As always, Andy McCarthy hits the ball out of the park with his post on the “disclosures” ordered by a British court about the CIA’s treatment of al-Qaeda terrorist Binyam Mohammed. This has been a non-story in the United States, but it is front-page news in the U.K. These classified paragraphs were supposed to show incontrovertible evidence that the CIA brutally tortured Binyam Mohammed. In fact, they show no such thing.

There seems to be a pattern here, where the Left hypes some top-secret document that will finally prove their case, once and for all, that the CIA committed egregious abuses. The anticipation builds, the press hypes the story, there are leaks about what the document supposedly says, but when the document finally comes out . . . it completely deflates their case. This was what happened with the CIA Inspector General’s report, which was supposed to prove a) a pattern of systemic CIA abuse and b) that the CIA program did not work. Instead, it proved the opposite. Now history repeats itself with these disclosures from the U.K. (Here are the graphs from the U.K. Foreign Office. Judge for yourselves.)

For the record, let’s review who Binyam Mohammed really is. He is painted in the British press as a poor victim, but as I detail in Courting Disaster, he is in fact a committed terrorist who was deployed on a plot to kill hundreds, possibly thousands, of innocent people here in the United States.#more#

Binyam Mohammed was Jose Padilla’s partner in a KSM plot to blow up apartment buildings in a major American city using natural gas. He and Padilla met with KSM in Pakistan after the 9/11 attacks to discuss the plot and receive instructions from al-Qaeda’s operational commander. They were trained in how to seal an apartment to trap the natural gas and to prepare an explosion using that gas that would destroy the building. KSM specifically instructed them to ensure that the explosives went off at a point high enough to prevent the people trapped in the floors above from escaping out the windows. KSM’s right-hand man, Ammar al-Baluchi, gave them cash and travel documents. And the night before their departure from Pakistan to carry out the mission, KSM, Ammar, and Ramzi Bin al-Shibh hosted a farewell dinner for the two terrorists -- a send-off to America from the men responsible for the destruction of Sept. 11, 2001.

Both men were subsequently captured. But instead of prosecuting Binyam Mohammed -- either by military commission or in federal court -- the Obama administration released him to the U.K., where he has become a cause célèbre of the Left.

Given what he planned to do, and the intelligence he possessed, the techniques detailed in these paragraphs are quite mild. Remember that these techniques were employed by the CIA in an escalating fashion, beginning with the least coercive first and culminating in waterboarding. Based on what the U.K. released, Mohammed clearly didn’t get very far. He basically gave in with very limited EITs -- as most detainees did.

This is a man who should be in a prison cell in Guantanamo today. Thanks to the Obama administration, he’s a British celebrity.

Why won't the Justice Department's ombudsman -- inspector general Glenn A. Fine -- investigate whether political interference prompted the Justice Department to drop or reduce voter-intimidation charges against the New Black Panther Party? Because he can't:

A Feb. 2 letter from Glenn A. Fine, inspector general for the Justice Department, to Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican, ought to give pause to lawmakers of any party. In effect, the letter says there is no independent authority that can investigate any decision by the department to stonewall congressional inquiries. If the department refuses to answer congressional questions by asserting legal privileges that have never been recognized in U.S. history, the IG is powerless to assess allegations of certain sorts of departmental misconduct.

. . . This means nearly a dozen separate requests from Mr. Wolf, Rep. Lamar Smith, Texas Republican, and other legislators for Black Panther-related information can be stonewalled by the Justice Department, as can inquiries and even subpoenas from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In short, the department is saying that it can ignore Congress with impunity.

Fine wrote in his letter that "unlike all other OIGs which have unlimited jurisdiction to investigate all allegations of waste, fraud or abuse within their agencies, the Department of Justice OIG does not. . . .For several years, I have expressed my position that Congress should change this jurisdiction."

The four-page letter is here.

"To do or not to do?" depends on the show. I'm pretty sure that Keith Olbermann would make you worst person in the universe if your final act was to appear on Red Eye.

expects to stay busy over the next days.

This is wonderful, wonderful news.

Radio Derb listeners and readers of WAD are all familiar with that Noël Coward classic "There Are Bad Times Just Around the Corner."

Do yourself a favor. Block out 6m45s of your morning and listen to this updating of the song, performed by Andrea Axelrod and Alan Siegal. Simply brilliant! Andrea obviously spent her formative years watching Ethel Merman movies. It was time well spent, Andrea.

Jonah, here's some advice -- i.e., a "special weather statement" from the National Weather Service -- for your ride to Fox:

IF YOU GET STRANDED IN YOUR VEHICLE...DO NOT LEAVE YOUR CAR TO TRY TO WALK FOR ASSISTANCE...YOU CAN QUICKLY BECOME DISORIENTED IN WIND DRIVEN SNOW AND COLD. THIS STORM WILL SUBSIDE EARLY THIS EVENING...SO WAIT IN YOUR CAR FOR EMERGENCY HELP TO ARRIVE. PERIODICALLY RUN YOUR ENGINE FOR ABOUT 10 MINUTES EACH HOUR FOR HEAT. ENSURE YOUR EXHAUST PIPE IS CLEARED OF SNOW AND ICE. CRACK YOUR WINDOWS TO AVOID CARBON MONOXIDE POISONING. TIE A COLORED CLOTH TO YOUR CARS ANTENNA TO BE VISIBLE TO RESCUERS. FROM TIME-TO-TIME...MOVE YOUR ARMS...LEGS...FINGERS...AND TOES TO KEEP BLOOD CIRCULATING.

Maybe Republicans should encourage Republican congressmen in competitive districts who are thinking about stepping down soon to do so this year. Odds are that 2010 will end up being a better year for Republican congressional candidates than 2012 or 2014.

My two cents: Thomas Sowell remains the most prolific, insightful, and consequential public intellectual in America and Victor Davis Hanson will assume the title should Sowell ever retire.

Speaking of Scott Brown . . . could the next inspirational race that confirms that nothing is inevitable in politics and no seat is safe be in Rhode Island?

John Loughlin, a former liet. col. in the Army Reserve, is hoping to beat Patrick Kennedy this November. He's armed with center-right issues and Scott Brown's strategists. Punditologist Larry Sabato tells me he's watching this uber-Democratic state. I talk to Loughlin here today.

A fine piece by Michelle Malkin this morning on the administration's bogus "jobs program."

Jobs programs are at least something our Community Organizer-in-Chief knows about at first hand. That's the work Obama was doing in Chicago twenty years ago. Steve Sailer tells the whole story in Chapter 7 of his book-length review of Obama's autobiography. Steve in turn quotes from Tom Wolfe's 1970 classic Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers:

Brothers from down the hall like Dudley got down to the heart of the poverty program very rapidly. It took them no time at all to see that the poverty program's big projects, like manpower training, in which you would get some job counseling and some training so you would be able to apply for a job in the bank or on the assembly line -- everybody with a brain in his head knew that this was the usual bureaucratic shuck. Eventually the government's own statistics bore out the truth of this conclusion. The ghetto youth who completed the manpower training didn't get any more jobs or earn any more money than the people who never took any such training at all. Everybody but the most hopeless lames knew that the only job you wanted out of the poverty program was a job in the program itself. Get on the payroll, that was the idea. Never mind getting some job counseling. You be the job counselor. You be the "neighborhood organizer."

Just so. The primary purpose of every jobs program is to create jobs for the people who run the program. No Bureaucrat Left Behind!

in Kandahar.

NPR notes that the New York state senate voted 53–8 last night to expel Hiram Monserrate, the fourth state lawmaker ever expelled, and the first since 1861.

Why? This didn't help:

Indicted [and later convicted] for allegedly slashing his girlfriend in the face with a broken glass. ... [He] was charged with six counts of assaulting his girlfriend, Karla Giraldo. She needed 20 stitches over her left eye. Security cameras in his apartment complex show Monserrate dragging her out of the building on Dec. 19. The same cameras show her desperately banging on a neighbor's door seeking help during the incident, just a month after his election to the Senate. The lawmaker pleaded not guilty and insisted the blows to his girlfriend were an accident. He is awaiting trial.

Nor did Monserrate make many friends with his ill-fated excursion into the Republican party. The expulsion brings down the Democratic majority in the senate to 31–30. Gov. David Paterson is calling for a March 16 special election to fill the seat.

For his part, Monserrate has vowed to fight the expulsion:

"I know that my behavior has brought unwelcome discredit to this chamber, and for that, I am deeply sorry. But, as Rev. Jesse Jackson once said, 'God isn't through with me yet.'"

This one a Republican (via Washington Post):

Michigan Rep. Vern Ehlers announced his retirement this morning, the 17th Republican to decide against seeking re-election to the next Congress.

"I don't want to stay in office so long that people will say you should have left five years ago," Ehlers said.

Extenuating circumstances likely played a role in Ehlers' decision. His wife, Johanna, suffered a heart attack last week and, on Tuesday, conservative state Rep. Justin Amash announced plans to primary the 76-year-old Ehlers.

Ehlers' 3rd district, which is centered in Grand Rapids, was extremely competitive in 2008 as Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) won it by just over 2,000 votes. The seat went strongly for George W. Bush in 2004 (59 percent) and 2000 (60 percent), however.

From the AP:

A can't miss rung on the ladder to celebrity status in Washington: Newly seated Sen. Scott Brown will write a book about his life leading up to his upset election to succeed the late Sen. Edward Kennedy.

Brown spokeswoman Gail Gitcho said Wednesday the Massachusetts Republican hopes to provide "insight and encouragement" to others and to ensure the record is "complete and accurate." She said that part of the book's proceeds will go to charity.

Gitcho said there was no word yet on the timing of the book or a publisher. She said Brown will work with a collaborator on the book and considers his Senate duties his first priority. Brown's surprise victory in the special election to replace Kennedy ended the Senate Democratic supermajority.

The laughter is dying in Obama's press shop:

Back in May, POLITICO analyzed the press briefings and found that the instances of laughter — as indicated by "(Laughter)" being noted in the official transcript — occurred more than 10 times per day during press secretary Robert Gibbs's briefings.

But the laughter has been reduced by half in recent months: In the first six months of the Obama administration, briefings produced an average of 179 laughs per month. Over the past six months, the average has dropped down to 89.

Chalk it up to the close of any administration's initial honeymoon — and the Obama administration's tough second half of 2009, as it wrestled with health care and saw the late Ted Kennedy's U.S. Senate seat filled by a Republican.

"The tone is one reason for less laughter," says American Urban Radio's April Ryan. "There are lots of serious questions begging for serious answers. Those questions do not meld with laughter and light banter."

But there's also some frustration a-brewing among press corps members.

"There definitely aren't a lot of laughs around the briefing room these days," says Washington Examiner White House correspondent Julie Mason. "Robert's little digs and evasions have lost their power to amuse — particularly since we haven't had a presser since July."

Mason also reports frustration in the ranks: "Reporters know how close the press secretary is to the president, and yet the quality of the information we get doesn't often reflect that."

Major Garrett reporting from Hoth:

Obama spending most of day in residence; working & w/family. 1 exception, Oval Office jobs meeting w/African American leaders.

COS Emanuel coming in, 1 of few. Axelrod working from home.

Kathryn -- I'm telling you, that didn't have to be your last trip to the Hill. You can still make it there if you leave right now. Find an alcove out of the wind and then wait for the sweet release of death. You can actually spend eternity on the Hill, if you act now.

And, heck, I may join you. I'm on the hook to be on Fox today around 1:30. They're sending a car. I'm dubious. If things get bad, I might just have to cut open the driver like tauntaun and get inside.

This headline, in the establishment newspaper of the capital city of the global superpower, is why our enemies think we're too stupid to survive:

US: Iran Nuclear Plan Risks Cancer Patients' Lives

As if to confirm Jonah's post, confirmation from the Washington Post that nothing is happening here anymore:

9:54 a.m. Blizzard force winds move through the region
Good morning. Montgomery County and the District have temporarily pulled plows off the streets due to safety reasons, officials said. It's bad out there, but if you have a window, you already know that. There is a blizzard warning for the region and officials are urging people to stay inside. Utility companies say they're doing their best to restore power to those who are without -- but after making some progress Tuesday, the number of outages is climbing. Virtually all public transportation has ceased.

In what I suppose was my last time on the Hill last night, I encountered a ghost town:

I'm sorry to say I don't think I have the same sense of adventure today that I had over the weekend when I took these and these pictures. It's way too windy today.

First Lady Michelle Obama appeared last evening on PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer to discuss the official launch of her anti-obesity campaign (which I wrote about here).

Lehrer served up your typical softball questions (my personal favorite: “What about this word ‘obesity’ . . . It’s not a comforting word at all.” Thanks, Jim, excellent analysis). But to be fair, I suppose no one’s expecting hard-hitting journalism on the First Lady’s crusade against fat. That said, it would have been nice to see Lehrer more fully flesh out the First Lady’s policy proposal to solve this childhood health issue.

As for Ms. Obama, she started the interview off on a sour note -- yet again bringing up her own daughters’ weight issues. I love how the liberals jumped all over Sen. Scott Brown for discussing his daughters’ “availability,” but have largely remained silent on what some would consider the much bigger parenting no-no of discussing a child's weight on national television.#more#

Nonetheless, Obama clearly is passionate about her new cause and she does actually provide some good advice to parents facing this issue -- get involved in your children’s food choices. Her guiding hand, she explains, was the critical element in successfully improving Sasha and Malia’s weight. Discussing her pediatrician’s reaction to her involvement, the First Lady tells Lehrer that (emphasis mine)

he was pretty floored by how quickly you could turn the tide on this issue with -- by just removing juices from lunchboxes and cooking a little bit more, maybe one or two more meals, turning the TV off a little bit more, limiting desserts to the weekends. I mean these were really not major lifestyle overhauls. So when I came here, I thought, if it can be that simple, it's all about lack of information and lack of focus on the issue. So I wanted to use the first lady spotlight to shine the light on this issue for many families that are struggling with this issue.

So, why not a simple solution for the American public? Why the call for government intervention when it’s clear that parental supervision is the key to solving this problem?

And it looks like the science might agree with a simpler solution. Just this month, Ohio State University released a major study on childhood obesity that found that children are likely to have a lower risk for obesity if they eat dinner with their family, get adequate sleep, and watch less television. The study, set to be published in the March issue of journal Pediatrics, is the first study to review the impact of all three activities on children in a national sample of preschoolers.

Unfortunately, the First Lady’s solution is a bit more complicated. It now involves an executive order signed by the president, a presidential taskforce made up of four Cabinet-level secretaries as well as the director of the OMB and several senior White House policy staffers, and a report due to the president in 90 days with recommendations on how to solve the obesity issue.   

No doubt, this taskforce will come up with some pretty predictable recommendations -- more federal money provided to schools for healthy lunches and additional physical-education programs. There will certainly be recommendations to increase regulations on foods aimed at children and new rules designed to rid schools of evil sugary drinks and high-fat snack foods all provided by those terrible vending machines.

Whatever the recommendations of the task force, the First Lady’s advice to parents to take a more active role in their children’s lives generally and food choices specifically will undoubtedly be more effective . . . and a lot less expensive.

— Julie Gunlock is a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum.

Republicans have narrowed the trust gap with Democrats and are gaining on President Obama, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Though the poll shows Obama's overall approval rating remaining at 51 percent, it reinforces the results of a number of recent surveys showing the president's support eroding in key domestic priorities --  health-care, the deficit, jobs, and the economy -- in which he previously enjoyed double-digit advantages over Republicans:

When compared with the early months of Obama's presidency, the GOP's overall gains are striking. A year ago, Democrats held a 26-point advantage on dealing with the big issues; that lead is now six points. At the one-month mark, Obama's lead over the Republicans on dealing with the economy was 35 points; it's now five points.

The poll also shows a majority opposed to the president's decision to try terrorists in federal courts.

The news for November is more mixed, but is trending toward the GOP. Respondents were split dead even on the question of how they would vote in November Congressional elections -- 46 percent with Republicans, 46 percent with Democrats. That is down from a 51–39 advantage Democrats held just four months ago.

With more than 70 percent of Americans disapproving of the job Congress is doing, nearly half are describing their mood as "anti-incumbent." On a generic Congressional ballot, independents favor Republicans by a 51–35 margin.

As the Post notes, the survey shows an electorate that looks much as it did in 1994 and 2006, both years that saw shifts in dramatic shifts in control of Congress.

You can see a graphical snapshot of the polling results here and read the data here.

I have a contribution to the New York Times online discussion forum, Room for Debate. Topic: the scrapping of NASA's plans for further government-funded manned space flight.

Here is my NRO column from last summer on the anniversary of the first Moon landing, making the same point at greater length.

Britain's Labour government is feeling more and more heat over allegations that their high-immigration policy of the past decade has been deliberate social engineering, with the aim of electing a new people more sympathetic to the Labourites' statist and egalitarian philosophy.

In the latest development, a key government document has been made public following a Freedom of Information request by Migrationwatch, an immigration-restrictionist group.

Gordon Brown pledged to secure "British jobs for British workers" as the recession led to a rise in unemployment … The document released yesterday suggested that Labour originally pursued a different direction. It was published under the title "Migration: an economic and social analysis" but the removal of significant extracts suggested that officials or ministers were nervous over references to "social objectives."

The original paper called for the need of a new framework for thinking about migration policy but the concluding phrase — "if we are to maximise the contribution of migration to the Government’s economic and social objectives" — was edited out.

Could it be the case that our own open-borders and amnesty lobbyists have the same "social objectives" in mind? Are they, like their comrades fellow progressives across the pond, cynically seeking to import leftist voters, the domestic supply being insufficient to ensure their permanent dominance?

Yes they are.

"We reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters," stated Eliseo Medina, international executive vice-president of Service Employees International Union, or SEIU … Can you imagine if we have … two out of three? Can you imagine 8 million new voters who care about our issues and will be voting? We will be creating a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle.

Did you know that today’s secessionist movement is an intellectual one, unlike the Tea Party movement? Neither did I, but it’s the claim of one of the organizers of a recent secessionist conference in Charleston, S.C. Now, don’t jump to conclusions just because of the setting:

In the Aloha State, the idea of secession for the native Hawaiian people is not just common, it's commonly approved. And rightfully so, considering that the Hawaiian Kingdom was illegally overthrown by the United States in 1893. And in case you need to be reminded, former Alaskan First Dude Todd Palin was a member of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party.

And then there is the Second Vermont Republic, a northeastern secessionist group headed up by Thomas Naylor. The Republic supports universal healthcare, green energy, equal rights, and nonviolent resolutions to international conflicts. Simply put: the members of the Second Republic are what some might call hippies.

Along with Second Vermonter Kirkpatrick Sale, founder of the Middlebury Institute, Naylor was a scheduled speaker at the Abbeville Conference. His lecture topic: “The Vermont Village Green: An alternative to empire.” As for Sale, he had a lecture lined up of his own. The subject: the size limits of states and the human scale of secession.

I always knew that foolishness respected no ideological boundaries. I just never expected to see Kirkpatrick Sale journey to Charleston, presumably by ox cart, to talk secession. What’s next, President Obama and Congressional Republicans convening a nationally televised summit to talk health-care reform? Oh, right.

Binyam Mohammed is an al Qaeda terrorist who planned, with his would-be partner Jose Padilla (the "Dirty Bomber") to carry out mass-murder attacks in U.S. cities as part of a 9/11 "second wave."  (More here.) Unlike Padilla, who was prosecuted on (tangentially related) terrorism charges and is now serving a lengthy (albeit not lengthy enough) sentence, Mohammed was released by the Obama administration, under great pressure from British authorities.

Mohammed is a cause celebre in the U.K. -- where he is living free and clear -- because he made "torture" allegations against the CIA.  Our military prosecutors wanted to try him for war crimes, but the Brits did not want a public trial -- and neither, I imagine, did parts of our intelligence community -- for fear that they'd be branded "torturers" in the press (which, naturally, happened anyway). So we released him, and of course he has had the vigorous support of the ususal suspects in pursuing civil suits demanding that details of his "torture" be revealed. 

The lower British court tried to force the release of seven redacted paragraphs in an internal British memo, describing what that government learned about his treatment in 2002. The Foreign Office rebuked the court for not respecting the assurances of secrecy that are the foundation of vital intelligence sharing between nations.  Finally, the appellate court directed that the seven paragraphs be disclosed -- but only because the information had already come out in American court cases.  So the Foreign Office has now made disclosure.  Here are the paragraphs that caused this whole mess:

It was reported that a new series of interviews was conducted by the United States authorities prior to 17 May 2001 as part of a new strategy designed by an expert interviewer.  [SEE UPDATE BELOW -- Andy]

It was reported that at some stage during that further interview process by the United States authorities, BM had been intentionally subjected to continuous sleep deprivation.  The effects of the sleep deprivation were carefully observed. 

It was reported that combined with the sleep deprivation, threats and inducements were made to him.  His fears of being removed from United States custody and “disappearing” were played upon.

It was reported that the stress brought about by these deliberate tactics was increased by him being shackled in his interviews 

It was clear not only from the reports of the content of the interviews but also from the report that he was being kept under self-harm observation, that the inter views were having a marked effect upon him and causing him significant mental stress and suffering.

We regret to have to conclude that the reports provide to the SyS made clear to anyone reading them that BM was being subjected to the treatment that we have described and the effect upon him of that intentional treatment.

The treatment reported, if had been administered on behalf of the United Kingdom, would clearly have been in breach of the undertakings given by the United Kingdom in 1972.  Although it is not necessary for us to categorise the treatment reported, it could readily be contended to be at the very least cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities."

That's it.  No water-boarding, no beating, no slapping around.  Mohammed was not even stuck in a box with a caterpillar. Just sleep-deprivation (carefully monitored to avoid doing real damage), shackling (not in a stress position), and playing on his fear that he would be taken out of the custody of the U.S. (you know, the torturers) and handed over to some less solicitous country. 

To the Brits, the Eurocrats, the American Left, and transnational progressives everywhere, this is somehow "tantamount to torture" because it amounts to "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment." Of course, it's not anywhere close to being torture.  I'm sure Marc Thiessen will have strong views on this, but I've talked to a lot of groups around the country on this topic, and I would say that easily two-thirds of Americans would not be offended in the slightest by the sort of treatment to which Binyam Mohammed was subjected if the reason were to induce him to tell us what he knew about al Qaeda and its ongoing plots.

We can't deprive a would-be mass-murderer of sleep?  He was trying to deprive us of a lot more than sleep.  Over this nonsense -- which we had to know would come out anyway -- we've let him free to go back to the jihad?  A guy who tried to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans?  That's how we uphold our "values"?  Whose values?

UPDATE:  The eagle eye of Tom Joscelyn alerts us that this date cannot be right -- it must be 17 May 2002. I got the excerpt from the 2001 date from the paragraphs as they are posted on the Foreign Office website.  The BBC gets this aspect of the story right:  "The key details are contained in a seven-paragraph summary of what the CIA told their British intelligence officials about Mr Mohamed's treatment in 2002." (Emphasis added.) 

From First Read:

*** Three Years Ago: Exactly three years ago today, Barack Obama officially launched his presidential bid in a speech he gave in Springfield, IL. On that bone-chillingly cold day -- though there was no snow like we're seeing this Wednesday on the East Coast -- Obama unveiled the themes of his ultimately successful campaign: 1) change Washington, 2) reduce the level of partisanship, 3) bring U.S. soldiers home from Iraq, 4) improve America’s image around the world, and 5) pass universal health care by the end of the president’s first term. And it’s easy to see what he has accomplished (or begun to), and what he hasn’t. Here's where Obama appears to have made the most progress: “Let us also understand that ultimate victory against our enemies will come only by rebuilding our alliances and exporting those ideals that bring hope and opportunity to millions around the globe.” (Though these rebuilt alliances, particularly with Russia and China, will be put to the test in the coming days, as the U.S. pushes for tougher sanctions against Iran.) And: “America, it's time to start bringing our troops home [from Iraq].”

*** Where He’s Made Progress -- And Where He Hasn’t: And here’s where he hasn’t made progress: “I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.” Or: “Let's be the generation that says right here, right now, that we will have universal health care in America by the end of the next president's first term.” And: “Most of all, let's be the generation that never forgets what happened on that September day and confront the terrorists with everything we've got. Politics doesn't have to divide us on this anymore - we can work together to keep our country safe.”

Generations from now researchers will crack through the glacial crust and discover the once-mighty capital of the United States under the ice. Everyone will be perfectly preserved, like the victims at Pompeii, only frozen. When that happens, I would be grateful if someone could saw off my head and put it on a fresh android for me.

Thanks, it's been nice knowing you.

The D.C. snowstorm is helping America:

With snow quickly accumulating around the Capitol again Tuesday night, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, gave up on his hope of advancing a jobs-creating bill by the end of this week.

Maybe I should wish for an additional 10–12 inches each week until spring.

This is of course not a "jobs-creating bill." It's a spending bill like last year's so-called stimulus. By the way, I'd love to see the NYT -- just once! -- refer to a Democratic legislative priority such as cap and trade as a "jobs-destroying bill."

On Monday, I said there would be a lot of chatter about Audi's Green Police ad. An excerpt from my column on it:

What was Audi’s intent? Presumably, to sell cars.

“The ad only makes sense if it’s aimed at people who acknowledge the moral authority of the green police,” writes Grist magazine’s David Roberts on the Huffington Post. The target audience, according to Roberts, is men who want to “do the right thing.” He’s certainly right that the ad isn’t aimed at people (whom he childishly mocks as “teabaggers”) who worry that their liberties are being eroded.

But the message is hardly “do the right thing.”

To me, the target demographic is a certain subset of spineless, upscale white men (all the perps in the ad are affluent white guys) who just want to go with the flow. In that sense, the Audi ad has a lot in common with those execrable MasterCard commercials. Targeting the same demographic, those ads depicted hapless fathers being harangued by their children to get with the environmental program. MasterCard’s tagline: “Helping Dad become a better man: Priceless.”

The difference is that MasterCard’s ads were earnest, creepy, diabetes-inducing treacle. Audi’s ad not only fails to invest the greens with moral authority, it concedes that the carbon cops are out of control and power-hungry (in a postscript scene, the Green Police pull over real cops for using Styrofoam cups). But, because resistance is futile when it comes to the eco-Borg, you might as well get the best car you can.

It will be interesting to see whether the ad actually sells cars. The premise only works if you take it as a given that this Gorewellian nightmare is inevitable. But the commercials arrive at precisely the moment when that inevitability is unraveling like an old pair of hemp socks.

Update: In case you haven't seen the ad:

In The Australian, Janet Albrechtsen has a fine column on Western democracies' accelerating retreat from core liberties. She touches on the Wilders trial in the Netherlands and your humble correspondent's recent travails up north, in both of which cases the state is happy to sacrifice freedom of expression in the cause of hedging the sensitivities of Islam with special protections. But what struck me most about Janet's piece was her local angle. I've been musing for years on how the illusions of multicultural tolerance have been hijacked by the avowedly unicultural and intolerant, but you could hardly have a more parodic example than Omar Hassan.

Mr. Hassan wrote to Queensland's Anti-Discrimination Commission to complain about Michael Smith's radio show. Mr. Smith had been discussing whether the burka should be prohibited in certain places because criminals have used it as a disguise with which to commit crimes. Which happens to be true. But, as in Canada and the Netherlands, the truth is no defense. So Mr. Hassan complained to the Anti-Discrimination Commission about Mr. Smith's "Islamophobia," and the ADC accepted the complaint. What's interesting is that Omar Hassan's complaint is 15 pages long, and discourses on many topics. For example:

He expressed his disgust at being "forced to look at the backside of a woman who bends over in front of me in supermarket to pick an item off a bottom shelf". It is a health hazard, he says. "Non-Muslim women do not use water to clean themselves when they go to the toilet." Thus, bending over in a supermarket could cause serious health risks.

So, in the course of complaining about Mr. Smith's "bigotry," Omar Hassan reveals himself to be a bigot: He's explicitly bigoted against infidel women. But, needless to say, the Anti-Discrimination Commission accepted the bigot's case and, at great cost to Queensland taxpayers, will now be making Mr. Smith's life hell for the foreseeable future.

Why don't the Anti-Discrimination Commission go after the bigot Hassan? After all, he very conveniently confessed his bigotry in a letter mailed directly to them.

Ah, but it doesn't work like that. The bigot Hassan belongs to a protected identity group, so Mr. Smith's free speech must be curtailed while Hassan can continue sating his peculiar obsession with non-Muslim female bottoms with impunity -- for it would be "intolerant" to subject an avowedly intolerant Islamic supremacist to "Islamophobia."

After two years of this battle up north, my only advice to Mr. Smith is this: Don't let them make what you said the issue. Make the third-rate hack enforcers of the Commission and their ugly inconsistent racket the issue. Every day, around the free world, liberty dims in the interests of appeasing thuggish ignoramuses like Omar Hassan. What kind of deal is that?

I am a great admirer of the Christian-rap artist Father Stan Fortuna, a Franciscan priest in Father Benedict Groeschel’s band of brothers, the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. (Some of his right-wing Catholic detractors label him “the Irreverend Stan Fortuna”; I think he’s delightful.) He has a new book out called U Got 2 Love, and I must admit I find one of the book’s central gimmicks quite distracting: Father Fortuna appears to have systemically eliminated all final g’s in his text. Example, chosen at random: “So at the end of the day, ‘the end of time’ has less to do with our dyin, and more to do with us livin -- livin life to the full with the fullness of love.” Now, I think that dropping g’s is cute in spoken usage – I do it all the time myself. But there’s something about seeing it in cold hard print that makes it look a little too self-consciously populist, a little too suggestive of the prospect that someday, someone who insists on a final g will be condemned as an aristo-elitist enemy of the people, doomed to the tumbrils with the duc d’Enghien and Mitt Romney.

But let no one doubt that I can read the signs of the times, and that I learned my politics from the Vicar of Bray. So here goes: I found Father Stan’s book highly edifyin, and I promise that readers will learn a lot from it, about livin, lovin, contemplatin, and prayin.

The singer Tweets:

Rain is on it's way...big vocal session today...lyrics all ready on my hand...feeling hopey changey that today is gonna be a good one.

In July, my colleague Steve Camarota estimated the size of the illegal-alien population in the first quarter of 2009 at 10.8 million. The Office of Immigration Statistics at DHS today released its own estimate of the illegal-alien population as of January 2009 and it's . . . 10.8 million.

First of all, it's good to have the results of our own research confirmed by the government. Second, it's nice to have beaten the government to the punch by six months. And this isn't because my researchers are better than their researchers; the analysts at DHS and the Census Bureau and elsewhere are quite skilled and capable. Rather, they're part of a large bureacuracy, and a government one to boot, so things necessarily move at a glacial pace.

I think that second point is important for conservatives in particular to keep in mind as we make jokes about "non-essential personnel" not reporting to work on federal government snow days. We're likely to have more success in making the case for downsizing government if we acknowledge the truth that these agencies we want to abolish (HUD, SBA, USDA, HHS, DoT, etc., etc., etc.) are full of very capable people whose productivity and potential contributions to the economy are stunted by the bureaucracies they're part of. The Washington area has the highest proportion of people with a bachelor's degree of any major metro area (behind only a few college towns like Boulder, Ithaca, and Ann Arbor); after the initial dislocation caused by abolishing these agencies, the presence of that pool of talent would lead to an economic boom -- a real, private-sector boom, not the parasitic one we've been experiencing in Washington.

Who cares whether this House would fight for King and country? Are you up for killing the Jews?

Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister was met by a protester screaming “slaughter the Jews” as he spoke at the Oxford Union. . . .

During the hour-long session one student ran towards Mr Ayalon shouting the Arabic phrase “Itbah Al-Yahud” [Slaughter the Jews].

But don't worry. I'm sure it's only "anti-Zionist."

Major Garrett Tweets this response from AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka on the defeat of Craig Becker: "A Republican-led filibuster has put political interests over the needs of America’s working families," Trumka said. "We support President Obama’s expressed willingness to make recess appointments of critical posts in the federal government if that’s what it takes to get around minority delay and obstruction."

A couple of readers have raised the specter of old C. P. Snow and the "two cultures" debate in this context. Let me say this about that.

“An egomaniac” -- that’s how Rep. Peter King of New York, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, describes John Brennan, President Obama’s deputy national-security adviser, after reading Brennan’s op-ed in USA Today that says criticism of the administration’s handling of the failed Christmas Day bombing serves the “goals of al-Qaeda.” It is “the most mindless, self-serving, and irresponsible statement that a homeland-security adviser can make,” King says.

“This is another case of John Brennan not knowing what he is talking about,” King tells National Review Online. “Brennan is trying to be cute by saying that on Christmas Day he briefed Republicans and Democrats. Leave aside the fact that he didn’t brief me, but he didn’t tell anybody anything that day other than the bare facts that were pretty much known to the public. He said that [Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab] was in FBI custody. Now he’s claiming that that means he told people that [Abdulmutallab] was receiving Miranda rights and no one objected. If that’s what Brennan considers being honest and forthright, then we know that John Brennan is not being honest and forthright.”

King adds that on Christmas night, Brennan built an “iron curtain of secrecy” around the handling of Abdulmutallab and “kept information” from members of Congress. President Obama, he notes, is “encouraging Brennan” and giving him “much leeway” to make political statements.

Incidentally, the phrase "scientific literacy" turns up in this discussion on the First Things website. The topic of the discussion is a piece by physics professor (and practicing Roman Catholic) Stephen Barr.

The Telegraph reports:

Two burka-wearing bank robbers have pulled off a heist near Paris using a handgun concealed beneath their full Islamic veil. Employees let the pair through the security double doors of the banking branch, believing them to be Muslim women. France is looking into ways of restricting -- or banning -- the use of the head-to-toe Islamic veil.

I couldn't resist.

In response to today’s excoriating editorial by the usually Obama-friendly USA Today editorial board about the administration’s bungled handling of Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, haughtily writes that “we need no lectures” from critics in the media, the Congress, and the public. We were among the first to call out the administration on treating Abdulmutallab like a criminal rather than an enemy combatant, so we assume some of Brennan’s anger may be directed at us. Let us respond to some of his points:

Immediately after the failed Christmas Day attack, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was thoroughly interrogated and provided important information.

The administration has spent the past two weeks telling anyone who will listen, including our enemies overseas (whom Abdulmutallab apparently is flipping on), that Abdulmutallab’s family convinced him to start cooperating six weeks after he was Mirandized. Indeed, this is when Brennan himself writes that “[t]he most important breakthrough occurred.” How, then, could Abdulmutallab have been “thoroughly interrogated” immediately after he was arrested if “the most important breakthrough” came six weeks later, and only after his family intervened? This glaring contradiction goes unaddressed.

Senior counterterrorism officials from the White House, the intelligence community and the military were all actively discussing this case before he was Mirandized and supported the decision to charge him in criminal court.

Well, someone isn’t telling the American public the truth. Either the heads of the intelligence community lied to Congress several weeks ago when they all testified, under oath, they were not consulted, or Brennan is fibbing now. We hope it’s the latter, because the former is a potentially criminal offense. No one is going to jail for lying to the public.

The most important breakthrough occurred after Abdulmutallab was read his rights, a long-standing FBI policy that was reaffirmed under Michael Mukasey, President Bush's attorney general.

This is only the policy if the FBI is placed in charge of the arrest and interrogation. This is circular reasoning at its best -- we Mirandized Abdulmutallab because we had to under FBI policy because we called in the FBI. Hmm. We would hope for better from the White House’s top expert on counterterrorism.

#more#Maybe the administration felt it had no choice but to use the FBI because the it just hasn’t gotten around to launching its much ballyhooed “High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group,” even though it’s a year and counting since President Obama shut down the CIA program it was meant to replace.

It's naive to think that transferring Abdulmutallab to military custody would have caused an outpouring of information. There is little difference between military and civilian custody, other than an interrogator with a uniform. The suspect gets access to a lawyer, and interrogation rules are nearly identical.

Brennan just doesn’t understand the law. A suspect held as an enemy combatant in military custody has no right to be Mirandized and no right to remain silent. None whatsoever. An enemy combatant does get access to a lawyer to help him challenge his detention as an enemy combatant. And we’re confident that the government’s lawyers would have had no trouble convincing a judge that Abdulmutallab -- a man caught trying to ignite a bomb in his underwear while on a plane, who then said before he was Mirandized that he’s a member of al Qaeda -- is an enemy of the United States, not a common criminal. But that lawyer would not be present during interrogation, and we would not have to get Abdulmutallab’s consent before questioning him. The only naivete in evidence here is Brennan’s belief that the presence of a lawyer makes no difference. That would be news to the Supreme Court, which has repeatedly held that it is vital to protecting a criminal defendant’s -- as opposed to an enemy combatant’s -- rights that he have access to a lawyer at all times after arrest, including during government interviews.

Would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid was read his Miranda rights five minutes after being taken off a plane he tried to blow up. The same people who criticize the president today were silent back then.

Brennan does have a point here, but he draws the wrong conclusion. There is a good argument that Reid should have been designated as an enemy combatant, though we have explained (see here and here, for example) why the comparison to Reid is ultimately a flawed one. Moreover, as Bill McGurn discusses in an excellent Wall Street Journal column today, it is truly bizarre, disingenuous, and misleading for the Obama administration to cloak itself in the Bush mantle now that it is receiving bipartisan condemnation of its counterterrorism policies. It’s also a non sequitur to say that we should do the same thing the Bush administration did in one case because the Bush administration did it, especially given the fact that nine years have passed by since that case, during which time Congress and the Supreme Court have authorized a system for detaining and trying enemy combatants outside the criminal system.

Cries to try terrorists only in military courts lack foundation. There have been three convictions of terrorists in the military tribunal system since 9/11, and hundreds in the criminal justice system -- including high-profile terrorists such as Reid and 9/11 plotter Zacarius Moussaoui.

Brennan is correct that there have been only three convictions in the military commission system -- but that’s mainly because left-wing lawyers, including many who now populate the highest levels of the Obama-Holder Justice Department, filed lawsuit after lawsuit during the Bush years challenging the system on behalf of the detainees held at Guantanamo. Those lawsuits were not resolved until 2008, and even now some other lawsuits continue to slowly wend their way through our federal courts. As Andy McCarthy has explained, the “hundreds” of convictions of “terrorists” is a bogus number that vastly inflates the real numbers by including people convicted of crimes like identity theft and immigration fraud.

Brennan also indirectly undermines the legitimacy of the military-commission system that his own boss is planning to use against a number of suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo. Recall that the administration has announced that the men believed to have plotted the attack on the U.S.S. Cole will be tried by military commission. The administration’s bifurcated system -- using civilian courts to hold show trials of KSM and others they believe they’ve got the goods on, while saving military commissions (with their somewhat lower evidentiary standards) for the tougher cases -- smacks of cynicism.

It is somewhat refreshing to hear a senior Obama-administration official admit that they have nothing but disdain for military commissions. But this will also be fodder for the lawyers representing the U.S.S. Cole suspects when they seek to have the charges against their clients thrown out on the grounds that the administration bringing the charges doesn’t believe in the system.

Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda.

Brennan ignores the widespread bipartisan criticism and clings to the old it’s-all-politically-motivated line. Forget the Democrats in Congress who are being just as tough on them as any Republican. Forget the editorial boards of the Washington Post (which pointedly asked, “Did the Obama administration blow an opportunity in the flight 253 case?” and answered (“yes”), USA Today, and many other newspapers not previously regarded as “fear-mongerers” or partisan Republicans.

And the notion that America's counterterrorism professionals and America's system of justice are unable to handle these murderous miscreants is absurd.

As has been his wont, Brennan caricatures the position of administration critics. No one has argued that “counterterrorism professionals” are not up to the task. The unanswered question is why only one subset of those professionals -- those who work at the FBI, but none who work in the intelligence services or in the military -- have been included. And no one has suggested that “America’s system of justice” can’t handle Abdulmutallab. America’s system of justice includes the military-commission system passed by the U.S. Congress, whether the administration likes it or not.

Nor has anyone suggested that Abdulmutallab could not be charged and convicted in a criminal trial eventually. The unanswered question is why the administration rushed to put him in the criminal system from the get-go. This was completely unnecessary: The law is clear that a foreign terrorist affiliated with al-Qaeda who is captured on U.S. soil may be lawfully held as an enemy combatant. Once Abdulmutallab had been thoroughly interrogated, the administration would have been free to choose whether to charge him in the civilian or military system (though we think the latter would be preferable). The point of interrogation, and holding Abdulmutallab even temporarily as an enemy combatant, is to get information to stop future attacks; the point of a trial, whether civilian or military, is to punish the wrongdoer. Conflating the two is Brennan’s -- and the administration’s -- most frustrating and dangerous mistake.

-- Dana M. Perino is former press secretary to Pres. George W. Bush. Bill Burck is a former federal prosecutor and deputy counsel to President Bush.

So I finally read the Luce piece Dan Foster mentioned below. Mickey's take strikes me as basically right, particularly the bit about how such pieces never blame the president.

But it seems to me Obama is to blame for his current woes and in a way that is unique to him. The upshot of the Luce article is that Obama is still in campaign mode. That's a point conservatives have been making for a year, so it's a bit funny to hear liberals suddenly credit this analysis.

The "permanent campaign" is a temptation for lots of presidents. But Obama's circumstances are special. He's never really run anything of significance save his presidential campaign (all praise and honor to Harvard Law Review notwithstanding). He's never governed. Even his limited Senate experience was really just another way of campaigning for president. I remember arguing with liberals about his qualifications during the general election and you'd often hear: He's run such a brilliant campaign!

Yes, yes he did. But that's not governing. Obama's using the one experience in his life where he successfully ran a significant enterprise -- his own campaign -- and he's designing his presidency around it, because that's all he knows. It's fine to blame the four horsemen, or to scapegoat Rahm. But the problem starts at the top.

Lost in the debate over Brennan’s comments is that he’s not just lashing out at critics on the right. As I point out here, his column today was written in response to criticism from the editorial board of USA Today, which declared the Obama administration’s handling of the Abdulmutallab case “amateur hour.” Also criticizing the administration is the editorial page of the Washington Post, which declared the handling of Abdulmutallab’s interrogation “myopic, irresponsible and potentially dangerous.”

Are these two liberal newspapers engaged in “fear-mongering” in service to the “goals of al-Qaeda”?

When Dick Cheney, the Washington Post, and USA Today all agree, that’s about as close as you get to consensus here in Washington, D.C.

The nomination of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board was just defeated on a cloture vote 52–33. Sen. Ben Nelson (D., Neb.), Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D., Ark.), and Sen. Scott Brown (R., Mass.) all voted against cloture.

UPDATE: Senator Brown said of his "no" vote on Becker, "Craig Becker’s theories about how the workplace should function, if ever put into practice, would impose new burdens on employers, hurt job creation and slow down the recovery."

Jonah: In my own days as a math undergraduate (old British system: no nonsense about majors and minors, we just did math) it was a running joke that when invited to the room of a female Humanities student, we'd browse her textbooks while she was making coffee; but when they came to our rooms, they never browsed our books.

Studying something really hard -- and at the university level, math and the sciences are really hard -- makes you a terrible intellectual snob. "They're giving you a degree just for reading novels?" we'd jeer. "Hoo hoo hoo!" Even discounting for youthful self-regard & arrogance, though, there was a real asymmetry of interest. We math geeks prided ourselves on being decently well-read; and you could have put a fair classical-music ensemble together from my undergradute class of 40-odd. If there was a similar level of math-sci interest in the English department, it kept itself well hidden.

With age comes wisdom, of course, and I've met enough super-bright Humanities academics to learn some humility . . . with an assist from the fact that I "hit the wall" around two thirds of the way into my degree course and realized I'd never be a creative mathematician. There are areas of the Humanities -- I'd cite history and political science -- where real intellectual prowess is on display at least some of the time. Still, early training imprints us, and whatever passing respect I might grant to a great mind in the Humanities, none the less, for me, to the day I die, math and science is it. ("Are them"? Whatever.) Always, when I'm reading a Humanities text, at some point halfway through it, that little voice starts up inside my head, saying: "Oh, there's nothing rigorous here -- only opinion."

It's my vague impression, by the way, that the asymmetry of interest I noticed in my college peers has lessened since the 1960s. The proliferation of good pop-science books must have something to do with it. Also TV programs like NOVA and good science journalism in papers like the New York Times and The Economist. From my occasional ventures into current highbrow fiction, it seems that nobody can write a novel nowadays without at least a passing reference to the Uncertainty Principle or gravitational collapse.

I bet the girls from English still don't browse the math guys' books, though.

Ramesh -- Thanks a lot. I just wasted precious minutes from my life reading that Eidelson piece on the filibuster. I admit I skimmed it, thinking I would get to the interesting parts and then discovered there were none, so I had to start over.

It seems to me Eidelson is just blowing off all of the actual arguments for and against the filibuster in order to make a case for the filibuster that is irrelevant to the reason for the filibuster. It's like arguing that under X circumstance shoes make great hammers but in Y situations they don't -- so we should only use shoes as hammers when X describes our predicament.

Where is the acknowledgment that shoes aren't supposed to be hammers?

Of course the filibuster is undemocratic. This is not some bombshell revelation. And yet in indictment after indictment of the filibuster -- and the Senate generally -- you hear people level the "undemocratic" charge as if it should be dispositive. The Senate was never intended to be all that democratic. It's the more republican of the two houses. Its rules and traditions are designed to blunt democratic excesses.  

I know everyone knows this, but so many refuse to acknowledge it. They simply glide past the relevant facts about the Senate and insist that everything would be better if the Senate was just a smaller version of the House.

Why haven't I heard these same liberals argue that Supreme Court justices should be more democratically accountable, too? They're not elected at all and they have not just filibustery power, but veto-ish (sorry to bust out the technical jargon) power over the whole Congress and presidency. A more "democratic" Supreme Court would (more vigorously) uphold the death penalty, would restrict abortion more and allow all sorts of stuff in the war on terror that liberals oppose. Of course, that misses the point. The assault on the filibuster is really a purely partisan thing. Watching liberals contort themselves to explain why the filibuster and obstructionism generally was great and good and healthy when they did it, but a sign of the end of America when Republicans do it is just unseemly.

Personally, I think the Senate is already too democratic as it is.

Tips of the hat to RCP and Megan McArdle for unearthing these two gems.

Here is Barack Obama in a speech in 2005, calling for then-president George W. Bush to give it up on social security privatization:

"I mean, the fact of the matter is, is the president has been on his 60-day tour, and everywhere he goes the numbers just get worse. The American people have essentially voted on this proposal and really what you have is a situation now where I think that the president and the Republican Congress are going to need to figure out a way to save face and -- and step back a little bit. And if -- if they let go of their egos -- listen, I've been on the other side of this where -- particularly with my wife. (laughter) Where I've gotten in an argument and then at some point in the argument it dawns on me, you know what, I'm wrong on this one and it's -- it's -- it's irritating, it's frustrating. You don't want to admit it, and so to the extent that we can provide the president with a graceful mechanism to -- to say we're sorry, Dear, then I think that would be -- that would be helpful."

Second, a June 2005 New York Times editorial urging Bush to admit defeat in Congress and stop blaming Democratic "obstruction":

Congressional Republicans have begun talking with top White House aides about an exit strategy -- not from Iraq, but from the winless quagmire of President Bush's campaign to privatize Social Security. Mr. Bush has responded to this new political reality by, first, insisting that the American people do not yet understand the virtues of privatization, and second, blaming the failure of his deservedly unpopular plan on Congressional Democrats.

That's absurd.

After listening to Mr. Bush talk of little else during his second term, the American people understand quite well what he is proposing for Social Security, and by wide margins reject it. In fact, the polls show that the more they learn about privatization, the less they like it. . . .

Mr. Bush has reacted by railing against Democrats for obstruction -- as if Democrats are duty-bound to breathe life into his agenda and, even sillier, as if opposing a plan that the people do not want is an illegitimate tactic for an opposition party.

After a long career of straight-faced service, John Brennan, President Obama’s deputy national-security adviser, has started to snarl. In a USA Today op-ed, he rants about how “politically-motivated criticism” of the administration’s handling of the failed Christmas Day bombing serves “the goals of al-Qaeda.” You don’t get it, he fumes: My critics are “naïve,” “fear-mongering,” and “absurd.” Sen. Kit Bond (R., Mo.), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, tells National Review Online that Brennan’s op-ed is “baffling” and part of a “political mess at the White House” that “puts our country at risk.”

Bond says that Brennan “needs to go,” and is no longer “credible.” Brennan’s recent “troubling decisions,” he adds, “have destroyed my confidence in him.” Firing Brennan, he says, “would be part” of fixing Obama’s national-security woes, though not enough. “A drastic change in policy is needed,” he says. “Our problem now is that we have to wonder whether we can trust [Brennan] after he has been a mouthpiece for the political arm that I thought only came out of the White House press office.”

“It is hard to trust anyone in the White House right now,” Bond says. “The national-security team has become a bench of political spokespeople. It doesn’t speak well of the individuals, but let’s remember that these continued attacks must be coming from the top, from the president himself, to try and deflect the mistakes they made in giving Miranda rights to the Christmas Day bomber.”

An interesting point via e-mail:

One unspoken conclusion of your . . . piece today on the potency of the Tea Party is that it has also allowed the “independents” (we used to call them Reagan Democrats) to become allied again with the Republican base without appearing to wear the tainted RNC brand. Essentially this provides a back door and cover for all those independents who have shifted 3-1 against Democrats to vote as Republicans in November without actually being labeled so. This is what happened in the VA-NJ-MA elections and is clearly showing up in the national polls. It is an aspect of the Tea Party phenomenon is being underestimated by the media and the Democrats  – to their peril.

Dennis Roddy writes in praise of a hack Democratic politician.

Eliot Spitzer comes up with talking points for the Democrats.

Ben Eidelson explains that Democratic filibusters are okay while Republican ones are deeply troubling.

A few comments: Roddy manages to champion the late Rep. Jack Murtha's statesmanship on military matters without ever mentioning Haditha. Spitzer's talking points have no bite: Republicans could easily endorse all of them while still opposing the policies Spitzer is trying to advance. Eidelson argues that Democratic filibusters serve the popular will because Democratic senators represent more voters than the Republicans do. It's a cute argument, but then why not look at the polls on the actual bills being filibustered? Because that would show public opposition to the Democrats' favored health legislation, and support for the "extremist" Republican judicial nominees that Democrats filibustered?