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.

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. ...

Several Sunni parties, as well as some secular groups, have called for the authorities to hold a new election, but that demand now seems unlikely to be met. Abdul Hussein al-Hindawi, an electoral commission board member, read a statement at the news conference saying that the commission planned on canceling some ballots in some areas, but that it had all but ruled out holding a new vote because it had not found evidence of widespread forgery.

Individual ballots with evidence of fraud or forgery will not count in the totals and will instead be destroyed, the commission stated yesterday. That just represents common sense in any election, and even in the most advanced democracies forged and fraudulent ballots will appear. All we have to do is look at the shenanigans in Wisconsin to see that, as thousands of bogus registrations in Milwaukee allowed Democrats to squeak out a win. In a tighter race, that could have created a constitutional crisis here. (The Democrats tried to force one over Ohio, but Congress didn't bite.)

The Iraqis have found out that democracy isn't perfect, and that having a vote means that one has a voice in how the government gets constituted -- not that one always gets what one wants. The UN has played an important part in emphasizing this lesson. Once the dust settles and the official results get announced, I predict that the National Assembly will, generally speaking, reflect the ethnic/religious demographics of the country, and that the Iraqis start consolidating the 300+ political parties down to a half-dozen or so for the next election in order to fine-tune their electoral power. That will be the lesson that Iraqis will learn most of all -- that collective voting with a larger national parties will create more leverage than a multitude of single-issue parties provide.

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 for a more restrained approach to legal challenges than his colleagues at the time.

The Black Panther case involved a $100 million lawsuit the group had filed against government officials alleging a government plot to shut them down. Judge Alito, who was an advocate in the office of the Solicitor General at the time, said the case should be left to a lower court. The solicitor general, Charles Fried, ignored the advice and petitioned the high court to hear the case.

Mr. Fried won the case before the Supreme Court with the help of a legal brief written, in part, by Judge Alito. But, Mr. Fried said Judge Alito's initial advice in the 1982 case was consistent with his generally cautious method. Three former attorneys general, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Central Intelligence Agency had urged Mr. Fried to take the case to the Supreme Court.

The Post notes, however, that Alito had confidence in the government case on the merits and thought the appeal would merely prove distracting:

Alito acknowledged in his memo to Lee that "a decision to the contrary has something to recommend it," but noted that acquiescing in the D.C. Circuit's ruling would still leave the government with ample opportunity to win the case in the district court "after a few additional steps are completed."

As his memo pointed out, the then-31-year-old Alito's recommendation ran counter to the wishes of the FBI, CIA, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and a long list of former high-ranking officials named in the suit.

Another memo given a bare mention by the Post notes that Alito also advised the Reagan administration not to argue against divestment by state governments in the apartheid nation of South Africa as unconstitutional. At the time, the US had wanted to play a balancing act with South Africa, seeing the issue in the binary Cold War vision and wanted to ensure that the federal government controlled all foreign-policy approaches towards the controversial nation. Alito's advice not only ran counter to what the Reagan administration wanted to hear, but it also allowed state governments to continue their economic protest of apartheid and discrimination against black South Africans. This runs counter to the attempt to paint Alito as a closet racist.

Even the AP has a nice piece on Alito today, reporting on recollections his students have of a favorite teacher who encouraged them to think for themselves:

Each week for two hours, under the tutelage of a distinguished federal appellate judge by the name of Samuel Alito, the students would hash out issues they knew were or soon would be a big deal as far as jurisprudence goes.

Typical of the class, just working out a definition of "terrorism" took the students weeks, and only then remained a work in progress, they said. Alito would simply shrug when asked if the latest version was right or wrong, as if to remind them how undefined the issue remained in the immediate post-Sept. 11 years, they said.

"This was one of those wide-open debates, on something so prevalent in our lives, that was going to define our time in history. And to discuss this with someone who would be involved in the issue was incredible," said former student Obadiah English, a Boston attorney who had watched from the law library several stories above downtown Newark, N.J., as the second World Trade Center tower collapsed. ....

Alito encouraged students to take risks and rewarded those who did. Former student Robert Marasco argued in his final paper that torture should never be allowed. Alito gave him an "A" on the paper and for the class, Marasco said.

And the AP report also shows Alito as a jurist who declared a concern over the erosion of civil rights during wartime:

For Alito, the topic of terrorism and civil liberties came up in other encounters with students during the period as well. In a brief visit to Pepperdine University School of Law in March 2003, he taught three hourlong seminars on the subject to first-year students, according to documents and school officials.

Robert Cochran, a professor at the Malibu, Calif., law school who suggested the visit, said Alito came across as dispassionate, deliberate and objective. Yet, Cochran said, he betrayed a concern with the topic.

"He didn't take a particular stance on the issues but the way that he raised the questions indicated that he was aware that there was a danger that, in times of national crisis, we take unreasonable steps to curb civil liberties," Cochran said.

Has the national media decided to play fair with Judge Alito? I suspect that they expect Alito to do well in his upcoming hearings and want to prepare their readers for the balanced, thoughtful, and thoroughly professional jurist they will see on television. The smears will have to come from PFAW and AFJ directly from now until then. Right now, it looks like the Exempt Media may be covering its bets, similar to how it acted when they failed to derail the Roberts nomination prior to the hearing.

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 won't step aside until the investigation is complete, Goodale said it is not the RCMP that has made allegations about him personally, "the opposition have made those allegations."

The RCMP, said Goodale, "have said they are looking into this matter because of the seriousness of the allegation. They have, at the same time, said they have no information, no evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of anyone - most particularly on my part - and quite frankly if I were to resign under those circumstances I believe I would only feed allegations that are out there in the context of a very political situation."

At the same time, the RCMP must have determined that the trading patterns, as we've discussed before, show something worth investigating regardless of who made the complaint. As for the allegations not being evidence, that much is true of any complaint made of any crime. The difference is that when the RCMP makes an initial review and determines that they have cause to open a criminal investigation, they must have found some reason to take it to the next level.

In an exclusive look at what the RCMP may have found, an anonymous source familiar with Canadian markets has done more research into the alleged damage done by the insider trading. This person estimates that insider trading on November 23rd on the TSX (not the NYSE) netted at least Cdn $10 million of ill-gotten gains from the five income trusts and dividend paying common shares cited in media prior to the Minister Goodale announcement of no tax on income trusts and materially lower taxes on dividends. There would be other income trusts and dividend paying corporations not in this list where illegal insider trading likely also occurred. The investigation will need to do an analysis of unusual volume and price upticking in all income trusts and dividend paying corporations to discern where likely illegal insider trading occurred. Then, of course, there would need to be an investigation on who did it, what exactly they were told and by whom.

ESTIMATED ILL-GOTTEN GAINS FROM ALLEGED ILLEGAL INSIDER TRADING

Methodology (1) : Took increase in volume on 11/23/05 from avg 10 previous days' volume and prorated the increase in market value between purchases on 11/23/05 and valuation at the opening price on 11/24/05

BCE..............................$6,122,444
ROYAL BANK..............$2,275,098
YELLOW PAGES............ $616,155
AEROPLAN......................$857,564
SUPERIOR PLUS...........$1,034,452

TOTAL OF ABOVE......$10,905,712

We're not talking peanuts here, people. Those who had access to that information prior to its release stood to make a lot of money -- and would have a great deal of loyalty to the Liberal Party that allowed them to glean that cash off of the losers who traded without the prior knowledge of Liberal tax policy changes. Who might have comprised the loser's contingent? A significant percentage of the ownership lives outside of Canada -- 24%, to be exact. Any country whose investors lost money in the transactions could sue for damages, including the US. The countries could also launch their own investigations into the insider-trading scandal, a development that would undoutedly worry the Liberals much more than an RCMP investigation. After all, they can't control the SEC the way they can control the OSC or even perhaps the RCMP.

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 terrorists.

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 American heritage. I went looking for the people who sinned against America itself, or the ideal of America. Otherwise, we'd just be looking at body counts.

I also tried to avoid picking contemporary political figures, as we do not have sufficient historical perspective to make that kind of determination. (I do have one exception to this.) Don't expect to see Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi on this list, nor Teddy Kennedy or Bill Clinton.

A couple of people barely missed the list. Earl Warren came under strong consideration for his efforts to set up the Japanese internment camps, as did Chief Justice Taney for his concurrence in the cowardly and cruel Dred Scott decision. Someone suggested William Randolph Hearst, a yellow journalist of the first order, and that was very tempting.

In the end, I came up with ten that I think will be intriguing and provocative, and I wrote explanations for each. Below you will find posts in groups of three, except for #1 which will have its own spot. The essays make it too long to put into a single post. I'm going to really enjoy the commentary for each of these, and I think we will have a great debate over this -- and I may just surprise a few people.

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 paranoid domestic-espionage activities designed to derail political opponents, such as Martin Luther King and others he deemed dangerous. Hoover did good work as well in creating a first-class law enforcement agency, but his ego forced it to miss the rise of the Italian Mafia and his racism kept it lily-white far past his death.

For the unfettered power he garnered through his Orwellian efforts and his reflexive use of blackmail to maintain that power -- a power which cowed presidents and Congresses alike for decades -- Hoover is, I believe, the obvious choice of worst American in national history.

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 restoring the citizenship of the rebels, freeing the slaves and easing their transition to full citizenship as well. His plans may never have been successful, but we never had the chance to find out. Instead, the enraged North locked the South down in a military occupation that did not stop until the disputed election of 1876, and the resentment that built in the South created the backlash of Jim Crow, whose effects can still be felt to this day.

But hey, he must have known what he was doing – he was famous, right?

• #3: Benedict Arnold

Not quite the unmitigated weasel that history has painted him, Arnold actually started the American Revolution as one of George Washington’s most trusted officers. However, Arnold became frustrated with a perceived lack of recognition for his talents and accomplishments and, spurred on by his pro-Crown wife, switched sides. He offered up West Point to the British, a strategic site that would have spelled the end for Washington and the Revolution had it not been for the fortunate capture of the messenger carrying Arnold’s offer to the British. He wound up spending the rest of his life in England, well-feted but never completely trusted by anyone.

• #4: Nathan Bedford Forrest

This hardline Confederate gets a pass for his activities during the Civil War, but his post-war activities gets him on the list instead. Forrest founded the Ku Klux Klan, at first more of a drinking club but shortly under his direction became a feared terrorist group rising in opposition to Reconstruction. Later, he renounced the group for its uncontrollable violence, but without a doubt Forrest started the Klan with the intent of terrorizing the former slaves and the people who had set them free. It has lasted to this day as a group dedicated to racist policies and has spawned dozens of splinter groups.

It should be noted, however, that his great-grandson N.B. Forrest III fought bravely in WWII, achieved the rank of Brigadier General in the US Army Air Corps, and gave his life for his nation in 1943 in a bombing raid over Germany.

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 Republican Party to form in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Douglas gets the nod over John Calhoun here mostly because Calhoun sincerely believed in states’ rights and nullification. Douglas started a war so he could become President.

• #6: Richard Nixon

The only president to resign his office in disgrace, although perhaps not the only president who should have done so. Nixon, like his contemporaries Hoover and McCarthy, presented such a classically tragic figure for the good that he tried to do. In the end, the tremendous damage he did eclipsed all of that, including the famous Opening of Red China. He abused his power for his own sake, using the FBI and the CIA to attack his enemies, real and imagined. His abuses, in fact, color our ability to defend the nation to this day. His legacy lives on in the Gorelick Wall, in the FISA warrant issue, in special prosecutors like Patrick Fitzgerald; Nixon brought a plague onto the body politic that will last for decades to come. Although he later rehabilitated himself somewhat, the damage he did in his presidency may never really end.

• #7: Joe McCarthy

Tail-gunner Joe had all of the same qualities of Greek tragedy as Hoover, but on a much shorter time scale. Originally seeking to root out the Communists from the US government – which the Verona intercepts would later prove was a very real threat – McCarthy singlehandedly destroyed the credibility of the anti-Communist effort through demagoguery, lies, and character assassination. McCarthy embodied the result of what happens when people use the ends to justify all means. In the end, his behavior on television shocked the nation and freed the Senate to finally censure him, but more tragically than that, it led an entire generation to dismiss Communist infiltration as a threat to the security of the nation. He has long been Hollywood’s bete noir, although most of the so-called blacklisting came from the efforts of the House Un-American Activities Committee, not the Senate. (McCarthy’s focus was on the federal bureaucracy and the Army, not Hollywood.)

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 deathbed with divorce papers – by the son of Alexander Hamilton.

• #9: John Walker Jr

Many people included the Rosenbergs on their list of the worst Americans, but the Rosenbergs largely gave the Soviets what they would eventually have divined on their own anyway. John Walker Jr stands out among espionage cases as perhaps the most egregious case, one in which advanced crypto passed into KGB control and allowed them access to our most secret communications. Walker eventually recruited his best friend, his brother, and even his son to spy with him, and even thought about creating “franchises” of espionage within the US military in order to increase the flow of money. And it was all about money to Walker; unlike other spies like the Rosenbergs who had political motivations for their treasonous behavior, Walker sold out America strictly for American cash, and lots of it. In fact, he only got caught because he cheaped out on paying his wife alimony, and she flipped for the FBI, unaware that her own son had gotten caught up in the family business. John’s reaction? He told the FBI that he should have killed Barbara years earlier.

I worked in the defense industry when Walker got caught, and the kind of information he sent to the Soviets could easily have lost us any war had it not been discovered. It would have made Enigma look like a parlor trick. This cold-hearted bastard should have been shot, and I don’t even support the death penalty under normal conditions. Instead, he’s doing life, after having cooperated in return for an easier sentence for his son, who got out of prison in 2000 after 15 years behind bars. And in case you’re curious, it cost you and me over a billion dollars to replace the crypto that Walker sold for a few hundred thousand bucks.

• #10: Jimmy Carter

I would normally leave off any contemporary political person until they had passed away, as their lives still might provide some kind of merit. However, after a promising beginning of his post-presidential career of building houses for the homeless, Carter has inveigled himself into so many foreign-policy crises and made them exponentially worse that it’s becoming more and more difficult to believe it isn’t done with purpose. His efforts to defuse the North Korean crisis deflected what had been until then a rather effective strategy by Bill Clinton to use a military threat to stop Pyongyang from producing nukes. After Carter jumped into the negotiations uninvited – violating the Logan Act – Carter’s prestige within his party and the US forced Clinton to accept the ridiculous Framework agreement that allowed Pyongyang to go nuclear within months. Carter has done the same with Haiti as well, and has traveled the globe to support many a leftist dictator or autocrat as long as they opposed American interests.

But the real reason Carter winds up here at #10 is because he singlehandedly almost lost the Cold War and allowed the start of the Islamofascist terror war during his single term in office. His naiveté in dealing with the Soviet Union, captured perfectly by kissing the jowled cheek of the Soviet dictator Leonid Brezhnev, led him to believe that worldwide Communism was here to stay and that we could do nothing about it. He also assured Americans that we had nothing to fear from the Soviets, who really weren’t bad guys – right up until they invaded Afghanistan. Even then, his response in boycotting the Olympic Games of 1980 has to remain one of the most embarrassing examples of displayed impotence in our nation’s history.

The winner in that category, however, also belongs to Carter. In November 1979, after pulling his support from the Shah in the highly strategic nation of Iran and watching him fall to an Islamist uprising, the same nutcases sacked our embassy in Teheran, an undeniable act of war. Instead of giving an ultimatum for the return of our embassy and the release of our diplomatic staff, Carter sat for 444 excruciating days, doing little except pleading publicly for mercy. He staged one – one! – military response to the crisis months later, which failed miserably. The failure to act not only allowed the rickety Khomeini government to survive, but gave Islamofascism a tremendous boost of prestige throughout the Middle East. It also allowed Iran to become a center for the funding and direction of terrorist activities for the past three decades, a legacy that has finally engulfed us since 9/11.

Other administrations have made their own mistakes in remaining blind to the threat of Islamist terror, but Carter played midwife to it and enabled it to survive when he had every opportunity and a perfect casus belli to kill it in its cradle.

UPDATE: A couple of CQ readers, including Michael Barone, have written to inform me that three VPs have resigned from office. In addition to Agnew and Burr, the third was John C. Calhoun, who resigned his office a couple of months early so he could take a seat in the Senate early enough to vote on pending legislation. This is the same John C Calhoun that some readers included on their own lists of the worst Americans.

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 Goodale until an independent review by either the RCMP or the OSC gets completed, which the Liberals will likely reject.

This makes yet another financial scandal for the Liberals and Paul Martin to explain during their election bid. It will complicate the efforts of Martin to push scandal fatigue and try to paint Tory leader Stephen Harper as a shadowy figure with a "hidden agenda". Right now, the Liberal agenda appears only too clear -- to score as much cash as possible while holding onto its grip on power.

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 first to authorize a program like the one currently in the news. Forty-eight percent (48%) say he is not while 26% are not sure.

While almost the entire Democratic Party leadership has accused Bush of high crimes and talked about impeachment, a majority of their own party approves of the NSA program (51%), even as it might be endangered thanks to the NYT's exposure of it. Fifty-seven percent of independents also approve of the program, and combined with the 81% of Republicans, Bush has a solid mandate to continue using all the tools at his disposal to protect the nation.

I think we can expect to see the end of this particular line of attack. Instead of weakening Bush, this demonstration of executive will to defend the nation has Bush's numbers rebounding faster than anyone could have guessed. By the time November 2006 rolls around, these Democratic attacks might make Bush the most popular president since FDR.

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 innocent Americans.

"I think when you suggest that civil liberties are just as much at risk today as the country is from terrorism, you've gone too far if you leave that impression. I don't believe that's true," said Michael O'Hanlon, a national-security analyst at the Brookings Institution who advises Democrats on defense issues. ...

"The Republicans still hold the advantage on every national-security issue we tested," said Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster and former adviser to President Clinton, who co-authored a Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) memo on the party's national-security weaknesses.

Nervousness among Democrats intensified earlier this month after Democrats led a filibuster against the Patriot Act that threatened to block the measure, followed by a victory cry from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, who declared at a party rally, "We killed the Patriot Act." ...

Recent polls say 56 percent of Americans approve of the job Mr. Bush is doing to protect the country from another terrorist attack.

Even the DLC recognizes the problem, but they have lost the attention of the party leadership as embodied by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Howard Dean. All three have pitched in with the MoveOn faction of the radical Left, with Reid's now-infamous boast of having "killed" the Patriot Act -- and then watching as it got extended anyway. Both have votes on security issues that demonstrate nothing more than political expediency; both voted for Patriot before they voted against it, recalling the fecklessness of their last Presidential candidate.

Small wonder, then, that the DLC's internal polling shows the Democrats behind on national security issues by anywhere from four to ten points, even at this stage. Once the election cycles start in earnest and the current leadership makes its influence felt, those numbers will expand and probably will cost the Dems even more seats in both the House and Senate. As the Iraq War begins to phase out as an issue, domestic security and the pursuit of AQ will once again take center stage, and American voters won't be fooled with a lot of irrational Bush-hatred in a mid-term election.

One more worry that the Democrats should consider is this: After watching the liberal press dismantle the NSA program on the front pages of the Times and Harry Reid dancing like Grandpa Fred on the corpse of Patriot, the Democrats had better hope that George Bush keeps the country safe from an attack in the next few months. If an attack should occur, a lot of people will start asking what changed, and they're going to look at the New York Times and the Democrats to explain their actions.

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 years of the court saw no rejections or forced changes in warrant applications -- not one single time. In 2000, the court forced a change in one single warrant. Since then, they've rejected four warrants and forced revisions in 176 warrants.

One might ask whether the Bush administration has flooded the FISA court with requests and has gotten sloppy about their work. Indeed, since 2001 the Bush administration has sought 5,645 warrants -- which hardly sounds like an administration that has worked with the impulse to run roughshod over the idea of getting search warrants for their work. That number reflects an increase of only 64% over the final term of the Clinton administration, which requested 3,436 FISA warrants during that period. Considering the increased activity by the Bush administration post-9/11 to tighten security and track terrorists, a 64% increase does not sound like the current administration has exactly tried to overwhelm the FISA court, but instead work within its legal parameters to balance national security and civil liberties -- and it seems as though the FISA court has chosen to get cranky about it at a very foolish point in time.

Even more curiously, 173 out of 177 of the forced changes and all four of the rejections came after the fall of 2002, after the appointment of Judge George Robertson, the FISA court member who made a public splash with his resignation earlier this month. Rodney at the Bayosphere deduces that Robertson probably knew more than he let on about the issues surrounding the NSA program and used his position to obstruct it, a deduction that appears sensible, looking at the data and Robertson's actions.

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.

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 Frau Osthoff this month as its first foreign policy triumph, is furious. It made huge efforts to secure her release and is widely believed to have paid a ransom.

It has now blocked all funding for her project and has told her that she should leave the region immediately. She is believed currently to be in Jordan, with her 12-year-old daughter, preparing to return.

“I would have little sympathy if Frau Osthoff puts herself again in danger considering the intensive efforts made by many people to secure her release,” said Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German Foreign Minister, who headed a team that negotiated her release.

CQ readers started following this story a week ago, when the Germans suddenly released Mohammed Ali Hamadi, a Hezbollah terrorist jailed for life in Germany for killing an American Navy diver in Beirut. The release of Hamadi came shortly before terrorists in Iraq released Osthoff. While the Germans delivered Hamadi to Beirut, they continued to deny any linkage between Osthoff's sudden release and their parole of a murderer they knew the Americans wanted for trial in the US.

Now, after having traded something for Osthoff, the Germans will look damned foolish indeed if she comes up missing again. On the other hand, just as with the Giuliana Sgrena incident, one can wonder whether Osthoff herself had a hand in her own kidnapping and ransom. If so, her possible partners might not want to team up with her again, as the Times notes that the German magazine Der Spiegel says the kidnappers appeared tired of dealing with her.

In any event, the Germans might find their initial political victory turn into a giant headache -- and Germans might start asking Merkel's government exactly what Osthoff cost them.

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 the middle of her forehead. When they're good, they're very, very good ... but when they're bad, they're horrid.

UPDATE: Mark Tapscott talks about how the Post can walk this back and cover bloggers more honestly in the future.

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 if fans get past security, the only protection they have is that which they provide themselves. Just because the person in question wears the team colors of a particularly hapless NFL squad doesn't make them any less potentially dangerous. Anyone who doubts that this type of behavior carries career-ending risks just hasn't paid attention -- and anyone who sticks up for the mouthbreather fans who pull these stunts should ask Monica Seles what she thinks about fans making themselves part of the game.

Wanna join the game? Welcome to the NFL, dipstick.

UPDATE: Here's the news story from the Post-Gazette on the picture:

With 9:17 left and the Steelers lined up on offense at Cleveland's 28, a roly-poly Browns fan wearing orange socks charged out of the stands, through the Browns' sideline and toward Verron Haynes, lined up in the backfield.

Haynes veered away from the fan, who continued toward the Steelers' sideline. He slowed, turned his back and Harrison grabbed him and slammed him to the ground, holding him until security could cart the man away. ...

"When he first came out he took off after V," Harrison said. "He started toward our sideline, he turned around and started backing up toward our sideline, so I don't know if the guy had anything on him or whatever. With his back to me, I thought I could take him down safely without risking injury to myself or my teammates and hold him there until the proper authorities came."

The idiot should count himself lucky that he didn't require an ambulance to take him off the field.

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 very difficult decision, but we take into consideration the fact that the mandate of UN stabilisation forces has been extended to the whole of 2006 and, secondly, strong requests of Iraqi authorities that we stay there," he said.

Poland has long provided a substantial share of combat-ready troops to guard the emerging democracy in Iraq. In March, they will start focusing instead on training Iraqi security forces to enable a transfer of power to the national contingent. The Poles have about half of the troop commitment of Italy and just a bit more than Australia, and command a central region of Iraq that includes the once-hot city of Najaf, the center of Shi'ite quietism espoused by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Their continuing commitment allows the Americans to continue their focus on training Iraqis as well as pursuing the Zarqawi terrorist network as the Iraqis seat their first democratically elected constitutional government ever.

In a time when European politicians often fall back on reflexive anti-Americanism to score short-term political points, let's remember that some of our friends understand the stakes involved in the Iraqi front of the war on terror. Three cheers for the brave and steadfast Poles.

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 in the centre of the city known for its Shia shrine.

They called the police, who cordoned off the area. Clothing found with the bodies indicated that they included men, women and children.

Had this grave contained the remains of men only, one could understand the explanation of its existence to bury rebels killed in an open battle. However, the presence of women -- not usually associated with Shi'ite political or military activity -- and especially children point to something else entirely. It sounds almost as if the BBC wants to couch this discovery in terms favorable to Saddam. The BBC assumes that all Shi'ites rebelled against the Saddam government, which would make all Shi'ites open targets for reprisals.

This mass grave shows something different than just a rebellion gone bad. It demonstrates that Saddm put down a rebellion among the Shi'a by indiscriminately killing civilians and dumping the bodies where they presumed no one would ever find them. That makes Saddam and his henchmen genocidal maniacs and mass murderers -- not exactly news to anyone, or at least anyone outside of the offices of the BBC.

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 allows Munich to build some word-of-mouth momentum, avoid a head-to-head clash with Kong and Narnia (for at least a week or two), and still qualify for the Oscar buzz. It can still fizzle out, like Syriana appears to have done since its opening.

I'm afraid that Debbie has indulged in a bit of wishful thinking. Hopefully we can rely on the wisdom of the American public to deliver that kind of judgment on Spielberg's paean to moral equivalency, but it hasn't yet been seen that we will. My guess: Americans embrace appeasement this winter, unfortunately.

UPDATE: Debbie and I disagree on the meaning of the numbers, but we agree that I screwed up the spelling of her name -- which seems a little silly, since it's in the title of her blog. Sorry!! Be sure to visit her site, which I've added to my blogroll.

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 western Europe and raise the rent paid by the Russian navy to keep its Black Sea fleet in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol.

Russia notes that eighty percent of its European deliveries has to pass through Ukraine, making the government in Kiev a de facto partner in Russia's oil exportation, along with their military supremacy on the Black Sea. The Russians could cut off Ukraine altogether, but Ukraine could at that point revoke all licenses to transmit oil to Europe as well as evict their navy from its Black Sea ports. Such a move would then guarantee a response from Russia's European clients, pressuring them to settle their differences with Kiev.

What are those differences? It appears that the revocation of the subsidies came as a direct result of Ukrainians electing the West-leaning Viktor Yuschenko over the hand-picked Russian favorite, Viktor Yanukovich. Vladimir Putin has decided to take that decision rather personally, and as a result feels the need to punish the intransigent Ukrainians that dare to prefer closer ties to European democrats over ties to increasingly autocratic Russia -- and this temper tantrum demonstrates why.

Europe may have to reconsider allowing Russia to take on the G-8 presidency next week until this has been resolved. That may put more public pressure on Putin to behave himself and convince him that price wars will be harmful to everyone in the long run.

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 matters than their actual numbers warranted. No American would knowingly tolerate such an arrangement today. But a glitch in the census that inflates the populations of some state legislative districts - thus exaggerating their voting power - has led to a contemporary version of that problem. It involves counting prison inmates in the district where they are confined rather than where they actually live. The Census Bureau could fix this problem in a heartbeat, so it needs to get a move on.

This isn't the NYT's first swing at this pitch, but at least they have stopped using ridiculously fictional numbers for their arguments. (See here, here, here, and here for CQ posts on this same subject from the Times' last attempt at this argument.) Unfortunately, the Times still uses the same faulty logic to shift blame from New Yorkers to the Census Bureau for their policy decisions.

First off, the Times attempts to draw a fictional distinction between where an inmate lives and where he is incarcerated. In fact, an inmate lives in prison, not where he'd like to live if he hadn't gotten convicted of a crime. I might live in California, but if I robbed a bank in Minneapolis, I'd be living in Stillwater and not Sacramento. Second, what the Times proposes would require sliding scales of living based on the expected detention time. If I was only going to serve two years and parole out, I would get counted as 8/10^ths of a person for NYC, perhaps? And that would get decided when, and what if I decided to move to Utica instead after my actual release? Nor does the thought of simply skipping over convicts work, especially not from a Constitutional point of view. The intent and the language included in the Constitution did not limit the count to "voters"; it meant to count each person in the United States. The shameful 3/5^ths compromise that the NYT suddenly supports meant to get around the fact that the prevailing law did not recognize slaves as humans, an odd position for the Paper of Record to take vis-a-vis convicts in prison.

But most of all, this editorial fails because it refuses to admit the culpability of NYC and other large cities in sending their convicts out of their jurisdiction. Why? They refuse to spend the money on building and maintaining prisons for long-term convicts. They don't want to eat up valuable real estate that could bring in tax money rather than spend money on taking care of their own criminal element. The people in these large cities would rather shove that responsibility off onto the hicks in the countryside. That NIMBY impulse may serve them well when it comes to gobbling up tax revenues, but now that it impacts their political representation, they want to eat their cake and have it too. Meanwhile, the people who have to deal with NYC's convicts in their communities have to deal with all of the extra cost of securing their communities and watching as eminent domain eats up their saleable real estate.

The Big Apple can take one of two actions to solve the problem. Either they take up some of that real estate that goes to pricey condos and office space and start housing their own security problems, or they can convince Congress to amend the Constitution declaring that convicted felons aren't really human beings at all and don't deserve to be counted in the Census. Otherwise, the editorial board should really move onto another subject entirely.

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 on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and to Mr. Schumer, but also to Mr. Israel. And several of those designated for earmarks gave to members of the Joint Defense Appropriations Conference Committee, which wrote the New York projects into the defense spending bill.

Highlights of the earmarks announced by the Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Schumer include:

* $5 million in taxpayer money to STIDD Systems in Greenport, a company whose president and chief executive officer, Walter Gezari, gave $2,500 to the Friends of Hillary political action committee in May. Mr. Gezari, whose company makes seating for military vessels, gave $25,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee in March. He has donated $108,350 to federal politicians since 1998. Federal lobbying records show that his company spent $400,000 lobbying Congress this year.

* $1.8 million in taxpayer money to EDO Corporation, an Amityville defense contractor that makes aircraft equipment. The company's political action committee has given $17,000 to Mr. Israel over the past four years and $15,000 to Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat of Pennsylvania who is the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Defense. EDO's political action committee also gave $1,000 to Mr. Schumer's campaign committee and $853.44 to Boulevard Caterers in Farmingdale for food at a fundraiser for Mr. Schumer. The company spent $1,145 on food for one of Mr. Israel's fund-raisers in April 2001.

* $8 million in taxpayer money to a publicly traded defense contracting firm, DRS Technologies, and its electronic warfare and network systems program in western New York. The firm's political action committee gave $8,000 to Friends of Schumer and $30,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, of which Mr. Schumer is the chair. DRS, which is based in Parsippany, N.J., gave Mrs. Clinton's political action committee $2,000 in May through its DRS Technologies, Incorporated Good Government Fund.

* $2 million in taxpayer money to a Buffalo nanotechnology firm, Nano-Dynamics, Incorporated. Its chairman, Allan Rothstein, contributed $4,400 to the Friends of Hillary political action committee over the past year. Its chief executive officer, Keith Blakely, gave $2,000 to Mr. Schumer's campaign on October 26, 2004, as did the company's president, Richard Berger, and its vice president, Glenn Spacht. Mr. Spacht's contribution to Mr. Schumer was the only political donation he made to a federal campaign last year, according to records at the Federal Election Commission.

* $3.5 million in taxpayer money to SuperPower, Incorporated, a Schenectady subsidiary of Latham-based Intermagnetics General Corporation SuperPower's president, Philip Pellegrino, gave $3,000 last year to a political action committee operated by Intermagnetics that, in turn, gave $2,000 to Mrs. Clinton this year; $1,000 to Mr. Murtha; and $1,000 to Mr. Stevens.

* $2 million in taxpayer money to Plug Power, Incorporated, a Latham developer of fuel cell technology for redundant power supplies. The company's president, Roger Saillant, has given $2,000 to the Friends of Hillary committee over the past two years, and $3,000 to the Friends of Schumer committee over the past four.

Earmarking funds forces the DoD to spend their money specifically on these resources instead of other pressing issues -- such as logistics and supplies to Iraq and perhaps protecting New York from another terrorist attack. Porkbusting has focused on this tactic recently, but in light of the screeching over Stevens' bid to attach ANWR, this string of sellouts to contributors appears unbelievably hypocritical on Schumer and Clinton's parts.

Since Schumer had such a problem with Stevens' approach, the two Senators should explain each of these items in detail to help us understand how this improves American defense and makes our men and women fighting abroad any safer. That, after all, was the heart of the anti-ANWR wailing last week -- that the DoD budget was somehow sacrosanct and should be above political machinations. Instead, we find out that the New York Congressional contingent finds it a perfect vehicle to pay off their major backers for the cash contributions they made.

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 an investigating magistrate that unidentified Greek and British men forced their way into their homes in four Athens suburbs after the bombings.

They were allegedly blindfolded and driven to unknown destinations. They claimed to have been questioned about friends and relatives in Britain, and about the persons they had phoned.

The men later got dumped in the middle of Athens, blindfolded, after British and Greek intelligence apparently satisfied themselves that the Pakistanis had nothing to do with the bombings. The unnamed diplomat would be the second MI-6 operative unmasked in recent weeks as the various competing intelligence services in Europe have apparently engaged in a series of outings to embarrass each other and to force the evacuation of rivals from the Balkans. Although the Telegraph doesn't name the countries involved in these spy games, the only other power interested in the Balkans would probably be the Russians.

If the Russians have anything to do with this story getting out, one has to question what Vladimir Putin can be thinking. The Islamist threat in the Caucasus hasn't gone away, and yet he's been playing footsie with Iran and probably interfering with the West in the Balkans on behalf of the Serbs. The only "strategy" possible to discern in these activities is that Putin only demonstrates reliability towards opposition to the West, even at the risk of what looks like long-term Russian interests.

It seems strange, but then almost everything done by Putin over the past few years has been increasingly strange. He appears obsessed with returning Russia to the status enjoyed by the Soviet Union, but without learning any of the lessons of its collapse. Russia could unleash an economic wave by cleaning up its markets and providing adequate protection for free enterprise, but instead Putin has nationalized industries and undermined the stability of private property. In a moment in history when Russia could finally stand up and play a positive role in the unleashing of human potential, he has taken the nation back to its worst Tsarist impulses.

In the meantime, the British and the Greek intelligence services will have to deal with the embarrassment of the Pakistani kidnappings, and wonder what role their erstwhile Russian allies have played in this debacle.

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 why they haven't taken the economically painful steps it prescribes for themselves. The US Senate foresaw the problems, both economic and strategic, and unanimously told then-President Bill Clinton not to bother even presenting it to them for ratification, 95-0. Not only did the limitations promise significant recessions in the future, but Kyoto specifically exempted two major economic powerhouses under the guise of empowering industrial development. One of these nations, India, needs the assistance, but the second -- China -- not only doesn't need help but will start to challenge the US for military supremacy in the Pacific Rim. American security has allowed the Asian nations to rise up as a formidable economic force after spending most of the 20th century in poverty. And China accounts for almost as much greenhouse-gas emission as all of Europe.

Kyoto would handcuff the US while allowing China an unfettered path to sconomic and political domination of the region, the latter being especially unacceptable given China's autocratic one-party regime. Europe, of course, could hardly care less about Chinese expansionism; they care more about reflexive anti-Americanism. The entire raison d'etre of the EU has always been to provide a global economy to rival the US, and Kyoto gives them an opportunity to slow us down. And just as with their debt controls, the EU contingent has no problem breaking treaty mandates on emissions as long as they feel it necessary to do so to remain competitive, making the agreement worthless anyway.

Kyoto represents nothing more than the rhetorical equivalent of the very subject of the treaty -- hot gas with almost no substance at all.

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 the federal vote race in Ontario has tightened (40% Liberals vs. 38% Conservatives), if a vote were held tomorrow, a Conservative led minority government would be the probable outcome.

The Liberals have what Ipsos refers to as "negative momentum", while the Tories have a slight positive momentum. Canadian voters have also decided that Stephen Harper and the Tories have improved significantly more than Paul Martin and the Liberals -- 31-18 nationally, but more ominously for the Liberals, 35-18 in Ontario. It spells disaster for the current Prime Minister. If he cannot hold a significant majority of seats in Ontario, then he will lose the entire election. Expect the Liberals to unleash heavy negative advertising starting as early as today in order to blunt the momentum that Harper has picked up in Ontario.

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 odor which is poisonous in large quantities.

Sixty-six people went to the hospital after the attacks, which the Russians seem very intent on calling anything but terrorism. Their explanation now states that the attack comes from competition between Makisdom and rival shops in the same market as their handyman business. In other words, think Macys vs. Gimbels -- if Macy's was run by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Gimbels by Carlos the Jackal.

This explanation reflects a ludicrous level of denial. Of course these attacks constitute terrorism; they're designed to inflict fear on civilians for a specific effect, even if the Russians have correctly identified the perpetrators and their motivations, which sounds doubtful in the extreme to me. If the Russians have reached the correct conclusion, the shoppers won't simply switch to Makisdom's rivals -- they will shop far away or not at all in the future.

This operation looks pretty darned expensive in materials, time, and expertise. If Russian shopkeepers have this kind of access to terrorist technology, just think what the political and Islamist terrorists can access there.

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 removed by me.

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 commander in downtown Bethlehem. "We did not expect this big a turnout of people, especially in light of the rain and cold. It was very exceptional and very orderly."

Peace has to start somewhere. Can it be too much to hope that it can start in Bethlehem, even it consists now of serial truces? It gives us a goal for our prayers today, anyway.

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 of Christ.

Six out of 10 believe in the devil and the existence of hell.

The Times notes a "partisan divide", with a twelve-point difference between Republicans and Democrats on the existence of God. However, the figures run 93 percent for the GOP and 81 percent for the Democrats -- so rather than God being a partisan trophy, it appears that both sides overwhelmingly believe in one monotheistic God. In fact, the Times says that the Democrats edge Republicans in their belief in miracles -- which finally explains the John Kerry nomination last year. Sixty-seven percent of Republicans believe that the Devil and hell exist, while 61 percent of Democrats agree. (The only difference is that two-thirds of them believe that George W Bush is the Devil and that Suburbia is Hell.)

More women than men believe in ghosts, while more men than women believe in UFOs. This proves that men will believe almost anything if it comes with really great gadgetry.

When reached for comment, the Golden Calf reminded us that "God always polls well at his peaks -- his birthday and April 15th. I expect to do better at my traditional height, which is the the couple of weeks between Spring Break and the Oscars." He did express disappointment that Billy Crystal and Chris Rock won't be hosting the latter.

God, as always, could not be reached for direct comment, but various spokespeople noticed a decided rise in attendance at His celebrations this week to underscore the polling numbers. They assure us that God keeps a close eye on His metrics and delights when His supporters come to celebrate with Him. They also extended His appreciation for all the best wishes and thoughts He receives this time of year and hopes -- as always -- that His friends stay in touch all year round.