraq and their take on the Civil War in 1864: Not even during the Vietnam War did a major American party position itself to support abject retreat as a wartime political platform. For that, one has to go back to the Civil War, when the Democrats demanded a negotiated peace with the Confederate States of America and a withdrawal from the South. Celebrating the popularity of former General George McClellan, who had come from the battlefield to represent a party whose platform demanded a negotiated settlement (which McClellan later disavowed), the Confederates assumed that the...
The 20-Foot Rings Of Able Danger
AJ Strata has more on the Able Danger story tonight, following the release of a National Journal article at Govexec.com that might fill in some of the blanks on why the program lost its backing in mid-2000, just when it appeared to make headway against al-Qaeda. As Shane Harris reports, the second dry run of the data harvest that eventually spawned Able Danger turned up more politically difficult names in connection to Chinese espionage: The experiment "went well," the former IDC employee said. "Unfortunately, it went too well." During construction of those link diagrams, the names of a number of U.S. citizens popped up, including some very prominent figures. Condoleezza Rice, then the provost at Stanford University, appeared in one of the harvests, the by-product of a presumably innocuous connection between other subjects and the university, which hosts notable Chinese scholars. William Cohen, then the secretary of Defense, also appeared....
December 8, 2005
I Guess The UN Has Closed Its Sex Camps
The United Nations high commissioner for human rights took the occasion of Human Rights Day to scold the United States for its conduct of the war on terror, instead of focusing on such enlightened nations as Syria, Myanmar, Zimbabwe -- and Turtle Bay itself. Louise Arbour's focus on the US resulted in a slap back from John Bolton, who warned the UN that the lack of credibility demonstrated by such actions would damage efforts to reform the UN: Louise Arbour, the high commissioner for human rights at the United Nations, presented the most forceful criticism to date of U.S. detention policies by a senior U.N. official, asserting that holding suspects incommunicado in itself amounts to torture. ... She also expressed concern in a news conference with efforts by some U.S. policymakers to exempt CIA interrogators from elements of the U.N. Convention Against Torture. Vice President Cheney's office has sought to...
Not One Of Langley's Finest Moments
The CIA should find itself embarrassed by the article in today's New York Sun on how CIA flights in Europe got exposed. The explanation unearthed by Josh Gerstein shows little imagination and even less care in covering the tracks of what supposedly amounted to a top-secret operation, and should concern Americans about the competence of the CIA in protecting wartime operations: In May 2004, the Swedish show reported on the CIA's involvement with the expulsion of two men from Sweden to Egypt in December 2001. The tail number of an aircraft involved in the transfer led quickly to information about at least six other occasions on which the same small Gulfstream V jet was used to move prisoners from various locations to countries such as Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. "Once we had the identity of the plane, which we were able to find out in many ways - a plane...
Judge Lets Level 3 Sex Offender Walk
In a mind-boggling decision, a Dakota County judge allowed a Level 3 sex offender -- the kind most likely to re-offend -- to walk out of a courtroom after spending two months without making required contacts or registering his whereabouts with the police. Jeremy Queen had turned himself in after a two-month search for the chronic parole violator and spent Tuesday night in jail. Thanks to Dakota County judge Ed Lynch, by Wednesday morning he had won release on his own recognizance: A convicted sex offender wanted by police for failing to report his whereabouts turned himself in to the Dakota County jail on Tuesday night, only to be released the next morning by a Dakota County District Court judge. Prosecutors, dismayed by the decision, said Jeremy John Queen, 26, has a long history of ducking authorities and violating par-ole. Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom said he will ask the...
More Evidence Of Insider Trading In Canadian Scandal
Last month I posted about a potential new scandal brewing for the Liberal Party in Canada involving insider trading on speculation about tax policy. Now it appears that more evidence and testimony gives credence to the charges that the government leaked advance warning on its tax policy to certain investors, allowing them to take advantage of the information to maximize their profits at the expense of other investors: In the two weeks since Canada's Finance Minister announced a tax cut to dividend-paying stocks, the big question in financial and political circles is whether some people had advance notice of his Nov. 23 announcement. A CTV Whistleblower investigation into what happened that day has found that may have been the case. ... Ralph Goodale's announcement was good news for income trust investors -- and those who buy dividend-paying stocks. He reversed his earlier plan to possibly tax the trusts. He also...
Will The Circle Stay Unbroken?
It's not unusual during this time of year to get nostalgic for Christmases past -- when life resembled the Norman Rockwell images of American culture and children enjoyed simpler pleasures and more innocent pastimes. It seems like so much of Christmas these days has not just disappeared under waves of commercialism, but now of politically-correct bickering that makes even the phrase "Merry Christmas" a statement pregnant with purpose, rather than just a celebration of the season. The burden gets heavy enough to tire even the most fervent optimist at times. For instance, when my sister and I were small, we waited impatiently for the Christmas television specials as an indication that the season had truly arrived. For us, Christmas season began with "A Charlie Brown Christmas", or "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Frosty The Snowman". Even when we got a little older and I tried to act as though I...
Harper Calls For Goodale Resignation Over Insider Trading Scandal
Tory leader and PM candidate Stephen Harper called for the resignation of Ralph Goodale over allegations of Liberal involvement in insider trading based on early warning of policy decisions by Goodale. The Finance Minister's office stands accused of leaking information to selected investors in order to allow them to profit off of policy statements before being made public: Conservative Leader Stephen Harper called today for Finance Minister Ralph Goodale to resign his cabinet post, saying that there is "growing evidence" that there was a leak of policy changes for income trusts that sparked trading in financial markets and that the information "may have leaked from senior Liberal sources." "I would say that given the revelations we now have, given the information we now know, that in any country, in any other advanced democratic country where we had a government that operated according to normal ethical standards, the finance minister would...
December 9, 2005
Boston Muslim Group Major Al-Qaeda Fundraiser: Treasury Dept
The Treasury Department has identified the Islamic Society of Boston and its founder, the now-imprisoned Abdurahman Alamoudi, as major financial contributors to the al-Qaeda network and a conduit for Saudi funds to radical Islamist terrorism. The New York Sun's Meghan Clyne reports that the politically-connected Muslim group has several connections to terrorism, not just al-Qaeda -- revelations that will prove embarrassing for both political parties: In July, Alamoudi was cited in a Treasury Department press release designating the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, a U.K.-based Saudi oppositionist organization, led by Saad al-Faqih, as providing material support for Al Qaeda. MIRA "received approximately $1 million in funding through Abdulrahman Alamoudi," the statement said. "According to information available to the U.S.Government," the statement continues, "the September 2003 arrest of Alamoudi was a severe blow to Al Qaeda, as Alamoudi had a close relationship with Al Qaeda and had raised money for...
Rice Gets Europe On Board War Policy, Media Shrugs
Condoleezza Rice has reversed what the media tried hard to blow up into a crisis between the US and its European partners by challenging their commitment to security and their unfounded suspicions of illegal activity by American interrogators of captured terrorists. European leaders have given Rice a resounding vote of confidence. The Washington Post dutifully reports this -- on page A16: European foreign ministers attempted to make peace with the United States on Thursday over the controversy concerning treatment of terrorism suspects, with many saying they were satisfied with visiting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's explanations of U.S. policy. ... Some ministers, such as Bernard Bot of the Netherlands, had indicated they still had deep concerns over U.S. policy, despite a week-long effort by Rice to defuse the tensions. But afterward, ministers reported that they were satisfied with the U.S. position. "Secretary Rice has covered basically all of our concerns,"...
Hoist Upon Their Own Petard
The GOP has made no bones about taking the gloves off after spending the last few months pretending to rise above the ankle-biting rhetoric about the Iraq War from the Democrats. After watching them slowly tip over the edge in the past month, openly calling for a recognition of defeat in Iraq and an immediate evacuation of troops from the region, the Republicans have opened up on Democratic Party leaders such as their chairman, their Congressional leadership, and their last Presidential nominee for their vacillating and pusillanimous responses. I covered most of this recent history in my last Daily Standard column, "Rally Round The (White) Flag, Boys!" For their part, the Democrats loudly responded that they have been quoted out of context. Drudge now reports that the Republicans intend on fixing that problem with a few web ads, using the actual recorded statements of each to show the nation that...
Who Will Be Time's Man Of The Year?
Longtime CQ reader Monkei gave me a great idea this afternoon. With the end of the year coming up, Time Magazine will shortly be selecting its Man (or Woman) of the Year, an always-controversial topic among its readers and in the blogosphere. Monkei suggested the US Coast Guard, but didn't explain it -- maybe he'll throw in with a comment. Who would you like to see Time "honor" as the person who made the biggest difference in the world in 2005? George Bush? Abu Musab al-Zarqawi? Condoleezza Rice? Paul Volcker? Nominate your suggestions in the comments section, and we'll pick six or seven by Sunday that appear to be the most popular as finalists. I'll post a poll afterwards that we can run until Time makes their own selection known and see how close we got. Please note that this is not an open thread, and so comments should reflect...
Iraqis Take Another Step Towards Freedom
The Iraqis took a major step forward today towards freedom when the plain folks of Ramadi captured and handed over a major al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Amir Khalaf Fanus, known as "The Butcher of Ramadi": Iraqi citizens turned over a high-ranking Al Qaeda member known as "the Butcher" to U.S. forces in Ramadi Friday a military statement said. Amir Khalaf Fanus was No. 3 on the 28th Infantry Division's High Value Individual list for Ramadi, wanted for murder and kidnapping in connection with his affiliation with Al Qaeda in Iraq. "He is the highest ranking Al Qaeda in Iraq member to be turned into Iraqi and U.S. officials by local citizens," Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool said in a statement released from Camp Blue Diamond in Ramadi. "His capture is another indication that the local citizens tire of the insurgents' presence within their community." The critics of the war have long...
December 10, 2005
Hamas: Peace Is Too Boring
The terrorist group Hamas, which has emerged as the most popular political group with Palestinians over the past year, has shifted its position on truce with the Israelis again. Khaled Meshaal, Hamas' leader, claims that the truce has Hamas ... well, rather bored: The leader of Hamas said Friday his group was growing weary of its pact with the Palestinian Authority to avoid conflict with Israel. "There is no room for truce. I say to our brothers in the [Palestinian] Authority that we are witnessing political stagnation," Khaled Meshaal said in a fiery speech at a rally in the Syrian capital of Damascus. "I say it loud and clear, we will not enter a new truce. Our people are preparing for a new round in this struggle," Meshaal said. Hamas much prefers blowing up women and children in pizzerias than the actual work of statecraft, ie, building political consensus and...
Schroeder's Parachute: Made In Russia
David Kaspar at Medienkritik notices a Bloomberg dispatch that should have Germans in the streets, demanding an explanation from the SPD for years of misguided policy favoring Russian interests over that of their longstanding friendship with the United States. Gerhard Schroedoer, who narrowly lost his position as Chancellor in the last election and the resulting formation of the new German executive, has managed to land on his feet -- working for the Russians on a program then-Chancellor Schroeder approved just three months ago: Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder will lead the shareholders committee for a German- Russian gas-pipeline project to pump gas under the Baltic Sea, OAO Gazprom Chief Executive Alexei Miller said today. State-controlled Gazprom began building the more than 4- billion-euro ($4.7 billion) North European gas pipeline project today in the town of Babaeyvo in Russia's Volodga region, north of Moscow. The pipeline will allow Gazprom to ship...
Will Zarqawi Stand Down During Elections?
The United States and the UK have prepared themselves for a massive security effort for the upcoming Iraqi elections, which will replace the interim government with its first democratic, constitutional four-year Assembly and executive and promote Iraq to the ranks of the liberal democracies. Some Sunni leaders think that the security effort may prove superfluous, as they have convinced themselves that even Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has given up on intimidating the now-committed Sunnis from participating in the electoral process. Jonathan Steele at the Guardian reports that the same problem faces the native "insurgencies": Their candidates have been assassinated, their party offices attacked, but hopes are mounting among Iraq's Sunni Arab politicians that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, will not make a serious effort to disrupt next week's national elections. Despite threatening to block previous votes, this time the Jordanian militant, believed to be responsible for most...
Our New Bestest Buddy ... Joe Lieberman?
In the zero-sum game that has consumed our national politics in general and the Democrats specifically over the last month, Joe Lieberman has arisen as a new prize to be claimed -- or shunned. The Washington Post reports on the political damage that he may have done to his own party in coming back from Iraq and informing the nation that the Bush strategy has worked and will deliver victory if Democrats would simply not lose their nerve. Amazingly, the word "maverick" never once appears in Shailagh Murray's analysis: The Connecticut Democrat's strong public defense of Bush's handling of the Iraq war has provided the White House with an invaluable rejoinder to intensifying criticism from other Democrats. In public statements and a newspaper column, Lieberman has argued that Bush has a strategy for victory in Iraq, has dismissed calls for the president to set a timetable for troop withdrawal, and...
Northern Alliance Radio Today
We'll be on the air today between noon and 3 pm CT, talking about Joe Lieberman, the new Copperheads, advances in the Iraq war that the media hasn't covered -- and that's just the first hour. If you're not in radio range of AM 1280 The Patriot, tune us in on our Internet stream. Join us by calling the station at 651-289-4488!...
Insider Trading Scandal Deepens For Martin
Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin may face more questions about personal ethics in the exploding scandal surrounding the alleged insider trading involving the Finance Minister's office and the announcement of monetary policy two weeks ago. Blogger MK Braaten has done some investigative reporting on the winners the day the policy got announced -- and found out that one of the biggest traded its shares at 3400% its normal volume in the hours prior to the announcement: According to STOCKTRENDS.ca, the day before the Goodale income trust announcement, the trading volume of Medisys Income Trust was 226,500, with a value of $2,604,750, average trade was $37,750, and a total of 68 transactions. According to StockTrends.ca, this stock was listed as trading at “Unusual Volumes“. Click here for the report. The volume of shares traded for Paul Martin linked Medisys Income Trust shares the day before the Income Trust announcement is way...
Double Plus Good At The Weekly Standard
The upcoming issue of the Weekly Standard has two excellent articles that provide people with absolutely essential information on the war in Iraq. First is Stephen Hayes' report on the documents that the DIA refuses to release under a Freedom of Information Act request which appear to refute the conventional narrative of the war. Hayes has gained access to the index for these documents, but even though the documents remain unclassified, the DIA refuses to release them or to provide access for Hayes: FOR THE SECOND TIME IN recent weeks the Department of Defense has denied a request from The Weekly Standard to release unclassified documents recovered in postwar Iraq. These documents apparently reveal, in some detail, activities of Saddam Hussein's regime in the years before the war. This second denial could also be the final one: According to two Pentagon sources, the program designed to review, translate, and analyze...
An American Original Leaves Us Laughing
Richard Pryor died today at 65, after suffering from long bouts of multiple sclerosis, heart disease, drug abuse, and what appeared to be a decades-long death wish. Pryor overcame the pain and illness of his life to change an entire entertainment form -- stand-up comedy -- from a series of jokes and witty third-party observations to a review of his life and his pain that seemed almost Freudian at times, even while making us cry with laughter. Pryor started off trying to be the next Bill Cosby -- another American original -- but Pryor soon discovered that he could not spend his life ignoring his own viewpoint. While I would hardly claim to agree with much of what Pryor said and did in his life, he never quailed at talking about his failures and making them part of his always-hilarious act. His brutal honesty towards his own shortcomings made his...
December 11, 2005
Bill Frist, Post-Spine Transplant
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist warned Democrats today that any attempt to filibuster the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court would result in the Byrd Option, which would strip the minority of the filibuster tool permanently for confirmations on appellate-court nominations. His statement gives the strongest indication yet that the GOP has counted heads and determined that enough Senators will back the rules change to make it a reality: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Sunday he is prepared to strip Democrats of their to ability to filibuster if they try to stall Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court. "The answer is yes," Frist said when asked if he would act to change Senate procedures to restrict a Democratic filibuster. "Supreme Court justice nominees deserve an up-or-down vote, and it would be absolutely wrong to deny him that." In recent weeks, Senate Democrats have questioned whether Alito,...
Biggest. Anticlimax. Ever.
New York Times Magazine, according to Editor & Publisher, had a report on the blogosphere that would create a storm of controversy. The Michael Crowley report would show that while liberal blogs outnumbered and in some cases outdraw conservative bloggers, the right side has more effect on politics because of the nexus of talk radio and Drudge. As it turns out, that's all Crowley had to say. He should sue E&P for lifting his entire 283-word article for their 360-word description of it. Crowley offers no support, no research, not even a hyperlink to the two bloggers he mentions in his threadbare blurb. As for his central assertion -- that conservatives have superior message discipline because of orders received on high from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Drudge -- Michelle Malkin takes that down with a series of of references to high-tension debates on the right this year, primarily the...
Native Terrorists Warn Zarqawi: Back Down For Elections
The London Telegraph reports that the Iraqi "insurgencies" may come to loggerheads this week when the Iraqis go to the polls. The native Iraqis have made it clear to the Zarqawi faction that they intend to provide a clear road for Sunni voters to cast their votes and get the representation they need in the new, regular National Assembly: Iraqi insurgents have signalled a major shift on January's parliamentary elections, urging Sunni Arabs to vote and warning al-Qa'eda militants not to attack polling stations. Ba'athist loyalists boycotted Iraq's last set of elections and intimidated would-be voters out of participation. Now guerrillas in the volatile Anbar province say they are prepared to protect voting stations from al-Qa'eda fighters. Ali Mahmoud, a former army officer and rocket specialist under Saddam's Ba'ath party, said: "We want to see a nationalist government that will have a balance of interests. So our Sunni brothers will...
CQ Reader Gets His Eagle
Many of our CQ community come from a younger demographic than I sometimes imagine. Although I have been interested in politics since Watergate, when I was ten years old, most people don't start finding politics and policy debate very exciting until they have gone through at least an election or two as a voter. As you may imagine, I'm always pleased to hear that young men and women in high school and college follow CQ and other blogs, keeping up with the latest in politics. One of our regular readers, Sean Skelton, has also had time to be active in the Boy Scouts of America, serving his local community as well as participating in ours. I heard from his family that Sean has passed his final BSA review and will shortly receive his Eagle Scout award. As a former Scout myself -- one who only made it to First Class...
Liberals: Poor Parents Are Drunks
So much for the Liberal concern for the poor and downtrodden. Liberal Party leader Paul Martin will have a lot of explaining to do about comments made earlier by two of his aides on the Tory plan to give cash back to families for child care expenses. Trying to discredit Stephen Harper's new initiative for child-care tax credits, Martin aides Scott Reid and John Duffy told Canadian television viewers that the money would probably go for beer and popcorn instead of child care: The federal Liberals scrambled Sunday to control the damage from their first serious gaffe of the election campaign after a top aide to Paul Martin suggested Canadian parents could blow any extra child-care money they get from Ottawa on beer and popcorn. ... The Conservatives would provide tax credits worth $250 million a year over five years to private companies and non-profit day-care operators. But the centrepiece...
December 12, 2005
Did Syria Notch Another Murder On Its Guns?
Another anti-Syrian Lebanese politician died in a car-bomb attack this morning, a day after the UN heard the latest report on the last victim of Syrian assassination, Rafik Hariri. The circumstances provide an eerie sense of deja vu in the case of this journalist-turned-MP: Gebran Tueni, a prominent politician and journalist, was among those killed in a car bomb attack in Lebanon, police have said. Mr Teuni's armoured SUV car exploded as it was driving through the mainly Christian Mekalis area of east Beirut. Three other people also died and 10 were wounded in the blast. Mr Tueni, 48, was a well-known journalist and fierce critic of Syria. He was elected to parliament in this year's election. Tueni had only just returned to Lebanon from Paris, where he had published his anti-Syrian newspaper in hiding from Assad's security forces. The 48-year-old journalist had been back in his native country for...
The Incredible Lightness Of Being Hillary
The Washingtom Post reports today on the missing 800-lb gorilla in the national debate on the Iraq War. Hillary Clinton has largely made herself AWOL from the debate, testing various formulations of vague anti-Bush criticisms without tipping over into anti-war rhetoric. That has led to criticism from both liberals and conservatives and left most wondering exactly where she stands on the war and the strategy needed. Hillary, however, isn't talking about it: At a time when politicians in both parties have eagerly sought public forums to debate the war in Iraq, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has kept in the shadows. Clinton has stayed steadfastly on a centrist path, criticizing President Bush but refusing to embrace the early troop withdrawal options that are gaining rapid favor in her party. This careful balance is drawing increasing scorn from liberal activists, frustrated that one of the party's leading lights has shown little...
The Eighty Percent Lie
A new poll by ABC/Time shows that the Iraqi polling numbers tossed around by Democrats for the past month in defense of their cut-and-run "strategy" were bald-faced lies. The Oxford study underwritten by the network and news magazine determined that not only has Iraqi optimism increased dramatically throughout 2005, more than half of those polled believe that the US should stay in Iraq until Iraqi security services have been fully trained: An ABC News poll in Iraq, conducted with Time magazine and other media partners, includes some remarkable results: Despite the daily violence there, most living conditions are rated positively, seven in 10 Iraqis say their own lives are going well, and nearly two-thirds expect things to improve in the year ahead. Surprisingly, given the insurgents' attacks on Iraqi civilians, more than six in 10 Iraqis feel very safe in their own neighborhoods, up sharply from just 40 percent in...
Salon's Commitment To Freedom As Constant As Wind Direction
Earlier in the Captain's Quarters archives, I wrote about the threshold of democracy in relation to Afghanistan. The measure of a democrat, I wrote, isn't whether he supports the results when he wins, but when he loses. Until one accepts the results of elections even when they go against their wishes, they do not practice democracy but hypocrisy. Hypocrisy oozes from Salon's latest effort from Cary Tennis, and the magazine itself should explain the reason for their continued presentation of Tennis. Not only does his latest "advice" show him as a pseudo-democrat, but singularly lacking in basic understanding of the American political system: At a certain point in the near future, if the current oligarchy cannot be removed via the ballot, direct political action may become an urgent and compelling mission. It may then be necessary for many people in many walks of life to put their bodies on the...
About The Ad ...
I have received a few e-mails objecting to the MS-NBC ad running in the Premium strip, asking me why I approved the graphic and/or why I don't cancel it. It's a fair question, and I'll throw the comments open for debate on the topic. First, on the ad itself, the graphic shows the outline of a female torso and the word "Porn". I don't find the outline objectionable; I've seen bra ads that reveal much more. In fact, the ad just above it features a woman modeling an anti-ACLU T-shirt that has more curve (and a much more realistic image), and yet I don't consider that objectionable either. The word "porn" has appeared on this blog in the context of discussion and debate; I don't shy away from it, although sometimes I spell it "p0rn" to keep the Googlebots from delivering me fresh readership under false pretenses. MS-NBC has made...
The Last Hours Of Tookie
Stanley "Tookie" Williams has run out of options for avoiding his long-delayed execution, having lost both his bid for clemency and his final appeal to the US Supreme Court this evening. Retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor likely got the call, as the 9th Circuit comes under her jurisdiction, which might cool the ardor for her from the Judiciary Committee Democrats at the Alito hearings next month, but really means nothing much at all. Since no one had any significant new arguments to present on Williams' behalf -- supposedly one witness surfaced after over a quarter-century that might have had something to say about one of the four murders that put him on Death Row -- the only hope Tookie had was clemency, and the Governator terminated that possibility earlier in the day: Schwarzenegger said he was unconvinced that Williams had had a change of heart, and he was unswayed by...
December 13, 2005
Peeking Out Of Putin's Pocket
Gerhard Schroeder lashed out at his critics yesterday after accepting a cushy job with the Russian state=owned oil company Gazprom just weeks after approving a major project while still Chancellor. He threatened to sue anyone accusing him of "sleaze", while new Chancellor Angela Merkel says she wants a debate on a code of conduct for politicians re-entering the marketplace: In remarks made to the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, Mr Schroeder says the allegations against him are "nonsense" and announces that he is taking legal action - although he does not give any details about this. Mr Schroeder and President Putin signed the deal to build the gas pipeline underneath the Baltic Sea 10 days before the general election in September - earlier than originally planned. Politicians and the media have suggested there was a conflict of interest, with Mr Schroeder allegedly feathering his nest while acting in a public capacity. "Schroeder...
A Prosecutor's Rebuttal
My posts on the Stanley Williams execution and my opposition to the death penalty has generated a number of comments and e-mails. One e-mail comes from a prosecutor who wrote such a good argument that it deserves a wider exposure, even though he disagrees with my position. I suspect it speaks for a number of CQ readers. I'm a big fan of yours, and I read your blog daily. As a prosecutor in Los Angeles, I appreciated your comments today regarding the disgusting glorification cum martyrdom of Tookie Williams, particularly as you are personally opposed to the death penalty. I'm not a good enough theologian to even try to convince you of the moral propriety of the death penalty, but I would like to take a stab at the LWOP argument. It seems to me that it isn't enough to say that the people of California could have simply chosen...
Has Abbas Gotten Serious?
The Palestinian Authority has done something remarkable the past few days; they have arrested dozens of islamic Jihad operatives in response to attacks on Israel, a unique demonstration of authority that PA president Mahmoud Abbas had long avoided: Masked Palestinian security forces have arrested dozens of Islamic Jihad activists in a series of overnight raids across the West Bank in recent days — an operation the Palestinian Authority says is aimed at bringing those behind attacks on Israel to justice. However, the biggest crackdown on militants since Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas took office a year ago has netted only low-level operatives, and some suspect the goal is to appease the United States and Israel rather than crush the militant group. At the same time, analysts and Israeli security officials said the arrests have sent an important message to the Palestinians — and Israelis — that militant groups can no longer...
CQ On The Air Tonight
I'll be on the air with Rob Breckenridge in a few minutes at CHQR, the Calgary radio station that has often been kind enough to invite me on their show. I hope you can listen in on their Internet stream -- and check out Rob on a regular basis. UPDATE: Sorry for the short notice, folks -- but I had a series of appointments and couldn't post this until just before air time. We talked about Stanley Williams and his execution, and Rob gave me plenty of time to discuss it with his audience. Calgary has a fine show in The World Tonight -- I hope that more people discover it through their website....
Has The War Turned The Corner ... At Home?
The blogosphere has long resigned itself to the lack of coverage given by the Exempt Media to positive developments in Iraq. While we have read about increasing enthusiasm for voting on the milblogs and some of the secondary professional media outlets, the market leaders such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post have almost exclusively focused on body counts and bombings while ignoring everything else. When the Gray Lady sees fit to start reporting that even the Sunni of Saddam's hometown have committed themselves to democracy in the upcoming elections, it might indicate that defeatism has finally jumped the shark: The guerrilla war found fertile ground in Tikrit, and defiant Sunni Arabs boycotted the elections in January. But turnout in the parliamentary elections on Thursday is expected to be high, reflecting the shift in attitude of many Sunni Arabs toward the American-engineered political process....
A True World Series And Its Best Possible Ambassador
Baseball has decided to embrace a world vision this year by creating an international tournament of national teams, based loosely on the format used by the Olympics in past years. Instead of those Olympic competitions, which occurred in the middle of the major-league season and wound up as amateur and minor-league tournaments, the World Baseball Classic will feature the best players in the world competing for their native countries -- the US, Japan, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Canada, Mexico, and others. The venues will be in Japan, Puerto Rico, and the US, with the final games in San Diego's Petco Park. MLB has selected one of my favorite baseball legends for its ambassador to the first WBC: Tommy Lasorda. As I wrote in a comment on his site, who better to represent the love and passion we Americans have for our national pastime than the Hall of Fame manager who...
December 14, 2005
Syria: Assassinated MP A 'Dog', Says Israel Runs US
The Syrian regime of Bashar Assad will not comply with any more investigations into a continuing series of political assassinations in Lebanon of anti-Syria politicians, if the reaction of their UN ambassador gives any indication. Speaking in closed session, Fayssal Mekdad compared murdered MP Gibran Tueni to a 'dog' and blamed Israel for the suspicion under which the Assad regime finds itself: Syria's ambassador to the United Nations, Fayssal Mekdad, likened slain Lebanese legislator Gibran Tueni to a dog yesterday and indicated that Israel leads American policy on his country. American and French officials, meanwhile, vowed support for Lebanon, but shied away from pushing for sanctions against Syria in the aftermath of yet another damaging report on that country's role in Lebanon. America's U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, said he would ensure that international pressure on Syria is "unrelenting." When asked why he did not refer specifically to sanctions, which the...
Paper Of Rumor And Urban Legend
The Confederate Yankee catches the New York Times with its pants down, reprinting rumor as fact and getting caught on a single-sourced story that attempts to discredit the upcoming Iraqi elections. Dexter Filkins reported this morning that trucks inbound from Iran had carried forged ballots for the Iraqi elections with the intention of skewing the results for the Shi'ites: Less than two days before nationwide elections, the Iraqi border police seized a tanker on Tuesday that had just crossed from Iran filled with thousands of forged ballots, an official at the Interior Ministry said. ... The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the Iranian truck driver told the police under interrogation that at least three other trucks filled with ballots had crossed from Iran at different spots along the border. The official, who did not attend the interrogation, said...
Europe Botching Afghanistan Duties
When we first went into Afghanistan to take out the Taliban, the action had the backing of Europe, which promised its support for the effort and its aftermath. The operation got handed to NATO in a move lauded by the American media as a model of how we should have handled Iraq. Now it appears that NATO has botched the mission, with the various European countries that pledged their support to help build the newly democratic nation reneging on their promises, according to The Scotsman: BRITAIN is set for a U-turn on its commitment to send thousands of troops to fight in Afghanistan next year, with some in the army now questioning whether the mission should be abandoned altogether. Military commanders say that lessons have not been learned from the run-up to the Iraq war and that political prevarication has left them unable to make adequate preparation for the mission,...
Carl Levin Can't Handle The Truth
Democratic Senator Carl Levin has pledged to block an appointment for President Bush's choice of Pentagon spokesman based on the supposed attitude problem of the nominee, J. Dorrance Smith. What has caused this political obstructionism to rise again, this time in the Senate Armed Services Committee? Senator Levin doesn't appreciate what Smith thinks about ... al-Jazeera: J. Dorrance Smith, the nominee, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in a closed session about an opinion article in which he accused U.S. television networks of helping terrorists through the networks' partnerships with al-Jazeera. The article has sparked concern among committee members and has prompted Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) to pledge to defeat Smith's nomination to be assistant secretary of defense for public affairs. "I have deep concerns about whether or not he should be representing the United States government and the Department of Defense with that kind of attitude and...
Nation On The Edge Of Forever
Day is dawning at this moment in Iraq -- Election Day, when the Iraqis freely select their first constitutional government in decades. Some estimate a turnout of ten million voters in the elections today, and while the biggest concerns will be about security, no one believes it will discourage anyone from making their way to the polling booth. Just the same, like a broken record, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi issued his traditional Election Day threat, making the even seem more official: With Iraqi exiles starting to cast their ballots, including in Zarqawi's home town of Zarqa in Jordan, a statement issued by his branch of al-Qa'eda announced "a blessed conquest to shake up the bastions of non-believers and apostates and to ruin the 'democratic' wedding of heresy and immorality". There were sporadic shooting and bombing attacks at polling stations yesterday, and several candidates have been killed in recent weeks. But overall...
December 15, 2005
Iraqis Turn Out In Droves, CNN Reports, While Negotiated Truce Holds
At this point in the Iraqi election polling, it appears that the day has provided a smashing success for democracy. Christiane Amanpour of CNN reported moments ago from Baghdad that the turnout in Sunni areas has been surprisingly high, compared to what she experienced in the last two elections. Here's a rough transcript of her report, coming at midday in Baghdad, talking live with anchor Soledad O'Brian: SO: What are you seeing there? CA: Well, Soledad, we are at a polling place at a school not far from our office here in Baghdad, which has been turned into a polling station. There are police outside, there are Iraqi Army outside. These people have been maintaining the security -- in fact, they have been sleeping at these polling stations for several days before the election. .... All day, it's been quite a steady stream of people coming to vote. In Baghdad,...
Martin's Potatoe
Sensing a chance to exploit the always-present undercurrent of resentment towards Canada's southern neighbor and largest trading partner, Prime Minister Paul Martin took an opportunity given to him by American ambassador David Wilkins to sound tough and stand up to Wilkins' rebuke earlier this week that "the US is not on the ballot" in the upcoming election. Tory leader Stephen Harper backed away from Wilkins' criticism of Martin (who went unnamed in Wilkins' statement), claiming that the ambassador's speech had been "inappropriate": Paul Martin enthusiastically tore into an election-time spat with the United States yesterday, firing nationalist rhetoric from a B.C. softwood-lumber mill only one day after U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins warned Canadian politicians against campaign chest-thumping. At the same time, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, in his first comments on the issue, called the ambassador's intervention "inappropriate" -- as federal party leaders appeared to calculate that rebuking the United States...
Anti-Alito Campaign Losing Momentum
The New York Sun reports that the "grass-roots" efforts by PFAW and Alliance for Justice to generate a groundswell of opposition to the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court has so far failed miserably. A nationwide 'educational' tour has generated almost no interest at all, and on-line petitions have only received 55,000 endorsements instead of the targeted million or more: A grass roots effort aimed at fueling opposition to Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito has become a target of mockery for the nominee's conservative allies instead - the latest skirmish in an ongoing turf battle among interest groups almost four weeks ahead of the confirmation hearing. Earlier this month, the liberal activist group Alliance for Justice kicked off a nationwide tour against Judge Alito in which members travel from town to town distributing literature and organizing events against the nominee. Starting in Colorado, the so-called "Rolling Justice"...
Trashing What Isn't Broken
In the days after 9/11, Americans resigned themselves to the inevitability of a series of terrorist attacks on our homeland. We tried to do whatever we could do to minimize the possibility of such an attack, but we all prepared ourselves and tried to do what we could to remain vigilant against terrorists. One element of that vigilance was the PATRIOT Act, which gave law enforcement the same kinds of power to pursue counterterrorism as they do in investigating child pornographers and organized crime suspects. That proved to be successful; we have yet to experience another successful attack on American soil, more than four years later. After that tremendous success, when key provisions of this legislation have reached a critical expiration date, the Democrats propose to force the calendar back to 9/10 and filibuster the renewal of the PATRIOT Act: The real fight will be later this week in the...
Who Will Investigate The Liberal Insider Trading Scandal?
The insider trading scandal continues to fester this week as none of the normal agencies that would have jurisdiction have yet to announce any sort of investigation. The Medisys trades may only have been the tip of the iceberg, according to a CQ reader with knowledge of Canadian financial markets, and a check on the winners from the run on income trusts on November 23rd might demonstrate why Canadians may not get an investigation at all -- at least until the Americans decide to check into the action. On Tuesday, Ontario House member Michael Prue (NDP - Beaches/East York) stood to query the Minister of Government Service, Gerry Philips, on why he had not initiated an independent investigation into the series of trades on income trusts that took place just hours before Goodale announced an end to taxation on these investment products, boosting their value considerably. Philips replied that the...
Have We Gotten The Message Now?
It will take weeks for the accurate count of votes cast in today's Iraqi elections to get finalized, but one common strain has come through in all reports during this historic day -- the Iraqis stood together as never before in their history. For a variety of reasons and motivations, all factions except the foreign terrorists of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi embraced the ballot over the bullet for the first time since the British cobbled together the nation of Iraq after the fall of the Ottoman Empire following World War I. Millions of Iraqis from all factions -- ethnic, secular, geographic -- turned out despite the dangers of the Islamofascist lunatics that would rather kill Muslims than see them vote for their own leaders, and in defiance of the skeptics around the world who claim that Iraqis simply aren't worth the bother of liberation. Look the people with purple-stained fingers in...
Gray Lady's Editorial Page: What Elections?
In my post below, I ask whether the world has finally gotten the message that all people of all backgrounds want and deserve freedom, as demonstrated by the Iraqi elections. Media watches might expect that serious newspapers around the world will address the lessons to be drawn from this historic event. Not at the Paper of RecordTM, however; the message -- and the elections -- seem to have escaped the attention of the editorial board at the New York Times. The RSS feed for the Opinion page at the Times just updated with tomorrow's articles. Here's what readers of the Times will see addressed by the opinion leaders of what was once the most influential of all American dailies: * Don't rush to renew the PATRIOT Act (even though it's about to expire after four years) * The Red Cross may not be motivated to fix its problems * Chad...
December 16, 2005
Ask Not What Windmills Do To My View ...
One of the more laughable hypocrisies of the environmental movement has been the proposed windmill farm called the Cape Wind project. The proposal involves the installation of hundreds of windmills in an area that should capture enough power to generate a significant amount of clean energy -- the kind of energy that environmentalists normally insist be part of our future. Most of the time, this kind of government spending gets high marks from limousine liberals like Rep. Robert Kennedy Jr, but not when the project gets built where their limousines park, as Kennedy's fine NIMBY whine in today's New York Times explains: AS an environmentalist, I support wind power, including wind power on the high seas. I am also involved in siting wind farms in appropriate landscapes, of which there are many. But I do believe that some places should be off limits to any sort of industrial development. I...
Canadian Debate Piles On Martin
It may have been a four-way affair, but at the beginning of the first national televised debate in the Canadian elections, it looked more like a tag-team wrestling match, with the three opposition parties taking turns reminding voters exactly why Paul Martin and his Liberals have to go. Martin, for his part, appeared to focus on Bloc Quebecois's separatist sympathies in his rebuttals rather than address the Adscam corruption that stripped him of his grip on power: The early section of the debate was dominated by the sponsorship scandal. It took just seconds for sponsorship to become a cudgel in the hands of the prime minister's political rivals as they took turns pounding Martin on the topic. Duceppe, in his element in French, led the charge against Martin's scandal-plagued Liberal government, which he described as having "lost the moral authority" to govern. "The sponsorship scandal is an incontestable issue," Duceppe...
Palestinians Choose War, Again
As long as we're talking democracy, we can check in on the results of another recent round of elections in the Middle East. In the Palestinian territories, the results of recent municipal voting show that the terrorist group Hamas has gained significantly over the slightly-less-terrorist ruling party of Fatah. Hamas won over 70% of the vote in this last round of local elections before the parliamentary elections which will determine which set of terrorists runs the West Bank and Gaza Strip: The Hamas militant group won local elections in the West Bank's largest cities, according to preliminary results released Friday, dealing a harsh blow to the ruling Fatah party just six weeks ahead of a parliamentary poll. Hamas swept more than 70 percent of the vote in the West Bank city of Nablus, highlighting the fierce challenge posed by the group to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party, which suffered...
Tough Day
Sorry for the long absence and the silence on the two stories of the day. I've been preoccupied with an unexpected complication for the First Mate all day long and just started to catch up with e-mail and news feeds. The FM has to have some routine maintenance tasks for evaluating her transplants every six to nine months, including a biopsy, which normally is no big deal -- just a half-day in the hospital and an evening of bed rest. In the past, I'd take the day off and hang out, hospiblogging, but today I decided to go into the office and get some work done, as this has always been a non-eventful task. Until today, of course. Apparently, the biopsy ruptured a small blood vessel and forced the doctors to stop the other tasks about halfway through the procedure. When the bleeding continued (a very small amount, but just...
NSA Snoops And PATRIOT Acts = 4 Years Of No Attacks?
Many in the blogosphere have commented on the two big stories of the day -- the New York Times revelation of the NSA operation to conduct warrantless wiretaps on international communications, and the filibustering of the extension of the Patriot Act. I have read the Times article in depth and read some of the commentary on the leak, including the Power Line demand that the leak get treated the same as the Valerie Plame fiasco-in-progress. I predicted the PATRIOT Act filibuster earlier this week, and considering this new story, am not surprised in the least to see it succeed. Let's review what the Times has to say on their big scoop, on which they sat until the day after the Iraqi elections: Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the...
December 17, 2005
Sunni Leader Predicts Secular Coalition For Iraq
One of the Sunni political leaders expected to compete for leadership positions in the next Assembly has predicted that Shi'ite religious parties will not win enough seats to form a government and pledged to work with secular Shi'a and Kurds to create the new executive in the first four-year Iraqi National Assembly, the AP reports this morning. He also acknowledged the efforts by native insurgents to stand down during the election to allow the political process to overtake violence, an effort that most hope will bring an end to the terrorist attacks in Iraq: A leading Sunni politician on Saturday reaffirmed his party's commitment to being part of a coalition government and thanked insurgent groups for refraining from attacks during this week's parliamentary elections. Adnan al-Dulaimi, a former Islamic studies professor who heads a Sunni Arab bloc expected to have a voice in the new National Assembly, said a power-sharing...
Presdent's Address: Live Blog
I will be reviewing the rare, televised weekly address by George Bush on the filibuster of the PATRIOT Act renewal. It will start in three minutes ... 9:07 - PA tore down the "wall" and received large bipartisan majorities ... 9:08 - The law did exactly what it was designed to do. Bush makes a powerful point when he says that the terrorist threat will not expire in two weeks. 9:10 - Surprise! Bush went on the offensive on the NSA leak -- he stresses that the NSA only worked on international communications, not domestic. He called the leak "illegal", and he took complete responsibility for the program. 9:12 - The program gets reviewed every 45 days, and the White House has to reauthorize it each time. Bush says he has done so over 30 times, and Congress has received "over a dozen briefings" -- hardly a surprise for Capitol...
Those 3K Iraqis Sure Do Get Around
The three thousand trained Iraqis that Joe Biden says comprises all of the independent Iraqi security forces have a very full plate, according to the latest from the Washington Post. The American forces have already begun tasking Iraqi battaliions -- those that Biden says don't exist -- with holding territory in the most contentious parts of Iraq, and they are finding them succeeding in doing so: The U.S. military is scaling back combat forces in regions of Iraq's Sunni Triangle that were once fiercely contested, freeing thousands of troops to shift to other trouble spots or to go home without being replaced, according to senior military officials. The U.S. drawdown in parts of central Iraq is a new and important indicator of commanders' confidence in Iraqi security forces in a region long ravaged by lethal insurgent attacks. In Iraq's east-central Diyala province, for example, the U.S. military expects by next...
Why Did The Gray Lady Play Coy With Its Scoop?
One of the eyebrow-raising revelations from the New York Times scoop on the secret NSA operation to intercept international communications came from the story itself, which acknowledged that the Times held back from publishing the story for a year. Today, the Washington Post's Paul Farhi takes a look at why the Times spiked the story for so long -- and why it decided to publish now: In an unusual note, the Times said in its story that it held off publishing the 3,600-word article for a year after the newspaper's representatives met with White House officials. It said the White House had asked the paper not to publish the story at all, "arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny." ... The paper offered no explanation to its readers about what had changed in the past year to warrant publication. It...
Long Day: The FM Update
Many thanks to all the CQ readers who have left comments and e-mails for the First Mate, who has now been in the hospital for two days over what was supposed to be a three-hour maintenance visit. The bleeding that started yesterday continued today -- again, nothing than produces much volume, but as long as it continues they can't proceed with the rest of the tasks left from Friday. Now it looks like she may be stuck there through Monday. Oh, and that biopsy that started the whole problem? They never got kidney tissue. All they got was a bit of fat tissue. They're going to have to do that over again, too. Needless to say, the FM is not a happy sailor tonight. But she's well and in good hands, at one of the nation's highest-rated hospitals according to US News & World Report. She wants me to thank...
The FISA Act And The Definition Of 'US Persons'
One of the critical points argued in regard to President Bush's angry pushback on the NSA leak is that his executive order violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). People have the impression that FISA requires warrants from the FISA judge, but that isn't what FISA says at all. In fact, FISA gives the government wide latitude in warrantless surveillance of international communications even when one point originates in the US -- as long as the person in the US does not qualify as a "US person": (i) “United States person” means a citizen of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence (as defined in section 1101 (a)(20) of title 8), an unincorporated association a substantial number of members of which are citizens of the United States or aliens lawfully admitted for permanent residence, or a corporation which is incorporated in the United States, but does not...
December 18, 2005
Sunnis Want Cooperation With US
Events in Iraq this year have convinced the Sunnis that cooperation with the United States gives them the best option for political strength in the new democracy and now want to build on the temporary truces that led to an almost violence free election this week, the Washington Times reports today. Sunni leaders understand now that they will need to participate fully in the new political structure if they hope to see the central region of Iraq freed of American soldiers, but want to negotiate their cooperation with explicit actions from American forces as well: Key Sunni Muslim leaders in Iraq's violent Anbar province have concluded that their interests lie in cooperating with the United States, and they are seeking to extend a temporary truce honored by most insurgent groups for last week's elections. But at the same time, they are demanding specific steps by the U.S. military, including a...
Powell: CIA Never Told Administration Of WMD Doubts
Colin Powell has dropped a water balloon on his friends of the Left and their "Bush Lied, People Died!" cri du coeur during a BBC interview due to be aired within hours. Mark in Mexico caught this early report of Powell's revelation that the American intelligence agencies never gave the White House any contradictory intelligence to the prevailing wisdom that Saddam Hussein had retained and hidden his WMD stocks and capability throughout the twelve-year quagmire of UN impotence, corruption, and failing containment: THE US administration was never told of doubts about the secret intelligence used to justify war with Iraq, former secretary of state Colin Powell told the BBC in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday night. Mr Powell, who argued the case for military action against Saddam Hussein in the UN in 2003, told BBC News 24 television he was "deeply disappointed in what the intelligence community had...
The Santa Crime Family
Did you know that a Santa Claus conspiracy to protest global commercialization of Christmas existed? It apparently consists of men in red suits and white beards who get drunk off of stolen liquor and urinate on cars from overpasses, according to sources in New Zealand: A group of 40 people dressed in Santa Claus costumes, many of them drunk, rampaged through New Zealand's largest city, robbing stores and assaulting security guards, police said Sunday. The rampage, dubbed "Santarchy" by local newspapers, began early Saturday afternoon when the men, wearing ill-fitting Santa costumes, threw beer bottles and urinated on cars from an Auckland overpass, said Auckland Central Police spokeswoman Noreen Hegarty. She said the men then rushed through a central city park, overturning garbage containers, throwing bottles at passing cars and spraying graffiti on buildings. ... One man climbed the mooring line of a cruise ship before being ordered down by...
Time Jumps The Shark
We had a great post up here at CQ nominating people for Time's Person Of The Year, which Monkei and I wanted to turn into a poll for the finalists. Real-life events got in the way of the second step, but I'm reasonably sure that whatever CQ voters would have decided would have made a lot more sense than Time's selections for Persons Of The Year -- Bono, and Bill and Melinda Gates. Bono? Bill Gates? Mrs Bill Gates? Whatever for? For being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and re-engineering justice, for making mercy smarter and hope strategic and then daring the rest of us to follow, Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono are TIME's Persons of the Year. ... The Constant Charmer The inside story of how the world's biggest rock star mastered the political game and persuaded the world's leaders to take on global poverty. And...
Boring Day: FM Update
Not too much to report on the FM. She's still resting comfortably, and the blood has almost completely cleared up. This being Sunday, though, the necessary doctors had the day off, so they will complete the work on Monday. That means she gets one more night in the hospital for observation. She and I watched the Steelers beat the Vikes at the Metrodome, which is less than two miles away from the hospital. I actually ran into another Steelers fan at the hospital after the game -- she wore a Jerome Bettis jersey, always high on my Santa list -- and she reports that a lot of Steeler fans made it to the Metrodome for the game. Maybe next time they're in town, I'll join the rest of the Steeler Nation. In fact, the FM called while I was posting this, and she says to tell you all thanks again...
Presidential Address Live Blog
I'll be live-blogging the Oval Office speech by George Bush in this post when it starts in 30 minutes. Keep checking back for updates ... 8:00 -- I wonder what color tie he'll be wearing? I'll be watching this on Fox ... 8:02 - Stressing the launch of a constitutional democracy and an ally in the heart of the Middle East; good point. 8:03 - Found "some capacity" to restart WMD programs but not the weapons themselves. He again took responsibility for the war, but reminds us that we rid the world of a "murderous dictator". "The world is better for it" -- yes, it is. 8:06 - He talks about the nature of the terrorists in plain language. He reminded us that on 9/11, we weren't in Iraq or Afghanistan and the terrorists attacked us anyway. 8:08 - Bush strikes the right notes in acknowledging the criticism of the...
December 19, 2005
Standing Tall In Tal Afar
The London Telegraph highlights the American success in at least one previous terrorist stronghold in Iraq -- the city of Tal Afar. Americans wouldn't know this from their own media, but the Telegraph reports that Tal Afar has been transformed by the American destruction of the Zarqawi-led terrorists there, through rebuilding and cultural sensitivity that has made the Americans more popular than ever: In the low-slung concrete buildings of Tal Afar, a city built on dirty sand and mud, George W Bush sees the potential for military success in Iraq. ... In Tal Afar, according to the president, military success had been followed by the restoration of law and order and the implementation of reconstruction projects to give "hope" to its citizens. Visiting the city, nestled near the Syrian border in the north-west of the country, there is no doubt that something has been achieved. Unlike in Fallujah, another Sunni...
Reid Discovers Democracy, Leaves Bad Taste In His Mouth
We've become like the House of Commons. Whoever has the most votes wins. It hasn't worked that way in 216 years. -- Harry Reid, on the likelihood of losing a vote on budget cuts and defense spending, including ANWR The Senate Minority leader shut down the Senate yesterday in yet another fit of pique brought on by reality. He discovered that a conference committee would shortly present a defense bill -- agreed upon by members of both houses -- that contained a provision allowing drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The thought of having a majority-rule vote on ANWR has driven Reid to threaten a complete shutdown of the Senate every time a presidential nomination comes to the floor, raising obstructionism to ever-new heights just in time for the next election cycle: House and Senate negotiators yesterday reached year-end deals on a $42 billion budget-cuts package and a...
Who Let These Dogs Out?
Someone in the Iraqi Interior Ministry has some explaining to do, according to the AP. An Iraqi lawyer says that two dozen of Saddam's henchmen have been let out of prison and have fled the country, including two notorious leaders of Saddam's biological-weapons programs: An Iraqi lawyer said Monday that about 24 former top officials in Saddam Hussein's government have been released from jail in Iraq, and some have left the country. A legal official in Baghdad said Rihab Taha, known as "Dr. Germ," and Huda Salih Ammash, known as as "Mrs. Anthrax," were among those released. Iraqi officials did not immediately confirm the information. No other details have come out as yet. If true, it could either mean a jailbreak with help from Ba'athist sympathizers within the outgoing Iraqi government, or it could also indicate some kind of plea deal. The latter seems rather unlikely, especially since the top...
Gray Lady Loses Respect For Security Council
I seem to recall a time when the New York Times editorial board considered the UN Security Council the final word on international affairs, not to be contravened once it had rendered a decision -- or a non-decision. Even after a dozen years and sixteen resolutions demanding that Saddam Hussein comply with terms of his cease-fire and the disarmament demands went by without any answer from the Iraqi dictator, the New York Times insisted that the UNSC still held the only legitimacy for international action to remove a madman from power. Now it discovers that the UNSC has feet of clay -- but only because it won't hold Syria responsible for the assassination of a newspaper columnist: Syria is getting away with murder in Lebanon, and the United Nations Security Council is letting it happen. The resolution the Council passed last Thursday might have been minimally adequate if something less...
FM Update: Good Day
I just wanted to let everyone know that the First Mate has returned home after her four-day stint at the hospital. She's tired but happy to be back in her own bed, where she's currently resting. She thanks everyone for their kind thoughts and prayers; they helped her tremendously. Whenever I mentioned all the e-mail and comments I got from the posts, it never failed to pick her spirits up. For that, I also thank you. CQ has the best community in the blogosphere, bar none. Back to blogging ......
Saving The Lives Of Our Enemy
With all of the cheap talk floating around the media about how the US supposedly tortures its prisoners -- all based on the common-sense refusal of the US to tell the world what specific limits we place on interrogation -- local columnist Katherine Kersten provides us with a reminder of what it really means to be an American soldier. In her Star-Tribune article, Kersten highlights local Army medic Sgt. Joe Buhain of Rochester and his dedication to saving lives on the battlefield, regardless of which side his patients fought: What do you do if you are an Army medic and you are asked to provide medical care to an Iraqi terrorist who has just killed or maimed some of your buddies? Staff Sgt. Joe Buhain of Rochester knows the answer. ... Buhain, 35, found it emotionally taxing to treat terrorists who had detonated explosives under coalition Humvees or killed innocent...
Copperheadism Still A Tough Sell: AP-Ipsos
When Jack Murtha started talking about "immediate redeployment" and had it taken up by a chorus of Democratic Party leaders such as Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry, one had to wonder whether they had discovered some undercurrent of American defeatism in secret polling. After all, they had long searched for a resonant message on Iraq; their lack of coherence on the issue likely cost them the 2004 presidential election. Even up to the eve of the historic elections last week, the Democrats still insisted that we couldn't hope to beat the insurgency and the only realistic tactic left was retreat. If the Democrats hope to find resonance with the American public on that message, they will find themselves very much disappointed in 2006. In a poll taken before the Iraqi election and the strong speeches of George Bush shortly afterwards, Ipsos-AP discovered that the percentage of Americans believing in defeatism...
December 20, 2005
Germany Frees Terrorist Wanted By US
The Germans continue their cluelessness in the war on terror by releasing not just any known terrorist serving out a life sentence, but one wanted by the US for the murder of a Navy diver in 1985. The AP reports that German diplomatic sources confirm the release of Mohammed Ali Hammadi back to Beirut and his Hizbollah cohorts despite an outstanding extradition request from the United States: Germany has secretly released a Hizbollah member jailed for life for killing a U.S. Navy diver and returned him to Lebanon despite an extradition request from the United States, Lebanese political sources said on Tuesday. They said Mohammad Ali Hammadi, convicted of killing Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem during the 1985 hijacking of a TWA flight to Beirut and sentenced to life without parole, was flown back to Beirut last week Diplomatic sources in Germany confirmed Hammadi's release. In case anyone wonders how...
Dislikes It, He Hates It, He Wants No More Of It
Mahmoud Ahmedinajad has issued a presidential order demanding that bans on Western music, even classical music, get full enforcement in Iran. The hard-liner has decided to follow Ayatollah Khomeini's example and castigate Western music as "intoxicating" and un-Islamic: Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has banned all Western music from Iran's state radio and TV stations — an eerie reminder of the 1979 Islamic revolution when popular music was outlawed as "un-Islamic" under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. ... [T]he official IRAN Persian daily reported Monday that Ahmadinejad, as head of the Supreme Cultural Revolutionary Council, ordered the enactment of an October ruling by the council to ban all Western music, including classical music, on state broadcast outlets. "Blocking indecent and Western music from the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting is required," according to a statement on the council's official Web site. Ahmadinejad will have his hands full trying to enforce this ban. The...
Liberal Foot-In-Mouth Disease Continues
The Liberal propensity to shoot off the mouth continued on the campaign trail with a testy e-mail exchange between now-former Liberal riding president Elie Betito (Oakville, ONT) and now-former Liberal voter Stacy Cherwonak. Cherwonak wrote the opening salvo in protest of Martin's pledge to ban all handguns, sparing none of her ire as a sport shooter who thought the Liberals would protect her right to engage in her sport: At issue was an e-mail exchange initiated by Stacey Cherwonak, who identified herself as a sport shooter and wrote to Brown's campaign to take issue with Prime Minister Paul Martin's proposal to ban handgun ownership as a crime-fighting measure. "In addition to the millions (if not billions) of dollars that your party has stolen from Canadians since 1993, Paul Martin's speech today makes it clear that your party's word isn't worth the breath it's spoken with," wrote Cherwonak. "After work today,...
Stevens: I'm Here All Month, And Don't Forget To Tip The Waitresses
Senator Ted Stevens has raised the temperature in the Senate by attaching ANWR drilling to the defense appropriations bill that needed to get signed to keep the troops funded in the field. Senate Democrats howled at the supposed breach of rules, and Harry Reid has promised to block all sorts of Senate business as a result. Now Stevens has raised the ante on Reid, threatening to Grinch the Senate into working right through the holiday season and forcing them to give up their Christmas: It's an audacious power play, even for Sen. Ted Stevens. The wily and cantankerous Alaska Republican is trying to secure the mother of all pet projects for his state: oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Stevens has attached the provision to a popular defense spending bill and has put holiday plans of his Senate colleagues on hold as he dares Democratic and moderate Republican...
What A Shock! The FBI Investigates Domestic Terrorism!
The New York Times has yet Another Major Scoop for the completely clueless. After informing the nation that the NSA intercepts international communications last Friday, the Gray Lady now spills the beans that the FBI investigates domestic terrorism and has jurisdiction to conduct intelligence operations to prevent it: Counterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief, newly disclosed agency records show. F.B.I. officials said Monday that their investigators had no interest in monitoring political or social activities and that any investigations that touched on advocacy groups were driven by evidence of criminal or violent activity at public protests and in other settings. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general, loosened restrictions on the F.B.I.'s investigative powers, giving...
Vikings Coach Blames Fans For Loss
You think I'm kidding? Think again. After seeing their winning streak halted at six games by the visiting Pittsburgh Steelers, head coach and chief boob Mike Tice found yet another way to shed all class -- a tricky proposition, given that his players already faced charges for flying prostitutes in for an orgy on Lake Minnetonka. Now Tice has decided that the real culprit in the Viking's lackluster effort against the Steelers wasn't the fault of his offense or defense, or even special teams, at least not entirely. Oh, no -- it was the fans who didn't cheer the Vikings to Tice's satisfaction: Vikings coach Mike Tice blamed his team's 18-3 loss to Pittsburgh on its sputtering offense and frazzled special teams. But make no mistake: Tice wasn't happy with video workers at the Metrodome, nor the fans that filled it Sunday. Tice said Monday he was really bothered by...
Have Islamists Begun Using Chemical Weapons?
The Scotsman reports tonight that dozens of Chechnyans have been hospitalized in what looks like a nerve-gas attack in the region where Islamists have surpassed nationalists in a terror war against the ruling Russians. As in nearby Beslan, the attack took place at a school and children comprised the bulk of the victims: AT LEAST 45 people, most of them children, have been hospitalised in the Russian region of Chechnya with an illness that doctors say might be nerve-gas poisoning. Pupils, teachers and workers began reporting breathing trouble and headaches on Friday at a school in the town of Starogladovskaya, emergency workers said. As of yesterday, 38 children and seven teachers had been hospitalised, said Oleg Ugnivenko, a spokesman for emergency situations ministry. Preliminary investigation points to an unspecified kind of nerve gas, said emergency workers and Chechen government officials. This preliminary report, if confirmed, will certainly cause many people...
December 21, 2005
Hamadi Held In Beirut
In a move proving that the new government of Lebanon has more sense and more courage than Berlin, the terrorist that tortured and killed an American Navy diver in 1985 got arrested almost immediately on his arrival. Acting in concert with US intelligence, Lebanese officials detained Mohammed Ali Hamadi and will hold him while they consider a request for his extradition to the US: The Lebanese killer of a U.S. Navy diver was in custody in Beirut yesterday, according to U.S. officials who decried his release from a German prison last week and pledged to bring him to the United States for trial. ... Kenneth Stethem, the petty officer's older brother, called the release "absolute injustice," and called on the Bush administration to "bring to bear all of its resources to demand an explanation from the German government as to why he was released." U.S. and German officials said Berlin...
Subdued Saddam Returns To Trial
Saddam Hussein returned to his trial, showing a more subdued and respectful tone since getting banished for his disruptive behavior two weeks ago. A bit more nattily attired, the former dictator only interrupted to make one request to pray: A noticeably calmer Saddam Hussein sat quietly in his defendant's chair at the resumption of his trial Wednesday, two weeks after he called the court "unjust" and boycotted a session. When the judge refused to let him take a break to pray, the former leader closed his eyes and appeared to pray from his seat. ... The deposed president had refused to attend the previous session on Dec. 7. "I will not come to an unjust court! Go to hell!" he said in an outburst in court the day before. But on Wednesday, his behavior was calmer, and he appeared clean-shaven and in fresh clothes, wearing a dark suit but no...
Undermining The War Effort
My new Daily Standard column, "Fit to Print?", focuses on the New York Times' supposed scoop that the NSA intercepts foreign communications, blowing a top-secret program that formed a vital part of American defense against terrorist attacks. They followed it up with yet another "scoop" that the FBI investigates domestic terrorism. Unless the Gray Lady plans another "scoop" about how the Highway Patrol conducts warrantless searches when it conducts field-sobriety checkpoints, I'd say it has run out of material for its anti-Bush smears at the moment. Why did the Times decide to run with this story, after sitting on it for a year? The Times editors must be asking themselves that question after seeing legal experts shred their arguments about domestic spying, but also by the reaction from the President himself: ... With the Patriot Act up for renewal, the current headlines finally provided a political context that would make...
A True Case Of Discrimination
LaShawn Barber got an interview request from the Baltimore Sun to discuss Morgan Freeman's recent comments about the silliness of Black History Month, remarks which I didn't interpret as especially conservative more than just common sense. I doubt that Freeman meant the remarks as an endorsement of the conservative viewpoint, for that matter. Freeman just pointed out the dismissiveness and compartmentalization that occurs when everyone gets their little time slice; it's about the most condescending approach that one can take towards a group. Read LaShawn's post to find out what happened when the Sun's reporter couldn't get her to criticize Freeman ... but I bet you can already guess what happened, can't you?...
The Procrastinator's Ball
Late word out of Washington has the Senate ready to pass a six-month extension to Patriot Act that puts off a fight over the more controversial sections of the law. With time running out on the sunset provisions of Patriot, the Democrats wanted a three-month window and the Republicans wanted a full year -- which would have pushed the expiration past the next election. Instead, the Senate split the difference: The Senate neared passage of a six-month extension of the USA Patriot Act Wednesday night, hoping to avoid the expiration of law enforcement powers deemed vital to the war on terror. ... The extension gives critics — who successfully filibustered a House-Senate compromise that would have made most of the law permanent — more time to seek civil liberty safeguards in the law. Democrats and their allies had originally asked for a three-month extension, and the Senate's Republican majority had...
Zarqawi Starts Arranging Next Front For Al-Qaeda
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may have seen the writing on the wall in Iraq and started looking for greener pastures -- or perhaps more yellow. As the Iraqis increasingly take the terrorists on themselves, Zarqawi has decided to open a more promising front: A wave of arrests across Europe has thrown new light on a European terrorist network being developed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most prominent insurgent in Iraq. A growing number of terrorism investigations in Britain, Germany, Bosnia, Denmark and most recently Spain and France are linked to the man who has masterminded countless suicide bombings in Iraq, personally beheaded hostages and bombed three hotels in his native Jordan. Some of the suspected networks appear to be involved only in supporting his operations in Iraq. But counter-terrorism officials are worried that Zarqawi could be planning to use his base in Iraq to start attacking Europe. Security officials are particularly...
December 22, 2005
Hamadi Bails Out Of Beirut Custody
The long wait for American justice for the murder of Robert Stethem will have to go longer, it seems. Lebanese officials released Stethem's torturer and murderer from their custody yesterday, noting the lack of extradition between Lebanon and the US: U.S. officials yesterday said the killer of a U.S. Navy diver had been released from "temporary custody" in Lebanon but refused to rule out bringing him to the United States by force. ... Hamadi, a member of the Hezbollah guerrilla group, was taken into custody upon returning to Lebanon after his release from a German prison Thursday. He had served 18 years for hijacking a TWA plane to Beirut and fatally shooting Petty Officer 2nd Class Stethem, who was 23 when he was killed. "What I can assure anybody who's listening, including Mr. Hamadi, is that we will track him down, we will find him, and we will bring him...
The Gray Lady -- Captain Obvious
First the New York Times "discovers" that the NSA intercepts communications as a key part of its national charter, stirring up a hornet's nest only to find out that intercepting international communications is legal. Next, the editors "discover" that the FBI conducts counterterrorism investigations to combat domestic ecoterrorism involving political-action groups that might channel funds to the lunatics that commit bombings and arsons around the nation. Again, the Times doesn't find any illegal activity, but just breathlessly reports that the government conducts surveillance on people to find the criminals. Now the Gray Lady keeps drilling down into the epidemic of law-enforcement competency by discovering that New York's finest goes undercover at protests to ensure that the demonstrations remain peaceful and do not front for domestic or foreign terrorist groups: Undercover New York City police officers have conducted covert surveillance in the last 16 months of people protesting the Iraq war,...
Frist Grip Slips
The debacle that occurred yesterday in the Senate for the GOP despite a ten-seat advantage demonstrates a continuing and apparently worsening leadership vacuum for the Republican caucus. Majority Leader Bill Frist once again failed to deliver on two key legislative issues for the White House -- ANWR drilling and the permanent extension of the PATRIOT Act -- and required the Vice President to cut off a diplomatic trip overseas to rescue a third objective of budget cuts for at least a show of some fiscal sanity. As the Boston Globe notes today, either Frist cannot whip the fractious caucus into line or has poor vote-counting skills, but either way he has performed poorly in his role as shepherd to the legislative agenda of the GOP: Senate majority leader Bill Frist, heading a 55-to-45 Republican majority, might have expected to deliver a pile of legislative gifts this month to the White...
Spielberg's Munich Another Appeasement?
FrontPage Magazine reviews the new Spielberg film Munich, which Steven Spielberg based on the discredited book Vengeance, and finds it offensively appeasing towards the terrorists who murdered eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games. FPM reports that the movie appears to want to create an allegory between the Israeli effort at eradicating terrorism back then and our efforts today in Iraq and elsewhere: Like the book on which it’s based, Munich is long, boring, and filled with fakery. ... Spielberg’s Mossad agents cry and brood a lot, unsure of themselves and why they are pursuing terrorists. Been there, seen that before – in the left-wing Israeli film Walk on Water. But it bears little resemblance to the real Mossad agents who hunted the terrorists. They were not metrosexual, sensitive guys – as badly as Spielberg and Kushner would like them to be. Like Golda Meir, they could not have...
AP Caught In More Bias
Michelle Malkin proves that she can do addition -- and reporting -- better than the AP, even with the latter's multiple layers of editorial control. I guess no one ever bought these guys a calculator. Corruption -- even in the Abramoff case -- extends to both parties, and both parties need to come up with a solution. Reporting like this just gets in the way. UPDATE: Patterico wrote to point out the correct URL for Michelle's post, along with several other CQ readers. Sorry for the confusion!...
How Do We Solve Pork For Good?
The failure of the ANWR strategy of amending arctic drilling to the defense budget, even as other spending amendments remain attached to the Pentagon funding, has Jon Henke at QandO thinking about how best to fight pork and get more honest votes on all federal funding. Jon, who runs one of the best neoliberatarian sites along with co-bloggers Dale Franks and McQ, wants to return to line-item budgeting: The Parties have each failed to coordinate their principles on legislating-via-budget because they don't actually have any principles on legislating-via-budget. Their position on the process is entirely dependent upon the outcome. They have no Original Position. While calculations of power and interest might lead one to conclude that this process-pervesion will ultimately be productive, this is not a promising way to organize government. The tables will turn, the majority will be the minority and the precedent will have been set. Republicans often...
Saddam Judges Reject Beating Claims
The judges in charge of the trial of Saddam Hussein denied today that his American guards had ever beaten their most notorious prisoner, despite Saddam's numerous protestations. In what has to be a crushing blow to the New York Times, the Scotsman reports that the judge remarked that American security professionals provide the former Iraqi dictator with a standard of care far better than any ordinary Iraqi: AN INVESTIGATIVE judge said yesterday that officials never saw evidence that Saddam Hussein was beaten in US custody, contradicting claims by the former Iraqi dictator that he was abused and "the marks are still there". ... When the court gave the former Iraqi leader an opportunity to cross-examine witnesses, Saddam instead used the time to expand on earlier assertions he had been abused in custody. He claimed that the wounds he suffered from the alleged beatings had been documented by at least two...
British Tories Unveil The New Conservatism -- Socialism
It appears that British Tories need a strong dose of Margaret Thatcher more than ever. Their new policy chief, Oliver Letwin, wants the Tories to support redistribution of wealth as a central operating principle of the British Conservatism: The Tories should support the redistribution of wealth and try to narrow the gap between rich and poor, Oliver Letwin, the party's new policy chief, says today. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he says: "Of course, inequality matters. Of course, it should be an aim to narrow the gap between rich and poor. It is more than a matter of safety nets." Although he refuses to be drawn on specific proposals, he signals a dramatic break with the past by saying that his party should support the redistribution principle. "We do redistribute money and we should redistribute money," he says. "But we have to find ways that empower people rather...
December 23, 2005
Daschle: Democrats Clueless On 9/12, Too
Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle writes an op-ed in today's Washington Post (which the Post covers as a news item on page A04, just in case its readers miss it) claiming that the declaration of war granted to Bush after 9/11 specifically limited his war powers. It's a must-read, if only to demonstrate that either the Democrats have to be the worst historical revisionists still received by polite society or have been truly clueless about the nature of the war on Islamofascist terror since its start. Daschle actually makes a case for both in his essay: On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to...
Profiles In Democratic Courage
The New York Sun reports that Democrats blocked the adoption of a resolution denouncing Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his anti-Semitic remaeks and Holocaust denial until a demand for an Iranian plebescite and self-determination free of the Guardian Council had been removed. The objection officially came from Senator Wyden (D-OR), who then told the Senate that, uh, he didn't have a problem with the resolutuion, but that his colleagues did -- who displayed their intestinal fortitude by hiding behind Wyden's skirts: When Mr. Santorum moved to introduce the resolution last Friday, Senator Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, registered an unusual objection. According to the Congressional Record, Mr. Wyden told Mr. Santorum on the Senate floor that he was objecting to the resolution because his Democratic colleagues in the Senate had asked him too. Mr. Wyden did not say who asked him to issue the objection. "While I personally am vehemently...
Rumsfeld: Starting The Stand-Down
Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Fallujah to address the American troops now holding the once-notorious insurgent stromghold, proclaiming enough progress had been made that the baseline American deployment to Iraq would decrease to 15 brigades, rather than the 17 brigades delpoyed prior to the increased election security details: Just days after Iraq's elections, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Friday announced the first of what is likely to be a series of U.S. combat troop drawdowns in Iraq in 2006. Rumsfeld, addressing U.S. troops at this former insurgent stronghold, said President Bush has authorized new cuts below the 138,000 level that has prevailed for most of this year. Rumsfeld did not reveal the exact size of the troop cut, but Pentagon officials have said it could be as much as 7,000 combat troops. The Pentagon has not announced a timetable for troop reductions, but indications are that the force could be...
Movie Review: Munich
After giving the matter quite a bit of thought, I finally decided to see Munich at the theaters in order to make up my own mind about the film and the controversy that surrounds it. The film, which informs the audience that it was "Inspired By True Events", takes the bare bones of the Munich massacre and the Israeli intelligence operation which followed against the Black September organization which plotted it and turns it into ... well, an interesting if ultimately bankrupt morality play. ** Some Spoilers! ** On its most facile level, Munich is a gripping film. Had it been based on complete fiction -- if Spielberg had had the sense to manufacture a hypothetical instead of hijacking history and twisting it -- then it might have even had a valid point to make. Spielberg has lost nothing as a film director in a technical sense, and apart from...
December 24, 2005
Was 'Pull My Finger' One Of The Reindeer Games?
The problems with fanatics for any cause is that they make the reasonable proponents look like idiots by association. Today in Britain, I suspect that many otherwise reasonable environmentalists are reading about Liberal Democrat transport spokesman Tom Brake and spitting their rainforest-supporting java all over the pages of The Scotsman. Brake apparently decided to celebrate this Christmas season by informing the world that Santa Claus is a major polluter, as his reindeer would emit almost the equivalent amount of greenhouses gases as a jet airplane from ... methane emissions: REINDEER-drawn sleds have been slammed as environmentally unfriendly, because the carrot-munching animals produce the greenhouse gas methane in their wind. Now Santa has been urged to ditch his sleigh team and start travelling on public transport to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. It has been calculated that Santa's team of nine reindeer would emit methane with a global warming impact...
Alito Opponents Believe In Recycling
Earlier this week, I noticed but did not bother to blog on a news story that Samuel Alito had suggested using a particular case to gain a limitation of scope for Roe v Wade. Although the news media had presented this memo as somewhat of a blockbuster, it appeared more to me that it seemed a lot like an earlier memo uncovered by Alito's opposition; it recommended a certain course of action for the Reagan administration to take if the administration wanted to gradually reverse the ban on abortion but cautioned against an all-out war on Roe. It was yet another example of basic attorney-client advice that should be irrelevant for a committee considering a candidate with over a decade of experience as an appellate court jurist -- which is what the Judiciary Committee should consider when determining whether Alito is qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. What I...
Saddam's Chemical Supplier Gets 15 Years For WMD
For those who keep insisting that Saddam had no WMD and no way of producing them, The Hague has some embarrassing news. It convicted Saddam's supplier, Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat, to 15 years for selling Saddam the chemicals used to kill at least 5,000 Kurds in Halabja, among others: A DUTCH businessman was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to 15 years in prison yesterday for helping Saddam Hussein to acquire the chemical weapons that he used to kill thousands of Kurdish civilians in the Iran-Iraq war. The ruling by a court in The Hague — which could have an impact on the trial of the former Iraqi dictator in Baghdad — also said that genocide had been perpetrated against Kurds in Iraq after Saddam accused them of collaborating with Iran. ... Prosecutors accused Van Anraat of delivering more than 1,000 tonnes of thiodiglycol. It can be used...
December 25, 2005
God Polls Well On His Birthday
For Christmas Day, the Washington Times reports on a poll taken this week on religion. In a small surprise, the poll shows that traditional monotheism still ranks highly among Americans of all political stripes and that New Age and Eastern beliefs have not gained much of a toehold: Traditional religion is still the bedrock of America, with "very large majorities" of the public steadfast in their belief in God and the birth and Resurrection of Jesus Christ -- with belief in astrology, ghosts and other New Age hallmarks lagging behind. Overall, 82 percent of Americans believe in God, according to a recent Harris poll, which also revealed that 73 percent also believe in miracles, 70 percent in life after death, 70 percent in the existence of heaven, and 70 percent that Jesus is the Son of God. In addition, 68 percent believe in angels and 66 percent in the Resurrection...
Bethlehem Makes A Comeback
After several years of war and strife chasing tourists and pilgrims away from the place where Mary and Joseph stopped for the birth of Jesus, the little town of Bethlehem has recovered enough stillness for people to return for Christmas: Despite the foul weather, Bethlehem residents had reason to smile. About 30,000 pilgrims converged on the birthplace of Jesus for Christmas celebrations this year, Israeli officials said, about twice as many as last year and by far the highest turnout since fighting broke out in September 2000. Although the crowds remain a fraction of the peak years in the mid-1990s, the influx of tourists reflected the improved security situation. Israel and the Palestinians declared a cease-fire last February, bringing a sharp drop in bloodshed. Israel's recent withdrawal from the Gaza Strip also has buoyed spirits. ... "This was a very, very exceptional Christmas," said Abdel Rahman Ghayatha, the Palestinian police...
A Christmas Card To Our Troops
CQ reader Keemo has a terrific idea for today -- a Christmas card for our men and women in the Armed Forces, signed by everyone in the CQ community. I received this one from a good friend this year: While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child -- Luke 2:6 Our Savior is born! Let His peace and joy be yours this Christmas. Please sign and attach your own greetings to this card for our men and women in uniform, both here and abroad, in our Armed Forces or our first-responder agencies here in the States, in the comments section to this post. Let's be sure to let them know we're thinking about them and praying for them this Christmas. And from the First Mate and I, thank you for all you do to keep us safe and free. Please note: Inappropriate comments will be...
December 26, 2005
Terrorism, Russian-Style?
Dozens of Russian shoppers fell ill in St. Petersburg shops when gas canisters with timing devices released a garlic-smelling gas, but Russian authorities insist that the attack does not constitute terrorism: A gas smelling of garlic hurt dozens of Russian shoppers when it was released into a supermarket on Monday in the city of St Petersburg, but police ruled out a terrorist attack. Two other shops of the handyman store chain Maksidom were evacuated at the height of the pre-New Year shopping period, after rescue workers found two other suspicious canisters fitted with timing devices. Local media quoted officials as saying the gas was probably released by criminals trying to blackmail the stores' managers. They ruled out an attack such as those launched by Chechen rebels against civilians. ... Local media quoted prosecutors as saying the gas was methyl mercaptan, a compound added to domestic gas to give it its...
At The Break, It's All Tied Up
In my rush to wrap up before the Christmas break, I missed the last Ipsos/CanWest polling on the Canadian elections -- one which appears to dispute a number of other media polling done in the last few weeks. Ipsos reports that the national numbers have the Conservatives trailing the Liberals by a single point (33-32). Even in the Liberal stronghold of Ontario, the Tories have remained within two points of the Grits, 40-38: After a week following the debates, the survey shows that if a federal election were held tomorrow, 33% of voters would cast their ballot in support of the Liberals (-3 points), 32% would support the Conservatives (+5 points), 16% would support the NDP (-1 point) and 5% would support the Green Party (unchanged). In Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois (54%, -2 points) have a 30-point lead over the Liberals (24%, -1 point). Further, as it would appear that...
Blowing Kyoto Smoke
Given all of the hot air that foreign politicians spew about the failure of the United States to join the Kyoto accord on greenhouse emissions, the new BBC report on their own compliance should come as shocking news. In all of Europe, only the UK has met its 2005 obligations, with Sweden being the only other European nation that has a chance of coming close: The UK is almost alone in Europe in honouring Kyoto pledges to cut greenhouse gases, a think-tank claims. Ten of 15 European Union signatories will miss the targets without urgent action, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) found. The countries include Ireland, Italy and Spain. France, Greece and Germany are given an "amber warning" and will not reach targets unless they put planned policies into action, the IPPR said. The EU nations want the US to adopt the Kyoto limits without explaining for themselves...
Have The Russians Started The Great Game Again?
The London Telegraph reports that MI-6 may have kidnapped Pakistani nationals in Greece after the London subway bombings this summer. Media reports have already forced the Greek intelligence services to recall agents from Kosovo, and the alleged victims have named a high-level British diplomat who may face the same fate: Amid growing controversy, the magazine Proto Thema said at the weekend that those who took part in the alleged abductions included a man listed as a senior diplomat at the British embassy in Athens as well as several named Greek officials. A Government "D" notice requests British newspapers not to name MI6 officers, even if they are identified abroad. However, the name given by Proto Thema matches that of a man identified as a British intelligence officer on the internet and in allegations made by the renegade MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson. ... Seven of the 28 Pakistanis have testified before...
December 27, 2005
Hillary And Chuck Line Up Defense Pork For Contributors
The New York Sun reports this morning that their two senators, Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, really know how to put the quid in quid pro quo. While Schumer in particular vehemently protested attaching an authorization for ANWR drilling to the Defense Department appropriation bill, he and Hillary both stuck spending amendments that directly benefitted serious contributors to their election coffers: Senators Clinton and Schumer are asking the Pentagon to spend $123 million of its wartime budget for New York projects that the Department of Defense didn't ask for - but that in many cases are linked to the senators' campaign contributors. ... Two New York congressmen sit on the House Armed Services Committee: Rep. John McHugh, a Republican of Watertown, and Rep. Steven Israel, a Democrat of Long Island. Many of the companies and executives who won earmarks this year donated money not only to Senator Clinton, who sits...
Gray Lady Still Pining For Her Lost Convicts
One of the silliest memes generated in the last few years is the counting of imprisoned convicts during the regular Census. The Gray Lady has long complained about the practice of counting American citizens as part of the Census in the counties where they are incarcerated, instead of either (a) counting where they would be living if the poor dears hadn't gotten themselves convicted, or (b) not counting them at all. It seems that the NIMBY-fueled practice of building prisons out in the hinterlands, where the attendant security and potential crime associated with jailkeeping becomes Someone Else's Problem, dilutes the political impact of the Big Apple: The first Constitution took for granted that enslaved people could not vote, but counted each slave as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of apportioning representation in Congress. This inflated the voting power of slaveholders and gave them much more influence in legislative...
Russia, Ukraine Play Petro-Hardball
Former allies Russia and Ukraine have now seen their relationship deteriorate rapidly since the Orange Revolution, not exactly an unexpected development. However, Russian antagonism has escalated the breach into a full-fledged economic battle, with both sides holding the other hostage over Russian oil: Russia and Ukraine are on the brink of a political crisis over gas prices that symbolises the widening gulf between the two former Soviet countries. The state-controlled Russian gas monopoly, Gazprom, is threatening to cut off flows on January 1 if Ukraine does not agree to pay quadrupled prices for the energy that comprises a third of its needs. Ukraine currently buys Russian gas for its homes and factories at a heavily subsidised $50 (£29) per 1,000 cubic metres but a disgruntled Moscow wants to raise the cost to $230, in line with world prices. Kiev has retaliated by threatening to increase tariffs for gas transit to...
Did Munich Bomb At The Box Office?
Debbie Schlussel, whose opinion of Munich mirrors my own, announced on her blog today that the Spielberg film flopped on its first release weekend, coming in twelfth at the box office in limited release. Intrigued, I took a look at the numbers Debbie references -- but alas, Debbie is mistaken. True, Munich wound up at #12, but the film only got shown on 532 screens. (I was actually lucky to catch it in my neighborhood with that kind of release.) Its per-screen average comes in around $3,000 for Christmas and the day after, which would make it more lucrative than King Kong and only second to Casanova for the week. Does that mean that it's a blockbuster? Not hardly; we need to wait to see what happens when it goes into wide release to see if that average holds up, and for how long. The strategy behind the limited release...
More Genocide Evidence Found In Iraq
The BBC reports that yet more evidence of Saddam Hussein's genocide against the Shi'a came to light today, as workers attempting to restore water service to Karbala discovered a mass grave containing the remains of men, women, and children. The grave contains what the BBC refers to as "rebels" from the 1991 uprisings against Hussein following the defeat of Saddam's forces in Kuwait, but one has to wonder why they would call the children rebels: A mass grave has been discovered in the predominantly Shia city of Karbala south of Baghdad, Iraqi police said. Dozens of bodies have reportedly been found, apparently those of Shia rebels killed by Saddam Hussein's army after its defeat in the 1991 Gulf War. The Shia revolt was crushed and as many as 30,000 people were killed, many of them buried in mass graves. The remains were uncovered by workmen digging a new water pipe...
Poland Stands By The Coalition
A hearty round of applause, please, for our allies in Poland who understand the necessity of guarding freedom and democracy. Despite an earlier indication that the Poles would stick to a withdrawal timetable that would have seen their 1500-troop contingent leave Iraq within a few weeks, Poland announced instead that it would maintain its forces in Iraq throughout 2006 in keeping with a request from the new Iraqi government: Poland's government says it has taken the "very difficult decision" to extend its military deployment in Iraq until the end of 2006. The new conservative government's decision reverses the previous leftist administration's plan to pull troops out in early 2006. Poland, a staunch ally of the US, has about 1,500 troops stationed in Iraq. ... But Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, elected in October's parliamentary elections, has asked the Polish president to keep them there for another year. "This is a...
So You Want To Be Part Of The Game?
Every once in a while, sporting events get interrupted by mouth-breathing morons who decide that the only thing missing from the game is a personal appearance from a walkin', talkin' rectum -- namely, themselves. Usually lubricated by healthy doses of alcohol, these idiots hold up play, distract the fans, tie up security, and all to feed their own senses of inadequacy. At one time, the interruptions had some humor to them, but that was before: * A crazed Stefi Graf fan stabbed Monica Seles on court and pretty much ended her career (1993) * Royals coach Tom Gamboa got attacked by a father-son duo and barely avoided being stabbed (2002) * Houston Astros outfielder Bill Speiers suffered whiplash and an eye injury from an attacking fan (1999) * Umpire Lan Diaz gets tackled by a Chicago fan (2003) With this kind of track record, players on the field know that...
Death Throes Of The Exempt Media, Vol. MCCLXII
Today's example of the Exempt Media meltdown comes from the Washington Post in a hack-job report on blogger Bill Roggio. I'd write about it, but Hugh Hewitt, Paul Mirengoff, and Bill himself have done an excellent job in tearing Jonathan Finer and Doug Struck into tiny shreds. I have to express some disappointment with the Post in this instance. While I know they write from a liberal viewpoint, I've usually considered them more fair and professional than the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, although in both cases that can fairly be called damnation by faint praise. In this case and in their coverage of the John Roberts nomination especially, they have gotten carried away by their prejudices and need to correct their reporting if they want to maintain anhy kind of credibility. Right now, they remind me of the proverbial little girl with the curl smack in...
But We're Out Of American-Killing Terrorists!
The German government has another scandal on its hands, and this one they went out of their way to create. The hostage that people widely believe Germany traded for the release of a terrorist that tortured and murdered American Robert Stethem in 1985 has refused to come back to Germany and insists on returning to Iraq instead. The Times reports that the hostage, Susanne Osthoff, had converted to Islam and married an Arabic nomad long before being captured by terrorists last month: THE German Government angrily rebuked a former hostage yesterday who is determined to return to Iraq despite being held captive for three weeks by a Sunni gang. Susanne Osthoff, a 43-year-old archaeologist, announced this week on al-Jazeera television that she would go back to her work in northern Iraq, trying to set up a German cultural centre in Arbil. Angela Merkel’s new Government, which regards the freeing of...
The Ten Worst Americans?
Alexandra at All Things Beautiful has a challenge up for the blogosphere -- a post asking us to select the ten worst Americans of all time. I've been giving this some serious consideration today, and I have to admit, it's a poser of a question. In order to qualify, one would have to have committed some dreadful act in the name of the country, or against it; it seems to me that simply relying on the criminal would produce far too many easy candidates. I'll be posting my thoughts during the week, but if CQ readers have any ideas, make sure to include them in the comments. Don't forget to visit Alexandra for updates on other bloggers as well....
December 28, 2005
FISA Court Obstructionism Since 9/11
One of the arguments that critics of the Bush administration give for their outrage at the warrantless surveillance of international communications between targeted, non-US persons inside the US and suspected al-Qaeda contacts abroad is the supposed ease of gaining FISA warrants. Bear in mind that the text of FISA does not require warrants for that kind of communication, and the NY Times did not allege that the NSA tried to use warrantless surveillance for any other communications. Even if warrants were as easily gained as Bush's critics claim, the law allows them to do that kind of surveillance without it. However, the track record of the FISA court shows that the judges have engaged in their own form of obstructionism after 9/11. The blog Bayosphere has put together a track record of FISA court actions on warrant applications, and it shows some surprising trends. Starting in 1979, the first twenty-one...
Centrist Dems See 2006 Slipping Away, Too
Today's Washington Times reports on the qualms felt by centrist Democrats over recent efforts by their party to block national-security efforts by the Bush administration. Donald Lambro spoke with two influential DLC advisors, who express concern that the positions taken over the past month by Harry Reid and others in opposition to the Patriot Act and the NSA's efforts to surveil suspected terrorists on international calls will once again demonstrate that the Democrats cannot be trusted with national security decisions in the upcoming election: Some centrist Democrats say attacks by their party leaders on the Bush administration's eavesdropping on suspected terrorist conversations will further weaken the party's credibility on national security. That concern arises from recent moves by liberal Democrats to block the extension of parts of the USA Patriot Act in the Senate and denunciations of President Bush amid concerns that these initiatives could violate the civil liberties of...
Dems Pick Another Winner
After having the New York Times blow a secret defense plan all over its front page for the last two weeks and having Democratic Party leaders fall all over themselves in condemning the Bush administration for protecting the nation from attack, the Democrats will undoubtedly expect the American public to share their outrage. Unfortunately for Howard Dean, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi, the American electorate has proven themselves to be quite a bit more concerned with winning the war than with sharing the radical Left's paranoid fantasies: Sixty-four percent (64%) of Americans believe the National Security Agency (NSA) should be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that just 23% disagree. Sixty-eight percent (68%) of Americans say they are following the NSA story somewhat or very closely. Just 26% believe President Bush is the...
The Mounties Ride To The Rescue
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada's federal police force, has announced this evening that it will open an investigation into allegations of insider trading surrounding Finance Minister Ralph Goodale and the Liberal Party: The RCMP is conducting a criminal investigation into an alleged leak from the federal Liberal government of an announcement on income trust taxation rules. "There's sufficient information for us to launch a criminal investigation,'' said RCMP Sgt. Nathalie Deschenes told The Canadian Press on Wednesday. She wouldn't comment further, except to say the investigation will determine if there's enough evidence to warrant charges and that the Mounties aren't sure how long the case would take. The NDP insisted on serving a complaint to the RCMP, and the Conservatives have also filed a complaint with the Ontario Securities Commission. The RCMP replied directly to the NDP complainant, MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis. The NDP also has demanded the suspension of...
The Ten Worst Americans: 8-10
• #8: Aaron Burr The only Vice President in American history to kill a man while in office, and he killed a man better than he, Alexander Hamilton, in a duel. (Reportedly, Hamilton shot wide and only intended to satisfy honor; Burr returned the favor by shooting Hamilton through the liver, although he did not find out about Hamilton’s intentions until later – and even then, found them “contemptible, if true”.) He resigned in disgrace and became one of only two men to quit as Vice President; Spiro Agnew didn’t come until 170 years later. He conspired to build a competing empire in the Southwest after having been chased out of the United States, but never came close to accomplishing his goal. Tried for treason but acquitted, Burr satisfied himself by running through his second wife’s money while debauching as many women as possible. She had him served on his...
The Ten Worst Americans: 5-7
• #5: Stephen Douglas Now known primarily for the series of gentlemanly debates he held with Abraham Lincoln leading to the latter’s election in 1860, Douglas earlier had done almost everything he could to ensure that civil war would eventually break out. Douglas’ ambition for the White House led him to break the Missouri Compromise and replace it with the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, breaking the territory into two parts in an effort to extend slavery into at least one portion of the territory. He pushed for a plebiscite to determine the status of each part, setting off a war between the pro- and anti-slavery mobs that flocked to Kansas in response. The conflict, known as “Bleeding Kansas” or “Bloody Kansas”, took years to settle and only missed being part of the Civil War by a couple of months. Democrats should take note: it was this man who inspired the...
The Ten Worst Americans: 2-4
• #2: John Wilkes Booth Booth had been a star of the American stage, along with his famous family. In an early precursor to Hollywood cluelessness, Booth got involved in politics, became a fanatical Southern sympathizer, and considered Lincoln a tyrant on the order of Julius Caesar. He joined a conspiracy to murder Lincoln and most of the chain of command, but only Booth was successful in his assassination attempt. Dramatically declaring “Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged!” and leaping from the balcony of the Ford Theater (and breaking his leg for his theatrics), Booth wound up dying ignominiously in a barn after getting shot by Union troops. Unfortunately for the US and ironically because of the actions of this Southern sympathizer, command passed from the pro-reconciliation Lincoln to the more radical Reconstructionists of the Republican Party. Lincoln wanted to heal the breech by welcoming back the South and...
The Ten Worst Americans: Number One
• #1: John Edgar Hoover At first, this attorney-cum-supercop only wanted to make America safer, but in short order, this bureaucrat re-enacted every Machiavellian nightmare while transforming a backwater investigative office into the free world’s most effective police force. He didn’t last 47 years as America’s top cop by playing fair. He used his influence and abused his power to accrue files on almost every political player, friend or foe, to use as blackmail to increase his personal power or as leverage for legislative and executive action. He became the closest thing America has ever known to an emperor and managed to die before his empire came crashing down around him. The tragedy of his life can be seen in his contradictions: a gay man who persecuted homosexuals; his undeniable love of country getting consumed by his thirst for power; his desire to enforce the law giving way to his...
The Ten Worst Americans: The Explanation
In response to Alexandra's challenge at All Things Beautiful to name the Ten Worst Americans of All Time, I asked CQ readers to make their own suggestions as I considered the choices. Speaking from a historical perspective, it really is quite difficult to come up with a list of "worst Americans". Most of our history is spent pursuing what we did well, and our failures tend to get shoved under the carpet. Some people simply rise to the occasion, however, and our history has its fair share of the scandalous and the downright evil. For my consideration, I decided that the status of American had to be part of their "crimes". In other words, simply picking someone like Ted Bundy or Charles Manson would be too easy. Their evil, though real and in most cases worse than what you'll read on this list, doesn't have to do with their innate...
Who Didn't See This Coming?
After the release of hostage Susanne Osthoff -- and her return to Iraq after the Germans negotiated for her freedom -- the market has suddenly turned brisk for German hostages: A former German ambassador to Washington and four members of his family were reported missing and apparently kidnapped Wednesday while vacationing in a remote part of Yemen. It was the latest in a string of tourist abductions in the Arabian desert. Juergen Chrobog, ambassador from 1995 to 2001, his wife and three adult sons were declared missing by the German Foreign Ministry. In Yemen, government officials said the family had been taken hostage by tribesmen who regularly seize Western tourists as bargaining chips in dealings with the government, according to news service reports from Sanaa, the capital. Great move, Germany. I think you're about to learn a hard lesson in market economics as well as the folly in negotiating with...
Goodale Refuses To Resign; Scam Netted Millions
The CBC now reports that even with an RCMP investigation pending, Liberal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale refuses to resign his position. The RCMP announced earlier today that after reviewing the trading activity immediately before Goodale's announcement on the Martin government's policy on income trusts, they would start a criminal investigation into insider trading based on activity around the FMO: Finance Minister Ralph Goodale said Wednesday night in an interview on CBC's The National that he is not going to bow to political pressure and step aside while the RCMP conducts a criminal investigation into a possible leak of information from his department. "The RCMP said in their statement of this afternoon that there is no evidence of any wrongdoing on my part- or on the part of anyone else for that matter," Goodale said in an interview with the CBC's chief correspondent Peter Mansbridge. ... Questioned repeatedly about why he...
December 29, 2005
So Much For Alito As Racist And Fascist
Papers released yesterday show a young Samuel Alito as a cautious attorney and advisor to the Reagan administration, offering a conservative strategy in terms of the use of the courts for political purposes, as evidenced by two memos reported by the Washington Post and the New York Sun. The main issue involved a Black Panther lawsuit that had won a technical ruling on standing for its lawsuit against a number of government officials, including Bush's father, that Alito advised should not get challenged. As the Sun reports, Alito underestimated the government argument in the Black Panther case: As a young lawyer in the Department of Justice, Samuel Alito argued against asking the Supreme Court to review a Black Panther lawsuit, documents released yesterday show. It was the third time in less than a month that papers from the Supreme Court nominee's early career in the Reagan administration show him pressing...
UN: Iraq Vote Valid
The American-led effort to conduct the election in Iraq has produced a valid, democratic result according to UN election monitors, dealing the Sunnis a blow in their efforts to extort more seats than they won at the ballot box from nervous Shi'ite and Kurds. The New York Times reports that the UN has declared that there exists no justification for any re-run: Craig Jenness, a Canadian who led the United Nations' election coordination effort in Iraq, said his agency believed that the elections "were transparent and credible." He added that although all complaints must be weighed thoroughly, "we at the U.N. see no justification in calls for a rerun of the elections." The assertion, made at a news conference in Baghdad, brought bitter denunciations from some Sunni Arab political leaders, who swore to continue pressing their claims that ballot box stuffing and other fraud had distorted the election results. ......
Sixth Circuit Says No Wall Between Church And State
I missed this story last week, although I believe other bloggers have already reported it. The 6th Federal Appellate Circuit ruled against the ACLU in a Ten Commandments case on December 21st, ruling specifically that the Constitution did not require a wall between church and state, revalidating the display of the Ten Commandments on government property: A federal appeals court has upheld a display of the Ten Commandments alongside other historical documents in the Mercer County, Ky., courthouse. The judge who wrote the opinion blasted the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the display, in language that echoed the type of criticism often directed at the organization. Judge Richard Suhrheinrich's ruling said the ACLU brought "tiresome" arguments about the "wall of separation" between church and state, and it said the organization does not represent a "reasonable person." The decision was issued by a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit...
The Latest On Trackbacks
I'm starting to see trackbacks working again on the blog, but Movable Type does make it more difficult to use in version 3.2, it appears. If others who have tried TBs did so with the autofind feature, that probably will no longer work. The URL for the trackback ping will probably have to be entered "manually" in order for the system to pick it up; the codes are on the individual post screens. MT 3.2 has a way to minimize the junk TBs that I hope will not prove too difficult for valid TBs to match. If it doesn't work, feel free to include the link in the comments section of the post....
Milking Cookies
In the denouement of the fizzling meme of NSA as Big Brother, the New York Times features an AP report on the intelligence agencies inadvertent use of persistent cookies in its new web system. The software came with persistent cookies as the default for any new installation, and the NSA forgot to disable it when it upgraded its website. Predictably, the AP and the Times (and CNN and the Guardian in the UK) treat this as yet another example of NSA abuse: The National Security Agency's Internet site has been placing files on visitors' computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most files of that type. The files, known as cookies, disappeared after a privacy activist complained and The Associated Press made inquiries this week. Agency officials acknowledged yesterday that they had made a mistake. Nonetheless, the issue raised questions about privacy at the...
December 30, 2005
CTV: 'Well-Connected Liberals' Tipped Traders On Goodale Announcement
CTV has broadcast new evidence showing that the run on income trusts at the Toronto Stock Exchange in the hours prior to Finance Minister Ralph Goodale's favorable policy announcement was not a lucky guess by the investment community. In their broadcast last night, reported by blogger MK Braaten, three investors acknowledged either to CTV or in e-mails to their associates that they had insider tips from "well-connected Liberals": * Don Drummond, VP/Chief Economist: CTV said that Drummond told them he first heard about the announcement via email, 4 hours in advance of announcement. Also, stated that Liberal strategists in Ottawa were the source of email. CTV quoted Drummond as saying “Alot of people seemed to know there was an announcement coming and a few people seemed to know what it was.” * Jim Leech, Teachers pension fund - CTV said that Leech received emails at about 2 pm stating that...
Exempt Media Blows Cover On Another Key Counterterrorism Program
In another attempt to find something sinister to hang onto the Bush administration, another secret program constituting a major part of the war on terror has been exposed by another member of the Exempt Media. This time, the Washington Post uses its contacts in the CIA to expose an umbrella program called GST, the code for a loose affiliation of dozens of programs designed to locate and fight terrorists abroad rather than wait for them to show up here. Nothing about the article stands out as a smoking gun, it never alleges anything specifically illegal, but Dana Priest writes the front-pager as a warning that the President has gone out of control in defending the US from attack: Over the past two years, as aspects of this umbrella effort have burst into public view, the revelations have prompted protests and official investigations in countries that work with the United States,...
Losing Their Position
The Saddam regime had long adopted the Palestinian cause as a means of championing a pan-Arabic political movement, one that he thought would carry him to the throne of a secular caliphate that would control Southwest Asia and North Africa. He paid the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and feted Palestinians inside Iraq as well, giving them privileges he denied to native Iraqis. When Saddam invaded Kuwait, the Palestinians cheered -- and when the US ejected him from Kuwait and eventually from power, the Palestinians protested. Now they complain that life has gotten much more difficult without their patron to give them their customary handouts: For years, Saddam Hussein harbored a small population of Palestinians in Iraq, trotting them out to cheer whenever he went to war -- which he routinely justified as essential to Arab nationalism and the Palestinian cause. Shiites and other Iraqis looked glumly at his wards,...
Justice Department To Follow Plame Precedent
"The fact is that al Qaeda's playbook is not printed on Page One and when America's is, it has serious ramifications. You don't need to be Sun Tzu to understand that." -- Thomas Duffy, White House spokesman The New York Times will soon wish it hadn't pushed so hard for a criminal investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame's identity on the basis of national security violations. The Justice Department has now decided to act on the NYT's publication of a top-secret NSA program in exactly the same manner for much clearer damage to national security, and the NYT's James Risen and Eric Lichtblau find themselves in the Judith Miller Hotseat in this case: The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the disclosure of classified information about a domestic surveillance program authorized by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, officials said today. Justice prosecutors will examine whether...
Insider Trading Scandal Deals Blow To Liberal Momentum
In the Canadian elections, I have mostly followed the Ipsos polling numbers as I believe them to be more reliable and closer to reality than others. I do often see poll data from SES Research, which has shown a consistent Liberal national lead from six to nine points since the passage of the no-confidence motion. Based on other research, that gap seems too wide for a true look at Canadian political fortunes at the moment. However, SES has shown an interesting change today. Since the Goodale insider-trading scandal pushed the RCMP to open a criminal investigation, even SES shows that the Liberal gap has disappeared, almost literally overnight. SES now reports that their tracking has the Liberals in a virtual tie with the Tories: The announcement of a RCMP criminal investigation of a possible tax leak from Finance Minister Ralph Goodale's office has initially had an impact on the political...
Prayers Needed For FM
Got some bad news today on the transplant front. The biopsy came back from the hospital, and the tissue shows a polyoma virus infection of the transplanted kidney, which has led to the lessened kidney function that we have seen the past few weeks. It often comes with the transplant, and normally healthy people don't have a problem with it as the body suppresses the virus without incident. However, when a patient is on immunosuppressive therapy as transplant patients are for life, this is always a potential threat. The First Mate will have to go three days each of the next three weeks to the hospital for IV infusions of anti-virals, as well as add in more medication for fighting the infection. At the same time, the doctors have to lessen the immunosuppressive therapy somewhat to allow the body to fight the infection -- but which risks the kidney and...
December 31, 2005
Rendition Started Under Clinton
After months of debate about the Bush administration's supposed support of torture through the "rendition" policy of sending captured terrorists to their nations of origin for questioning, it turns out that the policy did not start with the Bush administration after all. Former CIA operative and now-author Michael Scheuer, who wrote a lengthy criticism of the Bush administration's war policy in 2003 in part for not being aggressive enough, has revealed that the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" policy began in 1995 under President Clinton: The CIA's controversial "rendition" program to have terror suspects captured and questioned on foreign soil was launched under US president Bill Clinton, a former US counterterrorism agent told a German newspaper. Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA who resigned from the agency in 2004, told Thursday's issue of the newsweekly Die Zeit that the US administration had been looking in the mid-1990s for a way...
Syrian VP Confirms Assad Threatened Hariri
Former Syrian VP Abdel-Halim Khaddam confirmed in an interview yesterday with al-Arabiya that Bashar Assad threatened to "break Lebanon" on the head of Rafik Hariri after the latter refused to submit to orders to circumvent Lebanese law and extend President Emile Lahoud's term of office. Khaddam makes clear that Assad and his security advisors made numerous threats to Hariri during the meeting, which upset the Lebanese billionaire and patriot so much that he left with a nosebleed: The meeting in Damascus referred to by Mr. Khaddam occurred on Aug. 26, 2004, when Mr. Assad bluntly ordered that the Lebanese Parliament amend the Constitution to extend the term of his ally, President Émile Lahoud. Mr. Hariri, a billionaire who had almost single-handedly rebuilt the center of Beirut after 15 years of civil war, objected. The meeting lasted just 15 minutes. According to both the United Nations report and previous accounts by...
Iran In The Crosshairs?
The German magazine Der Spiegel published a report yesterday that speculates an impending military response to Iranian intransigence on nuclear proliferation, primarily involving the US military. According to the magazine, the US has leaned on Turkey to provide extensive intelligence on Iran in exchange for helping to suppress the PKK in northern Iraq, and will use that intelligence in a series of air strikes on key strategic points in Iran: The most talked about story is a Dec. 23 piece by the German news agency DDP from journalist and intelligence expert Udo Ulfkotte. The story has generated controversy not only because of its material, but also because of the reporter's past. Critics allege that Ulfkotte in his previous reporting got too close to sources at Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND. But Ulfkotte has himself noted that he has been under investigation by the government in the past (indeed, his...
Knucklehead Of The Year?
The Florida Masochist has taken his daily Knucklehead award (one which I've thankfully not yet won) and used it to anoint the Knucklehead of the Year. He got a blue-ribbon panel of bloggers to help him judge the contest. I won't reveal exactly who it is here, but in keeping with the nautical theme of CQ, you can expect a good Kelo-hauling at The Florida Masochist....
Northern Alliance Radio Today
Once again, and for the final time in 2005, the Northern Alliance Radio Network takes to the Twin Cities airwaves starting at noon Central Time. We will spend our first hour reviewing the week's news, probably giving special attention to leak probes, the Alito nomination, the ridiculous desperation of the latest domestic spying stories, the real story behind "extraordinary rendition", and so on. The following two hours will review the past year of Northern Alliance tomfoolery, and if you've been a faithful listener, you'll know that two hours will hardly do that any justice. (I expect my brilliant non-endorsement of a non-sponsor from a couple of weeks ago to get a highlight somewhere in there.) If you're in the Twin Cities, tune us in at AM 1280 The Patriot. If you're outside our signal reach, you can listen to the fun on the webstream at the station's website, which is...
Closing Out 2005
To celebrate the end of 2005, the FM and I finally went out and saw The Chronicles of Narnia this evening after a couple of false starts at it the past two weeks. We both really enjoyed the movie, and we would recommend it to everyone. I won't write a full review, but the movie was excellent in all of its facets -- acting, cinematography, music, the works. The only complaint I had was that the score tended to drown out the dialogue in a couple of places. Otherwise, it should please every member of the family -- and I can't wait for the sequel. I don't have a retrospective to offer for 2005. I had thought I might go through some of my old posts for a list of favorites, but in the end, I just had other tasks going on. Instead, take a look at some of my...
About
Ed Morrissey has blogged at Captain's Quarters since 2003, and has a daily radio show at BlogTalkRadio, where he serves as Political Director. Called "Captain Ed" by his readers, Ed is a father and grandfather living in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, a native Californian who moved to the North Star State because of the weather.
My Other Blog
The Crows Nest
Closing Out 2005
To celebrate the end of 2005, the FM and I finally went out and saw The Chronicles of Narnia this evening after a couple of false starts at it the past two weeks. We both really enjoyed the movie, and we would recommend it to everyone. I won't write a full review, but the movie was excellent in all of its facets -- acting, cinematography, music, the works. The only complaint I had was that the score tended to drown out the dialogue in a couple of places. Otherwise, it should please every member of the family -- and I can't wait for the sequel.
I don't have a retrospective to offer for 2005. I had thought I might go through some of my old posts for a list of favorites, but in the end, I just had other tasks going on. Instead, take a look at some of my friends who did:
* Patterico looks at the year for the LA Times, whose time may be up soon.
* The Anchoress looks at 2005, and makes predictions for 2006
* Michelle Malkin reviews 2005 in The War on Blogs
* Hugh reviews five blogs that hit their stride in 2005
* The Persistent Burrito comes back with a list of predictions after a busy day of posting
As for me, I'm going to ring in the New Year by watching my new DVD of Serenity, and I'll get back to blogging in the morning. Happy New Year, everyone!
Northern Alliance Radio Today
Once again, and for the final time in 2005, the Northern Alliance Radio Network takes to the Twin Cities airwaves starting at noon Central Time. We will spend our first hour reviewing the week's news, probably giving special attention to leak probes, the Alito nomination, the ridiculous desperation of the latest domestic spying stories, the real story behind "extraordinary rendition", and so on. The following two hours will review the past year of Northern Alliance tomfoolery, and if you've been a faithful listener, you'll know that two hours will hardly do that any justice. (I expect my brilliant non-endorsement of a non-sponsor from a couple of weeks ago to get a highlight somewhere in there.)
If you're in the Twin Cities, tune us in at AM 1280 The Patriot. If you're outside our signal reach, you can listen to the fun on the webstream at the station's website, which is not brought to you by Jorgensen Real Estate, who are, uh, ... good. Join the conversation by calling us at 651-289-4488. If that's not a local call, use your cell phones and take advantage of your free weekend calling!
UPDATE: We have a challenge for Northern Alliance listeners. We need an additional 200 hits for SCSU Scholars to get King to 500,000 on his Sitemeter stats. Also, we need one of our listeners to start a Persistent Burrito blog, which our first segment (over)used as a metaphor.
UPDATE II: We get results! The Persistent Burrito has now been launched, and even has two new posts!
Knucklehead Of The Year?
The Florida Masochist has taken his daily Knucklehead award (one which I've thankfully not yet won) and used it to anoint the Knucklehead of the Year. He got a blue-ribbon panel of bloggers to help him judge the contest. I won't reveal exactly who it is here, but in keeping with the nautical theme of CQ, you can expect a good Kelo-hauling at The Florida Masochist.
Iran In The Crosshairs?
The German magazine Der Spiegel published a report yesterday that speculates an impending military response to Iranian intransigence on nuclear proliferation, primarily involving the US military. According to the magazine, the US has leaned on Turkey to provide extensive intelligence on Iran in exchange for helping to suppress the PKK in northern Iraq, and will use that intelligence in a series of air strikes on key strategic points in Iran:
The most talked about story is a Dec. 23 piece by the German news agency DDP from journalist and intelligence expert Udo Ulfkotte. The story has generated controversy not only because of its material, but also because of the reporter's past. Critics allege that Ulfkotte in his previous reporting got too close to sources at Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND. But Ulfkotte has himself noted that he has been under investigation by the government in the past (indeed, his home and offices have been searched multiple times) for allegations that he published state secrets -- a charge that he claims would underscore rather than undermine the veracity of his work.According to Ulfkotte's report, "western security sources" claim that during CIA Director Porter Goss' Dec. 12 visit to Ankara, he asked Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to provide support for a possibile 2006 air strike against Iranian nuclear and military facilities. More specifically, Goss is said to have asked Turkey to provide unfettered exchange of intelligence that could help with a mission.
DDP also reported that the governments of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman and Pakistan have been informed in recent weeks of Washington's military plans. The countries, apparently, were told that air strikes were a "possible option," but they were given no specific timeframe for the operations.
In a report published on Wednesday, the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel also cited NATO intelligence sources claiming that Washington's western allies had been informed that the United States is currently investigating all possibilities of bringing the mullah-led regime into line, including military options. Of course, Bush has publicly stated for months that he would not take the possibility of a military strike off the table. What's new here, however, is that Washington appears to be dispatching high-level officials to prepare its allies for a possible attack rather than merely implying the possibility as it has repeatedly done during the past year.
The background context for these attacks come from Iran itself. Not only has the new hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a number of anti-American statements, but he has openly campaigned for the destruction of Israel, hosting a "seminar" exploring the ramifications of a world without America and Israel. He has disputed the historical fact of the Holocaust and told Europe that if they want to save Israel, they will need to relocate the entire country to Europe.
Having given Israel an almost perfect excuse for a pre-emptive attack, the Germans think that George Bush won't pass up the opportunity to join them. The DDP quoted a high-ranking German military officer as saying that an attack would have to happen before Iran develops its nuclear weapon, and that window appears to be closing fast. Along with a series of high-level meetings in Turkey between American and Turkish diplomats and military planners, it looks like something may soon be afoot regarding Iran. And oddly enough, although Der Speigel doesn't mention it in their article, one of the clearest indicators may be Teheran's sudden reversal on the Russian offer to process their uranium for the Iranians. Until this week, Iran rejected the offer outright, saying that Iran had a sovereign right to process their own uranium for peaceful purposes. Without much explanation, though, the Iranians changed course this week and endorsed the Russian proposal in concept while asking for clearer details on the Russian plan.
In other words, it looks like everyone has suddenly understood that the Americans have taken over the game plan on Iran, as quietly as possible under the circumstances. The question remains what we intend to do with Teheran to blck their acquisition of nuclear weapons and end Iranian provocations of Israel.
Syrian VP Confirms Assad Threatened Hariri
Former Syrian VP Abdel-Halim Khaddam confirmed in an interview yesterday with al-Arabiya that Bashar Assad threatened to "break Lebanon" on the head of Rafik Hariri after the latter refused to submit to orders to circumvent Lebanese law and extend President Emile Lahoud's term of office. Khaddam makes clear that Assad and his security advisors made numerous threats to Hariri during the meeting, which upset the Lebanese billionaire and patriot so much that he left with a nosebleed:
The meeting in Damascus referred to by Mr. Khaddam occurred on Aug. 26, 2004, when Mr. Assad bluntly ordered that the Lebanese Parliament amend the Constitution to extend the term of his ally, President Émile Lahoud. Mr. Hariri, a billionaire who had almost single-handedly rebuilt the center of Beirut after 15 years of civil war, objected.The meeting lasted just 15 minutes. According to both the United Nations report and previous accounts by Mr. Hariri's political allies, Mr. Hariri returned shaken, saying Mr. Assad had threatened to "break Lebanon on your head."
The report also included the transcript of a taped conversation with the Syrian deputy foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, just two weeks before Mr. Hariri was killed in which he called the meeting "the worst day of my life."
When Mr. Hariri protested Syria's domination of Lebanon, the report said, Mr. Moallem replied, referring to the security services, "We and the services here have put you into a corner." He continued, "Please do not take things lightly."
Khaddam now lives in Paris, outside the reach of Syrian security services, and claims that he wanted to make sure that the record was set straight. He also pointed out to al-Arabiya that the security services of Syria could not have acted alone in assassinating Hariri, and that means that they had to get higher authority for coordination. Khaddam told his interviewer that the UN probe would reveal the "apparatus" behing Hariri's car-bomb death soon enough, and strongly implied that the report would implicate the entire Syrian government in the assassination.
This will present a problem for the Security Council, which has demanded the investigation. One sovereign nation -- and a member of the SC itself -- has conducted assassinations on politicians of another sovereign member-state. What punishment will the UNSC devise for such a transgression? Will Russia and China use their vetoes to ensure that Syria remains unaffected by United Nations actions? Even more than with Iraq, this has the potential to reduce the UN to nothing more than the League of Nations with better stationery. Russia and China will not allow the British, French, and Americans to lock Assad into a sanctions regime that will cut him off and ensure his collapse. Anything less would be a joke, and for truly effective action such as military strikes, I suspect that the Russians and Chinese wouldn't even need to use the veto; it would probably lose on a majority vote in the UNSC.
Does that mean that Assad will escape without any consequences? Not hardly. The French and the Americans will push for sanctions anyway, and perhaps even a military demonstration or two just to remind Assad that he's playing on a much larger scale now. Bypassing the UNSC will drive another nail into its long-overdue coffin, though, and the Russians and Chinese might consider that when they debate on whether to use those vetoes.
Rendition Started Under Clinton
After months of debate about the Bush administration's supposed support of torture through the "rendition" policy of sending captured terrorists to their nations of origin for questioning, it turns out that the policy did not start with the Bush administration after all. Former CIA operative and now-author Michael Scheuer, who wrote a lengthy criticism of the Bush administration's war policy in 2003 in part for not being aggressive enough, has revealed that the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" policy began in 1995 under President Clinton:
The CIA's controversial "rendition" program to have terror suspects captured and questioned on foreign soil was launched under US president Bill Clinton, a former US counterterrorism agent told a German newspaper. Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA who resigned from the agency in 2004, told Thursday's issue of the newsweekly Die Zeit that the US administration had been looking in the mid-1990s for a way to combat the terrorist threat and circumvent the cumbersome US legal system."President Clinton, his national security advisor Sandy Berger and his terrorism advisor Richard Clark ordered the CIA in the autumn of 1995 to destroy Al-Qaeda," Scheuer said, in comments published in German.
"We asked the president what we should do with the people we capture. Clinton said 'That's up to you'."
Scheuer, who headed the CIA unit that tracked Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, said that he developed and led the "renditions" program, which he said included moving prisoners without due legal process to countries without strict human rights protections.
"In Cairo, people are not treated like they are in Milwaukee. The Clinton administration asked us if we believed that the prisoners were being treated in accordance with local law. And we answered, yes, we're fairly sure."
Instead, the Bush administration decided not to render CIA captives after 9/11 but to have the agency keep custody of the terrorists in foreign bases, such as Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and apparently some of the European nations that the Washington Post exposed in its leak publication. In point of fact, the Bush administration took more responsibility and offered a plan that resulted in lowered likelihoods of torture by foreign governments of American prisoners. That decision probably came from the accepted wisdom that real torture produces bad intelligence, and that the best way to ensure good intelligence was to keep the entire process under American control.
That certainly changes the entire rendition story. Amazingly, the New York Times and the Washington Post both failed to report on this development, as did the Los Angeles Times. If I hadn't read the link from the excellent local blog Everything I Know Is Wrong, I would never have known that critical part of the rendition story and the context of the Bush administration's changes to it. Instead, the Scheuer interview got published in the German magazine Die Zeit and carried on the French wire service Agence France-Presse. How's that for irony?
Why doesn't the Exempt Media want to report these findings on the policy about which they have railed on their editorial pages ad nauseam? Perhaps it has more to do with their efforts to protect the Bill Clinton legacy than to report the news, and the former effort has more to do with allowing Senator Clinton to run for president on that legacy in 2008. It certainly appears that the large media outlets suddenly couldn't care less about extraordinary rendition at an odd moment in time -- when its principle architect goes public to explain its origins.
UPDATE: Forgot the link!
Prayers Needed For FM
Got some bad news today on the transplant front. The biopsy came back from the hospital, and the tissue shows a polyoma virus infection of the transplanted kidney, which has led to the lessened kidney function that we have seen the past few weeks. It often comes with the transplant, and normally healthy people don't have a problem with it as the body suppresses the virus without incident. However, when a patient is on immunosuppressive therapy as transplant patients are for life, this is always a potential threat.
The First Mate will have to go three days each of the next three weeks to the hospital for IV infusions of anti-virals, as well as add in more medication for fighting the infection. At the same time, the doctors have to lessen the immunosuppressive therapy somewhat to allow the body to fight the infection -- but which risks the kidney and pancreas that she received over the last year. It's a tightrope act, and for the next few weeks we'll have to just keep a close eye on her to make sure she comes through OK.
She has always appreciated your thoughts and prayers, so I thought I'd keep you updated. We could use a few of them now and for the next few weeks.
Insider Trading Scandal Deals Blow To Liberal Momentum
In the Canadian elections, I have mostly followed the Ipsos polling numbers as I believe them to be more reliable and closer to reality than others. I do often see poll data from SES Research, which has shown a consistent Liberal national lead from six to nine points since the passage of the no-confidence motion. Based on other research, that gap seems too wide for a true look at Canadian political fortunes at the moment.
However, SES has shown an interesting change today. Since the Goodale insider-trading scandal pushed the RCMP to open a criminal investigation, even SES shows that the Liberal gap has disappeared, almost literally overnight. SES now reports that their tracking has the Liberals in a virtual tie with the Tories:
The announcement of a RCMP criminal investigation of a possible tax leak from Finance Minister Ralph Goodale's office has initially had an impact on the political environment. CPAC-SES tracking has the Liberals and the Conservatives statistically tied for the first time in the campaign. Nationally, the Liberals have 35%, the Conservatives 34%, the NDP 14%, the BQ 13% and the Green Party 5%. Overnight, the CPAC-SES one day measure on trust and vision for Canada has realized a noticeable drop for Paul Martin. Outside of Quebec, the Conservatives lead the Liberals by 5 points.
The most interesting part of this change is that SES show the Tories gaining five points, while the Liberals only lost two. That appears to demonstrate a positive momentum for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives, even at the onset of this latest scandal -- and it shows that the Liberals have plenty of room to fall further behind on their own. In fact, SES has the Tories at 42% nationwide outside of Quebec, numbers that hint at a possible majority government for Harper if the Tories can maintain that momentum.
Right now, it looks like Paul Martin is fading fast. If he cannot quickly recover from the Adscam and income-trust financial scandals, the Liberals may need to rethink their leadership quickly.
Justice Department To Follow Plame Precedent
"The fact is that al Qaeda's playbook is not printed on Page One and when America's is, it has serious ramifications. You don't need to be Sun Tzu to understand that." -- Thomas Duffy, White House spokesman
The New York Times will soon wish it hadn't pushed so hard for a criminal investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame's identity on the basis of national security violations. The Justice Department has now decided to act on the NYT's publication of a top-secret NSA program in exactly the same manner for much clearer damage to national security, and the NYT's James Risen and Eric Lichtblau find themselves in the Judith Miller Hotseat in this case:
The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the disclosure of classified information about a domestic surveillance program authorized by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, officials said today.Justice prosecutors will examine whether classified information was unlawfully disclosed to the New York Times, which reported two weeks ago that the National Security Agency had been conducting electronic surveillance on U.S. citizens and residents without court-approved warrants.
The Times won't find itself alone in the dock, however. The Washington Post will also have some dancing to do over its exposure of CIA detentions of terrorists captured abroad, endangering missions in Eastern Europe and undermining our wartime alliances:
The Justice Department has also opened a probe into whether classified information was illegally disclosed to The Washington Post, which reported on a network of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
Thomas Duffy at the White House has the best line on the new investigations, as I quoted at the start. That one leak started a flood of Big Brother hysteria that flooded the Exempt Media over the past month, most of it complete nonsense and almost all of it miscommunicated and misunderstood. The NSA program that the NYT "exposed" has less reach than the infamous Echelon program, reported by CBS News in 2000, but has specific application to suspected al-Qaeda assets and their contacts. Despite the continuing insistence of critics to call it "domestic spying", the Times report clearly stated that domestic calls only got wiretapped after getting a FISA warrant, and that the presidential directive only applied to calls and communications that crossed international boundaries and did not appear to involve "US persons" as defined by FISA. Those communications don't require a warrant at all, especially while the President works under a grant of war powers from Congress.
However, the exposure of the program and the wailing and gnashing of teeth have done two things for the enemies of the US. First and most generally, it has shown them that Americans have a problem getting serious about national defense even after the loss of 3,000 of its citizens after a terrorist attack. Second and more specifically, it reveals to them the broad strokes of how the NSA has gleaned enough information to frustrate their plans for more attacks on American cities. Both developments allow Islamofascist terrorists to recalculate their strategies and tactics in the future for greater success -- which means Americans are more likely to die in an attack, thanks to the New York Times. As for the Post, they have made it more difficult for the CIA to get intelligence from captured AQ assets, thanks to their leak, and have made it much more difficult for European leaders to provide support and logistical assistance to our intelligence operations.
The pattern of leaks clearly shows that members of the intelligence community want to fight a war -- but rather than fight a war against the terrorists that killed thousands of Americans and want to kill millions more, they've chosen to fight one against the elected civilian government of the US. For some strange reason, those who claim to love civil liberties have decided to take the side of the unelected bureaucrats in this Coup Of The Thousand Leaks. When partisan hatred meets with professional egotism, the resulting bedfellows turn strange indeed. The Justice Department needs to put an end to this wholesale dismantling of the national defenses that have kept the US safe from attack for the past four years, and do it quickly.
UPDATE: Mark Tapscott links back to me and, as a former newsman himself, muses about journalist shield laws:
Will any of the reporters who could now face jail time for not disclosing their sources be able to hold out as long as Judith Miller? Frankly, I doubt it, as Miller was caught up in a misguided Special Prosecutor drama that had everything but an actual crime.This time around there is no question about serious crimes having been committed and only the most blindly obstinate professor of journalism will insist on the right of the relevant journalists at the Times, Post and elsewhere to protect the guilty parties.
I am generally a supporter of the strongest possible shield laws for journalists, but in these newest cases it seems most likely there will be no such legitimate place to afford cover for the recipients of the illegal leaks that almost certainly damaged national security and endangered the lives of thousands, possibly millions, of Americans.
I'm not as big on the shield laws as others. In this case, the people who came to the Times and the Post had plenty of other opportunities to blow the whistle through other means if the sources felt that the programs were illegal. They could have gone to Congress and forced hearings, a la Able Danger; I daresay they would have gotten more attention than Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer. They hardly needed to run to James Risen and Eric Lichtblau to expose top-secret American capabilities to everyone, including our enemies.
Be sure to read all of Mark's commentary.
Losing Their Position
The Saddam regime had long adopted the Palestinian cause as a means of championing a pan-Arabic political movement, one that he thought would carry him to the throne of a secular caliphate that would control Southwest Asia and North Africa. He paid the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and feted Palestinians inside Iraq as well, giving them privileges he denied to native Iraqis. When Saddam invaded Kuwait, the Palestinians cheered -- and when the US ejected him from Kuwait and eventually from power, the Palestinians protested. Now they complain that life has gotten much more difficult without their patron to give them their customary handouts:
For years, Saddam Hussein harbored a small population of Palestinians in Iraq, trotting them out to cheer whenever he went to war -- which he routinely justified as essential to Arab nationalism and the Palestinian cause.Shiites and other Iraqis looked glumly at his wards, jealous of the Palestinians' privilege and status while others suffered.
Now Hussein is in prison. The Shiites are in power. The Palestinians are worried.
Perhaps they worry because the Palestinians come from a long history of "insurgency", and the last thing the new Iraqi government needs is more foreigners with the inclination to join terrorist bands. The Palestinians would certainly prefer Saddam's return, and considering their lost privileges, it would make sense for them to do so. The Post hints at that even as it reports on their plight. Consider the following passages, emphases mine:
After the fall of Hussein in 2003, several thousand Palestinians left for Jordan and were stuck in a no-man's land at the border. Most eventually went to a refugee camp just inside Jordan. With the new threats, another group of 19 Palestinians left the capital in October for Syria and spent more than a month camped in the no-man's land before they were finally let into a refugee camp in northeastern Syria, according to Stort.But the majority of Palestinians here are hunkering down in Baghdad. Most live in a neighborhood of shabby concrete buildings where they have been housed, at government expense, for decades. ...
Palestinians were not allowed to become Iraqi citizens under Hussein's rule and were discouraged from purchasing property, but they were given housing and free utilities and were exempt from military service. They were also favored for government positions and allowed to travel more freely than Iraqi citizens. ...
The Palestinians say their position was less privileged than it seemed. "This was all just talk," said Thayer Mahdi, 39, a Palestinian who owns a clothing store. "We suffered like all Iraqis."
When Hussein fell, nearly 1,500 Palestinians were forced from their homes as landlords suddenly found themselves free to raise rents and evict their formerly privileged tenants. They lived for a while in tents at a sports club in Baghdad before eventually finding other housing.
Not only did Hussein keep them at government expense -- giving them a rather carefree life on the Iraqi dole -- but they lived in non-government housing at little or no expense until after Saddam fell. Landlords had to put up with them at whatever rate Saddam deemed satisfactory. And the Palestinians wonder why Iraqis don't like them?
Exempt Media Blows Cover On Another Key Counterterrorism Program
In another attempt to find something sinister to hang onto the Bush administration, another secret program constituting a major part of the war on terror has been exposed by another member of the Exempt Media. This time, the Washington Post uses its contacts in the CIA to expose an umbrella program called GST, the code for a loose affiliation of dozens of programs designed to locate and fight terrorists abroad rather than wait for them to show up here. Nothing about the article stands out as a smoking gun, it never alleges anything specifically illegal, but Dana Priest writes the front-pager as a warning that the President has gone out of control in defending the US from attack:
Over the past two years, as aspects of this umbrella effort have burst into public view, the revelations have prompted protests and official investigations in countries that work with the United States, as well as condemnation by international human rights activists and criticism by members of Congress.Still, virtually all the programs continue to operate largely as they were set up, according to current and former officials. These sources say Bush's personal commitment to maintaining the GST program and his belief in its legality have been key to resisting any pressure to change course.
"In the past, presidents set up buffers to distance themselves from covert action," said A. John Radsan, assistant general counsel at the CIA from 2002 to 2004. "But this president, who is breaking down the boundaries between covert action and conventional war, seems to relish the secret findings and the dirty details of operations."
The administration's decisions to rely on a small circle of lawyers for legal interpretations that justify the CIA's covert programs and not to consult widely with Congress on them have also helped insulate the efforts from the growing furor, said several sources who have been involved.
This effort by Priest mirrors the slop served up by the NY Times on the NSA surveillance of international communications, except in one regard -- the activities described by Priest clearly fall under the category of the President's war powers. One cannot even claim the limited ambiguity of the NSA position on that point. When Bush took on the war after Congress' authorization, he made it clear that he would use all tools at his disposal, explicitly naming the CIA and other intelligence services to serve as front-line assets in this new kind of war. As an example, Priest spends time reporting on qualms over CIA "assassinations" of al-Qaeda leaders. Once AQ declared war on the US, those stopped being assassinations at all but attacks on command and control assets of our enemy. It no more constituted an "assassination" as would dropping a bomb on Hitler's bunker in 1945 would have been.
Reading the lengthy article, it becomes clear that the sources feeding this to the Post come from the CIA. Not only does the article expose Langley programs exclusively, the entire end of the article is dedicated to the whining of CIA personnel over their public image:
Some former CIA officers now worry that the agency alone will be held responsible for actions authorized by Bush and approved by the White House's lawyers.Attacking the CIA is common when covert programs are exposed and controversial, said Gerald Haines, a former CIA historian who is a scholar in residence at the University of Virginia. "It seems to me the agency is taking the brunt of all the recent criticism." ...
But a former CIA officer said the agency "lost its way" after Sept. 11, rarely refusing or questioning an administration request. The unorthodox measures "have got to be flushed out of the system," the former officer said. "That's how it works in this country."
In other words, Priest's sources want to use the Post to fight the housecleaning that Porter Goss has initiated and to play a little CYA along with their years-long pushback against the Bush administration. They hijacked the front page of the newspaper to file complaints about having to engage the enemy in the war on terror, and when confronted about those rogue elements that have spent their efforts fighting the Bush administration rather than Islamofascists, they sob to Post reporters about their "image".
One day, these leaks will end, but the question will then be whether we have any effective defense left against the terrorists, or if we have tipped our hand so badly that our enemies will adapt and find ways around our efforts to launch another attack. If that happens, these same media outlets will be screaming about the administration's failure to keep us safe. However, we won't be fooled; the responsibility will be on those who took it upon themselves to cripple the very programs that have kept us safe for the past four years.
CTV: 'Well-Connected Liberals' Tipped Traders On Goodale Announcement
CTV has broadcast new evidence showing that the run on income trusts at the Toronto Stock Exchange in the hours prior to Finance Minister Ralph Goodale's favorable policy announcement was not a lucky guess by the investment community. In their broadcast last night, reported by blogger MK Braaten, three investors acknowledged either to CTV or in e-mails to their associates that they had insider tips from "well-connected Liberals":
* Don Drummond, VP/Chief Economist: CTV said that Drummond told them he first heard about the announcement via email, 4 hours in advance of announcement. Also, stated that Liberal strategists in Ottawa were the source of email. CTV quoted Drummond as saying “Alot of people seemed to know there was an announcement coming and a few people seemed to know what it was.”* Jim Leech, Teachers pension fund - CTV said that Leech received emails at about 2 pm stating that the announcement was guaranteed. CTV Quoted Leech “I got a bunch of emails around 2pm saying for sure Goodale was making an announcement after the close.”
* Sandy Mcintyre, Sentry Select Capital: CTV reported he sent the following email: “There is a strong rumour out of Ottawa that Goodale is going to pronounce after the close today his trust solution…hope my sources are right!” Mcintyre said his sources were quoting ‘well connected Liberals’.
* Richard Nesbitt, CEO TSX Group: According to CTV, Nesbitt purchased $759,000 worth of stocks hours before the announcement and made $100,000 in profit the next day. However, he could not be reached for comment, yet his spokesman said that he was only filling up his core holdings before the calendar year end.
The last person shows a particularly egregious conflict of interest. The TSX Group is a private company that runs the Toronto Stock Exchange, and so functions in a quasi-regulatory capacity. If the CEO of TSX Group took part in this insider trading conspiracy, it could destroy all confidence in the fairness and legitimacy of Canadian trading altogether. The Liberals may have succeeded in completely corrupting the environment where many ordinary Canadians have trusted their retirement money for investments.
No wonder the RCMP has decided to conduct a criminal investigation. And the leak may not have come from Goodale or his office, either, although it had to come from someone within the government with knowledge of Goodale's policy decision ahead of time. That could have also included the Prime Minister's office as well as Goodale's. Perhaps the Finance Minister's refusal to resign means something quite different than first thought.
Will voters continue to support the Liberals through another financial scandal, with the latest one developing into a far more personal threat to their own finances? It seems doubtful that Paul Martin can rely on scandal fatigue now.
Milking Cookies
In the denouement of the fizzling meme of NSA as Big Brother, the New York Times features an AP report on the intelligence agencies inadvertent use of persistent cookies in its new web system. The software came with persistent cookies as the default for any new installation, and the NSA forgot to disable it when it upgraded its website. Predictably, the AP and the Times (and CNN and the Guardian in the UK) treat this as yet another example of NSA abuse:
The National Security Agency's Internet site has been placing files on visitors' computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most files of that type.The files, known as cookies, disappeared after a privacy activist complained and The Associated Press made inquiries this week. Agency officials acknowledged yesterday that they had made a mistake.
Nonetheless, the issue raised questions about privacy at the agency, which is on the defensive over reports of an eavesdropping program.
If it did raise questions about privacy at the NSA, then it also answered them. The AP report explains later that the new installation created the problem and that it corrected it as soon as the AP and the one complainant made them aware of the issue. In the great spectrum of Internet privacy dangers, "persistent cookies" sits on the weakest end. Spyware from free downloads cause more security problems than cookies, and even the ones used by the NSA can be blocked by any browser on the market. The AP uses the mistake to make cookies sound vaguely sinister when they're almost as ubiquitous on the Internet as pop-up ads, if not more so. The Guardian gets even more hysterical, in all senses of the word, when it says that the "[e]xposure adds to pressure over White House powers".
The silliest part of the story is that no one can understand why the cookies would present any danger to visitors to the NSA website. Both versions of the story call the risk to surfers "uncertain", but a more accurate description would be "irrelevant". Even if the NSA used it to track where casual visitors to its site surfed afterwards, it would discover nothing that any casual surfer wouldn't already be able to access on their own with Google or a quick check on Free Republic. Now imagine who stops to check on the NSA website and try very hard to come up with any good reason to spend precious resources on scouring the web preferences of bloggers and privacy groups instead of focusing on real signal intelligence, which already comes in such volume that the agency has trouble keeping up with their primary task.
The only story on the NSA cookies is that the Exempt Media intends on milking every last ounce of public outrage it can manufacture out of sugary nothings.
ADDENDUM: Just for grins, here's a partial list of cookies that the Exempt Media has placed on my computer:
Cookie ........................................................... Expires
ads.guardian.co.uk ....................................... 12/30/2037
ads.telegraph.co.uk ...................................... 12/30/2037
adserver.tribuneinteractive.com ................... 12/30/2037
adsremote.scripps.com ................................ 12/30/2037
ap.org ........................................................... 09/23/2021
bbc.co.uk ...................................................... 11/21/2009
cnn.com ........................................................ 05/27/2010
foxnews.com ............................................... 12/31/2010
gannettnetwork.com .................................... 12/31/2010
latimes.com .................................................. 12/15/2010
msnbc.msn.com ........................................... 11/04/2021
nytimes.com ....................................... 10/06/2021
usatoday.com .............................................. 12/31/2025
washingtontimes.com .................................. 01/17/2038
It's a damned good thing that the Exempt Media -- especially the AP, the New York Times, and the Guardian -- have so much concern about my privacy.
UPDATE: The DNC web site generated persistent cookies that expired in 2033, according to Wizbang -- until this Tuesday. Why do you suppose they suddenly changed their programming? Do you suppose that the AP may have tipped them off?
The Latest On Trackbacks
I'm starting to see trackbacks working again on the blog, but Movable Type does make it more difficult to use in version 3.2, it appears. If others who have tried TBs did so with the autofind feature, that probably will no longer work. The URL for the trackback ping will probably have to be entered "manually" in order for the system to pick it up; the codes are on the individual post screens. MT 3.2 has a way to minimize the junk TBs that I hope will not prove too difficult for valid TBs to match.
If it doesn't work, feel free to include the link in the comments section of the post.
Sixth Circuit Says No Wall Between Church And State
I missed this story last week, although I believe other bloggers have already reported it. The 6th Federal Appellate Circuit ruled against the ACLU in a Ten Commandments case on December 21st, ruling specifically that the Constitution did not require a wall between church and state, revalidating the display of the Ten Commandments on government property:
A federal appeals court has upheld a display of the Ten Commandments alongside other historical documents in the Mercer County, Ky., courthouse.The judge who wrote the opinion blasted the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the display, in language that echoed the type of criticism often directed at the organization.
Judge Richard Suhrheinrich's ruling said the ACLU brought "tiresome" arguments about the "wall of separation" between church and state, and it said the organization does not represent a "reasonable person."
The decision was issued by a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Cincinnati. It upheld a lower-court decision that allowed Mercer County to continue displaying the Ten Commandments along with the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner" and other documents.
All of the items were posted at the same time in 2001.
The ACLJ, which often squares off against the ACLU in appellate court, also notes the decision on its web site. This makes for an interesting showdown in the new Supreme Court, especially with Sandra Day O'Connor retiring and her "know it when I see it" approach to religion disappearing soon. Nowhere is her case law more muddy than on this point, and the 6th Circuit has now provided an excellent test case for the new SC to elucidate a clear and resounding standard. Does the Establishment Clause guarantee a public square scrubbed of any religious mention whatsoever, or will the newly constituted court actually rule from the text itself and discover that it just prohibits the government establishment of a single official religion?
When Alito joins the court, I'm betting that the Supremes start consistently voting for the latter.
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