Bush Plays It For Laughs While Colbert Bombs

George Bush attended the White House Correspondents Dinner tonight, an annual event that encourages all parties to engage in some self-deprecating humor and relax in each other's company for an evening. Fox News showed Bush's speech live, and he decided to have a Bush impersonator join him at the podium. Using a tag-team approach, the ersatz Bush provided the plain-language translation and some interior dialogue to accompany the real Bush's cliche-heavy foil of a speech. The two skewered Bush's public-speaking flaws, as well as Dick Cheney:

FAKE BUSH: Speaking of suspects, where's the Great White Hunter?

BUSH: Vice President Dick Cheney regrets he could not be here tonight.

[Laughter]

BUSH: Dick Cheney is a fine man. He has a good heart -- er, he is a fine man.

...

BUSH: I love America. It's full of Americans!

....

BUSH: This ruggedly good looking man next to me is Steve Bridges. He is a talented man. In fact, he did all of my debates with Senator Kerry.

The gathered correspondents loved it, laughing frequently at the two Bushes. Ironically, the pair was followed by a more well-known comedian, Steve Colbert of Comedy Central's Colbert Report. Initially Fox News pulled away for a couple of minutes of useless analysis, but the anchor of the broadcast took viewers back to the presentation because, in her words, Steve Colbert "never fails to make us laugh." Fox then broadcast three of the most laugh-free minutes of comedy seen on national television since Chevy Chase fancied himself as the new Johnny Carson. Colbert barely garnered even polite laughter for his banal and obvious schtick, and eventually Fox returned to its obviously embarrassed anchor.

Now that was funny.

UPDATE: The AP report is here. Colbert, by the way, was the featured act.

UPDATE II: Welcome to Hot Air readers! There were two problems with Colbert's act. The first is that it wasn't funny, and the second was that it didn't keep with the spirit of the evening. The Correspondents Dinner prides itself on making the evening a safe venue for all, and the humor is supposed to stay self-deprecating. Attacking one's opponents in this forum is considered bad manners. Colbert has no grasp of his audience or the event, and he paid the price for it. And that price was painful indeed.

Joe Gandelman, however, disagrees and blames the audience for not appreciating Colbert.

UPDATE III: Joe links to Bloggledybook who absolutely nails the pretentious whinery of believing that Colbert had courage in "speaking truthiness to power", as one of Joe's commenters put it. And kudos again to Joe for once again giving us the best of commentary on both sides of an issue. TMV is a must-read for that reason.

CQ: Gadfly Of The Year

I found out this morning that the local alternative newspaper City Pages has named me its Best Gadfly for 2005. Atomizer from Fraters Libertas mentioned to me in the studio while we're waiting for our turn at the microphones for today's Northern Alliance show. Since I had not received any notification, I completely missed that when I had perused the site earlier this week.

The paper made it clear that they're not exactly fans of this site, which does not surprise me, but they demonstrated their openmindedness in their selection:

According to the American Heritage dictionary, a gadfly is one of three things: "A persistent irritating critic; someone who acts as a provocative stimulus; or one of an array of various flies that bite or annoy livestock and other animals." So far as we know, Morrissey does not harass cattle. On the other two counts, though, he meets the definition to a T. Captain's Quarters, the political blog Morrissey has operated since 2003, can be a tiring read. It is chock full of predictable right-of-center talking points and, like most political blogs, is stained by its tone of chronic indignation. But if nothing else, Captain Ed—as he calls himself—is one persistent fellow. And per the definition, he certainly is willing to act as "a provocative stimulus." Just ask Paul Martin, the former prime minister of Canada whose long-ruling Liberal Party was ousted in the January elections. Martin's defeat, it is widely acknowledged, came in part due to Morrissey's tireless blogging on the subject of a kickback scandal involving Montreal ad firms with government contracts. How, you ask, could a middle-aged call-center manager from Eagan out-compete the Canadian media on such a matter? To understand that, you need to recognize the peculiarities of press restrictions in Canada, where media outlets were barred from reporting on the continuing investigation. Supplied with a steady stream of information from a Canadian citizen who attended the court hearings in Ottawa, Captain Ed faced no such constraints. Not long after he began publishing the particulars, hundreds of thousands of Canadians were soon visiting Morrissey's blog for updates. Why did Morrissey feel compelled to weigh in on clean government issues in Canada? Because he's a gadfly, that's why. And an effective one at that.

Thank you, and please note that I am dropping my chronic tone of indignation in this post.

Northern Alliance Radio Network Today

The Northern Alliance Radio Network returns to the air today at 11 am CT, with Brian and Chad from Fraters Libertas joining John from Power Line in the first half. Starting at 1 pm CT, I'll join Mitch Berg from Shot In The Dark and King Banaian from SCSU Scholars to discuss the stories of the week. King will bring his expertise in economics to the questions surrounding the oil markets this week and will interview a guest on that topic. We will also touch on the 101st Fighting Keyboardists and definitely debate the McCain statement that he would trade away our First Amendment rights for "clean" government.

Tune in at AM 1280 The Patriot, either on air or on its Internet stream, and call us at 651-289-4488 to join the conversation!

McCain: Trade The First Amendment For Clean Government

Mark Tapscott has a clip of John McCain's appearance on the Don Imus Show that demonstrates the truly frightening prospect of having the Senator from Arizona occupy the White House. McCain told Imus that he would trade the First Amendment for "clean government":

"He [Michael Graham] also mentioned my abridgement of First Amendment rights, i.e. talking about campaign finance reform....I know that money corrupts....I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I’d rather have the clean government."

Senator McCain apparently has no love for the First Amendment, nor any understanding of why it occupies the primary position in the Bill of Rights. The right to free speech recognizes the inherent and natural right to speak one's mind and to argue for one's political beliefs. Free speech costs nothing and it requires nothing other than a lack of government interference. The right to speak out informs all of the other natural rights recognized in the Constitution; without it, none of the others make sense, including the right to religious expression, property rights, the right to bear arms. None of these make sense if the government can control your political speech and determine about what its citizens can protest and when they can do it.

Furthermore, the entire reason the founders saw fit to recognize this natural right in the primary position was to guard against corruption and totalitarianism in the federal government. They had just broken free of a particularly ill-tempered monarch who actively sought to oppress dissent regarding British policies in the colonies. The crafters of the Constitution understood that the only barrier to its new government's potential for creating another tyranny would be the free and unfettered poltical speech that would point out such corruption and abuse of power.

The founders would have laughed at McCain's notion that one could trade free political speech for 'clean' government. They knew that the only manner in which to keep the government clean was to enable its citizens to speak out against abuses. Trading free speech for any kind of government only enables the villains of power to accumulate and abuse it all the more.

Senator John McCain has many fine qualities, but an understanding of free speech is not among them. He would trade our primary birthright for a mess of bureaucracy and trust it to operate in our interests while limiting our ability to criticize it. That path leads to autocracy, corruption, and ruin.

Professional Courtesy?

The Washington Post has uncovered an even seedier level of corruption surrounding disgraced former Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) and the defense contractors that made him a millionaire. According to sources within a federal investigation, money wasn't the only thing the contractors stuffed into the Duke's pants, and Cunningham may not have been alone:

Federal authorities are investigating allegations that a California defense contractor arranged for a Washington area limousine company to provide prostitutes to convicted former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.) and possibly other lawmakers, sources familiar with the probe said yesterday.

In recent weeks, investigators have focused on possible dealings between Christopher D. Baker, president of Shirlington Limousine and Transportation Inc., and Brent R. Wilkes, a San Diego businessman who is under investigation for bribing Cunningham in return for millions of dollars in federal contracts, said one source, who requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. ...

The Cunningham investigation's latest twist came after Mitchell J. Wade, a defense contractor who has admitted bribing the former congressman, told prosecutors that Wilkes had an arrangement with Shirlington Limousine, which in turn had an arrangement with at least one escort service, one source said. Wade said limos would pick up Cunningham and a prostitute and bring them to suites Wilkes maintained at the Watergate Hotel and the Westin Grand in Washington, the source said.

Cunningham resigned from Congress after pleading guilty last November to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from four co-conspirators, including Wilkes and Wade. The former lawmaker was sentenced to eight years and four months in prison. Wade pleaded guilty to his part in the scheme in February and is cooperating with investigators. Wilkes has not been charged.

The allegations about prostitutes were reported this week by the Wall Street Journal. Asked yesterday about the allegations, Wilkes's attorney, Michael Lipman of San Diego, said: "My client denies any involvement in that conduct." Cunningham's lawyer, K. Lee Blalack II, declined to comment.

Why should this be shocking? After all, Cunningham prostituted his office for his own personal gain. One might even expect that the financial arrangements may have been mitigated from a sense of professional courtesy.

The investigation will focus on government contracts given to Shirlington and its president by the Department of Homeland Security. Baker has a criminal record for misdemeanors including drug charges and larceny, and managed to avoid conviction on felony charges for armed robbery. He has had problems with the IRS -- well, who hasn't? -- and filed for bankruptcy twice. Despite all of these background issues, Baker managed to win multi-million-dollar contracts with DHS for transportation services, the first time as the only bidder for the contract. In the past two years, it has received $25 million in contracts with DHS.

On the surface, and way below that, this looks like Shirlington secured its contracts through its longstanding support for Cunningham and his "entertainment", a relationship that goes all the way back to the early 1990s when Baker first launched his limousine service. Two possibilities exist if federal investigators can establish a connection between Cunningham and the awarding of the DHS contracts. Either Baker paid Cunningham off in hookers, or Baker blackmailed Cunningham with the knowledge of the Congressman's track record in personal entertainment.

Once again, we see in a petty and tawdry way why government spending on foolishness creates the opportunity for corruption. It's the trap that captures politicians of both parties and keeps lobbyists highly paid. It turns the entir federal government into a bunch of whores, and the irony in this story is that the actual prostitutes are probably the least blameworthy and most honest out of everyone involved.

Addendum: The Post's article is a late entry, TPM Muckraker reminds us. The Wall Street Journal and the San Diego Union-Tribune have much more on this subject, including the scope of the investigation. The feds think that the Duke may have had Congressional company on his nights out with the ladies.

Brits Finally Start Checking On Galloway

British investigators have finally started checking into MP George Galloway and his role in the Oil for Food scandal at the United Nations. The London Times reports that their diplomats have approached Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister under Saddam Hussein, to see if he will talk about Galloway's relationship with the Hussein regime:

BRITISH diplomats in Baghdad have asked Tariq Aziz, Iraq’s former deputy prime minister, to help an investigation into allegations that George Galloway was given cash by Saddam Hussein under the Oil-for-Food programme.

The diplomats made the secret approach through Mr Aziz’s lawyer this week on behalf of Parliament’s so-called “sleaze buster”. The lawyer, Badie Izzat Arief, claimed that they offered to try and secure Mr Aziz immunity from prosecution on any charges arising from the Oil-for-Food scandal.

Embassy officials want to meet Mr Aziz, 70, in the US-run detention centre where he is held with other top members of Saddam’s regime to put a series of questions from Sir Philip Mawer, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.

Sir Philip is investigating claims that the MP for Bethnal Green & Bow took money under the UN Oil-for-Food programme — a charge that Mr Galloway strenuously denies and about which he has already successfully sued and won damages from one national newspaper.

Galloway won a lawsuit against the London Telegraph for publishing the documents uncovered by the Coalition forces that showed him receiving oil futures for his efforts to support Saddam and opposition to military action. In the UK, truth is not an absolute defense to libel, and the paper lost on the basis of the damage the documents caused to Galloway's reputation. Since then, more evidence has been found of Galloway's corruption, and in January the Brits hauled off "thousands" of documents on the scandal and its relation to British politicians. At the time, the Guardian (UK) reported that the British would consider opening an investigation; apparently it took them longer than expected, but they have done so.

Galloway's reaction reflected the strange, contradictory, and combative nature of the Saddam shill himself. He noted that Aziz had had heart attacks, strokes, and been denied medical treatments, implying that Aziz would make a less-than-credible witness due to his Coalition-imposed infirmities. In the very next breath, he then proclaimed confidence that Aziz would clear him of all charges. Perhaps only such a confused and handicapped witness could do so.

Aziz, for his part, is not likely to cooperate. He has steadfastly refused to testify to Saddam's crimes, rejecting all arrangements for immunity for his cooperation. His lawyer tells reporters that Aziz's health is deteriorating, but the most interesting information to come from Aziz's counsel is that the British visit by investigators is their first since Aziz's surrender in April 2003. One has to wonder whether the British simply did not want to hear about backbencher complicity in Saddam's corruption if they have never bothered to ask about it.

Reid Blinks

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid backed away from his demand that the immigration-reform bill currently before the Senate receive a direct vote with no amendments from Republicans, a condition that scuttled the compromise agreement before the Easter break. Reid told reporters yesterday that he would allow a certain number of amendments as long as they did not unduly burden the bill:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said yesterday he is willing to allow consideration of Republican amendments to the comprehensive immigration bill, a concession that removes a primary obstacle that killed the bill earlier this month.

"We're willing to work through these amendments," the Nevada Democrat told reporters yesterday. "If they want to have these votes, we'll have the votes."

Republicans said they welcomed Mr. Reid's change of heart, while Democrats cautioned that other obstacles remain.

"What part of 'yes' doesn't he understand," said Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, who has offered several amendments that Democrats refused to allow to be considered. "That is exactly the position that I and others interested in immigration reform took three weeks ago. We could have had a bill voted out of the Senate three weeks ago today if he hadn't been the one who obstructed votes on amendments on the floor."

Reid spokesman Jim Manley said later that while his boss is flexible about amendments, he remains opposed to allowing the legislation to be bogged down by too many. Mr. Reid and Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee say they are still negotiating over precisely how many amendments will be considered.

The Democrats had previously thought that stalling on immigration hurt the Republicans more than themselves and that they had enough crossover support from John McCain and others that the GOP would be forced to accept their direction. However, after Reid suddenly imposed the no-amendments condition and McCain publicly upbraided him for it, Reid and his caucus found themselves painted as the deal-killers. Senate Democrats received most of the criticism for the failure to pass the Senate legislation before the recess, and now Reid has to deliver some cooperation in order to get himself off the hook.

Reid and Frist will negotiate the number of amendments and their scope in the coming days, probably in time for Monday's session. The one amendment offered by Cornyn as mentioned above will almost certainly receive a vote now, although the Democrats claims it "guts" the reform bill they crafted. It's difficult to see why denying citizenship to people who have been convicted of felonies or three misdemeanors while living here illegally offends Democrats to such an extent. Even legal immigrants who reside here face deportation if they get convicted of such crimes. Why should illegal aliens get preferential treatment?

The Democrats say that they will easily defeat such amendments, and that they do not represent the spirit of the legislation. If that were true, then Reid would have allowed the amendments to come to a vote three weeks ago, as Cornyn also noted. The truth is that amendments such as Cornyn's and another which mandates a physical barrier system at the southern border will likely pass with bipartisan support. These will make the Senate bill that much closer to the House legislation that awaits a conference committee, and it will strengthen the Republican position in that negotiation. That is the real cause for Reid's obstructionism, and his capitulation makes it much more likely that a truly meaningful reform package will emerge for Bush's signature.

As I have written many times before on this blog, border security is the primary goal of immigration reform; regardless of what we do with the people already here, we have to stop the flood of people crossing the southern border. After that, the question of earned citizenship becomes much less problematic, and the proposals offered have some rational benefits for assimilation and identification of the truly undesirable. However, any proposal that treats this group better than legal immigrants, such as noted by Cornyn's amendment, will be found unacceptable by fair Americans. This is one example where the amendment process serves a good purpose.

Hiltzik Loses Column Over Sock Puppetry

Last week, Patterico's Pontifications discovered that Los Angeles Times columnist and blogger Michael Hiltzik had created multiple personas for comments on Patterico's blog as well as Hiltzik's own. When Patterico posted the evidence of the phony personas, Hiltzik's newspaper suspended his blog while it investigated the behavior of its Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist. Now the Times has announced that Hiltzik will lose his column for his violation of their ethics policy, although he will remain as a reporter with the paper:

The Times is discontinuing Michael Hiltzik’s Golden State column, which ran in the Business section, because the columnist violated the newspaper’s ethics guidelines. This follows the suspension last week of his blog on latimes.com, which also has been discontinued. Hiltzik has acknowledged using pseudonyms to post a single comment on his blog on latimes.com and multiple comments elsewhere on the Web that dealt with his column and other issues involving the newspaper.

Hiltzik did not commit any ethical violations in his newspaper column, and an internal inquiry found no inaccurate reporting in his postings in his blog or on the Web. But employing pseudonyms constitutes deception and violates a central tenet of The Times’ ethics guidelines: Staff members must not misrepresent themselves and must not conceal their affiliation with The Times. This rule applies equally to the newspaper and the Web world.

Over the past few days, some analysts have used this episode to portray the Web as a new frontier for newspapers, saying that it raises fresh and compelling ethical questions. Times editors don’t see it that way. The Web makes it easier to conceal one’s identity, and the tone of exchanges is often harsh. But the Web doesn’t change the rules for Times journalists.

After serving a suspension, Hiltzik will be reassigned.

I never had a high opinion of Hiltzik before the sock puppetry, and have an even lower opinion of him now. However, one has to wonder whether the Times went overboard with its reaction. As the editors state, Hiltzik didn't break any rules in his column or in his reporting for the newspaper, at least according to the editors. The violations occurred on the Golden State blog and at Patterico's Pontifications.

It seems to me that killing the blog and suspending Hiltzik would have been sufficient for the violations he committed. Don't get me wrong; I don't think Hiltzik wrote well enough or posed good enough arguments to warrant his own column anyway, as his silly and ignorant rantings over Hugh Hewitt's Sitemeter stats proved well enough. If the Times thought so, then they should have just deep-sixed the column for that reason and been honest about it. If they liked Hiltzik's work on the column, then they should have kept the punishment to the same venue in which the violations occurred.

The message the Times wants to send with this action doesn't appear very clear to me. Why go through all the hassle to kill his blog and his column, suspend him, and then have his work still appear in their newspaper? Cancelling his blog acknowledges that he has shot his credibility in this arena, and the suspension serves as a financial penalty for embarrassing his newspaper. But canceling his column demonstrates a lack of faith in Hiltzik's credibility as a columnist -- which must then also apply to his work as a reporter. The Times has kneecapped Hiltzik for any other assignment at the Times.

The Times had the right principles in mind when they addressed this situation; they held Hiltzik accountable for his sad and pathetic attempts to invent people who would agree with him. Either they went overboard in their attack on his print work, or they should have fired him outright, and to do the latter would have been completely dishonest. The true punishment for Hiltzik's foolishness is the knowledge that he made himself into a joke. The Times couldn't leave it at that and turned him into a tragedy instead.

IAEA: No Cooperation From Iran

The IAEA decided to bypass diplomatic niceties on the lack of cooperation coming from Iran on their commitments to nuclear non-proliferation in a new and disturbing report to the UN Security Council. The Washington Post reports that the international nuclear watchdog has highlighted new centrifuge development and "information gaps" that prevent the inspectors from knowing the full extent of nuclear research by the mullahcracy:

The United Nations' atomic monitoring agency reported Friday that Iran continues to expand its uranium enrichment technology and to hold back information that would allow inspectors to determine whether a covert military nuclear program exists.

The report by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran is conducting an enrichment program in defiance of U.N. Security Council demands to halt it. Agency inspectors who visited Iranian sites observed construction of additional centrifuges for expanding uranium enrichment operations, the report said.

Agency inspectors found no "undeclared nuclear material in Iran," the report said. But it added that because of information gaps, "including the role of the military in Iran's nuclear program, the agency is unable to make progress in its efforts to provide assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran."

The report gives the United States and other Western countries ammunition to convene a debate in the U.N. Security Council next week on possible sanctions or other international pressures against Iran. Within minutes of the report becoming public late Friday afternoon Europe time, British officials urged such a debate.

George Bush told reporters that the US and the UK would bring the matter back to the Security Council, where both will press for economic sanctions as a response to Iranian defiance. Russia and China will likely oppose such a move, with both cautioning today against hasty action that would drive the Iranians from the NPT. That argument lost quite a bit of credibility when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that Iran "won't give a damn" about the IAEA or the UNSC.

The report reflects the same defiance. The IAEA repeatedly notes where Iran refused to discuss the open issues of compliance, balked at providing the documentation for nuclear designs it knows Iran purchased from the AQ Khan network, and ignored deadlines for meeting the agency and UNSC resolutions. It generally points out that Iran has stonewalled inspectors in private just as much as they have insulted negotiators and made wild threats in public.

The case for further action is clear. Iran has openly defied the UNSC and the IAEA. US ambassador John Bolton told reporters that the next step will likely be to make the previous resolution mandatory, a step opposed by Russia and China in the first round, and to establish another short deadline for compliance. The two Iranian allies will probably bend on making the resolution mandatory, allowing them to procrastinate another few weeks. If the two oppose it, or if the next deadline comes with the same result and they oppose further action for enforcement, they will have given the US and its European allies the political opening the West needs to pursue their own solution to the Iranian problem. They will also have driven a stake through the heart of their policy of using the UN to diplomatically restrain the US.

Much rides on the next step. Too bad the main actor in this drama is a nutcase like Ahmadinejad.

Still More Server Problems

We've come under attack all day here at the Hosting Matters community, apparently by Saudis who have issues with free speech. Michelle Malkin has some of the background at her site, if you can access it. The only thing I know is that the folks at Hosting Matters have treated me very well, and I'm not going to burn my friends when they're getting attacked.

This, too, shall pass. In the meantime, I think I'll check to see if my backup site still works for later use.

UPDATE: Please bookmark my backup site. I'm guessing we'll see more of these attacks in the coming days, and if so I will post updates on the old Typepad blog. It's kind of like coming back to your parent's house and having to sleep in your old bedroom -- it makes you feel a bit diminished, but the memories are priceless.

Quit Digging

Minnesota Senator Mark Dayton, recently selected by Time Magazine as one of the top five worst Senators in office, just can't seem to stop justifying his inexplicable office closing shortly before the 2004 presidential elections. The Star Tribune tries to assist him by giving him another shovel with which to dig the hole ever deeper:

As Sen. Mark Dayton contemplated closing his office because of a terrorist threat 18 months ago, he huddled privately with his top aides, who warned him that such an unprecedented decision would spell his demise.

"I said, 'If you close the office and you do so alone, you'll be committing political suicide. You'll be isolated.' ... I think my prediction bore out," said Jack Danielson, Dayton's chief of staff.

For Dayton, D-Minn., it is the one issue that won't go away, dragging him down more than a year after he announced he wouldn't run for a second term and playing a key role in Time magazine's decision last week to pan him as one of America's five worst senators.

"It is likely to be my Senate epitaph, which is not what I would choose," Dayton said in an interview in his Capitol Hill office. His office is fighting back, providing new behind-the-scenes details on his decision, which he says he's still convinced was right.

Dayton then tries to explain how dire the intel sounded when first released to Congress. He claims that he only had his staff in mind when he shut the office down and sent them home, even though his was the only Congressional office to close down in fear on the basis of that intelligence. The Star Tribune includes accolades from the staffers and their families for this decision, even as it also reports that Dayton's chief of staff (and presumably a member of the same office) tried to warn him repeatedly that doing this on his own would destroy his career and reputation.

What the Strib fails to include are the contemporaneous reactions of his peers when he unilaterally shut down his offices, including observations from his own caucus that Dayton's actions appeared unstable:

The surprising response by the freshman senator from Minnesota to the latest in a series of warnings prompted ridicule and a flurry of angry reactions yesterday. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) said Dayton's decision was "ill-informed." Minnesota's senior senator, Norm Coleman (R), called Dayton reckless. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) compared him to the boy who cried wolf. Colleagues on both sides of the aisle whispered "paranoid." ...

Dayton's reaction to the extreme possibility was ridiculous, D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said.

"It's not based on any credible information that's come in. Nobody knows why he is doing what he is doing," Ramsey said. "It doesn't take a brain surgeon to think that the White House and the Capitol are targets. But there is no credible information about planned attacks -- nothing to set off the reaction we saw." ...

"He's damaged us. He's unnecessarily panicked people across the United States," said Norton, who has often questioned the federal government's security moves in the capital. "Now we have a member of Congress who steps out and says, 'I'm going to tell you something the rest of Congress won't tell you.' That's unfair to the entire security network that is in constant communication about this place."

No matter how one tries to sell it, Dayton's actions showed a remarkable lack of testicular fortitude in wartime. When 99 out of 100 Senators all read the same intel and all come to the conclusion that it doesn't require the government to shut its doors in panic and fear, it highlights the pusillanimity of the 100th member. Dayton can spend the rest of his life trying to justify it, but it won't wash. Most of us here in Minnesota saw this as either another example of Dayton's emotional instability or a rather transparent attempt to embarrass the administration on national security in the days before the election. I lean more towards the latter than the former, and I believe Dayton's bitterness on this topic comes from the fact that his fellow Democrats allowed him to twist in the wind instead of following his example.

Dayton should remember the First Rule Of Political Holes: quit digging.

Lukashenko Jails His Opposition ... Again

The man known as Europe's last dictator lived up to his reputation once again in suppressing dissent in the former Soviet satellite Belarus. Alexander Lukashenko threw opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich in prison for a fortnight after Milinkevich attended an "unsanctioned" protest:

Alexander Milinkevich, the pro-western leader of Belarus's opposition, was yesterday jailed for 15 days for attending an unsanctioned protest as President Alexander Lukashenko tried to keep a lid on dissent in his Soviet-style regime.

Mr Milinkevich, who won 6% of the votes in March's discredited presidential election in which Mr Lukashenko claimed 83% and a third term, was arrested by riot police and taken to court. He was charged with the "administrative offence" of attending a 7,000-strong unsanctioned protest on Wednesday to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. The nuclear accident badly contaminated Belarus, yet the Lukashenko regime has played down its impact and urged people to farm land still regarded by some experts as contaminated.

Apparently Lukashenko only allows people to protest in approved ways, which defeats the entire notion of protest at all. The Belarussian leader has come under diplomatic fire for weeks after running a rigged election in which Lukashenko took 83% of the vote. Europe and the US refuse to issue travel visas to Lukashenko and his staff, leading to the last-minute rerouting of a plane carrying the Belarussian Prime Minister from a trip to Cuba a week ago.

The Belarussian government has made no secret of its affiliation with Vladimir Putin, and the latter has made no secret of his desire to use Belarus as a buffer between NATO and Russian soil. Putin has seen many of his former buffers disappear, the victim of populist uprisings against the corrupt strongment that Moscow props up. Inevitably, this results in hostility towards Russia on behalf of the people oppressed by its erstwhile allies.

Putin and Lukashenko may win the short game, but they are losing the long war against tyranny and autocracy. Tyrants who feel the need to hold mock elections are already one foot into forced exile. When the Belarussians decide that they have had enough, Lukashenko had better already have his Moscow dacha selected and purchased outright. With this flimsy excuse for a detention, that day may come even quicker than Lukashenko imagines.

Southern Border Crossings Not Just For Workers Any More

Thomas Joscelyn reports that transcriptions of Guantanamo Bay hearing uncovered plots by two different Islamist terror groups to send its volunteers into the United States through Mexico, exploiting the border we seem unwilling to credibly secure:

The detainee explains his travels thusly:

I did not take a boat from one country to another. I did take a small boat to cross rivers inside Mexico. I do not know all the countries I went to. I did take a plane from Pakistan to Guatemala. From there I traveled by foot and vehicle to Mexico.

The most intriguing aspect of the transcript concerns the allegations surrounding the smuggler responsible for getting the detainee across the border. The government alleges:

The smuggler responsible for the above-mentioned vessel has close business ties with an individual known to help coordinate smuggling operations for members of Hizballah and al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya; Hizballah and al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya are known terrorist groups.

Joscelyn reminds his readers that Hezbollah is one of the oldest and most successful of the Islamist terror organizations operating. It has conducted operations in Argentina, killing a number of Jews in a string of bombings that culminated in an attack on a Jewish community center in 1994. Al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya has affiliated itself with al-Qaeda occasionally, but has more exposure as the group run by Sheiks Omar Abdel-Rahman, the "blind sheikh" who conspired with other terrorists to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993. Rahman currently resides here in Minnesota as a permanent guest of the federal government, and over the years IG has proclaimed a desire to set him free through extortion and terrorism.

Read all of Joscelyn's post. Remember that we have long worried about the ability of terrorist groups to infiltrate the US through the porous southern border. It highlights the stubbornly naive approach taken by the Senate and endorsed by the White House in pursuing immigration reform. This underscores the need to secure the border first before we discuss normalizing those left inside the US.

Goodman: Stop Kerry Before He Runs Again!

With John Kerry making more high-profile appearances and having his opinions published in the New York Times, everyone assumes he plans to make another presidential run in 2008. Despite having the advantage of Bush Derangement Syndrome on his side, not to mention CBS' 60 Minutes Wednesday, Kerry could not win the general election in 2004. Boston Globe columnist and Kerry supporter Ellen Goodman sees no reason to believe he could do better in 2008, either:

The signs that John Kerry is going to run for president in 2008 are rising faster than the pollen count. There was the requisite New York Times op-ed -- How many days late? How many dollars short? -- on getting out of Iraq. There was the Globe op-ed that preceded the speech supporting war dissenters at Faneuil Hall to an audience of groupies yelling ''Run" and ''2008." There was Ted Kennedy's remark, ''If he runs, I'm supporting him."

And then there was his op-ed in The Manchester Union-Leader defending New Hampshire's place as first-in-the-nation primary. A true profile in courage.

All of this leads me to blurt out: ''Stop him before he kills (the Democrats' chances) again."

Goodman, who has voted for Kerry six times now, makes the rather obvious point that Kerry turned out to be a rather bad politician. He ran on a paper-thin legislative record despite his lengthy tenure in the Senate, and tried to transform that into substance while he waffled on everything from Iraq to Cambodia. As Goodman implies, he had everything going for him in the last election -- an unpopular war, general unease about the economic situation (misplaced though it was), and a majority of the electorate looking for a change -- and he couldn't close the sale.

Why does Goodman fear for her party? She explains rather baldly that Kerry doesn't believe in anything as much as he has proposals for everything. He has no real vision for the nation except that he should lead it. The lack of substance in two decades of Senate work reflected in a general lack of substance on the campaign trail, where Democrats embraced him mostly because they discovered that Howard Dean couldn't get elected or even win a primary outside of Vermont.

Of course, these are the same reasons why Republicans want to see Kerry give it another try. The real subtext of Goodman's column isn't so much that she opposes Kerry as a candidate, but that she knows a serious run in the primaries will damage the eventual national ticket on which Kerry has no chance of appearing. In this she probably doesn't have that much cause for concern. Russ Feingold is the candidate that will split the party between the ANSWER/MoveOn crowd and the DLC-type moderates. Kerry will receive the polite yet slightly embarrassed acknowledgement that one gives a celebrity whose star has long faded but fails to realize it.

Zarqawi Got His Answer

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi appeared on video earlier this week, exhorting Iraqi Sunnis to join the insurgency and defeat the United States. Today the Iraqis gave an answer to one of his lieutenants, only the message will not get hand-delivered, thanks to the Iraqi security forces:

Iraqi commando forces acting on a tip raided a house where Hamid al-Takhi and the two other insurgents were hiding in Samarra, a city 60 miles north of Baghdad, said police Capt. Laith Mohammed. All three were killed in a gunbattle.

Mohammed said al-Takhi had been responsible for many insurgent attacks against coalition forces and civilians in the area.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq — the country's most feared insurgent group — appeared in a video earlier this week trying to rally Sunni Arabs to fight Iraq's new government and denouncing Sunnis who cooperate with it as "agents" of the Americans.

Apparently, Zarqawi needs to hone his presentation skills. In an area heavily populated by the same Sunnis that he called to terrorism, the Iraqi security forces got hot intel on a key member of the insurgency and adeptly canceled his ticket. That speaks volumes for two reasons. First, the Iraqi civilians didn't buy Zarqawi's nonsense, not while his lunatics blow up everyone in sight, and they have reacted by giving out better and more useful intelligence to security forces. Second, this appears to have been an exclusively Iraqi operation. The emergence of the new Iraqi Army and police forces show the country's increasing ability to stand on its own.

That should become even easier after the leading cleric in Iraq, Ali al-Sistani, not only endorsed the new Iraqi Prime Minister but also called for a dissolution of all militias, including the Shi'ites. Nouri al-Maliki met with Sistani yesterday and got an endorsement for the government push to absorb all militias into the military structure. Sistani released a statement pressuring all factions to comply:

"Therefore, weapons must be exclusively in the hands of government forces, and these forces must be built on a proper national basis so that their loyalty is to the country alone, not to political or other sides," a statement from al-Sistani's office said.

Maliki wants to build a civilian-controlled security force, one that has no loyalty to anything except the democratic government, and the endorsement of Sistani provides a critical piece of that effort. Maliki told the cleric that he will appoint defense and interior ministers without any connections to existing militias. Sistani agreed with this approach and urged him to make security his first priority. This impacts no one more than Moqtada al-Sadr, his ostensible acolyte but more practically his biggest rival. Sadr's Mahdi Army will have the highest profile in this push to eliminate sectarian militias, and it will prove interesting to see if Sadr can withstand Sistani.

The resolution of the political impasse in Iraq has paid dividends. Let's hope this continues. If it does, Zarqawi may have more video sessions in his immediate future.

The VandeHei Tantrum

Washington Post reporter Jim VandeHei pitched a fit at the prospect of exposure to Fox News on an Air Force One flight earlier today, CNN reports. The latest example of maturity in the White House press corps came as George Bush flew to Louisiana to highlight the rebuilding effort:

During a briefing led by White House spokesman Scott McClellan as President Bush was traveling to New Orleans, Louisiana, the Washington Post's Jim VandeHei asked why the White House televisions always seemed to be tuned to Fox News and if it was possible to have them tuned instead to CNN.

"It's come to my attention that there's been requests -- this is a serious question -- to turn these TVs onto a station other than Fox, and that those have been denied," VandeHei told McClellan, who is soon to be replaced by former Fox anchor and self-described conservative Tony Snow.

"My question would be, is there a White House policy that all government TVs have to be tuned to Fox?" VandeHei asked.

"Never heard of any such thing," McClellan responded. "My TVs are on four different channels at all times."

Earlier reports of this exchange did not identify the reporter whose delicate sensibilities found such easy offense at Brit Hume. Not only did VandeHei raise this "serious" question, but he continued to complain about having to endure Fox over CNN. Finally Scott McClellan put an end to this national crisis by changing the channel on the television.

It's interesting to see what matters mainstream media reporters consider as "serious". Next time his family loses the remote at home, we hope to see front-page coverage at the Post.

Addendum: If the White House would like to invite this blogger onto Air Force One to cover the president's schedule, I'll be satisfied with Fox or CNN. I'd prefer HBO and The Sopranos to either one, though.

UPDATE: VandeHei filed this report on Bush's trip to New Orleans. Bush appeared at a Habitat for Humanity construction project, visited a tent city to bolster the spirits of people clearing debris and also building houses, and put out a call for more volunteers to help restore the city. VandeHei, on the other hand, whined about the television programming in the cushy environs of Air Force One.

Specter Threatens To Starve NSA

Senator Arlen Specter has threatened to introduce a bill stripping the National Security Agency of funding for surveillance of overseas communication unless George Bush agrees to a wider briefing on the program. Specter says he doesn't plan to vote for the bill, but that yanking the pursestrings is the only tactic left available to him to bring the White House to Congressional heel:

Noting that Congress holds the power of the purse, a frustrated Senate chairman threatened to try to block money for President Bush's domestic wiretapping program.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Thursday he delivered a message to Bush that cut to the heart of the debate over executive power.

"I made the point that the president doesn't have a blank check," Specter said about their meeting Wednesday. "He didn't choose to engage me on that point."

Without a pledge from Bush to provide more information on the surveillance program, Specter filed an amendment to a spending bill Thursday that amounted to a warning to the White House.

The amendment would enact a "prohibition on use of funds for domestic electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes unless Congress is kept fully and currently informed."

Specter also said he would turn the amendment into a bill and hold hearings.

The AP reporter typically uses the inaccurate description of "domestic surveillance" in reference to the program. The NSA effort surveils communications that cross international borders, which makes it the exact opposite of "domestic". Perhaps the wire service could use a dictionary.

The Senator could also use a copy of the Constitution. He correctly states that Congress has the power of the purse, and that they can withdraw funds for government operations. The same document gave the President the power to exercise military force when granted authorization by Congress -- and military force has always included the duty to conduct intelligence and surveillance of the enemy. His complaint about the President 'walking all over' Congress doesn't hold water at all, especially since ranking members of the relevant committees have been continuously briefed on the program since its inception.

That leaves Specter's effort as nothing more than political posturing, although this posturing carries with it the real possibility of damage to national security. If the NSA has to interrupt its surveillance streams, two very bad consequences will result. First, the terrorists will know that they have a window in which to communicate with each other when the US will be unable to trace them. Second, surveillance depends on connecting threads. If the NSA gets forced to stand down even for a few days, the leads on which they work now may go completely cold by the time the operation can begin again.

Does Specter really want to disrupt a program that has helped keep America safe against attack since 9/11? If he follows through on his threat and we get attacked, what exactly does Specter think will happen to him?

The terrorist surveillance program has suffered enough damage, and the Bush administration has already given extended briefings to Congress as a result. A similar threat forced the Bush administration to reveal the amount of money in the intelligence budget spent on the program. Now it looks like members of Congress plan to use this threat on a regular basis to extort capitulations from the White House. Specter and Congress have the power to do this, but that doesn't make it the correct or the smart action to take.

Acting Presidential On Immigration

At least one Republican acts presidential on immigration by arguing for actual enforcement of existing law and creative thinking for long-term solutions. Unfortunately, that Republican does not currently live in the White House, but he may be building a case as the next occupant:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich yesterday said the government's failure to enforce immigration laws resembles its handling of Hurricane Katrina, and described current reform proposals in Congress as a "con."

Mr. Gingrich said he sympathizes with illegal aliens participating in protests and placed blame for the illegal immigration problem on businesses and the federal government.

"I do not blame someone who leaves poverty to seek prosperity," Mr. Gingrich said during a speech at the American Enterprise Institute. "They showed up here to work under a social contract and then [the government] tried to change the terms."

Gingrich has slowly rebuilt his political strength since dropping out of Congress rather ignominiously after a personal scandal and his failure to maintain the Republican Revolution. Once considered a partisan firebrand, Gingrich has spent most of his time out of office working with people across the aisle to build bipartisan proposals for Congress and bolster his credentials as a political analyst. Now he sees his opening for a return to political relevancy with immigration, an opportunity provided by the failure of GOP leadership to correctly assess the priorities of border security and its strange embrace of Amnesty Lite.

Gingrich takes the position that many of us hoped our President would support as chief executive -- enforcing the law and creating a credible and secure border. He doesn't support a full border barrier, but wants to put barriers in the high-traffic areas and deploy high-tech surveillance in the remaining gaps. I support that as an interim to building a complete barrier, but at least it provides a start.

He also includes a provocative plan for reform that enhances security while allowing for low-cost labor that businesses insist they need: privatization of worker visas. Gingrich says that government has proven that they cannot efficiently handle the visa process, and suggests that a company like American Express could create the necessary biometric identification system and supervise the program so that workers pay taxes and can be supervised to ensure compliance and security.

I'm not certain that approach will work. Putting businesses in charge of low-cost migrant labor sounds a bit like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse. However, Gingrich has a point when he says that the feds have done a very poor job managing visas and that privatization and competition, properly managed, could get better results. At least he provides some original thinking and leadership on an issue that has provoked nothing but worn-out, rehashed proposals derived from all our previous failures by the leadership of both parties.

If Gingrich keeps this up, he may well argue himself right back into national politics again.

Israel Responds To Hamas

As I predicted after the suicide bombing in Tel Aviv last week, Israel has decided on its response to the attack and the Hamas response praising it by finishing the security barrier through Jerusalem and shutting out the Palestinians, apparently permanently. Hamas gave the Israelis all the justification they need to complete the project with its endorsement of suicide bombings on Israeli civilians:

Israel's prime minister-designate, Ehud Olmert, told top security officials today to swiftly plug the gaps in the separation barrier around Jerusalem. His order came nine days after a Palestinian suicide bomber struck again in Israel.

Israel's separation barrier still has numerous openings around Jerusalem, and Israeli security officials consider the city one of the places most vulnerable to attack. ...

Mr. Olmert ordered "all gaps be closed immediately by means of temporary fences until they are permanently closed by the security fence," according to the prime minister's office.

The Israelis have wanted to close off the barrier through Jerusalem for some time, but the West has opposed it, considering it too provocative and a potential negotiation-killer for peace talks. Israeli courts have also held up progress on the security wall, although they have given the green light to everything but its route by now. Ariel Sharon probably figured the proposed wall had more effect as a threat than as an actuality in getting the Palestinians to take peace talks seriously.

All of that flew out the window when Islamic Jihad conducted its last bombing, but especially when Hamas praised the operation as "self defense". Rather than conduct a military strike on Hamas and bolster their popularity among the Palestinians, Olmert has shrewdly selected a tactic that will stab at the heart of their enemy and create a backlash against the incompetent terrorists who govern them. Not only will Hamas and its intransigence on adhering to previous treaties and recognition of Israel left the Palestinian Authority completely bankrupt, but now their diplomatic fecklessness has lost them Jerusalem. The barrier will complete their humiliation.

The Palestinians might finally wake up once they realize that their government has left them even more poor and even more isolated than Fatah could have dreamt. They will have no one to blame but themselves. Their insistence on supporting terrorism and war has brought them international scorn and abject poverty, and now they will watch as the security wall separates them from the one supposedly overriding goal of their struggle. Thanks to Hamas and their own benighted support, they may never see Jerusalem again.

Tories Pick Up Steam

After winning their last national election more narrowly than predicted, the Conservatives came into government with a restricted mandate and a short leash. Now, however, they have inspired confidence in their no-nonsense, professional manner and the Canadian electorate has responded accordingly:

The Conservatives have seized a commanding lead in popularity over the Liberals and inched into majority-government territory, says a new survey released Wednesday.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Tories held a 15-point advantage over the Liberals and broke past what is considered the benchmark for winning a majority government, says the Decima poll. ...

The Conservatives stood at 41 per cent — one point above the mark that is traditionally considered the dividing line that separates majorities from minorities.

The Liberals held 26 per cent and the NDP, despite its continued efforts to chip away at Liberal support, remained a distant third at 19 per cent.

Decima's chief pollster says the Conservatives have been steadily gaining ground since the election. They won a minority government with 36 per cent of the popular vote on Jan. 23.

The Liberals set themselves up for failure and now reap their harvest. They painted the Conservatives as radical and PM Stephen Harper as a bogeyman with dark "hidden agendas" that would destroy the Canadian Union. Instead, Canadians see a competent and uncontroversial government proceeding professionally with the nation's business, pursuing moderate goals moderately. The Liberals will have to spend their time wiping the egg off of their faces, and so will the NDP that conspired with them to keep the Tories from rising to power for several months.

The new strength for the Tories comes in traditional Liberal stomping grounds -- urban areas, young voters, and women. They have even opened up a wide margin on the Grits in Ontario, the Liberal power base, with 40% of voters supporting Stephen Harper and his party. The Tories lead the Grits in every area of Canada except the Atlantic provinces, although they trail Bloc Quebecois in Quebec, of course. If Harper can nail down the softwood compromise with Washington, that will push Conservative numbers even higher.

With the Conservatives proving themselves as adept centrists, the Canadian electorate will be forced to re-evaluate the Liberals and their scare tactics. In fact, that re-evaluation appears to have already begun, and the rudderless Grits have already begun paying the price.

Extree, Extree, Read All About It (While A Million People Hear It)

Only Fox News could come up with a headline proclaiming to have an exclusive by publishing the lyrics of a pop song:

Neil Young: Exclusive 'Impeach the President' Lyrics

Why would anyone be surprised by Neil Young's three-minute hate against George Bush? For that matter, why would anyone care? Because it's the most explosive development on the music scene since the Rolling Stones' "Sweet Neo-Con"? Memo to Fox News: Young has spent his career writing song lyrics that provoke and annoy, with a singing voice to match. Even his best song, the fun "Rocking In The Free World", suffers from his typically banal protest lyrics. "Impeach The President" doesn't even have wit going for it.

Young's greatest contribution to rock and roll as a solo artist was "Southern Man", an insufferably whiny song that painted all white males below the Mason-Dixon Line as racists and lynchers. The song itself wasn't the contribution, but what it inspired -- the classic Lynyrd Skynyrd rocker "Sweet Home Alabama", with its delicious guitar hook and its direct slap back at the sanctimonious Young:

Well, I heard Mister Young sang about her
Well, I heard ole Neil put her down
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
Southern men don't need him around anyhow

Maybe another band will pick up Young's challenge again.

UPDATE: I had not yet seen Chris Muir's excellent cartoon this morning when I posted this, but I reloaded the home page when I read Mike Wallster's comment.

Cancel Fitzmas: Attorney

The Associated Press story on the new testimony of Karl Rove to the grand jury investigating the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame to the media buries a critical part of a statement by Rove's lawyer deep in the article. The AP reports on Rove's return visit to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's panel by emphasizing the potential peril for the White House political advisor:

Top White House aide Karl Rove made his fifth grand jury appearance in the Valerie Plame affair Wednesday, undergoing several hours of questioning about a new issue that has come to light since the last time he testified.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald declined to comment at the conclusion of the grand jury session. Rove appeared at ease as he left the U.S. courthouse, joking to journalists to "move to the back" as the White House aide, his lawyer and several reporters entered an elevator to leave the building.

It isn't until the eleventh paragraph that the AP gets around to reporting what should be breaking news:

Rove "testified voluntarily and unconditionally at the request of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to explore a matter raised since Mr. Rove's last appearance," Luskin said in a statement. "Mr. Fitzgerald has affirmed that he has made no decision concerning charges."

According to Luskin, Fitzgerald has advised that Rove is not a target of the investigation [emphasis mine -- CE]. A target is someone likely to be indicted.

Given all of the frogwalking demanded by people who have been convinced of Rove's guilt without any proof whatsoever, this statement seems rather remarkable. The fact that the AP buried it in its late-night recap of the event is even more remarkable. After all, the blogosphere has been abuzz with the Rove testimony all day, speculating that Fitzmas was once more just around the corner.

If Rove's attorney related the conversation correctly, Fitzmas has just been canceled. Fitzgerald has had over two years to come up with charges against anyone other than Scooter Libby, who hasn't been charged with anything connected to the leak but with lying to investigators during Fitzgerald's probe. Fitzgerald hasn't even established that a crime was committed, let alone announced who committed it if one was. Telling Rove's attorney that his client was not a target of the grand jury proceeding is tantamount at this point to a pass.

Instead of pursuing that statement, however, the AP follows up with one legal expert proclaiming that Rove's appearance is an "ominous sign" for Bush's right-hand man. They do this despite explaining that Luskin's statement means that Rove is not likely to ever face an indictment, a pretty safe bet when a prosecutor has failed to establish that a crime has even been committed. Stanley Brand never mentions the implication of Rove's not being a target to his analysis of the dire predicament. Perhaps Brand relied on the AP report to keep him informed.

Bush Hears The Uproar But Misses The Message

An inside source to the negotiations between George Bush and the Senate on immigration reform report that Bush will not officially endorse the Hagel-Martinez compromise out of fear of the political backlash on the de facto amnesty program:

President Bush generally favors plans to give millions of illegal immigrants a chance at U.S. citizenship without leaving the country, but does not want to be more publicly supportive because of opposition among conservative House Republicans, according to senators who attended a recent White House meeting. ...

At another point, Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada and other members of his party pressed the president about their concern that any Senate-passed bill would be made unpalatable in final talks with the House.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat, said the lawmaker who would lead House negotiators, House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, had been "intractable" in negotiations on other high-profile bills in the past. Bush did not directly respond to the remark, officials said.

It appears that Bush not only passed on defending a conservative in Congress, he took a pass on defending himself. We knew that Bush has always been more of an open-borders politician than any true conservative on immigration. Most of us hoped to get the border fence and truly credible security on the southern border as a minimum once he came to office, and figured we would have to give way on some sort of compromise on the status of those already in the country as a trade-off.

This, however, is disappointing. The nature of legislation is compromise, but this appears to be closer to capitulation. Nowhere in this article does Bush appear to express any support for the House bill that strengthens the border even as a companion to the Hagel-Martinez compromise. Instead, we get this Republican president conspiring with Harry Reid to give him political cover with immigration hard-liners in his own party.

If this is accurate, then Bush owes Sensenbrenner an apology. He owes the rest of us an explanation.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has more. And who wants to bet that this will be the subject of tomorrow's Vent?

When The Law Is Too Much Of A Bother

The Minnesota House passed a stadium-funding bill that requires Hennepin County to cough up 75% of a $522 million bill to construct a new home for the Twins. Billionaire owner Carl Pohlad would only have to throw in $130 million to get the luxury appointments that will bring cash into his coffers. State representatives passed the legislation despite a legal requirement to put the increased sales taxes to Hennepin County voters, dismissing such rules as too bothersome to heed:

The Minnesota House gave the Twins stadium hopes a big lift Wednesday, voting 76-55 in favor of an open-air ballpark that would be paid for mostly by Hennepin County taxpayers. ...

The downtown Minneapolis stadium project would cost $522 million — three-fourths from a higher Hennepin County sales tax — and would allow the Twins to flee the Metrodome, their home since 1982 and the place where they clinched two World Series crowns. ...

A state law requires local governments to put sales tax increases to a referendum. But the county and the Twins say it would cause too much uncertainty and increase the project's cost.

Minnesota passed this law specifically to keep this kind of back-room maneuver from occurring. Stadium financing plans in this state have always involved some sort of local taxation as a means to avoid a state-wide expenditure. Outstate politicians and voters have rightly balked at coughing up money to fund a private enterprise accessible primarily to metro-area citizens. When the Twins and Vikings first started pressuring the state for public financing for new venues, legislators passed the law in order to ensure that counties would only saddle themselves with the higher taxes if a majority of voters approved.

Now, however, legislators from both parties have bailed out of this democratic approach, blithely passing the bill without even addressing the law's application. The representatives from Hennepin County opposed the bill, but that didn't stop the rest of the House from sticking them with the $390 million tab. Take a look at the Democrats from Hennepin who opposed this bill (Democrats almost exclusively represent Hennepin), and take a look at how many opposed it.

The imposition of this kind of tax burden to fund a private enterprise should ask the consent of the taxed before having it dumped on them by the state. Since Hennepin County residents will have to pay the increased taxes, and since county businesses will lose revenue from people who want to avoid the levy by shopping in one of the other nearby counties, they should have had the opportunity to endorse or reject this proposal. That's more than just fairness -- it's the actual law. Politicians who spend their time trying to stuff money into the pockets of billionaires in order to build playing fields for millionaires apparently have little time or patience for the voters who trusted them to protect their interests and uphold the law.

Papa Lost His Brand-New Bag

How incompetent is the new Hamas leadership that now runs the Palestinian Authority? Apparently, they can't even hire a decent bagman any more:

Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar has had $450,000 stolen from his hotel room during his current visit to Kuwait, the Itim news agency quoted the Kuwaiti media as saying Wednesday.

According to the report, al-Zahar had asked the Kuwaiti authorities to keep the theft under wraps, but the incident was confirmed by a security official at the hotel.

The foreign minister, a senior member of Hamas, is on a tour of Arab and Muslim countries to drum up funds after Israel suspended the transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority and Western donors cut off aid to the Hamas-led government.

He wanted the theft kept a secret? Understandable; I suppose that the Palestinians who elected Hamas will not be too thrilled to find that their new government isn't smart enough to refrain from leaving a half-million dollars laying around a hotel room. Supposedly they elected Hamas to fight the corruption in the Fatah-run PA, but whether they steal money or carelessly leave it out for people to pilfer, the end result is that the money isn't getting to the Palestinians. At least with Fatah, they had an income stream.

This looks like a strange attempt to get around the banking blockade that has kept pledged donations from transferring from Arab benefactors to the PA. Diplomats normally would not bother with cash, especially in this amount, for a diplomatic mission. Hamas apparently cannot rely on lines of credit while their assets are frozen. That's what happens when a government openly applauds terrorism and refuses to commit to peace.

Culture Of Corruption, Side 2

The Abramoff corruption scandal got just a teensy bit wider today when Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow resubmitted her campaign finance reports from 2002 and 2003 to show that she took donations from Indian tribes connected to the disgraced lobbyist. Stabenow had originally reported the donations as an individual contribution:

Sen. Debbie Stabenow's campaign has corrected her campaign finance reports to show that some donations from 2002 and 2003 came from an Indian tribe then represented by now-disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, not an individual as she reported at the time.

Stabenow's campaign originally reported that $4,000 in donations came from Christopher Petras, who was the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe's legislative director at the time. The donations came during a period in which Stabenow and other Michigan lawmakers sought funding for the tribe and wrote letters to federal regulators on the tribe's behalf. ...

The wealthy Mount Pleasant, Mich., tribe, which operates a casino, contributed $308,980 during the 2002 campaign cycle and $564,480 during the 2004 campaign, according to campaign finance watchdog group PoliticalMoneyLine.com.

The tribe received $3 million in funding approved in November 2003 to build a school on the reservation.

The change points out yet another Democrat that not only took contributions from Abramoff-related tribes but also intervened on their behalf. Harry Reid took in almost $68,000 in contributions from Abramoff clients and intervened on their behalf four times, which the AP revealed in February. Abramoff even hired one of Reid's former staffers as a lobbyist, who immediately started fundraising for Reid. Reid also tried to bury these connections, but apparently did not do so as well as Stabenow.

In reviewing overall donations from Indian gaming interests, an interesting dynamic appears. According to Open Secrets, Democrats have outraised Republicans in this industry by a wide margin in each cycle, even while Republicans have controlled Congress:

Cycle...............Dem/Rep ration%
1990..................100/0
1992..................81/19
1994..................81/19
1996..................85/15
1998..................60/40
2000..................79/21
2002..................66/34
2004..................67/33
2006..................58/42 (so far)

Over this period of time, these interests have given $10 million more in donations to Democrats than Republicans. Until 2006, the best the GOP could get was a third of their political contributions. This doesn't quite match the rhetoric from the media about the so-called culture of corruption that the GOP supposedly introduced into a pristine legislative process.

The ugly truth about corruption in government is that both sides have elected officials who indulge in it. For every Cunningham there is a Mollohan, and it has ever been thus. The culture of corruption comes not from party affiliation but from the unbelievably lucrative trough supplied to legislators by an American electorate that demands a government solution to every problem. As long as we maintain a large, intrusive bureaucracy, special interests will buy or rent whomever they can to get access to it. Reid, Stabenow, Cunningham, and all of the others who intervene to get their pet contributors government cash all deserve scorn and prosecution. The sooner both sides grow up and acknowledge that love of money is the root of all corruption, and that reducing the size and reach of government is the only long-term solution, the closer we will be to truly cleaning up our politics.

Salute To Port

When any of us in the blogosphere succeed, we all benefit, and I would like to offer congratulations to two bloggers from the port side of the 'sphere. Glenn Greenwald recently released a new book, How Would A Patriot Act?, in which he offers his critiques of the war on terror. The book just hit #1 on Amazon's best-seller list, proving that the blogosphere has plenty of talent for the book market.

John Aravosis at Americablog achieved another form of blogospheric success. Due to his discovery of the ease in which anyone can purchase cell-phone records, John has helped get legislation passed protecting the privacy of all cell phone customers. (If you'll recall, John first bought his own cell phone records through a third party -- and when that didn't get much attention, he bought the records for General Wesley Clark -- which got Congressional attention quickly.)

Both men show that the blogosphere's influence and power continue to increase and therefore make the market better for all of us. Congratulations on your successes.

Not Invited To The Party

Last night the White House announced a breakthrough on immigration reform, and members of both political parties hailed the President's leadership on breaking the legislative impasse in the Senate. Harry Reid told the press that the meeting had "made great progress" and that "I'm not in the habit of patting the president on the back and sending him accolades, but I have to say that this meeting that we just had, I have to pat the president on the back." However, in the rush to achieve consensus on the plan for so-called earned citizenship, it looks like a few Senators didn't get their dinner invitations:

President Bush and a group of senators yesterday reached general agreement on an immigration bill that includes a pathway to citizenship for many illegal aliens.

But left out of the closed-door White House meeting were senators who oppose a path to citizenship. The meeting even snubbed two men who had been considered allies of Mr. Bush on immigration -- Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican and chairman of the immigration subcommittee, and Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican.

Mr. Bush in brief remarks to the press said there was agreement to get "a bill that does not grant automatic amnesty to people, but a bill that says, somebody who is working here on a legal basis has the right to get in line to become a citizen." But senators, speaking afterward, said Mr. Bush was far more specific in the meeting.

"There was a pretty good consensus that what we have put into the Hagel-Martinez proposal here is the right way to go," said Sen. Mel Martinez, Florida Republican. "I think he was very clear [on] pathway to citizenship, so long as it goes to the back of the line, and he even opened the door here for something we've haggled back and forth on, that you can shrink the time for people to become citizens by simply enlarging the number of green cards."

Cornyn's office downplayed the snub, saying that any message about an end to partisan bickering and blocking votes had to be meant for the Minority Leader and didn't require the Texan's presence. Still, one has to wonder why two staunch allies of the President got ignored for this key meeting. It appears that the White House wants to build consensus through ignoring those who have a different perspective on immigration and pretending that they don't exist.

Another issue that apparently doesn't exist is border security. While everyone at this meeting kept their concern focused on people who entered the country illegally, none of them addressed the issue of ensuring that the illegals entries get stopped. Instead, the words "Hagel-Martinez" slid off of the lips of attendees as smoothly as one might say "Simpson-Mazzoli".

The Bush administration is about to go squishy on a national-security issue, and unlike the overblown Dubai ports deal, this one actually has real security implications for the US. It is a national disgrace that more than four years after 9/11, we still have not credibly secured our southern border. During a war in which our enemy moves primarily by stealth and attacks exclusively through individual or small-group terrorist actions, allowing the unfettered movement of people on the vast scale we see presents a clear danger to our nation. Instead of focusing on that, the President has aligned himself with Democrats and the handful of Republicans who put political correctness (and political expediency) ahead of their Constitutional duties.

The last time we saw this kind of alliance, Washington passed the BCRA into law.

Cornyn and Kyl need our help to get this administration focused on real border security before worrying about earned citizenship. I could accept the latter as a reasonable compromise as long as we have established the former first. That's the broad consensus that Americans have in regards to immigration reform, not the warmed-over rehash of a failed policy from twenty years ago.

Bolton Wins A Round At The UN

John Bolton has successfully pushed through sanctions on four Sudanese that have participated in war crimes despite earlier resistance from genocide-apologists Russia and China. The UN Security Council voted unanimously, with three key abstentions, to block the assets and travel of the quartet:

The Security Council passed a resolution on Tuesday imposing the first sanctions in the violence that has killed more than 200,000 villagers and driven two million people from their homes in Darfur, in western Sudan.

Twelve members of the 15-nation Council voted in favor of the American-drafted measure, which will freeze the assets of four Sudanese accused of war crimes and instructs nations to block their entry. Three countries — China, Qatar and Russia — abstained.

"I think today's sanction resolution shows that the Security Council is serious, that its resolutions have to be complied with, that it is prepared to take enforcement steps if they are not complied with," said John R. Bolton, the United States ambassador.

Bolton had previously tried to have sanctions imposed on the four through quiet channels available at the UNSC, which allows resolutions to pass by acclamation as long as no one voices a public objection to it. Russia and China balked at the sanctions, even though Bolton had carefully focused the punishment on four individuals responsible for the atrocities rather than on the nation as a whole. Earlier American envoys may have shelved the effort at that point to retain comity among the members, but instead Bolton went public and upped the ante, allowing the obstructionism of Russia and China to be seen clearly.

It represents a victory not just for Bolton but for human rights and justice. His bold approach managed to embarrass Russia and China, at least temporarily. It sends a signal to both nations that the US has lost patience with their protection for terrorists and genocidists, a lesson that has more application to bigger issues than Sudan. The lack of a veto indicates that the message has been received.

India Gets Expansionist

India has taken its first step as a military power in Asia by opening its first foreign military base in Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic in central Asia. The move signals a more assertive and muscular foreign policy by the Indians, who need to secure routes for its ever-increasing reliance on oil and natural gas:

India is to open its first overseas military base this year in the impoverished central Asian country of Tajikistan - a testament to its emerging status on the world stage.

The Indian air force will station up to two squadrons of MiG-29s at the refurbished former Soviet airbase of Farkhor more than 60 miles from the Tajik capital of Dushanbe, Jane's Defence Weekly said, citing defence officials. A control tower is already in place, Indian media reported. ...

India has stepped up its activity in central Asia, eager to gain access to its gas supplies. Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, is expected to meet with Uzbekistan's president, Islam Karimov, during a visit to the capital, Tashkent, which began yesterday.

As the Guardian (UK) notes, this makes the race for influence in Central Asia a bit more interesting. The Russians have wanted to keep the former Soviet satellites as a diplomatic and economic buffer zone and a barrier to Western ambitions in the region. The republics themselves, impoverished by their long Soviet occupation and lingering dictatorships, need more interaction with the West to build modern economies. Their chief asset is energy, and that has attracted many suitors, including the US and Germany, the former also attracted by the key strategic physical positions of these countries in the war on terror.

Now, with India joining in the effort, the republics of Central Asia will come under even more democratic influence. India's new economic growth requires dependable sources of energy, and the region has the reserves and the capacity to deliver. The military bases will provide India the necessary security for their pipelines, but it will also serve to strengthen the independence of Tajikistan from the increasingly autocratic domination of Moscow. Vladimir Putin will find his influence waning in the region as more free nations engage the former Russian proxies. Hopefully, the continued engagement by free nations will press the Tajiks and other Asian republics to embrace democracy and put aside strongman rule; it certainly gives more hope than we have seen from Moscow's politics the past few years.

Feingold -- A Lame Comedian And Worse Politician

Senator and presidential candidate Russ Feingold has already redefined the political campaign as satire with almost two years to go before the first primary. His political-action committee has a television ad out already, and it accuses President Bush of spying on his political opponents and wishing to make himself king. However, when challenged about the misinformation contained within the video, Feingold's spokesman tried convincing people that it was intended as a joke:

Advisor: So Mr. President, how's our commander in chief feeling these days?

President (off-screen): Yeah, I'm fine, fine.

Advisor: Oh, you're a lot better than fine. The war's over like you said. Missions accomplished Georgie baby.

President (off screen): Huh?

Advisor: I'm sorry, that probably doesn't seem appropriate for the king of the United States. Yes I said "King." Think about it. You don't have to settle for just being President GW. The war still got everyone running scared. They'll go along with whatever you say. Forget the rules and quit treating the Constitution like it's set in stone. For starters, we should be eavesdropping on anybody who has the nerve to disagree with you - court order or not.

President (off screen): What?

Advisor: It's not domestic spying George. It's terrorist surveillance.

President (revealed as George Washington): Break the law? Ignore the Constitution? What you propose goes against the very things we stand for. As President of these United States, I would never condone that.

Feingold (voiceover): Our country hasn't stood for this kind of abuse of power for over two hundred years. Let's not stand for it now. Support the Progressive Patriots. We can fight the terrorists without breaking the law or sacrificing our freedoms. Authorized and paid for by the Progressive Patriots Fund.

As Factcheck.org points out, this supposed "satire" leaves a lot of space between it and the truth. The non-partisan political oversight organization reminds its readers that no one has offered any proof, or even a credible allegation, that the NSA surveillance program has been used to spy on political opponents. Members of Congress from both parties have been briefed on this program and its results since its inception four and a half years ago, and no evidence or testimony has yet been brought that shows the NSA surveilling anything except conversations in which at least one party has been suspected of terrorist ties due to evidence obtained through other means.

Nor does the ad pass historical muster, as Factcheck also points out. Two Presidents considered among our greatest -- Abraham Lincoln and FDR -- did much worse than anything that Feingold has Washington refusing to approve. Lincoln jailed his political opponents and suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, while FDR threw 112,000 Japanese and Americans of Japanese descent into concentration camps during World War II. Granted, these are hardly examples to follow, but at least these abuses actually occurred somewhere outside of Feingold's fevered imagination.

Besides, the notion of Feingold as protector of the Constitution is patently laughable. Feingold teamed up with John McCain to pass legislation controlling and even banning political speech in flagrant disregard of the First Amendment. The BCRA limits what people can say on television and radio about politicians within 60 days of elections that will determine whether they reach office. At the same time that court precedent equates all sorts of odd behavior with speech, such as public nudity and burning flags, the BCRA pretends that political advertising is money rather than political speech. Feingold has built a system where strippers have more free-speech rights than political activists. If Feingold wants to build a career as a satirist, that's a better entry on the resume.

Feingold's political organization wants to pass this ad off as a parody. If so, the only point made by such a satire is that leftist politicians cannot be trusted with the truth. Satire uses truth to make a political point, whereas lies intend to mislead people. Feingold has proven a master at the latter.

Snow Takes The Job

Tony Snow has accepted the post of White House press secretary, CNN reports tonight. The Fox News anchor and syndicated radio host will travel the DC circuit in reverse, making him perhaps the highest-profile media player to take on the role of media liaison:

Fox News anchor Tony Snow has formally accepted the job as White House press secretary, according to three Republican sources familiar with his discussions with the White House.

The sources said his appointment to succeed Scott McClellan will be announced Wednesday morning.

Snow has been focusing on family, finances and his health, as he battles colon cancer, sources familiar with his deliberations said Monday. Neither Snow nor the White House would comment.

Tony Snow is one of the more gracious people in the radio industry, which I learned during the Republican National Convention, and hopefully he will tackle this opportunity with his customary relish. It is, without a doubt, a formidable challenge, especially with the hyperpartisan White House press corps. Josh Bolten did not select a shrinking violet, and the tenor of press briefings will change significantly from the sieges we have seen with Scott McClellan.

Will this make a significant difference for the Bush administration? Tony will make a more forceful and eloquent spokesman for the administration than either McClellan or even Ari Fleischer, who did an excellent job in the first term. From his years of radio duty, Tony knows how to talk extemporaneously and engage in debate on a moment's notice. It would be hard to imagine Tony being at a loss for words or failing to present the best case for any position in which he believes.

That could have been the key point for Tony during the weeks of negotiations. As other bloggers on the left have made clear, Tony has had his differences with this administration over the past five years. (Who hasn't?) Tony may have wanted to make sure that the next three years would bring policy efforts for which he could have great enthusiasm. I doubt Tony would have given up his lucrative positions at Fox and in syndication in order to represent policies in which he did not believe. His hiring may not have explicit policy implications, but it hints at some possible shifts.

One thing is certain -- the gaggle will be a lot more interesting.

Everything The Mullahcracy Needs To Know It Learned In Kindergarten

Iranian supreme leader Ali Khameini proved today that he applies well the lessons of his youth -- especially his inclination to share his toys, even those he does not yet possess. The chief Iranian mullah promised his Sudanese counterpart the bounty of all the scientific progress of the Iranians, a pointed reference to Iran's intent to spread nuclear weapons among Islamist nations:

Iran's supreme leader said Tuesday at a meeting here with the Sudanese president that Iran was ready to share its nuclear technology with other countries.

"Iran's nuclear capability is one example of various scientific capabilities in the country," the leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said to President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, the news agency IRNA reported. "The Islamic Republic of Iran is prepared to transfer the experience, knowledge and technology of its scientists."

Mr. Khamenei made his comments just days before the Friday deadline set by the United Nations Security Council for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment.

This only confirms what the world knew would happen if the Iranians got their hands on nuclear weapons. Their successes in controlling the nuclear cycle makes this worse; they could eventually produce enough material not just for their arsenal, but could also build arsenals for various Islamist governments in the region. The Iranians and the rest of the Islamist fanatics understand that nuclear weapons will create a standoff in which they can hold the West at bay while they strengthen their grip on the critical oil fields of the region. Instead of democracy flowering across the region, we will see entrenched petty dictatorships.

The Iranians followed up this statement by Khameini by warning the West to do nothing in response to it. Their nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said that any sanctions would result in their withdrawal from the IAEA and the NPT. Military strikes would only press the Iranians towards driving their weapons programs further underground, literally as well as figuratively.

Unfortunately, the series of provocative statements issued by Iranian leadership underscores the need for the West to take action now. That does not necessarily mean military strikes, although it almost seems as though Teheran wants it to come. They may want a traditional attack to garner support for their unpopular regime. The US and Europe need to try aggressive measures to support dissident movements and undermine the lunatics of the Guardian Council. The only way to guarantee the disarmament of Iran is regime change, but that brought about by the Iranians themselves.

As our friend Michael Ledeen says -- faster, please. Because slower means spreading Iran's nuclear weapons across the entire Middle East.

The Check Is Not In The Mail

The Hamas-led government of the Palestinian Authority has claimed that it does not need American and European cooperation to survive, requesting and receiving pledges for stop-gap financing from Arab nations as well as Russia to avoid complying with the conditions necessary to do business with the US and the EU. Having refused to recognize Israel's right to exist and to honor previous commitments made by the PA, Hamas has instead gone the route of full defiance, relying on their brethren in the Middle East to sustain them. However, the terrorists have underestimated the extent of a Western crackdown on finances during wartime:

Banks fearful of U.S. retribution are preventing millions of dollars in foreign aid from reaching the Palestinians, the Palestinian finance minister acknowledged Tuesday.

Since a Cabinet run by the militant Islamic Hamas was sworn into office last month, financial pressure by
Israel and Western countries has left the government broke. It was unable to pay 165,000 workers on April 1 and paychecks are due again in less than a week.

Hamas turned to Arab and Muslim countries for help. But the money raised remains stuck in an account in Egypt, said Finance Minister Omar Abdel Razek of Hamas. Arab banks that do business in the Palestinian territories fear that by transferring the money they will run afoul of U.S. anti-terrorism laws, he said.

Hamas apparently forgot about the squeeze on terrorist banking since 9/11, and their fellow Arabs do not seem terribly interested in defying the US to help them out. After all of the pledges Hamas received in the last two weeks, they now find that the real trick will be in collections. One wonders if the Arab kleptocrats understood this obstacle all along and felt free to pledge all they could in order to please their subjects, knowing that the money would go nowhere as long as Hamas remained intransigent.

That puts the Palestinians in a real bind, and Hamas in the crosshairs in a big way. They came to power on promises to end corruption, spread the wealth of Western aid to everyone, and to push the Israelis into the sea. Hamas expected to get assistance in all of these efforts from their cousins across Southwest Asia, and now they discover that the other nations care more for their lucrative financial interests with Europe and America than they do for green-kerchiefed lunatics in Ramadi.

Welcome to the neighborhood, Hamas.

The new government will rapidly face a breaking point. If they cannot pay the workers in the government, the people will soon grow completely disenchanted with Hamas' rule. If they capitulate and agree to negotiations with Israel, the fanatics will kill them. If they vacillate, Fatah will take control by force. In almost all of these scenarios, Hamas suffers crippling political defeats. The Palestinians will have to face the literal as well as figurative bankruptcy of their political choices.

CQ Sends Its Condolences

... to Terry Heaton, whose lovely young wife passed away suddenly and inexplicably. He found his wife in the bathroom early this morning, already gone, and with no warning whatsoever.

My heart breaks for Terry, and our prayers go out to him. Please join us in asking the Lord for His support for Terry and his family and friends.

An American Anniversary

The Washington Post reminds its readers of one of the finest moments in baseball history, an event that celebrates its thirtieth anniversary today. It wasn't a record-breaking home run or a perfect game, but a singular moment in an era of cynicism and doubt that for one moment united us and reminded us of the best of America ... and it happened in Dodger Stadium:

Rick Monday never tires of answering questions about that memorable day 30 years ago, when he performed his own Patriot Act and unwittingly became an icon to millions of American war heroes and their loved ones.

Monday was playing center field for the Chicago Cubs on April 25, 1976, at Dodger Stadium when he noticed two protesters kneeling on the grass in left-center, intending to burn the American flag. He immediately bolted toward them and snatched it away.

Rick Monday never tires of answering questions about that memorable day 30 years ago, when he performed his own Patriot Act and unwittingly became an icon to millions of American war heroes and their loved ones.

Monday was playing center field for the Chicago Cubs on April 25, 1976, at Dodger Stadium when he noticed two protesters kneeling on the grass in left-center, intending to burn the American flag. He immediately bolted toward them and snatched it away.

As it happens, I wrote about this incident last year when in came up as part of the run-up to Flag Day. The description of the event given by Larry Henry covered the heroic actions of Monday well, but missed an important part of the context. Being from Los Angeles and a life-long Dodger fan, the event has remained with me for all of these years:

Dodger coach Tommy Lasorda had also started running out to the outfield from the other direction, and fortunately for the two nuts involved, security got there before he did. Monday, in other interviews, has said that Lasorda had murder in his eyes as Monday passed him in full stride. He had no doubt that the two individuals, who appeared stoned and somewhat amused at Monday's deft steal of the flag, would have presented no challenge whatsoever to the middle-aged but well-known battler.

Lasorda himself, in his memoirs from years ago, acknowledged that he meant to stop the pair any way he could. But that was not the prevailing attitude in 1976. For those too young to recall, the nation had reached what we thought was the depth of our national crisis of confidence. A year earlier, we had watched on television as the last Americans in Saigon had to be airlifted out by helicopter from our doomed embassy as the North Vietnamese overran the allies we abandoned in 1973. Two years earlier, our President resigned from the office he disgraced, taking the credibility of the national law-enforcement and intelligence agencies with him.

With the bicententennial of the Declaration of Independence coming up, the country had started a celebration of the event that overloaded on red, white, and blue. The nation tried to put on a coat of faux patriotism it didn't really feel, and the entire effort felt commercialized and hypocritical. With Independence Day two months away, many already had had enough of the celebration.

However, when Monday took off with the flag, all of the cynicism and defeatism of the past two years melted away. Watching Monday rescue the flag from two lunatics who tried to hijack a baseball game for their protest, which would have provided the perfect nadir of American morale at that time, the crowd did something no one expected. Lasorda recalled in his book that starting softly, the crowd started singing "God Bless America", completely unprompted, until all of the tens of thousands of Dodger fans had joined together to sing it. It was one of the few unscripted and spontaneous patriotic displays in our Bicentennial, and one of the most moving at any time.

Monday became a favorite of Dodger fans from that moment on, and the next year the team traded for Monday. He played on three pennant-winning Dodger teams and played a key role in their World Series win in 1981. Today he still works for the Dodgers as a broadcaster, continuing an almost 30-year association with the team that began with that daring rescue of Old Glory. Monday not only saved the flag from burning that day, but at least for a brief moment in time, united us in genuine love of country and showed us what real patriotism looked like. For that, Monday has always been and always will be one of my favorite Dodgers -- and favorite sports figures -- of all time.

Just another slice of Dodger history that I hope everyone will enjoy.

I am happy to re-run this post in honor of a fine ballplayer and an even better man. Thank you, Rick Monday, for a heroic gesture and a wonderful memory.

UPDATE: MLB.com has much more, including the play-by-play by the great announcer Vin Scully that will take you back to that day as if it were yesterday.

CQ Headline Services!

Nathan Goulding at the National Review's Media Blog caught a couple of interesting captions for pictures of Osama bin Laden at AP and Agence France-Presse yesterday. The captioners did world-class gymnastics to avoid referring to the al-Qaeda leader as a terrorist. Instead, both wire services called bin Laden a "Saudi dissident," which somehow implies that the mastermind of attacks that have killed thousands of people has some moral equivalency with Natan Scharansky.

Nathan decided to see how well the blogosphere and its readers could emulate the example given by our older siblings in the media, and I submitted entries for both pictures. I wound up with one winning entry, while a Media Blog reader took the other honors. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

New Ideas Same As The Old Ideas

There are really no new ideas in politics, no new grand themes -- only a replay of older themes dressed up in new packaging. That's the conclusion one has to reach when reading E.J. Dionne's column today on the beginning of a new national center-left movement. Dionne describes perfectly the mechanism for stirring new movements to life, but he misses the point when it comes to the nature of the philosphies that govern them:

"New ideas," "bold visions," "detailed solutions" and "courageous policies" almost never originate with politicians, especially politicians in the middle of election campaigns. Political consultants, with a few honorable exceptions, don't do "vision" either.

Politicians typically pick up their ideas from intellectual entrepreneurs, professional visionaries and impatient ideologues who wonder why the parties they support seem to stand for little.

Ronald Reagan could not have become, well, Ronald Reagan, if William F. Buckley Jr. and his allies at National Review magazine had not spent years developing modern conservatism's core ideas -- and if neoconservatives such as Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz had not tweaked the philosophy in directions that brought in new converts. ...

The biggest change is that moderates and liberals have begun to accept the fact that they cannot simply adjust to conservative dominance of the political debate and alter their ideas to fit the current consensus. As Michael Tomasky writes in the current issue of the American Prospect, Democrats and their allies must destroy the current political "paradigm" based on "radical individualism" and replace it with a politics of the "common good." Only a larger argument rooted in a different conception of government and society, Tomasky argues, will allow the party to "do a lot more than squeak by in this fall's (or any) elections based on the usual unsatisfying admixture of compromises."

Unfortunately, this "new" paradigm is the same as the old paradigm that governed this country from the Depression to the end of the Cold War. The notion of "common good" created the welfare state, the Great Society, and eventually speech codes, political correctness, and the hypersensitivity to offensive expression that threatens to stifle free speech. The philososphy which produces this new paradigm is the same one that places the needs of society above those of the individual. That's not new or even particularly controversial, and it describes the entire left, not just that of the center.

On the other hand, modern conservatism bases itself on the opposite philosophy -- that the needs of the individual should take precedence over the needs of society, because in a free government based on the rule of law, self-interest will produce the best results overall. This also is no new idea, and it didn't get cranked out by William F. Buckley or Irving Kristol or Norman Podhoretz. It came from philosophers such as John Locke and put into place by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and our other founding fathers. The genius of men like Buckley, Podhoretz, and Kristol came from their recognition of the distance we had travelled from those philosophies and the effort they put into moving us back towards them.

Dionne is wrong about Reagan, although he certainly isn't alone in that position. Reagan had spoken on the same themes as Buckley and others for a decade on the speech circuit, honing his ability to communicate and learning how the message got received. Reagan had long been an anti-Communist even before that, and by the time he ran for governor in California he had transformed himself into a rarity: a philosopher-politician. Dionne is correct in that they do not exist in large numbers, but Reagan was one of them and very much the contemporary to Buckley, Kristol, and Podhoretz.

The center-left did learn the lessons taught them in the past twenty years by the conservatives about how to build a movement; Dionne notes the new and revamped magazines, the new think tanks, and the development of new intellectual voices on the left as signs of a resurgent liberalism, and he may be right. However, the power of the message won't be in what's new, but in what's old. The liberals still must rely on a message that defines freedom downward as a government benefit rather than upward as a natural component of the individual. Their approach worked for decades here in the US and still holds sway in Europe, and it may work again someday. But let's not pretend that they have invented anything new.

Bush Wants Investigation Of Gas Prices

George Bush has called for an investigation into escalating gas prices in order to ensure that gouging and illegal manipulation of the markets has not caused the increases. Bipartisan calls for a probe reflect a growing populist concern that oil companies have unduly profited from the squeeze in oil markets:

President Bush is ordering an investigation into whether the price of gasoline has been illegally manipulated, his spokesman said Monday.

During the last few days, Bush asked his Energy and Justice departments to open inquiries into possible cheating in the gasoline markets, said White House press secretary Scott McClellan. Bush planned to announce the action Tuesday during a speech in Washington. ...

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., urged Bush in a letter Monday to order a federal investigation into any gasoline price gouging or market speculation.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada dispatched his own letter, calling for a multi-pronged approach to restrain gas prices. Among the steps were swift enactment of anti-price gouging legislation, an appeal to oil companies to refrain from further price increases; use of more alternative fuels and increased attention to existing fuel-saving laws and regulations.

Bush can call for all the investigations he wants, but all he will find is a ridiculous American energy policy that practically guarantees our inherent risk of market manipulation and foreign extortion. With the price of crude oil topping $75 a barrel, it doesn't take an economics genius to understand why the price at the pump keeps going up. China's demands on worldwide production have contributed mightily to that increase, and it will continue getting worse as China expands its industrial base.

Until we find ways to produce more crude in order to get more oil onto the market, the prices will continue to increase. Oil is, after all, a commodity -- a free-market product that will fetch the best price possible in trade. The more oil produced, the cheaper it will become. That mechanism does not rely on cost, either, except to the extent that high production costs would lower the amount of oil in the marketplace until prices rose high enough to cover the overhead.

If the US would start producing its own crude oil, then global prices would start dropping due to the increased worldwide supply and the drop in demand. We have vast fields of petroleum available for this purpose. Both coasts have proven oil deposits, and the Alaskan arctic area has stood ready for years to produce crude. In the case of our deposits off of the Florida coast, others such as Cuba may exploit those reserves instead. However, environmentalists refuse to allow for this production, forcing us to buy our oil elsewhere, artificially propping up prices and surrendering to the instability of the markets.

Crude oil is the basic component of gasoline, and the price at the pump will reflect the vagaries of oil prices. However, that isn't the only component that drives the cost so high. The main problem with gasoline prices is the number of varieties of gasoline that must be produced for local markets. Instead of having one single formulation, states have passed their own standards for the composition of gasoline, with various additives required in differing concentrations depending on where it is sold. If states all had their own refineries, this would present less of a problem. However, as we have noted before, the US has not built a refinery in 30 years, forcing the existing refineries to run at full capacity at all times -- a dangerous policy that does not allow for enough down time to avoid major disasters in the long run. Only during national emergencies such as the hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year do states lift their formulation requirements so that a single formulation of gasoline can be produced and sold anywhere, easing these artificial restrictions on production of each formulation.

Environmentalists won't let us build more refineries, either. Even Corpwatch notes that Americans now have to import gasoline -- not just crude oil, but refined gasoline -- in increasing quantities. That project, even if allowed to proceed unhampered, will not come on line for at least another three years, and that is the only production facility proposed thus far.

Lately, populists such as Fox's Bill O'Reilly have railed about the excessive profits realized by companies like ExxonMobil, whose $10 billion in bottom line offends their sensibilities. As Dale Franks at QandOt points out, however, that comes to a 10% profit margin, a good number but hardly a ripoff in any sense of the word. ExxonMobil employs hundreds of thousands of people and has millions of stockholders, with plenty of crossover between the two groups at all levels of employment. A return of ten percent beats sticking money in a CD, but it doesn't amount to the kind of exploitation that O'Reilly and others presume from the gross numbers they toss around out of context. In fact, stockholders at most publicy-held companies might wonder why the number-one corporation in gross sales only came in at #127 for profitability.

So let's have an investigation, but let's not confine it to ExxonMobil's profit margin. Let's expand the probe into the bankruptcy of our energy policy for the past thirty years and the handcuffs we put on ourselves that force us to rely on unstable sources of crude oil and gasoline to meet our energy needs. Let's start getting realistic about those needs and start proposing rational methods of meeting them. Take the shackles off the US energy industry and allow us to shrug off the mullahs that control the world market.

Softwood Dispute Over?

The largest issue in US-Canadian relations may move to a resolution within the next few days, according to the Globe & Mail. The free-trade dispute over softwood subsidies has complicated relations between Washington and Ottawa since the NAFTA accord, but the new Tory government may have found the key to bringing the issue to a close:

Canada and the United States appear very close to a historic breakthrough in the enduring softwood lumber dispute.

Industry sources who have been briefed on the discussions told The Globe and Mail that U.S. President George W. Bush called Stephen Harper on the weekend to outline an offer. In it the United States would lift duties on Canadian lumber and return most of the $5-billion it has collected from Canadian lumber companies.

In a complex arrangement that would include both a quota and an export tax, Canada would agree to cap its share of the U.S. lumber market at one third, which is roughly the current level.

PM Stephen Harper wanted to resolve the dispute before making a visit to DC, and the deal looks like a winner for Canada. Bush wanted the matter closed before moving the US trade representative, Rob Portman, into the White House as budget director. Both leaders need a foreign-policy victory and both need to demonstrate strengthened ties. Faced with a deadline for an unfavorable ruling from a NAFTA tribunal, the timing seems perfect for an announcement of this kind.

Getting the duties returned to the Canadian logging industry will give Harper a huge political boost. In return, the ongoing lumber trade between the two countries will have better regulation to keep American companies from bankruptcy from subsidized price wars, allowing George Bush to save American jobs. Bush needs to make Canada a more visible ally; they are the largest trading partner of the US and our largest supplier of oil (trading spots often with Mexico at #2). Bush needs to highlight the Canadian relationship as a close friendship, and he has no better opportunity than with Harper at the helm in Ottawa. He had to bend on softwoods to give Harper the necessary domestic support for improved relations with DC.

The agreement still has to pass muster with the lumber industries of both countries, or the agreement will never see ratification. It appears designed to give enough protection to American loggers while giving Canadian loggers enough of the American market to keep everyone satisfied, if not exactly happy. Expect this agreement to get announced in the next couple of days and for the US and Canada to withdraw their grievances from the NAFTA boards forthwith.

A Taste Of Germany In Iraq

While Europe ponders its problems with large and isolated Muslim communities in their midst, suffering from unemployment and refusing to assimilate, its citizens have begun looking towards the ummah for solutions to their own economic woes. Der Spiegel reports on the newest ethnic restaurant in Irbil:

Now, finally, just in time for the World Cup, Iraqis have the opportunity to savour German cuisine and culture following last week's opening of the country's first German restaurant, in the northern city of Arbil.

The "Deutscher Hof Arbil" was set up by Gunter Völker, a former German soldier who already runs a German restaurant in the Afghan capital of Kabul. The restaurant will stage parties to mark highlights in the German calendar such as the Oktoberfest beer festival and carnival. Its musical offerings will range from Oompah band classics to local Kurdish tunes.

For Völker, the prospect of unemployment at home in Germany is worse than any safety concerns in war-torn Iraq. "I'm not fit for Germany any more," he told Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung. "There are more people on the dole than job vacancies there."

The former cook for peacekeeping forces in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia has found better opportunities working among the Kurds of Irbil than in Germany. Der Spiegel reports his "dubious" claims that he finds both travel and residency in Iraq easier and more secure than the inner city of Berlin. Given that Volker has located his other venture in the former hot spot of Taliban rule, I would presume that Volker knows a bit more about it than Der Spiegel's skeptical reporter.

Perhaps Europe should wonder at their approach to economics when their most enterprising citizens find it ncessary to travel to war zones to open new businesses and experience economic success.

Denial And Distraction

Mary McCarthy denies having supplied Dana Priest with the information used to write the Pulitzer Prize-winning story on secret CIA detention centers in eastern Europe, according to her friend Rand Beers. NBC reported earlier this evening that Beers has acted as McCarthy's spokesperson and relayed her denial to the press, although that denial isn't exactly complete:

The fired official, Mary O. McCarthy, “categorically denies being the source of the leak,” one of McCarthy’s friends and former colleagues, Rand Beers, said Monday after speaking to McCarthy. Beers said he could not elaborate on this denial and McCarthy herself did not respond to a request for comment left by NEWSWEEK on her home answering machine. A national security advisor to Democratic Party candidate John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign, Beers worked as the head of intelligence programs on President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council staff and later served as a top deputy on counter-terrorism for President Bush in 2002 and 2003. McCarthy, a career CIA analyst, initially worked as a deputy to Beers on the NSC and later took over Beer’s role as the Clinton NSC’s top intelligence expert.

McCarthy's lawyer, Ty Cobb, told NEWSWEEK this afternooon that contrary to public statements by the CIA late last week, McCarthy never confessed to agency interrogators that she had divulged classified information and "didn't even have access to the information" in The Washington Post story in question.

After being told by agency interrogators that she may have been deceptive on one quesiton during a polygraph, McCarthy did acknowledge that she had failed to report contacts with Washington Post reporter Dana Priest and at least one other reporter, said a source familiar with her account who asked not to be identified because of legal sensitivities. McCarthy has known Priest for some time, the source said.

This sounds like rubbish. For one thing, if McCarthy feels that she has been railroaded, why have Beers issue the denial? Why not just hold a press conference and deny it in person? Why, it sounds almost like a leak! Beers has no real details to give the media as part of this denial, except to say that McCarthy never admitted to giving Priest the information on the detention centers, and that she had no access to that data anyway. She admits to knowing Priest and failing to disclose contacts with the Washington Post reporter and one other unnamed journalist.

Let's remember that McCarthy worked as a senior officer in the Inspector General's office. Since the issue of the detention policy had created controversy within the CIA, with several people supposedly unhappy with the actions of the agency, the responsibility of investigating the policy would have been with the IG's office. McCarthy has a personal relationship with Priest, who presumably doesn't have a big entourage at the CIA. Priest writes a story about detention centers, specifically in eastern Europe, using an inside source with access to the data, and McCarthy has been hiding her contacts with Priest.

Now who could suspect McCarthy of leaking the intel under those circumstances?

So far we have seen a number of interesting defenses of McCarthy, all of which presumed she did leak the story. One defense mentioned in this article has one "former senior U.S. intelligence official" ask why McCarthy got fired for leaking while the people who missed the 9/11 attacks all kept their jobs. The obvious answer is that no one deliberately ignored evidence of the 9/11 plot; mistakes were made, but they weren't made on purpose. I would agree that George Tenet should have been fired, right along with Richard Clarke, both of whom had the responsibility for counterterrorism. I note that neither one of them are there now, and that neither one of them were appointed by the same people who fired McCarthy.

Another defense argues that the nation's laws safeguarding intelligence has an opt-out clause, a "public-interest defense", the kind of argument made by people who have never held a clearance in their lives. The public-interest defense has no basis in reality, and clearances do not grant everyone who holds them the legal authority to decide whether classified information should be released in the public interest. If it did, none of our classified information could ever be considered secure. Releasing classified information to anyone not authorized to receive it is a crime, a fact lectured into the heads of cleared personnel on at least an annual basis. People can go to prison for exposing national-security data, especially during wartime.

[Note: I worked in the defense industry for several years, and held clearances for lower-level classified data. I have also served as a facility security officer (FSO) for a secure site. None of this is a mystery to anyone who has done similar or more classified work.]

Besides, if McCarthy really thought that the program either violated the law or the public interest, she had other avenues to take, as I wrote yesterday. She could go to the FBI or the Department of Justice, if the program violated US laws or international treaties ratified by the Senate. She could have gone down Pennsylvania Avenue and spoken to the White House, or at least the National Security Council, where she once served. If that didn't get her concerns addressed, Congress has at least two standing committees on intelligence, as well as judiciary committees, foreign relations committees, and so on. McCarthy has extensive political connections and would have had immediate support for her efforts.

Did she choose any of those paths? No. She chose to sneak information out to the press through her relationship with Priest in order to embarrass the US and damage our relationship with nations cooperating in the war on terror. She chose a path that any fool with the lowest-level clearance working on the most mundane project knows to be criminal ... and people want to applaud her for it.

Or, maybe she didn't, if one believes Rand Beers. Unfortunately, Beers doesn't want to elaborate on why she categorically denies having fed Priest information while acknowledging she hid her relationship with Priest and another reporter. McCarthy doesn't want to speak for herself on these matters, either, making it even more difficult to believe her demurrals. Right now, that reticence appears remarkable.

Saddam And Nukes: Together Again In 2001

Joseph Shahda has translated yet another critical document from the captured Iraqi Intelligence Service files that adds to the increasing knowledge of Saddam Hussein's efforts to protect and extend his WMD capabilities. Shahda discovered two memos regarding the supposedly moribund Iraqi nuclear program in this file, both of which make specific reference to efforts at restarting the nuclear program in 2001 and later in 2002. Here are the translations of the memos:

Beginning of Page 3 Translation of document CMPC-2004-000167

In the Name of God the Most Merciful The Most Compassionate

The Republic of Iraq

The Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission

To: The Respected Mr. Chairman of the Engineering Department

Subject: Simulation Reactor

An inspection was made to the suggested hall to build the Simulation Reactor and that contain recently laundry equipments (Laundry) and the hall was closed and the location abandoned and neglected for a long time and based on this it requires the following:

1. Remove all the laundry equipments and machines.

2. The structural division should inspect the hall and to repair and remodeling and fortify the building after determining the cost of these works.

3.Transfer the equipments and systems specialized in the control of 14 TAMUZ Reactor from storage 14a to the location of the hall and by phases.

4. Distribute the engineering and technical staff proposed for work in the project to the days of the week where engineer will be dedicated for one day.

5. Dedicate one of the technicians to fully work in the location.

6. Prepare the timeline schedule to finish the project and for the duration of a full year.

Please review and comment

With regards

Signature…

Adnan Salim Girgis

director of the Electronic Support Division

29/1/2001

End of translation of page 3

Beginning of the translation of page 9

In the Name of God the Most Merciful The Most Compassionate

The Republic of Iraq

The Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission

The Engineering Department

Number: 10/2/1000

Date: 1/9/2001

To: The Respected Mr. Chairman of the Comission

Subject: Simulation Reactor

Previously you instructed to re-install the Simulation Reactor. Please approve the delivery of hall that was dedicated for it and currently occupied by the Laundry to the Electronic Support Division with the dedication of 15 millions Dinar for the purpose of starting the work.

Please review and comment… with regards

Signature

Doctor Hisham Mahmood Ahmad

Chairman of the Engineering Department

In addition, a memo dated Septemer 9, 2001 discusses the approval of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission to build the reactor simulator described above. Another, later memo in September 2002 asks the IAEC to stop work on the simulator, reminding them that UN resolutions prohibited such work. At the time, the US Congress had just started debate on the Authorization to Use Military Force against Iraq for its transgressions against UN Security Council resolutions and its ongoing efforts to build WMD.

As Shahda points out at Free Republic, the equipment discussed in the memo came from the ruins of Osirak, the nuclear facility built by Saddam in 1982 and destroyed by the Israelis before the reactor could come on line. The mere existence of this equipment violated UN sanctions, and the effort to put it into a simulator shows that the Iraqis had not lost their determination to develop nuclear weapons. Only the credible threat of military force, as requested by George Bush, stopped the Iraqis from completing their project. They had to get rid of the evidence so that Saddam could invite the inspectors to return as a political ploy that would derail US plans for military intervention. It worked, too; the UN decided to accept Saddam's offer and it snarled the previous consensus for invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein.

The memos demonstrate Saddam's intent to build nuclear weapons and his insistence on continuing research on their development even while supposedly "contained" by UN sanctions.

Addendum: Another Shahda translation shows the effort Iraq made in procuring aluminum tubes. These memos are less explicit and do not necessarily show that they were intended for nuclear-arms development. However, because of their dual-use capability -- both uses involve weaponry and both were banned by the sanctions -- it underscores the fact that Iraq was never going to cooperate and fully disarm under the terms required by UN sanctions and resolutions.

A Funny Way To Wage War Against The West

Three bombs exploded simultaneously in the tourist resort of Dahab in Egypt, killing at least 35 people and injuring scores more. The attack comes on the heels of a new Osama bin Laden tape warning the world that al-Qaeda would attack Westerners and Western interests around the globe -- which may confuse the many Egyptians in Dahab this afternoon:

Three powerful explosions rocked the Egyptian resort town of Dahab last night killing at least 35 people and wounding hundreds, many of them foreigners, in the third terrorist attack on the Sinai Peninsula in the last 18 months, Egyptian officials said. ...

It is the height of the tourist season in Sinai, and police said bombs ripped through the central part of the city, packed with thousands of people eating dinner and strolling through the open-air markets shortly after nightfall.

A restaurant, a market and a hotel were hit in timed explosions that detonated shortly after 7 p.m., within five minutes of each other, Al-Jazeera television reported.

There was no claim of responsibility as of press time, but al-Qaida and its affiliates were responsible for the previous attacks and they are the likely suspects once again, Israeli security officials said.

Most will conclude that al-Qaeda conducted this attack, as it has the hallmarks of AQ all over it. The bombs targeted places where a lot of people would congregate; Dahab also represents a significant economic center for the Egyptians, a favorite aspect for AQ crosshairs. The coordinated bombings also shows a significant level of planning and communication, again a key indicator of AQ operations. The attack comes just a day after a major announcement by Osama bin Laden, which leads to the conclusion that its publication may have signaled the attack.

Osama warned that more attacks would come in his lunatic rant:

Peace, Allah's mercy and blessing be upon you, as I am directing this speech to all the Islamic Umma, to continue talking and urging them to support our prophet Muhammad, and to punish the perpetrators of the horrible crime committed by some Crusader-journalists and apostates against the master of the predecessors and successors, our prophet Muhammad.

The holy verses of the Quran and the holy prophetic teachings have all clarified the need for according love, respect and obedience to our prophet. Allah, the Almighty, has made it a taboo to offend him, saying in the Quran those who harm Allah and his messenger would be damned and severely punished.

It was also confirmed by an authentic source that prophet Muhammad said no one could be faithful until he loves me more than he loves his parents, his sons and all other people. Therefore, the Umma has reached a consensus that he who offends or degrades the messenger would be killed. Such offence is regarded as kufr (infidelity).

We ask Allah to give his blessings to whoever decried the behaviour of the infidels who have offended the prophet in every part of the world, and blessings to those who have died in the process, while we vow to Allah to avenge for those whose blood have been spilled.

However, in the main, AQ attacks have not targeted the "Crusaders"; the Islamofascist terrorists have attacked obviously Muslim sites, including the Egyptian Sinai cities for the third time now. While tourists have gathered in these places, the economic damage done by these attacks will be borne by the Egyptians, not the Israelis or other Westerners. Some tourists may have been killed today, but the majority of the dead and maimed will almost certainly turn out to be the Egyptians who worked at these tourist stops: the clerks, the housekeepers, the waiters, the cabdrivers, and everyone else in Dahab unfortunate enough to be caught in the blast.

Nor is that unique to Egypt. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi changed tactics months ago from attacking Americans in Iraq to focusing much more on Iraqis, especially those who volunteer for the security forces. They kill Iraqis by the score while American deaths from terrorist attacks have steadily dropped over the same period of time. Zarqawi wants to touch off a civil war or at least a sectarian gang war that will make democracy impossible, but what that means is a slaughter of the very Muslims Osama and his gang purport to represent. After all, they aren't attacking American economic interests in Baghdad but instead target those who try to rebuild the wrecked marketplaces and restore water and power to the Muslim Arabs who live there.

What does this mean? It indicates that while al-Qaeda has retained some operational capability, they apparently cannot project it outside of their own back yard. So far, despite Osama's rhetoric, they have not successfully staged an operation on Western interests, not even in Southwest Asia, not even in Iraq to any great measure. Instead of bombing American economic and military assets, they instead infiltrate into and destroy Muslim cities, killing Muslism and badly damaging Muslim economies.

For a man who claims to lead a war defending Muslims against Western "Crusaders", Osama has an odd strategy indeed.

Hot Air Debuts!

Michelle Malkin and several friends have launched Hot Air, a new multimedia blog intended to exploit the newest technologies in information delivery. Part blog, part Internet TV show, part podcast, Hot Air appears ready to engage the twin blogosphere thirsts for information and sheer geekiness. Michelle will have a daily video presentation called Vent, which I am certain will garner attention across the broad spectrum of the blogosphere.

Be sure to check out Hot Air!

The Inspector Gets Inspected

The New York Times reports that the Inspector General of the CIA, a position appointed by the President, submitted to polygraph testing in the wake of the leaks coming from the intelligence agency. John Helgerson, who supervised Mary McCarthy until the agency discovered that she leaked classified material to the media, experienced the awkward position of being cleared by the people who work for him:

The crackdown on leaks at the Central Intelligence Agency that led to the dismissal of a veteran intelligence officer last week included a highly unusual polygraph examination for the agency's independent watchdog, Inspector General John L. Helgerson, intelligence officials with knowledge of the investigation said Sunday.

The special polygraphs, which have been given to dozens of employees since January, are part of a broader effort by Porter J. Goss, the director of the C.I.A., to re-emphasize a culture of secrecy that has included a marked tightening of the review process for books and articles by former agency employees.

As the inspector general, Mr. Helgerson was the supervisor of Mary O. McCarthy, who was fired Thursday after admitting she had leaked classified information to reporters about secret C.I.A. detention centers and other subjects, agency officials said.

Mr. Goss and the C.I.A.'s deputy director, Vice Adm. Albert M. Calland III, voluntarily submitted to polygraph tests during the leak investigation to show they were willing to experience the same scrutiny they were asking other employees to undergo, agency officials said. Mr. Helgerson likewise submitted to the lie-detector test, they said.

The application of the polygraph to Helgerson, the Times argues, is unusual and is emblematic of the new culture of secrecy imposed by the Bush administration. Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti detail the efforts by Goss to crack down on leaks and even books and articles written by current and former CIA agents. The overall tone gives the impression that the agency and its professionals now have to suffer a culture more oppressive than anything since the 1950s, when one source (a leak!) says what went on at CIA stayed at CIA.

Well, boo hoo. I don't know if the Times or the CIA understand this, but we are at war, and that takes precedence over the memoirs of a two-year agent or the political posturing of senior IG staff. Intelligence work, especially during wartime, requires secrecy and professionalism. If Helgerson is shocked to find himself polygraphed after one of his senior aides got unmasked as a leaker (and the Times gives no indication that he was), then he doesn't have the first clue about investigations. Any time an office crime occurs either in government or in business, the first thing investigators want to know is whether the co-workers or management took part in it. It's SOP, and what makes it remarkable is not that Helgerson is the IG but that his staff -- which is supposed to catch leakers -- released classified material to the press.

If anyone is to blame for Helgerson's discomfort, it's Mary McCarthy. Juan Williams attempted to defend her on Fox News yesterday evening as a principled dissenter, but that's hogwash. A principled dissenter would have gone through available channels, such as to the FBI, to Congress, or to the White House, to express her discontent on an issue. Failing that, she would have resigned and spoken openly about what she knew. McCarthy took none of those actions. Instead, she violated her confidentiality agreements, broke the law, and attempted to leak what she knew -- and only what suited her -- to the media. She wanted to keep her job rather than her honor.

The most pathetic point in this entire article is that secrecy at the CIA has suddenly become a new culture. Most of us expected it to be a continuing part of intelligence work.

Now Batting For Taliban Man ... Jewish-Conspiracy Man!

John Fund, who has kept alive the story of Yale's egregious admission of the Taliban propagandist, now reports that Yale may trade one Zionist-conspiracy theorist with another. Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi may not qualify for his program at Yale next semester as the university finally tries to clarify the "moral purpose" of Yale's existence, but they may balance that by inviting a professor with similar ideas about the inordinate Jewish influence on American government:

Taliban Man's days as a Bulldog look to be numbered. But Yale may be about to stir up new controversy as it appears to be on the verge of offering a notorious anti-Israel academic a faculty position. ...

Last week, Yale's president, Richard Levin, issued a statement saying that a review he had ordered "raised questions whether the admissions practices of the non-degree Special Student Program have been consistent with the published criteria, let alone the standard that should prevail." He noted that "in recent years, while fewer than 10% of the applicants to the regular undergraduate program have received offers of admission, more than 75% of the applicants to the non-degree program have been admitted."

Mr. Levin's conclusion was that both the nondegree and Whitney special programs "suffer from lack of clarity about mission, purpose, and standards." He ordered they undergo a full review to define "admissions criteria consistent with the high standards and moral purposes of a leading institution of higher learning." The Yale Daily News reported that in an interview Mr. Levin made clear that Mr. Hashemi's pending application in the Whitney program will be held to the same standard as that of a regular applicant.

The morality of allowing a member of a government that oppressed people as brutally as the Taliban has been clear to everyone except the Yale admissions office. Despite the months of controversy over the admission of Hashemi, Yale has refused to budge from its decision. Even after an impromptu on-campus scolding from a true refugee from Afghanistan -- a woman who experienced the oppression of Hashemi's regime -- Yale's admissions office still refused to reconsider the wisdom of its choice.

Hashemi was no nameless cog in the machine of the Taliban's rule. Despite his youth, the Taliban sent him abroad as an ambassador without portfolio to put the best possible face on the Islamist dictatorship. While the Taliban's secret police went into people's homes to beat men for not properly growing their beards and women for insufficient modesty, Hashemi attempted to convince Western nations to recognize their government as legitimate. He traveled to the US prior to 9/11 to speak on behalf of the Taliban, winding up with a mission to explain how the Islamists had to destroy priceless Buddha statues in Bamiyan in order to practice their faith, which had been fairly unmolested by the Buddhas for 1400 years. Hashemi acted as the Taliban's chief apologist to the West and bears responsibility for the government he not only served but actively defended.

Yale may finally have come to its senses about Hashemi, although they have taken a rather cowardly way out of the controversy by claiming to want higher standards rather than just expelling Hashemi and admitting their mistake. That brings us to their next mistake, a potential hire that may just fill the role of Zionist-conspiracy theorist that Hashemi's departure leaves open:

Meanwhile, Yale faces a new challenge. In the next few days the university may hire Juan Cole, a history professor at the University of Michigan, to fill a new spot as a professor of contemporary Middle East studies.

Mr. Cole's appointment would be problematic on several fronts. First, his scholarship is largely on the 19th-century Middle East, not on contemporary issues. "He has since abandoned scholarship in favor of blog commentary," says Michael Rubin, a Yale graduate and editor of the Middle East Quarterly. Mr. Cole's postings at his blog, Informed Comment, appear to be a far cry from scholarship. They feature highly polemical writing and dubious conspiracy theories.

In justifying all the time he spends on his blog, Mr. Cole told the Yale Herald that "when you become a public intellectual, it has the effect of dragging you into a lot of mud." Mr. Cole has done his share of splattering. He calls Israel "the most dangerous regime in the Middle East." That ties in with his recurring theme that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee effectively controls Congress and much of U.S. foreign policy. In an article titled "Dual Loyalties," he wrote, "I simply think that we deserve to have American public servants who are centrally commited [sic] to the interests of the United States, rather than to the interests of a foreign political party," namely Israel's right-wing Likud, which was the ruling party until Ariel Sharon formed the centrist Kadima Party. Mr. Cole claims that "pro-Likud intellectuals" routinely "use the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv."

Juan Cole has gathered a significant following at Informed Comment, and at least blogs reasonably honestly about his positions. However, as Fund notes, Cole has given up scholarly writing for polemics in doing so, and it calls into question his approach to his subject matter. Cole has embraced the most radical positions of anti-Israel politics, which is, of course, his right. Even so, Yale should take into account his actions and his rhetoric, which not only express the most radical of academic thought but also go against the values of education and free debate in general. Cole recently appeared on the Yale campus to take part in a "teach-in" to protest the Iraq War, an activity that will no doubt take up much of the professor's time if hired by Yale. Fund relates a Cole interview with the Detroit Free Press in which he exhorted the government to close down Fox News for "polluting the information environment". Fund even quotes Noam Chomsky as questioning Cole's judgment, and when someone gets to the left of Chomsky, that is a remarkable achievement.

It appears that Yale has a new quota system in place -- one that requires a certain level of Zionist-conspiracy theorists to be on campus at any one time. Instead of relying on its students and the admissions department, Yale's executives seem to want to address it through its faculty.

Stampede On!

The two-week Easter break for Congress ends today, and the immigration debate begins anew. The New York Times reports that both parties in the Senate have expressed a desire to get a bill passed well before the elections but refuse to be "stampeded", as Arlen Specter put it:

Prodded by large demonstrations and the prospect of another on the horizon, Senate leaders will try to revive stalled immigration legislation this week, with some urging President Bush to mediate personally the sharp differences among Republicans on the volatile issue.

Two weeks after the Senate walked away from its immigration debate, leaders of both parties are expressing a new sense of urgency to act before the November midterm elections. Mr. Bush, who has made an immigration bill a centerpiece of his legislative agenda and who could use a victory on Capitol Hill to revive his flagging second term, is expected to address the issue again on Monday in an appearance in Irvine, Calif.

"This is a top priority, and the president wants to see the Congress press ahead and get something done, in a comprehensive way," the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, told reporters on Sunday.

After an Easter recess punctuated by large immigrant rights protests, both Democrats and Republicans say their colleagues recognize that if they do not press ahead it could stir a reaction from those who want stricter border enforcement, business operators who rely on foreign workers and advocates of immigrant rights.

Bush has given his point of view on immigration in broad strokes; he favors stronger border controls and normalization of the existing illegal population. The Senate approach comes closest to his stated goals, and so far he has remained on the sidelines because most of the debate has been focused on points that, in his mind, are more minor than significant. The problem comes from the radically different approach taken by House Republicans, an approach much closer to that favored by the GOP rank and file, and the Senators of both parties know that any conference committee will radically change their amnesty-lite program.

How does Bush "lead" this debate, and do we want him to do so? Having never been a fan of the President's approach on this topic, I'd prefer he stay sidelined while the people who still have to face voters hash it out. The Bush strategy has focused on the people inside the country first and gives short shrift (at least so far) to credible border security. I suspect that any Bush leadership on this issue will put him pretty close to the McCain-Kennedy position -- and I suspect that Harry Reid believes the same thing. That's why Reid has suddenly become a cheerleader for White House interference in a Senate negotiation.

The Senators just took two weeks off to get back in touch with their constituents, a break they said they needed to understand more clearly the wishes of the people back home. Supposedly, they now have their temperature taken. The President can't help them understand the specifics of the debate nor the opinions of their voters any better than they already do. They need to come to an understanding that any approach that will pass both houses of Congress will have to address the needs expressed by the House as well as their own inclinations towards liberalization of the existing illegals. The only path to get to that point requires credible border security as a prerequisite for any normalization process.

Will the Senate actually pass legislation? Unlike two weeks ago, I believe they will. The Democrats may have believed that a failure to pass legislation hurt the GOP, but during the two-week recess it looks like they discovered that voters on all sides of the debate want the issue settled. Activists for illegal immigrants recognize that the demonstrations have put some at risk of discovery and deportation, and the recent IFCO raids underscored that. If the federal government starts conducting raids in earnest and pushing for long prison sentences for the hiring managers who commit fraud themselves to use illegals, then a lot of illegals will lose jobs and get deported, and the question will become more or less moot. It's now in the interest of Democrats to get the problem resolved, or at least to a vote.

Politics is the art of compromise, and the bottom line is that some people are going to be unhappy with whatever gets passed. Neither house of Congress offers a wholesale roundup of the illegals in the country; the House addressed border security, while the Senate focused on normalization. It doesn't take a genius to understand that simply combining the two would satisfy the largest number of people while having the best chance of passing into law. In the end, given the sharp divisions of the electorate, it probably provides the best reflection of voter desire. By the end of May, that's what we will have. As long as the border truly gets secured -- something that the US has never really tried -- it should be enough.

'The More Fearful Remain'

Yesterday, I posted an alternative look at the immigration debate -- the impact that unfettered illegal immigration has had on the Mexican communities abandoned by the men who come to the United States. Eusebia Flores at Artcamp Artesanas Campesinas sent a missive that implored Americans to send their men back home to Mexico to assist them in rebuilding Tecalpulco through their growing business of handmade crafts. I asked a series of follow-up questions, and Eusebia sent her reply this afternoon.

CQ: How many of your able-bodied men have left Tecalpulco for the US, on a percentage basis (your best estimate, not looking for literal accuracy)?

EF: More than 100 are in the United States, about 40%. This is an estimate based on a comment made in my presence by the comisario of Tecalpulco.

CQ: Do they send money back to Tecalpulco, and if so, how does that support your community?

EF: Some do. Not all do. Some do not do well - they cant find a job or get settled or they dont have money left after paying rent and expenses. Some let their bad habits get the better of their promises, for example drinking alcohol. Often the men get involved with other women there.

Money sent from the USA is a form of income to support the household as if they were employed here, and when money does arrive, it is always needed, and welcome.

CQ: Do the men often have their families cross the border later to join them, or do they usually leave everyone behind for good?

EF: Sometimes the family does go to join them. But this is still only a few.

CQ: Please describe the damage to the community that this abandonment of the men has done to Tecalpulco. How has it affected the raising of children, the ability of young women to marry, and so on?

EF: This has been a disaster for us.

It means that the children do not have their fathers. Usually, the men marry the girls before they are twenty years old and they have children before they go. An important part of the motive for going to the USA is the adventure,
because these are young men and they do not want to miss out on an adventure or stay behind when others have gone and done well.

Usually, it is the most courageous ones who go, and the weaker and the more fearful ones are the ones who remain.

CQ: If the men remained in Tecalpulco, how would that improve the economy of your community?

EF: In the past years, women have built a new cottage industry jewelry business that is doing well. The situation has changed because now we do have work and we wish the men would return to help us sand and polish in production. What they can accomplish there is less than what they could accomplish here and even when they do make more money, we would rather have them with us.

CQ: Do you believe that American business interests deserve the blame for the men abandoning your community?

EF: Honestly, we are not interested in blaming anybody. It is true that businesses in the United States often ask good workers to invite family members to go and they offer to pay the expenses including what the border coyote charges [emphasis mine -- CE].

Businesses are spending money reimbursing the coyotes? If this is true, then we don't just have a problem with hiring practices at these shops, but we have them contributing to organized crime and modern-day slavers.

The women of Tecalpulco want their men back. Who in our government wants to tell them no?

The Terrorist State

According to the London Times, Iran has picked a wanted terrorist to head its defense operations in case of a Western attack on nuclear development sites. Imad Muguniyeh participated in the TWA hijacking in 1985 that resulted in the murder of Navy diver Robert Stethem and has been wanted by the FBI for over 20 years:

IRAN’S president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, attended a meeting in Syria earlier this year with one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, according to intelligence experts and a former national security official in Washington.

US officials and Israel intelligence sources believe Imad Mugniyeh, the Lebanese commander of Hezbollah’s overseas operations, has taken charge of plotting Iran’s retaliation against western targets should President George W Bush order a strike on Iranian nuclear sites.

Mugniyeh is on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” list for his role in a series of high-profile attacks against the West, including the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jet and murder of one of its passengers, a US navy diver.

Now in his mid-forties, Mugniyeh is reported to have travelled with Ahmadinejad in January this year from Tehran to Damascus, where the Iranian president met leaders of Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

The meeting has been dubbed a “terror summit” because of the presence of so many groups behind attacks on Israel, which Ahmadinejad has threatened to wipe from the map.

Michael Ledeen, one of our own CQ community and one of my favorite columnists, gets quoted in the Times as confirming the connection between Ahmadinejad and Muguniyeh. Muguniyeh has more experience than Stethem's murder in killing Americans; he also participated in the torture and execution of CIA station chief William Buckley in 1984, one in a series of Western hostages taken by Hezbollah in the mid-1980s. He supposedly also took part in the Beirut barracks bombing in 1983 that sent the Marines home from Lebanon, and Israel reportedly suspects him of recruiting the bombers that killed Israelis and other Jews in a series of Argentina bombings in the 1990s.

The Hezbollah connection makes it clear that Iran has called in its chits with the terrorist groups it finances in order to gain some needed credibility to the deterrent threat it can offer to the West, especially the United States. Ahmadinejad has selected one man that has demonstrated success in terror operations against Western targets, especially against America and Israel. As part of this transaction, Hezbollah has given Iran control of the missiles in Southern Lebanon that they have aimed at Israeli cities, according to the Times, so that the Iranians have a more immediate military deterrent against Israel.

It's getting progressively more difficult to ignore the provocations of Iran in this game of nuclear chicken. The appointment of Muguniyeh and the Iranian presence in Lebanon present enough of a casus belli that the US may have to engineer a reason not to follow the Bush Doctrine in the war on terror to avoid using the military option. Ahmadinejad has pushed Teheran into a series of raises that may reflect a core bluff, but the United States may still be forced to call them with action rather than words. Israel will not long sit still with Iranian hands on missiles in Southern Lebanon, and any demurrals at that point would be rendered moot.

More Financial Influence At Chez Clinton (Updates)

The New York Times reports on a highly lucrative position given to Bill Clinton by billionaire financier Ronald Burkle, the man who claims to have been extorted by a New York Post gossip columnist, Jared Paul Stern. Supposedly Burkle got infuriated by reports that he would be purchasing a modeling agency for the former president to oversee, and the Post columnist required over $200K to keep any other salacious rumors from reaching Page 6. However amusing the proposition of Bill Clinton working in modeling agency may be, the Times uncovers a more problematic relationship between Burkle and Clinton given the likelihood of a Hillary Clinton presidential run:

After leaving the White House in 2001, former President Bill Clinton was inundated with business and job offers, from investment-bank partnerships to seats on corporate boards. He turned them all down, with one exception: He agreed to be an adviser to a family of funds run by the Yucaipa Companies, a California private equity firm controlled by one of his best friends, the billionaire Ronald W. Burkle.

Mr. Clinton's arrangement with Mr. Burkle is an unusual one for a former president, giving him the potential to make tens of millions of dollars without great effort and at virtually no risk, according to Mr. Burkle and advisers to Mr. Clinton. Mr. Clinton's role is to help find investment opportunities for Yucaipa projects, give credibility to the funds and champion their mission of investing in poor areas to corporate executives, union leaders and others. But he has put up little of his own money and has no day-to-day responsibilities over how the more than $1 billion in the funds is invested.

Does this sound fishy to anyone? This billionaire has raised millions of dollars for Bill Clinton in the past, and now does the same for Hillary. In fact, Burkle just held a big Beverly Hills fundraiser for Hillary this past Friday evening. The arrangement between the billionaire and the former president -- and hopeful presidential spouse -- allows Burkle to stuff tens of millions of dollars into the bank accounts of the Clintons in return for no significant work on behalf of the fund itself. All that Burkle requires of Bill Clinton is to stand up and make a few speeches. This sounds ominously similar to Hillary's 10,000% return on her commodities investment while Bill served as governor in Arkansas.

The Times reports that one of the major investor in Burkle's funds is the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), the retirement fund that often acts as a big dog in political matters. Its board tends to skew Democratic and conducts political battles on behalf of the liberal and leftist agenda. CalPERS jumped into Burkle's Yucaipa funds in a big way in 2002 -- shortly after Bill Clinton came aboard. They now fund almost half of the portfolio that provides Bill Clinton with his enormous salary and light workload.

The Yucaipa funds have provided a solid return, mostly by focusing on risky ventures in underserved areas. Clinton doesn't get paid unless the funds grow past 9% in a year. In 2005, it grew over 50% in one fund and 28% in the other. It appears that many people wish to put their money where the Clintons go, including New York Comptroller Carl McCall, who sank the state pension fund into Yucaipa just after Hillary endorsed his bid for governor over former Clinton aide Andrew Cuomo.

But where does Yucaipa put that money? Front Page Magazine reported in January that some of it went to Al Gore -- what a coincidence! -- for his cable-TV venture. Despite the fact that Yucaipa supposedly exists to provide opportunities for underprivileged and depressed communities worldwide, they saw fit to sink millions into Current Television, which is neither minority owned nor located in an economically-disadvantaged area. It also invested in a Diversified Investment Management Group acquisition of Piccadilly Restauarants, and DIMG is apparently a front for Burkle. It has invested in at least one minority-owned business: Sean John, the clothing firm owned by rapper P. Diddy -- hardly an example of uplifting the disadvantaged.

It appears that the Times has described a archetype for political payoffs and control, with Burkle holding the reins and the Clintons at his beck and call. This is the kind of corruption that First Amendment violations like the BCRA can never touch, and which really present a danger to the electoral process. New York should hold the Clintons responsible for this transparent money-laundering scheme, but likely will shade its eyes and bask in the celebrity of the pair. Americans outside of the Empire State will have to hold Hillary accountable in 2008.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention one of the most recent initiatives by the Yucaipa Funds -- they want to invest in a particular segment of an economically-disadvantaged industry, according to the New York Sun in late March:

A private investment group whose board of directors includes President Clinton made a bid yesterday to take over a dozen daily newspapers owned by Knight Ridder, including the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Mr. Clinton serves as a senior adviser to the Yucaipa Companies, a Los Angeles-based investment firm that has joined with a journalists' union, the Newspaper Guild, to seek control of the 12 newspapers and gradually transfer ownership to the news outlets' employees. ...

"The Yucaipa Companies are putting in a bid today for the 12," a spokeswoman for the union, Candice Johnson, said in an interview. She declined to say how much the union-backed group is offering. "We think the bid will be a very strong bid," she said.

The papers on the auction block include both of Philadelphia's leading newspapers, the Inquirer and the Daily News, as well as the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the San Jose Mercury News. Industry analysts have estimated that the dozen newspapers will fetch between $1.4 billion and $2 billion.

So the Yucaipa Funds, which supposedly exists to invest in poor neighborhoods and minority-owned businesses, wants to allow the Clintons access to twelve major newspapers just in time for the presidential election. I wonder whether my local St. Paul Pioneer Press will endorse Hillary two years from now?

UPDATE II: It's a good thing that Yucaipa performs so well. Its employees have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic coffers since 2000, mostly from Burkle. He gave $100,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in August 2001, $100,000 to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee in December 2001, and another $20,000 to the DCCC in November 2003. He donated a whopping $500,000 to the DNC in November 2002, just at the first Bush midterms. (Terry McAuliffe must have been pleased.) He donated $25,000 to a DNC subsidiary in 2004.

Burkle has spent over $785,000 in the past three election cycles on the Democrats. Interestingly, only $4500 of that got spent in the 2006 cycle. It looks like he has found another method to influence Democratic politics.

UPDATE III: The Burkles spent $4500 so far in this cycle, and only $74,350 in the 2004 cycle. They supported candidates such as John Edwards, Barbara Boxer, Patty Murray, Dianne Feinstein, and Ken Salazar. They spent almost ten times as much in the 2002 cycle, despite it not involving a presidential election; the $500,000 DNC donation covers two thirds of this outlay, but the remainder was three times what Burkle spent after Bill Clinton came aboard Yucaipa.

In 2000, the Burkles contributed over $340,000 to Democrats, including $4,000 to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign -- $1,000 more than they spent on Al Gore's presidential campaign.

In 1998, the Burkles spent $229,000. All but $1,000 went to Democrats; the single Republican donation went to David Dreier.

1996: $155,000.

So why do the Burkles contribute so much less now than before Bill joined Yucaipa? Maybe because their money can go directly to the source.

It Rises From Its Grave!

Once again, the Rice-for-Cheney meme has arisen like a zombie from a bad movie, only now it walks the earth in London where the Times reports that Republicans have urged the change on George Bush. Supposedly, the only way to address the dissatisfaction within GOP ranks will be to push Dick Cheney out as VP and nominate Condoleezza Rice as his replacement:

REPUBLICANS are urging President George W Bush to dump Dick Cheney as vice-president and replace him with Condoleezza Rice if he is serious about presenting a new face to the jaded American public.

They believe that only the sacrifice of one or more of the big beasts of the jungle, such as Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, will convince voters that Bush understands the need for a fresh start.

The jittery Republicans claim Bush’s mini-White House reshuffle last week will do nothing to forestall the threat of losing control of Congress in the November mid-term elections.

Fred Barnes, one of my favorite writers, gets extensively quoted in this article as arguing for a dramatic change. Other GOP analysts get quoted for noting a malaise among the ranks. The Times also notes that the picture of Cheney supposedly napping during the visit of Hu Jintao again raises the possibility of a medical excuse for stepping down from office, allowing Bush to regretfully accept Cheney's departure while making the change to Rice.

Well, maybe. It's not outside of the realm of possibility, certainly. However, Bush gave Rice a task in the second term that he sees as a high priority -- clearing the Department of State of its entrenched and politicized bureaucracy, a similar mandate to that of Porter Goss at CIA and almost as important. That job has just begun, and it's hard to imagine another person with the tremendous public image necessary to face down the anklebiters at Foggy Bottom. Moving Rice out of State would put an effective end to any attempt at reform.

Secondly, although Rice might take the job if Bush pressed her on it, it doesn't present her with any intellectual challenge whatsoever. Cheney has been an unusually active vice president, but he still doesn't have the flexiblity and the opportunity to make the impact that the Secretary of State does. Rice, who has spent her life in the study of foreign relations, has in her hand the pinnacle of that pursuit. Would she willingly give it up just to become the world's most prominent second banana, even in an administration structured to give that position more power? I doubt it.

The time for this change would have been 2004, when it could have had a real impact on the electoral politics. I need to hear a specific argument about any specific race contested this year where moving Rice from State to VP would win an election for the Republicans. What Senate seat will that capture? Which House district will go GOP on the basis of this change? Which governorship will come to the Republicans if Bush dumps Cheney for Rice, or for anyone else? None, and that's why this is a rather silly argument. The changes required at the White House have to do with improving communication and refining tactics towards achieving the administration's goals, and Rice serves an important role at State in both functions.

Of course, it's hard to take this report too seriously when the reporter, Sarah Baxter, cannot get her facts straight. At the end of the article, she says that Richard Nixon was impeached. Nixon never got impeached; he resigned before the House could vote on the articles pf impeachment that surely would have passed.

John Kerry Was Against Leaking Before He Was For It

We should consider ourselves fortunate to live in John Kerry World. Most of us thought that we would have lost the humorous inanity that the Senator and erstwhile presidential candidate brought us throughout 2004, but he has been considerate enough to continue with his silly pronouncements well past his expiration date. Today on ABC's This Week, Kerry gave George Stephanopolous a tortured explanation of how he opposes leaks in all circumstances while trying to excuse Mary McCarthy for hers:

SEN. KERRY: Well, I read that. I don't know whether she did it or not so it's hard to have a view on it. Here's my fundamental view of this, that you have somebody being fired from the CIA for allegedly telling the truth, and you have no one fired from the white house for revealing a CIA agent in order to support a lie. That underscores what's really wrong in Washington, DC Here.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's one issue of hypocrisy but should a CIA officer be able to make decisions on his or her --

KERRY: ... Of course not. Of course, not. A CIA agent has the obligation to uphold the law and clearly leaking is against the law, and nobody should leak. I don't like leaking. But if you're leaking to tell the truth, Americans are going to look at that, at least mitigate or think about what are the consequences that you, you know, put on that person. Obviously they're not going to keep their job, but there are other larger issues here. You know, classification in Washington is a tool that is used to hide the truth from the American people. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was eloquent and forceful in always talking about how we needed to, you know, end this endless declassification that takes place in this city, and it has become a tool to hide the truth from Americans.

STEPHANOPOULOS: These --

SEN. KERRY: So I'm glad she told the truth but she's going to obviously -- if she did it, if she did it, suffer the consequences of breaking the law.

A leak, by its nature, involves releasing actual classified or sensitive information, so any leaker can be said to have "told the truth" as part of the process. In this case, however, we still have no independent verification that McCarthy's story of a chain of torture chambers across Europe was anything other than either McCarthy's exaggeration of transit stops for captured terrorists or a mole hunt. Two European investigations conducted after the leak (and the attendant diplomatic damage) have found exactly nothing.

While it is touching to see Kerry offer support for a campaign contributor, I suggest that he revisit the law on releasing classified information and just leave his remarks at that. McCarthy had plenty of other options for addressing her concerns, but she chose to expose secret data rather than do her job in protecting it. The White House has the authority to declassify and release information and did so to answer the questions of the media about the true pre-war intelligence estimate of Iraq. That's not hypocrisy; that is responsiveness, especially since Kerry and his fellow primary candidates had made such an issue of White House "secrecy" all during their campaigns.

We all wish Senator Kerry the best of luck in his primary campaign for the 2008 presidential election. His laughable attempts to eat his cake and have it too on almost every topic will provide some needed comic relief in the next contest.

Making Excuses For The Leaks

An interesting offshoot of the exposure of senior CIA officer Mary McCarthy as a leaker is the excuse-making that has accompanied it. Even those who oppose leaks in general have found ways to rationalize her unauthorized disclosures in some manner, as the Washington Post report by Jeffrey Smith and Dafna Linzer shows. The Post doesn't hold a candle to the rationalizations offered by the New York Times in a piece hilariously headlined, "Colleagues Say C.I.A. Analyst Played by the Rules," indicating that the Gray Lady has decided to go the route of full irony.

The Post starts off by characterizing the attitude of former intel officials as opposed to leaks, but ....

Larry Johnson, a former State Department counterterrorism expert who worked briefly for McCarthy at the CIA in 1988, said yesterday that if McCarthy were really involved in leaks, she may have concluded that the investigation was "a whitewash, and why not tell the press? . . . I am struck by the irony that Mary McCarthy may have been fired for blowing the whistle and ensuring the truth about an abuse was told to the American people." ...

Several sources who know her said they were disappointed. Others were sympathetic, saying many feel frustrated by a lack of debate over policies on the treatment of detainees that are seen as radical by many officers. "They're thinking Mary had nowhere else to go," said one former official who would only discuss the issue on the condition of anonymity.

The Times has much more grist for McCarthy supporters, however:

"We're talking about a person with great integrity who played by the book and, as far as I know, never deviated from the rules," said Steven Simon, a security council aide in the Clinton administration who worked closely with Ms. McCarthy.

Others said it was possible that Ms. McCarthy — who made a contribution to Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004 — had grown increasingly disenchanted with the methods adopted by the Bush administration for handling Qaeda prisoners.

Larry Johnson got more blunt in his remarks to the Times:

Larry Johnson, a former C.I.A. officer who worked for Ms. McCarthy in the agency's Latin America section, said, "It looks to me like Mary is being used as a sacrificial lamb."

Some see this as a conspiracy despite the fact that McCarthy failed a polygraph and confessed to leaking information:

Government officials said that after Ms. McCarthy's polygraph examination showed the possibility of deception, the examiner confronted her and she disclosed having had conversations with reporters.

But some former C.I.A. employees who know Ms. McCarthy remain unconvinced, arguing that the pressure from Mr. Goss and others in the Bush administration to plug leaks may have led the agency to focus on an employee on the verge of retirement, whose work at the White House during the Clinton administration had long raised suspicions within the current administration.

One other expert besides Johnson gets quoted in both newspapers. Richard Kerr, a former deputy director at the CIA, gets quoted briefly by the Times:

If in fact Ms. McCarthy was the leaker, Richard J. Kerr, a former C.I.A. deputy director, said, "I have no idea what her motive was, but there is a lot of dissension within the agency, and it seems to be a rather unhappy place." Mr. Kerr called Ms. McCarthy "quite a good, substantive person on the issues I dealt with her on."

However, the Post quotes Kerr more fully, and in his extended remarks he explodes the notion that McCarthy had no other choice but to go to the press with her concerns:

Richard Kerr, a deputy director of the CIA from 1989 to 1992 who worked with McCarthy at one point, described her as "a good, solid intelligence officer," based on his own experience. "She is not a firebrand kind of ideologue," he said, adding, "I don't know her motivation in this case." In his experience, Kerr said, "nearly all senior officers at some time want to take a complaint somewhere else."

But they have several options, Kerr said. "You can quit, stay inside and fight or use the appeal mechanism inside." The formal mechanisms sometimes are not effective, he said, and "this one way [leaking to the press] is a high-risk one." Kerr added, however, that in his view, the CIA cannot allow leaks to go unpunished, because "your discipline breaks down."

In fact, McCarthy had several options, none of which it appears she used. First, as Kerr mentions, she had the option of raising her concerns with senior CIA officials, up to Porter Goss. She could have then gone to the State Department to discuss it with their intelligence liaisons, especially since the information she revealed had the potential to damage relations with key allies -- which it did when she released it to the press. McCarthy could have gone to the White House as well. Perhaps she considered that a waste of time, but without having attempted it, she wouldn't have any idea whether the White House would have addressed her concerns.

At the end of all those options, if she still couldn't get her concerns addressed, she could have gone to the ranking members of the two Congressional committees on intelligence or the Armed Services committees. Congress has oversight responsibilities for intelligence and the military, and both houses of the legislature had been publicly bristling over the way the administration had supposedly sidelined them. The Democrats would have been especially receptive to McCarthy's entreaties -- especially given her financial support of John Kerry. The issue could then have been hashed out with the administration and the CIA behind closed doors.

But instead, McCarthy decided to leak it to the press, rather than attempt to solve the problem she perceived. Why? Michael Tanji, a former intel officer who writes for the blog Group Intel, has his own perspective:

[I]f you ever wanted a strong indication that our intelligence services have been penetrated, the McCarthy case is it. I don’t mean penetrated by a foreign intelligence service (forgive me JJA) but by something worse: politics. After nearly two decades of service in the IC I am happy to report that robust dialog about personal political opinions is alive and well. I would however, be hard pressed to name a case where someone I worked with let their politics interfere with the job at hand. ...

Unlike the names associated with real or perceived IC fiascos (Tice, Edmonds, Shaffer, etc.) if Ms. McCarthy had a serious, legitimate gripe with what was going on at the CIA, she could have walked down the hall to the IG, she could have had lunch with someone at the FBI or Justice, or she could have made a phone call and been talking to members of Congress. In short she would have suffered almost none of the pain that most whistleblowers normally face. ...

Time was that that a lot of people in the IC (myself included) didn’t vote; lest someone have cause to accuse us of pushing a political bias in our work. We prided ourselves on the fact that we dealt in hard data and well-reasoned deduction; not political agendas or pet academic theories. We accepted the fact that ours was merely one voice that decision-makers listened too, even if we didn’t like their courses of action. When certain elements in the IC decided that they were going to stop talking to power and start taking it I don’t know, but one thing is for certain: this is a practice that we cannot allow to stand.

The CIA has rotted through the adoption of politics. They have joined the State Department as an activist bureaucracy rather than an effective arm of the US government, thanks to people like McCarthy, who have decided that their concerns and their politics trump national security. Michael Tanji is correct; we cannot allow this to stand. We need to clear out the political players within the intelligence community, people like McCarthy, Valerie Plame, and others who want to overrule the elected government through selective and deceptive leaking.

Addendum: One other item from the Post article tends to support the notion of a mole hunt:

CIA officials, without confirming the information in the article, have said the disclosure harmed the agency's relations with unspecified foreign intelligence services. "The consequences of this leak were more serious than other leaks," said a former intelligence official in touch with senior agency officials. "That's what inspired this [firing]." Others pointed out that the information in question was known by so few people that the number of suspected leakers was fairly small, enabling investigators to work swiftly.

It seems to me that the series of detention centers described by Dana Priest in the article based on the McCarthy leaks would have included a not-insignificant number of support personnel, assisting in the clandestine movement of agents and detainees through secret facilities in Europe and elsewhere. The logistics of such a program would be overwhelming. Either a clandestine team would have to be created for the effort, or the resources of CIA field offices throughout Europe would have to be exploited to ensure the program remained effective and secret. The only scenario I can see where the information on the program could be contained within just a few individuals would be that the program never really existed at all -- and that's why the investigation centered so quickly on McCarthy and a few others.