John Warner... Kingmaker?

The Key Monk has an interesting thought about the filibuster deal. He notes that John Warner was the key GOP member in negotiation compromises. While Warner is a big champion of Senate comity, he's also well-respected by the GOP base and able to take the brickbats that will come his way. Monk notes that Warner's action, and the deal itself, served to increase George Allen's chances for the Presidency. Since both are Senators from Virginia, is it possible that Warner was doing a little Machiavellian maneuvering?

The more I think about the deal, the more I find the scenario plausible. Let's leave Jeb and Dick Cheney out of the analysis, as they've said they're staying out. The deal just about kills one major front-runner on the GOP side, Senator Frist. The conservative base won't trust him, especially the religious right.

Another one, John McCain, is gambling that the conservative base will capitulate in later primaries if McCain can win New Hampshire and Iowa and be anointed the front-runner by the press -- he would likely suffer a defeat in South Carolina, but if Mark Sanford's running, that won't hurt him much (I'm assuming the primary schedule doesn't change). If he can put together a coalition of moderates and fiscal conservatives, he has a shot at winning the nomination... but expect the support from the base to form around someone who can take him down. And McCain may get TV time and press kudos for brokering this deal... but when the primaries start to take shape in 18 months, it's more likely that people who remember this deal will be the ones who are angry about it.

For his fellow competitors for the moderate banner, Condi Rice and Rudy Guiliani, this issue has little impact, other than what happens to the competition. The same is true for GOP Governors like Sanford and Pawlenty (and Owens, if he's still in the running).

Finally, we have the remaining Senators -- Hagel and Allen (let's exclude Santorum until he wins re-election). Hagel scores a mild win because he refused to join the Gang of Fourteen, but his strong words against the deal came forth after the deal took place. Allen stepped forth as a leader in favor of the nuclear option, without bearing the burden of responsibility for its failure that Frist has. Allen was critical of compromise throughout, but stayed above the fray nicely. Conservatives who don't trust McCain (I don't) and the religious right may be taking a new look at Allen. If he wants the Majority Leader position when Frist leaves the Senate next year, it's his. But I'm relatively certain he wants a little more than that.

High Comedy

Whoever runs this site is a satiric comic genius. I'd like to see someone else connect Barbara Boxer, John Bolton, Sandy Berger and Michael Jackson's genitals.

Okay, not literally see it.

Another Take on the Dirty Deal

Loyal reader RB makes me wonder whether I need to make this a group blog, if only for priceless observations like this one...

In "Attack of the Clones," the Republic and the Jedi called upon the clone
army to save the day.

Ultimately, this same army was their undoing.

In Congress, a group of moderates (some of whom have invoked pathetic Star
Wars analogies) united to defeat the "nuclear" option. With any luck, this will
be their undoing.

As the nuclear option drew near, many on the left (example) have invoked the classic movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", where Jimmy Stewart's character (Jefferson Smith) filibusters until another senator (Senator Joseph Paine) tries to shoot himself. The scene was dramatic. Jimmy Stewart standing, sweating, exhausted. Struggling to utter each additional syllable as he continued talking for hours and hours, yielding the floor only for an occasional question. Here is the difference: if someone wants to talk, debate, read Betty Crocker recipes, I might support the filibuster. That is not what they do. A filibuster no longer requires a congressman to stand there talking. It is a fiction - an illusion. In fact, the filibuster has become like the war in Star Trek episode 23 "A Taste of Armageddon."

Beaming to the surface with a landing party, Kirk and Spock are met by a young woman, Mea 3, who tells them that Eminiar VII has been at war with its neighboring planet, Vendikar, for over 500 years. Mea 3 takes them to the council chambers where they find banks of computers. Eminiar's head council Anan 7 informs them that the two planets have learned to avoid the complete devastation of war because computers are used. When a "hit" is scored by one of the planets, the people declared "dead" willingly walk into antimatter chambers and are vaporized.

Wars and filibusters are messy for a reason. They should not be entered
into lightly. When you make the process of either painless, there is no
disincentive to undertaking them.

Apparently, the inspiration for this bit of prose came from Peggy Noonan's piece at Opinion Journal. Here's the part I enjoyed...

I think everyone in politics now has been affected by the linguistic sleight-of-hand, which began with the Kennedys in the 1960s, in which politics is called "public service," and politicians are allowed and even urged to call themselves "public servants." Public servants are heroic and self-denying. Therefore politicians are heroic and self-denying. I think this thought has destabilized them.

People who charge into burning towers are heroic; nuns who work with the poorest of the poor are self-denying; people who volunteer their time to help our world and receive nothing in return but the knowledge they are doing good are in public service. Politicians are in politics. They are less self-denying than self-aggrandizing. They are given fame, respect, the best health care in the world; they pass laws governing your life and receive a million perks including a good salary, and someone else--faceless taxpayers, "the folks back home"--gets to pay for the whole thing. This isn't public service, it's more like public command. It's not terrible--democracies need people who commit politics; they have a place and a role to play--but it's not saintly, either.

I don't know if politicians have ever been modest, but I know they have never seemed so boastful, so full of themselves, and so dizzy with self-love.

Then again, some would argue that I'm boastful, full of myself and dizzy with self-love. Except I'm not in politics... even though I'm apparently qualified.

Well, It's Just CBS

Captain Ed nails CBS and its latest skewed poll results. The section on how the poll is weighted leaves us wondering whether CBS just plans on surveying Demcorats next time -- they could probably conduct the poll in their newsroom and leave it at that.

The next time someone wonders why conservatives believe the media has a liberal bias... well, you know the story.

Episode 3.5: The Revenge of Darwin

Somehow, I knew this would happen...

Two British Star Wars fans sustained critical injuries after constructing their own lightsabers from fluorescent light tubes filled with liquid fuel.

According to British media reports, a 20-year-old man and his 17-year-old female friend were filming a mock duel in homage to Star Wars: Episode III--Revenge of the Sith, the latest chapter of George Lucas' record-breaking franchise.

The duo were reportedly emulating one of Sith's key battles, a lightsaber clash between Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan Kenobi and Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker.

The two Brits suffered severe burns when their homemade sabers exploded. The two had been videotaping their clash. They have been hospitalized at Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire since the accident Sunday.

Aside from fiery accidents, the Sith craze is being blamed on a string of robberies. In separate incidents in Illinois and Florida, dark side-inspired crooks wearing Darth Vader helmets are being sought by police on assault and robbery charges.

The most surprising part of the story is that this 20 year old guys has a 17 year old female friend. A hat tip to the Lord of Truth, who noted the same story about the time I was posting this.

One More French Surrender

Top international correspondent JK (based in Philadelphia; I don't ask my international correspondents to travel to dangerous places) points us to this article, which tells us that when the going gets tough, the tough get going... and the French give up...

THE leader of France’s ruling party has privately admitted that Sunday’s referendum on the European constitution will result in a “no” vote, throwing Europe into turmoil.

“The thing is lost,” Nicolas Sarkozy told French ministers during an ill-tempered meeting. “It will be a little ‘no’ or a big ‘no’,” he was quoted as telling Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the Prime Minister, whom he accused of leading a feeble campaign.

Although Europe would be thrown into disarray, the Government would be greatly relieved if M Sarkozy were right.

Ministers have privately told The Times that Britain is prepared to ditch its commitment to a referendum if France, or the Netherlands next Wednesday, vote against the constitution. They believe that if the French say “no”, President Chirac will have to declare the constitution dead or promise a renegotiation.

Because French voters consider that the treaty has already given too many concessions to Britain, ministers see no likelihood of the Government being able to put a renegotiated treaty to the country.

Tony Blair would instead have to use Britain’s imminent EU presidency to try to save those parts of the constitution that can be enforced without a treaty. That could mean that mechanical changes, such as ending the six-month rotating presidency of the EU, could go through.

The mood of pessimism that descended on the French Government after ten successive polls showing the “no” camp leading was echoed by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former French President, who drafted the constitution. He blamed the failures of the “yes” campaign on the half-heartedness of France’s leaders.

“Our current leaders are of course believers in the idea of Europe but in their heart of hearts they are not men and women who are inspired by a European feeling,” he told a French newspaper.

President Chirac will go on television tonight to deliver a last-ditch appeal to his country to resist the temptation to vote “no” and trigger a crisis for the whole European Union.

Either that or Chirac will surrender the country to Germany and appeal for help from the U.S. and Great Britain. Look, I could care less whether the E.U. Constitution succeeds or fails -- personally, I can't tell whether it's good or bad, because it's about 300 pages long (imagine how long it would take John Kerry to read it!). But it's hysterical to me that the French would kill what effectively constitutes the dream of French multi-lateralist champions everywhere. Maybe next we can get them to vote on whether to maintain membership in the U.N.

A Blogger Gets Murdered...

... and his blog helps police catch the killer.

This story is like something out of Law & Order (hat tip: Instapundit). The final blog post that helped catch the killer is somewhat chilling, to say the least.

The John Kerry Post of the Day

My latest discovery about my favorite cheese-eating surrendermonkey-looking Ketchup King cum former Presidential candidate:

There are times when the Ketchup King makes you laugh, even as you shudder about the thought that he almost won the Presidency.

As noted before, this is no longer a regular feature. Frankly, we hope it never is, because that might mean he's running again -- and outside of the humor of watching him windsurfing, we'd like to think our country can do better, even if we elect a Democrat.

Kerry apparently tried to put to rest the issue that's been dogging him for the past 100+ days -- why hasn't he released all his military records yet? But once again, he's still trying to flip-flop...

During an interview yesterday with Globe editorial writers and columnists, the former Democratic presidential nominee was asked if had signed Form SF 180, authorizing the Department of Defense to grant access to all his military records.

''I have signed it," Kerry said. Then, he added that his staff was ''still going through it" and ''very, very shortly, you will have a chance to see it."

The devil is usually in the details. With Kerry, it's also in the dodges and digressions. After the interview, Kerry's communications director, David Wade, was asked to clarify when Kerry signed SF 180 and when public access would be granted. Kerry drifted over to join the conversation, immediately raising the confusion level. He did not answer the question of when he signed the form or when the entire record will be made public.

Several e-mails later, Wade conveyed the following information: On Friday, May 20, Kerry obtained a copy of Form 180 and signed it. ''The next step is to send it to the Navy, which will happen in the next few days. The Navy will then send out the records," e-mailed Wade. Kerry first said he would sign Form 180 when pressed by Tim Russert during a Jan. 30 appearance on ''Meet the Press."

Six months after Kerry's loss to George W. Bush, it feels somewhat gratuitous to point out how hard it can be to get a clear, straight answer from Kerry on this and other matters. But as long as the Massachusetts senator is thinking about another presidential run, the candor gap remains on the table, because he puts it there.

On one hand, he seems to have concluded that Democrats have a ''branding" problem, much like a company selling razor blades. The Democratic Party, said Kerry, needs ''a new brand. That's the challenge." For 25 years, he said, Democrats did not fight negative branding by their opponents. As a result, he said, Democrats are now labelled as ''tax, spend, weak, things like that."

...The twists and turns of the past campaign still elicit bursts of passionate analysis. He continues to attribute Bush's success to a combination of voter indifference to the truth and the Republicans' ability to leverage the ''fear factor."

Asked about the impact of religion, he said that he reread the New Testament since the election to make sure ''I didn't miss anything" and recalled that on the campaign trail ''I gave a very strong speech about values and how you measure these things." He believes he lost the ''soccer moms" and ''security moms" to the Osama bin Laden videotape, released the Friday before Election Day.

The campaign waged against him by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth arouses Kerry's greatest passion. ''What they said was untrue," he said. He considered, but decided against, filing suit against the group, which alleged that he did not deserve his Vietnam military honors.

I don't know where to start.

Okay, let's start with Form-180. He's had nearly four months to sign it. There's a copy of the form right here. I've had credit card applications that were longer than this.

Second, his staff is looking through it right now? He signed the form on Friday, after nearly four months of waiting -- didn't they vet the accuracy of what he was putting on the form before that? What, do they need three days to look over the form for spelling errors? Hey, bucko, last I checked, the taxpayers are supporting your Senate staff. Can I get an accounting of the time they're wasting instructing the Senator on how to use a pen to properly sign the form?

Third, if it took him four months to sign, God only knows how long it will take for them to find a stamp. And an envelope. And who's going to drop it off at the Post Office?

Next, he takes time out to blame his loss on the fact that (a) the voters fell for scare tactics perpetrated by the GOP and assisted by Osama bin Laden, (b) the voters were indifferent, (c) the voters didn't listen to his speeches on values, and (d) the Democrats suffer from negative branding. Good thing none of it was his own fault. By the way, snide remarks about re-reading the New Testament to make sure he didn't miss anything are a good way to make certain that religious people think you're a phony.

Finally, there's the Swift Boat Vets. He considered filing a lawsuit, but decided not to do so. Maybe that's because discovery in the suit might have stalled while he tried to figure out how to sign that pesky Form-180.

It's a wonder Kerry won as many votes as he did. Maybe I should give John Edwards some credit.

No Diploma For You

Someone needs to work on their sense of humor...

Eagleville High School Valedictorian Abe Stokla said all he wanted to do was give a memorable speech, but what he thought was funny, school leaders considered offensive.

In his speech, Stokla planned to say, “You have given us the minimum required attention and education to master any station at any McDonald’s anywhere. For that we thank you. Of course, I’m only kidding. Eagleville is a fine institute of higher learning, with superb faculty and staff.” He said all of the jokes were simply segues to build up the school with compliments.

But those in attendance at Eagleville’s graduation ceremony never heard that second part of Stokla’s speech because the school’s principal asked that the microphone be turned off when he varied from the speech he said he was going to deliver.

Eagleville High School principal Rhonda Holton said there were two sentences the school wanted Stokla to change.

“Because it implied that the students did not receive a quality education,” Holton said.

...Because of his speech, Stokla did not receive his diploma at the ceremony.

God forbid that someone imply that the students didn't receive a quality education, even in jest. Perhaps the principal protests a tad too loudly here.

In the meantime, I'm guessing Stokla will be president of his fraternity, based on the picture. He might even become the most powerful person on campus -- IFC President.

Sorry -- every now and then, I'm entitled to an inside joke.

The Force Compels You To Eat A Whopper

Faithful reader KS sends us this link, where Darth Vader (with some help from the King) tries to read your mind. He's not very good at it, in my opinion. I tried "stadium scoreboard" and he guessed unicycle at one point. But the commentary's pretty funny.

More Goofiness in the Garden State

The Lord of Truth sends us the latest from the great state of New Jersey...

Acting Gov. Richard Codey yesterday proposed that New Jersey's most dangerous sexual predators be prohibited from going near schools or playgrounds, and that police use satellite technology to make sure they don't.

Codey announced his backing for legislation to use bracelets equipped with global positioning system technology to monitor the whereabouts of convicted sex offenders deemed most likely to commit new crimes. The bill would set up a one-year pilot program in three counties that would let authorities know if an offender was in the vicinity when a crime was committed.

The acting governor took that proposal a step further, saying satellite tracking should be used to keep predators away from places where children gather.

"If one of these offenders were to wander into a playground ... the police would send an officer there to let them know in no uncertain terms to get their rear ends out of there," Codey said. "They're not going to wait until he enters a playground. As soon as he gets close to it, they'll respond."

Current law does not limit where convicted sex offenders who have completed their sentences can go. Megan's Law requires them to register their addresses, and for authorities to notify neighbors if certain high- and moderate-risk offenders live nearby.

Following yesterday's news conference, spokespeople for Codey and for Sen. Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester), the bill's sponsor, said it will be amended to include new restrictions on the movements of those offenders classified as the highest risk, who currently number 207.

"This system is pretty simple: It's tracking," said Sweeney. "When you're dealing with someone who has a goal in mind, and that is to get someone and do ... great harm .. This stops them from doing that. The main thing is to keep the predator away from the child."

Sweeney and Codey spoke of keeping offenders from approaching within 500 feet of a school or playground.

West Trenton lawyer Jack Furlong, a critic of Megan's Law, called the governor's latest plan a "ridiculous waste of time and taxpayers' money" that "offends the Constitution and our common sense of decency and individual liberty."

"This effectively rules a substantial portion of urban America off limits," Furlong said. "If you want to put these guys on Devil's Island, why not just have the nerve to come out and say that?"

Tom Rosenthal, spokesman for state Public Defender Yvonne Smith Segars, said the office would wait until the amendment is introduced before commenting. "But we want to make people aware that ... if you move someone 500 feet from a school, you have to realize you're moving them somewhere else," where they may not be watched over as well, Rosenthal said.

As the Minister of War noted, that last quote is one of the worst criticisms I've ever heard against a policy position. That aside, this idea is bordering on the absurd.

First of all, I don't want sex offenders near schools. I don't want them near anything but a prison cell. But changing the rules after someone's been convicted and served their sentance is wrong. There's a difference between requiring a person to register with local authorities as a former convict and forcing them to wear a monitoring device -- I can see the former as an impostion but not a punishment, but the latter really does involve a fundamental violation of one's privacy. Maybe we can do this for those who commit sex crimes going forward, but it's beyond the realm of both our Constitution and fairness to punish someone after they've served their time.

Next, can we really trust the government to create an effective monitoring system? This is New Jersey, where some contractor will take the contract and have cost overruns until 2009, when they'll need more money to finish the work. I don't even want to get into the fact that the monitoring would be done by government employees.

Look, if we're this worried about sex offenders hitting playgrounds, let's post cops there. And if we're this worried about sex offenders in general, let's give them longer jail sentences. Sometimes new technology isn't as good an answer as common sense.

A Worthy Appeal

I don't usually blog for issues like this (though I probably should, because they're truly important), but it's a request for help that came through a good friend, and it's a worthy cause in every way. I'm cutting and pasting the text of the e-mail below, with the names of the people who sent it deleted...

Some of you I am emailing for the first time and for others and this is an update on my friend, Susan Torres.

On May 6, Susan Torres-26-year-old vaccine researcher at NIH, mother of a two-year-old son, Peter, collapsed of a brain hemorrhage. She was rushed to the Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, where she has been diagnosed with stage four melanoma and is brain dead with little hope of recovery. What makes this situation especially tragic is that Susan is 18 weeks pregnant. Right now, doctors are fighting to keep her alive through artificial respiration and other means until July 11, to give her baby a fighting chance at life. Over this past weekend (May 21-22), Susan has contracted pneumonia, and is breathing with just one lung. Her blood pressure has been unstable, however the doctors are hopeful she will be able to fight off the infection. The sonogram of the baby (as of last week), looks good. There is a 95% chance it is a girl--which is great news considering preemie baby girls seem to fair better than boys.

As a young family, Susan and her husband Jason Torres have few assets and their health insurance is severely limited. This family faces financial ruin-simply lying in the bed in ICU is costing more than $2000 per day, before drugs, interventions, and other medical costs-and Jason may have to care for a premature baby on top of the expense of Susan's care. Above and beyond anything else, please pray for this family.
Also, many of you have asked how you can help. Honestly, donations are very needed and we have set up a trust for unreimbursed medical expenses. If your budget allows, please send a check to:

The Susan M. Torres Fund
PO Box 34105
Washington DC 20043-0105

(Tax exempt status is pending.) Please forward this email to anyone you think can help and thank you so much on behalf of my friend Susan.

If you can't give, please pray for the baby and for this family, and count your own blessings.

A Lousy Deal

The deal on judicial nominations stinks to high heaven. GOP centrist Senators who opted to pursue the deal have given up on the hard work of thousands of party activists who worked tirelessly to gain and then build a Senate majority. We tossed out Tom Daschle based in large part on his obstruction, yet Senators from our own party decided earlier today to pretend that the last two elections meant nothing.

Look, I can walk away and rationalize it by noting that two judges who were among the most demonized nominees (Brown and Owen) will get votes on the floor of the Senate. But the rest of this deal is worse than allowing the filibuster to continue. I guarantee that at least one of the next three Supreme Court nominees will be contentious, especially since Bush will not pick all moderates. Even if he does, we have no guarantee that the Democrats won't act in bad faith on a moderate conservative like McConnell or Lutting. We've simply delayed the battle, and the Republican centrists have tied their hands while the Dems can still filibuster under whatever they determine to be "extraorinary circumstances" which probably includes any time Ralph Neas gets an itch in his throat.

Let me say this in very simple terms: John McCain just cost himself ANY chance of winning the Presidential nomination. The same is true for Bill Frist. And the Senate continued to be the same feckless, pathetic place it has always been. The press will spin this as a positive development, because everyone enjoys comity and compromise. We know better. Frist got rolled by McCain, who was in search of his own headlines as the great conciliator. And before anyone tells me differently, they need to explain why Robert Friggin' Byrd was up on the podium with them celebrating this evening. The first person to explain why that would be different from inviting David Duke wins a gold star.

I'm disgusted by my own party, and appalled by the opposition. It's a good way to save money on donations to the NRSC, I guess.

Shhh! Don't Tell Anyone

The Lord of Truth lets us in on a little secret -- the President's tax cuts have increased tax revenues....

So we thought our readers might like to know that so far this year federal tax revenues are booming. Overall, in the first seven months of Fiscal Year 2005 through April 30, they climbed by $146 billion to a total of $1.216 trillion. That's an increase of 13.6% over a year earlier, some four or five times the inflation rate, and the kind of raise that most American families can only dream about. Income tax receipts are driving this windfall, with individual revenues up $66 billion, or 16%, to $547 billion. Corporate income taxes are rolling in even faster, tsunami-like in fact, rising 48% to $134 billion.

...Nonetheless, CBO concluded that the revenue surge means the federal deficit for the year will fall substantially, perhaps to "the vicinity of $350 billion." That would be down from some $412 billion last year, and well below the White House budget office estimates.

There are several lessons here, starting with the fact that somebody is earning all that extra income that the feds are getting their share of. The economy has been doing better than media coverage admits, with growth lifting employment and incomes and thus the federal fisc. This revenue boom also is taking place in the wake of the 2003 reduction in dividend, capital gains and marginal income tax rates that Robert Rubin and other worthies predicted would be fiscally disastrous. Apologies accepted.

The "deficit" problem, in short, is not on the revenue side of the ledger. Tax revenues as a share of the economy fell sharply from their Clintonian (post World War II) heights after September 11. But they are now climbing back toward their modern historical average in the neighborhood of 17% to 18% of GDP. This will happen even at the lower Bush tax rates -- or shall we say, because of them -- since as incomes rise more Americans are pushed into higher tax brackets.

Good thing the press has to report on Newsweek's problems, or they might stumble across this story and make people realize supply-siders have it right.

But I'll Bet She Doesn't Have Any Mice

Those crazy cat lady stories finally have a real-life counterpart...

A woman who founded a "no-kill" animal shelter was charged with health code and animal welfare violations after 200 dead cats were discovered rotting in garbage bags in her backyard.

Marlene Kess, who has built a reputation in Manhattan as a caretaker of homeless and dying cats, had 48 cats inside her house, including 38 in one room, authorities said.

Out back, 200 vermin-infested cat corpses were stuffed into garbage bags and apparently were going to be buried in a large hole that had recently been dug, said Sgt. Joseph Bierman of the state's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The cats were discovered after neighbors complained about the stench.

...Kess was cited for health code violations, including keeping an unlawful number of animals, harboring dead animals and causing an environmental hazard with the corpses. The SPCA, which enforces the state's animal cruelty laws, charged Kess with 38 counts of failing to properly shelter cats.

Authorities are allowing Kess to keep the 48 cats in her home because she promised to separate the sick animals from the healthy ones, Bierman said.

Perhaps she plans to seperate them by killing them and stuffing them in bags. They're letting her keep 48 cats after 200 were found dead in her backyard? I don't like cats, but this seems to be a bad idea if you want to keep the cats alive.

Newsweek Gets Weaker

Loyal reader RB sends us the story on Newsweek's investigation of its now infamous flushing Koran piece and we're sorry to say that the story's even worse than before...

The International Committee of the Red Cross announced that it had provided the Pentagon with confidential reports about U.S. personnel disrespecting or mishandling Qur'ans at Gitmo in 2002 and 2003. Simon Schorno, an ICRC spokesman, said the Red Cross had provided "several" instances that it believed were "credible." The ICRC report included three specific allegations of offensive treatment of the Qur'an by guards. Defense Department spokesman Lawrence Di Rita would not comment on these allegations except to say that the Gitmo commanders routinely followed up ICRC reports, including these, and could not substantiate them. He then gave what is from the Defense Department point of view more context and important new information.

...According to Di Rita, when the first prisons were built for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo in early 2002, prison guards were instructed to respect the detainees' religious rituals. The prisoners were given Qur'ans, which they hung from the walls of their cells in cotton surgical masks provided by the prison. Log entries by the guards indicate that in about a dozen cases, the detainees themselves somehow damaged their Qur'ans. In one case a prisoner allegedly ripped up a Qur'an; in another a prisoner tore the cover off his Qur'an. In three cases, detainees tried to stuff pages from their Qur'ans down their toilets, according to the Defense Department's account of what is in the guards' reports.

...In light of the controversy, one of these incidents bears special notice. Last week, NEWSWEEK interviewed Command Sgt. John VanNatta, who served as the prison's warden from October 2002 to the fall of 2003. VanNatta recounted that in 2002, the inmates suddenly started yelling that the guards had thrown a Qur'an on or near an Asian-style squat toilet. The guards found an inmate who admitted that he had dropped his Qur'an near his toilet. According to VanNatta, the inmate then was taken cell to cell to explain this to other detainees to quell the unrest. But the incident could partly account for the multiple allegations among detainees, including one by a released British detainee in a lawsuit that claims that guards flushed Qur'ans down toilets.

In fewer than a dozen log entries from the 31,000 documents reviewed so far, said Di Rita, there is a mention of detainees' complaining that guards or interrogators mishandled their Qur'ans. In one case, a female guard allegedly knocked a Qur'an from its pouch onto the detainee's bed. In another alleged case, said Di Rita, detainees became upset after two MPs, looking for contraband, felt the pouch containing a prisoner's Qur'an. While questioning a detainee, an interrogator allegedly put a Qur'an on top of a TV set, took it off when the detainee complained, then put it back on. In another alleged instance, guards somehow sprayed water on a detainee's Qur'an. This handful of alleged cases came out of thousands of daily interactions between guards and prisoners, said Di Rita. None has been substantiated yet, he said.

This is the reason for their crappy reporting? I'm not even going to get into this story, but I'd say we're all well within our rights to question Newsweek's professionalism as well as their motives here.

Maybe a word needs to be said about the fact that the idiots who rioted and killed people in reaction to the story are idiots, and no such story is worth this kind of reaction. For this, we'll turn to the always-entertaining Mark Steyn...

To date, reaction has divided along two lines. Newsweek has been hammered for being so flushed with anti-Bush anti-military fever that they breezily neglected the question of whether their story would generate a huge mound of corpses.

Which is true. On the other hand, there are those who point out it's hardly Newsweek's fault that some goofy foreigners are so bananas they'll riot and kill over one rumor of one disrespectful act to one copy of one book. Christians don't riot over ''Piss Christ'' and other provocations by incontinent ''artists.'' Jews take it in their stride when they're described as ''a virus resembling AIDS,'' which is what Sheikh Ibrahim Mudeiris said a week ago in his sermon on Palestinian state TV, funded by the European Union. Muslims can dish it out big-time, so why can't they take it, even the teensy-weensiest bit?

All of which is also true, but would be a better defense of Newsweek if the media hadn't spent the last 3-1/2 years bending over backwards to be super-sensitive to the, ah, touchiness of the Muslim world -- until the opportunity for a bit of lurid Bush-bashing proved too much to resist. In a way, both the U.S. media and those wacky rioters in the Afghan-Pakistani hinterlands are very similar, two highly parochial and monumentally self-absorbed tribes living in isolation from the rest of the world and prone to fanatical irrational indestructible beliefs -- not least the notion that you can flush a 950-page book down one of Al Gore's eco-crazed federally mandated low-flush toilets, a claim no editorial bigfoot thought to test for himself in Newsweek's executive washroom.

Steyn's always worth reading, but this one's particularly entertaining. He's got a great point about how the pro-Jihadi politicians in the Islamic world see fit to keep their population ignorant and hate-filled. It's a shame that Newsweek doesn't do more reporting on that.

The Public Editor Calls It Quits

Daniel Okrent's final column as the public editor to the New York Times is a treat. And we all know that's not something I often say about the left-wing dishrag. But Okrent takes the time to hammer both sides, and does so fairly. My favorite part...

Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults. Maureen Dowd was still writing that Alberto R. Gonzales "called the Geneva Conventions 'quaint' " nearly two months after a correction in the news pages noted that Gonzales had specifically applied the term to Geneva provisions about commissary privileges, athletic uniforms and scientific instruments. Before his retirement in January, William Safire vexed me with his chronic assertion of clear links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, based on evidence only he seemed to possess.

No one deserves the personal vituperation that regularly comes Dowd's way, and some of Krugman's enemies are every bit as ideological (and consequently unfair) as he is. But that doesn't mean that their boss, publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., shouldn't hold his columnists to higher standards.

I didn't give Krugman, Dowd or Safire the chance to respond before writing the last two paragraphs. I decided to impersonate an opinion columnist.

Standards? At the Times?

Give Okrent credit. He also noted the following...

Reader Steven L. Carter of Bala Cynwyd, Pa., asks, If "Tucker Carlson is identified as a conservative" in The Times, then why is "Bill Moyers just, well, plain old Bill Moyers"? Good question.

Perhaps because it might be unfair to label Moyers as a windbag.

No, Seriously

Yeah, I definitely believe this one...

Scientists say they have located the parts of the brain that comprehend sarcasm - honestly.

By comparing healthy people and those with damage to different parts of the brain, they found the front of the brain was a key to understanding irony.

Damage to any of three different areas could render individuals unable to understand sarcastic comments.

(hat tip: The Corner) Once again, proof that anyone who doesn't understand my sense of humor is brain damaged.

Dr. Demento is Back

Howard Dean, DNC Chairman, and God's gift to Karl Rove and the GOP, appearing on Meet The Press (empasis added)...

DR. DEAN: ...But the thing that really bothered me the most, which the 9-11 Commission said also wasn't true, is the insinuation that the president continues to make to this day that Osama bin Laden had something to do with supporting terrorists that attacked the United States. That is false. The 9-11 Commission, chaired by a Republican, said it was false. Is it wrong to send people to war without telling them the truth. And the truth was Osama bin Laden was a very bad person who was doing terrible things, but that Iraq was never a threat to the United States.

(hat tip: Instapundit and Jackson's Junction). As Instapundit noted, if Bush had said, the Left would be all over the remark. Of course, maybe Dean thinks Osama's innocent anyhow.

Actually, here's the part of the transcript that really lit a fire under me...

MR. RUSSERT: Let me stay on your rhetoric. January, I mentioned that "I hate the Republicans, what they stand for, good and evil, we are the good." In March, you said, "Republicans are brain dead." You mentioned you're a physician--and this is April. "[Dean] did draw howls of laughter by mimicking a drug-snorting Rush Limbaugh. `I'm not very dignified,' Dean said."

DR. DEAN: Well, that's true. A lot of people have accused me of not being dignified.

MR. RUSSERT: But is it appropriate for a physician to mock somebody who has gone into therapy and the abuse for drug addiction?

DR. DEAN: Here's the point I was trying--as most of these things are taken by the Republicans, spun around Washington saying this in a one sentence, which I generally had said. But then they're sort of manipulated around, saying this is the kind of thing he said. The Rush Limbaugh comment was one that I made about Rush Limbaugh, and I also said something about Bill O'Reilly. The problem is not that these folks have problems. They do, and they have problems in the case of a drug addiction. That's a medical problem. And I respect those who clearly, in my profession, who are trying to overcome their problems.

The problem is it is galling to Democrats, 48 percent of us who did not support the president, it is galling to be lectured to about moral values by folks who have their own problems. Hypocrisy is a value that I think has been embraced by the Republican Party. We get lectured by people all day long about moral values by people who have their own moral shortcomings. I don't think we ought to give a whole lot of lectures to people--I think the Bible says something to the effect that be careful when you talk about the shortcomings of somebody else when you haven't removed the moat from your own eye. And I don't think we ought to be lectured to by Republicans who have got all these problems themselves.

Rush Limbaugh has made a career of belittling other people and making jokes about President Clinton, about Mrs. Clinton and others. I don't think he's in any position to do that, nor do I think Bill O'Reilly is in a position to abuse families of survivors of 9/11, given his own ethical shortcomings. Everybody has ethical shortcomings. We ought not to lecture each other about our ethical shortcomings.

Oh, up yours, Dr. Demento.

How does this tie into your own party's lectures regarding House Majority leader Tom Delay? Plenty of people within your party see fit to attack Mr. Delay despite their own ethical shortcomings. Do you have the same words for them?

I am sick and tired of Democrats who whine about being attacked and claim it's unfair. You know, I'm sick of Democrats who seem to think Republicans just want screw widows and orphans while providing tax breaks to rich people and evil polluting corporations. But I don't stand around complaining about the rhetoric from the other side -- I know that my party doesn't believe in hurting children and old people, despite the demogoguary. Most Republicans don't spend their time on the defensive, because they know better about their own beliefs. Perhaps Democrats get defensive about being called a bunch of whiny anti-religious moral relativists because the label fits.

Next, don't give me this crap that I can't express an opinion about another person's ethical shortcomings. Forget freedom of speech concerns, although maybe this is dean's way of supporting McCain-Feingold. Based on Dean's comments, Jesus might well be the only person available to comment on the personal actions of various politicians and whether they're immoral.

Sorry, but that doesn't cut it. If Rush Limbaugh has a drug problem, is he somehow unfit to comment on the extramarital activities of President Clinton? Or the pro-abortion stance of Hillary Clinton? You may call him a hypocrite for having his own shortcomings, but that doesn't make him wrong. Dean can criticize Limbaugh for his drug addiction, even if Dean happens to be a kleptomaniac (I have no idea if that's true or not; I'm just using it as an example).

And that's where Dean and his cohorts get it wrong. Some of us believe Limbaugh's drug abuse is wrong. We think the same thing about Clinton's extra-marital affairs, and about abortion. Even if we have engaged in behavior that we ourselves judge to be morally wrong (if we've abused drugs, cheated on a spouse or had an abortion), that doesn't mean our opinion on the issue is wrong. You may question our motivation for making the claim, or call us a hypocrite for our own failings. But that doesn't in any way excuse the behavior or answer the criticism that it's wrong. If you don't think the behavior is wrong, then you have to defend it, not point to the other side's appalling shortcomings.

I'd love to see Democrats get up and defend the stances that keep losing elections, rather than trying to talk about how they have their own moral values and the GOP has its own shortcomings. If you believe in abortion on demand, explain to those religious folks who think it's murder why you don't believe it is, rather than trying to distract them by talking about some other issue. If you think gay people should have the right to get married, stand up for it, and tell people who might not vote for you that you don't give a damn because you believe you're right. Granted, they still won't vote for you, but they may respect you.

In the end, the reason Democrats fail is because they don't have a coherent position on most policy issues anyway. But the reason they face a values deficit compared to the GOP is that most people trust them less, because they're fundamentally not honest about who they are. Howard Dean isn't changing that -- all he's doing is changing the volume.

Not Moving On

As noted the other day, the geniuses at MoveOn have aired commercials which reference Revenge of the Sith while criticizing the GOP effort to end filibusters. Now, having seen the movie (full review coming), I can state conclusively that any political overtones one wants to take out of the movie are equal to the beliefs you bring into the movie. Of course, this means MoveOn and their like are finding what they want. I just didn't expect the group to include Senate Democrats...

Yesterday morning, Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) used the phrase. Yesterday afternoon, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) used it. But it took Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) to show why the Senate is the world's greatest deliberative body.

The octogenarian legislator, rising in defense of the filibuster, displayed a larger-than-life poster of Ian McDiarmid playing the evil Supreme Chancellor Palpatine in the just-released film "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith."

"In a far-off universe, in this film, the leader of the Senate breaks the rules to give himself and his supporters more power," Lautenberg inveighed. "I sincerely hope that it doesn't mirror actions being contemplated in the Senate of the United States."
Lautenberg juxtaposed the evil chancellor with another poster, of Jimmy Stewart playing Sen. Jefferson Smith in Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." That film, Lautenberg said, "is a celebration of this Senate, the world's greatest deliberative body. But if the majority leader is successful in ending the filibuster . . . we will move from the world's greatest deliberative body to a rubber-stamp factory."

...After Lautenberg, echoing a new MoveOn.org advertising campaign, likened Republican leader Bill Frist (Tenn.) to Palpatine, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), on a visit to the Senate press gallery, was asked what character Democrats represent. "We are the Jedi knights," he replied instantly. "We have the light source."

Frist spokesman Bob Stevenson scoffed at these claims, suggesting the Democrats are in fact led by a floppy-eared outcast from Naboo. If Frist is Palpatine and Democrats are Jedi, Stevenson wondered, "would that make Howard Dean Jar Jar Binks?"

First of all, I have no friggin' clue what Schumer is talking about, and I've seen everyone of the Star Wars movies (save the last one) multiple times (including the execreble Attack of the Clones). The light source? Is Schumer smoking something?

Second, Lautenberg and his cronies need help. I know the Democrats are fascinated with Hollywood, but this is going too far. Lautenberg probably figures he's Yoda at this point -- or maybe that's Robert Byrd. Of course, Yoda makes a helluva lot more sense at 850 years old than either of those two do now.

Finally, I'd like the Democrats to make a coherent, credible argument in favor of their filibuster against appellate court judges... yeah, I know. I'm guessing Lucas will come out with Part VII before we get there.