It's a fair question from a man who lost his son on 9/11:

Mr. Holder said that he and his boss had not spoken in person about this decision. This matter only involves upholding the constitutional rights of Americans, establishing a precedent with battlefield impact, and the safety and security of our citizens in a time of war. What are the criteria to make something a priority with President Barack Obama? How can it be that this matter didn't make the cut?

The Obama administration decided to trash the detainee policies of its predecessor before the inauguration -- and before they'd even looked at the case files of the detainees being held at Gitmo. But when Obama came into office and signed the executive order setting a January 2010 deadline for closing Gitmo, detainee policy was placed under the purview of Obama's White House counsel Greg Craig. That is, detainee policy was to be set by the White House, not the Department of Justice. Now Craig is gone and all of a sudden the American people are to understand that these decisions need to be made independently of the White House, by an attorney general who isn't even asked to bounce his new policies off the president before announcing them to the public.

Beamer wants to know why Obama has shirked a decision with obvious implications for U.S. national security. There is no precedent that demands the president maintain distance from this process, and, of course, the administration had, for most of the last year, run this process out of the West Wing. Ultimately, Obama will be held responsible for whatever fallout comes from this decision -- from the spectacle of KSM berating the American people and calling for ever more jihad from his stand in federal court to the legal ramifications of giving full due process rights to terrorists picked up on foreign battlefields -- whether he was in the room or not.

So why wasn't he in the room? Obama has plenty of time for golf, failed Olympic bids, fundraisers, dozens of meetings on Afghanistan in which no decision is made, and apology tours on three seperate continents. Was Obama too busy even to vote 'present' on one of the most important national security decisions of his presidency?

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee has taken another shot at the administration's war on terror policies with a letter yesterday to AG Eric Holder and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates questioning the decision to put the terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks on trial in federal criminal courts rather than military tribunals:

Skelton, a fellow Democrat of President Barack Obama, asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to brief the committee about the decision to use the criminal courts instead of the revamped military commissions.

"As a former prosecutor, I am not yet convinced that the right decision was made in these cases, nor that the presumption in favor of federal criminal trials over military tribunals for these detainees should continue," Skelton said in a letter to the two officials.

You have to think that Gates isn't particularly pleased about getting caught up in Holder's ill-conceived plan to make American great again by giving terrorists a microphone and a platform in New York City. Skelton has already broken ranks with his party to support McChrystal's call for more troops in Afghanistan, giving Gates (and Obama) much-needed cover in in the fight to fund any additional forces. Now Holder is mucking things up and putting Gates in the position of defending a policy that, by all accounts, he has no interest in defending.

Mark Hemingway: Won't somebody think of the trustafarians?

Worse than waterboarding: Iraqi detainees use Favre to taunt Wisconsin soldiers.

Jay Cost: Of course 60 Democratic senators will vote yes on Saturday night's motion to proceed to debate on the health care bill.

Wesley Smith: Senate health care bill is assisted suicide friendly.

Sarah Palin is concerned that panels made up of health care bureaucrats recommend scaling back on mammograms and cervical cancer screenings.

Obama campaign calls Palin "dangerous" in fundraising letter.

Jim Geraghty: Fox finds no significant wrongdoing in henhouse.

Ace: Gallup shows Obama is under 50 for first time; Cook Political Report says he's "beyond radioactive" in many districts held by Democrats.

Ed Morrissey: Do hacked e-mails show global-warming fraud?

Andrew Malcolm wrote this up yesterday, news from the last stop of Obama's Asia trip:

Even President Obama himself during his just-concluded trip to Asia admitted that he was surprised to receive the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year without actually producing any peace.

In fact, the rookie American president ordered his own troop surge, boosting U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan to 68,000. Now, the Democrat may be preparing to send more. And a Gallup Poll showed 61% of Americans didn't think he deserved the prize either.

Anyway, there he was in Seoul, the last stop of his journey.

And out of the Seoul sky, President Lee Myung-bak hands over to the American leader a tae kwon do outfit. And then Lee, who practices tae kwon do himself, presents Obama with a coveted black belt.

After zero long years of study.

A friend sends along this picture, which has been making the rounds and goes quite well with the story:

Sen. Chuck Grassley asked Attorney General Eric Holder in a hearing Wednesday for a list of the employees at Dept. of Justice who might have to recuse themselves due to conflicts of interest over detainees. Some DOJ employees and their former firms represented and defended detainees in the past, raising questions about how DOJ might deal with their cases in the future.

Holder was cagey, promising only to "consider the request" despite Grassley's repeated requests.

Today, the Washington Times reveals some of the recusals already made:

The Obama Justice Department is having problems prosecuting terrorist cases because top department attorneys have conflicts of interest.

According to documents obtained exclusively by The Washington Times, Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli, No. 3 official in the Justice Department, had to recuse himself on at least 13 active detainee cases and at least 26 cases listed as either closed or mooted...

Mr. Perrelli's recusals presumably stem from the work that either he or his former firm, Jenner & Block LLP, did on behalf of detainees while Mr. Perrelli served on the firm's management committee and on its appellate and Supreme Court practice groups. And Mr. Perrelli is just one official; a number of other Justice Department officials apparently did private-sector work on detainee cases.

DOJ has not provided a list to Grassley yet, but the list of Perelli's recusals was circulated at the department before being acquired by the Times.

John Noonan is correct in stating that NORAD will be sorely stretched by the requirement to stand alerts against incursions by Russian bombers and reconnaissance aircraft (even if these pose only a minimal objective threat, air sovereignty must be maintained). He overlooked, I think, the implications of long range Su-30 fighter/attack aircraft being acquired by Venezuela, which could pose a threat to Florida and the Gulf Coast, further increasing stress on NORAD. At the present moment, it does not appear that the administration will reverse its decision to terminate the FA-22 Raptor at just 183 aircraft, or that a larger number of F-15C Eagles will be modernized to provide front-line fighter-interceptor capabilities. The backbone of NORAD at present consists of aging F-15Cs (whose structural problems were recounted a couple of years ago), and F-16 Air Defense Variants, whose range and sensor capabilities are not really optimized for the continental air defense mission.

It is ironic, therefore, that the U.S. was sitting on a stockpile of perhaps the best bomber interceptor aircraft ever produced, the Northrop Grumman F-14 Tomcat (of "Top Gun" fame). Retired from service in the U.S. Navy in 2006, the F-14, particularly in its upgraded B and D variants, combined long range and excellent performance with a powerful AWG-9 or APG-17 multi-mode radar capable of tracking 24 incoming targets while targeting six simultaneously, and a Television Camera Set (TCS) that allows long-range visual identification of potential targets (to avoid embarrassing and tragic accidents). Originally, the primary armament of the Tomcat was six AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missiles, backed up by a pair of AIM-9 Sidewinders and an M61 Vulcan 20mm Gatling gun. A true beast of a missile, the 1000-lb. Phoenix has a maximum speed of Mach 5 and a range in excess of 100 nautical miles. It can attack targets flying anywhere between sea level and 100,000 feet -- and has demonstrated this capability. The ability to engage and detect very low flying targets will become more important as potential adversaries acquire or develop land attack cruise missiles.

It would have been a simple thing for DoD to transfer surviving F-14s and their Phoenix missiles to NORAD, but apparently long-range planning is not a Pentagon strong point. Instead, both missiles and aircraft were placed in the infamous "Boneyard" at Davis-Montham Air Force Base. There, they were placed in a state of preservation which could have allowed them to be reconditioned and reactivated under Air Force colors to meet the present crisis. However, in 2007, DoD decided to shred almost all of the 165 surviving F-14s to prevent spare parts from being sold to Iran (which says something about the USAF's security system, if nothing else). By the end of 2007, 23 of these magnificent aircraft had been shredded and sold for scrap; probably only a handful remain intact, mostly intended to become "gate guards" at various naval air stations.

With a little foresight, these aircraft could have been preserved and modernized to provide NORAD with a highly capable gap-filling interceptor at relatively low cost. Instead, we are likely to find ourselves short-handed just at the time when we would need them most.

Politico reporters will give right-wingers the kind of fair treatment that they can get almost nowhere else, but in this piece on McCain's shift on cap and trade includes a line that just drips with bias. Reporter Lisa Lerer, wrongly in my opinion, attributes McCain's shift on cap and trade to a changeover in staff -- in particular the departure of Mark Salter, who was always pretty green for a Republican. Lerer writes,

The staff that remains, say former aides, lacks the institutional history on the issue and the ability to steer McCain toward productive solutions.

Even if former aides said that -- and given the enormous number of former McCain aides, a reporter could find "a former McCain aide" to say almost anything -- what's with the nonsense about "productive solutions"?

If Lerer wants to assert that the current crop of McCain aides are eco-friendly incompetents who just can't manage to steer the senator toward a cap and trade compromise, fine -- though there doesn't seem much evidence for such an assertion. But "productive solutions"? I'd say the current staff is having more success at steering McCain to a "productive solution" on cap and trade than any that came before them.

As to the larger question of why McCain has dropped this issue, I'd offer a simpler answer: John McCain doesn't like Barack Obama and isn't about to spend his political capital on Obama's hugely unpopular domestic agenda. That's just a guess, but I'd bet dollars to donuts it's the truth.

What’s become of Captain Silvertongue Goldenvisage, bewitcher of men, mascot of children, icon of fools, fetish of knaves? His ship’s afloat, but barely. His sextant’s faulty. His rudder’s sluggish. His port side’s taking on water. His officers await his orders, flirt with mutiny. His crew is scurvy. Rats who followed him aboard as if he were the pied piper are clambering off. Grumbling is heard in the meeting rooms of his patrons. His coffers are shrinking, his debts increasing. The shores he seeks grow ever more distant. His dreamed-of spice route’s come a cropper. Pirates threaten. Shots fly across his bow. Disaster looms.

He has the boat but seems so terribly to regret it, to be averse to steering it, that well might his passengers be wondering: Where is he? What is he thinking? Holed up in his cabin, he’s scouring the pages of his predecessor’s log looking for a place to put the blame. It’s only human—the recourse of children and lesser men. But a captain must be more than only human. He must love the sea as much when it’s rough as when it’s glassy calm.

Is he less than he was? Was he good enough before but now, having gone off course, has he changed his mind in a surge of remorse? Or was he always less—his idolaters worshipping a chimera—just more enough, like so many of the other madly over-praised and pampered members of his class and generation, to desire the ship but not the captaining of it? Will he get it back on course, guide it away from the shoals, while there’s still time? Or will he, like the antecedent captains he is coming increasingly to resemble, Notacrook and Rabbitproof, sink it—and his passengers—in disgrace?

The New York Times has an interesting article up on the role of US and Canadian air defense in the post-9/11 world. Between 2001 and 2007, NORAD provided for regular combat air patrols over major US cities. Due to the spiraling costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, military planners swapped out those active CAPs for a Cold War style of alert posturing, where fighter aircraft are fueled and ready to scramble upon receipt of a tactical warning.

That system, it seems, is also too expensive for some in the government -- as the GAO recently launched an inquiry into the Air Force's self-evaluation processes for determining size and force structure of our air defense fleets. The Times emphasizes two points that support cutting the number of on-alert aircraft: an increasingly limited number of fighters, and cost. Both are valid -- to an extent.

But the irony is, while the internal homeland air defense load may have been mitigated by better airline security measures, the overall demands on NORAD fighter aircraft have increased. A few years ago, Russia resumed bomber flights within close-proximity of the US and Canadian borders. That upped Northern Command's alert requirement, in that they had to start looking externally as well as internally. The probability of a surprise Russian bomber attack is nil, but with 200 bombers -- many of them supersonic and all nuclear capable -- it's a threat that NORAD has to take seriously. Add that to the fact that the Air Force is working with roughly half the F-22 interceptors that they originally planned for, and you can understand why military strategists have become frustrated with what's becoming a Sisyphean task.

We're entering an era where our two oceans can no longer protect the US homeland. Military technology has just become too advanced to be restricted by range and distance. That means we need to be very careful about cutting our fighter forces and missile defense systems. 21st century homeland defense is too serious to do on a nickel's budget.

Another fun email from the NIAC treasure trove...Given that J Street blasted Sarah Palin for her support for the official policy of the government in Jerusalem, and given that even ADL chief Abe Foxman is questioning J Street's "pro-Israel" bona fides as a result, it's worth taking a look behind the scenes of J Street's campaign to scuttle new sanctions on Iran -- a campaign that the group coordinated with NIAC. Here's J Street political director Joel Rubin congratulating the legislative director of the National Iranian American Council, Emily Blout, on their successful push to defeat new sanctions legislation in late 2008:

From: Joel Rubin
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:30:43 -0400
To: Emily Blout
Subject: Re: Hi - get together in mid-October?

I just got airtight confirmation that no 362 language will be included in the Iran sanctions subsection of the India nuclear bill. My bet is that that subsection will get dropped in conference, if it even gets that far. Of course, who knows if they'll be back in November and if the other side makes another play. In any event, you guys did great work this year. Really great

I don't think anybody would make the claim that NIAC is on the "pro-Israel" side, so when Rubin talks about "the other side," it's the genuine pro-Israel community he's talking about, right? Sanctions are the number one priority for Israel and the pro-Israel community in the United States. Why is J Street conspiring with an organization run by an Iranian national -- an organization that Congress has asked AG Holder to investigate for violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and lobbying disclosure laws -- to kill that legislation?

Parsi was invited to speak at J Street's conference last month. At the time, I asked Hadar Susskind, J Street's director of policy and strategy, what he was doing there. "Some people say Parsi is the regime's man in Washington," I told him. "Those people are wrong," Susskind said. He insisted that Parsi "supports the Iranian people, he is not here on behalf of the regime." Maybe, but that isn't the way the Iranian people see it. When Eli Lake first broke this story, he closed with a quote from Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the unofficial spokesman for Iran's Green Movement. "I think Trita Parsi does not belong to the Green Movement. I feel his lobbying has secretly been more for the Islamic Republic," Makhmalbaf said. It seems J Street isn't just redefining "pro-Israel" -- they're redefining "pro-Iran" as well.

It was reported this morning that Obama would not be letting us enjoy our Thanksgivings without a cameo from him, and now THE WEEKLY STANDARD has acquired this copy of the upcoming ad:

All right, I kid. The real ad is here, but almost equally weird.

Senator Ben Nelson announced today that he will vote yes on the motion to proceed Saturday night. Politico reports two Democrats remain undeclared: "A few moments ago, Sen. Dick Durbin walked back a statement he made earlier today that Sen. Blanche Lincoln told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid how she is going to vote tomorrow. Lincoln and Sen. Mary Landrieu are the only two Democrats who have not yet publicly stated their intentions."

The National Iranian American Council denies it engages in lobbying, yet the organization's internal emails tell a different story. The group calls itself the National Iranian American Council, but it's run by Trita Parsi, an Iranian national who didn't even have a green card when he started the organization. NIAC claims to represent an Iranian-American community that may number a million or so, but just 500 people responded to the group's most recent membership survey. And NIAC claims to support the Obama administration's policy on Iran, but it coordinated a secret campaign to scuttle the appointment of Dennis Ross to serve as the administration's Iran envoy. The emails show why that campaign was secret -- "Our views on Ross may resemble Tehran's," Parsi wrote.

There's so much smoke here you wouldn't be able to see the fire if it was right in front of your face. Which is why Senator Jon Kyl has asked Attorney General Eric Holder whether there is an investigation ongoing, and if not, why not? Politico reports on the written questions submitted by Kyl to Holder after Wednesday's hearing:

The November 13, 2009 Washington Times article, “Iran advocacy group said to skirt lobby rules” alleges that the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) may be operating as an undeclared lobby and may be guilty of violating tax laws, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and lobbying disclosure laws.

• Is DOJ investigating the allegations put forward in this article? If not, why?

• Has DOJ found the allegations in this article to be true?

• What is the proper recourse against a 501(c)(3) group that engages in lobbying activity on behalf of a foreign government without registering as a lobbyist or filing papers with DOJ indicating that the group is a local agent of a foreign government?

It's not every day that a United States senator asks the Attorney General to investigate whether a Washington-based organization is actually a front for a hostile regime. Holder is required by law to answer such questions, so we ought to have our answers soon enough, but at this point the evidence seems to indicate that NIAC has, at the very least, skirted federal lobbying disclosure laws. Of course this all leads to the more serious question of who, exactly, Parsi represents -- but that is really a question for the FBI to answer.

Old and busted storyline: Tea Parties are aggressively, throughly corporate-organized Astrotuf.

New hotness: Tea Parties not organized enough.

Tea Parties: Illegitimate if you do. Illegitimate if you don't.

Here are four key facts about the costs of the Democrats' 2,074-page Senate health bill:

1. According to the CBO, only 1 percent of the bill's costs would kick in prior to the fifth year of its alleged "first ten years" (2010 to 2019). Starting in 2014, 99 percent of the bill's costs would hit -- meaning that the bill's true first 10 years are from 2014 to 2023. Before then, it wouldn't really take effect.

2. In the bills' real first decade (2014-23), it would cost $1.8 trillion, raise Americans' taxes by $892 billion, and siphon $802 billion out of already barely-solvent Medicare to spend elsewhere -- according to CBO projections.

3. According to CBO projections, in the bill's real first decade (2014-23), it would do one of two things: It would either cut doctors' pay under Medicare by $431 billion (as it claims it would but as nobody believes it would), or it would raise United States deficits by $286 billion

4. So, if the bill doesn't follow through on its pledge to cut doctors' pay by a drastic 23 percent under Medicare and never raise it back up, it would violate President Obama's very public and very emphatic pledge in his Sept. 9 speech to the joint-session of Congress that he would "not sign" any bill that "adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period." This bill would raise deficits by $2.86 trillion dimes. Read my lips, what?

It is things like this that make me love the Internet. This week, MSNBC's intrepid Norah O'Donnell, with the help of a team of producers and researchers, bravely confronted a 17-year-old girl in line for a Palin book signing about the ideological consistency of her t-shirt.

The young woman is, predictably, getting a bunch of flak from liberals who are under the impression that throwing a 17-year-old slightly off her game in her first live TV appearance is a great political score for them. From the right side, Norah O'Donnell has been the one receiving flak. The video is below:

But now, O'Donnell's interview subject is responding in her own blog post, noting the behind-the-scenes machinations, her own understandably flustered state, and O'Donnell's factual inaccuracies. Unsurprisingly, she comes out looking sympathetic, sweet, and smart. Read the whole thing, if you've got the time, and if you've only got a minute, click through for the very last paragraph, which is a winner.

I was first approached by a New York Times writer who wrote what my shirt said and then asked me a couple questions. She asked me what it was I liked about Sarah Palin. I said, “As a young female she is someone I can look up to, before her the only prominent female in politics I had known about was Hilary Clinton, whom I respect don’t get me wrong, I respect her but when you don’t agree with someone it’s hard to really look up to them. I like how Sarah Palin will speak her mind, regardless of what the media will say about it.”

After that I just stood in line eagerly waiting for Sarah Palin to arrive. I then see Norah O’Donnell approach a man all decked out in Palin garb. She asked him a few questions (camera not rolling) then said she’d like to have a woman in the shot. She asked a woman who refused then pointed at me and said “Hey talk to her” So I walked over. I knew I was walking into hot water with MSNBC- thought I was prepared….Seconds later I met her… One of the many faces of liberal media bias.

She asked me my name and then before going on air asked me why I liked Sarah Palin, I repeated what I told the NYT reporter. Norah didn’t seem to like that much. So what did she do? I mean she couldn’t ask me that question on television, heaven forbid her not have a biting response.. I noticed her look down at my shirt then, she turned around blackberry in hand spoke to a man, thumbs tapping the blackberry (I don’t remember if she called or not, she may have. But she was on her blackberry), then jotted down a quick note. Little did I know that note would be used against me...

O'Donnell asked the man identified as Joe in the video the same question she asked him on-air, so he was prepared, before she moved onto the young woman, whom she proceeded to debate on the history of bailout politics:

She had me read my shirt and then proceeded to ask me “Did you know Sarah Palin supported the bailout” to be 100% honest I was like, are you kidding me? She is trying to use my shirt against me...

Immediately after the interview I said to my dad “Oh man, I have so many great responses now about my shirt” I could have said, well my shirt doesn’t say anything about Sarah Palin supporting the bailout or “Hey Norah, have you read the book? She talks about how during her debate prep she was handed a list of note cards that had questions and ‘non-answers’” Of course they told Sarah Palin to support everything McCain did. Call me crazy but it would have looked pretty bad had Sarah Palin been against something John McCain was against while they were running together.

The teenager also claims a factual inaccuracy on O'Donnell's part:

Norah also claims I told her I voted (on her twitter). That is not true. She never asked my age or if I voted. I’m 17 I couldn’t have voted…and I don’t live in an ACORN district so I didn’t have a chance to even register illegally.

Good on her. Click through for the whole, entertaining account, or to leave her a message of support.

The University of Georgia is mourning its mascot, Uga VII, who unexpectedly died of a heart attack yesterday at four years old. He had served fewer than two seasons as the football team's mascot, the shortest tenure of any in the long line of English Bulldogs who represent the university, and are owned by the Seiler family of Savannah.

"This Thanksgiving, you'll see public-service announcements about the importance of fitness for America's children, featuring NFL stars and a skinny smoker."

The 25 funniest Sports Center commercials. Why not? It's Friday.

Frum criticizes Palin: "This is a woman who has got into a position of leadership by sending very powerful sexual signals." Sheesh, what a demagogue that Palin is, always relying on tired talking points and whingy personal attacks, huh?

White House reversing on the bullying tactic with Afghanistan.

How much does AARP's health-care support cost? About $18 million in stimulus money.

Mary Landrieu drives a much better bargain. Watch and learn, AARP.

Krauthammer: "'Failure is not an option,' replied Holder. Not an option? Doesn't the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure -- acquittal, hung jury -- is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place."

Jay Cost: Seriously, Democrats, the oldsters are going to do you in for cutting Medicare.

Congress now stealing our money and our Satuday nights from here on out. Way to win friends, Harry.

A pro-Palin piece in Salon? Are we turning some kind of corner, here?

The perils of an angry, scared Congress for Obama administration's goals.

Aww, couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, Levi. Also, your lipgloss is poppin'.

When Sarah Palin offered her unqualified support for the Israeli government's policy of settlement expansion in Jerusalem and the West Bank, the self-described "pro-Israel, pro-peace" J Street blasted her for "pandering to her right-wing base . . . at the expense of the security of the State of Israel." The group added that "the majority of Israelis and pro-Israel Americans . . . view the growing settlement enterprise as a threat to Israel’s very future as a Jewish democracy." So according to J Street, Palin's support for the official policy of the Israeli government raised questions about Palin's pro-Israel bona fides.

Anti-Defamation League chief Abe Foxman sees things differently. JTA reports:

he head of the Anti-Defamation League says J Street's attack on Sarah Palin's defense of Israeli settlements was "over the line" and questioned whether the group should be calling itself "pro-Israel."

In a call to JTA late Thursday, ADL national director Abraham Foxman called "the height of chutzpah" J Street's statement Wednesday which said "Palin's pandering to her right-wing base comes at the expense of the security of the State of Israel" and her remarks "reveal a glaring ignorance of damaging facts."

"Who authorizes them to detemine what the security of Israel is?" Foxman asked of J Street. "Israel determines its security."

"They're attacking a celebrity for supporting Israel, but not in the way they want her to support Israel," he said referring to the former governor of Alaska.

Two days ago J Street flacks were promoting the ADL's attack on Glenn Beck, now they're on defense -- J Street chief Jeremy Ben-Ami responds in a statement this morning that takes the form of an open-letter to Foxman:

You, of course, have every right to disagree with us. It’s a free country.

But you have no right to decide who is and is not pro-Israel based on whether they agree with your views.

Anyone who's been following the travails of J Street over the last few months has to be amused by that. Questions have been raised from all sides about J Street's claim to be "pro-Israel," including from those featured at J Street's conference, some of whom refused to self-identify as pro-Israel and others of whom went so far as to declare themselves anti-Zionist. And all the while, J Street has questioned the pro-Israel credentials of legitimate and well established pro-Israel organizations like Christians United for Israel.

J Street has explicitly worked to change the definition of what it means to be pro-Israel by pushing people like Palin out of the tent and letting self-described anti-Zionists in -- so is Ben-Ami the only one who gets to decide who is and who is not pro-Israel based on whether they agree with his views? Palin is without a doubt pro-Israel, and yet Ben-Ami blasted her -- why? Because she doesn't agree with his views, and because J Street is not a pro-Israel group but a partisan political organization that, in Ben-Ami's own words, seeks only to be Obama's "blocking back" in Congress.

Ben-Ami's writes today,

To quote the most recent Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert – if the two-state solution collapses and Israel faces a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, the state of Israel is finished.

Perhaps you believe the former Prime Minister is not pro-Israel either?

Of course Olmert supported precisely the policies of settlement expansion that Palin was defending. And of course the current government of Israel has publicly denounced J Street, refusing to send its ambassador or any other government official to its recent conference on the grounds that J Street's policies threaten to "impair Israel's interests."

So just to be clear: nobody's saying the Prime Minister of Israel is not pro-Israel, the Prime Minister of Israel is saying that J Street is not pro-Israel. And now he's being joined by the head of the ADL, Abe Foxman. And that's what J Street gets for opposing sanctions on Iran, questioning Israel's right to self-defense, and supporting the Goldstone report.

Last week, the West Virginia Supreme Court issued a well-deserved slap in the face to a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, which all too often makes up the law out of whole cloth to meet its latest view of what is socially and politically correct.

In June, the Court issued what may have been one of the worst opinions of the term in Caperton v. Massey Coal Company, a case I wrote about previously. In a 5 to 4 decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy joined with the liberals on the Court to opine that if there was an appearance of possible bias by a judge, it violated the right to a fair trial under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. It didn’t matter that there was no actual or real bias in the case, no financial impropriety, or that even the Court’s analysis of the “appearance” of bias was completely wrong. Instead, the majority conjured up a vague standard so broad and undefined that Chief Justice Roberts said in his dissent that it provides “no guidance to judges and litigants about when recusal will be constitutionally required.”

The end result of this decision was that West Virginia Chief Justice Brent Benjamin was forced to recuse himself from a case involving a $50 million judgment against Massey Coal. Benjamin had been part of a three-judge majority that had overturned the $50 million judgment, with two other judges of the West Virginia Supreme Court dissenting. This was actually unusual--Benjamin had voted against Massey Coal on 15 prior occasions.

Benjamin had been elected to the court after receiving the endorsement of almost every newspaper in the state. He defeated the incumbent, a judge who had refused interviews, ignored debates and gave a speech that the media characterized as “deeply disturbing.” But Benjamin had received a (shudder) $1,000 contribution from the owner of Massey Coal, who had also spent large sums of money in a totally independent campaign to defeat the incumbent, a well-known ally of the plaintiffs’ bar which itself spent huge sums trying to get him reelected.

After the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June, the case was remanded to the West Virginia Supreme Court. With Benjamin disqualified from the case and another West Virginia judge sitting in his place by special designation, the West Virginia Supreme Court overturned the $50 million judgment against Massey Coal last week again, but this time by a 4 to 1 vote. This is exactly what one would expect since no one had ever presented any evidence in the U.S. Supreme Court case--and the majority opinion certainly did not point to any at all--that there had been any factual or legal errors in the original decision that was the basis of the “bias” claim.

So once again, we have a bad decision from the Supreme Court establishing a new legal right that does not actually exist in the Constitution that will live on forever, causing far-ranging and damaging consequences that the majority failed to adequately anticipate. It is an expansion of a “constitutional mandate in a manner ungoverned by any discernable rule.” Just more evidence of how important Supreme Court nominations are and how bad the liberal justices can be on far too many cases.

Congress as an institution will never win any popularity sweepstakes. More than any other branch of government, it’s a forum for open, raucous, and partisan debate. And as a result, it also exposes the lack of consensus on many public policy questions.

Yet as this recent Gallup poll finds, public trust in Congress is particularly anemic this year, dropping to the lowest point since these surveys have been conducted.

One of the critiques the public hears most about Congress (at least the House) is its lack of transparency and lack of fairness to the minority. Republicans regularly complain that they are precluded from offering amendments, that the Democrats deliberate in secret, and that lawmakers rarely have the time to read mountainous bills rushed to the floor.

House Republicans, seeking to address some of these issues and improve the congressional transparency, announced a new initiative yesterday:

House Republicans today launched a new effort to change the way Congress works, calling on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to schedule an immediate vote on five common-sense reforms that will bring greater transparency to the legislative process and make Congress more open and accountable to the people it serves. The House GOP congressional transparency initiative includes “read the bill” reform that would ensure all bills are posted online at least 72 hours before coming to a vote, a ban on “phantom amendments” being added to bills in secret after they pass committee, a resolution requiring the upcoming House-Senate health care negotiations to be open to the public, and other critical reforms.

Don’t expect Speaker Nancy Pelosi to do anything with this new plan. Voters may have to wait until she’s back in the minority to see her show any interest. But if her party’s numbers continue to drop, and trust in Congress doesn’t rebound, that could happen sooner than you think.

The new Rasmussen poll for the 2010 Arizona GOP Primary—John McCain 45%, J. D. Hayworth 43%—will generate a fair amount of buzz. But August is a long way away, and I assume that when McCain gets back to Arizona and campaigns, he’ll pull it out.

Still, who could help McCain beat back a populist conservative challenger? Sarah Palin. I predict that Palin will come to Arizona next summer to campaign for McCain, will make an impassioned case for him, and will help him win. She will thereby repay McCain for his confidence in picking her last year, help keep McCain as a crucial voice in the Senate for a strong foreign policy, and get credit for being a different kind of populist conservative—a Reaganite, not a Buchananite, populist—than the immigration-obsessed, voter-alienating (he was ousted in 2006 in a Republican district) Hayworth.

Senate Republican aides say that Harry Reid has scheduled the first vote on his health-care bill for Saturday night for 8:00 p.m. after 10 hours of floor debate. Ed Morrissey notes that registered voters oppose the House health care bill 51 percent to 35 percent; a poll done by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling shows registered voters oppose "President Obama’s health care plan" 52 percent to 40 percent.

All eyes are on Democratic senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska to see if he will vote Saturday night on the motion to proceed. Nelson is threatening to filibuster the final bill over funding of abortion and the "public option," but he's said this about voting on the motion to proceed:

the meaning of the motion to proceed is very simple:

It’s a motion to commence debate and an opportunity to make changes.

Let me say it again: it is a motion to start debate on a bill and to try to improve it.

If you don’t like the bill, then why would you block your own opportunity to amend it? Why would you stop senators from doing the job they’re elected to do—debate, consider amendments, and take action on an issue affecting every American?

If Senator Nelson is really dead-set against things like taxpayer-funding of abortion, it would make sense to vote against the motion on Saturday night. While there's a chance language like the Stupak amendment could get 50 votes in the Senate, it can't get 60 votes. Nelson can always vote against cloture at the end if the bill pays for abortions. But the Senate could get 60 votes for cloture without Nelson if Reid drops the public option and keeps its abortion-funding provisions, thereby potentially snagging the vote of Olympia Snowe. (Of course, that would also require self-proclaimed pro-lifer Bob Casey to sell out, and voting for abortion-funding could end the careers of senators like Kent Conrad, Harry Reid, and other Democrats.)

Right now Nelson has a stronger hand to play: either his colleagues promise to vote for Stupak language or he doesn't vote for the motion to proceed.

A series of internal emails and documents from the National Iranian American Council, headed by Iranian national Trita Parsi, released as part of the discovery process in a lawsuit initiated by NIAC, reveal a major effort by the group to "clean house" at VOA's Persian-language service of Voice of America. Emails show NIAC using its muscle on Capitol Hill, aggressively lobbying individual members of Congress, to impose greater oversight over the radio station including "an independent review of the organization" to address what NIAC considered "poor journalism" and declining credibility.

But the group's emails show that NIAC was far less concerned about VOA's impact on Iran than about its impact on NIAC. The leadership at NIAC perceived VOA's reporting as a threat to its own credibility, and they were determined to prevent their critics from having a voice on the station. NIAC officials used two strategies. First, they sent cease and desist letters to VOA threatening legal action if the network continued "airing the views of a fabulist with malicious intent." The alleged fabulist was Hassan Daeoleslam, the man whom NIAC has since sued for defamation (the case is still pending) leading to the release of these internal documents.

On February 3, 2009, Siamak Namazi, a close confidant of Parsi, wrote to Jeffrey Trimble, a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors that oversees the operations of VOA and Radio Farda:

Dear Mr. Trimble,

Once again VOA has chosen to bring Mr. Hassan Daeoleslam at its guest and once again he makes a slanderous claim that my father and my business associate – Mssrs Baquer Namazi and Bijan Khajehpour – are fronts for the Iranian government.

I have brought the matter to your attention in the past, stressing that such comments not only hard [sic] the reputation of respectable democrats, but also put them in direct danger in Iran. I told you in detail how after Daeoleslam’s fictitious claims against me I was subjected to problems in Iran and also how it harmed my reputation in the Iranian community. We spoke at length about this issue when we met in August 2007 and you promised to look into it.

I am once again asking the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to make it known to VOA, which falls under your umbrella of responsibility, that it cannot just air slanderous garbage at will. You have been served several notices about the harm that such acts have brought in the past and is likely to bring in the future. BBG and VOA will be held responsible if any harm comes to my family and I due to such irresponsible behavior. I once again urge you to pay greater attention to the programming at VOA and to cease and desist from airing the views of a fabulist with malicious intent.

Here is a link to the VOA program in question: http://www.voanews.com/wm/voa/nenaf/pers/pers1730vSAT.asx

I expect immediate action to rectify this situation, specifically by barring VOA from bringing Mr. Daeoleslam on air. Consider this a formal complaint which can be used as evidence of serving notice of harm in a court of law. While my family and I do not desire to make a legal issue out of this matter, we reserve all right if you fail to take adequate measures and continue to allow Mr. Daeoleslam to air his malicious commentary.

Sincerely,

Siamak Namazi

So NIAC wanted one of its critics barred from ever appearing on the government funded network. The left often gripes about imagined efforts by the "Israel Lobby" to silence its critics. Here we have the Iran Lobby literally threatening media outlets with legal action if they continue to give voice to a NIAC critic.

Likewise, NIAC sent two cease and desist letters to the Washington Times threatening legal action if the paper published Eli Lake's story that first reported these internal emails and which raised serious questions about the legality of NIAC's activities, specifically its claims that it is not engaged in lobbying and therefore does not need to register as a 501(c)4 rather than its current tax-exempt 501(c)3 status.

Of course, 501(c)3 groups are supposed to engage in education. Was it education or lobbying when NIAC engaged in efforts to bring the hammer down on VOA with the help of members of Congress who were well disposed to their cause?

On September 11, 2007, Emily Blout, NIAC's legislative director, sent an email to Celes Hughes, an aide to Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski. Blout writes that "Per our conversation this afternoon, I am sending some background information regarding the Iran democracy funding included in HR 2764." Blout's email makes a series of allegations against VOA, asserting that "VOA has struggled to find experienced staff and has instead hired political activists with loyalty to their agenda rather than to the VOA mandate." Further, Blout says that "According to insiders at VOA, this has led to its loss of credibility among the Iranian public."

However, Blout wants to be clear: "This is not to say the US should not promote democracy in Iran, rather it should employ other means towards this end." There are two such "other means" suggested by Blout: "Lift US sanctions on NGO activities" and "Reinvigorate VOA Persian’s credibility by cleaning house."

Further emails reveal that NIAC's war against VOA was a top agenda item for the group -- right alongside its fight against new sanctions on Iran -- in its contacts with numerous members of Congress. After lunch with Markus Rose, an aide to Rep. Barney Frank, Blout follows up with an email that starts off with some flattery about Rose's knowledge of Iran and then proceeds,

Two things:

1) I’ll be sending you information on NGO to NGO exchanges, Voice of America Persian (VOA), and sanctions on humanitarian aid (it is illegal for US citizens to give more than $100 to an orphanage in Tehran for example) shortly. Let me know if you think of anything else you’d like information on.

2) I wanted to make a correction. H.R. 2347, which your boss sponsored, does not include a provision that prohibits export of civilian aircraft parts. However, HR 1400, which your boss co-sponsored, does. It is my understanding that the counterpart to HR 1400 in the Senate- S.970- is getting ready to move (mid-spring). This presents a great opportunity for your boss to a) insert language into HR 2347 saying that humanitarian exports, including exports relating to civilian aviation, cannot be prohibited by any new or existing law, or b) for your boss to make sure that the provision barring export of civilian aircraft parts is stripped from HR 1400 during conference. (Sec. 203.1 in the House, Sec 7b.2 in the Senate).

I cannot emphasize enough how important is for the US to make clear that sanctions are not directed or intended to hurt the Iranian people. It is the Iranian government that is to blame. Expressing a “sense of congress” or giving $10 million for exchanges is not enough. It is congress’ responsibility, in my view, to do everything in its power to ensure that the Iranian people do not suffer at our hands and are not isolated from the rest of the world. It also the US’s responsibility to ensure that Iranian planes, which are US made and aging, do not fall out of the sky for lack of replacement parts.

Smells like lobbying. (What's more, there are reasons for those sanctions on airplane parts, and Parsi's old boss Rep. Bob Ney went to jail for violating them.)

Here is another email from Blout, this one debriefing NIAC leadership on her day of meetings on the Hill:

Thank you for joining us for the meeting on democracy funding yesterday. Your commentary and insight was extremely valuable. The following is a summary of all of yesterday’s meetings. Please make any additions/corrections necessary.

The meeting with Ven Neralla from Rep. Barbara Lee’s office was positive, although the discussion was not as focused as we would have liked on the democracy funding. When I follow-up with Ven today with the promised information on sanctions (Ivan Eland’s report, the report by Dewey Ballantine (commissioned by Jake Colvin’s group), NIAC’s analysis of HR 1400, and the report by Terror Free Tomorrow), I will reiterate our message on the democracy funding.

I think the meeting with the appropriations staffer from Nita Lowey’s office went well. Trita and I were pleased to find Steve Lopes, who works specifically on the democracy program funding, willing to consider our concerns and suggestions. He asked that we get back to him with information about how other countries have approached democracy funding in Iran.

After you departed, Trita and I met with Paul Grove, minority clerk for the Senate state and foreign operations sub-committee (Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH)). Trita and Paul hit it off right away. We were delighted to find Mr. Grove’s views in line with our own, as he has had extensive knowledge of the problems posed by explicit “democracy” funding programs enacted by congress in the past and present, most recently in the case of Egypt. He was extremely critical of the state department’s administration of middle east democracy initiatives such as MEPI and said such operations/funding would be better left to the National Endowment for Democracy (as that was what it was created for). As for what could be done, he brought up the idea of “burying the money” in the greater context of funding for the Middle East, rather than specifically appropriating it to “democracy programs in Iran”. Specifically, he talked about providing NED “not withstanding authority” to appropriate funding for Iran- thus deflating the role of the State department and USAID. He also raised the possibility of including a “blanket waiver” for non-profit NGO exchanges between the US and Iran. He asked me to identify and analyze all of the provisions of law necessary for inclusion in such a waiver. Hopefully, I’ll have this analysis to him soon.

Following the meeting with Paul, I attended a meeting with two staffers, Chris Homan, Foreign Policy Legislative Assistant, and Reema Dodin, Legislative Aide, from Senator Dick Durbin’s office. Durbin (D-IL) is the assistant majority leader in the Senate and sits on the state and foreign operations sub-committee. He is also the co-sponsor of the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007 (S970).
This meeting was also very productive. Homan used to work for USAID and his wife works for NED. Homan was very responsive to our concerns and pointed out that this had been a problem in regards to other countries in the past. He said it was important to get a meeting with Tim Rieser, the majority clerk on the sub-committee (Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) ) and said we could use his name to get one. He also expressed interested in including a provision in HR1400 that would lift sanctions on NGO-NGO exchanges. He said he would be willing to pitch our argument to reduce or remove the democracy funding appropriation (or to take other positive measures) to the Senator, provided that he felt he had all the necessary information to make his case. He asked me to get back to him with a summary of the cultural exchange programs currently being conducted, including what types of exchanges are being done (not just those conducted by NGOs) and what is and what is not allowed under current law.

I also attended a meeting in the morning with Tim Morrissey and Peter Frosch from Representative Betty McCullum’s office. McCullum is on the House sub-committee and voted ‘yes’ on Iran sanctions. Other than that, she has not been active on Iran. Frosch worked on the state and foreign opps bill when it was being debated by the House, but was unaware of our concerns and the problems with VOA. He asked me to provide him with a breakdown of the Iran-related funding in the bill as well as some numbers on VOA Persian listenership historically and compared to other broadcasters in Iran (such as BBC). He also said to keep him up to date on who else from the committee is on-board, and said that the congresswomen might be able to make a few calls to members (say,when its in conference).

Keep in mind, this is an organization that claims on its tax forms that it DOES NOT engage in lobbying. Moreover, all of the group's efforts seems focused on preventing additional sanctions, eliminating U.S. democracy funding initiatives, and destroying the Voice of America's Persian service and Radio Farda. The regime couldn't come up with a better set of priorities for NIAC, which may explain why so many people are wondering on behalf of whom NIAC is working.

A doctor who's been following the health care debate closely writes in an email:

The Senate bill has a demonstration project, section 2074, that seeks to control costs in Medicaid by trying to create a fixed payment for doctors and hospitals for a given patient’s stay in the hospital. The goal is to reduce costs but part 6 of the plan (page 541), copied below, states that one cannot reduce services as part of the project! So same services but less payment. Great demonstration. Great bill.

And by the way, the Secretary of HHS can change anything anytime he/she wants to.

(6) The Secretary and each State selected to participate in the demonstration project shall ensure that the demonstration project does not result in the Medicaid beneficiaries whose care is subject to payment under the demonstration project being provided with less items and services for which medical assistance is provided under the State Medicaid program than the items and services for which medical assistance would have been provided to such beneficiaries under the State Medicaid program in the absence of the demonstration project.

(c) WAIVER OF PROVISIONS.—Notwithstanding section 1115(a) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1315(a)), the Secretary may waive such provisions of titles XIX, XVIII, and XI of that Act as may be necessary to accomplish the goals of the demonstration, ensure beneficiary access to acute and post-acute care, and maintain quality of care.

Everyone seems to know Rudy Giuliani's political future -- except Giuliani. First the New York Times reported that Giuliani "has decided not to run for governor of New York next year after months of mulling a candidacy, according to people who have been told of the decision." Then the Daily News reported that "Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani has decided not to run for governor next year - but will run for U.S. Senate instead, sources told the Daily News." So, is it true?

Not so, according to the Giuliani camp. They want to dispel any rumors. Giuliani aide Maria Comella issued this statement: "Rudy has a history of making up his own mind and has no problem speaking it. When Mayor Giuliani makes a decision about serving in public office, he will inform New Yorkers on his own." Perhaps Giuliani hasn't made up his mind after all.

In recent polls, Giuliani doesn't fare well against probable Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo. He'd fare better against the horribly unpopular incumbent Gov. David Paterson. And he'd have an even better shot, it seems to me, against the unelected incumbent Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

If elected to the Senate, Giuliani would immediately become a prominent spokesman for an assertive U.S. foreign and counter-terrorism policy. But who's to say? At the moment, Giuliani's future, like the political future in general, remains unknown.

In my piece yesterday, I noted that the ACLU released a video earlier this month that features former Gitmo detainee Moazzam Begg. Begg made news earlier this year when he became the front man for a video game in which players could pretend to be Gitmo detainees capable of shooting their way out of the detention facility. The game’s producers canceled it as public pressure to nix it mounted.

But that hasn’t stopped Begg.

In fact, Begg has compiled an extensive and troubling resume since being released from Gitmo. (This is in addition to the disturbing jihadist dossier he compiled prior to ever being detained.) One of Begg’s more troubling associates is Anwar al Awlaki – the al Qaeda cleric who became a confidant for the Fort Hood Shooter.

The relationship between Begg, Cage Prisoners (Begg’s organization), and Awlaki has been detailed by Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens of The Centre for Social Cohesion, which has released a dossier on Awlaki’s supporters in the UK.

On the relationship between Cage Prisoners (CP) and Awlaki, Mr. Meleagrou-Hitchens writes (footnotes omitted):

The relationship between CP and Awlaki dates back to 2006, when they organised campaigns appealing for Awlaki to be released from custody by Yemeni authorities. Among other things, the campaign asked CP supporters to “Write to the Yemeni Ambassador to UK, Mohamed Taha Mustafa and urge him to work for the immediate release of Imam Anwar al-Awlaki,” and “Write to the Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett to make representations to her Yemeni counterparts to work for Imam Anwar al-Awlaki’s immediate release.” In the ‘sample letter’ provided by CP, Awlaki is referred to as a “prominent Muslim scholar.”

The relationship between CP and Awlaki appears to have strengthened after this, and in December 2007, CP announced Awlaki’s release, telling readers that any messages of congratulations they had could be passed to Awlaki through them – suggesting that CP were at the time in direct contact with Awlaki.

In December 2007, Begg interviewed Awlaki for CP’s website and Awlaki praised CP for its support. (A transcript of the interview is available online here and you can also find audio of the interview, with pictures of Begg and Awlaki, on You Tube.) Meleagrou-Hitchens rightly observes that the interview is “extensive and friendly” and notes:

Sayeth the British Spectator:

'The Afghan issue has made clear the astonishing disregard with which Mr Obama treats Britain . As he decides how many more troops to send to Afghanistan – a decision which will fundamentally affect the scope of the mission – Britain is reduced to taking a guess. The White House does not even pretend to portray this as a joint decision. It is a diplomatic cold-shouldering that stands in contrast not just to the Blair-Bush era, but to the togetherness of the soldiers on the ground.'

That's an accurate enough summation of Obama's foreign policy. Coddle the bad guys, freeze out our friends. Though perhaps our British allies didn't get the memo. We're a world of "shared interests" now. No need for "alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long gone Cold War."

Except, of course, when you're trying to supplement American troops with European ones. No wonder the Brits are peeved.

H/T - The Corner

The numbers in California:

A new Rasmussen Reports survey in California finds next year's race for governor now a dead heat with Jerry Brown (D) and Meg Whitman (R) tied at 41%.

In other match ups, Brown leads Steve Poizner (R), 43% to 32%, and tops Tom Campbell (R), 42% to 33%.

And in Florida:

Charlie Crist – 47 percent (-10)
Marco Rubio – 37 percent (+26)

Keep in mind that the second set of numbers comes from a DailyKos/Research 2000 poll -- and the lefties think they're being very clever in boosting Rubio in what is expected to be a bloody Republican primary, but whichever Republican emerges from that contest has a pretty good shot of winning the seat. The left may outsmart themselves on this one.

As you may have noticed during the health-care debate, on almost every iteration of the bill, we get a CBO score and then a real cost revealed later, which Democrats reluctantly own up to once confronted with it. For the House bill passed last week, the true cost was $1.2 trillion.

This is because, though my love for Douglas Elmendorf is well-known, Elmendorf has to calculate the bill given to him, which is carefully crafted by Democrats to earn the score they think the President and the American people can stomach with minimal outcry.

Such bills can leave out large parts of the cost of a bill and assume savings Congress promises will come to pass, even while it's simultaneously planning to pass another bill that will eliminate the savings entirely, as in the case of the doc-fix for the House health bill:

On Thursday, the House is expected to pass a $210 billion measure — known as the “doc fix” — that will adjust Medicare payment rates to avoid a 21 percent cut in January and continuing cuts in the years ahead.

The House originally included the provision in its big health care bill. But it was dropped because its steep cost would have meant the bill would add to future federal deficits, violating one of President Obama’s central requirements for the health legislation.

Another tactic is for Congress to front-load the benefits of a bill while back-loading the costs. This is what CBO found Reid doing:

The Democrats cite the bills’ projected costs from 2010-19. Yet, as the Congressional Budget Office reports, the bill would cost just $9 billion total from 2010 through 2013 — versus $147 billion in 2016 alone. In the first 40 percent of what the Democrats are calling the bill’s “first 10 years,” only 1 percent of its costs would yet have hit.

As the CBO analysis indicates, the bill’s real 10-year costs would start in 2014. And in its true first decade (2014 to 2023), CBO projects the bill’s costs to be $1.8 trillion — double the price Reid is advertising.

Phil Klein examines how we'll be paying for it:

To pay for the bill, Reid would impose $371.9 billion of new taxes over 10 years, including $67 billion on health insurers; $23 billion in on drug companies; and $20 billion on medical device makers. All of these taxes are likely to be passed directly on to consumers in the former of higher health care costs.

In addition, the bill would tax employer health care plans that cost more than $8,500 for individuals and $23,000 for families. And, during a time of double-digit unemployment, it would hike payroll taxes by 0.5 percent on individuals earning more than $200,000 or couples making $250,000.

You'll find Elmendorf's caveats about the real nature of government buried in each CBO report:

The CBO estimates assume that politically unpopular cuts (mostly to Medicare) will actually get implemented, which the office reminds us is "often not the case for major legislation." The report goes on to say that the bill "would put into effect a number of procedures that might be difficult to maintain over a long period of time."

This is the latest video from Keep America Safe and I think the best one yet. Justin Germany put this together after a trip up to Standish, Michigan, with KAS board member Debra Burlingame, who was all over the Holder hearings yesterday. It now seems unlikely that the detainees will end up in Standish, in no small part because the community there rallied against the plan even as statewide Democrats tried to turn the town into a cash-for-jihadis stimulus program.

You can bet that KAS will be in Illinois or South Carolina or anywhere else this administration tries to make America less safe by bringing terrorists into the United States simply to appease the ACLU and their liberal base.

Watch the whole video -- and visit Keep America Safe.

At a joint press appearance with South Korean President Lee Yong-Ho earlier today, President Barack Obama used what the New York Times called a "stern tone" with North Korea. Obama's main objective is to bring an end to the Sisyphean quality of the negotiations.

"The thing I want to emphasise is that President Lee and I both agree we want to break the pattern that existed in the past, in which North Korea behaves in a provocative fashion, and then is willing to return to talk ... and then that leads to seeking further concessions."

What's the best way to do this? Apparently, by answering the DPRK's demands and provocations by providing these concessions before the DPRK agrees to return to the Six Party talks. Earlier this month, the DPRK laid out its conditions for talks. “If the U.S. is not ready to have a face-to-face meeting, we will go our own way,” the state Korean Central News Agency said, quoting a spokesman for the foreign ministry. “It’s time for the U.S. to make a determination.”

So yesterday Obama announced that he will be sending Ambassador Stephen Bosworth for direct, face-to-face meetings with Kim Jong Il's regime, something the North Koreans have been seeking for years as a boost to the legitimacy of their criminal regime. And, standing next to Obama, President Lee promised the North Koreans a "grand bargain" of incentives for good behavior.

All of this after repeated provocations by North Korea and a persistent intransigence on multilateral talks. When North Korea tested a Taepodong 2 missile on April 4, Obama promised consequences: "With this provocative act, North Korea has ignored its international obligations, rejected unequivocal calls for restraint, and further isolated itself from the community of nations." UN Ambassador Susan Rice warned that the US would "send a strong message to North Korea that it can't act with impunity." After a nuclear test in late May, Obama said the US would "work with our friends and our allies to stand up to this behavior." In a letter to the UN on October 1, the DPRK said that abandoning its nuclear program was "unthinkable even in a dream" and test-fired short range missiles several days later.

And yet after all of this, President Obama holds a press conference in which he offers concessions and says "we want to break the pattern that existed in the past, in which North Korea behaves in a provocative fashion, and then is willing to return to talk ... and then that leads to seeking further concessions."

Is it any wonder they don't take our threats seriously?

Here's a nifty write-up of counterinsurgency sensei David Kilcullen's speech at Johns Hopkins, delivered last night. Kilcullen's been in the news recently, warning of a "Suez-like disaster" should the White House lowball USFOR-A boss Gen McChrystal's request for 40k additional combat troops. DoD Buzz's Greg Grant gives us the synopsis.

I wanted to highlight some of the points [Kilcullen] made in remarks the other day to a British newspaper to clarify his position on Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s troop request, and why a large troop surge is needed. First off, he said the Taliban are much better fighters than the insurgents in Iraq. “The Taliban love to fight,” he said, and their operational skills have improved significantly over the past three years as they’ve learned and adapted to U.S. and NATO tactics.

The Taliban’s rapid adaptation — a theme we return to again and again here in our discussions of irregular warriors — is what makes them so tough on the battlefield. American units rotate in and out of theater. The Taliban stay and can work a group of new recruits up the skill chain pretty rapidly by exposing them first to small ambushes or sniping away at American outposts and letting them grqduate to larger firefights. If they survive the early engagements, they become quite experienced and skilled fighters. They are going up against the world’s most advanced military after all.

“One of the [Taliban’s] biggest strengths is that they’ve shown the ability to absorb and adapt to successive increases in foreign presence… and come back stronger,” Kilcullen said. He believes trickling in a few thousand troops at a time as reinforcements is a bad idea: “They’ll just take it in stride and adapt; they’ve done that four times already.”

That’s why Kilcullen has publicly called for a plus-up of at least 30,000 to 40,000 troops and has said a “middle ground” option is just courting failure. McChrystal said he needs to launch a counteroffensive to knock the Taliban off stride and regain the initiative. That requires a large enough force that can keep the Taliban off balance, Kilcullen says. “The worst place to be is in that middle band of 20–30,000 troops.”

Nothing to fear. Though the President will likely shortchange General McChrystal's troop request, his charm, charisma, and supernatural diplomacy powers will soon make war obsolete anyway.

Standing on a riser wearing a blue suit and red tie, with a cluster of troops and a large American flag behind him, Obama expressed "the gratitude of the American public" and said his meetings in four countries over eight days in Asia will help deliver a "safer more prosperous world for all of us."

America's fighting men and women play a vital role in this ambitious plan.

"You guys make a pretty good photo op," the president said.

If bin Laden is captured, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee doesn't see any need at all to interrogate the al Qaeda founder and mastermind -- because we already have enough on him for a "conviction."

If the U.S. captures Osama bin Laden, there's no need to interrogate him, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Thursday.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of that committee, said that arguments raised by Republican senators about whether bin Laden would be afforded Miranda rights if he were captured amount to a "red herring."

"The red herring that my friend [Sen.] Lindsey Graham [R-S.C.] was covering is not realistic," Leahy said during an appearance on "Washington Journal" on C-SPAN.

"For one thing, capturing Osama bin Laden — we've had enough on him, we don't need to interrogate him," Leahy added.

Leahy went on to defend Holder, saying "We're going to bring them back to New York and prosecute them...I think we ought to stand up and applaud that." Why would we stand up and applaud that? Democrats seem to genuinely believe that this is all a show, that as soon as the decent and law-abiding Obama administration starts giving terrorists their due process rights, our enemies will lay down their arms and simply surrender to our moral superiority. But we've already tried it this way. The first time these guys attacked the WTC, the Clinton administration did everything by the book -- due process for terrorists in U.S. courts. And how'd that work out?

According to a lot of media coverage, the only difference between Florida governor Charlie Crist and former Florida House speaker Marco Rubio is that the governor supported the Obama stimulus package. Therefore, conservatives are waging an ideological crusade against Crist for straying from conservative orthodoxy on this one issue. The reality is different. Crist has a "moderate" record on other issues as well: he supported California-style emissions standards in Florida, appointed liberal judges to the Supreme Court, and though he calls himself "pro-life" he's said he can't think of a single restriction on abortion he'd favor in Florida.

So conservatives are naturally backing Rubio. But what's really fueling the excitement about Rubio's candidacy is not just his beliefs but the fact that he's a young, charismatic Cuban-American who has a record of developing ideas and fighting to implement policies of conservative reform. It's unfortunate that Charlie Crist, still far ahead in the polls, continues to avoid debating Rubio. Crist is no slouch. He comes across as a likeable person, he's popular, and isn't nearly as liberal as Arlen Specter or Dede Scozzafava.

So Rubio is left trying to get his message out through stump speeches and, beginning today, a series of YouTube videos. In the first "Marco In His Own Words" two-minute spot, Rubio makes the case against Obamacare as the first step to a single-payer system. He also calls for reforms on which there's a consensus. You can watch it here:

When Paul Krugman and Niall Ferguson agree on something, it's worth paying attention. In recent weeks, both the liberal New York Times columnist and the free-market Harvard University historian have penned op-eds calling on China to allow the renminbi to appreciate against the dollar. Here's Ferguson:

Right now, Chimerica clearly serves China better than America. Call it the 10:10 deal: the Chinese get 10 percent growth; America gets 10 percent unemployment. The deal is even worse for the rest of the world — and that includes some of America’s biggest export markets and most loyal allies. The question is: What can the United States offer to make the Chinese abandon the dollar peg that has served them so well?

The authorities in Beijing must be made to see that any book losses on its reserve assets resulting from changes in the exchange rate will be a modest price to pay for the advantages they reaped from the Chimerica model: the transformation from third-world poverty to superpower status in less than 15 years. In any case, these losses would be more than compensated for by the increase in the dollar value of China’s huge stock of renminbi assets.

It is also in China’s interest to kick its currency-intervention habit. A heavily undervalued renminbi is the key financial distortion in the world economy today. If it persists for much longer, China risks losing the very foundation of its economic success: an open global trading regime.

Does Obama have the pull to convince the Chinese that something like the arrangement Ferguson describes is in Beijing's interest? I'm not so sure. Which is why Chinese currency manipulation, which helped fuel the U.S. real-estate bubble in mid-decade, may be fueling a much larger asset bubble today. No one will be happy when it pops.

Among the health-care proposals advanced so far, here is the clear order of merit:

1. the House Republican bill (the only proposal the CBO says would lower insurance premiums);

2. the status quo;

3. the massive Democratic attempts to overhaul our nation’s health-care system and dramatically increase government control.

Over at NRO, however, former Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Tevi Troy and I outline a proposal that's modeled off of the small bill presented in these pages. It would combine the best features of the House Republican bill with far more effective help for the uninsured. Our proposal would end the unfair tax on the uninsured (and self-insured)—giving them a long-overdue tax-break similar to that which is already enjoyed by those with employer-provided insurance.

The proposal, which we’re hoping Senate Republicans will review and will consider adopting as the Republican alternative, would be a “triple crown” bill: It would lower health costs, significantly reduce the number of uninsured, and be deficit-neutral. The House Republican bill hit on two of these three (not bad), while the Democratic bills in the House and Senate hit on only one (the number of uninsured) while making the other two substantially worse (health costs and deficits).

And unlike the Democratic bills, our proposal would also have the added advantage of not raising Americans’ taxes by hundreds of billions of dollars, or siphoning hundreds of billions of dollars out of already barely-solvent Medicare and spending it elsewhere.

We hope you’ll give the proposed bill a look—and will encourage your GOP senators to do the same.

Via Hot Air, the Washington Times unearths a quote from New York Senator Chuck Schumer in which, just a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Schumer mocks the idea that anyone would give the 9/11 plotters the same rights afforded to American citizens charged with pick-pocketing.

There are also those prisoners of war who we have captured and will capture in Afghanistan and other countries who will receive a trial of some sort. It is clear we need to try those suspects in a forum that achieves two primary goals—two goals, I might add, that may not conflict. First, the Government must have the power to use even the most sensitive classified evidence against these suspects without compromising national security in any way, shape, or form. In addition, those who commit acts of war against the United States, particularly those who have no color of citizenship, don’t deserve the same panoply of due process rights that American citizens receive. Should Osama bin Laden be captured alive—and I imagine most Americans hope he won’t be captured alive. But if he is, it is ludicrous to suggest he should be tried in a Federal court on Center Street in Lower Manhattan.

Yesterday, when Holder was asked whether bin Laden would be read Miranda rights if he were captured by U.S. forces, his answer: "that all depends..." Ed Morrissey asks, "What has changed in eight years to transform KSM and his cohorts into people who do 'deserve the same panoply of due process rights that American citizens receive'?" On that, the Washington Times was unable to get a straight answer from Schumer.

No surprise here, Tehran doesn't believe sanctions will materialize and have buried the lion's share of their HEU stockpiles -- and accompanying centrifuge cascades -- in a massive underground complex near the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center. Isfahan, Tehran's version of Cheyenne Mountain, is well protected by advanced Russian radar systems, surface-to-air missile batteries, and roughly 150 meters of rock and concrete. The logistical hurdles involved in destroying such a facility would be nearly insurmountable.

Iran’s foreign minister said in remarks reported Wednesday that he opposes sending the country’s enriched uranium abroad under a tentative deal negotiated with the United States and other big powers last month. The foreign minister’s remarks cast further doubt on the deal, which the Obama administration had hoped would defuse a standoff over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, told the student news agency ISNA that Iran would consider a simultaneous swap of its nuclear fuel for other uranium. But he told ISNA, “Definitely, Iran will not send its 3.5 percent-enriched fuel out.”

Mr. Mottaki is the highest-ranking Iranian official to openly reject the deal, which was brokered by the United Nations nuclear agency and would require Iran to export much of its low-enriched uranium abroad for processing. But it was unclear whether Mr. Mottaki’s comments reflected Iran’s official stance or were simply more posturing from Iran, which has yet to give an unambiguous official response to the nuclear deal.

So Iran has very publicly played President Obama for a fool, faking their way through negotiations that were a farce from the get-go. The question now becomes one of response. Israel has indicated that the current negotiations could be Iran's last chance for a non-military solution. Now that Iran's own foreign minister has admitted that negotiations will fail, will the United States drop its objections to Israeli military action? And, more importantly, will Obama green light the massive ordnance penetrator -- a weapon widely believed designed specifically for the inaccessible Isfahan facility -- for export?

Chances that the White House will order a U.S. strike hover between slim and none and equipping the capable Israeli Air Force with MOPs would essentially be the same thing as condoning an attack. It's more likely that the Obama administration has resigned itself to a restructured deterrence framework with the Iranians -- an increasingly difficult task, considering how aggressively the president is cutting both our strategic arsenals and missile defense.

The mammogram message: "Democrats cannot afford to lose the support of women on this issue, but the announcement plays into a narrative already advanced by the pro-choice movement that ObamaCare will ration healthcare for women. The Obama administration is clearly worried about this."

And, this won't help.

Harrycare is a rotten deal: "To pay for the bill, Reid would impose $371.9 billion of new taxes over 10 years, including $67 billion on health insurers; $23 billion in on drug companies; and $20 billion on medical device makers. All of these taxes are likely to be passed directly on to consumers in the former of higher health care costs."

Post-racial Jesse Jackson: "You can't vote against health care and call yourself a black man."

Report: Palin photographer breached contract by selling photo to Newsweek.

America's safest cities.

Gay marriage opponents suing D.C. over decision not to allow a ballot initiative.

Video: Holder confronted by 9/11 families at testimony about KSM trial.

HarryCare is a rotten deal: "To pay for the bill, Reid would impose $371.9 billion of new taxes over 10 years, including $67 billion on health insurers; $23 billion in on drug companies; and $20 billion on medical device makers. All of these taxes are likely to be passed directly on to consumers in the former of higher health care costs."

Maybe he knows what really happened to Tupac?

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Michael Boskin made the case for a payroll tax cut:

My Stanford colleague Pete Klenow and Rochester economist Mark Bils estimated that cutting the payroll tax by six percentage points (of the 12.4% Social Security component) would, under standard assumptions, increase employment by three million to four million workers—an amount equal to all the job losses since the stimulus was passed.

The payroll tax cut would have reduced firms' costs by roughly the same amount as from the entire decline in employment. It would have cost less than half as much as the stimulus bill, gotten far more income into paychecks quickly and, most importantly, greatly reduced incentives for firms to lay off workers. In fact, it would have created incentives to hire.

Even using the administration's claims of one million jobs "created or saved," the stimulus program passed in early February is millions of jobs short of what a cheaper payroll tax suspension would have delivered (see nearby chart).

Interestingly, Sarah Palin also has some kind words to say about the payroll tax cut in Going Rogue: "And if we really want to help the poor and middle class get through this recession, how about cutting their payroll taxes?"

Sounds good to me!

One of several e-mails I’ve received on the KSM trial:

“I'm an attorney and a former civilian and military prosecutor. Congress can indeed remove jurisdiction for Article III courts to try this case or any other terrorism case. I think Republicans should get a bill going fast on this and make the Democrats go on record right away on this.”

I agree. But when you suggest this to Senate Republicans, they point out that Majority Leader Reid is moving to the health care bill, that he will presumably get 60 votes for cloture on the motion to proceed to the bill Saturday or Monday, and that health care will then be on the floor until the (attempted) showdown final cloture vote just before Christmas. The only interruption will be a brief one, for an Omnibus bill that will take care of government funding (the Continuing Resolution runs out Dec. 18) and a few other issues—and that will be an unamendable conference report. So, it was explained to me, there are procedural obstacles to getting a floor vote on the KSM to New York issue in the near future in the Senate (and the minority has no power to start with in the House).

But this isn’t a fact of nature. This is a choice Reid has made. Of course he could interrupt the health care debate for a day or two—what’s the rush on health care?, most of it doesn’t go into effect for a few years anyway, except for the taxes—to allow for a debate and vote on some version of the Lieberman-Graham legislation to reverse Holder’s reckless decision. But Reid certainly doesn’t want to do this. And House Republicans have filed a discharge petition to force their legislation to the floor. But Pelosi will put pressure on Democrats not to sign on.

There will only be congressional action if popular outrage forces it. The public needs to understand that if Congress does nothing, they’re enabling Holder and the KSM trial. Especially after Holder’s appalling performance yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, you wouldn’t think congressional Democrats would want to be known as Holder’s enablers. So exposing the emptiness of the arguments on Holder’s side, and putting pressure on Congress to step up to prevent KSM from getting his wish, a gold-plated trial and bully pulpit for jihad in New York, is key.

The man to focus on, I think, is Harry Reid. Many Nevadans are family members or friends of those who died on 9/11. Many other Nevadans have contributed—many through serving in the military—to our efforts in the broader war on terror. If they—along with everyone else in the country—let Sen. Reid know they want an up or down vote on KSM, they might be able to force Reid to change the Senate calendar, and allow Congress to do its duty.

Harry Reid unveiled his $849 billion health-care bill tonight. It weighs in at 2,074 pages. Keith Hennessey runs through the tax hikes in the bill:

The following is from the Joint Tax Committee estimate of the revenue effects of the Reid bill. I have listed provisions with major revenue effects (+$20 B / 10 years) and a few others that have significant policy or political impacts. There are some smaller changes as well, which you can see for yourself in the 3-page document. All revenue figures are revenues raised over the ten-year period 2010-2019.

1. 40% excise tax on health coverage in excess of $8,500 (individuals) / $23,000 (families). Amounts are indexed for inflation by CPI-U + 1% – begins in 2013 – $149 B tax increase

2. Additional 0.5% Medicare (Hospital Insurance) tax on wages in excess of $200,000 ($250,000 for joint filers) – begins in 2013 – $54 B tax increase

3. Impose annual fee on manufacturers and importers of branded drugs – begins in 2010 – $22 B tax increases

4. Impose annual fee on manufacturers and importers of certain medical devices – begins in 2010 – $19 B tax increase

5. Cut in half (to $500K) the amount of an executive’s compensation that a health plan can deduct from its corporate income taxes – begins in 2013 – $600 million tax increase

6. Impose 5% excise tax on cosmetic surgery and similar procedures – begins for surgery in 2010 – $6 B tax increase!

In total the bill would raise taxes by $370 B over ten years.

Analysis on the tax hikes from Hennessey at the link. Reid has decided to raise the Medicare payroll tax on individuals making more than $106,800; perhaps not the smartest way to boost employment.

The CBO report says the bill would save $127 billion over 10 years--but as Allahpundit notes "$127 billion over 10 years sounds like a lot until you remember that $176 billion was October’s monthly deficit." We still haven't gotten a look at the CBO report to see just how bad the Medicare cuts will be [Update: The CBO (download here) reports Medicare will be cut by $491 billion over 10 years], but tell grandma and granpa not to worry: Under this bill they'll get $500 in 2010 when Harry Reid just so happens to be up for reelection.

The bill also allows taxpayer-funding for abortions through the public health insurance plan and the health insurance exchanges; the language is similar to the Capps amendment that tried to conceal federal funding of abortion through an accounting gimmick (see here). National Right to Life Committee calls the amendment "completely unacceptable."

Senator Mitch McConnell said in a statement: “This bill has been behind closed doors for weeks. Now, it’s America’s turn, and this will not be a short debate. Higher premiums, tax increases and Medicare cuts to pay for more government—the American people know that is not reform.”

Andy McCarthy on the Holder hearing.

Obama not planning to screw up Iraq until April or May.

Ace goes supernova on Sullivan.

NIAC shockingly uses the same PR firm as Qaddafi.

Christian Whiton and Greg Jenkins: Hope for conservatives in California?

When Jeffrey Toobin isn't busy ripping off Matt Labash he finds time to misinform New Yorker readers.

House Republicans have introduced a discharge petition to try to force a vote on a bill to keep the Obama administration from transferring Guantanamo detainees to the United States. From a press release:

U.S. House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-CA) today joined with the senior Republicans of the Judiciary, Intelligence and Homeland Security Committees, and Appropriations Commerce, Justice and Science Subcommittee Ranking Member Frank Wolf (R-Va.), to demand answers to questions posed over the past ten months about the Administration’s ill-advised decision to close Guantanamo Bay. In a letter to President Obama, the Ranking Members outlined the national security concerns posed by the decision and insisted that the Administration provide responses to the American people before any terrorists are imported to the U.S. for detention or prosecution.

“By choosing to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the 9/11 co-conspirators in United States federal courts, the President has revealed that he views the terrorist attacks on New York City and the nation’s capital as a crime—not as an act of war,” stated Rep. McKeon. “Make no mistake about this fact—Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his cohorts are hardened terrorists who declared war on America by planning and sanctioning the attacks that killed thousands of people on September 11th.”

McKeon continued, “From the classified information that I have seen on these guys, I can assure you that they are some of the worst of the worst. They wake up in the morning with the sole purpose of devising new ways to kill or attack Americans and the western world.”

“In my opinion, Guantanamo Bay provides America the safest location to detain these terrorists. Earlier this year, I traveled to Guantanamo to inspect the facilities and meet first-hand with our military personnel down there,” said McKeon. “The facilities rival any that you would find in the United States—as does the care that is being provided to the detainees.”

“As the President admitted to Fox News earlier today, he’s finding it harder than he thought to close Guantanamo. That’s because—in Guantanamo—you have a unique facility capable of detaining hundreds of terrorists in a secure environment that is detached from American population centers—but still relatively accessible for prosecutors and defense counsel. As the President and his Administration have discovered, it’s nearly impossible to replicate all of these factors at a facility in the continental United States,” concluded McKeon.

The members also introduced a discharge petition to force a vote H.R. 2294, the “Keep Terrorists Out of America Act.” Republican Leader Boehner introduced the bill earlier this year, along with 169 Republicans, to require the President to notify Congress 60 days before the transfer or release of a Guantanamo detainee occurs and to certify that such a transfer or release will not result in the release of any detainee into the U.S., adversely affect the prosecution of any detainee, or otherwise pose a security risk to the U.S.

Today’s actions follow the decision by President Obama to move self-confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other accused terrorists to New York City for trial in a U.S. civilian court.

I cannot compete with Allahpundit's write-up of this exchange, from the Holder hearing today, so go forth and read his take.

Holder says Miranda wouldn't be an issue in KSM trial or Osama bin Laden's because the evidence is so overwhelming against the two that prosecutors wouldn't need "custodial statements" gotten without Mirandizing them. But as Allahpundit notes, the question is what happens in the future, when soldiers on a field of battle, knowing that combatants may be tried in federal courts, have to start Mirandizing terrorists instead of interrogating them. And, if they don't do that consistently (soldiers are not supposed to be cops), does it not mean that many a future conviction of future terrorists would be impossible?

Here is the video:

Way back in March 2008, widespread protests erupted across the Tibetan plateau and were brutally crushed by a massive Chinese security response. On March 28, then-Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama, who had previously shown little interest in Tibet, sent a letter to President Bush chiding him for not doing enough about the situation there and helpfully suggesting some specific steps he should be taking. A few choice selections:

The United States has many issues for which China's cooperation is important, including denuclearization of North Korea, ending Iran's nuclear program, stopping the genocide in Darfur, confronting repression in Burma, and combating global warming. However, it is important that we give high priority to the plight of Tibetans and make clear to President Hu that the way in which China treats all Chinese citizens, including Tibetans, profoundly affects how China is viewed in the United States and throughout the international community.

===

I hope you made clear to President Hu the American view about the importance of the following: a negotiation with the Dalai Lama about his return to Tibet; guarantees of religious freedom for the Tibetan people; protection of Tibetan culture and language; and the exercise of genuine autonomy for Tibet. That is the path to the stability and harmony that the Chinese leaders say they are seeking in Tibet.

In addition to your personal intervention with President Hu, there are other steps I hope you will take to highlight our concern. I support your call for the foreign press and diplomatic personnel to have free access to Lhasa and other Tibetan cities and villages to ensure that repression and human rights violations cannot escape the world's notice. Beijing has committed to the International Olympic Committee to allow foreign journalists free access to cover stories throughout China, including Tibet. We should hold them to that commitment. The U.S. and our democratic allies and friends should also urge the UN Human Rights Council to send an investigatory team to Tibet. China should be encouraged to allow the International Committee for the Red Cross to visit prisons in Tibet to ensure that detainees are not held under inhumane conditions, tortured, or mistreated.

Like you, I want to take steps that increase the chance of a negotiated solution between Beijing and the Dalai Lama, and that have the best chance of improving the lives of ordinary Tibetans. Therefore, I support your effort to aggressively use your relationship with President Hu to achieve these goals. Should it appear, however, that the Chinese are taking private diplomacy as a license for inaction or continued repression, I would urge you to speak out forcefully and publicly to disabuse them of the notion that they can thus escape international censure.

How times have changed. When President Obama stood next to Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing yesterday and uttered the words "Tibet is part of the People's Republic of China", he may have been the first U.S. president to do so on Chinese soil. In any case, this was more than just an idle (and unnecessary) repeating of long-standing U.S. policy; rather it was a concession to a very specific and intensely-sought Chinese demand for this trip.

In the weeks before Obama traveled to China, following on his refusal to meet with the Dalai Lama, three Tibetans were executed in Lhasa after closed trials that failed to meet minimum standards of due process, and a prominent Tibetan blogger was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his writings, without any comment from the White House. Talks between the Dalai Lama's representatives and China have been stalled for the past year. The repression on the ground has not changed, but Obama's views on how to treat those responsible for it certainly have. Instead of seeing Tibet as a priority in U.S.-China relations, he now seems to view Tibet as a cheap bargaining chip to be traded away in a futile attempt to curry favor with the Chinese. Hypocrisy we can believe in?

Click the picture for the punchline.

Earlier this month, when Rep. Mark Kirk accused Trita Parsi, the Iranian national who heads the oddly named National Iranian American Council, of being a "regime sympathizer," NIAC accused Kirk of making a "slanderous allegation." Yet internal emails reveal that Parsi certainly did not see himself as an opponent of the regime in Tehran. In fact, Parsi was confident that an affiliation with NIAC would be looked upon favorably by officials in Iran.

In an email exchange with Parsi, Mohammad Mansouri, listed as a project manager on NIAC's website, worries "how reasonable it will be to take the risk and actually go to Iran." It's not clear whether Mansouri's concern is the threat from regime officials or from American bombs -- the correspondence is dated March 17, 2006, and came as NIAC was warning of an imminent war between the U.S. and Iran -- and Mansouri explains that given "what's going on in the world, it might be very dangerous and we may be forced to cancel [the trip]."

Parsi reassures Mansouri -- "NIAC has a good name in Iran and your association with it will not harm you."

On 3/17/06, Trita Parsi wrote:

Re the Iran trip, I think it will be difficult to get out of this one. Since nothing extraordinary has occurred since we submitted the proposal (Ahmadinejad was already in office) we are going to have a tough time with this one. Nevertheless, we have to be careful and not put you in risk. I can tell you though that NIAC has a good name in iran and your association with it will not harm you. In fact, I believe two of our board members are in Iran as we speak!

How can NIAC have had a "good name in Iran" if it was working to promote human rights, to foster democracy, and to undermine the authoritarian regime? Simple: it couldn't, and it wasn't. While the left screams about AIPAC and the "Israel Lobby," they rise to defend a man who, by his own estimation, was in the good graces of the Ahmadinejad regime as recently as two years ago. Surely that was because the regime viewed NIAC as "sympathetic."

The full exchange after the jump...

Attorney General Eric Holder seemed to take an unorthodox view of the guarantees of the American justice system today during a committee hearing about his decision to try 9/11 co-conspirators in federal courts in New York City.

Asked by Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) if the justice department had contingency plans, should by some technicality, KSM and others not be successfully prosecuted, Holder replied:

“Failure is not an option. These are cases that have to be won. I don’t expect that we will have a contrary result.”

The answer met with audible snickers in the gallery, perhaps from those who were under the impression that the very essence of our court system is that failure to prosecute is always an option.

"Well, that's an interesting point of view," Kohl said. "And, I'll leave it at that."

Sen. Chuck Grassley later criticized Holder's assertion.

"I don’t know how you can say failure is not an option," Grassley said. "I’m a farmer, not a lawyer, but it seemed to me ludicrous."

Holder sought to soothe critics by explaining the administration has already determined that if something did go wrong, and a mistrial or acquittal happened, it would "not allow release into this country of anyone who was deemed dangerous." KSM and others would remain detained as enemy combatants, Holder said, in that case.

Holder was asked on several occasions about his confidence in convictions. He said it lay in evidence that others don't have access to—evidence he had determined could be best used in U.S. courts instead of military tribunals.

"My top priority is to select the venue where the government will have the opportunity to present strongest evidence," he said.

Republican senators asked repeatedly why, if Holder is concerned with which evidence would be admissible, he had picked civilian courts rather than military tribunals, which have fewer restrictions on what evidence may be considered.

"There is really, from my perspective, very compelling evidence that I’m not at liberty to discuss now that will probably not be revealed until we are in a trial setting," he said. "The evidence that I am not talking about I think is compelling, is not tainted, and I think it will prove to be decisive in this case."

Alice Hoagland, who lost her son Mark Bingham on Flight 93, disagrees with Holder's decision about 9/11 co-conspirators, and was in the gallery for the hearing. She approached him after the hearing and the two spoke for about five minutes, surrounded by media and cameras.

"It's a bit of a 'trust me' thing, I suppose," Holder told her. "There are reasons why bringing this case in an Article III (federal) court, in terms of admissibility of certain evidence, is really the right thing, and really maximizes our chances to be successful."

President Obama responds to a question from CBS about the Afghan policy leaks:

“I think I am angrier than Bob Gates about it, partly because we have these deliberations in the Situation Room for a reason – because we are making decisions that are life-and-death, that affect how our troops will be able to operate in a theater of war. For people to be releasing information during the course of deliberation -- where we haven’t made final decisions yet -- I think is not appropriate.”

In the same breath as Obama pats himself on the back for making the tough decisions required of a wartime president, he simultaneously concedes that no, he hasn't actually made any "life-and-death" decisions on Afghanistan over the last four months. Meanwhile, the wires are reporting once again that the president is "very close" to making an actual decision -- i.e., a decision is "just weeks away." A very generous interpretation of the phrase "very close" indeed. It's like how President Bush was "very close" to making a decision about sending federal assistance to New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and true to his word just a few weeks later there were FEMA trailers and everything.

Update: Gary Schmitt hits the above and adds:

Finally, the president also said that a “multi-year occupation” would not serve the interests of the United States and he repeatedly referred to the Afghan mission as “this thing”—as in, “the American people will have a lot of clarity about what we’re doing, how we’re going to succeed, how much this thing is going to cost” and “what’s the end game on this thing.”

“Occupation?” Does the president really think of the Afghan mission as an occupation? Doesn’t that, in turn, mean the Taliban are “freedom fighters?” Presumably, the president’s use of the term “occupation” was just sloppy on his part. And maybe his use of “this thing” is a product of a tired, travelling chief executive.

On the other hand, having spent several weeks supposedly knee-deep in reflection on Afghanistan and America’s role there, the fact that he would have such slips of the tongue is hardly reassuring that his Afghan strategy review is headed in the right direction or, as we used to say, “his head is in the right place.”

Earlier today, Dick Durbin argued no one complained about Zacarias Moussaoui's trial in civilian court. In fact, as a friend on the Hill points out, "several Democrats" said the 20th hijacker should have been tried in a military tribunal:

During the Attorney General’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning, Senator Durbin asserted that he did not recall any Republicans, and certainly no Democrats, complaining that Zacharias Moussaoui was not prosecuted before a military commission. Actually, two very prominent Democrats contemporaneously complained about that decision, including the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Armed Services.

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on December 12, 2001 concerning President Bush’s Military Order creating the military commissions, S. Hrg. 107-513, Senator Lieberman expressed that he was “troubled by the precedent that this sets” in prosecuting Moussaoui in a civilian court rather than the military commissions existent at the time. Senator Lieberman asked, “if we will not try Zacarias Moussaoui before a military tribunal, . . . who will we try in a military tribunal?”

The New York Times coverage of that hearing reported that “[s]everal Senate Democrats . . . [expressed] that Mr. Moussaoui appeared to be a perfect candidate for a military tribunal and that they were baffled about why no tribunal had been sought. ‘The glove fits so perfectly here,’ Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said after [the] hearing.” In its coverage of the hearing, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution referenced Senators Levin and Lieberman in its December 13, 2001 article under the title “Senators Question [Moussaoui] Terror Trial in Federal Court.”

Oddly enough, after the Moussaoui trial began, even the Washington Post suggested, in a way that seems quite prescient in hindsight, that “it may be best” to have moved Moussaoui into a military commission, editorializing that “[t]he administration deserves credit for having tried to bring the Moussaoui case under the regular order. But the better part of valor now is to end the experiment.” Editorial, Washington Post, “The Moussaoui Experiment,” Jan. 27, 2003.

At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this morning, Sen. John Cornyn asked Attorney General Eric Holder about the decision he announced Friday to try some detainees, including the 9/11 plotters, in Article III courts: "Does the president agree with you?" Holder’s response: "I believe he does. I have not spoken to him directly, but the decision I made is consistent with his Archives speech...”

This is ridiculous. This decision has national security, foreign policy, intelligence, and homeland security implications, as well of course as legal aspects. The idea that the Attorney General would decide how to deal with the mastermind of 9/11 without talking directly to the president is unbelievable. Either Holder isn’t telling the whole truth here, and he got guidance indirectly—if not “directly”—from his boss. Or Obama is so concerned to distance himself from the decision that he’s willing to let it appear Holder’s alone, even though that would constitute a remarkable presidential dereliction of duty. Or both.

The good news is that, having decided on this kind of decision-making process—or having decided to say there was this kind of decision-making process—Obama and Holder have left the door open for Obama to overrule Holder, as he did a few months ago with respect to releasing the photos of alleged military-prisoner abuse.

So the conclusion I draw from the Cornyn-Holder exchange is this: Those who want to reverse this reckless and irresponsible decision need to turn to their attention both to Congress, which could act to prevent Article III court trials for some or all Guantanamo detainees, and to the president, who could reverse Holder with a stroke of a pen or a simple statement.

I imagine senators and congressmen will move ahead with legislative efforts. But they might also send a letter to the president—who hasn’t yet been “directly” involved in this decision—explaining why he should step in to overrule Holder.

Mary Katharine Ham is on Capitol Hill reporting on Attorney General Eric Holder's testimony to Congress and capturing lots of very interesting exchanges on Twitter:

Holder says: "Failure is not an option. These are cases that have to be won. I don't expect that we'll have a contrary result." To which Senator Grassley replied: "I don't know how you can say failure is not an option...I'm a farmer, not a lawyer, but it seemed to me ludicrous."

As Senator Kyl said, "How could you be more likely to get a conviction in federal court when [KSM] has already asked to plead guilty to military commission?"

Andy McCarthy writes at NRO:

AG Holder's testimony has resumed, and Senator Durbin claims that no one complained about the Moussaoui trial being in a civilian court. In fact, many of us complained — I pointed out several times that Moussaoui was the "poster child" for commissions.

More importantly, though, Senator Durbin and the attorney general fail to point out that the Moussaoui trial was a three-ring circus, that the district judge actually tried to dismiss the indictment, and that we don't know what would have happened had Moussaoui not surprised everyone by pleading guilty. When the Court of Appeals reinstated the Moussaoui indictment, it also said it was sensitive to the trial judge's concerns and would look very carefully to ensure that the government made available to Moussaoui all the information he needed to present his defense. What would have happened if Moussaoui had continued to press his demand for access to classified information and testimony from al-Qaeda captives like KSM? We don't know.

Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed to the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning that Gitmo will not be closed by the initial January 2010 deadline. Holder’s comments follow President Obama’s earlier announcement that the deadline will be missed. There are, according to published accounts, around 210 detainees or so still at Gitmo.

Holder offered the following breakdown for these remaining detainees.

“We have more than 100 detainees who have been approved for transfer,” Holder said. Who are these detainees? The Obama administration has not said. But this seems like an awfully high number.

There were roughly 250 (or so) detainees at Gitmo when the Obama administration assumed power. The Obama administration is now saying that 100 of them (40 percent) are considered transfer-worthy. This may be in addition to the 25 detainees Holder said had already been transferred. If so, that would mean that 125 detainees (50 percent), in total, are either going to be transferred or already have been under the Obama administration.

Concerned parties on the Hill should push for additional transparency on this. How is it that the Obama administration determined that so many detainees, who were considered a threat by the Bush administration and military officials, should no longer be held?

This question takes on more urgency when you review the Obama administration’s previous transfer decisions. Binyam Mohamed was transferred to the UK in February, despite the fact that he admittedly trained at an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and was originally detained because he was likely traveling to the U.S. to take part in an al Qaeda attack orchestrated by senior al Qaeda members in 2002. U.S. intelligence officials never backed down from that assessment. In June, the Obama administration transferred Ahmed Zuhair -- a known al Qaeda terrorist and likely murderer of a U.S. diplomat -- to Saudi Arabia. And the Obama administration has also approved Ayman Batarfi -- a known al Qaeda doctor with troubling ties to al Qaeda’s anthrax program -- for transfer as well. Batarfi has not been transferred as of yet (at least, there has been no public announcement of Batarfi’s transfer).

The Bush administration made its own mistakes in transferring detainees. The Obama administration is posed to make additional mistakes and has, in fact, already made additional mistakes. Congressmen and senators should push for additional details concerning the Obama administration’s transfer decisions.

Holder also noted that “more than 40 detainees have been referred for prosecution.” Thus far, the administration has only publicly commented on 10 of the detainees who have been referred for prosecution. Who are the other 30 detainees that have been referred for prosecution? And are they going to be prosecuted in federal courts or military commissions?

Finally, who are the remaining dozens of detainees that the administration hasn’t made a final decision on?

Attorney General Holder has only given the broad details concerning the administration’s efforts to close Guantanamo. The devil is in the details. It is up to Congress and the press to ferret out those details.

Sarah Palin weighs in on settlements:

Barbara Walters: Governor, let's talk about some issues. The Middle East. The Obama administration does not want Israel to build any more settlements on what they consider "Palestinian territory." What is your view on this?

Sarah Palin: I disagree with the Obama administration on that. I believe that, um, the Jewish, uh, settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And, um, I don't think that the Obama administration has any right to tell, um, Israel that, that, uh, the Jewish settlements cannot expand.

Barbara Walters: Even if it's Palestinian areas?

Sarah Palin:I believe that the Jewish settlement should be allowed to expand.

J Street says Palin's comments "reveal a glaring ignorance of damaging facts and a callous disregard of past and present U.S. policy," but isn't Palin just following the administration's lead? Indeed, the Israelis continue to build -- allowing for natural growth -- and at the same time Secretary Clinton has praised the Netanyahu government's "unprecedented" concessions on settlements.

In my interview with Governor Palin yesterday evening, we touched briefly on some current events, including President Obama's trip to Asia and the place of the tea-party movement in the Republican party. Some highlights:

1) I asked Palin about the anti-tax-and-spending tea parties. "I love the tea party movement," she said. "It's beautiful, it's healthy. It's part of that good healthy competition that's needed in a political party." She contrasted the somewhat tumultuous state of the GOP to what's going on in the Democratic party today. "It seems like the Democratic party is filled with more sheep-like individuals, who go along and get along," she said.

I brought up the Senate primary fight in Florida between Governor Charlie Crist and former state house speaker Marco Rubio. Palin isn't ready to make an endorsement. She told me she's just starting to look at the candidates "and see what their positions are." Palin added that she is eager to meet Rubio. She worked with Crist at the Republican Governors Association and thought highly of him. "I hear good things about Rubio, too, though," she added. No question, if Palin decides to endorse a candidate in this race, her influence will be powerful.

2) Would Palin bow or curtsy to the emperor of Japan? "No," she said. She went on to say that Obama's recent bow to the emperor was "symbolic" of the new administration's "apologetic mode of operation." "I'm not comfortable with it, and I don't think most Americans are as well," Palin said.

In other Asia news, Palin expressed a willingness to meet with the Dalai Lama, and said that she was happy to hear that Obama brought up the "abuse of human rights in China" during his visit. But she also said that Obama needs to focus on "getting our house in order." "There are so many things that need to be taken care of domestically," Palin said. The president, in her opinion, ought to "buckle down on the huge challenges facing our country."

3) I was surprised to learn that Palin, who is using social media to speak directly to her supporters, is the only member of the Palin family on Facebook. "Ironically, I banned the kids from using it," she said.

Associate editor Matthew Continetti is the author of The Persecution of Sarah Palin.

I tweeted this a few days ago, but deliberately kept it vague. Capt. Shannon Meehan, an old college associate and former patient at Fort Hood's medical facility, said that Hasan had a reputation for telling his patients to report themselves to the legal office for war crimes, an unbelievably sick offense and deep betrayal of the doctor-patient privilege. Now that Shannon has relayed the same to the Dallas Morning News, I'll amplify.

Fort Hood massacre suspect Nidal Malik Hasan sought to have some of his patients prosecuted for war crimes based on statements they made during psychiatric sessions with him, a captain who served on the base said Monday.

Other psychiatrists complained to superiors that Hasan's actions violated doctor-patient confidentiality, Capt. Shannon Meehan told The Dallas Morning News.

One day after the Nov. 5 attack that killed 13 and wounded 29, a Fort Hood official said she had never received complaints about Hasan's job performance. Col. Kimberly Kesling, deputy commander of clinical services at the base's Darnall Army Medical Center, also said he was a "hardworking, dedicated young man who gave great care to his patients."

Shannon's is a sad tale. During his deployment in Iraq, he called in an airstrike on a residence believed to double as an IED factory. The intelligence was wrong, the house was a civilian residence -- occupied by a family of eight (this is the crushing burden of leadership our young officers shoulder daily). Shannon was deeply traumatized by the horrific incident, a condition exacerbated by a severe brain injury suffered a few days later while leading his men in combat. When his road to recovery finally led him back to Fort Hood (his home station), Shannon -- in his fragile mental and physical state -- could have easily been assigned to Hasan. Fortunately, fate was on his side -- the Army placed him in the care of another therapist shortly before treatment started.

The thought of soldiers having their conscience and pain manipulated by the likes of Hasan is chill inducing. This is how far the Army has been pushed and corrupted by political correctness, in that they were willing to sacrifice the mental health of their soldiers on the altar of religious and political neutrality.

Aside: Though he's quick to emphasize that the quality of care he received at Fort Hood was top-notch, Shannon's most effective treatment came in the form of paper and quill. His combat memoir, Beyond Duty, was released this past fall to wide accolades.

The president of the United States has expressed his displeasure with Israeli government plans to build 900 new housing units in Jerusalem’s Jewish neighborhood of Gilo. Glad to know Mr. Obama, with all he has to occupy him, is able to maintain so deep an interest in city planning. But just how deep is it? And how wide? Does it extend to the Tehran neighborhoods of Naziabad, Niavaran, Farmanieh, Saadat, Abad, Shahrak, Gharb, and Vanak Square? Will he be demanding that the mullahs who send their Basij murderers into those areas to put down demonstrators discontinue doing so as a precondition for negotiations?

A new CNN poll "indicates that 61 percent of the public opposes the use of public money for abortions for women who can not afford the procedure, with 37 percent in favor of allowing the use of federal funds."

How much stronger must opposition to public funding of abortion be in states like Byron Dorgan's North Dakota and Blanche Lincoln's Arkansas?

What's really remarkable is that a majority of Americans oppose private insurance coverage of abortions:

38. Now think about women who are covered by private health insurance plans that are paid for by
private individuals or employers with no money from the government involved. Do you think private health insurance plans should cover some or all of the costs of an abortion, or do you think that women who want to get an abortion should have to pay the complete costs of that abortion out of their own pockets?

Health insurance should cover 45%
Pay all costs herself 51%

In their attacks on the Stupak amendment, a number of pro-choice Democrats, like Rep. Nita Lowey of New York, have claimed that the amendment "puts new restrictions on women's access to abortion coverage in the private health insurance market even when they would pay premiums with their own money." Even the St. Petersburg Times's Politifact, which has a history of flacking for the Democratic party, reports that this claim is "false."

It turns out that a majority of Americans support even the supposedly scary and radical position that Nancy Pelosi and Planned Parenthood falsely ascribe to Stupak supporters.

While it's remarkable, opposition to private insurance coverage of abortion is hardly surprising. The CNN poll reports that 55 63 percent of Americans want abortion to be illegal in all but a few circumstances. It's not shocking that they don't want public funds or private insurance to pay for something they believe to be so unjust that it should be generally banned.

Update: Via Ramesh Ponnuru, the Washington Post/ABC poll had a similar finding:

21. Say someone buys private health insurance using government assistance to help pay for it. Do you think insurance sold that way should or should not be allowed to include coverage for abortions?

Should 35
Should not 61

Correction: 63 percent of Americans believe abortion should be illegal or legal in only a few circumstances. I had originally reported 55% believed so. That number was from a 2005 poll.

In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, Eric Holder will say, according to the Associated Press, that "I have every confidence the nation and the world will see him for the coward he is....I'm not scared of what (Mohammed) will have to say at trial and no one else needs to be either." And, "we need not cower in the face of this enemy. Our institutions are strong, our infrastructure is sturdy, our resolve is firm, and our people are ready."

I suppose we should be grateful Holder is calling Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a coward, rather than describing the American people as "a nation of cowards" (as he did earlier this year). But is anyone else struck by the tinny bravado of Holder's prose? When politically correct careerists start beating their chests and proclaiming their own courage--you know they're in deep trouble. Let's see how Holder does today when he finishes posturing and has to answer the intellectually serious and morally compelling criticisms of his plan to grant KSM and his fellow terrorists a trial in federal court in New York. And if he does badly (as I expect), let's see if some congressional Democrats have the courage to break with the administration and join in passing legislation to block Holder's plan.

The White House realizes there are no settlements in Jerusalem -- and yet their position remains unclear.

David Frum says it isn't enough to take Trita Parsi at his word.

Russia gives Georgia the 411: We're annexing your sovereign territory.

Ace examines the "diplomacy of deference."

"He ought to get professional help, perhaps from Maj. Nidal."

Good news: Terrorist lawyer and enabler Lynne Stewart may get a longer sentence.

Obama's going to get to that whole Afghanistan war thing any day now.

Flashback from the day of the Ft. Hood massacre: watch Dr. Phil and Shoshana Johnson attack this former Army JAG for daring to suggest that Major Nidal Hasan might be a jihadist. How about having all three back on for a follow-up?

I spoke to Governor Palin by phone this afternoon. Lots of interesting material, but to me the most interesting takeaways were the following:

1) I asked about Palin's upcoming visit to Ft. Hood. "We had planned on that before the tragedy struck," she said. She commented on the trail of evidence linking the alleged Ft. Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Hasan, to militant Islam. "There were such clear, obvious, massive warning signs that were missed," she said. "This terrorist, even having business cards" that identified him as an "SoA" or soldier of Allah. Palin blamed a culture of political correctness and other decisions that "prevented -- I'm going to say it -- profiling" of someone with Hasan's extremist ideology. "I say, profile away," Palin said. Such political correctness, she continued, "could be our downfall." If the upcoming investigations into the attack reveal bad decision-making on the part of senior officials, Palin continued, those officials ought to be fired.

Palin visits Ft. Hood on December 4. She plans to donate all the royalties from her book-signing there to the families of the victims.

2) I also asked Governor Palin about Attorney General Holder's decision to try September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohamed in federal court in New York City.

"Does KSM deserve constitutional rights?" I asked.

Palin's response: "Not no, but hell no."

And she went on: "That was an atrocious decision," she said. "And it makes a mockery of our judicial system." She focused in particular on the fear that "war criminals" like KSM and his accomplices will use the trial as a "platform" to denigrate America.

More Palin to come, including her thoughts on President Obama's trip to Asia and the role of the tea-party movement in the GOP ...

Associate editor Matthew Continetti is the author of The Persecution of Sarah Palin.

As NIAC prepared its duplicitous campaign to scuttle the appointment of Dennis Ross as the Obama administration's envoy to Iran, Trita Parsi and his policy director, Patrick Disney, conferred with their allies on two separate listservs to devise a strategy. The date was January 7, 2009, and as the administration started floating names to reporters, Disney suggested that the group and its allies (which presumably included J Street, already a participant in NIAC's Campaign for a New American Policy in Iran) to "start a conversation about what our response will be if Dennis Ross is named Iran envoy." Disney explained that "NIAC is obviously still formulating a plan, but we're exploring the idea of coming out publicly, and relatively strongly, against Ross." In the end, NIAC decided not to come out publicly against Ross, choosing instead to lobby Congress and the administration behind closed doors while sending out fundraising appeals casting Ross as a fellow proponent of engagement and a victim of the same "smears" being launched against NIAC.

Disney concludes that "if it's simply impossible for us to work with Ross, we should be in a position to say I told you so after he messes everything up." Eleven months later and everything is messed up, but not because of Ross. Indeed it seems like NIAC's strategy of engagement minus sanctions has not produced any result other than providing the Iranian regime with more time to work on their nuclear weapons program and kill dissidents. But Parsi was acutely aware of the fact that on this issue, like so many others, his views closely resembled those of the regime in Tehran. Parsi wrote,

From: Trita Parsi [mailto:tparsi@niacouncil.org]
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 1:55 PM
To: Patrick Disney; new-iran-policy-coordinating-committee@googlegroups.com; IranPWG@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Response to Ross as Iran envoy

Just to add to Patrick's points: Coming out strongly against him will likely also make it more difficult for him to go the neo-con way. The pressure should be on him. He is so obviously conflicting with Obama's views so we could make that very clear - criticize him, without criticising Obama.

Also, by being on record now, we protect ourselves for the time when Ross does screw up - then our criticism will be consistent with what we've sai all along, and will be able to defend oursleves against any attacks that our views on Ross may resemble Tehran's.

Love to hear other ideas and views.

Sincerely,
Trita Parsi, PhD
President

Because Parsi and his group chose not to go on record with their objections to Ross but to lobby against his appointment behind closed doors, no one could connect the dots that both NIAC and Tehran happened to have the same view of the appointment. The effect of NIAC's duplicity is that the group was lobbying for Tehran's preferred outcome (the scuttling of the Ross appointment) while appearing before its members and the press as though it was supporting the administration approach. That is shady pool. But here's another question: how did Parsi know what Tehran's view of the Ross appointment was two weeks before Obama was even inaugurated? Is Parsi so plugged in to the regime that he would have a good sense of Tehran's disposition on this subject? Did Parsi simply assume that the regime would not welcome the appointment of a Jew as the administration's interlocutor? Or is there some other explanation?

And now that Ross has been moved out of the Iran job, and John Limbert, a member of NIAC's board, has been installed in his place, it seems fair to ask whether it was NIAC's objections or Tehran's objections that ultimately led to Ross's departure. Is there even a difference between the two?

The full email exchange after the jump...

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is in trouble again, and this time he may not be able to save his job. You’ll recall that his confirmation was threatened by revelations of cheating on his income taxes. Now he’s accused of paying billions too much for the bailout of AIG and allowing the insurance firm’s Wall Street creditors -- Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Wachovia -- to be paid in full for their derivative contracts with $27.1 billion in taxpayers’ money.

The accusation comes from Neil Barofsky, the inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in a report issued yesterday. At the time of the bailout in September 2008, Geithner was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Rather than bargain with AIG and its creditors for a reasonable bailout, Geithner agreed to pay “an amount far above the market value at the time,” the report said. The bailouts for the big creditors was agreed to by Geithner “even though senior policy makers contend that assistance to AIG’s counterparties was not a relevant consideration in fashioning the assistance to AIG.”

In extending $85 billion in credit to AIG, Barofsky said, the New York Fed “did not craft its own terms and instead simply adopted in substantial part the economic terms of a draft term sheet under consideration by a consortium of private banks, which included a high interest rate.” The banks, which had declined to help AIG, “believed AIG’s liquidity needs exceeded the value of the company’s assets.”

The shorthand of what the inspector general concluded is this: Geithner bailed out AIG and its investment bank creditors without negotiating for tougher terms that would have saved the taxpayers billions. And he did this though one of the “counterparties” was willing to agree to concession. In Geithner’s defense, Barofsky noted that Fed officials “believe they will recoup the loan made to AIG to pay off the big creditors.

The private report, first disclosed by Huffington Post, is officially titled “Factors Affecting Efforts to Limit Payments to AIG Counterparties.”

The Republican to call for Geithner’s resignation as treasury secretary was Rob Simmons, a former House member who is running for the Republican nomination for the Senate seat in Connecticut held by Chris Dodd. Polls show Simmons running ahead of Dodd.

In a statement, Simmons said: “The cozy relationships between the bailed out financial companies and powerful politicians like Tim Geithner and Chris Dodd are exactly why Americans have lost trust in Washington, D.C., and why we need new leadership with the skills and integrity to clean up the mess and get our economy back on track.”

As the Barofsky report circulates on Capitol Hill, more Republicans are likely to raise the matter of Geithner’s conduct in the AIG case. “There were already serious doubts about Secretary Geithner’s credibility, stemming from his failure to pay taxes and subsequent poor performance,” Simmons said.

For anyone who's been in Washington for the past year, it's become increasingly obvious that the only moments of true bipartisanship come when everyone in the city is waiting for Douglas Elmendorf to deliver a CBO report.

No matter which persuasion, political junkies universally hunker down with their e-mail accounts and Twitter on constant refresh mode as Washington awaits another all-important judgment from the fiscal overlord of the federal government.

Douglas Elmendorf, the CBO economist on whose numbers the world waits, is the very picture of the kind of unlikely, unassuming man whom the geeky business of politics makes into an unwitting celebrity. The New York Times, in an interesting and fair piece, takes a look at the toll the numbers take on the numbers man.

A thumbs-up from Mr. Elmendorf could speed the process along, helping Mr. Obama fulfill his hope of signing a bill into law this year. A thumbs-down on any of the critical questions — how much the bill costs, how many people it covers, whether it reins in the runaway growth of health spending — could leave the White House and Democrats scrambling.

Democrats, who have been chafing at his calculations, sound nervous.

The glamorous life of the Elmendorf (who is, incidentally, a Democrat):

Mr. Elmendorf — bearded, bespectacled and cautious to a fault — shuns publicity and almost never appears on television, except for the occasional hearing shown on C-Span. He and his team of number crunchers occupy the cramped fourth floor of a government building that once housed F.B.I. fingerprint files. His own office has a view of the freeway.

In a way that's also quintessentially Washington, Elmendorf's celebrity comes with all the criticism and none of the glitter, all downside and no up:

Yet for a quiet man who thinks carefully about everything — he courted his future wife by inviting her to a baseball game, after calculating that games offer precisely enough activity to fill in conversation lulls — Washington’s health care cauldron is an uncomfortable place to be. He is a Democrat who left partisan politics to join the budget office in January, and he is irking old friends.

“I get e-mail messages and read blog postings that think I’m a brilliant hero, and I also get blog postings and e-mail messages that think I’m a stupid traitor, and I’ve learned to let that roll off my back,” he said in a rare interview about himself.

Also revealed: Elmendorf coaches his daughters' youth soccer team on weekends, has a black Labrador, and generally behaves in exactly the way you'd expect a man named Douglas Elmendorf to behave, even if it means he'll lose friends over the numbers:

David Cutler, an economist at Harvard and Mr. Elmendorf’s close friend, agrees. He said the budget office was “doing a great disservice” by ignoring evidence about how to reduce cost savings. He and Mr. Elmendorf have known each other since their student days; Mr. Cutler said the relationship is suffering.

“It’s a bit painful,” Mr. Cutler said, “which is sad.”

Hearing this, Mr. Elmendorf grows quiet, though unapologetic. “Obviously,” he said, “I can’t lead C.B.O. to reach conclusions to make particular friends of mine happy.”

Douglas Elmendorf, avatar of unaffected, average, honorable Americanness, found against all odds in the abyss of the federal government's finances. As a longtime Elmendorf fan, I say it's downright Capra-esque.

There are thoughtful arguments to be made against Sarah Palin's future as a national politician, her persona as a conservative folk hero, her political ideology. Relatively few liberals or critics in the media bother to make them. It's a testament to how thoroughly they caricatured her the first time around, and how little respect she warrants in some circles, that all questions about her are presumed perfectly settled, and serious engagement about her is often treated as a nuisance to be avoided.

To them, Palin is audacious (not in that good, Obama way) and out-of-line to even write a book. Her criticisms of the McCain campaign leakers who anonymously bashed her while the campaign was still going on are "ungrateful." To venture to promote the book is more audacious still, and means she gets exactly what's coming to her in all interviews and coverage, no matter how unfair. The fact that the book she's daring to promote is selling extremely well means more license still to sully the woman from Alaska once again. I've heard each of these sentiments uttered or implied by pundits or reporters in print, on Twitter, or on TV this week.

The thoughtlessness of these critics, who never see the irony in attacking Palin's alleged anti-intellectualism using debunked doctored photos of the governor in a bikini, is crystallized in Ana Marie Cox's review of Sarah Palin's Going Rogue today. It is perhaps overly generous to call the Washington Post piece a review. It reads like an off-the-cuff e-mail to a friend with very low standards in e-mail correspondence. It's atrocious, not in its assessments necessarily (of which there are few), but in its laziness. I hesitate to excerpt much of it, because at 379 words, I would quickly be dealing with questions of fair use, but here's a taste:

Rush Limbaugh last week proclaimed "Going Rogue" to be "truly one of the most substantive policy books I've read," though that certainly raises questions about what other policy books Rush has read and by what lights he considers the Palin book to be one. For all I know, it may be true. There may truly be substantive discussion of policy, something that goes beyond the thudding "taxes bad"/"government small" rhetoric that characterizes the moments when Palin turns her personal narrative into a discussion of government workings.

I cannot claim to have completely read "Going Rogue" -- I had to skim the last 150 pages (or more than one-third). I only got the thing into my hands late Monday afternoon with a deadline of early evening. It's terrible, I know, but if I didn't read it all, neither can Sarah Palin claim to have completely written it.

One of the few surprises of the book: For a frontierswoman, Palin really doesn't like smokers.

It's a Washington Post book review, for goodness' sake, not a note you pass in between classes before that book report you totz didn't prepare for. In the print version of the article, Cox is introduced as a national correspondent for Air America who has described Palin as "crazypants with arrogant sauce on top," right before she criticizes Palin's take on campaign strategy as unsophisticated. Feel free to click over and read her devastating, postcard-length critique of Palin's, ahem, lack of substance.

But if you're short on time, skip it, and read our own Matt Continetti's thoughtful review of the same book, also in the Washington Post today—a juxtaposition by which Cox's effort suffers all the more. Sure, I'm biased, so here's a taste of his review by which you can judge:

Through no fault of her own, Sarah Palin has become a sort of political lens, refracting the different ways conservatives and liberals see the world. To her supporters, she is, as she puts it, a "common-sense conservative" who isn't afraid to make moral judgments. To her detractors, she's a moronic zealot who has no place in American public life. The two interpretations are concrete. "Going Rogue" won't do much to change any minds. But for what it reveals about our current political culture, Hans Robert Jauss would say it can't be beat.

I was originally just going to use this post to tout Continetti's review, but Cox's review was so emblematic of the frequent laziness and lack of professionalism that characterizes media coverage of Palin, that I thought it important to point out.

For more from Matt on Palin for the Palinistas in the audience, try his book.

Israel has approved the construction of some 900 housing units in their own capital city, Jerusalem:

... Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said he refused to be part of a halt to Jewish and Arab construction in west or east Jerusalem.

"Israeli law does not discriminate between Arabs and Jews, or between east and west of the city," he said in a statement. "The demand to cease construction just for Jews is illegal, also in the US and any other enlightened place in the world."

"It is inconceivable that the US government would demand a construction freeze in the US based on race, religion or sex, and the attempt to demand this from Jerusalem constitutes a double standard and is unacceptable," continued the statement. "The Jerusalem Municipality will continue to enable construction in every part of the city for Jews and Arabs alike."

To which the White House responds:

We are dismayed at the Jerusalem Planning Committee’s decision to move forward on the approval process for the expansion of Gilo in Jerusalem. At a time when we are working to re-launch negotiations, these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed. Neither party should engage in efforts or take actions that could unilaterally pre-empt, or appear to pre-empt, negotiations. The U.S. also objects to other Israeli practices in Jerusalem related to housing, including the continuing pattern of evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes. Our position is clear: the status of Jerusalem is a permanent status issue that must be resolved through negotiations between the parties.

Obviously this administration's approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict has been so successful, there is no need to adjust the rhetoric. Just keep making demands of the Israelis and expressing dismay and offering objections and the peace process will, no doubt, get on back on track any moment now. But let's be clear -- the Obama administration's position on Jerusalem is not clear. From the moment during the campaign that Obama declared "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided," to the subsequent walkback, to the demand that all settlement construction in East Jerusalem come to an end, to the subsequent walkback on that -- nobody knows what this administration's position is on Jerusalem, least of all the parties involved in the peace process.

The only "achievement" this administration can claim is having driven the Israeli public into Bibi's arms, helping him solidify his support across party lines, and destroying President Obama's credibility with the Israeli public -- smart power.

Where lie the sympathies of the UN nuclear watchdog agency's chief dog has been no secret: Mohammed El Baradei earned his 2005 Nobel Peace Prize not for shepherding rogue states to denuclearization—on the contrary, North Korea and Iran spent his (soon-to-be-over) watch as head of the IAEA in a frenzy of development and proliferation—but rather for spending his years in the anti-nuke saddle singling out the Bush administration and Israel for vicious criticism. Beyond his purview, maybe, and very non-aligned-movementy of him, but bad sympathies alone do their mischief only in the ether. It’s where reverse transubstantiation occurs—words into deeds—that the real harm lies, and Mr. El Baradei has been engaging in some of that recently, securing a legacy he may one day wish he hadn't.

In August, the AP revealed he’d been sitting for a year on “compelling” intelligence about Iran’s active pursuit of “research into developing nuclear warheads and the way to deliver them”; in September, the French foreign minister excoriated him for omitting this crucial information from his report to the Agency’s September 14 General Conference; in October, he described a newly-uncovered secret nuclear site near Qom as "a hole in the mountain . . . nothing to be worried about," suggesting at best an extremely poor job of inspecting, and at worst shameful—treasonous?—colluding. And just today, TimesOnline reports that Mr. El Baradei has conspired secretly with the Iranian despots on the formulation of a “deal to persuade world powers to lift sanctions and allow Tehran to retain the bulk of its nuclear programme in return for co-operation with UN inspectors.”

How beautiful the irony that the UN's chief champion of a nuke-free peace is a collaborator with tyrants threatening the destruction of Israel, and that the defense of the West on this issue has been left to France. Yet there’s some comfort in knowing Mr. El Baradei’s days there are numbered—the moment of his retirement cannot come too soon—and in believing the UN will be hard-put to find someone worse to fill his shoes.

Americans disapprove of the way Obama is handling health care by a 49-47 percent margin, according to the latest Washington Post poll. Americans disapprove of Obama's handling of Afghanistan by a 48-45 margin. In April of this year 63 percent of Americans approved of Obama's handling of that conflict -- that support is now down 18 points. And why wouldn't it be -- Obama has showed zero leadership on that issue.

Meanwhile, Obama has broken the record for travel in the first year of his presidency and the DNC has sent out no less than 5 releases this morning attacking Sarah Palin. I understand that the Democrats fear Sarah, but maybe this administration and its allies could better spend their time making the case for the incumbent president and his increasingly unpopular policies?

The doc-fix's decline: The conflicting maneuvers suggest that, rather than a permanent solution, the best the doctors might get is yet another one- or two-year fix, which could threaten their support for health care reform.

Stop the presses: Obama "braved" freezing temperatures in China.

What's the matter with Arkansas? "Lincoln, a second-term senator, helped write some of the legislation's key provisions as a member of the Finance Committee, and her sometimes uncomfortable role near the center of the debate could cost her in culturally conservative Arkansas. Despite the potential benefits for many in her state, polls show her support weakening, and constituents are expressing doubts about the proposed overhaul."

Thinking the American public and system wants Dodd's perpetual TARP legislation would be like assuming they desperately want a sequel to "Gigli."

Meet the GOP's 2012 dark horses.

The Obama administration wants you to pay back your tax credit now that he's gotten credit for the campaign promise.

Hoffman un-concedes in NY-23.

DVR alert: Vice President Biden tapes an appearance for Comedy Central’s “Daily Show.”

Obama's town hall in which he criticized censorship in China, censored by China.

Late, but still hilarious, which is a testament to the Onion staff's skills:

The petitioners in McDonald v. Chicago, the Supreme Court case challenging Chicago's handgun ban, filed their merits brief yesterday, and it's a doozy. Rather than just citing the well-established Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the brief invokes the long-dead Privileges and Immunities Clause and seeks to overturn three 19th-century Supreme Court cases. From SCOTUSblog:

In a bold thrust, the attorneys for the challengers to Chicago’s strict handgun ban asked the Court to strike down three of its prior rulings: the Slaughterhouse Cases in 1873 — the ruling that made the privileges clause a nullity — and two decisions limiting the Second Amendment to a restriction only on federal laws: U.S. v. Cruikshank in 1876 and Presser v. Illinois in 1886.  “Faced with a clear conflict between precedent and the Constitution, this Court should uphold the Constitution,” the brief argued.

The brief spends only seven pages addressing the Due Process Clause. Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr is impressed by the novel approach:

It’s certainly an attention-getting way to brief the case. It’s not just arguing for a win: It’s arguing for a revolution.

Or, to put it another way, it's like calling a pass play on fourth and two on your own 28*. But like any good gamble, there are heavy rewards if the petitioners win out. Lower courts cited the Cruikshank and Presser decisions in ruling the Second Amendment only applied to the federal government. If the Supreme Court overturns those antiquated decisions (Cruikshank also rather quaintly ruled that the First Amendment did not apply to the states), it will definitively close a line of argument used for decades to restrict Second Amendment rights.
 One good sign for the petitioners: The Court hinted that it didn't consider Cruikshank good law when it struck down D.C.'s handgun ban in 2008.
 The city of Chicago now has 30 days to file its merits brief. You can read the full petitioner's brief here.


*Which was the correct decision according to The Numbers.






When President Obama took the stage in Shanghai on Monday for his faux town-hall with 400 carefully selected Communist Youth Leaguers future Chinese leaders, he had already lost the crowd. Amid reports that the town-hall participants had been held in splendid isolation in the days prior to the town-hall and subjected to special "training" for their participation, the Chinese authorities managed to wring every ounce of spontaneity out of the event. Not that it mattered much, since most Chinese were unable to watch what the White House had billed as its big attempt to reach out directly to the Chinese people because their government had helpfully blocked it online and was only carrying it on local TV in Shanghai.

While the Chinese government's countermeasures to control the event are unsurprising, the degree to which the Obama administration went along with them should be. At one point there were reports that the advance team working on the trip was fighting back against the Chinese efforts at control, but those efforts apparently stopped at some point over the weekend and the Obama team gave in to Chinese demands for a tightly controlled forum. In the end, Obama seemed uncomfortable dealing with the non-responsive crowd, which did not laugh at his jokes despite their apparent English fluency, and he seemed to be self-censoring, even in response to the "tough and straightforward" questions about how it felt to win the Nobel Peace Prize. When he did get a serious question such as on Taiwan arms sales or his knowledge of the Great Fire Wall that tightly controls access to the internet in China, he ducked and flinched. In an otherwise decent answer to the Internet censorship question, in which he praised the value of freedom of information in American society (albeit in typically self-regarding terms), he undercut his whole message by referring to the "different traditions" that Chinese internet users supposedly have. Huh?

Nevermind that his predecessors were somehow able to get the Chinese to agree to let them speak on live TV. As the White House explained in response to criticisms of Obama's lack of direct contact with the Chinese people, he really was unable to do more because of the shortness of his trip (during which he reportedly did manage some sight-seeing at the Great Wall and Forbidden City).

But you would never know there was any controversy about any of this from reading the White House website, which referred to the town-hall as "unprecedented" and "historic." Yes--I suppose it was both those things, in that it has now set a new low standard for what American presidents can expect in terms of their ability to directly address the Chinese people without the filter of China's authoritarian government. Apparently oblivious to all this, Katie Lillie, the White House Director of Press Advance told the White House Blog that: "What was so amazing to her about today’s town hall in Shanghai, was the similarities it had to hundreds of events held all over the United States during the campaign." Well, that explains a lot.

On the homepage, James W. Ceaser asks: will President Obama show as much respect for the Dalai Lama as he did for the emperor of Japan?

Keep America Safe is joining forces with The Bravest and 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America to encourage people to attend AG Eric Holder's appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning. The hearing promises to be a major event, with Holder answering questions about his decision to bring KSM and other 9/11 plotters to New York City for trials in federal criminal courts:

AG Eric Holder will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, November 18, to testify about the administration’s plan to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed back to the scene of Al Qaeda’s greatest single atrocity–Ground Zero–where he will brag about the slaughter of 3,000 innocent men, women and children and his lawyers will tell a “jury of his peers” that HE is a victim of the U.S. Government.

This is insanity.

Please join 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America, the firefighters of TheBravest.com and Keep America Safe in Washington, D.C. to tell Eric Holder, President Obama and their supporters in Congress:

“WE WILL FIGHT YOU ALL THE WAY!”

More details here.

President Obama has responded to critics of the administration's weak human rights policies by getting tough on Asian abusers during his trip.  Sort of.  

While sitting across the table from the Burmese junta's prime minister, General Thein Sein, at the US-ASEAN Summit in Singapore, President Obama publicly and privately reiterated the pointed statements on Burma he had made earlier in the week in Tokyo.  According to NSC spokesman Ben Rhodes:

“[I]n his intervention,” Obama “used exactly the same language that he used in the [Tokyo] speech. So privately he said the exact same thing that he said publicly in enumerating the steps that the government of Burma must take: freeing all political prisoners, freeing Aung San Suu Kyi, ending the violence against minority groups, and moving into a dialogue with democratic movements there.”

Contrast his vigorous advocacy for Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's democrats, however, with his unwillingness to mention the name of another Asian Nobel Peace Prize winner: the Dalai Lama.  There was no mention of the Dalai Lama or the situation in Tibet in Obama's remarks in Tokyo or, so far as we know, during his time in China. Despite having been given a serious opening by the Chinese Foreign Ministry's ham-fisted moral equivalence of the American Civil War and the Chinese occupation of Tibet, Obama used a vague reference to the rights of "ethnic and religious minorities" when talking about human rights to the Communist Youth League representatives who participated his so-called town hall in Shanghai. There was no teachable moment for China's future leaders.  

While he may yet raise concerns about Tibet during his bilateral meetings in Beijing, none of us will know what he said and how his interlocutors responded.  It is good to know that Obama is willing to stand up for his fellow Nobel Peace Laureates and the suffering people they represent.  Except when he isn't.  

Joementum, in Israel, says Iran "has failed the test."

While Obama dithers on Afghanistan, Lang Sias asks what happened to the "fierce urgency of now."

Steve Clemons says "the dark side has taken hold at the White House."

Fact: It took 11 AP reporters to fact-check Palin's book.

Jamie Kirchick asks what NIAC is and who it represents.

Iran to establish "cyber police" -- but Obama and NIAC will bear witness.

Even Chinese artists are fired up (!) about President Barack Hussein Obama. At right is a work created by Chinese artist Liu Bolin. It's a bronze bust laced with gas lines so that every few minutes President Obama is engulfed in blue flame. (Much as he will be during his Assumption.) Says Liu, "He's so hot right now, so I wanted to translate that through my work. . . . Yes, setting something on fire can have negative connotations, but this piece represents energy and life that Obama has given to the world." The AP report helpfully notes that Liu made a similar piece commemorating Mao Zedong.

Our first Pacific President^TM is also being celebrated in Beijing with "Oba Mao" T-shirts picturing Obama dressed as a Red Guard soldier. In America, this sort of thing might set Robert Gibbs off on one of his sputtering sneers of indignation. Happily, in China the image is meant as a compliment.

It's all about context.

Andrew Sullivan is digging in to defend Trita Parsi -- and to attack Parsi's critics:

But it does reveal a classic neoconservative move. They are essentially trying to accuse Iranian-Americans who disagree with them of dual loyalty. Even as they rightly scream blue murder if that is ever applied to them. You realize after a while that they have no principles but the maintenance of their own power and the destruction of their perceived enemies. War for ever indeed - within American and outside it. At any cost. Whatever it takes.

It is not a classic neoconservative move to accuse people of dual loyalty -- it's a classic Sullivan move. Neoconservatives tend to be pretty careful not to accuse people of dual loyalties. And, of course, nobody is accusing Parsi of dual loyalties -- we're asking if he has any allegiance to America at all. Parsi is not, contra Sullivan, an "Iranian-American." Parsi is not an American citizen, and yet he claims to speak on behalf of Iranian-Americans. Parsi did not even have a green card when he started NIAC, and the organization he set up before NIAC sought only to "safeguard Iran's and Iranian interests." Dual loyalty would be a huge improvement I think. Meanwhile, Sullivan sees in all this a neoconservative plot to undermine Iran's opposition. "Smearing the non-neocon Green opposition as essentially pro-Khamenei solidifies the neoconservative war project," Sullivan writes.

If Parsi is part of the opposition, why was he working to silence regime dissidents? After the jump is an email exchange between Parsi and Siamak Namazi, who helped Parsi establish the group that sought to "safeguard Iran's and Iranian interests," and Hadi Semati, an Iranian who served as an adviser to Khatami, in which they plot to keep Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former Iranian parliamentarian who resigned in protest over her government's crackdown on reformers, from participating in a panel discussion on the democracy movement in Iran. The panel was sponsored by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Iranian Students for Democracy and Human Rights.

Parsi first asks his two confederates, only one of whom is an actual Iranian-American, "Will either of you discuss with Haghighatjoo how she should deliver her message on the Hill?" The problem, it seems, was that Haghighatjoo supported the idea that Americans should do more than "bear witness," as Obama likes to say, to the repression of the Iranian people. Namazi responds that "I spoke to her in Boston and tried to emphasize that she should not go around saying 'we need foreign help to promote democracy in Iran' w/o being very clear." Semati then chimes in to explain that while Haghighatjoo is a "very brave and genuine democrat...[she] does not know the field at all." Semati, an Iranian national, wants democracy to "develope [sic] authentically from within" Iran. And Semati adds that he is "very skeptical of the true intent of the US."

And then Parsi returns to the conversation and offers to intervene himself if necessary. "I am fond of convincing Iranians of the hostile intentions many players in DC based on my own observations from within Congress," Parsi writes. So what does that mean? Parsi is an Iranian national working to convince Iranian dissidents of the "hostile intentions" of those who would give voice to regime dissidents -- something isn't right here. It was Parsi who wanted to kill the National Endowment for Democracy State Department funding for Iranian civil society groups, not the neocons. It was Parsi who wanted to keep this particular dissident from speaking out, not the neocons. At the height of the protests in Iran, Sullivan used his blog to amplify the voices of those who were standing up to the regime, so I wonder how Sullivan feels about Trita Parsi using his organization to try and prevent those same voices from being heard in Washington.

The email exchange is after the jump -- read it from the bottom up.

According to a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services report:

CMS took a close look at the health care bill that was passed by House Democrats and endorsed by the White House, and it found that not only would the bill not reduce health care costs -- it would increase them. Time and again, we have been reminded that the United States spends a higher percentage of its GDP on health care than any other nation -- about 16 percent. As Obama but it in his June speech to the American Medical Association, "If we fail to act, one out of every five dollars we earn will be spent on health care within a decade." Yet if we adopt the legislation supported by Obama -- which finances expanded coverage through tax increases and Medicare cuts -- health care spending will actually rise to 21.1 percent of GDP, according to CMS, compared to 20.8 percent if we simply do nothing.

"Make no mistake: The cost of our health care is a threat to our economy," Obama told AMA. "It's an escalating burden on our families and businesses. It's a ticking time bomb for the federal budget. And it is unsustainable for the United States of America."

This is not the first entire justification fail of the health-care reform process, nor will it be the last. Why? Because as "Saturday Night Live" notes, "The President wants to pass a health-care bill so bad that he will literally sign anything...As long as it's a stack of paper with the words 'health care' on it, he'll sign it."

Because what's important in this time of 10.2 percent unemployment is to pay several trillion dollars to preserve the fantasy that Congress knows anything about bringing down the cost of health care, despite the fact that the fallacy has been laid bare on numerous occasions by lawmakers, CBO, CMS, and trusty common sense.

Now, go forth, and get that giant, directionless hodge-podge of made-up policy remedies and government largesse on the president's desk before the make-believe deadline of the end of the year, lawmakers! That'll fix everything.

In light of ABC's reporting on the Obama adminstration's reporting do-over on stimulus jobs, which slashed 60,000 jobs from the count due to funky reports, please click over to this new interactive map of bogus stimulus job reports.

Hey, Recovery.gov has its map.

And, now recovery doubters have a map of their own, which charts the locations of more than 75,000 fake "saved or created" jobs boasted by stimulus-boosters.

Ross Douthat writes in the New York Times:

If there’s any comfort for Democratic legislators in this landscape, it’s the possibility that the angst-ridden health care debate may matter less to their re-election prospects than anyone expects. Amid the town-hall tumult in August, Obamacare looked like 2010’s defining issue. But when you talk to Republicans on Capitol Hill today, it sounds as if health care will play a relatively modest role in the campaign they plan to run.

If a bill passes, they’ll attack the Democrats for reorganizing the nation’s health care sector instead of putting Americans back to work. If the legislation fails, they’ll attack the Democrats for trying to reorganize the health care sector instead of putting Americans back to work.

Either way, though, they expect the jobs issue to matter much, much more than the specific details of health care reform.

It's not entirely clear that unemployment will matter "much, much more" than the Democrats' health-care legislation, but it will obviously be a very big issue in 2010. Here are just a few articles from around the country that Republicans are highlighting to show that the stimulus package isn't doing what President Obama said it would do.

The Detroit Free Press: "Car orders not lifting auto jobs"

The hundreds of millions of dollars the federal government spent to buy thousands of vehicles from metro Detroit's three automakers under the $787-billion federal stimulus act didn't retain or keep a single job, a Free Press analysis shows.

The Greenville News in North South Carolina: "State's stimulus job count questioned"

The Greenville Housing Authority “saved or created” 118 jobs by use of federal stimulus money, according to the Obama administration.

Not bad for an agency that has 35 employees.

Those jobs, like many of the 8,147 jobs listed by the feds as having been saved or created in South Carolina through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, weren't actually permanent positions.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution: "Georgia jobs created by stimulus dollars overstated"

At issue is the federal government’s reporting of jobs created or preserved by the Obama administration’s $787 billion stimulus program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The stimulus Web site, recovery.gov, says 24,681 jobs have been created or saved so far in Georgia, and 640,329 nationwide.

But an AJC examination of records posted on the Web site calls into question the accuracy of the numbers. The AJC found:

● An Augusta agency reported creating 68 jobs even though the work has not started yet.

● A private contractor counted the same 10 jobs six times, erroneously reporting 60.

● A Head Start organization in LaGrange reported 77 jobs based on raises it gave its employees with the money.

The AJC found the errors after downloading records from recovery.gov, examining those that reported the most jobs, and contacting recipients of the federal funds to verify their job numbers.

There is no doubt much more muckraking to be done on the Obama administration's claims of jobs "created or saved" by the stimulus package. And the national media are beginning to catch on. This just in from ABC News:

The Obama administration, under fire for inflating job growth from the $787 billion stimulus plan, slashed over 60,000 jobs from its most recent report on the program because the reporting outlets had submitted "unrealistic data," according to a document obtained by ABC News.

The Office of Management and Budget document shows that before an Oct. 30 progress report on the program the administration asked the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board to remove information from 12 stimulus recipients that contained "unrealistic data," including "unrealistic job data."

One recipient -- Talladega County of Alabama -- claimed that 5,000 jobs had been saved or created from only $42,000 in stimulus funds.

Normally I tend not to get as worked up about our national eating habits like, say, the Center for Science in the Public Interest or Mayor Bloomberg. Is there an obesity problem in America? Sure. Childhood obesity even moreso. Do we need to ban trans-fats from cities like New York or sue fast-food giants because their food makes us fat? Probably not. But what about enormous cupcakes the size of your kitchen microwave? And what about the commercials for them on children’s channels like Sprout? I’m talking about Big Top Cupcake. And this, I firmly believe, must be stopped, if necessary, by congressional legislation. Judge for yourself. (And if you think this is directed toward large birthday parties, notice how the “cupcake” is served to only two kids!)

Jen Rubin corrects the L.A. Times: "And to prevent (Ft. Hood) from happening again, we need to get over the diversity fetish (which imagines that Americans are too dumb to distinguish between nonviolent Muslims and those who've adopted a murderous ideology) and get on with the business of fighting a war against those who want many, many more Fort Hoods."

Finding an impartial jury for KSM should be easy, right?

WSJ: Meet the health-care rationing commission.

"Going Rogue" reviewed: "This is not the prejudiced, dim-witted ideologue of the popular liberal imagination."

Is the Washington Post still stuck on the PTSD narrative? "Attack is a reminder of the mental demons unleashed by combat," even though Hasan had never been in combat, and we here at the Post don't consider those he killed to have died in combat. Wait, what were we saying?

U.S. Chamber and other critics of Obamacare plan an economic study to illuminate the job-killer.

Barone advises a Democratic president, whose job-saving policies are hard to recognize, but job-killing policies are obvious: "So here is a suggestion for the jobs summit. The president should put on again the bipartisan hat he wore during much of the campaign and embrace the proposal by some Republicans for a payroll tax holiday. Cutting our most regressive tax should appeal to Democrats. And it would immediately reduce the cost of job creation. Voting for health care legislation may or may not help incumbents. Voting for a payroll tax cut would."

Another illustrious member of the Party of Tax Hikes has to go pay her back taxes before running.

Japanese press to Obama: "Were the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima the right decision?" Obama: "Err, uhh, wanna talk about N. Korea?"

An Obama supporter on the bow: ""The bow as he performed did not just display weakness in Red State terms, but evoked weakness in Japanese terms....The last thing the Japanese want or need is a weak looking American president and, again, in all ways, he unintentionally played that part."

Heart-ache: Health care is least wished for Christmas gift in a New York Magazine poll.

SNL goes after Obamacare.

Video: The UCONN College Republicans explore the prevalence of the bowing protocol Obama observed with Akihito:

NIAC and J Street might seem at first an odd alliance. J Street is "pro-peace, pro-Israel" and NIAC is pro-engagement, pro-Iran. But J Street isn't all that pro-Israel, and NIAC will take any allies it can find in the fight against sanctions, so few and far between are such organizations in Washington. J Street director Jeremy Ben-Ami co-authored an op-ed with NIAC chief Trita Parsi making the (extremely unpopular in the Jewish community) argument against sanctions. J Street invited Parsi to speak at their conference last month. And the two groups have together constructed and embraced a narrative that explains away all the questions about their credibility and legitimacy as the work of the same nefarious right-wing conspiracy.

But follow the money and the tie that binds seems to be George Soros, who provides substantial funding to both groups. Also, Morton Halperin, one of the top men at Soros's Open Society Institute, sits on the boards of both J Street and NIAC. As Ben Smith reported Friday, Soros pays the salary of the NIAC staffer who runs the Campaign for a New Policy on Iran. Documents reveal that J Street participated in the discussions that determined the group's agenda.

And there's another thing the groups have in common: they've both been caught telling their supporters they've taken one position while lobbying behind the scenes for the exact opposite outcome.

Jennifer Rubin notes two examples of this dishonest conduct. J Street declared publicly that it would not lobby against passage of a resolution in the House of Representatives condemning the Goldstone Report. (Neither would J Street support the resolution, of course. The group's position was somewhere between oppose and support.) Yet this blog reported and Morton Halperin has not denied that either he or someone in his office was the author of a letter circulated to members of Congress and signed by Judge Goldstone. J Street, or at least one of its top advisers, was actively lobbying against the resolution and in support of Goldstone.

NIAC gets caught in a similar lie. Eli Lake's Washington Times report details NIAC's campaign to "create a media controversy," in the words of one NIAC staffer, in order to scuttle the appointment of Dennis Ross to oversee Iran policy. NIAC failed, but just last week NIAC put on its website a "Myths and Facts" page to set the record straight about the organization's work:

NIAC is not the only organization that is under attack. In fact, almost every distinguished American policymaker, intellectual and administration official that supports Obama's pro-engagement policy in the Middle East is being targeted. This includes:

* Ambassador Dennis Ross - Currently serving in the U.S. National Security Council...

So after trying to kill Ross's appointment in a secret and perhaps illegal lobbying campaign, the group touts Ross on its website as a "distinguished policy maker" who is the victim of neoconservative smears. Now we know that the smears against Ross were being conceived and directed by the staff at NIAC, and all the while NIAC was playing the victim.

Trita Parsi has charmed his way into the very heart of the "progressive left," and no progressive organization has been more easily or completely charmed than J Street. So what is a "pro-peace, pro-Israel" group doing allying itself so closely with a man who is himself so closely allied with a Holocaust-denying regime that daily threatens the existence of the State of Israel? And why is it that neither organization is able to represent in public the views that they so aggressively promote behind closed doors?

Anwar al Awlaki, the radical cleric contacted by Major Nidal Malik Hasan, gave an interview to a "terrorism expert" who spoke on behalf of the Washington Post. (See the story for WaPo disclaimers/cautions.) Awlaki , who issued a statement praising Hasan for his killing spree, says he neither directed nor pressured Hasan to kill US Army soldiers.

But according to the Post:

On Dec. 23, 2008, days after he said Hasan first e-mailed him, Aulaqi also posted online words encouraging attacks on U.S. soldiers, writing: "The bullets of the fighters of Afghanistan and Iraq are a reflection of the feelings of the Muslims towards America," according to the NEFA Foundation, a private South Carolina group that monitors extremist Web sites.

The FBI and others familiar with Hasan's emails to Awlaki have described them as "benign" and consistent with his research. It's always good to be skeptical of self-serving accounts from al Qaeda clerics, but Awlaki has a different view. Again, according to the WaPo:

Aulaqi described Hasan as a man who took his Muslim faith seriously, and who was eager to understand how to interpret Islamic sharia law. In the e-mails, Hasan appeared to question U.S. involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and often used "evidence from sharia that what America was doing should be confronted," the cleric told Shaea.

Who is telling the truth? We should see the emails.

In the online-only "Panel Plus" segment of Fox News Sunday, the boss and Liz Cheney continued their assault on the Obama administration's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and his associates in a federal court in New York City. You can watch it here:

Politico reports that “A senior administration official said President Barack Obama was simply observing protocol when he bowed to Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko upon arriving at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo on Saturday.”

Why won’t that “senior administration official” come out from behind the curtain and make that assertion in his own name? Because it’s nonsense. As these photos make clear, numerous heads of state and the former U.S. vice president didn't bow to the emperor; they shook hands. The New York Times criticized Bill Clinton in 1994 for almost bowing to the Japanese emperor.

We await the release of a State Department briefing paper that says it’s “protocol” for an American president to bow to a Japanese emperor.

The Hill reports that a Republican member of Congress is claiming that he was denied access to General Stanley McChrystal during a recent trip to Afghanistan:

"Miller, who sits on both the Armed Services panel and the Intelligence Committee, told The Hill that the Pentagon denied his request for a meeting with the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan

The top-ranking Republican on the Intelligence oversight subcommittee was in Afghanistan in mid-October.

“I wasn’t allowed to [meet with him]. I was there for four days, asked to meet with Gen. McChrystal and was told I couldn’t, although Sen. [Daniel] Inouye [D-Hawaii] met with him and Sen. John Kerry [D-Mass.] met with him,” Miller said in an interview.

Miller, who is serving his fifth term, stressed that McChrystal was in Afghanistan when he was there.

“I said I’d meet with him anywhere,” Miller said, sarcastically adding, 'that’s OK … I’m just on HASC [the House Armed Services Committee] and Intel.'"

This raises a larger question about whether the Obama administration is trying to muzzle General McChrystal. White House aides opposed to the deployment of additional troops to Afghanistan have been shamelessly leaking details of National Security Council meetings and classified cables even after National Security Advisor Jim Jones chastised General McChrystal in early October for publicly discussing his request and explaining why other options, such as a more limited counterterrorism strategy, would not be successful. The administration has rejected repeated requests, including from some Democrats, for General McChrystal to be allowed to appear in front of Congress to discuss his assessment.

Last month, the Washington Post reported that prior to President Obama making his final decision, General Jones said that the president would meet again in person with General McChrystal. "When the White House is ready, he said, McChrystal -- along with the U.S. ambassadors to Afghanistan and Pakistan -- will fly to Washington so that the three 'can meet with the president before a decision is made.'"

President Obama told reporters in Tokyo that he would make a decision "soon." Does he still plan to meet with General McChrystal in person to tell him whether he is rejecting his strategy and request for additional troops?

About six weeks ago, as Obama was dithering over Afghanistan, I reported that he worried, at a meeting with congressional leaders, about the cost of sending reinforcements. And I wrote that “this particularly pathetic excuse for ducking his responsibility for doing the right thing in Afghanistan put me in mind of the brilliant, and mordant, 1969 Philip Larkin poem, ‘Homage to A Government.’”

Well, Obama is still dithering, and the New York Times reports today that, according to senior administration officials, “High Costs Weigh on Troop Debate for Afghan War.” One definition of a classic is that it’s always relevant, and Larkin’s poem is a classic. So here it is again, in the hope that it might spur President Obama--who, we know, is something of a poetry lover--to act like the leader of a great nation.

Homage to a Government

Next year we are to bring all the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it is all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
We want the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.

It's hard to say who wanted it to happen,
But now it's been decided nobody minds.
The places are a long way off, not here,
Which is all right, and from what we hear
The soldiers there only made trouble happen.
Next year we shall be easier in our minds.

Next year we shall be living in a country
That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
The statues will be standing in the same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.
Our children will not know it's a different country.
All we can hope to leave them now is money.

Though it is a piece of superficiality worthy of People magazine, the Washington Post's account of the process by which Eric Holder came to make his decision to try war criminals in federal court is a remarkable--if inadvertent--revelation of just how much, despite their vastly disparate backgrounds, the attorney general resembles his coolly remote boss, the president. As his boss has chosen to do with respect to Afghanistan, so Mr. Holder solicited the opinions of a veritable army to help him “wrestle” with his responsibility:

He ordered top federal prosecutors in four districts -- the District of Columbia, Northern Virginia, Brooklyn and Manhattan -- to present by Oct. 1 their recommendations on how to proceed, and sought input from military prosecutors who had sole control over the cases for years. . . . He consulted with intelligence experts within the Justice Department, the national security division and the solicitor general's office. He kept in continual phone contact with Jeh Johnson, the general counsel of the Defense Department, and deputy Bill Lynn, the Pentagon's point man on detainees. . . . He twice listened to presentations by the top prosecutors in Alexandria and Manhattan, who appeared side by side in the secret command center in the department headquarters and lobbied him to send the era's biggest terrorism case to their office.

He sought and got the nod as well from New York’s Governor Paterson, Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Senator Schumer, the U.S. Marshalls Service, and Lindsey “Cap and Trade” Graham. And unlike Mr. Obama, whose stuttering impotence on Afghanistan and appeasement of dictatorships on every continent is so worryingly evocative of the dark days of the Carter presidency, the attorney general was able to pull the trigger: “The decision on trials coalesced in Holder's mind Wednesday, at a White House principal's meeting attended by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and other top administration officials. But not until Thursday did Holder send a message to the president, then en route to Tokyo, that he had closed the thick briefing book on the cases.”

As for criticism, not a worry: "I'll just have to take my lumps, to the extent those are set in my way," he said.

But I think if people will, in a neutral and detached way, look at the decision that I have made today, understand the reasons why I made those decisions, and try to do something that's rare in Washington--leave the politics out of it and focus on what's in the best interest of this country--I think the criticism will be relatively muted.

And there you have it. The dispassion, the self-reverence, the blindness of the man, are marvelous to behold, and so perfectly reflect the president he so perfectly serves. “Neutral and detached” people shall “understand the reasons why” he made those decisions, shall see he has left “the politics out of it,” and shall recognize what’s right--something the rest of us, benighted and bellicose souls that we are, have never managed to do with respect to the disposition of those committing mass murders of Americans in their ongoing war against our civilization.

Attorney General Eric Holder said yesterday that the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal court in New York will be "truly the trial of the century."

It's unbelievable that the attorney general would use that phrase in the course of justifying his decision.

As Wikipedia helpfully explains:

Trial of the century is an idiomatic phrase used to describe certain well-known court cases, especially of the twentieth century....The Washington Post observed in 1999 on the eve of the closing century: "Calling court cases "the trial of the century" is a traditional bit of American hyperbole, like calling a circus "The Greatest Show on Earth." Nearly every juicy tabloid trial in our history was called the "trial of the century" by somebody. "Every time I turn around, there's a new trial of the century," says defense attorney F. Lee Bailey. "It's a kind of hype," he says. "It's a way of saying, 'This is really fabulous. It's really sensational.' But it doesn't really mean anything.""

Leave aside all the practical problems with trying KSM and his henchmen in a civilian court. Doesn't Eric Holder realize he's inviting a circus-like "juicy tabloid trial" for men who have the blood of thousands of Americans on their hands? Does he really think such a trial will contribute to "fairness and justice," as he claims? Does he think military tribunals aren't fair and just? And did it never occur to him to ask whether giving the terrorists the chance to create a tabloid spectacle is an appropriate way to honor our dead and those who continue to fight the jihadists?

I'm very doubtful a "trial of the century" will serve the cause of fairness and justice. I'm certain it won't help the cause of victory.

In his speech Saturday at Tokyo's Suntory Hall, Barack Obama called himself “America's first Pacific President.”

His basis for that claim seems to be that he was born in Hawaii, lived in Indonesia as a boy, and, “when I was a young boy, my mother brought me to Kamakura, where I looked up at that centuries-old symbol of peace and tranquility -- the great bronze Amida Buddha. And as a child, I was more focused on the matcha ice cream....I have never forgotten the warmth and the hospitality that the Japanese people showed a young American far from home.”

Perhaps that memory led to Obama’s extraordinary deep bow in reaction to “the extraordinary honor of the meeting with Their Imperial Majesties, the Emperor and Empress, on the 20th anniversary of his ascension to the Chrysanthemum Throne.” I must say, when I was Dan Quayle’s chief of staff, and we met the newly-ascended emperor on a trip to Japan, it didn’t occur to any of us in the official party--all of whom were, I think, perfectly polite--to bow.

In any case, Obama claims that his youthful encounters with Asia make him “America’s first Pacific President.” What of William Howard Taft, who served his nation from 1901 to 1903 as the first civilian Governor-General of the Philippines, with great dedication and considerable success? And what of John F. Kennedy and George H. W. Bush, who, four decades later, served their country in the Pacific Theater with great distinction. Don’t they qualify--more than Barack Obama--as “Pacific Presidents?”

But then again, none of them bowed to emperors.

The gaffe-prone Democratic congressman Jim Moran calls those opposed to federal trials for the 9/11 terrorists "un-American":

Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) has strong words for the Republicans opposing Attorney General Eric Holder's plan to bring five 9/11 suspects to New York City to face trial.

"They see this as an opportunity to demagogue," he said. "They will seize on any opportunity to do that, and that means they'll even take a stand that's un-American."

"It's un-American to hold anyone indefinitely without trial," Moran added. "It's against our principles as a nation."

Doesn't Moran realize the alternative is a military trial--or that Obama is going to hold others without trial?

No one really knows what's inside Sarah Palin's Going Rogue, which hits stores Tuesday. The AP has obtained a copy, and published this story, which suggests that the book is a gauzy, campaign-heavy memoir that "follows Palin from childhood to her departure last summer as Alaska governor" -- and not much else. Palin, we are told, has a lot of folksy gossip to share in her book, but little to say of substance.

John Ziegler, the director of Media Malpractice who has also read the book, was the first to say that the AP report is inaccurate:

[T]he book that the AP supposedly read sounds like it is full of self-serving whining and almost totally lacking in substance. That is not a remotely accurate evaluation of Going Rogue.

First of all, there are far more interesting and important revelations in the book (I have noticed in my own experience with my film “Media Malpractice” that one of the most insidious forms of media bias against conservative projects is to paint them as boring) that the AP has for some reason chosen to totally ignore.

Second of all, Palin’s analysis of what really happened with the now infamous (and totally misunderstood) Couric and Gibson interviews could not be LESS whiny — it is instead full of fact-filled writing that finally provides the full story of what really happened in the way that only a book can do (my documentary, which I am told Palin handed to her collaborator and said “here, this is what happened” could only provide a foundation of understanding that is magnified in much greater detail in Going Rogue).

Today, Palin herself weighed in with this message: "The AP and a number of subsequent media outlets are erroneously reporting the contents of the book. Keep your powder dry, read the book, and enjoy it!"

So, who are we to believe? Palin and her defenders, or the AP? Well, a report out tonight says that Palin's book includes criticism of bailouts, the Obama economic program, the Obama climate-change agenda, and the stimulus. Sounds pretty substantive to me.

Which Palin defender published these snippets in order to combat the media portrayal of Going Rogue as shallow? Why, it was the AP -- in the course of a ridiculous "Fact Check" of Palin's book. (Among the "facts" in this piece: "Few politicians own up to wanting a high office for the power and prestige of it, and in this respect, Palin fits the conventional mold.")

We'll have to wait until Tuesday to see the actual contents of the book. But, by the AP's own biased reporting, it seems that it will be filled with policy indeed.

(SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION ALERT: While waiting for Going Rogue, check out The Persecution of Sarah Palin!)

This AP story explains how a federal civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four associates poses legal and political risks for Barack Obama:

“Hauling the professed 9/11 mastermind and four alleged henchmen to a New York courthouse is a risky proposition for President Barack Obama. The move will bar evidence obtained under duress and complicate a case where anything short of slamdunk convictions will empower the president's critics.... The case is likely to force the civilian federal court to confront a host of difficult issues, including rough treatment of detainees, sensitive intelligence gathering and the potential spectacle of defiant terrorists disrupting proceedings....

“[Attorney General Eric] Holder insisted the case is on firm legal footing, but he acknowledged the political ground may be more shaky when it comes to bringing feared al-Qaida terrorists to U.S. soil. ‘To the extent that there are political consequences, I'll just have to take my lumps,"’he said. But any political consequences will reach beyond Holder to his boss, Obama.”

But, the AP fails to note, the political consequences will also extend to 54 Senate Democrats who voted recently against legislation to bar such civil trials--and to Democrats in the House who will be put on the spot as well. Congress could insist on military tribunals, and indeed in the past it has provided for such tribunals. I imagine Republicans on the Hill will try to move to overrule Holder, with legislation in the Senate, and with legislation and perhaps a discharge petition in the House. Holder can take his lumps for his reckless ideological decision if he wishes. Will congressional Democrats follow him off the cliff?

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is willing to. He’s quoted by AP as saying that "by trying them in our federal courts, we demonstrate to the world that the most powerful nation on earth also trusts its judicial system—a system respected around the world.” Do non-Vermont and non-left-wing Democrats really think we need what is likely to be a disgusting and dangerous spectacle in order to demonstrate something “to the world?”

I suspect some Democrats might find more to agree with in the comments of President Bush's last attorney general, Michael Mukasey, a former New York federal judge who presided over the blind Sheikh case. Mukasey objects that federal courts are not well suited to this task, and that trial in open court "creates a cornucopia of intelligence for those still at large and a circus for those being tried.”

The AP story claims that “family members of Sept. 11 victims were also divided.” I don’t believe that. A few family members could be found today to say they didn’t care about the venue as long as justice is done. That’s certainly understandable. But when it becomes clear how much of a circus the administration may well be creating in the name of trying the killers of their loved ones, in order to make the world happy, I think very few family members will remain who can be provided to reporters to give cover to the administration.

President Obama and Attorney General Holder have embarked on a path that’s perilous for their party. We’ll see how many congressional Democrats choose to follow them.

A friend emails: CAIR is trying to score some cash off of Fort Hood. Classy.

Urgent Action: Help CAIR Defend Your Community in Times of Crisis

Dear XXX,

As-salaamu alaykum(Peace be with you),

When a crisis such as the Fort Hood attack and now the government’s move to seize four American mosques occurs, CAIR is there to defend you and the Muslim community.

Within hours of the Fort Hood attack, CAIR, along with other organizations, held a news conference at its Washington, D.C. headquarters and issued a statement of condemnation to thousands of local, national and international media outlets.

Perhaps you saw CAIR spokespeople interviewed on MSNBC's Hardball or on PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, CNN, MSNBC, or the BBC. Or maybe you read CAIR quotes in the Washington Post, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, or USA Today.

CAIR's professional staff has been working non-stop in dealing with these crises.

CAIR provided advice and support for Islamic centers nationwide on how to handle the crisis, including ensuring your safety in case of an anti-Muslim backlash. CAIR soon became the most watched non-profit on You Tube.

Our tone and immediate response is paying off. Major media acknowledged the strong statement that American Muslims issued condemning the Fort Hood attack. On CNN, Anderson Cooper reported that CAIR “reacted to the shooting spree, condemning the attack in the strongest terms possible.” ON MSNBC’s Hardball, Chris Matthews noted that CAIR was “quick to condemn the massacre.”

But our efforts are not without associated expenses. Sending just one statement about the Muslim community's stance against violence and extremism can cost thousands of dollars in staff time and distribution costs.

There’s no way for me to soften this: We need financial help to meet these crises and push back against those who seek to score political points off the Muslim community in the wake of the Fort Hood tragedy.

Please consider giving $5,000, $2,500, $1,000, $500, $250, $100, $50 or whatever you can.

If you donated in the past, please consider doubling that donation.

All contributions are zakat-eligible and tax-deductible.

Thank you for your support and may Allah bless you. We will continue to monitor the situation to prevent backlash against our community.

Nihad Awad

CAIR National Executive Director

P.S. Responding effectively to this crisis is pushing CAIR’s resources to the limit. Please donate right now. Then send this appeal to your friends and family, and post to Facebook, Twitter, and other Internet sites.

Just two weeks after taking office, the new German defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg began a surprise visit to Afghanistan yesterday to meet with the country’s top leadership -– including President Karzai -– in an effort to gauge the situation on the ground and to express Berlin’s growing frustration and impatience with the Afghan government’s reluctance to fight corruption and promote good governance. Zu Guttenberg’s polite but unmistakable message to Karzai was very clear: Get serious about cleaning up your government or risk loosing the West’s political, military, and economic support for the Afghan regime.

With about 4,400 deployed Bundeswehr soldiers, Germany is NATO’s third largest ISAF troop contributor after the United States and the UK. Specifically, the German defense minister said that Berlin expects “tangible signs of progress” by the time a planned high-level conference on Afghanistan involving Kabul, NATO and the UN is convened, most likely in early 2010. While Berlin remains committed to the Afghanistan mission -– the Bundestag is set to renew the current ISAF mandate in mid-December for three months pending the outcome -– Germany’s military engagement is not open-ended and the country’s leaders are talking more and more about potential “exit strategies”.

Via Philip Klein:

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who as a judge presided over a trial stemming from the first attack on the World Trade Center, on Friday warned that the Obama administration's decision to bring Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to New York, along with three other terrorist detainees, to stand trial in a civilian court, reflected a pre-9/11 mindset that viewed terrorism as a simple criminal matter.

Speaking at the Federalist Society's National Lawyers Convention, Mukasey described the move, as “a decision I consider not only unwise, but based on a refusal to face the fact that what we are involved with here is a war with people who follow a religiously-based ideology that calls on them to kill us, and to return instead to the mindset that prevailed before Sept. 11 that acts like the first World Trade Center bombing, the attacks on our embassies in Africa and other such acts can and should be treated as conventional crimes and tried in conventional courts.”

More Mukasey remarks are at the link, until I find a transcript.

From Aussie Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, an alumnus of the vaunted Petraeus 'brain-trust' that beat the Iraqi insurgency, comes a biting commentary on dithering.

David Kilcullen, one of the world's leading authorities on counter-insurgency and an adviser to the British government as well as the U.S. State Department, said Obama's delay in reaching a decision over extra troops had been "messy". He said it not only worried U.S. allies but created uncertainty the Taliban could exploit.

Speaking in an interview with the Guardian, he compared the president to someone "pontificating" over whether to send enough firefighters into a burning building to put a fire out... Kilcullen expressed concern that Obama might deny McChrystal the 40,000 extra troops and split the difference between the four options, the kind of fudge common in domestic politics.

"Time is running out for us to make a decision. We can either put in enough troops to control the environment or we can credibly communicate our intention to leave. Either could work. Splitting the difference is not the way to go," Kilcullen said.

"It feels to me that all these options are dangerously close to the middle ground and we have to consider whether the middle ground is a good place to be. The middle ground is a good place on domestic issues, but not on strategy. You either commit to D-Day and invade the continent or you get Suez. Half-measures end up with Suez. Do it or not do it."

The Suez Crisis, which ended Britain's reign as a global hegemon, transcended a political-military loss. "Suez," said a former colonial governor of Aden, "is where the British people lost confidence in their ability to deal with situations." The proud British optimism of Pax Britannica faded away after two world wars, and disappeared completely after Suez. Afghanistan similarly tests America's special role in the world. Beating back the Taliban isn't simply a matter of winning or losing. Our reputation and role as a continued global hegemon --in a time when the world is sliding back into a multi-polarity where democracies could be the minority-- is also at stake.

Kilcullen is right: either do it or don't do it. Unfortunately, Obama doesn't believe in America's unique place in the global equation. Afghanistan could be our greatest defeat, or our finest hour. Here's hoping President Obama "does it."

This coming from the Commander, United States Strategic Command, who knows a thing or two about nuclear deterrence.

A U.S. missile defense system that is too robust could actually backfire and become destabilizing, prompting countries like China to expand their nuclear arsenals, a U.S. general said on Tuesday.

Air Force General Kevin Chilton, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, did not question the current system, which was revised by President Barack Obama and the Pentagon in September. But he explained that careful calculations would be needed when boosting U.S. defenses in the future to guard against threats from countries like North Korea.

"We have to be cautious with missile defense. Missile defense can be destabilizing depending on how you array it," Chilton told a defense gathering in Washington. He outlined a scenario that he said "I don't think any of us want to see" in which hundreds of interceptors were deployed along the Western side of the United States.

"That kind of makes you feel more secure, doesn't it? But what would it make the Chinese think about their deterrent?" Chilton asked.

It's a fair point. Chinese nuclear forces are pragmatically arrayed in a defensive posture -- they have the numbers and the technology to knock out our major cities, but aren't accurate enough for a counterforce strike on our strategic bases and assets (in particular our geographically dispersed missile fields). So the US-China strategic posture is deterrence in its simplest, most pristine state. We should be careful not to upset that balance.

On the other hand, either Reuters or the Pentagon might be a bit confused as to which coast is actually threatened by North Korea and which is threatened by Iran:

...the Pentagon has assured that the 30 ground-based interceptor missiles to be deployed in Alaska and California by the end of 2010 will provide the United States with full protection against an Iranian ICBM.

So could our west coast interceptors defend against the same threats as the canceled Poland-based missiles? An intercept of an Iranian ICBM from the West Coast is technically possible, but not optimal. There's a reason we wanted these things in Poland. Justifying pulling missile defense from Europe because your Pacific interceptor force could technically -and we're talking long shot here- knock out an Iranian ICBM doesn't add up. That doesn't provide the redundancy needed for aggressive boost/mid-course/terminal missile defense -- nor does it address what our Eastern European allies really wanted -- a bolstered defensive agreement with the United States in order to keep the Russian bear off their doorstep.

The same applies for the canceled ground-interceptors in Poland, in their potential (again, long shot) to somehow contribute to missile defense redundancy on our West Coast. The idea that pulling European missile defense had something to do with the strategic balance of power in the Pacific is ludicrous. Chilton is correct in his assessment that we need to treat our deterrence equation with China carefully -- however let's not kid ourselves into think that placating Beijing had anything do with placating Russia. Those are two completely different issues and need to be treated as such.

My, if I didn't know better, I'd think it's 2008 all over again.

This morning, Dylan Ratigan of MSNBC brought us this great moment in journalism, using a well-known Photoshopped picture of Sarah Palin (used repeatedly in the original '08 systematic smear of Palin) in a bikini in his raunchy segment on why "Palin drives America wild."

Among other sexist, marginalizing hilarious reasons Ratigan came up with for why she drives us wild:

#9? “She’s hot!” #6? Ratigan calls her the “ultimate capitalist” because “she’ll sell anything to anybody for any reason.”

Sean Hannity recently apologized for a mistake in B-roll on his show that substituted the gigantic crowds of the 9/12 rally for the smaller (but still large) crowds at Michele Bachmann's rally against the Pelosi health-care bill.

I wonder when the noted "real" news organization MSNBC will make similar, professional amends for its blatant mistake.

Earlier this week, John Limbert, who was held hostage at the American Embassy in Tehran 30 years ago, began his job at the State Department as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iran. Limbert also served on the advisory board of the National Iranian American Council, which the Washington Times reports today is almost certainly in violation of federal lobbying regulations and whose chief, Trita Parsi, seems to be working as an unregistered foreign agent, arranging meetings for Iranian officials with members of Congress and others. Among the emails obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD is a thank you note from Limbert to Parsi, who was kind enough to arrange a meeting between Limbert and the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif, in early 2007. On February 26, 2007, Limbert emailed:

Trita,

I wanted to thank you for arranging the meeting with Ambassador Zarif. We had a very profitable session during my recent trip to New York.

Thanks again for all your help.

Regards.

When Limbert met with Zarif, he was just a private citizen, who for some unknown reason wanted to meet with the ambassador of a country that held him hostage for 444 days. Of course, Zarif is also in the news today for his illegal activities related to the Alavi Foundation, an Iranian front group that was managing more than $500 million in assets now seized by the US government. The rental income from these properties was being funneled back to an Iranian bank that the US Treasury Department says is providing support to Iran's nuclear program.

So just to be clear: Ambassador Zarif is not a good guy and he's not on our team. He's on Team Iran, he is complicit in the policies of that regime, and he does not hesitate to break the laws of this country even as he resides here under the auspices of the United Nations.

In a statement blasting Lake's Washington Times story, NIAC points to Limbert's history as a hostage and his role on the NIAC advisory board and asks "Why would Ambassador John Limbert, a former hostage imprisoned for 444 days by the government in Iran, join the advisory board of an organization that supposedly represents the interests of the very same government that imprisoned him? This claim is illogical at best and ludicrous at worst."

So why would Limbert want to meet with Zarif? It's certainly something most people would find odd -- why would a former hostage want to enjoy the company of the representative of the regime that took him hostage? The meeting was "profitable"? So if Limbert was happy to associate with Zarif, who today also happens to be at the center of "one of the biggest counterterrorism seizures in US history" per the AP, maybe it's not so illogical that he would join the advisory board of an organization that "supposedly" represents the interests of the very same government that imprisoned him? Who knows, maybe Limbert's got Stockholm syndrome.

Of course, I'm sure Parsi's defenders will not be troubled in the least by the fact that he is so close to an Iranian official, Zarif, who is brazenly violating U.S. law in a scheme to funnel money to the Iranian nuclear program. Nothing unusual or shady about that -- who doesn't have friends overseeing illegal real estate empires that are used to fund the nuclear programs of hostile, authoritarian regimes?

As we noted here a week ago, the French are planning a major arms deal with Kremlin. Gary Schmitt delves deeper today with a piece for THE WEEKLY STANDARD website. Schmitt writes:

In little over a week, a modern French warship is scheduled to visit St. Petersburg. If the Russians like what they see, and a deal can be reached, the French government has signaled that it is willing to sell Moscow a ship of its own. Should the sale go through, it will be the first ever arms sale of its kind to Russia from a NATO member. It will also be a remarkable bit of appeasement by an allied president, Nicolas Sarkozy, whose signature is on the cease-fire agreement between Russia and Georgia from the August 2008 war--the terms of which Moscow has been violating ever since.

The vessel, a French Mistral, is a new class of carrier that can carry more than a dozen attack and landing helicopters, landing craft, nearly a thousand troops, and dozens of tanks and other land vehicles. Mistrals, in short, are major amphibious assault ships, equal in capability to virtually any vessel in its class globally. The Russians have said that the ship will be used in peacekeeping and anti-piracy operations. But, of course, "peacekeeping" in Moscow's dictionary is not always so peaceful. As Russia's Navy chief, Admiral Vladimir Vysotskiy, rather pointedly noted about the possible sale: "In the conflict [with Georgia] in August last year, a ship like that would have allowed [our] Black Sea Fleet to accomplish its mission in 40 minutes, not the 26 hours it took us [to move our troops ashore]."

Read the whole thing here, but there is one angle Schmitt doesn't address that may become a major story in the weeks and months ahead. At the same time as the French are courting Ivan, they're also trying to make it with Uncle Sam. The contract to provide the United States Air Force with a new fleet of air-to-air refueling tankers pits Northrop Grumman and its French partners at Airbus against all-American but occasionally corrupt Boeing.

This tanker contract has been up in the air for nearly a decade as one scandal and screw-up after another has conspired to prevent the Pentagon from procuring this badly needed equipment. One of the most controversial issues in this process has been the French participation in the Northrop bid. The Democratic members of Congress who represent the states where Boeing employs thousands of voters are not pleased about the prospect of U.S. defense dollars going to support jobs in Toulouse, France.

Now the French not only want to sell their planes to the United States, they want to sell their amphibious assault ships to the Russians at the same time. But that isn't going to work. If the French go through with this deal with the Russians, I suspect the Pentagon, under tremendous pressure from Congress, will find some very serious problem with the French/Northrop bid for the KC-X tanker.

Aaron Sorkin--who brought us the reliably Democratic The American President, The West Wing, and Charlie Wilson's War -- has spent the last couple years working on adapting odd-ball non-fiction to the silver screen: He wrote the Facebook movie and the screenplay for a film based on Moneyball. But instead of moving on to projects about Twitter or The Tipping Point, Variety reports that Sorkin may be returning to his roots, with a movie about the founding of . . . wait for it . . . Greenpeace.

The jokes write themselves. (That said, early West Wing is gold and we all owe Sorkin a debt of gratitude for making Allison Janney and Richard Schiff household names.)

This week, the New York Times ran an in-depth story critical of popular charity Kiva.org. The organization, lauded in a 2007 column by Nicholas Kristof, claimed until recently to let "you lend to a specific entrepreneur, empowering them to lift themselves out of poverty.” Kiva connects Westerners to entrepreneurs in impoverished countries, giving them the means to make big changes in the entrepreneurs' lives with relatively small chunks of money, given as "micro-loans." Kiva purports to connect each Western lender to a specific entrepreneur—Constance, a Ghanan mother of four looking to expand her seamstress business, or Rem Sem, a Cambodian woman who wants to buy land for her farm, for instance.

After an online controversy arose about whether the money given by lenders went to specific entrepreneurs, as advertised, the New York Times went into investigation mode on this charity and one other.

Lenders like Mr. Kristof were not making direct loans. Borrowers like Ms. Cruz already have loans from microfinance institutions by the time their pictures are posted on Kiva’s Web site.

Thus, the direct person-to-person connection Kiva offered was in fact an illusion...

Kiva is not the only site with transparency problems. GlobalGiving, whose Web site allows donors to choose among various projects to support, has raised money for philanthropic projects of three or four profit-making companies, according to Dennis Whittle, its co-founder and chief executive. It did not, however, tell donors that their money would support a company’s philanthropic projects rather than one proposed by a nonprofit.

For instance, it raised $975 for SunNight Solar Enterprises, a small start-up that develops solar-powered consumer products, so it could distribute 500 free solar-powered lights to refugees in camps. After The New York Times raised questions about the issue, Mr. Whittle said in a blog post on The Huffington Post that GlobalGiving was considering whether to tell potential donors when it was raising money for a business rather than a nonprofit.

These are fair points. The transparency and accountability of non-profit organizations and charities is important both for the charities, to maintain confidence of potential donors, and for their missions, which are ill-served by opacity. Even though the money of lenders went to help poor entrepreneurs—there is no dispute about that—the Times thinks it's important for the charity to be honest about the fact that it didn't go to poor entrepreneurs in exactly the way advertised. The newspaper understands that money is fungible, and a promise that it will be spent in one way does not mean that those specific dollars will be spent on the specific promise.

That, as it happens, is the exact argument conservatives and pro-life activists have been making about money for abortions in the health-care bill. Despite legislative language that says federal money will not be used for abortions, it's almost impossible to ensure that without the stricter language of a Stupak amendment. As my colleague John McCormack wrote:

Congress isn't requiring the public option to cover abortion--merely allowing it. And through some nifty bookkeeping, abortions will supposedly be paid for out of private funds rather than tax dollars.

Because money is fungible, it's difficult to say that tax dollars wouldn't fund abortions through this plan. Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee says, "Federal subsidies would also flow to private plans that cover elective abortions, under meaningless bookkeeping schemes -- and the amendment actually creates a federal mandate that there must be at least one private abortion plan in each premium rating areas of the health insurance exchange." Say that an individual contributes $1,000 annually to purchase a health-care plan, and the government contributes $5,000. The federal subsidies are not supposed to pay directly for abortions services, but the taxpayer-subsidized plan would allow a person to purchase an abortion for, say, $50 rather than $500.

"The status quo is that nobody has federally subsidized health care that includes abortion," says Johnson. That is true not only for Medicaid recipients, but federal employees as well.

But because the New York Times sees "anti-abortion" activists as paranoiacs, and the federal government as far more benevolent a force than even a charity like Kiva, it does not have the same requirements for transparency and accountability in the spending of federal tax dollars on health care. From the New York Times editorial on the Stupak amendment, which the Times deemed unnecessary:

The bill brought to the floor already included a careful compromise that should have satisfied reasonable legislators on both sides of the abortion issue. The vast majority of people expected to buy policies on the new exchanges would pay part of the premium and receive government tax credits to pay for the rest. The compromise would have prohibited the use of the tax subsidies to pay for almost all abortions, but it would have allowed the segregation and use of premium contributions and co-payments to pay for such coverage.

You see? Promise made! Different monies for different things. You'd have to be absolutely unhinged to think things could go differently than promised.

It's nice that the Times reported on the discrepancy between how Kiva spent its fungible donations and the promises it made about how to spend it. Though the lack of transparency resulted in nothing very dishonorable, Kiva has now revamped its pitch and become more accountable to donors. Kiva's very existence relies on such honesty, as it must keep its good name in order to lure donors.

A federal health-care program, which will be run by a slew of unaccountable bureaucrats and funded by forcibly acquired tax dollars, does not have nearly the natural mechanisms for accountability that Kiva has. And, the federal government's potential broken promises and lack of transparency in spending tax money, particularly on abortions, would be far more widespread and less benign than any transgressions Kiva could manage.

If only the New York Times could be as skeptical of a $2 trillion behemoth of a health-care plan run by unelected bureaucrats armed with the power to forcibly extract funds from taxpayers and jail them when they don't comply, as it is of an organization that enables $25 loans to Afghani bakers and single moms in the Dominican Republic. Aren't you glad they're your watchdogs?

Matthew Continetti writes in the Wall Street Journal today Sarah Palin's political career could make a comeback. How would she do it?

She'd need to return to her 2006 playbook.

In Alaska, Ms. Palin didn't run as a culture warrior. She focused on issues with overwhelming public support: ethics reform, a revised oil tax, and more competition and transparency in the effort to build a natural gas pipeline. She took the conservative vote for granted and focused on winning independents and even some Democrats.

Read the whole thing and, if you haven't already done so, check out his cover story, "The Palin Persuasion," in this week's issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

And, of course, please consider buying a copy of The Persecution of Sarah Palin.

Continetti discussed the book during his appearance on Sean Hannity's show last night:

From the office of Senator Joe Lieberman:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) today strongly differed with Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to prosecute the individuals charged with committing the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in civilian courts in the United States.

Senator Lieberman said, “The terrorists who planned, participated in, and aided the September 11, 2001 attacks are war criminals, not common criminals. Not only are these individuals not common criminals but war criminals, they are also not American citizens entitled to all the constitutional rights American citizens have in our federal courts. The individuals accused of committing these heinous, cowardly acts of intentionally targeting unsuspecting, defenseless civilians should therefore be tried by military commission rather than in civilian courts in the United States.”

Senator Lieberman continued, “The military commission system recently signed into law by the President as part of the National Defense Authorization Act provides standards of due process and fairness that fully comply with the requirements established by the Supreme Court and the Geneva Conventions. Earlier this year, when passing the National Defense Authorization Act, the Senate also passed language expressing its clear intent that military commissions rather than civilian courts in the U.S. are the appropriate forum for the trial of these alleged terrorists. I share the views of more than 140 family members of the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks who recently wrote to the Senate urging that the individuals charged with responsibility for those attacks should be tried by military commission rather than in civilian courts in the United States: It is inconceivable that we would bring these alleged terrorists back to New York for trial, to the scene of the carnage they created eight years ago, and give them a platform to mock the suffering of their victims and the victims’ families, and rally their followers to continue waging jihad against America.”

Senator Lieberman urged the Administration to reconsider its decision and to try those charged with responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks using the military commission system that was created by Congress and recently signed into law by the President for that very purpose.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) recently returned from a three day trip to Honduras where, according to her, human rights abuses are running rampant under the “coup regime” of interim president Michelletti.

This list of human rights abuses that Rep. Schakowsky related during a 30 minute conference call Thursday afternoon includes: 21 political assassinations, 3,000 illegal detentions, and the repression of the press. But the congresswoman didn’t stop there: according to Schakowsky, the ousted president Zelaya himself has suffered violations of his human rights. “I met with Zelaya who himself was the victim of severe human rights abuses including being kidnapped [and] prevented from returning” to Honduras.

In fact, though Schakowsky held a conference under the guise of human rights abuses, she seemed more interested in defending the record of the deposed former president. It was “big business” that ousted Zelaya, she said. The business interests of Honduras feared Zelaya’s populist economic measures, which included increasing the minimum wage. Could they, she was asked, have been motivated by Zelaya’s desire to extend his term in office in violation of the country's constitution? “I think that the argument that it was his [Zelaya’s] intention to extend his own term of office is not the case…I haven’t seen any evidence for that.” What she has seen evidence for is an illegal coup that begat an illegitimate regime that the current U.S. government does not recognize.

And what about the official report, issued by the Library of Congress’ legal experts, that concluded Zelaya's removal from office was constitutional? The congresswoman thinks that the “report is an outlier…the report was mistaken.” To the congresswoman, the solution to Honduras’s human rights abuses and constitutional woes is the restoration of President Zelaya to office prior to the November 29 elections -- or at least before the Israeli mercenaries get to him with their poison gas and radiation.

"The result is a Rube Goldberg scheme of penalties and inducements, creating a system that is ripe for gaming...As the system gets gamed, the costs will be much, much higher than CBO is estimating."

"Obamacare is predicated on the assumption that the federal government has the knowledge, capacity, and will to drive greater efficiency in American health care. Inadvertently, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has become an articulate spokesman for why that assumption is dead wrong."

In a move that can only be described as highly un-Olbermannesque, Sean Hannity admits to some creative editing on his show, and apologizes for it.

Nice sales job: "More Americans now say it is not the federal government's responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage (50%) than say it is (47%). This is a first since Gallup began tracking this question"

You can buy Kennedy's house if you have a spare couple million.

Greg Craig's slow-motion sacrifice to the underside of the bus is finally complete. He'll be replaced by Anita Dunn's husband.

Get your Palin book previews right here.

Krauthammer: Explaining away mass murder

Obama: Troop decision soon. How many times have I read this headline?

White House may drop cap and trade upon finally getting the news that Americans are concerned about jobs and spending, not job-killing federal boondoggles. Still hoping for that health-care bill, though.

According to former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, when 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was apprehended in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in March 2003, his first response to his captors was to sneer "I’ll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer.”

No doubt he thought he had good reason to anticipate that outcome. A committed jihadist enemy of America, KSM had taken active part in plots over the course of more than a decade, and eagerly watched many more, all of which had elicited from the American government little more than criminal investigations and, in rare cases, criminal trials. Prior masterminds--such as the notorious Blind Sheikh--not only did not receive the death penalty (for trying to blow up the World Trade Center), but even were able to communicate from prison with their followers through their American-born attorneys.

So a confident KSM thought he understood us. But he was right no longer. Largely through his own efforts, he and his band had managed to change American opinion and the American approach to fighting terror. He eventually got his lawyer, but not before being questioned and revealing valuable information that Tenet and other officials insist stopped other attacks, aided in the capture of other terrorists, and helped immeasurably in deepening our understanding of the al-Qaeda network.

Since then the KSM story has been almost solely about the methods used to interrogate him. Some loudly insist that it was torture--no question about it!--while others point out the many reasons why that analysis is too simplistic--or simply wrong.

Now the second half of KSM's taunt to his captors is coming true. He is off to New York, where he will have endless opportunities to converse with his many lawyers. They will work hard to ensure that his trial is all about what he "endured" at the hands of the U.S. government, and not at all about what he inflicted on the American people. They will strive to put in the dock George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, George Tenet, John Yoo, the CIA, and the United States government and the American people.

The odds are of course against KSM winning an acquittal, though one never knows. But that is not the point. The point is that our civilian justice system is designed to do specific things, and to try non-citizen enemy combatants who make war on this country and slaughter innocent civilians is not one of them. Now that system will be used for what will likely be a months-long propaganda circus that will make a mockery of our principles and broadcast a message of weakness and pusillanimity to terrorists, their fellow travelers, and intellectual mentors around the world. Even if the U.S. government ends up winning the legal case, we all lose. And the reversion to a federal court trial will, along with other actions of the current administration, conspire to lull the American public into the view that we’re not really at war.

Imagine what the next terrorist, planning the next plot, is thinking as he sits working on the wiring of his bomb (or worse): “If they catch me, I’ll talk to them after I get to New York and see my lawyer.” Except in his case, unlike in KSM’s, it will be true from day one.

Michael Anton is a writer in New York who served in national security positions in the Bush administration.

Debra Burlingame--the sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame, III, pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and my fellow board member of Keep America Safe--emails:

Today Attorney General Eric Holder will announce that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and several of his fellow 9/11 co-conspirators will be brought to New York City and tried in federal court. No doubt the Attorney General will invoke the phrase, "Swift and certain justice." This is a sham. There will be nothing swift and nothing certain about it.

The trial will be a travesty. The prosecutors at the Southern and Eastern Districts fought over these career-making cases like vultures at a kill. But who will be the vulture? In open court, it will be Khalid Shiek Mohammed who will hold forth, mocking his victims, exulting in the suffering of their families, ridiculing the judge, his lawyers and the American justice system, and worst of all, rallying his jihadi brothers to kill more Americans as the men and women of the US military risk their lives in the mountains of Afghanistan and the sands of Iraq. All, just blocks from where 20,000 body parts were dug out of the rubble of the Twin Towers.

Remember KSM's famous opening line when he was grabbed in Rawalpindi? "I'll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer." Thanks to the Obama admnistration, it looks like he’ll get his wish. And he’ll do his best—with the help of this top-drawer lawyers and much of the media—to make the real defendants at the trial the CIA interrogators—and the American government.

How will this help achieve what our president claims he wants to achieve--"restoring respect for America"? Is that what he really wants?

Today the Washington Times prints a blockbuster expose on NIAC, the National Iranian American Council run by Trita Parsi that has long been suspected of acting as an unofficial, and unregistered, lobby for the Iranian regime. These suspicions seem to have been well founded. Here are the facts as reported by Eli Lake in a story that relies on thousands of emails and internal NIAC documents that were obtained by the Washington Times and have been independently reviewed by THE WEEKLY STANDARD:

1. Trita Parsi claims to speak on behalf of Iranian-Americans, but he is not an Iranian-American. Parsi is not a U.S. citizen; he holds passports from Iran and Sweden. Parsi's allies claim his critics have unfairly questioned Parsi's loyalty to this country--or accused Parsi of dual loyalties. If Parsi's loyalties are divided (and it's not clear that they are), then they are divided between Sweden and Iran.

2. In fact, the evidence suggests that Parsi's loyalties are not divided at all but lie entirely with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Times reports that Parsi set up a group similar to NIAC in Sweden in 1997. The group's stated goal was to "safeguard Iran’s and Iranian interests." That organization did not understand democratic reform as a core Iranian interest but rather sought to bolster the current regime by "the removal of U.S. economic and political sanctions against Iran, and the commencement of an Iran-U.S. dialogue."

3. Parsi is not registered as a foreign agent, but he seems to have engaged in the very activities regulated by the Foreign Agents Registration Act. In particular, Parsi arranged meetings between members of Congress and senior Iranian officials, including the regime's ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif. Lake quotes former FBI deputy director Buck Revell, who says that "arranging meetings between members of Congress and Iran's ambassador to the United Nations would in my opinion require that person or entity to register as an agent of a foreign power; in this case it would be Iran."

4. Parsi, an Iranian citizen who aims to "safeguard Iranian interests" and who arranges meetings on behalf of Iranian officials, has consistently opposed any U.S. sanctions on Iran and more recently has advocated for U.S. acquiescence to Iran's enrichment of uranium. These are the same positions advocated by the regime in Tehran.

5. The unofficial European spokesman for Iran's Green Movement, which has been ruthlessly suppressed by the regime in Tehran, tells Lake that, "Trita Parsi does not belong to the Green Movement. I feel his lobbying has secretly been more for the Islamic Republic."

6. NIAC's own policy director, Patrick Disney, implicates Parsi in illegal activity in an email printed by the Washington Times. Disney writes that "Under this expansive view of 'lobbying,' I find it hard to believe Emily [Blout] and I devote less than 20 percent of our time to lobbying activity. I believe we fall under this definition of 'lobbyist.'"

These are the facts as reported by the Washington Times, but the emails also reveal financial ties between Parsi and an Iranian company with close ties to the regime. The emails suggest that Parsi's use of funds from the National Endowment for Democracy deserve close scrutiny, that he worked to dissuade dissidents from speaking out, and that he repeatedly attempted to intimidate the press to prevent these facts from seeing the light of day. But this isn't Iran, and the truth will come out.

Laura Rozen reported yesterday that the Obama administration was set to announce the appointment of a special envoy to monitor and combat global anti-Semitism. Per Rozen, rumor has it that the administration has settled on Hannah Rosenthal -- a Chicago lawyer who has precisely the kind of views that you'd expect of an Obama administration anti-Semitism czar.

Ed Lasky does a little Googling and discovers that Rosenthal has been criticized by ADL chief Abe Foxman, who was compelled to write an open letter to Rosenthal after she attacked the speakers an Israel Solidarity Rally for their "narrow, ultra-conservative views of what it means to be pro-Israel..." Those ultra-conservative views were apparently espoused by Dick Gephardt, Harry Reid, and Natan Sharansky among others who spoke that day. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but it strikes me that an anti-Semitism chief probably shouldn't have said something in the recent past that warranted a rebuke from the ADL.

Rosenthal is also on the advisory council of J Street and J Street PAC (she's not just pro-Israel, she's "pro-Israel, pro-peace") -- so Obama turned to an organization that opposes sanctions on the Holocaust denying regime in Iran and refuses to condemn the Goldstone report for his anti-Semitism czar.

Rozen links to a few statements from Rosenthal's past and declares that "She has a track record of involvement in countering anti-Semitism in the international context." One of the reports that Rozen links to includes this quote from Rosenthal:

Then there was the dramatic rise in attacks on European Jews and their institutions as Israeli-Palestinian violence intensified. This followed a wave of anti-Semitic attacks in Europe after the Palestinian intifada erupted in September 2000...

"I'll tell you point-blank: I have two grown daughters, and I didn't think that my kids were going to have to deal with some of the same anti-Semitism that I did as the daughter of Holocaust survivors," Rosenthal said. "It's a scary time, with people losing the ability to differentiate between a Jew, any Jew, and what's going on in Israel."

Parse that quote and it's pretty clear what Rosenthal is saying -- the Israelis have it coming, but the rest of the world needs to distinguish between the good progressive Jews who are not living on Palestinian land and the Israeli Jews who are committing daily atrocities in the name of colonialism and occupation. Indeed, the story goes on,

Some European pundits on the left and right brushed off charges of latent anti-Semitism. They seemed to excuse the violence by blaming it on Diaspora Jews' presumed support for Israeli actions against the Palestinians.

To some observers, however, that smacked of an age-old canard: that Jews themselves are the cause of anti-Semitism.

Some European pundits? That's exactly what Rosenthal did in the preceding paragraph. It is Rosenthal that tries to disabuse readers of the notion that Jews outside of Israel support the policies of the Jews living in Israel -- because if they did support those policies, well then they would be the cause of the anti-Semitism they encounter.

There is nothing that this administration could do vis-à-vis Israel and the Jewish community that would surprise me at this point, but appoint an anti-Semitism czar who has been criticized by the ADL, who has been a vocal critic of even left-wing Israeli governments, who sits on the advisory council of a group that is pro-Goldstone and anti-sanctions? Not that it matters all that much -- this could be the most irrelevant post in the entire federal government -- but that only makes the choice even more bizarre. Does this administration still feel it needs to prove its anti-Israel bona fides? Obama bowed to the Saudi King and gave Bibi the cold shoulder, he gave a speech in Cairo but refuses to address the Israeli public, he makes public demands on the Israelis and offers nary a peep of criticism for the Arabs. We get it, they're "even-handed." But this appointment -- like the Freedom Medal for Mary Robinson -- is just gratuitous.

In the Los Angeles Times, Judith Miller and David Samuels grossly distort what Jennifer Rubin wrote about the Fort Hood shooter.

An interview with Bart Stupak: "Why would I compromise now? I won the issue."

Feds move to seizes 4 mosques, NYC skyscraper for funneling money to the Iranian regime.

Conservatives4Palin.com reviews The Persecution of Sarah Palin.

Marco Rubio will deliver keynote speech at CPAC 2010.

A couple clips from her upcoming appearance on Oprah. After you've watched these, you can tune in to see Matt Continetti on Sean Hannity's show tonight, talking about his new Palin book.

In the first, she talks about how she knew the Couric interview was not a good performance:

In the second, she speaks exceedingly charitably about Levi Johnston, who has spent the last six months making a general fool of himself and trashing the entire Palin family in the process.

As President Obama goes wheels up to Asia, it seems a good time to do a pulse check on his China policy.  Today's Washington Post article on the art of labeling the US-China relationship raised questions about whether "strategic reassurance" has really become the authoritative articulation of Obama's China policy.  "Strategic reassurance" -- or, as I like to call it, "strategerea" -- was rolled out as the new intellectual framework for US-China relations in a September 24 speech by Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg.  

After Steinberg floated the concept, the administration said nothing further in public about it for about six weeks, leading to much speculation by various commentators about the true meaning and importance of this new label inside the administration.  This speculation culminated in an item by Josh Rogin at the Cable last week reporting that Steinberg had gotten ahead of the rest of the administration by announcing this new policy without getting buy-in from his colleagues at State and beyond.  (The Post article confirms this.)  The rumor that the policy was stillborn gained further steam when, in consecutive remarks last Friday, the NSC's top Asia hand Jeff Bader failed to use the terminology in his pre-trip scene-setter at Brookings, and Steinberg himself gave a wan defense of his creation during remarks at the Center for American Progress.

This week, however, on the eve of his departure for Asia, Obama himself appeared to endorse the concept of strategic reassurance in an interview where he discussed forging a "strategic partnership" with Beijing in terms that seemed drawn from the original Steinberg speech, and according to the South China Morning Post, the Chinese appear to be acting as if they believe the policy remains operative.

Meanwhile, there have been persistent rumors in Washington for several weeks that there are no real deliverables for this trip, and that the Chinese were pretty much refusing to move beyond the status quo on all the important issues.  So, is the "strategic partnership" happy talk a last-ditch effort to get something useful out of this trip?  Possibly.  The Chinese have been trying for over a decade to get successive US administrations to characterize the US-China relationship as a "strategic partnership," and commentators in Asia (6) have seized on this as a major development. But if that is the case, then the Chinese seem to be getting the best part of the deal.  Again from the South China Morning Post:

Beijing wants Obama to make a public statement recognising China's sovereignty over Tibet and promise to refrain from arms sales to Taiwan. Chinese diplomats familiar with the situation say Chinese negotiators are bargaining for an Obama statement on Tibet and Taiwan in exchange for China's commitment to accept the "strategic reassurance" tag, which includes measures to promote transparency of its military and co-operation on non-proliferation and disarmament.

If this comes to pass, Obama will have sold the Tibetans and Taiwanese down the river for nothing more than vague Chinese promises to work on areas where they have been notoriously uncooperative and have little real incentive or inclination to change.  Let's hope that this is just wishful thinking of misinformed Chinese diplomats and sloppy reporting by Hong Kong journalists.

Whatever the case, as Dan Blumenthal and Bob Kagan noted in the Washington Post earlier this week, it has to make our real allies in Asia pretty nervous to see the US government using the same language to describe its relationship with China as it uses to describe its relationship with them.  Let's see...which one of our "vital partners" in Asia conducts its war-games against the United States, threatens to use its large holdings of US public debt as a cudgel, launches regular cyber attacks on our government and private institutions, provides political cover and economic support to problem regimes from Burma to Zimbabwe, and is presently engaged in a massive military build up?  Here's a hint: its not East Timor.

And amid all this happy talk of partnership and cooperation, there are some worrying signs that China's leadership is not so enamored of President Obama on a personal level, or as ready for prime time, as their many boosters would have us believe.  Today, the Chinese Foreign Ministry's spokesman delivered this stunning statement at a pre-trip press conference:

[Chinese foreign ministry] spokesman Qin underscored -- and possibly intensified -- the political temperature of the issue by citing Obama's background and admiration for President Abraham Lincoln, who opposed the secession of the southern states and sought to abolish slavery, which Qin likened to Tibetan society under the Dalai Lama.

"He is a black president, and he understands the slavery abolition movement and Lincoln's major significance for that movement," said Qin. "Lincoln played an incomparable role in protecting the national unity and territorial integrity of the United States."

On the bright side, the Beijing city government did order local vendors to stop selling Obamao t-shirts and tchotchkes that feature Obama dressed as one of Mao's notorious Red Guards during the presidential visit.  So that's something.

To recap, for those of you keeping score at home: 

- The US and China are now strategic partners.  

- We are going to reassure Beijing that we will accommodate their rise as an authoritarian superpower.  In exchange, they are going to give us some information about their massive military build up and the intentions behind it, and make some vague promises to do more on non-proliferation.

- Chinese leaders believe that their repression of Tibetans and Uighurs is the moral equivalent of Lincoln's emancipation of the slaves, and Obama should therefore understand.

Any questions?  Ok, then.  Have a nice trip Mr. President.

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post threw a fit in print yesterday over the "lies" Republicans unleashed on those watching C-SPAN Saturday night as the House worked to pass Pelosi's health-care bill. In the column, she muses with impressive intellectual nuance, "Are Republicans against figuring out what works?" and admits she's only backing Pelosi's 2,000-page regulation of 1/6 of the economy because she didn't like the way Republicans were talking about it. Trust her admittedly fickle judgment on health-care legislation at your own peril.

Her indictment of Republicans, on many points (though not all; Boehner admits a mistake on his statement, for instance), relies on the standard retort to conservative worries about the bill. "The bill language doesn't precisely say any of the stuff you say, and because I'm a liberal and therefore utterly confident in the benevolence and efficiency of the federal government in practice despite all evidence to the contrary, I can't imagine that anything unintended or bad would ever come of the measures put forth in this 2,000 page bill no one understands. You're a liar."

Here's one of the things Republicans "lied" about on Saturday:

Michigan Republican Dave Camp: "Americans could face five years in jail if they don't comply with the bill's demands to buy approved health insurance."

Not true. The bill requires people to obtain insurance or, with some hardship exceptions, pay a fine. No one is being jailed for being uninsured. People who intentionally evade paying the fine could, in theory, be prosecuted -- just like others who cheat on their taxes.

Oh, so you'll face five years in jail for refusing to pay the fine imposed upon you for choosing not to buy insurance. Well, that's totally different. Thanks, Ruth Marcus for clearing that up. I'm sure Nancy Pelosi will back you up on this very important distinction. "No one is being jailed for being uninsured," after all.

Stone: Do you think it’s fair to send people to jail who don’t buy health insurance?

Pelosi: … The legislation is very fair in this respect.

See the whole exchange below. Pelosi doesn't bother making the distinction without a difference that Marcus made for her. Instead, she evades and rambles about how citizens who don't buy insurance (henceforth, criminals and tax-evaders, according to the bill) will be given ample chance and subsidy to buy insurance before they are ultimately put in jail. It amounts to, "Hey, this is good for everyone, and they'd kinda of be asking for it if they didn't buy it." She had a chance to say that's not what she's doing, and she couldn't even muster a smarmy denial.

Much like the illegal immigrant coverage, abortion coverage, and the "death panel" criticisms, all of which have been proven to be distinctly unfabricated concerns during the process of bill wrangling, the idea that the new bill might send folks to jail for not buying health insurance doesn't look that crazy after all.

As Ace suggests, if you don't want to be compared to creepy statists, quit acting like creepy statists.

ABC reports that Ft. Hood terrorist Nidal Hassan had his own business cards made:

United States Army Major Nidal Hasan proclaimed himself a "soldier of Allah" on private business cards he obtained over the Internet and kept in a box at his apartment near Fort Hood, Texas.

A couple of interesting nuggets in the latest Quinnipiac poll out of Connecticut. First off, the numbers show little sign of improving for friend of Angelo and netleft hero Chris Dodd. He loses a hypothetical matchup against both Republicans in the race -- he trails Rob Simmons by 11 and WWE boss Linda McMahon by 2. It's almost like being a darling of the progressive left is harmful to the electoral prospects of Connecticut Democrats.

On the other hand, being an independent seems to be paying dividends for Joe Lieberman. According to Quinnipiac, Connecticut voters approve of Lieberman by a margin of 49 to 44. Lieberman has a 74 percent approval number among Republicans and 52 percent approval among independents. Democrats disapprove of Lieberman by a margin of 62-31 percent -- but hey, you can't please all the people all the time.

On the issue of health care, however, Lieberman seems to be pleasing more Connecticut voters than President Obama. "Voters say 64 - 29 percent that Democrats should not strip Lieberman of his committee chairmanship if he joins Republicans in a filibuster against the Democrats' health care reform," according to Quinnipiac. Moreover, Connecticut voters disapprove of the president's health care reform effort by a margin of 48-45.

Conclusion: Lieberman can filibuster the public option secure in the knowledge that he is representing the people of Connecticut and serving the best interests of the American people, while progressive champion Chris Dodd will need a miracle to hold on to his seat in 2010.

The USS New York was met with appropriate fanfare last week when she was commissioned in New York. Now there's word that her sister ship, the USS Somerset has scheduled her keel-authentication ceremony for December 11 at the Northrop Grumman Avondale yard in Louisiana.

Like the New York, the Somerset is a San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock. And like the New York, she's tied to 9/11. She takes her name from Somerset County, Pennsylvania, where Flight 93 crashed. Flight 93 crashed in a field where old coal-mining equipment had been sitting for years. One of those machines was a Marion 7500 dragline, which was quite near the crashsite. The shipbuilders took the bucket of that dragline, melted it down, and used it to pour the Somerset's bow stem.

When she's commissioned in 2013, the Somerset will be a fine memorial to the heroes of Flight 93--probably the best memorial the federal government can offer.

On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a group called KulturProjekte Berlin set up a virtual wall on which Twitter users could post their thoughts. The project seems to have been overwhelmed by Chinese Twitter users who took the opportunity to protest their lack of freedom. One such message pleaded,

“Mr. Hu Jintao, Please Tear Down this Great Firewall!”

Must reading: A powerful cri de coeur by an Army officer, Major Shawn Keller, about Ft. Hood.

Major Keller is angry, and he’s right to be:

“But as angry as I am at what happened, I'm even angrier that it was allowed to happen. Apparently, there was no shortage of warning signs that this guy identified himself more with Islamic Jihadists than he did with the US Army....There were more than enough red flags raised that at a minimum, should have gotten Hassan kicked out of the Army.

But just like 9-11, those agencies and individuals charged with keeping America and Americans safe, failed to connect the dots that would have saved lives. Jihadist rhetoric espoused by Hassan was categorically dismissed out of submissiveness to the concepts of tolerance and diversity. The Army as an institution has been neutered by decades of political correctness and the leaders in Hassan's chain-of-command failed to act accordingly out of fear of being labeled anti-Muslim and receiving a negative evaluation report. The counter-terrorism agencies knew this guy was communicating with Al-Qaeda and dismissed it as academic research instead of delving deeper into the probability that a terrorist had infiltrated the ranks.

Even four hours after Hassan stood on a desk yelling Allahu Akbar and opened fire, the FBI stated that they were not investigating the attack as an act of terrorism even as there were still reports of other gunmen on the loose. Meanwhile the Army continues to dismiss it as a "tragedy" and an "isolated incident by a lone gunman" while the media has invented the psychological condition of post-traumatic stress disorder by proxy. There is more concern for promoting the appropriate information operation campaign and maintaining the illusion of safety than there is for actually exposing the weaknesses and faults in the system that allowed this to happen....

Hassan's radical ideology grew to the point that he committed mass murder because too many leaders were too afraid to lead out of fear harming their career or the image of the Army. If those leaders don't have the intestinal fortitude, moral conviction or personal courage to do stand up, speak up and protect soldiers, then retire, resign or get out of the way and let somebody else do it for you.”

I’ll make this despairing prediction: Major Keller will get in more trouble for writing this, than anyone in Hasan’s chain of command or elsewhere in the government will get for failing to do their job.

Via Drudge, Syracuse.com reports that Democrat Bill Owens, who was sworn in as a congressman last week, has had his lead reduced from 5,300 to 3,000 votes after recanvassing took place:

Conservative Doug Hoffman conceded the race in the 23rd Congressional District last week after receiving two pieces of grim news for his campaign: He was down 5,335 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted on election night, and he had barely won his stronghold in Oswego County.

As it turns out, neither was true.

But Hoffman’s concession -- based on snafus in Oswego County and elsewhere that left his vote undercounted -- set off a chain of events that echoed all the way to Washington, D.C., and helped secure passage of a historic health care reform bill.

Democratic Rep. Bill Owens was quickly sworn into office on Friday, a day before the rare weekend vote in the House of Representatives. His support sealed his party’s narrow victory on the health care legislation.

Now a recanvassing in the 11-county district shows that Owens’ lead has narrowed to 3,026 votes over Hoffman, 66,698 to 63,672, according to the latest unofficial results from the state Board of Elections.

In Oswego County, where Hoffman was reported to lead by only 500 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted election night, inspectors found Hoffman actually won by 1,748 votes -- 12,748 to 11,000.

The new vote totals mean the race will be decided by absentee ballots, of which about 10,200 were distributed, said John Conklin, communications director for the state Board of Elections. [...]

"I don’t know if we would have conceded on election night," Rob Ryan, Hoffman’s campaign spokesman, said Wednesday while discussing the latest results of the recanvassing. "I’m someone who doesn’t like to look back. But would we have taken longer to make a decision on election night? Probably, if we knew it was only 3,000 votes making the difference."

Ryan, while acknowledging that Hoffman’s chances of pulling off a come-from-behind victory are still remote, said the campaign is looking at its legal options.

Chances that Hoffman could make up the 3,000-vote deficit are very slim, but crazier things have happened.

Things that might have been helpful in January: A jobs summit.

12 reasons unemployment is going to (at least) 12 percent

"California law used to say property was unclaimed if the rightful owner had had no contact with the business for 15 years. But during various state budget crises, the waiting period was reduced to seven years, and then five, and then three. Legislators even tried for one year. Why? Because the state wanted to use that free money."

Fox wins.

Flashback Friedman: Employer-provided health insurance is crazytown.

Ayn Rand goes mainstream.

Obama goes Tim Gunn on his war council, tells them to take it back to the drawing board and "make it work."

Washington Post helps Obama stretch out that Afghanistan decision with no consequences for a bit longer with the "Afghanistan is making him skip meals" story.

The White House is very serious about debt reduction.

Walter Reed in '08: "Is Hasan psychotic?"

No, not Canton, Ohio--quite the opposite actually. But the president is all the rage in China:

The Barack Obama love fest may have waned in the United States since he took office in January, but when the US president arrives in China next week, he will find his popularity is as strong as ever.

Obama, who will visit China from Sunday until Wednesday, is especially well-liked among the youth in the world's most populous nation, who see the US leader as a symbol of the American dream.

In Beijing, where Obama will meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao, the latest fad in the tourist areas is the unlikely "Obamao" T-shirt - Obama dressed in a olive green Mao Zedong suit and red-star cap, Cultural Revolution-style.

"Most Chinese people really like Obama. They think he's nice, funny and he's the first black president," explains the creator of the popular shirt, 39-year-old Liu Mingjie, at his shop near Houhai Lake.

A quick search on Google China for "Obamao" yields nearly five million results - more than the four million entries that pop up for Hu.

Internet users have also created "Comrade Maobama" - a kitsch portrait in muted colours of the US president with a wide forehead and a haircut like that of the founder of the People's Republic.

That would be the pro-abortion extremists:

From the outraged comments of the abortion-rights movement, you'd think that Rep. Bart Stupak's amendment to the House version of the health-care bill would all but overturn Roe v. Wade.

No, it wouldn't. The Michigan Democrat's measure -- passed 240 to 194, with 64 Democrats voting yes -- would prohibit abortion coverage in the public option and bar any federal subsidies for plans that included abortion purchased on the new insurance exchanges.

Stupak argues that the federal government has stayed out of the business of financing abortion since passage of the Hyde Amendment in 1976 and that none of the policies available on the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program covers elective abortion. The structures that reform would create, he says, should carry the same restrictions, which do not apply in cases involving rape or incest or when a mother's life is in danger.

Supporters of abortion rights counter that, at the very least, individuals who pay part of the cost of their policies should be allowed to choose abortion coverage.

Whatever else is true, Stupak's amendment is unlikely to have a significant effect on the availability of abortion. And most abortions are not paid for through health insurance. The Guttmacher Institute, for example, reported that only 13 percent of abortions in 2001 were directly billed by providers to insurance companies...

Okay, Dionne does make some silly statements--credulously calling the Capps amendment a compromise, and writing that the existence of some Democrats who don't want taxpayers to pay for abortions "proved conclusively that [Democrats] are, indeed, a big tent."

I guess that means you are a moderate on guns if you believe people should have the right to own machine guns--but the government shouldn't have to pay for them.

But all in all, Dionne's honest reporting and logical argument are much appreciated.

First, Anwar al Awlaki's web site was taken offline. (Some press accounts suggest that the al Qaeda cleric took it down; others raise the possibility that it was hacked.) Now, Awlaki's Facebook page has been taken down too. Earlier today, we noted that there was a post dated December 14, 2008 from a user named "Hasan." While it could be some other "Hasan," it could also be Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- the Fort Hood Shooter. This possibility is only speculation, however.

The contents of the post had been deleted, so there was no telling what had been written. But we know that Hasan took great interest in Awlaki's lectures, and the post included a reference to Awlaki's lectures in its title. The original post was also written around the time we know that Hasan's emails with Awlaki were first discovered by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials.

Given the fact that Hasan's ties to Awlaki are now under considerable scrutiny, we have to wonder: Was the "Hasan" who posted on Awlaki's Facebook page the one and only Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan? If so, what did he write? Surely U.S. officials have investigated this minor clue, haven't they?

And what caused Awlaki's Facebook page to be taken down now too?

From the AP:

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

That push follows strong reservations about a possible troop buildup expressed by the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, according to a second top administration official. In strongly worded classified cables to Washington, Eikenberry said he had misgivings about sending in new troops while there are still so many questions about the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Obama is still close to announcing his revamped war strategy -- most likely shortly after he returns from a trip to Asia that ends on Nov. 19.

Allahpundit: Bombshell: Walter Reed shrinks thought Hasan might be nuts since last year.

David Ignatius on Iraq and Afghan war veterans: "Standing tall in harm's way."

Stephen F. Hayes from the archives: "The Long Road Back."

Newsflash: Joe Klein is unhinged.

Gallup finds that Republicans have taken a 4-point lead on the generic congressional ballot among registered voters; and a 22-point lead among independents.

As Rich Lowry observes, it's just more bad news for the GOP.

Pew reports voters just want to throw the bums out.

Jonah Goldberg: "If we act as if 'Islam is the problem,' as some say, we will guarantee that Islam will become the problem. But outright denial, like we are seeing today, surely is not the beginning of wisdom either."

Of course, you can bypass the long lines of Palinistas by ordering a copy of Matthew Continetti's book online today!

To whet your appetite for The Persecution of Sarah Palin, check out Shawn Macomber's Q&A with Continetti at The American Spectator and Continetti's cover story, "The Palin Persuasion," in the latest issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

Meanwhile, the elite media attack The Persecution of Sarah Palin book party here at TWS because, like real Americans, we didn't have fancy little waiters serving us our beer and hors d'oeuvres on silver platters. That's right: we had to pick up our ahi tuna with mustard on wonton crackers from a table.

Fight back against the persecution: Order a book today!

The Center for American Progress has released a white paper calling on the administration to establish a new deadline for closing the detention facility at Gitmo now that it's clear the administration has no hope of meeting the original January deadline. The report recommends:

Push back the closure deadline to July 2010. It is extremely unlikely that the administration can meet the one-year timeline without unwanted compromises. Merely allowing the deadline to slip, however, would be a serious mistake. The Obama administration should establish new deadline [sic] and, at the same time, announce a comprehensive plan to get the Guantanamo detainee population down to zero.

So is this an administration trial balloon to prepare the left for the inevitable? Perhaps. There are certainly other indications that the report is meant to take the temperature of the president's liberal base, including a recommendation that all detainees who will not be tried in federal courts be moved to the military prison at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan. Bagram is already being set up as the next battlefield in the left's crusade for terrorist rights -- the administration will now have a chance to capitulate to the ACLU without ever having made the recommendation in the first place.

Still there are obvious problems with this report, not least of which is how ridiculous it would be for this administration to set another deadline after the first deadline became such a deep source of embarrassment for those involved. Go back and read the Washington Post's account of how that first deadline came to pass:

Although the move was approved by all of Obama's senior advisers and, ultimately, the president himself, the deadline came at the suggestion of [White House counsel Greg] Craig, according to two senior government officials involved in the process. Craig declined to comment on internal discussions.

Craig oversaw the drafting of the executive order that set Jan. 22, 2010, as the date by which the prison must be closed.

"It seemed like a bold move at the time, to lay out a time frame that to us seemed sufficient to meet the goal," one senior official said. "In retrospect, it invited a fight with the Hill and left us constantly looking at the clock."

"The entire civil service counseled him not to set a deadline" to close Guantanamo, according to one senior government lawyer.

Craig has since been taken off the Gitmo portfolio -- it seems unlikely that his successor will opt to make the very same mistake that earned Craig his latest "promotion." But it is amusing that the report urges the administration to also release a plan this time in tandem with the announcement of a deadline. So CAP is suggesting that maybe it wasn't such a great idea for Obama to offer a bold pronouncement on the fate of Guantanamo, and to take credit for closing it, before studying the issue and examining the alternatives?

Via Michelle Malkin, a reminder that, in addition to killing 13 people and wounding 30 at Fort Hood last week, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan also murdered soldier Francheska Velez's baby. Velez's cousin told the Washington Post that Private Velez "was supposed to be coming very, very soon. Everyone’s devastated. Everyone’s at a loss for words. She was very young. She wasn't supposed to die the way she died.”

Under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, Hasan is "guilty of a separate offense" for causing "the death of, or bodily injury (as defined in section 1365) to, a child, who is in utero at the time the conduct takes place."

Will the Obama administration prosecute?

When I attended Michele Bachmann's impromptu rally against Pelosi's health-care bill last week, I met a lot of just-plain-good folks. Media accounts ignored them in favor of a sprinkling of offensive signs, although the Huffington Post wasn't able to muster even 12 offensive signs from the rally of more than 10K. At times, coverage suggested the animating emotion of every attendee was "hatred." Irresponsible commentators multiplied offensive signs to fit their narrative—in Paul Krugman's hands, one documented Holocaust sign at the rally became "large signs showing piles of bodies."

If one cared to be fair to the attendees, however, it was easy to find a stream of kind, determined, involved, ordinary Americans. And, occasionally, a truly extraordinary one.

Fremont Gruss is one of the extraordinary ones, and today is a good day to honor him. An exceedingly spry 85-year-old Minnesotan, he had traveled from parts north for more than 24 hours on a bus to attend the health-care rally. When I first spotted him (or heard him, I should say), he was seated on a bench on the Capitol lawn after the rally wound down, performing duck calls for Sue Lovell of Maryland, who was delighted by his quacking skills.

He stopped quacking and started laughing when I approached, explaining when I introduced myself, that he and Lovell had just met at the rally. Lovell, whose father was disabled in World War II, had been attracted, not by the duck calls, but by Gruss' hat, which proclaimed his service in the 97th Infantry Division during WWII.

(I later found out that Gruss' duck calls were a left-over skill from the Depression when, as a young man, he hunted duck and pheasant for his family's food. He owned a precious, $3.50 duck-caller, but when he lost it, and couldn't afford a new one, he learned to do them on his own.)

Gruss served from 1943 until after the end of the war, in both the European and Pacific Theaters. His division is credited with firing the last shots of the European Theater in Czechoslovakia, said Gruss, who's also the historian of his local American Legion Post. Shortly after, he and his fellow soldiers were shipped to the Pacific, and would have been among the men sent to invade Japan had the U.S. not ended the war by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"I wouldn't be alive right now if we hadn't dropped the bomb," he said.

Behind the bench, flapping in the late-afternoon wind, was the guidon of Gruss' 303rd regiment, worn almost to translucence in spots, but entirely intact. It had been brought back from Japan after the war by a comrade, carefully guarded through the years, and passed from veteran to veteran as time took its toll on the regiment's numbers.

Gruss is not a conspiracy theorist or an extremist. He did not carry a rude sign or mention with malice the president of the United States. He wore a "Tea Party Patriot" t-shirt and a hat heavy with ribbons, which spoke more clearly about his claim to the title of "patriot" than any shirt could. Why did he come?

"Our freedoms are being taken away," Gruss said, getting specific about his children's and grandchildren's ability to choose their doctors, care, and insurance companies. "I wanted to come here and do my part. If Obamacare comes to be...we'll lose all that."

Lovell chimed in: "I'm here for my children and grandchildren. I just want them to live in the same land of freedom that we were privileged to live in."

Even when they sound mundane—when they're dismissed blithely with legislative promises about "choice" and "competition"—those freedoms are important to Gruss. He considers all of them bought at a very high price.

"The buddies I trained with in 1943," he said, pausing. "Probably about half gave their lives for the freedoms we have today."

Gruss speaks about the war and his lost friends freely, perhaps because he enjoys paying tribute to them, and probably partly because of the distance of time. While I listened to him, he was approached by a woman from a nearby crowd of protesters—a tanned, middle-aged woman in striking green and purple, with long, brown hair.

"You were with the 303rd? I saw the flag from over there and I had to come check," she said, as he nodded, smiling. "I was in Iraq, and the first person we lost was with the 303rd," she said, choking up.

She shook his hand, thanked him for his service, and they shared a short, sad silence for American heroes, lost two generations apart. She hurried away, and I didn't want to spoil their conversation by asking for her information, so I regret I don't know what her name was.

While I sat with Mr. Gruss, a stream of Tea Party protesters—couples, young families, grandparents, teachers—walked by Gruss' bench as they left the Capitol complex. Most of them stopped to shake his hand, thank him for his service, or take pictures with a duck-calling American hero and the tattered flag of the 303rd.

We were all lucky to meet him.

The former New York governor will be giving a lecture tomorrow at Harvard's Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics. The talk is titled "From Ayn Rand to Ken Feinberg – How Quickly the Paradigm Shifts. What Should be the Rationale for Government Participation in the Market?"

It's unclear whether Spitzer will be paid by the hour or simply given a flat fee for services rendered.

It is always interesting to see how these two respond to the same event. In the case of the fall of the Berlin Wall, both Obama and McCain delivered remarks -- Obama, via video, to the assembled masses in Berlin, and McCain to the students at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (what a difference a few million votes make). Obama never mentions the words Russia or Soviet Union. As Ed Morrissey writes, to hear Obama tell it you'd think "there was some vague tyrant that used to oppress eastern Europe but has since receded into the mists of history."

Neither did Obama mention any other president besides, of course, the references to himself. Obama gave a "shout out" to Joe Medicine Crown (indeed an impressive WWII vet) before his remarks on the Ft. Hood massacre the other day, but he didn't give any shout outs in his Berlin remarks to the great men (and women) who made that wall come down. As Scott Johnson writes,

Omitted from the remarks, among other things, is any mention of the Soviet Union or Communism, Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher or Pope John Paul. Obama neither decries the villains nor salutes the heroes of the story. Rather, Obama celebrates himself. He is an agent of destiny. He is the fulfillment of history.

You can watch the video of Obama's speech here. Then read McCain's speech, the full text of which you can find after the jump. McCain gave shout outs to people like Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Kohl, and Margaret Thatcher. He praised Democrats like Harry Truman, John Kennedy, and Scoop Jackson. And he remembered Ronald Reagan, "whose message of solidarity with the oppressed carried into the coldest gulags of the Soviet Empire, and who stood before the bleakest symbol of the Cold War and told Mr. Gorbachev to tear the awful thing down."

McCain went on,

In retrospect, this all seems unobjectionable. But I can assure you, my friends, it was anything but. Some objected because they thought America had no right to preach moral values when we failed to live up to them ourselves at times. Others objected because they felt the most America could do for human rights was to lead by example, but not take sides on the internal matters of other countries. Still others objected because they saw issues of morality and human rights as secondary to the real business of foreign policy – to the trade-offs, and deal-making, and interest-seeking of the world as it is, not as we would wish it to be.


We heard all of these arguments back then, and we hear them again now – for this great debate over human rights and foreign policy is as old as America itself, and it continues to this day. I know the Bush Administration spoke a lot about freedom, and democracy, and human rights. But that does not make them dirty words, and it does not make them ideas unworthy of our support today. Quite the contrary. The good thing is, America's long-running debate over whether, and how, to support human rights offers a lot of lessons to guide us at present. I'm just old enough to remember some of them, so I'd like to suggest a few of these lessons to you today.


Most important is this: The United States has a special responsibility to champion human rights – in all places, for all peoples, and at all times. Why us? The answer, I think, is simple: It's who we are. Human rights – the right to life and liberty, to the protection of property, and to rule by the consent of the governed – these values are the core of our national creed. And it is fidelity to these values – not ethnicity or religion, culture or class – that makes one an American.


And yet, human rights are not just American values; they are universal values. We embody them, but we do not own them. We think it should not be just the purpose of our government, but of all governments, to protect human rights. And when we see rulers who violate the basic rights of their citizens, it offends a sense of justice in us that we believe is shared by all people, regardless of their differences. It leads us to demand better of governments, for the simple reason that it is the right thing to do. Since America's earliest days, human rights have shaped not only who we are, but how we conduct ourselves abroad. And this should never change.

Read the whole thing after the jump...




The NEFA Foundation has uncovered another message from Anwar al Awlaki’s now defunct web site in which he calls upon Muslims to fight any army that serves the “interests of the enemies.” This includes America’s military, and any army of any state (Muslim or otherwise) that does not serve Awlaki’s cause.

In a message dated July 14, 2009, Awlaki wrote:

“These armies are the defenders of apostasy in the Muslim world. They fight against Sharia and kill the Muslims who attempt to bring it back. They are fighting on behalf of America against the mujahideen in Pakistan, Somalia and the Maghrib.

If this is the case with these armies how could anyone place the blame on the ones who fight them, accusing them of fighting against Muslims?! What kind of twisted fiqh [note: Islamic jurisprudence] is this? The blame should be placed on the soldier who is will to follow orders whether the order is to kill Muslims as in Swat, bomb Masjids as with the Red Masjid, or kill women and children as they do in Somalia, just for the sake of a miser salary. This soldier is a heartless beast, bent on evil, who sells his religion for a few dollars. These armies are the number one enemy of the ummah. They are the worst of creation. Blessed are those who fight against them and blessed are those shuhada [note: martyrs] who are killed by them.”

So we know that: the Fort Hood Shooter attended the same mosque that Anwar al Awlaki preached at in 2001; Maj. Hasan had clearly adopted jihadist views very similar to those Awlaki has espoused, including the idea that Muslims cannot truly serve in a foreign army that is supposedly attacking all of Islam, by June of 2007; Maj. Hasan contacted Awlaki between “10 to 20 times” beginning in December 2008; Maj. Hasan may have posted on Awlaki’s Facebook page on Dec. 14, 2008; and, in July 2009, Awlaki again said that true Muslims cannot serve these armies and called on Muslims to turn against them.

Is there really any mystery about what drove Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan to commit mass murder?

Tarek Fatah writes in the Ottawa Citizen:

No one seemed to notice the significance of the attire that Maj. Nidal Hasan was wearing the morning of the killings. It was captured on a store surveillance video where he bought a coffee....

Hasan was wearing the "shalwar-kameez," the traditional attire worn by Pashtuns on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghan border....I have lived a decade in the Arab world and not once did I see an Arab wearing the shalwar-kameez.

There is one particular group of Arabs who did embrace the garb of the Pashtuns - those who went to Afghanistan to wage jihad alongside al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

This guy was walking around a U.S. military installation dressed like Osama bin Laden and nobody said anything, yet the Army is being accused of intolerance and anti-Muslim bias. To repeat, according to Tarek Fatah, Hasan was not merely dressed in traditional Arab garb--he dressed in the traditional garb of al Qaeda terrorists. But the left worries about how he was affected by the combat stress of others at the base, rather than ask how Iraq and Afghanistan veterans must have felt coming across a guy dressed like this at the convenience store. He dressed like a terrorist, he went to a mosque frequented by terrorists, he emailed with terrorists, he sympathized with terrorists and he ultimately carried out an act of terror. Yet in the course of Obama's fine speech yesterday, the word terror was not mentioned once -- wouldn't want to offend anyone.

Elaine Donnelly at NRO goes overboard in castigating the Army for allowing a Sikh doctor (and potentially a Sikh dentist) to retain the beards and turbans their faith requires of them. Donnelly (whose work I usually admire) compares this dispensation to the Army's deliberately turning a blind eye to the blatant jihadism of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. The two are in no way comparable. The latter was an egregious dereliction of duty on the part of the authorities, while the former is merely bureaucratic nitpicking of the sort that Paul Fussell characterized so accurately as "chickenshit."

Donnelly should consider that the Sikhs have a long and distinguished history of military service in the British Indian Army. Sikh regiments were not only unfailingly loyal (once the British had conquered the Sikhs, a feat that required two wars between 1845 and 1849) but were usually in the forefront of the battle. Only the Gurkhas equal or exceed the military reputation of the Sikhs. Throughout their service to the Raj, which ended only with Indian independence, the Sikhs were allowed to retain their beards and distinctive headwear. It did not affect their performance in combat; rather, it was a mark of distinction, of regimental loyalty and unit cohesion--the intangible moral factors that lead to high combat effectiveness.

Unfortunately, the United States Army has a tin ear when it comes to such matters. Take, for example, a simple matter such as headgear. Up through the tenure of General Eric Shinseki as Army Chief of Staff, only elite units were permitted to wear a beret--a privilege earned in blood. The Army Rangers wore a black beret, the paratroopers of the 82nd and 10