Jumping To Conclusions Is Not Good Exercise

Jill Carroll has released a statement through the Christian Science Monitor, now that she has safely left Iraq and the clutches of her captors, that repudiates the video that the kidnappers forced her to make:

During my last night in captivity, my captors forced me to participate in a propaganda video. They told me they would let me go if I cooperated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. I agreed.

Things that I was forced to say while captive are now being taken by some as an accurate reflection of my personal views. They are not. The people who kidnapped me and murdered Alan Enwiya are criminals, at best. They robbed Alan of his life and devastated his family. They put me, my family and my friends--and all those around the world, who have prayed so fervently for my release--through a horrific experience. I was, and remain, deeply angry with the people who did this.

I also gave a TV interview to the Iraqi Islamic Party shortly after my release. The party had promised me the interview would never be aired on television, and broke their word. At any rate, fearing retribution from my captors, I did not speak freely. Out of fear I said I wasn't threatened. In fact, I was threatened many times.

Also, at least two false statements about me have been widely aired: That I refused to travel and cooperate with the US military and that I refused to discuss my captivity with US officials. Again, neither is true.

It's worthy to note that she gives effusive thanks to the US military for their efforts before and after her release, a gracious note that the organization for the hostages freed earlier through direct military action could not bring itself to do. As I wrote last night, the explanation given by the CS Monitor and confirmed today by Carroll herself makes perfect sense. Had people thought for a moment before committing their initial responses to their blogs, they would have understood the video and her first statement as nothing more than the ticket for her release.

Had the Iraqi Army released a video like this during the opening days of Operation Iraqi Freedom with Jessica Lynch, all of us would have immediately understood it to be nothing more than a cheap propaganda trick. Why did so many in the blogosphere not understand that the same dynamic was at work with Jill Carroll? Was it the widely-distributed picture of her wearing traditional Muslim garb and severe glasses that made us forget that she had been the victim of a kidnapping and kept under threat of force for almost ninety days? Now that we have a new picture of hers to use, does the initial reaction seem a lot less understandable?

In this event, we gave the terrorists their talking points by jumping to an unfair conclusion. The reaction of people to her statement gave the terrorists credibility that they never would otherwise have had and ensured that their propaganda got the maximum amount of play. The real story is contained in this statement, made when she finally got out of the war zone -- and it will never get the amount of play that her initial report did.

Finally, for those who blamed her for being in Iraq in the first place, let me remind you that we have continually harped on the media for being balcony reporters -- for not getting outside of the Green Zone and trying to get the true stories of Iraq. Well, that's what Jill Carroll tried to do, and she got unlucky enough to get kidnapped for her efforts. We need reporters to take those kind of chances, and we should have been more supportive of her all along. Now that she's home, let's hope we remember that with the next reporter unfortunate enough to find themselves the victim of violence and not victimize them a second time when they cooperate enough to be set free.

UPDATE: Joe Gandelman has been kind enough to make this post his Quote of the Day, although I think I might choose Rick Moran's "Twice A Victim" for that honor. I've perused the sites linking to this post and the Carroll statement at Memeorandum (that absolutely invaluable tool for bloggers); Joe and Rick have a series of excellent posts on this subject, and Rusty has been going wall-to-wall as he does on all hostage stories.

Northern Alliance Radio Network Today

The Northern Alliance takes to the airwaves today in two separate locations. Brian, Chad, and John will man the studio for the first two hours (11am - 1pm), debating the topics of the day and revealing their new feature, "The Week In Gatekeeping". For the second half of the show, Mitch and I will be live at the White Bear Lake Superstore, hanging out with the cars and talking about the week's events. Topics will probably include the McKinney circus, the emergence of Lynn Swann in Pennsylvania, as well as the immigration controversy.

Be sure to listen to the entire program at AM 1280 The Patriot, on the stream if you're not in the Twin Cities. If you're in the Twin Cities, stop by the WBLSS and say hello. Join in the conversation by calling 651-289-4488 or sending an e-mail to comments -at- northernallianceradio.com. We hope to hear from you!

UPDATE: I'm out here at WBLSS a little early, and they have some great vehicles out here for me to drool over. I'm talking with Chris Deal, who's ready to rock. Come on out and tell Chris I said hello!

You Can Help Defend Free Speech

The excellent Canadian magazine Western Standard now faces a lawsuit from an Islamic cleric in Calgary for publishing the Prophet cartoons in its coverage of the massive riots around the world earlier this year. The suit was presented in "human rights court", an apparent dodge in which to silence criticism of radical Islam's political goals through the squelching of legitimate satire. The cost of defending the lawsuit may prove too much for the magazine, estimated at $75,000.

CQ readers can assist the Western Standard in its fight for free speech. The information for their legal defense fund can be found here. If we want to prevail against the forces that would silence us and force us to live in dhimmitude either of their making or ours, now is the time to be heard.

The First Winner Of The Chef Award

Brian Maloney notes an appearance by Al Franken on yesterday's Today Show that reveals the utter lack of a sense of humor by the supposed comedian. After riffing on the supposed exhaustion of outgoing White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and his replacement, Joshua Bolten, Franken got very cranky indeed when Michael Smerconish turned the barb back on Franken himself. Newsbusters has the transcript, with Scott Whitlock's commentary:

Lauer: "Andrew Card, five and a half years as chief of staff, out. Was he shown the door? And if so, is change good?"

Franken: "He was exhausted. I think he's been exhausted since, pretty much, since day one...You know, they point to lousy decisions made recently, but they've been making lousy decisions since, pretty much since- I think they just stayed up too late at the first inaugural."

[Franken went on to say that Josh Bolten taking over as chief of staff would do no good because he’s "even more exhausted." He then added:]

Franken: "I think they should just fire these guys in order of exhaustion. I think Rumsfeld is looking real tired."

[That last line drew a laugh from Lauer and the Today set. However, Mr. Franken, who felt free to dish insults out, became very testy when Michael Smerconish noted how somber the author of "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot" seemed:]

Smerconish: "Yeah, Al sounds a little exhausted to me this morning."

Franken: "It's 4:11AM! It's four in the morning here....Screw you! I got up at four in the morning."

[Franken, who was appearing via remote from California and thus in a different time zone,couldn’t let the issue go:]

Franken: "I got up at 4AM, Michael! Four friggen AM!"

Ian Schwartz has the video clip. It's a big file, so be patient while it's downloading.

All of this again reveals Franken to be a hypocrite and a coward, a man who can dish out the insults but who loses his temper easily when challenged. He has assaulted people in public for crossing him, including Laura Ingraham's producer and a heckler at a political rally. He can joke about how exhausted Card has become after five years of 18-hour days, seven days a week, but God forbid anyone mention a lack of energy on his part when he manages to roll out of bed before dawn on one occasion!

That makes Franken our new nominee for the Chef Award, given to those celebrities and political pundits who feel free to skewer everyone but howl when anyone dares criticize or satirize themselves or their pet causes. Isaac Hayes established this award by enthusiastically participating in South Park's satires of every major religion -- but quit in a huff when Scientology got skewered. Dishing it up has proven easier for these two chefs de wheezine.

Those Aggies Don't Just Tip Cows Any More!

One of the pleasures of having a vibrant local press is the colorful stories about the community that get missed when focusing on the national and international news. The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports today on an agricultural fraternity at the University of Minnesota that has been suspended and may be disbanded for violating the university's ban on hazing. The FarmHouse Fraternity apparently has pushed the Midwestern envelope a little too far -- say, all the way to San Francisco:

Hazing by the suspended FarmHouse Fraternity at the University of Minnesota included hitting members on their backside with a leather strap and taking them to livestock barns for the apparent purpose of having sex with animals, a university report says.

The university suspended the agriculturally oriented fraternity, located on the St. Paul campus, on Wednesday and outlined various requirements for the lifting of the suspension in the fall of 2007. At least 15 of the fraternity's 29 members also are under investigation in the hazing incident and could face individual discipline.

Wow -- sadomasochism and a little animal husbandry (literally) mixed together! Not to worry, Gopher fans; the Aggies eventually defended the honor of their animals:

During the "livestock barns'' hazing, according to the memorandum, members "were taken to the University livestock pens and handed condoms. No explanation was given, but the new members perceived that they were to have sex with the animals. Members were stopped before entering the pens and informed it was a joke."

Yeah, well, that would have been difficult to explain at the State Fair anyway.

The university divided the report into four areas of concern, with the livestock barn being one of those categories. "Strapping" apparently occurred outside of recruitment as a physical punishment for members at any stage of their membership. "Showering" involved hanging the young men upside down from the balcony, clad only in underwear, while dumping "liquid" on them. (The PP does not specify the liquid used, but I'd say beer would be a fair bet.) Some members got showered as many as five times in a single night -- and the practice often resulted in injury when resisted. As odd as it seems, the "pre-initiation" category when hazing would normally occur sounds like the easiest time for students to engage with FarmHouse fratters; all they had to endure was "excessive cleaning", mind games, verbal abuse, and sleep deprivation.

I guess they didn't like to really party with people until they got to know them.

The most unintentionally funny part of the story comes at the end:

While under suspension by the university, the Minnesota chapter will not be able to participate in social and official recruiting events.

Uh-huh. Like these guys could find a date after this kind of publicity. I can just imagine how the young women on campus would find themselves attracted to a group of guys who appeared obsessed with seeing each other in their underwear, engaging in rather odd bonding rituals, and sending members to "date" Bessie in the barn. I don't think the U has to worry about the frat engaging in any social activities in the foreseeable future.

UPDATE: No, this is not an April Fool's Day joke ... unfortunately.

Demostrations For Illegals Are No Civil Rights Movement

The demonstrations this week do not have any relation to the American civil-rights movement, Joe Hicks writes in today's LA Times Op-Ed section. Hicks, a former director in the West Coast contingent of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference -- Martin Luther King's organization -- has spent his life working for civil rights but makes clear that those who cross the border illegally are, well, criminals by definition:

THE DEBATE over illegal immigration has reached a vigorous boil, with contrasting bills in the House and Senate and hundreds of thousands of protesters demonstrating nationwide. The complexities of this debate seem lost on many of the protesters. Many claim that what lies beneath reform efforts is raw racism, leading to the view that the recent protests signal a new civil rights movement.

It's simply not true. This nation's civil rights movement of the 1960s broke the back of white supremacy that prevented black Americans (who were citizens) from enjoying the rights guaranteed to them under the Constitution. Undeniably, the freedoms codified by civil rights-era legislation have made life better for all Americans — regardless of skin color, gender or national origin.

Now, many Latino immigrant-rights organizers and their sympathizers seem to be saying that there is some inherent right being expressed when people sneak into the country, thumb their noses at the law and make fools out of those who wait patiently in foreign lands for visas to come to the United States.

It is quite clear that many of those participating in the demonstrations have adopted the stance of the beleaguered victim, perceiving frustration about illegal immigration as racism. Some comments have been painfully ignorant. One protester said: "I'm here to make sure that Mexicans get their freedom, their rights."

During the student protests, the American flag was only occasionally on display, while the Mexican flag was omnipresent. A student said he was waving the latter in support of La Raza (the race), while another asked why illegal immigrants were "treated like criminals." Perhaps he wasn't aware that crossing the U.S. border without the required visa is now, and always has been, against the law.

Hicks brings a center-left perspective to these massive embarrassments, noting that the wave of illegals creates a downward pressure on wages in all entry-level areas of the market. Hicks writes about the stunning ignorance of teens who turn out for these protests, both in their lack of sophistication about the issue itself and their failure to grasp that the illegals compete for jobs that normally would have been filled by themselves and their friends. He also notes the irony of the demonstrations taking place on a day that honors labor leader Cesar Chavez, who fought against the use of illegals in the fields by agribusiness as a means to break the strikes he called.

Hicks has it exactly correct. These demonstrations did not occur to promote civil rights, but instead to demand an entitlement from the United States. The protestors want an entitlement to violate border laws, to use government services without paying income taxes, and to ignore American law in general. The fact that officials who rely on the social contract that springs from this rule of law to execute their official duties welcomed these protestors with open arms (he specifically mentions LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa) should embarrass the people who elected them.

We can debate how we want to handle the people who have already crossed the border after securing it against further incursions. Reasonable people can differ on this complicated issue. However, the basis for any practical resolution has to be the security of our southern border, as no program can succeed until we effectively stop the flood and establish credibility in our efforts. It isn't a matter of civil rights, but a matter of law enforcement and wartime security. The fools out waving Mexican flags in the streets and asserting that "the border crossed us" only shows how much credibility we have to regain.

How To Clear The Room (Democrat Style)

The New York Times notes that the call to censure President Bush for his approval of a program to conduct surveillance on an enemy in wartime without treating it as a law-enforcement project has made lots of headlines but won few converts, even among Bush's opposition in the Senate. David Kirkpatrick reports that Russ Feingold's push to officially scold Bush has Democrats oddly silent:

Although few Senate Democrats have embraced the censure proposal and almost no one expects the Senate to adopt it, the notion that Democrats may seek to punish Mr. Bush has become a rallying cause to partisans on both sides of the political divide. Republicans called the hearing to give the proposal a full airing as their party sought to use the threat of Democratic punishment of the president to rally their conservative base.

Five Republicans at the hearing took turns attacking the idea as a reckless stunt that could embolden terrorists. Just two Democrats showed up to defend it, arguing that Congress needed to rein in the White House's expansive view of presidential power. The Democrats' star witness was John W. Dean, the former counsel to President Richard M. Nixon who divulged many of the details in the Watergate scandal.

Senator Russell D. Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat who proposed the censure motion and is considering a 2008 presidential run, argued that the Bush administration's insistence that it needed no Congressional approval for its wiretapping program implied that "we no longer have a constitutional system consisting of three co-equal branches of government; we have a monarchy."

"If we in the Congress don't stand up for ourselves and for the American people, we become complicit in the lawbreaking," Mr. Feingold said.

Here, I think, is the crux of the problem for the Democrats. First, in the hearing itself, five former FISA jurists have told the Judiciary Committee that Congress cannot strip the president of his powers granted by the Constitution to defend the nation in wartime, no matter how many laws they pass -- and that to the extent that FISA does so, it is unconstitutional. Conducting intelligence on a wartime enemy has always been part of any military response, including (and especially) their attempts to communicate to agents within the US. Both Truong and in re Sealed Case, discussed at length at Power Line and joined by liberal legal scholars such as Cass Sunstein, back the FISA judges that appeared this week.

Beyond that, the problem Feingold faces is that Congress had been briefed about the program since its inception. Leading Democrats on the relevant committees knew full well about this program and its implications starting in late 2001. None objected in any serious manner to the program's existence, tactics, or goals, and only mildly objected on occasion about its reach -- after which the NSA suspended it, retooled the parameters to meet the objections, and then restarted it. When Feingold talks about complicity, the Democrats understand what that means, and they're not keen to throw themselves on a political pyre just to help Feingold gain momentum for a presidential run in 2008.

These attacks on a program that has consistently won solid support from the American public do nothing but energize both parties' bases. That may help Feingold personally, who right now has made himself the darling of the MoveOn crowd, but it won't help moderate Democrats. Feingold has explicitly called them cowards, fueling the radicals in his party to attack them and press for primary opponents to knock them out of the general election in the fall. Meanwhile, a dispirited conservative base that had made a lot of noise about staying home in November to protest the lack of fiscal discipline and the paltry efforts made at securing the borders now finds itself back on the front lines, determined to thwart Democratic plans to impeach Bush after winning control of Congress after November. The GOP base will put aside many differences, even they key disputes over budgeting and borders, in order to ensure that stops right now.

Russ Feingold hasn't been paying attention, not to his caucus, not to the testimony presented in the hearing, and not to the majority of the American electorate. He may remain tone-deaf and in the grasp of the lunatic fringe, but his fellow caucus members seem to have a better sense of politics. Don't expect them to jump onto the pyre any time soon.

UPDATE: The LA Times notices another reason for all the echoes -- the room was mostly empty:

[T]he hearing also dramatized, in the form of a long row of empty chairs, the hesitance other Democrats have about the resolution. Besides Leahy and Feingold, the only other committee Democrat who attended was Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin. And he left without delivering an opening statement or questioning any of the witnesses.

Democrats skipping the session included Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware. Five of the panel's GOP members also were absent.

Feingold's resolution has been championed by an array of left-leaning blogs and the online liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org. But it has attracted only two co-sponsors — Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

Patrick Leahy did wind up endorsing Feingold's resolution, which brings the total on the commitee to ... two. And those two had better get used to loneliness, because when your best witness for censure comes from the Nixon Administration, you really have lost all sense of perspective. John Dean spent his time promoting his book by claiming that the NSA surveillance program was "worse than Watergate", a notion that even a Clinton appointee just couldn't let pass:

Disagreeing were Robert F. Turner, the associate director of the University of Virginia's Center for National Security Law; Lee Casey, another former Reagan administration attorney; and John Schmidt, an associate attorney general under President Clinton. They contended the spying was justified either by the congressional resolution authorizing Bush to use force against terrorists after Sept. 11 or by the president's inherent constitutional powers as commander in chief.

"He did not break the law, and there is no evidence that he has in any way misused the information collected," Casey said. "This is not Watergate."

But ... but ... that doesn't sell books ... or get people votes in the presidential primaries!

Demanding Accountability For Dean Johnson

The controversy over Dean Johnson's lies to a group of pastors regarding assurances he supposedly received from state Supreme Court justices on how they would rule on gender-neutral marriage has escalated, thanks to two seperate requests for ethics investigations. A former judicial candidate and court critic has joined a Republican state representative in demanding an accounting for either judicial malfeasance or deliberate deception on the part of the Minnesota Senate majority leader:

A legislator and a longtime critic of the judicial system filed separate ethics complaints Friday asking a board to determine whether several state Supreme Court justices held improper conversations about Minnesota marriage law with Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson.

Johnson, DFL-Willmar, said he discussed the law with justices but they offered him no assurances on how they might rule if it were challenged. The justices have denied talking to him about the law.

In his complaint, Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Delano, asked, "Who is telling the truth?"

Former judicial candidate Greg Wersal, a Golden Valley attorney, also filed a complaint calling for an inquiry by the Minnesota Board on Judicial Standards.

Johnson made headlines in Minnesota when tapes of a meeting he held with pastors about Johnson's opposition for a referendum on marriage got released to the public. The tapes, clandestinely made by one of the attendees, revealed that Johnson had claimed to have had conversations with four of the justices, and that they had assured him that they would not overturn the statute in Minnesota passed recently that defined marriage as between one man and one woman. This assurance, if true, would mean that the constitutional amendment reinforcing the statute was unnecessary. It would also represent an unconscionable breach of judicial ethics, as jurists cannot make such assurances, and certainly not in secret to politicians while considering legislation germane to the point.

Johnson at first denied he had said it, and then excoriated the minister for his low ethics in secretly taping the conversation. (He had nothing to say about the ethics of lying to ministers about fantasy conversations.) He then retreated somewhat from the taped statements, saying that he had spoken informally to one Supreme Court justice, who had said something casual that led him to believe that the court would not take up the issue. However, the Chief Justice, Russell Anderson, had become so irate over the suggestion that his court would corrupt itself in such a manner that he interrupted his family vacation to interrogate current and former members of the court, releasing a statement that stopped just short of calling Dean Johnson an outright liar.

After a couple of days with that simmering, Johnson finally apologized, but the incident had already done its damage. His apology never cleared up whether he had dropped his assertion that any justice had ever discussed the marriage law with him in such a manner, and now that lack of clarity has left the door open for this ethics investigation. The entire fiasco makes it much more likely that the referendum will appear on the ballot eventually as the opposition has lost all credibility to deny the voters a shot at deciding the issue directly. If that happens, recent electoral history has shown that it will pull conservatives to the polling stations in large numbers, threatening the thin edge of power that the DFL holds in the upper chamber and the electoral momentum they gained in 2004.

This, of course, is the real reason Johnson wanted to keep the question off the ballot. Now he has ironically made it more likely that the DFL will have to face an energized conservative base thanks to his lack of honesty and his besmirching of the character of the Supreme Court justices. One wonders when the DFL might think about replacing him with a leader who isn't a proven prevaricator.

Good Enough Explanation For Me

After the extraordinary release of Jill Carroll, many people wondered what she would say about her time in captivity. When she started issuing statements about how well she had been treated by her captors, seemingly forgetful about the murder of her translator, many reacted in understandable dismay and anger. That criticism crescendoed when her kidnappers released a video of Carroll giving what looked to be her opinions about the war, George Bush, and the American military.

However, her editors explain that the statement and the video were preconditions for saving her own life:

The night before journalist Jill Carroll's release, her captors said they had one final demand as the price of her freedom: She would have to make a video praising her captors and attacking the United States, according to Jim Carroll.

In a long phone conversation with his daughter on Friday, Mr. Carroll says that Jill was "under her captor's control."

Ms. Carroll had been their captive for three months and even the smallest details of her life - what she ate and when, what she wore, when she could speak - were at her captors' whim. They had murdered her friend and colleague Allan Enwiya, "she had been taught to fear them," he says. And before making one last video the day before her release, she was told that they had already killed another American hostage.

That video appeared Thursday on a jihadist website that carries videos of beheadings and attacks on American forces. In it, Carroll told her father she felt compelled to make statements strongly critical of President Bush and his policy in Iraq.

Her remarks are now making the rounds of the Internet, attracting heavy criticism from conservative bloggers and commentators.

In fact, Carroll did what many hostage experts and past captives would have urged her to do: Give the men who held the power of life and death over her what they wanted.

I too wondered about Carroll's initial statements after terrorists dumped her in a Sunni neighborhood close to the Green Zone. Most of us have listened to similar opinions from reporters and pundits about the US effort in Iraq, and perhaps that's why many believed her statements to reflect her true opinions. Certainly the press has not built a reservoir of goodwill among their readers or the military.

It's good to remember than anytime a hostage gets released by their captors instead of escaping or being freed by authorities, it's usually to send a message. Having been a captive for three months, fighting to stay alive and relatively unharmed every moment of the time, the promise of release for a few minutes of meaningless babble in a video and an initial statement would sound like a terrific bargain to any civilian.

Not long ago, the US acknowledged that even its POWs had to make these kinds of bargains with captors to avoid torture and murder. Many brave men died at the hands of the North Vietnamese trying valiantly to remain defiant through years of captivity because of the prevailing orders at the time that forbade American servicemen from acting in their own defense, losses that inspire us to acts of courage but also in the end did nothing to prevent the enemy from using POWs as propaganda tools. By the time of the Gulf War, the American public had developed the sophistication to understand that programmatic answers videotaped by agents of tyranny meant nothing.

I wonder why we forgot it in this instance. Jill Carroll will have plenty of time to tell us her story, but I think we would all benefit by taking a deep breath and holding our fire until she's safely home and in a clearer mental state. The Christian Science Monitor's explanation makes sense; if it's untrue, we'll know soon enough, but for the moment I think we can all give Carroll the benefit of the doubt.

UPDATE: Jim Geraghty at TKS agrees, and has more thoughts on the subject.

Iranians Celebrate MIRV Or A Suicidal Tendency, Take Your Pick

The Iranian government announced today that it had successfully test-fired a missile capable of both evading radar and hitting multiple, independent targets, suggesting for the first time that the Islamic Republic has developed a MIRV system capable of delivering multiple nuclear warheads throughout the region:

Iran's military said Friday it successfully test-fired a missile not detectable by radar that can use multiple warheads to hit several targets simultaneously, a development that raised concerns in the United States and Israel.

The Fajr-3, which means "victory" in Farsi, can reach Israel and U.S. bases in the Middle East, Iranian state media indicated. The announcement of the test-firing is likely to stoke regional tensions and feed suspicion about Tehran's military intentions and nuclear ambitions. ...

Andy Oppenheimer, a weapons expert at Jane's Information Group, said the missile test could be an indication that Iran has MIRV capability. MIRV refers to multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles, which are intercontinental ballistic missiles with several warheads, each of which could be directed to a different target.

"From the description, it could be a MIRV. If you are saying that from a single missile, separate warheads can be independently targeted then yes, this is significant," he said.

The question is how true this news actually is, and whether it means that the Iranians have a nuclear device to sit atop the missile. Most analysts think that the Iranians may be as far as five years away from a nuclear warhead, and that the Shahab-3 might be a more likely delivery system, at least initially. No one has a clear idea whether the Iranians truly have a radar-evading missile as they claim, as their footage of the tests did not show much about the missile or its launch.

If the Iranians have told the truth about the missile, it represents a dangerous escalation of the standoff over its nuclear program. The ability to pierce the missile defenses of Israel will mean that stopping Iran's nuclear program takes on an even more urgent cast. It almost guarantees that Israel and the US will have to take pre-emptive action to destroy or at least cripple the nuclear program in Iran.

The Iranians had better be careful. If this is gamesmanship and bluff, they may have pushed it too far. If it isn't, it would appear that the nuclear warheads that the Fajr-3 will carry are closer than anyone has guessed thus far. In either case, the missile announcement brings us closer to military action to stop the mullahs.

McKinney: Guard Molested Me Because I'm Black

Cynthia McKinney may cause a security crisis all on her own in the nation's capital before she gets done with her moment of infamy. Instead of apologizing for failing to wear proper identification, violating a security checkpoint, ignoring a security officer when he asked her to stop, and then assaulting him when he attempted to detain her, McKinney claims that she has been victimized -- by the racist and sexist molesters who guard the government offices in DC:

Rep. Cynthia McKinney, the Georgia congresswoman who had an altercation with a Capitol Police officer, said Friday a Capitol police officer started the incident by "inappropriately touching and stopping" her after she walked past a security checkpoint.

McKinney, speaking at a news conference, declared she will be exonerated.

"Let me be clear. This whole incident was instigated by the inappropriate touching and stopping of me, a female black congresswoman," McKinney said, surrounded by supporters at predominantly black Howard University. ...

Her lawyer, James W. Myart Jr., said, "Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, like thousands of average Americans across this country, is, too, a victim of the excessive use of force by law enforcement officials because of how she looks and the color of her skin."

"Ms. McKinney is just a victim of being in Congress while black," Myart said. "Congresswoman McKinney will be exonerated."

Apparently Rep. McKinney has some sort of defect which keeps her from following the standard security practices with which her colleagues manage to comply every day. As someone who has entered into Congressional office buildings on occasion, I can assure CQ readers that they do not present insurmountable obstacles to one's day. If you've traveled in an airport since 9/11, you've experienced more inconvenience than you would find at these checkpoints. Further, members of Congress can bypass the checkpoints altogether if they wear a special pin identifying themselves as such -- which McKinney, for some reason, refuses to do.

Rest assured, what started off as a stupid and narcissistic incident has already grown into an embarrassment for the entire party. According to WSB-TV in Atlanta, the ranking member of the House Administration Committee, Juanita Millender-McDonald, personally intervened with the House sergeant-at-arms to keep McKinney from being arrested for assault:

Channel 2 Action News has learned that Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-CA.) intervened when word got out Wednesday night that McKinney might be arrested.

She says she approached the House sergeant-at-arms to discuss the situation.

Millender-McDonald sits on the House committee that oversees the Capitol Hill police and the sergeant-at-arms' office.

Millender-McDonald does not believe what she did constitutes “intervention”, said spokeswoman Denise Mixon. “She simply wanted some questions answered,” Mixon said.

Unfortunately for Millender-McDonald, if she pressured the sergeant-at-arms to leave McKinney alone, that constitutes obstruction of justice, as that office is responsible for law enforcement and security oversight for Congress and its offices:

The Sergeant at Arms is an officer of the House with law enforcement, protocol, and administrative responsibilities (House Rule II). The Sergeant at Arms is elected at the beginning of each Congress by the membership of the chamber. The duties of the Sergeant at Arms are mandated in law, House rules, custom, and policies determined by the House Committee on Appropriations and the Committee on House Administration in the exercise of their oversight roles. ...

As the chief law enforcement officer of the House, the Sergeant at Arms is responsible for security in the House wing of the Capitol, the House office buildings, and on adjacent grounds. Under the direction of the Speaker of the House or other presiding officer, the Sergeant at Arms plays an integral role in maintaining order and decorum in the House chamber. The Sergeant at Arms is authorized to hold up the mace, the symbol of the Sergeant at Arms’ authority, before unruly Members, and to carry the mace down the aisles of the House chamber to subdue disorderly conduct. The Sergeant at Arms may be directed to compel absent Members to attend House sessions in order to achieve the necessary quorum by escorting them to the chamber (House Rule XX). Both practices have been rare, particularlyin recent years. The Sergeant at Arms or his assistant attends all floor sessions.

The Sergeant at Arms is also responsible for ensuring the safety and security of Members of Congress, congressional staff, visiting national and foreign dignitaries, and tourists. Toward this mission, the Sergeant at Arms works in concert with the Senate Sergeant at Arms, and the Architect of the Capitol. These three officials comprise the Capitol Police Board.

Rounding out the circus was the appearance of fringe lunatics Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte issuing statements of their own, despite the fact that (a) they weren't witnesses to the incident, and (b) they have no particular expertise in security or law enforcement. It didn't stop Glover from supporting McKinney's claim to be a victim of racial profiling and "inappropriate touching", a term used in molestation cases. In the meantime, McKinney's embarrassed colleagues tried the let's-move-along, nothing-to-see-here approach that McKinney's outrageous claims completely negated. Nancy Pelosi's suggestion that hitting a security guard constituted no "big deal" prompted a reply from Speaker Denny Hastert's spokesman -- "How many officers would have to be punched before it becomes a big deal?"

Meanwhile, Fox News reports that a witness to the altercation has essentially corroborated the security officer's report. A female aide to Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) has given a statement to Capitol Police; Fox says that the staffer did not realize who the woman was until the story broke later in the day.

Will the Democrats continue to abide this embarrassment? Will we find that Rep. Millender-McDonald interfered with law enforcement on McKinney's behalf? One fact is for certain: now we know what the Democrats think of security in general. To quote Nancy Pelosi, it's no big deal.

UPDATE: Danny Glover says that he has no comment on the specific charges, but that he appeared with McKinney in order to support "our sister". And just to set the record straight, we're not talking about this Danny Glover, although he assures us that he often gets confused with the Lethal Weapon star...

UPDATE II: John Aravosis at Americablog tries to get his fellow "lefties" to see the difference between Jim Crow and legitimate security procedure:

I'm sorry, but what a pitiful excuse for a Democrat. Yes, let's cry racism and sexism and Democratism, I guess you'd call it, because a cop didn't recognize you and you decided to not even wear your member of Congress pin, or turn around when the cop called out to you while we're at war. Next time, it'll be better if the cop lets strangers without their pins just barge into the halls of Congress, bypass security, and oh blow the hell out of the entire building because they're afraid the person they stop might be - what? - a Democrat?

Like I said, the only thing more pathetic than McKinney is that NOW and the NAACP would lower themselves to attend this ridiculous farce of a press conference. Have they nothing better to do than pander to someone who belittles legitimate concerns about race and gender and political bias?

Pathetic liberal groups, and pathetic Democratic members of Congress. Their funders should cut them all off until they prove the worth of their continued existence.

Some of you wondered why I wrote about my respect for John; now you know why. We may not agree on much, but he's as willing to hold his side accountable for their stupidity as I am mine.

Was He Looking For Applicants?

Today's USA Today headline: "Bush stumps for 'guest worker' program in Cancun"

He might find it more effective to stump for the program while in the United States. Do we really need an advertising campaign in Mexico calling for even more border crossing?

In the meantime, here are the images that the Mexica Movement want to promote from the anti-border enforcement rallies held earlier this week:

Yes, American legislators as Nazis. Nice. Of course, the anti-Semitism of their own movements wouldn't be germane, would it?

Here's another sign they proudly display at their site showing how much the reconquitas love the United States:

That matches up with a description provided with another image that shows American flags held by marchers. Do they point to this to show their love of their adopted country? Not exactly:

One of the more negative parts of the march was when American flags were passed out to make sure the marchers were looked on as part of "America".

Being part of "America" -- note the scare quotes -- is negative. And in case you really miss the point, we have this:

It's the "Europeans" who are the illegals and should be driven out. At least no one can say they didn't tell us exactly what they want -- and it sure isn't assimilation and a desire to become part of the American dream.

Ending The 527 End-Around

The Republicans in Congress have decided to tackle the end-around to campaign-finance reform that the 2004 election produced in the form of tax-exempt 527 organizations. While Congress and the White House signed into law the most profound curbs on political speech in a century in order to supposedly rid the political process of money, organizations like MoveOn took in millions from benefactors like George Soros with no oversight whatsoever. After having been caught unaware in 2004, the GOP wants to close that loophole for 2006 and 2008. The New York Times reports that the effort may come too late, as money has found other holes in the system to exploit:

To many Republicans, the liberal activist organization MoveOn.org is a political boogeyman that they hope to chase off with new restrictions on so-called 527 groups.

But the pursuit may turn out to be fruitless. Like other major groups planning to inject themselves aggressively into the midterm elections through advertisements, voter drives and issue fights, MoveOn.org has already figured out what it thinks is a better, and less controversial, way to spend its millions. Its 527 — named for a section of the tax code — is being put on ice.

"Our 527 is dormant," said Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org. He said his group would predominantly operate as a conventional political action committee, allowing it to more freely mix explicit political support and issue advocacy in a way that Mr. Pariser described as "squeaky clean."

MoveOn.org might be moving on from its 527, but Congress is not. Two years after 527's burst onto the political scene, gaining notoriety by raising unlimited amounts from private donors, Congressional Republicans are moving to rein in the groups — just in time for the November midterm elections. Leading Democrats are threatening a fight.

Instead of 527s, the new buzz number is 501(c). That's the tax designation for a brand of non-profit that can legally campaign for the election of specific candidates, and whose contributions fall outside of campaign regulation. While Congress plays whack-a-mole with 527s, the truth is that most people have abandoned that format due to existing restrictions on direct support for candidates. MoveOn had to split itself into two entities in 2004 to get around that problem, and this time around won't even bother with the 527 effort. In effect, the Republicans are thus far solving a problem that no longer substantially exists.

Once again, we can thank decades of Congressional action for this nonsense. Repeated attempts to "reform" the electoral process has resulted in a Byzantine labyrinth of legislation that creates so many artificial categories for the good old US greenback that even the lawyers have trouble keeping up with it. Instead of removing big money from the political process, they have guaranteed its further insinuation while drastically reducing the responsibility of candidates and political parties for its use. These independent 501(c)s can campaign with no boundaries of taste or accountability, and the causes and people they support can have no effect on their activities -- in fact, they must not be able to affect them, lest that prove illegal coordination. Donors with big checkbooks will send their money to these front organizations instead of the political campaigns but get the same benefit regardless.

If this sounds a lot like money laundering to you, it only proves you're paying attention.

Once again, and before we lose even more of our right to free political speech, Congress needs to abandon these ridiculous attempts to build a stick dam in the middle of a flood. All these laws do is employ lawyers by the hundreds or thousands, turn inexperienced candidates into criminals, and allow big-money donors to escape responsibility. We need to forego artificial contribution categories and allow unlimited contributions with full and immediate disclosure. The money will still be in play, but it will force candidates to assume responsibility for their existence and application. Voters will then have a true picture of the political arrangements between donors and their favored candidates.

It's far past time that we abandon our fantasy that money can be removed from the political process, or that it even should be divorced from it. Money only provides a tool for communicating messages. The money itself is not an evil, but the darkness and confusion of its application in our current system makes it so. Bring it into the sunlight; it's time to quit fearing it and treat it responsibly/

Dems Try To Starve NSA As First Act Of Their New Security Plan

The Democrats announced their new platform on national security earlier this week, promising to reverse decades of image problems on national defense and foreign policy with a policy statement long on sloganeering but dreadfully short on specifics. Yesterday they underscored their new commitment to securing America by attempting to starve the National Security Agency in a fit of pique over the work performed by the agency in terrorist surveillance. The Los Angeles Times soft-pedals this while reporting some serious pushback to the monster created by the 9/11 Commission in the intelligence community:

Republicans on the House panel defeated a Democratic push to suspend hundreds of millions of dollars in spy agency funding until the Bush administration provided more information about a controversial domestic espionage program being conducted by the National Security Agency. ...

Republicans on the committee defeated a Democratic amendment that sought to force the Bush administration to reveal the budget for the controversial NSA espionage program.

The Democratic measure would have withheld 20% of the NSA's budget unless the White House agreed to disclose how much was being spent on the domestic eavesdropping program.

This encapsulates the Democratic strategy on the overall war on terror quite splendidly: ignore our national defense in order to play partisan politics. Only a moron would seriously propose cutting funds to a key component of our defense strategy during a time of war. This once again proves that the Democrats care less about keeping us safe than in winning elections, and appear willing to strip us of our defenses in order to score cheap political points.

If the Democrats really wanted to rein in a purported abuse of executive power, they could take the administration to court on the issue of conducting wartime intelligence surveillance without warrants. However, they know full well that the courts will almost certainly rule against them, especially after the testimony given by five former FISA judges at the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. If they sue and lose, it will demonstrate that Bush had it right all along and was working fully within his powers to protect the country from further attack -- an effort that has resulted in over four years of safety.

Instead, now they clamor for censure and worse for supposedly breaking laws that Democrats won't enforce through normal channels and to which they didn't object while being regularly briefed on the program for all four years. As if that wasn't foolish and self-centered enough, now they want to leave us without a vital means of finding and tracking potential Islamofascist terror cells within and outside the US just to extort information from the White House, information they know to be classified as are all line items for intelligence agencies.

This is what I mean when I say that the new Democratic plan for national security is the same as the old plan: a cynical strategy for political exploitation that puts the defense of our nation a distant second to their grab for power.

NOTE: This is part 1 of the look at actions at the Intelligence Committee yesterday; part II follows rather than precedes this post.

Don't Say We Didn't Warn You

When the 9/11 Commission's final report came out in the middle of the presidential election, the reaction was predictable. Both sides used the conclusions and recommendations for political point-scoring, but none more than the John Kerry campaign. Kerry and his allies, and even some Republicans, pressed the White House and Congress to immediately adopt all of the board's recommendations for revamping the American intelligence community. The Democrats accused George Bush of ignoring the commission's efforts when he suggested that the government consider the recommendations before immediately writing them into law, and the political momentum forced Congress and the administration into precipitous action instead of rational debate.

As the second part of CQ's review on the Los Angeles Times article on action in the House Intelligence Committee hearing yesterday, our biggest effort is to keep from saying "I told you so" in every paragraph. A bipartisan vote yesterday finally showed that Washington now realizes that adding two layers of bureaucracy to intelligence agencies has damaged our capabilities instead of enhancing them:

The House Intelligence Committee voted Thursday to withhold funding from the nation's intelligence director over concerns that his office, which was created to streamline operations in the nation's spy community, is instead becoming bloated and bureaucratic. ...

The move to withhold funding still must be approved by the full House as well as the Senate. But it reflects rising frustration among House lawmakers with an office that was created less than two years ago to solve communication breakdowns and other problems that plagued the intelligence community leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq.

The bill would require the nation's intelligence director, John D. Negroponte, to present a detailed rationale for any additional increases to his staff or risk losing a portion of his budget. The measure was endorsed by Republicans and Democrats.

"We're concerned about some of the steps that are going on" at Negroponte's office, said Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Hoekstra said Negroponte needed to demonstrate that any further expansion would improve coordination among intelligence agencies, and would not amount to "putting in more lawyers and slowing down the process."

Rep. Jane Harman (DVenice), the ranking Democrat on the committee, cited similar concerns.

"We don't want more billets, more bureaucracy, more buildings," Harman said. "We want more leadership."

More leadership may be what Congress wants, but what they implemented was more billets, more buildings, and lots of additional bureaucracy. The 9/11 Commission took the demonstrated problems in coordination that existed pre-9/11 among the alphabet soup of intelligence agencies and developed the one solution guaranteed to make it worse. Instead of eliminating the needless duplication and artificial divisions between the different groups by merging them into two agencies, one for domestic intelligence and the other for foreign/military intelligence, the panel decided to create two extra layers of bureaucracy as a means of providing better communication. Congress and the White House agreed to create the office of the Director of National Intelligence, who by law would have the president's ear on all intelligence matters.

Of course, the results were utterly predictable. The expanded bureaucracy did not result in better communication, but instead has guaranteed that two more levels of bureaucrats will tie up any operational intelligence before it gets to the decision-makers. Instead of streamlining the progression of intelligence to the President, it creates extra hurdles for any information to reach his desk.

Now, comically, Congress has realized almost two years later that the collection of bureaucrats on the 9/11 Commission prescribed the hair of the dog that bit us to the bone in the years leading up to 9/11. The ONI has expanded far faster than anyone (in DC) imagined, and now boasts 700 people -- hundreds of extra bureaucrats that do nothing to collect intelligence but exist only to push it around Beltway offices.

In fairness, who could have predicted that outcome? Well, here's where I break my vow:

07/22/04: Executive Summary Balanced And Disappointing
08/02/04: Bush Adopts The Expanded Bureaucracy Approach
08/23/04: New Intelligence Reorganization Proposal Not Much Better
12/02/04: Tenet Joins Fight Against 9/11 Intelligence Reform
12/08/04: Does Anyone Like This Intelligence Reform Bill?
03/31/05: When Bureaucracies Grow, They Tend To Collide
06/07/05: I Love Hate To Say I Told You So ...
11/27/05: Intelligence Agencies Multiplying Out Of Control

All of this nonsense can be traced back to the formation of a supposedly independent panel while timing their efforts so that their report would get published in the middle of an election. We can also thank the John Kerry campaign for transforming a set of recommendations into the 347 Commandments that somehow garnered immunity from the process of rational debate and scrutiny. Anyone who looked at this document with any careful scrutiny could see that the solution promised more bureaucracy and never addressed the real issues in communication and coordination. We had ten people on this panel who represented bureaucracies their entire lives; when one only owns a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, and this is a perfect example of that wise proverb.

And just for the record ... well, you know.

Swann Leads Rendell

NFL Hall-of-Famer Lynn Swann's campaign for governor in Pennsylvania has generated more than its share of skepticism. Some questioned whether the former Pittsburgh Steeler could translate his home-state popularity into real political support, especially against an experienced and wily pol like Ed Rendell. The skeptics appear to have miscalculated in this case, however:

Pro Football Hall of Famer Lynn Swann held a slight lead over Gov. Ed Rendell in a statewide poll released Thursday, but more than a third of registered voters indicated they hadn't settled on either candidate.

Thirty-five percent of those surveyed in the IssuesPA/Pew Poll said they were likely to vote for Swann, a retired Pittsburgh Steelers star and Republican campaigning to become the state's first black governor.

Twenty-nine percent said they would probably support Rendell, a Democrat and former Philadelphia mayor who is running for a second four-year term.

Among the rest, 34 percent were considered up for grabs and 2 percent didn't support either candidate. Neither Swann nor Rendell faces a primary challenge.

For a political novice taking on an incumbent of national stature like former DNC chair Ed Rendell, Lynn Swann has made his presence felt early. Even with so many voters undecided, taking a six-point lead over the sitting governor has to have not just Rendell's campaign worried, but also Robert Casey's campaign to unseat Rick Santorum in the one Senate seat considered most vulnerable for the GOP. The Democrats wanted to use Rendell to help push Casey over the top against Santorum. Now it looks like Rendell will be kept busy fighting for his own survival, and if Swann generates enough momentum, he may wind up rescuing Santorum as well.

This means more than just a lost opportunity in the Senate for the Democrats. Pennsylvania barely went to Kerry in 2004 even with the war and Rendell running the state. Without having Bush Derangement Syndrome as an issue in 2008, the Democrats will have a tough enough time keeping the Keystone State in their column. If Swann pushes Rendell out in 2006, the GOP will gain the upper hand in 2008 in one of the most significant states in the Electoral College.

Swann has a long ways to go, but he has already shown that he cannot be dismissed.

The Background On Reconquista

I'm in the middle of another e-mail meltdown, so I'm going to send you over to Brant at Strange Women Lying In Ponds, who reports what Southwesterners have known about the reconquista movement for years. It hardly argues for assimilation but instead demands a separatism that makes any effort on our part to enable it self-defeating. And as Brant notes, it has a healthy streak of anti-Semitism -- as if we need any more of that than we already have.

Back when the e-mail works ....

George Will: Ich Bin Ein Ost-Berliner?

George Will makes his conservative case for the moderate approach to immigration reform, giving enough room for hard-line enforcement while arguing for eventual absorption of the illegals already inside the US. However, he starts out with an almost unforgivable analogy that will have border-enforcement readers seeing red before they ever get to the rest of his arguments:

America, the only developed nation that shares a long -- 2,000-mile -- border with a Third World nation, could seal that border. East Germany showed how: walls, barbed wire, machine gun-toting border guards in towers, mine fields, large, irritable dogs. And we have modern technologies that East Germany never had: sophisticated sensors, unmanned surveillance drones, etc.

East Berlin? Perhaps George doesn't quite recall the purpose of the Berlin Wall, but I guarantee you it wasn't to keep West Berliners out of East Berlin. The East German government and its Soviet masters built that wall to keep people from fleeing the despair and poverty imposed on the unfortunate half of the city and killed anyone they caught trying to cross it. It wasn't part of an overall interdiction effort that promised to stop illegal immigration, drug traffickers, and terrorists from entering Communist territory; it formed the prison wall for the Gulag State and its inmates.

Israel's border with the West Bank and Gaza provide a much clearer analogy. First and foremost, it's built to keep people out, not create a nation of prisoners. It also provides deterrence from illegal crossings, forcing Palestinians towards well-manned checkpoints where security reaches maximum efficiency. The idea is not to kill Palestinian crossers, but to keep them from trying to enter Israel illegally at all. And, by the way, it works; it has been the single most important tool the Israelis had in ending the intifadas. (And by the way, it's hard to argue that Israel isn't a developed nation, that the Palestinian territories aren't a Third World area, or that their border is less significant to Israel's national defense than our southern border.)

The rest of Will's column fares better, although I disagree with his emphasis on what will be an amnesty program in practice, if not in name. Will writes that security must come first, no matter what plan one has for the aftermath. No immigration reform will do anything to stem the flood of illegals coming across the border without effective and robust barriers to entry. Failing to provide such a system only encourages local landowners to protect their property themselves, an impulse which will lead to tragic outcomes.

Will favors the approach taken by the Senate on the rest of its bill on transforming 11 million illegals into citizens by forcing them to pay fines and back taxes, learn English, and register with the government. Had the Senate taken the border issue seriously, that may have been a reasonable follow-up. However, until we secure the border, all of this is smoke and nonsense. No illegal will enter a program that costs him significant fines and back taxes when all he has to do is stay quiet and keep crossing the border in both directions as he sees fit. As for learning English, that would certainly be a novel approach; we don't even make our legal immigrants do that any more, as evidenced by ballots in a plethora of languages and government-sponsored translators at all level of public services.

At least Will sounds a reasonable note in the immigration debate, and his column is well worth a read -- once you get past the implied analogy of America transforming itself into a prison state.

UPDATE: Fixed the title of the post. As Xrlq noted in the comments, it initially translated to "I leg an East Berliner." I try to avoid doing that, actually. Xrlq thinks that Will just wanted to demonstrate that walls can be effective, but Bithead sees it more along the same lines as I do.

Gallup Throws Doubt On Political Polling

Editor & Publisher noted yesterday that Gallup reported a shift in party identification in the US; Democrats outpoll Republicans in party identification -- by a single point:

In a (perhaps) historic shift, more Americans now consider themselves Democrats than Republicans, the Gallup organization revealed today.

Republicans had gained the upper hand in recent years, but 33% of Americans, in the latest Gallup poll, now call themselves Democrats, with those favoring the GOP one point behind. But Gallup says this widens a bit more "once the leanings of Independents are taken into account."

However, that's not exactly how Gallup itself headlines its results:

Americans are about as likely to identify as Republicans as they are Democrats according to a review of recent Gallup polls. However, once the leanings of independents are taken into account, the Democrats gain an advantage. Democrats have been on par with, or ahead of, Republicans in party identification since the second quarter of 2005.

A one-point difference, especially in a poll of 1,000 adults, falls within the margin of error in any case. It's interesting and revealing to see E&P cast this as a "historic shift" when Gallup reports that this has been unchanged for almost a year. Either E&P has a strong case of analytical illiteracy or they want to put a spin worthy of John McEnroe on what amounts to a lob.

But one issue does arise from this fresh polling, one that undermines practically every political survey published in the past couple of years. If party identification is so close as to be a dead heat, why do polling services routinely underrepresent Republicans? CBS polls routinely overpoll Democrats so badly that their results are hardly worth the effort of analyzing. Their last major poll had a disparity between Democrats and Republicans of thirteen points -- which they corrected to a nine-point difference. Surprise! It found that Bush's approval numbers had dropped!

Here's another that CQ noted earlier this year. Despite undersampling Republicans by 5 points, the NSA terrorist surveillance program managed to garner majority support, with or without warrants. CBS actually had their raw numbers correct in this poll, but "corrected" them through weighting to give Democrats a five-point edge. Again, it should surprise no one that this allowed CBS to report that Bush had suffered another drop in support in May of last year.

Now we have a benchmark against which to measure these polls. Any poll purporting to take the political temperature of the American electorate that doesn't reflect these rather steady numbers should receive the scorn it deserves. The polls that we have seen thus far in 2006 all fail the sampling test, and most of what we saw last year fares no better. Too bad Editor & Publisher didn't think to actually review media reporting on polls based on this information.

Color The LA Times Unimpressed

One media outlet on which Democrats could rely for sympathetic treatment for their new "plan" on national security would be the Los Angeles Times. Its political analyst, Ron Brownstein, is not known for pandering to conservatives either. The combination should have provided the best opportunity for the Democratic plan to resonate with the national media.

Unfortunately, the Democrats developed a "plan" that not even the LA Times could like, and Brownstein tells why:

Sharpening their election-year message, leading Democrats on Wednesday released a plan that promised to strengthen America's security but offered few details about how they would achieve their sweeping goals. ...

Though Democrats were spirited in their denunciations of Bush's record on national security, they offered limited insights into the actual policies they would pursue if returned to power.

The party document said Democrats would double the size of the military's special forces, pass legislation improving veterans' medical care and press to screen all cargo bound for the United States "in ships or airplanes at the point of origin."

On many other fronts, though, the Democratic plan emphasized aspiration over direction.

For instance, party leaders said they would make "the needed investments in equipment and manpower so that we can project power to protect America wherever and whenever necessary." But aides said the proposal did not commit Democrats to any specific increase in defense spending.

Along with its vow to eliminate Bin Laden, the plan said Democrats would "destroy terrorist networks like Al Qaeda, finish the job in Afghanistan and end the threat posed by the Taliban." But other than adding more special forces and improving America's intelligence capacity, the document offered no hints of what strategies the party might employ toward those ends.

The plan is a collection of slogans and mission statements with almost no specifics about legislation, financing, strategies, tactics, or military efforts to achieve them. Even on those topics where their report gets specific, it fails to address the consequences of the action involved. For instance, on its insistence that the Democrats would eliminate Osama through greater numbers of special forces (doubling them), it does not say how or where they will find the men to fill those slots or the funding necessary for the expansion. It does not address how exactly they will manage to invade Pakistan against the will of our precariously-seated ally Pervez Musharraf without touching off another war.

The most humorous moment comes when the Democrats accuse George Bush of "subcontracting" the Iranian nuclear talks to the British, French, and Germans. After listening to their complaints over the last four years about Bush's supposed "unilateral" approach to foreign affairs -- while he garnered the support of dozens of nations for the invasion of Iraq, including troops from 15 other countries -- having them screech about allowing the three European nations that appear to be at the highest risk of a nuclear-tipped Shahab-3 rocket only solidifies the hyperpartisan nature of their approach. The Democrats have no consistency on national security, no credibility, and this passage is a perfect example of why. Instead of actually developing a comprehensive, consistent, and thorough strategy for foreign policy, they've reduced themselves to nothing more than gainsaying whatever the GOP does and hope that the voters don't notice the difference.

The point of the document, as Brownstein hints but never outright states, isn't to redirect American policy much at all, except to make our exit from Iraq a full-blown retreat reminiscent of our exits in Somalia and Beirut. This effort is just a superficial talking-points memo designed to make Democrats sound tough without having to make any of the hard decisions already faced by this administration. It's the perfect "eat your cake and have it too" document, but it is so baldly superficial that it can't even convince Democratic allies to support it.

Dafydd ab Hugh at Big Lizards and Jim Geraghty at TKS have done an excellent job in dissecting this piece of meringue. Start at the links at keep moving through the rest of their posts on the subject.

Jill Carroll Released By Captors

After three months as a hostage, AP reporter Jill Carroll has been released to American forces in the Green Zone, the news service reports (via Stop the ACLU):

Kidnapped U.S. reporter Jill Carroll has been released after nearly three months in captivity, Iraq police and the leader of the Islamic Party said Thursday. She was reported in good condition.

Carroll, a freelance reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, was kidnapped on Jan. 7, in Baghdad's western Adil neighborhood while going to interview Sunni Arab politician Adnan al-Dulaimi. Her translator was killed in the attack about 300 yards from al-Dulaimi's office.

"She was released this morning, she's talked to her father and she's fine," said David Cook, Washington bureau chief of The Christian Science Monitor.

Police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said was handed over to the Iraqi Islamic Party office in Amiriya, western Baghdad, by an unknown group. She was later turned over to the Americans and was believed to be in the heavily fortified Green Zone, he said.

Carroll's kidnappers had demanded the release of all female prisoners from US custody as a condition of her release. Five eventually were released by US forces in late January as part of an overall release of 424 detainees, a move that Centcom denied having any connection to the Carroll kidnapping, but it only resulted in a repeat of the overall demand in any event. The deadline for the ransom came and went over a month ago, and no one had heard anything significant about her status since then.

The AP does not report when Carroll will return to the US, or whether she intends to do so immediately or not. Undoubtedly, we will await her own report on her captivity, treatment, and observations about the nature of the enemy that kept her in bondage for so long.

Canada First To Cut Off Hamas

The Canadians became the first nation besides Israel to formally cut off funds to the Palestinian Authority after its Hamas-controlled government officially took power yesterday. The nation's Foreign Affairs Minister, Peter MacKay, announced that Canada would not support terrorists regardless of whether they win elections or not:

Canada has become the first country after Israel to cut funding and diplomatic ties to the Palestinian Authority over the new Hamas government’s refusal to renounce violence. ...

“As you know, Hamas is a terrorist organization — listed in this country — and we cannot send any direct aid to an organization that refuses to renounce terrorist activity, refuses to renounce violence.”

The news shocked pro-Palestine groups who fear aid will be cut to those living in squalid refugee camps. ...

“The stated platform of this government has not addressed the concerns raised by Canada and others concerning non-violence, the recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the Roadmap for Peace.

“As a result, Canada will have no contact with the members of the Hamas cabinet and is suspending assistance to the Palestinian Authority.”

The new policy and the speed in which Stephen Harper implemented it may have truly caught the Palestinians by surprise. They surely expect a similar reaction from the US, but they had hoped that Europe and Canada would offer more moderation, more talks, and more money as an incentive to keep Hamas at the bargaining table. Hamas tried to keep that gambit alive in Ismail Haniyeh's double-talk prior to the Israeli election, hinting that Hamas might negotiate with the Israelis but refusing to change its stated goal of the destruction of Israel.

This development strikes a significant blow to those hopes. No one pretends that the EU has much interest in unity with the US on foreign policy, but Canada has been a reliable partner for the past few years for Europe. Having Canada leap out ahead of even the US to isolate Hamas and disengage from the Palestinian Authority places much more pressure on the EU to follow suit. Even with the Tories in power in Ottawa, it will be impossible for Europe to characterize the Canadian government action as a radical right-wing move.

Harper really has cast a gauntlet down to all parties. He has challenged the Palestinians to acknowledge that choices have consequences, especially in elections, and Europe to follow through on its own policies of non-negotiation with terrorists. Harper's action also prods Washington to join him soon; if we delay, we may wind up leaving Harper twisting in the political wind.

Gray Lady Misrepresents FISA Testimony

The New York Times has panicked into a serious misrepresentation of the testimony given to the Senate Judiciary Committee by five former FISA judges. Power Line looks at the transcript of the committee hearing and discovers that reporter Eric Lichtblau, who predicated his new book on the supposed illegality of the secret NSA terrorist surveillance program, wrote dishonestly about their appearance in yesterday's hearing.

Here's what Lichtblau wrote:

In a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the secretive court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, several former judges who served on the panel also voiced skepticism at a Senate hearing about the president's constitutional authority to order wiretapping on Americans without a court order. They also suggested that the program could imperil criminal prosecutions that grew out of the wiretaps.

Judge Harold A. Baker, a sitting federal judge in Illinois who served on the intelligence court until last year, said the president was bound by the law "like everyone else." If a law like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is duly enacted by Congress and considered constitutional, Judge Baker said, "the president ignores it at the president's peril."

After buying the transcript and reading it for themselves, Power Line reveals what the judges really said:

Judge Kornblum: Presidential authority to conduct wireless [Sic. Presumably Judge Kornblum meant "warrantless."] surveillance in the United States I believe exists, but it is not the President's job to determine what that authority is. It is the job of the judiciary. *** The President's intelligence authorities come from three brief elements in Article II....As you know, in Article I, Section 8, Congress has enumerated powers as well as the power to legislate all enactments necessary and proper to their specific authorities, and I believe that is what the President has, similar authority to take executive action necessary and proper to carry out his enumerated responsibilities of which today we are only talking about surveillance of Americans. ***

Senator Feinstein: Now I want to clear something up. Judge Kornblum spoke about Congress's power to pass laws to allow the President to carry out domestic electronic surveillance, and we know that FISA is the exclusive means of so doing. Is such a law, that provides both the authority and the rules for carrying out that authority, are those rules then binding on the President?

Judge Kornblum: No President has ever agreed to that. ***

Senator Feinstein: What do you think as a Judge?

Judge Kornblum: I think--as a Magistrate Judge, not a District Judge, that a President would be remiss in exercising his Constitutional authority to say that, "I surrender all of my power to a statute," and, frankly, I doubt that Congress, in a statute, can take away the President's authority, not his inherent authority, but his necessary and proper authority.

Senator Feinstein: I would like to go down the line if I could. *** Judge Baker?

Judge Baker: No, I do not believe that a President would say that.

Senator Feinstein: No. I am talking about FISA, and is a President bound by the rules and regulations of FISA?

Judge Baker: If it is held constitutional and it is passed, I suppose, just like everyone else, he is under the law too. ***

Senator Feinstein: Judge?

Judge Stafford: Everyone is bound by the law, but I do not believe, with all due respect, that even an act of Congress can limit the President's power under the Necessary and Proper Clause under the Constitution. ***

Chairman Specter: I think the thrust of what you are saying is the President is bound by statute like everyone else unless it impinges on his constitutional authority, and a statute cannot take away the President's constitutional authority. Anybody disagree with that?

[No response.]

Chairman Specter: Everybody agrees with that.

Instead of expressing skepticism, the judges confirm that the matter is far from settled, and in fact told Congress that they don't have the jurisdiction to make the judgment. What they did tell the Judiciary members is that President Bush's arguments have a strong element of validity and probably are correct. Unfortunately for Lichtblau, that undermines the whole premise of his book -- and apparently that can't be tolerated.

UPDATE: Er, Gray Lady. I wasn't suggesting some sort of transgenderism when I first wrote "Gary Lady".

Trent's Tone-Deaf MYOB On Pork

Mark Tapscott has the skinny on how Senator Trent Lott decided to keep pork in the dark. Lott scuttled an amendment by Tom Coburn and Barrack Obama that would have created a public database of pork projects so that taxpayers could see where Congress spends their money. Lott, apparently, decided that government spending is none of the taxpayers' business and has nothing to do with lobbying reform.

Really?

Sen. Trent Lott, R-MS, raised a Rule 22 Point of Order which resulted in the Coburn/Obama amendment being killed. ... The Senate's Rule 22 refers to the germaneness - i.e. relevance - of a proposed amendment. Translated from the Washington legislatese in which senators and congressmen so often hide, this means Lott thinks making sure the public can see who is getting more than $300 billion of their tax dollars has nothing to do with congressional ethics.

Put another way, Lott just told taxpayers to butt out.

Tom Coburn has tried mightily to return the GOP to the anti-spending activism that carried them to control of Congress in 1994. There is more than a fair bit of irony in having this latest effort squelched by the man who became Senate Majority Leader on the momentum of that massive power shift, although I doubt that this amuses or consoles Coburn. Lott lost that position by extolling the virtues of Strom Thurmond in historical terms that left much to be desired, and his political ear has not improved since.

Earmarks are the single most vulnerable process in Congress to corruption, by lobbyists or anyone else, thanks to the lack of open voting on the various line items involved. Congressional representatives can insert funding for any pet project that either pleases campaign contributors or aggrandizes themselves. Robert Byrd has practically named the entire state of West Virginia after himself by bringing home the federal bacon for a wide range of public projects back home. To pretend that earmarks are not germane to any honest effort at ethics and reform is to reveal the entire exercise as either a sham or a hopeless waste of time.

Hopefully Coburn and Obama can breathe new life into the Pork Database. Maybe we can even get Trent Lott back on board by promising to name it after him. We could call it the Whole Lott Of Pork Federal Earmark Database, where we hope to empty the silk purse that Congress keeps making out of pork earmarks.

UN Gives Iran 30 Days, But Then What?

The UN Security Council finally agreed on a resolution demanding that Iran halt its uranium-enrichment program and sent it to the Islamic republic late today. The UNSC demand gives Iran thirty days to cease its program and return to the terms of the NPT, but the document carries no legal standing and fails to communicate any consequences for defiance:

The U.N. Security Council demanded Wednesday that Iran suspend uranium enrichment, the first time the powerful body has directly urged Tehran to clear up suspicions that it is seeking nuclear weapons. ...

Diplomats portrayed the statement, which is not legally binding, as a first, modest step toward compelling Iran to make clear that its program is for peaceful purposes. The Security Council could eventually impose economic sanctions, though Russia and China say they oppose such tough measures.

The UNSC adopted the resolution by consensus, but the only agreement that the 15 nations could reach was to punt for another month. The UN representatives plan to debate the consequences for Iran if it fails to comply with the request, but that will wait until tomorrow -- and it's unclear that any decision could affect this resolution anyway. The resolution did not give any indication that the UNSC will modify its approach in any way.

This may be a start, but it's a weak one, which is exactly what Russia and China wanted all along. They actually wanted the matter referred back to the IAEA, which lacks any kind of enforcement power. All it can do is report its findings to the UNSC when a country falls out of compliance. If the Russians and Chinese prevail, what the UNSC would wind up creating is an endless loop, where violations would get reported to the UNSC and then promptly be returned to them. Even this resolution refers the matter back to the IAEA, asking only for a status update.

Teheran must have spent this afternoon laughing up its collective sleeve. As Saddam did in the last years of his regime, the mullahs have spent their oil money wisely to capture at least one and probably two of the five vetoes on the UNSC. There will be no further progress on this matter, at least not at the UN, while we allow Russia to run interference for Iran long enough for them to develop working prototypes of nuclear weapons.

New Democratic Image On Security A Hit!

Today the Democrats launched their mission to revamp their image on security and national defense. They have long complained about a national perception of their party as wimpish, but Cynthia McKinney decided to set the record straight -- by slugging a cop:

According to two sources on Capitol Hill, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., walked through a metal detector in a House of Representatives office building. When an officer asked her to stop, McKinney kept walking. The officer followed her and tapped her on the shoulder.

McKinney then allegedly turned around and hit the officer in his chest with her cell phone.

Members of Congress are not required to stop for the metal detectors, but that policy should change soon. Obviously, some members have less emotional stability than others. Cynthia McKinney probably has less than anyone.

So will this be the new Democratic program to convince Americans that they can handle security issues -- by punching those responsible for the security of our federal buildings?

NOTE: That picture is the one that ran with the story at MS-NBC. If I were a Democrat, I'd be complaining about the use of that picture on this story.

UPDATE: The AP has a little more detail than NBC:

Members of Congress do not have to walk through metal detectors as they enter buildings on the Capitol complex. They wear lapel pins identifying them as members.

McKinney routinely doesn't wear her pin and is recognized by many officers, the police official said, adding that she wasn't wearing it when she entered a House office building early Wednesday.

By one police account, she walked around a metal detector and an officer asked her several times to stop. When she did not, the officer tried to stop her, and she then struck the officer, according to that account.

I just need to make sure we have this correct. The new Democratic effort on national security, therefore, is to defy identification procedures, ignore common-sense safeguards, pretend not to hear warnings, and then assault the people protecting us.

Gee, I don't know ... sounds like the old Democratic program on security to me.

CQ On The Air Tonight

I will be appearing on The World Tonight with Rob Breckenridge, broadcast from Calgary's CHQR, at 9:05 Central time this evening. Rob and I will be talking about illegal immigration and the political firestorm it has caused this week in the US, as well as anything on Rob's mind. Be sure to join us on the Internet stream if you can't catch the signal on 770 AM.

Senate Ends Anonymous Holds, Holds Off On Other Reform

In a little-noticed action yesterday, the Senate ended the much-abused practice of anonymous "holds" on legislation, a parliamentary trick by members that allow them to stop progress on legislation without allowing a vote. It came as part of an overall reform effort that will fall short in other areas, but this change may hold real promise:

The Senate on Tuesday voted to strip its members of the power to secretly place a "hold" on legislation they oppose, a parliamentary tool that has allowed a single senator to derail bills or nominations while leaving no fingerprints. ...

The proposal to do away with the anonymous holds, used by senators to signal to Senate leaders their objection to legislation, won overwhelming support on a vote of 84 to 13.

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who cosponsored the amendment, argued that requiring disclosure of a senator relying on the hold procedure would enable negotiations to occur on the dispute.

More than that, an end to the anonymous hold means that Senators will now be held accountable for their obstructionism. An anonymous act in a public debate suggests either a lack of testicular fortitude for one's position, or some sort of corruption in play. In either case, as both Grassley and Wyden note, one cannot engage in negotiation when the aggrieved party will not identify himself, essentially giving each Senator veto power over any bill that comes to the Senate floor.

Unfortunately, the rest of the bill looks like more warmed-over platitudes towards reform than the real item. The Senate soundly rejected a new independent ethics office and has moved to place most of the burden for reform on the lobbyists rather than themselves. The Senate plan will not ban the travel that lobbyists fund despite that being one of the key complaints in the Jack Abramoff scandal. Most interestingly, limits on earmarks have been eliminated from the bill:

McCain complained that some key amendments are being laid aside as a result of the vote. In particular, he said he regretted that amendments that would limit earmarks -- narrowly focused appropriations -- and that would, in effect, restrict lawmakers' use of chartered jets would not be voted on as part of the bill.

The legislation as it stands would bar lawmakers from accepting meals and gifts, including sports tickets, from registered lobbyists, and would increase the disclosure that lobbyists must make to the public.

The Senate apparently does not see the corrosive connection between earmarks and lobbyist money. If one truly wants to reform politics, then the only way to do that is to remove the individual ability to direct federal money towards pet projects. Without that kind of power, politicians have to reach consensus on all expenditures, and lobbyists can't simply buy one politician to get their clients undeserved chunks of our tax money. That simple mechanism for reform should be apparent to everyone, even within the Beltway. Its exclusion from the reform debate shows that both sides lack any real appetite to change how business gets conducted on Capitol Hill.

Illegals To Americans: We Hate America

It's hard to imagine that the schoolchildren who engaged in a pro-illegal immigration rally yesterday helped their cause much, except to harden the polarization already felt on both sides of the issue. While our politicians in Washington talked about how the illegals came to the US to enjoy the American dream, their actions speak much more towards the reconquista that, as Michelle Malkin has written, lies at the heart of the triumphalism that they now espouse. The Los Angeles area school districts allowed 22,000 students to protest border security and the enforcement of immigration law Monday, and it produced moments like this one:

That is a Mexican flag over an upside-down American flag on the flagpole behind the students that raised them. Note the display of unbridled patriotism of these American students -- for Mexico.

Of course, the schools themselves see it differently. They say that the Mexican flag doesn't demonstrate disloyalty to the US, but rather allows the students to show "unity":

But UC Irvine professor Frank Bean said the flag doesn't signify loyalty to Mexico but rather loyalty to one another.

"They are saying, 'We are together in fighting against these people who are trying to make felons out of us,' " said Bean, co-director of UC Irvine's Center for Research on Immigration, Population and Public Policy.

No, Professor Bean, by flying American flags upside-down under the Mexican flag, they're showing a loyalty to Mexico that overrides their loyalty to the US. And then they have the temerity to demand that we allow them to live here without following our laws governing entry into the US as well as continue to provide government services to them. In the meantime, people who come here legally and wish to stay wind up having to go home and reapply for permanent residency. Joe Gandelman has a guest poster from Britain who cannot avoid leaving the US after coming here legally and showing nothing but loyalty to his new home.

The rallies in Southern California only ripped the lid off of a well-known dynamic in the culture that mixes native guilt with radical illegal-immigrant activism to fuel the La Raza dream of Aztlan, the reconquest of the the Southwest and its return to Mexico or existence as a separate nation. This radical notion has been around since 1969 and plays a part in the fringe politics of the Southwest. However, the increasing sense of entitlement for illegals in the area has led this impulse out of the shadows and into the forefront of the amnesty movement by enabling people to argue that the illegals are returning to their own land and that the US lacks the sovereignty to declare otherwise.

If the illegals and their support groups think this will win over the American people, they are very much mistaken. If they think they can intimidate Congress into action with these demonstrations ... that may be another thing entirely, I'm afraid.

CORRECTION: Changed a typo from "American" to "Mexican"; thanks to several CQ readers for pointing out the mistake.

Palestinians Celebrate Likud Collapse

At least one group of people got enthusiastic about the Israeli elections:

Several officials in Ramallah expressed satisfaction with the results of Tuesday's election in Israel, especially the fact that the Likud Party had lost much of its power.

"We're happy to see that [Binyamin] Netanyahu has suffered a humiliating defeat," a top official told The Jerusalem Post. "We hope that Kadima and Labor will join forces to advance the peace process and end the conflict."

Apart from their schadenfreude at the woes of Netanyahu, the Palestinians didn't care who won the election, at least not publicly. Official after official quoted in the Jerusalem Post shrugged it off, claiming that all Israeli politicians are more alike than not. The officials, mostly Hamas but also PA president Mahmoud Abbas, warned Olmert about a unilateral implementation of his border plan, saying it would lead to chaos.

The Palestinians have the solution to that in their own hands. They need to live up to their existing agreements, recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce their goal of its destruction, and then they will have provided the basic framework for bilateral or multilateral efforts to end the conflict. Their intransigence on these points -- which effectively makes Israel itself a bargaining point for the Palestinians -- is what forced Sharon to simply act on his own without consultations with Abbas on Gaza, and will force Olmert to do the same with the West Bank.

The Palestinians may think that the Likud collapse has provided them with a victory. In reality, it has made them irrelevant. Without a realistic partner in peace, Israel will set her own borders and close off the West Bank, economically and politically isolating the Palestinians. If that is the Palestinian vision for the future, they have made great strides towards that goal by electing Hamas, and I wish them well in their poverty.

Guess Who's Back In Business With The Thugocracy?

Germany has opened an investigation into six companies that may have supplied Iran with technology vital to the mullahcracy's development of nuclear arms, the New York Times reports today. They're apparently not alone, as the Germans state that Russian companies acted as intermediaries for the transactions:

German prosecutors are investigating whether six German companies sold electronic equipment to a clandestine procurement network established to supply Iran with equipment for its nuclear development program.

A prosecutor in the state of Brandenberg, Benedikt Welfens, told German television on Monday that several million dollars' worth of equipment that could be used for a nuclear program had been shipped from Germany to Iran, via a Russian company that operated in Berlin in 2003 and 2004.

"Its main business is the supply of Iran's nuclear program," Mr. Welfens said on the ARD television network. He said the parts included special cables, pumps and transformers, worth about $3.6 million.

The Web site of the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel on Tuesday quoted Mr. Welfens as saying that prosecutors suspected that one of the companies knew where the equipment had been headed, while the others may have mistakenly believed the equipment had been destined for Russia, for which no export restrictions apply.

If the German companies truly believed that they sold the equipment to the Russians as end users, it demonstrates a rather lackadaisical approach to the security of dual-use technology on the part of Germany. It seems likely that the German companies, and the German government, didn't much care where their technology ended up as long as it brought in cash. This rationale sounds very familiar in any case; the Germans, Russians, and others got caught breaking the sanctions against Saddam by supplying Iraq with weapons and technology that got middled through Syria in a similar fashion.

But if this shows that Germany has been asleep at the switch, it demonstrates that Russia has been wide awake in its dealings with Iran. The transactions show that Russia has put a lot of effort into breaking the technology embargoes against Iran, all of which are designed to keep Iran from going nuclear -- a goal which they profess to share. If that was truly the case, though, the Russians would not provide clandestine means of communication for that technology to reach Iran.

The Russians have decided to restart the Cold War and want to start building up a network of nuclear states in opposition to the US and the West. Vladimir Putin has supplied the worst dictators with technology and intelligence aimed directly against Western interests, including military intelligence to Saddam Hussein that, in the hands of a more competent military commander, could have made the invasion of Iraq much bloodier. Russia remained one of the regime's biggest suppliers, sending weapons to Baghdad through 2002 despite the absolute UN Security Council ban on sales of military equipment of any sort. And now they're doing the same thing with Iran.

We must not allow Russia to insinuate itself as a mediator in the Iranian nuclear standoff. Their interests lie in a nuclear Iran to keep the US and UK out of the region. They should be treated as an advocate for the enemy in this diplomatic effort, because they certainly have proven themselves no friend to the West.

A Virtual Wall Brings Virtual Amnesty

The Senate will begin debate tomorrow on the new immigration-reform plan voted out of the Judiciary Committee earlier today. The comprehensive bill will create another pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens twenty years after the last time the government thought that we had illegal immigration licked and waters down the stringent border security that the House demanded:

Under the Judiciary Committee bill, illegal immigrants who pay a $1,000 fine and back taxes would be able to apply for a three-year work visa, renewable for a second three-year period. In the fourth year of work, the visa holder could begin a five-year path toward citizenship. A second guest worker program would open up legal agriculture jobs to 1.5 million undocumented farm workers.

The measure would also add as many as 14,000 new border patrol agents by 2011 to the current force of 11,300 agents and would authorize a "virtual wall" of unmanned vehicles, cameras and sensors to monitor the U.S.-Mexico border.

Unlike the House bill, it would not make illegal immigrants and those who assist them into felons, nor would it authorize the construction of massive new walls along 700 miles of the southern border.

As I have written repeatedly over the past two years, we simply cannot throw out 12 million people overnight, so some sort of guest-worker program is inevitable, if for no other reason than to get an accurate accounting of the aliens in our nation. Either that, or we will have to herd people into concentration camps, a solution that will never pass political muster even if were remotely possible logistically. That program could form a basis of a comprehensive immigration "reform", if properly written.

That being said, the bare minimum necessary for such a program to succeed is border security successful enough that it forces those who want to enter the US to do so through either legal immigration or the guest worker program. And that is precisely where the Senate bill fails, and fails miserably. Rather than build barricades along the border that will force illegals to easily-monitored crossing points, the Senate wants to build a "virtual" wall instead of the real thing. They make it sound very high-tech, and they back it up with a little more than double the current number of border-patrol agents, but in reality all they provide is cameras and sensors to note the passage of ever-more illegals across our border.

Without real security at the southern border, any guest-worker program will fail. Why should the illegals register and cough up so much of their pay when they can easily cross over and keep everything they earn?

Immigration stalwarts might hope that the House approach will prevail in the joint conference committee that will reconcile the two bills, but that hope appears fading at best:

House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said that he hopes the Senate will pass what he called "a responsible border security bill," but he indicated he is willing to rethink the House approach. After meeting with ranchers and law enforcement officers on the U.S.-Mexican border, Boehner said those living on the frontier did not believe the House-passed border wall would work.

"If the people on the border don't believe that the wall will have the effect that people here think, then we ought to reconsider it," he said.

The Israeli wall works pretty darned well -- so well that their entire national-security policy relies on it for protection against the terrorists that want to destroy their country. Such a border barrier would relieve the agents of the necessity of being everywhere at once, and they could instead form rapid-response to attempted incursions before they actually succeed instead of tracking illegals once they've crossed the border. It appears that Congress has not learned from the Israeli experience at all.

Recent demonstrations in Los Angeles and elsewhere seems to have rattled the Republican majority, but they have taken the wrong lessons from these spectacles. The message given by the massive demonstration is that when the government fails to take action in enforcing its own laws and securing its borders, those who break the law start believing they have an entitlement to continue doing so. And why not? They learned that lesson in the amnesty program of the mid-1980s, when the Reagan administration and the Democratic Congress decided that offering those already here an easy path to citizenship would somehow deter further illegal immigration. They also promised strict border enforcement, but somehow Congress never really got around to implementing it. Twenty years later, we're talking about giving a free pass to the next generation of illegals.

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Congress appears ready to establish itself as the 109th Asylum, with its fantasy walls and their insistence on granting amnesty while pretending it doesn't exist ... again.

Democrats Finally Agree On National-Security Message: Invade Pakistan

The Democrats plan to announce their new national-security strategy for the 2006 election tomorrow, but Liz Sidoti at the AP reports that advance word has already leaked on the broad strokes. The message? Get tough on Osama while retreating in the face of his friends:

Congressional Democrats promise to "eliminate" Osama bin Laden and ensure a "responsible redeployment of U.S. forces" from Iraq in 2006 in an election-year national security policy statement.

In the position paper to be announced Wednesday, Democrats say they will double the number of special forces and add more spies, which they suggest will increase the chances of finding al-Qaida's elusive leader. They do not set a deadline for when all of the 132,000 American troops now in Iraq should be withdrawn.

"We're uniting behind a national security agenda that is tough and smart and will provide the real security
George Bush has promised but failed to deliver," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday.

Let's get this straight. The Democrats want to retreat against al-Qaeda forces assembled in Iraq in order to invade Pakistan, which is where Osama is most likely spending his time. They want to run away from the operational forces of AQ in a fashion that will remind all of them of Somalia, Beirut, and Teheran -- proving Osama right about American tenacity. Going after Osama is a terrific goal, but unless they have a better plan than to flood Pakistan with special-forces teams and spies that Pervez Musharraf will consider an act of war, then this policy is doomed to failure.

Once again, the Democrats will run on slogans instead of real strategy and tactics. They shrewdly selected Osama as a focal point, reminding the country that after over four years, the Bush administration hasn't captured the terrorist leader. Without a doubt, that has to rankle Americans; it rankles me. However, the Bush administration has isolated the AQ leadership and forced it back into Pakistan, as well as killed off or captured most of the operational leadership in the organization. We removed Saddam Hussein and transformed the geography of Southwest Asia, cutting off the terrorist lines of communication across the Middle East. The US forced the Islamofascists to engage our military on their turf instead of our civilians on ours.

What do the Democrats propose in its place? Disengagement from the only place where we can bring our military force to bear on Islamofascist terrorists, and another ignominious retreat just as we have to show strength in the region to back down the Iranian mullahcracy. The Democrats want to implement the Murtha plan, a strategy that will pull all our forces back to Kuwait, just in case they're needed to support the Iraqi security forces we will be abandoning to the terrorists we swore to fight. And when they are needed, what do we have to do? Redeploy in force across what will now be even more hostile territory after stripping ourselves of all the intelligence and recon we have while we're in place now.

Slogans and Osama-baiting may well work for the Democrats, but in the end we will still wind up fighting the same people we fight now. Instead of fighting them in Samarra and Tal Afar, we will fight them in San Francisco and Washington, DC. We may well fight them in Pakistan, as well as the nuclear-armed Pakistanis, if we openly invade their territory to chase Osama bin Laden. That's not a plan for victory; it's an incoherent fantasy.

Israelis Vote For Sharon's Strategy

The shadow of Ariel Sharon hung over the election today in Israel which saw his Kadima party win its first contest, putting Ehud Olmert in charge and making Sharon's strategy of unilateral border establishment ascendant. In an election that drew an unsually low voter turnout, the ailing former leader's former party found itself struggling to keep from finishing fourth:

ISRAEL’S Prime Minister-elect last night offered to restart negotiations with the Palestinians, after exit polls showed his centrist Kadima party set to form the next government.

In a late-night victory speech Ehud Olmert spoke of a new chapter in Israel’s history, offering peace to its enemies and uniting internal divisions.

Just four months after the party was formed by Ariel Sharon – to whom Mr Olmert paid fulsome tribute – Kadima was predicted to win 28 seats after votes were counted in 50 per cent of polling stations, according to Israel Channel 10 Televison.

The centre-left Labour party came second, winning 20 seats, leaving Mr Olmert the possibility of heading a centre-left coalition with more than half of the Israeli parliament’s 120 seats.

In a major blow for Binyamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister and anointed heir to Mr Sharon until last year, his divided and bickering Likud Party was reduced to a right wing parliamentary rump, predicted to win just 12 seats.

Both the electoral results and the relatively low turnout (around 63%, which in the US would be a record) shows that the Israelis have given up on the hardliner approach to stand their ground wherever Israelis live. With the security wall showing a significant dampening effect on terrorist attacks, they apparently have decided that they want no part of the territories any longer. The nation has explicitly decided to abandon most of the settlements, a development that as recently as two years ago would have been almost unthinkable. Binyamin Netanyahu did not foresee the exhaustion of the Israelis, but Sharon did -- and he may have saved the Israeli center in politics as a result.

So what now? Olmert says he would rather negotiate for the ultimate decisions on borders and settlements, even parting with more Israeli land if necessary to find common ground with their enemy. Unfortunately, they claim far too much common ground for that to be practical. If Mahmoud Abbas could not sell a partition of Jerusalem, the lunatics of Hamas certainly won't -- and that's assuming that Olmert would offer it.

For the first time in years, though, Israel has finally found a way to simply disengage and leave the Palestinians to themselves. It will cost them in the short run, as the IDF will have to re-enact the evictions we saw in Gaza again and again as Israel pulls itself behind their wall. Hamas and the PA will threaten the Israelis, but the fact is that the IDF has built a strong defensive border, and further attacks on it will only force the Israelis to close it even tighter. That may impact the Israeli economy, but it will devastate the Palestinians, just as we see already in Gaza.

The Israelis have chosen a practical but painful strategy that gives them the best chance for their own survival as a democracy and a Jewish state. The lower turnout underscores the grim decision that faces their country, but the result confirms the wisdom and brilliance of the first of the hard-liners who dared to imagine another path to security.

This Should Keep The Beltway Press In A Dither

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card will resign today, according to the AP:

White House chief of staff Andy Card has resigned and will be replaced by budget director Josh Bolten, an administration official said Tuesday, in a White House shake up that comes amid declining poll standings for President Bush.

The move comes as Bush has been buffeted by increasing criticism of the drawn-out war in
Iraq and as fellow Republicans have suggested pointedly that the president bring in new aides with fresh ideas and new energy.

Card came to Bush recently and suggested that he should step down from the job that he has held from the first day of Bush's presidency, said the administration official.

After a flurry of stories generated by the gaggle questioned why Bush hadn't shuffled the deck, a Card finally drops out. That should keep the reporters busy talking about something that matters little to any of the issues, a familiar position for most of them anyway. I find it amusing that the press corps can't fathom why Bush would want stability in his senior staff, and at the same time provide shelter for Helen Thomas, who has been around the White House so long she can remember when the British burnt it.

The CoS is a demanding job, and by all accounts Card acquitted himself well in the role. He should be commended for his service and Bush should be commended for his loyalty. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to toss out a few staffers every election cycle to deflect criticism, warranted or not, of Bush's performance.

UPDATE: George Stephanopoulos seems enamored of Card's replacement, Josh Bolten:

It's hard to imagine a man more qualified for the job of WH Chief of Staff than Josh Bolten. He grew up in Washington, started out at the Reagan State Department and followed that up with work in the first Bush White House, the Senate, and a stint at Goldman Sachs in London. He's about as nice and smart a man as you'll ever meet, with strong support on the WH staff and Capitol Hill, and he's got a playful side (expect to hear more about Harley Davidsons and Bo Derek!). Most important perhaps to the President, he's been with W from the very beginning of his Presidential campaign.

Harleys and Bo Derek? Who knew how easy it was to keep the White House press corps happy?

The Untrue Always Disappoint, E.J.

E.J. Dionne makes a discovery that has echoes going back into antiquity -- that someone willing to betray their old friends are damned likely to betray their new friends as well. The press has conducted a love affair with John McCain for the past few years, dubbing him a "maverick" while McCain adopts a posture du jour to ensure as much camera time as possible. The center-left punditry cheered McCain when he kneecapped his own party's majority in the Senate and created an unprecedented star chamber to approve judicial nominees. They feted him while he played footsie with the notion of joining John Kerry's ticket as his running mate, denying his interest while defending Kerry publicly. And they adored McCain when he granted them a monopoly on political debate in the final 60 days of any federal election.

John McCain was their kind of guy ... at least until John McCain discovered that Democrats don't usually win Republican primaries, except in New York and Washington DC. Now that McCain has become a born-again Republican, however, the word "maverick" seems to have lost its luster:

McCain the Maverick fought for campaign finance reform, took global warming seriously, opposed Bush's tax cuts and spoke out against torture.

Those positions bred mistrust in McCain's own party, even though he was always a staunch supporter of overthrowing Saddam Hussein, a firm opponent of pork-barrel spending, an abortion foe and an advocate of private accounts carved out of Social Security.

McCain's problem is that political parties rarely nominate mavericks, and McCain has decided the only way he'll ever be president is as the Republican nominee. So today he cares very much about what hurts him or helps him in his own party.

The trouble with McCain the Maverick is that he never existed. McCain has spent his entire political career as McCain the Center of the Universe, mostly adopting positions that get him as much air time as possible. It comes as no surprise that he now wants to suck up to the Bush contingent in the GOP, which E.J. inaccurately considers the more conservative faction. The Bush contingent happens to have the party's best organizers at the moment. McCain needs them for his own organization as well as to keep them out of the hands of his rivals, especially Mitt Romney, who stole a march on McCain's Arizona base last night. Mormons have political strength in Arizona and Romney may be the only candidate who can really hurt McCain at home.

The problem with McCain isn't that he is a maverick or a conservative, but that McCain can't be trusted to be either. He began his Senate campaign by getting into bed with Charles Keating, and then to wash away that scandal, decided to become more Catholic than the Pope on campaign ethics and fundraising reform. He helped pass the most flagrant restrictions on political speech since the turn of the last century. After three successive GOP campaigns to gain a solid majority in the Senate to confirm conservative judicial appointees, he instead formed the Gang of 14, with himself as the titular head, effectively supplanting his own leadership on judicial appointments. As Dionne notes, he has opposed the tax cuts that Republicans promised in every election for the past six years. He has demonstrated repeatedly that he offers little reliability -- but as long as he betrayed the GOP, the press loved him.

Now that he is betraying his earlier betrayals, Dionne eloquently verbalizes the disappointment that his admirers feel. All I can say to E.J. is that unfaithfulness is rarely a singular event. When one dates the town flirt, one should not be surprised to find his affections fleeting and meaningless.

Honoring 1979

Yesterday, Canadian PM Stephen Harper thanked the United States for our efforts to free two Canadians held captive in Iraq for four months by kidnappers and terrorists. Harper did what the hostages' own organization could not bring itself to do -- graciously recognize the risk and the skill of the British and American special-forces troops that had saved the lives of their friends:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has phoned U.S. President George W. Bush to thank the United States for helping rescue two Canadian hostages in Iraq last week.

White House spokesman Frederick Jones says the phone call lasted about 20 minutes. ...

The hostage crisis ended Friday with the release of James Loney, 41, a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, and along with fellow Canadian Harmeet Sooden, 33, formerly of Montreal. They were kidnapped off the streets of Baghdad on Nov. 26. Mr. Loney returned to Canada on Sunday. Mr. Sooden now lives in New Zealand.

Harper shows a lot of class and skill in his opening months at the helm in Ottawa, and this is yet another example. However, this American would be remiss is he did not remind readers that we certainly owed Canada in this case. n 1979, when Iranian "students" sacked our embassy in Teheran, they held dozens of Americans captive for 444 days, finally releasing them on the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated into office. A handful managed to escape in the chaos of the first hours of the attack, however, and they made their way to the Canadian Embassy.

It may seem a small thing now, with the passage of time, but the Canadians had no reason to believe that the Iranians would not attack them next in any event, and certainly giving sanctuary to Americans would have sent the mobs screaming towards their gates. Regardless of the risk, they quietly sheltered the Americans while they scrambled to provide false travel papers identifying them as Canadians. They eventually brought them home to the US.

Their embassy risked their lives to get our people out of a war zone. The Canadians acted courageously in the face of Islamicist mob rule to protect and rescue Americans. I'm delighted that we had the opportunity to finally return the gesture in kind, and so we can say to Mr. Harper and all of Canada that we remember 1979. We will never forget it.

The Fukuyama Two-Step

Francis Fukuyama has made headlines once again for abandoning the neoconservativism that he once espoused. His change of heart came, he says, when he attended a speech two years ago that treated the Iraq War as an unqualified success, and realized that he had nothing in common with this movement. Interestingly, it's taken him a while to come public with this information -- say, just about the time that public support for the war has ebbed -- and he does so just as his new book is being released.

Of course, Fukuyama has every right to change his mind, as well as be stunningly and laughably wrong, such as when he insisted that we had come to the "end of history" fifteen years ago. What he lacks is an honest rendition of why he changed his mind, as Charles Krauthammer (the man who spoke at that fateful event in 2004) insists that he never said the Iraq war was an "unqualified success", and that the speech wasn't even about the war:

It was, as the hero tells it, his Road to Damascus moment. There he is, in a hall of 1,500 people he has long considered to be his allies, hearing the speaker treat the Iraq war, nearing the end of its first year, as "a virtually unqualified success." He gasps as the audience enthusiastically applauds. Aghast to discover himself in a sea of comrades so deluded by ideology as to have lost touch with reality, he decides he can no longer be one of them.

And thus did Francis Fukuyama become the world's most celebrated ex-neoconservative, a well-timed metamorphosis that has brought him a piece of the fame that he once enjoyed 15 years ago as the man who declared, a mite prematurely, that history had ended.

A very nice story. It appears in the preface to Fukuyama's post-neocon coming out, "America at the Crossroads." On Sunday it was repeated on the front page of the New York Times Book Review in Paul Berman's review.

I happen to know something about this story, as I was the speaker whose 2004 Irving Kristol lecture to the American Enterprise Institute Fukuyama has now brought to prominence. I can therefore testify that Fukuyama's claim that I attributed "virtually unqualified success" to the war is a fabrication.

Ever since this nugget of information appeared in the New York Times' book review of Fukuyama's new book, people have pulled a similar citation in the New Yorker out as a demonstration of the sorry state of the war. One of the resident liberals here at CQ did so last night for the thread on the latest "revelation" that the US and UK had decided to end the twelve-year quagmire on Iraq in 2003, one way or another. For some reason, Fukuyama has suddenly developed unassailable credibility with the left.

Krauthammer dismantles Fukuyama's credibility in one article, complete with a link to the original speech. Since it aired on CSPAN and has long been published at the American Enterprise Institute, Fukuyama's assertion can easily be checked. Try checking the references for Iraq and success, separately or together, and one will find that Fukuyama has made this story up out of whole cloth. As Krauthammer says, the speech discusses what he sees as four schools of thought for foreign policy. He winds up supporting "democratic realism", a meld between Wilsonianism and muscular engagement that treats the UN as only one avenue for democratizing the world, and a minor one at that.

It's a fascinating speech and an excellent look at our varying efforts in foreign policy and a defense of the current direction of the administration. Krauthammer makes the case that we have tried the other schools and have achieved no lasting stability and have increased the capacity for violence by turning a blind eye to despots like Saddam. He also argues that the existence of WMD in a post-Cold War era requires pre-emptive action, as mutually-assured destruction means nothing to suicidal and/or asymmetrical foes such as Saddam or al-Qaeda. But what Krauthammer most assuredly did not argue was that the Iraq War was an unqualified success, or even speak much about the war at all.

What I find fascinating about Fukuyama's folly is that history has proven him right in his initial stance. Using another link provided by Monkyboy, let's review what the neocons said in early 1998, shortly before Bill Clinton and Congress made regime change our national policy:

The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam’s secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.

Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.

Now, after the fall of Baghdad, we know that our UN "partners" France and Russia busily enriched themselves by Saddam's bribery. We know that the UN put billions into Saddam's pockets while the humanitarian aid the money ostensibly provided never existed. The Russians provided military intelligence to Saddam as well as materiel even while American troops approached Baghdad. Far from being "contained", Saddam felt convinced he could ride the sanctions out and restart his WMD programs, a conclusion that Charles Duelfer reached in his final report and which new intelligence bears out.

Containment had failed; Fukuyama and the other signers were right. One can argue about tactics and timing, but the need to remove Saddam from power was obvious in 1998, and obvious in a bipartisan way, and 9/11 showed we could not afford to wait for him to die and his sons to take over. Saddam had played footsie with AQ and other terrorist groups too long to ignore the threat and to wait until they attacked again.

So why change his mind now? Only Fukuyama knows that. One thing is certain: the fairy tale he shared with his readers isn't the reason, and until he makes a better accounting of himself, I'd say that Fukuyama's reached the end of his history as a credible voice on foreign affairs.

UPDATE: Tom Maguire tallies up the scorecard and comes up with a closer game, but still says Fukuyama and the Times have some 'splaining to do.

Quick Links

Lyn Nofziger, the longtime Reagan aide, passed away after a long illness today. I had heard he was ill, but Nofziger and his family wished to keep it private. Mark Tapscott writes a short but elegant post to his friend and asks his readers to pray for Lyn and his family.

Michelle Malkin has been providing excellent coverage of the immigration debacle, including the news that Los Angeles schools apparently took it upon themselves to send students off to bolster the pro-illegal-immigration rallies. Start with the link and keep going.

The Anchoress notes that political correctness has struck "Amazing Grace". God forbid we should have been "wretches" when we turn our face from Him!

It's March. It's an election year. That means that Hugh Hewitt must have a book coming out ... Order your copy of Painting the Map Red at fine booksellers everywhere.

Moussaoui: I Would Have Hit The White House

Zacarias Moussaoui stunned a courtroom today when he confessed, or rather proclaimed, that he intended on participating in a fifth hijacking on 9/11 and destroying the White House before his capture in August 2001. Disputing the intelligence given by 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Moussaoui told the court that he had repeatedly lied to the FBI to protect the operational integrity of the 9/11 plot and to confuse American investigators afterward:

Zacarias Moussaoui testified in Federal District Court here today that he knew of Al Qaeda's plans to fly jetliners into the World Trade Center and that he was to have piloted an airliner into the White House on Sept. 11, 2001.

Taking the stand before the jury that will determine whether he is put to death or spends the rest of his life in prison, Mr. Moussaoui related in calm, measured language that he was to have been accompanied on his death-dive into the White House by Richard C. Reid, the so-called shoe bomber, among others. ...

Mr. Moussaoui, whose previous courtroom behavior has sometimes consisted of belligerent ravings, was calm in the early going today. But though he was unemotional, the question of "what might have been" arose almost inevitably from his appearance.

He readily admitted that he lied to investigators after his arrest in Minnesota on immigration charges a few weeks before the attacks because he did not want to plot to be uncovered. And asked by Mr. Spencer whether he eagerly awaited the attacks, he replied, "Yes, you can say that."

Mr. Moussaoui matter-of-factly admitted knowing 17 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers, having become acquainted with most of them in Afghanistan, where he said traveled often to confer with Al Qaeda's leaders.

If Moussaoui told the truth today, then we can speculate that Flight 93's target was Capitol Hill, the other major target in Washington DC. That makes some sense. Al-Qaeda would have wanted to decapitate the US government as well as its financial leadership, making five targets overall. The strike on both Capitol Hill and the White House would under ordinary circumstances accomplish that, along with the hit on the Pentagon.

However, the planners miscalculated in several respects. The plane that hit the Pentagon did not have enough force to destroy the building , or even the section it hit, thanks to a bungled approach that bounced off the freeway just across from the impact point and slowed the plane. George Bush wasn't at the White House that day, having gone to Florida on a mundane but well-reported tour touting his education policy. Congress was in session that day, but a number of representatives were outside of the building that early in the morning.

All of this hinges on whether Moussaoui told the truth today. We probably will never know, but it seems unlikely. He had just started his pilot training when his strange behavior and requests aroused suspicion. The other pilots had long before received the training they got for their mission. Most of the intelligence gleaned from other sources put Moussaoui in a less-important role of a standby, and Reid wound up on a very different kind of mission three months later, not keeping with the long prep times that AQ usually conducts.

I'm rather suspicious of the testimony today, and in the absence of corroboration, I'm inclined to chalk this up to a streak of egotistical, suicidal idiocy on Moussaoui's part. He clearly wants to die a martyr's death, and with the government case hitting some road bumps, he may have started to worry that a jury would just let him rot in a Supermax facility in the Midwest for the rest of his life. What better way to ensure one's 72 virgins than to claim a leading role in the world's worst terrorist attack? I think a 1,000-year sentence may sound like the correct solution instead.

The Scarlet Letters

Apparently the Associated Press thinks that bloggers don't deserve the same protections against plagiarism that they themselves claim for their own work. Larisa Alexandrovna at the Huffington Post got quite a shock when she contacted the AP to complain that they lifted her work on a story regarding security clearances for gays:

On March 14, 2006, the AP did their own article, left out any attribution to me or my publication and lifted not only my research but also whole sections of my article for their own (making cosmetic changes of course).

We contacted an AP senior editor and ombudsmen both and both admitted to having had the article passed on to them, and both stated that they viewed us as a blog and because we were a blog, they did not need to credit us. What we are or are not is frankly irrelevant. What is relevant is that by using a term like blog to somehow excuse plagiarism, the mainstream press continues to lower the bar for acceptable behavior. It need not matter where the AP got the information, research, and actual wording from. What matters is that if they use it in part or in whole, they must attribute properly. A blog or a small press publication or grads students working in the corner of a library all equally deserve credit for their work, period.

After seeing the pillorying that Ben Domenech received -- and rightly so -- for plagiarism, this arrogant dismissal of outright theft by the supposed "professionals" of the mainstream media puts the whole issue in perspective. This implicates not just the AP, one of the world's largest newsgathering organizations, but every client of the AP that runs their stories on their sites and in their newspapers. That includes almost every major newspaper, most if not all broadcasters, and almost all of the media outlet websites.

The familiar AP logo is now a Scarlet Letter. Will the editors of this nation who have bloviated endlessly about the superiority of the Exempt Media's quality checks take a stand against plagiarism? Or will they continue to be complicit in the theft of written material from uncredited sources by buying and publishing AP's material?

UPDATE: Well, do they or don't they? It looks like the AP can't make up its mind, at least according to Jim Lindgren at The Volokh Conspiracy. (via Instapundit)

A DQ For Scalia? (Updated)

First reported on SCOTUSBlog and now in next week's Newsweek, Justice Antonin Scalia gave extensive comments on matters that the Supreme Court will have to consider when it reviews the 4th Circuit's decision on Hamdan v Rumsfeld over two weeks ago in Switzerland. Scalia's assertion that combatants captured on the field of battle should expect no access to the courts appears to be cause for him to recuse himself from consideration of Hamdan:

The Supreme Court this week will hear arguments in a big case: whether to allow the Bush administration to try Guantánamo detainees in special military tribunals with limited rights for the accused. But Justice Antonin Scalia has already spoken his mind about some of the issues in the matter. During an unpublicized March 8 talk at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland, Scalia dismissed the idea that the detainees have rights under the U.S. Constitution or international conventions, adding he was "astounded" at the "hypocritical" reaction in Europe to Gitmo. "War is war, and it has never been the case that when you captured a combatant you have to give them a jury trial in your civil courts," he says on a tape of the talk reviewed by NEWSWEEK. "Give me a break."

Challenged by one audience member about whether the Gitmo detainees don't have protections under the Geneva or human-rights conventions, Scalia shot back: "If he was captured by my army on a battlefield, that is where he belongs. I had a son on that battlefield and they were shooting at my son and I'm not about to give this man who was captured in a war a full jury trial. I mean it's crazy." Scalia was apparently referring to his son Matthew, who served with the U.S. Army in Iraq.

This appears pretty serious. Jurists refrain from debating issues likely to come under consideration in the near term in order to afford all parties in question a fair hearing on the merits. While Hamdan does not directly rest on the specific issue addressed in the description of the questions and answers given by both SCOTUSBlog and Newsweek, it comes close enough to give an appearance of prejudicial bias.

Supreme Court recusals are rare, but Hamdan already has one: Chief Justice John Roberts recused himself from the case as it appeals his own ruling from his prior engagement in the appellate court. Scalia also has had to recuse himself once before, on the case that reviewed the Pledge of Allegiance for constitutionality, thanks to off-the-cuff remarks he made while the court awaited that appeal. Since the Supreme Court is the last stop in American justice, no rules exist for recusals, but Scalia's remarks sound like a textbook case for it if reported accurately. (Newsweek has a link to the video, but it's over 280 MB.) Unfortunately, that leaves the Court with just seven votes, with two of its best minds now sidelined.

Scalia is, without a doubt, one of the more brilliant legal minds on the bench at any level. However, when it comes to decorum and judicial temperament, it seems that Scalia has some room for improvement.

UPDATE and BUMP: Daveed Gartenstein-Ross has an excellent column up at the Weekly Standard on this topic. Titled "Free to Dissent", Daveed argues that Scalia should refrain from recusal in this case, as the circumstances differ from Newdow:

At first blush, Justice Scalia's latest remarks seem like an even more compelling cause for recusal. While his remarks about the pledge occurred before the case was on the Supreme Court's docket, here the court was scheduled to hear arguments less than a month after the Freiburg speech. But a closer examination reveals that there is more than meets the eye: Scalia's remarks don't put forward anything different from the views he already articulated in two published opinions, a dissent in Rasul v. Bush and another dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. And that fact makes all the difference. ...

BY ALL ACCOUNTS, Scalia's Freiburg speech did not go beyond the views he already expressed in his Rasul and Hamdi dissents. The applicable legal standard for recusal is supplied by 28 U.S.C. S 455(a), which states: "Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned." Scalia's critics argue that his Freiburg speech calls his impartiality into question. But to show that their questions are "reasonable," they face two tough questions: Since Justice Scalia's speech didn't go beyond his Rasul and Hamdi opinions, are those dissents already grounds for recusal? And if not, is their position simply that justices cannot speak publicly on matters where they have already expressed a view through published legal opinions?

In the end, this goes to a judgment as to whether he has compromised his ability to give a fair hearing to both sides of the Hamdan appeal. The only one who can make that call is Scalia himself. Hopefully he will use better judgment than he did yesterday in making a rude gesture in church:

Minutes after receiving the Eucharist at a special Mass for lawyers and politicians at Cathedral of the Holy Cross, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had a special blessing of his own for those who question his impartiality when it comes to matters of church and state.

“You know what I say to those people?” Scalia, 70, replied, making an obscene gesture under his chin when asked by a Herald reporter if he fends off a lot of flak for publicly celebrating his conservative Roman Catholic beliefs. “That’s Sicilian,” the Italian jurist said, interpreting for the “Sopranos” challenged.

Well, he's colorful, no denying that.

UPDATE II: Ronald Cass has some thoughts on the Scalia story that are well worth your time. I think that Scalia opened himself to these kinds of attacks this week by clearly commenting on a subject scheduled for his review, or one so closely related as to be virtually indistinguishable, but Cass surely is right to say that Scalia has been under attack for most of the past five years, and it won't get any better soon.

I should also note that there has been some dispute over the gesture, more specifically about its nature. Some bloggers wrote that he had flipped off the reporters, but being of Italian descent, I knew that was inaccurate. I also don't think it does much but add color to the story, although if Scalia really feels like he's under attack, it's best not to give ammunition to the opposition. Scalia argued that the gesture wasn't obscene, and it's not, but it is certainly considered rude, and that's what I wrote. The Boston Herald responded to Scalia's letter here, and also has links to others who saw the gesture.

Strib: Let's Ignore The Constitution

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune once again demonstrates why it remains on the fringe of the newspaper industry. Their news section shows flashes of brilliance, but their editorial board continues to display the lunacy of the political outliers, and today's editorial gives a great example. The Strib today argues to allow a handful of states to hijack the Electoral College, defy the Constitution, and capture the presidency for the most populous states:

This country could form a more perfect union by accepting a novel idea: that the president of the United States should be elected by the people of the United States.

That's not the way it's done, of course, and, given the Constitution's enshrinement of the Electoral College, things aren't likely to change. To quit the college would take approval of two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-quarters of state legislatures, so fuggedaboudit.

But now comes a gaggle of bipartisan reformers with a cheeky idea worth considering. What if legislatures, one by one, entered their states into an interstate compact under which members would agree to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote? The compact would kick in only when enough states had joined it to elect a president -- that is, when a majority of the 538 electoral votes were assembled. As few as 11 states could ensure that the candidate with the most popular votes nationally would win the presidency. As a result, the Constitution and the Electoral College would stay intact, but the college's fangs would be removed.

The Strib's editors need a history lesson. The Constitution established the Electoral College as a means to ensure that the most populous states would not control the presidency. Those states had control of the House and the federal pursestrings. The EC gives populous states more votes but the structure keeps them from absolute control over the election of the head of state. This arrangment has worked well for over 200 years, during which only two elections ever came into dispute because of a difference between the EC and the popular vote: the 1876 election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden and the 2000 Bush-Gore election. (Ironically, both hinged on Florida's electors.)

This Strib idiocy shows that three recounts and six years later, the editorial board still hasn't recovered from seeing its endorsed candidate lose the election. Now, instead of using the system that has guaranteed all states a voice in selecting the president, it wants to dump it. And does it advocate doing so through the channels established in the Constitution itself? No indeed. They endorse an end-around by states to undermine the Constitution and the creation of a compact that puts the most populous states at odds with the rest, committing a conspiracy to strip them of their ability to affect presidential elections.

This should come as no surprise. The Strib has shown remarkably little affection for the Constitution in the past, pushing for gun control and outright abolishment as well as their more recent amnesia regarding war powers. They regularly oppose judicial nominees who aim to rule on the actual text of the Constitution as "extreme" while extolling those who find emanations from penumbras, or penumbras from emanations, or just plain whole cloth instead of the Constitution itself. However, their distaste for Constitutional law seems to have reached its apex in this bald effort to simply ignore the plain and clear language of the founding document of the Republic.

If the Strib wants a different president, it should implore the opposition party to nominate better candidates. The 2000 election came down to which candidate could carry his home state; had Gore managed to do that, he would have easily won the presidency. If it wants a change in the Constitution, then it should endorse an amendment ending the Electoral College. If it wants to be taken seriously, it should stop encouraging states to act unconstitutionally and endorsing the capture of the electoral process by the nation's most populous states. Shame on the Strib, its editors, and the McClatchy newspaper organization for this "cheeky" idea from the nation's premier collection of asses.

UPDATE: The 1876 election pitted Rutherford B. Hayes against Tilden, not Harrison (1888). Several CQ readers caught that one -- my apologies, and I've corrected the text above. I also heard from CQ reader Bruce B, who reminds me that Article I, Section 10 forbids compacts between the states without Congressional approval. It would appear that the founding fathers suspected that states might be tempted to form syndicates to undermine the federal system and ensured that they included a restriction against it.

Hamas Wants Dictation, Not Talks

Hamas steps up its public-relations campaign today by insisting that it wants peace talks with the rest of the world even while it rules out negotiating with and recognizing the one nation that has a real stake in the outcome. The new Prime Minister of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, Ismail Haniyeh, insisted that Hamas truly wants peace while remaining defiant about their goal of the destruction of Israel, while another Hamas apologist scolds the US in the Boston Globe for refusing to deal with terrorist organizations.

Haniyeh announced that he wants the Western Powers to listen to their demands for a "just peace":

Hamas's prime minister-designate, Ismail Haniyeh, told parliament that the new government, expected to win a vote of confidence on Tuesday or Wednesday, would be ready for a dialogue with the "Quartet" of mediating powers. ...

"Our government will be ready for a dialogue with the Quartet ... to look into all ways to end the status of struggle and to achieve calm in the region.

"Our people are in need more than any other nation on earth for peace, for security and stability. Our government will not spare any effort to achieve a just peace in the region."

But Haniyeh showed no sign of agreeing to demands by Western powers and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that it commit to negotiations with Israel.

The new country should be called Chutzpahstan, as Haniyeh demanded that President Bush deliver on his promise of a sovereign Palestinian state. This is the same group that wants to toss out every agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, including the Oslo accord, that the US sponsored over the last fifteen years. Haniyeh isn't interested in talks at all -- he wants to dictate terms under which Hamas may or may not lay down arms and stop terrorizing Israel, and those terms are Israel's destruction.

The Globe op-ed piece by Makau Mutua follows the same party line, focusing on our refusal to deal with elected terrorists. Matua laughingly declares that only by accepting a terrorist-run government can we truly support democracy:

CONTRARY TO popular political rhetoric in the West, it is a colossal mistake to isolate Hamas, the Islamist movement poised to form the next government in the Palestinian Authority. It is neither democratic nor politically defensible to deny a people the right to be governed by a party they have freely elected to power. If the West truly supports democracy, it must accept a Hamas government.

Hamas is not a garden-variety political party. But the occupied territories are not a run-of-the-mill political entity. It is a society that has been under occupation and colonization for decades. Hamas rose to power because of the failure of the Western-led Oslo peace process, the virtual collapse of the Palestinian Authority, and impotence of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Like it or not, Hamas is now the embodiment of the sovereignty of the people of Palestine.

It smacks of hypocrisy for the West and Israel to accept the participation of Hamas in the elections and then reject its victory over Fatah, the party of PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas. This is tantamount to accepting the results of a fair contest only if your preferred side wins. That is not how democracy works. What moral authority or consistency can the United States -- and the West -- claim if they reject a democratically elected Hamas government?

That is false logic. We told the Palestinians exactly what they could expect by electing Hamas to power. No one has suggested that Hamas stole that election; in fact, it was probably more fair than the election which gave Mahmoud Abbas his presidency. The Palestinians now have to live with the results of their choice. What's undemocratic about that? Would we be obliged to accede to their demands if the Palestinians passed a referendum declaring all-out war against Israel? Of course not -- and that's exactly what the Palestinians did when they elected Hamas to power, and the refusal of Hamas to work within existing agreements and to recognize Israel as a sovereign nation proves it.

Matua's fatuous logic pervades this piece. He talks about the "pathologies of Oslo" and how Hamas is the only organization that can bring peace to the Middle East. That seems a rather strange description of an organization that commits suicide bombings that target civilians and who refuse to change their position about their ultimate goal of the destruction of another country. Bigots do not make peace, and terrorists do not make reliable negotiating partners. Hamas represents the Islamic-supremacist network that has declared war on the US as well as Israel, and as long as they represent that, we need not accede to their demands nor send a penny to their supporters and voters in the Palestinian territories.

When the Palestinians truly want peace, we will know it. They will elect people willing to negotiate in good faith for a two-state solution, a government not run by terrorists but by statesmen. Until then, we owe them nothing, not even an acknowledgement of their demands and threats.

Yushchenko Fades

Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko suffered a humiliating defeat in polling yesterday, as his Our Ukraine party polled a meager 15% of the vote just a year after being heralded as a hero in the former Soviet republic. His former Orange Revolution partner, Yulia Tymoshenko, drew 23% after she publicly split with Yushchenko over policy disputes. Tymoshenko will try to lead the next parliament, relegating the president to a secondary position in what could still be an Orange government:

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko signaled a return to office to form a coalition government after a poll triumph, urging pro-Western liberals to end squabbles and keep out a pro-Russian party.

Tymoshenko said on Sunday a coalition deal was "practically ready," but the poll outcome put her and other 2004 "Orange Revolution" leaders under pressure to deliver on reforms after prizing Ukraine from centuries of Russian domination.

Voter disillusionment over "Orange" team splits and an economic slowdown hit the liberals and clearly helped Viktor Yanukovich's pro-Russian Regions Party win the largest share of the ballot in the parliamentary elections on Sunday.

But exit polls showed the liberals, who have set the former Soviet republic on a course to join the European mainstream, can still control parliament. Further talks between the liberals on a coalition were scheduled for 11 a.m. (0800 GMT) on Monday.

The split in the ranks of the former partners allowed the hand-picked successor to the corrupt regime of Leonid Kuchma to make a comeback of sorts. Viktor Yanukovych pulled the highest plurality for his Party of Regions, estimated at around 31% based on exit polling. However, he will find it difficult to form a government unless Yushchenko allies with him -- a possibility that Yushchenko refused to rule out, a development that may have helped Tymoshenko outpoll Yushchenko so well yesterday.

If the numbers hold up, a Tymoshenko-Yushchenko reunion appears to be the most likely result. However, the firebrand Tymoshenko may have a hard time working with her former partner after he publicly acknowledged that he would work with the same group of people who poisoned him just as soon as working with Yulia again.

Telling Us What We Already Knew

The New York Times reports on leaked notes from a US-UK White House summit in January 2003 that shows both George Bush and Tony Blair determined to remove Saddam Hussein and to put an end to the twelve-year quagmire that kept Saddam in power. Like most of the Gray Lady's reporting on the war (except for the estimable John Burns), this supposed revelation rehashes what we already know, with a thin veneer of hyperbole:

In the weeks before the United States-led invasion of Iraq, as the United States and Britain pressed for a second United Nations resolution condemning Iraq, President Bush's public ultimatum to Saddam Hussein was blunt: Disarm or face war.

But behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.

"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Mr. Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides.

As usual, however, one has to read much farther into this document in order to get the context of the meeting. By January 31, Bush and Blair had already forced Saddam to allow Hans Blix back in the country for more weapons inspections, the purpose of which was to get the Iraqis to produce proof that they had destroyed their WMD stocks and equipment. That intermediate step came at the insistence of France, which wanted to delay consideration of the so-called "second resolution" wanted by Britain as political cover.

By the time Bush met Blair at the White House, Hans Blix had reported that the Iraqis would not cooperate with the inspections, only paying lip service to the inspectors. Now, thanks to captured notes of Iraqi meetings, we know that Saddam remained confident that his bribery of France and Russia (as well as their well-known economic interest in maintaining their contracts with the Saddam regime) would result in a stalemate at the Security Council over any resolution opening military force as a consequence of failure. That may be why France practically begged Blair at that moment not to pursue a "second resolution" (actually a 17th); they assured both the US and the UK that the previous sixteen resolutions gave plenty of cause for action, but that France would find it politically impossible to vote for explicit military action against Iraq.

By this time, had the US not had a plan for military action against Iraq, it would have been almost criminally neglectful. Why should it surprise anyone that two nations that faced war with Saddam Hussein would discuss the military strategy involved in that war? Nothing discussed in the meeting appears to break new ground, politically or tactically; the US planned to attack command-and-control assets quickly and reduce the Republican Guard to disorganized patrols instead of a cohesive fighting force. The one big question, protecting the oil wells, got addressed by US planning for their protection. Otherwise, this discussion could have taken place around anyone's kitchen table by January 2003.

In short, the Times presents us with a memo that shows the US and UK understanding that Saddam would not cooperate with the UN nor voluntarily disarm or step aside; history proved them correct on all those assertions. Given those as reality, the two nations prepared for war. If the Times finds this surprising, it demonstrates their cluelessness all the more.

Answering RedState On Phelps

I received a kind note from Smagar at RedState informing me that he had written a rebuttal to my post about Fred Phelps and the legislation passed to ban funeral protests. I wrote that legislation banning public political protests -- even those as despicable as the Phelps tactics -- begins a slide that follows the BCRA in creating an unacceptable government-approval process for public speech. It also disturbs me to lose even a little ground on free speech to the likes of Fred Phelps:

These protests embarrass and outrage every community where they occur, as the should. Those who give their lives in defense of our country deserve a respectful farewell, and their families deserve peace and space to mourn. These ghouls use their right to free speech to act like mindless hyenas.

However, they do have the same right to free speech, a small technicality that both houses of the state legislature appears to have forgotten in their eagerness to provide a legal solution to a poverty of the soul. ...

Hopefully our legislature will heed the words of a Gold Star mother and rethink their reaction to the disgusting provocations of Fred Phelps. In the end, Phelps is a bug, and we shouldn't make him important enough to merit the loss of our speech rights.

Smagar finds my stance unproductive and wants to know what my solution to the problem would be:

Pretend a grieving family is standing in front of you. Now, pretend you are the state legislator who cast the deciding vote against a state law that called for a ninety-day jail sentence for anyone who intentionally disrupts a memorial service or funeral, and barred protestors from any demonstrations at the houses of the families.

Team Phelps is outside. He and his crew are cheering that this family's son is dead, because God hates fags. You've shut the church windows, but Phelps' freedom of speech still trickles through the cracks in the window frame molding.

Tell us what you'd say to that family, which would make them accept Phelps' presence outside.

Smagar offered to let me respond at RedState, but as it turns out, I'm not registered there -- and it would take a few days for it to go through, so responding there wouldn't really work out. Smagar deserves a response, so I'll just post it here instead.

Smagar writes passionately about a topic understandably given to passionate feelings. I completely understand the impulse that says we must create barriers to the despicable antics of "Reverend" Fred Phelps and his ilk. The families of our fallen heroes should not have to endure the hateful and insane rantings that his flock brings to the funerals around the nation. But for that matter, the people of Skokie should not have to endure the marching of Nazis through their streets, and the people of the South should not have to endure Klan rallies. As long as those demonstrations get conducted on public land, however, the First Amendment forces us to endure all of that, and more. (I think we can all agree that on private property, the owner gets to decide who enters and who leaves.)

Smagar asks me for a solution to Fred Phelps and his use of free speech to make an ass out of himself. I don't believe that there is one, short of more free speech. I do think that any restraint on public speech, especially political speech, starts us on a road that leads to a requirement for government permission to speak out at all. One Red State commenter already suggested a "free speech zone" in communities where all rallies could be assigned. Before the advent of the BCRA, the entire country was a free speech zone. Defining public land as off-limits to political speech allows totalitarians to narrow it down so far as to be useless, and as conservatives, we should fight even the beginnings of that trend.

So what do we do about Fred Phelps? The same as we do about Michael Moore, Pat Robertson, David Duke, Janeane Garofalo, Ted Rall, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, anarchists, and all of the assorted fringe elements that spew hatred and filth -- we use our freedom of speech to expose them for what they are. In fact, given the resources of the Internet, perhaps we could expose them in a literal sense by identifying all of the little morons that follow Phelps to these funerals and ensure that their neighbors and co-workers know who they are and what they do with their free time. That takes work and effort, and doesn't rely on the government to decide which speech deserves airing and which doesn't.

What I would say to the families is that restrictions on speech sound great as a solution -- until you need to speak out against what you perceive as injustice. When others then restrict your ability to protest, such as the recently-overturned restrictions on demonstrations outside of abortion clinics -- then it will be too late. We will have already agreed that speech has to be controlled by government, placing our core freedom in the hands of whatever group has their hands on those levers.

Live By The Sword ...

Moqtada al-Sadr escaped an assassination attempt this morning in Baghdad:

A mortar attack hit the compound of Moqtada al-Sadr, the powerful Shiite cleric and militia leader on Sunday, injuring one guard and a child, a top Sadr aide said. Sadr was inside his house at the time of the attack but escaped injury, aide Mostafa Yacoubi said.

Two 82mm mortar rounds hit the Shiite cleric's compound, which is in a neighborhood controlled by Sadr's forces in the northeast of the Shiite holy city of Najaf.

One round struck by the front gate, injuring the guard and a neighborhood child, Yacoubi said. Yacoubi gave no details of any casualties inside Sadr's house, except to say Sadr was not wounded.

The mortar got launched from a neighboring house; apparently the neighborhood isn't entirely pleased with Sadr and his Mahdi militia. Sadr issued a statement calling for calm and restraint from revenge, advice which if he himself had heeded it probably would have kept the mortars from falling on his house today.

Perhaps he learned a lesson today, but I rather doubt it.

Rahman Unbound

ABC News reports this morning that the Afghanistan convert to Christianity, Abdul Rahman, has had the charges dropped against him for abandoning Islam (via Michelle Malkin):

"The court dismissed today the case against Abdul Rahman for a lack of information and a lot of legal gaps in the case," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the matter.

He said the case has been returned to the prosecutors for more investigation, but that in the meantime Rahman would be released.

"The decision about his release will be taken possibly tomorrow," he said.

This isn't the end of the story, and it may well be that Rahman faces more danger now than he did before. Earlier today, before the decision was announced, Afghan authorities transferred Rahman to a maximum-security prison where former Taliban soldiers and al-Qaeda terrorists are detained. One can imagine how precarious Rahman's fate will be when word gets around the yard about his conversion to Christianity -- which will probably be obvious five times a day when Rahman doesn't kneel in the direction of Mecca. Even if he survives to be released, he faces a nation that overwhelmingly believes he deserves punishment for his religious beliefs, and some may feel it necessary to deliver it personally.

His best bet is to apply for asylum to the West, preferably the US but at least anywhere but Afghanistan and Pakistan in the near term. Given enough time, they may learn religious tolerance, but that time obviously has not come yet.

Marching For Lawbreaking

I grew up in the Los Angeles area, and while I enjoyed the area for its diversity and its many fine choices for living, working, and entertainment, it has always had an aura on unreality. Angelenos literally demonstrated this yesterday by rallying a half-million people in favor of unsecured national borders in a time of war:

A crowd estimated by police at more than 500,000 boisterously marched in Los Angeles on Saturday to protest federal legislation that would crack down on undocumented immigrants, penalize those who help them and build a security wall along the U.S.' southern border.

Spirited but peaceful marchers — ordinary immigrants alongside labor, religious and civil rights groups — stretched more than 20 blocks along Spring Street, Broadway and Main Street to City Hall, tooting kazoos, waving American flags and chanting, "Sí se puede!" (Yes we can!).

Well, that description doesn't show any reportorial bias, does it? "Ordinary immigrants"? Believe it or not, this is a news report and not the start of an editorial. (I should mention that this is the Los Angeles Times.)

Attendance at the demonstration far surpassed the number of people who protested against the Vietnam War and Proposition 187, a 1994 state initiative that sought to deny public benefits to undocumented migrants but was struck down by the courts.

Less than a half-million people demonstrated in California during the entirety of the Viet Nam War? Not only are Hector Becerra and Teresa Watanabe biased, but they can't write worth a damn either.

"There has never been this kind of mobilization in the immigrant community ever," said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. "They have kicked the sleeping giant. It's the beginning of a massive immigrant civil rights struggle."

I'm sure they think of it this way, but illegal immigrants have been getting a free pass in California for decades. The state has never had the will to actually do anything about cracking down on illegals and their access to government services. Proposition 187 passed overwhelmingly but got hijacked by the Ninth Circuit, and successive state governments have washed their hands of the problem ever since.

The problem isn't immigration or immigrants -- and they know it. The problem is illegal immigration, an uncontrolled wave of people flowing into the country. Even in peacetime this creates a huge problem for law enforcement and a host of government services, including education, welfare, and health care. In an era where Islamofascist terrorists seek entry to the country in order to attack it, the notion that our borders should be thrown wide open and immigration laws go unenforced is suicidal beyond imagination.

This country has always been the most welcoming of legal immigrants. My great-grandparents on my mother's side came here from Italy and Eastern Europe, and three generations before that my father's great-grandparents escaped the Potato Famine. In all cases, they managed to enter the country legally, respecting our laws from the outset of their relationship with America. No one is entitled to enter this country unless they follow those laws and meet the requirements.

I have some sympathy for the idea of guest-worker plans, but those only work once the borders have been secured. In truth, the marchers in LA don't believe in borders at all; the leaders of the "immigrant" community still believe that the southern border is illegitimate and that the Southwest was stolen from Mexico, and that they have an entitlement to cross them at will. That's what lies behind the march yesterday and the activism in Southern California that fights every effort to enforce border control. I have no sympathy for people who refuse to respect our borders and our laws, regardless if they march in the hundreds of thousands or not.

The Orange Devolution?

Last year at this time, the world celebrated the collapse of the clan-based kleptocracy in Ukraine in favor of the clean election of Viktor Yuschenko in what was dubbed the Orange Revolution. Yuschenko managed to unite the opposition factions to the Kuchma regime and his hand-picked successor, Viktor Yanukovych, and overcome the political divide between the West and East in Ukraine. Ukraine defied Russia and Vladimir Putin by sending Yanukovych packing, a slap that damaged Putin's relationship with the West.

After the year has passed, however, the Orange Revolution has given way, a victim of the factionalism that Yuschenko managed to briefly overcome. That division has allowed the clans to once again develop momentum and return Moscow's fair-haired boy to political viability:

For a man who was supposed to be politically dead, Viktor Yanukovych has a light step. With a bounce in his stride, he emerged onto a downtown stage Friday evening, faux-marble columns framing his salute, as a crowd of thousands chanted his name in four hard beats: "Yan-U-Kov-Ych."

The Kremlin's favorite for power in this former Soviet republic, he was vanquished 16 months ago by the weeks of marches and sit-ins known as the Orange Revolution. Now, opinion polls predict that his party will win the largest number of seats in parliamentary elections Sunday.

His comeback reflects the advent of genuine democratic freedoms in Ukraine, a nation of 47 million people on the shores of the Black Sea, and the rapid disintegration of the political coalition the revolution brought to office. President Viktor Yushchenko and his former allies on the streets now trade accusations of corruption, incompetence and betrayal almost daily.

Russia is watching the vote closely. Yanukovych is the country's hope for the central goal of its foreign policy: the fostering of sympathetic governments in the former Soviet republics that share its borders. In the months since the revolution, Ukraine has aligned itself firmly with the European Union, the United States and NATO; Yanukovych has said that any government he heads would swing back toward Moscow.

Ah, democracy! Winston Churchill once called it the worst form of government, except for all the others, and there is some truth in that. No one should be surprised by this development; despite his participation and benefit from the corrupt practices that led to the Orange Revolution, Yanukovych has never lacked true popularity in the Russophile east of Ukraine. The Orangers have given Yanukovych his opening by disintegrating back into factions that show little sign of the kind of cooperation needed to form a long-term governing coalition.

It need not be the end of the road for Ukrainian democracy if Yanukovych comes back into power, either. Yuschenko has had over a year to implement the kinds of checks and balances to keep the party in power from stealing elections. That in itself would be a major victory, and most observers believe the election will be fair. Public debate will be open and energetic. And Yanukovych and his Party of Regions know now that Ukraine will rise up to stop the kind of autocracy that Yanukovych and his mentor, Leonid Kuchma, attempted to impose in 2004.

In fact, Yanukovyh may find himself a strange ally if he manages to gain a plurality in parliament: Viktor Yuschenko, who pushed him out of power last year. Yuschenko has indicated a willingness to form an alliance with Yanukovych, a stunning rejection of his Orange partner, Yulia Timoshenko, who has refused such a partnership with the man she helped depose. It shows the depth of the nadir that the movement has reached. It also shows the kind of strange bedfellows one finds in a functioning democracy.