Chirac and His Degringolade

The Economist has a summary of the French political scene which manages to neglect the news that President Chirac's bagman, former Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, has been indicted in the Oil-For-Food scandal. The Economist sums up the entire squalid French political hierarchy thus:

The electorate veers between indifference and repulsion. Talk to ordinary voters far from the Paris elite, and the overwhelming reaction is nausea. A Paris-Match poll last week suggested that the Clearstream affair ranked only tenth among subjects of conversation; top was petrol prices. 'For the electorate, the affair confirms the view that the political class is a separate caste that does not apply to itself the rules it applies to others,' comments Dominique Reyni?, a political scientist at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques.

The big loser besides the discredited buffoon Chirac is his silly Prime Minister, who has never won an election for any office, but whose pretensions are Napoleonic in envergure.

For the time being, Mr Chirac declares confidence in his enfeebled prime minister. But pressure is building among restless UMP deputies, fearful for their jobs after the election next year. Mr Chirac dislikes reacting in the middle of a storm. Yet when the country is distracted by the soccer World Cup this summer, a switch of prime ministers cannot be ruled out.

Mr. Sarkozy is unlikely to take the doomed poisoned chalice of the PM job in the last year of a presidency repudiated by the French electorate. The socialists have an excellent chance to pick up the presidency if they select the new phenom on the left, Segolene Royal, but politics in France is always rife with self-destruction, so there is a chance the Socialists will implode before selecting their candidate.
And in the bowels of the infrastructure of France lurks the Phantom of the Opera---

the far-right National Front. Its leader, Jean-Marie le Pen, has long played on disaffection with the elite as much as on xenophobic nationalism. Over the past month, according to a TNS-Sofr?s poll, his popularity has jumped by four points to 18%—his best rating since 1996.

That might not seem high, but given the volatile banlieues and the intense disaffection of the electorate for the political elites---could Gen. Boulanger be the solution? Le viellard on horseback!

Baltimore: Crime to Go to Baseball Game

If you have any questions about why Baltimore MD is one of the most crime-ridden racist urban ratholes in North America, read how a couple of baseball fans were treated by a so-called police officer.

I will bet you the ultra-left tabloid Baltimore Sun won't even carry the story, especially because the black female police officer is sure to get off without a reprimand, and this urban sewer will remain bleak testimony to decades of Democratic Party misrule in the city and state of Maryland.

I hope that Republican candidate for Senate Steele wins the November election.

I am Da Vine, Where is Da Vinci?

The New York Times A.O. Scott is the latest reviewer to damn the DV Code with the faintest of praise:

Ron Howard's adaptation of Dan Brown's best-selling primer on how not to write an English sentence, arrives trailing more than its share of theological and historical disputation.

The arguments about the movie and the book that inspired it have not been going on for millennia — it only feels that way — but part of Columbia Pictures' ingenious marketing strategy has been to encourage months of debate and speculation while not allowing anyone to see the picture until the very last minute. Thus we have had a flood of think pieces on everything from Jesus and Mary Magdalene's prenuptial agreement to the secret recipes of Opus Dei, and vexed, urgent questions have been raised: Is Christianity a conspiracy? Is "The Da Vinci Code" a dangerous, anti-Christian hoax? What's up with Tom Hanks's hair?

Luckily I lack the learning to address the first two questions. As for the third, well, it's long, and so is the movie. "The Da Vinci Code," which opened the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, is one of the few screen versions of a book that may take longer to watch than to read. (Curiously enough Mr. Howard accomplished a similar feat with "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" a few years back.)

To their credit the director and his screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman (who collaborated with Mr. Howard on "Cinderella Man" and "A Beautiful Mind"), have streamlined Mr. Brown's story and refrained from trying to capture his, um, prose style. "Almost inconceivably, the gun into which she was now staring was clutched in the pale hand of an enormous albino with long white hair." Such language — note the exquisite "almost" and the fastidious tucking of the "which" after the preposition — can live only on the page.

A.O. has a lot of fun with this review:

In spite of some talk (a good deal less than in the book) about the divine feminine, chalices and blades, and the spiritual power of sexual connection, not even a glimmer of eroticism flickers between the two stars. Perhaps it's just as well. When a cryptographer and a symbologist get together, it usually ends in tears.

A reader review sums up the entire viewing experience:

Phenomenally bad film with director, writer and actors all guilty. I am reeling, having just been Hollywoodized. This film drags and drags and ends not a moment too soon. Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou mail it in, while Bettany and McKellen ham it up. Director Ron Howard takes zero chances. Everything that makes the book interesting, if not well-written, is absent from this stationary lump of a movie, which is about as controversial as vanilla.

Guess a boycott would not be necessary if the first forty reviews on the RottenTomatometer are going to be typical---19% favorable.

Iraq: Twice as Safe as NOLA [before the flood]

The New York Sun puts some perspective on just how badly the MSM is distorting the situation in Iraq. Alicia Colon writes:

I happened to catch Rep. Steve King, a Republican of Iowa, on C-span last week and he rattled off some startling figures that demonstrate how off-base journalists are when it comes to reporting on the war in Iraq. According to Mr. King, the violent death rate in Iraq is 25.71 per 100,000. That may sound high, but not when you compare it to places like Colombia (61.7), South Africa (49.6), Jamaica (32.4), and Venezuela (31.6). How about the violent death rates in American cities? New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina was 53.1. FBI statistics for 2004-05 have Washington at 45.9, Baltimore at 37.7, and Atlanta at 34.9.

Hmmm.... MSM misrepresentations of the situation in Iraq? Who wouldda thunkit?
Colon continues:

On a daily basis, mainstream journalists are spewing out anything they can that is negative about the Bush administration, regardless of whether the information threatens our national security. Leaking highly classified information to the public during a war should be grounds for criminal investigations. Instead,it’s been deemed worthy of reward.

Dana Priest of the Washington Post received a Pulitzer for reporting that the CIA was holding terrorist suspects in secret European prisons. The New YorkTimes exposed intimate details of the CIA charter flights ferrying prisoners overseas. The names of the charter companies were disclosed and the Times even ran a picture displaying the identification number of one of the aircraft. Al Qaeda must be so grateful to these newspapers for doing all their legwork.

Now the big brouhaha is about the phone-number database that the government maintains, and we’re supposed to get upset that our civil rights are being invaded. I don’t care if the FBI has my phone number — Radio Shack, Macy’s, and the New YorkTimes have it as well. Besides, the phone companies that are cooperating with the government are furnishing only numbers, not names and addresses. NSA is looking for patterns to detect terrorist activity, not to record your conversations with your mother.

Before the phone database furor, there was the “wiretap” uproar. Let’s be clear: Wiretapping is what Democrat Robert Kennedy did to Martin Luther King Jr. There is a huge difference between that activity and eavesdropping on communications between America and other countries to thwart potential terrorist attacks

She quotes Thomas Sowell, who asks the question Fourth Estate or Fifth Column?

"With all the turmoil and bloodshed in Iraq, both military and civilian people returning from that country are increasingly expressing amazement at the difference between what they have seen with their own eyes and the far worse, one-sided picture that the media presents to the public here."

The Pulitzer farce just scratches the surface of the ultra-left's campaign to destroy American values by destroying America's morale:

Another Pulitzer went to the Times-Picayune of New Orleans, which tied with a paper in Biloxi, Miss., for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina. That much of the coverage was a pack of lies meant absolutely nothing to the Pulitzer panel. Nevertheless, the distorted coverage did its job. The nation was outraged at the horrific images conjured up by the newspapers. Forty bodies were stacked in freezers, reporter Brian Thevenot wrote — or were they? Mr.Thevenot later admitted that he never verified that information before rushing it into print. His reporting, too, won a Pulitzer.

Maybe we should start awarding a new journalism award for uncovering the absolute truth, regardless of who’s in office. Wouldn’t that be unique?

Yes, it would, Alicia.

Chicken Little Gorebot: Sky Will Fall in 10 Years!

I wonder which coked-out alum of Beverly Hills High is picking up the tab for the
Inconvenient Conjecture Not Supported by Science experimental film shown by a wacko science teacher who obsesses about the end of the world to her students who get a half-day off.

Wonder what the SAT scores of that zoo look like?

School is nearly out for summer, but before the break, students at Beverly Hills High will get a "Heat Day" -- when they get to ditch class to see Al Gore's new movie!

On May 24, 2006, 1,500 Beverly Hills High School students will be boarding 30 gas-guzzling buses across town to see Al Gore's new global warming film 'AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH' at the Arclight Theatre in Hollywood, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Sarah Utley, a science teacher at Beverly Hills High School, explained in an e-mail to staff and students: "This field trip has been funded by a very generous alum!... You get to see the film for free!!!"

Utley would not reveal who is financing the school outing to mark the opening day of the movie.

"We need parent volunteers who can ride the buses and sit in the theatre," Utley said in her pitch. "The buses are arriving at 8:00am and will arrive back at BHHS by 1:00pm."

The film's urgent trailer warns: "Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced."

Insiders claim that Utley has annoyed some students with her instance that "global warming" is a proven science.

"She is obsessed with it," said one source. "Can't we just go see 'X-MEN?'"

X-MEN just might be a bit more realistic than the blatherfest Gore is putting out.

Scotia Nostra

The Economist has an article on-line describing how devolution in Scotland has led to a land bedeviled by red tape, socialism-by-a-thousand-cuts, and out-and-out graft/hanky panky.

the propensity to spend is strong. Almost everything that the parliament has done to distinguish itself from its London counterpart has cost money, and its two main innovations may well be unsustainable: waiving student tuition fees means compensating universities (or assuring them an ever-sinking status), and free care for the elderly is a terrifying blank cheque in a country whose pensioners are expected to increase by 35% (to 1.3m) in the next 25 years, while those of working age are forecast to fall by 7% (to 3m).

Scotland's politicians, however, have been more interested in settling some old class-war scores than in shrinking the state. One of their first priorities was to ban hunting (embarrassingly, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, the Labour member whose acute sense of morality prompted him in 1999 to introduce the bill, was last year given a prison sentence for arson committed in an Edinburgh hotel after the Scottish Politician-of-the-Year awards).

Then came land reform, largely directed at “feudal” landowners. Some aspects of the legislation were good: the laws of access were clarified. Some were bad: crofters (hereditary tenants of small farms), many of whom live and work in distant cities, now have the right to buy not only their croft but also any fishing and mineral rights, so long as they form a "community," even if the landowner has no wish to sell. Some will have unintended results: the changes designed to increase the number of tenancies for farmers are having the opposite effect. None will save money: the purchase by their inhabitants of islands such as Gigha under new right-to-buy laws has largely been made possible by huge grants from the taxpayer.

Almost everything that the parliament has done to distinguish itself from its London counterpart has cost money, and its two main innovations may well be unsustainableThe ban on smoking in indoor public places, introduced at the end of March, falls into the nanny-state, not the class-war, category. It is, however, equally typical. Self-government has not merely brought an 18% increase in employment in the Scottish Executive's main departments and a 40% increase in jobs in quangos, it has also brought a flurry of new regulations. Tourists who struggle all the way to Orkney in the far north to visit Maeshowe, a remarkable neolithic tomb, may, for instance, find it closed by Historic Scotland because of “high winds”, even in August. The production of red tape—the issuance of statutory instruments provides a good proxy—far outpaces that of Harris tweed.

Banana-skin republic

The new parliament has not pulled all the best, or even best-known, Scottish politicians back home. Only about a score returned from Westminster, and they did not include such Labour luminaries as Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Robin Cook, John Reid or Alistair Darling. Donald Dewar was an exception. His early death robbed Holyrood of its first premier—known as "first minister"—and one of its few members who was widely admired. Scandal, albeit a small one over expenses, claimed his successor, Henry McLeish. The present incumbent is Jack McConnell, the only one of the three not to have served at Westminster. A product of local government—which, especially in the west, is richly peopled in many minds with "numpties," ie, bone-headed placemen—he has conspicuously chosen not to give ministerial jobs to several capable colleagues.

Mr McConnell, too, has been caught up in controversy—scandal would be too strong a word—for failing to declare as an "interest" a brief holiday with a well-known television presenter, Kirsty Wark, and her husband in their villa in Majorca. In truth, the episode revealed more about Ms Wark and the small world of the Scottish establishment, often known as the Scotia Nostra. Ms Wark, it turned out, was a woman of many parts: fearless public-interest inquisitor on the telly, old friend of the first minister, founder of a company chosen by BBC Scotland to make a film about the new parliament building, and member of the panel that had originally selected its design. Fancy.

Looks like the Irish, who went sensibly to sound fiscal management and encouragement of the private sector, and built a booming economy, have reversed the traditional identities of the two entities as the newly-independent Scots spend wildly, build a gigantic bureaucracy, conduct low-intensity class warfare, and export their most talented politicians---Adam Smith must be revolving at a thousand RPMs! And a whiff of scandal with the BBC to boot!

Failure of Nerve?

The Financial Times has a pay-per-view commentary piece which again demonstrates how far FT soars above the squalid agitprop of US MSM purveyors of tabloid leftism like the NYT, LAT, and their groupies on the left.

In 1900, most westerners were confident and optimistic, full of pride about their civilisation. Since then, the west has made enormous strides in economic, scientific, military, political and social terms. Yet the earlier confidence has gone.

We have stopped believing in the ideas that drove earlier generations to improve the world. Six main ideas made the west, century after century, progressively successful, powerful, and attractive – Christianity, optimism, science, economic growth, individualism and liberalism. Are these ideas past their sell-by date?

The article is written by Richard Koch and Lord Smith, co-authors of a book "Suicide of the West" and goes on to say:

"Today many of us do not believe in the soul or Christ. In a way, however, we all still believe the Christian message. We believe we have a self, just as we have arms and legs. With the idea of the soul safely transmuted in the idea of the self, Christianity has permanently changed the west. The modern self-help movement best exemplifies the central Christian innovation---personal responsibility."

When I first worked overseas in Beirut in the early '70s, just before the outbreak of the twenty-plus year civil war among the many sects of Christians, Muslims, and over the border to the south, Jews, I noticed something very different from the US which I had just departed.

Everyone commented on the political situation which was rapidly falling apart, but in a context that each observer noted was the fault of a sect or denomination or party other than his own---given the twenty-odd major affiliations available in Lebanon, this was understandable. The cohesion of Lebanese society was crumbling, and soon it would be a war of all against all.

But each local observer, with almost no exceptions, would note that his own party, social stratum, sect, or ethnicity was a victim of the aggression of others. My Lebanese Assyrian Christian landlord kept an arsenal in his bedroom because he was convinced that the Muslims would come to kill him and ravish his women--wife and daughters. And the town of Suq-al-Gharb, where I lived, did get destroyed later in the conflict---albeit partly by US naval gunfire, it was reported!

So there is reason for paranoia, because enemies are out there somewhere. But it is important for Americans and Europeans to bear in mind that we must avoid the fractious factionalism that results in tragedies like Lebanon.

As the authors finish up their FT Op-Ed piece, they note that aside from the neo-conservatives pushing for aggressive imposition of democracy around the world, we must guard against:

"...ultra-liberalism, the relativists who see nothing special about western liberal society, who deny personal responsibility and incubate the "victim mentality."....
Western civilization has reached a fork in the road. Down one road lie cynicism, aggression, indifference, neo-conservatism and ultra-liberalism. Down the other lie a recovery of nerve, confidence in ourselves and our culture, unity within and between America and Europe, a society of individuals held together by self-improvement, striving, optimism, reason, compassion, equality and mutual identity. The road chosen will determine whether our civilization collapses or reaches its destiny."

As the piece mentioned in its beginning, the "central Christian innovation..[is]..personal responsibility."

Secular reformers like to pin every shortcoming in American politics and society on the values of a religious education. They want to throw out the baby of Christianity with the bathwater of lapses in Christian behavior.

On a weekend when The Da Vinci Code, a movie dedicated to scandalizing Christians and non-Christians alike with blasphemous lies under the guise of entertainment, we should bear in mind that Christianity and its insistance on the value of the human soul lies as the foundation and basis of our western civilization.

Da Vinci Code Actor Calls Bible "Fiction"

Ah, it's always good to see Matt Lauer doing his every-imbecile interviews at Cannes Film Festival serving as a straight man for flick-flacks peddling their hooey while Katie Couric festers at home back in NYC!

Today, Matt was his usual speechless punching-bag self [Tom Cruise bruised him badly while Matt emitted nary a whimper] as John Gielgud's long-time boyfriend Ian McKellam predictably called the Bible "worthy of a fiction disclaimer" in the incessant publicity parade leading up to the Da Vinci Code's US release on Friday.

Nothing like insulting other peoples' beliefs to drive up the Box Office numbers. Oh, by the way, "Rotten Tomatoes" website has 0% favorable reviews out of six so far for the ponderous "bloated" epic. I read the book Holy Blood Holy Grail in the early '80's and couldn't put it down, and Dan Brown's book was relatively slow-paced. I guess the third time is not the charm in trotting out a ridiculous parody of a Black Mass that might, like Oliver Stone's JFK, otherwise have become the lore of the land.

My Daddy Makes Me Write This!

Max Boot writes a devastating review of the latest diatribe by a defrocked Catholic priest who has decided that everyone else is to blame for his own perfidious wreck of a life.

Of course, "everyone else" would mean first and foremost this gelded freak's father,

an Air Force general who was the first director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in the 1960s. Unfortunately, Mr. Carroll already told that story in a previous tome, "An American Requiem" (1996). Here he incessantly cites his parentage and his childhood visits to the Pentagon to lend unwarranted authority to antimilitary and anti-American pronouncements of the sort that undoubtedly drove his dad batty. "I have the eyes of a soldier's son, through which, unfortunately, I see everything," he writes with mock humility. (Note that "unfortunately"--oh, what a curse omniscience is.) In reality he sees nothing beyond his own ideological blinders.

I read Carroll's first book, a waste of money, but interesting anecdotally. This deranged priest represents the mass psychosis which the ultra-left tries incessantly to perpetrate with the help of big media and Hollywood---Carroll himself would be full of pride to be called an apostle of an anti-Christ.

In contrast, Garry Wills is a sort of sane representative of the left---of course, Wills probably has 50 IQ points and is not fixated on his father as Carroll obviously is. Wills was a Jesuit postulant in his youth, left the Order, and became a writer on the right when it was not fashionable, then flipped to the left a la Andrew Sullivan---just in time for the Reagan ascendancy, which Wills has treated with much more insight than the frivolous whiner Carroll.

Unfortunately, there is a whole series of booknote programs on C-Span, Charlie Rose, and network Morning Shows on CNN, MSNBC, and the broadcast beacons of the left all to be cluttered with this psycho/ex-priest peddling his ultra-left rubbish.

Of course, he will hit the academicide circuit with dozens of drone hives available to expatiate on the evils America has brought on the world, with some students lapping this up as they strive toward degrees in psychology, sociology, African studies, and women's studies.

This phony racketeer of self-hatred should go back to the Boston Globe where projection of self-hatred upon the USA and authority in general is a mandatory illusion.

I'd love to hear Carroll's views on the Da Vinci Code!

Good Fences Make Great Neighbors

As I blogged a while back in April, the need for some sort of border blockade or fence, other than sporadic patrols by Border Patrol agents and National Guardsmen, appears obvious.

It appears that GWB is his father's son. GWB is more stubborn and inflexible than Poppy, but like his father wants to be liked and is also a compromiser at heart.

At any event, CNN reports a 67% approval poll for the Immigration speech.

Pins in Dem Balloons

Although Bush may be suffering a slow decline in his polls, the resuscitating political corpse of Chicken Little Al Gore [covers on Wired, Vanity Fair, and an SNL guest slot last night arestill lower at a miniscule 28% as the public still doesn't give him credibility as a national figure---despite the HuffingtonPuffington windiness from the ultra-left, where Gore has made his final resting place. [HT: Mickey Kaus]

John Kerry is also below Bush with about a 26% approval rating.

Rupert Murdoch, no dummy when it comes to spotting a winner, has picked Hillary Rodham C as the probable pony the Dems will bring to the starting post in 2008. Despite her astounding negatives, close to the 50% level, she has a better shot at the Big House [of the White variety] than her Democratic friends on the left.

If McCain's health holds up and he stays out of political thickets, the Arizona Solon should be an acceptable pick for the Republicans, who may finally accept him as a probable winner---as opposed to a Republican who is unnominateable like Giuliani. Or a sure-fire loser like Frist or any other lackluster Rep Senator you care to choose. Only Mitt Romney seems to have any sizzle among the Reps besides McCain and Giuliani, and Ralph G is pro-abortion. Mitt might face an anti-Mormon bias, but he did score well in the straw poll in Memphis last month.

Hillary might beat every Rep except McCain, and he might not be healthy two years from now. Or he might shoot himself in the foot, although he has recovered from that in the past.

Dems: Better to Lose than to Win?

The New York Times has an interesting article by Adam Nagourney that suggests that the Democrats might have a better chance to sweep the table in 2008 if they do not win control of the House and Senate this coming November.

Adam also gives Nancy Pelosi a semi-sideswipe:

"....gives them freedom to be critics. There's a certain liberating aspect of being in the minority in the short term, but I don't recommend it in the long term."

Another worry is whether some Democrats would use their power in what could be perceived as payback against Republicans. Party leaders like Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, have talked of investigations into allegations of malfeasance across all parts of the Bush administration.

Some Democrats argue that such investigations are long overdue in order to expose and correct a pattern of abuses by the administration. But others differ.

"Revenge — that's what we have to avoid," said Joe Andrews, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, adding that it's dangerous to talk "about what are you going to do to the guys you beat, as opposed to what are you going to do for the people."

"If the first thing that happens is a series of investigations, or committee restructurings, it will clearly sour people on the party and make it more difficult to win in 2008," he said. "As a practical matter would Democrats be able to restrain themselves?"

Democrats and self-restraint? Don't bet on it with terminal cases like John Conyers and other prospective committee chairmen full of bile saved up over the decade since 1994 when they lost their House majority. Nagourney is not a Pelosi fan, anyway:

The new Democratic leaders will also find themselves under new scrutiny. On "Meet the Press" last Sunday, Ms. Pelosi, who would become speaker if Democrats take back the House, came across as tentative and halting when questioned about her party's plans. Even though Ms. Pelosi enjoys notable support in her party, her performance was panned even by fellow Democrats. "I was screaming at the TV as if it were Bush being interviewed," wrote Stephen Kaus, a lawyer and contributor to huffingtonpost.com, a liberal blog.

My guess might be that the Dems will win back the House this Fall, but Pelosi and Co. will exhibit such amateurish behavior that 2008 might see the House retaken by the Republicans after a refreshing time-out to relocate the goalposts.

Republicans in Disarray, but is there Hope?

The Elephant in the Living Room in the 2006 Fall elections most likely will be the Immigration issue, a thorny problem for the two wings of the Republican Party, the urban shareholder libertarians who favor more low-wage labor and the isolationist religious conservatives who favor a Fence and oppose amnesty for law-breaking trespassers already in the country.

There is an issue which can unite Republicans. The protection of our nation from international terrorists---mostly of the Islamic variety---by surveillance of phone and internet communications is, to my knowledge, supported by nearly all Republicans. It is also supported by moderate Democrats whose concern for civil liberties is balanced by sensible measures taken to protect the country from Al-Qaeda franchisees plotting to penetrate American security.

Therefore, it behooves the Democratic leadership to exercise self-restraint, often a rare commodity on the left, when it undertakes what the New York Times calls "an opening:"

Democrats say that sharply declining support for the war in Iraq and Republican political miscalculations like the administration's initial support for turning over some United States port operations to a Dubai company have cut into the historical Republican strength on security issues. At the same time, Mr. Bush's own standing on the handling of the campaign against terrorism has dropped significantly.

The balance between civil liberties and national security makes for combustible politics, as Sen Reid from Nevada acknowledges:

[One Senator] expected Republicans to try to turn the confirmation hearings into a referendum on who is against terrorism.

Mr. Reid, the Democratic leader, agreed that Republicans might try to use the hearings and the focus on the surveillance programs to regain momentum on security issues. He said that Democrats would approach the nomination with an open mind but that they would not sell Republicans short when it came to political tactics.

"They have taken us to the cleaners twice," he said, referring to the last two election cycles. "I am certainly not going to underestimate their abilities. We have to keep our eyes on the prize."

With mikeaholics like Arlen Specter and Chuck Schumer in the mix, there are plenty of opportunities for showboating by the Senate on this issue.

If the Republicans can find a way to tie illegal immigration with the national security issue, there might be a way for them to win back their majority status in the Fall electiosn.

Whacko Left Can't Believe Polls

Live by polls, die by polls. Committed hard-core civil liberties fanatics simply cannot fathom how the American people do not reflexively react in a paranoid fashion when the government takes measures to protect national security. For an extreme view of the lawyerly left on this subject, take a look at how Glenn Greenwald reacts to the good sense of the American people.

Maybe living in NYC has convinced this privacy fanatic that big govt listens:

Let's have a few days of debate over whether Americans actually want the Government to maintain a permanent data base of every call they make and receive -- to their girlfriends and boyfriends, their doctors and lawyers, their psychiatrists and drug counselors.

Then, as all lefties do, he goes on to lie big-time:

As the debate over the NSA scandal became more informed and more Americans understood the issues at stake, virtually every poll thereafter showed that a majority or plurality of Americans oppose warrantless eavesdropping and/or believe the President broke the law, and some even show that a plurality favors the Censure Resolution. Opinions change when people stand up and explain why what the Government is doing is wrong and dangerous, and Americans respect politicians who are willing to do that even when -- especially when -- they are not guaranteed by the consulting class ahead of time that they will win.

This creepy left-winger demonstrates why the ultra-left is regarded with such disdain by Democrats who want to win the Presidency. The fact is that the American people approve wiretapping in principle. Like a true lawyer, he neglects the big picture to niggle over a flawed FISA system, as the REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF 9/11 by the House Permanent Select and Senate Select Intelligence Ctes. noted in 2003:

12. Finding: During the summer of 2001, when the Intelligence Community was bracing for an imminent al-Qa’ida attack, difficulties with FBI applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) surveillance and the FISA process led to a diminished level of coverage of suspected al-Qa’ida operatives in the United States. The effect of these difficulties was compounded by the perception that spread among FBI personnel at Headquarters and the field offices that the FISA process was lengthy and fraught with peril.
"If not addressed, these weaknesses will continue to undercut U.S. counter terrorist efforts." [xvi]

No matter that the FISA system is flawed and perhaps not even constitutional. First Amendment lawyers supposedly know better about how to defend the country against terrorists, sure, and you can be sure that they will also line up to defend the terrorists after they commit their crimes against the American people.



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Hamas/Israel Standoff

The Economist has a sad run-down of the economic hardships in Gaza and the West Bank as the boycott against Hamas continues.

Israel showed remarkable restraint recently when a suicide bomber killed 9 innocent civilians in Tel Aviv without an immediate reprisal by Israel against Palestinian targets. Hamas had the effrontery to call a suicide bombing "legitimate self-defense!"

With that sort of government in power, the Quartet and international NGOs will hardly be scrambling to supply Hamas with humanitarian assistance. Mahmoud Abbas does not support refusal to recognize Israel, but his Presidential office cannot handle distribution of funds to PA government offices.

Perhaps Arab nations or Islamic hardline states like Iran might enable the PA to get enough funding to pay their bills, but Israel should not have to sustain a neighboring country which refuses to recognize its right to exist.

Bush Damned by Faint Praise

The left-leaning Mainstream Media has underreported consistently the good news about the American economy, barely mentioning a 4.8 increase in GDP and lower unemployment numbers. At the same time, gas price increases are trumpeted in Apocalyptic fashion, as though GWB were able to decrease prices at will. The fact that big oil is making record profits plays into the hands of business-hating social engineers.

Now the FT reports that two-thirds of Americans own their own homes [although the homes are normally heavily mortgaged]. People who own property tend to vote, and they tend to vote Republican.

The Democrats specialize in supercilious commentaries on Bush's sustained economic recovery, which they gnash their teeth about [especially Paul Krugman, a so-called "economist" who keeps forecasting gloom and doom to no avail], but insist is based on all sorts of false indicators and gloom-inducing trade and fiscal deficits. They insist that the average American has not participated in the economic fiesta, while at the same time supporting illegal immigration which naturally drives down the average wages of lower and lower-middle class Americans.

One of these Left Coast commentators, a moderate Democrat named Howard Fineman takes Bush to task for lowering taxes, contrary to the Democratic mantra that taxes must rise:

It would, among other things, extend by two years the Bush-era’s reductions in taxes on capital gains and dividends. The claim is that doing so will sustain overall economic growth (which has been pretty impressive, even though Bush gets no credit for it.) But the real political target is somewhat narrower: the estimated 60 million Americans who own stock.

Bush and the GOP talk earnestly about their vision of an “ownership society.” And maybe it’s true that they want everybody to be part of it. In the meantime, however, they will focus on trying to secure the support, or at least the acquiescence, of voters with portfolios. They aren't the stereotypical country club Republicans of old, by the way; they include tens of millions of middle-class Americans — ancestral Democrats — who nevertheless don’t want Congress to do anything that would depress the value of their 401 (k)s.

The idea is to get Democrats to vote against the tax-cut bill — ANY tax-cut bill. Let the op-ed pages rail about the deficit and the debt; the White House survivalists won’t care if they can find a way to accuse the Democrats of "wanting to raise taxes."

People who own stock are shareholders with a stake in the economy. People who own stock tend to vote, and to vote Republican, even in off-year elections.

Remember when the MSM used to trumpet "It's the economy, stupid!" while Clinton did his best to stay out of international efforts to stem the growth of Islamic terrorism?

Now that the economy is booming, and shows no sign of letting up, the same MSM is silent, hoping that its client Democratic Party will somehow stumble into power despite the fact that the average American is doing better than ever.

Hyperventilation over Phone Databases?

The Hardball Report had a level-headed interview with a young ex-NSC staffer under both Bush and Clinton who warned about "hyperventilating" about the phonecall database, as there were no listening devices or other infringements on privacy other than patterns of calls.

Prevention of another terrorist attack on US soil does require some careful examination of communications across the board. Although Able Danger had the name of Mohammed Atta, the program was shut down because of jitters about the 4th Amendment.

A nation ruled by lawyers is operating at a handicap when national security comes under nit-picking by attorneys with an agenda.

Fox Down 17% CNN Down 38%--Quick, what's the LAT Headline?

Mickey Kaus led me to this entertaining LAT story, which buries the lede about 10 paragraphs into the "story," which demonstrates why the LAT has lost so many subscribers in the last year more than anything about Fox News.

Sublimely fatuous Jon Klein at CNN says the network is down because, well Dobbs is way up [because of Lou's sudden espousal of a rightist stance on immigration, and you can read what else the failed successor to CNN failure Eason Jordan has to say at Patterico who dissects the LAT, Klein, CNN and robo-dope Olbermann in an extended autopsy.

Hillary and Fox News---Engaged or Just Seeing Each Other?

Drudgereport signals that Hillary Clinton and Rupert Murdoch may have made one of those strategic alliances Murdoch is famous for---especially the long-shot bet on Tony Blair back when Murdoch was a dyed-in-the-wool Conservative [he still is conservative, but no longer wears wool].

This may be an indication that the hapless, ham-handed handling of the Iraq War by the GWB team, allied to the traditional tilt of the MSM to the left, has convinced Murdoch that the dozen years since the Contract with America may have made the Republicans ripe for minority status. And Rupert like the Godfather does not regard these realignments as personal, just business.

So HRC's hands-across-the-water to the Great Right Wing Conspiracy may engender more than just favorable news coverage for her campaign. Like the Fox TV broadcast network, Fox Cable might move into the front of the news provider pack as the MSM eases off on the cultural hostility the left harbors toward conservative news orgs.

Next question: when is the NYT going to ease off on the editorials embedded in its news copy?

Another question: when is Nancy Pelosi going to stop sounding like Karl Rove on steroids speeding on crystal meth?

Slate's take on Nancy forgets to mention her colossal genius on display the previous time she piped up the band---the great John Murtha hyperendorsement followed 15 minutes later by Steny Hoyer's statement that Nancy "speaks for herself" when it comes to Democratic Party leadership issues.

Can't wait for paragons of integrity in the Dem house lineup like Maxine Waters, Patrick Kennedy, Cynthia McKinney and John Conyers to begin investigation on the Bush WMD. And don't forget [like the MSM obviously has] NOLA Rep Jefferson and WV Rep Mollohan!

Duke University Prez gulled by Corrupt Durham DA

A report commissioned by Duke University demonstrates both the gullibility of the Duke Administration in believing the Durham Police Dept. and the dishonesty of DA Mike Nifong in using the case to get elected, thanks to hysteria by brain-dead constituents and TV cable court anchoresses.

Tawana Brawley never had it this good. It took DA-designate [Nifong had never been elected to anything, contrary to CNN Nancy Grace who kept repeating "elected" in her addled histrionics over the case]Mike N. a week to figure out that the demented rapee-suspect was the ticket to his actual election to be DA.

A Duke U commission has unearthed the fact that the crazy woman in police custody first claimed she was raped by 20 lacrosse players, then was talked back to three.

The MSM as usual was too flimflammed by PC considerations to get closer to the facts, but hysterics like CNN's Grace and other wack-job lawyerettes poured gasoline on the flames shooting for ratings.

No Pulitzers on the horizon for this case, it seems. But girlie-man DA Nifong finally got elected to something after two and a half decades of second-rate service. Check off Duke as another school just as bad as Tom Wolfe's book I Am Charlotte Simmons portrayed it to be.

Aaron Brown's Posthumous Victory over Anderson Cooper

Despite the Cabalmeisters Graydon Carter and Jann Wenner's strenuous efforts, the Nibelung strategy to boost Anderson Cooper into MSM superhero status continues to falter.

Or could it be part of CNN's feckless [successor to feckless Eason Jordan] Jon Klein's herculean efforts to utterly destroy CNN's brand, at least in its news division, by offing Brown and jabbermouth ratings winner Larry King to gain some sort of cred as a counter to Fox behemoths in the nighttime cable lineup.

If Klein and his chattering-class Vanity Fair/Rolling Stone allies have a plan, it has not worked for Anderson, a nice enough fellow, but without gravitas or perspective to match his predecessor, Aaron Brown, whose opinions were always couched in terms that were accessible, if not always believable.

Cooper is in touch with his own passionate inner-child, but does this guarantee viewers, especially with the geriatrics still awake after 10PM?

Perhaps if the hyperventilating Klein would switch Cooper with Wolf Blitzer, the kiddie-corps demo that CNN aims at would occasionally watch the news. But then again, maybe not. Hard nowadays to make the news watchable unless it's infotainment.

Hayden a Rumsfeld Stooge or Rice Ally?

The announcement has not been made yet, but it looks like Gen. Michael Hayden will be nominated to head the CIA after Porter Goss's abrupt departure. The Washington Post has a rather sophomoric article dithering about Hayden's non-conformist MOs "despite his military background," as if the military were tin-soldiers moved about at the whims of their superiors.

Two Republicans who might cause problems are the head of the House Intelligence Committee and the spotlight-seeking Arlen Specter, always trying to outdo Chuck Schumer as the most ridiculous mike-aholic on the Hill.

Hayden's investiture hearings will, of course, bring to the fore the NSA wiretapping of Americans and illegal aliens living in America suspected of being in contact with Al-Qaeda, a civil liberties issue for the paranoid left and their MSM allies.

However, this will also bring into the spotlight the efforts of the Administration to fight terrorist attempts to replicate 9/11 or at least to pull off a Madrid or London mass mayhem black eye on America and its feckless flatfooted inability to even protect itself, let alone its allies, against fanatical suicidal terrorism. The MSM wants to treat the whole problem as a fight against crime and criminals, not a global war on terrorism and an alien ideology of religious conquest.

Hayden might resign his four-star commission to take on the job. He will gratify the senior CIA officials with his appointment, the article notes, as he is well-placed to defend CIA turf against Goliath Rumsfeld and his Pentagon Empire-Builders. However, Negroponte appears to be the new Rumsfeld on the block, and is snatching CIA counterterrorist assets to staff his own CTU [shades of 24!] in the Negroponte crusade to actually make his new job meaningful and effective.

Hayden gets on well with Negroponte and has worked with Rice in the NSC. He just might be the right fellow to get the CIA back into forward gear after the WMD debacle under Tenet and Goss's "Gosslings'" deconstruction and destruction of senior CIA operational staff.

Ed Morrissey believes the Congressional Hearings are going to be the GWB Gettysburg in the GWOT:

....conservatives will appreciate Hayden and rally to support his nomination. Picking a fight with the Democrats gives the White House yet another argument to paint Democrats as soft on national security, hoping that the solid majority in favor of the NSA intercept program will eventually wear his opposition down once and for all.

The Democrats, on the other hand, hope to force Hayden to issue enough refusals to answer questions and keep the answers he does provide so vague as to wear down that majority support -- and with it, Bush's base of support for the war itself. That's the risk that Bush runs with the appointment of Hayden, and with Feingold on the committee, the risk is real enough. If Feingold begins to get traction during these hearings, more Democrats will start calling for further hearings on the NSA and Bush. If not, he can kiss his presidential aspirations goodbye.

This hearing will have much more impact and volatility than the Alito and Roberts hearings. Much more rides on its outcome than a judicial confirmation. The result will likely determine the course of the November elections, the next President, and the future of the war on terror. Hopefully the White House really understands these stakes.

Finally, the Post's reporters on this article, Peter Baker and Dafna Linzner, provide a laugh when they mischaracterize the nature of the turf war taking place in the American intelligence community. The article says that Congress will be concerned with Hayden's appointment in terms of the reach Donald Rumsfeld has in the intel services. Hayden's appointment would put a military man at the head of all the intel services, but the real story here is the expansion of influence by John Negroponte, not Rumsfeld. Congress may have its issues with Rumsfeld, but they have openly debated cutting off funds to the DNI to keep him from what they consider empire-building. They will have concern with turf wars and Hayden's appointment, but Rumsfeld won't be the problem they wish to resolve.

Oprahfication of American Foreign Policy

Lawyer Bill Clinton and his lawyer spouse Hillary presided over the most hyper-lawyered administration/regime in US/world history, with Jamie Gorelick the Cerberus at the Firewall keeping the CIA and FBI at arms-length from each other and impeding their effectiveness in preventing a terrorist attack on US soil. One might recall that Bill was dissuaded from Sudan's offer to hand over Osama bin Laden to the US because his legal team didn't think he had authority to protect the nation from a budding terrorist.

Smug and barmy Bill doesn't have the historical accountability problems GWB has because over 90% of MSM journalists voted for him. The famous Carlos the Jackal in even more ossified France had to pay a fine recently. At least the famous Venezuelan terrorist, who killed several French flics and now lives comfortably in Paris, has the foresight to have as a "life partner" a lawyer named Isabelle. Bill and Carlos should compare notes on how to dodge accountability.

Mark Steyn says it better in the Chicago Sun-Times, pointing out just how absurd the American obsession with "Law and Order: CSI in WTC" turned out in the Moussaoui trial:

...the notion, peddled by some sappy member of the ghastly 9/11 Commission on one of the cable yakfests last week, that jihadists around the world are marveling at the fairness of the U.S. justice system, is preposterous. The leisurely legal process Moussaoui enjoyed lasted longer than America's participation in the Second World War. Around the world, everybody's enjoying a grand old laugh at the U.S. justice system.

Only a lawyer could have made such an absurd comment, and the "ghastly" 9/11 Commission was packed with lawyers, including chief perp Gorelick, who more than any other US official, made it possible and in some ways easy for UbL to stay away from justice [in '96 when he flew from Khartoum to Afganistan, thanks to Gorelick in the DoJ pulling strings]. After a riff noting that Saddam Hussein wishes he had access to an O.J./Oprah jury in the US to flimflam and whine in front of, Steyn continues:

On the afternoon of Sept. 11, as the Pentagon still burned, Donald Rumsfeld told the president, "This is not a criminal action. This is war."

That's still the distinction that matters. By contrast, after the 2005 London bombings, Boris Johnson, the Conservative member of Parliament, wrote a piece headlined "Just Don't Call It War." Johnson objected to the language of "war, whether military or cultural . . . Last week's bombs were placed not by martyrs nor by soldiers, but by criminals."

Yes, and criminals are subject to limp-wristed pansy judicial systems notoriously weak-minded in the application of the real world to their cloud-cuckoo trial chambers.

A "criminal" approach gives terrorists all the rights of criminals, including the "Gee, Officer Krupke" defense: I'm depraved on account of I'm deprived. If you fight this thing as a law enforcement matter, Islamist welfare queens around the world will figure there's no downside to jihad: After all, you're living on public welfare in London plotting the downfall of the infidel. If it all goes horribly wrong, you'll be living on public welfare in Virginia, grandstanding through U.S. courtrooms for half a decade. What's to lose?

Yes, and the weird female judge in Virginia was fearful that the graphic violence of the tapes and videos of what actually happened in the real world on 9/11 might unduly influence the jury toward a more severe standard of justice! Tut tut...
Wouldn't want the real world to intrude. She got her wish. The defense lawyers pulled out the stories of the terrible childhood this wannabe-murderer endured and the soft minds of the jurors turned into mush:

It's a very worn cliche to say that America is over-lawyered, but the extent of that truism only becomes clear when you realize how overwhelming is our culture's reflex to cover war as just another potential miscarriage-of-justice story. I was interested to see that the first instinct of the news shows to the verdict was to book some relative of the 9/11 families and ask whether they were satisfied with the result. That's not what happened that Tuesday morning. The thousands who were killed were not targeted as individuals. They died because they were American, not because somebody in a cave far away decided to kill Mrs. Smith. Their families have a unique claim to our sympathy and a grief we can never truly share, but they're not plaintiffs and war isn't a suit. It's not about "closure" for the victims; it's about victory for the nation. Try to imagine the bereaved in the London blitz demanding that the Germans responsible be brought before a British court.

Agreeing to fight the jihad with subpoenas is, in effect, a declaration that you're willing to plea bargain. Instead of a Churchillian "we will never surrender!", it's more of a "Well, the judge has thrown out the mass murder charges, but the DA says we can still nail him on mail fraud."

And, even if the defendant loses the case, does that mean the state wins? Here's an Associated Press story from a few weeks ago recounting yet another tremendous victory for the good guys in the war on terror:

"A Paris court fined the terrorist known as 'Carlos the Jackal' more than $6,000 Tuesday for saying in a French television interview that terror attacks sometimes were 'necessary.' The 56-year-old Venezuelan, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, was convicted of defending terrorism. The court did not convict him for expressing pleasure that 'the Great Satan' -- the United States -- suffered the Sept. 11 attacks, saying those comments were his personal reaction."

That's right, folks. The French state brought a successful hate-speech prosecution against Carlos the Jackal, albeit not as successful as they wanted:

"Prosecutors asked for a fine four times larger than the $6,110 penalty imposed. But the judges said they did not see the need for a higher fine because Ramirez's comments referred to the past and aimed to justify his own actions. Ramirez, dressed in a red shirt and blue blazer, kissed the hand of his partner and lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, during the judgment."

Coming soon to a theater near you: The Day of the Jackal's Hate-Speech Appeal Hearing.

Mark Steyn left out the most ridiculous subtext of the entire collective psychosis---the French government plans to ask that Moussaoui be repatriated so that he can be near his mother, who can then visit him more easily.

Guess how many years [months] Moussaoui would serve in the collective-suicide capital of the Western World before he would be released on some pretext or another, perhaps availing himself of the services of Carlos' live-in counsel to spring him? Then he could live down the street from cop-killer Carlos in a nice Paris neighborhood, far from the banlieues full of smoldering unemployed riffraff like he used to be before he became a celebrity. I'm sure the ACLU is on Moussaoui's side on the repatriation request.

And Jamie Gorelick would make a suitable and appropriate character witness for Moussaoui, if that ever came to pass.

Blair Setback Starts Purge, Could End as Hemorrhage.

Way back in the day, when I was living in London with wife and new-born daughter, I remember reading the FT on the platform of the Kingston Upon Thames British Rail station and coming upon the article that the resignation of the Home Secretary [if I recall correctly] would lead to the downfall of Margaret Thatcher. It was just a matter of time, the FT said.

Today, seventeen years and two swings of the pendulum later [or a swing and a half], the FT notes that Tony Blair has purged his senior Cabinet to avoid Maggie's fate.

Will David Cameron be able to resuscitate the Conservatives enough to get them off the semi-permanent life support Blair has consigned them to over the best part of the last decade?

Blair's dazzling political skills are awesome during Question Time, but America's favorite Brit may not be able to withstand the Bolshies in his own Labour Party, who support Gordon Brown as a pure reincarnation of their past failures during the TUC ascendancy in the British left. It's more complicated than that, of course, but Tony faces a rebellion by the revolting ultra-left fringe of his own party, which predictably will lead to a Conservative victory in the next General Election.

Maybe I'm wrong, but a bit of the same thing is happening, mutatis mutandis, to GWB stateside.

Kennedy and Jefferson [and Mollohan] Should Resign?

The chief bat cave of organized Moonbattery occasionally allows a ray of sunlight to penetrate the semi-permanent twilight of the Daily Kos and today is one of those rare occasions.

Here's the problem folks: most Americans who aren't partisans truly believe the democrats and The Republicans are "all the same" and that the power-elite takes care of its own. Via Orthogonal:

Democrats can talk about Abramoff and Cunningham and the Republicans' toothless ethics bill, but so long as the People see us as just the "other side of the coin", they have little reason to go to the polls to vote for Dems.

Now we've got Congressman William Jefferson who despite allegations of bribery won't resign, and Patrick Kennedy who announces he's "going to vote" and so dodges a Breathalyzer test, and now will go into rehab rather than resign.

This gives all the justification in the world to independents who will say that the Dems are "just as bad" and that "all of them are corrupt".

As a former Dem, I agree that both parties are corrupt, having experienced Democratic peculation while working on several Dem political campaigns and having noticed that the DeLay/Abramoff nexus is a K-Street cabal to generate campaign funding.

But McCain started a small brouhaha by an obiter dictum that he cares more for clean government than for the First Amendment. So any sanctimonious Jimmy-Carter-style pieties are suspect, from Dems or Repubs alike.

Poker and Porter Goss?

At the same time as the NY Daily News has a rather superficial allegation that Porter Goss accompanied his friend "Dusty Foggo" to a Watergate [Hookergate is the latest appellation connected to this notorious Washington landmark] party because of his "love of poker and fine cigars," then quit his post as DCI for fear he would be exposed, the Financial Times has a lucid article in its Weekend section on the siren-song of this quintessentially American game.

Really worth the read, if the link works.

Hobson's Choice: Left's Treason or Right's Lies

Rick Moran has a piece on Right Wing Nut House that skewers Rumsfeld for lying to a traitorous creep named Roy McGovern [any relation?] at a news conference in Atlanta.

Rumsfeld, as I have noted often on my blog, seems stuck on stupid when it comes to dumb Dutch pigheaded inflexibility---I suppose gracefully admitting mistakes to a disloyal pack of rabid dogs on the left is very difficult and don't know if I could do it myself---but when turncoat McGovern says Rumsfeld was "lying" about WMD, just come back with the fact that everyone in all the worlds' intelligence communities said the same thing.

Instead, Rumsfeld denies he said it, something as easy to verify as the fact that Molly Ivins is a serial plagiarizer and insane to boot. But Rick says it better:

Rumsfeld’s lie yesterday about something he didn’t have to lie about points to this changed dynamic in Washington that extends all the way to the office of the President. Accepting responsibility for mistakes both of omission and commission is necessary for our public servants. The American people recognize this which is why they are almost always quick to forgive an official who admits mistakes and apologizes. How and why this tradition has been lost probably has a lot to do with the polarization of our politics and the rabid, open hostility of the media to this President and his policies. But this really is no excuse. The people have shown that they are perfectly capable of making up their own minds about our leaders, even when they get most of their information through the prism of a press suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome. George Bush’s re-election proves that point in emphatic fashion.

Porter Goss Resigns from DCI Post

Time Mag has a web piece on John Negroponte's restructuring of the CIA and diminishment of its areas of responsibility and authority.

The author is obviously a CIA sympathizer and goes so far to amuse us with some pretty far-fetched baloney slicing:

CIA supporters are upset about what they see as the neutering of an agency that helped win the Cold War and worry that it will undermine its human spy responsibilities, of which the CIA is still in charge.

In reality, of course, the CIA had vastly over-rated the intelligence figures on the strength of the Soviet economy and mis-read a lot of the effects of the Cold War's Thawing. President Reagan and Pope John Paul 2 had more to do with the downfall of the USSR than the social club upper-class WASPs at the CIA. Stansfield "Tugboat" Turner famously fired 800 senior HumInt CIA types on orders from his gadget-loving technocratic boss, the clueless Jimmy Carter.

Since then the CIA has relied on expensive toys linked by satellites to swoop on enemies of our nation---oops, that's the plan anyway!

The CIA has been nabbed trying to undermine GWB's policies and strengthen its own position by leaks and even publishing books [by James Scheuer] aiming at pursuing its own agenda---or at least an agenda other than the Administration's.

The CIA's failure to hand off information about Al Qaeda types arriving in San Diego from Malaysia to the FBI aided the 9/11 plotters in avoiding detection.

So the CIA appears to be a rogue politicized agency which suffers from incompetence in its ranks and insubordination in its attempts to undercut American policy.

I hope Negroponte has full authority from GWB to clean up the mess in Langley.

Like Father, Unlike Son

Rep. Patrick Kennedy is going to enter "rehab" in Minnesota, perhaps at the famous Hazelden Clinic, but anyway he is making a conscious choice to get better.

Like his father, he lies about the circumstances of the accident and denies he was drinking---although he was at my old drinking haunts in the Hawk and Dove just prior to closing time and smelled of booze just before he was whisked away by Capitol Police before a breathalizer could be used by the DC constabulary. Just like those wind-power machines off Nantucket, the Kennedy pull is legendary for its hypocrisy and strength.

But unlike his father, nobody died of his serial drunkenness and non-stop lechery. He has decided to better himself in admitting he is an addict----something his likkered-up pappy never could bring hisself to do.

Patrick's mother also had a problem with the sauce, and maybe the genetic predilection is overwhelming. God is the judge and Kennedy fils should be in the prayers of every Christian who wishes good will towards the sinner.

New Orleans Congressman Forced to Take Bribes

Congressman Jefferson whom I had written two blogs about back in January [concerning all the MSM investigative watchdogs who don't bark at Democrats' crookedness] is described as being a victim [more than once!!] of businesses trying to bribe him!

Poor guy! And these businessmen actually attest that this New Orleans Member of C SOLICITED bribes and DEMANDED percentages of contracts for contracts in Africa.

Poor Randy Cunningham and Rostenkowski [or Dem. Mollohan], they are not swarthy enough to escape the MSM's attacks on their character. Like dog/rat Moussaoui, is Cong. Jefferson going to claim a deprived upbringing for his peccadillos?

Colbert a Bully and a Coward

Richard Cohen is right on the money in the following excerpt from today's WaPo:

Why are you wasting my time with Colbert, I hear you ask. Because he is representative of what too often passes for political courage, not to mention wit, in this country. His defenders -- and they are all over the blogosphere -- will tell you he spoke truth to power. This is a tired phrase, as we all know, but when it was fresh and meaningful it suggested repercussions, consequences -- maybe even death in some countries. When you spoke truth to power you took the distinct chance that power would smite you, toss you into a dungeon or -- if you're at work -- take away your office.

But in this country, anyone can insult the president of the United States. Colbert just did it, and he will not suffer any consequence at all. He knew that going in. He also knew that Bush would have to sit there and pretend to laugh at Colbert's lame and insulting jokes. Bush himself plays off his reputation as a dunce and his penchant for mangling English. Self-mockery can be funny. Mockery that is insulting is not. The sort of stuff that would get you punched in a bar can be said on a dais with impunity. This is why Colbert was more than rude. He was a bully.

I actually had someone comment to me that Colbert must have been right because after his spew-session, he was googled several thousand times.

Cheap shots from leftoid mock-heroic frauds like Susan Sarandon who breathlessly told a British newspaper her life was threatened [turned out some blogger hoped someone would do something to her] and then claim they are being persecuted---wish I had a nickel for every weak-minded celebrity claiming they are brave and daring to insult our country's elected officials.

At least the WHPA had enough class [a word that exists in left-blogging only to denote hatred, as in "class struggle" or "class war"] to maintain silence while Colbert made a fool of himself. That was classy. A class act.

Depraved On Account of He Was Deprived: Victimhood Triumphant

Peggy Noonan recounts the inane conclusion the 12 jurors gave dog/rat Moussaoui yesterday---he was a victim in his youth, so let him kill and pillage and rape to his heart's content.

Muslims can argue they all were victims of Western Imperialism---in fact they do, and weak-minded Westerners heartily agree and assume the position and beg for more punishment. Fouad Ajami gave the lie to such fatuous idiocies in his eulogy to Bernard Lewis's 90 productive years of life recently in the WSJ [See my blog above].

The Untergang des Abendlands proceeds apace, as 12 mediocrities let a criminal terrorist live and rant that the Muslims won and America lost.

American[s] have lost their minds, or at least their will to assert themselves as responsible adults.

I myself am against capital punishment, but I am for clarity of thought and enforcement of laws on the books.

Peggy notes one happy thought---the dog/rat in Supermax for life:

I don't want to end with an air of hopelessness, so here's some hope, offered to the bureau of prisons. I hope he doesn't get cable TV in his cell. I hope he doesn't get to use his hour a day in general population getting buff and converting prisoners to jihad. I hope he isn't allowed visitors with whom he can do impolite things like plot against our country. I hope he isn't allowed anniversary interviews. I hope his jolly colleagues don't take captives whom they threaten to kill unless Moussaoui is released.

NYT Pats Self On Back for Stabbing Bush in Back

Bill Keller whinged and whined about the WSJ to the WSJ for insinuating correctly that the NYT flirts with treason by revealing state secrets during wartime. Here's Hugh Hewitt's take on Keller:

New York Times editor Bill Keller did not return my call or my producer's call or respond in any way to my invitation to appear on the program today to discuss his extraordinary letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal. (The background to today's invitation is provided in this post, as well as the links to all the relevant articles.)

In his place, I have interviewed law professors Erwin Chemerinsky, John Eastman, Jonathan Adler and Eugene Volokh --all ConLaw experts with enormous experience in First Amendment matters-- as well as Commentary senior editor Gabriel Schoenfeld and NYU's Jay Rosen.

No one I have spoken to today asserts or defends the idea that the New York Times, or anyone else, is exempt from the laws governing the unlawful release of highly classified material. Bill Keller has never agreed to comprehensive questioning about his paper's conduct in the NSA surveillance controversy, and his refusal to do so actually strengthens the argument for a Department of Justice investigation including the impaneling of a grand jury and the summoning of reporters/editors involved in the leak.

Keller fires off e-mails and "letters to the editor," but won't answer direct questions about his paper's decision to imperil the national security. If the paper has done a noble and good thing, why not?

Radioblogger will have the transcripts of many if not all of these interviews. The invitation to Mr. Keller remains open. Bill Keller wrote last week that "No president likes reporters sniffing after his secrets, but most come to realize that accountability is the price of power in our democracy."

The Bush Administration is the definition of openness compared to the New York Times.

[emphasis in original]
The NYT believes the First Amendment puts it above the law. Its sloppiness and bias make it a second rate tabloid.

Failed States Ranked by Foreign Policy magazine

Back in the day when I worked Political Risk country profiles in the Amoco Corp's Corporate Planning area, the Economist Intelligence Unit country analyses were the ne plus ultra on an individual country analysis basis. Foreign Policy magazine has a comparative basis in its latest issue.

I can always recall that Algeria and Morocco back then had comparative populations and also comparative GDP and annual income numbers, even though Algeria was an oil state. This could be another indication that oil and gas reserves are a curse as well as a blessing for the country's inhabitants.

Sudan is the worst ranked on the list, with two separate civil wars in various regions of this vast country. Go on to the corruption index page and New Zealand is the least corrupt. The US is less corrupt than France, but moreso than the UK and Germany.

The entire list makes fascinating reading, as does the methodological background.

Chickenhawks and Turtledoves

The New Republic has an excellent essay by Lee Siegel which bears the title above that starts out well:

I guess we're all contrarians now. And we're all intellectual heroes now. Bush and his cronies are so stupid, dishonest, and incompetent that all you have to do is mock or contradict them and you're George Orwell, Patrick Henry, and Martin Luther King Jr. rolled into one. This new style of self-congratulatory "heroics" is giving real opposition to this administration and its policies a bad name.

There were honest supporters of the Iraq war and dishonest jingoists banging and shouting on the invasion-bandwagon, and the latter can now beef up the appearance of integrity by criticizing Bush at every turn--that way they can also qualify their conservatism while appearing "contrarian" (i.e. marketable) to all sides. And without the unambiguous shame and shamelessness of Bush et al., there would hardly be a liberal blogosphere, much of which rests on herdlike ideological certitude.

The best thing is that you don't have to pay any kind of price for saying the most adolescently stubborn and contrary things against Bush. You are operating inside the safe shell of a mostly liberal culture. But these brave so-called liberal writers working inside their snug and smug shells are to culture what the neoconservative chickenhawks are to foreign policy. They're turtledoves.

The latest instance of turtledove courage occurred this past Sunday on The New York Times op-ed page, in an essay by David Thomson, the film historian. Thomson was opining about United 93, natch.

Siegel laughingly accuses girlie-man Thomson of having a spine and imagines the frisson of brave heroic emotion Hollyweirdo Thomson has dissing GWB. Que huevos!!

Fatuity after fatuity, Thomson the film historian patiently built his way toward his turtledove conclusion. He praises United 93 for not being a conventional action film, but then denigrates it for focusing exclusively on American "courage and enterprise." Because it is in the nature of art to see that everyone has his reasons, Thomson would like to see a film about Flight 93 that made an "equal effort to show the courage of the terrorists." You could almost feel the self-conscious shiver of Patrick Henry-like boldness running up Thomson's spine when he wrote those words. Bush called them cowards; well, then, the most powerful blow you can strike for peace in the Middle East and for sanity and decency at home is to call them the very opposite thing. Take that, Mr. Decider. And if you want to send me to prison and torture me, or at the very least, blacklist me, so be it.

Siegel is right. Thomson's poses and heroic postures rival the Kossacks' chest-thumping manifestoes and clarion calls for sheer phoney fatuous flimflammery. Siegel ends with a last swipe at the chattering-class urbane cheesiness of a second-rate imposter who pranced his best on the NYT Sunday Op-Ed burlesque show.

But there will be no penalty for Thomson--not that there should be. There will be champagne toasts and complimentary phone calls and emails. And anyone who dissents from Thomson's thrilling dissent might just as well be Billy Kristol's right-hand man.

Shelby Steele on White Victimhood and US Guilt-Tripping

The Wall Street Journal puts the question right up front just as the Iranian jerk-offs threaten to attack Israel if the US "does evil."

Get it? If the Iranians attack Israel, it will be the US's fault---I can feel the cringing in liberal spine cavities [where a notochord formerly dwelt] as they anticipate those words that hurt them far more than 9/11 seemed to have done.

Shelby Steele points out that despite an American economic growth pace [not noted in the MSM] of emerging-economy size [4.8% GDP in 1st Q 2006], the MSM and their foreign allies have America wrong-footed in every department, wailing dissatisfaction and whining endlessly and committing communications fraud with "a day without immigrants" [Oops, the MSM forgot the 'illegal' word].

He has the good humor to note the following:

Anti-Americanism, whether in Europe or on the American left, works by the mechanism of white guilt. It stigmatizes America with all the imperialistic and racist ugliness of the white Western past so that America becomes a kind of straw man, a construct of Western sin. (The Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons were the focus of such stigmatization campaigns.) Once the stigma is in place, one need only be anti-American in order to be "good," in order to have an automatic moral legitimacy and power in relation to America. (People as seemingly disparate as President Jacques Chirac and the Rev. Al Sharpton are devoted pursuers of the moral high ground to be had in anti-Americanism.) This formula is the most dependable source of power for today's international left. Virtue and power by mere anti-Americanism. And it is all the more appealing since, unlike real virtues, it requires no sacrifice or effort--only outrage at every slight echo of the imperialist past.

Chirac and Sharpton, both as fraudulent and dishonest as Tawana Brawley, whose lies lifted Sharpton to inexplicable MSM stardom, are the two perfect showcases for the cast of mountebanks and snake-oil peddlars infesting the groves of academe and think-tanks that foster American self-doubt and Pavlovian international disdain for the US.

However, in a crunch, there are countries and entire regions whose peoples see through the rubbish peddled by political opinion-makers at home and abroad. Foreign Policy magazine has an article noting that Afghanistan, for instance, loves the US. And if the French do not, exactly who needs the approbation of a country whose students' greatest ambition is to become a "petite fonctionnaire" in the country's vast bureaucratic labyrinths?

The US MSM tries to cripple Bush with "death by a thousand cuts" and there may be a future where whoever is US President will face crippling investigations and drawn-out affairs over absolutely nugatory petty crimes or oversights.

The lawyers are taking over the US, and anyone in business knows that the best way to avoid a successful closing of a deal is to allow lawyers in the negotiations beforehand. Their quibbles and nitpicking will predictably smudge up the works and raise scarecrows at every opportunity. Vision and a mission are needed to make a successful merger and a successful policy.

It just may well be that the US is becoming what De Gaulle long ago called France: "ungovernable." If the people whose vision and mission REALLY built America, [not the serial risible claims of certain egregious minorities], the white European REAL IMMIGRANTS can summon up some sense of their own self-worth and translate it into political power, the situation so ably outlined by Shelby Steele might be overcome.

Lou Dobbs Alert on "Illegal" Immigrants

Lou Dobbs points out the obvious MSM whitewash of the illegal alien protests as "immigrants." No, my ancestors were immigrants, these protestors are guilty of criminal trespass.

The Far Left is trying to harness the protests, one agitprop commando even comparing the marches to the colonists trying to throw off the yoke of the British King. Anyone besides me get a whiff of reconquista irredentism in that nonsensical comment?

Read the whole Dobbs piece above. Dobbs was wrong on the Dubai Port acquisition, but is right on the nonsensical puffery by the MSM [excluding the WaPost] portraying the protest as justified.

We don't want Chavez/Humala/Morales/Castro Al-Qaeda sympathizers living among us and taking our jobs away. Also present is chest-thumping "we are the backbone of America" delusionary drivel---Oh Yeah, Markos and his Kossacks from cacique-territory have the same hallucinations! Last the US census made a count, 11 million illegals are not a large percentage of 300 million residents.

Too bad poor American citizens don't have powerful friends among the MSM editorial/managing editor elites [including the WSJ]. Then wages in meat-packing plants wouldn't have halved in the last decade.

The Dutch are now learning almost too late what a large unassimilated bolus of immigrants can do to a generous welcoming society. We should treat the Mexicans the way their barbaric border police treat Guatemalans and other immigrants sneaking across from Central America. And deputize the Minutemen to assist the beleaguered ICE Border Patrols.

Joe Klein's Secret?

Joe Klein's new book Politics Lost hankers after an authentic heterodox Presidential candidate who.....oh, well, just link to the Mickey Kaus Slate piece above and find out who it is MK thinks Joe is boosting.

Hint: It's not Al Gore!

Angry Left Blogosphere Agog [Again]!

Elizabeth Bumiller wrote a praiseful description of President Bush's excellent funny presentation with his impersonator Steve Bridges. Two things are now certain.

Unlike skanky WaPost snark-artiste Robin Givhan, Bumiller will never win a Pulitzer.

Howell Raines is rolling over in his grave. [Oh, he's not dead? Physically?]

Judging from the splenetic excess of the HuffNPuff Kossack lefties, crack mixed with crystal meth can't explain the hysterical delirious rave/rant posturing of these mentally-unbalanced substance abusers.

As James Taranto noted in an earlier blog today, the ultra-left liberal bloggers take themselves very seriously and cannot abide contradiction. When my daughter was two, she was the latter. But thankfully, she did not become the former; taking things with a grain of salt is her style.

The terrible twos are where lefty blogger are stuck; or is it stuck on stupid?

Chirac Bag Man Indicted in Oil for Food; Not Fit to Print for the NYT

Le Monde could barely stifle a yawn as it buried the story of the indictment of former French Interior Minister and reputed Chirac Bag Man Pasqua on page 14 in a tiny article dominated by Pasqua's quotes defending himself. Below is the text of the Le Monde Watch blog and the link for Frenchreading blog visitors:

Indicted in the Oil-for-Food Scandal? Hardly a Big Deal, N'est-ce pas?

While Corine Lesnes' two articles on Bush's so far informal troubles, regarding Plamegate as well as the war against terror (articles using harsh words and expressions filled with emotion and whose only domestic quotes come from opponents of the president, quotes which effectively end the article), take up two thirds of a page in the foreign affairs section on page 4; G?rard Davet's single straight-forward, matter-of-fact, ho-hum article on Pasqua's formal indictment in the oil-for-food scandal (Le Monde seems to have waited two or three days after the indictment before printing the piece) is relegated to a sixth of a page (it takes up a quarter page only if you count the Pessin cartoon) in the Politique & Soci?t? section on page 14.

A large bulk of the text is filled with quotes by the former interior minister, fellow defendents (and companies implicated, such as Total), and their lawyers (justifications, denials, accusations of witch-hunts, etc).

Okay, okay, so we've reported it. See? See how fair we are? Okay, enough already. Now that that's done — and over with (will you get over it, already?!) — let's get back to serious matters: castigating that horrendous Halliburton, castigating that awful Dubya (i.e., see the top Corine Lesnes article), and castigating that unforgiveable support that Bush has extended to countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

Like the NYT, Le Monde plays teacup tempests like Plamegate to the hilt above the fold while stories harming Bush-bashers are sequestered deep in the Societe pages.

Pasqua, of course, was reputedly Chirac's moneyman. The entire gangsta-team of Chirac/deVillepin is implicated as getting some sort of recompense from Saddam somewhere somehow for not joining the Coalition of the Willing.

But don't look for a gaggle of "investigative journalists" searching high and low for evidence---no Pulitzers for proving Chirac is a corrupt cowardly crook would be in the offing.

And besides, treasonous tracts by Lichtblau, Priest, and Risen are obviously the fast lane to the top of the sleazy journalistic pole.

The Fifth Column approaches DC and may take over the US government in November.

Angry Left Angrier Than Ever About Colbert

The Wall Street Journal has a nice rundown of shrieks and gibberings and moans from the Angry Left that the White House Press Dinner guests weren't ecstatically applauding Steve Colbert's snarky put-downs of GWB:

You'll never believe what the Angry Left is angry about now. It seems the biased right-wing media are trying to cover up . . . a comedy routine! Editor & Publisher, the trade magazine for Bush-hating newspapermen, tells the story:

A blistering comedy "tribute" to President Bush by Comedy Central's faux talk-show host Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondent Dinner Saturday night left George and Laura Bush unsmiling at its close. . . .

[E&P's Joe] Strupp, in the crowd during the Colbert routine, had observed that quite a few sitting near him looked a little uncomfortable at times, perhaps feeling the material was a little too biting--or too much speaking "truthiness" (Colbert's made-up word) to power.

Over on the Puffington Host, Peter Daou, who worked on the 2004 John Kerry* campaign, describes the performance in this way:

The White House Correspondents' Association Dinner was televised on C-Span Saturday evening. Featured entertainer Stephen Colbert delivered a biting rebuke of George W. Bush and the lily-livered press corps. He did it to Bush's face, unflinching and unbowed by the audience's muted, humorless response.

He then quotes the enthusiastic reactions at DemocraticUnderground and the Daily Kos and faults the mainstream press for not seeing it the Angry Left's way:

The AP's first stab at it and pieces from Reuters and the Chicago Tribune tell us everything we need to know: Colbert's performance is sidestepped and marginalized while Bush is treated as light-hearted, humble, and funny. Expect nothing less from the cowardly American media. The story could just as well have been Bush and Laura's discomfort and the crowd's semi-hostile reaction to Colbert's razor-sharp barbs. In fact, I would guess that from the perspective of newsworthiness and public interest, Bush-the-playful-president is far less compelling than a comedy sketch gone awry, a pissed-off prez, and a shell-shocked audience.

This is the power of the media to choose the news, to decide when and how to shield Bush from negative publicity.

Daou's sentiments are echoed by fellow Puffingtonians Jesse Kornbluth and Chris Durang.

The trouble is, Colbert bombed. Both E&P and Daou acknowledge this in roundabout ways ("[the audience] looked a little uncomfortable at times, perhaps feeling the material was a little too biting"; "the audience's muted, humorless response"). If you'd like to evaluate it for yourself, you can download the video here, have it streamed in three parts (uno, dos, tres), or watch a series of clips of Bush and Colbert. There's also a transcript.

Our review: We've seen Colbert's Comedy Central show a few times and thought it was pretty good, but here much of his material wasn't funny, and even the stuff that was good, he managed to deliver badly. Here's an example, the line we thought funniest:

Mayor Nagin! Mayor [Ray] Nagin is here from New Orleans, the chocolate city! Yeah, give it up. Mayor Nagin, I'd like to welcome you to Washington, D.C., the chocolate city with a marshmallow center.

This drew a hearty laugh from the audience--and anyone who's familiar with the demographics of Washington can see why. But Colbert then lost control of his metaphor:

And a graham cracker crust of corruption. It's a Mallomar, I guess is what I'm describing, a seasonal cookie.

A graham cracker crust of corruption? Huh? As for the Mallomar, it's not only a seasonal cookie (not made during the summer, when it would melt) but a regional one. According to the Bergen, N.J., Record, 70% of all Mallomars are sold in New York and New Jersey. Did Colbert's Washington audience even know what he was talking about?

Here's an example of the anti-Bush humor, in which Colbert adopts the persona of a Bush supporter:

Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Or maybe this joke is at the expense not of Bush but of the Angry Left, for their whole "reality-based community" conceit and their professed devotion to opinion polls. Who knows? But if you're left scratching your head trying to figure out what a joke means, chances are you aren't laughing.

National Review's Jonah Goldberg raises an intriguing question:

It is enduringly fascinating how deeply invested many liberals are in comedians (and to a lesser extent, movie stars). There's of course Al Franken and Jeneane Garofalo (a recovering somewhat funny person), but even Jon Stewart is increasingly becoming a Big Thinker according to some liberals. . . . What does it say about the "real" spokespeople of the left--journalists, politicians, activists et al.--that the most appealing figures are ones who get to hide behind clown make-up whenever the kitchen gets too hot?

It may show that they are envious of conservatives, who have had great success at mocking liberals, who can neither dish it out nor take it. This is because liberals take themselves way too seriously--which ensures both that they are easy targets for mockery and that they do not do mockery well. For an example, check out the blog of Duncan "Atrios" Black. It is almost totally devoted to mockery, and it is totally devoid of wit.

Colbert has considerable wit, though plainly it is not enough--or not yet well enough honed--for what he tried to do Saturday night.

* "Do you think he's a flip-flopper, or more of a straddler?"

Next Year They Won't Serve Fondue
"Bush Skewers Self at Correspondents' Dinner"--headline, Reuters, April 30

Azar Nafisi on Literature and the West

The Financial Times has a pay-per-view interview of Ms. Nafisi, whose book Reading Lolita in Tehran is an NYT bestseller in one of my favorite restaurants, the Tabard Inn in downtown DC.

Ms. Nafisi says it all in the following sentence: "In Iran, the regime sees western literature as decadent and morally corrupting --- it cannot see literature for what it is." Then she described her amazement when she found people in America parroting the same Edward Said propaganda which says that western writers are "unconscious agents of an imperial project that sought to portray eastern cultures as natural subjects of the west."

Nafisi notes: "What some of these liberal American critics have in common with the mullahs is that they only see the writer and not the writing. They do not understand that great literature transcends time and place. We do not read Jane Austen to find out about the French Revolution. We read her to gain insights into the petty jealousies and vanities of humanity."

Nafisi is amazed also at the culture of celebrity and the worship of sound bites that attest to the staccato ADD-nature of American pop political culture. Nafisi quotes Saul Bellow:

"in totalitarian cultures moral choice is easier in a perverse sort of way. You see the repression and the torture and you know what you feel. But in a democracy there is an atrophy of feeling.....We have to fight against it. It is in many ways just as difficult."

Edward Luce sums up the interview:

"...in a city that occasionally appears to forget there is a world out there that exists independently of America's view of it, the opinions of people such as Nafisi should be heard more often. They should also be listened to without presupposition."

Fouad Ajami on Bernard Lewis

The Wall Street Journal has a long and brilliant piece by Fouad Ajami on Bernard Lewis, whose 90th birthday approaches and whose contribution to America's understanding of the Middle East Ajami outlines with detail and clarity.

When I got married a quarter-century ago, Fouad Ajami rented my bachelor digs from me before I sold the condo a year later. I also spent a wonderful evening into late night with Bernard Lewis at his home in Princeton in my bachelor days, and I can attest to his largeness of spirit and gregarious nature. I own a dozen of his books, and his encyclopedic knowledge of Islam in its heyday is unparalleled.

Bernard Lewis, Fouad Ajami, and Christopher Hitchens are all prophets from abroad warning an America rent by civil libertarian quibbles and arcane senseless squabbles and gotcha politics that the U.S. and the West face a decisive crisis.

All analogies limp a bit and Lewis is not quite correct in comparing Britain's struggle with Hitler in 1940 with the current looming confrontation with Islamic civilization [Lewis never meant it as a strict comparison, I'm sure.] But in one sense, the heedless careless academic and MSM belittling of the threat beggars description, and the analogy of a long-term struggle between the Enlightenment and the forces of darkness is appropriate. Ajami's words:

"...an old struggle between "Christendom" and Islam was gathering force. (Note the name given the Western world; it is vintage Lewis, this naming of worlds and drawing of borders--and differences.) It was the time of commerce and globalism; the "modernists" had the run of the decade, and a historian's dark premonitions about a thwarted civilization wishing to avenge the slights and wounds of centuries would not carry the day. Mr. Lewis was the voice of conservatives, a brooding pessimist, in the time of a sublime faith in things new and untried. It was he, in that 1990 article, who gave us the notion of a "clash of civilizations" that Samuel Huntington would popularize, with due attribution to Bernard Lewis."

JFK wrote a Pulitzer-Prize winning book [with help from an anonymous NYT ghost writer] on "Why England Slept." But back in the day, America had not been eviscerated by a postmodern nihilist suicidal pessimism propagated by do-gooders with a bad agenda. Small minds with obscurantist programs for domestic egalitarian utopias shriek for attention, and the MSM and intelligentsia insist that America's foreign problems can be resolved---Jimmy Carter style---with good will and negotiations. The overarching silliness of the American leftist project beggars description, and Mr. Lewis had to resign from the Middle East Studies Association because of postcolonial mindsets that demanded contrition for historical sins.

The time for mea culpas is past and Iran arms itself with nuclear weapons that sooner or later will be another threat to Israel and the values it represents.

Bernard Lewis once told me he spoke or read seventeen [17]languages, including Turkish dialects of Central Asia, and told me of an epic poem he was reading about the "evil bolshebeggi" written by a Central Asian Homer after the Red-White Civil Wars in Russia in the early twenties. His prodigious scholarship and extreme erudition are products of an earlier era of greatness.

Now, in the era of the epigonies, giants like Lewis are reviled. Ajami is right to mourn the loss of a universalist epoch and greet the darkness like Lear, raving but lucid, and warning us that we must struggle to stay free.