Pascoe's Blog

Jack Murtha's At It Again

2007-08-02T23:25:00.001-05:00

Jack Murtha, the Sultan of Swine, the Prince of Pork, is at it again, to the tune of $150.5 million in 48 separate earmarked appropriations in the Defense Appropriations bill that will be taken up by the House tomorrow.

That represents just under 5 percent of the earmarked appropriations in the entire bill.

Membership has its privileges, as the ad says, but Chairmanships apparently have it all. Instead of getting 1/435th of all the pork in the bill, Murtha's chairmanship of the Defense Approps subcommittee gets him one dollar of pork for every twenty dollars of swine to be found.

That's not a bad take.

Put another way, if every Member of Congress were able to pull as much pork out of that one bill as Jack Murtha has, the pork alone would balloon from $3,070,000,000 to $65,467,500,000.

That's $65 billion, with a "B."

Thank God there's only one Jack Murtha.

To read more, see Roxana Tiron's piece in today's The Hill.

Will the House reprimand Jack Murtha?

2007-05-22T14:14:00.000-05:00

Check out this YouTube post by the National Republican Congressional Committee:

And then ask yourself:

Will Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats live up to their campaign promises to "drain the swamp" and make this "the most honest, ethical, and open Congress in history?"

We'll find out later today, when the House takes up a resolution reprimanding U.S. Rep. Jack Murtha for threatening to kill any defense appropriations earmarked by U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers "now and forever" -– a clear violation of Clause 16 of House Rule XXIII, which reads

"A Member … may not condition the inclusion of language to provide funding for a congressional earmark … on any vote cast by another Member."

Mr. Murtha's threat, says Mr. Rogers, was the direct result of Mr. Rogers' attempt last week to strike a $23 million earmark in the Intelligence Authorization bill for the National Drug Intelligence Center, one of Mr. Murtha's favored pork projects. Conveniently located in Johnstown, Pennsylvania -– the largest city in Mr. Murtha's district -– the NDIC employs 400 of his constituents, and has sucked some $400 million out of the federal trough since its creation 14 years ago.

Why was Mr. Rogers trying to strike the funding for the NDIC?

Because, in the words of a report released last year by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, the NDIC's budget is "an expensive and duplicative use of scarce federal drug enforcement resources," and the NDIC itself "was never able to fulfill its original mission of centralizing and coordinating drug intelligence, given its remote location and the unwillingness of the other Federal agencies to contribute significant information."

It turns out, you see, that the Drug Enforcement Agency has another drug intelligence center, located in El Paso, Texas –- somewhat closer to the nexus of illegal narcotics trafficking than Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

… All of which led the Bush Administration this year to include in its 2008 budget proposal no funds for continued operations at the NDIC, but instead $16 million to shut it down …

Which is what set Mr. Murtha a-scramble.

But it seems that Mr. Murtha's threat against Mr. Rogers -– which, interestingly, has not been denied by Mr. Murtha -– isn't the only violation of House Rules in this episode.

According to a report in this morning's The Hill, Mr. Murtha's earmark request to restore funding for the NDIC was submitted five weeks after the deadline, and was not communicated to the Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra -– which failure is itself a violation of the Rules of the House.

So the choice before House Democrats is clear: they can live up to their promises to reform the Congress, or they can continue to back the ethically-challenged Mr. Murtha one more time.

As to the outcome of today's vote … your guess is as good as ours.

Defense official contradicts Murtha

2007-05-03T14:19:00.000-05:00

Jack's back.

And he's up to his old tricks.

Jack Murtha – whose reputation for stretching the truth and making wildly exaggerated claims is legendary – has just put his foot in his mouth.

Again.

Two days ago, Murtha told the press that General David Petraeus, the commander of Multi-National Forces-Iraq, had not met with Members of Congress during his recent visit to Washington.

On Tuesday, appearing on his favorite cable news talk show, MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews," Murtha said of General Petraeus's recent visit, "They bring Petraeus back – purely political move. Petraeus comes back here. He doesn't talk to any of us. He only talks to the news media and so forth trying to sell this program."

But that's not true.

Not only did General Petraeus meet and conduct two briefings for Members of Congress, he briefed Jack Murtha PERSONALLY.

And the two briefings he conducted for Members of the House and Senate were two of the most widely attended operations intelligence briefings in recent memory – with 250 Representatives and 86 Senators in attendance.

Read the full story for yourself.

When, oh when, is Jack Murtha going to tell the truth?

McCain and the Kissinger Endorsement

2007-04-12T10:39:00.000-05:00

Two decades ago, I left my job at The Heritage Foundation to join the 1988 Bush campaign as the liaison to the conservative movement. Perhaps in the future I'll have more to write about my experiences during that campaign; in the meantime, let me tease you with just one -- the story of the Henry Kissinger non-endorsement endorsement.

(Not coincidentally, the story happens to be of interest right now because just two days ago, John McCain proudly accepted and then touted his endorsement for President by the very same Henry Kissinger.)

My friends over at Human Events were kind enough to post the piece to their web site this morning, so you can click here to read it in full.

Fred Thompson: National Statesman

2007-04-06T12:43:00.000-05:00

2007-03-09T09:18:00.000-06:00

Grassroots 1, Hillary 0

Best News of the Day: Tom Cole as NRCC Chairman!

2006-11-17T11:47:00.000-06:00

U.S. Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) has just been elected Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

This is the best news of the day, for both the Republican Party and the Republic.

I had the privilege and the good fortune to work at the Republican National Committee during the 2000 cycle, when Tom Cole was the Chief of Staff. I can personally attest to the fact that Tom has what it takes to lead House Republicans back to the majority -- if there's a way, he will find it.

It isn't just his grace under fire, his leadership and management skills, or his vast experience and knowledge of the campaign arena that has me so enthused today about his election, though; far more important is the knowledge that Tom Cole is a good man at a time when the Republican Party needs good men and women to take leadership roles.

Congratulations, Tom, and best wishes for continued success.

Next Up: Alcee Hastings.

2006-11-17T11:42:00.000-06:00

In a post a few days ago, I warned of the likely ascension of U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) to the Chairmanship of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Congressman Hastings, you will recall, was impeached and convicted and kicked off the federal bench in 1989 for his role in a bribery scandal.

National Review's Byron York has the full details.

Happy, Happy, Fake Happy, Happy ... REALLY Not Happy.

2006-11-17T07:34:00.000-06:00

This New York Times photo of Rahm Emanuel, John Larson, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and Jack Murtha after House Democrats finished selecting their leaders for the 110th Congress -- a leadership election in which Speaker-To-Be Nancy Pelosi took it on the chin and The Man Who Would Not Be Majority Leader Jack Murtha took it in the gut -- says a lot more than a thousand words.

Another Thought on Murtha's Defeat.

2006-11-16T13:32:00.000-06:00

Last night, less than 18 hours before House Democrats met to choose their leaders, Jack Murtha was interviewed by Chris Matthews on MSNBC. Asked if he was going to win, Murtha replied, "We've got the votes."

Ahem.

86 of them, to be precise -- 32 votes shy of the 118 needed to secure victory.

Jack Murtha now will, in his words, go back to "this little subcommittee that I have." Which is a reference, of course, to the fact that he will now assume the chairmanship of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, which writes the single largest annual appropriations bill in the government -- roughly $450 billion per year.

A suggestion: someone should make sure that the calculator Mr. Murtha used to count votes in his race for Majority Leader isn't the same one he uses to calculate the Defense Approps bill.

Hoyer Defeats Murtha. Our Pocketbooks Are Safer.

2006-11-16T12:18:00.000-06:00

Steny Hoyer defeated Jack Murtha by a whopping 149-86 -- that's a 63-37 percent smackdown.

Think about that for just a moment -- almost two-thirds of the House Democratic caucus voted to defy the woman they had, just moments earlier, unanimously elected as the first-ever female Speaker of the House.

Now remember what The New York Times reported on October 2, in its front-page, above-the-fold expose of Murtha's practice of trading votes for earmarks:

Mr. Murtha can punish lawmakers, as well. Those who do not support the defense spending bill, for example, discover their next earmark requests go nowhere. ''Let me tell you the facts of life,'' Mr. Murtha said he tells balky legislators. ''If you vote against this bill, you won't have any input at all the next time."

Both Murtha and Pelosi were reported this week to have been using strong-arm tactics. Pelosi, in fact, was said to be telling newly-elected Democrats that she needed Murtha as her number two in the very same conversation where she inquired about the newbies' desired committee assignments.

Murtha, with a reputation for being no more subtle, likely was employing his own version of arm-twisting -- offering earmarks in exchange for votes, and threatening to deny funding for pet projects of those who failed to support him.

Pelosi gets a black eye, Murtha doesn't even come close, and next year's Defense Appropriations bill will likely contain fewer earmarks.

Taxpayers win on all three fronts.

Thank you, House Democrats.

It's Not Over Until It's Over. But It Might Be Over.

2006-11-16T09:57:00.000-06:00

According to our friends at Hotline's On Call, the race for House Majority Leader may already be over -- and Jack Murtha may have just lost.

Jack Murtha Is STILL Not Telling the Truth. Really.

2006-11-16T03:55:00.000-06:00

Interviewed last night on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews," Jack Murtha continued to evade, dodge, obfuscate, and even tell outright falsehoods to host Chris Matthews.

Let's take a look at what Murtha said last night, and how it squares with known facts:

MATTHEWS: Let's talk about what's being said against you. Not just by your opponents, but in the newspapers. Let's talk about Abscam. Back 26 years ago, I went through the numbers. Five members of the United States Congress, a United States senator, Pete Williams from New Jersey were convicted of accepting money from these undercover FBI agents, posing as Arab guys trying to make an offer to congressmen so he'd cut a deal, put some money in the pockets of these people.

All these people are convicted, you weren't. Does that mean you're innocent?

MURTHA: Well, I'll put this way. I had 24 percent unemployment, I was looking at investment. I told them I wanted an investment in my district, they put $50,000 out on the table. I said I'm not interested in that, I'm interested in investment. The ethics committee cleared me completely, unanimous vote.

FACT: The Ethics Committee did no such thing. Contrary to what Jack Murtha declared as fact, the House Ethics Committee split on a straight party-line vote -– every Republican cast a vote to proceed with an investigation of Murtha, while every Democrat on the Committee cast a vote to close down any proceeding against Murtha.

The Special Counsel hired to investigate the Abscam scandal on behalf of the Ethics Committee –- E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr. -– resigned in protest that very day.

MATTHEWS: When they said, when they offered you the envelope of $50,000, did you think that was a bribe?

MURTHA: It wasn't an envelope, it was a drawer full of cash.

MATTHEWS: Was that a bribe?

MURTHA: No. As far as I was concerned...

MATTHEWS: ... No, what did you see that as? Why did you say I'm not interested?

MURTHA: Well, I said I'm not interested because I just didn't feel like it was the right thing to do.

MATTHEWS: Why not?

MURTHA: Well, what the hell, I'm not going to take cash from some Arab sheikhs. They weren't Arab sheikhs, they were FBI agents.

MATTHEWS: But you didn't know that.

MURTHA: I just said this is not what I'm interested in. I'm interested in you folks investing.

FACT: Actually, as we pointed out yesterday, Jack Murtha's "investment defense" was nothing more than a cover to throw any inquiring reporters off the scent. If the rich Arab put money into Murtha's district, he reasoned to the undercover FBI agent, no one would start wondering aloud why Murtha was doing favors for a rich foreigner; absent such a cover, however, people would naturally become suspicious. Here's how Murtha described it at the time, in his own words (courtesy of the Abscam surveillance video):

"And what I'm sayin' is, a few investments in my district, a few you know, is big to me, to this guy apparently is not too big, to a couple of banks which would get their attention. And investment in a business where you could legitimately say to me -- when I say legitimately, I'm talking about so these bastards up here can't say to me, well, why, in eight years from now, that's possible, we'd never hear a thing for eight years, but all at once, ah, some dumb bastard would go start talking eight years from now, ah, about the whole thing and say, '[expletive deleted], ah, this happened,' then he, then he, in order to get immunity so he doesn't go to jail, he starts talking and fingering people and then the [expletive deleted] all falls apart."

Just a few moments later in the tape, Mr. Murtha continues, discussing what he calls "a business commitment" in the district:

"A business commitment that makes it imperative for me to help him. Just, let me tell you something. I'm sure if -- and there's a lot of things I've done up here, with environmental regulations, with all kinds of waivers of laws and regulations. If it weren't for being in the district, people would say … 'Well that [expletive deleted], I'm gonna tell you something … This guy is, uh, you know, on the take.' Well once they say that, what happens? Then they start going around looking for the [expletive deleted] money. So I want to avoid that by having some tie to the district. That's all. That's the secret to the whole thing."

"That's the secret to the whole thing." Investment not for the sake of investment, but because "that's the secret" to how you can take a bribe and get away with it.

MATTHEWS: I've heard you, I've seen this tape on YouTube now, everybody has seen it. A million people apparently have seen this tape. You said I'm not interested, and I assume you think it was something you shouldn't have done, as you just said. It wasn't the right thing to do, right, sir?

MURTHA: Well certainly, that's exactly.

MATTHEWS: OK. Well then why did you say at this point, then?

MURTHA: Listen, I wanted to negotiate with them about investment in the district, that's what I was interested in. It's the only thing I was interested in.

MATTHEWS: But what do you mean when you said I'm not interested at this point. I'm not interested maybe at some point?

MURTHA: No, no, listen.

MATTHEWS: That's on the tape.

MURTHA: I know, but what I said was I want to continue to talk to you guys, I want investment in the district. That's all I was interested in.

FACT: In fact, Murtha was quite interested in taking the $50,000. He just didn't want to take cash out of a room in front of two men he had never before met, and a third man who had been introduced to him by one of his corrupt congressional colleagues.

Roughly 46 minutes into the 54-minute-long meeting, Howard Criden and Jack Murtha briefly stepped into the hallway outside the meeting room for a private conversation. There, the two discussed a means for Murtha to accept the cash without putting his hands on it -- by having Criden put his hands on it.

Here's what you see on the tape:

Upon their return, Howard Criden says to Anthony Amoroso, the undercover FBI agent posing as the representative of the sheik, 'John says that it is okay for you to give me what's in that drawer.' [The drawer he was referring to, of course, is the desk drawer in which agent Amoroso had already placed $50,000 in cash.] Jack Murtha then immediately follows, explaining to Mr. Amoroso, 'Is that all right, Tony, let me make it very clear. The other two guys [Congressmen Frank Thompson and John Murphy] do expect to be taken care of, as Howard. And you're gonna have to deal through Howard. Me, you've got my deal.' Criden then acknowledges, 'We have a deal.'

Leaving a room where one has just been offered $50,000 in cash, only to return two minutes later with a bag man saying "John says that it is okay for you to give me what's in that drawer," is not something done by a man who's not aware he's trying to take a bribe.

These are the actions, rather, of a man who wanted very much to take the bribe -- as Jack Murtha said at one point on the tape, "you know, I need the [expletive deleted] money like anybody else does" -- but who thought he was clever enough, and careful enough, to have figured out a way to take the bribe without actually accepting the money himself.

Jack Murtha could have contradicted Howard Criden when Criden said, "John says that it is okay for you to give me what is in that drawer." He could have said, "Howard, I never said that."

But Jack Murtha did NOT contradict Howard Criden. Instead, he said, "Is that all right, Tony," and went on to remind the FBI agent that two other Congressmen "do expect to be taken care of," and then to agree with Criden -- "And you're gonna have to deal through Howard."

Just what did Howard Criden and Jack Murtha discuss in the hallway? Did Criden tell Murtha, "It'll be alright, Jack, I'll take the money, just like I did for Frank Thompson?" In fact, in trial testimony later, Jack Murtha testified that that is EXACTLY what happened in the hallway.

Jack Murtha believed he had cut a deal. But the deal fell apart -- FOR THE MOMENT -- when he refused to take the cash out of the room himself.

Did Jack Murtha call the FBI to report that, as a sitting Member of the House of Representatives, he had just been offered a bribe? Did Jack Murtha call the Speaker of the House of Representatives, or even the Chairman of the House Ethics Committee -- of which he was a member at the time -- to report a bribe attempt, as he was required to do under the Rules of the House in effect at the time?

No, he did not. Instead, as he testified later in federal court, he called his "immigration guy," to determine what could be done on behalf of the sheik. Why? Because he thought he still had a deal.

MATTHEWS: But did you smell corruption in that conversation?

MURTHA: Sure. I saw these guys were trying to corrupt me and trying to...

MATTHEWS: ... Did you think they were legitimate emissaries for an Arab big shot or did you think they were...

MURTHA: They were the slimiest guys I've ever seen.

MATTHEWS: Well why didn't you walk out of the room the minute you met them?

[Ed. note: Walking out of the room is exactly what Republican U.S. Senator Larry Pressler did when he was offered a cash bribe by the same undercover FBI agent.]

MURTHA: Well listen, they said they were going to invest in the district.

MATTHEWS: I understand the constituent service part of it. I understand that. But the tricky part of this is to say I'm not interested, which meant you didn't want to have anything to do with these slime balls, as you saw them, but then you said "at this point." Was that just a way of finessing your way out of the conversation?

MURTHA: Exactly, exactly. I deal with people like this all the time. I wanted to find a way to move towards a negotiation to investment.

MATTHEWS: Did you know they had already paid two other members off?

MURTHA: I had no idea.

FACT: Of course Murtha knew the faux sheik's representatives had already paid off two other Members of Congress already -– one of them, Frank Thompson, had been the man who brought Murtha into the sting operation in the first place. At Thompson's trial, Murtha testified to this fact, and to the fact that he had been told by Thompson that there would be $50,000 in what he called "walk around money" offered to him before he ever went to the meeting.

Here's how David Holman, a reporter for The American Spectator, summarized it:

Murtha's claim that he thought he was meeting to discuss investments in his district is only half true: he knew for weeks beforehand that there would be bribes involved. In late October or early November of 1979, Murtha testified, Congressman Frank Thompson approached him on the floor of the House. He told Murtha there were some rich Arabs who might be willing to invest in the district. "He wanted to get two more Congressmen involved. ... But all we would have to do is help these two Arabs get into the country perhaps sometime in the future."

About a week later, Thompson sat next to Murtha on the floor of the House. Murtha testified that Thompson said he had checked the Arabs out -- they had hundreds of millions of dollars. (Abscam had a banker at Chase Manhattan who would "verify" the size of their bank account if any marks called to check.) This time, though, Thompson said, according to Murtha, "And there would also be some walking around money for the three Congressmen involved." In direct examination, Thomas Puccio, the government's lead prosecutor on the case, then asked, "Did Mr. Thompson say how much walking-around money?" "He said $50,000," Mr. Murtha replied. "What did you understand walking-around money to mean?" Mr. Puccio asked. "Cash," Mr. Murtha said. Murtha knew since the first half of November 1979 that the Arabs were offering bribes.

Thompson pursued the matter with Murtha through the end of the year, finally securing a meeting for Murtha's first day back in town: January 7, 1980. Thompson phoned Murtha on January 7. He said that Howard Criden, an attorney arranging meetings with members of Congress for the Arabs' representatives, was in his office and Thompson would like Murtha to meet Criden.

Murtha went over. After some small talk, Thompson told Murtha that he would go with Criden to the Arabs' house in Georgetown, where Criden would "pick up the money." Murtha testified that he repeatedly demurred and said that he was "just not prepared to get involved with the money." He said that he twice almost walked out of Thompson's office at Thompson's and Criden's insistence that Criden would pick up the money. At one point, Thompson said, "You go down and Howard will pick up the money and we will split -- that the three of us will split the money." Murtha testified in cross-examination that when he went to the W Street townhouse, he knew there was a "possibility" that he could be bribed by going there or a bribe offer could be made there.

Before Murtha left Capitol Hill, he knew the terms of the meeting: he was going to a strange townhouse, with a strange lawyer he had not met before that day, to meet with strange representatives of strange sheiks from an unnamed Middle Eastern country. Thompson explicitly told him that Criden would pick up the money for the three congressmen, Thompson, Murphy, and Murtha, to split three ways. Despite his account of protesting to this situation, he went along.

Twenty-six years later, Jack Murtha still isn't telling the truth about what happened in that room that day.

How To Embarrass Your Boss. IF She Has the Requisite Embarrassment Bone.

2006-11-15T13:27:00.000-06:00

Roll Call's John Bresnahan has the scoop:

MURTHA CALLS ETHICS BILL "TOTAL CRAP"

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) told a group of Democratic moderates on Tuesday that an ethics and lobbying reform bill being pushed by party leaders was "total crap," but said that he would work to enact the legislation because Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) supports it.

Murtha and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) are locked in a battle for the House Majority Leader post, and both men made presentations for to the Blue Dog Coalition on Tuesday in a bid for their votes.

"Even though I think it's total crap, I'll vote for it and pass it because that's what Nancy wants," Murtha told the Blue Dogs, according to three sources who were at the meeting.

Pelosi has made enactment of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act the cornerstone of her legislative agenda for the 110th Congress, and she is preparing to make it the first bill introduced under her reign. Murtha voted against the legislation earlier this year on the House floor.

Congressional corruption was a major issue for voters in the recent midterm elections, and Pelosi has pledged to clean-up the Congress as part of her efforts to reform the House.

A Democratic lawmaker, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he was "surprised" by the tone of Murtha's comments, especially Murtha's repeated claim that he would back any proposal that Pelosi favored. This lawmaker has already declared for Hoyer.

"'My agenda will be Nancy's agenda' -- he kept saying that," the lawmaker said. "The performance was stunningly awful."

Another Democrat who was in the room said Murtha's remarks, especially on the ethics and lobbying reform bill, "were not the right thing to say in front of a roomful of Blue Dogs."

Murtha's office did not comment for for this article.

So. Let's review.

Nancy Pelosi promised to make the 110th Congress the "most open and accessible in history." She follows that up by promising to introduce as H.R. 1 the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, and to push it to passage on Day One of her reign.

Then she chooses to back Jack Murtha for the position of Majority Leader, despite his numerous and varied ethical failings -- a "one-man wrecking crew when it comes to policing congressional corruption" was how one liberal congressional watchdog put it.

In Day Five of what will be his seven-day campaign, Mr. Murtha trashes the Speaker-To-Be's numero uno legislative priority, referring to it as "total crap" in front of a room full of key House Democrats.

And yet Nancy Pelosi is, by all media accounts, actually making phone calls and twisting arms for him -- to the extent that one incoming House freshman Democrat reported being asked in a private meeting by Ms. Pelosi who she was backing for Majority Leader, and THEN asking what committees she'd be interested in joining. (Ms. Pelosi has been called many things. "Subtle" is not one of them.)

Embarrassed by Mr. Murtha's behavior? Ms. Pelosi? Not at all.

The question here is, just what kind of embarrassing pictures of Ms. Pelosi does Jack Murtha have, anyway?

You Don't Know Jack. Murtha, That Is.

2006-11-15T05:40:00.000-06:00

Now that Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi has chosen to take sides in an intramural leadership fight, throwing her weight behind Jack Murtha's bid to become House Majority Leader, you might find it useful to brush up on Jack Murtha's background.

Most of the national press corps has a simple thumbnail bio of Jack Murtha: "A conservative pro-life, pro-gun defense hawk whose courageous decision to take a public stand against the war in Iraq last November provided cover to his party's liberal wing, and paved the way for an historic victory last Tuesday."

That's probably what most of the Capitol Hill and K Street crowd thinks of Jack Murtha, too.

But if that's all you know about Jack Murtha … you don't know Jack.

Start by reading John Fund's excellent primer in this morning's Wall Street Journal.

Then read Ruth Marcus's excellent piece in this morning's Washington Post.

Then consider:

In late September, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) issued its second annual report on the most corrupt Members of Congress. Of the 25 Members listed, 21 were Republicans; Jack Murtha was one of just four Democrats to make the grade. CREW documented the hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions Murtha has taken in exchange for delivering tens of millions of dollars in earmarked appropriations to clients of two lobbying firms –- both of which employ former senior Murtha staffers, and one of which actually employs Murtha's own brother. See the full report here.

More than a year before CREW issued its report, the Los Angeles Times detailed how the lobbying firm featuring Jack Murtha's brother -– KSA Consulting -– delivered for its clients. You can read the full L.A. Times piece here.

Jack Murtha's brother isn't the only Murtha family member to be graced by earmarks directed by the acknowledged Pork Master: long before he started directing taxpayer funds to clients of his brother, Jack Murtha directed $1.4 million to tiny St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania -– a college where his cousin, John F. Murtha, served as President. U.S. News & World Report wrote it up in a cover story here.

Yes, Jack Murtha is a great believer in family –- but not just his own. According to Roll Call, he's also done favors to put taxpayers' money in the pockets of the nephew of Rep. Paul Kanjorski (who, not surprisingly, has endorsed Murtha's bid for Majority Leader) and the nephew of –- wait for it –- Nancy Pelosi. Read Roll Call's take here. Read the San Francisco Chronicle's take here. And here, you can read about how Kanjorski's nephew's company went belly-up when the federal contracts dried up.

Ten days after the CREW report went public, the full 54-minute FBI Abscam surveillance video -– never before seen by the public -– was released. The video puts the lie to Murtha's so-called "investment defense," in which he claimed he only met with men he believed to be agents of a rich Arab sheik in order to facilitate new investment in his district. Instead, the video makes shockingly clear that Murtha wanted to take the $50,000 cash bribe offered him -– he just didn't want to put his own hands on the money. Instead, he wanted Philadelphia attorney Howard Criden to act as his bagman and take physical possession of the cash. You can read a summary analysis of this new information here, you can read the full transcript of the video here, and you can see the full video here.

One of the great, if largely unknown, Abscam stories is just how Jack Murtha got away without facing the wrath of his colleagues on the House Ethics Committee. Avoiding a federal prosecution by agreeing to turn state's evidence -– and still earning the title "unindicted co-conspirator" (making him the second most famous "unindicted co-conspirator" in American political history, right after Richard Nixon) -– was one thing; but the Rules of the House at the time required that a Member report any attempted bribe –- something Murtha clearly failed to do, and for which he faced serious consequences. To learn how Tip O'Neill, "Good Time Charlie" Wilson, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts figured into Jack Murtha's escape from the Ethics Committee, click here.

On October 2, The New York Times entered the fray, giving front page, above-the-fold treatment to an expose of Murtha's longstanding practice of trading his vote for favors –- specifically, the Times detailed how he regularly traded his vote (and those of his cronies) to Republican leaders in exchange for earmarked federal appropriations he could then dispense to his favored Democrats and back into his own district. Read the full New York Times piece here.

Did you know that Jack Murtha's arrogance regarding the perks of Congressional office is so great that he once hosted a welcome-back party for a powerful former staffer who had just been convicted of taking a bribe –- and that, when questioned by reporters about the propriety of hosting a party for a convicted bribe-taker, he referred to the conviction as being "just like a traffic ticket," and said he felt "like she was exonerated?" Read about it here.

Jack Murtha's belief that Congress and its staffers should be considered in a class by themselves doesn't stop there. He even pushed for a law that would require taxpayers to foot the legal bills of Members of Congress (and staff) who had been convicted of crimes -– including taking bribes! So much for the fundamentally American notion that every man is equal under the law. Read more here.

Jack Murtha is the reason regular citizens can no longer file complaints against Members of Congress directly with the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. It was his drive, in the wake of the federal investigations of his friends U.S. Reps. Bud Shuster and Joe McDade, that led to a change in the Rules of the House that require that only a Member of Congress can file such a complaint with the Committee. But even that wasn't enough for Jack Murtha -– he pushed for a Rules change that would have required the automatic dismissal of any Ethics complaint if the Ethics Committee failed to take action within six months.

Nancy Pelosi told NBC News in her first post-victory interview last week that she would promise "to turn this Congress into the most honest and open Congress in history. That is my pledge. That is what I intend to do."

Is putting Jack Murtha in charge of the House Floor what she meant?

Or could it be that Nancy Pelosi ... doesn't know Jack?

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid. Part Two.

2006-11-13T16:35:00.000-06:00

So what's there to be scared of, anyway?

MI5 Boss: 200 Terror Cells in U.K.

That's what.

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

2006-11-13T16:03:00.000-06:00

Of this man: U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, one of only three federal judges in the 20th century (and one of only six since the founding of the Republic) to be impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate.

Why be afraid? Because Speaker-Designate Nancy Pelosi has made clear her intent to skip over the U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, the Ranking Minority Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and instead install Rep. Hastings as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

As our friends at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy point out, Alcee Hastings' background leaves, shall we say, a bit to be desired, at least when it comes to feeling safe and secure with him as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

So ... be afraid. Be very afraid.

Apologize. Our Soldiers Are Waiting.

2006-11-01T19:06:00.000-06:00

Pat Toomey Endorses Diana Irey for Congress

2006-10-30T15:42:00.000-06:00


Pat Toomey Endorses Diana Irey for Congress: Former PA Congressman Pat Toomey, a hero to conservatives nationwide, endorses Diana Irey for Congress over 32-year-incumbent Jack Murtha.

Find a Veteran. And Thank Him.

2006-10-29T21:33:00.000-06:00

12 minutes to change your thinking.

"You may fly over a land forever.

"You may bomb it, atomize it, and wipe it clean of life.

"But if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground.

"The way Roman legions did ... by putting young men into the mud."

--T.R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War

"When the Air Force flies over, it's important. It's a show of force.

"When the Navy steams up, it's important. It's a deterrent.

"When the Army plants its boots on the ground ... it's control."

After you watch it ... find a veteran, and thank him.

The Diana vs. Goliath Blogger Challenge

2006-10-17T10:51:00.000-05:00

If you're reading this, you're among the first to see how the conservative blogosphere is taking up the challenge of helping fund Diana Irey's campaign against Jack Murtha.

Born out of Rob Bluey's regular conservative bloggers meeting -- where Diana met with a range of conservative bloggers last week -- the Diana vs. Goliath Bloggers Challenge is an effort to involve conservatives around the country (and, actually, around the world) in funding her campaign.

Every contribution of $25 or more gets a special "thank you" -- a Diana Irey "V-FORCE" bumper sticker.

So ... go! Stop reading this page, and contribute to Diana Irey!

24 Days Out. Is It Over?

2006-10-14T17:02:00.000-05:00

No, it's not over yet. But one sign of impending doom is when the right's most influential blogger posts the traditional post-mortem analysis ... with more than three weeks to go.

A GOP Pre-Mortem

On Broken Down Escalators and Saving Taxpayer Bucks

2006-10-13T16:00:00.000-05:00

Metro Board Rejects Escalator Proposal

This post has nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with brains in politics.

Seems the bureaucrats who run the Washington, DC, Metro wanted to spend an untold amount of money to replace what are described as "23 short escalators" with stairs at 15 Metro stations. Apparently, these escalators are prone to break down, and the Metro bureaucrats thought it would be a wise investment to replace breakdown-prone escalators with breakdown-free stairs.

The change, they posited, would have saved taxpayers $1.5 million per year in maintenance costs.

Umm.

Am I missing something here, or ... isn't a broken down escalator really nothing more than a fancy set of stairs?

Note to Metro bureaucrats: Let the escalators run until they break down. At that point, don't spend the money to replace them -- just put up (cheap) signs that say "Metro encourages our riders to stay in shape. Use these stairs in place of a workout today," save the repair and replacement cost, and ... use your new stairs.

When a Picture Really Is Worth a Thousand Words

2006-10-13T12:29:00.000-05:00

Check it out. Behind SecDef Donald Rumsfeld is a satellite photograph of the Korean peninsula, taken at night. North Korea dark, South Korea ablaze with electricity.

Need we say anything more about the utter failure of communism to provide even the basic essentials of life in the modern age? I think not.

Next?

"Greed is one thing."

2006-09-16T11:55:00.000-05:00

"But this guy took it to a different level."

I know, I know ... you're thinking I'm talking about Bob Menendez. Or maybe Jack Murtha.

Not this time. The title above and the lead sentence are actually quotes from this morning's New York Times expose of just how $90,000 in cash bricks ended up in the freezer of Louisiana's Democratic Congressman, William Jefferson.

You can read it here.

Another Torricelli? Two Days and Counting. Or ... 14?

2006-09-16T10:19:00.000-05:00

Two days from today, we will be 51 days away from the November election.

On Monday, September 18, under New Jersey statute, the deadline will arrive -- and pass -- for Democrats to replace Senator Bob Menendez on the ballot with a new candidate.

Of course, given our experience in 2002, and the precedent set in the case of Torricelli v. Everyone, no one I know of expects that if New Jersey Democrats let that deadline slip and then decide, oh, say, ten days from today to replace Menendez, that the New Jersey Supreme Court will NOT allow the switch; having sanctioned the law-breaking once before, it's hard to come back and say, "Oh, silly us! We were wrong four years ago, but we'll get it right this time!"

The way I see it, New Jersey's Democrats have until at least September 30 (12 days beyond the deadline) to announce a decision to replace Menendez.

September 30, after all, was the day Bob Torricelli made his withdrawal announcement four years ago.

"Does His Wife Know?"

2006-09-15T23:51:00.000-05:00

Read this first.

Yes, I actually got the credit for the line. But, as often happens in a good campaign staffed by high-quality professionals, it wasn't mine originally.

Just in case this one turns out not so well, though, I'm going to allow him to keep his anonymity, and I'll take the heat if it gets turned up.

Not that anyone who knows the folks in my office would have much trouble figuring it out, now that I've acknowledged I wasn't the original author of the line. But he can pretend to be anonmyous anyway.

Click here. Please.

2006-09-15T23:37:00.000-05:00

Seriously. I mean it. Pay attention, and do what the nice lady says.

The New Jersey Switcheroo, or How To Pull a Torricelli

2006-09-15T23:30:00.000-05:00

It just might be happening again in New Jersey.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water ... New Jersey's Democrats may be up to it again.

At least no one can blame me this time.

(You know what I like best about the Wall Street Journal editorial linked above? The pixilated image of Bob Menendez. It makes him look fat. Bwahahahahahahaha.)

My Killer App

2006-09-15T20:32:00.000-05:00

There's a blog that's running a contest right now to find the next Killer App for Macs: My Dream App.

Here's my entry:

I am an iPod/iTunes fanatic: How Steven Jobs Got Me. Sorry, Marty.

I have roughly 2,000 CDs loaded onto my latest iPod.

In MAC OS X Panther, iTunes allowed me to look at my CD album art in both iTunes and on my iPod. It was a nice feature, but nothing too splashy.

And now, with MAC OS X Tiger, I get an added bonus: iTunes album art can be displayed on my computer as a screen saver. Yep, I can now see all the CDs I've got in my iTunes library, displayed as album covers. Five rows from top to bottom, seven columns from left to right, I get a lovely mosaic of squares on my computer screen when it goes to sleep. And every few seconds, one of the squares swivels (like the computer has its own little invisible Vanna White inside) to change and display a new album cover.

Nothing more than a momentary diversion, granted, but one that grabs me every time -- because, with more than 2000 "albums" to look at, I get to see a lot of CDs that I haven't played in quite a while. With 15,000 songs on my iPod, there's a LOT of music that I haven't played recently.

So here’s the Killer App:

Create an option on the “Album Art” screensaver function so that when I come back from lunch and I see all those album covers on my screen, and I see a CD I haven’t played in quite some time, I can move my mouse to point the cursor at a particular CD, click on it, and have iTunes open and begin playing that CD.

How cool would THAT be?

All it would take is a software fix that would start a three- or five-second delay from the moment I moved the mouse, and another one that would recognize the particular file folder associated with the album art I choose to point the cursor to before clicking.

The result? I’d get to listen to a much wider variety of music, on a far more regular basis, without having to deliberately take the time to search through my iTunes library. And isn’t making our lives easier what Apple and Macs and iTunes are all about?

Here's the rotten part:

The contest's submissions window was over long before I wrote this post. That's the price I pay for doing what I do for a living -- as much as I really would have liked to submit this idea, I just haven't had time to sit and do anything that wasn't job-related for way too long. As it was, I wrote this little post at about 3 AM this morning. And I haven't even had time today to actually publish it.

C'est la vie.

William Jefferson, Back in the Spotlight

2006-09-11T13:36:00.000-05:00

Hmm. The businessman accused of bribing Democratic Congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana was just convicted ... of bribing Congressman William Jefferson.

Which makes it kind of hard for Jefferson to argue that he was not bribed -- if there's a briber, there must be a bribee, after all.

Businessman Gets 7 Years for Bribing Legislator.

Dean Broder speaks: The Media Owes Karl Rove an Apology.

2006-09-07T12:02:00.000-05:00

Otherwise entitled, "Ray Donovan Said It Best: 'Where do I go to get my reputation back?'"

Read on: One Leak and a Flood of Silliness.

At Long Last, the CIA Leak Investigation Plames Out

2006-09-01T14:33:00.000-05:00

It's not often that the Washington Post eats its words. But this morning, in a rather remarkable document, the editorial board of my hometown newspaper does just that, with respect to the nearly three-year-old investigation of who broke Valerie Plame's cover.

Click here to read "End of an Affair."

Why We Do What We Do

2006-08-09T12:50:00.000-05:00

I have been way too busy over the last two months with my two campaigns to post at all.

I apologize.

This link came from a friend in New Jersey, where I watched the Twin Towers fall, five years ago, from the safety of my apartment across the Hudson River, in Jersey City.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this video montage is worth a million. And then some.

Click here to see it.

Why I haven't been posting

2006-07-13T18:04:00.000-05:00

Because in the last month, I've taken on two new clients that have me hopping -- Diana Irey, running for Congress in PA-12 against Jack Murtha, and Tony Peraica, running for President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners.

Click here to see Diana Irey's web site

Click here to see Tony Peraica's web site

Apologies to readers who have missed my posts over the last five weeks I've been dark. I'll try to post again soon, but these two campaigns are taking up an AWFUL lot of my time.

Funniest line of the day

2006-06-02T09:19:00.000-05:00

PoliticsNJ.com has a piece on its front page this morning regarding dueling press events yesterday in Hudson County: appointed US Senator/Hudson County Democratic Party Boss Bob Menendez officially kicked off his campaign at his old high school, while state senator Tom Kean Jr. held a press conference at the Hudson County Courthouse to denounce Menendez's corruption.

At the bottom of the piece, appearing almost as an afterthought, is a few paragraphs reminding voters that Kean, in fact, faces a primary challenge from a conservative activist -- John Ginty.

Here's how the piece ends:

Of course, not too many political observers in the Garden State are willing to go out on a limb and predict a Ginty win, but the candidate himself remains confident.

"I think I have a decent chance to win," says Ginty. "That's not based on polls – I'm not doing any polling – it's just based on a feeling."

Ginty's web site describes his current occupation thusly: "Financial Data analyst at a New York City-based publishing company."

Let's hope Ginty's clients ask for the hard data when they get a recommendation from him on a proposed business move. His "feelings," I'll wager -- and we'll know the answer on Tuesday next -- are way off.

NJ Senate: A "virtual debate" is no debate at all

2006-05-31T23:18:00.000-05:00

Yes, there will be a "debate" in the New Jersey US Senate race -- but not the kind we're used to. This, from an Associated Press dispatch earlier today:

TRENTON, N.J. -- Candidate debates are standard fare in American politics.

But when the back-and-forth is confined to a Web site, it's called a virtual debate, a new political phenomenon that will be tried in New Jersey's U.S. Senate race beginning in July.

The Hall Institute of Public Policy, a nonpartisan policy think tank, plans to host the virtual debate on its Web site. The expected nominees in the race are Republican state Sen. Thomas Kean Jr. and Democratic U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez.

"The virtual debate will provide a platform to sort out ideas and work collectively toward solutions," Hall Institute founder George E. Hall said Wednesday.

The debate is expected to work like this: A question will be posed to each campaign every two weeks. Their responses will be posted and the campaigns can then respond to the opposing candidate. Viewers also will be able to post comments.

The Hall Institute expects to get through about eight questions before the November election.

This is silly.

This is not a "debate" between the two candidates, and it will not "provide a platform to sort out ideas and work collectively toward solutions."

This will be a test of the two candidates' communications gurus and their ability to skewer their opponents rhetorically, nothing more. The result will be poll-driven, focus-group-tested mush.

It is axiomatic that a "debate," in the modern American political context, is not really a "debate" at all -- at least not the kind of debate our high school civics teachers taught us about, where two candidates face off on the issues of the day, questioning each other and challenging one another's views; in the modern American political context, a "debate" is a joint press conference, where each candidate is tested on his ability to spew forth, in 60- and 90-second sound bites, the stock answers he's practiced until he's blue in the face.

Granted, our current model of "debates" leaves much to be desired -- like, say, spontaneity, for starters -- but at least they offer us some clue as to each candidate's ability to do the job to which they seek election: By putting the two candidates on display at the same time, in the same place, and in an environment where their control is minimized, current debates at least let viewers/voters see how comfortable each is in the glare of the spotlight; let viewers/voters see how well each candidate thinks on his feet; let viewers/voters see whether or not each candidate can make a coherent, if abbreviated, argument in defense of a position.

Now, with this "virtual debate," we are to be deprived even of this measly little bit.

It's not at all surprising that the two candidates in question would agree to this exercise; after all, each will be able to hone "his" "answers" to his heart's content, making sure to cross every T and dot every I before hitting the "send" key on his computer. What is surprising is that an academic institution should be the one sponsoring the "event" -- and that the academic institution should appear to be excited about it.

Embarrassing, if you ask me. On all counts.

NJ Senate: Score One for Menendez

2006-05-31T18:10:00.000-05:00

Action in New Jersey today, as appointed US Senator Bob Menendez, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the general election, issued a challenge to his GOP rival, state senator Tom Kean, Jr., to debate before the end of June. Here's the wording of the challenge, issued by Menendez campaign director Steve DeMicco:

"Even in the absence of details about the Hall Institute's proposed virtual debate, the Menendez for Senate campaign is happy to endorse and participate in an on-line forum on the critical issues in this year's election. We want to emphasize, however, that an on-line forum is no substitute for live, televised, real-time debates between the two major party candidates. And in that spirit, given the urgency of the issues and the magnitude of the choice in this campaign, we issue a challenge today for Tom Kean, Jr., should he become his party's nominee, to meet Senator Menendez in a one-hour debate before a statewide television audience, and to do so before the end of June. Given its experience in conducting debates in every major recent statewide election, we would suggest that New Jersey Network serve as lead sponsor of this debate.

"The Menendez campaign believes that debates are a critical tool for voters to use in comparing the candidates. Campaign debates and forums should be sponsored by television, radio and newspaper organizations that command a statewide audience. They should offer various formats. And they should encourage citizen participation at the same time that they invite informed and probing questions from journalists.

"Both campaigns should sit down to discuss these principles and other ideas for elevating the campaign dialogue. But in the meantime, we hope Tom Kean, Jr. accepts the challenge to debate Senator Menendez before the end of June."

This is a killer challenge: Bob Menendez has been a Member of Congress for 14 years, is a skilled orator, and is well-versed in virtually every policy issue likely to be discussed in a US Senate debate. Kean, on the other hand, has been a member of the New Jersey legislature for just five years, and is not known for a particularly dynamic speaking style. Perhaps more importantly, he has had no experience, other than his current campaign, in speaking to federal issues, and reporters in the New Jersey press corps are, shall we say, waiting with bated breath for evidence that he can do so comfortably, competently, and comprehensively.

The Menendez campaign knows this, and is confident that a one-on-one debate will show Kean Jr. to be unready for prime time.

Hence, the debate challenge -- about which, two observations:

First, the real audience for the debate challenge isn't the viewing public. They'll see campaign debates when they regularly see campaign debates -- in the fall, after Labor Day. No, the first test posed by the Menendez challenge is to Team Kean, and the challenge is this: How will you respond to our debate challenge?

That is, the Menendez campaign is rolling a hand grenade into the Kean campaign's headquarters, to see how Team Kean will react -- and, more importantly, to make sure the New Jersey press corps sees how the Kean campaign reacts.

The New Jersey press corps is the prism through which the vast majority of New Jersey voters will get the information on which they will base their voting decisions in November.

Second, we'll find out tomorrow whether or not the Kean campaign passed the test -- when we read in the New Jersey newspapers how the story is played, if it is played at all. The Kean campaign's immediate dismissal of the debate challenge as a "lame stunt" could become the dominant theme in the media (even though it's not actually a lame stunt -- it's a fairly smart, if predictable, stunt), or the Kean campaign's dismissal of the debate challenge could be taken by the press corps as a sign of weakness.

We'll know in the morning.

But until we find out if the New Jersey press corps falls for Team Kean's spin, this exchange leans toward Menendez. Score one for him.

McCain cancels on Bilbray: another sign of impending GOP loss?

2006-05-31T09:40:00.000-05:00

John McCain has cancelled his appearance at a fundraiser for CA-50 GOP candidate Brian Bilbray.

The reason, according to McCain's office, is that McCain and Bilbray disagree over immigration reform.

But the truth may be something more simple: McCain doesn't want to tarnish his credentials by showing up in a district where the Republican could lose the special election six days from now.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, McCain's office tried to get the Bilbray campaign to close the fundraising breakfast to the local media. McCain apparently didn't want his presence on Bilbray's behalf well-publicized -- even though it had only been added to the schedule recently.

Which is more believable: that McCain doesn't want to talk about immigration, or that McCain doesn't want to have his picture taken with a loser? McCain is the chief Senate sponsor of the immigration reform bill that the Senate just spent two weeks debating. Is it really possible that he would be bashful about that?

It's not like the Senate immigration debate happened suddenly. The Senate schedule was known a long time ago. McCain and Bilbray campaign officials knew when they scheduled the fundraiser for the last week of the special election campaign that the Senate would have just gotten done debating the legislation.

What they did not know when they scheduled the event was just how close this race would become -- so close, going into its final six days, that most local handicappers are calling it "pick 'em."

Term Limits. Please?

2006-05-31T00:59:00.000-05:00

In this corner: US Senator Bill Frist, US Senator David Vitter, US Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite.

In that corner: House Speaker Denny Hastert, US Senator Trent Lott, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner.

Aside from the obvious difference between the two corners -- the Frist/Vitter/Brown-Waite corner all condemn Speaker Hastert's condemnation of the court-sanctioned FBI raid against the office of US Rep. William Jefferson, while the Hastert/Lott/Pelosi/Sensenbrenner corner all condemn the FBI and the Justice Department for the raid -- what is the other, not-so-obvious difference?

Term limits. Or, to be more precise, their individual length of service in the Congress.

To wit, in this case, at least, one can determine a player's likely view on the constitutionality of the FBI search of Mr. Jefferson's congressional office based on how long they've been serving in the Congress.

Mr. Frist promised, when first campaigning for the US Senate in 1994, that he a) would vote for an amendment limiting the terms of Members of Congress, and b) would self-term-limit himself to just two terms in the Senate. He voted for the term limit constitutional amendment in 1995, in the first year of his first term. And he is retiring at the end of this, his second, term.

Mr. Vitter made his bones in the Louisiana legislature by mobilizing public pressure on the state legislature's leadership, and virtually single-handedly forced term limits down their throats. He is currently serving his first term in the US Senate, after having served two full terms in the US House.

Ms. Brown-Waite has only been in Congress since her first election in 2002.

Mr. Hastert, on the other hand, has been in Congress since first being elected in 1986 -- 20 years ago. He is running this year for reelection to his eleventh term.

Ms. Pelosi has been in Congress since first being elected in June 1987, and is now serving her ninth full term. She is running this year for reelection to her tenth full term.

Mr. Lott has been in Congress since first being elected to the US House in 1972, before being elected to the US Senate in 1988. That's 16 years in the House and 18 years in the Senate. And this year he's running for reelection to his fourth term in the Senate.

Mr. Sensenbrenner has been in Congress since first being elected in 1978 -- 28 years ago -- and is running for reelection to his 15th term.

Term limits, anyone?

More on Haditha ... from CNN?

2006-05-31T00:30:00.000-05:00

CNN reporter Arwa Damon was in Haditha with the Marines now under investigation for the massacre that took place on November 19. Earlier this evening, she posted this story to the CNN website telling her tale of the gallantry of the Marines who protected her and her crew while she was out on maneuvers with them.

The entire piece is worth reading, but here are some particularly salient excerpts:

"I know the Marines that were operating in western al Anbar, from Husayba all the way to Haditha. I went on countless operations in 2005 up and down the Euphrates River Valley. I was pinned on rooftops with them in Ubeydi for hours taking incoming fire, and I've seen them not fire a shot back because they did not have positive identification on a target.

"I saw their horror when they thought that they finally had identified their target, fired a tank round that went through a wall and into a house filled with civilians. They then rushed to help the wounded -- remarkably no one was killed.

"I was with them in Husayba as they went house to house in an area where insurgents would booby-trap doors, or lie in wait behind closed doors with an AK-47, basically on suicide missions, just waiting for the Marines to come through and open fire. There were civilians in the city as well, and the Marines were always keenly aware of that fact. How they didn't fire at shadows, not knowing what was waiting in each house, I don't know. But they didn't.

"And I was with them in Haditha, a month before the alleged killings last November of some 24 Iraqi civilians.

"I'm told that investigators now strongly suspect a rampage by a small number of Marines who snapped after one of their own was killed by a roadside bomb.

"Haditha was full of IEDs. It seemed they were everywhere, like a minefield. In fact, the number of times that we were told that we were standing right on top of an IED minutes before it was found turned into a dark joke between my CNN team and me.

"In fact, when we initially left to link up with the company that we were meant to be embedded with, the Humvee that I was in was hit by an IED. Another 2 inches and we would have been killed. Thankfully, no one was injured."

You Don't KNOW, Jack.

2006-05-30T23:33:00.000-05:00

US Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Cutandrun), the former Marine/34-year Congressman who famously called late last year for a complete withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, says he knows Marines operating in the Iraqi village of Haditha last November are guilty of a premeditated massacre of 24 innocent Iraqi civilians.

Appearing Sunday on ABC's "This Week," Mr. Murtha declared

"There’s no question in my mind what happened. It was an IED [that] went off. And you’ve got to put this in perspective. Every day they go out, an IED goes off. And when I sanitize it and say an 'IED,' I’m talking about an explosive device goes off. It hurts somebody one day, the next day it kills somebody, the next day it maims somebody, and I see those people in the hospital all the time. So the pressure builds every time they go out.

"So this particular case, an IED exploded, it killed one Marine, and then a taxi drives up, and when the taxi comes up, there’s four or five people in it, and they shoot those four or five people – unarmed. And then they go on a rampage throughout the houses, and kill people. One woman, as I understand it, from talking to the officials in the Marine Corps, was bending over her child, pleading for mercy, and they shot her in cold blood. That’s the thing that’s so disturbing ...

"I will not excuse murder, and this is what happened. There’s no question in my mind about it."

This, before a single Marine has been charged. This, before a single court-martial has been convened. This before a single Marine has been convicted.

"I will not excuse murder, and this is what happened. There's no question in my mind."

Question: If the events had actually transpired exactly as Mr. Murtha says he knows they did, where was al-Jazeera? Wouldn't al Qaeda's own CNN have been on the spot immediately to broadcast videotape of the dead bodies? Is it possible that the dead bodies found upon inspection a day later were caused by the actions of anyone other than the Marines who were on duty in Haditha last November 19?

I'm not saying a massacre didn't occur, and -- because I have no way of knowing -- I'm not even saying that Marines did not massacre innocent Iraqi civilians. But I'd like a court martial to take place before blame is assigned and declarations of guilt are meted out.

Oddly, Jack I'll-convict-before-a-court-martial-has-been-convened Murtha is silent on another rather egregious abuse much closer to home: the case of US Rep. (and fellow Democrat) William Jefferson of Louisiana, who was videotaped by the FBI taking $100,000 in cash, and then found with $90,000 of that loot tucked away in his freezer four days later.

A Google search of the terms "Murtha" and "Jefferson" together reveals ... not a single word uttered by Mr. Murtha in this seemingly open-and-shut case of corruption by a fellow Democrat.

Let's review: Haditha -- no videotape of the alleged crime. William Jefferson -- FBI videotape of the alleged crime. Murtha: Haditha was murder, "no question about it in my mind"; Jefferson -- nothing.

You don't KNOW, Jack.

Is Rahm Emanuel playing hardball in CA-50?

2006-05-30T13:51:00.000-05:00

Somebody's trying to peel off Republican votes from Brian Bilbray, the former GOP Congressman running to replace Randy "Duke" Cunningham in the CA-50 special election.

And the betting here is that it's the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Logan Jenkins is on to something -- yesterday he published a piece on the special election in CA-50 that ought to set tongues to wagging at the headquarters of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

According to Jenkins' column, automated phone calls are pouring into the district -- on behalf of a third-party candidate on the right named William Griffith.

Out on the extreme far right of the political spectrum, the main draw should be William Griffith, the independent “republican” (note lower case) whose rock-ribbed conservatism has earned him the recent endorsements of the local Minutemen and the super-conservative American Independent Party, which has about 7,000 registered voters in the 50th Congressional District.

In the special primary in April, Griffith was eclipsed – he received only 1,100 votes – but in the runoff, he has the gun/gay/abortion axis to himself, free and clear ...

Like Libertarian Paul King, the fourth name on the runoff ballot, Griffith has less than zero chance of winning a ride to Washington. Still, Griffith could be the Ralph Nader or Ross Perot of this race. He could draw Bilbray blood in the zero-sum game of the runoff.

The political math is simple: True-blue conservatives don't much like Bilbray. It's the gay/gun/abortion thing. He's just too liberal, too GOP establishment, some conservatives believe. In the GOP primary, renegade candidate Bill Hauf is trumpeting that very message.

If Busby steals the safe Republican seat next week and finds herself on the front page of The New York Times as the Democratic It Girl, she could owe Mr. G. a case of champagne. (Then again, he doesn't drink. Maybe a case of Martinelli.)

On the other hand, if Griffith (and King) fade to a percent or two apiece, Bilbray's chances of winning the traditionally safe Republican seat – and then repeat in November – are much improved.

A mystery person(s) evidently has done the math and started dialing for political dividends.

Households in the 50th are receiving phone calls pumping up Griffith, but the candidate has no clue who has commissioned the automated messages.

“I don't know if they're doing it for me or as a tactic against Bilbray,” he admits.

On his Web site (www.williamgriffith.us), Griffith writes: “I do not know who's conducting the phone campaign on my behalf. I am grateful for the enthusiasm of those who know what I stand for, and want to promote my candidacy.”

Nice thought, but the mathematical probability is that a Busby supporter is pushing buttons on behalf of Griffith. It so adds up.

"A Busby supporter?" That would be the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Nice work, Mr. Emanuel.

Reid: "I think it was all one, the way I look at it."

2006-05-30T00:28:00.000-05:00

Hypocrisy, thy name is Reid -- Harry M., to be specific.

Mr. Reid, the Minority Leader of the United States Senate, has been wailing for months now about the so-called Republican "culture of corruption." Despite evidence that he, too, regularly met with associates of the convicted felon lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and despite evidence that he, too, regularly took official actions that benefited Abramoff's clients, and despite evidence that he, too, was himself the beneficiary of fund-raising efforts on his behalf by Abramoff and his associates (including a fundraising event held at Abramoff's offices), Mr. Reid has continued to moralize against the Republicans, insisting that there is no connection between the favors he received from Abramoff et. al. and the official actions he undertook on behalf of Abramoff's clients.

Absent a smoking cancelled check, there is little that can be done, other than to raise an eyebrow in Mr. Reid's general direction.

But John Solomon's new piece for the Associated Press -- Reid accepted free boxing tickets while a related bill was pending -- may have just provided the smoking gun, in the form of a remarkable admission by Mr. Reid:

Reid had separate meetings in June 2003 in his Senate offices with two Abramoff tribal clients and Edward Ayoob, a former staff member who went to work with Abramoff.
The meetings occurred over a five-day span in which Ayoob also threw a fundraiser for Reid at the firm where Ayoob and Abramoff worked that netted numerous donations from Abramoff's partners, firm and clients.
Reid said he viewed the two official meetings and the fundraiser as a single event. "I think it all was one, the way I look at it," he said.
One of the tribes, the Saginaw Chippewa of Michigan, donated $9,000 to Reid at the fundraiser and the next morning tribal officials met briefly with Reid and Ayoob at Reid's office to discuss federal programs. Reid and the tribal chairman posed for a picture.
Five days earlier, Reid met with Ayoob and representatives of the Sac & Fox tribe of Iowa for about 15 minutes to discuss at least two legislative requests. Reid's office said the senator never acted on those requests.

So, to make the timeline clear:

Day One: Mr. Reid meets with a group representing an Indian tribe from Iowa. They seek legislative action. The group is led by Edward Ayoob, a former Reid staffer who had became a lobbyist for Team Abramoff.
Day Two: Mr. Reid busies himself with matters not related to taking cash from Indians in exchange for official action.
Day Three: Mr. Reid continues to busy himself with matters not related to taking cash from Indians in exchange for official action.
Day Four: Mr. Ayoob throws a fundraising reception for Mr. Reid at the offices Mr. Ayoob shares with Jack Abramoff. The fundraiser nets $26,000 for Mr. Reid's campaign fund, of which $9,000 is donated by the Saginaw Chippewa of Michigan, another Ayoob/Abramoff client.
Day Five: Mr. Reid meets in his office with a group representing the Sagina Chippewa tribe of Michigan. Naturally, they're all pretty chummy -- after all, it was just the night before, at Mr. Abramoff's offices, that Mr. Reid saw them at his fundraiser. Again, the group is led by his former staffer, Mr. Ayoob. The group discusses federal programs, and Mr. Reid poses for a photo with the tribal chief.

And Mr. Reid's Money Quote, when asked by a reporter for the Associated Press, is to say, "I think it all was one, the way I look at it."

This Money Quote is the key to the story -- for while the chain of events has long been known, Mr. Reid's rhetorical flourish has not.

Since when does a Member of Congress view official meetings in his office to discuss legislative action and his attendance at a fundraising reception hosted by a lobbyist (at which he accepted thousands of dollars in campaign cash from people seeking his official assistance) as "one?"

Global Warming: Post Two

2006-05-27T18:32:00.000-05:00

Michael Crichton is a one-man media conglomerate:

Author of more than a dozen best-selling novels (including Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Disclosure, Congo, Sphere, The Andromeda Strain, Rising Sun, Timeline, The Terminal Man, The Great Train Robbery, Prey)
Hollywood screenwriter (Twister, Rising Sun, Jurassic Park, Runaway, Westworld)
Hollywood director (Westworld, Coma, The Great Train Robbery, Looker, Runaway, Physical Evidence)
Hollywood producer (Disclosure, Twister, Sphere, The 13th Warrior)
Hit TV series creator (ER)

His specialty is the science/medical/technology thriller.

His latest is State of Fear, a novel about the overblown claims of radical environmentalists -- and the lengths to which they will go to make others believe them -- landed, as usual, on top of the New York Times best-seller list when it was first published in December 2004.

As a fan of Crichton's, I got my hands on it and read it in two sittings. As a liberty-loving conservative, I was pleased that he so deftly punctured the global warming balloon.

About a year later, I was doing some of my regular blog-trolling, and I came across a speech Crichton had given to something called the Washington Center for Complexity and Public Policy (admittedly, a strangely-named organization -- makes it sound as if there are people in Washington rooting for more complexity!).

And I was awestruck.

Without further ado, here's the speech he gave on November 6, 2005, entitled

Fear, Complexity, and Environmental Management in the 21st Century

Global Warming: Post One

2006-05-27T17:34:00.000-05:00

Does global warming exist? If so, is it caused by humans? If so, does it matter?

Al Gore has staked his political life on it. Others -- notably, author Michael Crichton -- aren't so sure.

Sunday's Washington Post Magazine features an extensive article on the skeptics:

Click here to read "The Tempest."

Dowd to House GOP: On Immigration, Comprehensive Reform Is Best

2006-05-26T23:53:00.000-05:00

In the guise of one of his regular polling/strategy memos to the members of the Republican National Committee, Bush strategist Matthew Dowd offers advice to House Republicans preparing to deal a death blow to the "comprehensive" immigration reform bill that just passed the Senate:

MEMORANDUM

TO: Republican National Committee Members

FROM: Matthew Dowd, RNC Senior Advisor

RE: Public Opinion On Immigration Reform

DATE: May 26, 2006

Given the ongoing public and legislative debate on immigration reform, I wanted to provide you with an overview and analysis of public opinion research on this important issue. A review and evaluation of both public and private polls reveals the following:

Americans believe illegal immigration is a serious problem that the government has failed to address in the past. Doing nothing on this issue is not a solution, as Americans want it fixed today.

The public wants a comprehensive solution that includes reform on three fronts: (i) strengthening border security/law enforcement to stem the flow of illegal immigration, (ii) enhancing the avenues through which immigrants can lawfully and safely enter the U.S. for work and (iii) creating a compassionate, practical and equitable way for those illegal immigrants already in the U.S. to legally enter the system.

On the other hand, proposals such as criminalizing illegal immigrants, have significantly less support among the American people.

The comprehensive approach that emphasizes both security and compassion is unifying, not polarizing – it is supported by Republicans, Independents, and Democrats. Furthermore, majorities of Hispanics back it. Therefore, it is imperative for the Republican Party to talk about immigration effectively and comprehensively and demonstrate leadership on this vital issue as we move toward the mid-term elections.

I. Public Polling Summary

Public polls show that Americans want the government to solve the immigration problem. The public strongly supports a comprehensive approach. For instance:

Expanding the Border Patrol. Eighty percent (80%) in the FOX News poll (4/4-4/5) support increasing the number of officers policing the border, and Gallup (4/6-4/7) shows 81% believe increasing the number of Border Patrol agents will be an effective way to reduce illegal immigration.

Creating a temporary worker program. More than two-thirds of voters – and equally large numbers of Republicans – support creating a temporary worker program. FOX News (5/16-5/18) found 63% of all voters support a temporary worker program and 63% of Republicans supporting it too. Similarly, CBS (5/16-5/17) found 61% of Americans and 62% of Republicans support a temporary worker program.

Strong Support For Temporary Worker Program From GOP Voters

Providing a way for illegal immigrants already here to obtain legal status. Proposals to allow illegal immigrants who have been in the country for at least five years and meet other requirements (pay a fine, pay back taxes, learn English, and go to the back of the line) to apply for legal status garner wide support. Close to 80% support such a proposal in the CNN poll (5/16-5/17) and 77% in the CBS News poll (5/16-5/17), including 76% of Republicans. And according to the NBC News/WSJ poll (4/21-4/24), more than two-thirds (68%) support the Hagel-Martinez approach that passed the Senate.

Sending the National Guard to help Border Patrol agents secure the border. Voters strongly support the President’s plan to deploy National Guard troops to the Mexican border. 74% support the plan in the ABC News/Washington Post poll (5/12-5/14), 64% support it in the CNN poll (5/16-5/17), and 62% support it in the CBS News poll. Moreover, the CBS poll shows 68% believe National Guard troops will be effective in reducing illegal immigration.

II. RNC Polling Summary

Examining RNC internal polling sheds even more light on the immigration debate. Our most recent poll (5/21-5/23) by Voter/Consumer Research finds:

Overwhelming support exists for a temporary worker program. 80% of all voters, 83% of Republicans, and 79% of self-identified conservatives support a temporary worker program as long as immigrants pay taxes and obey the law.

When voters are given the choice of other immigration proposals, strengthening enforcement with a tamper-proof identity card (89% among all voters, 93% among GOP), various wordings of a temporary worker program (the highest at 85% among all voters, 86% among GOP), and sending National Guard troops to the border (63% among all voters, 84% among GOP) score the highest among both all voters and Republican voters.

Immigration Proposals, Ranked By Overall Support

Voters don’t consider granting legal status to those already here amnesty. Seventy percent (70%) of voters say illegal immigrants who have put down roots in the U.S. should be granted legal status after they go to the back of the line, pay a fine, pay back taxes, learn English, and have a clean criminal record; just 25% say that would be amnesty and we should instead impose criminal penalties on illegal immigrants in the U.S. Republican and conservative opinion is only slightly lower— 68% of conservatives and 64% of Republicans support granting legal status over criminal penalties.

Voters want comprehensive reform, including a temporary worker program and legal status, not inaction. When voters are given the choice between a comprehensive reform plan of getting tough on border security and a temporary worker program or no reform at all (below), 71% choose comprehensive reform and 19% choose no reform. Support for comprehensive reform is even higher among GOP base voters—80% of conservatives and 72% of church-going Protestants want comprehensive reform over no reform.

· “Getting tough on the border by building more fences, motion sensors, and cameras, and creating a temporary worker program where people can apply to work in this country for a limited period if they pay taxes and obey the law.”

/OR/

· “Not reforming our immigration system or strengthening border security if it means letting more immigrants into the U.S. through a temporary worker program and failing to punish immigrants here now who came into the country illegally.”

Conservative Subgroup Support For Temporary Worker Over Inaction

Republican candidates succeed when they support taking action on immigration. Our poll tested a number of messages, and found candidates who talk about comprehensive reform are more successful than those who focus only on border security. For example, a candidate using comprehensive reform language wins 71%—including 52% of Republicans—when matched against a seal-the-border candidate.

Candidate A “who only supports sealing off the border, stopping illegal immigrants from entering the country, and imposing criminal penalties on immigrants already here”

25% are more likely to support Candidate A

/OR/

Candidate B “who supports comprehensive immigration reform that would beef up border security, enforce laws against companies that hire illegals and creates a temporary worker program that would allow immigrants to work here for a set period of time so long as they register, pay taxes, obey the law, and return home when their permit expires.”

71% are more likely to support Candidate B

Finally, when discussing immigration reform, tone and language are extremely important. To continue to grow the party, we must conduct this debate with civility and respect for our nation’s heritage – as the President has said, we are both a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. That is why the American people favor a balanced plan that secures the border, improves enforcement, enhances immigration avenues AND deals compassionately and equitably with those who are already here.

Bush orders seized documents sealed

2006-05-25T14:17:00.000-05:00

FOX News just reported that President Bush has ordered the documents seized during Saturday evening's search of US Rep. William Jefferson's office to be sealed for 45 days.

This means the investigation of Mr. Jefferson, which has been ongoing for the past 14 months, just got put on hold for another month and a half. To what end?

Justice delayed is justice denied. The American people, and, more specifically, the residents of Louisiana's second congressional seat (who are represented by Mr. Jefferson), deserve to know in a timely fashion whether their Congressman is a crook.

It's bad enough that congressional leaders have been misquoting the Constitution for the last four days. Now the President has succumbed to their pressure.

Not good.

Enron execs convicted on all counts

2006-05-25T11:20:00.000-05:00

Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, the two top executives of Enron, were found guilty on all counts in their conspiracy/bank fraud trial.

Political implications: Ken Lay, as Democrats were quick to point out when he was first indicted, was, through the course of his life, George W. Bush's single largest individual donor. That he has now been convicted will cut two ways:

Democrats will delight in using the episode as more proof positive that the GOP is wallowing in a "culture of corruption." "The President's single biggest donor just got convicted of massive fraud and conspiracy!" they will shout as loud as they can.

Republicans will counter with something along the lines of: "That the President's single biggest donor just got convicted in a prosecution brought by the Department of Justice proves what we have said all along -- that no man is above the law, and that nobody in this Administration allows political considerations to stand in the way of rendering justice where wrongdoing has occurred. Oh, and by the way, all the illegal activity for which Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were convicted took place during the Clinton Administration."

It will be interesting to see which spin wins in the battle for public opinion.

ABC News: The original broadcast report

2006-05-25T10:57:00.000-05:00

Here's a link to a video clip of Brian Ross's report on last night's ABC World News Tonight -- the one that started the whole Hastert-"in-the-mix" ball of wax.

Click here to see it.

ACLU leader keeps "thick files" on his own board members!

2006-05-25T01:13:00.000-05:00

From Wednesday's New York Times:

"The American Civil Liberties Union is weighing new standards that would discourage its board members from publicly criticizing the organization's policies and internal administration.

"'Where an individual director disagrees with a board position on matters of civil liberties policy, the director should refrain from publicly highlighting the fact of such disagreement,' the committee that compiled the standards wrote in its proposals.

"'Directors should remember that there is always a material prospect that public airing of the disagreement will affect the A.C.L.U. adversely in terms of public support and fund-raising,' the proposals state."

The American Civil Liberties Union is going to gag its own board members? Huh?

So the ACLU will go to court to defend the rights of American Nazis who want to march, but will seek to gag its own board members who might disagree with the rest of the organization's board on a matter of policy?

Why would the ACLU want to muzzle dissent, even among its own board members? Doesn't the ACLU pride itself on its reputation for being willing to stand up for the right to free expression, no matter how objectionable?

Here's where it gets interesting. As one reads further into the piece, one encounters this little tidbit:

"When the committee was formed last year, its mission was to set standards on when board members could be suspended or ousted.

"The board had just rejected a proposal to remove Ms. [Wendy] Kaminer and Michael Meyers, another board member, because the two had publicly criticized [ACLU Executive Director Anthony D.] Romero and the board for decisions that they contended violated A.C.L.U. principles and policies, including signing a grant agreement requiring the group to check its employees against government terrorist watch lists — a position it later reversed — and the use of sophisticated data-mining techniques to recruit members.

"Mr. Meyers lost his bid for re-election to the board last year, but Ms. Kaminer has continued to speak out. Last month, she was quoted in The New York Sun as criticizing the group's endorsement of legislation to regulate advertising done by counseling centers run by anti-abortion groups. The bill would prohibit such centers from running advertisements suggesting that they provide abortion services when they actually try to persuade women to continue their pregnancies."

So the first thing we learn here is that there's an internal power struggle going on, and the current Executive Director of the ACLU, one Anthony D. Romero, is involved in a spitting match with one of his board members -- Wendy Kaminer, a writer and social critic whose civil libertarian credentials are not suspect (she's a former lawyer for the New York Legal Aid Society, and formerly wrote for The American Prospect and served as a contributing editor for The Atlantic Monthly, neither of which are known for harboring troglodytes).

Ms. Kaminer's first offense cited in the article is that she publicly disagreed with a decision by Mr. Romero and the rest of the ACLU board to agree to check its employees against government terrorist watch lists as a condition of receiving a grant. She also objected to the organization's use of data-mining techniques to help build its membership. Seems to me she's taking a somewhat hardline civil libertarian position in that dispute, while Mr. Romero and the rest of her compatriots appear to be willing to fudge their principles in pursuit of a larger -- and presumably more important -- goal: the greater political power that a larger budget and a larger membership list will bring it.

Her next offense, it seems, is that she more recently disagreed with Mr. Romero et. al. on whether or not the ACLU should endorse legislation regulating advertising -- in this particular case, advertising conducted by abortion counseling centers run by pro-life groups. For a consistent and principled civil libertarian, what matters isn't the content of the speech being regulated, it's the regulation itself that's offensive. So, again, it appears to an outside observer as if it's Ms. Kaminer who's on the consistent civil libertarian side, and Mr. Romero and the rest of her compatriots who are willing to fudge their principles in pursuit of a larger -- and presumably more important -- legislative/political goal: making sure that women who seek abortions don't fall for "fraudulent" advertising undertaken by pro-life abortion counseling centers.

But wait, there's more. Later in the article, we learn that:

"The uproar their comments produced at the April board meeting illustrates how contentious the issue of directors' publicly airing dissent with policies and procedures has become at the organization.

"Some directors lamented that Ms. Kaminer and Mr. Brittain had shared their disagreement with the paper, and Mr. Romero angrily denounced Ms. Kaminer. 'I got frustrated and lost my temper,' he said yesterday. 'In retrospect, that was a mistake.'

"At the meeting, Mr. Romero did not denounce Mr. Brittain. But board members said he had demanded that Ms. Steiner step outside the meeting room, where he chastised her for the look on her face when he was criticizing Ms. Kaminer.

"'Anthony went on to say that because I was Wendy's "friend" and did not appear ready to join him in "getting rid of her," (by, among other things, lobbying her affiliate to remove her as its representative) I was no better than she was, and then stormed off angrily,' Ms. Steiner wrote in an e-mail message to the board.

"Later in the meeting, Mr. Romero asked another board member, David F. Kennison, to step outside after Mr. Kennison apologized for failing to object to Mr. Romero's attack on Ms. Kaminer.

"Mr. Kennison reported in an e-mail message that Mr. Romero 'told me that he would "never" apologize to the target of his outburst and that his evaluation of her performance as a member of this board was justified by information he had been accumulating in a "thick file on her."'

"When Mr. Kennison asked whether Mr. Romero intended to start such a file on him, 'he asked me what made me think that he didn't already have a file on me,' Mr. Kennison wrote."

WAIT.

WAIT.

WAIT.

The Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union -- a man who serves at the pleasure of the ACLU Board of Directors -- is a) keeping "thick file[s]" on his own board members, and b) THREATENING his board members with them?

This, from the organization that just yesterday proudly launched a national public affairs campaign against the National Security Agency's data-mining program?

Crap. I buried the lead.

How Steven Jobs got me. Sorry, Marty.

2006-05-24T14:45:00.000-05:00

Things are going well for Steven Jobs and Apple computers.

A little more than three years ago, I was asked to spend a week in Taiwan as a consultant for Taiwan Broadband Communications, a cable company owned by The Carlyle Group. They wanted me to advise them on whether they could move a bill through the Taiwanese legislature using an American-style public affairs campaign, complete with broadcast advertising, grassroots lobbying, and political campaigning -- the works. After spending a week there and talking to a bunch of people, I advised them that I thought they could, and I gave them a brief memo on how it could be done. They asked me if I would be willing to move to Taiwan for 6-12 months to oversee the execution of the plan I had written, and I said I would.

Nothing came of the TBC effort -- they couldn't get any of the other major players in the industry to go along with the idea, and in the end they decided it wouldn't be appropriate for them to go it alone.

But while I was waiting to hear back, I began to consider how would I live in Taiwan for as long as a year, living out of a hotel room? (Granted, it was a five-star hotel. Nothing but the best for a Carlyle Group consultant. But a hotel room is a hotel room. Confined. Small. Restrictive. And one without a widescreen TV with a good A/V system for my DVDs and CDs.)

The widescreen TV I could do without. My music collection -- lovingly assembled over the course of decades, with more than 2000 CDs -- I could not.

So I looked, for the first time, at MP3 players. After a few days' worth of market research, it became clear to me that my best choice would be this then-still-new Apple device called an "iPod."

I had initially been reluctant to even check out an Apple device. At the time, I used an IBM ThinkPad, and I adored it. It was easy to use, I had all the software I thought I needed, and it was reliable. And everyone knows IBMs and Apples don't get along.

I was wrong.

The second-generation iPod I bought -- the 30-gig model -- was formatted to work with either Windows or Mac OS X. Granted, the Windows version of the application required that I also purchase a separate Firewire adapter, which led to some interesting email exchanges with a techie who turned out to be in Greece, but once I got everything installed properly, it worked fine. It took me the better part of a week to rip my CD collection to my hard drive so I could then transfer the music files to the iPod. And once it worked, it ... worked. Really, really well.

So well that the moment Apple came out with a 40-gig version of the iPod, I bought one. And then replaced that with the 60-gig version as soon as THAT came out.

And something else was happening: Every time I walked into an Apple store (here in Chicago, on Michigan Avenue, in the heart of the Magnificent Mile; at the Short Hills Mall, in New Jersey; or at Clarendon, in Arlington, Virginia), I was floored by the designs I saw.

The designs of the computers on display -- sleek, functional, powerful. The designs of the peripheral devices on display -- small, functional, powerful. The design of the stores themselves -- easy to move around in, easy to find what you needed.

Meanwhile, I was having troubles with my ThinkPad. I crashed a hard drive around Thanksgiving 2003, and lost everything on it. Nope, no backup. Ouch. So I got a new hard drive installed and started from scratch, even reinstalling the music files that were on my iPod back onto the new hard drive. Things seemed to be fine, until I crashed the new hard drive almost exactly a year after I'd bought it. The good news was, I had learned my lesson -- I had an external drive to back up my data, so at least that wasn't lost.

But now I'd suffered two hard drive crashes on my ThinkPad. Even when it was working, the computer froze regularly, requiring reboots way too often for my taste. And I'd had to fight off all the various viruses that were out there. I spend so much time on the Internet it's the computer equivalent of walking naked through the labs at the Centers for Disease Control -- with honey smeared all over my body.

The overwhelming majority of the evil people who have nothing better to do with themselves than create computer viruses create computer viruses that attack Windows-based PCs, not Macs. Why? I have no idea. Because they hate Bill Gates? I don't know. I don't get that at all. Regardless, they do NOT create viruses to attack Macs. Hell, they're probably creating those viruses ON Macs!

So ... I scrunched up, and laid out a coupla grand for a Powerbook G-4 with a 15" screen, I GB RAM, and an 80-GB hard drive.

And I adore it.

Steven Jobs made a critical strategic decision when he decided to make the iPod available to Windows users. Up to that point, Apple made products for Apple users, period. If you wanted to run a particularly cool Apple software program, you had to buy an Apple computer. There was just no way around that problem. Most people aren't willing to ditch a several-thousand dollar investment in their computer and installed software just to get one new software application, so Apple was stuck.

But with the decision to make the iPod available to Windows users, they got me in the store. And once they did, it was only a matter of time before I broke down and fell for the advantages of the Mac.

Now Apple has gone even further, and crafted a deal with Intel, so Macs now use Intel chips. And they've got a new software/hardware fix called Boot Camp, to make it even easier for Windows users to make the transition.

The only person I know who doesn't like my Mac is Marty, the best computer guy I know. He was the one who first turned me on to the ThinkPad several years ago, and he walked me either in person or via phone through all my ThinkPad troubles.

Last year, I went back to New Jersey to work for Bret Schundler's 2005 gubernatorial campaign, and Marty was one of the first guys who greeted me in the new Schundler headquarters. We were happy to see each other -- in addition to being a great computer guy, he's also been a good friend.

But then his eyes fell upon my sleek new PowerBook, and he began cursing under his breath. I asked him why. He said that he used to sell them, but didn't any longer. Now fearful, I asked what was wrong with it.

"Wrong?" he replied. "Nothing's wrong with it. It's a great computer. But they don't break down, so there's no money in them for the retailers. What you want, if you're a retailer like me, you see, is a computer that works fine until it doesn't, and then you have to bring it back to me to fix it. That's where we make our money."

Oh.

Sorry, Marty.

By the way, if you haven't been near a television in a couple of months, you've missed the new Apple ad campaign. Click here to see them.

"Our" economic plan?

2006-05-24T14:26:00.000-05:00

"His leadership was critical to the development and passage of our economic plan, and he deserves much credit for the prosperity, fiscal responsibility and poverty reduction it produced."

-- joint statement from Bill and Hillary Clinton, on the passing of former Clinton Treasury Secretary/1988 Democratic VP nominee/TX Senator Lloyd Bentsen

Umm.

"Our" economic plan? Hillary had an economic plan?

Hillary's plan was to nationalize health care. Bentsen's plan -- later, for the most part, adopted by President Clinton -- was for massive tax increases and somewhat moderated spending, so that the Administration could claim a $140 billion cut in the deficit in its first year. Bentsen was all about convincing Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan that the Clinton Administration was serious about deficit reduction, in hopes that the Fed would respond in kind and begin lowering interest rates.

Bentsen's deficit reduction plan and Hillary's health care plan were, to say the least, at odds. For her now to make a joint statement with her husband, calling it "our" plan, is ... odd, to say the least.

This post has nothing to do with politics

2006-05-23T14:38:00.000-05:00

But it's really cool.

Click here and follow the directions.

I have never in my life seen such an interesting proof that our eyes can be deceived.

Studying existentialism at 15?

2006-05-23T12:35:00.000-05:00

"The first was when I was fifteen years old and came here for the summer to study the existentialists -- Sartre, Camus ... We were not allowed to speak anything but French!"

-- Al Gore in Cannes, explaining that his current visit is the second time he has visited Cannes

Which leads one to wonder: who the hell studies existentialists when they're fifteen years old?

Jefferson and Adams ... Carter and Mondale?

2006-05-23T10:44:00.000-05:00

From this morning's "The Note":

"Today is a red-letter day for former President Jimmy Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale. They have lived one day longer after leaving office than any other pair. Today marks 25 years and 123 days since Carter and Mondale left office. The only other president/vice president team to last more than 25 years were John Adams and Thomas Jefferson."

Of course, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the nation's second and third Presidents, respectively, were not allied in the public mind the way Carter and Mondale were. Though they had served their new nation ably as two of the key leaders of the American revolution -- Adams as one of its earliest and craftiest political operators, and Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence -- they had split following Independence.

Adams had served the new nation as its first Vice President from 1789-1797 -- a job he disliked so much that he famously wrote his wife Abigail, "My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." Jefferson served during the same time frame as the new nation's Minister to France.

In 1796, Adams ran for President as a Federalist. His opponent: Thomas Jefferson, the Republican. Adams won -- by a margin of 71 electoral votes to 68 (69 votes were needed to win an outright majority) -- and Jefferson served a term as his Vice President. (In those days, the Vice Presidency went to the candidate who polled the second-highest number of votes in the Electoral College. The concept of a Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidate running together as a "ticket" didn't emerge until several elections later.)

But in 1800, the tables were turned, and Jefferson again competed for the Presidency against Adams. This time, the two tied in the Electoral College, with 73 votes each; the election went to the House of Representatives, which chose Jefferson.

So on March 4, 1801, the post-White House clock started ticking on the Adams-Jefferson pairing. The two began a correspondence which survives to this day as an example of brilliant nation-building and commentary on political philosophy.

That the two remained rivals, even in retirement and right up to the very moment of death, was never in doubt -- and was proven when, with his dying breath, Adams uttered his famous lament: "Thomas Jefferson survives."

But Adams was wrong: Unbeknownst to him, Jefferson had died earlier that very day.

The date? July 4, 1826 -- exactly fifty years to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Top THAT, Messrs. Carter and Mondale.

Sometimes you just can't spin it

2006-05-23T08:29:00.000-05:00

In the wake of last week's primary elections in Pennsylvania -- in which a dozen incumbent Republican legislators were defeated, many by novices, because they had run smack up against a tidal wave of voter anger over a pay-raise vote last year -- PA GOP chair Eileen Melvin announced she wouldn't be running for a full term.

To anyone who picked up a newspaper last week, the cause of her decision was obvious: she was the sitting party chairwoman when way too many incumbents went down to defeat. One doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to make the connection.

Unless one is the PA GOP spokesman designated to explain her decision.

Here's how the Tribune-Democrat carried the story:

"SOMERSET — Just days after a dozen GOP legislators were defeated in the primary, state Republican Party Chairwoman Eileen Melvin of Somerset announced she will not seek a new term.

"Scott Migli, the executive director of the state Republican Party, said Melvin’s decision to step down had nothing to do with last week’s primary in which two high-ranking state senators and several Republican state representatives were defeated.

“'It was something she had been thinking about and decided this was the right time for her and the party,' Migli said."

Viguerie: Right Diagnosis, Wrong Prescription

2006-05-22T23:42:00.000-05:00

My friend of two decades, Richard Viguerie, published a provocative piece in yesterday's Washington Post "Outlook" section. There, on page B1, under the headline Bush's Base Betrayal,Richard argues that perhaps conservatives should stay home in November to punish President Bush and the GOP for its apostasy. And just for good measure, perhaps conservatives should be prepared to have the GOP lose control of the White House in 2008, too.

Let us hope that's Richard's musings are nothing more than that -- musings. Because were conservatives to follow his advice and stay home in November, it would be as egregious an example of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face as ever has been witnessed in American politics.

Are conservatives happy with the GOP? No, they are not. In recent months, as Richard correctly notes, the President's approval ratings have been diving -- largely driven by the increasing disaffection of base GOP voters. In the span of just one month, he notes, disapproval of the President's job performance among Republican voters virtually doubled, from 16 to 30 percent.

Richard's list of the President's "betrayals" is long and varied, and is not, to be sure, without merit. Conservative Republicans who voted for George W. Bush for President in 2000 certainly had no reason to expect that his Administration would lead the charge for a new Medicare prescription drug benefit that will be the largest expansion of the welfare state since the days of LBJ and the Great Society; nor did they have reason to believe he would sign the McCain-Feingold/Shays-Meehan Incumbent Protection Act (referred to by the mainstream media as "campaign finance reform"); nor did they have reason to believe he would increase federal spending so much that he made Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter look like pikers.

But I believe Richard goes too far when he cites the President's No Child Left Behind act and the President's failure to veto a single bill as "betrayals" by the President. Anyone who paid attention during the campaign of 2000 could have reasonably surmised that a President Bush would work to enact a major federal education reform -- and that this, in his eyes, would mean working with Ted Kennedy. And why would any Republican voter in 2000 have had the reasonable expectation that he should veto bills coming to him from a House and Senate controlled by fellow Republicans?

Then there are the twin prizes totally unmentioned by Richard: to wit, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. In Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Alito, the President has placed on the Supreme Court of the United States two solidly conservative legal intellects, who can be counted on to influence American jurisprudence for the next quarter century. No small feat, that.

And don't forget the tax cuts passed in 2001, 2003, and just last week. By enacting tax cuts on a "temporary" basis, there's a built-in guarantee for the future -- for what President and Congress in 2010 or later wants to be responsible for letting them phase out, and foist another massive tax increase on the American public?

But I quibble. On the larger point -- that many conservatives feel disappointed and even betrayed -- Richard is quite correct. They feel embarrassed by their support for an Administration that so seriously screwed up the response to a hurricane that they found themselves longing for the days of Bill Clinton's FEMA director; they feel let down by the President's failure, so far, to push for a constitutional amendment defending traditional marriage; they were shocked when the President nominated his personal lawyer for a seat on the Supreme Court, despite her obvious lack of qualification; they feel just as confused about what's going on in Iraq as do their liberal friends.

Suggesting Richard has the diagnosis right, however, is not the same as saying Richard has the prescription right. Sometimes, the proposed cure is worse than the disease.

Suppose millions of conservatives were to follow Richard's proposed prescription, and stayed home in November: the result could well be GOP losses so great that Democrats retake control of either the House or the Senate or both. Of course, this is precisely the effect Richard desires.

But note the first problem with this "solution": If President Bush is the "problem," shouldn't it be President Bush who pays the price? Why should the political retribution be aimed at anywhere other than at President Bush?

The second -- and larger -- problem with Richard's proposed solution, of course, is that the REAL pain of the "solution" would be inflicted on Americans of all shapes and sizes -- and, most especially, on conservatives themselves.

In the last 26 years, Democrats have had control of the White House and the House and the Senate for precisely two years -- from January 1993 through January 1995. During that short two-year period, they: foisted on the nation the largest tax increase in American history; tried to nationalize the world's best health care system, and turn it into an American version of Britain's National Health Service; enacted a "crime bill" that had the government spending money on midnight basketball and dance classes for criminals; banned so-called "assault weapons" that were defined by nothing more than cosmetics, and enacted other "gun control" restrictions so severe even the Democrats who still hold office don't any longer discuss; overturned the Reagan "Mexico City" policy; implemented the infamous "don't ask, don't tell" policy overturning centuries of tradition in the armed forces; allowed women into combat units for the first time; gutted the Beck decision protecting workers' rights to control the use of their own union dues; and implemented Executive Orders that had conservatives wailing and gnashing their teeth. I'm sure I've left out a laundry list of other liberal policies, but I'm getting on in years, and memory no longer serves as it once did.

Of course, the nation's response was to throw the bums out the first chance they got. There can be no doubt that Republicans never would have taken control of the House of Representatives for the first time in four decades if Democrats hadn't had the chance to over-reach during those crucial two years.

Not coincidentally, it was during those two years that the conservative movement -- decimated at the grass-roots level by 12 years of GOP control of the White House -- was able to rebuild and reassert itself.

(The movement's response to Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 was, "Thank God! Now that we've finally got a true conservative in the White House, I don't need to write a check any longer to the American Conservative Union!" And the movement's response to George H.W. Bush's presidency was "No, thank you." To use the American Conservative Union as an example, on the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, ACU had some 1.5 million donors; by the time George H.W. Bush left office twelve years later, that number was down to 30,000. But within two years of Bill Clinton's inauguration, ACU donor rolls were surging back to the million-plus level. Coincidence? I think not.)

Isn't there another way to square the circle? Must conservatives be willing to tolerate at least two years of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel, Education Chairman George Miller, Energy and Commerce Chairman Dingell (again!), and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman? Must we be willing to give up conservative leaders like Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, Jim Talent in Missouri, and George Allen in Virginia, just to prove a point?

Like C.S. Lewis's insight that every choice made represents movement either one step closer to or one step further away from God, I view individual election contests as bringing the nation one step closer to or one step further from conservative governance.

A perfect example can be found in the contest for the U.S. Senate currently being waged in New Jersey between Republican Tom Kean Jr. and Democrat Bob Menendez. Is Kean as conservative as I? Of course not. Few political leaders are. And fewer still are the political leaders in New Jersey who are as conservative as I. But is Tom Kean Jr. more conservative than Bob Menendez? Of course he is. If for no other reason than the certainty of my belief that Kean will vote for Republican Mitch McConnell as Majority Leader, I strongly back him over Menendez.

Some conservatives in New Jersey disagree. These are the same people who, last year, denied their support to Bret Schundler, ostensibly based on their belief that he wasn't conservative "enough" for them. They cast their primary ballots instead for Steve Lonegan, a man who never had any chance of winning a statewide general election, to prove a point. In so doing, they denied themselves the best chance they've had in decades to have a conservative take the Governor's Mansion. And now they are paying the price: New Democrat Governor Jon Corzine is proposing massive tax increases to the Democrat-controlled legislature.

Perhaps national conservatives should look at what's happening in New Jersey right now if they want a preview of what could happen to the nation in 2007 if they follow Richard's prescription.

Teddy Roosevelt, meet Bob Menendez

2006-05-22T14:23:00.000-05:00

One week ago tonight, President Bush gave a prime-time address on immigration reform. Buried 22 paragraphs into that 26-paragraph speech, the President finally found the magic word: "assimilate." It is here, on the question of assimilation, that the immigration reform debate will be decided.

Am I offended that more than a million people seek entry into the United States every year? No, not at all. I'm proud that the country into which I was lucky enough to be born is still seen around the world as a place of hope and opportunity.

Am I scared that hundreds of thousands of them enter illegally? No, I'm not scared. And I'm not threatened. At least not by the hundreds of thousands who come here illegally for the right to pick lettuce or bus tables on their way to a better life. Because if they do it right, one day soon they won't be picking lettuce and busing tables, they'll be farming their own land or owning their own restaurant.

(Granted, I wish the border were more secure for more mundane reasons -- to wit, the threat that terrorists could find easy entry, and we could be looking at another World Trade Center attack right here in Chicago, or Los Angeles, or another major American city.)

If I'm not offended, and I'm not threatened, what is it about the current immigration debate that gets under my skin?

One word: assimilation.

Actually, it's a few words more -- it's the fact that too many of the new immigrants do NOT want to assimilate. And actually, to get even MORE specific, it's the fact that too many of the leftists who still wield power in the media and political establishment don't want new immigrants to assimilate.

Used to be, you came to America, first thing you did was learn English. Every child of an immigrant from a non-English speaking background knows how hard his/her mother or father pushed him/her to learn to speak and write English properly. Those immigrants came here to build a better life for themselves and their children, and they knew that being able to communicate effectively in America was one of the keys to climbing the socioeconomic ladder. So they pushed their kids hard, in the hopes that their children would have a better life.

Learning English was one of the essential elements of the American melting pot -- a notion of ourselves inscribed on our currency, in the Latin phrase "E pluribus unum" ("Out of many, one").

But somewhere along the way that changed. The melting pot is no longer the metaphor of choice for the left's description of America. Now the preferred metaphor is something they like to call "the cultural mosaic." Apparently, the left likes this metaphor better than the melting pot because the idea of a melting pot presupposes the idea of superiority -- the idea that a whole can be greater than the sum of its parts, which apparently is an idea offensive to the left.

America, "better" than other nations? Harumph, says the left. We've got 40 million plus without health care (yes, they say "without health care," when they ought to say "without health insurance," as if not recognizing that there's a big difference between health care and health insurance), too many children are hungry, we work harder and longer than our compatriots in other nations, yada yada yada. America, they believe, is no "better" than anyplace else.

Balderdash.

America IS "better" than just about any place I can think of. More importantly for THIS particular discussion, America is better than just about anyplace any immigrant wants to go. How do I know? BECAUSE THEY KEEP COMING HERE. They're not flooding Sweden. They're not going to Egypt. They're certainly not going to Russia. Nope, they keep coming here, and it's a bit more than a tad ironic that their very insistence on coming to America disproves everything the left thinks about America.

In a recent Pew poll, 85 percent of Americans surveyed said they thought English should be recognized as our national language. In that same poll, 77 percent of Hispanics surveyed said ... the same thing, that English should be recognized as the national leanguage of the United States.

But don't tell that to the left, which clings to its moral superiority the way Mike Wallace clings to "60 Minutes" -- as if without it, they'd die.

When, last week, a simple English language amendment was offered to the immigration reform bill now before the Senate, 34 Senate Democrats voted "no."

Bob Menendez of New Jersey was one of those "no" votes.

Bob Menendez of New Jersey is the child of immigrants who came to America from a Spanish-speaking country.

Isn't that a bit odd? Here's a man whose own parents came to America for a better life. Here's a man whose parents, no doubt, pushed him to learn to speak a tongue that was not native to them. He was probably speaking better English by the time he was four than did his parents.

But now, faced with the task of determining for his fellow Americans what will be the best course of action on the question of designating English as the national language of his own country of birth, he votes "no."

It's a shame we can't arrange for time travel. Because I would LOVE to introduce Bob Menendez to Teddy Roosevelt, who said it best:

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against such men because of creed or birthplace origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American and nothing but an American."

The FBI's search warrant affidavit re: US Rep. William Jefferson

2006-05-22T12:33:00.000-05:00

Click here to read it

New Orleans: 17,000 missing

2006-05-22T01:03:00.000-05:00

New Orleans just took another big hit.

No, I'm not referring to the somewhat surprising reelection of Mayor Ray Nagin in Saturday's runoff election.

That result was only somewhat surprising to those who hadn't been following the Mayoral race. In the last 7-10 days of the runoff, it was clear that Nagin was peaking at just the right time -- he picked up the endorsements of five of the six Mayoral candidates who failed to make the runoff, while his opponent, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, failed to make good use of the lone endorsement from a former Mayoral rival he received; and Nagin received a blessing in disguise when he lost the endorsement of the Times-Picayune, the New Orleans Establishment's newspaper of record; the lost endorsement gave Nagin a backhanded seal of approval in the black community ("If Mitch got the T-P's endorsement, he can't really be on our side, can he?" was the thinking in at least a good number of black households in New Orleans).

(Nagin's depth of support in the black community was one of the wild cards in the campaign. Running four years ago, Nagin had the support of the white business community in his campaign against Richard Pennington, another black Democrat. And just a year after his 2002 victory, in 2003 he endorsed GOP gubernatorial candidate -- now U.S. Rep. -- Bobby Jindal against Democrat Kathleen Blanco, a move that caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the New Orleans black community.)

Nor am I talking about the possibility that it may be the case that Howard Dean and his Democratic National Committee were actively aiding Landrieu -- which possibility ran as the banner headline on the Drudge Report on Sunday night. Landrieu is the sitting Lt. Governor, the brother of the state's senior U.S. Senator, and the son of the last white Mayor of New Orleans, so a DNC decision to actively support Landrieu wouldn't really be all that surprising.

No, when I say New Orleans just took another big hit, what I'm talking about is missing voters: roughly 17,000 or so.

In New Orleans' last Mayoral election, four years ago, 130,475 voters cast ballots in the runoff election. On Saturday, just 113,591 voters cast a ballot -- many, after taking a five-hour bus ride from Houston just so they could cast their votes.

In other words, in Saturday's Mayoral runoff election -- an election where the stakes for New Orleans' future were so high that it can be reasonably presumed that voter interest was as high it's likely ever going to be -- not only did New Orleans not exceed the voter turnout from the previous election, they actually fell 13 percent short.

FBI+Nigeria+Ritz Carlton+Katrina=William Jefferson

2006-05-22T00:09:00.000-05:00

An old political axiom defines an honest politician as one who, when he's bought, he stays bought.

How, then, to classify U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana, whose Capitol Hill office was searched Saturday night, and again Sunday, by FBI agents serving a warrant?

According to documents released Sunday afternoon to support the search, Mr. Jefferson took $100,000 in $100 bills from an FBI informant at the Ritz-Carlton hotel at Pentagon City last July 30. The money was allegedly to be used to bribe a Nigerian official whose connivance was deemed necessary for a corrupt business deal to work.

Two days later, on August 1, the FBI informant called Mr. Jefferson to ask about "the package" -- i.e., to find out if the money had been delivered as promised. "I gave him the African art that you gave me, and he was very pleased," responded Mr. Jefferson.

But on August 3, FBI agents raided Mr. Jefferson's home in Washington, and found $90,000 in his freezer. The cash was wrapped in foil and stuffed into food containers in packages of $10,000.

The bills found in Mr. Jefferson's freezer matched the serial numbers of the bills given to him at the Ritz-Carlton.

Which leads to more questions, and more observations:

First, what happened to the missing $10,000? On July 30, Mr. Jefferson was given $100,000; just four days later, the FBI found $90,000 in his freezer. $10,000 in cash is a fair amount to move in just a few days.

Second, for Mr. Jefferson, at least, it appears there is no honor among thieves. If an honest politician is one who, when bought, stays bought, how would one define Mr. Jefferson -- a man who apparently tried to con even those corrupt people with whom he was doing a corrupt deal?

Third, one can't help but laugh at the fact that of all the places this corrupt business deal could have been taking place, it just happened to be Nigeria. Nigeria, as anyone with an email account knows, is the home of the modern-day version of a con game called "The Spanish Prisoner," in which an intended victim receives a spam email offering millions of dollars in recovered assets, if the victim will first part with ten or twenty thousand to get the process started. According to the U.S. Government, there may be as many as a quarter million people in Nigeria -- including corrupt government officials -- who are engaged in this massive international fraud scheme.

A fourth and final note about Mr. Jefferson: He is the very same U.S. Rep. William Jefferson who, in the wake of hurricane Katrina, used the National Guard to drive him to his house in New Orleans so he could retrieve personal effects, while other New Orleanians were still stranded on top of their homes.

Stephen Colbert is no Jim McQueeny

2006-05-21T17:53:00.000-05:00

Once a year, politicians and the press who cover them lay down the rhetorical cudgels they use to beat on each other, and gather for a "See-we're-really-all-friends-...-REALLY!" dinner. At the national level, this event is known as the White House Correspondents Association dinner, and the highlight of the evening is the President's riff, usually followed by the Comic It Girl (actually, Boy -- I can't remember when, if ever, there was a female comic given the honor) of the moment, skewering the President.

This year's WHCA dinner, held three weeks ago, featured Stephen Colbert taking on the President. In a 25-minute bit, Colbert spoke truth to power in such a brutally head-on manner that nary a laugh was heard in the hall. That is, if you believe what the left-wing blogosphere says. From my point of view, nary a laugh was heard in the hall because Colbert was decidely unfunny. His timing was off, and the jokes weren't that funny to begin with.

The night was a huge disappointment for the legions of Colbert fans (among which I count myself -- Colbert is, in my mind, the funniest comic working today, and his nightly "The Colbert Report" on Comedy Central is must-TiVo television). Being given the honor of roasting the President at the WHCA dinner is the Washington Establishment's ultimate seal of approval; I, for one, was pleased when I learned Colbert would be doing the honors. So when I tuned in to C-SPAN on a Saturday night, ready to laugh as hard as I do during the 22 minutes each week night when I'm watching his regular show, it was extraordinarily disappointing not to be compelled to laugh more than a few times during the whole bit.

Nevertheless, I've included a link here so you can see for yourself, in case you missed it:

Stephen Colbert roasts President Bush and the media

In New Jersey, the event is called the Legislative Correspondents Association dinner. The evening's funnies begin when various members of the press corps do skits and sing song parodies lampooning the state's political leaders; but the real highlights of the evening invariably follow the press's turn at bat, when the former Governors (each of whom is offered rebuttal time at the microphone) let loose with their own observations on the state's politics and political leaders.

This year's dinner featured an added special: a video prepared by Jim McQueeny of News Channel 12. Jim is a public affairs professional by day, and has a long and successful history in Garden State politics (including stints at the Star-Ledger and as a key member of Team Lautenberg).

McQueeny's bit is much, much funnier.

Granted, because many of the players involved in the making of the video are recognizable only to true New Jersey political insiders, many of you who might watch this bit might not get it. But humor only works in context -- and in the context of a video prepared for a dinner where 800 or so of the men and women who rule New Jersey gather to take a load off, this bit is truly funny: the peeks inside the Assembly Democratic caucus, the Assembly Republican caucus, and the Senate Democratic caucus stand out as the best laughs of the bit.

Until, that is, the end of the video, when a New Jersey spectre from the past strides into the picture, complete with Clint Eastwood spaghetti western soundtrack for effect. Now THAT is FUNNY.

Jim McQueeny's idea of a humorous take on New Jersey politics

Given that spectre's return to the front pages of New Jersey newspapers in a decidely unamusing context, one can only wonder if he would have been as willing to help McQueeny if his news had broken two weeks before the dinner, instead of two days after.

El Senor Harry Reid es idiota

2006-05-19T10:20:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, the US Senate, in working through the dozens of amendments introduced to the immigration reform bill now before the body, took up for consideration Amendment 4064, offered by Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma. The amendment, commonly referred to as the English Language amendment, would state as the policy of the United States Government that English is the national language.

Mr. Reid took to the floor and, speaking of the proposed amendment's effect, said, "I really believe this amendment is racist." Which, to a number of observers of the Senate floor, sounded as if Mr. Reid were suggesting that Mr. Inhofe was a racist.

Luckily for Mr. Reid, one of those observers was one of his own staffers, who immediately passed him a note. I have no way of knowing what was on that note (but wouldn't we all love to know -- "Boss, you just called Jim Inhofe a racist!"), but I do know that shortly after the note was passed to him, Mr. Reid assured Mr. Inhofe and those watching the floor of the Senate that he didn't believe Mr. Inhofe himself to be a racist. Not surprisingly, Mr. Inhofe appeared only slightly mollified.

What's truly disturbing about the whole exchange is that Mr. Reid seems not to understand the concept of "racism." "Racism" is defined as "the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish one as inferior or superior to another race or races; prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on that belief."

So the first question is, how are differences between the races defined? Traditionally, races were defined physically -- first by phenotypes (the totality of external physical characteristics, such as eye color and shape, body size and shape, hair color and texture, etc.), and then more recently by genotypes (similar genetic material). The current consensus in the anthropological community, however, suggests that race is more a cultural than a physical phenomenon.

No one, however, suggests that language has anything to do with race. The Australian aborigine who speaks English is clearly of a different race than Muffy Bernard Shaw, whose ancestors arrived in North America shortly after the Mayflower.

That is, there is no "English-speaking" race, just as there is no "Spanish-speaking" race.

And, consequently, Mr. Reid is an idiot. Or, to put it in language he appears to like as least as much as his own native tongue, Senor Reid es idiota.

Busby stuns Bilbray

2006-05-19T03:00:00.000-05:00

That's my prediction for the headlines on the morning of June 7 in the San Diego Union-Tribune and the North County Times, the two daily newspapers that serve California's 50th congressional district, just north of San Diego.

Francine Busby, a Democrat, is campaigning in a special election runoff to fill out the unexpired portion of the term to which Randy "Duke" Cunningham was elected in November 2004.

The special general election was held on April 11. In that race, there were 18 candidates: two Democrats, 14 Republicans, and and two Independents. Under the rules that governed the election, whoever won 50 percent plus one of the votes cast would fill out the remaining eight months of the term; if no one won the requisite majority, then the top vote-getter from each party would compete in a runoff election to be held on June 6.

National Democrats hoped that they could pick up this Republican seat as a fluke, and not without good reason. In any normal year, this district is rock-solid Republican: It's 44-30-26 percent GOP-Dem-Ind by registration, and votes 65-35 percent GOP at the congressional level historically. But given the fact that the special election was necessitated by the resignation of Duke Cunningham (as the result of his personal corruption), whose trials and tribulations dominated news coverage in the district for six months, and given the Democrats' belief that what they call "the GOP Culture of Corruption" will serve as a significant voting issue this year, CA-50 was viewed as Ground Zero of the Corruption Argument: If it could work anywhere, it would be here.

Consequently, national Democrats poured money into the district on Busby's behalf. National Republicans believed the only way they could lose this seat would be if, because of the unique circumstances surrounding the general election, Busby would be able to win 50 percent plus one on April 11 -- so they poured money into the district, too, with negative ads whacking her.

It wasn't surprising that Busby, familiar to the district's voters from her 2004 run against Cunningham (which she lost, 65-35 percent), took far more votes than anyone else on the night of April 11: she pulled in roughly 44 percent of the vote. That was enough to impress some people, but there was a great sigh of relief at 110 First Street SE, in DC, headquarters of the National Republican Congressional Committee -- close, but no cigar.

The next highest vote-getter was a Republican, the moderately conservative former Congressman Brian Bilbray, who eked out a win over the more conservative newcomer/self-funder Eric Roach by 15.3-14.5 percent, or just over 1,000 votes.

Thus, the special election runoff would feature Busby v. Bilbray, and it was widely believed that Bilbray would be able to rally Republicans around him in time for the June 6 runoff election. Several of the other GOP candidates who had made the race -- led by Richard Earnest (a former client of mine) -- moved immediately to endorse Bilbray and rally their supporters around him in hopes of holding the seat on June 6.

The one big holdout at the time was Roach, who bided his time and considered continuing his campaign for the GOP nomination in the primary election to be held concurrently with the special election runoff.

Huh?

That's right: Complicating the analysis of what's going on in CA-50 is the fact that on June 6, TWO elections will be held simultaneously -- the first will be the special election runoff between Democrat Busby and Republican Bilbray, to fill out the remainder of the term through January 2007; the second will be the regularly primary election, so that each party can select its nominee for the full term that begins in January 2007 and runs through January 2009.

Busby, not surprisingly, is the Democrats' candidate in both the special election runoff AND the primary election; right now, Bilbray is the GOP candidate in the special election runoff, but could still have a fight on his hands for the GOP nomination for the full term.

Until earlier this week, it was expected that Bilbray's only potential challenger in the primary election might be Roach, who had already invested almost $3 million of his own money in building his name ID in the district during the course of his campaign in the special election. So again, there were huge sighs of relief at 110 First Street SE when Roach -- who came to Washington two weeks ago to meet with conservative leaders to discuss continuing his primary challenge -- announced he would NOT challenge Bilbray in the June 6 primary.

Those sighs may have come too soon. One of the other Republicans who ran in the special election on April 11 is Bill Hauf, another conservative self-funder (he spent more than $1 million of his own money to win 1.6 percent of the vote). On Monday of this week, Hauf announced that conservative Republicans in CA-50 were unrepresented by Bilbray, and Hauf would run against him in the primary, for the right to take on Busby in the regular November election. Vowing to spend "whatever it takes," Hauf let fly with his first mail piece.

So now Bilbray will be taking hits from Busby on his left and from Hauf on his right for the next three weeks. Hauf says he's endorsing Bilbray in the special election runoff -- even as he plans to spend hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars to win the GOP nomination for the full term. Does anyone believe the vast majority of voters are sophisticated enough to know the difference between the two elections? Is it fair to expect that a significant number of GOP voters will actually be smart enough to vote for Bilbray in the special election runoff, and then vote for Hauf in the primary election?

Likely not. More likely, Hauf's attacks from the right will siphon off enough support that some GOP voters either vote for Hauf in the primary election and skip voting in the special runoff election, or, worse, they could just stay home altogether.

The most recent polling in the race shows Busby leading Bilbray by 47-40 percent. More worrisome for Bilbray: that 7-point lead for Busby represents a 9-point shift since April 20, the last time the poll was in the field, when Bilbray led Busby by 45-43 percent.

Of course, there is one other potential outcome: Bilbray could win the special election runoff and lose the GOP nomination. That result would be one for the books, wouldn't it?

"'Tis only a flesh wound!"

2006-05-18T12:23:00.000-05:00

An item in Thursday morning's Washington Post caught my eye, and I haven't had a chance to write about it until now. So forgive my tardiness in posting, please.

Seems FOX News isn't the only media outlet focusing in on the alligators-in-Florida story. (Which, I must admit, is kind of a surprise to me -- if I've heard once, I've heard a hundred times from my friends in the media that 'the first three letters of "NEWS" are "N-E-W"' -- and if alligators in Florida are "new," I've got some land down there in the Keys I'd like to sell you.)

Anyway, back to the Washington Post. This excerpt comes from a story that ran on page C1 -- the Arts & Living Section:

"Yesterday ... an alligator walked through the doggy door of a woman's house in Bradenton and went for her golden retriever. The woman grabbed a shotgun and blazed away. The alligator escaped with a flesh wound. The neighbors heard shots and called police, who promptly cited the woman for hunting without a license."

Indoors -- and, therefore, presumably within relatively close range -- "blazing away" with a shotgun at an alligator small enough to enter her home through a doggy door, this woman couldn't kill the gator outright, and instead let it escape with a flesh wound? The police shouldn't have cited her for hunting without a license. They should have cited her for bad aim, and ordered her to the local firing range for practice.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

2006-05-18T12:02:00.000-05:00

Late Wednesday evening, a friend of mine here in Chicago -- a conservative (!) member of the Fourth Estate, no less! -- sent an email to a selected few friends and family members. The subject of his email was a speech given by Ronald Reagan in West Berlin in June of 1987, at the Brandenburg Gate, wherein the President uttered perhaps the most powerful six words ever spoken by an American President in the 20th century: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Below you'll find selected excerpts from the speech. But first, a brief interlude by historian Douglas Brinkely, who was asked in 1999 to select and then write about the most patriotic speech given by an American President in the 20th century. He certainly had a lot from which to choose -- FDR's first inaugural ("We have nothing to fear but fear itself"); Harry Truman's address to the Congress in March of 1947, wherein he enunciated what came to be known as the Truman Doctrine ("I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures"); JFK's inaugural ("Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," and my personal favorite JFK line, "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty").

But Brinkley chose President Reagan's June 12, 1987 address in West Berlin. Here's what Brinkley wrote:

"The story of how Reagan came to deliver his freedom-tolling speech is worth retelling. In May 1987, White House speechwriter [now Hoover fellow] Peter Robinson had been assigned to draft an address for President Reagan’s upcoming journey to Berlin, a teeming city that was celebrating its 750th anniversary. Unfortunately, Berlin—although one of the blessed centers of Europe, with its Bauhaus architecture, imposing Reichstag, Tiergarten Park, and smoky cabarets—was divided by a concrete barrier and encircled in barbed wire.

"The Berlin Wall, erected in August 1961, was a monstrous affront to Jeffersonian democracy, human rights, common decency, and laissez-faire capitalism. It had become an ugly, drab symbol of Soviet totalitarianism gone haywire. Obviously any society that had to wall in citizens or, as Reagan put it, “had to pen its people up like farm animals,” was committing an enormous affront to the very notion of justice.

"Not content to just sit at his White House desk to draft such an important international speech, Robinson flew to Berlin, took the pulse of the city, and asked a lot of questions. It was at a dinner party, however, that Robinson came up with the simple but powerful “tear down this wall” phrase. When the host of the party, Dieter Eltz, a retired World Bank official, was asked about the wall, she suddenly made a fist with one of her hands and slapped it into the palm of her other and said, “If this man Gorbachev is serious with this talk of glasnost and perestroika, he can prove it. He can get rid of this wall.”

"Robinson had the line he was looking for, the centerpiece of the thirty-minute speech Reagan would deliver. When Reagan read the first draft of the Robinson speech he loved it, particularly the part about the wall having to come down. But the State Department and National Security Council were in an uproar. They pleaded with the president to drop the inflammatory line about the wall, which they considered antagonistic in the extreme. A flurry of telephone calls and memoranda circulated, insisting that the Robinson speech be thrown away, or at least seriously rewritten.

"America’s top foreign policy experts were vehement that Reagan not deliver the so-called crude and unduly provocative speech, which would only incite friction with the Kremlin. Even on the morning that Reagan arrived in Berlin, top aides pleaded with the president not to deliver the Robinson speech. Reagan told his top advisers that he would consider their recommendation. But on the limousine ride to the Brandenburg Gate, Reagan told his deputy chief of staff, Ken Duberstein, that he just had to deliver the powerful line about tearing down the wall. With an “aw shucks” smile, he poked Duberstein in the ribs and said, “The boys at State are going to kill me, but it’s the right thing to do.”

"Ronald Reagan had the self-confidence to pull off a clarion call for democracy on that June afternoon. Today, the speech stands as a permanent testimony to the power of presidential rhetoric and to one man’s inclination to ignore the conventional wisdom and follow his own beliefs. And isn’t that what we expect from our presidents?"

And now to the speech itself: (selected excerpts below)

"We come to Berlin, we American presidents, because it's our duty to speak, in this place, of freedom...

"Our gathering today is being broadcast throughout Western Europe and North America. I understand that it is being seen and heard as well in the East. To those listening throughout Eastern Europe, a special word: Although I cannot be with you, I address my remarks to you just as surely as to those standing here before me. For I join you, as I join your fellow countrymen in the West, in this firm, this unalterable belief: Es gibt nur ein Berlin. [There is only one Berlin.]

"Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. From the Baltic, south, those barriers cut across Germany in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers. Farther south, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same--still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state. Yet it is here in Berlin where the wall emerges most clearly; here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world. Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar.

"President von Weizsacker has said, "The German question is open as long as the Brandenburg Gate is closed." Today I say: As long as the gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind. Yet I do not come here to lament. For I find in Berlin a message of hope, even in the shadow of this wall, a message of triumph...

"In the Reichstag a few moments ago, I saw a display commemorating this 40th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. I was struck by the sign on a burnt-out, gutted structure that was being rebuilt. I understand that Berliners of my own generation can remember seeing signs like it dotted throughout the western sectors of the city. The sign read simply: "The Marshall Plan is helping here to strengthen the free world." A strong, free world in the West, that dream became real. Japan rose from ruin to become an economic giant. Italy, France, Belgium--virtually every nation in Western Europe saw political and economic rebirth; the European Community was founded.

"In West Germany and here in Berlin, there took place an economic miracle, the Wirtschaftswunder. Adenauer, Erhard, Reuter, and other leaders understood the practical importance of liberty--that just as truth can flourish only when the journalist is given freedom of speech, so prosperity can come about only when the farmer and businessman enjoy economic freedom. The German leaders reduced tariffs, expanded free trade, lowered taxes. From 1950 to 1960 alone, the standard of living in West Germany and Berlin doubled.

"Where four decades ago there was rubble, today in West Berlin there is the greatest industrial output of any city in Germany--busy office blocks, fine homes and apartments, proud avenues, and the spreading lawns of parkland. Where a city's culture seemed to have been destroyed, today there are two great universities, orchestras and an opera, countless theaters, and museums. Where there was want, today there's abundance--food, clothing, automobiles--the wonderful goods of the Ku'damm. From devastation, from utter ruin, you Berliners have, in freedom, rebuilt a city that once again ranks as one of the greatest on earth. The Soviets may have had other plans. But my friends, there were a few things the Soviets didn't count on--Berliner Herz, Berliner Humor, ja, und Berliner Schnauze. [Berliner heart, Berliner humor, yes, and a Berliner Schnauze.]

"In the 1950s, Khrushchev predicted: "We will bury you." But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind--too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor....

"There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.

"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
I understand the fear of war and the pain of division that afflict this continent-- and I pledge to you my country's efforts to help overcome these burdens. ...

"We must remember a crucial fact: East and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we are armed because we mistrust each other. And our differences are not about weapons but about liberty. When President Kennedy spoke at the City Hall those 24 years ago, freedom was encircled, Berlin was under siege. And today, despite all the pressures upon this city, Berlin stands secure in its liberty. And freedom itself is transforming the globe.

"In the Philippines, in South and Central America, democracy has been given a rebirth. Throughout the Pacific, free markets are working miracle after miracle of economic growth. In the industrialized nations, a technological revolution is taking place--a revolution marked by rapid, dramatic advances in computers and telecommunications.

"In Europe, only one nation and those it controls refuse to join the community of freedom. Yet in this age of redoubled economic growth, of information and innovation, the Soviet Union faces a choice: It must make fundamental changes, or it will become obsolete.

"Today thus represents a moment of hope. We in the West stand ready to cooperate with the East to promote true openness, to break down barriers that separate people, to create a safe, freer world. And surely there is no better place than Berlin, the meeting place of East and West, to make a start. ...

"Perhaps this gets to the root of the matter, to the most fundamental distinction of all between East and West. The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship. The totalitarian world finds even symbols of love and of worship an affront. Years ago, before the East Germans began rebuilding their churches, they erected a secular structure: the television tower at Alexander Platz. Virtually ever since, the authorities have been working to correct what they view as the tower's one major flaw, treating the glass sphere at the top with paints and chemicals of every kind. Yet even today when the sun strikes that sphere--that sphere that towers over all Berlin--the light makes the sign of the cross. There in Berlin, like the city itself, symbols of love, symbols of worship, cannot be suppressed.

"As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: "This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality." Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom ... "

What do illegals know that Nancy Pelosi doesn't?

2006-05-18T02:45:00.000-05:00

So, let's review:

There are currently somewhere between 11 and 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

Over the last five years, we have captured 6 million at the border and returned them to Mexico. That's an average of 1.2 million per year that got caught.

But somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 -- every year -- evade the Border Patrol and make it in.

America, it seems, is a pretty darn popular place. At least to foreigners.

Which is interesting, if you listen to Nancy Pelosi, the Minority Leader (read: Top Democrat) in the House of Representatives.

If all you did was listen to Nancy Pelosi, you'd think America was some third-world blot on the face of the earth, where a rich oligarchy rules for its own interests, where workers are enslaved, where democracy died on the night of December 12, 2000, where no one has health care, where no one can get an education, where everything that can go wrong does go wrong, where our nation's finest and youngest are sent overseas to die in the service of greedy corporations. Think Burundi circa 1900 (before it was Burundi), and you've described the America of Nancy Pelosi's vision.

What do illegal immigrants know that Nancy Pelosi doesn't?

If America were really as bad a place as Nancy Pelosi would have you believe, would foreigners really be so desperate to get here that they'd break our laws and risk dying in the desert just to be able to call America "home?"

Because they keep coming. Build a fence, they keep coming. Double the size of the Border Patrol, they keep coming. Announce you're going to move 6,000 National Guard troops to the border, and they keep coming.

And not only do they keep coming, now they have the gumption to stand up by the hundreds of thousands in the major intersections of our nation's largest cities and protest that their demands be met. Of course, rallying to demand government action is something that only works in some form of representative government, where the government actually pays attention to public sentiment. (Anybody remember what happened when mere tens of thousands rose up and demanded that their interests be accommodated in, say, the Soviet Union, or China, or Cuba -- or Poland, or Hungary, or East Germany? Liberals fall strangely silent when you ask them that question. Go ahead, try it. I'll wait. See?)

Which means that the illegal immigrants who've been rallying of late, at least, seem to think our democracy is working just fine, thank you very much, or they wouldn't be taking the risk involved in exposing themselves to the authorities this way.

That's kind of odd, isn't it? Nancy Pelosi thinks American democracy is dead, while illegal immigrants by the hundreds of thousands are counting on a live democracy to have their demands translated into government action.

Sometimes, you just can't make this stuff up.

By the way, is there any other country on the face of the planet that has so many people trying to get in on a regular basis?

Didn't think so.

"Menendez" is Spanish for "chutzpah"

2006-05-17T18:35:00.000-05:00

Here's the first piece I published in New Jersey, on April 27, in the wake of Bob Menendez's introduction of an amendment to the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill then (and now, still) working its way through the Senate:

"MENENDEZ" IS SPANISH FOR "CHUTZPAH"

By BILL PASCOE

Bob Menendez is nothing if not crafty and clever. Witness this week's gas tax gambit, wherein the new U.S. Senator proposed reducing motorists' pain at the pump with a 60-day “tax holiday” on the 18.4 cents-per-gallon federal gasoline tax, to be “paid for” by taking back roughly $6 billion worth of tax breaks currently enjoyed by Big Oil. As a political maneuver, it was brilliant: Mr. Menendez stands up for the little guy by taking money out of the pockets of the greedy, bad oil companies and moving it into the pockets of consumers - what could be better? As a legislative maneuver, however, it was idiotic; as a Constitutional maneuver, it was pathetic; and as a policy maneuver, it was virtually criminal. But that's all right - Mr. Menendez wasn't looking for real action to reduce pump pain, he was merely looking for great headlines. And he got them.

Consider first the actual legislative maneuver: Mr. Menendez introduced the measure on Tuesday afternoon, as an amendment to the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act now moving through the Senate. Here's where he ran into his first problem: Senate rules strictly prohibit legislating on appropriations bills, so another Senator immediately rose to offer a Point of Order (which is, in Senate-speak, another way of saying he cried “foul!”). The presiding officer of the Senate promptly ruled Mr. Menendez's amendment out of order. Mr. Menendez then asked for unanimous consent to ignore the Point of Order against his amendment, at which point the other Senator played his part in the unfolding drama, and objected. The presiding officer declared the matter closed and moved on. Total floor time taken: approximately six minutes.

But those six minutes - and the press conference that preceded them - got Mr. Menendez everything he wanted: national exposure for his efforts to stand up for the little guy by whacking greedy Big Oil.

Nothing wrong with that, assuming this was just a case of a member of the minority party being shut down by the majority. It happens all the time. But what if Mr. Menendez's gambit was, in fact, a far more cynical maneuver - a maneuver based on a proposed amendment that had no chance at all of passing, and would actually have hurt the very people it was supposedly intended to help if it HAD become law?

Suppose, for a moment, that the chamber had been empty when Mr. Menendez rose to offer his amendment, and there had been no one there to challenge him by offering a Point of Order. Would that have made a difference? Not at all. Mr. Menendez's amendment changes certain provisions of the tax code (placing a hold on the collection of the federal gasoline tax, while raising certain other taxes on oil companies), and is, therefore, a “revenue measure.” Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution of the United States mandates that all revenue measures must originate in the U.S. House of Representatives. So Mr. Menendez's measure wouldn't have been able to withstand a Constitutional challenge from the House, either - where House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas is known as a fierce defender of his chamber's institutional powers.

Surely Mr. Menendez - who, as we are constantly reminded, served in the Democratic leadership of the U.S. House - knew this.

But suppose Mr. Menendez merely intended to offer the amendment immediately, knowing it would be ruled out of order, just so he could say he followed through as promised - and that his plan all along was to try to attach the amendment to a tax bill coming from the House? That would meet the Constitutional test. Could that be what he was really planning?

Not likely. There are currently two conferences going on over tax legislation. But a Conference Report cannot be amended, so he wouldn't be able to offer his amendment to either Conference Report. Nor would he be able to attach his proposed amendment to either Conference Report while the conferences were still meeting - neither conference would agree to add a measure that hadn't yet been passed by either house.

Perhaps Mr. Menendez was really getting ready to propose his measure as an amendment to some other piece of tax legislation originating in the House? The only other tax bill coming down the pike is a bill to make permanent the repeal of the death tax. That bill has already passed the House, and is awaiting floor action in the Senate. Mr. Menendez could try to attach his measure to that bill, couldn't he?

No. Senate Democrats have made clear their intent to filibuster that tax bill. They don't want repeal of the death tax to become permanent. And the last head count shows they likely have the votes to stop it with a filibuster. Which leaves Mr. Menendez - and any consumers silly enough to rely on his efforts - out of luck.

But suppose again, for a moment, that Mr. Menendez had somehow been able to overcome the Senate Rules problem and had also somehow been able to overcome the Constitutional problem and had also somehow been able to find a tax bill to which he could attach his amendment. After all, that's all just process, and we certainly can't let process stand in the way of doing the People's Business. What, then, would be the impact of his proposed amendment, on the policy level?

Mr. Menendez says it would shift $6 billion from greedy oil companies directly into the hands of consumers, by relieving them of the burden of paying the federal excise tax on gasoline for 60 days. A straight transfer of wealth, from oil companies to consumers, courtesy of the coercive power of your federal government.

But Mr. Menendez is wrong. Again.

How can that be? Simple - believe it or not, the federal excise tax on gasoline is not collected at the pump. It is collected at the terminal rack, when refined gasoline flows from those huge silos through a massive hose into the tanker rigs you see driving up and down the Turnpike all day long. It is not the actual consumer who writes the check to the Federal Treasury, it is the oil company.

So under Mr. Menendez's proposed amendment, the oil companies themselves will be relieved of the burden of paying that gasoline tax. That's $6 billion that gets to stay in their left pocket … which makes up nicely for the $6 billion that's about to be taken out of their right pocket, as the tax hikes (the second half of Mr. Menendez's amendment) go into effect.

(In reality, it's worse: by reducing one tax obligation by $6 billion even as it raises another tax by $6 billion, the government is actually going to collect another $2 billion or so from the oil companies - because by reducing the one obligation by $6 billion, you've just increased the oil companies' pre-tax profits by that same amount, and they will have to pay a tax on that added profit. But since when did raising taxes bother Mr. Menendez?)

But wait. What about the consumer? Isn't this supposed to be a tax holiday for consumers?

Oddly, Mr. Menendez's proposed amendment does not include a requirement that the tax holiday savings be passed on to the consumer. Read that again: Mr. Menendez's proposed amendment does not include a requirement that the tax holiday savings be passed on to the consumer.

As any adult who has read a newspaper in the last week knows, there are a host of variables that determine the price of a gallon of gasoline at the pump. Those variables … well, they vary, and on a regular basis - oft times on a daily basis, sometimes even on an hourly basis. So just because a gas station owner gets a break on his cost of product does not necessarily mean that he will turn around and reduce his pump price by an equivalent amount; he could well decide to hold onto it, in anticipation of further price hikes in the underlying cost of his next shipment of gasoline.

So under Mr. Menendez's proposed amendment - assuming it could pass the Rules test and the Constitutional test and be attached to a tax bill somehow - the net effect would be to raise taxes on oil companies by another $2 billion, while offering nothing whatsoever of value to the consumer.

But wait - there's even MORE! Raising taxes on “oil companies” doesn't actually do anything to the oil company (for once, Mr. Menendez is right - an oil company, because it is nothing but a legal entity, literally has no soul), but it DOES do something to the oil company's owners. It costs them money, by reducing the funds available to pay their dividends.

Who owns the oil companies? Millions of stockholders own oil companies, that's who. In the case of ExxonMobil, for instance, institutional investors (read: pension funds) hold 53 percent of the stock.

So retired teachers, and retired cops, and retired firemen, all of whom draw their retirement checks from pension funds whose monies are invested in oil companies … these are the people who will actually pay the price of Mr. Menendez's proposed wealth transfer.

Let's recap: Mr. Menendez has introduced a measure that has no chance of becoming law, for which we should all be grateful - because if it did, the net effect would be to take money out of the retirement checks of teachers, cops, and firemen, and put it into the pockets of gas station owners … all in the name of motorists, who will be left wondering where the heck their supposed “savings” went. But that's all right, because Mr. Menendez got exactly what he wanted - national exposure for his efforts to “help” the little guy.

One final note: After making his floor speech and offering his amendment, Menendez left the Senate chamber and returned to his office in the Hart Senate Office Building two blocks away. He drove the two blocks in … a Ford Explorer XLT.

“Menendez,” apparently, is Spanish for “chutzpah.”

NJ Conservatives haven't yet found the next Schundler

2006-05-17T18:22:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, I published two pieces in New Jersey -- one in the Newark Star Ledger (the state's biggest newspaper), and the other on PoliticsNJ.com (the state's most influential political media outlet).

I'll post the first piece momentarily.

About this second piece: too many people in New Jersey apparently think that 2006 is 2001. They look at the GOP primary for the US Senate nomination and they see a conservative outsider challenging a GOP Establishment-backed moderate conservative, and they automatically think that the setting is ripe for another conservative upset.

They couldn't be wronger, and it was important that somebody put on the record what's different about 2006. As the guy who worked that 2001 gubernatorial primary race as Bret Schundler's campaign manager, I was uniquely qualified to be the guy to explain the differences.

So here's the second piece, which was published in the Star Ledger under the title "NJ Conservatives haven't yet found the next Schundler:"

In recent weeks, some observers of New Jersey politics have suggested that this year’s Republican primary contest for the U.S. Senate looks just like the GOP primary for governor five years ago: A moderate Republican backed by the party establishment faces off against a plucky conservative who hopes to pull off a stunning upset.

In reality, the two contests couldn’t be more different: The candidates are different, the resources they bring to the table are different and the campaign environment is different. The Senate challenge mounted this year by conservative John Ginty against party favorite Tom Kean Jr. bears little resemblance to the campaign waged by Bret Schundler against party heavyweights Donald DiFrancesco and Bob Franks. 2006 is not 2001.

Start with the campaign environment. Campaigns are not conducted in a vacuum; they are conducted inside a framework beyond the control of the candidates. The office to be contested, what matters most to the voters, media attention, fundraising dynamics, recent voting history, who’s in power, and a host of other factors combine to create the environment in which the campaign will be waged.

The 2001 primary was a contest to select the nominee for governor; the 2006 primary is a contest to select the nominee for U.S. Senator. Anyone who follows New Jersey politics knows the governor’s race is the one that gets all the action. Media attention is much higher in a governor’s race than in a race for the U.S. Senate; consequently, the challenge Ginty will face in building support for his candidacy will be a much more difficult challenge than the one faced by Schundler. Ginty’s campaign will be forced to rely far more heavily on paid advertising to communicate to primary voters.

Further, at the time of the 2001 primary, the GOP had held the governor’s mansion for 16 of the previous 20 years. That created the opportunity for a powerful "change vs. more of the same" theme - an opportunity the Schundler campaign seized and used against DiFrancesco and then Franks, who had been key players in the state party’s dominance of New Jersey politics. Ginty will not be able to use that theme against Kean.

Voter concerns in 2001, too, were very different. That contest took place before 9/11, and I can’t recall anyone talking about homeland security; property taxes, education and Parkway tolls were the key issues. In each case, Schundler was more in tune with GOP primary voters than either DiFrancesco (who as acting governor was the consensus favorite of the party establishment until he dropped out of the race) or Franks (who stepped forward to carry the establishment’s banner after DiFrancesco’s withdrawal). But in 2006, the issues matrix is totally different, and Kean is far closer to primary voters than either DiFrancesco or Franks were. Ginty will not be able to draw as clear a contrast.

Beyond the different environments are differences in the candidates involved, and the assets they bring to the table.

In 2001, Schundler’s most important asset was the fact that he was Bret Schundler. He was a political rock star. Brilliant, confident, courageous and decisive, he was a darling of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and national conservative and GOP circles. He was a leader people were willing to follow.

From that initial and fundamental asset flowed another: Schundler’s nine-year reign as mayor of Jersey City. This did two things for his gubernatorial candidacy, strategically speaking. First, it offered a quick and easy rebuttal to the argument that he was "too conservative" to win a statewide race in New Jersey (Jersey City is 69 percent Democrat by registration, against just 6 percent Republican; if he could win there, he could win anywhere). This was a major selling point to GOP primary voters.

Second, his tenure as mayor gave him a governing record on which he could run. It made him credible as a potential chief executive. He had led a city and managed a government. He had cut taxes, slashed the crime rate and held the line on spending, all by (forgive the cliché) thinking outside the box.

That governing record gave him a powerful positive message - "The Jersey City Success Story" - which, in turn, created two more key assets: troops and money. For years, Schundler had cultivated Republican leaders, willingly using his political influence on their behalf. Just as important, Schundler had cultivated key grass-roots leaders. Consequently, the "Schundler Army" existed long before he ever announced his candidacy - they were just waiting for orders.

But most voters, even primary voters, are not activists. So while Schundler’s support among activists was relatively high, his support among GOP primary voters would, in the end, be a function of communicating to them. And communication requires money.

Perhaps too few now remember the night in February 2001 when Schundler finance chairman Larry Bathgate - a leading member of the state Republican establishment - packed the ballroom of New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel with 800 donors. Together, Bathgate and Schundler ensured that the primary campaign would be fully funded, to the tune of nearly $6 million. That money allowed for a precisely targeted advertising campaign aimed at the most likely GOP primary voters.

John Ginty, to put it mildly and charitably (I have known Ginty since that 2001 primary campaign, and consider him a friend), does not have these assets.

The political environment is different. The candidates are different. The assets they bring to the campaign are different. 2006 is not 2001.

Good fences, good neighbors ... and Bob Menendez

2006-05-17T17:20:00.000-05:00

Earlier today the US Senate voted by a margin of 83-16 to add hundres of miles of fencing along the border between the US and Mexico. No Republican voted against the amendment, and the overwhelming majority of Democrats voted for it.

The 15 Democrats who voted against it (as did Jim Jeffords of Vermont, the Republican-turned-Independent) were Daniel Akaka and Daniel K. Inouye, both of Hawaii; Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico; Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, both of Washington; Christopher Dodd and Joseph I. Lieberman, both of Connecticut; Richard J. Durbin and Barack Obama, both of Illinois; Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin; Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts; Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, both of New Jersey; Jack Reed of Rhode Island, and Paul Sarbanes of Maryland.

So twice as many Democrats voted for this common-sense amendment as voted against it.

But Bob Menendez decided he'd rather be a minority within a minority.

Interesting.

Of the 15 Democrats who voted against this common sense proposal, only Akaka, Bingaman, Cantwell, Lieberman, Feingold, and Menendez are in cycle, running for reelection in November.

Bob Menendez, appointed to his seat in the US Senate in January upon the inauguration of former-Senator/current NJ Governor Jon Corzine, is widely viewed by the DC political establishment as one of the two most vulnerable Democratic incumbent running for reelection in 2006 (the other being Maria Cantwell of Washington).

Does Menendez know something we don't?

On the MPA

2006-05-17T16:25:00.000-05:00

That's the Marriage Protection Amendment, for the uninitiated.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, under the chairmanship of Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, is scheduled to take up for consideration the Marriage Protection Amendment tomorrow morning at 9 AM. Assuming it passes the GOP-dominated committee, it will be scheduled for floor action in the US Senate during the week of June 5.

Here's what was introduced as S.J.Res. 1 on January 24, 2005:

109th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. J. RES. 1

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to marriage.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

January 24, 2005

Mr. ALLARD (for himself, Mr. INHOFE, Mr. LOTT, Mr. ENZI, Mr. DEMINT, Mr. SANTORUM, Mr. CRAPO, Mr. SESSIONS, Mr. VITTER, Mr. THUNE, Mr. ALEXANDER, Mr. FRIST, Mr. TALENT, Mr. BURR, Mrs. HUTCHISON, Mr. KYL, Mrs. DOLE, Mr. MARTINEZ, Mr. ISAKSON, Mr. MCCONNELL, Mr. HATCH, Mr. ROBERTS, Mr. CORNYN, Mr. STEVENS, and Mr. COBURN) introduced the following joint resolution; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

JOINT RESOLUTION

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to marriage.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States:
`Article--

`SECTION 1. This article may be cited as the `Marriage Protection Amendment'.
`SECTION 2. Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.'.

Note that it was given the designation Senate Joint Resolution 1 -- "1" being the key. Though it was introduced by Wayne Allard of Colorado, its designation as the FIRST joint resolution (read: Constitutional amendment) was chosen by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

My friend Dick Polman, one of the best political reporters in the country -- he writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer -- just asked me via email whether or not I thought moving the marriage amendment to the floor was a good political strategy for a GOP struggling to get things right in time for the November elections.

Here's how I responded:

"According to recent polls, the biggest reason for the President’s drop in the polls is that a significant portion of the Republican base — upwards of 30 percent — now disapprove of his job performance. This is an historic turnaround for him — through the course of his first term, and into the 2004 election, he was holding 90 percent support among Republicans. Bringing back disaffected Republicans is the fastest way to return his overall job approval ratings to his historic norm, and, therefore, one of the keys to rebuilding the GOP coalition in time for the November elections.

"The first question, then, is to determine what’s causing the disaffection among the “missing” Republicans. I see no reason to believe that it’s dissatisfaction on the social front — Republicans are increasingly unhappy over Iraq, just as is the rest of the country. And Republicans (and conservatives in particular) are VERY unhappy about continued out of control federal spending. Many Republicans were unhappy about the state of play on the social issues front two years ago, and they’re still unhappy — but I don’t see them being any MORE unhappy than they were.

"Nevertheless, it’s clear that the missing Republicans who are most likely to be moved to work their butts off for the Party’s candidates in the mid-term elections are the social conservatives. They always have been. On the one hand, they’ve gotten two huge thank-yous as a result of their work in the 2004 elections — their thank-yous are named Roberts and Alito, and they now sit on the Supreme Court. But that’s clearly not enough, because there are two issues that are motivating them in addition to court appointments — federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, and the Federal Marriage Amendment. They worked hard to get George W. Bush — and a Republican Senate and a Republican House — reelected in 2004, and they have every right to expect that their concerns will be addressed.

"Remember, too, that strategists, when laying out a legislative strategy to serve a political end, don’t just look at showing party commitment to coalition groups’ priorities; they also look to what issues can be used to define the electoral terrain to their advantage. The country overwhelmingly opposes the new “definition” of marriage being written by liberal activist judges — in every state where the matter has been put before the voters, traditional marriage has won by a 2-1 margin. It isn’t just “social conservatives” who are winning by those margins — when you get 70-30 and 65-35 splits on these issues, you’re clearly going way beyond the social conservative base, and reaching into Independent territory.

"So ... Is this a good strategy for the Party? Yes, it is, to the extent that it moves the electoral battleground to a terrain where one side is defending traditional marriage, and the other side is defending liberal activist judges."

Then I remembered something I had written on this blog a few nights ago, and I sent him another email:

"I forgot to add:

"The depth of support for traditional marriage can be seen in DNC Chairperson Howard Dean’s recent interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network, in which he tried to reduce his presumed audience’s opposition to Democrats by stating — quite incorrectly, as he was later forced to acknowledge — that “The Democratic Party platform from 2004 says that marriage is between a man and a woman. That's what it says."

"Here’s your potential money quote from me:

"When the chairman of the opposing party goes on national television and tries to get away with a bald-faced lie to make voters think his party stands with them on a given issue, you know it’s an issue that helps you and hurts them."

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, Mr. Snow

2006-05-16T17:59:00.000-05:00

Tony Snow is a racist?

No, of course not.

But don't tell that to Donna Brazile, the Democratic Party uberconsultant and former Gore 2000 campaign manager who happens to be African American.

During the early minutes of Snow's first on-camera White House briefing earlier today, he refused to be drawn into commenting on the NSA's alleged data mining program, and used a phrase deemed offensive by some African Americans. Here's what he actually said:

"Having said that, I don't want to hug the tar baby of trying to comment on the program -- the alleged program -- the existence of which I can neither confirm nor deny."

At which point, apparently, Donna Brazile's phone began ringing off the hook with calls from irate African Americans demanding God knows what of Snow, simply because he used the phrase "tar baby." She dutifully called April Ryan, the White House reporter for the American Urban Radio Network, to tell Ryan that her phone was ringing off the hook. Ryan filed a story on her network.

"Tar baby," as anyone with even a modicum of knowledge of American folklore can tell you, comes from the stories of Uncle Remus -- B'rer Rabbit, and B'rer Fox, and all that. Here's a link to the original story: The Wonderful Tar Baby

I first remember reading the stories of Uncle Remus in a collection of books by Walt Disney that my parents bought for me while I was still in elementary school. Walt Disney himself brought the stories to the big screen in 1946, in "Song of the South" -- which upon its release was hailed as Disney's greatest accomplishment yet. The movie was Disney's first live action/animation feature-length film, and it wowed crowds all over the world -- so much so that it was released again in 1956, 1972, 1980, and 1986.

So, Mr. Snow, while Donna Brazile may be upset with you, at least you're in good company -- and I'll take Walt Disney over Donna Brazile any day of the week. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah!

West Wing, RIP

2006-05-16T16:17:00.000-05:00

Sunday night's episode of West Wing, entitled "Tomorrow," was the last of the series. Based on running conversations I've had with friends and colleagues over the years, I must be one of the few (if not only) conservatives out there who can say, with all sincerity, I will miss the show.

No other television series in history won more Emmy Awards for Best Drama.

No other television series in history ever came as close to portraying what actually goes on at the highest levels of national politics.

No other television series in history found a way to regularly show the ongoing conflict between principled idealism and cold, hard, nut-cutting realism.

When the show first began, seven years ago, it was a television show driven by its writing -- to a fault. No one single person, let alone an entire cast, could ever really be as on-the-spot brilliant with the devilish ripostes as were the characters who wandered the halls of WW. But it sure made for good dialogue.

Over the years, though, it was the acting that took over. Martin Sheen, Stockard Channing, John Spencer, Allison Janney, Bradley Whitford, Richard Schiff, Rob Lowe, Dule Hill, Janel Moloney, Josh Molina, Mary McCormack, Kristin Chenoweth, Lily Tomlin, and Emily Proctor -- among the show's regular cast -- created characters who were believable BECAUSE they were flawed, each in his/her own special way: Bartlet the pedantic knowitall, Leo the reformed alcoholic, Josh the overachieving realist, Toby the condescending moralist ...

I, for one, do not count myself among those fans who, in the last three years of the show -- dated to the departure of series creator Aaron Sorkin -- thought that it had suffered greatly. In fact, I think some of the highlights of the last three years stand up very well to the highlights of the first four.

Which is what made Sunday evening's series finale so terribly disappointing.

A friend who knows of my fondness for the TV show IMed me on Monday morning. "So, did you cry last night over West Wing?"

"Yes," I replied. "I was bored to tears."

Granted, the show's writers were in a box: there were an awful lot of loose ends out there that needed to be tied up. Because the final year began with a scene that showed us where everybody was three years from now, the final season had to move along a story arc that would set the stage for three years from now: Toby as a professor of political science at Columbia, CJ and Danny married, Charlie in law school at Georgetown, Will as a Member of Congress, etc.

But still ... the show seemed to move along at a glacial pace. It was as if the writers were determined to focus on just one or two of the key transition cliches -- the tradition of the outgoing press secretary, for instance, penning a note to the incoming press secretary, to leave in the flak vest that's traditionally handed off; the personal letter from the outgoing President to the incoming President; etc.

And then ... then there was the most colossal screw-up I've ever seen on an episode of WW: to wit, the pedantic knowitall President's response to his wife when she asked who was the numbskull who came up with the idea of an outdoor ceremony in January. "Franklin, Adams, Jefferson," or something to that effect was the President's response. In fact, from 1789 through 1937, the Inauguration of a new President took place on March 4 of the year following the election; in 1937, just in time for FDR's second inauguration, the 20th Amendement to the Constitution kicked in, and Inauguration Day was moved to January 20. How that one got by the technical consultants escapes me.

And then that screw-up was followed by another major clunker: As she leaves the White House for the very last time, and walks out onto Pennsylvania Avenue, outgoing chief of staff CJ Cregg is approached by a man and his child, tourists who apparently unaware of the big goings-on of Inauguration Day. And why should they be aware? After all, there are no bleachers erected on Pennsylvania Avenue, no marching bands, no horses, no tens of thousands of people lining the parade route -- at the EXACT moment when Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House should be jammed with wall-to-wall people, there are but a few tourists meandering about.

Oops.

Even with these screw-ups in the final episode, though, WW was the best thing on television.

Except for, maybe, The Sopranos. Which, of course, is also at its heart a character- and writing-driven drama about ... politics.

Gore and Gingrich: The More Things Change ...

2006-05-16T12:47:00.000-05:00

The more they stay the same. Sometimes a line is so good it's worth using again ... and again ... and again.

In the space of 12 hours between Saturday night at 10:30 PM CDT and Sunday morning at 10:30 AM CDT, I saw two major political figures of the last decade of the last century, acting to all the world as if they should be taken seriously as potential national leaders -- presidential candidates in 2008, even? -- for the future: Al Gore opened Saturday Night Live sitting behind the desk in the "Oval Office," giving a speech to the nation as if he were midway through his second term; Newt Gingrich appeared for an extended interview with Tim Russert on Meet the Press the following morning.

Each was, in his own way, nothing short of stupendous.

Here's a link to see the Gore bit:

Click here

In this bit, Gore showed that he has mastered the art of self-deprecating humor. I have no idea how many times he had to practice the lines, and I have no idea who wrote the bit for him. (Al Franken? That'd make sense.) But while the piece was definitely well-written -- Gore even mocked SNL's 2000 mocking of him, referring to the "lockbox" on two occasions -- it was Gore's delivery that made the piece work. He looked comfortable playing a President on TV, and even the more outrageous lines were delivered in a tone that was a perfect blend of gravity and levity.

Could Gore run again in 2008? Sure, why not? Were he to do so, he'd be in good company. His career arc then would look eerily similar to one of the Left's greatest boogeymen: a war veteran who came back from war, served two terms in the House before getting elected to the US Senate, then was chosen for his party's national ticket and served as Vice President to a very successful President for eight years, at the end of which time he ran for President and lost in one of the closest elections in American history, complete with still-believed allegations of vote-stealing and corrupt counting; this guy then went away, sat out a Presidential cycle, and came roaring back 8 years after that first presidential loss to claim his party's nomination on the way to winning the White House.

His name: Richard Nixon.

Like Nixon, Gore served his country in a time of war, then came home and ran for Congress; 8 years in the House, followed by 8 years in the Senate, followed by 8 years as Vice President, followed by a Presidential loss that still rankles half the country, six years later. Granted, the timing isn't the same -- Nixon only served two terms in the House before getting elected to the Senate, and was only a third of the way into his first Senate term when he was chosen as Dwight Eisenhower's VP running mate in 1952 -- but the career arc is.

The key for Gore is that in this one bit -- which is already generating major buzz in the left-wing blogosphere (the link posted above is a link from CrooksandLiars.com, one of the most widely-read of the leftie blogs) -- Gore has attacked his single biggest vulnerability: that he was too pompous, too arrogant/insecure, too stuffy to be President. Now, it appears, he ... gets it.

Gingrich, on the other hand, always had a different problem in terms of national perception -- he was never able to overcome the perception with which he branded himself early in his career, when he led a band of GOP conservative back-benchers to the well of the House night after night for "Special Orders," long monologues about the faults of the Democratic Party, which earned for Newt the sobriquet "bomb thrower."

His appearance on Sunday's MTP was nothing if not sober. No bomb-throwing visible at all.

Here's a link to the transcript: Gingrich on MTP transcript

And here's a link to the full broadcast: Gingrich MTP video

It's almost enough to make one wish for a Gore-Gingrich showdown in 2008.

Almost.

It was Bobby's assassination, not John's, that began the Democrats' Long March to wimpiness

2006-05-16T01:48:00.000-05:00

I just posted a response to a question posed by my friend Tom Roeser at his blog, to wit: when did the Democrats become such wimps, anyway? (I'm paraphrasing. Tom is too nice and too Old School to refer to the Democrats as "wimps." I am not known for being "nice" -- to my opponents, anyway -- and I'm certainly not Old School.) So I've decided to post my response, in somewhat longer form, here.

Tom began his post by suggesting it was the assassination of John F. Kennedy that began the Democrats' march to the mush.

I think Tom is half right on this one, so I'll agree with him halfway. That is, it WAS the Kennedy assassination that began the process of changing the Democrats from the Cold Warriors abroad/welfare statists at home to just plain wimps everywhere -- but it was the assassination of ROBERT Kennedy, not John, that began the Long March.

Consider: Even after November 1963, the Democrats nominated for President LBJ (in 1964) and HHH (in 1968) -- the last two committed Cold War Liberals to serve in either of the nation's two highest offices.

It was at the Democratic National Convention of 1968, right here in Chicago, that the house came tumbling down, scant weeks after Bobby Kennedy's assassination in Los Angeles, where he had just won the California primary -- and with it, likely, the Democratic nomination.

We've all seen the footage of Chicago cops busting heads in Grant Park. We've all seen the footage of Mayor Daley, from the floor, screaming obscenities at Sen. Abe Ribicoff, at the podium. And we all know how the national Democratic Party leaders swore in the aftermath, "never again."

What far fewer are aware of, though -- and I'd bet that a lot of the readers of Tom's blog are among the relatively few who DO know -- is that it was from the ruins of the 1968 Democratic National Convention that our entire presidential nominating process was f'ed up.

Right up to and through 1968, presidential candidates were nominated in the proverbial smoke-filled back rooms. Primary elections to choose delegates to the national conventions weren't important -- Hubert Humphrey won the 1968 Democratic nomination without winning a SINGLE state primary election, and Richard Nixon didn't even win the most votes cast by GOP voters in primaries across the country. (That honor went to California Governor Ronald Reagan, who ran as a favorite son in the CA GOP primary unopposed -- and in doing so, won 1.6 million GOP primary votes, in a year when Richard Nixon won a total of 1.5 million GOP primary votes in all the other state primaries combined.)

But at the brutal 1968 Democratic convention, the Democratic Party's Elders established the McGovern-Frasier Commission, to recommend changes to the rules governing the selection of delegates to the national convention. The creation of the commission was, at the time, seen as nothing more than a bone to be thrown to the protesters. It was meant to quiet them down, to give them a "victory" they could claim over a Democratic Party establishment they despised.

Those rules were adopted in 1970, just in time for them to govern the 1972 nominating process.

Out were the old-line, established pols, the guys who -- while not necessarily practicing democracy as we know it -- knew how to pick candidates who could a) get elected and b) do at least a reasonable job once in office. In were the new party activists, the special interest groups, the single issue groups -- in other words, the left-most of the influences on the national Democratic Party.

Their next two nominees were South Dakota Senator George McGovern, who lost 49 states on a bring-them-home-now platform, and Jimmy Carter, who famously opined at Notre Dame that we as a nation were "over our inordinate fear of communism" -- leaving us to wonder if he still had even an ORDINATE fear of communism. The poor citizens of Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Mozambique, Angola, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam (each of whose nations fell to Soviet-backed communists between 1975-79) wondered, too.

Now, how did a simple change in the rules of the delegate selection process lead the Democrats away from their historically strong anti-communist position on foreign policy? Well, by changing the rules, you change the outcome. A candidate and a campaign strategy that works under one set of rules won't work under another; and a candidate and a campaign strategy that wouldn't have worked under the old set of rules may well flourish under the new set.

That, in fact, is exactly what has happened to our presidential nominating process. We now nominate candidates for President in a far different way from the way we did just 40 years ago.

It should come as no surprise, then, that once we changed the way we nominate Presidential candidates -- and, therefore, Presidents -- we would change the kind of people we end up nominating.

To win the nomination under the old system required coalition-building skills. Negotiating skills, of the kind necessary to wheedle and woo in the back rooms. I'll trade you a subcabinet post, Mr. State Delegation Chairman, for your bloc of delegate votes, etc. Winning required successful government experience. The Establishments of both major political parties acted as the National Vetters, ensuring that no one could get into the Oval Office who hadn't at least first passed their minimal screening.

Under the new rules, though, the National Vetters lost their power. Candidates no longer had to kowtow to Party Elders. Because delegates were to be selected openly, via primary elections, candidates could appeal over the heads of the Party Bosses and directly to the masses. No longer was long experience and coalition building skill required; instead, a good head of hair, the ability to deliver a good speech, the talent for packaging political messages into soundbites suitable for TV responses, and a willingness to spend ungodly amounts of time on the phone raising money were the new coins of the realm.

In came the more extreme members of both parties. Because candidates found they could rally more votes on the fringes of their parties, they played to them -- candidates are ambitious people, and most of them can't honestly be called dumb. So they went where the votes were. And because the votes in Democratic presidential primaries were on the left end of the spectrum, that's where Democratic candidates went.

Mayor Richard J. Daley was a well-known anti-communist. He must be rolling over in his grave at the thought that it was his chaotic convention in 1968 that led to the Democrats' abandoning their strong foreign policy/national security credentials.

Karl Rove at the American Enterprise Institute

2006-05-15T23:41:00.000-05:00

You can read it here.

Howard Dean: What I MEANT to say was ...

2006-05-15T20:19:00.000-05:00

Howard Dean, chairperson of the Democratic National Committee, just appeared for an interview on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. Interview opening question from Stewart: "President Bush is very low in the opinion polls. I believe he's now at negative 13. People are displeased with his handling of Iraq, the economy, his family, Katrina ... How will the Democratic Party blow this?"

Dean explained that he hoped that this time, the Dems wouldn't blow it. Seems that two weeks ago, Dems knocked on a million doors -- in Dean's words, "a thousand groups of people went out and knocked on a million doors, in every state in the country, with a message that we hope Americans will like." Stewart: "So Democrats are now as powerful as some of the Jehovah's Witnesses. Is that what you're telling me?"

[Math break: to knock on one million doors, 1,000 groups would have to knock on 1,000 doors each. The typical precinct walk/door-knocking exercise can hit roughly 25 doors per hour per person. That means that EACH of Dean's 1,000 groups would have had to devote 40 man hours to hit 1,000 doors. Which leads me to wonder if Dean's numbers aren't just as far off as that banshee yell with which he let loose two years ago in Iowa.]

Then Dean pulled out a door hanger, to show what they leave behind when no one's home to answer the Dems' knock. Stewart looked at it as if were a hunk of enriched uranium that had just been deposited on his studio desk, and then said "You are SO not taking back the House and Senate!"

I guess Dems in New York City, where Stewart lives, don't bother with door hangers.

Stewart then went on to whack Dean for a typically vague campaign agenda -- "Open and honest government," in Dean's words -- and finished the bit by asking, as he held up the door hanger, "Are you sure this isn't just a way for Democrats to let each other know they're [having sex]?"

[Editor's note break: Yes, I cleaned that up a bit. My mother reads this blog.]

Dean then went on to lie (again) about the President's plan on illegal immigration: "This is a President who can't find a six foot four Saudi terrorist. How's he going to find 12 million undocumented people and send them all back across the border? That's what he wants to do."

Observant readers of this blog -- hell, observant readers of any newspaper -- know that this is, flat-out, a lie.

Here, exactly, is what the President said in his address tonight re: the 12 million illegal immigrants who are already here:

"Some in this country argue that the solution is to deport every illegal immigrant – and that any proposal short of this amounts to amnesty. I disagree. It is neither wise nor realistic to round up millions of people, many with deep roots in the United States, and send them across the border."

Just a few days ago, Mr. Dean found himself in trouble when he said, during an interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network, "The Democratic Party platform from 2004 says that marriage is between a man and a woman. That's what it says."

Oops.

In fact, as Mr. Dean hastened to acknowledge, "I misstated the Democratic Party's platform, which does not say that marriage should be limited to a man and a woman, but says the Party is committed to full inclusion of gay and lesbian families in the life of our nation and leaves the issue to the states to decide."

This reminds me of an old Steve Martin riff: "Always ... no, NEVER ..."

Can't wait to see the RNC's rejoinder in the AM.

The President on Immigration

2006-05-15T19:05:00.000-05:00

The President's speech, as sent out to the media with an embargo until 8:01 PM EDT.

Monday, May 15, 2006

THE PRESIDENT DELIVERS AN ADDRESS TO THE NATION

As Prepared for Delivery

Good evening. I have asked for a few minutes of your time to discuss a matter of national importance – the reform of America’s immigration system.

The issue of immigration stirs intense emotions – and in recent weeks, Americans have seen those emotions on display. On the streets of major cities, crowds have rallied in support of those in our country illegally. At our southern border, others have organized to stop illegal immigrants from coming in. Across the country, Americans are trying to reconcile these contrasting images. And in Washington, the debate over immigration reform has reached a time of decision. Tonight, I will make it clear where I stand, and where I want to lead our country on this vital issue.

We must begin by recognizing the problems with our immigration system. For decades, the United States has not been in complete control of its borders. As a result, many who want to work in our economy have been able to sneak across our border – and millions have stayed.

Once here, illegal immigrants live in the shadows of our society. Many use forged documents to get jobs, and that makes it difficult for employers to verify that the workers they hire are legal. Illegal immigration puts pressure on public schools and hospitals ... strains state and local budgets ... and brings crime to our communities. These are real problems, yet we must remember that the vast majority of illegal immigrants are decent people who work hard, support their families, practice their faith, and lead responsible lives. They are a part of American life – but they are beyond the reach and protection of American law.

We are a Nation of laws, and we must enforce our laws. We are also a Nation of immigrants, and we must uphold that tradition, which has strengthened our country in so many ways. These are not contradictory goals – America can be a lawful society and a welcoming society at the same time. We will fix the problems created by illegal immigration, and we will deliver a system that is secure, orderly, and fair. So I support comprehensive immigration reform that will accomplish five clear objectives.

First, the United States must secure its borders. This is a basic responsibility of a sovereign Nation. It is also an urgent requirement of our national security. Our objective is straightforward: The border should be open to trade and lawful immigration – and shut to illegal immigrants, as well as criminals, drug dealers, and terrorists.

I was the governor of a state that has a twelve-hundred mile border with Mexico. So I know how difficult it is to enforce the border, and how important it is. Since I became President, we have increased funding for border security by 66 percent, and expanded the Border Patrol from about 9,000 to 12,000 agents. The men and women of our Border Patrol are doing a fine job in difficult circumstances – and over the past five years, we have apprehended and sent home about six million people entering America illegally.

Despite this progress, we do not yet have full control of the border, and I am determined to change that. Tonight I am calling on Congress to provide funding for dramatic improvements in manpower and technology at the border. By the end of 2008, we will increase the number of Border Patrol officers by an additional 6,000. When these new agents are deployed, we will have more than doubled the size of the Border Patrol during my Presidency.

At the same time, we are launching the most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history. We will construct high-tech fences in urban corridors, and build new patrol roads and barriers in rural areas. We will employ motion sensors … infrared cameras … and unmanned aerial vehicles to prevent illegal crossings. America has the best technology in the world – and we will ensure that the Border Patrol has the technology they need to do their job and secure our border.

Training thousands of new Border Patrol agents and bringing the most advanced technology to the border will take time. Yet the need to secure our border is urgent. So I am announcing several immediate steps to strengthen border enforcement during this period of transition:

One way to help during this transition is to use the National Guard. So in coordination with governors, up to 6,000 Guard members will be deployed to our southern border. The Border Patrol will remain in the lead. The Guard will assist the Border Patrol by operating surveillance systems … analyzing intelligence … installing fences and vehicle barriers … building patrol roads … and providing training. Guard units will not be involved in direct law enforcement activities – that duty will be done by the Border Patrol. This initial commitment of Guard members would last for a period of one year. After that, the number of Guard forces will be reduced as new Border Patrol agents and new technologies come online. It is important for Americans to know that we have enough Guard forces to win the war on terror, respond to natural disasters, and help secure our border.

The United States is not going to militarize the southern border. Mexico is our neighbor, and our friend. We will continue to work cooperatively to improve security on both sides of the border ... to confront common problems like drug trafficking and crime ... and to reduce illegal immigration.

Another way to help during this period of transition is through state and local law enforcement in our border communities. So we will increase federal funding for state and local authorities assisting the Border Patrol on targeted enforcement missions. And we will give state and local authorities the specialized training they need to help federal officers apprehend and detain illegal immigrants. State and local law enforcement officials are an important resource – and they are part of our strategy to secure our border communities.

The steps I have outlined will improve our ability to catch people entering our country illegally. At the same time, we must ensure that every illegal immigrant we catch crossing our southern border is returned home. More than 85 percent of the illegal immigrants we catch crossing the southern border are Mexicans, and most are sent back home within 24 hours. But when we catch illegal immigrants from other countries, it is not as easy to send them home. For many years, the government did not have enough space in our detention facilities to hold them while the legal process unfolded. So most were released back into our society and asked to return for a court date. When the date arrived, the vast majority did not show up. This practice, called “catch and release,” is unacceptable – and we will end it.

We are taking several important steps to meet this goal. We have expanded the number of beds in our detention facilities, and we will continue to add more. We have expedited the legal process to cut the average deportation time. And we are making it clear to foreign governments that they must accept back their citizens who violate our immigration laws. As a result of these actions, we have ended “catch and release” for illegal immigrants from some countries. And I will ask Congress for additional funding and legal authority, so we can end “catch and release” at the southern border once and for all. When people know that they will be caught and sent home if they enter our country illegally, they will be less likely to try to sneak in.

Second, to secure our border, we must create a temporary worker program. The reality is that there are many people on the other side of our border who will do anything to come to America to work and build a better life. They walk across miles of desert in the summer heat, or hide in the back of 18-wheelers to reach our country. This creates enormous pressure on our border that walls and patrols alone will not stop. To secure the border effectively, we must reduce the numbers of people trying to sneak across.

Therefore, I support a temporary worker program that would create a legal path for foreign workers to enter our country in an orderly way, for a limited period of time. This program would match willing foreign workers with willing American employers for jobs Americans are not doing. Every worker who applies for the program would be required to pass criminal background checks. And temporary workers must return to their home country at the conclusion of their stay.

A temporary worker program would meet the needs of our economy, and it would give honest immigrants a way to provide for their families while respecting the law. A temporary worker program would reduce the appeal of human smugglers – and make it less likely that people would risk their lives to cross the border. It would ease the financial burden on state and local governments, by replacing illegal workers with lawful taxpayers. And above all, a temporary worker program would add to our security by making certain we know who is in our country and why they are here.

Third, we need to hold employers to account for the workers they hire. It is against the law to hire someone who is in this country illegally. Yet businesses often cannot verify the legal status of their employees, because of the widespread problem of document fraud. Therefore, comprehensive immigration reform must include a better system for verifying documents and work eligibility. A key part of that system should be a new identification card for every legal foreign worker. This card should use biometric technology, such as digital fingerprints, to make it tamper-proof. A tamper-proof card would help us enforce the law – and leave employers with no excuse for violating it. And by making it harder for illegal immigrants to find work in our country, we would discourage people from crossing the border illegally in the first place.

Fourth, we must face the reality that millions of illegal immigrants are already here. They should not be given an automatic path to citizenship. This is amnesty, and I oppose it. Amnesty would be unfair to those who are here lawfully – and it would invite further waves of illegal immigration.

Some in this country argue that the solution is to deport every illegal immigrant – and that any proposal short of this amounts to amnesty. I disagree. It is neither wise nor realistic to round up millions of people, many with deep roots in the United States, and send them across the border. There is a rational middle ground between granting an automatic path to citizenship for every illegal immigrant, and a program of mass deportation. That middle ground recognizes that there are differences between an illegal immigrant who crossed the border recently – and someone who has worked here for many years, and has a home, a family, and an otherwise clean record. I believe that illegal immigrants who have roots in our country and want to stay should have to pay a meaningful penalty for breaking the law … to pay their taxes … to learn English … and to work in a job for a number of years. People who meet these conditions should be able to apply for citizenship – but approval would not be automatic, and they will have to wait in line behind those who played by the rules and followed the law. What I have just described is not amnesty – it is a way for those who have broken the law to pay their debt to society, and demonstrate the character that makes a good citizen.

Fifth, we must honor the great American tradition of the melting pot, which has made us one Nation out of many peoples. The success of our country depends upon helping newcomers assimilate into our society, and embrace our common identity as Americans. Americans are bound together by our shared ideals, an appreciation of our history, respect for the flag we fly, and an ability to speak and write the English language. English is also the key to unlocking the opportunity of America. English allows newcomers to go from picking crops to opening a grocery … from cleaning offices to running offices … from a life of low-paying jobs to a diploma, a career, and a home of their own. When immigrants assimilate and advance in our society, they realize their dreams ... they renew our spirit ... and they add to the unity of America.

Tonight, I want to speak directly to Members of the House and the Senate: An immigration reform bill needs to be comprehensive, because all elements of this problem must be addressed together – or none of them will be solved at all. The House has passed an immigration bill. The Senate should act by the end of this month – so we can work out the differences between the two bills, and Congress can pass a comprehensive bill for me to sign into law.

America needs to conduct this debate on immigration in a reasoned and respectful tone. Feelings run deep on this issue – and as we work it out, all of us need to keep some things in mind. We cannot build a unified country by inciting people to anger, or playing on anyone’s fears, or exploiting the issue of immigration for political gain. We must always remember that real lives will be affected by our debates and decisions, and that every human being has dignity and value no matter what their citizenship papers say.

I know many of you listening tonight have a parent or a grandparent who came here from another country with dreams of a better life. You know what freedom meant to them, and you know that America is a more hopeful country because of their hard work and sacrifice. As President, I have had the opportunity to meet people of many backgrounds, and hear what America means to them. On a visit to Bethesda Naval Hospital, Laura and I met a wounded Marine named Guadalupe Denogean. Master Gunnery Sergeant Denogean came to the United States from Mexico when he was a boy. He spent his summers picking crops with his family, and then he volunteered for the United States Marine Corps as soon as he was able. During the liberation of Iraq, Master Gunnery Sergeant Denogean was seriously injured. When asked if he had any requests, he made two – a promotion for the corporal who helped rescue him … and the chance to become an American citizen. And when this brave Marine raised his right hand, and swore an oath to become a citizen of the country he had defended for more than 26 years, I was honored to stand at his side.

We will always be proud to welcome people like Guadalupe Denogean as fellow Americans. Our new immigrants are just what they have always been – people willing to risk everything for the dream of freedom. And America remains what she has always been – the great hope on the horizon … an open door to the future … a blessed and promised land. We honor the heritage of all who come here, no matter where they are from, because we trust in our country’s genius for making us all Americans – one Nation under God. Thank you, and good night.

END

For mother, a day after Mother's Day

2006-05-15T18:06:00.000-05:00

Okay, so now I've seen how this Blogspot blog thing works. Pretty cool, and definitely easy to use -- I'm no techie, despite the fact that I was the first person I know to purchase an iPod (and now I'm now on my fourth -- with 53 gigs of the available 55 gigs used up. Mr. Jobs, sir, when is the 80-gig model coming out?). I highly recommend it to anyone who cares to throw his thoughts out to the blogosphere. Dad, pay attention.

Mother, in case you didn't see my first post, you can access this blog every day when you get in to your office, and at least you'll know I'm alive as of my last posting. Dad, I know this doesn't take the place of an actual telephone call from me to Mom, but at least she won't have to worry about me anymore. As much, anyway.

So ... in about 90 minutes or so, the President is going to speak on immigration. His first prime-time White House address that doesn't have anything to do with 9/11, Iraq, or the War on Terror. As the son of an immigrant (see above -- mother's maiden name is Maria Carmen Salas-Cornejo del Rabanal) who came here the hard way (read: legally), I have a particular perspective on this whole issue: on the one hand, I recognize that those who come to America, by and large, make ours a better society. But they ought to come here legally. As Sonny Bono once responded, when asked his thoughts on illegal immigration, "What's to say? It's illegal."

I'm of the "build a big wall with a wide gate" mindset. We need immigrants, if for no other reason than that we're not replicating ourselves fast enough. I don't buy the argument offered by some of my more libertarian friends that "they do work that Americans won't do." Because what's missing in that sentence is " ... at ridiculously low wages." As in, "they do work that American's won't do at ridiculously low wages." Start paying lettuce-pickers better, and you'll find plenty of Americans who'll take the job. (As someone who has spent rather long stretches virtually unemployed, I know of what I speak -- seeking work and taking a job is definitely a function, in the rational mind, of deciding to give up leisure time in exchange for compensation.)

Bill Bennett famously used to talk about the "open gates" test of a nation -- that is, if you open the gates all over the world, and let everyone move to wherever they wanted to move, you'll find massive flows of people leaving the Soviet Union (yes, the test is old!) and moving into America. That's something of which we should be proud.

But we can't allow them all to come in at the same time, and with no rational sense of order about it. It just makes no sense.

To begin, we don't have the social or economic infrastructure in place to allow untrammeled immigration. On a normal day, I-95 between New York and Washington is a road that's plenty wide enough to handle the traffic that uses it in a reasonable fashion. But if everyone in New York decided this week that next Tuesday at 8 AM is the day and time they're going to get on the road to Washington, all hell would break loose.

So politicians offer solutions. I'm still waiting for the one that: a) recognizes the important contributions made by immigrants to America, while b) recognizing the need to secure our borders and c) doesn't send a signal that breaking our laws is a good way to get started in America. I'm not sure I know how to square all these circles, but I'm pretty sure that offering more security in the immigration process for those who have been breaking the laws the longest time is NOT the way to go. Seems kind of backward to me.

Watching the President will be interesting. And in the meantime, I'm just happy my mother came to America the old-fashioned way -- by earning it. I love you, Mother.

Why this blog? Why, indeed.

2006-05-15T17:01:00.000-05:00

I wish I could say I decided to start blogging because I'm tired of answering thousands of emails and phone calls from friends, neighbors, allies and adversaries, all saying "Pascoe, when the hell are you going to start blogging, anyway?" Alas, this is not the case, unless one counts the all-too-frequent IMs from my father, back home in Alexandria, who regularly drops me a suggestion that I call my mother.

Actually, I decided to publish this blog because I find myself posting to other people's blogs way too much. Why should I post there anonymously, and for free, when I could publish my own blog, and maybe get to the point where it actually pays me for the time I spend doing what I like to do?