A Good Video for Friday

My colleague and loyal reader ST sends us the link to this rather hysterical take on the Emporer's reaction to the first Death Star being blown up. Personally, I love the line, "What the hell is an Aluminum Falcon?"

Reasons I Don't Live in New Jersey

I know the Lord of Truth must be enjoying his Senate race. I'm reasonably certain Bob Menendez will win, because he's still elading in the polls, and I think Kean needs a 3 point lead in the polls at minimum going into Election Day to offset the New Jersey Democratic get-out-the-vote program (a.k.a. getting out the cemetary vote in Newark, Trenton and Camden). But Menendez is trying really hard to lose this race...

Connecticut U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman's tough re-election fight has caused his Democratic colleagues in the Senate to walk a fine line, and U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez sought to straddle that line at a forum for Jewish voters.

...A audience member asked Menendez why he was putting party loyalty ahead of a good candidate by backing Lamont. Menendez became indignant and he told the crowd of hundreds the premise of the question was dead wrong. He called Lieberman a "tremendous Senator," and said, "We wish him well. We hope he returns."

But after the event, safely away from the hundreds of audience members, Menendez had a different response when a reporter asked if he was endorsing Lieberman. No, he said, he is "officially" supporting Lamont, the party nominee.

Republican state Sen. Tom Kean Jr., who backs Lieberman, denounced Menendez for trying to have it both ways. "I think New Jersey voters who want to look into the character of Bob Menendez need to look no further than the treatment of Joe Lieberman. Menendez went before a group of concerned Jewish voters and he tried to hoodwink them . . .it's absolutely despicable," said Kean.

Hey, maybe it's not inconsistent -- maybe Menendez is advocating giving Joe Lieberman a permanent Senate office, with no voting privileges.

Clearly, Menendez is trying to have it both ways. There's nothing politically wrong with that, as long as you can get away with it. That's becoming tougher today than in the past. It's stunning how often politicians forget that.

One More Reason to Worry About Trusting Democrats with National Security

Wow. I don't know what to say...

House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra has suspended a Democratic staff member because of concerns he may have leaked a high-level intelligence assessment to The New York Times last month.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press Thursday night, Rep. Ray LaHood (news, bio, voting record), R-Ill., a committee member, said that an unidentified staffer requested the document from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte three days before the Sept. 23 story about its conclusions.

The staffer received the National Intelligence Estimate on global terror trends on Sept. 21.

"I have no credible information to say any classified information was leaked from the committee's minority staff, but the implications of such would be dramatic," LaHood wrote Hoekstra, R-Mich., late last month. "This may, in fact, be only coincidence, and simply 'look bad.' But coincidence, in this town, is rare."

A spokesman to Hoekstra, Jamal Ware, confirmed that a committee staff member was suspended this week. He said the staff member is being denied access to classified information pending the outcome of a review.

To paraphrase Instapundit, maybe Pat Fitgerald has something real to investigate this time. A real breach of national security, as it were. TigerHawk has some comments as well. I also should note the new name given to the Democrats by Ace: "The party of leaking security secrets and sexual orientations."

Hey, if the shoe fits... Over at CQ, Captain Ed sums up what should happen rather well..

If this turns out to be true, the staffer should face several years in prison. After all, the Congressional committees have to protect national-security information, and the American people have to trust them to do so. Politicians have often been careless with classified material, but this will be the first time in recent memory that anyone involved in the committees have been identified as a deliberate leaker. That cannot go without serious consequences, or else politicians and their staffers from both parties will manipulate exposure of secret information for political purposes at their whim.

In fact, it's hard to see how this could have been anything but that kind of manipulation. Critics of the Bush administration have assumed that the leak came from people within the programs, nonpartisans who objected to the orders they were given. If this turns out to be true and he or she was the source for all the leaks, the leaks are anything but non-partisan. The staffer worked for the committee that conducted oversight on these programs, which means that Congress had full knowledge of the programs.

Hopefully, the DoJ will take over this probe immediately, and give us the answers to which we are all entitled as to how our secret efforts to defeat terrorism wound up on our newstands.

Whoever this person is, they should go away for a long time. There is no question this information was classified, as opposed to the identity of Valerie (shh!) Plame. But I'm not going to hold my breath for the New York Times to scream for an independent investigation of this leak.

V for Villanova

College basketball season is approaching. I will miss last year's Villanova team -- as I noted following their last game earlier this year, that team might be the most memorable sports team that I've ever supported. But college basketball always gives you a chance to start over with a whole new set of guys, and we have a coach who seems to be building something very special...

They still look like the best team in the Big Five, and a team that should be in the mix in the brutal Big East Conference.

And that reflects nearly as well on Wright as the success his first wave of players achieved in their final season together.

Wright was telling the self-deprecating tale of how McDonald's all-American guard Scottie Reynolds wound up on the Main Line. Basically, Reynolds recruited himself, choosing 'Nova after getting out of a letter of intent to attend Oklahoma.

"We did nothing," Wright said. "Not only did he fall into our lap, but the perfect fit for our team fell into our lap."

That's because, with Lowry jumping to the NBA, Wright suddenly had a need for a guard. But Reynolds' decision to attend Villanova didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened because he watched Wright's team play on TV last year and liked the way they played, the way they were coached, and what he heard about the way the program was run.

This is how perennial powerhouses do it. You create a program that top players want to join. Mike Nardi, Will Sheridan and the returning Curtis Sumpter still have the sparkle from last year's team. Dante Cunningham and Shane Clark grew into contributors over the course of the season. Now along comes Reynolds.

"He looked up to those guys," Wright said. "I think he might have come even if Kyle Lowry stayed, because he talked about playing with Kyle. He looked up to Randy. That's what you want, guys who want to come to the place those other guys came, and who want to be that kind of person."

I love the fact that our program works to concentrate on producing good people as well as good players. Guys like Randy Foye, Jason Fraser and Allan Ray made me proud because of the people they were, in addition to the way they played. It sounds like Jay Wright wants to produce more of the same types of people. That's more reassuring than any NCAA Tournament bid... but I'll take another of those as well.

Proposal on Iraq

Jonah Goldberg's column on the Iraq War is thought-provoking in a way our current debate over the war is not. I don't agree with every word, but I do think that he actually frames the debate properly...

In the dumbed-down debate we're having, there are only two sides: Pro-war and antiwar. This is silly. First, very few folks who favored the Iraq invasion are abstractly pro-war. Second, the antiwar types aren't really pacifists. They favor military intervention when it comes to stopping genocide in Darfur or starvation in Somalia or doing whatever that was President Clinton did in Haiti. In other words, their objection isn't to war per se. It's to wars that advance U.S. interests (or, allegedly, President Bush's or Israel's or ExxonMobil's interests). I must confess that one of the things that made me reluctant to conclude that the Iraq war was a mistake was my general distaste for the shabbiness of the arguments on the antiwar side.

But that's no excuse. Truth is truth. And the Iraq war was a mistake by the most obvious criteria: If we had known then what we know now, we would never have gone to war with Iraq in 2003. I do think that Congress (including Democrats Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Jay Rockefeller and John Murtha) was right to vote for the war given what was known — or what was believed to have been known — in 2003. And the claims from Democrats who voted for the war that they were lied to strikes me as nothing more than cowardly buck-passing.

The failure to find weapons of mass destruction is a side issue. The WMD fiasco was a global intelligence failure, but calling Saddam Hussein's bluff after 9/11 was the right thing to do. Washington's more important intelligence failure lay in underestimating what would be required to rebuild and restore post-Hussein Iraq. The White House did not anticipate a low-intensity civil war in Iraq, never planned for it and would not have deemed it in the U.S. interest to pay this high a price in prestige, treasure and, of course, lives.

According to the goofy parameters of the current debate, I'm now supposed to call for withdrawing from Iraq. If it was a mistake to go in, we should get out, some argue. But this is unpersuasive. A doctor will warn that if you see a man stabbed in the chest, you shouldn't rush to pull the knife out. We are in Iraq for good reasons and for reasons that were well-intentioned but wrong. But we are there.

Those who say that it's not the central front in the war on terror are in a worse state of denial than they think Bush is in. Of course it's the central front in the war on terror. That it has become so is a valid criticism of Bush, but it's also strong reason for seeing our Iraqi intervention through. If we pull out precipitously, jihadism will open a franchise in Iraq and gain steam around the world, and the U.S. will be weakened.

Bush's critics claim that democracy promotion was an afterthought, a convenient rebranding of a war gone sour. I think that's unfair, but even if true, it wouldn't mean liberty isn't at stake. It wouldn't mean that promoting a liberal society in the heart of the Arab and Muslim world wouldn't be in our interest and consistent with our ideals. In war, you sometimes end up having to defend ground you wouldn't have chosen with perfect knowledge beforehand. That's us in Iraq.

I don't know if I agree with Goldberg's contention that the war was a mistake or that we let the Iraqis vote on our presence, but at least he's trying.

The problem right now is that everyone is criticizing the President's course of action in Iraq, but very few (and I'm talking elected or would-be lawmakers) have a concrete plan (or any plan) on what they would do... except a wholesale withdrawal, which does not serve American interests. I see candidates on the left running ads all the time saying "they opposed Bush on Iraq" or "will oppose Bush on Iraq." That's a choice, but it's hardly one that is reassuring.

McCain Threatens... Suicide?

Well, that would narrow the 2008 Presidential field...

Arizona Senator and probable 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain jokingly says he would "commit suicide" if Democrats take control of the U.S. Senate in this November's election.

McCain is in Iowa today (Wednesday), campaigning with GOP Congressmen Steve King and Tom Latham as well as Republican congressional candidate Jeff Lamberti. McCain spoke at a mid-day news conference in Des Moines, where McCain was asked what his reaction would be to a Democratic take-over of the Senate.

"I think I'd just commit suicide," McCain said, as the Republicans standing beside him burst into laughter. "I don't want to face that eventuality because I don't think it's going to happen...I think it's going to be tough, but I think we'll do o.k." A few moments later McCain turned to Congressman Latham and joked that Latham would probably commit suicide first, as polls suggest control of the House is likely to swing to Democrats in this year's election.

According to McCain, the current "tenor" of campaigns is too negative and he hopes the courts can help stop new groups called "527s" which are able to skirt campaign contribution limits. "The 527s are pernicious evil that needs to be eliminated," McCain said. "We have a Federal Elections Commission that will not enforce the law and they are an absolute national disgrace." McCain said.

I love the sense of humor. I just wish McCain, who's more grounded in reality than most politicians, would realize that the "tenor" of campaigns hasn't changed much -- just the level of disclosure we get in society on anyone's life has changed. A generation ago, we didn't have anything near the level of crap we do about celebrities. Is it so surprising that we can find so many negatives about our politicians?

And calling groups organized around the idea of creating political free speech (which is what a 527 organization essentially is) a "pernicious evil" is the worst part of McCain. There's a lot to admire in him, but I always find it funny when people characterize the Bush Administration as a threat to civil liberties and free speech. McCain has restricted, and wants to further restrict, the right of Americans to speak freely regarding political campaigns. Isn't that a tad bit dangerous?

Maryland Senate Race Heats Up

Hmmm. Interesting developments in the Maryland Senate race...

Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele accused a leading Democratic congressman yesterday of racial insensitivity for saying the Republican candidate has "slavishly" followed the GOP.

Steele, an African American running for the U.S. Senate, was reacting to remarks by House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer, who characterized Steele this week as having had "a career of slavishly supporting the Republican Party."

After speaking to members of the Maryland Chamber of Commerce gathered in Ocean City, Steele called the description "the height of arrogance."

"It goes to just the sheer craziness of some in the Democratic Party who think they can use racist terms and infer things about me just because I'm an African American Republican," he said.

Steele added that he expects his Democratic opponent, Benjamin L. Cardin, to "stand up and tell his team to sit down and shut up, stop the noise and apologize."

Hoyer's comments, first reported by MSNBC, came Sunday as he was introducing Cardin to a group of black business owners in Upper Marlboro, and his choice of words did not cause a visible reaction from the crowd.

"There was absolutely no offense taken or noticed," said event organizer Melvin Forbes, chief executive of Cool Wave Water. "It was obvious that Steny was simply talking about Steele's constant support for the Republican agenda."

The Rev. Anthony Evans, who heads a group called the National Black Church Initiative, released a statement last night calling Hoyer's comment "outrageous and destructive." "If I did not know Rep. Steny Hoyer, I would say that he is a racist," Evans said.

"I shouldn't have used those words," Hoyer said yesterday, through a spokesman. "If Mr. Steele did in fact take offense let me assure him that none was intended."

Okay -- let me start by noting that the Post published this story on p.2 of the Metro section. If George Allen had said it, it would be on p.1 of the lead section of the paper... for the next week.

With that being said, I don't think Steny Hoyer is a racist, any more than George Allen. To me, this is just an exceedingly poor choice of words and bad judgment. Of course, Hopyer may be dipping into something else. I think most Democrats are stunned that African-American Republicans exist, let alone run for public office. And since the other two running for office this year are going to lose badly in governor's races (Ken Blackwell in Ohio and Lynn Swann in Pennsylvania), Steele is a highly visible African-American candidate who could be a symbol the Dems don't want -- an elected African-American Republican Senator.

Steele's opponent, Rep. Ben Cardin, has experienced problems with getting African-American voters excited about his campaign. This isn't going to help. Then again, maybe Cardin's having enough problems getting anyone excited about his campaign, since he's using campaign workers in his ads to imitate real people. Of course, it might help if Cardin himself was excited about his campaign... but that's hard to believe, since he makes Al Gore look charismatic.

Time Gives Me An Excuse to Do A Simpsons Quote

Okay, this might be required posting for yours truly, courtesy of Time Magazine...

Most big cities in the world face the same kinds of problems: traffic, pollution, crime. Then there is New Delhi, which has a challenge rarely encountered elsewhere — monkeys. Hungry Rhesus macaques roam the streets and even the subway, leap through treetops outside grand government buildings and scale fences of companies and private homes in search of open windows and tempting food. Even Delhi's police headquarters has been raided by a monkey gang.

And to deal with such a rare urban problem, Delhi has come up with an unusual response: it's launched a monkey arms race. Companies and city officials have started employing langurs — large, black-faced apes — to protect buildings and scare off the smaller rhesus monkeys. "Any langur will do the business," says Zahid Khan, 20, who has been handling langurs since he was eight and most days chains one or two outside the Press Trust of India building, which houses TIME's Delhi bureau. "The monkeys are petrified of them."

...To get a better idea of how big the monkey problem is I spoke with Iqbal Malik, one of India's leading primatologists. Malik has studied monkeys for more than two decades and estimates there are now 5,000 monkeys in Delhi. Seven years ago she came up with a plan to create a reserve for the city's monkeys and begin a program of sterilization for selected male monkeys. But she says the city fumbled those plans and instead started trapping monkeys and caging them to create the impression they were doing something. (You can read her story at primatesinperil.blogspot.com). Malik says using langurs is "stupid." The smaller monkeys may be scared of langurs but they will simply move elsewhere in the city. There is also some evidence that over time the monkeys and langurs may start coexisting peacefully. Chaining langurs also contravenes India's wildlife protection act.

I'd try to comment on the deeper meaning to this story, but I'm not sure I can do so. Mostly because the entire story reminds me of a brilliant Simpsons episode. After Bart mistakenly kills a mother bird, he cares for the eggs, but is surprised when they hatch and give birth to Bolivian tree lizards. The local bird watching society, headed by Principal Skinner, advocates killing the lizards, as required by federal law, but Bart sets them free on the city. The city changes its mind when the tree lizards proceed to wipe out the annoying pigeon population, leading to this exchange between Skinner and Lisa...

Skinner: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're
overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese
needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous
type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around,
the gorillas simply freeze to death.

So all New Delhi needs is a good cold spell. Damn global warming.

Not That There's Anything Wrong With That, But We Feel You Should Know

I remember in 2004 when Democrats and libertarians condemned Karl Rove for his strategy of using gay marriage as a hot button issue to push up evengelical turnout in key battleground states. This year, it appears the Dems have decided to use gays as an issue to drive down evengelical turnout.

I'm not even talking about the Foley imbroglio, which appears to be fading as an issue but certainly had an impact on the race. I think Eric Schie might have the best take on that, by the way...

While it is true that in general the Democrats are better on many sexual and social issues, there's also that sexual identity politics thing, which I don't like too much. And I just don't see sex as the leading issue in American politics. At least, I don't think it should be. In this regard, the Foley scandal has caused me to be more disgusted with the Democrats than the Republicans, for I think their exploitation of the scandal is cheap demagoguery at its absolute worst. It might be revenge for Monica Lewinsky, but at least that involved actual sex (as opposed to cyber raunch), and it also involved perjury. Ordinary voters, though, seem to think Foley/Masturgate is actually an important reason to vote the Republicans out.

That people can be so stupid astounds me. I mean, it's not as if there aren't plenty of reasons to vote the Republicans out, but a single congressman talking dirty to street-wise pages? For which he's already out on his ass?

(hat tip: Instapundit) With that being said, the latest sexual issue being pushed by the left seems to be the desire to out gay Republican officeholders and staff. As noted previously, the left is already circulating a list of people who work for the GOP who are secretly gay (and as others have noted, Joe McCarthy would be proud). Now, Patterico points us to the news that one erstwhile left-wing geek has outed a GOP Senator, Larry Craig of Idaho. I'm not linking to the actual idiot (he's getting enough traffic), but Patterico and Captain Ed both have links, and I'll let Captain Ed take the lead with a typically well-written analysis...

People wonder why we don't attract a wider range of qualified candidates for public office. Michael Rogers sets himself up as Exhibit #1. The personal and degrading attacks convince many people to skip the trouble, and the people who do dare to run for office usually wind up experiencing the ruination of their reputations in one form or other. It comes from all sides to some degree, but this ghastly mudslinging really marks a new low.

These kind of slimy allegations have no way to be proven or disproven, leaving Craig with limited options to clear the air. How does one disprove a sexual orientation? He has three children with his wife Suzanne, and nine grandchildren. That seems to be proof that he has a heterosexual orientation, but Rogers and the scandal brigade will argue that Craig's just in denial. It's a no-win argument, and its use of anonymous sourcing is especially egregious and despicable. Rogers wants to ruin Craig politically, and yet he doesn't produce a single source for his allegations to go on the record.

Once again, the Left shows its obsession with sexuality, but it's really more than that. The Left obsesses over identity politics in all forms, and that obsession comes out in pathological terms. Rogers reveals this in his blog post, demanding that gay staffers on the Hill identify their orientation publicly, or else he will do it for them. Sexual identity is everything to him, and the concept of sexual privacy has no value to him at all. He wants to humiliate gays who prefer to keep their sexual activity private, forcing them to wear the virtual pink triangle against their will to experience obloquy and castigation.

The left's obsession with identity politics usually rears its ugly head when left-wing Dems attack African-American Republicans like Michael Steele, but this is even worse. Taking a person's sexual orientation public for no reason other than smear politics crosses the bounds of decency, and it also sets you up for libel (although the blogger in question may well be judgment-proof anyway). At least in the Foley case, we had a person who might have been abusing his power over others and/or soliciting minors for sex. Unless Rogers is trying to start a crusade to stop people from having sex in the bathrooms at Union Station (which is the charge he's levelling), I'm not sure why this interests the public.

I'm sure the folks in favor of this policy on the left seem to believe gay people shouldn't be Republicans -- because even if gay people favor strong national defense, low taxes and oppose abortion, they should be repulsed by the GOP opposition to gay marriage (which is shared by most Democrats). Personally, I'd leave that up to each person to decide whom they want to vote for, based on the issues they deem important. But I guess there are people who deem someone's sexual orientation important in making their decision on whom to vote for -- and I'm sure those are exactly the people the left wants to have voting for their candidates.

In the end, I don't mind that politics is dirty. But I really hate the transparent stupidity.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Start the Dirt

My friends who are McCain supporters may want to take note that the front-runner battle for the 2008 nomination may have been joined. From the New York Daily News...

An anonymous attack by a Clinton advisor on John McCain in the New York Times today has triggered what may be the sharpest exchange so far between the 2008 frontrunners.

This line, from Maureen Dowd's column today , drew an outraged response from McCain's side:

Privately, Hillary’s camp was not overly upset by the McCain swipe because it suspected he was doing the bidding of the White House and that he ended up, as one adviser put it, “looking similar to the way he did on those captive tapes from Hanoi, where he recited the names of his crew mates.”

Either this is a slip, or it's a signal from Clinton-land that the "McCain is crazy" whisper campaign -- which worked quite well for Bush in 2000 -- is being revived. Or both.

Asked about the line, McCain advisor John Weaver responded:

"I never expected the Clintons or their allies to know much about Vietnam. But [it] is disappointing to see one of her spokespeople purposefully lie about John's war record and time in a Hanoi prison camp. There was no such tape recording; though he did once give up the starting lineup of the Green Bay Packers while under extreme duress. Senator Clinton's spokesperson does a disservice to all who were there and served so bravely and honorably."

UPDATE: Clinton's (actual) spokesman Howard Wolfson says, "These comments are reprehensible and they in no way reflect Senator Clinton's feelings." Clinton called McCain this morning about the comment.

(hat tip: The Corner and Instapundit) The starting lineup for the Packers? Man, I have to give the Senator credit for that stratagem alone. I'm wondering if the North Vietnamese are still looking for Forrest Gregg and Paul Hornung. I also have to give credit to the Instapundit reader who noted that McCain flew an A-4 Skyhawk, which meant he flew solo and didn't have any crewmates.

For those wondering, you can pretty much assume this means all those expectations for high-minded campaigns focused on the issues are right on track. Guess McCain-Feingold is working. Seriously, I think McCain's military record is fair game for Hillary's people to discuss, since he has made it a huge part of his backstory as a Presidential candidate. But I tend to think there's not much there that can be used as a basis for attack.

More On Raj... the Other Raj

In response to my earlier item about Raj Peter Bhakta, Wojr sends me links to this picture of the candidate. The story that goes with the picture reminds of a few things. First, going on The Apprentice is a bad idea, simply because of the number of jokes you get about being fired. Second, my friends have not made many jokes about a guy named Raj (from Philly) being on the show, which means they don't watch the show, which speaks to the intelligence of my friends. Third, I think my brown brother needs some advice -- acting high and mighty because you lost on a reality TV show will trigger a ton of jokes at your expense. Smile and laugh about it, no matter how tired the jokes get. Hey, at least they're not ripping your bowtie, like they should.