NARN, The Tired Of Toein' The Line Version

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 Peggy Noonan's column about her disillusionment with the Bush administration. We'll also talk about my trip to Iowa and interview with Mitt Romney and also with John McCain. We'll keep an eye on the developing story in New York about the thwarted terror plot at JFK, and we'll want to debate the immigration bill, too, plus other topics.

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 ...

JFK Terror Plot Foiled

The FBI has three people in custody in the fourth domestic terror conspiracy stopped in less than a year, and are seeking a fourth suspect. The quartet planned to use a jet-fuel line to attack John F Kennedy Airport in New York, according to sources close to the investigation:

Three people were arrested and one other was being sought Saturday in connection to a plan to set off explosives in a fuel line that feeds John F. Kennedy International Airport and runs through residential neighborhoods, officials close to the investigation said.

The plot, which never got past the planning stages, did not involve airplanes or passenger terminals, according to the two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the arrests had not yet been announced. ...

According to sources, the suspects have been identified as: Russell Defreitas, Abdul Nur, Kareem Ibrihim and Abdul Kadir.

Last summer, the FBI rounded up a group of home-grown terrorist wannabes in Miami, who planned to attack the Sears Tower in Chicago. Just a month later, they arrested another group that wanted to bomb train tunnels in New York City in order to flood them. Earlier this month, authorities stopped six men from conducting an attack on Fort Dix in New Jersey, at least three of whom lived in the US illegally.

The plot came to light after one conspirator, a Guyanese cargo worker at JFK, looked for outside assistance for the attack. He contacted an FBI informant last summer, and the agency kept tabs on the group while apparently checking for connections to other terrorist groups. The intent of the attack was not to kill people, but to disrupt one of the main supplies for jet fuel to New York's airports, all of which use the same pipleine, and therefore to disrupt travel in and out of the US.

The arrests and announcement apparently means that the FBI has satisfied itself that it either knows all of the connections made by this cell, or that none exist. One suspect remains at large, and the FBI may believe that public awareness can help catch him.

I'll have more as this develops.

UPDATE: It doesn't appear that this is a home-grown plot, either:

Two additional arrestes were made in Trinidad, a law enforcement source said. A source identified the suspect arrested in the United States as Russell Defreitas.

The plotters had "indirect" links to overseas terror elements and the plot had links to Guyana, Trinidad and possibly Germany, a source said.

Terrorist ties in Germany. Hmm. Where have we heard that before?

UPDATE II: The FBI thought that a well-known terrorist may have had a part in this plot:

FBI agents feared but never confirmed the three men accused of plotting to attack John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York were linked to one of the most wanted al Qaeda leaders, Adnan Shukrijumah, known to have operated out of Guyana and Trinidad.

Officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com that they heard repeated references to "Adnan" during the extensive wiretaps conducted on the suspects' telephone conversations, including calls to Guyana and Trinidad.

There is a $5 million reward for information on Shukrijumah, who officials consider extremely dangerous because of the years he spent living in the Miami area and his known ties to al Qaeda. Some of the 9/ll hijackers attended a south Florida mosque run by Shukrijumah's now deceased father.

UPDATE III: The ambition for this attack was pretty high, according to the indictment, which Michelle Malkin reproduces:

28. During the return drive from JFK, Defreitas discussed the extent of the damage they could cause. In particular, Defreitas predicted that the plot would result in the destruction of "the whole of Kennedy," that only a few people would escape and that, due to underground piping, part of Queens would explode.

They wanted to take out a good portion of a borough that houses more than 2.2 million people, according to the 2000 Census. In fact, it's among the most diverse populations in the United States; 46% of residents were born outside the US. That's what these four wanted to destroy.

Did We Send Mixed Signals To China On Taiwan?

According to Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein, the Department of Defense under Donald Rumsfeld may have aggravated China's paranoia over Taiwan by deliberately undermining the long-standing US policy on relations between the two. Colin Powell's chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, claims that the Pentagon encouraged Taiwan to declare independence against the policy of the Bush administration -- a move that would have touched off a military confrontation with Beijing (via Memeorandum):

The same top Bush administration neoconservatives who leap-frogged Washington’s foreign policy establishment to topple Saddam Hussein nearly pulled off a similar coup in U.S.-China relations—creating the potential of a nuclear war over Taiwan, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell says.

Lawrence B. Wilkerson, the U.S. Army colonel who was Powell’s chief of staff through two administrations, said in little-noted remarks early last month that “neocons” in the top rungs of the administration quietly encouraged Taiwanese politicians to move toward a declaration of independence from mainland China — an act that the communist regime has repeatedly warned would provoke a military strike.

The top U.S. diplomat in Taiwan at the time, Douglas Paal, backs up Wilkerson’s account, which is being hotly disputed by key former defense officials.

During the Nixon effort to "open up" Red China, the US agreed to a formulation which recognized only one China, with its capital in Beijing. In return, China agreed to consider Taiwan an autonomous entity outside of its direct control. The US guaranteed Taiwan's security as long as the status quo remained.

Three years ago, however, Taiwan began making noises about declaring independence. During most of 2004, a crisis mentality prevailed after an assassination attempt on President Chen Shui-bian and VP Annette Lu failed in March of that year. Many blamed China, as Chen had been talking up independence. Only after the failure of Chen's party to hold the parliament in December did tempers cool.

Wilkerson accuses Therese Shaheen of manipulating Chen into pushing for independence. Shaheen ran the American Institute in Taipei at the time, which took over the diplomatic functions of the embassy after the US closed it in 1979. Shaheen openly endorsed Chen, and since Shaheen is the wife of Lawrence DiRita, a close aid of Donald Rumsfeld, the Chinese took that endorsement as an official position change for the US -- and began acting accordingly.

Stein notes that the people Wilkerson accuses of this shadow diplomacy all deny it in very strong terms. Douglas Feith says that the accusations are too fuzzy to refute in detail, but that the “remarks are not even close to being accurate." DiRita calls them "completely ridiculous ... absurd." However, Shaheen worked for Douglas Paal at the Institute, and Paal corroborates Wilkerson's account. In the end, the White House put its foot down and stamped out the effort, according to both men.

The sudden crisis of 2004 in Taiwan has always seemed odd. Wilkerson's story could explain why Taiwan changed course so abruptly and pushed for a challenge to Beijing so openly. If so, then it calls into question the judgment of some DoD officials, especially considering the fact that we already have a war on our hands against radical Islamist terrorists, in and out of Iraq. We hardly needed to provoke a military engagement over Taiwan.

Carbon Credits Lead To Increased Greenhouse-Gas Emissions

Do you like your irony so thick that it drips? The Guardian has a nice, juicy slice of it for you today. The main organization used by Europe to trade carbon credits has mismanaged the process so badly that they have created an increase in greenhouse-gas emissions as a result:

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which is supposed to offset greenhouse gases emitted in the developed world by selling carbon credits from elsewhere, has been contaminated by gross incompetence, rule-breaking and possible fraud by companies in the developing world, according to UN paperwork, an unpublished expert report and alarming feedback from projects on the ground.

Possible fraud in the developing world? Who'd have ever thought that might happen? It gets better:

One senior figure suggested there may be faults with up to 20% of the carbon credits - known as certified emissions reductions - already sold. Since these are used by European governments and corporations to justify increases in emissions, the effect is that in some cases malpractice at the CDM has added to the net amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. ...

There are only 17 of these validating and verifying companies. Most of them have a clean track record and will have approved reliable emissions reductions, but three of them have been performing so poorly that the CDM's executive board ordered spot checks - and all three companies failed on multiple grounds. The findings on one company, which is believed to have validated dozens of projects and verified millions of tonnes of carbon reductions, were so bad that the board considered suspending its right to work.

The entire system rests on a couple of major assumptions. The first and most laughable is that the system of carbon trades can be reliable based on spot audits. Billions of dollars are at stake in this enterprise. Without constant monitoring and checking, firms will cheat all day long -- especially since the metering of greenhouse-gas emissions relies on estimates more than precise measurements.

The second is that one can improve the environment by trading carbon credits. All that does is penalize the efficient and enable the inefficient. For instance, in this situation, companies that invested in efficiencies expected to recoup that investment by selling their carbon credits. If others cheat the system, the reliability of those credits gets damaged, and they will find that the credits are worth considerably less than they imagined. On the other hand, purchasers of credits will find it less expensive in that market to continue to emit the gases and pay less for the cut-rate credits. Eventually, no one will seriously consider investing in technology that actually reduces emissions.

If environmental improvement is desired, one has to move away from systems that support a status quo, which is what the credit market does, even when it works correctly. That means technological innovation and a realistic expectation of time and investment.

Slowly The World Turns

The move by Hugo Chavez to shutter a television broadcaster that has criticized him and his dictatorial rule over Venezuela has apparently alerted more than just the Venezuelans to his megalomania. Nations that didn't get the clues from his bizarre behavior at the UN or when he demanded and received dictatorial powers have suddenly awoken to the fact that Chavez is an imbalanced dictator who means to quash all opposition to his aspirations of Castro-like rule:

While condemnation from the Bush administration, an ideological foe of Venezuela, was expected, criticism has come from many quarters around the world, some of them surprising.

Spain's Socialist government, in a joint declaration with the United States, called Friday for Chávez to renew RCTV's license. The European Parliament voiced concern, and Brazil's Senate passed a resolution calling on Chávez to reconsider, drawing a sharp rebuke from the Venezuelan leader.

"A head of state who doesn't know how to live with democratic manifestation, such as that of the Brazilian Senate, is probably against democracy," the president of that body, Renan Calheiros, said in response.

The previous cluelessness didn't just apply to nations, either. Some NGOs have suddenly found themselves on the Damascus road, albeit reluctantly:

Reporters Without Borders, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, the Chilean Senate and the Atlanta-based Carter Center have said freedom of expression could be in peril in Venezuela. "I think this weakens the Chávez government's argument that it furthers free expression," said Carlos Lauria, who has studied the case for the Committee to Protect Journalists. "It debilitates that argument."

Note the weasel words Lauria uses in this statement. He thinks that using government force to shut down critics in the media weakens the argument that Chavez supports free speech. It debilitates that argument. Well, what would it take for Lauria to say that it negates it entirely? Does Chavez have to line journalists up against the wall and shoot them before Lauria will admit that Chavez is a tyrant?

It's not as if Chavez has any subtlety to his position at all. The last independent broadcaster, Globovision, got the word from Hugo yesterday in this warning: "I recommend that you take a tranquilizer, that you take it easy, because if not, I'm going to make you take it easy." And yet, all that Reporters Without Borders, the CPJ, and the Carter Center can do is issue mealy-mouthed statements about how this course of action could possiblymaybeperhapsundercertaincircumstances be construed as an attack on free speech.

Unbelievable.

Meanwhile, thousands of university students bravely take to the streets to fight for their freedom. They show courage and defiance. The nations of the West have finally noticed the danger in Venezuela, no thanks to Hugo's pals in the media and the NGO community.

US Navy Sends Message To Somali Islamists

A small group of Islamists suddenly appeared in a remote Somali village, attempting to set up a new base of operations. Local authorities assume they escaped from the trap at Ras Kamboni, bringing guns and small boats, and almost immediately picking fights. They thought the dense foliage around their position made them safe from concentrated attack. The US Navy has disabused them of that notion:

At least one U.S. warship bombarded a remote, mountainous village in Somalia where Islamic militants had set up a base, officials in the northern region of Puntland said Saturday. ...

A local radio station quoted Puntland's leader, Ade Muse, as saying that his forces had battled with the extremists for hours before U.S. ships arrived and used their cannons. Muse said five of his troops were wounded, but that he had no information about casualties among the extremists.

A task force of coalition ships, called CTF-150, is permanently based in the northern Indian Ocean and patrols the Somali coast in hopes of intercepting international terrorists. U.S. destroyers are normally assigned to the task force and patrol in pairs.

As many as 35 fighters may have arrived in Puntland. It's not a large force, but likely an advance group sent to find some toehold in the northern part of Somalia, in order to assist in the escape of the remaining forces in the south, where the Ethiopians and the Kenyans have them in a vise. More probes will follow, but it appears that all of the Islamists' opponents have prepared themselves for that contingency.

The US Navy has sent a message, too. We have not forgotten that the UIC hid the perpetrators of the 1998 African embassy bombings, and we consider them partners with al-Qaeda. They may think dense forests offer them protection from serious attack, but in truth it makes it easier for us to hit them, as their remote positions remove the worries of collateral damage.

In other words, they can run ... but they can't hide.

Exploitation Squared

Yesterday, I wrote about the Dutch television show that was to air today, where a dying woman would select the person who would receive her kidney for a transplant. The show created a firestorm of controversy, as people around the world accused the producers of exploiting the sick and dying for entertainment. Now it looks like they have exploited the contestants for an elaborate hoax (h/t: CQ reader David B):

A Dutch reality television show in which a supposedly dying woman had to pick one of three contestants to whom she would donate a kidney was revealed as an elaborate hoax on Friday.

The show, which the broadcaster had said aimed to focus attention on a shortage of donor organs in the Netherlands, was condemned by Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende before broadcast Friday night and sparked controversy worldwide.

Identified only as "Lisa," the 37-year-old woman who had been said to be suffering from a brain tumor was to base her selection on the person's history and conversations with the candidates' families and friends.

In the last minutes of the program, she was revealed as a healthy actress and producers stunned viewers by saying "The Big Donorshow" was a hoax.

The contestants were also part of the deception, although all three are genuine kidney patients.

I'm not sure which scenario was worse, but both are pretty repulsive and exploitative. The producers claim that they wanted to make a statement about the lack of organs for transplant patients, and at least the topic got some attention. However, they used real ESRD patients for the roles of the contestants, which seems rather cruel, considering that they had to pretend to abase themselves to seem the most pathetic -- and the most worthy -- of the transplant.

I share the hope of the producers that this will convince more people to donate their organs for transplant. I also hope that no one pulls this kind of stunt again.

Palestinians Pine For Israeli Security

How bad has life in Gaza become? Palestinians have begun to recognize that they cannot govern themselves -- and that life under Israeli authority was preferable. Not only are they saying this out loud, but as MEMRI reports, they're writing it in their newspapers (via QandO):

Papers reported that some people in Gaza even want the Israelis to return to the Strip. Faiz Abbas and Muhammad Awwad, journalists for the Israeli-Arab weekly Al-Sinara, wrote: "People in Gaza are hoping that Israel will reenter the Gaza Strip, wipe out both Hamas and Fatah, and then withdraw again... They also say that, since the [start of the] massacres, they [have begun to] miss the Israelis, since Israel is more merciful than [the Palestinian gunmen] who do not even know why they are fighting and killing one another. It's like organized crime, [they said]. Once, we resisted Israel together, but now we call for the return of the Israeli army to Gaza." [20]

Al-Hayat Al-Jadida columnist Yahya Rabah wrote: "When the national unity government was formed, I thought, 'This will be a government of national salvation.' If a government that includes Fatah, Hamas, other factions and independents associated with [various] factions has not been able to save the day, it means that no one can, unless Israel decides that its army should intervene. Then it will invade [the Gaza Strip], kill and arrest [people] - but this time not as an occupying [force] but as an international peace-keeping force. Look what we have come to, how far we have deteriorated, and what we have done to ourselves." [21]

Palestinian journalist Majed Azzam wrote: "We should have the courage to acknowledge the truth... The [only] thing that prevents the chaos and turmoil in Gaza from spreading to the West Bank is the presence of the Israeli occupation [in the West Bank]... [as opposed to] its absence from the Gaza Strip." [22]

It doesn't end there. One former newspaper chief called on Mahmoud Abbas to resign and for Arab nations to withdraw recognition of the Palestinian Authority. He called both Hamas and Fatah "agents of Israel", a laughable proposition, and one which shows the irrational demonization of Israel -- but also that shows the disaffection the Palestinians have from both major political organizations/terrorist groups. He also demanded that Abbas declare a state of emergency to clear out the gunmen from the streets, but since Fatah has plenty of gunmen themselves, it sounds more like a call for open civil war.

And, in fact, some are calling for that as well. Three columnists have called for a new intifada, but this time against Hamas and Fatah. Ali al-Khalili, who is also a senior PA official, wrote in Al-Ayyam: "Our only option is to [go out] on the streets and announce that we refuse to take leave of our senses, of our reason and of our determination to deal with the mother of all nakbas [catastrophes] before it is too late, and before history sweeps us all into the void of oblivion and death."

The two-state solution is dead until the Palestinians prove they can govern themselves. Even the Palestinians know this, and dread the thought of governance by Hamas and Fatah. Perhaps the rest of the world should listen to them.

CQ Radio: Chris Cillizza, Mark Tapscott

Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), I'll talk with the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza, who writes prolifically for their political blog, The Fix. We'll talk about the impact of the immigration bill on the McCain campaign, and the impact of Fred Thompson's toe-dipping on the entire GOP primary field.

In the second half of the show, Mark Tapscott joins us to talk about the warnings of a Republican meltdown. Mark is the editorial page editor for the Examiner series of newspapers and a well-known conservative essayist and thinker. We'll talk about the Peggy Noonan piece in the Wall Street Journal and the secret hold by Jon Kyl on FOIA expansion.

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

Addendum: My boss talks about BlogTalkRadio on CBS's Wallstrip. And Heading Left's James Boyce will appear on MS-NBC today to provide the liberal point of view on the immigration bill.

Why Aren't We Arguing For Liberty?

Fred Thompson continues his virtual campaign today by asking an important question about our efforts to spread democracy and liberty. Why have we neglected the most powerful weapon in our arsenal -- the truth? Thompson argues that our Radio Free broadcasts helped bring down the Soviet empire, and their neglect has allowed socialism to surge again in Latin America:

Well, he's done it. Hugo Chavez was already systematically silencing criticism of his autocratic rule through threats and intimidation. Journalists have been threatened, beaten and even killed. Now he's shut down the last opposition television networks in Venezuela and arrested nearly 200 protesters – mostly students. It’s a monumental tragedy and the Venezuelan people will pay the price for decades to come. Americans are also at risk as he funds anti-American candidates and radicals all over Latin America.

It’s equally tragic that the U.S. is in no position to provide the victims of this emerging dictator with the truth. There was a time, though, when Americans were on the front lines of pro-freedom movements all over the world. I'm talking about the “surrogate” broadcast network that included Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, often called "the Radios." ...

The Radios were not some bland public relations effort, attracting audiences only with American pop music. They engaged the intellectual and influential populations behind the Iron Curtain with accurate news and smart programming about freedom and democracy. They had sources and networks within those countries that sometimes outperformed the CIA. When Soviet hardliners and reformers were facing off, and crowds and tanks were on the streets of Moscow and Bucharest, the radios were sending real-time information to the people, including the military, and reminding them of what was at stake.

Then we won the Cold War. The USSR collapsed in 1991, and America relaxed. Military downsizing began and the Radios began to reduce broadcast air time to target countries.

How badly do Venezuelans need an independent source of news? They're marching in the streets in defiance of newly-minted dictator Hugo Chavez after he shut down the last major independent broadcaster for its criticisms of his leadership. Not that Venezuelans can know this through Chavez' state-controlled media:

While almost 40 percent of voters in last year’s election opted for Mr. Chávez’s opponent, the president’s support topped 60 percent and he still enjoys wide popular backing. This level of support is expected to be on display Saturday, when Mr. Chávez has called for large demonstrations in support of the RCTV decision.

Until then, however, the message from students is still being heard, if not widely broadcast, in Venezuela. “They are taking our free speech away,” said Sandra Bellizzia, a marketing student at Alejandro Humboldt University who had “RCTV” painted in black on her face at a protest here on Thursday. “If they closed any channel, it would mean the same thing.”

Had we presented a continual and sustained effort to supply the people of Venezuela and the rest of Latin America with unbiased, truthful reporting, they could be relying on that information now. As Thompson notes, democracy activists knew they could rely on our communications channels during the Cold War. We helped people free themselves, not with weapons or surgical bombing strikes, but with reliable information that allowed them to see around the propaganda of their governments.

What happened? Too many people bought into the "peace dividend" mentality. Mitt Romney acknowledged this in my interview with him on Wednesday specifically regarding Chavez and Latin America. After the Soviet collapse, we stopped worrying about Latin America, not understanding that tinpolt dictators will still arise, even without Russian financing. We let our guard down, and more importantly, we let the agents of freedom down in the region.

Dictatorships and oppression will afflict mankind for ages to come, and we have to be prepared to fight against it, using the most effective weapons in our arsenal. Fred reminds us that simple communication of truth, and the establishment of our credibility from that effort, is perhaps the most powerful and effective weapon against tyranny that we possess. It's high time that we start using it again.

The End Of The Bushes?

Peggy Noonan, one of my favorite columnists and always a great read, today turns her substantial rhetorical guns on what she sees as the biggest threat to the Republican Party -- George Bush. Accusing him of following his father in squandering a great political inheritance, Noonan calls for a Republican repudiation of Bush and his family:

What political conservatives and on-the-ground Republicans must understand at this point is that they are not breaking with the White House on immigration. They are not resisting, fighting and thereby setting down a historical marker--"At this point the break became final." That's not what's happening. What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. What President Bush is doing, and has been doing for some time, is sundering a great political coalition. This is sad, and it holds implications not only for one political party but for the American future.

The White House doesn't need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don't even much like the base. Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out their disdain. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.

For almost three years, arguably longer, conservative Bush supporters have felt like sufferers of battered wife syndrome. You don't like endless gushing spending, the kind that assumes a high and unstoppable affluence will always exist, and the tax receipts will always flow in? Too bad! You don't like expanding governmental authority and power? Too bad. You think the war was wrong or is wrong? Too bad.

But on immigration it has changed from "Too bad" to "You're bad."

I'm a little surprised by Noonan with this piece. I see nothing all that unusual with the way the Bush administration has attacked its critics over immigration. If she was to honestly look at the last six years, she will see that this is the normal mode of operation for the White House -- to always stay on the attack. In fact, they've followed the James Carville model from their first days in the White House.

What's the difference? They've not had to answer substantial conservative criticism very often. When they have, though, they've been consistent. When the Right objected to the poor choice of Harriet Miers as a Supreme Court nominee, they were accused of being sexist. When the Dubai Ports deal came to light -- which the administration failed to properly support -- they accused critics of bigotry and xenophobia. Those same accusations have arisen from Bush himself in this debate, with his accusation that opponents of the compromise bill "do not want what's right for America".

Welcome to the hardball of the Bush administration. We loved it when they used it on Democrats and the war, and it seems just a little hypocritical to start whining about it now that we're getting a taste of it ourselves.

However, Noonan does get the main point correct, which is that the GOP needs to start working on defining itself for the post-Bush era. We support him on the war and on taxes, but on most other domestic issues, we have a lot of daylight between Bush and the party. Discretionary spending went out of control on his watch, and the government grew faster than during the Clinton administration. That's not just Bush, either, but also the Congressional Republican leadership prior to the last mid-terms. We allowed lobbyist influence to increase, and we exploded the use of earmarks.

Republicans used to stand for smaller government, federalism, and strong national defense. Not all of that conflicts with the Bush legacy, but enough of it does that we need to start publicly demanding a return to those core concepts. Rather than repudiating Bush over his insulting attacks on the base, the better path is to generate a positive agenda that demonstrates our dissatisfaction with the previous six years -- and give Republicans something to vote for, rather than something to vote against.

If we can do that, we won't have to demand that the Bushes stay in Kennebunkport. We just won't give them any room to remain in party leadership.

The Iranian Answer, Continued

The Iranians extended their response to American diplomatic overtures by arresting another American in Iran. Ali Shakeri, who ironically works as a peace activist in Irvine, California, now faces charges of espionage and potentially the death penalty:

The United States confirmed that a missing Irvine peace activist has become the fourth Iranian American detained by Iran on suspicion of espionage, and warned U.S. citizens against traveling to the country.

"American citizens may be subject to harassment or arrest while traveling or residing in Iran," the State Department said after confirming that Ali Shakeri, who has been missing in Iran for more than two weeks, is being held at the notorious Evin prison in Tehran. ...

Shakeri, a founding board member at UC Irvine's Center for Citizen Peacebuilding, had been scheduled to leave Iran and fly to Europe in the first half of May.

The UCI-CCP advertises itself as "tak[ing] an integrated approach to studying the best grassroots peacebuilding methods in both domestic and international conflicts, and utilizes those findings in direct engagement in peacebuilding projects in neighborhoods in Orange County and Los Angeles, California as well as in selected communities in Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Bosnia/Herzegovina, and the former Soviet Union." It hardly seems the place for nefarious espionage activities, especially knowing the general political direction of UCI. In 2004, for instance, they gave a Peacebuilding Award to Mikhail Gorbachev, hardly a fan of American influence in the Persian Gulf.

However, the next year, they gave the award to Iranian ex-patriate Shirin Abadi. She has campaigned against human-rights abuses in Iran and for greater democratization there. The Iranians consider her a threat, and likely they consider any organization which honors her as an equal threat.

Ironically, Ali Shakeri has championed expanded diplomatic efforts between the US and Iran. Now he may become the center of a diplomatic effort to get himself and three other Americans released before the Iranians can execute them. This seems like a pretty clear answer to the recent efforts by the Bush administration to quiet its critics by pushing for diplomatic talks with the mullahcracy in Teheran.

John McCain Interview Transcript Ready

My interview with John McCain earlier this week has been transcribed and is now posted at Heading Right. The Senator and I discussed the controversial comprehensive immigration-reform proposal, but also talked about Iraq and the upcoming Iowa caucuses. McCain acknowledged the difficulties in convincing people to trust that the government would actually secure the borders:

EM: ... I think the issue is, for them, how to get them to trust that Congress and the enforcing agencies are actually going to follow through on those border triggers and border security triggers and employment triggers in a way that they feel safe about proceeding on to the next level. I think that this is basically saying we just don’t trust Congress to do it.

SM: And that skepticism is well justified because of what happened in ’86. Look, we all love and revere Ronald Reagan. We want to do everything exactly like him and I quote him every other sentence but you know, that was a failure in that administration. We said we would secure the borders in return for giving amnesty, we didn’t secure the borders, we gave amnesty so the skepticism and concern is very legitimate. The response I have to that is, one, then you want to maintain the status quo, which we all agree is unacceptable. The status quo is totally unacceptable and one of the responses that very quickly will be, well just enforce existing laws. Nobody believes that, Chertoff doesn’t believe it, nobody believes it and if we leave the status quo, then you have de facto amnesty. You have de facto amnesty because they will be allowed to stay here.

On Iraq, Senator McCain warned that the adoption of reform in the Maliki government might be slow and halting:

EM: At some point they’re going to have to implement that. But is it a big concern that those three major reforms which is oil revenue, the provincial elections and reverse de-Baathification . Is it a major concern that isn’t going to be accomplished by the end of September? What does that mean if that’s true?

SM: I’ve got to give you some straight talk, Ed. I am more worried about the Maliki government then I am about our ability to obtain our military objections and we all know it is has to be a combination. I don’t know the answer to it. I keep getting assurances from people that that the Maliki government will act and that they’re trying their best, etc. etc. I also hear from people this and I understand this side of it, that is if they think we’ll leaving, they’re going to have to stay in the neighborhood and they are going to have to try and accommodate the neighborhood and take care of their own interest first which increases the sectarian priority as opposed to the all encompassing priorities. So, look, I am concerned about the Maliki government. I believe that they can and will act, particularly if we continue to show some military success but I am very concerned about it and that’s all I can tell you my friend.

He also injected a little self-deprecating humor:

EM: No, I mean I agree with you that the idea here is that we need to show some forward progress and I think we are all ready seen that; we’ve been seeing that since February, actually.

SM: You know the trouble that I got into by claiming it.(laughing)

EM: (laughing) Yeah, Yeah. I’m not going to make you go back on the record and do that all over again.

Be sure to read the whole transcript, and listen to the podcast as well. (The interview starts at 50 minutes.) You get a good sense of McCain, who genuinely believes in what he's doing with immigration, Iraq, and everything else. That doesn't mean that one has to support all or any part of it; I'm not supporting the immigration bill in its current form, and I don't see much hope of improvement through the amendment process.

However, we have to be careful about demonizing people instead of criticizing them, and I include myself in that warning. It's the same mistake that Bush just made on Wednesday with his comments about immigration opponents not wanting what's best for the country, rather than acknowledging the disagreement over what the best course of action might be. At some point after the primaries, we'll need John McCain as an advocate for the Republicans, and trashing him now makes that a lot less effective down the stretch. Let's have a good, tough primary debate, but let's not send dissenters into exile.

Secret Holder On Open Government: Kyl

Senator Jon Kyl has acknowledged placing a hold on a bill that would strengthen the Freedom of Information Act, which open-government reformers see as key to exposing government processes to sunlight and criticism. Kyl insists that the Department of Justice has concerns that must be addressed before proceeding, even though the bill has strong bipartisan support and was co-sponsored by John Cornyn (R-TX). The other co-sponsor, Pat Leahy (D-VT), will attempt to get a vote despite Kyl's hold:

Kyl revealed his identity Thursday, days after the bill's backers launched an e-mail and telephone campaign, urging supporters to help in "smoking out 'Senator Secrecy.'" They pointed out the irony that an open government bill was being blocked using a rule that allowed secrecy.

Supporters say the bill would plug loopholes in the FOIA law by, among other things, clarifying when federal agencies would have to pay attorneys fees if they miss deadlines to provide information, and bolstering deadlines for the government's response to requests under the law.

Although the Justice Department has objected strenuously to several provisions, advocates say they have answered or addressed the major concerns.

For example, a section has been eliminated that would have lifted exemptions letting the government deny access to privileged or law-enforcement sensitive information, said Leahy spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler.

Mark Tapscott, a longtime supporter of the FOIA, criticizes Kyl's use of a secret hold to block an open-government reform, and questions his conservative credentials:

Memo to Sen. Kyl: Some differences are irreconciliable, such as the difference between those like Cornyn who believe transparency in government is the first essential for democratic accountability, and those in government like the career attorneys at the Justice Department who ALWAYS find a reason to oppose increased transparency.

This gulf cannot be bridged without completely gutting the FOIA reform of whatever substance it retains after three years of negotiation and concessions by its proponents in a vain effort to create a bill that is sufficiently non-threatening to government interests.

Moreover, Sen. Kyl, you have been in Congress more than long enough to know the original FOIA - approved by Congress in 1966 after a decade-long struggle - already has such rigorous exceptions to protect national security considerations that no honest, reasonably alert bureaucrat in the Pentagon or anywhere else in the government can't keep just about any document behind closed doors. Even President Bush has conceded that the government classifies far too many documents.

What is really aggravating here, Sen. Kyl, is that you profess to be a conservative, a believer in limited government and individual liberty, but here you are taking up the cause of Big Government's first line of defense.

Kyl has had to answer that charge quite a bit in the last few weeks, after taking the lead in crafting the immigration compromise. A staunch Republican and normally a reliable conservative, his effort enabled a bill that has conservatives screaming mad and killing donations to his party. Now he's blocking a bipartisan bill that would allow for better access to evidence of government mismanagement, abuse, and fraud.

Mark has this correct. Conservatives rightly fear the rise of big government precisely because of its threat to individual liberty and property. As federal programs grow, conservatives believe that they at least become less efficient and more prone to bad judgements in funding. At worst, they become convenient mechanisms through which to pay off contributors and enrich politicians. The only way to fight that is to make sure that these agencies cannot hide the evidence behind walls of secrecy that have little to do with protecting the nation and everything to do with protecting the right flabby backsides.

Congress should engage the Justice Department in crafting the best possible compromise that allows for free access to information while protecting legitimate interests of the nation. However, as Mark notes, the DoJ may have its reasons for foot-dragging, and at some point Congress needs to take some action. If Kyl believes that the bill is deficient, let him argue that on the floor of the Senate -- and then let the Senate vote on the bill with the debate in mind.

The Reason We Have Two Parties

Many people believe that the two major political parties offer so little difference as to be virtually identical. Certainly some of the politicians of either Democratic or Republican stripe focus more on power than policy, and in that sense and in those examples, they have a point. However, some may find themselves surprised by E.J. Dionne's latest column, as he somewhat inadvertently demonstrates why we have two political parties -- and what fundamentally separates them:

Our two political parties and their candidates are living in parallel universes. It's as if the candidates were running for president in two separate countries. Their televised debates next week will be productions as different from each other as "American Idol" is from "P.T.I."

The parties do have some things in common -- Iraq and the economy are concerns for both. But beyond these two issues, what matters most to Republican voters is hugely different from what matters most to Democrats. The polarization between the parties extends to the very definition of our country, its problems and the stakes in the next elections.

Consider a Pew Research Center survey in April whose findings the center kindly re-analyzed for me. Asked to name the issue that would most affect their choice for president, respondents from both parties put Iraq first -- but it was named by 40 percent of Democrats and only 29 percent of Republicans. If Democrats in Congress wonder why they got so many e-mails and phone calls on the recent war-funding vote, that's why.

On almost every other issue, the gaps between the parties are even more striking. Health care was the most important for 13 percent of Democrats but 2 percent of Republicans. On the other hand, 17 percent of Republicans said issues related to terrorism and security were paramount in their choices, compared with 5 percent of Democrats. Terrorism is actually the No. 2 issue for Republicans, behind Iraq and slightly ahead of the economy. (The economy is No. 2 for Democrats, after Iraq.) No wonder Republicans got into all that detail last month about "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Education was most important for 12 percent of Democrats and only 5 percent of Republicans; abortion for 8 percent of Republicans and just 1 percent of Democrats; immigration for 12 percent of Republicans and 1 percent of Democrats.

Now, in doing this analysis, E.J. wants to make an argument for the existence of an entrenched divide so profound that it defies rational debate. I don't want to quote too extensively, because I want you to read his entire column, but he even goes into a political version of Two Americas for an explanation. How can Democrats and Republicans talk to each other when neither side values the other's issues, Dionne asks, although he couches this more as a Republican problem than Democrat.

Dionne misses two points. First, we're in the primary, when parties select their own candidates. Sure, they want to engage moderates and independents if possible, but the voters in the primaries want candidates who represent their points of view and who adopt their priorities. Of course Republican candidates will debate their positions on the pressing concerns of Republican voters, giving shorter attention to lower-priority issues. The Democrats will do the same, and that's SOP for primary campaigns going back decades, if not longer. I'm not sure why Dionne finds that terribly surprising.

Second and more to Dionne's theme, the differences in priorities have to do with fundamental differences in political philosophies. Let's look at the issues that Dionne notes lower Republican interest for the national elections: education and health care. The key point is that Republicans don't believe the national government should be involved in either to any great degree. It's not a question of valuing education and health care -- Republicans for the most part reject federal government intervention in either.

Understanding that, let's look at the Democratic priorities. Health care and education is the most important issues for 13 and 12 percent of Democrats, while terrorism and border security barely register (5% and 1%). From that, we can deduce that Democrats have a vision of the federal government primarily as a benefits management system, where those tasks should receive more attention and resources than national security. Republicans see the federal government's role primarily as securing national security and the borders, and leaving benefits management to the private sector.

In other words, Republicans still believe in smaller government limited by the original text of the Constitution, where Democrats see the federal government as the appropriate mechanism to ensure equitable distribution of wealth and assistance. That's nothing new or terribly profound, and it demonstrates the political differences between two parties and millions of good, honest Americans. It's a choice that reflects real philosophical differences, and explains the existence of the two-party system.

In November 2008, the entire nation will make that choice on a number of levels of government. We'll have plenty of time between then and now to have debates across the electorate about those priorities. In the meantime, the parties will determine which candidates best express those philosophies for that larger debate -- and that seems just fine to me.

Firing The Collectors: Desperation Or Efficiency?

The Republican National Committee no longer has operators standing by to take your call -- reportedly because you haven't been calling. Their staff of call-center employees got pink slips yesterday, and while the RNC denies it, the fired employees say that donations have dropped precipitately:

The Republican National Committee, hit by a grass-roots donors' rebellion over President Bush's immigration policy, has fired all 65 of its telephone solicitors, The Washington Times has learned.

Faced with an estimated 40 percent falloff in small-donor contributions and aging phone-bank equipment that the RNC said would cost too much to update, Anne Hathaway, the committee's chief of staff, summoned the solicitations staff and told them they were out of work, effective immediately, fired staff members told The Times.

Several of the solicitors fired at the May 24 meeting reported declining contributions and a donor backlash against the immigration proposals now being pushed by Mr. Bush and Senate Republicans.

"Every donor in 50 states we reached has been angry, especially in the last month and a half, and for 99 percent of them immigration is the No. 1 issue," said a fired phone bank employee who said the severance pay the RNC agreed to pay him was contingent on his not criticizing the national committee.

I've received e-mails asking me about the RNC's explanation, given my call-center background, of aging phone equipment for the terminations. The RNC employed 65 phone solicitors, so the system has to be of significant size, likely with automated-call distribution and call-tracking software. Replacing a system like that would cost quite a bit of money, perhaps in the quarter-million dollar range on the outside. I've seen companies look at that cost, blanch, and start looking at outsourcing as another option.

That said, though, I've also seen infrastructure maintenance used as an excuse to get rid of a failing department. The Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political donations to all parties and affiliated committees, confirms that the Republicans have a fundraising problem. The smaller donors with whom the RNC's call center interfaced have decreased their contributions considerably, and overall income has dropped significantly. The RNC has done better than the Congressional committees, but only because the RNC also focuses on big donors through other means, such as fundraising events.

Republican donors have certainly lost some enthusiasm since the midterm losses last year, and the immigration bill has added to their woes. People are angry about the compromise; they have flooded talk radio shows and the blogs to express their discontent, and in return they have been attacked by President Bush as "not wanting what is best for their country." Under those circumstances, the average small donor has one option, which is to cease being a donor at all -- and to communicate that to the people who call for their assistance.

That creates a need for belt tightening. Under those circumstances, unloading 65 salaries and skipping the replacement of an expensive call-center system makes sense. The question of which is the chicken and which is the egg at this point seems secondary to the overall fundraising problem, which won't get solved by either option of keeping or ending the in-house call center.

Brisco Lives!

Over the years, I have gradually lost interest in episodic television. Most of them recycle the same old plot lines; the good ones find new twists and different personalities to showcase, but the stories themselves don't vary much from one to another. The exceptions to that rule have gradually disappeared, or more often get cancelled before anyone knows they exist.

Fortunately, we live in the era of the DVD -- and that has allowed us to revisit shows that fall into that latter category. In 1993, Fox aired a show that blended science fiction, Western, action, and comedy called The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr -- and promptly cancelled it after 27 episodes, including a two-hour pilot. Given that it was Fox and that they hardly had anything else to air, many wondered why they didn't give the series a chance to find an audience. The DVD collection with all 27 shows may prove that Fox made a big mistake, not unlike the one they made in canceling Firefly.

In fact, the two shows have some similarity. Both have the same elements, and both challenge traditional notions of storytelling and of the nature of heroes. Brisco County was more comedic than Firefly, but both used sardonic comments for stylish humor. Both used recurring villains and secondary characters to an unusual extent to flesh out the strange universe created in both shows, and to entrance the audience.

Brisco County had more of a serial nature to its episodes. Brisco's father gets killed in the pilot (played by R. Lee Ermey), and his son gets hired to track down the gang that killed him. Each of the episodes brings him closer to that goal, and by the end of the season, he actually accomplishes the task. However, a golden orb with supernatural powers complicates matters, and Brisco and others want to find out the nature and the origin of the orb, and how to control its seemingly limitless power.

The cast is top-flight. Bruce Campbell played Brisco, with the same comedic sense that he displayed in Army of Darkness and other Sam Raimi features. John Astin played the absent-minded Professor Albert Wickwire. Billy Drago played Brisco's archnemesis, John Bly, whose gang Brisco seeks. Lesser-known actors fill out the rest of the important roles, such as Julias Carry playing fellow bounty-hunter Lord Bowler, Kelly Rutherford as temptress Dixie Cousins, and Christian Clemenson as Socrates Poole. John Pyper-Ferguson plays the often-killed Pete Hutter, a nutter with a wide vocabulary (and apparently a lot of luck).

Tonight we watched the pilot episode, and I wasn't sure what to expect. After all, 14 years have gone by since it aired, and memories can play tricks on you. Fortunately, it was exactly as I remembered it: funny, inventive, wise-cracking, and full of surprises. Each commercial break featured a cliff-hanger, and every resolution had a laugh. Even the First Mate liked it -- and she doesn't even remember the show at all.

I still think Fox blew an opportunity to carve out an audience with Brisco County. Lucky for us, we can revisit it and see that for ourselves all over again.

NPR Continues Kyoto Dishonesty

Two days ago, I pointed out that the layers of editors and fact-checkers at the AP managed to miss the fact that the Kyoto treaty got rejected almost four years before Bush took office. Apparently, the fact-checkers and editors at NPR are no better than those at the AP. In a report on developments on the climate-change issue today, NPR again falsely accuses the Bush administration of killing Kyoto (h/t: CQ reader Jeff K):

The issue will get plenty of attention in another meeting this year: The signatories of the Kyoto Protocol are due to meet in Bali to discuss a follow-up agreement. But critics say the protocol is meaningless without the cooperation of the U.S., the world's largest contributor of greenhouse emissions.

The protocol, which expires in 2012, was never submitted to Congress for ratification. President Bush objected to it because it exempts China and India, two of the world's fastest-growing economies, from the tough standards. In his speech Thursday, Bush included China and India in his list of countries he hopes will engage in goal-setting.

The two sentences that begin the last paragraph, while technically accurate, leave out so much information that it clearly intends to communicate the false notion that George Bush killed Kyoto.

Once again, the Clinton administration signed Kyoto in 1997. Before Bill Clinton ever submitted it to the Senate for ratification, they voted 95-0 on a resolution informing Clinton that they would not ratify any treaty that didn't include limits for China and India. That included members of both parties, quite obviously, and such Democrats as Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Barbara Boxer. The resolution (which I included at the link above) specifically includes the language objecting to the exclusion of developing nations:

Whereas the Department of State has declared that it is critical for the Parties to the Convention to include Developing Country Parties in the next steps for global action and, therefore, has proposed that consideration of additional steps to include limitations on Developing Country Parties' greenhouse gas emissions would not begin until after a protocol or other legal instrument is adopted in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997;

Whereas the exemption for Developing Country Parties is inconsistent with the need for global action on climate change and is environmentally flawed; ...

Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that--

(1) the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other agreement regarding, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, at negotiations in Kyoto in December 1997, or thereafter, which would--

(A) mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the Annex I Parties, unless the protocol or other agreement also mandates new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties within the same compliance period ...

Bush obviously agrees with this position. While Clinton never formally withdrew from Kyoto, he never attempted to get it ratified, either. Bush formally withdrew from Kyoto so that he could pursue the direction the Senate unanimously demanded. He wants to make sure that the US does not impose limitations on our ability to produce in a manner that gives unfair advantage to China, which already represents an economic threat to American business, especially manufacturing, which would be hardest hit by Kyoto.

That's the true history of Kyoto. That's the story that the AP and NPR keep obfuscating. Both parties made a clear -- and correct -- decision to tube Kyoto four years before Bush took office. Bush, in fact, took more initiative than the Clinton administration did in pursuing greenhouse-gas emissions reductions than the Clinton administration ever did after the Senate rejection, and is still trying to reach a truly global agreement.

The media must think that if they keep repeating the same misinformation long enough, it becomes accepted truth. That says volumes about the competence and the bias at these media operations, and it goes to the heart of their credibility.

The Fix: McCain Fights Back

Chris Cillizza at The Fix notes the tough time that John McCain has had in his presidential campaign after the introduction of the comprehensive immigration reform bill in the Senate. McCain has begun to fight the characterization of the bill as an "amnesty", but as Cillizza notes, that's an uphill battle:

Over the last week, McCain has made a flurry of apperances on conservative talk radio television to sell the plan. He's been on "The Mike Gallagher Show". Sean Hannity's radio show, "The Michael Medved Show", "Captain's Quarters Blog Radio" as well as local radio programs in South Carolina, Iowa and Arizona. He also appears last night on "The O'Reilly Factor". ...

The argument? Doing nothing amounts to the very amnesty that conservatives are railing against. "Right now it's de facto amnesty because we have 12 million people here illegally," McCain said on "The O'Reilly Factor." He added that the bill backed by him and Bush does "everything short of deportation," pointing out that it includes fines, waiting periods and learning English in order to be a citizen. ...

The problem for McCain is that it is a far simpler case to oppose the legislation than support it. Decrying amnesty is an easy-to-understand political position that can be conveyed in a matter of seconds to a potential voter. Explaining why this bill is not amnesty takes far longer. Campaigns often hinge not on which candidate has the more nuanced position on a controversial issue but rather who has the more easily explained stance.

Actually, although Cillizza says that Romney has "most notably" attacked the plan as amnesty, Romney avoided that particular word in his appearances yesterday and in our interview. He noted that many people have different opinions of what constitutes amnesty, and he wanted to avoid a war over definitions. His objection stems from what he sees as a fundamental unfairness of allowing illegal entrants to remain permanently in the US.

That actually bolsters Cillizza's argument elsewhere, though. "Amnesty" is an easy hook for opposition, and it forces McCain and other backers of the bill to argue over a dictionary definition. That takes time and nuance, neither of which are terribly effective in emotional arguments.

What does this mean? It argues that McCain will have a tough time defending the bill and his involvement in it -- which could easily be gleaned in the comments on this blog and others in the conservative blogosphere (and I suspect on this very post). My skepticism doesn't come from amnesty, which this bill clearly is not; it comes from what appears to me to be a lack of substantive border security guarantees, including the fence, before the controversial normalization provisions even come into play. And with the President saying that the bill would eliminate the need for a fence, I'm even less enthusiastic about it now:

Addressing one of the most sensitive issues in the measure, Bush expressed hope that the changes would reduce the need for a fence along the border with Mexico. ...

"The fence sends a clear signal that we’re serious about enforcing the border," Bush said. "A lot of these ranchers down there are saying, `Wait a minute. Bad idea.’ I presume we’re not going to build a fence on places where people don’t want it."

So what keeps even more illegals from crossing the border in the future? Angry cattle?

CQ Radio: NZ Bear And The Mitt Romney Interview

Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), I'll talk with NZ Bear about developments on the immigration bill, Fred Thompson's toe-dipping, and the campaign tour in Iowa with Mitt Romney. We'll also get an update on the Victory Caucus, and take your calls.

In the second half, I'll air the exclusive interview I conducted yesterday with Mitt Romney, focusing first on immigration but the rest on foreign policy. This arena gets little attention from a national media seemingly more concerned about the Mormon philosophy on the nature of God than the Romney approach to the nature of global politics and security. Given today's global challenges, this lack of interest seems rather strange -- but CQ Radio listeners will get a jump on the rest of the country when it comes to vetting Romney's policy outlook on a broad range of foreign-policy issues.

The interview goes 15 minutes, and then we'll take your calls at 646-652-4889. Be sure to join the conversation!

Note: Today is a travel day, so responses to e-mail and other communications will be necessarily slow.

UPDATE: I've had two requests for transcripts. My transcriber is finishing the McCain interview and will work on the Romney interview immediately afterwards. I'll have both up hopefully by the weekend over at Heading Right.

People Power Vs Al-Qaeda

People power -- the rising of ordinary people of a nation or region in force against oppression -- has toppled more than one dictator in the last generation, or even in the last few years. The phenomenon started with Filipinos forcing an end to the Marcos regime two decades ago, and continued with Poles, Czechs, Georgians, the Lebanese, and others. The people of Palermo even rose up against almost a millenia of terror and crippled the Mafia.

Now it looks like the Sunnis in Iraq may have had enough of terror, too (via Power Line):

A battle raged in west Baghdad on Thursday after residents rose up against al-Qaida and called for U.S. military help to end random gunfire that forced people to huddle indoors and threats that kept students from final exams, a member of the district council said. ...

U.S. forces backed by helicopter gunships clashed with suspected al- Qaida gunmen in western Baghdad's primarily Sunni Muslim Amariyah neighborhood in an engagement that lasted several hours, said the district councilman, who would not allow use of his name for fear of al-Qaida retribution.

Casualty figures were not immediately available and there was not immediate word from the U.S. military on the engagement.

But the councilman said the al-Qaida leader in the Amariyah district, known as Haji Hameed, was killed and 45 other fighters were detained.

Members of al-Qaida, who consider the district part of their so-called Islamic State of Iraq, were preventing students from attending final exams, shooting randomly and forcing residents to stay in their homes, the councilman said.

Of course, this is one incident in one area, and it would take a brushfire of discontent to drive AQ out of Iraq. Sometimes it only takes one spark to touch off that brushfire, though. In any case, the Sunnis of the region understand that their lives will never return to normal until the terrorists leave -- and they knew who to call to get help with their impromptu battle against AQ.

Word also has come that the other, native insurgencies may have had enough:

U.S. military commanders are talking with Iraqi militants about cease-fires and other arrangements to try to stop the violence, the No. 2 American commander said Thursday.

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said he has authorized commanders at all levels to reach out to militants, tribes, religious leaders and others in the country that has been gripped by violence from a range of fronts including insurgents, sectarian rivals and common criminals.

"We are talking about cease-fires, and maybe signing some things that say they won't conduct operations against the government of Iraq or against coalition forces," Odierno told Pentagon reporters in a video conference from Baghdad.

This actually follows up on the offer made by Nouri al-Maliki a year ago, granting amnesty to former insurgents if they agree to surrender and return to normal lives. Some in the US found the amnesty provisions distasteful, but some sort of national reconciliation is necessary if the Iraqi government is to succeed in securing the streets of Baghdad, Anbar, and Diyala.

Small steps, of course, but steps in the right direction.

Thompson Gets Serious

Up to now, Fred Thompson has brilliantly remained coy about his presidential ambitions -- to the point of exasperation among some of his would-be fans. Now, however, Fred has made clear that he intends to run, and in a USA Today interview, how he plans to do it:

In an interview with USA TODAY, however, the former Tennessee senator not only makes it clear that he plans to run, he describes how he aims to do it. He's planning a campaign that will use blogs, video posts and other Internet innovations to reach voters repelled by politics-as-usual in both parties. ...

Thompson could reshape a GOP contest in which each of the three leaders has significant vulnerabilities and none of the seven second-tier contenders has broken through. Without formally joining the race — he's preparing to do that as early as the first week of July — Thompson already is placing third and better among Republican candidates in some national polls.

Dissatisfaction among one-third of Republicans with the 2008 field has opened the door for the candidate, whose folksy tone, actor's ease before an audience and conservative credentials drew comparisons to Ronald Reagan at the annual Connecticut GOP dinner here. Thompson addressed the dinner last week to a sold-out audience.

"People listen to him and see someone who's very comfortable with who he is and confident about what he believes in," state Republican chairman Chris Healy says. "That's a skill that, obviously, Ronald Reagan took to great heights."

That's the obvious attraction for Fred. He has the same kind of demeanor as Ronald Reagan, the same kind of presence, and it's probably not coincidence that both of them worked in Hollywood. However, where Reagan started in films, Thompson started in politics, and he has a long history as a reformer and an activist against corruption.

Earlier this week, I noted that Fred seemed to be staging a philosopher's campaign for the Presidency. Rather than declaring and then opining about issues on an individual basis, he has remained out of the fray, concentrating on issues to support the grander theme of federalism and smaller government. So far, that has worked, and he tells USA Today that his campaign themes will reflect that: "tighter borders, smaller government, lower taxes". While that's not exactly an unknown combination among present Republican presidential candidates, Fred bets that his consistency -- and his persona -- will lend greater credibility to his claim to those themes in the primary campaign.

He may be right, but he's going to have tough competition. Mitt Romney sounds those same themes, although the "smaller government" portion tends to get buried in discussions of health care, where Republicans tend to mistrust any mention of that issue as a stalking-horse for expansion of entitlements. Romney rejects that approach, but some Republican voters may remain wary. John McCain also hammers the same themes, but his record on the Bush tax cuts hurts. Rudy Giuliani also lays claim to those principles. So do Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo, Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback, and Ron Paul takes them to the extreme.

It will take the next coming of Ronald Reagan to break out of the pack. Thompson will have to convince GOP voters that he gives the party the best opportunity to actually put those principles into action -- something that twelve years of GOP control over Congress and six over the White House didn't accomplish. Can he do that? Fred makes it clear that he will grasp the opportunity to convince us.

Guess Who's Forming The Frosh PAC?

The Democrats, as often observed, won a majority in Congress by demanding an end to the "culture of corruption" and undue lobbyist influence. The main beneficiaries of that campaign, the 41 freshman Democrats in the House, now want to form a political action committee to increase their clout on the Hill. So who did they choose to form and run it? Three guesses, and the first two don't count:

The class of 41 freshman House Democrats has selected a registered lobbyist to form its political action committee, in what ethics watchdogs and Republicans are calling a contradiction of their promise to end a "culture of corruption" in Washington.

The custodian of the Democratic Freshmen PAC is William C. Oldaker, 65, whose most-recent lobbying clients include the oil industry, the tobacco lobby, pharmaceutical industries and American Indian gambling interests. Mr. Oldaker also has been removed from several Democratic PACs over conflict-of-interest concerns.

According to a 2005 report by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), "When lobbyist William Oldaker sits down to negotiate with a member of Congress, he brings years of experience working for the federal government to the table, as well as the legislative resources of his own firm. He also brings quite a bit of money."

CPI has publicly referred to Mr. Oldaker as a "rainmaker," for his ability to successfully represent his clients' interests before congressional lawmakers. Many prominent lawmakers, and especially those seeking higher office, form PACs to donate money to other candidates or causes.

Oh, I get it. It takes a thief to catch a thief, right? The Democrats want to use a full-employment model for "rainmaker" lobbyists so that they can catch them in the act of benefitting Democrats instead of Republicans -- the better to expose them. That must be the strategy!

Or, perhaps, the Democrats have decided to end even the pretense of fighting corruption and lobbyist influence. Given their rhetoric on and off the campaign trail, the selection of Oldaker specifically rejects their promises over the last two years. Oldaker has represented the betes noirs of the modern Democratic Party: Big Oil, Big Tobacco, and the pharmaceuticals. It's practically the Democratic version of Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, and Leatherface, someone that they would have hauled in front of a televised committee hearing to humiliate rather than hire to add the Democrats to that list of clients.

Congressman Mike Thompson insists that the Democratic Freshmen PAC has followed the law in forming its PAC and hiring Oldaker, but that's hardly the point. Most of the influence that lobbyists have in Washington comes within the law, too. That's what the Democrats -- and especially these freshmen -- promised to change. They certainly never indicated that they would hire registered lobbyists from Big Oil and Big Tobacco as their consultants.

Republicans set themselves up to lose last year by clinging to lobbyists and their money more and more tightly over their 12-year period of control of Congress. The Democrats are setting speed records in making the same mistakes over a 12-week period. It's a betrayal of the Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid rhetoric, one that even Oldaker could have predicted would backfire.

Of Market Forces And Organ Donors

Until now, I have not commented on the story regarding the Dutch game-show giveaway of two kidneys, which may surprise CQ readers, since the issue is one that hits very close to home for my family. Michael van der Galien's post about the television competition for a dying woman's organs expresses frustration about how the controversy reflects on The Netherlands, but the show is only the symptom of a global problem with organ donation -- and a demonstration that market forces will prevail in any situation where demand far exceeds supply:

In the Netherlands we have a new television show: De Grote Donor Show (The Big Donor Show). What’s the show about you ask? Well, quite simple: this Friday 37 year old Lisa will donate one of her kidneys… on television. Three people who need a new kidney will be there. They have to answer questions. After that, Lisa will decide who gets her kidney. The viewers have an active role as well: they can SMS (to advise Lisa probably).

There is a lot of debate going on about this show in the Netherlands. Some consider it a good thing: we do not have enough people who are willing to donate their organs (after they die). This ’stunt’ or show, might make it easier for people to make the decision to donate their organs. However, there are also people who object, who find it tasteless. Members of Parliament have asked questions about the show, some want the government to ban it (it’s being broadcasted on a government-owned channel). ...

Well, this certainly puts the Netherlands on the map once again. I am very pleased to see that whenever the world talks about us, it is usual about something ridiculous, like now. Wouldn’t want the world to take us seriously, now would we? No, lets happily enforce the idea that we are more liberal than liberal, more tolerant and open-minded than tolerant and open-minded: no rules. No moral values. No nothing! Hedonism rules!

Reuters also noted this controversy a couple of days ago. The Dutch government and the EU registered protests with the broadcaster, BNN, objecting to the network turning organ donation (and death) into entertainment. BNN still plans on airing the program tomorrow night.

This follows on the heels of a Washington Post column that caught my eye a month ago by Dr. Sally Satel, arguing for a market approach to organ donation in order to increase the supply:

It is a sad time for the 96,000 patients waiting for kidneys, livers, hearts and lungs: The chasm between supply and demand grows wider each year. By this time tomorrow, 18 people in need of an organ will be dead because they did not get one soon enough.

Kidneys are in highest demand; currently, 71,000 people need a renal transplant. They will spend, on average, five years on dialysis while waiting for an organ from a deceased donor. At least half will die or become too sick to undergo a transplant before their name is called. ...

Lamentably, too many transplant professionals are resigned to rationing. The alternative is to create a larger supply of organs -- and the most likely way to achieve it is through a safe, regulated system in which donors can receive compensation for their organs. The idea of rewarding living donors for a kidney, or their estates if they give an organ after death, has long been taboo. Yet as thousands die every year the idea is being taken more seriously -- and it should be.

If we had not found a donor for the First Mate, she would not have survived long enough to get a cadaver donor in the present system. She had been on dialysis for only a year, and she barely made it to the finish line with a live donor. Another couple of months on that plan, and it would have meant the end for her. When I tell you that her donor is a hero, I mean that very literally.

So what do we do to save the lives of everyone else on the list? The simple fact is that we have a rationing system that does not work, as Dr. Satel explains. We have a demand that far exceeds the supply, and we have put in place regulations that artificially keeps the supply low -- for noble reasons, but those noble reasons are costing thousands of lives every year.

The kidney transplants with the best track record for success are live transplants, even those where the donor is unrelated to the recipient, as was the case with the FM. Many brave people volunteer for these every year, even for people they don't know. However, these donors face significant financial disincentives. The recipient's insurance covers 100% of the medical costs, but the donor loses time at work, a significant period of recovery in some instances, and restrictions on activity. By law, they can receive no compensation. If they could, it's at least possible that more would donate.

And that's just the American system. In the single-payor systems, the supply problem is not organs as much as it is transplant surgeons. Three years ago, the London Telegraph reported that viable kidneys had to be discarded due to the lack of qualified transplant surgeons. The government rationing of compensation for doctors provided no incentive to spend the extra time and money to learn that specialty. It created a shortage on another part of the distribution chain that ended up with the same result: people who needed organ transplants didn't get them in time.

When we ration irrationally, we get irrational results. The BNN show tomorrow night is an example of this. Denied the ability to acquire a kidney through some rational method, these kidney-failure victims will abase themselves in public in order to save their lives. Denied a rational method of receiving compensation for her donation, the terminally ill woman will have to choose other, less objective means for rationing her kidneys. It sounds terrible, and it is, but you'd better believe that I would have jumped at the chance the first few months of this year to get one of those kidneys, had we not already found a donor.

I'm not suggesting a kidney bazaar, where the highest bidder gets the organs and only the rich can find transplants. However, we have to find a system that generates a much larger supply for organs than the one we have now, and we have to move away from the old methods of rationing if we want to save lives. Satel's proposals put us on the right track. It's certainly less disturbing than grinding up embryos to find elusive treatments for diseases, and much less ethically objectionable.

UPDATE: Virginia Postrel, one of the heroes who donated one of her kidneys not long ago, has more thoughts about the "egregious" status quo (via Instapundit).

Deadlines In Ukraine

The situation in Ukraine continues to grow more strange and more potentially explosive. After the two major political antagonists reached an accord on new elections, the country's parliamentarians appear to have balked at endorsing it. Meanwhile, the man in charge of the nation's security forces has suddenly -- and suspiciously -- been stricken with a heart attack (via SCSU Scholars):

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on Thursday extended by one day a deadline for parliament to approve a series of laws vital for holding a snap election intended to end a long-running political crisis.

The pro-Western president's web site said he had issued a decree giving the parliament another day, until the end of Thursday, to approve the measures -- hours after debate in the chamber bogged down after midnight in acrimonious exchanges. ...

Much of the evening debate focused on objections from Yanukovich's allies to the president's call to bar parliamentarians from switching parties once elected. Other rows centered on the voters' list and a proposal for a minimum poll turnout, rejected by the president's allies.

One might have expected the assembly to immediately adopt the compromise reached between Yushchenko and Yanukovych. The nation had reached the point of civil war, with security forces starting to take sides, until the two men reached the agreement on new elections. Stalling that agreement could bring the nation back to the brink once again.

Underscoring that point is the sudden bad health of the Internal Affair Minister, Vasyl Tsushko. He played a crucial role in the final days of the standoff between the two men, attempting to keep control of the security forces and blocking Yushchenko's bid to remove a prosecutor who didn't pursue political charges against members of the Constitutional court last month. Now the man caught in the middle of the power play finds himself in the hospital, barely surviving a heart attack that Tsushko thinks resulted from a poison attack:

Minister of Internal Affairs Vasyl Tsushko, who was at the eye of the political storm at the Prosecutor-General's office last week, has had a heart attack. Rumors immediately circulated that the minister was poisoned by a substance which triggered the attack. Tsushko has told his attorney, Tatiana Montyan, that he himself believes this.

Apparently, on 26th May the Party of Regions issued a press release which warned about a plan of 'physical destruction' of Vasyl Tsushko. On 27 th May the minister's health sharply deteriorated and he was placed into the MIA hospital where his life was saved by 'timely surgical intervention'. ...

Tatiana Montyan said,"I spoke with him on Saturday at midnight... Then Tsushko rang again on Monday evening and said, "Tan'ka, greetings, I'm in the MIA hospital". I arrived there, and found him half-dead state - he could hardly speak. There was uninvited visitor in the ward - in the opinion of minister, he came just to check how soon Tsushko would die. Tsushko said that he felt terrible - and added that he was absolutely confident as to who his poisoner was. He gave me surname of this person - and said that if he did not survive, I should reveal the information about who poisoned him, but if he survives, then he will do this himself...

No international news agencies have yet picked up on the Kiev report of Tsushko's sudden heart attack. That in itself seems odd, given his high position in the government and his involvement in the recent power play between Yushchenko and Yanukovych. It also seems odd given the recent poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko -- and the confirmed poisoning of Yushchenko three years ago.

Perhaps the heart attack came from the undue recent stress of the political situation, but just the fact that his attorney is talking publicly of poisoning makes it newsworthy. Why no coverage? And if it turns out that Tsushko was poisoned, who did it, and who would have benefitted from his death? Could it have been the same people who tried to kill Yushschenko, widely believed to have been Russians, or pro-Russian Ukranians tied to the previous Kuchma regime?

Ukraine has started to resemble The Sopranos, relocated to the edge of Eastern Europe. Democracy is stumbling, and gangsterism threatens to replace it.

CQ Radio Brings You Mitt Romney's Town Hall Live!

We're going live in just a few minutes, here in Iowa, at the Mitt Romney town-hall forum. I'll be broadcasting live via CQ Radio, so be sure to tune in! I may be able to take calls at points during the broadcast -- you can dial 646-652-4889 to join the fun ....

The Romney Interview

I just finished my one-on-one exclusive interview with Governor Mitt Romney as we traveled between campaign stops in West Des Moines. The weather turned poor and we battled road noise, but in 15 minutes, Romney gave an impressive performance as a man with a solid grasp on policy -- and of someone completely confident in his ability to master it.

This comes as no surprise, of course. Romney built a billion-dollar business, rescued the Salt Lake City Olympics, and won the governor's race in Massachussetts as a Republican. Someone with that kind of resumé could be forgiven a little cockiness, but Romney comes across as completely grounded and accessible, even in the tight confines of a minivan, talking with a citizen journalist.

I asked Governor Romney some tough questions regarding his immigration stance. Readers of Heading Right have already learned of Romney's specific issues with the current immigration proposal. When I asked him to reconcile his support of the 2006 McCain-Kennedy bill with his rejection of this year's proposal, he quickly corrected me and insisted he never endorsed last year's legislation. While he has been accurately quoted as calling its approach "reasonable", the same interview also has him refusing to endorse it. His staffers emphasized the point with me later.

I pressed him on his insistence on Z-visas being temporary, and he put me off by saying that he didn't want to write legislation as a candidate. He said that Congress should ensure that illegals do not get ahead of legal immigrant candidates, and that the proposed Z-visas do exactly that. It's fundamentally unfair, and it damages the prospects for legal immigration.

Mostly, though, I concentrated on foreign policy. This is an aspect of Romney's portfolio that hardly ever gets any serious attention, and I wanted to see how much depth Romney has in this area. I have to say, I'm impressed. Obviously the man knows global economics, but he actually placed that in a secondary position to security policy -- and he has a lot to say about that topic.

He has some fresh ideas about how to organize trade, security, and military organizations along vertical lines for each region. While a free-trader by nature, he also thinks that trade agreements should benefit all sides, and to the extent that agreements with China have damaged us, they need review and change. In this, he appears sympathetic to Duncan Hunter, whom I interviewed last month. He recognizes that we let Latin America slip away from us after the end of the Cold War, and he has some interesting ideas about how to win it back.

I will be airing the interview tomorrow on CQ Radio, which will be on the air at 2 pm CT. In the meantime, stick around for a special live broadcast of the town-hall forum here in West Des Moines, which starts at 6 pm CT. Don't miss this broadcast!

Working The Romney Beat

I'll be trailing the Mitt Romney campaign today, reporting from a number of events that the Governor has scheduled for today in Iowa. I'll be posting at Heading Right today on Romney events, so be sure to keep checking back. (I'll probably post links to those articles here as well.)

Later today, I'll get an exclusive interview with Governor Romney, where I'll probe for some of the underreported aspects of his platform, especially foreign policy, which I think has mostly been ignored. We'll have a later edition of CQ Radio with that taped interview at around 4 pm CT. At 6 pm, we'll have an additional, live CQ radio show at the Hy Vee Conference Center, where you can hear the Governor handle questions from the Iowa audience in a town-hall forum.

Keep checking back here and at Heading Right for more!

UPDATE: I'm starting the first live-blog at Heading Right at this link. There will be plenty of this today, although it does appear that I will have to find my own food -- they're not feeding the press, and I'll be too busy anyway.

UPDATE: My reporting on the press conference is here.

UPDATE III: The next event, an interview with Iowa public TV, is here. This will not air immediately, but instead will be broadcast on Friday and Sunday.

So far, I have to admit that the Romney campaign and Romney himself are impressive. He has the same ability to hold an audience as Rudy Giuliani, and also the same grasp of detail in his speaking. He's even better off the cuff than with prepared remarks.

Sadr's Militia Kidnapped Britons

Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army apparently masterminded the kidnapping of five Britons in Iraq. The abductions likely came as retribution for the death of Sadr's lieutenant in a gunfight earlier this month between the Mahdis and the British:

Iraq's most prominent Shia militia has emerged as the chief suspect in the kidnappings of five British nationals in Iraq.

Negotiations with the Mahdi Army are already under way after one of several spokesmen for the armed force under the command of the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr claimed responsibility for the kidnappings at the finance ministry in Baghdad.

Hundreds of Iraqi and American troops raided Sadr City, Baghdad’s largest Shia neighbourhood, in an operation that ended early today. Residents said areas of Sadr City were sealed off and several arrests were made.

Iraqi forces have established a special battalion of soldiers and police officers to search for the kidnapped men. “We are conducting search operations near the site where the abduction took place,” said Brig Gen Qassim al Musawi, an Iraqi army spokesman.

If this is true, it challenges the status of Sadr as a politician to a degree not seen since his capitulation in Najaf in 2004. It also highlights the problem of Sadr's influence on the Interior Ministry, controlled by one of his allies and reportedly infiltrated to a high degree by Mahdis and other Shi'ite militias. The kidnapping took place at a government building, the first time Westerners have been abducted from such a facility.

The abduction itself was a complicated, well-planned event. The Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshiyar Zebari, told the BBC that he suspected the Mahdis of the kidnapping. He said it took a number of people to seal off the building, get inside, and abduct four private security contractors and the computer expert they were protecting. Zebari said that local police almost certainly were involved in the "sophisticated" operation.

The big worry is that the Mahdis will sell the hostages to another group, perhaps even al-Qaeda. The commandos of the SAS have been put on alert in case they are needed for rescue and extraction. In the meantime, the UK and the US have to pressure the Maliki government to either take care of Sadr or to stand by while we do so. The raids on Sadr City this week sent a message, but as we have seen with Sadr in the past, that message needs to be personal -- and final, this time.

Fred Takes The First Step (Updated)

Fred Thompson will take the first step towards declaring himself a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, according to Ryan Sager at the New York Sun. After reportedly meeting with campaign-finance advisors, Thompson will launch a presidential pre-exploratory committee, in a move that will delight Republicans and satirists in equal measure:

Speculation over whether Fred Thompson is serious about running for president just went toes-up. Mr. Thompson's not-yet-a campaign has confirmed: He's dipping his toes in.

Specifically, a Thompson adviser told The New York Sun yesterday, he will announce the formation of a presidential "testing-the-waters" committee early next week — possibly as early as Sunday.

A "testing the waters" committee is a step before the more familiar presidential exploratory committee. It allows the former Tennessee senator to raise money and hire staff. But it also prevents him from doing a number of other things: advertising his candidacy, referring to himself as a real candidate (presumably just in public, he can say whatever he likes in front of the bathroom mirror), raising money that could be transferred to another candidate, or raising money to get on the ballot.

This reminds me of corporate processes for meeting preparation. At two companies for which I worked in management, efficiency training implemented a set of requirements for meetings which eventually forced "pre-meetings" in order to set the agenda for the real conferences. Eventually people tired of these requirements and went back to actually doing work. A "testing the waters" committee seems like an absurd extension of the same process, especially since an exploratory committee doesn't commit a potential candidate to much of anything, at least on paper.

I'm looking forward to a Thompson candidacy. As Sager notes, it will shake up the field and finally clarify the roster. Thompson began hinting that he would run in March, and the polling has clearly shown that he has a ready-made constituency, based primarily on those who feel that the current crop of candidates does not reflect the conservative nature of the party.

Unlike Sager, though, I believe that Thompson has made several serious moves towards his candidacy -- just nothing official. He has managed to make himself very relevant by delivering much-anticipated speeches to various Republican groups. Thompson has also written a series of essays, erudite and sensational, on various hot issues as well as explaining and expanding on his federalist beliefs. It's almost a philosopher's campaign for the White House, an approach that may not have a parallel since Woodrow Wilson.

Rumor has Fred entering the race officially over the Fourth of July holiday. Meanwhile, he's collecting a staff and making plans while still remaining able to use the media to his advantage. That's the real story behind the dipped-toes approach, and it's not Fred's fault that the mechanism exists. Like this primary season, though, it seems like election laws keep extending the degrees in which a candidate is or is not running for office, and the additional stages are bordering on the comical.

UPDATE: The Washington Post has caught up to the story now:

Thompson, who has been fueling speculation of a Republican presidential bid by traveling the country and making speeches, urged a group of donors in a conference call Tuesday to begin raising $46,000 from 10 couples each, starting on June 4, according to two participants in the call. Once the money begins flowing, Thompson will begin to hire a campaign staff and set up his headquarters in Washington and Nashville, his advisers said.

In addition, the nascent campaign is planning to launch a website in the next 10 days, according to one person familiar with campaign planning. Thompson will give a speech in Virginia this weekend and is scheduled to appear on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno next month.

The papers Thompson intends to file on Friday with the Federal Elections Committee will allow the former Tennessee senator to "test the waters" by raising money that could be used once he declares officially, several sources said. The committee will be called "Friends of Fred Thompson."

The Post is more cautious about the July 4th launch date. Michael Shear reports that those plans are "in flux" and could change. I'm not sure why, unless organizationally he thinks he won't be ready for it. It would make a great backdrop for a presidential announcement, and would almost certainly wind up being the political story of the entire holiday.

Also, just to clarify, I'm not criticizing Fred for using the toe-dip committee procedure to keep all his options open. I'm criticizing the fact that the option exists at all. I'd prefer to see just the exploratory committee and the actual campaign, not some pre-exploratory stage where nothing changes at all. It's a reflection of the absurdity of campaign finance reform, as practiced in recent years.

Judicial Modesty In Action

The Supreme Court decision yesterday to reject the pay-equity lawsuit brought by a Goodyear Tire supervisor shows that the Bush administration will have a lasting legacy of judicial modesty, thanks to its appointments on the Court. Instead of rewriting a poor law, the Court followed it -- and pushed the mess Congress created back in its own lap:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday made it harder for many workers to sue their employers for discrimination in pay, insisting in a 5-to-4 decision on a tight time frame to file such cases. The dissenters said the ruling ignored workplace realities.

The decision came in a case involving a supervisor at a Goodyear Tire plant in Gadsden, Ala., the only woman among 16 men at the same management level, who was paid less than any of her colleagues, including those with less seniority. She learned that fact late in a career of nearly 20 years — too late, according to the Supreme Court’s majority.

The court held on Tuesday that employees may not bring suit under the principal federal anti-discrimination law unless they have filed a formal complaint with a federal agency within 180 days after their pay was set. The timeline applies, according to the decision, even if the effects of the initial discriminatory act were not immediately apparent to the worker and even if they continue to the present day.

From 2001 to 2006, workers brought nearly 40,000 pay discrimination cases. Many such cases are likely to be barred by the court’s interpretation of the requirement in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that employees make their charge within 180 days “after the alleged unlawful employment practice occurred.”

Workplace experts said the ruling would have broad ramifications and would narrow the legal options of many employees.

Does the decision ignore workplace realities? Probably. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in her dissent, salary increases do not get published, so any apparent inequity would take quite some time to discover. Further, it would take a long time to prove a pattern of such discrimination for an employer, especially one (like Goodyear) with many facilities in many jurisdictions. In fact, even for one employee, it would likely take more than one review cycle to determine whether discrimination exists or just one poorly-executed review.

And the response to that for the Court should be: Write better laws. It is not the job of the Supreme Court to rewrite poorly-constructed legislation. Congress obviously intended for a short window of opportunity for these complaints, for whatever reason they had. The Supreme Court follows the law, unless the law is expressly unconstitutional. Fine-tuning dumb laws and badly-written legislation isn't the purview of the Court, but rather the responsibility of Congress.

Obviously, Congress needs to revisit this piece of legislation. Thankfully, we now have a Court which forces America's elected representatives to do their job, primarily by refusing to legislate from the bench. This gives hope that the last fifty years of judicial legislation have come to an end.

Immigration Bill Blues, Or, How I Derailed The Compromise

The Hill reports this morning that conservative Republicans in the House have plans to derail the Senate immigration compromise based on a procedural matter. The bill includes tax policy, which according to the Constitution, has to originate in the House, and some Republicans have lined up to issue a "blue slip" stop to the legislation on that basis.

And, I have to tell you, this is my fault:

House conservatives are ready to stop the Senate immigration bill in its tracks with a potent procedural weapon should the contentious measure win passage in the upper chamber.

The trump card conservatives may hold is a constitutional rule that revenue-related bills must originate in the House. The Senate immigration measure requires that illegal immigrants pay back taxes before becoming citizens, opening the door to a House protest, dubbed a “blue slip” for the color of its paper.

House Republicans used the same back-taxes mandate for a blue-slip threat that derailed last year’s immigration conference. The new Senate bill still must survive two more weeks of voter scrutiny and contentious amendments, but several conservatives already are lying in wait for the Senate to “make the same mistake twice,” as one House GOP aide put it.

“If we get an opportunity to do it, believe me, we’ll do it,” the aide said. “I think it’s going to be a matter of who will get there first. A number of people in the House are dying to be fingered as the person who killed [the Senate bill].”

How is this my fault? During a blogger conference call with Senator John McCain, one of the bill's architects, I mentioned a Boston Globe story that reported the removal of a requirement to pay back taxes before entering either the Z-visa or Y-visa program. The White House reportedly requested that section be removed, and I asked the Senator why illegal immigrants would get a pass on paying back taxes when American citizens don't get that privilege.

McCain was surprised by this question; he hadn't heard about the removal of the requirement. According to The Hill, McCain went back and reinstated the provision after my question:

The back-taxes provision that could trigger the blue slip came from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who continues to take heavy fire on the presidential hustings for supporting the immigration deal. McCain introduced a back-taxes amendment after a conference call in which Republican bloggers mentioned reports that the Bush administration had asked that this year’s bill not force the very costly process of tax collection among illegal immigrants.

“I’d not heard that proposal on the part of the president,” McCain said, according to a transcript of the call. “I would resist that.”

Some CQ readers (and some of the bloggers on the call) questioned McCain's sincerity, but he apparently meant what he said. He put that provision back into the bill -- and inadvertently provided a hook for House Republicans to at least delay the bill's consideration. While any Representative can blue-slip a revenue-producing bill from the Senate, it takes a majority to enforce it. Given the heat from both sides of this debate, that may not be difficult to arrange, and it would require the Senate negotiators to start from Square One.

So, it turns out that I may have killed the bill, or at least unknowingly provided the means to kill it. Sorry about that ....

Media Embarrassment Over Socialist Rhetoric?

Hillary Clinton announced that she would campaign on a platform that would emphasize the need for collective economics and move away from individual performance and success. It could be called an extension of "It Takes A Village," and it might have been -- had the newspapers bothered to cover it:

The Democratic senator said what the Bush administration touts as an ownership society really is an "on your own" society that has widened the gap between rich and poor.

"I prefer a 'we're all in it together' society," she said. "I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none."

That means pairing growth with fairness, she said, to ensure that the middle-class succeeds in the global economy, not just corporate CEOs.

"There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets. But markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed," she said. "Fairness doesn't just happen. It requires the right government policies."

A lot of nations have tried "all in it together" economic policies over the last century. Some used "government policies" to force all economic activity under government management, and places like the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites all collapsed. Others, such as France, have belatedly discovered that collectivism results in economic stagnation and an entitlement mentality that deflates the will to innovate and invest.

This kind of rhetoric isn't new for Hillary. She has promoted collectivist economics for two decades now. Her effort to nationalize health care reflected the same kind of thinking, and this statement shows that she hasn't learned much from that debacle. Almost three years ago, she promised that she would "take things away from [Americans] for the common good," back when the economy had just started its latest expansion. That's collectivism, and it's not limited to Hillary among Democratic candidates.

However, what I find most interesting about this statement is the complete lack of coverage it received in today's newspapers. She made the statement in the early afternoon, and it was meant to be part of a major series of speeches on economic policy. Yet, none of the major newspapers covered it in their political or national sections today. It's missing from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe. The NY Times only carried the part of her message that mentioned "shared prosperity", and then only on its blog, The Caucus.

Why didn't they mention the main thrust of her economic vision? Could it be that the editors of these publications have a better ear for politics than Hillary -- and acted to protect her from criticism?

Dry Run Confirmed

A declassified report confirms that Annie Jacobsen accurately recounted suspicious activities on a Northwest flight from Detroit to Los Angeles in the summer of 2004, and that a number of Syrians attempted a dry run for a terror attack. Eight of the 12 had already been flagged for criminal or suspicious behavior, and the apparent leader was involved in a similar incident later as well:

A newly released inspector general report backs eyewitness accounts of suspicious behavior by 13 Middle Eastern men on a Northwest Airlines flight in 2004 and reveals several missteps by government officials, including failure to file an incident report until a month after the matter became public.

According to the Homeland Security report, the "suspicious passengers," 12 Syrians and their Lebanese-born promoter, were traveling on Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles on expired visas. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services extended the visas one week after the June 29, 2004, incident.

The report also says that a background check in the FBI's National Crime Information Center database, which was performed June 18 as part of a visa-extension application, produced "positive hits" for past criminal records or suspicious behavior for eight of the 12 Syrians, who were traveling in the U.S. as a musical group.

In addition, the band's promoter was listed in a separate FBI database on case investigations for acting suspiciously aboard a flight months earlier. He was detained a third time in September on a return trip to the U.S. from Istanbul, the details of which were redacted.

The air marshals and the gate personnel for Northwest knew at the beginning of the flight that these passengers presented a threat. Before the men had even boarded the plane, they started acting suspiciously enough that the air marshals signaled each other about the group. Twenty minutes into the flight, well before Jacobsen contacted a flight attendant, the crew had contacted the air marshals about their concerns. One flight attendant took the unusual step of entering the cockpit an hour into the flight to discuss the concerns with the pilots; cockpits have been locked and barred ever since 9/11.

After all of this, the FBI did not open an investigation into the incident until Jacobsen appeared on MS-NBC's Scarborough Country. The Homeland Security personnel involved did not pass the irnformation along to their Operations Center, even though the leader of the group had been involved in a similar incident in January of that year, on Frontier Airlines. It didn't get logged into the HSOC database until the Washington Times reported it on July 26, 2004. By that time, all 12 Syrians had left the country.

TSA, for its part, said that the matter did not merit a referral since all of the passengers could be "cleared". It's fuzzy about why they thought that, since the DHS found a pattern of suspicious activity for eight of the men involved, including a "similar" incident involving the leader five months earlier. His third time, on a trip back from Istanbul, the FBI finally detained him. DHS rejects the TSA excuse, stating categorically that the incident should have been logged into the HSOC and merited further investigation.

A look at the seating chart shows another reason for suspicion. Despite traveling together (they all supposedly worked as a musical group), they pretended not to notice each other. They got seats that literally put them all over the plane.

Without a doubt, this vindicates Jacobsen and shows that either these men intended to conduct a terrorist dry run, or that they wanted someone to think that they were. It could have been a probe, a test to see just how far they could go without provoking a response. That could explain why the same man was involved in three such incidents. The official line that nothing happened on Flight 327 should embarrass everyone in the Homeland Security system, and someone owes Annie Jacobsen an apology.

Another Reason To Question The Tenet Regime At Langley

NBC has received a declassified report from the CIA which states that the agency considered Valerie Plame a "covert agent" at the time her identity was revealed to Robert Novak and other journalists in July 2003. The CIA declassified her status in order to pursue the criminal investigation into the leak, according to other documents from Patrick Fitzgerald's independent counsel probe:

An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame's employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was "covert" when her name became public in July 2003.

The summary is part of an attachment to Fitzgerald's memorandum to the court supporting his recommendation that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former top aide, spend 2-1/2 to 3 years in prison for obstructing the CIA leak investigation. ...

The unclassified summary of Plame's employment with the CIA at the time that syndicated columnist Robert Novak published her name on July 14, 2003 says, "Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for who the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States."

They were? Plame drove into the office in Langley. She traveled abroad under her own name. She helped arrange for her husband to do some fact-checking on a sensitive intelligence matter. Her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, then came home and leaked his observations to two nationally-known journalists, and then wrote his own op-ed in the New York Times under his byline.

And her husband managed to list her in Who's Who, where any journalist could look up the entry -- and where Robert Novak did just that.

If that's keeping an agent covert, it speaks volumes about the agency's competence during the George Tenet years.

So now we have confirmation that Plame did get her cover blown. I suppose the only reason that Fitzgerald didn't bother to indict Richard Armitage for the crime was that it would have meant explaining how the CIA tried to hide its NOC asset in plain sight.

CQ Radio: John McCain

Update: We got a chance to continue the conversation past the end of the live stream. Be sure to download the podcast in order to hear Senator McCain's full interview!

Today, on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we'll talk live with Senator John McCain regarding the immigration bill, his campaign for President, and the Iraq War. Senator McCain will join us in the second half of the show, and before that, we'll tackle the stories of the day. Be sure to call in at 646-652-4889 to join the conversation!

Don't forget that tomorrow will be our all-day coverage of Mitt Romney and his campaign tour through Iowa, capped by a live show at his open forum in Des Moines. You can only hear it live on CQ Radio, starting at 6 pm CT!

Where's The Love?

If the New York Times editorial page did not exist, the Onion would have to make it up for entertainment. Today the Gray Lady tackles the immigration compromise, lauding it for its bipartisan nature -- while casting its opponents as vitriolic haters:

The problems with the restrictionist provisions of the Senate immigration bill are serious and many. It includes a path to citizenship for 12 million illegal immigrants, which is a rare triumph for common sense, but that path is strewn with cruel conditions, including a fine — $5,000 — that’s too steep and hurdles that are needlessly high, including a “touchback” requirement for immigrants to make pilgrimages to their home countries to cleanse themselves of illegality. The bill imposes an untested merit-point system that narrows the channels through which family members can immigrate.

And it calls for hundreds of thousands of guest workers to toil here temporarily in an absurd employment hokey-pokey — you put your two years in, then one year out, then repeat that twice and go home forever. It would be massive indentured servitude — colonial times all over again, but without any hope of citizenship for those taking our most difficult and despised jobs.

Those who want this bill to be better are horribly conflicted by it. Their emotions still seem vastly overmatched by the ferocity of the opposition from the restrictionist right, with talk radio lighting up over “amnesty,” callers spitting out the words with all the hate they can pour into it.

It is encouraging that the bill survived several attempts by that camp to blow it apart, including an amendment that would have stricken the legalization section outright. The center held last week. But it will take a real effort to make the Senate bill much better, given that a core group of senators are bound to the ungainly architecture of their “grand bargain” and that any progress in significantly altering or improving it could unravel the deal.

Undeniably, some people have allowed themselves to get too emotional in this debate. It's a rather broad brush that the Times paints here, however, in that anyone on the right seeking to defeat this bill or change it -- as the Times wants to do for its own purposes -- are automatically "spitting out the words with all the hate they can pour into it," which is not only hysterical but ungrammatical. The editors could use some editors.

The truth is that this bill damages the rule of law at the moment while promising to restore it in the long run. Those who object to that approach recall the 1986 amnesty, without the scare quotes, which came before a promised securing of the border. That promise still remains unfulfilled, and those who oppose a second amnesty want more than promises this time around. Even if one disagrees with the position or finds the emotional level disquieting, one has to acknowledge that these opponents have a point.

Furthermore, polls show that most people have an objection to the manner in which this bill attempts to solve the problem. An overwhelming majority of Americans believe that border security is a much more pressing problem than normalization. Does the Times believe that 70% or more of America belongs in that group of "haters" that want to see border security first before normalization?

The Times gets more hysterical than those whom they criticize when they talk about the guest-worker program being a form of "massive indentured servitude". In the first place, it's voluntary. If they don't like it, workers don't have to enter the program. They're also free to leave if they do come here and don't like the conditions. The conditions as they exist today come much closer to indentured servitude, where employers can extort labor with the threat of exposure to the ICE. I agree that the guest-worker program could create a lot of problems, but modern slavery isn't one of them.

I know most CQ readers don't bother with the Times, but it's good to keep an eye on them. They still have influence, although this editorial demonstrates why that influence continues to fade.

The Next Scandal At Justice?

The Prowler at the American Spectator reports that the next scandal at the Department of Justice may reflect very poorly on the White House -- the Clinton White House. While the Democrats rant over Monica Goodling's unsurprising revelation that the DoJ considered political connections for political appointments, the Prowler reports that the Janet Reno-led DoJ did the exact same thing:

"We knew the political affiliation of every lawyer and political appointee we hired at the Department of Justice from January 1993 to the end of the Administration," says a former Clinton Department of Justice political appointee. "We kept charts and used them when it came time for new U.S. Attorney nominations, detailee assignments, and other hiring decisions. If you didn't vote Democrat, you weren't going anywhere with us. It was that simple."

In fact, according to this source, at least 25 career DOJ lawyers who were identified as Republicans were shifted away from jobs in offices they held prior to January 1993 and were given new "assignments" which were deemed "noncritical" or "nonpolitically influential." When these jobs shifts came to light in 1993, neither the House nor Senate Judiciary committees chose to pursue an investigation.

This is the same issue that has caused a wave of criticism from the Democrats in Congress during this session. It's what makes this part of the so-called "scandal" so laughable. Of course political appointments get political vetting. Of course affiliations matter in these positions. While I don't think making lower-level assignments dependent on those affiliations is a good practice, it was naive to think that this administration differed from the last in that aspect.

This reminds us that the real scandal at Justice isn't that anyone broke the law in firing the prosecutors, although Goodling thinks she broke the law in her personnel practices. The scandal is the incompetent manner in which all of this was handled, and the absentee-manager performance of Alberto Gonzales. By pushing a non-existent legal case against the Bush White House, the Democrats overplayed their hand and made themselves look foolish by raising expectations of a Monichristmas for the netroots.

UPDATE: I forgot that I "must credit" Right Wing Nut House for the incredible scoop that Reno's DoJ also played politics with hiring and assignment decisions!

Will The Surge Miss Its Goals?

The Pentagon has grown convinced that the political goals of the surge will not be met by the time the supplemental expires, the Los Angeles Times reports today. Only one of the three main reforms still has a chance for implementation by September, and the oil revenue plan still has to work its way through a parliament taking the bulk of the summer as a vacation:

U.S. military leaders in Iraq are increasingly convinced that most of the broad political goals President Bush laid out early this year in his announcement of a troop buildup will not be met this summer and are seeking ways to redefine success. ...

Enactment of a new law to share Iraq's oil revenue among Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish regions is the only goal they think might be achieved in time, and even that is considered a long shot. The two other key benchmarks are provincial elections and a deal to allow more Sunni Arabs into government jobs.

With overhauls by the central government stalled and with security in Baghdad still a distant goal, Petraeus' advisors hope to focus on smaller achievements that they see as signs of progress, including local deals among Iraq's rival factions to establish areas of peace in some provincial cities.

In truth, these goals will not be redefined as much as the expectations revised towards reality. The Iraqis have come closest to oil-revenue sharing because it is the one topic on which they all agree action is necessary. Everyone in Iraq is a stakeholder in that debate, and they actually have a proposed law that has entered the final processes of deliberation.

For the other proposed reforms, these conditions do not exist. Provincial elections might be closest, but at least two of the provinces are not yet stable enough to conduct them. Anbar and Diyala have active insurgencies and al-Qaeda networks that, for the moment, preclude the kind of census-taking and building of electoral infrastructure to allow it. The second, the reversal of de-Ba'athification, doesn't even have majority support from the Iraqis. Both the Shi'ites and the Kurds have no desire to see their former oppressors back in power, even within the confines of a Shi'ite majority government. They want to see them tried for their crimes, not allowed back into the bureaucracies, especially those with control of security services.

In that sense, the surge will not present much success for the Bush administration come September. That will make the task of funding continuing operations in Baghdad more difficult, to be sure. However, it may well be that the military goals of the surge -- a reduction in insurgent activity and the dismantling of terrorist networks -- will show significant progress by then. And as General Petraeus and his staff propose, the better short-term goal on which to focus would be the cooperation and support within Iraq for the counterinsurgency strategies employed by the US this year.

By September, if Petraeus has scoped the situation correctly, the political progress of reforms may not be terribly relevant. He's betting that the tribal alliances the US is building, and the increased engagement of Sunni tribes in the political process, will demonstrate more than enough progress to justify his continued operations. At that point, Democrats will increasingly realize that a cut-and-run from Iraq altogether is nothing more than a fantasy, and may be willing to give Petraeus another few months to see what he can do.

Bush, The Liberal

Richard Cohen makes the case that Republicans have noted for the last six years -- that the Bush administration has not been conservative at all, but rather an exercise in big-government, liberal action. Calling Bush a "neo-liberal", Cohen hits some convincing points in his argument that Bush resembles a cross between Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson (via Memeorandum):

An overriding principle of conservatism is to limit the role and influence of the federal government. Nowhere is this truer than in education. For instance, there was a time when no group of Republicans could convene without passing a resolution calling for the abolition of the Education Department and turning the building -- I am extrapolating here -- into a museum of creationism.

Now, though, not only are such calls no longer heard, but Bush has extended the department's reach in a manner that Democrats could not have envisaged. I am referring, of course, to the 2001 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, better known as No Child Left Behind. I will spare you the act's details, but it pretty much tells the states to shape up or face a loss of federal funds. It is precisely the sort of law that conservatives predicted Washington would someday seek -- and it did.

Similarly, let's take a look at the much-mocked notion of diversity. Bill Clinton was widely berated for his effort to have an administration that looked like America -- women, African Americans, Hispanics, you name it. Whether by design or not, Bush has also managed that feat. A female education secretary is one thing, but a national security adviser -- the uber-macho post -- is something else, and that went first to Condi Rice. And over at Justice, Bush chose Alberto Gonzales, the son of Hispanic migrant workers and, incidentally, a lawyer with the singular gift of forgetting meetings he attended. (In private practice, did he forget to bill?)

I am not suggesting that any of these appointees -- including Bush's former White House counsel, Harriet Miers -- are what is pejoratively known as affirmative action hires. I am suggesting, though, that Bush has not only diversified his Cabinet and staff but obviously got enormous satisfaction in doing so. You only have to listen to Bush talk about the virtues of immigration -- another liberal sentiment -- or his frequent mention of the "soft bigotry of low expectations" to appreciate that the president is a sentimental softie, what was once dismissively called a "mushy-headed liberal."

Allow me to make the case that this is also true when it comes to Iraq. I acknowledge that the war is a catastrophic mistake and was incompetently managed. But if you don't think it was waged on behalf of oil or empire, then one reason for our involvement was an attempt to do some good -- rid the world of a really bad guy and make life better for Iraqis and others in the region. This "liberal" intent may have left Dick Cheney cold and found Don Rumsfeld indifferent, but it appealed to Bush and it showed in his rhetoric and body language. Contrast it to the position of the so-called foreign policy realists, exemplified by the first President Bush and his trusted foreign policy sidekick, Brent Scowcroft.

I've made this same argument a number of times on this blog. In fact, most people forget that George Bush did not run as a doctrinaire conservative in 2000, but rather as a "compassionate conservative" -- one that would use the federal government as a solution to social ills, rather than cast it as a culprit for them. Bush added Dick Cheney to the ticket in large part to assuage conservative fears that he would turn into his father.

As Cohen notes, those fears have been mostly realized. The Bush administration has overseen profligate spending by successive Republican Congresses, and pushed that spending along with efforts that expanded federal oversight in areas conservatives fear to tread. Chief among these has been the expansion of the Department of Education, which has seen its spending more than double during his tenure. It seems that Bush has not yet seen a federal program he dislikes well enough to cast a veto on spending.

Iraq, as I have noted, is not an exercise in conservatism either. It is an expressly Wilsonian project, attempting to make the world safe for democracy by transforming the Middle East. The conservative strategy would have been to topple Saddam and leave the Iraqis to figure out the rest -- but that would have left vast oil resources in the hands of the strongest factions able to grasp power in the vacuum left behind. Instead, Bush and his team decided to attack terror by kicking out the struts that prop it up -- the oppression and despair in the Muslim world created by kleptocracies and mullahcracies in the region.

Cohen agrees, although reluctantly. Cohen calls the realism that Scowcroft and Bush 41 used to leave Saddam Hussein in power, and then to stand by while he decimated the Shi'ites in the immediate aftermath of the first Gulf War, "sickening". He worries that the "incompetently managed" effort will cause liberals to forget that it was John Kennedy who said that we would "pay any price, bear any burden . . . to assure the survival and the success of liberty." Cohen seems to be reaching a conclusion that many Democrats have reluctantly started to grasp; we cannot leave Iraq to the terrorists, and betray the Iraqis and our own values a second time.

If that conclusion means that Bush has to be accepted as a liberal, I'm fine with that. I think George Bush himself would accept that as a workable tradeoff.

Now Sit Back And Let Peace Roll Across The Globe

The United States has held its first diplomatic contacts with Iran in over 27 years -- since the time the Iranians overran our embassy in Teheran and held our embassy staff hostage for 444 days. The meeting at the ambassadorial level came as a result of demands from the Iraqi government and the proponents of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, which claimed that official contacts between the two nations would improve the security of the new democratic state in Iraq:

The United States and Iran held rare face-to-face talks in Baghdad on Monday, adhering to an agenda that focused strictly on the war in Iraq and on ways the two bitter adversaries could help improve conditions here.

The meeting between Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker of the United States and Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qumi of Iran — held in the offices of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki — produced no agreements nor a promise of a follow-up meeting between the nations, participants said. ...

He said he “laid out before the Iranians a number of our direct, specific concerns about their behavior in Iraq.” The United States has repeatedly accused Iran of meddlesome activities in Iraq, including training Shiite militiamen and shipping highly lethal weaponry into Iraq for use in attacks by Shiite and Sunni Arab militants against American troops.

Mr. Crocker said he told his Iranian counterpart that those activities “needed to cease.”

“We all are pretty much in the same place in terms of declaratory policy,” he said. “The problem lies, in our view, with the Iranians not bringing their behavior on the ground into line with their own policy.”

I don't think that talking with the Iranians does much harm, except to the extent that it sends a bad signal to the democracy activists within its borders. By focusing the talks exclusively on Iraqi security concerns, it helps to keep the talks from appearing to endorse the reign of the mullahs. Those pushing to end that reign from within might note the subtleties of the diplomatic dance and not conclude that the US has resigned itself to dealing with the theocrats currently oppressing the Iranian people.

The talks won't do any good, however, while the Iranians see Iraqi chaos in their best interests. They want to see American troops tied up in Iraq and battling insurgencies and al-Qaeda terrorists there. It gives the mullahs a handy excuse for exercising even more power over their own people, and it creates the kind of political instability in the region that becomes a force multiplier for their own terrorist proxy groups.

Iran does not fund Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad for the purpose of creating stability, after all. They want to destabilize the entire region, dominated by Sunnis, and either replace them with Shi'ite leadership or weaken them until they fall under Iranian hegemony by default. The only power in the region capable of opposing the Iranian mullahs in that strategy is the United States, and they want us either tied down in Iraq or forced out of the region altogether.

Diplomacy has its place, but the effort has to be reciprocated. As Michelle Malkin notes, the Iranians have made clear their view of reciprocity by indicting three Americans in Iran for espionage:

Iran has formally charged two Iranian- American academics currently in jail in Tehran with espionage.

A judiciary official said a third Iranian-American, Nazi Azima, who works for Radio Free Europe, faced the same allegations but had not been arrested. ...

Kian Tajbaksh is also a well-known academic and social scientist who had carried out some work for the Open Society Institute of George Soros - an organisation Iran says was trying to instigate a "velvet revolution" to topple the clerical regime.

Three Americans who wanted to help expedite this dialogue now face death or long prison sentences for pursuing the ISG's suggested diplomacy. That appears to be a more concrete answer than any provided by the weekend meeting.

Romney Pulls Into Second Place

Just a few days ago, I asked Duane "Generalissimo" Patterson why Romney had such a difficult time progressing in the polls. He seemed mired at 8% support despite having the best organization and fundraising operations in the GOP. Now, however, a new Rasmussen poll shows that Romney may have found some wind for those massive sails as he outpolled John McCain and moved into second place by a razor-thin margin:

The immigration reform debate may be shaking up the race for the Republican Presidential nomination. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has inched past Arizona Senator John McCain for second place in the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone poll. Just two weeks ago, Romney was in fourth place among GOP hopefuls.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) remains on top with 25% support. That’s essentially unchanged from last week. In fact, Giuliani has been at 25% or 26% in the polls for four straight weeks.

This week, Giuliani is followed by Romney at 16%, McCain at 15%, and former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson at 12%. While Romney’s one-point edge over McCain is statistically insignificant, it’s worth noting that McCain had a six-point advantage over Romney just two weeks ago.

This could be fallout from the immigration debate. Despite publicly stating that he would support some form of comprehensive reform that included normalization, Romney wasted no time in attacking this version of reform. That quick decision may have opened eyes among the conservatives in the GOP who have not trusted Romney's recent conversion on other social issues.

That new support appears to come at the expense of McCain and perhaps the second-tier candidates. Rudy's numbers have changed little since the end of April, when he got buffeted by his stumble on abortion. He still has a 9-point lead, now over Romney. McCain drops back three points, and Fred Thompson, who has not yet declared, lost two. Interestingly, it looks like Rudy got no bump for chewing out Ron Paul in the last debate, but didn't lose any ground either.

Romney has a substantial lead in Iowa among likely caucus voters. This latest poll shows that the momentum seems to have shifted nationwide as well. Insiders tell me that Romney's Q2 fundraising numbers will be substantially better than his record-setting Q1 numbers and that they have continued to grow the organization. If all that money keeps flowing into that large campaign structure, Romney will be well positioned to take advantage of that momentum and turn himself into a phenomenon.

Addendum: Don't forget that I will be traveling to Des Moines for tomorrow's Romney campaign through Iowa, capping the day off with a live broadcast tomorrow evening on CQ Radio of Romney's open-forum event at 6 pm CT. Don't miss it!

Choosy Social Cons Choose Rudy

According to Pew Research and the Politico, a significant part of Rudy Giuliani's national polling lead comes from conservatives at odds with his domestic policy views. Rudy gets 30% of the social conservatives in the GOP, a factor which keeps him in the lead over John McCain, who gets only 19% of that bloc. What does that tell us about the Republican primary voter base? Has pragmatism won out over ideology, or is there an overriding ideology that commands that support? At Heading Right, I take a look at some of those dynamics and propose my own analysis.

Cindy Sheehan Says Adios

Once the "darling" of the Left, a woman to whom crowds flocked, Cindy Sheehan has discovered that she has worn out her welcome by attacking everyone. In a missive she sent to the Democratic caucuses in Congress, Sheehan has renounced her membership in the party, claiming to have been as abused by the Left as she was by the Right:

Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier son was killed in Iraq three years ago, said yesterday she was stepping down from her role as the figurehead of the US campaign against the war.

"This is my resignation letter as the 'face' of the American anti-war movement," she wrote in a sometimes bitter diary entry on the website Daily Kos. "I am going to take whatever I have left, and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children, and try to regain some of what I have lost." ...

"I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican party," she wrote. "However, when I started to hold the Democratic party to the same standards that I held the Republican party, support for my cause started to erode, and the 'left' started labelling me with the same slurs that the right used."

On Saturday, in an open letter to Democratic members of Congress, she announced that she was leaving the party because she felt its leaders had failed to change the country's course in Iraq.

I used to comment regularly about Sheehan and her antics, but had laid off recently. For one thing, she presented too easy a target. She clearly had lost her bearings, if not her mind, lionizing Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez while reviling George Bush as a dictator. She rarely said or did anything coherent. While she was the face of the anti-war movement, it showed them as hysterical and very uninformed.

Democrats may have used and exploited her, as she complains now, but she allowed them to do it. She practically threw herself in front of cameras, and the Bush-hatred she spewed matched their own rhetoric perfectly. She didn't attempt to separate herself from the politics of the situation, but instead embraced it enthusiastically.

However, when she started literally kissing up to Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, the Democrats got very nervous about their connections to Sheehan. They started putting some distance between Sheehan's antics and the mainstream of the party, and when they did that, Sheehan lashed back at them. Apparently they answered her, and she didn't like criticism from her former supporters -- and now she's quitting as a result.

I hope she does return to her family and regain what she has lost. She lost her son, and she lost the rest of her family when she tried to turn herself into a weird kind of martyr. Now that she's climbing down off the cross, perhaps she can finally find some comfort in her surviving children and leave behind the lunacy she has exhibited in her fringe-Left campaign against not just George Bush but the country towards which she feels so much bitterness.

UPDATE: Rick Moran has more thoughts.

AP Still Gets Kyoto History Wrong

Earlier this year, I noted that the Associated Press either did a poor job of research or revealed their bias against the Bush administration by incorrectly recounting the history of the Kyoto Treaty in the US. They used the Left's talking points in reporting that the present administration rejected Kyoto and had the responsibility for the lack of its implementation. Jim Krane apparently isn't alone at the AP in passing along misinformation, as CQ reader Jal Ark noticed:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) said Monday she led a congressional delegation to Greenland, where lawmakers saw "firsthand evidence that climate change is a reality," and she hoped the Bush administration would consider a new path on the issue. ...

Her trip comes ahead of next week's Group of Eight summit and a climate change meeting next month involving the leading industrialized nations and during a time of increased debate over what should succeed the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 international treaty that caps the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted from power plants and factories in industrialized countries. It expires in 2012.

President Bush rejected that accord, saying it would harm the U.S. economy and unfair excludes developing countries like China and India from its obligations. Pelosi, who strongly disagrees with that decision and many other of Bush's environmental policies, said Friday she said she wants to work with the administration rather than provoke it.

Once again, the AP has failed to report the history of this treaty correctly. While Bush does not support the Kyoto approach, he had nothing to do with rejecting the pact. The Senate rejected it in 1997, almost four years before Bush took office. When Al Gore pushed Bill Clinton to sign the treaty, the Senate reacted by passing a resolution informing Clinton that Kyoto would not get ratified.

That resolution got sponsored by Chuck Hagel and Robert Byrd, and it passed by a roll call vote in which not a single Senator voted to support Clinton and Gore. The final vote was 95-0, and it included such Democratic luminaries as Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Barbara Boxer rejecting Kyoto. I have the resolution itself in the extended entry, and it makes clear that the Senate would not abide a pact which excluded the developing nations of China and India. Since it still does not include those countries, there is no reason to think that the Senate has changed its position, nor should it.

Even if I hadn't already written about this, I could have found this in about ten seconds simply by doing a search of the Internet. The Wikipedia entry is well-researched, and even an advocacy group manages to get this correct. Why can't the AP? Now that two of their reporters have found it impossible to accurately recount the history, it seems less likely that it reflects incompetence and more likely that it reflects a bias -- especially since that vaunted system of fact-checking and editorial oversight has once again allowed misinformation into print.

105th CONGRESS

1st Session

S. RES. 98

[Report No. 105-54]

Expressing the sense of the Senate regarding the conditions for the United States becoming a signatory to any international agreement on greenhouse gas emissions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

July 25, 1997

Mr. BYRD (for himself, Mr. HAGEL, Mr. HOLLINGS, Mr. CRAIG, Mr. INOUYE, Mr. WARNER, Mr. FORD, Mr. THOMAS, Mr. DORGAN, Mr. HELMS, Mr. LEVIN, Mr. ROBERTS, Mr. ABRAHAM, Mr. MCCONNELL, Mr. ASHCROFT, Mr. BROWNBACK, Mr. KEMPTHORNE, Mr. THURMOND, Mr. BURNS, Mr. CONRAD, Mr. GLENN, Mr. ENZI, Mr. INHOFE, Mr. BOND, Mr. COVERDELL, Mr. DEWINE, Mrs. HUTCHISON, Mr. GORTON, Mr. HATCH, Mr. BREAUX, Mr. CLELAND, Mr. DURBIN, Mr. HUTCHINSON, Mr. JOHNSON, Ms. LANDRIEU, Ms. MIKULSKI, Mr. NICKLES, Mr. SANTORUM, Mr. SHELBY, Mr. SMITH of Oregon, Mr. BENNETT, Mr. FAIRCLOTH, Mr. FRIST, Mr. GRASSLEY, Mr. ALLARD, Mr. MURKOWSKI, Mr. AKAKA, Mr. COATS, Mr. COCHRAN, Mr. DOMENICI, Mr. GRAMM, Mr. GRAMS, Mr. LOTT, Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN, Mr. ROBB, Mr. ROCKEFELLER, Mr. SESSIONS, Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire, Mr. SPECTER, Mr. STEVENS, Mr. LUGAR, Mr. REID, Mr. BRYAN, Mr. THOMPSON, and Mr. CAMPBELL) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations

July 21, 1997

Reported by Mr. HELMS, without amendment

July 25, 1997

Considered and agreed to

RESOLUTION

Expressing the sense of the Senate regarding the conditions for the United States becoming a signatory to any international agreement on greenhouse gas emissions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Whereas the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (in this resolution referred to as the `Convention'), adopted in May 1992, entered into force in 1994 and is not yet fully implemented;

Whereas the Convention, intended to address climate change on a global basis, identifies the former Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe and the Organization For Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), including the United States, as `Annex I Parties', and the remaining 129 countries, including China, Mexico, India, Brazil, and South Korea, as `Developing Country Parties';

Whereas in April 1995, the Convention's `Conference of the Parties' adopted the so-called `Berlin Mandate';

Whereas the `Berlin Mandate' calls for the adoption, as soon as December 1997, in Kyoto, Japan, of a protocol or another legal instrument that strengthens commitments to limit greenhouse gas emissions by Annex I Parties for the post-2000 period and establishes a negotiation process called the `Ad Hoc Group on the Berlin Mandate';

Whereas the `Berlin Mandate' specifically exempts all Developing Country Parties from any new commitments in such negotiation process for the post-2000 period;

Whereas although the Convention, approved by the United States Senate, called on all signatory parties to adopt policies and programs aimed at limiting their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, in July 1996 the Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs called for the first time for `legally binding' emission limitation targets and timetables for Annex I Parties, a position reiterated by the Secretary of State in testimony before the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate on January 8, 1997;

Whereas greenhouse gas emissions of Developing Country Parties are rapidly increasing and are expected to surpass emissions of the United States and other OECD countries as early as 2015;

Whereas the Department of State has declared that it is critical for the Parties to the Convention to include Developing Country Parties in the next steps for global action and, therefore, has proposed that consideration of additional steps to include limitations on Developing Country Parties' greenhouse gas emissions would not begin until after a protocol or other legal instrument is adopted in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997;

Whereas the exemption for Developing Country Parties is inconsistent with the need for global action on climate change and is environmentally flawed;

Whereas the Senate strongly believes that the proposals under negotiation, because of the disparity of treatment between Annex I Parties and Developing Countries and the level of required emission reductions, could result in serious harm to the United States economy, including significant job loss, trade disadvantages, increased energy and consumer costs, or any combination thereof; and

Whereas it is desirable that a bipartisan group of Senators be appointed by the Majority and Minority Leaders of the Senate for the purpose of monitoring the status of negotiations on Global Climate Change and reporting periodically to the Senate on those negotiations: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that--

(1) the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other agreement regarding, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, at negotiations in Kyoto in December 1997, or thereafter, which would--

(A) mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the Annex I Parties, unless the protocol or other agreement also mandates new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties within the same compliance period, or

(B) would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States; and

(2) any such protocol or other agreement which would require the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification should be accompanied by a detailed explanation of any legislation or regulatory actions that may be required to implement the protocol or other agreement and should also be accompanied by an analysis of the detailed financial costs and other impacts on the economy of the United States which would be incurred by the implementation of the protocol or other agreement.

SEC. 2. The Secretary of the Senate shall transmit a copy of this resolution to the President.

Film Review: Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

As CQ readers have surmised, I have mostly taken today off after a long weekend of birthday celebrations. My sister flew out from California for a couple of days, and we celebrated her birthday as well as my son's and the Little Admiral's, who turns 5 on Wednesday. After a weekend of these celebrations, the First Mate and I found ourselves tired out. I bought The Reagan Diaries for later reading, and both of us caught up on our sleep.

This evening, though, we decided to take a look at HBO's new movie, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, which tells the story of the Native Americans in the Dakotas between the Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee. It has a stellar cast, including a cameo for Fred Thompson as President Ulysses S Grant, in what some will hope turns into dramatic foreshadowing in real life. Aidan Quinn, Adam Beach, and Anna Paquin star, but the focus remains on the Sioux tribes and their betrayal at the hands of those who thought themselves the advocates of the American Indians.

The history may not be well known by viewers before seeing the movie. If not, the film gives the audience a good tour of the fourteen years between Custer's idiotic attack and the uprising at Wounded Knee. An attempt to renege on a treaty with the Sioux in order to get to the gold in the Black Hills created instability in what little order the US had with the Sioux after Custer, and in the end forced the natives to repudiate the entire treaty process. This led, in the end, to a massive overreaction by the US and state governments in putting down what they saw as a dangerous uprising in the end of 1890.

The film brilliantly depicts all of these issues, using the historical characters of Charles Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman as the "witnesses" to the depredation and oppression of the Sioux, and Henry Dawes as the perpetrator the the betrayal by Washington DC. It's necessarily sympathetic to the Native American point of view, especially since Adam Beach as Eastman suffers betrayals from all sides. Dawes starts off by demanding of Grant a merciful and positive approach to saving the Indians from extinction, but Dawes becomes the architect of the land grab that eventually causes the tribes to reject the ever-changing demands to renegotiate the treaties with the US.

The acting is uniformly excellent. It features a cast largely drawn from the Native American community. Wes Study makes a cameo appearance as Wovoka, the Paiute visionary who taught the Sioux new dances that he promised would bring an end to white people and restore the Native American tribes to supremacy over the earth, as well as bringing back the buffalo. It's shot in a stylish and affecting manner, and gives a fairly accurate account of history in an manner which grips the viewer.

If you have a chance to watch this, make sure you do. It's a part of history that does not get taught well in the US, especially the post-Custer reaction that made that singular Sioux victory a Pyrrhic event.

CQ Radio: Day Off

Today, CQ Radio will take the day off for the holiday. However, I hope you will take the opportunity to listen to my interview with Nader Elguindi, the submariner who overcame the loss of a leg to requalify for the service. It's one of the most inspirational stories I've ever heard -- and a perfect Memorial Day event for the family. Don't forget my talk with Major John Heil, which I conducted live while the Major serves just outside of Baghdad.

Tomorrow, I will be talking with Senator John McCain live in the second half of the show. We'll talk about immigration, Iraq, and take your calls at 646-652-4889. Wednesday I'll be reporting live from the campaign trail with Mitt Romney.

If You're Reading This Blog Today...

... you can thank a veteran, either one who gave his life in service to his country, or one who gave his youth and health. America has never lacked for heroes, men and women who exemplify patriotism, honor, duty, and sacrifice. All of us, whether Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, have members of our family who have devoted time in their lives to our country; we're all connected to them.

Our families share in this, and fortunately, our relatives all survived their service. My father, the Admiral Emeritus, served in the Army in Korea. The First Mate's father was a Marine Corps pilot who served in both World War II and Korea, flying Corsairs in the Pacific. My father's oldest brother went into the Navy and became part of the Seabees, and his other brothers served in the armed forces as well. My cousins have volunteered for duty; at least one of them reads my blog occasionally. The next generation now serve in the military.

On my mother's side, two of her brothers served in Vietnam, in the Marine Corps and the Army. Her third brother volunteered for the Air Force at the end of that war and spent 14 years serving his country.

I never served in the military, as CQ readers know. Our family has not lost a member in service; we have been fortunate, given how many have served. Many families today are remembering their fallen brothers, sisters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers ... sons and daughters. Our prayers are with those families today, those who have felt the pain of that last full measure of devotion given by those who didn't come home.

I'm flying my flag today to honor all of those. I know you are doing the same. Have a good Memorial Day with your family, and remember all of those who died to keep us free.

UPDATE: My cousin Mike reminds me of two family stories that I overlooked today. Our great-uncle John Edward Morrissey died in World War II as a member of the Merchant Marine. He died on his 21st birthday on 13 April 1942, 65 years ago last month. Mike has the details of the engagement in the comments.

Also, our grandfather Thomas Philip Morrissey was the second-youngest enlistee in the first World War. Big for his age and a rather daunting fellow, he bluffed his way into the Navy at age 13 to escape a hard home life. It took six months and a discerning commanding officer to reveal his real age and send him back home.

MIke, by the way, served in the Air Force and now flies for a major carrier today. Thanks, Mike, and I hope everyone on your end has a wonderful weekend.

The Birthday Boys

My good friends at Power Line are celebrating their fifth anniversary in the blogosphere this weekend. Most of us on the conservative side of the blogosphere have been influenced, directly or indirectly, by the clear prose and skilled argument that John, Scott, and Paul have consistently produced since 2002. Not only did they help inspire me to start blogging, but they actively mentored me during the early days of Captain's Quarters.

Happy anniversary to three great guys. Keep up the great work.

Flight 327: More To The Story

In the summer of 2004, I noted the story of a musical band traveling on one-way tickets between Detroit and Los Angeles. Anne Jacobsen revealed the terror she felt on that flight in a Women's Wall Street column, eventually turning her recollections into a book. At the time, she was derided as a panic-stricken hysteric. Now, the Washington Times reports, the FBI thinks she may have been right about it being a terrorist dry run for another attack:

Thirteen Middle Eastern men were traveling together as a musical group, 12 carrying Syrian passports and one, a lawful permanent resident of the United States of Lebanese descent, purchased one-way tickets from Detroit to Los Angeles. Six of the men arrived at the gate together after boarding began, then split up and acted as if they were not acquainted. According to air marshals, the men also appeared sweaty and nervous. An air marshal assigned to Flight 327 observed their behavior and characterized it as "unusual," but made no further reports at the time. During the flight, the men again acted suspiciously. Several of the men changed seats, congregated in the aisles, and arose when the fasten seat belt sign was turned on; one passenger moved quickly up the aisle toward the cockpit and, at the last moment, entered the first class lavatory. The passenger remained in the lavatory for about 20 minutes. Several of the men spent excessive time in the lavatories. Another man carried a large McDonald's restaurant bag into a lavatory and made a thumbs-up signal to another man upon returning to his seat. Flight attendants notified the air marshals on board of the suspicious activities. In response, an air marshal directed a flight attendant to instruct the cockpit to radio ahead for law-enforcement officials to meet the flight upon arrival. After arriving, Flight 327 was met by federal and local law enforcement officials, who gathered all 13 suspicious passengers, interviewing two of them. An air marshal photocopied the passengers' passports and visas. The names of the suspicious passengers were run through FBI databases, indicating the musical group's promoter had been involved in a similar incident in January 2004. No other derogatory information was received, and all 13 of the men were released.

The Times will release the entire report on Wednesday. It appears that a few people may owe Jacobsen an apology. (via Power Line)

This Week's Schedule On CQ Radio

This week will have CQ Radio listeners on the edge of their seats. Tuesday, I will have a one-on-one interview with Senator and presidential candidate John McCain. We'll talk about immigration, the war on terror, the surge, and much more.

On Wednesday, I will go on the road to cover the Mitt Romney campaign in Iowa. While the former Massachussetts governor has not broken out in national polling, he now leads all Republican candidates among likely Iowa caucus attendees, garnering 30%. How has he done it? Let's find out together. I'll trail Romney in his campaign events, posting reports along the way. Later in the afternoon, I'll conduct a one-on-one interview with Governor Romney.

And, in a CQ Radio/BlogTalkRadio first, I'll provide live coverage of Romney's open forum in Des Moines in the evening, starting around 6 pm on CQ Radio. You'll hear it as it happens on CQ Radio. Be sure to listen right from the start!

US Forces Free Dozens Of AQ Victims

US forces raided an al-Qaeda torture facility today in Baghdad, freeing 42 hostages. Some of them showed signs of torture and had to be immediately hospitalized:

U.S. forces raided an al-Qaida hide-out northeast of Baghdad on Sunday and freed 42 Iraqis imprisoned inside, including some who had been tortured and suffered broken bones, a senior U.S. military official said Sunday.

The raid was part of a 3-month-old security crackdown that included the deployment of 3,000 more U.S. troops to Diyala, a violent province north of the capital that has seen heavy fighting in recent weeks, said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the top U.S. military spokesman in
Iraq.

Caldwell said Iraqis told U.S. forces about the hide-out: "The people in Diyala are speaking up against al-Qaida."

Caldwell said the 42 freed Iraqis marked the largest number of captives ever found in a single al-Qaida prison.

At the same time, American forces raided Sadr City for the second straight day. They arrested a man suspected of routing Iranian weapons to insurgents, including the shaped charges that have increasingly been used to attack American patrols. This cell also sent people to Iran for training in insurgent warfare.

In the south, British troops served an arrest warrant on Mahdi Army elements. They opened fire on the British, who apparently expected trouble. While taking no casualties themselves, the British arrested four militants and killed three others.

Moqtada al-Sadr called again for the end of the occupation. However, with one of his key lieutenants dead and his network under pressure from both ends of the country, Sadr may decide to take another Iranian vacation soon. The Americans and the British have provided an answer to his demonstrations over the past week, underscoring their resolve to put an end to the militias, including the Mahdis.

Jules Nails The AP, Michelle Gets The Rest

Jules Crittenden notices a substantial gap in the AP's reporting on the war on terror, and wonders what games the news agency wants to play with American body counts:

I thought body counts went out with the Vietnam War. The AP is kicking off Memorial Day weekend with a fresh body count in Iraq.

How come no mention of Americans killed in Afghanistan since last Memorial Day?

The AP story leads with the number of new graves opened for dead American soldiers since Memorial Day last, but only those killed in Iraq. Why this slight? Are the dead in Afghanistan not worthy of respect in the eyes of the Associated Press? It is possible that this article is not about honoring the dead at all, or even about reporting the news, but just another thinly veiled editorial attack on the Bush administration? Would the Associated Press be so callous as to use American dead in this manner, as a political tool?

Michelle Malkin also takes a look at reporting this weekend on the war. Be sure to read them both.

Here's the trouble with these body-count reports: they only tell half of the story, if that. As Jules notes, and as Chris Muir depicts in today's cartoon, the real story is much broader than how many American soldiers died in the line of duty over the past year (980). Those increased deaths come from a much more aggressive, and successful, strategy of clearing and holding neighborhoods in order to drive out terrorists and insurgents. We hear nothing about the deaths of these insurgents and terrorists. Jules notes that a conservative estimate of captured terrorists is over 1,500 in the same time period, and the number of terrorist dead is several times that.

And it isn't just about body counts. It's about the increased access to information and power of the average Iraqi citizen. More and more of them have mundane services such as telephones and television, uncontrolled by a paranoid dictator. Schools have reopened, and even more are being built for more Iraqi children than ever before. Independent radio stations and newspapers allow Iraqis to freely debate the issues, a world apart from their experience over the last four decades.

Body counts tell us nothing. The mission is what we should debate. The deaths over the last year amount to about two-thirds of the losses in the Kasserine Pass, our first engagement against the Wehrmacht in WWII. Fifteen hundred dead American soldiers in North Africa did not make the mission worthless there, and 980 deaths do not discredit this mission, either. If we want to defeat terrorists in the Middle East and see a strong, secure, and independent Iraq as a vital part of that mission, then we need to commit ourselves to that mission while trying to minimize American deaths to the best extent possible.

Every American death is a tragedy for their families, and of course we mourn them. Memorial Day exists for that purpose. However, it also honors their commitment to freedom, liberty, and our nation's security.

Democratic Divide On Fox

The Democrats still have a Fox problem. They want to beat the network down as a "propaganda" outlet despite its #1 rating for prime-time news, and despite the connections that several prominent Democrats have forged with the network to broaden their appeal to middle America:

Four years ago, the leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus began looking for a television outlet to co-sponsor and broadcast a presidential debate to address the concerns of minority voters.

Only one news channel made an acceptable proposal, and an unlikely channel at that: Fox News, in what some Democrats viewed as an effort to associate itself with a group that could help it make good on its claim of presenting “fair and balanced” news coverage.

But now that relationship is being shaken by the decision of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina to shun the debate, a move that has exposed fault lines among two major constituencies of the Democratic Party. While the withdrawal by the candidates frustrated members of the black caucus, it mollified liberals who had objected to the involvement of Fox News, whose programming includes some of the most conservative and pro-Republican commentary on the air.

The sensitivities surrounding the issue were evident this week when a spokeswoman for Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, said Mr. Richardson would not participate in the debate, which is scheduled for September. But only a few hours later, the spokeswoman phoned the reporter to say that she had misspoken, and that Mr. Richardson had yet to decide. In the interim the reporter had sought a response from the caucus on Mr. Richardson’s apparent withdrawal.

Howard Dean notoriously referred to FNC as a "propaganda outlet," which must have surprised the Congressional Black Caucus. They want to establish themselves as a power player in the effort to get minority voters to the polls, and they won a rather impressive coup in getting the most popular news network to partner with them in that effort. Not only did Dean make them look like fools, the Democratic Party chairman likely drove off the very viewers they hoped to attract with the debate series -- African-American voters.

But the CBC isn't the only Democratic entity with ties to the supposed "propaganda outlet". Hillary and Bill Clinton have ties to the network in its effort to broaden minority representation in television ratings systems. Fox hired a consulting firm with "strong" connection to the Clintons for that project; it belongs to Howard Wolfson, who is currently Hillary's communication director. Rupert Murdoch, Howard Dean's bete noir, has also done fundraising for Hillary in her re-election campaign to the Senate.

Typically, this made no difference to Hillary when the debate topic came up. Anxious to score pooints among the anti-war left, Hillary renounced Fox and bailed out of the debate, along with the less-well-connected Barack Obama and John Edwards. Not exactly a Profile in Courage, and now she has left the CBC in a position where it will have almost no impact on the primaries.

In the end, of course, it shows a massive inferiority complex on the part of the Democrats. The terms of the Fox deal were especially generous; Fox would pick up almost all of the production costs, and in return, the CBC could pick the moderators and control the format. That means that the questions would have been outside of Fox's control, which negates the entire "propaganda" argument, even if it wasn't a ludricrous slander. The Democrats could have had a free ride in front of Fox's audience, a gift that would have allowed them access to moderates and centrists.

Instead, they ran away, and continue to run away, even while the CBC reminds them of the chance they're missing. Once again, I have to ask why America should trust Hillary, Obama, and Edwards to stand up to terrorists and dictators when they run like frightened children from Fox News.

Reminder: Iraq Is The Central Front Against AQ

A mash note from #2 Islamist nutjob Ayman al-Zawahiri provides a reminder to like-minded minions and to the world at large that al-Qaeda sees Iraq as the central front for their efforts to create the new Caliphate. The Times of London reports on Zawahiri's message to the ummah, exhorting Muslims to help use Iraq to launch a Greater Syria run by and for murderous terrorists:

THE deputy leader of Al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has urged supporters in Iraq to extend their “holy war” to other Middle Eastern countries.

In a letter sent to the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq in the past few weeks, Zawahiri claims that it is defeating US forces and urges followers to expand their campaign of terror.

He conjures a vision of an Islamic state comprising Lebanon, Palestine and Syria, where Al-Qaeda has already gained its first footholds.

The goal of an Islamic “greater Syria”, first outlined by Zawahiri two years ago, is detailed in the letter amid growing concern about the activities of new groups under Al-Qaeda’s influence in the countries concerned.

Zawahiri wants to return to the days before the Sykes-Picot Agreement, where Arabia existed as an amorphous entity ruled from Constantinople under the direction of a Caliph. The Ottoman Empire had been on life support for at least a century before World War I, trapped in time like a mosquito caught in amber, and even then various Arab tribes like the Sauds and the Hashemites jockeyed for real power on the ground.

The efforts in Nahr al-Bared come as a part of Zawahiri's vision of a return to this chaotic and destructive time. They want an end to Lebanon and its partly-Christian rule, seeing it as a foreign intrusion on the Arabian ummah. In fact, they don't even like the current Syria all that much; they have called for a jihad against Bashar al-Assad, despite his copious efforts to assist Hezbollah, the Shi'ite version of al-Qaeda.

Perhaps Assad might wise up and discover that radical Islamists are a knife that too often turns in the hand that wields it for their own purposes. His father at one point understood the dangers of jihadis, but the seduction of using Hezbollah against the Israelis was too great a temptation to resist. That decision could bring the Assad "dynasty" to a quick conclusion.

Interestingly, Zawahiri's message was not intended for wide distribution. He sent it to Abu Hamza al-Mujaher, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, in order to get them to start launching attacks outside of Iraq and throughout the region. It shows that AQ and AQI see themselves as the vanguard for a regional terrorist war, one they hope will destabilize not just Iraq but also Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the rest of the emirates.

When they have accomplished that, they will control the region's oil and can hold the rest of the world hostage to their demands -- and they will have an enormous cash flow that can fund all manner of attacks around the world. Their eyes will then look towards Egypt and North Africa, which would threaten Mediterranean shipping, and perhaps even al-Andalus ... which we know as Spain.

The central front in the war on terror is Iraq. If we run away from AQ in Anbar, then we will wind up fighting them all over the Middle East, and perhaps North Africa, before we turn them back. We have to stop them now and keep them from the breakout they seek.

Ukraine Crisis Abates, For Now

The crisis in the Ukraine eased this weekend as the two main antagonists reached a compromise on new elections. Viktor Yanukovych and Viktor Yushchenko agreed to hold new elections in September and to leave the Ukrainian security services alone:

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on Sunday declared his feud with Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych "finished" after the political rivals agreed on holding snap parliamentary elections in September.

"The political crisis in Ukraine is finished. We have come to a decision that represents a compromise," Yushchenko said at a joint press briefing with Yanukovych after seven hours of overnight talks in Kiev between the two leaders.

"Early elections will be held on September 30," Yushchenko said.

Yanukovych signed a joint statement with Yushchenko sealing the deal.

The breakthrough signals a major step towards resolution of a months-long crisis in this ex-Soviet republic that has sparked concern in neighbouring Russia and the European Union.

"Finished" may mean "postponed" in this context. The feud between the two men has gone on for years now, and at least for Yushchenko, has become very personal. In his attempt to win the presidency in 2004, someone poisoned him with dioxin, leaving his face badly scarred and Yushchenko lucky to be alive. Most people believe that the attempt came from someone in Yanukovych's movement or that of the previous president, Leonid Kuchma.

The problem arises in part from a disagreement over how the Ukrainian system controls power. Yushchenko wants it held in the executive, while Yanukovych -- who earlier would have agreed -- now exploits the parliamentary sentiment that the legislature should control the state, along the lines of most European democracies. That's what led both sides to attempt to take control of security services over the past week and threatened civil war.

Both sides have a few months to calm down. The end of the Machiavellian machinations of the two factions should allow Ukrainians to rationally decide which approach works best, and which approach will keep Ukraine's clans from grasping power once again. The biggest winner of all could be the one politician apparently uninvolved in the latest crisis, Yulia Tymoshenko. The firebrand may be able to cast herself as the cleanest of the options Ukrainian voters have on the slate. If she wins, we may have another crisis loom on the horizon.