There is a lot of talk about Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group that is strongly suspected of being behind last week's terror assault in Mumbai, India. Below is a quick primer on Lashkar-e-Taiba I've excerpted from an update on the situation in Mumbai I wrote yesterday. There is far more to the terror group than this, but it should help explain the relationship between what is called "al Qaeda Central" and their affiliated groups. There are a lot of people out there twisting themselves in knots to disassociate  Lashkar-e-Taiba from al Qaeda. They are wrong to do so.

Lashkar-e-Taiba has an extensive network in southern and Southeast Asia. A senior US military intelligence official described the group as "al Qaeda junior," as it has vast resources, an extensive network, and is able to carry out complex attacks throughout its area of operations. "If by some stroke of luck al Qaeda collapsed, LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiba) could step in and essentially take its place."The relationship between al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba is complex, the official noted. "While Lashkar-e-Taiba is definitely subordinate to al Qaeda in many ways, it runs its own network and has its own command structure. The groups often train in each others' camps, and fight side by side in Afghanistan."

Lashkar-e-Taiba forces fought alongside al Qaeda and Taliban in the assault on the US combat outpost in Wanat in Nuristan province, Afghanistan in July of this year. Nine US troops were killed, and 15 US soldiers and four Afghan troops were wounded in the heavy fight that nearly ended in the outpost being overrun. US forces ultimately broke the attack.Founded by Hafiz Mohammed Saeed in Afghanistan in 1990, the organization quickly expanded its reach.

The Lashkar-e-Taiba has received direct support by Pakistan's notorious Inter-Service Intelligence agency as they serve to destabilize India and wage war in Indian-occupied Kashmir.Like al Qaeda, the Lashkar-e-Taiba seeks to establish a Muslim caliphate in southern and central Asia. Lashkar-e-Taiba "consistently advocated the use of force and vowed that it would plant the 'flag of Islam' in Washington, Tel Aviv and New Delhi," the Southeast Asia Terrorism Portal reported.

Also, like al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba practices Wahabism, the radical Islamist school of thought born in Saudi Arabia.The group essentially runs a state within a state of Pakistan. The sprawling Muridke complex houses "a Madrassa (seminary), a hospital, a market, a large residential area for ‘scholars’ and faculty members, a fish farm and agricultural tracts. The LeT also reportedly operates 16 Islamic institutions, 135 secondary schools, an ambulance service, mobile clinics, blood banks and several seminaries across Pakistan."

John Ondrasik, the lead singer of Five for Fighting, has released a second "CD for the Troops" -- a free download for anyone with a military ID. Ondrasik is a great guy and this is a worthy project. Spread the word and send people here.

Hat tip: NewsBusters

The terror assault on Mumbai is in its second day as Indian security forces struggle to regain control of the city and clear the remaining terrorists from two hotels and a residential complex. Hundreds of Indian Naval and National Security Guards commandos have been rushed into the capital to help end the hostage situations at the Taj and Oberoi Trident hotels and the Nariman House. Reports from India indicate the commando assaults are underway. More than 200 hostages, many foreigners, are still held captive. The Indian Mujahideen have demanded the release of all jihadis currently in Indian jails to end the crisis.

While it is too early to know exactly how the Mumbai strikes were planned and executed, one thing seems clear: This attack is the most significant terrorist attack since the Sept. 11 attack against the United States.

The terrorists launched a sophisticated, multi-pronged attack into a city of 18 million residents. This requires planning, training, funding, and detailed reconnaissance. The targets were chosen carefully to achieve maximum effect. The terrorists hit hotels, a train station, a movie house, a residential complex, and a hospital--all soft targets. They also were able to plant bombs in taxis as well as capture a police van, which was then used in a drive-by shooting spree.

The assault teams--there is no other way to describe them--coordinated and synchronized their attacks to overwhelm Mumbai security. The terrorists were able to take a significant number of hostages. They knew where to find foreigners and wealthy Indians--at the five star hotels.

Past attacks in Indian cities and in other parts of the world may have had higher death tolls, but they failed to achieve the results of Mumbai. The city has been completely shut down for two days, while the Hindustan Times said the country is gripped by a "fear psychosis." India's government has long treated the terrorist problem as a secondary issue. This will change. The mode of attack--assault teams launched into the heart of a major city--is already sending chills down the spines of security officials and governments throughout the world.

The number of injured is up to a gut-wrenching 900, and the Deccan Mujahideen (which Bill connects to Lashkar-e-Taiba) has reportedly taken responsibility for the attacks, sending e-mails to media outlets.

The Times of India has more information on hostages and apprehensions:

The attacks appeared to be aimed at getting international attention as the terrorists took up to 40 British nationals and other foreigners hostage. The chairman of Hindustan Unilever Harish Manwani and CEO of the company Nitin Paranjpe were among the guests trapped at the Oberoi. All the internal board members of the multinational giant were reported to be holed up in the Oberoi hotel.

Two terrorists were reported holed up inside the Oberoi Hotel. Fresh firing has been reported at Oberoi and Army has entered the hotel to flush out the terrorists.

At least some of the terrorists have been shot or arrested:

Well after midnight, sources said two of the terrorists were shot and wounded at Girgaum in south Mumbai. The two were driving in a commandeered silver-coloured Skoda car. Earlier, these men had sprayed bullets from a police Bolero, outside the Metro Adlabs multiplex.

Early reports attributed the attacks to Lashkar-e-Taiba, members of whom were arrested in the 2006 bombings.

Obama's team responded:

“President-Elect Obama strongly condemns today's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and his thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families, and the people of India,” Obama spokesman Brooke Anderson said. “These coordinated attacks on innocent civilians demonstrate the grave and urgent threat of terrorism. The United States must continue to strengthen our partnerships with India and nations around the world to root out and destroy terrorist networks. We stand with the people of India, whose democracy will prove far more resilient than the hateful ideology that led to these attacks.”

Bush hasn't released an official statement, "but White House spokesman Tony Fratto made clear the Bush Administration’s reaction.

'We condemn these attacks and the loss of innocent life," Fratto said, adding that "we continue to seek more information.'"

The outgoing and ingoing presidents' teams are said to be in close contact about national security issues during the transition period, during which the hand-off could make the country more vulnerable to attack.

Today, there was news that the feds warned of a possible Al Qaeda attack on New York's subway and train system during the holiday time:

A person briefed on the matter, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the intelligence-gathering work, said the threat may also be directed at the passenger rail lines running through New York, such as Amtrak and the Long Island Rail Road, which are particularly busy with Thanksgiving holiday travelers.

A U.S. counterterror official, also speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to do so publicly, said senior government officials have been briefed because the FBI very recently received credible information about possible attacks over the holiday season, and authorities are particularly concerned about this long holiday weekend.

Thomas Joscelyn is absolutely correct in suspecting the Pakistan and Kashmiri-based terror groups as being behind today’s terror attacks in Mumbai. A group called the Deccan Mujahideen, or Indian Mujahideen, has taken credit for today’s strike, the Times of India just reported.

While it is certainly possible that the group is taking credit for another’s handiwork, the Indian Mujahideen has been implicated as being behind several recent attacks in India.
The group claimed credit for the July 25 and 26 bombings in Ahmedabad and Bangalore. At least 36 Indians were killed and more than 120 were wounded in the attacks. The Indian Mujahideen took credit for the Sept. 13 attacks in New Delhi that resulted in 18 killed and more than 90 wounded. The group also claimed credit for the bombings in Jaipur last May (60 killed, more than 200 wounded), and bombings in Uttar Pradesh in November 2007 (14 killed, 50 wounded).

Indian intelligence believes the Indian Mujahideen is a front group created by Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Harkat ul Jihad al Islami to confuse investigators and cover the tracks of the Students' Islamic Movement of India, or SIMI, a radical Islamist movement. The groups receive support from Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence and are al Qaeda affiliates.

Of the eight targets hit today, authorities say there are still hostages at two of them:

A.N. Roy, a senior police officer, said police were continuing to battle the gunmen. "The terrorists have used automatic weapons and in some places grenades have been lobbed, the encounters are still going on and we are trying to overpower them," he said.

Local television said army troops had begun moving into one of the hotels, the Oberoi, containing hostages.

The Times Online has more specific information:

The gunman, armed with automatic weapons and grenades, targeted British and American tourists in the city’s luxury hotels and bars. They were reported to be holding Western tourists hostage at the Taj Mahal Palace, Bombay’s top hotel, where a group of British MEPs were staying...

“I guess they were after foreigners, because they were asking for British or American passports,” said Rakesh Patel, a British witness who lives in Hong Kong and was staying at the Taj Mahal hotel on business. “They had bombs.”

“They came from the restaurant and took us up the stairs.”

From the Taj Mahal hotel:

Sajjad Karim, an MEP for the North West of England who was a member of an EU delegation visiting Bombay said he had seen a gunman opening fire in the lobby of Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.

Speaking via mobile phone, he said: “I was in the lobby of the hotel when gunmen came in and people started running … A gunman just stood there spraying bullets around, right next to me. I managed to turn away and I ran into the hotel kitchen and then we were shunted into a restaurant in the basement.” “We are now in the dark in this room and we’ve barricaded all the doors. It’s really bad.” Outside the Taj hotel, injured guests were being stretchered away on the hotel’s golden-coloured luggage carts.

All American diplomats have been accounted for, but the State Department is still working to track down tourists and visitors who might have been staying in the hotels.

Mumbai's chief of the Anti Terror Squad, Hemant Karkare, has died from injuries suffered while leading an operation against terrorists holding hostages at one of the five-star hotels targeted.

Karkare (54), who is probing the Malegaon blasts case, was gunned down when he was leading an operation at Hotel Taj against terrorists who had taken 15 people, including seven foreigners, as hostages. He was hit by three bullets in his chest. One MP Krishan Das and 200 people were stranded in Taj hotel.

Another IPS officer Ashok Marutirao Kamte, a 1989 batch IPS officer, was killed while fighting terrorists at Metro Cinema in the city along with encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar who also gunned down as one of the worst terror strikes brought Mumbai to the knees.

Fighting was ongoing in the city as the first reports emerged from the chaos:

Gunmen opened fire on two of the city's best known luxury hotels, the Taj Mahal and the Oberoi. They also attacked the crowded Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus station in southern Mumbai and Leopold's restaurant, a Mumbai landmark.

The gunmen also attacked police headquarters in south Mumbai, the area where most of the attacks took place.

"We are under fire, there is shooting at the gate," said constable A. Shetti by phone from police headquarters.

MSNBC offers some raw footage from India in their report, and a glimpse of one of the gunmen, some of whom witnesses are describing as "very young."

Video below the fold:

In some ways, today’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai (Bombay), India are unremarkable. India has been repeatedly attacked in recent years. Pakistani and Kashmiri based terrorist groups, as well as so-called homegrown terrorists, kill up to hundreds every year. But if the early reports are correct, then today’s terrorist attacks seem unprecedented. As many as seven different locations (if not more) have been struck, with hostages taken. Most, if not all, of the targets are places that cater to westerners – restaurants, hotels, trains, etc. Moreover, the terrorists have laid siege to a couple of hotels and the terrorists are incredibly mobile, moving from location to location. The attacks are ongoing and the casualty count keeps rising. The result is a traumatized city and nation.

It is too early to tell with any precision who is behind these attacks. The smart money is on the multi-headed hydra of terrorist and extremist groups based in Pakistan and Kashmir. Indeed, Pakistan’s intelligence service has waged a proxy war against India using terrorists for decades. The two nuclear powers have avoided a large-scale exchange, but the Pakistani ISI has repeatedly sponsored or aided terrorist groups targeting civilians in India. For example, Indian authorities were quite vocal in blaming Pakistan for the July 11, 2006 train bombings, which killed more than 200.

Today’s attacks, if they are indeed a continuation of Pakistan’s proxy war, threaten to destabilize relations between the two nations further. The contest for regional hegemony has played out across the region from Kashmir to Afghanistan. And terrorist groups have, once again, reminded India of their reach deep into the subcontinent. In the coming weeks, when the chaos has played out and authorities stabilize the situation, it will be crucial for American authorities to pay attention to the evidence accumulated by Indian authorities. It is possible that Pakistani intelligence played no role in this attack, but it is equally possible, if not likely, that they did.

All of the prime suspects have ties to Pakistani Intelligence: Kashmiri separatists, Pakistani extremists, and even the Taliban and al Qaeda. American authorities should, therefore, look not only for evidence of which specific terrorist groups are involved, but also evidence of ties to the ISI.

Via Hot Air, Times of India reports:

Armed with AK-47 rifles and grenades, a couple of terrorists entered the passenger hall of CST and opened fire and threw grenades, Mumbai General Railway Police Commissioner A K Sharma said.

The terror strike which began at 10:33 PM at Chhatrapathi Shivaji Terminus(CST), formerly known as the Victoria Terminus(VT), claimed 10 lives in the premises of the station alone, police said.

Three persons were killed in a bomb explosion in a taxi on Mazegaon dockyard road and an equal number were gunned down at Taj Hotel. The victims in the hotel were its employees.

The lobby of the Oberoi hotel was on fire and the hotel evacuated, eyewitnesses said.

Maharashtra DGP A N Roy said tonight’s attack in “at least seven places” is a “terror strike.”

Via Ace of Spades HQ, the Times of India reports the terrorists took hostages:

Two terrorists carrying guns tonight took 15 people, half of them foreigners, hostage on the roof of the luxury Taj Hotel, one of the hostages who managed to escape said.

Two youths in their 20s came to the restaurant of the hotel and took 15 people to the roof of the hotel, Rakesh Patel, a businessman from London who lives in Hong Kong, told a TV channel giving the first eyewitness account of what happened in the five-star hotel in South Mumbai.

"The two young boys came to the restaurant and took us upstairs. We were taken to the 18th floor from where we escaped", he said.

Replying to a question, Patel said the terrorists wanted to know if any one of the hostages was carrying American and British passports.

They clearly wanted foreigners, he added.

As President-elect Obama puts together his national security team, a narrative has emerged to explain the somewhat surprising continuity on foreign policy between President Bush's second term and the incoming administration. There will be a shift to the left, but not a big shift, and certainly nothing that represents a drastic change in how Washington does business. The expectation is that Obama is set to continue the course set by Bush in his second term -- continued draw downs in Iraq, an increased focus on the Afghan-Pakistan border, greater engagement with Iran, and a serious effort to restart the peace process in Israel -- because Obama is a realist, as is Bush after the failures of his first term. Secretary Gates will remain at Defense. Jim Jones, another realist, will serve as National Security Adviser. And Hillary Clinton, who has been a consistent hawk, will head the State Department.

The always sharp Robert Kaplan explains:

For President George W. Bush did not just damage America’s position in the world, he has also, over the past two years, quietly repositioned himself as a realist in foreign policy, and that, coupled with a bold new strategy in Iraq, known as the “surge,” has poised America for a diplomatic rebound, which the next administration will get the credit for carrying out.

Kaplan's larger point is that Obama will preside over a period of foreign policy (and economic) recovery, and will get the credit for policies that are little different from those of his predecessor. Obama will be in the right place at the right time. This is almost certainly true, but the way Kaplan describes the Bush administration's second term is revealing: with the exception of the surge, Bush has been a realist. Of course, the surge has been the signal accomplishment of the Bush administration's second term -- and the realists opposed it. The surge was, at its core, a doubling down on the notion that American foreign policy objectives could be achieved by force of arms. Yes there was more to it than that -- a greater emphasis on co-opting the local population and a new willingness to negotiate with reconcilable elements of the insurgency -- but this was a military solution to a problem that realists like Jones, and liberals like Obama, claimed could not be solved militarily.

So what did the realists of the Bush administration achieve in the second term? There is a functioning peace process in Israel, but the two sides are nowhere near a deal. The imbalance in the Taiwan Strait continues to grow, the realists having fought against Taiwan's efforts (supported by this magazine) for a massive purchase of American arms that was ultimately pushed through but without the more than 60 F-16s Taiwan had requested. President Bush did nothing in the face of Russian aggression in Georgia. Democracy activists were slaughtered in Burma. The administration has removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terror in exchange for what exactly? The genocide in Darfur continues unabated. And while President Bush has tried to engage Iran, offering a long list of incentives for a halt to uranium enrichment and sending Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns to deliver the offer in person, the Iranians continue toward a nuclear weapon -- perhaps because they will not be convinced to do otherwise through mere diplomacy.

The realist policies of the Bush administration appear to have been failures, while the surge, championed by the neoconservative wing of the party, has been an unbridled success. However, one can say that the realist failures of the Bush administration have, so far, been small. While they have not made any real headway on North Korea or Iran, the worst outcomes have, for now, been avoided as well. Realists focus on an incremental approach to solving problems, neoconservatives and liberal hawks tend to favor bold strokes -- with greater risk and greater reward.

Of course, none of this is to say that conservatives of all stripes shouldn't be pleased by the direction Obama is taking. As Max Boot says, "Only churlish partisans of both the left and the right can be unhappy with the emerging tenor" of the Obama administration. The realists may have opposed the surge, but they were not hostile to it -- they worked diligently for its success once the decision was made. If there is an emerging consensus on American foreign policy, it is that the players should remain the same even if the outcomes are different -- that the center should hold.

CNN reports:

Minnesota's Canvassing Board voted unanimously to reject Franken's request to include thousands of absentee ballots that are not included in the recount in the Minnesota senate race between the Democratic challenger and Republican incumbent Norm Coleman.

The Canvassing Board, which oversees the recount, stressed during a hearing today, that they weren't rejecting the merits made by Franken's attorneys. The panel also indicated that the fight over the exclusion of the absentee ballots from the recount will most likely land in court.

Here's where things stand in the Coleman-Franken recount. With 82 percent of the ballots recounted, Coleman leads Franken by 243 votes, but--and this is a very important but--both campaigns agree that Coleman's lead is smaller than that.

The Coleman campaign has challenged 1,897 ballots, while Team Franken has challenged 1,806. Almost all of Coleman's challenges will go to Franken or neither candidate; almost all of Franken's challenges will go to Coleman or neither candidate. But both campaigns agree that Coleman has challenged a larger number of ballots that will end up going to Franken in the end than vice versa.

After 79 percent of the votes had been recounted, the Coleman camp claimed their candidate's lead was about 180 votes, but the Franken camp said Coleman's lead was only 84 votes. This number, Team Franken said, reflected the "election judge's actual calls from the table" at each recount site. It is highly unlikely that a significant number of election judges' rulings will be overturned by the canvassing board.

If the Franken campaign has resorted to telling the truth, and Coleman's lead is actually 84 votes, Coleman would still be on track to win when the entire recount process has finished. If Coleman's lead dropped from 215 to 84 votes, that translates into a 61 percent decrease in Coleman's lead after 79 percent of the votes had been recounted.

To catch Coleman, Franken would have to pick up votes at twice the rate he has thus far among the share of ballots yet to be recounted. Even though a large chunk of Minneapolis haven't been recounted, it seems unlikely Franken will pick up the votes he needs because all of the ballots from the Democratic strongholds of St. Paul and St. Louis County (where Duluth and the Iron Range are located) have already been recounted.

But the Franken campaign will almost certainly go to court in an attempt to include rejected absentee ballots. The issue could be decisive. John Fund sketches out the arguments of both campaigns in today's Wall Street Journal

The problem with adding absentee ballots is state law. According to an advisory opinion issued last week by the office of Democratic state Attorney General Lori Swanson, "Only the ballots cast in the election and the summary statements certified by the election judges may be considered in the recount process." A recount manual prepared this year by the office of Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, also a Democrat, makes clear that the canvassing board only supervises "an administrative recount" that is "not to determine if absentee ballots were properly accepted."

But Mr. Franken's attorneys are now arguing that Minnesota law also requires that each county's election report include "the complete voting activity within that county." They are also invoking the Equal Protection arguments cited by the Supreme Court in Bush vs. Gore, as well as rulings from Washington State's disputed 2004 governor's race -- that contest was decided for Democrat Christine Gregoire by 133 votes after an initial count and two subsequent recounts.

The Boston Globe published an interview with Admiral William Fallon, the former CENTCOM commander who was relieved of command in March 2008 after just one short year. Admiral Fallon discusses the situation in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. In a portion of the interview on Pakistan, he demonstrates why his tenure was short lived.

Admiral Fallon displayed a very real lack of understanding of the situation on the ground in the Taliban-controlled, al Qaeda sanctuaries of North and South Waziristan. He promotes the fallacy that the "local Taliban" drove out elements of al Qaeda and the Pakistani government’s policy has been successful in dealing with the terror group. He claims al Qaeda, and not the Pakistani Taliban, are the root of the problems in Waziristan.

The real troublemakers are Al Qaeda who are a worldwide terrorist network who will do anything they can do have instability in the area, first of all, because it protects them. If they can have a cone of instability around them, then they can continue to exist where they are. And we're pretty certain, at least when I checked out, that they were up somewhere in those remote areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan where not only is the terrain about as challenging as you'll find anywhere on earth, but the tribal networks are very, very exclusive of outsiders.

They [the Pakistanis] were actually pretty successful in south Waziristan, which is one of the areas on the border. Why? They decided to act, which was nice, for a change. They got tribal support to help them get rid of the outsiders. Very interesting.

But they didn't get that kind of help up in North Waziristan, and they haven't yet. Why? Because the outsiders [in South Waziristan] were mostly Uzbeks. And they didn't treat the locals very well. And the locals picked up on it. And after a while, they said, "We'd be happy to get rid of some of these thugs for you."

It hasn't happened with Arabs from Al Qaeda They've been very clever about this. They've figured out how to get very close culturally. I'm not there, this is all second and third-hand but we get a lot of reports that indicate that this is the way it is. They've intermarried. They've taken great pains to be deferential to the local chiefs. And they've done, I'm sure they've greased the way fairly, so they've been much more successful.

There are plenty of problems with Fallon's narrative, I’ll touch on the major ones..

First, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and I debunked the idea that the "good Taliban" drove out the Uzbek al Qaeda fighters out of the kindness of their hearts back in April 2007. The clashes between Nazir's Taliban in South Waziristan and Uzbek fighters from the Islamic Jihad Group were due to local issues of land ownership and intermarrying with the tribes, not out of a desire to rid the region of jihadis. Senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders ultimately mediated the dispute.

The Pakistani government promoted the idea that Nazir's forces were "pro-government" because they fought the Uzbeks, however Nazir has openly supported al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Nazir routinely sends fighters into Afghanistan fight U.S. and Coalition forces. And Nazir doesn't harbor ill will towards Uzbeks of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan; Tahir Yuldashev, the group's leader, is thought to have been killed in a US airstrike on a meeting in South Waziristan. He was meeting with none other than Nazir, who was wounded in the attack.

Second, Fallon completely ignores the elephant in South Waziristan's room: Baitullah Mehsud, the commander of the Pakistani Taliban. Baitullah has been behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and a rash of suicide attacks throughout Pakistan as well as a military campaign in Pakistan's northwest. Baitullah and Nazir openly operate in South Waziristan; the government has essentially ceded this region to them.

Third, the "the outsiders in South Waziristan" are not mostly Uzbeks. Fallon should explain why several senior and mid-level al Qaeda leaders have been killed in U.S. strikes in South Waziristan. Also, the biggest U.S. cross-border incident inside Pakistan this year occurred in Nazir's tribal regions in South Waziristan. U.S. special operations forces conducted an air assault in an effort to take down some high-value targets.

Finally, Fallon said "I'm not there, this is all second and third-hand but we get a lot of reports that indicate that this is the way it is." Fallon clearly was getting his information from the Pakistani government, which had a vested interest to show some progress against al Qaeda in the tribal areas. Here's the rub: you don't need classified information to figure out what is happening in Pakistan's tribal areas. For all of Pakistan’s failings, its press does an excellent job in providing the nuggets of information that allow you to paint a picture on what is happening in Pakistan.

The London Times has written an over-the-top story on the recent airstrike this weekend that is reported to have killed Rashid Rauf, the al Qaeda operative behind the foiled London airlines strike. The headline alone says it all: Top al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Zubair al-Masri ‘was missile target in Bush campaign for favourable legacy.

The problem is the Times gets a few basic facts wrong in this story. First and foremost, the Times identifies the target of the raid as "Abu Zubair al-Masri, an Egyptian described as being 'high up in the al-Qaeda pecking order.'" While the target of the raid is debatable, Zubair's status in al Qaeda isn't. He's a mid-level operative at best. So bagging Zubair would do little to enhance Bush's "favourable legacy."

Second, there is a photo of Zubair accompanying the article. The problem is the photo is of Abu Ayyub al Masri, the current leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, and not Zubair.

Third, there is very little to the claim that these strikes are designed to enhance Bush's "legacy." In early September I recognized that the United States had dramatically ramped up its strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas. I asked around and to a man, the people I spoke to said U.S. intelligence is fearful the next strike will emanate from al Qaeda's safe havens within Pakistan's tribal agencies. Not a single person mentioned legacy. While I am sure it is true President Bush would love to kill bin Laden before he leaves office, there is no evidence he's launched a campaign in an allied country strictly to enhance his legacy.

This type of war reporting is all too common these days. Any editor that had half a clue about al Qaeda and the war in general should have at least caught the photo mismatch. Abu Ayyub al Masri's photo is often splashed on the pages of newspapers and on the television. This should have immediately set off alarm bells. We deserve far better reporting on the war than this.

The economy brings an uptick in "struggling" families, just in time for the holidays. Yuck.

"Heavy is the head that wears the tiara."

Obama is still asking for your money, at the bottom of public service announcements about the ailing economy and how he'll rescue it. Classy.

Good news: SNL hiring actual black guy who can impersonate Barack Obama for four years instead of Fred Armisen, who was neither black nor capable of impersonation, making him somewhat unconvincing.

Mormons are being investigated in California because tolerant liberals are mad Prop. 8 won Californians Against Hate filed a complaint that the church neglected to report "nonmonetary contributions" to the campaign.

Obama talks to Barbara Walters, doesn't cry.

A decision in Minnesota could be months away.

President Bush gets former Fugee John Forte out of jail. He will get zero cool points for this.

Giving thanks for the free market.

Sunni lawmakers are demanding concessions before signing onto the security pact that would keep U.S. troops in Iraq until 2011. The vote is expected to be today.

McCain's first post-election news conference:

As an encore to last week's "Giving up on God," Parker is now endorsing a federal subsidy for a daily supply of newspapers to high-school students, which will make students smarter and — Bonus!— save the newspaper industry with your tax dollars.

This plan is necessitated, according to Parker, by an abysmal performance by American voters on an Intercollegiate Studies Institute civics quiz (the average score was 49).

Right, because what corrects a left-leaning public school education lacking in respect for America's founding fathers, documents, and principles better than a daily dose of the New York Times, whose circulation and ad revenue will have been artificially inflated by the government in circumvention of the very free-market system of which many Americans are sadly ignorant? Yeah, that'll do the trick.

Clearly she didn't read P.J. O'Rourke in this week's Standard, or she would have known why newspapers don't deserve a bail-out.

I'm all for young Americans getting a better civic education, but why not do that through assigning readings readily available in all public schools? The Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Gettysburg Address, and the Federalist Papers are undoubtedly sitting under a thick layer of dust, while "Dylan has Two Mommies" and the companion study guide to "An Inconvenient Truth" are widely distributed.

Breaking his silence, the man who so skillfully horrified liberals by doing his job in the background of a Sarah Palin interview:

"I thought they had panned in on her face…I did try and block the process," he said.

Tomes has worked at the Triple D Turkey Farm in Palin's hometown of Wasilla for nine years. He offered support for the former vice-presidential candidate.

"The only thing I can say is, 'Don't mess with my governor!'"

Don't mess with her, he says. It's up to you if you'd like to ignore a man that handy with a turkey chipper.

Gates will stay on at Defense; Jim Geraghty notices some gnashing of teeth on the left.

Michael Yon writes that the Iraq war is over.

Without missing a shot, a corporal tallies 20 kills, as 30 U.S. Marines defeat 250 insurgents in Afghanistan.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco blocked a major offshore drilling effort.

Mitt Romney v. Jennifer Granholm on the auto bailouts.

Peter Schiff, who predicted the recession, is a bear on the bailouts and Obama.

The University of Chicago's Eric Posner writes:

A conservative estimate is that more than 40,000 Iraqis survive per year today than during the sanctions regime, and probably most of them children. The tight correlation between GDP and child mortality across countries bolsters this conclusion.

Let’s suppose that the sanctions regime had continued for 10 years, from 2003 to 2013, and further that security flattens out—it doesn’t get worse, but it doesn’t get better. Under these assumptions, 400,000 Iraqi children would have died if the war had not occurred and the sanctions regime continued. Now, almost 100,000 Iraqis died during the war, and so one of the war’s benefits is that it saves the lives of 300,000 Iraqis (over 10 years). ...

The 2003 war damaged it even more, but now the economy is recovering. GDP per capita (PPP) in 2002 was about $2400; today it is about $3600. Everyone hears about how bad electricity is in Iraq, but that is news from Baghdad. For the country as a whole, there is more electricity generation today than there was prewar (see the Brookings report).

A bizarre development in the story of the pirates operating off the coast of Somalia:

The pirates who captured the Saudi oil tanker Sirius Star have broken off negotiations with the ship’s owners, apparently insisting they want to talk with a wealthy Virginia woman with close ties to the US military and intelligence communities.

Michele Lynn Ballarin, a figure only Washington could offer the world, runs a small Virginia-based company, SelectArmor, that designs and makes body armor and provides executive protection to wealthy individuals. She has a long history of involvement in Somalia, including allegations by a respected publication — Africa Confidential — that she was helping plan military operations there in 2006.

Military.com has the exclusive interview with Ms. Ballarin, definitely worth reading. But the real news here is that the pirates, with their seizure of the Saudi-owned supertanker, seemed to have crossed the Islamist insurgent group Al Shabab, successor to the Islamic Courts Union that was toppled by an American-backed Ethiopian invasion.

[Ballarin] claimed the Islamist group had captured, tortured and killed a young male relative of one of the pirates in the last few days. This came after Al Shabab announced it opposed the taking of ships owned by Muslims and promised to behead those who did.

Al Shabab “made it dead clear that any ransom that is collected they will take it; they will take away their money and kill them,” Ballarin said.

It seems obvious enough that the Saudis have some kind of relationship with this group. That concerns me. Al Shabab has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States State Department. One wonders how much money the Saudis gave these terrorists in exchange for a little help protecting the sea lanes in the Gulf of Aden and further out into the Indian Ocean. And if the terrorists are running some kind of racket here, shaking down the Saudis for help with keeping the pirates under control -- isn't that our racket? What is the United States Navy doing if not protecting sea lanes and insuring the free flow of commerce on the world's oceans?

Interestingly, there is a current on the left that would welcome a return of Islamist rule in Somalia for the measure of stability it would bring -- even if that stability allowed the state to become a safe-haven for al Qaeda affiliated terrorists. There are others who think we should embrace the pirates as the "secular, liberal capitalists of Somalia," who might serve as a bulwark against what now seems to be the inevitable return of Islamist rule.

Must we accept a choice between pirates and terrorists? Shouldn't we be for killing them all?

Nate Silver would probably take issue with this number:

40 percent of Iraqis would have Washington bomb Iran to halt its nuclear weapons programme, while more than half of all Arabs share the US view that a nuclear-armed Tehran is intolerable.

Just 60 percent of those surveyed say Obama will be "a better president" than Bush (apparently Arabs are a little more circumspect than the American media) and "little more than a third believe he can turn the US into a 'force for good.'" To hear the New York Times and the Associated Press tell it, Obama's election turned the entire Arab world upside down -- our enemies "suffered a defeat in the global war of ideas with Mr. Obama’s election" the Times said. Perhaps an al Qaeda defeat in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, accompanied by prosperity, freedom, and democracy for the people of those two countries, would do more to convince the Arab world of America's good intentions than the feel-good election of a man with a Muslim middle name as President of the United States.

But for a quick popularity boost in the Arab world, he can always bomb Iran.

Over at the Next Right, Patrick Ruffini writes that conservatives shouldn't waste their time crying wolf about the Fairness Doctrine, a regulation that would mandate equal time for political opinions on public airwaves and thus kill conservative talk radio. Ruffini notes that the re-imposition of the Fairness Doctrine would "constitute a direct provocation to the Right without any tangible political benefit in the Center or the Left", and, futhermore, Obama said he does not want to bring it back. Focus on legitimate threats like nationalized health care and card check, he writes.

But Conn Carroll responds:

Yes, Obama is too smart to bring back the 'Fairness Doctrine'. You are absolutely not going to see any movement in Congress to pass legislation forcing the FCC to revive the same rule it abandoned in 1987. But as the Center for American Progress points out, Congress does not need to pass any new legislation: "The public obligations inherent in the Fairness Doctrine are still in existence and operative, at least on paper." Instead you will see a regulatory push at the FCC to intimidate conservative radio stations by shortening their licensing requirements from every eight, to every three years, and forcing them to meet stepped up "public interest" requirements. This new standard would be just as vague and ripe for abuse as the old Fairness Doctrine ever was.

... a re-regulation of radio broadcasting along the lines that CAP envisions is a real threat to freedom of speech. And the way Obama will porbably go about it, bypassing Congress and using a bureacratic out of touch regulatory body, is exactly the route the Obama administration is probably going to take on cap and trade as well. As Patrick points out CAP "president John Podesta is leading the Obama transition" and he "is dead serious."

An article by Marin Cogin in The New Republic argues that concerns about the Fairness Doctrine were mere "Republican paranoia."

The left gets its first scalp:

John Brennan, President-elect Barack Obama's top adviser on intelligence, has taken his name out of the running for any intelligence position in the new administration.

In a letter Tuesday, Brennan wrote letter to Obama that he did not want to be a distraction. His potential appointment has raised a firestorm in liberal blogs who associate him with the Bush administration's interrogation, detention and rendition policies.

"The fact that I was not involved in the decisionmaking process for any of these controversial policies and actions has been ignored," he wrote, in a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

In the end, the responsibility of governing will lead Obama to many of the same war on terror policies that Bush endorsed -- just as he came to support telecom immunity when the chips were down. Surely whomever Obama appoints to head the CIA will be someone he views as pragmatic, and hopefully ruthless as well. But consider this another early sign of overreach: if conservatives want to stage a comeback, they should be heartened by any evidence that Obama is catering to the loudest, and most ideological, elements of the Democratic base.

Harry Reid told the Detroit Free Press that he expects comprehensive immigration reform to be passed relatively early in the next Congress:

Q. With more Democrats in the Senate and the House and a Democrat in the White House, how do you see congressional efforts playing out on such issues as health care and immigration?

A: On immigration, there's been an agreement between (President-elect Barack) Obama and (Arizona Republican Sen. John) McCain to move forward on that. ... We'll do that. We have to get this economy stuff figured out first, so I think we'll have a shot at doing something on health care in the next Congress for sure.

Q: Will there be as much of a fight on immigration as last time?

A: We've got McCain and we've got a few others. I don't expect much of a fight at all. Now health care is going to be difficult. That's a very complicated issue. We debated at great length immigration. People understand the issues very well. We have not debated health care, so that's going to take a lot more time to do.

One senator who wields significant influence on the debate is Robert Menendez, and he seems to be pushing ahead on the issue as well. Menendez is no extremist among Senate Democrats, either; he's just been named head of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee. Expect Menendez to lead a push--apparently with Reid's blessing--to get comprehensive reform passed in the first half of 2009. Proponents will argue that while the measure may be unpopular, it's better to swallow a bitter pill far in advance of the midterms. And if it seems that they lack the votes to pass it in the next few months, they'll bargain for a commitment for passage later in 2009.

Less than a week after the IAEA reported that "a Syrian site bombed by Israel last year had features resembling those of a nuclear reactor site," the AP reports that Mohamed ElBaradei wants to...help Syria build a nuclear reactor:

The chief U.N. nuclear inspector said Monday that Syria had a right to his agency's help in planning a power-producing atomic reactor, in what diplomats described as a rejection of U.S.-led efforts to block the aid.

The clash reflected tensions between Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the U.N. nuclear agency, and key Western nations over whether Syria should be given potentially sensitive nuclear guidance at a time when it is being investigated.

Russia, China and developing nations also back the aid project, said diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the International Atomic Energy Agency talks.

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said it was "totally inappropriate, we believe, given the fact that Syria is under investigation by the IAEA for building a nuclear reactor outside the bounds of its international legal commitments.

"And then for the IAEA to be involved in providing technical information concerning nuclear activities would seem to be contradictory, if not ironic," McCormack said.

It will be fascinating to see how an Obama administration, so keen to strengthen our alliances and restore our standing in the international community, will respond to this kind of idiocy from our international institutions.

Eighteen to twenty-nine-year-old turnout did not live up to all the pre-election hype. According to CNN exit polls, the proportion of voters under 30 increased by about 1 percent nationally--from 17 percent of the electorate in 2004 to 18 percent this year. Yet even if their share of the electorate was relatively flat, their propensity to choose Barack Obama was not. The Democratic share from this subgroup surged in 2008.

Barack Obama’s 34-point (66 percent-32 percent) victory among 18-29-year-olds was the largest winning margin in that age group since Lyndon Johnson beat Barry Goldwater in 1964. By way of comparison, George W. Bush lost the under-30 vote by 9 points to John Kerry (54 percent-45 percent) four years ago.

Even though younger voters are hard to turnout and often inattentive to politics, they provided a huge number of votes to Barack Obama. Not surprisingly, Democrats are already working hard to maintain their edge with this cohort. This recent Los Angles Times piece discusses some of the efforts already under way. Reporter Laura Olson writes:

The Obama transition team already has moved to capitalize on this enormous youth base: Web-casting the president-elect's weekly addresses on YouTube; communicating its transition steps on a post-election website, Change.gov; and reaching out by e-mail to many of the campaign's 3 million donors amassed during a nearly two-year campaign.

The team also has taken advantage of booming social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, in reaching out to younger voters in their own element.

Republicans may not win this age group in the foreseeable future. But a Republican won’t step foot in the White House again if the party continues to lose this roughly 20 percent of the electorate by more than a 2-1 margin. Closing that gap--at least to low double digits--should be a top priority of the Republican Party hierarchy now that the election dust has settled.

HT: The Democratic Strategist

Mary Katharine points out that Joe Biden's chief of staff, Ted Kaufman, has been named to fill his boss's seat. Kaufman says he will step down in 2010. By all indications Kaufman is simply keeping the seat warm until Beau Biden, Joe's son and Delaware's attorney general, will return from serving in Iraq as a JAG and run for his dad's seat. In what NBC reporters describe as a "lengthy" statement from Biden (is there any other kind?), the vice president-elect pretty much says he would have wanted his son to have his seat if he weren't in Iraq:

"It is no secret that I believe my son, Attorney General Beau Biden would make a great United States Senator-just as I believe he has been a great Attorney General,” Biden said. “But Beau has made it clear from the moment he entered public life, that any office he sought, he would earn on his own. He proved that two years ago when he turned down an appointment as Attorney General. Instead, he ran on his own and won election. Typical of Beau, he made it clear again his year that he would not accept an appointment to the United States Senate. As he said when he deployed overseas, he is determined to fulfill his military obligations and then return to his duties as Attorney General. If he chooses to run for the Senate in the future, he will have to run and win on his own. He wouldn't have it any other way. In making her decision, the governor has made it clear that whoever seeks the office in 2010 will do so from a level playing field. The voters will make that decision. For now, my concern is with Beau's safety, not his political future.”

Delaware Democrats seem a bit miffed that no one informed them of Kaufman's appointment prior to the governor's announcement. Could Biden's positioning to get his son in the Senate lead to a backlash and create an opening for a Republican to have a serious shot at the seat? Perhaps. But the fact that Beau Biden wasn't directly appointed to fill his father's seat lessens the appearance of blatant nepotism--the kind of nepotism that nearly led to the defeat of Alaska's senator Lisa Murkowski in 2004, who was appointed by her father Frank. The Alaska legislature later passed a law against appointing a family member to office, and you may recall Frank Murkowski was walloped in a gubernatorial Republican primary by a certain moose-hunting former mayor of Wasilla.

This coming from a country that single-handedly sparked a space weapons race and has thousands of missiles pointed at our Taiwanese ally....China Adopts Russian Anti-BMD Rhetoric:

China has followed Russia's lead in recent broad statements about missile defense efforts by "relevant countries."

On Nov. 5, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke in Tokyo on Russia's Asia-Pacific foreign policy. He said Moscow was "closely watching the intensive deployment of a theater missile defense system in the region."

At a regular press conference the following day, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Qin Gang said China "always believes that setting up a global missile defense system, including deploying such a system in some regions of the world or conducting cooperation in this field, is detrimental to global strategic balance and stability, undermines mutual trust among countries and affects regional stability."

Objections on the grounds of regional stability are duly noted, China.

Tyler Cowen offers the NYT audience some lessons from the Great Depression and the New Deal. Among them, "don't raise taxes in a slump" and "don't make unionization easier." Liberals pout.

Weekly Standard alum Whitney Blake interviews critics of the new New Deal for Fox News.

Rudy goes to Georgia, where he will shortly become the first man to answer the question, "How 'bout them Dawgs?" with a Brooklyn accent.

Polling shows Chambliss may need the star power.

"Thanksgiving is coming — a time to participate in the great American tradition of maligning and abusing our ancestors."

Change is coming: Longtime Biden aide picked to fill Senate seat.

Hee. Letterman flubbed Couric interview, too.

Bush pardons 14, commutes two sentences, for drug offenses, fraud, breaking endangered species laws. No high-profile criminals in the bunch. Left left in suspense over which long-awaited perp walks and frog marches they will be deprived of.

A short history of the bagel? Sure, why not?

Video flashback: Obama's AG on enemy combatants

Rasmussen reports:

Nearly half of U.S. voters (49%) say the United States should not close the terrorist prison camp at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba....

Only 32% of voters say the Guantanamo prison camp should be closed, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. One-out-of-five (19%) are undecided.

The new findings mark a drop in support for the special prison camp for terrorists where the United States detains about 250 inmates. In a survey in late July, 59% said Guantanamo should be kept open, while 26% said it should be closed.

I don't know why support for keeping the prison open dropped since July, but I imagine support would be a lot higher if more people read Thomas Joscelyn's excellent article on the terrorists at Guantanamo, "Clear and Present Danger", in this week's issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey fainted during a speech last week to the Federalist Society, but, thankfully, he was released from the hospital with a clean bill of health and appears to be in good spirits. It's really too bad, though, that the actual speech he delivered hasn't received more attention. The attorney general offered a strong defense of the Bush administration's war on terror policies and laid down some challenges for the incoming administration:

As the end of this Administration draws near, you would expect to hear broad praise for this success at keeping our Nation safe. Instead, I am afraid what we hear is a chorus with a rather more dissonant refrain. Instead of appreciation, or even a fair appraisal, of the Administration's accomplishments, we have heard relentless criticism of the very policies that have helped keep us safe. We have seen this in the media, we have seen this in the Congress, and we have heard it from the legal academy as well.

In some measure, those criticisms rest on a very dangerous form of amnesia that views the success of our counterterrorism efforts as something that undermines the justification for continuing them. In an odd way, we have become victims of our own success. In the eyes of these critics, if Al Qaeda has not struck our homeland for seven years, then perhaps it never posed much of a threat after all and we didn't need these counterterrorism policies. ...

If you listen only to the critics, you might assume, for example, that this Administration, by asserting that habeas corpus did not apply to alien enemy combatants, had tried to deprive the judiciary of a time-honored role in second-guessing our military commanders' decisions concerning whom to detain on foreign battlefields. Of course, before this armed conflict, federal judges have never asserted the authority to afford habeas corpus to alien enemy combatants captured and detained abroad.

As even the majority in Boumediene acknowledged, the Supreme Court had "never held that noncitizens detained by our Government" outside the United States had "any rights under our Constitution." Indeed, following World War II, the Court had specifically rejected that habeas corpus would apply in that context. The Administration's position in Boumediene thus was at least arguably justified by text, history, and precedent. A majority of the Supreme Court may have disagreed, but the Administration's position hardly constitutes the attack on habeas corpus asserted, but not explained, by its critics like the author I quoted.

And when people denounce a purported assault on the "Geneva Conventions," you might expect some level of specificity in the charges. One cannot "assault" a treaty as an abstract concept; one can only violate the treaty by acting contrary to its words. The Geneva Conventions contain 319 articles, of which 315 are plainly addressed to armed conflicts among the nations that signed the Conventions. It is hardly surprising that the United States concluded that those provisions would not apply to the armed conflict against Al Qaeda, an international terrorist group and not, the last time I checked, a signatory to the Conventions.

The Dallas Morning News reports:

A jury on Monday determined that the Holy Land Foundation and five men who worked with the Muslim charity were guilty of three dozen counts related to the illegal funneling of at least $12 million to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

The unanimous verdicts are a complete victory for the government, which streamlined its case after a mistrial last year, and worked hard to carefully educate jurors on the complex, massive evidence presented in the trial. Guilty verdicts were read on 108 separate charges.

The boss encourages some fresh thinking.

Halperin says the media suffers from extreme pro-Obama bias.

Politico finally gets around to vetting Obama's advisers.

Jodi Kantor is pleased with herself for trolling facebook...her editors are unimpressed (at least in public).

How did our friends on the left miss this?

Lauren Collins catches Huckabee being petty, again.

Despite fears of a recession, a drop in consumer spending, and a general onset of malaise, the holiday catalogues keep coming to my door. Take Dean & Deluca, where you can order two 12-ounce Wagyu strips for only $190. Or a generous 8.78 ounces of Calvisius caviar that will only cost you $900. But the ultimate indicator of whether or not we are hitting hard times is if I stop receiving catalogues from this God-forsaken place. So far, they keep on coming.

This is outstanding -- better than I could do if I were trying.

A question at Politico's "Arena" about the Obama team and a potential stimulus package elicits this response from Harvard (Harvard!) Professor Stephen Walt:

"On economics, Obama is putting the right pegs in the proper holes. But the other shoe still has to drop: what will we be doing overseas while we are trying to dig ourselves out at home? If the foreign policy and defense team funds the full DoD wish list and continues the interventionist tendencies of the Bush and Clinton eras, the ship of state will keep taking on water no matter how fast Geithner and Summers can bail."

Maybe if Obama would put some of those pegs not just in the proper holes but in holes on the sinking ship of state, we could stop taking on water! How can Geithner and Summers keep digging us out at home and avoid dropping shoes? By keeping their eye on the ball and tightening their belts?

Over the weekend, the U.S. special operations teams of Task Force 88 took another shot at al Qaeda's network operating inside Pakistan's tribal areas. The target of the Predator strike was Rashid Rauf, the man behind the failed bombing in 2006 of London airlines. The plan was for al Qaeda operatives to mix binary liquid explosives and detonate them on about a dozen planes while in mid-flight over the Atlantic. Pakistani intelligence claimed Rauf was killed, but this hasn't been confirmed.

The strike has led to protests--not from Pakistanis but British Members of Parliament. Rauf was a dual Pakistani-British citizen. Some Tory backbenchers are angry over the "execution" of a citizen, while some in Labor are concerned Rauf's civil rights were violated.

Patrick Mercer, Tory MP for Newark, said the attack had “ultimately led to the execution of a British subject”. He called for a clear statement from the Government to explain what was known about the planned attack. Andrew Dismore, Labor chairman of the parliamentary Human Rights Committee, wanted to know whether British intelligence services had been consulted by the Americans.

The protests over Rauf highlight the fundamental disagreement between those who see the conflict with al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists as a war and those who see the conflict as a problem to be left to law enforcement agencies.

As the attitude of the British Members of Parliament shows, Britain, like most European countries, has opted for the latter view. This is why men like Abu Qatada, al Qaeda's "ambassador to Europe," are released on bail. Qatada cannot be deported to Jordan, where he was convicted on terrorism related charges, because his human rights might be violated. Instead the government pays him thousands of dollars a month in benefits.

Seven al Qaeda operatives, including a "recruiting sergeant," have skipped what are called "control orders," which essentially is bail, and are missing. British intelligence believes there are over 2,000 determined jihadists operating inside the country and plotting attacks from "enclaves" in London, Birmingham, and Luton. Britain’s capital has earned the derisive title of "Londonistan" because terrorists and their supporters flock to the country, knowing they can operate in an environment where the law handcuffs the government.

Hillary Clinton's move to Foggy Bottom will set off an intriguing parlor game among Democrats in New York state. Whom will Governor Paterson appoint to succeed Clinton? And how will it affect the gubernatorial and senate races in New York in 2010?

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has long been seen as a likely primary opponent to Paterson in 2010, and given his famous name and fundraising base, he's likely to offer a stiff challenge. Paterson will surely be tempted to dispatch Cuomo to Washington--if he's willing to go. Recent reports say Cuomo would turn the job down, but his attitude might change once the discussion moves past hypotheticals.

On the other hand, the New York State chapter of NOW wants a woman to succeed Clinton. That could boost the chance that New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn could become the first openly lesbian member of the U.S. Senate. And if all that speculation weren't enough, the New York Post reports that Paterson and Senator Chuck Schumer may already have a deal. It seems that Schumer's priority is that he get recognized as New York's preeminent Senator, and Andrew Cuomo would be the only contender for the Senate seat that would threaten that status. Schumer wants a less high-profile junior Senator--someone like Buffalo Representative Brian Higgins, or Congresswoman Gillibrand.

Whoever ultimately succeeds Clinton, both the successor and Paterson will be up for re-election in 2010. Waiting in the wings are New York mayor Michael Bloomberg (whose popularity has dipped since he announced his plan to seek a third term), and former mayor Rudy Giuliani. A recent Marist poll shows that even as Paterson's popularity falls, he still leads both Bloomberg and Giuliani. But Giuliani may have an ace-in-the-hole if he runs for Goveror in 2010: He will be the only one of the three candidates who won't have to deal with massive budget deficits in the next two years. Both Bloomberg and Paterson are looking at tax increases and spending cuts to address the deteriorating fiscal state of New York City and New York state, respectively. Neither one may be sporting a shining resume in 2010, and voters may be ready for new leadership.

So many pubs, so few drink specials:

Britain is considering a ban on "happy hour" discounts at bars and restaurants to curb drinking, a spokesman said Saturday, as health advocates warned that a rise in liver-related deaths among young people may signal a future epidemic.

Health officials will decide on whether to ban the happy hours — designated times for discount drinks — once an independent policy review is published in coming weeks, a health department spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity.

President Jimmy Carter, the man who insisted that the Zimbabwe-Rhodesian government allow the Soviet backed Zanu paramilitary liberation movement to participate in national elections, has been denied entry into Zimbabwe by.... Zanu-PF leader and dictator Robert Mugabe.

The former United Nations chief and a former U.S. president have canceled a planned humanitarian visit to Zimbabwe after being denied entry into the country by President Robert Mugabe's government.

Kofi Annan and Jimmy Carter, along with human rights campaigner Graca Machel, were scheduled to visit Zimbabwe Saturday for a first-hand look at the emerging cholera crisis.

Double irony: Graca Machel was the wife of former Mozambique President Samora Machel, the man who hosted Mugabe's Zanu while they were launching military raids into apartheid Rhodesia during the 1970s.

The story of Zimbabwe is one of the great tragedies of the 20th century. Once a first world nation, Rhodesia -- and Zimbabwe during the 80s -- exported enough food to feed roughly half of Africa. Though deeply stained by the apartheid policies of the white minority government, Rhodesia still boasted the largest black middle class in Africa, had a top-tier educational system for both blacks and whites that rivaled those in Europe and the United States, a Rhodesian dollar that was nearly equal with its U.S. cousin, and unemployment that was in the low single digits.

Today, after Robert Mugabe's tyrannical 28 year reign, Zimbabwe has become one of the poorest nations in the world. Unemployment is at 80 percent and rising. Inflation is an unbelievable 2000 percent, also rising. Once the breadbasket of Africa, Zimbabwe is now reliant on Western food relief to feed its people. Refugees pour over the South African and Botswanan borders by the thousands, as AIDS (and now cholera) ravage the countryside. Life expectancy for a Rhodesian male was appx. 67 years. That number has collapsed to an unthinkable 37 years.

To this day, Carter is unrepentant for his assistance in Mugabe's rise to power. That he was denied entry into the very state he helped create underscores the dangerous naivete of Carter's foreign policy, and serves as a warning shot to administrations to come: the history and nature of Marxist dictators is both universal and constant. To legitimize them, as Carter did with Mugabe, can create humanitarian crises that span decades.

For more on the Zimbabwe-Rhodesian elections, see James Kirchick's How Tyranny Came to Zimbabwe.

Bush, this morning, talking about the $20 billion decision to help out Citigroup:

Citigroup lost about half of its stock value last week. Bush and Paulson have decided to give them an additional $20 billion from the $700 billion bail-out, and the government will guarantee more than $300 billion in risky loans held by the bank.

Citigroup will shoulder losses on the first $29 billion of that portfolio.

Any remaining losses will be split between Citigroup and the government, with the bank absorbing 10 percent and the government absorbing 90 percent. The Treasury Department will use its bailout fund to assume up to $5 billion of losses. If necessary, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will bear the next $10 billion of losses. Beyond that, the Federal Reserve will guarantee any additional losses.

In exchange, Citigroup will issue $7 billion of preferred stock to government regulators. In addition, the government is buying $20 billion of preferred stock in Citigroup. The preferred shares will pay an 8 percent dividend and will slightly erode the value of shares held by investors.

Citigroup will also agree to certain executive compensation restrictions, which will be reviewed by regulators. It will also put in place the FDIC's loan modification plan, which is similar to one it recently announced.

Barack Obama is set to announce his economic team at a press conference around noon today. In addition to pure personnel, we should look for hints that Team Barry will be holding off on long-promised tax hikes on the upper income brackets in exchange for hefty domestic spending and economic stimulus plans.

Obama signaled that he would pursue a far more ambitious plan of spending and tax cuts than he had outlined during his campaign and planned to announce his economic team on Monday. Some Democrats in Congress, meantime, were calling for the government to spend as much as $700 billion to stimulate the economy over the next two years.

Obama aides William Daley and David Axelrod suggested he'd hold off on the Bush tax cut rollback on Sunday news shows:

During an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Obama economic adviser William Daley suggested that the incoming administration would reconsider whether to quickly increase taxes for Americans earning more than $250,000 per year.

Daly, who was commerce secretary under former President Bill Clinton and is the brother of Chicago Mayor Richard Daly, said it looks “more likely than not” that Obama would not seek legislation to repeal President George W. Bush’s cut in the tax rate for the wealthiest Americans before it is scheduled to expire after the 2010 tax year. Bush cut the top rate to 35% from 39.6% in 2001...

David Axelrod, an Obama political strategist who was recently named as one of the president-elect’s senior White House advisers, also suggested during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” that Obama was considering delaying the tax increase, but he did not elaborate.

Larry Summers, who will head Obama's National Economic Council, suggested in 2007 that while he doesn't like tax cuts for the rich, tax hikes are not a good idea in a downturn:

With respect to the short term, especially if the economy turns down, that would not be the right moment to seek to increase taxes.

Video after the jump:

More evidence to support the theory that progressives will feature prominently in the Obama administration's domestic policy and have almost no role in shaping foreign policy:

Melody Barnes, former chief counsel to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) on the Senate Judiciary Committee and head of policy at the Center American Progress, will be named director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, officials said.

Surely Barack Obama knew what he'd be up against when he tried to bring healing to Washington:

McConnell took nine days to return a congratulatory phone call from Reid after the election, but the Republican leader returned a flurry of other calls earlier. McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said McConnell called President-elect Barack Obama the day after the election — Obama returned the call a day later — but took another week before calling Reid back on Nov. 13. Stewart said he did not know the reason for the delay, but did say McConnell had a long list of callbacks to make.

McConnell is also warning Reid that the weakened Republican minority won't be bending to a far Left agenda:

“What I’m saying to the new president and the new administration: ‘Do big things, and do them in the center, and you’ll be surprised at how much support you might have,’ " he said at the news conference.

Otherwise, McConnell warned, his party would stand together and block a far-left agenda.

“You're likely to have very significant unity among Republicans," he said.

Not exactly negotiating from a position of power, especially given that the letter to Reid was signed by two incumbents who have yet to secure their seats, but it's nice to see some spunk.

In a 2002 CNN interview, Eric Holder delivered this answer, which will have the Hope 'n' Changers' heads spinning:

One of the things we clearly want to do with these prisoners is to have an ability to interrogate them and find out what their future plans might be, where other cells are located; under the Geneva Convention that you are really limited in the amount of information that you can elicit from people.

It seems to me that given the way in which they have conducted themselves, however, that they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. They are not prisoners of war. If, for instance, Mohamed Atta had survived the attack on the World Trade Center, would we now be calling him a prisoner of war? I think not. Should Zacarias Moussaoui be called a prisoner of war? Again, I think not.

If he stuck to his guns on this, it might be enough to forgive him for his unfortunate gun views.

Muqtada al Sadr's political party held a rally in Baghdad to protest the U.S.-Iraqi agreement on the posture of U.S. forces in Iraq. Sadr, who has toed the Iranian line on the agreement, and coincidentally lives in Iran, says the agreement is invalid as it brings "shame and humiliation" on the Iraqi people because the "occupier" is not thrown out of the country.

The rally had the usual political theater - chants of death to America, flag-waving, and an effigy of President Bush that is beaten, abused, and then set on fire. But despite all of the reports on the unpopularity of the agreement among the Iraqi people, Sadr barely drew a crowd.

The Iraqi military put the number at "less than 10,000." McClatchy, which consistently overestimates the size of Sadr's protests, put the number at "tens of thousands."

Baghdad has a population estimated over seven million, and Sadr City, the supposed base of Sadr's power in Baghdad, has an estimated two million residents. Sadr's followers intentionally hold protests on Friday, the day most Muslims go to the mosque, so he had an abundant, pliable audience. So the best Sadr can do on an issue that supposedly is opposed by most Iraqis is about 10,000 demonstrators? Perhaps opposition to the U.S.-Iraqi agreement doesn't run as deep as we are being told.

During an interview with Minnesota secretary of state Mark Ritchie on Wednesday afternoon, I asked him what protections are in place to prevent ballot tampering in the Coleman-Franken Senate race. “All ballots are in the control of election officials. All ballots are carried with two election judges of different parties," he said. "The state law is clear. These [ballots] are under lock and key. Ballots moved with election judges of both parties.”

In fact, Ritchie’s statement that Minnesota law requires ballots to move with two election judges of both parties is incorrect. Later in the day on Wednesday, I spoke with Matt Stevens, an election judge from St. Paul. Stevens, a 30 year-old musician in the reggae band New Primitives and a self-described political independent, told me that he alone moved the ballots from his St. Paul precinct to the county office. Stevens didn't do anything illegal. Minnesota law states: "One or more of the election judges in each precinct shall" transport ballots (emphasis mine).

There is no evidence that vote tampering has occurred, but it's noteworthy that Ritchie--who will take part in a crucial decision this week regarding whether or not rejected absentee ballots may be included in the final vote count--apparently does not understand Minnesota election law.

For a piece on the Coleman-Franken recount in the new issue of TWS, I spent some time at the recount site in Ramsey County (St. Paul) on Wednesday. I was struck by the civility and reasonableness of volunteers for both campaigns. Very few ballots were challenged, and at the end of the day both sides were pleased with the proceedings. After the recount had concluded for the day, I chatted with one Franken campaign volunteer in the parking lot as she walked to her car. She said she had previously participated in a recount in another county and told me that the election officials were particularly professional and polite even by Minnesota's standards.

As we reached her green Toyota, I noticed that the passenger side seat was covered in lefty bumperstickers (yes, the seat). “Bush and Cheney Belong in Jail,” read one. “9/11 What really happened?” read another. She said she was a member of a 9/11 Truth group, which has about 10 to 20 members who attend the meetings. She expressed hope that the Obama would launch a full investigation and report the truth about 9/11. Of course, I must know all about what really happened since I live in Washington, D.C, she said.

“They murdered Paul Wellstone, too,” she told me before she shut her car door. I surmised that the recount was really going quite well when it had a conspiracy-theorist’s seal of approval.

Of course, had Coleman picked up votes instead of Franken that day, I suspect she would have thought "they" had something to do with it.

Is Tim Geithner, Barack Obama’s choice to succeed Hank Paulson at Treasury, worth 500 points on the Dow? So it seems. No surprise say the professional traders: Markets hate uncertainty, and by making up his mind about this key economic post, Obama has removed a great deal of uncertainty. Plausible, but not persuasive.

One thing was certain since the day Barack Obama became our president-elect. Someone would replace Paulson, and that person would implement the Obama agenda. Whether that person turned out to be Paul Volcker, Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner or some reincarnation of Adam Smith, that person would be an implementer of policy. Yes, he--no plausible “she” was ever in the frame--would also be a key adviser to the new president. But would the advice of Larry Summers be very different from that of his long-time buddy, Geithner? Not likely. So where was the uncertainty that was dispelled by the naming of the new secretary of the Treasury?

Also, just what uncertainty has been eliminated? We knew no more about Obama’s plans and priorities on Friday afternoon, after the Geithner appointment was announced, than we did that morning. There will be a stimulus package of undetermined amount, there will be a GM bailout containing undetermined conditions, there will some day be an end to the secret ballot in union elections but we have no idea when--all known for some time. No uncertainty eliminated, no certainty substituted for the vagueness that has so far been the Obama hallmark.

The real significance of the market pop on the Geithner announcement is that we are shifting, at least for now and for the foreseeable future, from a market-driven economy to a government-policy driven economy. When Hank Paulson announced that he had changed his mind and would not buy the rotten IOUs that litter bank balance sheets, the market tanked. Nothing about the prospect for the economy changed--earnings will be whatever they will be in this recession, so will unemployment and other variables. Only policy changed.

So, too, on Friday. The economy was in as bad shape in the afternoon as it was in the morning. But a new policy player was inserted into the game. It didn’t take a genius to understand Paulson when he said that he would put the remaining $350 billion into a lockbox, to be opened by his successor--or sooner, with the blessing of that successor. Nor did it take a genius to figure out that this weekend’s deliberations about what to do about the sinking ship that is Citigroup--some wags are suggesting that CEO Vikram Pandit ask for a bailout by cash-rich Somali pirates who undoubtedly would like to move from their Mafia-like existence to financial respectability as the Corleones did when they shifted to Las Vegas--would now include Geithner as the “decider”, rather than merely as an advisor.

In short, policymaking changed on Friday afternoon, and the market likes what it thinks is the new direction more than it likes Paulson’s recent moves. The economy is no different. Obama might have intended to keep his hands off policy until he is inaugurated so as to distance himself from the Bush administration. But the policy-driven economy waits for no man, not even one who claims to be able to cool the planet and turn back the flood waters.

We are now in an era in which Washington trumps New York. When the economy is creating wealth, Wall Street and Main Street are the centers of the action; Washington has little or nothing to contribute. When attention shifts to redistributing wealth, the center of the action shifts to Pennsylvania Avenue, Capitol Hill and K Street. That’s where it is now.

It will be some time before we know the full extent of Obama's ambitions on domestic policy, but progressives are sure to feature prominently in any debate over health care, energy, banking, etc. In the realm of foreign policy, however, progressives seem already to have been marginalized, or dismissed entirely.

Barack Obama's national security team is beginning to take shape and there is not a progressive in sight. Assuming the leaks and rumors are true, Hillary will be at State, Jones will serve as national security adviser, Brennan will head the CIA, Gates will stay on at Defense, and Obama will be taking counsel from Scowcroft all the while. These people are not progressives (except Clinton on domestic policy); they are generally considered to be in the realist camp, with the possible exception of Clinton, a liberal internationalist. Jones, Gates and Scowcroft aren't even Democrats.

None of this is surprising. Obama never seemed to take progressives very seriously on foreign policy. Throughout the campaign he signaled his respect for the foreign policy of Bush 41, and his advisers tended to split between realists like Richard Danzig and liberal internationalists like Samantha Power. In the one instance that Obama did genuinely excite progressives -- his call to sit down with the leaders of rogue states for direct and unconditional negotiations -- there was no formal roll out or set-piece speech announcing the policy. Instead, even supporters of the idea acknowledged that his arrival at the position had been 'accidental,' and Obama backpedaled over the course of the campaign.

What is clear is that the split between realists and neoconservatives has been resolved, for the time being, in favor of the realists, whose titular leader, Colin Powell, endorsed Obama at the end of the campaign. Over the last eight years this split produced some genuine personal animosity between the two camps, and, in fact, it may have been personal animosity more than anything else that drove Powell away from McCain and into the arms of Obama. So what had been an intra-Republican fight has now led the realists to take refuge in an ascendant Democratic party.

But the real losers here seem to be progressives. If progressives can't get their foot in the door on national security in an Obama administration, it's difficult to imagine precisely what conditions would bring them to power, since we are unlikely to see a more liberal president for decades.

Meanwhile, in foreign policy, the fight for the soul of the Republican party -- realists vs. neocons -- has shifted venues, with realists drifting into prominent positions in a Democratic administration and neoconservatives staying behind. The liberal internationalists, led by Hillary, will also be a powerful force in the new administration, and in their battles with Obama's realists they may find willing allies among the neocons on the right. After all, liberal internationalists have been allied with out-of-power neoconservatives before, most notably during the fight inside the Clinton administration over U.S. policy in the Balkans.

Since progressives will have their hands full with domestic policy over the next four years, they could well be completely locked out on matters of national security. The same fights that riled the Bush administration could then continue into the Obama administration -- with different winners and losers perhaps, but the same basic framework guiding the debate. Progressives are getting wise to this pretty quickly. From their point of view, neocons, realists, and liberal internationalists are separated by only a few degrees of difference. Their frustration may be some small consolation to conservatives of all stripes.

One final thought on this: John Podesta, head of the Center for American Progress, is running the Obama transition. CAP was the most visible proponent of a 'muscular progressivism' during the Bush years, and yet the transition appears likely to bring very few muscular progressives into government. Does Podesta really subscribe to the foreign policy ideas produced by his own organization, or does Obama simply disagree with Podesta on these issues?

British intelligence has reestablished links with Syrian intelligence at the highest level on terrorism issues and other matters after a visit by Foreign Minister David Miliband. “Mr Miliband's visit, the first by a British foreign secretary for seven years, was touted as an opportunity to test Syria's willingness to engage with the West, lifting it out of its current isolation,” the London Times reported. “Washington has long insisted on isolating Syria but with a change of administration - and attitude - looming, Britain and France are leading efforts to lure Damascus out of the solitude it has found itself…”

Britain has rewarded Syria with diplomatic talks and the exchange of intelligence information, despite the fact that Syria is still a state sponsor of terror and has refused to denounce and turn in terrorists openly operating on its soil. Hezbollah has long been based in Damascus; Imad Mugniyah, the artitect of the 1983 bombings that killed more than 200 U.S. Marines in Beirut, was killed in a car bombing last February. Mugniyah had a home a in an upscale neighborhood in Damascus. Khaled Mashal, the leader of Hamas, is also based out of Damascus.

Syria is strongly believed to be behind multiple terror attacks inside neighboring Lebanon, including the February 2005 bombing that killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 21 others. Syria has also turned a blind eye to, and in some cases even aided, Al Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni insurgent groups operating on its soil. Just last month, U.S. special operations forces conducted a cross-border raid into western Syria and killed Abu Ghadiya, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq’s network that pushed foreigner fighters into Iraq.

Syria has never paid a price for its sponsorship of multiple terrorist outfits operating on its soil, and likely never will.

The media has been noting, with some distaste at the paranoia of backwoods Americans, that the Obama win has triggered an uptick in gun sales:

But whatever the reason, gun dealers in red and blue states alike say they've never seen anything like the run on weaponry they've been experiencing since Election Day— surpassing even the panic buying in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"People are terrified of losing their right to protect themselves," said DeWayne Irwin, owner of Cheaper Than Dirt, a large gun store in Ft. Worth. "The volume is 10 times what we ever expected. It started with assault rifles, but at this point people are buying ammunition, high-capacity magazines, Glocks—it's all flying off the shelf. With the economy the way it is, people are worried about instability. They are scared of civil unrest."

But with the unprecedented scrutiny of lawful firearms for applicants to the Obama administration, who could blame them for thinking the guy may be a bit unfair to gun owners?

Tucked in at the end of the questionnaire and listed under “Miscellaneous,” it reads: “Do you or any members of your immediate family own a gun? If so, provide complete ownership and registration information. Has the registration ever lapsed? Please also describe how and by whom it is used and whether it has been the cause of any personal injuries or property damage.”

Paul Light, professor of public service at New York University, said there was no such question for potential appointees when President George W. Bush took office in 2000.

“It kind of sticks out there like a sore thumb,” Light said.

He expressed uncertainty over why it was included but surmised it was out of an abundance of caution, a desire to avoid the spectacle of a Cabinet-level or other high-ranking appointee who is discovered to have an unregistered handgun at home.

Now, it appears Obama's AG pick, Eric Holder, held plenty of unfriendly ideas about gun ownership during his time as Deputy AG, and filed a brief in support of the D.C. handgun ban in the Heller case:

As Deputy Attorney General, Holder was a strong supporter of restrictive gun control. He advocated federal licensing of handgun owners, a three day waiting period on handgun sales, rationing handgun sales to no more than one per month, banning possession of handguns and so-called "assault weapons" (cosmetically incorrect guns) by anyone under age of 21, a gun show restriction bill that would have given the federal government the power to shut down all gun shows, national gun registration, and mandatory prison sentences for trivial offenses (e.g., giving your son an heirloom handgun for Christmas, if he were two weeks shy of his 21st birthday). He also promoted the factoid that "Every day that goes by, about 12, 13 more children in this country die from gun violence"--a statistic is true only if one counts 18-year-old gangsters who shoot each other as "children."(Sources: Holder testimony before House Judiciary Committee, Subcommitee on Crime, May 27,1999; Holder Weekly Briefing, May 20, 2000. One of the bills that Holder endorsed is detailed in my 1999 Issue Paper "Unfair and Unconstitutional.")

After 9/11, he penned a Washington Post op-ed, "Keeping Guns Away From Terrorists" arguing that a new law should give "the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms a record of every firearm sale." He also stated that prospective gun buyers should be checked against the secret "watch lists" compiled by various government entities. (In an Issue Paper on the watch list proposal, I quote a FBI spokesman stating that there is no cause to deny gun ownership to someone simply because she is on the FBI list.)

Happy gun shopping, folks, just in time to catch all the Black Thursday sales on ammo. Nothin' says lovin' like a stocking full of Winchester.

Madam Secretary:

Hillary Rodham Clinton has decided to give up her Senate seat and accept the position of secretary of state, making her the public face around the world for the administration of the man who beat her for the Democratic presidential nomination, two confidants said Friday.

Mrs. Clinton came to her decision after additional discussion with President-elect Barack Obama about the nature of her role and his plans for foreign policy, said one of the confidants, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the situation. Mr. Obama’s office told reporters Thursday that the nomination is “on track” but Clinton associates only confirmed Friday afternoon that she has decided.

“She’s ready,” said the confidant. Mrs. Clinton was reassured after talking again with Mr. Obama because their first meeting in Chicago last week “was so general,” the confidant said. The purpose of the follow-up talk, he added, was not to extract particular concessions but “just getting comfortable” with the idea of working together.

Let the games begin.

Presumably this is the first of many commemorative Metro cards to be issued by the DC transit system:

I can't wait to buy my 'Jindal/Palin' metro card four years from now.

Another Palin Rorschach test. Watch the video and see if you're from real America or fake America. As a real American, it's clear to me that these turkeys had it coming, and, personally, I admire a woman who can keep her wits about her even in the face of such horrific violence. In retrospect, they might have slaughtered animals during the Couric interview just to keep things on an even keel.

Max Blumenthal talks with the daughter of Malcolm X about the Zawahiri tape and Obama's election victory::

MB: Do you think your father would have been surprised by the level of white support for a black candidate like Obama, especially in the South?

MS: No, not at all. He had equivalent support as well.

MB: He had equivalent support from white people?

MS: Yeah. Not all white people are bad. He was not a racist, unlike what the white racist media would say. He had a global outlook just like Barack and Michelle.

Blumenthal says that when he explained the Zawahiri tape to Ms. Shabazz, who had not yet seen it, she "reacted angrily, immediately comparing the Al Qaeda figure to Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam chieftain who was an avowed enemy of her father and has admitted he “may have been complicit” in inciting his murder." Of course Farrakhan endorsed Obama, and was good friends with Rev. Wright, or perhaps that was all a concoction of the white racist media. Read it all here.

The Pakistani military's reaction to the unmanned U.S. Predator airstrikes in its northwest would be funny were it not that al Qaeda is plotting their next attack on the West from there. Supposedly outraged over the U.S. violations of its sovereignty, the Army has conducted exercises to shoot down the Predators.

"The elements of Army Air Defense demonstrated their shooting skills by targeting the drones flying at different altitudes," the military said in a statement.

Air defense commander Lieutenant-General Ashraf Saleem praised the "precision and agility" of the gunners.

The exercises "at a desert range near the city of Muzaffargarh in the central Pubjab province," far from the border areas where the U.S. Predators are ranging.

Here's a suggestion: Deploy the anti-aircraft batteries in Wana in South Waziristan and Miramshah in North Waziristan. The vast majority of the U.S. strikes take place in these towns. This happens for good reason: the Haqqani family and Taliban forces under Baitullah Mehsud, Mullah Nazir, Hafiz Gul Bahadar, and a host of other minor Taliban leaders and their al Qaeda allies openly operate in these areas.

While the Pakistani Army is at it, try deploying ground forces along with the air defense units and take down these networks. If they really want the airstrikes to stop, that is the best solution.

I guess, technically, he's neither a senator nor the president at the moment, but that didn't stop him from negotiating for an auto bailout during his private meeting with Bush, and leaking his version of the details.

Then, he told "60 Minutes" he'd like to "see how this thing plays itself out," before offering an apparent endorsement of a bailout with strings attached:

For the auto industry to completely collapse would be a disaster in this kind of environment, not just for individual families but the repercussions across the economy would be dire. So it's my belief that we need to provide assistance to the auto industry. But I think that it can't be a blank check.

So my hope is that over the course of the next week, between the White House and Congress, the discussions are shaped around providing assistance but making sure that that assistance is conditioned on labor, management, suppliers, lenders, all the stakeholders coming together with a plan what does a sustainable U.S. auto industry look like? So that we are creating a bridge loan to somewhere as opposed to a bridge loan to nowhere. And that's, I think, what you haven't yet seen. That's something that I think we're gonna have to come up with.

But as public opinion begins to stack up against the position Obama momentarily staked out, he characteristically withdraws:

President-elect Barack Obama is staying out of the congressional fight over bailing out the U.S. auto industry, despite his previous statements urging help for Detroit's struggling Big Three, a leading Senate Democrat said Wednesday.

"I can tell you flat out there will be no endorsement [by Mr. Obama] prior to January 20," said Senate Banking Committee Chariman Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut a day after his committee heard a combined appeal for billions of dollars in taxpayer help from the heads of General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co, and Chrysler LLC.

Around about January 21, I'm sure we'll get a convoluted endorsement of whatever the White House and Congress did (or didn't) cobble together as this thing "played itself out." He'll sprinkle it with stern words for the auto CEOs who shamed Main Street by flying their Wall-Street-style jets to Washington, and an assurance that was "consistently for" whatever passes, until such a time as it doesn't work, at which point he'll say he "always said" he was for the opposite, and no one heeded his admonitions, despite the fact that he's the most powerful Democrat in the nation.

The man doesn't want to have a position. Positions are just political liabilities, whereas cop-outs can be cajoled into charmingly nuanced and inscrutable interview answers.

Obama leadership: "Well, let's see how this thing plays itself out."

It can work for auto bailouts. It ain't gonna work with Iran.

Tim Mahoney, the man who replaced scandal-ridden Mark Foley in 2006 before being defeated in the wake of his own sex scandal, is not only Congressionally seatless, but shameless as well:

Unbowed by the sex scandal that led to his disgrace and reelection defeat, Congressman Tim Mahoney (D-Fla.) showed up today at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee where Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke addressed problems with the $700 billion bailout program.

Current and former aides to Mahoney told ABCNews.com that both his own staff and Committee staff strongly urged Mahoney not to appear but, when he insisted, said he should not ask questions.

"Someone didn't get the memo that he wasn't re-elected," said one of Mahoney's staff members, who spoke to ABCNews.com on the condition of anonymity.

He also requested a private meeting with Barney Frank to offer his advice on how to deal with the economy.

Mukasey was about 20 minutes into a speech to the Federalist Society when he began to slur his words and shake slightly before collapsing slowly, into the arms of several nearby men (probably from his security detail) who had rushed to assist him.

He lost consciousness briefly, but regained it before leaving for treatment George Washington University, and never transferred power to his deputy. He is reportedly "alert and conversant," which is good news considering the stroke-like look of the incident. His spokespeople asked if it was a stroke, but offered no comment.

Mukasey was appointed by President Bush in 2007 to replace the beleaguered Alberto Gonzales, and was confirmed 53-40, after some controversy about his answer on waterboarding, an aggressive interrogation technique he refused to designate as "torture" and declare illegal. Presidential candidates Clinton, McCain, Dodd, Biden and Obama were not around to vote.

As is its wont, the Left blogosphere went to work wishing ill upon the imperiled official, although their behavior has improved somewhat since conservative blogs and O'Reilly started pointing out every death wish thread they concoct. At Daily Kos, the diary writer and one commenter were mocked for offering prayers for Mukasey, "The equivalent of urinating on a cold sparkplug...How have your prayers been working out for you over the past eight years? Got a constitution? A rule of law? Got a decent job?" This guy "questions the timing."
Democratic Underground offers more mockery for prayer and calls him a "3rd reich henchman."

Feel the hope. Keep Mukasey in your prayers. It's good news that paramedics were quick, and he sounds like he's doing fairly well.

Out on the tour circuit for his new book, "How Mitt Romney, the Fake Conservative, Almost Bought the Republican Primary With His Big CEO Money" "Do the Right Thing," Mike Huckabee took a break from bashing former rival Mitt Romney to take a few whacks at a fellow governor he's never had to compete with:

“What John McCain did for her was to give her the capacity to sort of leapfrog over the process and get right to the center stage,” he said at a breakfast with reporters this morning. “By naming her (his running mate) he was able to put her in a position where she did have to go through the bruising process of the primaries. Many of us had been out there for 15 months … she walks into the hot spotlight and she’s a blank slate nobody knows so Republicans are fired up.”

Oh, Huck's just mad that moose-hunting super-mom who sells planes on eBay trumps Jared from Subway with a penchant for federal workplace smoking bans.

“She didn’t have to go through any the debates, she didn’t have to go through the primaries, she didn’t have to have people pick her or pick someone else against her. State parties did not have to divide from one to 12 ways over her. So it was a remarkable ability for her to come in at a level that is an extraordinary benefit to her.”...

“So will she be part of the future? Of course she will, for the simple reason that she is one of the few people who played at that stage who didn’t have to get bloodied in the process.”

When she was beaten up, he added, it was by “people Republicans don’t like,” such as Democrats and the media.

Wow, this guy's so petty, you could put him in the 43 car and call him the King. Huckabee's very good performance during his primary "bloodying," such that it was, has served his profile and career fairly well. Less whining would serve him even better.

I was never a huge Romney fan during the primaries, but I found the open distaste for him among his opponents somewhat hyperbolic, and thought he was unfairly maligned for simply taking them to task on their records. A comparison of Huckabee's and Romney's preliminary 2012 positioning indicates Romney may have been the bigger man in that dispute all along. Huckabee's a great politician, but he's throwing up barriers between himself and the good will of the average voter right now.

Romney has been penning helpful op-eds on the economy and the auto bailout (though I should note that he loses points for his politically convenient pro-intervention position while campaigning in Michigan and the flip required for his new position). Romney has declined to trade paint with his opponent thus far.

Asked to respond (to Huckabee's book), Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said Huckabee was acting small.

“This type of pettiness is beneath Mike Huckabee,” Fehrnstrom. “If we’re going to move the party forward, we need to offer more than personal recriminations. Unfortunately, in this book, Mike Huckabee is consumed with presumed slights, and he seems more interested in settling scores than in bringing people together.”

I think they accidentally put self-absorption in the water down in Hope, Ark. instead of fluoride.

This morning Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Norm Coleman conducted a conference call to review the latest information on the Coleman/Franken Senate race in Minnesota. Here are the highlights of the call:

The recount began yesterday. Counties will continue their work over the next week. Some may not conclude until after Thanksgiving. But a lot more information will be available after today. Coleman noted that Minnesota has 4130 precincts. 4112 have newer, more accurate optical screener machines. In all of the precincts where the optical screener machines were in place, very small to no changes occurred in the early recount (2-5 votes swings some for Coleman, or the same number for Franken, but no real appreciable net changes).

Minnesota, also has 18 precincts with older, less accurate machines. In the counts taken in those areas yesterday, Coleman lost a net 28 additional votes.

Coleman estimates that as of now he’s ahead by roughly 170 votes. Many of the big Republican counties have not yet conducted their recounts, according to Coleman. The Minnesota senator sounded upbeat about victory at the end of the day and concluded with a fitting hockey metaphor: “We’re on the ice and its time to put the puck in the net."

Quin Hillyer profiles congressional candidate Joseph Cao, who faces 'Dollar Bill' Jefferson in a Louisiana runoff on December 6. Cao sounds like a singular person -- a Vietnamese immigrant who fled to the United States before the fall of Saigon, eventually became a Jesuit novice, then elected to forego the priesthood in favor of the law and charity work. It's hard to do justice to Cao's biography in an excerpt, so I encourage you to read the whole piece.

Cao eventually elected to run against scandal-tarred Bill Jefferson:

Undaunted, Cao looked at the developing scandal around Rep. Jefferson, and his background in philosophy kicked in. Forget the 66% to 11% (23% "other") Democrat-to-Republican edge in the Second District. Forget the 62% black voter registration (Jefferson is black). "Clearly," said Cao campaign treasurer Murray Nelson, himself the loser last year of a state legislative race and recently the statewide executive director of McCain's Louisiana campaign, "this is a real David going up against a Goliath, but he's a guy who actually taught ethics going against a guy facing multiple indictments. I think he's just offended [by Jefferson's ethics], and he's doing this race for the right reasons, not for himself."

"I want to bring reform back to the Second District," Cao told me. Again, simple as that.

Cao is clearly an underdog, but at least one local analyst gives him an excellent chance. Jefferson prevailed in a December runoff in 2006 with 57 percent of the vote, a substantial drop from his prior re-election campaigns. Two years later, there are likely to be more Louisiana voters who are tired of the headlines about Jefferson's ongoing corruption case. And this year, they have an alternative with a compelling contrast and personal background.

Can an underdog like Cao win against an ethically-challenged Member of Congress who's held his seat for ages? Ask Ted Stevens.

Sen. Ted Stevens gives his last speech from the floor, after 40 years and seven felonies. Audio and summary available, here.

He has some good words for the Alaska pipeline and still doesn't take kindly to radical environmentalists who prevent Alaska tapping its natural resources.

"To hell with politics, just do what's right for Alaska," has been his motto these many years, he said.

Update: In other Alaska news, Begich enters the Senate with a flourish:

Mark Begich settled in Wednesday as Alaska's newest U.S. senator-elect by doing what almost no other Democrat in Washington would ever do: declaring his support for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

But this is Alaska, where Democrats are of a different stripe, Begich reminded those who haven't seen many national-level Democrats from Alaska lately.

"I think anyone who knows me knows I'm a different Democrat. I'm from Alaska. I'm a believer, a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment, a supporter of drilling in ANWR. Alaskans are very liberal [in their belief that] government should not interfere in their personal life," he said.

"I'm definitely different from a New York Democrat -- you can bank on that," he said in response to a question from the New York Times.

Roll Call reports that Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid is giving up on a potential bailout for the Big 3 automakers -- at least for now:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Wednesday that they would try to work out a Thursday vote on a House measure that would extend unemployment insurance, a move that would signal the end of the week’s lame-duck session.

Reid filed for cloture Wednesday evening on a bill that would extend unemployment insurance benefits after he failed to get unanimous consent for an economic stimulus package that included infrastructure funding, state aid for Medicaid, and a loan for the ailing automotive industry...

The cloture petition guarantees there will be a vote on unemployment benefits by Friday, but Reid and McConnell are hoping to move that vote up by a day, and they said they would go back to their colleagues to work out an agreement that would allow a Thursday vote.

If the Senate succeeds, there is no reason for the House to come back to town because it has already passed the measure.

Harry Reid will call Congress back into session in December to try again, but if the Bush administration won't agree to a bailout, then Democrats in Congress will simply wait until January 20, and hope some car manufacturers are still around to benefit from their largesse.

It's been clear for a while that Democrats in Washington don't want to save the Big 3 per se, they want to run a car company. A look at the terms of Barney Frank's bailout bill shows that his idea is to put Barack Obama's Cabinet in charge of the automakers. This will merely prolong the death of the Big 3 rather than requiring them to undergo the drastic changes needed to survive.

A friend at the State Department tells of the elation that greeted Barack Obama's election and the subsequent unease at the rumors that Hillary Clinton would be appointed Secretary of State:

"That's not the change they voted for."

The appointment is not yet a done deal according to the Times, but if it does go through -- there's more good news: the current "tension could foreshadow a complex relationship [between Clinton and Obama] burdened by suspicion and enmity." Apparently that would be new suspicion and enmity in addition to all the suspicion and enmity leftover from Obama's stealing of the nomination.

As noted Monday, elements within Pakistan's dysfunctional Inter-Services Intelligence agency (or ISI) continue to support the Taliban and al Qaeda inside Afghanistan. The ISI also supports the extremists inside Pakistan. U.S. intelligence and the leadership of the ISI plan to dismantle the extremist support network inside Pakistan, according to the Asia Times. The main targets are former ISI chief Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, who is considered the father of the Taliban, and Squadron Leader Khalid Khawaja, a retired ISI official:

High-level meetings between US intelligence and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have already been held at different levels to devise plans to cripple the support systems of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

Two prominent names came under discussion at these meetings: retired Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul and a former ISI official, retired Squadron Leader Khalid Khawaja.

Gul, a former head of the ISI, is suspected of providing political and moral support to the Taliban-led resistance in Afghanistan. Last year, former premier Benazir Bhutto named him as a suspect for the October 18 attack on her life in Karachi. She was subsequently assassinated in December.

Khawaja was the first person in the country to assist the displaced families of Arab fighters who fled to Pakistan after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. He fought their cases in court, arranged temporary housing for them and assisted them in departing to their countries. Khawaja is active in the cause of missing people (those detained without trial for years) and wants to register cases against the former chief of army staff and president, General Pervez Musharraf, and his military aides for abuses allegedly committed during their eight years in power.

While the removal of Gul and Khawaja, two senior former ISI officials who have been eyeballs deep in extremist activates in Afghanistan and Pakistan, would likely help the effort, the idea of working with the ISI to take them down is fraught with risk. The ISI remains riddled with officers with competing loyalties. The ISI purges conducted by the Musharraf regime and the Zardari goverment largely targeted the high-level officers in bed with the Taliban. Lower-level officers, many loyal to Gul, Khawaja, and others are still in the ranks, and will sabotage these efforts.

The ISI-Taliban-al Qaeda nexus is quite capable of killing those who oppose them. Just yesterday, Major General Amir Faisal Alvi, the former commander of the Special Services Group, was gunned down while driving to Islamabad.

The Special Services Group is Pakistan's elite counterterrorism force that conducted the assault on the Taliban Red Mosque in Islamabad in July 2007. While police are unsure if this attack was an assassination or a criminal act, good money is on the latter.

The Taliban and their allies have pulled off several high profile assassinations, including the murder of Pakistan's Surgeon General in Rawalpindi, the supposed secure garrison city adjacent to Islamabad. Another suicide strike in Rawalpindi occurred right outside the military general headquarters; the target was a bus carrying ISI personnel. There have been numerous attacks like these throughout Pakistan, in areas only those with assistance from the ISI or the military should be able to access.

Yesterday the Washington Post listed General Jim Jones as a contender for the job of national security adviser in an Obama administration -- a rumor that had circulated for some time already. Jones was floated as a potential running mate for Obama early in the general election (this blog discussed the possibility of Jones serving as VP on either ticket back in October '07), and during the final presidential debate Obama listed Jones as one of the people he consults with (as opposed to William Ayers):

Let me tell you who I associate with. On economic policy, I associate with Warren Buffett and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. If I'm interested in figuring out my foreign policy, I associate myself with my running mate, Joe Biden or with Dick Lugar, the Republican ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or General Jim Jones, the former supreme allied commander of NATO.

A number of Republicans I spoke with recently believe that Jones, the former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, will indeed get the job. Perhaps Republicans aren't the best source for rumint on the Obama transition, but Jones has deep ties to Republican figures in this town as well -- none more so than John McCain.

Jones opposed the surge, but he's as hawkish a pick as one could hope for from Obama. And of course his primary qualification is that he is not Susan Rice.

Segments of the conservative movement have been questioning Michael Steele's commitment to conservative values, particularly social issues, posing the first obstacle in his bid for RNC chair.

At issue is his part in founding the centrist, pro-choice Republican Leadership Council with Christine Todd Whitman and John Danforth, whose mission includes embracing fiscally conservative candidates with diverse social views. But Steele told the Washington Times this week that he is no longer on the RLC's board, having left in spring of this year when the organization began getting involved in Republican primaries (audio, here):

"I shouldn't be listed on their site because I'm not on their board anymore...I have a fundamental issue with organizations getting involved in primaries, and the organization was endorsing candidates in primaries, which I am fundamentally opposed to...I get what you're trying to do, but if you do it in a way that will alienate people, then it's not ultimately to the benefit of the party...I can't be a part of that."

RLC's mission, as stated by the group's website:

Inspired by a drive to get back to the fundamentals of the Republican Party, Senator John Danforth, Lt. Governor Michael Steele, and Governor Christine Todd Whitman created the political organization the Republican Leadership Council, which advocates for the historic Republican principles of liberty, individual responsibility, and personal freedom.

RLC-PAC's vision is a Republican Party that is unified by the basic tenets of fiscal responsibility and personal freedom, but that allows for diverse opinions on social issues by its members.

If you're having a "one of these things is not like the other" moment in reading that line-up, you're not alone. Whitman is constantly and openly at odds with social conservatives in the party and Danforth has become recently critical of the influence religious conservatives have, writing in 2005, "Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians."

Steele on the other hand, despite running in a the moderate state of Maryland, has been clear about his personal pro-life views, was an energizing underdog Senate candidate in 2006, and rallied much of the base to his side in an unsuccessful campaign for RNC the same year. He supports overturning Roe v. Wade eventually and more politically attainable pro-life measures in the interim, and has said that he would keep the overturning as part of the Republican Party platform. He's against embryonic stem-cell research funding, but he sounds more skeptical about something like a Federal Marriage Amendment, which given the polling trends on gay marriage, is a perfectly reasonable political position.

In addition, Steele is a devout Catholic who spent three years in seminary preparing to be a priest. One wonders if he'd actually have to be the Pope to satisfy some of the critics as to his pro-life credentials.

Let me be straight-forward in a way I think Michael Steele would appreciate: A black Catholic who grew up in D.C. and lives in Prince George's County becomes a Republican, overcoming social pressure and withstanding abuse, because he believes in conservative ideas and the way they can serve all communities, not because he wishes to be a squishy moderate beloved of the Beltway press. The knock on his pro-life credentials has always struck me as silly, and his leaving the RLC should quiet that line of attack.

God speed, Norm Coleman. It's gonna be a rough recount.

I was listening to the local pop station this morning, and the three usually inane DJs were enraged by the auto bailout story, particularly the part of the story that had even Congressmen marveling at Detroit's tinnest political ears:

After hearing that the chief executives of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler flew here in their costly private jets, Ackerman questioned whether they would use the billions of dollars they are seeking to fix underlying management problems that landed them in a financial mess in the first place.

"There's a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hand, saying that they're going to be trimming down and streamlining their businesses," said Ackerman at a Financial Services Committee hearing yesterday.

"Couldn't you have downgraded to first class or something, or jet-pooled...to get here?" Ackerman asked. "It's almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high hat and tuxedo."

ABC's evening newscast went with the story last night, going so far as to look up coinciding flights on Expedia, from Detroit to Dulles. There were 12 of them, starting at about $200.

The last Rasmussen poll showed more than 40 percent opposed an auto bailout, with 70 percent worried the government would run out of money if it kept traveling this road. Now that the jet story has reached "Fey effect" levels of pop-culture exposure, it may very well keep Congress from rewarding the Big Three's jet-setting paupers with our money.

I'm with Mitt. Let 'em go.

A video retrospective on "Uncle Ted" Stevens, if you dare.

My personal favorite moment isn't in there, when Ted took the floor of the Senate, his Incredible Hulk tie shaking against his chest with barely contained rage, to declare the Bridge to Nowhere his hill to die on.

"I will put the Senate on notice -- and I don't kid people -- if the Senate decides to discriminate against our state and take money only from our state, I will resign from this body," Mr. Stevens vowed.

For the record, I think he's been unfairly maligned for his notorious explanation of the Internet as a "series of tubes," but much of the other maligning has been warranted.

U.S. Special Operations Forces / the CIA struck yet again in Pakistan’s northwest. A senior al Qaeda leader named Abdullah Azzam al Saudi is thought to have been killed in the unmanned Predator/Reaper airstrike, but this has not been confirmed by U.S. intelligence. Azzam serves as a liaison between al Qaeda and the Taliban, and also is involved with al Qaeda’s “external operations” – meaning they network that plots attacks on the West.

Today’s attack isn’t extraordinary because it killed an al Qaeda or occurred inside Pakistani territory: Five senior al Qaeda leaders have been confirmed killed during 30 strikes and incursions into Pakistan’s tribal areas this year. The strike is unusual because it took place in the Bannu Frontier Region, outside of Pakistan’s seven Taliban-controlled tribal areas. The rest of the 29 U.S. strikes inside Pakistan this year took place in the tribal areas of Bajaur and North and South Waziristan.

So is this meaningful? Yes. Most of the reports from Pakistan focus on al Qaeda and the Taliban’s presence in the tribal areas. But for years the groups have been expanding into what are called the “settled districts” of the Northwest Frontier Province. Al Qaeda and Taliban safe houses and camps, and their area of influence extend far outside of the tribal areas. Is the United States planning to strike deep inside Pakistan?

The Pakistani government has weakly protested the U.S. strikes. Earlier this week the Washington Post claimed the attacks were occurring with the approval of the Pakistani government. Will the Pakistani government accept U.S. strikes beyond the tribal areas?

Russia's plan for the new Iskander theater ballistic missile doesn't stop with their proposed Kaliningrad deployment. Aviation Week reports that once domestic requirements are met, Russia may export the weapon to Syria, India, and the UAE -- to start. Algeria, Belarus, Kuwait, and Vietnam have also expressed interest in the SCUD replacement, though Russia claims to be working on an "Echo" variant of the rocket for export that reduces the Iskander's range from 400km to appx. 280km.

Russia's export of its latest and hottest weapon system isn't exactly news -- they've been supplying the world with military hardware for decades. What is interesting is the potential for another East v. West technological showdown in the Israeli-Syria theater. Israel is currently deploying a robust rocket and missile shield that is designed to knock out everything from short range Hezbollah rocket attacks all the way up to an Iranian Shahab-III ballistic missile laydown. That shield will include top-of-the-line American missile defense systems such as the Patriot PAC-3, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), and a highly-sensitive new x-band radar, as well as Israeli weapon systems like David's Sling and Iron Dome.

As with the Six Day War, the October War, and the invasion/occupation of southern Lebanon, Israeli and Syria may once again test the mettle of US vs. Russian weapon platforms in the near future. Considering the frightening power of ballistic missiles one would hope that America's defense technology again proves superior.

If nothing else, Ivan's callous proliferation of these heavy shooters should be enough to cast doubt on any existing plan to cut missile defense from the budget.

[Photo: Aviation Week]

The Financial Times reports that Barack Obama is “negotiating terms” under which Robert Gates will remain as Secretary of Defense in an Obama administration. It was widely assumed that Gates would keep his job regardless of who won the election and while I’ve heard conflicting reports about whether he wants to stay, his success means he will almost certainly be offered the choice. If McCain had won, Gates merely would have been rewarded for his competence -- a rare quality in the Bush administration but one that was increasingly visible in the management of the war. For Obama, Gates could be of far greater value.

Barack Obama's problem is that he promised a withdrawal from Iraq that is neither prudent nor possible. More than that, withdrawal at the pace Obama demanded during the primary is no longer warranted: it’s clear we’re winning the war. It was good politics to promise a withdrawal during the primary, and it was something of a wash during the general election, but it would be a complete disaster to deliver on that promise as President. Perhaps the most serious foreign policy mistake Obama made during the election was to support unconditional meetings with our enemies (bad politics and bad policy), and he’s since made fairly clear that he has no intention of following through on that promise. Why should his 16 month timeline for withdrawal from Iraq be any different?

The new Iraqi deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces is 32 months, rather than the 16 Obama had promised during the primary, and it may well be possible to safely remove the bulk of U.S. forces by the end of 2011. What Gates can do is provide Obama with the cover to remove troops more quickly. Gates will be one of only a few voices who can credibly say that the facts on the ground allow for Obama's timeline -- that Obama isn’t threatening the gains made by U.S. troops. But Gates can also help provide Obama with the cover to move a little more slowly than his supporters might like -- another voice cautioning, from the inside, against too quick a draw-down.

There’s almost no one who would object to keeping Gates at the helm. As Harry Reid approvingly noted, Gates isn’t even a registered Republican. The usual suspects will whine about how this isn't the change they were promised, or that keeping Gates furthers the perception that Democrats are soft on defense -- in this case too soft for even Obama to find one up to the task of secretary -- but that's all background noise.

Pardoning Lieberman, reaching out to Clinton, and keeping on Gates -- perhaps things won't be as bad as we feared.

He may get the chance to become the underwhelming, charmless Secretary of the Interior, if he is disappointed in his quest to become the underwhelming, charmless Secretary of State.

National Journal reports that Barack Obama has selected CBO Director Peter Orszag to head up the Office of Management and Budget. Orszag is widely respected on both sides of the aisle for his professionalism and his command of budgetary detail. The Orszag appointment also suggests that one of Barack Obama's priorities as president will be controlling health care costs, which Orszag has consistently identified as essential to getting the government's fiscal house in order.

Multiple reports suggest that leading Democratic senators will make health care one of the first issues taken up in the Obama presidency. The Washington Post reported several days ago that the CBO, under Orszag's direction, is preparing a report on cost-saving health care measures. And that report is attracting the interest of one of the last liberal lions:

Aides have refused to indicate what direction Kennedy will pursue but have made it clear he does not intend to cede his longtime leadership role on health policy. They expect to get valuable assistance next month when Peter Orszag, head of the independent Congressional Budget Office, releases a two-volume report on the need for health reform and a set of policy actions that could achieve measurable savings.

Orszag's pet issue is controlling health care costs; his work is being cited by Kennedy aides as they prepare to introduce Kennedy's health care reform blueprint. Kennedy is the Senate's most influential Democrat on health care. Does all this mean that Obama will support Kennedy's approach?

Rasmussen released results of a new national poll yesterday showing Americans put more faith in the concept of free market capitalism than they do in our national leaders’ ability to apply it. According to the poll:

Forty-four percent (44%) of Americans agree with President Bush’s declaration last week that "free-market capitalism is far more than an economic theory. It is the engine of social mobility - the highway to the American Dream."

The same survey found that just 22 percent disagree with that sentiment, while 33 percent are undecided.

As a pollster I know it’s sometimes hard to separate the “message” from the “messenger.” So in this case, given President Bush’s low approval ratings and the economic meltdown over the past two months, I’m surprised the number of free market supporters isn’t even lower.

The news gets worse when voters are asked about their confidence in our national leaders’ ability to handle current economic problems. Republicans as well as Democrats seem equally unsure. Rasmussen writes this:

In a finding rare to Rasmussen Reports’ recent surveys on the economy, there is virtually no partisan divide when voters are asked about their confidence in policymakers. Only 27% of Republicans are somewhat confident in U.S. policymakers, as are just 30% of Democrats. Twenty-one percent (21%) of unaffiliateds agree.

Voters are also pretty cynical when it comes to the economic rescue plan recently passed by Congress:

Adding to this perception is the further finding that 48% of voters think Congress’ passage of a $700-billion economic rescue plan last month was bad for the country. Just 25% think the plan, first proposed by the Bush administration, was good for the country, and 26% are undecided.

Read the full Rasmussen report here.

CNN and AP are both reporting that Stevens fell short in the Alaska Senate race against Democrat Mark Begich (although CNN is only sourcing Begich's campaign at this point, which let's face it, could be the same source AP is using as authoritative.)

The AP is apparently so excited about the Republicans losing another seat that they've lost themselves in the clumsy purple prose of electoral ecstasy:

The crotchety octogenarian built like a birch sapling likes to encourage comparisons with the Incredible Hulk, but he occupies an outsized place in Alaska history.

There may be a recount. Stevens deserves to lose. Coleman doesn't in Minnesota, where his lead has been slip-slidin' away for two weeks even before the recount has begun.

Oh, dear:

She has coruscating intelligence, beauty, style and -- drumroll, please -- a butt. (Yes, you read that right: I'm going to talk about the first lady's butt.)

As I gradually relaxed, as Michelle strode onto more stages and people started focusing on her clothes and presence instead of her patriotism, it dawned on me -- good God, she has a butt! "Obama’s baby (mama) got back," wrote one feminist blogger. "OMG, her butt is humongous!" went a typical comment on one African-American online forum, and while it isn't humongous, per se, it is a solid, round, black, class-A boo-tay. Try as Michelle might to cover it with those Mamie Eisenhower skirts and sheath dresses meant to reassure mainstream voters, the butt would not be denied.

As America fretted about Obama's exoticism and he sought to calm the waters with speeches about unity and common experience, Michelle's body was sending a different message: To hell with biracialism! Compromise, bipartisanship? Don't think so. Here was one clear signifier of blackness that couldn't be tamed, muted or otherwise made invisible. It emerged right before our eyes, in the midst of our growing uncertainty about everything, and we were too bogged down in the daily campaign madness to notice. The one clear predictor of success that the pundits, despite all their fancy maps, charts and holograms, missed completely? Michelle's butt.

We were too bogged down, you see, in the daily madness of discussing issues, arguing talking points, polling voters, and generally conducting the business of electing the next leader of the free world to address the pressing issue of Michelle Obama's rear end. There was a time when a female writer would have relished a female public figure's words being examined instead of her anatomy, but now that we have left behind that provincial trope, we're free to rhetorically and literally leer at the First Lady's behind and debate its social implications. Free at last.

This piece begins with the words, "free at last"— as in Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, which referenced the reverential, ancient gospel song. "Free at last"— as in the eloquent and efficient phrase used by generations of African Americans to embody the tragedy of slavery, segregation, and America's shame, and the corresponding hope that we could overcome them.

In this case, the phrase is used differently, as in, "Thank God Almighty, we are free from an oppressive history of First Ladies with insufficiently Sir-Mix-a-Lottian figures."

I only wish I could say the piece was tongue-in-cheek, but a) it's not very, and b) that phrase might be inappropriate given the subject matter.

What is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.

This is precisely what the Democratic party achieved with Barack Obama’s historic victory on November 4. The Democrats increased their majorities in both the House and Senate while eliminating anything even resembling a functioning opposition. Those Republicans that survived the massacre are exhausted, scattered and foraging for scraps. It was a bloodbath, and one that should have satiated the blood lust of even the most committed Democratic partisans. Yet some Democrats can’t seem to accept a complete and total victory -- they want to round up the wounded and execute them. Joe Lieberman’s name is at the top of their list.

To his most rabid detractors on the left, Lieberman’s perceived offenses are too many to count. The grievances are tedious and petty and small in comparison to what compelled him to offend in the first place: loyalty to a friend and a commitment to victory in Iraq (a war that many of his opponents once supported but have since abandoned and absolved themselves of any responsibility). Lieberman knew the potential consequences of his political disobedience, but in the end President-elect Obama, Majority Leader Harry Reid, and incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel were magnanimous and merciful -- and why wouldn’t they be? None of Lieberman's statements was beyond the pale.

Of course, to the Jake Tappers, Keith Olbermanns and Joe Kleins in the “press corps,” any statement from the McCain campaign was considered beyond the pale, but Michael Scherer catalogues the ‘worst of the worst’ and there’s nothing there that wasn’t echoed by a hundred other decent and honorable supporters. Perhaps Lieberman was more committed to the fight than his counterpart on the Obama campaign, Chuck Hagel, but any sense of proportion has been lost by the hysterics leading the anti-Joe lynch mob. And there are no pitchfork wielding Republicans intent on burning Chuck Hagel at the stake. There was hardly a peep from the right over his heresy because nobody cared.

The Democratic party and the left won a stunning victory in this election, and while they should be savoring it (and most are) a few are busy trying to settle old scores. It’s pathetic, but it’s also cause for some optimism: these people are a cancer on the Democratic party that even a landslide victory couldn't cure.

Since everyone's been a bit preoccupied with the question of Sarah Palin's next political or entertainment venture, I shamelessly propagate this rumor read on a celebrity blog (by a friend of mine who sent it to me while I was just sitting here reading "The Economist," of course).

Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry is reportedly courting the former Republican Vice-Presidential candidate for a cameo appearance on the fifth season finale of the ABC dramedy, airing in May.

Marc is “very hot to trot to have her appear on the season-five finale,” an inside source revealed to the New York Post on Thursday.

“Marc is highly enamored of Sarah and sees her as the ultimate guest star [playing] a similar version of herself. The idea has gone over surprisingly well with execs at Disney, who see it as a blockbuster based on Sarah’s huge ratings on ‘Saturday Night Live.’ “

Palin is back to running the state of Alaska (and disappointing the paparazzi, poolside in Miami), but that won't stop activists from skipping over 2010, the debate of the future of the party, and any TV ventures for Palin entirely in their attempts to get her on the ticket in 2012.

Afghanistan's president raised quite a few eyebrows yesterday when he insisted he would provide safe passage to senior Taliban leaders for negotiations, including Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar. The Taliban responded immediately to Karzai's offer, rejecting it of course.

Mullah Bahadar, the Taliban's second-in-command, insisted NATO forces must leave. "As long as foreign occupiers remain in Afghanistan, we aren't ready for talks because they hold the power and talks won't bear fruit," he told Reuters. "The problems in Afghanistan are because of them."

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid also weighed in. "The Taliban's (leadership) decided they will not take part in any peace talks with Karzai or Karzai's administration until such a day when foreign forces leave Afghanistan," he told the Associated Press. "The Taliban will pursue jihad against foreign forces and (Karzai's) government."

Combined with other rejections of offers to talk, it is safe to say the senior Taliban leadership has no interest in negotiations. So why did Karzai make the offer? Slate's Fred Kaplan comes close to figuring it out:

Two inferences can be made from [Karzai's offers to talk to Omar]. First, Karzai is not really proposing anything; Omar has no interest in negotiating for peace, and Karzai certainly knows this. Second, he made the remarks in Kabul after returning from a meeting in London, so he may have meant them for domestic consumption—as a demonstration that he's not a puppet of the West.

There is another component to this: Karzai has to show the Afghan people he has repeatedly offered the olive branch to the Taliban, and that it is the Taliban leadership that refuses to sit down and talk.

Kaplan then asks if there are any Taliban that can be turned. The answer is yes, but the current focus on peeling off low mid-level Taliban leader and their fighters is not a new effort. In may of 2005, the Afghan government established the Tahkim-e-Solh program (Strengthening Peace) that did just that.

I saw this program in action in June of 2006 when I was embedded with the Canadian Army in Kandahar. The Canadians coaxed a Taliban leader named Mullah Ibrahim, who was influential in the Panjwai and Zari districts, the birthplace of the Taliban. At the time, the Strengthening Peace program had peeled off 1,569 low and mid-level Taliban leaders and fighters over the course of a year.

So the effort to pull in the rank and file of the Taliban really is nothing new. So what changed? The media has finally started to pay attention to Afghanistan after years of dwelling on Iraq. And so has the U.S. military.

Michael Isikoff reports that yet another Clintonite will serve in the Obama administration:

President-elect Obama has decided to tap Eric Holder as his attorney general, putting the veteran Washington lawyer in place to become the first African-American to head the Justice Department, according to two legal sources close to the presidential transition.

Holder, who served as deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration, still has to undergo a formal vetting review by the Obama transition team before the selection is final and is publicly announced, said one of the sources, who asked not to be identified talking about the transition process. But in the discussions over the past few days, Obama offered Holder the job and he accepted, the source said. The announcement is not likely until after Obama announces his choices to lead the Treasury and the State Department.

Chief Justice John Roberts has been known to liven up his dissents by writing like a crime novelist. Jan Crawford Greenburg notes that his predecessor, Chief Justice Rehnquist, had a penchant for the theater:

Rehnquist, who had a flair for drama (remember the gold stripes he'd later add to his robe?), also proposed a skit or variety show by the clerks. It was something he eventually would institute.

“I would enjoy seeing what each annual crop of law clerks, together with such help from the Justices that they might wish, could do in the way of a gridiron show or other parody or satire on the court," he wrote.

This tidbit was discovered in the small portion of Rehnquist's papers which were just opened up to the public. Greenburg writes that Rehnquist dictated that his "papers would not be publicly released until the death of every justice who was sitting with them in a particular term. ... That means we only have access to cases over a three-year period, since John Paul Stevens joined the Court in 1975."

Greenburg has more here.

Rob Portman, former US Trade Representative and OMB Director under George W. Bush, shares his thoughts here.

The renewal of the Republican Party starts with an embrace of the core principles of fiscal conservatism, smaller government, traditional values, personal responsibility and ethics, not just when we campaign, but when we govern.

But adherence to these core principles is only a starting point. The key to success is turning these principles into compelling policy solutions to real-world concerns.

There is an understandable nostalgia in the Republican Party for Ronald Reagan. He grew the party and was a popular president while staying true to core values. But I believe we sometimes overlook what made him successful.

Based on core conservative beliefs, he fashioned innovative, and ultimately successful, solutions to seemingly intractable challenges of his time: a dysfunctional welfare system, the Cold War, stagflation from the Carter years, and increased levels of violent crime, among others.

And he effectively communicated his policies in a way that resonated with the American people. His simple and clear explanations, his relentless optimism about America, and his focus on results, not partisan advantage, allowed him to reach beyond the Republican Party to garner support.

We must do the same thing.

Portman, who has played the Democrats' vice presidential nominee in mock debates for the last three election cycles, is a potential candidate for governor in 2010 or the US Senate in 2012. So he may be in a position to follow his own wise advice.

Read it all.

Patrick Ruffini assembles a list of all potential 2010 Republican challengers to Democratic incumbents in the Senate. A couple names I'd add: Congressman and former governor Mike Castle to take on Joe Biden's replacement in Delaware and Tommy Thompson to challenge Russ Feingold in Wisconsin.

Update: In related news, First Read reports John Cornyn will head the National Republican Senatorial Committee this cycle.

From today's Washington Post:

After the G-20 global economic summit wrapped up Saturday afternoon, the Italian prime minister headed for ... the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City. A mall? Since he's already seen Washington's famous monuments, Berlusconi really wanted to see one of the area's famous shopping meccas, Italian Embassy spokesman Niccolo Fontana explained. "He just walked around the mall. Many Italian tourists recognized him, and there were even a few Americans who wanted to take pictures with him."

Berlusconi, surrounded by a flock of nervous-looking security guys, browsed for 10 minutes in Macy's housewares and linens department, moved on to a sports store, then spent about 20 minutes at Brookstone, where he started flying a remote-controlled toy helicopter. Sold! The Italian delegation bought "several" of the $49.95 gadgets before heading to the airport.

You can't make this stuff up.

Senate Democrats have chosen not to give Joe Lieberman a reason to leave the party:

Senate Democrats backed away from a major rebuke of Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) on Tuesday morning, keeping their colleague as the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in the next Congress and stripping him only of the gavel on a lesser subcommittee.

Though many Democrats and liberal activists wanted a tougher penalty for Lieberman’s disloyalty — his aggressive criticism of President-elect Barack Obama’s candidacy and his support of GOP presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) — Senate Democrats ultimately voted to allow Lieberman to stay at the plum Homeland Security post.

Instead, Senate Democrats agreed to take away Lieberman’s top spot on the Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Private Sector and Consumer Solutions to Global Warming and Wildlife Protection.

Senators approved the motion by a resounding vote of 42-13.

The Netroots are not taking the news well.

The New York Times editorial page endorses the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

Time's Washington bureau chief Jay Carney swoons:

From Obama's 60 Minutes interview, this seemingly obvious but all-too-rare, refreshingly non-ideological declaration about how best to govern:

We've gotta come up with solutions that are true to our times and true to this moment. And that's gonna be our job. I think the basic principle that government has a role to play in kick starting an economy that has ground to a halt is sound.

I think our basic principle that this is a free market system and that that has worked for us, that it creates innovation and risk taking, I think that's a principle that we've gotta hold to as well. But what I don't wanna do is get bottled up in a lot of ideology and is this conservative or liberal. My interest is finding something that works.

And whether it's coming from FDR or it's coming from Ronald Reagan, if the idea is right for the times then we're gonna apply it. And things that don't work we're gonna get rid of.

Talk about a welcome change from the ideology-first recent past.

I assume that that line about the "the ideology-first recent past" is a reference to the guy still living in Barack Obama's White House. Don't you remember the right-wing ideologue who signed McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform, who pushed for McCain-Kennedy immigration reform, and who signed No Child Left Behind, a bill co-authored by Ted Kennedy?

Just remember that when Barack Obama tries to pass legislation to nationalize health care, eliminate the secret ballot in union elections, and fund abortions with taxpayer money, he's not being ideological. He's just trying to find "something that works."

Joshua Kurlantzick's analysis of how the global economic crisis will affect the Chinese regime is well worth your time. One of the lessons of the current mess is that so-called "decoupling" - the theory that emerging markets were no longer dependent on the major economies - has been exposed as false. As the saying goes, we're all in this together. As U.S. consumption dwindles, Chinese production dwindles too. This means major layoffs in Chinese factories, and growing political instability in China. Kurlantzick:

As the economy turns sour, protest is rising. Many young Chinese have never even lived through an economic downturn. In the Pearl River Delta, months of layoffs are sparking street protests by blue-collar workers fearing they'll never see back pay owed to them and creditors furious at factory owners who shut their doors and vanish. These demonstrations are turning violent, and ultimately could provoke a violent response, since Chinese factory owners increasingly hire thugs to hit back at demonstrators. Overall, demonstrations are spreading, according to Radio Free Asia, which closely follows the Pearl River Delta. Though China has in recent years weathered thousands of protests, they tended to be clustered in poor, rural areas, not the prosperous Delta or other middle-class regions of the country.

Economic instability leads to political instability. That is one of the lessons of the Great Depression. Will declining economies in Russia, China, and Iran makes those countries' leaders more cautious, or more adventurous? More liberal, or more oppressive? We don't know the answer. We do know that it is already a dangerous world. And that the global economic downturn makes it more dangerous still.

She divorced him, got custody of their daughter, married a tennis instructor, and so as to prevent a descent into divorce cliches, she thought outside the box and worked to defeat constitutional reforms he proposed in 2007, which would have made him president for life. Not your average passive aggressor, Marisabel Rodriguez.

Rodriguez, an attractive blonde radio personality and journalist, is now running for mayor of her hometown Barquisimeto to replace an outgoing pro-Chavez candidate. She's reportedly luring much of the woman vote, and support from those disappointed with Chavez's "21st-century socialism," which has produced such delights as "overflowing sewage, human waste in the streets and the lack of electricity." It will only get worse as Chavez's petro-bucks keep falling.

She demonstrated a natural touch as she entered homes and chatted with women about their lives. About 225 miles southwest of the capital Caracas, Barquisimeto may be a city of a million people but in many ways it feels like a small provincial town.

In this neglected neighbourhood, Mrs Rodriguez, despite her fame, is not a celebrity but one of their own. "She has gone through what we have gone through," said Guillermina Barrios, 45, who works as a restaurant cook. "She has suffered emotionally."

Polling shows either of two anti-Chavez candidates could win the office, but if they split the vote, the city may remain in Chavez's camp. Here's Rodriguez bashing her ex on CBS earlier this year.

Roll Call covers the after-action report by Chris VanHollen (D-MD), Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). VanHollen gets credit for the 24-seat gain (so far) Democrats achieved in the 2008 election. He's quick to point out that despite the impressive Democratic gains, it seems like Barack Obama's coattails had little to do with it:

“A lot of people did not focus on the fact that in order to win a lot of these seats, we had to win a lot of votes” from supporters of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), DCCC Chairman Chris Van Hollen (Md.) said in an interview on Monday...

Of all the Democratic pickups this year, only three were in districts that Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) carried in the 2004 White House election: Connecticut’s 4th district, where former investment banker Jim Himes ousted Rep. Christopher Shays, and New Mexico’s 1st and New York’s 25th districts, where Democrats won open seats.

Van Hollen praised victorious Democrats for figuring out how to prevail in challenging districts. He cited Idaho’s 1st district, Alabama’s 2nd district and Maryland’s 1st district as places where his party’s candidates faced long odds.

“They had to create an identity for themselves that was separate and distinct from the national Democratic ticket,” he said...

According to the DCCC, the House Democratic candidate performed better than Obama in 42 competitive districts, while Obama did better than the Democrat in 14 districts. The data are not fully available in 11 additional competitive districts...

Reading between the lines, VanHollen has reason to be worried about his success. The current Democratic majority rests on dozens of Members of Congress who will still need to craft "separate and distinct" identities from the national Democratic party. With 81 of the 256 House Democrats now residing in districts won by George Bush in 2004, Democrat leaders will need to be highly attentive to the views of their moderate minority when they debate things like the automaker bailout, tax increases, immigration, urban aid, and other dicey issues.

VanHollen was concerned enough about the challenge going forward that he tried to escape the DCCC job for the coming cycle, knowing that he is almost certain to lose seats in 2010. Of course, defending a strong majority is a nice challenge to face; Congressional Republicans would trade in a heartbeat.

On another note, VanHollen's presentation again reminds Republicans of the importance of competing for all 435 House seats. Every credible candidate helps conservatives in the next election -- whether a given candidate wins or not. If nothing else, it turns previously safe races into ones where the opposition is forced to spend money better used elsewhere. And when the political winds eventually blow your way, it seems that one party winds up with lots of near misses, while the other enjoys surprise wins.

Neocons may indeed be hailing the coming Hillary era at State, as the Guardian reports:

Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned.

Obama's advisers have begun looking into Bill Clinton's foundation, which distributes millions of dollars to Africa to help with development, to ensure that there is no conflict of interest. But Democrats do not believe that the vetting is likely to be a problem.

The piece sounds more thinly sourced than a New York Times hit piece on McCain, citing no "unnamed sources," but simply saying "the Guardian has learned." I have yet to figure out why Clinton would want the position. The slot is prestigious, but the job description includes a particularly anti-Clintonesque requirement that she serve Barack Obama's legacy, not her own. As a fairly sensible thinker on foreign threats, who seems unallergic to the exercise of American power where appropriate, she'd undoubtedly part ways at times with her more "naive" boss. If I were Obama, I'd be wary. There's plenty of undermining that can go on in the State Department while Clinton keeps up appearances of loyalty.

I continue to think power playing in an overwhelmingly Democratic Senate would be more to her liking. But if she truly wants the position, there'd be something tragically poetic about this:

Could former President Bill Clinton's charitable affairs cost Hillary Clinton the secretary of state job in Barack Obama's administration?

That's what insiders are wondering after reports that the former president's financial and foreign entanglements could hurt the New York senator in her bid for a Cabinet post.

Politico.com reported Monday that Democrats "are becoming exasperated" by Bill Clinton's response to requests for information about his finances.

Predictably, most other would-be saboteurs (outside the Clinton marriage, that is) are in the liberal wing of the party.

And the clearest opposition to the Clinton appointment comes from Obama's backers on the left of his own party, whose initial support for him was motivated in part by a distaste for the Clinton dynasty, and who now view her reemergence with some dismay.

"There's always a risk of a Cabinet member freelancing and that risk is enhanced by the fact that Hillary has her own public and her own celebrity and that she comes attached to Bill," said Robert Kuttner, a Clinton critic and co-editor of the American Prospect whose new book, Obama's Challenge, implores the president-elect to adopt an expansive liberal agenda. "The other question is the old rule – never hire somebody you can't fire. What happens if her views and his views don't mesh?"

An unnamed Democratic source points to distraught and somewhat pathetic Obama backers who "believe in this stuff more than Barack himself does," and see the potential packing of the administration with Clinton officials as counter to their dream of an administration filled only with lollipop princesses and dreams. Meet Barack Obama, the political opportunist, guys.

Christopher Hitchens, recent Obama backer and noted neocon ally, missed the "Strange New Respect" express throughout the primaries, and is not about to jump on now, calling the potential Clinton pick a "ludicrous embarrassment:"

Christopher Hitchens appeared on "Hardball" Monday night and voiced his strong opposition to Hillary Clinton being named Secretary of State.

Appearing with Peter Beinart of Time, who is for Clinton's appointment, Hitchens said, "This is the woman who played the race card on Obama... This is the woman whose foreign policy experience consists of making a fool of herself and fabricating a story about Bosnia."

He also brought up the Clintons' overseas fundraising connections and called the idea of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State a "ludicrous embarrassment."

He forgets, apparently, that Obama did his share of expert race-card playing, and Hillary was often the victim.

Meanwhile, all the right people are happy, and all the right people are mad, so count me in.

Update: According to Page Six (which means it's better-sourced than a NYT hit piece on McCain), Chris Matthews doesn't much like the Hillary idea:

"I don't understand it," Matthews bellowed. "Why would he pick her? I thought we were done with the Clintons. She'll just use it to build her power base. It's Machiavellian. And then we'll have Bill Clinton, too. I thought Obama didn't want drama. He's already got [chief of staff Rahm] Emanuel and [transition team leader John] Podesta. He'll have even more drama with her.

"She's just a soap opera. If he doesn't pick her, everyone will say she's been dissed again, we'll have to live through that again."

Is Pakistan's shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence agency supporting and even fighting alongside the Taliban and allied groups against NATO and Afghan forces? Defense Tech's Christian Lowe posted a snippet of an interview with Eric Edelman, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, which suggests the ISI is still active against allied forces in Afghanistan. Here is the exchange:

Defense Tech: In Afghanistan, have you seen any evidence of Pakistani agencies' involvement in assisting the Taliban and other parties within Afghanistan against US troops and also within the [federally administered tribal areas]?

Edelman: I think that, you know, there's a long history here. The Pakistan government for a very long time has regarded Afghanistan as its 'strategic depth' and clearly there have been relationships that go back to the Mujahaddin era that have persisted. We've had some concerns about it, we've expressed those concerns. We had a meeting with the head of ISI, general Pasha ... my view is we ought to give him a chance to see how he can handle his new responsibilities and go from there.

Defense Tech: So is that a 'yes?'

Edelman: You'll have to make a judgment on whether that was a yes or not.

Reports of the ISI's aiding the Taliban are nothing new. In December 2006, Afghan intelligence captured a Pakistani intelligence officer who was "in charge of relations between the ISI and al Qaeda leaders" in Kunar province.

But the most controversial claim was made by Lieutenant Colonel Chris Nash, a U.S. Marine Corps leader of an Embedded Training Team operating on the Afghan-Pakistani frontier from June 2007 until March of this year. Nash claimed the ISI provided helicopter resupply support to "a 'base camp' in Nangarhar Province occupied by fighters from the Taliban, al Qaeda and the Hezb-i-Islami faction led by Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar." Nash told this to the Army Times after a copy of his PowerPoint briefing was leaked. Several military officers have denied seeing evidence of ISI involvement in Afghanistan.

Nash states in his presentation that the information is classified (I have a copy of the presentation). "ISI involved in direct support to many enemy operations…classification prevents further discussion of this point," Nash states in the notes. "Area specific."

Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, and multiple "purges" of the ISI, elements of Pakistani intelligence are still supporting Taliban and al Qaeda attacks inside Afghanistan. Edelman and the rest of the U.S. government dances around the issue of Pakistani complicity with the Taliban and even al Qaeda inside of Afghanistan because the United States is dependent on Pakistan to keep NATO's vital supply line open.

The New York Times has a report today on alcohol abuse in Wisconsin:

When a 15-year-old comes into Wile-e’s bar looking for a cold beer, the bartender, Mike Whaley, is happy to serve it up — as long as a parent is there to give permission.

“If they’re 15, 16, 17, it’s fine if they want to sit down and have a few beers,” said Mr. Whaley, who owns the tavern in this small town in southern Wisconsin.

While it might raise some eyebrows in most of America, it is perfectly legal in Wisconsin. Minors can drink alcohol in a bar or restaurant in Wisconsin if they are accompanied by a parent or legal guardian who gives consent. While there is no state law setting a minimum age, bartenders can use their discretion in deciding whom to serve.

When it comes to drinking, it seems, no state keeps pace with Wisconsin. This state, long famous for its breweries, has led the nation in binge drinking in every year since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began its surveys on the problem more than a decade ago. Binge drinking is defined as five drinks in a sitting for a man, four for a woman.

People in Wisconsin are more likely than anywhere else to drive drunk, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The state has among the highest incidence of drunken driving deaths in the United States.

A few thoughts (that I hope aren't colored by my bias as a native Wisconsinite):

1. Most states allow exceptions for underage drinking with a parent. See this map created by the Alcohol Policy Information System (details about these exceptions may be found here):

Does drinking with the permission of a parent really "raise some eyebrows in most of America"?

2. In 2007 Wisconsin ranked 7th in alcohol consumption per capita, but ranked 19th among all states in alcohol-related traffic fatalities per capita in 2004 (I'm not cherry-picking, just using the latest figures I can find for each statistic). Is it fair to say that Wisconsin has "among the highest incidence of drunken driving deaths in the United States"?

3. These are good laws. I don't know whether they lead to more responsible alcohol consumption, but who would want to live under the yoke of a state where it's illegal for a 19 year-old to drink a beer with his father while watching a football game?

4. What's up with the guy drinking a Bud Light in the accompanying photo to the Times's story? A true Wisconsinite would be drinking Miller, Leinenkugel's, or New Glarus.

Sir Paul McCartney recently revealed to BBC Radio that his former band kept hidden a song they recorded 40 years ago but that “the time has come for it to get its moment.” For Beatles aficionados, could there be anything more exciting? Entitled “Carnival of Light,” the track runs approximately 14 minutes and was performed in public only once—at an electronic music festival. As McCartney explained to Radio 4’s “Front Row” show (and as reported by Reuters), “I said all I want [John, George, and Ringo] to do is just wander around all the stuff, bang it, shout, play it, it doesn't need to make any sense. Hit a drum then wander on to the piano, hit a few notes, just wander around. So that's what we did and then put a bit of an echo on it. It's very free."

Not so excited now, are you? The teaser alone makes you think less “Revolution 1” and more “Revolution 9.” Just longer. But, as one of my colleagues says, this is Paul’s way of staying relevant and, out of sheer curiosity, fans will be compelled to hear it—at least once. (This coworker is still recovering from only partially listening to “What’s the New Mary Jane.”) And no doubt this will generate attention. Just like the time Starbucks played McCartney’s album Memory Almost Full on a continuous loop for an entire day at all their locations. (This brings to mind The Simpsons waiter who worked at the New Year’s Eve-themed restaurant where the ball drops every few minutes: “Please kill me!”)

As for “Carnival of Light,” Reuters reports, “in order for [the song] to be released, McCartney would have to get the agreement of Ringo Starr and the estates of John Lennon and George Harrison. According to the BBC, McCartney had wanted to include the track on The Beatles' Anthology compilations in the mid-1990s, but the rest of the band vetoed the idea.”

That’s right. Even Ringo vetoed it.

Mike Allen reported over the weekend that "Gregory B. Craig, a well-known Washington lawyer who quarterbacked President Bill Clinton’s impeachment defense, has been chosen White House counsel by President-elect Barack Obama".

Believe it or not, the time Craig spent shilling for Clinton may have been his most honorable days of work. John J. Miller wrote in this May 2000 article National Review:

In the early 1980s, [Craig] was an attorney for John Hinckley, the man who shot President Reagan and three others. Craig helped put together an insanity defense that led to Hinckley’s acquittal. Nine years later, he advised Ted Kennedy in the Palm Beach rape case involving the senator and his nephew, William Kennedy Smith. ...

Craig orchestrated a 1984 [Senate] hearing for Kennedy on alleged human-rights abuses committed by Nicaragua’s rebels, the Contras. He worked with groups closely tied to the Sandinista regime to find witnesses for the forum, which led to a round of anti-contra news coverage in the U.S. Soon afterward, however, Joshua Muravchik, currently of the American Enterprise Institute, exposed a fraud: The most compelling witnesses — three Miskito Indians — had been served up by the Sandinistas.

And a fourth participant, Father Alfredo Gundrum, an American priest living in Nicaragua, had been asked to play the role of honest broker — to place the testimony “into some kind of perspective,” as Kennedy put it. Gundrum, described as “totally apolitical” in background material distributed by Kennedy’s staff, told of how the Contras launched vicious raids on Indian villages “almost every day.” Yet Gundrum had been the subject of a San Francisco newspaper article just one month before the hearing. He was photographed standing before his church with a Soviet-made rifle in his hands and quoted as saying, “To me it was a day of grace the day the Sandinistas took over, and I really mean it.”

In 2000, while serving as the lawyer for Elian Gonzalez's father, Craig did the bidding of the Castro regime by killing an agreement "to transfer custody of Elian to his father, as long as [Elian's family from Miami] could live with the boy and his father in an environment free of U.S. and Cuban officials." Since then, Craig has represented foreign officials accused of war crimes such as former Bolivian Defense Minister Carlos Sánchez-Berzaín and Pedro Miguel González, the president of Panama's legislature, who is under federal indictment for the murder of U.S. Army Sgt. Zak Hernández Laporte.

But at least he didn't lobby for Fannie Mae.

There appears to be little angst among conservatives at the prospect of Hillary Clinton joining the Obama administration as Secretary of State. The idea was warmly embraced by Henry Kissinger, who our President-elect seems to hold in high-esteem, Governor Schwarzenegger, who likely has no more sway on Obama than the proverbial guy in the neighborhood, and Jon Kyl -- surely Senator McCain put in a good word today as well. The love affair that was sparked last spring between Clinton and the Obama-fearing right continues to smolder, surely a surprise to those who suspected that such an unholy alliance couldn't last beyond the convention. Whether Clinton would accept the job, or why she would want it, is not clear, but the right would be happy enough to have her.

On the issues, Clinton's a hawk. Not only did she vote to authorize the war in Iraq, she delivered her vote in style -- her floor speech on October 10, 2002, went so far as to connect Saddam to al Qaeda:

In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. [emphasis mine]

Clinton flipped on the war, but as the nomination slipped out of her reach last spring she spoke of the threats this country faces, and of the prescriptions offered by Obama, in language that would warm the hearts of neoconservatives (if we had them). She threatened to "obliterate" Iran in response to unprovoked aggression against Israel, she spoke of unconditional meetings with the leaders of rogue states as "irresponsible and, frankly, naive," and she castigated Obama's transparent saber-rattling on Pakistan ("last summer [Obama] basically threatened to bomb Pakistan, which I don't think was a particularly wise position to take."). On matters of diplomacy, Clinton's views are not so different from those held by John McCain and most Republicans -- and they are certainly well to the right of Obama.

Of course, if Clinton takes the job one expects she’ll be loyal to her new boss. Though it would be extremely entertaining, we probably wouldn't see Madame Secretary working to undermine an Obama administration with recalcitrance and rogue diplomacy. But then Colin Powell was a dutiful soldier while inside the Bush administration and that still didn’t prevent him from becoming a foil for the administration’s opponents. It’s not difficult to imagine Clinton performing a similar service for Republicans. She could be held up as the very model of a responsible Democrat, forced against her better judgment to partake in a series of reckless diplomatic escapades pursued by a more ideological president.

Clinton would be a fine Secretary of State, and she is likely to be a nuisance to Obama whether she is inside or outside of his administration, but as our top diplomat she could reprise a role that made Powell a kingmaker in this year’s election. And perhaps she could even present the case for war with Iran to an insubordinate United Nations in the event that Obama's personal diplomacy somehow fails to deter the mullahs from their present course.

Fake hate in our newly post-racial society, created to "get a reaction" in the wake of Obama's election:

A black man from Mississippi has been arrested and accused of sending racist death threats over the Internet to three black students at Louisiana's Nicholls State University.

The FBI in New Orleans said Dyron Hart, 19, was arrested Wednesday. He is accused of sending the messages by way of the students' Facebook accounts. The messages contained racial epithets and death threats and were sent to two black women and a black man at Nicholls State in Thibodaux, La.

The author of those messages cast himself as a white man who intended to kill blacks because Barack Obama was elected president.

Don't let this story become an urban myth about the embers of racial hatred burning afresh in white youth since the election of Obama. Its perpetrator likely knew that myth would be quite easy to create.

Over the weekend, the Pakistani government closed down the vital border crossing to Afghanistan in the Khyber tribal agency. The decision was made after the Taliban hijacked and looted a convoy of vehicles transporting supplies and two Humvees to NATO forces in Afghanistan. The crossing was reopened today after Pakistan said it would provide military escorts for the convoys.

Attacks on NATO convoys have risen dramatically the past month. More than 70 percent of NATO’s supplies pass through Khyber, making this route the key supply line for our forces in Afghanistan. With the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan’s northwest worsening, NATO’s main supply route will increasingly be threatened.

The United States is looking for alternate routes, but these come at a cost: poor infrastructure along the alternate routes in the central Asian countries or China. Plus, the United States would have to rely on Russian or China to keep its troops in Afghanistan supplied. The reliance on these rivals for our lifeline to Afghanistan will come at a cost in other theaters vital to the United States’ national security.

There is much talk of a “surge” for Afghanistan to deal with the spiraling violence and the resurgence of the Taliban. Some experts, such as David Kilcullen, say we don’t need a surge in forces, but need to rethink how we are using our forces in Afghanistan. No matter what the answer is, until we secure our supply lines through Pakistan, the U.S. and NATO forces currently there are in danger of being choked off. Richard Fernandez sums up this problem well:

The two major issues raised by the situation are 1) the future of Pakistan’s ability to keep its territorial integrity and 2) the viability of the lines of communication between Pakistan and Afghanistan. It’s no use talking about a Surge in Afghanistan if the supply lines to the sea are largely cut. Pakistan has to be fixed first.

This chart from a recent Pew report about the youth vote is fascinating. We’ve all seen the numbers on the growing Obama and Democratic edge among voters under 30 repeated ad nauseam. But it’s interesting how closely various subgroups of voters over 30 divided.

2008 would have been a nail biter without 18-29 year olds.

McCain and Obama split independents, college-educated voters and non-college-educated voters almost evenly. McCain also experienced the traditional gender gap--winning men by 4 points and losing women by 6 points. And each candidate drew an overwhelming number of self-identified partisans.

It’s just hard to win an election when you lose 18 percent of the electorate by more than a 2-1 margin (18-29 year-olds split 66 percent-31 percent for Obama)

Research suggests getting some of these young voters back will be difficult but not impossible. Despite all the hype surrounding this election, young voters are still less interested and engaged in politics than older Americans. We also know partisan bonds are weakest at an earlier age. So if you can get younger voters to pay attention long enough to a new GOP message, I suspect that in a post-Bush world and with a lot of hard work, Republicans will be able to trim this deficit. But challenges abound in finding new messengers and crafting a more appealing message. To paraphrase Vince Lombardi, it’s not what you say that is important, but what people hear.

One day after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s cabinet approved the proposed U.S.-Iraqi status of forces agreement, Iran is signaling it is changing its tune on supporting the pact. From the Associated Press:

Iran and Syria, longtime adversaries of Washington, have said an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces would be the best solution for Iraq, fearing threats to their security and regional influence. Iraqis sought to allay their fears, amending the pact with the ban on cross-border attacks from Iraq.

On Monday, however, Iran's judiciary chief, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, said the Iraqi Cabinet acted "very well" in approving the pact. The Web site of Iran's state television quoted him as saying he hoped the U.S. will withdraw from Iraq within the time specified in the deal.

"The Iraqi government has done very well regarding this," he said. "We hope the outcome of (the deal) will be in favor of Islam and Iraqi sovereignty."

Shahroudi is very close to Iran's top leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his comments reflect thinking of conservatives within the ruling system, but not all hard-liners or President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Hard-line outlets, which have said the pact would "turn Iraq into a full-fledged colony" and urged Iraqis to oppose it, remained adamant. "Iraqi government gave in to American capitulation," read a front-page headline in the hard-line daily Jomhuri-e-Eslami newspaper Monday.

So why is the Iranian leadership making a sudden change on this act? Nothing has changed substantially; U.S. forces will not be immediately withdrawing from Iraq, and from all appearances, the changes in the draft after Maliki sent the agreement back to the United States are minor.

At first glance, it appears Iran is looking to save face for its failure to sabotage the deal. The U.S. military said Iran was attempting to bribe Iraqi members of parliament, but this failed. Iran has used Muqtada al Sadr and his Sadrist movement as a proxy to protest the agreement, but this failed to gain traction with the wider Shia parties. The Iraqi cabinet approved the final agreement nearly unanimously; 27 cabinet members voted in favor, one abstained and nine were not present (some of them are thought to be traveling overseas). It is believed the Iraqi parliament will approve the agreement; the three major Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish blocks in the cabinet voted in favor of the measure. Even Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, the senior most Shia leader in Iraq, signed off on the deal.

Iran is yet again in danger of ending up on the wrong side of an important issue pertaining to Iraq’s security. Last spring, Sadr’s Mahdi Army and other Iranian-supported “Special Groups” were roundly defeated by the Iraqi security forces after they attempted to seize power in Basra and tried prevent the military from entering Baghdad’s Sadr City. Iran likely doesn’t want to repeat this mistake.

National Journal links to a new advertisement by the AFL-CIO in support of the Employee Free Choice Act:

It looks like Big Labor's strategy for selling the EFCA can be summed up in one word: obfuscation. There's no mention in this ad of any of the provisions of Card Check--wiping out the secret ballot, allowing the federal government to dictate the terms of a collective bargaining agreement, and dramatically increasing the penalties on employers (but not unions) for inappropriate activities during organizing drives.

If signed into law, Card Check holds the potential to make labor strife a regular front-page feature during Obama's first term and slow down an economy that's already beset with huge problems. Does Obama really want to sign such controversial legislation if the unions sell the measure by bait-and-switch? If the voters feel they were fooled, they'll take it out on the elected officials who supported the bill--and that might not be limited to representatives and senators.

It's interesting that Democratic senators are so afraid of taking public stances on controversial issues that they're deciding Joe Lieberman's fate by a secret ballot, but they seem eager to take the right of privacy away from employees deciding on a union.

Ed Morrissey was impressed by Michael Steele's performance on Fox News Sunday yesterday:

Steele hits the nail on the head with his warning about communications. The Republicans need to have someone who relentlessly offers positive alternatives along with rational opposition to the Democratic agenda. It’s not about being nice, but about positioning the GOP as the grown-ups while the Democratic Congress and Obama administration write one check after another.

Watch Steele here:

Change is coming to Israel, one might say. The kind of "change" that specializes in dealing with reality, not dictators.

Apparently unsatisfied with the fact that Republican leadership suffers fewer consequences for crushing defeat than team leaders on "The Apprentice," several conservatives are making some waves.

Jim DeMint is angling for a spot on the seat on the finance committee, despite lagging several others in seniority. His argument? The spot should be awarded based on merit. Now, that would be some serious change in the Senate.

Dan Lungren of California will be challenging John Boehner for Minority Leader, a seat Boehner seemed recently to have wrapped up without opposition.

The headline of Newt Gingrich's appearance on "Face the Nation" today has been that he declared that Sarah Palin will not be the future of the GOP. What he actually said was less inflammatory and more sensible.

What he did was praise her as a "wonderfully aggressive, intelligent, hard-working person" and say that, while an asset, she's not the guaranteed leader of the party. He took the star of this election and placed her in a constellation of up-and-coming Republican governors, such as Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Jon Huntsman of Utah, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, and Mark Sanford of South Carolina.

Jindal was on hand to argue that conservative governors can make concrete changes in their states and demonstrate that conservative ideas can be a solution to real problems-- a message that was entirely lost in the presidential campaign, but has not been lost on the people of Lousiana. He also refused the Palin-bashing bait Bob Schieffer so desperately wanted him to take: "Didn't it bother you when Sarah Palin stole the show at the Republican Governors' Association?" Thank you, Regina George, new moderator of "Face the Nation."

Of the media's treatment of Palin post-election, Gingrich said: "They know how to spell Sarah Palin's name. They've got it locked in their word processors. She's going to be a much bigger story in the short term."

He's right. The media wants desperately to talk about 2012 and Sarah Palin, when conservative leadership needs to be talking about now and 2010. Sarah Palin is a force, but she will not be the only force. She should neither be summarily dismissed (as some have been far too eager to do) nor prematurely anointed, and avoiding too much preoccupation with the debate would be wise.

Below, Newt and Jindal talk about the mess we find ourselves in, and who's got the stuff to get us out:

Barack Obama and Michelle met up with CBS' Steve Kroft on "60 Minutes" this evening. Obama was well-spoken, characteristically cryptic, and seemed to be whistling a different tune than we heard from him on the trail.

For instance, did you know that both parties bear some responsibility for the housing crisis?

Kroft: How high a priority are you placing on re-regulation of the financial markets?

Mr. Obama: ... And keep in mind that the deregulation process, it wasn't just one party. I think there's a lot of blame to spread around.

He'll apparently be postponing the lowering of sea levels in favor of lowered expectations:

Mr. Obama: And I think that's what the American people expect. You know, they're not expecting miracles. I think if you talk to the average person right now that they would say, 'Well, look, you know well, we're having a tough time right now. We've had tough times before.' 'And you know, we don't expect a new president can snap his fingers and suddenly everything is gonna be okay. But what we do expect is that the guy is gonna be straight with us. We do expect that he's gonna be working really hard for us.'

Also, suddenly the American people aren't looking for speeches; they're looking for action:

Kroft: Are you gonna make a lot of speeches? Are you gonna talk a lot to the American people on television and radio?

Mr. Obama: You know, I'm not sure that the American people are looking for a lot of speeches. I think what they're looking for is action.

And, for good measure, a "no" to a new New Deal. It'd be encouraging if you could ever take him at face value:

Mr. Obama: I think our basic principle that this is a free market system and that that has worked for us, that it creates innovation and risk taking, I think that’s a principle that we’ve gotta hold to as well. But what I don’t wanna do is get bottled up in a lot of ideology and is this conservative or liberal. My interest is finding something that works.

And whether it’s coming from FDR or it’s coming from Ronald Reagan, if the idea is right for the times then we’re gonna apply it. And things that don’t work we’re gonna get rid of.

Ward Connerly is founder and president of the American Civil Rights Institute. This year, he led efforts to approve ballot propositions banning affirmative action in Colorado and Nebraska. Amendment 46 in Colorado failed with 49 percent of the vote, while Initiative 424 passed in Nebraska with 58 percent of the vote. I recently asked him a few questions about these efforts and his plans for the years to come.

Why do you think Amendment 46 failed in Colorado?

For several reasons. Number one, there were about 13 or 14 initiatives on the ballot, and there was a very well-organized “just say no” campaign that was intended to discourage future ballot initiative proponents from pursuing initiatives by triggering their defeat this time around.

The second issue was the enormous effort that was waged by Senator Obama to get out the vote. He had a lot of money and hired a lot of people who joined forces with some of our opponents, and they walked precincts door to door and they urged people not only to vote for Senator Obama, but while you’re there, also to vote against Amendment 46. If we did not have to run during this Obama year or if we did not have so many initiatives on the ballot, I believe we would have won by 15 points.

The third thing, and this is one that is highly conjectural, is that it appears that many individuals did not fully understand what our initiative was. For example, we lost in a lot of districts that were McCain districts.

Was there anything unique going on in Nebraska that eased passage of Initiative 424?

I think it was just the message. Our message that this was just about fairness, that we have reached the point in Nebraska where we don’t have to worry about treating people differently, and the state motto is equality under the law. Therefore we should live up to our creed and put it in the constitution.

What are the most likely opportunities for success in the next four years for the anti-affirmative action movement?

Given the fact that we now have a self-identified black man as the president of the country, I think it is much more difficult for racial advocates to argue for discrimination. Given that difficulty, it is an excellent time for those of us on my side of the issue to put the nail into the coffin of these policies. So the three states I think are fertile ground for 2010 are Colorado, Arizona, and Missouri. The opposition will have a hard time replicating what they did this year.

There has been a lot of discussion since the election about how conservatives can appeal to minority voters. How do you think the GOP could or should reach out to minority voters, and do you think anti-discrimination initiatives can play a role?

I certainly think we should reach out to everyone. I am not a proponent, however, of trying to reach people on the basis of their color, race, or ethnic background, or circumstances such as that. Once my party starts doing that, it corrupts its own hard-core values. I have seen over the last 10 years enough things the Republican party has done to appear more attractive to blacks and Hispanics that violate the professed beliefs of the party that I shudder at using that kind of tactic.

Karl Rove wrote in the Wall Street Journal yesterday:

History will favor Republicans in 2010. Since World War II, the out-party has gained an average of 23 seats in the U.S. House and two in the U.S. Senate in a new president’s first midterm election. Other than FDR and George W. Bush, no president has gained seats in his first midterm election in both chambers.

Since 1966, the incumbent party has lost an average of 63 state senate and 262 state house seats, and six governorships, in a president’s first midterm election. That 2010 is likely to see Republicans begin rebounding just before redistricting is one silver lining in an otherwise dismal year for the GOP.

Republicans may have history on their side, but the landscape for the 2010 Senate races, at least, looks pretty inhospitable for the GOP, as Chris Cillizza writes today:

Republicans must defend 19 seats including six (North Carolina, Iowa, New Hampshire, Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio) in states won by President-elect Barack Obama earlier this month.

Democrats have far less vulnerability; only one incumbent up for re-election (Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar) won with less than 55 percent of the vote in 2004 and several potential races are entirely contingent on one Republican candidate deciding to run.

In addition to Colorado, the best opportunities for Republicans to pick up seats are in Nevada, where Harry Reid has had some very low approval ratings, and North Dakota, where the race would be a competitive race if the state's popular Republican governor jumps in. Of course, no one thought in 2004 that Democrats would win, or even seriously compete, in Montana and Virginia. There's great potential for Democratic overreach, and it would be a shame if Republicans failed again to recruit candidates for some races.

The Hill reports that Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) has at last hired a forensic investigator to review his financial records and ethics filings:

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) has hired the accounting firm of Watkins, Meegan, Drury and Company to investigate his financial records and prepare a report for the House ethics committee.

The selection of Watkins, Meegan comes two months after Rangel first announced he would hire a forensic auditor to investigate 20 years of his personal income taxes and financial disclosure records, which are riddled with areas [sic. -- presumably 'errors'].

The Washington area-based public accounting firm employs 200 professionals and has been in business for more than 30 years. Mary Lou Gervie, a forensic accountant and a former revenue agent with the IRS, will lead the investigations into Rangel’s record, Rangel’s office said in a release.

Rangel's attorney--Lanny Davis--had previously said that Rangel would seek to hire an investigator who did not have a direct relation with Rangel:

Attorney Lanny Davis asserted sole responsibility for the protracted search, stating: “I set up a number of criteria in order to establish this is a truly independent person.”

Among those requirements, Davis said the accounting firms considered could not engage in lobbying activities before the Ways and Means Committee, could not make campaign contributions to Rangel and could have no other contacts with the lawmaker.

Rangel may have succeeded in hiring an investigator with no business before the committee and no history of donations to him, but according to CQ Moneyline, the officers of the firm have made a number of political donations. Several donated to Al Gore's 2000 presidential bid, several to former Republican Senator Al D'Amato, and a number to other candidates and committees--both Republican and Democrat. Rangel's lead investigator is reportedly Mary Lou Gervie, who donated to John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004.

A single donation to a Democrat doesn't necessarily suggest a lack of impartiality, but it's hard to believe that Rangel was unable to find a competent investigator who had refrained from active participation in national politics.

Our ever vigilant colleague Anne-Elisabeth Moutet draws to our attention target=_blank>an operatic sendup of the Obama coronation so brilliant as to be worthy of mention in the same breath as I Disonesti, David Tell’s unforgettable parody of the Lewinsky affair from our March 1, 1999, issue. David was opinion editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD from 1995 to 2007.

The first appeasement:

One source close to Hillary Clinton tells CNN that as of early yesterday, Senator Clinton had not been contacted by the transition team about a possible cabinet appointment. This same source tells CNN that Senator Clinton would not necessarily dismiss such an offer.

Obama would probably do well to repair what close Clinton associates describe as relationship that's "not friendly," seemingly unaware of the fact that it doesn't take a close associate to see that. He reportedly invited her to Chicago this week for a talk about possible cabinet positions.

Meanwhile, with the election good and won, the media can go back to conceding that in fact John McCain is not very much like George Bush. In a discussion of Hillary's future in the party:

Clinton may be constrained from stepping out by the fact that her party is in power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Taking on her party in the manner that John McCain so often did in the early years of George W. Bush's first term is not, friends say, her way of doing business. "In retrospect, [McCain's] 2000-2002 persona was the result of personal pique, positioning himself as the Democrats' favorite Republican," says a Clinton adviser. "That's not the role she wants to play. That's the last thing she wants to do."

As the security situation in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province continues to deteriorate, the Taliban are threatening to take control of Peshawar, the provincial capital. As the Taliban grow bolder, they have begun to target foreigners of all stripes. Even one of their own.

Today, two reporters, one from Newsweek, were shot in western Peshawar after they dodged a kidnapping attempt. Yesterday, the Taliban successfully kidnapped an Iranian consular official, in the same region. Two days prior, a U.S. aid worker and his driver were killed in another kidnapping attempt.

But the most curious kidnapping that occurred in Pakistan’s northwest has gone largely unreported. The Taliban kidnapped a Canadian journalist named Beverly Giesbrecht. CTV described Giesbrecht as "a Web magazine publisher in British Columbia who adopted the name Khadija Abdul Qahaar after converting to Islam after 9/11."

What magazine does Giesbrecht/Qahaar write for? None other than Jihad Unspun, a pro-al Qaeda, pro-Taliban, pro-jihadi rag that describes terrorists as "Mujahideen" and Western forces as "Occupiers." Jihad Unspun routinely posts translations of terrorist leaders.

Here's how Giesbrecht/Qahaar "reflects" on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks (read the whole thing, it is much worse than this):

This year, the seventh anniversary of the attacks on America fall within this blessed month of Ramadan providing us with a special opportunity to give thought to our current condition. Since America unleashed its hellfire on Afghanistan following the 2001 attacks, Muslims around the world have been killed, injured, detained, humiliated and demonized in a ceaseless war that America has loosely termed a "war on terror” but that has no specific definition or end.

Giesbrecht/Qahaar recently joined the Taliban in the Mohmand so she could "eat breath and sleep with the Taliban in order to show the true face of those America’s calls 'terrorists.'" She describes bombings in the region as follows:

Over the next nine days, there were many other bomb blasts including attacks at the main bus terminal that killed dozens. For the record, while the Taliban were quickly blamed, neither the attacks on the power grids nor the bus terminal were Taliban operations. The power grid blasts were part of an ongoing royalty dispute with local villagers and the bus attack appears to be the work of foreign forces as the Taliban do not attack civilian targets.

Of course, the Taliban never kill civilians.

So how does CTV describe Jihad Unspun to its readers? CTV clearly never went to the website. Instead they relied on a "friend" of Giesbrecht/Qahaar, who called it "an alternative source of news on the Islamic world."

If alternative means pro-al Qaeda, then yes, that is correct. Shame on CTV for not telling its readers what kind of "publication" the kidnapped "journalist" runs.

This story will surprise no one who has lived in a deeply liberal community that prides itself on its tolerance and diversity above all else. A brave Illinois 8th-grader, daughter to a conservative dad and liberal mom, conducted a social experiment in the weeks before the election in the tolerant, liberal suburb of Oak Park.

She wore a "McCain Girl" shirt to school on one day, and an "Obama Girl" shirt on a subsequent day. The responses to her McCain shirt were predictable, as she was harassed by students and questioned by teachers:

"One person told me to go die. It was a lot of dying. A lot of comments about how I should be killed." ...

"He said, 'You should be crucifixed.' It was kind of funny because, I was like, don't you mean 'crucified?' " Catherine said.

Other entries in her notebook involved suggestions by classmates that she be "burned with her shirt on" for "being a filthy-rich Republican."

This story will not surprise Phyllis Burgess who was attacked for carrying a cross into a crowd of Prop. 8 protesters in the aftermath of California's gay marriage measure passing.

It won't surprise Jose Nunez who was assaulted for distributing pro-Prop. 8 flyers.

It won't surprise Mormon temples that have been under siege by angry crowds hurling expletives (and occasionally projectiles) since Prop. 8 passed.

Now, suspicious white powders have shown up at several Mormon temples, though the incidents have yet to be connected to Prop. 8.

I understand that emotions run high on this issue, but the behavior of gay marriage activists in the aftermath of Prop. 8's passage has been largely disgraceful. The marches, rallies, and protests would have been more helpful to their cause before the election, and with decidedly less anger.

They'd also likely be more successful in persuasion if sober efforts were directed at members of their own Democrat/liberal coalition who voted for Prop. 8, like Hispanics and black voters. But white liberals have no capacity to criticize those communities in even the slightest way, so they vent their anger by throwing things at Mormons.

What's going on now has far too much the look of a hateful temper tantrum than a regrouping to fight another day. Imagine the outcry had Prop. 8 supporters lost the vote and immediately began protesting gay clubs or disrupting gay marriage ceremonies and club meetings in large numbers. Gay marriage is an issue on which public opinion is trending in their favor, but displays such as the Phyllis Burgess incident are not convincing any Prop. 8 voters to be more open to the gay community and its needs.

There was a vote. It was close, but they lost. They should go about the work of convincing people to vote the other way next time. The law will not be changed because a requisite number of Mormons are harassed.

Liberals fancy themselves the most tolerant of all people, and indeed they are, as long as they never encounter anyone with the gall to wear a McCain t-shirt or support traditional marriage. Then, it's on.

Will Barack Obama choose Hillary Clinton to be his secretary of state? She was in Chicago yesterday, and Politico reports that "Obama has, himself, recently discussed the possibility with advisors," some of whom like the idea.

Jennifer Rubin looks at the merits of making Clinton secretary of state:

As became painfully obvious during the campaign, she really doesn’t have much foreign policy experience. And her opportunistic opposition to the surge was not the high point of her career. Nevertheless, for conservatives, she might be about as good as it gets — she did support the Iraq War (until she didn’t), voted for the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, and (before she realized it would be a problem in the Ohio primaries) was a free trader. Conservatives could do worse. And they probably will.

The political benefit to Obama is much more obvious. If Hillary is offered and accepts the job, that would almost certainly prevent her from challenging Obama for the 2012 nomination--no matter how bad things get in the next four years. The unseemliness of a cabinet member challenging the president would just be too much. As they say, keep your friends close ...

But Clinton has much to gain politically as well: it could potentially put her in a better position to make one last run in 2016 (she would be 69 then). While being secretary of state would tie Clinton to every Obama administration foreign policy decision, she would be able to avoid taking a position on all of the tough, controversial economic questions that she would otherwise have to deal with in the Senate.

And putting Hillary in charge of State might even mend the rift with Bill Clinton, who would undoubtedly be grateful for all the time he would have to focus on his, uh, philanthropic activities while Hillary is busy globetrotting.

It looks like Republicans may be able to foil the narrow Democrat majority in its quest to dole out money to the first in a list of private companies making bad business decisions that should be rewarded with your tax money:

House Republican leader John Boehner, Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, and Alabama Representative Spencer Bachus, have all criticized aspects of the aid package being crafted by Democrats in the House and Senate.

"I don't know of a single Republican who is willing to support'' the auto bailout, Democrat Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said yesterday, adding that he would be careful about bringing up any measure that might fail.

General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC would receive $25 billion in loans out of a $700 billion financial bailout package approved earlier this year under the legislation, which Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Senator Carl Levin of Michigan are writing. The Bush administration opposes using those funds for the auto companies.

The finer print reveals several less-encouraging quotes from Republicans, who sound far too willing to approve a bailout if the money has certain strings attached:

"Spending billions of additional federal tax dollars with no promises to reform the root causes crippling automakers' competitiveness around the world is neither fair to taxpayers nor sound fiscal policy,'' Boehner said in a statement yesterday...

"The financial situation facing the Big Three is not a national problem, but their problem,'' Shelby said in a statement this week. ``I do not support the use of U.S. taxpayer dollars to reward the mismanagement of Detroit-based auto manufacturers in such a way that allows them to continue and compound their ongoing mistakes.''

Chuck Grassley has asked top auto executives to cut their own pay until the crisis is averted, and Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) has suggested any bailout money be tied to automakers' ability to renegotiate labor contracts.

Complicating the Dems' problems: Obama resigns his Senate seat on Nov. 16, decreasing their majority, and the bill would likely need enough support to withstand a presidential veto.

If Republicans can stand up to the Washington pressure to do this, they're likely to come out on the right side of this issue, according to numbers from Rasmussen:

Forty-six percent (46%) of Americans are opposed to a taxpayer-backed bailout of the Big Three automakers. Thirty percent (30%) support such a plan, and 25% are undecided.

A near identical percentage (45%) are opposed to a specific government bailout for General Motors, which says it is facing bankruptcy in the near future without an infusion of federal aid. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Americans support a GM bailout, with a sizable group (20%) not sure.

A whopping 73 percent are worried the government will run out of money if it keeps bailing companies out, recognizing that there's likely no end in sight once GM gets the goods. If Republicans need more incentive to oppose this, there's the fact that women are more worried than men, and younger Americans more than older Americans. Good government is the most attractive part of the Republican message right now, and it's an inroad to groups Republicans lost this time around.

Dan Mitchell of Cato disputes the notion Democrats are selling that this is the requisite bailout of Main Street required after the bailout of Wall St.:

Bailouts are a particularly bizarre form of redistribution, however, because the corporate bureaucrats at the Big Three are among the very richest Americans. The UAW bosses make extravagant salaries, as well, and even regular union workers make an average of approximately $70 per hour, far higher than the average American.

Bankruptcy may be the quickest path to profitability, painful though it is. A court-supervised opportunity to streamline production and costs would undoubtedly make union bosses and executives uncomfortable, but it's what they need to do to become viable in the long term. BMW, Nissan, and Toyota all make money making cars in the United States. Most of them do it in South Carolina and Alabama, where workers have been glad to trade insurance-covered massage therapy for steady jobs working for companies that aren't constantly on the verge of collapsing.

The U.S. military has struck yet again inside Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas. U.S. Predators hit an al Qaeda safe house in the Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan. Twelve people, including five “foreigners” were killed in the attack.

The strike occurred just one day after Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari protested the attacks. “It’s undermining my sovereignty and it’s not helping win the war on the hearts and minds of people,” Zardari said in an interview. On the same day, a spokesman for Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry described the attacks as a “violation of international law.”

But the United States is stuck between a rock and a hard place on this issue. On one hand, the attacks risk destabilizing Pakistan’s government and turn Pakistanis toward the extremists. On the other, U.S. intelligence strongly believes al Qaeda has regrouped in the tribal areas and is actively plotting strikes against the West, using men with Western passports.

The attacks have netted some major al Qaeda leaders this year. Abu Laith al Libi, a senior military commander in Afghanistan, was killed in a strike in North Waziristan in January. Abu Sulayman Jazairi, al Qaeda’s external operations chief, was killed in a strike in Bajaur in March. Abu Khabab al Masri, al Qaeda's WMD chief, and several senior members of his staff were killed in a strike in South Waziristan in July. Khalid Habib, the leader of al Qaeda's paramilitary forces in the tribal areas, was killed in North Waziristan in October. Abu Jihad al Masri, the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Group and member of al Qaeda's top council, was also killed in North Waziristan this October.

Pakistan is complaining about its sovereignty, but refuses to accept large swaths of its northwestern province are out of its control. Until Pakistan gets a handle on the problem, the United States has no choice but to continue the attacks.

Bill Ayers describes Barack Obama as a "family friend" in a new foreward to his 2001 book. At least he didn't say they were "pals".

Miami -- In an interview after her speech at the Republican Governors' Association meetings here today, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin criticized the Bush administration for exacerbating voter "distrust" by shifting money from the $700 billion bailout from buying bad bank assets to purchasing additional stock in banks. In response to the proposed changes, announced yesterday by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Palin expressed frustration on behalf of a weary electorate and offered a stern warning.

"No more surprises," she said. "I think the surprises make the electorate distrust elected officials and their ability to appoint people who are to be looking out for the public’s interest."

The brief interview took place in a meeting room at the Miami Intercontinental Hotel. I asked her the question today because when Wolf Blitzer asked her a similar question yesterday, she struggled to give him an answer.

She initially told him that "there is going to come a point here where absolutely the federal government must play an appropriate role in shoring up some of these industries that are hurting and will ultimately hurt our entire economy and the world's economy if there aren't some better decisions being made." But then she spoke of the need for "personal responsibility" and worried about setting a bad precedent. Blitzer pressed her:

Blitzer: So, sorry, I'm still waiting for the answer, should the government bail out the big three automakers?

SP: Well, that -- it's in debate right now and I'm listening closely to the debate and there is a lot of information that even you and I certainly aren't privy to, to understand all of the ramifications if federal government were going to step in and bail out.

But we do know that the auto industry is that important that certainly it needs to be considered. But, you know, I'm not getting to ignore the debate again that I think needs to lead to the personal responsibility, the management decisions that have been made in some of these companies and corporations that have also led us to where we are.

Blitzer: So I hear you saying you need more information right now.

SP: Yes, I do. Yes.

In her speech this morning, Palin alluded to the bailout and voiced her growing concerns about Washington's addiction to, as she put it, "opium" -- O.P.M. - other people's money. During a panel discussion following her speech, TWS editor Bill Kristol lamented the fact that there had not been a serious alternative to the $700 billion bailout and Congressman Mike Pence explained his opposition to the bailout. In her interview with TWS, Palin seemed more skeptical of the a potential bailout of the automakers than she had been yesterday. The exchange with Palin follows.

TWS: Where are you on the possible bailout of the automakers?

SP: Not real enthused about looking at this next package if this entails additional dollars – beyond the $700 billion – and if it at all would suggest in this new proposal that these would be grants, not loans. And because Paulson just came out yesterday and again this morning kind of shifting gears on Americans in terms of what had just been proposed in the first bailout. It kind of lends to some distrust to the solution here that’s being proposed. So we all need more information on what exactly is it this time – the second bailout package that would evidently be very beneficial for manufacturing, for the auto industry. If that’s important we have to consider it. But no more surprises. I think the surprises make the electorate distrust elected officials and their ability to appoint people who are to be looking out for the public’s interest.

TWS: Given that reality…

SP: And the other Republican governors, too. I don’t hear a whole lot of them real enthused about the second idea.

TWS: Given the changes – and the fact that they’re suddenly shifting – do you have any regrets for supporting the initial bailout?

SP: No, because I think that we had to do something there. And Bill Kristol and others up there were saying also there had to be action taken by the federal government to start shoring up some of the elements here of the economic collapse – especially in the housing market. But now, with talk of a second, a third, a fourth stimulus or bailout package that’s being considered right now without all of the details – and was suggested up there also, all three pages of the $700 billion bailout. Well, not regret for the action that was taken. But certainly Americans need to know what we’re talking about when we’re talking about these solutions that aren’t obviously solely based on free enterprise solutions. We need more information.

And we also need to get to the point where we’re not reacting in crisis mode but we can be proactive here. That entails of course greater oversight of the entities and the players involved in all this. But with this second bailout plan that would evidently exclusively assist one segment of the manufacturing industry we want to know – Americans want to know that there is accountability here also. And if there were poor management practices and actions taken by the corporations and companies themselves that led to this collapse – it shouldn’t be about a blank check handed to them as a reward for perhaps some poor judgment and poor decisions made. There’s got to be accountability, otherwise, you know, there’s going to be a line of entities, states, people with their hands out sayin’: ’I want some of that, too.’ And what about those who have been wise and made sound decisions based on the circumstances that they were in?

Via Allahpundit:

TPM reports that American labor leaders are coming to Washington to meet and spell out their priorities for the incoming Obama administration:

According to a senior AFL-CIO official, the labor leaders -- who could include AFL-CIO head John Sweeney, AFSCME chief Gerald McEntee, and others -- will be putting the finishing touches on plans for a national campaign, including possible TV ads, to press members of Congress for quick passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, one of labor's major agenda items.

The measure, which would give workers the right to join a union as soon as a majority of employees at a workplace say they want to, went down to defeat in 2007 and is likely to provoke huge opposition from business groups again this time around.

The labor heads will also discuss the Obama team's ongoing transition efforts and evaluate whether they think labor has had an adequate role in behind-the-scenes discussions, the AFL official said.
One key topic: How labor can push harder right now for quick passage of an economic stimulus package, which labor leaders want done even before Obama takes office...

One sensitive topic likely to be discussed at the meeting: How the big unions can press their agenda aggressively right now, without being seen as publicly pushing the administration too hard at a point when it's just trying to find its footing. Labor's agenda dovetails in many ways with Obama's, but labor, just like every other series of powerful interest groups, is trying to strike the right balance in pressing the administration to prioritize their agenda.

Is Big Labor more concerned that Senator Obama will resent the pressure that they intend to apply, or that the public will see union bosses as calling the shots? In either case, eliminating the secret ballot is a poor way for the new administration to make a good first impression.

In a recent Financial Times interview, Germany’s former Green foreign minister Joschka Fischer slams Chancellor Angela Merkel for renouncing “any claim to leadership in shaping Europe’s response to the financial and economic crises” and for “acting purely nationally”. In contrast, Fischer praises UK prime minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy for having “made more decisive contributions” to help solve the ongoing crisis. Furthermore, Fischer describes the $15.3 billion fiscal stimulus package passed by Berlin last week only as “business as usual, not a strategic response to the crisis”. Finally, in view of the severe slowdown now threatening the German economy, Mr. Fischer called for “far more decisive action”, including large-scale infrastructure investments. “We are now wasting whatever margin of manoeuvre we still have left”, Fischer added.

Well, last time I checked, the 60-year-old high school drop-out is not exactly known to be an authority on complex international economic and financial matters. In fact, Mr. Fischer spent much of his young adult life (he turned 20 in 1968…) as part of Germany’s radical left-wing student movement, fighting the Capitalist establishment, trying to organize workers at car manufacturer Opel for the coming Communist revolution, battling German police in violent street demonstrations, and so on. You get the picture.

CNN reports:

The Roman Catholic Church is cutting off funds to the community organizing group ACORN, citing complaints over its voter registration drives in the November 4 election as part of the reason.

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development froze its contributions to the group in June amid allegations that Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, had embezzled nearly $1 million.

This week, as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops met in Baltimore, Maryland, the campaign's chairman said it was cutting all ties with the group.

"We simply had too many questions and concerns to permit further CCHD funding of ACORN groups," Roger Morin, the auxiliary bishop of New Orleans, Louisiana, told his colleagues in a letter to the conference.

The CCHD has donated more than $7.3 million to ACORN-related projects over the past decade, including $40,000 to an ACORN chapter in Las Vegas, Nevada, that was raided before the election in an investigation into fraudulent voter registration forms. Among other questionable documents, the ACORN chapter submitted registration forms for members of the Dallas Cowboys football team.

It's good that the Church cut off funding a group promoting fraud, but why was it giving money to ACORN in the first place? The group is basically a subsidiary of the Democratic party, and thus local chapters endorse pro-abortion candidates like Al Franken--something you'd think Catholic bishops would frown upon.

Perhaps more to the point: why is the Chruch spending money on voter registration drives? I don't recall any of the beatitudes beginning "Blessed are the registered voters..." but then again I also missed the part in the Bible where it's written that Jesus and Moses were community organizers, so I'm not really the best authority on this.

In his Washington Post column on Sarah Palin's post-election media blitz, Howard Kurtz perpetuates the myth that Palin "never held a news conference" as a vice-presidential nominee. According to CBS News, she held a full-scale press conference on October 17:

"For the first time since becoming a candidate for the vice presidency in late August, Sarah Palin held an on-camera press conference with her full travelling press corps on the short flight from Ohio to Indiana this afternoon."

Today, Palin held a short press conference in Miami where she is attending the Republican Governors Association meeting. The first reporter to pose a question asked: "During the campaign, you never held a news conference, which I believe was unprecedented. What's changed?"

Palin replied that she doesn't want to talk about campaign strategy. Perhaps she didn't want to embarrass the reporter by pointing out that his question was based on a faulty premise.

Allergists dispute Obama's claim that there are "hypoallergenic dogs:"

President-elect Barack Obama has said his young daughters have been promised a dog with their move to the White House. And in his first post-election news conference last week, he announced that Malia "is allergic, so it has to be hypoallergenic."

It's a common misconception. In response, the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology issued a statement Wednesday saying, "There is no truly 'hypoallergenic' dog."

Another campaign promise broken in the new administration, at the expense of the children, no less.

The famously loudmouth radical is "breaking his silence" in an interview with "Good Morning, America," tomorrow where he'll be promoting the reissue of his book, "Fugitive Days."

The great irony of calling out Obama for his association with an unrepentant, domestic terrorist is that the likely result will be a serious increase in the terrorist's speaking fees in the warped world of academia. Watch out for him on your campus.

Pakistani politicians continue to blame U.S. airstrikes against Taliban and al Qaeda camps in the lawless tribal areas for alienating the public, but refuse to address their own problems in conducting counterinsurgency operations. The latest objection to U.S. military airstrikes comes from President Asif Ali Zardari and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi during a meeting with Secretary of State Rice. Qureshi's comments are particularly interesting.

"These drone attacks are unproductive, and they are contributing to alienation as opposed to winning people over," Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said in an interview Wednesday night.

Qureshi spoke after briefing Pakistani journalists on what he described as Zardari's 20-minute meeting with Rice and another private gathering between Zardari, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia...

"And there is a collateral damage which we must avoid," Qureshi recounted, referring to U.S. strikes that have inadvertently killed civilians. "In fact, what is required is more sharing of intelligence information. What is required is building Pakistan's capacity to deal with insurgency."

The United States has been conducting strikes in North and South Waziristan because intelligence strongly believes al Qaeda's next attack on the west will originate from there. Al Qaeda and the Taliban have scores of camps in the region, which crank out suicide bombers as well as fighters for Afghanistan. The Pakistani military said it has no intention of going into the Waziristans. The Army has taken a serious beating each time it tried.

But most interestingly are Qureshi’s comments about the U.S. strikes alienating the Pakistani population. Perhaps he should look into how his own military is fighting in the Taliban stronghold of Bajaur. As the Washington Post reported this week, the Army is coercing the tribes to fight the Taliban, and bombs their villages if they won't. The military is over relying on artillery and airstrikes to attack the Taliban inside towns. Entire towns have been reduced to rubble. These actions alienate the Pakistanis living in the tribal areas far more than any U.S. airstrike.

The Pakistani military has been fighting in the tribal areas on and off for seven years since the Sept. 11 attacks. Yet they refuse to learn the hard lessons of counterinsurgency. The U.S. would not be forced to hit al Qaeda havens if Pakistan would get its act together and take the Taliban insurgency seriously.

The Taliban is urging the United Nations, the European Union, and the Red Cross to intervene to halt the execution of three Taliban fighters on death row. "We strongly request the U.N., the EU, the Red Cross and human rights groups to earnestly prevent this barbaric act," the Taliban said in a statement on their website, Reuters reported today.

Predictably, the United Nations and the European Union oppose the executions, "citing concern about the standards of judicial fairness."

One wonders if the irony is lost on the Taliban, the United Nations, and the European Union. The Taliban is guilty of some of the most atrocious crimes in recent history. One doesn't have to walk back very far to find such crimes.

For instance, yesterday two Taliban fighters poured acid on the faces of four schoolgirls in Kandahar. Their crime? Who knows. Some of the girls were wearing the full burkas. Perhaps because they went to school?

A week ago, Taliban fighters halted a bus in Kandahar and dragged all thirty passengers off. All of the passengers, including women and children, were murdered. Six were beheaded. The Taliban claim they were all soldiers.

Taliban military units are constantly fighting from populated areas and place civilians directly in the line of fire. The Taliban intentionally try to provoke NATO and Afghan forces into kill civilians. It works. Five days ago, a Taliban force intentionally intermingled with a wedding party in Kandahar. The Taliban continued fighting and prevented the civilians from leaving the battlefield. NATO forces called in an airstrike, which resulted in the death of 27 Taliban fighters and 36 civilians.

Incidents such as these occur on a near-daily basis, yet there is no international outcry. Nor does the Taliban refer to them as "barbaric acts."

The Anchorage Daily News reports:

Mark Begich made a dramatic comeback Wednesday to overtake 40-year incumbent Ted Stevens for the lead in Alaska's U.S. Senate race.

Begich, who was losing after election night, now leads Stevens by 814 votes -- 132,196 to 131,382 -- with the state still to count roughly 40,000 more ballots over the next week.

The state Division of Elections tallied about 60,000 absentee, early and questioned ballots from around the state on Wednesday. The ballots broke heavily in the Democrat's favor, erasing the 3,000-vote lead the Republican Stevens held after election night Nov. 4. ...

The state still needs to count at least 15,000 questioned ballots and an estimated 25,000 absentees. ...

Most regional elections headquarters will count their remaining ballots on Friday. But the most populous region, based in Anchorage, won't count its ballots until either Monday or Wednesday, state elections chief Gail Fenumiai said.

The headline will be that she's ready to jump on an energy panel to serve Barack Obama in the spirit of bipartisanship he has instilled in even the most hateful of backwoods politicians. In fact, she says she's happy to help him tap into domestic resources to earn our energy independence— an idea both campaigns supported in theory, but only one was willing to move on if it required anything beyond converting to greener light bulbs.

The headline on this will be that the hateful, backwoods politician who promises bipartisanship is talking out of both sides of her mouth, but she's asked about the Ayers association, specifically. She quite reasonably answers that the association didn't magically stop bothering her as soon as Obama had won the election. She displays a bit of the incredulity many McCain backers feel that neither the media nor many voters thought that the man's too-comfortable relationship with a radical unrepentant, domestic terrorist was pertinent to Obama's judgment. I feel you, Sarah. I feel you.

She delivers perhaps the best defense of that line of attack I heard throughout the campaign: "I do not think that it is off-base, nor mean-spirited, nor negative campaigning to call someone out on their associations and their record, and that's why I did it." Lord knows she sure answered for her associations. Would that McCain could have defended his ground as well.

This is what people like about Sarah Palin. It's one thing to move on and accept that the American people made their voice heard, as she indicates she's happy to do. To do so does not require acquiescing to the media's suggestion that your message was unseemly, racist, or hateful. Good on her.

As the security situation in Afghanistan continues to spiral downward, the notion that the United States and her allies should open talks with the Taliban has gained wide acceptance in Washington. Anonymous aides to President-elect Obama have indicated that talking to the Taliban (as well as Iran, a country that continues to aid terrorist attacks in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as throughout the Middle East) is a great idea. "Advisers also said Obama is open to supporting discussions between the Afghan government and "reconcilable" elements of the Taliban," the Washington Post reported yesterday.

The problem is that "the Taliban"--Mullah Omar's traditional organization, the Haqqani family's faction, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's faction Hizb-i-Islami--have no interest in negotiating. The so-called Taliban who attended "talks" hosted in Saudi Arabia at the end of September are really outsiders who have been kicked out of the group for being to moderate. The rumors that the Taliban have made a split from al Qaeda, a precondition for talks, are just that.

Mullah Omar issued several press releases stating that the only terms he'd agree to are the full withdrawal of Western forces and the restoration of the Taliban government. Omar has mocked the West for its defeatist statements and said his forces are "on the verge of victory." The Haqqani Network remains closely aligned with al Qaeda. And Hekmatyar, who is also aligned with al Qaeda (and is supported by Iran, interestingly enough), has been stringing along the West since 2003 with claims he's interested in reconciliation, but has yet to abandon his terror allies.

So what is the solution? In an op-ed at The Small Wars Journal, Joseph Collins, an Afghanistan expert and a retired Army colonel who teaches strategy at the National War College, tells us we should fight harder, and negotiate from a position of strength, not weakness. This in turn would allow us to peel off the low-level Taliban fighters from their radical leaders.

To create favorable conditions for reconciliation and later negotiations, we must first step up our military efforts. General Petraeus is right: we can not kill our way to victory in Afghanistan. We can, however, create a more pliable enemy, one eager to negotiate, if we defeat Taliban offensive operations and threaten their sanctuaries. While wizards may imagine ways to do more militarily with less, in the short run, more Afghan and NATO troops, as well as more aid money will be essential.

Collins clearly and succinctly explains the reasons why negotiations with the Taliban are problematic, such as the political problems negotiations cause with Afghanistan's other ethnic groups. There is no quick fix in Afghanistan, and negotiations at this time would only complicate, not improve, the security situation. Read the whole thing, as they say.

The bailout of the Big 3 automakers is going full speed ahead--if GM can survive until the check comes, that is. Business Week reports that GM barely has enough in cash reserves to keep the doors open until the end of 2008. And President Bush seems less than eager to dispense billions in taxpayer money to prop up a company at death's door, anyway. Instead, it seems likely that Barack Obama will be forced to bail out the automakers as one of the first acts of his new administration.

And while Barack Obama seems committed to giving with one hand, he plans to take away with the other. Transition chief John Podesta confirms that the Obama administration will authorize California to impose its own emission standards on cars sold in the state. California alone constitutes 40 percent of the market for new automobiles in the United States, so imposition of state standards effectively requires the automakers to use those standards for its entire U.S. fleet.

Federal law currently mandates a fleet CAFE standard of 31.5 mpg by 2015. The California standard calls for 36 mpg by 2016. That will be difficult enough for Detroit to achieve, particularly considering how little capital is available for new technologies. But what if Sacramento enacts a more stringent standard, or what if several other states elect to do so? It may become impossible for the automakers to meet the rule--at least without massive infusions of new cash. And given the poor health of the companies, they won't get such financing in the private market anytime in the next few years.

So there's a good chance that once Barack Obama bails out GM, the company will struggle along as a Government Sponsored Entity for years. A taxpayer subsidy will be essential both to retain the jobs and union benefits, and to meet the increasingly stringent emission standards--which Speaker Pelosi and others specifically mention as one condition of Detroit receiving assistance.

The FBI has arrested Tarek Mehanna and charged him with lying in an affidavit about his relationship to Daniel J. Maldonado, "a former Methuen resident who was suspected of training at an Al Qaeda terrorist camp to overthrow the Somali government." Maldonado pled guilty to receiving training from a foreign terrorist organization and is currently serving time in a U.S. federal prison.

The FBI picked up Mehanna, a U.S. citizen, as he was boarding a plane to "start a new job overseas," the Boston Globe reported.

Mehanna's family and lawyer claim he is innocent of the charges, but the FBI recorded Mehanna's phone call in which he admitted to lying to the FBI. Mehanna's lawyer, J.W. Carney Jr., dismissed Mehanna's activities as small-time. "If this is the FBI's idea of a terrorist, they are using a net that is designed to catch minnows instead of sharks," he told the Globe.

But Dr. Rusty Shackleford at the indispensible Jawa Report notes that Mehanna did more than lie to the FBI. Mehanna was in fact one of several bloggers who incites others to fight jihad overseas and recites the words of al Qaeda ideologues:

Mehanna goes by the online handle "Abu Sayaba" and runs the "Iskandari" website which is devoted to promoting the Salafi ideology.

For instance, Tarek "Abu Sayaba" Mehanna has, literally, dozens of posts recounting the words of Abdullah Azzam, the intellectual backbone of al Qaeda. Also among his favorite authors are Sayyid Qutb.

Mehanna is part of a network of online jihadis here in the United States and in Europe who support al Qaeda and other jihadi causes. Their activities are out there for all to see, yet little effort is made to detain them or shut down their sites. As Rusty notes, it will be interesting to see if Mehanna is charged with aiding and abetting al Qaeda by serving as a propaganda mouthpiece on the Internet.

Some recent headlines:

N. Korea to halt border crossings with S. Korea

N. Korea rejects request for nuclear sampling

Kremlin Plans Missiles Targeting NATO if U.S. Defense Shield Proceeds

Russia rejects U.S. missile proposals

Cuban president Raul Castro to visit Russia

Iran test-fires new missile

Police: 3rd day of deadly bombings in Baghdad

Is one or more of these hostile actions what Joe Biden had in mind when he predicted that there would be a generated international crisis to test Obama's mettle? Or does Biden think we should be waiting for something much bigger?

Noted primary loser John Edwards began his rehabilitation last night with a closed event at Indiana University. How long before cell-phone video emerges of an irate college student asking how he could possibly endanger the ascendancy of Hope and Change by hiding his extra-marital affair with Rielle Hunter while he was running for president? I look forward to it. (Update: I just found an account that says he only took written questions submitted beforehand, and the affair didn't come up. We shall have to wait.)

Can he make a comeback? Democrats were angry at him, not because he cheated (as they made sure to stipulate, so as to avoid being pegged as insufficiently non-judgmental), but because he endangered their electoral prospects. Surely, he'll stick around as a middling speaker, but in the Age of Obama, how does a sullied Southerner the Dems don't even need to gain the Bubba vote forge a path back to prominence?

Sadly, we cannot count on his shame to keep him far from a microphone for long. At least his hiatus (partially imposed by the time-line of the election) lasted longer than Jesse Jackson's in 2001, a true model of political shamelessness. When the story broke of his affair and lovechild around January 18, 2001, Jackson said:

The news that the Rev. Jesse Jackson fathered a child out of wedlock with an aide, Karin Stanford, and used money from his nonprofit Rainbow/PUSH Coalition to pay the woman $40,000 in "moving expenses," broke in the National Enquirer and reintroduced the nation to the politics of sex. Jackson responded by issuing a statement saying, in part, "I fully accept responsibility and I am truly sorry for my actions." He also said that he would step away from public life "to revive my spirit and reconnect with my family."

Those of us who were more than happy to see him withdraw weren't happy for long. His first public speaking event was January 22, 2001, where he thanked supporters in his church and proclaimed his determination to get back to his activist work. By February 4, he was speaking out against Bush's faith-based initiative. Way to pay penance, Jesse.

It will not end with Ryan Lizza, the Washington Times, New York Post, and Dallas Morning News getting kicked off the campaign plane, if this profile of the prospective press secretary is to be believed.

They call Robert Gibbs the "Barack Whisperer," which reveals that he a) has a very close strategist relationship with the president-elect and that b) he should have Obama's very capable speech writers come up with his nicknames (The "Barack Whisperer" doesn't exactly roll off the tongues. "Boss Whisperer," maybe?).

On the trail, Gibbs got more guarded as his status rose, shouting matches with reporters were not uncommon, and critical reporters (such that they were) could be frozen out by the spokesman for weeks at a time.

If you're wondering what it takes to get on Gibbs' bad side, the answer is not much. Dean Reynolds of CBS, who wrote the much-linked account of Obama's gamy campaign plane, received a "rather tendentious note" from Gibbs. Gibbs said later the piece hurt staff's feelings and raised issues the reporter did not raise in person. Well, then. In the Obama White House, presumably critical reporters will have to say everything they write "to his face" before they write it.

Another way to get Gibbs' censure, apparently, is to veer from unfailingly fawning coverage for even one instant, as Newsweek had the gall to do in one or two of its Obama cover stories throughout the year.

Last spring, when Newsweek ran a cover portraying Obama as the elitist "arugula" candidate, followed weeks later by a cover story in which editor Evan Thomas wrote Obama an open memo on dealing with race, the campaign suddenly stopped cooperating with the magazine's quadrennial book project, which requires behind-the-scenes access. Thomas had to fly to Detroit and try to assuage Gibbs during a campaign flight before access was restored.

"I thought the Obama campaign was overreacting to those two covers," Thomas says. "They thought we were overly concerned with race." In light of the election, "maybe they were right."

The magazine covers in question are "Obama's Bubba Gap" of May 5, 2008 and "Obama, Race, and Us" of June 2.

The "Bubba Gap" cover was, perhaps, the most critical of the 11— count 'em, 11!— covers that featured Barack Obama over the past two years. Three of those covers featured him with others— one with Hillary, one with Biden, and one with McCain— but the rest featured him alone, and most were utterly positive.

Click through this slide show to see the scathing coverage that warranted Gibbs' freeze-out: "The O Team," "What He Believes," and "When Barry Became Barack," among them.

As we saw throughout the campaign, the Obama team is a disciplined message machine that puts a premium on loyalty and limits access, in much the same style the Bush administration has been maligned for. Because the press is predisposed to like Obama, his arm's-length treatment of the press never became the story, as it did about the McCain and Palin camps, which allowed Gibbs to punish press members for slights both tiny and imagined.

It will continue in the White House. This paragraph makes me lament the lack of a similar figure in the Bush White House:

He also monitors coverage intensively, pushing back against the smallest blog post he considers inaccurate.

In the late years of the Bush administration, the relationship with press has remained contentious, but without systematic push-back on controversial issues such as pre-war intelligence, even though press coverage pushed much more problematic memes than the "Bubba Gap."

Sounds like the Obama administration won't be making such mistakes. Will they ever go far enough in limiting access and punishing critics to turn off the journalists who love them so? Yeah, I won't hold my breath.

Michael Scherer notes a few of McCain's highlights:

On Sarah Palin: "Did you expect mavericks to stay on message?"

On discord within his campaign: "I think I have at least 1,000 top advisers. 'Top advisers said...' "

On sleeping like a baby: "Sleep two hours, wake up and cry. Sleep two hours, wake up and cry."

On the Republican Party: "We just got back from the woodshed."

Megan McArdle explains:

Why bail out Wall Street and not GM, demand many people. Why do we care about bankers and not ordinary folks?

I think this misses the point of the financial bailout. Whether or not it works--and I sure hope it will--I don't think very many people wanted to bail out the financial industry because we were so moved by the plight of those plucky traders on the mortgage desk. We bailed them out not because they deserved it--they didn't--but because if we didn't, there was a very big risk that they would take us down with them.

This is not generalizeable to other industries. Money is weird. Finance is weird. There is no other industry that is, first, so tightly coupled, and second, severely affects every other industry in the country. Moreover, there are few other industries that are so vulnerable to panic. Strategic injections of capital can actually salvage operations that are otherwise sound.

GM's operations are not otherwise sound. They have been headed for this moment since 1973. Conservatives blame legacy costs, and liberals blame management. They're both right. GM's legacy costs are crazy. So is the UAW leadership, which, goaded by the retirees, is knowingly driving the company into bankruptcy rather than negotiate clearly unsustainable deals. Those legacy costs would probably not be supportable by any company in a competitive environment; the UAW's expectations were created in an era of comfortable oligopoly, when all costs could be directly passed on to the consumer. And the poor quality control on American cars is, from all reports, the responsibility of the union, which maintains downright silly work rules that not even the most ardent liberal could defend in both the Big Three and their various parts suppliers. My favorite was the supplier plant that was forced to work in english measurement even though they had to sell parts in metric. But the examples are legion.

Read the rest here.

The New York Times reports that Democratic senator Max Baucus will unveil his nationalized health care proposal today, and (surprise!) it would require all Americans to purchase health insurance:

The plan proposed by Mr. Baucus, Democrat of Montana, would eventually require everyone to have health insurance coverage, with federal subsidies for those who could not otherwise afford it.

Other Democrats with deep experience in health care are also drafting proposals to expand coverage and slow the growth of health costs. These lawmakers include Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representatives John D. Dingell of Michigan and Pete Stark of California.

The proposals are all broadly compatible with Mr. Obama’s campaign promises. But Mr. Baucus’s 35,000-word plan would go further than Mr. Obama’s in one respect, eventually requiring all people — not just children — to have coverage. [...]

People would have a duty to obtain coverage when affordable options were available to all through employers or through the insurance exchange. This obligation “would be enforced, possibly through the tax system,” the plan says.

At the second Democratic candidates' debate in June 2007, Obama said that mandating coverage was ineffective:

on this issue of mandatory versus nonmandatory [coverage] going around trying to avoid buying health care coverage. And, in fact, if you look at auto insurance, in California, there's mandatory auto insurance -- 25 percent of the folks don't have it.

While Hillary Clinton said she might be willing to garnish wages in order to provide universal coverage, Obama made clear at the January 31 debate with Clinton that he opposed the government's coercing citizens into buying their own health insurance:

My belief is that if we make [health care] affordable, if we provide subsidies to those who can't afford it, they will buy it.

Senator Clinton has a different approach. She believes that we have to force people who don't have health insurance to buy it. Otherwise, there will be a lot of people who don't get it.

I don't see those folks. And I think that it is important for us to recognize that if, in fact, you are going to mandate the purchase of insurance and it's not affordable, then there's going to have to be some enforcement mechanism that the government uses. And they may charge people who already don't have health care fines, or have to take it out of their paychecks. And that, I don't think, is helping those without health insurance. That is a genuine difference.

Obama's national health care plan is frightening enough as it is, but it will be interesting to see if he maintains his opposition to mandatory health insurance coverage, a position that made his plan slightly more moderate than Hillary Clinton's.

Jen Rubin writes:

Some are hearing, in Sarah Palin’s recognition of the failure of Republicans to attract Hispanics, an embrace of John McCain’s immigration plans. (They feel compelled, of course, to label this “amnesty”). It is interesting that immigration reform opponents immediately make the connection--although Palin did not herself. I guess a coordinated, highly emotional campaign by the Right to stop any plan for the legalization of illegal immigrants actually did turn off Hispanics. Who’d have thunk it?

Palin has said that she favors a "path to citizenship" for illegal immigrants, but Rubin is right that Palin was merely making a factual statement in her interview with Lauer: Hispanics voted overwhelmingly for Obama, and this is a big demographic problem facing Republicans:

For the first time ever, whites constituted less than 75 percent of the electorate, a considerable problem for the Republican Party given its historical problems attracting minorities. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) drew just 55 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004, but Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) drew 67 percent of it four years later -- a remarkable showing considering that many of those voters preferred Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) in the Democratic contest and supposedly were resistant to voting for a black candidate.

Whew, that was a close one! Just imagine what it would have done to our opinion of him as a fair arbiter of the news if he had actually gone into the voting booth and cast a vote for Barack Obama.

Now, we know he was the only commentator in the entire country to claim that Barack Obama didn't go back on his word on public financing because he's a lone, brave voice among the corporate media, and not because he's a flagrant and often dishonest partisan whose very serious spectacles are there only to protect his mortal eyes from the cosmic sheen of Obama's vibrant smile of unity. Glad we got that cleared up.

Watch the ladies of "The View" yell at him (at the end of the clip) partly for fun and partly because the uncommon confluence of opinions among daytime's most reliable disagree-ers suggests that the real path to national unity may be through hating Keith Olbermann, together.

Bonus video of Ben Affleck's "SNL" impression of Olbermann, which proved that the only thing that could bring him and me together is making fun of Olbermann.

We all know by now that President-elect Obama improved his performance among a host of voter subgroups compared to John Kerry four years ago. Political Scientist Charles Franklin arrays the change in this interesting chart that displays how well Obama did and how far McCain slipped among key subgroups.

Obama’s victory was indeed broad. As the chart reveals, some of the largest gains were among socio-economic bookends, including those who earn over $200K and among those with less than a high school education. The surge among blacks, Latinos, first-time voters and younger Americans age 18-29 is also impressive.

HT: Pollster.com

Today, as we reflect on the sacrifices of those who fight for our freedom, it's good to remember there's plenty we can do to thank them.

I've been part of the fund-raising crew for Project VALOUR-IT for several years now, and we're at it again, raising money to get voice-activated laptops to wounded troops. Computers and other spirit-lifting electronics can make more of a difference than you know, according to Chuck Ziegenfuss, whose 2005 injury in Iraq was the inspiration for the program, which has since supplied more than 1,500 computers to troops:

“Not only could I not get out of my bed to walk down there (to the hospital computer), but my hands were all blown up, he said. “I only had really one finger on each hand that I could use, and one of those was in a cast…I was really incapable of communicating.”

A computer with voice-activated software changed his outlook:

“Here’s the thing. They give you enough [pain meds],”—strong, expensive, good meds—“to knock out a horse, and it honestly sometimes doesn’t begin to touch the pain. You really don’t have anything else to think about.”

While on the meds, the pain is better, but all the body’s processes slow down, which means you may be in less pain, but you also may be in a hospital bed quite a bit longer. And, the longer you’re on the meds, the harder it is to get off them.

For accomplished soldiers who have just had their independence ripped away, anything that can shorten that process is welcome. For Chuck, it was a computer.“When you’re using something that takes your mind off the pain…you get the benefit of your body being able to recover without being heavily drugged,” he said.

You can help give a bit of that independence back through a donation to VALOUR-IT. I'm Team Air Force, in honor of the service of my dad and granddad, and much to the chagrin of my Army granddad and Navy grandmother, no doubt. Please feel free to use the interservice rivalry to motivate you to donate to this great cause.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

President-elect Barack Obama is leaning toward asking Defense Secretary Robert Gates to remain in his position for at least a year, according to two Obama advisers. A senior Pentagon official said Mr. Gates would likely accept the offer if it is made.

No final decision has been made, and Obama aides said other people are also under serious consideration for the defense post, one of the most highly coveted in any new cabinet. Several prominent Democrats, including former Clinton Navy Secretary Richard Danzig and former Clinton Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre, are also being considered.

The decision on retaining Mr. Gates will be the clearest indication to date of the incoming administration's thinking about Iraq and Afghanistan.

Like the president-elect, Mr. Gates supports deploying more troops to Afghanistan. But the defense secretary strongly opposes a firm timetable for withdrawing American forces from Iraq, and his appointment could mean that Mr. Obama was effectively shelving his campaign promise to remove most troops from Iraq by mid-2010.

But Politico reports antiwar groups are pushing back:

Arms control advocates and anti-war activists are ratcheting up pressure on President-elect Barack Obama to dump Defense Secretary Robert Gates and replace him with a more strident anti-war voice.

Nominating Gates to stay, “would be a violation of the mandate for change that Obama says he represents,” said Medea Benjamin, cofounder of the anti-war group CodePink.

A better bipartisan fit for Obama, they say, is Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who brings out what they like about Gates – his ability to deal with Russia, Iran and Syria – without the direct link to Bush’s policies.

“That would be an unmistakable sign from the Obama camp that they really are nonpartisan,” said Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com. “He would be great.”

The pressure comes as momentum appears to be gaining for those who support keeping Gates to remain at the helm of the Pentagon, at least for a transitional period.
Moderate Democrats in Congress, including Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, support the idea.

But when Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) promoted Gates appointment in a closed door meeting with Obama and House Democrats several months ago, he was booed by his colleagues.

Bill Sammon's sources tell him Steele may announce as soon as Thursday, and is courting the endorsement of Newt Gingrich, which if landed, would do much to scare off the incumbent and possible challengers:

The source also contradicted a report in Tuesday's Washington Times that Steele and Gingrich were competing for the RNC post.

"There is no fight," the source said. "This tension between Michael Steele and Newt Gingrich is totally fabricated and, in fact, Gingrich and Steele are working together to create a new strategy for the direction of the GOP."

In a statement issued by the former House speaker, Gingrich said he was not interested in seeking the post of Republican party chairman.

"A number of people have asked me to consider running for Republican National Committee chair. They have been very flattering, and I am very honored by their support," he said.

The Washington Times' report on the "behind-the-scenes battle" between the two is here.

I like the direction this is heading, if correct. Michael Steele is an eminently likable guy who can communicate conservative values and ideas with competence and charm, and has always inspired the base. He comes without the significant political baggage of a Newt chairmanship, but will undoubtedly be bolstered by Newt's ideas, as Gingrich has signaled that he wants to be very involved in the remaking of a party that could use some new ideas.

As for the somewhat fallacious face-off David Brooks drew between traditionalists and reformists, a Steele and Newt alliance could offer both a fresh face and fresh ideas without succumbing to the temptation to fight Democrats by becoming second-rate, imitation liberals. Both are "Hayesian reformitionalists" (see the above link) in their public pronouncements.

Mike Duncan will likely make a bid to stay in place, but there is serious danger in leaving the three most visible members of GOP leadership in place--Duncan at RNC, Boehner in the House, and McConnell in the Senate. If GOP voters and the rest of the country notice that Republican party leadership is subject to fewer consequences than team leaders on "The Apprentice," they will continue to impose their own punishment at the polls.

The Pentagon is planning to expand the number of air bases in the remote regions of Afghanistan’s south and east, USA Today reports. The bases will allow the U.S. military to sortie more of the deadly unmanned Predator and Reaper aircraft that provide surveillance and striking power for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The bases are needed “particularly in the rugged mountain area near the border with Pakistan” as the region “has seen some of the toughest fighting for U.S. troops.”

The article focuses on using the Predators and Reapers to support U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, but the USA Today misses the elephant in the room. The U.S. military and CIA have been conducting covert airstrikes into Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas that border eastern Afghanistan, primarily with unmanned Predators and Reapers. The strikes have skyrocketed over the past year after President Bush loosened the restrictions on striking inside Pakistan. U.S. intelligence is deeply concerned the next attack on the West will be hatched in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The United States has conducted at least 28 airstrikes and cross-border attacks in Pakistan in during 2008 (you can see the current list here). Twenty-one of these attacks have occurred between Aug. 31 and Nov. 7. At least four senior al Qaeda leaders have been killed in these attacks. In comparison, there were only 10 recorded strikes during 2006 and 2007 combined.

The big question is whether or not President-elect Barack Obama will continue the current policy of hitting al Qaeda and their Taliban allies inside Pakistan. The Pakistani government has already implored Obama to halt the attacks. Obama has run on a platform that emphasizes a kinder, gentler foreign policy that stresses diplomacy. He also promised to be aggressive inside Pakistan. He will soon learn that being “liked” and “respected” by the international community often conflicts with vital U.S. national security interests.

In the first part of Sarah Palin's interview with Matt Lauer, Palin highlights a few reasons why the Republican ticket was defeated: the loss of the Hispanic vote, Obama's fundraising advantage, and anti-incumbency sentiment. In light of her remarks about the Hispanic vote, Allahpundit observes: "If you think she’s going to jettison her position on amnesty now that she’s free of Team Maverick’s clutches, I think you’re kidding yourself."

In the second part of the interview, the governor prepares dinner as she, husband Todd, and daughter Piper answer Lauer's questions. Quite a talented multi-tasker. I think the most interesting part of this clip comes toward the end when Lauer asks Palin about the campaign's strategy to limit her contact with the press. While Palin says she won't discuss the strategy, she admits, "You can't just assume that the voters are going to guess ... and assume what a candidate's positions are or what their plans are. You have to be able to speak with them. And you do that through the media. That's the way the system works." Indeed. Palin gets it.

Thomas Frank got a lot of attention a few years ago for his book What's the Matter With Kansas, in which he wondered why lower-income voters would back candidates who offered them little in the way of expanded government services. Frank and a host of liberal analysts found it astounding that so many Americans would vote against their perceived economic interests, and instead vote their cultural sensibilities. As far as they could tell, these bitter voters were clinging to guns, religion, and antipathy toward foreigners (to borrow a phrase).

But today Mark Penn--writing in the Politico--reports that the middle-income voters of Kansas may not be the only ones voting against their economic interests. Apparently affluent voters backed Barack Obama--despite the fact that he promises to raise their taxes:

Barack Obama promised he would lower taxes for 95 percent of Americans and presumably raise them for the 5 percent who benefited most under President Bush’s tax policies. But, remarkably, the most affluent 5 percent supported Obama and that was perhaps the key to his victory last week.

This group — and the rise of a new elite class of voters — is at the heart of the fast-paced changes in demographics affecting the political, sociological and economic landscape of the country. While there has been some inflation over the past 12 years, the exit poll demographics show that the fastest growing group of voters in America has been those making over $100,000 a year in income. In 1996, only 9 percent of the electorate said their family income was that high. Last week it had grown to 26 percent — more than one in four voters. And those making over $75,000 are up to 15 percent from 9 percent. Put another way, more than 40 percent of those voting earned over $75,000, making this the highest-income electorate in history.

Don't hold your breath waiting for What's the Matter With the Top 5%. It's apparently understandable that educated and cosmopolitan voters regard other issues as more important than the personal bottom line. It's only the working voters of middle America whose votes ought to be predetermined.

While Pakistan's president thinks the war against the Taliban in the tribal areas is going well, several reports from the frontlines tell a different story. The London Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Times all share grim accounts of the fighting in Pakistan's tribal agency of Bajaur.

The London Times also reported that detailed plans drawn up by the Taliban were recovered in Bajaur. The Taliban established weapons and ammunition caches and set up fixed bunkers and networks of trenches. The fight on one stretch of road about eight miles long was so bad it took nearly two months of heavy fighting to clear the area.

The most disturbing aspect of the reports is the Pakistani government’s plan to get the local tribes on their side to fight the Taliban. This effort is often touted as Pakistan’s version of standing up an Awakening as happened in Iraq's Anbar province. I’ve detailed some of the problems associated with the government’s efforts to win over the tribes: There is no organization between the tribal groups; the tribes that join are largely on the margins; they often refuse to work with the military; and they are vastly outnumbered by the Taliban.

But the Washington Post provides another disturbing detail in the efforts to get the tribes to fight the Taliban. Instead of working with the tribes, the government is threatening them to join the effort or face the wrath of the military.

But, so far at least, the tribal militias have been no panacea. Instead, the use of the militias, known as lashkars, has set off a debate over whether such a strategy will contribute to a civil war in the northwest that could engulf all of Pakistan. Yet some tribal leaders say they have little choice but to fight their brothers, cousins and neighbors: The Pakistani military, they say, has threatened to bomb their villages if they do not battle the Taliban.

"They are between the devil and the deep sea," said Akhunzada Chitran, a tribal representative from the Bajaur area. "On the one side, there is the Taliban, but on the other side, they are being forced by the government to fight the Taliban or flee or the government will bomb them. It's a very difficult choice to make, but we have made up our minds to take on the Taliban."

In Charmang, a town about 30 miles east of the border with Afghanistan, two tribal leaders were kidnapped and beheaded three weeks ago after organizing 300 to 400 tribesmen into a lashkar to fight the Taliban in Bajaur. Their bodies were tossed into the road for all to see the next day, witnesses said.

"We're in a constant state of panic and fear. We're sandwiched between the government and the Taliban," said Rahimullah, a resident of Charmang who, like many ethnic Pashtuns in the area, uses only one name. "If we support the government openly, then we have to face the wrath of the Taliban."

Coercing the tribes to fight the Taliban is a deeply flawed tactic that is sure to backfire on the Pakistani state. This is no way to win an insurgency.

A characteristically thoughtful and provocative column by David Brooks today, this one the coming "fight over the future of conservatism." There are two camps, Brooks argues, the Reformers and the Traditionalists.

Traditionalists are

the people who believe that conservatives have lost elections because they have strayed from the true creed. George W. Bush was a big-government type who betrayed conservatism. John McCain was a Republican moderate, and his defeat discredits the moderate wing.

To regain power, the Traditionalists argue, the G.O.P. should return to its core ideas: Cut government, cut taxes, restrict immigration. Rally behind Sarah Palin.

Reformers

argue that the old G.O.P. priorities were fine for the 1970s but need to be modernized for new conditions. The reformers tend to believe that American voters will not support a party whose main idea is slashing government. The Reformers propose new policies to address inequality and middle-class economic anxiety. They tend to take global warming seriously. They tend to be intrigued by the way David Cameron has modernized the British Conservative Party.

Moreover, the Reformers say, conservatives need to pay attention to the way the country has changed. Conservatives have to appeal more to Hispanics, independents and younger voters. They cannot continue to insult the sensibilities of the educated class and the entire East and West Coasts.

This strikes me as too simplistic. I suspect most conservatives do not readily fit into one of these two categories. Like me, for example.

I do think conservatives have lost, in no small measure, because they've strayed from conservative creed. And I think it's indisputable that George W. Bush was a big-government Republican who, in many respects, betrayed conservatism. Further, I believe conservatives should return to their core ideas and near the top of the list of such core ideas should be cutting government and cutting taxes. But I don't think restricting immigration is one of those principles and I know many so-called traditionalists who don't necessarily want to rally behind Sarah Palin, but nevertheless defended her from the hysterical media criticism of her views, her family and her candidacy. So I'm half traditionalist, I suppose.

But, I think I'm half reformer, too. I'm skeptical of modernizing priorities (though I'd be more skeptical about modernizing principles) and I like tax cuts as a way to address middle-class economic anxieties. I take global warming seriously, but I'm turned off by a lot of the alarmist rhetoric used by global warming theorists and I worry that the "solutions" they propose restrict market activity in harmful and unnecessary ways. I'm definitely intrigued by the way David Cameron has modernized the British Conservative Party. I certainly believe that conservatives should pay attention to the ways the country has changed and I've argued repeatedly that we have to appeal to Hispanics and younger voters. Finally, I have very mixed views about insulting the sensitivities of the educated class and "the entire East and West coasts." (Wait, there are no traditionalists on the East and West coasts? Hmmm.) The elites on the East and West coasts have been mocking those of us from "flyover country" for decades and many of those in the so-called "the educated class" -- Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Lee Bollinger, Juan Cole, Ward Churchill, Frank Rich -- have earned their insults.

So am I a reforming traditionalist? A traditional reformer? A tradiformer? A reformitionalist? All of the above? None of the above?

I'm pretty much just a small government conservative. I think there are still a lot of us out here.

A website intended to showcase great American role models in uniform was launched today by Matt Daniels and Sequoia Capital.

GreatAmericans.com is an online video portal, similar to YouTube, that features videos of American soldiers, policemen, firefighters, and others.

Matt Daniels, the creator of the site, grew up in Spanish Harlem in New York without many positive role models. "I became convinced that one of the great disasters of our time is the utter absence of good role models in the media culture," he says.

"Role models are how we transmit values. Values are not transmitted in the abstract; they are transmitted by example. Society rises or falls by the role models we lift up."

Citing public polling critical of the media's infatuation with celebrity culture, Daniels says he is confident that there is an audience hungry to see real heroes like those in the U.S. military. He also plans to help educators use the website to teach American children about duty, service, patriotism, and character.

The front page of GreatAmericans showcases a preview of an exclusive, extensive interview with retired general Norman Schwarzkopf.

This Veterans Day, take a few minutes to learn about some of America's past and present military heroes.

While President Bush's executive order allowing U.S. forces and the CIA to attack al Qaeda around the world may not have been much of a secret, it certainly was and is a vital measure in waging the war on terrorism. As Richard H. Shultz Jr. wrote in a January 2004 article in THE WEEKLY STANDARD:

"Prior to 9/11, these [special forces] units were never used even once to hunt down terrorists who had taken American lives. Putting the units to their intended use proved impossible--even after al Qaeda bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, bombed two American embassies in East Africa in 1998, and nearly sank the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. As a result of these and other attacks, operations were planned to capture or kill the ultimate perpetrators, Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, but each time the missions were blocked. A plethora of self-imposed constraints--I call them showstoppers--kept the counterterrorism units on the shelf."

By removing these constraints and actually taking the fight to al Qaeda, Bush accomplished what Clinton couldn't.

Allahpundit catches The New Republic and MSNBC falling for an anti-Palin hoax.