Is Kim Jong Ill?

Reports coming from diplomats in Pyongyang have Kim Jong-Il so debilitated that he can no longer walk 30 feet without assistance. He apparently needs heart surgery, which has kept him from making public appearances on his normal schedule:

Kim Jong Il, North Korea's reclusive leader, has been so unwell that he could not walk more than 30 yards without a rest, western governments have been told.

Diplomats in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, are increasingly convinced that the 65-year-old dictator needs heart surgery to restore his apparently flagging health. He has had to be accompanied by an assistant carrying a chair so that, wherever he goes, he can sit and catch his breath. ...

Kim's public appearances have been curtailed this year and he has appeared in public only 23 times, compared with 42 times at the same point last year - an indication, observers say, of his declining health. The suggestion that he underwent an operation offered an apparent explanation for his recent month-long disappearance from public view.

Last month, German cardiac specialists flew into Pyongyang, which heightened speculation about Kim's health. They later claimed that they treated a scientist, a nurse, and three laborers, but a German team of cardiac specialists doesn't come cheap. It would have been easier for Kim to send the five to Germany if those North Koreans needed the help -- and it stretches the imagination that Kim would have that much concern over a nurse and three workers.

Diplomats also report that Kim has begun to rely on his two sons more than usual. They speculate that Kim may want to test them now for the succession, while he's around to see how they perform. Undoubtedly he wants to ensure a smooth transfer of power to someone in his own family, although the military has made moves towards coups in the past. They will likely resist a furtherance of Kim's dynasty, especially while their nation starves.

Kim will also probably want to get more medical assistance for himself, but he will have to do that within North Korea. The UN sanctions on the DPRK restricts the international movement of Dear Leader while he pursues nuclear weapons. On the bright side, Cuba probably won't honor the sanctions, and Kim can take advantage of the superior medical system Castro offers, except when Castro needs life-saving attention himself.

NARN, The Greatest Generation Edition

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

Today, the entire NARN will be at the dedication of the Minnesota World War II Memorial, broadcasting live from the state Capital. We'll get a chance to interview the heroes of the war and others, as well as review the week's news, including immigration. Be sure to call 651-289-4488 to join the celebration!

JFK Plot Larger Than First Thought

Last night, law enforcement sources told the AP that the investigation into the terror plot to blow up JFK Airport in New York City has expanded beyond the four men now in custody:

The investigation into the thwarted plot to bomb Kennedy International Airport is widening beyond the four men in custody, with more suspects sought outside the U.S. for their suspected roles, a law enforcement official said Friday.

The defendants identified last weekend were "just a piece of it," the official told The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because of not being authorized to speak publicly. "We are definitely seeking more players. We are targeting others overseas."

The official declined to provide details about the possible suspects, or in what countries they are being sought.

All of this is preliminary, and many times investigations go down channels that turn out to be dead ends. However, the men in this plot seemed rather well connected to be just a group of lunatics with delusions of grandeur. Ties to Guyana and Trinidad matched up with already-established patterns for Islamist terrorists known to the FBI and the intelligence community.

The plot went beyond just talk. The plotters had attempted to contact Jamaat al Muslimeen, a known terrorist group. Its previous operations included an attempted coup in Trinidad, as well as murders, kidnappings, and weapons trafficking. The would-be terrorists had already started casing their target, taking pictures and video and gathering as much intel as they could to plot the attack.

This looks like one of the most serious plots brewing in the US since the 9/11 attacks. The most fascinating part of the story is the lack of coverage. We have seen little in any of the major newspapers about the JFK plot since last week, and even though almost all of them use the AP's wire service, none of them reported this development. I'm curious why. (via Michelle Malkin)

The Real Reason The Bill Failed

Yesterday on CQ Radio, I explained why legislators already had an animus for the immigration reform bill outside of its policies. The New York Times follows up on similar lines today (h/t: Gary Gross):

The creation of the bill, too, was highly unorthodox. Even participants in the private negotiations that led to the so-called grand bargain say their very approach created problems, producing contentious legislation embraced by the participants but met with skepticism by other lawmakers, the public and groups like organized labor and conservative research organizations. “The chance to create meaningful immigration reform legislation was lost the moment the bill emerged from its closed-door meeting with an immediate path to amnesty for anywhere from 12 million to 20 million illegal immigrants,” Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, said in hailing the defeat of the bill.

“This agreement was reached between a handful of senators,” said Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, one of the Democrats who balked and voted against limiting debate. “That should not be considered a substitute for deliberation by the full Senate.”

Despite what Rasmussen says this morning, this process failure caused the bill to die on Thursday. The opposition among the electorate had already been factored into the equation by this week, and the bill had built momentum nonetheless. It was the demand for amendments by both sides and the need for lengthy debate that killed it, and the process that created the bill is to blame for both.

Here's what people have forgotten about legislation. Under normal circumstances, a bill comes to the House or Senate floor, and is sent immediately to a relevant committee. That committee assigns it to a subcommittee, which begins deliberation on the proposal. It gets hearings, readings, debate, and amendments at that level, after which it gets sent back to the committee (if it passes at all) and goes through the same process all over again. If the committee approves it, it then goes to the floor of the Senate for more debate and amendments.

And this is why this bill failed. The coalition members arrogated to themselves the role of both committee and subcommittee, bypassing members who serve on those panels. In the case of a bill this broad, it could have come to a number of different committees, all of whose members vyed for the right to deliberate on these very policies. They had their roles usurped by the coalition, and that made them antagonistic at the start.

That's not the only detrimental effect this process had. If the bill had gone through the normal process, it would have spent weeks being reviewed and amended. Even those Senators not directly involved in the process would have had time to speak with those committee members and work indirectly to get their concerns addressed. By the time the bill had hit the floor, Senators would have been well-versed in the particulars of the bill, and most of the main concerns would have been addressed in committee. Under those circumstances, limiting the legislative schedule for the bill to a few days would have made sense.

Not so under the circumstances that this bill came to the floor. The handful of Senators in the coalition never showed the bill to anyone prior to dumping it on the Senate and demanding that the committee process be bypassed and the debate schedule truncated. Even Harry Reid could not abide that kind of arrogance and extended the debate so that people could actually read the bill. The Senate then took on the role of Committee Of The Whole, but on such an accelerated rate that Reid had to ration the number of amendments. In the end, he didn't leave enough time for the bill to have its proper review, and it failed -- and quite properly.

Regardless of the merits and demerits of the bill, this process was atrocious and arrogant. Had the bill come through committee as was proper, we wouldn't have had the parliamentary free-for-all we saw these last two weeks. It would have allowed for interested parties to carefully peruse the legislation, fix its myriad problems, and have an intelligent debate over amendments. Instead, we had the ridiculous fire drill of a nine-day scrum to determine the overhaul of our entire immigration and border security systems, starting in ignorance and ending in ignominy.

The next effort should go through proper channels.

Harry Reid, National Man Of Mystery

The Washington Post reports that the comprehensive immigration reform bill may still rise from the dead as its backers try to cobble together agreement on process. Republicans want ample time to amend the bill and debate the various adjustments, while the Democrats want to spend as little time as possible working on what they see as a White House initiative. Harry Reid has become the center of the puzzle, as people question his real motivations:

Republican and Democratic negotiators believe they can reach agreement by early next week on the official sticking point: which conservative amendments would be considered before final passage. The list must be short enough for time-conscious Democrats, yet substantive enough for Republicans demanding to be heard.

But a second act will come only if Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) allows the immigration issue to return to the floor. And exactly where Reid stands on the bill is one of the many mysteries left smoldering after Thursday's defeat. ...

Reid's motives have been a question mark from day one. Spokesman Jim Manley said his boss was prepared to support the immigration bill on final passage. But advocates had their doubts, given Reid's determination to limit debate, and the green light he gave to one of the bill's Democratic critics to twice offer an amendment to end a guest-worker program after five years. Supporters of the immigration bill viewed the measure, which passed on the second try, as a poison pill.

Whither Reid? He did extend debate on the bill, only reluctantly, after Republicans threatened a filibuster over the original schedule demanded by the bill's authors. He added an extra week and warned that he would not allow the bill to come back if they could not get to a floor vote by that deadline. After cloture went down to defeat in two bipartisan votes, Reid backed away from that statement, offering to allow it to return later in the session.

At the same time, as the Post notes, he allowed Byron Dorgan two bites at the poison pill. The effort to strip the guest worker program out of the bill actually failed the first time Dorgan tried it. The second time, in which he added a five-year sunset provision to kill it later, he surprisingly succeeded, in large measure from efforts by Jim DeMint and other bill opponents to latch onto any poison pill they felt would succeed. Why Reid gave Dorgan a second chance is a question only Reid can answer -- but it undoubtedly killed the bill, and Reid had to know that it would.

Harry Reid remains the key, although in a limited way. He can kill the bill or let it rise again, but he can't get it passed by himself. We will have to wait and see which way he goes, and that will depend in no small manner in how he perceives the White House to cooperate with him and the Democrats this summer. He knows Bush wants this bill badly, and Reid will want to exact a high price to resurrect it.

A Victim? Hardly!

The Paris Hilton saga has become so compelling that many political bloggers who swore off mentioning her have weighed in on the topic, including myself. Hilton got hauled off screaming and crying to jail after having been released by Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca five days into a 45-day sentence, reportedly for becoming too hysterical. Judge Michael T. Sauer ruled that Baca had violated the court's order in releasing her, and sent her back to serve the entire sentence for violating probation on a drunken-driving conviction:

Hilton, who was brought from her home to the court in handcuffs in a sheriff's car, entered the courtroom red-eyed and trembling, and she cried throughout the hour-long hearing, dabbing her face with tissues, biting her knuckles, and shaking her head. She sat slumped at the table throughout the proceeding, wearing a gray sweater, her blond hair pinned up.

Hilton was released from the county jail Thursday by Sheriff Lee Baca because of an undisclosed medical condition, and the sheriff said she would serve the duration of her term confined to her home in the hills above Sunset Strip, wearing an electronic ankle bracelet to monitor her movements. Late in the day, however, she was ordered back to court Friday so Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer could review the situation. ...

Assistant City Attorney Dan Jeffries said "no good cause" was shown by the sheriff for overruling the judge's earlier decision that Hilton serve her time in jail. Jeffries said Hilton's early release "erodes confidence in the judicial system."

Hutton offered to have a private hearing in the judge's chambers to discuss Hilton's condition, but Sauer declined. The judge said he had been promised a medical explanation for her release, but never received it.

For some reason, the plight of this rich heiress has generated a lot of sympathy in the blogosphere, and from some odd places. The Corner's John Podhoretz got quite a bit of e-mail from readers disturbed by Hilton's treatment. Jules Crittenden, while supporting Sauer's action, sounds a sympathetic note as well:

I may be a heartless bastard, and a tabloid vulture to boot. But like the lefties like to say about murderers, rapists, etc., society made her what she is. High society, in her case. And I feel bad for her. How can you look at anyone piteously sobbing on her way to jail and not feel bad for her, when her crime is not murder or rape or even bank robbery but forgetting that the rules apply to her as well. Sort of like how I feel bad for the trainwrecks that are Britney and Lindsay, who are more specifically victims of adults who felt they had to share their little darling’s talent with the world, maybe wanted to live vicariously through their little darling’s accomplishments and make a pile off their darling little asses.

Michael van der Galien agrees with Crittenden, but blames Hilton's parents:

That is exactly how I feel about it as well. I actually feel bad for Paris, I’ve got to admit it.

To her parents: j’accuse!.

This young woman was raised with the idea that the rules do not apply to her. This girl was raised with the idea that money can buy everything. This girl (she’s older than me, but she’s not a woman) was raised with the idea that there is nothing wrong with being stupid and ignorant.

Pardon me for injecting a little conservative thought into all of this, but I have very little sympathy for Ms. Hilton. She has had all of the advantages possible in society, and has shown herself contemptuous to any sense of responsibility. The screaming and crying jag in court only came after she had thrown away her chances to get lenient treatment by lying and evading responsibility for her actions.

Let's not forget why Paris Hilton went to jail. Last January, Hilton got convicted of driving drunk. That killed 18,000 people last year; it's no joke. Hilton didn't have to serve a day in jail for it, either. She got 36 months probation and had her license suspended (in November 2006). She was also ordered into an alcohol education program.

Within a month, she had been arrested twice for driving without a license, and still had not entered the program as ordered. The city prosecuted her for violating her probation and the court order, and convicted her last month. Her defense? She blamed everyone but herself, and even at this last court proceeding, wanted to appear only by telephone. The judge had to order her brought to court.

Paris Hilton is no child. She's twenty-six years old. She has all the money she needs to hire the best lawyers to represent her. For that matter, she had all the money she needed to hire a driver after her license got suspended. Not too many of us have those kinds of resources, but she does, and she decided to flout the law and her probation anyway.

Did her parents bring her up poorly? It seems that way. Does it matter now? No. She's far past the age for taking responsibility for her own actions. Instead, she has acted with contempt for the laws, for the safety of others on the road, and for the court in which she was called to answer for her actions. Paris Hilton deserves no sympathy for her sentence, nor for the crying jag and histrionics she displayed when she finally figured out that she had pushed her self-centeredness just a little too far.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan's got the best line: "It's almost enough to make up for O.J." Would it only be so ...

UPDATE II: I always suspected that Jon Swift was Paris Hilton. Or vice-versa. Or not at all. One of those, anyway.

Also, a few people have written to correct me about the drunk-driving conviction, noting that Hilton got convicted of reckless driving -- which is true, but it was specifically an alcohol-related charge. Bear in mind that her current sentence is for violating her probation, and not the original conviction.

Look Back In Disappointment

Newsweek has a fascinating interview with Rep. John Lewis, talking about the death of Jim Clark, formerly the Sheriff of Selma, Alabama -- and the nemesis of Lewis during the civil-rights movement. Lewis shared a particularly noxious moment in history with Clark, one that defined the movement and shocked America into acknowledging the continuing injustice of Jim Crow.

Lewis had planned to march to Selma with a few hundred followers in order to register black voters in the city. He had run afoul of Clark on several occasions, the most recent an arrest for attempting to take the literacy test used by Alabama at that time to deny the vote to blacks. Lewis expected trouble, but he got much worse. Clark ordered his men, some on horseback, charge the demonstration, beating and trampling the peaceful and unarmed men and women on a bridge coming into town. National media captured the attack on film, and it provided a turning point for Lewis, and Clark as well.

Lewis recounts the story in the interview, but what is striking is the fact that Clark never reconciled himself to the freedom he inadvertently brought to black Alabamans. Unlike other segregationists like George Wallace, who later sought Lewis' forgiveness, Clark refused to repent for his brutality:

Did he ever apologize for his actions, or express any remorse?

No, he never did. I know there were press people that tried to interview him in a little town near where he died and he never, ever showed any sense of remorse. He never asked to be forgiven for what he did. He even told one reporter that he didn't beat John Lewis, that he never hit anyone, that some of us were beaten because we were trying to date some of the local peoples’ wives and girlfriends. He was never able to see the light; he was just never able to come around. There were other people in Selma—the mayor—who called us troublemakers and agitators at the time, [who] came around and said he thought I was one of the bravest human beings he had ever known and if he had been black he would have been doing the same thing. And when we went back to Selma for an anniversary a few years ago as honorary mayor, he hosted a luncheon for us and gave me the keys to the city. Gov. [George] Wallace, who was a friend of Sheriff Clark, asked to be forgiven, but Sheriff Clark never did. ...

To some extent it was the brutality of people like Sheriff Clark that brought the country around on civil rights. Is their some level of appreciation for what his actions did for the movement?

I can appreciate that. I think it was President Kennedy who said that if we ever passed a Civil Rights Act, and he was talking about the act he didn't live to see passed, he said we would have to give credit to Bull Connor. I think we have to give a lot of credit to Clark and other people who beat us because Americans were able to see the contrast. They saw unbelievable, brave, courageous people believing in a dream and participating in nonviolence being beaten and brutalized. And it was the contrast that I think did change America and hasten the day of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. In early 1965, President [Lyndon] Johnson told Dr. [Martin Luther] King we didn't have the vote to pass the Voting Rights Act, but with the reaction of people like Sheriff Clark he created the environment to get the votes to pass the act. That cannot be denied.

I may not agree with Rep. Lewis on policy, but I have tremendous respect for his efforts to ensure the respect for civil rights and the end of Jim Crow. People of my age and younger have grown up with the big battles of the civil-rights movement as history rather than current events, and we don't really have the context of the difficulties that men and women like Lewis had to overcome. It's important to tell the stories of these fights and to understand how an entire nation could have willed itself to avert their eyes to a century of injustice after the end of the Civil War.

Stories of repentance are equally valuable. The men who participated in that oppression who later repented, such as Wallace or the mayor Lewis mentions, shows that we can forgive and heal eventually, and most can finally step outside themselves and allow for empathy with the people they once considered their enemies. Clark, on the other hand, showed that some people can never let go of the bitterness, hatred, and lies that perpetuated Jim Crow. His failure to come to terms with his personal bigotry and his role in brutalizing the citizens of Selma feels like an opportunity lost, a life wasted, a lesson eternally unlearned.

It is said that the only meaning in some lives is to serve as a warning to others. Clark's viciousness doubled back on itself to defeat him in the long run. Unfortunately, he seems to have been one of those examples.

UPDATE: I did write Selma, Georgia at the beginning of the piece, even though I wrote Alabama everywhere else. Yikes. Thanks to Roger in the comments for pointing out my mistake.

CQ Radio: The Generalissimo Returns!

Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), Duane Patterson -- the Generalissimo from the Hugh Hewitt show -- joins me again for a review of the week and to talk about the immigration plan. Duane and I will also discuss the state of the presidential race, Hillary's choice for national co-chair for her campaign, and much more.

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

UPDATE: Duane couldn't make it today, but he will be on the air with me Tuesday instead.

The live player will start automatically if you click on the link to the extended entry. You can also listen from the player on the sidebar.

The Culture Of Corruption, Presidential Version

The midterm election theme of the "culture of corruption" functioned as an argument for Democratic control of Congress, after several scandals rocked the Republican caucuses. The Democrats apparently like the theme so much that they plan to incorporate it into their presidential campaign -- but perhaps not in the manner some might expect (via Big Lizards):

The Clinton Campaign today announced that Florida Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Congressman Alcee Hastings have been named national Campaign Co-Chairs.

"We need a leader with a clear vision and sound judgment, who can work with a Democratic Congress to renew the promise of America. Hillary is that leader," Rep. Wasserman Schultz said.

Rep. Hastings said, "When we elect the next President Clinton, this country will be a much better place for the African-American community, Floridians and all Americans."

Both Reps. Wasserman Schultz and Hastings serve in the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives, and Hastings is the Vice Chair of Florida’s congressional delegation.

That's not all Alcee Hastings is. He's also the last federal judge to get impeached -- and that was by some of Hillary Clinton's current colleagues in Congress. In fact, his impeachment took place less than 20 years ago, and Hastings has long been a controversial figure in the Democratic caucus.

Hastings got appointed to the federal bench by Jimmy Carter in 1979. In less than two years, he got indicted for soliciting a bribe in an FBI sting. In 1983, he won an acquittal, but a subsequent House investigation found that he had committed perjury in that trial. The House Judiciary Committee authorized a whopping seventeen counts for impeachment against Hastings in 1988.

The man chairing Judiciary at the time? None other than John Conyers, Jr, a longtime member of Democratic leadership. In fact, the House voted to impeach Hastings in a massively bipartisan vote of 413-3, and the Senate convicted him on 8 of 11 counts they considered. He became only the sixth federal judge ever removed by impeachment. Hastings attempted to play the race card, but Conyers strongly rejected that, and a majority of the Congressional Black Caucus voted for his impeachment.

This all came out again last year, when Nancy Pelosi started assigning committee chairmanships in expectation of winning the majority in the midterms. It became a major embarassment to Pelosi, who had already angered the CBC with her removal of William Jefferson from the Ways and Means Committee. She wound up having to remove Hastings from her list of committee chairs.

Now Hillary has embraced Hastings, and indeed has made the former perjurer and corrupt judge as her campaign's national representative. She says that with Hastings' help, her "message of change" will get rolled across the country. The message is that the Clinton campaign has its own idea about the culture of corruption -- they want to pursue it.

UPDATE & BUMP, 6/8: A hearty welcome to readers of James Taranto's Best of the Web at OpinionJournal. Take a look around, and be sure to catch CQ Radio at 2 pm CT today, where Duane "Generalissimo" Patterson and I will discuss this story, among others -- and be sure to read the rest of Captain's Quarters!

Will Fred Damage McCain? (Update: No Big Loss?)

The advent of Fred Thompson has been seen by analysts as a challenge to the top three Republican candidates for the presidential nomination -- Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mitt Romney. Conservatives dissatisfied with the options have wanted a traditional conservative with less political baggage to enter the race as a white knight, and so far, Thompson fits the bill. Today, though, the Washington Post reports that McCain may be especially vulnerable to Fred's entry, especially at the organizational level:

John Dowd represented Sen. John McCain in his darkest hour, the "Keating Five" scandal. He supported McCain the first time he ran for president in 2000 and signed up to be a major fundraiser for him in this year's presidential race. But when former senator Fred D. Thompson began thinking about running, the Washington lawyer changed his mind.

For McCain (Ariz.), who started off as the favorite to win the Republican nomination but now trails former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani in most polls, Dowd's move signals yet another threat to his struggling campaign. As Thompson (Tenn.) builds his team of major fundraisers such as Dowd, the challenge for McCain will be to collect the millions of dollars necessary to maintain a nationwide campaign and convince Republicans that he is their best bet to retain the White House.

"I am very sorry to see what's happened to John," Dowd said in an interview. "I don't think his campaign is being well run. It's been over-managed. He blew through $8 1/2 million. It's a difficult thing to leave a friend and go to another friend. But we lost the John McCain I knew."

With the second-quarter deadline for reporting money raised only weeks away, Thompson's decision to become a candidate comes at a particularly bad time for McCain. After the initial fundraising results this year showed him behind former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Giuliani, McCain reorganized his fundraising staff and promised that the results would become apparent on June 30.

Losing Dowd has to hurt, but this seems a bit overwrought. The Post can only point to Dowd for high-level defections from McCain to Thompson, but Fred has attracted others from competing campaigns, too. For instance, Mitt Romney lost Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) ten days ago. Giuliani lost Curt Kiser in Florida to Fred in the key fundraising state, which Fred's campaign has explicitly targeted.

Organization-building will continue through most of this year, and the composition of each will change during the campaign. Backers will come and go depending on the dynamics of the race, including when candidates enter and leave it. Having Dowd leave doesn't help, certainly, but McCain has held onto FedEx chair Frederick Smith in Tennessee. It's just too early to assume that the lineup has been fixed in stone.

McCain has more to fear from Fred's entry on a political basis, and so do Rudy and Mitt. The Republicans have an enthusiasm deficit in the primary race, with supporters increasingly lukewarm for all of the top three candidates. For the most part, they have held their breath for a breakout conservative candidate who could rally the base and get people excited about the 2008 election. Fred has an opportunity to capture that desire, and if he does, he could rapidly outpace the field.

Note: I have not yet congratulated my good friend Jon Henke on his new position at New Media Strategies, working for the Fred campaign. It's a smart move by all involved. Jon is effective and relentless, and as he proved in surviving the Allen campaign, Jon has the right stuff for a national presidential campaign.

UPDATE: I've talked with a source with the McCain campaign, and they emphasize that this story is very overstated. First, Dowd only raised a few thousand dollars for McCain; he is not exactly a rainmaker for the campaign. They also tell me that Dowd informally distanced himself from the campaign weeks ago over McCain's position on torture, a rather fundamental disagreement.

According to the source, the Fred Thompson campaign has already started chatting with McCain's fundraisers, but so far have only Dowd to show for the effort. They expect Fred's team to continue to sound out their donor list, but feel pretty confident that he won't get many takers.

A Modest Proposal Of Dhimmitude

The blogosphere has spent most of the morning scratching its collective head over an op-ed article at Time Out London. It purports to outline all of the beneficial aspects of an Islamist takeover of London, and castigates those who believe in a "hysterical, right-wing nightmare" of dhimmitude. People are unsure whether the author, Michael Hodges, is either a capitulationist or a satirist non pareil. You decide:

On the surface, Islamic health doesn’t look good: the 2001 census showed that 24 per cent of Muslim women and 21 per cent of Muslim men suffered long-term illness and disability. But these are factors of social conditions rather than religion. In fact, Islam offers Londoners potential health benefits: the Muslim act of prayer is designed to keep worshippers fit, their joints supple and, at five times a day, their stomachs trim. The regular washing of the feet and hands required before prayers promotes public hygiene and would reduce the transmission of superbugs in London’s hospitals.

Alcohol is haram, or forbidden, to Muslims. As London is above the national average for alcohol-related deaths in males, with 17.6 per 100,000 people (Camden has 31.6 per 100,000 males), turning all the city’s pubs into juice bars would have a massive positive effect on public health. Forbid alcohol throughout the country, and you’d avoid many of the 22,000 alcohol-related deaths and the £7.3 billion national bill for alcohol-related crime and disorder each year. ...

In an Islamic London, Christians and Jews – with their allegiance to the Bible and the Talmud – would be protected as ‘peoples of the book’. Hindus and Sikhs manage to live alongside a large Muslim population in India, so why not here? Although England has a long tradition of religious bigotry against, for instance, Roman Catholics, it is reasonable to assume that under the guiding hand of Islam a civilised accommodation could be made among faith groups in London. This welcoming stance already exists in the capital in the form of the City Circle (see Yahya Birt interview), which encourages inter-faith dialogue and open discussion.

Hodges doesn't make it easy, but I'm voting for satirist. Hodges easily makes a case for dhimmitude that is worthy of Jonathan Swift, or at least Jon Swift. In fact, Hodges may have used A Modest Proposal as a guidepost to writing this article:

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout. ...

I think the advantages by the proposal which I have made are obvious and many, as well as of the highest importance.

For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of papists, with whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal breeders of the nation as well as our most dangerous enemies; and who stay at home on purpose with a design to deliver the kingdom to the Pretender, hoping to take their advantage by the absence of so many good protestants, who have chosen rather to leave their country than stay at home and pay tithes against their conscience to an episcopal curate.

Secondly, The poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own, which by law may be made liable to distress and help to pay their landlord's rent, their corn and cattle being already seized, and money a thing unknown.

Thirdly, Whereas the maintenance of an hundred thousand children, from two years old and upward, cannot be computed at less than ten shillings a-piece per annum, the nation's stock will be thereby increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, beside the profit of a new dish introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom who have any refinement in taste. And the money will circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture.

The entire piece offers a vision of the "benefits" of accepting Islamic domination and oppression in terms that liberals love. It means an end to junk food, compulsory education (at least for the boys), and end to racism (through religious triumphalism), environmentalism, and so on. It's A Modest Proposal for the age of radical Islamist terror, a surrender document designed to embarass those who would capitulate.

I could be wrong. Michael Hodges could possibly be so intellectually vacuous as to believe in the literal interpretation of what he wrote at TimeOut London. If so, then this serves as an even greater satire, if unintended.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Iowahawk has a great satire based on the satire.

Did George Bush Become A Climate-Change Convert?

The London Telegraph headlines the agreement of George Bush to significantly reduce greenhouse-gas emissions as part of a global effort. They hail his "dramatic" shift on the issue of global warming. Did Bush change American policy -- or did he change the ground conditions for the climate-change debate? At Heading Right, I explain that the only dramatic change came from the rest of the G-8 nations. They decided to stop short of economic suicide, and Bush pulled the gun away from their temples.

UPDATE: Kimberly Strassel at The Wall Street Journal agrees (h/t: CQ commenter onlineanalyst):

Under the vaunted Kyoto, from 2000 to 2004, Europe managed to increase its emissions by 2.3 percentage points over 1995 to 2000. Only two countries are on track to meet targets. There's rampant cheating, and endless stories of how select players are self-enriching off the government "market" in C02 credits. Meanwhile, in the U.S., under the president's oh-so-unserious plan, U.S. emissions from 2000 to 2004 were eight percentage points lower than in the prior period.

Europeans may be slow, but they aren't silly, and they've quietly come around to some of Mr. Bush's views. Tony Blair has been a leader here, and give him credit for caring enough about his signature issue to evolve. He began picking up Mr. Bush's pro-tech themes years ago, as it became clear just how much damage a Kyoto would do to his country's competitiveness. By the end of 2005, he admitted at a conference in New York that Kyoto was a problem. "I would say probably I'm changing my thinking about this in the past two or three years," he said. "The truth is, no country is going to cut its growth or consumption substantially in the light of a long-term environmental problem." He doubted there would be successor to Kyoto, which expires in 2012, and said an alternative might be "incentives" for businesses. Mr. Bush couldn't have said it better.

The other big difference is the inclusion of India and China in the parameters of the deal. That also came straight from Bush, who held fast on that demand -- a bipartisan demand from Congress.

Roll Out The Pork Barrel For HASC

The Hill reports on an old-fashioned pork pull at the House Armed Services Committee, but only a few select guests can enjoy the festivities. Appropriators on the HASC have earmarked millions of dollars that primarily benefit their lobbyist friends. The top two offenders show the bipartisan nature of pork:

Rep. Jim Saxton (R-N.J.), ranking member of the Air and Land Forces defense subcommittee, reaped the most money from employees working at firms that would benefit from his funding requests.

During the last election cycle and the first three months of this year, Saxton’s campaign collected 118 contributions worth $91,000 from the employees and political action committees (PACs) of firms such as Lockheed Martin, L-3 Communications, Price Systems and NetIDEAS.

Saxton has also requested millions of dollars in project spending for these companies. He solicited $3 million for L-3 Communications, which has a facility in Camden, N.J., to develop a high-resolution digital recorder; and $25 million in additional funding for Lockheed Martin to work on the Aegis ballistic missile defense system.

That's the blue ribbon in this national hog-calling contest. The Democrats get second and third place:

Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-Ind.) requested $5.98 million for AmeriQual, a company based in his district, to develop high-pressure packaging for the military. Employees of AmeriQual contributed over $10,000 to his campaign during the first three months of this year. They gave around $5,000 in the 2006 election cycle. ...

Since January, Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) received 27 contributions totaling $7,500 from employees of Electric Boat, based in Groton, Conn. Courtney asked the leaders of his committee to authorize an additional $70 million for Electric Boat’s “Virginia Class” submarine program.

By the way, both Ellsworth and Courtney are freshmen in the new, anti-Culture of Corruption Congress. They got elected by running on that same campaign plank that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid articulated all during last year -- that the Republicans had grown too cozy with lobbyists and too corrupt as a result. It didn't take long for the Democrats to pick up where their Republican predecessors left off.

Others receive honorable mention from The Hill. They include Duncan Hunter, currently running for President, who got thousands from the employees of companies that received his earmarks. Loretta Sanchez got thousands from the corporate PACs of Orange County, CA companies that received her largesse, as well as thousands more from an employee group at a lobbying firm that represents defense contractors. Marty Meehan also got thousands from five companies that benefitted from his line-item approach to appropriations.

That's the entire problem. Instead of simply funding the Pentagon and allowing them to make the decisions on spending, Congress has allowed its members to specify the allocations themselves. That gives the appropriators very specific control on how the Pentagon operates, which in theory sounds great, but in practice gives politicians far too much power and creates an almost-irresistable impulse for corruption.

If earmarks were eliminated, the lobysists would not spend millions of dollars on re-election campaigns. It would make it a bit more difficult for incumbents to run for re-election, although not all that much more of a burden from their current 96% re-election rate. They would have little leverage over other members of Congress as well, who must kowtow to the appropriators in order to get their funding priorities addressed.

We know the problem. We need to elect representatives who want to eliminate it. So far, the Democrats have proven incapable of doing so, just as the Republicans did for the previous twelve years.

What's Next For Immigration?

The "grand compromise" died in an ignominious fashion last night, with supporters of the bill unable to garner even a simple majority to end debate in the Senate. In the end, the bill's overall opponents seized on a poison pill amendment that they knew would fracture the coalition supporting it, even though they themselves didn't really support the thrust of the amendment itself. Does that mean that they managed to kill the bill altogether, or will it arise from its current coma?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) immediately announced that he would pull the bill from consideration and move on to energy legislation. But he left open the possibility that lawmakers could still reach a decision on immigration legislation and called on Bush to do more to help.

"Even though I'm disappointed, I look forward to passing this bill," Reid said after the vote. "There are ways we can do this. There's lots of support for this bill on the outside; the problem was on the inside of this chamber. ...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), citing "the disastrous status quo that we have on immigration in America today," insisted that Democrats could have gotten the bill passed had they allowed Republicans to vote on more amendments. The effort may have collapsed, in part, because of a dispute over as few as two GOP amendments. Reid said that he offered Republicans up to eight more amendments, but Republicans apparently wanted 10 or 12.

Although McConnell acknowledged that some Republicans would never vote for the bill, he rebuked Reid for not trying harder to win over more moderate Republicans. "The key is the rest of us," McConnell said. "We could have finished this bill in a couple of more days."

McConnell added that he hoped Reid would bring the bill up again soon. "I wouldn't wait a whole long time to do it," he warned.

Procedurally, the Senate can revisit the legislation any time they want. However, it seems unlikely that they will try again this session. The members of the coalition took a beating from their constituents over the last three weeks, and for some, the political moment has passed. They do not want to sail back into those waters, at least not without a guarantee of achieving something that would make the journey worth the pain.

Part of the reason for the heated emotions was the process by which the bill came to the Senate. Reid complained about having to have so much time eaten up by amendments, but the bill took an unusual path to the Senate floor. Most of those amendments could have been offered in committee, but the backroom deal that cobbled the legislation together bypassed that process altogether. Quite obviously, enough Senators from both parties had enough problems with the massive overhaul that it shows the benefits of normal legislative process, rather than having something this complicated suddenly show up with only two weeks to parse it.

In the end, that's why Jim DeMint and other Republicans voted to sunset a guest-worker program they support -- because they couldn't stop the process any other way:

Shortly after midnight yesterday, DeMint returned to the floor and, along with three conservative Republican colleagues, voted in favor of the same measure he had opposed, to sunset the program after five years. Not that DeMint has anything against guest workers. He supports the idea. But weakening the guest-worker program would leave the bill in tatters -- and in the twisted logic of the Senate, that served DeMint's greater goal of derailing the legislation.

"If it hurts the bill, I'm for it," DeMint explained matter-of-factly.

The early-morning vote shocked members of the bipartisan coalition who have struggled to pass an immigration bill, one of the most complex and controversial that Congress has tackled in years. Leaders in both parties condemned the GOP switchers for conspiring to sabotage legislation that had taken countless delicate negotiating sessions to craft. And that was exactly the intent. The four new votes were the result of an aggressive last-minute lobbying campaign by the legislation's Democratic and Republican critics.

I doubt they were shocked, and if they were, it speaks to a certain amount of hubris evident from the first moments of this compromise. The coalition demanded a fast-track process to a floor vote and asserted that they would not allow more than a handful of amendments. They originally wanted only a week to debate the bill, but pressure from Republicans got that extended to two weeks.

In contrast, for just a simple budget supplemental for troops under fire, Congress took over 15 weeks to debate and produce a bill. For an overhaul of immigration, Border Patrol, and national-security processes, the Senate could spare only ten legislative days.

Mickey Kaus says that the bill is "just resting", and technically that's true. However, the bill's backers just learned that the Senate, and especially the Republican caucus, will not allow them to stuff a bill down their throats. They also learned that their constituents do not trust Congress to do what it says on border security, and that they have no credibility at all selling "triggers" and normalization in one package.

If they paid attention at all, they would understand that they need to rebuild credibility by tackling the issues in order. Build the security fence they passed last year first, and bolster the Border Patrol. Fix the visa management system that had been mandated for completion two years ago. Once those border-control solutions are in place and working, then debate normalization -- and I think they will find the American public more willing to work with them.

UPDATE: The Fishwrap at the Washington Times has a round-up of reactions from last night.

The Next Children's Crusade

In the thirteenth century, the fabled (and almost certainly mythical) Children's Crusade set out to bring peace to the Holy Land. According to the legend, a young boy proselytized throughout central Europe that Jesus had told him in a vision that an army of pure children could liberate Jerusalem just by showing up, and that the waters of the Mediterranean would part to greet them when they arrived in Italy. They set out in boats instead, sail to Tunisia -- where they all get sold into slavery and are never heard from again, even in legend.

One might think that anyone relying on this kind of strategy 800 years later would automatically discredit himself as a leader. However, John Edwards thinks this is a better way to fight terror than actually fighting terror:

Senator Edwards is outlining a new national security strategy that hinges on the creation of a 10,000-person civilian peace corps to stem the tide of terrorism in weak and unstable countries.

Mr. Edwards's plan, which he presented in Manhattan yesterday, comes less than a week after he called President Bush's war on terror a "bumper sticker slogan" and said the current national security strategy has not made America safer. ...

The plan Mr. Edwards presented yesterday — which he dubbed "A Strategy to Shut Down Terrorists and Stop Terrorism Before It Starts" — calls for a 10,000-person "Marshall Corps" to deal with issues ranging from worldwide poverty and economic development to clean drinking water and micro-lending. He said investing in those areas would shore up weak nations and help ensure that terrorism does not take root there. That, he said, would allow the country to stop potential terrorists before they even join the ranks.

There are "thousands committed to violence" today, he said, and America needs to use all of its tools to go after them. But he said millions more people are "sitting on the fence" about whether to join those ranks. "We have to offer them a hand to our side instead of a shove to the other side of that fence," he said.

Mr. Edwards proposed creating a Cabinet-level position to oversee the initiative, which he said would require international allies.

It's the Peace Corps under another name. That's not a bad thing; after all, the Peace Corps did good work in helping make life easier in small ways for destitute peoples. It has done little to stem the rise of terror, mostly because it isn't designed to do that.

And, in fact, George Bush has already pledged to double the number of Peace Corps volunteers who go abroad. The number is already over the 10,000 Edwards wants for his "Marshall Corps", and funding has increased significantly already since the 9/11 attacks. But even at its height of 15,000 volunteers abroad in 1966, those volunteers served in 44 nations, or roughly 360 per country, which won't do much to alleviate the conditions for terrorism in the nations afflicted by it.

Why? Primarily, terrorism stems from political oppression and radical Islamist theology. The Peace Corps, or Edwards' redundant Marshall Corps, would do little for the former and would likely aggravate the latter. Poverty doesn't have much to do with terrorism, as terrorists today prove. Most of them come from educated classes, with the exception of the saps they get to carry out suicide attacks. The main leaders of al-Qaeda and most of the 9/11 attackers all came from either middle-class or wealthy families and had been well-educated.

Ten thousand people dedicated to clean water, worldwide poverty, and economic development won't make a dent. Ten million people dedicated to those missions might have a chance of changing some conditions on the ground on a wide enough area to help prevent some local frustrations throughout the world from turning violent. Even then, what it does is to help perpetuate the bad political situation in these nations by giving the regimes a safety valve for the kinds of conditions that could help bring real political change. It's the kind of foreign aid that sounds good in the short term but which does real damage in the long term.

John Edwards keeps trying to show us that he is not a serious candidate. This Children's Crusade should cinch that.

Final Cloture Motion? (Update: Failed!)

The Senate has now begun voting on what Harry Reid threatened would be the final cloture vote for the immigration reform bill. So far, while the counting still has taken place, I have counted 32 votes against cloture. Opponents of the bill only need nine more to defeat the bill altogether, and they have a few Democrats among them.

NOTE: They have added four more, all Democrats. This seems to be the end of the compromise.

7:40 - Michelle Malkin is also live-blogging this, and I've heard four more against. All they need is one more, and I think they'llhave it shortly.

7:43 - As I count it, Rockefeller's No pushed it over the edge, but Landrieu and McCaskill presented some insurance. If no one changes their vote -- and they still can -- the bill is toast.

7:44 - Jon Kyl voted against cloture. So did Bingaman.

7:46 - Trent Lott voted against cloture -- after that scolding he delivered and that Hugh Hewitt captured so well? You think he heard from a few constituents on that one?

7:57 - Down in flames. The bill's sponsors could only get 45 votes for cloture, and 50 against.

7:59 - Harry Reid's blaming the collapse on Republican objections on votes for amendments. "Small groups shouldn't dictate what goes on around here." The bill is now off the floor, but Reid wants to bring it back later in the "next several weeks". Ten Democrats voted against cloture, but it's still the fault of the GOP.

8:03 - More Reid, as he moans about a high-school senior who claimed she couldn't go to college because her parents were illegal. Huh? She could have gone -- but she couldn't get tax subsidies. In other words, she couldn't qualify for her tuition to be paid by you and me. I'm in favor of normalization after the borders are secured, but we don't need to add more entitlements on top of what we already have.

Maybe now, Congress will do something serious. Secure the border, in part by building the fence Congress authorized and funded last year. Fix the visa program so that people can be properly tracked, as Congress demanded be done by 2005. Bolster the Border Patrol so that they can get the job done. When Congress has done that and rebuilt some of the credibility that they have tossed away over the last 21 years, then let's talk about normalization in a rational manner, and without adding entitlement programs like the DREAM Act.

8:20 - Last update, I think. Harry Reid talked about how he gave the bill lots and lots of time, but the Republicans wanted too many amendments and too much time from the busy legislative schedule.

Hmm. Funny about that. Isn't this the same Democratic leadership that took 108 days just to pass a spending bill for our troops in Iraq? How many weeks is that? I'll help -- over 15 weeks. That's 7 times longer than Reid wanted to give a historic overhaul of our immigration system.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Dollar Bill's Money On Ice -- Again!

Rep. William Jefferson finds himself almost back to square one regarding his finances as a result of the corruption investigation of his alleged corruption. The year after the FBI found $90,000 in cash inside Jefferson's freezer, a judge has frozen his assets:

A federal judge in Virginia issued a restraining order to freeze the assets of Louisiana Democrat, Representative William Jefferson, including stocks he owned from two West African companies.

Jefferson was indicted Monday on charges he solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes.

The congressman is facing 16 criminal counts including a forfeiture count. Federal prosecutors have said they will seek to recoup hundreds of thousands of dollars from Jefferson that they believe he obtained illicitly by peddling his influence to help broker business deals in Africa.

The man who redefined cold cash will now have to watch his accounts and assets frozen by federal authorities. They'll need to bring lots of coolers -- according to NBC, his assets are substantial. He has almost a half-million dollars in the bank, under the name of the ANJ Group. He also has almost 31 million shares of stock in iGate, and another 1.5 million shares in a Nigerian corporation, and yet another 1.5 million in International Broad Band Services.

How did Jefferson gather these kinds of assets as a Congressman?

We still have not seen much action from Congress in dealing with Jefferson. The Congressional Black Caucus still supports Jefferson, as The Hill reported today. They want no action taken at all until Jefferson goes to trial, which puts Democratic leadership in a bind. It will be uncomfortable, to say the least, to have Jefferson on the Small Business committee, and provide a sharp counterpoint to Nancy Pelosi's efforts to push ethics reform legislation.

They're freezing Dollar Bill's assets, but I suspect that it might be a little chilly in the Democratic caucus in the House as well.

Andy McCarthy On Libby

I probably should post this as an update to my earlier post on Bill Otis' suggestion of a commutation, but this post by Andy McCarthy sums up my feelings about Scooter Libby and his conviction and sentencing. The long-time federal prosecutor explains why conservatives do themselves no favors by engaging in partisan invective -- and do Scooter Libby no favors, either:

Not that Scooter Libby has asked for my advice, but I also must say that that the ardor of his supporters — including, I believe, NR — has hurt him, and hurt the conservative movement, in very fundamental ways. As to him personally, all this passionate rhetoric about his heroic service to the United States, how the investigation should never have happened, and how he got unfairly singled out and screwed (all of which I agree with) would be fine if it weren't obscuring something fairly important: Lying to the FBI and a grand jury is a very bad thing, even if we all think it was an unworthy investigation.

The blather about the foibles of memory is just an excuse for people who don't want to confront that inconvenient fact. Foibles of memory come up in every trial — they were particularly highlighted in the Libby trial because the defense hoped to score points with them given the nature of the charges, but they were not materially different from what happens in every trial. That's why we have juries.

Witnesses have varying recollections, and juries sort it out. The evidence that Libby lied, rather than that he was confused, was compelling. And the jury was dilligent: the post-verdict commentary showed that they liked and felt sorry for him, several thought there should have been no case, some openly hoped for a pardon, and on the one count where the evidence was considerably weaker than the others, they acquitted him. They convicted him on the other four charges, reluctantly, because they had no choice if they were going to honor their oaths. And I respectfully think it's very presumptuous of people who were not there and did not spend nearly the time and attention the jurors did on Libby's case, to continue saying that the jury got it wrong and this was just a case of faulty memory.

By ignoring all that, and by railing as if Libby deserves an apology rather than acknowledging that he did a bad thing, Libby's supporters have made it easier for him to avoid doing something that would have put him in much better stead with the sentencing judge and would position him much better for a pardon: Utter the words "I'm sorry," in a way that communicates an awareness and some real contrition over the lying. Judges who've sat on cases where the evidence of wrongdoing is compelling expect a defendant — especially a smart, accomplished defendant — to express awareness and remorse; when the defendant fails to do that, it is not at all unusual for a judge to hammer him. The message from Scooter supporters here and elsewhere that he's got nothing to apologize for is not doing him any favors.

Andy says he dreads the next time a high-ranking liberal Democrat lies to investigators. When conservatives call for his head, a lot of what has been written and said in this debate will get thrown back in our faces. They will claim that we don't really care about perjury and obstruction of justice, but only about who we punish for it.

It's good advice, and people should read the entire essay. Our good friend Beldar has a speech to go with a presidential commutation, if Libby gets denied bail during his appeal.

CQ Radio: Dr. Kevin Fleming & Health Care

Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), I'll talk with Dr. Kevin Fleming about single-payor health care. Dr. Fleming wrote an interesting study on this topic for the Heritage Foundation, and we'll ask him about current political postures on renovating the American health-care system. His commentary here at CQ has generated some controversy, and CQ Radio listeners can ask him questions directly at 646-652-4889!

UPDATE: Tomorrow, Duane Patterson -- the Generalissimo from the Hugh Hewitt show -- joins me again for a review of the week and to talk about the immigration plan.

I have the live player in the extended entry, so click on the link below for the stream to automatically start!

Immigration Cloture Fails

The Senate's immigration-reform coalition took a big hit a few moments ago. The upper chamber refused cloture on the comprehensive reform bill, meaning that unlimited debate will continue for the foreseeable future. The motion asked to limit the debate to 30 more hours, which would have produced a vote early next week at the latest.

This puts Harry Reid in a tough spot. He originally said that he would take immigration off the calendar if it could not be resolved by Monday. He now has to ask for another cloture vote, which would have to take place tomorrow at the earliest -- and given that only 33 people voted to end debate, he has an almost insurmountable obstacle to success.

I think the immigration bill just died. More in a moment.

UPDATE: All of the Republican caucus voted to block the bill, and got 15 Democrats and Vermont's Independent Bernie Sanders to go along with them. Those included Claire McCaskill, Max Baucus, Barbara Boxer, and more. This is a stiff loss for the coalition.

UPDATE II: Harry Reid backed down from his previous hard-line approach and said he would give the bill more time:

Still, the measure — a top priority for President Bush that's under attack from the right and left — got a reprieve when Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record), D-Nev., said he would give it more time before yanking the bill and moving on to other matters.

"We need to complete this marathon," Reid said.

His decision set the stage for yet another procedural vote later Thursday that will measure lawmakers' appetite for a so-called "grand bargain" between liberals and conservatives on immigration.

I figured he would do that. We'll see whether he can reverse the Dorgan amendment that has put a stake in the heart of the bill.

Was The Libby Sentence 'Extreme'?

The sentencing of Scooter Libby has created a firestorm of protest in the blogosphere, and even in the Republican presidential primary contest. Most of the candidates said they would consider a pardon, if elected and if George Bush has not issued one before then. Most of those have based their point on the notion that Libby should never have been prosecuted in the first place. However, the man who helped get Caspar Weinberger his pardon disagrees, but suggests that a commutation may be a better option (via Power Line):

Scooter Libby should not be pardoned. But his punishment -- 30 months in prison, two years' probation and a $250,000 fine -- is excessive. President Bush should commute the sentence by eliminating the jail term while preserving the fine.

There is a legal principle at stake in this case greater than either Libby or the politics of the moment. It is a fundamental rule of law that the grand jury is entitled to every man's evidence. The grand jury cannot survive as the essential truth-finding tool it is if witnesses can lie with impunity. True, Libby committed a "process crime" -- that is, so far as has been established in court or even alleged by the prosecutor, he committed no crime until after the government initiated its investigation of the underlying act (namely, the revelation of Valerie Plame's CIA employment). But for obvious reasons it is not for grand jury witnesses to determine when an investigation is legitimate. As the Supreme Court has noted, there are many ways to challenge questions one believes the government should not be asking, but "lying is not one of them."

U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton noted that there was ample evidence that Libby intentionally lied. Jurors took care (they did not convict on all counts), and the evidence before them makes it hard to believe that Libby's misstatements were merely a product of poor memory or confusion. The case was proved, and the conviction should not simply be wiped away.

Yet the sentence is another matter. Neither vindication of the rule of law nor any other aspect of the public interest requires that Libby go to prison. He is by no stretch a danger to the community, as "danger" is commonly understood. He did not commit his crime out of greed or personal malice. Nor is his life one that bespeaks a criminal turn of mind. To the contrary, as letters to the court on his behalf overwhelmingly established, he has been a contributor to his community and his country. And whether or not we agree, we cannot dismiss out of hand the notion that Libby thought he was serving his country by his overall conduct in this episode, specifically by letting it be known, truthfully, that it was not the White House that tapped Joseph Wilson to look into whether Saddam Hussein had sought uranium in Niger.

This sounds like a better option to me. Like Bill Otis, I cannot just disregard a jury's conviction and claim no crime occurred. They found Libby guilty on four of five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice -- crimes that go to the heart of our justice system. Whether or not the investigation in question resulted in an indictment on the original charges, we cannot allow people to lie and obstruct justice, even when they believe they act with the best intentions. Keeping the conviction and the fine while commuting the prison sentence would be a good middle ground to acknowledging the adventuresome nature of Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation, and it also allows Libby to continue to pursue his appeals on the conviction.

However, I'm struck by the notion that the sentence is extreme or excessive. Federal sentencing guidelines for perjury and obstruction are pretty clear, as my friend Jeralyn Merritt points out. Obstruction of justice is a level 14 crime for sentencing purposes, and even with no criminal record, a single count at that level brings a 15-21 month sentence, as the DoJ chart shows. It also carries a 3-level upgrade if "the offense resulted in substantial interference with the administration of justice." That puts Libby's level at 17, with a 24-30 month sentence. If the defendant/convict abused a position of "special trust" -- and as a high-ranking government official, Libby qualifies -- the level on sentencing has to be increased two levels to 19. That puts the potential sentence at 30-37 months -- and that's not accounting for multiple convictions for perjury.

Federal judges do not have a lot of leeway on sentencing. That's because conservatives insisted on these sentencing guidelines more than twenty years ago, frustrated with a judiciary that gave too many slaps on the wrist. They work well, too, but they tie the hands of federal judges. Judge Reggie Walton expressed sorrow and frustration at the sentencing, but his hands were mostly tied. As I wrote earlier this week, the convictions made the sentencing an anticlimax, and Walton appears to have actually taken it easy on Libby. Walton's only other option would have been to vacate the convictions, but he had no real legal basis on which to do that.

I believe Bush will wait for the appeals process to run its course before inteceding on Libby's behalf in any way. If he does intercede, he would be better advised to take Otis' advice.

UPDATE: On the other hand, we have a great example of California justice in ... must not type these two words ... Paris Hilton. (AAARGH!) Shaun Mullen notes that she got out of a 45-day sentence after just five days by -- wait for it -- crying:

As everyone but those hundreds of tortured souls rotting in Gitmo surely know by now, the hotel heiress was streeted only five days into her 23-day sentence (already reduced from 45 days) in a celebrity lockup for repeatedly driving drunk.

The reason: Paris couldn’t sleep and had become a sniveling mess. She will serve the rest of her sentence at home with a tracking device attached to her ankle.

The New York Post said she was seen crying after she cracked “under the pressure of prison.”

May Libby can go for a sobutation instead. Californians should be embarrassed.

UPDATE II: Back to the substance of the matter. The Los Angeles Times reminds us of who appointed Walton, and why:

That Walton would put the Bush administration in an uncomfortable position of having to consider a politically charged pardon for Libby is highly ironic: The 58-year-old jurist was one of the first appointments that Bush made to the federal bench in October 2001, a prime example of a new law-and-order mentality that the administration wanted to infuse in the courts.

"Bush wanted people to know that 'I appoint tough guys to the bench,' " said Roscoe Howard, the U.S. attorney in Washington during Bush's first term. "They appointed him just for what he did to Scooter; they were just not expecting it to happen to Scooter." ...

The 2 1/2 year sentence was within the range of guidelines that the Bush administration has created and espoused for federal judges to follow to ensure that defendants are punished the same regardless of the judge hearing their case. The administration and Republican members of Congress have admonished other judges who give defendants a break under the guidelines — as lawyers for Libby sought Tuesday when they asked Walton to give him probation only.

As I noted above, that get-tough attitude was needed on the federal bench. Walton did what he got appointed to do -- and given the guidelines, may have taken it a little easy on Libby.

An Answer For Mr. Henninger

Daniel Henninger takes his fellow conservatives to task for their emotional opposition to the comprehensive immigration reform bill currently under debate in the Senate. At Heading Right, I answer his question -- and remind him that conservatives support solutions that work instead of putting process on the pedestal.

Lindsay Graham Melting In Dark (Update: The Video Is Even Better)

I've been following the coverage of the immigration bill by Michelle Malkin, who really redefines the term "tireless". No one else could stay awake through hours of Senate coverage a day and make it seem exciting in the recaps, and people should make sure they're keeping pace with her live-blog posts. Start at the top and keep scrolling.

Michelle also picked up this story about a contretemps between Lindsay Graham and Barack Obama, when the latter introduced an amendment that would have capped the points-based entry system. Graham apparently took great exception to this amendment. He berated Obama on the floor of the Senate, and then continued scolding the freshman Senator outside the chamber:

The amendment infuriated Graham, a South Carolina Republican with close ties to another presidential hopeful, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Pacing the Senate floor and waving Obama's amendment, Graham loudly accused Obama of undermining a delicate agreement whose advocates have shown political courage.

Issues that require bipartisanship often fail, Graham said, "because some people, when it comes to the tough decisions, back away." Obama's amendment, he said, would destroy the bill's prospects and bring special woe to Republicans—such as himself—who have endured conservatives' searing criticism for backing it.

It would undercut "everybody over here who's walked the plank and told our base, 'You're wrong,'" Graham said. "So when you're out on the campaign trail, my friend, tell them about why we can't come together. This is why."

Obama briefly appeared stunned and demanded time to respond. The notion that his amendment would gut the bill "is simply disingenuous" he said. "It's engaging in the sort of histrionics that is entirely inappropriate for this debate."

Almost immediately, the two men continued the argument in a hall just outside the chamber. "They were going at it," said Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla. "We could hear them inside."

Barack Obama chalked it up to too much caffeine and the long hours of debate on the bill. Graham later said that he likes Obama but found the amendment disappointing. Both men seemed to want it put behind them after Obama's amendment failed.

It's not the first time Graham has been reduced to histrionics on this topic. He lashed out at opponents of the bill as "bigots" in this appearance at a La Raza event last month. It comes at the end of this four-minute clip, most of which is completely unobjectionable:

When politicians get hysterical about criticism, I generally tend to think that the criticism has struck home. In this case, Graham apparently realizes that he has risked his career on a compromise bill that everyone genuinely hates. While he has a good point in the difficulties of solving problems that have a high degree of both partisanship and emotion, Graham has acted to throw gasoline on the fire of at least the latter by lashing out irrationally at those who simply think this bill is too flawed, regardless of the efforts made by reasonable people to compromise.

Graham mistakes process for results. The bill's opponents don't have any requirement to validate Graham's risks on behalf of bad legislation, no matter how well-intentioned those efforts were. It's hard to credit him much with even good faith, though, as long as he engages in name-calling and red-faced tirades when challenged on the merits of the legislation. He's become a petulant child rather than a cool-headed legislator, and quite frankly, it destroys the credibility of the bill as well as Graham.

UPDATE: OK, you have to see the video at Hot Air. It's priceless. Graham looks like a petulant child as well as sounding like one.

Go Away, Kid, Ya Bother Us

Robert Novak reports that John Edwards has problems within the Democratic Party, even though his candidacy seems to have gained some momentum in Iowa. He has disenchanted the power brokers with his move towards class warfare, and the revelations of his financial dealings make the Democrats very nervous about Edwards as a potential nominee:

Even though Edwards may end up being the party's nominee, prominent Democrats are surprisingly candid about him. Mark Siegel, a 35-year party insider, told me: "He came to Washington as a 'New Democrat,' but he's not that kind of Democrat anymore. He's into class warfare."

Edwards has not worn well with party colleagues. Campaign consultant Bob Shrum was enthusiastic about Edwards after working on his 1998 Senate victory in North Carolina and unsuccessfully advised Gore to make him his 2000 running mate. But Shrum chose Kerry over Edwards as his 2004 presidential client. In his newly published memoir, "No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner," Shrum explains: "I was coming to believe he wasn't ready; he was a Clinton who hadn't read the books."

During the 2004 primaries, Democratic activist James Carville was enchanted when Edwards shifted his centrist posture to a populist depiction of "Two Americas." Carville told me -- and then repeated it on CNN -- that Edwards was the best stump speaker he ever had seen. When I asked him this week whether he still thought that was true, Carville replied: "Maybe he's not as good now."

In fact, Edwards's populist rhetoric sounds about the same today as it did three years ago. The big change is his performance away from the podium. Seldom has a presidential candidate undergone a trifecta like Edwards's this year -- reports of the $400 haircut, a $55,000 honorarium from University of California at Davis for a speech on poverty and the $500,000 hedge fund salary -- without his campaign imploding.

Novak has been in DC for decades and has plenty of connections. He got two significant sources on the record, too, including the Mouth of the South, discussing their unhappiness with Edwards. Novak also reports, without naming sources, that the unions may not throw their support to Edwards due to their questions about his viability even in the primaries.

Still, Novak is known more for keeping his finger on the pulse of conservatism than populism. Carville's site says that he no longer accepts consulting clients for domestic political races, but given his connections to the Clintons, one has to take his remarks to Novak with a grain of salt. If Edwards wins Iowa and shows well in New Hampshire and South Carolina, all of this quibbling will fall by the wayside.

Without a doubt, Edwards is a problem -- a man who has served a single term in public office, and spent half of that running for President the first time. In a general election, his inexperience and strident class-warfare rhetoric will almost certainly doom the Democrats, who would have then blown two easy chances in a row to win the White House. In fact, that's what makes this part of Novak's column so hilarious:

So Edwards must rely on true believers who will brave the bitter Iowa cold in the dark of night to attend caucuses. That's the kind of voter impressed by Edwards lashing out at Obama and especially Clinton on the war. Iowa Democrats in 2004 pulled back from catastrophe at the 11th hour and abandoned Howard Dean when they contemplated the impact of a Dean victory. Party leaders hope Iowans will take a similarly hard look at John Edwards.

Well, sure, Iowans did that -- and they selected John Kerry, maybe the only other man in the primaries who could have lost that election to George Bush outside of Howard Dean and John Edwards. They pulled back from catastrophe and instead selected mediocrity ... an improvement to be sure, but still a loser. If the Democrats hope to get the same kind of rescue in Iowa that they did in 2004, they may wind up with Dennis Kucinich as the nominee.

Kiss And Make Up, Jihadi Style

The reports that al-Qaeda in Iraq had been attacked by another terrorist group, Islamic Army of Iraq, turns out to be true -- and unfortunately short-lived. Instead of the prospect of two insurgent groups decimating each other, they have announced a truce:

A Sunni insurgent group that waged a deadly street battle last week against the rival group al-Qaeda in Iraq in a Sunni neighborhood of west Baghdad announced Wednesday that the two forces had declared a cease-fire.

The Islamic Army of Iraq, a more moderate and secular Sunni group, said it had reached the cease-fire with al-Qaeda in Iraq because the groups did not want to spill Muslim blood or damage "the project of jihad."

Last week, the two groups fought for several days in the Sunni neighborhood of Amiriyah, leaving about 30 of their fighters dead. Residents of the neighborhood and leaders from the Islamic Army, which reportedly is made up of mostly Sunnis from the disbanded army of Saddam Hussein, said they had risen up against al-Qaeda in Iraq because it was imposing strict rules on the neighborhood and killing fellow Sunnis without evidence of wrongdoing.

In a statement posted on the Internet, the Islamic Army said the groups had agreed to end all military operations against each other, stop criticizing each other in the media, and stop taking prisoners. The groups would create "a judicial committee" to resolve differences, the statement said.

Some of the elements fighting AQI apparently were unaffiliated civilians, as first reported. However, the bulk of the fighting came from IAI, which the Post describes as "more secular" despite its name. The IAI also refers to the "project of jihad", which doesn't sound terribly secular either.

Judicial committees aside, it's hard to see this truce holding for very long. Both terrorist groups want absolute control, and they will not give up power to govern the region peacefully. If they wanted to govern, they would have run for office. This is the pause that refreshes gun magazines, and not much more.

An Amendment Too Far

All this week, Republicans have tried to find a "killer amendment" that would fracture the coalition supporting the comprehensive immigration reform bill in the Senate. Ironically, it may have come from a Democrat, as the Senate surprisingly approved Byron Dorgan's amendment to end the guest-worker program after five years:

A fragile compromise that would legalize millions of unlawful immigrants risks coming unraveled after the Senate voted early Thursday to place a five-year limit on a program meant to provide U.S. employers with 200,000 temporary foreign workers annually.

The 49-48 vote came two weeks after the Senate, also by a one-vote margin, rejected the same amendment by Sen. Byron Dorgan. The North Dakota Democrat says immigrants take many jobs Americans could fill.

The reversal dismayed backers of the immigration bill, which is supported by President Bush but loathed by many conservatives. Business interests and their congressional allies were already angry that the temporary worker program had been cut in half from its original 400,000-person-a-year target.

A five-year sunset, they said, could knock the legs from the precarious bipartisan coalition aligned with the White House. The Dorgan amendment "is a tremendous problem, but it's correctable," said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa. The coalition will try as early as Thursday to persuade at least one senator to help reverse the outcome yet again, he said.

The amendment not only came from a Democrat, it passed with mostly Democratic votes. Eleven Republicans voted to support the amendment, only a portion of the bill's GOP opponents:

Bunning (R-KY)
Corker (R-TN)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dole (R-NC)
Enzi (R-WY)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Sununu (R-NH)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)

Amusingly, these ten voted in support of the labor unions. Dorgan drafted the bill to protect the interests of the unions, who see the guest worker program as a threat to their members. After all, temporary workers will have little leverage for collective bargaining, especially since the workforce turns over every two years. That's why Dorgan's amendment has the support of Senators like Barbara Boxer, Carl Levin, and Chuck Schumer.

The compromise coalition will pressure at least some of these Senators to reverse themselves starting today. One of the first people who will feel it will be Chris Dodd. He missed the vote and the opportunity to stop the amendment with a tie vote. They may go after one of the rookies, like Jon Tester of Montana, where business interests in a guest-worker program may have more impact than on a Barbara Boxer.

The day had gone well for the coalition before this. They had turned back a number of amendments that would have stopped the momentum for the immigration reform bill, including one by Barack Obama to sunset the points-based immigration review system. A more troubling rejection was the vote against David Vitter's amendment to add a trigger for the biometric border security system. That system should have been implemented by 2005, but it has been delayed. That amendment lost by a single vote, even though it seems odd that such a requirement would have ended the coalition. Yet, the Republicans in the coalition voted against it, including Jon Kyl, Lindsay Graham, john McCain, and Arlen Specter.

It looks as though it all may be moot. Unless the coalition can force another vote on the Dorgan amendment, the bill is toast.

The Follow-Up Survey

When I live-blogged the progress of the First Mate's kidney transplant, we had a strange and interesting coincidence. One of the friends supporting the donor's family turned out to be the mother of a graduate student at Stony Brook University who had recently requested a link to a survey. Neither of us realized it until we started talking about our sons in college, and when she told me her son's name, I recognized it and looked up the e-mail.

After I told that story and linked to it, many CQ readers graciously took the survey. Now they have a follow-up survey, and I hope you take the time to take it as well. Chris writes:

Immigration Attitudes Survey

Increasingly, Americans are turning to the web for news about politics. This is a survey about online news coverage of the immigration issue. We are interested in your thoughts on this important political controversy. If you decide to participate in our survey, you will start off by answering a few questions about yourself and your political attitudes. Then you will watch a short news clip of an immigration story. After the clip, we will ask you some questions about your position on immigration policy. In total, the survey should take about 15 minutes to complete. The survey is completely anonymous and you can skip any questions you do not wish to answer.

Click here to take the survey.

Stony Brook has asked me to disable comments on this thread so that each participant does not encounter any bias from comments made by others. Let's help Chris get plenty of feedback. Thanks in advance, and I hope you enjoy it.

NATO: Iran Supplying The Taliban

ABC News reports that NATO officials have proof that the Iranian government supplies the Taliban in their war against Afghanistan. The materiel includes C-4, heavy arms, and roadside bombs not unlike those deployed against the US in Iraq:

NATO officials say they have caught Iran red-handed, shipping heavy arms, C4 explosives and advanced roadside bombs to the Taliban for use against NATO forces, in what the officials say is a dramatic escalation of Iran's proxy war against the United States and Great Britain.

"It is inconceivable that it is anyone other than the Iranian government that's doing it," said former White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, an ABC News consultant.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stopped short earlier this week of blaming Iran, saying the U.S. did not have evidence "of the involvement of the Iranian government in support of the Taliban."

But an analysis by a senior coalition official, obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com, concludes there is clear evidence of Iran's involvement.

"This is part of a considered policy," says the analysis, "rather than the result of low-level corruption and weapons smuggling."

This is quite an interesting development. For one thing, the Taliban and Iran considered each other enemies until the US expelled Mullah Omar's gang from Afghanistan. If NATO has this correct, it shows that radical Islamist impulses have outweighed the traditional Sunni/Shi'ite divide in Islam. Both types of Islamist lunatics may have decided that their war against the West outweighs their internal differences.

Secondarily, it confirms Iranian mischief outside of areas in US control. While we're obviously the driving force behind the NATO mission in Afghanistan, NATO's imprimatur means that Europe can no longer treat Iranian involvement in both Afghanistan and Iraq as an American cover story. Nations that have opposed our get-tough efforts against Iran will have to realize that Iran presents a threat to their own troops - and one they will need to address quickly.

CQ Radio: Patrick Hynes, Debate, Immigration, And More

Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), I'll talk with Patrick Hynes, both of Ankle Biting Pundits and of the John McCain campaign, about last night's debate. We'll talk about who won and who lost, and we'll also talk about immigration, the war, and much more.

Join the conversation! Just call 646-652-4889.

Tomorrow, I'll have Dr. Kevin Fleming to talk about single-payor health care. Dr. Fleming wrote an interesting study on this topic for the Heritage Foundation, and we'll ask him about current political postures on renovating the American health-care system.

Turkish Incursion Into Iraq

Turkey sent thousands of troops into northern Iraq, chasing Kurdish insurgents after an apparent attack on a Turkish base. The move threatens to destabilize the area most successfully adjusted to the new status of Iraq and bring the US and Turkey into diplomatic conflict:

Several thousand Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq early Wednesday to chase Kurdish guerrillas who operate from bases there, Turkish security officials told The Associated Press.

Two senior security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said the raid was limited in scope and that it did not constitute the kind of large incursion that Turkish leaders have been discussing in recent weeks.

“It is not a major offensive and the number of troops is not in the tens of thousands,” one of the officials told the AP by telephone. The official is based in southeast Turkey, where the military has been battling separatist Kurdish rebels since they took up arms in 1984.

If it isn't a "major offensive," it's at least a reconaissance in force, and significant enough to cause considerable problems. Any time "several thousand" troops move across a national border, it's a major operation, or the nation involved has major command and control problems. Even in hot pursuit, this number seems very large.

The US and Turkey will probably act in concert to keep the heat low on this operation, and the US will pressure Turkey to withdraw quickly. However, the US has to do a better job in keeping Kurdish insurgents from provoking these reactions. We cannot afford a shooting war with Turkey in Northern Iraq, and we cannot afford to provoke an Islamist reaction there which will push Turkey farther away from the West.

If the operation continues for long, expect to see even more complications in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, as the Kurds gear up for a fight against the Turks. This could turn ugly very quickly.

UPDATE: Iraq says they have seen no incursion, but both AP and Reuters have sources in Turkey that claim otherwise.

A Victory On The Judicial Front

Today's Wall Street Journal reveals more about the offensive against the US in the war on terror -- on the judicial front. Last week, the Islamic Society of Boston withdrew its lawsuit against critics of a land deal, but not before the discovery process turned up proof of the critics' allegations of terrorist ties to the IS. At Heading Right, I discuss how this lawsuit turned out to be a big bluff, an attempt to use the American judicial system into silencing critics of Islamist groups. This dovetails with the Flying Imams' attempts to silence tipsters by creating an environment of legal intimidation. Be sure to read the whole thing.

I first covered the lawsuit in December 2005.

Have The Democrats Leapt To Faith?

To read Ruth Marcus this morning, one would believe that the Democrats had begun a revival tour rather than a presidential primary. She describes the latest talk from the campaign trail as a conversion movement that will roll holy rollers to the Democrats, but manages to miss the fact that none of these stories involve any influence on actual policy:

You know it's a different kind of candidate forum when Hillary Clinton allows that she sometimes prays (no doubt, she says, to some divine eye-rolling) "Oh, Lord, why can't you help me lose weight?" and describes how "prayer warriors" sustained her through the public dissection of her husband's infidelity.

When Barack Obama muses on the nature of good vs. evil. When John Edwards recounts that he "strayed away from the Lord" in adulthood, only to find that "my faith came roaring back" after the death of his 16-year-old son. ...

For the 2008 campaign, the Democrats have the advantage of -- you might say they are blessed with -- three front-running candidates for whom religion isn't a matter of conversion on the road to Des Moines.

Marcus, not surprisingly, misses the point. No one accused the Democrats of not belonging to a church. Walter Mondale wasn't an atheist, and neither was Michael Dukakis or Al Gore. No one believed any of these candidates had a conversion on the stump during an election year. What they also didn't do was to connect the values of their faith to policy.

Barack Obama may come closest to doing that, but as Marcus notes, not when the brightest lights shine on the campaign. Why? Because a large portion of the Democratic base are agnostic or atheist in temperament, especially when it comes to implementing policy that reflect values shared by people of faith. Whether the issue is abortion, gay marriage, religion in the public sphere, or any other topic, their base accuses anyone defending those values as theocrats who want to create an American Taliban -- and these candidates appease them.

Memo to Ruth: it isn't Republicans accusing Democrats of attempting to make America a theocracy.

Marcus then attempts to cast Republicans as more secular than Madalyn Murray O'Hair. She quotes David Kuo saying that Mitt Romney is "terrified" of discussing his faith, and that John McCain and Rudy Giuliani sound like secularists. I'm not sure where she's been, but the latter two men have talked about their faith rather openly, and Romney has not ducked the Mormon question at all. In fact, he talks of the pride he has in his faith, and how Americans prefer to rely on people of faith for leadership positions. In fact, I've heard him address that in every venue I've seen him speak -- mostly because people want to keep challenging his faith.

It's easy to talk about relying on prayer when husbands stray or tragedies occur in fanilies. In some cases, especially Edwards', it's rather moving. But when these same people support partial-birth abortions, federal funding for embryonic stem-cell testing, and so on, it's obvious that their faith doesn't inform their policy decisions, which is why those who most devoutly pursue their faith overwhelmingly vote Republican.

The Kingdom Made Her Slouch

Megan Stack writes a fascinating account of her experiences as a woman in Saudi Arabia, stationed there for the last four years by the Los Angeles Times. If anyone wonders what being a woman in Saudi Arabia means, Stack gives a firsthand account of the demeaning and oppressive existence that all women -- Western or otherwise -- endure in the Kingdom. For Stack, the abaya that Saudi law required her to wear not only symbolized her oppression, but actually seeped into her psyche:

As I roamed in and out of Saudi Arabia, the abaya, or Islamic robe, eventually became the symbol of those shifting rules.

I always delayed until the last minute. When I felt the plane dip low over Riyadh, I'd reach furtively into my computer bag to fish out the black robe and scarf crumpled inside. I'd slip my arms into the sleeves without standing up. If I caught the eyes of any male passengers as my fingers fumbled with the snaps, I'd glare. Was I imagining the smug looks on their faces?

The sleeves, the length of it, always felt foreign, at first. But it never took long to work its alchemy, to plant the insecurity. After a day or two, the notion of appearing without the robe felt shocking. Stripped of the layers of curve-smothering cloth, my ordinary clothes suddenly felt revealing, even garish. To me, the abaya implied that a woman's body is a distraction and an interruption, a thing that must be hidden from view lest it haul the society into vice and disarray. The simple act of wearing the robe implanted that self-consciousness by osmosis.

In the depths of the robe, my posture suffered. I'd draw myself in and bumble along like those adolescent girls who seem to think they can roll their breasts back into their bodies if they curve their spines far enough. That was why, it hit me one day, I always seemed to come back from Saudi Arabia with a backache.

The kingdom made me slouch.

Like most people, I find the experiences of Westerners in foreign lands intriguing, and not just for the supposedly odd behaviors of the natives. It's interesting to see how Westerners bring their own assumptions and values to their travels, and how they mesh or clash with reality. After all, one hardly can have studied Saudi Arabia at all without knowing of the impulse to cover and hide women that the Saudis have, but knowing it is far from living it, as Stack discovered.

Just the act of covering herself created a cognitive dissonance for Stack. She had little awareness of exposing herself before traveling to Saudi Arabia, but when she was able to finally shed the abaya in public -- on the plane out of Riyadh -- she felt strangely immodest. Wearing the abaya on some level made her buy into the male fear of the feminine in Saudi Arabia, which might explain why so many Saudi women see nothing wrong with the tribal customs of total submission to males. They've lived an entire life under the abaya.

One passage struck me in particular as revealing. Stack met a couple who had traveled abroad and educated themselves in the West. When they lived outside of Saudi Arabia, the wife was independent, outgoing, and able to take care of herself. When they moved to Saudi Arabia, she could not do any of those things -- and the husband realized that she had become a dependent, an added burden. The system traps everyone, but no one seems ready to change it, and certainly not the religious police that Stack narrowly avoided on one occasion.

This also points out the dangers of moral relativism and multiculturalism. Obviously Stack objects strongly to the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia, and rightly so. However, a multiculturalist would probably criticize that objection as a result of Western projection -- especially since it was Stack who went to Saudi Arabia. She could find herself accused of American cultural imperialism, and in fact had that experience when talking with some of the women. Yet, Stack was expected to abide by that culture while in Saudi Arabia, while some Muslims who emigrate to the West demand that we respect that culture when they arrive here, arguing for multiculturalism that doesn't exist in their homelands (and that's not limited to Muslims, either).

Be sure to read the entire article. I doubt the Los Angeles Times will want to send another woman to Saudi Arabia for a lengthy assignment after reading this -- but would that conflict with our own cultural norms and legal requirements?

Former CIA Client Built An Army For Laos Coup

Federal agents conducted a series of raids across California to shut down a private army that intended to conduct a coup d'etat against the Communist government of Laos. General Vang Pao, a former CIA client in Laos, wanted to purchase explosives to conduct a terrorist attack on Vientiane and remove the Communists he failed to defeat decades ago:

The ageing former leader of the CIA's "Secret Army" in Laos was in an American prison last night, accused of mounting a coup against his and Washington's old Communist enemy. General Vang Pao, 77, and nine other people were arrested in dawn raids by more than 200 federal agents in dawn raids across California.

The detentions were the culmination of 'Operation Tarnished Eagle', a six-month investigation into an attempt to bring down Laos' Communist government.

According to prosecutors Vang Pao and his co-conspirators planned to spend almost USD 10 million (pounds 5 million) on weaponry including assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, Stinger surface-to-air missiles, mines and C-4 explosives.

They were recruiting a mercenary force to attack government buildings in the Lao capital Vientiane and "reduce them to rubble," they said.

How much has the world changed since Pao's defeat in 1975? Ventiane remains Communist, but is only one of five outright Communist dictatorships left in the world, according to the Telegraph. They remain isolated and disengaged, still fighting internally against the Hmong, who oppose their brutal rule. Many Hmong migrated to the US; in fact, a fair number of them live in the Twin Cities.

Thirty years ago, the US would likely have provided assistance to Pao for fighting Communists. Now, however, we have no reason to target the Laotians militarily, and we certainly cannot allow Pao or any other asylum-seekers to use the US as a base for what appears to be terrorism. The cause may have some nobility, but the tactics appear unacceptable -- and we simply cannot have private armies assembling in our nation for an attack on another nation. If we tolerated that, we would be responsible for the act of war just as if our own military had conducted it.

It will be interesting to see how this case plays out. Raising $10 million is no easy feat. Where did he get the money, and who else was involved in this proto-insurgency?

Pew Poll: Most Voters Dim

Last night, I complained about the repetitive nature of the questioning at the debates. For the third straight debate, Rudy Giuliani had to state his position on abortion, and Mitt Romney had to answer for his change of position over the last two-plus years. As it turns out, though, CNN may have had a good reason to ask the same plodding questions over and over again, as Pew Research discovered that less than half of the voters have paid attention:

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted May 30-June 3 among 1,503 adults, finds that overall voter engagement in the presidential campaign remains somewhat limited, despite intense press coverage of the race. Just 33% of all voters say they have given a lot of thought to the presidential candidates, up only modestly from December (27%). However, Republican voters have caught up with the Democrats in campaign engagement, after trailing in previous surveys.

Many voters are dimly aware of even heavily covered aspects of the candidates' positions and backgrounds. For instance, just 37% of all registered voters could correctly identify Giuliani as the leading Republican candidate who favors a woman's right to choose when it comes to abortion. Among Republican and Republican-leaning voters, just 43% correctly identified Giuliani.

Let's get this straight. Pollsters asked Republican voters which of the ten candidates supported abortion rights, and less than half of them selected Giuliani. Who did they think it was -- Mike Huckabee?

If anything, this makes it easier for Giuliani to recover from his stumble on this issue last month. If no one paid that much attention, his new strategy -- to bluntly declare his pro-choice political stance -- has a good chance of succeeding. It puts the rest of the field in opposition to him, but that works for Rudy, too. The primary race could come down to Rudy vs Conservative X, which at least keeps Rudy in the top two.

Fred Thompson got good news from this poll. Despite only having a 58% name recognition -- by far the lowest in the top tier -- he has 66% of the voters saying that they would vote for him, and 37% saying that the chances are good that Fred will get their vote. The latter number puts him in a tie with Rudy, and the former puts him ahead of everyone else but Rudy. Mitt Romney gets an overall 60%, which is an improvement from the last poll. McCain gets a 65% overall, but only 20% give him the "good chance" rating.

The no-chance numbers are even more interesting. Despite the sense that Giuliani had been alienating some Republicans, only 20% claim that he has "no chance" of getting their primary votes. That's the lowest number in the field, followed by Fred's 24%, although it did rise from 15% in the February poll. Romney has 32% of the voters set against him, and Newt Gingrich surprisingly has 46% who would refuse to support him. McCain only has 28%, but that number ticked up rather than down since February.

Right now, it looks like a three-man race -- but with Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney challenging Rudy for the nomination. McCain seems to have lost some momentum, and given his high name recognition, he may not have much in reserve to get it back.

Fred Kicks Off

Fred Thompson took another small step towards his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination yesterday. He launched his new web site, I'm With Fred, the first overt act he's made since dropping big hints in March.

Right now, the site has little content, other than his introductory message. He has a postscript to it that promises "a lot more coming," and asks viewers to return often. The site has functions for donations and volunteers, and even includes a web widget for supporters to place on their websites to pass through donations to his campaign.

Given the amount of essays Fred Thompson has written in the last few weeks, I'm guessing the content -- his policy positions -- will shortly arrive. In the meantime, for those interested in supporting Fred, the website gives them the opportunity.

Republicans Threaten Filibuster As Immigration Compromise Stumbles

The immigration compromise appears headed for the rocks, as Republicans threatened a filibuster yesterday after Democrats attempted to block them from offering amendments. Neither side has compromised as yet on a list of amendments, and Harry Reid has warned that he will take the bill off of the calendar after this week:

The immigration deal foundered yesterday, on the verge of collapse under its own weight just days after it appeared to have a clear path to pass the Senate.

By late in the afternoon, Republicans were accusing Democrats of trying to "stuff" them, and Democrats said Republicans were trying to kill the bill by obstructing the process. Both sides were saying they don't know whether the process can be put back on track.

A showdown is scheduled for tomorrow, when Democrats said they will force a vote to set a time limit on the bill, and Republicans have promised to block that move through a filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that if Republicans block his effort to limit debate, it would bump the bill off the schedule and likely derail it for the rest of the year.

John Cornyn says he has waited 13 days for a vote on his amendment, which would exclude anyone already ordered deported from the normalization process. Other Republicans have similar complaints. Mitch McConnell wants floor votes on a number of offered amendments, complaining that the back-room compromise left this bill with serious flaws that have to get addressed before its passage.

Democrats worry that amendments such as Cornyn's are designed to force them to take unpopular positions, which could be used against them in 2008. Cornyn's bill is an example. What politician would vote to grant an amnesty for a valid deportation order -- when he has to run for office in a year? This is the main reason why the bill's authors hoped to limit the amendment process in the Senate, and why Reid will attempt to limit debate today.

McConnell and most of the GOP caucus see their way clear with a filibuster. They believe that they can satisfy the Republican base by tubing this bill, and explain to moderates and centrists that without serious amending, it was too flawed to pass anyway. The CBO analysis certainly helps that case, in that it predicts only a 25% improvement in ending illegal immigration.

The only question will be whether they can muster enough votes for a filibuster. They won't have John McCain and Lindsay Graham, of course, and they may not get Jon Kyl. McConnell needs 41 votes, and that only leaves him a buffer of five. If they cannot filibuster the bill, it will pass with its current amendments, and the GOP may not be able to stop it in the House. It's a tough maneuver -- and if Reid pushes cloture, he may already believe he's got the votes for it.

UPDATE: I'm assuming that McConnell will have Jeff Sessions on board for a filibuster. Sessions put together a list of 20 objections Monday to the bill, and he has given detailed references to the actual language. (h/t: CQ reader Keemo)

Post Debate Analysis: Giuliani Keeps The Crown For Now

The third GOP debate is over, although there may be some who haven't realized it yet. What it lacked in firepower, it more than made up in pointlessness. And while CNN may not have been anywhere near as bad as MS-NBC, they should still be embarassed that their audience asked better questions than CNN's journalists.

The format for tonight's debate seemed forced and odd. First, Wolf Blitzer promised everyone that he wouldn't let the candidates dodge questions -- and then asked questions that made little sense. He wanted the candidates on stage to talk about Fred Thompson. He wanted answers on Genesis, and he wanted them now. Romney got to answer the same old question about his Mormonism.

The audience participation section went better than it did with MS-NBC -- and in fact better than the first half of CNN's show. The candidates got to actually answer questions on policy without Blitzer demanding that they hew to his tedious wording. For some reason, though, they had to wait five minutes while they forced the candidates to sit in chairs -- and most of them chose to stand instead while answering questions.

Next time, skip the gimmicks and focus on real issues.

How did the candidates do? No one did badly, but McCain suffered the most. He actually had moments of high eloquence, especially when responding to Tancredo, but he blew it big time at the end. He called the US a shining city on the hill, evoking Reagan, and then asserted that he "would not build fences and barriers" around it. Rhetorically, it's a great flourish -- but politically, it's suicide. He just reinforced the notion that he won't actually follow through on border security, which most Republicans believe involves building fences and barriers. All the work he did over the last two weeks to push back on immigration reform went up in a puff of smoke in New Hampshire.

Giuliani performed the best. He took advantage of a recurring technical glitch to demonstrate his sense of humor, and he gave great answers on national-security questions. He attacked Hillary Clinton -- again -- and was the only one on stage looking to move the debate to the Democrats -- again. He stung CNN, too, by turning around a Blitzer hypothetical about what he'd do if Petraeus reported no progress in September by asking Blitzer whether he'd bother reporting progress if it was being made.

Romney also did well. He parried the inane question about Mormonism, but got stung when someone asked why a candidate who wants English as an official language advertises in Spanish. Otherwise, Romney brought his command of detail to most of his answers.

Among the others, Mike Huckabee and Duncan Hunter did the best. Both looked presidential and showed real spirit on stage. Huckabee in particular exhibited the most warmth of anyone on the panel. Both men deserve better than their current positions, but with Fred Thompson entering the race, it seems unlikely they'll move up any time soon.

The rest didn't distinguish themselves. Ron Paul once again showed why he's a margin player, asserting that Iran "never did anything to us" and that the Iranians represent no national-security threat to the US. Tancredo came across as flustered and irritable, and his demand to stop all legal immigration assigned him to the Ron Paul fringe. Tommy Thompson switched from being a stiff to suddenly becoming oddly animated, waving his arms around and gesturing in an exaggerated manner. Jim Gilmore was ... Jim Gilmore.

In the next debate, we'll have eleven -- and we'll probably know even less. Let's hope that they start whittling down a few of the candidates, or they focus on just a few questions so we can get more than soundbite answers.

Debate Live Blog And Roundtable At Heading Right & BTR

Tonight, the crew at Heading Right will live-blog the Republican presidential debate ob CNN. Afterwards, we'll conduct a roundtable with Rick Moran, Frank P, Macranger, and Jim Lynch at Debate Central, starting at 9 pm ET. Be sure to join the conversation!

CQ Radio: Val & Fausta

Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), I'll talk with Fausta and Val, about NBC's decision to air Today from Cuba. They've both been following the story closely. We'll talk about what that means for the Cuban people and the Castro regime as well. We'll also talk about Venezuela and the start of an opposition movement that could put Hugo Chavez in a bind.

You can join the conversation by calling 646-652-4889! And don't forget that we will be live-blogging tonight's Republican debate at Heading Right, and then reviewing the debate at Debate Central at 9 pm ET/8 pm CT.

A Tale Of Two Prosecutions

Two major prosecutions for abuse of power make the news today. First, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby will go to prison for perjury and obstruction of justice:

Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison Tuesday for lying and obstructing the CIA leak investigation.

Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, stood calmly before a packed courtroom as a federal judge said the evidence overwhelmingly proved his guilt.

"People who occupy these types of positions, where they have the welfare and security of nation in their hands, have a special obligation to not do anything that might create a problem," U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said.

Regardless of the ludicrous nature of a three-year investigation where the perpetrator never got charged with the initial suspected crime, Libby got what he deserved, having lied to investigators and the grand jury. People cannot commit perjury to block an investigation and expect to simply walk away from it. A jury concluded that Libby did exactly that, and the sentence is commensurate with the crime.

Will the conviction survive on appeal? Likely it will. Again, the special-counsel investigation got out of control, like just about every special-counsel investigation that preceded it. That doesn't give Libby the right to commit perjury and obstruct justice. It's more likely that Bush will eventually pardon Libby, but probably not until after the 2008 election.

A pardon is much less likely for William Jefferson, who apparently gave new meaning to the word "globalization" in his quest for cash:

Nearly two years after federal agents reported finding $90,000 in a freezer in his Washington home, U.S. Rep. William Jefferson has been charged with a global campaign to solicit bribes, obstruct justice and engage in racketeering, Justice Department officials said Monday. ...

The charges are based on 11 schemes in which Jefferson allegedly solicited bribes for himself and his family from government and business officials in the United States, Nigeria, Botswana, Equatorial Guinea and Sao Tome e Principe, U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg said at an afternoon news conference.

"Mr. Jefferson corruptly traded on his good office and on the Congress where he served ... to enrich himself and his family through a pervasive pattern of fraud, bribery, and corruption that spanned many years and two continents," Rosenberg said.

Jefferson sought millions of dollars in cash and company stock and received "somewhat less than $400,000," Rosenberg said.

CNN does a better job of reporting on Jefferson's status in Congress than the Post did yesterday. Kevin Bohn and Kelli Arena note that Pelosi removed Jefferson from the Ways and Means Committee last year, but then also report that she tried to assign him to Homeland Security this year. They credit the Republicans with ending that maneuver.

One prosecution ended, and another begins. It's another day in Washington DC.

UPDATE: Commenters are complaining about Sandy Berger getting a walk while Libby does 30 months. Put aside for the moment that the same exact Justice Department handled both (no one told them to go easy on Berger, after all, and they did just that), what exactly is the argument here? Because they screwed up the Berger prosecution, that no one else should be prosecuted for obstruction? Sorry, that doesn't fly. That puts the entire DC culture in a tit-for-tat game that allows no consequences for abuses of power. I don't want that kind of government -- do you?

A jury of Americans found Libby guilty of the charges against him. The sentencing is commensurate with the convictions. If Libby obstructed justice and perjured himself, which the jury found that he did, then he should be punished for it. If Berger got off scot-free, then blame the DoJ under George Bush and Alberto Gonzales, but it doesn't give Libby a pass on lawbreaking.

I would have no problem if George Bush chose to pardon Libby, and I think it's appropriate in this case, considering the circumstances. But that's not the same thing as saying that he should have been somehow shielded from prosecution because of the incompetence in handling the Berger case. A jury found that he committed perjury and obstruction of justice, and just like anyone else convicted of those crimes, he should be punished for them.

UPDATE II: Apparently, people still believe I'm being unclear. Let me lay it out this way:

* A duly constituted jury heard the evidence in front of a judge. Libby and his lawyers presented their defense. That jury found that Libby committed perjury and obstruction of justice. That's the way the criminal-justice system works in this country.

* A 30-month sentence for obstruction of justice and perjury is not out of line, especially for multiple counts. Both are serious crimes against the rule of law, and should be punished accordingly.

* Whether Clarice Feldman thinks I've been following the case is immaterial. A jury convicted Libby, and they followed the case better than anyone. I'm going to accept the result of the justice system and respect that decision.

* Libby has plenty of opportunity to appeal the decision. If it's wrong, it will likely be overturned. It will not be overturned on the basis of Victoria Toensing's opinions on the law she wrote, because Libby didn't get convicted of violating that law. It's immaterial to the charges Libby faced and on which he got convicted.

* If George Bush wants to pardon Libby, I don't see a problem with that. That's part of due process as well, and it's a political decision for George Bush. I think it would be a political mistake to offer one before the appeals run out. There are extenuating circumstances that warrant consideration of a pardon -- but that doesn't mean that Libby should have gotten a pass from the judge after the convictions. (It certainly would be a more supportable pardon than most of those granted by Clinton at the end of his term.)

If you support the rule of law, then this sentencing was a foregone conclusion. He was convicted weeks ago, and people who get convicted on these charges get sentenced to prison time, especially those who work in the executive branch of our federal government. I fail to see the reason for all the current hysteria over this sentencing.

The Consistency Of Cuba

With NBC broadcasting the Today show live from Havana this week, we can expect to see plenty of media hyperbole on the Cuban health-care system and general ignorance of all the circumstances surrounding the relationship between Cuba and the US. However, the UK's Prospect Magazine gives a much more intimate look at the Cuba beyond the camera lenses in Castro's controlled access to the island. Bella Thomas actually lived there, and knows the Cuba that Western romanticists refuse to see:

What observers at this time most underestimated was the power of the regime's nationalist rhetoric and Castro's strategic skill. Unlike in eastern Europe, where nationalism helped to erode communism, Cuban nationalism has shored up the regime. Castro was always a nationalist in communist clothing, and, throughout the 1990s, the communist references in his speeches were gradually replaced by nationalist ones.

The continuing hostilities with the US have played into Castro's hands. It was as an embattled nationalist leader of a small island, standing up to an aggressive, neighbouring superpower, that Castro preserved his revolutionary credentials most effectively. The shortcomings of life under his regime were, he argued, attributable mainly to the US embargo. Many swallowed the argument. He knew, too, how to capitalise on the latent anti-Americanism in Latin America, Europe and Canada to give his struggle more universal appeal.

In fact, the regime seems to act with zeal to ensure that the embargo continues. When it looks as if the US government might consider ending it, some heavy-handed Cuban act ensues that the status quo prevails. In 1996, when Clinton was keen to initiate rapprochement, the regime shot down two US planes manned by members of a Cuban exile group rescuing those escaping the island on rafts. When, in 2003, an influential cross-party lobby in the US seemed set to dismantle the embargo, the Cuban government promptly incarcerated 75 prisoners of conscience and executed three men who hijacked a tugboat with a view to getting to Miami. ...

In their call for the US to keep its "hands off Cuba," western supporters of the Cuban regime seem to miss the irony that this, unfortunately, is precisely what the US is doing. Were the US to relax its embargo, the result would be a tidal wave of US capital, which the regime would be unlikely to survive. Many Cubans would grow richer and more demanding, and would no longer accept playing second fiddle to the tourists.

When speaking with a Cuban dissident, Thomas told him of London mayor Ken Livingstone and his planned celebration of the 50th anniversary of Catro's revolution (in 2009). The dissident expressed surprise that people in the West -- with instant access to the truth -- instead turned a blind eye to the suffering and the oppression in Cuba. He then shrugged and said, "Well, you're a democracy," and changed the subject.

How galling it must be to ordinary Cubans to see Western media organizations like NBC enable Castro to magnify his propaganda. The Michael Moores of the West -- and we can't deny that there are many like him, and some just as bad -- extol the oppression of a dictator who imprisons and executes journalists who dare to tell the truth about life under the dictator. They act as repeater stations about how the only thing holding back the Cuban people is the American embargo, even though they import more food and medicine from us than anywhere else.

Every time these journalists betray their fellow reporters and build up Castro as some sort of rational alternative to private property and free enterprise, they see their chances of overcoming the oppression dim. Be sure to read the entire article, paying particularly close attention to Thomas' reporting on the decrepitude of Havana's hospitals (the ones for the locals) and the bribery it takes to get treatment even there.

I'll be talking with Val Prieto and Fausta today on CQ Radio about this topic. Be sure to tune in.

Fred Moves Into Second

It's amazing how far a non-candidate can go in a race. Fred hasn't begun to run for the Republican presidential nomination, and Rasmussen shows him almost within the margin of error for the lead:

With former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson taking his first formal steps towards a Presidential run and the immigration debate creating challenges for Arizona Senator John McCain, the race for the Republican Presidential nomination has an entirely different look this week.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) remains on top, but his support has slipped to 23%. That’s down two points from a week ago and is his lowest level of support all year. Earlier, Giuliani had consistently enjoyed support in the mid-30s. That was before Thompson’s name was added to the mix and before Giuliani stumbled on the abortion issue in the first GOP debate of the season.

Thompson, who just formed an exploratory committee and is the newest face in the race, immediately moved into second place. With 17% support, he is within six points of the frontrunner. That’s closer than anybody has been to Giuliani in 20 consecutive weekly polls. Thompson is also competitive in a variety of general election match-ups with potential Democratic nominees.

According to Rasmussen, Thompson actually leads Giuliani among men likely to vote in the GOP primaries. No other demographics are available, but that presumably means that Rudy has a significant lead among Republican women. That seems a bit surprising, given Rudy's marital woes and his reputation as an authoritarian. The bigger news is that Giuliani has slid from 37% in March to 23% in May -- still ahead but looking more and more vulnerable.

Romney managed to move past McCain and into third place in the past two polls, mostly by treading water. Up until last week, he trailed McCain, but passed him and went briefly himself into second place.

How does Thompson do against the Democrats? Not well, unfortunately, but that may be because of his relative anonymity until recently. He loses by three points to Hillary, but gets stomped by John Edwards and Barack Obama by double-digit deficits. In contrast, Rudy ties Hillary and beats Obama by razor-thin margins, although he loses to Edwards. John McCain loses to all three, as does Mitt Romney.

Thompson won't be in tonight's debate, but he will be on Hannity & Colmes just afterwards. Expect him to overshadow the debate, but the GOP needs to start building momentum somewhere.

'We're Not Being Well-Served'

Bruce Kesler does yeoman work today at the Democracy Project, looking through the CBO report on the immigration compromise legislation to understand its conclusions. He concludes that the CBO, which actually seems rather sanguine on the cost-benefit ratio of the bill, does not project costs far enough to cover the entitlement burden properly:

1) There’s some disconnect between the CBO estimates and others: The Center for Immigration Studies, in testimony before Congress, estimated that for 2002 that “if illegal aliens were legalized and began to pay taxes and use services like households headed by illegal immigrants with the same education levels, CIS estimates the annual net fiscal deficit would increase [from $10.4 billion at the federal level] to $29 billion.” Part of that is due to differing data, methods of analysis and laws considered. The rest needs further analysis. Nonetheless, although the amounts are not intolerable, of themselves, in an economy our size, they do weigh upon future service levels and taxation of already pressed citizens.

2) The CBO estimates only go out 20-years:
A Heritage Foundation analyst did a back-of-envelope estimate of the present value of future Social Security costs for legalizing current illegal immigrants, whose average age would bring them to retirement in about 30-years, of $2.5 trillion over 18-years of retirement, or about $139-billion per year. If even half that, due to greater than expected return of illegals to their home country and inability to qualify for legal status, it’s a substantially larger fiscal impact – on an already insolvency headed program – than any of the others. Other entitlement and social service programs for the elderly or ill would also be impacted in the future, as the normalized immigrants age.

Bruce also questions whether members of Congress have bothered to read this and other analyses of immigration by the CBO. He guesses few, and notes that the media hasn't covered the independent analyses at all -- and concludes that "We're not being well-served" by either the political or media establishment.

Be sure to read the entire post.

Another Probe?

Boston's WBZ-TV reports on an unusual disturbance on a Northwest flight from Minneapolis to Boston's Logan Airport. Police detained two men after they exhibited bizarre behavior -- and two other passengers took action to subdue them:

Before the flight even took off, [Bob] Hayden said a man, who appeared aggravated, was walking up and down the aisle of the plane. The flight attendant had to force him into his seat after asking him to do so a few times.

Hayden said after the aircraft finally got in the air, he noticed there was some sort of commotion. The same man had started screaming and fell into the aisle.

Initially, Hayden said he thought the guy was having a heart attack, but he quickly realized the incident might have been staged. According to Hayden, two flight attendants helped the man back into his seat where he continued to yell for the entire flight. ...

When the pilot made the announcement the plane was approaching Logan Airport, Hayden said the man who caused the first commotion and a second person began yelling and fell into the aisle. That is when Hayden said he, with the help of a retired U.S. Marine captain, took action.

Hayden said he grabbed the first guy and sat him down. He then pushed the second man onto the floor and cuffed him with a pair of handcuffs a flight attendant had given him. Hayden said he sat next to the two men until police were able to board the plane.

One point the text report missed was that one of the two passengers opened up the overhead bin and threw out a suitcase. That makes it sound rather staged, as Hayden himself noted in his statement. Surprisingly, neither man has been charged with a crime, but are under psychiatric evaluation.

Was this another probe? The two men didn't apparently have any connection to each other -- and yet they acted out in similar fashion. It sounds suspicious, and Homeland Security should be investigating the possibility -- and better than they did on Northwest 327 in the summer of 2004.

If it was a probe, it shows one positive development. After 9/11, American passengers can no longer be considered reliably docile. We fight back.

UPDATE: Forgot to credit Power Line for the story.

Flashback To Impotence

The Bush administration has rightly scotched the idea of a revival for a particularly inane Jimmy Carter policy -- the Olympic boycott. Both the White House and the USOC have immediately rejected a suggestion by Governor Bill Richardson that the US boycott the Beijing Olympics for its indifference to the genocide in Darfur:

The Bush administration and American Olympic officials are rebuffing calls to consider a boycott of the Olympic Games in Beijing next year to protest China's sluggish response to the genocide in Darfur.

The U.S. Olympic Committee pointedly rejected the idea of a boycott, which was floated by Governor Richardson of New Mexico on Sunday night during a debate for Democratic presidential candidates.

"We completely disagree with the point of view expressed by Governor Richardson," a spokesman for the committee, Darryl Seibel, said yesterday. "The Olympic movement is about sport, not politics, and, as has been demonstrated in the past, boycotts accomplish absolutely nothing other than to unfairly penalize athletes who have spent decades preparing for that moment."

For those who don't know, Richardson proposed an Olympic boycott as one of his actions to force China to apply pressure on Sudan. Apparently, Richardson spent 1980 in a coma. Jimmy Carter tried the same tactic on the Soviet Union after its invasion of Afghanistan, and it did absolutely nothing.

Well, that's not entirely true. Even though a number of nations joined us in the boycott, not one single Soviet soldier got withdrawn from Afghanistan. However, it did have the effect of making us look impotent, a feat that Carter had already accomplished in Teheran the year before. It did bring us ringing condemnation for using a sporting event as a political tool. In other words, it made us look like idiots.

In 1984, however, the Soviets returned the favor. This time they got all of the criticism while we scooped up most of their medals. I lived in LA at the time, and believe me, none of us missed the Soviets that summer. We had a great time, only marred by the addition of synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics as "sports".

What would an Olympic boycott do, anyway? China isn't guilty of anything but a sin of omission, for which we should then sanction half of our trading partners -- at least half. Besides, China relies on Sudanese oil, and the net economic effect of an Olympic boycott would be negligible in comparison to a loss of Sudanese crude. It's laughable on its face, almost as laughable as the idea that an Olympic boycott would force a surrender by the Soviets to the mujahideen.

Richardson has provided an instructive moment. Apparently there is no policy hatched by Jimmy Carter that is too stupid, too useless, too impotent not to get a second try by Democrats wanting to run for the presidency.

Addendum: Besides, if we want to boycott an Olympiad, we might want to select the London games in 2012. At least then we wouldn't have to see their new logo:

I had to stare a long time to realize that the logo reads LO 12, for London Olympics 2012. Stephen Bayley at the Telegraph calls it "a puerile mess, an artistic flop and a commercial scandal," which is putting it lightly. Does that thing come with batteries and a volume knob?

UPDATE: The Yell informs me that the logo reads "2012", and links to this Telegraph media presentation. Apparently, the logo afflicts anyone in motion; I suggest that Londoners stand absolutely still until it dies.

Will The Democrats Split Over Dollar Bill?

Now that the other shoe has finally dropped on Rep. William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson, the next question is what the Democrats intend to do about him. Under indictment on sixteen counts of corruption, Jefferson represents just about everything against which the Democrats campaigned last year, with their attacks on the supposed "culture of corruption", and they'd like to be rid of the albatross. However, the Congressional Black Caucus smells a double standard, and they're not likely to go along with any plan that could railroad Jefferson out of the House without having been convicted first:

Democratic leaders fear that Rep. William J. Jefferson's indictment yesterday on racketeering and bribery charges, coming exactly one year after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi engineered his ouster from the powerful Ways and Means Committee, could rekindle a smoldering dispute between the speaker and black lawmakers who were once pillars of her power.

For months, the Louisiana Democrat's mounting legal peril has bedeviled Democrats as they sought first to point to corruption as a tool to oust Republicans from control of Congress, then pressed for ethics and lobbying changes that they said would usher in a new era of clean politics on Capitol Hill. For every thrust Democrats made against the GOP, Republicans parried with Jefferson, saying problems in Congress were bipartisan.

Through it all, much of the Congressional Black Caucus has stood by Jefferson and against the Democratic leadership. And yesterday, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), a veteran caucus member, said it would be "as supportive of our colleague as possible, in terms of saying a person in America is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty."

The Democrats screwed this up when they supported Jefferson's re-election. They should have pulled their support in last year's midterms when it became obvious that Jefferson was corrupt. They could have easily selected someone else in the LA-02 and thrown enough money behind him or her to have avoided this situation now. Given where they are at the moment, it would have been money well spent.

After his re-election, Nancy Pelosi made it worse. She wanted to assign him to a significant committee to repair relations with the CBC, relations she damaged by removing him from the Ways and Means committee and hinting that he should resign last year. This year, she assigned him to the Homeland Security committee, and only got stopped by Republicans when they demanded a roll-call vote to put Jeffersons supporter on the record. They still have left that seat unfilled, as Pelosi has apparently never withdrawn the nomination.

The problem for the Democrats is that the CBC has a point -- or rather, two of them. First, Jefferson has not been convicted of anything, at least not yet. While Jefferson should never have had any committee assignments, and should be removed from the last one he has, the House should not expel him unless he receives some sort of due-process hearing. Either that means a trial, which may take a long time, or an ethics hearing, which will require Pelosi's endorsement and will invoke the wrath of the CBC all over again.

The second point involves the double standard the CBC recognizes. Allan Mollohan still retains his powerful position on the Appropriations Committee, despite an investigation into serious corruption issues by the DoJ, similar to Jefferson before the indictment. Pelosi never demanded his removal from Appropriations, and in this case the assignment is even more egregious, as Mollohan sits on the subcommittee that controls funding for the DoJ. Mollohan, however, is white, while Jefferson is black, and the CBC doesn't see much else separating the two cases.

Pelosi is in a jam, which will be made worse by John Boehner. He wants the Ethics Committee to review the indictment and make a recommendation on expulsion from the House for Jefferson. That's an overreach, but it still puts Pelosi in a vise. She either has to endorse that call and fuel the CBC's opposition to her, or fight it and wind up defending a man indicted on multiple counts of corruption. Either choice is a loser.

Senator Craig Thomas, RIP

Craig Thomas, Wyoming's quiet Senator, lost his battle with cancer yesterday at age 74. Re-elected in a rare bright spot for Republicans in last year's midterm meltdown, Thomas had hoped to recover for his full term, but his leukemia turned out to be too advanced:

Wyoming Sen. Craig Thomas, a three-term conservative Republican who stayed clear of the Washington limelight and political catfights, died yesterday. He was 74.

The senator's family issued a statement saying he died Monday evening at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. He had been receiving chemotherapy for acute myeloid leukemia.

Just before the 2006 election, Thomas was hospitalized with pneumonia and had to cancel his last campaign stops. He nonetheless won with 70 percent of the vote, monitoring the election from his hospital bed. ...

"Wyoming had no greater advocate, taxpayers had no greater watchdog, and rural America had no greater defender than Craig Thomas," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) said last night. "The Senate is a lesser place without Craig here, but the state of Wyoming and our nation are much better places because he was here."

He may have stayed out of the limelight and the partisan battles on Capitol Hill, but he was an effective member of the Senate for his state. His passion was public land use, helping to maintain parks like Yellowstone. Interestingly, Thomas first entered Congress as a replacement for Dick Cheney in 1989, when Cheney became Secretary of Defense in Bush 41's Cabinet.

For those keeping score, Wyoming has a Democratic governor, and in most states, that would mean that the balance in the Senate would change. In Wyoming, though, the law apparently requires that the party holding the seat nominate replacement candidates, among whom the governor selects one. The seat will remain in Republican hands as a result.

Our prayers go out to the former Marine who served his country faithfully, and to the family that supported him. Godspeed, Senator Thomas, and thank you.

CBO: Immigration Bill Wll Fail On Most Counts

As CQ readers know, I have advised keeping an open mind and a close eye on the details. The immigration bill could have some benefit, if properly amended and loopholes closed. However, now the Washington Times has a report from the Congressional Budget Office that shows that the bill will fail -- and fail rather spectacularly (via Confederate Yankee):

The Senate's immigration bill will only reduce illegal immigration by about 25 percent a year, according to a new Congressional Budget Office report, Stephen Dinan will report Tuesday in The Washington Times.

The bill's new guest-worker program could lead to at least 500,000 more illegal immigrants within a decade, said the report from the CBO, which said in its official cost estimate that it assumes some future temporary workers will overstay their time in the plan, adding up to a half-million by 2017 and 1 million by 2027. ....

And in a blow to President Bush's timetable, the CBO said the "triggers" -- setting up the verification system, deploying 20,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents to duty and constructing hundreds of miles of fencing and vehicle barriers -- won't be met until 2010.

Those triggers must be met before the temporary worker program could begin, and Mr. Bush had hoped to have them completed about the time he leaves office in January 2009.

Any immigration bill has to succeed at two tasks: stop illegal immigration by securing the border, and reach a resolution of some kind for the millions of illegals already here. According to the CBO, this bill won't do either very well. All it does is reduce annual illegal immigration by 25% -- which is not nearly enough.

Why? Because without ending illegal immigration, we can't proceed with normalization. We will eventually build up a new base of people "living in the shadows," and it will eventually require another normalization effort. We will do nothing but kick the problem down the road once again.

That 25% reduction comes from the border security provisions in the bill, which appear to be a good start but not a complete solution. The reason for that is the border fence -- which only goes 370 miles in this bill. If the fence went longer, it might suffice for a solution. However, that would push off the triggers even further than the three years the CBO estimates they will take, even with the 25% solution, twice as long as advertised.

The bill's authors need to go back to the drawing board. We need solutions that carry a 95% success rate or better, not ones that leave three-quarters of the problem unsolved. We also need to get a solution that offers options that will show success in managing the system, not extend issues like visa enforcement where we have clearly failed for so long.

The Sopranos Heads To Its Conclusion

CQ readers know that The Sopranos has been one of my must-see television series, perhaps one of the best episodic television series in history. The series is known for its violent and strong sexual connotations, but it handles these themes in a manner which most series and movies do not: it remonstrates the characters (and the audience) for the degrading nature of immorality in both areas. The show goes so far as to almost scold the viewers for their fascination with Mafia stories, as it shows how those involved in organized crime slowly get corroded by its effects.

Last night, I skipped the Democratic debate, because I knew I'd turn it off for the second-to-last episode in the series. I have TiVo, but the anticipation would have frustrated me, and I expected more resolution from the show than from the debate. On this point, I was not disappointed.

(SPOILERS -- Click the link below to read the extended entry.)

Quite frankly, I got more resolution than I expected. Tony got tipped that he and his family were about to get attacked by the FBI, but he seemed slow to understand the implications. Rather than take precautions, the entire outfit seemed to live in denial until the button men actually showed up. Bobby got killed in a toy store, and Silvio got critically wounded outside the Bing -- the refuges for both men, showing that they could not escape their violent world through mindless sexual gratification or through escapism.

Tony had a lot of closure in this episode, and none of it good. He lost his top two men, and possibly another who managed to run off alive. His therapist finally gave him the boot after realizing that she had done nothing but enable him, and possibly to enjoy the vicarious thrill. Her colleagues considered her patient "cool", which obviously got under her skin, after having to feed her own therapist's voyeuristic tendencies in that regard. That message also seems to be aimed at the viewing audience, and that final door slam has more meaning tham just abandonment of Tony.

In the end, all Tony has is his rifle. He's lost his two best men, he's killed his cousin, and now he's cowering in a middle-class house in the dark. And there's still one more episode left.

How does it end? I'm betting that Tony gets clipped. I think Phil wins in the end, and the Sopranos families -- both of them -- collapse under Tony's poor management. I think AJ will try to do something brave and stupid, and that will force Tony out into the open.

But that's just me. What do you think?

Why Nationalizing Health Care Will Make Us Less Free

In the debate over health care, many people support the idea of a government-run, single-payor system that will supposedly guarantee equitable distribution of treatment. However, in granting government the authority to ration all medical care, we grant them the power to withhold it for whatever purpose they see fit. The British have begun to discover this dynamic, as the Daily Mail reports that the National Health Service will begin denying smokers access to medical care until they prove they have quit -- through a blood test.

At Heading Right, I note how this demonstrates the power we will grant government over the most personal of choices as a necessary end result. Where does it stop? Do we refuse service to the obese? To those who engage in sex without condoms? Every risk factor adds cost to the delivery of nationalized medical care, and at some point the single payor will start to act to reduce those costs and freeze out those higher-risk patients. Be sure to read the entire post.

CQ Radio: Rick Moran

Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), I'll talk with Rick Moran of Right Wing Nut House. We're going to talk about Rick's BlogTalkRadio show, his current fundraiser on the Nuthouse, and the developments on immigration and maybe even the indictment of William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson. We're going to be wide open for your phone calls, so be sure to join us at 646-652-4889!

We're already looking to make this week a special one at CQ Radio. Tomorrow I'll have Fausta and Val back on the show, talking about NBC's decision to air Today from Cuba. They're already posting on the subject, so make sure you keep up with the blogging. On Wednesday, we'll have Patrick Hynes to review the Republican presidential debate -- which we'll live blog at Heading Right and follow with our normal Debate Central roundtable afterwards at 9 pm ET.

Dollar Bill Jefferson To Get Indicted: CBS (Update: No They Didn't)

Federal authorities will indict Rep. William Jefferson on several counts of corruption today, CBS News reports. The move comes long after a series of raids triggered a Constitutional showdown between Congress and the Department of Justice:

Sources tell CBS News that authorities are seeking an indictment against Congressman William Jefferson, D-La., on more than a dozen counts involving public corruption.

Jefferson has been the subject of a ongoing probe in which FBI agents allegedly found more than $90,000 in cash in his freezer.

CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports that the Justice Department is expected to unveil the charges later today.

This was the latest development in the 16-month international investigation of Jefferson, who allegedly accepted $100,000 from a telecommunications businessman, $90,000 of which was later recovered from a freezer in the congressman's Louisiana home.

The indictment puts Nancy Pelosi in a tough spot. She removed Jefferson from the Ways and Means committee after the discovery of the freezer cash. The backlash from the Congressional Black Caucus forced her to give Jefferson a seat on the Homeland Security committee instead, giving critics of Pelosi's supposed fight against the "culture of corruption" plenty of ammunition.

However, the damage last year from the revelations of Jefferson's corruption got mitigated by the inane attempt by then-Speaker Denny Hastert, a Republican, to defend Jefferson from the raid on his office. Hastert's unfathomable fight to render duly-issued search warrants null and void on Capitol Hill made the entire scandal look like a Republican attempt at corruption, and inadvertently gave credence to the Democrats' election-year attacks. It also delayed Jefferson's indictments, thanks to the protracted legal battle Hastert initiated in attempting to make Capitol Hill a refuge for corrupt lawmakers.

Now that the indictments will be filed, it will be interesting to see how the Democrats, and especially the CBC, will react. Will they attempt to distance themselves from Jefferson? Will they force him to step down from his committee assignments? My guess is -- no.

UPDATE: Here's the Washington Post report on the story. Notice what they leave out? See update 2 -- the Post is correct.

In July, the House officially expelled Jefferson from the prestigious Ways and Means Committee.

At the time, then House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the allegations against Jefferson were too egregious to wait for a legal resolution.

"This isn't about proof in the court or law; this is about an ethical standard," she said.

Jerry Markon and Allan Lengel never bother to mention that Pelosi later assigned him to the high-profile Homeland Security committee, and that he sits there still. (via Memeorandum)

UPDATE II: Actually, I'm wrong on this -- the Democrats left the seat open. He does still sit on the Small Business Committee.

UPDATE III: Lorie at Wizbang declares me more right than wrong:

Ed has updated his post (which I linked earlier) to say the Washington Post was not wrong, linking a list of current members. I guess Ed was referring to the "he sits there still" line in his post. The Democrats did, however, vote to give Jefferson the seat, at least that is what CNN reported in February ...

In response to that action, Republicans objected and the appointment was put on hold. I really think the Washington Post should have included all of that in their story. If you read the Post story linked, it absolutely gives the wrong impression.

Lorie's a sweetheart, and this does show that the report made the Democrats look more circumspect than they were, but I did get it factually incorrect.

Reagan On Iraq, Israel, And Saddam

I've started to read The Reagan Diaries, edited and collected by Douglas Brinkley, which cover his entire presidency. It's quite remarkable, and even more useful as a reference guide thanks to the helpful index in the back of the book. So far, it shows that Reagan had been quite involved in policy matters, in contrast to his commonly-accepted persona as a hands-off CEO. Today as I began my tour through the book, I noted an interesting passage that has direct relevance to today's Middle East problem:

Sunday, June 7 (1981): ... Got word of Israeli bombing of Iraq -- nuclear reactor. I swear I believe Armageddon is near. ... (Israeli PM Menachem) Begin informed us after the fact.

Tuesday, June 9: ... Ended day with an N.S.C. meeting re the bombing of Iraq. Begin insists the plant was preparing to produce nuclear weapons for use on Israel. If he waited until the French shipment of "hot" uranium arrived he couldn't order the bombing because of the radiation that would be loosed over Baghdad.

I can understand his fear but feel he took the wrong option. He should have told us & the French, we could have done something to remove the threat. ...

What has happened is the result of fear & suspicion on both sides. We need a real push for solid peace.

When I read this section, I could not help but notice how badly Reagan got this one wrong. First, the French were building the reactor, and were obviously not interested in halting its progress. Not only that, but twenty-six years later almost to the day, we have proceeded no further on the comprehensive peace that would have allowed the Israelis to ignore the nuclearization of a state like Iraq.

Had Begin asked for and followed Reagan's advice, Saddam Hussein would have had nuclear weapons, and the first Gulf War would almost certainly have turned into a nuclear exchange. In fact, it probably wouldn't have waited until 1990, and we probably wouldn't have pushed Saddam back out of Kuwait.

Any lessons here for our strange and passive course with Iran?

I'll continue to post intriguing diary entries from the book as I come across them. In the meantime, you can order your own copy from Amazon, and help put a couple of dollars in my account there.

Scarborough Attacks Fred's Wife

Joe Scarborough offers his keen insight and classy analysis into today's political scene in an interview this morning with Congressional Quarterly's Craig Crawford. During the Morning Joe program on MS-NBC, Scarborough suggested that Fred Thompson's wife is a whore (via the Palmetto Scoop):

SCARBOROUGH: Have you seen Fred Thompson’s wife?

CRAWFORD: Oh, yeah.

SCARBOROUGH: You think she thinks she works the pole?

CRAWFORD: That’s what a Hollywood career will do for you, I guess.

SCARBOROUGH: What do you mean?

CRAWFORD: You get wives like that.

SCARBOROUGH: I mean, look at that guy. God bless him, I love his voice. But I mean, you know. He ain’t Robert Redford in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

CRAWFORD: Well I would like to see him back into politics because I think he’s a lousy actor.

Anyone who has watched Scarborough for any length of time knows that Scarborough can be an ass. What we didn't know was that he could also be tacky enough to attack someone's wife in the most personal of terms. Thompson's wife is beautiful, but that doesn't make her a whore or a stripper. Perhaps it speaks to Scarborough's view of women that he immediately associates one with the other.

The counterbuzz around Thompson has started to center on his supposed "trophy wife", as if he somehow should be blamed for dating beautiful women after his divorce. Thompson remained single for several years before marrying his current wife; he had also dated country singer Lorrie Morgan for a while as well. It's hardly a scandal, it hardly makes Jeri Thompson a homewrecker or a whore, and it hardly qualifies as unusual.

This is nothing more than character assassination, and especially egregious as it targets someone who isn't even a political player. Scarborough should be ashamed of himself.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin: "I suppose it's an improvement that they didn't say anything about Mrs. Thompson's hair." She wonders whether Joe would let anyone say that about his wife without demanding an apology.

Actually, I'm kind of hoping that Fred has another video out this afternoon about this. Can you imagine how he'd take Scarborough apart, given what he did to Michael Moore?

UPDATE II: Fred got divorced in 1985. He got remarried in 2002, seventeen years later. Jeri Kehn turned 40 in January, meaning they got married when she was 35 years old and he was 60 -- hardly robbing the cradle. Why this is anyone's business but Fred and Jeri's is beyond me.

UPDATE III: CQ comenter Rich says the segment started off with the traffic and weather reporter, Tracy, talking about how she "works the pole" for exercise to stay in shape. That topic continued for some time, and then Craig Crawford came on, which is when Scarborough made this comment.

That only mitigates it a little, in that Scarborough may not have meant to insinuate that Jeri Thompson was a stripper, or worse. I'm still mystified why Scarborough thinks that Jeri's appearance requires some lecherous reference.

Four-State Fred

The strategy for Fred Thompson's presidential run has begun to coalesce, reports the Wall Street Journal, and to no one's great shock, it relies heavily on the Internet. However, the WSJ points out an opening that hasn't seen much reporting -- and one that Fred could easily use to his advantage:

As a late entry into the crowded, expensive, presidential campaign, Fred Thompson's first big test of viability will be his ability to raise money quickly.

A major part of the former Tennessee senator's strategy is a heavy reliance on the Internet to get his message out and to raise funds. He is also trying to tap into the large number of well-heeled Republican financiers who have yet to commit to a 2008 hopeful, amid widespread disaffection among party loyalists with the current field.

Yet a late start and signs that Mr. Thompson may adopt an unconventional campaign style -- limiting in-person appearances by making extensive use of blogging and online video -- could crimp the television actor's ability to raise money over the long haul. He has suggested he isn't enamored of leaving his family for long stretches of campaign travel. The question is whether an Internet campaign will help him raise money quickly or leave big donors cold.

Howard Dean managed to raise $40 million in two quarters by relying on a strong Internet campaign -- and that was four years ago. If Fred starts in the first week of July, he would have roughly the same amount of time that Dean had before the Iowa caucuses. Dean melted down in the Iowa cornfields, but that had to do with Dean himself and not his fundraising. Fred could turn in a similar performance, and if he kept his costs down, could find himself among the top tier in funding.

In the meantime, though, the Fred campaign has discovered an interesting opening for fundraising. The existing candidates have neglected four prominent states, thanks to the unusual primary-election schedule. Fundraising has been minimal in the high-population states of Florida, Michigan, Illinois, and Ohio. Currently, Mitt Romney leads in all four, but among them they have only donated less than $7 million to GOP candidates. Ohio, traditionally a robust state for Republicans, has only donated a skosh over $500,000. Fred's advisors believe that they can score big in these states, perhaps mostly in Florida, where Gov. Charlie Crist and former Gov. Jeb Bush have refused to endorse anyone -- and have left their superior fundraising organization on the sidelines so far.

People who may have gravitated to Fred Thompson have already committed to other candidates, of course, and Thompson will have trouble luring committed high-profile fundraisers to his cause. That's the penalty for starting late. However, if Fred can successfully leverage the Internet and work his four-state strategy, he may overcome that handicap -- and success may convince some people to switch sides. A fast start on fundraising could put aside the residual doubts surrounding a Fred Thompson candidacy.

The A Word (Update: And the M Word, Too)

Mike Allen at The Politico reviews the use of the word "amnesty", as the Washington Post's Shankar Vedantam explains why we offer them so often. Both reasons come from a lack of definition in the law and an inability to enforce it:

“Amnesty” now is a political dirty word – the favorite slur of the bill’s opponents. But it was not always thus. The Googling monkeys discovered that McCain himself embraced the term during a news conference a few years ago in his office in Tucson, Ariz. “McCain Pushes Amnesty, Guest-Worker Program,” reported the Tucson Citizen of May 29, 2003. The senator is quoted as saying: “Amnesty has to be an important part because there are people who have lived in this country for 20, 30 or 40 years, who have raised children here and pay taxes here and are not citizens. That has to be a component of it.” The newspaper also quoted McCain as saying: “I think we can set up a program where amnesty is extended to a certain number of people who are eligible and at the same time make sure that we have some control over people who come in and out of this country.”

Ouch. McCainland points out that different people have given the word different meetings at different times for their own political purposes, but that the bottom line is that the current bill is not amnesty, for reasons McCain articulates in the text of his Coral Gables remarks: “Those undocumented workers who declare themselves, pass criminal background checks, prove their employment, pay fines, taxes, learn English and study American civics may be offered eventually, and I stress eventually, a path to citizenship. Critics of the bill attack this as amnesty and a special path to citizenship that is denied to lawful immigrants. Both charges are false.”

In this case, the bill's opponents insist that anything short of deportation is an amnesty. Technically, a $5,000 fine is a high price for a misdemeanor, which is the criminal classification for illegal entry into the US. That level of fine is usually associated with felonies, which argues against it being amnesty -- again, in the technical rather than emotional sense.

The problem with amnesties, opponents say, is that it leads to more amnesties. They rightly point to the Simpson-Mazzoli amnesty of 1986 (which also had a $1,000 fine) as an example. However, as Vedantam points out, it's not the amnesties that create the need for more amnesties, but the unenforceablity of the underlying laws that make them necessary:

Husak and Solum, legal theorists and philosophers, argue that laws on immigration are part of a broad pattern. In recent decades, they say, Congress has passed innumerable laws that no one seriously expects will be enforced. Such laws largely seem to serve symbolic purposes and are often designed to placate some powerful constituency -- conservatives in the case of immigration, or the entertainment industry in the case of laws that seek to deter people from swapping copyrighted music and movies.

The yawning divide between reality and what such laws say should happen is what produces the dilemmas that lead to amnesties. Immigration law has produced a situation where an estimated 12 million people in the country -- most of whom look, sound and act like law-abiding citizens -- are supposed to be apprehended, prosecuted and deported, a job that is not only well beyond the capacity of the police and courts, but would wreck substantial parts of the economy were it attempted. ...

The consequence of symbolic lawmaking is over-criminalization, which turns out to be as difficult a problem to deal with in the long run as crime itself. It might sound good for a politician to sternly declare that draft dodgers are in violation of the law and at risk for prosecution, but how do you deal with thousands of Americans who evaded the draft during the Vietnam War -- after the country had concluded the war was lost and a ghastly mistake? You offer them amnesty, of course.

Vedantam uses the war on drugs as another example of this problem. Despite the "war" nomenclature, most people arrested for being on the other side see no jail time. Instead, we give first-time offenders a version of "amnesty" -- a trip through rehab and another chance to Just Say No. Courts remain reluctant to imprison users who do not deal, even with multiple convictions, because our resources are limited and they want to keep the space open for violent offenders.

The problem isn't the amnesty, but the overcriminalization -- the passing of broad criminal legislation without the resources to enforce it. It encourages people to break the law, and then when enough people have broken it, the only recourse left is to either imprison millions or to grant them a pass. Amnesty just happens to be the traditional manner in which we acknowledge our mistakes in resource allocation or legislation, and as Vedantam writes, it's a poor way of running a country.

In this case, the problem isn't the law but the lack of resources to enforce it. Unfortunately, that has been the case for decades, and even a commitment of the proper resources now would only stop the bleeding. The proper commitment of resources -- including a border barrier and the higher-tech solutions -- should have occurred in 1986 or earlier. Now that we're finally closing the barn door, we have to deal rationally with the results of our earlier abject failures. Insisting on continuing the same patterns as before will result in another amnesty down the road, because without the commitment of a vastly higher level of resources, that's all we will have left.

UPDATE: The Post reports that the bill has picked up some momentum:

After a week at home with their constituents, the Senate architects of a delicate immigration compromise are increasingly convinced that they will hold together this week to pass an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, with momentum building behind one unifying theme: Today's immigration system is too broken to go unaddressed.

Congress's week-long Memorial Day recess was expected to leave the bill in tatters. But with a week of action set to begin today, the legislation's champions say they believe that the voices of opposition, especially from conservatives, represent a small segment of public opinion. ...

Public opinion polls seem to support Kyl's contention that Americans are far more open to the deal than the voices of opposition would indicate. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll released today, 52 percent of Americans said they would support a program giving illegal immigrants the right to stay and work in the United States if they pay a fine and meet other requirements. Opposition to that proposal was 44 percent.

The reason why Congress has considered this compromise is because they perceive to have the most support from their constituents. However, Kyl is among those keeping an eye on amendments offered this week from the Democrats, and he promises to withdraw his support if any of them pass. Among them: expanding the family-based immigration applications, and doubling the number of green cards.

Unfortunately, momentum may work against that, too. With so much political damage already being taken over the bill, no one among this generation of politicians will be tempted to take up the issue again. The pressure will increase for some kind of immigration reform to pass in this Congress; if it doesn't, anyone who thinks another immigration package will rise again in the next ten years may be fooling themselves. With everyone jockeying for the best possible twists on this bill, the final coalition passing it may look substantially different by the time the legislation passes or fails.

UPDATE II: Here's a Romney quote from 2005 on immigration which indicated a more relaxed attitude towards normalization:

Here's the best I can make out of the quote:

"My view is that those who are here, contrary to the law, should seek to establish legal residence -- and if they do so, I would be delighted to provide support."

Is that an endorsement of normalization? It's actually fairly vague; one could argue that he meant that if illegals left and came back, he'd support them. In the context of the issue, though, it seems to be more supportive of some form of normalization. It's not entirely inconsistent with Romney's stance as explained to me last week, either, although "delight" never entered into the conversation. He said that normalization proposals are "reasonable" but that he could not support anything which put illegals ahead of those seeking legal immigration.

The problem is that Romney has clearly rejected this proposal, but has not offered a proposal for immigration reform. That may be wise, as it appears to be a third rail for Republicans this year, but it leaves confusion over what exactly Romney would do about immigration as President. I believe voters would be interested in specifics from the Romney campaign -- and the Giuliani campaign, too.

Mitt Romney Interview Transcript Published

The transcript from my one-on-one interview with Mitt Romney is now available at Heading Right, and I think that CQ readers and CQ Radio listeners will find it very revealing. As I noted when I first broadcast the interview, I wanted to press Romney on foreign policy, a topic that has not received much attention so far in this campaign other than the war on terror. Before we got to that, though, I asked the Governor about immigration. He had talked about his opposition to the current compromise under consideration in the Senate based on the Z-visa plan, and I asked him to elaborate on how he would change that part of the legislation:

EM: ... Now, your main problem in this bill as you explained in the interviews today, has been the “Z” provisions which is something that kicks in, it’s supposed to kick in after the triggers but there is a temporary status that kicks in immediately upon passage of the bill. And you were talking about how we can amend the “Z” visas possibly to reflect what you feel are the priorities of trimming illegal immigration. You were saying something about the “Z” visas temporary. Could you explain more about how you would see a temporary “Z” visa program and what would be the cut off at that point?

GR: Well, I’m not proposing legislation; I’m not drafting a piece of legislation. There are many pieces of legislation floating around Washington. My principle is pretty straightforward, which is don’t give the people who here illegally the right to stay here indefinitely in a way that puts them ahead in the line of the people who are applying for that right. And a, one way to do that of course is to say to all people who are here illegally, sign up, for a, come into the post office sign up, or state department or where ever you might be; sign up so that we know who you are and get you on a pathway to, if you will, a realistic attrition program so that you can return home, ultimately if you want to apply for citizenship or apply for permanent residency, you will be able to do so. I don’t think people should be barred from applying for citizenship or permanent residency if they have been here illegally but I don’t think they should have any advantage in being given that status by virtue of having coming here illegally.

After that, I concentrated on foreign-policy questions. I expected Romney to have answers ready for questions about the Middle East, but was surprised at the depth of information he could recall extemporaneously on other areas, including Latin America and trade with China. For instance, when I asked him about the idea for a League of Democracies, he insisted that he had been first with the notion:

EM: It’s been proposed that we try to quarterback the creation of a league of democracies or a league of western nations that, apparently, would be built on a NATO model or something similar to that. Would you think that would be a good model to follow? Do you think it would be something you would want to replace the UN with or is it something you could use in a parallel, if you would be interested in doing that, that you would use it in a parallel fashion to the UN?

GR: Well, that’s something I first proposed under a different name, which is a Partnership for Progress and Prosperity, which is a partnership of civilized nations as well as moderate Islamic states that would come together to help establish good public schools in Islamic states which are threatened by violent jihad, good public schools that are not radical schools, the rule of law in those nations, agriculture and economic policies that are modern and allow these nations to compete in a global basis. Different candidates have picked up on the idea, given it different names, but we’re getting to bring together like minded nations that want to support a movement towards democracy and that’s something which I think is a high priority for this nation.

And on Hugo Chavez:

Hugo Chavez’s progress and his affiliation is very troubling and there are a number of things that I think we need to do. (1) is to reach out diplomatically to leaders of the nations in Latin America; (2) is to assure that our financial support is going is to those nations that are closest to us in supportive of our policies (3)is to market to people of the hemisphere in which we live as to the principles of democracy and free enterprise and to make sure that the reality of America’s heart and goodness which they understand and appreciate (4) I think we should extend our economic ties with nations of Latin America; the President has worked out free trade agreements, trade promotion authority agreements, with a number of nations, with Panama, with Nicaragua, excuse me, with Panama, with Peru and Columbia and in those cases among others, I believe we should be, Congress should be the giving final sign offs so we’re able to have better economic ties, better economic ties, I think, create better understanding our between nations.

I'd say this is quite impressive. Read the whole transcript, and the image of Romney as a slick, tanned, empty suit dissipates rapidly. Whether you support him or not, he is a solid candidate worthy of a long look.

Rick Moran's Fundraiser

One of my favorite bloggers needs your assistance. Rick Moran, of Right Wing Nut House, will hold his third annual fundraiser, as he tries to keep his time free for free-lance writing:

This is the third June in a row that I have forthrightly and without any qualms asked the readers of Right Wing Nuthouse to donate funds to this site. And it is the last time I will make such a request.

This is because by next June, I either won’t need the money or will have given up trying to write for a living.

Of course, you are not exactly donating to “this site.” You would be giving money to me, Rick Moran – someone who no doubt has made you laugh, angered you, made you think, or perhaps moved you with his writing. I make no pretense to having a corner on truth, being a superior writer, or even having any special insight. The one quality that I hope you agree I have is honesty. So here it is.

I'm going to toss a few shekels in the pot, and I hope other CQ readers will consider doing the same.

Is It Newt's Time Yet?

Newt Gingrich hinted in even stronger terms this weekend that he will run for President. He plans to spend the summer lecturing, and after a workshop series in late September will make his decision, he told Fox News:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) fueled further speculation Sunday about entering the Republican race for president by taking shots at the Bush administration.

“The government is not functioning,” Gingrich said on Fox News. “It’s not getting the job done, and Republicans need to confront this reality.”

The face of Republican opposition to President Clinton’s administration, Gingrich said he will hold workshops on Sept. 27 and 29 to discuss “fundamental change.” He hinted he will make a decision about running after the workshops.

Asked about his favorites in the GOP race, Gingrich said Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and prospective candidate Fred Thompson each “bring their unique strengths." But they need to do more work to keep the attention of conservative voters, he added.

“We need to have some very bold proposals for fundamental change,” Gingrich said. “So far, I don't see them.”

No one really doubts that Newt will run for President this cycle. He has allowed the media to play footsie with him for too long this cycle to be simply yanking their chain. After spending more than a decade as an outsider, playing analyst, he wants to be back in the action again, which is why he has raised his public profile this year.

The question will be whether he can gather enough momentum to matter when he does jump into the race. After all, Newt has never run for an office on a level above the House. He has only needed to build a constituency within a Congressional district; he has not even won a statewide office. That's a problem with Representatives in general who run for the Presidency, but the 12-year gap in service compounds that problem with Newt.

Given the circumstances of his departure from Congress, Newt will have a tough time building a case against the current set of candidates and the addition of Fred Thompson. Most people consider Newt a philosopher than a candidate, the kind of man who can influence politics by his ideas rather than his direct participation. Even at the height of his power, he left his caucus so discouraged that they attempted to replace him as speaker (1997), an effort that failed only when the plotters disagreed on his replacement. (Those plotters included John Boehner, Dick Armey, and Tom DeLay.)

Gingrich has plenty of time to muse on these issues, since he has given himself four months before announcing his effort. In another presidential cycle, that may not have been a problem. However, his entry into the race will come very late in this primary campaign, and he may find it difficult to attract staff and backers from established campaigns. Given his high negatives -- he has the highest among potential GOP candidates, and almost as high as Hillary Clinton -- staffers attached to competitive campaigns won't be anxious to drop their current job and flock to Newt's banner.

Time will tell. In this case, it may have already run out.

CAIR Named As Terrorist Supporter

Federal prosecutors have named the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as an unindicted co-conspirator in support of the terrorist group Hamas. CAIR joins Islamic Society of North America and The North American Islamic Trust as accused terror-supporting organizations in the case against The Holy Land Foundation's officers, as well as 300 other individuals and entities:

Federal prosecutors have named three prominent Islamic organizations in America as participants in an alleged criminal conspiracy to support a Palestinian Arab terrorist group, Hamas.

Prosecutors applied the label of "unindicted co-conspirator" to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, and the North American Islamic Trust in connection with a trial planned in Texas next month for five officials of a defunct charity, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.

While the foundation was charged in the case, which was filed in 2004, none of the other groups was. However, the co-conspirator designation could be a blow to the credibility of the national Islamic organizations, which often work hand-in-hand with government officials engaged in outreach to the Muslim community. ...

The inclusion of the Islamic groups on the list of alleged conspirators could give ammunition to critics of the organizations. CAIR, in particular, has faced persistent claims that it is soft on terrorism. Critics note that several former CAIR officials have been convicted or deported after being charged with fraud, embargo violations, or aiding terrorist training. Spokesmen for the group have also raised eyebrows for offering generic denunciations of terrorism but refusing to condemn by name specific Islamic terrorist groups such as Hamas or Hezbollah.

In addition, one of the Holy Land Foundation defendants, Ghassan Elashi, founded CAIR's Texas chapter. CAIR's Washington office was also set up in 1994 with $5,000 in seed money from the foundation, according to congressional testimony by a researcher into Islamic extremism, Steven Emerson.

That identification will make some politicians nervous, but none more so than Keith Ellison of Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District. Ellison received their endorsement, after which he flew to Florida in order to speak to the group -- while CAIR barred the press from covering the event. He didn't bother explaining himself to Minnesota voters about his ties to the group during the election, but then again, he had plenty of assistance from the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the New York Times in pushing back against his critics.

Their inclusion as a conspirator in the effort to fund Hamas should come as no surprise to people who have followed this story since 9/11. CAIR originally showed its support for Americans in 9/11 by encouraging donations to relief efforts -- and then sending people to the Holy Land Foundation -- the same group that is at the center of this prosecution -- for those donations. When they got caught, they changed the link to the Global Relief Foundation, which also got shut down by the feds for supporting terrorist groups.

The Holy Land Foundation has deep ties to CAIR. Its founder, Mousa Abu Marzook, also founded CAIR's parent organization, the Islamic Association for Palestine. Ghassan Elashi, HLF's chairman at the time of its closure, founded the Texas chapter of CAIR. Rabih Haddad co-founded the Global Relief Foundation -- and raised funds for CAIR. CAIR had direct links to both banned foundations, and at its most senior levels.

It's about time that CAIR got outed, and in a manner which shows the editorial boards of papers like the NY Times and the Strib as the saps and suckers they are. It's also time for Keith Ellison to explain his ties to CAIR and to either repudiate them or to resign his office.

Bring A Long Ladder For That Last Helicopter

Iraqis who have worked with the US to help bring peace and stability to their country now want some guarantees about their future if the troops start withdrawing in the face of terrorists. They want assurances that they will not become the second Montagnards:

With pressure building in Washington for an American troop pullout, Iraqis who have worked closely with U.S. companies and military forces are begging their employers for assurances that they will be able to leave with them.

"They must take care of the people who worked with the Americans," said Hayder, an Iraqi who has worked for several U.S. companies since coalition forces entered Iraq. ...

A woman who has worked closely with the U.S. military said she was deeply worried about what will happen when the Americans leave.

"Who is going to protect us?" she asked during an interview near her home in downtown Baghdad.

When the Americans leave, all those who worked with them "must leave also," said another woman who has been forced to move to Jordan. She asked that her name not be used in order to protect her extended family still living in Baghdad.

One special-forces member interviewed by the Washington Times says that these people are right to be frightened. He said they would be exterminated if we allowed Iraq to collapse by leaving too quickly, a prediction that many in the armed forces have made. He referred to it as his "second Viet Nam."

This is one of the problems caused by an early withdrawal, and it will lead to others. We abandoned the Montagnards (better known now as Degar) and South Vietnamese who had directly assisted us during that war, leading to their slaughter after our withdrawal of support for the Saigon government. While the Degar have always had problems with the dominant Vietnamese culture, their cooperation with us in the central highlands led the triumphant Hanoi forces to crack down hard on their people, along with all of the other so-called collaborators.

We know what followed the collapse of our support to our ally in Saigon. Hanoi created re-education camps that killed hundreds of thousands of people, and sent hundreds of thousands to the sea in flight from the Communists. Those who survived mostly ended up here in the US, where we finally allowed them to come after braving piracy and the sea to escape the fate which we enabled. It also enabled Pol Pot in Cambodia to commit his larger genocide without fear of intervention from the US or anyone else.

As the Saigon government collapsed, so did our credibility. We promised to support the South militarily if Hanoi attacked them again, and Congress refused to send materiel to Saigon in the actual event, leading to their downfall. The last flight from the US Embassy, captured on film for the world to see, showed us to be a paper tiger with little resolve underlying our commitment. It showed that the US, at the time, would not fight -- a lesson that the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini learned four years later when his followers sacked our embassy in Teheran.

Withdrawal and retreat endangers our security. It emboldens our enemies, as demonstrations of weakness always do. It also discourages people from supporting us, now and in the future.

Giuliani Lead Steady But Softer

A new ABC/Washington Post poll shows Rudy Giuliani maintaining a strong lead over most of the Republican challengers for the presidential nomination. However, the underlying internals of the poll show that his popularity has softened, which leaves room for Rudy's opponents to make inroads on his lead:

A softening of underlying confidence in Rudolph W. Giuliani, including some damage on the abortion issue, could hearten his current -- and future -- opponents for the Republican presidential nomination.

Giuliani's hardly in trouble; he maintains large leads over his opponents on key personal attributes including leadership and electability. But he's lost ground on empathy, honesty and inspiration; his support is not strong -- and a third of Republicans now flatly rule him out because of his position on abortion, up from just under a quarter earlier this year.

Giuliani remains the Republican frontrunner, with overall candidate preferences stable compared with an ABC News/Washington Post poll in mid-April. But just 36 percent of his supporters are "strongly" for him, and his backing is notably lower among conservatives -- a core Republican group -- than among moderates. Indeed, it's moderate Republicans (and the party's relatively few liberals) who propel Giuliani to a clear lead.

It's not quite as dire as this report suggests. Twenty-seven percent of self-described conservatives in the party support Rudy. However, half of all Republicans tell ABC that Rudy;s position on abortion makes them less likely to support him; 33% say it means that he has "no chance" of winning their support.

Also, in the intervening time between the last poll in February, Giuliani has made a couple of big stumbles on abortion. Yet the polling shows less damage than one might suspect. Those who say that Rudy's position on abortion and gay unions would make them less likely to support him only went up 4 points, from 46 to 50. Those saying it made no difference remained exactly the same, at 43%. In fact, a majority of Republicans still consider Giuliani as giving the GOP the best chance to win the general election, 53-22, over McCain.

What has made Rudy the front-runner so far? According to the internals, Rudy projects the best image of leadership. He scores a majority in several categories in this area, including:

Best Able to Handle a Crisis: 59% (McCain - 23%, Romney - 8%)
Strongest Leader: 55% (26% - 10%)
Most Inspiring: 53% (22% - 13%)
Best Chance to Win: 53% (22% - 9%)

Giuliani has fallen on some of these metrics. He had a majority on Best Able to Understand Your Problems, but lost 11% to fall to 40% - still ahead but vulnerable. He lost eight points on Strongest Leader and 12 points on Most Inspiring. McCain has almost caught him on Most Honest after Rudy lost 7 points on that trait, but McCain lost 12 points on best chance to win. Republicans who supported McCain for his ability to cross the aisle have started to disappear, probably because of the latest example on immigration.

The poll has a couple of problems. For one, it includes an oversample of African-Americans, which means that the Republican sample will be necessarily smaller. That's reflected in the 5-point margin of error for the GOP results, a little high for these political polls. It also samples adults rather than likely primary voters, which would tend to favor centrist candidates.

If the internals show Rudy's national lead softening, it still shows Rudy with the same gap over the rest of the field. Other candidates may have an opening to make their case, but so far, no one on Rudy's bandwagon as jumped off as yet.

Shadegg: Let's Keep It Civil

John Shadegg, one of Arizona's conservative Congressmen, writes about his opposition to the proposed comprehensive immigration bill in today's Arizona Republic. As he outlines the reasons for his unhappiness with the bill, he warns Republicans on all sides to tone down the emotion:

The recent personal attacks leveled at Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl are inappropriate and counterproductive. It is appropriate for any of us to express our views on the merits or flaws of any proposed legislation. However, personal attacks or challenges of individuals' honor or patriotism are unbecoming and out of place, especially on issues of such magnitude.

At the same time, the criticism by President Bush and Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez of those who disagree with them are equally inappropriate and counterproductive and only serve to further divide the nation on this issue.

President Bush's comment that those who disagree with the bill “don't want to do what's right for America” was intemperate and offensive. He presumptuously asserted that anyone who does not support the bill hasn't read it.

I think that Republicans and conservatives need to take a deep breath. Shadegg structures his opposition in a rational and sensible manner -- by explaining the actual deficiencies in the bill, rather than lashing out at the authors. Shadegg objects to the probationary Z-visa, the disparity in treatment between illegals and guest workers, and the loose restrictions on qualifications for normalization, all of which are valid and serious concerns with this bill.

We cannot afford to keep up the namecalling that this proposal has generated. Regardless of what one thinks about this bill, the fact is that Jon Kyl has been a good friend to conservatives in his political career. John McCain has had his self-inflicted troubles with conservatives, and many in the party refuse to even consider him for the presidency. However, McCain has served his country in a manner that few have, and has for the most part supported conservative causes. Neither man deserves the vilification that has come their way over the last two weeks.

George Bush and Lindsay Graham should learn that lesson, too. While McCain took pains in my interview to express understanding and sympathy with conservatives who do not trust Congress, Bush and Graham spent their time accusing the bill's opponents of either being unpatriotic or bigoted. They need to take a deep breath as well, and apologize for the personal attacks on the party's core supporters.

If we are to advance the cause of conservatism, we need men like Jon Kyl and the party'sbase to work together. We need to end the namecalling, debate rationally, and then work together for real solutions to the problems of immigration and border security.