Obama ready to "rule" as President

Newsbusters.org

The co-chair of Barack Obama's Transition Team, Valerie Jarrett, appeared on Meet the Press this weekend and used, shall we say, an interesting word to described what she thinks Barack Obama will be doing in January when he's officially sworn into office. She told Tom Brokaw that Obama will be ready to "rule" on day one. It's a word that reflects the worst fears that people have for Obama the "arrogant," the "messiah," that imagines he's here to "rule" instead of govern.

Jarret told Brokaw that "given the daunting challenges that we face, it's important that president elect Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one."

Someone needs to get to Jarrett and inform her that American politicians are not Kings and do not "rule" from office. But if this is the attitude of Obama's transition team, what does The One himself imagine he is about to unleash? Could the fears that Obama thinks he is being anointed America's King be far off with this sort of talk flying about?

Democrat fingerprints are all over the financial crisis

The Independent

Dominic Lawson

Of all the characteristics of a successful politician, none is more essential than bare-faced cheek. Never has this been more evident than in the past fortnight, as senior Democrat members of the US legislature have sought to lay all the blame for the country's financial crisis on the executive arm of Government and Wall Street.

Neither of these two institutions is blameless – far from it. Yet when I see such senior Democrats as Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Christopher Dodd, Chairman of the Senate's Banking Committee, play the part of avenging angels – well, I can only stand in silent awe at the sheer tight-bottomed nerve of it. These are men with sphincters of steel.

"Our banks are knowingly approving risky loans to get the feds and the activists off their backs... When the coming wave of foreclosures rolls through the inner city, which of today's self-congratulating bankers, politicians and regulators plans to take the credit? ... Barney Frank doesn't. But his fingerprints are all over this fiasco."

What is the proximate cause of the collapse of confidence in the world's banks? Millions of improvident loans to American housebuyers. Which organisations were on their own responsible for guaranteeing half of this $12 trillion market? Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the so-called Government Sponsored Enterprises which last month were formally nationalised to prevent their immediate and catastrophic collapse. Now, who do you think were among the leading figures blocking all the earlier attempts by President Bush – and other Republicans – to bring these lending behemoths under greater regulatory control? Step forward, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.

In September 2003 the Bush administration launched a measure to bring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under stricter regulatory control, after a report by outside investigators established that they were not adequately hedging against risks and that Fannie Mae in particular had scandalously misstated its accounts. In 2006, it was revealed that Fannie Mae had overstated its earnings – to which its senior executives' bonuses were linked – by a stunning $9.3billion. Between 1998 and 2003, Fannie Mae's executive chairman, Franklin Raines, picked up over $90m in bonuses and stock options.

Yet Barney Frank and his chums blocked all Bush's attempts to put a rein on Raines. During the House Financial Services Committee hearing following Bush's initiative, Frank declared: "The more people exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness [at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae], the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially." His colleague on the committee, the California Democrat Maxine Walters, said: "There were nearly a dozen hearings where we were trying to fix something that wasn't broke. Mr Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac and particularly at Fannie Mae under the outstanding leadership of Mr Franklin Raines."

When Mr Raines himself was challenged by the Republican Christopher Shays, to the effect that his ratio of capital to assets (that is, mortgages) of 3 per cent was dangerously low, the Fannie Mae boss retorted that "our assets are so riskless, we could have a capital ratio of under 2 per cent".

Maxine Walters' complaint about previous attempts to bring the great state-sponsored housing finance bodies under stricter control was partly a reference to Bill Clinton's efforts. Last week the former President acknowledged that "responsibility" for the absence of proper regulation rested "with Democrats who were resisting any efforts of Republicans in Congress, and earlier when I was President and tried to impose tighter standards on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac". Then, as now, members of his own party saw all such initiatives as unwonted attacks on the chances for low-earners, and particularly African-Americans, to own their own homes.

From its inception in 1938 Fannie Mae (and later Freddie Mac) was designed to make housing finance available to "ordinary Americans". This was a noble aim. In the 1970s another Democrat President, Jimmy Carter, introduced legislation which demanded that such bodies enhance their lending to minorities. Again, this was based on a noble idea: to stamp out racism in the mortgage market. Thus by 1998 you had the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston producing a document entitled "Closing the Gap: a Guide to Equal Opportunities Lending", which instructed banks that an applicant's "lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor" in obtaining a mortgage. As Stephen Malanga of the Manhatta *Institute notes: "Of course the new federal standards couldn't just apply to minorities. If they could pay back loans under these terms, then so could the majority of loan applicants. Quickly, these became the new standards in the industry. As the housing market boomed, banks embraced these new standards with a vengeance. Between 2004 and 2007, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac became the biggest purchasers of subprime mortgages from all kinds of applicants, white and minority, and most of these loans were based on lending standards promoted by the Government."

One of the few journalists to see where this would lead was Jeff Jacoby, of the Boston Globe. Last week he reminded his readers what he had written in 1995: "Our banks are knowingly approving risky loans to get the feds and the activists off their backs... When the coming wave of foreclosures rolls through the inner city, which of today's self-congratulating bankers, politicians and regulators plans to take the credit?". Jacoby adds now: "Barney Frank doesn't. But his fingerprints are all over this fiasco."

It's true that the improvident lending was not initiated by Fannie and Freddie: their role in this was to buy these loans and sell them on – but then the music stopped. Cynical students of the American political system will note that the biggest recipient of campaign contributions from the munificent duo of Fannie and Freddie over the past 20 years was one Christopher Dodd, Democrat Chairman of the Senate's Banking Committee.

Rather surprisingly, given that he has only been in the Senate for four of those years, the second biggest beneficiary was Barack Obama. In August the Washington Post reported that Obama's presidential campaign team had sought the advice of Franklin Raines "on mortgage and housing policy matters". Perhaps Mr Obama's team just wanted to know where all the bodies are buried – there are rather a lot of them.

The saddest outcome of all this within America – apart from the crippling cost to the nation's taxpayers – is that the very people the Democrats had intended to help will be the biggest victims: for many years to come banks will demand the most stringent terms for mortgages to the least well off.

In the meantime, let us praise Congressman Artur Davis of Alabama, who confessed this week: "Like a lot of my Democrat colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised. I wish my Democrat colleagues would admit that we were wrong." I fear Congressman Davis will not go far with this attitude – but at least he will be able to look at himself in the mirror.

The Lamest Congress Ever

“The 110th Congress, whose term officially ends in January, hasn’t... attacked high gasoline prices. But it has used its powers to celebrate watermelons and to decree the origins of the word ‘baseball.’ Barring a burst of legislative activity after Labor Day, this group of 535 men and women will have accomplished a rare feat. In two decades of record keeping, no sitting Congress has passed fewer public laws at this point in the session—294 so far—than this one. That’s not to say they’ve been idle. On the flip side, no Congress in the same 20 years has been so prolific when it comes to proposing resolutions—more than 1,900, according to a tally by the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense. With the mostly symbolic measures, Congress has saluted such milestones as the Idaho Potato Commission’s 70th anniversary and recognized soil as an ‘essential natural resource.’ As legislation on gasoline prices, tax fixes and predatory lending languish, Congress has designated May 5-9 as National Substitute Teacher Recognition Week, and set July 28 as the Day of the American Cowboy. The resolutions, which generally don’t carry the force of law, can originate in either the House or Senate. However, some types of resolutions establish the federal budget, authorize the president to go to war, or condemn actions such as the genocide in Darfur. Even among the 294 laws passed thus far, many were symbolic in nature. Many of the post offices named by this Congress honor servicemen and -women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the 435-member House, fully one-quarter of the workweek is typically devoted to debating and passing symbolic measures.”

—Elizabeth Williamson

What's the Wrong Track?

Today’s most widely accepted political belief is that because an unprecedentedly high percentage of Americans — 81 percent — believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, the Republicans are headed for a major defeat this coming November. If this is the case, it can only be because the American voter translates ‘headed in the wrong direction’ as ‘because the Republicans have had their way, so it’s time to let the Democrats have theirs.’

That should not be the case.

I count myself as one of the 81 percent who believes America is headed in the wrong direction, and that is precisely why I am voting Republican. Moreover, I suspect I am not alone among the 81 percent in ascribing the wrong track to the leftist, not the conservative, influence on American life. ...

Perhaps most of the 81 percent think that ‘wrong direction’ means, among many other things, the following: Forty years of left-wing control of the news media, of Hollywood, of the public schools, of the universities and of nearly every big city government have nearly ruined those institutions. Forty years of a litigation explosion has had terrible social and economic effects... Multiculturalism is destroying the concept of an American culture and people. Obama and the Democrats even opposed declaring English as America’s national language. So 81 percent of Americans are right.

We are on the wrong track. But the future of America entirely depends on what track it is most Americans think is wrong. — Dennis Prager

The Last Word

“Savvy Democrats have found a way to capitalize on market fears. Just as they frequently attribute every hot day to global warming—not weather—now they lay every economic problem at Iraq’s door. If the economy is not strong, they blame what Obama calls the ‘Bush/McCain war.’ Sure, it’s fair to oppose the war and cite the cost to American taxpayers. Although, once a war has started, we have to pay for it. So when Democrats talk about how the war hurts the U.S. economy, it sounds to me as if they are arguing that U.S. troops can spill their blood in Iraq, but not if gasoline hits $4 per gallon. Then the cost is too high... Forget, if you will, that Clinton and 76 other senators voted (for the resolution) to authorize the use of military force in Iraq. This is America’s war. To troops stationed in Iraq, it doesn’t matter who started it. It does matter, however, that their sacrifices count for something. And it doesn’t help U.S. troops, whose morale has been boosted by the surge’s success, when Clinton announces, as she did again last week, that the Iraq War is ‘a war we cannot win.’... Last week, Clinton said in her Iraq speech, ‘The reality is that this war has made the terrorists stronger.’ Likewise from Obama: ‘Above all, the war in Iraq has emboldened al-Qaida.’ But if the terrorists are stronger and bolder, why are they losing ground in Iraq? Why are they in hiding elsewhere? And why have leading Democrats begun to frame the Iraq War, not just as a war that cannot be won, but as an expensive engagement that is driving up the price of gasoline for Americans?”

—Debra Saunders

David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'

village voice

An election-season essay
by David Mamet

John Maynard Keynes was twitted with changing his mind. He replied, "When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?"

My favorite example of a change of mind was Norman Mailer at The Village Voice.

Norman took on the role of drama critic, weighing in on the New York premiere of Waiting for Godot.

Twentieth century's greatest play. Without bothering to go, Mailer called it a piece of garbage.

When he did get around to seeing it, he realized his mistake. He was no longer a Voice columnist, however, so he bought a page in the paper and wrote a retraction, praising the play as the masterpiece it is.

Every playwright's dream.

I once won one of Mary Ann Madden's "Competitions" in New York magazine. The task was to name or create a "10" of anything, and mine was the World's Perfect Theatrical Review. It went like this: "I never understood the theater until last night. Please forgive everything I've ever written. When you read this I'll be dead." That, of course, is the only review anybody in the theater ever wants to get.

My prize, in a stunning example of irony, was a year's subscription to New York, which rag (apart from Mary Ann's "Competition") I considered an open running sore on the body of world literacy—this due to the presence in its pages of John Simon, whose stunning amalgam of superciliousness and savagery, over the years, was appreciated by that readership searching for an endorsement of proactive mediocrity.

But I digress.

I wrote a play about politics (November, Barrymore Theater, Broadway, some seats still available). And as part of the "writing process," as I believe it's called, I started thinking about politics. This comment is not actually as jejune as it might seem. Porgy and Bess is a buncha good songs but has nothing to do with race relations, which is the flag of convenience under which it sailed.

But my play, it turned out, was actually about politics, which is to say, about the polemic between persons of two opposing views. The argument in my play is between a president who is self-interested, corrupt, suborned, and realistic, and his leftish, lesbian, utopian-socialist speechwriter.

The play, while being a laugh a minute, is, when it's at home, a disputation between reason and faith, or perhaps between the conservative (or tragic) view and the liberal (or perfectionist) view. The conservative president in the piece holds that people are each out to make a living, and the best way for government to facilitate that is to stay out of the way, as the inevitable abuses and failures of this system (free-market economics) are less than those of government intervention.

I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.

As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.

These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life. How do I know? My wife informed me. We were riding along and listening to NPR. I felt my facial muscles tightening, and the words beginning to form in my mind: Shut the fuck up. "?" she prompted. And her terse, elegant summation, as always, awakened me to a deeper truth: I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio."

This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.

But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part.

And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.

I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.

For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.

To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.

The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.

I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.

And I began to question my hatred for "the Corporations"—the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live.

And I began to question my distrust of the "Bad, Bad Military" of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world. Is the military always right? No. Neither is government, nor are the corporations—they are just different signposts for the particular amalgamation of our country into separate working groups, if you will. Are these groups infallible, free from the possibility of mismanagement, corruption, or crime? No, and neither are you or I. So, taking the tragic view, the question was not "Is everything perfect?" but "How could it be better, at what cost, and according to whose definition?" Put into which form, things appeared to me to be unfolding pretty well.

Do I speak as a member of the "privileged class"? If you will—but classes in the United States are mobile, not static, which is the Marxist view. That is: Immigrants came and continue to come here penniless and can (and do) become rich; the nerd makes a trillion dollars; the single mother, penniless and ignorant of English, sends her two sons to college (my grandmother). On the other hand, the rich and the children of the rich can go belly-up; the hegemony of the railroads is appropriated by the airlines, that of the networks by the Internet; and the individual may and probably will change status more than once within his lifetime.

What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow.

But if the government is not to intervene, how will we, mere human beings, work it all out?

I wondered and read, and it occurred to me that I knew the answer, and here it is: We just seem to. How do I know? From experience. I referred to my own—take away the director from the staged play and what do you get? Usually a diminution of strife, a shorter rehearsal period, and a better production.

The director, generally, does not cause strife, but his or her presence impels the actors to direct (and manufacture) claims designed to appeal to Authority—that is, to set aside the original goal (staging a play for the audience) and indulge in politics, the purpose of which may be to gain status and influence outside the ostensible goal of the endeavor.

Strand unacquainted bus travelers in the middle of the night, and what do you get? A lot of bad drama, and a shake-and-bake Mayflower Compact. Each, instantly, adds what he or she can to the solution. Why? Each wants, and in fact needs, to contribute—to throw into the pot what gifts each has in order to achieve the overall goal, as well as status in the new-formed community. And so they work it out.

See also that most magnificent of schools, the jury system, where, again, each brings nothing into the room save his or her own prejudices, and, through the course of deliberation, comes not to a perfect solution, but a solution acceptable to the community—a solution the community can live with.

Prior to the midterm elections, my rabbi was taking a lot of flack. The congregation is exclusively liberal, he is a self-described independent (read "conservative"), and he was driving the flock wild. Why? Because a) he never discussed politics; and b) he taught that the quality of political discourse must be addressed first—that Jewish law teaches that it is incumbent upon each person to hear the other fellow out.

And so I, like many of the liberal congregation, began, teeth grinding, to attempt to do so. And in doing so, I recognized that I held those two views of America (politics, government, corporations, the military). One was of a state where everything was magically wrong and must be immediately corrected at any cost; and the other—the world in which I actually functioned day to day—was made up of people, most of whom were reasonably trying to maximize their comfort by getting along with each other (in the workplace, the marketplace, the jury room, on the freeway, even at the school-board meeting).

And I realized that the time had come for me to avow my participation in that America in which I chose to live, and that that country was not a schoolroom teaching values, but a marketplace.

"Aha," you will say, and you are right. I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.

At the same time, I was writing my play about a president, corrupt, venal, cunning, and vengeful (as I assume all of them are), and two turkeys. And I gave this fictional president a speechwriter who, in his view, is a "brain-dead liberal," much like my earlier self; and in the course of the play, they have to work it out. And they eventually do come to a human understanding of the political process. As I believe I am trying to do, and in which I believe I may be succeeding, and I will try to summarize it in the words of William Allen White.

White was for 40 years the editor of the Emporia Gazette in rural Kansas, and a prominent and powerful political commentator. He was a great friend of Theodore Roosevelt and wrote the best book I've ever read about the presidency. It's called Masks in a Pageant, and it profiles presidents from McKinley to Wilson, and I recommend it unreservedly.

White was a pretty clear-headed man, and he'd seen human nature as few can. (As Twain wrote, you want to understand men, run a country paper.) White knew that people need both to get ahead and to get along, and that they're always working at one or the other, and that government should most probably stay out of the way and let them get on with it. But, he added, there is such a thing as liberalism, and it may be reduced to these saddest of words: " . . . and yet . . . "

The right is mooing about faith, the left is mooing about change, and many are incensed about the fools on the other side—but, at the end of the day, they are the same folks we meet at the water cooler. Happy election season.

Hoisted on their Liberal Petards. . .

James Taranto

The Lewinsky Decade

Sometime in 1997, a friend signed us up for the Drudge Report's email updates. We didn't quite understand what the Drudge Report was, but into our email box at irregular intervals would pop often-interesting news and gossip bulletins, written in a breathless, tabloidy style. (One of them, dated Nov. 9, 1997, declares, "WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE TOPS 150,000 PAID!")

Ten years ago today came the most interesting Drudge missive:

BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT

**World Exclusive**

**Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT**

At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!

The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that reporter Michael Isikoff developed the story of his career, only to have it spiked by top NEWSWEEK suits hours before publication. A young woman, 23, sexually involved with the love of her life, the President of the United States, since she was a 21-year-old intern at the White House. She was a frequent visitor to a small study just off the Oval Office where she claims to have indulged the president's sexual preference. Reports of the relationship spread in White House quarters and she was moved to a job at the Pentagon, where she worked until last month.

The following day, Drudge named the intern as Monica Lewinsky, and a few days after that, the story was all over the mainstream media. It looked for a while as if President Clinton might not serve out his term. Even his dutiful wife commented on the "Today" show that if true, "that would be a very serious offense." But, insisted Hillary Clinton, it was not true. The real story "is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president."

One participant in that "conspiracy" was Attorney General Janet Reno, who had petitioned to expand Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr's mandate to include the investigation of possible obstruction of justice in a sexual-harassment suit filed by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas employee who alleged that then-Gov. Clinton had dropped his pants and issued a demand that she "kiss it."

Clinton's denials were politically expedient. By the time he owned up to his shenanigans with the youthful Miss Lewinsky, his supporters had accustomed themselves to the idea of presidential droit de seigneur, and they defended Clinton's conduct as being "only about sex." Because Clinton had issued false denials under oath, however, as a legal matter it no longer was only about sex but about perjury and obstruction of justice. Starr presented a report to Congress, which impeached him. In February 1999 the Senate found him not guilty.

Clinton survived the scandal by brazenly lying. Had he acknowledged the affair at the outset, he surely would have been forced to resign. This centrist president became the hero of the left, which actually believed that "right-wing conspiracy" talk. The impending impeachment produced a backlash against Republicans, who lost House seats in 1998, countering a historic trend in which the president's party almost always suffers big congressional losses in the sixth year of his term (cf 1986 and 2006).

The effects of the Lewinsky scandal continue to be felt. By some accounts it launched Mrs. Clinton's political career. The notion of a first lady seeking a Senate seat in a state to which she had no real connection was preposterous--yet she carried it off, in part by affording liberal New Yorkers an opportunity to poke the eye of the vast-right conspirators. Now she is a viable candidate for president. Who'd have expected that back in 1998?

Organized feminism lost much of its moral authority, as no less a personage than Gloria Steinem--in a famous op-ed that is mysteriously missing from the New York Times archives but we found here--explained away treatment of women that she never would have tolerated from a Republican or a private-sector boss.

The independent counsel statute, a post-Watergate abomination that no one thinks made government cleaner, finally went by the boards when Congress in 2000 declined to renew it. (The impulse behind the independent counsel, however, remains alive, as shown by the witch hunt in the Valerie Plame kerfuffle.)

The paranoid style of politics took hold on the left, which blamed right-wing conspiracies for George W. Bush's victory in the disputed election of 2000, the liberation of Iraq, George W. Bush's victory in the undisputed election of 2004, Hurricane Katrina and, on the furthest fringes, the attacks of 9/11. A far-left subculture harbors fantasies of impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney as revenge, even though they haven't committed any high crimes or misdemeanors.

In reality, far from being the victim of a "vast right-wing conspiracy," Clinton was caught in a trap set for him unwittingly by the political left, which made sexual harassment both a legal offense and a political outrage, and which hatched the independent-counsel scheme. He was saved only by an exercise of raw, partisan political power in the Senate, where not a single Democrat voted for conviction.

Mrs. Clinton, facing a strong challenge from Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, finds herself in a weirdly parallel position. Once again, as we noted last week, Gloria Steinem has produced a risible op-ed for the Times, this time defending Mrs. Clinton as a feminist icon, even though she owes her political power to her husband, and even though she seems to have saved her chance at the nomination by coming close to tears.

Meanwhile, the Baltimore Sun, in a report on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's controversial Afrocentric "spiritual mentor," notes that "that woman" has come up this year, in a new context:

On Sunday morning--amid intensified crossfire between Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Obama over the use of race in the Democratic presidential campaign--Wright was preaching from the Gospel of John, using his powerful style to link the story of the loaves and fishes to a contemporary political message.

Man should not put limits on what God can do, but that's what people always do, he told the crowd. Just as God made five loaves and two fishes feed thousands, God has provided liberators for blacks in the past--from Nat Turner to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and now Barack Obama. But, Wright said, there were always reasons not to follow them.

Some argue that blacks should vote for [Mrs.] Clinton "because her husband was good to us," he continued.

"That's not true," he thundered. "He did the same thing to us that he did to Monica Lewinsky."

Feminism, the independent counsel, now racial identity politics: Before the Clintons have passed from the stage, maybe they will have been hoist by every liberal petard.

A Failure to Lead

OpinionJournal - Featured Article

The Democratic Congress is more interested in acting out than in taking positive action.

BY KARL ROVE

This week is the one-year anniversary of Democrats winning Congress. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid probably aren't in a celebrating mood. The goodwill they enjoyed after their victory is gone. Their bright campaign promises are unfulfilled. Democratic leadership is in disarray. And Congress's approval rating has fallen to its lowest point in history.

The problems the Democrats are now experiencing begin with the federal budget. Or rather, the lack of one. In 2006, Democrats criticized Congress for dragging its feet on the budget and pledged that they would do better. Instead, they did worse. The new fiscal year started Oct. 1--five weeks ago--but Democrats have yet to send the president a single annual appropriations bill. It's been at least 20 years since Congress has gone this late in passing any appropriation bills, an indication of the mess the Pelosi-Reid Congress is now in.

Even worse, the Democrats have made clear all their talk about "fiscal discipline" is just that--talk. They're proposing to spend $205 billion more than the president has proposed over the next five years. And the opening wedge of this binge is $22 billion more in spending proposed for the coming year. Only in Washington could someone in public life be so clueless to say, as Sen. Reid and Rep. Pelosi have, that $22 billion is a "relatively small" difference.

Let's also be clear about what it means to roll back the president's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, as the Democrats want to do. Every income-tax payer will pay more as all tax rates rise. Families will pay $500 more per child as they lose the child tax credit. Taxes on small businesses would go up by an average of about $4,000. Retirees will pay higher taxes on investment retirement income. And now we have the $1 trillion tax increase proposed as "tax reform" by the Democrats' chief tax writer last month.

Failing to pass a budget, proposing a huge spike in federal spending and offering the biggest tax increase in history are not the only hallmarks of this Democratic Congress.

Beholden to MoveOn.org and other left-wing groups, Democratic leaders have ignored the progress made in Iraq by the surge, diminished the efforts of our military, and wasted precious time with failed attempts to force an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. They continue to try to implement this course, which would lead to chaos in the region, the creation of a possible terror state with the third largest oil reserves in the world, and a major propaganda victory for Osama bin Laden as well as for Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah.

After promising on the campaign trail to "support our troops," Democrats tried to cut off funding for our military while our soldiers and Marines are under fire from the enemy. For 19 Senate Democrats, this was simply a bridge too far, so they voted against their own leadership's proposal. Democrats also tried to stuff an emergency war-spending bill with billions of dollars of pork for individual members. Now the party's leaders are stalling an emergency supplemental bill with funding for body armor, bullets and mine-resistant vehicles.

After pledging a "Congress that strongly honors our responsibility to protect our people from terrorism," Democrats have refused to make permanent reforms of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that the Director of National Intelligence said were needed to close "critical gaps in our intelligence capability." Their presidential candidates fell all over each other in a recent debate to pledge an end to the Terrorist Surveillance Program. Then Senate Democratic leaders, thinking there was an opening for political advantage, slow-walked the confirmation of Judge Michael Mukasey to be the next attorney general. It's obvious that this is a man who knows the important role the Justice Department plays in the war on terror. Delaying his confirmation is only making it harder to prosecute the war.

Democrats promised "civility and bipartisanship." Instead, they stiff-armed their Republican colleagues, refused to include them in budget negotiations between the two houses, and have launched more than 400 investigations and made more than 675 requests for documents, interviews or testimony. They refused a bipartisan compromise on an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, instead wasting precious time sending the president a bill they knew he would veto. And they did this knowing that they wouldn't be able to override that veto. Why? Because their pollsters told them putting the children's health-care program at risk would score political points. Instead, it left them looking cynical.

The list of Congress's failures grows each month. No energy bill. No action on health care. No action on the mortgage crisis. No immigration reform. No progress on renewing No Child Left Behind. Precious little action on judges and not enough on reducing trade barriers. Congress has not done its work. And these failures will have consequences.

Democrats had a moment after the 2006 election, but now that moment has passed. They've squandered it. They have demonstrated both the inability and unwillingness to govern. Instead, after more than a decade in the congressional minority, they reflexively look for short-term partisan advantage and attempt to appease the party's most strident fringe. Now that Democrats have the reins of congressional power, their true colors are coming out and the public doesn't like what it sees.

The Democratic victory in 2006 was narrow. They won the House by 85,961 votes out of over 80 million cast and the Senate by a mere 3,562 out of over 62 million cast. A party that wins control by that narrow margin can quickly see its fortunes reversed when it fails to act responsibly, fails to fulfill its promises, and fails to lead.

Mr. Rove is a former adviser to President George W. Bush.

Che Guevara was a murderous thug

Examiner.com

Jay Ambrose

Ernesto “Che” Guevara was executed 40 years ago this week, and the impulse to honor him is bursting out all over.

Celebrations are taking place in such places as Cuba, Bolivia and Ireland, a priest has called him a saint, and hosts of other people are likewise instructing us on what a hero he was, what a moral giant, what a fierce combatant for justice in an imperialist-threatened, inhumane world.

Not to interrupt the hallucinatory hosannas or anything, but it seems worth mentioning that there is another side to this story, the one that says Che was in fact a murderous, evil, obsessed thug who stands convicted of his vicious ideological fanaticism and cruelties by his own words as well as by his damnable deeds.

Perhaps the idolizers who wear the Che T-shirts are unaware of those words, as when he said that a true revolutionary had to hate so much that he would be pushed past ordinary human limits and become “an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine.”

Perhaps they don't know that, after the Soviets took their nuclear missiles out of Cuba in 1962, he told a reporter he had hoped to “use them against the very heart of America, including New York City,” very likely killing some of those who would later put on those T-shirts, and otherwise making this particular fad less likely.

Perhaps the people who make Che-adoring movies — Robert Redford did it — or write adulatory pieces about Fidel Castro's henchman are ignorant of how Che recklessly exterminated people who had been proven guilty of absolutely nothing, sometimes shooting them in the back of the neck himself.

Following the Castro takeover of Cuba in 1959, Che ran a Havana prison in which he killed, killed and then killed some more, and later helped start the labor camp system in which homosexuals and others considered undesirable were to be confined as nothing more than slaves.

None of this information is hard to come by. There are a number of easily accessible, well-researched, carefully documented, evidence-heavy articles reciting the truth, while telling us as well how Che’s economic guidance of Cuba's central bank was a disaster that further afflicted people who either learned to survive hunger-inducing totalitarianism or risk their lives fleeing the island.

Turn to these articles instead of to romantic fantasies, and you'll also learn how this Argentinean doctor left Cuba after an apparent falling out with Castro, fought in the Congo and then went to Bolivia to liberate peasants who were finding their lives improved without his aid and were intelligently wary of this crazed ideologue. That’s where he was caught and shot to death at the age of 39.

One writer speculates that a famous, endlessly reproduced photograph of a handsome, bold-looking Che is at least partly responsible for some coming to very nearly worship him as an unparalleled 20th-century fighter for societal righteousness.

Maybe so. Images can be powerful that way. But as the writer recognizes, it is hardly excusable for this or any other reason that anyone who has delved into the story of this cruel, Hitler-like, 20th century scourge to preach he was a good man with the right ideas.

What's at work in the idolizing is either a mild leftist ideology that decides to leave out or refuses to believe the condemnatory stuff, or a wild leftist ideology that says yes, what Che did was justified in trying to set the world right.

Either way, there are many perils, such as the destructive march of some Latin American countries — such as Hugo Chavez-led Venezuela — toward a destructive, liberty-denying socialist future.

Osama couldn't "have done better himself."

“On the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Americans were treated to two starkly contrasting images that speak centuries of difference between the U.S. and its enemies. In Frame One, we see Gen. David H. Petraeus testifying before Congress on the status of the war in Iraq. In Frame Two is Osama bin Laden in a new video—resplendent in white robes, his beard recently rinsed dark to conceal the gray—promising that Islam will subjugate the West. One an image of courage, integrity and honor; the other a caricature of manhood. Then there is a third frame. It is a full-page ad in [last] Monday’s New York Times placed by MoveOn.org and attacking Petraeus’ integrity: ‘General Petraeus or General Betray Us?’ reads the caption. And then, ‘Cooking the Books for the White House.’ The fog of war, it seems, has seeped into the left wing of the blogosphere. One may disagree with the war—and even find informed fault with Petraeus’ report—but impugning the character of the war’s commanding officer while American forces are still fighting is what’s known as betrayal. If Petraeus were ordering the mass murder of civilians, this would be a different matter. But last time we checked, American forces were fighting to prevent innocent people from getting killed. Thus, the ad reveals more about the character of those who placed it than it does of Petraeus. It also reveals a dangerous lack of judgment... The distorted judgment that prompted an attack on Petraeus as America relives the horrors of 9/11 hints at a sinister alignment with darker forces. Bin Laden must be very pleased. He could not have done better himself.”

—Kathleen Parker

ACORN's record: clean up or shut down

The ACORN case — what Secretary of State Sam Reed called "the largest case of voter-registration fraud in the state's history" — has resulted in a settlement that looks at first like a slap on the hand. It is more than that when the details are examined. ACORN has done things similar in other states, and it needs to be cleaned up or shut down.

ACORN is an acronym for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group that promotes left-wing and progressive causes. Its aim clearly is to change the outcome of elections. The effort here, apparently, was lower and sleazier than that: A group of employees tried to keep their $8-an-hour jobs without doing the work. Their task was to go into the community, find eligible citizens and help them fill out voter-registration cards. What they actually did was go to the library, or sit at home, and fill out hundreds of voter-registration cards with names like Tom Tancredo, Dennis Hastert, Fruito Boy Crispila and Leon Spinks, usually giving the addresses of homeless shelters.

All this was supposed to fool elections workers. It didn't.

The registrations were accepted for a while. Officials watched to see if anyone voted claiming to be Fruito Boy or his friends. No one did. If anyone had, it would have been an effort to corrupt an election. Still, the mass filing of fake registrations could be a first step in corrupting an election.

The King County Canvassing Board has invalidated 1,762 ACORN registrations, and another 55 have been tagged in Pierce County. Felony charges have been filed against seven persons, some of whom have criminal records and two of whom are in jail for other things.

Some of them, says King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, "are people you wouldn't want to hire to mow your lawn."

To avoid prosecution, ACORN has agreed to pay $25,000. It has agreed to train paid canvassers to state specifications and sign every registration they turn in, to have a paid supervisor responsible for their conduct, and to notify county prosecutors when they're coming.

All this puts ACORN under a public microscope — which, as its conduct shows, is where it belongs.

Murtha/Pelosi blueprint for defeat

The Washington Times

With Congress's August recess less than one week away, it should hardly come as a surprise that Rep. John Murtha, the chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, is readying more legislative mischief. Mr. Murtha, a close political ally of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has made it clear that plans to use the $459.6 billion defense appropriations bill, which comes to the floor this week, to short-circuit the current military campaign against jihadists in Iraq and shut down the prison at Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo).

Mr. Murtha plans to offer three amendments to the fiscal 2008 defense appropriations bill: One would set a 60-day timeline to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq (which will certainly help al Qaeda and the like in planning the Rwanda-ization of the country). A second Murtha amendment would implement the Pennsylvania Democrat's "slow-bleed" strategy for ensuring a U.S. military defeat by conditioning funds for the war upon the military meeting some unattainable standards for training and equipping the troops. Should the administrate violate the strictures in an effort to reinforce besieged American soldiers or prevent genocide, we have no doubt that if the Democrats are still in the majority that they will be holding oversight hearings and issuing subpoenas to U.S. military commanders and senior Pentagon officials, summoning them to testify about "why they broke the law" by sending these soldiers to the battlefield.

Mr. Murtha's third amendment would close the Guantanamo Bay facility. He hasn't said precisely what he wants to do with these terrorists, but his Democratic colleagues have weighed in, including Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia (who has been perhaps the most fervent congressional advocate of shutting down Gitmo) as well as House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri and Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers of Michigan.

Messrs. Skelton and Conyers want to grant the detainees habeas corpus rights, permitting them to challenge their detentions in federal court. while Mr. Moran has suggested: 1) sending them back to their countries of origin (he doesn't specify whether these people would be turned over to security services in countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, or set free to rejoin their jihadist comrades on the battlefield — something that has already happened in at least 12 cases involving prisoners released from Gitmo); or 2) imprisoning them here. By arming unlawful combatants captured on the battlefield with a panoply of rights a la American criminal defendants, the Democrats are creating a perverse incentive for foreign enemies of the United States join terrorist groups and violate the laws of war — knowing that even if they behave as barbarians, they can fight everything out in U.S. courts, represented by lawyers working with groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights.

While we're discussing new "rights" for Gitmo detainees, there's new evidence suggesting it is false to assert that most of the men locked up there are hapless innocents or low-level functionaries who pose no real threat to American forces. A new study published by the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point concludes that between 73 and 95 percent of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners represent a threat to U.S. forces; they include veterans of terrorist training camps, al Qaeda fighters and men who have experience with explosives, rocket-propelled grenades and sniper rifles.

It would be unconscionable for Republicans and sane Democrats not to challenge Mr. Murtha and Company to explain why they want to grant such dangerous people expansive new legal rights.

'It Didn't Happen'

James Taranto - OpinionJournal.com

We suppose it was inevitable: Four and a half years after Congress authorized the liberation of Iraq, some observers are comparing the situation there to Vietnam, where America lost a war after its will faltered. It turns out at least one congressman actually served in Vietnam, so he ought to be particularly qualified to help us determine the lessons of that conflict for this one.

Meet John Kerry, junior senator from Massachusetts. Some say he looks French, others call him haughty. But everyone agrees on one thing: He served in Vietnam.

After returning from a tour of duty that lasted an astonishing four months, Kerry also became an antiwar activist. In 1971 Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Vietnamese were a simple people, too simple to care about freedom or oppression:

We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart.

Kerry's side prevailed. In 1973 the U.S. withdrew its troops from Vietnam, and in 1975 Congress, its Democratic majority expanded by the post-Watergate election of 1974, voted to cut off aid to the South Vietnamese government. That year Saigon fell to the communists.

What happened then? Not much, according to Kerry, quoted in the Chicago Tribune:

"We heard that argument over and over again about the bloodbath that would engulf the entire Southeast Asia, and it didn't happen," Kerry said, dismissing the charge out of hand as he argued that the American presence only makes the situation worse every day.

In 2001, California's Orange County Register published an investigation of communist re-education camps in postwar Vietnam:

To corroborate the experiences of refugees now living in Orange County, the Register interviewed dozens of former inmates and their families, both in the United States and Vietnam; analyzed hundreds of pages of documents, including testimony from more than 800 individuals sent to jail; and interviewed Southeast Asian scholars. The review found:

• An estimated 1 million people were imprisoned without formal charges or trials.
  
  
• 165,000 people died in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's re-education camps, according to published academic studies in the United States and Europe.
  
  
• Thousands were abused or tortured: their hands and legs shackled in painful positions for months, their skin slashed by bamboo canes studded with thorns, their veins injected with poisonous chemicals, their spirits broken with stories about relatives being killed.
  
  
• Prisoners were incarcerated for as long as 17 years, according to the U.S. Department of State, with most terms ranging from three to 10 years.
  
  
• At least 150 re-education prisons were built after Saigon fell 26 years ago.
  
  
• One in three South Vietnamese families had a relative in a re-education camp.

According to John Kerry, "it didn't happen."

Things were even worse in Cambodia, as the Christian Science Monitor reported in 2005:

When the Khmer Rouge victoriously entered Phnom Penh 30 years ago, many people greeted the rebels with a cautious optimism, weary from five years of civil war that had torn apart their lives and killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians. . . .

During the nearly four years following that day--April 17, 1975--Cambodia was radically transformed. . . .

Everyday freedoms were abolished. Buddhism and other forms of religious worship were banned. Money, markets, and media disappeared. Travel, public gatherings, and communication were restricted. Contact with the outside world vanished. And the state set out to control what people ate and did each day, whom they married, how they spoke, what they thought, and who would live and die. "To keep you is no gain," the Khmer Rouge warned, "To destroy you is no loss."

In the end, more than 1.7 million of Cambodia's 8 million inhabitants perished from disease, starvation, overwork, or outright execution in a notorious genocide.

But don't worry. According to John Kerry, "it didn't happen."

Last week, as we noted, Kerry's colleague Barack Obama opined that genocide in Iraq would be preferable to America's continued presence there. But John Kerry has shown the way. If genocide, or some lesser horror, does occur in the wake of a U.S. retreat, Obama can simply assert: "It didn't happen."

Prominent Democratic officeholders are willing to deny or countenance crimes against humanity in order to justify a popular political position. Doesn't this shock the conscience of Democrats?

Petraeus Is Talking; Is Anyone Listening?

IBDeditorials.com

Leadership: It's pathetic when a major political party holds a pajama party to publicize its desire to surrender during a war. But it's even worse when such shenanigans drown out a vital message from a real leader.

In the end, it was a cheap PR stunt that came undone when the Senate voted not to cut off debate on a proposal to begin withdrawing troops within 120 days.

Such maneuvers have earned the Democrat-led Congress the American public's contempt. They've rewarded this Congress with a 14% approval rating — the lowest ever.

Unfortunately, the noise from Congress' pajama-clad know-nothings drowned out a truly important voice in this debate: that of Gen. David Petraeus. In case you don't know, he's the innovative commander who is spearheading our war effort in Iraq and the "surge" of 28,500 additional troops.

He's worth listening to because this September he will deliver a progress report on Iraq to the American people. That report, required by Congress, will make or break our war effort. And that's why we listened carefully Wednesday as Petraeus spoke about the progress in Iraq on the Hugh Hewitt Radio Show.

What he had to say, in measured, nonpartisan tones, both the good and the bad, should be of interest to every American.

After watching a parade of Democratic congressmen pursue their 15 seconds of fame on TV, it was refreshing to hear someone who genuinely knows what he's talking about — and wants to win.

Here's just a taste of what Petraeus said:

• On progress in the war: "(W)e have achieved what we believe is a reasonable degree of tactical momentum on the ground, gains against the principal near-term threat, al-Qaida Iraq, and also gains against what is another near-term threat, and also potentially the long-term threat: Shia militia extremists."

• On fighting al-Qaida: "(We have seen) the detention, or the capture or killing of (a) number of leaders that we have taken out in recent months . . . and the progress in terms of just clearing areas of them. . . . So there has been considerable progress against them."

• On Iran's support for the enemy: "It has remained very substantial. . . . Iran has indeed provided substantial funding, training, equipping, arming, and even direction, in some cases, to what are called the special groups or secret cells affiliated with the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr."

• On our troops: "Our (military) leaders get it, our soldiers get it, they are these flexible, adaptable, thoughtful, culturally astute, and by and large, leaders and soldiers and Marines, and they are showing that on a daily basis here."

As we said, balanced. But read for yourself. The entire extraordinary interview can be found at hughhewitt.townhall.com. As you'll see, Petraeus is no Pollyanna. He knows things aren't perfect. He wants to get things right.

But it's also clear from his remarks we've made significant progress in recent months in stabilizing major parts of Iraq. The surge seems to be working.

Petraeus is doing an incredible job and deserves America's support. So do the 160,000 troops now in Iraq who risk their lives daily in the war on terror — even as some in Congress would pull the rug out from under them, making us all less safe.

From what we've heard from Petraeus — and contrary to the parade of pundits and politicians urging us to withdraw — it seems we're winning this war.

Maybe it's time the word got out.

Steyn: Light bulbs that don't signify ideas

Mark Steyn - Chicago Sun-Times

Everything's difficult, isn't it? In the Democratic presidential candidates' debate, Sen. Barack Obama was asked what he personally was doing to save the environment, and replied that his family was "working on" changing their light bulbs.

Is this the new version of the old joke? How many senators does it take to "work on" changing a light bulb? One to propose a bipartisan commission. One to threaten to de-fund the light bulbs. One to demand the impeachment of Bush and Cheney for keeping us all in the dark. One to vote to pull out the first of the light bulbs by fall of this year with a view to getting them all pulled out by the end of 2008.

In 1914, on the eve of the Great War, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey observed, "The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." Whether he was proposing a solution to global warming is unclear. But he would be impressed to hear that nine decades later the lights are going out all over Washington.

This week, both the House and the Senate voted for defeat in Iraq. That's to say, Congress got tired of waiting for deadbeat insurgents to get their act together and inflict devastating military humiliation on U.S. forces. So America's legislators have voted to mandate the certainty of defeat. They want the withdrawal of American forces to begin this October, which is a faintly surreal concept: Watching CNN International around the world, many viewers unversed in America's constitutional arrangements will have been puzzled by the spectacle of a nation giving six months' notice of surrender. But the cannier types in the presidential palaces will have drawn their own conclusions.

For example, as Congress was voting, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would withdraw from the post-Cold War arrangements of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty in protest at American plans to install missile defense systems on the Continent. In the first months of the Bush administration -- pre-9/11 -- this issue was mostly theoretical. European leaders couldn't quite figure out why anyone would need a system to take out incoming nukes but Bush seemed hot for it and, that being so, you might as well be inside the system rather than out.

Six years on, Iran is going nuclear and nobody seems minded to stop them. So a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe is a more practical benefit than it once seemed. In fact, the mullahs are precisely the kind of fellows the system's intended for: small nuclear powers less susceptible to conventional deterrence theory. There might be quite a few of these a decade down the line. Reluctant to find themselves living under a Shia Persian nuclear umbrella, the Sunni Arab dictatorships are said to be pondering whether they might benefit from going the nuke route. The Saudis and Egyptians could certainly afford it very easily.

So what's Putin's game? Well, he leads a country with severe structural defects (a collapsed birth rate for everyone except Russia's Muslims, a depopulating east, disease-ridden menfolk face down in the vodka) but a relatively buoyant economy -- or, to be more precise, kleptocracy. In particular, Western Europe is increasingly dependent on Russia as an energy supplier. Putin calculates that even a weak Kremlin can make mischief for America. The missile-defense interceptors might have been expressly designed for fin-du-civilization Europe: You don't have to do anything, you don't have to attack anyone, you don't have to be beastly and aggressive like the swaggering Texan cowboy. You just have to go about your business and, if anything's heading your way, the Yanks will press a button and blow it to smithereens and send you a confirmatory e-mail afterward. But Putin is putting Continental leaders in the position of having to choose between even this benign defensive technology and relations with Russia. And, given European dispositions, he must surely feel he's got a sporting chance of winning this one. And, if he does, he will in effect be making the world safe for Iranian nuclear blackmail.

Why would he do this? Well, why wouldn't he? As I always say, if you live in Tikrit and Ramadi, the Iraq issue is about Iraq. But, if you live anywhere else on the planet, Iraq is about America. In Tehran, Pyongyang, Khartoum, Caracas, Beijing, Moscow and the South Sandwich Islands, they watch Harry Reid & Co. on the 24/7 cable channels and draw their own conclusions about American will.

The Defeaticrats are being opportunist: They think they can calibrate the precise degree of U.S. defeat in Mesopotamia that will bring victory for them in Ohio and Florida. Contemptible as this is, it wouldn't be possible had the administration not lost the support of many of the American people over this war. The losses are devastating for the individuals' families but they are historically among the lowest in any conflict this nation or any other has fought. So I don't believe the nightly plume of smoke over Baghdad on the evening news explains the national disenchantment. Rather, the mission as framed by the president -- help the Iraqi people build a free and stable Iraq -- is simply not accepted by the American people. On the right, between the unrealpolitik "realists" and the "rubble doesn't cause trouble" isolationists and the hit-'em-harder-faster crowd, the president has fewer and fewer takers for a hunkered-down, defensive, thankless semi-colonial policing operation. Regardless of how it works on the ground, it has limited appeal at home. Meanwhile, the leftists don't accept it because, while they're fond of "causes," they dislike those that require meaningful action: Ask Tibetans about how effective half a century of America's "Free Tibet" campaign has been; or ask Darfuris, assuming you can find one still breathing, how the left's latest fetishization is going from their perspective:

"On Sunday, April 29, Salt Lake Saves Darfur invites the greater Salt Lake community of compassion to join with us as we honor the fallen and suffering Darfuris in a day of films, discussion and dance with a Sudanese dance troupe."

Marvelous. I hope as the "Salt Lake Saves Darfur" campaign intensifies in the decades ahead there'll be enough Darfuris to man the dance troupe. It would be truer to say that the greater Salt Lake community of compassion, like Sen. Obama with his light bulbs, is "working on" saving Darfur.

In Khartoum, Tehran, Moscow and elsewhere, the world's mischief-makers have reached their own conclusions about how much serious "work" America is prepared to do.

When Dissent Becomes Obstruction

In the US Civil War, 'Copperheads' in the North nearly defeated Lincoln's effort to save the Union. Today's Democrats are similarly guilty.

Mackubin Thomas Owens

Dissent in wartime is as American as apple pie. There is not a single war in US history that did not face opposition from some part of the citizenry. But at some point, dissent becomes something else altogether – obstruction of the war effort.

The most egregious case of this occurred during the Civil War when "peace Democrats," called "Copperheads," nearly succeeded in defeating President Lincoln's attempt to save the Union.

It's a largely forgotten element of the Civil War, but it bears striking – and ominous – similarity to the obstruction we see in Washington today over the Iraq war. Indeed, as Democrats in Congress this week imposed withdrawal deadlines, it's clear that Copperhead syndrome is alive and well.

The Copperhead is, of course, a poisonous snake, which is how the Civil War-era opponents of the peace Democrats portrayed them: Confederate sympathizers and obstructers of the Union war effort. But "Copperhead" was also a contemporary term for the penny, which at the time bore the likeness of Lady Liberty. Peace Democrats often rendered these pennies into lapel pins to portray themselves as defenders of states' rights and civil liberties.

Self-image aside, Lincoln criticized the Copperhead effort as "the fire in the rear." Some historians have dismissed the Copperhead threat as, according to one author, "a fairy tale," a "figment of Republican imagination," made up of "lies, conjecture and political malignancy." But a fine new book, "Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln's Opponents in the North," by journalist-turned-academic-historian Jennifer Weber, shows that the Northern anti-war movement was far from a peripheral phenomenon.

Copperhead obstruction then...

The Copperheads exploited the North's widespread antiwar sentiment.

They actively interfered with recruiting and encouraged desertion. Indeed, they generated so much opposition to conscription – including armed resistance in some places and the infamous draft riots in New York City – that the Army was forced to divert resources from the battlefield to the hotbeds of Copperhead activity in order to maintain order. Many Copperheads actively supported the Confederate cause, materially as well as rhetorically.

The Copperheads were particularly dangerous because of the substantial influence they exerted on the Democratic Party. During the election of 1864, the peace Democrats wrote the party platform, and one of their own, Rep. George Pendleton of Ohio, was the party's candidate for vice president. Until Adm. David Farragut's victory at Alabama's Mobile Bay, Gen. William Sherman's capture of Atlanta, and Gen. Philip Sheridan's success in driving the Confederates from the Shenandoah Valley in the summer and fall of 1864, hostility toward the war was so profound in the North that Lincoln believed he would lose the election.

Fortunately for the country, the turn of events on the battlefield permitted a coalition of Republicans and "war Democrats" to reelect Lincoln in 1864. Of particular importance was the fact that Union soldiers voted overwhelmingly for Lincoln, abandoning the once-beloved Gen. George McClellan because of the perception that he had become a tool of the Copperheads.

...and Copperhead obstruction now

Today's Democratic Party seems to have inherited the mantle, if not the name, of their Copperhead forebears. Like the Copperheads of old, today's Democrats put the entire blame for the war and its conduct on the administration. While the Copperheads of old assured the Union soldiers that the Rebels could not be defeated, today's Copperheads assure us that the Iraqi insurgents are invincible.

The Copperheads of old described Lincoln as a bloodthirsty tyrant, trampling the rights of Southerners and Northerners alike. And they portrayed Union soldiers as instruments of his tyrannical administration. Invoking the USA Patriot Act, Guantánamo Bay, and Abu Ghraib, today's Copperheads – from lawmakeres to bloggers – call President Bush a tyrant and a terrorist. Some have even suggested similarity between US soldiers serving in Iraq and Nazis in World War II. Rarely do they censure the enemy in such terms.

Like the Copperheads of old, today's Democrats offer no viable alternative to their respective president's policy except to "end the war now." And just as former Copperheads preferred Lincoln's failure to saving the Union, the current ones would rather see Bush lose than the country win in Iraq.

Of course, rhetoric is one thing. An action to obstruct the war effort is another. With the recent shameful vote in Congress to hamstring the commander in chief's authority and ability to conduct the war in Iraq, the Democrats have assumed Copperhead status by moving from the former to the latter.

The bill they passed is a disgrace, but it is certainly in the best Copperhead tradition. It is a variant of what some call the "slow bleed approach": tie the president's hands while avoiding the responsibility that would go with an action that is within Congress's constitutional authority – cutting off spending for the war.

The principle that once Congress funds a military force, it has no further authority to direct or limit its employment was established during the administration of President Adams and the Quasi-War against France (1798-1800). Congress's action in this case is clearly unconstitutional.

What helped save Lincoln politically was the fact that there were "war Democrats" who contested Copperhead control of the Democratic Party. Sadly, Copperhead behavior has become institutionalized in today's Democratic Party and among a disturbingly high proportion of that party's voters. Democrats who can challenge the Copperhead influence are few and far between.

The Associated Press called last week's vote in the House to order the troops home by next year "a triumph" for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She must be so proud.

Democrats may well pay a high price

But Democratic Party leaders should heed a cautionary note. The late 19thcentury Democratic Party paid a high price for the influence of the Copperheads during the Civil War, permitting Republicans to "wave the bloody shirt" of rebellion and to vilify the party with the charge of disunion and treason for years after the war.

The actions of the Copperheads radically politicized Union soldiers, turning many Democrats into lifelong, stalwart Republicans. Many Union soldiers came to despise the Copperheads more than they disdained the Rebels. As the Democrats were reminded for many years after the war, the Copperheads had made a powerful enemy of the Union veterans.

Americans are clearly dissatisfied with the progress of the Iraq war. But most Americans do not want to see the United States defeated in Iraq. And there are encouraging signs that the US troop surge in Baghdad is working. Because of the perception that defeat – not victory – is the goal of today's Copperheads, the Democratic Party may well pay the same price as its predecessor did after the Civil War.

• Mackubin Thomas Owens is a professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College. The views expressed here are his own.

Taranto: Space Aliens in US Senate!

At least two U.S. senators are space aliens, and this isn't one of those supermarket-tabloid gags. We are as serious as a heart attack.

On Dec. 20, 2002, Sens. Joe Biden of Delaware and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska shared a byline on a Washington Post op-ed titled "Iraq: The Decade After." Biden and Hagel, both of whom had voted two months earlier to go to war with Saddam Hussein's regime, warned that it would not be an easy undertaking and that America had to be prepared for a long-term commitment:

Although no one doubts our forces will prevail over Saddam Hussein's, key regional leaders confirm what the Foreign Relations Committee emphasized in its Iraq hearings last summer: The most challenging phase will likely be the day after--or, more accurately, the decade after--Saddam Hussein.

Once he is gone, expectations are high that coalition forces will remain in large numbers to stabilize Iraq and support a civilian administration. That presence will be necessary for several years, given the vacuum there, which a divided Iraqi opposition will have trouble filling and which some new Iraqi military strongman must not fill. . . . Americans are largely unprepared for such an undertaking. President Bush must make clear to the American people the scale of the commitment.

Today President Bush remains committed, while Biden and Hagel are among the leaders of the effort to retreat. Their "decade" turned out to last barely four years. The only plausible explanation is that the planet Biden and Hagel are from revolves around its sun in the equivalent of about 150 Earth days.

Bush Lied is the Big Lie

Debra Saunders

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson wants to impeach President Bush. In arguing that point, he asked Fox News' Bill O'Reilly on Tuesday, "Have you seen the National Intelligence Estimate that was provided in October of 2002, in which the intelligence agency under the State Department said that Iraq was not building up a nuclear capability, that this whole story about the aluminum tubes (reportedly sought by Saddam Hussein in Niger) was completely off base?"

I decided to re-read the NIE excerpts that the administration released. What does the report say? "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of U.N. restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade." The NIE also reported that Iraq had "expanded its chemical and biological infrastructure under the cover of civilian production," that Baghdad had renewed production of mustard and sarin gases, and that Iraqi missiles could threaten the "U.S. homeland."

Yes, the NIE key judgments reported that some officials in the State Department did not believe Saddam Hussein was pursuing a "comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons." But the report also noted that, "Most agencies assess that Baghdad started reconstituting its nuclear program about the time that (U.N. weapons) inspectors departed -- December 1998."

So let us review the Bush-lied argument that Anderson and other war critics espouse. They say Bush lied about WMD, when, in fact, America's best intelligence presented no doubt about Iraq having chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. And according to the NIE, most intelligence agencies also believed Iraq had been working on nukes for four years.

Here's another point that the Bush-lied misinformation campaign has forgotten. While war critics point to Bush's inclusion of this sentence -- "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" -- in his 2003 State of the Union Address as proof that Bush misled the country into war, Bush uttered those words three months after Congress voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

Bush Lied is the Big Lie. It takes the controversy over one aspect of U.S. intelligence on Iraq's WMD -- the nuclear program question -- to argue that the whole WMD argument was bogus. That is, the president's accusers are guilty of the very sort of dishonest selectivity that they accuse Bush of using.

Now the Bush-lied lie is boomeranging on those Democratic presidential hopefuls -- Sens. Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd and former Sen. John Edwards -- who voted in favor of the Iraq war resolution.

By going along with the Bush-lied spin, by refusing to acknowledge that the intelligence community presented strong reasons to vote for war, these Democrats have boxed themselves into a corner. They now have only one rationale for their vote that they can use -- they were duped by the nincompoop Bush -- or one rationale that they cannot use -- they sent U.S. troops to Iraq against their better judgment but out of naked ambition.

And the dishonesty now has placed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the uncomfortable position of pushing for passage of a bill to continue funding a war into next year that the grassroots believe was based on a lie.

So how does Pelosi plan on getting the House to pass the Iraq spending bill? As The Washington Post reported, the Democratic leadership has larded the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Health and Iraq Accountability Act with pork. After all the (deserved) rhetoric decrying Republican big spending, the Democratic leadership inserted $25 million for spinach growers, $75 million for peanut storage, and $120 million for shrimp and Atlantic menhaden fishermen into the supplemental spending bill.

The idea is to sweeten the pot so that war opponents will agree to fund a war they oppose, while war supporters will vote for the bill, despite provisions the seem to be designed solely to undermine the Bush surge.

Pelosi frequently says that President Bush must heed the message that American voters sent in November 2006. Who knew that message was to fund the war while undermining the war effort and to spend more tax dollars on pork?

Dick Morris: The Phoniest Scandal of the Century (So Far)

Dick Morris

When will the Bush administration grow some guts? Except for its resolute -- read: stubborn -- position on Iraq, the White House seems incapable of standing up for itself and battling for its point of view. The Democratic assault on the administration over the dismissal of United States attorneys is the most fabricated and phony of scandals, but the Bush people offer only craven apologies, half-hearted defenses, and concessions. Instead, they should stand up to the Democrats and defend the conduct of their own Justice Department.

There is no question that the attorney general and the president can dismiss United States attorneys at any time and for any reason. We do not have civil servant U.S. attorneys but maintain the process of presidential appointment for a very good reason: We consider who prosecutes whom and for what to be a question of public policy that should reflect the president's priorities and objectives. When a U.S. attorney chooses to go light in prosecuting voter fraud and political corruption, it is completely understandable and totally legitimate for a president and an attorney general to decide to fire him or her and appoint a replacement who will do so.

The Democratic attempt to attack Bush for exercising his presidential power to dismiss employees who serve at his pleasure smacks of nothing so much as the trumped-up grounds for the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in 1868. Back then, radical Republicans tried to oust him for failing to obey the Tenure of Office Act, which they passed, barring him from firing members of his Cabinet (in this case, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton) without Senate approval. Soon after Johnson's acquittal, the Supreme Court invalidated the Tenure of Office Act, in effect affirming Johnson's position.

But instead of loudly asserting its view that voter fraud is, indeed, worthy of prosecution and that U.S. attorneys who treat such cases lightly need to go find new jobs, the Bush administration acts, for all the world, like the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. All Republican supporters of the administration can do is to point to Bill Clinton's replacement of U.S. attorneys when he took office. Because the president and the attorney general insist on acting guilty, the rest of the country has no difficulty in assuming that they are.

Bush, Rove, Gonzales and Co. should explain why the U.S. attorneys were dismissed by emphasizing the importance of the cases they were refusing to prosecute. By doing so, they can turn the Democratic attacks on them into demands to go easy on fraudulent voting. A good sense of public relations -- and some courage -- could turn this issue against the Democrats for blocking Bush's efforts to crack down on the criminals he wanted prosecuted.

In making such a big deal over the routine exercise of a presidential prerogative to fire these prosecutors, the Democrats, led by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) may be biting off more than they can chew. Unless the administration turns and aggressively defends its decision to get rid of these particular appointees, it could be left holding the bag and defending the U.S. attorneys' decision to avoid prosecuting voter-fraud cases.

If the administration continues to follow its run-and-hide policy, it will look terrible asserting claims of executive privilege as it seeks to shield its appointees from Senate interrogation and its documents from committee scrutiny. But if it contextualizes the issue by using the specific failings of the dismissed appointees to prosecute particular cases, it will assume the high ground and its procedural objections will be seen in a more positive light by the American people. If only the administration would show some courage.