Al-Reuters Doctors War Photos In Lebanon

Charles Johnson at LGF demolishes Reuters for publishing a laughably doctored photo of Beirut, attempting to make it look like the Israelis bombed the city indiscriminately. Readers do not need any particular expertise in photography or digital editing to spot this phony -- smoke patterns get exactly duplicated over and over again. Even buildings get duplicated in this amateurish attempt to manipulate images for political purposes. And guess who gets the credit for the photography? Adnan Hajj -- the same photographer who documented the Qana attack that now looks more and more to have been a phony story as well.

This isn't just one reporter and a producer going nuts at a network news division. This shows that Reuters has either complete incompetents as editors or that the entire British wire service has chosen one particular side in this war. Check all the links in Charles' post, and try to keep from laughing out loud at how utterly stupid Reuters considers its customers to be.

UPDATE: Here's the link to the photo itself. Take a read of what sports photographers think of this image.

Iran Tried To Get Uranium From Tanzania

The London Times reports that the Iranians bought uranium from Tanzania and attempted to smuggle it into the country, disguised as another non-radioactive commodity. However, as a UN report indicates, Tanzanian customs officials discovered the ruse and stopped the transport:

IRAN is seeking to import large consignments of bomb-making uranium from the African mining area that produced the Hiroshima bomb, an investigation has revealed.

A United Nations report, dated July 18, said there was “no doubt” that a huge shipment of smuggled uranium 238, uncovered by customs officials in Tanzania, was transported from the Lubumbashi mines in the Congo.

Tanzanian customs officials told The Sunday Times it was destined for the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, and was stopped on October 22 last year during a routine check.

The disclosure will heighten western fears about the extent of Iran’s presumed nuclear weapons programme and the strategic implications of Iran’s continuing support for Hezbollah during the war with Israel.

The Iranians disguised the uranium as coltan, a component of computer chips and a legal commodity for trade. Tanzania, however, scans cargo with Geiger counters, mindful of the uranium mining in its country and the potential for illegal trade. When the counters started clicking, the customs officials started pulling the containers off the ship. Each drum contained over 100 pounds of ore, and several had uranium rather than coltan.

If this sounds familiar, it should. This scenario was exactly what the Brits determined might be the aim of Saddam Hussein, that time in Niger. As in Tanzania, the uranium mines had been shut down -- but in both nations, illegal mining had been known to occur. Hussein tried to get Niger's government to clandestinely arrange for trade in the one commodity they could not openly sell, but the Nigerien PM refused. Iran went behind the backs of Tanzanian officials and dealt directly with the illegal mining operations to get their nuclear material.

Prairie Pundit suggests sending Joe Wilson to Dar es Salaam for a few more mint juleps, but unfortunately for Wilson, the cat is already out of the bag this time -- and the UN has documented the attempt. Intriguingly, this happened in October 2005, almost a year ago, and Tanzanian officials were asked to keep quiet about it. Americans helped dispose of the material. In its way, it appears to be a reverse Wilson -- no one revealed the attempt until well after Iran announced its success at uranium enrichment.

So have they bought more elsewhere? And would the UN tell us if they did?

Where's Raul-Do, Redux

More information and less confirmation keep coming out of Cuba. The government in Havana keeps insisting that the Castro brothers still control the island, and the Castro brothers keep failing to appear:

With Fidel Castro still nowhere to be seen, military reservists, retired officers and decommissioned soldiers are under orders to check in daily at military posts.

Burly men who appear to be plainclothes security agents are stationed along a stretch of waterfront that saw rare anti-government riots in 1994. There are more police and army reservists throughout the capital, and dissidents said the military was telling citizens in eastern provinces that they could use force against those criticizing the government.

Repelling an invasion from the United States has been a constant theme in state media since Castro announced Tuesday that he undergoing intestinal surgery and temporarily handing power to his brother Raul. ...

Cubans said that their friends and relatives who are decommissioned or retired military officers are being ordered to report their whereabouts daily and be reachable at all times.

Despite having power for the last five days, Dear Placeholder has yet to appear publicly on his brother's behalf. Fidel himself has supposedly issued terse statements saying that he feels great but that his health is a state secret. Now the Cuban military has ordered its reservists to stay in touch in case of a Yanqui invasion, but everyone knows that's poppycock.

The military needs to keep track of their reservists to make sure that they haven't begun a counter-revolution. And since an appearance by Raul would effectively quell any such thoughts, one has to assume that both Fidel and Raul have disappeared for a reason. The reason, according to Brazilian sources, is terminal stomach cancer for Fidel, as Oak Leaf at Polipundit reports:

“Cuban authorities” informed Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his party’s leaders that Castro’s health is worse than publicly acknowledged. The newspaper reported Castro, 79, apparently has abdominal cancer, and that the unidentified Cuban authorities said he would be too incapacitated to reassume power.”

Well, maybe. One problem in dictatorships is that they tend to grow strange theories and rumors in the darkness, and this situation is about as opaque as it gets. Stomach cancer would explain Fidel's disappearance, but not Raul's. Something other than a medical problem has occurred in Cuba, but no one's talking -- except to order the Cuban military to march in circles where they can be watched.

Strange days -- and dangerous days -- in Cuba. The explosion may come soon.

Santorum Sneaking Up On Casey

Don't look now, but the one Republican incumbent in the Senate that the media has given up for dead may just be making a comeback. Real Clear Politics notes a new Pennsylvania poll that shows Rick Santorum has erased a double-digit deficit to Bob Casey and may have the momentum back on his side:

Santorum started closing the gap in late spring, those polls found, and seems to have momentum. An April Morning Call/Muhlenberg College survey showed Casey 8 percentage points ahead. Keystone had Casey up 16 points in February, and then 6 points in May.

To be sure, two other statewide polls still show the race to be a blowout. June surveys by Quinnipiac College and Rasmussen Reports both put Casey ahead by double digits.

But experts and the candidates themselves have long said they expected the race to tighten. And behind the horserace numbers, the latest Morning Call/Muhlenberg College survey found evidence of other good news for Santorum -- fewer people view him in an unfavorable light than in the spring. And although President Bush remains a drag on Santorum and other GOP candidates, the drag appears to be lessening.

Rasmussen has, as the article states, Santorum behind by a wide margin still, and Rasmussen has proven fairly reliable. The July 26th poll showed Santorum down 11 points and still struggling with a 50% disapproval rating. Lynn Swann actually looked closer to Ed Rendell than Santorum to Casey. Both, however, still showed significant improvement over Rasmussen's June 19th poll, from which both candidates gained four points.

If this poll shows an accurate trend, Casey may have already peaked. He still has a slim majority in most polls, but his support looks weak. His "very favorable" rating only amounts to 14%, well below Santorum's 23%. The bulk of his approval numbers shows up as "somewhat favorable" at 42%, putting three-quarters of his support in a somewhat less than enthusiastic light.

The GOP could still hold Santorum's seat -- and if it does, it will be a major blow to Democratic hopes of a takeover in the upper chamber this November.

Keep John & Annie Glenn In Your Thoughts

Forget about all the dangers of the early space program and the issues of being the first septuagenarian to ride the Space Shuttle -- it turns out that Ohio freeways will really get you. Space pioneer, decorated Marine, and Senator John Glenn and his wife suffered minor injuries in a traffic accident early this morning:

Former senator and astronaut John Glenn and his wife were taken to a hospital with minor injures after being involved in a car accident, police said. Glenn, 85, and his wife, Annie, 86, were in fair condition early Saturday morning at Grant Medical Center, a nursing supervisor said.

The driver of the other car, Amy Myers of suburban New Albany, said she was driving east late Friday night when Glenn, who was headed west, tried to turn left onto a highway ramp.

Myers, who was not injured, said her car hit the front of his.

Glenn was "very sincerely sorry," Myers said.

Hopefully the hospital stay is just precautionary. It was only eight years ago that he flew on a Shuttle mission after passing the physical for mission specialists. We hope that the Senator and his wife, two great Americans, recover fully and quickly to enjoy the rest of this summer.

UPDATE: Hey, folks, we may not have liked Glenn much as a politician -- I certainly didn't -- but this man put his life on the line on many occasions for this country. He flew combat missions in both World War II and Korea -- 59 and 63 missions, respectively -- just as my late father-in-law did in the Corps. He stuck a rocket on his back when most of them blew up a hell of a lot sooner than designed during the Mercury program. This man may not win kudos for his politics, but he has more than earned our respect as an American. I consider him a great American for his service to our nation, and I think people need to rethink some of their comments in this thread.

No Saudi Sympathy For The 'Devil'

Hezbollah's war continues to inspire some unprecedented politics in the Middle East, this time in Wahhabi Saudi Arabia. An influential cleric who helped inspire Osama bin Laden's war on the West has issued a fatwa demanding that Saudis oppose the 'devil' in this conflict -- but if you think that means the yahoud, you'd be mistaken:

A top Saudi Sunni cleric, whose ideas inspired Osama bin Laden, issued a religious edict Saturday disavowing the Shi'ite guerrilla group Hizbullah, evidence that a rift remained among Muslims over the fighting in Lebanon.

Hizbullah, which translates as "the party of God," is actually "the party of the devil," said Sheik Safar al-Hawali, whose radical views made the al-Qaida leader one of his followers in the past.

"Don't pray for Hizbullah," he said in the fatwa posted on his Web site.

The edict, which reflects the historical stand of strict Wahhabi doctrine viewing Shi'ite Muslims as heretics, follows a similar fatwa from another popular Saudi cleric Sheik Abdullah bin Jibreen two weeks into the conflict with Israel.

"It is not acceptable to support this rejectionist party (Hizbullah), and one should not fall under its command, or pray for its victory," bin Jibreen said at the time. That fatwa set off a maelstrom across the Arab world, with other leaders and people at the grass roots level imploring Muslims to put aside differences to support the fight against Israel.

The war has sundered the Sunni community in the region. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has rejected the Saudi rejections, pitting two of the most influential Sunni factions against each other. Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called for support for the Shi'ite terrorists in Lebanon even while killing Shi'ites in Iraq, a position that Zawahiri doesn't even bother to try to rescue from incoherence.

People have warned about unifying Islamists around a terrorist culture through Israel's attempt to dismantle Hezbollah's military capability after years of provocations. They may eventually prove prescient, but at the moment it looks like Hezbollah has driven even deeper fractures into the Islamic world. In any event, ignoring Hezbollah has done nothing to either solve the terrorism or to garner a consensus among Islamic nations to end it, so these warnings sound almost as incoherent as Zawahiri on this issue.

We should quit worrying about the so-called Arab street on this point. Not only is it not a one-way thoroughfare, it looks like a street that can't even pick out two distinct directions.

UPDATE: AJ Strata links to this as well, but his primary point sounds intriguing:

If Hezbollah is as well armed and trained as the Syrian and Iranian militaries, then maybe we have been overestimating the ability of these nations while we underestimated Hezbollah. Syria is looking especially vulnerable since their military has not been in a fight for decades and therefore is not battle hardened. In fact, I would wager Syrian and Iranian elements are inside the Hezbollah units right now. One thing is for sure. As this battle rages on, those who fear confrontation at all costs get shriller as we saw in Qana. But those who are not afraid of confrontation in self defense are watching how the last bastions of Islamo Fascism in the Middle East are looking like less and less of a force to deal with. As long as the other side doesn’t get a nuclear weapon.

And that is what the handwringing media has lost site of. This conflict was started because Iran was willing to start a regional war to hold onto their hopes for nuclear power and possible state-initiated martyrdom.

Read the rest of his thoughts.

France, US Agree On Cease-Fire Formulation

France and the US have reached accord on the wording of a UN cease-fire proposal for the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. It calls for an immediate cessation of hostilities by Hezbollah, which started the conflict, and allows Israel to respond if Hezbollah does not comply:

The United States and France agreed Saturday on a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that calls for a "full cessation" of fighting between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, but would allow Israel to defend itself if attacked.

The draft, obtained by The Associated Press, "calls for a full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations."

That language would be a major victory for Israel, which has insisted it must have the right to respond if Hezbollah launches missiles against it. France and many other nations had demanded an immediate halt to violence without conditions as a way to push the region back toward stability.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton and French President Jacques Chirac's office confirmed that agreement had been reached. The full 15-nation Security Council was to meet later Saturday to discuss the resolution, and it was likely to be adopted in the next couple of days, Bolton said.

France lost the manuevering room to dictate Israel's position when their foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, heralded Hezbollah's sponsor Iran as a "stabilizing force" in the region. Douste-Blazy then had to backpedal furiously when Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad openly called for Israel's destruction days later and told Muslim nations that the cease-fire France was peddling amounted to a good first step. Iran embarrassed France further yesterday by publicy announcing that it had armed Hezbollah with rockets and missiles in the past.

The cease-fire proposal addresses that very issue. It demands that Lebanon ensure that no non-state militias purchase arms, which means that Beirut has to attend to its borders. They will have the responsibility to keep Syria and Iran from resupplying the terrorist group, and failure makes them responsible for attacks on Israel.

South of the Litani, Lebanon would then become a demilitarized zone. The UNIFIL contingent still in the area would stay long enough to verify that the cease-fire had taken place, and then the UN would send a larger and presumably competent peacekeeping force into the area. Their job would be to support the Lebanese Army in assuming military control all the way to the Blue Line. Once that happened, then the UN could start brokering the other issues involved in the conflict, such as Shebaa Farms and the prisoners captured by both sides.

It sounds intelligent and rational, and it places the onus on Hezbollah, where it belongs. They started this war, and either they have to stop or the Lebanese have to stop them. The Israelis will not depart Lebanon under fire this time, nor should they.

Rightroots: Michele Bachmann Interview

After five full days of the Rightroots initiative, we have raised more money than we thought possible. We're up to $35K, and most of our candidates have over $1,000 in contributions already.

Today we spoke with Michele Bachmann, one of the Rightroots candidates, along with Rep. Phil English from Pennsylvania, a key member of the Ways and Means Committee. The two are campaigning in Michele's district today and took a half-hour to talk with us about the election as well as key issues facing Congress now and in the next session. I have podcasted the interview in two segments:

Segment 1
Segment 2

Be sure to listen to the whole interview, and hit the contribution page at Rightroots for Michele and the other fine candidates!

Northern Alliance Radio Hits The Air At New Time

Talk about a New Dawn Coming! The Northern Alliance Radio Network airs today at its new time, 9 am CT, with Mitch Berg from Shot in the Dark and me starting off the festivities. Brian and Chad from Fraters Libertas and John from Power Line take the second shift in their normal start time of 11 am. King Banaian is still in Mongolia -- no, seriously! -- and will join us next week.

Today we will be talking with Steven Vincent's widow on the first anniversary of the author's death in Iraq. We will also speak with state senator Michele Bachmann, currently campaigning for Congress and a recent endorsee of the Rightroots initiative. You can tune us in at AM 1280 The Patriot, or catch our Internet stream at their website or at Townhall. Give us a call at 651-289-4488 to join the conversation -- and don't forget to start your morning off Right!

UPDATE: Lisa Ramaci-Vincent wants to continue Steven's work at her foundation in her memory. Contributors can send cash via PayPal using stevenvincentfoundation@yahoo.com, or to the following address:

Steven Vincent Foundation
534 E. 11th St #18
New York, NY 10009

IG: DoD Did Not Lie To 9/11 Commission

Despite complaints made public by 9/11 Commission members and staff this week, the Department of Defense did not knowingly lie in testimony to the panel, according to the Inspector General. The New York Times reports this morning that the IG's report blames the inaccuracies on poor record-keeping:

The Defense Department’s watchdog agency said Friday that it had no evidence that senior Pentagon commanders intentionally provided false testimony to the Sept. 11 commission about the military’s actions on the morning of the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The agency, the Pentagon’s office of inspector general, said the Defense Department’s initial inaccurate accounts could be attributed largely to poor record-keeping.

The Pentagon initially suggested that the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the military’s domestic air-defense operation, had reacted quickly to reports of the hijackings and had been prepared to intercept and possibly shoot down one of the hijacked planes.

The Sept. 11 commission, which uncovered the inconsistencies in the Pentagon’s account, made a formal request in July 2004 for the inspector general to investigate why senior military officials who testified to the commission had made so many inaccurate statements.

This investigation lasted two years, and yet suddenly it made news this week when the 9/11 Commission members went public with their accusations of perjury. The media jumped all over this, playing up the frustration of the truth-seekers of the panel with the dastardly witnesses determined to keep the truth from them. Now we find out that no one did anything of the sort, but that they had poor record-keeping -- another scandal, but not a conspiracy -- and didn't do enough to correct their assumptions based on those records.

Does anyone else smell a plan to get ahead of the IG's report? Why would the Commission suddenly make this a big issue just before the release of the investigation they themselves requested? It certainly looks like a pre-emptive attack on the DoD by panel members hoping to get the public's blood boiling regardless of what the report would finally indicate. It certainly gave them yet another opportunity to burnish their own image as truth-seekers, when the ABLE DANGER fiasco showed otherwise.

The DoD has problems it needs to fix, and hopefully the report will expedite that effort. However, this cynical ploy by the 9/11 Commission should remind everyone yet again how the members exploited their positions for their own aggrandizement and to shelter the bureaucrats from blame.

UPDATE: A Newer World says that I am misleading readers, in a post titled "More Inattention To Detail". He (?) says that the report got released Friday and so the 9/11 Commission had nothing to do with this story. I know that -- this story exonerates the DoD based on the IG's report. Had ANW bothered checking my links, he would have found that the Washington Post reported on this on Wednesday with the accusations of perjury -- and Dan Eggen based his story on "several commission sources". Readers can judge the motives behind those "commission sources" and attention to detail for themselves.

UPDATE II: ANW has updated again, but still misses the point. Two days before the report was released, "several commission sources" went to Dan Eggen to get their allegations of perjury in print -- without waiting to see what the IG found. They got their headlines and pre-empted the weekend release of the actual report, which found no evidence of perjury. Which version of this story got the most play, and who got to define it first? That was the point of this post. No one disputes that the DoD gave the commission incorrect information. The point is that "commission sources" set out to spin this story ahead of the IG report, a continuation of their efforts to cover a mediocre performance on their own part.

Israeli Commando Raid On Tyre Nets Hezbollah Captives

Israeli naval commandos raided the Mediterranean port of Tyre early Saturday, destroying a missile-launch site and capturing Hezbollah terrorists, including senior members. The operation comes after Israel destroyed the last major road link to Syria, cutting off escape and resupply routes for the beleagured terrorists in Lebanon:

The operation, which was conducted based on military intelligence, targeted terrorists that were responsible for firing long-range rockets at Israel, including those that reached Hadera on Friday.

The commandos entered an apartment building in a crowded residential area in northern Tyre, where they engaged with Hizbullah operatives, including three senior members.

When the elite unit left the apartment, they were fired upon from several directions. IAF aircrafts and drones covered the force and cleared an exit for it. Seven Lebanese were killed in the operation.

Head of Naval intelligence told Army Radio that an aerial assault on the building was avoided since it was not known whether there were civilians in the building. He also mentioned that the ground operation sent a strong message to the fighters, indicating that the IDF can reach deep into Lebanon.

The IDF has now conducted two impressive commando operations far to Hezbollah's rear without much loss. Two commandos received serious wounds in this operation and six others light wounds, while the Baalbek raid resulted in no casualties at all. The efficiency and success demonstrates the difference between a group of zealous terrorists and a professional military force. While zealots may fight with surprising tenacity and insane levels of self-sacrifice, they cannot conduct complicated operations such as these raids, and therefore have little hope of ever beating Israel militarily. That, plus the advantage of Israeli air supremacy, puts Hezbollah at a serious disadvantage in open war.

This is the reason why they objected to Israel's response to what was supposed to be a simple abduction. It's also the reason why Israel and the US object to an immediate cease-fire agreement; Hezbollah retains the advantage in a low-level conflict, and no one expects them to stop fighting one.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah has continued its Baghdad Bob public-relations strategy. They still have not acknowledged that the Israelis they claimed to have trapped in Baalbek do not exist, and now they claim to have repelled the commando forces in Tyre. The Jerusalem Post, however, displays a picture of the results of their missile attack on a road during the raid, which tends to belie the Hezbollah description of events. As for the operatives captured by the IDF, perhaps Al-Manar will tell us that they are on their way to visit Fidel Castro in the hospital ...

Plan B Didn't Work Out Too Well

Floyd Landis got fired from the cycling team Phonak and the Tour de France director indicated that his win would be invalidated as Landis' B sample came back as positive for doping. The second test confirmed the finding of the first, which found unnaturally high levels of testosterone after the 17th stage, when Landis came from behind in spectacular fashion to put himself in position for victory:

Floyd Landis is set to lose his Tour de France title and faces a two-year ban after returning a positive B sample for excessive levels of testosterone. The American's Phonak team dismissed Landis on Saturday when it was confirmed he produced levels more than twice the legal limit after stage 17.

Landis, 30, has said the high levels detected were a "natural occurrence". ...

The official decision to strip Landis of the victory rests with the International Cycling Union (UCI), but Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme said: "It goes without saying that for us Floyd Landis is no longer the winner of the 2006 Tour de France."

The B testing took place with his Spanish attorney present (no word why Landis did not have a French lawyer), and the results confirmed that something happened to Landis that apparently did not occur at any other time in the race. One would presume that if, as Landis states, he naturally produces testosterone at these high levels that he would fail every test he takes. We would have seen this at other testing points in the Tour de France and not just stage 17, at the very least.

Phonak doesn't buy the excuses. They have terminated his association with their team for "violating the team's internal Code of Ethics," which translates to: Landis cheated. They acknowledge that he has more legal options but make clear that they want no part in them, which tends to affirm that they have no faith in Landis' explanation either. Phonak would hardly assist in disqualifying their team's victory in the world's most prestigious cycling event if they though Landis might be telling the truth.

It's a shame, in the literal sense. Landis has embarrassed himself, his team, and the people here in America who celebrated his victory. His doping also tarnishes Lance Armstrong, who had to defend himself against untrue allegations of this variety for years. Landis should consider the option of sparing everyone further embarrassment.

UPDATE: For those who still hold our hope that Landis is just twice as manly as the rest of us, the AP has a little cold water for you:

Floyd Landis was fired by his team and the Tour de France no longer considered him its champion Saturday after his second doping sample tested positive for higher-than-allowed levels of testosterone. The head of France's anti-doping commission said the samples contained synthetic testosterone, indicating that it came from an outside source.

Rightroots: Michele Bachmann Interview Tomorrow

I just took a look at the Rightroots page, and we have had an excellent start to our effort! In just four days we have raised almost $35,000 for the eighteen candidates supported by the Rightroots initiative. The money has been spread around, too. Fourteen of the eighteen have received over $1,000 so far. Diana Irey has been the most popular candidate, pulling in more than $6,500 already. Considering that she had just $160K on hand at the end of June, the money will definitely come in handy. Her opponent, John Murtha, had $1.8 million in his campaign chest, although an amount almost equal to Irey's fund came with no disclosure. Does Murtha have contributors he wants to hide from his constituents?

Another early Rightroots favorite is Michele Bachmann, running for Rep. Mark Kennedy's seat in MN-06 (Kennedy, another Rightroots candidate, is running for Minnesota's open Senate seat). We will be interviewing Michele on our Northern Alliance Radio Network show, which starts at our new time of 9 am CT and can be heard on our Internet stream at Townhall and AM 1280 The Patriot. Be sure to listen tomorrow as we discuss the Rightroots initiative and much more with Michele!

Iran Defies ... Well, Everyone

We have known for years that Iran has funded and sheltered Hezbollah, along with Syria, in an effort to undermine Israel's security. Up to today, Teheran couched that assistance in humanitarian terms, arguing that it wanted to promote the social activities of Hezbollah and its spiritual jihadism. According to Jane's, a respected military publication, Iran will send arms to the non-state militia:

Iran will supply Hezbollah with surface-to-air missile systems in the coming months, boosting the guerrillas' defences against Israeli aircraft, according to a report by specialist magazine Jane's Defence Weekly, citing unnamed Western diplomatic sources.

In a meeting, held late last month, the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militia called on Tehran to "accelerate and extend the scope of weapon shipments from Iran to the Islamic Resistance, particularly advanced missiles against ground and air targets."

Hezbollah's representatives pressed for "an array of more advanced weaponry, including more advanced SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems," Jane's said Friday.

"Iranian authorities conveyed a message to the Hezbollah leadership that their forces would continue to receive a steady supply of weapons systems,"it added.

Iran obviously will not announce this themselves, but Jane's has been a reliable source of military information. If true, it just underscores what we already know about Iran and Hezbollah. The Iranians have not been all that covert about their political support for the terrorist group, and arming them should surprise no one.

However, if one of those missiles ever take out an Israeli aircraft, the Iranians will make themselves an open target for retaliation. Whether Israel decides to act on that will be the question.

UPDATE: Not that Iran is bothering to hide it:

A senior Iranian official admitted for the first time Friday that Tehran did indeed supply long-range Zelzal-2 missiles to Hezbollah.

Mohtashami Pur, a one-time ambassador to Lebanon who currently holds the title of secretary-general of the "Intifada conference," told an Iranian newspaper that Iran transferred the missiles to the Shi'ite militia, adding that the organization has his country's blessing to use the weapons in defense of Lebanon.

Pur's statements are thought to be unusual given that Tehran has thus far been reluctant to comment on the extent of its aid which it has extended to Hezbollah.

For a nation to openly admit arming non-state actors should result in heavy sanctions in the UN, if the UN had any worth. This goes against the very notion of sovereignty and undermines the Westphalian concept of nationhood.

More Racism From The Left

It appears that Democratic racism has spanned the nation from coast to coast. After a Ned Lamont campaign volunteer* posted a blackface picture of Joe Lieberman at the Huffington Post, the leader of the California state senate referred to conservatives demanding an end to illegal immigrations with a racial slur:

The state Senate leader ridiculed some San Diego-area opponents of illegal immigration yesterday by describing them as “crackers,” often used as a disparaging term for poor, white people in the South.

During a media briefing, Oakland Democrat Don Perata was asked about whether it was politically wise going into an election to push a bill that would give illegal immigrants the ability to obtain driver's licenses.

“No. Let's face it. Immigration is a red-meat issue,” Perata said. “You've got all these crackers down in Southern Cal – ah, where is it, San Diego, taking on the governor. You know, even the governor was shocked. He said he was embarrassed, and I agree with him.”

These two events demonstrate yet again the obsession with identity politics that plagues the Democratic Party. One does not see Republican campaign volunteers photoshopping opponents' pictures to make them appear in blackface. No one from the GOP would get away with using a term like "cracker" in an interview, or something similarly objectionable about another ethnic or religious group. Trent Lott got hounded out of his leadership position just for saying something nice (but very foolish) about Strom Thurmond on his 100th birthday, and he never even mentioned race at all.

Will Democrats take Peralta to the woodshed? Will Leftists finally reject identity politics and rely on rational argument instead of scare tactics in their campaigning? It seems doubtful. Instead of the kind of outrage that we saw on the Right when Lott blew it at Strom's birthday, we will likely get a whole lot of insincere apologies for any offense we take, and a long explanation about how it's our fault that Democrats play the race/ethnic card.

That's worn so thin it's transparent -- to everyone but the Left.

* - Jane Hamsher helped shoot an Internet campaign ad and traveled extensively with the Lamont campaign. That qualifiers her as a campaign volunteer in my estimation; YMMV.

Cooking The Books In DC

Despite the coming disaster in entitlement spending, just the mention of entitlement reform brings yawns and not-so-surreptitious glances at watches. One of the reasons why the issue gets such low interest from the public is that the costs do not appear in financial reporting for the government. Thanks to the adherence to rules that the government forbids businesses to use, the budget deficit has been chronically and vastly underreported for decades. This practice goes back through administrations of both parties, and Congress under control of both as well.

Remember how we balanced the budget and ran surpluses in the 1990s? Well, we didn't, and we didn't even come close.

My new post at the Heritage Foundation Policy Blog discusses the problem in some detail. The discrepancy arises from the government's decision not to report retirement benefit commitments in the year made, but in the year paid. The SEC strictly forbids this practive in private enterprise because it distorts a company's valuation; once the commitment is made, the company cannot simply rescind it. However, the federal government rationalizes its decision to violate this same principle on the basis that Congress can simply vote to stop paying Medicare and Social Security benefits whenever it desires.

Not only does that distort the deficit picture, but the government doesn't provide audited balance sheets from a quarter of federal agencies, so there's no way to tell exactly how much money was spent. While Congress forces publicly held corporations to waste billions on Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, 25% of the agencies -- including the largest, Defense -- produce records so poor that no auditor will approve them.

If the government truthfully reported the deficits adding up each year, we would get an outcry for entitlement reform like no one has ever heard. Be sure to read the entire post.

Not The End

One of my favorite columnists, E.J. Dionne, asks an interesting question about the future of conservatism in today's Washington Post. It relates to the ongoing debate over whether conservatives should stay within the GOP or create an ideologically pure movement:

Is conservatism finished?

What might have seemed an absurd question less than two years ago is now one of the most important issues in American politics. The question is being asked -- mostly quietly but occasionally publicly -- by conservatives themselves as they survey the wreckage of their hopes, and as their champions in the Republican Party use any means necessary to survive this fall's elections. ...

President Bush, his defenders say, has pioneered a new philosophical approach, sometimes known as "big-government conservatism." The most articulate defender of this position, the journalist Fred Barnes, argues that Bush's view is "Hamiltonian" as in Alexander, Thomas Jefferson's rival in the early republic. Bush's strategy, Barnes says, "is to use government as a means to achieve conservative ends."

Kudos to Barnes for trying bravely to make sense of what to so many others -- including some in conservative ranks -- seems an incoherent enterprise. But I would argue that this is the week in which conservatism, Hamiltonian or not, reached the point of collapse.

I doubt that many conservatives would defend Bush for creating "big-government conservatism", an oxymoron under any circumstances. In fact, the conservative base has been most restive about his spending habits and that of the leadership in Congress, which has completely abandoned the tenets of conservatism in federal government. On domestic policy, the last five years look much more like Rockefeller Republicanism than any brand of conservatism espoused over the last generation.

In that sense, conservatism has definitely moved to life support. The conservative movement has grown so frustrated with what they see as a giveaway administration that an open debate broke out among conservative pundits about the benefits of forming a third party and breaking away from the GOP altogether. That debate may have receded with the midterms approaching, but it will surely come back to the front burner in the next session of Congress.

However, the truth about ruling coalitions in democracies is that power comes from a big tent, not a narrow ideological group. Conservatives who believe that they must purge the party of unbelievers tend to forget that 25% of the votes win one nothing in a representative democracy. The only manners in which an ideological group can control the levers of governent are either by convincing a majority of people to agree with this ideology in toto or to align themselves with enough other groups to hold a majority. Parliamentary democracies do this through multiple parties and explicit coalition-building after the election; Americans do it by convincing voters to vote in one of two coalitions at election time.

Conservatism, just like progressivism and socialism, won't end with one particular election cycle. Hell, socialism has shown itself as a train wreck everywhere it has been tried, and we still have die-hard socialists in the Democratic Party attempting to implement as much of their agenda as possible. Dionne is a bit inaccurate in his description, because we still haven't seen conservatism actually used as a template for government since the Reagan administration. We do see conservative judicial nominations, which has been the part of the agenda we did manage to win in this coalition over the last six years -- but even then we had to wage an open battle with the Bush administration to get it.

Coalitons come and go, and the influence of their component groups wax and wane. The survival of conservatism relies on the intellectual vitality of its philosophical thinkers and the ability to convince people of its applicablity. The conservative movement has plenty of gas left. If anything, the big-spending habits of this generation of Republican leadership will motivate us to press harder for our candidates and our goals.

The Unbearable Lightness Of Ned Lamont's Honesty

This week has provided some revelation about the honesty of Ned Lamont, whose primary run to unseat Joe Lieberman has captured the nation's attention. Earlier today I posted about his sudden case of amnesia when one of his key blogosphere supporters decided to use race-baiting to attack Lieberman on Lamont's behalf. Now it appears that Lamont used Wal-Mart, the liberal bete noir, as a punching bag without telling anyone that he owned a chunk of the retailer's stock:

Connecticut millionaire businessman Ned Lamont, who sharply criticized the employment practices of Wal-Mart this week in his campaign to unseat Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Democrat primary, owns stock in the company, Senate records reveal.

"This is about waking up Wal-Mart, and this is also about waking up corporate America," Mr. Lamont said Wednesday at a Bridgeport rally against the retail giant, hosted by many of the same liberal bloggers who have boosted the former cable executive far ahead of Mr. Lieberman in the polls.

But Mr. Lamont and his family are part owners of the company, according to financial disclosure records he filed earlier this year with the secretary of the Senate. Mr. Lamont, his wife and a dependent child own as much as $31,000 in Wal-Mart stock.

Mr. Lamont and his wife jointly own two accounts containing as much as $16,000 in Wal-Mart stock. Their Wal-Mart holdings spin off as much as $3,500 in annual dividends. In addition, a trust fund he set up for one of his children contains as much as $15,000 in Wal-Mart stock and spins off as much as $1,000 in dividends.

In his remarks at the anti-Wal-Mart rally this week, Mr. Lamont never mentioned his shareholder status in the company. He did, however, criticize Mr. Lieberman for not doing more during this three terms in the Senate to help the workers he says are so mistreated by Wal-Mart.

These purchases do not come from a market fund or retirement portfolio. The Lamonts deliberately purchased Wal-Mart stock for themselves and their child. One presumes that the Lamonts did so because of Wal-Mart's performance and delivery of dividends to their stockholders -- all of which come from the same business practices that Lamont publicly blasted this week.

It gets worse. While he and his family continued to get thousands of dollars in dividends, Lamont supporters castigated Lieberman at the event for taking a one-time donation from Wal-Mart's PAC of $1,000. Lieberman says he sent the money back, but will Lamont's supporters now demand to know what their candidate did with his Wal-Mart money.

Lamont bills himself as a new kind of politician, but from what we've seen this week, he looks like the same old model we see too often in Washington: dishonest and hypocritical.

Run Away!

After Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's maiden speech focused on the critical need for entitlement reform, done on a bipartisan basis, we hoped that this would prompt a new dialog on correcting the bloated programs to stave off the impending finanical crisis they will cause. Today's Washington Post editorial scolds the Democrats for rejecting this promising start for Paulson:

YOU MIGHT THINK that a call from the new Treasury secretary for reform of entitlements would get a respectful hearing from Democrats. If entitlement programs are not reformed, they will squeeze out other spending programs that Democrats care about; they will create a budget crunch that no responsible party could want. But some Democrats do not appear to understand this. Yesterday an e-mail sent out on behalf of Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, dismissed Henry M. Paulson Jr.'s comments on "privatizing" Social Security, adding that this policy has been "soundly rejected by the American people." ...

[T]he idea that the American people rejected Mr. Bush's plan is only half true. The president failed to get traction not least because Democrats were doing their best to scare voters into thinking that their retirement checks would be confiscated.

Pelose wants nothing to do with entitlement reform, rejecting even the thought of discussing it on a bipartisan basis. This ignores the coming burden even if no new benefits get added to Medicare and Social Security. Entitlement spending under current rules will increase the cost of these programs from 8% of GDP currently to 17% of GDP in 2060 -- which is almost the same level as the entire federal budget today.

Democrats apparently don't want to solve problems; they just want to blame and complain. This demonstrates just more of the same. Pelosi and her party want to grab control of Congress with no plan to deal with the largest financial issue facing the United States. If the Republicans have not been perfect on budget and spending -- and they have been far from it -- at least they have the courage to address the problems and try to reach solutions.

Don't Stand So Close To Me

John Dickerson in Slate takes Ned Lamont to task for feigning ignorance of the blogroots he cultivated in his run for Joe Lieberman's seat now that one of the blogroots leaders has embarrassed his campaign. While everyone understands that Jane Hamsher ran the minstrel-show photoshop of Lieberman on her own accord, Lamont clearly lied about knowing nothing of blogs and bloggers:

"I don't know anything about the blogs," he said according to Dan Balz in the Washington Post. "I'm not responsible for those. I have no comment on them."

Oh my.

If Lamont wants to get to Washington, he's going to need to learn one of the most important senatorial clichés: "I'd like to revise and extend my remarks." He can't run from the bloggers. And he can't run from Hamsher, who has raised money for him, boosted him tirelessly, and even helped him shoot a video blog. He's their guy. He put Markos Moulitsas, the founder of DailyKos, in a campaign ad. Bloggers are integrated into his Web site. One contributor to a Connecticut blog designed a fabulous float depicting the Bush-Lieberman kiss. It has been used to lampoon Lieberman across the state and is used in this Lamont ad. He can't say the bloggers aren't his problem now.

Lamont, who thus far remains the "not Lieberman" choice, is also missing a chance to be senatorial. His spokeswoman denounced Hamsher. Why didn't he? The campaign asked Hamsher to take down the image from her post; she did, and then offered the non-apology preferred by loutish boyfriends—I'm sorry if I made you upset. Lamont should have gone further to show some spine.

The rise of Ned Lamont has been impressive, speaking as someone who can appreciate the power of the blogosphere conceptually, putting aside partisan concerns. Lamont has plenty of his own money, but what he lacked was political traction -- until Markos Moulitsas and Hamsher decided to savage Lieberman in the primary. He has come from nowhere to outpoll a longtime incumbent, a man who ran as his party's Vice Presidential candidate just six years ago. That journey came courtesy of the netroots, at least in part.

That's why the sudden amnesia on bloggers sounds so false. Hamsher accompanied him on at least one television appearance, and she shot an Internet advertisement for his campaign -- with Lamont in front of the camera. (Hamsher has experience as a Hollywood producer; her list of producer credits tends to lean towards serial murder, starting with Natural Born Killers.) Blogs have raised money for Lamont, campaigned for Lamont, and served as his attack dogs against Lieberman, allowing Lamont and his official campaign to take the high road.

Dickerson says that this will serve as a cautionary tale not to get too involved with bloggers. However, there's really no difference between dealing with bloggers and dealing with 527s or any other groups over which a campaign has no power to control the message. The real cautionary tale teaches that feigning ignorance makes a politician look like a liar. When Sister Souljah made incendiary racial comments during Bill Clinton's first campaign, Clinton didn't pretend not to know who she was or to make the excuse that the rapper had no "official" position in his campaign. He turned on her and scolded her for her race-baiting in a move that bolstered Clinton among moderates, and made clear that he was in charge of his own campaign.

Lamont could learn a lesson from Clinton -- except that Clinton's campaigning for Lamont's opponent.

There's Gotta Be Irony In Here Somewhere

Israeli PM Ehud Olmert has told an interviewer that he wants German troops in any international force protecting the Jewish state. I'm really not kidding:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he would welcome German troops participating in an international force in southern Lebanon, according to a newspaper interview published Friday. ...

Olmert said he told Merkel that Israel has "absolutely no problem with German soldiers in southern Lebanon."

"Why should German soldiers shoot at Israel? They would be part of the force protecting Israel," Olmert was quoted as saying in the interview with the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

"There is at the moment no nation that is behaving in a more friendly way toward Israel than Germany," he added. "If Germany can contribute to the security of the Israeli people, that would be a worthwhile task for your country. I would be very happy if Germany participated."

So now we have the spectacle of another genocidal nutcase threatening to kill off millions of Jews in the form of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the nation that will protect them will be the last nation with the same genocidal impulse, if Olmert gets his way. Not that the Germans still have that illness -- they lost it sometime during the Nuremberg trials, for the most part. However, the historical irony is too great to simply dismiss -- and some Israelis with living memory of the Holocaust may find the irony more than just a historical curiosity.

Olmert knows that international troops will eventually get deployed in southern Lebanon, and the question will be which countries contribute. America has already ruled out another military commitment, a move that is questionable considering our fight against terrorism; where better to find it? Canadians would probably make a great choice, but they do not seem enthusiastic about the mission at this point. The UK has stretched itseld in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the French .. think that Iran is a stabilizing force in the area.

The Germans look pretty good at this point, history notwithstanding. However, Germany's Angela Merkel has demurred, and probably for more reasons than just overcommitment in Afghanistan. A real peacekeeping force will have to open fire on anyone violating a DMZ. Can anyone imagine the public relations nightmare if German forces started shooting Jews, which has to be considered as a theoretical possibility? That may be why Olmert wants the Germans in southern Lebanon, but Merkel is rightly leery about that assignment.

TN Primary A Corker

Bob Corker has won the GOP nomination in the Tennessee primary to see who will attempt to hold Bill Frist's seat in November. Corker took almost half of the vote, easily outpacing his two rivals, who have already conceded:

Former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate on Thursday after a bitter primary campaign to decide the party's nominee to replace Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist.

With 82 percent of precincts reporting, Corker had 190,490, or 48 percent of the vote, to Bryant's 136,993, or 35 percent. Hilleary had 64,758, or 16 percent. ...

Corker will face Democratic U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. in November. Ford, who had no serious opposition in the Democratic primary, had 262,115 votes, or 80 percent, with 82 percent of precincts reporting.

Ford, who hosted a Nashville fundraiser Thursday night with former President Clinton, would be the first black U.S. senator elected in the South since Reconstruction.

Corker's win will put a serious dent in Ford's ambitions. Among the three candidates, Ford fares worst against the Chattanooga mayor. According to a Rasmussen poll from July 16, Corker has a double-digit lead against Ford, 49-37. In fact, Ford trailed all three Republicans in head-to-head polling, and suffers a 41% unfavorable rating in Tennessee -- a high but not completely insurmountable obstacle to office.

Ford has two big problems in his run for the Senate -- his family and the state of Tennessee. The Fords had a political dynasty running in the Volunteer State, and as it turns out, his uncle tried turning that into a family business a la the Corleone Family. The feds indicted former State Senator John Ford on bribery and extortion charges after a two-year investigation into his consulting business, topped off with his threats to kill FBI agents involved in the case. None of this involves Harold Ford Jr, but since the seat he now holds got handed to him by his father, family isn't exactly irrelevant in this case.

Ford would have problems in any case due to the conservative nature of Tennessee. Ford himself is a moderate, not given to the wilder positions of his colleagues in the caucus. In fact, Ford supported the war in Iraq, although he has backtracked enough to keep himself clear of the activist Left currently attacking Joe Lieberman. When one looks at Ford's voting record in the House, one again has to wonder why Lieberman -- with his solid record of support for liberal causes -- gets all the wrath and Ford gets all the support. He self-identifies as a Blue Dog Democrat, and has voted to abolish partial-birth abortion (twice) and to restrict interstate transport of minors to get abortions. He voted for a Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. He also voted for restrictions on attorney's fees on class-action lawsuits.

Compare that to Lieberman, and the Left looks more and more incoherent every day.

It still won't help, however. Ford's influence has never extended much beyond his Memphis power base, and Tennessee went for George Bush in a big way, 57%-43%. Even Tennessee independents broke sharply to Bush in 2004. Ford faces an uphill battle against Corker, especially now that the primaries have concluded.

Castro: I Believe In HIPAA

Fidel Castro released a new statement to his island of adoring subjects [cough, cough] this evening. In deep appreciation for their concerns, he told Cubans to mind their own business about the state of his health:

In a statement attributed to Fidel Castro that has only fuelled the rumours surrounding his health, the Cuban leader said that his medical condition was a "state secret" and that it would require the "passage of time" to assess his recovery.

He added that he was feeling "fairly well", according to the words read on his behalf by a state television presenter.

"I cannot invent good news, because that wouldn't be ethical. And if the news were bad, the only one to benefit is the enemy," he said in his statement.

He couldn't invent his brother Raul, either, who didn't bother to make this statement on his big brother's behalf. No one knows where Dear Placeholder has hidden himself, but the lack of clear command has some Cubans worried, according to the London Telegraph. For a populace used to Fidel speeches that give new meaning to the word "interminable", the fact that the Commandante passed this short statement onto the nearby TV anchor shows just how serious the situation is.

It's not just rank-and-file citizens, either. Cubans reported new troop movements around the island, especially in Guantanamo, where dissidents say the government has them trapped. The Cuban diaspora, perhaps sensing a momentous change coming, have started making preparations for a massive boatlift if control dissipates in Cuba.

No one appears to know what's happening in Cuba, and that's a bad recipe for this military dictatorship.

Is Anyone Buying This?

The latest news on the diplomatic front of the Hezbollah-provoked war in southern Lebanon has the Europeans convincing Syria to pressure their terrorist proxies into accepting a cease-fire. According to Ynet News, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad has agreed to get Hezbollah to allow Israel to stop shooting at them:

The European Union has enlisted Syria's help to end the fighting in Lebanon as Damascus pledged support to the Lebanese government's plan for a settlement.

EU envoy and Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said following talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad Thursday, Damascus agreed to play a constructive role in settling the conflict by pressing Hizbullah to accept a ceasefire. ...

He said Syria backs Siniora's seven-point plan to end the conflict. "Hizbullah's present stance is unanimous with the government, and Premier Siniora represents all Lebanese parties, including Hizbullah.["]

Syria has agreed to push Hezbollah into winning the conflict by getting everything for which they started this war. The Siniora 7-point plan is:

* Immediate ceasefire
* Return of "refugees"
* Exchange of Lebanese and Israeli prisoners
* Settlement of Shebaa Farms
* Extending Lebanese control into southern Lebanon
* Disarming all militias
* Enlarging the UN force and reviving the 1949 armistice between Lebanon and Israel

All of these issues will have to get addressed at some point, so none of this sounds outrageous on its face. However, at least some of this was supposed to be done in 2000 when Israel pulled out of Lebanon. The UN Security Council demanded the disarming of all militias in UNSC resolution 1559 as well as the deployment of the Lebanese Army to secure the south. The UN force predates the original Israeli occupation and has proven useless in keeping Hezbollah from conducting terrorist activity.

These demands amount to nothing more than an Israeli capitulation under the terms offered here. Hezbollah and Lebanon are only entitled to swap for prisoners of war, not for Lebanese criminals in Israeli jails. They want Israel to endorse the very reasons Hezbollah started this war in the settlement, before Hezbollah verifiably disarms. That's not a promising development -- it's the same ploy Mussolini used to get Europe to the table in Munich, and the same nations have fallen for it again.

If anyone thinks that this represents some move towards a compromise, then they have not paid much attention to this conflict. Syria would be delighted to broker this deal, and Israel would have to have rocks in its collective head to approve it. The time for these negotiations was over when Hezbollah abducted two soldiers and killed eight more in their initial invasion.

Oh, So That's Not What You Meant By 'Stabilizing'?

Sacre bleu! The French just figured out exactly what kind of stabilization Iran has in mind for the Middle East. Just days after his jaw-dropping description of the radical Iranian mullahcracy as a "stabilizing force" in the region, the French Foreign Minister had to eat his words:

Days after calling Iran a "stabilizing" force in the Middle East, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy issued a statement harshly criticizing Iran's call on Thursday to destroy Israel.

"I totally condemn these words," Douste-Blazy said on France-Inter radio, in response to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement Thursday that the solution to the current Middle East crisis was to destroy Israel.

"Peace and security in Lebanon and its borders has to be preserved by the Lebanese government and people. Deployment of foreign forces is not acceptable in any shape unless it is just, based on UN rules and preserves the unity and territorial integrity of Lebanon," he said.

The words are "absolutely unacceptable on anyone's part, especially from a head of state," Douste-Blazy said.

Douste-Blazy said that the crisis had presented an opportunity for Iran to "show that it can play a positive and stabilizing role in the region," but added that Ahmadinejad's statement "confirmed that this is not the case."

Not to be rude, but no s**t, Sherlock. And France wonders why no one trusts them? It doesn't take a genius to understand that someone who keeps asking Europe to dismantle a sovereign nation and move them onto the Continent isn't interested in "stabilizing" the region. I'm not sure what Phillipe Douste-Blazy actually does for a living, but it certainly has nothing to do with actually reading what Iranian leaders have written and spoken for the last several months.

Perhaps Douste-Blazy has had a Road To Damascus moment today. At least one can hope that someone with the demonstrable cluelessness of Douste-Blazy has the capacity for some intellectual growth. Now maybe we can get some real progress not just on allowing Israel to complete its mission against Hezbollah but also regarding the mullahcracy's nuclear-weapons programs.

In the meantime, though, CQ would like to give Douste-Blazy the Captain Louis Renault award for being shocked, shocked! that Iran plays a malevolent role in international affairs. Notre Capitaine had an epiphany at the end of Casablanca about working with appeasers and collaborators in their pursuit of genocide. Dare we hope that Douste-Blazy also tosses the Vichy water into the trash and thinks about starting a beautiful friendship with the West?

A Good Dog Goes To Her Reward

Cory: 1994 - 2006

For every tear we shed today, she brought us a thousand smiles. We will always have her in our hearts, and we pray that she will be somewhere where the sun always shines.

UPDATE: Thank you all for your lovely comments and memories of your own beloved pets. I especially liked the Rainbow Bridge, which the veterinarian gave us as a memento when our other dog Angel had to be put down earlier this summer. I was in the hospital when that happened.

It turned out that Cory had a bad case of peritonitis, which always comes as a secondary issue. It would have taken exploratory surgery to find the root cause, and the vet was pretty certain she wouldn't make it anyway -- and we would have had no good reason to think that she could have survived the underlying disease at her age. One of the most difficult aspects of being a responsible pet owner is knowing when to stop. She would have spent the next few weeks in the university hospital in pain with no real chance of living a good life afterwards. We had to let her go, but making that decision was heartbreaking.

We're trying to recall all the good times we had with her instead of focusing on the last week. I want to make the point that Guide Dogs of San Rafael gave us Cory for the FM, and they do marvelous work. If you're inclined to pick a charity for some contribution, it's a good group to support.

Rightroots: Glad To Know Jack

We just received a message from Jack Kingston regarding the challenge he issued on our Tueday launch. Rep. Kingston offered to donate $14,000 to the eighteen Rightroots candidates if we could raise $26,000 by midnight Friday. We've surpassed that with more than 36 hours to go!

Rep. Kingston says:

Way to go! I'm proud to be a member of this team. And I'll start cutting the checks!

Now let's keep it going. George Soros hopes we'll stop. Let's be sure to disappoint him.

-Jack

Let's all keep cutting the checks -- and keep pushing hard for these critical races!

UPDATE: I had the total wrong, as Jhn'1 in the comments notes -- Rep. Kingston donated a total of $14,000 to the candidates, not $100 each. Just when you think you know Jack ...

Walk, Don't Run 2006

According to the Washington Note, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has made Hillary Clinton an offer she will probably refuse. Reid, with his eyes on Clinton's negatives, has offered to step down from his leadership position in favor of Hillary -- as long as she pledges not to run for President in 2008:

Some high level Democratic Party political insiders have shared with TWN details of a potential shift in vectors for several of the major political stars in that party.

First of all, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, whom most give high marks for the manner in which he has stewarded the Dems in the Senate despite the absence of a clear Democratic Party chief, has sent private signals to Senator Hillary Clinton and other stalwarts of the party that he "would like to" step down from his post in early 2009. Reid has not stated definitively that he will -- but he apparently prefers "whipping" the Party from behind and the side rather than serving as commander-in-chief on the Senate floor.

What Reid is offering Senator Hillary Clinton is his total, robust support to succeed him as Senate Majority Leader if she elects not to pursue the Democratic nomination for President.

Many are realizing that the electoral map is not something one can wave a magic wand over and reverse the views of 42% of Americans who believe that they know Hillary Clinton well and have strongly formed views of her and will not vote for her under any conditions -- according to recent polls. Reports are that Senator Clinton herself knows this and that her own enthusiasm for running actually trails that of her husband, her advisors, and her staff -- whose enthusiasm for the race is ranked in that order with Hillary the least enthusiastic.

Imagine that -- Bill wants to get back to the White House, only this time without the bother of running things -- at least, not officially. Quelle surprise!

If true, it appears that the Democrats may have less enthusiasm than first thought for a Hillary bid. If Hillary has an enthusiasm problem, then Reid made the right call in proposing this face-saving alternative. She would provide a boon for fundraising and Republican GOTV efforts in 2008, just when the Democrats have a numerical advantage in contesting the Senate. A Hillary candidacy would have the same motivational impact on the GOP as a Jeb Bush run would with the Democrats.

My gut tells me that voters will want someone in the White House not named Clinton or Bush for the first time in 20 years come November 2008. The Democrats run the risk of Bush-Clinton fatigue if Hillary wins the nomination.

In an update, Steve Clemons notes that Reid strenuously denies this report. However, Clemons says he will stick with his sources.

AOL Will Try Giving Itself Away

One of the earliest on-line experiences for home computer users came from America On Line, known better now by its initials AOL. It started service in 1989 as an exclusively Apple service, but gained popularity by providing squeaky-clean content in a single user-friendly interface for computer neophtytes. It took several years before AOL allowed its users to access the wilds of the Internet, but eventually dominated that market as well. At its peak, AOL had over 26 million paid subscribers to its service.

Unfortunately, those days have long since passed. With the broadband revolution, AOL's dial-up services are increasingly anachronistic, and their subscriber base has begun a steep decline. After losing close to 40%, AOL has decided on a new strategy -- giving itself away:

Time Warner, the symbol of the early dotcom rise and fall, geared up for a last desperate throw of the dice yesterday. In an attempt to save its ailing AOL internet business, which has been rapidly losing lucrative American users, Time Warner is turning its back on its well established subscription model. AOL will offer its distinctive services such as email and web security free to anyone with broadband, relying on the revenues generated by online advertising. ...

AOL has lost nine million customers in almost four years, slumping from a high of 26.7 million in September 2002 to 17.7 million at the end of June this year. The rate has been increasing as dial-up users migrate to broadband. Attempts to get into the broadband market have been hampered by the make-up of the US cable and telephone market. It has tried to sign wholesale deals with network companies to use their pipes for a broadband product but with little success.

As a result AOL's dial-up users have to pick a rival broadband service if they want super-fast internet access. To make up for the lack of broadband access, AOL has made its services available to broadband users for a monthly fee - generally about $15. About 6.2 million Americans who have broadband provided by someone else pay for this service. But as consumers become more web savvy they have been realising that they can get free email from the likes of Google and they are dumping AOL.

"Our members don't want to leave," said Mr Bewkes. "They want to keep using AOL and they tell us that the number one reason that they leave AOL when they switch to broadband is price, so now we are fixing that problem. We are going to stop sending our members to our competitors."

I'm surprised that AOL took this long to figure out their problem, and I'm still not sure they understand it fully. Broadband only represents one reason for their decline. The other comes from the natural expertise developed by Internet users and the wide availablity of content.

AOL built its business on its one-stop interface and exclusive content. At one time, Internet users without AOL had little choice in general-interest content, or at least a limited way to access it. With AOL, one could find reference materials, news services, magazines, chat rooms, e-mail, gaming, and a wide variety of other content in one spot. The Internet, without that powerful interface, was uncharted territory for most casual users. That changed with the advent of Yahoo!, Google, and other navigational sites. Instead of relying on AOL's slow-loading interface, netsurfers could find their content quickly and reliably, using just a web browser.

AOL had one other key asset -- its reliable and national dial-up service. Straight Internet providers rarely could provide that kind of ease, at least not at first. For those users who traveled frequently, AOL gave them a fully portable account where e-mail and stored information could easily get accessed. Web mail sites, offering their services for free, eroded that advantage over the last few years.

Broadband has not been quite the bogeyman painted by the Guardian in this article. AOL recognized the issue of charging a dial-up subscription rate for users who wanted faster access. They developed the Bring Your Own Access plan, which cost users only $4.95 per month to access the service outside of their dial-up servers. It still required the AOL software to be installed on the computer, however, with all of its overhead and slow responses magnified by the speed of regular Internet surfing.

Will the new model work for AOL? Hopefully; those of us with Internet sites hope that Internet advertising becomes a successful model for content providers. AOL may in the end suffer from its almost-inherently anachronistic approach. In a world of expert Internet users and ever-easier methods of netsurfing, who really needs the handholding that AOL offers?

Now Murtha Wants To Surrender For Other Nations

Rep. John Murtha has demanded an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq for months. Now he's demanding another stand-down, but this time he's telling Israel to declare defeat and go home:

Pennsylvania's Rep. John Murtha said yesterday that he favored an immediate cease-fire in the fighting in Lebanon. ...

Mr. Murtha, speaking yesterday at a Post-Gazette editorial board meeting, was asked if he favored a cease-fire in the campaign north of Israel's border.

"I think so," he said. "I think it would be very difficult to justify continuing on."

Referring to the Bush administration's position, he said: "You know, they say, 'Well, we want a long-term cease-fire.' It seems to me you start with a cease-fire, and then you try to work out the details long term. If you don't, and you continue to have heavy-handed military action -- and I support heavy-handed military action because it saves your own troops -- but it creates enemies, and that's the problem we have."

Mr. Murtha said the fighting risked hardening against Israel the "hearts and minds" of Lebanese civilians within the general population, beyond Israel's entrenched enemies in the Shiite militia.

John Murtha has made himself into the paragon of Democratic tenacity in wartime, only now he wants Israel to follow his example -- after Hezbollah attacked them. He trots out the same old "hearts and minds" line that we have heard since Viet Nam, only he fails to realize that for Israel, surrender will not endear it to their neighbors. Israel withdrew from Lebanon six years ago, and Hezbollah has lobbed missiles and conducted border raids ever since. Surrender has not worked for the Israelis; Islamists hate them just the same, and only get emboldened by their efforts to act peacefully.

For this reason, as well as for his impulse to declare fellow Marines guilty of murder without benefit of trial, Murtha will have a tougher time convincing his constituents to return him to Congress. Many of them supported the veteran Marine because of his service record, and understandably so. However, Murtha has dissipated that asset with this kind of incessant defeatism and knee-jerk capitulationism. Considering that Bush probably won this district in 2004 (gerrymanderings makes it difficult to say definitively), the Republicans certainly have a shot at a win here in PA-12.

Some have challenged the wisdom of including Diana Irey in our Rightroots campaign, which has raised over $25,000 to date for the eighteen races we selected. Irey leads all fundraisers at Rightroots, with over $5,000 in contributions. Given Murtha's wide lead in fundraising and his electoral record, that skepticism is understandable. (The Florida Masochist elected us his Knuckleheads of the Day for being, well, masochists.) I don't share his defeatism. Murtha ran unopposed in 2004, but a lot has happened since then, and none of it reflects well on Murtha. Despite his financial advantage, which we hope to dent just a bit, he's going to be vulnerable to a serious challenge in the fall.

We don't win by ducking a fight. We learned that despite John Murtha and his defeatism, and we want to work as hard as we can to replace him with someone who supports a forward strategy for the war on terror -- someone who understands that terrorists do not abide by cease fires and the rules of war. Diana Irey deserves our support in showing the courage to challenge John Murtha for his Congressional seat, and I'm pleased to have her as part of our Rightroots initiative.

Where's Raul-do?

The world's most celebrated younger brother has apparently come down with a case of shyness. Four days after Fidel Castro handed the reins of power to his brother Raul, the relief dictator has yet to make an appearance to his subjects. Raul's absence has triggered a sense of unease on the island, and people have begun asking questions about the nature of power on the island for the first time in decades:

In this island capital's long bus-stop lines and open markets, its offices and restaurants, the question keeps popping up: Where's Raúl?

Raúl Castro has yet to appear in public since being named temporary president of Cuba late Monday. His absence is adding a layer of intrigue to the speculation-heavy ambience that has settled over this city. It was two days ago that the Cuban government announced that Fidel Castro -- who is recovering from intestinal surgery -- would relinquish his 47-year hold on power to his younger brother.

"I think Raúl should have appeared by now, more than anything to calm the public and to show the world that everything is under control," said Joel, a taxi driver, who did not want to divulge his last name for fear of government reprisals.

Cuba's government has not made an official proclamation about Fidel Castro's health since late Tuesday evening, even as Cuban exiles and some U.S. officials have questioned whether the Cuban leader, whose 80th birthday is this month, has already died. The closest to an official statement was delivered in an unlikely forum on Wednesday when Ricardo Alarcón, the Cuban National Assembly president, told NPR's "All Thing Considered" that Fidel Castro would not return to power for "some weeks."

In a national crisis, the first action of any rational government -- especially personality-cult dictatorships -- is to assure people that the government is still in control. We have had our own experiences with that here in the US, after presidential assassinations, deaths, and illnesses. On one occasion, the impulse was strong enough to cause a great deal of embarrassment to Alexander Haig, who seemed to have forgotten that the Vice President outranked the Secretary of State.

If anything, governments err on the side of too much reassurance, not too little. Leaving the appearance of a power vacuum creates the same amount of danger as a real power vacuum, because under these circumstances appearances probably do not lie. And power vacuums invite all sorts of responses to the need to fill them.

After almost five decades in power, the Castro regime surely knows this. So why are Cubans being forced to ask where Dear Placeholder has hidden himself? One has to wonder whether the transfer of power to Raul went as smoothly as first indicated, and whether Fidel is in any shape to enforce it.

UPDATE: US News & World Report has an excellent Q&A on this topic with Brian Latell:

Q. Do you think Castro is signaling that he is nearly ready to step down?

A. I think it even goes beyond that. I think that Raúl Castro is now the senior partner in the Cuban leadership. The transfer of power actually began in early June, and now it's official. I have my doubts that Fidel is ever going to get back in the saddle and run things again the way he did. Even if he survives, I think his condition is going to be so weakened that Raúl is going to be running the show.

Q. Who is Raúl Castro, and how likely is it that he will retain the reins of power if Fidel abdicates or dies?

A. As I show in After Fidel, the first biography ever written about Raúl Castro, he lacks many of Fidel's leadership qualities. He doesn't do speeches very well, doesn't like to give speeches, doesn't have the same kind of direct contact with the Cuban people that Fidel has always had. He is not an intellectual like Fidel. He likes to stay in the background. But he has many other qualities that compensate. He is very, very smart, and he is powerful. He is the regime's best organizer, an experienced manager and organization man. He will run Cuba very differently, with a more collective leadership, sharing responsibilities--and titles--with other civilian and military officials. He won't be the constant center of attention, the single source of authority that Fidel has been all these years.

But I think it is likely that Raúl will retain power. He has the support of the three most powerful institutions in Cuba. He runs the military, the security and intelligence services, and is now the dominant force in the Communist Party.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

UPDATE II: Val at Babalublog also wants to play Where's Raul-do. He's hearing all sorts of conflicting reports, but he's staying on top of everything there. Be sure to keep checking back at Babalublog.

The True Purpose Of The Cease Fire

At least one world leader has given an honest assessment of why an immediate cease fire should occur in the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict, now entering its fourth week. Oddly enough -- or not -- that world leader runs Iran:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday the solution to the Middle East crisis was to destroy Israel, state-media reported.

In a speech during an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders in Malaysia, Ahmadinejad also called for an immediate cease-fire to end the fighting between Israel and the Iranian-backed group Hizbullah.

"Although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented," Ahmadinejad said, according to state-run television in a report posted on its Web site Thursday.

Ahmadinejad made these comments at a hastily-arranged summit of Muslim nations in an attempt to get more support for Iran's proxy in Lebanon. He implored the other leaders to cut any ties they may have with Israel and to unite together to destroy it, as well as isolate the United States and UK. Unlike others insisting on an immediate cessation of hostilities, Ahmadinejad rejected the notion of an international peacekeeping force, claiming that the Lebanese should retain sole responsibility for the area.

While this may be a rather extreme example, it does show the general purpose of the cease-fire demands. After all, who exactly would take responsibility for that agreement? Israel would, and Lebanon would be their partner. However, Lebanon has yet to bring Hezbollah under control, which is the entire problem. The Lebanese government can't disarm the terrorists, and it's still a large question as to whether they would if they had the ability.

Cease-fire agreements have to have two responsible partners, both willing to enforce the pact. That doesn't exist in southern Lebanon any more than it does in Gaza and the West Bank, where Israel has plenty of experience with this concept. A cease fire at this stage does nothing but handcuff Israel and allow Hezbollah back into southern Lebanon to re-arm and restart the war.

Of course, Iran favors this because, as Ahmadinejad said, it would be a first step to the destruction of Israel. Oe wonders why other nations, supposedly Israel's Western allies, favor this strategy as well.

New Dawn Coming This Saturday

The Northern Alliance Radio Network has broadcast for almost two and a half years here in the Twin Cities and around the world on our Internet stream, the first broadcast radio show by bloggers ever. We started as a three-hour show on Saturday afternoons with a rotating cast for every hour. When we got an extra hour earlier this year, we split the show into a more fixed format, with three bloggers in each two-hour segment, and ran from 11 am to 3 pm Central time each Saturday.

Now we have an exciting change that we believe will attract even more listeners. The Patriot has allowed us to shift the show to a 9 am CT start, beginning this Saturday morning. Mitch Berg and I will take the first two hours, giving us a chance to start the day off for our listeners with our two-hour segment. Brian, Chad, and John will continue to broadcast between 11 am to 1 pm.

To celebrate our debut as a morning show, we have invited Michele Bachmann to join us at 10 am. Michele is one of our Rightroots candidates, running for Minnesota's Sixth Congressional District to replace Mark Kennedy, who's running for Mark Dayton's seat in the Senate. We'll talk about Rightroots and Michele's campaign as well as the issues she champions.

We hope you have breakfast with us, this Saturday and every Saturday!

No Retirees Or Tourists: Olmert

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has made clear that the war in Lebanon could be over in days, but only under conditions that ensure security for Israel on its northern border. With the UN debating various types of peacekeeping forces to replace Israel in Lebanon, Olmert insists that Israel would not accept another UNIFIL disaster:

In an interview with The Times in Jerusalem, the Israeli Prime Minister, said that the conflict could be over as soon as the United Nations Security Council authorised an international force and the troops were in place.

As he set out his vision for peace, the fighting intensified with 10,000 Israeli soldiers battling against Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon. The Shia Muslim militant group fired a record number of 213 rockets into Israel, with some penetrating the West Bank, the farthest that they have reached.

Nevertheless, Mr Olmert seemed confident that the fighting could be stopped within days. “I do not think that it will take weeks,” he said. “I think that a resolution will be made some time next week by the UN Security Council and then it depends on the rapidity of deployment of the international forces into the south of Lebanon.” ...

He also said that Israel would not welcome a unit similar to the existing UN Interim Force In Lebanon (Unifil), which he said had proved ineffective in halting Hezbollah’s seizure of southern Lebanon.

“It has to be made up of armies, not of retirees, of real soldiers, not of pensioners who have come to spend leisurely months in south Lebanon but, rather, an army with combat units that is prepared to implement the UN resolution.”

He added: “We will not pull out and we will not stop shooting until there is an international force that will effectively control the area.”

Well put. UNIFIL proved not just completely ineffective in keeping peace but actually turned out to inadvertently promote war on the Blue Line. Undermanned and poorly led, the UN force stood by while terrorists built offensive positions adjacent to their own and did nothing when they launched attacks on northern Israel. The UN has demonstrated complete disregard for Israeli security, and no one believes that the UN has their safety in mind with their demands for a cease-fire.

Olmert gets the formulation humorously correct. UNIFIL turned out to be bystanders and tourists, not a fighting force, and only a fighting force can keep Hezbollah away from Israel. Israel doesn't need more of the same to supposedly defend a DMZ above their border. Anything less than a real fighting force with a mandate to commit violence against Hezbollah incursions will be worse than nothing, because Israel would have to fight past them in order to defend themselves once again when Hezbollah attacks Israel in the future.

Will the UN agree? Probably not, but the Israeli position will allow them more time to do the job themselves.

Lieberman In Blackface?

I missed most of this today, but this kind of politicking embarrasses everyone associated with it:

Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton visited Mount Aery Baptist Church in Bridgeport to announced their endorsement of challenger Ned Lamont in his campaign against Sen. Joseph Lieberman. A picture of Lieberman in 'blackface' on a Lamont supporter's blog drew criticism from both sides. ...

This campaign has apparently hit a new low today with something offensive, and that is putting it mildly. The popular Huffington Post blog, which has strongly supported Lamont's candidacy, posted a picture today depicting President Clinton and Joe Lieberman in an Amos n Andy-type doctored picture obviously taken from the Waterbury rally last Monday. In the picture, Lieberman is drawn in blackface and Clinton is wearing dark sunglasses.

Lamont's campaign manager Tom Swan condemned this, calling it very offensive and said he requested that it be removed. He also said that while blogger Jane Hamsher is a supporter, she is not on the campaign pay-roll.

"It's extremely offensive," Lieberman said. "I have been the target of the 'blogs' on a lot of really offensive stuff, stuff I consider lies and smears, but this picture of me with Bill Clinton and me having my face blackened is offensive to people of all races and colors and just doesn't belong."

The photoshop artist didn't just blacken Lieberman's face -- they put a minstrel-show suit and tie on the picture as well. Michelle Malkin and Hot Air have commented extensively on this, as has Tom Maguire and many others, bit no one can come up with a rational idea as to why Jane Hamsher would have posted this. Did she think that this was a pithy little statement regarding Lieberman's views on race? Or did she really think it would read -- as she claimed -- that Lieberman was a phony?

Hatred makes people do embarrassing things, and Hamsher isn't the first to demonstrate that. However, one has to wonder why Arianna Huffington allowed it on her site. Is she a Lieberman hater too? Or was she foolish enough to buy Hamsher's explanation of the picture's meaning?

It really is difficult to understand what a mainstream Democratic politician has done to inspire such hatred and vitriol. In fact, it's becoming more and more obvious that Lieberman hasn't done anything to inspire it, but just that the haters on the Left have set their sights on Lieberman this cycle. They will do and say anything to destroy him, and this is about as low as it could get. Lieberman doesn't deserve this kind of treatment after his years of honorable public service. He's not my favorite by any means, but that doesn't mean he should have to suffer this kind of despicable treatment at the hands of his own party.

This is what the activist, radical Left have planned for America if they win control in November -- character assassinations and smear campaigns. If they enjoy doing this to Lieberman, imagine what they'll do to the rest of us.

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt has a great post, noting Arianna's huffery on the Mel Gibson story and contrasting it with her expurgation of the photo and silence afterward. Stand up and be counted, indeed!

Mark Coffey also has some thoughts about that.

Two Faces Of Spending

Two more of my posts have appeared at the Heritage Foundation Policy Blog today. The first takes a quick look at three amendments to the defense appropriation being debated in the Senate this week. Did you know that a memorial commission, a traveling exhibit on World War II, and a market research program will help us win the war on terror? Neither did I, but Senators Daniel Inouye and John Warner apparently think so.

The second post takes a longer look at Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's maiden speech, delivered at Columbia University yesterday. Paulson gave some reason for optimism that the Bush administration might finally get serious about cutting the federal budget after five years of growth in both discretionary and entitlement spending. I say some optimism, because we have heard much of this rhetoric before, and neither Congress nor the White House has had much political will or desire to put it into practice.

Still, Bush did want to reform Social Security last year before being thwarted by the Democrats, who preferred to do nothing about it except pretend that the problem doesn't exist. Paulson reminded everyone that under current system, entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security will go from 8% of GDP to 17% of GDP by 2060, just slightly under the cut of our GDP that the entire federal budget takes now. I have more on this at Heritage, so be sure to read it all.

Rightroots: Irey Needs Support

Diana Irey has her work cut out for her if she wants to unseat longtime incumbent John Murtha in PA-12. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that she trails far behind Murtha in fundraising, although she still qualifies as the best-financed challenger in the state:

While Republican challenger Diana Irey accelerated her fund-raising pace in the second quarter of the year, she still trailed far behind U.S. Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Johnstown, the veteran incumbent in the 12th Congressional District.

Entering the final four months of the campaign, Mr. Murtha's campaign committee had a cash advantage of more than 10-to-1 over the Washington County commissioner. The Democrat entered July with $1,804,695, while Ms. Irey had $159,138, according to a digest of Federal Election Commission filings compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. Murtha funds include money leftover from his last campaign.

Mr. Murtha had raised a total of $2,452,426 during that election cycle and spent $1,481,352 by June 30. Ms. Irey, who has tried to build a national fund-raising effort based on opposition to the Democrat's anti-war rhetoric, had raised a total of $305,541 and spent $146,403.

Irey's race is one of the eighteen focus campaigns supported by the Rightroots initiative. In fact, so far she's proven one of the most popular of the candidates, with over $1200 in donations in the first 24 hours. As is obvious from this P-G report, she will need much more support to erode Murtha's fundraising edge. She has a tough fight, but with enough support she could win this seat and help the GOP retain control of Congress.

One of our other candidates has noticed the Rightroots support already. Ray Meier, running in NY-24, has a press release on his site:

State Senator Ray Meier is breaking new ground in his campaign for New York’s 24th Congressional seat as he receives a boost today from Rightroots, a new fundraising effort organized by bloggers from across the country.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist endorses the Rightroots on his own Volpac blog today as well. Volpac becomes the eighth official endorser of Rightroots, and has been added to our site at ABCPac.

UPDATE: I think we can take Michelle Malkin's challenge and agree that we won't be photoshopping people into racist blackface images, like the netroots of the Left.

The Coming Democratic Meltdown

The Howard Dean experiment at the DNC appears to have created division, distrust, and chaos, as many of us predicted last year when Dean took the job. The Washington Post reports that party leaders have begun to craft back-channels to undermine Dean's authority, bringing their efforts for a national program for the midterms to a shambles:

At a meeting last week, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) criticized Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean for not spending enough party resources on get-out-the-vote efforts in the most competitive House and Senate races, according to congressional aides who were briefed on the exchange. Pelosi -- echoing a complaint common among Democratic lawmakers and operatives -- has warned privately that Democrats are at risk of going into the November midterm elections with a voter-mobilization plan that is underfunded and inferior to the proven turnout machine run by national Republicans.

The Senate and House campaign committees are creating their own get-out-the-vote operations instead, using money that otherwise would fund television advertising and other election-year efforts. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) -- who no longer speaks to Dean because of their strategic differences -- is planning to ask lawmakers and donors to help fund a new turnout program run by House Democrats. He recruited Michael Whouley, a specialist in Democratic turnout, to help oversee it. ...

Many Democrats said that despite a favorable political climate and record-setting fundraising, the campaign to recapture the House and Senate could fall short if the organizational problems persist. "What the party really needs is to get serious about local, volunteer-based" operations, said Jack Corrigan, a longtime Democratic operative. "The last-minute, throw-money-at-it approach . . . does not really solve the fundamental failure to organize that is there. The DNC is moving in the right direction, but needs to do more, fast," he said.

Dean gave the internal version of "Yeaarrgh!!" in response, telling Democrats that "we have a big secret ... and it's going to help us win." That sounds great, but successful political campaigns keep secrets from their opponents, not from their allies. With the election coming in three months, one has to wonder when Dean plans to let his pals in on his big secret, and what exactly about grassroots organization would be so secret in any case.

The big secret appears to be that Dean has been a complete incompetent at the job of party chairman. He has only raised a little over half of the funds that the RNC has gathered and only has one-quarter of the cash on hand of his rivals, a rather critical problem in the final 90 days of an election cycle. He has angered his big-checkbook donors, even George Soros, who probably lost some interest anyway when his efforts to buy the presidency fell short in 2004. The Democrats have been left with the slender reed of conservative disaffection with the GOP, and hope that the Republicans have turnout problems to mask their own problems with organization.

Now we have the different committees and activists within the party working independently, lacking coordination, and shuffling their money around to cross purposes. One of the key figures for the midterm cycle, DCCC chair Rahm Emanuel, won't even speak to the head of his own party. The party has fallen apart, thanks to Dean's incompetence and their lack of action in correcting it.

If the Democrats lose the midterms, expect to hear a lot of conspiracy theories about Karl Rove's supposedly Machiavellian power. The truth will be that the Democrats sealed their fate when they put a nutcase like Howard Dean at the head of their organization.

UPDATE: I made an error in the difference between cash on hand and overall fundraising, which I have corrected, thanks to Thlime in the comments on this thread.

Israel Got Hezbollah's Attention

After their rocket attacks on Israel dwindled down to 10 yesterday, the commando raid on Baalbek has apparently infuriated Hezbollah into risking everything on a last-gasp series of volleys. A record number of missiles have flown over the border, and in one case hit near the West Bank town of Jenin:

Hezbollah launched its deepest strikes yet into Israel on Wednesday, firing a record number of more than 160 rockets. An Israeli-American was killed as he fled for home by bicycle, and a stray rocket hit the West Bank for the first time.

The intense rocket fire defied claims by Israeli leaders and generals that they have considerably weakened Hezbollah's military capabilities. It followed a two-day lull in Hezbollah rocket attacks, and came hours after Israeli commandos in Lebanon captured what Israel said were five Hezbollah guerrillas.

Police said at least 21 people were wounded in Wednesday's attacks, which brought the Israeli death toll in three weeks of fighting to 55, including 19 civilians. Israel's onslaught on Lebanon has killed at least 540, mostly civilians.

Hezbollah fighters have run gauntlets through IDF forces in southern Lebanon to get to the Blue Line with their launchers. They have fired and retreated at high speed, hoping to avoid return fire. They want to prove that they still have offensive capability against Israel, even thouugh their rockets do almost no damage to Israeli military assets.

It's impressive, but rather foolish. In the first place, Israel has already shown that they will not be deterred by rocket attacks, so the effort here is mostly wasted. Just as in Britain in 1940, the attacks on civilian populations has strengthened Israeli resolve, not diminished it. Tactically, Hezbollah's new operation is not much better than Japanese banzai attacks in the Pacific in WWII. They are sending their assets out into the open in a frontal charge that even when initially successful carries no strategic or political gain. All they do is expose their fighters to IDF fire -- and their rocket launchers.

The inventory of Hezbollah's rockets and missiles has been the topic of much discussion, but that isn't the critical materiel problem for the terrorists. The launchers are the weak spot, and they're relatively easy to hit. Mobile launchers are basically big trucks -- big, slow-moving, heat-generating vehicles that have to stay on established roads to manuever. Without air cover, these launchers can easily be spotted at targeted by israeli aircraft, and it doesn't take much to put one out of commission.

The decline of attacks in the last couple of days probably indicates a lack of launchers, and Hezbollah's desire to conserve enough of them for a single big offensive. This is what we're seeing now. If Israel destroys the rest of the launchers, it won't matter how many missiles and rockets Hezbollah has left -- they will just become useless stock. That's what Israel wants to keep Syria from resupplying to the terrorists, and that's why they blew up the roads as well as the airports.

Hezbollah will get its licks in today, but I doubt it will retain much capacity for rocket launches after this.

What Is A Yale Diva Doing At Columbia?

Eliana Johnson, once the proprietress of a clever blog called Yale Diva, has moved to the New York Sun as a reporter. She covered the appearance of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson at Columbia University yesterday, where Paulson tried to establish a new momentum for spending cuts and entitlement reform in his maiden speech. I'll cover this at the Heritage Foundation Policy Blog later today.

Eliana has another blog connection: she is the daughter of my good friend Scott Johnson at Power Line, who proudly notes the tight style and straightforward reporting of the story. I had the pleasure to meet Eliana and all of Scott's family on a few occasions and am delighted at her new success. I'm particularly pleased that she works at one of the best newspapers in this new media age.

Omission Commission Furious At Lack Of Truth

Today's Washington Post reports that the 9/11 Commission got so frustrated with inaccurate testimony from military and aviation officials regarding the immediate response on 9/11 that they considered referrals to the Department of Justice for perjury:

Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.

Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said.

In the end, the panel agreed to a compromise, turning over the allegations to the inspectors general for the Defense and Transportation departments, who can make criminal referrals if they believe they are warranted, officials said.

The commission complained early about the spin coming from the Department of Defense and from aviation officials in reconstructing the events of the day. DoD officials blamed sketchy records of the day's events for the confusion on timing. For instance, testimony indicated that the Air Force had tracked United 93 and would have shot the plane down had it approached Washington, but tapes subpoenaed by the Commission later revealed that the military had no idea about United 93 until it had crashed.

The tapes told a much different story than the witnesses, and the Commission was understandably upset that these witnesses gave them demonstrably false information two years or more after the events in question. The DoD could have reviewed the tapes themselves and figured out the facts. Commissioners felt that it approached perjury and wanted to have them prosecuted after they finallly got the tapes through the hostile manuever of subpoenas.

In the end, they allowed the DoD and DoT inspectors general to review the matter. Reports from both are expected shortly as to whether the testimony given was knowingly false. If so, the DoJ should consider prosecution.

However, we should also keep in mind the balls-up that the Commission became. While their recreation of the day's events was excellent work, the rest of their effort produced nothing but the bureaucratic spin of which they accuse the DoD. The inclusion on Jamie Gorelick even after her role promoting the extralegal separation of law enforcement and intelligence units became clear skewed the panel's point of view. She should have been a witness, not a panel member, as she was too much of a participant in the activities that led to the intelligence failures of 9/11.

The Commission also failed to follow up on important information in their haste to blame 9/11 on intelligence operations. They completely missed the ABLE DANGER program that had identified Mohammed Atta and his core of operatives as potential terrorists, and that was not because of DoD intransigence. Multiple members of that team tried to get their interest, and the panel refused to follow up on the leads. Even after these people went public with the information, panel members like Thomas Kean -- quoted heavily in this story -- mocked them and discounted their honor.

The panel of bureaucrats had too much at stake to allow bureaucracy to get the blame for 9/11, and so they concluded that the operations end of intelligence had to get it instead. They proposed a massive increase in intelligence bureaucracy, supposedly to make intelligence gathering and analysis more efficient. Instead, they created a behemoth of a bureaucracy in the Directorate of National Intelligence, so much so that Congress threatened to cut off its funding to keep its empire-building to a dull roar. It now employs almost a thousand people, almost none of whom develop or gather intel in the field, but instead look at it and push the paper up another level.

If anyone knowingly provided false information to a Congressional panel, then that person should face trial for perjury. However, the Omission Commission is the last group of people whose complaints about fair play and honesty interest me.

Israel Captures Prisoners In Bekaa (Updated)

The Israeli operation in Bekaa has met with success. In a commando raid far behind enemy lines, the IDF captured an unspecified number of Hezbollah operatives in a Baalbek hospital:

Israel poured up to 10,000 armored troops into south Lebanon Tuesday, and separately sent commandos deep into the eastern Bekaa Valley where they raided a Hezbollah-run hospital and captured guerrillas during pitched battles, a major escalation of the three-week-old war.

The Israeli military confirmed the attack on the ancient city of Baalbek, about 80 miles north of Israel. It said troops, ferried in by helicopter, captured an unspecified number guerrillas and all soldiers returned unharmed. The statement gave no other details.

The Baalbek raid was the deepest ground attack on Lebanon since fighting began 21 days ago.

Hezbollah denied that Israel captured anyone in Baalbek, telling the press that they had the commandos pinned down at the hospital. Perhaps that is why only 10 rockets and missiles flew over the Israeli border today -- all of their personnel may have turned around to realize that the IDF has the capability of operating anywhere within Lebanon.

It appears that the Israelis have just taught the Islamist terrorists a lesson in tenacity -- and if the rocket trend continues, perhaps Hezbollah may have learned something about futility.

UPDATE and BUMP: The Jerusalem Post confirms that IDF commandos captured "several" Hezbollah officials in the daring raid, even though they got spotted early in the operation:

After several hours of intense fighting in and around the hospital in the eastern Lebanon town of Baalbek, which was built by Iran for the express purpose of treating Hizbullah operatives, IDF commando forces on Wednesday morning took a number of Hizbullah operatives captive.

An IAF helicopter dropped commando forces a short distance from the hospital late Tuesday night. The force was discovered as it moved towards the structure, where Hizbullah operatives were suspected of hiding. Several hours of gunfights ensued, and at least 10 Hizbullah guerrillas were reported killed. Another force was helicoptered in to extricate the commandos and provide backup for the mission.

After inspecting the identification of everyone in the hospital, the IDF soldiers proceeded to arrest several Hizbullah officials, who were later transported back into Israel. The officials' names and positions in the organization were not revealed. The main target of the operation was Muhammad Yazbek, a senior figure in the organization. Yazbek was not in the hospital at the time of the raid.

No IDF soldiers were wounded in the operation, an army spokesperson told The Jerusalem Post.

If that last part is true, then Hezbollah couldn't even wound the IDF far to its own rear after having spotted them in action. Israeli troops had the time to enter the hospital, check everyone's identification, round up Hezbollah officials, and then extricate both themselves and their prisoners without taking a single casualty. Even the raid on Entebbe didn't go that smoothly, and that raid is legendary for its effectiveness.

This makes Hezbollah look like a bunch of amateurs playing out of their league -- and it demonstrates that Israel can hit them pretty much at will. Hezbollah leadership has to understand that if they can't be protected in their own strongholds, they live pretty much at the whim of Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz. More importantly, their sponsors in Damascus and Teheran now understand that their liaison teams have a substantial risk of capture, which would be more than embarrassing in the current conflict.

Israel just won a huge victory in the psy-ops wars.

The Dictator's Islamist Dodge

Daniel Freedman, who runs the excellent New York Sun blog It Shines For All, takes an interesting look at the disincentives for dictators to defeat Islamofascism in the American Spectator. Freedman reports that the real threat to Pakistan's military dictatorship comes not from Islamists but from Democrats, led by former PM Benazir Bhutto. However, Pervez Musharraf has plenty of motivation for painting the Islamist threat as the biggest threat -- and for making sure that he never quite beats them:

THIS RESPONSE TO A PERCEIVED Islamist "threat" by the West is based on the premise that if the dictator falls, Islamists, rather than democrats, will take power. An apparent "threat" therefore ensures that the dictator won't be pressured to introduce reform and will be showered with aid. Take Egypt's Hosni Mubarak: He's backtracked on democracy reforms and imprisoned democracy activists. Yet he receives $1.7 billion a year in American aid. Why? Because of the supposed threat of radical Islamists (the Muslim Brotherhood). Other experts at this trickery are the Saudi princes: They fund extremist mosques around the world and yet American taxpayers pay for American troops to protect them.

It's also true, however, that the astute dictator has few other options if he wants to maintain his rule while maintaining good relations with the West. He's stuck in a Catch-22 situation. Not only does an Islamist "threat" solidify the dictatorship, defeating an Islamist threat, meantime, spells trouble for the dictatorship.

Under the Bush Doctrine, if a dictator has an Islamist threat and appears to be fighting that Islamist threat, he's an ally in the war on terror. But if the dictator ever defeats the Islamists, he's simply a dictator and an enemy in the war on terror -- as dictatorships breed terrorism. Therefore, if a dictator successfully defeats the terrorists and fulfills his tasks in the war on terror he's really scored the ultimate Pyrrhic victory: He's turned himself into the target. That the Bush Doctrine ends up punishing a dictator who succeeds in destroying domestic terrorists can't have escaped dictators.

With the fighting continuing in Afghanistan, we still need a cooperative Musharraf rather than the alternative. However, this does set up a dichotomy that the US will eventually have to face. If the cure for terrorism and fanaticism is democracy -- and I believe it is -- then we have to quit enabling the dictators at some point.

Israelis Press Towards Bekaa

The Israeli offensive has taken an interesting turn as the IDF unleashes its ground forces in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah may have felt sanguine about their chances of outlasting Israel thanks to the efforts of world leaders in handcuffing Ehud Olmert, but now the re-energized IDF has taken aim at Hezbollah's patron:

Lebanese army and security officials said a major Israel Defense Forces operation was underway against suspected Hezbollah positions near Baalbek in eastern Lebanon's Bekaa Valley late Tuesday. IDF troops thrust deep into the area, landing troops by helicopter in the Hezbollah heartland.

Lebanese security sources said IDF soldiers had landed by helicopter near Baalbek as aircraft launched several strikes in the region.

One Lebanese officer saying the Israel Air Force presence in the air above the ancient city was "unprecedented." ... "The extreme, unprecedented number of aircraft indicates the possibility that the Israelis are planning to land troops, but we cannot yet confirm that," said one security official on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

Israel had seemed ready to shut down its offensive a few days ago, but the Israeli people rose up in indignation at the criticism leveled at them for defending themselves. This shows that the new push may have all of the critics confounded. Israel is not just looking to create a buffer zone in southern Lebanon with this new action -- they want to strike at Syria.

Syria has maintained their connections to Hezbollah in large measure in this area. The Bekaa Valley borders on Syria, on the eastern slope of the Lebanon Mountains in northeast Lebanon. It puts Israeli troops much closer to Damascus than they otherwise would be, and removes most of the natural obstacles between the IDF and the Syrian capital. Most importantly, the destruction of Hezbollah assets in the area would not just degrade Syrian control over their terrorist proxies, it would severely damage their status as kingmaker in Lebanon as well.

Israel must win this battle. The US has to keep running interference until Syria and Iran stop funding Hezbollah and the Lebanese government disarms the terrorists. We have to show the resolve necessary to stop accepting hudna and start winning this war. Thus far, the White House has done a masterful job of allowing Israel the space to engage the terrorists and confound their sponsors. Until the terrorists agree to lay down their weapons and stop provoking regional wars, the White House should stick to its guns.

UPDATE: I completely forgot to credit Rick at Right Wing Nuthouse for the tip; sorry, Rick.

Rightroots: The Kingston Challenge (Updated!)

Our first day of the Rightroots initiative has started off very well -- and has received quite a bit of notice. In less than a day, we have already raised almost $7,000 for the eighteen key candidates we have endorsed in our effort to hold both houses of Congress. Now we have been challenged by Rep. Jack Kingston, one of the most blogosphere-savvy Congressmen in office, to raise a goodly amount of money by the end of the week -- and he's ready to open up his own checkbook if we make it:

FROM THE DESK OF CONGRESSMAN JACK KINGSTON

Dear Friends,

I commend the efforts of the Rightroots movement for providing a forum which seeks to help the Republican Party secure our majorities in the House and Senate, and might even push some competitive races over the finish line in November.

I strongly believe that small donations from a large number of people will help influence public policy and change the face of politics in Washington.

This is our opportunity to send a clear message to folks that Republicans don't just beat Democrats on the streets and on Election Day, but on every battlefield, including the Internet.

I'm going to make a pledge: If Rightroots raises a total of $26,000 by 11:59 PM (EST) on Friday, August 4, I will contribute a total of $14,000 directly to some of the candidates from my Leadership PAC in the name of our movement.

It's time for action, and these candidates need our help. Together, we can do it.

Sincerely,

Jack Kingston
Member of Congress

Well, let's not let Rep. Kingston down!

UPDATE: I put up a draft, not the final -- my mistake. We will have details to follow, but Rep. Kingston is very enthused about our project.

UPDATE II: We now have the final version from Rep. Kingston, and I've updated the post to reflect the correct numbers. We've raised over $7,000 the first day -- so far! We can make $26,000 if we keep at it.

Unhappy Days Are Here Again

National Review's Michael Ledeen takes us on a trip in the Wayback Machine, but unlike the journeys of Peabody and his boy Sherman, Ledeen notices that we arrive back in the present:

Certainly there is lots of bad news, most of which confirms what we already knew: The Western world hates Israel; the taboo on anti-Semitism is off; the Western world has been P.C.’ed to the edge of death; there is no stomach for fighting the war against Islamic fascism.

Sounds like the Thirties to me. ...

Then, too, the mounting power of what became the Axis was ignored. As my father often reminded me, a few months before Pearl Harbor, at a time when Nazi armies were long since on the march, the draft passed by a single vote. Apologists for Hitler and Mussolini were legion, and some of our leading intellectuals were saying that American democratic capitalism was a failure, and we would do well to emulate the European totalitarians.

So I don’t see this moment as something unique, the result of some inner rot, or a moment on a greased skid leading to the abyss. It’s one of the many things we are. But we are many things, and we are not like the Europeans, many of whom are reviving their anti-Semitic fantasies in an effort to cope with their weakness and irrelevance.

We seem to have the same problem that afflicted Europe in the Thirties, as Ledeen notes. We don't have the will to conduct war when it can be won relatively cheaply, and so we will dither until it becomes obscenely expensive. One reason for re-opening the Gulf War in 2003 was to ensure that people understood that we would not sit idly by while a nation flaunted its violation of both a cease-fire agreement and sixteen UNSC resolutions. We dithered on Iraq for twelve years while ignoring an almost-continuous series of acts of war.

Unfortunately, that effort took what little tenacity the West had to offer. Now, when a universally acknowledged terrorist organization commits an obvious act of war, the West demands that the victim stop fighting back. Instead of uniting to face down the terrorist enablers in Teheran and Damascus, we have the spectacle of the French government calling Iran a "stabilizing force" for the region. They may be right -- but what kind of stabilization does France and the rest of Europe want? Apparently the same kind that Hitler provided and Vichy administered.

When we entered the war on terror, we knew where the loci of state support existed: Damascus, Teheran, Baghdad, and Kabul. We have managed to do something about the latter two, but we seem curiously unwilling to finish the job. We do not need to declare war on Syria and Iran to beat them, and in Iran's case at least, war would definitely be detrimental to the cause. However, we need to work fast and hard to topple the terrorist-sponsoring regimes, not coddle and reward them by having them dictate the peace in the Middle East. We know what their idea of peace means -- so why do we endorse it?

Let's try winning this war. As Ledeen always says .... faster, please.

Mel Asks For Help And Forgiveness

Mel Gibson has extended his apology in a statement released earlier today, and this time he explicity acknowledges the anti-Semitic rant that has plunged one of Hollywood's most bankable stars into so much hot water. Not only has he apologized to the Jewish community, he has asked them for help in determining the source of his bigoted words:

There is no excuse, nor should there be any tolerance, for anyone who thinks or expresses any kind of anti-Semitic remark. I want to apologize specifically to everyone in the Jewish community for the vitriolic and harmful words that I said to a law enforcement officer the night I was arrested on a DUI charge. ...

The tenets of what I profess to believe necessitate that I exercise charity and tolerance as a way of life. Every human being is God's child, and if I wish to honor my God I have to honor his children. But please know from my heart that I am not an anti-Semite. I am not a bigot. Hatred of any kind goes against my faith.

I'm not just asking for forgiveness. I would like to take it one step further, and meet with leaders in the Jewish community, with whom I can have a one on one discussion to discern the appropriate path for healing.

I have begun an ongoing program of recovery and what I am now realizing is that I cannot do it alone. I am in the process of understanding where those vicious words came from during that drunken display, and I am asking the Jewish community, whom I have personally offended, to help me on my journey through recovery. Again, I am reaching out to the Jewish community for its help. I know there will be many in that community who will want nothing to do with me, and that would be understandable. But I pray that that door is not forever closed.

The sentiment seems sincere, and he doesn't appear to be dodging any responsibility for his words and actions over the weekend. Some may see this as a publicity stunt, and it certainly could be just that. The question for his fans and foes is whether to accept Mel at his word and challenge him to atone for his hateful and asinine actions, or whether to write him off as a human being.

I'm not suggesting that Gibson get a pass for his outburst; far from it. In fact, the responses as noted in the New York Times sound perfectly reasonable under the circumstances:

On Monday, Hope Hartman, a spokeswoman for Disney’s ABC television network, said the company was dropping its plans to produce a Holocaust-themed miniseries in collaboration with Mr. Gibson. ...

She did not connect the project’s termination to Mr. Gibson’s remarks. But his statements had already attracted sharp criticism from some who argued that he should be disqualified from moving ahead with the series, despite having apologized for several anti-Jewish statements.

“I don’t think he should be doing a film on the Holocaust,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who had previously criticized what he saw as anti-Semitic overtones in Mr. Gibson’s hit, “The Passion of the Christ.” “It would be like asking someone associated with the K.K.K. to do a movie on the African-American experience.”

I think Hier has that about right. If Gibson wants to produce some work on Jewish history, particularly on its history of suffering and displacement, then it should not be a for-profit endeavor. He needs to atone for his sin, and one does not profit from atonement. Besides, Gibson's words have opened up a huge credibility gap on any project involving Judaism in the near or moderate term, perhaps forever. He would do better by working with the Jewish community to really learn about Judaism and the journey of this ancient and wise people.

If he does, though, it seems that some people will still hold no possibility for forgiveness in their hearts. That's a choice each of us has to make, but we should ask ourselves whether we believe in redemption at all. The point of Christianity is that each of us, no matter our transgressions, have the ability to redeem ourselves and change for the better. If we believe that sinners can be forgiven, then Gibson -- if he sincerely repents and atones for his sins and accepts the consequences of them -- has that same possibility.

I have a particular interest in anti-Semitic rants, as my maternal grandfather was Jewish, although non-practicing. He was one of the sweetest men I ever knew, and loved his family more than anything else. His own family ostracized him, more or less, when he married my Roman Catholic grandmother. He died when I was eighteen, the first person to whom I was really close to pass away. I still miss him and his sense of humor, which my mother swears I inherited. (That doesn't make me Jewish or give me any moral superiority over anyone else opining on this topic, but in the interest of disclosure, CQ readers should understand my perspective.)

When people issue these disgusting insults and paranoid conspiracy theories, I think of my grandfather and the humble life he led, and it makes me angry. I expect it from the likes of Hassan Nasrallah, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, and David Duke, but not from Mel Gibson, who has worked with enough Jews to know better. Still, my own faith tells me to judge a man's actions and not the state of his soul, and I think that is where we should leave it with Gibson, at least for now. We should challenge him to repent and atone, and this statement is a good step towards the former. We should pray that he enlightens himself rather than wallow in the kind of hatred and ignorance that produced those terrible comments. If he meets the challenge, we should welcome him back into our good graces and allow him to be an example that bigotry can be healed.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Airlines To Get Free Ride On Pension Reform?

Congress is about to send a pension-reform bill to the White House that forces employers to meet their funding obligations for employee pension plans. Unfortunately, HR 2830 exempts at least one key industry from meeting that requirement, and tosses some serious pork into the stew to boot. I explain this at the Heritage Foundation Policy Blog:

Airlines employ hundreds of thousands of Americans and the risk to those pensions will require immediate action. This free pass allows the industry to continue its under-the-radar flight on pensions, which hides the instability of the industry’s economic position. Postponing action does not mean that the PBGC would not have to bail out these pension funds; if history is any judge, exemptions and postponements result in less compliance, not more.

Not only does the bill contain these exemptions, putting the retirement of many Americans at risk, the Senate has played their usual pork-barrel games in putting together this legislation. What do scenic prairie roads and the cleanup of abandoned mines have to do with pension reform? To the untrained eye, nothing at all – and yet two Senators have earmarked $50 million and $5 billion for these tasks in HR 2830, respectively.

Rep. Mike Pence has voiced serious reservations about the Abandoned Mine Land Fund under any circumstances. Since 1977, AML has existed on fees charged for coal production, and these fees will expire in 2007. The fees go to cleanup of old mining sites, and also to supplement health-care premiums of miners whose companies have left the industry or gone under altogether. The new proposal starts lowering fees on coal production, increases payments to states and retirees, and forces the federal government to replace the funds – and changes AML from discretionary to mandatory spending. This adds the $5 billion to an already-bloated set of entitlement spending by the federal government, making it ever more difficult to reduce the federal budget.

Be sure to read David John's entire analysis of HR 2830, and why we should push for a presidential veto if it remains in its current state.

The Soft Nihilism Of Low Expectations

I return to the editorial page of the Examiner today with a piece on the double standard for Israel's prosecution of the war, as opposed to the lack of outrage over terrorist tactics and strategy. Borrowing a phrase from George Bush, I argue that this soft nihilism of low expectations -- which also snares the United States in its grip -- actually encourages terrorism:

While the world holds Israel to this standard, things become curiously silent when it’s time to hold Hezbollah responsible for its conduct of war. Hardly a word has escaped from the U.N. or Europe on the 2,500 missiles that have rained down upon Israeli civilians, deliberately targeted by Hezbollah. Those attacks have displaced more than 300,000 civilians, a fact the global community and the mainstream media ignore.

Those who argue that Israel has occasionally violated the Geneva Conventions in its attacks casually ignore the blatant violations of Hezbollah, whose combatants wear no uniform, deliberately hide in civilian populations and fire weapons from residential areas. Hezbollah conducts none of its operations within the rules of war — and yet world leaders and the media never mention it.

Why? Because no one expects terrorists to follow the rules. This is the soft nihilism of low expectations.

Quite frankly, this double standard will eventually destroy Western civilization by rendering us incapable of defeating our enemies. Those nations wishing to destroy us have watched carefully over the last several years while our own people obsess -- and I do not think that too strong a term -- over anomalies like Abu Ghraib and Qana, and they note the lack of outrage over the fact that their proxies have deliberately launched 2,500 missiles at Israeli civilians. No leaders or media make a peep about the butchery of our enemies as displayed in the torture and beheading of our troops, except to somehow make it our fault for fighting terrorism in the first place.

What lessons do you think Iran, Syria, and the rest of the terrorists draw from these observations?

Bruce Kesler has more on this topic.

Meet The Rightroots Candidates (Update & Bump)

[Good questions from commenters -- see update below!]

A group of conservative bloggers have worked on a developing a list of candidates in critical races this fall, not just for a show of support but also to allow our readers a single point where they could contribute to their campaigns. John Hawkins at Right Wing News began to organize this a couple of weeks ago, and we have selected a slate of Congressional and Senatorial races we think will get the most benefit from organized grassroots support on the Internet.

We call this effort Rightroots, and our site, powered by ABCPac, launched this evening.

The selection committee comprised the following bloggers:

John Hawkins from Right Wing News
Robert Bluey from Human Events Online
Mary Katherine Ham from Townhall
Erick Erickson from Redstate
Patrick Hynes from Ankle Biting Pundits
Lorie Byrd from Wizbang!

We have selected fourteen Congressional races and four Senate races we see as critical and close enough to warrant organized support from our readers. On our donations page, we give a description of the races and the politics involved. We deliberately avoided races where Republicans either have a large edge or face weak opposition. Each of these races may well come down to the last $100 for campaigning efforts, and winning all eighteen would provide a tremendous boost for conservatives across the nation.

All of these candidates have our unanimous endorsement for their races. We hope that you will join us in supporting these fine candidates, and follow along as we raise money for them. Bookmark the Rightroots page to see how well our candidate fare in the weeks ahead, and help us spread the word through the blogosphere.

We talk about the need to build conservative power in government -- and now we have the tool to do it.

UPDATE: I'm replacing the links with those for the posts of the other Rightroots members, so keep checking back.

UPDATE II AND BUMP: I've received some good questions from CQ readers, and I want to explain our decisions in answer to them.

Why isn't Candidate X on the list? Why not list all GOP candidates? - We hope that all Republican candidates win their races. However, we wanted to focus on competitive races or on seats that have a broader impact on national politics. Obviously, we still encourage people to contribute to other Republicans; it's just that we feel contributions in these races will have the most impact.

You don't list incumbents -- Given the natural advantages of incumbency in most cases, we felt that our efforts should focus elsewhere.

Michael Steele is almost 20 points back in some polls, so why include him? - I think that's an outlier, but even so, we felt that Steele's candidacy has a national impact. The same goes for Diana Irey, who wants to unseat John Murtha in Pennsylvania.

What about governors? - It turns out that having this sort of effort for governors gets too complicated in regard to contribution regulations, and we were asked to eliminate those from our list. We tried!

I noticed you passed over [insert RINO candidate here] -- Glad you noticed. However, we did not include incumbents as a rule, so don't take an exclusion to mean we oppose someone's re-election.

Your logo trips me out, dude -- Actually, John has several on his site, and I chose this one for the post. Feel free to put one of the others on your site and link back to the Rightroots page at ABCPac! (And if you come up with something better, let us know!

The Dog Ate ... Something

Sorry for the slow start this morning. Our dog has been sick all night and we just dropped her off at the vet. I'll be back up and running shortly.

UPDATE: Just to explain, we lost one of our dogs, Angel, while I was in the hospital. She was almost 15 years old and had been "losing it" for a few months, so her passing wasn't unexpected. That left us with Cory, the First Mate's retired guide dog, who has never exactly been a canine dynamo of energy, if you know what I mean. She's 12 now and even a bit slower these days, but over the last week she started getting lethargic even for her, and a couple of days ago stopped eating after vomiting a couple of times. We took her to the vet yesterday, where she gobbled up some treats, and everything else looked normal. We bought some medicine and the vet told us to bring her back right away if we had any more trouble.

Unfortunately, last night she got sick again and started wandering aimlessly around the house. I spent most of the night trying to get her to lay down and relax until we could take her to the vet. They're going to keep her today and probably tonight to take some X-rays to see if she has a blockage, which is what we suspect. So now I'm pretty tired out, and thinking that this has been the summer from hell. We've certainly had the heat and humidity to indicate it, along with the series of family crises.

UPDATE II: The blood panel came back with no indications of kidney or liver failure, but with a substantially elevated white-cell count. The vet suspects pancreatitis, which is apparently treatable, and they're starting antibiotics just in case. She's also pretty dehydrated, so they're giving her IV fluids. They can't keep her overnight, so we'll probably bring her home later and take her back tomorrow for more IV fluids if necessary.

I feel silly about this, but she's such a great dog, and I'm hoping she can recover.

Don't Hurry Back

Fidel Castro has taken ill and turned over control of the government to his brother. The 80-year-old despot who has ruled Cuba for almost 50 years had a sudden bout of intestinal bleeding, requiring emergency surgery:

Fidel Castro temporarily relinquished his presidential powers to his brother Raul on Monday night and told Cubans in a statement that he had undergone surgery.

The Cuban leader said he had suffered intestinal bleeding, apparently due to stress from recent public appearances in Argentina and Cuba, according to the letter read live on television by his secretary, Carlos Valenciaga. ...

Castro said he was temporarily relinquishing the presidency to his brother and successor Raul, the defense minister.

He said the move was of "a provisional character."

Raul is no spring chicken either at 75. The quiet sibling of the Cuban strongman has taken more of an active public role of late, which might indicate that Fidel's health issues may not be as acute as Castro's announcement might indicate. Raul has taken over his brother's duties in both the Party and the presidency, and the nation has postponed Castro's upcoming birthday celebrations in two weeks until December.

That sounds like the Castros do not expect Fidel to be recuperating very quickly. If Fidel stays sidelined or declines significantly, one has to wonder how long Raul can hold the government in place. Raul has never had the kind of personality cult that his older brother encouraged for himself. When the strongman of a dictatorship fails or appears to do so, it causes the men around him to suddenly recalculate their own fortunes.

Even if Raul could hold things together, it won't be for very much longer in any case. His own advanced age, combined with the stress of domination, will tax him in a way that Fidel somehow avoided -- perhaps because he enjoyed it so much. Raul will likely not have the same quality and will quickly weaken.

This could develop rather quickly if Castro fails to return soon. Keep an eye on the Cuban-American bloggers, who will have the best information. And that means keeping my friend Val Prieto high up on your feedreader.

UPDATE: Well, Val doesn't disappoint; he's already all over this. He also gives a characteristically original caveat:

I feel I must urge everyone to take this news - however absolutely grand it is - with a grain of salt. castro has "died" many times before, only to then reappear like genital herpes. Let's all keep the champagne chilled, but let's not be popping any corks just yet.

UPDATE II: Er, "strongman of a dictatorship", not "strongman of a democracy". Thanks to LC Scotty in the comments for pointing out my brain fade.

Get Ready For The Offensive

The Israeli war cabinet has decided to launch a wide-ranging ground offensive, as I predicted earlier. The move comes as France has attempted a new diplomatic effort with Syria and Iran:

Israel's Security Cabinet approved early Tuesday widening the ground offensive in Lebanon and rejected a cease-fire until an international force is in place, a participant in the meeting said.

Airstrikes in Lebanon would resume "in full force" after the 48-hour suspension expires in another day, said the participant, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters. He said there was no deadline for the offensive, though the United Nations Security Council is expected to debate a resolution this week about a cease-fire.

The Israelis may have found some encouragement from new intel that says Hezbollah has run low on launchers, if not the rockets. They want to make sure they can capture or destroy the rest before they end this campaign, and have reached the conclusion that air power alone cannot achieve that objective.

While Israel earlier had asked for a 2-km buffer zone, reports say that the IDF incursion will penetrate much further than that. An Israeli commander interviewed on Fox said that they plan on pushing far into Lebanon to chase down and cut off Hezbollah. The IAF has successfully cut off many of the roads that Hezbollah would use to pull their equipment to safety in Syria, and they would need to act fast in order to take advantage of the cut in communications.

The French effort in Beirut has not yet hit the wires, but the French foreign minister has apparently requested an emergency meeting with the Iranian ambassador. France, which earlier today called Iran a stabilizing force in the Middle East, may try to get Iran to call back Hezbollah so that a settlement can be reached. I suppose it doesn't hurt to ask, but one has to wonder how France would convince Iran that a war on Israel's border doesn't serve their national interest -- which is, of course, the destruction of Israel.

GOP To Harris: We Love You .. Now Get Lost

One of the more embarrassing campaigns for the GOP this cycle is the Senate race in Florida. The election should give Republicans a chance at a pickup; after all, George Bush won the state twice and his brother Jeb remains very popular as governor. However, the Republican candidate has squandered all of these advantages and has dropped far behind the incumbent, Bill Nelson. The national party decided in May that Harris has no chance in the general election, and apparently did not get shy about sharing that opinion:

The state Republican Party bluntly told Rep. Katherine Harris that she couldn't win this fall's Senate election and that the party wouldn't support her campaign, a letter obtained Monday by The Associated Press shows.

Party Chairman Carole Jean Jordan made a last-ditch attempt in the confidential May 7 letter to force Harris out of the race for the nomination to challenge Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson. But the next day, Harris turned in paperwork to get her name on the Sept. 5 Republican primary ballot. ...

The letter to Harris listed major obstacles, including coverage of campaign contributions she took from a defense contractor, Mitchell Wade, who later pleaded guilty to bribing another congressman.

Harris has said that she wasn't aware of the illegal contributions and that she was only trying to bring high-wage jobs to her district when she tried to help Wade's company, MZM Inc., get a federal contract.

Polls by Quinnipiac and others show Harris trailing Nelson by well over 30 points, a laughable deficit that the GOP rightly deduced could not be overcome. They have pushed other candidates into the Florida primary to oppose Harris, but she leads all of them handily. Unfortunately, it looks like Harris has the primary locked up.

The only way the GOP can get back on track would be to find a high-profile candidate willing to enter the race. It would have to be someone with high name recognition and solid popularity among Floridians. The one man who meets all of these qualifications also has an opening in his schedule, as he will reach a term-limit end to his current position. Unfortunately, Jeb Bush says he's not interested:

Gov. Jeb Bush said Thursday he would not be part of a bizarre plan Republican strategists have contemplated to replace U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris as a candidate for U.S. Senate. ...

Speaking with reporters after addressing a graduation ceremony for Florida Highway Patrol recruits, Bush called the plan nonsensical and said he would not run for U.S. Senate.

"I think that's purely hypothetical," he said. "It ain't going to be me."

I'm not sure why it's "nonsensical". George Allen went from Governor to Senator and has managed the transition smoothly. All the Republicans wanted was to have Jeb enter the primary to give Republicans a fighting chance for the seat. If Jeb doesn't want the job, that's understandable and even commendable, but the notion is hardly "bizarre", as the Tallahassee Democrat described it.

Unless someone can convince Jeb to reconsider, it looks like Bill Nelson can laugh his way to re-election this year.

Iraqi 'Special' Olympics

Another set of translated documents have been released by the FMSO over the last few days, and while a good deal of them contain nothing new, some enlighten us as to the twisted mindset of the Saddam Hussein regime. Document ISGZ-2004-019744 contains a list of equipment and prices for equipment requested by the Iraqi National Olympic Committee -- for something called the "Special Workshop". A covering memo requesting the funds shows to what use the equipment was needed:

The Republic of Iraq Presidency of the Republic Saddam’s Fedayeen Office of secretary

Number/8/1/1720
Date 20 December 2002

The supervisor of the honorable Saddam’s Fedayeen

Greetings...,
Subject: Issue of funds

Please approve the request to issue the sum of (143,670,000) One Hundred Forty-Three Million, Six Hundred Seventy Thousand Dinar to the Iraqi National Olympic committee (special workshop), the amount is to manufacture and prepare for the Fedayee effort with supplies indicated in the attached application list.

Please review the matter and advice… with appreciation.

Signature
Brigadier General of support
Muhsin ‘Abd-al-Karim Mahmud
General Secretary
20 December 2002

The memo shows an approval dated the next day, meaning that while the US demanded a green light from theUN Security Council to invade Iraq, a Brigadier General took the time to ask the supervisor of the Saddam Fedayeen -- Uday Hussein -- permission to buy equipment for the Olympic Committee. Could these have been pommel horses for their gymanistics squad, or perhaps new uniforms for the wrestlers? Not exactly:

Cost.............................. Subject 5,000,000 Dinar....... For the manufacturing of 2 fuel tanks. “received” 360,000 Dinar.......... For the preparation of the special insignia for the Fedayeen (God-Country-Commander) [TC: Hand written note on the side of the page statingreceived] 100,000,000 Dinar .. For the manufacturing of 5 al-Razi firing systems 11,732,500 Dinar .... For special equipment (batons shaped like an “L” for riot control – leather gloves – equipment for climbing trees - climbing rope - “Nachuka” rope - deadly stars – jumping circles – seatbelt for jumping) 2,000,000 Dinar ..... For the manufacturing of 200 weapons 9,375,000 Dinar ..... For 125 fire extinguishers size 12 kg 5,460,000 Dinar ..... For 1365 Chinese made pickaxes 9,742,500 Dinar ..... For 2165 Chinese made shovels

The total amount is 143,670,000 Dinar.

Nachukas and deadly stars? Did the Olympics suddenly open up ninja competitions in 2002? Apparently the IOC has a very broadminded take on competition, as the Iraqi Olympic team needed to manufacture 200 weapons for their team. Pickaxes and shovels may have been needed for preparation in the brand-new Mass Grave Dig-off, in which the Chinese held a traditional edge.

Most interesting on this list is the 100 million dinars for 5 "al-Razi" shooting systems. The ISG report has a couple of al-Razi references. One regards the efforts at the al-Razi research center on a type of laser used in uranium enrichment, which doesn't really fit the context of this memo. The other refers to the Zakaria al-Razi Chemical Company -- which the ISG identifies as a "special weapons" contractor to the Saddam regime's WMD programs.

In December 2002, Saddam's army wanted to go for the gold in the war everyone knew was coming, and purchase 5 al-Razi shooting systems for his Olympic team. The Saddam regime really supported its own idea of the 'special' Olympics, it appears.

Contractors Balking At Open Government

Today's Washington Post has an article on the progress of the federal-spending database, but thanks to the Post's editors, it's buried on page D-4 of the Metro section rather than in national news. It contains an assertion that federal contractors will balk at having their oh-so-lucrative contracts listed for the public to review:

Politically, though, the bill could run into problems, as many large companies with federal contracts might not want certain information made easily accessible.

"Vendors don't want their competitors to know what they're doing and what they're winning," Webber said.

Two thoughts spring to mind here:

1. Boo-frickin'-hoo.
2. Then let some other company win the business.

I have more to say at the Heritage Foundation Policy Blog, which also has a link to a minimum-wage study which shows how a raise will actually decrease the spending power of families who rely on it for their sole income. Don't forget to check out the Heritage quick-link aggregator, to which I will also contribute. I put a link to NZ Bear's work on pork in the HHS budget -- but you have to check the link to see it!

Israel Will Expand Ground Offensive, Or Else ....

Israel will only temporarily cease operations over the next few hours, as the Knesset has demanded a more expansive ground offensive and a "strategic victory" over Hezbollah. Defense Minister Amir Peretz ignored heckling by Israeli Arabs in the parliament as he pledged to engage Hezbollah on a more sweeping scale than before:

Israel must not agree to an immediate cease-fire, but rather expand and strengthen its attacks on Hizbullah, Defense Minister Amir Peretz told an emergency session of the Knesset on Monday.

"We must not agree to a ceasefire that would be implemented immediately," Peretz said at the start of the heated session. ...

Peretz's speech was widely echoed by MKs across the spectrum including Opposition Leader Binyamin Netanyahu who added that Hizbullah posed a strategic threat, and therefore required a strategic victory.

"The journey of war is like any other journey. It starts easily but midway there's a difficult junction where we must decide whether we continue to climb the mountain or stop," said Netanyahu. "I call on the government: Don't stop midway. Complete the job."

Again, the Israelis do not want to relive the Lebanon occupation for another eighteen-year period. Israel knows better than most that occupations do not result in stabilization over the long term. They want to push Hezbollah back far enough to reduce their ability to hit northern Israel, and hopefully get the Lebanese Army to keep Hezbollah away from the border.

That kind of goal cannot be achieved through air power alone, especially given the problem of Hezbollah's entrenchment and the close proximity of their weapons to civilian populations. Ironically, the outrage over civilian casualties may force Israel into a sweeping ground offensive. Qana shows that air bombardments can create more problems than they solve. A ground force can strike at the weapons systems more accurately and hold down civilian casualties where possible. If the world objects to the IAF, then they will see the IDF instead.

Netanyahu's demands come as no surprise. He will want the war waged to maximum effect, and in a way represents a deterrent all on his own. If global pressure forces Olmert to leave Hezbollah in the field and still effectively attacking the Israeli north, Olmert's Kadima coalition may well fail -- and in wartime, the Israelis will likely turn to Netanyahu as the stronger alternative. Netanyahu will give the diplomats much less attention than Olmert, and may be tempted to widen the conflict to include Damascus.

Any "peace" that does not secure Israel against terrorist attack from Lebanon-based Hezbullah terrorists will be no peace at all. It could touch off a series of political changes that will create momentum for total war the likes of which have not been seen in the region for forty years.

Back To Thunderbird

CQ readers know that I have had a lot of fun with e-mail clients over the past year. I started off using Thunderbird, but after having a few meltdowns, I decided to look elsewhere.

First I tried Outook, the comprehensive program included in Microsoft Office. I actually liked Outlook a great deal, Its integrated approach made it easy to use schedules and e-mail all at the same time, as well as organize my contact lists somewhat rationally. Unfortunately, as an intergrated program, it kept eating up memory and slowing the computer to a crawl.

I then switched to Outlook Express, which I had used successfully in the past. It ran faster than Outlook, but had its own quirks. It didn't handle junk mail properly, and had a nasty habit of junking the wrong e-mail message when I used the toolbar. I switched to Eudora last week in frustration, even paying for the license. However, while Eudora ran well and has a tremendous number of features, I just found the interface too clumsy for efficient use. The user has to open each mail folder as a tab, and then switch between tabs just to see how many unread messages await and to access them.

So now I'm back to Thunderbird's latest release, and hopefully I can keep the meltdowns to a minimum. I'm compressing the folders on a regular basis and automatically deleting anything older than 30 days. I'll let you know how it goes, but it's nice to be back on familiar ground.

Chicken Or Egg?

Howard Kurtz notes an interesting trend among television news magazines; instead of tackling a wide range of interests, they have increasingly focused exclusively on crime. Kurtz argues that the trend has been prompted by a decline in viewership as networks flooded the zone with such programs:

Television news -- especially local television -- has always been drawn to crime. But in a country in which more than 16,000 murders were committed last year, are the killings of ordinary people, however tragic, really worth all this airtime?

"I think it lends itself to storytelling," says David Corvo, executive producer of "Dateline." "You've got a confrontation, right and wrong, guilt or innocence, and a resolution, and there's some suspense getting to that resolution."

The tabloidization of these programs comes as the networks have fallen out of love with newsmagazines, which were crippled by overexposure. As recently as 1999, magazine shows served up a dozen hours a week. Over the years, "Eye to Eye," "Public Eye," "Now," "West 57th," "60 Minutes II" and others came and went. "Dateline" and "48 Hours" have largely been relegated to weekends.

One has to ask the question as to whether the decline came before the focus on true crime or as a result of it. After all, A&E has had the franchise on such documentaries through three of its brands: American Justice, City Confidential, and Cold Case Files. Each has their own flavor, as regular viewers have learned. AJ does straightforward criminal cases, usually murder. City Confidential has much more of a tabloid feel, delivering dish on a particular location along with a murder case that highlights it -- and the late Paul Winfield gave it a certain delicious feeling with his excellent narration. Cold Case Files specializes in justice delayed, and inspired a host of network crime-drama clones.

The network news magazines came late to the party, and with few exceptions do not add to the artform, such as it is. One exception may be Stone Phillips' expose of on-line predators, a series of Dateline NBC shows that captured people traveling to remote locations just to have sex with underage girls. (One memorable pervert brought along his four-year-old son.) That type of work may provide some tabloid spectacle, but it also rid our communities of dozens of sexual predators -- at least it did after the initial segment, when NBC didn't think to coordinate with law enforcement, a mistake they didn't repeat. Still, that seems pretty close to the formula originated by Fox's America's Most Wanted, a two-decade example of interactive law enforcement that has captured hundreds of fugitives -- and even a few cold-case perpetrators.

News magazines keep following formulas in a quest to build ratings, but they still have never truly broken from either the 60 Minutes mold or the formats pioneered and mastered at A&E. The latter proves especially problematic, because A&E airs episodes of their crime shows every night, giving cable and satellite customers an opportunity to sate themselves, leaving little appetite for the offerings of the networks.

Can newsmagazines survive? Perhaps, but they need to break out of the molds they have followed for so long. Nightline might be a better example to follow, or perhaps a new effort focusing on other important subjects, such as foreign policy and war, or the effort to curtail gangs. Those may seem rather narrow areas of focus, but it has to beat the deathchase that Kurtz eloquently analyzes in his article.

Addendum: Kurtz also writes one of the best daily media round-ups. Bookmark him, as well as the National Journal's Blogometer and Slate's round-up (which has no permanent link), and check all of them each weekday. All three are a don't-miss for me.

Putting Qana In Perspective

When we or our allies go to war, we expect the maximum effort to adhere to the modern conventions of warfare, especially in protecting civilian populations. Unfortunately, the success for such efforts largely depend on the nature of the enemy. An enemy that does not concern itself with protecting civilian populations -- in fact, one that hides itself and its weapons among civilians for tactical and political purposes -- makes civilian casualties impossible to avoid. That Israel faces such an enemy should surprise no one, especially considering the tactics used by their enemies now and for the last generation, as Naomi Ragen reminds us in Arutz Sheva.

Ragen describes an incident experienced by her son's friend in the current conflict:

The village looked empty, and then we heard noises coming from one of the houses, so we opened fire. But when we went inside, we found two women and a child huddled in the corner of the room. We were so relieved we hadn't hurt them. We took up base in one of the empty houses. And then, all of a sudden, we came under intense fire. Three rockets were fired at the house we were in. Only one managed to destroy a wall, which fell on one of us, covering him in white dust, but otherwise not hurting him. I spent the whole time feeding bullets to my friend who was shooting non-stop. We managed to kill 26 terrorists. Not one of us was hurt.

Our commanding officer kept walking around, touching everybody on the shoulder, smiling and encouraging us: "We're are better than they are. Don't worry." It calmed us all down. And really, we were much better than them. They are a lousy army. They only win when they hide behind baby carriages.

Please remember this when you hear about the "atrocity" of the Israeli bomb (allegedly) dropped on Kfar Kana, killing many civilians, a place from which Hizbullah has fired hundreds of rockets at Israel. Unlike previous administrations, Mr. Ehud Olmert has my respect when he says: "They were warned to leave. It is the responsibility of Hizbullah for firing rockets amidst civilians."

Terrorists and their supporters have lost the right to complain about civilian casualties, since all they have done this entire war is target civilians. Every single one of the more than 2,500 rockets launched into Israel is launched into populated towns filled with women and children. Just today, another suicide belt meant to kill civilians in Israel was detonated harmlessly by our forces in Nablus.

So, don't cry to me about civilian casualties. Cry to those using your babies and wives and mothers; cry to those who store weapons in mosques, ambulances, hospitals and private homes. Cry to those launching deadly rockets from the backyards of your kindergartens and schools. Cry to the heartless men who love death, and who, however many of their troops or civilians die, consider themselves victorious as long as they can keep on firing rockets at our women and children.

Lest the New York Times editorial board accuse me of endorsing the terrorist standard for warfare as they did in their irresponsible editorial on Joe Lieberman yesterday, let me be clear: civilian deaths should be avoided as much as possible. When accidents happen, they should get investigated promptly to avoid them in the future. When the cause of avoidable civilian deaths are no accident, then the perpetrators should face court-martial.

However, the world needs to temper their outrage over the accidental and collateral civilian deaths with a lot more outrage over the tactics of Israel's enemies. Hezbollah has from the opening momemts of this war targeted civilian populations on purpose, firing 2500 rockets at Israeli cities and displacing over 300,000 civilians in the process. They routinely position their fighters among civilian populations and dress them to blend into residential neighborhoods. Civilian deaths are not collateral damage in Hezbollah's strategy, but a key component of their battle plan.

So let's hear a little less moral outrage over Qana, and let's start hearing a lot more moral outrage over Hezbollah's tactics. We don't want to fight like the terrorists, but it would be nice if so-called global leaders recognized the difference and pointed it out publicly. Otherwise, it becomes a tacit endorsement of terrorist tactics, and it only encourages more of the same. (via It Shines For All)

Getting Serious On Employer Enforcement?

It looks like the White House may really have taken advice to get tough on employers for immigration fraud seriously. The New York Times reports that Homeland Security has opted for full-bore prosecution lately rather than administrative fines:

Immigration agents had prepared a nasty surprise for the Garcia Labor Company, a temporary worker contractor, when they moved against it on charges of hiring illegal immigrants. They brought a 40-count federal indictment, part of a new nationwide strategy by immigration officials to clamp down on employers of illegal immigrant laborers.

Maximino Garcia, the president of the company, which provides low-wage laborers to businesses from Pennsylvania to Texas, stood before a federal judge here on Tuesday to answer conspiracy charges of aiding illegal immigrants and money laundering. If convicted, Mr. Garcia, who pleaded not guilty, could serve 20 years in jail and forfeit his headquarters building and $12 million.

The criminal charges against Mr. Garcia and his company were brought by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security. The campaign has included at least five other federal indictments of business executives in Ohio and Kentucky and has sent payroll managers rushing to re-examine their workers’ papers and rethink plans for their work force. ...

Until recently, the worst that Mr. Garcia, 43, might have expected from the immigration authorities was a civil fine and the deportation of some illegal workers. In April, with President Bush under fire from both Democrats and Republicans who accused him of being lax on employers of illegal immigrants, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the new campaign. It focuses on those suspected of violations with felony charges that could lead to huge financial penalties and the seizing of assets.

The Times includes the statement that the DHS has created a "climate of fear" among immigrant communities, complete with a quote from a Catholic nun. The second half of the article describes the economic impact of enforcement on immigrant communities. The "fright" of enforcement nearly killed one undocumented worker who got missed in a roundup in his neighborhood, ironically because he went to work that morning. Suffice it to say that the Gray Lady does not find this development promising.

However, it does lend more credibility to the Bush administration's assertions that they take enforcement seriously. In 2002, the old INS made a grand total of 25 arrests of employers, a laughable level considering the amount of employer fraud in this country. So far in 2006, ICE has made 445 such arrests and deported most of the 2700 illegals detained in the investigations. Those numbers still represent a very small portion of the overall problem, but it represents a substantial improvement and more of a commitment than seen previously.

And what, exactly, did Garcia Labor do with all of these illegal workers? They contracted them to ABX Air, a contractor of DHL. The workers sorted the freight for the delivery service, and had access to the airplanes while doing so. One might wonder how illegal immigrants get so close to commercial freight aircraft in a post-9/11 world, and why TSA wouldn't have had someone looking into the issue as well.

If the ICE and the White House continue this effort to curb the economic benefits of illegal immigration, then perhaps we can feel a little more comfortable with their desire for comprehensive reform.

No Bolton Filibuster: Schumer

Chuck Schumer confirmed that he may change his position on the confirmation of John Bolton and now considers a filibuter "unlikely", removing one of the key struts to Harry Reid's obstructionism during Bolton's last confirmation attempt. Bolton's defense of Israel appears to have changed his mind:

A Democratic filibuster of John Bolton's nomination as United Nations ambassador is "unlikely," Senator Schumer said yesterday.

Mr. Schumer supported an effort last year to block Mr. Bolton's nomination from gaining a full Senate vote, but he confirmed that he is considering changing his position. ...

Mr. Schumer said he had not made a final decision on which way to vote and that a lot of Democrats were also contemplating their position. The Democrats would need the support of 41 of their 45 members in the Senate to block Mr. Bolton's nomination. Three Democrats crossed over to oppose a filibuster last year, meaning that a shift of even a few senators would signal Mr. Bolton's confirmation. "I think that if you count the votes, a filibuster is unlikely," Mr. Schumer said.

Mr. Bolton has served as the U.N. envoy for nearly a year after President Bush appointed him during a congressional recess last August. Mr. Bush could reappoint Mr. Bolton again at the end of the year, but some have said it is important for the ambassador to have legislative backing, especially with a war in the Middle East.

Schumer still had to get in a few digs at Bolton, reminding everyone of the bogeyman Democrats built out of the current ambassador to the UN. Schumer talked about the "good part of Bolton" and the "bad part of Bolton", but had trouble explaining the latter. He said that Bolton had a "go it alone" attitude that has come across in his efforts on Iran and North Korea.

Huh? The last time we heard from the Democrats on this issue, they blamed the Bush administration for its multilateralism, not for a "go it alone' attitude. John Kerry demanded that we cut out the other four nations in the six-party talks and start dealing direct with Kim Jong-Il. Democrats across the party have complained about "outsourcing" the negotiations with Iran to the EU-3, which insisted on leadership in those talks because they already had diplomatic relations with Teheran. France, Germany, and the UK also have economic ties with the mullahcracy and thought they could leverage that into concessions from the mullahcracy.

I'm happy that Schumer has decided to stop playing partisan politics with foreign-policy positions, which clearly fall into the purview of the White House and have tenure limited to that of the president's term. Hopefully, his caucus will follow his lead and quit acting like petulant children. However, it would also be nice if they could finally make up their mind about whether multilateralism is a virtue or a vice and get their stories straight forthwith.

Adding Insanity To Insult

Mel Gibson made an ass out of himself this weekend, first by driving while drunk, and then by reportedly spewing anti-Semitic slurs while police officers took him into custody. As he said in his apology, Gibson's remarks were despicable, and regardless of his state of sobriety, he richly deserves his embarrassment for those actions and remarks.

Some have said that his controversial film, The Passion of the Christ, should be re-evaluated in light of Gibson's alleged latent anti-Semitism. Of course, people are free to do so, although people didn't appear to be shy in reviewing the film on those terms during its release over two years ago. (My review can be found here.) Gibson invited those reconsidered evaluations with his remarks, as well as speculation on the motivation behind his upcoming work on the Holocaust.

However, some people just cannot abide the fact that even stupid people have the right to free speech. Abraham Foxman, the director of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, wants the police to open a criminal probe into Gibson's stupid remarks:

Gibson's reported criticism of Jews, contained in a leaked police report detailing his arrest early on Friday morning, included the phrase: "F*****g Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."

He has since apologised for his actions, saying they were "despicable", but community Jewish leaders called for Gibson to be ostracised from Hollywood, where the A-list actor is considered an industry powerbroker.

Calling for a criminal investigation into the Oscar-winning actor and director's remarks, Abraham Foxman, the national director of the US Jewish Anti-Defamation League, said: "We believe there should be consequences to bigots and bigotry."

What crime does Foxman claim Gibson violated with these remarks? Americans have the right to say some pretty stupid things. Hell, the blogosphere proves that almost every day! We also can say some hateful things about our fellow man, and it's still not a crime.

Perhaps some might want the government to police our speech and our thoughts in order to ensure that no offensive speech can occur. Many have already tried this; Russ Feingold and John McCain have succeeded in no small measure, and many colleges and universities have enacted speech codes. However, that is a blade that cuts both ways, and those who complain about the speech of others should take care that their speech is not the next target for a powerful lobby to silence.

Foxman had our support while he expressed outrage and disgust at Gibson's drunken rant. However, he loses it when he advocates criminal penalties for merely offering an opinion. Gibson's remarks, as reported, were hateful and obnoxious -- but Foxman's are truly dangerous.

Thanks For All That Death And Destruction

Fuad Saniora apparently wants to make it difficult for people to remain sympathetic to Lebanon, or perhaps he just has the worst case of Stockholm Syndrome since Patty Hearst. Whatever the reason, Saniora made it clear that he will not have the stomach for disarming Hezbollah as required by the UN Security Council as he praised their "defense" of Lebanon:

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuoad Siniora expressed his 'gratitude' to Hizbullah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah for "sacrificing their lives for the country."

During a press conference held in wake of the Qana village incident in which 55 Lebanese were killed, Siniora asked: "Is Israel's mission to wipe out the Lebanese? It seems they want to kill all of us. One of those killed today is a baby just one day old. With its aggression, Israel is encouraging extremism." ...

Siniora repeatedly stressed his desire to reach a ceasefire, and called on the UN Security Council to meet immediately and act on the issue.

The Lebanese prime minister added that he esteems those who fell in "the defense of Lebanon,"' and said that his government is doing everything to strengthen its stance. He even expressed his "full admiration for Nasrallah and all those who sacrifice their lives for Lebanon."

Under any rational view of the situation, Saniora should decry the deliberate sacrifice of southern Lebanon and its denizens to the radical terrorism of Hezbollah -- that is, if Saniora didn't sympathize with Hezbollah's aims. It appears that he does, which calls into question the notion that Lebanon itself isn't primarily responsible for this act of war, and isn't getting the response it deserves.

We already know that Lebanon has ultimate responsibility for acts carried out by militias it tolerates on its land, but the assumption was that Saniora didn't disband Hezbollah out of inability. Statements such as these make it appear that Saniora didn't want to disband Hezbollah under any circumstances. That makes Saniora more overtly responsible for the act of war, and it frees Israel to target Lebanese military assets on a much broader basis.

Israel won't do that, and for good reasons, even if Saniora deserves it. Ehud Olmert can beat Hezbollah by making it clear to the Lebanese that supporting the terrorists come at too high a price. Once they get the message, Lebanon has to have enough capability left to eject Hezbollah and strip them of their weapons. If Israel crushes the Lebanese army, Hezbollah will not only never get disarmed, but they may just conduct a coup and take over Beirut altogether.

It's a tough balancing act. However, if Saniora continues to salute Hassan Nasrallah and his terrorists, the Israelis will discount Saniora altogether and conclude that he wants to be part of the problem and not the solution. At that point, the Lebanese may find a much wider war on their hands.

Israel Agrees To Temporary Suspension

In response to the outcry over the bombing in Qana, Israel has agreed to suspend aerial attacks on southern Lebanon for 48 hours, and also to suspend ground operations for 24 hours in order to allow humanitarian aid into and civilians out of the area:

Israel agreed to a 48-hour suspension of aerial activity over southern Lebanon after its bombing of a Lebanese village on Sunday that killed a number of children.

The suspension of over-flights was announced by State Department spokesman Adam Ereli. He said Israel has reserved the right to attack targets if it learns that attacks are being prepared against them.

"The United States welcomes this decision and hopes that it will help relieve the suffering of the children and families of southern Lebanon," Ereli told reporters traveling with Rice.

This is a smart move by the Israelis. It gives Hezbollah 24 hours to manuever, of course, but the time won't be long enough to bolster their capabilities in any meaningful manner. The suspension shows that the Israelis will respond to the global community within reason, taking some of the diplomatic heat off of Israel and the US.

A suspension puts more pressure on Hezbollah than it does Israel. The world has screamed for a cease-fire, and Israel has conditionally agreed, at least for a short period. If Hezbollah quits firing over the border, the Israelis may extend it, allowing the conflict to settle. However, no one really believes that Hezbollah will honor this -- after all, they started the war, and they obviously believe this plays to their benefit. Once they launch another rocket, all bets are off, and Israel will get at least another two weeks before the ADD-addled global diplomats again forget that Hezbollah started the war.

The US also benefits with this suspension. Given that our State Department announced it first and that it came at the end of Condoleezza Rice's trip to Jerusalem, it appears rather obvious that the demand came from the White House. That kind of intervention establishes that we have some limits -- even if they are foolish limits -- to our laissez-faire attitude towards Israeli action.

I predict that the suspension will not last; Hezbollah will continue its operations, providing yet another point of clarity in this conflict.

Webb Tangled

Virginia supposedly offered one of the brightest hopes for a Democratic takeaway in this year's Senate race. James Webb, a former Reagan official and a best-selling novelist, challenged potential Presidential aspirant and leading conservative George Allen, who has served as Governor and Senator in the state. Early polls showed Allen vulnerable to Webb, but the latest surveys show that Webb has dropped back rather dramatically:

Republican Sen. George Allen has a 16-point lead over Democratic challenger Jim Webb in the latest independent statewide poll, published Sunday, but a fifth of the electorate is still undecided. ...

Forty-eight percent backed Allen and 32 percent supported Webb in the Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. survey of registered voters likely to vote in the Nov. 7 election.

However, 20 percent of the 625 respondents surveyed statewide by telephone July 25-27 said they had not decided between Allen, a former governor seeking a second Senate term, and Webb, a former Republican who was President Reagan's Navy secretary.

The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Webb probably damaged his chances in a recent debate when he admitted he had no idea what or where Craney Island is. Allen used it to brag about bringing home some pork, which doesn't speak well for Allen, but he scored an important point about Webb's lack of depth regarding Virginia's economy and politics. Craney Island supports tens of thousands of jobs and serves as a major refueling port on the Atlantic Coast. It also has plenty of historical significance for a state that practically serves history with every breakfast. Ignorance of its significance painted Webb as a lightweight, and the new polling demonstrates that plenty of Virginians paid attention.

Even before that, however, Webb's numbers had started to decline. Rasmussen put Allen up by eleven on July 18, up slightly from June. While the AP points out that Bush's declining job approval has created a drag on Allen, his own approval far exceeds that of Webb. Allen gets a 64% favorable rating from Rasmussen's survey against a 31% unfavorable rating. Webb, despite his status as a relative newcomer and a popular author, only garners a 46% favorable rating against 31% unfavorable, with 24% undecided.

Allen still has not topped 50%, which provides some cause for anxiety. Allen can't afford to let up. However, if the Democrats counted on Virginians to end Allen's career, it looks like they're in for some disappointment.

Gray Lady vs WaPo On Lieberman (Update)

With the Connecticut primary approaching, one could expect local newspapers to consider endorsements, even though papers do not usually endorse candidates until the general election. Having not one but two national newspapers outside of the contest endorse primary candidates is even more unusual -- but given the exposure of Connecticut's Senate race, it seems utterly predictable that the New York Times and the Washington Post would feel it necessary.

The Gray Lady likes Ned Lamont, and that should come as no surprise, either. The one issue on which Lamont seeks to oust Joe Lieberman is the war in Iraq, which the Times has opposed from the beginning:

This primary would never have happened absent Iraq. It’s true that Mr. Lieberman has fallen in love with his image as the nation’s moral compass. But if pomposity were a disqualification, the Senate would never be able to call a quorum. He has voted with his party in opposing the destructive Bush tax cuts, and despite some unappealing rhetoric in the Terri Schiavo case, he has strongly supported a woman’s right to choose. He has been one of the Senate’s most creative thinkers about the environment and energy conservation. ...

If Mr. Lieberman had once stood up and taken the lead in saying that there were some places a president had no right to take his country even during a time of war, neither he nor this page would be where we are today. But by suggesting that there is no principled space for that kind of opposition, he has forfeited his role as a conscience of his party, and has forfeited our support.

Mr. Lamont, a wealthy businessman from Greenwich, seems smart and moderate, and he showed spine in challenging the senator while other Democrats groused privately. He does not have his opponent’s grasp of policy yet. But this primary is not about Mr. Lieberman’s legislative record. Instead it has become a referendum on his warped version of bipartisanship, in which the never-ending war on terror becomes an excuse for silence and inaction. We endorse Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary for Senate in Connecticut.

The Times tries to throw in more meat than just Iraq, but its reasoning seems faulty at best, and more than a little bit of a stretch. They blame Lieberman for leaving the task of "investigating" the Bush administration to Lindsey Graham, but the American electorate left that "task" -- as if a never-ending investigation of another branch should comprise some sort of standing committee -- to the GOP. Joe Lieberman has no chair on any committee, thanks to Democratic ineptitude at the polls the last three election cycles.

The Times also faults Lieberman, and takes a quote out of context, by claiming that he endorsed the idea that American forces should be held to no better standard than the terrorists. This comes from Lieberman's response during the Abu Ghraib scandal, when Lieberman noted that the world has not held any of our enemies to the Geneva Convention when they flew civilian jets into civilian buildings in New York, killing almost 3,000 of our fellow Americans. I might add that few members in Congress who blathered on for years about Abu Ghraib spent more than a few moments noting the depraved manner in which terrorists killed several of our troops in Iraq.

Bill Keller and his editorial board may think they have built a broad argument for Ned Lamont, but every word in their endorsement says one thing over and over again: the war, the war, the war.

The Post, however, talks about Lieberman's efforts to bridge partisan divides to accomplish difficult tasks in its endorsement:

[I]t seems that Mr. Lieberman is also being pummeled for his ability to work with Republicans and get things done in Washington -- also rare traits -- and that's a criticism that strikes us as shortsighted even from a partisan Democratic point of view. Throughout his Senate career, Mr. Lieberman has been faithful to the fundamental values that most Democrats associate with their party: care for the environment; dedication to a progressive tax code and other ways to help the poor and middle classes; and support for Israel and other democracies around the world. But he's managed to hold on to those values while also working with Republicans to move legislation forward: with Susan Collins (R-Maine), for example, on homeland security; or with John McCain (R-Ariz.) on climate change.

This is a talent and temperament that is helpful to the Democrats in the minority but will be needed even more if there's a change in power in one or both houses of Congress or, in 2008, in the White House. Then, more than ever, the Democratic Party, if it hopes to accomplish anything, will need people such as Mr. Lieberman who bring some civility to an increasingly uncivil capital -- who can accept the idea that opponents may disagree in good faith and who can then work to find areas of agreement and assemble working majorities of 60 senators. His ability to do so is a strength, not a weakness, for the party as well as the nation.

I have seen no evidence that Lamont lacks civility, either, but that really isn't the point. His backers have almost an allergic reaction to civility, and that has fueled the Lamont campaign from its inception. The same party that blames George Bush for divisiveness is about to pillory one of its most effective and yet solidly Democratic members for disagreeing with the activist base on one issue. Under those circumstances, it would be hard to imagine that Lamont -- no matter how much of a nice man he probably is -- could work across the aisle to get decisions made and accomplish good works on behalf of all Americans.

In fact, it sends a message to all Democrats that to differ from the base on any issue puts them at serious risk of attack from their own ideological compatriots. In the last three sessions of Congress, Lieberman has come in close to dead center in his caucus. At least 15 Democratic Senators in each session had more conservative voting records than Lieberman, including Minority Leader Harry Reid in all three. Will the activist Left start unseating those incumbents as well for committing heresy to the Left -- and if so, how can Democrats ever expect to gain a governing coalition of moderates when even Joe Lieberman cannot be abided in the caucus?

The Post seems to understand this, although their advice will likely get dismissed by the Left as conservative propaganda. Instead, they will follow Bill Keller's political advice, and likely suffer the same declining support as the Paper Of Record's declining subscriptions. That's what happens when any organization panders to the extremes.

UPDATE: Connecticut newspapers have endorsed Lieberman. The Hartford Courant:

He is now called a renegade by many in his party for standing with President Bush on the invasion and occupation of Iraq. We have not often agreed with Mr. Lieberman on the conduct of the war but admire his sticking to his beliefs in the face of withering criticism. Not enough members of Congress have such character. ...

Mr. Lieberman's history of enthusiasm for military interventions overseas is an anomaly in a man famous for mediating among warring factions in Washington. But to dismiss this moderate - a vanishing breed in a Congress sundered by extremism on both sides - for dissenting on a single issue would be a terrible waste. And a mistake.

It would show an intolerance unworthy of any political party.

Palestinians: We're Not Hezbollah

The Palestinians in Gaza have begun to resent the linkage made between their conflict and that in Lebanon, the Washington Times reports. In their objections, they point out the key flaw in Hezbollah's claims of self-defense and resistance:

As fighting between Israel and Hezbollah continues to rage in Lebanon and northern Israel, Palestinians find themselves at the margins of a regional conflict that has shifted attention away from their six-year uprising for the first time.

The war between Israel with the radical Shi'ite Hezbollah also has highlighted the Hezbollah-Iran alliance as a major Middle East flash point that has overshadowed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

To the chagrin of many Palestinians, a resolution to the Gaza clashes often is linked to a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah.

"The Palestinians have to prove that they are not in the same basket and that they should not be punished for the Lebanese cause," said Omar Shaban, a Gaza-based political analyst.

"We have our own political agenda. We need a political solution. What is going on in Lebanon is different. Hezbollah has no political agenda. Lebanon is not occupied by Israel."

Although the Palestinians use terrorism to gain political advantage over the Isrealis in the same manner as Hezbollah, in the West Bank they still live under occupation and do have the right to resist. That's not true in Gaza, as Israel has withdrawn from that territory, or at least they had until Hamas committed an act of war against them. And it certainly isn't true in Lebanon, where Israel ended its occupation six years ago -- which made their attack an act of war against Israel, a war which Hezbollah had not expected.

The Palestinians have suffered from the lack of global attention. They had counted on world leaders to force Israel into more concessions, including the same kind of prisoner swap that they had extorted from Israel in the past. Instead, Israel has attacked the leaders of the various terrorist groups to drive home the message that everyone suffers when people start wars. The latest attack, this morning, came on the home of a leading member of the Palestinian Resistance Council, one of the groups believed to be responsible for the Gilad Shalit kidnapping. The IDF called the man and told him to get his family out of his house immediately -- and then leveled the three-story house with a 500-pound bomb shortly after they evacuated.

Israel sent a message: We know who you are and where you live, and the next time we won't bother to call.

The Palestinians can't wait for the Hezbollah initiative to play out. The Israelis keep getting better intelligence, and they will soon start picking off all of the terrorist leaders if Shalit does not come back alive. The Gazans need an intervention -- and they're unlikely to get it while everyone's focused on Lebanon.

UPDATE: A couple of comments in this thread talk about "occupation" and whether the West Bank qualifies, but from two different perspectives. I agree that Israel conquered the land in response to a war declared on their nation by Jordan and others. That, however, doesn't make it part of Israel for the simple reason that Israel has never annexed it, nor do they want to do so. That would make the residents Israelis, and they would have the right to vote -- and to destroy the Israeli democracy. In fact, Arafat threatened to declare both West Bank and Gaza part of Israel and demand the vote for that very purpose. In legal terms, the West Bank is occupied territory.

That does give the Palestinians the right of resistance, just as it would anyone else. However, two points have to be kept in mind. First, the PLO predates the occupation (1964 vs 1967), and the aim of the PLO and other terrorist groups has always been the destruction of Israel, not an end to occupation as defined by the global community. Second, the right of resistance does not extend to the deliberate targeting and murder of civilians. A "legal" resistance would have to limit its targets to military, police, and government assets and personnel. The PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the other assorted lunatics have never limited themselves in that sense, and therefore have earned the sobriquet of terrorist.

The Qana Funeral

Israel attacked Hezbollah launching positions in the ancient city of Qana, resulting in the deaths of dozens of civilians. Ehud Olmert and his staff immediately expressed regret for the deaths, but pointed out that Hezbollah's positioning made this kind of collateral damage unavoidable:

Olmert expressed deep regret for the harm inflicted on the civilians in Qana Sunday morning when at least 57 civilians - 37 of whom were children - were killed as the IAF fired missiles at a building in the southern Lebanese town.

"I express deep regret, along with all of Israel and the IDF, for the civilian deaths in Qana," said Olmert. "Nothing could be further from our intentions and our interests than harming civilians - everyone understands that. When we do harm civilians, the whole world recognizes that it is an exceptional case that does not characterize us."

"In contrast," Olmert said, "Hizbullah has launched rockets with the aim of murdering innocent civilians in northern Israel." ...

Olmert said that the area was a focal point for the firing of Katyusha rockets on Kiryat Shmona and Afula. He said that from the outset of the conflict, "hundreds of rockets have been fired from the Qana area."

Defense Minister Amir Peretz was also profoundly repentant for the fatal strike, saying, "this is a tragic incident that is a result of war. Hizbullah operates in the heart of populated centers with the full knowledge of endangering the lives of innocent civilians."

Qana is considered the same town where Jesus performed his first miracle, turning water into wine at a wedding feast. Unfortunately for Qana, no miracle will bring the residents back to life after this destruction. Nor is this the first time that a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah resulted in civilian deaths in Qana; ten years ago, an Israeli strike on this town killed over 100 civilians, under similar circumstances as today.

The IDF has video showing that Hezbollah positioned its rocket launcher adjacent to the bomb impact site, making it an open target for military response. Militarily, the Israelis have plenty of justification for the attack. Politically, however, they may have run out the string on their operation. The attacks comes as the UN Security Council meets to debate any action that can be taken to put an end to the fighting -- one of the key roles for the almost-toothless body -- and with civilian deaths escalating, there will be a lot of pressure to enforce some kind of cease-fire,

This could play out well for Israel, at least in one aspect. Israel has made clear that they will not accept another UNIFIL mission -- useless, toothless, and eventually hostage to Hezbollah terrorists themselves. The UN and NATO nations had been reluctant to suggest anything else but a UNIFIL-like force to replace them. With the deaths escalating, the UN and/or NATO will have more pressure put on them to create an effective force to keep this kind of war from breaking out again.

Israel has two choices: occupy Lebanon again or smooth the ground out for a buffer force to protect their northern border. The Israelis do not want another 20-year occupation on their backs, for understandable reasons, so they have to do what they can now to make the alternative as successful as possible. It looks like time may run out more quickly, in terms of political cover, than they may have considered.