LFTC - Letter From The Capitol

LFTC HIATUS: AFTER 5/25/07 UNTIL THE FALL

The 5/25/07 postings on Letter From The Capitol are the last before LFTC goes on summer hiatus.  Preparation for a concert and then completion of my book will take too much time to allow for blogging effectively.  The book, whose working title is The Long War Ahead--and the Short War Upon Us, is slated for release this fall.  LFTC readers will get a sneak preview just before the book is released.

Index 5/25/07

6 posts: (1) Torture: For REAL--Us v. Them; (2) American Politics: Permanent Campaign Forever?--The Home Front; (3) Is America's Sun Setting?--Us v. Them; (4) Israel - Arabs: Six-Day War + 40--Us v. Them; (5) IRAQ Update--Us v. Them; (6) IRAN Update--Us v. Them.

Torture: For REAL

Folks who consider water-boarding and forcing inmates to stand in stress positions to be torture should check out this report on a captured al-Qai'da manual in Baghdad, which includes drawings and images not for holiday joy.  Blow-torching skin, removing eyes, you get the drift.  The tools page includes electric drills, hammers, pliers, whips, etc.  Want to bet that the "world community", the UN and the human rights groups are notably less vocal about this than re milder US practice?  Thus the pernicious effect of double-standards; excoriate our side's debatable practices  and ignore the other side's atrocities.

American Politics: Permanent Campiagn Forever?

WSJ columnist Dan Henninger sees the US adopting what he also recently observed in Spain: the politics of permanent opposition.  He attributes this to (a) Florida 2000 and (b) Iraq.  "Blue" and "Red" folks living alongside one another frequently simply refuse to talk about differences that are unbridgeable.  Recall that George Shultz once famously said of Washington: "Nothing ever gets settled in this town."  But times indeed have changed.  Yet the causes are broader than Henninger's excellent column, which talks a lot about Spain, identifies.

Step 1 was the 24/7 domestic campaign that began in 1987, when Democrats, facing a President weakened politically by Iran-contra, destroyed a superbly qualified Supreme court nominee, Robert Bork, by misrepresenting his record.  Unlike the Nixon-era defeat of two nominees deemed unqualified by the opposition, it was precisely because he was supremely qualified that Bork, who wrote 400 opinions in five years on the D.C. Circuit federal appellate bench without once being reversed on appeal, was stopped.  Liberals (mostly Democrats but also a few liberal Republicans) feared that Bork would be the crucial vote in overturning, on persuasive grounds, liberal iconic precedents like the Miranda ruling on interrogations, Roe on abortion and other cows sacred to liberals.

Step 2 was the 24/7 foreign policy operation, launched in 1990 when former President Carter toured capitals of American allies and urged them not to join the Gulf war Coalition.  Bush Senior found out when Canadian PM Brian Mulroney informed the Administration.  Carter went one step further in 1994 when he defied the Clinton Administration and negotiated a nuclear reactor deal with North Korea, handing it to the Administration as a fait accompli.  Until Carter, Presidents left office and left the world stage, rarely commenting on successors.  Eisenhower did take JFK to the woodshed over the Bay of Pigs, but did so in private.

Step 3 was Bill Clinton's political operation, openly dubbed the "Permanent Campaign."  Campaign mode, for the Clintons, continued throughout their eight years in the White House, and continues today.  It will not end until both have passed from this Earthly vale.  For a current example of permanent campaign in opposition, read this account of the unholy alliance between Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and a renegade senior Justice Department official, James Comey, already responsible for causing lots of trouble for the White House he is supposed to work for.

Step 4 was Al Gore in 2000.  Asking for a simple statewide recount would have caused no problems.  But Gore instead mounted a narrow, partisan challenge, a selective recount in heavily Democratic districts (asked by the Florida State Supreme Court if his client wanted a statewide recount, Gore counsel David Boies said "no").  Nixon in 1960 had declined to challenge Kennedy despite ample basis for claiming massive voter fraud, because he knew that whoever emerged as victor would inherit a damaged Presidency.  To his great credit (later sins notwithstanding) Nixon stepped away from the brink, putting his country's interest first.  Not so Gore, who had told Newsweek during the 2000 campaign that while Bush could go home to Crawford if he lost, and live happily thereafter he, Gore, viewed the Presidency as (per Frank Sinatra) all or nothing at all.  Gore thus set in motion a process certain to damage whoever won a diminished prize, as in fact happened.

Step 5 was Iraq, which intensified this.  Carter's "worst President" crack (he should talk!), Howard Dean's "I hate Republicans" and "Republicans are evil", John Kerry's embrace of the "Bush lied, people died" mantra, Al Gore's "Save the planet!" are all part of the Permanent Campaign.  Iraq will not disappear as US political fodder for generations, if Dan Henninger's account of how the current Spanish government is bringing up the Franco years, which ended in 1975, despite risk of fracturing further Spain's polity, holds over here.

Step 6 is the immeasurable added amplification due to the rise of the Internet 24/7 "Blogosphere" (OK, it includes me, but I cannot stop it, and if you can't beat 'em...right?).  Extreme blogs, pitched in high dudgeon every time, add much energy.  (LFTC, for its part, tries to be strong without going to excess, even posting good opposition pieces.)

Bottom Line.  Permanent campaigns mean that activists and even those not that activist among the general public talk on politics, if at all, through clenched teeth.  The inevitable result: politics fatigue, and a concomitant indisposition to re-examine one's own positions.  This is not good for any side, except our Islamist adversaries.  So what will it take to re-unite us?  Scarily, it will take the kind of catastrophe that forces re-connection that places our differences, vast though they are, in larger perspective.  One shudders at just what that would entail.  Think WMD or mega-natural disaster.  And be afraid.  Hope it does not ever happen.  But try as well to enjoy the summer.  The next item, alas, won't help.

Is America's Sun Setting?

A thoughtful National Journal article suggests that after Iraq America is headed for a decline in its world position.  The mess in Iraq, the hijacking of Mideast democracy by terrorists and thugs, the effective applications of asymmetrical warfare that turns the media against the conventional military power of the US, have combined to undermine America's "hyperpower" position.  The article quotes George Will (from a column on John McCain's candidacy): "Vietnam produced an antiwar movement in America; Iraq has produced an antiwar America."  The article then offers from ex-neocon Francis Fukuyama his five fallacies that the Bush Administration committed: (1) reliance on conventional military power against an asymmetrical warfare challenge; (2) use of "pre-emptive war" justification for strikes against states that, unlike stateless groups, can be deterred; (3) the attempt to jump-start democracy, in societies with no tradition of democracy; (4) the belief that America would be perceived as pursuing a "benevolent unilateralism"; (5) the failure to harness adequate means to achieve extremely ambitious goals.  Quoth Fukuyama: "For an administration that set unbelievably ambitious goals, the implementation was like watching a patient with attention deficit disorder."  Historian Niall Ferguson says we are headed for a climax of Shakespearean bloodshed, with the worst yet to come, having identified the wrong axis (Iraq, Iran & North Korea) instead of an "axis of allies" that is, he believes, behind our troubles: Israel, Saudi Arabia & Pakistan.

In that the future is uncertain, nothing is inevitable.  Yet one needn't agree entirely with the critiques above--everyone concedes that immense blunders were committed in the Iraq venture--to feel that there is much truth to them (not, though, as to Israel).  Factor in that Europe, beset by restive Muslim populations and declining non-Muslim demographics, is a questionable ally (and was, even before 9/11).  Factor in that global economic shifts will make China and India immense powers as the century wears on.  Factor in that the United States, if it loses a war (Iraq) whose outcome is much in doubt will be isolationist for some time.  Factor in that an energized militant Islam will be on the march if we fail in Iraq. 

Factor in that a new Pew survey of America's estimated 2.35 million Muslims (highlights; full report) shows that while US Muslims are generally contented, there are disturbing undercurrents: (1) 25 percent of young Muslims thing suicide bombing sometimes defensible; (2) a mere 25 percent believe that the US war on terror is a sincere attempt to curb transnational terror; (3) only 40 percent think Arabs carried out 9/11 hijackings.  (The survey also showed that 47 percent put Muslim identity before American identity, but the same response was given, in earlier Pew surveys, by 42 percent of Christians and 62 percent of white evangelical Protestants did the same.)  Blogger Michelle Malkin points out that minorities of a large group can add to big trouble; she cites polls in other countries: in Indonesia alone, 10 percent of the country's 190 million Muslims support jihad.  We may comfort ourselves that answers to a pollster are not predictors that respondents will sign up with terrorist groups, but they are at least passive sympathizers.  Malkin rightly attributes the US total among young Muslims to multiculturalist schools and jihadist messages on the Internet.  Diana West notes that most media folks paint a bright picture of the Pew survey, and ignore the implications of a growing polity within America that believes in violence as a way of producing political change.  A former Islamist terrorist warns that the 5 percent of US Muslims that support al-Qai'da means 100,000 sympathizers in the US.

Add this: No Democrat with a chance to win the Presidential election in 2008 will be assertive in use of force, or in rebuilding America's military.  Even a Republican will likely have to pull troops out of Iraq.  Worse, as Fareed Zakharia notes in a recent column, retreat on free trade has spread from parochial Democrats to timid Republicans who fear voter backlash.  (One professor writes that the trade problem cannot be fixed by floating China's currency, either, as underlying trade forces--"comparative advantage"--are what determine trade flows.)

Simply put, barring a concatenation of sub-50-/50 propositions--emergent victory in Iraq, stopping Iran and a resolute President taking office in 2009--American retreat may well be in the cards.  This will not be good for America.  And, although our European "allies" did not think of this, it will be worse for them.  Europeans will discover, should American decline become reality, the truth of the ancient Chinese admonition: Beware of what you wish for, lest you get it.

Israel - Arabs: Six-Day War + 40

Columnist Charles Krauthammer recreates the climate leading up to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, and rightly says it explains why Israel resists returning to the pre-1967 borders.  CK notes that then the world did nothing.  His theme is part of the larger story (which he cannot tell in 700 words).  The real consequence of Israel's smashing military victory was the elevation of Palestinian nationalism to the forefront of Mideast politics.  So long as Jordan held sway over the West Bank and Egypt over Gaza, no one was talking about the plight of the Palestinians.  Yasser Arafat's PLO aimed explicitly at the "liberation" of the East Bank--Israel: the PLO's first terrorist strike targeted Israel's national water carrier,on January 1, 1965, more than two years before the 1967 conflict.

Historian Michael Oren writes that Palestinian nationalism arose because Palestinians realized Arabs would not help them.  Acquisition of Biblical lands made Israel more of a Jewish state.  Israel fought with French arms, but after the war Israel, viewed as Goliath, lost European support (plus the American Left).  Only after 1967 did the US-Israel relationship blossom into strategic partnership.  (Oren notes that "land for peace" was first floated by Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948, not after 1967.)

The poisonous confluence of petrodollar politics, as the US and Europe increasingly relied on Mideast oil, the rise of a Third World bloc in the UN deeply hostile to the West and above all, to Israel, Soviet Russia's opportunistic use of the issue to gain a stronger foothold in the Mideast and to assist Palestinian terror aimed at weakening the West, all came together to transform the Mideast.  Today, even post-9/11, the Palestinians remain the favorites of "world opinion" and Israel a virtual pariah.  No amount of barbarity by the Palestinians nor of concessions by Israel can change this.

Recent articles highlight the baleful effects of this attitude.  The New York Sun's Daniel Johnson notes that Muslims killed by other Muslims in the Mideast outnumber those killed by Israel by more than 100 to 1, but only Israel gets routinely condemned.  Continued appeasement effectively subsidizes terror.  David Frum gives the latest metrics of Palestinian terror: 100 rockets daily fired from Gaza into Israel, and a looming war this summer, with Hamas rewarded for terror tactics--aid to the Palestine Authority increased from $1B in 2005 to $1.2B ins 2006.  Frum suggests cutting aid by $1M per rocket to penalize, rather than reward, terror.  Ralph Peters sees the Arabs only to happy to help the Palestinian terror factions, like Saturn, devour their own revolution's children.  Bret Stephens links the Palestinian kidnapping of a BBC journalist to the BBC's appeasing Palestinian terror over the years (which teaches terrorists that terror pays).  Mort Zuckerman sagely advises Condi Rice to stay home and shelve State's latest plan to spur negotiations with the Palestinians.  MZ cites three Israeli concessions that in the past few years yielded more terror.  All were pushed by State: (1) allowing Hamas to take part in the 2006 Palestinian elections, over Ariel Sharon's objection; (2) getting Israel to open the "Philadelphi [sic] Ccorridor" in Gaza, which, as Israel warned, enabled the smuggling of arms to the terror factions; (3) the Mecca Agreement between Hamas and Fatah has collapsed into today's chaos.  Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick details how the weak Olmert government is encouraging terror, and may lead to war again this summer.

Check out this amazing Jerusalem Post interview with Palestinian Media Watch director Itamar Marcus.  Key points:

(1) Palestinian society was, as recently as 2000, secularist and nationalist.  But in 2006 78 percent of Palestinians support submission to shar'ia law.  Arafat had pushed religion as an expedient, never thinking it would supplant nationalist irredentism.

(2) Condi Rice concluded after meeting with Abbas, when Abbas said that the PA's finance minister would have to recognize his Israeli counterpart as a finance minister, that Abbas had "recognized" Israel; but Abbas publicly denies this.

(3) Palestinian popular hatred of Israel is a consequence of governance passing from Israeli authorities to the Palestine Authority (PA)--Arafat and his poisonous successors: As recently as 1996, 78 percent of Palestinians felt positive about Israel, versus 65 percent for the US and only 50 percent for the PA.  In 1999 the numbers were Israel 65%, US 55% & PA 32%.  This was in part because under Israeli rule Arab life expectancy shot up from 47 to nearly 70, and in the 1970s the Palestinian economy had the fourth highest growth in the world.  In mid-2000 the PA's positive rating has fallen to 22%.  Then came Arafat's terror campaign.  (Yes, the 1987-1991 intifada showed many Palestinians angry at Israeli rule; but many others stayed silent, in fear of their lives for speaking up for Israel--the the 1970s, West Bank Palestinian mayors who backed Israel were simply assassinated by the terrorists.)

(4) A Palestinian state would control the aquifers that carry 60 percent of Israel's water needs.  After 10 or 20 years, given economic growth, all that water would be needed by the Palestinian state.  (N.B. that the first PLO terror attack, 42 years ago, targeted Israel's water supply.)

Thought Experiment: Suppose Israel decides to "end" the conflict once and for all, by retreating to the 1967 borders, dismantling all remaining settlements and handing East Jerusalem over to the Palestinians?  Would "world opinion" then condemn future acts of Palestinian terror unconditionally, and stand behind Israel?  The former, not a chance.  The latter, only to knife Israel in the back.  Palestinian terror would morph from fighting "occupation" (of territory much of which was ceded to Israel by the UN in 1947) to fighting "mistreatment" of Israeli Arabs.  Let a single Israeli cop drag an Arab suspect into the car, on camera.  Riots and terror would follow.  "World opinion" would blame the Israelis.  Let Israeli access to the Wailing Wall be barred by Muslim overseers.  "World opinion" would hardly demand now what it abjectly failed to demand between 1948 and 1967.  In the Arab world, non-Arab concessions are read as a sign of weakness, not compromise.

Arnaud deBorchgrave offers the views of war historian Martin van Creveld, on the nuclear threat from Iran.  Van Creveld says Israel can deter a nuclear Iran, and can destroy not only Iran but European capitals, too.  Thought Experiment: What if Israel went to key European leaders whose countries have helped Iran and told them that in event Iranian nukes land on Israeli soil?

Bottom Line.  Forty years from now, as Israel approaches age 100 (due in 2048), will there be "just and lasting" Mideast peace between Arab and Jew?  Alas, don't bet on it.

IRAQ Update

Iraq's government is planning ahead: making contingency plans for a worst-case US rapid withdrawal.  This is not a bad thing, as it indicates that, per Dr, Johnson, the prospect of being hanged in a fortnight has concentrated their minds.  But Max Boot asks that we stop harassing the Iraqi government over its summer (July & August) recess.  He says quality time trumps quantity, and also that absent success from the surge the security necessary to enable real bargaining on remaining political matters will not exist.  Also, he notes that Congress just came back from a recess, taken before passage of interim war funding.  One could add that Congress goes in recess every August, until after Labor Day.

Mideast expert Fouad Ajami perceives an Sunni Arab "circle of enmity" surrounding Shi'a Iraqi rule, another hurdle in Iraq's path to free existence.  And factor in that a nuclear Iran is, at this writing, a serious prospect, probably better than 50-50; going nuclear would give Iran a shield behind which to foment unrest in Iraq.  One soldier who served in Iraq says the surge can work if given time.  The Guardian (UK) reports that Iran and Syria are planning a major push against the US in Iraq this summer.  The latest from Iraq maven Bill Roggio warns that a campaign for Diyala is coming soon.  Joe Klein, most famous for writing "Primary Colors" in the early 1990s, and no Bush fan, concedes that real progress has been made in Iraq.  But now pro-Iran thug-cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has returned to Iraq and already has preached an anti-US sermon at a mosque, according to this NY Times report.  Summer project for Gen. Petraeus: nail Sadr.

Frederick Kagan, co-architect of the surge, explains why we must prevail in Iraq.  Former Senator Bob Kerrey writes that even if it was an error to invade Iraq (he supported invasion), now it would be a victory for al-Qai'da if we are defeated, and that we should continue the flight.  We may have drawn the terrorists to Iraq like moths to a flame (my image), but they are there and that is where the battle is.  Kerrey cites Senator James Webb's comment that you can fight terror inside a country without occupying it.  Let us hope we hear more about this from the Senator, who knows a great deal about how to fight wars.

Ominously, David Ignatius (who thinks it is a good thing) reports that the Iraq Surrender Group report is getting new respect at the White House, and revival may be in the cards.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid.  House Republican leader John Boehner pleas with Democrats re the stakes in Iraq.

Let us end with stories of four American heroes who gave their lives in Iraq to save comrades.  May they be honored forever, starting this Memorial Day Weekend.

IRAN Update

Iran has arrested an activist sympathetic to engagement with the regime, one connected to Iraq Surrender Group co-chairman Lee Hamlton.  She had returned to Tehran to visit her 93-year old mother.  Her "crime": having married an Iranian Jew.  Her husband writes of her plight in an LA Times op-ed.  Seems the lady was held up at knife-point on her way to the airport to leave Iran, and her passport confiscated.  The charge she faces: conspiracy to foment a "velvet" revolution in Iran.  Conspiracy to foment non-violence, now there's a crime for you.

And the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that Iran has accelerated its nuclear enrichment program, defying pressures.  A nuclear Iran would doom America's Mideast future.  CBS reports that the US and other countries have used industrial sabotage to disrupt Iran's program by sending faulty components with subtle flaws.  It also reports that the Iranians are paranoid about this, so perhaps disclosure has not told Iran anything it did not already know.  Nice to know we are doing something useful.

Index 5/24/07

6 posts: (1) "The Khazakhs Are Coming!"--"It's The Earth Stupid!"; (2) North Korea: State's Latest Pratfall--Us v. Them; (3) George Tenet's Great Intel Failure--The Home Front; (4) Courts: How Often Do We Convict "The Wrong Man"?--The Home Front; (5) Feminist Failure: Ignoring Islam--The Home Front; (6) US Economy: Poor Richer, Middle Moving--"It's The Earth Stupid!".

"The Khazakhs Are Coming!"

I forget which wag called the 5 "stan" countries who were formerly part of the Soviet Union "Jennifer Annistan," but the point was made--not serious countries.  Comes now Khazakhstan, per this report by Heritage Foundation scholar Ariel Cohen in the Washington Times, led by longtime leader Nursultan Nazarbayev.  It is liberalizing economically, if less so (to date) politically.  Having seen premature democracy in several Mideast locales advance the agenda of extremists, Nazarbayev wisely puts developing the economy first.

Khazahkstan is a top Caspian oil player, with reserves that may eventually top Kuwait and Iraq.  Its GDP has risen 75 percent in just 6 years, averaging 10 percent annual growth.  It sends 3,000 top students to study abroad, then return to apply advanced skills to spur economic growth.  It is a multi-confessional society, Muslim, Orthodox Christian and secular.  I am scheduled to visit the country this fall, and look forward to learning more about this Central Asian star player.

North Korea: State's Latest Pratfall

John Bolton demolishes State's playing Charlie Brown to North Korea's Lucy: its predictable violation of (the football) its Feb. 13 agreement to surrender its nuclear programs.  If this report is true it will get even worse: State's man in Seoul has told lawmakers the US will sign a peace treaty with the North in September.  Great idea: sign a treaty with a country that has violated every treaty it has ever signed and broken every promise it has ever made.  That'll show 'em we mean business.

George Tenet's Great Intel Failure

Richard Perle rebuts George Tenet's feeble accusation that a cabal of "neos" (including Perle) tied Saddam to Sept. 11 and on that basis went to war.  But Perle goes farther, in saying that the great intel failure re the war against Islamic jihadism was not the WMD fiasco re Saddam, but rather the failure to divine that Saudi Arabia was clandestinely funding global extremist Islam in mosques and madrassas.

That indeed is the case.  Several years ago Hudson Institute held a forum on the Mideast & democracy, in which Perle and nonpareil Orientalist Bernard Lewis participated.  Lewis then said that he could better follow events in the Mideast than could the American State Department because the latter relied on information gleaned at diplomatic cocktail parties and official exchanges, whereas he, Lewis, talked to former students, who could converse in a cafe in Cairo--where US diplomats could not go.  Verily so.  We were blindsided on 9/11 because we were unable to infiltrate mosques, madrassas and cafes in the Islamic world, and see the hatred building and spreading.

Courts: How Often Do We Convict "The Wrong Man"?

Catching up on old articles led me to an April 26 Wall Street Journal article on a vital subject: false convictions.  Contrary to what intuition suggests to many, the actual evidence, according to  Colorado state judge, shows false convictions are rare.   "Innocence projects" gin up misleading data, defining wrongful conviction of an innocent defendant to include errors made by the trial judge.  Judge Hoffman notes that in his career he has never had a 100 percent error-free trial (probably true of all judges).  Hoffman starts with the 95 percent of criminal defendants who plead guilty.  Then he takes the two million criminal trials held over the last twenty years and notes that recently Cardozo Law School celebrated the 200th person freed by DNA evidence.  Assuming that 25 percent of criminal defendants are acquitted at trial, and ignoring wrongful acquittals (as the innocence projects do), this makes for an 0.013 percent error rate; factoring in that only 5 percent of cases go to trial, reduces the error rate to 0.00065 percent.

Hoffman concedes that his assessment excludes defendants who plead guilty although in fact innocent, and assumes that the data gathered by innocence projects are representative.  So he adjusts the data by one order of magnitude, to 0.0065 percent.  This is still an accuracy rate above 99 percent.  Most trials, in the judge's experience, are about uncertainty as to the defendant's state of mind, and hence, his level of criminal liability.  (Weak cases rarely get to court, plus many pre-trial motions exclude evidence and thus free guilty defendants before trial.)

Intuitively, Hoffman's finding seem to good to be true.  But probably he is right that of cases that actually go to trial, most defendants are in fact guilty.  "The Wrong Man" case happens (think: Dr. Sam Sheppard, whose case made the career of one F. Lee Bailey).  But one suspects strongly that wrongful acquittals (a class of cases not measurable) are more frequent that wrongful convictions.  Which accords with the famed Blackstone precept that it is better to set ten guilty men free than wrongly convict one.  If ever we acquit a WMD terrorist who then strikes society may revisit that one.

Feminist Failure: Ignoring Islam

AEI scholar Christina Hoff Summers explores reasons why Western feminists are generally reluctant to assail Muslim cultures for gross abuse of women.  It's the usual poisonous ideological cocktail of multiculturalism, anti-Americanism, etc.  And when they do criticize Islamic practice, as this quotation Summers offers from arch-feminist columnist Katha Pollitt (of "The Nation") shows, they can be counted upon to juxtapose Muslim outrages with attitudes of Western Evangelicals as if the two were morally equal:

In Bangladesh, Muslim fanatics throw acid in the faces of unveiled women; in Nigeria, newly established shariah courts condemn women to death by stoning for having sex outside of wedlock. . . . In the United States, Protestant evangelicals and fundamentalists have forged a powerful right-wing political movement focused on banning abortion, stigmatizing homosexuality and limiting young people's access to accurate information about sex.

Let's see: throwing acid in a woman's face is no different than limiting young people's access to sex-ed.  Death by stoning is no different than banning abortion.  Faced with this level of intellectual and moral denseness, what can one do?  Take some feminist and tell her that either she agrees to give up the right to abort, or she keeps that right and allows acid to be thrown in her face?  As Dr. Johnson famously said, "When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."  Ditto for women, right?  OK, we are too nice to feel the need to prove the point, and as we know the answer we can skip the test.

US Economy: Poor Richer, Middle Moving

A Wall Street Journal editorial discusses the latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data on the poor and middle class segments of the US economy.  Between 1991 and 2005 real family income rose 78% for the fifth quintile, 23% for the fourth, 18% for the third, 22% for the second and 54% for the top quintile.  For the bottom quintile, the CBO cites welfare reform, higher employment and the Earned Income Tax Credit as factors in the rise.  Income for female-headed poor households doubled during this period, with employment earnings now 1/2 of their income, up from 1/3; for those families, cash welfare plummeted from 42% to 7% of income.  Middle quintile families have gained $8,500 in real income over this period (enough to pay for 21.25 JEHs--John Edwards Haircuts, the new measure of economic purchasing power).

What about the 54% rise for the top quintile?  Keep in mind that big gainers in the lower four quintiles move up, and thus do not raise quintile averages.  Think of a teen phenom who signs a baseball contract and zooms from Poverty Row to Gazillionaire Estates.  Thus the top level will always show a steep rise in boom times.  Thus the very strength of our economy--its class mobility--works to skew the income numbers as a portrait of our economy.  Even with this, the numbers above tell a grand story.

Index 5/23/07

3 posts: (1) Media Double Standards: Causes Trump Cases--MSM Murders; (2) Hillary Doubles Up; Edwards Walks the Double-Talk--The Home Front; (3) Immigration: Makeover or Meltdown?--9/11, 3/11 & N/11.

Media Double-Standards: Causes Trump Cases

Media critic John Leo compares two sets of cases: the Duke rape charges with a Knoxville rape + torture + murder, and a notorious torture + murder of a gay man with an equally heinous torture + murder of a straight teen by two gay men.  Result: guess which stories make national news and which ones go instantly down the mainstream media (MSM) Memory Hole?  The reason, given in a quote Leo got from a Washington Post editor, is simple: Cases that advance causes favored by MSM are a Big Story; cases that run contrary to MSM's causes are No Big Deal.  White oppression of black, straight oppression of gays, both advance hate crime laws; converse cases do not.  This re-affirms a truism about MSM today: Reporters, in today's world, are not observers who report what they see; they are advocates who use MSM's immense reach to promote causes they prefer.

Hillary Doubles Up; Edwards Walks the Double-Talk

Hillary has now been endorsed by DC Madam Deborah Palfrey (last week was porn queen Jenna Jamison).  I wonder who's next to back Hill?  Check out Lisa Fabirizio's hilarious "Doyenne of the DNC" ode to Hillary, set to Gilbert & Sullivan (who could never have invented Hillary).

In January 2006 John Edwards gave a speech on poverty at the University of California, Davis.  We now learn what he charged the school for the privilege of hearing him speak to 1,787 students: $55,000.  It was the highest fee of the nine speeches Edwards gave on campuses last year.  That will pay for 137.5 $400 haircuts.  Math problem for elementary schoolers: If Edwards gets a haircut every two weeks, how long ill it be before he has to pay for one again?  Math problem for high schoolers: If Edwards has to pay taxes at 35 percent on his earnings, how many $400 haircuts does $55 grand buy?  Math problem for college students: If Edwards's barber ups his fee to $550, and the Democrats win the White House in 2008 and raise the top rate to 42 percent and Edwards speaks on poverty at UC Davis again, how much must Edwards raise his fee to cover the same number of haircuts his January 2006 fee did?  Math problem for political science graduate students: If Edwards wants his campaign to cover his barber costs, what loopholes in campaign finance laws might be applied to enable this?  Math problem for law students: Rank tort law fields as to which ones offer you the best chance of making as many millions as Edwards did representing plaintiffs.

Immigration: Makeover or Meltdown?

Ted Kennedy and Dubya are all smiles over the latest proposed compromise on immigration.  Should both be smiling?  Start with a recent plot uncovered.  Mark Steyn sees four sobering lessons in the arrest of the Fort Dix Six Muslim immigrants: (1) the plotters were non-Mideast Muslims, whom the US invited in as refugees; (2) the radicals are children of moderate Muslims--Steyn calls this de-assimilation at work; (3) the US aid to Muslims in the Balkans radicalized Muslims, rather than placated them--no good deed (however belated), it seems, goes unpunished; (4) America remains, nearly 6 years, after 9/11, one of the easiest countries for illegals to enter and to live in.  (Steyn notes one incredible instance of epic ingratitude: one member of the Fort Dix Six is an ex-wife of a pro tennis star, and was a Victoria's Secret model--hardly a hardship case, eh?)  Steyn sees this latest compromise as a capitulation to dependence upon a vast army of illegal alien workers, and ignoring the cultural implications of shifts in demography.

For ease of living here, how about a Muslim radical enclave in the Catskills, run by a Pakistani militant sect, since 1979, 70 acres behind a sentry post, called Islamberg, and feared by local residents?  A Washington Post Capitol Briefing reports that Republican Senators John McCain (AZ) and John Cornnyn (TX) traded barbs at a wrap-up session, touched off by Cornyn's expressing of concern that the compromise would facilitate excessive use of judicial appeals, a concern McCain considers an effort to "torpedo" the deal.  In fact, legal process is sure to be a weapon deployed by illegal immigration counsel, and harbors the potential to gum up the works unless carefully circumscribed.

On to the bill itself: NRO's Rich Lowry sees real carrots but illusory sticks in the compromise, because the 12 million illegals now here get presumptive amnesty immediately.  Hudson Institute scholar Diana Furchtgott-Roth gives the bill an "A" because it eases the path for hard-working illegals to enter the mainstream.  She cites the travails that the notoriously inept and stupid Immigration & Naturalization Service gave to a New York financial analyst and a concert pianist.  Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald says that one thing--only one thing-matters: Does the bill encourage future law-breaking by rewarding current law-breakers?  She says it does, citing the same reason Rich Lowry cites: immediate provisional citizenship.  But Manhattan Institute's immigration scholar, Tamar Jacoby, demurs and praises the bill as a "good rough draft" that needs work but heads int he right directions, that of securing our borders and improving incentives to work.

A Wall Street Journal editorial endorses the compromise, with a few reservations.  The WSJ likes the registration provision, under which those of the estimated 12 million illegals who report to authorities can stay, if they pay a $5,000 fine, pass a criminal background check and make a "touch back" visit to their home country; they would then get a "Z" work visa.  WSJ regards with suspicion a provision changing the criteria for granting visas from family (the orientation of the 1965 immigration bill, sponsored by the young Ted Kennedy, that led to the mess we face now) to job skills, a shift Manhattan Institue Stephen Malanga hails as long overdue.  Malanga cites the economic success of Australia, which made a similar shift in the 1980s.  Whereas then 70% of immigrants to Australia were family-based, now 70% are skill-based.  Within five years of arrival the new entrants speak the language, thanks to language-proficiency rules.  Australia even targeted blue-collar workers in Eastern Europe as desirable entrants.

In 2006 2/3 of the 1.2 million green cards issued went to family members; 13 percent were employer-sponsored.  WSJ states that many low-skill jobs are only done by immigrants, and that excluding low-skill immigrants will leave jobs undone and thus lower our quality of life.  Immigrants hold 14% of domestic jobs, but are 47% of farm workers, 36% of custodians, 27% of construction workers and 24% of food preparers.  These job areas have been, WSJ notes, identified as high-growth areas of our domestic economy.  WSJ cites as the worst provision the "Y" visa guest-worker program, under which foreign workers can obtain a thrice-renewable two-year visa, but with one-year stays back home before renewal.  This, says, WSJ, will result in red tape and economic inefficiency.

Lastly, WSJ dislikes the provision requiring employers to aid in enforcement, noting that the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli Immigration Reform and Control Act was based upon this, and it utterly failed to curb illegal inflows.  Of 2.7 million illegals n 1986, only 37 percent ultimately chose US citizenship.  A Monday New York Times front-pager reports employers are turning against the bill for those very reasons--harsh compliance rules and failure to reflect economic realities.  Immigration is heavily concentrated: nearly 2/3 live in 6 states: California, New York, Florida, Texas, New Jersey and Illinois.  In 2006 1.26 million immigrants received documentation, up from 1.1 million in 2005 & 950,000 in 2004.  Of these, 65 percent already lived in the US.  WSJ editor John Fund counsels against hasty passage of a monster bill, and calls for more open debate before passage, as a way of fixing errors and winning public support.  Fred Thompson says scrap the bill until the borders are secured.  NRO editors call it a bipartisan fantasy whose enforcement provisions will never be applied in practice, especially if there is a Democratic victory in 2008.  George Borjas, a skeptic with expertise in the economics of immigration, calls ti a travesty (and more), in that it amounts to amnesty for 12 million illegals, in all but name.  David Brooks is more sanguine, and argues that the bill's enforcement provisions would prove effective.

Here is a WSJ bill summary of the compromise.  So whom to believe?  The WSJ is probably right that the "Y" guest-worker program is unrealistic.  And low-skill workers should be welcomed--it is welfare, not work, that should concern us.  As for "X" visa worker registration, the $5,000 fine will keep many illegals in the shadows.  The Department of Homeland Security estimates that 15 to 20 percent of immigrants have a criminal record; taking 12 million as the illegal entrant number, that is 1.8 to 2.4 million.  Which brings us to the key issue for any immigration reform: reliable, tamper-proof identification.

We all want concert pianists to get in (last week I heard another hard-luck story from an Argentinian immigrant who finally got in, partly due to help from senior officials she got to play for).  None of us want the next Muhammad Atta to get in.  We want diligent workers.  One party does not want welfare clients; the other (guess which) thinks clients of the state are just peachy.  Complicating matters are "sanctuary states" that refuse to cooperate with federal efforts to find illegals, and deliberately do not run database checks on stopped drivers--one of the best tools for catching terrorist illegals, as often they are stopped for vehicular violations.

My own take: We have waited too long to deal with the problem.  No law likely will be adequately enforced by either the State Department or the INS, employers will happily hire cheap illegals, welfare clients will come in carloads to big cities run by Democratic officials, etc.  Sometimes it really is too late.  Even a well-crafted law, if not enforced, is wishful thinking if our dinosaur bureaucracy cannot be made into a less plodding, reasonably efficient 21st century government.

 In the event, until, if ever, we can create a governmental apparatus that can enforce the laws, nothing will happen.  The start of that is a national ID card.  Until we know who is here and what their status is, we are blowing smoke.  The FBI & IRS can find me and you, and thus they should be able to find the bad guys.  Yes, the government will abuse such a system, as it abuses all else, sooner or later.  Allow a review process, with lawsuits for egregious cases (and "loser pays" to deter frivolous legal gaming of the system).  Michael Barone endorses an ID card, and notes that even Mexico now has a tamper-proof voter ID card.  Perfect?  Hardly, nothing ever is.  Which is why lack of same is never a valid argument against a given policy proposal.  Does anyone believe that 2 million aliens with criminal records will come forward on their own?  An ID card or bust!

Index 5/22/07

3 posts: (1) Bernard Lewis & Others Ask: Was Osama Right?--Us v. Them; (2) Media Mayhem: Terror's Nuclear Weapon--MSM Murders; (3) World Bank Palace Coup: Samson Time?--Weenie Watch.

Bernard Lewis and Others Ask: Was Osama Right?

Orientalist Supreme Bernard Lewis fears that Osama is right as to his  fundamental calculation, that Americans do not have the stomach for a protracted, often messy, conflict.  Lewis notes that the jihadists feared the USSR more, which is why they accepted our aid to them in Afghanistan.  They believe they, and not the US, won the war.  (This is untrue, as without the Stinger missile to down Soviet helicopters the Afghans would have lost, but that Osama believes what he does is what counts.)  Lewis notes that only once did Mideast terrorists take Russians hostage.  The Russians sent commandos into Lebanon to capture, mutilate and then kill relatives of the terror leaders, and trouble ended.  Ditto against the Chechens.  Messy, ugly, but effective.  We lack the stomach for such--we cannot even stand water-boarding, dunking 9/11's mastermind in water without his water wings for two minutes.

Mind you, those who consider water-boarding unacceptable view it as torture.  They include extraordinarily courageous people like McCain and Sharansky.  Osama considers this weakness, but he is wrong.  What ultimately matters, however, is whether our values so constrain us that, as Lewis fears, we cannot do what may be necessary to prevail.  Historian Efraim Karsh echoes Lewis's theme, and adds more examples.  NY Times columnist David Brooks contends that modern terror groups have supplanted old-line groups like the late Yasser Arafat's PLO.  They seek to disrupt, not destroy modern states, which therefore cannot muster the will to fully mobilize to defeat them.  They combine modern technology, sophisticated communications and a feudal mind-set.  Brooks says that there are 70 to 100 such groups operating in Iraq, far more nimble than our dinosaur bureaucracy.  Brooks cites the blog Global Guerillas for its focus on networked adversaries; it is worth a look.

The same holds true for Iraq.  The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol excoriates the eleven Republicans who met with President Bush to inform him they were jumping ship on Iraq, then went straight to the airwaves to tell the world.  A friend of Kristol's in Iraq had this to say about the consequences of our cutting out, and how Iraqis really feel about us:

"It will be a tragedy and an unforgivable crime if we abandon the Iraqis who are fighting with us. It will really be a black spot on our history far worse than Vietnam. . . . It will set back any effort to achieve positive effects in the Muslim world, and especially the Arab world. . . . A senior Iraqi officer I spoke to today told me that any Iraqi who says that America should withdraw soon is not a real Iraqi. Only the militia and the insurgents, he said, want us to leave. He is right. If we withdraw now, we will be acting at the behest of our worst enemies, snatching defeat against al Qaeda from the jaws of victory, and strengthening all of the worst actors in this region. The Iraqi people do not want us to leave. . . .

"We went through two of the worst Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad. . . . heavily infested with al Qaeda and other terrorists who terrorize the population and drive them to support or at least tolerate attacks against us. But the kids on the streets--and there were many--waved, smiled, asked for candy. The locals give us tips and ask us to get the terrorists out of the area and, above all, to protect them. We walked through a market off of Haifa Street--remember, the site of that long-running gun-battle back in January that made so much news? The market was thriving, flourishing, the local U.S. commander knew everyone and everyone knew him. The kids thronged around us, laughing, asking for candy. . . . One guy chased us all around the pool hall with a paper in his hand. He wanted to give it to General Odierno to get him a job working at the airport. Imagine a guy not only willing to be seen in public asking us to help him, but a guy willing to chase us around to do it.

"And Haifa Street is a mixed neighborhood. There were Sunnis and Shias both at the market and mixed in areas all through there. And we have not cleared Haifa Street--but we were able to drive up and down it, see people living, working, talking together, and in considerable safety. We are winning this war with the people. And they are putting their lives in our hands. . . . Our tip lines are flooded with calls from locals to tell us about bad people, even of their own sect. They are counting on us and they want to work with us and help us help them. I will never be able to see America the same way if we abandon them now. I hope and pray that our country is incapable of such an abominable act."

Columnist Diana West doubts this portrait, and writes well in opposition.  She contrasts the attitudes of Iraqis with that of Danes in world War II, and asks why more Iraqis aren't already on our side.  She sees P.C. in the air and asks, as to Petraeus's plan to win over hearts and minds: "Is this a war plan, or a Miss Universe contest?"  (As for the Danes, perhaps their future is what residents of Copenhagen saw last Sunday: its famed mermaid statue draped in a burqa.)

In the event, defeat in Iraq would, in reality, prove far worse than Vietnam, where our defection gave one last hope to a dying superpower that it could prevail in the Cold War.  But this time we will energize globally the worst elements of Islam.  If the mess in Iraq has minted jihadists by the boatload, our departure in defeat will mint many more.  With militant Islam on the rise, energizing it will be a catastrophe for the West.

Media Mayhem: Terror 's Nuclear Weapon

An NRO article details how mainstream media (MSM) sensationalism distorts to Afghanistan stories, to the advantage of the terrorists.  One involved a two-year-old incident of German troops desecrating graves, and the other involved an air strike where 20 to 200 "civilians" were killed.  Reporters, it seems, routinely presume allegations by the Taliban to be true, and answers from Coalition spokesmen "claims" that presumptively are dubious.  And if after a long investigation original atrocity allegations are refuted, it is at most a one-day story.  By then, as reporters fully understand, the damage has been done.  Asking reporters to hold a story until it is verified or debunked is, for the media, nearly always a non-starter.

Add to this a juxtaposition: (a) the wall-to-wall months-long media saturation hysteria over Abu Ghraib, which was stupid pet tricks by a bunch of jerks left without adult supervision on the night shift; versus (b) the Palestinian jihadist Mickey Mouse video, a two-day story by now fully flushed down the memory hole.  Which was worse, some obscene pranks by a few retarded renegades, or the appropriation and stomach-turning perversion of a beloved global symbol of childhood fun?

But were MSM to air this last story for two months Americans might decide it is crazy to ask Israel to parley with the Palestinians.  And this MSM will never let happen.  We are, it is clear to all, losing the information war.  Administration ineptitude partly explains this, but MSM perversity explains much more.

World Bank Palace Coup: Samson Time?

The Wall Street Journal exposes the culprits behind the ugly Kangaroo-court coup against WB President Paul Wolfowitz: UN biggies ensnared in  the Oil-For-Food cover-up, European governments and the sinister George Soros.  All oppose serious WB reform.  A Tuesday, May 15 comment by WH Press Secretary Tony Snow that "all options are on the table" was the sound of the Administration jumping ship.  A WB report to the WB Board asserts that Wolfowitz broke rules in arranging a compensation package for his lady love, which PW denies.  So the Board, having refused PW's request that allow him to completely recuse himself, now hangs him, despite PW having sought and relied on the advice of the WB ethics panel whose advice, the special WB panel conceded, was "not a model of clarity."  This WSJ editorial details evidence omitted from the panel's report to the EB Board, favorable to PW.  So first the WB Board refuses to let PW recuse himself, then when PW, with full disclosure, follows murky advice from the ethics panel he is blamed for guessing wrong as to what that advice suggested as safe harbor.  As for the severance package, salaries at the WB are in the stratosphere for everyone, largely tax-free, which is the real money scandal.  A May 18 WSJ editorial gets it right: by caving the Bush Administration has weakened US influence at the WB, where the "inmates are now in charge" despite the US paying 16 percent of the WB's budget.  Washington Post reporter Karen DeYoung calls PW as "misfit" for the WB due to ideological differences and lack of administrative acumen.  But the staff was hostile from the start and PW's strengths and weakness known in advance.  The shabby treatment he received is still shabby, his faults (everyone has them) notwithstanding.

George Will goes a step further, and maintains that the WB has outlived whatever usefulness it once had.  Capital markets, writes Will, were small and risk-averse after the economic havoc of global depression in the 1930s and World War II right after.  Today, capital markets are deep and risk-taking, and thus the WB is now superfluous.  Will's bottom line is that the WB itself should be cashiered.  Will is right, but this will not happen.

NRO diarist David Frum quotes a friend and financial institute maven on the "Samson Option"--one Wolfowitz and his allies apparently passed on:

"At this point, especially after having read the Guardian piece today, I'm thinking that the best option really would be for him to be a Samson — go down (over a girl), but take the building with him as well. Expose it all — other sweetheart deals, personal corruption, the whole lot. Why not? What are the chances that the other corruption at the Bank could ever get exposed? If he does not, the narrative will forever read: "evil neocon Yank broke rules, noble development types save Bank, help poor." And we will be powerless to change it and under tremendous pressure to shove even more money into the institution.

"Oh, the Euros will carp about how this is hurting the poor — but then we should challenge them to lend money from their own governments directly or work through private sector means or the regional development banks."

Great idea!   Per Dylan Thomas: "Do not go gentle into that good night; Rage, rage, against the dying of the light."  A former senior WB official calls for carrying on anti-corruption efforts that he fears are endangered by staff hostility after PW's departure.

As for Dylan's counsel, PW seems instead to have settled for the WB acknowledging that he didn't act unethically, and that the WB made mistakes as well.  PW seems to have gone with Shakespeare: "He who steals my purse steals trash....But he that filches from me my good name...."  To be fair, it is easy for kibitzers like me to seek Samson Options.  It was a nice thought, anyway.  Perhaps the threat of the SO aided PW in getting the WB to admit they were not clean on this mess.  In the event, may PW have best of luck, and may the WB sink deeper into irrelevancy.

Index 5/21/07

3 posts: (1) NATO v. NATO--Weenie Watch; (2) Pelosi's Petro-Politics--The Home Front; (3) Second Amendment: Gunfight at Supreme Corral?--The Home Front.

NATO v. NATO

Russia's latest NATO contribution: launching cyberwar against a fellow NATO member, Estonia.  This is not the first intra-NATO war--think Turkey v. Greece over Cyprus.  It is, however, the first known case of a state launching cyberwar as official state policy.  Estonia reports a flood of spam.  It will not be the last.

Pelosi's Petro-Politics

George Will, at his best, dissects Nancy Pelosi's contortions on oil prices and energy.  It seems that the only time Pelosi grasps market economics is as to non-union labor toiling in her California vineyard.

Second Amendment: Gunfight at Supreme Corral?

On March 9 the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, decided Parker v. District of Columbia.  In a split (2-1) decision written by highly regarded Senior Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman, the Court held unconstitutional, as a violation of the Second Amendment right to bear arms, a D.C. law banning private possession of guns.  The decision conflicts with holdings of three other federal appeals courts, which have held that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is limited to those who are members of state militias.  There may be a showdown in the Supreme Court on the extent of the constitutional right to bear arms.  But that is not certain.  In the event, Silberman's opinion is yet another pearl in a long string of gems from one of America's finest legal minds.  It is often a chore to wade through judicial verbiage, but never so with Silberman.

Begin with the text of the Second Amendment: "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."  In 1939 the Supreme Court, in United States v. Miller, held that right to be conditional on membership in a militia and possession of permissible arms, in the way most courts have parsed the Court's opinion.  The Parker Court interprets Miller more narrowly, as basing its ruling solely on the type of arms possessed by appellants (in that case, a shotgun), a construction that the Parker dissent rejects.  Parker states that none of the sparse legal precedent pertaining to the Second Amendment is precisely on point.  Thus, it concluded that no prior case precedent requires any current court to follow prior rulings.

Parker involved six appellants, five of whom were dismissed for lack of standing to sue DC (the reasons are too technical to bother with here).  The sixth appellant sought a license to possess a pistol at home, and to keep it assembled and ready for use in self-defense.  The District took the position that: (a) the right to "bear" arms is a collective one, not individual, and exists only in the context of a "well-regulated militia"; (b) DC laws requiring gun disassembly or lock-up are mere regulation of gun ownership, not outright prohibition; and (c) in the event, DC is not a state and thus the Second Amendment does not apply.

Judge Silberman rejected all three District arguments, holding: (a) the Second Amendment right is individual in character; (b) DC's laws are so constraining as to amount to outright prohibition, and thus are unconstitutional; (c) the Second Amendment applies to the District.  Let's take each point.

Second Amendment: A Collective or Individual Right?  The traditional view of Second Amendment rights has long been that they are "collective" in character--that is, they exist only in the context of service in a militia.  Recent scholarship has convinced many judges and lawyers that the right is in fact "individual" and thus exists independent of service in a militia.  No less a liberal scholar than Laurence Tribe has come around to this view.

Driving this change in view are several factors.  First, the Second Amendment right is held by "the People"; this is a phrase that everywhere else in the Bill of Rights means everyone as individuals, and not as part of a collective entity.  Under the canon of statutory construction noscitur a sociis ("a word is known by the company it keeps") the presence of "People" in other provisions of the Bill of Rights adds weight to giving it a similar meaning within the Second Amendment.  Second, the right is to "keep and bear" arms, not only to bear them.  This is significant, because a fundamental rule of reading provisions of constitutions, treaties and statutes is that every word must have some independent meaning, lest it be merely redundant.  The drafters of the Bill of Rights--folks like James Madison and James Wilson--knew how to write laws, and did not throw in superfluous verbiage.  Thus "keep" must be given its own meaning, to which the Parker Court ascribes private ownership.  Third, the militia of 18th and 19th century days was not today's National Guard.  Indeed, even today it comprises more than the NG (more on this below).  Rather, it was every able-bodied man between 18 and 45.  Fourth, members of the militia were supposed to bring their own firearms, excepting large items such as artillery.  Rifles and guns were traditional weapons owned by individuals.  Fifth, the purpose of the right to keep and bear arms was broader than merely to resist federal encroachment; it also pertained to personal liberty and the right of personal self-defense.  Finally, although the prefatory clause "well-regulated militia" precedes the operative "keep and bear" clause, it is common in statutes for the operative clause to denote a broader scope than does the prefatory clause, and thus include more activity than indicated solely by looking at the prefatory language.

More now on militias and the keeping and bearing of arms in American history, as this is central to the new scholarship on Second Amendment rights, and as well to the Parker ruling.  At the time of the nation's birth few places had professional police forces.  It was thus commonly understood that private-owned firearms were to be used for self-defense and hunting, in addition to soldiering activity.  The First Militia Act and the Second Militia Act were both passed in 1792.  The FMA authorized the President to call the militia to meet foreign invasion and internal rebellion.  The SMA required able-bodied males between 18 and 45 to "enroll" in the militia, which entailed notifying a local official as to one's name and address.  The militia itself need not be organized, but rather provided the human resources which Congress could, in time of need, call up into organized units.  The specific statutory language, in pertinent part, reads: "That out of the militia enrolled as is herein directed, there shall be formed for each battalion...."  (Emphasis in Court opinion.)  Members of the militia were obligated to arm themselves, regardless of whether the organized militia were called up.

Today, the militia is more than just the National Guard.  It is all able-bodied male citizens 17 up to 45 plus female citizens who are members of the NG.  The current congressional militia statue recognizes both the organized militia (NG + Naval Reserve) and unorganized militia (everyone else).  Thus the Second Amendment contemplated private ownership of guns for private use, which included rights of private self-defense and hunting.

DC's Gun Laws: Regulation or Prohibition?  No one disputes that mere regulation of how rights are exercised under the Constitution and Bill of Rights is permissible.  Thus, "time, place and manner" regulations of public speech have long been upheld--you do not have the right to run a sound truck under my window at 3 AM; you cannot parade in the buff down Fifth Avenue to protest obscenity laws, etc.  Regulation cannot, however, be so comprehensive and restrictive as to effectively nullify a constitutional right.  Allowing public protest only between 7 and 7:15 AM on alternate rainy Wednesdays would thus amount to de facto prohibition.  The District's gun laws amount to just that.  If you even can get a gun at all, it must either be trigger-locked or unloaded and disassembled.  So if a burglar shows up, the homeowner would have to tell the burglar to wait a minute, while he finds and assembles his gun and removes the trigger lock.  A DC bureaucrat might just wait around, but burglars, even those with plant-level IQs, would not likely cooperate.  Thus the District law amounts to outright prohibition.

DC: A "State" or Not One, per the Second Amendment?  Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson seized upon DC's special non-state status as sufficient to deny all appellants standing to sue DC over its gun laws.  She argues that the use of "State" in the Second Amendment means that a purely federal entity like DC is excluded,  The Parker majority interprets "a free State" as akin to country, as the plural form "the states" is used in other provisions; whereas the plural form clearly refers to the individual states, the singular form suggests country.  The Constitution's text also uses the form "each state" to denote individual states.  The majority concludes that the "security" of a free State of necessity includes the security of DC, as the seat of government, whereas the dissent states that DC has no need for protection from the federal government because it is the federal government.  The dissent also notes that whereas governors can call out the national Guard, the mayor of DC cannot; the power to call out the DC NG rests with the President.

Judge Henderson's final argument addresses the "incorporation" doctrine, under which the Supreme Court has made provisions of the Bill of Rights applicable to state governments.  Originally the BR applied only to deprivations of protected constitutional rights by the federal government (the Supreme Court so held in 1834).  Beginning in the 1920s, the Supreme Court began incorporating "preferred freedoms" of the BR so as to make designated clauses applicable to the states.  But this doctrine has never been applied to the Second Amendment.  The judge's argument does not quite parse, however, as if DC is not a state there is no need to incorporate the Second Amendment to the states to make it apply to DC.  The BR has always applied to the federal government, of which DC not only is part of, it is the very seat of the federal power.

Yet the majority view here is also problematic.  Consider that in 1862, when Robert E. Lee was offered by President Lincoln, after the opening battles of the civil war, command of the Army of the Potomac, that Lee declined.  His reason was the he could not command an army that would fight against his "country" of Virginia.  To Lee and others the Anti-Federalist understanding of the Union had never been settled.  It was not until Appomattox that the argument was settled once and for all.  Thus at the Founding many Americans saw their country as what we today call their state.  The security of the District of Columbia, which one minister of the time called "ten square miles of debauchery and tyranny" (more, to be sure, of the latter than the former, as remains true today), was not a concern of those who saw their State as their "country": to the contrary, they feared a strong DC.  The Bill of Rights embodied Anti-Federalist concerns about excess federal power over the States.

Bottom Line.  The Silberman opinion is brilliant and persuasive as to the interpretation of a private individual right to bear arms and as to what "militia" denotes.  It argument as to DC being covered is, it seems, more problematic.  In the event, DC may well get the full DC Circuit Court to review the ruling en banc (trans. "as a bench"--meaning all eligible judges participate, not just the three original judges in Parker).  If this either does not come to pass, or if the full D.C. Circuit Court reviews Parker and affirms it, then a conflict of rulings between the DC Circuit and three other federal appeals courts assures that the Supreme Court will take the case.  Stay tuned, and keep your (Constitutional) powder dry.

Index 5/18/07

4 posts: (1) War Czar: No Tsar--The Home Front; (2) Our World's A-Changin'--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (3) DC's A-Changin' Demographics--The Ap & The Cap; (4) USA's A-Changin', Republicans A-Dreamin', Democrats A-Steamin'--The Home Front.

War Czar: No Tsar

Ralph Peters doubts that Gen. Lute, named by Pres. Bush as "war czar," will be able to move mountains--or even molehills.  Peters, who served under Drug Czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey, should know.  He puts it crisply: " In Washington, if you can't fire people, prosecute them or take away their money, you're a joke."

We will know that a real czar with real power has been appointed when his title is "Tsar."

Our World's A'Changin'

Watch this 5-minute video that in a succession of slides tells us things about our changing world.  At least some will surprise you, surely.  Many of them focus on the interplay of the economies of the US, China & India.  Things ain't what they used to be, and there is no turning back.

DC's A-Changin' Demographics

The Washington Post reports that in the first 5-1/2 years of the new century the District's non-Hispanic black population fell from 60 to 55 percent; Hispanics are now 8 percent, whites are 32 percent and Asians are 3 percent.  Blacks have been departing the city for Maryland and Virginia.  For the US as a whole, the latest figures put Hispanics at 15 percent, non-Hispanic blacks 12 percent and Asians 4 percent, with whites now but 69 percent.  For the first time, minorities top 100 million.  In four states--Hawaii, New Mexico, California & Texas--whites are already a minority.  A major demographic trend is the relative graying of the white segment vis-a-vis minorities.

For the US the changes will be felt in the medium- to long-term, and could lead (as the WP piece notes) to inter-generational conflict, sharpened by racial demography.  For DC this likely will mean less.  Many new arrivals coming to DC are reliably liberal.  Not many red-meat conservatives choose to live here, and they will never be a majority force in a government town.  Statehood will be just as dead as it is now: it only takes 13 states to decline to ratify a constitutional amendment.  As the center of federal power, DC will never be popular enough to get 38 state ratifications, regardless of the city's racial make-up.

But there is good news in one sense: the tribal triumphalism of Marion Barry's heyday is gone forever.  And good riddance to it, too.  Anyone who doubts this should read Dream City, by Tom Sherwood and Harry Jaffe (1994).  It tells the tale of how Barry rose to the pinnacle of local power and then, in his ghastly decline, took the city with him.  It has yet to recover.

Longer-term, the best future for DC is to have the federal government parts Vaticanized, and the remainder retroceded back to Maryland, with which DC was federated from 1800 to 1854.  DC residents would vote in all local, state and federal elections.  Maryland would get an extra House seat.  The two absurd DC Senatorial electoral votes (a mess created by the 23rd Amendment) would have to be bargained off in the form of added House seats in two Democratic states.  But this is a long way off, if ever.  It would put DC's political class under state suzerainty.  This is anathema to the locals, but would be a relief to Congress, whose members rarely win constituent brownie points for devoting time and energy to supervising governance of the District.  Still, don't hold your breath.

USA's A-Changin', Republicans A-Dreamin', Democrats A-Steamin'

Political scientist Michael Barone sees demographic realignment re-shaping the American polity, with the 2010 Census the first to reflect changes.  Barone takes the top 5o metropolitan areas--those with populations of at least one million, that collectively comprise 54 percent of the total 2006 US population--and places them into four main categories, plus two areas separated as outliers.  For each area, Barone projects change in seats in the House of Representatives (and, consequently, in associated state Electoral College totals) after the 2010 Census is taken.

Coastal Megalopolises.  The 8 largest areas, characterized by modest immigrant growth but slightly greater native outflow, and with a yawning chasm between an affluent upper tier and low-wage laborers forming a stagnant bottom tier.  Both tiers vote heavily Democratic.  The 8 areas: NY, LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago (coast of Lake Michigan--poetic license on Barone's part), Miami, Washington and Boston.  2010: Ds lose 5 seats.

Interior Boomtowns.  16 metro areas, with moderate immigrant inflow and major in-country domestic inflow.  There is no major wealth gap in these areas, and families tend to be traditional ones.  This category includes cities like Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Austin, San Antonio, Raleigh, Tampa. Orlando and Nashville.  Republicans are stronger here.  2010: Rs gain 10 seats.

Rust Belt.  6 metropolitan areas, with small domestic  outflow and smaller immigrant inflow.  These are doing poorly economically.  The 6 are Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Buffalo and Rochester.  They vote narrowly Democratic.  2010: Ds lose 6 seats.

Static Cities.  18 metropolitan areas.  These feature essentially stable population growth, with mixed small inflows and outflows, and with lethargic economies.  In the East are areas such as Philadelphia, Providence, Hartford and Baltimore; in the West are Seattle, Denver and Portland; in the Midwest are Minneapolis, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Columbus and Indianapolis; in the South are Norfolk, Memphis, Louisville, Oklahoma City and Birmingham.  These areas lean slightly Democratic.  2010: no change given.

Outliers.  New Orleans, ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, has lost 25 percent of its population and attracted near-zero immigration.  (Barone's figure seems way low here.  The true loss is about 50 percent, given by other sources.)  The other outlier is Salt Lake City, rapidly growing, but not via inflows and outflows.  Rather, in 1950s style, it is dominated by large, traditional family growth--lots of kids.  The Big Easy is, of course, Democratic while SLC is Republican to the core.  No change projection is offered by Barone.

According to Barone, the rest of the country looks like Static cities, with stable population, but tends sightly Republican.   Overall, he envisions a shift from the heavily Democratic Coastal Megalopolises and the Democratic Rust Belt to the Interior Boom areas, which are Republican strongholds.  But one area, Barone writes in US News & World Report, where Republicans cannot make a dent is with the young, not even on Social security.  Barone believes that this is because the young are highly content, and do not want to worry about retirement or militant Islamists.  Sleep is blissful.

2008.  But the above trends are for the 2012 Presidential race and after.  Meanwhile, there is 2008.  Pundit David Frum argues that the Republican 2008 field may be the strongest ever, yet the candidates are floundering and, worse, Republicans are dreamin' of The Return of the Gipper.  Dan Henninger agrees that Republicans are in disarray, but attributes this to the essentially non-ideological cast of the American electorate, and says that neither party has a candidate to redefine its agenda into a coherent whole.  "The Gipper Returns" might make for a fun movie, but it is not where America's polity is today.  Unless Republican voters wake up, Frum warns, disaster looms in 2008.

As I have said on LFTC already, I see 2008 as Dukakis '88, delayed twenty years, courtesy of the epic managerial train-wreck of Dubya's second term: the 2008 election "is not about ideology; it's about competence."  Bush's two worst failures, in the eyes of the electorate, are the mess in Iraq and in New Orleans.  The Democrats have been mostly irresponsible on Iraq, and the latter is more Louisiana's fault, but voters see Katrina as mostly Bush's mess.  That judgment is unfair, but, as JFK famously said, so is life.

Yet Democrats are running more on visceral anger than on competence.  Partly this is because their meltdown over Iraq is energizing their efforts.  But also it reflects the fact that none of the major Democratic candidates has a resume evincing managerial acumen.  The three front-runners are all lawyers with minimal managerial credentials, all three also having run Senatorial staff operations.  Hillary has run First Lady staff, Barack Obama has run a state legislative staff, and John Edwards has run a plaintiff's law office.  The same is true of Republicans John McCain and (Fred Thompson (not yet formally in, but will decide in June).  Peggy Noon has a great column on the smart Internet guerrilla campaign Thompson is running, and the questions that he must answer if he is to formally go for White House gold in the 2008 Presidential Olympics.

But Mitt Romney is a hugely successful venture capitalist, ran a smash success 2002 Winter Olympics and governs a state competently despite facing a legislature controlled by the opposing party.  Rudy was NYC's mayor, running a city that during his terms was larger than 42 states.  Before that ran the nation's top DA office, the Southern District of New York, which handles many high-profile cases--in Rudy's tenure, it broke the back of the Mafia.  If this Daily Telegraph report is true, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is making formal preparations for a White House run as the candidate of the Independence Party.  Bloomberg, after a successful stint as a securities trader with top firm Salomon Brothers, went on to build the world's leading market information company (Bloomberg News), and now runs NYC (still larger than 40 states as of the latest Census numbers).  He will make his final decision in February, after the two major party candidates emerge.  As he is worth over $5 billion Bloomberg can finance a complete Presidential run out of what amounts to petty cash.  (One indication Mayor Mike is pondering a run: he has announced a national energy policy for the country to adopt.  Mere mayors do not do this.)

So, if Mayor Mike wades in, are the Democrats sure winners?  I think not.  True, Ross Perot's 19 percent share in 1992 was drawn 2 to 1 from Bush Senior, and cost Bush Sr. the race (Bill Clinton beat Bush 43-38).  But Bloomberg is a different kettle of , shall we say, Fulton Fish Market produce.  He is a New York City, not a Texas, Republican, whose party affiliation was Democratic until he decided to run for mayor.  His top issues, besides competence, are liberal--he authored the health-Nazi smoking ban for NYC, and gun control, hardly an issue that will excite Republicans.  He has no national security experience.  He lacks the ideological appeal of a Reagan or a Bobby Kennedy, which would be needed to make the election more ideological in tone.  He thus seems to be most appealing to liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats, both minority segments of their Party's rosters.

In sum, Bloomberg runs left of all major Republican candidates.  If Rudy or Romney wins the Republican nod, their sterling managerial records nullify that asset for Bloomberg.  So, if managerial aptitude is a big plus for 2008 candidates, any Democrat looks weaker with Bloomberg in, let alone with Rudy or Romney also running.  If Bloomberg draws evenly from both sides his entry is a wash, unless somehow he wins, which is hard to envision.  As NYC mayor he should appeal to Democrats more than Republicans. (Rudy is the rare exception that proves the general rule, due to his crime-buster and post-9/11 successes.)

It may be that Hillary is least vulnerable to a Bloomberg run.  Her base is solid, as is the group of voters flatly opposed to her.  (Her base is growing: she has just been endorsed by porn queen Jenna Jameson, who could considerably liven up the Clinton camp stops.)  There will be fewer undecideds if Hillary runs, and Bloomberg might well draw from Republicans more.  That is less clear in the event Obama or Edwards are nominated, in that their bases are smaller and are also less secure from poaching.  NRO's iconoclastic John Derbyshire places his bet on Al Gore as next President, based on his belief that Hillary's ceiling vote-getting potential is too low, and on Gore's ability to energize the Florida 2000 mess plus his status as leader of the Left's grandest current cause, global warming.  Nixon '68, Gore '08.  Could be.  But a Dem White House win hardly means they will keep Congress.  The latest Gallup Poll numbers show that by 64%-33% Americans disapprove of the performance of the new Congress; the 33% approval is 4 points below President Bush's 37%.

In the event, a Rudy-Hilary-Mayor Mike race would be a great advertisement for the Big Apple.  It just might make the managerial theme for 2008 not Dukakis, but Frank Sinatra--think My Way plus New York, New York.  ("Start spreading the news...I govern my way...I can make it anywhere....")

But the key in 2008 may prove to be, as it was in key 2006 races, a strong turnout of Democratic-voting women.  If the "security moms" of 2002 and 2004 do not come out and vote Republican again, 2008 will be a Democratic "Happy Days Are Here Again" election.

Thus, in 2007, Republicans are dreamin' and Democrats are steamin'.  Stay tuned.

Index 5/17/07

5 posts: (1) Palestinian Poison--Yet Again--Us v. Them; (2) Gore II: Royal Flush Washers--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (3) Black on White: a New Twist--The Home Front; (4) Rudy, Abortion & 2008--The Home Front; (5) Dear Michael: "Drop Dead!" Love, Fred--The Home Front.

Palestinian Poison--Yet Again

The arrest of a Palestinian staffer of Doctors Without Borders as a suspect in a plot to kill Israel's Prime Minister adds another accomplishment to the Palestinian ledger: yet another group whose humanitarian purpose is poisoned by contact with the Palestinians.  This comes one week after the poisoning of Mickey Mouse.  Wonder what will be next.

Gore II: Royal Flush Washers

A Wall Street Journal editorial Al Gore and his eco-pals gave us low-flush toilets that do not succeed in their assigned mission, and now, after that eco-royal flush we have eco-friendly washers, courtesy of a Clinton-era mandate that starting in 2007 washers' scrubbing power is limited, to conserve water.  The result, says Consumer Reports, is washers that cannot clean what they wash.  Just wait until the Gore set finishes with your car engine.

Black on White: a New Twist

It took an EEOC complaint and a federal judge, but as columnist Kathleen Parker reports the multiculturalist educrat class suffered a major setback in Charleston.  A white teacher subject to vicious verbal abuse by black students at a high school sued the school and wound up with a $200,000 settlement, based upon the refusal of the school administrators to put an end to what the court found to be a racially "hostile environment"--a legal buzzword standard for nearly thirty years at the EEOC.  The school, naturally, took the position that black students call each other "bitch" & "ho" and "m-f "and other such lovely names (mentioned in the article), so what's the big deal if they preface it with "white" and curse out the teacher?  Oh, and of course the teacher was fired for complaining.  This is unlawful retaliation under federal law, but what with the settlement the case is over.  For once P.C. lost.

Rudy, Abortion & 2008

Rudy Giuliani's inability to lay to rest the abortion issue with Republican primary voters imperils his White House quest.  Herewith is how he might put across in more clarity (I hope) to non-lawyer voters what I understand to be his abortion message--namely, that he personally opposes the practice, he believes that our society is generally  pro-choice, but will support certain restrictions (like partial-birth abortion) but will not use abortion as a litmus test in selecting judges.  He seems, in his Mother's Day interview with Fox's Chris Wallace, to want abortion to be, as Bill Clinton said, "safe, legal and rare" (Rudy didn't use this specific formulation; it is mine as a shorthand descriptor of his longer answer).  In the event Rudy should say this:

Voters want to know whether I will, if elected, nominate Supreme Court Justices who will vote  to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that created a judicially-mandated right for a woman to obtain an abortion, with only minimal restrictions permissible.  I believe that decision to have been a mistake by the Court, for two reasons: (1) the text of the Constitution is silent on abortion; (2) Roe short-circuited a process of state legislatures reconsidering abortion bans.  But for strong reasons of constitutional and legal principle, I would not require a judge to pledge reversal of Roe.

My view of judicial appointments follows three principles: (1) how powers are divided in our system of government, which separates how judges versus legislators approach issues; (3) how judges interpret the constitution; and (4) how judges approach prior legal precedent.

Separating Governmental Powers: Judges Are Not Legislators.  Under our tripartite constitutional system, powers of government are separated into three branches: legislators make laws, the executive administers them and the judiciary interprets them.  While branch powers do overlap, they have distinct roles.  Judges are supposed to decide particular cases on the facts as presented and the law as best they can apply it.  They are not legislators, who tell the public when running for office how they will vote on issues if elected.  And because judges aren't  legislators, they cannot advertise their votes in advance and be faithful to their constitutional oath.  The two roles are fundamentally different in our constitutional system.  In appointing judges to any level of the federal courts, the one thing I will avoid is any advance issue litmus test.  Any judge who states how he or she would rule if appointed is automatically thus unfit to serve on the bench.  Judges can be asked their general outlook on how to approach constitutional questions, and I will pick those who are strict constructionists.   In our system who decides is at least as important as what is decided.  Policy issues should be decided by those regularly accountable to the voters.  The Constitutional framework America has leaves many things to the legislative process, where open debate can be had, and where voters can choose those who decide questions of how communities are governed.  That is why judges should not legislate.  Those whom I would appoint will not do so.

The 1973 Roe ruling came when 16 states had already passed laws liberalizing abortion.  In 1970 New York passed what then was the nation's most liberal abortion law.  It was passed when a wavering member of the New York State Assembly switched sides after talking with his teenage daughter.  The Assemblyman was defeated in the next election, as voters in his district expressed what then was their preference.  That was the democratic process at work: a legislator changed his vote as a matter of personal conscience; voters expressed their disagreement with his choice.

Judicial Interpretation of the Constitution.  I am a strict constructionist, who believes that where the Constitution is silent, judges should be silent, too.  Above all, strict constructionists believe that constitutional change should not be made by judges, but by the process of constitutional amendment.  Activist judges see the Constitution as a "living document" that judges may amend as needed, based upon their own sense of how the document evolves.  Strict constructionists reject this view, because it denies the right of the people to have those who make the laws answerable to them at the voting booth.  Judges are appointed for life, and thus their powers must be carefully limited.

There is, of course, the option of a constitutional amendment.  But as I support the right of a woman to choose, I will not support such an amendment.  Should the Justices decide to return abortion to the legislative arena, I believe that Americans, after a generation with abortion, will not return to absolute prohibition of abortion.  They will vote in accord with how Americans today see the issue, which is one where there should neither be an absolute ban on abortion, nor an absolute, unqualified right to obtain one under all circumstances. That actually is fairly close to where the Supreme Court stands today, and our politics would have been less bitter had the same result been obtained through the legislative process, as had been underway at the state level in 1973 when the Court took the issue away.

Judicial Respect for Prior Legal Precedent.  I believe Roe was wrongly decided.  The courts should instead have left the matter to the state legislatures.  But since 1973 Roe has been re-affirmed some 40 times by the Supreme Court.  Under a legal doctrine known as stare decisis--which means "let the decision stand"--judges generally follow earlier case-law decisions as legal precedent.  There are rare exceptions--the 1954 Brown case overruled the "separate but equal" Plessy ruling of 1996.  Justices frequently stand by decisions with which they personally disagree: the late chief Justice William Rehnquist voted in 2000 to uphold the 1966 Miranda ruling because after a generation and after repeated re-affirmation by the High Court he believed it had been woven into the societal fabric.  Justice Rehqnuist was a strict constructionist, but other justices sitting in Rehnquist's position might have decided to overrule Miranda, just as Plessy was overruled despite its 58 years as law of the land.  Whether a precedent should be reversed depends partly on how long it has stood, partly on how often (if at all) it has been re-affirmed, and partly how deeply woven into peoples' expectations, and hence the fabric of our society, it may have become.

All the above notwithstanding, nothing will permanently settle the issue for Rudy.  His position is a nuanced, complex one, based upon his lawyer's training.  It is not evasion as such, but it involves a view of government powers that many non-lawyer voters apparently find confusing.  Then again, the Republican Party platform has been officially pro-life since 1976, yet Republican voters have chosen pro-choice candidates.  Indeed, no Republican Presidential candidate since Richard Nixon has been 100 percent pro-life throughout his adult lifetime.  But the above explanation may at least further clarify his position with voters.  Former Solicitor-General Ted Olson (the S-G is the federal  government's top lawyer before the Supreme Court and federal appeals courts) notes that one-third of Supreme Court cases each year are decided by one vote.  Olson supports Rudy and says Rudy will appoint strict constructionist judges.  There is no reason to doubt this.

In the event, if abortion is the issue that drives Republican primary voters, Rudy will never be nominated.  His biggest issue is the war, and unless he can make this first in the minds of Republican voters he is not going to be nominated.  His recent Houston appearance indicates he understands this, as well as his nailing of Ron Paul during this week's South Carolina debate exchange.  Rudy has made a huge success of his life without my advice, and may he continue to do so.

Dear Michael: "Drop Dead!" Love, Fred

Michael Moore, by now Hollywood's--and America's most famous imbecile, just back from his Cuba love-fest with Fidel Castro, challenged Fred Thompson to a debate.  Fred's 38-second tv reply says it better than Law & Order DA Arthur Branch could do.  Enjoy a great laugh.

Index 5/16/07

3 posts: (1) Updates: IRAQ & Tony Blair--Us v. Them; (2) Russian Rice Crispy--Weenie Watch; (3) Can Oxy Contin Continue?--The Home Front.

Updates: IRAQ & Tony Blair

The Daily Standard (online edition of The Weekly Standard) offers a trio of articles as part of its unequaled coverage of events in Iraq.  Kimberly Kagan's Iraq Report IV (one-para. summary and  18-page full report) updates her first three reports, focusing on events in Diyala.  Bill Roggio examines the shrinkage to five hostile tribes of those US intel terms the "sinister six."  Daveed Gartenstein-Ross warns of damage to our alliances if the US repeats its Vietnam retreat.  Roggio notes that with 4 of 5 "surge" brigades deployed (the final one due in June) violence is down 2/3 in Baghdad as intel tips go up, but US casualties, 100 KIA in April, are also up.  The Anbar Salvation Council is now fighting not only inside Anbar province on our side, but now has extended its assistance to other provinces.  Roggio reminds us that Gen. Petraeus says September is the earliest time to try to evaluate the results of the surge.  Oregon Republican Senator Gordon Smith defends  his recent switch on Iraq (against the President) by stating that Gen. Petraeus told him that he gives the surge no more than a 25 percent chance to succeed.  This is hard to believe.  Given how astute Petraeus is, he would be unlikely to quantify his assessment.  Ralph Peters chides us for lacking the stomach to win ugly, and for obsessing on our failings.

Max Boot says the surge needs at least a year, plus less noise from Washington.  He recommends several fixes: (1) a major expansion of the Iraqi Army; (2) more detention of criminals and terrorists; (3) giving realistic leeway to Iraqi troops, who cannot absorb Western norms of battlefield treatment overnight; (4) building a national IDs card database; (5) more aggressively pursue foreign fighters, who comprise a small fraction of insurgents but carry out 80 to 85 percent of the worst attacks, by using special ops for cross-border pursuit and raids.  All excellent ideas.  Boot has more details in his article.

September is also around the time Democrats plan to push for withdrawal.  Bob Tyrrell reminds Democrats that their push to depart Vietnam and abandon our South Vietnamese allies cost Democrats dearly, and may do so again re Iraq.  Fred Thompson, in a recent radio commentary, says of George Tenet's book that it makes points for the Administration, too, which (naturally) the mainstream media ignored: Iraq had a relationship with al-Qai'da, but one whose nature we didn't know; Iraq was pursuing nuclear weapons; al-Qai'da wishes to detonate nukes on US soil.

Last week marked the formal announcement that Tony Blair will depart 10 Downing Street come July.  Of Gordon Brown one hears that he is not anti-US like Edward Heath was, but surely he will not forge a close relationship with any American President comparable to the improbable Bush-Blair partnership.  David Brooks identifies the core of Blair's views: his passionate belief that the modern world enables forging a human community based upon global liberal values, a view that stands in stark contrast to the "clash of civilizations" school led by Professor Samuel Huntington.  Brooks notes that Blair calls the war a clash not of civilizations, but about civilization.

One thing is, however, already clear: Blair literally immolated himself on the pyre of the mess in Iraq.  That many Britons view him as Bush's "poodle" is truly shocking.  Blair has proven himself, beyond reasonable cavil, as a "conviction politician" re Iraq, and on his vision of a global human community.  The "poodle" view harbors within it the seeds of the impending dissolution of the "special relationship" that the US and UK have shared since 1940.

Russian Rice Crispy

Condoleezza Rice was anything but "with sweetness" (the meaning of her first name) when she braced Russia and Vladimir Putin over Russian misbehavior.  She reaffirmed strong US ties to Russia's neighbors, whom Mother Russia professes to fear, but whom history teaches have more to fear from Mother Russia than vice-versa.  Rice's crispy (yes, a rare LFTC pun) response came after Putin unloaded on America last week, comparing the US to Nazi Germany--indirectly.  Quoth Putin:

We do not have the right to forget the causes of any war, which must be sought in the mistakes and errors of peacetime.  Moreover, in our time, these threats are not diminishing.  They are only transforming, changing their appearance. In these new threats - as during the time of the Third Reich - are the same contempt for human life and the same claims of exceptionality and diktat in the world.

Nice stuff, coming from an ex-KGB agent.  AEI scholar Leon Aron warns that Putin's erosion of democratic forces may bring on a succession crisis in March 2008.  Although Russian oil now earns $500B annually, there are too many potential recipients of goodies to all be bought off.  Russia's army is a shambles, with most recruits either destitute or criminals.  Chechnya is pacified, but Dagestan and the North Caucasus in general are not.  Demographic trends are already undermining stability.  The worker-beneficiary ratio will soon be 1:1; at 25% of wages, Russia's pensions are the lowest in Europe.  Health care and education remain mired in Soviet-era stagnation.  Oil revenues fund 1/3 of Russia's budget; a price drop would create havoc.  The Kremlin is waiting as long as possible to designate a preferred successor, lest losers have more time to organize.  WSJ editor Bret Stephens details how Putin is trying to engineer the disbarment of Russia's leading human rights lawyer, who had for more than ten years represented clients before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, to which Russia is subject per its 1993 Constitution.

Rice has since stated that we have not returned to Cold War relations.  Not yet.  Rice--and her boss at 1600 Penn--had best keep in mind that selling out our staunch allies in the former Eastern Europe is bad policy.  So far, so good, as Rice stated yesterday in Moscow that the US will not give up European ally missile defense.  But 2008 looms.  A Democratic win would surely deep-six missile defense and resurrect Clintonesque appeasement as to Mother Russia (and China).

Can Oxy Contin Continue?

AEI scholar Dr. Sally Satel slams the tort bar for its own (legal, alas) form of drug abuse: another excessive settlement against a powerful, effective drug, Oxy Contin.  The drug's maker, Purdue Frederick, agreed last week to pay $635M to settle a lawsuit brought by the West Virginia state attorney-general, over charges of "misbranding"--legalese for the maker's failure to adequately warn of the dangers of abusing the drug, which is highly addictive.

Satel explains that nearly all those addicted to Oxy Contin are committed substance abusers.  Abuse by patients seeking relief of chronic pain are rare.  Oxy Contin, which reached the market in 1995, gives slow-release 12-hour pain relief.  I recently had first-hand experience with Oxy Contin.  Traveling around-the-world, I had a back spasm just as I was packing to leave Easter Island and board our jet for the 8-hour trip to Samoa.  I took Flexeril, a prescription back pain reliever that has always worked for me.  Although this spasm wasn't severe, Flexeril failed to help this time.

Upon reaching Samoa I had several more back spasms, presaging worse to come.  The trip physician, an emergency medicine specialist from Massachusetts General, gave me Oxy Contin.  He did tell me it was potentially highly addictive if taken to excess.  I took it for a couple of days, and my back rapidly improved and stabilized.  I was able to finish the trip.  Had my problem worsened, I might not have been able to continue, as serial long flights were coming up.

For too long our drug use policy has been driven by substance abusers, with the rest of us treated as if we were no different.  Putting a company out of business, which multiple verdicts could do, will make the honest majority the biggest losers.  People with no prior history of drug use should be able to obtain certification of their clean status, and obtain prescriptions on a more reasonable basis.

Index 5/15/07

3 posts: (1) Tax Treasure Hunt--The Home Front; (2) Arab Reality Video; US Un-Reality Video--Us v. Them; (3) IRAN: Nuclear High-Gear, Oh Dear!--Us v. Them.

Tax Treasure Hunt

A Wall Street Journal editorial shows how tax revenues are in a "surge" of their own, and the deficit is shrinking.  Democrats, alas, could not care less.

Arab Reality Video; US Un-Reality Video

New York Daily News columnist Michael Goodwin pinpoints the harbinger of persistence of Islamist terror: the saturation in Arab and Islamic media of stories, cartoon and videos promoting jihad, martyrdom and hatred of the West and Israel.  The latest creation is a Palestinian knock-off of Mickey Mouse, no less, that preaches jihad, etc.   See for yourself the Palestinian Mickey Mouse video at the website of Palestinian Media Watch.  In response to Western ire, Hamas pulled the video, which shows that resolute Western pressure can bear fruit.

Goodwin correctly concludes that there can be no peace with this poison still spreading, and that Israel should not be faulted to standing firm.  It all goes back to Golda Meir's formulation, when asked about eventual peace between Arab and Jew: it will happen only if and when the Arabs decide they love the children more than they hate the Jews.

Which is what makes the turn al-Hurra ("the free one") has taken under ex-CNN producer Larry Register all the more appalling.  A Wall Street Journal editorial explains that since Register took over last fall, terrorists and the Arab street have been getting abundant air time.  As the WSJ notes, US taxpayers need not fund a clone of al-Jazeera.  Giving our enemies free air time is not a sign of open-mindedness nor is it the airing of positive criticism; it is subsidizing those who wish to destroy our society.  Airing conflicting views within American society to show the virtue open US debate is a plus; airing terrorist video is not.  During the Cold War VOA and Radio Free Europe did not broadcast Kremlin agitprop.  The State Department's hapless Karen Hughes sits on the board of al-Hurra, but is apparently clueless, and a Foggy Bottom flack praised Register's performance.  More details of this latest fiasco are given by journalist Joel Mowbray.  Mowbray also shows, even more dismayingly, that Secretary of State Rice did not realize just how bad the stuff is.

IRAN: Nuclear High-Gear, Oh Dear!

An NY Times front-pager brings the cheery news that as the State Department prepares to negotiate with the Iranians, Iran's progress in enriching uranium seems to be much faster than had been thought.  According to IAEA chief inspector Mohammed el-Baradei: “We believe they pretty much have the knowledge about how to enrich.  From now on, it is simply a question of perfecting that knowledge. People will not like to hear it, but that’s a fact.”  The Times article notes that four years ago the same el-Baradei "clashed" with the Bush Administration when he denied that there was any evidence that Iran has resumed its nuclear enrichment program.

Iran now has 1,300 centrifuges running at high-speed, sufficient to enrich uranium for reactors, having solved technical problems that plagued their effort.  They already have another 300 ready to go, and are adding one cascade (164 centrifuges) per week.  A diplomatic source says that by June they will have the needed 3,000 to produce on bomb within a year.  They may be able to add another 5,000 centrifuges by year-end.  Meanwhile, the IAEA admits its ability to monitor "the scope and content" Iran's program has declined since Iran pulled out of its inspection arrangement with the IAEA in February 2006.

Yet premier foreign correspondent Arnaud de Borchgrave believes the US can cut a deal with Iran re nukes, Iraq and non-aggression.  It is hard to believe this.  If something sounds to good to be true, as to revolutionary and rogue nations, it usually is.  And A DeB adds this nugget: British and Russian experts believe that as early as this fall Iran will test either a plutonium-0device using North Korean technology or an enriched-uranium device using fuel bought on the black market, plus its own production.  If this guess is right, how will we negotiate Iran's nuke program away?  If Iran is months from having a nuke, there is zero chance that they will give it away, as once they have one they are immune from pre-emptive strike and will become the dominant player in the Mideast.  Nothing Iran could gain by negotiation comes close to equaling nuclear status in strategic value.

Index 5/14/07

3 posts: (1) Paris Blues--Class & Crass; (2) La France, L'Amerique--Weenie Watch; (3) Elsewhere: Scots, Israel & Turks--Weenie Watch.

Paris Blues

After a lengthy special series on global climate change, what better way to return to normal but by addressing an issue of micro-climate change, namely, that of Paris Hilton facing jail?  One suspects the Lafite Rothschild vintages she might be served in the stir are not the best vintages. Paris, facing 45 days in the clink beginning June 5, seems to realize her plight is real: She has asked her fans (yes, she has fans) online and Governor Terminator (presumably, off-line) to give her a get-out-of-jail-free card before she even gets in.  The New York Post's acerbic Andrea Peyser sums Paris up neatly:

She's got so many to blame for what she did, it's a wonder the judge ordered jail time for a dame who speaks English as if it's her second language, and believes every cop in Los Angeles wants to feel her up. Well, who hasn't?

Who hasn't?  Inmates at the county jail, including 400-pound not-so-ladylike types looking for a new girlfriend.  Paris is lucky--she likely will be housed in solitary and allowed to shower with no one else around.  Which makes sense: her fellow inmates do not quaff Lafite.

La France, L'Amerique

Victorious French President-Elect Nicholas Sarkozy, of Hungarian and Greek-Jewish descent, said upon his May 6 election: "France has given me everything, and now it is my turn to give back to France what France has given me."  Sarkozy not only won the popular vote 53%-47%, with an 85% turnout; he won the female vote 52%-48%.  He also did well with blue collar voters.

For America his win is a clearly vastly superior outcome to Socialist Segolene Royal winning.  Witness this campaign quote from the victor: France's friendship with the United States is an important part of its history. I stand by this friendship, I'm proud of it, and I have no intention of apologizing for feeling an affinity with the greatest democracy in the world.  Would Chirac or Segolene say this?  Jamais!  (trans. "Never!")

But Sarkozy, who takes power this week, is, warns astute columnist Jim Hoagland, more an admirer of America's domestic economic prowess than its foreign policy; significantly, though, Sarkozy is pro-Israel.  Hoagland further cautions that Sarkozy's party must do well in next month's parliamentary elections to give him a mandate for the economic reforms he wishes to institute.  An NRO editorial cautions that while France has a bloated public sector (52% of GDP--more than twice that in the US), the French are not in the economic plight of pre-Thatcher Britain or pre-Reagan America, and thus reform will be risky and hard to implement.  Forbes reports (print only, or by free online registration) that France's combined taxes are the highest on the planet.

Mark Steyn fears that the French electorate, like Germans in elected Angela Merkel in 2005, will not allow Sarkozy to implement needed reforms.  The Wall Street Journal's John Fund waxes less pessimistic, and notes that Sarkozy is regarded as an outsider by France's policy elite (which may partly explain his Israel stance), and that 70 percent of France's electorate perceives their country in decline.  Fund also notes that Sarkozy explicitly campaigned against those in France who hark back to the radical revolution of 1968, calling that event one that taught false lessons.  Walid Phares believes that French voters see Sarkozy as the best answer to Muslim radicalism surging in France; Phares also chronicles forty years of French appeasement of Arabs, which has failed miserably to quell Muslim anger in France.  Astute Anthony Daniels interprets the vote as one for change, as Sarkozy explicitly campaigned for exactly that.  Hudson Institute scholar Laurent Moraviec sees the end of Gaullist "exceptionalism" and the marginalization of fringe politicians like rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen.

The New York Sun reports that Sarkozy will target radical Islamists as well, having said during the campaign that "France will abandon women condemned to wearing the burqa."  A Wall Street Journal editorial is upbeat but warns that a new leader's "window" is often closed quickly.  NRO's Denis Boyles sees Sarkozy's campaign as a 2008 model for Republicans here: focus on ideas, ignore hostile media and run away from losers (Bush, in Boyles's view).  Author Anne Applebaum says that Sarkozy represents "new Europeans" whose physical mobility enables them to migrate to areas of greater economic opportunity, thus increasing the penalty imposed upon countries who stick to policies that foster economic stagnation.  In a Commentary Online seven-pager France expert Michel Garfunkel fears that the entrenched French bureaucratic elite, which Charles De Gaile did much to empower, will likely rally to defeat reform efforts.

Ralph Peters offers bracing quotes from Sarkozy's book, Testimony (recently translated into English).  The best nugget, vintage Reagan: France has been discouraging initiative and punishing success for the past 25 years. And the main consequence of preventing the most dynamic members of society from getting rich is to make everyone else poor.  But Sarkozy is no Reagan clone: he is staunchly protectionist.  French farmers can go back to sleep.

Sarkozy takes the helm for five years, France having shortened the seven-year term established by Charles De Gaulle upon founding the Fifth Republic in 1958, with the change taking effect after the 2002 election.

It seems to me that the big news is what did not happen: election of a staunchly anti-US candidate.  Sarkozy, simply by not being Segolene, will be a big plus for us.  France, in reality, can do little to help us much on the upside, but on the downside can be a major thorn.  (A French veto in the UN Security Council can hurt us more than a vote on our side, which still leaves three other permanent members of the SC who can veto a US proposal.)  Under Sarkozy--provided he can keep the career bureaucrats at the Quai D'Orsay in check--France will at least not be trying to undermine us at every opportunity.  We will get at least some help: Mideast maven Amir Taheri sees Sarkozy helping the US pressure Iran to stop its nuclear program, and pressing Syria over Lebanon.  Hillel Halkin recites the sorry French record re Israel that Sarkozy must confront.

One US Presidential prospect, Fred Thompson, proposes we cheer the result by drinking French wine.  And Woody Allen can go back to ordering French--not Freedom--Fries.  Sarkozy's minions, one suspects, will be astute enough not to hire Woody as a spokesman (nor the eponymous Paris Hilton, for that matter--do not ask Paris what an eponym is--especially the subsidiary definition offered online by Merriam-Webster).  In sum, La France under Sarkozy likely will help us less by doing things for us than by not doing things to us.

Elsewhere: Scots, Israel and Turks

Sarkozy's French win was the third momentous May moment, the Scottish Nationalists having won but 46 of 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament meaning, reports the Laos Angeles Times, that there is not a majority sufficient to effect the secession of Scotland from the United Kingdom.

And in Israel the Winograd Commission, created to assess Israeli government performance during the 2006 Lebanon War, released its partial report a fortnight ago.  Haaretz published this summary of its harshly critical interim findings.  Basically, staggering casualness, incompetence,, indecisiveness and general incapacity to deal with matters entrusted to people, civilian and military, in way over their heads, made for the fiasco that was Israel's failure to destroy Hezbollah last summer.  Leaders with a sense of honor would already have resigned.  The final report is due in July.  Depressingly, an Israeli defense journalist warns that the problems go deeper--much deeper--than the current hapless government, and that unless fixed Israel faces more botched wars.   Add this stunner: Jerusalem's current mayor predicts that Hamas may "capture Jerusalem through demography" within twelve years.  No wonder Palestinians refuse serious peace negotiations.  A new study shows that by 2020 Arabs will be 40 percent of Jerusalem's population.

Elsewhere near the Mideast, there is, author Claire Berlinski writes, a battle between Turkey's Islamic leaders, whom she regards as relatively moderate, and Turkey's secular leaders, whom she regards as anti-US and thus not a boon to us if they win.  The bottom line: Turkey will be a hard case for America to deal with, no matter how the upcoming elections go.  Muslim liberal activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali urges secular Turkish liberals to act to stop Islamism in Turkey, and recognize past mistakes--corruption, poor economic policies--in an effort to save Turkey for moderate liberal governance.  Good luck.