From today's AP piece on the Iraqi elections:

This version CORRECTS APNewsNow. corrects short hedline to NO major violence, sted major violence.)

Ramesh Ponnuru makes the case for a bipartisan compromise on Social Security reform.

Charles Krauthammer: "it is both false and deeply injurious to this country to draw a historical line dividing America under Obama from a benighted past when Islam was supposedly disrespected and demonized."

A war Obama wants to win.

Kimberley Strassel has more on Democratic stealth care.

Tom Daschle, Obama's nominee for secretary of HHS, failed to pay $101,943 in taxes that he owed for accepting a chauffeur service from a "wealthy Democratic friend."

Politico's Manu Raju and Jonathan Martin write:

Republicans in Washington and New Hampshire are mounting a full-court press to keep Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) in the Senate and out of the Obama administration, aides and senators said Friday.

But if he does take the commerce secretary job, they want a commitment that New Hampshire’s Democratic governor will appoint a Republican senator so the party holds at least 41 seats, the minimum needed to sustain filibusters. No such commitments have been made, even as Granite State Republican sources tell Politico they are worried Gregg will take the Cabinet job if offered it by Obama.

“I think it would be a loss to the Senate of a great mind and somebody who I think we need a lot as we chart our way through economic challenge,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told Politico on Friday.

Asked what could be offered to keep Gregg in the Senate, Cornyn said: “I would say whatever it is, name it.”

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said luring Gregg with a Cabinet job was “sneaky” because it would put the GOP in a bind and take away a valuable member.

Friends tell Politico they expect Gregg to accept the seat if it’s offered, even though Gregg has only confirmed he is under consideration and would not comment further. Gregg has to run for reelection next year and could lose in his increasingly Democratic state.

Does it really matter if the Republicans have 41 votes or 40? After all, there are likely to be a number of bad bills on which a few liberal Republicans--Specter, Snowe, Collins--side with the Democrats and render any GOP threat to filibuster moot. Of course, there will be some truly atrocious left-wing measures--card-check, taxpayer-funding of abortions, etc.--where almost every Republican will be willing to filibuster and the GOP has a good chance of plucking off the small number of Democrats needed to thwart the bill. These are the kind of votes where having, or not having, Judd Gregg in the Senate could make all the difference.

In his first press conference as RNC chairman, Michael Steele called his election "just one more bold step the party of Lincoln has taken since its founding."

A reporter pointed out that Barack Obama, while campaigning for Steele's Democratic Senate opponent in Maryland in 2006, called Steele an "amiable fellow" but his resume was "very thin." What does Steele think of the job Obama's done in his couple weeks in office?

"I would say to the new president: congratulations," Steele replied. "It's going to be an honor to spar with him. And I would follow that up with: How do you like me now?"

Asked what he planned to do to do to fix the GOP's image problem, Steele stepped to the side of the podium and quipped: "I got a nice suit. And the tie is good." Steele said that in 2006, the American people had "lost faith in our leadership" because Republicans "abrogated" the principles set forth in the 1994 Contract with America. "In order to right the economy, we don't need to redistribute their wealth, we just need to empower them to create more of it," he said.

Steele said that Republicans had failed by allowing the media and Democrats to define the GOP as a

party that doesn't care, a party that's insensitive, a party that's unconcerned about minorities, a party that's unconcerned about the lives and expectations and dreams of average Americans. And nothing could be further from the truth. We are the party that fought for the freedom of slaves. We are the party that fought for the empowerment and suffrage of women. We are the party that put in place the foundational civil rights principles in this nation.

Asked where he would devote party resources in upcoming elections, Steele called on state party leaders to come to him with a strategy and a plan to win in each of their states.

Steele also had one message for grassroots supporters: "Get ready to work. Were back in the game."

In one of their famous analysis pieces, the AP declares that the stimulus bill is "not all stimulating."

They call it "stimulus" legislation, but the economic measures racing through Congress would devote tens of billions of dollars to causes that have little to do with jolting the country out of recession.

There's $345 million for Agriculture Department computers, $650 million for TV converter boxes, $15 billion for college scholarships — worthy, perhaps, but not likely to put many Americans back to work quickly....

An $800 billion-plus package, it turns out, gives lawmakers plenty of opportunities to rid themselves of nagging headaches left over from the days when running up the government's $10 trillion-plus debt was a bigger concern.

How bad is the stimulus bill? So bad that Senator Claire McCaskill, one of Obama's closest allies in the Senate and a national co-chair of his campaign, has taken to sniping about the excessive spending in an interview with the Huffington Post:

In an interview with the Huffington Post, however, McCaskill didn't just take on corporate CEOs. She criticized some of the spending in the House stimulus package, saying that her fellow Democrats had been "over-anxious."

"Whether it is the National Endowment of the Arts or some of the STD funding or contraceptive funding, all we did was just tee up ammunition for the other side to tear this thing down," she said. "And I would like to think we are smarter than that. I'm hopeful on the Senate side we will be smarter than that."

I guess she's with Rush Limbaugh.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan goes after Israeli President Shimon Peres at a panel in Davos:

Here's a disturbing bit of agit-prop from President Obama that's not gotten enough attention:

“There will be time for them [Wall Street Bankers] to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses,” Mr. Obama said during an appearance in the Oval Office with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner. “Now’s not that time. And that’s a message that I intend to send directly to them, I expect Secretary Geithner to send to them.”

He's right that the bonuses are "shameful." But profits? The bonuses are shameful because they're being doled out in the midst of record-breaking losses. Now would in fact be an exceedingly good time for them to make profits--the sooner the better, the more the better. Unless you're what Arnold Kling aptly terms a "folk Marxist."

Here is my real-time transcript of his speech. I may have missed a few sentences, but it's almost all there:

As a litte boy growing up in this town—this is awesome.

It is with a great deal of humility and a sense of service that I accept and appreciate and thank all of you for the opportunity to serve as the next chairman of our very proud, very strong, and our very, very hard-working Republican National Committee.

To our friends, to those who support us, to those who believe in the ideals, those conservative ideals that make us the strong, proud party that we are. To Americans who believe in the future of this country. To those who stand in difference with us, it's time for something completely different, and we're gonna bring it to them.

We're gonna bring this party to every corner, every boardroom, every neighborhood, every community and we're gonna say to friend and foe alike: We want you to be a part of this, we want you to worth with us, and for those of you who wish to obstruct, get ready to get knocked over.

So, I want to thank all of you, especially. I remember sitting in this body in 2000 and 2002, and I never thought this day would come. I want to thank especially my friend in the territories, who I can assure all of you will be a part of building this party in a way we have never seen before.

To my friends in the Northeast: get ready, baby. It's time to turn it on, and work to do what we always do well, and that is win. We're gonna win again in the Northeast. We're gonna continue to win in the South. We're gonna win with a new storm in the Midwest and we're gonna get to the West and lock it down there, too.

This is our opportunity. I cannot do this by myself. This is about empowering you, our chairmen, our national committee men and national committee women to grow our party.

We stand proud as the conservative party of the United States, and we will make sure that the values that have made our party the Party of Lincoln, are part of the issues, part of the policies that are reshaping this country.

We will cede no ground to anyone on matters of principle, on matters than matter to the people of this country.

My first official act as your chairman is to end this speech right now because we have a few more races to do to fill out the leadership team to lead you the next two years. I look forward to visiting you all in your towns, in your neighborhoods as we grow and build our party.

Thank you again for this honor. God bless you. God bless our party.

Steele defeats Katon Dawson 91 to 77.

Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) appeared on Fox News this morning to discuss his concerns about the 'stimulus' bill that the Senate will take up next week, and his effort to suggest changes that could lead to a stronger bipartisan vote. From his tone, it sounds like there may be a number of Democratic senators who are unhappy with the bill:

Nelson: What I want to see changed in the bill, is to move away from some of the so called programs that are 'stimulus,' that are at best marginally stimulative.

Hemmer: Give me an example Senator.

Nelson: Well for example there's $58 million for smoking cessation programs. There's $400 million to study STDs...

I don't even know how many Democrats will vote for it as it stands today because a lot of -- lot of my colleagues are not decided. They're undecided on the bill as it is right now.

Right now Nelson seems to be the only Democratic Senator publicly wavering on the measure, but its rapidly falling popularity must be worrisome -- particularly to senators in conservative states. And while only Nelson is saying publicly that he might vote no, it's clear that he's hearing from other colleagues who see this turning into a big negative. With the Senate set to vote next week, and some conservative groups now calling on their members to voice their opposition, the bill may need to see some changes before it comes to a vote.

That said, Nelson is going to have a hard time arriving at a compromise that works. He complains that the bill doesn't have enough traditional infrastructure spending in it, and that it wouldn't bother him if the bill grew larger to allow more such spending. He makes a valid point. While Democrats are largely selling the bill as a roads and bridges measure, that accounts for only about 3% of the total. Increasing that number would lead to a slower payout however, so even more money would be spent in later years, when it will do no good. And even if a few billion more for roads and bridges was attractive to some senators, it could easily lose others who are already wary of the overall total price tag.

I was unhappy to see the New York Times report today that, despite decades of hysterical reports to the contrary, the Amazonian rain forests are actually doing quite well.

My displeasure is a result of reading an early galley of David Grann's fantastic book, The Lost City of Z, which is about Col. Fawcett's legendary disappearance into the Amazon and Grann's (slightly gonzo) attempt to find his remains.

The book is crackerjack stuff--I can't recommend it enough--but one of the overwhelming impressions you get is that the Amazon's rain forests are a deadly false paradise. There's nothing charming or beautiful about it; it's nothing but a vast killing field for sentient life.

It's funny how the environmental movement romanticizes some habitats and scorns others. You never hear anyone fretting about deserts. You don't see little theme restaurants centered around swamps. But we make a fetish of rain forests which must be protected against being turned into useful, civilized land.

After three rounds of balloting, Mike Duncan withdrew his bid for another term as RNC chairman. Michael Steele had just pulled ahead of Duncan after the third round:

Steele 51, Duncan 44, Dawson 34, Anuzis 24, Blackwell 15

On the second ballot, Duncan and Steele were tied:

Duncan 48, Steele 48, Dawson 29, Anuzis 24, Blackwell 19

On the first ballot, Duncan was in the lead:

Duncan 52, Steele 46, Dawson 28, Anuzis 22, Blackwell 20

During his remarks, Duncan made no public endorsement, but the big question is whether or not he has privately thrown his weight behind another candidate. Eighty-five votes are needed to win.

Update: The fourth ballot:

Dawson 62, Steele 60, Anuzis 31, Blackwell 15.

Jim Geraghty sums up the fears of some in the room:

there are already murmurs of, "Can you imagine how the MSM's coverage will be if the guy who was in the country club with a whites-only charter beats an African-American on the final ballot?"

Update: Blackwell, who had 15 votes last round, gives a speech saying the party needs a "new birth of freedom" and endorses Steele. The fifth ballot showdown between Dawson, Steele, and Anuzis begins.

Update: Steele is six votes from victory. Fifth ballot:

Steele 79, Dawson 69, Anuzis 20

Anuzis withdraws without making an endorsement.

Update (MKH): They're counting votes on the sixth ballot, now. Steele needs six votes to win; Dawson, 16. For Dawson to win, the remaining 20 Anuzis votes would have to break for him at 80 percent after Anuzis withdrew.

Joe Lieberman's speech on Afghanistan receives praise from the Huffington Post and the Corner. You can read the speech, delivered at the Brookings Institution yesterday, here. Perhaps most striking about the current debate over Afghanistan, aside from utterly predictable efforts on the far left to stymie an escalation even in this "good war," is the continuity from the Bush administration to the Obama administration. There is no serious dispute over what the objective in Afghanistan must be: the elimination of al Qaeda and other irreconcilables and the fostering of a strong, democratically-elected government.

On the subject of Afghanistan, Joe Lieberman, our favorite Democratic neocon, finds himself advocating a position that even now is very much in the mainstream. Lieberman stands at the center of a consensus that rejects the withdrawal of U.S. forces and rejects the notion that we can reduce our objectives in Afghanistan to simply denying terrorists a sanctuary or safe haven. In fact, what Lieberman has done in his speech is redefine what it means to be a "realist" on Afghanistan:

There is no question, we all need to be realists when it comes to Afghanistan, both about our objectives and about the limits of our power. And I agree with Secretary Gates that we need to have “modest expectations” about the near term in Afghanistan. But we should not and cannot take any false comfort from these modest expectations, because the way ahead is still going to be extremely hard.

We all agree, our foremost interest in Afghanistan is preventing that country from becoming a terrorist safe haven. But the only realistic way to prevent that from happening is through the emergence of a stable and legitimate political order in Afghanistan, backed by capable indigenous security forces—and neither of those realities is going to materialize without a significant and sustained American commitment. This will not be easy, but it is absolutely necessary.

Translation: the only answer in Afghanistan is democracy.

Andy McCarthy makes the key point in response to the refusal of the judge presiding over the military commission of the man accused of bombing the USS Cole:

[Obama] is, moreover, the President of the United States and the commander-in-chief of our military forces in a time of war. These considerations, by themselves, should have been enough for the judge to indulge his request — I can't think of a single civilian court judge I ever appeared before who would not have respectfully deferred to a reasonable request for delay by the president in similar circumstances.

Obama must be given the maximum amount of latitude in deciding how best to proceed in adjudicating the cases of terrorist detained on the battlefield -- this is a matter of principle for conservatives. Still, the judge who has refused this order has only illustrated once again what has been clear for some time now: these military commissions are anything but kangaroo courts. Indeed, there are many moving parts in this system and most are immune to pressure from officials in Washington. As McCarthy points out, this is yet another "reason to think there are better ways to deal with detainees than a system that denies abundantly sensible motions — and in which Osama bin Laden's personal bodyguard, arrested in possession of missiles intended for shooting at U.S. troops, gets sentenced to a grand total of six months on a war crimes conviction (which is what happened in the first commission trial)."

Well that was fast. Now, what's the over-under on the date of his Nobel Prize? Let's set the opening line at 2011.

The New York Post's Charles Hurt reports:

Buried deep inside the massive spending orgy that Democrats jammed through the House this week lie five words that could drastically undo two decades of welfare reforms.

The very heart of the widely applauded Welfare Reform Act of 1996 is a cap on the amount of federal cash that can be sent to states each year for welfare payments.

But, thanks to the simple phrase slipped into the legislation, the new "stimulus" bill abolishes the limits on the amount of federal money for the so-called Emergency Fund, which ships welfare cash to states.

"Out of any money in the Treasury of the United States not otherwise appropriated, there are appropriated such sums as are necessary for payment to the Emergency Fund," Democrats wrote in Section 2101 on Page 354 of the $819 billion bill. In other words, the only limit on welfare payments would be the Treasury itself.

You'll remember from the campaign that one of Obama's signature accomplishments as an Illinois State Senator was that he "passed a law to move people from welfare to work — slashed the rolls by 80 percent." Well, he didn't personally pass the law, he was a co-sponsor. At the time, credit was given to the state's Republican governor and President Clinton, who pushed welfare reform through at the federal level. Obama said then that he "probably would not have supported the federal legislation," and that he found President Clinton's position on the issue "disturbing."

During the campaign Obama was particularly sensitive to the allegation that his tax cuts amounted to "welfare" by providing credits to individuals who paid no income tax at all. The press likewise suggested that any criticism of Obama's welfare-like policies amounted to thinly veiled racism. It would be ironic then if Obama's first major act as president was a massive expansion of welfare -- and a massive expansion of medicare -- without any debate at all.

Somewhere a war is raging between a government and a terrorist group that pioneered the use of suicide tactics, which it uses often against the civilian population. The terrorist group claims it has a right to land and is oppressed by the government. The government, tired of years of suicide attacks and failed peace agremeents brokered by European countries, has decided to engage the terror group in combat. The fighting has put hundreds of thousands of civilians in the crossfire, limiting their access to food, shelter, and medical facilities. So what conflict is being described below [note: I've removed the names of the two parties in the text below]:

Hundreds of people have been killed and scores of wounded are overwhelming understaffed and ill-equipped medical facilities in [an area of the unnamed country], following intensified fighting between the [unnamed government's military] and the [terror group], the Red Cross warned on Tuesday. An estimated 250,000 people are trapped in a 250 square-kilometre area which has come under intense fighting. They have no safe area to take shelter and are unable to flee, the Red Cross said.

[The country's] military says it is trying to secure the north-east coastline to encircle [the terror group] as part of a final assault. Troops were on Tuesday moving north from the captured rebel town ..... to take the 30km stretch. The military says it hopes to control the entire north within weeks.

People are being caught in the crossfire, hospitals and ambulances have been hit by shelling and several aid workers have been injured while evacuating the wounded. "The violence is preventing the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from operating in the region," said Jacques de Maio, ICRC head of operations ...

The terrified population is in need of protection, medical care and basic assistance, according to the ICRC, which urged the [country's] military and the [terror group] to allow "safe and voluntary movement of civilians out of the combat zone." Hundreds of patients need emergency treatment and evacuation to [a hospital] in the government-controlled area, said the Red Cross. United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon and the European Union have expressed deep concern for civilians who are caught in the fighting.

"We may see countless victims and a terrible humanitarian situation, unless civilians are protected and international humanitarian law is respected in all circumstances," said Mr de Maio. "It's high time to take decisive action and stop further bloodshed because time is running out." The ICRC said humanitarian aid workers must be allowed to enter [the region] and their premises must be protected from shelling and looting, as required by international humanitarian law.

If you've watched the news the past month, you know the story above could have described the fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. If you guessed that you'd be wrong. The article is describing the current fighting between the government of Sri Lanka and the terror group known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which is better known as the Tamil Tigers. its interesting how one story of civilians caught in the crossfire between a nation and a terror group garners so much attention, and the other story is largely ignored.

Track the RNC chairman vote, happening now, right here.

RNC communication FAIL.

CNN: Hey, let's not worry about judging Obama's "First 100 Days," huh?

Shouldn't Obama also be lecturing Congress for giving itself a raise?

Here's to transparency! Now, sign this bill you haven't even read. Quick!

Christina Romer on the 3.8 GDP drop.

What's happening at Davos?

Nasrallah crawls out of hole to celebrate "Freedom Day," bash Bush administration.

Gitmo judge refuses to hold off on trials for Obama.

When German architect Mark Aretz planned on renovating a Leipzig apartment building, he knew there was much work to be done. But when he opened the door to one unit, he was completely taken aback. Apparently, no one had lived there since 1988. The former occupant was a 24-year-old on the run from the DDR authorities. And, as Spiegel Online reports (in German), everything from that era had been preserved -- sort of like that movie Good Bye Lenin! -- right down to the Flaschen of Hit-Cola.

Shockingly, the place was a sty.

Earlier this week, the Pakistani government claimed it took control of the radical Markaz-e-Taiba, the headquarters and campus for the Jamaat-ud-Dawa in the city of Muridke. Jamaat-ud-Dawa is the front group for Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group that was behind the November 2008 terror assault in Mumbai, India. The government appointed a chief administrator and a team of policemen to "supervise and monitor all activities" at the complex.

But in Pakistan nothing is as it first seems. Bloomberg reports this team stood by while a radical imam preached jihad against India:

A dozen Pakistani policemen stood watch last week outside a Lahore mosque known to be a stronghold of the Lashkar-e-Taiba guerrilla group -- while the imam inside preached jihad to thousands of worshippers... As the officers heard Saifullah Khalid’s sermon blaring over loudspeakers, he demanded more attacks on India.

“Muslims under the leadership of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat ud-Dawa will conquer all South Asia!” Khalid roared. “Nobody can stop us from fighting India!”

Bloomberg also reported that only a fraction of the schools and complexes run by the terror group have been shut down. And only a few of the wanted Jamaat leaders have actually been arrested.

While the government is claiming success in clamping down on the terror group, the members continue to conduct business as usual. Hafiz Saeed, the group's leader, has been seen in public despite being under "house arrest." Two weeks ago, the Lashkar-e-Taiba/Jamaat-ud-Dawa held a rally under the auspices of a newly named group. But the black-and-white flag of Jamaat-ud-Dawa flew as senior leaders spoke at the podium. The Pakistani government clearly has no intentions of seriously cracking down on these groups.

The silliest line of attack against Republicans for voting against the House stimulus bill is that they did so for no good reason. The pro-Obama echo chamber must be so loud as to drown out all of the many reasonable critiques of the House plan -- most of which point out that there's nothing necessarily wrong with the idea of a stimulus package. So we have Eugene Robinson write today that the House GOP vote was

a triumph of discipline over reason, of doctrine over observation. There is abundant evidence suggesting that we are in a new political era with new rules and a new lexicon. Those who ignore that evidence will have only themselves to blame if, like the air traffic controllers, they end up losing their jobs.

This despite the fact that Rasmussen's numbers have support for the stimulus falling.

Rather than explain why theirs is the best of all possible plans, the Democrats have fallen back on chest-thumping, emotional appeals, and name-calling. When the bill first ran up against Republican criticism, the Democrats had a very simple answer. To the victor goes the spoils. Pelosi: "Yes, we wrote the bill. Yes, we won the election." Obama: "I won." This is the same logic you find throughout the recent writings of the Obamaphiles. Victory forecloses debate. Remind me where that's mentioned in the Constitution?

Tevi Troy exposes the threats to American health care lurking within the "stimulus" bill.

Military judge denies Obama request to suspend hearings at Guantanamo.

Waxman wants to take up a national health care bill this year.

Blago convicted, 59-0.

Obama's gambit for a filibuster-proof Senate?

I'm pretty sure with every interview, she's chipping away at public support.

Below, her stellar explanation of why STD prevention education is stimulative. Because it just is:

Matt Labash's opus on the death of Detroit spent a lot of time with Detroit News reporter Charlie LeDuff. Today LeDuff has another Detroit story almost too terrible to believe: A body found encased in ice in an abandoned warehouse.

The body had been there for at least a month. Plenty of people saw it, but never bothered to call the police. You have to read the rest to believe it.

From what I can confidently describe as the most self-absorbed blog post I've ever read, Steve Clemons writes about how fate keeps bringing him and David Corn together at the absolute swankiest parties in Washington:

And then I saw this note in "The Sleuth" column of The Washington Post identifiying David Corn and myself as the "wonkiest of wonks" in Washington. This actually made me happy.

And then the columnist, Mary Ann Akers, disclosed that we were talking to Ben Affleck for a really long time about a lot of stuff -- the economy, Affleck's new documentary on Nick Kristof, the Middle East, and the like. There were about 50 people standing around us, and Susan Eisenhower was in on the discussion too.

I'm not going to comment on exactly what Affleck said -- but I want to say that he impressed me with his passion and the level of detailed understanding that he had about the dilemmas we face in the Middle East. He has his views -- and he's not shy about broadcasting them, but he also listens to alternative takes. I think Ben Affleck can be an important voice on the need to approach many of the country's foreign policy problems without the kind of biases we have had before.

Go read the whole thing. You won't be disappointed.

I and others noticed last week there were no press briefing transcripts on the WhiteHouse.gov website, despite the Obama's administration's promises of increased transparency.

It seemed like a deliberate omission considering WhiteHouse.gov looked like a finished product when it switched on flawlessly at the moment of Obama's swearing-in, yet there was no place for such information. Several days after Robert Gibbs' first press briefing, a new section appeared under "The Briefing Room" called "Press Pool," which conceivably could have been a spot for transcripts, but had no content. It later disappeared, and has now been replaced by "Press Briefings," where there are transcripts of the daily briefings.

It was a rough week on the technology front for the new administration, as the new employees endured an hours-long e-mail outage due to an apparent inability to keep the Outlook server up and running. That outage didn't happen until several days after Gibbs' first press briefing.

I was about to say this marks my restoration of faith in the Obama administration's transparency promises, but then I found— via the non-partisan Sunlight Foundation, no less— that the White House broke its promise to post bills on the Internet for public comment on Bill No. 1.

As Paula Abdul once wisely said, two steps forward, two steps back.

C-Span is carrying a live feed of Blago's final argument before the Illinois Senate.

David Freddoso provides an earlier snippet of Blagojevich's swan song:

It's really an embarrassing spectacle. "I didn't go to Harvard," he says. "I applied on a Monday, got my rejection letter back on Tuesday . . . But I became governor, and what was I going to do with that, squander it? No, I was going to try to get things done for people like my parents . . . I think about my parents a lot. I think about ordinary people like them . . ."

Blago also says that if you fire him, then Obama will have to fire Rahm Emanuel, too. Because Blago thinks he's being impeached for trying to provide low income families with health care. And Rahm Emanuel wants to do that, too. Or something.

Perhaps it's the weather that's confusing President Obama. After all, anyone could be thrown for a loop when Al Gore is testifying on the Hill as to the impending doom of the planet Earth due to global warming while the Hill is blanketed in snow and ice.

Maybe that's why Obama was ridiculing Washington, D.C. residents for their panicky response to several inches of snow on Tuesday:

"Can I make a comment unrelated to the economy?" -- and launched into weather remarks (please check transcript):

"My children's school was canceled today, because of what? Some ice," he said, and all at the table started laughing.

"As my children pointed out, in Chicago school is never canceled," he said, joking about how kids go out for recess on snow days. More laughter.

POTUS said he would have to instill "some flinty Chicago toughness" into Washingtonians.

"When it comes to the weather, folks in Washington don't seem to be able to handle things," POTUS said.

Only to have David Axelrod explain the change in Oval Office dress code (no jackets required) by invoking Obama's Hawaiian roots, just days later:

The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.

“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”

We D.C. folks could stand to learn a few lessons from this flinty Chicagoan who is ready to brave the 50-foot, indoor commute to his office in a 75-degree White House.

Update: Heyyyyy, wait just a second. Who was it that lectured us about how we can't keep our thermostats at 72 degrees?

Oh, that's right. Obama, On Your Shoulder.

Joe Lieberman is delivering a big speech on Afghanistan today over at Brookings that should be worthy of careful reading. Lieberman has proven a prescient observer of Afghanistan. Nearly a year ago, he wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post calling for a massive expansion of the Afghan National Army. He also proposed that we ask European countries like Germany that won't sent their own combat troops to Afghanistan to pay for the surge in Afghan military ranks instead.

Both ideas were controversial at the time; now they are part of the conventional wisdom about what we need to turn the war around, and indeed, were major elements of Bob Gates' testimony about Afghanistan earlier this week. The Washington Post editorializes on the war in Afghanistan today, noting that Democrats have long called it the central front in the war on terror, but now seem squeamish about prosecuting the fight. It will be interesting to see what new ideas Lieberman offers today.

A web video from my friend Justin Germany, who produced some of last year's most memorable ads (including this classic).

HT: Ben Smith

Rasmussen:

Forty-two percent (42%) of the nation’s likely voters now support the president’s plan, roughly one-third of which is tax cuts with the rest new government spending. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 39% are opposed to it and 19% are undecided. Liberal voters overwhelmingly support the plan while conservatives are strongly opposed. ...

Over the course of the past week, there has been little change in the views of either Republicans or Democrats towards the legislation. Seventy-four percent (74%) of Democrats support the plan along with just 18% of Republicans. Both those figures are up just a single point from the previous poll.

However, support among unaffiliated voters has fallen. A week ago, unaffiliateds were evenly divided on the plan, with 37% in favor and 36% opposed. Now, 50% of unaffiliated voters oppose the plan while only 27% favor it.

Ouch: Goracle gored by Dana Milbank.

Bring on the Rangel Rule for delinquent taxpaying citizens.

RNC race is wide open as members gather to vote.

Not the Charmer-in-Chief: Obama gets the big, fat goose-egg after wooing Republicans for days.

Been there, done that in Iran.

Palin and Obama: Together at last.

Andrea Mitchell: Gay icon?

I could have written an entire post completely made up of lobbyist stories about the Obama administration this morning. Way to walk to walk, Barry.

President Obama tries to walk into the Oval Office through a window, somehow escapes weeks of wall-to-wall coverage and ridicule of mistake.

Be prepared for the inevitable backlash to the House GOP's unanimous rejection of the stimulus package. Goldfarb has already noted the Huffington Post's response. A savvy observer writes this morning that the vote may turn the GOP into the "party of no" when "hard-working, God-fearing families are losing their health insurance and watching dreams of college disappear."

Not quite. Yes, economic circumstances are dire. But the Democrats are using those circumstances to force through a bill that will do relatively little to stimulate the economy and a lot to stimulate liberalism. It's entirely appropriate for Republicans to criticize this bill and, ultimately, vote against it. And as long as they criticize constructively, as long as they put forward a reasonable alternative - as long as they do not obstruct a popular president - Republicans will do themselves little harm. Especially if the bill doesn't work. Which is a strong possibility.

So far, to my knowledge, the Republican leadership has criticized President Obama's bill politely. They wish him success, which is appropriate, but they also point out the flaws in his ideas. What's wrong with that? Meanwhile, there is a Republican alternative plan -- and, though it's pretty unoriginal and needs revision, at least it exists. All the House Republicans did last night was register their opposition to the stimulus. They didn't hold it up. Senate Republicans may be tempted to filibuster the bill when it reaches their chamber. That would be a bad idea. It would turn the tables and allow the Democrats to scapegoat the Senate GOP. Instead, if the bill isn't significantly revised, Sen. McConnell should aim to replicate the House's unanimous No vote.

Comity, reason, and no filibusters. Score one for the loyal opposition.

Limbaugh:

"Fifty-three percent of American voters voted for Barack Obama; 46% voted for John McCain, and 1% voted for wackos."

Seriously, though, Limbaugh's stimulus compromise is a novel idea. (Though he ought to propose a payroll tax cut rather than cuts in the capital gains and corporate tax rates.)

Lawrence Lindsey:

And what of the plan being put forward now? As crafted, it is unlikely to produce the desired results. For a similar amount of money, the government could essentially cut the payroll tax in half, taking three points off the rate for both the employer and the employee. This would put $1,500 into the pocket of a typical worker making $50,000, with a similar amount going to his or her employer. It would provide a powerful stimulus to the spending stream, as well as a significant, six percentage point reduction in the tax burden of employment for people making less than $100,000. The effects would be immediate.

Which political entrepreneur in the Senate is ready to pick up this idea?

Conservative economist Martin Feldstein made waves last year when he declared his support for a fiscal stimulus bill to combat the recession. Last December, Feldstein wrote in the Wall Street Journal that "a temporary rise in DOD spending on supplies, equipment and manpower should be a significant part of that increase in overall government outlays." Thus the idea of defense stimulus was born.

Today, Feldstein looks at the House stimulus bill and calls it "an $800 bill mistake":

The problem with the current stimulus plan is not that it is too big but that it delivers too little extra employment and income for such a large fiscal deficit. It is worth taking the time to get it right.

It's up to Senate Republicans to argue in good faith for a better bill.

President Obama has hired at least 21 federal lobbyists.

Did Holder and Senate Republicans make a backroom deal?

Putin pans U.S. stimulus packages: "There is a temptation to expand direct interference of state in economy. In the Soviet Union that became an absolute. We paid a very dear price for that.”

In memory of John Updike, you might want to read his terrific essay on Ted Williams's last game.

Via Hot Air, why did these celebrities need Obama's election to pledge to be better people?

Republicans voted unanimously against the stimulus. The response at the Huffington Post, fast degenerating from a hotbed of partisan opposition into a government propaganda outlet that would make the editors of Pravda blush, is the headline "toeing the party line" along with a picture showing the backside of a couple elephants. How dare the opposition oppose our dear leader's stimulus package!

In fact, Republicans have done precisely what they should have: provided Republicans in the Senate with some additional leverage in hope of stripping out some of the pork and wasteful spending that makes the current "stimulus" little more than an easy way around the traditional legislative process.

And after all, it was Republicans who attracted Democratic support -- not the other way around. This would seem to bode well for the Republican leadership (especially Cantor who whipped a perfect game), who have a smaller caucus but one that is finally unified by being in opposition. As McCormack pointed out below, almost all the Democrats who defected are considered vulnerable in 2010. Holding together a majority isn't easy, and governing is even harder. The left can complain about Republican obstruction until they're blue in the face, but they don't need Republican support to enact their agenda of social justice and government handouts, and they shouldn't expect it. When this stimulus does nothing to revive the economy or put people back to work, there will be no confusion as to who is to blame.

Change you can believe in:

All U.S. taxpayers would enjoy the same immunity from IRS penalties and interest as House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) and Obama Administration Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, if a bill introduced today by Congressman John Carter (R-TX) becomes law.

Carter, a former longtime Texas judge, today introduced the Rangel Rule Act of 2009, HR 735, which would prohibit the Internal Revenue Service from charging penalties and interest on back taxes against U.S. citizens. Under the proposed law, any taxpayer who wrote “Rangel Rule” on their return when paying back taxes would be immune from penalties and interest.

“We must show the American people that Congress is following the same law, and the same legal process as we expect them to follow,” says Carter. “That has not been done in the ongoing case against Chairman Rangel, nor in the instance of our new Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. If we don’t hold our highest elected officials to the same standards as regular working folks, we owe it to our constituents to change those standards so everyone is abiding by the same law. Americans believe in blind justice, which shows no favoritism to the wealthy or powerful.”

Carter also said the tax law change will provide good economic stimulus benefits, as it would free many taxpayers from massive debts to the IRS, restoring those funds to the free market to help create jobs.

From the Washington Post:

With no Republican support, the House approved an $819 billion stimulus plan that will serve as the cornerstone of President Obama's efforts to resuscitate the economy, an early victory for the new president but still a disappointment because of the lack of Republican votes.

The measure passed 244 to 188, with 11 Democrats and 177 Republicans voting against it.

A party line vote on a pork-laden trillion dollar spending bill--now that's change you can believe in.

Seriously, this was a good night for Republicans because it was a display of unity that the minority party will need going forward. Of 11 Democrats who voted against the stimulus, most are considered vulnerable next cycle. I don't recall the last time that Republicans have been this united. Three cheers for change.

The House of Representatives will today pass President Obama's $900 billion stimulus bill, despite the beliefs of many economists that it will do nothing to help the economy, and despite concerns that it's nothing more than an aggregate of the spending wish lists of Washington Democrats, saved up for decades.

And while Congressional leaders are going full steam ahead, some House Democrats are starting say publicly what others have been saying privately for weeks: this debt spending package is not going to solve the problem, and it may actually work against needed legislation in the future. Pete DeFazio told the Washington Post that additional legislation will likely be needed, and worried that "after this initial rush . . . a lot of people are going to begin to wonder about whether we're pushing the limits of our borrowing capacity here." Paul Kanjorski says he'll probably vote against the bill, and that more bailouts will be necessary.

To what is Kanjorski referring? Perhaps to the growing interest of Democrats in a TARP II, which seems necessary if there is going to be a new 'Bad Bank':

FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair is pushing to run the operation, which would buy the toxic assets clogging banks’ balance sheets, one of the people said. Bair is arguing that her agency has expertise and could help finance the effort by issuing bonds guaranteed by the FDIC, a second person said. President Barack Obama’s team may announce the outlines of its financial-rescue plan as early as next week, an administration official said...

Obama is under increasing pressure to drastically revamp the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program for the ailing industry. While setting up a bank to buy underwater assets is emerging as a favored approach, it could drive up the cost of the rescue in excess of $1 trillion.

Frank told reporters that he would be open to expanding the size of the bailout if the Obama administration “can demonstrate the need for it.”

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said yesterday he wants to hear more about the bad-bank idea when he meets in coming days with newly installed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

At his confirmation hearing, Geithner talked about a need for $3-$4 trillion in order to take all the 'toxic assets' off the books of America's banks. We'll soon learn how much additional money the Obama administration believes is necessary to do this -- trillions of dollars, or something less. However, whenever the announcement comes it is likely to dramatically change the current stimulus debate.

Eli Lake reports:

President Obama's executive order closing CIA "black sites" contains a little-noticed exception that allows the spy agency to continue to operate temporary detention facilities abroad.

The provision illustrates that the president's order to shutter foreign-based prisons, known as black sites, is not airtight and that the Central Intelligence Agency still has options if it wants to hold terrorist suspects for several days at a time.

Why does the CIA want to hold terrorist suspects, and why is the Obama administration reviewing whether to issue the CIA waivers for interrogation techniques above and beyond those listed in the Army Field Manual? Because waterboarding and other harsh methods of interrogation may amount to torture -- but they work. Or at least that's the verdict from one CIA official who has actually seen those methods in action but for some reason is rarely quoted in this debate:

A leader of the CIA team that captured the first major al Qaeda figure, Abu Zubaydah, says subjecting him to waterboarding was torture but necessary. In the first public comment by any CIA officer involved in handling high-value al Qaeda targets, John Kiriakou, now retired, said the technique broke Zubaydah in less than 35 seconds.

"The next day, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate," said Kiriakou..."From that day on, he answered every question," Kiriakou said. "The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks."

The left spent years attacking the Bush administration for what was deemed to be Orwellian doubletalk on the most controversial elements of the war on terror. Rather than talk about torture, the left said, the administration referred to "enhanced interrogation techniques." Rather than talk about "mercenaries," in the parlance of the left, the Bush administration created an army of private contractors. And rather than talk about what the left perceived as a paring back of civil liberties, the Bush White House pushed the Patriot Act. And on and on. Well, now apparently it's the left's turn. Check out this quote in Lake's story from Ken Gude, the associate director of international rights and responsibilities at the Center for American Progress:

"My understanding is that these types of temporary facilities can be in no way described as a prison," Mr. Gude said. "They are temporary holding facilities that the CIA has used in the past for decades, ... often parts of exchange agreements with other foreign intelligence agencies."

You got that? It's a "temporary holding facility," which in no way should be confused with a "prison," where the CIA temporarily held people in the bad old days of the Bush administration. At least the right had no illusions about the practices it was defending.

Last weekend, a U.S. raid in a region north of Kabul led to the killing of 15 Afghans. The local villagers and the Afghan government claimed all of those killed were civilians, while the United States said Taliban fighters, including a target leader, were among those killed. The incident, like many others in Afghanistan, has sparked an international uproar over the use of force in the Taliban-ridden country.

But an Afghan counterterrorism official and the governor of the province where the raid took place admitted the Taliban leader and other Taliban fighters were among those killed in the attack. So what did the U.S. Army do in response to the raid and the resulting controversy? It issued payments to the families of those killed, including the Taliban commander. The Associated Press reports:

On the back of an Afghan army truck, U.S. officials paid $40,000 in Afghan currency to representatives of the 15 people killed — $2,500 for each death plus $500 for two wounded men and $1,500 for village repairs.

Lt. Col. Steven Weir, a military lawyer who helped oversee the payments, said the payments were not an admission by the U.S. that innocents were killed.

"It's a condolence payment," he said. "The villagers said none of them were in the Taliban, just peaceful individuals from the village. So by this payment they will understand it's not our goal to kill innocent people. This may help them understand we're here to build a safer and more secure Afghanistan."

When asked if the U.S. was paying money to relatives of people that the U.S. had wanted to kill or capture, Weir said: "If we did accidentally shoot someone, we want to make that right, and if we have to pay money to someone who didn't deserve it ... it's kind of like it's better to let nine guilty people go free than to jail one innocent person."

But didn't the Taliban commander "deserve it"? It's just this kind of fuzzy logic that gets U.S. troops killed. The money given to the Taliban commander's family will funneled back into the Taliban coffers--in fact, the odds are good the Taliban will move back into the town and collect all of the money disbursed--and used to facilitate attacks on U.S. troops.

Deficit hawks need to take a deep breath and stop squawking. The national debt is in bad shape, true. And it's going to get worse, thanks to TARP and the stimulus bill and other baseline spending. But, for the next two years at least, the national debt will remain within its historic boundaries. David Leonhardt, as always, has the numbers:

Surprisingly, the debt that the federal government has already accumulated doesn’t present much of a problem. It is equal to about $6 trillion, or 40 percent of G.D.P., a level that is slightly lower than the average of the past six decades. The bailout, the stimulus and the rest of the deficits over the next two years will probably add about 15 percent of G.D.P. to the debt. That will take debt to almost 60 percent, which is above its long-term average but well below the levels of the 1950s.

America survived the debt that World War II produced (at 120 percent of GDP) and the debt in the 1950s. We grew our way out of it. All things being equal, with the right policies the United States can grow its way out of its current debt as well.

Except all things aren't exactly equal, as Leonhardt points out:

[T]he unfinanced parts of Medicare, the spending that the government has promised over and above the taxes it will collect in the coming decades requires another decimal place. They are equal to more than 200 percent of current G.D.P.

Not good. James Capretta writes up a possible Medicare reform here. President Obama has pledged to reform entitlements, which really do pose a long-term threat to American solvency. The trick is to finance the welfare state in a way that allows the maximum possible amount of individual liberty and economic growth. Is Obama up to the task?

Reading through the clippings on Iceland I came across a London Times piece on David Oddsson, the former Icelandic prime minister who is now chairman of the central bank. Oddsson did more than his share to contribute to Iceland's economic catastrophe and is now the most hated man in the country. So here's how the Times's Roger Boyes describes him:

He ignored them for whatever reason -- perhaps it was an ideological blindness because he ranks as the very last neocon in Europe, the Nordic Margaret Thatcher -- perhaps it was merely a matter of personal vanity.

Oddsson believes in modified free markets -- his nearest American economic analogue would be Bill Clinton -- and has no serious (or even unserious) foreign policy record from his time as prime minister. So what makes him a "neocon," exactly?

In the Washington Times, national security analysts William Hartung of the New America Foundation and Christopher Preble of the Cato Institute argue against increasing defense spending in the stimulus package:

Decisions on how many Humvees to buy, or how many bases to refurbish, should rest on military necessity, not economic expedience subject to political chicanery. When military procurement becomes nothing more than a series of thinly veiled pork-barrel projects, it risks exposing our troops to unnecessary risks, and ultimately undermines our security.

But Hartung and Preble don't exactly explain how having more Humvees, more soldiers, or more fighters would “expose troops to unnecessary risks” or “undermine our security.” The case for a defense stimulus rests not only on the argument that there are plenty of 'shovel ready' defense projects to fund, but also that there are military investments we need.

Preble and Hartung do not see this convergence of economic and military interests. They give the impression that hiring people to build the Virginia-class submarine, the V-22 Osprey, and the F-22 is the equivalent of hiring people to dig holes and then fill them in. Capping the F-22 program is sensible, they write, because "our most dangerous adversaries are al Qaeda terrorists and Taliban insurgents that don't possess even a single aircraft."

But, as Stuart Koehl wrote last month, it would be myopic to cede U.S. air and sea superiority to China. Furthermore, Koehl pointed out that the V-22 Osprey is "one of the few new high-tech systems that really supports low intensity operations (by virtue of its ability to insert troops very rapidly at long distances from base)."

The current debate in Congress is not whether there will be a jobs program, but about what kind of jobs program we will have. Is it an NEA jobs program for artists? Or is it a DOD jobs program for heroes?

Much has been written about Barack Obama's interview with Al Arabiya. One comment the president made has not gotten enough attention. "America was not born as a colonial power, and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there’s no reason why we can’t restore that. And that I think is going to be an important task."

Fair to ask, then, how things looked as recently as 20 or 30 years ago. The answer: Not great. I'd been thinking about this for two days and now Max Boot, at Contentions, fills in some of the history, with an assist from Bernard Grun's The Timetables of History.

Boot writes:

It turns out that in 1989 U.S. fighters shot down two Libyan jets over the Gulf of Sidra. The last Soviet troops left Afghanistan, creating a vacuum that would eventually be filled by the Taliban. Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie’s death for “blasphemy.” Hundreds died in Lebanon’s long-running civil war while Hezbollah militants were torturing to death U.S. Marine Colonel William “Rich” Higgins, who had been kidnapped the previous year while serving as a UN peacekeeper in Lebanon.

And 1979? That was an even darker year-in many ways a turning point for the worse in the Middle East. That was, after all, the year that the shah of Iran was overthrown. He was replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeini, who launched a war against the West that is still unfolding. One of the first actions of this long struggle was the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran and all of its personnel as hostages. The same year saw the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which led to the growth of the mujahideen, some of whom would later morph into Al Qaeda and the Taliban. This was also the year that Islamic militants temporarily seized control of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, an event that drove the Saudi royal family to become ever more fundamentalist.

In other news in 1979, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan, was hanged by General Zia al-Hak, inaugurating a long period when Pakistan would be under the effective control of the army in alliance with Islamic militants. That year mobs also attacked U.S. embassies throughout the Muslim world from Kabul and Islamabad to Tripoli. The one bright spot in 1979 was the signing of the Camp David Accord between the US, Egypt, and Israel, which did not, unfortunately, auger a “new” Middle East as many optimists hoped.

As Boot's post makes clear, Obama's comments reveal a rather short view of history and one in which George W. Bush is the cause of America's problems.

It's worth remembering, as a very smart foreign policy thinker pointed out to me the other day, the world loved America under Bill Clinton -- or at least liked and respected us more than it did under George W. Bush. (See here for more.) And despite those warm feelings, the halcyon 1990s brought the dramatic build-up of the global jihadist network, the training of some 20,000 fighters (at least) from camps in Afghanistan, and several attacks on American interests. Much of the planning for the 9/11 attacks took place during the Clinton years, too.

Being loved, it seems, is not quite the same thing as being safe.

Voting in Iraq's provincial elections has begun:

In the Karrada district of Baghdad, soldiers and police streamed steadily into the Furat (or Euphrates) Middle School, a worn, dusty building where posters encouraged voting: “Register. Vote. Make the Change.”

By late afternoon, more than half of the 4,000 people eligible to vote early at the school had done so, said Adel Jabbar, a 38-year-old poll monitor. Above the doorways to each room that had been set aside for voting, signs were hung forbidding cell phones, cameras, smoking and weapons.

Mr. Jabbar reported no problems.

Election Day is Saturday.

That's David Leonhardt's description of America's economic troubles: "[T]hink of the debt-fueled consumer-spending spree of the past 20 years as a symbol of an even larger problem. As a country we have been spending too much on the present and not enough on the future. We have been consuming rather than investing. We're suffering from investment-deficit disorder."

If you look at the Democrats' spending plan through this prism, you begin to see what they are up to. They want to increase government "investment" in energy, healthcare, and education to cure economic inefficiencies and produce long-term returns. One problem with this is that their investments will probably create a whole new set of inefficiencies. Look at what subsidies for corn ethanol got us. More spending on education? Unlikely to produce better-educated students unless the money is coupled with accountability, testing, and curricular reform. Shoveling money into Medicare? It could help states through these rocky budgetary times. But, absent reform, the program is still an entitlement disaster in the making.

"Investments" in updating and expanding the nation's electric grid and increasing broadband access make sense. Says Leonhardt: "[A] smaller share of households in the United States has broadband Internet service than in Canada, Japan, Britain, South Korea, and about a dozen other countries." That shouldn't be the case. But otherwise the Democrats' plan is weak brew. Why not invest in defense stimulus instead?

Douglas Holtz-Eakin joins Larry Lindsey and John H. Makin in supporting a payroll tax cut:

[A] 1-year, 6.2 percent reduction in the payroll tax should be at the center of discussion. It is a tax that impacts all Americans. Cutting the payroll tax will target the labor market and have real impact on the marginal incentives for employment. And it is large enough that even if some of the cut is “saved” this will simply serve to shore up the weakened balance sheets of households and lower risks facing our banks and financial institutions.

The political and economic benefits are clear. All it needs is a political champion.

Good news: The 2009 Virginia governor's race already has ads on TV.

You know what they say: If you give an anti-Semitic mouse a cookie...

Good news: The 2010 race for Harry Reid's seat already has ads on TV.

If Gaza became the next Dubai, would they throw Fatah party members off the top of the giant, luxury, sail-shaped hotel?

Charlie Rangel is still being investigated for tax troubles, but the whole confirmation of a tax cheat as Treasury Secretary thing will likely keep him safe from much punishment.

Ashley Judd is finally proud of her country.

Obama apparently has had a change of heart over whether there are military solutions to our problems in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Brian Williams slobbers over Obama in a professional, impartial, detached manner on Letterman.

Democrats continue to aggressively elevate man they're desperate to prove is irrelevant. Nancy Pelosi must be planning this offensive.

At last: Michelle Obama yearbook photos.

Chris Cillizza asks if Rush Limbaugh is the new face of the GOP. It's not a crazy question. When the leader of the free world singles someone out as the leader of the opposition, he goes a long way toward making it so. In the last few days, Obama and his advisers have done just that, holding Limbaugh out as a symbol of partisanship and an impediment to the change that some 63 percent of the country now expects from our new president. Why the President of the United States would want to pick a fight with a talk show host is not entirely clear, but it surely has something to do with the fact that the Republican party is now so disorganized that it no longer possesses a figurehead who can credibly be blamed for obstructing "change."

If one assumes that Obama isn't going to deliver on a lot of his promises (and he isn't), then one should expect him to start searching around for scapegoats. In this case Obama needs a scapegoat for his failure to convince Republicans to rally around a thoroughly Democratic stimulus proposal. Obama could have done more to bring Republicans on board, but he doesn't need Republicans to get the measure passed. What he does need to do is explain why Washington hasn't been miraculously transformed into a bipartisan utopia. He could blame Boehner or McConnell or Cantor, but with all due respect to the Republican leadership, the American public probably doesn't have any idea who they are. The American people do know who Limbaugh is. It makes Obama seem small to pick a fight with Limbaugh (and it makes Limbaugh seem awfully big), but the president needs a foil.

Cillizza quotes a couple of Republicans (and John Weaver) expressing varying levels of concern at the prospect of Limbaugh emerging as a figurehead for the right -- "filling a vacuum" as Haley Barbour says. Republicans shouldn't worry too much. The next election is two years away, and any perception voters have now about Republican obstruction or cooperation will be long forgotten by November 2010. What voters will be looking at is the state of the economy and progress in the war on terror. If the economy is revived, Obama will get the credit. Likewise if the country is kept safe while progress continues in Iraq and gets underway in Afghanistan. If America sees setbacks on any of these fronts, Obama will take the blame, or at least some portion of it, and Republican fortunes may be somewhat revived.

Either way, Republicans are off the hook and free to vote as they please. Some will support the stimulus and some will oppose it, but they will neither be held responsible for its failures nor reap the rewards if it succeeds. The left is still trying to figure out how to operate in a world without George W. Bush, without a right-wing bogeyman who can be blamed for all the country's problems. Today there's a target on Rush Limbaugh, but if the economy doesn't recover in the next 18 months, nobody's going to blame Rush. At that point Obama will have to try and pin it all on Bush, again. If Republicans feel compelled to worry, they should worry about George W. Bush still being the face of the GOP two, four, or even six years from now. From that perspective, el Rushbo starts looking pretty damn good.

Recently the Scrapbook reported the following:

To mark the Czech Republic's turn at the rotating European Union presidency, artist David Cerny told officials in Prague he and other artists from the EU would create a sculpture of Europe, in which individual countries would be represented by national symbols of pride. Or something like that. In reality, Cerny and a few of his friends made "Entropa," which is currently on display in Brussels. And it may result in the dissolution of Europe.

While Italy is rendered lovingly as a nation of soccer fanatics, Belgium as a box of chocolates, and Sweden as an IKEA box, Bulgaria is, well, a Turkish toilet (see photo below). One Bulgarian diplomat was flush with anger, describing it (to euobserver.com) as "preposterous, a disgrace," and "a humiliation for the Bulgarian nation and an offence to national dignity." But as Cerny explained to Spiegel Online, "No other [European] country has those kinds of toilets." Germany is represented by a mass of cars on highway strips--that look suspiciously like a misshapen swastika. (Cerny denies this vehemently.) All of Holland, meanwhile, is submerged in water, save the minarets of mosques. France is dominated by a giant sign yelling "Strike!" And Luxembourg is so tiny it simply dangles a pricetag.

THE SCRAPBOOK hopes these countries will develop a sense of humor. After all, it could be worse. Imagine being depicted as a Dracula-themed amusement park. That would be Romania.

But an Austrian diplomat informed me today that Italy, in fact, does not escape unscathed: “You have to see the players in motion,” he subtly explained. You can pretty much get the gist from the image provided by Der Spiegel. Now that is an infamnia.

AFP:

The Taliban welcomed President Barack Obama's order to close Guantanamo but said peace would only come if he reverses the "satanic policies" of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

In a message posted on online jihadist forums, the Taliban also called on Obama to close all "evil" US detention centers for militants, "completely withdraw" from Iraq and Afghanistan and "stop defending Israel."

"Obama's move to close Guantanamo detention center is a positive step for peace and stability in the region and the world," said the message, a copy of which was obtained from the US-based monitor, the SITE Intelligence Group.

MEMRI has video of former Gitmo terrorists pledging to strike the United States again.

Palin launches SarahPAC.

Republicans press Obama on his pledge to keep earmarks out of the stimulus package.

Franken-Coleman trial gets off to a slow start.

Chuck Schumer says Kirsten Gilibrand's "views will evolve" as senator.

Democrats subpoena Karl Rove.

Biden apologizes to John Roberts for making this snarky comment.

Obama's RCP Job Approval: 63.3 percent.

WEEKLY STANDARD alum Sonny Bunch scored an interview with Benicio del Toro about his new movie Che:

Mr. del Toro doesn't deny that Guevara's persona had some darker aspects. "We have to omit a lot of stuff about his life," he said, "but we're not omitting the fact that he's for capital punishment, which is the essence of that."...

"They didn't do it blindly; they had trials," Mr. del Toro said. "They found them guilty, and they executed them - that's capital punishment."

Sonny then asked del Toro about Castro's "concentration camps" prompting del Toro to storm out of the interview. Apparently he took exception to that description of the manner in which political prisoners were detained before being tried and executed (that's capital punishment). Still, the New York Post has a Q&A with the actor for those interested in hearing what del Toro likes most about the Commie icon:

Early on in his life, one of his first emotional moments is an asthma attack. And the family, in order to give him a better chance, moves [within Argentina] from Rosario to Cordoba. His early, formative years were surrounded by this protection and encouragement and love from the family. You know that he's a warrior, but he didn't start on the streets fighting for a meal. The warrior - you imagine that he was born in a cage of lions.

This guy has become an icon for armed struggle, yet he spent a lot of time wheezing through the jungles of Latin America.

He was in the middle of battles and the middle of war with asthma, and sometimes he had no medicine. What impressed me was that he forced himself to adhere to the same regulations he set for his men. And what we went through was similar. It wasn't an easy movie to make.

At 4.5 hours long, it can't be very easy to watch either, but hopefully that doesn't stop all the asthmatic children who, with the right amount of love and encouragement, can still grow up to execute the enemies of the revolution.

Update: reason.tv's video "Killer Chic: Hollywood's Sick Love Affair with Che Guevara" is worth watching.

The Obama administration has talked of an intention to put the stimulus bill online for the American people to read before it's voted on, which is commendable.

But where is it? Apparently in the same place as the press briefing transcripts. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about when the bill would go online, and replied that it would be available between the time the bill is in its final form and when President Obama signs it.

As Gibbs and anyone with a passing interest in politics knows, that's around about the exact time that having it online will no longer matter. The American people will not be able to make much of a difference in the crafting of the bill at that point. All of the negotiations will have taken place. All the pork will have been traded. All the boondoggles agreed upon and on their way to the President's desk before the American people get a look at much of it.

If you want a look at it before everything has been decided, a group of right-leaning bloggers and organizations offers a searchable version of the 1,500-page stimulus at ReadtheStimulus.org. Read more than a few pages, and I can almost guarantee you'll be ahead of your representative in Congress. And, you may even find a few gems that Obama will direct Democrats to jettison, just as he did the millions for contraception.

That should be the Republican strategy for getting most ridiculous liberal provisions jettisoned, by the way. Have Nancy Pelosi pitch each idea in the most unpleasant, tin-eared way possible on the Sunday shows and pile on with criticism until Obama backs away from the idea, as he will from anything that's mildly politically unpopular, especially with this first, important bill.

On January 21, President Obama signed an Executive Order requiring ethics commitments for officials of his administration. As has been covered here, that commitment has already been compromised.

Interestingly however, the 'Ethics' section of the White House website went down that day, ostensibly to be updated to reflect the president's initiative. Six days later, that page is still down. Go there today and you find this message:

The ethics section is currently being revised to reflect President Obama's Executive Order concerning Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel, issued on January 21, 2009. Please check back soon.

Six days later and the website still hasn't been updated? This EO has been in the works for months. Furthermore, none of the other 'agenda' pages has been pulled down. According to Roll Call, this is what you found on the page before it went dark:

...the new White House Web site — launched just after President Barack Obama was inaugurated Tuesday — included a list of ethics reform proposals that would apply to Congress, including new earmark disclosure guidelines, requirements for public mark-ups of legislation and a call for a new Senate office to investigate ethics complaints. The last idea had been voted down in the Senate during the 110th Congress.

I wonder why it's down for such a long time -- at least in Internet terms -- and what will (or won't) be there when it goes back up.

Jimmy Carter: "Of course Hamas can be trusted."

As I've said before, John Conyers would hold a fake impeachment hearing at the Chuck E. Cheese with the animatronic band as witnesses.

Most tech-savvy White House in history has e-mail meltdown in Week One.

Jon Favreau writes mediocre speeches and dates hot models? Gotta love a multi-tasker.

Good news: Obama's new enviro standards to add $2-10K to price of vehicle.

Businesses demand more tax breaks in stimulus, so they can, you know, create and save jobs.

The Maverick Twitters!

More econo-blogger catfights!

Sarah Palin welcomes SarahPAC, having worked on the campaign trail and in the governor's office right up until the day of its arrival. Noted Atlantic blogger consults OB-GYNs, notes "she was hardly showing."

Civilian cameraman wounded by shrapnel in Afghanistan risks life to save Marine.

Hamas now murdering its most enthusiastic international apologists— liberal human rights organization workers.

While Barack and countless other Washington Democrats have spoken repeatedly about the need to depoliticize the Department of Justice, it looks like the president is handing a top job there to a former senior aide for Senator Chuck Schumer.

Matthew Miller, who spearheaded the communications operation at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee during the 2008 election, is moving inside the walls of the Obama administration as chief spokesman for the Justice Department. With Eric H. Holder Jr. expected to be confirmed as attorney general this week, Miller will be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. He's had good practice. Before working under Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) at the DSCC, Miller was communications director for the successful 2006 Senate campaign of Robert Menendez (D-N.J.).

But notwithstanding this mild announcement, Miller is a polarizing figure with a controversial past. When Miller worked for the House Democratic Caucus in 2005, he came into into possession of inappropriate communications from Representative Mark Foley. According to CNN, he sent them first to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. (Specifically, he sent them to Bill Burton, who's now a White House spokesman.) Miller also "shopped them to the press," according to the Washington Post, rather than the proper authorities. This behavior makes Miller one of the primary people responsible for Foley's chatting with pages going on far longer than it ought to have.

Later, Miller was the chief spokesperson for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, under hyper-partisan Chuck Schumer. In that post, it was Miller's job to repeatedly attack Republican Senators and candidates, and spin for their Democrat opponents. For example, Miller repeatedly attacked Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell -- at times in quite personal terms. While Miller's role at the Department of Justice should not require him to interact regularly with McConnell and other Senate Republicans, his past is a source of friction between Congressional Republicans and the Justice Department.

So while Democrats have complained for years about how the Bush administration supposedly politicized the Justice Department, one of Barack Obama's first moves is to make a partisan hatchet man the chief spokesperson for the agency. Hope and change, Washington style.

A reader sends along this quote that appeared last week in the Guardian:

Ahmed Tafwiq, 27, a civil servant from Shujaih, said: "I am totally against the so-called resistance, because it proved a total failure. We used to hear these slogans of how strong our resistance is. I believed the slogans. But when the war started, nothing happened. I live in an area close to the border with Israel. I used to see hundreds of Hamas and other factions' gunmen waiting for Israeli troops who might storm Gaza. But, since the first day of the war, none of them appeared. And Hamas still talks about a resistance that did nothing to protect our people."

A McClatchy reporter once lectured me on the failures of "the Bush administration's so-called war on terror." Those failures alone, as so many on the left see it, make the war irredeemable (never mind that those policies coincided with the absence of any further attacks on U.S. soil). Yet somehow that logic doesn't carry over in the assessment of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, which fail completely to protect their people from "state-terrorism" as they keep pursuing military solutions to what is (of course) a diplomatic problem.

Just once it would be nice to see opponents of the war on terror train their rhetorical fire on terrorist groups for the terrorists' criminal incompetence, but I can't recall ever seeing any such thing. Instead, the tactics employed by a completely overmatched Hamas are condemned just before being explained away as the only means available to the so-called resistance.

Tim Geithner was confirmed as Treasury secretary by a 60 to 34 vote in the Senate last night. Because 30 of the 34 senators who opposed him were Republicans and 50 of the 60 who supported him were Democrats, Politico declares that the vote signifies that "partisanship is officially back."

But, if anything, this vote shows that Republicans are pretty weak partisans. One of the 10 GOP senators to vote for Geithner was John Cornyn--the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the GOP's Senate campaign arm. Apparently, Cornyn believed he had to give Geithner the "benefit of the doubt" on the issue of his unpaid taxes. Can you imagine Cornyn's counterpart Chuck Schumer giving the benefit of the doubt to a GOP appointment in a similar situation? Appointing and confirming a cabinet member who broke the law strikes many as unjust--a perfect example of Washington politicians playing by their own rules. This is the kind of thing that the party out of power runs against every election.

If Cornyn really wasn't convinced that Geithner cheated on his taxes, perhaps he should be applauded for putting principle over party. But anyone who's followed the case, especially Byron York's excellent coverage, would find it hard to believe that Geithner didn't knowingly fail to pay his taxes.

From Obama's interview with Al-Arabiya:

Q Will the United States ever live with a nuclear Iran? And if not, how far are you going in the direction of preventing it?

THE PRESIDENT: You know, I said during the campaign that it is very important for us to make sure that we are using all the tools of U.S. power, including diplomacy, in our relationship with Iran.

Now, the Iranian people are a great people, and Persian civilization is a great civilization. Iran has acted in ways that's not conducive to peace and prosperity in the region: their threats against Israel; their pursuit of a nuclear weapon which could potentially set off an arms race in the region that would make everybody less safe; their support of terrorist organizations in the past -- none of these things have been helpful.

But I do think that it is important for us to be willing to talk to Iran, to express very clearly where our differences are, but where there are potential avenues for progress. And we will over the next several months be laying out our general framework and approach. And as I said during my inauguration speech, if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us.

Wouldn't a simple 'no, a nuclear Iran is unacceptable to the United States and our allies' have sufficed? Instead Obama says that Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon is "unhelpful," that it's "not conducive to peace." When Obama was in Israel, he said that "a nuclear Iran would pose a grave threat and the world must prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon." He added that he would "take no options off the table in dealing with this potential Iranian threat." In the first debate of the general election, Obama reiterated that the United States "cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran." But when Obama has the chance to speak directly to the Muslim world, he can only muster retread rhetoric from his inaugural address about clenched fists and open hands.

President Bush was incapable of engaging the Muslim world with his own words, but neither was it possible for the Muslim world to confuse his view of American interests in that region. President Obama has the potential to secure real progress through his skill as a communicator, but there's always been a fear that some portion of his success in negotiating difficult issues was the result of a willingness, or perhaps a compulsion, to tell his audience whatever it is he thinks they want to hear.

The New Yorker's Jane Mayer reports on Barack Obama's executive order on interrogations. She writes:

Across the Potomac River, at the C.I.A.’s headquarters, in Langley, Virginia, however, there was considerably less jubilation. Top C.I.A. officials have argued for years that so-called “enhanced” interrogation techniques have yielded lifesaving intelligence breakthroughs. “They disagree in some respect,” Craig admitted. Among the hard questions that Obama left open, in fact, is whether the C.I.A. will have to follow the same interrogation rules as the military. While the President has clearly put an end to cruel tactics, Craig said that Obama “is somewhat sympathetic to the spies’ argument that their mission and circumstances are different.”

Despite such sentiments, Obama’s executive orders will undoubtedly rein in the C.I.A. Waterboarding, for instance, has gone the way of the rack, now that the C.I.A. is strictly bound by customary interpretations of the Geneva Conventions. This decision, too, was the result of intense deliberation. During the transition period, unknown to the public, Obama’s legal, intelligence, and national-security advisers visited Langley for two long sessions with current and former intelligence-community members. They debated whether a ban on brutal interrogation practices would hurt their ability to gather intelligence, and the advisers asked the intelligence veterans to prepare a cost-benefit analysis. The conclusions may surprise defenders of harsh interrogation tactics. “There was unanimity among Obama’s expert advisers,” Craig said, “that to change the practices would not in any material way affect the collection of intelligence.”

So "top CIA officials" say that enhanced interrogation techniques "have yielded lifesaving intelligence breakthroughs," but "Obama's expert advisers," some of whom he met on the campaign trail, nonetheless concluded "that to change the practices would not in any material way affect the collection of intelligence.”

In the Bush administration this might have been called politicizing intelligence.

(H/T Ben Smith.)

Automakers concerned that Obama's decision to allow stricter emissions standards will harm business.

Joe Biden says he doesn't see himself as "deputy president." Thanks for the clarification, Joe.

Limbaugh responds to Obama.

Citigroup takes bailout money, buys $50 million corporate jet.

Nancy Pelosi doesn't want to send Gitmo detainees to Alcatraz.

Kentucky Senate rematch in 2010.

Sebastian Mallaby writes that China's manipulation of its currency "is arguably the most important cause of the financial crisis."

We're constantly told that the U.S. airstrikes against Taliban and al Qaeda operatives and leaders taking refuge in the tribal areas angers the Paksitani people and is creating more terrorists. The sentiment below repeatedly creeps up in press reporting:

"The people know that there is a tacit understanding between the government and the U.S. regarding the drone attacks," argued author and political commentator Zahid Hussain.

"This is not only fuelling outrage among the people, but is isolating the Pakistani army from the tribes people in those areas. And that affects Pakistan’s own authority to contain militancy," explained Hussain.

The anger now threatens to undermine the authority of the fledgling civilian government in Islamabad, which after one year in office, is still struggling to take control of rising militancy in the country.

But, according to Farhat Taj, not all Pakistanis agree. In fact, may Pashtuns living under the boot of the Taliban and al Qaeda privately cheer the strikes, hoping they weaken the terror groups' grip on power.

The Pakhtun who experience the full range of Talibanisation, day and and day out, know that Taliban atrocities are not going to end with a dialogue. The Taliban have an agenda of a savage social order to be imposed on the people. The Pakhtun are not ready for that and this is the reason why they are bearing the brunt of the Taliban savagery. Hatred against the Taliban in the Pakhtun areas is at an all-time high and so is disappointment, even resentment, about the Pakistani army for its failure to stop the Taliban. All over the NWFP and FATA one can find people who even discuss possibilities of Israel and India to be asked for help. Their argument goes like this: "We are not killed by Israel and India. We are killed by the Taliban and the Pakistani army. So, who is our enemy, then?" Many people in the Taliban-occupied territories of the NWFP and FATA told me they constantly pray for the US drones to bomb the Taliban headquarters in their areas since the Pakistani army is unwilling to do so. Many people of Waziristan told me they are satisfied with the US drone attacks on militants in Waziristan and they want the Americans to keep it up till all the militants, local Pakhtun, the Punjabis and the foreigners, are eliminated. [emphasis added]

There have been several miscues by the Obama team since Election Day, not that you'll hear too much about them in the press. The Richardson nomination falling apart, the handling of the Blago investigation, the Geithner nomination, the new lobbying rules followed quickly by the issuing of waivers for those who didn't meet the criteria, all these might have done some real damage to a president who wasn't taking office under such "historic" conditions, i.e. being the first black president and assuming office in the midst of a frightening economic contraction. In the event, Obama has had little trouble staying above the fray and has continued to receive adulatory coverage much as he did throughout the campaign.

All of these early gaffes have been covered -- certainly no one believes that Obama helped himself by nominating someone who doesn't pay his taxes for the job of Treasury Secretary -- but not too extensively, and none has left a mark. Still, other Obama mistakes have been almost completely obscured by the reality of his victory and the fawning coverage of it. Everybody involved in a winning campaign looks like a genius when it's all over, but of course there are always mistakes. I think it's obvious that one of the mistakes made by the Obama campaign was its compulsion to spell out policy on hot-button issues on its campaign website. This led to numerous moments of embarrassment, as when the campaign distanced itself from Obama's call for direct, presidential diplomacy with Iran only to have critics note that the website stated clearly that the candidate supported such a policy. Another example was the language the Obama website used to discuss the surge, language that later had to be tweaked to acknowledge the success of U.S. forces, and Obama's error in opposing the plan.

These were not suspend-the-campaign size mistakes, but they were unforced errors that would not have been repeated had the media been only slightly more even-handed in covering the contest -- and slightly less inclined to portray every innovation on the part of the Obama campaign as though it represented a revolution in democracy. The Obama folks were very clever, but the value of the website they created didn't come from the superficial discussion of policy it offered -- instead those policy statements become an unnecessary burden on a campaign that occasionally required flexibility.

For some reason, this model has now been adapted to the website of the White House. There has already been some quibbling with this or that section of the website, but the real problems will come in six months to a year when language gets changed, whole sections disappear, and events trump campaign rhetoric. The campaign is over -- the thirty-word policy prescriptions should have died with it.

All House Republicans on the Appropriations Committee voted against the “stimulus bill” reported out of their panel last week. This portion of the stimulus legislation will be combined with the tax provisions (reported from the Ways and Means Committee last week also on a party-line vote, with all Republicans voting “no”) and scheduled for consideration by the full House on Wednesday. Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois – a Republican member of the Appropriations Committee – prepared an analysis (see below the fold) for his colleagues last week. Looks like the Democrats are using the demand for stimulus to satiate their pent up demand for a lot of new spending unrelated to economic growth.

Arguments like these – from well-respected Republicans like Kirk – are emboldening many in the GOP to vote against this measure, which looks more like a funding platform for Democratic projects than source of economic stimulus.

Late last week the Hill put out a list of the top 20 lobbying firms in Washington. The list detailed year over year performance for each firm. Most of the firms on the list saw revenue decrease in 2008 by between 5 and 15 percent. Field leader Patton Boggs saw a drop of 8 percent from $42.7 million to $39.2 million, with a weak fourth quarter of just $9.3 million. Still, one firm on the list showed unbelievable growth over the last year. While the rest of the industry struggled to keep pace with their 2007 numbers, and a few managed to see single digit growth, one firm managed a 40 percent increase in revenue over 2007. Oddly enough, that firm -- the Podesta Group -- just happens to boast a managing partner who shares a last name with the man that ran Barack Obama's transition, John Podesta. The Podesta Group saw revenue jump from $11.4 million to $16 million, with a particularly strong fourth quarter take of $4.3 million.

Does the Podesta group simply represent a whole bunch of businesses that are immune to the economic turmoil now afflicting the American economy, or is there maybe some other reason for the sudden surge in business?

Bill Lynn, former Raytheon lobbyist and current nominee for Deputy Secretary of Defense, received a "waiver" from the Obama administration in order to qualify for a post at the Defense Department. Still, his confirmation is in jeopardy as some Democrats balk at Obama so flagrantly violating his own rules. Adding fuel to the fire, Josh Rogin, who first broke the story of Lynn's confirmation trouble, reports that Lynn's tenure as Pentagon comptroller in the late '90s may create further problems for his appointment:

The White House sought to smooth William Lynn’s confirmation to a top Defense Department post by exempting him from new ethics rules, but now scrutiny of his last stint at the Pentagon has presented new questions about his nomination.

Lynn, nominated by President Obama to be deputy Defense secretary, previously served as the Pentagon’s comptroller during the latter half of the Clinton administration. He was tasked with the dual mission to reform the Pentagon’s antiquated financial management systems and move the world’s largest corporation closer to its first-ever clean audit. But Pentagon investigators, experts and watchdog groups noted little if any progress toward those goals after he spent four years at the post.

Moreover, some allege that Lynn sought to relax accounting rules while in office and misled congressional staff on Defense budget matters.

Republicans rolled over for Geithner, who got a waiver from Obama on not paying taxes. Lynn may not be so lucky.

Last October, Iceland's financial system collapsed. The broader economy went bust as a result. Infrequent riots began occurring in November and soon became a weekly event in Reykjavik's main square, in front of parliament. Last week, the riots became daily, with police using force to break them up. Late last Friday, Iceland's prime minister, Geir Haarde, called for elections. This morning Haarde resigned as prime minister, effectively ending the Independence party's long-time control of the government.

Parliamentary elections had been scheduled for 2011, but Haarde could no longer hold together the governing coalition. The new elections will likely be held in May and Haarde will not be standing for office.

On Sunday, Iceland's minister for Business Affairs, Bjorgvin Sigurdsson, resigned, as did the director of the government's Financial Supervisory Authority (the FME) and the entire FME board.

The riots continued even after Haarde announced the elections and said that he would be leaving government. And David Oddsson, the bumbling head of the central bank who was once the most popular prime minister in the history of Iceland, remains at his post, to the consternation of many Icelanders. It's unclear who will run the government in the interim between now and the elections.

Current polling suggests that the country's Left-Green movement would run away with the elections if they were held today. The Progressive party has seen its support shoot up from 4.9 percent to 17.2 percent.

As the Financial Times notes, "A shift to the left could undermine already extremely fragile confidence in Iceland's currency and trigger massive capital flight as investors bail out. The central bank estimates international investors own up to [400 billion krona] of Icelandic bonds that could be withdrawn once its currency is fully refloated."

The fragile krona has already taken a huge hit, falling some 43 percent against the euro since Friday.

Those interested should monitor Iceland Review, the best English-language news source from the island.

From Zakaria's latest column:

Obama's rhetoric suggests that he understands this issue. But does Congress? Can the American political system rise to the challenge? The United States will have to enact extraordinary measures, many of them unpopular, run up huge deficits, then just as quickly start to unwind these guarantees and commitments, get onto a path of strict fiscal prudence, reform entitlements and bring our financial house in order. If we don't, the world will talk not of American power but weakness. America will be a model, all right, but of pride and its fall.

Well, of course Obama understands the issue -- as Zakaria told Playboy last spring, "I think he's right about every issue he's been criticized on." But perhaps Zakaria could cut Congress some slack for failing to see how running up "huge deficits" will put this country onto "a path of strict fiscal prudence...and bring our financial house in order."

I believe the folks over at The Democratic Strategist write some of the most insightful analyses of contemporary American politics. Ed Kilgore’s recent post on Obama and Values-Based messaging continues that tradition.

Many conservative pundits and Republican activists criticized President Obama during the campaign –- and even his inaugural address -- because he was “too vague.” His speeches never include enough specifics. Exactly “how” would all this change come about? Instead, his rhetoric usually provided a broad narrative of hope, opportunity and change without getting into the details. This frustrated his political opponents who dismissed him as either a policy lightweight or a charlatan. Turns out he’s neither.

There’s a method to Obama’s vagueness. He speaks to Americans in language most agree with and understand. This gets people to listen. He then pursues more “progressive” (some would say liberal) policies to fill in the details. Kilgore agrees. He writes that the central idea behind values-based messaging is:

that progressives in politics and government can and should build the largest possible audience for our more partisan policy goals and individual programs by embracing broadly-shared values that we often take for granted, but don't articulate, making us vulnerable to the kinds of conservative stereotypes that have been so effective in the past.

Kilgore believes Obama embraces this rhetorical/political strategy better than most.

Whatever you think of this or that speech, Barack Obama is clearly a master of values-based messaging. And the inaugural address did not simply embrace broadly shared values beyond those usually emphasized by progressives; he went out of his way to argue that values often placed in opposition to each other are both reconcilable and essential (e.g., liberty and security, and public-sector activism and "free" markets). This may sound dangerously like Third Wayism to many progressives, but if reflects the fact that big majorities of the American people do in fact embrace such "contradictory" values, and do not want to see them vanquished or ignored.

Like it or not, I believe he’s right. Political elites and the pundit class view the world in left/right ideological terms. Most others do not. The so-called “middle” in American politics -– to the extent one exists -- is far less ideological. Obama recognizes this and it’s one of the keys to his rhetorical and political success. He speaks a broad language most not heavily immersed in policy details or legislative intricacies understand. Republicans and conservatives could learn a lot from this strategy. Read the full post of values-based messaging here.

The elitist chef constituency is very excited about Obama and what he might tell all of us to eat, which strikes me as odd considering there's a fair amount of evidence that he doesn't eat much of anything:

Phrases like "real food" and "farm-to-table" may sound like elitist jargon tossed around at upscale restaurants. But the country's top chefs, several of whom traveled to Washington for Obama's inauguration this week, hope that Obama's flair for good food will encourage people to expand their horizons when it comes to what they eat...

Dan Barber, chef at New York's popular Blue Hill restaurant and a frequent critic of the country's food policy, says a few small gestures from the president and first lady Michelle Obama could accomplish what many of the chefs have been working toward for years.

"I recognize that I'm an elitist guy," says Barber, who cooked a $500-a-plate meal for incoming Obama aides and other guests at a small charity fundraiser the night before the inauguration. "Increasingly raise awareness, but don't do it through chefs like me. ... My advice would be more of a symbolic nature, and to not underestimate what can be done through the White House."

Look out for organic broccoli farm and arugula awareness earmarks in the stimulus.

Barack Obama's administration may be promising the "greatest ethical standard ever administered to an executive branch," and increased transparency over his predecessor, but it seems to be forgoing at least one transparency practice that was routine in the Bush White House— transcripts of the daily press briefing.

It's been four days since Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' first (and widely panned) appearance before the White House press corps, but no transcript, summary, or video of the event has shown up on WhiteHouse.gov. The delay could be forgiven in a less tech-savvy bunch, but given the Obama team's considerable online skill, the omission of the the transcript is clearly intentional.

In contrast, the Bush White House provided a transcript of every daily briefing, searchable and accessible in its own section on their web site. The archive, available via the Wayback Machine but not on the new WhiteHouse.gov, started Jan. 24, 2001. The Clinton White House also provided transcripts of the briefing, according to archives, at least as early as 1999.

The decision to withhold transcripts is not a departure from the Obama Team's online posture during the campaign, and signals that's exactly the posture they intend to take for the next four years. Team Obama got a lot of credit for being an active online presence, which indeed it was, but that presence was built for message control, not openness. (My.BarackObama, the campaign's social networking platform, is a different story, but it was cordoned off from the official campaign material, which was pretty tightly controlled.)

Of the 1,800 YouTube videos at Obama's channel, precious few include questions from town halls and other unscripted events. The channel is a vehicle for Obama's speeches and commercials, not questions or debate.

WhiteHouse.gov looks like it will have a similar philosophy. The "briefing room," which ironically has no information on White House briefings, offers Obama's "Weekly Video Address," photo slideshows, text of executive orders, and press releases on nominees, and a blog updated only with Obama statements and official proclamations. I suppose transcripts could eventually be going here, in the "pool report" section, which I'm reasonably sure didn't exist until this weekend or today, and is not listed as a section of the "briefing room" at the bottom of the page in the index. I wonder if it's a response to complaints about the lack of transcripts, which would explain why it has no content yet.

All old links to White House press briefings will take you only to the bland "briefing room," and do not redirect to archived versions of transcripts. This wasn't really the Obama administration's responsibility, but it's generally considered annoying in Internet circles, and likely impairs a bunch of old, earnest lefty blogger diatribes that used Scott McClellan as inspiration.

It's enough to make you long for the openness and transparency of the Bush administration.

Obama's opportunity: "Over the next three decades, it was modern conservatism, led at the crucial moment by Ronald Reagan, that assumed the task of defending liberty with strength and confidence. Can a revived liberalism, faced with a new set of challenges, now pick up that mantle?"

Step one for getting around earmark ban: Just stop calling them earmarks.

So many reasons to like Kirsten Gillibrand, not least of which is that Maureen Dowd hates her.

Even McCain's not backing Obama's proposed stimulus. Give 'em hell, Mav!

Other moderate Republicans stay mute, signaling a GOP consensus that a "yes" vote might not be good policy or good politics for 2010.

Karl does the campus circuit, facing women's studies majors and conspiracy theorists without fear.

The tax cheat and that guy who pardoned all those criminals and terrorists likely to be confirmed this week.

Reporting from Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are seeking a hard-earned victory. Or, as Obama would call it, a "hard-earned peace."

Do you ever get the feeling David Paterson is just messing with all of us?

Obama: Hey, you know what the struggling auto industry needs? An expensive new mandate!

L.A. Times inching closer to commissioning "Obama as Michelangelo's David" replica.

Pelosi: You know what'll help the economy? Birth control.

25 People Behind the Meltdown. Oddly enough, not every single one of them is Republican, as the Obama campaign would have had you believe.

A Gaza post-mortem as Hamas goes back to plotting the brave resistance and Israel's demise, this time from assorted lean-tos and shanties.

There's a reason I've loved Rick Schroeder since "Silver Spoons:"

Phil Terzian wrote the piece in these pages just a few weeks ago, speculating that Biden's role in the Obama administration would rate slightly higher than "the 'bucket of warm piss' described by John Nance Garner, [but] less than its constitutional status suggests." That would seem to be confirmed by the first "daily guidance email" distributed by the Office of the Vice President to members of the press, who are, no doubt, studying Biden's every move:

The Vice President attended the President's Daily Briefing; the President¹s Bipartisan Congressional Leadership meeting; the President's Daily Economic Briefing; and the President¹s Budget Meeting. In addition, the Vice President and President held their weekly luncheon meeting."

Read Terzian on vice presidents past and present here

Barack Obama was sworn in Tuesday. He ordered Guantanamo closed on Thursday. And today comes news that the United States plans to send 94 Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo back to Yemen -- a nation with a long history of accommodating terrorists.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh made the announcement today at a security conference in Sana'a. "Now, within 60-90 days, 94 Yemeni detainees will be here among us," he said.

The Yemen Observer reports that US Ambassador to Yemen Stephen Seche expressed his hope that the detainees would be able to "make a future for themselves" back in Yemen. Seche made his comments to Stephen Kaufman of America.gov.

“We are going to have to find a way to relocate them at some point. Certainly we would like to be able to bring them back to Yemen and have them integrate themselves back into their own society with their families and make a future for themselves here,” Seche said.

He added: “Except in the case perhaps of some very hard-core elements, we believe that the majority of these detainees can be put productively into a … reintegration program with the goal over time of enabling them to find a way back into Yemeni society without posing a security risk."

And who will make that determination? Let's hope it's not the Yemeni government -- a regime that never quite accepted the "with-us-or-against-us" paradigm of George W. Bush's war on terror and insisted on both. At various times, Yemen has released high-ranking al Qaeda terrorists, including Jamal Ahmed al Badawi, the mastermind of the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000. When they're not releasing terrorists outright, Yemeni prisons seem subject to a surprising number of "escapes," such as this one in February of 2006, when al Badawi and 12 other al Qaeda terrorists.

Saleh's announcement comes on the heels of a New York Times story about Abu Sufyan al-Azdi al-Shahri, who was released from Guantanamo and now serves as a leader of Al Qaeda in Yemen. Al Shahri is now appearing in a new al Qaeda video, along with another terrorist released from Guantanamo Bay.

Are Saleh's comments accurate? Will the Obama administration release 94 Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo to Yemen? Does President Obama share the views of his Ambassador to Yemen that the majority of Yemeni Gitmo detainees should be allowed to return to their native country to "make a future for themselves" back home?

Is this Barack Obama's War on Terror?

Obama better break out those waivers pretty quick.

A group of mostly left-leaning government watchdog groups are asking senators not to confirm Deputy Sec. of Defense nominee William Lynn due to his lobbying ties to defense contractor Raytheon:

Several Washington watchdog groups have ratcheted up pressure on Levin and Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the panel’s ranking Republican, to not confirm Lynn because of Obama’s ethics rules.

In a letter dated Friday to Levin and McCain the groups stressed that Lynn cannot serve “effectively” as the Pentagon’s No. 2 because he was a lobbyist for Raytheon in the last two years. They also said they would oppose a waiver, which they declared would violate Obama’s new “revolving door” rules.

The Project On Government Oversight (POGO), Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Government Accountability Project (GAP) and Public Citizen signed the letter.

The waivers for lobbyists Press Secretary Robert Gibbs suggested yesterday may have to be plentiful, as yet another former lobbyists has been tapped as the No. 2 at Interior. Although, he hasn't lobbied as recently as Lynn:

President Barack Obama plans to name environmental lawyer David Hayes as deputy interior secretary, a position Hayes also held during the last three years of the Clinton administration...

Hayes, who served as the department's No. 2 official under Secretary Bruce Babbitt from 1997 to January 2001, also at one time lobbied the Interior Department on behalf of a California utility.

After leaving government, Hayes joined Latham & Watkins LLP, one of Washington's top lobbying and environmental law firms as head of its environment, land and resources department. Until the end of 2006, he was a registered lobbyist, including on a number of issues before the Interior Department, falling just outside Obama's two-year restriction on lobbyists joining the administration.

This is what happens when you see lobbyists in black and white, and paint them as our evil enemies with your aggressive campaign rhetoric instead of allowing for nuance. Obama's administration will now suffer for his declaration of war on the Axis of Influence.

We were betrayed on Hope Day One. Following in the inauspicious footsteps of Milli Vanilli and Ashlee Simpson before them, the all-star chamber orchestra serenading Barack Obama Tuesday was caught in the act of instrumental lip-syncing.

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman, clarinetist Anthony McGill and pianist Gabriela Montero allegedly performed "Air and Simple Gifts," a version of the traditional Shaker song, "Simple Gifts," composed by John Williams, of "Superman," "Indiana Jones," and "Jaws" fame.

But it turns out the version we heard during the inauguration was actually a recording done two days prior.

“Truly, weather just made it impossible,” Carole Florman, a spokeswoman for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said on Thursday. “No one’s trying to fool anybody. This isn’t a matter of Milli Vanilli,” Ms. Florman added, referring to the pop band that was stripped of a 1989 Grammy because the duo did not sing on their album and lip-synched in concerts.

The Inaugural Committee didn't announce the arrangement, but said it passed word to the television pool that a recording might be used.

“It would have been a disaster if we had done it any other way,” he said Thursday in a telephone interview. “This occasion’s got to be perfect. You can’t have any slip-ups.”

The performers and inauguration planners alike said the recording was absolutely necessary to honor the "magnitude of the occasion." It would also have been a disaster had the recording malfunctioned, leaving Yo Yo and Co. to do an Ashlee Simpson jig while exiting the inaugural stage, ashamed. As Obama would tell the musicians, transparency is paramount.

“We also knew we couldn’t have any technical or instrumental malfunction on that occasion. A broken string was not an option. It was wicked cold," Ma said. "“What we were there for was to really serve the moment.”

I believe the magnitude of the moment and the national interest were also invoked to explain China's having a child model lip-sync their national anthem to the recording of a less-cute little girl's voice this summer at the Beijing Olympics.

Of note, the Marine Band performed without a recording, which I choose to attribute to their superior toughness and not the fact that they're all on brass instruments.

This story will strike most people as very unimportant. Most of those people will be the same ones that have gleefully repeated the "fake turkey" myth as a symbol for George W. Bush's betrayal of the nation. I, for one, will melodramatically mark this day as the day I lost faith in the new Obama administration.

Lately all eyes have been on Washington, but the biggest political surprises tend to happen in the states. That's where insurgent candidates are made, where policy experimentation takes place, and where social and political movements start. So be sure to pay attention to developments in New Jersey, where four candidates are fighting to be the Republican who will challenge Governor Jon Corzine in the fall. The primary is set for the first week of June.

And it's quickly becoming a two-man race. That was the lesson of a nonbinding straw poll held this week in Camden County. Former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie took 77 percent of the vote. Former Bogota mayor Steve Lonegan came in second with 23 percent. The two other candidates, Rick Merkt and Brian Levine, did not receive any votes.

Yes, the poll is nonbinding and there's a while to go before primary day. But Christie is clearly the establishment candidate in the race. He has a strong biography and a moderate record on social issues. He wants to be the next Christie Todd Whitman.

Former mayor Lonegan is an unreconstructed Reaganite who wants to slash spending, cut taxes, and govern as a social conservative. He first won election in 1995, then was reelected with 65 percent of the vote. An impressive feat, considering Democrats have a two-to-one advantage in voter registration in Bogota.

Lonegan also has money. He's qualified for state matching funds and has raised close to a million dollars so far. Christie hasn't disclosed how much he's raised. He'll likely raise a lot, since the state GOP establishment will close ranks behind him. But a well-financed conservative challenger like Lonegan shouldn't be counted out. If he's competitive with Christie in the money race, Lonegan's right-wing bonafides could rally conservative activists -- the folks who actually vote in the primaries -- behind him. It's happened before, most recently when Jersey City mayor Brent Schundler defeated former congressman Bob Franks in 2001. Upsets happen. This is a race to watch.

At Foreign Policy's blog, Marc Lynch notes that a senior Islamist from Egyptian al-Gama'a al-Islamiya (the Egyptian Islamic Group) is calling for a four-month truce between al Qaeda and the United States "to test Barack Obama's pledges to establish a new relationship with the Islamic world and to close Guantanamo."

Lynch then properly notes that while the call for a truce within Islamist circles is interesting, it wont amount to anything from al Qaeda's side as previous denunciations of al Qaeda for their tactics, such as a book written by Sayyid Imam al Sharif, the found of the Egyptian Islamic Group who is better known as Dr. Fadl, have been ridiculed by al Qaeda.

Does this matter? Probably not all that much (although I'm one of those who didn't think Dr. Fadl mattered very much either - still a matter of much debate amongst smart experts, I know). Most dedicated salafi-jihadists probably see Derbala as a sell-out or as a relic, while the mainstream Muslim public only vaguely knows who he is. Al-Qaeda's leadership is no more likely to listen to Derbala than it was to Dr. Fadl. Nor do I think that Obama will be, or should be, the slightest bit interested in a dialogue or ceasefire with al-Qaeda even were one offered. He should instead push ahead on marginalizing al-Qaeda, while refusing to allow its terrorism to exercise a veto over the possibility of new, constructive relations with the vast majority of the Islamic world (including moderate Islamists, I would add).

It should be noted that the Egyptian Islamic Group split in November of 2006 after Mohammad Khalil Hasan al Hakaymah, who was better known as Abu Jihad al Masri, appeared on a videotape with Ayman al Zawahiri and announced the merger with al Qaeda. The Egyptian Islamic Group split largely along the lines of those inside Egypt and those outside of Egypt.

Abu Jihad al Masri took control of the "external" wing, while the Egyptian wing denounced the merger. He became a senior leader within al Qaeda and earned a seat on al Qaeda's top council. He was killed two years later in a U.S. Predator strike on a safe house in North Waziristan in November 2008.

These fissures between Islamist groups are interesting because they force al Qaeda to defend its tactics and strategy, weaken al Qaeda's message in the Islamic world, and give intelligence agencies an opportunity to exploit these weaknesses. But by no means should policymakers succumb to the illusion that those denouncing al Qaeda are in any way allies of the civilized world. These are internal disputes among the Islamists over tactics and strategy.

Ian Bremmer and Nouriel "The Glass is Half Empty" Roubini write:

We enter the new year grappling with the most serious global economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression. The U.S. economy is, at best, halfway through a recession that began in December 2007 and will prove the longest and most severe of the postwar period. Credit losses of close to $3 trillion are leaving the U.S. banking and financial system insolvent. And the credit crunch will persist as households, financial firms and corporations with high debt ratios and solvency problems undergo a sharp deleveraging process.

Worse, all of the world's advanced economies are in recession. Many emerging markets, including China, face the threat of a hard landing. Some fear that these conditions will produce a dangerous spike in inflation, but the greater risk is for a kind of global "stag-deflation": a toxic combination of economic stagnation, recession and falling prices. We're likely to see vulnerable European markets (Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria), key Latin American markets (Argentina, Venezuela, Ecuador and Mexico), Asian countries (Pakistan, Indonesia and South Korea), and countries like Russia, Ukraine and the Baltic states facing severe financial pressure.

And it only gets worse:

Politics will make matters worse, primarily because governments in both the rich and the developing worlds are intervening in their economies more broadly and deeply than at any time since the end of World War II. Policy makers around the world are hard at work crafting stimulus packages filled with subsidies and protections they hope will breathe new life into their domestic economies, and preparing to rewrite the rules and regulations that govern global markets.

Why is this dangerous? At the G-20 summit a few weeks ago, world leaders pledged to address the crisis by coordinating their economic policy responses. That's not going to happen, because politicians design stimulus packages with political motives -- to satisfy the needs of their constituents -- not to address imbalances in the global economy. This is as true in Washington as in Beijing. That's why politics will drive the global economy more directly (and less efficiently) in 2009 than at any point in decades. Its politics that is creating the biggest risk for markets this year.

Read the House stimulus bill, and you aren't likely to feel any better about the shape of things to come. The bill's "tax cuts" are stimulus checks that the Feds will send to you in the mail - just as they did last year, to no substantial macroeconomic effect. A huge chunk of the remaining money is aid to states to help them balance their books. That isn't exactly "stimulus." What's left will go to infrastructure -- good! -- but also to pork projects, government make-work that doesn't increase demand, and subsidies for alternative energies that only further distort price mechanisms and hence the economy. The "tax cuts" aren't stimulative, in other words, and the spending probably isn't great enough to boost demand. Congress needs to go back to the drawing board. Be afraid.

While President Obama is keen on rolling back the Bush administration policies on Guantanamo Bay, black detention sites, and all related legal decisions pertaining to the war, one area he has not backed away from is targeting al Qaeda operatives inside Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal areas. Today, unmanned Predators struck in two locations in North and South Waziristan, killing at least 20 people according to the initial reports. There is not word if senior al Qaeda or Taliban leaders were killed.

The attacks took place just four days after President Obama took office, and one day after he appointed a special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan. U.S. intelligence believes al Qaeda has reconstituted its external operations network in Pakistan's tribal areas, and has struck at these external cells in an effort to disrupt al Qaeda's external network and decapitate the leadership. Today's dual strikes show Obama plans to continue these attacks. While he can politically afford to close Gitmo and the black sites (these decisions will take a long time to implement) he cannot afford to back down from hitting al Qaeda's safe havens. Nearly every terror plot against the West has been hatched from Pakistan's tribal areas, and he would be held responsible for any successful attack against the U..S if he ended the decapitation campaign.

Obama's not the first president to retake the oath or forgo the Bible.

Blagojevich compares his arrest to attack on Pearl Harbor. You will all soon be asked to buy Blago Bonds to help the defense effort.

Rule of thumb: Wait a week after the elation of inauguration before getting an Obama tattoo. The urge will likely pass.

"And Barack was down there one time hosting a meeting and one ran right up his leg. Without battling an eyelash he shook the rat off and continued to talk at the meeting in a completely composed way. Other people would have erupted."

Turbo Tax: Yo, do not blame us for this guy's mistakes.

The men behind your favorite liquors.

"The governor is an idiot."

Inside the NYT's impartial, detached, professional Inaugural Bash for Obama, ZOMG!

Please, let it be true.

Economists agree: We have no idea how to fix this thing.

... That the war on terror is over. The Washington Post's Dana Priest has the major scoop today:

President Obama yesterday eliminated the most controversial tools employed by his predecessor against terrorism suspects. With the stroke of his pen, he effectively declared an end to the "war on terror," as President George W. Bush had defined it, signaling to the world that the reach of the U.S. government in battling its enemies will not be limitless.

Imagine that, a war that ends with a few strokes of the pen. I'm trying to think of other great men who ended wars by signing a few pieces of paper...Lee at Appamattox, Jodl at Rheims, Shigemitsu on board the Missouri. Or maybe what Priest means is that those parts of the war on terror that violated international norms and offended the decency of liberals and Islamists alike will now be replaced by a kinder, gentler, legitimate law enforcement action against suspected terrorists who remain innocent until proven guilty and convicted by a jury of Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Sullivan, Joe Klein, and Jose Padilla (the vote must be unanimous!).

Meanwhile, something that looks an awful lot like Bush's war on terror continues with a drone strike in Pakistan killing seven suspected terrorists, and news that a Gitmo detainee, no doubt innocent until his rage at being unconstitutionally detained boiled over upon release, has since emerged as the emir of al Qaeda in Yemen. Naturally, when Obama releases detainees they will be informed that the war is over, so hopefully this is the last time we'll see this kind of problem.

It's an idea that conservatives should rally behind. The intellectual work for a cut in the payroll tax -- amounting to an instant raise for millions of American workers and relief for employers torn between layoffs and going under -- is well underway. Lawrence Lindsey wrote about it for us here. Lindsey's American Enterprise Institute colleague John H. Makin has a longer paper here.

When you study the current congressional plan closely, you quickly realize it's unlikely to have a major stimulative effect on the economy and will probably lead to a larger national debt without real investment in national infrastructure and growth in aggregate demand. Which means it's probably going to lead Obama into the stimulus trap.

The problem is that Republicans are out of power and conservatives seem to have a disposition toward pouting. But that needn't be the case. They could rally behind an alternative stimulus bill that permanently cuts the payroll tax and combines spending on road- and bridge-building with repairing and expanding the American military. This would put them on the side of the American worker and the American soldier. Sounds like a good place to be as the age of Obama begins.

Robert P. George on Roe v. Wade's 36th anniversary: The Struggle for Our Nation's Soul.

Murtha earmark beneficiary raided.

Sad news for journalism: Evans-Novak Political Report to print its last issue next week.

The trashiest inauguration evah.

A baby we can believe in:

Posted by John McCormack at 09:29 PM
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Politico reports:

President Obama made a surprise visit to the White House press corps Thursday night, but got agitated when he was faced with a substantive question.

Asked how he could reconcile a strict ban on lobbyists in his administration with a Deputy Defense Secretary nominee who lobbied for Raytheon, Obama interrupted with a knowing smile on his face.

"Ahh, see," he said, "I came down here to visit. See this is what happens. I can't end up visiting with you guys and shaking hands if I'm going to get grilled every time I come down here."

Pressed further by the Politico reporter about his Pentagon nominee, William J. Lynn III, Obama turned more serious, putting his hand on the reporter's shoulder and staring him in the eye.

"Alright, come on" he said, with obvious irritation in his voice. "We will be having a press conference at which time you can feel free to [ask] questions. Right now, I just wanted to say hello and introduce myself to you guys - that's all I was trying to do."

Update: Allahpundit has the video.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that when the Indian government discovered that the Obama administration planned to appoint Richard Holbrooke special envoy for Afghanistan-Pakistan-India, they swung into action and lobbied to have India excluded from his purview. And they succeeded. Holbrooke's account officially does not include India.

Yesterday, Joe Biden took a shot at Chief Justice John Roberts for transposing the words of the oath of office on Inauguration Day. He should have held his fire.

Today, he flubbed the oath while administering it to Colorado Sen. Michael Bennett:

But who can blame ol' Joe? He's never been comfortable with any situation that requires delivering under 2,000 words at a time.

Could Foreign Policy's Shadow Government blog get any better? Yes it can! Dan Twining, who's contributed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD in the past, has joined an already impressive group and posts today on "China's National Defense in 2008," a white paper quietly issued by the Chicoms during the inauguration. Twining says the paper "is a useful reminder that China’s is the only military in the world explicitly training and equipping to fight the United States." Read the whole thing.

In other news at FP, Stephen Walt wrote his first blog post today not obsessing over Israel and the Jews.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the suspicious case of OneUnited Bank, which received a TARP bailout thanks to Barney Frank, despite running afoul of state and federal regulators due to shady investing and lending practices, as well as the perks it granted to senior executives. The case is an object lesson on the opportunities that massive bills like TARP create for payoffs by those in power, and the power to hide those payoffs. First, the background:

Troubled OneUnited Bank in Boston didn't look much like a candidate for aid from the Treasury Department's bank bailout fund last fall...

Nonetheless, in December OneUnited got a $12 million injection from the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. One apparent factor: the intercession of Rep. Barney Frank, the powerful head of the House Financial Services Committee.

Mr. Frank, by his own account, wrote into the TARP bill a provision specifically aimed at helping this particular home-state bank. And later, he acknowledges, he spoke to regulators urging that OneUnited be considered for a cash injection.

The Journal later described the provision Frank inserted into the bill to help UnitedOne. Frank apparently recognized that it would prompt unpleasant ethical questions if he simply earmarked money for UnitedOne, so instead he created a pool that would benefit the bank without having to name it:

Mr. Frank says that in order to protect OneUnited bank, he inserted into the bill a provision to give special consideration to banks that had less than $1 billion of assets, had been well-capitalized as of June 30, served low- and moderate-income areas, and had taken a capital hit in the federal seizure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Frank saw fit to provide this legup to OneUnited despite it running afoul of federal regulators:

The allegations against the bank included "operating without effective underwriting standards and practices," "operating without an effective loan documentation program" and "engaging in speculative investment practices."

The action also alleged excessive executive compensation. The FDIC ordered OneUnited to "sell all bank-owned automobiles," and to require that executives reimburse the company for any vehicles that had been purchased. The Boston Business Journal reported in November that the bank owns a 2008 Porsche sport-utility vehicle that is registered at the address of OneUnited CEO Kevin Cohee.

The FDIC also ordered the bank to stop paying for a beachfront house in Santa Monica that, according to the Boston Business Journal, was purchased for more than $6 million in early 2007 by a group that included Cohee and his wife Teri Williams, the bank's president.

The story would not be complete without a reminder of where OneUnited puts its political support:

The moves left OneUnited's capital badly depleted. A measure called "Tier 1 risk-based capital" equaled only 1.88% of assets at the bank, versus a desired level of about 6%. A OneUnited lawyer, Robert Cooper, says he called Rep. Frank and Rep. Maxine Waters of California, both Democrats, to complain that the Treasury's move had hurt the bank.

Rep. Waters heads the House Financial Services subcommittee on housing, and until last spring her husband, Sidney Williams, was a OneUnited director. Rep. Frank, besides heading the Financial Services Committee, has longstanding ties to OneUnited, and recalls having had a deposit account at a predecessor bank in the 1960s.

But Frank and Waters are not the bank's only friends in Congress. Members of the Board of OneUnited have been extremely generous to many Democratic candidates over the years. Just look here, here and here for examples.

Right now Congress is considering a stimulus package likely to grow to $1 trillion before the process is over, and there's talk of a multi-trillion TARP II in the near future. Expect hundreds more such tales if those measures pass.

This provocative blog from Harvard economist Edward Glaeser will be the most interesting thing you read all day. A taste:

[S]kepticism about vast public works does not necessarily lead towards Alf Landon-like antipathy towards stimulus, or towards tax cuts for big businesses and the wealthy. A quite plausible alternative, which is partially present in the president-elect’s proposal, is for the fiscal stimulus to primarily take the form of payroll tax cuts for poor and middle-income Americans. Those are, after all, the people who are most likely to spend the money quickly.

Targeted tax aid for poorer Americans would be far more egalitarian than most kinds of infrastructure spending, like broadband technology. Sensible infrastructure projects wouldn’t disproportionately employ the least-skilled Americans. Forgoing the payroll tax for households earning less than $75,000 a year is surer progressivism than bridge-building.

A payroll tax cut would be, in effect, an instant raise for millions of Americans. And since the cut would not be a one-time rebate - let's hope it would be permanent - it is more likely to change behavior and encourage folks to spend and thus increase demand. What's not to like?

(A tip of the hat to Ross Douthat.)

Reuters reports:

President Barack Obama's choice to head the CIA declined on Thursday to call waterboarding "torture," only days after his attorney general nominee condemned the interrogation practice as precisely that.

Retired Adm. Dennis Blair replied cautiously when pressed on the waterboarding question at a hearing on his nomination to be director of national intelligence....

"There will be no waterboarding on my watch. There will be no torture on my watch," Blair said, refusing to go further.

Note that Blair has been nominated for the job of DNI, not head of the CIA. At CIA Obama has nominated Leon Panetta, whose righteous indignation over torture extends only as far as American sovereignty. Panetta was more than happy to allow our Egyptian "allies" to use such coercive measures when he was Clinton's chief of staff and signing off on that administration's rendition program.

This isn't mere semantics -- serious people understand that there are consequences to turning campaign rhetoric into policy, and that sometimes bad things need to be done in order to ensure a good outcome. In this case Blair's language was calibrated to avoid accusing the people who will soon work for him of war crimes, but if he thought what they did was criminal than why wouldn't he say it? Lofty principles won't keep this country safe, contra Robert Gibbs, but perhaps the left will refuse to accept this "false choice" and force Obama to throw Blair under the bus.

Norm Coleman came to Washington, D.C., yesterday to talk with colleagues and reporters about his efforts to hold onto his Senate seat in an election contest--a legal proceeding, set to kick off January 26, in which a three-judge panel will determine which candidate got the most votes. "I think our chances of winning are better than pulling an inside straight,” Coleman told me at the beginning of an interview at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "We have a good shot at this thing."

His reference to an "inside straight" was implicit criticism of my assessment of his odds of overtaking Al Franken's 225 vote lead in an election contest. While the contest involves a number of different disputes over how votes were counted, Coleman believes that if two issues are resolved in his favor, he'll overcome Franken's lead and be re-elected. First, Coleman believes that Franken's lead will be cut down to somewhere between 110 and 125 votes if double-counted votes are excluded from the count.

Second, Coleman believes that if 5,000 rejected absentee ballots are included in the final count, he'll erase the rest of Franken's lead.

About 12,000 absentee ballots were rejected and went uncounted on Election Day, but both campaigns and local election officials have already identified as improperly rejected and counted about about 950 of those absentee ballots. Franken ran up a surprising 20 point margin among these 950 ballots, which came from counties where Franken was only favored slightly.

"We’ve identified over 5,000 ballots we think ... based on the standard we admitted these 950 something, that we think will be entered," he said. “Can you make up 115 votes? I gotta believe you can.”

Coleman's case for including these 5,000 rejected ballots rests on an equal protection argument. There have been reports that different counties used different standards to count these 950 absentee ballots. A senior Coleman campaign adviser tells me that, for example, in some counties some absentee ballots lacking a signature on the envelope--which is required by Minnesota law--were counted. Since these votes have already been mixed into the count, the only way to have a uniform standard is to count other ballots that lacked a signature on the back of the ballot envelope as well.

So are Coleman's chances of winning better than I previously reported? Maybe. Even if thousands of more ballots are included in the final count, there's no way to know if they'll break in Coleman's favor. And we'll first have to see if Coleman's equal protection argument passes muster. He may have his work cut out for him in front of three judges who were selected by a liberal Minnesota supreme court justice. Coleman declined to say whether he would be open to appealing the three judge panel's ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. "I'm firmly convinced if we get a fair resolution of the handling of absentee ballots and a fair resolution to the double counting, then there's no need to bring it to a higher level," he said.

Coleman says he hopes to get the election contest “done quickly, hopefully in the next month.” In the meantime, he's taken up work as a consultant for the Republican Jewish Coalition to pay the bills. He was adamant that he would only do "policy-related" work "not lobbying". He's also been busy tying up loose ends on his constituent cases. Though Majority Leader Harry Reid had Coleman's staff locked out of Senate offices a few weeks ago, he's now given them until February 4 to vacate.

"We have to pack up an office and place it somewhere with the hope and expectation that we're going to unpack it," Coleman said. "We're in this purgatory, this in between place right now."

Josh Rogin reports:

President Obama’s new lobbying rules are fueling the concerns of senators from both parties regarding the nomination of William Lynn to become deputy defense secretary.

Obama signed an executive order Wednesday strengthening the restrictions on lobbyists and former lobbyists entering his administration.

“If you are a lobbyist entering my administration, you will not be able to work on matters you lobbied on, or in the agencies you lobbied, during the previous two years,” Obama said in a press conference.

Lynn lobbied on behalf of defense contractor Raytheon Co. until last year and now stands to be in a position to make decisions on a plethora of the defense giant’s programs as the new manager of the Pentagon.

After vilifying lobbyists during the campaign, Obama is finding out how difficult it is to manage the government without their help. The most absurd part of this is that Obama, a man who puts such great emphasis on expertise as to have no less than 300 foreign policy advisers, has created a system that allows lobbyists in his administration but only in those fields in which they have no experience and no expertise. As Harry Reid said this Tuesday, "People should understand that lobbyists, per se, are someone's father, mother, son, daughter." Or in this case, someone's nominee.

After meeting with retired generals in the White House today, President Obama signed three executive orders.

The first order requires that Gitmo be shut down within a year, grants detainees rights under the Geneva Conventions, and sets up a review to determine whether detainees may be transferred to other countries. If they cannot be transferred, another review will determine the venue in which they may be prosecuted. The desire is to prosecute them in federal court or under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but military commissions remain on the table.

The second executive order requires a special task force co-chaired by the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense to review detainee policy and file a report in 180 days.

The third order requires all U.S. agencies to follow the Army Field Manual for interrogations, though the field manual guidelines will be reviewed by another task force. The CIA must also close any prisons it is operating.

Despite signing an executive order yesterday that would prevent lobbyists in his administration from working in the areas for which they lobbied, his Deputy Secretary of Defense nominee most recently lobbied for one of the biggest defense contractors in the U.S.— Raytheon.

The obvious contradiction is bothering even Democrats overseeing his nomination:

“I have no reason to impugn Mr. Lynn’s integrity, but it’s a problem,” said Claire McCaskill , a Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “You can’t just recuse yourself from huge programs at the Pentagon if you’re going to do that job.”

Following his Jan. 15 confirmation hearing, McCaskill, of Missouri, said she was considering placing a hold on Lynn’s nomination because she doubts Lynn can separate his recent work on behalf of Raytheon from the job of chief operating officer at the Pentagon.

Senate Republicans, who have offered some push-back on other troubled nominees like Tim Geithner and Hillary Clinton, are gearing up once again to ask strongly-worded questions:

Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the No. 2 Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said he wants clarification from the administration on how the Lynn appointment fits into the new rules.

“While I announced my support for Mr. Lynn’s nomination, the announcement of the new ethics executive order is puzzling,” Inhofe said.

Surely Obama saw this coming down the pike, and will offer some sort of convoluted answer about lobbyists that includes the phrase, "I have consistently said" preceding a statement that he most certainly has not consistently said.

Or, he might just send his press secretary out to say, "Rules are made to be broken, people."

"Even the toughest rules require reasonable exceptions," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. "Our waiver provisions are designed to allow uniquely qualified individuals like Bill Corr and Bill Lynn to serve the public interest in these critical times."

Update: Senate Democrats are taking Obama's new rules to heart even if he's not. Carl Levin was on the Hill today wondering whether Bill Lynn's nomination will get through Obama's new rules:

Given the President’s new stricter rules requiring his appointees to recuse themselves from matters or issues on which they have lobbied, the Senate Armed Services Committee will need further information before proceeding with the nomination of William J. Lynn III to be Deputy Secretary of Defense.

The committee will await the administration’s assessment as to whether the new rules will preclude Mr. Lynn, who was a registered lobbyist for a defense contractor, from participating in key Department of Defense decisions, and if so, whether a waiver will be forthcoming and what the scope of the waiver will be.

Meanwhile, Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters in his first White House press briefing that there will be a "waiver process" set up for lobbyists the Obama team thinks are A-OK to serve their country, like Lynn.

Approximately 24 hours after voicing deviationist thoughts about the importance of President Obama's inauguration, Venus Williams lost to Carla Suarez Navarro, an unseeded Spaniard at the Australian Open.

Let this serve as notice. The Great Eye is watching. Always watching.

Is Obama the only Democrat in town who doesn't want to investigate the Bush administration for war crimes?

And note that Think Progress files this under "Social and Economic Justice." How long until the left starts demanding that detainees get free health care and a generous unemployment benefit to ease the transition back into the [your] community.

According to one Palestinian doctor:

Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera reported Thursday that a doctor working in Gaza's Shifa Hospital claimed that Hamas has intentionally inflated the number of casualties resulting from Israel's Operation Cast Lead.

"The number of deceased stands at no more than 500 to 600. Most of them are youths between the ages of 17 to 23 who were recruited to the ranks of Hamas, who sent them to the slaughter," according to the newspaper article.

The IDF pegs the casualty figure at twice that, which might indicate the Israeli focus on constantly updating the body count has itself caused an inflation in the number. The U.S. military has gone back and forth on this issue in Iraq, but for the most part avoids reporting on enemy casualties except in the case of more conventional operations like the battle with the Mahdi militia in Basra and Sadr City last year. The IDF has a much better view of the entire battlefield than one doctor, but given wide-spread public support for the operation in Israel, it certainly possible that the IDF was under some pressure create an impression of more, not less, destruction.

Either way, it's obvious the IDF went to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties in an urban environment that made such efforts extremely difficult.

The election of President Barack Obama led many to believe that the Europeans would change their tune on Afghanistan and beef up the NATO forces deployed there. Just one day after President Obama’s inauguration, both France and Germany, Europe’s two largest powers, have signaled that no additional troops are in the cards:

France's defence minister said Wednesday said Paris had no plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, despite plans by US President Barack Obama to step up the pressure on a resurgent Taliban.
"As far as France is concerned, we have made the necessary efforts and there is no question, for now, of considering extra reinforcements," Defence Minister Herve Morin told French radio Europe 1.

And:

Germany is among European nations bracing for demands from the new US administration that they do more in Afghanistan, but the Germans are reluctant to send more troops and believe talks on a new strategy for stabilizing the country are the main priority.

Chancellor Merkel has said that she would not accede to any request from the new US administration to send troops to southern Afghanistan, the scene of much of the heavy fighting against Taliban insurgents. "Wherever Germany commits itself, a wholeness of military and civilian assistance should be visible," she said.

NATO isn’t meeting its obligations to send police trainers to Afghanistan, and those who are there often have "no transport, no armoured vehicles and no money," one NATO official complained to Reuters. Experts believe that there is little chance of NATO significantly increasing troop levels. The result may lead to the fracturing of NATO.

But Michael O'Hanlon of Washington's Brookings Institution think tank saw little hope for more than a 10 percent increase in European troop numbers, and said that would not go down well the other side of the Atlantic.

"The European rationale for why it's hard to do more will not be met with a great deal of American sympathy -- and will especially fail to impress American voters, who will be disappointed that Obama's style of leadership does not elicit more genuine burden-sharing," he said.

Bob Jackson of London's Chatham House think tank said that in turn could lead to fresh U.S. disillusionment with NATO. "If the Germans, the Spanish, the Italians, the French aren't going to find a cooperative strategy with the United States, what's the point of keeping NATO? The United States will just go it alone," he said.

Despite President Obama’s popularity in Europe and particularly among the political elites, European governments will continue to act in their own self interests. President Obama has declared Afghanistan the central front against al Qaeda, and without NATO assistance, U.S. troops will be left manning the bulk of the front, just as they did in Iraq. The vast majority of NATO countries have tired of the Afghan mission, and no amount of hope will change that.

Isn't it nice to know that the WaPo can still surprise you with its bias after all these years?

Stimulus could do some good, but won't actually stimulate.

The re-oath.

What will become of the 50-state strategy?

Sizing up Obama's executive orders.

"It is so amazing to see what the daughter of a son of a mill worker can achieve in the dawning Age of Obama!"

Ha: TV audience for Obama's inauguration couldn't top Reagan's audience in 1981.

Caroline Kennedy shows uncharacteristic self-awareness for a Kennedy, dropping out of her embarrassing bid for Hillary Clinton's senate seat.

Video: Obama economic adviser on making sure stimulus money doesn't go to white, male construction workers.

"It sure as hell helps to be on MSNBC today," he said. "Let's talk straight here: This is the network that has opened its heart to change."

Clinton, confirmed.

Geithner: Yeah, sorry about that tax cheat stuff...

Even the coverage of the Australian Open was wall-to-wall Obama talk yesterday, with stalwarts such as Darin Cahill, Mary Carillo, and James Blake going on and on and on and on about the 44th American president. The one person trying to opt out of the chatter? Venus Williams. Some excerpts from her post-match press conference, where the media tried desperately to get her to gush about Obama and Venus, who's a pretty gracious presence, tried desperately to change the subject:

Q. There's a big event happening in a few hours back home. Does your mind wander back there with the inauguration? Does that inspire you at all?

VENUS WILLIAMS: Yeah, you know, I feel so off. I'm firmly in Australia time. Today is Wednesday? What is today?

Q. Tuesday.

VENUS WILLIAMS: Yeah, today is Tuesday. Uhm, I don't know really what's happening at home. I don't watch TV. I'm a book reader and stuff, so...

Q. Would you watch it at 3 a.m.?

VENUS WILLIAMS: I have a doubles match tomorrow. I really am not political at all. I don't take any political sides. But I obey laws, yes.

Q. Politics aside, does it inspire you with the inauguration and with president‑elect Barack Obama?

VENUS WILLIAMS: Can you be more specific, please?

Q. With him being elected as President, does that inspire you in terms of your heritage? Serena mentioned it did inspire her.

VENUS WILLIAMS: I think it's exciting that in America we can have a President ‑‑ or that we can have diversity. We've had a long history in America of, you know, in the past racial strife. My parents grew up in the South, things like that. So it is nice to see that diversity, I guess.

Q. Were you surprised that he had such a broad‑based appeal beyond the African American community?

VENUS WILLIAMS: I think he was the best candidate. So I'm happy that the best candidate was elected, so...

But I really am not a political expert. I know zero. Like I know a lot about tennis, so if you ask me about tennis, I can just go toe‑to‑toe with you [smiling].

How refreshing is that? Go Venus.

From White House counsel Greg Craig:

"We believe that the oath of office was administered effectively and that the President was sworn in appropriately yesterday. But the oath appears in the Constitution itself. And out of an abundance of caution, because there was one word out of sequence, Chief Justice Roberts administered the oath a second time."

According to the pool report, Roberts re-administered the oath to Obama in the map room at 7:35 p.m.

Just for the record, Obama jumped in too soon yesterday--after Roberts said "I, Barack Hussein Obama" instead of waiting until the chief justice completed the full line: "I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear". Then Roberts misplaces the word "faithfully" in the next line and there's some more confusion.

It really isn't that big of a deal, but I imagine if George W. Bush had done exactly what Obama did the news coverage of this gaffe would have been relentless. Thankfully, the media have been able to rise above such pettiness on this occasion, at least for a Democratic president.

Obama suspends Gitmo hearings and will issue executive orders on torture, Gitmo, and detainees tomorrow.

Jules Crittenden on the Obama swoon: inaugural keepsake edition.

Noemie Emery on Bush's legacy.

Juan Williams: Judge Obama on performance alone.

Report: North Korean officials claim to have enough plutonium to produce five nuclear bombs.

Gingrich: Oppose Geithner.

Hillary is confirmed 94 to 2.

New DNC chairman Tim Kaine pledges a permanent 50 state campaign.

Change:

On the campaign trail, Obama repeatedly relied on the same basic formulation when discussing his plans for Iraq. Obama would declare his intent to "to end this war responsibly." Sometimes he'd say he was going "to end this war responsibly and deliberately, but decisively," but the point was the same -- above all else, the goal was to end the war. So it's interesting that Obama changed that formulation for his inaugural speech. From the text of yesterday's speech:

We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan.

I've already quibbled with Obama's call to to achieve peace in Afghanistan -- shouldn't our goal be plainly stated as victory? -- but I missed the evolution of his language on Iraq the first time I heard it. As Jonathan Last noted below, Obama did not shy away from using campaign rhetoric in his address. He talked about Americans "choosing hope over fear," and he repeated his criticism of the "worn-out [read conservative] dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics." So why did he not just repeat his call to end this war responsibly?

Even if Obama's views on Iraq haven't changed -- despite the end of the campaign and the overwhelming success of the surge (and there's reason to think they have) -- his language must. Obama is now the commander in chief, and he will be leading the men and women who remain in Iraq whether they are there for 16 months or 36 months. Liberals are fond of saying you can support the troops without supporting their mission, but their commander doesn't have that luxury. Obama's goal is no longer simply to end the war, but to "responsibly leave Iraq to its people." Doing so may not allow him to adhere to a hard and fast time-line, but it will allow the U.S. troops who remain in Iraq to believe they have a mission worth fighting for.

Let's just say President Obama's sense of irony is not nearly as well-developed as his sense of self-confidence:

President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed a sweeping set of executive orders and directives he said would usher in “a new era of openness,” freezing the salaries of senior aides and taking a number of steps to reduce the role of lobbyists in his administration.

Appearing at the White House, Obama announced a ban on gifts to members of the administration and said those who serve under him will be barred from “attempting to influence your colleagues” for two years after leaving. Lobbyists who take jobs in the administration will not be able to work on the areas in which they lobbied or for the agency they lobbied for the past two years, and after leaving government will be prevented from lobbying the administration for as long as Obama remains president.

Administration officials will also be required to receive a new “ethics briefing” — starting with Obama, who received the briefing last week...

The event announcing the new openness was closed to all reporters except the handful who are in the White House pool. The event was televised, though.

It's reminiscent of the lesson Chicago columnist Carol Marin has learned since Obama took the reins, his 2007 promise to "not just call on my four favorite reporters" notwithstanding:

The press corps, most of us, don't even bother raising our hands any more to ask questions because Obama always has before him a list of correspondents who've been advised they will be called upon that day.

But Obama's treatment of the press aside, which hasn't been as reciprocally slobbering as the press corps would like, what of the new transparency?

He's been steadily backing away from his campaign promises that lobbyists "won't find a job in my White House" and amending his early 2008 promise to "tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over." It's a far cry from the days when he was regaling the crowds at Daily Kos convention by slamming Hillary Clinton for insinuating that lobbyists are people, too.

Today's promise to keep lobbyists working for him from working in the areas for which they lobbied must be an unsatisfying culmination for those hoping for a lobbyist-free administration, especially given that Obama's not even delivering that.

His Deputy Secretary for Health and Human Services William Corr lobbied on health issues before he got the slot in the Obama administration:

William Corr, whose name Mr. Obama put forward this morning to be deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, was, until September 2008, a federal lobbyist with the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, lobbying Congress unsuccessfully to require the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco.

The group also supports higher cigarette taxes, smoke-free workplaces, and other initiatives opposed by the tobacco industry.

Obama's Deputy Secretary of Defense was most recently a, wait for it, defense lobbyist:

President-elect Barack Obama, who campaigned on lessening the influence of lobbyists in government, has chosen a defense expert who is currently a vice president and lobbyist for one of the country's biggest defense contractors to be his deputy secretary of defense...

Lynn is currently a senior vice president at Raytheon, which has billions of dollars in Defense Department contracts and is the maker of the Army's Patriot Missile system and the Tomahawk missile used by the Navy. The company is also developing a global positioning satellite communication system with the Air Force.

As deputy secretary, Lynn would be involved in the process of budgeting and acquisitions, in addition to running the day-to-day operations of the Defense Department.

But no worries. As Harry Reid informed us this week: Lobbyists are people, too, even in the Obama administraion.

"People should understand that lobbyists, per se, are someone's father, mother, son, daughter," said Reid. "They work for a living." The Democratic leader's sons and a son-in-law have worked as lobbyists.

If you count the treatment of reporters and lobbyists, that's two broken promises down, only 508 to go.

Among the first “directives” of this very young presidency is one Barack Obama has given himself. From a press release issued earlier today:

I will also hold myself as President to a new standard of openness. Going forward, anytime the American people want to know something that I or a former President wants to withhold, we will have to consult with the Attorney General and the White House Counsel, whose business it is to ensure compliance with the rule of law. Information will not be withheld just because I say so. It will be withheld because a separate authority believes my request is well grounded in the Constitution.

This is a curious directive. As he has before, Obama here seems to be trying to draw a contrast with his predecessor, George W. Bush. But if there were occasions on which Bush failed to consult with White House or Justice Department lawyers on claims of privilege, they don’t come to mind. I checked with a lawyer who worked for Bush in the White House Counsel’s office who could not recall any either.

Maybe Obama’s real complaint is not with Bush but with Bush’s lawyers. Maybe he thinks they approved claims that were not “well grounded in the Constitution.”

A question Obama does not address is what happens if, following his own directive, his Attorney General says “no” to a request but his White House Counsel says “yes.” Someone has to be the decider, if I may use that word, and it would have to be Obama, who, after all, is the president.

Without making value judgments one way or another, one is struck by how backward-looking and partisan President Obama's inaugural speech was. All inaugurals are principally forward-looking (you can peruse the entire oeuvre here) and Obama's was no exception. But what was exceptional was that nearly every forward-looking optic in Obama's speech was framed with an implicit criticism of the recent past.

Looking at other recent party-transition inaugurals (Reagan 1981, Clinton 1993, and George W. Bush 2001) makes clear how different Obama's was. Inaugurals follow a certain form: Reagan, Clinton, and Bush all used the words "renew" or "renewal" in their speeches; all three spoke about challenges facing the country and all three looked to the bright future which their administrations hoped to bring about. But they were also all careful not to speak ill of the administration which preceded them.

President Reagan's first inaugural began darkly, warning that the United States was "confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions." But Reagan didn't place any specific blame for this affliction, saying that "The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades." The only time he came close to swiping at his predecessor was saying that "We are not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline."

For his part, President Clinton warned that the economy was "weakened by business failures, stagnant wages, increasing inequality, and deep divisions among our people." He spoke elliptically about the failures which had led to this, but couched it the first-person plural: "We know we have to face hard truths and take strong steps. But we have not done so. Instead, we have drifted, and that drifting has eroded our resources, fractured our economy, and shaken our confidence." The closest Clinton came to bashing the Reagan/Bush years was saying that "we pledge an end to the era of deadlock and drift."

President Bush had not a single bad thing to say about the Clinton years in his first inaugural. The gloomiest note he sounded was that "While many of our citizens prosper, others doubt the promise, even the justice, of our own country. The ambitions of some Americans are limited by failing schools and hidden prejudice and the circumstances of their birth. And sometimes our differences run so deep, it seems we share a continent, but not a country." Bush proposed all sorts of forward-looking precepts for the way his administration would engage the world, but he never looked backwards for blame.

President Obama, on the other hand, rarely looked forward except in the context of looking back: "Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age." Looking to explain the economic crisis, Obama said that "our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions—that time has surely passed."

Obama used a familiar construct from his campaign speeches (talking about his politics of "hope" versus the Bush/Rove "politics of fear"), saying, "On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord."

Obama then seemed to attack conservatism itself, saying, "On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics." (It seems reasonable to assume that the "dogmas" Obama refers to were conservative dogmas, since he frequently accused conservatives of adhering to "worn" "dogmas" over the course of the campaign. During the debate on the economy, for instance, Obama said of McCain's recovery plan: "It's little more than the worn dogma that says we should give more to those at the top and hope their good fortune trickles down to the many who are hard-working.")

Three moments seemed to be pure critiques of Bush policies. First, Obama promised that "We will restore science to its rightful place . . ." Later he said that "[W]e reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." And finally, he said that "Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please."

Whatever its other merits, President Obama's speech was more partisan than recent inaugurals, more interested in locating blame for current problems and drawing sharp distinctions between his ambitions and the works of his predecessors. In many ways, it resembled a campaign speech.

At the new White House website, Obama lays out his agenda for Iraq. In addition to assuring the American people that he "had the judgment and courage to speak out against going to war" (unlike the cowardly fool Joe Biden), Obama promises a responsible withdrawal, a 'diplomatic surge,' a new effort to assist refugees, and then this odd item:

The Status-of-Forces Agreement

Obama and Biden believe it is vital that a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) be reached so our troops have the legal protections and immunities they need. Any SOFA should be subject to Congressional review to ensure it has bipartisan support here at home.

It's possible that the Obama team didn't have an Iraq expert proof this portion of the website before it went live, but our new administration is so competent, and so web savvy, we should assume this isn't just a screwup. So what to make of it?

The Bush administration did, following the election, sign a new status of forces agreement with the Iraqi government. The deal took nearly a year of wrangling with the Iraqi leadership, who faced strong domestic opposition to the deal, and ultimately required the Bush administration to accept a fixed time-line for withdrawal (all U.S. forces must leave Iraq by the end of 2011). The Bush administration and General Petraeus were also satisfied that the agreement provided all necessary legal protections and immunities for U.S. forces. Moreover, the left was largely pleased with the new agreement. Marc Lynch recently called it "Bush's finest moment on Iraq."

So does President Obama plan to renegotiate the agreement and submit it to Congress "to ensure bipartisan support here at home"? And will he expect the Iraqis to do the same, perhaps after the coming elections?

I'm with Jonah Goldberg. He writes:

I am proud of and excited by the fact that we have inaugurated the first black president of the United States. He wasn’t my first choice, but he is nonetheless my president. And if ever there were a wonderful consolation prize in politics, shattering the race barrier in the White House is surely it.

Conservatives who try too hard to belittle the importance of this milestone are mistaken on several fronts. First, this is simply a wonderful—and wonderfully American—story. Any political movement that is joyless about what this represents risks succumbing to bitter political crankery.

He's right. I went to the Inauguration yesterday to be a part of that history and I'm glad I made the effort.

Two things stood out.

As I walked from the TWS offices to Capitol, I had to pass through Washington's infamous 3rd Street tunnel -- where commuters headed to their homes in the District, Maryland and Virginia sometimes wait for hours in traffic before they truly begin their trip home. Yesterday, the tunnel was only open to pedestrians and emergency vehicles. When I entered at about 8:30am, it was nearly full -- a sea of people mostly headed to the south side of the US Capitol. Among the crowd were three black males -- and given the similarity of their looks, I took them to be three generations of the same family.

I saw a grandfather old enough to have experienced the sting of real discrimination, a father old enough to know it and a grandson perhaps not even old enough to understand it. I caught only snippets of their conversation -- from everyday chatter about the mundane to what sounded like a more meaningful discussion of race. Really, though, I didn't need to hear what they were saying. Just their presence -- on this, for this occasion -- was deeply moving.

So, too, was the view I had about two hours later. My seat was #45 in the Section Two (green) on the West Front of the Capitol. I was directly behind the military band -- so close that I could read their sheet music -- and maybe forty feet from the podium. (And perhaps forty rows in front of Oprah Winfrey, who obviously didn't know the right people.) Given all that was in front of me -- the band, the podium, row after row of congressmen and senators, the Capitol itself -- it was ten minutes before I turned around. The view of the mall from the Capitol -- which really is on a hill -- was breathtaking. It certainly felt like a once-in-a-lifetime moment.

Sadly, the muffled boos and not-so-muffled songs mocking George W. Bush, his family and his team -- offered a quick reminder that for all of the lofty rhetoric and for all of the meaningful scenes that passed our way yesterday, there is and always will be parts of our political world that lack class and even basic decency. Obama's speech, too, took some political shots at his predecessors that were unnecessary and unworthy of the occasion.

I am probably a bit less sanguine than Jonah about what this might mean for racial politics. Even today we hear complaints that Obama's cabinet is not diverse enough. We hear that Hispanic interest groups wanted a more high-profile spot than Commerce Secretary for Bill Richardson before he dropped out and there is talk that Obama must nominate another Hispanic to replace him. Two years ago, members of the Congressional Black Caucus effectively banned newly-elected representative Steve Cohen from joining their ranks because he is white. And just three years ago, and despite his many public promises to move America beyond race, Obama himself cut a radio ad for the campaign to preserve racial preferences in Michigan.

Obama's inauguration is a powerful symbol in a debate where symbols can be very important. But if he truly wants to govern as a post-racial president, he'll need to do things that won't please some elements of his base.

A new Congressional Budget Office report suggests Obama's proposed, gianormous stimulus plan is really just a proposed, gianormous spending plan:

Less than half the money dedicated to highways, school construction and other infrastructure projects in a massive economic stimulus package unveiled by House Democrats is likely to be spent within the next two years, according to congressional budget analysts, meaning most of the spending would come too late to lift the nation out of recession.

Congressional Democrats defend the plan by saying the CBO report doesn't examine elements of the plan that would go into action more quickly, such as "$275 billion in tax cuts and nearly $200 billion for jobless benefits, health care for the poor and other entitlement programs," which Dems say will serve to jolt the economy.

"The new CBO report does not take into account the fastest spending provisions in the bill, leaving the false impression that the overall spend-out rates are slower than they actually are," said Brendan Daly, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

But CBO reports are a force to be reckoned with:

Still, the report from the CBO, the nonpartisan arbiter of congressional spending measures, offers a stark assessment of some of the Democrats' top priorities. For example, of $30 billion in highway spending, less than $4 billion would occur over the next two years. Of $18.5 billion proposed for renewable energy, less than $3 billion would be spent by 2011. And of $14 billion for school construction, less than $7 billion would be spent in the first two years.

David Axelrod suggested on Fox News yesterday that the Obama administration's incoming CBO director disagrees with the current CBO's assessment:

In his interview with Fox News, Axelrod said incoming Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, the outgoing CBO head, has a different view than that of the report put together by CBO under his successor, Robert Sunshine, the acting CBO director.

Axelrod then defended the stimulus, arguing that the government has to act, and act fast. He also said critics were missing the point — “that a lot of these investments are ones that are going to pay dividends in the short term and the long term.

“We should have a discussion and a debate, but we ought to move with all deliberate speed here because we do have a national emergency when it comes to the economy, and that will be our first order of business.”

The CBO report’s findings suggest that funds authorized by the stimulus could reach the economy just when many expect it to recover in 2010.

All of the telecasts of yesterday's Inauguration lauded the peaceful, and even positive, transfer of power that we take for granted in America. Indeed, it is something to be applauded. The pictures of the Obamas and Bidens seeing the Bushes off in their helicopter, even sharing a joke on the stairs, were a moving testament to the grand idea behind America that extends legitimacy to each executive during each hand-off, no matter how dicey.

Many commentators noted that the 2001 transition from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush wasn't similarly friendly or celebratory in tone. Because of the controversy over the election's outcome, the incoming Bush team and the outgoing Clinton team were engaged in a P.R. war in the press over transition funds and transition headquarters until late November. Bill Clinton himself was offering helpful soundbites about Gore's fight for "every single vote" to count while Andy Card (incoming COS) and John Podesta (outgoing COS) were publicly arguing about whether Podesta was returning Card's calls.

It was only in mid-December when Al Gore finally conceded the election, that the Bush team officially got to take the reins, pulling off what historians have deemed an impressively smooth transition considering they had about half the time other administrations have had.

Beyond the contentious election, which iced already chilly Clinton/Bush White House relations, there was the well-known damage done to the White House and other offices by Clinton staff, inflicting the final indignity of the Mark Rich era of Clinton's presidency. Apparently determined to leave the office of the presidency like disreputable double-wide renters, Clinton staff removed "W" keys from White House keyboards and left obscene voice mails, notes, and trash behind, to the tune of at least several thousand dollars worth of damage, according to a GAO report. Democrats predictably decried the GAO report as a witch-hunt. Although there's some dispute over how widespread the damage was, there were pranks pulled and some damage done.

Clinton staffers dismissed any accusations that they were not cooperative enough, adding that the first Bush had left them a White House missing "even basic office supplies," and had not offered briefings to incoming staff. As reported by the NYT:

It is clear that in addition to the mandates of the transition law, some old grudges are playing out. Mr. Clinton's aides bitterly maintain that the administration of Mr. Bush's father did little to help the incoming Clinton team at the end of 1992, after a hard-fought campaign. They arrived, they say, to a White House lacking even basic office supplies.

Oddly enough, I can find no reporting in the New York Times along these lines from the actual transition of 1993; only retroactive complaints during the 2001 transition, when the Clintons needed a plausible motive for their behavior. In fact, most blame the truly disorganized Clinton transition, not on Bush 41, but on Clinton's continuous campaigning, appointing Cabinet members before appointing a Chief of Staff, and letting the "gays in the military" issue take up too much ink during the transition.

Obama learned from the mistakes of Clinton in transition (as he has shown an ability to do in other areas), and had the benefit of an extremely cooperative Bush administration to keep his transition running well.

During yesterday's peaceful and positive transition, commentators gave the Clinton crew a pass on its bad behavior during 2001. They similarly gave a pass to 2001's protesters, many of whom waved "Hail to the Thief" signs at Bush's limo on Inauguration Day, blaming the behavior on the hotly contested election.

Certainly, tempers were high, but was a hotly contested election really an excuse? Let's engage in a little counter-factual (It's no "Jewish Gaza," but stick with me). Try to imagine if you will, a scenario in which John McCain had lost a very close election to Barack Obama, coming just shy of the the electoral college total because of a handful of votes in one state. Can you see a scenario in which Mr. "Country First" would not concede after the first prescribed recount?

Can you further imagine a Bush White House, weary after eight years of tough decisions and low approval ratings, begrudging the Obama administration help during the transition because they were mad McCain did not win? Can you imagine Bush staff taking the "O"s from their keyboards with them and leaving their mounds of trash behind? And, can you imagine the uproar if they had shown that kind of disrespect?

It's hard even to imagine right-wing protesters showing up on Inauguration Day to protest the new president's very legitimacy, though you might have been able to find a few. In fact the only bad behavior of note during yesterday's Inauguration festivities came from Democratic supporters still venting their Bush hatred eight years later by chanting "na, na, na, na, hey, hey, hey, good-bye" to the outgoing president.

You saw in yesterday's Bush, embracing his predecessor and wistfully waving to unfriendly crowds, an echo of the "uniter not divider" he always wanted to be. History intervened on Sept. 11, 2001, and required Bush to make hard, often unpopular decisions because he was putting the good of the nation before his own good image. In many ways, his success in keeping us safe from foreign threats has given Obama the luxury of credibly being a "uniter not divider" focused on domestic problems as he maintains many of the hard-fought security measures Bush put in place.

Obama yesterday urged the nation to "put away childish things." Obama's own supporters and appointees (many from the Clinton administration) could learn that very lesson from the extremely adult behavior of the outgoing Bush administration. In the history of America's peaceful and positive transitions, we should not take that important ingredient for granted.

Update: Possible shenanigans on the part of departing Bushies? A little early to say, but it looks rather innocent. Liberals will undoubtedly have a conniption without much proof or shame, however.

In his interview on Meet the Press over the weekend, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel made an interesting point when he addressed the problem of the deficit:

MR. EMANUEL: Yeah. Well, as you probably know, that there--over the last decade, the last eight years there's been actually a--there was a surplus at one time, and now we've added in the last eight years $4 trillion of debt to the nation's obligations. What you see here--and the president has always said that we must have an approach to spending money differently and respect for the taxpayers' dollars, and do it in a more efficient way and in a different way. And most importantly, we must deal with the long-term challenges that face this country. So while he has talked about the need--and everybody I think from economists on the left to economists on the right realize that we must make critical investments at this time. And yes, they'll add to our obligation. It has got to be coupled with a serious attack about putting our fiscal house in order. And for too long that hasn't happened. Challenges that needed to be met, responsibilities that needed to be met have not. So from the era--from the area of, let's just say, in the defense area.

MR. GREGORY: Hm.

MR. EMANUEL: On an annual basis we have about $300 billion in cost overruns. That must be addressed, and we will be addressing it...

During the last presidential campaign, some believed conservative Republicans’ opposition to comprehensive immigration reform turned off Hispanic voters toward the GOP. But this new survey from Pew suggests the issue ranks a little lower in the minds of Latinos than suggested by conventional wisdom. Pew released the poll last week and wrote:

Only three-in-ten (31%) Latinos rate immigration as an "extremely important" issue facing the incoming Obama administration, placing it sixth on a list of seven policy priorities that respondents were asked to assess in a nationwide survey of 1,007 Latino adults conducted from December 3 to December 10, 2008 by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.

The top-rated issue among Latinos is the economy; 57% of Hispanics say it is an extremely important issue for the new president to address. Education, health care, national security and the environment all also rate higher than immigration as a policy priority among Hispanics, while energy policy ranks lower.

Like other Americans, Hispanics rated the economy as the top issue. Immigration ranked 6th on the list, virtually tied with the environment and well below education and health care.

These numbers suggest President Obama’s lopsided support among Hispanics was not due to Latino anger toward Republicans about immigration but because they trusted the Democrats more on the issue most salient to them--the economy.

Clinton vs. Cornyn in the Rotunda.

The unofficial inaugural parties struggled at the greatest, most enthusiastic inauguration celebration of all time?

Nifong says it's not his fault.

Questions Tim Geithner should be asked, not counting, "Will you pay your taxes, pretty please?"

Whither the enviros this morning?

It may be old-fashioned, but I still think the headline should read, "Tween idols get chance to visit First Family in White House," not the other way around.

The new WhiteHouse.gov doesn't find Iran's activities nearly as troubling as Obama did on the trail.

Gaza war: Regional game changer or lost opportunity?

Rudy tells us how to save the party. Capiche?

Transition.

Can Obama lead us out of the recession?

MSNBC carried a shot of a group mocking President Bush with "Na, na, na, na, hey, hey, hey good bye" as he took his seat. I figured there'd be a bit of this, but singing the song was particularly bold. Not your average under-the-breath boo or hiss for these classless attendees.

“You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”

For many conservatives, I would guess for many Americans in uniform, this was the signature phrase in Barack Obama’s inaugural. The Yes-We-Can man is no longer a candidate for office or a president-elect, but now commander-in-chief during times of trial in a most uncertain moment. For it is not our current economic troubles that pose the most profound question for President Obama, it is the larger geopolitical challenges to America’s position in the world. This is not a new era of responsibility; the security responsibilities of the United States have been accumulating are as large and lasting as any of the legacies cited in the inaugural address.

The change from George Bush to Barack Obama is the first change of party in the White House since 9/11. And indeed, many Democrats seem still to be a state of denial about the realities of the modern world, blaming all its unpleasantnesses on Bush. A year ago, Obama was one of them.

Yet from the moment he secured the Democratic party nomination, the new president increasingly has tempered his views. It was as if he began then to contemplate what his presidential responsibilities would be, to appreciate the nature of what Donald Rumsfeld rightly called the “long, hard slog” in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the greater Middle East, anticipate the dangers of an Iranian nuclear weapon -- which is almost sure to happen on Obama’s watch -- and grasp the nature of the rise of China as a global great power. Though there is a world-weariness that stretches across party lines, the strongest tug to “come home America” still comes from the left. Barack Obama’s resolve to defeat the enemy is a break with recent Democratic habit.

But there are questions of means as well as ends. New fashions for “soft power” and “smart power” can be dangerous if they are taken as a complete substitute for hard power and, particularly, military strength. Part of the reason George Bush was so disturbing to the rest of the world, and especially to Europeans, was that he pointed out inconvenient truths. Estranged allies and potential may be more willing to say nice things about Barack Obama -- and the simple fact of his election and presidency reflects the urgent power of the American example to the world -- but it is less likely that they will take the difficult steps needed to help police the planet. There are many stakeholders in the American-led international order, but precious few of them show signs of accepting any greater responsibility for preserving it. President Obama will, like his predecessor, often find it lonely at the top.

“You cannot outlast us.” Obama has made a conscious attempt to connect his presidency to that of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln sent Ulysses S. Grant back to do battle with Robert E. Lee with the admonition to “[h]old on with a bulldog grip, and choke and chew as much as possible.” Let us hope that our 44th president continues to channel the 16th president, both in healing our domestic wounds and in relentless pursuit of the defeat or our foes.

Does the era of bipartisanship mean people of the same party have to get along, too? If so, then Jimmy Carter has yet to "put away childish things," judging by this tape.

The Pakistani Taliban in North Waziristan executed six more "US spies," continuing their campaign to remove any opposition to their rule in the Taliban-controlled tribal areas. One of the "spies" was publicly hanged in Mir Ali, which is one of the two large towns in North Waziristan. The locals won't take his body down out of fear of retribution by the Taliban. At least 15 such "spies" have been killed in North Waziristan since the New Year.

The murders in North Waziristan make clear that the Taliban are running the show in the tribal area. Hundreds of such executions have been carried out by the Taliban, but there has yet to be a single prosecution for these murders. The government doesn't have the capability to conduct an investigation in the area, and if they did, it has no power to detain the suspects. The Taliban, and not the Pakistani government, is calling the shots in this region. Here are some other indicators the Taliban is in control of territory. These warning signs show up routinely in the Pakistani press:

• The government seeks to negotiate with the Taliban to restore peace in a region, or the locals themselves turn to the Taliban to end the fighting. Most recently this happened in the settled districts of Hangu and Swat (outside of the tribal areas). Peace deals have been signed in many of the tribal agencies and the settled districts in the northwest.

• The Taliban is bold enough to grant amnesty to government officials. This just happened in Swat, where Mullah Fazlullah announced a "conditional amnesty for social and political workers and public representatives from target killings.” Fazlullah is confident enough to admit his forces are conducting targeted killings of government officials, knowing nothing can be done to stop him.

Having just listened to the speech, I think there was a lot to like there for those whose greatest concern is that Obama is soft -- that he doesn't appreciate the role violence has played in forging our democracy. Dianne Feinstein opened the ceremony by talking about how the ballot is more powerful than the bullet, how non-violence has made this day possible. It's a bizarre revision of American history that focuses on Martin Luther King rather than William Tecumseh Sherman or George Washington. It was the violence inflicted against British, Confederate, and German troops that made possible the inauguration of an African-American. Obama's speech acknowledged as much:

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn. Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life.

Obama closed by conjuring the image of Washington crossing the Delaware:

In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Obama also spoke of leaving Iraq 'responsibly,' which would necessarily dictate leaving a stable and democratic government in place. But, true to form, Obama would not allow the word victory to pass his lips when talking about the wars in which this country is currently engaged. In Afghanistan, Obama spoke of achieving "a hard-earned peace." Can we really have peace with our enemies in Afghanistan, or is victory a prerequisite for any real peace?

All in all though, a fine speech.

William McGurn writes in today's Journal:

In a few hours, George W. Bush will walk out of the Oval Office for the last time as president. As he leaves, he carries with him the near-universal opprobrium of the permanent class that inhabits our nation's capital. Yet perhaps the most important reason for this unpopularity is the one least commented on.

Here's a hint: It's not because of his failures. To the contrary, Mr. Bush's disfavor in Washington owes more to his greatest success. Simply put, there are those who will never forgive Mr. Bush for not losing a war they had all declared unwinnable.

As McGurn notes, both Obama and Biden opposed the surge on the grounds that it would only make the situation worse, and both subscribed to the view widely held among the press and the Democratic leadership that the war was lost -- that the only thing to do was to retreat, even at the cost of genocide in Iraq. We now know that Bush was right, the surge has succeeded, and even liberals like Peter Beinart are demanding that their fellow Democrats admit their mistake.

The result is that Obama has inherited victory in Iraq. Bush has done more than, as McGurn quotes Biden in early 2007, "keep it from totally collapsing...[until he could] hand it off to the next guy." Now rather than retreat in defeat, our new president must manage to withdraw American troops without undermining their success. It will be a tremendous challenge, but the press will not be able to blame Bush if security deteriorates in Iraq after Obama gives the Joint Chiefs their "new mission." The victory in Iraq is Obama's to lose.

Ironically, the famously eloquent new president stumbled three times during his Oath of Office, requiring prompting from Chief Justice John Roberts. It was out-of-character, but one of the more human moments from a man renowned for his composure.

His prepared remarks are going much more smoothly. Obama's speech, embargoed until release, indicate according to reports that his speech will only be 18-20 minutes long— a departure from his longer-form acceptance speech at the DNC and victory speech on Nov. 4.

Update: I wasn't sure, but I thought this might have been the case. Roberts flubbed his lines, too, after Obama jumped in early on the first line of the oath.

Update: Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov.

Update: Full speech below the fold:

All that fuss for nothing.

Pastor Rick Warren delivered his much-anticipated invocation Tuesday, calling the inauguration of the first black president a "hinge-point of history" that has "Dr. King and a great crowd of witnesses are shouting in heaven."

He asked blessings upon Obama, his family, and all freely elected leaders, saying, "Give to your new president the wisdom to lead us with humility, the courage to lead with integrity, and the compassion to lead with generosity."

Warren's prayer was not short on praise for America herself, either:

We are so grateful to live in this land, one of unequal possibility...Let us remember we are united not by race or religion or blood, but to our commitment to freedom and justice for all.

He closed by committing "our new president," his wife and children to God's care.

"I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life—Yeshua, Jesus, Jesús," he said before closing with this Lord's Prayer.

According to Richard Leiby and DeNeen L. Brown of the Washington Post, "the free mega-concert signaled a departure from the Bush administration's frequent efforts to distance itself from Hollywood." Which makes it sound like Jamie Foxx, Stevie Wonder, Tom Hanks, Jack Black, Usher, Bruce Springsteen, U2, and Jon Bon Jovi (to name just a few) would have loved to perform in 2005's inauguration if only Bush hadn't rebuffed them. Or maybe Leiby and Brown simply meant the reverse.

I'm guessing a McCain inauguration concert would have consisted of the Charlie Daniels Band, Blues Traveler, Hootie & the Blowfish, KC & the Sunshine Band, and Lee Greenwood. Maybe Chaka Khan if she isn't busy.

P.S. Did I miss opera singer Denyce Graves at the concert? Or is she performing today? Or is the extremely talented and beautiful African-American soprano from D.C. being punished for singing at Bush's second inaugural?

Kay Hagan, the new Democratic senator from North Carolina, signaled the dawning age of bipartisanship Sunday as she spoke to the pro-choice women's political group, EMILY's List at an Inaugural Luncheon.

The group was gathered to celebrate the wins of Democratic women in the Senate, House and governorships, but the group couldn't help but indulge in a mean-spirited outburst for one of the nation's most famous conservative leaders— Jesse Helms, the five-term Republican senator from North Carolina, who died this past summer after a long struggle with health complications such as cancer to heart problems.

Hagan threw a juicy T-bone to the pack of pro-choice activists with her remarks:

Speaking at an abortion-rights women's luncheon in Washington on Sunday, the Greensboro Democrat noted that she was taking the seat of former Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, drawing boos from the audience.

First, there's nothing like a group of liberal women for clinging to bitterness in the face of overwhelming victory, huh? From their point of view, putting Kay Hagan in the seat of the staunchly pro-life Jesse Helms should be reason for celebration, but did they take the opportunity to cheer their up-and-coming female ally? Of course not. Instead, they used it to disrespect the memory of her recently deceased, male predecessor. Women's empowerment apparently requires an unhealthy preoccupation with male adversaries, both in electoral defeat and death.

Second, Kay Hagan likely knew exactly how this group would react to her mention of Jesse Helms, but she dropped his name to earn cheap political points with a group that will back her no matter what. It wasn't necessary. What she should remember at times like this is that she has to run for reelection in a state that, thanks to Jesse Helms, remains very Republican.

Now, if some enterprising Republican oppo-research person were to get his hands on video of this luncheon and find that Hagan made no attempt to stop the booing, or worse, smiled her way through it, the people of her home state would not take kindly to the sight of it. No matter what she thinks of his views, Helms remains the longest-serving popularly elected senator in the history of the state, and he deserves far more respect than Hagan's supporters gave him.

Obama will keep President Bush's custom-made Oval Office rug. It really ties the room together.

Not just an Inauguration; the largest temporary restroom in history.

Cheney will appear at Inauguration in a wheelchair, partly because he pulled a back muscle, and partly because he thinks now that he's lost some weight, it will make his Monty Burns impression more convincing.

"They don't want them laying around so people can use them for improper things."

Only seven percent of the stimulus money will actually make it into the economy to stimulate anything by the end of the budget year.

When Al Qaeda biological weapons experiments go horribly right.

One thing for which I'd like to thank President Bush.

Obama to meet with Petraeus on Wednesday.

Not so fast, Hill.

NY Politician: Hey, you guys stop whining that the fix is in for Caroline. She's a princess!

The bipartisanship cometh:

Over the weekend, Barack Obama embarked on a train trip from Philadelphia to Washington reminiscent of Abraham Lincoln's train journey from Springfield prior to his inauguration. As the New York Times says, Obama's pre-inaugural journey "is another nod to history, kicking off a week when the parallels between the 16th and 44th presidents will be plentiful." While Obama's train slowed down to accommodate throngs of cheering supporters along the way, the Philadelphia to Washington leg of Lincoln's journey was conducted under the cover of darkness because of a potential assassination plot. While Lincoln delivered his inaugural address, Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens had already been installed as leaders of an open rebellion, and Confederate agents likely plotted the destruction of the United States within the capital city.

Perhaps Obama's fascination with Lincoln in this bicentennial year of his birth will cause Americans to take a look beyond Lincoln's clothing, favorite foods, and circumstances of birth, to the natural rights philosophy that governed every aspect of the man's political thought.

Before Lincoln left Philadelphia for Washington on the aforementioned train trip, he gave a speech at the site of the founding of the first government to be grounded on the proposition that all men are created equal:

I am filled with deep emotion at finding myself standing here in the place where were collected together the wisdom, the patriotism, the devotion to principle, from which sprang the institutions under which we live. You have kindly suggested to me that in my hands is the task of restoring peace to our distracted country. I can say in return, sir, that all the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which originated, and were given to the world from this hall in which we stand. I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.

Lincoln's affirmation of the principles of the Declaration of Independence recognize the self-evident truth that there is no distinction between any two men that is as great as the difference between men and beasts or men and God. Lincoln shared this view, along with the corresponding principle that slavery is a moral and political evil, with many in the Founding generation.

Bush keeps it classy with a farewell ceremony closed to the press. (And White House staffers pledge that no “O’s” will be removed from White House keyboards).

Was Joe Biden offered a choice between secretary of state and vice president?

Obama's stimulus costs $275,000 per job saved/created.

Gay bishop Gene Robinson tells Obama crowd that the 44th president is "not a messiah".

Bush declared Sunday as sanctity of human life day.

Bush commutes the sentences of border agents Compean and Ramos.

No pardon for Libby.

Via Megan McArdle, happy MLK Jr. Day:

Plenty of criticism has been heaped on the Israeli Defense Forces for firing on United Nations and media headquarters during the operation inside the Gaza Strip. During these incidents, UN employees and reporters claimed it was impossible for Hamas to fire rockets from these compounds and intimated the Israelis intentionally targeted the facilities. Here is one such report in Editor and Publisher, America's Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry:

Bullets also entered another building housing The Associated Press offices, entering a room where two staffers were working but wounding no one. The Foreign Press Association, representing journalists covering Israel and the Palestinian territories, demanded a halt to attacks on press buildings.

The army had collected the locations of media organizations at the outset of fighting to avoid such attacks.

But we have at least one confirmed incident of Hamas's launching rockets from a media headquarters:

Al Arabiya reporter Hannan al-Masri is live on the air in Gaza when she is told that Hamas has just fired rockets from inside the Al Arabiya studio building, news which apparently strikes her as quite humorous.

Watch the video below and turn on the subtitles feature. The first laugh might be dismissed as nervous laughter, but the second one can't. She is clearly amused by the launch.

If the Israeli Air Force responded by striking the building housing Al Arabiya, it would have been completely justified in doing so.

Editor and Publisher was adamant the Israelis are "attacking" media headquarters, yet there is no report of the Al Arabiya incident on the website or a mention of the unprofessional behavior of the Hannan al-Masri. Surely E&P will eventually cover both sides of this story for the sake of balance. Right?

Faced with a slow economy and a large deficit, Democrats in Washington are going to try to solve the problem by adding more than $1 trillion to the national debt. Many governors face similar challenges, and some at least, are trying a different approach. One noteworthy example is Minnesota's Tim Pawlenty:

In his State of the State Address to a joint body of the House and Senate in the House chamber, Pawlenty urged lawmakers wrestling with a $4.85 billion budget deficit in the upcoming biennium not to raise taxes for strapped workers.

Rather, calling the challenges facing the state "the worst we've seen in a long time,'' Pawlenty said the state should cut the business tax rate in half, from 9.8 percent to 4.8 percent over a six-year period, and give businesses a series of tax credits and exemptions that would allow them to expand and create jobs...

In his budget proposal later this month, Pawlenty said he will rely on spending cuts to balance the state's budget. But he promised to protect military members and their families and public safety programs, and he urged legislators dealing with the deficit to do the same.

Incoming North Carolina governor Beverly Perdue -- who was elected on Barack Obama's coattails -- has also chosen budget cuts over tax increases:

Gov. Beverly Perdue tried to get ahead of a deepening budget crisis Thursday by ordering larger cuts in state agencies, freezing vacant jobs and halting millions of dollars in construction, purchases and travel.

She said agencies are close to laying off employees.

It was the second time Perdue, governor for less than a week, has dispatched an emergency order to help stabilize the state's finances.

She issued an executive order Thursday afternoon telling agencies to increase cuts in the current year's spending -- 7 percent for most of them. Smaller cuts were ordered for schools, mental health services, prisons and courts.

These approaches will earn both Pawlenty and Perdue fans among fiscal conservatives. In the case of Pawlenty in particular, it may help burnish his national image in the event that he seeks the presidency in 2012.

Hat tip: Ambinder

From a most unlikely source, the BBC, comes an excellent defense of Israel's Gaza incursion. Two points stand out here. One, war is hell. It's completely unpredictable and impossible to fully choreograph. Two, by way of the first point, civilian deaths and collateral damage are unavoidable, especially when the fight is conducted exclusively on the urban terrain. As the good colonel notes below, civilian casualties benefit Hamas, not Israel -- which is precisely why the IDF has taken unprecedented steps (at considerable cost) to shield noncombatants from the fury of their offensive.

HT: Seraphic Secret

The boss writes in today's New York Times:

As we recited this on Saturday, I couldn’t help but reflect that a distressingly small number of my fellow Jews seem to have given much thought at all to the fact that President Bush is one of the greatest friends the state of Israel — and, yes, the Jewish people — have had in quite a while. Bush stood with Israel when he had no political incentive to do so and received no political benefit from doing so. He was criticized by much of the world. He did it because he thought it the right thing to do.

He has been denounced for this, as Israel has been denounced for doing what it judged necessary to defend itself. The liberal sage Bill Moyers has been a harsh critic of Bush. On Jan. 9, on PBS, he also lambasted Israel for what he called its “state terrorism,” its “waging war on an entire population” in Gaza. He traced this Israeli policy back to the Bible, where “God-soaked violence became genetically coded,” apparently in both Arabs and Jews. I wouldn’t presume to say what is and isn’t “genetically coded” in Moyers’s respectable Protestant genes. But I’m glad it was George W. Bush calling the shots over the last eight years, not someone well-thought of by Moyers.

Read the rest here.

Ashton Kutcher announced this new initiative in a barely literate personal essay at the Huffington Post over the weekend. The concept seems to be 'Pay it Forward,' but with a creepy loyalty oath to our new leader mixed in for good measure:

We call it a Presidential Pledge. We have gathered a group of individuals who share the courage to pledge to our president, and the world at large, what it is that they are willing to do, give, or sacrifice, in an effort to help their fellow man. Our hope is that this effort will inspire others to do the same, with individuals posting their initiatives within their communities. This is not a selfless utopian action. In fact it is a very selfish one. By improving the lives of those who surround us we will in effect improve our own.

Here's the video of a bunch of B-, C-, and D-list celebrities, and Michael Strahan, resolving to take time out of their busy schedules of pilates and facials to end slavery, hunger, and Alzheimers -- and to be a "servant" to our new president. That or a lot of slaves, hungry people, and confused seniors just got punked.

John Kerry is pushing for a costly global emissions treaty and Hillary Clinton testified at her confirmation hearing that "climate change" an "unambiguous security threat." But it appears a majority of Americans don't buy the theory of anthropogenic global warming. Rasmussen reports:

Forty-four percent (44%) of U.S. voters now say long-term planetary trends are the cause of global warming, compared to 41% who blame it on human activity.

Seven percent (7%) attribute global warming to some other reason, and nine percent (9%) are unsure in a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Democrats blame global warming on human activity, compared to 21% percent of Republicans. Two-thirds of GOP voters (67%) see long-term planetary trends as the cause versus 23% of Democrats. Voters not affiliated with either party by eight points put the blame on planetary trends.

In July 2006, 46% of voters said global warming is caused primarily by human activities, while 35% said it is due to long-term planetary trends.

In April of last year, 47% of Americans blamed human activity versus 34% who viewed long-term planetary trends as the culprit. But the numbers have been moving in the direction of planetary trends since then.

I didn't make it to the "We Are One" concert yesterday at the Lincoln Memorial, but I did catch a little bit of HBO's re-broadcast of the program last night at 11:30. At one point Sheryl Crow and will.i.am performed a little mash-up of Bob Marley's "One Love" and the Black Eyed Peas' "Where Is the Love?"--a song which includes lyrics calling the CIA a terrorist organization:

Overseas, yeah, we try to stop terrorism,
But we still got terrorists here livin'
In the USA, the big CIA,
The Bloods and The Crips and the KKK.

But during yesterday's rendition, will.i.am changed the lyrics and sang:

Overseas, yeah, we trying to stop terrorism,
But we still got terrorists here living,
In the USA . . . no education, and we got that racial hate.

It's not clear whether will.i.am censored himself or was censored by the inaugural committee. (Ben Smith points out that Bruce Springsteen included some political lines in one of his songs). Perhaps will.i.am simply thinks that in the Age of Obama the CIA is now a force for good.

Courtesy of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, home of the 231 million percent inflation rate.

Zimbabwe's central bank says it will soon introduce a 100 trillion dollar note as the once prosperous country battles to keep pace with hyperinflation that has caused many to abandon the country's currency.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe said the new notes that includes 50 trillion, 20 trillion and 10 trillion would be released for the "convenience of the public," according to statement released Thursday.

Ironic -- one of the poorest nations on earth is filled with billion and trillionaires. Unsurprisingly, the once bountiful African nation has unofficially defaulted to the US dollar as its main currency.

The entire country is wondering: Who designed Michelle Obama's inaugural gown?

For the first time in First Lady history, we won't find out the designer of this much-hyped dress until Tuesday. This is a "break with precedent," reports the Washington Times, since the "designer of the First Lady's gown has traditionally been released in advance."

We do know what she likely won't be wearing: Oscar de la Renta or pantyhose. Designer de la Renta is a common choice for First Ladies, as he designed both Hillary Clinton's 1997 inaugural gown and Laura Bush's 2005 inaugural gown. He also designed both Hillary's inauguration day outfit and evening gown, so expect Michelle Obama to choose a new and different designer. And she probably won't wear pantyhose, says New York magazine, since she reportedly finds them "too painful." Will she go bare-legged in the 20-30 degree weather? Or perhaps wear some cashmere tights?

Either way, fashionistas are anxiously awaiting Tuesday...for a dress.

The national Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, has been at a standstill as the National Park Service tried to negotiate the purchase of the final piece of land from owner Michael Svonavec. Svonavec's land was the last crucial parcel needed for the planned 2,231 acre national park and included the actual crash site of the plane. Talks between Svonavec and the Park Service had become so frigid that the Families of Flight 93 went so far as to request that President Bush seize Svonavec's land before leaving office.

Today comes word that the dispute has been resolved, apparently without Bush's intervention. The Somerset County Tribune-Democrat reports that late yesterday Svonavec and the Park Service reached an agreement, the essential terms of which are: (1) Svonavec will grant immediate access to the NPS so that construction can begin later this year; and (2) The Park Service will allow a court to determine the value of the land for Svonavec's compensation.

As part of the deal, Svonavec donated the 6 acres of land where Flight 93 crashed, in keeping with his long-stated promise to never accept money for the crash site itself.

The U.S. Treasury Department dropped a bombshell today when it sanctioned four al Qaeda operatives known to be operating in Iran. Osama bin Laden's son Sa'ad along with Mustafa Hamid, Muhammad Rab'a al Sayid al Bahtiti, and Ali Saleh Husain have been designated as terrorists under Executive Order 13224. All four men serve on al Qaeda's Shura Majlis, or executive council. Mustafa Hamid's dealings with Iran, which the Treasury provides great detail, are especially interesting.

A senior U.S. military intelligence official who tracks al Qaeda told me that Hamid is both "al Qaeda’s emir of Iran" and "al Qaeda’s ambassador to Iran." Here is how the Treasury described Hamid:

While living in Iran, Hamid was harbored by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which served as Hamid's point of contact for communications between al Qaeda and Iran...

In the mid-1990s, Mustafa Hamid reportedly negotiated a secret relationship between Osama Bin Laden and Iran, allowing many al Qaeda members safe transit through Iran to Afghanistan.

In the late 1990s, Mustafa Hamid passed communications between Osama bin Laden and the Government of Iran. When tensions were high between Iran and Afghanistan, Mustafa Hamid traveled multiple times from Kandahar to Tehran as an intermediary for the Taliban.

In late 2001, Mustafa Hamid was in Tehran delivering messages from the Taliban to the Government of Iran. Hamid also negotiated on behalf of al Qaeda in an attempt to relocate al Qaeda families to Iran. As part of this effort, senior al Qaeda member Abu Hafs the Mauritanian traveled with Hamid and two IRGC members to Tehran for meetings. Beginning in late 2001, the family of a senior al Qaeda military commander lived with Mustafa Hamid's family in Iran. Separately, in 2002 Mustafa Hamid facilitated contacts between the IRGC and another senior al Qaeda military commander. In mid-2003, Mustafa Hamid was arrested in Iran along with other al Qaeda members and associates.

The "arrests" were made after the 2003 bombings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia were directly traced back to al Qaeda's network in Iran (Sa'ad was involved the planning of this attack.) But the arrests were merely window dressing, as noted here at THE WEEKLY STANDARD back in 2005. Incidentally, in June 2008, the Treasury confirmed this when it sanctioned three al Qaeda financiers who operated from Iran and moved freely throughout the Middle East and South Asia well after 2003.

Not only has the Treasury linked Iran to al Qaeda, but it has linked the group to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Back in October 2007, the Treasury sanctioned the Qods Force, the special operations branch of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for providing "material support to the Taliban, Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC)." Hamas and Islamic Jihad are also Sunni terror groups.

We're constantly told that Shia Iran and Sunni al Qaeda would and could never cooperate due to the ideological differences between the two sects. But the Treasury, whose information is valuable in understanding al Qaeda's global network, shows this is patently false.

Obama may create “classified loophole” for enhanced interrogations.

Really good economic news: the Ted spread is now below 100 basis points.

Forty-four senators--25 Democrats and 19 Republicans--urge Obama to buy F-22s.

Behold the dreaded American patriarchy: the passengers on the safely crash-landed U.S. Airways flight evacuated women and children first. Update: Apparently 'women and children first' was not practiced by everyone on the flight. “It was kind of first come first served,” said one passenger.

61 percent of Americans oppose spending TARP funds.

Obama answers card-check question with Obamian vagueness.

The "otherwise smooth" transition of the Obama administration hit yet another bump in the road today when the team's vaunted discipline could not keep the likes of pop princess Beyonce Knowles in line. When it was announced today that Beyonce would perform the couple's first dance, the inauguration team insisted on secrecy:

The Presidential Inaugural Committee isn’t saying. “It is our hope that we can keep the song secret until the moment,” said spokeswoman Linda Douglass.

Beyonce could not keep her mouth shut for more than a couple of hours, releasing a statement to Entertainment Tonight:

"I am so honored that I will be performing for President Obama and the First Lady. To sing 'At Last' while they have their first dance is a dream come true," says the Grammy-award winner. "I could not be more honored and excited that they have asked me to be part of this moment in history."

And, here I was hoping for "Single Ladies."

Now, Obama could go one of two ways with this. He could either throw Beyonce under the bus for embarrassing him, and ask someone else to perform. Or, he could look at her track record for keeping important secrets, and give her a national security Cabinet position. After all, she'd be about as good with classified material as Tim Geithner is with taxes.

Of seven newly minted freshman Democratic senators, six voted for releasing the second half of the $700 billion TARP funds in what is being considered Obama's first major test of strength on the Hill. This would be rather uncontroversial had not five of them, to some degree or another, campaigned against the original, unpopular bailout bill to win their seats.

The most flagrant offender is Jeff Merkley, who ran an ad against his opponent Gordon Smith harping on the bailout:

At the time of the first vote, Merkley commended fellow Democratic Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden for voting against the bill. Wyden, who is facing reelection in 2010, voted against releasing the second half of the bailout, too. Of the eight Democrats who Obama lost on the vote, five are up for reelection in 2010, and these kind of poll numbers were presumably more persuasive than The One himself.

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Co.) and Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) both voted against the bailout when they were in the House and running for Senate, but backed Obama's plea for $350 billion last night. Mark voted against both versions of the bill in the House, claiming that the oversight rules for the TARP money were not enough to satisfy him. As of just six days ago, even the watchdog panel appointed to oversee the TARP money agreed that the program needed more oversight before the second half was released:

She said Treasury has still not adequately explained how it is selecting banks for its $250 billion program to inject capital directly into the financial system.

"The panel's initial concerns about the TARP have only grown, exacerbated by the shifting explanations of its purposes and the tools used by Treasury," the report said. It said Treasury had "not yet explained its strategy" for stabilizing the financial markets.

Tom Udall similarly slammed both versions of the bailout bill only to okay the second half this week:

In addition, the bailout bill approved by Congress is rife with problems. To begin, the bill's oversight provisions amount to little more than a congressional rubber stamp.

Instead of bailing out Wall Street investors, the bill should have helped responsible homeowners by allowing them to renegotiate their mortgages in bankruptcy court. This would have addressed the root cause of the problem — risky mortgages gone bad — while helping responsible families stay in their homes.

Merkley and both Udalls are taking flak from the Left for their votes, with David Sirota claiming the votes signify that they "have absolutely no principles - that, in fact, they are the worst stereotype of politicians."

Mark Begich, who defeated Sen. Ted Stevens in Alaska, was more tepid in his denouncement of the bailout, but nonetheless used it to distance himself from President Bush and the current Congress, offering the refrain that it didn't do enough for Main Street.

Kay Hagan, who took down Liddy Dole in N.C., repeatedly dodged taking a position on the bailout during the campaign before finally putting out a press release after the bailout vote in the Senate indicating she would have voted "no":

"It's a fix for Wall Street, not Main Street, and this isn't a situation where we can afford to only address half the problem," she said in a statement. "I've said that any new bailout legislation must add real accountability, oversight and protections for Main Street to ensure we never find ourselves in this position again."

Dole voted against the bailout.

My, how quickly things change. Their arguments for changing their votes no doubt hinge on the fact that they're now rubber-stamping spending by Obama, not George Bush. Democrats also received letter from Larry Summers promising that some of the money would go to help Americans facing foreclosure:

In contrast with the out-going President Bush, Obama is also promising to put his personal stamp on the Treasury program. Summers’ letter promises that no substantial new investments will be made without Obama’s approval—a very different image than the one conveyed today, with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson seeming to overshadow Bush.

If you're wondering how hard Obama had to work to flip these principled votes, don't trust the lede on the Politico story, which says Obama "threw himself into the fight." As the story later notes, "Obama worked the phones with close to a dozen calls."

It's reminiscent of the first time the bailout came up for a tough vote and the Washington Post reported that Obama was really diving into the fight, but didn't place a single phone call to the Hill. His charm is just that powerful, I guess.

I for one am pleased to see that Democrats will continue to speak truth to power in an Obama administration:

The $825 billion economic stimulus package rolled out by Democrats on Thursday might not be enough to prevent an economic catastrophe, according to the chief architect of the package.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) also told reporters it may not be the last effort to use big government spending to spur the economy....

The bill could be voted on in committee next Wednesday. That’s the day after the inauguration of President-elect Obama — or, as Obey put it, “the day after the crown prince is sworn in.”

The BBC reports:

The authorities in China say they have found that most Chinese women would like to have more than one child.

Family-planning officials say their research indicates that 70% of women want to have two babies or more.

Chinese couples who ignore China's strict one-child policy must pay fines and often face discrimination at work.

The authorities say the policy, which will not be relaxed, has prevented hundreds of millions of births and has helped to make people wealthier. ...

China's one-child policy has been hugely controversial at home and abroad, as enforcement of it has involved forced abortions and other abuses.

It has also been blamed for a gender imbalance, as a traditional preference for boys has persuaded some parents to abort girl foetuses.

Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush all refused to fund the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) because the organization helps China execute its one-child policy (and because the UNFPA also funds the occasional unseemly eugenics program). But Barack Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, has pledged to reverse the course of his Republican predecessor and fund the UNFPA. It's somewhat ironic that feminist organizations are the interest groups pushing most strongly for UNFPA funding.

Apparently, if thousands of Chinese women are forced to abort their unborn children--and baby girls, in particular, are targeted for death--well that's just collateral damage in the cause of "women's rights", in the view of groups like NOW. Of course, to be fair, feminists claim that UNFPA does not directly support forced abortions in China. I'm skeptical that UNFPA equipment and funds do not aid some of the doctors performing forced abortions, but it's indisputable that that the Communist party gives local bureaucrats population control goals to meet. When number of births exceeds the desired limit, the bureaucrats sometimes decide to round up women and abort their children. For example, in April 2007 in Guangxi province, "61 pregnant women were injected with an abortive drug after being dragged to local hospitals".

If Obama funds China's population control program without requiring China to prosecute those performing forced abortions--or, ideally, requiring China to do away with its one-child policy altogether--there will be a lot more horrifying stories coming out of China--brought to you, in part, by the American taxpayer.

Goldfarb noted that the captured Hamas fighters have been stunned bey the ferocity of the Israeli assault on Gaza. That same article notes that the Israeli Defense Force has taken out on of Hamas's elite military units:

The so-called "Iranian Unit" of Hamas has been destroyed, according to Gaza sources cited Thursday by the Haaretz daily. The sources said most of the unit's 100 members were killed in fighting in the Zeytun neighborhood of Gaza City.

The terrorists had been trained in infantry tactics, the use of anti-tank missiles and the detonation of explosives, among other skills, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard at Hizbullah camps in Lebanon's Beka'a Valley, as well as sites in Iran.

Israel clearly has had tactical successes against Hamas's military arm. Earlier in the week, an IDF official told Ynet News that Hamas has suffered significant casualties in some areas. "Hundreds of people were killed in the various combat sectors," the officer told the news agency. "Some Hamas companies and battalions were simply wiped out. We also see cases of desertions and unauthorized leaves, while some terror activists are scared to undertake moves that would jeopardize them vis-à-vis IDF troops."

Since the Gaza operation began, multiple rocket cell leaders have been killed, as well as Hamas's "defense minister" and other commanders. The Israeli Air Force has systematically leveled much of Hamas's infrastructure. Hamas's military is estimated to have from 15,000 to 20,000 fighters, but the estimate of hard core fighters is not known. Palestinians in Gaza claimed more than 350 Hamas fighters have been killed so far, but that number may be the lower end of casualty estimates.

The Israeli government has been clear the operation is limited to degrade Hamas's military ability and restore Israel's military deterrence capacity, which many believe was lost during the 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Israelis have no intention of reoccupying Gaza, which is the only way Hamas can be uprooted.

Negotiations have now come to the fore and it is expected a cease-fire will be signed within the week, if not in days. The IDF would be well served to redouble efforts against Hamas's military before the cease-fire is signed. Not only would this improve the Israel's position at the negotiating table, this will make Hamas's job of retaining power in Gaza difficult.

I do heartily recommend that you follow Mary Katharine's advice and take a crack at writing, er, generating your own Obama speech. Here's what I came up with:

My fellow Americans, today is a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious day. You have shown the world that "hope" is not just another word for "cheese", and that "change" is not only something we can believe in again, but something we can actually hope.

Today we celebrate, but let there be no mistake – America faces clean and articulate challenges like never before. Our economy is bright. Americans can barely afford their mortgages, let alone have enough money left over for mothballs. Our healthcare system is nasty. If your eyebrow is sick and you don't have insurance, you might as well call a blogger. And America's image overseas is tarnished like a Joe Biden's hairplugs. But hoping together we can right this ship, and set a course for Tora Bora.

Finally, I must thank my change family, my hope campaign volunteers, but most of all, I want to thank hicks for making this historic occasion possible. Of course, I must also thank you, President Bush, for years of eating the American people. Without your tasty efforts, none of this would have been possible.

Ahead of her final White House press briefing, press secretary Dana Perino spoke with reporters at a breakfast in Washington hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

Perino said she's thinking about writing a book, though she promised it wouldn't be a "kiss and tell" because she "wasn't raised that way." Perino added that she hopes to hit the speaker circuit to talk up the accomplishments of the Bush administration.

One topic that Perino is considering writing about is Republican women. She thinks Republican women get a bad rap in the media and reminded reporters that Ann Coulter "doesn't represent Republican women." Perino blasted the treatment of Sarah Palin, especially by some women in Hollywood. "I don't know why women treat each other like that," she said.

Perino criticized a few trends she's noticed in media coverage of the presidency. "Why does everyone have to include the approval ratings of the president [in their reporting on the president]?" she wondered. She also mocked a certain news magazine for electing to offer more commentary when that's all it was offering already. While she thinks some of the "analysis" articles published in newspapers are genuine pieces of analysis, others are thinly veiled commentary, "a trend that's not necessarily good," she said.

The press secretary took a little dig at the incoming president for attacking Bush's policy on Guantanamo throughout the campaign. "All of a sudden, 'Gosh it's so complicated to close Guantanamo Bay,'" she said.

On Tuesday night, Perino will depart from Washington for a six-week trip with her husband that will include two weeks of volunteer work at a PEPFAR site in South Africa. PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS relief, will probably be remembered as one of the great achievements of his presidency.

Thanks to this web application, you can do it right now. Groping cardboard cut-outs of female Cabinet appointees is optional, but apparently helpful to the Obama speech-writing process, so have at it if you wish. Here's my go at it:

My fellow Americans, today is a illustrious day. You have shown the world that "hope" is not just another word for "promise", and that "change" is not only something we can believe in again, but something we can actually move.

Today we celebrate, but let there be no mistake – America faces great and soaring challenges like never before. Our economy is depressed. Americans can barely afford their mortgages, let alone have enough money left over for hopes. Our healthcare system is funky. If your elbow is sick and you don't have insurance, you might as well call a plumber. And America's image overseas is tarnished like a seas mountains. But parting together we can right this ship, and set a course for Unity, New Hampshire.

Finally, I must thank my righteous family, my warm campaign volunteers, but most of all, I want to thank Americans for making this historic occasion possible. Of course, I must also thank you, President Bush, for years of looking the American people. Without your endless efforts, none of this would have been possible.

target=_blank>This is cause for optimism:

Two captured terrorists interviewed by Maariv/NRG say that Hamas was not expecting Israel's response to the escalation in missile attacks on Israeli targets that preceded Operation Cast Lead. One of them, a 52-year-old victim of a premature detonation who had already done time in an Israeli jail, said, "Hamas took a gamble. We thought, at worst Israel will come and do something from the air - something superficial. They'll come in and go out. We never thought that we would reach the point where fear will swallow the heart and the feet will want to flee. You [Israel] are fighting like you fought in '48. What got into you all of a sudden?"

Despite the ferocity and effectiveness of the Israeli operation, the Damascus-based leadership of Hamas has rejected an Israeli offer for a cease-fire. It's not clear whether this is more bluster or whether the Hamas leadership inside Gaza is willing to continue the fight, forcing Israeli troops to remain in Gaza. And the UN is urging Israel to accept a unilateral cease-fire -- because nothing says victory like retreating under fire.

Assuming that a cease-fire is agreed upon in the next two or three days -- prior to Obama's swearing in -- one wonders how involved the Obama team has been in negotiations. Were they simply kept abreast of the talks? Have they signed on to the basic framework?

Germany has been in shock and outrage over an incredibly nasty incident, which took place in the city of Duisburg last Saturday. That day, about 10,000 agitated protesters organized by the radical Islamist Turkish group Milli Gorus, were marching through the city to protest Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Suddenly, when the angry, young, and predominantly male Muslim crowd spotted two Israeli flags hanging from the balcony of a fourth floor apartment building, things turned really ugly.

To the shouts of “Allahu Akhbar” and “Death to Israel”, the mob immediately charged towards the building and began throwing stones and other objects at the apartment unit. German police, numbering only 250 men in total, were completely overwhelmed by the situation. For sure, they were able to fend off a first wave of Milli Gorus protesters trying to storm the building by force. However, in an apparent effort to appease the protesters and prevent the situation from spiraling completely out of control, the commanding police officer then ordered one of his men to climb up the balcony and remove the Israeli flag, while several other colleagues entered the apartment by force to take down the second flag.

At the time of the incident, the two tenants--a young German student and his girlfriend who had wanted to show “solidarity with the sole democracy in the region”--were in fact following the Turkish Islamist protest march down on the street to document any instances of anti-Semitism or hate crimes. The video footage of this incident is deeply disturbing to say the least. After the Israeli flags had been removed, the 10,000 protesters continued their march through the city. It is interesting to note that Duisburg has the highest share of immigrants in the entire Ruhr area (about 17 percent of the roughly 500,000 inhabitants are foreigners, the vast majority of them from Turkey).

German politicians of virtually all political stripes as well as the Central Council of Jews in Germany swiftly condemned the incident, criticized the Duisburg police for their conduct, and demanded a full-scale investigation into the matter. The Duisburg police chief, for his part, posted a statement on the police website on Wednesday saying “I deeply regret that feelings, especially those of our Jewish fellow citizens, were hurt.” While such a statement is certainly welcome, one should be careful not to merely portray this serious incident as a matter of “hurt feelings”. Doing so would divert political and public attention away from what appears to be the key take-away from this ugly episode: namely that Germany’s law enforcement agencies are in retreat while the Muslim mob is on the rise. Just for the record: while still legal in Germany, the Turkish fundamentalist group Milli Gorus has been under surveillance by German domestic security agencies for quite some time.

Last August the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court once again affirmed President's Bush's constitutional authority to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance in the name of national security. That ruling was made public yesterday but the court reached a similar conclusion in 2002, In re: Sealed Case. Still, ever since December 2005, when the Times first broke the story that President Bush had decided to set aside FISA's various problematic strictures and procedures, there has been a constant drumbeat of charges that President Bush was acting illegally in ignoring FISA. The authorization of warrantless wiretaps was offered as a prime example of the renegade, "imperial presidency" of George W. Bush.

The law is clear: the United States government does not need a warrant to listen to the perfectly innocent conversations between, say, a New York Times editor and his al Qaeda buddy in Peshawar.

As the boss and frequent WEEKLY STANDARD contributor Gary Schmitt pointed out early on ("Vital Presidential Power," Washington Post, December 20, 2005, and "Constitutional Spying," WEEKLY STANDARD, January 2, 2006), the president was both correct and well within his rights to put aside an out of date law that was impeding him from his duty to protect the country from another attack. The case against Bush, pushed by the media and carried by the Democratic party, was built on ignorance about what the Constitution says and what Bush has actually done.

But there's no apology from the New York Times -- not for compromising national security by first reporting the existence of the program, and not for endlessly repeating over the next three years that the president had abused his office by authorizing the program. The Times said yesterday that the ruling "may offer legal credence to the Bush administration's repeated assertions that the president has constitutional authority to act without specific court approval in ordering national security eavesdropping." But today, Times columnist Paul Krugman demands that Barack Obama launch an investigation into the Bush administration's "torture and illegal wiretapping." It's a joke.

Democrats, including Obama, have demagogued this issue with no less enthusiasm than the press. Now that the matter has been settled in the president's favor, and now that the Democrats hold both the presidency and the responsibility for protecting this country from attack, one hopes Obama will act as "energetically" as previous presidents have, including Bush, and not like the carping caucus of Democrat senators he is leaving behind.

Update:A friend writes in:

The initial NYT report got it wrong: the court did not reach the question of whether the president has inherent constitutional authority to conduct such surveillance in the face of FISA restrictions.

The NYT got an intelligence-and-law-related story wrong? Go figure.

For more see "Wiretap Vindication" in today's Journal. The paper explains that while the decision "applies only to the stopgap FISA measure in place between 2007 and 2008, it sets a precedent."

Senior UN officials and Human Rights watchdog groups are calling for Israeli leaders to be brought up on war crimes charges, alleging that the IDF's use of M825 Felt-Wedge projectiles violates international protocols restricting conventional weapons use in densely populated areas.

The problem in the UN's argument, as with most of the arguments against Israel's use of force in Gaza, is that it rewrites international treaties on warfare to better fit an anti-Israel narrative. White Phosphorous -- or 'Willy Pete' -- has been used for decades to create large smokescreens for troop cover and target illumination and is not -- despite any claim to the contrary -- an incendiary weapon (nor is it proscribed under any law on armed conflict). Article one of the treaty banning incendiaries says as much:

Incendiary weapon means any weapon or munition which is primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat, or combination thereof, produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target. (a) Incendiary weapons can take the form of, for example, flame throwers, fougasses, shells, rockets, grenades, mines, bombs and other containers of incendiary substances.

(b) Incendiary weapons do not include:
(i) Munitions which may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants, tracers, smoke or signalling systems.

That's not to say Willy Pete is without collateral effects. There have been several documented cases where WP has injured or killed civilians, as the illuminant burns slowly at extremely high temperatures. But like with other legal conventional munitions such as artillery shells and guided bombs, the responsibility for incidental death and damage lies with Hamas and any other combatant which uses human shields to mask its operations.

International war crime statutes were written to prosecute those who fill mass graves with the bodies of noncombatants, the Hitlers and the Milosevics, not those who use legal illuminants in small, localized conflict. If a treatise on armed conflict can no longer differentiate between the use of military smoke shells and deliberate rocket attacks on civilian populations, the effect is to doom such treaties to irrelevance.

Naturally, the media is doing its part to maximize confusion and obscure the truth. One particularly egregious example comes in this Los Angeles Times report on the subject in which WP is called a 'gas' and never even identified as a smoke device.

Joe Biden: "I know as much or more than Cheney ... I’m the most experienced vice president since anybody." Really, Joe? Really?

In the Age of Obama, plane crashes are no longer lethal. (Seriously, though, what an amazing pilot.)

The big blue wall.

Protesters label Redford an enemy of the poor.

Obama's inauguration is the most expensive ever.

Rod Dreher argues that online maps identifying the homes of Prop. 8 campaign contributors might not be such a good idea.

Max Blumenthal is the M. Night Shyamalan of political Internet "filmmaking." The brash politico experienced early success with his brave foray into the bow-tied underbelly of conservative politics, producing "CPAC 2007: The Unauthorized Tour." The young filmmaker was praised for his innovation--using the exact same style as Michael Moore, but on the Internet, to isolate right-wing cranks and their most egregious quotes through his skillful manipulation of Windows MovieMaker.

Since then, he's become increasingly predictable and self-derivative, diving into crowds of conservatives with his video camera to deliver scoops like, "Hey, some College Republicans say doofy stuff," and "Christians will tell you they believe things that are in the Bible, if you ask."

Add the ponderous, self-important narration and unnecessary face-time for Blumenthal himself, and you feel like you're waiting for the unsatisfying twist ending to "Lady in the Water."

Blumenthal's latest creation--this time in conjunction with Alternet.org instead of The Nation magazine--takes him onto the streets of Manhattan, where he attempts to find right-leaning, pro-Israel demonstrators saying crazy things. He finds next to nothing, at a rally of thousands, but that doesn't keep him from using misleading headlines and editing.

The video is entitled "Bomb a Ghetto, Raise a Cheer," and the header on his written account is "Pro-Israel Rally Attended by Big-Time NY Dems Descends into Calls for 'Wiping Out' Palestinians"--which, come to think of it, is as inappropriate as calling Shyamalan's latest snoozefest "The Happening."

No one in the video actually does call for the "wiping out" of Palestinians. Blumenthal conveniently deprives viewers of the context necessary to make the distinction, but it's far more likely (obvious, even) that the people in the video are talking about Hamas terrorists, not all Gazans.

Blumenthal asks, "How many civilian casualties would it take before you questioned the attack," to which one man answers, "There's not a number involved," before the film cuts abruptly and suspiciously to another woman who answers the same question, "until they wipe them all out. They gotta go strong with this." The next woman on the tape refers to someone as a "cancer" that must be burnt out or removed, but Blumenthal doesn't allow her to specify whom exactly.

A man says, "They are forcing us to kill their children to defend our children," and it's not delivered as a rallying cry, but as an angry lament. It doesn't much matter to Blumenthal, but the statement is also demonstrably true. Hamas deliberately puts women and children in harm's way by shooting rockets from population centers and civilian facilities, like schools and hospitals, making it nearly impossible for Israel to defend its children without endangering the children of Gaza.

In an extreme example, prominent Hamas cleric Nazir Rayan explicitly instructed his children to stay inside his house to be "martyred" with him after he had been warned the IDF would take him out.

Surviving family members spoke to local Arab media and said that in the days before his death, Rayyan had repeatedly asked his children, "Who wants to die with me as a martyr?" The children would respond, "Yes, daddy, we all want to be with you alive or dead."

Rayyan's adult daughter, Wala, said even the younger children wished to die with their father. "If you had asked my four-year-old sister Aisha, who died in the attack, she would have told you that she preferred to die as a martyr," Wala told Ma'an news.

Blumenthal is incredulous of charges that Hamas endangers civilians by placing munitions inside schools, despite the fact that such practices have been documented by none other than the NYT. He mocks people who simply say, "even when they're in a school, you have to get them out," once again depriving the viewer of the context necessary to determine who "they" is, though any reasonable person would conclude it's a pronoun for "terrorists."

His money quote comes at the very end of the video when he asks a man, "So, what if Israel went in and just wiped Gaza off the map? What would be so wrong with that?" The man pauses, clearly unwilling to go where Blumenthal is leading him. When he starts to answer the question, Blumenthal cuts away, presumably letting the man's hesitation speak for itself instead of letting the man actually speak for himself. Why? Because the man did not oblige him with a politically convenient and cruel soundbite.

Video can be a very manipulative medium, and political filmmakers of any stripe can be tempted to push boundaries to make their films prove their preconceptions. Blumenthal's failure to turn his subjects into unbalanced warmongers even with his leading questions, selective edits, and sheer determination is indicative of the true spirit of the rally in New York City, January 11.

If Blumenthal really wanted shocking footage, he could venture into London's anti-Israel protests where "Kill the Jews" is not an uncommon message. Or, "the Jews are our dogs" is a nice chant from Montreal. Ft. Lauderdale is closer by, where a woman in a hijab shouted "back to the oven" to Jewish counter-protesters.

These outbursts are far more disgusting than anything in Blumenthal's video, and are apparently unprovoked by a director with an agenda. The Left often invokes its all-purpose moral relativism to deflect responsibility for the tone of such gatherings--both in real life and in online comment sections--arguing that every large gathering of political activists will produce a few bad seeds.

But just browse YouTube's Gaza protest clips from around the world. Many of the shouts, signs, and speeches are far more offensive than Blumenthal's expose, and they're taped by the very people who organized the rallies, not by political adversaries on a mission for gotcha moments. This is how many of them want to be seen. The distinction is profound.

Blumenthal's video is here:

Good