One More Year And He Gets A Gold Watch

The UN will celebrate an important and singular milestone tomorrow. Its International Criminal Tribunal will mark the fourth anniversary of the start of the Slobodan Milosevic trial. The unique aspect of this anniversary comes from the fact that the trial is still underway:

The war crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic enters its fifth tedious year Sunday, and though international interest in the tribunal has waned, it has proved a useful tool in educating Serbs. ...

Milosevic is charged with genocide and crimes against humanity in last decade's bloody Balkans conflict, and for four years, he has dragged out judicial proceedings with his political grandstanding and health-related absences.

The U.N. Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 1993, and Milosevic was charged with 66 counts involving war crimes during the Balkan wars.

The prosecution has 293 witnesses testifying to Milosevic's war crimes and genocide, but the real timewaster has been Milosevic himself. He has avoided appearing in court, wasting 66 trial days in four years with health-related complaints. He has represented himself in court and has engaged in obstructive tactics designed to drag the trial out long enough to either outlive the witnesses or whatever interest his crimes evince.

However, a four-year trial with no end in sight has to be some kind of record. Milosevic's sick days cannot account for all of the delay. In order to get that strung out, one has to find incompetent prosecution and ineffective courtroom management from the judges. It also requires that the certifying agency give no useful direction or oversight to the court itself. Once again, the UN shows itself as a monumental waste of time and effort, and not for the first time nothing more than a stage on which the criminals and monsters of the world can manipulate nations that are too afraid to take positive action to put an end to their antics.

We'll see you around in a year, when Milosevic will gain an extra week of vacation and full vesting of the retirement benefits from his tenure at the trial.

NARN Podcast: La Shawn Barber

I have a fresh podcast of our interview with La Shawn Barber from CPAC here. Her cell connection was a bit troublesome, but it was a fun interview. We'll have La Shawn back on the show sometime soon!

Carter Spied, And Then He Lied

Despite former President Jimmy Carter's pointed jabs at the Bush administration over the NSA surveillance program this past week, it turns out that Carter has more familiarity with warrantless eavesdropping than he let on. Today's Washington Times reports that Carter and his Attorney General authorized warrantless electronic surveillance on two suspected espionage agents, one of whom was an American citizen:

Former President Jimmy Carter, who publicly rebuked President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program this week during the funeral of Coretta Scott King and at a campaign event, used similar surveillance against suspected spies.

"Under the Bush administration, there's been a disgraceful and illegal decision -- we're not going to the let the judges or the Congress or anyone else know that we're spying on the American people," Mr. Carter said Monday in Nevada when his son Jack announced his Senate campaign. ...

But in 1977, Mr. Carter and his attorney general, Griffin B. Bell, authorized warrantless electronic surveillance used in the conviction of two men for spying on behalf of Vietnam.

The men, Truong Dinh Hung and Ronald Louis Humphrey, challenged their espionage convictions to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which unanimously ruled that the warrantless searches did not violate the men's rights.

In its opinion, the court said the executive branch has the "inherent authority" to wiretap enemies such as terror plotters and is excused from obtaining warrants when surveillance is "conducted 'primarily' for foreign intelligence reasons."

Not only does Jimmy Carter betray his hypocrisy here, but his Attorney General told Congress when it debated the FISA law in 1978 that FISA would not impede the president from exercising precisely this power under the Constitution. The Times also notes that Jamie Gorelick said much the same thing in 1994. In any case, the appellate court certainly agreed with both Bell and Carter in 1980, even after passage of FISA the year after the surveillance took place.

Keep in mind that this surveillance took place to fight a simple espionage case, not to defend the country against an enemy that has already attacked American assets on numerous occasions and killed 3,000 civilians in one attack on American soil. Carter did not get an authorization for the use of military force against Viet Nam -- can you imagine him asking for one? -- and yet still claimed Constitutional authority for warrantless surveillance on Ronald Humphrey, an American citizen. And the courts agreed with Carter.

That gives a very strong precedent for Bush's argument that both Article II and the AUMF against Al-Qaeda gives him the authority to surveil international communications that may involve American residents without a warrant. It certainly has more common-sense standing than the case against Truong and Humphrey, which the 4th Circuit upheld and for which the Supreme Court denied cert, giving it the authority of precedent. It also shows what a complete hypocrite Carter has become in his bitter pursuit to damage George Bush in any way possible.

I wonder where all the Democrats who hailed stare decisis during the Alito and Roberts confirmation hearings have gone. My guess is that we won't hear from them about this precedent. (via The Anchoress)

UPDATE: Power Line noted this case earlier in its argument for the NSA program. It's good to have sharp lawyers on your side.

Northern Alliance Radio Network Today

The Northern Alliance Radio Network will be on the air today between 11 am and 3 pm Central time on our local radio station, AM 1280 The Patriot. The first two hours feature Brian "St. Paul" Ward and Chad "The Elder" Doughty from Fraters Libertas and John Hinderaker from Power Line, who will interview our guest, author John McWhorter, at noon. McWhorter will be discussing his new book, Winning the Race : Beyond the Crisis in Black America, with the crew.

Starting at 1 pm, we switch to Mitch Berg from Shot in the Dark, King Banaian from SCSU Scholars, and myself, as we discuss the week's news and blog eruptions. You can join us on our Internet stream from The Patriot's website, and call in to give us your perspective at 651-289-4488. We also take comments on our e-mail, comments@northernallianceradio.com, and frequently read the best of our e-mail on air.

Join the fun at the NARN today!

UPDATE: La Shawn Barber will join us shortly to talk about CPAC -- tune in now!

UPDATE II: Hope you caught La Shawn's segment. We had a blast with her. I'll podcast the segment later tonight!

Rising From The Dead

The Patriot Act appears headed for an easy renewal after the White House and Senate Republicans reached a compromise on a few minor tweaks to aasuage civil-liberties concerns. House Speaker Denny Hastert signaled that the House would back the new version, and even the man who bragged that he'd killed the law said he'd now vote for it:

Legislation to renew the anti-terror Patriot Act was cleared for final congressional passage Friday when House Speaker Dennis Hastert blessed a day-old compromise between the White House and Senate Republicans.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid also indicated he will vote for the bill when it comes to a vote, possibly next week.

The legislation gives federal agents expanded powers to investigate suspected terrorists in the United States, and the Bush administration has said it is one of the key weapons in the war on terror. ...

The changes, worked out over several weeks of talks, specifically with the office of White House counsel Harriet Miers, covered three main areas:

* Under the first, recipients of court-approved subpoenas for information in terrorist investigations would have the right to challenge a requirement that they refrain from telling anyone.

* The second removes a requirement that an individual provide the FBI with the name of an attorney consulted about a National Security Letter, which is a demand for records issued by administrators.

* The third clarifies that most libraries are not subject to National Security Letter demands for information about suspected terrorists.

Reid and California Senator Dianne Feinstein both indicated that they would now vote for this bill, a far cry from two months ago when the Minority Leader crowed to the press about his role in killing the extension. He tried to explain himself away in a Fox News appearance shortly afterward as nothing more than an attempt to extend the debate and blamed the administration for not agreeing to a three-month extension. But that doesn't undo the image of Reid grinning from ear to ear, taking credit for "killing" legislation that most Americans support as a key component of our national defense. It's the same tin-eared approach that Reid has used on judicial confirmations, and all it does is point out how out of touch Reid and the Democratic leadership has become with the American people.

Now with these minor changes, Reid meekly declares his support -- but the obstructionism that he fostered on national defense still lives on. Presidential candidate Russ Feingold of Wisconsin has declared himself opposed to the compromise and wants to filibuster the Patriot Act again. He may garner a significant amount of his caucus to support him, although with Reid and Feinstein already pledged to support the bill, the filibuster has little chance of success. It will, however, once more solidify the image of Democrats as completely irresponsible demogagues on national security.

The Quagmire Continues

The Kosovars elected a new, more moderate president to continue its efforts to free the enclave from the Serbians, despite being stuck in a limbo status since Western intervention in 1999. Fatmir Sejdiu proclaimed Kosovo's independence "non-negotiable", while the Serbs responded that any proclamation of independence would result in an effort by Belgrade to liberate the province from foreign occupation:

President Fatmir Sejdiu told The Associated Press Friday that he would not abandon the ethnic Albanian majority's push for independence from Serbia. But he pledged in his acceptance speech to make Kosovo a state that guarantees minority rights and is "at peace with itself and its neighbors."

"Kosovo's independence is non-negotiable," Sejdiu said in an interview at his modest house in Pristina. "For us it is very important that this road to independence is a quick one," he said. ...

Tomislav Nikolic, leader of the extreme nationalist Serbian Radical Party, said no politician in Serbia would accept Kosovo independence.

"If someone declares an independent Kosovo ... we will declare that an occupation and use all means to revoke that state of occupation," Nikolic said.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and President Boris Tadic also have rejected independence for Kosovo.

Kosovo has not progressed an iota since US and European troops occupied the province to stop the Serbs and Kosovars from killing each other. The intervention occurred without any plan for a political solution to the centuries-old dispute; it developed from the earlier NATO involvement in Balkan politics. NATO gave responsibility for the resolution of the Kosovo situation to the UN almost immediately, which has done absolutely nothing to create any kind of plan or proposal for a peaceful resolution to the standoff. In fact, the UN announced four months ago that it planned on scheduling talks to finally resolve the problem.

Four months ago. After six years. And they finally scheduled the talks for February 20th in Vienna. In all that time, we still have the same problem we did when we first intervened: ethnic Albanians in Kosovo want their independence, and the Serbs refuse to allow it.

I'm tempted to ask what the UN has been doing for almost seven years in Kosovo, but Claudia Rosett probably has more of those answers than we care to know. This is just another chapter in the ongoing incompetence of the UN to actually move from a status quo to real resolutions in disputes. It its way, the UN offered Kosovo no more than a hudna, but in this case a truce in which both sides could gather their strength for a future conflict. Contrast this with Iraq and Afghanistan, where despite ongoing violence, both nations have created democratic governments and appear well on their way towards standing on their own without a form of martial law being imposed indefinitely by the UN.

And some people wonder why we believe the UN is useless, and in some cases even worse than that, as Congolese women and girls could explain at length.

Russia Offers Talks With Hamas

Vladimir Putin broke with most Western nations by inviting Hamas to the Kremlin for talks after their election. Despite the united front that most nations had taken on insisting that Hamas recognize Israel's existence and forswear terrorism before gaining any diplomatic standing, the Russians have decided to invite the Islamists to Red Square for talks. Now France has endorsed the Russian initiative, leaving the US and other European nations surprised:

France on Friday endorsed Russia's decision to hold talks on the Middle East conflict with Hamas, the radical Islamist Palestinian group, saying the discussion "can contribute to advancing our positions."

Other European countries distanced themselves from the French statement, which appeared to be in defiance of the American and European view that Hamas is a terrorist organization and therefore should not be officially recognized. Israel condemned it. ...

The United States considers Hamas a terrorist group, and American officials are forbidden to talk to the organization. The European Union's policy on talks is not as clear, several officials and diplomats said in interviews. But none said their countries would talk with Hamas.

Just when Hamas had really been stuck in a corner, forced by Fatah to form a government on its own and faced with economic disaster for its terrorist policies, Russia rides in to extend its gamesmanship in Southwest Asia. Israel erupted with an anger infrequently seen in diplomatic circles, calling the Russian initiative a "knife in the back." Israel has been forced into a long war with Hamas, which it (rightly) sees as an Iranian/Syrian proxy in the territories, and has endured countless attacks on civilian targets by the so-called "political" party. For Israel, the election of Hamas into power by the Palestinian people provided a rare moment of clarity for the world to recognize that the Palestinians are not prepared to accept a peaceful settlement in the region.

Instead of pressuring the Palestinians on the basis of their electoral choices, Russia decided to once again let them off the hook and deal directly with the terrorists they elected. And France, who should know better after the season of rioting they endured, has followed suit and encouraged the diplomacy. It violates one of the more trumpeted and lately most-violated tenets of the West: no negotiations with terrorists. And it will have its usual effect, which is to pump up the standing of the terrorists in Hamas and extend the war rather than bring it to an end.

Western nations need to rethink their entire approach to the Palestinians. They had several opportunities to get a two-state solution in the 1990s, starting with Oslo and ending at Wye. Bill Clinton, in one of his better moments, hammered out a deal for them that no one else could have extracted from the Israelis, and all it took was a signature from Yasser Arafat. He answered with an intifada that took thousands of lives.

Some argued that the PLO had a death grip on power and that the average Palestinian just wanted peace. After Arafat's death, Mahmoud Abbas tried working towards that end, either honestly or as a pretext, but even the pretext inflamed Palestinians. Hamas and Islamic Jihad continued their attacks on civilian targets while Israel received nothing but criticism for building a defensive wall to keep the terrorists from blowing up women and children on buses and in pizzerias. Now, after ten years, the Palestinians finally had a moderately fair election -- and they overwhelmingly elected terrorists to power.

When does the world finally listen to what the Palestinians say through their actions and their votes? They do not want peace; they want a war of annihilation, and they elected the party most likely to deliver it. It's time to quit engaging the Palestinians and let Israel give them the war they so desperately want. After four decades of trying to solve their problem, the world owes nothing to the Palestinians. Let them lie in the bed they have made.

Thinking Dynamically In DC

Imagine that the federal government almost never took into account the market reactions to the economic and tax policies it proposed. Instead of calculating the changes to behavior due to the regulatory changes, imagine that Washington based its presumptions of revenue and economic impact on the notion that people would never change their habits to meet the new environment. Politicians might make those presumptions of change, but the bureaucracy responsible for analyzing the effects of the change never took them into account.

If you can imagine that, then you've just identified the way DC has conducted economic analysis -- until now. William Beach at the Heritage Foundation points out that the new Bush budget proposal contains funding for a new office in the Treasury for what the government calls "dynamic analysis", or what Beach calls "economics":

So why is this news? Hasn’t the government been studying the effects of tax policy on the economy all along? Aren’t Washington policymakers routinely advised about how tax changes will affect jobs and output and how those, in turn, will affect government revenues?

Surprisingly, the answer is often no. Until very recently, no official Washington agency produced estimates of the economic and tax-revenue effects of proposed tax policies. ...

Dynamic scoring might not prevent bad tax policy from becoming law, but it would help. Furthermore, reporting the economic consequences of tax proposals will be enormously helpful in redesigning the tax system. The President has called for fundamental tax reform, and he and Congress will find fundamental reform a much easier exercise if routine and sophisticated dynamic scoring is in place when that task is tackled.

Meaningful tax reform cannot take place unless people understand the true consequences of the policies they propose in relation to the policies they would replace. It's amazing that Treasury didn't have anyone responsible for this kind of analysis in the past, but at least the Bush administration recognizes its significance now. Instead of sitting around and inagining what tax incentives, increases, and cuts might do to the economy -- in other words, pulling numbers out of thin air -- Treasury will have solid analysis to help develop positive economic policy in the future.

Sounds like progress to me!

Schumer Gasses On Gas

CQ's unofficial lawyer in New York, Eric Costello, tells us that Senator Chuck Schumer became incensed earlier this week when reviewing Homeland Security funding. According to the New York Post on February 7th, Schumer railed about the amount of funding that went to the US Virgin Islands. He pointed out that the DHS expenditure for the USVI came to $29 million since 2001, infuriating the Empire State's senior Senator:

Sen. Charles Schumer blasted Homeland Security officials yesterday for sending millions in federal funds to fortify the idyllic U.S. Virgin Islands against a terror attack.

The Post reported yesterday that the feds have doled out $29 million in the last four years to secure the island paradise - spending $42 for each territorial resident, or almost three times the $15 per New Yorker.

"It is just incredible that the Virgin Islands would get more money than New York," said Schumer.

"I have not read once that the Virgin Islands has security threats. It just shows the mindset of throwing the money up in the air and seeing where it falls down."

It seems a bit strange to explain math to one of the people responsible for the federal budget -- well, maybe not -- but if the DHS spent $15 per New Yorker, it comes to a hell of a lot more money than $29 million. If Schumer just refers to residents of the Big Apple, that would come to $120 million, more than four times what was spent on the Virgin Islands. More likely Schumer meant residents of his state, which would push that total to $285 million. Both figures come to far more than what DHS spent on the Virgin Islands.

And if Schumer doesn't know of any security issues on the Caribbean island group, that only proves that he hasn't a clue about the Virgin Islands. On the island of St. Croix sits a state-of-the-art oil refinery that produces a significant amount of the fuel used on the Atlantic seaboard, apparently including New York. It refines up to 495,000 barrels of oil a day from all over the world, but primarily from Venezuela, which has an ownership stake in Hovensa. Since the US refines 16 million barrels a day, this comes to 3% of the daily oil refinery capacity of our country ... which makes it a key strategic asset for the United States.

Normally, we'd expect a Senator to understand this before shooting his mouth off. Instead, he reveals himself as nothing more than a home-state porker unhappy that national-security interests keep federal funding from stoking his re-election credentials.

UPDATE: The refinery is on the island of St. Croix, not St. Thomas, as a couple of e-mailers have noted. I've edited the post to make the correction.

I have to respond to the ridiculous notion that Eric and I have somehow revealed a secret to terrorists with this post. As Eric says in his comment, this information is readily available on the internet. It's also well known to Virgin Island residents, anyone who has any knowledge of refinery issues in the US, and one might hope Congress as well. Chuck Schumer might have thought to do some research on the specific security risks involved in the Virgin Islands before publicly proclaiming his ignorance of both security issues and simple mathematics.

Bush Caught At Being Honest

A story hot off the presses at the AP involves President Bush's appearance at a Republican conference of Congressmen earlier today. Unbeknownst to Bush, the microphones used by the press earlier remained on when he began to address the conference in its closed session. Sounds like a reporter's dream come true? It must have seemed that way when he began talking about the NSA surveillance program after asking the attendees to keep the remarks to themselves.

So what secrets did Bush tell them about the wiretaps? Let's just say it shocked the press:

The eavesdropping tables were turned on President Bush on Friday. The president apparently believed he was speaking privately when he talked about listening in without a warrant on domestic communications with suspected al-Qaida terrorists overseas. But reporters were the ones doing the listening in this time.

The incident happened at a House Republican retreat. After six minutes of public remarks by the president, reporters were ushered out. "I support the free press, let's just get them out of the room," Bush said, intending to speak behind closed doors with fellow Republicans and take lawmakers' questions.

When reporters left, Bush spoke about the National Security Agency program that he authorized four years ago and which has drawn criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.

However, the microphones stayed on for a few minutes. That allowed journalists back at the White House to eavesdrop on Bush's defense of the eavesdropping. His private statements were basically no different from what he's said in public.

Wow ... what a shock! The press had a golden opportunity to nail Bush -- but they discovered that he tells the same story behind closed doors that he tells the American public. They discovered that the GOP has no great conspiracy ... just a President trying his best to defend his country from terrorist attacks.

Bet this doesn't make the front page tomorrow.

Freedom's Just Another Word At Yahoo!

Internet giant Yahoo! joins Microsoft and Google in bending to the Chinese autocracy, only this time they helped jail an activist for freedom in the nominally Communist nation. The London Times reports that Yahoo! coughed up records used to send a dissident to prison for ten years:

THE American internet company Yahoo! provided evidence to Chinese police that enabled them to imprison one of its users, according to allegations that came to light yesterday.

The disclosure marked the second time in months that the company had been accused of helping China to put someone in jail. Li Zhi, a civil servant, was imprisoned on charges of trying to subvert state power after he criticised corruption and tried to join the dissident China Democracy Party. ...

Yahoo! said that it could not comment on an individual case. However, it said that it turned over to governments only legally required information. Mary Osako, at Yahoo! headquarters in California, said: “We would not know whether a demand for information focused on murder, kidnapping or another crime.” She added that Yahoo! regarded the internet as a positive force in China.

The journalist Shi Tao may not agree. He was jailed for ten years last year on charges of leaking state secrets after Yahoo! supplied Chinese police with his user identification.

Julien Pain, an internet expert with the Paris-based Reporters without Borders, believes that the revelation that Yahoo! had co-operated in two cases could be the tip of an iceberg. He said: “The problem is how many (cases) do we not know about? Probably dozens, given how hard it is to get information from China. Yahoo! should release a list of people they helped to jail.”

What, besides the temptation of the cash, causes American ventures to cave to Chinese demands in curtailing free speech and free expression? These companies made their billions here taking advantage of the capitalist system of free enterprise, and their success should be applauded. However, now that they have cornered the Western markets on their slices of the Internet, they've turned themselves into tools -- in every sense of the word -- for dictators to enforce the antitheses of the freedoms that allowed them to exist in the first place.

Have these corporate managers no shame at all? Do they feel proud of their success in China, knowing it comes at the expense of courageous people like Li Zhi and Shi Tao, among others about which we have not yet heard? How long will these companies and their major stockholders continue to sell out freedom and its foot soldiers in order to kiss up to the Chinese government?

Janis Joplin once sang, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." It appears that attitude has infected the Internet giants, who value the blood money they get from helping to oppress the Chinese people than the freedom that gave them the opportunity to exist. Shame, shame, shame.

UPDATE: Bruce Kesler at Democracy Project has more thoughts on this -- he's been covering the Chinese front of the Internet for some time. Be sure to scroll through his many posts.

Some Tories Criticize Emerson's Switch

It didn't take long for Stephen Harper to generate controversy in his new role as Prime Minister. As noted earlier here, Harper offered a ministerial post to Liberal David Emerson, and he switched parties to take the international trade portfolio. Having just won re-election in his riding as a Liberal, however, several members of that party and the NDP objected. Now some Tories have joined them:

International Trade Minister David Emerson is under increasing pressure from some of his new Conservative colleagues to resign and run in a federal by-election.

Several Tory MPs publicly criticized his defection from the Liberal Party and appointment to Stephen Harper's cabinet as they took part in orientation meetings yesterday on Parliament Hill. ...

The most vocal critic among the Conservative MPs yesterday was Garth Turner, from Halton, Ont., who said the public was justified in being concerned about the controversial appointments of Mr. Emerson and Michel Fortier, the unelected party organizer who will be a Quebec senator and Public Works Minister.

"My own view would be I think a by-election would be a great idea," Mr. Turner told reporters when asked about Mr. Emerson. "This kind of thing actually grates a lot of people the wrong way."

Garth Turner, as it turns out, has his own blog -- and he's not shy about sharing the fallout of his remarks. He doesn't regret them, but he acknowledges that they came at a cost.

Americans probably won't relate to the outrage that Turner and others feel. We don't require people to change parties when they get Cabinet-level appointments. Bill Bennett was still a Democrat when Reagan picked him to be Secretary of Education, according to Bennett on his show. Bill Clinton picked a Republican to be Secretary of Defense for the last term of office (William Cohen). Usually such appointments are made to offer an olive branch to the opposition and to garner bipartisan support for key portions of the agenda.

At least one can understand the reaction of the Tories, who got bypassed for a ministerial position in favor of Emerson. It seems rather striking that so much controversy would arise on behalf of other MPs from a cross-partisan appointment at the beginning of the term. Harper doesn't need to count seats and the motivations would appear more straightforward than with Belinda Stronach's stroll across the aisle that rescued the Martin government -- for a few more months. Martin had much more to gain by inducing Stronach to cross over, and the ministerial position appeared to be much more of a bribe for Martin's personal sake than with Emerson -- but the NDP and the Liberals choose now to become outraged by this behavior.

The sauce, in Liberal/NDP circles, is not as tasty for the gander as it was with the goose, I suppose.

Kinsley's Not Surrendering (Update: Neither Is Krauthammer)

Michael Kinsley at the Washington Post understands the stakes involved in the controversy surrounding the Prophet cartoons. He points out the spectacular flop of a cartoon depicting Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler circulated by European Muslims as a tit-for-tat response to their outrage over the Jyllands-Posten editorial cartoons, and argues that the Muslims aren't demanding equality in any case:

Meanwhile, whatever point these European Muslims were making with their cartoon of Hitler and Anne Frank is more or less disproved by their very exercise. No one tried to stop them from putting the cartoon on the Web. The notion that jokes about Frank are beyond the pale is provably false. ...

By contrast, in a spectacular exercise of self-censorship, almost every major newspaper in this country is refraining from publishing the controversial Danish cartoons, even though they are at the center of a major news story that these papers cover at length every day. An editorial in the Times on Wednesday said that not publishing the cartoons was "a reasonable choice" because they would offend many people and "are so easy to describe in words." ...

Of course it is not Western values that are trampling freedom of expression, it is the ayatollah's own values, combined with the threat of violence. The other problem with his little joke about double standards, and with the whole, supposedly mordant, comparison between denying the Holocaust and portraying the prophet is that the offended Muslims do not want a world where people are free to do both. They don't even want a world where people are not free to do either, which would at least be consistent. They want a world where you may not portray Muhammad (even flatteringly, slaying infidels or whatnot), but you may deny the Holocaust all day long.

Freedom of speech necessarily means that people will be offended by its exercise. It makes no sense to guarantee free speech and then demand "voluntary" speech codes designed to take all of the potentially offensive speech out of the marketplace of ideas. Under those circumstances, what freedom does anyone have left? Those who want to exercise speech now have to meet everyone's threshold of offense, which in a global community means 6.5 billion standards.

Of course, what we're talking about here isn't refraining from offending everyone, anyway -- we're just talking about meeting the threshold of a group of people based on their capacity for violence. After all, as Kinsley points out, the Muslims themselves have routinely printed the most foul accusations and cartoons about Jews, Christians, and Westerners in general, and they're not proposing to stop. All they're demanding is that we don't offend them, and they're killing people in order to make their point.

Offering respect and restraint in response to violence isn't an act of "maturity" or responsibility, as some argue; it's a surrender, and more dangerously, it's an invitation for the violence to spread. After all, when people see that the way to earn "respect" from the West and its media is to commit violence and riot in large numbers, that behavior will begin to repeat itself. That is exactly the reason we don't negotiate with terrorists of any stripe -- and this is no different.

If newspapers print offensive opinions, let the offended protest, boycott, and use free speech to counter with their own opinions. Those actions are a proper exercise in a free society. When the free societies start giving up their right to speak out because of violence, they give up their freedom and tacitly endorse the rule of the bullet and the bomb. In the end, we will all wind up as dhimmis if we allow that to happen.

UPDATE: It's not often when Michael Kinsley and Charles Krauthammer agree on a topic, especially on the same day -- but on this topic they are united:

What passes for moderation in the Islamic community -- "I share your rage but don't torch that embassy" -- is nothing of the sort. It is simply a cynical way to endorse the goals of the mob without endorsing its means. It is fraudulent because, while pretending to uphold the principle of religious sensitivity, it is interested only in this instance of religious insensitivity.

Have any of these "moderates" ever protested the grotesque caricatures of Christians and, most especially, Jews that are broadcast throughout the Middle East on a daily basis? The sermons on Palestinian TV that refer to Jews as the sons of pigs and monkeys? The Syrian prime-time TV series that shows rabbis slaughtering a gentile boy to ritually consume his blood? The 41-part (!) series on Egyptian TV based on that anti-Semitic czarist forgery (and inspiration of the Nazis), "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," showing the Jews to be engaged in a century-old conspiracy to control the world?

A true Muslim moderate is one who protests desecrations of all faiths. Those who don't are not moderates but hypocrites, opportunists and agents for the rioters, merely using different means to advance the same goal: to impose upon the West, with its traditions of freedom of speech, a set of taboos that is exclusive to the Islamic faith. These are not defenders of religion but Muslim supremacists trying to force their dictates upon the liberal West.

We have a choice in this instance - we either will declare that we will be ruled by fear or remain free, a freedom we offer all people regardless of their religion or ethnicity.

Surrendering To The Enemy

The Telegraph reports that the EU may not have the stomach to stand up for free speech, despite the best efforts of several newspapers on the Continent. Ironically, the EU commissioner for justice, freedom, and security wants European news organizations to adopt a voluntary pledge of censorship to send a message of sensitivity to Muslim concerns:

Franco Frattini, the European Union commissioner for justice, freedom and security, revealed the idea for a code of conduct in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. Mr Frattini, a former Italian foreign minister, said the EU faced the "very real problem" of trying to reconcile "two fundamental freedoms, the freedom of expression and the freedom of religion".

Millions of European Muslims felt "humiliated" by the publication of cartoons of Mohammed, he added, calling on journalists and media chiefs to accept that "the exercising of a right is always the assumption of a responsibility". He appealed to European media to agree to "self-regulate".

Accepting such self-regulation would send an important political message to the Muslim world, Mr Frattini said.

Yes, it would indeed send an important political message to the Muslim world. That message would be "we surrender".

The papers can certainly be criticized for their editorial decisions. That is also an expression of free speech. However, demanding that European newspapers adopt some parallel to a Hays Code because Muslims cannot abide criticism without generating murderous mobs around the world only encourages more pressure later for further concessions to their sensitivities. One should expect more from a Western commissioner supposedly dedicated to justice, freedom, and security.

When Harry Met Jack

After weeks of harping on the emerging Jack Abramoff scandal as an example of the Republican "culture of corruption" and debating for the last day about the proximity to George Bush that Abramoff had, Democrats may find the investigation hits too close to home to continue celebrating. The AP reported earlier today that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid intervened on four separate occasions on behalf of Abramoff clients and that Reid coordinated on legislative efforts with the lobbyist's office:

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid wrote at least four letters helpful to Indian tribes represented by Jack Abramoff, and the senator's staff regularly had contact with the disgraced lobbyist's team about legislation affecting other clients.

The activities _ detailed in billing records and correspondence obtained by The Associated Press _ are far more extensive than previously disclosed. They occurred over three years as Reid collected nearly $68,000 in donations from Abramoff's firm, lobbying partners and clients. ...

Abramoff's records show his lobbying partners billed for nearly two dozen phone contacts or meetings with Reid's office in 2001 alone.

Most were to discuss Democratic legislation that would have applied the U.S. minimum wage to the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory and Abramoff client, but would have given the islands a temporary break on the wage rate, the billing records show.

Reid also intervened on government matters at least five times in ways helpful to Abramoff's tribal clients, once opposing legislation on the Senate floor and four times sending letters pressing the Bush administration on tribal issues. Reid collected donations around the time of each action.

This isn't the first time that Reid's connections to Abramoff have come up, but the AP has drawn much more clear lines between Reid and Abramoff than was known before. The AP also reminds its readers that Abramoff hired a former Reid staffer as one of its lobbyists, who promptly held fundraisers for Reid from the lobbyist's offices -- fact we noted seven months ago. Reid took over $40,000 from Abramoff clients for his enthusiastic bargaining on their behalf.

Again, without a doubt, Abramoff spent more money and effort on courting the GOP; after all, they are the party in power, and have been for a few years now. Democrats have made themselves look foolish by trying to convince people that the corruption only affected the GOP, though, and the revelations about their party leader will make that hypocrisy even more transparent.

Applebaum's Response

Yesterday I wrote a post criticizing Anne Applebaum's latest column in the Washington Post, which resulted in a series of e-mails between Anne and myself. I offered her an opportunity to respond to my criticism, and today she accepted. I've posted her entire rebuttal to my criticism (and Power Line's) below:

1. You and many others who selectively quoted from the column missed its two other points, which were criticisms of the State Department's initial, grovelling reaction to the cartoon fracas, as well as criticism of U.S. newspapers which are queasy about reprinting the cartoons but not queasy about printing images offensive to Christians in this country. The only reason I can see for quoting selectively is to be able to write something crass about the supposedly far-left Washington Post, whose editorial page might surprise you if you actually read all of it.

2. The Newsweek affair continues to bother me, because of the widespread assumption, perpetuated on the Right, that the magazine (with which I have no personal association) "lied" in order to smear American soldiers, and therefore deliberately endangered our troops. In fact, they repeated a story - about throwing a Koran in a toilet - which came from Guantanmo inmates, and erroneously claimed the story would be confirmed by an official investigation. That's very, very different from lying in a deliberate attempt to endanger Americans.

Besides, the real truth was more complicated. As I wrote at the time, official reports did actually confirm that U.S. interrogators used dogs, nudity, sexual advances and fake menstrual blood in attempts to offend Muslim prisoners. My point, in writing that, was to note that deliberately offending Muslims is a pretty stupid way to spread democracy in the Middle East - but then I also believe, having spent six years writing a book about Soviet concentration camps, that torture is not only immoral, but bound to produce bad information.

Nevertheless, I was then, and still am now, bombarded with email from people who felt it was anti-American to write such things, and who wanted the press to keep quiet about bad U.S. policies and stupid mistakes. You can read a version of this very argument on Powerline, which repeated it yesterday in another lopsided, selective criticism of my column. I quote:

And the Newsweek story was part of a media assault on the American armed forces. American newspapers, magazines and television networks, over a period of more than a year, relentlessly and falsely depicted American soldiers as sadistic thugs. The prime exhibit in this campaign was Abu Ghraib, the most over-hyped news story of modern times.

Yes, I call that an assault on press freedom. Should we have all kept quiet about Abu Ghraib? Would that have served our troops, our war on terrorism, our democracy?

3. Finally, the parallel between the Muslim's world's overreaction to this story and the Muslim world's overreactions to these cartoons is indisputable. In both cases, the original sources of controversy - a sentence in a magazine, a cartoon in a Danish newspaper - were blown up to a ludicrous degree by clerics and politicians who actually wanted to cause riots. (The Washington Post actually has a pretty good story about how this is being done, and in whose interests, today). But when Newsweek was the proximate cause, the parochial Right was mostly interested in using the incident to blame the "mainstream media," and for the most part completely missed the bigger story, which is the impact of global media on an extraordinarily volatile Muslim world. Now you get it - but you didn't then.

In my opinion, Applebaum still hasn't addressed the main part of my criticism, which was that she indicted the entire "right-wing blogosphere" by claiming that we all said that it was wrong for the media to investigate government malfeasance. (I quote: "Worse, much of the commentary implied that Newsweek was not only wrong to make a mistake (which it was) but also that the magazine was wrong to investigate the alleged misconduct of U.S. soldiers.") That was not our argument then, and it isn't our argument now. What we said was that Newsweek should have corroborated their single source before publishing that rumor, and that reprinting allegations by terrorist detainees of abuse without any corroborating evidence of their truth was highly irresponsible. It's a far cry from publishing these baseless allegations as fact -- and the basis of what turned out to be a non-existent pending report of proven misconduct -- and publishing editorial cartoons that express an opinion.

Applebaum did not provide a single example in her original column of this argument from the right-wing blogosphere, but just assumed that all of us issued the same opinions. She also assumed in her original column, as she does here, that all of us have the same opinion about the cartoons now, which is not true. Hugh Hewitt and others have argued that the cartoons were unnecessarily provocative and the editors should not be defended on the basis of free speech, but scolded for a lack of sensitivity to religious beliefs.

Where I went overboard, though was accusing Anne of rewriting history, which was too hyperbolic and -- given her work on the Soviet gulag system earlier -- particularly provocative, and I regret it. I still disagree with much of what Anne wrote in this column, but I thank her for engaging me and CQ readers in an honest and professional debate, and encourage everyone to show their support by making a point of reading her columns ... in their entirety, of course.

Hillary Meter Slipping To New Lows

Rasmussen reports that its polling shows support for a presidential run by Hillary Clinton at its lowest point in over a year. Only 27% would "definitely" vote for the former First Lady, while 43% have no intention of ever casting a vote for her:

Support for Hillary Clinton's Presidential bid has slipped over the past month to the lowest levels recorded in two dozen surveys over the past year.

Today, just 27% of Americans say they would definitely vote for the former first lady while 43% would definitely vote against. Still, 59% of Americans believe it is somewhat or very likely that she will be the Democrat's nominee in 2008.

Among Democrats, the number who would definitely vote for Clinton dropped 11 percentage points over the past two weeks.

Eleven points in two weeks is more than a statistical anomaly -- that's quite a meltdown. Hillary has had an eventful fortnight or so in politics, however. She not only publicly opposed the Alito nomination, but she also joined in the failed filibuster. She referred to Congress as a "plantation" run by mean Republicans. Her recent speeches on religion and abortion designed to position herself to the center apparently does not stand up to her more revealing actions and rhetoric elsewhere.

It also might reflect a decline in Democratic fortunes altogether. The party embarrassed itself in its zeal to smear Justice Alito and in the performance of the specific Senators who took part in their latest in a series of Judiciary psedo-lynchings. It also miscalculated terribly on the NSA intercept program, which not only once again painted them as soft on national defense but gave George Bush an opportunity to rebound from a polling collapse of his own. With Bush now at an improved 47% approval rating, the Democrats not only missed their opportunity but reinforced their image as weak and out of touch -- an image that most seriously affects their frontrunner for 2008.

Will Democrats learn? Perhaps; they've already abandoned their initial position on the NSA program. They will probably need a new front-runner to promote a badly-needed image change. They should start looking outside of the Northeast.

Stalemate On NSA Program Abating

The standoff between Congress and the White House has apparently started to slowly subside, as members in both houses assuage themselves by drafting new legislation to broaden Congressional oversight on the agency's actions. Meanwhile, a key Democrat admits that the program's reality did not match the hyperbole spouted by its opponents after a White House briefing yesterday:

Responding to congressional pressure from both parties, the White House agreed yesterday to give lawmakers more information about its domestic surveillance program, although the briefings remain highly classified and limited in scope.

Despite the administration's overture, several prominent Republicans said they will pursue legislation enabling Congress to conduct more aggressive oversight of the National Security Agency's warrantless monitoring of Americans' phone calls and e-mails. Recent disclosure of the four-year-old program has alarmed civil libertarians and divided the GOP, with many Republicans defending the operation and others calling for more information and regulation.

Yesterday, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and former NSA director Michael V. Hayden briefed the House intelligence committee, behind closed doors, for nearly four hours. The panel "was given some additional procedural information to provide a fuller understanding of how carefully tailored and monitored this program is," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

The Democrats, of course, initially wanted to hanh Bush from a yardarm over this program, but quickly ran into a problem: the White House had kept key Democratic leaders abreast of the program since its 2001 inception. They then wanted to get the public irate over what they kept calling "domestic spying," but eventually realized that the public thought it reasonable to check on international calls from suspected al-Qaeda terrorists during a war against them. Now they have settled for the most reasonable position yet -- that Congress should have some method of weighing the risk/benefit ratio of warrantless wiretaps, even in a time of war. It may still not meet the terms of the Constitution, but politically it's the most resonant message that Democrats can make.

The White House knows this, which is why they changed their position and decided to fully brief both Intelligence Committees in full, rather than just the leadership as they have done throughout the program. It has already paid dividends, although this hasn't received much attention from the media so far. The AP reported that the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Oversight Committee has publicly stated that the program doesn't represent the Big Brother nightmare that its critics have painted it:

At least one Democrat left saying he had a better understanding of legal and operational aspects of the anti-terrorist surveillance program. But he said he still had a number of questions.

"It's a different program than I was beginning to let myself believe," said Alabama Rep. Bud Cramer, the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee's oversight subcommittee.

Expect Congress to pass legislation, either through FISA or a new structure, that deals with the collection of intelligence in wartime. As long as impeachment talk stays off the table and Democrats continue exercising a more reasonable tone on the subject, then the White House may play along as long as possible without actually signing it. My prediction will be that in two months, people will have to dig through the archives to even recall why intelligence collection during wartime caused such a stink in the first place.

Fear Factor

My column in the Daily Standard appears today and discusses the differing treatment of Muslim and Christian outrage and the consequences they portend. Entitled "Fear Factor", it notes that the threat of violence encourages a certain "respect" from Western media that does not appear when non-violent groups protest the mocking of their religion:

The differing reactions of Muslims and Christians to perceived slights is worth examining. ...

THERE IS the curious website We Are Sorry, which appeared this week attempting to apologize on behalf of moderate Muslims for the violent response to the cartoons. The apology on the site not only sounds sincere, but gets to the heart of freedom of speech ... These are powerful words that would go a long way to healing the breach between the Muslims in the street and the Western world--if they truly represented the viewpoint of moderate Islam. Unfortunately, we cannot tell that, because the people behind We Are Sorry have remained anonymous. ...

In each of these cases, fear might well be the difference maker. Western artists can mock Christians with impunity, and so they do. Western new organizations don't self-censor when it comes to non-Muslim faithful because they are not afraid of violent repercussions. And in the West, differing religious factions feel free to make their cases in broad daylight, comfortable in the knowledge that those of the opposite view will not issue fatwas against them.

Speaking of the folks at We Are Sorry, they have expanded their repertoire to include some interesting dhimmitude on behalf of Danes. In a new section of links, the still-anonymous sponsors of the website now offer this apology from a similarly unnamed Dane:

Dear Muslim citizens in Denmark and the World

I wish to state the existence of another Denmark: A Denmark that wants to live in peace with the Muslim world. There is another Denmark, which hopes for and believes in respect and tolerance between religions and different groups of people. As a Dane I have no responsibility for what a single and privately owned Danish newspaper chooses to publish. Even so, I strongly condemn the actions of Jyllands-Posten that have offended muslims around the world, and I understand the need for an apology from the newspaper.

We all have a responsibility for treating each other, our religious faiths, and convictions with dignity and respect. By publishing the caricatures of Muhammad, the newspaper Jyllands-Posten failed their obligation to exercise with care and consideration the right of freedom of speech.

This ignores the fact that Jyllands-Posten already apologized for running the cartoons, but the sellout goes deeper than that. Nowhere does the mysterious Dane acknowledge that Islamic papers run much worse caricatures of Jews for their editorial cartoons, nor does he or she even address the fact that free speech has to include the right to offend. Also, if the newspaper is privately owned, an apology by someone with no connection to it is meaningless. It also demonstrates a cowardice among Westerners, an impulse that comes out when violence is threatened that makes bystanders all cower and point to the one person courageous enough to speak out against the bomb-throwers.

Also, one cannot imagine the establishment of mea culpa sites such as these if Danish newspapers ran editorial cartoons poking fun at the political efforts of fundamentalist Christians. Christian protests would be met either with editorial glee or, more likely, a rousing round of indifference. The only reason for web sites such as Another Denmark is because of the real threat of violence coming from Islamists and the millions of Muslims they've inspired.

This is the real Fear Factor. It's why the Western press won't even show the cartoons so that people can determine for themselves if they crossed over into tastelessness -- which, in my opinion, they did not. It's why bystanders like Another Denmark feel the need to point out that the offense came from only a few Danes working at a private enterprise. It's why everyone wants to show "respect" in this case instead of actually informing people and standing up for free speech.

UPDATE: The domain registration for Another Denmark is as anonymous as the one for We Are Sorry. However, it does have a name quoted at the top -- Claus Jacobsen.

Chaffee Stacks Up Better Than Laffey In General Election

New polling numbers have shown that Stephen Laffey, the Not One Dime candidate for the GOP nomination in Rhode Island's Senate race, does not do as well against expected Democratic competition as does Lincoln Chaffee, the current incumbent and GOP gadfly. In preliminary polling, Chaffee holds a razor-thin edge against both Democrats, but Laffey trails both rather badly:

Chaffee/Whitehouse: 40%/34% (38%/25% in September)
Chaffee/Brown: 38%/36% (41%/18% in September)

Laffey/Whitehouse: 29%/44% (25%/35% in September)
Laffey/Brown: 24%/47% (26%/30% in September)

These numbers show a couple of issues. First, it demonstrates that Matt Brown has tremendous momentum right now against Sheldon Whitehouse. In four months, Brown turned a 32-16 deficit against the then-frontrunning Whitehouse into a 31-25 lead. His is the campaign that will give the GOP the biggest headache, apparently, and the numbers reflect that. Even the incumbency doesn't get Chaffee out of the margin of error against him, even though Chaffee at one time led Brown by 23 points, head to head.

Normally, one would look at the difference in the matchups between the two Republicans and determine that Chaffee was the better candidate for GOP support. However, in this case I disagree, for two reasons. The first is that if the Brown momentum continues, he is likely to out-poll the dry and dull Chafee by a considerable margin in the general election, and secondly Chafee's support for the national program of the GOP is so tepid that the loss will prove rather painless anyway. Chafee voted against the confirmation of Samuel Alito, joined the Gang of 14 last year, publicly announced that he would vote against his party's nominee for the White House in 2004, and in general has been a Republican out of convenience rather than any philosophical or true political connection.

If Brown remains ascendant, then the GOP needs to develop its bench in Rhode Island. Laffey comes much closer to the GOP mainstream than does Chafee, and so far the Republicans have no other stars on the horizon. The party needs to consider its post-Chafee options. Sinking tons of cash in a vain attempt to re-elect a Senator who rarely supports them when most needed seems almost masochistic, and actively attacking one of the few candidates that could one day replace him borders on the insane.

I know from discussions with people around DC that the White House considers Chafee worth supporting. As it was expressed to me, they would rather deal with a Senator who frequently frustrates them on the agenda than one who actively caucuses against them -- and that Chafee is lower-maintenance than some other GOP Senators with more popularity outside the Beltway. If Chafee was a lock for re-election, then perhaps the White House view should prevail, but if Chafee can't cut it in the general election, it's time to develop the bench. Perhaps the White House may find that by fully supporting Laffey, he might gain enough strength to overcome Brown by energizing Rhode Island conservatives who feel ignored by Chafee and the odd GOP support for his incumbency.

Saudis Snub Danes; Will Americans Endorse It?

Judith Klinghoffer notes that the Saudis have snubbed the Danes by disinviting them to the Jeddah Economic Forum to be held in the Saudi city this weekend. Arab News reports that the JCCI disinvited the Danish delegation after the publication of the Prophet cartoons by private Danish newspapers -- four months later, actually -- although apparently no other European countries have been barred despite their media republishing the editorial cartoons:

The organizers of the Jeddah Economic Forum 2006 decided yesterday not to invite the Danish delegation at the annual event.

The organizers made the decision in the wake of Muslim anger over the publication of the blasphemous caricatures published by a Danish newspaper on Sept. 30. ...

The Council of Gulf Countries’ Chambers and the Council of Saudi Chambers of Commerce & Industry have praised the positive reaction by businessmen in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf in responding to the deliberate humiliation of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

Condemnation of the cartoons mocking the Prophet published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten has been voiced throughout the Muslim world and in the past few days has taken the form of demonstrations and attacks on some Danish and other Western embassies.

This isn't any little backwater conference, either. The Saudis have invited high-profile people from around the world for seven years to the JEF, hoping to take leadership on economic development, especially in the Gulf region. In fact, theArab News lists some of the participants expected this weekend, and a couple of very familiar names pop up (emphases mine):

According to JEF 2006 Chairman Hassan Enany, global speakers include Irish President Mary McAleese, Congo Brazzaville President Denis Sassou N’Guesso, Gambia President Al Hajji Jammah, Ghana’s former President Jerry Rawlings, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, former US Vice President Al Gore, human rights lawyer Cherie Blair, Forbes Inc. President & CEO Steve Forbes, Forbes Magazine Editor in Chief Peter Roberston, Vice Chairman of Chevron Corporation, Abdul-Salam Al-Majali, former prime minister of Jordan, Haifa Al-Kaylani, founder and chairman of Arab International Woman’s Forum, Mohamed Alabbar, director general of the Department of Economics Dubai and Chairman of Emaar Properties, Bahia Hariri, member of the Lebanese Parliament and sister of Rafik Hariri, Andre Azoulay, counselor to King Mohammed VI of Morocco.

Al Gore and Steve Forbes, both of whom have run for President of the US on at least two occasions, plan on speaking at this conference. Cherie Blair may be a human rights lawyer, but she is better known as the wife of Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister and George Bush's partner in the war on terror. Gerhard Schroeder just got kicked out of office for his incompetence, despite his anti-American rhetoric based on our supposed disregard for international law and foreign policy.

Do these Westerners still plan on attending the JEF now that the Saudis are using it as a means to stir up more protest against the Danes? Does Al Gore and Steve Forbes intend on endorsing the position that the Danish government should have suppressed their media from publishing their opinions? I find it hard to fathom what made Cherie Blair decide to attend an economic conference in a nation that doesn't even allow its women to drive -- but does she plan to attend after this protest against free speech? And Germans will have yet another reason to re-evaluate their former Chancellor more negatively if he temporarily relocates his lips from Putin's posterior to that of the Saudis by tacitly approving of the ejection of the Danes from this conference.

All of the above like to talk about human rights, dignity, and freedom. I wonder if any of them will literally put their money where their mouths are.

Political Funerals And Partisanship

My concern is when we use national moments to reflect and to mourn and to be respectful and we turn them into political diatribes, you know, against the president or, you know, against the Democrats or whatever. It’s just disrespectful; and that’s not what the family wanted, that’s not what the nation wants to see. That doesn’t help heal people. That doesn’t help bring people to a better place. It just exacerbates wounds and makes things more, I guess, poisonous, if you will. And, it just left a bad taste in my mouth and I was hoping for better than what I saw. -- Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, Tony Snow Show, 2/8/06

Many in the blogosphere have begun to debate the Coretta Scott King funeral, with some on the right arguing -- as I did earlier -- that it turned into another partisan exploitation in the same manner as the Paul Wellstone memorial here in Minnesota four years ago. Others on the left argue that the memorial for Mrs. King was appropriate, given the political life she led, and that President Bush's appearance at the event was political.

In a way, both sides are right about this. Bush and his family attended the King funeral at least in part because not attending would have been a political mistake. Bill and Hillary Clinton attended because both had come to know Mrs. King pretty well, but also because all living ex-Presidents were invited. (Gerald Ford is still too ill to travel, I believe.) The King family themselves made this a political event by making the memorial so public -- and it was entirely appropriate to do so. After all, she fought a long struggle for civil rights as well as her husband, and she had to carry the banner for him after his assassination as well as raise her family. Not honoring her political life would have been outrageous.

However, the difference is the partisanship on display, mostly by Jimmy Carter and Reverend Lowery. Politics and partisanship are two different things, although some apparently cannot divorce one from the other. It is entirely possible to have a political event and handle it on a non-partisan basis. Bush attended the funeral, as one CQ commenter stated, as the representative of the nation. That was a moment for all to come together to honor Mrs. King and her achievements, all of which are political, and by avoiding partisanship make them a gift to all Americans.

Instead, Rev. Lowery decided to make snide jokes about WMD, and Carter made barely-veiled allusions to the NSA program he opposes. Both men have ample standing and media access to make those arguments at other times. In this venue, however, the President did not represent himself or his agenda but spoke on behalf of the entire nation. He did what the other speakers should have done: he avoided talking about himself and instead focused on Mrs. King. The other two gentlemen used her death to score petty partisan points and should be ashamed of themselves. (Unlike others in the blogosphere, though, I can't fault Bill Clinton, whose only "crime" was to make a joke about his wife's ambitions for the White House; previous speakers had used humor, and the joke was at no one's expense.)

Perhaps in the future, when statesmen and stateswomen pass away, the politicians they leave behind will learn to put aside their partisanship for a few hours and allow us to focus on the achievements of the deceased, rather than the agendas of the present.

Rebuttals, Rebuttals (And Rebuttal-Rebuttals!)

I sometimes get rebuttals via e-mail rather than comments, mostly due to either some difficulties with the Typekey authorization interface or just the length and depth of the rebuttals themselves. I received two today that deserve special mention on posts I wrote early this morning.

On my post about Lynn Swann and the exit of Bill Scranton from the governor's race, I received this e-mail from a political activist in PA who wishes to remain anonymous:

I read your blog daily, and have nothing but the utmost respect you for you. However, when I read your post this morning on Bill Scranton’s having dropped out of the Gubernatorial race, I could have smashed my head through a wall. With all due respect, this is what happens when campaigns are viewed and analyzed “from afar.” I’m a blogger and political consultant in Pennsylvania, and I can tell you that your characterization of Scranton as the insider and Swann as the outsider is patently wrong. Bill Scranton is a former Lt. Governor, you are correct. However, he has angered all of the Republican party leadership in PA with his message of reform. Swann, on the other hand, was recruited into this race by State Senate President Pro Tem Bob Jubelirer, the pro-choice, pay raising, tax raising, corrupt, big government Republican from the 30th District (my district). Swann’s campaign manager, Ray Zaborney, is even the boyfriend of Jubelirer’s campaign manager. Swann was set to get the endorsement of the Republican State Committee precisely because he is the leadership’s hand-picked lapdog. ...

Again, I love your blog and agree with you 99% of the time. However, not only is Swann not the right candidate, he doesn’t stand a chance of beating Ed Rendell.

This person suggested that people check out this Pennsylvania political blog to get a taste of the electorate. I'd note that while Jubelirer is pro-choice, Swann has already stated that he is pro-life, and it's not uncommon for people in the same party to share connections between campaign staff. I think that the recruitment of Lynn Swann came from people a few pay grades above Jubelirer as well, remembering that Swann got podium time at the Republican convention in 2004 (and did a nice job as well). However, it's good to hear from folks in PA and I'll be keeping a closer eye on the issues that the commenter raises.

The second rebuttal regarded my post about the Anne Applebaum column this morning, and it came from Applebaum herself, who thinks I treated her unfairly and harshly in my post. I consulted with a couple of people I trust, who thought I could have treated her a bit more kindly and thought that accusing her of deliberately distorting history was unfair. I'll let the readers decide. I've offered Ms. Applebaum an opportunity to rebut me on the blog, but I'm not going to reproduce our correspondence as I didn't get the chance to ask her if she felt comfortable with that. I'd encourage CQ readers to read her entire column and then post your assessment in the comments on this post.

UPDATE: And in a new feature here at CQ, we have Rebuttal Rebuttals^TM! Here's a comment from a seasoned PA media consultant who takes issue with the above rebuttal, again anonymously (ellipses in original):

The tone of the e-mail you received from the "blogger and political consultant" sounds to me as if it was written by a bitter Scranton supporter. I've heard disparaging comments from lobbyists I know, and one of the low-level Scranton folks, that Swann has no government/executive experience. Sounds to me like the entrenched bureaucracy (R's, D's, doesn't matter which) is fearful of what a real government outsider will bring to the table (i.e., fear of any change in status quo). And I wish I had recorded/written this down...but two days before then-campaign manager Jim Seif melted down on statewide TV, I briefly chatted with Mr. Seif at the Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon in Harrisburg...and in front of me he said to another person (they appeared to know each other) something to the effect that they had some good dirt on Swann and were going to exploit it....could this Zaborney-Jubelirer thing be that dirt? I have no clue....just something else to consider....but if it IS the dirt Seif talked about, that for me would be further evidence that your e-mailer is an angry Scranton supporter. Finally, my understanding of the Swann-Rendell poll numbers is that such a tight race, this early, is almost unheard of in PA gubernatorial history. I interpret that as a good sign for Swann, although I acknowledge that so far he has been overtly non-specific as to how he'll govern and what policies he'll support/propose--Swann clearly needs to sharpen his focus/attack on Rendell as the campaign unfolds.

Here's my analysis: it's a good thing that Pennsylvania Republicans aren't going to have that primary, because it looks like that might have turned into one bloody mess -- and Ed Rendell would have been the beneficiary.

A Nobel Nomination For Bolton?

CNS News reports that John Bolton and Kenneth Timmerman have been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize (h/t: CQ reader Maggie):

John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is one of two Americans who have been nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. ...

Bolton and Kenneth R. Timmerman were formally nominated by Sweden's former deputy prime minister Per Ahlmark, for playing a major role in exposing Iran's secret plans to develop nuclear weapons.

They documented Iran's secret nuclear buildup and revealed Iran's "repeated lying" and false reports to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a press release said.

Bolton formerly served as U.S. undersecretary for arms control and international security, and he authored the Proliferation Security Initiative, an international effort to block WMD shipments. The effort eventually unmasked the secret nuclear network directed by Pakistan nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan.

Timmerman, an independent researcher, has written extensively on Iran's nuclear activities for more than 20 years. His report for the Simon Wiesenthal Center in 1992 first detailed Iran's ties to A.Q. Khan. His most recent book, "Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran," was published last year.

I guess that means that the Left will soon line up to insist that Bolton receive confirmation for UN ambassador, right? After all, a Nobel nomination convinced them that Stanley "Tookie" Williams was really a great guy who deserved not just commutation of his death sentence but also high praise for his humanity, or at least that was the argument they made. I'll just hold my breath until they start the picketing outside the DNC headquarters in support of Bolton.

Post: Bush Reaches Out

The Post reports on yesterday's appearance by President Bush at Coretta Scott King's funeral and provides an analysis that seems more than a little off the mark in its details. Michael Fletcher decides that Bush has finally started reaching out to the black community as a result of Hurricane Katrina, but in the details notes that Bush has "reached out" to the black voters all along -- but chose to bypass the political leadership that had opposed him so bitterly in 2000:

It was the type of eloquent tribute that Americans have come to expect from their president when an iconic figure passes. But the presidential gesture took on added significance because it marks the latest step in the administration's effort to repair its frayed relations with many black civil rights and political leaders.

"President Bush was where he should have been," said Bruce S. Gordon, the new president of the NAACP. "Coretta Scott King is a very important figure in black American history and American history. I thought it was appropriate for the president to be there to honor her."

Bush all but ignored many black civil rights and political leaders during his first four years in office. Instead, he focused on building inroads to African American leaders through the pastors of black evangelical churches and business leaders who were not identified with the traditional civil rights agenda.

Bush became the first president since Herbert Hoover to serve a full term without addressing the NAACP, which many acknowledge as the nation's leading civil rights organization. At the same time, Bush's relations with the Congressional Black Caucus were frosty, contributing to a growing gulf between the administration and black voters.

Fletcher ignores a bit of significant history in this analysis, and comes up with the "growing gulf" characterization out of whole cloth. In 2000, when Bush ran for president, he made a point to speak at an NAACP meeting in order to "reach out" to the leadership. He was rewarded for his effort by an NAACP ad campaign that attempted to pin the James Byrd lynching on Bush, who had resisted hate-crime legislation in Texas. The despicable ads never mentioned that Texas had captured, tried, and convicted the men responsible and sentenced them to death -- underscoring Bush's point about the superfluousness of hate-crime laws. The NAACP just wanted to tar Bush with the lynching to smear him as a closet bigot.

After that ad came out, Bush garnered 9% of the African-American vote, but won office anyway. The NAACP then spent the next five years whining about Bush refusing to visit them. Why should he? They proved to have no appreciation for his earlier appearance, his first attempt to "reach out", and they effectively marginalized themselves with an insulting, degrading, and unfair smear campaign. Bush decided to "reach out" in other directions, bypassing old-line organizations like the NAACP and leaders like Jesse Jackson and instead appeal directly to the communities themselves, through the churches and other organizations. It had a small effect: his share of the African-American vote rose to 11% in 2004.

So much for the "growing gulf".

Bush went to King's funeral because of the stature of her life and the work she accomplished during it. Again, he "reached out" -- and what happened? The political leaders on the left turned the funeral into an embarrassing recapitulation of the Wellstone funeral, using the corpse of King as a soapbox to harangue a President who had simply come to pay his respects. Instead of focusing on a moment of unity, when people from all walks of life and political persuasions could meet and agree that Coretta Scott King had made a positive difference for America, they turned it into a partisan sniping show, with the ever-bitter Jimmy Carter making himself the center of attention, as always.

Some people never learn.

Anne Applebaum Rewrites History

The latest offering from Anne Applebaum attempts to play to an imaginary center in the cartoon fracas by castigating liberal-leaning newspapers that refused to reprint the supposedly offensive Danish cartoons and balancing that with an attack on the right-wing blogosphere. Applebaum rewrites history, apparently an industrial hazard at the Washington Post, in comparing the cartoon controversy to the Newsweek Qu'ran-flushing story:

Remember the controversy over Newsweek and the Koran? Last year Newsweek printed an allegation about mistreatment of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base that -- although strikingly similar to interrogation techniques actually used to intimidate Muslims at Guantanamo -- was not substantiated by an official government investigation. It hardly mattered: Abroad, Muslim politicians and clerics promoted and exaggerated the Koran story, just as they are now promoting and exaggerating the Danish cartoon story. The result was rioting and violence on a scale similar to the rioting and violence of the past week.

But although that controversy was every bit as manipulated as this one, self-styled U.S. "conservatives" blamed not cynical politicians and clerics but Newsweek for (accidentally) inciting violence in the Muslim world: "Newsweek lied, people died." Worse, much of the commentary implied that Newsweek was not only wrong to make a mistake (which it was) but also that the magazine was wrong to investigate the alleged misconduct of U.S. soldiers. Logically, the bloggers should now be attacking the Danish newspaper for (less accidentally) inciting violence in the Muslim world. Oddly enough, though, I've heard no cries of "Jyllands-Posten insulted, people died." The moral is: We defend press freedom if it means Danish cartoonists' right to caricature Muhammad; we don't defend press freedom if it means the mainstream media's right to investigate the U.S. government.

Perhaps Applebaum has hung around American newsrooms too long to notice the difference, but editorial cartoons express opinion, while news reporting is supposed to deliver facts. Newsweek didn't publish a cartoon of a GI flushing a Qu'ran down a toilet. They reported as fact that American soldiers had done so, with the thinnest of sourcing and without attempting to corroborate the information. Newsweek didn't investigate at all -- they just took the word of a single source and put it in their magazine.

The right-wing blogosphere defends the freedom of the press to express opinons, when labeled as such, and to report facts when delivering news. It doesn't mean that people can't criticize either action when necessary. No one in the "right-wing blogosphere" argues that the American media shouldn't investigate the government, but we certainly argue that such investigations should be done properly, without endangering national security, and reported fairly with properly corroborated allegations, if and when they are to be made.

This is yet another of the tiresome examples of writers at the Post attempting to appear reasonable by finding some basis on which to attack all sides of a controversy. Applebaum's reach exceeds her grasp on this point, and she made up for it by trying to rewrite the Newsweek debacle by turning it into a debate on the First Amendment -- a conflict that never arose when Newsweek botched its reporting. It's just another form of pandering, no less than the capitulations she decries earlier in her essay by the media outlets who issue statements of "respect for Islam" that would never appear about any controversy involving Christianity or Judaism.

Democrats Offer Nothing: Pelosi

The New York Times reports today on the problems facing the Democrats, who hope to gain enough seats in the upcoming midterm elections to take back control of Congress. Although the midterms for a second-term President usually see a significant gain for the party out of power, Democrats have a sneaking suspicion that they have not positioned themselves to take advantage of the situation:

Democrats described a growing sense that they had failed to take full advantage of the troubles that have plagued Mr. Bush and his party since the middle of last year, driving down the president's approval ratings, opening divisions among Republicans in Congress over policy and potentially putting control of the House and Senate into play in November.

Asked to describe the health of the Democratic Party, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said: "A lot worse than it should be. This has not been a very good two months."

"We seem to be losing our voice when it comes to the basic things people worry about," Mr. Dodd said.

Democrats said they had not yet figured out how to counter the White House's long assault on their national security credentials. And they said their opportunities to break through to voters with a coherent message on domestic and foreign policy — should they settle on one — were restricted by the lack of an established, nationally known leader to carry their message this fall.

As a result, some Democrats said, their party could lose its chance to do to Republicans this year what the Republicans did to them in 1994: make the midterm election, normally dominated by regional and local concerns, a national referendum on the party in power.

What was the difference between 1994 and now? A number of corruption and ethical issues had dogged Congress in the previous years, but that hadn't been enough to dislodge the Democrats from the power they held for over four decades in the lower chamber. The difference came when the Republicans put together an extensive and detailed plan for reforming Congress and shrinking government called the Contract With America. Newt Gingrich started the Republican revolution that eventually crescendoed into the control they have now over both the House and Senate.

In contrast, what have the Democrats offered? They have put forth no coherent plan, no strategy for leadership. The only recognizable plan that Democrats have put in front of the American electorate for five years is the "I Hate Bush" platform that sells well with the activist base but disgusts a wide swath of the rest of the electorate. This problem does not restrict itself to the base, either; party leaders like John Conyers and John Kerry have both argued that a Democratic majority would take action to impeach George Bush, making a preconceived coup d'etat the issue for the national referendum in the fall. Its incoherence gets magnified by Nancy Pelosi, whom the Times quotes as proud that the Democrats don't offer anything but gainsay to American voters:

"It's absolutely required that the party talk about things in addition to the Abramoff scandal," said Martin Frost, former leader of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "I think the climate is absolutely right to take back the House or the Senate or both. But you can't do it without a program."

And Mr. Bayh said, "I don't believe we will win by just not being them."

Ms. Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, did not dispute that argument. But, pointing to the Democratic strategy in defeating Mr. Bush's Social Security proposal last year, she said there was no rush.

"People said, 'You can't beat something with nothing,' " she said, arguing that the Democrats had in fact accomplished precisely that this year. "I feel very confident about where we are."

Democrats -- The Party of Nothing. It doesn't make for an exciting campaign slogan, but it's enough for Nancy Pelosi, the party leader in Congress.

Until the Democrats stand for something other than a naked lust for power, they will remain out of the mainstream. As long as they continue arguing out of both sides of their mouth on national security -- for example, screaming about checking international communications during wartime while calling for the program's continuance -- no one will trust them with leadership. And as long as they keep making the upcoming midterms a referendum on impeachment, they will find themselves more marginalized than ever.

Scranton Bows Out In PA

Former lieutenant governor Bill Scranton has bowed out of the race for governor in Pennsylvania, leaving the endorsement to the frontrunner and last remaining candidate, Lynn Swann. The former Steeler great will have no further Republican competition before the primary on May 16th:

Bill Scranton dropped out of the governor's race Tuesday after it became clear that Republican Party leaders planned to endorse former Pittsburgh Steelers star Lynn Swann for the nomination.

Swann is seeking to become Pennsylvania's first black governor. Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell is running for a second term in November.

Swann had locked up more than enough unofficial support to win the endorsement of GOP leaders Saturday.

Scranton exits after having watched his campaign manager commit the season's most spectacular blunder so far. James Seif had engaged in a TV debate with Swann campaign aide Ray Zaborney, during which he claimed that "the rich white guy in this campaign is Lynn Swann." Rather than climb down from that ludicrous statement, Seif defended it when a caller objected to the characterization, responding that "[Swann's] the guy at the country club that hangs around the country club, plays golf with the legislators and is the inside candidate." (Link to video here.) Besides being an ignorant statement and an appalling judgment on the "blackness" of Swann by the Caucasian Seif (on behalf of Scranton, also white), it's simply untrue. Scranton has been a politician much longer than Swann, who's running for his first political office, and the attempt to sell Scranton as an outsider in comparison was almost as stupid as calling Lynn Swann the whiter of the two candidates.

Scranton fired Seif, but the damage was already done, as apparently was Scranton himself. It doesn't change much, except that it clears Swann to consolidate his Republican support early in the campaign, allowing him to conserve his campaign money for the battle against Ed Rendell. He has a slight lead already according to Rasmussen (45%-43%) and may gain a boost from the Steeler's victory for some extra momentum heading into the election campaign. A sitting governor polling only 43% looks particularly vulnerable, and without a primary to handicap his run, expect Swann to outrun Rendell just as he did with so many defenders during his elegant and graceful NFL career.

What Would A Blogswarm Do To Congress?

Former journalist Mark Tapscott takes another look at the effect that Paul Mirengoff had on Capitol Hill this week and wonders what could happen if we had six bloggers working full time, supervising Congress. All I know is that it sure looks like fun to me ... but not as much fun as Paul's more lunatic critics seem to imagine!

Using The Dead As Soapboxes, Part II

I suppose after having watched the Paul Wellstone funeral here in Minnesota four years ago, I shouldn't be shocked by Democrats turning bipartisan shows of respect at memorial services into partisan sniping. President Bush and his family had to endure the bad taste of several speakers who used Coretta Scott King's funeral as a forum to snipe at his politics:

Speakers took a rare opportunity to criticize U.S. President George W. Bush's policies to his face at the funeral on Tuesday of Coretta Scott King, widow of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Civil-rights leader the Rev. Joseph Lowery and former President Jimmy Carter cited Mrs. King's legacy as a leader in her own right and advocate of nonviolence as they launched barbs over the Iraq war, government social policies and Bush's domestic eavesdropping program. ...

Lowery, former head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King helped found in 1957, gave a playful reading of a poem in eulogy of Mrs. King.

"She extended Martin's message against poverty, racism and war / She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar," he said.

"We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there / But Coretta knew and we knew that there are weapons of misdirection right down here / Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war billions more but no more for the poor."

Jimmy Carter, for his part, went out of his way to note that the Kings suffered from "secret government wiretapping and other surveillance," an allusion to the NSA program under George Bush. He of course neglects to mention that the wiretaps were approved by Bobby Kennedy, one of the saints of his party, and that the reasons for it had nothing to do with national defense. He lectured about the lack of progress in civil rights, saying that all one had to do was look at the faces of those victimized by Hurricane Katrina to know that more progress had to be made. It's the first time I've ever heard God be called a bigot -- unless Carter somehow has evidence that Bush ginned up a hurricane to deliberately attack the Gulf Coast.

The Anchoress was not surprised:

No, none of it was surprising. It was not surprising that President Bush went, knowing - as he had to know - that a few opportunists and insecure old men would try to take their shots in an attempt to ingratiate the rabble and make the news shows. It was not surprising that both President Bushes spoke with class and humility. It was not surprising that Bill Clinton got the room rocking, and got just a little dramatic, as ever, appealing to the emotions -and he does it very well. It was not surprising that Hillary stood there nodding before plodding. It wasn’t even surprising to me that Hillary got to speak last - in essence giving her the “keynote” spot. In a crowd for whom everything is political and everything is calculated, that was completely predictable.

It's not surprising ... but it is sad that the Left cannot allow a single moment to pass without partisan rancor marring what could have been a marvelous bipartisan show of unity, in respect for a woman who deserved it.

The Dionne Amnesia (Update and Bump)

E. J. Dionne, one of the best liberal columnists in America, suffers from a strange attack of amnesia in today's Washington Post. He argues that the tax cuts have crippled the American budgeting process, which I'll get to momentarily, but he also lays the blame on George Bush's father for disavowing his compromise with Democrats on taxes in 1990:

The roots of our fiscal madness, on display once again yesterday with the unveiling of President Bush's new budget and its deficit in excess of $350 billion, were planted on Oct. 27, 1990.

Ironically, that's the day when the first President Bush embraced the last genuinely bipartisan budget reduction package to include both tax increases and spending cuts.

It can be seen in retrospect as one of Bush 41's admirable long-term achievements. (Another, of course, was his success in driving Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.) In tandem with Bill Clinton's tax increases three years later, the 1990 agreement set off a decade of fiscal responsibility and exceptional economic growth.

But Bush 41 could not embrace his budget victory as a triumph, because the agreement split his party and because he had won election just two years earlier promising "no new taxes." So he backed away from his achievement as soon as it was in hand.

Er, that isn't all that happened, and either Dionne has a bad memory or has slipped into uncharacteristic disingenuity by claiming this. Dionne leaves out two important points. The first fact omitted is that the tax increase in 1990 resulted in a sudden recession, which the Gulf War made worse by driving up oil costs temporarily. In fact, the increased rates flattened tax receipts; it did not result in any significant increase to the Treasury.

Second and more to the point, the Democrats with whom the President consulted and compromised used his efforts to castigate him as unfaithful to his promises in the 1992 general election. I find it hard to imagine that Dionne cannot recall the "Read My Lips' commercials that the Clinton campaign used to devastating effect in that election, which showed Bush promising to hold the line on taxes -- and blamed him entirely for raising them later. The Democrats stabbed Bush 41 in the back for working with them, and that's the lesson that 43 learned from the experience. Compromise with Democrats, and they will use it to attack at the first opportunity.

In terms of the actual issue of tax cuts and their effect on the budget, Dionne also neglects to mention that since the inception of the tax cuts in 2003, tax revenues have actually increased -- and increased sharply. The OMB, in fact, shows tax receipts at their highest point ever for this year (page 3). The reason for the deficit isn't the tax cuts, which provided the spark for the economy that has driven tax revenues far past the $2T mark for 2005. The deficit comes from increased federal spending, which both parties have increased on almost a straight line ever since that budget agreement in 1990.

Dionne is rightly concerned about the federal budget and the deficit, but he seems to have a hazy memory about its origins and its underlying causes. His call for bipartisanship in solving the problem is also laudable, but instead of castigating Republicans for a lack of intestinal fortitude in handling its fiscal conservatives, perhaps Dionne should scold the Democrats who twisted Bush 41's bipartisanship into a character flaw and the moderate Republicans who join with the Democrats in their inability to stop spending our money.

UPDATE: It's a little off the topic, but Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly claims that I've misrepresented the 1990 tax increase. He argues, as does some of his readers in the comments, that the 1990 tax increase actually rescued the American economy from a recession. That flies in the face of the actual numbers, and it also misrepresents the political climate at the time. I had an opportunity to briefly interview Brian Beach at the Heritage Foundation, who confirmed my original analysis that (a) the economy had not been in a recession when Bush 41 finally caved and agreed to negotiate for increased tax revenues in mid-1990, and (b) the immediate result was a slowdown in the economy. Brian also recalled that the need for the increase, according to the Democrats in control of Congress at the time, was not to reverse a recession but to balance the budget. Bush agreed to consider tax increases in May 1990, and by June had agreed in principle to do so.

If people have forgotten, then these numbers should recall the economic climate. The Bureau of Economic Statistics shows that the 1990 Q1 GDP performance shows a 4.7% annual growth rate, and the previous four quarters had performed at 1%, 2.6%, 2.6%, and 4.1% respectively. Even Q2, when Bush committed in principle to "increase tax revenues", grew at an annual rate of 1%. After announcing that he would raise taxes, and then doing so in November 1990, the economy stopped its slower growth and slipped into outright recession. GDP stood still in 1990 Q3, and then dropped in Q4 (-3.0%) and again in 1991 Q1 (-2.0). As recessions went, it was a shallow one, but the resulting anemic recovery -- and the Democratic attacks on Bush 41 as untrustworthy for having reversed himself on taxes -- cost Bush 41 his re-election.

King Banaian, the chair of the economics department at St. Cloud State University (and one of the nicest men you'll ever want to meet), provides an excellent analysis at SCSU Scholars. Read the whole thing, but here's the money quote, if you'll pardon the pun:

[I]f the tax increases were really going to lead to the recovery and growth of the economy, why did the resulting expansion take so long to take hold that 21 months had to pass before the recession's end was found?

And they did nothing for revenues either. Indeed, at the beginning of the Andrews AFB negotiations of summer 1990, the projected FY 1992 budget deficit was $101 billion. By the time of Bush's 1991 SOTU speech, it was $318 billion. (Source.) If tax increases were to stimulate the economy, how could they have been so anemic both to economic growth and to tax revenues?

Revenues, in fact, grew very anemically over the next two years. In 1990, the year the tax increases went into effect, revenues only grew 2.2% in 1991, not even matching the average inflation rate for that period. Revenues only grew 3.4% the next year (1992). Deficits, however, continued to expand, because Congress and the Democrats reneged on their promise to Bush 41 and continued to expand federal spending (5.7% in 1991 and 4.4% in 1992). The deficits only came under control in the mid-90s because the Republicans took over the House and brought the expansion of federal spending under 4% for the rest of the decade.

All of this strays a bit from my original post, but the responses given by Washington Monthly and the commenters here show the short and fact-deficient memories of the Democrats when it comes to the effect of tax increases, as demonstrated by E.J. Dionne and Kevin Drum. It also reinforces the lesson that sucking money out of the private sector for redistribution by a bloated federal government does not generate growth, but instead kills investment and disrupts markets. The lesson from every tax cut and every tax increase is that only the former truly works to increase federal revenues.

German Revolving-Door Justice Strikes Again

The Germans seem to have a problem in keeping terrorists behind bars. For the second time in as many months, Germany has freed a convicted terrorist, this time a man connected to the 9/11 attacks. Mounir el Motassadeq will walk out of prison for the second time, freed by German appellate courts:

Germany's Federal Constitutional Court ordered the 31-year-old Moroccan released from prison where he had been serving a seven-year sentence following a conviction by a Hamburg court. Carsten Grote, a Hamburg judicial spokesman, did not give a reason for the release and did not indicate when Motassadeq would be let free.

Authorities have long suspected Motassadeq of having belonged to the Hamburg terror cell led by Mohammed Atta. He arrived in Germany in 1993 and learned German in the university town of Münster before attending a technical university in Hamburg and eventually getting a job at the same school. He admits that he knew Atta in Hamburg but insists he knew nothing of his planned attack until seeing the events of 9/11 unfold.

Motassadeq got sprung the first time because the US refused to extradite Ramzi Binalshibh for courtroom testimony. American authorities send extensive documentation of Binalshibh's interrogation for Motassadeq's second trial, but he only got convicted of membership in a terror group -- and only got seven years for that crime. No one knows why the German court ordered him freed at this point, but he has only served a year of his sentence.

After watching the murderer of Navy diver Robert Stethem walk free earlier, we should have become used to German indifference to terrorism, but after watching them work so hard to free a convicted al-Qaeda member, it still proves shocking. Obviously relying on European law enforcement as an ally in the fight against Islamofascist terror will get us nowhere.

Saddam And WMD: Case Re-Opened?

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence wants to reopen a question on what it calls "postwar" intelligence that both Congress and the administration would prefer to remain closed -- whether Saddam Hussein had WMD in late 2002. Its chair, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, says that mounting evidence and testimony point to Saddam's possession of the banned weapons prior to the final UN debates on the invasion, and that untranslated documentation holds the answer:

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is studying 12 hours of audio recordings between Saddam Hussein and his top advisers that may provide clues to the whereabouts of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The committee has already confirmed through the intelligence community that the recordings of Saddam's voice are authentic, according to its chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, who would not go into detail about the nature of the conversations or their context. They were provided to his committee by a former federal prosecutor, John Loftus, who says he received them from a former American military intelligence analyst.

Mr. Loftus will make the recordings available to the public on February 17 at the annual meeting of the Intelligence Summit, of which he is president. On the organization's Web site, Mr. Loftus is quoted as promising that the recordings "will be able to provide a few definitive answers to some very important - and controversial - weapons of mass destruction questions." Contacted yesterday by The New York Sun, Mr. Loftus would only say that he delivered a CD of the recordings to a representative of the committee, and the following week the committee announced that it was reopening the investigation into weapons of mass destruction.

The audio recordings are part of new evidence the House intelligence committee is piecing together that has spurred Mr. Hoekstra to reopen the question of whether Iraq had the biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons American inspectors could not turn up. President Bush called off the hunt for those weapons last year and has conceded that America has yet to find evidence of the stockpiles.

Mr. Hoekstra has already met with a former Iraqi air force general, Georges Sada, who claims that Saddam used civilian airplanes to ferry chemical weapons to Syria in 2002. Mr. Hoekstra is now talking to Iraqis who Mr. Sada claims took part in the mission, and the congressman said the former air force general "should not just be discounted." Mr. Hoekstra also said he is in touch with other people who have come forward to the committee - Iraqis and Americans - who claim that the weapons inspectors may have overlooked other key sites and evidence. He has also asked the director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, to declassify some 35,000 boxes of Iraqi documents obtained in the war that have yet to be translated.

Hoekstra has gotten little assistance from the intelligence community. Sada's testimony resulted in little follow-up by intelligence agencies, and the entire question of WMD gets treated like a bad dream in political circles. Yet as Stephen Hayes has repeatedly written in the Weekly Standard, most of the documentation from the Saddam regime on its weapons and defense systems has yet to be translated at all. The entire US government appears to have leapt to a conclusion far ahead of a complete review of the postwar evidence.

We need to support the Hoekstra effort, even if it never finds a WMD. We need to base history's conclusions on the most complete and accurate data we have in our possession. And if we find out that the WMD did exist, we'd better start looking for it -- before it finds us first.

Did Canada Get More Conservative Than We Thought?

The political realignment in Canada last month may be more significant than first thought. When Canadians elected Stephen Harper and the Conservatives as a minority government, their modest victory was thought to have chiefly been the result of the series of financial scandals surrounding the Liberals. An Ipsos-Reid poll shows, however, that the electorate may instead have become more conservative than previously thought. Majorities in Canada would not object to the Tories pursuing a broad and controversial agenda in their new government:

A majority of Canadians say they would not support the opposition parties voting the Conservatives out if they try to cut the GST or pass legislation banning same sex marriage:

* 57% would not support bringing down the government if they “try to pass a law to cut the GST by 2% over their term” (39% would support bringing the government down if they tried to do this).
* 54% would not support bringing the government down if they “try to pass a law that makes same sex marriages illegal” (41% would support bringing the government down if they tried to do this).

Slim majorities would not support bringing the government down over sending troops to Iraq or limiting access to abortion.

* 51% would not support bringing the government down if they “send Canadian troops to fight in Iraq” (44% would support bringing the government down if they did this).
* 50% would not support bringing the government down if they “try to pass a law that limits a woman’s access to abortion” (45% would support bringing the government down if they tried to do this).

The only exception is on the issue of health care.

* Canadians are divided over whether the government should be brought down if it “moves to give private for-profit health care a bigger role in Canada”. Forty-six percent say the government should not be brought down while a slightly higher number (48%) say it should.

It's important to note that this does not translate into majority support for these proposals. It does mean that Canadian voters are open to debating the issues instead of treating them as holy dogma and unfit for political review. That indicates more flexibility and openness to traditional Conservative positions than was first thought from the election results. The Tories do not need to walk on eggshells or hide their values when working in Parliament; Canadians want an open process and appear willing to consider any reasoned point of view.

Might As Well Face It, We're Addicted To Dole

The Heritage Foundation has released a report that shows the federal budget in crisis, and pork only tells part of the story. Titled Federal Spending - By The Numbers, the Brian Riedl report gives an easily-accessible look at the growth in federal spending during the Bush administration that should sober any drunken Congressman right up. It also demonstrates without a doubt that the tax cuts enacted by Bush have nothing to do with this crisis.

Tax revenues, in fact, have steadily increased during the tax cut period, and overall have more than doubled since 1990. In 2000, the last full year of Bill Clinton's term, tax receipts came to $2.025T. They dipped in 2001 and 2002 with the recession, dropping to a low of $1.783T in 2003, when the tax cuts got implemented. They have jumped in the last two years, to $1.88T and $2.154T, the last a 14% increase and the highest amount of federal tax dollars collected in history. By comparison, the tax receipt figure in 1990 was a "modest" $1.032T.

However, federal spending has kept the pace of the expansion in revenues. Last year's budget came in at $2.472T, and this year we expect to spend $2.77T, according to estimates released this week. Of that money, $969B comes in so-called discretionary spending, up $300B since 2001. But by far and away the worst of the bill comes in entitlement spending, which went to $1.32T last year, up from $1.009 in 2001. As a measure of the rate of increase in both areas, discretionary spending has increased 93% since 1990, but entitlements have gone up 132%, while revenues have increased by 109%.

Where has the increase come? Some of it has gone to national defense, but not all of it. In fact, the federal budget has grown across the board since 2001, outstripping inflation (12% overall) in several categories, such as Education (137%), Community and Regional Development (342%), Medicare (58%), Housing and Commerce (58%), Medicaid (49%), and Water Transportation (46%). Do you like the idea of nationalized health care? We may be heading there by default, as the federal budget for Health Research and Regulation has grown by 78% since 2001 and now consumes $76B of our budget.

It's these numbers and this growth that accounts for the budget crisis we face, but the root cause is a growing belief in America that government should deliver all services and provide a completely risk-free environment to its constituents. This leads to a simple yet unanswered question: who pays? The numbers make the answer clear -- we all pay, and we will all start paying much more unless these trends are reversed. Federal programs have become an addiction, not just to politicians looking to pork up home districts to guarantee re-election, but to all of us. What started as noble programs to assist the truly disadvantaged have now become bloated socialist nanny-care programs, floating everyone and relying on a decreasing work force to prop up the Ponzi scheme for just one more generation before the collapse comes.

It may not yet be here, but we can see it coming. We need to wean people off the public dole and make clear that the costs outstrip the benefits one will eventually realize. If we don't, Riedl's analysis shows where we will soon head. Read it all.

Harper Includes Surprises In His Cabinet

Stephen Harper took office yesterday as the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada and formed his new Cabinet -- a move which resulted in immediate controversy. In a scene reminiscent of Paul Martin's seduction of Belinda Stronach, Harper included a newly-elected Liberal MP as his international trade minister:

He lured a Vancouver Liberal star, David Emerson, to become his international trade minister and made an unelected Montreal businessman, Michael Fortier, a Senator and public works minister in one fell swoop.

Emerson - re-elected as a Liberal just two weeks ago - drew gasps as he arrived at Rideau Hall to be sworn in. He took the oath while still in possession of a Liberal party card.

Fortier, a former Progressive Conservative party president, didn't run for Parliament but was the party's election campaign co-chair. He has agreed to run in the next election and will hold a temporary Senate seat until then.

Harper later told the press that he wanted to ensure that the urban areas had representation in his cabinet. The Tories came to power mostly on the basis of rural and suburban ridings, where the Conservative influence grew after the string of Liberal scandals. The Grits held onto the urban centers of Canada, where they have long held sway. That resulted in an awkward imbalance where the Tories would have had no urban representation in their leadership -- leading them to negotiate for Emerson's defection from the Liberals.

Harper made a smart move in offering the position to Emerson. The Tory leader obviously has his eyes on the next election, and he needs to build party support in the cities if the Conservatives hope to form a majority government at some point. Emerson's switch also gives wavering Liberals some reason to rethink their affiliation. And voters in Montreal and Vancouver, who may have thought themselves written off after backing the losing horse, will find themselves still engaged in the governing process. Finally, including a former Liberal as the international trade minister sends a message that change will be incremental, at least at first, which should alleviate some nervousness about Harper's rule among Canadian voters.

The press, meanwhile, did their best to spin this as a betrayal of principle. However, after Belinda Stronach's switch to the Liberals, the Tories only complained that the portfolio she was given was nothing but a sinecure, a payoff for keeping the Martin government afloat. The Tories do not face a no-confidence vote, and cannot be accused of paying Emerson off for his switch. Besides, Emerson doesn't share a bed with a Liberal leader the way Stronach did with Tory deputy leader Peter MacKay, making hers a dual betrayal.

Harper showed some nerve yesterday in his selections. He may be more of a political visionary than anyone expected.

Shooting Fish In A Barrel

Congratulations to our good friend Paul Mirengoff at Power Line for making Dick Durbin look like ... well ... Dick Durbin. Read Paul's own account here. Mark Tapscott replies to his rhetorical question in this post, which sounds more and more true all the time ...

Carville And Begala Reinvent The Wheel

James Carville and Paul Begala write a lengthy editorial for the Washington Monthly, offering their view of campaign reform. It should come as no surprise that their preferred method of reform involves turning elections into yet another expensive government program, but what is so amusing is that they make it into such a Byzantine affair that it practically turns into self-parody.

First, the pair make the argument that members of Congress are underpaid:

First, we raise congressional pay big time. Pay 'em what we pay the president: $400,000. That's a huge increase from the $162,000 congressmen and senators currently make. Paul, especially, has been a critic of congressional pay increases. But he is willing to more than double politicians' pay in order to get some of the corrupt campaign money out of the system. You see, the pay raise comes with a catch. In return, we get a simple piece of legislation that says members of Congress cannot take anything of value from anyone other than a family member. No lunches, no taxi rides. No charter flights. No golf games. No ski trips. No nothing.

It's always amusing when Democrats routinely castigate people who make six figures as the "rich", but then claim that politicians making $162K somehow have a claim of poverty. That salary doesn't include per diems, nor does it include staffers, which in many cases include family members to max out the benefits for holding electoral office. Nor does it take into account that some of these people have their own businesses back home, to which they tend when not in session. Carville and Begala make it sound as if their abject poverty causes corruption, a ludicrous notion, and one that would cost taxpayers $127,330,000 per year to fix.

After that, they decide that incumbents need to be handicapped in running for re-election. They insist that elected officials should never raise funds, but that challengers can raise however much they want from whatever sources they want. How would that work? Well, that's where the fun starts:

No president or member of Congress could accept a single red cent from individuals, corporations, or special interests. Period.

Challengers, on the other hand, would be allowed to raise money in any amount from any individual American citizen or political action committee. No limits, just as the free-market conservatives have always wanted. But here is the catch: Within 24 hours of receiving a contribution, the challenger would have to report it electronically to the Federal Election Commission, which would post it for the public to see. ...

The day after [disclosure], the U.S. Treasury would credit the incumbent's campaign account with a comparable sum—say 80 percent of the contribution to the challenger to take into account the cost of all the canapés and Chardonnay the challenger had to buy to raise his funds as well as the incumbent's advantage. ...

What if the incumbent wants to spend her own money? After all, the Supreme Court has made it clear that the Constitution does not allow restrictions on how much money a candidate—challenger or incumbent—can spend. No problem. Uncle Sam would write the challenger a check for an equivalent amount.

Why not just ban private donations altogether and simply provide public financing for all elections? I don't believe that's compatible with freedom of speech, but at least it's coherent. The Carville-Begala mess appears to have been a committee creation tasked with finding a middle ground between public financing and full disclosure. This hybrid is a laughable product that reminds one of the silly Reese's Peanut Butter Cup commercials from the 1970s, where two people collided and someone stuck a chocolate bar in a jar of peanut butter. It only resembles a coherent strategy on the most superficial level.

I agree that we need to reform political processes that protect incumbents, but the problem with incumbency comes from apportionment processes that have become seriously derailed, not with campaign financing. Carville and Begala need to go back to Scream TV and let more rational minds develop reform strategies.

Who's Sorry Now?

Instapundit links to a new website, We Are Sorry, that has issued an apology to Denmark and Norway for the rioting and the violence directed at them by mobs of Muslims around the world. Purportedly set up by moderate Muslims, the website makes a well-written and eloquent apology to those harmed by the protests over a series of editorial cartoons:

We whole-heartedly apologize to the people of Denmark, Norway and all the European Union over the actions of a few, and we completely condemn all forms of vandalism and incitement to violence that the Arab and Muslim world have witnessed. We hope that this sad episode will not tarnish the great friendship that our peoples have fostered over decades. ...

Anyone offended by the content of a publication has a vast choice of democratic and respectful methods of seeking redress. The most obvious are not buying the publication, writing letters to the editor or expressing their opinions in other venues. It is also possible to use one’s free choice in a democracy to conduct a boycott of the publication, and even a boycott of firms dealing with it. Yet an indiscriminate boycott of all the country’s firms is simply uncalled for and counter-productive. We would be allowing the extremists on both sides to prevail, while punishing the government and the whole population for the actions of an unrepresentative irresponsible few.

We apologize whole-heartedly to the people of Norway and Denmark for any offense this sorry episode may have caused, to any European who has been harassed or intimidated, to the staff of the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish Embassies in Syria whose workplace has been destroyed and for any distress this whole affair may have caused to anyone.

Powerful words, and certainly an astute observation of the ridiculous nature of the protests currently reverberating through the Islamic world. This would be an encouraging sign of moderation -- if we knew who authored and sponsored it. The whois information for this domain reveals nothing about the owners of the site, except that the domain itself came from GoDaddy. The site has no signature, no sponsoring organization, no links to identifying materials; it is as anonymous as a site can get.

This leaves us with two options. Either the owners of this site aren't Muslim at all and just want to gain attention (and possibly dial down the heat), or the Muslims that sponsor the site intend on remaining anonymous. If the former is true, then this site means nothing. If the latter is true, it shows the marginalization that moderates within Islam feel when criticizing the Islamists -- which demonstrates why we have to support the publishers of criticism despite the outrage it provokes. Until we support the Danes and others who dared to criticize radical Islam and its claim on temporal as well as spiritual dominance, moderate Muslims will have no reason to stand up to the Islamists and risk their own safety.

Hugh's Silver Lining

I knew Hugh would find a way to make a Steeler victory in the championship into a silver lining somehow. Hugh noted that Lynn Swann got a thunderous ovation from Steeler fans -- and Pennsylvania voters -- when he ran onto Detroit's Ford Field in pre-game introductions:

[The worst Superbowl moment] had to be Ed Rendell's when he saw Lynn Swann run on to Ford Field with other past Superbowl MVPs. Swann got a thundering reception from the pro-Steelers crowd. Let's see --tired, old party hack versus fresh face superstar with charisma. Rendell's got a money advantage, but Swann is already pulling ahead in the polling.

It is the Arnold effect --someone new, someone not defined by the battles of the past dozen years. Unlike Arnold, Swann's also liked by the GOP base.

Swann's been charging past Rendell in the polls for some time, and the Steeler victory certainly won't hurt the former Pittsburgh great in his run against Rendell for the governor's seat. Swann will also help Rick Santorum campaign in the Philadelphia area where he faces some tough numbers. So far, Santorum has a hard task ahead of him, but with Swann gracefully ascending over Rendell, he may be able to ride that momentum for a victory as well. The two of them in combination may even make the Keystone State go red in 2008, a feat the Republicans nearly accomplished in 2004.

No wonder, then, that Hugh seems so cheerful in this photo:

Well-Planned Spontaneity

The ruckus over the Prophet cartoons continued to inspire violence over the weekend, with two Danish (Lebanon, Syria) and one Norwegian (Syria) consulate burnt down in Southwest Asia, victims of angry mobs. The idea that these mobs formed spontaneously and erupted in anger gets disputed by today's Guardian (UK), which calls the protests the result of some "well-planned spontaneity":

It was one of those unpredictable Lebanese Sunday mornings. The ski slopes in the mountains overlooking Beirut would have been crowded with skiers enjoying the brilliant winter sunshine. Walkers were out along the Corniche, strolling in designer tracksuits. Downtown, the chic restaurants were preparing for lunchtime. And there were a few men on scooters riding around town broadcasting an imminent protest.

It wasn't long before the heavily-laden coaches and minivans began to arrive from Beirut and the rest of Lebanon. They were all full of young, often bearded men who wore headbands and carried identical flags with calligraphic inscriptions in Arabic such as: "There is no god but God and Mohammad is his Prophet" and "O Nation of Muhammad, Wake Up." ...

The police seemed to know the demonstrators were coming and had turned out in force with barriers, barbed wire fences and several large fire trucks. ... By 11am, the Lebanese police and army were firing tear gas at the crowd. The protesters threw volleys of stones. Some stuffed cotton wool into their nostrils to stifle the effect of the gas.

One group overturned a car and set it alight. Sunni clerics in robes tried to calm the young men down. They were ignored. One cleric, Ibrahim Ibrahim, said his pleas were met with stones and insults. "They are hooligans," he said.

The police finally withdrew and allowed the crowd to burn down the Danish embassy. Although they set the building alight, they had time and the forethought to bring a large banner to place on the building before it burnt down, announcing that the protestors were ready to offer their children in sacrifice to Mohammed. (That is a strange expression of human sacrifice for a monotheistic religion, but a theme that has become much more pronounced in radical Islam since the rise of Islamofascism thirty years ago. It's almost as if Islam got the story of Abraham and Isaac but missed the ending entirely.) That message delivered, the mob then went into the most affluent Christian neighborhood and began vandalizing property all along the way, smashing windows and damaging vehicles.

Suddenly, the protest stopped. The police and Islamic clerics couldn't stop it -- but one of the leaders announced that the demonstration was over and that the crowd needed to go home. And it did; the streets were cleared within minutes, leaving the area back in police control and the residents of the area to clean up after the violence. The protestors went back to the buses that brought them into the area, similar to tourists trying to attend a cultural event.

In fact, the tourist notion sounds like an apt analogy. This demonstration and the arson at the Danish embassy was nothing more than tourist-style outrage on behalf of radical Islamists. They have no real street following; instead, they have to bus their people into the area in order to get any attendace whatsoever, and their swath of destruction got as much planning as a three-star tour of the Holy Land. The only aspect missing was the color brochures and the timetables.

Hamas Signals For More Violence

As if its daily pronouncements about refusing to change its goal of Israeli annihilation, Hamas gave a more tangible sign of its support for war against the Israelis yesterday:

Ismail Haniyeh, the front-runner to be the next Palestinian prime minister, appeared yesterday at the graveside of three Fatah militants in what was seen as a signal of continued support for armed resistance.

Mr. Haniyeh postponed a vital trip to Cairo to attend the funerals for the three men, who were killed Saturday night in an Israeli helicopter strike. It is highly unusual for a Hamas leader to attend the funeral of fighters from the rival Fatah movement.

"These killings will increase the citizens' unity, and boost their steadfastness and their resistance against the Zionist occupation," said the Hamas leader, who walked with the cortege amid intermittent gunfire and the blaring martial music in praise of Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

Ahmed Hilles, the Fatah secretary-general for the Gaza Strip, stood alongside Mr. Haniyeh as relatives and Fatah gunmen, some wearing masks, shoveled brown clay over the three bodies that had been wrapped in shawls emblazoned with Fatah's emblematic crossed rifles and a hand grenade. Many green Hamas flags were also in evidence.

"The presence of Haniyeh is something strange. We have not seen this before," said Hazem Abu Shanab, a professor of political science at Al Azhar University of Gaza. "I think Hamas did try to send a signal also that they are supporting the Palestinian activists sticking to resistance activity. 'I am so close to you.' "

Now we have Hamas and the martyrdom organization of Fatah making overtures towards each other, with the former's leader attending their funerals now. It demonstrates that the incoming Hamas power structure wants to emphasize the armed struggle aspects of their group and not the diplomatic or even the social-services efforts that Hamas has made. Hamas and Fatah have long been bitter rivals with a similar end goal, but dissimilar motivations. Fatah has operated as a secular movement, more of an ideological group of fanatics that more resembled European communist terror groups that sprang out of the 1960s along with the PLO.

Hamas, on the other hand, has always been Islamist and considers itself more pure -- a feeling borne out by Fatah's managemen of the Palestinian Authority, with its rampant corruption. Hamas also considers Fatah fatally corrupted by its negotiations with the "Zionist entity". All of that leads to Haniyeh's attendance at the funeral yesterday as a singular event, and not to be dismissed lightly for its propaganda value. He helped lead the procession. That was meant to communicate a message to the West, as well as to Fatah members throughout the territories -- Hamas intends to fight and wants all of the martyrdom operations to unite under its banner, or at least under its leadership.

If people still refuse to acknowledge the consequences of this election, it becomes increasingly obvious that the refusal is willful. Hamas has done everything but take out Super Bowl ads announcing its intention to continue making war until the Israelis die or leave. The US and Europe need to cut the Palestinians off from the flow of money as long as these radicals stay in charge.

One For The Thumb

Why is this man smiling? Perhaps Hugh Hewitt understands that Pittsburgh had a date with destiny tonight, surviving a subpar performance by Ben Roethlisberger and its running game to eke out a Super Bowl championship over the surprisingly good Seattle Seahawks, 21-10 tonight:

The Pittsburgh Steelers finally gave coach Bill Cowher some Super Bowl satisfaction. Moments after the Rolling Stones rocked a Ford Field filled with Terrible Towels, Willie Parker broke a record 75-yard touchdown run, sparking Pittsburgh's 21-10 victory Sunday over the Seattle Seahawks.

Not only did the Steelers earn that elusive fifth championship ring and their first since 1980, but they completed a magic Bus ride that made Jerome Bettis' homecoming and likely farewell a success.

And they provided sweet validation for Cowher with a title in his 14th season as their coach, the longest tenure in the NFL.

As a sixth seed, no less.

The Steelers won four successive road games in the playoffs, beating a third seed, a second seed, and two #1 seeds to win the championship. No team in NFL history ever had that kind of run to a championship, and none likely will ever do it again. Jerome Bettis won't do it again. He announced his retirement while holding up the Lombardi Trophy, saying, "I think the Bus ... will make its last stop in Detroit."

The Seahawks dominated the first half but could not put points on the board. The Steelers, meanwhile, looked tight and inept for much of the first half, not even getting a first down until midway through the second period. Roethlisberger never looked comfortable in the entire game, but he did get the Steeler offense in gear at the end of the first half and the beginning of the second half. He played just well enough to win his first championship in his second year, and hopefully the experience will allow the young phenom more opportunities to play better in future Super Bowls.

The Seahawks' Matt Hasselbeck outplayed Roethlisberger but made one critical mistake late in the game. He had an opportunity to put Seattle in the lead, but instead threw a pick that took the air out of the Seahawks. It led to a reverse option for Antwaan Randle El to throw a TD pass to eventual MVP Hines Ward. If nothing else, he showed guts and determination, but he couldn't overcome a resilient Steelers defense that truly was the MVP for this game.

I suspect that Hugh will have plenty to say about this game, especially about the close calls from the referees. I'll be sure to call him Monday evening to get his reaction. Expect to hear a reminder about the spectacular run this team had over the last two months to even get into the playoffs, let alone win the championship.

Congratulations, Pittsburgh. Thanks for a great season, a great championship, and one of the greatest franchises in pro sports.

The Perfect Sponsor

Michelle Malkin notes that the left-wing protest group World Can't Wait, dedicated to the overthrow of the Bush administration, staged a demonstration yesterday in Washington, DC. She posts a picture of a protestor holding a sign that depicts a disembodied head of President Bush being held by a hand, blood spurting out of his severed neck, as a political statement (courtesy of Free Republic, which has more photos here). It's about as honest of a depiction of WCW that can be captured on film, especially the creepy smile on the signholder's face:

They differ only slightly from the Islamofascists that have burned down three embassies in protest of editorial cartoons originally published last year. They insist on political supremacy and call for the murder of those who oppose them, openly and gladly. It's small wonder that they cannot convince multitudes to join their protest, but even the 1,000 or so who gathered should be embarrassed to be associated with this.

It's not just the bloodthirstiness, either, but the stupidity. Someone thought they'd be clever and make up this sign tying the NSA program to a call for Bush's impeachment (via Rogouski.com, which has a number of hilarious pictures of the rally posted on his site):

I assumed that the WCW protestors had the foresight to buy the toll-free number listed to assist in spreading their message. I called the number to hear what they had to say, but instead got quite a surprise. The phone number for 800-IMPEACH actually belongs to Principle Business Enterprises, which manufactures Tranquility incontinence products.

It's the perfect sponsor for a protest group that can't hold its water and wait for the electoral process to work.

Israel Pays The Danegeld

The Israelis have decided to rely on the technicality that Hamas has not yet taken over the government of the Palestinian Authority to make its payment of tax revenues to the PA, an amount that comes to $54 million. Israel had held the money for a week while deciding whether to allow one of its intractable enemies access to funds that will likely go to financing more attacks on its citizens:

Israel agreed to make a crucial payment of $54 million in tax and customs revenues to the Palestinians, but officials said future transfers will be halted once Hamas militants form the next Palestinian government.

The decision was taken shortly after a flare-up of violence. Israeli forces pounded the northern Gaza Strip with missiles and artillery fire, killing three Palestinian militants. Hours later, a Palestinian assailant killed one woman and wounded four other people in what police called a politically motivated stabbing in central Israel.

Israel collects millions of dollars in taxes and customs duties for the Palestinians, transferring the funds to the Palestinian Authority each month. Israel delayed the most recent payment last week to protest Hamas' victory in Palestinian legislative elections, deepening a financial crisis for the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority.

Putting money in the hands of terrorists is a mistake no matter what the circumstances are. In this case, it will not do anything to convince the Hamas lunatics to moderate; all it will do is emphasize the weakness of the West, which does not want confrontation and will believe almost anything as long as it allows them to maintain the appearance of the status quo.

The excuse that Hamas has not yet formed a government provides an excellent example of this tendency. Hamas may not have formed a government, but the Palestinians gave them a majority in their Parliament, which means that they will not find it difficult to accomplish. The money given to the PA will have to go through Hamas under any circumstances, a group that refuses to even consider rethinking its public goal of the annihilation of Israel.

Israel wants to appear reasonable by paying this month's tax collections. However, they wind up appearing as weak as a parent who keeps threatening dire consequences to their children for misbehavior but then hands them candy at the same time. The child learns not to take the parent seriously, and Hamas understands that Israel wants international approval much more than Hamas does. It's a lesson that requires twice as much effort to undo than that required to simply withhold the money the first time.

USS Cole Mastermind Escapes

Interpol officials have now verified that a number of convicted al-Qaeda operatives escaped from a Yemeni prison by digging a tunnel -- and included among them was the mastermind of the attack on the USS Cole:

A man considered a mastermind of the USS Cole bombing that killed 17 sailors in a Yemeni port in 2000 was among 23 people who escaped from a Yemen prison last week, Interpol said Sunday. ...

Interpol said in a statement that at least 13 of the 23 escapees were convicted al-Qaida fighters, who escaped via a 140-yard-long tunnel "dug by the prisoners and co-conspirators outside."

Yemeni officials confirmed to Interpol that a man considered a mastermind of the Cole attack, identified as Jamal al-Badawi, was among those who escaped.

Al-Badawi was among those sentenced to death in September 2004 for plotting the USS Cole attack. Two suicide bombers blew up an explosives-laden boat next to the destroyer as it refueled in the Yemeni port of Aden on Oct. 12, 2000.

They dug a tunnel? Was this a prison or a tent camp?

Let's make a deal with the various governments in the region. We'll take custody of AQ terrorists captured from now on, and they can use these high-security prisons for some other purpose .... perhaps training their guards about how to detect big holes being dug out from underneath them.