Have you recently discovered that your teenage son is an aspiring jihadi? That all those hours he was spending holed up in his room scouring the Internet he was not looking at porn sites, as you thought, but communing with other martyrs-in-waiting just like him?

Not to worry, help may be only a few suras away: Mohammed Sheikh, director of Toronto's Masjid el Noor Mosque, has developed a "Specialized De-Radicalization Intervention Program," based on AA's 12 steps to recovery, that is designed to turn him around. Present your little terrorist wannabe to the mosque's counselors, and they will try to show him that his "interpretation of the Islamic faith is inconsistent with the last 1,400 years of Islamic schools of thought . . . and bring [him] back toward the traditional interpretation of the Islamic faith, which completely rejects suicide bombings and extremism in all of its forms."

Whether it works remains to be seen. In the meantime, it's no less worthy a use of the 12 steps than that of, say, VH1's "Celebrity Sober House."

After last year's reported talks with the Taliban met a dead end and were mocked by Mullah Omar, more negotiations are underway. Al Jazeera reports "secret" talks between Hezb-i-Islami leader Gulbaldin Hekmatyar and the Western and Afghan officials are underway.

The talks, between Taliban-linked mediators, Western officials and the Afghan government, are believed to involve a proposal for the return to Afghanistan of Gulbaldin Hekmatyar, the country's former prime minister, who has been in hiding for seven years.

Hekmatyar, the leader of the Hezb-i-Islami forces fighting alongside the Taliban and labelled a "terrorist organisation" by the United States, would be allowed to return to Afghanistan with immunity from prosecution, according to information revealed to Al Jazeera.

Like past talks with supposed Taliban leaders who really are former Taliban leaders who have been expelled from the group, negotiations with Hekmatyar are very likely to go nowhere. Hekmatyar has been offered a way out several times before, only to reject the offers. He even rejected the offers in 2002 after the U.S. ejected the Taliban from control and the movement appeared to be defeated. His Hezb-i-Islami has become more radical and grown closer to al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Those looking to split the Taliban and allied groups would be better served by attempting to peel away the lower level leaders and followers as the upper echelon leaders have little interest in reconciliation. They have stated their demands time and time again: foreign forces must leave, the Afghan government must be dissolved, and the Taliban would regain control of Afghanistan.

Christian Brose evaluates Barack Obama's Iraq speech and points to a missed opportunity that struck me as I watched it. Obama only got to give the address he did because he was wrong about the surge. And George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain and others were right.

At the risk of heading into la-la land, I think Obama should have tipped his hat ever so slightly today to President Bush, Sen. McCain, and other Republicans who had supported the surge strategy, naming them and thanking them. Of course, there's no telling how Iraq would look today had the surge never happened, but it's likely that conditions would be pretty grim and that this withdrawal plan would have the smell of defeat to it, rather than the opposite, as it does.

Obama could have caveated this to death -- "I opposed Bush's decision to begin this war, I opposed how he sold it to America, I opposed the way he prosecuted it," etc. But he could have recognized that Bush's decision to change strategies in 2007 is in large part why the security situation in Iraq has turned around more than anyone could have hoped, why we can now begin drawing down our forces with a good measure of confidence, and why our troops now feel more and more that their sacrifice is worth it.

Not only would this have been magnanimous, it would have been smart politics. It would have acknowledged the bipartisanship that underlies the decision to begin bringing our troops home by drawing an important line of continuity through our Iraq efforts of the past two years. It would have disarmed Obama's more hawkish critics on Iraq by conceding their point on the surge and turning it into an argument for the drawdown, which it is. And it would have shown Republicans that Obama is committed not just to a bipartisanship of style but of substance -- not just being willing to recognize when the other side has valid points, but actually incorporating them into one's own thinking.

The whole post is smart.

I had some problems with the speech (see Tom Donnelly's comments below) and I am concerned that Obama's timeline locks him in to this drawdown even if conditions on the ground make it look increasingly unwise. But overall, it was a good speech. There are many on the loud-mouthed left who are too dim to understand it, but this was Bush's gift to his successor.

First Read factchecks Obama's Iraq speech.

CNN: "half of all Americans think the United States is winning the war in Iraq, the highest percentage since that question was first asked in a CNN poll in 2004."

Sonny Bunch on why Hollywood and the left love JFK assassination conspiracy theories.

Matt Continetti will be on C-Span Sunday night at 8pm/11pm Eastern to discuss "The Age of Irresponsibility."

Ramesh Ponnuru reflects on the life of William F. Buckley Jr., who died one year ago today.

George Will doesn't back down to the global warming hysterics.

The left tries to smear Jindal over his Katrina story.

Obama has made more unilateral executive moves at this point in his presidency than his predecessors. This, of course, is just another sign of his change-y awesomeness--unlike that imperial president before him.

Reid opposes reinstating the "assault weapons" ban.

As is always the case, Newt Gingrich delivered a speech that did not bore on Friday at CPAC. Entering the hall to a mob of college students, "Eye of the Tiger," blaring in the background, he was perhaps inspired by the pugilistic soundtrack. He opened his speech with a challenge for Attorney General Eric Holder, who called the U.S. "essentially a nation of cowards" in a Black History Month speech to Department of Justice employees.

"We now have more than enough evidence of what this administration thinks of the American people," Gingrich said. "Let me say to Attorney General Holder, I welcome the opportunity to have a dialogue with you about cowardice, anywhere, anytime."

He suggested the face-off— "dialogue, not a debate. Let's be above partisanship," he said. —could happen in Detroit, Mich., a city ill-served by the liberal policies Holder and the Obama administration promote

"Let's discuss the total failure of the Detroit political system, which has taken a city of 1,800,000 with the highest per capita income and has driven it into the ground so that there are now fewer than 900,000 living there," he said. "With a per capita income that is 62nd in the United States."

"It is the function of bad government, bad politicians, bad bureaucracy, bad ideas, Let's talk about that," he said.

He called the state of such cities a "betrayal" of the Americans who live there, and urged conservatives confront liberals about the failure of their policies in order to "eliminate bad government" and "liberate the people of Detroit from the terrible circumstances."

"I hope Attorney General Holder will talk about the failures of the institutions he supports, the failure of the unions he supports, the failure of the policies he supports, and let's talk about it in a one of the cities that has been betrayed by those policies most sadly and most tragically."

A challenge to take on the first black attorney general in Detroit's inner city on race issues and the domestic issues that disproportionately affect African-Americans? You can't fault him for not being bold.

The Washington Post reported on Saturday:

Restrictive U.S. policies toward Cuba are ineffective, have failed to achieve their stated purpose of promoting democracy and should be reevaluated to take advantage of recent political changes on the island, according to the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The views of Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) are appended to a report by minority committee staffers that calls for lifting Bush administration restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba, reinstituting formal bilateral cooperation on drug interdiction and migration, and allowing Cuba to buy U.S. agricultural products on credit. Scheduled for release Monday, the report stops short of proposing that the 47-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba be lifted.

The Cuban Government is so happy with Senator Lugar's staff report calling for unilateral measures on the embargo, that the Cuban diplomatic mission in DC is circulating it. A friend sends over this note from Michelle Abdo, a Cuban diplomat stationed in Washington:

Hi [redacted]:

I am the Second Secretary of Cuban Interests Section attending the American business sector dealing with Cuba.

I would like to up date you on the current US Cuba policy where [redacted] is an important State. Hereby I am attaching you news on the Cuba issue. I will be pleased to meet with you, if it is possible. Please confirm me your Office location.

Best regards,
Michelle Abdo
Second Secretary
Cuban Interests Section

Here's the last part of today's speech by Obama:

Finally, I want to be very clear that my strategy for ending the war in Iraq does not end with military plans or diplomatic agendas ­ it endures through our commitment to uphold our sacred trust with every man and woman who has served in Iraq.

You make up a fraction of the American population, but in an age when so many people and institutions have acted irresponsibly, you did the opposite­ you volunteered to bear the heaviest burden. And for you and for your families, the war does not end when you come home. It lives on in memories of your fellow soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who gave their lives. It endures in the wound that is slow to heal, the disability that isn't going away, the dream that wakes you at night, or the stiffening in your spine when a car backfires down the street.

You and your families have done your duty ­ now a grateful nation must do ours. That is why I am increasing the number of soldiers and Marines, so that we lessen the burden on those who are serving. And that is why I have committed to expanding our system of veterans health care to serve more patients, and to provide better care in more places. We will continue building new wounded warrior facilities across America, and invest in new ways of identifying and treating the signature wounds of this war: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury, as well as other combat injuries.

We also know that service does not end with the person wearing the uniform. In her visits with military families across the country, my wife Michelle has learned firsthand about the unique burden that your families endure every day. I want you to know this: military families are a top priority for Michelle and me, and they will be a top priority for my administration.

We'll raise military pay, and continue providing quality child-care, job-training for spouses, and expanded counseling and outreach to families that have known the separation and stress of war. We will also heed the lesson of history ­ that those who fight in battle can form the backbone of our middle class ­ by implementing a 21st century GI Bill to help our veterans live their dreams.

This is a very subtle form of the soldier-as-victim trope that is fast becoming an Iraq legacy. For soldiers throughout history--those who have endured physical and emotional sufferings of an essential similar quality, if less clinically expressed--the trials of war were at least partially ameliorated by the salve of personal honor and, if the battle went well, the celebration of a victory. The troops who have served and serve still in Iraq should be singled out not just for the burdens of the fight but because they emerge from it, as Bing West's book puts it, as the "strongest tribe."

No doubt there is a genuine tenderness in the president's feelings for soldiers. But there is little of the praise of warriors in his words. Gratitude or sympathy for suffering is quite different from honoring a sacrifice. I am sure Obama will honor his pledge to continue to ensure that people in uniform "form the backbone of our middle class." But the pay, the benefits, the programs alone are never enough and never, ultimately, what make the call to service worth answering.

It is never easy for a civilian to fully empathize with a soldier's experience, particularly with that of long-service professionals asked to serve constant watch on distant, dusty frontiers, in wars that ebb and flow but do not end. The only wisdom can come from acknowledging this almost unbridgeable gap and trying to mentally leap across it. Soldiers more easily see that we civilians are not like them; we civilians are mistakenly prone to think that soldiers are like us.

For the president, the civilian who stands at the beginning of the chain of command--who, by his constitutional authority as commander-in-chief really resides on the far side of the gap--making the leap is an obligation, not an option. He, above all, should speak to his troops in the language of duty, honor, and country which is their native tongue but seems to be such a foreign dialect to a detached, cool, post-modern politician. President Obama must not simply bind up the soldier's wounds or care for his widow, but lead him.

Yesterday Susan Rice got into a bit of a catfight with the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations. Rice came out and declared that the United States would "seek an end to Iran's ambition to acquire an illicit nuclear capacity and its support for terrorism." The Iranian ambassador, Mohammad Khazee, fired back, saying Rice was employing "the same tired, unwarranted and groundless allegations that used to be unjustifiably and futilely repeated by the previous U.S. administration."

Now Ben Smith reports that the Obama administration is pulling out of Durban II, also known as the United Nations Zionism is Racism Conference. When the State Department initially announced its intention to participate in the planning stages of that conference, despite calls for a boycott from Israel and Canada, a spokesman explained that American attendance was "in line with [the new administration's] commitment to diplomacy," and that American diplomats intended to "change the direction in which the review conference is heading."

It's clear now -- even to the Obama administration -- that diplomacy can't achieve the impossible, in this case convincing the U.N. that Zionism isn't inherently racist. I'd prefer to wait until the second or third year of the Obama administration to get truly conspiratorial, but the timing of the announcement also feels like some kind of sop to those who were troubled by the appointment of Chas Freeman.

Either way, the Obama administration has not impressed with its diplomacy so far. We lost a critical base in Kyrgyzstan, Rice is getting into unhelpful and unproductive squabbles at the UN, and attempts to redirect Durban II were a complete bust. It's early yet, but Obama has failed to secure any advantage for the United States through diplomacy or through his mere ascension to power -- something many of his supporters prattled on about during the campaign. Are there even rumblings of more NATO troops to Afghanistan? Is there any sign that the Iranians are looking for an opening? The Russians have only become more hostile. When can we expect to start seeing the returns on our new diplomacy-friendly foreign policy?

It's an oldie, and there's no link, but this passage from Irving Kristol's "The Shaking of the Foundations," published in his On the Democratic Idea in America (1972), leaped out at me today:

It is less comforting but more realistic to reflect that we don't live in the world; we live in a particular world; and history records many particular worlds that did indeed come to their ends—sometimes abruptly, more often slowly and insensibly, but always painfully for those who felt themselves to be part of what was being destroyed.

These words ought to resonate with conservatives as they study the Obama budget and begin to understand the president's ambition.

Eli Lake does some more work on the Chas Freeman story in today's Washington Times:

Since 1997, Mr. Freeman has been president of the Middle East Policy Council (MEPC), a Washington think tank. In 2007, he accepted a $1 million donation from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud that, according to a press release at the time, was meant for "future projects" for the council.

MEPC Vice President Anne Joyce said the donation was intended to fund an endowment for the council, which, she said, aims to further U.S.-Arab relations and widen the range of debate in Washington from what the group sees as an excessively pro-Israel focus.

Let's be clear about what this $1 million sum was for: the funding of a Saudi lobby that could "widen the range of debate," i.e. counter the Israel Lobby. Except in this case, unlike AIPAC which gets its funding from American citizens, the money comes directly from the Saudi regime.

The upshot is that the people who are most strident in their denunciation of the "Israel Lobby" are, without any hesitation, lining up behind a man who was a pawn of the Saudi Lobby. The result will be that every single intelligence product produced by the NIC will be fairly questioned by critics as having been tainted by Freeman's debts to the Saudis -- debts he has paid off over the last decade by making laughable claims in defense of Saudi Arabia.

Republicans are concerned -- Lake quotes Minority Whip Eric Cantor as saying Freeman's past associations "are deeply alarming" and reports that Rep. Mark Kirk is urging the inspector general to review the appointment -- but so are Democrats. THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that Senator Charles Schumer called Rahm Emanuel earlier this week to express his concern about the appointment.

And while Freeman's appointment is unlikely to be revoked, this story may yet have legs. Freeman has yet to file his financial disclosure forms. He has one month to do so. It will be interesting to see just how dependent Freeman has been on Saudi largess these past few years.

President Obama delivered his Iraq withdrawal address at Camp Lejuene today:

1. The most important part is the 2011 total withdrawal. Obama just made the SOFA into something vague and not-that-meaningful: 2011 just became a hard stop, I think. When presidents lay down markers like that, they don't easily walk away from them. It's now what Iraqi politicians described it as: the American Withdrawal of Forces Agreement. I fear Iraqi domestic political convenience just became American strategic reality. This converts the SOFA from a framework for a long-term strategic partnership to a guarantee of withdrawal.

2. The numbers seem to flow like this. Phase 1: 2009 withdrawals are small, maybe 20-25K max if we support Odierno; phase 2: January 1, 2010 to August 31, 2010 accelerates to 75 to 90K within 9 months, depending on size of residual force; phase 3: August 31, 2010 to December 31, 2011 is the final 35 to 50K.

3. The distinction between phases 2 and 3 isn't that great and certainly isn't very long. Slight pause in pace of withdrawal that probably won't be that apparent to Iraqis.

4. This is strategy by timetable rather than timetable by strategy.

As Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar push a 10 year, $15 billion non-military aid package for Pakistan as well as a one-time aid package estimated between $4 and $5 billion, Senator Carl Levin has questioned the wisdom of such a move. The Press Trust of India reports:

An influential US Senator has questioned the commitment and willingness of Islamabad to take head on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and charged the official machinery in Pakistan of providing crucial assistance to its leaders.

"For many reasons, I question whether Pakistan has the political will or the capability to take on the Taliban and other militants. Evidence of their unwillingness or inability to do so has been clear and longstanding," said Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services.

Levin, who convened a hearing on "Strategic Options for the Way Ahead in Afghanistan and Pakistan," said there have been reports for some that the Afghan Taliban council meets in Quetta and from there plans attacks in southern Afghanistan.

"The militant Baitullah Mehsud, suspected of orchestrating the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, holds an open press conference in South Waziristan," he pointed out. "To make matters worse, the Pakistan government inflames opposition to the United States with their strong public criticism of our air strikes," Levin charged.

At the Times of India, Chidanand Rajghatta notes that billions have gone missing, but the tap may soon be turned back on.

US government reports in recent times have detailed how Pakistan has misused billions in aid for a military build-up against India instead of using it for the intended war on terror. Audits have also detailed million of dollars in fraudulent claims by the Pakistani military. Reimbursement to Pakistan have been halted for several months because of this but are set to resume soon after the Obama administration has given a green signal pending further audits.

He also notes that "the proposed aid is not contingent on Islamabad living up to any benchmarks." Considering that Congress was insistent on having benchmarks to judge Iraq's political and security progress, this omission is curious, to say the least.

In a highly symbolic gesture, Berlin has offered to grant German citizenship to the children fathered by Wehrmacht soldiers during the 1940-1944 occupation of France. Estimates indicate that about 200,000 babies were born as a result of such romantic Franco-German liaisons in WW II. After the war, unfortunately, many of these “war children”--condescendingly referred to as “Génération Boche”--were ostracized by French society and treated as outcasts by neighbors and even members of their own family.

The recent decision by the German interior ministry is the result of an initiative launched by French children of former Wehrmacht soldiers for whom it was important to seek symbolic recognition by the home country of their fathers, many of whom never saw their children. Berlin has promised an expedited, case-by-case handling of these citizenship applications, for which there will be no fee. As members of the EU, these Franco-German children will also be allowed to hold dual citizenship. While successive French governments had largely ignored the “war children” issue for decades, Paris has now offered to set up a commission to shed light on the psychological and even physical sufferings endured by many of the “enfants de la guerre”.

The LA Times reports on the plans for an investigation by Senate Democrats into the CIA under the Bush administration.

Does anyone doubt that this will be a total sham? It will allow the Senate Democrats to "investigate" the evidence they want to look at without considering the national security ramifications. Without having to make a judgment on whether or not the officials broke the law, the Senate Democrats avoid all of the sticky issues concerning whether or not questionable, but not necessarily unlawful, actions were necessary to protect the country. It allows them to cherry-pick the story, present it in a light that is most favorable to them, feeds the base, and keeps alive a "Blame America/Bush/Republicans" storyline indefinitely.

There are other investigations into detention policies that may or may not bear on the substantive issues, but this one has all of the appearances of being a political operation. Notice that this investigation will take up to a year, meaning this has no bearing on how detention policies should be crafted, unless the Senate Democrats are willing to wait a year to make such a determination (which would be an admission that they are not very serious at all).

Given Obama's defense budget, this may not be too different from what our future looks like:

Under current plans, the Royal Navy circa 2020 will be a very strange force. There will be just six high-end warships to protect two 65,000-ton super-carriers, plus a mixed flotilla of old Type 23s and FSCs numbering just over a dozen. It’ll be a top-heavy force with too few destroyers to escort the carriers into a shooting war, and too few frigates to perform day-to-day patrolling during peacetime. It’s a fleet optimized for nothing.

19 Georgia lawmakers preparing resumes for Obama Cabinet positions by getting behind on taxes.

Tancredo obliges Think Progress by assessing the Bobby Jindal speech in his characteristically sober way.

Obama's audaciously hopeful budget predictions vs. private prognosticators.

Somewhere, Ayn Rand is smiling, grimly.

Patty Murray just gave us our talking point, in the event she ever runs for president.

Joe the Plumber to sue state of Ohio for meddling in his private records. Now, that's the kind of JTP activism I can get behind.

Obama's threat to charity.

Surprise: Conservative politicians call Obama's policies socialist, a lot.

Romney's Utah home robbed of three 2012 TV ads and two field offices a bunch of jewelry.

Larry Kudlow for Senate?

Some interesting testimony by William Happer, Professor of Physics at Princeton University:

I believe that the increase of CO2 is not a cause for alarm and will be good for mankind. I predict that future historians will look back on this period much as we now view the period just before the passage of the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution to prohibit “the manufacturing, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors.” At the time, the 18th amendment seemed to be exactly the right thing to do – who wanted to be in league with demon rum? It was the 1917 version of saving the planet. More than half the states enacted prohibition laws before the 18th amendment was ratified. Only one state, Rhode Island, voted against the 18th amendment. Two states, Illinois and Indiana, never got around to voting and all the rest voted for it. There were many thoughtful people, including a majority of Rhode Islanders, who thought that prohibition might do more harm than good. But they were completely outmatched by the temperance movement, whose motives and methods had much in common with the movement to stop climate change. Deeply sincere people thought they were saving humanity from the evils of alcohol, just as many people now sincerely think they are saving humanity from the evils of CO2. Prohibition was a mistake, and our country has probably still not fully recovered from the damage it did. Institutions like organized crime got their start in that era. Drastic limitations on CO2 are likely to damage our country in analogous ways.

But what about the frightening consequences of increasing levels of CO2 that we keep hearing about? In a word, they are wildly exaggerated, just as the purported benefits of prohibition were wildly exaggerated. Let me turn now to the science and try to explain why I and many scientists like me are not alarmed by increasing levels of CO2.

Happer doesn't dispute the current warming, just the cause -- and the potential impact. The statement is not that long and very well written. It's worth reading in full.

Peter Baker reports:

Republicans emerged from a White House meeting more supportive than several key Democrats, who complained earlier in the day that the president was still leaving behind too many American forces. Mr. McCain said during the private meeting that he thought the withdrawal plan was thoughtful and well prepared, according to several people in the room. His spokeswoman, Brooke Buchanan, confirmed by e-mail Thursday night that Mr. McCain is “supportive of the plan.”

Another key Republican, Representative John M. McHugh of New York, the ranking minority member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he was reassured by Mr. Obama that he would revisit his plan if circumstances on the ground change.

“The president’s objective to withdraw U.S. combat forces from Iraq is one that we should pray for, plan for and work toward,” Mr. McHugh said. “However, I remain concerned that the security situation in Iraq is fragile and we should work to mitigate any risks to our troops and their mission.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will address CPAC shortly. TWS has gotten an early look at what he will say regarding Gitmo:

Conservatives also believe that the government has no more solemn duty than to protect the people who established it. And on this last point, let’s be very clear about something else: When it comes to Guantanamo, the new Administration needs to show it’s more concerned with safety than symbolism. Many of those still detained are serious threats to the safety of our citizens. In fact, several of these terrorists still proudly proclaim their desire to kill more Americans. The new Attorney General visited Guantanamo earlier this week and he returned with a glowing report. He said it was well-run, that he was impressed with the people in charge, and that every single person there has to be moved out and Guantanamo shut down in less than a year. The Obama Administration needs to answer a question: Where exactly do they expect to send these guys next January? They have no answer. Well I do: these terrorists are right where they belong.

Update from CPAC: "The GITMO riff inspired an enthusiastic standing ovation."

Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor cum candidate cum Fox News host, spoke on the first day of CPAC, using his considerable communication skills to bring the audience through a 30-minute vision of the revitalization of the Republican Party, on everything from nuclear energy to health care.

And, judging by his speech, the Huckabee revolution will be word-smithed and catch-phrased, aggressively. After an oddly off-color opening joke, which finished with— I kid you not— a teacher tasting puppy piddle, Huckabee called for "family conservatives," "fiscal conservatives," and "freedom conservatives" to come together as "compentent conservatives."

Employing the Obama-style couplet he urged "deliberation over desperation" and "prudence over panic" in financial crises, reiterating his opposition to the first bank bailout in 2008. The stimulus bill became the "Congressional Recovery Action Plan," because "we all know it's pure Congressional Recovery Action Plan and smells like Congressional Recovery Action Plan." He renamed pork-filled stimulus and spending bills, "Confessions of a Shopaholic."

As for conservatives, they are called to be "vertical politicians" and "vertical patriots," who don't worry about what moves Americans right or left, but what moves them up and down. In so doing, the party can earn the votes of the broad middle class, because if we "lose that connection, we lose the election."

Invoking Katrina as a metaphor for the party's decline, he said it must once again become "the party of a shining city on a hill, not the party of the ruined city in the sea."

On regulation, Republicans must be the "party of just right," not allowing overzealous regulation or deregulation to endanger the Goldilockses of America.

The Republican Party, he said, must communicate that it is the party that believes opportunity in America is a "ladder," not a "stepstool." It believes in life as a "World Series," where the exceptional are allowed to shine, benefiting everyone; not "tee ball," where everyone is forced to play on the same level.

You know what I say? Yes, we can, as soon as we sort out all these metaphors.

Senate passes an unconstitutional bill to give the District of Columbia representation in Congress.

Congressman Keith Ellison attacks Jon Kyl's decision to invite Geert Wilders to screen Fitna at the Capitol.

Patrick Ruffini on the Joe-the-Plumberization of the GOP.

Dawn Johnsen, Obama's nominee to head up the Office of Legal Counsel at the DOJ, has compared pregnancy to involuntary servitude, but she now denies it.

Don't pass up the opportunity of a lifetime: Apply for an internship at the Obama White House today!

One of the most strident defenses of Chas Freeeman came from Robert Dreyfuss, writing at the Nation. A friend now forwards us a snap of the back cover of Dreyfuss's book, Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, which features...a blurb from Chas Freeman. Other luminaries who praised the book include Chalmers Johnson and Seymour Hersh.

Freeman calls the book "a fluent tour de force," and goes on to talk about America's misguided attempts to "use the Islamic right to Western strategic advantage [that] have helped make political Islam the formidable force it is today." He then goes on to praise Dreyfuss for making the case that the U.S. government -- inadvertently -- "played a central role in building up the forces that struck New York and Washington on 9/11..."

It strikes me that no one has done more than Freeman to prop up the "Islamic right," which by my understanding would necessarily include Freeman's client or, as Freeman calls him, King Abdullah the Great. Is it not our support for the Saudi monarchy, perhaps as much as our support for Israel, which provides the ideological fuel for al Qaeda?

In any case, surely there is some large reservoir of vile anti-American statements in Dreyfuss's book. Perhaps some reader of ours who has a stronger stomach than I do has leafed through it and can send along the passages that make the Devil's Game such a tour de force.

And for extra credit: click here to read our new chair of the National Intelligence Council complain about how the Arabs' "concern about investigation of wire transfers and checks [on] donations generally" was crimping his fundraising -- a situation that was ultimately resolved, Freeman says, by "the generosity of Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia."

The Hill's Mike Soraghan writes:

Attorney General Eric Holder raised the prospect Wednesday that the administration would push to bring back the ban. But Pelosi (D-Calif.) indicated on Thursday that he never talked to her. The Speaker gave a flat “no” when asked if she had talked to administration officials about the ban.

“On that score, I think we need to enforce the laws we have right now,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference. “I think it's clear the Bush administration didn’t do that.”

Outside of the dig at the recent Republican president, that phrase is the stock line of those who don’t want to pass new gun control laws, such as the National Rifle Association.

The White House declined to comment on Holder's remarks, referring reporters to the Department of Justice. The DoJ did not respond to The Hill's request for comment.

Given the chance to express support for an "assault weapons" ban, Pelosi throws back a line about enforcing the "laws we have right now". That's pretty much an NRA talking point. And the White House is unwilling to comment on Holder's remarks?

Sounds like status quo you can believe in.

Roll Call's Emily Pierce writes that senior Democrats are expressing skepticism about Obama's reported plan to leave a residual force of 50,000 troops in Iraq:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the number is “a little higher than I expected.” But he said he was heading to the White House for a briefing on Iraq later Thursday afternoon.

Similarly, Senate Democratic Conference Vice Chairman Charles Schumer (N.Y.) said, “50,000 is more than we thought would stay and we await the explanation for why that’s needed.”

CQ's Josh Rogin reports that some Democrats in the House are criticizing Obama's plan:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., suggested a smaller contingent of 15,000 to 20,000 troops, and said she wanted to study Obama’s proposal. “I don’t know what the justification is for the presence of 50,000 troops in Iraq,” Pelosi told MSNBC on Wednesday.

House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John P. Murtha , D-Pa., said only a complete withdrawal would suffice. “I don’t think we need to leave anybody there,” he said. “They have got to be on their own. Their presence alone makes them vulnerable.”

Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin , D-Mich., said his previous calculations had led him to believe that “a limited force, following the removal of all combat forces, of a size in the low tens of thousands would be adequate to meet the mission.”

Not all anti-war Democrats were ready to criticize Obama’s proposal. Appropriator James P. Moran , D-Va., said Obama’s plan, as reported, meets the test of a gradual withdrawal. [...]

And Republicans are skeptical of Obama's plan:

Rep. John M. McHugh of New York, ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said that committing to a withdrawal timeline now, before the next round of Iraqi elections, was unwise. [...]

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview that he wanted a chance to study the plan. But in a speech Wednesday at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, McCain warned, “We must avoid drawing down troop levels there too quickly or risk jeopardizing the hard-won security gains.”

Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the committee’s second-ranking Republican, called on Obama to explain the strategic rationale for the withdrawal, the logistical details for how it will be carried off, the risk of failure, and the impact on global operations.

“These are important questions that the president should address with his commanders on the ground, and truthfully explain to the American people, before he undertakes the complete drawdown of troops in Iraq,” Inhofe said.

The notification to Congress:

The Director of National Intelligence has selected Charles W. Freeman, Jr. as the Chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC). The Chairman of the NIC will report to the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis (DDNYA) and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). As Chairman of the NIC, Ambassador Freeman will be responsible for overseeing the production of National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) and other Intelligence Community analytical products, providing substantive counsel to the DNI and senior policymakers on issues of top national security importance, reaching out to nongovernmental experts in academia and the private sector to broaden the Intelligence Community's perspective, and articulating substantive intelligence priorities and procedures to guide intelligence collection and analysis.

Ambassador Freeman brings a diverse background in defense, diplomacy, and intelligence to this position having served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Deputy Chief of Mission and Charge d'Affaires in Bangkok and Beijing, Director of Chinese Affairs at U.S. State Department, and Distinguished Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and the Institute for National Security Studies. He received his J.D. from the Harvard School of Law.

What the release doesn't tell you: Freeman has been a shill for the Saudis ever since leaving government, making outlandish claims like,"It is widely charged in the United States that Saudi Arabian education teaches hateful and evil things. I do not think that is the case." Or, "I believe King Abdullah is very rapidly becoming Abdullah the Great."

The left has defended Freeman's views on Israel -- even when his statements seem designed only to inflame and provoke controversy. What the left is unable to do is defend Freeman's views on China, where he unapologetically supports the bloody crackdown on democracy activists who dare protest in the streets of the capital, and Saudi Arabia, which as far as Freeman is concerned is something like Berkeley in the desert. The left spent years bemoaning the close ties between the Bush family and the Saudi royals -- and it was a relationship that few on the right were eager to defend. Now the left can have their turn defending a man who is so closely tied to the Saudi Kingdom that in the weeks after 9/11 he wouldn't even consider halting his business with the bin Laden family.

The man who will be "providing substantive counsel to the DNI and senior policymakers on issues of top national security importance" is in the pocket of the Saudis. Contrary to the expectations of Marty Peretz and others, Obama has enlisted in his administration a number of individuals with views that are hostile to Israel. One more won't matter too much. What makes Freeman different is that he actually defends the corrupt Arab states that foment and support terror while at the same time condemning a democratic ally of this country.

It's a disgrace.

Jeffrey Goldberg noted this exchange at State yesterday:

QUESTION: Can you give us - well, what is the State Department's definition geographically of Southwest Asia? What countries does that include?
MR. WOOD: Matt, I didn't --
QUESTION: No, you guys named an envoy for Southwest Asia. I presume that you know what countries that includes.
MR. WOOD: Yes. Of course, we know. I just - I don't have the list to run off - you know, right off the top of my head here. But obviously, that's going to encompass - that region encompasses Iran. It will - you know, it'll deal with --
QUESTION: Does it include Iraq?
MR. WOOD: Indeed, it does.... .
QUESTION: And so, does it include parts of the Middle East?
MR. WOOD: Yes.
QUESTION: It does? Does it include Syria, and it includes Israel and it includes Jordan?
MR. WOOD: Well, he'll be looking at the entire region that will include, you know -
QUESTION: Where does that stop? I mean, you know, you have NEA which, you know, runs all the way to Morocco. So does it include -
MR. WOOD: Well, he's going to be in touch with a number of officials who work on issues throughout this region.

It's not at all clear what is meant by Southwest Asia, other than that Ross was meant to have the Iran portfolio and for some reason the State Department wasn't even comfortable being specific as to which Gulf he is supposed to be tending. As Christian Brose notes, the vagueness of Ross's title will leave things wide open for a good old fashioned turf-war between Ross, Holbrooke, and Chris Hill.

What strikes me as especially odd is that Jim Jones came into office with the explicit goal of clarifying who was in charge of what by redrawing the map. As he told the Washington Post just a few weeks ago:

Organizational maps within the government will be redrawn to ensure that all departments and agencies take the same regional approach to the world, Jones said. The State Department, for example, considers Afghanistan, Pakistan and India together as South Asia, while the Pentagon draws a line at the Pakistan-India border, with the former under the Central Command and the latter part of the Pacific Command. Israel is part of the military's European Command, but the rest of the Middle East falls under Central Command; the State Department combines Israel and the Arab countries surrounding it in its Near East Bureau.

"We are going to reflect in the NSC all the regions of the world along some map line we can all agree on," Jones said.

Jones has apparently been so successful with this project that the State Department can't even figure out what countries their envoys represent.

Contradicting Obama's language on the trail and his press secretary's comments in the briefing room, there's a $7.7 million earmark in the $410 billion spending bill with Barry's name on it:

President Obama, who took a no-earmark pledge on the campaign trail, is listed as one of dozens of cosponsors of a $7.7 million set-aside in the fiscal 2009 omnibus spending bill (HR 1105) passed by the House on Wednesday.

The bill is an accumulation of leftovers from 2008 — spending measures that weren’t enacted before the 110th Congress expired. Lawmakers who wanted money for local projects in those bills were required to submit their requests many months ago, while Obama was still a senator. It’s moving through Congress now because a temporary extension of funds to run the government will run out after March 6.

Obama’s name jumps out on a list of many earmark cosponsors because he and his staff have been so emphatic about his no-earmark stance.

“I think you can take one sign of the president’s seriousness on this that there aren’t any from him that I know of in that omnibus largely because there weren’t any that were requested last year,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday.

He's not the only one:

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. , who was a senator from Delaware when the window for making 2009 pet project requests was open, has his name is attached to $94.9 million in earmarks.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar , who was a senator at the time, sponsored or cosponsored even more in special line items for favored projects. His total, including earmarks he supported as a secondary sponsor, was $227.4 million. The overwhelming majority of those earmarks were cosponsored in conjunction with other lawmakers.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton , Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood , Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel also were members of the last Congress, and each of their names is associated with at least one earmark in this appropriation, which is ready for debate in the Senate.

That ethics bar keeps looking higher and higher every day.

AG Eric Holder told reporters yesterday that the Obama administration intends to enact an "assault weapons" ban. In 1994 the House passed such a ban, which outlawed any semi-automatic rifle with a combination of two features such as a scope and a pistol grip, by a 216 to 214 vote.

The ban expired in 2004, and it's not entirely clear that Democrats now have the votes in Congress to pass another ban. In 2006, the NRA endorsed 68 Democrats. NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam tells me that that number is a good indicator of how many Democrats would probably vote against a ban, so about 35 Republicans would have to join the Democrats to pass it.

Nancy Pelosi appeared on MSNBC last night and discussed Obama's much-hyped withdrawal strategy:

MADDOW: Doesn't 50,000 seem like an awful lot for a residual force.

PELOSI: I completely agree with that. And the president hasn't made a statement, so I don't know what he's going to say.

I know what the rumors -- and I don't know what the justification is for 50,000, a presence of 50,000 troops in Iraq. I do think that there's a need for some. I don't know that all of them have to be in country. They can be platformed outside.

I'll just be interested to see what the president has to say. But I do think that -- I would think a third of that, maybe 20,000, a little more than a third, 15,000 or 20,000.

If Obama plans to remove two-thirds of U.S. troops from Iraq, leave 50,000 behind, and claim the complete withdrawal of "combat" forces -- you can see why Pelosi would be frustrated. Any Democrat who's being honest with himself will realize that this is nothing more than a charade -- this isn't going to be 50,000 cooks and advisers. It will be an acknowledgment that the kind of withdrawal Obama talked about during the campaign simply isn't prudent or responsible, despite the fact that large numbers of his supporters championed just such a strategy. And still, there will be a legitimate concern that even this withdrawal is too much, too fast. If the situation deteriorates, it will be Obama that has to decide whether to send troops back in or abandon our allies in Iraq. With 50,000 U.S. troops already there, it's not hard to imagine how that will play out.

Either way, the left should follow Pelosi's lead and stop pretending that 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq -- almost as many as would be in Afghanistan -- represents something other than a complete rejection of the antiwar, out-of-Iraq-now rhetoric the MoveOn crowd has been using for years. At least Pelosi has the courage to admit it.

HT: Ben Smith

Canoes and tattoo removal: Your tax dollars at work.

It was "savings" two days ago. Now, it's "deficit reduction."

Will the new White House rely too heavily on Obama's ability to give a grand-slam speech?

Top 5 best conservative movie moments.

Good news: You'll be paying for the affluent Bay Area's over-valued homes, too.

How TARP changed deficit accounting.

Joe the Plumber populism or Rick Santelli populism? Sign me up for Santelli.

At CPAC, Rep. Paul Ryan warns of tipping point for socialism, urges tax reform.

O'Hanlon and Pollack are back to effectively annoy the left again with their assessments of Iraq.

Soak the rich: "Take everything they earn, and it still won't be enough."

Tedisco leads in NY-20 by 12 percent, but Murphy nudges closer.

Nicole Gelinas has a smart piece over at City Journal on Bobby Jindal's missed an opportunity to make the case for limited government Tuesday night:

In the Republican response to President Obama’s speech last night, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal could have used his state’s searing Hurricane Katrina experience as an object lesson in the proper role of limited government in a relatively free-market economy. Sadly, the Katrina story he told made exactly the opposite point.

Jindal noted that Republicans have an “honest and fundamental disagreement” with Democrats about “the proper role of government.” Regarding the public sector’s ability to rescue Americans from the economic storm, he said, “those of us who lived through Hurricane Katrina—we have our doubts.” Jindal told how, in the immediate aftermath of the 2005 storm, he went to visit Sheriff Harry Lee (now deceased) and found him yelling into the phones. Lee had learned that volunteers in boats were ready to go out and help, but that “some bureaucrat” had told them they couldn’t do so without insurance and registration. The sheriff told the boaters to “ignore the bureaucrats and go start rescuing people.” From this tale, Jindal concluded, America should realize that “the strength of America is not found in our government” but in the “enterprising spirit” of regular people.

The problem with Jindal’s story—and one reason why Republicans are in so much trouble now—is that reasonable people don’t consider providing critical, life-saving support for starving and dehydrated people after an unprecedented natural disaster to be an example of scarily big government. That’s just minimally competent government, even in a country far less developed than ours. In fact, Jindal’s story illustrates the opposite of what he intended. Lee, a longtime government official, personified the functional, nimble government that we need. He overrode unnamed bureaucrats and told volunteers that he’d be personally responsible if they ran into any more trouble. Lee made a smart decision on the fly and saved lives. Unfortunately, other officials—at all levels, with only a few exceptions—proved shamefully negligent in their responses. Because they failed at their jobs, people died.

Read the whole thing here .

Notwithstanding the president’s righteous campaign talk about how committed he is to the separation of church and state, White House aides are now in the business of vetting prayers said before Obama rallies by individuals whom they’ve asked to do the praying. Read this remarkable story by the enterprising Dan Gilgoff of U.S. News & World Report. Apparently no previous White House went down this road. If Bush had done so, Gilgoff wouldn’t be the only one on the story.

Be sure to read Rove today.

The House passes the $410 billion Omnibus spending bill on a mostly party-line vote.

Obama plans tax increases and spending cuts to build up a $634 billion government health care fund.

Chris Matthews says that the GOP "outsourced" its speech last night to Bobby Jindal. What is it with Democrats and anti-Indian insults?

Ryan T. Anderson and Sherif Girgis propose a real compromise on same-sex marriage.

It is the overwhelming consensus that Bobby Jindal's delivery of the response to the President's address last night was not good.

It is truly too bad that Jindal didn't shine last night, but it was not his last chance to do so. There seems to be a panicky vibe to the panning of Jindal's speech, both on the left and right today. Perhaps that's understandable. Conservatives, frustrated by years of Bush's inexpert speeches, McCain's evaporating charisma at the podium, and Palin's uncertainty under questioning, were looking for deliverance in Bobby Jindal on all fronts. They didn't get it. Liberals are both gleeful at the comparative superiority of Barack Obama and happy to scuttle one of Republicans' only young, promising stars by turning him into a punch line after one speech.

Liberals who thought Sarah Palin's brilliant RNC speech performance meant absolutely nothing are sure that Jindal's off night means everything. Conservatives who decried Obama for being nothing but a good speechifier seem to be dismissing Jindal's substantial record in light of one night of sub-par speechifying.

Everyone should just tap the brakes before hurtling to foregone conclusions. Gov. Jindal is a demonstrably smart, young, interesting politician with a compelling personal story. If you watch his past TV appearances, you'll find he has always communicated a surprising gravitas, despite his youthful looks. When questioned by reporters, he's comfortable with talking points, anecdotes, and data.

It is unfortunate that he sounded over-rehearsed and sing-songy in his first major national address, but the State of the Union is always a tough act to follow. Even when the orator is not one of Obama's skill, the abrupt shift from the pomp of an applause-filled joint session of Congress to the spare presentation of the solitary response is rough on a speaker. Who could forget the wandering eyebrow of Tim Kaine's 2006 rebuttal?

Today, the Internet is abuzz with comparisons of Jindal to "Kenneth the Page," the naive, irretrievably nerdy bumpkin from the NBC comedy "30 Rock." The comparison is unfortunate for several reasons, not least of all because it signals the undue influence of Tina Fey on national politics may continue unabated. It's also catchy, and was not terribly unfair after last night's speech. But on any other day of his career, it would have been a total mischaracterization of his skills, which are considerable.

The Jindal Michael Gerson writes about today is the one I've seen in action; the real one:

At a recent meeting of conservative activists, Jindal had little to say about his traditional social views or compelling personal story. Instead, he uncorked a fluent, substantive rush of policy proposals and achievements, covering workforce development, biodiesel refineries, quality assurance centers, digital media, Medicare parts C and D, and state waivers to the CMS (whatever that is).

Some have compared Jindal to Obama, but the new president has always been more attracted to platitudes than to policy. Rush Limbaugh has anointed Jindal "the next Ronald Reagan." But Reagan enjoyed painting on a large ideological canvas. In person, Jindal's manner more closely resembles another recent president: Bill Clinton. Like Clinton (a fellow Rhodes scholar), Jindal has the ability to overwhelm any topic with facts and thoughtful arguments -- displaying a mastery of detail that encourages confidence. Both speak of complex policy issues with the world-changing intensity of a late-night dorm room discussion.

He proved his mettle this morning on the "Today Show," when he was back to his sharp, serious self. In the coming years, just as in the years preceding last night's performance, he will demonstrate it time and time again.

I imagine, even if comedians feel the need to saddle Jindal with an unrepresentative caricature, ala Chevy Chase's klutzy Gerald Ford, the American people will be more fair to him. He deserves it.

AG Eric Holder:

"I did not witness any mistreatment of prisoners. I think, to the contrary, what I saw was a very conscious attempt by these guards to conduct themselves in an appropriate way....It does not in any way decrease our determination to close the facility, even though as I said it is being well-run now," he said.

Lawyer for terrorists:

"According to my clients, there has been a ramping up in abuse since President Obama was inaugurated," said Ghappour, a British-American lawyer with Reprieve, a legal charity that represents 31 detainees at Guantanamo.

Is Holder laying the groundwork for the administration to walkback it's pledge on Gitmo? If Gitmo is such well-run and professional facility, then why rush to close it down. The other oddity here is the timing of all this -- on the same day Holder goes down to Gitmo, reports emerge of stepped up torture and abuse of detainees. Did Eric Holder order a code red?

President Obama announced the appointment of former Washington Gov. Gary Locke to head up the Commerce Department, but Politico's Kenneth P. Vogel reports that Locke's work for some corporations may cause another "hiccup" for the smoothest transition evah:

Locke, a partner in an international law firm’s China division, has advocated for Microsoft, Starbucks, and banking, timber and shipping interests in recent years, raising potential conflicts for him as head of a department charged with promoting U.S. trade around the globe.

One of Obama’s first acts as president was to sign an executive order barring executive branch officials from working on issues “directly and substantially related” to their former clients or employers for two years.

Yet if he’s confirmed as Commerce Secretary, Chinese trade issues – including some with direct impact on the companies he went to bat for – are likely to be high on the agenda for Locke, who is the first Chinese American governor.

Software piracy issues would rank among them. Microsoft and other software developers have lobbied both the U.S. and Chinese governments to crack down on profit-draining practice. On a similar front, Starbucks recently won a trademark lawsuit against a Chinese company using its logo.

Did Helen Thomas crack a "Slumdog Millionaire" joke about Bobby Jindal this morning? She said it to a film crew, so I look forward to the video.

According to Washington Times reporter Christina Bellantoni, she did. Don't worry. It's not racist or even insensitive. Jindal's a Republican, which makes it comedy!

Sadly, last week’s great snack-bar takeover at NYU came to an end after only three days. The courageous (if minuscule) group of students who occupied the food court in NYU’s Kimmel Center really spoke truth to power, demanding, among other things: “The establishment of a student elected Socially Responsible Finance Committee....An in depth investigation of all investments in war and genocide profiteers, as well as companies profiting from the occupation of Palestinian territories...annual scholarships for thirteen Palestinian students,” and, hilariously, “that the general public have access to Bobst Library.” And they faced the consequences. No, they weren’t gassed, tazered, beaten, shot with rubber bullets, or hauled off in chains to waiting paddywagons. But security guards did tear down their barricades and brutally inspect their NYU ID cards! And, in spite of their pre-emptive call for “full legal and disciplinary amnesty for all parties involved in the occupation,” some of them got suspended!!

Happily, one brave young man brought his camera and recorded some of the action, providing a not-to-be-missed 10 minutes of viewing. Highlights: PLO-scarf-girl screaming “HE TOUCHED ME!!!” when a security guard tries to corral her from one spot to another, and the heroic documentarian himself, cataloguing the contents of the backpacks strewn about (in case they get confiscated): macbook, mackbook, ipod, macbook, diary, macbook charger. Their parents must be so proud.

Shakespeare, too (with apologies):

We few, we happy few, [we very, very few] we band of brothers [don’t forget the sisters]
For he to-day that sheds his blood [or whines pathetically] with me
Shall be my brother [boyfriend/girlfriend/other]
. . . And gentlemen in England [or Tribeca] now a-bed [or in class, not wasting their parents’ money]
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here [but rather home and playing with their wiis]
And hold their manhoods cheap [no comments, please].

That's the boss's message to conservatives in a column for the Washington Post:

Obama's speech reminds of Ronald Reagan's in 1981 in its intention to reshape the American political landscape. But of course Obama wishes to undo the Reagan agenda. "For decades," he claimed, we haven't addressed the challenges of energy, health care and education. We have lived through "an era where too often short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity." Difficult decisions were put off. But now "that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here." The phrase "day of reckoning" may seem a little ominous coming from a candidate of hope and change. But it's appropriate, because it's certainly a day of reckoning for conservatives and Republicans.

For Obama's aim is not merely to "revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity." Obama outlined much of this new foundation in the most unabashedly liberal and big-government speech a president has delivered to Congress since Lyndon Baines Johnson. Obama intends to use his big three issues, energy, health care and education, to transform the role of the U.S. federal government as fundamentally as did the New Deal and the Great Society.

Conservatives and Republicans will disapprove of this effort. They will oppose it. Can they do so effectively?

Read the rest here.

Senator McCain is just now delivering a speech at AEI on the war in Afghanistan. Some highlights:

"Success is possible in Afghanistan. Afghans reject the Taliban. Just 4 percent of Afghans wish them to rule the country, and they rate the Taliban as by far the most dangerous threat to their nation. Despite the deteriorating conditions, nearly 70 percent continue to say the U.S. invasion and overthrow of the Taliban were a good thing. What the people in Afghanistan want most is not the exit of foreigners, or of coalition troops, but rather the things that a properly configured and resourced strategy would deliver: security, some degree of development, and basic good governance.

"The problem in Afghanistan today is not innate xenophobia or hostility to the West. It is our own failed policies that are the problem. We have tried to win this war without enough troops, without sufficient economic aid, without effective coordination, and without a clear strategy. The ruinous consequences should come as no surprise. If we change our policies, the situation on the ground will change, too."...

"...Many Americans have begun to wonder whether it is truly possible to turn this war around. Public commentary increasingly focuses on past failures in Afghanistan by the Soviets and British, and warns that the country has earned the label “graveyard of empires.” Some suggest it is time to scale back our ambitions in Afghanistan—to give up on nation-building and instead focus narrowly on our counterterrorism objectives, by simply mounting operations aimed at killing or capturing terrorist leaders and destroying their networks, while leaving the broader tasks of building fundamental security, governance, and development to someone else – or abandoning them altogether.

"I disagree. I am confident victory is possible in Afghanistan. I know Americans are weary of war. I’m weary of it. But we must win the war in Afghanistan."

Full text of the speech after the jump.

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen (D-Tenn.) is joining Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) and Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) in the small chorus of politicians who are openly wary about taking all of the federal government's stimulus handout. At issue in Tennessee is the same sticking point Sanford and Jindal cite— expanded unemployment benefits. All three governors say that increasing the pool of people eligible for unemployment benefits would be a persistent budget challenge that would last long after the stimulus funds run out:

"We are evaluating this piece of money, whether it makes sense for us to take it," Bredesen said in an interview Monday with the Chattanooga Times Free Press. "We're in the position of going back to our legislature this year for changes in our tax structure just to keep our fund whole, and taking it to a new level may be too much of a lift for the legislature this spring."

Bredesen is the seventh governor to say he may not take all the stimulus money for his state, but he is the first Democrat. Sanford and Jindal have been the most vocal, but the governors of Idaho, Alaska, and Texas have also expressed reservations.

Bredesen's objections give lie to the New York Times' Monday editorial, which excoriated wavering governors as reinforcing the "disturbing conclusion that the Republican Party seems more interested in ideological warfare than in working on policies that get the country back on track." Unless Bredesen has hopes of becoming a "rising Republican star," stimulus concerns are more than political posturing.

The New York Times, whose own employees may soon be familiar with the ins and outs of unemployment eligibility, blithely dismissed any objection to changes in unemployment law as both politically motivated and unfounded:

The governors are blowing smoke when they suggest that the federal unemployment aid would lead directly to new state taxes. No one knows what the economic climate will be when the federal aid has been used up several years from now. But by dumping billions of dollars into shrinking state unemployment funds, which puts money into the hands of people who spend it immediately on food and shelter, the stimulus could help the states through the recession and into a time when unemployment trust funds can be replenished. In other words, the stimulus could make a tax increase less likely.

But even if new taxes are required at some point, the new federal standards would protect more unemployed workers than ever before and bring states like Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas into the 21st century.

In other words, "people are hurting, man," the Keynesian stimulus absolutely will work, and liberal conceptions of unemployment law are morally superior, so abandon your pesky federalism and attempts at responsible accounting, and treat the American taxpayer like your own personal Mexican oligarch. They're great!

Here are the fiscal facts the New York Times can ignore while telling stories of "struggling" families hurt by Republicans:

If the state adopted such a law, businesses in Louisiana that have experienced job losses would begin to be charged higher unemployment insurance assessments as early as 2010 in order to meet the mandates of the expanded system, state Workforce Commission spokesman Curt Eysink said.

The estimated extra cost to business in the state would be about $12 million per year, Eysink said. That number is based on the approximately 4,000 extra people who would have been eligible for the benefits last year had the new law been in place. The actual cost in the future could be higher if the state's jobless rolls increase, Eysink said.

Tennessee is already raising premiums on businesses, and does not wish to raise them more to fund increased benefits:

The state Department of Labor and Workforce Development is preparing to raise unemployment insurance premiums paid by employers to bring more money into the fund. But even with that extra revenue factored in, the fund is expected to become insolvent sometime next year.

Adding more obligations to the unemployment system could make it even harder to cover the shortfall, said Bill Fox, an economist at the University of Tennessee and an adviser to the fund. It might require even higher payments by businesses after the recession is over.

Maybe these guys should just follow the Times' lead and mortgage their governor's mansions and capitol buildings to provide for the magical unemployment funds people need when they are hurting, man.

Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan famously told the Washington Post that “If the reputation then builds that the Saudis take care of friends when they leave office, you’d be surprised how much better friends you have who are just coming into office.” The Saudis have few better friends than Chas Freeman, who has been unofficially appointed to head Obama's National Intelligence Council after serving as Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and later as the president of the Saudi-backed Middle East Policy Council. From Freeman's perch there, he's had nothing but praise for the Saudi regime.

In 2002, Freeman explained that "in the case of Saudi Arabia, reform has always come from the top down. It has been the ruling family that has sought to liberalize society and to open it up." Freeman goes much further in an interview with the Saudi-US Relations Information Service (wonder who funds that):

SUSRIS: What are your impressions of King Abdullah's accomplishments in reform and modernization in Saudi Arabia?

Amb. Chas Freeman: I believe King Abdullah is very rapidly becoming Abdullah the Great. If you look at his record over the time of his regency when he was Crown Prince, he was acting in many ways as chief of state. Since he became king I've been struck by the scope of change. It has been quite extraordinary....

Not surprisingly, Freeman's admiration for the Saudi royals comes in inverse proportion to his disdain for the democratically-elected government of Israel. In today's Journal, Gabe Schoenfeld fairly calls Freeman a "China apologist and Israel basher" (Freeman's bizarre sympathy for the Communist crackdown on democracy activists in Tiananmen Square 1989 was examined here yesterday). Schoenfeld quotes a speech Freeman gave in 2007:

While President Obama speaks of helping the people of Israel "search for credible partners with whom they can make peace," Mr. Freeman believes, as he said in a 2007 address to the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs, that "Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians; it strives instead to pacify them." The primary reason America confronts a terrorism problem today, he continued, is "the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation that is about to mark its fortieth anniversary and shows no sign of ending."

Much of the left clearly shares Freeman's hostility to Israel -- and sensing that Israel supporters fears Freeman's appointment (after all, Freeman was the first to publish Walt and Mearsheimer's screed) they have leaped to his defense. Still, this support is not on the merits of Freeman's views, but rather almost exclusively for the sake of antagonizing the nefarious Israel Lobby. Will Talking Points Memo or the Nation offer a substantive defense of Freeman's self-professed support for running over democracy activists with tanks?

I'm not holding my breath.

Some back-of-the-envelop math on Barack Obama’s speech last night. Although he acknowledged that we are “a nation at war,” in a speech of 6182 words the president used just 468 of them to talk about national security – the military and diplomacy, together – approximately 7 percent.

Of course the speech had to be largely -- even overwhelmingly -- about the economy. But the war was overshadowed by Obama's other priorities, too. He devoted some 827 words to education, 13 percent -- nearly double the time he spent talking about national security.

Most extraordinary, as Bill Kristol pointed out below, is his failure to talk about the 17,000 additional soldiers he will be sending to Afghanistan, other than a passing mention of “more who are ready to deploy.” Who are they? Why are they being sent? What will they do? What are his goals? We are left to wonder.

Gallup has evaluated first-month job approval for U.S. presidents going back to Richard Nixon. A few points deserve note.

First, Obama’s 63 percent approval level is about the same as the average of all presidents (62 percent) going back to 1968 during their first month in office. Barack Obama’s “disapproval,” at 24 percent, however, is slightly higher than the average of the other presidents (16%).

Second, Obama’s approval among self-identified Democrats and pure independents rose slightly over the last month. Yet his standing with independent-leaning Republicans and conservative Republicans dipped. The president’s numbers crept up 1 to 4 points among Democrats but dropped 14 points in the last month among conservative Republicans.

Gallup writes this about the early trends in presidential approval:

These shifts result in a slightly different profile for Obama relative to past presidents than what he enjoyed in the immediate afterglow of his inauguration. While Obama's initial 68% job approval rating was one of the highest in Gallup polling history (from Dwight Eisenhower through George W. Bush), his current 63% job approval rating is typical of how the last several presidents have fared at the one-month mark.

Finally, in hindsight, one president’s numbers at the first-month mark jump out--Jimmy Carter’s. The Gallup report notes that his 71% approval rating at the end of his first month was the highest of any president going back to Richard Nixon – and 8 points higher than Barack Obama’s.

Read Gallup’s full report on Obama’s first-month job approval here.

Pakistan continues to complain about the U.S. Predator campaign against al Qaeda and Taliban leaders and operatives in Pakistan's tribal areas, even after it has been disclosed that bases inside Pakistan are being used to conduct the strikes. Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency told the New York Times that these strikes, as well as U.S. plans to send an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, "are having an increasingly destabilizing effect on their country."

American missile strikes have reduced Al Qaeda’s global reach but heightened the threat to Pakistan as the group disperses its cells here and fights to maintain its sanctuaries, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

The officials acknowledge that the strikes and raids by the Pakistani military are proving effective, having killed as many as 80 Qaeda fighters in the past year. But they express growing alarm that the drone strikes in particular are having an increasingly destabilizing effect on their country.

They also voiced fears that the expected arrival of 17,000 American troops in Afghanistan this spring and summer would add to the stresses by pushing more Taliban fighters into Pakistan.

In essence, the ISI is saying that U.S. efforts to target Taliban and al Qaeda leaders and secure Afghanistan are responsible for the rise of "militancy" in the region. This of course ignores the fact that for decades the Taliban has been sponsored by elements within Pakistan's military and intelligence service, even to this day.

While the Predator strikes no doubt put the government in an awkward situation and are angering Pakistanis, the real cause of instability and the spread of radical Islam is Pakistan’s inability to control its own territory. Pakistan could end the Predator strikes if it showed it was serious about dislodging the Taliban and al Qaeda from the tribal areas and the Northwest Frontier Province. Instead, the Pakistanis have cut a series of peace deals, starting in North and South Waziristan in 2004, with the latest ceasefires coming to effect in Swat and Bajaur. The Pakistanis have ceded ground to the Taliban, thus giving al Qaeda the sanctuaries needed to reestablish its network after its near-defeat in Afghanistan in 2001-2002.

The U.S. strikes are happening because the Pakistani government is either unable or unwilling to restore its writ in large swaths of territory, and is in fact quite willing to cede control of these regions to the extremists. Make no mistake: These strikes are signs of just how bad the situation is inside of Pakistan. The United States would rather police its own territory but is forced to step in and keep al Qaeda off balance lest it conduct another attack on the scale of 9-11 or worse.

A statement from U.S. Congressman John M. McHugh (R-NY), ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, on Obama's reported decision to withdraw all U.S. combat forces by August 2010:

“Having just returned from my 10th trip to Iraq, I heard nothing from our military and civilian leaders that would validate such a decision at this time. The scheduling of troop withdrawals in Iraq has to be based on military imperatives—not on political considerations,” said Rep. McHugh.

“It’s simply too early to tell if the hard-fought security gains can be sustained with fewer U.S. troops. The Secretary of Defense and the Army’s former Vice Chief of Staff have both cautioned Congress recently against withdrawing U.S. forces too quickly,” continued McHugh. “Republicans look forward to receiving the Administration’s official proposal, as well as working to ensure the security gains made by our brave troops are not jeopardized.”

McHugh pointed to the following comments made by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at a January 27, 2009, hearing before the House Armed Services Committee as evidence that a wait-and-see approach toward the withdrawal of U.S. troops is warranted:

“[2009] is a year that is actually fraught with both opportunity and risk, and they're the opposite sides of the same coin in the respect of really four elections that will be held: the provincial elections this fall—in a few days, the district and sub-district elections this summer in June, the referendum on the SOFA [Status of Forces Agreement] at the end of July, and then the national elections at the end of the year. If we make it through those elections, then the prospects I think for an enduring domestic peace in Iraq are substantially enhanced, and I think that—and we'll see how these elections go.”

Consensus: Jindal speech great on paper, delivery not so great.

The AP fact-checks Obama.

Did America invent solar technology and the automobile?

The scariest image of the night?

Looking forward to seeing the $2 trillion in waste Obama's rooting out.

In other words, Secretary Clinton is now asking the Chinese to do precisely what Secretary Geithner asked them not to do.

And, the markets say...

Jimmy Carter did one thing right. I'm as surprised as you are.

Obama questions the patriotism of high-school drop-outs.

Biden: "I'm embarrassed. I don't know the website number." I give you, the man in charge of stimulus spending oversight.

Chris Matthews whispers "oh, God," as Bobby Jindal starts his response to the president's speech:

Kristol weighs in at the Washington Post:

You’d never know from the one-sentence discussion of Afghanistan that just last week the president had ordered an additional 17,000 troops there. Obama doesn’t seem to think his responsibility as commander in chief is in any way special. He certainly felt no responsibility even to begin to educate the public about this theater to which he’s committing additional American soldiers.

Instead, both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were treated as sideshows to “a new era of engagement” that Obama claims has begun. The only particular place mentioned by Obama, in addition to Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan, was Israel: “To seek progress toward a secure and lasting peace between Israel and her neighbors, we have appointed an envoy to sustain our effort.” The Israeli-Arab dispute and its envoy merits a mention. Yet Iran and its nuclear program does not?

This was not the speech of a man who even contemplates the possibility of using force within the next year to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. This was not the speech of a man who thinks America needs to be reminded about the dangers out there in the world, because Americans might have to be summoned to deal with them. This was not the speech of a man who thinks of himself as a war president.

Read the whole thing here.

This may come back to haunt him:

But let me perfectly clear, because I know you’ll hear the same old claims that rolling back these tax breaks means a massive tax increase on the American people: if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.

Obama seems intent on running a permanent campaign, and he's still making the kind of over-the-top promises that campaigns toss around like Monopoly money. In this speech he promised cap and trade and health care reform this year. He promised universal college education. He promised a cure for cancer. Obama also promised that he, too, would "sacrifice some worthy priorities for which there are no dollars."

Obama's critics during the campaign -- Democratic and Republican -- painted Obama as a lightweight who talked a good game but wouldn't be able to deliver. Clinton accused Obama of raising a "false hope" and pointed out that it wasn't the speeches of JFK and Martin Luther King that landed a man on the moon and ended segregation, but the competence and oversight of a rather less inspiring LBJ. Now Obama, having promised so much during the campaign and already off to a bad start with his new era of bipartisanship, is pledging massive increases in spending, huge reductions in the deficit, and no new taxes for 95 percent of Americans. It's only been a few weeks, but so far all the American people have to show for Obama's election is $1 trillion in new debt and a thousand point drop in the Dow. Everything else is still just talk, some of which has the potential to damage the economy even further if implemented poorly or, in the case of cap and trade, implemented at all. The only thing Obama's certain to deliver is the one thing he claimed tonight he didn't believe in -- bigger government.

Listen closely as Jindal approaches the mic and Matthews lets out an exasperated "oh God" before he even opens his mouth.

Officials say Obama will withdraw all combat troops by August 2010 and leave a force of 30,000 to 50,000 troops to train the Iraqis.

Reagan 1, Wieseltier 0.

Tom Daschle must be weeping again: Hilda Solis, another cabinet appointee with tax problems, is confirmed as Labor secretary.

William Shatner wants to be Canada's prime minister.

Rogue financier Stanford linked to fund run by Bidens.

The end of the NYU student occupation.

Ralph Peters has an op-ed in the USA Today questioning U.S. interests and U.S. policy in Afghanistan. At Commentary's website last week, Max Boot addressed the arguments advanced by Peters and others on the right who are skeptical of our policies in Afghanistan.

If you add up the stimulus bill, Obama's proposed foreclosure fix, and the omnibus spending bill House Democrats are preparing, the administration is kicking off its tenure by spending a whopping $1.4 trillion.

There's money for green golf carts. There's money for ACORN. There's money for weatherizing galore!

But there are some things the Democrat-controlled Congress will not countenance spending money on. Namely, Sakeithia, 12, Rashawn, 16, Paul, 11, Dominique, 14, Breanna, 9, Jordan, 17, Fransoir, 12, and De'Andre, 9.

They're all Washington, D.C. kids attending private schools thanks in part to a federally funded school-voucher program. The program was enacted five years ago after a heated battle in the Senate, and supporters say it's unlikely it will be reauthorized by the Democratic Congress unless they're lobbied something fierce.

The fiscal 2009 omnibus Appropriations bill (HR 1105) would require that the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program — known as the D.C. voucher program — be reauthorized by Congress and then approved by the D.C. government in order for the program to receive federal funding after the 2009-2010 academic year.

But Republicans and advocates say the program is unlikely to be reauthorized with Democrats controlling Congress.

“It would certainly be a steep hill for supporters of the program to climb given the slim margins this program passed with back when conservatives controlled the Congress,” said Dan Lips, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. The D.C. government may be more willing to support the program, he said.

The D.C. voucher program — the first to provide federally funded vouchers to students — was launched as a five-year pilot program through the 2004 omnibus appropriations law (PL 108-199).

Nancy Pelosi's office offered a "wait-and-see" soundbite on the program, but the language in the bill is more clear about its fate:

But the joint explanatory language accompanying the financial services portion of the omnibus legislation indicates that the program will likely be phased out. It directs Michelle Rhee, chancellor of the D.C. public schools, to take steps to ensure smooth transitions for students who need to enroll in public schools as a “result of any changes made to the private scholarship program.”

Obama has yet to take a position on the issue, but several students of the Opportunity Scholarship program are trying to convince him to support them. It's not so easy to write them out of an enormous budget filled with buildings named after congressmen and other pedantic Pelosi creations once you hear from them:

Jake Tapper:

"President Obama has accomplished more in 30 days than any president in modern history," a senior White House official said this morning in a background briefing for TV reporters.

Of course, no president in modern history had the help of "the most experienced vice president since anybody."

From Gov. Bobby Jindal's prepared response to Obama's not-quite SOTU tonight:

As I grew up, my mom and dad taught me the values that attracted them to this country - and they instilled in me an immigrant’s wonder at the greatness of America. As a child, I remember going to the grocery store with my dad. Growing up in India, he had seen extreme poverty. And as we walked through the aisles, looking at the endless variety on the shelves, he would tell me: ‘Bobby, Americans can do anything.’ I still believe that to this day...

Republicans are ready to work with the new President to provide those solutions. Here in my state of Louisiana, we don’t care what party you belong to if you have good ideas to make life better for our people. We need more of that attitude from both Democrats and Republicans in our nation’s capital. All of us want our economy to recover and our nation to prosper. So where we agree, Republicans must be the President’s strongest partners. And where we disagree, Republicans have a responsibility to be candid and offer better ideas for a path forward...

The strength of America is not found in our government. It is found in the compassionate hearts and enterprising spirit of our citizens...

To solve our current problems, Washington must lead. But the way to lead is not to raise taxes and put more money and power in hands of Washington politicians. The way to lead is by empowering you - the American people. Because we believe that Americans can do anything...

Democratic leaders say their legislation will grow the economy. What it will do is grow the government, increase our taxes down the line, and saddle future generations with debt. Who among us would ask our children for a loan, so we could spend money we do not have, on things we do not need? That is precisely what the Democrats in Congress just did. It’s irresponsible. And it’s no way to strengthen our economy, create jobs, or build a prosperous future for our children...

In recent years, these distinctions in philosophy became less clear - because our party got away from its principles. You elected Republicans to champion limited government, fiscal discipline, and personal responsibility. Instead, Republicans went along with earmarks and big government spending in Washington. Republicans lost your trust - and rightly so...

A few weeks ago, the President warned that our nation is facing a crisis that he said ‘we may not be able to reverse.’ Our troubles are real, to be sure. But don’t let anyone tell you that we cannot recover - or that America’s best days are behind her.

Last week a Rasmussen poll showed that only 38 percent of Americans support Obama's mortgage plan, but a new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that 64 percent of Americans somewhat or strongly support Obama's plan.

Why the wildly different results? How the poll questions were phrased might explain the difference.

The WaPo/ABC News poll asks:

21. On another economic issue, would you support or oppose the federal government using 75 billion dollars to provide refinancing assistance to homeowners to help them avoid foreclosure on their mortgages? Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat?

Rasmussen asks:

1* To reduce the number of mortgage foreclosures, should the federal government subsidize mortgage payments for financially troubled homeowners?

It seems that the difference between these two questions is that Rasmussen states that the government would "subsidize" "financially troubled homeowners", while the WaPo/ABC poll states that the government would be "using" money to provide "refinancing assistance to homeowners".

Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, but it seems that Rasmussen emphasizes that those getting government cash are financially troubled, while the WaPo poll leaves the impression that the money may go to a larger pool of homeowners. Of course, one would think it would be easy to infer from the Post poll question that people who need "help" to "avoid foreclosure" are financially troubled. But unless one (or both) of the pollsters got a bad sample, the subtle differences in phrasing may explain the big difference in the results.

Jennifer Loven can tell the future. Maybe Obama should put her on his economic team.

See Instapundit for a brief history of similar "laphamizations."

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) met with rogue Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) this morning for about 45 minutes, but was rebuffed by Bold Blago's protege when he asked him to resign:

"I told him under the circumstances that I would consider resigning," Durbin told reporters. "He said he would not resign."

Durbin was clearly frustrated by the meeting. He recalled how he had advised Burris not to accept the appointment in the first place. "My advice obviously doesn't move him," Durbin said.

"The people of Illinois have grown weary of this stuff," he added. "They want this Blagojevich burlesque to end."

Questions about Burris' contact with the Blagojevich family, in which he was asked to raise money for the governor, have had Illinois newspapers and politicians alike calling for the newly minted senator's resignation for several weeks. Burris gave no comment as he left the meeting.

If, in the grand tradition of flagrantly corrupt Illinois politicians, Burris grandstands instead of resigning, the fight will go back to the Illinois legislature again, much to the delight of political reporters:

If Burris quits, Gov. Quinn will appoint a Democrat on a temporary basis–someone, Quinn told me, who would be a caretaker. Quinn then would push the Illinois legislature to change the law for a special election.

Quinn has called on Burris to quit.

I asked Quinn Monday when we talked what he would do if Burris did not resign. He said the state lawmakers could pass a special election law effectively shortening Burris’ tenure. That could be subject to a constitutional challenge.

Rep. Bobby Rush's race card could not be reached for comments, as its schedule is already full for the next week.

Like Tom Daschle, Charlie Rangel, Timothy Geithner, et. al. Here.

The Progressive Policy Institute is holding a forum this week titled "New Threats and Tough Choices: A Discussion on Obama's First Defense Budget." The keynote speaker will be Rep. John Spratt (D-SC), chairman of the House Budget Committee and member of the House Armed Services Committee. According to the release,

In the middle of two major military deployments, the White House must take stock of today's national security threats and begin the painful process of spending discipline. Yet tough questions remain: How will the U.S. fund massive weapons projects ill-suited to today's security challenges?

Translation: Only defense has to worry about spending discipline. And those massive weapons projects ill-suited to today’s security challenges? Planes, ships, and army vehicles that we would only need in the event of some unimaginable conflict with Iran, China or North Korea.

The Star-Tribune reports:

FBI Director Robert Mueller said Monday in Washington, D.C., that a Somali-American man from Minnesota who was one of several suicide bombers in a terrorist attack in Somalia had apparently been indoctrinated into his extremist beliefs while living in Minneapolis.

I just flew through Minneapolis, a city with a large Somali population. The Somali community there has something of a lock on jobs at the airport. There's been some coverage of the taxi drivers at the airport there, some three-quarters of whom are Somali, refusing to take passengers carrying alcohol or dogs. That kind of fundamentalism is an early warning sign that a community is being radicalized. One hopes that Eric Holder's Justice Department will find the courage to open up a frank and forthright dialogue on religious extremism with the Somali community of Minneapolis.

It’s rather fitting that even when it comes to selling the “sniper’s perch” where Lee Harvey Oswald fired his rifle at President Kennedy, there is confusion over who owns the real perch. Parris Mayhew says he possesses the actual window, removed by his father in 1971 when he owned the Texas Schoolbook Depository. Caruth Byrd, however, insists he has the real window, removed by his father a few years earlier when he owned the building. Byrd is suing Mayhew and both are selling their respective windows on eBay.

Sure it would be interesting to own a piece of history--assuming you believe Oswald actually hit the president from that awkward angle, six stories up, and using an old Italian rifle (and through foliage no less!). But as the great Kevin Costner once said, “This was a military-style ambush from start to finish... a coup d'etat with Lyndon Johnson waiting in the wings.” Not to mention the mob, the Cubans, and Tommy Lee Jones.

The Florida state cosmetology authorities launched a preemptive strike on an imminent threat to the well-being of its citizens this week, outlawing the trendy "fish pedicure" despite the fact that it has yet to be offered anywhere in the state.

The procedure, popularized in Asia and introduced to the U.S. at a Virginia salon, allows customers to put their feet into a bowl of water filled with fish who eat away dead skin, as a supplement to the filing and sloughing of a traditional pedicure. Officials cited sanitation laws, saying it's impossible to sanitize live fish between customers, so the procedure is illegal.

Other reasons for the banning may include, "Hey, Washington did it, too!" And, what happened to the Peridot Salon and its owner Tuyet Bui when Washington banned the practice?

For the past three weeks, scores of customers descended upon a nail salon in Kent [Washington].

They came from Idaho and Ohio and Minnesota. The appointment book was booked solid two months out...

“Customers loved it,” said the salon’s owner, Tuyet Bui, who goes by Tweety.

Thursday, however, the Department of Licensing shut down Bui’s, um, fishy operation, saying that the pedicures were illegal.

Bui said she spent $3,000 to import the 300 fish from China, which are a type of carp called “chin chin.” She paid an additional $10,000 for a machine that would streamline the process...

Bui said she had to turn away eight customers by Thursday afternoon and would soon begin calling her customers, informing them of the ruling.

What about in Texas?

The co-owner of Zen Luxury Nail & Beauty Bar, located in the Dallas suburb of Frisco, said she was disappointed to learn she could no longer offer the service.

Now she's not sure what to do with the 500 guppy-like fish she bought for $2,500.

"I guess we will either keep them as pets, or send them back," she said.

And, in New Hampshire.

“It’s heartbreaking,” says Delores Nichols, director of spa services at the New Hampshire salon, “This was something we all were looking forward to doing. And we’re hopeful that the fish pedicures will be back.”

According to Nichols, only 20 people had tried the fish treatment before the state intervened.

She adds that Kim’s Spa is now gathering testimony from scientists about the hygienic safety of chin chin pedicures. The salon intends to appeal the state’s ban at the next cosmetology board meeting on Dec. 8.

That's at least three small businesses that lost out on an innovative service for customers, during a recession, thanks to the overzealous nanny state. In none of the stories about banning the fish pedicure is there any report of sickness caused by it. As far as I can tell, even women's magazines have yet to come up with hysterical headlines— "Fish Pedicure Horror! How a Guppy Lost Me My Guy!"— which means there is nary a trace of concern to exploit.

These are real people whose real livelihoods are being threatened by their governments' determination to protect customers from an as-yet non-existent and unlikely threat. And, unlike most of the people who find favor in Obama speeches and in the halls of Congress— Yes, I mean you, Big Three.— these people were providing a service that people actually wanted to buy.

The potential loss of business is pretty big, if you use Yvonne's Salon in Alexandria, Va. as your gauge. Its owner John Ho started the craze in 2008 by shipping in the guppy-like "chin-chin" fish to supplement pedicure service, and reported 5,000 takers in just the first few months. After Yvonne's unorthodox process got national coverage on daytime talk shows and women's magazines, demand went up across the nation. But here's the kicker. Guess why Ho started offering fish pedicures in the first place?

He said he wanted to come up with something unique while finding a replacement for pedicures that use razors to scrape off dead skin. The razors have fallen out of favor with state regulators because of concerns about whether they’re sanitary.

They're from the government, and they're here to help, as many times as it takes. The procedure is yet to be banned in Virginia, though PETA has complaints about the treatment of the fish, so go to Yvonne's while you still can.

Obama could probably add a few jobs to the "saved" column of his "created or saved" calculation if he'd make a few visits to state cosmetology boards.

See a fish pedicure slideshow, here. I think you'll agree that this crisis could easily have become a catastrophe if the government had not acted boldly and swiftly.

Update: Whew, thank goodness this is being dealt with on a federal level.

We already noted his egregious remarks on Tiananmen Square here, and there's more.

Freeman on Israel:

"American identification with Israeli policy has also become total. Those in the region and beyond it who detest Israeli behavior, which is to say almost everyone, now naturally extend their loathing to Americans. This has had the effect of universalizing anti-Americanism, legitimizing radical Islamism, and gaining Iran a foothold among Sunni as well as Shiite Arabs. For its part, Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians; it strives instead to pacify them. Palestinian retaliation against this policy is as likely to be directed against Israel's American backers as against Israel itself. Under the circumstances, such retaliation – whatever form it takes – will have the support or at least the sympathy of most people in the region and many outside it. This makes the long-term escalation of terrorism against the United States a certainty, not a matter of conjecture."

Freeman on Iraq:

"Very early on, the notion of achieving some sort of victory didn't take. So if victory is not possible and not feasible, even if you could define it, then what you're left with is to find some way to mitigate defeat."

Freeman on his friends and sponsors, the Saudis:

"It is widely charged in the United States that Saudi Arabian education teaches hateful and evil things. I do not think that is the case."

And on Hamas and Hezbollah:

"I'm a very practical man, and my concern is simply this: that there are movements, like Hamas, like Hezbollah, that in recent decades have not done anything against the United States or Americans, even though the United States supports their enemy, Israel. By openly stating and taking action to make them--to declare that we are their enemy, we invite them to extend their operations in the United States or against Americans abroad."

As one of the conditions to ending the fighting in Swat, Taliban chieftain Mullah Fazlullah has demanded the government pay reparations to the Taliban. And the guy who is footing the bill? The U.S. taxpayer, according to Pakistani reporter and Taliban expert Syed Saleem Shahzad. At least $6 million has been paid to the Taliban and more is on the way.

"The amount has been paid through a backchannel, " a senior security official told AKI on condition of anonymity.

"It is compensation for those who were killed during military operations and compensation for the properties destroyed by the security forces. In fact, negotiations for this package were finalised well before Maulana Sufi Mohammad signed a peace deal."

The security official said the amount was delivered from a special fund of president Asif Ari Zardari. All the tribal areas come under the president's jurisdiction and a special aid package, including a donation from the US, was designated for the tribal area by the president's office and distributed through the governor's office in the North West Frontier Province.

"Some other smaller amounts are also under negotiation which shall also be delivered soon," the official confirmed.

Not only is the United States paying the Pakistani government to abdicate territory to the Taliban, we get to fund the Taliban as well.

Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar are pushing yet another aid package for Pakistan. The Kerry-Lugar bill is expected to triple military aid to Pakistan to $1.5 billion. It's time for the U.S. government to ask if it is getting a good return on its investment. Considering that more than $3.8 billion of $5 billion of U.S. aide to Pakistan has gone unaccounted for and the Taliban is being funded by the United States, perhaps the answer is no.

First Read:

Attorney General Eric Holder is the cabinet member who will not attend tonight's presidential speech.

By custom, one member of the cabinet is designated to go to -- as we say these days -- "a secure location," in case that person is needed to carry on as head of the government. Since 9/11, the stay-away is typically a member of the national security team.

Chas Freeman, who has reportedly been offered and accepted a job as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, offered his take on the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 on a listserv in 2006. Here is the full text of his email to that group:

From: CWFHome@cs.com [mailto:CWFHome@cs.com]
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2006 9:29 PM

I will leave it to others to address the main thrust of your reflection on Eric's remarks. But I want to take issue with what I assume, perhaps incorrectly, to be yoiur citation of the conventional wisdom about the 6/4 [or Tiananmen] incident. I find the dominant view in China about this very plausible, i.e. that the truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud, rather than -- as would have been both wise and efficacious -- to intervene with force when all other measures had failed to restore domestic tranquility to Beijing and other major urban centers in China. In this optic, the Politburo's response to the mob scene at "Tian'anmen" stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action.

For myself, I side on this -- if not on numerous other issues -- with Gen. Douglas MacArthur. I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be. Such folk, whether they represent a veterans' "Bonus Army" or a "student uprising" on behalf of "the goddess of democracy" should expect to be displaced with despatch from the ground they occupy. I cannot conceive of any American government behaving with the ill-conceived restraint that the Zhao Ziyang administration did in China, allowing students to occupy zones that are the equivalent of the Washington National Mall and Times Square, combined. while shutting down much of the Chinese government's normal operations. I thus share the hope of the majority in China that no Chinese government will repeat the mistakes of Zhao Ziyang's dilatory tactics of appeasement in dealing with domestic protesters in China.

I await the brickbats of those who insist on a politically correct -- i.e. non Burkean conservative -- view.

Chas

Given Secretary Clinton's recent comments "that the debate with China over human rights, Taiwan and Tibet cannot be allowed to interfere with attempts to reach consensus on other broader issues," one gets the sense that the Obama administration will be giving the Chinese a free hand to deal with dissent however they see fit.

Joe Klein apparently understands the Russians better than they understand themselves, and certainly better than anyone else in the press corps. In his latest dispatch for Time, the self-styled bane of neoconservatives untangles the latest Jewish deception in foreign affairs:

Today Jackson Diehl picks up Charles Krauthammer's theme of last Friday, which is that Barack Obama is getting played by the Russians. This is a theme that goes back to John McCain's overreaction to the skirmish in Georgia last summer--and further, to Robert Kagan's theory that the Russkies are roaring again. Which goes back to the neoconservative tic of searching for--at times, creating--enemies rather than opportunities.

In other words, this is cold war nonsense. The Russians were behind Kyrghizstan's "decision" to close down the American base there, an important Afghan supply link. (The "decision" is more like the opening round in a negotiation, which will probably wind up with the U.S. shelling out more for the rights to use the base.) The Russians want to have a choke-hold on U.S. Afghan supply routes. The Russians want to build a naval base in Abkhazia--nominally part of Georgia, but not really--on the Black Sea. The Russians want to gobble up Georgia.

OK. Russia has a history of aggression in its near-abroad. Let's assume all of the above is true, even if it probably isn't.

There were very few times in last year's campaign when McCain completely outmaneuvered Obama, but one of those instances came during the invasion of Georgia, when McCain's deep suspicion of all things Russian led him to condemn Russia's aggression quickly and forcefully. Obama, on the other hand, allowed his staff to put out a pathetic statement calling on both sides to show restraint. The invasion of Georgia provided no opportunities for this country, it was a moment that brought into sharp relief the dangers posed by a resurgent and more confident Russia. Even as a decline in energy prices and a global recession threaten the collapse of the Russian economy, that country continues to assert itself by pressuring the Kyrgyz to shut down a critical U.S. supply line. What makes Joe Klein think this isn't true?

More troubling, why does Joe Klein consider Abkhazia "not really" part of Georgia. It is a part of Georgia according to the United Nations and nearly all of its members. The borders in that region are contested only by Russia. Is the West Bank "not really" a part of the Palestine territories? One doubts that Klein would be similarly inclined to ignore an internationally recognized boundary for the benefit of nationalist Jews -- so why the sympathy for nationalist Russians?

Obama projected weakness and indecision when Russia first invaded Georgia last summer. Now the Russians are trying to choke off U.S. forces in Afghanistan and the Obama administration has offered no discernible response -- though, presumably, hopefully, a serious behind-the-scenes effort to determine a strong response is underway. But for those whose loyalties are divided between their responsibilities as a journalist and their fealty to Obama, Klein offers an alternate realty in which Obama is playing the Russians, not the other way around.

Whatever that means...it's part of the pitch for "Aspire: A Plan for Princeton."

The Aspire campaign has three principal goals:

• to encourage all Princetonians to engage more fully in the life of our remarkable University and to help shape its future;

• to expand our capacities in such critical areas as engineering and the environment, the creative and performing arts, neuroscience and the natural sciences, and global citizenship; and

• to enhance the programs and activities that form the core of the Princeton experience, inside and outside the classroom.

The website links to slide show that explains, "global competence...should be a part of every Princeton undergraduate's education." In case you've never heard the term global competence before, it was defined in a recently-published National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges report, A Call to Leadership: The Presidential Role in Internationalizing the University, as the ability “… not only to contribute to knowledge, but also to comprehend, analyze, and evaluate its meaning in the context of an increasingly globalized world.”

Besides using impenetrable and ridiculous jargon, under the section on global citizenship, the globally competent deans at Princeton note the opening of Princeton's new Center for African American Studies, described here as "a model for the study of race and cultural diversity." Why are African-Americans put under the same category as foreigners is a question a black undergraduate might want to ask the folks running the Aspire campaign.

U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman meets Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman in Jerusalem last week. Lefty bloggers--go wild!

Via Ben Smith.

Confidence in War on Terror has dropped dramatically in last two weeks.

The greasy taste of reform: $410-billion omnibus spending bill contains 9,000 pork projects.

Obama ready to give $900 million for shovel-ready projects in Gaza.

Yeah, about the polar ice caps melting...

McCain confronts Obama about Marine One costs.

10 things economists agree on. Oddly enough, Obama's stimulus does not top the list.

80 percent of Obama's auto team owns foreign cars.

In the event of a catastrophe at tonight's joint session of Congress, you'll be glad to know we'll still have someone to call us cowards.

The joke that was the fiscal responsibility summit.

Yesterday's New York Times blockbuster article on the secretive U.S. military trainers in Pakistan isn't quite the secret it was made out to be. Here's what the Times reported:

More than 70 United States military advisers and technical specialists are secretly working in Pakistan to help its armed forces battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country’s lawless tribal areas, American military officials said.

The Americans are mostly Army Special Forces soldiers who are training Pakistani Army and paramilitary troops, providing them with intelligence and advising on combat tactics, the officials said. They do not conduct combat operations, the officials added.

But this "secret" is almost one year old. On March 2, 2008, the New York Times broke the story that the United States would be sending trainers and special equipment.

This raises the question: do New York Times editors read their own newspaper? Because if they did, they'd know they had already broke this story.

Andy McCarthy has a long post at the Corner suggesting that the Obama administration's decision to send $900 million to UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency) in Gaza is, in effect, giving the money to Hamas. It's worth a read. (And while I don't think Andy is a "knuckle-dragger," I might be one of the "la-la land conservatives" he mentions since I think Barack Obama will be much more pragmatic than his various associations might have suggested.)

During the campaign, at least, Obama had harsh words for Hamas, when Jimmy Carter went to Gaza to meet the terrorist leaders. Obama spoke of his "unshakable commitment" to guard Israel from its "bitter enemies." He added: "That's why I have a fundamental difference with President Carter and disagree with his decision to meet with Hamas. We must not negotiate with a terrorist group intent on Israel's destruction. We should only sit down with Hamas if they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist and abide by past agreements."

Why?

"Hamas is not a state. Hamas is a terrorist organization."

Military families cut an ad protesting Obama's decision to release Gitmo detainee Binyam Mohamed.

Democrats longing to make the GOP conduct an old-fashioned phonebook-reading filibuster will be disappointed.

Geert Wilders wants a First Amendment for Europe.

The cramdown cometh.

Sean Penn is "very proud" that his country elected an "elegant man" president, who should also, apparently, "reflect and anticipate [his] great shame and the shame in [his] grandchildren's eyes" for opposing gay marriage.

Obama's blue period. If you know how to turn these into ringtones, please send me an email.

If President Obama is to sell his mortgage bailout plan to the public, an important argument will be his claim that preventing foreclosures actually helps all homeowners by preventing housing prices from dropping:

“This plan will not save every home, but it will give millions of families resigned to financial ruin a chance to rebuild,” Mr. Obama told a crowd here, in one of the communities hardest hit by the housing crisis. “It will prevent the worst consequences of this crisis from wreaking even greater havoc on the economy. And by bringing down the foreclosure rate, it will help to shore up housing prices for everyone.”

The claim that the program helps “shore up housing prices for everyone” has been frequently repeated by administration officials. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Donovan elaborated on the point:

And in all, this will help, as I said, 3 to 4 million families. But let's be clear: This will also help millions of other families, as well. Recent research shows that neighboring homes to foreclosed homes lose as much as 9 percent of their value. So people who are not in danger of foreclosure still are suffering from nearby foreclosures. This will help those families, as well. Our estimates are that the average home -- not the average home in foreclosure, but the average home across the country will gain $6,000 in value relative to had this plan not been put in place.

The 9 percent figure seems to come from a study by three analysts at Fannie Mae in a report titled, Spillover Effects of Foreclosures on Neighborhood Property Values, which was abstracted this way:

We project that the spillover effect of a foreclosure on neighborhood property values depends on two factors: the discount of foreclosure sale and the weight placed on the foreclosed property as a comparable in the valuation. The former is related to housing cycle and the latter varies by time of foreclosure and its distance from the subject property. Empirical results based on a 2006 sample show that this effect is significant within a radius of 0.9 km (roughly 10 blocks) and within 5 years from its liquidation. The most severe impact is an 8.7% discount on neighborhood property values, which gradually drops to anywhere between −1.2 to −1.7% for foreclosures liquidated within the past 5 years. These spillover effects vary slightly when the sample selection bias is taken into account. Based on an alternative sample of purchase transactions in 2003, the estimated spillover effects in booming years are reduced by half, confirming on the important role played by housing cycles.

The only problem is that the study doesn’t prove what the Obama administration would like to say it does. Some of it is playing with data. For example:

1. It is only “the most severe impact” that is 8.7% -- this is a foreclosure within 0.1 kilometer of a house with the foreclosure occurring within the last two years. A house 1.5 to 2.0 kilometers from a foreclosure that occurred within two years experiences only a 0.7% decrease.

2. The $6,000 gain in value seems unlikely. The National Association of Realtors said that the median sales price of a home in the 4th quarter of 2008 was $180,100. So the administration is assuming the median home in America would fall in price by 3.3 percent due to neighborhood foreclosures. In order for this to occur, according to this study, the foreclosures would have to occur with a half mile of a house. Yet as Alan Reynolds pointed out in the New York Post, foreclosures are overwhelmingly occurring in just five states.

3. Even if true, the impact dissipates quickly. The study shows that a foreclosure within 0.4 to 0.5 kilometers causes a 4.3 percent dip in neighboring home values -– but only for the first two years. Between three and five years, the dip is down to 1.9 percent and after 6 years, only 0.6 percent.

More broadly, the study was not a controlled study in which half the houses in distress were foreclosed on and the other half saved by the government. It is just an analysis of what happened to neighborhood prices when a home got foreclosed on. The study does not even touch on the issue the president and Secretary Donovan attempt to draw from it: What would happen if foreclosures were stopped?

Foreclosures typically occur when real estate prices have not been rising sufficiently to enable someone to sell their house and pay the mortgage off. This happens for a reason. If an auto maker in a small town closes a factory and lays off a lot of workers, the real estate market in that company town will be weak. This means that laid-off factory workers who can’t afford their mortgages will be foreclosed on.

Yet the problem in the community is the closing of the auto plant and the subsequent loss of jobs and income. This is the cause of the decline in housing prices. Foreclosures are just a symptom. It simply doesn’t follow that when the auto plant closes, if we just don’t foreclose, the neighboring houses will stay at their old value. Indeed, the very knowledge that so many people are continuing to live in houses they can’t afford might depress the market further due to fear that the homeowners may not be able to keep up the homes or that they may be hesitant to invest in local schools or amenities. Plus the fact that they may be sellers at the first positive move in the market implies a limit to the upward potential of property in that community.

Foreclosures often serve to broadcast clearing market prices. When prices decline in a community, many simply won’t sell if they don’t have to. Typically the number of transactions goes way down. Foreclosures are one of the situations where the house has to be sold. But the researchers did not establish or even attempt to establish that the pre-foreclosure market price they used to measure price declines was, in fact, a liquid market at which people could actually sell their homes. It is highly likely that the researchers discovered not so much a causal link -– foreclosures cause houses nearby to go down in value -– but a publicizing function -– foreclosures communicate what the values of homes in the area actually are and thus encourage the market to become liquid at a new, lower, price point.

In addition, the study -– all the data is from the Chicago area –- does not distinguish between foreclosures, per se, and the rules of different jurisdictions to require maintenance of vacant properties. There is a national movement, as evidenced in Boston and Miami-Dade County, to make sure that the owners of foreclosed or vacant properties maintain the properties, often using municipal authority under nuisance abatement laws. One suspects that whatever negative effects foreclosures may entail, relate not to the foreclosure itself but, rather, to the negligence of local authorities in enforcing local laws requiring properties be properly maintained.

The president, the administration, and its advocates can promote any mortgage relief plan they choose on whatever basis they wish. But any claims that there is evidence that bailing out the mortgages of particular individuals helps all property owners is simply not supported by any real research and should be viewed with great skepticism.

The Washington Post story (linked below) declares that Guantanamo is "one of the toughest prisons on the planet."

Last May, in an attempt to put to rest some of this nonsense about Gitmo, Rear Admiral Mark Buzby, then commander of Joint Task for Guantanamo, explained the difference between "the Guantanamo that exists in ... pop culture and the media and most people's minds" and the "Guantanamo that exists here, the one that I see every day".

Our Camp 5 and Camp 6, which is where 75 percent of our population -- detainee population lives, those two buildings are actually models of a facility in Indiana -- a prison in Indiana and a prison in Michigan that were brought down here and built, so that the very same conditions that U.S. Bureau of Prisons prisoners live in are what our detainees live in, in terms of their place of incarceration.

Every detainee, no matter what their compliancy status is -- in other words, how well they behave and everything else -- they all get at least two hours of outdoor recreation with other people every day, every single day. They also get a shower every single day, which is actually more than the Bureau of Prisons offers their high-security folks. For those other 25 percent that are in highly compliant status -- in other words, they behave very well and follow the camp rules -- they are in a place called Camp 4, which is a very open-air, communal sort of facility, where they live in groups of six in a bunk room, if you will. And they have access to recreation about 22 hours a day, including group recreation and group prayer and all that sort of thing.

So to say that our conditions are especially arduous or different than ... what a normal prisoner might find in the Bureau of Prisons systems ... I think is probably twisting the truth quite a bit.

So life in Gitmo doesn't seem too hard for detainees, especially considering that most of them are accused of fighting with al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Life for the guards, however, is not so easy. See this detainee activity report from last April. Just a few statistics on what the Gitmo guards endured in 2007:

135 physical assaults

132 assaults with bodily fluids

1,734 incidents of failure to comply with orders

That means there was about one assault against the guards for every detainee held in Gitmo. Contrast that with New York state prisons. Erik Kriss, a spokesman for New York's Department of Correctional Services, tells me that in 2008 the rate of inmate assaults against staff throughout the state was 9 for every 1,000 inmates. So the assault rate is 100 times higher at Gitmo than the New York prisons.

President Bush offered job as greeter at Dallas hardware store.

The New York Times is happily reporting, with credulity, that the President plans to "slash deficit, despite stimulus spending.". The Washington Post reports on his "stern speech," which rapped the Bush administration for leaving Obama with a record deficit. Nevermind that large parts of that deficit were incurred due to TARP, which Obama supported, and a 2008 stimulus plan, which Obama criticized for not costing enough.

But despite Obama's pretensions to "fiscal responsibility," there are some who dare doubt the tax-and-spender's ability to deliver. For one, the non-partisan Tax Policy Center predicts:

In 2009, the federal deficit will be larger as a share of the economy than at any time since World War II. The current deficit is due in part to economic weakness and the stimulus, and in part to policy choices made in the past. What is more troubling is that, under what we view as optimistic assumptions, the deficit is projected to average at least $1 trillion per year for the 10 years after 2009, even if the economy returns to full employment and the stimulus package is allowed to expire in two years. The longer-run picture is even bleaker. We estimate a fiscal gap – the immediate and permanent increase in taxes or reduction in spending that would keep the long-term debt/GDP ratio at its current level –about 7-9 percent of GDP, or between $1 trillion and $1.3 trillion per year in current dollars.

Economist Jeffrey Miron of Harvard called Obama's proposed goal "wildly optimistic:"

Most of the savings would come from spending less on the war in Iraq, streamlining government and raising taxes on those who make more than $250,000, an administration official told CNN.

"First, tax increases will probably not produce as much revenue as being forecast, and second, he hasn't really touched the two really important programs that account for a huge fraction of our future liabilities ... Social Security and Medicare," Miron said Monday on CNN's "American Morning."

"Unless he does something about those, he's just kicking a can down the road," he said.

Consider the can kicked.

Meanwhile, any of you worried about oversight of the stimulus spending, worry no more!

President Obama has turned to his own vice president to oversee implementation of the $787 billion economic stimulus package, part of which will be available this week for state Medicaid programs.

Vice President Joe Biden, in his new role, would meet regularly with key members of the Cabinet, governors and mayor to make sure their efforts are speedy and effective. He is expected to make regular reports to the president that will be posted online at www.recovery.gov.

In the words of late-80s advertising and pop-culture references, "Joe knows spending."

At the New York Times Opinionator blog, Tobin Harshaw points out that "The Times didn’t report on the Holder speech in print, only on the Caucus blog."

The Times op-ed page has featured one piece on Holder's "nation of cowards" speech: Charles M. Blow wrote on Saturday that he takes "exception to Holder's language, but not his line of reasoning." On Sunday, Maureen Dowd criticized Holder's speech at the end of her column.

This isn't the first time the Times's news team has found the incendiary rhetoric of members of Team Obama unfit for print. As Byron York noted at the time, the news pages of the Times never quoted Jeremiah Wright's "God Damn America" sermon until September, six months after the infamous tapes first surfaced.

The New York Times sends an ambassador to visit a Potemkin synagogue in Esfahan and, surprise, he finds some Jews willing to say they are as appalled by Israel as he is. Does he stop to wonder whether it could be their dhimmitude speaking? Nah. That's not a language Times columnists are required to know, even the Jewish ones.

Jane Mayer delves into the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri in last week's issue of the New Yorker and quotes Greg Craig discussing the false hard choices this administration will have to make:

Obama’s legal team is aware that every step it takes will be seen as an indication of core convictions. Craig, who will coördinate the revamping of the Bush Administration’s legal policies on terrorism, said, “One way we’ve looked at this is that we own the solution. We don’t own the problem—it was created by the previous Administration. But we’ll be held accountable for how we handle this.”

It seems Craig believes that the problem is Gitmo -- not the terrorists who are being held there. As far as al-Marri, the last enemy combatant held on U.S. soil, he's living pretty well at the Naval Brig in Charleston, S.C. Mayer reports:

Marri’s conditions have so improved that his lawyers jokingly refer to him these days as “the Emir of the S.H.U.”—the high-security wing of the brig is known as the Special Housing Unit. He remains the sole prisoner in the wing, but he now has the regular use of three cells, which he refers to as his “executive suite.” One cell contains a memory-foam mattress. Another houses a personal library containing hundreds of volumes. The third contains alcohol-free cleaning supplies, in compliance with his Muslim religious needs. When visitors come, he sees them in an upper-tier room that he calls his “summer chalet.” He also has exclusive access to a thousand-square-foot dayroom equipped with a treadmill and an elliptical machine. Officially barred from watching the evening news, Marri has become a devotee of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart—whom he calls “that Jewish guy.”

And in case you're wondering, al-Marri was elated by the election of Barack Obama. His lawyer tells the author, "He’s happy about Obama, but worried he won’t be able to fulfill all the promises and expectations.”

On Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol pointed out that in Eric Holder's "nation of cowards" speech, the attorney general mentions 18 African Americans of distinction, but not a single military hero:

KRISTOL: Here's the big deal, though. Sean Delonas is a cartoonist for the New York Post. Phil Gramm, who was widely denounced -- John McCain had to remove him from the campaign for calling the nation a nation of whiners -- was in the private sector, an informal adviser to John McCain.

Eric Holder is the attorney general of the United States. This was a speech given in his official capacity at the Justice Department. It is a total disgrace -- a total disgrace -- for the attorney general of the United States to stand up there and say in his formal prepared remarks that this is a nation of cowards. What could he be thinking?

I mean, he really should be forced to apologize. He, in fact, has gotten a total walk. Phil Gramm was denounced. John McCain had to say, "Oh, my God, my informal adviser said we were whining too much."

A nation of cowards? People really should read the speech, incidentally, to see what real liberal elitism is. It's a disgrace on many levels. He cites 18 African Americans in the next to the last paragraph of the speech as examples, and many of them are very impressive men and women -- not a single military person.

Now, one of the great things that African Americans have done in U.S. history, despite being discriminated against throughout, until very nearly the last couple of decades, is serve this country with great distinction in war. Not a single African American military hero is cited by Eric Holder

Here's the list of the African Americans Holder acknowledged in his speech:

Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Walter White, Langston Hughes, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, Charles Drew, Paul Robeson, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Vivian Malone, Rosa Parks, Marion Anderson, Emmit Till.

In the second part of a series on how Gitmo makes and justifies terrorism against this country, the Washington Post describes the detention facility there as "one of the toughest prisons on the planet."

The Times of London reports that Binyam Mohamed, a Gitmo detainee who was rendered to Morocco and allegedly tortured, has been released to the UK where he will reportedly live in freedom:

[Mohamed's lawyer] confirmed that Mr Mohamed has reached a deal with the Home Office over his living arrangements in Britain. The lawyer refused to say what the deal entailed, but is believed that Mr Mohamed has to report regularly to the UK authorities and has accepted that he will be kept under surveillance. He has also agreed to be interviewed by the British police.

He is not expected to be placed under a control order, which would restrict his movements and limit the people he is allowed to speak to. As a foreign national, he has been granted temporary admission to the UK but his immigration status will be reviewed. He will be allowed to seek NHS treatment.

The press and government officials here and in the UK have been notably more interested in allegations of Mohamed's tortured than allegations of his training as an al Qaeda terrorist.

Obama's egghead methods not working, and Holder was wrong to call us all "cowards," says... MoDo?

Another view on aid to Africa, with a dash of moral authority.

If Chris Dodd had a TLC real-estate show, it would be called something really catchy like, "Trading Favors."

Why the long faces? When Kerry met Bashar.

Obama's approval ratings slip-sliding away.

It's like he's wondering how he could possibly make the economy worse. "I've got it! Tax hikes!"

Sen. Bunning, as they would say in Kentucky, doesn't have the sense God gave him, bless his heart.

Jindal says he'll reject $98 million in stimulus money for expanded unemployment, remains awesome while doing so.

I think there was some awards show last night.

Colin Clark reports:

The Air Force’s chief of staff was careful to withhold his professional military advice until Defense Secretary Robert Gates gets it, but Gen. Norton Schwartz told reporters [Tuesday] morning that he would not “dispute” comments by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs late last year that the service would get an additional 60 F-22s, for a total of 243.

Schwartz then poured cold water on any hopes the Japanese and Australians might have of buying F-22s, saying some of the technologies in the plane are just too sensitive to export. [...]

Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that 60 is the exact number everyone has decided on, but Schwartz didn’t try to pour cold water on it either… He did say the final decision should be out very close to the congressionally mandated date of March 1.

If the Pentagon approves 60 more F-22s that's approximately three additional squadrons of the air supremacy fighter, which is respectable--but inadequate. The Air Force's previous desired fleet projection of 381 airframes was, in and of itself, an enormous compromise (planners originally banked on over 600). The Obama administration would nonetheless be making the right choice by choosing to invest in America's continued air superiority, if they go ahead and order the additional jets. Here's another humble suggestion: less money for DoD green initiatives, more for war-winning weapon platforms.

Charles Krauthammer on Obama's supine diplomacy.

Jindal won't take stimulus money for unemployment insurance because of concerns it would require tax hikes.

Chris Dodd suggests some banks may have to be nationalized.

Report finds Gitmo meets Geneva Conventions standards. (Just a reminder: al Qaeda terrorists do not qualify as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.)

Illinois Governor Quinn calls for Burris's resignation and special election to fill the seat.

Gibbs slams CNBC's Santelli.

Helen Thomas thinks one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Many thanks to Eric Holder and his calumny against America as a "nation of cowards" for the maddening reminder of one of the reasons we yanked our children out of the D.C. public school system and fled to Virginia 15 years ago. Black History Month was a particular trial, during which the children were taught--or rather, hoodwinked into believing (some of them, anyway)--that the light bulb was the invention not of Thomas Edison but of Lewis Latimer, a black man; that bathing, underwear, tables, and chairs were imports to backward "Euro-Americans" from Africa; that Cleopatra was definitely black and Moses probably so; and that Michael Jordan, Bill Cosby, Rosa Parks, Michael Jackson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Aretha Franklin--you name 'em, we looked 'em up--were all black "leaders," roughly indistinguishable from one another in their contributions to the history of their people, and equally worthy of oral reports to the class, or, better yet, dioramas: basketball court, Birmingham Jail--what's the diff?

Where's the harm in lying to students about the accomplishments of, say, a Latimer, the son of escaped slaves who by self-demand and toil became a respected scientist and brilliant draughtsman? Here's the harm: to pretend he was something he wasn't is to diminish completely what he was, and, in a devilish inversion, to tell little children that what's good--hard work against difficult odds--is worthless, and what's bad--the self-excusing blaming of others--is acceptable.

A courageous dialogue about race in D.C. public schools was nowhere to be had. Complaints to the "educators," as the principal and teachers at our elementary school liked to call themselves, fell upon deaf, not to say hostile, ears. Our neighbors, who like the Clintons and the Obamas "believed" in public schools for other people's children, had no use for honesty either. We were left alone to confirm our children's sneaking suspicion that hitting a triple-double on the basketball court is not the same as standing up to violence and humiliation and prison and dogs and fire hoses to win your God-given rights.

Late Wednesday night, I emailed RNC spokesman Alex Conant to see if Chairman Michael Steele would be willing to comment on Attorney General Eric Holder's remark that America is a "nation of cowards" on matters of race.

Conant informed me Thursday that Chairman Steele was "traveling" and thus unable to comment. So I asked Conant if he could comment on Holder's remarks. I didn't get a response to that question on Thursday, nor to a followup email I sent last night.

Maybe Steele really is too busy to comment. But compare and contrast, as they say. The DNC immediately jumped all over Phil Gramm's "nation of whiners" remark. And the RNC has continued to issue statements about a variety of issues--on the stimulus, and most recently on Obama's trip to Canada.

Perhaps the RNC's silence is due to the shakeup Steele is undertaking at the RNC, and the chain of command for approving statements isn't settled. Or, maybe, they're afraid to step into the race minefield. Steele recently reiterated his commitment to reaching out to minority groups, which is a fine idea: If Republicans can win an extra 5 to 10 percent of black and Hispanic voters that's progress.

But if the RNC is afraid to jump on Holder's offensive and false statement because they're worried that the Obama administration will play the race card against them, that's unfortunate.

Last November, Townhall.com's Matt Lewis asked Steele: "Do you believe that because you are an African-American you might be able to critique Barack Obama in a way that your Republican colleagues may not be able to?"

Steele replied: "I think that because I'm an American I'll be able to do that. ... When you're off base you're off base. It has nothing to do" with race.

Steele said he was dismayed that the McCain campaign refused to discuss Jeremiah Wright because they feared having the race card played against them:

"The Obama campaign played the race card, and it worked beautifully." He said it hurt Bill Clinton, "tripped up Hillary Clinton," and that it also "stymied" John McCain because he wouldn't mention Reverend Wright. Steele argued that in taking Rev. Wright off the table, McCain surrendered the one issue that might have helped him win because "it went to the core" of Obama's character.

"That's not how you win elections," Steele added.

Ramesh Ponnuru takes apart a shoddy report on the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) by Time magazine's Amy Sullivan.

Sullivan states that FOCA would codify a right to abortion until an unborn child is viable, when it would actually codify a right to abortion effectively throughout all nine months of pregnancy. She doesn't bother to mention that the bill would also strike down bans on taxpayer funding of abortion and parental-consent laws. She writes that in a letter from 63 pro-abortion organizations to President Obama, FOCA was not included as one of their top fifteen priorities. Sullivan neglects to mention that they do indeed call on Obama to sign FOCA at some point during the next four years.

Sullivan oddly claims that FOCA is a "mythical abortion bill" just because it hasn't been reintroduced in this Congress. As G.K. Chesterton once wrote, "The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. ... It is no answer to say, with distant optimism, that the scheme is only in the air. A blow from a hatchet can only be parried while it is in the air."

Worst of all, Sullivan writes that it is a "false claim" that FOCA would "lead to at least 100,000 more abortions each year."

Political scientist Michael New, who has studied the effect that taxpayer funding of abortion has on the abortion rate, writes in an email:

In her February 19th Time Magazine article Amy Sullivan considers the claim that FOCA would lead to more than 100,000 abortions a year as a piece of "misinformation." This figure was calculated using the results of my 2004 Heritage Foundation study which analyzed the effects of state level pro-life legislation on state abortion rates. Matt Bowman of the Alliance Defense Fund used the results to calculate how many abortions would occur if every state level 1) public funding restriction 2) parental involvement law and 3) informed consent law were overturned. The figure came out to approximately 125,000.

Of course, the exact magnitude of the abortion increase is an estimate. That having been said there is a substantial body of peer reviewed research which indicate that state level pro-life laws reduce abortion rates. For instance, there are at least 8 peer reviewed studies which indicate that parental involvement laws reduce minor abortion rates and 9 peer reviewed studies which indicate that public funding restrictions reduce the overall incidence of abortion. As such, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the passage of FOCA would increase the number of abortions performed in the United States.

Furthermore, this 125,000 figure is calculated by analyzing what would happen if only state pro-life laws were repealed. The repeal of federal pro-life laws may well push this number even higher.

Sullivan's analysis that FOCA may not have the votes to pass seems accurate, but, as Ed Whelan notes, it's certainly possible that there will be attempts to pass some of the most egregious parts of FOCA in piecemeal fashion. In particular, there may be efforts to fund abortion through Medicaid and through Obama's health care plan. These measures alone could easily lead to more than 100,000 additional abortions each year.

President Obama named Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and Brooking Institution scholar, to head up a review team for overhauling U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan. Via the Christian Science Monitor, a big part of Riedel's grand strategy for winning in Afghanistan is, um, securing a peace deal between the Palestinians and Israel:

Ultimately, the solution in Afghanistan may involve solving the age-old conflict between the Arab states and Israel, says administration adviser Riedel in a book published by the Brookings Institution, a foreign-policy think tank, last year. Al Qaeda, and the Taliban to some extent, continue to be motivated by the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, Riedel argues. If that conflict is resolved, Al Qaeda may go away.

"If Palestinians choose to make peace with Israel, the most fundamental point of Al Qaeda's narrative becomes irrelevant," Riedel writes. "In other words, making peace between Israelis and Arabs is not only wise policy in its own right, but also an extremely useful strategy for pulling the rug out from under Al Qaeda."

A few points:

1. The conflict between Palestinians and Israel is not "the most fundamental point of Al Qaeda's narrative"--see bin Laden's 1996 declaration of war against the United States. He cites a number of grievances regarding flashpoints throughout the Muslim world. Does the Palestinian issue really motivate jihadists in Afghanistan/Pakistan more than the conflict, much closer to home, with India?

2. The deep theological/ideological underpinnings for jihad aren't going to go away if the Palestinians agree to a peace deal. Raymond Ibrahim's recent review of The Mind of Jihad serves as useful reminder of this fact.

3. Is there any indication that Palestinians are going to "choose to make peace with Israel" in the near future? It seems delusional think that Hamas will choose to lay down its arms.

Now, it's important to reiterate that Riedel wrote this a year ago. He certainly (and hopefully) could have changed mind and identified other more relevant issues to focus on in order to win the war in Afghanistan. As Gary Schmitt and Dan Twining point out in this week's issue of TWS, the United States faces a number of challenges in Afghanistan. One very troubling notion, they write, is that that we should lower expectations in Afghanistan and launch a half-hearted surge in Afghanistan.

If one of Obama's top advisers thinks that holding Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at Camp David will lead to victory in Afghanistan, then we may be in bigger trouble than we thought.

On the homepage, Thomas Joscelyn tells the story of Gitmo detainee Binyam Mohamed.

Mohamed was reportedly tortured, and there have been a number of calls for his release. But as Joscelyn points out this doesn't make Mohamed an innocent. The Times of London now confirms that next week Mohamed will become the first Guantanamo detainee released or transferred by the Obama administration.

The Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed is to be flown back to the UK “as soon as the practical arrangements can be made”, the Foreign Secretary said today.

David Miliband said in a statement that the British and US governments had reached agreement on Mr Mohamed's transfer, which will be the first such transfer by the Obama Administration.

It's quite troubling that there is discussion of a possible investigation of the intelligence officials involved in his interrogations and not Mohamed's own al Qaeda ties.

Starry-eyed optimism in light of Zimbabwe's new unity government aside, peace in the former Rhodesia remains as elusive as ever. The primary opposition to Robert Mugabe's murderous ZANU-PF, the Movement for Democratic Change, insisted on several key conditions prior to signing on to the much touted power-sharing agreement -- the release of political prisoners topping the list. One of those prisoners, former farmer and MP Roy Bennett, is facing life in prison on over-hyped terrorism and illegal firearms charges. Bennett is the MDC's treasurer and the party's selection for Deputy Minister of Agriculture, a most important post in the former breadbasket nation's political hierarchy.

He also knows the cruelty of the Mugabe regime first hand. Peter Godwin, a Rhodesian soldier turned journalist, chronicled Bennett's entry into politics and subsequent farm seizure by Mugabe's 'war vets' in his superb When a Crocodile Eats the Sun. An excerpt (circa 2002):

Bennett tells me that he has only just moved back onto his farm after war vets invaded it. He was away at the time, he says, and they seized his wife, Heather, who was three months pregnant. They put a panga to her throat and made her dance around the house and chant ZANU-PF slogans until she collapsed from fear and exhaustion before they let her go. As a result she miscarried. They beat up the farm workers and occupied the farmhouse, ransacking it and daubing the walls with their own shit. They emptied the urn of Bennett's father's ashes and cut the paws off the lion-skin rug to use for muti -- traditional medicine.

Ultimately Bennett was forced to flee his homeland, seeking refuge in South Africa. He returned after the power-sharing agreement was signed, but was arrested when he attempted to fly back to the RSA.

Until Roy Bennett and other political prisoners are freed, until Mugabe releases his white-knuckled clutch on power, and until the MDC gains viable power through control of the police forces or army -- Zimbabwe is doomed to continue its plummet into anarchy.

Need a break (already!) from the Age of Obama?

Escape this weekend into more interesting fictional worlds. Occasional TWS contributor and Harvard political philosopher Harvey Mansfield recommends his five favorite crime writers at Forbes.com. Apart from the criminal omission of Rex Stout from his list, we’re happy to endorse Mansfield’s picks. We also call to our readers’ attention Mansfield’s short appreciation of Pride and Prejudice for National Review Online. Enjoy.

An interesting look at the behind-the-scenes wrangling that led to Michael Steele becoming chairman of the Republican Party from Brad Todd. Todd, one of the smartest of a young generation of Republican strategists, describes a sophisticated national campaign to get Steele elected.

The core of Steele’s winning coalition were the RNC’s newer members—people like [Wisconsin GOP chairman Reince] Preibus and mostly-unknown state party chairs like Jim Greer of Florida and Bob Tiernan of Oregon. Half of Steele’s 21-person “whip team” on the committee rose to their current Party leadership roles after the disastrous election of 2006. They’re the brave ones who swam toward the sinking ship...

Though the race is decided by a finite pool of 168 party insiders, Steele asked Republican activists around the country to sign up to support his bid for chairman. In the two months after Obama’s dispiriting rout, his website enlisted 42,000 such activists.

Blaise Hazelwood, Steele’s campaign manager, put the 42,000 to work. Hazelwood first came to prominence as the driver behind the “72-Hour Task Force” in 2001—the party’s last meaningful revision to its tactical campaign playbook. This time, Hazelwood innovated again, asking those online supporters to email their national committee members. While urging a vote for Steele, the supporters pledged a specific donation of volunteer hours to their state parties. This caught the eye of hungry state chairmen like Preibus.

This was a fresh committee: 141 of the 168 who voted had never served through a contested chairman’s race. They were much more impressed by Steele’s actions than by the cajoling of the old bulls. Steele was himself an underutilized talent during his term on the committee in 2001 and 2002. That experience birthed an Election Day operation surprisingly ready to do hand-to-hand combat against the GOP’s most experienced operatives.

ROTC returns to Colgate.

Just 38 percent support Obama's mortgage plan.

George Will explains how we got hosed on the stimulus.

Lobbyist settles libel suit against the New York Times in McCain story.

Kyrgyzstan parliament votes to close key U.S. air base.

Egyptian political prisoner Ayman Nour has been freed.

The Pakistani establishment is going out of its was to promote Sufi Mohammed, the man behind the peace agreement in northwestern Pakistan, as a moderate cleric only interested in peace.

This article, passed along by Chidu Rajghatta at The Times of India, who is closely following the Pakistan peace accord, is rich in irony. The author portrays Sufi as "a simple and peaceful man who does not preach violence except in the way of jihad against non- Muslims." To top that, the author, Asad Munir, "is a former brigadier who served as chief of military intelligence and of the ISI for NWFP, FATA and the Northern Areas." It has been well documented that elements of Pakistan's ISI, or Inter-Services Intelligence agency continues to back extremist groups to this day.

Just in case you might have any doubts about Sufi's positions, his own words can speak for him. Here are some select Sufi quotes over the past few days:

‘‘We hate democracy"
"We want the occupation of Islam in the entire world. Islam does not permit democracy or election.’’
“From the very beginning, I have viewed democracy as a system imposed on us by the infidels. Islam does not allow democracy or elections,”
“I believe the Taliban government formed a complete Islamic state, which was an ideal example for other Muslim countries."

In case it wasn't clear, the Taliban government he is referring to is Mullah Omar's paradise-on-earth in Afghanistan from 1996-2001.

Back to the ISI, Nadeem H. Kiani, the press attache for the Embassy of Pakistan, wants us to know that the ISI isn't part of the problem, it is part of the solution. In another case of unintended irony, Mr. Kiani's letter to the editor is titled "Intelligence agency of Pakistan pivotal in war on terror." He is correct that the ISI is a critical player in the war, but not the way he thinks it is.

When John McCain's economic adviser Phil Gramm said that this country is a "nation of whiners" when it comes to the economy, the Washington Post featured its 1100 word story on Gramm's controversial remark on the front page: "Gramm Remark Adds to McCain's Difficulty Addressing the Economy"

When Barack Obama's attorney general Eric Holder said that America is a "nation of cowards" when it comes to race, the Post buried its 200-word story on the second page, nestled amongst a bunch of ads.

Why didn't Holder's remark get the same treatment as Gramm's? Sure, the campaign's over, so the "horse-race" aspect isn't there any more. But if the Treasury secretary had called America a nation of whiners, that would get front-page attention, no? Why does the Post downplay an attorney general's statement that America is a "nation of cowards"?

As Goldfarb wrote yesterday, it's more offensive to be called a coward, and an administration official's words carry more weight than a campaign adviser's.

Holder's statement is clearly controversial--after all, Democratic politicians aren't willing to defend it. And the remark is all the more offensive because it is plainly false--America has done a pretty good job discussing racial issues. Most people who have gone through school during the last 30 years--whether public or private, K-12 or college--have endured seemingly endless discussions on race.

Now, it's true that some topics, namely conservative criticism of racial preferences, are out of bounds. But I doubt that that's the kind of conversation Holder wants to encourage.

So, the vice president (Mr. Cheney, not Mr. Logorrhea) waged and lost a just war with an increasingly irritated and ultimately implacable George Bush (and God-knows-how-many-other forces of pusillanimity who were whispering in the president's ear) over a pardon for Scooter Libby. It was a noble cause. Those of us who'd taken sometimes embarrassed note of the much-vaunted Bush loyalty (Miers, Hughes, Gonzales), and who'd watched with pride the commander-in-chief tearing up on visits to his wounded soldiers and the parents of those lost on the battlefield had every reason to believe he'd do right by this loyal soldier. To learn that not even the righteous arguments of his second-in-command could persuade him is sickening.

Did the president think Scooter was actually guilty of something other than going out to do battle on his behalf and getting vanquished by St. Tim of Russert and his evil press fairies? And if he did think so? So what? One hundred-fifty-odd guilty embezzlers, drug dealers, money launderers, arms dealers, counterfeiters, tax evaders, committers of mail fraud, thieves, bank robbers, bomb-throwers, and arsonists managed to earn the Bush pardon over the course of eight years. And the dirty dozen convicts whose sentences he commuted? Every one--with the exception of Scooter and, oh yeah, the Sacco and Vanzetti of the conservative media, those two border patrollers nabbed for shooting an unarmed illegal alien who turned out to be a marijuana dealer though they didn't know that at the time they were lodging a bullet in his ass as he fled--every one was a cocaine dealer, a heroin dealer, a marijuana dealer, a PCP dealer, a crack dealer. To leave a man who has served you and his country faithfully in the company of these vicious criminals is unpardonable.

As questions swirl around Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.), Gov. Rod Blagojevich's appointment to fill Obama's seat, the L.A. Times has joined the chorus of papers calling for Burris' resignation.

It doesn't matter whether there was a quid pro quo behind Burris' appointment. By failing to level with investigators and the public, he has forfeited all credibility. He should resign to make way for an untainted appointment by Gov. Pat Quinn, who would have chosen a new senator in the first place if Blagojevich had had any sense of shame.

Before the Times, it was the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Chicago Sun-Times. The Sun-Times called on Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to give Burris the nudge he needs:

Some political leaders already are calling on Burris to resign, but it's time for the real heavyweights to join in.

Sen. Dick Durbin, above all, needs to join the chorus. In plain and deliberate language, he must call on Burris to call it quits.

Durbin need not wait for the outcome of a Senate ethics investigation. There is no rush to judgment, as Burris claims. All the relevant facts are available.

Durbin was the first Democrat out of the gates calling for a special election to fill Obama's seat, announcing his preference the day Blagojevich was arrested. Durbin's announcement prompted a pseudo-assent from an Obama spokesperson before the political winds changed and Democrats unified against a special election. Amid talk that formidable Republican Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) might consider a run in a special election, national and Chicago Democrats preferred to bet that Blago wouldn't be bold enough to appoint a successor.

Harry Reid sent a letter from all 50 senators stating their intention to oppose any nomination he might make. When Blagojevich appointed Burris, they realized opposing him would not be so easy, enduring days of Burris grandstanding, Illinois court decisions, and internal dissention before they seated him.

Now that Burris and Blagojevich punked the Democrats good, the Illinois GOP is back on the warpath, demanding the special election Durbin requested on Day One.

Senator Durbin, Governor Quinn, Attorney General Madigan, Treasurer Giannoulias, Congresswoman Schakowsky and others who supported a special election should re-commit today to helping pass this legislation.

In the coming days, Republicans in the General Assembly will introduce special election legislation to give the people a vote. It is time to put the power back where it belongs - with the people.

The decision to call a special election was a risk for Illinois and national Democrats back in December, but the subsequent hits they've taken for Burris' race-baiting press conferences, Blago's taint, and Burris' lies make that path look like the wiser one. The Democratic brand has suffered three more months of lashings in Illinois than it had to had state Democrats done the right thing and called for a special election immediately. And, as in the case of the stimulus package, the most powerful politician in the country failed to take control of the situation, causing his party unnecessary damage.

There are a lot of things Obama's campaign trail behavior promised that he hasn't delivered— drama-free staff appointments, impeccable ethics, a new dawn of competence. But his relative inaction in the face of large problems should surprise no one.

While a lot of criticism of Pakistan's agreement to impose sharia and end military operations in the Malakand division focus on the government's ceding of territory, Pakistan's unwillingness to confront the extremists, and the extension of a safe haven in the northwest, few analysts have explained why this is an ideological victory for al Qaeda and the Taliban. Asia Times' Syed Saleem Shahzad provides an excellent yet quick overview of the ideological implications:

Many Muslims believe that ancient Khorasan - which covers parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan - is the promised land from where they will secure the first victory in the end-of-time battle in which the final round, according to their beliefs, will be fought in Bilad-i-Sham (Palestine-Lebanon-Syria).

The geographical borders of Bilad-i-Sham-Khorasan extend from Samarkand in Uzbekistan to the small Malakand division in the northern fringe of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) that includes the militant-dominated Swat Valley.

On Monday, at a time when United States Central Command chief General David Petraeus was trying to set up a supply route for troops in Afghanistan through Uzbekistan, in this extreme corner of the promised land of Khorasan - Malakand division - militants had every reason to celebrate.

Mentions of the Khorasan have begun to increase in al Qaeda's propaganda. After their defeat in Iraq, al Qaeda began shifting its rhetoric from promoting Iraq as the central front in their war in against the West to the Khorasan being the central front. The victory in northwestern Pakistan, as well as the gains in Afghanistan, will provide al Qaeda and the Taliban with a powerful recruiting message.

Politico's Ben Smith identifies Peter Orszag, Obama's budget director, as the delinquent who nearly burned down the Executive Office Building during his first week on the job. Lesson learned: Ask first if a fireplace works before starting a fire.

The budget director spoke to Politico on the he refers to as the “the living room.” In it, a small red sofa and two hard wooden armchairs face a marble fire place. When Orszag arrived for his first weekend of work on a snowy January day, there were logs neatly stacked.

“It still seemed a little suspicious. So I lit a piece of paper to see if it vented,” Orszag said. The smoke went up the chimney.

“So then we lit a few logs. It was venting. It was fine,” he said. The only problem: The Secret Service had capped the building’s chimneys. Smoke alarms started going off upstairs, and the building was evacuated.

And though Orzag wasn’t publicly named as the culprit (“Smoke Linked to Attempt to Use 2nd-Floor Fireplace,” was the Washington Post’s headline the next day.) the incident remains the source of much amusement inside the White House.

“Rahm asked me to send smoke signals to the Hill,” Orszag recalled.

Inquiring minds want to know: Has Orszag purchased a carbon offset to compensate for his indulgent use of firewood?

The AP reports that "Republicans are preparing to pounce on any wasteful spending" in the stimulus package.

House Republicans are setting up "a stimulus-watch program" that will allow watchdog groups and private citizens to report findings as contractors and agencies start spending billions of dollars on roads, schools, renewable energy projects and other initiatives, said House Republican Whip Eric Cantor.

"We'll be taking a look in detail" and "really providing accountability and transparency," Cantor said in an interview Wednesday.

House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said in a statement: "House Republicans are concerned about the potential for abuse of taxpayer funds in the massive trillion-dollar spending bill that the president signed into law this week. ... We will remain vigilant in our oversight efforts."

Some Republican lawmakers and aides say that even relatively small examples of spending abuse will feed conservative talk shows and fuel criticism of the plan's implementation, just as a handful of dubious items in the bill helped House Republicans mock it and stay united against it. Only three Senate Republicans voted for the bill, giving it the minimum needed for passage.

This is a smart move by Cantor, Boehner, and Co. The White House has launched a website that is supposed to allow people to track how stimulus funds are spent, but I suspect the GOP will do a better job of finding wasteful spending. After all, the White House hasn't exactly done a great job of finding tax errors of administration appointees.

Sen. Richard Burr polling under 50 percent in newly blue North Carolina.

Other electoral shifts in New Jersey and Virginia?

Indicted Baltimore mayor miffed she wasn't mentioned during Obama's pre-inauguration stop in B'more. She's letting him off easy; she could have asked for a Cabinet spot.

Republicans are about to get 'off the hook.' And no, that's not a golf term.

Obama to Canada: Erm, sorry.

Good news: Government doubles Fannie/Freddie backing to $400 billion.

"Create or save:" The Obama out.

The coming inflation?

Contestant No. 1, 2, 3! Come on down!

So, what's the reaction to the new foreclosure plan?

The Washington Post story today on the FBI's investigation, under J. Edgar Hoover, of the sexuality of a White House aide to Lyndon Johnson includes this anecdote about our good friend Bill Moyers:

Even Bill Moyers, a White House aide now best known as a liberal television commentator, is described in the records as seeking information on the sexual preferences of White House staff members. Moyers said by e-mail yesterday that his memory is unclear after so many years but that he may have been simply looking for details of allegations first brought to the president by Hoover.

Moyers recently condemned Israel and declared that "God-soaked violence became genetically coded" in the DNA of Jews and Arabs. Today's Post story suggests that Moyers has done a remarkable job of maintaining the same level of integrity over the past forty-five years in Washington.

Update: Peter Wehner has more and points to this WEEKLY STANDARD piece on Moyers by Steve Hayes.

The pope rebukes Pelosi during a private meeting.

Time magazine's list of favorite blogs runs the ideological gamut from the Huffington Post to Paul Krugman.

Utah Sen. Bob Bennett may face a primary challenge in 2010.

Jennifer Rubin: "In case you haven’t noticed, California is fast becoming a third world economy."

R. Allen Stanford, the man allegedly at the center of an $8 billion swindle, gave nearly $1 million to Democrats.

Behold Obama's commitment to transparency.

Michael Barone on the Great Depression.

Take a moment to celebrate the post-racial age the Obama administration is ushering in.

Jindal has raised a nice chunk of change.

Gee, I wonder why it is, Atty. Gen. Holder, that Americans of all creeds and colors don't feel perfectly free to talk more with "each other about things racial?"

Oh, that's right.

A few days after Obama's inauguration, the Washington Post's Dana Priest wrote that Obama effectively ended the war on terror--excuse me, Bush's "war on terror"--by signing executive orders to close Gitmo and CIA prisons and limit interrogation methods.

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

Priest also informed readers that in the bad old days of Bush's war on terror, "Front companies and fictitious people were used to hide a system of aircraft that carried terrorism suspects to 'undisclosed locations' and to third countries under a little-known practice called rendition."

But lo and behold, today the New York Times reports "Obama’s War on Terror May Resemble Bush’s in Some Areas":

Even as it pulls back from harsh interrogations and other sharply debated aspects of George W. Bush’s “war on terrorism,” the Obama administration is quietly signaling continued support for other major elements of its predecessor’s approach to fighting Al Qaeda.

In little-noticed confirmation testimony recently, Obama nominees endorsed continuing the C.I.A.’s program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone.

The administration has also embraced the Bush legal team’s arguments that a lawsuit by former C.I.A. detainees should be shut down based on the “state secrets” doctrine. It has also left the door open to resuming military commission trials. ...

During her confirmation hearing last week, Elena Kagan, the nominee for solicitor general, said that someone suspected of helping finance Al Qaeda should be subject to battlefield law — indefinite detention without a trial — even if he were captured in a place like the Philippines rather than in a physical battle zone.

So even though spinners in the Obama administration are trying their best to call the war something other than "war on terror," the president will continue many of Bush's common sense war policies that had the left up in arms for the past seven years. In fact, contra Dana Priest, it appears the Obama administration will continue to use one of the most controversial anti-terror tools employed by the Clinton and Bush administrations--rendition. The Times reports:

Mr. Panetta also said the C.I.A. might continue its “extraordinary rendition” program, under which agents seize terrorism suspects and take them to other countries without extradition proceedings, in a more sweeping form than anticipated....

Mr. Panetta said the agency is likely to continue to transfer detainees to third countries and would rely on diplomatic assurances of good treatment — the same safeguard the Bush administration used, and that critics say is ineffective.

In 2005, Reuel Marc Gerecht wrote a piece in THE WEEKLY STANDARD arguing against rendition. It's a policy that leads to actual torture, and in all likelihood it will be relied upon more and more as the Obama administration affords legal protections to terrorists who operate outside the laws of war. Rather than outsource torture to these unreliable and undemocratic regimes in the Middle East, the Obama administration may soon come to see even the most controversial interrogation techniques of the Bush administration for the humane alternatives they really are.

Our new attorney general:

Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that despite advances, the United States remains “a nation of cowards” on issues involving race.

“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial, we have always been, and we, I believe, continue to be, in too many ways, a nation of cowards,” Holder said in remarks to his staff in honor of Black History Month. His comments appear on a transcript provided by the Justice Department.

There was a lot of fuss kicked up when Phil Gramm called America a "nation of whiners," but Phil Gramm was not an administration official or a representative of the people -- and being called a whiner is considerably less offensive than being called a coward. Not to mention the fact that this seems like a fairly smug charge from a man who is serving as the first black attorney general and at the pleasure of the first black American president.

David Brooks: "The administration has taken its faith in government to such an extreme I’m turning into Ayn Rand. Help!"

The whole thing is worth reading.

As House Democrats set their sights on producing a new energy and climate change bill by Memorial Day, voters tell Rasmussen they support increasing supply versus reducing demand by about a two-to-one margin. When asked, “Which is more important, finding new sources of energy or reducing the amount of energy Americans consume,” voters choose “new sources” over “reducing consumption” 60 percent-32 percent. Republicans choose more supply over reduced demand by a 71 percent-24 percent margin. Independents are right behind, opting for increased supply 63 percent-25 percent. Democrats also pick increasing supply, although by a narrower seven-point margin (50 percent-43 percent).

A slim majority of Americans also believes more nuclear power plants should be built in the U.S. Overall 51 percent say yes, while 31 percent say no. The question of nuclear power, however, generates some interesting differences based on gender and party.

For example, men support nuclear power by a hefty 67 percent-24 percent margin. Women on the other hand split almost down the middle, 38 percent-36 percent. When it comes to party, Republicans want to build more nuclear power plants 66 percent-20 percent, but Democrats oppose, 35 percent-43 percent. Independents side more with the Republicans on this issue, with 57 percent supporting more of these facilities while only 25 percent oppose.

The survey also delves into questions about global climate change, including whether voters believe there is a conflict between “economic growth and environmental protection.” Read the full Rasmussen poll here.

President Obama is set to unveil a new plan today to stem rising foreclosures by empowering the government to renegotiate loan terms to keep people in their homes. The price tag for the measure is expected to be between $50 and $100 billion.

Details remain scarce, but officials are looking to help homeowners who are in danger of defaulting on their mortgages, as well as those already behind, according to sources close to the discussions. Until now, most government and industry efforts have centered only on the delinquent...

One likely component will be interest-rate subsidies for at-risk borrowers, with the government matching the servicer's rate reduction. Borrowers would have to take an affordability test to see whether they could handle the monthly payment on the reworked loan.

Obama chose Phoenix, Ariz. as the backdrop for his announcement of the new plan because Phoenix area home values have dropped precipitously since the housing bubble burst (and, perhaps, as a slight stab at former rival John McCain whose vociferous opposition to the President's stimulus was undoubtedly unappreciated).

Home values have fallen more than 25 percent from their peak, and Phoenix is routinely in the top five cities most affected by the housing crisis. Others include Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, and San Diego— all temperate cities with year-round good weather and entertainment that attracted swarms of house flippers and their attendant TLC and HGTV shows, which then encouraged each city's novice real estate investors to acquire three mortgages with a combination of equity and their children's college funds.

Phoenix welcomed more than 61,000 new single-family units between 2000 and 2006. According to the Arizona Republic, housing prices soared more than 55 percent in 2005 alone, and one of four sales that year was to a speculator. Phoenix real estate bloggers argued with housing bubble bloggers, blithely dismissing those who foresaw the crash as paranoid doomsdayers. The city is home to Nouveau Riche University—not a joke—a real-estate speculation program whose course offerings read like a guidebook to creating the current crisis. Learn to "Fix 'n' Flip" or how to buy more property with "Creative Financing!"

But the time came when the sun set on the Valley of the Sun. Today, Phoenix is not only home to families down on their luck and behind on their home payments, but people who acted irresponsibly and may be underwater on several houses. The problem is such that there's an entire blog devoted to "Phoenix Flippers in Trouble." Eleven of the properties listed there are in Mesa, where Obama is giving his speech today.

So, one wonders what type of homeowners the American taxpayer will be bailing out under Obama's plan. Will he try to save only people in danger of losing a primary residence, or will he consider saving flippers part of the collateral cost of propping up the housing market? Even if he intends to keep flippers off the dole, there's no reason to have any confidence in oversight that would actually accomplish that.

Scott Mintz, the chiropractor who is underwater on four houses, won't be the anecdote Obama uses when he talks about bringing help to Main St., but Scott sure does think he deserves a bailout. For the greater good, of course, and because he's facing bankruptcy and a $10,000 monthly shortfall on mortgages he never should have gotten.

Click here to watch the Scott's unbelievable pitch to taxpayers, courtesy of CNBC. My guess is any riche this guy sees in the nouveau economy will come courtesy of you and me.

The Telegraph is reporting that U.S. officials in Islamabad have secretly backed the ‘peace agreement’ between the Pakistani government and the Taliban which ends military operations in Swat in exchange for the implementation of sharia or Islamic law:

American officials in Islamabad said they hoped it would divide Fazlullah's Swat Taliban and his father-in-law's TNSM from Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

"The strategy has to be to divide the two groups. The TNSM and Baitullah's TTP found some common cause briefly, but a peace deal will separate them," said one US official, who explained that while Mehsud's TTP is part of the global jihad, Maulana Radio is regarded as more focused on local issues and the campaign for Sharia law.

One source suggested it reflected the "smart power" thinking outlined by Hillary Clinton in her Senate confirmation hearing as secretary of state.

But Baitullah Mehsud’s camp has no problem with the peace agreement:

Mehsud's Taliban on Tuesday night appeared unruffled by the prospect of a peace deal in Swat.

"If a true Sharia was enforced, we shall fully support it," said Maulvi Omar, a spokesman, adding that the group backed the involvement of TNSM chief Maulana Sufi Muhammad in any deal.

If at this stage of the game U.S. officials, likely from the State Department, think that such an agreement can split the Taliban factions, they are ignoring recent history. Baitullah Mehsud signed off on a similar peace agreement in 2008, and clearly has no problems with the current agreement at this time.

The only good news to come of this is that State has finally recognized Baitullah Mehsud’s Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, or Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, is part of “the global jihad.” What they fail to realize is that Mullah Fazlullah is Baitullah’s deputy, and Baitullah is signing off on this because Fazlullah has succeeded in humiliating the government into imposing sharia at no cost to the Taliban.

Yeah, this guy probably didn't deserve any of the blame for Katrina, right?

Following in the McCain campaign's footsteps, the House GOP violates copyrights, provoking cranky liberal bands, and earning two news stories for every web video released.

Jindal: I will assess the money provided to Louisiana through the stimulus and the strings attached before deciding to take it. Congress: Awesome, we knew someone would read the bill if we just passed it first.

The Cult of Competence works on TARP II.

Don't earn too much! How the stimulus increases marginal tax rates.

Pat Robertson vs. Rush Limbaugh.

"Break out the butter because Burris is toast."

Somehow methinks a protest of this size would have gotten more attention if it were aimed at Bush while he was signing a bill.

GM wants to take you for a ride. Only figuratively, of course, because no one's buying the actual cars they make.

Gabriel Sherman has a piece in the new issue of TNR examining the early success of the Politico as a business and a journalistic enterprise. There are a few bits that stick out from the piece, among them the odd claim, made repeatedly by the author, that Politico only produces small stories that "will make prime time." The paper may not have jeopardized national security by exposing wiretap programs or CIA black sites, but neither has it been incapable of serious reporting -- the Politico produced plenty of stories during the campaign on policy, religion, race, and all the other things that don't really matter too much to the daily news cycle. Sherman also talks about Politico reporters getting burned out and leaving. He says more than a dozen staffers have left since the paper first launched and that the pace of operations raises questions about sustainability. People I talk to at Politico seem to like working there fine and there have been zero big name departures.

The condescension peaks with this quote from Bill Keller:

The Times' Bill Keller dismisses Politico's scooplets as an insubstantial foundation on which to build a sustainable news organization. "If you hadn't reminded me, I couldn't have told you who broke the seven houses and the six-figure wardrobe budget. ... Politico has focused on an inside game. I'm not sure if it translates to an outside game. I'm not sure how they get scale, and, if they don't, I'm not sure what the business model is."

Exit question: which newspaper's business model consists of handouts from a shady Mexican oligarch, a tapped-out credit line, and a new mortgage on their office space. Hint: It's not Politico.

Tom Ricks believes that the peace accord between the government and the Taliban is a good idea. Here's why:

I know it looks like a setback but I suspect this might be a smart move. Give the people of Swat sharia law, and see how they like it. Meanwhile, bolster your security forces in the area so they can pick up the ball when the Taliban has sufficiently alienated the populace. Risky? Sure. But better than losing Swat altogether.

Here are a few reasons why the Swat agreement is a terrible idea:

First, the agreement to impose sharia isn't limited to just Swat, but to the entire Malakand Division, a region made up districts of Malakand, Shangla, Buner, Dir, and Chitral. This is nearly 1/3 of the entire Northwest Frontier Province being ceded to the Taliban.

Second, Mullah Fazlullah has been running Swat since the spring of 2007. Swat has been lost for almost two years. The agreement only codifies the harsh reality on the ground in Swat, where Fazlullah's jackboots murder dancers, musicians, CD shop owners, and others who disgrace his warped view of Islam. Expanding this rule elsewhere will be devastating to the people of the northwest. The people of Swat know what Fazlullah's sharia looks like. Just read the Paksitani press and you'll see they don't like it much. Nearly 300,000 Swatis, more than 15 percent of the population, fled the region since 2007.

Third, the government has negotiated two prior peace agreements with Fazlullah in 2007 and 2008. The agreement in 2008 was nearly identical in that it promised to impose sharia. The Taliban continued to attack government forces and consolidate power. Fazlullah never lived up to his end of the bargain and laid down weapons. He never intended to. Other peace deals in the tribal areas and in the northwest have clearly been violated. See North and South Waziristan, where the Taliban openly operate their emirates, with accompanying al Qaeda terror camps.

Fourth, the government is admitting it lost its writ in a large swath of the country, and is encouraging the Taliban to continue to use force to achieve its ends.

Fifth, the agreement proves that the Pakistani military is unable to defeat the Taliban, at least in the eyes of the Taliban. The Army and Frontier Corps launched three operation to clear the Taliban from Swat. Each time they made bold pronouncements. Each time they failed.

Jindal may not take stimulus money.

Dire poll numbers for New York's Gov. Paterson.

Japan's economy shrank at a 12.7 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter.

Why seven Democrats voted against the stimulus.

Michael Moynihan on the Britain's shameful treatment of Geert Wilders.

President Obama issued a statement this afternoon announcing the deployment of an Army Stryker brigade and a Marine Expeditionary brigade to Afghanistan this spring. Obama's full statement:

There is no more solemn duty as President than the decision to deploy our armed forces into harm’s way. I do it today mindful that the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan demands urgent attention and swift action. The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and al Qaeda supports the insurgency and threatens America from its safe-haven along the Pakistani border.

To meet urgent security needs, I approved a request from Secretary Gates to deploy a Marine Expeditionary Brigade later this spring and an Army Stryker Brigade and the enabling forces necessary to support them later this summer. This increase has been requested by General McKiernan and supported by Secretary Gates, the Joint Chiefs and the Commander of Central Command. General McKiernan’s request for these troops is months old, and the fact that we are going to responsibly drawdown our forces in Iraq allows us the flexibility to increase our presence in Afghanistan.

This reinforcement will contribute to the security of the Afghan people and to stability in Afghanistan. I recognize the extraordinary strain that this deployment places on our troops and military families. I honor their service, and will give them the support they need.

This increase is necessary to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires. That is why I ordered a review of our policy upon taking office, so we have a comprehensive strategy and the necessary resources to meet clear and achievable objectives in Afghanistan and the region. This troop increase does not pre-determine the outcome of that strategic review. Instead, it will further enable our team to put together a comprehensive strategy that will employ all elements of our national power to fulfill achievable goals in Afghanistan. As we develop our new strategic goals, we will do so in concert with our friends and allies as together we seek the resources necessary to succeed.

For a couple of recent insightful takes on the situation in Afghanistan, see this Washington Post op-ed by Seth G. Jones and this Wall Street Journal editorial.

Tom Ricks:

Apparently Robert Mugabe, who is third on my list for jerk of the year, after Rupert Murdoch and Bill O'Reilly, has bought an expensive house in Hong Kong.

You know who else is really bad? That Kim Jong-Il guy -- that's why I put him right behind Luke Russert on my jerk list.

A former detainee at Guantanamo who went on to become a field commander for al Qaeda in Yemen has reportedly turned himself into the Yemeni government and been repatriated to Saudi Arabia. The former Guantanamo detainee is named Abu al Hareth Muhammad al Oufi.

Al Oufi was captured in 2001, taken into U.S. custody, and ultimately repatriated to Saudi Arabia the first time in November 2007. He and some of his fellow former detainees went through the Saudi jihadist rehabilitation program, which obviously did not take, and then disappeared. Al Oufi was recently seen in an al Qaeda propaganda video alongside one of his fellow Guantanamo detainees. Both al Qaeda terrorists are part of al Qaeda’s Arabian branch and ended up on Saudi Arabia’s list of its 85 most wanted terrorists.

The Saudi government has complained that Yemen is home to an increasingly strong al Qaeda presence that threatens Saudi and western interests. This worry was echoed in the latest threat assessment released by the U.S. Intelligence Community last week. Al Oufi’s arrest is mildly encouraging. As Steve Hayes and I have reported (see here and here), the Yemeni government is duplicitous, with longstanding ties to Islamist groups, including al Qaeda. President Saleh’s regime has not only provided a permissive environment for al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations, it has also reportedly cooperated with these groups against common enemies in some instances.

The Yemeni government has often been unwilling or unable (or both) to crack down on al Qaeda operatives. For example, some of the terrorists responsible for the USS Cole bombing have “escaped” from prison on multiple occasions. In this vein, it is not entirely clear why al Oufi turned himself in now, or why the Yemeni government decided to hand him over to Saudi authorities. But it is likely that the massive amount of attention the Saudis and the western press have focused on al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen played a role. There is too much evidence of al Qaeda’s growing strength inside Yemen to think that this one move means that there has been a sea change by the Yemeni government. But, at the very least, one less former Guantanamo detainee who returned to the battlefield has been detained once again.

Only time will tell what comes of his fellow al Qaeda terrorists living in Yemen.

Mark Bowden's amazing profile of Col. Cesar Rodriguez makes as good a case as you'll ever see for the F-22. Bowden's over-arching argument is that air supremacy is the sine qua non of American war fighting and that said air supremacy comes at a cost. The question is simply whether we pay that cost ahead of time in dollars, or during military operations with blood. And in order for America to retain bloodless air supremacy, we need more Raptors. (In case anyone was looking to, say, stimulate the economy with stuff America needs, the F-22 is a "shovel-ready," made-in-America project.)

All of that high-minded defense stuff aside, Bowden's piece is nearly pornographic in its level of fighter jet detail.

Just one tiny sample:

When Rodriguez retired two years ago from the Air Force as a colonel, his three air-to-air kills (two over Iraq in 1991 and one over Kosovo) were the most of any American fighter pilot on active duty. That number may seem paltry alongside the 26 enemy planes downed by Eddie Rickenbacker in World War I, or the 40 notched by Richard Bong in World War II, or the 34 by Francis Gabreski across World War II and Korea. Rodriguez’s total was two shy of the threshold number for the honorific ace, yet his three made him the closest thing to an ace in the modern U.S. Air Force. . . .

American pilots haven’t shot down many enemy jets in modern times, because few nations have dared rise to the challenge of trying to fight them. The F‑15, the backbone of America’s air power for more than a quarter century, may just be the most successful weapon in history. It is certainly the most successful fighter jet. In combat, its kill ratio over more than 30 years is 107 to zero.

You read that right. To put things in perspective, the F-22 Raptor was initially 144-0 against F-15s and F/A-18s in Red Flag exercises and it took until July 2007 for a fourth generation fighter (an F-16) to finally register a mock kill against an F-22.

Then again, maybe we really do need that Disney-Vegas mag-lev line.

The American Prospect's Courtney Martin explains the meaning of true patriotism in a piece that includes this:

In 2000 I met a little girl in South Africa who asked me in utter amazement, "So in America, people of different races all live right next door to one another?" I took a look around and had to tell her that, in the U.S., the segregation was not much different from Langa Township in barely post-apartheid South Africa.

The deed is done, but I still find it puzzling that Obama didn't wait until tomorrow--a full five days after posting the bill online--to sign it.

On the campaign trail Obama pledged: "when there's a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out whats in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government's doing." He has already broken this vow twice: once when he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and again when he signed the expansion of the state children's health insurance program. Unlike those two bills, the stimulus may have slipped through Obama's "emergency" legislation loophole, but then why did he wait four days to sign it?

As Rich Lowry notes in his column today, Obama discarded a number of other promises about changing the way Washington does business, but "No one cares about process as much as the impressionable young people and journalists he already has firmly in his hip pocket."

Bill McGurn writes in today's Wall Street Journal:

In a passage from his 2006 book, "The Audacity of Hope," [Obama] sounds like a Republican complaining about the stimulus. "Genuine bipartisanship," he wrote, "assumes an honest process of give-and-take, and that the quality of the compromise is measured by how well it serves some agreed-upon goal, whether better schools or lower deficits. This in turn assumes that the majority will be constrained — by an exacting press corps and ultimately an informed electorate — to negotiate in good faith.

"If these conditions do not hold — if nobody outside Washington is really paying attention to the substance of the bill, if the true costs . . . are buried in phony accounting and understated by a trillion dollars or so — the majority party can begin every negotiation by asking for 100% of what it wants, go on to concede 10%, and then accuse any member of the minority party who fails to support this 'compromise' of being 'obstructionist.'"

"For the minority party in such circumstances, 'bipartisanship' comes to mean getting chronically steamrolled, although individual senators may enjoy certain political rewards by consistently going along with the majority and hence gaining a reputation for being 'moderate' or 'centrist.'"

(Hat tip: Mark Hemingway)

In the NY Post, Damon Root takes up the cause of Nick Sprayregen, the landowner who's standing up to Columbia University in their attempt to use eminent domain to expand their campus. In the latest development, Sprayregen filed a petition with the state appellate court; but this is just the first stop on the way up through the New York court system. The eventual destination could be the SCOTUS. Root writes, "the ESDC-Columbia scheme fails to meet even the low standards set by the Supreme Court's notorious Kelo decision, which permitted a government's transfer of property from one private party to another so long as the seizure was part of a 'comprehensive redevelopment plan.'"

Tom DeFrank reports that Cheney was aggressive in pursuing a presidential pardon for his former chief of staff, Scooter Libby. That news is getting a lot of attention, but as DeFrank also notes, Steve Hayes wrote the story for THE WEEKLY STANDARD a month ago. You can read Cheney in his own words here.

A couple weeks ago we had word of a forthcoming Austen-meets-horror novel mash-up called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Well there must be a real Austen boomlet going on in the Fangoria world because yesterday Variety reported that Will Clark is set to direct Pride and Predator, which seems to be the basically self-explanatory blending of Pride and Prejudice and Predator.

The AP headline says "Fallen oil prices a chink in Sarah Palin's armor." Huffington Post adapts that to read "Sarah Palin In Trouble As Oil Prices Fall: AP." The actual piece quotes Larry Sabato saying that tough economic times will limit the governor's ability to travel and Sen. Kim Elton, a Democrat "rumored to be up for a post in President Barack Obama's Interior department," saying Alaskans will look back fondly at the last two years as the state heads into a period of low oil prices and tougher times. Tucked away in the middle of the story:

The state has socked away $1 billion in an education fund for the next school year and education officials say another $1 billion is expected go into the fund this year for future use. More billions went into state savings as well, Palin said. "We're more prepared than other states because of the prudence there," Palin said recently. "We crossed that first hurdle."

The state currently has $6.6 billion in its constitutional budget reserve fund that it could tap into. A few billion dollars more also is available from other pockets, said Juneau economist Gregg Erickson, a longtime Alaska budget watcher. Given Alaska's robust reserves, the state is well-prepared to weather the next two years, Erickson said. As to how long reserves will last after that, there are too many factors involved to say for sure.

If only the country were as well prepared to weather the next two years as Palin's Alaska.

Anne Bayefsky has a good synopsis of where things now stand with Durban II, the United Nations Conference also known as "Zionism is Racism." The Obama administration has agreed to attend in a major reversal from its predecessor and despite intense lobbying from Israel. According to officials at the State Department, U.S. participation in these planning meetings does not necessarily indicate participation in the final conference, or that the United States will sign on to whatever document is ultimately produced, but as Bayefsky points out, there is no evidence of an exit strategy here:

Not only will Obama be buffeted by EU members attempting to save themselves and their pocketbooks, the developing world will be overjoyed at the prospect of debilitating Gulliver. The fact that he is prepared to lie down of his own volition and hand them the strings, just makes the occasion merrier. Obama will also come to know the overarching theme of all U.N. meetings, namely, that saving the credibility of the institution itself is the number one priority. This means that having mounted a global conference, any outcome or deal is better than nothing. Such a mindset leaves the extremists in the driver’s seat. They will eat multilateralists-in-need-of-a-warm-group-hug for breakfast.

True, State department officials are masters at claiming victory with a straight face regardless of the drivel they draft. The 250-paragraph draft of the Durban II “outcome document” now before Obama, includes provisions which: say Israel’s right of return (Jewish self-determination) is racist, accuse Israel of apartheid and crimes against humanity, seek major curbs on freedom of expression, invent global Islamophobia, and allege anti-terrorism tactics are a racist plot. The anti-democratic forces have thrown in the kitchen sink, knowing full well that Westerners will feign a win if even half of it is removed — though the reality will be a giant step backwards for rights and freedoms.

Once State gets into this, they will have every incentive to stay in, and none to get out.

Compare and contrast the following two takes on Iran's role in Afghanistan.

(1) Richard Holbrooke:

"It is absolutely clear that Iran plays an important role in Afghanistan," Holbrooke said on Tolo TV, a private Afghan television network. "They have a legitimate role to play in this region, as do all of Afghanistan's neighbors."

(2) General Petraeus's comments this past weekend:

Iran is providing assistance to the Taliban in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus said at a conference in Doha, Qatar late last week. “There is a willingness to provide some degree of assistance to make the life of those who are trying to help the Afghan people difficult,” Petraeus said, according to Bloomberg.

“It’s not in their interests to see the Taliban, a Sunni ultra-conservative, extremist element, return to take control of Afghanistan,” Petraeus said of Iran’s relationship with the Taliban. Nevertheless, Iran supports the Taliban on “a small level” and the U.S. is watching Iran’s behavior in Afghanistan “very, very closely.”

Petraeus downplayed the significance of Iran's support for the Taliban. But previous statements by military officials in Afghanistan have not been so kind. It is clear that Iran is supplying IED's and antiaircraft weapons to the Taliban, and providing safe haven for senior al Qaeda and Taliban officials - at a minimum.

Yet, it appears that Holbrooke & Co. are attempting to portray Iran as a possible partner in Afghanistan.

Half of Illinois voters approve of new Gov. Pat Quinn. Other half unsure that you can even be governor without an indictment.

Obama ousts Churchill from Oval Office.

Sheriff Joe vs. John Conyers (D-elusional).

Fallen Marine awarded Navy Cross for saving 30 Marines, 25 Iraqis from suicide attack in Ramadi.

Democrats hating on John McCain for not spending all his time being a bipartisan fig leaf for the Obama administration.

Kirsten Gillibrand becomes less cool by the day as she removes guns from under her bed after New York liberals freak out.

51 percent of Connecticut voters say they "definitely" or "probably" won't vote for Dodd in 2010, because of sweetheart mortgage deal.

Fred Thompson takes his folksy, grumbly wisdom back to TV.

WaPo on Alexandra Pelosi's McCain documentary: It's drive-by journalism, to put it charitably, a string of stupefyingly brief hit-and-run interviews with a bunch of unidentified people who we know are going to say nothing that will surprise us.

Just two days after a Predator strike in South Waziristan, the United States conducted yet another strike, this time in the tribal agency of Kurram. The target was a camp run by an Afghan Taliban commander who trains fighters inside Pakistan for attacks against NATO and Afghan forces. More than 30 have been reported killed after several Predators launched multiple Hellfire missiles at the camp.

The second attack is very interesting for several reasons. First, the United States has never struck inside Kurram. In fact, all of the previous airstrikes (51 total since 2006) have taken place in North and South Waziristan and Bajaur, and in one instance in the settled region of Bannu. The attack in Bannu also took place over the pst three months, which means the United States appears to be expanding its strikes outside of the three prime Taliban-controlled tribal agencies.

Second, the attack is the second since Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, disclosed that the CIA was operating a covert air base that is used to conduct the attacks inside of Pakistan. The Pakistani government has denied the existence of the base. As in Saturday's strike, no senior Pakistani leader in the government or the military protested.

Third, the United States appears to be branching out the attacks to include Taliban forces operating inside of Pakistan. In the past, the United States has focused on al Qaeda's network that is responsible for conducting strikes against the West. The al Qaeda-linked Haqqani Network was singled out for attacks, but the Haqqanis recruit foreign suicide bombers and play a role in al Qaeda's external network. Today's strike appears to be aimed at Taliban forces operating in Afghanistan, although it is possible this Taliban group also dealt with al Qaeda's external network. If the strikes have been expanded to include ordinary Taliban groups, there is no shortage of targets in Pakistan's northwest.

The Chicago-Tribune's Jill Zuckman has taken a job in the Obama administration. ABC's Jake Tapper rounds up a list of other journalists who have joined Team Obama:

Zuckman becomes at least the fourth reporter to join the Obama administration. Others include former TIME Washington bureau chief Jay Carney who is now Vice President Biden's communications director, former Los Angeles Times reporter Peter Gosselin who is now a speechwriter for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and former Washington Post deputy editor Warren Bass who is an adviser to United Nations Ambassador Dr. Susan Rice.

Former ABC News congressional correspondent Linda Douglass became a senior strategist for the Obama campaign, while other campaign officials included former CNN producer Kate Albright-Hanna and former CNN correspondent Aneesh Raman.

There is also talk, of course, of CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta becoming surgeon general.

Of course, none of this should call into question the objectivity of these former newsmen. As Time's Jay Carney put it, he doesn't see his gig as Joe Biden's spokesman "as a partisan job at all."

I've written quite a bit in the past about the Pakistani government's misguided negotiations with the Taliban. Agreements from 2006-2008 only allowed the Taliban and al Qaeda to regroup, rearm, and consolidate their power in the tribal areas and the greater northwest, while serving to demoralize the Pakistani military and the people living under the Taliban's boot. (See here or here).

Despite ample evidence of the failure of this policy, the Pakistani government is cutting a new peace agreement with the Taliban. The government will allow the Taliban to implement sharia in a region called the Malakand Division, which encompasses the districts of Malakand, Swat, Shangla, Buner, Dir, and Chitral. This region makes up about 1/3 of the Northwest Frontier Province (see map here). In exchange, the government will end its operation in Swat.

Recently, President Zardari said force must be used to defeat the Taliban, while Prime Minister Gilani said other measures are required. Clearly the "other measures" option will be tried, and the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters sheltering among them will only grow stronger.

The United States conducted an airstrike on a Taliban compound in Pakistan's tribal agency of South Waziristan Saturday. The attack, which killed at least 25 people, largely Uzbeks fighters and a few Arab al Qaeda members according to reports, is the third such strike inside Pakistan since President Obama took office. The last two attacks took place on January 23, just two days after President Obama took office. Interestingly enough, the reports in the Western media put far less focus on the violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and the death of innocent civilians, and focus more on the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters killed and the expansion of al Qaeda's safe havens.

Saturday's attack was also the first since Senator Feinstein confirmed the rumors of a secret CIA base inside Pakistan that is used to launch the Predator strikes. Putting aside the very serious national security and diplomatic implications of Senator Feinstein's disclosure, there is one positive outcome to this: the Pakistani government can no longer say with a straight face that it objects to the U.S. strikes. The Pakistani government's faux outrage over the strikes has served to portray the U.S. as imperialists who disregard the concerns of an allied country.

Interestingly enough, the Pakistani government failed to denounce, or even mention, Saturday's strike in South Waziristan. Unless the United States ends the strikes, the Pakistani government will eventually need to quit playing its double game and decide take a public stand on strikes against the Taliban and al Qaeda operating on its territory.

From the AP:

The Obama administration said late Saturday that it would participate in planning for a U.N. conference on racism despite concerns the meeting will be used by Arab nations and others to criticize Israel....

During the Bush administration the United States and Israel walked out of the first U.N. conference on racism in Durban, South Africa, in 2001 over efforts to pass a resolution comparing Zionism — the movement to establish and maintain a Jewish state — to racism.

Those efforts failed but there are signs the resolution may be reintroduced at the so-called "Durban 2" meeting in Geneva and Israel has been actively lobbying the United States and European countries to stay away from this year's meeting.

Our unilateralist neighbors to the north have already announced they will not be attending Zionism=Racism 2. The Obama administration, meanwhile, is intent on proving that, "in line with our commitment to diplomacy," the United States can "change the direction in which the review conference is heading." At this rate, it won't be long before backpackers start swapping out those Canadian flag patches on their gear in favor of Old Glory lest they cross paths with some anti-Zionist youths while bumming around Europe.

Sam Stein writes at the Huffington Post:

Democrats are growing increasingly frustrated with the brash political attacks Sen. John McCain has launched against Barack Obama in the weeks since the new president took office. No one expected the Arizona Republican to be a legislative ally for this administration. But it was widely assumed that Obama's overtures to McCain in the weeks after the election would dull some of the hard feelings between the two. Now, they are realizing, it has not.

You have to give Stein some credit -- his question during last week's presser was no softball. But this is baloney. In the aftermath of the election, everyone expected McCain to be a legislative ally for this administration. It's pure revisionism to say otherwise now, but this revision allows Democrats to blame McCain's recalcitrance on "hard feelings," as though his objections to the stimulus are driven by some petty, personal resentment.

Remember when dissent was patriotic?

The Blagojevich-Obama-Durbin earmark is the most expensive earmark ever.

Max Boot on Afghanistan.

A Democratic congresswoman "pocketed more than $200,000 of political contributions by charging as much as 18 percent interest on money she loaned to her own campaign."

A list of stimulus waste. And a breakdown of the stimulus. (But I repeat myself.)

The RNC tries to help lovestruck Dems find the right words for the tinpot dictators in their lives.

Yet another reason to love football.

A note from Anna Christopher, Senior Manager, NPR Media Relations:

I read your post last night, and would like to correct your misconceptions about NPR:

NPR is not “government-funded” – and since that misconception provides the basis for your argument, your entire post is inaccurate. NPR receives less than 2% of its funding from competitive grants sought by NPR from federally funded organizations (such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts).

If you’d like to check any additional facts, I’m always available. I appreciate you updating your post to accurately reflect NPR’s sources of funding.

I appreciate the smug, condescending tone of this letter, but I'm unconvinced. As one former CPB official I spoke to explained, "they love to claim they're insulated, but they're very much dependent on the public tit." The other 98 percent of NPR's funding comes from a mix of donations, corporate support, and dues from member stations. The fees and dues paid by member stations comprise more than half of NPR's budget. Where does that money come from? In large part, from the federal government.

Take the local NPR affiliate in Washington, WAMU 88.5. That station paid NPR in excess of $1.5 million in dues, the station's largest single expense outside of fundraising and personnel. The station also took in $840,000 in public funding and grants from the CPB. The station spent nearly $4 million on "fund-raising and membership development," with a return of just $6 million. Fundraising is expensive -- public money isn't.

As this former CPB official explained, "they like to contend they get little direct money, but they get a hell of a lot of indirect money." He also notes that the FM spectrum on which public radio stations broadcast is itself a government subsidy -- a valuable public resource provided by the government at no expense to the stations. "The importance of federal funding to their operations can be seen," our friend said, "whenever someone threatens to cut the CPB budget -- and they scream like a bunch of stuck pigs."

If NPR truly wants to be regarded as an independent entity, they should send back to the Treasury every dollar that's been set aside by Congress to support public broadcasting in this country. Otherwise, NPR survives only through the generosity of the American taxpayer, and should act accordingly.

Bow down and worship.

The stimulus passes, but again without a single Republican vote in the House. More than that, of the ten Democrats who initially crossed the aisle to vote against the bill, only three changed their votes in the final tally. So what does this tell us? Well, Republicans were clearly pleased with the response they were getting from constituents after they unanimously voted against Pelosi's first version of the stimulus. If anything they were emboldened by the course of events since that time.

The expectation on the Hill as recently as earlier this week was that some 20 Republicans would support the president when the stimulus came back for a final vote. Having casted a symbolic protest vote against the measure the first time around, many of those members from only marginally Republican districts were expected to cave to a popular president and vote in favor if only to show that they were doing something besides obstructing in response to a deteriorating economic situation.

And keep in mind that there was a major campaign by Obama's allies, coordinated with the White House, to target GOP leaders. As one Republican aide said in an email this afternoon, "the Dems threw in everything they had from the bully pulpit to the 527s." Still, not one Republican defected.

Some of the credit obviously belongs to the Republican leadership in the House. Cantor whipped another perfect game and seems well able to keep his troops in line -- even if they can't actually prevent the majority from ramming through whatever legislation it wants. But most of the credit goes to Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, who failed, despite all their resources and advantages, to corral, cajole, or coerce even one Republican into supporting this bill.

The House just passed the stimulus package with no Republican support, and eight "no" votes from Democrats.

Rep. Aaron Schock, whose llinois district is home to Caterpillar, spoke on the floor about the president's speech to his constituents and their telling response. Caterpillar has been a central part of Obama's stimulus pitch the past couple of days, but the pitch has been bumbled, as the rest of the stimulus message has been. Obama claimed the Caterpillar CEO told him he'd be rehiring some of his 22,000 laid-off workers as soon as the stimulus bill was passed, but Owens later flatly contradicted the President's claim.

Schock's constituents were urged by the president himself to tell Schock to vote "yes," but he was not approached by one constituent, Caterpillar employee or otherwise, asking him to support the stimulus. Democrats can pass this monstrosity because they control both houses, but they should never get away with painting criticism of it as unreasonable or purely partisan. Criticism comes from every quarter— even from laid-off workers who are subject to an onslaught of the president's patented Promises of an Implausible Nature and Grandiloquence of Economic Gloom:

I found it very interesting that after the president finished his speech and I stayed around, not one employee at that facility approached me and asked me to vote for this bill. In fact, I have received over 1,400 phone calls, e-mails, and letters from Caterpillar employees alone asking me to oppose this legislation

Video is here:

Update: When asked about Schock's floor speech and "no" vote, the White House responds by calling him a political hack for for voting in line with both his principles and his constituents.

Asked by ABC News about Schock's comments and the lack of constituents apparently lobbying him, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs at today's briefing said "if the congressman goes back and evaluates the plan, lobbying or not, I think he'll see that it saves or creates millions of jobs, puts people back to work,...would put money directly into employees at Caterpillar's pockets, as well as people throughout his district."

Gibbs added, "I think, if the congressman goes and looks at the bill through an economic lens, not just one -- not just through a political one, I think he'll see benefits not just for his district and his state, but for the entire country."

What Gibbs ignores is that Schock's anecdote is a reflection of just how deep the skepticism of the stimulus runs among regular Americans who have no political motivations. It's not something Obama's team wants to admit because it would require conceding that the fault lies almost entirely with him for losing control of the process and message. He was a president with a 70-percent approval rating tasked with getting a Democratic-controlled Congress to spend a bunch of money without vociferous objection from utterly politically neutered Republicans. He failed, and in doing so, he "brought publicity to the skunk."

The people of Peoria are not jockeying for reelection or fund raising off of their opposition. They've got the extremely popular president of the United States standing right in front of them, promising that their jobs will come back and money will be put in their pockets if they'll just tell Rep. Aaron Schock to vote "yes" on one bill.

By all rights, those folks should have been scrambling to the stage to admonish Schock for his opposition. And, yet they didn't. According to Schock, there's been much more scrambling to thank him for his "no" votes. His constituents are acting against interest, which makes their testimony all the more convincing. I'm sure Thomas Frank is right now putting together a proposal for another condescending, out-of-touch examination of Middle Americans entitled, "Seriously, What's the Matter With Peoria? It's as Bad as Kansas."

The people of Illinois, even the aggressively wooed Caterpillar constituents, are uncertain about the bill, probably for a combination of reasons. Maybe because Joe Biden said there was a 30 percent chance it would go badly even under perfect circumstances. Maybe because Obama's promises don't amount to much when the CEO of Caterpillar refutes them a day later. Maybe it's because they know the final version of the bill went up online just 12 hours before the House started talking about voting on it. Or, because even though Obama said the bill had no earmarks in it, they heard Charles Schumer call the bill amendments "porky." It could be that the idea of spending the equivalent of $1 million a day from the day Christ was born until today is a little much for them to stomach. Maybe they saw Nancy Pelosi argue for the bill, even just one time. Maybe they heard the problem with bipartisanship wasn't on the Republican side. Maybe they even heard that from a Democrat. Could it be that talk of accountability rings hollow after the first $350 billion of TARP was shown to have been frittered away in unseemly ways under the direction of Obama's tax-cheating Secretary of Treasury? They might be worried the government will run out of money, or convinced they can handle the economy better than Congress, or honestly think more tax cuts will stimulate before spending does.

But no, for the Obama administration, it's none of those things. It's that a congressman from Illinois is looking at the bill through the wrong "lens." Schock could look at this thing through a kaleidoscope, and it wouldn't hide the the mistakes in the bill or the mistakes the administration made selling it.

From one of my favorite blogs, Information Dissemination, comes the news that Senator Dianne Feinstein has divulged that the United States is conducting strikes in against al Qaeda's network in Pakistan's tribal areas from a secret base inside Pakistan:

A senior U.S. lawmaker said Thursday that unmanned CIA Predator aircraft operating in Pakistan are flown from an airbase inside that country, a revelation likely to embarrass the Pakistani government and complicate its counterterrorism collaboration with the United States.

The disclosure by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, marked the first time a U.S. official had publicly commented on where the Predator aircraft patrolling Pakistan take off and land.

At a hearing, Feinstein expressed surprise at Pakistani opposition to the ongoing campaign of Predator-launched CIA missile strikes against Al Qaeda targets along Pakistan's northwest border.

"As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base," she said of the planes.

Sen. Feinstein's spokesman later claimed she was referring to a February 2008 report in the Washington Post. Here is the article and the excerpt:

With all signs pointing to a unique target, CIA officials ordered the launch of a pilotless MQ-1B Predator aircraft, one of three kept at a secret base that the Pakistani government has allowed to be stationed inside the country. Launches from that base do not require government permission, officials said.

Regardless of how Sen. Feinstein came about the information, her making the statement gives weight to the notion that the CIA is launching attacks on targets in the tribal areas from a base located on Pakistani territory. And that genie cannot be put back into the bottle, Pakistanis will believe this.

Aside from the obvious operational security and diplomatic concerns, Sen. Feinstein has just confirmed what we have all known for some time: the strikes on al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan have taken place with the approval of the Pakistani government, and the government's protests of these attacks are designed to placate Pakistani citizens. But all this has done is harm the image of the United States, as we're portrayed as the big, bad bully that violates Pakistan's sovereignty without a care for the people. This mess also shows that the situation in Pakistan is so bad that the government has to lie to its people about a campaign designed to kill al Qaeda leaders, the very same ones that have been behind numerous suicide attacks on Pakistani soil that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians.

Back in January of last year, as the Democratic primary was just heating up, the candidates gathered in Nevada for a debate hosted by Tim Russert. Russert asked the candidates to tell the audience about what they perceived as their own greatest strengths and weaknesses. John Edwards, whose real weakness has since been revealed, answering then that he "sometimes [has] a very powerful emotional response to pain that I see around me." I'm reminded of that as the Obama administration tries to explain why the stimulus met with such unexpected resistance in Congress.

Meeting with reporters Thursday night, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said that there were times during the stimulus debate when “I don’t think we were sharp about the benefits” of the legislation, letting Washington process dominate the message.

Reflecting as “somebody who has been in this town,” he observed that “there’s an insatiable appetite for the notion of bipartisanship here and we allowed that to get ahead of ourselves.”

But Emanuel said that they recognized they had overdone their initial outreach to Republicans and had offered "a sharp message for the last week."

For now, the hard-charging chief of staff added, “He has an open hand, but he has a very firm handshake.”

Translation: Yes, the president will continue to do obligatory outreach to the GOP, but he’s not going to be burned again by an out-of-power and toothless minority for the sake of appearances.

The last time the Obama team was talking about open hands and clenched fists the comments were directed at "those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent." Rahm should be careful lest he leave Republicans with the impression that the administration views them the same way it views foreign despots, and to be handled with a similar approach. But is it true that the stimulus got bogged down by Obama's unrequited attempts at bipartisanship, or does some of the blame lay with the White House decision to let Congressional Democrats craft a really bad piece of legislation with no input from Republicans and little stimulative potential. How does the Obama White House explain the market's reaction to the stimulus? Are they just not selling the bill right to Wall Street as well?

Another highlight from Congressman Barney Frank's meeting with reporters this morning: Frank said that most of the $700 billion allocated for TARP is "going to be repaid" and it's a mistake to compare the "hundreds of billions spent the TARP and the hundreds and hundreds of on Iraq, which isn’t coming back."

He added:

The war in Iraq has been enormously expensive. The Cold War weapons we are building now are enormously expensive. The biggest ongoing threat, I believe, to fiscal sanity in this country is an open-ended ever-expanding military budget.

Frank has called for a 25 percent cut in Defense spending in the past.

NBC's First Read:

Despite his gracious words at his press conference yesterday, Republican Judd Gregg's decision to withdraw his nomination to be Commerce secretary was a blow to the administration. One, it became the latest nomination problem for Obama (Daschle, Killefer, and Richardson), and the second one at Commerce. Two, it undermined the president's bipartisan outreach (Gregg would have been the third Republican to serve in the cabinet, and the one with the most conservative credentials). And three, it enabled Republicans to immediately politicize the withdrawal. House Minority Leader John Boehner issued a statement pointing to Gregg’s concerns “about the congressional Democrats’ trillion-dollar spending bill,” even though Gregg had praised the stimulus after being tapped for the job. And RNC chair Michael Steele explained Gregg’s withdrawal to FOX, saying that the White House was “basically high-jacking the Census process.”

So the administration pulls the census into the White House and defers to Nancy Pelosi on the writing of the stimulus, but Republicans are politicizing the issue by pointing this out?

At a breakfast this morning sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, Congressman Barney Frank said he would like to implement the policy of allowing gays to openly serve in the military sooner than he had previously indicated. Last month, Frank told the New Yorker that he wanted to wait until "after the troops get home from Iraq" to bring up the issue of gays in the military.

Does that mean he wants to wait until all of the troops are home? "No," Frank said this morning. "I want to wait until the decision has been made [on Iraq] not the actual execution of the decision. I think the president first has to set in motion what he wants to do with regard to Iraq. Once he’s done that, we can go ahead."

So does the president need to set into motion any policies in Afghanistan, or wait for the fighting to calm down there, before he does away with Don't Ask, Don't Tell?

"No," Frank said. "Iraq is a particularly difficult issue for the country."

"In Afghanistan, he’s got difficult decisions, but," Frank said, " they’re not as politically divisive." Obama "may well be telling the military that he wants to withdraw at a quicker pace than they want. I think at this point he should focus on getting that decision made. It is of a different order in terms of the potential to be divisive." But once Obama makes a decision on Iraq policy, Frank doesn't see any reason to keep the president and Congress from pushing for gays in the military.

ACORN money, pet projects...back in the stimulus!

Hey, remember when fixing the AMT was too expensive, and Democrats were pay-as-you-go?

You could buy, literally, two whole Quarter Pounder meals a week with your middle-class tax cut.

House begins debate on stimulus, after the public has a whole 12 hours to review the 1,000-page monster, from 10 p.m. to 10 a.m. Transparency!

Krauthammer: It wasn't enough for Gregg to be the Commerce Dept. fish-feeder.

Yes, Democrats do want to monitor and regulate political speech on TV and radio.

Anderson Cooper explains away Obama failures with mythical GOP "war on the White House."

Obama team invokes its favorite adjective for old, white guys: Judd Gregg is "erratic."

Obama: Caterpillar we rehire workers once stimulus is passed. Caterpillar CEO: Not so fast. We're not nationalized yet, and I say we can't rehire anytime soon.

On top of everything else, Obama will now have the curse of the Scottish Play to deal with. Probably another sneaky move in the GOP's war on the White House.

Rep. Tom Price starts reading the stimulus bill, at 9 a.m. Good luck!

Over at the Washington Post's "Post Partisan" blog, Bill Kristol offers his take on why Gregg withdrew. It increasingly looks like the White House's census power grab is the reason Gregg walked.

House Democrats plan to vote on the stimulus at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow and thus break their pledge to post any bill online for 48 hours before voting on it.

Paul Bedard of U.S. News reported this afternoon that lobbyists have copies of the bill but congressional staffers do not. As of late this evening, a GOP aide said that he had not yet received a copy of the final text of the bill.

If the House GOP can't slow the bill down because rules there are so tough, then senators have the obligation to do so. They need to insist the stimulus be read in full by clerk and insist on debate. If the Democrats are going to shove a trillion dollar spending bill down the country's throat, shouldn't that at least be done in the light of day?

Don't Collins, Specter, and Snowe want to try to salvage whatever's left of their reputations in the GOP and stick up for minimal procedural fairness? If they don't, shouldn't their colleagues publicly pressure them into doing so?

The LA Times reports:

Little more than a year after U.S. spy agencies concluded that Iran had halted work on a nuclear weapon, the Obama administration has made it clear that it believes there is no question that Tehran is seeking the bomb.

In his news conference this week, President Obama went so far as to describe Iran's "development of a nuclear weapon" before correcting himself to refer to its "pursuit" of weapons capability.

Obama's nominee to serve as CIA director, Leon E. Panetta, left little doubt about his view last week when he testified on Capitol Hill. "From all the information I've seen," Panetta said, "I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability."

The language reflects the extent to which senior U.S. officials now discount a National Intelligence Estimate issued in November 2007 that was instrumental in derailing U.S. and European efforts to pressure Iran to shut down its nuclear program. ...

U.S. officials said that although no new evidence had surfaced to undercut the findings of the 2007 estimate, there was growing consensus that it provided a misleading picture and that the country was poised to reach crucial bomb-making milestones this year.

Panetta's testimony isn't the first time Obama has indicated that he discounts the 2007 NIE. In December 2007, he appeared to believe the report, saying, "By reporting that Iran halted its nuclear weapon development program four years ago because of international pressure, the new National Intelligence Estimate makes a compelling case for less saber-rattling and more direct diplomacy." But just last month, Obama told ABC News that Iran is "pursuing a nuclear weapon" (as early as his June 2008 AIPAC speech, Obama said that Iran "pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists.")

As Allahpundit notes, this LA Times story makes it all the more obvious that from the very beginning the NIE was used as a "political tool, to make sure Bush couldn’t take any drastic action to stop the program (which was unlikely anyway)." Just to reiterate: The Obama administration hasn't relied on any new information to conclude as false the 2007 NIE's claim that Iran halted its nuke program. If Obama and his advisers now think that the 2007 NIE is a sham, don't they have an interest in firing the people who wrote faulty intelligence? Presumably Obama believes that the role of intelligence agencies is to collect and relay accurate intelligence, and the role of political leaders is to make political decisions.

Judd Gregg says he "probably" won't run for reelection in 2010.

Dana Milbank protests David Plouffe.

The total cost of the stimulus could end up at $ 3.27 trillion.

Stimulus support rises.

It might be too late for the stimulus to do any good.

The end of welfare reform as we know it.

Britain arrests Geert Wilders.

Caterpillar CEO contradicts Obama on claim that 20,000 laid off workers will be rehired if stimulus passes.

Juan Williams has been attacked by the ombudsman at National Public Radio for comments he made while appearing in a segment on Fox's O'Reilly Factor along with our own Mary Katharine Ham. The quote that got him in trouble:

“Michelle Obama, you know, she's got this Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress thing going. If she starts talking, as Mary Katharine [Ham, a conservative blogger] is suggesting, her instinct is to start with this blame America, you know, I'm the victim. If that stuff starts coming out, people will go bananas and she'll go from being the new Jackie O to being something of an albatross”

Williams appears frequently on Fox News and is typically identified as "NPR News Political Analyst," which is precisely what his job title at NPR is. Williams is not on staff at NPR, rather he is an independent contractor -- and thus presumably free to sell his services wherever else he pleases. Which raises the question: does NPR even have the right, as a government-funded network, to publicly condemn an independent contractor for the manner in which he describes the First Lady while on his own time?

At the end of a long explanation, complete with bowing and scraping to NPR's liberal listeners and supporters, the ombudsman declares that the network has asked Fox to stop identifying Williams as having an affiliation with NPR when he appears on their network. NPR's Washington editor explains to the ombudsman, "What [Williams] says when he is not on our air is not within our control." So under what logic does NPR believe that it can and should prevent Williams from affiliating himself with NPR when he is not on their air?

If NPR were not government-funded, this would hardly be alarming -- just another liberal media organization unable to tolerate any criticism of Barack and Michelle Obama. But a government-funded media organization can't censor its own contributors when they are on another network and expect no complaint from those taxpayers who haven't yet pledged allegiance to Barack Obama.

Senator Judd Gregg withdraws from consideration for the post of Commerce Secretary. From the release:

"I want to thank the President for nominating me to serve in his Cabinet as Secretary of Commerce. This was a great honor, and I had felt that I could bring some views and ideas that would assist him in governing during this difficult time. I especially admire his willingness to reach across the aisle.

"However, it has become apparent during this process that this will not work for me as I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the Census there are irresolvable conflicts for me. Prior to accepting this post, we had discussed these and other potential differences, but unfortunately we did not adequately focus on these concerns. We are functioning from a different set of views on many critical items of policy.

The inclusion of the census among the "irresolvable conflicts" Gregg had with the administration is odd. The stimulus has already gone through, and the shape it would take was fairly clear when Gregg first put his hat in the ring. The Obama administration's attempts to hijack the census, however, only became apparent in the last week. Republicans were determined to make an issue out of this at the confirmation hearings, and Gregg would have been essentially neutered if he'd allowed the White House to take the census away from the Commerce Department.

Neither does the failure of another nominee help restore the image of competence to an Obama team that just a few weeks ago was considered a well-oiled machine and now sees almost daily unforced errors. It's possible to blame Gregg for this -- that he should have seen these kind of issues coming -- but again, the census issue was not foreseeable, and was perhaps both irresolvable and unacceptable to Gregg. The inclusion of the census in the statement ought to bring increased scrutiny to the Obama administration's attempts to what seems to the untrained eye like a clear attempt to subvert the law governing its administration. (If any lawyers can explain how the statue might be read differently, please drop us an email.)

As far as who will ultimately fill the post of Commerce Secretary...third time's the charm.

Exit quote, via Politico: "I couldn’t be Judd Gregg and serve in the Cabinet. I should have faced up to the reality of that earlier."

Politico:

New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg has abruptly withdrawn as President Barack Obama’s nominee to run the Commerce Department, another blow to an administration trying to build a bipartisan cabinet.

Gregg cited his problems with the economic stimulus bill, as well as disagreements over how to run the Census as reasons for pulling his nomination.

In the end, I suspect he feared he could never fill Bill Richardson's shoes.

The Wall Street Journal reports on a minor rebellion in the drug war and includes this counterpoint:

U.S. law-enforcement officials -- as well as some of their counterparts in Mexico -- say the explosion in violence indicates progress in the war on drugs as organizations under pressure are clashing.

"If the drug effort were failing there would be no violence," a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. There is violence "because these guys are flailing. We're taking these guys out. The worst thing you could do is stop now."

This is one of the paradoxes of the war on drugs that leads to ridicule from opponents of the policy. I spent my first year out of school writing memos for police chiefs on topics ranging from devising better systems for monitoring domestic violence to developing protocols for chemical attacks. One of the projects I worked on involved developing new metrics for monitoring the progress of the HIDTA (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area) program. The problem was just as described above. These cops would go in and target the upper echelon of a distribution network. When they achieved their mission, rates of violent crime would spike in their area of operations. The reason: once you take out the big fish, the small fish start killing each other as they battle for control of all those newly underserved customers.

The cops wanted a new metric by which to judge their success -- one that would not penalize them for an increased murder rate that necessarily follows from doing their job, i.e. eliminating a major drug trafficker. It's easy to ridicule this kind of thing, but there's a great deal of truth to the statement above. If the police were to stop targeting the big fish, there would still be violence, but an organized criminal enterprise would be able to keep that violence to a minimum -- or, at the very least, out of sight. On the other hand, when law enforcement is successful, it spurs increased competition. As far as I'm aware no one ever figured out a metric that made this outcome any less troubling.

Yesterday Pakistani police detained a New Zealander as he attempted to enter South Waziristan. He was captured in Tank, a district that borders South Waziristan, the center of gravity for the Taliban and one of al Qaeda's primary havens.

The New Zealander, identified on his passport as Mark Taylor, was detained at a paramilitary checkpoint on the outskirts of Tank, about 280km southwest of Islamabad, which is the gateway to South Waziristan.

He was reportedly trying to enter an al Qaeda and Taliban militant stronghold on the Afghan border and Pakistani intelligence officials suspected he might have links with Islamist militants.

Unless Mr. Taylor is an over-eager journalist, the likelihood he was attempting to join up with either the Taliban or al Qaeda. The latter is actively looking for recruits with passports that will allow them to more easily travel throughout the West. The U.S. air campaign in Pakistan's tribal areas is aimed at breaking up these networks. In one of the 30 plus strikes launched last year, two men holding Canadian passports were killed in an attack on an al Qaeda camp in South Waziristan.

Mr. Taylor isn't the first westerner captured while attempting to enter Pakistan. In October 2008, Pakistani police arrested Juddi Kenan, a U.S. citizen, as he attempted to enter Mohmand, another Taliban stronghold in the tribal areas. Kenan claimed he was a student at a community college in Florida and wanted to enter the tribal region to see a friend. Pakistani intelligence released Kenan, and little has been reported about him since.

Bill Sweetman posts an extremely cool video of the Harpy-2, the latest "lethal UAV" from Israel Aerospace Industries. The Harpy-2, Sweetman explains, is a loitering missile that is capable of being guided to a strike on a moving target or can guide itself using with an anti-radar homing system.

Sweetman also writes, "IAI's forecasters, by the way, have looked at "the budget footprints" of US classified programs and are convinced that the US already has jet-powered UCAVs in service, developed and deployed in the black world." Whatever Obama's plans for the defense budget and cuts to procurement, one hopes that these programs, if they do exist, will be left unmolested given how integral they will be to targeting terrorists along the Afghan-Pakistan border -- strikes that Obama has put at the center of his war on terror strategy.

Here's the video of the test:

The Jerusalem Post's Hillary Krieger reports:

US officials are publicly taking a wait-and-see approach to the formation of a new Israeli government, but privately many have expressed concern that Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu might preside over a right-wing coalition.

"There would be great unease" at the prospect of such a government, said one Capitol Hill source.

He predicted that a governing coalition of parties from the Right could embolden the left flank of the Democratic party and turn up pressure, particularly in the US Congress, to pass measures that made clear demands on Israel.

He distinguished, however, between a Netanyahu-led right-wing coalition and Netanyahu-led national unity government.

Krieger is a left-wing partisan whose reporting should be taken with a grain of salt, but she isn't making up quotes -- and there should be no doubt that this quote reflects the general view of the Israeli election on the American left. Likewise, Joe Klein has a column today asserting that American support for Israel will not withstand a coalition of Netanyahu and Lieberman, though Klein also stipulates that a national unity government, led by Netanyahu and including Labor and Kadima, would be an acceptable alternative. Never mind that that this is an extremely unlikely outcome, more important it is a good enough pretext to force a chance in policy -- a shift to a more "even-handed" policy -- that the left has long sought.

Still, the left's deep antipathy toward Israel has been further exposed by Tuesday's elections. Congress, so beholden to the "Israel Lobby," seems unlikely to insert itself into American policy towards Israel without Obama leading the way. But if Obama does cave to the left-wing of his own party and reduce American support for Israel on the basis of this election, maybe we finally see larger numbers of Jews shifting away from the Democratic party.

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who fiercely clashed with the Bush administration over the 2003 Iraq War, has published an essay in the weekly Der Spiegel on “The Way Forward in Afghanistan”. While Schroeder strongly rejects pacifist calls for Germany’s unilateral withdrawal from the military mission there he argues that “the time has come, more than seven years after the overthrow of the Taliban, to establish a timeframe for the transition to self-reliance, which would be tied to the beginnings of international troop withdrawal.”

While Schroeder would later turn into a major Bush adversary in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War, it is often overlooked that the German leader even called a vote of confidence in November 2001 to get his left-wing Red-Green government to support the deployment of Bundeswehr troops in Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. This was Schroeder’s way of making good on his promise to show “unlimited solidarity” with the United States. In this context, Schroeder also stresses that “the deployment of the Bundeswehr in the Hindu Kush is an expression of Germany's complete sovereignty over its foreign and security policy.” Here’s a quick overview of Schroeder’s key points on Afghanistan:

1. We [Germany] cannot unilaterally withdraw from Afghanistan right away. This would represent an abdication of international responsibility and a turning away from the community of nations. “[…]

2. The goal of international involvement in Afghanistan is to place responsibility for the country into the hands of Afghans, but also to ensure that the country does not once again become a safe haven and training ground for international terrorism. […]

3. In the regions where the Americans bear the principal responsibility, a disproportionately greater amount of weight is assigned to the military component than to civil reconstruction. In the North, on the other hand, the Bundeswehr is very well regarded by the local population because of its commitment to reconstruction. […]

4. The military presence remains the prerequisite for reconstruction in Afghanistan. This presence must even be strengthened in the short term to improve the security situation. For this reason, both raising the upper limit for the German ISAF mandate from 3,500 to 4,500 soldiers and the new US administration’s announcement of its plans to add more troops are correct. […]

5. We need a blunt analysis within the NATO alliance on why efforts to pacify southern Afghanistan have failed. I am convinced that the Bundeswehr’s concept, which tends to be militarily conservative and is considerate of the population and civilian facilities, will be more successful in the long run.

6. Civilian reconstruction efforts must be reinforced. The nations attending the Paris Conference on Afghanistan pledged US$20 billion (€15.3 billion) in aid. But instead of simply being promised, these funds must begin to flow, despite the international financial crisis.

7. Responsibility for the country must be turned over to the Afghans. This requires both international assistance and, above all, the will of the Afghans themselves. The Afghan leadership is deficient in this regard.

As you may have heard, Abraham Lincoln was born 200 years ago today. THE WEEKLY STANDARD's resident Lincoln expert and Lincolnphile-in-chief Andrew Ferguson recently sat down with the folks over at NewMajority to talk about his book Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe's America.

You can read Ferguson's WEEKLY STANDARD piece that helped lay the groundwork for his book here.

Obama on the stimulus at Monday night's press conference:

What it does not contain, however, is a single pet project, not a single earmark

The Washington Times's S.A. Miller reports:

Talk about a pet project. A tiny mouse with the longtime backing of a political giant may soon reap the benefits of the economic-stimulus package.

Lawmakers and administration officials divulged Wednesday that the $789 billion economic stimulus bill being finalized behind closed doors in Congress includes $30 million for wetlands restoration that the Obama administration intends to spend in the San Francisco Bay Area to protect, among other things, the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi represents the city of San Francisco and has previously championed preserving the mouse's habitat in the Bay Area.

In a moment of weakness, Goldfarb sent me this brilliant essay on Battlestar Galactica by Robert Farley. Writing as a concerned Colonial citizen, Farley makes that case that during the recent unpleasantness, Vice President Tom Zarek and Lieutenant Felix Gaeta--who lead a mutiny onboard the Galactica and then a military coup against the democratically-elected government of the Twelve Colonies--were, in fact, revolutionary heroes and not traitors.

Farley's case rests on a number of contentions about the wisdom of integrating the Rebel Cylons into the fleet. I won't try to summarize the full majesty of his argument (you should read it yourself, including the very clever comments at the end) but it rests primarily on three contentions: Humans cannot trust Cylons; the Cylons can't trust any concessions made by the humans; and ultimately an alliance between the humans and the Cylons provides little added tactical or strategic benefit to either camp. As such, the Adama-Roslin political clique is placing humankind in (added) existential peril by proposing to grant the Rebel Cylons full citizenship; Zarek and Gaeta were right to try to stop them, by any available means.

I find Farley's argument persuasive (then again I would); yet perhaps not entirely dispositive. So in the interest of a full exploration of the matter, let me try to mount a counterargument. Anyone who isn't deep into BSG nerd-dom should check out now have checked out two paragraphs ago.

in history?

Claudia Rosett reports that the Obama administration appears to be easing -- lifting? -- sanctions on Syria, designated by the State Department as a state sponsor of terror.

Trouble is, the most transparent administration in history won't talk about it.

(H/T, Andy McCarthy, The Corner)

DeNeen L. Brown writes in today's Post about Michelle Obama's appearance on the cover of Vogue:

Even if you take race off the table, there is an awe of how this new administration can bring energy to the conversation around how beauty can intersect with power. And how power can be beauty.

There is a sycophant.

Rasmussen: "Forty-four percent (44%) voters also think a group of people selected at random from the phone book would do a better job addressing the nation’s problems than the current Congress, but 37% disagree. Twenty percent (20%) are undecided."

Harkin wants the Fairness Doctrine.

Norks prep for long-range missile test.

Bobby Jindal will offer the GOP response following Obama's February 24 speech to Congress.

AP duped by hoax report of woman swimming across the Atlantic.

Secretary Clinton, who it must be said has managed the early weeks of this administration far better than many of her peers, will head to Asia next week for her first trip abroad. Asia isn't a bad place to start, and given the proliferation of