House of Cards

Paul Krugman shows how much he hates America by pointing out the damage that the Bush administration is doing to the military. ". . . the Bush administration, which was ready neither to look for a way out of Iraq nor to admit that staying there would require a much bigger army, simply threw out the rulebook. Regular soldiers are spending a lot more than a third of their time overseas, and many reservists are finding their civilian lives destroyed by repeated, long-term call-ups." And so forth.

Krugman also refers to a Baltimore Sun (registration) article that Josh Marshall linked to on Sunday. That article examines the plausible case of a general losing a star and being forced to retire because he contradicted Donald Rumsfeld on a critical issue: "Riggs was blunt and outspoken on a number of issues and publicly contradicted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld by arguing that the Army was overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan and needed more troops."

The cavalier way that the president embroiled the country in a the Iraq quagmire with a force too small to carry out the mission is only the most obvious problem that the administration faces. The house of cards (war, debt, unpopular medicare expansion, etc.) that the Bushies are constructing must be about a mile high by now. The only question is when will it collapse. They sqeaked by with a historically weak reelection victory in 2004. If John Kerry had Bob Kerrey's wooden leg, he would be president right now. Should the house of cards falls before the 2006 elections and the damage be severe enough that the Democrats win control of one or more houses of congress, look for investigations galore starting in 2007. If they win control of the house, be prepared for the possibility of impeachment.

The administration's acolytes on the web and in talk radio will do their best to stem the tide (forgive the mixed metaphor) of Bush's collapsing house of cards. But it will collapse.

"Culture of Life"

An article by Garance Franke-Ruta in the June issue of the American Prospect contains a telling factoid about Tom Delay's trips paid for by Jack Abramoff.

Saipan, part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands was a focus Abramoff's concern in the 1990s. As a U.S. territory, it can sell products -- made by foreign workers without protection of of U.S. labor laws -- with a warm and fuzzy "made in the USA" label. When the Clinton Deptartment of Interior produced a report critical of the Commonwealth's labor practices; Delay acting as Abramoff's French Poodle, worked to punish the Interior Department. According to Franke-Ruta, one of the practices of Saipan's garment factories is "forcing women to have abortions so that they could keep sewing."

Tom Delay regularly makes unctuous statements in support of the "culture of life." He opposes federal funding of stem cell research because "an embryo is a person." He spearheaded congressional intervention in the Terry Schiavo case, although at times he has trouble keeping her cause separate from his:

This is exactly the kind of issue that's going on in America, that attacks against the conservative moment, against me and against many others. The point is, the other side has figured out how to win and to defeat the conservative movement, and that is to go after people personally, charge them with frivolous charges, link up with all these do-gooder organizations funded by George Soros, and then get the national media on their side. That whole syndicate that they have going on right now is for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to destroy the conservative movement. It is to destroy conservative leaders, and not just in elected office, but leading. I mean, Ed Feulner, of the Heritage Foundation today was under attack in the National Journal. This is a huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in. And you need to look at this, and what's going on and participate in fighting back.

The Abramoff/Saipan business shows the Delay -- who passed on an opportunity to stand up for women who didn't want abortions and instead sided with their bosses -- abandons the "culture of life" when it goes against the wishes of powerful interests.

McCain v. Frist

It has been a while since Thomas Sowell produced something other than rehashed RNC memos, and today's column is more of the same. However, he makes one good point:

Those who claim that Senator McCain has forfeited the support of the Republican base by selling out his party must not realize that McCain never had the support of that base in the first place, as shown by their votes in the 2000 Republican primaries. Senator McCain has lost nothing. If Hillary Clinton is the Democrats' candidate in 2008, what alternative would the Republican base have? Vote for Hillary?

I don't think McCain (or Frist, for that matter) will be the nominee in 2008, but he has helped his prospects with the filibuster deal, not hurt them. Sowell loses me when he speculates that Senator Frist is too darned "humane and decent" to succeed in politics. Give me a break.

"Invited"

Brandon Snider at Antiwar.com links to a delightful exchange between White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan and Helen Thomas:

Q The other day -- in fact, this week, you said that we, the United States, is in Afghanistan and Iraq by invitation. Would you like to correct that incredible distortion of American history --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, we are -- that's where we currently --

Q -- in view of your credibility is already mired? How can you say that?

MR. McCLELLAN: Helen, I think everyone in this room knows that you're taking that comment out of context. There are two democratically-elected governments in Iraq and --

Q Were we invited into Iraq?

MR. McCLELLAN: There are two democratically-elected governments now in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments, and we are there today --

Q You mean if they had asked us out, that we would have left?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, Helen, I'm talking about today. We are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments -- Q I'm talking about today, too.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- and we are doing all we can to train and equip their security forces so that they can provide for their own security as they move forward on a free and democratic future. Q Did we invade those countries?

A crime against the English Language, Right? By any reasonable, non-bizarro world standard, we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq (justifiably in the former, insanely in the latter) and installed in power the "sovereign" governments that "invited" us to stay.

However, it didn't take much effort to find people who think that Helen Thomas is the crazy one, like this guy who described the exchange as a "classic Helen Thomas inanity" without adding any reasoning of his own. This guy, who says that Thomas is " off of her medications again" at least provides a reason for why she is so nuts: "it is obvious to all but the most obtuse that when the Administration says that we are currently in Afghanistan and Iraq by invitation, they mean that the current legitimate government in power has extended the invitation, not the previous theocracy or dictatorship."

I still can't understand how we can be invited to invade a country after the fact. Perhaps after I take my meds . . .

Clarification

To summarize these two posts: Most conservative books these days are crap. Steve Sailer is not blaming the Jews. "<>" means "does not equal."

I should add that contra Ross Douthat, I have read South Park Conservatives and it is one of those not very good books.

Launch Phony Indignation

Wouldn't he violate the Senate's 214 year traditon of not filibustering stem-cell research bills?

Low-Lying Lynndie England Fruit

Here is a good rule of thumb for political matters: when it is too difficult to effectively address a serious problem, do something easy.

A good example of this rule is the response of Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) to the problems that the military is currently having meeting its recruiting goals. The Army recently took a day off of recruiting to address ethical problems such as instructing recruits about how to fake diplomas and beat drug tests. The problem must be serious since, as I know from first hand experience, recruiters have been lying and urging recruits to lie for years.

To actually do something about this crisis would be difficult, so Bachus took the easy path of denouncing a Hollywood Liberal, Bill Maher. Maher made some fairly tepid remarks about the Armies difficulties: "More people joined the Michael Jackson fan club, . . . We've done picked all the low-lying Lynndie England fruit, and now we need warm bodies."

To Bachus, to point out the obvious is treason: "In treason, one definition is to undermine the effort or national security of our country." Why are Republicans, who claim to venerate the Constitution so frequently misreading it these days. It says, in article III, section 3 : "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." Why is that so hard to understand? There is nothing there about "undermin[ing] the effort," whatever that means. You pretty much have to go to war against your own country to be a traitor.

If we accept the Bachus standard that any criticism of the war is treason then the gallows will be rather crowded. What he really wants, of course, is to silence the president's and military's critics. In the unlikely event that he is successful, Bachus still won't have solved the military's recruiting problem.

Priorities

Jonah Goldberg on Robert Byrd of West Virginia: "Now, as they say, the Senate can get back to 'the people’s business.' Which means, as far as Byrd is concerned, getting back to the business of transferring the federal treasury wholesale to the state of West Virginia." Contrast that with the Bush-Goldberg-National Review-neocon axis business of transferring the federal treasury to Iraq.

Of Paleos & Pedicures

Here's hoping that A.C. Kleinheider turns Pat Buchanan's picture to the wall while he has his toes done.

What's the Score?

After a major political occurence such as the filibuster showdown, one of the first things the punditocracy does is try to decide who are the winners and losers. In the all important team sport aspect of politics, the Republicans lost because the failed to accomplish what their base wanted the most -- not a successful vote on all of the Bush judges, but a humiliating defeat for the Democrats.

That is the conclusion that I draw from some of the commentary that I have seen such as the DJ Drummond post at Polipundit labeled, "Treachery!": "That any Republican would sign such an agreement, is betrayal of his party, his state, and his nation."

This exchange from the Rush Limbaugh program has the same tone:

SHEETS(Sen. Robert Byrd): We have kept it. We have kept the republic. We have lifted ourselves above politics --

RUSH: I want to puke.

The Democrats won less than a full victory. They are hampered by their obsession with abortion, the right to which no more appears in the constitution than the phrase "up or down vote." If they would make more of a fuss over other issues, such as Priscilla Owen's alleged ethical problems, they might have some success. Owen took money from Enron and Halliburton and then ruled in their favor:

Two notable past corporate-friendly cases ruled on by Owen involve very publicly known corporations – Halliburton and Enron – both of which had donated to Owen's judicial campaign. In the case of Sanchez v. Halliburton, a Halliburton field worker "won a $2.6 million verdict after the jury found that a company supervisor had framed him to test positive for cocaine." After an appeals court ruling overturned the verdict, Sanchez tried to bring the case to the Texas Supreme Court. In the months during which the case was before the Court, Halliburton made its only campaign donations to Texas Supreme Court justices that year, giving thousands of dollars to three justices: Priscilla Owen, Nathan Hect, and Alberto Gonzales. Result: the court declined to hear the case and the ruling overturning Sanchez's case stood. In Enron Corp. v. Spring Independent School District, Owen "authored the opinion for a unanimous court [decision] that … saved Enron $225,000 and resulted in lost revenue for the school district."

If Owen stays at the appeals level, she will never have the final say on an abortion case, but she often will in more mundane cases involving lawsuits and regulations and the like.

The Politics of War

I have been reading The Politics of War, a history of American involvement in the Spanish American War, the Phillipines War and the Great War, by the late Walter Karp. I haven't even got to the second half of the book and I am struck by the similarities of events of the late 19th century to those of the early 21st.

The push for war against Spain began long before the accidental sinking of the Maine in 1898, and President McKinley attributed the war he had planned for to the "Almighty hand of God." A quick victory led to a lengthy war against insurgents in the Phillipines.

I could go on and on. George Santayana famously said "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The companion to that saying should be, "people never remember."

Two Views.

Two views of lost credibility. National Review sees the loss by the "MSM"; This Modern World (must subscribe or view ad) sees it in the Bush Administration.

Sinking Flagship

The blog of the National Review, the flagship of intellectual conservatism has consumed much bandwith in the last few days with posts about adorable dancing hamsters. The pace of such scintillating commentary will pick up in a few days because John Podheretz, Jonah Goldberg and the rest will be getting out of school for the summer and they don't report to neocon camp until July.

Say what you will about the Weekly Standard -- Fred Barnes and William Kristol -- realize that adolescence is a phase, not a way of life.

The Exterminator

I saw a few seconds -- all I could stand -- of the insufferable Senate judical debate. Mark Dayton (D-Minn) was commenting on inflammatory statements ("The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior") that House Majority Leader, Tom Delay made about judges a few weeks ago. Dayton noted darkly that we should be concerned because Delay had previously been an exterminator.

It would have been a lame and tired as a joke; but Dayton seemed to be seriously concerned that Delay wants to actually exterminate liberal judges, in stead of, you know, impeach them. Compare Dayton's comment to the testmony of George Galloway that I previously commented on. Galloway forthrightly denied the charges against him, denounced the commitee for convicting him in advanced, accused the senators of supporting an illegal war. Irrespective one's opinion of Galloway, he openly expressed his views for all to hear.

If Dayton had half a brain he could come up with numerous arguments against Bush's judges and the nuclear option. Instead he must insinuate that his political enemies are latent murderers.

Boortz on Galloway

Neal Boortz needs to hire new people to put words in his mouth. Commenting on the Galloway tesitimony, he said, "he may be an eloquent speaker, but the facts are the facts: documents show Galloway was paid off by Saddam Hussein to the tune of millions of dollars. Galloway's response? The war in Iraq was wrong and was fought based on lies."

Yes, Galloway did say that, but Boortz implies that he did not forthrightly deny the charges against him, which he did. This transcript of his testimony has it in the very first sentence: "Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf."

I have no idea who is telling the truth, but there is not doubt about Galloway's position. Neal Boortz should pay a little attention

Remedial Senate Education

I don't know who is telling the truth in this oil-for-food business, I always assumed that neocons are pushing the scandal to detract attention from the mess in Iraq. But senators Norm Coleman looked and Carl Levin looked rather foolish after George Galloway finished with testifying on his role (or non-role) in the affair. It is possible that Galloway is acting like Michael Corleone in the Godfather Part II, and is lying to the committee in the false belief that there are no witnesses available to finger him. We may eventually find out.

In the meantime, Galloway looked like a school teacher addressing a class of slow fourth graders. It is refreshing to see someone speak to the Senate that way. Members of Congress tend to bloviate endlessly while trying to say very little. I had no doubt where Galloway stood on the issues:

"Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth.

"Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Halliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer.

"Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it.

Alternate take here.
BBC video here.
UPDATE: I haven't found much substantive commentary from the War Party on his testimony, however Charles Johnson (who ironically called Daily Kos a "hate hole") of Little Green Footballs unleashed his followers on Galloway. Some highlights:
" I can't take more of that trash. Kos is a traitor."

"It's such a disgrace that the Left in this country will admire ANYONE that hates the Right. It doesn't matter to the them (the Left) that Galloway basically licked Saddam's balls! Who cares? He hates the Right - then he is their guy!

I'm giving up hope that this country will survive. There is too much bickering going on internally to recognize the external (and probably now internal) threat.

CRAP!"

"The Muslims will take care of George when he's done serving their purpose. The sooner the better."

"oh really, Galloway? I've a Angelsword forged Scimitar and the training to use it. and you're awfully overweight. but gristle can be carved away. Let's play."

The Servile Media

But for the Lunacy of the Hugh Hewitts of the world, I would be far more disturbed by the shoddy journalism of Newsweek. I won't say that Hewitt went off of the deep end, because that is where he lives. He ponders the involvement of the Trial Lawyers in the Newsweek case:

But how about the trial lawyers? While there are proximate cause issues around the reckless negligence of Michael Isikoff and his editors and the loss of life and property in the Muslim world, the plaintiffs' bar has never hesitated to tackle far more remote connections. But I doubt they suits will be descending on Jalalabad as they did in Bhopal or wherever an oil tanker founders.

Hewitt thinks that misreporting a story that stirs up violent thugs to riot and murder innocent people is comparable to a factory leaking poison and killing thousands. I wish he would elaborate on lawsuits with more remote connections than the one he is promoting here.

Hewitt also longs for the "Patriotic" reporting of World War II:

There were also plenty of discussions on whether one or two sources are enough when the issue could affect national security. Can you imagine a similar conversation surrounding any reporting during World War II that had a negative effect on the war effort? The default position of American media after the Pentagon Papers is that all disclosure of potential American wrongdoing is "good." But that premise --not widely shared outside of elite liberal circles-- is certainly not applicable when there is no wrongdoing to begin with.

Is it a good thing that the media didn't examine the Unconditional Surrender policy or expose the Katyn Forest massacre commited by our allie, "Uncle Joe" Stalin? Isn't it at least possible that our national security was harmed by the media's failure to seriously question some of Roosevelt's policys in the 1940s?

Hewitt wants a servile media (until Hillary Clinton gets elected) that parrots the Republican agend -- and he wants Congress to "subpoena some Washington Post (Newsweek's parent company) executives" and bully them into servility. I, on the other hand think the "MSM" has been incompetent--focusing on what Bush did in 1973 istead of 2003, for exaple -- and far too deferential towards the Bush administration and I'm glad we have alternatives.

Down the Drain.

Does Glenn Reynolds actually believe some of the nonsense that he parrots? He repeats a comment From an Austin Bay reader:

The word I receive from Kabuli friends is that Isikoff has singlehandedly turned US triumph in the country to a total disaster. It was thought an anomaly last summer that some wonderful–and tragically forgotten–American DynCorps workers (mostly ex-military and my good friends) were killed in an environment that was pro-American to the core. That could be seen as a terrible tragedy, an unreasonable sad event impinging on an overall positive atmosphere–a last ditch effort by desperate Al Qa’eda remnants from outside Afghanistan to vent anger at the overwhelming success of the Americans. Now thanks to one Bush-hating reporter (google Isikoff if you doubt his intentions,) the recidivist Taliban-Pathans of southeast Afghanistan once again have an issue to de-legitimize the Karzai-US alliance.

Now, it occurs to me that if the "Karzai-US alliance" can be so easily flushed down the toilet, it was probably a sham all along. Had the Newsweek incident not happened, do these people believe that this house of cards would have remained standing?

Of course, like most people commenting on this topic, I am almost totally ignorant, but I am far from convinced that the riots in Afghanistan were solely conerned with Newsweek's Periscope.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum pours some cold water on the fires of outrage and makes a valuable point: "The Taliban stages a resurgence every spring, anti-Americanism has been on the rise for some time, and the rioters in Afghanistan are responsible for the riots in Afghanistan. The Newsweek story is clearly just a pretext, and another story would have done just as well given their obvious animosity toward America."(emphasis added)

Imagine that. The rioters are responsible for the rioting.

Volunteer State to Require Volunteerism

The Nashville Tennessean (via John Norris Brown) reports that some legislators are proposing legislation to require some parents "volunteer" at their schools:

A proposal making its way through the General Assembly would require parents with children in kindergarten through grade 4 to ''volunteer'' at least 12 hours a year. And they couldn't just show up — they'd be expected to get involved in the teaching process by tutoring, chaperoning lesson-related field trips or helping students play educational games.

Forget, for a moment, what a bad idea this is in principle. Think of the type of people this dragnet might pull in -- child molesters, violent abusive types, complete idiots, people who bathe twice a year, etc. As a general principle, people who only show up because they are forced to do so, don't put in much effort; which is probably one of the bigger problems that public schools face these days.

I hope that Gov. Bredesen vetoes this bill, should it make it that far.

Term Limits for Pundits

Paul Jacobs, who is a "senior fellow" at US Term Limits, has a column at Townhall humerously suggesting that the Catholic Church adopt term limits for the papacy in order to draw attention back to his animating issue:

Term limits, after all, make sense for many reasons. (In fact, they make common sense, which is one reason I call my free e-letter Common Sense.) With a career in politics less an option, the republican ideal of citizen involvement could flourish again. And with less time in office, legislators and executives would have less time to consolidate power and accumulate the bad habits of corruption and logrolling and a dozen other features of today's precarious democracy.

. . .

Whether they make sense for the pope, well, that's another matter entirely. And none of my business.

But for public servants in these United States of America? That's every American's business.

This reads more like direct mail advertising copy than a column. I suppose after a while it gets hard to keep flogging such a dead horse of an issue that for a brief time was Really Important. One of the poster boys for term limits, Oklahoma physician, Tom Coburn, who served in the House from 1994 til 2000, when, true to his word, he went back to Oklahoma. Apparantly, the baby doctor tired of delivering new Okies in Muskogee -- he came back to Washington last year as a new U.S. Senator.

Jacobs' column reveals another group that needs to be term limited -- the pundit/foundation hack/Congressional staff/etc. permenant shadow government that has lost touch with America. This is not an original idea, Michael Kinsley suggested it about ten years ago.

Paul Jacob reminds me a bit of Grover Norquist, of Americans for Tax Reform. Norquist, who has spent most of his adult life as a Washington lobbyist, told the New York Times Magazine that Republicans don't put down roots in Washington the way that Democrats do.

These people need to spend some time in the Real America. They need to stand in line at Krogers and have Sunday dinner at Shoneys. It would do them a world of good to call up old high school friends and offer them term life insurance. They could adopt as their literary hero, John Huey Ketcham of Bill Kauffman's Every Man A King. In that novel, the hero is a rising young pundit whose career is destroyed after he used a racial slur during his Big Break on Face the Nation. Ketchum takes a fall and winds up home in Batavia, New York; finding happiness and love amonst the white trash of a Batavia housing project. Jacobs and friends should give it some thought.

Democracy in Afghanistan

Note Michelle Malkin's logic in a post on the riots sparked by a brief item in Newsweek that alleged that interrogators flushed the Koran at Guantanamo Bay. Malkin reprints an editor's note from the current Newsweek that admits that the story is at best, unverifiable.

Naturally, for Malkin and her allies this is another MSM scandal, and let me say shame on Newsweek for reporting the unverified and possibly untrue story in the first place. But then Malkin says, "Newsweek has blood on its hands. Blood on its desks. Isikoff should cough up his source." She believes that Newsweek (and not the people doing the actual killing) is morally culpable for the fact tha Muslims are killing each other over their story.

These people are missing an important story -- the thin veneer of "democracy" in Afghanistan. According to the Times story, "the most violent protests were in Afghanistan, where the death toll in clashes between demonstrators and security forces reached fourteen after a third day of rioting. Three people were killed and twenty-two injured near Faizabad, in Badakhshan province, when a thousand rioters burnt down aid agencies’ offices." But we have been hearing of the wonders of Afgan Democracy -- an idea so silly only a neocon could fall for it -- for months now. That a tiny item in Newsweek could spark (if in fact, it did) this level of violence indicates how close to the edge this country is some three years after the U.S. military liberated it from Taliban rule.

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds agree -- Newsweek and not the Muslim rioters are responsible for the recent violence in the Islamic world.

Commandments

Matthew Yglesias and Kevin Drum commit common sense on the topic of public displays of the Ten Commandments and other religious oriented battles in the Culture War. I think they are right, especially since I don't believe that it amounts to an establishment of religion to put up a marble slab with the commandments in the courthouse. Yglesias even goes a bit further:

Now where I'll probably lose your support is when I say that I don't even really
care about the school prayer question, but speaking from experience I was forced
to engage in sectarian Christian prayer in my (non-public) school and it was
fine.

I went to a Catholic school (because my teacher/mother had an idea of how bad the public schools are) and I agree with Yglesias on this. Rote classroom recitation of prayers, or of the Pledge of Allegiance tend to lose their meaning, tend to lose their meaning after a while.

Stephen. Green. Ugh.

Stephen Green, who is incredibly smug, even by the standards of the blogosphere attempts to "Fisk" Pat Buchanan for questioning the wisdom of US entry in to the Second World War. In my favorite part, Green writes, "Besides, this country was not going to go to war with an ally, no matter how monstrous, not after having just concluded three years of war and suffering a million casualties. It was Not. Going. To Happen." Geez. Stop. Being. Such. A. Jerk.

Green then describes two alternative scenarios of what might have happened had the US and Great Britain not gone to war against Hitler, followed by this: "These are historical facts. Buchanan knows them. He's hoping you don't." No. These Are. Stephen Green's. Opinions.

It is good that Buchanan continues to bring up subjects that our betters don't want discussed -- Green smarms that World Net Daily, "should have known better than to publish" Buchanan's Column. Buchanan should also raise the topic of how the allies fought the war some time. Thomas Fleming produced a book-length "Fisking" of Roosevelt and his war effort a few years ago, which Green would do well to read. The main object of his ire was Roosevelt's "unconditonal surrender" policy which prolonged the War. Fleming speculates (and unlike Green he knows the difference between his opinions and facts) that Hitler might have been done in by his generals in early 1943 after a stinging defeat on the Eastern Front had Roosevelt not announced that policy.

I think that the good guys won in World War II, and we got a lot of great movies out of it. But the reality of the war; and how the allies entered and fought it became much more complex to me when I ceased getting my history from John Wayne Movies.

Filibuster This

Radio Blogger -- who is a coffee getter, or something -- for Hugh Hewitt, makes the astonishing claim that the "judicial filibuster" did not exist before the year 2000. It is of course, the filibuster, period; and it has existed in differing forms for a couple of centuries now. That it has been used rarely for judicial nominees is of little import, since their have been other ways to keep judicial nominations from getting a vote.

Note that Radio Blogger mocks Robert Byrd, the only U.S. Senator that I don't despise, for quoting from the Bible (King James Version --"I don't read any other version of the Bible"). I can't think of a clearer cut example of religious bigotry.

Priorities

Neal Boortz: Endless spending to build an empire in the middle east, groovy; small surcharge on traffic tickets to fund driver's ed, terrible.

Marco . . . Polo!

The Loudmouthed radio gasbag, Neal Boortz, complains about a Holiday Inn commercial playing off on the kid's pool game, "Marco Polo."

If you want to completely ruin a nice afternoon relaxing by a swimming pool all
you need is just a few high-pitched voices in the pool yelling "Marco ... Polo"
for literally hours on end. In only takes ten minutes or so of this incessant
chanting for you to start searching the yellow pages for piranha suppliers.

I can think a few sounds, such as a Boortz radio broadcast, that are much worse.

Missing Bloggers

Justin Raimondo wonders why the warbot blogosphere, outside of Michelle Malkin, hasn't paid much attention to the Larry Franklin spy affair. Perhaps it is because their leader has decreed that we are in a slow news period and there is nothing to blog about other than digital cameras and lawn mowers.

The Guys at Power Line, Big Snout and the other guy, create their own reality.

No To Factory Farming!

The issue of the American Conservative now out on newsstands has a lengthy cover article by Matthew Scully on the practice of factory farming, and of conservative indifference towards it. Scully, a former special assistant to President Bush and the author of Dominion: The Power of Man and the Suffering of Animals is disappointed in his allies to say the least.

Many on the right seem to content to reflexively oppose the left on issues such as animal cruelty and organizations such as PETA are easy to mock. Scully makes the case that conservatives should care about factory farming, which he describes as a "preditory enterprise." For those who would attempt to feed him free market baloney, he notes that it is "unaturally propped up by political influence and government subsidies." He says that if "such matters were ever brought to President Bush's attention in a serious way he would find in the details of factory farming many things abhorrent to the Christian heart and to his own kindly instincts." Alas Scully worked for him for several years and didn't seem to get the chance bring it up. Meanwhile the president does the bidding of bigtime factory farm polluters.

The dominant strand of conservatism amounts to little more than low tax militarism with a dash of "moral values" thrown in for seasoning. Fortunately the dominant strand isn't the only strand.

South Park Cons

I have been reading Brian Anderson's South Park Conservatives for a review. Here are a couple of quick impressions. One is that this crowd has grown extraordinarily arrogant in a very short time. Their house of cards is built on a foundation of sand. (how's that for a mixed metaphor?) The second is that a good sign that there are problems with a book when the author decides to bolster his case with a liberal sampling of the thinking of Dick Morris.

Hogaaan!

Can we ever trust what the Bush administration tells us? Tex at Antiwar.com links to a Times of London article about last weeks capture of an al Queda operative. It was originally reported as a major capture, but it seems that Abu Faraj al-Libbi is less Heinrich Himmler and more Col. Klink:

THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W Bush as “a critical victory in the war on terror”. According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists’ third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as “among the flotsam and jetsam” of the organisation.

Al-Libbi’s arrest in Pakistan, announced last Wednesday, was described in the United States as “a major breakthrough” in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

Bush called him a “top general” and “a major facilitator and chief planner for the Al- Qaeda network”. Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, said he was “a very important figure”. Yet the backslapping in Washington and Islamabad has astonished European terrorism experts, who point out that the Libyan was neither on the FBI’s most wanted list, nor on that of the State Department “rewards for justice” programme.

That doesn't mean that the capture isn't good news, of course, but it is yet another example of how little trust on should place in the pronouncements of the Bush administration.

UPDATE: In a perhaps related matter, the Professor (no, this guy) and the Derb think that nothing worth blogging about is happening in the world.

Laura Who?

Even if I had nothing better to do than watch Gilligan's Island reruns or follow endless coverage of the "runaway bride" story, life would still be too short to care about some silly speech by the First Lady.

Decline and Fall

Neal Boortz attributes the decline of newspapers in part to the low quality of government schools:

You also have to factor in government schools. With every year that passes we have more young adults finishing their education (if that's what you want to call it) and beginning their lives. Why would these people want to subscribe to a newspaper if (a) they have no real understanding of the significance of the stories that might be covered in that paper; and (b) they can't read all that well anyway.

I wonder if Boortz would credit the rise of talk radio programs; you know, like his, to the same phenomenon.

Overheated Times

My favorite line in this overheated editorial from the LA Times is this:

Saying that the armed volunteers who have been patrolling the border with Mexico for the last month have done a "terrific job," [Schwarzenegger] all but invited them to come to California. What's next: Will the governor encourage vigilantes to combat street crime?

You know, I don't as a general rule endorse taking the law into one's own hands, but there are times to consider exeptions to that rule. When the Federal Government is shirking its duty to
defend the border, the Minutemen and their talk radio supporters are at the very least drawing serious national attention to the issue. And if law and order were to break down in my town, I wouldn't mind a few vigilantes taking up the slack.

Enemies of Normal Americans

A.C. Kleinheider just learned the hard way what happens when you show a bit of kindness to the stupid party. A couple of weeks ago he urged readers to support the 06 senate candidacy of Ed Bryant. The Blogging for Bryant people noted his endorsement and added a link to his blog:

I was happy and surprised to see that they had become aware of my support and added me to their links.

A day or two later it occurred to me to drop them a line thanking them. So, I went to their website in search of their email address. I found instead my link had been removed.

. . . I assumed they had done a bit more perusing of my blog and decided that Hard Right was not something a site promoting a mainstream politician should be linking to.

I wouldn't disagree. Where I in their position I don't know that I would link to me. Anyway, one of them emailed me back explaining that they had been playing around with they links and mine was inadvertently deleted.

. . . I had been imagining some conspiracy to keep Blogging for Bryant clean of crazy Rightists and all that happened was an oversight. . .

A few days later, the Hard Right link was then removed as well. My subsquent emails have gone unanswered.

I am aware it seems childish and petty to mention this but I think it is instructive. Let me be clear: I do not think they have any obligation to link to me just because I linked to them -- not at all. . .

All they had to say was, "Yeah, we looked at your blog again and think your site is incompatible with the image of Ed Bryant we are trying to promote". . .

None of this will effect my vote for Ed Bryant. He is excellent on the National Question therefore he is my main-est man in the 2006 US Senate race in Tennessee.

Bloggingforbryant must have had a link to me for a time since I saw it as a referring link on my site meter. I haven't endorsed Bryant, and won't be voting for him without some new information. It is good that he is strong on immigration, but unless he is willing to make enemies with Karl Rove the way that Tom Tancredo did, it isn't enough. Who cares what he is willing to vote for, if it is never going to get to a vote?

The only Republican that I have been able to vote for in the last couple of years has been Tennessee's second district congressman Jimmy Duncan, who defied the President on entering the Iraq quagmire and voted against the Dept. of Homeland Security -- two of the most important votes of career. On top of that, he has written for Chronicles and the American Conservative; and has quoted Bill Kauffman from the House Floor.

The problem with voting for Republicans in the Bush years is that the party has become in Newt Gingrich's phrase (for Democrats, of course) the enemies of normal Americans. George W. Bush, with his plans to ignite the fire of global democracy, has become in many ways the political heir of Woodrow Wilson. He is as bad as the Democrats on immigration. Even the Republican's tax cut fetish is bogus, since at some point somebody is going to have to pay for their spending spree of the last five years.

Unless Bryant indicates that he is going to be at odds with his party and president; almost to the point of being a persona non grata, he will have to win without my vote.

Inconvenient History

These people need to be reminded from time to time, who was president when Saddam was at his most genocidal, and who went to Iraq to play kissyface with the Hitler of the moment.

Update: It occurs to me that these guys, who made the Saddam Hitler comparison would be more convincing "Students for War" if they were studying at this school of hard knocks.

Lathered Hicks

For the height of delusional drivel, what better source is there than Rush Limbaugh. Here he is today on the Nuclear Option:

RUSH: This morning on the Senate floor, a bunch of Democrats stood up, basically to praise Dingy Harry for failing to get the Republicans to not drop the nuclear bomb. Now, I know that sounds odd, but as you listen to this, it sounds to me exactly like what they're doing. We have the mom in tennis shoes, Patty Murray from Washington, we have Dingy Harry himself, and we have the most partisan man in Washington, Senator Patrick Leahy, also one of the biggest hypocrites in Washington. You hear this and you'll see what I mean. They're lining up to praise Dingy Harry for failing to not get the Republicans to drop the nuclear bomb.

What nonsense. While Reid has not convinced Frist to drop the nuclear threat, Frist has not succeeded in breaking the filibuster. Who exactly is "failing"?

I have come to the perhaps not very original conclusion that Frist doesn't actually want the nuclear option to succeed.

If he actually wanted it to work, then his participation in Justice Sunday was a bad idea. The senators who might be won over by that appear to be on board. Now he needs the senate's remaining Republican moderates, liberals and media darlings.

By dragging the issue out Frist hopes to keep the red state hicks in a lather, while yet again failing to make substantive progress on their pet issues.

Invasion

Michelle Malkin notes the failure of both parties to address the immigration question. Best part:

I have said often that the only thing saving the Republicans on the
immigration issue is the Democrats' stupidity. No more. Hillary may only be
playing dress-up on border security, but that's far more than most of the
cowering GOP elite in Washington is willing to do. And she's not alone among
Democrats who are beginning to exploit the White House's vulnerability.

The failure of both parties on this issue shows the essential childishness of American politics. Immigration, legal or otherwise hardly came up in last fall's presidential campaign. The media and the candidates had far more important issues to focus on -- such as John Kerry's whereabouts in 1968 and George Bush's whereabouts in 1972. Three years after 9/11, one would think that Americans would be more concerned about border security.

Gagging on Frontpage

Justin Raimondo discovers for about the millionth time that the only way to read David Horowitz's Frontpage is with your fingers closed tightly over your nose.

More on Filibusters

According to Sam Rosenfeld writing at the American Prospect's website, Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist has overplayed his hand in his threat to resort to the nuclear option of abolishing the use of the filibuster for judicial candidates. I don't know if it is true, but it sounds plausible. I can think of no other reason for Frist to continue delaying a vote if he otherwise wants it.

EconRadical at Redstate.org is calling on Frist to resign over the matter, refering to him as a "rudderless clown" and stating that "he's been set up and [Democratic leader] Reid has outplayed him at every turn, but the responsibility for the coming fiasco rests largely with Senator Frist."

I am a little surprised at the extent to which the Right has become wedded to the nuclear option. The American Conservative Union announced that it will consider a vote on the issue in its ratings of Senators. Hugh Hewitt, a leading proponent of the move has written a smarmy and insulting speech that he would like to see a recently elected senator deliver:

Senators, the issue of judges matters more than you can imagine. More than it has probably ever mattered in the 217 years of our country's political history. So much does it matter, Senators Snowe and Chafee--and I say this as a friend--that if we refuse or lose this battle, I think you will lose your seats . . .

I want to early on in my remarks to thank Senator Voinovich. Senator, you may not have intended to do so, but with your comments in the Foreign Relations Committee last week, you opened the door. After you said you needed time to think about the Bolton nomination, well, every network couldn't rush an expert out quick enough to praise you for your integrity. Over at CNN I thought Bill Schneider was going to canonize you. Senator Chafee also was on a lot of broadcasts saluting your willingness to rethink your position. Others made the same point that it takes courage to change your mind in D.C.

I thought then, and I emphasize now, senators can change their mind on big issues, especially when it is because you have thought long and hard on the subject. I am hoping Senators Chafee and McCain, who have announced their intention to vote with the Democrats on the issue of the filibuster, that they use the opportunity that Senator Voinovich has given them to rethink their position and rejoin the caucus. I think it is much more important than saving Senator Chafee's seat, though I am fairly certain he will lose it if we lose this vote. It is more important than Senator Snowe's seat, though I think we will lose that one as well if we lose this vote. . .

I say that now and if we lose the majority and the presidency in the future, I will say it then. It is the principled thing to do, and it does nothing to dilute our institution's deliberate approach to legislation or blue slips or the committee's power. . .

Hewitt is inflating the importance of judical nominations so that they are virtually the only thing that matters. He should look back at the year 1937 if doesn't think that the courts have ever been more important than they are now. I assume many veteran senators are concerned about the institution in which they serve and the precedent that they would be setting. The Los Angeles Times called for abolishing all filibusters in an April 26th editorial:

. . . The filibuster debate is a stark reminder of the unprincipled and results-oriented nature of politics, as senators readily switch sides for tactical advantage. Politicians' lack of consistency on fundamental matters — the debate over the proper balance of power between Washington and the states would be another case in point — is far more corrosive to the health of American democracy and the rule of law than any number of Bush- appointed judges could ever be. For one thing, it validates public wariness about politicians professing deep convictions.

Liberal interest groups determined to keep Bush nominees off the bench are in such a frenzy that they would have you believe that the Senate filibuster lies at the heart of all American freedoms, its lineage traceable to the Constitution, if not the Magna Carta. The filibuster, a parliamentary tactic allowing 41 senators to block a vote by extending debate on a measure indefinitely, is indeed venerable — it can be traced back two centuries. But it is merely the product of the Senate's own rule-making, altered over time . . .

I don't agree with their position, but they are on far firmer ground that those calling for carving out a filibuster exemption. If Frist succeeds, the Democrats will have a precedent for future exceptions or abolition when they win the Senate.

A Serving of Crow For a Big Mouth

Watch out, Tex! Neil Boortz has the goods on you, and your liberal ilk. Many naive souls are under the impression that the U.S. military found no dreaded "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. Boortz points out that those people were wrong:

Actually, WMD has been found in Iraq. Several chemical agents classified as weapons of mass destruction have been located, including mustard gas and sarin, enough to kill tens of thousands of people. Naturally, this was dismissed by the Bush-bashing media is insufficient. Apparently weapons of mass destructions means something different to them.

Saddam Hussein knew we were coming....and either hid or destroyed the WMD. He had weapons of mass destruction, he used them and he was capable of producing more. But that won't be how this report is covered. Nor will you hear that regime change in Iraq was the stated policy of the Clinton administration for 8 years.

Not surprisingly, Boortz didn't link to any articles about WMD finds in Iraq. So I'll link to one (from Fox News, so it must be true). The WMD's found in the Fox News story sound consiberably less menacing that Boortz's interpratation:

. . . Two people were treated for "minor exposure" after the sarin incident but no serious injuries were reported. Soldiers transporting the shell for inspection suffered symptoms consistent with low-level chemical exposure, which is what led to the discovery, a U.S. official told Fox News.

"The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155-millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt (search), the chief military spokesman in Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad. "The round had been rigged as an IED (improvised explosive device) which was discovered by a U.S. force convoy.". . .

Two weeks ago, U.S. military units discovered mustard gas that was used as part of an IED. Tests conducted by the Iraqi Survey Group (search) — a U.S. organization searching for weapons of mass destruction — and others concluded the mustard gas was "stored improperly," which made the gas "ineffective."

They believe the mustard gas shell may have been one of 550 projectiles for which former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein failed to account when he made his weapons declaration shortly before Operation Iraqi Freedom began last year. . .

Kimmitt said the shell belonged to a class of ordnance that Saddam's government said was destroyed before the 1991 Gulf war (search). Experts believe both the sarin and mustard gas weapons date back to that time.

So there have been findings of "WMD" in Iraq. Specifically, aged and ineffective sarin and mustard gas was found. That would bolster the case for war if the administration had said that we must invade Iraq right away because there are a few rusting mustard gas shells somewhere in the desert. What the administration said, as I pointed out here, was that the country faced "clear evidence of peril" and we couldn't wait for the "smoking gun" which might in fact, be a "mushroom cloud."

No evidence of any genuine threat has been found in Iraq. Which is why people like Neal Boortz, who dined on the administration's "WMD" baloney are looking for any excuse to not eat crow.

Sue Ellen, Fearless!

60s generation Baby Boomers were obnoxious and self-absorbed about being young. Is it any surprise that some of them are equally obnoxious and self-absorbed about growing old(note the snotty "Not Your Mother's Midlife" heading)?

Aging is tough, and a pair of boomer women, Nancy Alspaugh and Marilyn Kentz, have a way to help their sisters cope that is as American as apple pie -- gaseous, self-help-style claptrap under the name "Fearless Aging"; combined with a coffee table book:

With their books, seminars, speaking engagements and stage play, Alspaugh and Kentz hope to raise awareness regarding being a middle-aged woman in this twenty-first century; to give them some hope and inspiration and the sense that they are not alone. The Fearless Aging Movement validates this unequaled generation and encourages them to take on the rest of their lives with a renewed sense of power.

But I'm open minded fellow and if if your idea of empowerment is a book that features pictures of 50 something celebrities, such as Linda Gray (best known as the tippling Sue Ellen Ewing of Dallas fame, triumphally hoisting sword aloft, I say knock yourself out.

Stating the Obvious

David Boaz does what is occasionally neccessary and restates the obvious. In the struggle over judicial nominations:

Republicans who once extolled the virtues of divided power and the Senate's role in slowing down the rush to judgment now demand an end to delays in approving President Bush's judicial nominees. President Bush says the Democrats' "obstructionist tactics are unprecedented, unfair, and unfaithful to the Senate's constitutional responsibility to vote on judicial nominees." Democrats who now wax eloquent about a "rubber stamp of dictatorship" replacing "the rights to dissent, to unlimited debate and to freedom of speech" in the Senate not too long ago sought to eliminate the filibuster altogether.

I would vote against ending the filibuster but I don't think it is the end of the world. I would feel better about the Republicans if they would openly admit that they are killing the filibuster period (which I believe will be the result) instead of pretending that it will only apply to judicial nominees; and drop all of this special pleading on behalf of "people of faith."

The Neo Curve

Perhaps in his spare time Steve Sailer could plot a bell curve of neoconservative columnists. I have a suspicion that Clifford May would show up on the left end. His latest column fails the test of elementary reasoning ability:

Buchanan says, Americans have brought terrorism on themselves through interventionist policies. "What happened on 9/11 was a result of interventionism," he argues. "Interventionism is the cause of terror."

That's an astonishing conclusion. The atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian. How, before 9/11, did Washington intervene in Egypt's affairs -- except to give Egypt billions of dollars, re-supply its military, and turn a blind eye to President Hosni Mubarak's repression of dissidents?

Atta followed orders from Osama bin Laden, a Saudi. For more than fifty years, American "interventionism" in Saudi Arabia consisted of paying the kingdom astronomical sums in oil revenue, granting Saudis unprecedented privileges (for example, empowering Wahhabis to vet Muslim chaplains for our military and our prisons) and, in 1990, sending American soldiers, at the request of the Saudis, to protect them from being invaded by Saddam Hussein.

Or maybe Buchanan was thinking about our intervention in Somalia -- the only goal of which was to feed starving people. Or our intervention in Afghanistan to support guerrillas fighting the Soviet invader. We also intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo -- to save Muslims from further devastation at the hands of their Christian neighbors.

Clearly, it is not "interventionism" that has spawned anti-American terrorism. What is it then? Listen to our enemies. They've told us -- over and over.

I don't know what May is talking about. It is not as if Buchanan, who is much more comfortable using the English language than May is, has not made him self clear. This three year old column explains his position fairly well:

America's leaders should start telling the truth: Evil though they may be, Islamic killers are over here because we are over there. They are not trying to kill us because they dislike our domestic politics, but because they detest our foreign policy.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. They did not fly into those twin towers to protest universal suffrage or to advance self-determination for the Palestinian people. As Osama bin Laden said, they want us to stop propping up the Saudi regime they hate, and to get off the sacred Saudi soil on which sit the holiest shrines of Islam. They want our troops out of Saudi Arabia -- and if we don't get out, they are coming over here to kill us any way they can.

Isn't that clear? May seems to think that because the U.S. government has propped up regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, that fanatical Islamists can't possibly object. However, as Buchanan notes above; U.S. support of the Saudi regime, along with U.S. bases in their country have been terror motivators.

A subtext of May's column is that because our intentions have been good, bad consequences can't follow ("maybe Buchanan was thinking about our intervention in Somalia – the only goal of which was to feed starving people"). This leads me to the conclusion that he didn't even pass Conservatism 101 where he would have learned an aphorism about good intentions and the road to Hell.

May and his colleagues on the Right have been steadily unlearning many of the basics in the last few years. They have embraced Bushian big government and radical notions about transplanting democracy as if it were a tomato plant. It would be a joy to watch them learning at the School of Hard Knocks if the price was not being paid by American soldiers and Marines, and countless innocent Iraqis.

Poisonous Legacy

David Brooks exposes the poisonous political legacy of Roe v. Wade in the New York Times:

When Blackmun wrote the Roe decision, it took the abortion issue out of the legislatures and put it into the courts. If it had remained in the legislatures, we would have seen a series of state-by-state compromises reflecting the views of the centrist majority that's always existed on this issue. These legislative compromises wouldn't have pleased everyone, but would have been regarded as legitimate.

Instead, Blackmun and his concurring colleagues invented a right to abortion, and imposed a solution more extreme than the policies of just about any other comparable nation.

Religious conservatives became alienated from their own government, feeling that their democratic rights had been usurped by robed elitists. Liberals lost touch with working-class Americans because they never had to have a conversation about values with those voters; they could just rely on the courts to impose their views. The parties polarized as they each became dominated by absolutist activists.

The decision's legacy will manifest itself again if the Republicans in the Senate abolish the filibuster for judicial nominees. Fanatical partisans such as Hugh Hewitt should consider the consequences of doing so:

Over the past four years Democrats have resorted to the filibuster again and again to prevent votes on judicial nominees they oppose. Up until now, minorities have generally not used the filibuster to defeat nominees that have majority support. They have allowed nominees to have an up or down vote. But this tradition has been washed away.

In response, Republicans now threaten to change the Senate rules and end the filibuster on judicial nominees. That they have a right to do this is certain. That doing this would destroy the culture of the Senate and damage the cause of limited government is also certain.

The Senate operates by precedent, trust and unanimous consent. Changing the rules by raw majority power would rip the fabric of Senate life. Once the filibuster was barred from judicial nomination fights, it would be barred entirely. Every time the majority felt passionately about an issue, it would rewrite the rules to make its legislation easier to pass. Before long, the Senate would be just like the House. The culture of deliberation would be voided. Minority rights would be unprotected.

Those who believe in smaller government would suffer most. Minority rights have been used frequently to stop expansions of federal power, but if those minority rights were weakened, the federal role would grow and grow - especially when Democrats regained the majority.

Majority parties have often contemplated changing the filibuster rules, but they have always turned back because the costs are so high. But, fired by passions over abortion, Republican leaders have subordinated every other consideration to the need to overturn Roe v. Wade. The Democrats, meanwhile, threaten to shut down the Senate.

Censorious Ninny

Michelle Malkin contiues her devolution into a censorius ninny. She whines about Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin's joke:

According to Copley News Service and the State Journal-Register, Sen. Durbin threw in a story about the late federal judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz of Chicago, whose collection of Lincoln books is included in the new library's holdings.
Judge Marovitz used to say that his mother believed that President Lincoln was Jewish, Durbin said. After all, his first name was Abraham, and then, to confirm it, she learned that John Wilkes Booth shot him in the temple.
This is funny?
A prominent Democrat joking about a Republican president's assassination.

Malkin seems to think Durbin is engaged in violent rhetoric on the level of wearing a "Kill Bush" tee shirt.

Editorial Note

Trust me, editors never pound on any doors to hand out paper and pen. As a general rule, they have plenty of people pounding on their doors.

Surrender the Rosary Beads, Judge Pryor!

Repubican lap dog, Hugh Hewitt is on his high horse over Democratic filibusters of Republican judges, which he says is due to anti-Christian bigotry. He makes the ludicrous claim, for example, that Judge William Pryor "is being held up because he is a devout Catholic."

Maybe I haven't paid close enough attention, but I haven't noticed Sen. Hillary Clinton demanding that Judge Pryor denounce the doctrine of Immaculate Conception. Nor have I seen Sen. Robert Byrd mock Transubstantiation while demanding that Judge Pryor admit that Roman Catholic Communion is only symbolic.

These issues, and matters such as the Rosary have not come up because Judge Pryor's religious faith is not at issue. The underlying issue is of course, Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision striking down state abortion laws. For what it is worth, I think it is (one of many) an outrageous usurpations of power by the Court without any basis in the U.S. Constitution.

They are planning to abolish filibusters with regard to judicial nominations if they can get the votes to do so. I am a lot less disturbed by this prospect after giving the matter some thought. The Constitution simply says that, "Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings . . ." In addition this article makes an excellent point:

The Senate rules that create the filibuster also do not allow the Senate to change the filibuster rules unless 67 senators agree. However, these rules should not bind the Senate any more than a statute that says that it cannot be repealed until 67 percent of the Senate votes to repeal the statute. An earlier Senate cannot bind a present Senate on this issue.

Still, it is a radical step, and I think I would vote against it if I were a senator. I would have more sympathy for the Republican position on the issue if they weren't indulging in the sort of victimology that they denounce when it is used by liberals and Democrats. The honest argument for the so-called "nuclear option" is that the Republicans have the power to do it. In the end, that is the only thing that matters.

UPDATE: Richard Cohen assesses the performance of Senator of Faith, Bill Frist:

The invocation of the phrase "people of" is no different when preceding "faith" than it is when preceding "color." It's a bold signal of mushy thinking, a corralling of people who have nothing in common other than a perceived -- and often fictionalized -- enemy. "People of faith" mischaracterizes what the political debate is all about. What Senate Democrats lack is not faith but 50 votes. Frist knows this, of course, but his mad pursuit of the presidency requires him to prove to the Christian right, the core of the Republican Party, that its cause comes before his principles.

He did this with Terri Schiavo, going so far as to use his medical bona fides (he's a heart surgeon) to view a neurologist's videotape of the poor woman and pronounce her somewhat alert. Now he is lending his name and his fast-diminishing prestige to this reprehensible effort to enlist faith on the side of a single political issue. This sort of stuff will not, as he hopes, make him the next president of the United States. Instead, it shows what raw ambition has made him: a person of pander.

On Top Of The World . . .

I assume that John 'Hindrocket' Hindraker, of Power Line, has greater reasoning skills than he exhibits in this post. He is upset that Howard Dean is not getting in trouble for saying "we're going to use Terri Schiavo later on." Hindraker says:

Why is it it that when a minor Republican staffer wrote that the Schiavo case was a "great political issue," it was a scandal that was reported in every newspaper in America, whereas, when the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee says, 'We're going to use Terri Schiavo' in the 2006 and 2008 elections, the response is a yawn? I'm sure there must be a reason why Dean's comment is different, but offhand I can't think what it is.

Hindraker can't figure out what the difference is because he excised the portion of the quote from the Los Angeles Times article (registration) that explained it. The Times wrote , "'We're going to use Terri Schiavo later on, Dean said of the brain-damaged Floridian who died last month after her feeding tube was removed amid a swarm of political controversy. Dean, who has called congressional intervention in the Schiavo case 'political grandstanding,' singled out House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) for his leading role in the matter." (emphasis added)

The italicized portion of the article makes clear to me that Dean intends to make hay over the Republican's, and specifically, Tom DeLay's political use of Schiavo case; which is very different from the Republican attempt to directly intervene in the case for political benefit (I assume that there was at least some genuine principle involved).

John Hindraker, who really wanted to believe that a memo hyping the political benefits of intervention for the Republicans was actually a Democrat dirty trick, should be careful. He and his colleagues were made "Blog of the Year" last year for their role in exposing the Dan Rather/fake memo business. It seems to have gone to their head -- their reasoning is often careless, and they make a lot of baseless charges. I wrote in a recent issue of the American Conservative that, "there was no blogosphere to speak of in 2000; it was a huge story by 2004. Dan Rather succumbed to the arrogance of power and never saw his downfall coming. There is no reason to assume that the same fate can’t befall a few big-name bloggers by 2008." The guys at Power Line are ripe for such a downfall.

Grave & Gathering, but not Imminent . . .

Jay Nordlinger chides Richard Cohen in his "Impromptus" column today:

The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen is an honest writer, basically. He wears his hates on his sleeve. In his 4/7 column, he wrote, ". . . I knew that the most alarming case against Saddam Hussein — that he was an imminent threat to the United States — was a lie."

Please note that word "imminent" — and recall what President Bush said in his State of the Union address, before he went to war against Saddam: "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations will come too late."

Concluding his column, Cohen said, "The fact will remain that this war was fought for a lie."

This is a cherished belief that liberals — and many conservatives, and others — will hold on to till the day they die. But the truth is that they can speak confidently about WMD because the U.S. invaded. And it’s odd that they never blame Saddam Hussein for failing to comply with the U.N., or the United Nations for failing to make him comply — or even to care whether he did. Indeed, the U.N. abetted him.

Note Nordlinger's exacting level of specificity. What the president said in his 2003 State of the Union speech is the only thing that matters. But here is one of the many places that you can find a collection of statements from Bush Administration representatives discussing the grave nature of the threat from Iraq. Also, don't forget his 2002 Cincinnati Speech. Here are a couple of tidbits:

While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone -- because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant who has already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people. This same tyrant has tried to dominate the Middle East, has invaded and brutally occupied a small neighbor, has struck other nations without warning, and holds an unrelenting hostility toward the United States.

Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

The attacks of September the 11th showed our country that vast oceans no longer protect us from danger. Before that tragic date, we had only hints of al Qaeda's plans and designs. Today in Iraq, we see a threat whose outlines are far more clearly defined, and whose consequences could be far more deadly. Saddam Hussein's actions have put us on notice, and there is no refuge from our responsibilities.

Nordlinger may actually believe that because the President didn't utter the phrase, "Iraq is an imminent threat," that he and his administration were not trying to create the impression that the country had to go to war in Iraq right away, but reasonably intilligent native English speakers can be forgiven for drawing that conclusion from the administration's verbal case for war.

Also note what Nordlinger says about the U.N. and Saddam: "it's odd that [liberals] never blame Saddam Hussein for failing to comply with the U.N., or the United Nations for failing to make him comply -- or even to care whether he did. Indeed, the U.N. abetted him." Did Hans Blix , of a U.N inspection team, fall down the memory hole? As I remember, he was their searching for non-existent WMDs when he had to leave before the U.S. invasion. How was the U.N. abbeting Saddam?

A Neocon's Best Friend is His Mother

Matt Barganier very rudely implied that Steven Schwartz is a psycho. I think he owes an apology . . . to Norman Bates.