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May 09, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - May 9

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GREGORY SCHULTE, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY: We don't need lengthy letters from Iran's president. What we need is a decision on his part and on the part of the leadership in Iran to negotiate seriously, to take up the diplomatic offers that are on the table from the E.U.-3 and from Russia.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Well, we may not need a lengthy letter from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but we sure got one, 17 pages in length.

Here are just a handful of the points contained in the letter.

He says Western-style democracy has failed; religion-centered government is the future. He questions the existence of Israel. He questions why Middle East technology -- you can read to mean nuclear technology -- is seen as a threat to Israel and others. And he says the Iraq war was based on lies.

That's part -- that's just a sampling of what's contained in this 17- page letter.

Some observations on this now from Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard, Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio, and the syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, FOX News contributors, all.

Well, what to make of this letter. What does it tell us? Is it -- I mean, the -- Condoleezza Rice was peppered with questions from the AP yesterday about why this wasn't seen as an important diplomatic opening.

(LAUGHTER)

FRED BARNES, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, THE WEEKLY STANDARD: Because it wasn't.

I mean, look, this was a bunch of accusations about Bush. It had nothing to -- this was not an overture in any way whatsoever. I will have to say, this is the most amazing document I have ever seen that might be considered diplomatic.

Just -- I mean, I -- I think I took diplomatic history in college...

(LAUGHTER)

BARNES: ... and there was never anything like this, where he says -- you left out the -- the line that I thought was interesting. He said, and surely, Allah is my lord, and your lord therefore serves him. You know, it...

(LAUGHTER)

BARNES: I mean -- I mean, he's even -- he's even dumping on Bush's faith.

Now, do you expect the president to say, this letter -- it also insinuates that he knew about 9/11 ahead of time, or, somehow, American intelligence was involved in it, and so on. And it reads, I mean, just some left-wing document. Maybe MoveOn.org will want to run text or something.

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Look, I -- the -- the -- I think the reason he did this is probably for a lot of internal political purposes of his own.

There wasn't any mention in here about what to do about Iran's -- the big problem between Iran and the United States, which is a nuclear program, no mention at all. And the United States' State Department, in the person of Condoleezza Rice, doesn't consider this to be diplomatic overture. So, I guess it isn't.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, FOX NEWS POLITICAL ANALYST: But I -- I think his reasons were more external.

I'm not sure it was -- it's going to appeal internally. I think what it was meant to do is to throw sand on the process that's now happening in the United Nations, for Iran to do things that put obstacles in the way.

So, what we get was at least a day of reporting on this, of an overture, which, as Fred says, is completely ridiculous. This is a "Twilight Zone" letter. This is from way, way out there.

(LAUGHTER)

KRAUTHAMMER: And it's kind of religious mysticism woven into it. It's not an overture. It doesn't offer anything. It's not a diplomatic instrument.

So -- but what Iran is trying to do is to try to do anything that will stop any coalescence of the allies at the U.N. And, in fact, at the U.N., we are -- we are not succeeding. The Russians and the Chinese...

LIASSON: But not because of this letter.

KRAUTHAMMER: No. But I'm saying anything that appears to put -- the motive of sending it was to appear to make an overture, as a way to say, let the Americans talk and speak with us bilaterally, and abandon the multilateral process happening now in the U.N.

And, in fact, a lot of Democrats and some senators here and Europeans are urging us to abandon the process, which they have urged on us for three years, of having the Europeans and the others involved, and saying, the U.S. ought to go it alone. It's incredible hypocrisy. And it's a way to kill any possible international action against Iran.

BARNES: You know, this letter was treated by some of the foreign commentary on it as being very deft, a very clever political move by Ahmadinejad. And...

HUME: That's close enough.

BARNES: OK. Look, if the State Department can't decide how to pronounce his name, I certainly can't.

But it's...

(LAUGHTER)

BARNES: I mean, it is -- it's just a remarkable document. I don't know how anybody could think that it was deft or clever. And I don't...

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: Well, does it tell you anything you didn't feel like you knew about the man and -- and -- and sort of what he thinks and -- and how he figures into the power structure over there?

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: Well, he certainly -- I wasn't sure -- I didn't think he would be able to echo, pretty accurately, the far-left-wing complaint about President Bush and his administration. But he's got it all in there.

HUME: Well...

KRAUTHAMMER: But he talks about end of days, judgment day. It's that kind of weird stuff, which he believes -- it's not as if he puts it on. Here's a guy who believes that the end...

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: What, are you suggesting has he been reading the Book of Revelations, you mean?

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, his version of it.

HUME: Yes.

KRAUTHAMMER: Shiites have a version of it, in which there's a 12th imam, whom he apparently speaks with. He's a hidden imam who hasn't been seen in about 1,300 years. But he speaks with him.

And he expects his return in a couple of years. And he's built a highway to a place from which he's supposed to appear into Tehran, as a way to make it easier to get in. This is a guy who is way, way out there, and it shows in that letter.

HUME: But it -- we now have an incident -- you may recall the other day that he announced the liberalization of certain social rules over there, and that women would now be allowed in -- in -- in soccer stadiums.

Oops.

(LAUGHTER)

HUME: The mullahs overruled him on that. And he's been brushed back. And, no, women apparently will not be allowed to go into soccer stadiums.

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: What does that tell you about this guy's standing over there?

LIASSON: Well, look, I am sure there are plenty of tensions inside Iran.

He has a very populist economic program. I'm sure, when he did that, many women in Iran applauded. Now, of course, they didn't get to go to the soccer games in the end, but he might have looked a little bit more of a reformer than he had before.

(LAUGHTER)

LIASSON: But, look, you can't -- I -- I don't think that you can discount internal Iranian politics. We don't know exactly how this was received inside Iran. It might not have been seen as way out. It might have reflected a certain kind of religious discourse.

KRAUTHAMMER: He was -- he was, in fact, rebuked by conservatives in the government for unilaterally approaching the United States, without consulting the parliament. So, it hasn't helped him internally.

HUME: When we come back with our panel, judicial nominee Brett Kavanaugh submits to a second round of questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Any minds change? Any chance of a filibuster?

That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER (D), NEW YORK: Your experience has been most notable, not so much for your blue-chip credentials, but for the undeniably political nature of so many of your assignments.

BRETT KAVANAUGH, JUDICIAL NOMINEE: There's no such thing on the courts of a Republican judge or a Democratic judge. Once you're on the court, all the judges are there representing the justice system, representing the idea of justice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Well, that wasn't exactly the direct answer to Schumer, and it certainly wasn't the answer that Senator Schumer was looking for when he questioned Brett Kavanaugh today. He was much the most aggressive questioner of the Democratic senators on the committee, and stayed around well past the time the committee hearing was supposed to be over.

So, the question is, did Brett Kavanaugh get through this day having succeed in depriving the Democrats of anything they could use as a justification for a filibuster.

Panel?

BARNES: Yes, he did get through.

Look, this one is grazed. He's in. He's done. It's over. You know, when Democrats got a -- were allowed to have -- when -- when the chairman, Arlen Specter, gave them another hearing today, it was so important to Democrats that some of them didn't even show up. And they -- and, frequently, there were only two or three of them there at a time.

And, you know, this -- this was not real opposition. Nobody called him an extraordinary circumstance or anything. And -- and they're even going to allow a fast vote. It will probably be Wednesday or Thursday. So, you know, this one is over. They're going to -- look, Democrats are going to take a stand. They're -- what are there? There -- there are 23 other nominations already up there, nine circuit court judges. And they're going to send up 27 more over the next few weeks.

Ten of those are circuit court judges. And, believe me, Democrats are going to fight some of those, for sure, but not Kavanaugh.

LIASSON: Starting with Boyle, actually. I mean, they have said they...

(CROSSTALK)

LIASSON: ... filibuster...

HUME: Tell us who that is.

LIASSON: OK.

This is the other controversial nominee, who has actually some ethical questions. Kavanaugh's problems were more political and ideological and whether he was involved in certain controversial policies in the Bush White House which Democrats took objections to.

HUME: But it appears he was not, though, right? I mean...

(CROSSTALK)

LIASSON: Well, he says he was not. He was asked today, were you involved in the decision...

HUME: And -- and...

LIASSON: ... on -- on torture and on -- and on treatment of detainees? He said no.

Now, he was involved in the crafting of the signing statements, which President Bush has taken to using far more than any other president, to attach to these bills that he signs, to kind of explain whether he will actually follow the law in every case, or he believes that he has the presidential prerogative not to.

HUME: Well, he believes...

LIASSON: And...

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: Excuse me.

I -- if I'm not correct -- correct me if I'm wrong. Isn't the president saying he in -- in these cases, that he will follow law consistent with the Constitution?

LIASSON: Right.

And his version of the Constitution is that he has some powers that are -- that won't...

HUME: OK.

(CROSSTALK)

LIASSON: ... can't be abrogated by Congress -- Congress.

In any event, Boyle has some problems where he is alleged to have purchased stock, not just owned stock, but purchased stock while he was trying a case about the -- that company.

HUME: The company in question.

LIASSON: So, the Democrats have said that they would filibuster him.

We haven't heard that there's a filibuster brewing for Kavanaugh. And it sounds like there won't be.

KRAUTHAMMER: I think Kavanaugh is -- what's really interesting, he's -- I think the ABA, the American Bar Association, is what's on trial here.

They changed the way they assessed him, from essentially an A to a B, over one year. Now, Kavanaugh didn't change in one year. He didn't lose his legal reasoning over one year. He didn't have a shrinkage of his neurons over that one year. It's the ABA that changed.

So, how do you get a different rating a year after you had an A rating last year? And the answer is, either the ratings are arbitrary, or they're corrupt. They're arbitrary if, as the ABA is saying, you had a different committee and you might have had different people, in which case how can you -- you trust any of its judgments?

But it's corrupt if there was a change in the mood on that committee, and people, with the president's ratings down and more hostility to the administration, decided to go after this candidate, and decide to do endless questioning of people who knew him.

If you do endless questioning of people who know you or me, you're going to end up with a finite number of people who are going to be negative on you. And they -- they cite these negative reports. They -- they leak them to the press, and, presto, a downgrading of his assessment.

It's a corrupt process. And I wish that the administration had stuck with its promise of abandoning it years ago.

BARNES: No, no, they didn't send him there. Yes, they have abandoned it. I mean, they don't go by it.

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: I think this was the...

KRAUTHAMMER: But they didn't denounce it, as it should have been denounced. Instead...

BARNES: Yes. Well, they should have denounced it. And they -- they...

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: ... some liberal Democrat...

HUME: Well, what happened is, they started citing it when the ABA was favorable to other judges...

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: ... judicial nominees. The administration starting citing the ABA.

BARNES: Now you're stuck with it.

LIASSON: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: Now they're...

(CROSSTALK)

LIASSON: You can't have it both ways.

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: On the Boyle case, you know, Boyle...

KRAUTHAMMER: But it's a corrupt process.

BARNES: Terrence Boyle says that it was only after he had announced what his decision was, before he had written the opinion, but after he had announced it, that he had bought this stock for GE -- from GE. And he actually ruled against GE in this -- in this case -- in this case, where they -- where the stock has become an issue.

So, I don't know. I think Democrats are -- are going to have a hard time making that into some horrible conflict of interests.

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: Well, the sense is, on the Hill, though Fred, isn't it, that the -- the Republicans don't want to fight for Boyle. Is that...

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: Well, they may have to.

HUME: You mean if -- if Bush doesn't take him down?

BARNES: Yes, yes, if Bush doesn't take him down, if he's there. And -- and...

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: What do you think will happen, Mara?

BARNES: And just on that case, I don't -- on the GE question and the stock question, that doesn't seem like -- like something that you can take him down on at all, quite the contrary.

LIASSON: Well, I -- I think that's the big question.

I feel like this is a return to the future here. I mean, if there's a filibuster, and if the White House wants Republicans to fight for him, I mean, we're back to the gang of 14, and whether or not you're going to declare the so-called nuclear option, and Frist declares the -- the filibuster inapplicable here.

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