I have been a defender of the military commission system (though, as I've also argued, we can and should do better, namely a national security court). But as we've seen before, military judges make whopper mistakes too — recall for example the one who tried to dismiss the charges against the detainee Omar Khadr.
Calling the one today a whopper does not come close to doing it justice.
Naval Captain Keith Allred, the military judge in Salim Hamdan's case, today sentenced Osama bin Laden's former driver and confidant to 5 1/2 years — that's FIVE-AND-A-HALF years — in prison for the war crime of providing material support to the terror network with which we are still at war and which continues killing and trying to kill Americans. Worse, it appears Hamdan will get credit for time served, which means his sentence will be deemed over in a matter of months if not sooner.
It is the worst sentence I have ever heard of. It demonstrates an unseriousness about the war and the stakes involved. It is a deep blow to those fighting to defend the commissions and for a different system for dealing with terrorists. Why not send them to the civilian court system, critics will ask with great force. After all, the judges there have shown they take terrorism seriously — they have routinely sentenced lesser players than a personal aide to bin Laden (one who kept him alive and helped sustain al Qaeda) to 30 and more years.
I don't know what else to say about it. It's just a mind-boggling disgrace.
Mo'talefeh secretary Habibi says the Supreme Leader is "a great asset which should not be used on everyday matters," a reference to Ahmadinejad’s false statements.
Ahmadinejad deputy in executive affairs Ali Sa'id-Lou says Kayhan's attacks against the Iranian president are due Kayhan’s insufficient knowledge of events.
Kayhan editor Shariatmadari evaluates the political crisis of the past few days involving the Ahmadinejad’s misrepresentation of Khamenei’s words: "It is obvious that the viewpoint of the Supreme Leader of the Revolutions is the Fasl al-Khatab [final word] for us, and it is written in it that 'the negotiation which have taken place in this regard are not counter factual.' Naturally, he [the Supreme Leader] is the best judge, but the explanation of the Beit [house hold, reference to the Supreme Leader's office] also stresses that the exact words of the Supreme Leader were 'not opposed to'…”
Alef News Agency publishes its complete correspondence with Oxford University disclosing that interior minister Kordan is not an Oxford Ph.D.
A number of parliamentarians file a complaint against Ahmadinejad for forging the words of the Supreme Leader and deceiving the parliament in an attempt to persuade the parliament to give a vote of confidence to his ministerial nominees. The same group is so filing a complaint against interior minister Kordan for lying.
Khatami says his meeting with "my comrade" Nateq Nouri was not politically motivated and of a private nature.
Khatami also denies rumors on his attempts at organizing a large alliance ahead of the next presidential elections and claims not to know the meaning of a "national unity government."
Shahriyar Barbod, former executive manager of Miangozar bridge project of Lake Oroumiyeh, accuses a "Jewish company," "foreign conspiracies" and "sabotage" for a number of problems with his project.
Khamenei says salvation of the community of believers is only possible by reading the Quran and claims the enemy is "instigating discord among Muslims."
Former president Mohammad Khatami stresses the importance of a free press and praises the role of the Iran Press Association.
Diplomacy
According to Alef News "a French journal" has released news of U.S.-Iran meetings between an Iranian delegation headed by former foreign minister Kharazi and an American delegation.
Larijani complains the U.S. utilizes the international organizations to impose its will on the international society.
I found two aspects of the Journaleditorial odd. One was that it treated health care as the main reason not to pick Romney, but didn't mention Pawlenty's record on health care at all. Which is arguably to the left of Romney's. Pawlenty appointed a task force that recommended an individual mandate, he opposed Bush's veto of S-Chip, he wants to use the government's bargaining power to bring drug prices down, raised tobacco taxes, etc.
Second: "Independent Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut would be a splendid VP in our book, and is solid on foreign policy and taxes, but he'd probably alienate too many social conservatives." Solid on taxes? When did this happen? In his 2004 presidential race, he campaigned on overturning the dividend and cap-gains tax cuts and bringing the estate tax back to life. (Maybe he's flipped on it since then and the Journal's just ahead of me—it wouldn't be the first time it has been.)
Re: Obama, Abortion, and Catholics [Ramesh Ponnuru]
Peter, you might want to check out the exchange between Ed Kilgore and Ross Douthat on the question, Why are evangelicals so much more anti-abortion than Catholics? Douthat's theory is that it's a matter of religious intensity, which should be testable.
Fans of the movie The Great Escape should note the passing of Flight Lt. Eric "Digger" Dowling, one of the members of the team that put together the real-life escape from Stalag Luft III on March 24-25, 1944. Dowling was no fan of the movie, which was based on the book by fellow prisoner Paul Brickhill. Dowling thought the dramatization gave too much credit to the Americans who, while they played a role in the escape plan, were moved to another camp before the actual escape. But what strikes me is how much of what was shown in the film was true, particularly the inventiveness of the POWs in outwitting their captors. The US Air Force Academy has a very good website on the history of the Stalag. See also personal recollections of daily life in the camp by Quentin Richard Petersen which reveal a much grimier and difficult daily existence than that portrayed in the film. Sadly Steve McQueen's bid for freedom by motorcycle was pure Hollywood.
I don't know when I've felt so flattered. The Ohio blogger who calls himself Evil Sandmich has taken my little America First rant from a recent Radio Derb and put pictures to it. Beautifully done. Thanks, guy. I mean, THANKS!
[It's on YouTube too, of course. What isn't, nowadays?]
Maureen Dowd recently preened that Obama "didn’t even tell Harvard Law School that he was black on his application." To the extent that her own research led her to believe this, or she would know accurately, one should still wonder why in the world Barack Obama, the child of a white woman and African father, would check the affirmative action box? When he applied to law school, there was nothing in the circumstances of his birth or even his upbringing up to then that located him in the African-American experience.
Obama's recent evocation of some sort of reparations, the resurgence in talk about affirmative action, current ballot measures, etc. should remind us of how unworkable a system it has become. As a veteran of two decades on hiring committees in the CSU system, I can attest that the rules and regulations of affirmative action were Byzantine, and not always based on the presumption of a past American history of racist oppression.
Hispanic elites from Chile and Argentina often qualified, whether officially or not. Meanwhile, Mexican-Americans felt that foreigners with work visas were accenting their names and simply piling on, despite their prior privileged lives back home in Santiago or Buenos Aires. Despite Hispanic-sounding last names, no one knew what to with the Portuguese and the Basques; both groups were usually seen as more affluent than the so-called 'white' minority. A student called Joe Smith could be the son a Mexican illegal alien and still seem far less a minority than Jose Castillo, a fifth-generation Chilean alien who was schooled in the US and decided to stay on.
We had a variety of recent immigrants from the Caribbean as professors and students, almost all from affluent families. One can imagine the problems of others supposedly with 3/4, 1/2, 1/8 black or Hispanic ancestry. What qualifies as a minority, and who ascertains it in the post-Ward Churchill era? Many of our white students with parents from the Oklahoma diaspora rightly claimed American-Indian heritage, albeit in the 1/16th to 1/8th range. The Asian problem was even weirder — 3rd-generation affluent Japanese, no? But the Hmong immigrant of 10 years, yes? The recent Taiwanese arrival, no? More likely, there were de facto Asian quotas — given the ability of such minorities in many fields to outperform almost everyone else and thereby become "overrepresented" in the UC system.
Bumper-sticker identification was unfortunate. The half-Hispanic student with Wilson as his surname never could obtain the authenticity that his counterpart with a Hispanic father received. Accented and hyphenated names, and renaming, were common, in addition to occasional ethnic dress. By the 2004, I think any original justification that groups whose ancestors had suffered historical discrimination qualified for redress was dropped, and informally it became a spoils system based on faulty perceptions of race — sort of a counterpart to the legacy system of the Ivy League that helps the offspring of wealthy alumni (which oddly, or rather logically, became a 'they do it too' argument by affirmative action's desperate adherents).
The corollary argument that someone of African or Caribbean ancestry, without ancestral claim to America's purported racist past, deserves some sort of compensation in the here and now on the basis of present public racism and discrimination fails utterly. There is a variety of other "people of color" — Arabs or Punjabis for example — who may, in fact, be more readily identifiable in the public domain as non-white and yet qualify for no such exemptions. One could go on, but here we are again in another racial absurdity of suggesting that Obama at some point in his career nobly chose not to suggest he was deserving of affirmative action, when in fact there would be no logical or ethical reason why he should.
In short, the entire Affirmative Action industry, however well-intended its origins, has gone the way of the Soviet bureaucracy as a sort of arbitrary racial nomenklatura that benefits mostly elites — self-contradictory, hypocritical, illogical, and finally unworkable.
Espousing the green life... is increasingly being seen as a luxury by everyone.
Only a year ago, according to MORI, 15 per cent of those polled put the environment in their top three concerns. That figure has dropped by a third to 10 per cent this month. Now that people are fighting for their own survival rather than their grandchildren's, they put crime, the economy and rising prices at the top of their list.
According to Andrew Cooper, director of the research company, Populus: “There is a direct correlation between how people perceive the economy and the importance they place on the environment. When times are tough people resent paying more to salve their conscience.”
...When David Cameron became leader of the Conservative Party he said that green issues were at the top of his agenda. His slogan for the local elections last year was “Vote Blue, Go Green”. But in the past few months he has realised that voters have lost the appetite for their greens.
He has only given one environmental speech since Christmas. Once he used to talk about putting a £3,000 windmill on top of his house. Now the message is not about conserving the planet but preserving his bank balance. He wears catalogue clothes, grows his own vegetables and holidays barefoot in Britain because it is less extravagant, not because he is trying to reduce his global footprint.
In fact, when the Tory leader's bicycle was stolen a week ago, the message of the story was not how green he was for riding his bike, but how broken our society has become when a politician finds his bike nicked from under his nose.
Boris Johnson was the first to realise that the tolerance for green taxes may have peaked. When he became Mayor of London, he dropped plans to charge a £25 congestion fee on gas-guzzling cars.
The Tories have quietly been reviewing many of their green policies. A range of measures designed to penalise motoring and other polluting activities has been put on hold in case they alienate families struggling to pay their bills. A proposal to tax the highest emitting cars up to £500 more than the greenest vehicles has been quietly shelved, as has the plan to raise taxes on short-haul flights. Instead George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, has promised to cut tax on fuel when oil prices rise.
The New York Times has an article today fretting that Obama's views on abortion may divide Catholics. The piece is notable for a few reasons, but perhaps the most important is that it's one of the rare times that the mainstream media has referred to Obama's 2002 vote against the Induced Birth Infant Liability Act ("IBILA") while he was in the Illinois state legislature.
IBILA would've extended the same medical care to babies born after surviving an abortion attempt, as is enjoyed by all babies born alive. When a similar measure, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act ("BAIPA") was introduced in the U.S. senate not onesenator voted against it. Even NARAL didn't oppose it.
The Times dutifully reports Obama's claim that he would've voted for BAIPA had he been in the U.S. senate because BAIPA wouldn't have threatened Roe v. Wade. Obama supposedly questioned the constitutionality of IBILA, contending that conferring equal protection/personhood upon a "pre-viable fetus" would render the bill an unlawful anti-abortion measure.
Obama's rationale for voting against IBILA is questionable at best. What isn't questionable is that Obama, the constitutional law lecturer at U.of Chicago Law School, offered no amendments to cure IBILA's purported defect so that it would be just as constitutional as BAIPA, the bill for which he now claims he would have voted. Rather, after voting against IBILA, the bill was referred to a committee he chaired where he killed it by never bringing it up again for a vote. (It's also worth noting that while Obama voted "present" 100+ times in the Illinois state legislature, in this particular case he bestirred himself to vote "no".)
Political savants maintain that the candidate who raises the abortion issue hurts himself. I haven't seen data to confirm the point, but maybe Obama is banking on McCain not raising the issue. Clearly, Obama's supporters must recognize the issue as a toxic one, not just with Catholics, but with nearly everyone — for it goes beyond abortion. At what point after birth does Obama call a baby a person and not a fetus? One week? Six months? Will any reporter ask him?
Here's Karl Rove with some advice for John McCain. Some of it sensible, some of it not. In the 'not' category comes this:
Mr. McCain is the most private person to run for president since Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s. He needs to share (or allow others to share) more about him, especially his faith. The McCain and Obama campaigns are mirror opposites. Mr. McCain offers little biography, while Mr. Obama is nothing but.
To claim that John McCain offers "little biography" is extraordinary. To no small extent his political career has been based on his (remarkable) biography. As for the fact that Senator McCain doesn't want to "share" (ugh) more of his faith with the electorate, I can only say, thank heavens. A man of the old, and much missed, school, he appears to understand that faith is best treated as an essentially private matter. The airwaves are already overfilled with politicians' public protestations of piety, their dreams of building the Kingdom here on earth, and all the rest of it. McCain's reticence in this respect makes for a refreshing contrast and may even prove to be electorally advantageous. One messiah in this campaign is quite enough.
It was awesome. Referring to McCain as “white-haired dude” instead of using his name, saying he’s old enough to remember when “beer came in buckets”, putting up a picture of Yoda while she’s talking — why can’t McCain get her writers?
Note how she was careful to take one glancing shot at Obama, even though she was responding to a McCain ad. This was very well thought through. The scariest part of the whole thing is that her energy plan kind of made sense. It was certainly more coherent than anything put forward by either major campaign.
Mona, if the GOP is serious about doing what it can to support increasing US oil production generally (and I'm thinking primarily about extending offshore drilling), fighting over ANWR is a distraction (however dubious the arguments being made against drilling in that small corner of the reserve may be) from the main battle. "Pounding away until the truth is recognized" is all very well, and, doubtless, intellectually satisfying, but I'd prefer the oil.
There’s a lot of oil in a very small part of a very big wilderness that 99.9% of Americans will never visit. There are, however, some reasons why making the decision to go get it is not likely to reduce prices people pay at the pump this summer. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), it would take about 10 years to get much oil flowing. It’s also not likely to be enough oil to dramatically change supply/demand (it would represent something like 0.5 – 1% of total global production for several years). Though it should be noted that at the time of peak ANWR production, around 2027, this would be equal to something like 10% of U.S. crude production, which is nothing to sneeze at, and comparable to various realistic cases for predicted energy production in this time period from some much-hyped alternative energy sources.
There’s an argument that just by signaling that we’re going to drill, we’d drive the oil market lower. There’s might be something to that, but such a prediction is highly speculative, both because the traders that set oil prices are aware of the size of U.S. conventional reserves, and because the market psychology arguments cut both ways — e.g., “Look, the U.S is committing to long-term dependence, and therefore demand will stay high.”
On the other hand, a very safe prediction is that it will be worth a lot of money to dig that oil up and burn it. The EIA estimates that there are about 2.6 billion barrels of oil in ANWR that could be expected to be extracted between 2018 and 2030. Even using the EIA’s long-term forecast for oil price — which is much lower than today’s price per barrel — that much oil would be worth about $200 billion. As an added bonus, that is almost a dollar-for-dollar reduction of the U.S. trade deficit. In the end, this is the rational argument to drill. America is a very wealthy country, but not so wealthy that we can afford to give up $200 billion for naught.
Once again, as with cap-and-trade, McCain has thrown away a key part of the energy issue, which should be one of his strongest issues in this campaign. Public opinion is moving very rapidly in favor of drilling in ANWR, as you would expect given what’s happened to the price of gas over the past couple of years. According to Pew Research polling, just in the last 6 months there has been a 15-point swing in support. It is now a majority position. Imagine what could happen if a presidential candidate were actually arguing for it.
The future is bright, which is why if you catch it on C-SPAN, I kept my shades close by.
Sorry, I didn't have coffee this morning. Corn keeps me awake.
I was deeply impressed by some of the questions at the Young America's Foundation panel I was on this morning — one in particular from a Hillsdale gal who is concerned about tone when addressing the Left. She wants to be a Buckley conservative. Challenging the left, but with class and grace. When you have truth on your side, why be any other way. Smart kids, I tell you, with their eyes on the right models. Good luck ...
The WSJ is not a fan. I don't know (and don't think) he'll be the veep choice. I do think he would be a smart one to choose however. Regardless, though, I think on health-care in a special way, he has an opportunity to help us move forward. And that his plan had flaws should not keep him from some post-election constructive policy discussions. I look forward to them. I suspect his contribution to conservatism has only just begun.
I disagree with Andrew. We should not surrender to the snow job the left has promulgated about ANWR. Every time they show verdant mountains and gorgeous trees under the ANWR heading they are lying. The area in which it is proposed to drill is flat and pretty lifeless. Besides, it's the size of Dulles Airport, not the entire Artic National Wildlife Reserve. As Jonah so ably pointed out in this piece from 2001 (complete with pics). We should keep pounding away until the truth is recognized.
Memo to the New York Times: Why You're Hemorrhaging Subscibers [Andy McCarthy]
... because the editors are embarrassing even to other liberals. Note in the mail box from a NYC lawyer friend regarding my earlier post about the Times' Hamdan editorial:
I gotta say — while I just don't feel that I know enough about the procedural protections that the defendants did have in the trial to make a fair assessment about whether it comports with the process that I believe should be due in such a situation (which I do believe should tolerate something less than the full panoply afforded to civilian defendants) — I read the absurd Times editorial today and had the same thought as you. It was obviously in the can before the verdicts were announced and totally dishonest in light of the real outcome. I'm a liberal and they really make me sick sometimes.
Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has been ordered to jail for violating his bond. The Michigan press seems to barely be able to restrain their contempt, as noted by this lovely juxtaposition:
"I don't believe that there is a person that's ever been through this process that respects it more than I do," Kilpatrick said, referring to the legal proceedings stemming from the eight felonies ranging from conspiracy to perjury to misconduct in office to obstruction of justice filed against him in March.
Kwame's mother, Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, just barely squeaked though the Democratic primary on Tuesday. She's lucky this didn't happen to her son a few days sooner.
UPDATE: Greg P. over at the media blog drops a note to remind me that Kwame's a superdelegate and adds, "A few more arrests and Hillary will have all the votes she needs."
"Dog-cloner denies she was Mormon sex kidnapper" — but it's the quote in the side bar that really puts it over the top: "I loved Kirk so much I would have skied down Mount Everest in the nude with a carnation up my nose."
Nasty Attack Ad Hits Jewish Dem Congressman For Visiting "Our Churches"
This brutal new attack ad from House candidate Nikki Tinker, who is challenging liberal Tennessee Rep. Steven Cohen in tomorrow's Democratic primary, just might be the nastiest, most race-baiting (and Jew-baiting) ad of the entire cycle.
"While he's in our churches, clapping his hands and tapping his feet ... he's the only senator who thought our kids shouldn't be allowed to pray in school," the announcer says, referring to an old vote against school prayer from when Cohen was a state senator. And remember, this is coming from a Democrat.
Good on TPM for reporting this, but I could do without the breathless "this is coming from a Democrat." I suppose it's too much to ask that liberal bloggers will now discover that along with nasty campaign ads, voter fraud is a bipartisan phenomenon, and disproportionately Democratic at that.
I had a really wonderful time on the Hillsdale College Alaska cruise (If I'm allowed to say that around here). I am enormously impressed with what Larry Arnn and his team have done with that school. More on that later. Anyway, I've got a column deadline this morning but I should be able to hang out in here a bit more. Just catching up, I mentioned in here last week I was doing a piece on Obama as a postmodernist. In case you missed it, here it is. And since I'm already plugging, here's my small ode to Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Peter Rodman. Back in a bit.
TORONTO - Greyhound has scrapped an ad campaign that extolled the relaxing upside of bus travel after one of its passengers was accused of beheading and cannibalizing another traveler. The ad's tag line was "There's a reason you've never heard of 'bus rage.'"
Naturally, I would never suggest that the New York Times stoops to a predetermined editorial narrative with which it proceeds, and toward which it slants news coverage, without a care in the world about what facts actually happen. But today's "Guilty as Ordered" rant about the Hamdan military commission trial has to take the cake. The first paragraph is so shamefully dishonest and misrepresentative of reality as to defy one's necessarily low expectations of the Gray Lady:
Now that was a real nail-biter. The court designed by the White House and its Congressional enablers to guarantee convictions of high-profile detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — using evidence obtained by torture and secret evidence as desired — has held its first trial. It produced ... a guilty verdict.
Of course, the trial also produced a not-guilty verdict. Was that "as ordered" too? If the system was "designed ... to guarantee convictions" how did that happen?
As our take at NRO this morning points out, the trial appears to have been exceedingly fair. Not only was there no "evidence obtained by torture" etc., there was actually suppression of interrogation proof derived from coercive questioning that did not come close to torture. There were also jury instructions that were very favorable to the defendant, and the introduction of exculpatory evidence. In combination, that probably led to that inconvenient acquittal the Times would prefer not to talk about.
The tiresome Times bombast, altogether emblematic of what passes for discourse on the Left regarding the serious questions about how combatants should be tried, underscores the best result of the Hamdan commission trial. As we argue today:
Such caterwauling, however, will no longer fill a void in the public mind. We now have a concrete record of a completed trial that seems to have been scrupulously deferential to Hamdan’s right to a fair proceeding.
And if it wasn’t, we’ll know that soon enough, too. In drafting and enacting the 2006 Military Commissions Act under which this trial was conducted, the Bush administration and Congress provided for multiple levels of appeal, first in the military system, then in the civilian federal courts — the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and, ultimately, the Supreme Court. In these tribunals, we will no longer be talking hypotheticals and hyperbole. We’ll be talking about an actual case — the things military justice did do, not scurrilous predictions of what it might do.
The plan to have Obama speak before a crowd of perhaps as many as 70,000 people at the Democratic convention will only reinforce the McCain celebrity ads as well as remind of the airy excess of the Berlin speech (although this time he'll be speaking to actual voters). Not good — especially in light of today's polls showing voters suffering from Obama fatigue.
Consequently, expect Obama's speech to be very heavy on humility to counteract the ego/arrogance storyline of the last few weeks. In addition, Obama will try to recapture the aura of racial transcendence that began evaporating with the appearance of Rev. Wright and now is almost completely gone due to the "dollar bill" comments. No doubt patriotism also will be a dominant theme.
The problem for Obama is that each of these themes lends itself to the soaring rhetoric for which the candidate is famous and for which — as opposed to the heady early days of the primaries when the rhetoric sounded fresh and inspiring — he is being parodied with increasing gusto.
The good news for Obama is that by all accounts, he remains, Czar of the Teleprompter.
K Lo: I've become a fan of soccer through my kids, especially my daughter. Last year, during the Women's World Cup, she got up two or three time at 5 am or so to watch the U.S. team play, before heading off to a day in first grade. I'm sure the TV ratings were abyssmally low. But the fans can be intense.
Rich, although I've got no particular brief for the ANWR, I think it would be a political mistake for McCain to reverse himself over the fate of that particular piece of swamp. Like it or not, it has established some kind of status as an environmentalist icon. As such it's a shrine of the new civic religion, and fighting for the right to "desecrate" it will only give ammunition to those who argue (wrongly) that boosting the US drilling program is inevitably an environmental bad. Winning a battle is often a matter of choosing the right battlefield — and the ANWR is not that battlefield.
I’ve never quite understood your soccer bashing, but for the record, there are plenty of us who are up watching the game at this time of day. I woke up at 4:00 am to watch it, and it’s not like anyone gets up to watch MSNBC at 4 for any other reason. And plus, it’s the United States and I like to actually support my country.
After posting my Samarra piece on NRO yesterday, I came across two interesting articles while waiting for transport out of Baghdad. Both address the current status of Samarra:
If Samarra is coming around, anywhere in Iraq can come around. Still waiting to see first-hand, but these are good signs. Alas, judgment remains reserved.
Also: I’m leaving now to meet Asaad Ali Yasseen’s son at the Al Rasheed hotel now in Baghdad. Should provide an update on the piece I wrote yesterday.
The Local N.C. Press on the Edwards Affair [Byron York]
The Charlotte Observer takes up the John Edwards story, reporting that Edwards needs to "publicly address" the "love child" matter if he is to have a prominent role in the Democratic convention:
"He absolutely does have to (resolve it). If it's not true, he has to issue a stronger denial," said Gary Pearce, the Democratic strategist who ran Edwards' 1998 Senate race. "It's a very damaging thing. ... The big media has tried to be responsible and handle this with kid gloves, but it's clearly getting ready to bust out. If it's not true, he's got to stand up and say, 'This is not true. That is not my child and I'm going to take legal action against the people who are spreading these lies.' It's not enough to say, 'That's tabloid trash.'"
The problem, the paper says, is that Edwards' disinclination to answer questions about the matter has "allowed doubts to linger and political bloggers to speculate."
Two weeks ago, after the National Enquirer ran the story about the hotel liaison, he dismissed a reporter's question in Houston and used the "tabloid trash" line.
Edwards brushed off a Charlotte Observer reporter in Washington last week: "Can't do it now, I'm sorry."
His designated staffer for press contacts has not responded to e-mail requests for an interview.
No one answered a reporter who rang a buzzer at the gate of Edwards' Orange County home on Wednesday. Friends and former staffers refuse to comment now, though they helped Edwards last fall by dismissing the Enquirer story of a sexual relationship between Edwards and a campaign videographer when it initially broke.
"Sorry cannot help you on this one," wrote Jennifer Palmieri, a former top Edwards aide, in an e-mail.
This Washington Post editorial is yet more evidence McCain should keep hammering Obama on the energy issue:
Mr. Obama wants a surtax on net oil company profits above a "reasonable" level. The tax would be set high enough to raise $65 billion over the next five years, and the revenue would fund a one-shot tax rebate that Mr. Obama would like to give to families and individuals this year.
Making Exxon surrender money that is now falling into its lap would not necessarily affect its longer-term plans or incentives. Indeed, some of Big Oil's "windfall" already will go to the government: The more profit the companies earn, the more corporate income tax they pay. But to add a five-year tax increase on top of that to pay for a one-year gift to voters would, indeed, increase the cost of doing business. That cost would be passed along in forgone investment in new production, lower dividends for pension funds and other shareholders, and higher prices at the pump — thus socking it to the consumers whom the plan is supposed to help. If oil prices fall, there might be no windfall profits to tax. Then the Obama rebate would have to be paid for through spending cuts, taxes on something else or borrowing.
When his presumptive Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), proposed a gas tax holiday as a way to reduce the high cost of driving, Mr. Obama showed political courage and intellectual honesty by refusing to sign on to that obvious gimmick. "It's an idea to get them through an election," Mr. Obama said. Now he has two such gimmicks of his own.
Update On Canadian "Human Rights" Tribunals [Mark Hemingway]
Charges have been dropped against Ezra Levant, publisher of Canadian conservative magazine The Western Standard, for publishing the controversial Danish cartoons a few years back. While this is good news, writing in the National Post today Levant is still indignant over the whole affair and the particularly offended by the rationale given by the Human Rights Tribunal for acquitting him:
In his report, Gundara presents as “fact” his personal opinion of the Muhammad cartoons. He says they’re “stereotypical, negative and offensive.” That’s one viewpoint. Others have a different view. Why should anyone care about Gundara’s personal opinion? Do I need permission from him — or anyone other than my conscience — before I publish things in the future? Is this column okay by him?
Gundara forgave me and the Western Standard our sins because, according to him, the offensiveness of the cartoons was “muted by the context of the accompanying article” and we ran letters both for and against the cartoons in our subsequent issue. He also acquitted us because “the cartoons were not simply stuck in the middle of the magazine with no purpose or related story.”
Let me translate: You’d better be “reasonable” in how you use your freedoms, or you won’t be allowed to keep them. You’d better not run political cartoons “simply stuck in the middle” of a magazine. You’d better have a “purpose” for being “negative” that is approved by bureaucrat, when he finally gets around to it three years later.
Of course, he's got a darn good reason to still be upset — the episode cost him $100,000 in legal fees of which he's still $10,000 in the hole. (If you're so inclined, you can go to Levant's website and make a contribution to help retire his legal bills.) And every Canadian should be outraged that the government spent half a million in taxpayer dollars to stage a trial to undermine the freedoms of all Canadians.
So Does This Mean There Will Be A Roll Call Vote? [Byron York]
Amid reports that the Clinton forces are prepared to make life difficult for Obama at the Democratic convention, the Obama and Clinton press offices just released this joint statement:
We are working together to make sure the fall campaign and the convention are a success. At the Democratic Convention, we will ensure that the voices of everyone who participated in this historic process are respected and our party will be fully unified heading into the November election.
So ... Should Colombia Give the Hostages Back to the Terrorists? [Andy McCarthy]
The International Committee of the Red Cross is in a snit over Colombia's use of its emblem during the brilliant rescue operation that freed Ingrid Betancourt and other hostages from the FARC terrorist group. The AP reports from Geneva:
The International Red Cross said Wednesday that Colombia broke the Geneva Conventions by deliberately using its humanitarian emblem during the covert military mission that freed Ingrid Betancourt and other hostages.... "It seems to be a deliberate improper use of the emblem," said Anna Schaaf, an ICRC spokesman. She said this was a violation of international law.
Use of the Red Cross symbol in a military operation violates the first Geneva Convention because it could damage the relief group's neutrality in conflicts, endangering medical personnel on the battlefield who are using the red cross for protection.
In the July 2 rescue, a team of Colombian military intelligence agents posing as members of a fake international humanitarian group airlifted the hostages safety, including Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate, and three U.S. military contractors....
[Ms. Schaaf] said it is now up to the Colombian government to take action against those responsible for misusing the symbol.
Here's hoping President Uribe gives them a medal. This is just another effort to validate terrorists whose every operation violates the customs of civilized warfare. FARC is a terrorist organization, not a nation-state waging a legitimate war. If they were going to comply with the Geneva Conventions and immunize medical personnel from their operations, they wouldn't do things like take hostages and hold them for years. The ICRC doesn't have much to say when, for example, Palestinian terrorists use its resources as cover to transport terrorists and explosives (see this 2004 WND report from Michelle Malkin). Why squawk about this one?
James Taranto (deftly invoking Alberto Gonzales's much maligned but entirely fair description of the Geneva Conventions) puts it well in today's Best of the Web: "Maybe we're dense, but it seems to us that rescuing civilian hostages from a terrorist group is a higher humanitarian priority than preventing unauthorized use of a trademark. The way the Red Cross interprets them, the Geneva Conventions seem almost quaint."
The Left and Plans for "Nuremberg-Style" Tribunals for Bush Administration Officials [Byron York]
One thing that hasn't received much attention in conservative and Republicans circles is the ongoing conversation on the left about the possibility of Nuremberg-style war-crimes trials for members of the Bush administration should a Democratic president take office. I'm not exaggerating or introducing the Nazi analogy myself; they actually use the phrase "Nuremberg-style" when they discuss "war-crimes tribunals." And they are quite serious (although the more moderate of them prefer a "truth commission.")
At the Netroots Nation gathering in Austin, Texas last month — that is the successor to YearlyKos — Dahlia Lithwick, of the Washington-Post-owned website Slate, did an interview with the Talking Points Memo site in which she described a panel discussion she had just taken part in on what is known as the "first 100 days of accountability." Among Lithwick's observations:
We're already falling into this trap of either positing Nuremberg-style war crimes tribunals, or nothing, immunizing everyone from John Yoo up and down…but everybody says there's a lot of gray area in between that, and that accountability doesn't necessarily mean Nuremberg, it doesn't necessarily mean nothing, it means possibly a truth commission, possibly appointing a special prosecutor to look at it…
Lithwick recommended a massive retrospective investigation of the Bush administration, going through every piece of paper, before moving forward:
Certainly long before we make a decision to do what Stuart Taylor suggested this week, which was immunize everybody in advance, or alternatively make a decision to trot them out before a war crimes tribunal before the whole world, we should really find out what happened…
But Lithwick recognized that there are those who argue such an action might be divisive:
We talked a lot about this notion that it's bad for America, that it will rip America apart if we have hearings or we have criminal trials or if we have war crimes tribunals. And I think it's really worse for America if we don't…
I think the thing to emphasize here is that this is a serious conversation going on among people who might have influential voices or play influential roles in an Obama administration. Many of them want to put John Yoo — a special favorite of theirs — on trial, whether before a Nuremberg-style tribunal, a criminal court, or a truth commission with as-yet unspecified powers. And, of course, they wouldn't stop with Yoo; if they had their way, they would likely have a long list of former Bush administration officials to put in the dock. They are serious.
Drilling is, of course, the best domestic issue Republicans and McCain have going for them. Can you imagine what the debate would look like if McCain hadn't changed his position on off-shore drilling a few weeks ago? Now, with the Democrats and Obama beginning to buckle, it's no time to let up on the pressure, as we argue here. McCain probably needs to go farther and support drilling in ANWR. It will augment his "all of the above" position; it will prompt howls from the left and environmentalists—which is a good thing given how this debate is shaping up; and it will keep him in a place on the issue where Obama can't go, or can go only with great difficulty. How can McCain make this change? That's a tougher question. He's going to have to live down the "Grand Canyon" nonsense, but maybe he can find a way to get some cover (arguing for drilling on the one hand, but expanding the size of ANWR on the other?). Or maybe he can just go the straight-talk route, "My friends, I've looked at this more closely in light of $4-a-gallon gas, and I realize I was wrong. But I will swallow my pride and gladly admit error if it means helping lift the burden of high energy costs on American consumers." Or something like that.
[Compiled by Ali Alfoneh; (E) signifies English link]
Politics
Hosseini receives a vote of confidence in the parliament as Minister of Economy of Fnance, Behbahani receives vote of confidence as Minister of Roads and Transportation and Kordan receives a vote of confidence as Interior Minister.
Ahmadinejad defends the three ministers he presented to the parliament: "The three dear ones who have been presented to you are three devout people loyal towards the Revolution [and have] a long record of serving the Revolution. What resemblance is there between Mr. Behbahani with the ministers of [the time of] the revolt against God [the Shah’s era?]… The honorable Hosseini is the result of the Revolution, and has therefore been appointed. And the honorable Kordan has sacrificed thirty years of his life serving the Revolution in very important responsibilities."
"Yesterday, my dear brother Dr. Ahmadinejad, the honorable president for whom I have great respect, made a reference to a sentence allegedly said by the Supreme Leader of the Revolution regarding cabinet ministers. This author has exact knowledge of the affair, and I know and I do not doubt the least that unfortunately this reference is false and unreal and is contrary to the opinion of the Supreme Leader of the Revolution. The difference is close to negation. If Mr. Ahmadinejad excuses me, it must be said that in his speech yesterday, the real opinion of the Lord [Khamenei] was forged to leave the impression that the Supreme Leader of the Revolution not only totally agrees with the minister suggested by Mr. Ahmadinejad, but has even encouraged members of the parliament to give them a vote of confidence!
It is no surprise that the honorable members of the parliament, who consider themselves students of the Supreme Leader and obey him regardless of their opinion, have given a vote of confidence to the ministers. There are two exceptions. Those who were aware of the true words of the Lord and second, those parliamentarians who are aware of the general opinion and deeds of the Supreme Leader of the Revolution and naturally, but also wisely, have deemed the reference false."
The Supreme Leader's Office issues a public statement stressing that the Supreme Leader has not "objected" to the ministers appointed by president Ahmadinejad.
Tehran parliamentarian Ali-Reza Zakani says a number of his colleagues had sworn to God that they interpreted the Iranian president's words in such a way that the Supreme Leader has ordered the parliamentarians to give a vote of confidence to the Iranian president's three candidates for cabinet portfolios.
Following Ahmadinejad’s claim that pamphlets have been distributed among parliamentarians as a psychological warfare scheme against his government and the three ministers he has presented to the parliament, 200 parliamentarians sign a declaration that they have not received such pamphlet!
Tehran parliamentarian Elias Naderan says Ahmadinejad and his supporters lied in yesterday's debate on vote of confidence for Interior Minister Kordan. In the face of several accusations against Kordan, the president and his supporters claimed the Intelligence Ministry had rejected all the accusations, but Naderan has contacted the Intelligence Ministry, which claims it has never received an inquiry regarding the qualification of the interior minister Kordan.
Alef News Agency publishes correspondence with the Student Administration Section at University of Oxford, in which the manager of the section Jeremy Drew writes that newly appointed minister of interior Ali Kordan "has not been awarded an Honorary Degree from this University," and that Kordan, contrary to his claims, has not received a doctoral degree from Oxford.
In a press statement, Association of Independents condemns appointment of Ali Kordan as minister of interior and criticize the process leading to a vote of confidence in the parliament.
Presidential advisor for executive affairs Sa'id-Lour says some elements, especially the "mafia of gold and might" try their best to spread hopelessness among the people and wage psychological warfare against the government.
Religion, Culture, and Society
Ali Rabi'i, social Affairs advisor to the government, says immorality is more dangerous to the Iranian society than military threats.
Economy
Rafsanjani urges the Ahmadinejad government to ease the "shock" resulting from its announced policy to transform subsidies into direct cash transfer to Iranian citizens.
Repeat: Obama Did Not Grow Up In Kansas [Byron York]
A reader points out this passage in the new Pew Research "Obama Fatigue" report:
When asked about specific commercials, those tested for each candidate registered about similar recall levels - 41% of Pew's respondents said they have seen McCain's commercial that compares Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. Almost the same number - (43%) report seeing Barack Obama's commercial where he talks about his background growing up in Kansas.
As mentioned here yesterday, the Kansas part just didn't happen.
Okay, I have definitive word on the David Letterman Obama/Edwards Top 10 list from the definitive Brent Baker of the Media Research Center:
As to how you got e-mails saying they saw the list on the show: No, they saw the YouTube video. We have the show on DVR, and the list DID NOT air. But the "Late Show" site had video of it up for about 48 hours.
So to recap: The Top 10 list was part of the program Letterman taped on July 29. It was cut from the program that aired on CBS — for time reasons, according to a spokeswoman. But the list, in text and video form, was posted on the "Late Show" website for a good while, from which people posted it on YouTube. It was taken from the "Late Show" website, according to the spokeswoman, when the CBS web types got word that it did not actually air. So it appears CBS did not axe the list for any political reasons.
Despite his highly touted tour of Europe, the Middle East and Afghanistan last month, Obama may be in something of a late summer slump. The poll shows that voters have increased their faith in McCain's ability to manage the Iraq war, favoring him over Obama by a margin of 51%-36%, a five point jump since June. And voters boosted their belief that McCain would do a better job in managing the war on terror than they did in June, favoring the Arizona Senator over his colleague from Illinois by a 56%-29% margin, up from 53%-33% in June.
This shows that the success of the surge is probably helping McCain, which makes sense: 1) It vindicates his judgment; 2) the better conditions are, the more likely it is that we can keep drawing down responsibly, thus removing the sting of the "100 years in Iraq" charge.
We've heard that the Washington Post's Dana Milbank left Keith Olbermann's program in a cloud of ill feelings over a Post column in which Milbank was insufficiently reverential toward Barack Obama. Now, via Michael Calderone of The Politico, we learn that troubles between Milbank and Olbermann actually began a few weeks earlier when Milbank ventured off the Olbermann reservation and said something insufficiently negative about top McCain adviser Charlie Black. From Calderone:
During the first week of July, Milbank spoke to [Olbermann] producer Katy Karp about why he had not been on the show for a couple of weeks. At that point, Milbank was told that there was an issue among staff with something positive he said the previous month about Charlie Black, a McCain senior adviser.
And what was that? A few days before, Milbank had appeared on the program to discuss Black's statement that a terrorist attack would help the fortunes of the McCain campaign. In the course of that, Milbank said:
The irony here is that Charlie Black is a very soft-spoken, well-liked figure, and this does seem rather out of character for him to sound off in this way.
That, apparently, was simply going too far in the Keith Olbermann community. Calderone writes that an MSNBC spokesman confirmed that Olbermann's producer did speak to Milbank about the Black comment, but the spokesman told Calderone the producer was "only joking." Whatever the case, Milbank was gone a few weeks later.
Now Bobby Jindal, see, you're heading right back into ectomorph territory there. If he's going to be our keynoter, I think Bobby should work on his sternocleidomastoids. Two ectomorphs in public life is one more than the American public will bear.
It's getting loony, but then who is to say that the Leaning Tower of Pisa might not really be the Victory Column?
What was stunning about the NY Times' Bob Herbert's charge that the McCain campaign, in its satire on Obama's messianic sense of self, had deliberately inserted clips of the phallic Leaning Tower of Pisa and Washington Monument to drive home a racist trope about black men and white women was not just his embarrassing ignorance of architecture, or his infantile pop-Freudianism, or even his preemptory efforts to tie all criticism of Obama to racism and thereby stifle dissent. It was the sheer arrogance in the manner in which he persisted in his false points: "An image right there... of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and ... the Washington Monument.... You tell me why those two phallic symbols are placed there...".
If one listens to the clip, he asks rhetorical questions, and then in condescending fashion chides his bewildered panelists about their inability to fathom his own pseudo-charges: "You remember that! Alright!...Look at the beginning of that ad again! You tell me!...Pow! ...I really wish someone would answer the question!...Run the ad again and take a look at it!"
There is never any sense of humility or self-doubt that he might just not know anything about the Victory Column or campaign ads. Instead, there is a very strong sense that all he has to do is evoke the charge of racism and, presto, all facts, details, and truth thereby simply are to disappear and skeptics are to cower.
So here we are this summer: a messianic candidate, rebuked in his efforts to use the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign backdrop, then settles for the garish Victory Column, the 19th-century monument to Prussian militarism and conquest over its neighbors, and thereby provides fodder for his supporters to allege that when others use clips of his silly stagecraft they are really inserting phallic symbols in racist fashion. Orwell couldn't have thought all this up.
There are a few questions I get asked all the time. What's it like working at National Review? What was Bill Buckley really like? What did you think of the latest Battlestar Galactica? How did you write that book while keeping your girlish figure? Is it really true that Ramesh was cut at the last minute from the starring role in Lambada: The Forbidden Dance? What is the annual rainfall in Western Oklahoma?
But there are few questions I'm asked more than, "When are you going to do another one of those conservative comedy nights like you (and Mark Steyn and Rob Long) did in New Hampshire or the Conservative Summit?"
Well, to that one I have an answer: In a couple weeks!
Alas, Mark Steyn couldn't make this one. At first, my reaction was "Well, that's that. We can't do it without Steyn." Then, I found out that Christopher Buckley would sub-in for him. My reaction was sort of like that of Hugo Drax in Moonraker when he's talking on the phone with the personal assassin employment agency inquiring about a new henchman. He describes his needs with much urgency, but then the person on the other side of the line says he can deliver Jaws. "Oh, you can get him?" Drax replies, "Yes, well, that will be more than satisfactory."
Or something like that.
Anyway, me, Buckley and Long will be at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, offering some much needed counter-programming to the Democratic Convention down the road. The drinks will be flowing. And hopefully a good time will be had by all. I should note — with some pride — that at the New Hampshire event, the laughter from our room was so loud that Bill Clinton, speaking at a rally next door for the woman he happens to be married to, had to wait a minute for the noise to die down before he could resume talking. That was pretty cool.
Anyway, I do hope Cornerites will be there. Also, anyone in Colorado who's been waiting for a book signing out there, can seize the opportunity for that as well. All the information is right here.
