NARN, The Run For The Border Edition

The Northern Alliance Radio Network will be on the air today, with our six-hour-long broadcast schedule starting at 11 am CT. The first two hours features Power Line's John Hinderaker and Chad and Brian from Fraters Libertas. Mitch and I hit the airwaves for the second shift from 1-3 pm CT, and King Banaian and Michael Broadkorb have The Final Word from 3-5. If you're in the Twin Cities, you can hear us on AM 1280 The Patriot, or on the station's Internet stream if you're outside of the broadcast area.

Today, Mitch and I will discuss the topics of the week. Chief among those, I'm sure, will be the immigration compromise announced on Thursday. We'll climb the fence on the new budget announced by the Democrats in Congress, which raises your taxes while they claim they're not raising your taxes. We'll attempt to dig tunnels under Ron Paul and his performance in the Republican debate. We may cross the river like the Democrats did on Iraq war funding, too.

Be sure to call and join the conversation today at 651-289-4488. You don't even need a Z-visa to get on the air ...

'Welcome To Teheran'

The Guardian has a scathing report on the British efforts in southern Iraq and the resultant influence of Iran in the Shi'ite militias vying to fill the power vacuum around Basra. It demonstrates the futility of the approach used by the British in engaging militias instead of marginalizing and defeating them, as even the Iraqi commanders on the ground explain:

When he finished his conversation, the general - who didn't want his name published because he feared retribution from militias -stretched out his hand to me and said: "Welcome to Tehran."

I asked him about British claims that the security situation was improving. His reply was withering: "The British came here as military tourists. They committed huge mistakes when they formed the security forces. They appointed militiamen as police officers and chose not confront the militias. We have reached this point where the militias are a legitimate force in the street." ...

"Most of the police force is divided between Fadhila which controls the TSU [the tactical support unit, its best-trained unit] and Moqtada which controls the regular police," the general said.

"Fadhila also control the oil terminals, so they control the oil protection force and part of the navy. Moqtada controls the ports and customs, so they control the customs, police and its intelligence. Commandos are under the control of Badr Brigade."

Even those who join the police and security forces as unaffiliated soon have to choose a militia to join, for their own protection. Once they do, they cannot be removed, as the militias act as a type of union to protect each other and the power they accumulate from their infiltration. The general estimates that 60% of his officers and almost all of the rank and file in his sector belong to militias -- and that it will take a "major surgical operation" to clean the city of Basra.

How do ordinary Iraqis respond to this power structure? They flock to the strong horses, as one would expect:

The people who really control Basra are men such as Sayed Youssif. He is a mid-level militia commander, but his name and that of his militia - God's Revenge - strikes fear anywhere in Basra.

Beginning with a small group of gunmen occupying a small public building, the former religious student built up a reputation as a fearless thug, killing former Ba'athists, alcohol sellers and eventually freelancing as a hitman for anyone willing to pay the price. ...

In the room outside his office, tribal leaders, officials and more gunmen sat, bare footed, waiting for Sayed Youssif to call them. Some wanted him to help their relatives join the army or police. Some had problems with other militias and were seeking his protection. But most were there to pay homage to a powerful man whose help they may one day need. As the official apparatus of state slides into chaos, men such as him have become the main dispensers of justice and patronage. No one in Basra can be appointed to the army, police or any official job without a letter of support from a militia or a political party.

As I have written many times, engaging with the militias was the biggest mistake the British made. It legitimized people like Sayed Youssif and Moqtada al-Sadr. The US has made its share of mistakes as well, but we have always insisted that the only use of force for security had to come from the Iraqi government through the national forces we train, not by attempting to blend militias into a police force. The militias should have been fought and stamped out, as we are trying to do it Baghdad.

Now what we have is all of the makings of a real civil war of the kind we see in Gaza now. We will have state-armed groups organizing into armies that will control territories and conduct operations against each other as soon as the British leave. With Teheran pulling the strings, the Shi'ite south could erupt into a new kind of internecine war that could undermine the Shi'ites in the national government.

ONA Conference In The Media

Given that this week's Online News Association had so many people from the media field, it doesn't seem surprising that it made its way into the news stream. Two articles covered the ONA conference on the convergence of traditional media, New Media, and political campaigns. Both report on the first panel only. First, we have Gene Koprowski from the Tech Daily Dose, courtesy of Danny Glover at Beltway Blogroll, talking about holding fingers to the blogospheric wind:

Political campaigns are now relying on blogs to "test market" new messages with small, niche audiences before transforming them into full-release commercials and press releases, Republican and Democratic consultants said Thursday.

The trend started on the state level but is going national with the 2008 presidential campaigns, experts said here at the Online News Association's regional conference.

Wisconsin Republican strategist Brian Fraley indicated that statewide blogs are an excellent tool to "test ideas -- and see if they are press release worthy." He said campaigns overall are now devoting more staffing and money to monitoring and cultivating bloggers and online sites.

In the Q&A of the panel, I argued that the blogs were another form of media and need to understand that campaigns will view us and other new media with the same cautious eye as any other reporter. Scott Bauer of the AP noted that this was a theme:

"If online news hasn't changed the way you run campaigns, you're not running campaigns," said Fraley, who worked for Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen's successful campaign last year and runs the Dailytakes.com Web site.

Political consultants are scared to death that a gaffe by their candidate will spread like wildfire online and derail their campaign, said Vaughn Ververs, senior political editor of CBSNews.com.

"I think they're becoming more cautious than ever before, they're more scripted than ever before," he said. "I don't know what it's going to take to break through that."

Bloggers need to understand that they are part of the media, just a different form of it, said Ed Morrissey, political director for BlogTalkRadio.com. Campaigns and bloggers have a "mutually symbiotic relationship" in that they will each use one another for their own needs, Morrissey said.

"Its a long way of saying we're both whores," he said.

That line got a laugh at the conference, but it came in response to both Brian Fraley and Ted Osthelder calling themselves whores to get their campaign message out any way they can. A question came up about access for bloggers and how it hadn't proceeded past the journalist stage, but we have to understand that we can be just as dangerous now as a reporter for the Washington Post. Not only do our observations hit the Internet in the same way, but newspapers and television will eventually pick those stories up from the New Media faster than you can say "macaca".

Both articles give a good overview of the first panel. If you want to know what transpired in the other panels, my posts are here and here. A live recording of the last panel, on which I served, can be streamed here.

Reload!

The two major Palestinian factions reached yet another cease-fire in their slide towards total civil war in Gaza this morning. Mahmoud Abbas reached out to international Hamas head Khaled Mashaal, who directed Hamas to negotiate with the Fatah leader:

Negotiators from the rival Hamas and Fatah movements reached a new cease-fire deal Saturday, a senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said.

The agreement was worked out in a meeting at the Egyptian Embassy in Gaza, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss the matter with reporters.

Previous agreements reached in the past week of deadly factional fighting quickly collapsed, and it was not clear if this one would hold. Under the new truce agreement, both sides pledged to pull their fighters off the streets and to exchange hostages later Saturday.

Of course, we've seen these cease-fires before, and they usually last long enough to get more ammunition to the street fighters. While the opening salvos of this latest war between the two groups showed high-level command and real tactics when Hamas attacked the Karni crossing and the presidential compound, it has descended into gang warfare on the streets. It's questionable whether those foot soldiers have enough discipline to stop shooting at each other for longer than that, now that the hostilities have broken out in a real way.

Hamas has other reasons to seek a peace besides altruistic desire for unity with the rest of the Palestinians. Shortly after launching their war against Fatah, they also attacked Israel in an attempt to gain the sympathy of the people of Gaza. They wanted to use an Israeli invasion to motivate the Gazans to rally to the Hamas banner, and even attempted to paint Fatah as collaborators ahead of time.

Israel didn't bite. Instead of the full-scale invasion Hamas thought they'd get, Israel has used some good intel to selectively hit only Hamas assets in the field. Hamas has complained that Israel is playing favorites -- I'm not kidding about that -- but it has taken the steam out of the Hamas offensive. Israel's response to Hamas' accusations can be summed up thusly: We don't care who wins as long as it's not Hamas:

A series of Israeli air strikes has driven Hamas fighters out of their bases and prompted accusations that Israel is helping Fatah.

Peretz insisted Israel is not interfering in the internal fighting. However, he also said that "we certainly would like the moderate forces to emerge with the upper hand," a reference to Fatah.

Fifty people are dead in Gaza. What services they had have come to a standstill. Garbage piles in the streets, commerce has shut down until this morning, food and supplies can't come through the crossings; it's a self-imposed catastrophe. While their people starve, Palestinian leadership try to kill Palestinians; while their infrastructure collapses, theie engineers try to squeeze more yardage out of their Kassams. This is what happens when a protostate puts terrorists in charge.

Think they've learned anything yet?

CQ Radio: Nader Elguindi

Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we'll talk to Nader Elguindi, who has authored a book that details his experience in overcoming adversity and devastating physical injuries to requalify as a US Navy submariner. Titled My Decision to Live, Elguindi has directed all proceeds to benefit the Walter Reed Medical Center, where he now works as a peer counselor. I've been looking forward to interviewing Elguindi for a while now, and this should be a fascinating hour.

Be sure to join the conversation by calling 646-652-4889!

The Myth Of Tax Cut Expirations (Updated)

The House and Senate passed a massive budget bill yesterday, a fact lost in the heat over the immigration compromise, that expands federal spending to almost $3 trillion dollars. At the heart of the new spending, now and in the future, is the elimination of the Bush administration's tax cuts from 2001-2003. The Los Angeles Times asks whether that amounts to a tax increase:

The House and Senate on Thursday approved a $2.9-trillion federal budget blueprint that, depending on whom you asked, contained the second-largest tax hike in history or, conversely, no tax increase at all.

How are such different readings of one document possible? It could happen only in the world of Washington budget-speak, where political spin is at least as important as fiscal reality.

The new budget resolution, the first to make its way through Congress since Democrats took control, anticipates almost $3 trillion in spending and just under $2.7 trillion in revenue, leaving a projected deficit of about $250 billion. ...

At the heart of the dispute are the major tax cuts that President Bush pushed through Congress soon after taking office in 2001. Congress, then controlled by Republicans, approved the cuts but specified that they would expire after 2010 unless Congress extended them — a provision designed to make the size of the cuts more palatable. The GOP has since sought to make the cuts permanent.

Now the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate have voted to let some of the cuts expire — particularly those that benefit the wealthiest taxpayers. For example, the new budget resolution would allow tax rates on high-income Americans to revert to pre-2001 levels in 2011.

Tax cuts don't "expire" unless taxes get raised. Americans who pay taxes know this from long experience. Regardless of the reason or the mechanism, when taxes go up, they increase -- a fact so obvious that only Beltway insiders can get it wrong.

The Bush administration and the Republicans had to accept the sunset provisions in order to get the tax cuts passed. At the time, Democrats and a few Republicans (John McCain among them) had doubts as to whether they would actually stimulate the economy and drive a recovery from the 2000-1 recession and subsequent mediocre performance. They wanted a mechanism to raise taxes back to the levels at the time if the cuts didn't perform as advertised.

Well, they did. The tax cuts sparked an economic expansion that continues to this day, one which has increased revenues to the federal government by 22% since their full implementation. The lower rates improved capital investment in the economy, created jobs and lowered unemployment to 4.5%, and expanded prosperity.

What has been the Democratic response? Not only to raise taxes back to the pre-expansion level, but to add even more federal spending on top of it. It envisions a 5% increase over FY 2007 spending just to start. That's the largest single-year increase since 2002, and it comes on the compounded increases of 3-4% year-on-year of the Republican Congresses of the Bush term. It represents a whopping 40% increase from FY 2000, when the budget came in at $2.1 trillion.

The current Congressional leadership doesn't want people to think that they're raising taxes. If not, where do they expect to get the money for the federal budget expansion? They will take capital out of the marketplace, where it creates and maintains jobs and production, and stick it into a federal system which burdens both -- creating an even greater need for federal spending on entitlements and welfare.

This budget shows that while Republicans spent like drunken sailors, they managed to avoid picking pockets like Fagan's ring of young thieves while doing so. The Democrats want to give us both.

UPDATE: And it gets worse. Take a look at page 50 of the Conference Report. The actual size of the budget is $2.965 trillion, which makes the year-on-year increase slightly higher than I said -- but that's not the real problem. Within four years, the Democrats want to push the budget to $3.274 trillion, an increase of 10% over their proposed spending for next year, and an an increase of almost 20% over this year.

It was just ten years ago that the budget was under $2 trillion. It has already grown 35% in ten years. By the time 2012 rolls around, it will have increased 44% in the previous ten-year cycle under this plan.

A Note On Comments

CQ commenters have noticed a large number of errors when trying to submit comments. I get the same errors when I try to comment -- and we're working on a permanent solution. The truth is that we've become too successful in building traffic and a large community to work through normal, low-cost hosting services, and I need to make other arrangements. I've been trying for months to make enough back-end changes to keep costs down, but I have to acknowledge that success in this industry requires a better allocation of resources.

It will take a few days to implement the necessary changes. In the meantime, please don't reload your comment when you get an error message -- in almost every case, the comment has been received. For new commenters, I have to approve your first entry in order to get past the spam protections we have here, and I'm pretty good about doing so within a short period of time.

In no time, we will have the changes made and the server responses should improve measurably. Thanks for your patience in the meantime.

Addendum: I mentioned my dissatisfaction with my previous hosting service in an earlier post. I didn't name them because they had been helpful to me in the past. This week, I exchanged e-mails with the service's owner, who could not have been more gracious and apologetic for the problems I experienced. She has offered some key support for the future, and it is much appreciated.

Fred: Kucinich Is Chavez Lite

Normally I'd put a post about the Fairness Doctrine in the First Amendment category, but not this one. Fred Thompson serves up more red meat, this time on Dennis Kucinich's back, by comparing the Democrat's efforts to revive the speech-limitation legislation to Hugo Chavez' media clampdown in Venezuela:

I had planned on talking a bit today about Venezuela. The president there doesn’t like the way his media is covering him, so he’s doing away with the free press. He’s established rules on what he thinks is fair, and he’s denying licenses to television and radio stations that don’t play by government rules.

I can’t criticize him now, though. After all, how would it seem for me to complain about another country, when our own congressional leadership is trying to put the same sort of rules in place here? To do so, they’re pulling the Fairness Doctrine out of the dustbin of history. ...

The real issue here is not what you “can” see or hear — which is what the Fairness Doctrine was about originally. It’s what you’re “choosing” to see or hear.

Insiders say it was the collapse of the radio station “Air America” that led to this attempt to retool the Fairness Doctrine as a form of de facto censorship. I guess the idea is that, if you can’t compete in the world of ideas, you pass a law that forces radio stations to air your views. In effect, it would force a lot of radio stations to drop some talk show hosts — because they would lose money providing equal airtime to people who can’t attract a market or advertisers.

Fred hits all the right notes in this broadside against the Democrats. The Fairness Doctrine isn't about fairness at all -- it's about their unhappiness over the choices made by talk-radio listeners. Conservatives have built an industry on talk radio because they have developed talented hosts who produce shows that garner listeners and attention -- and influence. It turns out that the liberals couldn't buy into that market, and now their Representatives want to kill the market altogether.

None of this is news. We all have watched Air America die slowly, and some of us understood its implications. If the liberals could not get market penetration, some of them would attempt a dog-in-the-manger ploy to ensure that conservatives could not use it. That's why I started talking about the Fairness Doctrine three years ago.

However, this column and the sudden flood of missives from Fred Thompson securely indicates that he's running for the Presidency. Fred has spent the last few years in Hollywood, far from the political fray, engaging only occasionally. Since the beginning of the year, though, Fred has treated us to a stream of well-written essays on a broad range of public policy, and has emerged as the rational voice of federalism among the Republican cognoscenti. He has issued video statements and ensured that he provides commentary on every major issue that arises. He's even engaging the blogosphere to a level that surpasses even some declared candidates.

At some point, though, Fred has to actually get in the race. He needs to build an organization and start raising funds. He needs to appear at debates and make his case explicitly. When will he do that? Hopefully soon, before people tire of his attempts to play coy.

In the meantime, though, enjoy this essay against an attempt to stifle free political speech. It should remind everyone of the stakes in elections, and why principled non-engagement harms freedom in the long run.

Do Conservatives Favor Expanding Federal Hate-Crimes Law?

Gallup has a stunning new poll that shows a majority of conservatives favoring an expansion of the federal hate-crimes law. In fact, it's not even close. Majorities of both Republicans and conservatives favor the addition of sexual-orientation classes to the existing race and ethnicity classes (via Memeorandum):

A substantial majority of the American public favors the expansion of federal hate crime legislation to include crimes against people based on their gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. The U.S. House of Representatives has passed such legislation, which is now being considered by the Senate. Republicans, conservatives, and religious Americans are slightly less likely than others to favor the expansion of hate crime legislation, but a majority of those in each of these conservative and religious groups favors the proposed legislation. ...

Much of the organized opposition to the expansion of the hate crime law has come from conservative religious groups, while the nation's top Republican leader, President George W. Bush, has suggested he will veto the legislation if it reaches his desk. But there is little evidence from these data to suggest that a majority of Republicans, conservatives, or more religious Americans are opposed to the new law.

Q: There is a proposal to expand federal hate crime laws to include crimes committed on the basis of the victim's gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Would you favor or oppose expanding the federal hate crime laws in this way?

The response to the question will surprise many here at CQ. Sixty percent of Republicans favored the expansion, and 57% of self-described conservatives backed it as well. In fact, all of the religious demographics favored it -- by even higher numbers. Catholics, for example, backed it 72%, while 65% of Protestants supported the expansion. Atheists and all other religious affiliations gave 3-1 support for the new law.

Given that the question was framed rather fairly, it calls into question the entire conservative effort to argue against the expansion of federal criminal authority. One has to wonder whether conservatives understand that this makes crimes like assault and battery federal offenses now, rather than state and local matters. It certainly shows that the conservative punditry -- who mostly opposed this on either federalist or thought-police bases -- has not made their case at all within their own community, let alone outside of it.

And the same can be said for the religious communities most bothered by the potential speech limitations, although that argument is rather indirect. (It comes from a different application of hate-crime legislation in Australia and Canada.) The efforts to push back against this bill have only garnered less than 30% support amongst the people who the critics claim will be most impacted by the bill.

If this is all the opposition that the conservative and religious critics can muster, then the bill will almost certainly become law, and President Bush will save his veto for other issues with more unanimity within his own political base.

Russians Suppressing Dissent

I could probably run that headline every day, but in this case it has implications for European politics as well as internal Russian politics. Russia hosts the EU-Russia Summit this year in Samara, and critics of the Vladimir Putin regime had planned to demonstrate outside the meeting to show their dissatisfaction with Putin's increasingly authoritarian style. When the Russians refused permission for the demonstration, Germany's Angela Merkel objected -- and Putin appeared to back down. Appearances can be deceiving:

Russian opposition leaders, including Garry Kasparov, were arrested Friday morning on their way to Samara to protest an EU-Russia summit. The Kremlin doesn't want images of police beating up protestors to be beamed around the world. But Angela Merkel has lodged a protest of her own with Vladimir Putin. ...

The march was given official approval late last week, following pressure from Germany, the current rotating president of the EU. But despite the fact that the city authorities have given the green light for the protest, the repression of Other Russia is in full swing. Over the past 10 days, 15 members of the opposition have been arrested; and on Friday morning another 13, including the coalition's leader, chess champion Garry Kasparov, were arrested and prevented from traveling to Samara. Human rights activists are describing this as a deliberate campaign against the organizers of the march.

Anastasia Kurt-Adzhiye, spokeswoman for The Other Russia, was arrested last Sunday. The petite 19-year-old was accused of carrying grenades and a knife in her small black handbag. "I showed them the permit from the mayor, which allows our demonstration," she said. Rubbish, the police told her -- the signature must have been forged.

The mayor had to interrupt his holiday to clear up the matter. But that didn't stop the security forces from forging ahead with other arrests. On Monday Yuri Chervinchuk was arrested, supposedly as part of an anti-terror operation, while Michail Merkushin was taken into custody because he looked like a wanted criminal.

The Russians do not appear to have taken Merkel's warning to heart. They achieved their purpose through other means, allowing the EU contingent to arrive under the false pretense that Putin tolerates dissent. Now the organizers of the protest are in jail, and the EU diplomats are in luxury accommodations in Samara.

Will the EU stand for this? If they value freedom of speech and democracy, they should register their protest by leaving Samara. Otherwise, their presence acts as an endorsement of the Putin regime and its oppressive tactics in stamping down any kind of dissent against the policies of its government. Merkel has made a statement expressing her concern, but thus far no other movement has been forthcoming from the EU.

Europeans know better than anyone the price of appeasing dictators and authoritarians. Left unchallenged, they continue to expand their power and eliminate dissenters. If the EU allows the Samara summit to continue and to conduct business as usual, they will send the message to democrats that freedom has a lower priority than commerce.

Chasing The Pipe Dream

I want to address -- again -- the arguments against the concepts outlined in the proposed immigration compromise announced yesterday. I've received a few angry e-mails and comments, but also a number of thoughtful objections to my post yesterday, attempting point-by-point rebuttals. Those members of the CQ community deserve the same thoughtful consideration.

Argument 1: Congress will never enforce the border-security provisions/triggers.

Many people firmly believe that Congress (and George Bush) will ignore the border-first, employment-first triggers and skip right to normalization. In this regard, they use the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli amnesty plan, but they forget that Simpson-Mazzoli didn't have any border-security provisions. Congress promised to add them later, and never did. That's why Jon Kyl and other Republicans insisted on security-first triggers before any of the rest of the plan can proceed.

Some say that Congress will just ignore the law anyway. If so, then you can't trust Congress to do anything, so even if they passed a border-security-only plan, you still can't support it. That's an argument for futility, where one does not believe in the legislative system any more.

Argument 2: It will prompt a flood of illegals.

What do we have now? What have we had for the last 21 years? Doing nothing won't slow it down, which is why we've been screaming for a border-security bill. This compromise tries to move from the status quo. It may not have enough, but it does provide exponentially more resources to the border than anything we've ever seen, and we can add to it in subsequent Congresses if necessary.

Argument 3: It rewards illegal behavior; the penalty for illegal entry should be deportation.

There are 12 million illegals in the US. Let me explain how difficult that would be. In the first place, the ICE has to find them, usually where they work. They then have to build a probable cause for a raid and search warrants (unless we want to toss out the 4th Amendment). That takes quite a bit of time; it might take months to build that kind of a case against an employer, but at least it will take a few weeks. Then they raid the shop, arrest everyone without proper identification, and start the deportation process -- which requires a hearing for each person in court to determine their status. During that period, we have to house and feed them.

Now, let's say we can summon up the vast resources it would take to send 10,000 people a month through that long, laborious process. (In comparison, we have 16,000 murders a year, and it sometimes takes years to resolve the cases.) It would still take 100 years to deport all 12 million illegals in that manner -- while clogging our courts, eating up our law-enforcement resources, and disrupting American commerce and politics for a century, all while we're fighting a war with radical Islamist terrorists.

Argument 4: Once we start cracking down on the border and on employers, the illegals will self-deport.

People offer this without a shred of proof that it works. I don't have a shred of proof that it doesn't. However, once we've secured the border, they won't be able to just pick up and leave any more; we will have trapped them inside the US. Furthermore, despite all the handwringing about American poverty, it is still a lot easier to be poor here than in Mexico or Central America. Even if we kept their kids out of our schools, blocked them from our health facilities, and denied them any chance at Social Security, I doubt they would find the conditions here more harsh or unpalatable than whence they came.

If we really want to solve the porous border and the immigration issue, then we need to start somewhere to stop the problem from getting worse first. This bill is not perfection by any means -- but it is a reasonable starting point.

UPDATE: Via Hot Air, here's the White House position paper on the compromise:

* Putting Border Security And Enforcement First: Border security and worksite-enforcement benchmarks must be met before other elements of the proposal are implemented.

* Providing Tools For Employers To Verify The Eligibility Of The Workers They Hire: Employers will be required to verify the work eligibility of all employees using an employment eligibility verification system, while all workers will be required to present stronger and more verifiable identification documents. Tough new anti-fraud measures will be implemented and stiff penalties imposed on employers who break the law.

* Creating A Temporary Worker Program: To relieve pressure on the border and provide a lawful way to meet the needs of our economy, the proposal creates a temporary worker program to fill jobs Americans are not doing. To ensure this program is truly "temporary," workers will be limited to three two-year terms, with at least a year spent outside the United States between each term. Temporary workers will be allowed to bring immediate family members only if they have the financial ability to support them and they are covered by health insurance.

* No Amnesty For Illegal Immigrants: Illegal immigrants who come out of the shadows will be given probationary status. Once the border security and enforcement benchmarks are met, they must pass a background check, remain employed, maintain a clean criminal record, pay a $1,000 fine, and receive a counterfeit-proof biometric card to apply for a work visa or "Z visa." Some years later, these Z visa holders will be eligible to apply for a green card, but only after paying an additional $4,000 fine; completing accelerated English requirements; getting in line while the current backlog clears; returning to their home country to file their green card application; and demonstrating merit under the merit-based system.

Again, if the compromise enforces these provisions and the others listed in this paper, it's better than another two years of doing nothing while the problem gets worse.

Immigration Deal Reached (Update & Bump)

The Senate will announce a bipartisan agreement on immigration along the lines I reported yesterday, with the GOP holding firm on moving away from family-based priorities on entry to the US. Jon Kyl apparently carried the day for the GOP:

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators reached agreement on Thursday on an immigration reform bill that would legalize millions of illegal immigrants and establish a merit-based system for future migrants, lawmakers said.

The agreement sets the stage for what is expected to be a passionate Senate debate over immigration and lead the way for what would be one of the most significant accomplishments of President George W. Bush's final term.

Details of the agreement were set to be released at a news conference the group scheduled for 1:30 p.m (1730 GMT). Negotiators, led by Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Sen. Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican, worked out the final details on Thursday morning.

According to Reuters, it also puts border enforcement ahead of normalization, and workplace enforcement as well. A merit-based points system will determine priority for entry, one which takes into account family but emphasizes knowledge of English, education, and needed skills.

Will this mollify the hard-liners? It's unlikely. Hugh Hewitt has called for a grassroots operation to stop the agreement, even though it pretty much matches what his preferred candidate outlined during the last debate:

MR. WALLACE: Governor Romney, you have also called Senator McCain's immigration plan amnesty. Are you prepared to say that sharing the stage with him tonight? And how do you explain your statement to the Lowell Sun last year in which you said, quote, "Those that are here paying taxes and not taking government benefits should begin a process toward application for citizenship as they would from their home country." Why isn't that amnesty as well, sir?

MR. ROMNEY: Well, my view is this. People should have no advantage by having come here illegally.

MR. WALLACE: But you're not telling them to go home, sir.

MR. ROMNEY: I am going to tell them to go home, but they start by beginning the process of applying for citizenship. But I do not believe -- or applying for permanent residency. They're not going to be barred from doing that, but they do not get any advantage by having come here illegally. That's the key part of what I objected to in McCain-Kennedy.

McCain-Kennedy, what it did is said that people who are here illegally get a special pathway. They're not like all the other immigrants in the world that want to come to this great country; they get a special pathway. That's what's wrong about it. If you're here illegally, you should not have a special pathway to become a permanent resident.

My view, you have to secure the border, number one, have an employment verification system, number two, and number three, say to those that are there illegally, get in line with everybody else; you're not going to have a special doorway, any particular advantage, by having come here illegally, to become a permanent resident.

Well, if this bill has the touchback provision, and it has the Z-visa and the formal guest-worker program, and really secures the border, then it meets his requirements ... doesn't it?

Here's the problem with the hard-liner arguments, which amounts to "they'll never engage the border-security and workplace enforcement portions." Well, that could be true of any immigration bill, even if it completely matched the conservative position on immigration. It's an argument that only supports no action whatsoever on illegal immigration, including border controls. In fact, it applies to everything Congress passes. If that's our concern, it's an argument for non-engagement in the legislative process -- which necessarily works through making compromises that the majority in the end can support.

As I wrote yesterday, this is about as good as we will get in this Congress. In fact, the Democrats probably had enough votes to pass something much more like a wide-open amnesty, given a few Republican votes in support of that and the relaxed attitude of the White House on immigration reform. The GOP did a pretty good job of holding the line and forcing the Democrats to include the border-first triggers, the reduction of the family interest, and the rest of what Kyl managed to retain.

It's not great, and it's not even very good. It's not bad, though, and given our lack of strength in Congress and the White House on this issue, it's a good deal that will strengthen our national security now rather than wait another two years to address it. To quote the Rolling Stones, you can't always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need. This is one of those times. (via Hot Air)

UPDATE & BUMP, 8:38 PM CT: I'm currently on the way home from Madison and eating dinner at Panera Bread, which has excellent (and free) wi-fi service. I've caught up with the comments, which mostly disagree with me on this topic, and that's fine. I give my honest opinions and allow people to respond as they see fit -- and I've made it easier for people to do so by dropping the Typekey requirement. We've picked up a lot of new commenters in the week since then.

However, some people have decided to make their very first comment at CQ an announcement that they will not return. That's fine, too. Some people cannot brook dissenting points of view, even when respectfully framed. I'm not going to be "turning out the lights" here because some people choose not to visit here anymore, despite suggestions to do so. I would warn those who can't handle disagreement on policy to find another hobby, because policy and legislation is all about handling those disagreements in a productive manner. Taking one's ball and going home is what got us into the minority in the first place.

I'll add a couple of comments about the bill itself. First, my support is based on firm triggers based on border security and employment verification -- in other words, that the compromise exists as described by the Republican Senators who helped craft it, especially Jon Kyl, who has been a very loyal Republican. If not, then I don't support it, because my primary consideration in this is national security. We have to tighten the borders and identify as many illegals as possible as quickly as possible in order to free law enforcement to track down the real bad guys.

I don't want to wait another two years to begin that process. That's why a compromise with the provisions announced today is tolerable, and why it's better than no bill at all. The fact that it took Congress more than 5 years after the beginning of the war on terror to finally get around to producing something that addresses border security is just short of a crime in and of itself.

UPDATE II: Before I hit the road again, I read Dafydd at Big Lizards, who outlines the compromise as it has been announced by the parties to the agreement. As is his wont, Dafydd gets very detailed about the legislation; be sure to check it out.

ONA Seminar III: Preparing Reporters And Students For A Changing Media Landscape

We're returning to the seminar now, with a five-speaker panel on preparing for the advent of all the forms of New Media.

Scott Anderson of CNN talks about being the last generation trained for traditional journalism. Now, he says, he's playing three-dimensional chess. It's challenging news producers on priorities and on resources. Audience attention span has narrowed, too, so that makes another consideration for allocation.

Adrian Holovaty of the Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive group, notes that wire services have worked under the moment-to-moment model all along. Online journalism has just caught up with the AP model, and people should look to the wire services for the best models. However, Holovaty also says that the wire services have a weak reputation for in-depth reporting; how to keep that while using the wire-service model? It's a tough culture change for publications like newspapers and especially news magazines, which publishes normally on a weekly basis.

Liz Brixley teaches at the Missouri School of Journalism, and she notes that students today are much more tech savvy, sometimes more so than the faculty. What they do not know is how to provide the content. "Everyone needs a good dose of humility," she advises, so that they can learn what they don't know in order to get a grasp of the New Media paradigms.

Anna Nicole Smith comes up as an example of how multimedia may not add all that much to a story. I'd say it needed to be a story at all before anyone could "add" to it.

Students need to learn how to gather accurate data before they try to report it. That makes a lot of sense, and I think J-schools attempt to do that. That's why wire-service reporters, who generally tend to be younger and less experienced, do a pretty good job of the five Ws. It's when they move onto other positions that those skills seem to be less valued at certain publications.

So far, as the moderator points out, the panelists have talked about the same skill sets that she learned 20 years ago. Adrian Holovaty says there should be social training so that reporters 'don't do the same old s**t", and that students need to provide "newness" and look to change the industry. Yikes. How about just reporting the facts? Or is that too old-fashioned?

Scott makes a point about journalism being a business. If they want to cover big stories with lots of resources, that will distinguish them from the grassroots media. However, they need to have the cash flow to pay for that -- and that means maintaining ratings and ad revenue. It forces producers to consider why they're spending money on certain stories, which is why the smaller stories do not break out. My reaction: that's why the grassroots media exists. He also said that he didn't take business courses in college, but today he would -- he feels that business management skills are essential in modern journalism.

Now we're talking about the Politico's reporting on Edwards' reaction to his wife's illness. Politico ran a story 15 minutes ahead of the presser that Edwards would withdraw, which turned into a Dewey Beats Truman moment for the on-line publication. Scott reported on their report, and the meme flew through the information hierarchy ... until Edwards announced that he would stay in the race. Ben Smith is here -- in fact, he's on my panel next -- and he wants to comment on it, but it looks like he won't get the chance.

UPDATE: Ben did get a chance to address this. He accepted responsibility for inaccurately promoting the story through the headline chosen. The actual story, he said, reported that a single source close to the campaign said Edwards would suspend his campaign. The headline, however, just stated that Edwards would suspend, a small but significant difference. The story itself, Ben insists, was accurate -- a source had reported that. I'm not sure I buy that. If The Politico published that story, they should know that they are reporting the substance and not the nature of the source.

UPDATE II, 6/4/07: Adrian Holovaty is the one who suggested social training for journalists, not Mike Westling. I got the two mixed up, and I apologize for the error. Thanks to Mike himself, who noted the error in the comments, and then correctly skewered me for following it with a question as to why the facts are not sufficient. Mea maxima culpa!

ONA Seminar II: Parsing Polls Properly

If any one seminar looks the most educational for bloggers, this would be it. It features Jim Pugh of the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce group, Paul Maslin, who has worked with various political campaigns on polls, and Ann Selzer of Selzer & Co.

Polling has gotten tougher and tougher. Seventeen percent of the people in the US no longer has landlines. More people refuse to answer polls. Paul Maslin says we should be wary, and says that 75% of them will be seriously flawed to useless.

Ann asks what political coverage would look like without polling. It would reflect campaign spin much more than real data. It gives media a clue as to where to probe.

Jim says that we should also be wary of media polls. They are performed by amateurs for the most part. Campaign polls are usually more reliable, if you can get to the data. (Paul conducts the Iowa Poll, which is usually pretty reliable for the Iowa caucuses.)

This so far features a lot of generalizations and common sense. Check the sample, for instance, and the methodology. Hardly groundbreaking, but then again, maybe people don't think to do that. Everyone emphasizes the fact that professional pollsters do better jobs than amateurs, and that the pros get snapped up by campaigns -- which leaves unsaid the fact that the polls we get to see are not the highest-quality surveys on the market.

What about cell-phone respondents? Ann says they worry about the results of such polls. The most reliable polls come from door-to-door surveys. It's also important to know the sample. A large number of households are unrelated, unmarried residents, such as college roommates in apartments, and that can skew results too.

One good point: the cell phone question keeps getting more and more pertinent in every election cycle, and it has to be resolved soon if polls are going to remain reliable.

Now the discussion is drifting off a little bit; Paul is criticizing media coverage of the presidential campaigns, saying that the media is covering both parties' primary races as three-person contests. He quipped that Romney may count as three and four due to his Mormonism. A bit snarky for this crowd, which didn't laugh as much as they collectively groaned. He's predicting another bloody and tight battle for the presidency in 2008, and wants to see more in-depth polling of Republican voters. "Why is Arnold Schwarzenegger so darned popular? ... How do they hang onto Bush but move away from him significantly enough to win?"

Iowa may represent the last chance for second-tier candidates. The polling reality there is different from the national momentum. It's a long way to the caucuses, and there's enough time left to see what effect the secondary candidates can have. In that sense, national polling runs risks of overshadowing the actual mechanics of winning a nomination.

Online polls get bashed, and deservedly so. You can't control for the sample, you can't control for the exposure, and you can't control for abuses. Other than that, they're great. We see this quite a bit in the blogosphere, where straw polls routinely return results that clearly conflict with the reality of the political races. Robopolls also get a lot of criticism, but also some defense for quick rollout response polling.

Which polls should be routinely ignored? I think the questioner wanted a brand name, but the panel's answer was any poll that refuses to release its sampling and methodology. If it can't be peer-reviewed, it should be disregarded -- just like scientific research. Good point, and one bloggers should consider and enforce.

CQ Radio: Live Simulcast Of The Panel

I'll be speaking at the Online News Association online journalism conference, and my show time overlaps with the panel presentation. Given that, I've decided to try something new and innovative -- a live broadcast of the panel presentation. I'm not sure how clear it will be, but you'll hear it the same way I do. I'll start it at 2:30 pm CT this afternoon to intro it, and it will run to 3:30, or about 2/3rds of the way through the panel.

I won't be able to take calls, but be sure to tune in. You can also listen to my previous podcasts as well, including a terrific interview with Major John Heil from Iraq, or yesterday's with Patrick Hynes about the Republican debate.

Also, not on BTR, but Glenn Reynolds has his podcast with "Conn Iggulden, whose new book, The Dangerous Book for Boys, takes an old-fashioned positive look at boyhood, bravery, and the nature of risk, about those subjects and others -- including the effect of modern parenting and education on military recruitment and the future of Western civilization.". One of these days, we'll get Glenn to try BTR for some live shows, but in the meantime, make sure you listen to this podcast.

ONA Seminar I: How Campaigns And The Media Interact On The Web

The first seminar here at the Online News Association conference will explore the impact of online media for political campaigns. The panelists are Jim Brady from the Washington Post, Brian Fraley, and Ted Osthelder, consultants for the Republican and Democratic parties.

We're talking about the 24-hour news cycle and the pressure to have information at all times to feed the beast. It also amplifies mistakes and creates more opportunity for them. It requires more resources allocated to media and monitoring the blogs as well as the major news organizations. It generates enormous resource allocation issues.

Jim Brady notes that Washington Post came under a lot of pressure from its readership to have continually new content on their site. That pressure had to come from the competition from blogs, something that he didn't mention, but the WaPo reacted by expanding their offerings. Chris Cilizza's The Fix was a direct result of that editorial decision, and they have also expanded their on-line chats.

Brian mentions that campaigns now have the challenge of being overwhelmed by credentialed media, after having made the decision to credential bloggers. He tells an anecdote of an event where TV cameras could not get squeezed into the media area because of the presence of so many bloggers.

Brady says the relationship between the traditional media, campaigns, and "grassroots media" -- bloggers, YouTubers, etc. He wonders if "macaca" now has put every politician on the defensive? They will be less likely to be spontaneous and to work in smaller venues, opting for fewer and more large-scale appearances to minimize the potential for damage.

YouTube will impact the dynamic of traditional campaigning, says Ted Osterheider. Candidates used to deliver the same speech six times a day for weeks in order to get it out to everyone. Now, with viral media, that speech gets very dated very quickly, forcing campaigns to switch it up more frequently. That creates more opportunity for macaca moments.

The Fred Thompson response to Michael Moore sparked an interesting discussion. Brian guessed that it cost $100, but had more impact than millions of dollars in traditional campaigning. He then made a strange assumption that campaigns wouldn't follow that example by spending a major portion of cash on YouTubes and the like. That touched off a debate about why they wouldn't, and Brian said that "you can't ignore the traditional media". True enough, but there's nothing to keep them from doing both.

Brian mentions that campaigns use bloggers to get around the gatekeepers of the media. Ted says they use bloggers as a test group. Both are acknowledging that campaigns float things in the blogosphere, which should concern bloggers. Both also acknowledge that risks exists for the campaigns using these techniques, because one screw-up will live forever on the Internet. Ted also warns campaigns that they have as much to fear from New Media as Traditional Media.

Sean Hackbarth from The American Mind notes that he gets little more than press releases with all of this New Media access, and says that he gets treated no better than reporters. I'm sitting with a few reporters (Scott Bauer of the AP among them), and they all rolled their eyes at that statement. Last year, we complained that we didn't get the same treatment as reporters. His point, though, was that the campaigns don't really put a lot of effort into cultivating bloggers, and the panel says that bloggers need to do their own cultivating, too.

"Life's tough -- get a helmet."

Jim Brady also makes a good point about evaluating the sources, and Ted mentions a meritocracy at work. The blogosphere has matured as a market, and the campaigns and the media understand who the players are and tailor their response accordingly.

Frankenfood Bad, Frankenstein Good

The scientific demands for embryonic stem-cell research just took a disturbing turn in Britain. The UK has given its approval to license researchers to create "cybrids", a mix of human genetics into animal egg cells in order to study stem cell development. Over at Heading Right, I look into the dichotomy of a Europe that has hysterically blocked genetic manipulations in grain production, but apparently has no such qualms about human embryos.

At some point, a line must be drawn on the manipulation of human beings for scientific progress that never seems to arrive. Those who advocate expanded hEsc research still have no progress to show for it, while adult and umbilical stem cells have generated many therapies. If hEsc has to go so low as to start blending humans into cybrids to pursue success, we should ensure that no government funds ever go towards that research in the US.

The Real Beneficiary Of High Gas Prices

The Democrats have continued to use high gas prices as a key part of their new populist agenda and class warfare. They pose at the pumps, decry the "windfall profits" gleaned by Big Oil from consumers, and promise more government intervention as a solution. However, as George Will points out, government creates more of the problem than Big Oil:

Pelosi announced herself "particularly concerned" that the highest price of gasoline recently was in her San Francisco district -- $3.49. So she endorses HR 1252 to protect consumers from "price gouging," defined, not altogether helpfully, by a blizzard of adjectives and adverbs. Gouging occurs when gasoline prices are "unconscionably" excessive, or sellers raise prices "unreasonably" by taking "unfair" advantage of "unusual" market conditions, or when the price charged represents a "gross" disparity from the price of crude oil, or when the amount charged "grossly" exceeds the price at which gasoline is obtainable in the same area. The bill does not explain how a gouger can gouge when his product is obtainable more cheaply nearby. Actually, Pelosi's constituents are being gouged by people like Pelosi -- by government. While oil companies make about 13 cents on a gallon of gasoline, the federal government makes 18.4 cents (the federal tax) and California's various governments make 40.2 cents (the nation's third-highest gasoline tax). Pelosi's San Francisco collects a local sales tax of 8.5 percent -- higher than the state's average for local sales taxes.

Pelosi and others who just know, evidently intuitively, the "fair" price of gasoline must relish what has happened in Merrill, Wis., where Raj Bhandari owns a BP gas station. He became an outlaw when he had what seemed, to everyone but the state's government, a good idea. He gave a discount of 2 cents per gallon to senior citizens and 3 cents for people who support local youth sports programs.

But Wisconsin's Unfair Sales Act requires retailers to sell gasoline for 9.18 percent above the wholesale price. The state's marvelously misnamed Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection has protected consumers from Bhandari's discounts by forcing him to raise his prices. Some customers now think he is price gouging.

Minnesota has the same kind of price controls on its gasoline sales. I believe the threshold here is 8% above wholesale, but it's the same problem. I assume this hearkens back to the bad old days of Standard Oil, which used to underprice its gasoline in new markets to bankrupt its competitors and then jack up the prices in a monopoly market. However, it no longer applies to today's market, and these laws wind up forcing consumers to pay more -- in fact, to impose a profit margin three times higher than normal.

As Will points out, gasoline itself carries about a 3% profit margin for oil companies. That's about 13 cents a gallon at today's prices. (Their overall profit margin is less than 10%, which puts it slightly behind most other consumer-product industries.) Will demonstrates where the rest of the money goes. In the example given, state and federal governments take 58 cents from every gallon, or four times what Big Oil gets in profit. San Francisco takes an additional 8.5% in city/county sales tax, which on $3 per gallon would be another 25 cents.

Since the government bite is based on the sales price as a percentage, the government gets more as the price goes up. Not only that, but now the government wants to impose a "windfall profits" tax on an industry that doesn't have windfall profits, making the government an even larger beneficiary of higher prices, and guaranteeing that prices will continue to rise as the money for further investment gets siphoned off to Washington DC.

Who has to pay that bill? You and I do. Unless you hide your money in your mattress, you probably own Big Oil -- through your retirement funds or 401Ks. You and I have invested in these companies so that we can retire on the proceeds of their growth over the long term. Stripping away profits from the industry will cripple their ability to deliver on that growth, and the tens of millions of us who have relied on those investments to retire may find out that we have lost ground to compounded inflation rather than gained it through compounded interest.

The price of oil and gasoline comes from very clear and very simple supply-and-demand factors. Conspiracy theories do not address the real issues, and politicians who enable conspiracy thinking either don't have the candlepower to recognize this or are exploiting the weak-minded for their own purposes. Perhaps the people of San Francisco should ask themselves into which category Nancy Pelosi falls.

Egypt And Jordan, White Knights

As Gaza spirals into the civil war that should surprise no one who has paid attention since the Palestinian Authority elections last year, some in the international community have finally figured out the obvious: the Palestinians are completely incapable of self-government. For the first time in decades, whispers of Egyptian and Jordanian custody for the territories have been heard:

Gaza was on the brink of civil war last night as violent clashes between Palestinian factions spiralled out of control.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, threatened to declare a state of emergency today, as fierce fighting raged on the streets.

But as the death toll climbed to more than 40 in four days of the worst fighting since Mr Abbas forged a coalition Government with Fatah’s rival Hamas two months ago, he appeared powerless to stop it.

He can't stop it, because Hamas has no desire to govern. They have no desire to partner with anyone. They want unfettered dictatorial rule over the Palestinian territories, because they want to make war on Israel -- a war that will result in the destruction of one nation or the other. All Abbas can do is to declare a state of emergency and try to regain control with his militias, which will exacerbate the conflict and start the civil war in earnest.

Abbas has one more political card to play: the self-destruct sequence for the Palestinian Authority. Once he initiates its collapse, Israel has to administer the territories directly once again, which will add the IDF to the civil war and create absolute chaos in both Gaza and the West Bank. If Hamas wants a civil war, Abbas can give it to them in spades -- but that may be the only viable solution:

Some Palestinian analysts predict that a collapse of the Palestinian Authority would pave the way for Jordanian custodial rule in the West Bank and a similar arrangement for Egypt in Gaza.

“The message is the Palestinians cannot rule themselves. This fighting will only end if a third party takes over,” said Ibrahim Abrash, a political analyst in Gaza.

Israel would love that solution. While neither nation has shown any warmth for the Israelis, they have relations with both. Israel knows how to work for practical purposes with both King Abdullah and Hosni Mubarak. Someone will have to twist the arms of both to get them to take back these Arabian sinkholes. Other members of the Arab League will have to push it hard, but they may also see that the Palestinians have left them with no other options.

The only other option is to roll out barbed wire, point guns all along both borders, and wait until the Palestinians finish doing what they do best: killing their own. If Jordan and Egypt want to see something different, then they'll need to start taking control of their former territories. (via Instapundit)

UPDATE: Jules Crittenden shows why statehood for terrorists isn't such a hot idea.

Just Like That, Huh?

People spend three years of their lives in a pressure-cooker graduate program to get law degrees. They spend years honing their craft by playing gopher to accomplished attorneys and judges in order to garner the experience they need to earn a good living at practicing law. A few talented individuals earn partnerships in prestigious law firms, while others work hard in the political sphere to reach a point where they can write their own ticket at any firm fortunate enough to put their name on the letterhead.

So when someone who has achieved all of that just tosses away a lucrative asset like a law license, one has to ask why:

Samuel R. Berger, the Clinton White House national security adviser who was caught taking highly classified documents from the National Archives, has agreed to forfeit his license to practice law.

In a written statement issued by Larry Breuer, Mr. Berger's attorney, the former national security adviser said he pleaded guilty in the Justice Department investigation, accepted the penalties sought by the department and recognized that his law license would be affected.

"I have decided to voluntarily relinquish my license," he said. "While I derived great satisfaction from years of practicing law, I have not done so for 15 years and do not envision returning to the profession. I am very sorry for what I did, and I deeply apologize."

As Michelle Malkin points out, it's the next paragraph that tells the story:

In giving up his license, Mr. Berger avoids being cross-examined by the Board on Bar Counsel, where he risked further disclosure of specific details of his theft. The agreement is expected to be formalized today.

Rep. Thomas Davis of Virginia has pressed the Justice Department to administer the polygraph that they included in his plea-bargain, and this shows that there may be more to learn about Berger's theft of documents from the National Archive. The DoJ concluded that Berger had revealed everything he knew about the thefts and that further investigation was not warranted. However, Berger could have fought to keep his license if he had been willing to be questioned about the thefts -- and his easy acquiescence to the forfeiture should tell the DoJ that he has more to hide than they admit.

Interestingly, Henry Waxman wants to block further investigation by Justice. The man who made investigations into supposed government malfeasance his and the Democrats' major campaign theme and who now chairs the House Oversight Committee suddenly wants to avoid further investigation into a real crime and cover-up, one that impacted our review of the worst attack on American soil. I'd call that at least a magnitude more important than whether Dick Cheney listened to energy producers when he helped develop the administration's energy policy, one of the supposed "scandals" that Waxman has promised to investigate.

The DoJ committed to interrogating Berger further under polygraph, and they failed to do so. Now Berger has relinquished his law license and all of the financial benefits it brings just to avoid questioning by the Bar. Someone needs to finish the job and find out why Berger is so reluctant to talk that he voluntarily disbarred himself.

The Rising Naziism Of Statue Relocation

The Russians have either gone a little stir crazy or they're looking to have an excuse for something in the Baltics. One of those two scenarios has to explain the pre-school meltdown they have indulged ever since Estonia had the unmitigated gall to relocate a monument to the brutal Soviet occupation of almost 60 years to a Russian cemetery:

A day after promising to temper the inflammatory rhetoric damaging East-West relations, the Kremlin returned to a familiar theme yesterday.

Dashing hopes for a constructive start to an EU-Russia summit tomorrow, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, a senior Kremlin official, attacked Estonia's decision to relocate a controversial Soviet war memorial last month as "barbaric" and gave warning that the European Union's "solidarity" with the Baltic state was akin to tolerating fascism.

Moscow's vitriolic reaction to the transfer of the monument, seen in Estonia as a symbol of Soviet occupation, has baffled many in the West. Frequently accusing it of resurrecting Nazism, Russia has threatened Estonia with sanctions.

I keep thinking that there has to be a rational reason for this temper tantrum, but I can't fathom it. Are they looking for a pretense to re-invade Estonia and the other Baltic countries? They couldn't possibly be that foolish. Is it a calculation to divide the EU and NATO? Vladimir Putin knows the West well enough to understand that this reaction will have a good chance of backfiring on the Russians with Europe and make them more determined than ever to unite against him.

The answer must be that Russia has gone slightly insane. How else can one explain anger over moving a monument to a cemetery for Russian soldiers, where it probably belongs? The shock should be that Talinn left it in the city square for more than 15 years after the end of the Soviet occupation, not that they finally eliminated the reminder of their oppressors. As I wrote earlier, Russia should consider it a favor that the Estonians didn't melt it down or crush it in a scrapyard.

Up to now, Putin has seemed coldly rational about his consolidation of power and his orbit of extortion victims. This latest madness deviates from that progression and suggests a hint of megalomania has entered the Kremlin. When the Russians equate a statue relocation with resurgent Naziism, it says a lot more about the Russians than it does the Estonians.

On The Road Again

I'm in Madison, Wisconsin, preparing for my appearance at the Online News Association conference tomorrow at the Hilton. I'll be on the last panel, discussing how online coverage will shape the upcoming campaign. I get to join a rather august group -- Tom Bevan of RealClearPolitics, joe Trippi, The Politico's Ben Smith, and Vaughn Ververs of CBS' Public Eye. I'm looking forward to meeting all of them.

Posting may be limited tomorrow, but I'm hoping to get some audio for a show or two later ...

Democratic Consistency On The War

Senate Democrats failed to get their firm withdrawal date passed today, but they did manage to change a few minds. Two months ago, 35 Democrats insisted that they would not cut or reduce funding for the troops. They voted for the Gregg Amendment, which said:

Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That it is the sense of Congress that Congress should not take any action that will endanger United States military forces in the field, including the elimination or reduction of funds for troops in the field, as such action with respect to funding would undermine their safety or harm their effectiveness in pursuing their assigned missions.

In 60 days, 17 Democrats changed their minds about the Gregg resolution and voted for the Reid-Feingold amendment, which said:

(c) Prohibition on Use of Funds- No funds appropriated or otherwise made available under any provision of law may be obligated or expended to continue the deployment in Iraq of members of the United States Armed Forces after March 31, 2008.” (S. 1077)

Here's the list of Democrats who couldn't wait more than two months to reverse themselves:

Boxer (D-CA) Cantwell (D-WA) Cardin (D-MD) Clinton (D-NY) Durbin (D-IL) Feinstein (D-CA) Harkin (D-IA) Inouye (D-HI) Kerry (D-MA) Klobuchar (D-MN) Kohl (D-WI) Lautenberg (D-NJ) Mikulski (D-MD) Obama (D-IL) Schumer (D-NY) Stabenow (D-MI) Wyden (D-OR)

Also, John at Power Line notes that Democrats -- who complained bitterly about Republicans not engaging them while they were in the minority -- now want to rig the rules so that the GOP cannot demand roll-call votes on tax increases. That didn't take long, did it?

CQ Radio: Debate The Debate (Update: Also Debating The Paul)

Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we'll talk about last night's Republican debate -- and we have a lot to discuss. Was Ron Paul a nut or a classic Republican? Did Giuliani rise to the occasion, or merely rise to the bait? Did anyone have a breakout night, and can the second tier hope to break through at all?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on all of these questions, and more. Call 646-652-4889 and join the conversation!

UPDATE: Patrick Hynes from Ankle Biting Pundits will join me for today's show, and you can bet we'll discuss this exchange by Ron Paul and Wendell Goler:

REP. PAUL: No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right.

We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?

REP. PAUL: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, "I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier." They have already now since that time -- (bell rings) -- have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary.

For all of the anti-war activists currently in bliss about this statement, I hope you understand that it links Iraq to 9/11, albeit indirectly. It also presupposes that we should have let Saddam annex Kuwait, one of our allies and key trading partners -- as well as a lot of other nonsense.

Be sure to listen and to call 646-652-4889. This one we're gonna chew on for a while.

Senate Tubes Withdrawal Timeline

The Senate blocked a bill from coming to the floor that would have imposed a fixed withdrawal date for American troops in Iraq. Proponents could only muster 29 votes, but as Allahpundit writes, those votes came from an interesting subset of the Democratic caucus:

The Senate on Wednesday rejected legislation that would cut off money for combat operations in Iraq after March 31, 2008.

The vote was a loss for Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., and other Democrats who want to end the war. But the effort picked up support from members, including presidential hopefuls previously reluctant to limit war funding — an indication of the conflict's unpopularity among voters.

The proposal lost 29-67 on a procedural vote, falling 41 votes short of the necessary votes to advance.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Democratic presidential front-runner, previously opposed setting a deadline on the war. But she said she agreed to back the measure "because we, as a united party, must work together with clarity of purpose and mission to begin bringing our troops home and end this war."

Sen. Barack Obama, another leading 2008 prospect, said he would prefer a plan that offers more flexibility but wanted "to send a strong statement to the Iraqi government, the president and my Republican colleagues that it's long past time to change course."

This bill never had a chance of reaching the floor. Reid only offered it to allow the anti-war crowd to make its statement and to exhaust itself ahead of the upcoming compromise. It also allows Reid to use the vote as leverage in the negotiations with the White House.

The proponents of the bill include every member of the Senate Democratic caucus running for president. Besides Hillary and Obama, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden voted to set the fixed deadline. Biden insisted that he didn't like the Feingold bill, but nonetheless felt compelled to "pressure" the White House by voting for a measure that had no chance of passage. It speaks much more to the pressure the netroots have put on the Democratic contenders to outdo each other in demanding a retreat from Iraq regardless of the extant conditions now or at the future date of their choosing.

The Senate also defeated a compromise bill by John Warner that included benchmarks affecting foreign non-military aid to Iraq. It foundered on an executive waiver Warner included, which would have allowed the Bush administration to bypass the requirement to cut funds if reform benchmarks are not met. Carl Levin withdrew a supplemental which allowed the same waiver on the terms of the last supplemental (bypassing troop withdrawal requirements) when he heard that the White House would not support that approach.

We will be left, shortly, with firm benchmarks on non-military aid to Iraq for political reform. That will be the basis of the funding through September, and the sooner the Senate acts on what has become the obvious compromise, the sooner we can get the bill to conference and then to the White House -- and the sooner we can fund the troops properly.

Immigration Reform Compromise: Good News/Bad News

The Senate has come closer to a compromise on immigration reform, and at least at first blush, it contains just enough to annoy everyone -- but finally get the situation addressed. At Heading Right, I take a look at the structure of the compromise and conclude that conservatives could have done worse -- and would have last year, had McCain-Kennedy passed:

It doesn’t seem that the conservatives do all that badly in this compromise. They get the borders-first approach demanded last year (and ignored by McCain-Kennedy), with an eighteen-month delay for the triggers to get met, as well as a statutory burden to ensure that they are met before continuing with normalization. It keeps in place the fines and requires a “touchback”, forcing the head of household to return to his/her country of origin and applying for legal entry into the US. It excludes felons from the program, and levies a fine for the illegal entry.

Conservatives don't get everything they want, of course, but we don't control Congress any more, either. While one could argue that no bill beats a bad bill, this compromise does not look all that bad. Its focus on border security and identification of illegals as part of the process of normalization addresses two significant national-security concerns, and it still penalizes illegals -- just not to the extent desired by conservatives.

It's either a compromise structured along these lines, or no progress on border security for two years and a large gamble on retaking Congress and the White House in November 2008. This seems like a better deal. Read my HR post and let me know what you think.

Gallup On GOP Race: Already Outdated?

Gallup reports on a survey taken last week on the presidential primary races that shows Rudy Giuliani dipping down to his lowest level of the campaign, while John McCain seems to be rebounding a bit. Rudy took a nine-point hit over the past five weeks, while McCain went up seven:

The national front-runners for the 2008 presidential nominations continue to be former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for the Republican Party and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party. Giuliani's pro-choice views were openly vetted during the Republican debate held earlier this month at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, and he has since tried to clarify them. It is not yet clear whether the resulting controversy has significantly harmed him among Republican voters. ...

Some of the changes in Giuliani's and McCain's support levels can be attributed to support for actor and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, since Gallup added him to the list of potential candidates in late March. However, Gallup's follow-up question, which asks Republican voters whom they would support if the race narrows down to Giuliani and McCain, does not have this complication.

The 2007 "narrow-down" trend shows Giuliani consistently well ahead of McCain, including in the latest poll, in which he leads by 10 points, 52% to 42%. This is Giuliani's slimmest lead on Gallup's head-to-head measure since January, when he led by only 8 points, but the changes in support for Giuliani and McCain that produced this gap are not statistically significant. Thus, it would be premature to say that the race has, indeed, tightened.

This seems to be the fruit of the first debate, held just a week before the start of this survey. Giuliani did poorly in that debate, trying to square the circle on abortion and not getting much to say. McCain didn't do badly but didn't exactly shine either. However, those who see the GOP primary in a binary, either/or for the two frontrunners appear to have shifted their support at least marginally to McCain.

Interestingly, even though Mitt Romney was seen to have won the debate by most observers, he didn't budge in the polls. Romney has tremendous organizational skills and excels in these debate formats, but neither seems to be engaging the electorate at all. He still only garners 8% of the base in poll after poll, which is starting to look like a hard ceiling rather than a ground floor. Either Romney has to find a way to break out -- and it looks like he's doing everything possible to do so -- or his donors will start looking for greener pastures.

Right now, the race looks like it will remain with Rudy and McCain, with room for a white knight -- either Fred Thompson or Newt Gingrich. Even with good performances in national debates, the second tier seems incapable of denting the momentum of the frontrunners. With Giuliani scoring big off of Ron Paul's looniness, he seems poised to regain some lost ground in the next round of polling -- probably at the expense of second tier candidates.

A Disturbing Interlude

The New York Times and the Washington Post both report on disturbing testimony from former Deputy Attorney General James Comey about an attempt to get an ailing John Ashcroft to approve an extension of the terrorist surveillance program over his objections and that of the FBI. Alberto Gonzales played a central role in this attempt, rousting Ashcroft from intensive care only to be spurned:

Mr. Comey said that on the evening of March 10, 2004, Mr. Gonzales and Andrew H. Card Jr., then Mr. Bush’s chief of staff, tried to bypass him by secretly visiting Mr. Ashcroft. Mr. Ashcroft was extremely ill and disoriented, Mr. Comey said, and his wife had forbidden any visitors.

Mr. Comey said that when a top aide to Mr. Ashcroft alerted him about the pending visit, he ordered his driver to rush him to George Washington University Hospital with emergency lights flashing and a siren blaring, to intercept the pair. They were seeking his signature because authority for the program was to expire the next day.

Mr. Comey said he phoned Mr. Mueller, who agreed to meet him at the hospital. Once there, Mr. Comey said he “literally ran up the stairs.” At his request, Mr. Mueller ordered the F.B.I. agents on Mr. Ashcroft’s security detail not to evict Mr. Comey from the room if Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card objected to his presence.

Mr. Comey said he arrived first in the darkened room, in time to brief Mr. Ashcroft, who he said seemed barely conscious. Before Mr. Ashcroft became ill, Mr. Comey said the two men had talked and agreed that the program should not be renewed.

When the White House officials appeared minutes later, Mr. Gonzales began to explain to Mr. Ashcroft why they were there. Mr. Comey said Mr. Ashcroft rose weakly from his hospital bed, but in strong and unequivocal terms, refused to approve the eavesdropping program.

“I was angry,” Mr. Comey told the committee. “ I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me. I thought he had conducted himself in a way that demonstrated a strength I had never seen before, but still I thought it was improper.”

Afterwards, Comey got an angry call from Andrew Card demanding an immediate meeting at the White House. Comey called Ted Olson, the Solicitor General, to accompany him and met with Card and Gonzales. He apparently informed Card that the entire senior staff at Justice was prepared to walk off the job if the two of them continued to pressure the DoJ to reauthorize the program without changes, including Robert Mueller at the FBI.

At that point, Bush stepped in and stopped the infighting. He kept the program going for three weeks without the reauthorization but with the agreement that he would change the program to meet Justice's terms. Bush kept his word, and Ashcroft -- now back on the job in a limited manner -- reauthorized the program.

The legal part of this story has been known for the last seventeen months. The Times included the gap and the dispute in its original reporting on the surveillance program, and Congress has known about it for longer than that. However, the details of the midnight ride of Gonzales and Card have not been disclosed until now, and it paints Gonzales in a very unflattering light.

The Bush administration has had a laser focus on national security and has done an admirable job of preventing further terrorist attacks. If anyone had guessed on 9/12 that no further attacks would occur for more than five years and counting, they would have been dismissed as Pollyannas. That focus led, in this case, to a very poor choice in bypassing a legitimate acting AG and trying to get a signature from an ailing AG who had already acknowledged that he would be temporarily too incapacitated to fulfill his duties. Instead of gathering the principals first -- Comey, Mueller, and Olson as well -- they attempted to browbeat a sick man to get the signature they felt they needed.

The people involved in that attempt should be embarrassed. Again, it shows that Gonzales was a poor choice to replace the man he tried to squeeze for a signature from his ICU bed. The White House should recognize their mistake in nominating Gonzales and try again.

UPDATE: My friend John Hinderaker posits this scenario:

This strikes me as the information that is vital to understand what likely happened. Attorney General John Ashcroft had certified, over and over, that the NSA program was legal. Suddenly, Ashcroft was taken ill. The next thing that happened, according to Comey, was that Comey notified the White House that he would not sign the certification that Ashcroft had signed some 29 times. Comey did not say--amazingly, no one asked him--whether he ever told the White House that Ashcroft had agreed with this conclusion on the very day when he was taken to the hospital.

So it is hardly surprising if, confronted with sudden intransigence from a brand-new, acting attorney general, Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card thought that the problem lay with Comey's staging a sort of palace coup. It may well have been reasonable for them to go to see Ashcroft to get the same certification they had gotten many times before.

But since Comey's decision was based on a just-completed Justice review of the program, wouldn't Comey have told that to Card and Gonzales? Wouldn't they have at least asked on what basis Comey made this decision? Certainly, the White House would have had access to the document had they requested it. If this is the basis for their middle-of-the-night visit to Ashcroft's ICU unit, it's pretty thin gruel.

XM Suspends Opie And Anthony

On Thursday, I wondered whether the controversial remarks on the XM Radio show "Opie and Anthony", where the two shock jocks joined an in-studio guest in joking about raping Condoleezza Rice, would result in the same kind of sanctions against the hosts as Don Imus received for his idiotic remark about the womens' basketball team at Rutgers. We have our answer now; XM has suspended the show for 30 days:

"XM Radio deplored the comments aired on “The Opie & Anthony Show” last week. At the time, the company strongly expressed its views to Opie and Anthony, and they issued an immediate apology,” the company said in the statement.

“Comments made by Opie and Anthony on yesterday’s broadcast put into question whether they appreciate the seriousness of the matter. The management of XM Radio decided to suspend Opie and Anthony to make clear that our that our on-air talent must take seriously the responsibility that creative freedom requires of them,” the company added.

CNN's Paul La Monica appears to disagree with the decision:

It just goes to show that even for satellite radio, where hosts can curse and use other objectionable language since they are not being broadcast on free “terrestrial” radio, racy comments can get on-air personalities in trouble.

So at the risk of angering many readers who flamed me when I suggested that there was no way Sirius or XM would hire Don Imus after CBS (CBS) fired him for his racist and sexist remarks about the Rutgers college women’s basketball team …I told you so.

I think it has more to do with the fact that consumers control the market to a greater degree than they realize, whether indirectly by pressuring advertisers, or more directly, by threatening subscriber rates. People have limits for bad taste, and XM just found out where they exist. And while the subscribers who complained may not have been O&A listeners, they still pay XM a monthly fee -- and apparently exist in large enough numbers to make a difference.

As La Monica points out, that was not the only pressure XM faced. They have inked a deal with rival Sirius to merge, which requires FCC approval, and Congress already has deep skepticism about the deal. Any controversy at this point hurts the merger, and especially one in which two emotionally stunted hosts start fantasizing about raping the Secretary of State. If Congress wanted an excuse to torpedo the merger, then O&A handed them the hook they needed.

Suspension is the proper penalty, and CBS would have done better to apply that penalty to Imus as well. It imposes limits on their tolerance for bad taste and gives the show the opportunity to exist within those limits, and it keeps their audience happy in the long run. All publisher make editorial decisions, and XM may have looser boundaries, but they still have to decide how best to keep their subscribers. It's the right decision, applied in the right manner, and it leaves the more permanent solution as a disincentive.

And this is not a free-speech issue. Opie and Anthony can start airing their show on the Internet tomorrow and become their own publishers in a heartbeat. They want a big salary, though, rather than relying on the uncertain income stream that would bring. If XM finds them offensive, or if they feel their subscriber base does, then they can dump the show whenever they want, within their contractual obligations. It's a free-market issue, not a free-speech issue. Those who disagree with XM's decision are just as free to drop them as XM is to drop immature jerks from their lineup.

Hamas Starting A Wider War

After its raid on the Karni crossing yesterday, Hamas could have claimed it to be a mistake and stood down its militia. Rather than avoid a civil war in Gaza, however, Hamas expanded its attacks to include key figures of Fatah leadership, including Mahmoud Abbas, and fired rockets into Israel to create a wider war:

Hamas gunmen fatally shot six bodyguards from the rival Fatah movement and fired a barrage of rockets at southern Israel Wednesday, apparently attempting to draw Israel into the fierce Palestinian infighting as the Gaza Strip slid further into chaos. ...

Fighting raged close to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' heavily guarded compound, which also was targeted by Hamas mortar fire overnight. Abbas, a moderate from Fatah, was not present.

Early Wednesday, Hamas gunmen fired mortars and pipe bombs at the home of Fatah security chief Rashid Abu Shbak, before storming inside and killing six bodyguards, Palestinians security and medical officials said.

There can be no more pretense of working with Hamas on any solutions for peace. Even Fatah has figured that much out. Fatah's spokesman called all Hamas members "killers, from top to bottom," and told the press that they want to turn Gaza into "a new Somalia or Darfur." While the Gaza fighting lacks the ethnic tensions of either place, Hamas seems determined to make them just as chaotic and violent as both.

Fatah has a tough choice. While Hamas fires rockets into Israel, it can expect the Israelis to attack the rocket-launching positions. If it joins the attack on Hamas, then Fatah will look like collaborators. If they join Hamas, they will have to knuckle under to Hamas leadership, which is now trying to kill off their own leadership. If they do nothing, they will just make themselves easy targets for Hamas. Fatah is stuck in the middle.

The Gaza experiment has failed in one way, and succeeded in another. Ariel Sharon gave Gaza away without any strings and gave the Palestinians an opportunity to show they could govern themselves. They have failed spectacularly to do so, and instead have turned it into a terrorist haven for launching attacks against Israel and each other. It succeeded in showing what a joke "land for peace" always has been and the futility of granting statehood to a bunch of terrorist lunatics.

Oslo failed. Wye River failed. The road map failed. All of these failed because the Palestinians want the peace of annihilation rather than the peace of coexistence. They elected Hamas to power, and they are reaping the fruits of their choice. Quit enabling these terrorists with diplomatic initiatives and aid of any kind at all until they tire of the taste of blood and come to us for peace.

Guest Post: A Remembrance Of Falwell

Our producer for the Northern Alliance Radio Network, Mathew Reynolds, attended Liberty University several years ago. Yesterday he let us know that he has some remembrances of Jerry Falwell that he would like to share.

Here are just a few things I remember most about Dr Falwell.

I attended Liberty University from 1998-2000. When I started at the school, I wasn't what you would call a Falwell fan. I would here people talk about him in glowing terms and think, "Yeah right. There's no way that he's like that."

After meeting and speaking with Dr. Falwell, my opinion started change. While he made mistakes in what he would say, he would immediately seek to correct those mistakes.

One of the first things I noticed about him was that he was genuinely interested in you as a person. He wanted to know how you were and would ask if there was anything he could pray for on your behalf. Second thing was that you always had to watch out for his SUV. Dr. Falwell, who always went around freely without security, still drove his own vehicle and would pretend to go after students. His humor was always there.

When the Teletubbies story happened, the AP reporter asked him if really believed they were gay. He turned to his wife and asked "What is a Teletubby and when did I call it gay?" The next day was Wednesday and that meant Dr Falwell's weekly chapel sermon. That night as he told us about that story, student ran up with the purple Teletubby doll and gave it to Dr. Falwell.

What happened next was perhaps one of the funniest things I've ever seen. "So this is a Teletubby? He's a cute little thing" Gave it a big great big kiss. " I love the Teletubbies."

But thing that most stood out was his great conviction and belief in his Lord Jesus Christ and his love for everyone, especially those he disagreed with. Dr Falwell spoke weekly with Larry Flynt for years as a result of the lawsuit. He had Sen Ted Kennedy come speak at Liberty University in what has been called one of the top 10 speeches of the 1990s. And while many find this hard to believe, it was this love that allowed him to bring back Mel White to speak at his church and work on reconcilation with the homosexual community and the evangelical church.

Many people have confused his Christian beliefs with hate-speech. This was not the case. While Dr Falwell may have disagreed with their lifestyle, he really cared about each person he met on an individual level.

At some point, after Falwell's funeral, I will talk about my view of the late religious and political leader. In the meantime, I'm happy to share Mathew's experiences with the CQ community.

Giuliani Wins, But Paul Threw The Game

Team Rudy should send a hundred roses to Ron Paul -- yellow roses, of course -- after the Congressman essentially tossed the debate to Giuliani. Rudy had a pretty good night going anyway, but when Paul as much as said that the terrorists had a point in killing 3,000 Americans, Rudy let fly with the righteous indigation that an entire nation was busily hurling at their television screens.

Ron Paul -- the Black Sox of Republican debaters.

Rudy needed a good night after a lackluster first debate, and he got it. He also managed somehow to be the only candidate to criticize a Democrat on specific policy stands. However, he wasn't the only candidate who benefitted. John McCain did considerably better than his Angry Man performance in the first debate, coming across as measured and poised. Mitt Romney continued to show that he has mastered the format. Even Mike Huckabee, who got the biggest laugh, scored more substantially on the issue of life and made himself look presidential. Duncan Hunter got kept off camera but showed his credentials when he got the opportunity.

As for the others, they did less well. Tancredo had trouble putting together a complete sentence and seemed rattled for most of the evening. Tommy Thompson was a rock -- in that he barely moved all night long. He did better than last time, but he had nowhere to go but up. Jim Gilmore spoke longer while saying less than almost anyone on stage.

But the Buffoon Of The Year award goes to Ron Paul. His contention that America deserved the 9/11 attack should end his political career. Hopefully it will convince the next forum to exclude him from the proceedings. Paul made everyone else look tolerable, and had most of us yearning for a vaudeville hook.

Don't forget to tune in to Debate Central!

UPDATE: Don't miss Michelle Malkin's live blog and big wrap-up. She makes a point that I had meant to address, which is the superior performance of Fox. There is no comparison between Brit Hume and Chris Matthews, and the two networks as well. This was crisp, sharp, with germane and substantive questions and a minimum of silliness. The MS-NBC forum was so silly that it almost defied description. Perhaps the Democrats should reconsider their allergy to Fox.

Debate Live Blog At Heading Right, Roundtable At Blog Talk Radio

Tonight, the second Republican presidential primary debate airs at 8 pm CT -- and Blog Talk Radio and Heading Right will team up to cover it. The entire team at Heading Right will be posting live at the site, offering a running conversation as the 90-minute debate progresses. Over a dozen top conservative BTR hosts will debate the debate, live, at the site. In fact -- we've already begun!

At 10 pm CT, about thirty minutes after the end of the event, we will meet at Debate Central, the new live Internet debate forum for BTR. I will moderate a post-debate roundtable with a number of BTR hosts for 30 minutes. We'll talk about the highs and lows, who gained and who lost ground, and the impact on the early primary efforts. We can even take your calls, live, to address how you felt about the debates -- so be sure to remember to call 646-478-4565 during the live broadcast. As always, you can download the show as a podcast minutes after the completion of the show.

Fred! Overshadows The Debate ... Again

Michael Moore challenged Fred Thompson to a debate. Fred Thompson replied --- and once again managed to cast his long shadow over the Republican presidential debate. It's 38 seconds of a down-home rhetorical spanking that manages to both address Moore and belittle him. I'm thinking Jack Palance in City Slickers, telling Bill Crystal, "I crap bigger than you." In Moore's case, though, it would be strictly figurative.

Which do you think will have a more positive and lasting impact on Republican voters -- these 38 seconds or anything said in tonight's 90-minute debate? Oh, now, let's not always see the same hands ...

UPDATE: Man, I could watch this over and over again. Talk about pitch-perfect ... and if you're wondering who Thompson references, there's a short explanation here. Thompson himself wrote about Guillen almost two weeks ago.

A Strange Org Chart At The DoD

President Bush finally got someone to accept a nomination to the new post of "war czar" to oversee the conduct of the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute will move from his current position as the Pentagon's director of operations as soon as he can be confirmed:

In the newly created position of assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan policy and implementation, Lute would have the power to direct the Pentagon, State Department and other agencies involved in the two conflicts.

Lute would report directly to the president and to National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

Filling the position had become a priority for the White House, after a handful of retired generals told the White House they did not want the job. Among them, retired Marine Corps four-star Gen. Jack Sheehan, who proved an embarrassment to the White House after he wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post saying there were "huge shortcomings" in the White House view of the strategy in Iraq.

Confirmation won't be easy, and the first challenge will be explaining the necessity of the role. The President is Commander-in-Chief, but he can delegate those responsibilities and authorities as he sees fit. Under normal circumstances, though, this position would be superfluous. The Secretary of Defense runs the military, and the Joint Chiefs command operations. Normally, the conduct of multiple theaters of war would happen at the Joint Chiefs under the direction of the Secretary, with the ultimate authority residing in the White House. That was the model used in WWII, of course; General Eisenhower reported to General Marshall, who ran the war for FDR and his Secretary of War, Henry Stimson.

So why the extra level now? It comes from the wide-ranging approach to the war on terror taken by the Bush administration. Bush wants one person directing traffic not just for the Department of Defense, but also for the State Department and the CIA as well. That falls outside of the Joint Chiefs' purview, and apparently the result is discoordination between agencies. The White House sees value in having one man take command of the overall prosecution of the war in all of its manifestations.

Of course, Bush could do that himself, as CinC, and up to now has been expected to do so. Perhaps the level of complication and detail requires another hand on the yoke, one dedicated to nothing else but the war, and that's plausible given the nature of the conflict. However, for an administration that supposedly wants to avoid bruising confirmation fights, the White House seems rather eager to open up a can of worms by creating a new confirmable position where it has not existed prior to now.

CQ Radio: Major John Heil (Updated)

Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we'll be speaking with Major John Heil, live from Iraq, where he's currently serving with the 3rd MEDCOM as Public Affairs Officer. He will talk about all of the wonderful work being done by the medical infrastructure of the Army in Iraq, as well as discuss other aspects of life among the Iraqis. Major Heil works for the Department of Veteran Affairs in civilian life.

Do you want to talk to Major Heil? All you have to do is call 646-652-4889 between 2-3 pm CT!

Tonight, Heading Right will live blog the Fox News Republican presidential debate, starting at 8 pm CT. At 10 pm CT, I will moderate a roundtable review of the debate at BlogTalkRadio's Debate Central, featuring some of our Heading Right co-bloggers. Be sure to join us!

UPDATE AND BUMP: I've also written a post at Heading Right discussing what's at stake for tonight's debate.

Jerry Falwell, RIP

Reverend Jerry Falwell, who helped organize and galvanize social and religious conservatives in the 1980s, has died suddenly in his offices at Liberty University. Falwell was 73 years old:

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority and built the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University, a school executive said. He was 73. ...

Ron Godwin, the university's executive vice president, said Falwell, 73, was found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. Godwin said he was not sure what caused the collapse, but he said Falwell "has a history of heart challenges."

"I had breakfast with him, and he was fine at breakfast," Godwin said. "He went to his office, I went to mine, and they found him unresponsive."

Our sympathies and prayers go out to the Falwell family and the many who loved and respected him. This no doubt will come as a deep shock to them, and we hope that they find strength in the Lord to get through it. That would be the best testament to Falwell's work.

Perhaps later I'll have something to say about his political legacy, but this isn't the time to go into a lengthy critical look at his work. I will say that I think he acted out of his sincere beliefs and attempted to do good in this world, and he succeeded in many ways. Any other thoughts can wait until later.

UPDATE: Allahpundit has gone on a search mission through the Leftosphere to find aggregate idiocy in the comments sections. Frankly, it's just too easy. Each side has its chronic cerebralrectalitis sufferers, and they show up in droves for these events. It's worth a dark chuckle to read the chucklehead response, but it doesn't say much about the mainstream of either side.

If bloggers post poisoned-pen sendoffs to Falwell, that's more indicative of a problem.

UPDATE II: Al Sharpton manages to be classy:

I am deeply saddened by the passing of Reverend Jerry Falwell. Though he and I debated much and disagreed often, we shared a very cordial and warm friendship. I visited him in Lynchburg, dined with him, and even talked with him during personal crises. Though we were as politically opposite as two people could be, I truly respected his commitment to his beliefs and our mutual belief in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. As I stated to my nationally syndicated radio show, I pray for the Falwell family and join the nation in mourning the passing of this religious leader.

UPDATE III: MS-NBC punks ... itself. It's a network only Keith Olbermann could love.

Should Obama's Daughters Get Affirmative Action? Should Anyone's?

Eugene Robinson asks a contentious question in today's Washington Post about race, identity, and entitlements. Noting that Barack Obama wants to shift the idea of affirmative action from race to class, Robinson thinks both should apply:

Obama has repeatedly gone on record as a supporter of affirmative action. But "if we have done what needs to be done to ensure that kids who are qualified to go to college can afford it," he said in the ABC interview, "affirmative action becomes a diminishing tool for us to achieve racial equality in this society."

He seemed to side with those who think class predominates when he said, "I think that we should take into account white kids who have been disadvantaged and have grown up in poverty and shown themselves to have what it takes to succeed."

It's hard to disagree with that proposition, especially as economic inequality worsens in this country. Harvard University (where Obama went to law school) has taken the lead in guaranteeing that money will not be an obstacle for qualified low-income students.

But Obama seemed to agree with those who point to the lingering effects of racism when he noted that "there are a lot of African American kids who are still struggling, that even those who are in the middle class may be first-generation as opposed to fifth- or sixth-generation college attendees, and that we all have an interest in bringing as many people together to help build this country."

That observation points to circumstances that have to be taken into account. Diversity, in my view, is very much in the national interest. But diversity is a process, not a destination. We have to keep working at it. And since a college degree has become the great divider between those who make it in this society and those who don't, affirmative action in college admissions is one of the most powerful tools we have to increase diversity.

In my view, this is a dangerous expansion of a program that had a meritorious purpose when first launched. It addressed a specific wrong against a specific group in a manner which would reverse the damage inflicted by specific policies of the US and state governments. If affirmative action continues to expand past its original mandate, it will create even more divisions -- and in the end, it attempts to resolve the basic issue at the wrong point anyway.

Affirmative action for African-Americans made sense when first proposed. At the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, they had suffered under official oppression for almost a century after being freed from slavery. While some people believed that freedom addressed the wrongs of the past, without a doubt the African-American community as a whole had been held back from the key struts of success of mainstream American society -- education and employment. The government needed to address those decades of inequity if African-Americans were not to continue existing as a permanent underclass.

That is not the experience of others in American history. While poverty is a great equalizer, the truth is that poor Caucasians have never had to deal with the official government policies of Jim Crow that held back the black community for so long. The government did not owe them Affirmative Action, as they did those who suffered legal oppression at the hands of state governments.

The question remains, though, as to how long AA should remain in place. As Obama notes, the disadvantaged do not suffer from offical government policies of oppression as their parents and grandparents did, and the hurdle is now economic. That isn't what AA was meant to address, and as soon as one transfers that mantle away from the group specifically damaged by American governments, it loses its legitimacy.

It also addresses the wrong end of the educational system. The true problem for economic advancement is not access to college, but access to effective primary education. Failing schools in the areas where poverty reigns causes the greatest setback to low-income children for their future economic success. If the government allowed competition through school vouchers for these areas, we could eliminate that problem in a single generation. Educated children have hope for their future -- and do not fall prey to gangs and drug dealers.

It's time we changed the calculus on AA. We need to solve the problem of educational disadvantage where it begins, not where it ends, and we need to stop preference programs that have no end in sight.

Congress Dives Below Bush Line

If the Democrats have had a few laughs looking at approval ratings for George Bush, the laughter has probably stopped this morning after Gallup's latest survey. It shows that Congress has even lower ratings than the President, and the number has dropped consistently since the Democrats first took charge:

A new Gallup Poll finds continued low levels of public support for both Congress and President George W. Bush. Twenty-nine percent of Americans approve of Congress, down slightly from last month's reading (33%) and this year's high point of 37%, while Bush's approval rating is holding steady at 33%. Both the ratings of Congress and the president are slightly lower than their respective 2007 averages. Approval ratings of Congress are higher among Democrats than Republicans, while Bush's ratings are much higher among Republicans.

According to the May 10-13, 2007, Gallup Poll, 29% of Americans approve and 64% disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job. Congressional approval is down 4 percentage points since last month, and is 3 points lower than the 32% average measured during the first five months of the year. The high point for the congressional approval rating so far this year was the 37% approval measured in February. Although ratings are quite low, Americans have been more positive in their assessments of Congress this year than last year, when an average of just 25% approved of Congress.

How bad is it? Even Democrats mostly disapprove of Congress. Only 37% of the majority party's voters think that Congress has performed well; Gallup doesn't mention the percentage that disapproves, but it seems almost certain that it outstrips 37%, unless more than 26% are clueless. Congress gets its worst ratings not from Republicans (25%), but from independents (24%). That should get the attention of leadership in both chambers, who owe their majorities to those independents.

The decline has not taken long, and is ironically steepest among Democrats. Approval ratings for Congress peaked at an embarrassing 37% in February, just after Congress convened. Democrats at that time gave it a meager 44% approval at that time. Since then, support has dropped 7 points among Democrats and nine points among independents.

Norm Coleman said yesterday that he believed the midterms to have a practical message rather than an ideological mandate. These numbers tend to underscore that analysis.

The Democrats had better start producing something other than sound bites if they want to hang onto their majorities in 2008. The electorate has already grown tired of posturing, and their patience has run out on partisan games. We're now at Day 100 for funding the troops, arguably the highest priority in national security, and we still don't have a supplemental bill that can reach a broad consensus. We have no movement on the Democrats' own agenda. It's possibly the worst do-nothing Congress in memory -- and the people have noticed.

Making Runs For The Borders

The Republican presidential hopefuls have one thing in common -- they have all turned hawkish on immigration. According to the Washington Post's Michael Shear, the three front-runners have run away from previously centrist positions in order to bolster their border-security credentials, leaving George Bush without much support for his bipartisan efforts to create a comprehensive reform plan. This will make it harder for Bush to win any victories in the final two years of his term, a situation that suits a large part of the GOP base just fine.

I discuss the consequences at Heading Right. Be assured that the candidates will be pressed on this topic at tonight's debate, which will again feature a live blog by the entire Heading Right crew and a roundtable discussion at BlogTalkRadio's Debate Central afterwards.

The Palestinian Hearing Problem

Maybe the noise from the mortars dropping on Israeli soldiers have the Palestinians a little hard of hearing, but they seem to have missed the point of Ehud Olmert's invitation to renew the peace process. Olmert invited the Palestinians, including Hamas, to Israel along with the leaders of the 22 Arab governments to discuss the Saudi proposal without preconditions -- but the Palestinians claim that Israel is "not ready":

"We are ready to come and to invite" Arab leaders "without preconditions from us or their side," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told reporters Tuesday after arriving in Petra for talks with Jordan's King Abdullah II, expressing Israel's readiness to discuss the Arab peace initiative and find ways to implement the plan.

Olmert later told a conference involving Nobel Laureates and Israeli and Arab youth on ways to solve conflicts in the Mideast that his country was "ready to sit down and talk about it carefully" and was willing to listen to Arab views.

"We heard about the Arab peace initiative and we say come and present it to us. You want to talk to us about it, we are ready to sit down and talk about it carefully," he told the conference in the ancient city.

The Palestinian response?

"I think it will take time before they meet again. The Israelis are not ready. All we've been told it that they are willing to prepare for the next meeting," Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeneh said.

"The peace process is frozen, but what we are looking for is seeing a real serious step from the Israeli side to sit at the table to negotiate what the roads map and the Arab peace initiative are calling for," Rdeneh added.

Excuses, excuses. Olmert used the word "ready" in the positive more than once to describe Israel's openness to both the Road Map and the Saudi initiative. It sounds more like the Palestinians have no readiness to negotiate in good faith for a two-state solution. That is even more apparent than ever, as Hamas drops mortars outside the Karni crossing after their ambush this morning on the critical checkpoint.

All Olmert wants from Hamas is a pledge to abide by the Quartet's conditions, and he will welcome Hamas to the table. The Hamas terrorists cannot even pledge that much, which demonstrates -- again -- their uselessness as a partner for peace. The only peace Hamas wants is that of annihilation, and like all nutcases, they are more than willing to throw the lives of their own people on the pyre to get it or die trying..

Until the Palestinians themselves decide they want peace, Olmert and Israel can do nothing but continue to defend themselves against the nihilists in kaffiyehs. Whether the proposal comes from the Quartet, the Saudis, or the Jordanians, it will have no use while the Palestinians prefer death to life and murder to accommodation.

A Cynical Attempt To Harvest Votes?

EJ Dionne reflects on the meaning of Rudy Giuliani's decision to speak plainly about his support for abortion rights and what it means for the Republican Party. Instead of acknowledging that his front-runner status despite his well-known pro-choice views demonstrates a larger tent than the media usually credits the GOP for having, Dionne argues that it reveals a cynical reliance on pro-life emotions to harvest votes:

Giuliani will also test the seriousness of those who claim that abortion is the decisive issue in the political choices they make.

Will conservative Catholic bishops and intellectuals, along with evangelical preachers and political entrepreneurs, be as tough on Giuliani as they were on John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign? If they are not, how will they defend themselves against charges of partisan or ideological hypocrisy?

Republicans in power have done remarkably little to live up to their promises to antiabortion voters. Yes, President Bush signed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, and the two justices Bush appointed to the Supreme Court joined the 5 to 4 majority to uphold it. But all third-trimester abortions combined account for less than 1 percent of abortions.

Republicans are steadfast against using public money to pay for abortions. That leaves abortions available to better-off women who can afford them and who often vote Republican. It limits access only for low-income women, who rarely vote Republican.

What Republicans have stopped pushing, or even talking much about, is a constitutional amendment to repeal Roe v. Wade, the landmark case legalizing abortion. They prefer gauzy language that sends soothing messages to pro-lifers without upsetting voters who favor abortion rights.

It's probably best to take these arguments one at a time. First, Giuliani has not tried to use his Catholicism as a campaign point. Kerry made quite a show of attending Mass as part of his presidential campaigning in 2004, and he was not alone in that, either; other pro-choicers like Nancy Pelosi did the same. The Church reacted to that by reminding them that support for abortion violated the basic tenets of Church teaching and put Kerry, Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, and others in danger of excommunication -- a stand that Pope Benedict reiterated in Mexico earlier this month.

Kerry made his Catholicism an issue, and critics pointed out the hypocrisy. I doubt Giuliani will make that mistake, and up to now, he hasn't.

It's true that third-trimester abortions account for less than 1% of all abortions. It's also true that the US has aborted over 44 million children in the past four decades, which means that we have aborted almost a half-million viable infants in the third trimester. That's nothing to shrug off. Note also that the partial-birth abortion kills the child by delivering all but the head and then deliberately murdering it by sucking out its brain. Even its supporters couldn't come up with a single objective reason to perform that procedure.

Republicans oppose public financing for abortions because we don't believe that the federal government should be in the business of aborting babies. If it's a choice, as abortion supporters keep reminding us, then let it remain a choice. It's not a question of keeping abortion an option only for the rich, and that formulation is very disingenuous. And if Dionne believes that women of means who choose abortions routinely vote Republican, then I'd like to have a little of what he's drinking today.

Republicans have stopped talking about a constitutional amendment because Republicans can count. Not only will it not happen, it won't even come close. Further, Republicans have decided that what ails the Constitution isn't a lack of amendments but judges who like to legislate from the bench. Eventually, Roe will get overturned not because a Supreme Court wants to make abortion illegal but because a Court will eventually have the intellectual honesty to admit that the decision amounts to an egregious and dangerous overreach by the judiciary. When that happens, abortion will still be legal -- but the issue will return to the state legislatures, where it belonged in the first place.

Nothing Rudy has said or done in his public career conflicts with anything Dionne has mentioned in this column. It's true that Rudy will face some strong opposition from single-issue voters -- but the real story is that those have proven far fewer thus far than the media has credited.

Hamas Initiating Civil War

Hamas attacked a Gaza checkpoint run by Fatah in conjunction with the Israelis earlier today, killing eight and engaging both Fatah and IDF personnel. The escalation comes a day after the resignation of the Interior Minister and appears to announce Hamas' intention to seize power by force:

Hamas gunmen on Tuesday ambushed rival Fatah forces near a key crossing along the Israeli border, killing eight people in the deadliest battle yet in three days of factional fighting.

The incident briefly drew Israeli gunfire, threatening to drag Israel into the conflict.

At least 18 people have died in the infighting, bringing life in Gaza to a standstill and pushing the fragile Palestinian unity government closer to collapse. Hamas and Fatah formed the union in March with the aim of ending months of violence.

Monday's fighting erupted when Hamas gunmen approached a training base used by Fatah forces that guard the crossing, officials said. The base was set up in part by an American security team sent to train Palestinians on how to check cargo and baggage at crossings.

The Hamas force attacked the base with rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, said Ahmed al-Kaisi, spokesman for the pro-Fatah Presidential Guard, which guards the crossing under an agreement with Israel. "We consider this a serious provocation and a crime committed in cold blood," al-Kaisi said.

The attack occurred at the Karni crossing, which Israel closed after the attack. This puts a huge crimp in the already collapsing Gaza economy. Karni is the main entry point for goods imported into Gaza and the one checkpoint that Israel and the PA had fairly secured. The Hamas attack assures Gazans that they will starve even more quickly than before.

That appears to be a deliberate motivation. This was no impromptu clash between cranky militia patrols, which according to the truce between the two factions shouldn't exist anyway. The Hamas attackers brought rockets and mortars, which means they had planned this mission ahead of time. When Fatah sent more security personnel to assist, they shot the vehicle and forced it off the road, and then surrounded the men in the car and riddled them with bullets. The only reason the Hamas unit retreated was because the IDF showed up with tanks, and their courage apparently only extended to an unannounced attack.

Both Ismail Haniyeh and Mahmoud Abbas spent Naqba Day talking about "national unity" and the need to remain focused on the struggle with Israel. On the day of mourning for the partition of Palestine, though, the actions of Hamas shows that there is no national identity for the Palestinians -- only factions of terrorists with civilian Arabs stuck in the middle, victims of their own leadership choices. Given Gaza and the authority to run it, the Palestinians have proven unable to rise to the occasion in several opportunities.

Hagel To Tilt At Windmills, Bloomberg To Be Sancho Panza

It's not too early to get some laughs from the presidential primaries. I missed this yesterday, but Chuck Hagel has begun mulling over an independent run for the presidency -- and apparently already has a running mate in mind:

The Republican Party has been "hijacked" and led away from its core values, Chuck Hagel, the Republican Senator from Nebraska, said Sunday on Face The Nation.

Hagel, who is still considering his options for the 2008 race, left open the possibility of becoming an independent and sharing a ticket with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

"I am not happy with the Republican Party today," Hagel said. "It's been hijacked by a group of single-minded almost isolationists, insulationists, power-projectors."

My friends at Power Line already have had their laughs over the "insulationists" part of Hagel's comment, but the rest of it makes no sense either. Hagel complains about isolationism and power projection? Those are two mutually exclusive states. Hagel should be the last person to complain about isolationism, anyway; he's been fighting against the war in Iraq on the basis of it being an example of neocon adventurism.

The only thing hijacked is Hagel's dictionary, apparently.

Hagel then went from snickers to guffaws when he talked about his potential running mate:

After dining with former New York's mayor, who is also said to be considering a run for president as an independent, Hagel said people might want to consider the two on a ticket.

"We didn't make any deals, but I think Mayor Bloomberg is the kind of individual who should seriously think about this," Hagel said. "He is the mayor of one of the greatest cities on earth. He makes that city work. That's what America wants."

Bloomberg? Isn't that the mayor who has spent the last few years making Rudy Giuliani look like a libertarian? After chasing smokers and gun dealers around the island, Bloomberg wants to spend $200 million on a vanity run. That makes sense for Hagel, who has about zero chance of raising significant funds for even a Ross Perot impact on the campaign.

Hagel's not a bad guy at all, but he's fooling himself if he thinks he has any chance at all for an independent bid. Even as a potential Republican candidate, he barely draws a single percentage point in primary polling. At this rate, he'd have to explode just to reach John Anderson's high-water mark.

Site Issues (Mostly) Resolved

Between Pair Networks, my new hosting service, and myself, we seem to have determined the problems with slow loads and errors on comments. It turns out that Movable Type wants to rebuild the entire comment database every time it rebuilds pages (blog posts or comments) on a blog. We have a database of over 140,000 comments at CQ, and that created a database table that topped 160MB. Rebuilding that file every time created an overload on the server that caused their "reaper" programs to kill the processes before they ever had a chance to complete.

This was certainly the problem at my former hosting service. However, since they gave me no direction about the reason for the problem -- indeed, told me on more than one occasion that application issues were not their problem -- I had no idea how Movable Type handled rebuilds, and so I could not fix the problem. Pair spent more than an hour with me today, talking with their MT specialists and watching rebuilds live to determine the actual issue.

However, in order to fix this problem, I had to remove all of the comments from the system from December 2006 back. I do have them in a backup database, but it's simply not possible to carry that load forward. It interferes, unfortunately, with my ability to post and your ability to add more comments. I assume that threads more than four months old are probably dead anyway. I will have to maintain that kind of rolling limit in order to keep the blog running properly in the future.

The good news, however, is that I have eliminated Typekey and am relying on other anti-spam tools that run more in the background. Hopefully, they will cause a minimum of problems for commenters and we will be able to welcome more people into the CQ community. Thanks for all your patience, and hopefully we'll be back to normal or better by tomorrow.

McNulty Heads For The Exit

It looks as though the going has gotten hotter over at Justice. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty has announced to aides that he will resign his post. This will put the Bush administration on a path with the Senate Judiciary Committee for a new confirmation hearing, which the White House had tried to avoid:

Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty said Monday he will resign, the highest-ranking Bush administration casualty in the furor over the firing of U.S. attorneys, The Associated Press has learned.

McNulty, who has served 18 months as the Justice Department's second-in-command, announced his plans at a closed-door meeting of U.S. attorneys in San Antonio, according to two senior department aides. He said he will remain at the department until this fall or until the Senate approves a successor, the aides said.

McNulty could not be immediately reached for comment Monday. Justice aides said he has been considering leaving for months and never intended to serve more than two years as deputy attorney general.

But his ultimate decision to step down, the aides said, was hastened by anger at being linked to the prosecutors' purge that Congress is investigating to determine if eight U.S. attorneys were fired for political reasons. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about McNulty's decision.

This is quite the quandry. With everyone more or less acknowledging the monumentally bad handling of the terminations, many thought that Gonzales would eventually fall on his sword, as is typical in these situations. When he did not, the assumption was that the White House did not want to withstand a bruising confirmation process in the Senate.

They can't avoid it now. The DAG has to get confirmation, and they can't just leave the position open, either. If Bush didn't act to fill the slot, the Democrats could claim that he was derelict in his duties and start an impeachment. This means that the Democrats can take lots of shots at the White House, demand all sorts of testimony, and issue subpoenas like raffle tickets at a county fair.

Well, all of that is already happening. The House and Senate have both recalled Alberto Gonzales for more testimony, and both have demanded testimony from Monica Goodling, another former Gonzales aide. After two months of high-profile hearings, all the Democrats have shown is that Gonzales and his team handled the firings incompetently. That's bad enough, but incompetence is not illegal, and the Democrats have already overplayed this so-called scandal.

A confirmation hearing could be no worse than the running sideshow we already have in both chambers of Congress. Perhaps if the White House discovers that, we can have another for Gonzales' replacement and eliminate this dead end story altogether -- and get back to business at Justice.

CQ Radio: The Big Oil Edition

Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we'll be speaking with Denise McCourt, Director of Member Relations at the American Petroleum Institute, to talk about the cause of rising gasoline prices and the flurry of coverage it has received. We'll talk about the op-ed in today's LA Times which charges that Big Oil has bought the state of California and the charges leveled about price gouging. We'll also review the Norm Coleman speech and its reception here at the University of Minnesota.

Be sure to join the conversation at 646-652-4889!

UPDATE: Great show today; be sure to listen to the download on the sidebar player.

Also, FYI: still working on comments and blog speed. My new hosting service, Pair Networks, spent an hour with me today troubleshooting the issues, and I have a handle on the problem now. I will have to make some configuration and procedure changes, and I'm working on those now.

Norm Coleman Live Blog

I will be live-blogging a speech by Norm Coleman at the University of Minnesota about renewable energy, over at Heading Right. Be sure to join me for the speech!

UPDATE: It was an interesting and intriguing speech, not so much for its content on renewable energy but because of the secondary nature of that topic in his speech. Coleman talked much more about centrism and compromise, assuring the audience that he approaches issues from an ideologically conservative point of view but with an effort to get results. Getting 100% of nothing is worse than 50% of something, Coleman argued.

I'm guessing that Coleman took a hard look at the audience at the U of M and decided to address their skepticism of him as a Republican. Coleman often speaks extemporaneously -- he's brilliant at it -- and it seemed as though he decided to shift gears to match his audience, primarily students at the U, which means primarily Democrats. In that, he succeeded, I believe.

Be sure to read the entire live blog, but one moment stands out. When the moderator asked whether a pro-life politician like Coleman could support Rudy Giuliani for President, Coleman didn't hesitate a moment before saying, "Absolutely!"

Where Is The Whistleblower Protection For The War On Terror?

Ever since the Traveling Imams threatened a lawsuit against the people who notified security personnel of their concerns over their pre-flight actions, members of both parties in Congress have spoken of the need to offer legal protection against lawsuits for those who tip off law enforcement about potential terrorist activity. Yet, as Katherine Kersten notes, they have done little to push the legislation to the floor:

Last week, we learned that federal authorities have foiled a plot to kill American soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J. The FBI uncovered the plan after an alert Circuit City clerk passed on suspicious video footage that the alleged conspirators had asked him to transfer onto a DVD.

The clerk's action was just the kind of citizen vigilance that a new bill before Congress is designed to encourage, and to shield such citizens against intimidation. The bill was inspired by a lawsuit filed in federal District Court in Minneapolis in March by the now famous "Flying Imams." ...

The bill's sponsors submitted it as an amendment to another bill in March. It passed 304-121. Every House Republican and 105 Democrats voted for the it. Opponents included Minnesota's Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum and Jim Oberstar.

So where is the bill now? It's stuck in a House-Senate conference committee. Last Friday, however, Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Independent, and others introduced a standalone version of the bill, and this week sponsors plan to do the same in the House.

The stakes here are large. What would have happened at Fort Dix if the store clerk had hesitated to contact authorities because he feared a retaliatory lawsuit? We might be watching funerals on TV.

Americans should not have to fear legal harassment for participating in the nation's security. Given that national security is one of the few tasks that everyone agrees belongs at the federal level, Congress has the duty and responsibility to protect people who assist in finding terrorists among us by calling the police or FBI, or airport security, about suspicious activity. The failure to close this avenue of intimidation will eventually result in dead bodies, and we will then hear all about people who thought the perpetrators suspicious but feared getting involved.

This goes to the heart of Democratic ineptitude in Congress since winning their majority. They have taken almost 100 days to produce a supplemental for troops fighting al-Qaeda terrorists, which should have been the highest priority in Congress. They have produced almost no other meaningful legislation since the start four months ago of the 110th Congress. This bill acts as a canary in the coal mine. If the Democrats can't even get this bipartisan bill accomplished, then what are they doing on Capitol Hill?

The Democrats are in charge now. They have to start producing something other than committee hearings and pointless investigations. Real people need real protection against the intimidation tactics that will make this country less safe.

Palestinian Unity Government Anything But

The unity government formed in March by the Palestinian Authority appears on the verge of collapse. The Interior Minister abruptly resigned today from the position which had been the hardest to fill during the negotiations between Hamas and Fatah, while internecine fighting raged anew in Gaza:

The Palestinian interior minister, Hani al-Qawasmi, has resigned, causing a crisis in the fragile two-month-old unity government, after the biggest surge in factional fighting in months revived fears of civil war.

Two Palestinian gunmen were killed in Gaza in clashes between the rival Hamas and Fatah groups hours before a government official announced that Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh had accepted the resignation.

As interior minister, Mr Qawasmi was to have overseen Palestinian security services but officials said the former academic faced competition from powerful Fatah rivals for control of the armed contingents.

The resignation cast new doubt on whether the power-sharing partnership between Islamist Hamas and secular Fatah could continue.

Egypt had brokered a truce between Hamas and Fatah, but it had little effect on Gaza. Despite an agreement that both sides would withdraw their gunment from the streets, the militias started closing streets this morning as a civil war appeared imminent. Checkpoints went up and Palestinians started trying to find ways to avoid getting entangled in them.

Forming unity governments might seem like a great idea, but a society has to have some kind of unity on which to base it. The Palestinians right now do not have even a protostate but a massive amount of gang turf. Hamas and Fatah have operated as the terrorist groups they are rather than as true political parties. Neither have interest in actual politics but in power grabs, which has been all too apparent in the failure of both groups to actually govern in any sense of the word.

Until the Palestinians decide that they have had enough of terrorism directed both within and without, they will continue to suffer under warlord rule. The PA has proven a failure as an instrument towards this goal, and the Palestinians in two elections have proven themselves unsuited for statehood. The best possible solution would be for the territories to revert to Jordan and Egypt, but both nations are wise enough to reject that notion. Failing that, they should be sealed off until they finish their civil war or weary enough of the violence that the Palestinians finally produce responsible leadership.

Internet Hysteria Strikes The Post

Tom Grubisch becomes the latest person to succumb to hysteria over the existence of anonymous writers on the Internet. The former Washington Post writer and editor waxes shrill over the amount of attention paid to those who eschew a normal byline and adopt Internet handles for their tirades, demonstrating a curious case of tunnel vision for a journalist:

These days we want "transparency" in all institutions, even private ones. There's one massive exception -- the Internet. It is, we are told, a giant town hall. Indeed, it has millions of people speaking out in millions of online forums. But most of them are wearing the equivalent of paper bags over their heads. We know them only by their Internet "handles" -- gotalife, runningwithscissors, stoptheplanet and myriad other inventive names. ...

In any community in America, if Mr. anticrat424 refused to identify himself, he would be ignored and frozen out of the civic problem-solving process. But on the Internet, Mr. anticrat424 is continually elevated to the podium, where he can have his angriest thoughts amplified through cyberspace as often as he wishes. He can call people the vilest names and that hate-mongering, too, will be amplified for all the world to see.

You would think Web sites would want to keep the hate-mongers from taking over, but many sites are unwitting enablers. At washingtonpost.com, editors and producers say they struggle to balance transparency against privacy. Until recently, many of the site's posters identified themselves with anonymous Internet handles -- which were the site's default ID. Now, people must enter a "user ID" that appears with their comments.

Strawman alert! Notice how Grubisch manages to equate anonymity with hate speech. Some "hate mongers" may remain anonymous, and some gladly use their own names. The correlations does not constitute causation, and Grubisch shows his hysterical approach in his assumption that it does.

Grubisch, in fact, misses the entire point. The Internet has allowed people to establish credibility through the message, not the messenger. Grubisch comes from a culture where having the byline at the Washington Post confers more gravitas to a writer than if it came from the Pudunk Weekly Herald. On the Internet, people write their arguments and garner or lose readers based on the argument and not the star power of the writer. The market manages to weed out those who flail in hatred from those who offer cogent analyses.

Grubisch, however, does not trust the market. He wants a top-down solution to the plague of anonymity on the Internet, even as he acknowledges that it will have a deleterious effect on whistleblowing and the like. His solution is that all Internet communities should force users to reveal their real names, and that community managers should consider anonymity only on a case-by-case basis. That would prove almost impossible to manage for even the most dedicated of managers, effectively killing off the free debate for which the Internet has become famous.

As for those who wish to retain anonymity, Grubisch takes an argument straight out of Joe McCarthy's playbook:

If Web sites required posters to use their real names, while giving the shield of pseudonymity when it's merited, spirited online debate would continue unimpeded. It might even be enhanced by attracting contributors who are turned off today by name calling and worse. Except for the hate-mongers, who wouldn't want that?

If Grubisch likes that argument, then try this one: If we allowed police to go door-to-door searching for illegal drugs without warning or warrants, it would only affect those who break the law now. The rest of us would get a clean bill of health and wouldn't have to worry about getting raided later. Except for the drug dealers and users, who wouldn't want that?

Grubisch needs to calm down. If people don't like anonymous writing, they won't read sites that feature it. If people don't like the message at certain Internet sites, they won't assign any more credibility to it regardless of whether the author reveals his actual name. If the Post suddenly began printing essays from anonymous writers, then Grabisch can criticize his former employer and its advertisers in an effort to get the policy reversed. Until then, the situation does not require "solutions" that are impractical at best and squelching at worst.

UPDATE: Larry J brings up a great point in the comments section -- will Grabisch demand a top-down solution for "unnamed sources" appearing in newspapers?

Is Gaddafi In A Coma?

The Jerusalem Post reports from a single source that Libyan strongman Moammar Gaddafi has suddenly slipped into a coma caused by a brain embolism. His family has been called to the hospital, according to the Post, and his prognosis looks murky -- perhaps as murky as the source:

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was rushed to the hospital Sunday after a blood clot was discovered in his brain, and is now in a coma, the Palestinian news agency Ma'an claimed.

According to the report, Gaddafi's children, who reside in Europe, were recalled to his bedside in Tripoli.

"The condition of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is very serious and he was brought unconscious to the hospital," the agency reported.

The report cites a European source and has yet to be confirmed.

Gaddafi gave the US its biggest foreign-relations victory of the Iraq War when he voluntarily disarmed his nuclear-weapons programs. The US and UK had held negotiations with Libya on this point for months, but Gaddafi suddenly acquiesced shortly after the capture of Saddam Hussein. He told Silvio Berlusconi that he didn't want to end his days like Saddam Hussein -- hiding in a dirt hole only to be hauled out by American troops. His abandonment of nuclear weapons may have made the entire exercise worthwhile, although most have forgotten about the surprising level of sophistication that UN inspectors found during the disarmament process.

If he is as ill as the Post and Ma'an reports, it puts Libya in a precarious position. Gaddafi has had poor relations with the Arab League of late, and the Saudis have been the problem. It's not altogether sure that a Gaddafi exit would result in a reconciliation; indeed, no one has really considered what comes after Gaddafi. The entire North African situation, as bad as it is already, could rapidly deteriorate as long-oppressed factions fight for power if he dies, or even if he remains incapacitated.

On the other hand, without independent confirmation, this report should be taken with a major grain of salt. Palestinian newspapers are not reknowned for their accuracy or allegiance to truth, and some factions within the PA have a heavy reliance on Saudi support. Ma'an might have indulged some wish fulfillment.

If not, though, we may have a short opportunity to work with Libyans to move their nation even further away from terrorism and oppression. Hopefully the State Department has its fingers on the pulse.

UPDATE: Via Allahpundit, he must be a rather active coma patient:

Libya's leader Moammar Gadhafi has denied a Palestinian news wire report that he is fatally ill, Italy's ANSA news agency said Monday.

Gadhafi called Monday to Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi saying he was in good health, the agency reported.

Musharraf Beset On All Sides

A dangerous life for a military dictator has grown even more precarious this weekend. Pervez Musharraf, who has fought Islamist extremists looking to assassinate him, now faces a burgeoning battle with democractization activists angered by his suspension of the chief justice of the Pakistani Supreme Court (via Memeorandum):

Clashes between government supporters and opposition activists flared for a second day Sunday in the country's largest city, bringing the weekend death toll to about 40.

The clashes in the southern city of Karachi were prompted by a judicial crisis that has gripped the country since March 9, when the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, suspended Pakistan's chief justice for alleged abuses of office. Since then, protesters have frequently taken to the streets to rally against what they see as an attempt by Musharraf to snuff out fledgling democratic institutions and ease his way to another term.

On Saturday, the judge, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, who denies the charges against him, was scheduled to speak at a rally in Karachi. But he was prevented even from leaving the airport. The protests soon turned violent as members of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, a coalition partner of Musharraf's known as MQM, exchanged fire with anti-Musharraf demonstrators.

Although the fighting Sunday was less intense than it had been on Saturday, as many as six more people were killed.

So far, Musharraf has survived by working both sides of the street. He played footsie with Islamists off and on before 9/11 forced him to decide whether to stick with the Taliban and face the inevitable consequences. Even after that, though, Musharraf has tried to let them go their own way in Waziristan as much as he possibly can without incurring the wrath of the US. He has even begun building a wall along the Afghanistan border, which has Pashtuns there incensed but which he hopes will discourage the transit of terrorists into Afghanistan and reduce the provocations along the border.

Musharraf has also tried to play nice with the democrats. He has promised elections and insists that he will not try to rule Pakistan for life, but so far has shown little progress in returning Pakistan to its democratic institutions. He even has a website dedicated to his vision of a "holistic" democracy in Pakistan, necessarily long on talk and short on action.

One cannot play both sides against the middle for a long-term strategy. Musharraf might be realizing that now, and he's showing the democrats that his vision of holistic democracy involves Musharraf increasing his grip on power, or at least maintaining it. In fact, it's impossible to determine just how many of the rioters were democrats and how many were Islamists -- and that is the long-range risk of Musharraf's strategy. Sooner or later, the two factions will discover that they have a mutual interest in getting rid of Musharraf, and the Islamists will benefit the most from that alliance.

The Imus Effect: A Demand For Decency?

Two more shock jocks find themselves on the unemployment lines after offending their audiences with racial humor. CBS News, which fired Don Imus for his offhand comment about the Rutgers basketball team, has now also fired the two hosts of the "The Dog House with JV and Elvis" for a skit that used an Asian restaurant as the butt of a joke about Asians and their accents:

One month after CBS Radio fired radio host Don Imus, it has permanently pulled the plug on a pair of suspended New York shock jocks for a prank phone call rife with offensive Asian stereotypes.

"The Dog House with JV and Elvis," hosted by Jeff Vandergrift and Dan Lay, "will no longer be broadcast," CBS Radio spokeswoman Karen Mateo said Saturday.

The cancellation of the show on WFNY-FM, nearly three weeks after the hosts were suspended, was another indication of the increased scrutiny on radio hosts and the heightened management sensitivity to complaints in the wake of the Imus firing.

Where Imus just got sloppy, these two made their bed deliberately. They called a Chinese restaurant and tried to order "shrimp-flied lice", and then broadcast it. They also compared menu items to the body parts of the restaurant employees and in general acted like 12-year-olds whose parents left them alone for the very first time.

Should that be a firing offense? When I was growing up in LA, that kind of schtick was the repetoire of almost half the FM dial. Rick Dees made a living off of gags like this, decades before it got called punking or pwning; he had one hilarious call to a promoter in which Dees pretended to represent Michael Jackson. Most times, though, it got pretty tiresome and repetitive, and that's the best that could be said for it -- when it didn't involve racial humor.

How many of us still put up with this kind of joking in our personal lives? Most of us would try to change the subject if one of our friends started spouting off about "shrimp-flied lice" out of embarrassment, and would walk away from acquaintances under similar circumstances. It's old, it's tired, and it's offensive. Almost none of us would make crank calls as a way to get a laugh, and most wouldn't tolerate it from their kids or friends, either. Radio listeners apparently feel the same way.

People will work this into a First Amendment case, but the First Amendment doesn't guarantee people gigs at CBS Radio. CBS gets held responsible for its content by its advertisers, who pay for shows like The Dog House. If people want to engage in offensive racial humor like JV and Elvis, no one is stopping them -- but CBS has no obligation to air it, and people have no obligation to listen.

In Imus' case, CBS went too far in firing him for an impromptu idiocy; a suspension would have made the point. In this case, where the two hosts went far out of their way to offend and act like middle-school pranksters, it may have been more appropriate, at least as far as CBS and their advertisers are concerned. Perhaps people will understand that hoary old gags about accents and racial issues should have died along with the comedians who started using them a lifetime ago. The First Amendment does not guarantee the tasteless a broadcast platform, after all.

Addendum: On my post about Opie & Anthony and their offensive broadcast about raping Condoleezza Rice, I printed a correction regarding Breitbart's text. Andrew Breitbart sent this reply:

At no point in our initial post (see below) did we state that this was a skit, not did we offer the time in which the interview occurred. Here is the initial subhead:

Warning: Extremely Vulgar Language. Shock Jocks Opie and Anthony engage in discussion about forced sex with the Secretary of State. A studio guest begins describing the scenario as the hosts laugh and encourage him. Anthony talks about the horror for Rice as the guest is “holding her down” and assaulting her.

I'm not sure where there is confusion. Perhaps because the Opie and Anthony 'pests' sent out volumes of emails to me and others posting the piece that we stated or implied it was a skit. We didnt'. Nor did we offer a time of the original interview.

It's true that Breitbart TV did not run the date; the assumption was that it had happened the day it appeared, but that assumption was made by me and other bloggers. Also, I didn't mean that Breitbart had called it a skit when I wrote my correction; Hot Air had retracted part of its criticism when Bryan acknowledged that it was extemporaneous rather than written, and my point was that it really didn't matter, since the two hosts were laughing and egging on Homeless Charlie -- and invited him back for another show. Hopefully this clarifies the clarification ...

Iran And The US, Together Again

Washington and Teheran have apparently agreed to hold talks about the security of Iraq and will meet in Baghdad soon. It represents a turnabout for both nations, and both nations have taken pains to ensure that people understand that they only have a mutual interest in Iraq:

The U.S. and Iran said Sunday they will hold upcoming talks in Baghdad about improving Iraq's security — a historic political turnabout for the two countries with the most influence over Iraq's future.

Expectations of progress remain low, however, with tough issues at stake and mutual suspicions running high. Even as it announced the talks, Iran lashed out at Vice President
Dick Cheney's weekend warnings about its nuclear program, saying it would retaliate if the U.S. attacked it.

Yet the two sides said they were setting aside such differences to focus on a narrow issue — Iraq's continued violence and sharp political deterioration.

"The purpose is to try to make sure that the Iranians play a productive role in Iraq," said Gordon Johndroe, the White House's National Security Council spokesman.

Cheney's spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, also confirmed the upcoming talks, saying the vice president supports the move as long as they focus solely on Iraq.

The Bush administration has finally decided to engage Iran over Iraqi security concerns. That looks like retreat and will likely play that way in the region, but at this point the White House has little to lose. The Iranians will not offer much to our liking anyway, and the talks will result in few changes beyond the superficial.

However, it may kick the Nouri al-Maliki government in the rear by removing one of its favorite excuses. Maliki has pressed the Bush administration on Iranian engagement just as much as we have pressed him on reform, and neither went far in getting what they wanted. Now that Bush has agreed to meet with the Iranians, Maliki will have even fewer excuses to dawdle on reconciliation with the Sunnis and the Kurds.

At the moment, the timing remains unclear, with estimates putting the meeting within the next few weeks. Ryan Crocker, the ambassador to Iraq, will most likely handle the American side of the talks. He has made informal contact with the Iranian foreign minister Abbas Aragachi, but Aragachi would probably not conduct the meetings himself unless Condoleezza Rice participated.

Could anything useful come out of these talks? One never knows, but unless Iran has suddenly decided to give up its dreams of hosting the new Caliphate from the heart of Persia, it's doubtful. The US may have more to win politically from this meeting than tactically or strategically.

Happy Mother's Day!

To my own mother, my mother-in-law, the mother of my granddaughter, and all of the mothers and grandmothers in the CQ community, the First Mate and I wish all of you a happy Mother's Day!

Mother's Day is a splendid American tradition. One man who recognized the crucial role of mothers in American society was Theodore Roosevelt, an early prototype of the modern masculine man. Roosevelt gave this speech over 100 years ago on motherhood. He gave this speech to a gathering of women, and while the societal roles have broadened (thankfully) for women, his emphasis on motherhood for the sake of the next generation still resonates:

Inasmuch as I am speaking to an assemblage of mothers, I shall have nothing whatever to say in praise of an easy life. Yours is the work which is never ended. No mother has an easy time, the most mothers have very hard times; and yet what true mother would barter her experience of joy and sorrow in exchange for a life of cold selfishness, which insists upon perpetual amusement and the avoidance of care, and which often finds its fit dwelling place in some flat designed to furnish with the least possible expenditure of effort the maximum of comfort and of luxury, but in which there is literally no place for children?

The woman who is a good wife, a good mother, is entitled to our respect as is no one else; but she is entitled to it only because, and so long as, she is worthy of it. Effort and self-sacrifice are the law of worthy life for the man as for the woman; tho neither the effort nor the self-sacrifice may be the same for the one as for the other. I do not in the least believe in the patient Griselda type of woman, in the woman who submits to gross and long continued ill treatment, any more than I believe in a man who tamely submits to wrongful aggression. No wrong-doing is so abhorrent as wrong-doing by a man toward the wife and children who should arouse every tender feeling in his nature. Selfishness toward them, lack of tenderness toward them, lack of consideration for them, above all, brutality in any form toward them, should arouse the heartiest scorn and indignation in every upright soul.

I believe in the woman keeping her self-respect just as I believe in the man doing so. I believe in her rights just as much as I believe in the man’s, and indeed a little more; and I regard marriage as a partnership, in which each partner is in honor bound to think of the rights of the other as well as of his or her own. But I think that the duties are even more important than the rights; and in the long run I think that the reward is ampler and greater for duty well done, than for the insistence upon individual rights, necessary tho this, too, must often be. Your duty is hard, your responsibility great; but greatest of all is your reward. I do not pity you in the least. On the contrary, I feel respect and admiration for you.

Into the woman’s keeping is committed the destiny of the generations to come after us. In bringing up your children you mothers must remember that while it is essential to be loving and tender it is no less essential to be wise and firm. Foolishness and affection must not be treated as interchangeable terms; and besides training your sons and daughters in the softer and milder virtues, you must seek to give them those stern and hardy qualities which in after life they will surely need. Some children will go wrong in spite of the best training; and some will go right even when their surroundings are most unfortunate; nevertheless an immense amount depends upon the family training. If you mothers through weakness bring up your sons to be selfish and to think only of themselves, you will be responsible for much sadness among the women who are to be their wives in the future. If you let your daughters grow up idle, perhaps under the mistaken impression that as you yourselves have had to work hard they shall know only enjoyment, you are preparing them to be useless to others and burdens to themselves. Teach boys and girls alike that they are not to look forward to lives spent in avoiding difficulties, but to lives spent in overcoming difficulties. Teach them that work, for themselves and also for others, is not a curse but a blessing; seek to make them happy, to make them enjoy life, but seek also to make them face life with the steadfast resolution to wrest success from labor and adversity, and to do their whole duty before God and to man. Surely she who can thus train her sons and her daughters is thrice fortunate among women. ...

To sum up, then, the whole matter is simple enough. If either a race or an individual prefers the pleasure of more effortless ease, of self-indulgence, to the infinitely deeper, the infinitely higher pleasures that come to those who know the toil and the weariness, but also the joy, of hard duty well done, why, that race or that individual must inevitably in the end pay the penalty of leading a life both vapid and ignoble. No man and no woman really worthy of the name can care for the life spent solely or chiefly in the avoidance of risk and trouble and labor. Save in exceptional cases the prizes worth having in life must be paid for, and the life worth living must be a life of work for a worthy end, and ordinarily of work more for others than for one’s self.

The woman’s task is not easy—no task worth doing is easy—but in doing it, and when she has done it, there shall come to her the highest and holiest joy known to mankind; and having done it, she shall have the reward prophesied in Scripture; for her husband and her children, yes, and all people who realize that her work lies at the foundation of all national happiness and greatness, shall rise up and call her blessed.

I will be back later. Please note that the Typekey functions have been completely disabled, but comments now have to be moderated -- and I will look into an alternative later today.

Troy Scheffler And Hamline University

Mitch Berg and I had the opportunity to invite Troy Scheffler to our studio yesterday to talk about his suspension from Hamline University for his protest against the gun-free zone policy of the school. After the Virginia Tech massacre, Hamline had sent out an e-mail to its students offering trauma counseling. Scheffler responded in an e-mail that asked the school to reconsider its position on making the campaus a "gun-free zone" -- and Hamline responded by suspending him and requiring a psychiatric evaluation before he could return.

I was curious about what kind of person Troy was, and so I looked forward to meeting with him yesterday after our intrepid producer Matt Reynolds made the arrangements. I didn't think he'd be a Seung-hui Cho type at all, but I was very much surprised when Troy turned out to be as mild-mannered as anyone I had ever met. He didn't harbor any bitterness nor even anger over his situation, only a resigned bemusement. He, in fact, is a very nice guy caught up in the academic manifestations of political correctness.

Mitch and I asked him about what happened in the two e-mails he sent to Janet Hanson and David Stern (who declined to appear on our program). Troy told us that he sent the e-mail to President Hanson first as a reply to the counseling offer, but that he never used any kind of threatening language at all. In fact, he stressed that he believed in dialogue to resolve disputes. He referenced a recent incident where a female student had sprayed a swastika in a bathroom and said how "idiotic" that kind of activism was.

And, at least at first, Hanson appeared to agree. Troy says that she responded by offering to meet him the following Monday in her office to discuss his concerns. However, that morning, he received a letter by courier from Stern informing Troy of his suspension and the rather Staliniesque terms of potential reinstatement. At that point, Troy sent the second e-mail complaining about his treatment and pointing out the hypocrisy inherent in Hamline's so-called diversity efforts.

As it turns out, Troy wasn't even referring to the main campus when he complained about the gun-free zone. He told us that security actually does a good job protecting the main campus, but he attended classes in the school's downtown Minneapolis facilities at night -- which is not a safe place to be, and where Hamline provides no security. Since Troy has a state license to carry a concealed weapon -- which means he's passed the background checks and training requirements -- all he wanted to do was to get their permission to have the opportunity to defend himself in case he got attacked.

So far, the school hasn't budged. Troy doesn't really want to return there anyway under the circumstances, but he worries that the incompletes he had to take and the record of the suspension will damage his chances to get into law school. In fact, he has just about despaired of that career at this point, and isn't sure what he will do now.

What is certain is that Hamline should be embarrassed to have treated Troy in this manner. Had Hanson actually met Troy, she would have seen that she had nothing to fear from him. He would have shown her that people who get concealed-carry licenses don't have a psychosis or some kind of aggression against humanity; they just want to have the option to defend themselves effectively when placed in dangerous situations. And it's Hamline that put him and its other students in those situations in the first place.

Shame on Hanson, Stern, and Hamline for their prejudice and their mistreatment of a fine, upstanding, and unassuming young man.

NOTE: Troy could use a good Second Amendment lawyer. Let me know if anyone wants to give Troy an assist in that manner. Also, I would have podcasted the interview, but the station didn't have its recording system running yesterday.

Top Level Taliban Commander Reaches Room Temperature

The improbably named Mullah Dadullah, almost certainly the most important field commander in the Taliban, died while fighting NATO forces in Helmand. Coalition forces showed the body to reporters, who immediately recognized Dadullah's amputation and black beard:

Afghan government officials showed the body of Mullah Dadullah, the top operational commander for the Taliban insurgency, to reporters here Sunday morning, saying he had been killed in a joint operation of Afghan and coalition forces.

Mr. Dadullah, an amputee, was recognizable in part from his missing leg and black beard. He had been shot in the head and in the stomach.

He was one of the most wanted Taliban leaders, responsible for numerous assassinations, beheadings and terrorist campaigns, and was thought to be behind many of the suicide bombings that have killed or wounded hundreds of Afghans in the last year and a half.

He was seen as probably the most important operational commander, organizing groups of fighters, weapons supplies and finances across much of the south and southeast of Afghanistan.

Dadullah is the real deal among Taliban bad guys. He didn't act merely as a military commander, but as a terrorist-in-chief for Mullah Omar. Kandahar's governor described him as the "backbone of the Taliban", a man who had personally beheaded Afghan civilians who displeased him.

Der Spiegel noted his popularity amongst the jihadis and his value to the morale of Taliban fighters just ten weeks ago:

If Osama bin Laden likes being in the global spotlight, he's likely a bit depressed in his hideout these days. The leader of the al-Qaida terrorist organization hasn't made an appearance on the evening news for quite some time. What's more, the Taliban no longer need bin Laden as a figurehead. Western intelligence agencies warn that the Taliban now have "their own star" in their struggle against Western soldiers and the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai. The new nightmare from the Hindu Kush Mountains is called Mullah Dadullah. He sports a pitch black beard, always wears a military jacket and these days, he is omnipresent in the media. ...

Western intelligence agencies believe the Taliban have used the winter to thoroughly tighten their organizational structure. Some Taliban commanders are even reporting that Taliban leader Mullah Omar -- who disappeared from the scene entirely for years -- is once again writing letters to his supporters, congratulating successful commanders and the parents of suicide bombers and reminding militants of their "Islamic duties" via audio recordings. For years, one-eyed Omar had disappeared without a trace -- likely afraid of being tracked down by the CIA.

But Mullah Omar seems to be feeling more secure these days -- as does Mullah Dadullah, who only recently outlined his vision for the coming months. Behaving almost like any normal politician, he invited al-Jazeera journalists to visit him in the mountains. His words were alarming despite being full of rhetoric and propaganda. Dadullah said he commands 6,000 men who have volunteered for suicide attacks, and that their offensive is "imminent." He added that some of his men are already set off on their mission, which he described as a "bloodbath for the occupiers." This week's symbolic attack on US Vice President Dick Cheney is reason to fear that Dadullah is issuing more than just empty threats.

At that time, I wrote that "the time to act has arrived," and apparently I was not alone in thinking that. The new American commander of the Helmand theater changed tactics, using gunships to chase down and kill every last Taliban jihadi when they attempted raids, It stopped the "spring offensive" before it had a chance to start and put Omar and Dadullah back on their heels. Now the Taliban has lost its most effective leader and so-called rock star, and the effect on the organization will likely be severe.

With the exception of finding Omar or killing him, it's the best news yet in the war against the Taliban.