From a very smart Barry Rubin piece at Pajamas Media:

In some ways, the most important — or at least second most important — thing to happen in the Middle East this week is that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah went too far, calling for the overthrow of Egypt’s government.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit responded, “They have actually declared war on Egypt.” And when he says “they” he means Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas. The Saudis and Gulf Arabs are also drawing lines deeper than ever before. Publicly and loudly, they look at Gaza and see Arabs and Muslims, and criticize Israel. More softly in public and loudly in private they look at Gaza and see the Iranian axis.

This is the Middle East of 2008 and not of 1958, 1968, 1978, 1988, or 1998. The Palestinian issue has little effect on any other issue. The real conflict is Iran-Syria against Egypt-Saudi Arabia. Islamists are seeking to conquer the region from Arab nationalists. Radical groups are not interested in happy homelands but jihad and genocide.

And so the issue is not why Israel is attacking Hamas in Gaza now, but why Hamas in Gaza is attacking Israel now.

Does Israel have any greater advantage in its existential struggle than the endless feuding among Sunnis and Shias, Arabs and Persians, nationalists and Islamists. Rubin makes an excellent point about Hezbollah having dangerously overreached (I think Hamas did as well, though on a smaller scale, with its attack yesterday on Be'er Sheva) and about the effect this latest fighting seems to have had on the existing divisions in the Middle East, but in many ways, the Middle East of 2008 is not so different from the Middle East of 1948 or 1967 or 1973. As long as the Muslim world is divided against itself, even a dysfunctional Israeli political system will be able to outmaneuver its foes as it has done for the last 60 years. Read the rest of Rubin's piece here.

Speaking of things that could kill a prayer, there is a new lawsuit by Michael Newdow (the guy who tried unsuccessfully to get "under God" struck from the Pledge of Allegiance) that takes aim at inauguration prayers as well as the practice (it started with George Washington) of a president's saying the words "so help me God" after reciting the brief oath in Article II of the Constitution. Newdow wants to have all of that declared unconstitutional. It won't happen.

This alone ought to disqualify Roland Burris from being appointed as a United States Senator. Its amazing how the left has been able to rally around Burris without knowing anything about him, declaring him qualified to serve if only he hadn't been appointed by a governor on the verge of impeachment and imprisonment. Nevermind that he sought the appointment despite all that, or that he ran for the Democratic nomination for Senate and was soundly rejected by the voters of Illinois once before, as he was rejected for governor by those same voters (in favor of Blago!).

Did anyone ever think that maybe there was a reason Illinois voters refused to send Burris to the Senate when they had the chance? Click through to see the "major accomplishments" Burris has emblazoned on his own monument to his own greatness.

On CBS's "The Early Show" this morning:

RODRIGUEZ: I’m fine, thank you. Yesterday we heard you say that they shouldn’t hang and lynch the appointee to punish the appointer. But do you believe that this is the way the only African-American Senator should be seated? Tainted, rightly or not, by a scandal and against the objections of most of his own party?

Rep. RUSH: Well, let me just say this, you know, the recent history of our nation has shown us that sometimes there could be individuals and there could be situations where school children–where you have officials standing in the doorway of school children. You know, I’m talking about all of us back in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas. I’m talking about George Wallace, Bull Connors and I’m sure that the US Senate don’t want to see themselves placed in the same position. I know my friend Harry Reid…

RODRIGUEZ: But it’s not just the Senate, Congressman. It’s Barack Obama who is African-American also who disagrees with this.

Rep. RUSH: Well, I think what needs–what needs to happen now is that all these folks who are opposed to Governor Blagojevich, they need to take a chill pill. We’re still a nation of laws and I believe that Roland Burris and Governor Blagojevich, they’re on solid constitutional grounds in terms of them being–of him being selected. I think that the US Senate will have to accept him. Let me just say this, you know, the real political tragedy, the real political issue, the moral issue that we face is why in the US Senate there are no African-Americans? There are two Asians, three Latinos, 11 women, but no African-Americans. And I just must applaud the people of the state of Illinois because in the last 150 years, we have sent two of the three African-Americans to the Senate over a period of 150 years. Now something is really, really wrong with that. So are you saying is this–is this…

Holy chutzpah! Nice careers you got there, Senators...shame if anyone should start comparing you to Bull Connor. For pure entertainment value, the Blago scandal cannot be beat.

How's this for encouragement in the new year? Obama and Senate Dems can't shake the resilient Rod Blagojevich, House Dems can't rid themselves of the scandal-ridden Charlie Rangel, and now, it is revealed that none other than Billy Mays is a Republican.

The interview is actually a couple months old, but I'd never seen it linked anywhere, and I thought the news was vital:

L.G.: A lot of the fundraising is done on the internet, in small increments—indeed, in many cases in $19.95 increments. Could you see a situation where you're selling Barack Obama or John McCain in that way, or is that just too nutty?

B.M.: I think if I was approached by the McCain camp. I'm a Republican.

L.G.: Maybe this is unfair to ask, but how would you pitch John McCain? Would you say, "Billy Mays here for John McCain?"

B.M.: Security. The world's a safer place. Country first. "Billy Mays for John McCain! If you want to keep you and your family safe, vote McCain!" I'd have to think about it, I wouldn't like to bash anything. I'd like to keep things positive.

As far as I'm concerned, this means our 2009 prospects are stronger than Mighty Putty and brighter than an Oxi-Cleaned laundry load.

Egypt cancels New Year's in solidarity with Palestinians. Too bad they didn't ever cancel all that smuggling into Gaza.

Beware the cycle of ceasefires.

Adding a million or so drunk revelers to a city renowned for its high levels of crime and low levels of competence? Happy Inauguration Day! Wear a helmet.

The Top 10 Top 10 lists of 2008. Meta!

Anti-Israel protestors wait for "change" in Mid-East policy that's not coming anytime soon.

Blago cannot be stopped!

Israel's stories you won't see on CNN.

Things get worse for Caroline.

They will never, ever leave us. Never.

The other day I emailed a few questions to Rick Warren, who has accepted Barack Obama’s invitation to give the inauguration prayer, and he’s now responded. Warren says, among other things, that the invitation was “completely unexpected” and that “several dozen” other pastors would do “a better job.” It’s apparent that he knows a great deal about inaugural prayers--he actually has a binder containing them all--and he says he’s going to reread them all before he settles on what shape his will take. I don’t think he’ll be backing away from praying in the name of Jesus. On the other hand, he won’t be using his prayer to preach or take a political stance--"that’s the fastest way to kill a prayer," he says.

Here are my questions and Warren’s answers:

How hard or easy was the decision to accept the president-elect’s invitation?

I am both humbled and honored to have a tiny part of a history-making day, when our country inaugurates our first African- American president. The invitation was completely unexpected. I could name several dozen wonderful pastors, both black and white, who would do a better job.

Do you expect to look at some past inauguration prayers to see what’s been done before?

I’ve always been an avid student of American history, since a Richard Warren was one of the 41 Pilgrim signers of the Mayflower Compact. I already have a collection of many of the important prayers in U.S. history, including a binder of every inaugural prayer. Of course, I’ll reread them all again before Jan. 20th. I own Abraham Lincoln’s handwritten note confirming the need for a national chaplaincy to care [for] wounded soldiers during the Civil War and approving a pastor.

How do you think about the kind of prayer to be given at a (any) public event, given that the audiences at such events usually have various faiths represented?

It doesn’t bother me at all when an Imam prays a Muslim prayer in [a] public arena or when a Rabbi prays a Jewish prayer in public or when anyone expresses their personal faith in public. This is America. We don’t deny our differences but we are respectful of all of them. I’m a Christian pastor so I will pray the only kind of prayer I know how to pray.

By which I mean both what is prayed for and how it is prayed?

Prayers are not to be sermons, speeches, position statements, nor political posturing. That’s the fastest way to kill a prayer. They are humble appeals to God. My hope is that all Americans will pray for the new president.

You've got to love the Pakistani government's sense of humor, which is so vividly on display with its official position on Ajmal Amir Kasab, the surviving terrorist involved in the execution of the Mumbai terror assault.

Pakistan has repeatedly denied that Kasab is even a Pakistani, let alone a member of the Inter-Services Intelligence-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba. Even President Asif Ali Zardari, in an interview with the BBC said there is no proof Kasab is a Pakistani. "Have you seen any evidence to that effect. I have definitely not seen any real evidence to that effect," Zardari told the BBC in mid-December.

More than one month after the Mumbai attack, Pakistani National Security Adviser Mahmud Ali Durrani waffles on the issue of Kasab's nationality. "Could be," Durrani said when asked if Kasab was a Pakistani citizen. "I am not saying more than that because we don't have, I hate to say this we don't have proof."

But Pakistan has been given proof of Kasab's nationality. Kasab himself admitted he is from Pakistan and submitted a request for consular access. The request is "under review." Kasab's father and neighbors were interviewed by Pakistani television and news outlets and confirmed he was indeed from Pakistan. His own father identified him and provided a nearly identical account of his son's background as Kasab gave to Indian intelligence. "This is the truth," Kasab's father told a Pakistani news outlet. "I have seen the picture in the newspaper. This is my son Ajmal."

Pakistan's response was to cordon the village, remove Kasab's family from their home and move someone else in, and force the townspeople to retract their statements. That's humor, Pakistani style. But nuclear-armed India doesn’t think it is funny.

Ramesh Ponnuru bats down the newfangled (and nonsensical) proportionality standard promoted by many critics of Israeli military action.

Cynthia McKinney's voyage to Gaza doesn't go quite as it was planned.

Vicki Iseman sues the New York Times for $27 million.

Remember when Joe Biden vowed there wouldn't be any earmarks in the next stimulus bill? So much for that.

If one of us has Alien Hand Syndrome, we all have Alien Hand Syndrome.

Via Allahpundit, Congressman Bobby Rush asks everyone to not "hang or lynch" Illinois's new senator (?) Roland Burris.

Can Harry Reid really deny Roland Burris a Senate seat? As Pejman Yousefzadeh points out, the Supreme Court seems to have ruled definitively on whether or not the Senate can refuse to seat a designee simply because they oppose the governor who named him. Yousefzadeh reviews the Supreme Court's finding in the case of Powell v. McCormack, and concludes:

... we glean that so long as Roland Burris meets the qualifications for a United States Senator as set forth in the Constitution, he must be seated. Art. I, Sec. 3 of the Constitution states that "No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen." Roland Burris is more than "thirty Years" old, has been a citizen of the United States all of his life and is "an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen." He may be expelled or punished if he engages in misconduct while a member of the Senate, but I can't see how he is prevented from taking his seat.

So while Reid has threatened to deny Burris the seat, Supreme Court jurisprudence forbids him from doing so. Can he prevent Burris' credentials from coming before the Senate? It seems unlikely. Senate Rule II makes this a question of privilege--one which can be raised by any Senator at more or less any time:

The presentation of the credentials of Senators elect or of Senators designate and other questions of privilege shall always be in order, except during the reading and correction of the Journal, while a question of order or a motion to adjourn is pending, or while the Senate is voting or ascertaining the presence of a quorum; and all questions and motions arising or made upon the presentation of such credentials shall be proceeded with until disposed of.

As I understand the rule, it only takes one Senator to call for action on Burris to force a Senate debate, and ultimately a vote on whether to seat him. If he is denied his seat--or if he's somehow denied a vote at all--Burris will presumably go to court to force the matter. And while there is a report that the Illinois secretary of state will refuse to certify Blagojevich's action, the secretary of state's own office has reportedly acknowledged that no certification is needed to make the appointment.

It seems that the U.S. Senate, the people of Illinois, and the nation at large may be set for a tragicomedy reminiscent of Florida 2000. With Democrats holding somewhere close to 60 Senate seats, Barack Obama's effectiveness in his critical first 100 days may depend on Reid's ability to muster 60 votes to break filibusters. And now it appears that two Senate seats (Minnesota and Illinois) could remain open for months or weeks while courts settle things.

And to think: the Illinois mess could have been avoided if the Democratic leadership of the state legislature had gone through with its initial plan to strip Blagojevich of appointment powers, and provide for a special election to replace Barack Obama in the Senate. Instead, they decided to try to avoid giving a Republican a shot at the seat by gambling that Blagojevich wouldn't appoint someone before he was kicked out of office.

The best laid plans of mice and men...

Eric Trager says that's the best possible outcome for Israel:

...Israel should move towards asserting a quick victory - immediately. At the moment, Israel has Hamas cornered: through its air strikes on key Hamas targets, Israel has achieved a peak in its military offensive, and the threat of a ground invasion remains highly credible. Now would be the perfect time for Israel to recruit pro-western Arab states for pushing Hamas towards relinquishing its rockets; or extending the truce well into the future; or releasing IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit; or some other meaningful concession to which Hamas might agree under the circumstances.

That all seems a bit fanciful. Haaretz now reports that two rockets have hit Be'er Sheva -- the first time such rockets have reached so deep into Israel (about 25 miles from Gaza). If anything, it seems that Hamas has doubled down and in so doing cornered the Israeli leadership. How are the Israelis to escape this with a credible deterrent and a credible claim to victory if they cease fire while Hamas retains an arsenal capable of penetrating so deeply into Israel? Another ten miles and Hamas could hit Tel Aviv, precisely the threat which compels an occupation of the West Bank.

Also at Contentions, Noah Pollak offers what I think is the only acceptable outcome for Israel:

What would be far more stabilizing is if democracies around the world backed Israel’s military operation until Hamas loses either its ability or its will to continue fighting. The Iranian-led resistance bloc would thus learn a lesson whose stabilizing effects would be felt around the region: the free world will support anyone forced to fight Islamic terrorism.

Obviously no such support will be forthcoming from most of the world's democracies, but most of the world's democracies are irrelevant in this fight. Israel has the support of the United States, and it will, presumably, continue to have such support in the wake of Obama's inauguration. If Hamas is not neutered, at least temporarily, then how can this be spun as a success, and how can Kadima hold on to power?

Alan Rogers of USA Today captures one of the central dilemmas facing the new Obama administration here:

President-elect Barack Obama vowed on the campaign trail to shut down the terrorist detention center at Guantánamo Bay. But he never said what he would do with the prisoners there.

What to do with the 250 alleged foreign terrorists at the Cuba prison is the real question facing Obama, experts say.

Rogers cites my research on the Guantánamo detainees, but that is not the only reason you should read the piece. (Ha!) Rogers also cites a new study by the Brookings Institution that is similar to the research I have been doing in many ways. The Brookings study was authored by Benjamin Wittes, who is always worth reading when it comes to Guantánamo and U.S. detention policy.

In addition to making a determination about what to do with the current detainees, the Obama administration would be wise to keep an eye on the former detainees as well. As Wittes and USA Today remind us, hundreds of detainees have been repatriated to Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, where we rely on foreign governments to keep an eye on them. The fact that the U.S. repatriated these suspects does not necessarily mean that they are not dangerous. Some of them, for example, were involved in al Qaeda’s anthrax program.

In the weeks to come, we’ll have more on the current and former Guantánamo detainees -- who they are as well as the difficulties the new administration faces in determining what to do with them and how to make sure they do not rejoin the jihad.

As Israel continues its retaliatory strikes against the Hamas stronghold in Gaza, so the left increases its collective j'accuse, specifically bemoaning the use of 'disproportionate force.'

The manner in which a nation conducts war, and achieves victory, can be as important as the war itself. Compare the conquests of the British Empire to that of the Mongols under Genghis Kan. Tactics and the utility of force matter, a point that hasn't been lost on modern, Western militaries.

The highly professional Israeli Defense Force, however, is nothing like the Mongol Horde. The IDF's campaign against Hamas is both legal and justified under ever major treatise on warfare, from the Geneva Convention to Thomas Aquinas' jus ad bellum. Israel is on firm ground here.

Observations that the action against Hamas constitutes a limited war, and should be conducted as such, are correct -- to an equally limited point. One of the principle problems with limited warfare is the frequent inability of the side with superior firepower to bring its force to bear in a manner quick enough to prevent the smaller, more agile force from responding, adjusting, and relocating. Israel's tactic of swift, sweeping air raids against Hamas' centers-of-gravity appears to have largely neutralized this trend.

For the left, this leads to clumsy fumbling over terms like 'disproportionate force.’ In today's highly technological battlefield, disproportionate force (or killing a mosquito with a cannon) has as much to do with types of weapon platforms as it does numerical superiority. The Israelis, with their air-delivered precision-guided munitions, are using a scalpel -- not a broad sword. And it's a method that we've used ourselves frequently -- during the Clinton years as well -- in places like Serbia and Iraq. There's no clause in the Law of Armed Conflict or Geneva Convention which states that your enemy must first have an air force before you use your own, nor are there any rules that restrict Israel to using weapons that are of equal or lesser caliber than the ones which Hamas uses against Israeli civilians.

So this is a strange phenomena that leaves critics of Israel forced to create their own rules of warfare to better fit their narrative. It's an odd play for a crowd noted for their championing of global solutions and treaties to local problems.

For more, I highly recommend Noah Pollak's The Juicebox Mafia on Gaza.

Most retailers won't report their sales results until the customary 1st Thursday after the 2nd, which is January 8. Still that hasn't stopped the downbeat headlines trumpeting the plummeting of retail sales, mostly based on the SpendingPulse Holiday Wrap-up Report put out by MasterCard Advisors. The report claims that "excluding gasoline, total sales were down 2% to 4% this holiday season compared to the same period in 2007."

One possibility is that when all the numbers are in MasterCard's estimates may be wrong this year. While MasterCard has complete access to sales activity on the MasterCard payments network, it has to estimate other sales, including the use of cash and checks. With credit card companies cutting credit limits and raising interest rates and fees it is entirely possible that MasterCard's model -- just like those used by so many Wall Street investment bankers -- will prove to be off this year.

In addition, many of the fastest growing retailers in the country are so-called "deep discounters" such as ALDI and they don't accept credit cards making MasterCard's estimate even less reliable.

Yet even if the estimates are correct, if you combine a 2 to 4 percent drop in sales, measured in dollars, with reports of far deeper discounting by retailers and manufacturers, the implication is that consumers bought more of most items than they did last year. In fact if reports of deep discounts on luxury goods and electronics turn out to be representative, it is very possible that this Christmas season consumers purchased substantially more goods than in 2007.

After all, if a store offers a 50% off sale it has to increase sales by 100%, in term of numbers of items sold, in order to stay even on dollar sales.

Of course whether sales are strong or weak, the profits of retailers and manufacturers, who often help retailers fund discounts, are at risk from deep discounting. The U.S. probably is over-stored and retail will have to adjust. That adjustment, just like adjusting from a surplus of homes, auto manufacturing capacity and who knows what else, will not be painless.

Still, how consumers are suffering in a recession is an important point of public interest so before we all collapse in despair, isn't it worth noting that a more accurate headline than "Retail Sales Plummet" is "Consumers Get More Stuff For Less Money?"

There's a 3 p.m. news conference scheduled for today. This guy is not joking around:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich is expected today to name former Illinois Atty. Gen. Roland Burris to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate.

The action comes despite warnings by Democratic Senate leaders that they would not seat anyone appointed by the disgraced governor who faces criminal charges of trying to sell the post, sources familiar with the decision said.

Shortly after Obama's Nov. 4 victory, Burris made known his interest in an appointment to the Senate but was never seriously considered, according to Blagojevich insiders. But in the days following Blagojevich's arrest, and despite questions over the taint of a Senate appointment, Burris stepped up his efforts to win the governor's support.

More on Burris:

Former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris, 71, had lobbied the governor for the position in recent weeks.

Burris made a previous attempt at the Senate seat in the past -- unsuccessfully. In 1984, he was beat out for the Democratic nomination by Paul Simon.

Update: Reid: No seat for you.

The Pakistani government has shut down NATO's vital supply link to forces based in Afghanistan as the military has launched an offensive to clear the Taliban in a region just on the outskirts of the provincial capital of Peshawar. This is the second such operation launched in this area by the Pakistani military in six weeks. Clearly the first operation failed.

Pakistan has closed the Khyber Pass to NATO convoys three times since September. The first closure was in protest of US airstrikes in the tribal areas. The second was due to the deteriorating security situation.

These closures highlight what should be painfully obvious to anyone remotely following the situation in Pakistan: the government and military have lost control of not only the tribal areas, but large swaths of the Northwest Frontier Province as well.

The Taliban is no longer bottled up in the small agencies of Bajaur and North and South Waziristan. They rule Swat and Shangla, and are poised to take control of Peshawar. Yet the Pakistani military is withdrawing an estimated two divisions of troops from the northwest to station then on the Indian front. The Taliban clearly has the initiative and the upper hand in the northwest. This is why the US is seeking alternative supply routes into Afghanistan.

Click on the map of the tribal areas and the Northwest Frontier Province at right. The government signed peace agreements in the red agencies/ districts (the military said Shangla was under Taliban control in October); purple districts are under de facto Taliban control; yellow regions are under Taliban influence. Map created by The Long War Journal.

In an effort to combat skewed media reports on the current fighting in Gaza, the Israeli Defense Forces launched a YouTube channel. The IDF has video of airstrikes on smuggling tunnels and rocket launch sites, the movement of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the deployment of IDF tanks to the Gaza region, and other such videos. Eight videos total have been uploaded over the post 24 hours.

The IDF is targeting the blogosphere and anyone else willing to watch the videos. "The blogosphere and new media are another war zone," IDF Foreign Press Branch head Major Avital Leibovich told the Jerusalem Post. "We have to be relevant there."

The videos show something that is rarely reported in the media. The Israeli strikes are conducted in the heart of built up areas. One video shows a strike on about one dozen Hamas fighters as they are loading Grad rockets into the back of a truck in the middle of a densely packed neighborhood. Another video shows an airstrike on a weapons storage depot that clearly is in a residential area (videos are posted below).

Of the estimated 375 Palestinians killed, only 60 are reported to be civilians. The Israeli strikes are remarkably accurate and are causing a relatively low degree of civilian deaths despite airstrikes being launched in built-up, urban areas.

Compare this with Hamas rocket and mortar attacks, or previous suicide attacks when the Palestinians terror groups could pull these off inside Israel. Hamas and others have clearly targeted civilians; the attacks are aimed at civilians in the heart of cities and villages. Yet the reporting invariably hints that the Israeli attacks are indiscriminate while the Palestinian attacks are a response to Israeli aggression and part of the “cycle of violence.”

It certainly isn't shocking to see that there is a double standard when the media report on the Israeli attacks in Gaza. Perhaps the IDF YouTube channel may help narrow this wide gap in reportage on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Sarah Palin's a grandma! Congrats, and a big welcome to little Tripp. Now, I want to see Piper-as-aunt pictures, pronto.

Obama will raise taxes on wealthiest Americans while lowering them for the middle class, all while passing a $775 billion stimulus package. Also, unicorns.

Atheist says only God-loving people can save Africa.

The IDF joins the fight online, with a new YouTube channel.

Craig Newmark offers suggestions for Continetti's call for creative conservatism.

Why Detroit's union problem is so very bad.

You know what this stimulus plan can't do without? $6 million for snowmaking in Minnesota.

Joe Biden names his puppy Champ, despite the fact that I lobbied hard for little "Botox Biden." I thought it had a nice ring to it. They could call him "Bo" for short.

Daschle tours the country with Obama's health care plan: "The Obama playbook is to engage everyone as long as they can, try to avoid getting into the details as long as they can."

Awww, Obama's abs can't save him from bowling jokes.

The Blagojevich recordings cometh.

The boss looks forward to Obama's inauguration with a hopeful eye.

Mackubin Thomas Owens and Reihan Salam pay tribute to Samuel P. Huntington.

Six out of ten active duty service members not too keen on Obama.

Briton with fatal disease waits in emergency room line for 6 hours.

Iraqis will take control of the Green Zone on Thursday.

Christopher Caldwell defends Obama's right to smoke.

Via Instapundit, the most absurd on campus p.c. kerfuffle of the year.

Seeing Gaza from the lookout on the Israeli side of the border, it's not obvious that the Palestinian enclave is among the most miserable spots one could possibly live. Still, we know it to be true. But perhaps it is lost on many Americans that living next to Gaza is likewise a miserable experience. The Israelis who cope with a daily bombardment from the crude but increasingly sophisticated rockets produced by Hamas endure what no American would ever abide. Barack Obama was uncharacteristically succinct when he described the situation last summer:

If someone was sending rockets on my house where my daughters were sleeping at night, I would do everything to stop it, and I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.

Yes, and it's evidence only of the extreme paralysis of Israeli politics that it took so long for the Israelis to actually do something. There is no reason to believe that the Israelis are lashing out in some ill-conceived manner -- using their superior military infrastructure to exact revenge for years of unanswered attacks (though such a response would be understandable). In fact, the operation has been in the works for at least six months as the Israelis gathered intelligence on the Hamas leadership and its infrastructure in Gaza. Roggio worries that this looks like a repeat of the 2006 war against Hezbollah. I'm more optimistic.

As Noah Pollak points out, the war against Hezbollah in 2006 did succeed in stopping the rocket fire on Israel's northern border -- at least for the time being. The problem was not solved permanently, and that was indeed a tremendous and unfortunate failure. But as Jeffrey Goldberg writes, the goal here is not the destruction of Hamas -- that doesn't seem possible at this point -- but for the Israeli government to fulfill its fundamental obligation to its citizens: "to use all of the tools of national power to stop attacks on its citizens." That can be achieved by restoring Israel's deterrent through a massive show of force. As Marty Peretz writes:

So at 11:30 on Saturday morning, according to both the Jerusalem Post and Ha'aretz, as well as the New York Times, 50 fighter jets and attack helicopters demolished some 40 to 50 sites in just about three minutes, maybe five. Message: do not fuck with the Jews.

The problem with this, however, is that if Israel doesn't finish the job, Hamas may accrue some benefit from the additional suffering of the Palestinian people. Hamas doesn't care whether the residents of Gaza live or die, whether they prosper or starve, it cares only that the Arab world and Iran support the organization with money and weapons, that the Palestinian people are united in their hatred of Israel, and that a moderate Palestinian faction is unable to pursue peace. If Hamas is left as the dominant force in Gaza, then their tactical defeat may also be a strategic victory -- as was the case for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Barak is promising a war with Hamas "to the bitter end." I'll believe that when I see it.

Still, the Israelis' fight in Gaza is a good fight. It is supported by the Israel's left-wing parties and more than 80 percent of its citizenry. While the American left kvetches about the disproportionate use of force, their silence when Hamas announced an end to the cease fire was far more revealing. And this time the American left cannot claim to be in solidarity with their ideological allies in Israel. They are on their own, and they speak only for themselves.

As far as Obama, does anyone doubt he would have supported this attack vigorously? Which raises the question: did the Israelis do Obama a big favor by launching this operation now, rather than forcing Obama to support it publicly three weeks from now? Ben Smith has some good reporting on how this is playing in Obamaland, see the last two paragraphs in particular.

I've been tuned out the last week and missed this amazing story which features the New Republic(!!!) exposing phony war reporting "first-person meditations." If that wasn't enough, Noam Scheiber has this graph attacking Harris Solomon, the man producing a movie based on the bogus story and who prosecuted a vigorous, TNR-like defense of the lies contained therein:

In fact, there's ample proof that Rosenblat's story isn't true; by this point, the burden is on Rosenblat to provide corroborating evidence. What's "bloody repugnant" is that Salomon would try to ward off questions this way.

As always, the burden to provide corroborating evidence must fall on the author, and I share in the New Republic's outrage that those vested in the story would stall, ignore troublesome facts, and ultimately fall back on the moral authority of an author exposed to the hardships of war. You know what would be a real shame is if the publisher responded with a 6,000 word diatribe against his critics rather than just a brief apology for being taken in by a huckster.

What does it take to become president of the United States? The ability to say more or less the same thing, again and again, for two years straight.

Here is Barack Obama to Steve Kroft, in early 2007, on why he should be president:

"We have a narrow window to solve some of the problems that we face. Ten years from now, we may not be in a position to recover the sense of respect around the world that we've lost over the last six years. Certainly, when you look at our energy policy and environment and the prospects of climate change, we've gotta make some decisions right now. And so I feel a sense of urgency for the country."

And here is Obama to Steve Kroft, in late summer 2008, on why he should be president:

"Well, I think that when you think about the challenges we face these are challenges that require us to look forward and not backwards."

Note the skill at which Obama stays on message without saying anything of substance. An extraordinary talent.

What struck me as I watched the 60 Minutes program on Obama last night was not only his unflappability. It was the fact that, for the least experienced president-elect since at least Jimmy Carter, Obama made only one and a half unforced errors throughout the entire long campaign. The first gaffe came in the summer of 2007, when he pledged to meet with the leaders of rogue regimes without precondition. As Charles Krauthammer has pointed out, it was a "metastatic gaffe" that trailed Obama for more than a year. Now that he is president, he has quietly dropped the pledge -- an implicit acknowledgment of a mistake.

The half of an unforced error was the Obama campaign's lack of preparedness for the inevitable attack on its candidate's ties to Jeremiah Wright. David Axelrod says here that "We didn't review all of the tapes of Jeremiah Wright as we should have." Translation: We weren't ready. But they knew what was coming. Which is why this counts as only half of an unforced error. The real mistake happened twenty years ago. The real mistake happened when Obama chose Wright as his mentor.

Let me know if I missed any major Obama mistakes during the campaign. I don't think I have.

From the paper's esteemed editors:

Before Mr. Bush spoke, the State Department announced that the United States and its partners would halt deliveries of heavy fuel oil because Pyongyang refused to agree, in writing, on a plan for verifying its nuclear stockpile and facilities.

China and Russia insisted that they had not agreed to any such decision. South Korea said it would delay shipping steel plates for North Korean power stations. Japan was already reneging on its commitment to supply fuel aid, and Australia, which had stepped into the breach, announced that it would withhold its contribution.

If the shipments stop, North Korea would be within its rights to stop disabling its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon and resume producing plutonium for weapons. That would present Mr. Obama with an immediate crisis.

According to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, all countries have the right to “develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes…in conformity with Articles I and II of the Treaty.” Of course, North Korea became the first country ever to withdraw from that treaty in 2003. Apparently it is the position of the editors at the Times that the North Korean regime therefore has an inherent right to produce nuclear weapons failing sufficient American bribes of food and fuel. One hopes that is not a view shared by Barack Obama.

The United States may cut a deal with the North Korean regime in order to reduce the threat to our allies in the region, but it will be a deal with the devil -- and surely one that we would be within our rights to break at the first opportunity to rid the world of the Kim family.

From the BBC:

The number of civilians killed by violence in Iraq has fallen by two-thirds in 2008, researchers say.

Official Iraqi figures say 5,714 people were killed in 2008 compared to 16,252 the previous year.

The non-governmental organisation Iraq Body Count also said the number of deaths was down by two-thirds, but put the figure between 8,315 and 9,028.

US military casualties fell from 900 in 2007 to just over 300 according to the independent website icasualties.org.

Several days ago, about 200 hundred prominent Turkish intellectuals launched a first-ever online petition apologizing for the “Great Catastrophe” in connection with the massacres of up to 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey during 1915-1917. Titled “I apologize”, the brief statement reads as follows:

“My conscience cannot accept the ignorance and denial of the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915. I reject this injustice and -- on my own behalf -- I share the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers - and I apologize to them.”

The authors of the statement, among them Cem Oezdemir, the new leader of the German Green Party, deliberately opted for the term “Great Catastrophe” in an effort to stay clear of the ultra-explosive term “genocide”. While genocide scholars widely agree that the killings of the Armenians constituted the first genocide of the 21st century, Turkey strongly rejects such accusations to this very day, arguing instead that those killed were simply the victims of civil war. So far, about 22,000 people have signed the online petition, not that many for a country of more than 71 million inhabitants. Several Turkish nationalist counter-websites with titles such as “I Expect An Armenian Apology” or “I Do Not Apologize” have already garnered more than five times as many votes as the initial “I Apologize” petition.

Turkey’s top leadership, too, has begun a strong push-back to counter the apology campaign. The powerful army, for instance, has warned ominously that the petition could “bring about harmful results”. Finally, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan came up with his own rationale for why he opposes the online petition, saying that “I did not commit any crimes, so why should I apologize?”. As a private individual, for sure, Mr. Erdogan was not involved in any of the Armenian massacres. But coming from a Turkish statesman eager to join the European Union, Erdogan’s statement and cavalier attitude regarding a very dark chapter in Turkish history is simply not acceptable in the 21st century.

In contrast to Erdogan's remark, I am reminded of how then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl dealt with the issues of personal guilt and collective moral and political responsibility in his historic January 1984 speech to the Knesset in Israel. He said: “I speak to you as someone who could not get caught up in guilt during the Nazi period because he had the grace of a late birth.” At the same time, however, Helmut Kohl (born in 1930) never left any doubt that as the German Chancellor, he was willing to assume collective moral and political responsibility for the atrocities perpetrated by Nazi Germany during the 1933-1945 period. Prime Minister Erdogan’s stubborn refusal to assume collective moral and political responsibility for the “Great Catastrophe” displays a lack of statesmanship and casts a long shadow on Turkey’s aspirations of joining the European Union any time soon.

Yesterday the Taliban conducted a heinous suicide attack in the eastern Afghan province of Khost. A suicide car bomber detonated his explosives outside of a government center just as a group of school children was passing by. A U.S. military surveillance camera captured the bombing, and the Department of Defense released the tape to the Associated Press.

Watch the video, you will see the suicide bomber weaving through the barriers designed to slow down vehicles. The school children are walking against the wall on the right, and are in clear view. The suicide bomber clearly had a view of the children - he was moving slowly enough. Yet he detonated his bomb just as the line of children passed by his car.

Today, the Taliban took credit for the attack, claiming "at least 20 American and puppet terrorists were killed and more than 50 were wounded, and the building was destroyed."

The statement praised the attacker, identified as Afghan Qari Hameedullah, claiming he had rammed a "explosive-laden vehicle into a puppet Afghan government building."

Perhaps the Taliban didn't see the video of their suicide bomber blowing up those puppet school children.

After the expiration of a "truce" with Hamas, terror groups in Gaza pounded the Israeli south with rocket attacks. The Israeli government has responded forcefully, with waves of air strikes targeting Hamas's security infrastructure. More than 280 Palestinians, mostly Hamas members, have been killed in strikes on more than 100 security compounds. Hamas's security chief and several other senior leaders were killed in the attacks.

Hamas has vowed to attack Israel with suicide bombers and other means. More than 80 rockets have been launched into the Negev despite the Israeli air offensive.

Within 24 hours of the assault, Israel already appears to be over relying on air power and avoiding the more difficult task of conducting a ground assault. Per Reuters:

Israeli military affairs commentators said the Israeli offensive did not appear to be aimed at retaking the Gaza Strip or destroying the territory's Hamas government -- ambitious goals that could prove difficult and politically risky to achieve ahead of Israel's February 10 parliamentary election.

Instead, they said, Israel -- after an air bombardment on Saturday -- wanted to strengthen its deterrence power and force Hamas into a new truce that would lead to a long-term halt to cross-border rocket salvoes.

Israel essentially followed the same failed strategy in Lebanon against Hezbollah in the summer of 2006. After two soldiers were captured by Hezbollah forces in a cross-border raid into northern Israel, the Olmert government launched an air campaign, convinced it could degrade and destroy Hezbollah's rockets in Beirut and the South, take out Hezbollah's leadership, and force them to release the soldiers.

The Israeli offensive is widely recognized as a strategic failure. Israel was always constrained by time; they could not indefinitely conduct operations inside Lebanon without serious international implications. The Olmert government's failure to act quickly and decisively allowed Hezbollah to maintain the initiative.

Hezbollah launched thousands of rockets into northern Israel, despite a blanket of air cover by the Israeli Air Force. The Israeli Defense Forces cautiously entered southern Lebanon only after it became apparent that the air campaign could only achieve limited results, and by then it was too late as the operation was winding down. The Israeli military never meaningfully pursued Hezbollah's infrastructure in the Bekaa Valley.

The Israeli-Hezbollah War left Hezbollah standing, stronger than ever. They stood up to Israel as no Arab regime has, and survived. Within two years, Hezbollah has become a part of the Lebanese government.

The Olmert government faces tough choices. There is little support for the reoccupation of Gaza, which is the only way Israel can ensure the rocket attacks will cease. The government cannot countenance the continuous rocket and mortar attacks against Israeli civilians in the South. But one thing is clear: If the Olmert government fails to act decisively against Hamas in Gaza, it should expect results similar to those obtained in Lebanon.

... At least when building new roads, bridges, and runways is the issue. Brookings scholar Clifford Winston:

One of the biggest killers of all is that states insist on allocating federal transportation funds through a politically devised formula. The result? Smooth, well-paved rural highways and worn-out urban roadways that are paved with a layer of asphalt too thin to withstand heavy use and are therefore in need of excessive, costly maintenance.

But don't blame the states for all the inefficient use of highway dollars. Federal regulations have also inflated the cost of providing roads, trains and so much more for a public on the move.

It takes the nation's busiest airports decades and billions of dollars to build new runways, for example, because of onerous regulations imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. Davis-Bacon mandates, which effectively require that "prevailing" union wages (often much higher than the actually prevailing market wage) be paid to workers on any construction project receiving federal funds, also drive up the costs of roads and other federal transport projects. The Federal Transit Act also makes it extremely expensive to lay off transit employees.

Will reforming Davis-Bacon solve America's infrastructure problems? Not entirely! It's also incredibly unlikely that such a reform will happen anytime soon, given the current power configuration in Washington. Outside Washington, however, there is a large group of people -- commuters -- who want to see more roads and runways built. And they are likely to rally behind a political figure who confronts those interests, like greens and NIMBY activists, that stand in the way of pavement.

Gov. Paterson is splashing righteously cold water on the Princess' Senate ambitions.

Meanwhile, Caroline, you know, really wants to be Senator, you know, because of Obama and change, and you know, new opportunity for the country and, you know, 9/11 and stuff. I'm trying to remember the last prominent member of an American political dynasty that was this inarticulate...

Hey, you know what will probably work? The "inevitability" strategy. I'm trying to remember the last prominent member of an American political dynasty for whom that strategy failed...

More corporate malfeasance and selfishness at Christmastime.

What they learn at the Islamic University in Gaza.

Among the RNC chair candidates, one attended an all-white country club and one distributed a "Barack, the Magic Negro" parody. Apparently the new slogan of the party is "Shrink the party, aggressively."

Yep, they're still counting votes in Minnesota.

Obama leans toward Israel, understands its "urge" to stop rockets from Gaza, according to David Axelrod, in a statement coming days after fighting started.

Also, Obama is so super-cool.

Obama as Bush?

Lt. Gov. Quinn: Blago impeached by February.

On the lookout for Pallywood photos of Gaza.

From earlier this year, Ken Levine reviews mega-blockbuster The Dark Knight:

"Why would anyone live in Gotham City? Jesus! You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting six mob bosses. And then there’s the town’s super psycho villain -- they couldn’t find someone a little more aesthetically pleasing? Children watch those televised truck chases too, y’know. And Juneau appears to have more daytime in the winter than Gotham City. Does it get dark everyday at noon?

"The skyline is harsh and impersonal. All that’s missing are smokestacks and an American Girl Place Experience."

Rep. Bob Inglis and tax cut guru Arthur Laffer must be reading the Standard -- their call for a carbon tax offset by reductions "in income or payroll taxes" dovetails nicely with our cover story this week. It's an idea worth considering, especially if the offset is a reduction in the regressive and burdensome payroll tax.

Two points. First, Krauthammer, Inglis, and Laffer advocate exactly the sort of taxation economists say is the most optimal. They want to decrease taxation on goods our society ought to favor, like work, and increase taxation on goods our society doesn't like, namely, carbon. Say the revenue from the new consumption tax on carbon went directly into Social Security. This would broaden the tax base for America's most popular entitlement program, which relies solely on the payroll tax for revenue at the moment (and faces a dwindling number of workers paying into the system). It would add some life to the program, in other words. It would be a de facto Social Security reform -- though only one of many necessary to secure the program's future.

Second, you hear a lot these days about how conservatives need new ideas. And what do you know? The new ideas are all over the place! Meanwhile, what are liberals calling for? Let's see ... universal health care, deficit spending to fight recession, subsidies for alternative fuels, and income tax hikes in the near future. Hmm. As Robert Samuelson points out today, the past year has upended a lot of our expectations about how the economy, government, and society ought to behave. But one thing's for sure. It's still hard to argue that the Democrats are the party of new ideas.

New Year's is just a few days away, which means it's time for Dave Barry's annual Year in Review column. Here's a taste, from the July 2008 news summary:

"Barack Obama, having secured North and South America, flies to Germany without using an airplane and gives a major speech -- speaking English and German simultaneously -- to 200,000 mesmerized Germans, who immediately elect him chancellor, prompting France to surrender.

"Meanwhile, John McCain, at a strategy session at a golf resort, tells his top aides to prepare a list of potential running mates, stressing that he wants somebody 'who is completely, brutally honest.' Unfortunately, because of noise from a lawnmower, the aides think McCain said he wants somebody 'who has competed in a beauty contest.' This will lead to trouble down the road."

Read the whole thing, as they say.

AP: "Hawaii Island Where Obama is Vacationing Loses Power."

Make sure you read Mark Shields's column this week on the D.C. Council's decision to keep the bars open an extra hour during Barack Obama's inauguration celebration.

One month after the Mumbai terror assault, Pakistan and India appear to be moving closer to war. Tensions have been high the past two weeks as both nations' militaries have been placed on high alert. Pakistan has refused to hand over terror suspects and has taken minimal and token action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba and its front group, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

South Asia is on edge today as reports indicate a Pakistani division is being redeployed from the tribal areas and the Northwest Frontier Province to the border region near Lahore. The unit that is being moved is assigned to blunt an Indian armored strike into Pakistan. The division was previously assigned to fighting against the Taliban in the Bajaur region, where a halting offensive has been underway since the summer.

Aside from the risk of an all-out war between Pakistan and India, two regional nuclear powers, the move may further destabilize the lawless Pakistani northwest. NATO convoys destined for Afghanistan have been under attack over the past month. More than 70 percent of NATO supplies move through the northwest. The United States plans to surge an additional four combat brigades and an aviation brigade into Afghanistan by next summer. Even more supplies must move through this region, which no doubt will further fall under Taliban control.

On Christmas Eve, the Minnesota Supreme Court handed down a decision that ensures the Franken-Coleman recount will not be resolved for at least a few more weeks.

Norm Coleman, who trails Franken by 46 votes, had filed a petition with the state supreme court to seek redress for the alleged double-counting of about 130 ballots, which occurred mostly in heavily Democratic Minneapolis. When damaged or defective ballots could not be run through the machine counters on election night, officials created duplicate ballots, marking the respective ballots "ORIGINAL" and "DUPLICATE", and ran the duplicates through the machines. In some precincts, where more votes were counted during the hand recount than were counted on election night, ballots marked "ORIGINAL" could not be matched up with an equal number of ballots marked "DUPLICATE" or vice versa. It stands to reason that officials created duplicates without properly marking them, and, therefore, both the originals and duplicates were counted during the hand recount.

But the supreme court unanimously ruled that a resolution to Coleman's petition is "better suited to an evidentiary hearing and fact-finding" and thus denied his petition. The "evidentiary hearing" where this issue will be resolved is an election contest, which, as Scott Johnson points out, is a "judicial proceeding that occurs before a panel of three judges assigned by the Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court."

Another issue that could come into play during an election contest is the canvassing board's decision to accept the election night machine count for a precinct where 133 ballots apparently went missing. As precedent for not counting ballots that no longer exist, the Coleman campaign pointed to a 2002 ruling in which a judge overruled the canvassing board's decision to accept the election night tally for 17 ballots that had been burned. The Coleman campaign has not said whether they would challenge the inclusion of these missing ballots in an election contest, but their argument is fairly straightforward. In a hand recount, ballots are tossed out for a variety of reasons--if a voter places identifying marks on a ballot, for instance, or crosses out a candidate's name. Accepting the machine recount for some ballots and a hand recount for others is a double standard.

If the 133 ballots are not included, Franken would lose 46 votes and the race would be tied. And Coleman could take the lead if duplicate/original issue breaks in his favor. However, both of these issues could be moot if Franken picks up enough votes among the more than 1,000 wrongly rejected absentee ballots that will be counted between now and January 5. We don't yet know if these ballots are disproportionately from districts that voted for Franken, but the inclusion of these votes is expected to benefit the comedian because of the strong Democratic push for early/absentee voting. There's still a chance that these ballots could help Coleman. But if Franken picks up more than 100 votes among these absentee ballots, Coleman probably won't have a shot at victory in an election contest.

I'm not saying the Washington Post's Eli Saslow is in love with Barack Obama, but with passages like this:

"The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games."

Well, maybe just a little.

From today's Thomas L. Friedman column:

"China may have great airports, but last week it went back to censoring The New York Times and other Western news sites. Censorship restricts your people’s imaginations. That’s really, really dumb."

I can think of about half a dozen other things Chinese censorship is, besides "dumb." Immoral and unjust, to name two.

Still, this column is thought-provoking. You read a lot about the shoddy state of Kennedy Airport, the Acela Amtrak train, etc. But you hardly ever read about the sources of such degradation. It's hard to believe that lack of funding is the main problem, though that may be the case.

Even if it is the case, however, lack of funding can't be the only problem facing American infrastructure. After all, the United States is still the richest country in the world. When we talk about infrastructure spending, we ought to spend some time talking about the human element: the lack of public oversight; inefficient and sclerotic public authorities; and an individual preference for private transportation -- the automobile -- over public.

One day after a jury convicted five Muslim immigrants of conspiring to kill U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey, two Muslim groups claimed the outcome of the trial was unfair.

Mohamad Younes, president of the American Muslim Union, questioned the jury's decision.

"I don't think they actually mean to do anything," he said. "I think they were acting stupid, like they thought the whole thing was a joke."

Jim Sues, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, attended five days of testimony during the trial.

"Many people in the Muslim community will see this as a case of entrapment," he told local media.

Unfortunately the media reflexively turns to the usual suspected after trials such as these--groups such at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, and the American Muslim Union, or AMU, for opinions on issues related to issues such as this. CAIR bills itself as “the largest and most mainstream Muslim organization in America” but is known to support terror groups. "Any objective assessment of the material ... leads to the conclusion that CAIR, its leaders, and its activities effectively give aid to international terrorist groups," said Steven Pomerantz, former counterterrorism chief of the FBI.

Four current and former senior leaders of the American Muslim Union were associated with a mosque established by the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. The Treasury Department designated Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in December 2001. Senior members of the group have expressed support for Hamas.

It's Christmas time, when we like to recommend the best books we read over the last year. Here are mine:

Novels

There are two. Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End is one of the best books I've read, period, which is saying something as it's only two years old. Highly recommended.

The other good novel I read this year was Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang. The book is an achievement, as it's told in the voice of a barely literate Australian outlaw and is written without using commas. It's a gripping postmodern novel -- and one doesn't normally use the words "gripping" and "postmodern" in the same sentence.

Nonfiction

Robert Kagan's Return of History and the End of Dreams.

Robert Cooper's The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first Century.

Paul Krugman's The Return of Depression Economics (2008 Edition).

Jack Germond's Fat Man in the Middle Seat: Forty Years of Covering Politics.

Humor

Simon Rich is twenty-three years old, but don't hold that against him. His Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations and Free-Range Chickens had me in stitches.

Don't miss Martin Feldstein's Wall Street Journal op-ed calling for additional defense spending as part of next year's economic stimulus bill.

Tomorrow, as much of the world is observing the birth of Jesus Christ, looks like we'll also be observing the cultural death of Britain.

Channel 4, a British TV station (publicly owned, according to Wikipedia), will be playing an "Alternative Christmas Message" tomorrow night from none other than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with this explanation:

With relations between Iran and the West set to play a central role in world affairs in 2009, Channel 4's Alternative Christmas Message will be delivered by the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Last year, the same address, which seems to be a counter-culture, P.C. affair, was delivered by a wounded British soldier, just back from Afghanistan. How quickly we devolve.

Joe Biden vows that the nearly $1 trillion stimulus package won't contain any earmarks.

Fortune projects that 9 8 of the 10 worst housing markets in 2009 are in California.

Joe Carter on the perennial Christmas culture wars.

George Will looks back at 2008.

Jeb talks to Esquire.

Texas will gain 3 congressional seats after 2010 census.

Via Newsbusters, CNN's John Roberts to Joe the Plumber: "Excuse me, Joe. Why would you cast aspersions on my journalistic integrity?"

As expected, the Obama Team's internal investigation of the transition team's contacts with indicted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich showed that there was no "inappropriate" contact. Obama, on vacation in Hawaii, did not make a statement about the findings, but his incoming White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and White House Counsel Greg Craig held a delayed press conference on the report at about 4:45 p.m. Rahm Emanuel, on vacation in Africa, also was not available for comment.

Reporters and politicos salivating over the possibility of transcripts or tapes from conversations between incoming Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Blagojevich will have to wait until Patrick Fitzgerald feels like releasing them.

"We do not have the tape recordings in our possession. Do not have transcripts, have never had transcripts. So they're not going to be made available by us," investigator Greg Craig said, adding that the transition team is making a point of not interfering with Fitzgerald or dictating the information he should release.

Craig conducted interviews with his subjects about their recollections, but did not seek transcripts or recordings.

The conference call focused on three contacts made between transition members and Blagojevich team members.

Rahm and Blago Team:

Rahm Emanuel had "one or two" conversations with Blagojevich himself, contradicting earlier leaks that they had only spoken once. When asked on the conference call about the uncertainty of the figure, Craig said Emanuel was unable to recall the exact number of conversations. Emanuel also spoke to Blago's Chief of Staff John Harris, who resigned in the wake of his boss' arrest, "about four" times. He once recommended Valerie Jarrett for the Senate seat to Blago and later recommended a list of Obama-approved qualified candidates to Harris:

Those conversations occurred between November 6 and November 8, 2008. Soon after he decided to accept the President-Elect’s offer to serve as Chief of Staff in the White House, Mr. Emanuel placed a call to the Governor to give him a heads up that he was taking the Chief of Staff’s position in the
White House, and to advise him that he would be resigning his seat in the House of
Representatives. They spoke about Mr. Emanuel’s House seat, when he would be resigning and
potential candidates to replace him. He also had a brief discussion with the Governor about the
Senate seat and the merits of various people whom the Governor might consider. Mr. Emanuel
and the Governor did not discuss a cabinet position, 501c(4), a private sector position for the
Governor or any other personal benefit for the Governor.

In those early conversations with the Governor, Mr. Emanuel recommended Valarie Jarrett
because he knew she was interested in the seat. He did so before learning -- in further
conversations with the President-Elect -- that the President-Elect had ruled out communicating a
preference for any one candidate.

Harris made no attempt to extract favors from the Obama Team, the report says.

Craig splashed cold water on a hot rumor of the Blagojevich scandal, saying that he was unaware of any conversations Emanuel had with the Attorney General's office before Blagojevich was arrested. Several outlets had reported suggestions made by a local Chicago journalist who said Emanuel may have tipped off the feds to Blago's bad behavior.

Valerie Jarrett and an SEIU Representative:

On Nov. 8, 2008, Jarrett had a conversation with Tom Balanoff, the head of the Illinois SEIU, who said he had talked to the governor about the possibility of naming her as Obama's replacement. In the same conversation, he said the governor had been pondering the possibility of being named head of Health and Human Services:

Mr. Balanoff did not suggest that the Governor, in talking about HHS, was linking a position for
himself in the Obama cabinet to the selection of the President-Elect’s successor in the Senate,
and Ms. Jarrett did not understand the conversation to suggest that the Governor wanted the
cabinet seat as a quid pro quo for selecting any specific candidate to be the President-Elect’s
replacement. At no time did Balanoff say anything to her about offering Blagojevich a union
position.

Craig characterized Jarrett's reaction to Blagojevich's desire for a Cabinet position by saying she thought it was "ridiculous" given the public knowledge that Blago had been under investigation for two years at that point.

Dr. Eric Whitaker and Blago Deputy:

Whitaker had one conversation with one person claiming to represent the Blago Team:

In the period immediately following the election on November 4, 2008 – on either November 6,
7 or 8 – Deputy Governor Louanner Peters called him at his office and left a message. When he
returned the call, Ms. Peters asked who spoke for the President-Elect with respect to the Senate
appointment. She explained that the Governor’s office had heard from others with
recommendations about the vacant seat. She stated that the Governor’s office wanted to know
who, if anyone, had the authority to speak for the President-Elect. Dr. Whitaker said he would
find out.

The President-Elect told Dr. Whitaker that no one was authorized to speak for him on the matter.
The President-Elect said that he had no interest in dictating the result of the selection process,
and he would not do so, either directly or indirectly through staff or others. Dr. Whitaker relayed
that information to Deputy Governor Peters.

Looks like things are mostly innocent, here, aside from Rahm's suspiciously faulty memory. I don't wish to cast aspersions on Team Obama before there is evidence of misdeeds, but I will note that the Washington press corps is awfully happily credulous of a Democratic internal investigation, conducted by Democrats, of Democrats, to clear Democrats of possible collusion with another Democrat, released on a holiday weekend at 4:30 p.m. while the principal and powerful subjects of the internal investigation are temporarily absent from the American mainland.

Yep, not raising any flags for me, either. Now, everybody go on vacation.

Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban who is accused of being behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, said he’d back the government if war breaks out with India. Baitullah promised the Taliban would to send "thousands of our well-armed militants" and hundreds of suicide bombers to Pakistan's eastern border with India "to fight alongside the army if any war is imposed on Pakistan." He also said the suicide bombers are being equipped with their suicide vests.

Baitullah’s call to support the military validates the long-standing Pakistani strategy of establishing strategic depth--supporting the Taliban and jihadi groups--to oppose India. Despite Pakistan siding with the United States after the 9/11 attack, many in the military and intelligence service continued to back this policy covertly. Little has been done to crack down on the multitude of jihadi groups inside Pakistan. And powerful elements within the Inter-Services Intelligence agency helped revive the Afghan Taliban after it was ousted from power in early 2002.

A war with India would be welcome for the Taliban. Pakistani Army operations, as ineffective as they have been in the Northwest Frontier Province, would end, allowing the Taliban to finally consolidate its Islamic Emirate in the region and free up forces to fight in Afghanistan. This would allow the Taliban to cut off NATO’s supply line to Afghanistan, making the upcoming U.S. “surge” difficult to support.

The time and date dictated by Patrick Fitzgerald for releasing Team Obama's internal investigation just happen to fall at the most convenient time of the year for burying bad news. Does that mean there necessarily is bad news? Biden told reporters this morning it will confirm Obama's assertions that there were no inappropriate contacts with Blago's team.

Obama is not expected to address the report, and he's unlikely to be asked about it, as he will be attending a memorial service for his grandmother in Hawaii. That would make questions about his involvement with Blago, at the very least, socially awkward. The prickly pres-elect would likely shame whoever tried.

The whole scenario comes off a little shady, so why release the report this way if there's nothing untoward in it? It will necessarily get less coverage than it would otherwise get, but most of that coverage will question the Obama transition's handling of the report and rehash Obama's bumpy response to the breaking of the scandal, in addition to examining the actual contents of the report.

Neither the national press nor the American people are much in the mood to find out that their new, fresh pres-elect was involved in any of this (and most evidence suggests he wasn't, directly), so a fairly clean report would have been greeted with a fairly generous reception, no matter the timing of its release. Releasing it in this fashion casts doubt on the conclusions of the report, Team Obama's competence, and his reputation as a transparent reformer. Why do that instead of letting Obama spend a couple minutes with the press corps last week, charming them into friendly write-ups about the report? (Yes, I know Fitzgerald's investigation required that he keep somewhat mum on details, but he could have been much more helpful to the press than he was.)

Of course, Obama's been so testy with the press since this story broke— indeed, since he was elected— maybe he's just counting on his good reputation to carry him through this without having to interrupt his vacation listening to the pesky press corps. With Christmas allowing everyone to check out of the controversy for a week, it may work.

He's never been accused of underestimating his own charm and abilities, but approaching a fight with the hubris of Apollo Creed can be a risky tactic, no matter how sparkly your top hat is. That seems to be the tack he's taking on the Blago scandal, and forecasts an approach to difficult future situations for which the press is already panning him.

Recent reports from Afghanistan claimed the Taliban are willing to negotiate with the Afghan government and NATO forces. A report in Iran's Press TV said Mullah Omar offered a seven point plan to end the insurgency, which was sent to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah. The plan, according to the news outlet, called for a phased withdrawal of NATO forces, power-sharing with the Afghan government, integration of Taliban forces into the Afghan Army, and immunity for Taliban fighters.

While this all looks good on paper, Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban has flatly rejected reports that negotiations are underway.

"The fact is that the Islamic Emirates has neither held any negotiations in Saudi Arabia or in the United Arab Emirates and neither anywhere else," the Taliban's Website quoted Omar as saying in a statement.

"I neither have sent any letter addressed to Saudi... King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz, or to the opposite side (Afghan government) and neither have (I) received any message from them."

The statement added that whatever was being said on this issue was false and part of a propaganda campaign by vested interests.

On the last point, Omar is correct. There has been a concerted effort by ex-Taliban officials to claim the Taliban is willing to negotiate. And it is an open secret that NATO is searching for a way to split the Taliban from al Qaeda, so there should be little doubt these claims are being promoted by Western intelligence services.

While splitting the Taliban from al Qaeda would aid in the fight in Afghanistan, the problem is that such propaganda isn't isolated to the combatants in Afghanistan. The "Taliban is willing to negotiate" meme has taken hold among western elites, and this belief can lead to bad policy decisions. NATO countries looking for a reason to disengage from Afghanistan will push negotiations that will lead nowhere.

Melissa Etheridge: "Hey, you know who's kind of an awesome guy who may herald a new era of good will between the religious community and gays and lesbians? Rick Warren. That's right, I said it."

Arab leaders outdo the RNC accessory budget with $300,000 in jewels for Condi.

44 percent of Americans have gone to church twice in the last month. The takeover of the Christianists is nearly complete.

Reminder to lefties: Obama is anti-gay marriage.

Obama's request to register Change.gov for YouTube videos and continued fundraising pleas was initially rejected because it didn't meet the requirements for a government site. Then, something changed.

Christmas comes to Baghdad.

Head of Air America says Limbaugh is right on Fairness Doctrine.

Inauguration crowd estimate reduced by half when D.C. government realizes it will take place in January outside.

Bush and Cheney comforted troops privately.

Hamas and Israel: Let's call the whole thing off.

Over on the homepage, Stuart Koehl responds to a New York Times editorial that called for a variety of cuts in defense spending.

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP):

The United States can no longer support a proposed Zimbabwean power-sharing deal that would leave Robert Mugabe, “a man who’s lost it,” as president, the top American envoy for Africa said Sunday.

Jendayi E. Frazer, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, made the announcement in South Africa after spending the last several days explaining the shift in the American position to regional leaders.

The new stance will put pressure on Zimbabwe’s neighbors, South Africa in particular, to abandon its support for Mr. Mugabe. But South Africa said its position was unchanged.

The United States, Ms. Frazer said, has become convinced that Mr. Mugabe is incapable of sharing power. She cited political moves he has made since September without consulting the opposition, reports that his government has continued to harass and arrest opposition and human rights activists, and the continued deterioration of Zimbabwe’s humanitarian and economic situation.

In the past month, President Bush, Gordon Brown, and Nicolas Sarkozy have all called for dictator Robert Mugabe to step down. However, this is the first time that a major power has admitted that a power-sharing deal between Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and Mugabe's thuggish ZANU party simply will not work. Mugabe has spent his entire 28 year reign in the former Rhodesia clinging to power through intimidation, vote rigging, calculated starvation of his people, and outright murder. His behavior, like that of all Marxist-Leninist dictators, has been constant and predictable for over three decades, resulting in the most dramatic peacetime collapse of a nation-state in recent history.

Unfortunately for Zimbabweans, it is the Republic of South Africa, not the the United States, that holds the key to Mugabe's downfall. Just as in the days of the Rhodesian Republic, where apartheid South Africa kept their landlocked neighbor to the north breathing, closing the Zimbabwe-South Africa border would result in the rapid collapse of the Mugabe regime. To wit, Zimbabwe's western neighbor Botswana has proposed just that, meeting resistance from the African National Congress and the bulk of South African leadership, all of whom continue to view Mugabe as a post-Colonial hero and freedom fighter.

Until the RSA is ready to commit to serious solutions to Zimbabwe's political crisis and impending implosion, the nation once hailed as the "breadbasket of Africa" will continue its swift descent into a Somali-like vacuum state.

Be sure to check out this Bret Stephens column on why the incoming Congress should just go ahead already and establish the Barack H. Obama Presidential Monument Commission. Yes, the piece is slightly tongue-in-cheek. But, as Stephens points out, there is a case that, "even if Mr. Obama turns out to be a mediocre or bad president, the very symbolism of his election is a historic achievement unto itself, a reflected monument to America, its promise, and every prejudice it has overcome." How much room is left on Mt. Rushmore?

You get the feeling sometimes that Obama himself thinks like this. He is constantly trying to link himself to our greatest president - as we see in his decision to be sworn in on the Lincoln bible, which has not been used since, well, Lincoln. As someone who has a great deal of admiration for Obama, I worry that he wasn't in church when Rev. Wright talked about that whole "pride-goeth-before-the-fall" thing.

Finally, Stephens mentions the latest Time magazine profile of Obama, which includes, amazingly, the following sentence:

""His genome is global, his mind is innovative, his world is networked, and his spirit is democratic."

Whew! That's a relief. For a second there I was afraid Obama's genome was national, his mind regressive, his world disconnected, and his spirit authoritarian. Glad we straightened that out.

Five convicted of plotting to kill U.S. soldiers at Ft. Dix.

Vice president Cheney says Democratic leaders agreed that we didn’t need Congress’s approval for warrantless wiretapping.

77 percent of Americans don't think Cheney is the worst VP ever.

The Atlantic has diverse views on the relative merits of hummus and baba ghanoush.

Peter Wehner on Barney Frank, Rick Warren, and the definition of marriage.

The first public celebration of Christmas in Baghdad:

It is an unfortunate consequence of the rise in celebrity gossip outlets confluent with the rise of a young, moderately attractive, liberal president, that we will be treated to pictures like this for the next four years. And, copy like this:

But from the looks of it, this isn't exactly the first time Barack has taken to work out. Wearing black shorts and sunglasses, the 44th President was sporting some serious abs as he caught some rays with his wife at an oceanfront estate in Kailua.

Of course, sometimes it will be hard to distinguish gossip-blog emoting over our new, sexy C-in-C from pool reports published in the Washington Post, as is the case today:

On Sunday, Obama awoke early for a 7:15 a.m. workout at a gymnasium at a sleepy Marine Corps base on the island of Oahu. Michelle Obama, carrying an iPod and headphones, joined her husband for the 45-minute exercise session, according to a media pool report. As they emerged from the gym, Obama, in a gray shirt soaked with sweat, lifted his right hand to give a quick salute to a couple uniformed Marines standing nearby.

Swoon. The Post refrains from swimsuit photos, opting for the more subtle golf-shirt cheesecake photo. Mysteriously absent from the mainstream coverage of Obama's various vacations and frequent workouts is the suggestion we've heard about Bush for eight years that staying in shape and being a responsible president are mutually exclusive. Odd.

After running into reporters and photographers a couple times during his round of golf— which is the kick-off of a 13-day Hawaiian vacation— Obama got predictably snippy with them, saying "Okay, guys, come on. How many shots do you need?"

He may be able to hold off the traditional press on everything from Blagojevich questions to golfing photos. They're not only ideologically inclined to help the guy out, but they operate by a set of decency standards that prohibits invading his family's privacy too brazenly. Paparazzi, whose aggressive exploits routinely contribute to car accidents, falling injuries, and flout the concept of privacy for public figures, will not be as easily contained. That's why they have photos of him apparently within the confines of his Kailua estate, which is supposed to be private.

Mainstream media, limping through the downturn in the economy, has had to turn at times to aggressive celebrity coverage to boost traffic and readership. The Associated Press' celebrity wire is Exhibit A in this trend, and outlets like the Huffington Post have illustrated that New Media outlets are not immune to the siren call of Britney Spears alerts, even when those outlets purport to be serious.

One wonders when the first pap will get cuffed for getting too close to the President in his quest to serve the celeb-obsessed among us. One also wonders if that photographer will be from US Weekly or Newsweek.

The situation in Iceland has not improved since the county's financial system went into meltdown in October. The krona was refloated on currency markets early this month and has sagged dramatically since then. It now sits at about 177 kr per euro.

And now comes word that the unemployment rate has shot up to 5.4 percent. That may not sound so bad to American ears, but in December 2007, the unemployment rate in Iceland was 0.8.

Expect more riots.

The Times falls for a prankster posing as the mayor of Paris.

One can only assume that it was their haste to reach the zenith of self-parody before the New Year by seeing a gay, French Socialist write upon their pages about the Kennedys, that caused NYT editors to forget to call the office of Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe to make sure he had actually written this letter, published today:

As mayor of Paris, I find Caroline Kennedy’s bid for the seat of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton both surprising and not very democratic, to say the least. What title has Ms. Kennedy to pretend to Hillary Clinton’s seat? We French can only see a dynastic move of the vanishing Kennedy clan in the very country of the Bill of Rights. It is both surprising and appalling.

With all the respect and admiration I have for Ms. Kennedy’s late father, I find her bid in very poor taste, and, after reading “Kennedy, Touring Upstate, Gets Less and Less Low-Key” (news article, Dec. 18), in my opinion she has no qualification whatsoever to bid for Senator Clinton’s seat.

We French have been consistently admiring of the American Constitution, but it seems that recently both Republicans and Democrats are drifting away from a truly democratic model. The Kennedy era is long gone, and I guess that New York has plenty of more qualified candidates to fill the shoes of Hillary Clinton. Can we speak of American decline?

Bertrand Delanoë

Turns out, he didn't. Oops. Perhaps the trickster very cleverly wrote the date in the European fashion, 18/12/2008, and threw them off.

Earlier this morning, we posted a letter that was signed by Bertrand Delanoe, the mayor of Paris, sharply criticizing Caroline Kennedy.

This letter was a fake. It should not have been published.

Doing so violated both our standards and our procedures in publishing signed letters from our readers.

We have already expressed our regrets to Mr. Delanoe's office and we are now doing the same to you, our readers.

This letter, like most Letters to the Editor these days, arrived by email. It is Times procedure to verify the authenticity of every letter. In this case, our staff sent an edited version of the letter to the sender of the email and did not hear back. At that point, we should have contacted Mr. Delanoe's office to verify that he had, in fact, written to us.

We did not do that. Without that verification, the letter should never have been printed.

We are reviewing our procedures for verifying letters to avoid such an incident in the future.

Ben Smith writes:

Matthew Yglesias, who now blogs on the website of the Center for American Progress, wrote Friday that Third Way, another Democratic group, puts out "shallow" policy and that its domestic agenda is "hyper-timid incrementalist bull***." This isn't the worst thing anyone ever said about anyone else on the Internet ("incrementalist" hasn't always been a fighting word), but executives at the nonprofits seem to have taken it pretty seriously: In an unusual, unexplained move, the acting CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Jen Palmieri, posted an item to Yglesias's blog expressing the group's "respect for their critical thinking and excellent work product."

"[W]e look forward to working with them in the future," Palmieri wrote.

Like many of Yglesias's other fans, I'm concerned that this knuckle-rapping might have a chilling effect on the CAP blogger. And who would want to live in a world in which Matthew Yglesias isn't free to coin "clever" (if Yglesias does say so himself) appellations like "neo-Hooverite Republicans" or "differential financial power" (instead of, say, the more pedestrian term "economic inequality")?

Free Yglesias!

I comment on Balgojevich’s selective quotation from Kipling’s “If” in a New York Times column this morning. A colleague notes that many Democrats might have preferred that Blagojevich had sought guidance (metaphorically, not literally, one hastens to add) from another Kipling work, “The Young British Soldier”

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,

And the women come out to cut up what remains,

Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains

An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

The United States is planning to surge an estimated 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan in an attempt to beat back the resurgent Taliban. The Economist details the plan to utilize the troops: secure the Ring Road, the vital roadway the links the major cities throughout the country; provide security for the 40-odd districts where the Taliban is in danger of taking control; and create the Afghan version of the Iraqi Awakening--the local militias paid to stamp out al Qaeda in Iraq.

Questions remain on whether NATO will be fully on board with the new strategy. Already the Canadians, who control the volatile southern province of Kandahar, have expressed reservations about the plan.

“The tribal militia idea that has been around for some time now is controversial; we are not onboard with that,” [Defence Minister Peter] MacKay said in a recent year-end interview with The Canadian Press.

“Our preference is to continue with this more formal training process that leads to a more reliable, more professional soldier and Afghan national security force.”

There has been no agreement on this issue between the multitude of NATO countries operating in the south. Because of this disagreement, the United States "will proceed with a pilot program in eastern Afghanistan."

One of the reasons the "surge" in Iraq worked was because the United States was able to execute a comprehensive counterinsurgency plan across the board. In Afghanistan, the United States will butt heads with the various NATO countries, all of whom have widely differing views on how to conduct military operations, reconstruction, and counterinsurgency. The challenge for the U.S. military and civilian leadership will be to get the NATO countries to buy into the change in strategy in Afghanistan.

President Bush approved a short-term bridge loan to Detroit on Friday averting a pre-New Year’s bankruptcy for one or more of the auto companies. But the White House action also kicked the can to the Obama administration to figure out a longer-term solution.

Many national polling organizations have measured public opinion on the bailout over the past several weeks. The results are decidedly mixed and in some cases contradictory when comparing different polls. But as always, question wording matters a great deal. Mark Blumenthal at Pollster.com reviews a host of recent surveys about the auto bailout and shows how the results change based on how the question is asked.

Depending on the question, opposition varies from 42% to 61%; support varies 28% to 57%. As is often the case, about a third of Americans appears to float between support and opposition depending on the way pollsters ask the question. They are more likely to oppose the bailout when the question emphasizes the "billions" of dollars involved. They are more likely to support it when the question gives greater emphasis to the imminence of the companies going into bankruptcy or "out of business" in the absence of the bailout. In one case, support is greater when the pollster (NBC/Wall Street Journal) specifies the changes that Congress will require the companies to make in exchange for the money:

Read Blumenthal’s full post here.

Breaking down the numbers by partisan identification raises some red flags for the Obama Administration. The same polls also reinforce congressional Republican anger toward the Bush White House for supporting the automakers' request for a bridge loan, as expressed in this piece by Martin Kady at Politico.

About 50 percent of independents and 50 percent of Republicans oppose the bailout, according to data compiled by political scientist Charles Franklin. Franklin writes:

At the moment, the pro-bailout position is a minority view. Either the new president will have to persuade those Independents to change their minds, or he will find he faces an early challenge to his ability to govern from a majority position. Little will erode his strong current public support faster than pushing for policies that face majority opposition. In this case, his tepid support for the auto-industry now may have missed the opportunity to convert Independents before their opposition has hardened. Or perhaps GM and Chrysler will file for Chapter 11 and spare him the task.

Read Franklin's full post here.

At a press conference Friday, Rod Blagojevich quoted Kipling's poem "If". Claudia Rosett has come up with a version of the poem revised to better fit Blago's current circumstances.

There is plenty of criticism to direct at the Bush administration for its failure to develop a coherent strategy to deal with the al Qaeda-backed insurgency. But Matthew Yglesias's criticism is far wide of the mark. Yglesias demonstrates a clear lack of understanding of the situation in the region, the nature of the Islamic Courts, Ethiopia’s strategic interests in preventing the rise to power of the al Qaeda-backed Islamic Courts, and the recent history in Eastern Africa.

In a nutshell, Yglesias argues that the United States pushed Ethiopia to invade Somalia to dislodge the Islamic Courts from power, and as a result the U.S. "is breeding a new generation of anti-American jihadists." This is wildly wrong for several reasons, just a few are listed below.

First, Ethiopia has a long history of fighting the rise of Islamist extremism in Somalia. Ethiopia battled Al-Ittihad-al-Islamiyah, the predecessor of the Islamic Courts Union and the same group behind the notorious Black Hawk Down battle in Mogadishu, throughout the 1990s. Al-Ittihad-al-Islamiyah conducted bombings in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa in 1996 and 1997 and small-scale attacks throughout the country. Ethiopian forces battled Al-Ittihad-al-Islamiyah in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia and inside Somalia.

Second, the Islamic Courts isn't just some "Islamist movement that arose out of sharia courts that had begun to provide some measure of local judicial authority amid Somalia's anarchy." The group has received backing from the same sources in the Middle East that support al Qaeda. Senior leaders of the Islamic Courts trained in al Qaeda camps and are considered al Qaeda leaders. For instance, Hassan Dahir Aweys, the leader of the Islamic Courts, is also a senior al Qaeda leader.

The Islamic Courts sheltered the three al Qaeda operatives behind the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. These same operatives served in senior leadership positions in the Islamic Courts. For instance, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed served as the intelligence chief for the Islamic Courts prior to its fall in early 2007.

Third, al Qaeda had established training camps and bases in Somalia long before the Ethiopian invasion. During the Ethiopian invasion in late 2006 and early 2007, several al Qaeda camps were targeted. The island fortress of Ras Kamboni was a major command, control, and communications hub for al Qaeda in East Africa. The Islamic Courts conducted suicide attacks in Somalia prior to the Ethiopian invasion.

Fourth, foreign fighters were encouraged to flock to Somalia to wage jihad in 2005 and early 2006, again long before the Ethiopian invasion. Osama bin Laden gave several nods to the Islamic Courts in 2006. The Islamic Courts issued propaganda tapes in Arabic to appeal to Arabs throughout the Middle East to join the jihad. Al Qaeda's propaganda outfit As Sahab helped to produce these videos. Islamic Courts leaders boasted of foreign involvement. In these videos, foreigners were seen training in camps and fighting.

Finally, As Shabaab, the new incarnation of the Islamic Courts, has openly lobbied to join al Qaeda. Again, its senior leaders are also senior al Qaeda leaders in East Africa. This didn't happen out of the blue, it is the result of years of links with the global terror organization.

This merely scratches the surface on Yglesias's ignorance of the Islamic Courts, its links to al Qaeda, and the reasons for the radicalization of "a new generation of anti-American jihadists." The fact is al Qaeda has been working to radicalize Somalia's youth before Ethiopia got involved, and Ethiopia had strategic reasons to halt the rise of the Islamic Courts.

Yglesias is essentially arguing the United States should have allowed the Somali version of the Taliban to take control of Somalia unopposed. We saw what that brought us in 2001.

There should be no doubt the United States encouraged and supported an Ethiopian invasion, but it should be remembered that the UN-backed Somali Transitional Federal Government requested Ethiopian assistance. The failures in Somalia occurred after the invasion. The United States failed to provide minimal support to the Transitional Federal Government. For a small price, perhaps tens of millions of dollars, the United States could have helped prop up the Somali military and police forces, and paid for some basic services. Instead, the U.S. state department and the European Union blocked funding and insisted on negotiations to include the Islamic Courts in the government. This inaction allowed the insurgency to fester.

McCain opposes auto bailout.

The Employee Free Choice Act is unconstitutional.

California towns face bankruptcy.

Czechs won't ratify EU treaty without approval of missile defense in Europe.

Where the $350 billion in TARP funds have been sent.

A new Research 2000 poll for Daily Kos:

Republican Primaries

Senate

Murkowski 31
Palin 55

[General election]

Murkowski (R) 49
Knowles (D) 41

Palin (R) 53
Knowles (D) 39

Rick Warren is the kind of man the Left loved until Obama made him an inauguration speaker in the wake of his support for Prop. 8. He confounded stereotypes, speaking frequently and acting generously on behalf of AIDS patients. He made all the right people mad, breaking with the old guard of the National Association of Evangelicals in 2006 by endorsing an official global warming position for the NAE.

The press saw Warren standing for social justice and the impoverished, but it was not that that earned him credit. Plenty of unsung pastors and churches stand up for the impoverished and sick every day. More important to the press was not what he stood for, but who he stood against. Chuck Colson, James Dobson, and the like.

The New Yorker praised him in 2008 as a new kind of evangelical "presenting a challenge to the religious right." The New York Times gave the "Evangelical Climate Initiative," the evangelical coalition borned of the global-warming argument with NAE, enough ink and paper to undo any evironmental strides the group might have made. Warren, playing the role of the wholesome, reasonable Dorothy to the press' conception of the Christian Coalition's flying monkeys, was named one of Time's 100 most influential in 2005, U.S. News and World Report's Best American Leaders the same year, and No. 6 on Newsweek's "People Who Make America Great" in 2006.

Remember that when the press starts calling him a bigot in light of his support of Prop. 8. They were more than happy to accept his social conservative views as long as he didn't say anything about them and lobbied for global-warming initiatives.

But Warren is no fool, and he won't lie down for unfair treatment. You don't get to be the leader of a church of 20,000 you built from nothing without some P.R. smarts, and he'll be using those smarts as this fight moves forward. He's familiar with the language of the Left due to years of charitable partnerships with our friends of the liberal persuasion, as illustrated by part of a conversation with Ann Curry on "Dateline."

CURRY: Are you homophobic?

WARREN: I don't know any church in America that's done more to help the gay community, particularly with AIDS, than Saddleback. But the hate speech against me is incendiary.

I can't think of another evangelical leader who would have the gumption to call attacks upon him "incendiary hate speech." White evangelicals are by definition incapable of being oppressed, according to the liberal definition. They are the haters; hatred is justified. They are not inclusive; exclusion is justified. Warren challenges that idea. After years of acquaintance with his liberal critics, Warren is not afraid to shame them with their own language. It will be interesting to see if other social conservatives take his lead in the future.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Was I the only one who wept a little when he quoted Kipling?

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel did in fact have direct talks with Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich about the open Senate seat: “Emanuel talked with the governor in the days following the Nov. 4 election and pressed early on for the appointment of Valerie Jarrett to the post, sources with knowledge of the conversations told the Sun-Times. There was no indication from sources that Emanuel brokered a deal, however.” And Emanuel, let us keep in mind, has not been accused of any wrongdoing. Still, it is quite curious that Valerie Jarrett had been previously described as wanting to be close to Obama and that her job at the White House was a no-brainer. So when did the Obama team switch from pushing for Jarrett to not, and why?

(In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit the only reason for this item was my fervent desire to use the headline “He Went to Jarrett” before anyone else did. I hate those commercials.)

Via Tom Bevan, a new Rasmussen poll shows that "just 37% of U.S. voters believe Caroline Kennedy is qualified to be in the U.S. Senate ... but 67% have a favorable view of Kennedy." As Obama might say, she's "likeable enough."

USA Today reports on Minnesota Muslims heading to Somalia to join the jihad:

Mohamud Ali Hassan once told the Somali grandmother who raised him that he'd become a doctor and care for her.

The Somali immigrant, who moved to the "Land of 10,000 Lakes" when he was 8, had good grades at the University of Minnesota and called Muslims to prayer at his mosque, where he also slept during the holy month of Ramadan.

But on Nov. 1, Hassan disappeared, as have a dozen other boys and young men here — two days after another young Muslim from Minnesota blew himself up as a suicide bomber in Somalia.

Hassan, 18, called his grandmother to say he was back in Somalia, where an Islamist militia is trying to take over the Horn of Africa nation. What he was doing there, he did not say.

Now the FBI is asking questions as are members of the Somali community. The Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center denies any wrongdoing, but many here suspect that the mosque and its imam are radicalizing their youth to become jihadists in an Islamic holy war overseas or perhaps even in the United States.

Bill Richardson has broken the first rule of political scandals: don't let yourself be filmed running from questions.

Jim Geraghty has more. Richardson's staff offers the implausible claim that Richardson did not hear the KRQE reporter. But if that's all it was, why is his spokesman unwilling to address questions, either? Richardson hasn't even trotted out the standard denial yet -- the one about not wanting to interfere with an ongoing investigation.

Blago to speak at 3 p.m. EST press conference.

Bush offers $17 billion to Big Three, Ford says "no thanks," making me far more inclined to buy Ford.

Only 37 percent think princess status confers upon one the ability to be senator.

Source says Rahm talked directly to Blago. Can you imagine the bleep quotient in that conversation?

CNN: Hey, Rick Warren isn't that controversial as long as he keeps his mouth shut about his basic beliefs.

"Deep Throat" has died.

The Duggars alone will breed Republicans back into power. Do not panic!

Obama to create Iran outreach post.

Happy impeachment anniversary:

Mike Allen:

President Bush is announcing a $17.4 billion bailout for auto manufacturers, with the loans contingent on the firms proving that they can become "viable" ongoing firms.

Of the total, $13.4 billion will be paid out in December and January The last $4 billion is contingent on the second installment of the Wall Street bailout funds from Congress.

The announcement immediately affects GM and Chrysler, not Ford, administration officials said.

The firms do not have to be profitable but have to be "profitable soon," a senior administration official said.

Via Ben Smith

The AP puts Norm Coleman's lead at 2 votes, causing Allahpundit and Kathryn Lopez, among others, to despair. There may be good reason to be anxious, if not desperate, but not because of the AP count.

Tomorrow morning the AP will show Franken rapidly pulling away with the lead--but this number is bunk because the state has not allocated thousands of challenged ballots withdrawn by Franken or Coleman. As Nate Silver wrote yesterday, Franken did reasonably well as the canvassing board, comprised of four judges and the secretary of state, reviewed his pile of 400 total challenged ballots, but

we don't know anything about the nature of the thousands of challenges that Franken withdrew. The state does not appear to have added the withdrawn challenges back into its totals; in fact, it does not appear to have done anything with them. We don't know, among other things, how many of these withdrawn challenges were made to Coleman votes (in which case, Coleman will now get credit for them) as opposed to nonvotes (in which case, they're basically irrelevant).

The board is now sifting through a much larger pile Coleman challenges--approximately 1,000 ballots, including 400 frivolous challenges that the campaign withdrew too late to be removed from the packets of ballots sent to the board. Once all of the withdrawn ballots are added to the totals, the race should tighten up. Nate Silver's (caveat-laden) projection puts Coleman up by one vote after the board reviews the challenged ballots.

But here's the reason to despair, er, worry: the Star-Tribune readers project that Franken will ultimately pull ahead by 40 votes once all of the challenge ballots have been reviewed. Readers are able to view and vote on all of the challenged ballots, and they have a very good track record of voting the same way as the canvassing board, with two exceptions.

Johnny Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban" who was captured by U.S. forces and was at the prison uprising that resulted in the first U.S. combat casualty after September 11, 2001, is back in the news. His parents are petitioning President Bush to issue a pardon after Johnny has served nearly seven years in prison.

"Our son never fought against American forces; he did not participate in terrorist activities of any kind," she [Marilyn Walker] said, noting he has admitted that joining the Taliban's army was a mistake. "This is the Christmas season, and it is a time of mercy. ... Please, Mr. President, show mercy for our son and for our family."

Johnny Taliban's parents and lawyers insist he was railroaded and unfairly treated.

But Johnny wasn't merely a Taliban foot soldier. Before reaching Afghanistan, he trained with Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, an al Qaeda linked terror group operating in Pakistan. He then trained at the notorious Al Farouq training camp, which is run by al Qaeda. While at Farouq, he sat in on a lecture by none other than Osama bin Laden.

He fought the Northern Alliance during the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan in 2001. After his capture, he concealed his identity when he had the chance to make his break from the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters surrounding him. He was then involved in the Qala-i-Jangi prison uprising that resulted in the death of CIA officer Johnny "Mike" Spann. Spann had interviewed him just moments before he was killed by the captive al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. During the interrogation, Johnny claimed he was Irish.

The U.S. government, eager to avoid a protracted court battle and the scrutiny over the conditions of Johnny's capture, dropped the main charges, which included: Conspiracy to Murder U.S. Nationals; Conspiracy to Provide Material Support & Resources to Foreign Terrorist Organizations; Providing Material Support & Resources to Foreign Terrorist Organizations; Contributing Services to al Qaeda and Conspiracy to Contribute Services to al Qaeda; Supplying Services to the Taliban and Conspiracy to Supply Services to the Taliban.

Johnny pled guilty to two charges: providing services as a soldier to the Taliban and illegal use of a weapon. He was given a sentence of 20 years. Given what he could have been charged with, he should consider his 20 years a gift. Instead, he is made out to be a victim.

The New York Times seemingly dropped a bombshell this morning, reporting that Iraq's Counter-Intelligence Bureau, which is exclusively under the command of Prime Minister Maliki, rounded up 35 Interior Ministry officials, including a senior general. The officials, according to the New York Times, were involved in a coup attempt organized by Al Adwa, a Baathist holdout group. Major General Ahmed Abu Raqeef, the Interior Ministry’s director of internal affairs, which is in charge of cleaning up corruption within the ministry, was reported to have been one of those detained.

But within 24 hours, the story has begun to fall apart. Major General Raqeef was not one of those detained, Voices of Iraq reported. In fact, he was one of those conducting the arrests. And 24, and not 34 officials from Interior and other ministries were rounded up.

Nibras Kazimi, a Visiting Scholar at the Hudson Institute, sniffed this one out early, noting that it was highly unlikely that Major General Raqeef would be part of a Baathist conspiracy. Raqeef has a reputation for being "squeaky clean," so his involvement in the arrests would indicate there is something significant behind the arrests.

We shouldn't be surprised that corrupt or compromised officials and officers exist inside Iraq's ministries. For example, in the Interior Ministry from 2006 to 2007, three Iraqi National Police division commanders, 7 brigade commanders and 14 battalion commanders were relieved of duty for corruption or associations with the insurgency or militias. Iraq is a society emerging from 30 years under the boot of a brutal dictator and five plus years of a violent insurgency. Corrupt and compromised officials and officers will succeed in infiltrating Iraq's security services.

The New York Times has already issued a correction on Major General Raqeef's arrest. It will be interesting to see if they follow this story up and tell us what really happened.

Minnesota Supreme Court orders local election officials and the Franken and Coleman campaigns to agree upon a procedure for identifying and counting wrongly rejected absentee ballots.

WikiLeaks posts information on bomb-stopping frequency jammers that have reduced killings in Iraq.

Bush enacts conscience clause for health care workers.

Palin says thanks but no thanks to a pay raise.

Woman kills would-be rapist.

A raise. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Let me get this straight:

A 20-year association with a radically leftist, anti-American, racist preacher whom Obama referred to as a spiritual adviser meant absolutely nothing about Obama's judgment or philosophy, and illustrated only the bigotry of those who dared criticize it.

A 20-minute association with one of the country's most well-liked, mainstream evangelical preachers who happens to support traditional marriage cannot be countenanced and illustrates only the bigotry of those who would dare allow it.

Got it.

Since Obama announced that he has asked pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration, liberals have at long last, with a jolt, realized that Obama is a man who professes many stands on issues, but rarely stands up for any of them.

The Warren pick is a political one, and a politically smart one, at that. Warren, despite the determined smearing he'll get from liberals in coming days, is utterly mainstream, ridiculously popular, and politically in line with Obama on issues like "social justice," poverty, AIDS, and the environment.

He's staunchly pro-life and anti-gay marriage, but he's a widely appealing, apolitical figure who speaks to a traditionally right-wing demographic on behalf of some traditionally left-wing policy ideas. He rankles politicos on either side of the aisle, and as such, is the perfect representative for Obama's allegedly "new politics" within an evangelical community that has shown a willingness to move in Obama's direction. There are a lot of moderate evangelicals and white church-attenders out there right now thinking, "Hey, this guy really can relate to us."

The Right has been successful for many years in painting the Democratic Party as both morally incompatible with evangelical beliefs and actively hostile to evangelical voters. Much of the success comes from the fact the Democratic Party and its liberal base have obliged conservatives by openly spurning pro-life Democrats and offering displays like the post-Prop. 8 demonstrations against churches and individual Christians, which have been abusive and sometimes violent.

Obama himself had a 20-year relationship with a radically leftist, anti-American, racist preacher, which undoubtedly kept him from peeling off more evangelicals from the Republican base than he did. He knows luring the ones he did was a remarkable political feat, and it's one he'd like to build on, so he can spread hope 'n' change for eight years. But he also knows there's ground to make up. He knows his liberal base will do its darnedest to drive evangelicals away from the party for the next four years. Facing off on Warren with the same people who are picketing churches in California will go a long way toward making it up, and endangering Republican electoral prospects.

The negative response from the Left has been swift and extreme, but I wonder if it will be sustained. Left-wing blogs and Twitter are ablaze with surprisingly stern denunciations, but creating a formal movement to overturn this decision isn't something the Left wants to get into before their champion even takes office. It's also not a message the Obama-loving press corps will want to carry for activists, which means the controversy may be relegated to Twitter outrage.

Obama's answer to the Rick Warren question at this morning's press conference invoked his campaign message of "healing," and "inclusiveness." He released talking points along the same lines, and I imagine he'll continue to be as dismissive of these questions as he has been about Blagojevich inquiries.

This is not the first time Obama has chosen politically expedient "inclusion" over allegiance to the demands of gay rights advocates. In the South Carolina primary, when Obama needed to appeal to socially conservative blacks backing Hillary Clinton, he had gospel singer Donnie McClurkin sing at a rally. McClurkin's stated views that being gay is a "curse" curable by prayer are much more controversial than Warren's mere opposition to gay marriage, but Obama had him sing at the concert nonetheless. Later, he said he was "disturbed" by those views, but that McClurkin was just one of many acts and of course Obama "disagreed" with him.

Dear liberals, This is the man you voted for, through and through.

During his press conference today, Obama defended his choice of Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation, as reported here, by saying that the country needs to "come together," even when there's disagreement on social issues. "That dialogue is part of what my campaign is all about.”

Meanwhile, The New York Times Caucus blog is reporting that Obama is calling for a National Day of Service on January 19, the day before the inauguration. According to the Times, the inaugural committee is contacting organizations of all kinds and ideologies and asking them to encourage their members to participate. The Times names moveon.org and Focus on the Family as left and right (ideologically speaking) examples of groups the committee is reaching out to. The committee’s decision to be so ideologically diverse suggests another Obama effort to get the country to “come together.” Watch to see how come-together-ish all of those invited decide to be, not least Focus on the Family, which so sharply criticized Obama during the campaign as to leave you wondering how it ever could say yes to this National Day of Service.

The conservative movement lost a leader today. Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation and Free Congress Foundation and philosophical father of numerous other organizations, spent his life confounding the Left. He built coalitions and pushed conservative principles when the idea of doing so in Washington was novel, and the possibility of success near nil.

He did not despair at the sometimes achingly incremental progress of conservative ideals in the capital's political culture, but commissioned similarly determined soldiers to fight on all fronts. He saw much success for the things he believed within his lifetime, and was handing out action items for upcoming battles until the end.

Jen Rubin notes that Weyrich's passing is another reminder that conservatism must cultivate new leaders to follow in the steps of his generation:

The identity of the individual or individuals is not clear, but the need is apparent.

There is a gap currently on the Right. On one hand, there are familiar groups (e.g,. NRA, Right to Life) and conservative think tanks. But these don’t provide the electoral machinery to groom candidates and to win elections. And their reach beyond hardcore conservatives is limited. The former have lost some of their relevance as their single-issue causes fade in importance, while the latter are not designed as political action groups.

On the political side is the creaky RNC, which is technologically bereft and nearly irrelevant as a political institution. Young techo-whizzes therefore have popped up, promising to revive the party with innovative marketing and technology. But they lack content. What do they want to organize for? What do conservatives want to social network about? It is not at all clear.

The time therefore is ripe for a new generation of conservative leaders who have the ability to organize, invigorate, and give purpose to conservatives outside the Beltway. It is not enough for conservatives to oppose cap-and-trade policies — they need an alternative to left-leaning environmental action groups. It is not enough for pundits to bemoan the lack of Republican appeal to nonwhite voters — they need Hispanic, African-American, and Asian-American conservatives to organize in their communities, support new candidates, and translate the conservative agenda into alternatives to the NAACP and LULAC...

So if Weyrich’s passing gives conservatives time to reflect, they might recall two accomplishments of his generation. They built structures that advanced the conservative cause. And they had a good time doing it. That’s an example worth following.

The Heritage Foundation has a slideshow of Weyrich, and collected tributes to him from Tom DeLay, John Boehner, Mike Pence, and Heritage alum who knew him well. May he rest in peace.

Yesterday British PM Gordon Brown announced that British forces would be largely withdrawn from southern Iraq by the end of July. Once numbering 46,000 troops, British forces have been reduced to around 4,100--the bulk of which were deployed to the Basra area in southern Iraq. As British forces in Iraq wound down from the 2003 high, Her Majesty's Armed Forces decreased in overall strength. Today the British military is in a sad state of affairs--largely neglected after a decade plus of Labour Party rule.

From a purely historical perspective, one wonders about the legacy of British foray into Iraq. Charles Johnston, Governor of Aden in the early 1960s, wrote that the Middle East was where the British lost their confidence in their ability to deal with situations. Johnston was lamenting the Suez crisis, but his words are just as relevant to 21st century Iraq, where the performance of the Brits in Basra was mediocre given their impressive history.

The slow bleed of England's power and influence is directly proportional to the increase in world instability. America never developed the taste for exporting our values of democracy and free markets like the British (those who do are snidely derided as neocons), nor were we able to replicate their remarkable ability to turn insignificant and remote little corners of the world into economic powerhouses (see Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Dubai). Though, with that said, I have high hopes for what could potentially be achieved in Iraq.

If President-elect Obama asked for an increased British presence in Afghanistan, there's little doubt that our cousins across the Atlantic would respond. But, absent such a request, this may be an ideal time for the British to rediscover that famous 'stiff upper lip' that made them great. With the conservative movement on the island growing, so grows a profound distaste for the erosion of superior British customs under the wishy-washy guise of multiculturalism. Now is the time for them withdraw, recharge, rebuild, and rediscover their inner greatness.

America needs a strong Britain and America needs a strong British Armed Forces. When the two nations are confident in themselves and each other, the rest of the world reaps in the benefits. Look no further than the Reagan-Thatcher coalition that trampled communism and ushered in over a decade of peace and prosperity.

British poet Susannah Centlivre once lamented "Where are the rough brave Britons to be found with hearts of oak, so much of old renowned?" No doubt many on that wonderful little island are asking themselves that very question.

Pakistani security officials have uncovered a plot to murder former President Pervez Musharraf. The plot was organized from a Pakistani jail in Hyderabad, and was led by none of than senior al Qaeda leader Omar Saeed Sheikh, The News reported.

Omar contracted out a local Pakistani terror group known as the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Security officials traced phone calls back to Omar and found communications equipment in his cell, and found records of communications with a senior Lashkar-e-Jhangvi operative who is serving time at another prison. The plan was to ambush Musharraf’s convoy,” preferably by using a suicide car bomber,” as he traveled between his home in Rawalpindi and his farmhouse outside of Islamabad. Al Qaeda uses local Pakistani groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi as “muscle” to carry out operations.

Omar Saeed Sheikh has a long pedigree in al Qaeda and various Pakistan-based terror groups. He is best known for the brutal murder and beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Omar was involved in funding the September 11 attacks; he wired more than $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the tactical commander of the September 11 attacks. Atta then sent money not used in the operation back to Omar.

Omar also is a close associate of Maulana Masood Azhar, the leader of the Jaish-e-Mohammed terror group. Omar and Aktar were freed from Indian custody in 1999 after terrorists hijacked an Indian Airline flight and forced it to land in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He also has close links to the Kashmiri terror group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, the Taliban, and of course Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency. After the murder of Pearl, Omar is said to have turned himself in to his ISI handler. It is believed Omar’s death sentence has not been carried out because of his connections with the ISI.

The good news here is that Pakistani security officials uncovered the plot and suspended police officials for negligence. The bad news is that high-value detainees can so easily plot the murder of senior Pakistani politicians from jail.

So the president-elect has asked Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. It’s an interesting decision. Warren, a Southern Baptist, is pastor of Saddleback, the evangelical megachurch in Orange County, Ca. When I was at the church in August for the debate between Obama and McCain that Warren moderated (and in which Obama did badly), one of his congregants told me that church members would vote overwhelmingly for McCain (and it’s hard to imagine they didn’t). On issues, Warren is pro-life and against defining marriage as other than between a man and a woman. But his agenda, which extends worldwide, also includes items Obama approves--such as confronting poverty, AIDS, climate change, and genocide in Darfur. Warren is not your usual religious conservative, and in fact some years ago declined to assume a leadership role as such. Obama and Warren do count each other as friends, and there is no more prominent pastor in America or, for that matter, the world, than Warren. Obama has best-sellers but Warren’s The Purpose-Drive Life has sold more than 22 million copies. Obama has picked to do the first prayer (so to speak) a man about as big in religion as Obama is in politics. It’s a choice that if you polled on it would doubtless do very well, and you could even call it a unifying choice, since Warren is to Obama’s right theologically and culturally.

Still, the selection of Warren is understandably frustrating religious liberals who expected something else. Note that Obama did not choose a pastor from his denomination, the theologically liberal United Church of Christ. Nor a preacher trained up in black liberation theology--the theology of his former church (Trinity, in Chicago) and his former pastor (the Rev. Jeremiah Wright) and, to infer from what Obama himself has written, the theology he knows best. Nor did Obama choose a pastor known for his work in the inner city. Nor a black or Hispanic or female preacher in an effort to score some diversity points. In sum, in picking Warren, Obama didn’t confirm what liberals thought Obama’s election might signify--a religious left revival.

Very smart column this morning by Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal. By "smart," of course, I mean that I share his views.

Rove writes that while Barack Obama is receiving good grades for his appointments thus far -- Cabinet and top staff -- the president-elect may be creating problems for himself. "Organizing and operating the White House will be a much bigger challenge than he can possibly yet understand," Rove writes.

He cites the example of incoming National Security Adviser, General James Jones. There has

historically been tension over the roles of the national security adviser and secretary of state. How that tension is resolved depends largely on the able National Security Adviser-designate, James Jones.

Mr. Jones has been Marine Corps commandant and NATO supreme allied commander, posts whose occupants are treated as demigods. How easily will he fit into a staff role? Will Mr. Jones see his responsibility as ensuring the president receives a broad range of options, or will he put a higher priority on advocating his own substantive views? Could Mr. Jones's personal relationship with so many top brass undermine Secretary Robert Gates's control of the Pentagon during what could be Mr. Gates's last year at Defense?

Jones also worked extensively on the Middle East peace process. Will he subordinate his views to Hillary Clinton's? Susan Rice, who wanted to be Secretary of State or National Security Adviser but is instead Obama's UN Ambassador, has already made clear that she intends to wield lots of power from New York and has sought to expand her staff.

Other problems may arise from what seem to be "sweeteners" that enticed his powerful top aides to take jobs that some might have not otherwise accepted. There were news reports that Tom Daschle did not want to serve only as Secretary of Health and Human Services. So Obama named him head of the White House office of Health Care Reform. Bill Richardson wanted to be Secretary of State; Commerce Secretary was something of a consolation prize. So Obama made him something akin to Commerce-Secretary-Plus. He introduced Richardson, a former UN Ambassador, as a "leading economic diplomat" for the United States and promised that Richardson, a former Energy Secretary, will help end "our dependence on foreign oil."

As Rove points out, Obama has added a "climate czar" to the already-complicated environmental policymaking apparatus in the executive branch. There is the EPA, the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the Interior Department, the Energy Department, etc. A lot of egos to manage.

In theory, of course, it's great to get advice from as many different sources as possible. And in theory it's great to give even White House interns walk-in privileges with the president. But reality makes those things problematic.

When Gerald Ford came to the White House, one of his priorities was to run a White House that gave as many people as possible access to the president. Following the top-down organization of the Nixon White House, Ford was determined to bring change to White House operations -- an operation that would be more collegial and less hierarchical. Ford wanted to have a White House that was transparent and open and responsive to the press. So he told his transition team -- which included incoming chief of staff Donald Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld's replacement, Dick Cheney -- that he wanted to operate on a spokes-of-the-wheel model, in which Ford would be the hub and some twelve advisers would be the spokes. How did it work? When Cheney left the White House after Ford lost in 1976, his staff gave him a mangled bicycle tire with nearly all of the spokes snapped in two.

So I would imagine many White House veterans will chuckle when they learn that Obama's top strategist, David Axelrod, told Mark Leibovich of the New York Times that the Obama White House will be "very collegial" and “not excessively hierarchical."

Good luck with that.

Hope 'n' Change hits the line-up: The Obama '08 Mugshots

Obama picks pro-life pastor Rick Warren for inauguration invocation. The Left reacts with...grace, tolerance.

Obama evading presser questions is nothing new.

What does the Left do when a "lump of cells" can Twitter from the womb? Isn't the ability to use social networking tools the definition of the beginning of life?

Learning lessons from BB&T.

Goodbye, $700 billion. Hello, $850 billion!

The woman who has presided over Michigan's economy— for several years during the Bush administration, the only shrinking one in the U.S.— was rumored for Labor secretary. Mercifully, she has withdrawn herself from consideration.

“The most important thing is that you have to control your vice-president.”

Man who threw shoes asks for pardon.

Bush narrowly averts major failure of second term with a last-minute Christmas Party invite for Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

Gateway Pundit posts this clip of Iraq's U.S. ambassador explaining to Code Pink why they're foolish for defending shoe-thrower Muntader al-Zaidi. Ambassador Samir Sumaida’ie tells the women holding "Free Al-Zaidi" signs:

"Mr. Muntader al-Zaidi is very very lucky that it was Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki and not Mr. Saddam Hussein. Because, had it been Mr. Saddam Hussein you would be carrying a different plaque by now."

Translation: The shoe-thrower would be waist deep in a wood chipper right now if he did that in front of Saddam. You'd be asking for his remains, not his freedom.

That is, of course, if Code Pink types actually were concerned about crimes committed by our enemies.

Hat tip: Allahpundit

Russia "to give" Lebanon 10 MiG 29 fighter jets.

US Navy's first tail-less, stealthy unmanned aircraft unveiled.

Obama's energy secretary said in 2005: "the risk-benefit equation looks pretty good for nuclear."

Michael Gerson v. John O'Sullivan

Sam Brownback will retire in 2010.

Madoff gave big bucks to Democrats.

Study shows chick flicks destroy relationships.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Streaming video of the Minnesota canvassing board reviewing challenged ballots may be viewed here. For the latest on the Franken-Coleman recount, see here.

She was in a meeting with Syracuse Mayor Matt Driscoll today, reportedly touting her experience and listening to ways in which Washington can help the state of New York. As she left, she read her first public statement about the seat, but took no questions from the press, demonstrating the same powerful combination of presumption and friendly dismissiveness that has served Team Obama so well:

"As some of you may have heard, I've told Gov. Paterson that I'd be honored to be considered for the position of United States senator," she said.

"I wanted to come upstate to meet with Mayor Driscoll and others to tell them about my experience and also to learn more about how Washington can help, and there are a lot of good candidates that the governor is considering. He's laid out a process, and I'm proud to be in that process."

Driscoll called her "pleasant and well-read," apparently mistaking the entitled, overreaching Kennedy for an entitled, overreaching Austenian heroine. He also said he couldn't say for sure whether she had any true knowledge of the upstate. All in all, not a terribly auspicious beginning to the princess' quest.

Politico confirms that California congressman Xavier Becerra turned down Barack Obama's offer to become the U.S. trade representative.

The other leading candidate is rumored to be former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk. Kirk was elected Dallas's first black mayor in 1995 and earned a reputation for being pro-business and pro-trade.

At his mayoral inauguration, Kirk said he wanted Dallas to become "the capital city of NAFTA and the Americas." He often extolled the virtues of NAFTA and in 1996 he expressed hope that Chile would join the agreement.

In 2000, at an event in support of China's membership in the World Trade Organization, Kirk told the Dallas Morning News, "If any state stands up for trade, it should be the state of Texas because of all the success we've enjoyed with NAFTA."

When Kirk ran for the Democratic nomination in the race for retiring Sen. Phil Gramm's seat in 2002, he tacked to the left a little bit on trade, saying he supported free trade but opposed a bill that would have given the president unilateral authority to negotiate trade agreements. Kirk said he wanted to ensure that trade bills contain enough environmental and labor protections.

Nevertheless, Kirk's position on free trade and NAFTA is a far cry from a former position of Barack Obama that NAFTA was "a big mistake."

Kirk's name has also been mentioned as a possible transportation secretary, but Kirk as the U.S. trade rep would be about as good a choice as a free-trader could imagine coming from Obama. Kirk, a lawyer who has lobbied for Southwest Airlines and TXU Energy, must be hoping Obama continues to ignore his own earlier statement that lobbyists "won't find a job in my White House."

The Taliban has been actively targeting the disparate tribal groups that have been formed in Pakistan's northwest to oppose the expansion of the extremists. The Taliban has been effective at destroying these groups by targeting leadership with suicide attacks and kidnappings, and in some cases with military assaults. Two days ago, the Taliban destroyed what many people believed to be the most effective tribal opposition force in the settled district of Swat, where fighting has been raging for well over a year.

The Taliban killed Pir Samiullah, the leader of tribal opposition, along with eight members of his group, and kidnapped more than forty others. To humiliate and intimidate any remaining opposition, the Taliban publically beheaded two of Samiullah’s lieutenants. And to further add insult to injury, they dug up Samiullah’s corpse and hung it in the village for his tribe to see.

In November of 2007, I warned in a TWS online article that these tribal groups are easy prey for the Taliban if the Pakistani military did not provide security and logistical support. The Awakening in Iraq would have failed without the backing of U.S. and Iraqi troops. Al Qaeda in Iraq struck hard at the Awakening in early 2007, and nearly caused the nascent group to collapse, despite outside support. The fate of Samiullah’s tribe awaits others in Pakistan if the military and government do not provide the needed support.

The United States is currently considering raising tribal militias inside Afghanistan to counter the spread of the resurgent Taliban. Unless U.S. and NATO forces provide the needed security and support, these tribal forces may meet the same fate as those in Pakistan’s northwest.

The Minnesota canvassing board making final rulings on ballots challenged by Al Franken for the second day. You can view a selection of the ballots reviewed yesterday here and read a liveblog here. The Franken campaign has withdrawn most of its frivolous challenges, leaving about 400 ballots for the board to review. (Once the board has ruled on Franken's challenges, it will review Coleman's roughly 1,000 challenged ballots.) Minnesota state law regarding determining voter intent is fairly clear, but there is still some room for interpretation.

NBC's First Read did some counting and discovered that Barack Obama, Time's person of the year, appeared on 27 percent of the magazine's covers in 2008. If you include mentions of Obama's name along with his face, the figure shoots up to 48 percent.

Come back, Sarah!

ComScore says that traffic to the joint venture between News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox and GE’s (GE) NBC fell 10.8 percent from October to November, dropping from 5.3 million unique visitors to 4.8 million...

This makes plenty of sense: Hulu was one of two places were you could (legally) see the “Saturday Night Live” Sarah Palin clips, which were huge sensations. The other one, NBC.com, dropped a whopping 50 percent–from 14.1 million to 7.2 million, comScore says.

Looky there: AP finally notices Obama is "young and inexperienced."

Betty Currie back on board, in the Obama transition.

Obama to depend on heavily federally subsidized, economically non-viable system to get to Inauguration.

Illinois governor's website disappears Blago/Obama photos.

Looking to Old Europe for reasons to be thankful in hard economic times.

Top Ten Funniest Political Quotes of the Year.

Time's Person of the Year: End the suspense.

"I can't wait to begin to tell my side of the story."

Ouch: "A month from now, the nation will say farewell to its sports-obsessed president who doesn't like tough questions. And it will replace him with, well, another sports-obsessed president who doesn't like tough questions."

Ken Blackwell's bid for RNC Chair heating up.

Have dynasties taken over Congress?

Kerry Kennedy tries to make case for Caroline, fails. H/t Allah.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Jay Carney, former Time magazine bureau chief and vice president-elect Joe Biden's new director of communications, wrote in 2007:

"Biden's penchant to talk too much can get him in trouble (see the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on Sam Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court.) But he's likable enough that he tends to get away with it."

Marc Ambinder reports that Arkansas's Blanche Lincoln -- who faces re-election in 2010 -- has declared her opposition to Card Check:

That's.... 57 votes in favor of cloture now. In-cycle Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas formally opposes the Employee Free Choice Act. She says it's "not necessary" right now. BTW: Lincoln's potential GOP opponent? Tim Griffin, the former White House political aide / Eastern District of Arkansas prosecutor / Karl Rove protege / native Arkansas / Iraq war veteran. Griffin says he'll make up his mind early next year. Democrats need 60 votes, or they might not even bring EFCA to the floor for a vote.

It's a shrewd move by Lincoln to announce her opposition early. Unions are sure to apply increasing pressure to undecided Senators as the session gets under way and a vote draws nearer. Her early declaration of opposition is sure to anger the unions, but they'll also recognize that it is nearly impossible for her to change her vote. They now must turn their attentions to other possible defectors.

As far as the vote count goes, the loss of Lincoln's vote is a major blow to hopes of enacting card check -- even if Arlen Specter continues to vote with Democrats on the issue. Besides the loss of Lincoln and the possibility of more defections, both Ted Kennedy and Bob Byrd face health issues that could prevent them from voting. And there will be three new Senators to account for -- with the possibility that the Illinois seat may not be filled for months.

The unions face a real challenge.

Three guesses as to whom Time magazine chose as its person of the year.

Testy, testy:

Continetti on Caroline Kennedy and dynasties.

George Bush thinks brother Jeb "would be an awesome U.S. Senator."

Palin talks about the arson committed at her church.

Fed cuts interest rate to 0.5 percent.

Rahm Emanuel is "reportedly on 21 different taped conversations by the feds -- dealing with his boss' vacant Senate seat."

Eli Lake on the Iraqi shoe thrower's connections to the Sunni insurgency.

Prior to announcing his appointments to the EPA and Department of Energy yesterday, Barack Obama held a meeting with his national security team. CBS News reported:

The meeting will include Mr. Obama, Vice President-elect Biden, White House Chief of Staff-designee Rahm Emanuel, Secretary of State designee Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Attorney General designee Eric Holder, Secretary of Homeland Security designee Janet Napolitano, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, Ambassador to the United Nations designee Susan Rice, National Security Advisor designee Jim Jones, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and White House Counsel designee Greg Craig.

A transition official provided CBS News with some background on the meeting:

"There is one president at a time and this meeting is part of the work being done during the transition to be ready to hit the ground running on January 20."

"This is not the first national security meeting. President-elect Obama previously held a meeting with key members of his team on Monday, December 1st, the day he announced key nominees. That meeting included the Vice President-elect, Clinton, Gates, Holder, Napolitano, Rice, Jones. Focus of that meeting was Mumbai."

"There will be more meetings like this between now and January 20."

By all accounts, Obama has presided over a quick and smooth transition, but it's interesting that he hasn't found a director of national intelligence or CIA director. Last week, Marc Ambinder explained why that is:

Sources say that Obama's team is having trouble finding a potential CIA director who lacks politically incriminating links to controversial Bush Administration policies and yet commands the respect of the agency's rank and file.

For all of Obama's talk on the campaign trail about having better intelligence, you'd think he would have picked new DNI and CIA chiefs before he made appointments to the EPA and HUD. Does this say something about Obama's priorities?

Hopefully the next intelligence chiefs won't have to rely on Joe Biden's notes for too many more national security meetings.

If you find the coverage of the Arab street's reaction to the shoe-throwing incident a bit much, make sure to read Bill Roggio's post yesterday on the New York Times report. Roggio points out that one of the folks quoted in the Times report just happened to be a senior aide to Moktada al-Sadr.

According to Pew Research, nearly one out of four Americans under 40 has a tattoo. The new poll finds 36% in the 18-25 age group and 40% of folks age 26-40 sport this form of “self expression.” Pew writes this:

Gen Nexters, Americans in the 18-25 age bracket, are not afraid to express themselves through their appearance and tattoos are the most popular form of self-expression -- more than one-in-three (36%) now has one. Tattoos, however, are at least as prevalent among the preceding generation of Gen Xers -- 40% of them have a tattoo.

So maybe the new litmus test for Republican presidential hopefuls as the party aims to improve its dismal performance among younger voters: An elephant tattoo? I might have to do a poll of 2012 hopefuls to see who already has one. Any guesses?

Read the full Pew poll here.

Washington area readers of the Washington Post might have missed in yesterday’s paper a small notice “To Our Readers” informing us that the price of an issue on newsstands and in vending machines will go from 50 cents to 75 cents. This followed Sunday’s announcement that the paper will be dissolving its “Sunday Source” section: “The decision to end the section is part of an effort at The Washington Post to rethink and restructure our arts, entertainment and lifestyle coverage in a way that is most useful to our readers.” But not to fear, the Post reassures us, our “favorite Source features” like “Road Trip,” “Eco Wise,” and “Trendspotter” will find a home in other sections. None of these I was exactly wedded to. But what seems to be on the chopping block is the “Three Wise Guys” column by Joe Heim, Justin Rude, and Dan Zak. If so, that would be a real loss. The columns were reliably irreverent, self-deprecating, and a breeze to get through. In short, it was a pleasure. And yet another victim of the decline of print.

During a recent interview on ABC News, Vice President Dick Cheney said the following with respect to waterboarding senior al Qaeda terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM):

“There was a period of time there, three or four years ago, when about half of everything we knew about al Qaeda came from that one source [KSM]. So, it's been a remarkably successful effort. I think the results speak for themselves.”

Put aside for a moment the debate over waterboarding, which has been discussed ad naseam, and think about what Cheney is saying with respect to the totality of America’s intelligence on al Qaeda. Cheney claims that half of everything the United States knew about al Qaeda as late as 2004 or 2005 came from one source: KSM. If true, what does this say about America’s intelligence capabilities and the value of human intelligence?

It is, of course, possible that Cheney is exaggerating the amount of intelligence garnered from KSM’s interrogation. However, George Tenet, the former Director of Central Intelligence, has made similar comments. In his book, At the Center of the Storm, Tenet discussed at length the value of the intelligence collected during KSM’s interrogation. According to Tenet, for example, KSM’s interrogation set off a chain of events that led to the capture of an entire cell of al Qaeda terrorists who were involved in plotting the terror network’s second wave of attacks.

Let us assume that Cheney’s claim is true and half of everything the United States knew about al Qaeda as late as 2004 and 2005 came from this single source. KSM is clearly one of the top five al Qaeda operatives ever, having played an instrumental role in the 9/11 attacks and numerous other plots. Even so, Cheney’s claim is remarkable. It means that three to four years after 9/11, everything else the U.S. Government did to learn about al Qaeda equaled, in terms of overall value, the intelligence collected from the interrogations of a single terrorist. This means that all of the other techniques and intelligence programs put in place to understand al Qaeda have been, comparatively speaking, less effective (in terms of a basic cost-benefit analysis). While these other programs certainly led to some successes, they clearly did not produce a relatively large amount of actionable intelligence if KSM’s interrogation alone produced half of what they knew.

What is even more remarkable is that there is a lot more to al Qaeda than KSM. There was at the time of 9/11. There was when he was captured. And there is, of course, today. Al Qaeda is a highly compartmentalized organization. Even a well-placed al Qaeda operative like KSM would not know much about what other al Qaeda operatives were doing at the time he was captured. It makes you wonder what we didn't know three or four years ago and how much we have (or have not) learned in the meantime.

The most significant deficiency in America’s pre-9/11 intelligence collection was the lack of human intelligence--information garnered from people on the inside of the organization. Prior to 9/11, America had little to no human intelligence inside al Qaeda and the effects of this failure are evident. Moreover, even if KSM’s interrogation gave the U.S. Intelligence Community 10 percent, or 25 percent, of everything America knew about al Qaeda in 2004/2005 (as opposed to the 50 percent Cheney claims), the value of human intelligence and interrogations is clear.

The questions going forward are: How will America interrogate terrorists in the future? What techniques will be used? Will those techniques be more or less effective than the controversial ones employed by the Bush administration?

Rod Blagojevich will keep the power to appoint the Senate successor to Barack Obama while Illinois Democrats embark on an impeachment process that could take weeks.

The Democrats, who hold a majority in the state house, deferred taking away his authority to appoint when they were unable to come to an agreement on how to proceed with a special election.

Democrats in the House met yesterday and aired “differences of opinion on the best way to proceed” with a special election for Obama’s seat, Brown said. The differences could not be overcome so a vote on taking the decision away from Blagojevich was “deferred for now,” he said.

They're now facing criticism from state and national Republicans, who accuse Democrats of propping up the guv to preserve the Democratic lock on the Senate seat.

“Shame on you,” Representative William Black, deputy leader of Republicans in the House, shouted during a debate in the state capitol building in Springfield. “We had an opportunity to limit the power of this governor and you refused.”

The move puts the body at odds with calls from Obama himself and other national Democrats to hold a special election. RNC Chair Mike Duncan, with an eye on his run for reelection, let loose on the state Dems:

"It's extremely disappointing that Democratic leaders in Illinois are ignoring bipartisan calls for a special election to fill President-elect Barack Obama's Senate seat. Considering the scandal surrounding Governor Rod Blagojevich's administration, a special election is the only way to credibly fill the seat. I hope that Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan puts good government before partisan politics, and will heed Senator Durbin's call for a special election."

County clerks in Illinois are complaining about the extra dough needed to run a special election, but are hopeful that a special election would coincide with scheduled state elections, with a primary on Feb. 24 and an April 7 general election. Those are the dates put forward in draft legislation:

"This is not something that's being welcomed by a lot of county clerks from a financial standpoint, because we're not the only county in this situation," Aiello said of a special election.

Madison County Clerk Mark Von Nida said that even though money might be a problem, the need for a special election is indisputable.

"It's necessary," Von Nida said. "The next part of that is to be mindful of the expense."

Rasmussen: 45 percent suspect Team Obama involved in Blago scandal.

Don King on Dubya: "He's got unbelievable reflexes!"

Caroline Kennedy's inexperience making it pretty hard for Dems who bashed Palin to support her.

Surprise: Time mag bureau chief to become Biden's communications director.

African-Americans do play at Katon Dawson's country club.

Gov. David Paterson upset about "SNL's" blind jokes. Blind jokes? I had no idea that kind of thing was even close to allowed anymore.

Cheney: Clinton is just what Obama needs.

Rice: Iran hurting under sanctions.

CNN's "Planet in Peril" a ratings bomb.

Secret Service under scrutiny over response to shoe-throwing.

Barney's Farewell Christmas Video:

Forbes's Jerry Flint points out an important difference between Ford and the other two Detroit-based automakers: Ford doesn't need a federal bailout:

Long run, Ford has the ability to grow. For the past two months the Dearborn, Mich., manufacturer has held its own in share against the prior year, while the others slipped. The company even picked up share in November, to 16.4% of the industry sales versus 15.4% a year before. This is a good sign. If GM downsizes, Ford could end up bigger than GM in just a few years...

If Ford could come close to Toyota or Honda in selling small cars, it would make lots of money. The same goes for its coming Fiesta, where I think Ford needs to sell 300,000 of these subcompacts a year in the U.S...

Pick-up trucks and sport utility vehicles are still profitable, too. This may not please environmentalists but it is a plus for Ford...

One more advantage: Washington is still battling over a bailout package, but Ford's two domestic rivals may have to report to a "car czar." That will not help them. In fact, if this person turns out to someone like Congressman Henry Waxman or one of his friends, GM and Chrysler could face ruin in 90 days. If so, Ford could pick up the pieces.

Ford's management will undoubtedly consider carefully how best to enhance the company's financial outlook. It may be that taking a cheap federal loan makes great business sense, and that the company would suffer from running afoul of the federal car czar. That might lead the company to follow GM and Chrysler into the semi-nationalized car program.

But Ford management might decide that the company can expand market share by pursuing its own business, unencumbered by 'help' from DC. As Forbes points out, trucks and SUVs remain the most profitable models. But as long as GM and Chrysler remain under the federal umbrella, they will be under pressure to reduce that business in favor of the green cars that Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and Barney Frank regard as the wave of the future.

If Ford remains independent, it's hard to imagine that it won't do much better than the other two. That will make it harder to justify the federal support for GM and Chrysler, and will make it harder to make those companies viable in the long run (as Ford builds market share).

The boss on left-wing and right-wing Detroit bashing.

Caroline Kennedy wants Hillary's Senate seat.

Seventy-four percent of public universities have unconstitutional speech codes.

Shock report: Obama isn't Lincoln.

Detroit embraces clean, green, and paperless newspapers.

Via Instapundit, some people in Iraq who didn't throw their shoes at Bush.

The New York Times's Baghdad Bureau Blog does a good job of rounding up opinions of Iraqis on yesterday's shoe-throwing incident by an Iraqi "journalist" that targeted President Bush during a press briefing in Baghdad with Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. Clearly there is a wide range of opinions by Iraqis on this incident. Some view it as an acceptable act of defiance, but many, even though they may not like President Bush, believe the incident was uncivilized, rude, and unprofessional for a journalist.

Scanning through this extensive compilation of quotes from Iraqi, I noticed something interesting. In a few cities, there was 'unanimous' support for the shoe-throwing. This was odd, based on the wide range of views expressed. Why were views in some cities uniform?

I decided to look a little closer at Najaf, one of these cities where there was a Sadrist demonstration in support of the "journalist." Interestingly enough, the first person quoted caused my antenna to perk up. Here is what the stringer from Najaf wrote:

"These demonstrators are refusing the president of evil as well as renewing their refusal of the [security] pact," said a man named Hazim Araji. "And we have coordinated such demonstrations in the whole of Iraq."

The name rung a bell. Well, it turns out Hazim Araji isn't just your average Iraqi "man." He is in fact a senior aide to Muqtada al Sadr. Araji organized today's protest in Najaf that called for the release of the shoe-throwing "journalist."

Why didn't the Times stringer point this out? Did the stringer ever leave the Sadrist protest in Najaf? Why didn't the Times's layers upon layers of editors catch this? Perhaps their editors should look a little closer at the stringers they are using in Iraq. Perhaps they are practicing the same form of "journalism" as the feted shoe-thrower.

Via Ben Smith, the Denver Post reports that Senator Ken Salazar is the leading candidate to become Obama's secretary of the Interior.

Salazar's term is set to expire in 2010.

Time magazine's Mark Halperin reports that his colleague Jay Carney, the mag's Washington bureau chief, will be director of communications for vice president-elect Joe Biden. I would normally be inclined to make a snarky comment about the Obama administration/mainstream media revolving door, but now is not the time for that.

Carney is going to need all the support he can get. I hear doing damage control for Biden is like cleaning the Augean stables.

(Hat tip: Byron York)

UPDATE: Referring to our esteemed online editor's sojourn to the McCain campaign, a colleague suggests an alternative title to this blog post: 'Worse Than Goldfarb's Gig?'

The Obama transition office just sent out this release about its internal "review" of contacts with disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich:

"At the direction of the President-elect, a review of Transition staff contacts with Governor Blagojevich and his office has been conducted and completed and is ready for release. That review affirmed the public statements of the President-elect that he had no contact with the governor or his staff, and that the President-elect's staff was not involved in inappropriate discussions with the governor or his staff over the selection of his successor as US Senator.

"Also at the President-elect's direction, Gregory Graig, counsel to the Transition, has kept the US Attorney's office informed of this fact-gathering process in order to ensure our full cooperation with the investigation.

"In the course of those discussions, the US Attorney's office requested the public release of the Transition review be deferred until the week of December 22, in order not to impede their investigation of the governor. The Transition has agreed to this revised timetable for release," said Obama Transition Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer.

Last week, in a press conference on Thursday, President-elect Obama announced that his staff would conduct an internal review of contacts with Blagojevich and his office. At the same press conference, Obama announced that this internal review would find no inappropriate dealings between his staff and Blagojevich. Since Obama announced the findings of the promised internal review at the same time he announced the internal review, it should come as no surprise that the internal review found just what Obama said it would.

If none of those contacts were "inappropriate" could releasing the details really "impede" the investigation? Such a public release would reveal the nature of some Blagojevich discussions about the Senate seat and would necessarily compromise the identities of the individuals involved in those discussions. Presumably, Fitzgerald is interviewing some of those people now and the less they know about these discussions, the better.

But how will waiting a week -- until Christmas week -- help? We'll see. But for political reasons it will be incumbent on Obama and (or?) Fitzgerald to explain in some detail why waiting a week was necessary.

It's been five days since Pres-Elect Barack Obama called for the resignation of indicted Ilinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, and the coiffeured Chicago corruptocrat seems no closer to the door than he did last Wednesday.

The call for resignation came through Obama's spokesperson Robert Gibbs one day after the Blagojevich scandal broke, and one day after Obama stated he was "saddened and sobered" by the news, but declined to go much further:

"The President-elect agrees with Lt. Gov. Quinn and many others that under the current circumstances it is difficult for the governor to effectively do his job and serve the people of Illinois," Robert Gibbs, the incoming White House press secretary, said.

That same day, Obama also said he had "no contact" with Blagojevich. After that it was revealed that Obama did indeed have some contact with Blago at the governor's meeting in Philadelphia, for which there was photographic evidence. His closest adviser David Axelrod had also told a Chicago TV station in November that Obama was talking to the governor about his replacement, but later said he had "misspoken."

Obama's claim was downgraded Thursday to "I have never spoken to the governor on this subject," as he was widely criticized for mishandling the response to the scandal. By that time, he had settled on an internal investigation of his team, the results of which may be released this week, but asserted he was sure his team was not at all involved.

Today, two sources report that Rahm Emanuel was "dispatched" by the Obama transition team to talk to Blagojevich specifically about Obama's replacement, providing a list of names to Blago advisers:

The Obama associates said the interactions concerned several people who might fill the seat. Such contacts are common among party officials when a political vacancy is to be filled. It was not clear whether the communication was via direct telephone calls.

The Chicago Tribune reported that communications between Mr. Emanuel and the governor, both Democrats, had been captured on court-approved wiretaps, but Obama associates gave conflicting accounts of the interactions.

The Wall Street Journal elaborates:

Among those in Mr. Obama's inner circle, Mr. Emanuel had one of the closest relationships to Mr. Blagojevich, a Democrat. He had succeeded Mr. Blagojevich in 2002 to the House seat that covered Chicago's near north side.

Mr. Emanuel didn't talk to Mr. Blagojevich directly about the matter, by phone or in person, according to people familiar with the matter. He spoke by phone with aides to the governor, those people say.

It doesn't sound like such contacts would have been necessarily out of line for Emanuel, but the creeping proximity of Team Obama's white garment hems to Blagojevich's filth is problematic for Obama politically. This scandal is easy to understand, viscerally disgusting, deals with the seat of Obama himself, and runs counter to everything Obama claimed to stand for as a candidate in its utterly old-school, machine-politics grime.

Blagojevich's stubbornness has further complicated matters by casting doubt on Obama's political influence and on the process for naming Obama's predecessor. The Guardian's headline, "Illinois governor ignores Obama's call to resign" can't be pleasing to a fawned-over political figure whose devotees in the press should be in peak fawn right now.

Further, the longer Blago holds on, the greater the chances of a special election to replace Obama, which would give the Illinois GOP at least a crack at a seat that should have been secure. Obama seems to favor a special election, which would necessarily make the process transparent and put him on the side of cleanliness. Other Illinois figures, Sen. Dick Durbin included, have backed the idea of a special election, as the Illinois legislature revs up to do that and impeach Blagojevich.

But Obama's position puts him at odds with most of the Democratic caucus, which prefers a pick made by Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn to a special election. The longer Blago dallies, the more unlikely a Quinn pick becomes.

Blagojevich's recalcitrance (say that five times fast) is threatening to spoil Obama's next months, during which the Obama campaign's best messages will take close-range hits from this scandal. Already, his vaunted communications team and reputation for crisis-management have come under fire. His promise of a "new kind of politics" and the mantle of change are increasingly in danger as the investigation continues. Now, his political influence and sway with Congress will face tests even before he's called upon to spend political capital on legislation. Standing back and looking cool with that first-class temperament of his won't fix all of this.

Happy honeymooning, Barack!

In light of John Dingell's and Jennifer Granholm's recent statements attacking the patriotism of Republicans who opposed the auto bailout, John Henke rounds up a few other recent examples of Democrats' criticism of "un-American" and "anti-patriotic" Republicans:

"[Some Southern Senators] unpatriotically blocked a bill..." -- Rep. Dingell

"It is unacceptable for this un-American, frankly, behavior of these U.S. senators..." -- Gov. Jennifer Granholm [...]

"John Ashcroft is not a patriot."—Howard Dean

"[In the Bush administration, there is] a group of people around the President whose main allegiance is to each other and their ideology rather than to the United States."—Howard Dean

"We hear them in the cries of the false patriots who bully dissenters into silence and submission".—Ted Kennedy

"I don't think it's patriotic to put on a flight suit and prance around on the deck of an aircraft carrier looking for a photo op." — Gen. Wesley Clark

"The policy that the administration is following in Iraq is ... anti-patriotic at the core..." — Sen. Bob Graham

Over the weekend, I noted that Pakistan’s “house arrest” of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba / Jamaat-ud-Dawa leader Hafiz Saeed was largely for show. Today, the London Times notes that the Jamaat-ud-Dawa headquarters in the city of Muridke is still open for business.

Pakistan claims that it ordered the closure of JuD’s [Jamaat-ud-Dawa] facilities on Thursday under pressure from India and the United States, which consider the group a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) — the militant group blamed for the Mumbai attack.

But when The Times visited the complex in Muridke, 30 miles from the eastern city of Lahore, over the weekend it was functioning normally with no sign of any police presence.

Most of the 1,600 students at the complex were away for last week’s Eid holidays, but a dozen or so staff and about 40 others were moving freely around the buildings, none of which was sealed. Mohammed Abbas, 34, also known as Abu Ahsan, the administrator of the complex, said: “We’ve not had any official communication about closing. A lot of parents have been calling, afraid that it will be closed or there could be some violence, but we are telling them to send their children back.”

Pakistan is complaining that it needs more weapons from the United States in order to fight the Taliban insurgency in the northwest regions bordering Afghanistan, Newsweek's Ron Moreau and John Barry report uncritically. "We are on a war footing," Pakistan's national-security chief, retired Army Gen. Mahmud Ali Durrani told the magazine. "But [the U.S.] supply chain is working on a peacetime basis. You have to support us at much greater speed." Pakistan wants more Cobra attack helicopters, designators for laser-guided bombs, night vision equipment, IED jammers, and sophisticated communications monitoring equipment.

The reality is the United States has already invested more than $5 billion in the Pakistani military. In December 2007, the New York Times reported the U.S. taxpayers are being taken for a ride by Pakistan, as much of the funds were diverted to conventional Pakistani forces on the border with India.

In interviews in Islamabad and Washington, Bush administration and military officials said they believed that much of the American money was not making its way to frontline Pakistani units. Money has been diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India, not Al Qaeda or the Taliban, the officials said, adding that the United States has paid tens of millions of dollars in inflated Pakistani reimbursement claims for fuel, ammunition and other costs.

In February 2008, one US official told The Guardian that more than 70 percent, over $3.8 billion, cannot be accounted for.

So what has this investment bought the United States? The Taliban have taken control of all seven of the tribal agencies bordering Afghanistan and is in control or has a strong presence in much of northwestern Pakistan. The Taliban, al Qaeda, and a host of jihadi groups maintain training camps throughout the region. Last summer, U.S. military and intelligence officials told me there are more than 150 camps and more than 400 support locations (safe houses, weapons storage locations, etc.) in the northwest. In late August, the U.S. stepped up airstrkes dramatically in the tribal efforts in an effort to prevent al Qaeda from htting the West again. NATO supply columns are being hit almost daily while traveling through Peshawar and Khyber. Jihadi groups launched a multitude of attacks on the neighboring countries of Afghanistan and India, with the help of Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency and elements within the military.

The U.S. better think long and hard before investing more money in Pakistan's military.

Would the election have been different if Obama had chosen the ridiculous exclamation point logo instead of the O?

Jesse Jackson, Jr.: "I want my good name back." American people: "You're gonna have to talk to your dad about that."

McCain won't say whether he'd support Palin if she ran for President in '12, referencing "other great governors," and causing a spasm of Palin hatred retread at lefty blogs.

Gov. Palin's home church damaged in suspicious fire.

"I don't want to talk about the bleeping campaign."

Yes, Tallulah, there is such a thing as "hipster baby names."

The United Nations of college basketball.

Juan Williams disses the auto bailout.

The other Democratic corruption scandal.

Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech for Muslims.

"You are a discgrace to the state of Illinois. Well, maybe not Illinois, but if you were the governor of any other state, you would be a disgrace to that state." (very mild content warning for bleeped language)

By now, you may have heard that an Iraqi Journalist threw his shoes at President Bush during a press conference in Baghdad:

Though Bush's ninja-like reflexes thwarted this evildoer's plans, I can't help but wonder how the president would have responded to a successful shoe pelting. I imagine it might have looked something like this:

Hat tip: Bill Flanigen

Patterico flags this LA Times story on the failure of the auto bailout:

Republican opposition killed a $14-billion auto industry bailout plan in the Senate on Thursday night, putting the future of U.S. automakers in doubt and threatening to deliver another blow to the economy. [...]

Senate Democrats couldn’t bring the measure up for a vote without the support of at least 10 Republicans. Ultimately, they were seven votes short.

In fact, precisely 10 Republican senators voted for cloture on the bailout bill.

I've been particularly hard on Pakistan the past several weeks. Watching the developments in Pakistan closely the past four years, I've learned that all is not what it seems, and there is significant institutional support for the Taliban, al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the alphabet soup of jihadi groups that infest the country. Actions taken against these groups are never decisive, and often smack of double-dealing attempts to placate the West.

But there are good people in Pakistan who fight the jihadis, knowing that they pose a very danger not only to the West, but to the Pakistani state itself. Major General Faisal Alavi was one of them. As the former commander of Pakistan's Special Service Group, he was charged with hunting down al Qaeda and other terror groups.

Alavi was relieved of his command three years ago after expressing displeasure with then-President Pervez Musharraf. He also said he was fired because he knew two senior Army generals who were cutting deals with the Taliban. Alavi was murdered three weeks ago after sending a letter to Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Kiyani requesting to have his honor restored and threatening to expose the generals. The London Times' Carey Schofield met Alavi just before he was killed, and tells the story:

Alavi, who had dual British and Pakistani nationality, named the generals he accused. He told Kiyani that the men had cooked up a “mischievous and deceitful plot” to have him sacked because they knew he would expose them.

“The entire purpose of this plot by these general officers was to hide their own involvement in a matter they knew I was privy to,” he wrote. He wanted an inquiry, at which “I will furnish all relevant proof/ information, which is readily available with me”.

I folded up the letter and handed it back to him. “Don’t send it,” I said. He replied that he had known I would talk him out of it so he had sent it already. “But”, he added, “I want you to keep this and publish it if anything happens to me.”

I told him he was a fool to have sent the letter: it would force his enemies into a corner. He said he had to act and could not leave it any longer: “I want justice. And I want my honour restored. And you know what? I [don’t] give a damn what they do to me now. They did their worst three years ago.”

The hit on Alavi was professional, Schofield reported. And Pakistanis are convinced this was carried out by elements within the Army.

Friends and family members were taken aback to be told by serving and retired officers alike that “this was not the militants; this was the army”. A great many people believed the general had been murdered to shut him up.

General Kiyani and other senior generals did not attend Alavi's funeral, but "wreaths were laid on behalf of Kiyani and most of the country’s military leadership."

Senior military and intelligence officials tell me they hope there are enough Pakistanis like Alavi to prevail over the multitude of Pakistani jihadis. But if General Kiyani, who most of this hope is placed upon, will not attend the funeral of a patriot such as Alavi, the situation clearly is quite grim.

Pakistan is making a big show of its "crackdown" on Jamaat-ud Dawa, the charity that serves as a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba. The government claims to have rounded up scores of members and closed multiple offices since the United Nations declared the group behind the Mumbai attacks a terrorist entity and named four senior leaders terrorists.

But if Pakistan's detention of Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Jamaat-ud Dawa and Lashkar-e-Taiba, is any indication, the crackdown is far from serious. The New York Times reports on the details of Saeed's so-called "house arrest." It turns out that Saeed is neither confined to his home, nor under arrest.

A few miles away, in Mr. Saeed’s leafy neighborhood, it was a decidedly more relaxed scene. Several dozen policemen ringed the area around his home, standing casually with rifles and enforcing a house arrest that seemed more of a forced vacation.

Two heavily bearded workers from Jamaat-ud-Dawa arrived with food, and the police raised the barricades and allowed them through, choosing not to inspect their Suzuki truck. Mr. Saeed’s relatives have been allowed to come and go freely from the home, policemen said. A young boy and a girl standing on the second-floor balcony of Mr. Saeed’s home looked down at the police and smiled.

One local police commander, seeing journalists arrive, rushed over and proclaimed that Mr. Saeed was confined inside his home, banned from going outside now or at any other time.

Almost on cue, Mr. Saeed emerged moments later from the mosque across the street, clad in a green jacket and a cream-colored shalwar kameez, the long tunic and baggy pants that Pakistani men commonly wear, and ambled back to his house. “No, no, it’s not Hafiz Saeed,” the embarrassed commander said, though it clearly was. “I’m just following instructions,” he added.

Pakistan's defense minister freely admitted the crackdown on Saeed's terror group occurred not because Pakistan has tired of the group's activities, but because the government was concerned it would be labeled a terrorist state and suffer from UN sanctions. "We are part of the international community and cannot afford confrontation with the whole world,” Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar told the Pakistani press.

Meanwhile, Saeed's son openly threatened the Pakistani government with violence at a sermon in one of Jamaat-ud Dawa's mosques.

Inside the mosque, Mr. Saeed’s 38-year-old son, Mohammed Talha Saeed, took his father’s place at the podium and inveighed against the government’s crackdown as the result of “dictation from the United States” and pressure from “Jews and the Hindu lobby.”

“If the government continues this type of activity, then one day the army of God will come,” he lectured, urging the worshipers to remain patient.

Megan McArdle writes:

I am not trying to punish the UAW. I am thinking about how the company can be made profitable. The company cannot, in my estimation, be made profitable with higher labor costs than the competitors.

Labor costs are not the issue at banks, or AIG; balance sheet impairment is. Labor costs are a much smaller portion of their financial burden than at an automaker. Cutting their compensation will not return the balance sheets to full strength.

However, in fact, workers in the banking industry are taking a massive hit. CEOs were forced to take huge paycuts, and if their bank is in trouble, they've already lost the greatest portion of their personal net wealth. The banks are firing huge numbers of people, and the ones who are left can count on their paychecks looking pretty anaemic this year. I know that many of you would like to see every single one of them have their paycheck reduced to that of a Nissan line worker, but it doesn't work that way. The good people at those banks have better alternatives than being a Nissan line worker, and have usually invested substantial amounts of time and money in building human capital, rather than hitting the line after high school. If you cap their pay there, they will leave to pursue those other opportunities, leaving you a firm staffed with the rejects who can't work elsewhere. Given that we are trying to save the banking industry, not destroy it, that's not a good idea. A UAW worker, on the other hand, has alternatives that are generally much worse than the wages on a Nissan line.

Read the rest.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports:

DFLer Al Franken's campaign scored significant victories in the U.S. Senate recount Friday, as the state Canvassing Board approved the use of Election Day results for 133 Minneapolis ballots that can't be found and also recommended that counties sort and count absentee ballots that were mistakenly rejected.

But the five-member board revealed some fissures. That came when its two Supreme Court justices put the brakes on the apparent hopes of its two district court judges to declare in advance that the board would accept the new results that include the previously rejected absentee votes.

The board chose instead to wait until those votes come in before deciding whether to accept them.

Coleman campaign officials planned to file a request today for an order from the state Supreme Court requiring counties to follow consistent standards for counting their rejected absentee ballots. They said they hoped to have a decision by early next week.

The board made clear that its ruling to accept 133 missing ballots may or may not be overturned in court. The Coleman campaign has, in fact, filed a brief pointing out that the state canvassing board, in previous elections, has accepted vote counts for ballots that could not physically be produced, and the courts have ultimately rejected the counting of ballots that don't exist.

The board will begin to count challenged ballots on December 16. There are currently 4,000 such ballots, but it appears both campaigns will withdraw a significant number of frivolous challenges before the board convenes. Coleman currently leads by 192 votes, but the Franken campaign maintains that their internal tally shows that Franken has a 196 vote edge among the 4,000 uncounted challenged ballots, thus giving the Democrat a 4 vote lead.

Once the board is done counting challenged ballots, it will decide whether or not to accept revised totals for the absentee ballots that were wrongfully rejected due to clerical errors. The secretary of state's office reports that about 600 wrongfully rejected ballots have been identified so far. It estimates that 1,600 ballots have been wrongfully rejected statewide.

Joseph Bottum writes:

Word has reached us that Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., died here in New York early this morning.

Created cardinal for his theological work by John Paul II, Avery Dulles was one of the great figures of the twentieth century: a theologian, an intellectual, a teacher, a writer, a lecturer, and a kind and gentle man.

In his long life, he wrote more than 700 articles and twenty-two books, and it is hard to imagine how anyone today can fill the roles he played in the Catholic world and American public life. As the disease that took his life progressed, his final months were a trial that took away his powers to speak, write, and move. But he seemed, in those months, to live even more serenely, more spiritually, and more beautifully. May God welcome him home.

A selection of Cardinal Dulles's writings for First Things may be found here.

Sen. Tom Coburn's porkbusting goes too far in downright un-American criticism of bailing out "Spanky's Liquor World".

The scene at Club Gitmo.

Ed Rendell: "Did Rahm Emanuel who took Rod Blagojevich’s seat in Congress have contact with Rod Blagojevich? Of course he did."

Did White House intervention kill the bailout?

Charles Krauthammer writes that Obama is no centrist.

Continetti is the grinch who stole Fitzmas.

Via Hot Air, Gutfeld v. Olbermann

As agreed upon in the inconsistently observed oversight rules for the Treasury Department's $700 billion in TARP funds, the Congress must approve Treasury access to the second half of the sum. The first half was doled out mostly to failing banks, and only $15 billion remains.

After the auto bailout went down last night, and the White House said it would push for using TARP funds instead, Treasury officials are hoping that acting on behalf of the Big Three will earn them enough Congressional good will to get at the second installment of the massive bailout fund.

Some on Capitol Hill see the potential for a deal: In exchange for aiding the automakers, the Treasury would receive support from some lawmakers if it requested the rest of the rescue funds.

Others are not so sure. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn), chairman of the Senate banking committee, said he remained opposed to releasing the remaining $350 billion in an interview on Bloomberg Television today.

Treasury officials have been pondering how to get access to the second $350 billion, floating the idea of getting Barack Obama to support its release, and formulating a plan for its use.

But if there's $15 billion in the fund now, that would cover the $14 billion Congress was considering with a billion to spare. How would it trigger Congressional consideration of the second half of the bailout, in that case?

It won't, which is why Treasury officials are meeting with Big Three representatives to do their "own evaluation," the result of which will undoubtedly be conveniently big enough to necessitate dipping into the second half of the TARP funds. Who's up for a little creative circumvention?

There will be no more votes on this until the new year in the Senate, and GM is unsure whether it will survive until January. Both GM and Chrysler have lawyered up for the possibility of bankruptcy. White House spokesperson Dana Perino suggested there were several options for helping auto companies in the light of the bailout bill's failure, but didn't specify. Auto industry folks are hoping the Fed might come through with a loan, if TARP funds can't be used.

Meanwhile, a majority of Americans are under no illusions that a bailout now would actually fix any problems in Detroit. Rasmussen shows 53 percent of Americans think the Big Three will be back in Washington— traveling Flintstone style this time, maybe?— even if a bailout goes through now. Smart folks.

George Washington University political scientist Henry Farrell posts this item today reporting on a conference he recently attended at Harvard about the political applications of the Internet in the 2008 campaign. Farrell includes some comments from Obama campaign representatives who note that their online tactics were really nothing more using the Internet to put old campaign tactics (contacting voters, raising money, and get out the vote efforts) on steroids.

Farrell writes:

As Joe Rospars,1 the (Obama) campaign’s New Media director, put it, “There was never anything online that was there for online’s sake.” Chris Hughes, the online organizing coordinator (and previous co-founder of Facebook) was even more direct: “the web was just the vehicle to empower the activists out there to have face to face meetings, to make phone calls, and to raise money.” So it’s perfectly clear that Internet activity wasn’t seen a form of mobilization in itself, contrary to the impression given by some of the more breathless coverage, but rather primarily as a means to more efficiently organize the traditional forms of direct contact.

From a voter contact/mobilization standpoint that’s probably right. Research shows the most effective voter mobilization/persuasion occurs through peer-to-peer contact and social groups. The web can facilitate these interactions quite effectively and efficiently. But I have to believe the Internet has also fundamentally changed the way campaigns advertise. Television and radio will always play a role. But given the amount of time voters spend viewing information via the Internet (one estimate I saw recently provided by Google finds that Americans now spend as many hours per week online as watching TV), online advertising is revolutionizing campaigns as much as television did in the early 1960s. Campaign 2008 probably just scratched the surface of the coming advertising revolution.

Hat Tip: The Monkey Cage

For much of this week and last, I've noted that the Pakistani government's action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba and its front group, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, would tell us much about their seriousness in rooting out the multitude of terror groups operating withing its borders. The New York Times report on how the Pakistan goverment went about shutting down the Laskhar/Jamaat officies and "detaining" its leader, Hafiz Saeed, is less than inspiring.

Despite the appearance of Pakistani resolve, the detention of Mr. Saeed was orchestrated by the government in a way to minimize what many here expect to be an angry reaction from the public, and from a broad spectrum of Islamic militant groups sympathetic to Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Just before the police surrounded his mosque and other buildings in central Lahore, Mr. Saeed, who claims he no longer has connections to Lashkar, was allowed to hold a news conference, unfettered by the authorities, in which he denounced a decision on Wednesday by the United Nations sanctions committee to place Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Lashkar on a terrorist blacklist of groups linked to Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

“We will not accept any decision taken under Indian pressure,” a defiant Mr. Saeed told several dozen journalists.

In another sign of the apprehension within the government about the domestic reaction to getting tough on Mr. Saeed and his groups, the foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, announced the United Nations decision on television at midnight when most viewers had gone to bed.

The foreign minister said Pakistan would comply with the United Nations decision, but did not say the group had been proscribed, nor did he announce the house arrest of Mr. Saeed. The Pakistani police said Mr. Saeed would be detained for three months. The State Bank of Pakistan said it had frozen the accounts of Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

Suffice to say that these are not the actions of a government that is confident in its abilities to rein in the multitude of terror groups operating on its soil.

Earlier this week in Washington, I had the opportunity to listen to Maajid Nawaz, Co-Founder and Director of the London-based Quilliam Foundation, which describes itself as “the world’s first counter-extremism think tank”. Both Mr. Nawaz and Co-Founder Ed Husain are former activists of the radical Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) who rejected their ideology of hatred and set up Quilliam Foundation in an effort to promote a pluralistic, open, and non-violent interpretation of Islam. Mr. Nawaz, who spent more than four years in an Egyptian prison, was in Washington for meetings with senior U.S. government officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

The striking thing about Quilliam Foundation--which also advises the UK government on anti-terrorism issues--is that it involves former Islamists who are now openly challenging the very intellectual foundations underpinning al-Qaeda’s all-out attempt to establish a global Islamic caliphate:

The Quilliam Foundation openly challenges Islamist groups to public debates. Our first challenge is to Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), the group that influenced Syed Qutb in prison and is thus the ideological inspiration to al-Qaeda. While HT may disagree with Osama bin Laden’s methods, they both aspire to the same end: the creation of a theocratic, expansionist dictatorship. […]

Islam, like other world faiths, is a religion, not a political ideology. As such, it makes no specific, monolithic prescription of an ‘Islamic state’, ‘economic system’, or ‘foreign policy’. Hizb ut-Tahrir, and by extension al-Qaeda, have rejected mainstream Muslim tradition and are an aberration of global Muslim discourse. Their neo-Wahhabite Islamism is the backbone of jihadism, as illustrated by the history of Islamist movements in Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other countries.

It is clear that, ultimately, the world’s on-going struggle against radical Islamists cannot be won without the active involvement and public support of moderate Muslims. The Quilliam Foundation is off to a very good start, and hopefully Maajid Nawaz and Ed Husain will convince more Muslims to follow their path and go after the intellectual godfathers of the jihadist ideology.

Via The Hill's Michael O'Brien

"It is unacceptable for this un-American, frankly, behavior of these U.S. senators to cause this country to go from a recession into a depression," Granholm said during a radio interview Friday morning.

I suppose everyone will shrug this off. But to ask the obvious question: If a Republican governor had said it was "un-American" to vote against the Iraq surge, wouldn't the media be howling with outrage?

After pledging not to use TARP funds to bailout the auto industry, the White House indicated this morning that, well, President Bush was open to using TARP funds to bailout the auto industry.

Offering significant concessions with no hope of changing decades-long bad behavior...

Does Bush think Harry Reid is Kim Jong Il? Is Bush consulting the State Department? Will Chris Hill lead the "negotiations?"

LAT gets critical: "It took three tries in as many days for President-elect Barack Obama to roll out a strategy for defusing the crisis over Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich's alleged attempt to put his old Senate seat up for sale."

The uncharacteristic silence of Rahm Emanuel.

Volokh: Parts of Blago's behavior are sleazy, but probably not illegal.

Romney for car czar?

Worst waste of the year.

McCain campaign liquidation sale sells info-loaded Blackberry to investigative reporter.

Colin Powell continues to lecture the Republican Party.

Was Blagojevich's hair a warning sign?

Holder fight already heating up.

Goldfarb does bloggingheads with Ben Smith:

Nancy Pelosi says that Senate Republicans were "irresponsible" for opposing the auto bailout, which failed on a cloture vote last night 52 to 35.

Senate Republicans’ refusal to support the bipartisan legislation passed by the House and negotiated in good faith with the White House, the Senate and the automakers is irresponsible, especially at a time of economic hardship. The consequences of the Senate Republicans’ failure to act could be devastating to our economy, detrimental to workers, and destructive to the American automobile industry

The problem with Pelosi's statement is that 10 Republican Senators voted with the Democrats last night, which means the Democrats could have reached 60 votes if the entire Democratic caucus voted for the bill.

But eight Democrats bailed on the bailout (Reid, it should be noted, voted against it for procedural reasons, in order to bring it up for a vote again).

Four Democrats voted 'nay': Baucus, Tester, Lincoln, and Reid.

Four Democrats did not vote: Biden, Kennedy, Kerry, and Wyden.

(And, of course, the Democrats would have another member right now if Blagojevich had sold that Senate seat before he was busted.)

Does Pelosi think that these Democrats, who had the ability to pass the bailout, are "irresponsible," too? And, for that matter, why didn't she simply call them "unpatriotic"? Isn't bailing out the auto industry a better indicator of your love of country than bailing out Wall Street?

"World Markets Plunge as U.S. Auto Bailout Fails."

In other news, the dollar has fallen to a 13-year low against the Yen. Have a great day!

The AP reports: "A $14 billion emergency bailout for U.S. automakers collapsed in the Senate Thursday night after the United Auto Workers refused to accede to Republican demands for swift wage cuts."

In a statement Mitch McConnell first expressed hope that the Senate might ultimately come to a resolution, like it did on the bailout in September, and then described why the auto bailout failed:

“The Administration negotiated in good faith with the Democratic Majority a proposal that was simply unacceptable to the vast majority of our side because we thought it, frankly, wouldn't work. [...]

“The sticking point that we are left with is the question of whether the UAW is willing to agree to a parity pay structure with other manufacturers in this country by a date certain. And I understand their reluctance to do that.

“So far in the discussions that Sen. Corker and Sen. Dodd and others have had, they have not been willing to give a date specific by which parity could be achieved.

“It is upon that issue that we’ve reached an impasse for the moment.”

Reuters: "U.S. conservatives rubbed their hands with glee on Wednesday over news that the Democratic governor of Illinois has been accused of attempting to sell the U.S. Senate seat of President-elect Barack Obama." I was actually twirling my moustache while sipping Scotch at the yacht club.

Rep. Mark Kirk mulls run for Obama's Senate seat.

McConnell opposes auto bailout.

President Bush honors Gary Sinise with Citizens Medal.

Hannity to host show solo.

Professor Jeremiah fails. Again.

Angry feminists not so angry about Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau's groping of a Hillary Clinton cardboard cut out.

McDonald's zings Starbucks.

Reason slams Che chic

AP reports:

A Russian man working for a nuclear company in Iran has been found dead after disappearing 18 days earlier, Iranian media and a Russian spokeswoman said Thursday....

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the state-run Russian company coordinating the Bushehr project, Atomstroiexport, said the deceased was an employee and that he died in an accidental fall from a rock in the recreational area.

The Russian in question was 57 years old, which would presumably make him 1) a senior figure on the staff at Bushehr, and 2) too old to be rock-climbing in sub-freezing temperatures. Or maybe it was an accident. Two other interesting developments on this issue today: A piece in the International Herald Tribune makes the case that the CIA was wrong to assert in the 2007 NIE that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program. Given the evidence, the author concludes that rather than halting the program to design a warhead, the Iranians had simply completed their objective and moved on. Also, Haaretz reports a thinly-sourced rumor that the Obama administration will make official the policy that Hillary Clinton offered to much derision in the primary: if Iran attacks Israel, the United States will obliterate Iran. Let's call it the Hillary Doctrine.

As Haaretz points out, the premise of any official security guarantee along those lines would be a concession to the reality of a nuclear Iran. Obama still maintains that a nuclear Iran would be unacceptable, but one can see the appeal of the Hillary Doctrine -- look tough, do nothing. The left already trashed the idea when it was first put forward by Krauthammer and then picked up by Hillary, but hypocrisy won't be a stumbling block for Obama supporters. What this proposal doesn't do is offer any way to deal with the broader problem of proliferation in the Middle East. Nor does it contend with the fact that such an umbrella would almost certainly have to be extended to despotic regimes that are ostensibly American allies.

In his press conference today, he said he's confident none of his aides are involved. He's downgraded his claim regarding Blagojevich to "no discussions regarding (the Senate seat)" from "no contact."

The United Nations Security Council has stepped up to the plate and declared the Pakistan-based Jamaat-ud-Dawa a front group for the Lashkar-e-Taiba terror group. The UNSC has placed Hafiz Saeed and three other senior leaders of Lashkar-e-Taiba / Jamaat-ud-Dawa on the list of terrorists associated with the Taliban and al Qaeda.

The Pakistani government has said it would act if the UNSC placed the group on its list of terrorists. Today, Saeed has been placed under "house arrest" for three months and offices of the terror group have been shut down in Karachi, Hyderabad, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Azad Kashmir. Prior to the designation, two senior Lashkar operatives thought to be behind the Mumbai attacks have been detained.

The big questions are: is the Pakistani government serious about taking on the host of terror groups openly operating in Pakistan and will the military and intelligence establishment accept this? Saeed has been detained in the past, only to be released, and when Lashkar-e-Taiba was banned in the past, it merely renamed itself the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and continued operations. The intelligence and military establishment have used Lashkar-e-Taiba / Jamaat-ud-Dawa and other jihadi groups as part of Pakistan’s policy to oppose India and liberate Kashmir decades ago. The Pakistani institutions have invested plenty into these terror groups, and significant elements are sympathetic or openly support their activities. What happens if the government goes to far?

As U.S. forces prepare to "surge" an estimated 20,000 soldiers and Marines into Afghanistan, the focus in the media has largely centered on where the forces will deploy. Will they be placed in the East along the border with Pakistan to stem the flow from the Taliban infested tribal areas? Will they be deployed to the provinces surrounding Kabul, where the Taliban is tightening a noose around the capital? Will they go to the South, where some of the most intense fighting occurs? Or will they be spread throughout the regions?

One question that is rarely asked is how the additional forces will be used. When fighting an insurgency, the way the troops are used is far more important than the number of troops in theater. The "surge" in Iraq was successful largely because the U.S. military and Iraqi forces decided to live amongst the people to provide security rather than operate from large bases. The additional 30,000 U.S. troops enabled U.S. commanders to get more troops out into the field and gave the commanders additional flexibility to take the fight to al Qaeda and the wider insurgency.

Unfortunately in Afghanistan, the United States and NATO have learned little from the success in Iraq, and are still largely operating from large bases (there are of course exceptions to this, but as a whole, combat power is concentrated in large bases). My friend Tim Lynch, who has lived and worked in Afghanistan for almost five years,says this is a major mistake and the primary reason we have not been successful in curbing the Taliban insurgency.

This problem is demonstrated with the military's application of the Human Terrain Teams, or HTTs. These are the teams of social scientists attached to U.S. military units that are tasked with mapping out the tribal structures and how they can be leveraged to succeed in defeating the Taliban. Tim provides a scathing critique of the HTTs and how they operate, and then explains this is part of the risk-averse culture that exists with much of the U.S. military in Afghanistan. This paragraph sums up the problem in Afghanistan nicely.

America cannot bring security to the rural population of Afghanistan if every time they interact with that population they treat them as potential enemy fighters. The military believes “force protection” is the job number one and I have listened to officers wax eloquent on the subject of protecting their men and woman no matter what because this country is not worth the noble sacrifice that their young troopers would represent if they lost life or limb here. I have used all my self control to avoid kicking these idiots in the teeth which is what they deserve. That kind of thinking will lead to our defeat just as certain as day follows night. It is ridiculous and based on an inflated self centered egotism which I find alarming. Infantry officers are paid to think – to think about the best way to beat those who ask for it while maintaining the cohesion and high morale amongst their troops. The job of military leaders is to spend blood, American blood, and spend it wisely in pursuit of the missions and objectives given them by their civilian masters. I know what those masters have said is our mission in Afghanistan. I also know the current American TTP (tactics, techniques and procedures) do not in any way support the mission they have been given and in fact do the exact opposite by alienating the very population we are supposed to be “winning.” I might be being a little harsh here but how else do you explain the performance of our military to date?

Lest you think Tim is being overly harsh on the U.S. military, it must be noted is a retired Marine officer who has spent much of his five years in Afghanistan outside the wire. He regularly meets with tribal leaders to gauge the security situation in the areas he works in. He isn't asking anyone to do what he isn't doing already.

Tim says we need to stop operating from the big bases and get the HTTs meeting with tribal leaders at the district level. To do this, small, specialized teams of warfighters and problem-solvers must live at the district level to understand and deal with the local problems.

Via Newsbusters, Chris Matthews and Bill Ayers had an interesting exchange on Hardball last night:

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about this quote. I read it in the New York Times, the other day. And honestly it, it bothered me, but you know, I certainly shared your anti-war views. I demonstrated and did all that stuff. But let me ask you this. "The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices. The ones at the Pentagon and at the U.S. Capitol were the most notorious as an illegal and unpopular war consumed the nation." Do you stand by that decision by the Weather Underground to plant those bombs?

AYERS: No I never-

MATTHEWS: You think that was a good thing to do at the time?

AYERS: You know I don't defend those actions and I didn't, don't defend them in my book Fugitive Days. ... I think we made enormous mistakes and I think that there were terrible things done. I think we ought to have, in this country, a truth and reconciliation process where we really tell the truth about who did what, when-

Later Ayers said of his bombing spree: "I'm not so sure and I don't, again I don't want to defend what we did but nor do I think it was completely insane."

Huh? Is this the same Bill Ayers who told the New York Times in September 2001: "''I don't regret setting bombs ... I feel we didn't do enough''?

Allahpundit points out that Ayers expressed mild regret in his 2001 memoir, though I don't really plan on reading that scumbag's book just to find out when he became an unrepentant equivocating former domestic terrorist.

Matthews, for one, is happy to let bygones be bygones.

"I think you're a different man. I think you're a different man than the one that was in the Weather Underground and you've said so," Matthews said. "You agitate your way, I agitate my way."

Is it Jim Lindgren day on The Blog?

For those of you following the contours of the Blago scandal, check out Lindgren's various posts at the Volokh conspiracy. He was the first person (or at least the first person I read) to focus on Valerie Jarrett, the importance of the November 8-12 time period, and the November 10th conference call. Lindgren notes the dramatic change in Obama's position during this brief period on Valerie Jarrett as his potential replacement in the Senate. First came leaks noting that Obama wanted Jarrett to have the position (leaks that presumably came from the transition). They were followed shortly by leaks that Obama wanted Jarrett with him at the White House. (And, as Lindgren notes, it's interesting -- and potentially revealing -- that Obama said that he wanted Jarrett at the White House rather than Jarrett simply declaring that she wasn't interested in the Senate seat. What happened in between? The November 10th conference call in which Blagojevich tells a large group that he wants something in exchange for the Senate seat.

Lindgren put together this timeline a couple days ago and, as he notes, it is quickly becoming the conventional view of what likely happened.

Obama's press conference did little to shed new light on all of this. It seems clear that he did not talk to Blagojevich by phone about the seat. If he had, it's inconceivable that he'd be making the kind of categorical denials he's made in recent days and made again today. It also seems clear that his staff did have contacts with Blagojevich (or his staff) about the seat. He has twice in recent days refused to rule out such staff contacts and this morning said he had ordered his staff to detail all such contacts so that he can make them public. That's smart.

But one thing in his comments today struck me as problematic. Shortly after he told reporters that he was looking into the nature of any staff contacts with Blagojevich he claimed knowledge of the contents of any such discussions. Obama said he was "absolutely certain" that "our office had no involvement in any deal-making for my Senate seat." That may be true. And if the narrative that Lindgren has put together is right, then it seems likely that someone on Obama's staff may have notified Patrick Fitzgerald of the pay-to-play scheme or have been otherwise cooperating with him. (Remember, in the Scooter Libby investigation, Fitzgerald asked Richard Armitage to say nothing public about the fact that he was the leaker in order to allow the investigation to proceed.)

Two concluding points. 1) Even with a 76-page complaint, a lengthy press conference by Fitzgerald and lots of reporting on this, we know very little about what actually happened. 2) Contrary to a lot of excitement on the right, it is possible -- and maybe likely -- that Obama will come out of this unscathed and perhaps even looking good. The opposite could be true, too, of course if Obama is not as transparent as he has pledged to be. As I say, there's a lot we don't know.

Roll Call scoops everyone with an interesting piece that suggests how Governor Blagojevich may have sounded out Barack Obama about his vacant Senate seat, as well as giving a candidate for identifying 'Adviser B':

Blagojevich has relied heavily on political advice from inside-the-Beltway strategists since taking over the statehouse.

In particular, political consultant William Knapp of Washington-based Squier Knapp Dunn Communications has worked closely with the Illinois governor.

Knapp’s partner, Anita Dunn, was a top adviser to Obama during the presidential campaign.

Knapp, who is a member of the governor’s small inner circle of advisers, helped develop the strategy that catapulted Blagojevich to become the first Democrat in 26 years elected Illinois governor.

In doing so, Knapp became Blagojevich’s highest-paid Washington consultant.

“Friends of Blagojevich,” his gubernatorial campaign committee, spent more than $12 million from January 2002 to December 2006 with Knapp’s firm, according to state campaign finance records.

More than $315,000 was for the firm’s political consulting work; most of the rest covered media buys and advertising...

Squier Knapp has also returned the favor. The firm contributed $105,113 to Blagojevich during the 2008 election cycle, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

Knapp, who led the Clinton/Gore presidential campaign’s creative team in 1996, has also worked for the Service Employees International Union, which was named in the government’s criminal charge as one of the organizations Blagojevich was hoping would provide him with lucrative employment after he left Illinois.

Squier Knapp received more than $4.6 million from the SEIU for political activities and consulting in 2007, according to Department of Labor records.

Knapp did not return calls and e-mails requesting comment for this article.

This is the first report I have seen indicating that one lobbying/public relations firm could be a link between Governor Blagojevich, the SEIU, and the Barack Obama campaign. Did Blagojevich use Bill Knapp to reach out to the Obama campaign -- via Knapp's partner Anita Dunn -- to determine whether Obama might offer something of value in return for naming Valerie Jarrett to the Senate? That's a key question. It would be gratifying if Knapp would answer, but it's possible that he's too busy discussing it with law enforcement.

Furthermore, isn't this the sort of obvious link you would expect to be reported by any one of 100 mainstream media publications which are instead screaming to assert that there's no link between Barack Obama and Rod Blagojevich. You might even have expected the Washington Post or New York Times to report the fact and get praise from all parties. Instead, none of these august institutions is curious enough to flood the zone.

Obama mob flagging questions about Blagojevich as inappropriate on Obama's "open questions" section of the Change.gov.

That Chicago TV station that reported Obama met with Blagojevich is revising and pulling its stories on the meeting.

Dear Big Three: Bankruptcy doesn't make assets disappear.

House approves bailout for Big Three.

What else is in the bailout bill?

Senate Candidate #5 Jesse Jackson Jr. says he didn't authorize anyone to offer a bunch of cash to Blagojevich for a Senate seat.

Depends on what the meaning of "no contact" is.

Pioneer Press says there are enough mistakenly rejected absentee ballots in Minnesota to swing the race either way.

Still not much oversight going on wiith TARP funds.

Jindal says he's not interested in 2012 slot.

Bold Blago not all that interested in resigning, despite urging from The One.

Greece's center-right government struggles under pressure of five nights of urban riots.

L'affaire Plaxico inspires Ken Levine to name some of his "other favorite stupid professional sports injuries."

Among them: "Atlanta Braves' pitcher/genius John Smoltz once burned himself while ironing a shirt. He was wearing the shirt at the time. I wish I making that up."

Jim Lindgren has two interesting ideas on how to reduce the gigantic federal debt. The most interesting: selling off large swaths of federal land to private owners. Individuals would develop the land, and the government would get a new revenue stream. What's not to like?

Continetti obtains unpublished sections of the Blagojevich wiretaps.

George Stephanopoulos swoons: "Blagojevich himself is the President-elect's best character witness."

Jesse Jackson Jr. says he did nothing wrong.

Jindal says he's not running for president in 2012. Seriously.

Obama picks progressives for energy posts.

The horror!: Gitmo terrorists had to listen to Barney and Christina Aguilera.

Ben Smith:

Perhaps the best way to see him is as a neutral in the (lopsided) battle between machine and reformers in Illinois. That's the stance he took in a defining battle, the 2006 contest for the presidency of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. Reformers fault him for failing to support their champion; but he didn't endorse the machine favorite either. He stayed on the sidelines, and kept his focus on the White House. You can accuse him of cowardice for that, or you can grant him that he had decided to devote himself to larger causes and ambitions than Illinois political reform.

This was one of the central criticisms of Obama throughout the campaign -- that he'd always put his political ambition first (in contrast to candidates who put country first, not that anyone would ever question Obama's position). He probably couldn't have risen so far so fast if he hadn't played ball. But maybe what was a liability for Obama as a candidate -- his general go along to get along political philosophy -- will be an asset as president. President Bush risked his political fortunes on a war with Iraq, and one imagines that most liberals would prefer he'd simply played it safe. Likewise, conservatives may be relieved to know that Obama is disinclined to do anything that could hurt his reelection prospects, or his legacy. Which might explain why Obama's assembled a national security team that will prevent the left from acting on its worst impulses -- quick withdraw from Iraq, presidential diplomacy with rogue states -- in favor of a go along to get along foreign policy.

Obama pledged to change Washington and to take on the establishment, but the Blago affair shows that's just not how Obama works. And the left seems to be lowering its own expectations in light of that reality. John Judis, for example, says that Obama will continue the Bush administration's foreign policy, and that such continuity will be a good thing. Judis offers a whole list of Bush administration accomplishments over the last two years (somehow omitting the surge), and attributes all of them to the return of realism, and the purge of neoconservatives, in administration policymaking. If imagining that's true helps Judis sleep at night, fine. For Republicans it should be enough that Obama will continue the policies, some successful and some completely flawed, set in motion by the Bush administration. Things could have been much, much worse -- and they may yet be.

Did Axelrod misspeak, and this TV station's report get it wrong? From Nov. 5:

Now that Barack Obama will be moving to the White House, his seat in the U.S. Senate representing Illinois will have to be filled.

That's one of Obama's first priorities today.

He's meeting with Governor Rod Blagojevich this afternoon in Chicago to discuss it.

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs says the president-elect thinks it's time for Blagojevich to step down.

Brian Ross reports:

Chicago Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., is the anonymous "Senate Candidate No. 5" whose emissaries Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich reportedly offered up to $1 million to name him to the U.S. Senate, federal law enforcement sources tell ABC News.

The Trust for America's Health has issued its annual report card on how states are doing in preparing for disease, disaster, and bioterror. Five states earn a perfect 10 out of 10: Louisiana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin. At the bottom of the scale -- earning just 5 out of 10 -- are 6 states, including Arizona.

Trust for America's Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) today released the sixth annual Ready or Not? Protecting the Public's Health from Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism report, which finds that progress made to better protect the country from disease outbreaks, natural disasters, and bioterrorism is now at risk, due to budget cuts and the economic crisis. In addition, the report concludes that major gaps remain in many critical areas of preparedness, including surge capacity, rapid disease detection, and food safety.

Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, Montana, and Nebraska tied for the lowest score with five out of 10.

Fortunately for Arizona, the Governor who helped the state earn this distinction -- Janet Napolitano -- will soon be resigning to move on to bigger and better things. The bad news -- for the country -- is that she will be soon head up the Department of Homeland Security -- the federal office most directly responsible for dealing with these threats.

The report shows Arizona doing especially poorly on preparation for a pandemic, having stockpiled only a very small amount of federally-subsidized anti-viral drugs. The state has failed to identify pathogens responsible for foodborne illnesses and failed to protect non-profits and emergency responders from legal liability for their efforts. It has also failed to create a Medical Reserve Corps to help overburdened communities respond to disasters.

Hopefully Governor Napolitano will do better in Washington than she did in Arizona.

Via Espresso Pundit

“The democratic process is often messy,” Axelrod wrote in the op-ed. “Diverse constituencies fight fiercely for their priorities. Their elected representatives use the influence they have to meet those needs, including sometimes the exchange of favors – consideration for jobs being just one.

White House party goes late, gets rowdy.

Iowahawk: Feds seize Blago's eBay account

Obama's vague answer on Blagojevich didn't cut it.

He doesn't make it any clearer in his first post-Blago interview.

Hezbollah checks "No" on Jimmy Carter's love note, totally stands him up for prom.

Blago returns to work today.

RNC Chair Mike Duncan announced his bid for re-election.

White House and Congress agree, "in concept," to throw lots of taxpayer money at Detroit in the absence of taxpayers who are willing to do it on their own by...buying cars.

Just three days after the Mumbai attacks, a senior U.S. military intelligence officer described the Lashkar-e-Taiba to me as “al Qaeda junior.” Lashkar-e-Taiba has vast resources, an extensive network, and is able to carry out complex attacks throughout its area of operations, the official explained. "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."

The Los Angeles Times' Sebastian Rotella explained on Decemebr 8 how Lashkar-e-Taiba “has actively recruited Westerners, especially Britons and Americans, serving as a kind of farm team for Islamic militants who have gone on to execute attacks for Al Qaeda, a close ally. The Pakistani network makes its training camps accessible to English speakers, providing crucial skills to an increasingly young and Western-born generation of extremists.”

Lashkar-e-Taiba notables include Australian David Hicks, the former Guantanamo detainee; Aabid Khan, a Briton who was arrested with “a trove of terrorist propaganda and manuals on his laptop ”and “maps and videos of potential targets in New York City and Washington”; and the leader of the suicide cell that attacked the London subway in 2005.

The article is well worth the read. Rotella shows that the war extends far beyond Afghanistan and the enemy consists of more than just al Qaeda.

No need to wait for Obama to frame the issue when the Associated Press knows his favorite words already. They are great students of his oratory, after all:

Though Barack Obama isn't accused of anything, the charges against his home-state governor - concerning Obama's own Senate seat no less - are an unwelcome distraction. And the ultimate fallout is unclear.

As Obama works to set up his new administration and deal with a national economic crisis, suddenly he also is spending time and attention trying to distance himself from Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and charges that the governor was trying to sell the now-vacant Senate post.

And, again, just a few paragraphs later, after a vigorous defense of Obama and a rigorous downplaying of his connections to Blago:

Still, at the very least, the episode amounts to a distraction for Obama at an inopportune time just six weeks before he's sworn into office. It also raises the specter of notorious Chicago politics, an image Obama has tried to distance himself from during his career.

The story goes on to castigate mean Republicans who just won't let the issue drop, already. Again, the AP should just drop the grown-up words and write with emoticons. The picture associated with the story even features Obama wearing a frowny face. The pathos!

AP also does Obama a solid by using his statement that he never met with Blagojevich about his Senate replacement while saving David Alxelrod's very different statement for two thirds into the story. Then, this predictable rejoinder from the Obama team:

Obama transition officials say Axelrod misspoke.

We've heard that so many times, the AP could have written that line, too.

In the run-up to election day we heard a great deal about Tony Rezko, and how his criminal associations reflected poorly on Obama. Little did we suspect then that the biggest crook Rezko knows is the governor of Illinois. With the arrest of Governor Blagojevich this morning, it becomes clear that Tony Rezko played a significant role in putting him in jail. Rezko's name appears 170 times in the criminal complaint against Blagojevich and Harris, and the FBI states early on (page 11) that he was cooperating with the investigation. At the same time, the FBI is apparently uncertain about just how reliable Rezko is:

Rezko, whose reliability has yet to be fully determined, has confirmed to the government in proffer sessions the essence of Ata’s testimony regarding Ata’s meeting with ROD BLAGOJEVICH, but has a different recollection regarding the timing and chronology of certain events and only recalls asking Ata for one $25,000 check for ROD BLAGOJEVICH. Rezko’s proffers have been substantial but are not complete and the government’s efforts to fact check and corroborate Rezko’s proffered information are not yet complete. Rezko has proffered with the government in hopes of receiving a recommendation from the government for a reduced sentence. During the proffer sessions, Rezko at times has provided accounts that differ from those of other witnesses, including Ata, but in broad terms Rezko’s account incriminates ROD BLAGOJEVICH in a “pay to play” criminal scheme.

Because the government is not yet satisfied that Rezko’s accounts are full and complete, the government is not relying on Rezko’s account for probable cause. The government simply notes that while Rezko’s account varies at times from those of other witnesses, Rezko’s account of ROD BLAGOJEVICH’s activity, on balance, would add to the probable cause set forth herein, not subtract. Where Rezko’s proffered recollection differs significantly from those of witnesses upon whose testimony the government is relying, this affidavit notes those differences.

Rezko's involvement is clear in a number of cases of corruption. He helped Blagojevich extort campaign contributions from Mercy Hospital, and told investigators about the plan:

The anti-Prop 8 inquisition continues.

Obama's plan for er, um, agrarian reform.

Palin on Hillary as secretary of state.

The LA Times finds it newsworthy to report that a talking-points memo on Bush's legacy "mentions none of the episodes that detractors say have marred his presidency".

In the race to be RNC chairman, William Bennett endorses Michael Steele and Steve Forbes endorses Ken Blackwell.

Uruguay's Socialist president resigns from his party after Socialists pass a bill to legalize abortion.

"F***ing Blagojevich Indictment Threatens Nation With Asterisk Shortage" (F-bomb tally from the official complaint: 18.)

Blagojevich to FBI: Is this a joke?

The Washington Post reports on the newfound stardom of Joseph Cao, the GOP's newest congressman. Cao (pronounced "gow") scored a stunning 3-point victory over scandal-plagued William Jefferson on Saturday in Louisana's 2nd congressional district, the most Democratic district in the country. The Post notes that although Cao received very little attention--and even less money--from the GOP prior to his election, Minority Leader John Boehner issued a memo over the weekend declaring: "The future is Cao."

The GOP's gushing response to Cao's victory might reveal just how badly the party needed a win after November's drubbing, but Cao's amazing biography is surely doing more to fuel Cao-mania than GOP desperation. The American Specatator's Quin Hillyer profiled Cao a few weeks before the election:

Sit down and make yourself comfortable, because this is one of those stories you just won't want to miss. It's the kind of story for which this poor pen might not do justice. And it's the kind of story of which the world of politics needs more examples.

It's a story that effectively starts three days before the fall of Saigon in 1975, when eight-year-old Joseph Cao escaped South Vietnam with a brother and sister and eventually made his way to the United States, where he settled with his uncle. ... [He lived] in Indiana for four years, then resettled in Houston for high school, then earned a B.S. in physics in 1990 from Baylor University. Baylor is a Baptist university. But upon graduation, Cao joined the Jesuit order. For six years he remained a Jesuit -- novice, scholastic, regent -- while earning a graduate degree in philosophy from Fordham University, several times doing social (anti-poverty) work abroad (including in his native Vietnam) and then teaching philosophy at Loyola University of New Orleans.

But he was never ordained a priest. He had become interested in politics, and "religion and politics don't mix," he told me. Cao continued teaching philosophy at Loyola while attending Loyola's law school. (From physics to religion to philosophy to law -- quite the intellectual journey.) Along the line he married, and eventually fathered two children. He found that New Orleans East had a vibrant Vietnamese expatriate community boasting a nursery run by Vietnamese nuns and an active church. He set up a shingle as general-practice attorney. He was appointed in 2001 to the National Advisory Council for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He became a board member of a charter school, and a board member for a community development corporation that runs a medical clinic, a retirement center, and an urban farm.

Cao, who taught ethics at Loyola, told the New York Times that he'll be able to hold on to his seat in a heavily Democratic district because “I truly espouse Aristotle’s definition of virtue: To walk in the middle line.”

The Times also reported that "the central insight he appreciates from his philosophical masters, the Russian and French apostles of existentialism, is the rule for living that 'life is absurd but one cannot succumb to the absurdity of it.'" If this report from one local paper is any indication, Cao's appreciation of the absurd is holding up quite well following his victory:

"I'm hoping to get onto the Appropriations Committee and Ways and Means, " said Cao, listing two of the most powerful committees in Congress and unlikely perches for the most junior member of the minority party. He added that he would like to be on the committee to elect the first Vietnamese-American president. "That's a joke, " he explained, helpfully. ...

Cao was asked whether he was disappointed about anyone he hadn't heard from. Angelina Jolie, he said. And the pope.

So, Cao's got a great personality, but where does he stand on the issues? The Times reported that "he said he was wary of seeing 'U.S. forces too prematurely leave Iraq,' based on his appraisal of what happened in the Vietnam War." He's pro-life, too. But Cao focused his campaign mostly on local issues--like restoring his hurricane-ravaged community--and reforming government:

Our long national nightmare is over: Word is out in tech circles that all of Fox broadcasting will be in HD starting in 2009. Which includes Fox News Channel.

No longer will the visages of Brit Hume and Megyn Kelly be clouded in hideous low-definition. It's a great day for America.

The supreme nuance of Team Obama reared its quisling little head again today, at a press conference:

Asked what contact he'd had with the governor's office about his replacement in the Senate, President-elect Obama today said "I had no contact with the governor or his office and so we were not, I was not aware of what was happening."

But on November 23, 2008, his senior adviser David Axelrod appeared on Fox News Chicago and said something quite different.

While insisting that the President-elect had not expressed a favorite to replace him, and his inclination was to avoid being a "kingmaker," Axelrod said, "I know he's talked to the governor and there are a whole range of names many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them."

Obama addressed the Blagojevich matter at the top of a press conference with Gore, saying:

Like other Illinois citizens, he said, he is "saddened and sobered by the news that came out of the U.S. Attorney's office today, but as this is an ongoing investigation involving the governor, I don't it will be appropriate for me to comment on the issue at this time."

Video of the Axelrod statement:

A local Chicago TV report suggests that the busting of Blagojevich came together so fast because the governor reached out to none other than Rahm Emanuel about working some angles on the Senate seat, and Emanuel blew the whistle on him.

Update: Sen. Dick Durbin is suggesting the Illinois legislature set up a special election to pick Obama's successor instead of leaving it in the hands of Blagojevich, who has just been released on $4,500 bond.

The complaint on Blagojevich involves but does not implicate members of the Obama transition, most notably Valerie Jarrett, a high-level Obama adviser to whom Blagojevich was interested in selling the Senate seat.

Blagojevich was convinced that President-elect Barack Obama wanted senior adviser Valerie Jarrett appointed to the Senate seat and, time and again in the indictment, is quoted laying out a variety of scenarios by which he could benefit from such a move. The two most mentioned: 1) Trade a Jarrett appointment for a spot as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services in an Obama Cabinet 2) Name Jarrett to the Senate in exchange for Obama helping him to get a job as the head of Change to Win, a labor coalition.

Patrick Fitzgerald was careful to note that the complaint contained no allegations about the president-elect, himself. Obama's team is expected to have a statement, but has not released on yet:

"I should make clear the complaint makes no allegations about the president-elect whatsoever," said U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

Ben Smith notes the part of the 76-page document that suggests Obama's team didn't want to play ball on the Jarrett appointment.

"ROD BLAGOJEVICH said he knows that the President-elect wants Senate Candidate 1 for the Senate seat but 'they’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. F*** them,'" says the complaint.

This despite Blagojevich's repeated attempts to do a deal, using an SEIU official as the go-between, who Blago understood to be an "emissary to discuss Senate Candidate 1’s (Jarrett's) interest in the Senate seat.":

During the conversation with SEIU Official on November 12, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH informed SEIU Official that he had heard the President-elect wanted persons other than Senate Candidate 1 to be considered for the Senate seat. SEIU Official stated that he would find out if Senate Candidate 1 wanted
SEIU Official to keep pushing her for Senator with ROD BLAGOJEVICH. ROD BLAGOJEVICH said that “one thing I’d be interested in” is a 501(c)(4) organization. ROD BLAGOJEVICH explained the 501(c)(4) idea to SEIU Official and said that the 501(c)(4) could help “our new Senator [Senate Candidate 1].” SEIU Official agreed to “put that flag up and see where it goes.”

On November 12, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH talked with Advisor B. ROD BLAGOJEVICH told Advisor B that he told SEIU Official, “I said go back to [Senate Candidate 1], and, and say hey, look, if you still want to be a Senator don’t rule this out and then broach the idea of this 501(c)(4) with her.”

So, what did the transition team know about SEIU's machinations on Jarrett's behalf, and why did Blagojevich understand the official to be working as an "emissary?" Jarrett removed her name from consideration for the Senate seat. Perhaps the Obama team knew about the investigation, and Jarrett exited to avoid the taint of Blagojevich's moves on her behalf? If the SEIU was freelancing with Blagojevich, Obama's inclination to extend himself for Big Labor by pushing Congress on card check should shrink considerably.

The Smoking Gun has some of the more colorful Blagojevich quotes, illustrating the blatant nature of the corruption in question.

Blagojevich was caught on wiretaps noting that the Senate seat "is a [expletive] valuable thing, you just don't give it away for nothing." He was also recorded saying that unless "I get something real good," he would appoint himself to the vacancy. "I'm going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain. You hear what I'm saying. And if I don't get what I want and I'm not satisfied with it, then I'll just take the Senate seat myself."

There's more than that, specifically some Jesse-Jacksonian words about Obama, but none of it will make sense without the curse words, so click over if you want to read it (content warning).

A run-down of the code names in the document for various potential Senate candidates and other figures:

"Senate Candidate 1" is Jarrett. "Senate Candidate 2" is Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. Emil Jones, an Illinois state legislator, is "Senate Candidate 5." And "Senate Candidate 6" appears to be J.P. Pritzker, a wealthy Chicago businessman. Additionally, Rahm Emanuel, the incoming White House chief of staff, is referred to in the affidavit as "President-elect Advisor."

This is a huge news story, and should be for some time, economic problems notwithstanding. If there were Spitzer-like interludes on top of all of this, you'd be looking at wall-to-wall for the next three months. I wonder if it will be at all soft-pedaled by a media not wishing to follow too closely or dig too hard, lest they find the corruption creeping too close to Obama associates. They're already soft-pedaling party affiliation.

It will be hard for Obama to dismiss as a mere "distraction," given the inclusion of at least one member of his transition's name in the corruption (even if it was only at Blago's behest). Obama and Blagojevich have had a relationship for a while, as Obama advised the governor on his first gubernatorial run and endorsed him for reelection to his second term in 2006, saying many ill-advised overly complimentary things about him in the process.

No Republican could get away with this proximity to corruption without a full reckoning, and some aggressive P.R. work. Obama's own call for transparency during his transition should put the onus on him to reveal even more about its meetings than he has up until now. But then, no Republican could have gotten away with the proximity to Wright, Rezko, or Ayers that Obama got away with, either.

Update: RNC Chair Candidate Katon Dawson didn't waste any time making some hay out of this. The S.C. party chair sent this release out, calling on Obama to honor his promise of transparency:

"President-elect Obama's presidential transition team has said the American people should have a 'seat at the table' and pledged to expand transparency in decision-making. If President-elect Obama is serious, he should immediately release all records of discussions about the appointment of Obama's successor that he and his transition team may have had with Governor Blagojevich or Governor Blagojevich's office. The American people expect and deserve nothing less. When politicians like Governor Rod Blagojevich exploit the power of elected office for personal gain, they demonstrate a disregard for standards of integrity and ethical conduct. Governor Blagojevich's actions are breathtaking in their callousness and arrogance."

I don't know anyone who's completely happy with the proliferation of television ads for all manner of new drugs. I suspect we'd all be happy never to see "Bob, the Enzyte guy" again. But the general distaste over drug ads notwithstanding, Henry Waxman's cure seems likely to be worse than the disease:

Giving FDA the power to impose two-year moratoria on consumer ads for some new drugs will be a priority for Rep. Henry Waxman as he takes the reins of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Waxman (D-CA) told attendees at a Prescription Project conference in Washington yesterday that he would support legislation allowing the agency to ban ads for new drugs on a case-by-case basis for up to two years after approval.

“It is in these first few years of a drug's life that drug companies often aggressively market their products and engage in direct-to-consumer advertising,” Reuters quoted Waxman as saying. “This increases the number of consumer exposed to safety risks of new products long before those risks are truly understood.”

The Democrats always pitch themselves as the defender of the little guy, but here's another example of where they believe that that selfsame little guy can't be trusted to make decisions for himself. Apparently patients are learning about too many new drugs, and the only way to handle the problem is to allow the FDA to stifle free speech.

Is it really so terrible that patients learn about drugs, and then might ask their physicians to prescribe them? It would seem to encourage more informed patients and physicians. It might even give some patients access to new treatments that could greatly reduce their suffering. Isn't that worth some annoying television commercials?