Look at the top two news items being highlighted at the top of his Solutions America Web site:

Giuliani and History

June 27, 2006 - With Rudy Giuliani crisscrossing the country in support of Republican candidates and raising money for his new political action committee, it is beginning to look inevitable that he will seek the presidency in 2008. Despite his lead in many early polls, skeptics still dismiss his chances of winning... More

Giuliani Leads New York Presidential Pack, Quinnipiac University New York State Poll Finds; Bloomberg Tops Pataki As Presidential Pick

June 23, 2006 - Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani leads Sen. Hillary Clinton when New York State voters rate native - or not so native - sons and daughter as possible Presidents, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Mayor Michael Bloomberg leads Go... More

Nope. No way. No how. This guy's not running for anything.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 11:00 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Immediately following the release of the Fed's statement yesterday, which took a much more dovish stance against inflation than a few weeks ago, gold prices surged and the dollar plummeted. Like a canary in a coal mine, these market movements indicate that a "pause" by the Fed in its rate hiking campaign would be an inflationary mistake.

Before advanced technologies, coal miners used caged canaries as a signal for the build-up of dangerous gases. If the bird died or had problems breathing, the miners knew there was a problem.

For inflation, the canaries are commodity prices and the value of the dollar. The sensitivity of these markets to detect monetary policy ease or restrictiveness has become very clear in the past decades. If the Fed prints too much money, commodity prices rise and the dollar falls. When the Fed is too tight, the opposite happens.

The price of gold fell from roughly $400/oz. in 1996 to less that $260 in 1999. Other commodity prices also fell, while the dollar surged to its highest level in decades. Despite these early warnings from gold and the dollar, the Fed was still blindsided by a brush with deflation in the early 2000s. It did not pay attention to the canary; and this was a huge mistake.

Since 2001, with the Fed fighting deflation, gold and other commodity prices have been on the rise and the dollar has been falling. These are early signs of an overly accommodative monetary policy, and it should not be surprising to see "core" measures of inflation beginning to rise. Nonetheless, many on the Fed and a large contingent of private sector and academic economists downplay the signals sent by these markets.

One typical argument is that commodity prices play only a small role in the US economy, especially as services grow relative to manufacturing. But this argument misses the point. It is not the feed-through of rising commodity prices (even oil) that causes inflation. Rather, it is easy money that causes inflation, and the sensitivity of these markets to dollar liquidity means that they provide the earliest warning sign of a Fed mistake. Commodities and currencies are traded every moment of every trading day and their prices are finely calibrated with the supply of dollars in the system.

(Brian Wesbury is the Chief Economist for First Trust Advisors in Chicago, IL)

Posted by Brian Wesbury at 03:57 PM | Email Author | Permalink

In honor of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to Graceland with President Bush today -- in which the prime minister took the opportunity to sing some Elvis tunes -- here's some archival footage of Koizumi on CNN.

It seems this guy just can't control himself.

For some footage from today's press conference, try CBS or CNN (warning, though: it loads slowly).

Posted by Ryan Sager at 03:04 PM | Email Author | Permalink

In further Rudy news (no, I'm not on the payroll -- yes, I am a Rudy supporter), Rudy buddy Bernard Kerik finds his name next to two words today that make presidential candidates nervous: "plead guilty."

To wit:

Former Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik plead guilty Friday to accepting thousands of dollars in illegal gifts while he was head of the city's Correction Department.

As part of a plea deal, Kerik will stay out of jail but he'll pay $221,000 in fines.

In court Friday, Kerik admitted accepting $165,000 in renovations to his Bronx apartment from a construction company seeking to do business with the city. He also admitted that he failed to report a loan as required by city law.

...

In a statement released Friday, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani said, "Bernard Kerik has acknowledged his violations but this should be evaluated in light of his service to the United States of America and the City of New York."

I tend to think this will have minimal impact on Rudy's chances in '08. But how much of this stuff is there lurking in the shadows from his time as mayor? Cronies with shady histories, low-level corruption in the city government, etc. I mean, this is New York City. Not exactly a Disney ride, despite what you hear about the new Times Square.

It's something to watch.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 02:25 PM | Email Author | Permalink

I've had a bee in my bonnet about this for a little while, so I figure I'll get it out, since American Research Group has released yet another poll making it appear as if Sen. John McCain were the undisputed frontrunner in the race for the '08 GOP nomination.

ARG's recent Rhode Island poll shows McCain with the support of 50 percent of likely Republican primary voters in the state. Mitt Romney comes in second with 14 percent. Newt Gingrich rounds out the top three with 4 percent. Giuliani's name isn't even on the list of candidates respondents are asked to choose from.

When Rudy Giuliani is added to a second question on the GOP primary in ARG's poll, it's McCain 43 percent, Giuliani 19 percent.

So, what does this mean? It means that any candidate added in a second question like this is likely to register a far lower level of support than if they'd been included as a top-tier candidate in the first question. ARG lists McCain, Romney, Gingrich, George Pataki (George Pataki!?!?!?), George Allen, Sam Brownback, Bill Frist, Chuck Hagel, and Mike (I heart) Huckabee as first-tier candidates, but thinks Rudy Giuliani shouldn't be on the table until the second question?

Assuming that these two questions must at least be randomized to make these legitimate polls (so that the order wouldn't matter), I shot an email over to ARG to ask what was up. This is the response I got from Dick Bennett:

We added Giuliani after the first ballot and did not randomize the order of the questions.

While he has been more active lately, there are still no signs on the ground that he will run. I continue to hear from activists that Giuliani will only get in the race if McCain does not.

Hope this is helpful.

Yes, it is. It lets me know that as far as the race between McCain and Giuliani going into '08, ARG's polls not only can, but must, be ignored.

So, how does the other polling on the McCain-Giuliani contest pan out? Well, the polling from Strategic Vision, for instance, shows Giuliani well ahead in most of the states the firm has polled.

Here are their respective percentages in a few states, as measured by SV:

[Giuliani / McCain]

PA: 39 / 28
WA: 35 / 28
FL: 39 / 28
GA: 27 / 22
N.J.: 45 / 32
WI: 28 / 25
N.Y.: 53 / 13

One exception in the SV polls is Michigan, where McCain leads 39 / 22.

[except for New York, all those samples are of likely voters -- in New York, the sample is of registered voters]

So, lastly, why does all this matter? Well, because in crucial primary states such as Iowa and South Carolina, ARG polls show McCain with a commanding lead. But it's likely this lead is entirely illusory, based more on a poor survey design than a reflection of reality.

As Giuliani's intentions have become more and more obvious -- and are at least on par with Newt Gingrich's as far as seriousness, to say the absolute least -- ARG should correct this immediately.

Below the fold is a look at two states, IA and MA, where ARG polling seems to conflict rather baldly with other public polls.

IOWA

ARG (likely Republican caucus voters, April 25 - May 2, 2006)

without Giuliani

John McCain: 26
Bill Frist: 10

with Giuliani

John McCain: 23
Rudolph Giuliani: 16

Victory Enterprises (potential Republican caucus attendees, Aug. 8-10, 2005)

With Giuliani on first question

Rudy Giuliani: 22
John McCain: 22

VE also polled the candidates' favorable/unfavorable/no opinion numbers:

McCain: 44/33/17
Giuliani: 66/9/16

[note that McCain has far lower favorables in Iowa, and far higher unfavorables]

MASSACHUSETTS

ARG (likely Republican primary voters, April 25 - May 2, 2006)

Without Giuliani

McCain: 48
Romney: 17

with Giuliani

John McCain: 42
Rudolph Giuliani: 21

Boston Globe poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire (likely Republican primary voters, Aug. 9-17, 2005)

Rudolph Giuliani: 29
John McCain: 26
Mitt Romney: 19

Now, admittedly, in both cases the Rudy-optimistic poll was taken in 2005 and the Rudy-less-optimistic poll was taken in 2006. But I haven't seen one poll over time that's shown such a massive drop-off in support for Rudy. This is clearly a methodology question. And ARG's wreaks havoc with Giuliani's numbers.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 09:55 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Most writers on foreign policy offer up the usual cant. One notable exception to this is Anatol Lieven, who writes fairly regularly for The National Interest, The Financial Times, and The London Review Of Books. I had a chance last year to pick up his book, America Right Or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, and found it to be the best analysis yet on the recent tumult in American politics. He has a new book coming out this fall, written with John Hulsman, called Ethical Realism and American Foreign Policy. It should be worth reading closely. Lieven has emerged as the best analyst of the potent combination of American idealism, religious fervor, and nationalist sentiment.

In the Summer 2006 issue of The National Interest, Lieven reviews the career of Francis Fukuyama, the apostate from neoconservativism. I can't recommend the article enough, not only for its discussion of Fukuyama's interesting career, but also for Lieven's casual apercus on American life -- observations that are worth fleshing out at great length. One example:

"Truly deep and radical thought in the foreign-policy-oriented sections of U.S. academia and think tanks is deadened both by the hegemony of American civic-nationalist ideology and by the interlacing of these institutions with the organs of government. As a result, too many formally independent American experts in fact tailor their every statement so that it can never be held against them by a possible political patron or at a Senate confirmation hearing. As a retired U.S. ambassador put it to me recently, 'in terms of free debate and moral courage, there is nothing worse than a permanent campaign for unelected office.'"

That observation goes a long way to explain how the United States found itself in its current agonizing position.

Posted by Brad Carson at 08:45 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Plenty of Hamdan coverage today, led by Ron Cass here at RealClearPolitics. If you're looking for more commentary, there's an absolute deluge on Buzztracker.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:32 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Three new polls have come out in the last two days (FOX News, LA Times/Bloomberg, and Hotline/Diageo/FD), all showing President Bush's job approval rating at 41%. He's now over 40% in the RCP Average for the first time in months.

Democrats still hold more than a 10-point lead in the RCP Average for the Generic Congressional ballot. CNN, FOX, and Hotline all show the Dems' lead well under 10-points, however, while the LA Times, Gallup, ABC News/Wash Post and Pew all have them leading by 12-16 points.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:27 AM | Email Author | Permalink

That's what Charles Krauthammer calls our policy in Iraq:

The most serious misconception had nothing to do with troop levels or whether to disband an army that had already disbanded itself. It had to do with gauging Sunni intentions. Decades of iron rule over the Shiites and Kurds had left the Sunnis militantly unreconciled to any other political order. [snip]

For better or worse, we chose occupation lite. The insurgency continues, and it is not going to be defeated militarily. But that does not mean we lose. Insurgencies can be undone by co-optation. And that is precisely the strategy of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Given that his life is literally on the line in making such judgments, one should give his view some weight.

He intends to wean away elements of the insurgency by giving them a stake in the new Iraqi order. These Sunni elements -- unreconciled tribal leaders and guerrilla factions -- may well decide that with neither side having very good prospects of complete victory, accepting a place and some power in the new Iraq is a better alternative than perpetual war.

The Bush administration is firmly behind this policy. And who is sniping at it from the sidelines? Democratic senators, fresh from having voted for troop withdrawal rather than victory as our objective in Iraq, led the charge to denounce any sort of amnesty for insurgents who had killed Americans.

Apart from the hypocrisy, there is the bizarre logic: Is the best way to honor the sacrifice of those who have died in Iraq to decree an impotent, completely hypothetical policy of retribution? (Who, after all, is going to bell the cat?) Or is it to create conditions for precisely the kind of Iraq -- self-governing and internally reconciled -- that these courageous soldiers were fighting for?

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:18 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Last Thursday, the Senate Indian Affairs Committee issued its final report on the investigation into the infamous Jack Abramoff/Michael Scanlon lobbying-related scam that bilked six Indian tribes out of an astonishing $66 million. The report also included a series of rather unflattering details for former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed, now running as a Republican candidate for Georgia Lt. Governor's office.

According to the Committee's report, Abramoff funneled $4 million in fees from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians to Mr. Reed's consulting firm, Century Strategies, through a number of conduits: first through Abramoff's lobbying firm Preston Gates, then via Grover Norquist's Americans For Tax Reform (ATR), and eventually through an entity controlled by Michael Scanlon called the American International Center (AIC).

Nell Rogers, a planner for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, testified before the Committee that Abramoff indicated the use of financial conduits was necessary "to accommodate Mr. Reed's political concerns."

On the day the report was released, Mr. Reed reiterated that he was misled by Abramoff into believing the money paid to Century Stategies had not come from gaming interests. Mr. Reed also strained to play up the bright side of the Committee's findings, saying, "The report confirms that I have not been accused of any wrongdoing."

Will this be enough to persuade Georgia Republicans, who go to the polls in just over three weeks to decide Mr. Reed's fate?

A new poll taken over the weekend (after news broke of the Committee's report) showed Mr. Reed's lead over his primary opponent, Casey Cagle, shrinking to a mere three points, 44-41, down from a six-point lead in May. Also of concern: nearly half (47%) of Republicans surveyed in the poll have an unfavorable opinion of Mr. Reed.

We'll know on July 18 whether Mr. Reed will survive his first run for elective office, or whether the sticky web spun by Jack Abramoff will claim another victim.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:03 AM | Email Author | Permalink

No. 1: Salon.com blogger Peter Daou's friends think he's sold out by going to work for Hillary (in order to boost her netroots cred).

No. 2: The N.Y. Post wonders why '08 Dem hopeful Mark Warner has yet to fire netroots favorite Jerome Armstrong, despite the fact that he was involved in shilling for worthless dot-com stocks. The implication floated -- one has to assume by Hillary operatives -- is that Warner is afraid of getting his kneecaps busted by the Townhouse mafia.

The intersection of lefty bloggers and lefty politicians continues. A messy process.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 11:14 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Let's just keep this simple, it is not good for the Republican Party if Rick Santorum loses.

Posted by John McIntyre at 11:13 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Wow. This is embarrassing.

Usually it's the long-shot challenger who has to hound the aloof incumbent for debates. But, down by 52-34, Santorum is the one who's started a Web petition to get Bob Casey to debate him:

I am troubled that Sen. Rick Santorum's likely opponent refuses to speak directly to the voters of Pennsylvania through a series of debates. He appears to be delaying this opportunity to debate Rick Santorum and his primary opponents simply to avoid having to confront the issues and take positions.

On the other hand, Sen. Santorum continues to be outspoken about his beliefs and accomplishments, ensuring this campaign is based on substance, not rhetoric. The intensity of the 2006 campaign for U.S. Senate is escalating, and Pennsylvania voters deserve the opportunity to make an informed decision on Election Day.

I agree with Rick Santorum that discussing the issues in an open and honest forum will serve the citizens of Pennsylvania well. Bob Casey, Jr. should accept Sen. Rick Santorum's challenge immediately and agree to ten debates between now and Election Day.

Sign this petition and then ask others to join you.

It will be a healthy day for the Republican Party -- and America -- when Santorum is sent packing.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 10:59 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Part of the reason for looking at political videos every day is to find new ways politicians are using the Web to communicate with constituents.

With that in mind, here's a peak inside Rep. Jack Kingston's (R-GA) "Journeys With Jack" series being produced by his interns and distributed over YouTube.

In this video, Rep. Kingston talks with a member of the Minutemen and, oddly, a slightly out-of-character Stephen Colbert.

You can click here to browse through all of the Journey With Jack videos, including the congressman answering a question from a constituent, the congressman getting a briefing from the Minutemen, and the congressman presiding over a rather bizarre trivia contest with Ben Stein (where the comedian[?] gives disturbingly specific information as to where he lives).

You can send in nominations for the video of the day, as ever, to:

ryan-at-realclearpolitics.com

Posted by Ryan Sager at 04:29 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Yesterday Mitt Romney joined a group of religious leaders in Massachusetts to call for a ballot initiative in 2008 to define marriage between a man and a woman:

"I'm concerned whenever there is discussion that suggests that there might be a way of keeping the voters from expressing their will," said Romney, who used the word "democracy" 10 times at a State House press conference that included reporters from national news outlets.

"That's not the nature of democracy and that's not the country and the commonwealth I love," Romney said.

Romney went beyond calling for a vote on same-sex marriage, saying he shared O'Malley's belief that same-sex marriage ought to be banned.

The governor called legalized gay marriage "a huge error and wrong."

"The ideal setting of society overall, is a setting where there's a mother and a father," Romney said.

Though I personally don't favor a federal marriage amendment, I find Romney to be among its most eloquent defenders. He made a reasonable and persuasive case for the FMA in a recent letter to the Senate, and I've also seen him make the same case on the stump. Obviously, the issue appeals greatly to many Republican base voters, but I suspect the tone and tenor with which Romney approaches the subject will resonate with a broader audience as well.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 02:07 PM | Email Author | Permalink

The JPost has an interesting column on whether the current fighting in Gaza shows that Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan was wrong.

Columnist Larry Durfner says no, Sharon's way is still the right way:

The two IDF soldiers killed at Kerem Shalom this week were the first two fatalities caused by Gazan Palestinians during the 10 months since disengagement.

By comparison, Gazan Palestinians killed 148 Israelis and 11 foreigners in the five years between the September 2000 start of the intifada and last September's completion of the withdrawal, according to Foreign Ministry statistics.

Now, Durfner argues, what's needed is to secure the border with Gaza as Israel secured the border with Lebanon.

And, I might add, to continue treating the Palestinians as in an open state of war with Israel. There is not, and never has been, a peace process.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:34 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Will Arizona's "clean elections" system come under fire after the Supreme Court's Vermont decision?

It's certainly possible. In Vermont, the invalidated law held that individuals could donate $200 to a state House or state Senate candidate. In Arizona, the maximum is just under $600.

Sounds ripe for a challenge to me.

(hat tip: Skeptic)

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:21 PM | Email Author | Permalink

As usual, Michael Barone has the final word on Chris Cannon's victory in Utah and what it might mean for immigration reform:

It is conventional wisdom in many quarters that Republican voters overwhelmingly favor a border-security-only approach to immigration. Cannon's victory casts some doubt on that.

Yes, there were extenuating factors; there usually are in elections. Last week, Jacob imprudently told the Salt Lake Tribune that he thought Satan was responsible for recent business reverses that prevented him from putting as much of his own money into his campaign as he had intended. Even in a very religious district--the Utah Third is the home of Brigham Young University and probably has the highest percentage of Mormons of any congressional district in the United States--that probably made him sound a little wacky. Cannon's record on issues other than immigration is impeccably conservative--a plus in a district that voted 77 percent to 20 percent for George W. Bush over John Kerry in 2004. Still, Cannon's victory stands for the proposition that support for a comprehensive immigration bill is not political death in a Republican primary, even in a very conservative district that has been affected by immigration (in 2000, 10 percent of its residents were Hispanic; presumably the percentage of Hispanics voting in the Republican primary this year was much smaller).

It should be noted that this is not the first time Cannon has been opposed in the primary by an anti-immigration candidate. In 2004, he beat Matt Throckmorton by 58 to 42 percent in a turnout of 47,335. This time, he beat Jacob by 56to 44 percent in a turnout of 57,895. Both challenges had high visibility, though Jacob evidently spent more money. Yet the results look pretty much the same in percentage terms, and the numbers suggest that an increased turnout did not bring out a landslide of anti-immigration voters.

Barone says he thinks Cannon's victory, combined with movement from folks in the Senate like Arlen Specter, now makes passage of an immigration bill this year a possibility.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 11:34 AM | Email Author | Permalink

One of the effects of the Supreme Court's upholding Texas's mid-decade redistricting is that now Democrats can try the same trick in states where they have control of the governorship and the legislature.

From ABC's The Note:

In an interview with ABC News, DCCC Chairman Rahm Emanuel identified Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Louisiana, New Mexico, and North Carolina as the ripest targets for Democrats to pursue mid-decade redistricting.

"Every party is going to squeeze every last bit of pulp out of this lemon to make lemonade and they are going to go after this with every thing that they have got," Emanuel told ABC News.

How big is this? LA Times political reporter Peter Wallsten (author of the new One Party Country, on how the GOP's electoral machine works) writes that: "By some estimates, this could mean at least five new House seats for Democrats, along with a host of newly competitive Republican seats -- an outcome that would inject parity to a political map that has tilted in the GOP's favor for more than a decade."

However, he notes that Democrats face a couple of political and structural problems that are likely to prevent them from taking advantage.

First of all, many Democrats are on the record as vociferously opposed to gerrymandering, including likely incoming New York governor Eliot Spitzer.

What's more, the racial politics would be difficult for the Democrats to manage. Typically, civil-rights leaders have looked for concentrations of black voters to elect black representatives. Distributing these black voters differently might lead to more Democrats being elected, but fewer African Americans.

Is this palatable to black leaders as part of a strategy to even the electoral playing field with Republicans? Or is it too politically volatile?

Posted by Ryan Sager at 09:57 AM | Email Author | Permalink

****SCROLL FOR UPDATES****

The Supreme Court just announced a 5-3 decision against the Bush adminstration in the Hamdan case. Right now, all the major papers are carrying the AP story from Gina Holland.

Here is the version from Reuters. And another from CNN.

UPDATE: Marty Lederman at SCOTUSblog: "The Court appears to have held that Common Article 3 of Geneva aplies to the conflict against Al Qaeda. That is the HUGE part of today's ruling."

UPDATE: Seems like Andy McCarthy's "pre-mortem" was on the money.

UPDATE: The Washington Post has now updated its page with a story by William Branigin calling the decision a "stunning rebuke to the Bush administration."

UPDATE: CNN has video of Jeffrey Toobin, Bob Franken on the decision.

UPDATE: Text of Hamdan decision in pdf format here.

UPDATE: Reuters - Ruling Won't Affect Guantanamo Inmates

UPDATE: From the Court's majority opinon, which included Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kennedy:

For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the military commission convened to try Hamdan lacks power toproceed because its structure and procedures violate both the UCMJ and the Geneva Conventions. Four of us also conclude, see Part V, infra, that the offense with which Hamdan has been charged is not an "offens[e] that by . . . the law of war may be tried by military commissions."

UPDATE: From Scalia's dissent:

On December 30, 2005, Congress enacted the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA). It unambiguously provides that, as of that date, "no court, justice, or judge" shall have jurisdiction to consider the habeas application of a Guantanamo Bay detainee. Notwithstanding this plain directive, the Court today concludes that, on what it calls the statute's most natural reading, every "court, justice, or judge" before whom such a habeas application was pending on December 30 has jurisdiction to hear, consider, and render judgment on it. This conclusion is patently erroneous. And even if it were not, the jurisdiction supposedly retained should, in an exercise of sound equitable discretion, not be exercised.

UPDATE: From Thomas's dissent:

Under either the correct, flexible approach to evaluating the adequacy of Hamdan's charge, or under the plurality's new, clear-statement approach, Hamdan has been charged with conduct constituting two distinct violations of the law of war cognizable before a military commission: membership in a war-criminal enterprise and conspiracy to commit war crimes. The charging section of the indictment alleges both that Hamdan "willfully and knowingly joined an enterprise of persons who shared a common criminal purpose," App. to Pet. for Cert. 65a, and that he "conspired and agreed with [al Qaeda] to commit . . . offenses triable by military commission," ibid.7

The common law of war establishes that Hamdan's willful and knowing membership in al Qaeda is a war crime chargeable before a military commission. Hamdan, a confirmed enemy combatant and member or affiliate of al Qaeda, has been charged with willfully and knowingly joining a group (al Qaeda) whose purpose is "to support violent attacks against property and nationals (both military and civilian) of the United States." Id., at 64a; 344 F. Supp. 2d, at 161. Moreover, the allegations specify that Hamdan joined and maintained his relationship with al Qaeda even though he "believed that Usama bin Laden and his associates were involved in the attacks on the U. S. Embassies in Kenya and Tazania in August 1998, the attack on the USS COLE in October 2000, and the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001." App. to Pet. for Cert. 65a. These allegations, against a confirmed unlawful combatant, are alone sufficient to sustain the jurisdiction of Hamdan's military commission.

UPDATE: From Alito's dissent:

The holding of the Court, as I understand it, rests on the following reasoning. A military commission is lawful only if it is authorized by 10 U. S. C. §821; this provision permits the use of a commission to try "offenders or offenses" that "by statute or by the law of war may be tried by" sucha commission; because no statute provides that an offender such as petitioner or an offense such as the one with which he is charged may be tried by a military commission, he may be tried by military commission only if the trial is authorized by "the law of war"; the Geneva Conventions are part of the law of war; and Common Article 3 of the Conventions prohibits petitioner's trial because the commission before which he would be tried is not "a regularly constituted court," Third Geneva Convention, Art. 3, ¶1(d), Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Aug. 12, 1949, [1955] 6 U. S. T. 3316, 3320, T. I. A. S. No. 3364. I disagree with this holding because petitioner's commission is "a regularly constituted court."

UPDATE: Joint statement by Sens. Graham & Kyl:

"We are disappointed with the Supreme Court's decision. However, we believe the problems cited by the Court can and should be fixed.

"It is inappropriate to try terrorists in civilian courts. It threatens our national security and places the safety of jurors in danger. For those reasons and others, we believe terrorists should be tried before military commissions.

"In his opinion, Justice Breyer set forth the path to a solution of this problem. He wrote, 'Nothing prevents the president from returning to Congress to seek the authority he believes necessary.'

"We intend to pursue legislation in the Senate granting the Executive Branch the authority to ensure that terrorists can be tried by competent military commissions. Working together, Congress and the administration can draft a fair, suitable, and constitutionally permissible tribunal statute."

UPDATE: Senator Russ Feingold statement:

The Supreme Court's decision concerning military commissions at Guantanamo Bay is a major rebuke to an Administration that has too often disregarded the rule of law. It is a testament to our system of government that the Supreme Court has stood up against this overreaching by the executive branch.

UPDATE: Senator Cornyn statement:

"This is a blockbuster decision, and it will take some time to determine the consequences of what the Court said today. But they've opened the door to a legislative remedy, and as Congress plays a key role in this debate, we'll work with the administration to reach a solution.

"We're not talking about simple criminals--these detainees include the most violent terrorists in the world. And let's not forget who we're talking about in this particular case: Hamdan was captured in Afghanistan and is charged with delivering weapons and ammunition to al Qaeda, providing logistical support to bin Laden's bodyguards and participating in weapons training.

"The Court does not call into question the U.S. government's power to detain terrorists while hostilities continue. This is critically important because we can't allow terrorists to simply return home and restart their war plans. Guantanamo will remain open so long as it is in the national security interests of the United States."

UPDATE: Bush to work with Congress over court concerns

Posted by Tom Bevan at 09:43 AM | Email Author | Permalink

The New York Post's Deborah Orin begins her column today with a thought experiment:

Imagine the outrage, especially from the Left, if President Bush were to hire an Internet guru who had a past as a Web shill for a worthless dot-com stock.

I'm sure you know where she's going. Read the whole thing.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 08:03 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Earlier this week in the Washington Post, Sebastian Mallaby had a column on the recent study in the American Sociological Review on loneliness and social interaction in America. Dick Meyer has a piece today on the same issue. The introduction from the report sums up the main thesis:

Since 1985, the number of people saying there is no one with whom they discuss important matters nearly tripled. The mean network size decreases by about a third (one confidant), from 2.94 in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004. The modal respondent now reports having no confidant; the modal respondent in 1985 had three confidants. Both kin and non-kin confidants were lost in the past two decades, but the greater decrease of non-kin ties leads to more confidant networks centered on spouses and parents, with fewer contacts through voluntary associations and neighborhoods. The data may overestimate the number of social isolates, but these shrinking networks reflect an important social change in America.

Meyer offers several ideas on why this may be occurring:

The main culprits are work time and commutes. Both have increased since 1985 and both take time away from families, friends and voluntary participation. As women entered the workforce in bulk, the total number of hours family members spent working outside the home went way up. As people fled the cities, suburbs and exurbs boomed and so did commute times.

This especially affects "middle-aged, better-educated, higher-income families." As the paper points out, these are exactly the people who build neighborhoods and volunteer groups and those are the social structures that have most atrophied in the past 20 years.

The more speculative hypothesis is that perhaps new communications technologies have led to people forming wider, but weaker social ties that are less dependent on geography. E-mail and cheap phone calling have made it easier to stay in frequent, sometimes constant touch with lots of people, no matter where they are.....

Certainly, it's hard to escape complaints about the busy-ness and time-stress of life these days; it's an obvious, bad problem. For most people I know, it is exacerbated by the technology that is meant to make it easier for us to communicate and stay connected.

Instead of feeling in touch, many feel on a leash. Portable, gadget driven communication doesn't count as soul-feeding bonding for many people I know, but is rather a cruel mockery. Explaining social isolation will be controversial, but not as difficult as repairing it.

In my mind there is no question that the explosion of cable/satellite TV and the Internet are major contributing forces, along with a myriad of other factors that contribute to these results. But in the end what they all lead to is a deficit of time in the day.

What most of us lack in this world today is time. And building real friendships and relationships is something that takes time. And time is something we haven't figured out how to make more of.

Posted by John McIntyre at 07:09 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Apropos Seth Swirsky's column this morning contrasting the basic decency of George W. Bush with the incivility of some Democrats, here's a snippet from GQ's interview with Russ Feingold:

What are your dealings with W. like?

Feingold: You know, I haven't had a lot of face-to-face contact with him over the years. But he's been very pleasant. What struck me recently was, I had, you know, just proposed censuring him. But McCain and I had also just gone to Iraq. And Bush wanted to have all the various people who had just been to Iraq come up to the Roosevelt Room in the White House and brief him. So we walk in, and I shake his hand, and he gives me not just the regular shake but the whole deal. [demonstrates a double-fisted handshake] And he said, "How ya doin', pal?" You know.

Despite five years worth of ad hominem attacks on his intelligence, faith, integrity, etc., Bush still treats even his most ardent opponents with a great deal of decency and civility.

Needless to say, civility has not been the Democrats' strong suit in recent years - not just toward the President but Republicans in general. Howard Dean's remark from last June springs to mind: "Well, Republicans, I guess, can do that, because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives."

Or John Kerry's off camera attack during the 2004 Presidential campaign: "These guys are the most crooked, you know, lying group I've ever seen." After the remarks were made public and caused an uproar, Kerry famously refused to apologize, lest he be seen as weak by his Bush-hating base.

Unfortunately, Kerry's response is a perfect example of the one idea that seems to have taken deep hold on the left over the last few years which is that civility equals weakness and, conversely, that being rude and uncivil is somehow an expression of toughness and strength.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 06:54 AM | Email Author | Permalink

The other day, we checked in on National Journal's No. 2 rated Senate race (out in Montana). Today, let's look in on No. 1: the Santorum-Casey race in Pennsylvania.

Both candidates have put lengthy biography videos up on the Web.

Here's Santorum's:

And here's Casey's:

It's worth noting that Casey's video leads off the bat with this quote: "How much longer must the concerns of Pennsylvanians take a back seat to an intolerant ideology?"

Santorum's video is much more focused on his can't-get-no-respect political career, where he's been counted out and then come from behind to win.

So far, it looks like Casey's approach is doing better, by a margin of 52-34, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 05:11 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Yesterday, Pew released a poll showing the Democrats with "distinct advantages" going into this year's midterm elections.

The bullet points (summarizing their press release):

* Voters continue to say they favor the Democratic candidate in their district, by a 51% to 39% margin.

* The level of enthusiasm about voting among Democrats is unusually high, and is atypically low among Republicans. In fact, Democrats now hold a voter enthusiasm advantage that is the mirror image of the GOP's edge in voter zeal leading up to the 1994 midterm election. [46% of Democratic voters say they are more enthusiastic about voting than usual, compared with just 30% of Republicans. In October 1994, Republicans held a comparable advantage on this measure (by 45%-30%)]

* Public anger with Congress continues to rise, and anti-incumbent sentiment has reached new highs.

* Increased Democratic intensity is mostly driven by anger toward President Bush and Republican leaders, not by support for the party and its leaders. Fully 64% of Democrats say their party is doing only a fair or poor job in standing up for its traditional positions on such things as protecting the interests of minorities and helping the poor.

Read the whole report here.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 04:26 PM | Email Author | Permalink

As the Supreme Court gives a virtually complete thumbs-up to the Texas redistricting plan sired by Tom DeLay, some of the reaction has contained moments of thorough nonsense.

First among these is the notion that DeLay was involved in some Republican "power grab." If so, it was a grab only in the way that one would grab one's own property from the hands of a thief. As redistricting was undertaken, the Texas congressional delegation featured 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans, an abomination in a state as red as Texas. (I would similarly scoff if a liberal enclave like Massachusetts had a majority of Republican members of Congress).

The legislature failed to redistrict right after the 2000 census, leading judges to do it instead. The state Constitution calls for lawmakers, not judges, to draw districts, so the legislature tackled it again in 2003, arriving at a plan that made Democrats apoplectic because it stood to strip them of more than a half-dozen seats in Congress, a development an objective observer would call a return to a delegation reflective of the electorate.

But in the hands of analysts to whom anything Republicans do is bad, and anything Tom DeLay does is worse, this thoroughly proper development is couched in the most sinister of terms.

The only portion of Texas redistricting that snagged on the high court was Republican Henry Bonilla's 23rd district. Somehow the loss of some of the Hispanics there struck the justices as a denial of "minority voting rights," whatever those are.

Is there such a thing as a racial constituency's right to the likelihood of a congressman of a certain race or party? Even before that debate starts, one must dispense with the shallow analysis that a heavily Hispanic district must be a Democrat district. Rep. Bonilla, a popular Republican who stood ready to run for Kay Bailey Hutchison's U.S. Senate seat if she had run for Governor, garnered nearly 70 percent in the 2004 vote in a vast district nestled along the Mexican border.

The days when minority constituencies can be pigeonholed are dwindling. The Supreme Court seems to be behind the learning curve on that development.

- Mark Davis
Host of The Mark Davis Radio Show

Posted by Mark Davis at 03:05 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Obama: Democrats must court Evangelicals.

It sounds reasonable enough. But is it?

The Democrats have run very close in the last two presidential elections without doing this (at least without doing it successfully). And they tend to make fools of themselves when they try.

Bill Clinton could pull off that kind of pandering. Hillary Clinton clearly won't be able to.

They're going to need another strategy.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 11:57 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Mitt Romney is quickly emerging as the only plausible '08 alternative for social conservatives to more socially moderate frontrunners Rudy Giuliani and John McCain (and, yes, I'm putting them in that order for a reason).

The elephant in the room, however, to use my new favorite phrase, is Romney's Mormonism. Evangelical conservatives are uncomfortable with it -- not necessarily hostile, but totally in the dark as to what Mormonism even is. (It's bad luck for Romney that Big Love had to start this year -- even if GOP primary voters aren't exactly HBO's target demographic.)

Here's a short item on Hotline On Call about a visit by Romney to Pat Robertson's 700 Club.

One question: What's his response to people who think Mormonism is a cult?

Not a promising start.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 11:42 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Don't blame me. Rep. Chris Cannon apparently said it quite a bit during his hotly contested primary against Buchananite and Tancredoite John Jacob.

With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Cannon won that primary by a commanding 12 points, 56-44.

What does this mean for the anti-immigration folks? Well, over at The Corner, immigration liberal John Podhoretz notes that some of his more restrictionist colleagues are sounding like Daily Kossacks.

A loss is a loss is a loss. It turns out that anti-immigration sentiment is weaker in the GOP than some thought -- especially in the West.

And some of us think that's a very good thing.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 10:46 AM | Email Author | Permalink

The Wall Street Journal is indispenable. The news section brings interesting perspectives to the great issues of the day, the Marketplace and Money & Investing sections are always finely done, and even the Personal Journal has a mix of essential material.

That's why the opinion section is such a disappointment. The latest example: Bret Stephens' "Global View" column, entitled "Democrats Need A Foreign Policy Clue. Here's One" in yesterday's paper.

The immediate occasion for Stephens' piece is the new book, "With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Deafeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty," edited by Will Marshall of the Democratic Leadership Council.

I'm a big fan of Will Marshall and the DLC, and, while I haven't read the book, I'm sure it is typically outstanding. The list of contributors -- ranging from Ken Pollack to Graham Allison -- is certainly impressive.

But Stephens uses the opportunity to create a foreign policy strawman that is grossly unfair to Democrats. Stephens bemoans the Democrats' seeming refusal to fully endorse President Bush's agenda of democracy promotion. OK, as far as it goes, although I recall Harold Koh, a prominent Clinton State Department figure, once say that the essence of Clinton's foreign policy was democracy promotion. But there is no doubt that the center of gravity has moved in the Democratic Party, and probably in the country, too. Iraq has had a certain chastening effect. But Stephens goes on to say that "it ought not to be impossible to mobilize the Democratic Party behind an aggressively anti-Islamist foreign policy that rallies support for the effort in Iraq."

This is the typical Republican conflation of the Bush doctrine with opposition to Islamist fanaticism. I don't know of any Democrats who want to compromise with Al Qaeda or have any truck with jihadism. Democrats -- for the most part -- would instead argue that invading Iraq is not only ineffective in the struggle against terror, but possibly counterproductive.

There are three separate and important debates that all Americans should consider. First, should the promotion of democracy be at the center of American foreign policy? Second, if the answer to the first question is yes, should we use armed force in the effort? And, third, how would democracy in Iraq quell jihadism?

There is a tremendous amount of debate among serious people in both parties about each of these questions. Democrats have played a key part in these debates, and most Democrats -- but by no means all -- have differed from President Bush in the answers to the three questions mentioned above. But their differences do not, contra Stephens, mean that they don't take seriously the great national security questions of the day. Nor do the differing answers of most Democrats imply that they don't care about foreign policy or American interests abroad.

For Stephens, to disagree with President Bush is to be a fellow traveller with Michael Moore, whom Stephens reflexively invokes in his article. Michael Moore -- the Ann Coulter of the Democratic Party -- richly deserves rebuking by prominent Democrats. But Democrats and Republicans alike should reject facile thinking in favor of a serious debate about the role of America and its military in the world today. The best Democratic thinkers are inspired less by Michael Moore than by George Kennan and Reinhold Niebuhr. I don't think either of those great men would have much use for either Michael Moore or George W. Bush.

Posted by Brad Carson at 10:18 AM | Email Author | Permalink

My column today covers some impressions of Ambassador John Bolton gleaned from a conference call with him on Monday. At the tail end of the call I managed to ask Ambassador Bolton about the New York Times' leaking of the SWIFT story, and this is what he said:

"This is one that, the publication of those stories is really very hard to defend....this is revealing something that was quite important and has been very effective in watching how the terrorists move money around, laundering it so that they can move it to places where they need to use it. And at some point somebody needs to make a decision in responsible media whether that World War II spirit that said "loose lips sink ships, don't spill our secrets", is something we still believe or not. So I don't think we can calculate the negative effect of the publication of that - how bad it's going to be."

By the way, if you're looking for a counterpoint to my column, Niall Stanage puts a hit on Bolton in the New York Observer this morning, airing conspiracies that Bolton's real agenda is to destroy the U.N. rather than reform it and/or he's merely positioning himself to write a big tell-all book in the future.

I have no doubt Bolton is tough and aggressive, or that his style may rankle some in Turtle Bay. The question, however, isn't so much whether Bolton is tough but whether he's fair and reasonable as well. I don't know that I've seen any evidence suggesting he's fallen short on either count. Recognizing that the term "fair and reasonable" is subjective, I'd still be delighted for Bolton's critics to lay out exactly which parts of the reform package being pushed by the U.S. Mission they find to be unfair and/or unreasonable and why.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 09:28 AM | Email Author | Permalink

In the first survey taken since Montgomery Country Executive Doug Duncan dropped out of the Democratic primary in the Maryland Governor's race last week, a Washington Post poll shows Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich trailing Democrat Martin O'Malley by 11 points among registered voters and by 16 points among those "absolutely certain" to vote. The Ehrlich campaign took issue with the poll, without delving into specifics:

Ehrlich declined to comment, but aides said they did not believe he trailed by such a large margin; communications director Paul E. Schurick said the campaign's most recent poll, conducted in mid-May, showed O'Malley ahead by 5 points.

"We've always known this was going to be an incredibly difficult and close race," Schurick said. "But there is something in this poll that strikes us as wrong."

The only other recent poll in the race, an April 18 survey of 500 likely voters by Scott Rasmussen, showed Ehrlich trailing O'Malley by nine points, 42-51.

That was before Duncan dropped out, of course, so it seems plausible Ehrlich is trailing by double digits right now. Either way, the race is going to be exceedingly close in the end, and while I wouldn't count Ehrlich out just yet, he is certainly going to have to fight tooth and nail to hold onto his job.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:50 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Andrew Cohen wrote a less than convincing op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday saying a "collective sort of reverse insanity has descended upon the media" in the Duke lacrosse case. Cohen rails against the way reporters have been lapping up the defense's arguments and says that the judge "long ago should have stepped into this case and shut up the defense teams with a gag order."

My beef with Cohen's piece is that he makes only two passing references to Mike Nifong's deplorable behavior at the start of this case when Nifong waded into the media frenzy and did more than seventy interviews, including at least a few where he touted the certainty that a rape had occurred. Just how fair would it have been to gag the defense team after such a prejudicial media onslaught induced by the District Attorney?

Just because Nifong subsequently decided (after his election was secured, of course) to unilaterally disarm and stop talking about the case with the press doesn't mean the defense should have to surrender its right to discuss the case as well.

My other issue with Cohen's article is that it makes no reference to Nifong's mind-boggling decision to postpone the trial until the spring of next year. One logical way to clear up all the posturing and uncertainty surrounding the case is to get it into the courtroom as soon as possible. Surely if there has ever been a case that merited expediting, it's this one.

Instead, however, we have nine more months of speculation awaiting us, and the accused have nine more months of living in hellish limbo. Cohen writes:

The point is that we don't know. We haven't seen all of the evidence, haven't examined all of the testimony; haven't had the privilege of seeing the case unfold at trial the way it is supposed to.

How true. But also written like a man who isn't waiting to stand trial for a crime he may not have committed.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 06:53 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Ward Churchill issued a statement yesterday blasting the University's recently completed investigation which resulted this week in an official recommendation that he be fired. Churchill writes:

The investigative report produced by the panel, while voluminous, misses the mark entirely.

The panelists were required by the rules to restrict their inquiry to whether I actually committed fraud and plagiarism.

Instead, they indulged in a repetition of the "Scopes Monkey Trial," presuming to assert the "truth" of the various historical and legal questions involved, in a manner comfortable to themselves and to those they seemingly perceive as comprising the "American mainstream." Such enforcement of orthodoxy was plainly not within the panels legitimate mandate.

Indeed, as regards the allegations of fraud raised by Interim Chancellor DiStefano, whether what I wrote is true or false is irrelevant. The ONLY relevant consideration is whether I had reason to believe it was true.

On this score, I did, and still do, and the panel proved nothing to the contrary. This is amply reflected in the evidence the panel left largely unaddressed in its report. Much the same pertains to my having supposedly "invented" historical incidents, and the alleged implications of my ghostwriting.

As to the panels findings that by a "preponderance of the evidence" I twice engaged in plagiarism, a simple question presents itself: What, exactly, is a "preponderance" of no evidence at all? Of course, the report produced by the investigative panel is designed to make the opposite of all this seem true. In fact, it seems reasonable to suggest that the very length of the document was meant to obscure its lack of substance.

I haven't been following this so closely as to have memorized the intimate details of the charges against Churchill, but his response seems bizarrely non-responsive...

Posted by Tom Bevan at 06:40 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Jonathan Gurwitz of the San Antonio Express-News fires back against.......you guessed it, Daily Kos.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 06:12 AM | Email Author | Permalink

To my mind, few publications are as consistently interesting as the London Review of Books, and the June 22 issue is a case in point. As in the New York Review of Books, pieces in the LRB are not so much reviews as extended meditations prompted by the book or film ostensibly under consideration. Three articles really stand out in the current issue.

First, there is a great piece by John Lanchester on the subject of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is a fascinating business to be sure, and Lanchester's review is worth reading if only for the notion that Sam Walton and Andy Warhol had something in common and for learning about the the marketing of Vlasic pickles. It is one of the most balanced and insightful pieces I've read on the controversial company.

Second, John Connelly examines (subscription required) the Red Army in World War II. Today, in the midst of Iraq and Afghanistan, the death of a single marine or soldier makes the evening news, which treats the casualty as the tragedy which it rightfully is. But it was not that long ago -- less than one hundred years -- where fifty thousand troops (or more) would die in a single battle, often in a day or two. Think of the Somme or Verdun, where whole generations were wiped out. Or imagine service in Stalin's Red Army. Troops were so ill-equipped that they trained with wooden rifles and replicas of tanks. The Soviet soldier was often sent into battle with no weapon at all, with the hope that the soldier could lift a rifle from a dead compatriot on the battlefield. And retreat was not an option; the secret police waited behind the lines to summarily execute anyone who retreated from a firing position. Soviet leaders expected their soldiers to die, which they did in big numbers. Of the 400,000 men in the Red Army's armored regiments, 310,000 were killed. These troops were not even referred to as "soldiers" or even "men." Rather, the Soviet leadership, knowing that death was all but certain for the men, simply called them "lives" -- as in "We need 100,000 more lives for Stalingrad." While the troops proved to be enormously brave, only the Nazis exceeded them in brutality toward civilians. Connelly notes that the Red Army raped at least 100,000 women in Berlin alone. The article is well worth your time.

Finally, Brian Jones discusses (subscription required) the crisis over Iran's quest for nuclear weapons. Jones' provocative argument stems from his conclusion that biological weapons are both easier to make and more difficult to deter (as their origins can be more difficult to trace than nuclear weapons). Even if we thwart Iran's nuclear ambition, the country can just continue to develop its BW capability. Alternatively, if we were to change the regime, Iran could easily collapse into a chaos that would allow terrorist groups to thrive and develop BW capability. So, Jones concludes:

"It will always be difficult to control nuclear proliferation without provoking a different threat that may be just as deadly but easier to develop and harder to deter. Military interventions, even if they succeed in setting back nuclear programmes, areunlikely to destroy them completely and may only strengthen hostile regimes. Or a regime may fall, leading to a breakdown of civil order, as has happened in Iraq. In either case, the likelihood of an unconventional response to perceived aggression using methods associated with terrorists will increase. We appear to be faced with an uncomfortable choice beteween promoting a world of strong, stable nation-states, some of which will be anipathetic to Western political and cultural values, or living in a more chaotic global society. . . . Before supporting precipitate action to halt Iran's nuclear programmme, Britain should consider whether that would undermine the chances of establishing a stable global framework, in which more states would possess nuclear weapons, but in which rogue states and terrorists would find it hard to survive, let alone to develop WMD."

To me, this is a fruitful way to think about the Bush/Blair doctrine.

Check out all these articles, and the LRB in general.

Posted by Brad Carson at 04:45 AM | Email Author | Permalink

With 85 percent of precincts reporting (at 1:40 a.m. Eastern), it looks as if Rep. Chris Cannon, supporter of President Bush's immigration policy, will survive a challenge from Tancredoite John Jacob by a healthy margin.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 12:38 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Also on the Israeli situation, I would be remiss not to link the most recent column by Hillel Halkin, also written just before the current military operation.

Halkin, who writes a column for The New York Sun (from Israel), is perhaps the sharpest person writing on Israel today -- put down that Tom Friedman column (as if I needed to tell you). And despite his being perhaps one click too far to the Left, I can't recommend his pieces highly enough.

Anyway, with the praise out of the way, here's a bit of his column, titled "An End To Ambiguity":

Make it clear that, as far as the government of Israel is concerned, it and the Palestinian Authority are now in a state of war and that Israeli policies will be adjusted accordingly.

Until now, ever since the creation of the Palestinian Authority by the 1993 Oslo accord, Israel's relations with this Authority have been absurdly ambiguous. On the one hand, the PA has supported anti-Israel terror, both by funding it and its organizations, and by turning a blind eye to it when it has been committed and refusing to bring its perpetrators to justice. Yet on the other hand, because the Palestinian Authority has always publicly disclaimed responsibility for terroristic acts, and has mendaciously asserted that it is not to blame for them and has done all it could to prevent them, Israel has refrained from declaring it an enemy state.

Although this has been a gross charade all along, there have been perhaps justifiable political and diplomatic reasons, from an Israeli perspective, for allowing it to take place. But these reasons have now exhausted themselves. The Palestinian Authority now has a Hamas government - and however this government may twist or turn, and however it may have tried to disassociate itself from the hundreds of Kassam rockets shot from the Gaza Strip into Israel with its complicit knowledge in recent months, it can not disassociate itself from the Hamas soldiers who raided the Israeli outpost on Sunday.

Israel should therefore say to this government: "The charade is over. While we are willing to negotiate through neutral parties a prisoner exchange involving Gilad Shalit, we are also declaring war on you. From now on we will treat you as any country treats another country it is at war with. We will close all our borders with you, cease providing you with all services, and consider any branch of your government, any of its members, and anyone on your side contributing to your military effort, legitimate war targets. We will do our very best to avoid harming civilians, and we will expect you to do the same, but anyone else, from Prime Minister Ismail Heniya down, is from now until further notice a legitimate target. And when you're ready to sue for peace-and-quiet, let us know."

Rest assured that Hamas will sue fast. This time, though, Israel will have to insist that the quiet, if not the peace, be real and lasting.

Bold added. This is the only way for Israel to deal with the Palestinian Arabs.

The election of Hamas officially ended the peace-process charade.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 12:27 AM | Email Author | Permalink

As Israeli troops move into Gaza, one of the best places to stay tuned for news and commentary will be The Jerusalem Post.

News here.

Opinion here.

In this editorial, written before the move into Gaza, the JPost calls for holding the Palestinian Authority responsible for all acts of terrorism against Israel.

There is no peace process. Especially with Hamas in control. It's time for Israel to take off the gloves.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 10:55 PM | Email Author | Permalink

The flag amendment is dead for now. But we all know it'll be back.

So, with that in mind, here are the responses from RCP Blog readers to my earlier post expressing some skepticism about the amendment.

Most surprising, to me at least, was that the letters ran about 3-to-1 against the amendment.

A sampling (a little heavy on the pro-flag-amendment ones, for balance) after the jump.

To the editor:

Put really simply, the American flag is the symbolic representation of our country. Hundreds of thousands of men and women have died or been maimed fighting to protect our country. Many of them died protecting the physical flag. Read accounts of 19th century battles. Look at what our foreign enemies do to our flag when they have managed to capture one. They desecrate it.

It is hardly a violation of anyone's first amendment rights to speech to forbid the physical desecration of our country's symbol. You say it's a right. Because you say so? Because the supreme court changed it's collective mind on the issue after many decades? The Congress and States through the amendment process have the constitutional right to correct the Supreme Court.

I hope this amendment finally passes.

Bill Brockman
Atlanta, GA

* * *

If the coercive power of the state includes banning the burning of leaves in your backyard, what's the big deal to include a flag? If leaves (or air quality) deserve such protection, does not the flag?

Paul Smith
Dallas, TX

* * *

You are right up until the point that the flag burning amendment is passed by 2/3rds of House and Senate and 75% of the states. Then it becomes equal to the first amendment. We will have said through our political process that we support free speech but we won't extend that protection to flag burning.

This is exactly how the political process is supposed to work. Take a controversial issue, put a huge political hurdle requiring lots of commentary and debate and overwhelming popular acceptance to enact it.

I don't like the campaign finance reform (not because I think the campaigns are a pure as the driven snow, but because of the distortions in political speech it imposes). But if they went to the same process to make it an amendment, fine.

Make a substantive argument on why there should not be a flag burning amendment that doesn't involve the first amendment. At best most people can come up with is that they don't think it is such a serious issue to warrant an amendment or that we should show ourselves more tolerant. But if 75% of the country (as represented by the state legislatures that would pass it) think it is worth while, that the idea of what the flag stands for should be respected, then those arguments against the ban have had their say and failed.

I just wish that proponents of other controversial public positions (e.g. gay marriage, abortion, unauthorized release of national secrets) would go through the rigor of crafting, promulgating and passing an amendment.

yetanotherjohn

* * *

We the country continues to be troubled by the 'free speech' movement of the Sixties which, through the courts, became the law of the land. When the definition of speech became broadened to any form of expression, all kinds of 'hell' became legal. If anyone wonders where all the pornography came from, they just need to look to the courts application of 'free speech'. And, of course, this re-defining of what constitutes speech affects everything from flag burning to campaign contributions to nakedness to you name it. We need the Supreme Court to help re-establish speech as the Constitution drafters knew it. Then the voters can operate within that framework. Life would be simpler, less political and certainly 'cleaner'.

Ralph Wright
Colorado Springs, CO

* * *

I agree completely that Flag Burning should not be prohibited. Burning the US Flag should remain distastefully legal and legally distasteful. Burning the flag is insulting to all of who love our country, and especially to all of those who served in the armed forces, knew or loved someone who did, or lost someone in the service of their country.

But, distasteful as it may be, burning the flag is free speech, just as our swift and merciless condemnation of those that do it is free speech.

The Flag is not a religious symbol, and writing an amendment to protect it is nothing short of elevating it to that status.

Better for us to allow those people who hate their country so much as to disrespect those who died preserving it - and those show themselves - than to take away that right.

Jason

* * *

I agree with your assessment regarding the flag burning amendment. Yes, flag burning is disgraceful and is a slap in the face to every veteran who has fought and died protecting the citizens of the United States. However, freedom of speech was one of the many rights for which those veterans died. No difference exists between some anti-American liberal intellectual (Ward Churchill) professing his hatred of the United States and someone torching an American flag. Flag burning uses symbolism, while someone like Ward Churchill uses words. The First Amendment begins by stating "Congress shall make no law...", but that is what Congress is about to do: enact a law restricting free speech.

Charles

* * *

Your statement "Either American citizens have the right to speak -- to express themselves, to associate -- or they don't." is, I am sure, a knowing oversimplification. The courts have already placed/allowed many limits on these rights, many of which are obviously appropriate (i.e., fire!, slander). Personally, I have no problem with flag burning as a means of expression and would probably, but not certainly, vote against the proposed amendment if I had a vote. But I also accept that some persons whom I respect, in good faith and not solely or primarily from base political motives, believe that flag burning is a uniquely pernicious form of expression that should be prohibited. If they succeed, I will choose to accept it as a vindication of the right to seek and obtain an amendment of the Constitution and not as betrayal of a sacrosanct First Amendment. Nor do I believe that the comparison between campaign finance restrictions and flag burning is apposite. Campaign finance restrictions truly inhibit vital political speech and have never (as far as I know) been proposed as the subject of a constitutional amendment. In sum. I wish you had confined your opposition to a flag burning amendment to its merits instead of making an attack ad hominem on those who support it.

Jim Hunter

* * *

Glad to see a little common sense on this issue. How many flags get burned each year anyway? What about all the Supreme Court decisions addressing use of the flag as speech? It is a sad waste of time.

Mike

* * *

You've never been more right. Watching the "conservative" party pander like this is disgusting.

Keith Morton
Northfield, IL

* * *

First off, thank you for your blog and realclearpolitics.com! I believe that this is the best clearinghouse of political philosophy and thought on the internet. To get this quantity of conservative-liberal, libertarian-statist, capitalist-socialist views, I would have to go to numerous sources. So, again, thank you!

Onto your blog entry - You state that:

Either American citizens have the right to speak -- to express themselves, to associate -- or they don't. Campaign-finance reform is a liberal's way of stifling speech he or she doesn't like. And a ban on flag burning is a conservative's way of stifling speech he or she doesn't like (emphasis added). Either both restrictions of speech are OK, meaning the government can restrict speech when a majority of citizens or their legislators want that speech restricted, or neither one is OK.

Would you admit that that liberals and conservatives use different methods to achieve their goals? Liberals use the courts and extra-constitutional means by changing the law and meaning of the Constitution. Conservatives use the legal process within the Constitution to change the "rights" of all Americans, with 2/3 vote in both houses and 3/4 vote in all state houses - giving the American people ample opportunity to voice their opinions. Liberals don't.

You would have to admit that, if someone believes that this practice should be banned, this is the proper and legal way to accomplish this, correct? Personally, I welcome the debate on freedom of speech and flag burning - and all of the merit and demerit attached.

The national discussion is whether flag burning is a "right". Conservatives put this discussion up for debate - liberals, as a habit, don't. I happen to agree with your libertarian assessment - that there should not be a Constitutional Amendment to give Congress the right to regulate this issue - it is best regulated as a public safety issue, which is grounded, versus an emotional issue, which is not grounded. Finally, I think your cynicism of politicians' motive is very valid, but your explanation of conservative-liberal methods is glossed over for the reader.

Tim Hediger

* * *

Why is it necessary to burn the American flag to make a point? All this does is to show one's hatred and contempt for his/her country and him/her self. I look at this as another sign of contempt liberals have for America, this somehow assuages their guilt as was so well stated by Shelby Steele. Why is it so necessary to show such hate, it adds nothing to any debate. Isn't this hate we are trying to get out of our society? The left rightly deplores hate crimes against, women, gays, etc. Are we not within our rights as rationale beings to insist that debate on any issue be civil and displayed without contempt? I think so. I have a son in the army. His tour will soon be up. I am glad of this not for the obvious safety reasons, but I recognize that there are many in America who are not worth his sacrifice or any other American boy or girl. Those who live by hate will die by hate.

Joe Bartlow

* * *

People think freedom of speech only applies to speech that doesn't
offend them. While I think burning the US flag is despicable, limiting
freedom of speech is more despicable.

Randy R

* * *

The First Amendment is about protecting the message, not the medium. (No, they're not the same.) I have a constitutional right to express my contempt for Senator Clinton. But that doesn't give me the right to parade around the U.S. Capitol stark naked with "Hillary Sucks" tattooed on my behind. There are alternatives. What possible message is contained in flag desecration that cannot be communicated through some other means?

The courts have always recognized that the First Amendment has an exception for "fighting words." I have a right to say "I don't like you." But when I start insulting your mother and questioning her sexual proclivities that protection goes away, and I'm the one who is to blame when you try to smash my face. Flag burning is also "fighting words," especially for veterans. Flag burners aren't trying to articulate any particular message beyond "I hate America." They are trying to attract attention and piss people off - not constitutional rights.

I'm especially angry with the Supreme Court's hypocrisy in declaring flag burning protected, but cross burning not. Cross burning is far more closely tied to a specific message. A nasty message, but one with constitutional protection. Please explain why some anti-American toe-rag can burn a flag at a military funeral, but some cone-headed klansman can't burn a cross on his private farm.

PatMc

* * *

I was sad to see that only two GOP senators voted against the amendment. I was pleased to see Mr. McConnell was one of them and I think that is especially fitting in terms of your linked argument on campaign finance "reform." As I am sure you recall, Sen. McConnell was the leader of the fight against the abhorrent McCain-Feingold Act and refused to go along despite tremendous pressure to do so.

His stand was in marked contrast to President Bush who signed the bill into law despite having stated his belief that all or some of the legislation was unconstitutional in his opinion. While I generally support our president it seems clear from the wording that signing legislation the president believes to be unconstitutional directly violates his oath of office. The fact that many presidents have done so does not excuse it.

I do disagree that campaign finance reform legislation is purely or even mostly a left wing interest. I would agree that Democrats are usually keener for it, but it is really about incumbency protection. Sadly two of the chief pillars of incumbency protection, campaign finance reform and district gerrymandering, are also two of the few areas where the two parties work well together.

It is particularly galling to me that the Senate can't find the time to do the heavy lifting of their jobs by figuring out Social Security, spending cuts, corporate tax questions, Medicare/aid, immigration, or dozens of other things but has loads of time to worry about flag burning.

In any event, the amendment thankfully failed to receive the 67 votes necessary and will hopefully die, at least for a while.

Will Althoff

Posted by Ryan Sager at 09:59 PM | Email Author | Permalink

The flag-burning amendment has failed.

By one vote. 66 to 34. (It needed 67 to pass.)

Posted by Ryan Sager at 05:49 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Hillary Clinton is hiring Peter Daou, author of Salon.com's Daou Report. He was also director of blog operations for John Kerry's 2004 campaign.

Daou has a post announcing it here.

In particular, Daou talks about the importance of "closing the triangle":

Since launching the Daou Report in December 2004, I have written extensively about a 'triangle' comprised of the traditional media, the political establishment, and the blogosphere. I have argued that "closing the triangle" (i.e. enhancing the connection between the three entities) is imperative for the Democratic Party and the progressive netroots. My thinking on this issue is informed by my experience directing blog outreach and online rapid response for the Kerry-Edwards campaign.

...

Which brings me to the point of this blog post: I have been offered - and accepted - what I believe is a unique opportunity to help close the triangle: joining Senator Clinton's team as a blog advisor to facilitate and expand her relationship with the netroots.

That's all well and good. But what does the closing of this triangle mean for the independence of the Left side of the blogosphere (and for the Right when the same situation arises)?

I'm not sure I have an answer, but in the wake (or, is it still going on) of Kosola, people seem to have a lot of questions about what it means for there to be a free flow of bloggers between the journalistic and consultant worlds.

And, pace Kos, the concern isn't just old media types and conservatives wanting to destroy the lefty blogosphere. But when consultants are working with bloggers behind the scenes and collections of blogs are actively working to coordinate their "message" (ahem, Townhouse), then how do you tell a blog from a tentacle of a larger activist machine?

Maybe that's the point. The Left would certainly ask, how do you tell any given conservative writer from a cog in the vast right-wing-conspiracy-slash-noise-machine?

So, more questions than answers here, I guess.

But congrats to Daou. Hillary certainly needs the help with the netroots.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 04:47 PM | Email Author | Permalink

The Left will want to have fun with this Rush Limbaugh story. And who could blame them.

But, according to the Drudge Report, Rush is at least doing what he can to diffuse it:

HOW DID BOB DOLE'S LUGGAGE GET ON MY AIRPLANE? I TOLD MY DOCTOR I WAS WORRIED ABOUT THE NEXT ELECTION'... ...CUSTOMS DID NOT BELIEVE ME WHEN I TOLD THEM THAT I GOT THOSE PILLS AT THE BILL CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY'...

But why would someone allegedly go through illegal means to get Viagra? Isn't it pretty easy to obtain legally?

Posted by Ryan Sager at 04:12 PM | Email Author | Permalink

I'll get to posting the flag letters shortly (y'all sent in a LOT of them), but right now I wanted to highlight and agree with James Taranto, writing in today's Best of the Web:

No doubt you are dying to know where this column stands on the flag-desecration amendment. The answer is, we are against it. Our view is that the Supreme Court got it right in 1989: Insofar as desecrating the flag is an act of political expression, it is protected by the First Amendment. (The objection that it isn't "speech" is overly literal. What we're doing now--causing pixels to form meaningful patterns on thousands of computer screens--isn't exactly speech either, but we like to think the First Amendment protects it from government interference.)

Burning the flag is a stupid and ugly act, but there is something lovely and enlightened about a regime that tolerates it in the name of freedom. And of course it has the added benefit of making it easier to spot the idiots.

Exactly.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 03:51 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Forbes' Rich Karlgaard on the Democrats and the Kos media boomlet:

Democrats will never win as a "screw them" party. In U.S. politics, the party that captures the moral high ground and frames the debate in optimistic terms generally wins. The Roosevelt, Truman and J.F.K. coalition did exactly that. Clinton's eight-year-interregnum of optimism succeeded against the fatigue of Bush 41 and the cynicism of Dole ... never mind that Bush and Dole were war heroes and honorable men, and Clinton was a rascal. Clintonism's best apostle was never Clinton; it is Tony Blair.

But to the Kos crowd, Clintonism, the DLC, Tony Blair and the whole tradition of Truman-J.F.K. strong defense and democratic intervention is one big sellout -- Republican lite.

It would be one thing if the Kos crowd made its arguments from a Gandhi-esque moral high ground. But they don't. Callousness and moonbat conspiracy mongering animates their foreign policy ideas. Jealousy rules in economics. Revenge will be the order of the day if these haters actually win. But I don't think the Kos crowd will win. "Screw them" doesn't sell in America. Never has. Never will.

If you're Karl Rove, you can't wait to pin the Kos tail on the Democratic donkey this fall and in 2008.

Running Joe Lieberman out of town is not the answer to the Democratic Party's problems.

Posted by John McIntyre at 12:30 PM | Email Author | Permalink

We all remember the morph ad. Powerful weapon in 1994.

Now, Joe Lieberman's netroots liberal challenger, Ned Lamont, has brought it back. (Lieberman used his own retro tactics here, reviving a 1988 ad involving a bear.)

Remember, you can send in nominations for the political video of the day to:

ryan-at-realclearpolitics.com

Posted by Ryan Sager at 11:43 AM | Email Author | Permalink

I apologize in advance for inflicting this on you:

"I'd rather be at home making love to my wife while my children are asleep."
-- Joe Biden (D-DE), on his interest in running for president

If his children read the papers, I don't see how they'll ever sleep soundly again.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 11:33 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Utah's 3rd congressional district today is home to a Republican primary that will be watched by both sides of the immigration debate.

Rep. Chris Cannon, who supports the president's plan, faces possible defeat by John Jacob, a restrictionist supported by Rep. Tom Tancredo's Team America PAC.

Polls open at 9 a.m. Eastern, close at 10 p.m. Eastern. Results will be posted online here.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 11:23 AM | Email Author | Permalink

I realize this might not be a popular view around here, but is there anything more ridiculous than the constant attempts to write a ban on flag burning into the Constitution? And is there anything more saddening than the fact that the Senate is only a hair's width away from putting its stamp on this foolishness?

I'm sorry, but how can anyone with an ounce of respect for the First Amendment support this?

Either American citizens have the right to speak -- to express themselves, to associate -- or they don't. Campaign-finance reform is a liberal's way of stifling speech he or she doesn't like. And a ban on flag burning is a conservative's way of stifling speech he or she doesn't like. Either both restrictions of speech are OK, meaning the government can restrict speech when a majority of citizens or their legislators want that speech restricted, or neither one is OK.

The whole point of the Bill of Rights, though, is that some decisions are simply beyond the reach of the democratic majority. Some individual rights are not subject to a veto by your neighbors.

Flag burning may be abhorrent. But it is a right.

Weakening the First Amendment is far too high a price for the Republican Party to wring some cheap publicity and political points out of forcing Democrats to choose between besmirching the Constitution and aggravating those foolish enough to equate a vote for free speech as a vote against patriotism.

Of course, I expect many readers to disagree with me. Want to weigh in?

Write to ryan-at-realclearpolitics.com

I'll try to post a batch of your thoughts later.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 11:05 AM | Email Author | Permalink

As promised, here's more Bob Bauer on the Vermont campaign-finance decision.

This morning, he surveys Breyer's decision and tries to figure out if the First Amendment has anything to do with it -- or whether Breyer just decided he didn't particularly like the Vermont system, and then went about rationalizing a way to strike it down.

Unfortunately, the latter seems to be the case. The Vermont decision was a happy development, but we're still miles away from the Supreme Court striking down the whole ridiculous business of campaign-finance "reform" as anathema to our Constitution.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 10:55 AM | Email Author | Permalink

As a pretty big fan of the Grateful Dead I found this interview with Ann Coulter, solely on the Dead, interesting. (Hat tip Andrew Sullivan.)

Posted by John McIntyre at 08:56 AM | Email Author | Permalink

This story is a further example of how the political environment can change very quickly. President Bush was already looking better after two weeks of positive news (holding CA-50, killing Zarqawi, Rove cleared, a new government in Iraq) before the New York Times irresponsibly disclosed details of a top secret program aimed at protecting the nation from future terrorist attacks. The program was legal, effective, and had strong bi-partisan support: both 9/11 Commission Vice Chair Lee Hamilton and Rep. John Murtha (Pa.) strongly urged the Times not to disclose the program.

Politically, this is a clear winner for Bush and the GOP. The issue plays to Bush's strengths and continues to paint the picture of the President as a stalwart fighter, protecting America's safety while the left-wing press does their best to undermine as many successful anti-terror programs as possible.

The Times and the far left are so completely out of touch with where the country is on national security and terrorism issues they probably thought this disclosure would hurt Bush politically. They are clueless.

But while this is a huge win politically for Bush, it doesn't have to be a loss for Democrats. This brewing scandal is a tailor-made opportunity for a Democrat to show his or her independence from the far-left, borderline anti-American media. Hillary Clinton would measurably improve her chances of becoming President if she walked down to the Senate floor and denounced the New York Times for harming American security.

So while the issue helps Republicans, it provides a huge opportunity for Democrats to send a message to the public on how seriously they take the War on Terror. They would be smart to take it.

Posted by John McIntyre at 08:35 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Just to add to the excellent post by Ross Kaminsky earlier, here's a roundup of commentary on the Vermont campaign-finance case (in which the Supreme Court struck down the state's limits on campaign spending and campaign contributions):

Allison Hayward: Offers an amusing (and informative) Randall v. Sorrell roadmap.

Allison Hayward (yes, again): Offers an attack on the idea of "balancing" an individual's right to free speech against other state interests, even when the balance occasionally comes out in favor of free speech, as in yesterday's Vermont decision. ("Speech or associational activity can be restricted by the government consistent with the First Amendment if the authorities have a good enough reason. So the Court balances.")

Bob Bauer: The anti-campaign-finance-regulation progressive election lawyer weighs in with an analysis of the decision, complete with a diagram of all the ideological contortions Justice Breyer had to go through along the way. Expect more from him Tuesday morning.

Adam Bonin: Sumarizes things for the crowd over at Daily Kos. An interesting discussion in the comments thread as to the legitimacy and usefulness of campaign-finance regulation in general. (I remain of the mind that there's a Left-Right coalition to be formed against campaign-finance "reform." The problem is there's an Incumbent-Incumbent coalition perpetuating it now.)

Eugene Volokh: Takes up the ever-vexing question of whether money is indeed speech.

Rick Hasen: The campaign-finance-regulation supporter offers a nice summary of what will happen next: battles across the country over whether particular local regulations are constitutional.

Rick Hasen (yes, yes, yes, again): Follows up with an argument that while the Supreme Court has upheld contribution limits for now, this decision could be the beginning of the end for campaign-finance "reform" (he doesn't use the scare quotes) in general and the beginning of the beginning of the long-hoped-for (among conservatives) dismantling of the awful Buckley decision that started this whole mess.

By the way, everyone, Happy Clean Money Day!!!

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:06 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Over at Slate, they're having a dialogue on the good/evil of Wal-Mart in the American economy. I've long been a defender of the promiscuous octopus -- just doing my part to stick it to the little guy on behalf of The Man.

Anyway, on the pro-Wal-Mart side is Jason Furman, who wrote a controversial paper on Wal-Mart as a progressive success story (PDF).

Here's a passage from his opening salvo, over at Slate:

Are you as surprised as I am by how quickly Wal-Mart's critics move past the issue of low prices? You will hear comments like, "Yes, Wal-Mart may have somewhat low prices, but let's talk about its impact on workers, the environment, trade with China, etc." But given just how important these low prices are to the hundreds of millions of Americans that shop there, I hope I can beg your indulgence to linger on them for a few moments.

A range of studies has found that Wal-Mart's prices are 8 percent to 39 percent below the prices of its competitors. The single most careful economic study, co-authored by the well-respected MIT economist Jerry Hausman, found that grocery sales by Wal-Mart and other big-box stores made consumers better off to the tune of 25 percent of food consumption. That doesn't mean much for those of us in the top fifth of the income distribution--we spend only about 3.5 percent of our income on food at home and, at least in my case, most of that shopping is done at high-priced supermarkets like Whole Foods. But that's a huge savings for households in the bottom quintile, which, on average, spend 26 percent of their income on food. In fact, it is equivalent to a 6.5 percent boost in household income--unless the family lives in New York City or one of the other places that have successfully kept Wal-Mart and its ilk away.

He's right, of course. A huge portion of the Wal-Mart debate happens among people who shop at Whole Foods. I've hardly ever been inside a Wal-Mart. I'm more of a Fresh Direct guy these days. But the people who get hurt when, say, the unions in New York City keep Wal-Mart out are the ones who would be saving a significant chunk of their budget if a supercenter could open in Queens or The Bronx and Staten Island.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 12:10 AM | Email Author | Permalink

In today's political video of the day, we take a trip to Montana, and the National Journal's No. 2 rated Senate race this November (by likelihood of the seat switching parties). In this race, State Sen. Jon Tester takes on Republican incumbent Sen. Conrad Burns, who has come under an immense amount of fire for his relationship with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

In this ad, Tester's first (according to the information included with the video at YouTube), he takes a page from the Brian Schweitzer school of Montana politics, emphasizing image over policy. Now-governor Schweitzer famously courted Montana voters in 2004, becoming the state's first Democratic governor in 20 years, by running a lot of TV ads featuring his dog and his gun.

With Tester, the image is all about the haircut in this ad titled: "Creating a Buzz."

The ad drew this response ad (a parody) from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, titled "Liberal Values."

There's been some controversy over the Republican ad's claim that Tester is a bad tipper.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 10:32 PM | Email Author | Permalink

In a decision released today in the case of Randall et al v. Sorrell et al, a divided Supreme Court invalidated Vermont's strictest-in-the-nation campaign finance laws.

The Vermont laws included some provisions which exceeded restrictions in many other states, including (quoting from the Court's decision):

1) "A political party and all of its affiliates together abide by exactly the same low $200 to $400 contribution limits", a provision the Court found to violate the right to associate in a political party,

2) "The Act excludes uncompensated volunteer services from its "contribution" definition, (but) does not exclude the expenses volunteers incur, e.g., travel expenses, in the course of campaign activities." This makes it difficult to use volunteers, again violating right of association.

3) The Vermont law's limits were not indexed for inflation, meaning "that limits already suspiciously low will almost inevitably become too low over time."

By a 6-3 vote (the 3 being Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg), the Court reversed lower courts' decisions which allowed Vermont's political speech gag rule and sent the cases back to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals for reconsideration. The Supreme Court's ruling reaffirms the Buckley decisions prohibition on states limiting candidates' spending.

The first major campaign finance case is the well-known Buckley v Valeo. In the decision in the current case, there is a fascinating and not-so-subtle argument about Buckley among the justices who agreed that the Vermont law was unconstitional.

The generally spineless Justice Breyer made a point of arguing that Stare Decisis (essentially respect for precedent) caused him to believe "subsequent case law has not made Buckley a legal anomaly or otherwise undermined its basic legal principles." Justices Scalia and Thomas retort with "Buckley v. Valeo provides insufficient protection to political speech, the core of the First Amendment, is therefore illegitimate and not protected by stare decisis, and should be overruled and replaced with a standard faithful to the Amendment."

Not everyone has seen the light of freedom however. From the opinion of the liberal Justice Stevens: "I am convinced that Buckley's holding on expenditure limits is wrong, and that the time has come to overrule it. I have not reached this conclusion lightly." In other words, not only does Stevens think contribution limits are OK, but he also thinks the Buckley decision should have allowed expenditure limits. Justices Ginsburg and Souter are lost as usual. Luckily Stevens and Ginsburg are the most likely judges to retire next.

In any case, there is a clear indication here that further challenges to campaign finance would be met by a Court which is more interested in protecting the First Amendment than we've seen in a long time. Indeed, in his concurrence in today's judgment, Justice Kennedy simply concurred in the judgment rather than participating in a big debate, reminding us that he disagreed with the Court's ruling in the original challenge to McCain-Feingold (also called "BCRA") in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission. Kennedy (who will forever in my mind be the villain from the Kelo case) made arguments in his concurrence which bear repeating:

The First Amendment guarantees our citizens the right to judge for themselves the most effective means for the expression of political views and to decide for themselves which entities to trust as reliable speakers. Significant portions of Titles I and II of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA or Act) constrain that freedom. These new laws force speakers to abandon their own preference for speaking through parties and organizations. And they provide safe harbor to the mainstream press, suggesting that the corporate media alone suffice to alleviate the burdens the Act places on the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.

Today's decision upholding these laws purports simply to follow Buckley v. Valeo and to abide by stare decisis...; but the majority, to make its decision work, must abridge free speech where Buckley did not. Buckley did not authorize Congress to decide what shapes and forms the national political dialogue is to take. To reach today's decision, the Court surpasses Buckley's limits and expands Congress' regulatory power. In so doing, it replaces discrete and respected First Amendment principles with new, amorphous, and unsound rules, rules which dismantle basic protections for speech.

A few examples show how BCRA reorders speech rights and codifies the Government's own preferences for certain speakers. BCRA would have imposed felony punishment on Ross Perot's 1996 efforts to build the Reform Party. BCRA makes it a felony for an environmental group to broadcast an ad, within 60 days of an election, exhorting the public to protest a Congressman's impending vote to permit logging in national forests. BCRA escalates Congress' discrimination in favor of the speech rights of giant media corporations and against the speech rights of other corporations, both profit and nonprofit.

To the majority, all this is not only valid under the First Amendment but also is part of Congress' "steady improvement of the national election laws." Ante, at 6. We should make no mistake. It is neither. It is the codification of an assumption that the mainstream media alone can protect freedom of speech. It is an effort by Congress to ensure that civic discourse takes place only through the modes of its choosing. And BCRA is only the beginning, as its congressional proponents freely admit:

"This is a modest step, it is a first step, it is an essential step, but it does not even begin to address, in some ways, the fundamental problems that exist with the hard money aspect of the system." 148 Cong. Rec. S2101 (Mar. 20, 2002) (statement of Sen. Feingold).

Our precedents teach, above all, that Government cannot be trusted to moderate its own rules for suppression of speech. The dangers posed by speech regulations have led the Court to insist upon principled constitutional lines and a rigorous standard of review. The majority now abandons these distinctions and limitations.

Today's ruling is the first major crack in the wall which government has built between citizens and politics (to protect incumbents, primarily) in the past 30 years. There are at least 3 Justices who obviously want to overturn most campaign finance law and one who is open to overturning at least expenditure limits. I would also expect Justices Roberts and Alito to be open to hearing arguments which tend in the direction of weakening campaign finance laws as violating our First Amendment rights. I hope that citizens in other states bring such challenges.

When the Founders wrote the First Amendment protecting freedom of speech, it was primarily political speech which they were thinking of. What would Jefferson say if he learned that political speech has become the least protected type of speech in our great Republic? It is some combination of tragic, embarrassing, and dangerous that we have let politicians muzzle us by claiming they are preventing corruption when all they are really doing is preventing competition.

Posted by Ross Kaminsky at 01:02 PM | Email Author | Permalink

"I don't like my home being a national laughing stock. This circus didn't need to happen." - Durham County Commissioner Lewis Cheek, speaking about the Duke rape case at a press conference today announcing a petition drive to get his name on the ballot to challenge Durham DA Mike Nifong in November.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 12:50 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Here's my two-part plea to pollsters: A) When possible, give regional breakdowns of national polls, B) and when you give these breakdowns, don't pretend there's a political entity called the "West."

While the Northeast, the South, and the Midwest are all relatively coherent political beings, which can be discussed as regions despite the obvious fact that there is infinite texture to any measure of public opinion, there is no such thing as the West. There is the Pacific Coast (California, Oregon, and Washington), and there are the eight states of the interior West (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming). There is no West.

To take one current example: the recent Pew analysis of President Bush's approval ratings. Now, I love the folks over at Pew, and they're always extraordinarily accommodating about breaking out their data in different ways. But let's just look at Bush's approval rating percentages, broken down by four geographic regions:

Northeast
Dec. 2004: 39
May 2006: 27
Change: -12

South
Dec. 2004: 56
May 2006: 36
Change: -20

Midwest
Dec. 2004: 48
May 2006: 32
Change: -16

West
Dec. 2004: 46
May 2006: 33
Change: -13

It looks, with a four-region breakdown, as if Bush is strongest in the South (though he's taken the biggest fall there) and weakest in the Northeast.

Now let's look at the West broken down between the coast and the interior (a breakdown provided by the kind folks over at Pew):

Interior West
Dec. 2004: 56
May 2006: 48
Change: -8

Pacific Coast
Dec. 2004: 41
May 2006: 24
Change: -17

Suddenly, we've got a new high and a new low. Bush is doing worse on the Pacific Coast than in the Northeast (24 vs. 27 -- though, granted, that might not be statistically significant) and he's doing far better in the interior West than in the South (a rather stunning 48 vs. 36). What's more, the interior West has seen the least movement in Bush's poll numbers between December of 2004 and May of 2006, a testament to just how solid his support is in the region.

What does it mean? Well, that's a question for another post. For now, my point is simply this: Any regional breakdown labeled "West" is simply an average of the Pacific Coast and the interior West, which are quite separate in their politics. Such a designation is utterly useless for understanding America's political geography.

And given that the interior West is beginning to be seen as a strategically crucial region for both parties (not just in my book, but also in an intriguing new book coming out later this year from Democratic political science professor Tom Schaller), it's time to start looking at it as a distinct entity.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 12:30 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Oh, how I'd like to violate the fair use doctrine with David Brooks' latest column blasting Markos Moulitsas. But, alas, I can only offer a snippet of Brooks' satirical takedown:

They say that the great leaders are gone and politics has become the realm of the small-minded. But in the land of the Lilliputians, the Keyboard Kingpin must be accorded full respect.

The Keyboard Kingpin, a k a Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, sits at his computer, fires up his Web site, Daily Kos, and commands his followers, who come across like squadrons of rabid lambs, to unleash their venom on those who stand in the way. And in this way the Kingpin has made himself a mighty force in his own mind, and every knee shall bow.

As expected, one of Kos's goose-stepping lieutenants by the name of "mcjoan" retaliates with an interminable list of diatribes against Brooks, concluded by her (his?) own:

What has been amply demonstrated is David Brooks' willingness to lie about anything and everything to serve his Republican masters. Nothing he writes is to be taken seriously or believed. He just does not tell the truth.

Brooks serving his Republican masters? At the New York Times? Despite the fact that David Brooks is moderate and exceedingly mild mannered - not to mention very critical of the Bush administration on a whole host of issues - he must be part of some top-secret "neocon" listserv (which includes Lieberman-lover Marty Peretz, no doubt) that is beamed out weekly direct from the Blackberry of _________ (insert name of most-hated member of Zionist-Likudnik cabal running the White House and the country).

Surely that's where Brooks gets instructions about which topics he should write about, and which ones he should "starve of oxygen."

Posted by Tom Bevan at 09:12 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Yesterday on FOX News Sunday Rep. Peter King called on the U.S. Government to prosecute the New York Times for its recent article revealing the SWIFT program:

To me, the real question here is the conduct of the New York Times. By disclosing this in time of war, they have compromised America's antiterrorist policies. This is a very effective policy. They have compromised it. This is the second time the New York Times has done this.

And to me, nobody elected the New York Times to do anything. And the New York Times is putting its own arrogant, elitist, left-wing agenda before the interests of the American people. And I'm calling on the attorney general to begin a criminal investigation and prosecution of the New York Times, its reporters, the editors that worked on this, and the publisher. We're in time of war, Chris, and what they've done here is absolutely disgraceful. I believe they violated the Espionage Act, the Comint (ph) Act.

This is absolutely disgraceful. The time has come for the American people to realize and the New York Times to realize we're at war and they can't be just on their own deciding what to declassify, what to release.

If Congress wants to work on this privately, that's one thing. But for them to, on their own -- for them to decide -- for the editor of the New York Times to say that he decides it's in the national interest -- no one elected them to anything.

Michael Barone discusses the subject of prosecuting the New York Times in his column today, and while he does say that " it certainly is in order to prosecute government officials who have abused their trust by disclosing secrets," he doesn't come out and squarely advocate prosecuting the paper.

Nevertheless, Barone concludes by expressing the sort of frustration and incredulity that many Americans, myself included, feel when trying to compute why the Times felt compelled to expose the SWIFT program. Barone writes:

Why do they hate us? Why does the Times print stories that put America more at risk of attack? They say that these surveillance programs are subject to abuse, but give no reason to believe that this concern is anything but theoretical. We have a press that is at war with an administration, while our country is at war against merciless enemies. The Times is acting like an adolescent kicking the shins of its parents, hoping to make them hurt while confident of remaining safe under their roof. But how safe will we remain when our protection depends on the Times?

I think that last question is rhetorical. There used to be a time in America when the publishing of classified information, especially in a time of war when such disclosures could materially benefit our enemies, was something that was taken very, very seriously. Not any more.

The New York Times, motivated by its own political ideology and dislike of the current occupant of the White House, has elevated itself on the back of the First Amendment to the role of unelected arbiter of U.S. national security interests.

How ironic is it that the Times, which has spent years (along with the rest of the liberal establishment) railing against the Bush administration for perceived abuses of executive power, continues to abuse the First Amendment for partisan political purposes? I'm sorry but, Bill Keller's effort this morning notwithstanding, there is simply no other explanation that can justify why the Times would expose, over the pleas of the United States government, a completely legal program designed to hunt down terrorists and protect American citizens.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:29 AM | Email Author | Permalink

John Edwards's 2004 presidential campaign has agreed to pay a $9,500 fine for accepting illegal contributions from a prominent Little Rock trial lawyer and his law firm.

I'm, of course, opposed to all campaign-finance regulation. But my guess is that Edwards is not, and there was no lack of clarity at the time as to what went on here being illegal.

Hypocrisy from the insufferable huckster Edwards. Not a surprise.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 06:56 PM | Email Author | Permalink

McCain says: "If we don't remember what we were elected to do, we'll lose our principles and our office."

He also says the GOP's current fiscal record is: "not a record Ronald Reagan would have been proud of."

A man after my own heart.

Except totally, totally not.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:11 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Over at The Plank, Marty Peretz (one of TNR's "neo-con owners") has a masterful reply to Kos's recent rantings:

Forgive me. But I never read Daily Kos until today. Well, now that I've read it, the first thought that came to me is how illiterate Kos is, just plain illiterate.

...

And his rant against us, well, borders on a nut case's. When a high-minded or, rather, high-strung moralist is accused by The New York Times of journalistic hanky-panky and then by TNR of running an ideological censorship bureau, reminiscent of the old Catholic Legion of Decency, he will go off the rails. And he did. "This is what The New Republic had evolved into--just another cog of the Vast RIGHT Wing Conspiracy." An old professor of mine once warned me against writers who use capital letters for emphasis. Good advice she gave me. Capital letters suggest some imbalance in the mind of their employer. In whose interests has TNR sought "to destroy the new people-powered movement"? Kos answers his own question: "for the sake of its Lieberman-worshipping neo-con owners; that it stands with the National Review and wingnutosphere in their opposition to grassroots Democrats." Don't look at Kos's grammar. He's ranting.

It feels a bit demeaning to defend oneself against Kos. But I am one of the neo-con owners, and I am titular editor-in-chief. So here goes: The New Republic is very much against the Bush tax programs, against Bush Social Security "reform," against cutting the inheritance tax, for radical health care changes, passionate about Gore-type environmentalism, for a woman's entitlement to an abortion, for gay marriage, for an increase in the minimum wage, for pursuing aggressively alternatives to our present reliance on oil and our present tax preferences for gas-guzzling automobiles. We were against the confirmation of Justice Alito. And, institutionally, TNR was against several policies that I favor, including allowing the government more rather than less leeway in ferreting out terrorists and allies of terrorists. From today's newspapers: I see nothing wrong with the feds scrutinizing international monetary exchanges in the dragnet for enemies of not just our civilization but civilization. But TNR is a heterodox institution, a concept Kos surely cannot fathom.

After covering YearlyKos, I was of the mind that conservatives shouldn't dismiss the netroots movement, no matter how easy it is to pick on the more unhinged of the commenters at Kos or the other major sites. This is a movement that's getting itself together as the conservatives did decades ago; in time, they could have a real impact.

But to the extent that the movement is built as a cult of personality around Kos himself -- around, that is, an unstable egomaniac bent on a sort of binge-and-purge model of management -- well, conservatives might not have that much to worry about.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 12:04 PM | Email Author | Permalink

I'll be on Larry Kudlow's radio show at 10:30 est this morning on New York's WABC Listen here.

Posted by John McIntyre at 09:01 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Over at TAPPED, Ezra Klein relates some great quotes from a breakfast The American Prospect had with Grover Norquist (does this mean that TAP has followed TNR in its defection to the Right?).

The best one was on McCain's chances in 2008:

"The right-to-life folks have figured out that McCain can't get them their judge. His goal in life is to etch Keating 5 off his tombstone and replace it with 'campaign finance reform.' But no judge will look at the constitution and see room for campaign finance reform but not abortion."

That's probably true.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 10:31 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Since we have something of a Rudy theme going on, here's the political video of the day, courtesy of the New York Daily News's Daily Politics blog.

This was shot at a University of Oklahoma speech back in 2004, according to the info included with the video, and, well, I'll let the camera man explain:

I was filming from the 2nd-3rd row... Mayor Giuliani was speaking at the University of Oklahoma when all of a sudden, the guy behind me goes a little nutzo and explains his conspiracy theory on 9/11.

Base-uh-keely, Wal-Mart did it.

Right...

Aw-kward.

Remember, send in videos for the political video of the day to:

ryan-at-realclearpolitics.com

(And thanks to all those who've been sending in.)

Posted by Ryan Sager at 04:27 PM | Email Author | Permalink

The New York Times is doing one heckuva job underming U.S. national security.

The Gray Lady's latest attempt to thwart the men and women charged with the vital task of unearthing terrorists, and capturing them before they steal any more innocent American lives, came last night when, against the repeated requests of the White House, the paper went ahead and revealed yet another classified program designed to gather information used to foil terrorist attacks like 9/11.

The saboteurs at the Times provided secret details into the Bush administration's use of subpoenas to gather large troves of data from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a Belgium-based consortium that handles international bank transfers. Financial data is used to identify terrorists before they get a chance to kill. It is an eminently sensible program, and one that has reaped rewards.

In one instance, the SWIFT program was used to capture a top Al Qaeda operative, Riduan Isamuddin, in Thailand in 2003.

The folks running the printing presses at the Times don't seem to care about any of this. They went ahead and made the determination that the SWIFT program was "a matter of public interest."

Gabriel Schoenfeld, the editor of Commentary magazine, had this to say about the New York Times in an interview with The New York Sun:

"They're courting prosecution...They're increasingly behaving like if we were in the middle of World War II and they learned of plans to invade Normandy. Because they decided it's a matter of public interest, they'd publish it. I think this is reckless and likely to encourage Attorney General Gonzales to prosecute them, if not for this story, for some of the other things they've done."

The New York Times is blinded by its hatred of George W. Bush. And, because of this, these boneheads compromise the lives of all Americans.

The Gray Lady has become the Queen of Saboteurs.

Posted by Lawrence Kudlow at 04:19 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Eric Boehlert is at it again, pushing the laughable and tendentious theme of his new book that the media are just "lapdogs" for the Bush administration:

It's been a head-scratching spectacle this week to watch Democrats in the Senate debate war resolutions that would press the administration to begin bringing troops home, and then be depicted in the press as the likely losers in the unfolding political battle. Losers because Democrats are "divided" (New York Times), "struggling for consensus" (Washington Post), and "squabbling among themselves" (Knight Ridder), as opposed to Republicans who appear unified behind Bush's 'stay the course' Iraq policy. (Democrats weak and confused, Republicans strong and resolute. Does the press ever got tired of that manufactured storyline?)

Boehlert calls this the press accepting "the GOP spin," as if pointing out the obvious is somehow falling into some devious Rovian trap.

Here's some more GOP spin: Democrats are "openly struggling with a lot of the difficult issues." Oops. That's Senator Hillary Clinton today. Okay, so maybe liberals like Boehlert think she really is a Republican who's on Karl Rove's talking points distribution list.

More GOP spin here: Democrats are "leaderless," "speaking in a cacophony," and need to "get their act together." That's lapdog Helen Thomas, writing in the Seattle PI this morning. Granted, Thomas is arguing from the other side of the equation - urging Democrats to be more united and resolute in standing up to the Bush administration - but her argument is basically the same: Democrats are "divided," they are "squabbling among themselves" and they do, in fact, look "weak and confused," especially when it comes to the issue of Iraq.

Boehlert is frustrated (quite understandably, if you ask me) that Democrats, despite having public opinion moderately in their favor (at least on paper) about the war in Iraq, won't stand up and vote together to withdraw from Iraq because they fear the political repercussions. And rightly so.

There was absolutely nothing stopping Senate Democrats from voting in favor of John Kerry's amendment the other day to "redeploy" our troops in Iraq - yet 32 Democrats voted against it. And had all Senate Democrats stood up in favor of the Kerry amendment, Boehlert would no doubt have seen the sort of press headlines he so desperately craves: "Democrats united on 'Redeploying' Troops in Iraq." Or something like that.

What's really driving Boehlert crazy is that he knows (as does everyone else in America that follows politics closely at all) that most Senate Democrats really do want to vote for something like the Kerry amendment. If the vote on the Kerry amendment had been conducted by secret ballot, almost every single Democrat in the Senate would have voted in favor (and maybe a few Republicans, too). But because Senators can't vote by secret ballot, because they have to stand up, be counted, and ultimately be held accountable for their decisions by voters in their respective states, most Democrats couldn't vote in favor of the Kerry amendment. They're divided, and they're struggling. It's a political reality. And it's ludicrous to call the press "lapdogs" for pointing out such a basic fact.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 03:55 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Which New Yorker currently thinking about making the jump to the national stage has the most solid backing from their home (blue) state? Well, we all know Gov. George Pataki's at the bottom of the list... But who's at the top?

It's: Rudy, with 61 percent in a new Q-Poll saying he'd make a good president. Hillary comes in a distant second in (I repeat, blue) New York, with 49 percent saying she'd make a good president. Next is New York City's Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with 47 percent. Bringing up the rear, with an embarrassing 25 percent, is the Gov.

Rudy's at 86 percent among just Republicans in New York -- Republicans who, unlike the rest of the country, know all about his social positions.

But remember folks: He could never, ever win.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 03:31 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Speaker Dennis Hastert is making something of an ass of himself with blustering legal threats against the Sunlight Foundation, which has been doing an admirable job shining, yes, sunlight upon a potentially shady real-estate transaction in which the speaker is involved.

Oops. I said something the speaker did is potentially shady. Maybe his counsel will send a blustering legal threat my way.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:01 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Cato's David Boaz writes that Hillary has made the famous parable of the Candlemakers' Petition (asking to be protected against competition from the sun) a reality:

Last month, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and nine colleagues (ranging from Barbara Boxer to Tom Coburn) endorsed a petition from -- you guessed it -- the domestic candlemaking industry asking the secretary of commerce to impose a 108.3 percent tariff on Chinese candle producers.

...

But perhaps the comparison is unfair. After all, Clinton and the National Candle Association aren't asking for protection from the sun, only from Chinese candle producers who are allegedly "dumping" candles in to the American market "at less than fair value."

What's the difference, though? Any source that supplies light to American consumers is a competitor of the American candle industry. And any source that can deliver the light cheaper than American candle companies is a tough competitor. Domestic producers will no doubt gain by imposing a 100 percent tariff on their Chinese competitors. But they could also sell more candles if the government required "the closing of all windows, dormers, skylights, inside and outside shutters, curtains, casements, bull's-eyes, deadlights, and blinds -- in short, all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures through which the light of the sun is wont to enter houses," as Bastiat's candlemakers requested.

In our modern world, the candlemakers might also propose that electric lights be banned. Think what that would do for the Syracuse candlemaking industry!

Of course, Hillary hardly needs to pander so hard to upstate New York to keep her job. Her likely Republican challenger, KT McFarland, is the one who said Hillary's helicopters were watching her house:

A freshman pol unused to getting shafted, she was recently pasted in the press for saying Mrs. Clinton was spying on her apartment via helicopter. She calls it a joke that went awry. She also says it nearly did her in. "I sat in a ratty old robe, tears spilling down my face. To ease my anguish, I killed off half a pint of ice cream. Next morning I was in a fetal position. Still crying. And my husband was traveling. Not even there to comfort me. It was a tough baptism."

There's no crying in politics, I've heard. Except if you're challenging Hillary for Senate this year. In that case, close the drapes, light a Syracuse-made candle, pop "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" into the DVD player, and weep like a colicky baby.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 11:05 AM | Email Author | Permalink

The House GOP has actually managed to do the right thing on immigration this year: nothing. That's because it is, and always has been, an utter non-problem.

With unemployment below 5 percent, it can't credibly be claimed that immigrants "took 'er jibs." And if too many Mexicans are undocumented in America and living off the grid, it's because we haven't provided them with a reasonable, legal way to be in our country.

There are definitely reforms that are needed to our immigration system, but they're along the lines of President Bush's guest-worker program, not building a wall. There's never been a crisis, save the political crisis created by Tom Tancredo and Lou Dobbs.

And as the Wall Street Journal editorial page writes this morning, the only people who are likely to get bitten by this "crisis" are the House Republicans who ginned it up and then decided to punt:

Looking at House Republicans who are vulnerable this year, we can't find a single one who will lose because of support for President Bush's comprehensive immigration reform. That isn't Heather Wilson's problem in New Mexico; she always has a tough race and favors both border security and a guest worker program. Chris Shays also won't save his seat by rallying the bluebloods in Greenwich, Connecticut, against their Mexican maids and construction workers. On the other hand, J.D. Hayworth could lose his seat in Arizona despite taking his anti-immigration riff to any radio or TV show that will have him.

What might well cost all of them their seats is the growing perception that this Congress hasn't achieved much of anything. If Republicans want a precedent, they might recall what happened to Democrats who failed to pass a crime bill in the summer of 1994. Already in trouble on taxes at the time, Democrats looked feckless on crime and health care and went down to crashing defeat. Immigration could do the same for Republicans, who have been flogging the issue for months as a grave national problem. Doing nothing about it now risks alienating even those conservatives who merely want more border police.

In fairness to the House Republicans, the immigration road show they are planning to put on might just work. And maybe they can blame the Democrats (somehow leaving out Bush and McCain) for the stalemate.

But if using the issue as a political cudgel without actually doing anything is their plan -- well, that just highlights what a nasty little bit of racial pandering and scapegoating this is and has always been.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 10:41 AM | Email Author | Permalink

More speculation on 2008 from a well-connected liberal pen pal of mine:

Edwards maintained his strong organization in Iowa as this [Iowa] poll demonstrates. Hillary will buy some good organizing talent in the state, but these are anti-war caucus goers who are, paradoxically, also extremely pragmatic (that's how they settled on Kerry, who they figured--wrongly--would be an anti-war warrior who could, therefore, beat Bush). She's going to lose both ways--she'll pull neither the hard core anti-war votes (Edward's early renunciation of his Iraq vote is looking brilliant), nor any of the pragmatic voters (Warner stays in the picture here, especially with his surprising netroots support--Markos and, obviously, Jerome are surprisingly open to him). If Vilsack can't do better than this poll demonstrated, he won't even bother to run, which frees Harkin to support Hillary, something of a plus for her (although he didn't help Dean very much last time around).

But another problem for her looms: There's a reasonable chance the DNC might put a Nevada caucus between Iowa and New Hampshire. Why is that a problem for Hillary? Because a caucus, of course, is all organizational turnout--and the only organization that matters in Nevada Democratic politics is the 60,000 member strong Culinary Workers Unions in Nevada (the union that has 90% of the Las Vegas strip organized, enabling Latino hotel maids and their families to live a middle class life--and the union that reelected Harry Reid by 500 votes or so in, I think, 1998). A couple of years ago, Nevada magazine rated D. Taylor, the brilliant leader of that union the third most powerful person in the state after Harry Reid and the Governor. And who will the Culinary Union support? John Edwards. This isn't Iowa--Culinary will get its people out for Edwards.

Iowa, Nevada....certainly doesn't lock things up for Edwards, but would deal a huge blow for Hillary's inevitability. Where she finally gets help is not New Hampshire but the Southern and industrial states. Charlie Cook's poll shows her getting 50% of the minority vote among the Democratic field, more than from any other subgroup--I'm now convinced that Bill's magic with African-Americans does help her to a large extent, despite the fact that she lacks his political gifts.

Edwards, Warner, and Hillary as the likely finalists--Wes Clark as a possible dark horse if he can exploit his national security credentials by contrasting them to what the others lack--the bloggers like him, too, but I think he's everyone's VP.

So--while I'm on a roll--I'm convinced that McCain killed himself with the GOP base re: immigration, and, notwithstanding Ryan Sager re: Giuliani, the party will never nominate a pro-choice, pro-gay rights nominee (moreover, one who actually lived with gay men for several months while separated from his (second) wife (sharing the same bathrooms!)--don't think that story won't circulate in South Carolina if he runs--alas, these things matter to some Republican primary voters.

So you're left with Allen and Romney. As a very smart and very prominent neo-con friend of mine says: If Republicans nominate who they want to nominate, it will be Allen, if they nominate who they should, it will be Romney--and, say a Romney/Cornyn "Health Care for all, plus a bit of gay bashing and, with a fresh look, we'll solve this Iraq thing asap" would beat Hillary 54-46. Edwards/Clark would be a toss-up.

On the latter point, I think that Allen is the only GOP nominee--Bush plus chewing tobacco and confederate flags, minus brush on the ranch--that Hillary might beat (very close race, like the last two).

Feel free to join in the '08 parlor game by sending your thoughts to me here.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 09:38 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Andrew Sullivan links approvingly to results from the latest survey from the Pew Global Attitudes Project showing support for Osama bin Laden tanking in Muslim countries. Pascal Riche at TPM Cafe also highlights various pieces of good news from the survey.

While Sullivan did throw out a weak caveat about "mixed results," let me run through some of the more disturbing aspects of the survey in more detail. (You can view the reports here: Part I | Part II | Part III | Topline Results of Survey - pdf )

The first thing that jumps out of the survey is that Muslims in Britain appear to the most radicalized in Western Europe. British Muslims take a dimmer view of relations between Islam and the West than do their counterparts in Germany, France and Spain. Muslims in Britain also see more of a conflict for devout Muslims trying to live in modern societies, and they have, by far, the most negative attitudes toward non-Muslims living in Western countries. Finally, only 17% of British Muslims believe Arabs carried out the attacks on 9/11, compared to 33% Muslims in Spain, 35% of Muslims in Germany, and 48% of Muslims in France.

Not surprisingly, the Pew Survey shows anti-Semitism continues to be rampant in Muslim societies. As you can see from the chart below, Jordan and Egypt are the worst offenders of the countries surveyed, but even among Muslims living in Germany, Britain, and Spain, roughly one in three holds "very unfavorable" attitudes toward Jews:

Historical data provided by Pew shows the trendlines are mixed, though the most significant shifts are clearly toward more anti-Semitism, not less: since May 2005 "unfavorable" attitudes toward Jews have risen 22 points in India, 19 points in Spain, 5 points in Turkey, 4 points in Russia, and 1 point in France and Britain, while they have declined slightly in Indonesia (4 points), Pakistan and France (3 points), and Jordan (2 points).

Another disturbing aspect of the survey is that while support for suicide bombings looks to have declined significantly in Jordan (perhaps as a result of the hideous Zarqawi-sponsored bombing of a wedding in Amman in November '05), 15% of Muslims living in France, Spain and the UK (and 7% of those living in Germany) support the killing of innocents via suicide bombs "often" and/or "sometimes." Furthermore, 12% of Muslims living in Britain, Germany and Spain said "many or most" Muslims in their respective countries "support Islamic extremists like al-Qaeda."

According to stats from the CIA factbook, Muslims make up 2.7% of the population in Britain, 3.7% in Germany, and between 5-10% in France. This site estimates the Muslim population in Spain to be around 500,000.

Some back-of-the-napkin math based on these numbers leads one to the estimate that there are somewhere between 900,000 to 1.5 million Muslims living in just these four European countries who either support suicide bombings, Islamic extremists like al-Qaeda, or both. Does that mean they're all going to strap on bombs or head off to terrorist training camps in Somalia or Sudan? Of course not. But it does, I think, help put the threat of Islamic extremism to the West in perspective, particularly in the context of how the ideology of radical Islam continues to imbed itself in open, tolerant societies.

The fact that many Muslims have lost confidence in Osama bin Laden is good news, no doubt about it. But the results of this survey show that we still have plenty of reasons to be concerned about the nature of the threat we face.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 09:25 AM | Email Author | Permalink

The New York Daily News somehow seems to have gotten the crazy idea that Rudy Giuliani is running for president:

Rudy Giuliani's political action committee's mission is to help elect Republicans - but right now, the prime beneficiary appears to be Rudy himself.

The vast majority of the $141,389 spent in May by Solutions America went to building up the former mayor's own political operation as he ponders a run for President in 2008 - including $35,000 on private planes to shuttle Giuliani staffers around the country, records filed yesterday show.

"It indicates that he is putting together a skeleton political operation of his own, and paying for the staff he needs to get it done," said Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf.

Other bills paid by Giuliani's PAC included more than $30,000 on fund-raising consultants; $25,000 to reserve the posh Four Seasons restaurant for a Solutions America fund-raiser last June 13; $19,500 on the PAC's Web site, and nearly $10,000 to Giuliani's former speechwriter.

The only outside contribution by the PAC - which describes its sole mission on its Web site as helping to "elect Republican candidates dedicated to finding responsible, common sense solutions" - went to Republican state Sen. Jeff Lamberti of Iowa, a key presidential battleground state.

Well, gol-ly! You think so!?

The CW that Rudy isn't going to run, or can't win the GOP nod, is going to collapse completely by the end of 2006, I predict. Rudy will run, and he can win. (I'm not saying will, mind you, but can. There's no structural reason he can't win).

And, no, I haven't just imbibed the Kool-Aid being served over at Giuliani Blog, but if you're interested in the '08 race -- and particularly a certain mayor -- you should be reading it. It's one-sided. But that's its charm.

(P.S.: Some wiseacre from Camp McCain seems to have purchased "John McCain Ringtone" ads at the top of Giuliani Blog. Nice touch.)

Posted by Ryan Sager at 09:22 AM | Email Author | Permalink

In her OpinionJournal column today, Peggy Noonan writes that the elites of both parties have really started hating their bases recently:

It has occurred to me that both parties increasingly dislike their bases, but for different reasons and to different degrees. By both parties I mean the leaders and representatives of the Democrats and Republicans in Washington. I believe I correctly observe that they feel an increasing intellectual estrangement from and impatience with the activists who people their base of support.

And this is something new.

In the past, Republican leaders in Washington bowed either symbolically or practically to the presumed moral leadership and cleanness of vision of the people back home.

...

Now they seem to bow less. They know the higher wisdom on such issues as immigration. They feel less fealty to the insights of the base. They know more than the base, are more experienced than the base, have a more nuanced sense of reality. And as for conservative social issues groups, the politicians resent those nagging, whining pushers-for-the-impossible who are always threatening to stay home or go elsewhere. (Where?)

...

On the Democratic side, it is not just as bad but worse. They don't only think they're more sophisticated than their base, more informed and aware of the complexities. I believe they think their base is mad.

This seems to be the continuation of a recent theme for Noonan. A couple weeks ago she wrote about how it was time for a revival of third-party politics in America. "Right now the Republicans and Democrats in Washington seem, from the outside, to be an elite colluding against the voter," she wrote. "They're in agreement: immigration should not be controlled but increased, spending will increase, etc."

The question, however, is what a third party would stand for. If there's a political impulse not fully represented by a political party right now, it's populism. Down with the gays, up with the minimum wage, down with free trade, up with the U.S.-Mexico wall.

The two-party system has its faults, but it curbs Americans' ugliest impulses (for now) by keeping a lot of people who believe in the same bad ideas in different parties.

If it's a battle of the elites versus the masses, count me with the elites.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 06:40 PM | Email Author | Permalink

OK, so for those of you still sorting through what on earth to think of net neutrality, here's a good rundown of the topic by Reason editor Nick Gillespie -- if you want the libertarian perspective, that is, and I know you do.

Basically, his argument boils down to: Wait and see. The theoretical problems of not having net neutrality aren't that bad, and they aren't particularly likely either:

Consider this recent New Republic house editorial, which presents a very representative argument in favor of net neutrality. Subtitled "The Bush administration prepares to wreck the Internet," the piece conjures up the following dread scenario:

Imagine you were choosing whether to buy a book from Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble's website, and you knew that Amazon's site would load much faster, allowing you to scan books and sample their content much more easily. Or imagine that Fox.com's streaming video came up instantly and CNN.com's balked. Or that whitehouse.gov loaded quickly while the site of a contentious political magazine was plagued by delays.

Forget for the moment that ISPs haven't kicked in tiered service yet, so there's no real telling what form(s) it might take. As Julian Sanchez noted at Reason Online back in April, the fears of net neutrality boosters--an entertainingly broad coalition ranging from high-tech behemoths such as Google and Microsoft and Amazon to political groups such as MoveOn and the Christian Coalition--revolve so far around a phantom menace. "It's true...that ISPs could misuse their control of the onramps to the Internet in a shortsighted attempt to extract monopoly rents, rather than benefit consumers," wrote Sanchez. "That's not a reason for preemptive regulation; it's a reason to see what happens... Hasty regulation that responds to hypothetical abuses may also prevent us from discovering benefits we haven't yet hypothesized."

Let's assume that The New Republic's worst fear of a fast-loading foxnews.com page comes true, even for those of us who prefer other, even more fair-and-balanced, less-comical news sources such as, say, The Onion. What are you likely to do in such a situation? Lump it or leave the company that delivers your broadband (as The Washington Post has reported, more than 60 percent of U.S. ZIP codes are served by four or more high-speed providers, a figure that will only continue to increase)? At the very least, you'll bitch and moan to your provider, which is known to have some beneficial effects, even with near-monopolists.

Essentially, the answer to any problems that might arise from net non-neutrality (net partiality?) is simply more competition between ISPs. And the less regulation there is, the more ISPs there are likely to be competing.

Consumers won't stand for Internet service that's not to their liking.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 06:03 PM | Email Author | Permalink

From the Colbert Report, here is Wall Street Journal Deputy Editorial Page Editor Daniel Henninger (in all seriousness) comparing a woman marrying a snake in India to gays and lesbians marrying in the United States:

If only Republicans can keep the conversation focused on gays -- as opposed to spending and Congress' general disregard for actual conservative principles -- perhaps they can just pull 2006 out of the toilet.

Remember, send in videos for the political video of the day to:

ryan-at-realclearpolitics.com

(And thanks to all those who sent in links today.)

Posted by Ryan Sager at 05:54 PM | Email Author | Permalink

While researching this morning's post about Maria Cantwell I came across this piece by Mike Seely who worked as her Deputy Press Secretary during her victorious 2000 Senate campaign. During the course of defending Cantwell's stance on the Iraq war as principled, Seely absolutely savages his former boss:

Cantwell is far from perfect. In fact, she ranks high among the most difficult people I've ever worked for or with. The seven months I spent in her charge felt like seven years. The campaign, larded with her RealNetworks stock windfall, spent more money on Red Vines than most candidates spend on direct mail. And conspicuous consumption during happy hour became all but a necessity, as it was invariably better to be half in the bag when Cantwell, a paranoid hellcat of a boss who rolls through staff like toilet paper, would make her daily sweep through the office, berating everyone in sight. [snip]

Essentially, we worked for Maria in spite of Maria. Yet if you were to ask Cantwell, the only person responsible for her victory over Gorton was the person who stared back at her in the bathroom mirror each morning. Her lack of gratitude and common human decency were simply repulsive. When the campaign ended, virtually nobody sought to accompany her to D.C. in even the cushiest of capacities. Good night and good luck, Senator, was the collective adieu.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 04:12 PM | Email Author | Permalink

"This case has taken an unbelievable, and horrendous emotional toll on all my family, especially my wife. We are committed as a family, along with Reade, to do everything necessary to restore our good name....The bond in the amount of $400,000 was too large an amount for me to post, but I was prepared to do everything possible to prevent my son from spending time in jail for a crime he did not commit." Philip Seligmann, father of accused Duke lacrosse player Reade Seligmann, in an affidavit filed in court today.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 03:36 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan has dropped out of the Democractic primary in the Maryland Governor's race, saying he's recently been diagnosed with clinical depression. Duncan's exit clears the way for Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley to take on Governor Ehrlich.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 02:52 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Take the Ann Coulter vs. Adolf Hitler quiz.

I got a 7 out of 14. I'm not sure what that says.

(via Sullivan)

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:41 PM | Email Author | Permalink

There's a big political hullabaloo brewing this election year over a minimum wage hike. What a surprise. This thing only seems to pop up during election years.

The economics of a minimum wage hike are terrible.

Think of fast-food restaurants and small eating establishments that hire young workers of all colors and races, especially during the summer. These students and others will be priced out of the labor market because of the higher minimum wage.

Did you know that only about 2 ½ percent of the total workforce (slightly less than 2 million people) qualify for the minimum wage according to the Department of Labor Statistics?

And did you also know that roughly four-fifths of all the minimum wage workers are un-poor? Two-thirds of the minimum wage workers actually come from families where at least one other family member has a job. (These stats courtesy of Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw's website.)

Think students in high school or college.

But, unfortunately, the politics may prove too compelling this election year. So here's my thought:

Tie a minimum wage hike to a tax cut for large and small businesses. Or even a big estate tax cut.

Then, the costs of a minimum wage hike would be offset by lower tax costs. We would get another tax cut on capital that would obviously help spur the U.S. economy.

I guess my hope here is to turn a negative into a positive.

Posted by Lawrence Kudlow at 12:04 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Such is the nature of the U.S. news media that a seemingly substantial revelation about WMD in Iraq is ignored by most major media outlets and gets A10 placement in the Washington Post.

It also says something about the nature of our politics these days that the news has sent the right half of the blogosphere into a frenzy of speculation about why it is only coming to light now while the left half of the blogosphere, from what I can tell, seems completely disinterested and concerned with more important matters.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 10:58 AM | Email Author | Permalink

From this morning's Note, John Kerry summarizes the state of the current Democratic Party:

Trying to battle the naysayers, Sen. John Kerry told CNN's Anderson Cooper last night that Democrats are "unified on the most essential ingredient, which is the failure of this administration, their lack of honesty with the American people about what is really happening in Iraq. We're unified about the fact that you need to begin redeployment of American forces now. I think there is a unity in moving in a new direction."

First the bold: Yes, being unified on the general concept of thinking the Bush administration has screwed up is the "most essential" issue facing America today. Very inspiring. It's a wonder how he lost in '04.

Now the italic: This simply isn't true. If there were unity about "redeployment" (a.k.a. retreat), there wouldn't be a debate on the Democratic side. They'd each come up with a figure (1 month, 8 months, 3 months), average them out, and there's your Democratic resolution on Iraq. There's actually disunity, most prominently featuring the party's likely '08 standard bearer.

It is truly amazing watching the Democrats do all they can to throw their best chance at taking back Congress in 12 years.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 10:33 AM | Email Author | Permalink

A new Rasmussen poll shows Washington Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell continuing to struggle in her reelection bid, now leading Republican Mike McGavick by only 4 points, 44-40. Zogby's latest has Cantwell up 5 points, 48-43, but also shows the race tightening.

Like Hillary Clinton, Cantwell continues to pay for her unwillingness to recant support for the Iraq war and to call for a withdrawal of U.S. forces. Like Hillary, Cantwell was recently booed by activists at the state party convention. University of Washington Political Science Professor David Olson points out the obvious in the Seattle PI today, "Any time you see the incumbent booed and party stalwarts having to intervene to turn those dissident voices off, that's not good."

Posted by Tom Bevan at 09:52 AM | Email Author | Permalink

I just got this in the (e)mail minutes ago from our friends at Mark Warner's Forward Together PAC. It's a contest where people can vote on which candidates the PAC will give money to.

In this round, voters are (s)electing 10 candidates, each of whom will receive $5,000 from Forward Together PAC. Then there will be a final round, and one lucky candidate will get a fundraiser with Mark Warner himself.

Note, however, that the contest rules refuse to get involved in contested Democratic primaries, or primaries with late filing deadlines (which may become contested, I suppose).

Here's what the PAC sent out:

Dear Ryan,

The 2006 elections will be an opportunity for Democrats. For the first time in many years, Democrats have a strong chance to win majorities in both houses of Congress. Forward Together PAC has already contributed to more than 50 campaigns in more than 30 states. Now we are opening up the process.

You can help us choose the next group of candidates we'll support. We are looking for fresh faces with fresh ideas - solutions-oriented Democrats with a focus on the future - candidates who will help us change the political map. Which candidates are you supporting? Come to the Forward Together Web site and vote for the ten candidates you believe should be Mark Warner's Map Changers.

To be eligible for the Map Changers contest, a candidate must be a Democratic challenger running for Governor, the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. We are not taking sides in any contested primaries, and did not include candidates from states with late filing deadlines.

This round of the Map Changer candidate contest will run through June 29th. The top ten vote getters will each receive a $5000 contribution from the Forward Together PAC, and advance to the final round. The ten finalists will compete for the Grand Prize - a fundraiser with Governor Warner. Vote today: http://www.forwardtogetherpac.com/mapchangers

Thank you,

Mame Reiley
Forward Together PAC

It's an interesting bit of outreach from DLC Dem Mark Warner to the netroots. (Is this from the brains of Warner Internet strategist Jerome Armstrong?) He's certainly making quite a play.

[Also: If I had to guess, the grand prize winner is between Jon Tester in Montana (a must-win Senate seat for Democrats this fall) and James Webb in Virginia (an it'd-be-really-really-nice-to-win Senate seat for Democrats this fall).]

Posted by Ryan Sager at 05:43 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Since Web video has gotten so much better recently, particularly through YouTube I've found, we're going to try something new: the political video of the day.

I'll be scouring the Web some myself, but I'd most love nominations sent in by you, the readers, of the funniest, most informative, most interesting politics-related videos making their way around the Web -- or, as of yet undiscovered. You see a particularly hard-hitting campaign ad? Send it in. A really bad ad? Send it in. An interesting clip from one of the Sunday shows floating around? Send it in.

To: ryan-at-realclearpolitics.com

Today, we're going to start off with the Frontline special aired last night, "The Dark Side," about Cheney's role in the War on Terror. This is the first clip of 10 up at You Tube. It also looks like PBS is going to post the whole video here soon. (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

It's PBS, so the politics are certainly slanted the way they're slanted. But, from the clips I've watched (haven't seen the whole thing yet), it's fairly gripping.

A Washington Post chat with the producer appears here.

Again, send those videos in to:

ryan-at-realclearpolitics.com

There will be a heavy preference for YouTube and other formats that can be embedded in a blog posting, as well as videos that can be downloaded.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 05:11 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski held a press conference yesterday and spoke out for the first time on the lacrosse case. Here is a partial transcript of his remarks:

On keeping low media profile during the spring: I think it is important for me to remember my place. I am the basketball coach. I am not the president, I am not the athletic director and I am not on the board of trustees. You have to be careful not to make statements outside of your realm. However, behind the scenes, I have tried to be very supportive of our athletic department, the coaches, the players, our president and the board of trustees. To me, the real story about this spring, without talking about the case because you have to let that run its course, is the community. I love our community because for the last few months, a number of people who have come into our community and raised a lot of questions, which they are entitled to do, that could have provoked things that where not a part of this situation. Our community is so darn good that they did not allow it. I don't look at this being a white community, an African American community, a Hispanic community, I look at this being a great Durham community. The students at the two universities [North Carolina Central and Duke] should be applauded.

I do think for us as a university, we have to always be mindful of the fact of the major reason we are here is because of our students. We have to give our students support in whatever situation, you have to be there to support them, to give them guidance and to just to be there and say 'We are with you.'. That is what I have tried to do behind the scenes. Giving support does not mean you are choosing sides, giving support is what a university should do whether it be at North Carolina Central, Duke, Forham, Illinois or Army. We are in the kid business and that is what I have tried to do behind the scenes.

I don't like the remarks that attack athletics, not just at Duke but anywhere and I think that the people that do that are very narrow-minded in the total scope of what a university or college does. All of the coaches that coach here are teachers. I write about 100 lesson plans a year and they are different ones than the ones I used the year before. I then have a chance to coach games and all that, but we teach more than coach a game. We know our students very well and the lessons that are learned on the court compliment the lessons that are learned in the classroom, because it should be unified effort in an educational process.

At the U.S. Military academy where I went to school, it [athletics] was a way of learning about teamwork, about spirit, about how to handle success and failure, how to be a complimentary player, a star player, how to be loyal, how to communicate in a frenzied moment, how to communicate to show compassion. In other words, it's a crucible of real life things, that's what sports do and to learn those lessons while you're getting this education that you get, the great education that you get in an English classroom, in math or whatever it is, that combination is total education.

We have many great graduates of this university who participated in intercollegiate athletics who are running major corporations, who are operating on people, who are defending people, who are counseling people, and to say that intercollegiate athletics is not an integral part of any university is so ridiculously wrong. It is so narrow-minded and I'm glad that our administration and our board of trustees recognize this.

On Coach K's behind the scenes support:
I have just tried to add support, whether it be just saying to my athletic director 'I'm with you' or to my president, 'What can I do.' With our lacrosse coach [Mike Pressler] and his wife, who are beautiful people, whether it's taking them out to eat or having them over to our house. We have done those things and we are proud of them. The Presslers are our dear friends.

I don't know what Mike Pressler did wrong in this case, whether he's judged in a whole other thing that's another matter. He is a good man. My feeling is that he is here 16 years, his players, former players and families swear by him. As far as my friendship with him, he is going be my friend.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 02:13 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Kate Zernike writes:

Mr. Kerry now describes the war in Iraq as a mistake, even though he once supported it. His critics say they believe the new stand reflects more politics than principle, and ignores other Democrats' concern that setting a fixed date will leave those in tough re-election fights open to Republican taunts that they are "cutting and running" in Iraq. [emphasis added]

In truth it's exactly the opposite: Kerry voted in favor of the Iraq war because he felt it was the politically expedient thing to do at the time knowing he was going to run for President. His entire history, from his post-Vietnam protests to his vote against the Gulf War in 1991, demonstrates Mr. Kerry's principles quite clearly.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 11:45 AM | Email Author | Permalink

I've been thinking for a while that killing an immigration compromise was close to a no-brainer for House Republicans. Why? To start with, eighty-five percent of Congressional Republicans voted in favor of some version of an "enforcement-first" type approach. The base of the party clearly supports enforcement-first, so just as a purely political matter, negotiating a compromise with the White House, a small minority of Republicans, and a whole lot of eager Democrats that included some sort of amnesty would be like shooting the GOP base in the stomach - or worse.

Furthermore, the polling on immigration has been mixed and, I think, generally confusing. Despite numbers cited by the White House and others pointing to support for a guest worker program and a "pathway to citizenship," the public seems very much of the enforcement-first mindset as well.

For example, in the most recent Wall Street Journal poll, voters were asked whether they'd be "more likely" or "less likely" to vote for a candidate who favored "increasing border security by building a fence along the border with Mexico." Fifty percent said it made them "more likely" to vote for the candidate, 26% said it made them "less likely," and 22% said it made no difference. However, when voters were asked the same question about a candidate who favored "a guest worker program for illegal immigrants who have been in the United States at least two years," 40% said "more likely," 34% said "less likely" and 21% said "no difference." That's a net positive of 24 points for those who support border security versus a net positive of only 6 points for those who support a guest worker program.

Another data point worth mentioning is from the most recent Democracy Corps poll which asked whether voters supported President Bush's recent proposal of putting 6,000 National Guard troops on the border to "increase border security and limit illegal immigration." Overall, 65% supported the idea and only 31% opposed it. More tellingly, nearly half of those surveyed (48%) said they strongly supported putting troops on the border, while only 20% strongly opposed the idea.

Which leads me to the next reason it was a no-brainer for House Republicans to kill the immigration bill: why on earth would they negotiate away something they've already won? President Bush has already given away the enforcement side of the equation. All border-state Governors have signed off on his plan and the first National Guard Troops have already started arriving at the border. The U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement just completed a 19-day long series of raids netting close to 2,100 illegal immigrants. Bush has already committed to doubling the number of Border Patrol Agents over the next two years, building some physical barriers and massively upgrading hi-tech survelliance equipment along the border.

I realize this may seem like "half a loaf" to conservatives, but the fact is the Bush administration is finally showing signs of taking the issue of illegal immigration more seriously, which is what Republicans have wanted all along. Besides, the principal ingredient for a tougher policy on illegal immigration is political will and leadership. We've already got laws on the books that aren't being followed. The House can stiffen penalties as much as they want, but it won't make a single bit of difference if the agencies involved look the other way on illegal immigration or don't enforce the law.

The bottom line is that the Bush administration has taken steps on enforcement - steps which the Republican caucus and the public very much support. There's simply no need for Republicans to turn around and give away an amnesty-type compromise that will endanger their majorities in Congress. Nor does the latest polling indicate they are going to suffer any more than Democrats - and, in fact, less than the President - for not getting an immigration bill. As far as Republicans should be concerned, this thing is better off dead.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 10:44 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Immigration reform is dead - at least for now. Speaker Hastert's decision to call for a series of "field hearings" (whatever those are) on immigration before sitting down to work out the details of a compromise with the Senate means the jig is up. ""Right now," Hastert said, "I haven't heard a lot of pressure to have a path to citizenship."

Here's a roundup of reactions gleaned from various news reports:

Senator John McCain: "I respect their [House Republicans'] views, and I hope that we can still continue discussions, and hopefully we can reach an agreement."

Senator Ted Kennedy: "This is clearly a delay tactic by the House Republicans, who have been dead set against comprehensive reform from the beginning. One has to wonder why there are going to be continued hearings ... other than just to delay and kill the bill."

Senator Hillary Clinton: "It looks like another effort to score political points by refusing to do what needs to be done. This Congress sure won't do anything that's in the best interest of Americans so far as I can tell."

Senator Arlen Specter: "There's a general recognition that we need a bill. We're going to get together. We're going to sit down and try to work it all out."

Senator Harry Reid: "The Republican House wants to defeat the immigration bill. This is a stall."

Dan Perino, White House Spokesman: "The president is undeterred in his efforts to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill. [He is] committed to working with members to see if we can reach a consensus on a bill that will help solve our nation's immigration problems."

Congressman Tom Tancredo: "Odds were long that any so-called compromise bill would get to the president's desk this year. The nail was already put in the coffin of the Senate's amnesty plan. These hearings probably lowered it into the grave. This is an issue that we can run on and win in November. By training Americans' focus on the Senate's amnesty pact, we'll create momentum for an enforcement-first bill after November. As more light is shed on the Senate's bill, more and more Americans find reasons to oppose it."

Majority Leader John Boehner: "We want to have a very clear idea of what is in the Senate bill and what people think of some of the provisions in the Senate bill. The American people want us to secure our borders. They want us to enforce our laws."

Senator Lindsey Graham: "The question is, Is it better to solve the issue before the election, or is it better to make people mad and do nothing? I think it is hard to go to the electorate when you have the White House, the Senate and the House and say that you cannot at least go through the effort of trying to get a bill. That would to me be a sign of inability to govern."

Senator Jeff Sessions: "The problem with the Senate bill is that it is a tremendously important issue that had very little serious thought given to it. The House can provide the nation an opportunity to find out what's in the bill."

Minority Whip Steny Hoyer: "This is a device to put off the issue, so they don't have to highlight their divisions."

Senator John Cornyn: "I think it's clear the Senate will have to move closer to the House position to get it resolved."

Senator Dianne Feinstein: "My own view is that Republicans want to use it as a campaign issue. I think it is a good idea to let this thing settle for a while."

Senator Mel Martinez: "I realize that the House has not addressed two of the three major aspects of the Senate bill."

I'll be back a bit later with more comment on the subject.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:29 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Over at NRO, Jim Geraghty posts a "Kos-ola" timeline, noting payments by Democratic candidates to the netroots and the netroots' subsequent supportiveness.

Basically, I'd say this shows nothing particularly fishy. It's the same catch 22 that comes with think tank funding. Do Cato Institute scholars say what they say because the think tank gets some money from the oil industry, or are they ideologues and the money flows to where the thinking is friendly? The fact that people who think alike support each other shows very little.

It's this most recent case, with the netroots suddenly being so friendly to DLC centrist Mark Warner that should be (and, well, is) raising some eyebrows.

(Also, if you click through to NRO, you might see the Solutions America PAC -- i.e. Giuliani 2008 -- banner ad.)

UPDATE: Kaus weighs in here.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:30 AM | Email Author | Permalink

The loving Christians over at Focus on the Family (Dr. Dobson's non-partisan, non-profit, non-political political soap box) have some harsh words for the current X-Men movie (which it turns out is part of the "homoseXual" agenda):

From the perspective of the [comic book] series, people were to be judged not by the condition of their genes but by the content of their character. Cruelty and persecution were deplored, kindness and brotherhood affirmed. Anyone who's ever been picked on for being different (and how many of us know what that's like) could testify to how precious these themes can be.

Again, though, even such a positive message as this can be distorted -- and has been.

Case in point: Homosexuals have embraced X-Men as a metaphor for their experience, seeing themselves as persecuted victims of a society driven by no more than fear, ignorance or bigotry.

That's right. Tolerance is great and all, Jesus said. Just not for the queers.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:09 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Tom Tancredo apparently named his political action committee Team America PAC. (I learned this via The Note.)

I could be very late to this news. But what a name.

Being from Colorado, maybe he thinks he can lock up the South Park Republican vote.

He might, however, want to check out South Park's answer to illegal immigration before committing to the association.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 04:25 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Are Wal-Mart shoppers the new NASCAR Dads? The new Soccer Moms? The new Security Moms?

As in, the new phrase that gets hyped by the media out of all proportion but still ultimately gets at something crucial about the current state of American politics?

Quite possibly.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 02:44 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Over at NRO, Michael Ledeen seems to think it should be news when our troops don't massacre women and children.

Has he thought that one through?

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:47 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Two very negative polls about 2008 are out right now. One asked which candidate "frightens" people the most, and the other asked whom people would "definitely not vote for."

Hillary came out on "top" in both polls. More grist for the left-wing, anti-Hillary mill ("She's too polarizing! We need to nominate Russ Feingold!").

Here's the breakdown.

Poll 1 (Fox News/Opinion Dynamics):

Which candidate frightens you the most?

Clinton?
All: 36 percent
Democrats: 22 percent
Republicans: 58 percent

Giuliani?
All: 17 percent
Democrats: 29 percent
Republicans: 6 percent

Gore?
All: 15 percent
Democrats: 10 percent
Republicans: 18 percent

McCain?
All: 11 percent
Democrats: 14 percent
Republicans: 8 percent

For Giuliani vs. McCain watchers, it's worth noting that Giuliani is far more feared by Democrats than is McCain, whereas they're roughly even among Republicans. Is this good news for Giuliani fans because their man strikes fear in the hearts of the enemy? Or does it show he's too polarizing for the general election? His negatives in this poll are still less than half those of Hillary, so I'd call it a good thing.

And I think the fact that Giuliani's the most-feared candidate by Democrats, by far, strengthens -- in a roundabout way -- the notion of Giuliani's strength with the conservative base. Does the base want a McCain, whom liberals love? Or a Rudy, whom liberals fear?

Poll 2 (CNN):

Respondents were asked whether they would "definitely vote for," "consider voting for," or "definitely not vote for" three Democrats and three Republicans who might run for president in 2008.

Hillary Clinton and John Kerry tied at 47 percent, as to whom voters would "definitely not vote for." Gore beat them with 48 percent of the "definitely not vote for" vote. (Far fewer respondents would even consider voting for Hillary [28 percent] versus Kerry [35 percent] and Gore [32 percent].)

On the Republican side, Gov. Jeb Bush -- riding his brother's coattails into oblivion -- walks away with the prize: 63 percent of respondents wouldn't even consider voting for him. McCain comes in second in that contest with 34 percent saying definitely no. Rudy does best, in third place, with only 30 percent saying definitely no. Rudy also has a higher base of support than McCain in the poll, with 19 percent saying they would definitely vote for him, versus 12 percent saying the same of McCain.

* * *

What do these polls, taken together, tell us? Well, Poll 1 is of registered voters, not likely voters; and Poll 2 is of "adult Americans." So ... not a ton.

But they do seem to confirm the CW that Hillary is polarizing and an extremely problematic candidate for the Democrats. (Over at NRO, JPod has his doubts about the CNN poll because of the group sampled. But are there polls of likely voters showing that Hillary isn't polarizing? Polarizing doesn't mean she can't win, of course ... but it does probably mean she can be stopped.)

At the same time, these polls also show that Giuliani is more popular with Republicans, and McCain is more popular with Democrats. (And if 34 percent would definitely not vote for McCain in that CNN poll, a lot of those people are probably Republicans.) Which position would you like to be in going into a Republican primary?

Posted by Ryan Sager at 12:15 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Another new poll shows leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador extending an ever-so-slight lead in Mexico's presidential race. Two weeks before voters go to the polls, Obrador gets 36.5% of the vote, Felipe Calderon of PAN is at 32.5%, and PRI candidate Roberto Madrazo brings up the rear with 27%. A poll by the same firm taken two weeks ago had Obrador leading by one percentage point.

A different poll (via Austin Bay) taken recently showed Obrador holding steady at 34% while Calderon's support dipped slightly to 31% from 33% in that group's last poll and Madrazo trailed with 30%.

What will an Obrador victory on July 2 mean for the United States? Trouble, most likely. Check out more coverage on the RCP topic page for Mexico.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 11:47 AM | Email Author | Permalink

A report from New York City's Campaign Finance Board says that roughly 22 percent of contributions in the 2005 election cycle (mayor's race, City Council and some other offices) came from contractors and lobbyists that had business with the city.

Is it just me, or does that seem quite low? Let's hear it for New York City's squeaky clean political culture! (Forget that the public-sector unions run Albany like their own personal piggy banks.)

The report didn't count the tens of millions (supposed) prospective presidential candidate Mayor Bloomberg donated to his own reelection effort.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 11:21 AM | Email Author | Permalink

The day after news leaked out last Friday that Cynthia McKinney wouldn't be indicted for striking a Capitol Hill police officer, Jeffrey Scott and Bob Kemper from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution served up this big wet kiss for Georgia's most notorious Congressperson.

Yesterday the Capitol Hill Police held a press conference expressing disappointment with the grand jury's decision and urging the House Ethics Committee to take up action against McKinney:

"This is solely about what is right or wrong," said Lou Cannon, president of the D.C. Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police. "It is wrong to assault a law enforcement officer who is performing his duties. No matter what your status, occupation or other factors, everyone must obey the law." [snip]

Also Monday, Chuck Canterbury, the national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, released a letter he sent to the chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee complaining about the investigation conducted by U.S. Attorney Kenneth Wainstein.

"It is clear to us that the accused is receiving special treatment from Mr. Wainstein," Canterbury wrote. "This is unacceptable. Had the officer's attacker been a visitor to the Capitol instead of a U.S. representative, it is likely that he or she would have already stood trial."

Members of Congress getting special treatment? You don't say. Don't hold your breath for the ethics committee to step up, either. McKinney pulled out the race card to smear the Capitol Hill Police, for God's sake. Imagine what she'd do to her poor fellow House members if they tried to take action against her.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 08:26 AM | Email Author | Permalink

If you missed it, the Wall Street Journal had a terrific editorial over the weekend as to why ethanol is still a bad idea, even in the current "crisis":

U.S. taxpayers today pay twice for ethanol: once in crop subsidies to corn farmers and again in a 51-cent subsidy for every gallon of ethanol. Without such a subsidy, ethanol simply wouldn't be cost competitive with gasoline. Then last year, Congress went further and passed a new ethanol mandate, requiring drivers to use at least 7.5 billion gallons annually by 2012.

The immediate consequence of this new mandate was higher gasoline prices this spring, since the ethanol industry was ill-equipped to meet the new demand. Ethanol must also be carried by truck or rail, rather than through pipelines, and it requires special blending facilities. All this has both raised prices and created gas shortages around the country. But rather than blame their new mandate for the higher prices, the Members of Congress blamed, of course, Big Oil.

Ah, but what about the other alleged virtues of ethanol? One favorite is that every gallon of ethanol will supplant a gallon of gasoline imported from tyrannical Mideast oil regimes. Thus, a la Brazil, ethanol can help the U.S. achieve the miracle of "energy independence."

Sorry. The most widely cited research on this subject comes from Cornell's David Pimental and Berkeley's Ted Patzek. They've found that it takes more than a gallon of fossil fuel to make one gallon of ethanol--29% more. That's because it takes enormous amounts of fossil-fuel energy to grow corn (using fertilizer and irrigation), to transport the crops and then to turn that corn into ethanol. The Saudis ought to love the stuff.

Ethanol might have a place in a Giuliani-style "diversification" of U.S. energy policy. But it still have a long way to go as a technology.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 12:53 AM | Email Author | Permalink

The other day, I asked if anyone knew of a good introduction to the "net neutrality" debate.

Here's a decent piece from the Weekly Standard. In it, Andy Kessler argues that both sides are wrong (which seems about right):

FINDING IT HARD TO UNDERSTAND the "net neutrality" debate? On one side are the hip, cool, billionaire web service companies like Google, eBay, Yahoo, and even Microsoft. Net neutrality is their rallying cry. Despite the fact that they are basically schlocky ad salesmen on a grand scale, they're pushing this quaint, self-serving '60s notion that the Internet is a town square--all for one and one for them, or something like that. Everyone should be allowed to hang out in the town square and use it as they please, one low price, eat all you want at the buffet.

On the other side are the monopolist plumbers like Verizon and AT&T and Comcast. These are the folks who laid the pipe that delivers the Internet--the blogs and pirated movies and photos of Shiloh Brangelina--to your house or office. They think the Internet is more like a giant shopping mall, and they're the mall owners. You the customer can walk around as if you were in the town square, but the tenants (see billionaire web service companies above) are going to have to pay for the upkeep of the premises. If they're one of the anchor stores, they might pay a lot.

In an effort to skim their own fees off the Google crowd, lobbyists and Congress have also taken up the fight. So far, the telcos are winning--a bid to add net neutrality language to a telecommunications bill was shot down 269-152 by the House on June 8--but this is one of those bizarre
issues where both sides are off their rocker.

Being the Weekly Standard, the piece offers its own big-government solution: threatening to seize telecommunications facilities under eminent domain.

Other than that, though, worth a read.

Bottom line: As in most things, it would be better if Congress didn't act.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 12:11 AM | Email Author | Permalink

No decision again today from the Supreme Court on the Vermont spending-limits case.

Rick Hasen's Election Law blog notes the passing of time and notes that Thursday is the next opportunity for opinions.

Hasen also notes speculation as to which justice might be writing the opinion:

Marty Lederman just called me with the following observation. He notes that Justices Kennedy and Breyer are the only Justices who have not authored opinions from the February session (in which both the Texas and Vermont cases were argued). Marty says that anything is possible, and there may be multiple opinions, but his guess at this point is that Kennedy and Breyer are each the lead author of one of these opinions.

Pure speculation. Generally speaking, Kennedy would be OK news (would rather it be Scalia, as, well, always) and Breyer would be very bad news. But, of course, this is again 100% speculation. And not even my own. It's speculation passed on twice on the Internet. You should probably forget you even read it.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 11:10 PM | Email Author | Permalink

If you aren't reading Mike Antonucci's Education Intelligence Agency Communiqués on American education -- especially keeping tabs on the nation's teachers unions -- then you should be. You can sign up to have it delivered, if you're obsessed like I am.

His section on ridiculous rules in teachers contracts is particularly delightful, for those of you who follow the issue and long ago realized that teachers unions' interests are diametrically opposed to those of children (and often to those of teachers, as well, especially charter-school teachers).

The June 12 Communiqué has a bit on the current scandal in New York, where the state teachers union (New York State United Teachers) took payments from financial giant ING Group to steer its members toward ING's investment funds. Attorney General (and gubernatorial candidate) Eliot Spitzer gave NYSUT a slap on the wrist. He's accepted donations from the union in the past, and will likely recieve their help in the near future.

My colleagues at the New York Post editorial page have a bang-up editorial on the whole kerfuffle here.

Union politics as usual in the good old Empire State!!!

Posted by Ryan Sager at 10:37 PM | Email Author | Permalink

OK, I'm not here to defend torture, but can Andrew Sullivan and the reader he quotes approvingly here really say what they're saying with straight faces?:

The Captured Soldiers

All we can do apart from searching for them is pray for them. But Rude Pundit has some thoughts about what we'll say if we discover that they have been tortured. Money quote:

What will our government do? What could it do? Could it condemn the actions as not abiding by the Geneva Conventions? Could it call the actions "torture"? Could it demand accountability? Could it demand that the soldiers be treated as POWs? Could it simply say, "Well, we don't do that shit ... anymore"?

No it couldn't. Pray for the safe rescue of the soldiers - and for the president who abandoned Geneva.

Right. Because the terrorists have adjusted their level of atrocity based on American policy. Just like they attacked us on September 11 because of Israel and the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.

Just ask Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, Fabrizio Quattrocchi, Tom Fox, and the countless others slaughtered by the Islamist thugs.

We shun torture to preserve our own dignity as a society, not because we expect mercy from the enemy. They will show us none.

To pretend otherwise is naive and morally blind.

UPDATE: Sullivan clarifies a bit here.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 10:02 PM | Email Author | Permalink

George Will's Sunday column took a position with which I'm quite sympathetic, that not only is the Tancredo wing of the GOP wrong on immigration, but it's also short-sighted politically in its willingness to alienate Latino voters. Winning Latinos doesn't have to mean amnesty or open borders, but it does mean keeping your distance from, say, the Minutemen.

Anyway, toward the end, Will got into just how close the election was out West in 2004, as a warning to Republicans:

Remember this: Out West, feelings of all sorts about immigration policy are particularly intense, and if John Kerry had won a total of 127,014 more votes in New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado, states with burgeoning Latino populations, he would have carried those states and won the election.

It's actually worse than that. I'm not sure what Will's source for the 127,014 votes is, but the number I came up with in my book -- and which the fact checkers at the Atlantic went over for the excerpt in this month's issue -- is fewer than 70,000 votes that would have needed to switch from Bush to Kerry in New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado to flip the election.

Using the Washington Post's final listing of election results, one gets the following:

New Mexico: margin of 6,047
Nevada: margin of 21,567
Colorado: margin of 107,567

Add those up and you have just more than a 135,000-vote margin in those three states, meaning half -- a little under 70,000 -- would have to switch from Bush to Kerry to arrive at a Kerry electoral-college victory.

This is all, of course, just playing with numbers. But it does make clear that just as much as 60,000-odd votes would have flipped Ohio and the election, 60,000-odd votes would have flipped the Southwest and the election.

The Southwest and the greater interior West constitute a swing region that the GOP needs to start worrying about.

Anti-immigrant sentiment in America is strongest in the South, and the issue can be used strategically in races throughout the country. But it's very dangerous to the GOP in the West.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 06:45 PM | Email Author | Permalink

If this strikes you as news, you haven't been paying very close attention:

Demos find border a top issue for rural voters

By Daniel Scarpinato

Arizona Daily Star

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 06.18.2006

SIERRA VISTA -- When Victor Walker knocks on the doors of fellow Cochise County Democrats to talk about his candidate of choice for Congress, the topic quickly turns to immigration.

"The common theme is, 'People broke the law, they should be treated like lawbreakers,' " says Walker, former Cochise County Democratic Party chairman, who is campaigning for Gabrielle Giffords.

"They want to vent. The issue comes home particularly when your property is being trashed. They don't like that," he says.

The tough talk by Democrats in border areas of the state is in striking contrast to the way liberals tackle the issue in nearby Tucson, or for that matter, in Washington. Elsewhere, they use words like compromise and comprehensive. In this neck of the woods, Democrats talk enforcement.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 03:22 PM | Email Author | Permalink

A reader sent through a link to this interview with Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim, the director of "An Inconvenient Truth." The two sat down together for the latest installment of "Unscripted" on AOL's Moviefone.

At the very end of the interview Gore is stumped by the question, "If you were to cast any actor to play you in a movie, who would it be?" But Guggenheim, who directed the first three seasons of the hit TV show "24" with Kiefer Sutherland, jumps in to compare Gore to Bauer:

"And I thought about it, and I was like, well, it's kind of like watching Al Gore, going from city to city trying to save the world and no one will listen. And I was like, well, the only difference is really, that with 24 it's pretend, and this is real."

Posted by Tom Bevan at 10:59 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Congressman John Murtha continues to make a fool of himself by suggesting we can effectively fight the terrorist insurgency in Iraq by "redeploying" our troops to a military base in Japan. Here's what he told Tim Russert yesterday in the course of arguing that we don't need a presence in Iraq to conduct the sort of quick-strike missions like the one that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:

REP. MURTHA: So--and we don't have to be right there. We can go to Okinawa. We, we don't have--we can redeploy there almost instantly. So that's not--that's, that's a fallacy. That, that's just a statement to rial [sic] up people to support a failed policy wrapped in illusion.

MR. RUSSERT: But it'd be tough to have a timely response from Okinawa.

REP. MURTHA: Well, it--you know, they--when I say Okinawa, I, I'm saying troops in Okinawa. When I say a timely response, you know, our fighters can fly from Okinawa very quickly.

They can? The two 500-lb bombs that killed Zarqawi were dropped by F-16 fighter aircraft. According to the U.S. military:

In an air-to-surface role, the F-16 can fly more than 500 miles (860 kilometers), deliver its weapons with superior accuracy, defend itself against enemy aircraft, and return to its starting point.

Okinawa is 4,899 miles from Baghdad. Do the math.

Murtha also continued to play fast and loose with certain poll data points. He once again said "80 percent of the Iraqis want us out of there" a claim which many people questioned and which was eventually sourced by the liberal Think Progress to a single poll question from March 2006 contained in this report put out by the Brookings Institution. The question is worded "do you approve the government endorsing a timeline for U.S. withdrawal." Not to be a stickler, but Iraqis endorsing a "timeline for withdrawal" is not quite the same as saying they "want us out of there."

Another example: Murtha stated flatly to Russert yesterday, "The public is two-to-one against what we're doing, and they want a change in direction." That was news to me, because I distinctly remember the latest NBC/WSJ poll results on the question of whether Iraq was worth it or not: 40% said 'yes,' 52% said 'no.' Same thing with the most recent CNN poll (54% said the Iraq war was a mistake, 42% said it was not) and the latest USA Today/Gallup poll (51% say mistake, 46% not). You do not need an advanced degree in mathematics to know these numbers aren't even close to two-to-one.

So where did Murtha get his "2-1" ratio? It looks like he cherry picked it from the latest CBS News poll in which 33% responded the war in Iraq was "worth it" and 62% said it was "not worth it." As you can see, however, the CBS numbers are by far the worst of the entire batch of polls - which is no doubt why Murtha chose to cite them. Ironically, the next question on the CBS survey asks the following: "Looking back, do you think the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, or should the U.S. have stayed out?" Forty-four percent said we did the right thing, 51% said we should have stayed out.

Congressman Murtha is free to spin the absurd notion of pulling out of Iraq as a simple "change of direction" as he did yesterday, but at least he could do it without misstatements and mischaracterizations.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 08:36 AM | Email Author | Permalink

As we await a Supreme Court decision on whether Vermont's campaign-finance system (with its limits on what individuals can spend) is Constitutional, here's a data point indicating that at the very least it's pretty ineffective:

Vermont's campaign finance law hasn't slowed the flow of money into campaigns since it was passed in 1998. Instead, the money merely follows a different path, one in which political action committees figure prominently.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:51 AM | Email Author | Permalink

OK, I'm a bit obsessed, but this has to be noted. There are two parties who have especially not distinguished themselves in this assault on free speech in Washington state:

1) Superior Court Judge Chris Wickham has twice upheld this egregious assault on free speech, twice turning a blind eye to the fact that this lawsuit constitutes little more than raw intimidation by one side in an initiative campaign against the other. He's a small fry in the legal system, and the important issues here will be decided by far bigger fish -- but because of his lack of respect for the First Amendment, the damage was already done in the I-912 campaign last year.

2) The Washington state press, and specifically the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, have behaved atrociously throughout this entire fight. The P-I ran editorial after editorial in favor of the gas-tax initiative, yet somehow felt its advocacy shouldn't count as a contribution while that of two conservative radio hosts on the other side should. The paper even wrote at least one snarky editorial to that effect. (I questioned the P-I's editorial page editor on his logic in this column last year ... I found it less than convincing.) I'm on the opposite coast from Washington state, so I could have missed the papers out there rushing to Wilbur & Co.'s defense. But I doubt it. It seems that if it isn't their ox being gored, they can't be bothered to exercise their First Amendment rights to speak up.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:48 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Over at National Review, the editors urge: Free Kirby Wilbur!

Yes, the man with two first names is in a pickle over in Washington state. As I mentioned earlier this week, Wilbur is in the middle of perhaps the most important free-speech case currently ongoing in America: The outcome of this case could set a precedent where speech on the radio -- by radio hosts speaking their minds -- would be considered a "campaign contribution" under the law.

Specifically, Wilbur and his co-host, John Carlson of Seattle's KVI-AM, were vocal opponents of an initiative to impose a gas tax in Washington state last year (the initiative won despite their opposition, the gas tax was imposed). Agents of the government, with a financial interest in the ballot initiative carrying, filed suit to force Wilbur and Carlson's radio station to report their air time as an in-kind contribution to the anti-gas-tax campaign. The fact that the hosts helped collect money and signatures was used as evidence that they should be considered part of the campaign, as opposed to citizens simply speaking about it -- magically converting their "speech" into a "contribution."

A trial court judge decided this was a compelling argument. The air time was assigned a value, and the reporting was made. Now, the Institute for Justice is challenging the trial-court finding in the Washington State Supreme Court. For those who don't immediately see the significance: If speech has a monetary value, it has to be reported; and, far more importantly, it can be limited just like any other cash contribution.

Oral arguments in the case took place on June 8, and can be viewed online here.

I spoke to IJ attorney Michael Bindas on Friday, and here's the status of the case:

Time frame: There's no telling when the court will issue a decision, but the justices seemed to understand there is some urgency. There are, of course, elections this year. And the uncertainty surrounding the issue of whether radio speech can count as a campaign contribution needs to be resolved.

Next step: If the Washington State Supreme Court's decision were adverse to the defendants (for our purposes, let's call them "the good guys"), the appeal would be to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Precedent: To IJ's knowledge, the trial court was the first ever to treat "pure political speech essentially as a monetary contribution." There have been FEC complaints where radio stations have been targeted under a similar theory to that in the Washington state radio case, by politicians unhappy with talk show hosts' coverage. The FEC has uniformly rebuffed these complaints.

So, that's where things are. Keep your eyes peeled.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:14 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Mark Warner's Internet strategist (Kos co-author Jerome Armstrong) appears to have a shady past touting bum stocks on Internet message boards, according to a story in the New York Post (Kaus says the Times broke it first, in the black hole known as TimesSelect, a.k.a. TimesDelete).

I guess the comparisons of Mark Warner to BluePoint (read the article) are inevitable. Kos & Co. were certainly giving an overly warm welcome to Warner, a (gasp!) centrist Democrat, last weekend at lefty-fest YearlyKos -- which has caused some degree of consternation in some quarters.

Armstrong seems to go as far as he can in the Post article to deny the SEC charges, without violating his agreement with the SEC that he ... not deny the charges.

My only problem with the Post story? It didn't ask Armstrong: Where would you turn? How far would you go? How hard will you fall?

Posted by Ryan Sager at 10:57 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Mickey Kaus doubts whether the new Lieberman "bear ad" is as bad as I think it is:

It seems juvenile to me. But doesn't its effectiveness hinge on whether (and how much) Connecticut Democrats hate Lowell Weicker?

Well, I'm from Connecticut. And though I was very young when Lieberman beat Weicker, it's always seemed to me since then that Republicans in CT hate Weicker more than Democrats there do (at least, his name was cursed in my Republican household). And given that Weicker's main issue in all of this seems to be the Iraq war, it sure looks to me like he's aligned with the Democratic mainstream.

But, aside from Connecticuters' views on Weicker, I think the problems with the ad are two-fold. First off, there's the question of surface perception (or, as Mickey might have it, "visceral surface revulsion"). It simply makes Lieberman look a) foolish (especially with the "stand-by-your-ad" tag at the end) and b) desperate, for I think obvious reasons.

The second fold: The ad's questionable "truthiness."

The claim that Lamont is really a Republican in disguise is bizarre, given that this is the main knock on Lieberman. It seems to be based on Lamont's votes as a Greenwich selectman -- i.e. on town issues, that probably don't have much bearing (sorry, couldn't help it) on national politics. Meanwhile, Lieberman is standing with the president in defense of an unpopular war. (Rightly, I think, but that hardly matters.)

The other claim -- the ad's main claim -- also seems tenuous at best. Weicker did consider an independent run, since he opposes the war and wants to see Lieberman taken out. And he stopped considering it when Lamont got in the race. And now Weicker is holding a big fundraiser for Lamont. But the idea that an independently wealthy candidate riding a wave of pre-existing anti-war sentiment is a puppet, or will be overwhelmingly beholden to one prominent backer, just seems silly.

At base, it looks like Lieberman is trying to change the subject from substance to personal smears. It makes him look weak. And at a time when every other piece of news (i.e. a closing gap in the polls) is making him look weak as well, it plays into a story line that ends with him losing and/or being forced to run as an independent.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 11:24 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Imagine you were working on a 500-piece puzzle and had assembled 497 pieces, but found out that the last three pieces did not fit. In fact, you realized that they were from a completely different puzzle all together. What would you believe, that the three pieces were the right ones and the 497 were wrong, or vice-versa?

This is an important question for people looking at economic data these days. Those who think the economy is slowing focus on the 0.1% increase in retail sales during May. But, one or two-month slowdowns in economic data mean nothing. Retail sales are up 7.6% in the past year and 8.5% at an annual rate over the past six months. Excluding autos, retail sales increased 0.4% in May and are up 9.1% in the past year and 9.6% at an annual rate in the past six months.

Moreover, the future for retail sales does not look dour at all. Yes, non-farm payrolls increased by a less than expected 75,000 in May, but the household survey reported a 288,000 jump in employment. The Household Survey has been a much more accurate predictor of economic strength in this recovery than the Establishment Survey.

The unemployment rate has fallen to 4.6% and average hourly earnings have accelerated sharply in recent months, rising at a 4.2% annualized rate in the past six months. Wages and salaries have accelerated as well, rising at a 7.9% annual rate in the first four months of 2006. Tax revenues to the federal government are growing even faster (13% above last year during the first eight months of this fiscal year) and people do not pay taxes on income they do not earn.

While industrial production data showed a decline of 0.1% in May, output has climbed 5.2% at an annual rate in the past three months and 4.4% in the past year - both faster than overall GDP.

Early data for June signals a rebound. Initial unemployment claims have fallen to 295,000, while the Philadelphia Fed manufacturing survey was 13.1 in June - a level that is indicates real growth in the 3.5% to 4.0% range. New orders in the Philadelphia area rebounded strongly in June with 31.8% of area manufacturers reporting rising orders and only 14.1% reporting declining orders - another signal of stronger than anticipated growth ahead.

Along with data that reflects a solidly growing economy, inflation remains elevated. The Consumer Price Index expanded by 0.4% in May, while the "core" CPI jumped 0.3%. No matter how you slice and dice it, "core" inflation is clearly running well above the Fed's comfort zone.

The bottom line is that the economy is still in very good shape, while inflation is moving higher. It may be easy to pick out some data here, or some anecdotal evidence there, that paint a picture of slower growth. However, that evidence is in the distinct minority. When put together, a vast majority of the data reflects an economy that continues to roll along much as it has for the past three years.

(Brian Wesbury is the Chief Economist for First Trust Advisors in Chicago, IL)

Posted by Brian Wesbury at 03:41 PM | Email Author | Permalink

So, the Christian Coalition is aligned with MoveOn.org, and both are aligned with Moby.

Either net neutrality is really good or really, really bad.

I'm guessing bad.

Here's a decent entry-point to the debate, if you follow some of the links. I must admit, though, I still don't think I know enough about the issue to render an informed opinion.

If anyone's seen a good, balanced article that explains the basics, send it in to ryan-at-realclearpolitics.com.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 02:16 PM | Email Author | Permalink

My Sun-Times column this month looks at the rough ride Dems have been having over the last few weeks.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 01:44 PM | Email Author | Permalink

All you Federalist Papers fans out there (you know who you are)...

Over at NRO, Jonah directs folks to a new online version, with a clever URL: here.

For a searchable version, however, check out Yale's online version: here.

(A search for "pirates," for instance, pulls up only one hit. I would have thought there would be more pirate-related material in there.)

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:32 PM | Email Author | Permalink

For anyone having trouble viewing the Lieberman "bear" ad that Tom just posted (at least I couldn't get it to open), here it is through YouTube.

It's enough to make one think maybe Lieberman deserves to lose.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 12:47 PM | Email Author | Permalink

I must agree with Josh Marshall, Joe Lieberman's new ad is one of the most ridiculous campaign spots I've ever seen.

Meanwhile, Lamont continues to close the gap.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 12:37 PM | Email Author | Permalink

It's been a rough week for Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack. First came the results of the latest Iowa poll, which showed him running a disappointing fourth in his home state (with 10% of the vote) and trailing John Kerry (12%), Hillary Clinton (26%), and John Edwards (30%).

Next came a less than fruitful effort trying to court the nutroots in Las Vegas. Ryan Lizza reports:

Sadly, Tom Vilsack, governor of Iowa and chair of the DLC, doesn't make the cut on Kos's top candidate list. Vilsack shares Richardson's lack of pretension, but he doesn't combine this man-of-the-people image with the de rigueur pandering or free meals. Instead, like Warner, he's burdened by DLC baggage, and he gets shoddy results. He sits on a poorly attended education panel with two know-it-all bloggers who dominate much of the session. Afterward, at his meeting with bloggers, 13 people show up, five of them national reporters. "Are you guys bloggers?" he asks of the other eight. During the panel's Q&A, one of the education panelists, Teacher Ken, interrupts the governor. "Let me respond to his question," Teacher Ken insists.

Vilsack gives lip service to the transformative power of the Internet on politics, noting the promise of a direct democracy project called the Progressive Caucus, but he also pointedly notes, "There is some maturing that has to take place" in the liberal blogosphere. "I think, in a more mature situation, you would see less focus on the personalities and more on the politics and the policies," he says. Pressed, he adds, "Well, you know, Daily Kos is banging away at the DLC. We don't need to do that. Because there is a set of values that I think people on Daily Kos have that define them as Democrats and a set of values that define me as the chair of the DLC. And you know what? I'm not the enemy. I'm a pretty decent guy, if I say so myself." Before wrapping up, Vilsack adds, "Al From takes some hits, and, clearly, Joe Lieberman, you know? We don't need to do that."

I have never met Vilsack before, and he strikes me as an extremely bright and knowledgeable governor. I almost feel bad for him. I want to--but don't--explain that, in the liberal blogosphere, he will now be the enemy.

Vilsack did manage to end the week on a positive note, impressing New Hampshire voters during a visit yesterday. Vilsack is a likeable guy with an endearing life story, but that isn't enough to put to rest the serious doubts Democrats have about his potential candidacy:

"I had a picture of Eugene McCarthy, a picture of Bobby Kennedy in my head. I had a very positive impression," said Seldin, a fixture in Concord Democratic politics. "But is he serious? And can he raise the money?"

We'll have to wait and see, of course, but I'd be surprised if the answer to that last question turns out to be 'yes.'

Posted by Tom Bevan at 09:55 AM | Email Author | Permalink

"I love her and hope she runs for president, but ... That voice, you know, it sort of gets on your nerves. I wouldn't want to have her as my mom, to have to hear that voice all the time." - 23 year-old Jennifer Stephens, after listening to Hillary Clinton deliver the commencement address at Adelphi University.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 08:42 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Another interesting twist in the Duke rape case: Jackie Brown, the woman who ran DA Mike Nifong's primary campaign, jumped ship and is now heading up the effort to get County Commissioner Lewis Cheek on the ballot to run against Nifong this fall. Cheek has been urged to enter the race by those critical of Nifong's handling of the Duke case.

Brown has worked for Cheek in the past, but it's still pretty clear she doesn't think too highly of the way Nifong has conducted himself during the Duke investigation:

"Durham has been the center of controversy for a long time and I believe it needs some leadership to take it in the right direction," Brown said. "Lewis is a leader; he's a gentleman."

While acknowledging, "We don't know everything Mr. Nifong knows," Brown said the Duke lacrosse rape case was a factor in her decision to help Cheek try to unseat the man she just helped elect.

"I don't see any progress made at this point," she said.

The Raleigh News Observer has more:

Although criticism of Nifong's handling of the Duke lacrosse case arose during his primary campaign, Brown said she did not abandon her candidate because she had never lost a campaign. But she fielded many questions about Nifong.

"I cannot tell you how many hundreds of people called me toward the end of his campaign saying, 'Oh my God, oh my God.' It really started before he got elected," she said.

The News Observer also reports that Ronald Leary, a former sheriff and big Nifong supporter, has also decided to switch sides and support Cheek. To be put on the ballot, Cheek needs to round up signatures from 6,303 registered voters in the next 14 days. Something tells me that won't be much of a problem if Cheek decides to run.

Meanwhile, the defense lawyers' assault on Nifong continues here and here.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 08:32 AM | Email Author | Permalink

From the looks of this editorial, the good folks at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette appear to have come down with a case of the vapors over news of Karl Rove's non-indictment:

Sometimes it feels like there's no justice. That's a sentiment likely to be shared by many Americans in the wake of this week's announcement that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has decided not to charge top White House aide Karl Rove in his investigation of the Valerie Palme leak case.

The feelings of frustrated justice are not just partisan sour grapes, although some of that certainly exists among Democrats who were prematurely convinced of Mr. Rove's legal complicity. The truth is that disappointment might be felt by any fair-minded person who remembers what exactly was at the heart of this case and who was involved. [snip]

Mr. Rove may yet be called as a witness in Mr. Libby's trial -- as perhaps Mr. Cheney will too. Unfortunately, as we have lamented before, the trial won't occur until after the November elections, so whatever is learned there won't inform the voters in time. Optimism is limited in any case. For all his vaunted independence and thoroughness, Mr. Fitzpatrick doesn't seem to have achieved much.

In the meantime, Mr. Rove is pictured smiling like the cat who swallowed the canary. And who can say he is wrong? Yes, sometimes it feels like there's no justice.

Liberals were so heavily invested in the frog-march fantasy, I can understand their disappointment in getting a big lump of coal for Fitzmas.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:35 AM | Email Author | Permalink

New Jersey is shaping up to be a problem for Senate Democrats. Most of the recent punditry has focused on Republican troubles and whether or not Democrats can recapture Congress, but when looking at the Senate for 2006, perhaps a better question might be: can the Democrats even pick up seats?

Republicans are getting a "two-fer" from Jon Corzine's decision to leave the Senate for New Jersey's Governor's mansion last year. First, as a sitting Senator with a willingness to spend enormous sums of his personal wealth, Mr. Corzine would have been a very difficult incumbent for Republicans to unseat. In his win in 2000, Mr. Corzine outspent his opponent Bob Franks $63 million to $6 million.

Second, as Governor Mr. Corzine has done his best to reenact the politically disastrous politics of the Florio administration. Like Florio in 1989, Mr. Corzine has called for higher state taxes causing his approval ratings to fall into the 30's. In 1990, this led to a political environment where the relatively unknown Christie Todd Whitman came within 3 pts (50%-47%) of beating incumbent Senator Bill Bradley - despite being out spent fifteen to one.

This is the playing field shaping up for Mr. Corzine's replacement, Senator Bob Menendez, who has neither Mr. Bradley's stature nor Mr. Corzine's money. To complicate matters further, Mr. Menendez's opponent, Tom Kean, Jr. is the son of the popular former Governor Tom Kean.

Polling over the last 6 months by Quinnipiac University and Rasmussen Reports show a close race with both candidates hovering in the high 30's/low 40's. Quinnipiac's last six polls (averaged out since November) show Menendez ahead 41% - 37%. Rasmussen's last six over the same time frame give Kean the edge 39% - 37%.

New Jersey was once a quintessential swing state that has become consistently more Democratic on the national level. The last time Republicans carried the state in a Presidential election was 1988. But George W. Bush managed 46% in 2004, a six-point improvement from 2000. And the state Democratic party has been skating on thin ice in the recent major elections for Governor and Senate, surviving the Torricelli and McGreevy scandals with shrewd gaming of the system which may be catching up with the state party.

While President Bush's woes and Republican angst on Capital Hill may be dominating most of the national headlines, the political environment may be quietly shaping up for Republicans to pickup a Senate seat in blue state New Jersey.

Posted by John McIntyre at 05:50 AM | Email Author | Permalink

It turns out that new political movements, even those with an eye toward alleviating "the corruption of the political process by money," are stymied by the very campaign-finance laws of which folks of their ilk are so fond. Who knew?

The Unity '08 folks are about to find out. And how.

Bob Bauer (if you're not reading his Web site for the latest on campaign-finance regulation and its various grotesqueries, you really should be) gives an amusing account:

The longing for unity and the dream of a better, more consensual politics may not survive an encounter with the federal campaign finance laws. See FEC Advisory Opinion Request 2006-20. Unity 08, a 527, represents this longing and this dream, and it hopes to forge for presentation to the American public a bipartisan ticket and a program broadly appealing to the middle on the "crucial problems" ... facing the country. One of these problems, it states, is "the corruption of the political process by money" ... and it is now before the Federal Election Commission with a proposal that it raise money for its activities without complying with the federal contribution limits. Reform without limits, at least for the reformer: this is a proposal commendable for its candor and freshness, and it may point the way to a new "middle" on reform, which allows for reform packaging but dispenses with bothersome content, such as limits.

Those who want "reform," we all know, are pure of heart. So why should they have to live by the rules they've written for everyone else? The rules are there to stop corruption, and the reformers are -- by definition! -- the antithesis of corruption.

The logic is air tight.

To be fair, the folks on the Unity '08 Founders Council aren't necessarily responsible for McCain-Feingold, but they do declare that: "Both [major parties] are unduly influenced by single-issue groups. Both are excessively dominated by money."

So, sorry guys. But the only way we major-party types can be sure that you're not unduly influenced by single-issue groups and that you're not excessively dominated by money is for you to adhere to all applicable rules and regulations.

After all, you wouldn't want even the appearance of corruption to taint such a promising new paradigm in American politics.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 02:57 AM | Email Author | Permalink

It's come to our attention that Thomas Riehle's recent article, published on RealClearPolitics on Tuesday, failed to properly disclose a business relationship between his polling firm, RT Strategies, and the pro-Wal-Mart group, Working Families for Wal-Mart.

The data cited in Riehle's article on Wal-Mart is derived from questions Working Families for Wal-Mart paid to have added to RT Strategies' monthly omnibus poll. This is a service RT Strategies offers to anyone in return for a fee, but it is most certainly something Riehle should have disclosed upfront when writing an opinion essay about the results. He has acknowledged and apologized for the mistake. We apologize to our readers as well.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 02:19 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Wednesday's press conference given by President Bush in the White House Rose Garden was the best I can remember him giving...ever. Despite the mother of all red-eye trips, a secret trip to Baghdad to meet with the Iraqi Prime Minister (who didn't know Bush was coming until 5 minutes before he arrived), Bush was obviously energized.

He didn't say anything like "ingrinable" or "strategery", and even made what I, as a stupid movie geek, found to be a very funny joke when he called on a reporter named Roger, and then said "Roger, Roger."

There was a minor gaffe which we learned about later: Bush asked a reporter if he was going to ask a question "with his shades on" not knowing that the reporter has an eye disease for which he has to wear sunglasses. Bush called the reporter later and apologized in what seemed like a very pleasant conversation. (Click HERE for the story.)

In any case, Bush gave a good answer to every question. He was firm about our support for Iraq. He stressed the importance of our commitment there, made no promises about withdrawing troops, and had excellent retorts for stupid questions like "Why didn't you tell the Iraqi Prime Minister sooner that you were coming?" (Those might not have been the exact words, but that was the question.) Bush's obvious answer: "I'm a high-value target for some."

The conference over all was the most solid performance I've seen from President Bush and was a great highlight to a solid week for him.

Al-Zarqawi was killed, Rove was not indicted, he made a successful trip to Baghdad, and he had his first noticeable uptick in poll results in months.

All this is a fragile foundation but a foundation nonetheless for improved Republican prospects for November, including making it more likely that GOP candidates will not shy away from having the President campaign for them.

I believe that some part of today's stock market rally, the first in 8 trading days for the Nasdaq, was due in some part to the improving possibility of the Republicans keeping control of Congress. As Oscar Wilde might say if he were still around "The only thing worse than electing Republicans to Congress is not electing Republicans to Congress", and that's especially true for financial markets.

In any case, although I'm not a huge fan of President Bush, I'm glad he had a good week. In this case, it meant we all had a good week.

Posted by Ross Kaminsky at 10:18 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Thanks to all the current and former Marines and other members of the U.S. military who emailed in response to my column yesterday. Getting the kind of response I did from the troops over a simple, humble 700-word article praising the United States military is more proof, I think, that the media in this country does a terrible job celebrating and honoring those in uniform who defend it.

Here's an example of the type of response I received:

Thank you for taking up the cause and standing up for the Marine Corps. I saw the same cartoon from one of the Marines I served with years ago. I have tried on my own to try to generate some condemnation and some help in standing up to an unjustified cheap shot by a person who does not have a grasp on reality. My outrage was not so much at him using the very freedoms that thousands of better men and women have sacrificed over the years to provide him, no it was the fact that the most important tenet of our legal system he denied to every single Marine including the ones accused of atrocities by saying that a crime and a cover up occurred before the investigation and the courts-martial were even held. Every American is entitled to the presumption of innocence until they are convicted of a crime. Thank you once again for conducting yourself in an honorable manner and defending an institution that has been defending before this country was even established.

And another who voices more detailed frustration with the media:

I am a Marine Captain and Iraq War Veteran and I just wanted to send you a thumbs up and good old Marine Corps OOORRRAAAHHH!

Frankly many of my peers are worn down by the media and their constant "gotcha" techniques of reporting. We are tired of many stories of goodwill going unreported. When I was in Iraq, specifically Baghdad, the Iraqis were concer