As we have reported, Maryland gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has been relentlessly attacking her Republican opponent Bob Ehrlich for his votes against certain gun control measures. Ehrlich's position has been that existing laws are sufficient, assuming that they are enforced. It turns out that in Maryland, under the incompetent Glendening-Townsend administration, the government of Maryland has failed to abide by existing gun control laws. Specifically, for a period of six months this year Maryland refused to cooperate with the FBI in carrying out statutorily-mandated criminal background checks through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The state claimed that it ran out of money. But it cannot account for how it spent $6.7 million received from the System since 1995. Congress has asked the Government Accounting Office to investigate. The whole sorry saga is recounted in this editorial in the Washington Times. With apologies to Michael Dukakis, political races are usually more about ideology than about competence. But in the corrupt one-party state of Maryland, the Ehrlich-Townsend race may be an exception.

Our sources tell us that the Republican Party's current three-day tracking poll has Coleman leading Wellstone by two points. Tim Pawlenty is also slightly ahead in the Minnesota gubernatorial race, with Tim Penny falling back.

Star Tribune poll update: I just got off the phone with Rob Daves, the Star Tribune's Minnesota poll director. I reminded him of our conversation two years ago after the 2000 election and told him I thought the current Wellstone/Coleman Minnesota poll results exaggerated the Democratic preference just as his final pre-election Bush/Gore Minnesota poll results had. I asked him if he would accept my bet for dinner at a restaurant of his choosing that Coleman would do five points better than his final pre-election poll. Suffice it to say he declined.

On the other hand, it may be that we are finally seeing the emergence of "moderate" Muslims in Indonesia, if not in the Middle East. The Straits Times also reports that "Indonesia's two largest Islamic organizations have given crucial backing for a new anti-terrorism decree rushed through in the wake of the devastating Bali bombing, saying it gave security forces much-needed power."

This report from Singapore's Straits Times repeats the news that a high-ranking al Qaeda operative gave Abu Bakar Bashir, the recently-arrested Indonesion cleric, $133,000 to buy explosives. Bashir's group, Jemaah Islamiah, used the money to buy three tons of explosives illegally from the Indonesian army; some of these explosives were used in the Sari Club attack. The fact that Army sources were willing to sell three tons of plastic explosives to a known Muslim fanatic is discouraging. The Straits Times has some additional information about other terrorist attacks planned by Indonesian Islamofascists, including randomly shooting Americans and Israelis at hotels across Indonesia. This proposal was reportedly abandoned because the terrorists believed its impact would be "minimal." The report also notes that one of the group's principal aims was to drive Christians out of Indonesia. Toward that end, they bombed a large number of Christian churches around Christmas 2000, and murdered a number of Christians.

While Rocket Man is at the dentist I feel obligated to post the latest dispatch on the Democratic shenanigans in South Dakota, "Fraud cases cloud South Dakota elections," from the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.

Christopher Horner on Tom Daschle's performance yesterday on Fox News Sunday. It seems that Tony Snow got Daschle to admit that he has voted with President Bush on all of the key issues that prompt the Europeans to complain about the U.S. -- the Kyoto protocol, the International Criminal Court, and Iraq. Yet Daschle still finds merit in the European grievances because of our "attitude." And what is the "attitude" that Daschle finds so objectionable? The fact that we decide "on a unilateral basis what the U.S. position is going to be." Thus, as Horner observes, "Daschle seemed to abdicate any meaningful concept of U.S. self-determination or sovereignty, largely in the futile name of making others more approving of us."

Jay Nordlinger has a wonderful note on Miss America in his National Review Online Impromptus column this morning: "The story of the new Miss America continues to amaze. I thought of something odd while reading about her. Erika Harold is part-black and part-Indian (as in Geronimo, not Gandhi). She didn’t think she had a chance of winning, because of her political views: She’s an anti-abortion Republican activist. How you like them apples? But it could well be that the racial cards she brought to the table canceled out the offensive political and social views. Jurors might have said, 'Yes, she’s a Falwellian monster — but, hell, she’s black and Indian!'"

George Will seethes with contempt for Jimmy Carter, and he expresses it incomparably in his Newsweek column, "Jimmy Carter, disappointed."

Two extremely interesting columns on the war: William Safire's summary of a telephone interview with Ariel Sharon, "A Chat with Sharon," and William Rees-Moog's summary of the political/diplomatic situation vis a vis Iraq, "Be in no doubt, war is only weeks away."

Minneapolis's own Barry Casselman has a good account of the Wellstone/Coleman senate race in today's Washington Times, "Neck and Neck in Minnesota."

George Will does not appear to fancy Republican Bob Ehrlich's chances in his Maryland gubernatorial race against Kathleen Kennedy Townsend now that the issues of race and guns have come to the fore. Meanwhile, the Washington Post has endorsed Townsend. It seems impressed by the fact that she has four daughters and served in the Clinton Justice Department. No mention is made of her eight years as Lieutenant Governor in the clueless Glendening administration or of the problems that have plagued the various programs (e.g. crime prevention) that she has spearheaded. The latter omission seems particularly odd because this weekend a Post story reported on the ineffectiveness and mismanagement of Townsend's anti-crime initiatives. That same story also found that the one allegedly positive achievement of Townsend's career cited in the Post's endorsement -- her success as a state education bureaucrat in persuading Maryland to adopt a requirement that high school students perform 75 hours of community service in order to graduate -- has had no discernible impact.

The Australian Green Party attributes its victory in a recent by-election to its strong stand against Australian participation in any war in Iraq. But Prime Minister John Howard is undeterred: "I can't understand how anybody could argue that you can respond adequately, in the name of the scores of Australians who were killed in Bali, without being part of the worldwide war against terror." Or, as he put it more bluntly to the father of one of the Bali victims: "We'll get the bastards who did this."

There is a school of thought that says the Democrats have been hurt by their dominance of the media because it allows them to harbor their illusions and overlook uncomfortable realities. This seems to be true as to the "gender gap," which has almost always been presented as a Republican problem--Republicans need to do a better job of attracting women--notwithstanding the fact that the Democrats' deficit among men exceeds the Republicans' deficit among women. Yet I'm not sure I've ever seen a single article about how the Democrats can stop offending men. Here is another example from the Washington Post. The headline says "Among Young Voters, Gender Gap Narrows." You have to read to the end of the article to discover that among adults aged 18 to 37, both men and women identify themselves more often as Republicans than Democrats--Men by a 32% to 23% margin, women by a 34% to 32% margin. And only in the last sentence does the Post disclose that "The dwindling gender gap also has made the GOP the party of young adults overall, with 33 percent identifying with the Republicans and 27 percent with the Democrats." That would seem to be the real story here; but it is simply inconceivable for the Post to headline a story "GOP Is Now the Party of Choice for Young Adults."

Douglas MacKinnon warns that campus liberals are creating an atmosphere of anti-Semitism at colleges and universities through their slanderous campaign against the State of Israel. The American Jewish Committee reports that intimidation and threats against Jewish students is on the rise. Even Harvard President Lawrence Summers has warned of this "upturn in anti-Semitism" at colleges. I say "even" because, as MacKinnon points out, Summers promptly undermined his argument by describing those responsible as "serious and thoughtful people." Would Summers have described individuals responsible for an upturn in sentiment against African-Americans this way? Not likely. MacKinnon concludes by saying "it's time for Jewish liberal to take a stand against liberals who hate." Don't hold your breath. The response of Jewish liberals more likely will be to ask "why do they hate us," blame the Jews, and call on Israel for more concessions to relieve their duress. It is the Jewish conservatives, and conservatives in general, who will take the stand against anti-Semitism.

The methodology used in the Star Tribune poll report summarized by Rocket Man below is described in Saturday's Star Tribune as follows:

"This report is based on the most recent Star Tribune Minnesota Poll, a random-digit-dial (RDD) telephone survey of 1,048 adults statewide Oct. 11-16.

"Market Solutions Group, Inc., of Minneapolis conducted the interviewing from its central interviewing facility where interviewers were trained prior to calling, and supervised and monitored during the interviewing. MSG used a stratified, area-probability sample that the newspaper provided. It was probability-proportionate-to-size, and stratified by county. The Star Tribune's polling unit provided the random-digit-dial sample of telephone numbers from the unit's server-based telephone sampling database, which contains all working residential prefix-area code combinations in the state. (Consequently, all adults in the state who live in households with telephones were potential respondents; the sample was not limited to those with listed phone numbers, or newspaper subscribers, or other inappropriate populations.) Interviewers used the 'most-recent-birthday' technique to choose the adult from each household to be interviewed.

"The sample first was weighted to take into account unequal probability of selection from sampling: Weighting accounts for the number of telephone lines in a sampled household and the number of adults in the household, because many households have more than one adult or one phone line, and the poll only called one phone line in the household and interviewed only one adult (18 or older). It also is weighted on certain demographic characteristics, including gender, age and education, based on the 2000 census of the adult population.

"Weighting in such a manner allows one to assume the sample is representative of adults in all English-speaking Minnesota households, within the margin of sampling error. Finally, results were weighted to account for likelihood to vote.

"Researchers modeled the likely electorate for the general election using four questions: past voting history, current registration status, interest in the election, and self-professed probability of voting. Summing the responses to those questions produced an 8-point scale. Respondents were weighted according to their scale scores. Those most likely to vote (registered, voted in '98, definitely will vote, high interest) were assigned larger weights; those least likely to vote (not registered, didn't vote in '98, won't vote and low interest) received smaller weights. Assignments are based on formulas verified in past elections. This model suggests a turnout of 57.2 percent of the voting age population, about the same as the June and September estimates. In the last comparable election (U.S. Senate and governor in a non-presidential year, 1994) the turnout was 53.4 percent. However, in 1998, a gubernatorial-only election, 60.5 percent of the eligible adults turned out.

"The maximum margin of sampling error for percentages based on 1,048 is 3 percentage points, plus or minus, at a 95 percent confidence level, if one ignores the effect of sample design. Those tolerances for smaller groups, such as Democrats or Republicans, will be larger. Other things such as question wording, question order and some practical difficulties of interviewing may affect the results. These difficulties include a limited interviewing period, and the effect of news events and campaign activities on public opinion . Generally accepted social science research procedures were employed at every step of the research to reduce such problems.

"Another factor that could influence results is the number of people excluded from the originally drawn sample. The extent to which those persons who did not respond to the survey are different from those in the larger population may affect the results. The cooperation rate (COOP4, as defined by the American Association for Public Opinion Research) for this poll is 67 percent."

End quote. This is me speaking again. In the 2000 presidential election, the final Star Tribune poll overpredicted Al Gore's Minnesota vote by something like 5 points (and, I believe, Mark Dayton's as well, though I may be mistaken on that score). I called the Strib's pollster to ask about the polling methodology and say I thought it produced inaccurate results, overpredicting the Democratic vote in a way that was calculated to demoralize Republican voters. The Star Tribune's pollster attributed the discrepancy to last minute shifts in sentiment that occurred after the polling was completed. But anyone who followed the presidential polls regardng the 2000 election knows that voter sentiment shifted throughout the country in the last few days before the election to Gore, not Bush. According to the Star Tribune pollster, Minnesota was an exception.

I don't believe it. I think the polling methodology is a Rube Goldberg contraption that seems conveniently to favor Democratic candidates on a fairly regular basis. The Star Tribune's lengthy explanation above avoids measuring poll results against actual election results. Why?

Forgive me for repeating the following observation, but I think it bears repetition. At the City Center shopping mall in downtown Minneapolis, I have heard the fire alarm go off while City Center security staff scramble to determine the cause. When the alarm is determined to be false and is turned off, the staff announces over the public address system that "the alarm has been verified as false." I think that is the sense in which the Star Tribune's polling methodology has been "verified."

Faithful readers of the Power Line know that I have been impatiently awaiting the day when Mark Steyn would address himself to the Jimmy Carter Nobel/Peace Prize phenomenon. Although his column today is not entirely devoted to the subject, I would say that he does justice to it in the following few sentences: "[Some America haters] express their feelings more or less harmlessly by going out of their way to laud the most incompetent and ludicrous Americans, as the Swedes did the other day by giving Jimmy Carter the Nobel Peace Prize. 'For what?' you may be asking. Oh, come on. It was Jimmy who handed the Islamofascists their first great victory, in Iran a quarter-century ago. If that ain't worth a Swedish meatball, what is?" The column is headlined "Our friends are at war, too."

The latest Minneapolis Star Tribune poll has Wellstone pulling ahead of Coleman by 47%-41% with 7% still undecided. The Strib is a hard-core Democratic paper and its poll does not have a good track record, but it is hard to escape the conclusion that Wellstone has indeed taken the lead. Insiders say he is running a superb technical campaign, and his get-out-the-vote efforts are likely to buoy Democratic candidates statewide.

UN Watch: I find it frankly outrageous that UN officials have come to Minneapolis to promote the wiring of money to Somalia in the face of obstacles erected by the United States government. Those obstacles, of course, have to do with our reluctance to provide funding to the terrorist groups who are trying to destroy us. The story, from Friday's Star Tribune, is "UN reps listen to Twin Cities Somalis' concerns."

One book I'm sure that I will never try to read is David Rockefeller's just-published, 517-page Memoirs. The Sunday New York Times Book Review had the smart idea of asking David Brooks to review the book, and his review is engaging and funny. The Times gives his review the clever and accurate headline, "Born to be mild."

I am probably showing the limitations of my interests in saying that I am much more likely to read another book discussed in the Times Book Review, one by the excellent Israeli writer Hillel Halkin, Across the Sabbath River: In Search of a Lost Tribe of Israel. The book explores the possibility that a people located in a remote border area of India-Burma-Tibet may, as they believe, be Jewish. The review by Judith Shulevitz is also worth reading. It may also show the limitations of my sense of humor to say that the Times headline writer must have been on a roll, because he gave Shulevitz's piece what is to me a hilariously apt headline, "Funny, you don't look Jewish."

Christopher Buckley came to St. Paul a year or two ago to promote his book of that year, Little Green Men. Our faithful reader Bruce Sanborn and I sat together in the first row, about a foot from Buckley, in the cramped space at Ruminator Books to listen to him read from the book. We arrived a few minutes early to take our seats. Buckley is not only funny, he is a genuinely decent man. When a group of nuns arrived from their home on the nearby St. Catherine's College campus, Buckley ran to go buy each of them his previous mock self-help book, written as "Brother Ty." I asked Buckley when he fielded questions following his reading if it was difficult to be a political satirist in the age of Clinton. My recollection is that he denied that it was. Now his new book is out, No Way to Treat a First Lady. The review by Rob Walker touches on precisely that question.

I ask you in advance to forgive the length of this blog and to trust that you will be grateful if you read it through to the end. The following story came to mind as I have been thinking about the Jimmy Carter/Nobel Peace Prize phenomenon and the nauseating statements of the Europeans and Scandinavians regarding President Bush's efforts to defend the United States from further attack.

I watched the 10-part HBO miniseries "Band of Brothers" when it aired last winter. I thought it was the best television series I have ever seen, maybe the best movie I have ever seen. The movie is of course based on Stephen Ambrose's fine book of the same name, and the the movie brings the book to life with incredible fidelity. (The movie will be available in formats for home viewing next month; it would make a great holiday gift.) Both the movie and the book depict the experience of E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (as the book's subtitle states). The movie and the book go best together, as the movie does not quite allow the viewer to understand the unique tactical difficulties confronting E Company in each of the successive battles it fought.

The men of E Company served on the front lines in ferocious, almost unimaginably arduous and brutal combat for the last twelve months of WW II. Many died, many were horribly injured, some survived. God bless Stephen Ambrose for capturing their story before even those who had survived died natural deaths. May he rest in peace.

At the very end of the book Ambrose briefly summarizes the postwar lives of those who survived. One of those who overcame a paralyzing injury suffered at Bastogne and survived was Corporal Walter Gordon. He went to law school and struck it rich through the exercise of great acumen in the oil business.

In December 1991, Mr. Gordon read that the mayor of Eindhoven, Holland had refused to meet with General Schwarzkopf because as general of the forces that served in the Gulf War General Schwarzkopf "had too much blood on his hands."

Ambrose recounts that Gordon wrote to the mayor of Eindhoven as follows: "On September 17, 1944 I participated in the large airborne operation which was conducted to liberate your country. As a member of company E, 506th PIR [parachute infantry regiment], I landed near the small town of Son. The following day we moved south and liberated Eindhoven. While carrying out our assignment, we suffered casualties. That is war talk for bleeding. We occupied various defense positions for over two months. Like animals, we lived in holes, barns, and as best we could. The weather was cold and wet. In spite of the adverse conditions, we held the ground we had fought so hard to capture.

"The citizens of Holland at that time did not share your aversion to bloodshed when the blood being shed was that of the German ocupiers of your city. How soon we forget. History has proven more than once that Holland could again be conquered if your neighbor, the Germans, are having a dull weekend and the golf links are crowded.

"Please don't allow your country to be swallowed up by Liechtenstein or the Vatican as I don't plan to return. As of now, you are on your own."

Bill Kristol and Gary Schmitt on the "Lessons of a Nuclear North Korea." Amazingly, but not surprisingly, some are trying to convert the failure of appeasing North Korea into an argument for appeasing Iraq. The argument is, we're not attacking North Korea, so why should we attack Iraq. Kristol's answer is that we should remove the danger posed by Saddam "because it is just, it is doable, and the likely costs to innocent civilians and American forces are acceptably low. The same can't be said with any confidence of an attempt to remove Kim Jong II and to liberate North Korea." This is a reasonable answer, and it underscores the need to deal with Saddam before he obtains nuclear weapons and becomes, like Kim Jong Il, that much more difficult to remove. However, I am less quick than Kristol and Schmitt to dismiss the Bush administration's suggestion that "Iraq is in a class by itself." It's not clear to me that North Korea is intent, as Iraq is, on overthrowing the established world order, as opposed to just surviving in it. Thus, while further appeasement is certainly not the way to go, it may be that something along the lines of the Reagan model for dealing with the Soviet Union is appropriate in the case of North Korea. In any case, as I said the other day, the sensible course is to eliminate Saddam while we consider our options with respect to North Korea.

Debka File reports that bin Laden is indeed alive, and that he returned last month to Saudi Arabia along with Zawahiri and others. He is said to be living in a remote desert area near Yemen, under the protection of a nomadic tribe. Debka File claims further that he has resumed command over al Qaeda forces in the Gulf region, and is coordinating al Qaeda's activities closely with Iraq.

Mark Steyn has not yet turned his attention to the Jimmy Carter/Nobel Peace Prize phenomenon, but he has found an almost equally worthy subject this morning in his weekly London Telegraph column, "Let slip the Babs of War." Let me quote the first paragraph of his column:

"One thing I like about the world's conservative parties is that there's minimal risk of running into celebrities. Mrs Thatcher, asked to pick a favourite record, named the Beverly Sisters' classic version of How Much Is That Doggie In The Window? - as pithy a distillation of Thatcherism as any, in that the singer's enthusiasm for the doggie is explicitly linked to his cost. However, at no time did it occur to Mrs Thatcher to get the Bevs in to the Treasury to brief Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson on macro-economic policy."

Meanwhile, Indonesia's leading Islamofascist cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, has been arrested. His reaction to the Bali bombing (for which he is suspected of being responsible) has been widely reported, but is worth repeating for those who missed it. Asked whether he had anything to say to the families of the Bali victims, he replied: "My message to the families is please convert to Islam as soon as possible." Oh, so that's why they hate us.

The Bali bombing was Australia's September 11; the Sydney Morning Herald provides comprehensive coverage of the aftermath, which, to Americans, will seem hauntingly familiar. It is not yet clear whether Australia's government under John Howard will supply the kind of leadership that the U.S. got from President Bush.

Australian blogger Tim Blair is in New York, where he encountered a "No Blood For Oil" protest at the U.N. Here is one thing I've never understood: If you take seriously the idea that the Administration would have no compunction about invading another country in order to get access to its oil reserves, why would it pick on Iraq, the one Arab country that is heavily armed and extremely dangerous? If we were that desperate for oil, why not just stroll into Kuwait (as Saddam Hussein did) or Saudi Arabia, neither of whom could offer any resistance at all, let alone unleash weapons of mass destruction? Heck, we already have enough troops in those countries to do the job. Or we could take over Venezuela; or, for that matter, we could save ourselves the trouble and just drill in Alaska. Of all of the ways one could conceive of to get control over more oil, the stupidest would be to attack Iraq. You wonder sometimes whether leftists ever think about the things they say.

President Bush visited Minnesota briefly today to support Republican candidates, including Norm Coleman and Tim Pawlenty. Here is a photo of him with Norm Coleman; Pawlenty is in the background on the right. The Coleman/Wellstone race remains too close to call. Today the firefighters' union endorsed Wellstone, in what Wellstone termed the "proudest moment" of his campaign. The gulf between union leaders and rank and file has never been wider.

The Sioux Falls Argus Leader has the latest on the South Dakota Democrat voter fraud scandal. Becky Red-Earth Villeda, the first of several Democratic contract employees who have been found to have submitted voter registrations on behalf of dead or non-existent people, was paid more than $12,000 by the South Dakota Democratic Party. She apparently has dropped out of sight, but called in to a public television studio to proclaim her innocence. She claimed that the charges against her are--you guessed it--"a ploy to stop her registering of Native Americans." Inevitably, the Democrats will play the race card and use their own fraud to motivate Indian voters with complaints of "disenfranchisement." There are not yet any poll data to show how the voter fraud scandal is affecting the campaign.

Here is a disturbing piece by columnist Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post. Ariel Sharon has agreed to transfer to the Palestinian Authority certain tax revenues that Israel agreed in the Oslo Accords to collect for the PA. The funds have been frozen since the PA went to war against Israel two years ago. A small amount was transferred this summer and the Israeli army says the money has been used to finance terrorists. Sharon's stated justification for transferring the rest of the money is that Israel, the U.S., and the PA have now worked out an agreement whereby the allocation will be conducted under the supervision of American and European Union officials who will make sure the money isn't used to finance murder. Right. Will Jimmy Carter oversee the process?

Why did Sharon really agree to this? Because President Bush asked him to. In fact, Bush praised this decision when he met with Sharon this week. Why did President Bush get involved? I don't know, but I suspect the State Department is telling him that PA "reform" is moving ahead beautifully and that the transfer of funds is needed to preserve the momentum. For whatever reason, Bush has bought this ridiculous story, at least for the time being. I fear that, while Bush is focusing on other issues, the State Department will soon pronounce the PA "reformed" and renew the push for a sovereign Palentinian state. The Glick column provides plenty of evidence that PA reform is a hoax. As I said, it is a disturbing piece.

Defrauding America: You may have heard about the controversy involving the book Arming America by history professor Michael Bellesisles of Emory University. The book purports to recount the history of gun ownership in America and is written with a slant that is hostile to gun ownership. The book received rave reviews from liberals and a Pulitzer Prize in the year following its publication. Slowly, the book has been exposed as an academic fraud. Professor James Lindgren of Northwestern University Law School is one of the folks who has exposed the book's fraudulence. His April 2002 law review article, "Fall from Grace: Arming America and the Bellesisles Scandal" is a remarkable article. According to Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, the article has been downloaded more than 100,000 times, which suggests that it is the most widely read law review article in history. The article is extremely long with numerous footnotes and appendices, but if you have an interest in the subject, or in academic frauds or related cultural phenomena, you will find it of interest.

We talk a great deal about the policy failures of the 1990s -- Clinton's policy towards Iraq, Clinton's policy towards Arafat, Clinton's policy towards North Korea, etc. But here Mona Charen discusses a great policy success of the 90s -- the Republican-enacted welfare reform. Charen notes that in the first five years after welfare reform was enacted in 1996, poverty among children decreased from 14.7 million to 11.7 million. And child poverty, which always increases during recessions, is "flat" now, with black child poverty at its lowest point in American history. In other words, the dire predictions of liberals about the consequences of welfare reform turned out to be flatly wrong. How is it that, while events have proven the Democrats consistently wrong and the Republicans consistently right on the major issues of the past decade, the parties remain equally popular?

In the post below, I noted the Pioneer Press story indicating that too many white men are building the new Ramsey County jail in St. Paul, and referring to a contractor affirmative action program with a "goal" of 15 percent minority participation. I wrote the Pioneer Press reporter asking for additional information about the program. I thought you might be interested in his response:

"The essence of the program is that the 15 percent goal targets underutilized businesses (small, women, and minority) who haven't been included in county projects before. However, there is no legal ramifications if the developer doesn't meet them, but the county reserves the right to pull the contract if they feel that the developer hasn't sufficiently met the county's outreach goals. Under revised federal regulations, that is within the county's right. The other reason why minority contractors are upset is that in the Twin Cities metro area, there is no shortage of minority businesses qualified to submit a low bid on contracts. The county and large private sector firms like McGough agree with that assertion, so they want to get those firms involved. There's no set-aside. The program was created to ensure that ALL qualified businesses are given an opportunity to compete for construction contracts with the county. If I've confused you more with my email, I think you might want to call Jolly Mangine at (651) 266-2261 for a clearer explanation."

Victor Davis Hanson brilliantly sums up the long, tragic history of appeasement and places President Bush on a historical continuum with Demosthenes, Don Juan ("Gentlemen, the time for counsel is passed and the time for fighting has come") and Churchill. Sadly, he concludes that human nature will always dispose the majority toward appeasement.

Too many white guys building the new Ramsey county jail in St. Paul? That's the complaint noted in today's St. Paul Pioneer Press. I find such proud displays of racism sickening, and government contracting happens to be one area in which racial discrimination is more or less illegal. But you'd never know it from the article,"Contractor hiring for jail faulted."

Two pieces you must read today, both courtesy of our friends at RealClearPolitics. David Gelernter of Yale University is a renaissance man. This morning he has an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal on the DC area murders, "Reflections on a Murder Spree." In the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer notes the diplomatic dithering of France regarding the UN Iraq resolution we desire. Krautahammer invokes the wisdom of Dirty Harry in advising the administration to "Call their bluff."

Good blog on North Korea, Rocket Man. Jimmy Carter must be shocked that the North Korean dictator lied to him, just as he was shocked that Brezhnev lied to him about Afghanistan. The Charlie Brown analogy is a good one except that, in Carter's case, I don't think he cares whether he actually kicks the football. He lives to strike the pose of approaching the football. But let's not forget that this is Bill Clinton's deal. Clinton didn't really care about kicking the football either. It was enough that the girls liked the way he looked in a uniform.

Nice point, too, on the vindication of President's Bush's inclusion of North Korea on the enemies list. Ironically, the same people who criticized Bush for this are now arguing that North Korea is more dangerous than Iraq because it has already developed nuclear weapons. They argue that, since we're apparently going to use diplomacy rather than force to respond to North Korea, we should do the same with Iraq. This is just silly. Iraq has attacked two of its neighbors in the past twenty years. North Korea hasn't attacked anyone in fifty years. Although dangerous, it is contained. Iraq sponsors terrorism and appears to have links with Al Qaeda. North Korea is removed from all of that. Finally, as Rocket Man points out, we're not quite sure what is going on in North Korea. We know exactly what is going on in Iraq. Thus, the sensible course is to take out Saddam while considering our options with North Korea.

North Korea's admission that it has violated its 1994 undertaking to abandon nuclear weapons development prompts several thoughts. First, it shows the wisdom of President Bush's inclusion of North Korea in the Axis of Evil. Second, it reveals the hollowness of Jimmy Carter's diplomatic "triumph"--he negotiated the deal whereby the U.S. gave North Korea nuclear technology worth $4 billion in exchange for a worthless promise. But don't expect the Nobel Prize committee to reconsider. Third, it demonstrates, once again, the infinite gullibility of the "peace" crowd. The advocates of treaties and multilateral resolutions remind me of Charlie Brown trying to kick the football. They never learn; hope always triumphs over experience. Even the usually-sensible Washington Times wrote: "The surprise disclosure that a nation would brazenly lie to international bodies suggests that Bush's criticism of arms inspections as a way to assure compliance may be valid in Iraq." Surprise disclosure? Who in this godforsaken Year of our Lord 2002 could be surprised that a mad dictator would "lie to an international body"? Then again, maybe that sentence was supposed to be ironic. I've lost my ear for irony. And finally, this incident raises the question of why North Korea would now admit to its violations. Apparently U.S. diplomats confronted the North Koreans with evidence of their continuing program which was first denied, then admitted to. But why? Glenn Reynolds suggests that "North Korea, whatever its other faults, has both an excellent intelligence service and close ties with Iraq. Maybe they have some idea what's going to happen, and don't want to be associated with Iraq when it does." Maybe. Perhaps this is related to North Korea's equally puzzling admission that twenty-five years ago it kidnapped a number of Japanese citizens in order to force them to teach the Japanese language to its spies; it released the survivors last week. Something is going on in North Korea, but I have no idea what.

As to "The Cross-Examination of Hermann Goering," the Trunk wrote the article and deserves all credit. I merely supplied a few observations on the art of cross-examination, learned mainly from my own mistakes. Having said that, it's a fun piece but also a sobering reminder that when confronting deadly evil, lawyers are not the defense of choice.

Here is the latest on the South Dakota Democrat voter fraud scandal from the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. The scandal continues to spread, as ten per cent of the new voter registrations in Shannon County are now considered "suspect and under investigation." This attempt to steal an election is reminiscent of Florida, with two major exceptions: First, it is occurring prior to the election and can still be exposed and stopped in time. Second, I grew up in South Dakota and am acquainted with the sort of ladies who become County Auditors there. This is not lost-in-a-fog Florida; these are not people to be trifled with. I have every hope that the fraud will be uncovered and dealt with by November 5.

"The Cross-Examination of Hermann Goering:" Rocket Man and I are the authors of an article that has been published in the October issue of Bench & Bar, the monthly magazine of the Minnesota state bar association. The article tells the story of the cross-examination of Hermann Goering by Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg trial in March 1946 and is now available online. We hope you find it of interest.

Mark Steyn has a powerful column on the Bali bombing, "They want to kill us all."

We recently moved to the lovely Twin Cities suburb of Mendota Heights, Minnesota. In Mendota Heights, as throughout the state, local political offices are nonpartisan as a matter of law. It is therefore difficult, particularly in a small suburb with little news coverage, to associate candidates for municipal office with their party affiliations. Yesterday evening, however, at the fundraiser we attended for Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Pawlenty, we found our candidate for Mendota Heights City Council, one Mr. Ultan Duggan. Mr. Duggan is a native of Ireland with a beautiful Irish brogue, and a Republican to boot. Among his foremost qualifications for office featured in his campaign literature are "zest and humor." We asked Mr. Duggan what his position on the Chieftains is. He paused only a few second before replying, "I think I'm the only person here who can dance to them." Bingo!

More on the sacrifice bunt: In doing research last week on the use of the sacrifice bunt, I somehow overlooked Rob Neyer's interesting dispatch of August 19, "The bunt is off in Detroit."

Peter Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Some years ago he wrote a book called Victory about how the Reagan administration contributed to the fall of Communism. He has spent the last several years conducting research in recently declassified Stasi, KGB and Soviet Communist Party files, and has now published Reagan's War. Reagan's War contains shocking disclosures of what can only be considered treason by leading Democrats. As described in this News Max article, via FrontPage Magazine, Jimmy Carter conspired with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to try to prevent Reagan's election in both 1980 and 1984. In 1980, when Carter ran against Reagan, he dispatched Communist sympathizer Armand Hammer to assure the Soviets that "Carter won't forget" the Russians' help if he won re-election. Tip O'Neill, the Speaker of the House, likewise conspired with the Soviets against the United States. O'Neill had a series of private meetings with Dobrynin in which he told the Russians that Reagan "is a dangerous man" and that the Soviet Union should spare no effort to prevent his re-election. It is astonishing to see that for these Democrats--the elected leaders of their party at the time--the real enemy was not Communist totalitarianism, it was the Republicans. One can only wonder whether the current generation of Democrats is, like their predecessors, more interested in defeating President Bush than in defeating our country's enemies.

One of the best pieces I've read in a while is this one by Paul Johnson, a favorite historian of mine, about the European malaise. Johnson tells us that "there is no longer a 'sick man of Europe.' The whole of Europe is sick." He explains that under "constant demands for 'social protection' European societies have become a paradise for bureaucrats, trade unionists. . .and those businessmen who prefer to work under government protection." This has left Europe unable to cope with recession. Thus, just as in the 1930s, the European democracies are too dispirited to confront a growing outside danger, and it is no wonder that they respond to the war on terrorism with little more than spiteful criticism of President Bush.

D.J. Tice of the Pioneer Press has another column on Minnesota's perverse campaign finance law that Tim Pawlenty's campaign was found to have violated, "Limits are for everybody."

More on Sara Jane Olson: This morning's Pioneer Press carries a more detailed story about yesterday's sentencing hearing as "Olson's prison sentence extended." Olson continues to deny knowing participation in the attempted bombing of the Los Angeles police officers, which is not exactly a great surprise. What is a surprise, at least to me, is that she continues to be represented by Shawn Chapman, one of the two Bay area radicals who represented her in the case and whose every move while the charges were pending seems to have backfired. Bob von Sternberg of the Star Tribune also has a good piece this morning, full of interesting quotes, so far not available online.

When David Horowitz accepted the invitation of campus Republicans to speak at Emory University in Atlanta, his appearance prompted a thinly veiled letter of intimidation to Emory students, faculty and administrators by the improbably named Ms. Candace Bacchus. Horowitz's response rises to the occasion; it bristles with anger and eloquence, like Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail. Horowitz reprints the exchange as "Grinding the wheels of censorship at Emory." To me it reads like some kind of a classic.

The national media have been slow to pick up on the South Dakota voter fraud story. The Washington Times has a story this morning, which notes that the Democrats are having a hard time keeping their story straight. So far, neither the Washington Post nor the New York Times has even mentioned the story. In the case of the Times, at least, this isn't surprising. The DNC hasn't yet issued a press release on the scandal, so how would the Times even know about it?

In response to Deacon's inquiry regarding the Wellstone/Coleman debate on C-SPAN, I must report that my threshold for pain is too low for the viewing of these kinds of debates. I think I have a lot of company in this respect, though perhaps for other reasons. Yesterday evening I was at a fundraiser for Tim Pawlenty, the Minnesota Republican candidate for governor. After his prepared remarks, one of the first questions he took asked whether he would be debating his opponents. Tim said he had participated in 25 debates, but that no one watches them.

I missed it, Deacon. The local buzz was that Wellstone performed poorly. I heard he was arrogant and obnoxious, rude to the hosts, and always insisted on having the last word. Sort of like Al Gore, only worse. And I heard that he came across as very tense and high-strung, while Coleman was more relaxed and natural. One friend of mine who has voted for Wellstone twice resolved to vote for Coleman after seeing the debate. But for the most part, my sources are anything but unbiased.

Hey, Trunk and Rocket Man, what did you guys think of the Minnesota Senate debate? I saw maybe a half an hour of it on C-Span. I thought that Wellstone and Coleman both did pretty well. If I try to look at it objectively, Wellstone didn't strike me as a tired old politician. He came across as an articulate and enthusiastic spokesman for old-fashioned liberalism, not quite the "happy warrior" but close. Coleman seemed equally articulate and did a good job of portraying himself as a pragmatist and a "bridge builder." But having seen less than half of the debate, and not knowing much about the context of the campaign, I'll defer to you guys on this one.

More on Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's increasingly aggressive efforts to pull away from Republican Bob Ehrlich in the Maryland gubernatorial race. This column in the Washington Times accuses Townsend of "playing the race card" in her debate with Ehrlich by taking Ehrlich to task for opposing affirmative action. Actually, I see nothing improper in Townsend's statements, as quoted in the column. This is an area of disagreement between the candidates and Townsend has the right to seek an advantage from it. I wish that Republicans did a better job of this sort of thing. And Ehrlich should stop congratulating himself on the fact that Townsend is only slightly ahead after her "negative" blitz and do a better job of attacking Townsend's record and that of the administration she has been part of it.

That said, I still fear that Townsend will cross the line and engage in dishonest race-baiting if her current tactics don't work. She has hired Bob Shrum, who has been responsible for dishonest racial politics in Maryland and elsewhere, as the above article points out. And, as I reported last month, she was associated briefly with an operative who told the Washington Post he would paint Ehrlich as a Nazi in the black community. Stay tuned.

Studies in liberal governance: The Star Tribune story on the six-car torching at the police station in the nicest neighborhood in St. Paul is Curt Brown's "Car arson 'hit close to home' for St. Paul police." The story's lead is not promising: "It could have been the brazen act of teenage vandals. Or an embittered citizen with a grudge against cops. But whoever intentionally burned six cars in a St. Paul police parking lot 'hit close to home,' an arson investigator said Wednesday." The story has a fair amount of eyewitness information regarding possible suspects. I'm going to go out on a limb and say I don't think the perpetrators were embittered citizens or teenage vandals.

Here is the latest on the South Dakota Democrat voting fraud scandal. It continues to grow.

Trunk, thanks for posting Lowell Ponte's piece on Jimmy Carter this morning. It seems harsh to blame Carter for 600,000 deaths, most of which resulted from the Iran-Iraq war. But ideas have consequences. And the foreseeable consequence of Carter's idea not to support the authoritarian but relatively progressive and staunchly pro-American Shah against the religious Mullahs was considerable mayhem and bloodshed.

Ponte actually goes easy on Carter in discussing the Camp David accords. The problem with giving Carter credit for this deal is not just that Begin and Sadat reached it without any significant assistance from Carter. Although few remember this, Carter was actually opposed to any settlement that did not involve his friend Arafat. Thus, if Begin and Sadat had taken Carter seriously (admittedly a virtual impossibility, no one else did), they would never have negotiated the "separate peace" that they later asked Carter to seal.

The World Tribune reports that Israeli intelligence thinks that bin Laden is dead, as does American intelligence. Maybe; Power Line readers probably know that I have been arguing for some time that bin Laden has been laiden six feet under (credit, once again, to Mark Steyn). But the World Tribune isn't much of a source, and Debka File, which really does have contacts with Israeli intelligence, appears to believe that he is alive. It doesn't matter much, as the Islamofascist movement is very much alive.

The Sydney Morning Herald has the latest on the terrorist attack in Indonesia. It appears that more perpetrators have now been caught.

It looks like the conspirators who blew up the Sari Club are being rolled up.

Studies in liberal governance: Yesterday the cruisers and personal vehicles of St. Paul police were torched in the Highland Park police parking lot. The Pioneer Press story is "Cars torched at police substation." This is an event that is simply unprecedented in the Twin Cities. In Minneapolis, the police had to defend themselves from a couple of gangbangers carrying firearms in broad daylight. The headline doesn't quite capture the brazenness with which the bad guys are operating in the Twin Cities: "Officer shoots man in north Minneapolis."

Democratic Socialist Vote Fraud Project for Wellstone: Yesterday the St. Paul Pioneer Press ran a brief story on the Democratic Socialists of America Wellstone voter fraud project. The story is "Taxpayers League says group backs voter fraud."

Rocket Man's post below refers to the resentencing of Sara Jane Olson, formerly known as Kathleen Soliah. The St. Paul Pioneer Press has an excellent update on the resentencing, "Board rules Sara Jane Olson must serve 5 extra years in prison." Rocket Man and I have followed the Sara Jane Olson story since she was apprehended at her home, a few blocks from where I and my family were living at the time. The striking thing in this story is Olson's approximation of an acknowledgment of her conduct and her approximation of an apology for it: "'I'm incredibly sorry,' said Olson, whose long hair had grayed considerably since her last court appearance. 'I can't take it back, so I have to take responsibility, and that's what I'm doing now. It's something that's very difficult to live with and face my own children.'"

Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Michael Latin, who prosecuted Olson for her attempted bombing of Los Angeles policemen, is also quoted in the article. Latin pursued the case despite the difficulties of proceeding in a matter in which two key witnesses had died and the evidence had grown cold. He refused to allow Olson's 25-year flight from prosecution for her crimes to succeed, and did so in the face of much public derision. We are sincerely grateful for his outstanding efforts and trust that they will pay further dividends in bringing justice to the family of Myrna Opsahl at the pending trial for her 1975 murder, a murder stemming from a bank robbery perpetrated by Olson and her other SLA cronies. The photograph of the SLA defendants together in the dock at the plea hearing on the murder charge is a classic depicting the unhappiest reunion since the Nuremberg defendants faced their accusers in November 1945.

The photo below is of Sara Jane Olson, formerly known as Kathleen Soliah. As Soliah, she was a “soldier” in the Symbionese Liberation Army in the 1970’s and was involved in bank robbery, murder and attempted murder. For twenty-five years she was a fugitive from justice. Most of that time she spent in St. Paul, Minnesota, living quietly with her husband and children. She was finally apprehended and, after changing her plea several times, the court accepted her plea of guilty and sentenced her to jail. California’s Board of Prison Terms has now ruled that she must stay in prison at least until 2010. The Trunk and I wrote an article about her case titled “Kathy’s Clowns;” there is a link to the article on the left.

A Minnesota-related story burst into national prominence today when Matt Drudge reported that the Democratic Socialists of America are “sending people to MN to illegally vote for Wellstone.” Drudge provided a link to the Democratic Socialists of America web site, which promotes a campaign to “Send a Student to Minnesota!” The Socialists explain that their “national electoral project this year is the Minnesota Senate election.” They indicate that “Minnesota is one of the few states that allow same day voter registration. We will therefore focus our energy on registering young Minnesotans.”

Many observers have understood this to mean that the Democratic Socialists intend to bus large numbers of young people to Minnesota so that they can fraudulently register as Minnesota residents and then vote for Wellstone. News Max, for example, wrote that “An outfit that calls itself Democratic Socialists of America is trying to exploit...Minnesota’s lax election laws by shipping in left-wing students to vote for Senator Paul Wellstone.” The local radio talk shows generally seconded this sentiment.

There are two significant issues here. The first is the fact that the Democratic Socialists of America’s primary effort in the 2002 election cycle is to support Paul Wellstone. The DSA is a far-left group, as is demonstrated by its website. The organization is not shy about its general aims; it states that “All our actions must be taken with the aim of ending the marginal position of the left in American public life and to restoring a socialist presence within mainstream politics.” It remains to be seen whether Minnesota voters will be put off by the fact that a socialist organization, dedicated to restoring a socialist presence within mainstream politics, chooses Paul Wellstone’s Senate campaign as its primary focus. This would seem to confirm all that Wellstone’s opponents have said about him for the past twelve years.

The second issue raised by the Socialists’ initiative is voter fraud. The DSA “Send A Student to Minnesota!” piece does not explicitly advocate voter fraud. Instead, it says that the organization will “focus its energy on registering young Minnesotans;” the stated reason for selecting Minnesota is that Minnesota has same-day registration. So one imagines busloads of volunteers wandering the streets, knocking on doors, rousting people out of bus stations, and hauling them to the polls where they can simultaneously register and vote. The potential for bribery and fraud in this situation is obvious. It is equally obvious that fears that the bussed-in students will vote rather than merely urging others to vote are well-founded. Minnesota’s election laws seem designed to encourage fraud. Anyone can show up at a polling place and claim to be a resident of that precinct and qualified to vote. If someone else at the polling place who is himself a registered voter “vouches” for the stranger, the stranger must be allowed to vote. He cannot be required to show a driver’s license or any other evidence of his identity or residence. Moreover, there is no limit on the number of strangers for whom a single voter can “vouch.” Thus, if 200 out-of-state Wellstone supporters are bussed into Minnesota, and they can find one Wellstone supporter anywhere in the state who is willing to vouch for them, all 200 must be allowed to vote. With the Wellstone/Coleman election expected to be extremely close, a few hundred out of state voters could potentially tip the balance.

Some would no doubt protest that it is unfair to assume that the Democrats intend fraud rather than a legal get out the vote campaign. Perhaps. But in the past legislative session, a bill was introduced by Republicans that provided that any one voter could vouch for no more than ten strangers. It was blocked by the Democrats. Another bill would have required unregistered voters attempting to register and vote on the day of the election to show identification to verify their identities. This was likewise blocked by the Democrats. Is there any good faith basis on which such basic reforms could be opposed? It is hard to draw any conclusion but that the Democrats are increasingly turning to voter fraud as a component of their electoral strategy.

I don't want there to be any chance that you will miss the fine column on the Belafonte/Powell flap that Deacon posts below. Consider this paragraph, right after Mr. Kane gets warmed up, hypothesizing a less dignified response than the one Powell gave to Belafonte's reference to him as a house slave: "Others not of Powell's character might have said something like 'that's mighty big talk coming from a guy whose major achievement in life is something called 'The Banana Boat Song.' But maybe Powell figures that by letting his statements and Belafonte's stand by themselves, prudent Americans will be able to figure out which one should get the 2002 Silly Award." Bravo!

While searching the Baltimore Sun for information on the Bentley-Ruppersberger race, I came across this piece by the Sun's fine African-American columnist, Gregory Kane on the Harry Belafonte flap. The story doesn't really deserve much more commentary than it has already received, but Kane gets off some good lines.

The Democrats are looking to pick up a second congressional seat in Maryland. In addition to the Eighth District seat held by Connie Morella, the Dems hope to pick up the Second District, which includes some of Baltimore and surrounding areas. The Republican candidate is tough 78 year old Helen Bentley, who represented the district until 1994 when she ran unsuccessfully for Governor. The Democrats are running Dutch Ruppersberger, a popular state legislator. The Democrats lead the Republicans in registered voters, but the district is fairly conservative and usually votes Republican. The race has been low-key and the parties have not poured money into it, probably because both consider Morella more vulnerable than Bentley. According to this story from the Baltimore Sun, Bentley held a slight lead in early October that did not exceed the margin of error.

More on Mister Peanut: Lowell Ponte gives me some grist to chew on as part of my anger management therapy this morning. Don't miss his column, "Carter's Appease Prize." Now if only Mark Steyn would get back from vacation...

John Fund has the most information published to date on the South Dakota voter fraud scandal. It is shaping up as much worse than was originally reported. Thune has said that he will leave open the possibility of a court challenge if he loses a narrow election and the result may have been impacted by voter fraud. Right now, that looks like one possible scenario.

Hugh Hewitt is a serious man with a sense of humor. He is not only the host of a great radio talk show and a reader of the Power Line, he is a student of history who cannot avoid observing that the perduring fatuities of the statesmen who brought us World War II seem to have been transplanted into the heart of the Democratic party. His outstanding column this morning, "How the '30s shadow our times," is a must-read.

I am struck this morning by the contrast between Tony Blankley and Jay Nordlinger on the most recent Jerry Falwell flap. In an interview aired on 60 Minutes, Falwell described the prophet Mohammed as a terrorist.

In his weekly Washington Times column, Tony Blankley condemns Falwell's statement as "idiotic and repulsive," and blames Falwell for the death of five individuals who perished during a Hindu/Muslim riot protesting Falwell's statement. Blankley particularly condemns Falwell's imprudence. The column is headlined "Falwell's fatal words."

On the other hand, in his Impromptus column in National Review Online this morning, Nordlinger notes the Iranian response to Falwell's interview: "The Iranian government — in the person of Mohsen Shabestari, representing the regime’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — has issued a fatwa against Jerry Falwell, just as it did against Salman Rushdie, and, presumably, many others. Said Shabestari, 'The death of that man [Falwell] is a religious duty.' So, one makes the same point [as he did in his column yesterday]: If you want to object to the statement that Islam is violent, it would behoove you to find a better way than to vow murder."

More on Mister Peanut: I have been patiently waiting for one of Mark Steyn's columns to do justice to the Jimmy Carter/Nobel Peace Prize phenomenon. Mr. Steyn must be on a well-deserved vacation. While awaiting his return I suggest that you read David Frum's "Jimmy Carter doesn't deserve a Nobel," from Canada's National Post, home of Mark Steyn's weekly column.

This photo shows hundreds of Balinese participating in a seaside service in honor of those murdered in the Sari Club bombing.

The Australian press is reporting that in the U.S., little notice has been taken of the terrorism in Bali. I hope that isn't true; it certainly isn't true in the blogosphere. But, as I noted here a couple of days ago, Australia lost more citizens, as a percentage of her population, in the Sari Club bombing than the United States did on September 11. In a very real sense, this was Australia's September 11; in addition, of course, citizens of many other countries, including the U.S., perished. This is just one story of many. Here is another.

Case clinched, Rocket Man. Meanwhile, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend tries to clinch her case for becoming Maryland's governor by using the sniper shootings that are plaguing Maryland and Northern Virginia. Townsend has stepped up her attacks on Ehrlich's position on gun control and is feeling the pain by pointing to the shootings of her father, Robert Kennedy, and her uncle. This fits together nicely with her impressive general media blitz against Ehrlich that I mentioned earlier today. All in all, it looks like Townsend may well succeed in diverting voter attention from the inept administration she has been part of for eight sorry years and from her own inadequacies as an administrator and candidate. It just doesn't take much for a Democrat in Maryland.

Brilliant analysis, Deacon. At the risk of descending from the sublime to the ridiculous, I offer--for those who may have missed it--The Greenpeace Guide to Environmentally Friendly Sex. Lately there has been a lot of commentary to the effect that conservatives have more fun. I think this clinches the case.

A few weeks ago (on Sept. 27) I suggested that Bill Clinton and Al Gore have brought a new kind of cynicism and dishonesty to American politics. Several days later (on Sept. 30), I considered why a new form of cynicism and dishonesty might surface now, and tried to point to parallels between "post-modern" thought and the way Clinton and Gore treat issues. Tonight I'm going to compound the mischief by asking why these tendencies have surfaced primarily in the Democratic, rather than the Republican, party. Here are four possible explanations:

1. Necessity is the mother of invention. After 1964 and before 1992, the Democrats lost five of six presidential elections including three landslides. The Democrats were consistently hammered on the issues and "liberal" became a bad word. The party's options were to change its core beliefs or pose as something it is not. Opting largely for the latter approach, it needed and found leaders who were particularly skillful in the art of deception. Note that the closest thing to a precursor of Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, emerged as the Republican standard bearer after a period of more than thirty years in which Republicans managed to elect only one president, an essentially apolitical war hero.

2. The Democrats are much more closely linked with academia, home of the intellectual trends that may be associated with the Clinton-Gore phenomenon. Despite the truth of this statement, I am not convinced that it provides a substantial part of the explanation I'm looking for. Clinton and Gore came up with their approach without the direct assistance of the academy. They probably "breathed the air" of post-modernism as students, but so did many Republican politicians.

3. The media lets them get away with it. Any major Republican politician with a record of mendacity remotely comparable to Clinton's or Gore's would have faced a media outcry far more debilitating than the one those two faced. Under this account, Republican politicians are not more honest because they are inherently more virtuous, but because prudence demands it.

4. Their constituencies let them get away with it. This is my favorite explanation. The Democratic party contains at least two core constituencies -- African-Americans and feminists -- who tend to view rules as instruments of their oppression and barriers to their advancement, and who therefore are less respectful than others of rules. We see this in civil rights litgation where "neutral rules with a disparate impact on African-Americans" (commonly known as tests and educational requirements) are constantly challenged as "discriminatory." We see it in the case for affirmative action, which demands that objective qualifications for selection be ignored to the extent that they interfere with desired outcomes. We see it in the notoriously shoddy "feminist scholarship" that has been exposed by Christina Hoff Sommers and others. The common thread here is something pretty close to cheating, which of course is a good one-word description of what Clinton and Gore are all about. No wonder that these core groups, and the sophisticates who believe that rules exist only to be deconstructed, tend to admire Clinton's intellectual gyrations and to tolerate Gore's less supple efforts.

By contrast, the Republican party is a "values" party, a party of church goers. While such folk can be hypocrites in individual cases (as Hollywood endlessly reminds us), collectively the Republican constituencies are far less likely to tolerate cheating and blatant dishonesty in their leaders. This, more than a lack of fortitude, may be why a Gingrich, a Livingston, and even a Nixon will step aside, whereas a Clinton will "hang tough," always with one more lie to tell.

Good news from Singapore's Straits Times: "Indonesia's most violent Muslim extremist group, Laskar Jihad, has been disbanded." The sub-headline reads: "Muslim extremist group senses major swing of public opinion against it as Bali horror draws condemnation from moderate Muslims." Yes, that plus the fact that the Indonesian government has announced it will arrest suspected terrorists without warrants and will detain them without trial. The bottom line, I guess, is that most people, of whatever religion, are opposed to mass murder. Still, it is understandable that Laskar Jihad was surprised at the reaction to the Bali bombing. The Straits Times notes that the group has been "blamed for the killing of thousands of Christians." Until now, apparently no one minded much.

Your memory is pretty good, Trunk. My view (based on James's data) is that if you are managing in the National League and your pitcher is batting, you may want to have him sacrifice bunt. But if you are in the American League and you have a batter whose best move is to make an out on purpose, you should get a new batter. But the real expert on this is Deacon.

As diehard Twins fans, we salute our gallant team, thank them for a great season, and wish the Angels success in the World Series. We have a sentimental spot in our heart for the Angels as the team that provided Rod Carew his only postseason appearance. In any event, the Twins' elimination from postseason play has officially delivered us to the time when we wait till next year and try to deepen our understanding of the game.

In the 1980s Bill James published annual versions of his Baseball Abstract each spring. His statistical /historical analysis of the game, its players, and its past sought to introduce a scientific rigor to the kind of arguments that baseball used to generate among its fans. Rocket Man not only read each year's edition of the Abstract upon publication, he actually retained James's points and explained them with great gusto. I remember in particular Rocket Man's expounding James's analysis of Harold Baines's butchery in the field.

The only analysis I remember ever understanding from the annual abstracts was James's analysis of the sacrifice bunt. My recollection, which may well be mistaken, is that James demonstrated with something like Euclidean logic the absolute worthlessness of the sacrifice bunt. It seems to me that he proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the single most powerful factor in run production was available outs, and that giving up an out under any circumstances through the sacrifice bunt was the baseball equivalent of lunacy. I thought James's analysis was so powerful that it would have an impact on the game, but I don't believe that it has.

I have been trying unsuccessfully to track down a summary of James's analysis on the Web. The best I have been able to find is a recent column on the ESPN Web site alluding to James's analysis in a way that slightly belies my recollection of it. The column refers to James's book evaluating baseball managers, a book that sounds interesting in itself. The review is "Surprise, surprise: Bunting may be OK" by Rob Neyer. If you can supply us with any information to pursue the issue, please e-mail us at the address on the left.

Indonesian investigators are interrogating two men in connection with the Sari Club bombing, according to The Scotsman. Semtex has been discovered at the scene, which many interpret as confirming the link to al Qaeda or a similarly sophisticated terrorist group. Indonesian authorities report that one of the men being interrogated "said he was present when the incident occurred but has refused to comment further." Hmmm....I think they're on the right track. The Scotsman reports further that support for a military strike against Iraq has spiked in the United Kingdom following the Bali bombing; 31 Britons are dead or missing.

More on the Minnesota gubernatorial race: Republicans are breathing a sigh of relief after internal polling shows their candidate, Tim Pawlenty, maintaining his lead after the campaign-finance snafu that the Trunk blogged on last night. Curiously, Pawlenty enjoyed a bigger lead among people who knew about the campaign finance issue than among people who didn't. Some credit this difference to Pawlenty's rapid and decisive response to the problem; I think it reflects the fact that more Republicans than Democrats read newspapers.

According to the Washington Times, even John Zogby doesn't believe his most recent poll showing Paul Wellstone with a substantial lead over Norm Coleman in Minnesota.

Another good source of information on the Bali bombing and its aftermath is The Gweilo Diaries, a blog written by an expatriate from New York who now lives in Asia. He lost friends in both the World Trade Center attack and the Sari Club bombing, and is both angry and eloquent. Among other things, he says: "If Muslims want understanding and tolerance from me, how about, at a minimum, they stop murdering my goddamn friends." And also: "A reader responds that the difference between Nazism and fundamentalist Islam is 'six million dead Jews.' True enough. But take the Israelis' guns away and I assure you, the Islamofascists would happily provide all the dead Jews required."

This Washington Post article is consistent with my general impression that Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has revived her faltering Maryland gubernatorial campaign with a withering advertising blitz that portrays opponent Robert Ehrlich as a disciple of Newt Gingrich. If Townsend can make this stick, it should pull her through in liberal Maryland.

Connie Morella, the Republican (in name) Congresswoman from the liberal 8th congressional district in Maryland is running slightly behind Democratic challenger Chris Van Hollen. Here, the Washington Post reports that, for the first time in her long career, Morella has felt compelled to mention her opponent by name in one of her ads. Connie remains quite popular in the district and she cannot be counted out yet. However, I continue to believe that, at the end of the day, the Democrats will have successfully redistricted her into retirement

A batch of generic Congressional preference polls have come out and are collected by the invaluable Real Clear Politics. They are pretty good news for Republicans. Starting around mid-September, the tide was running in the Democrats' favor, with a number of polls showing steadily increasing preference (up to as much as +7%) for Democrats. The most recent batch reverse that trend, generally showing the parties to be even. The range is from +5 for the Republicans to +3 for the Democrats.

Thomas Bray of the Detroit News wonders why the Republicans even have a shot at control of both Houses given the state of the economy and the usual fate of the president's party in mid-term elections. Bray offers this explanation: after September 11, "the party of Bill Clinton, having perfected the art of small-bore politics -- we feel your pain, so take your family and vote for us -- suddenly finds itself looking, well, small."

Dick Morris looks at the battle for the Senate. Relying in part on Zogby polls, Morris sees the Democrats likely to pick up seats in Arkansas and Colorado and Republicans likely to offset these gains with pick-ups in South Dakota and Missouri. Morris believes that further Democratic gains are possible in New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Texas, while the Republicans could pick up Minnesota and New Jersey. He also observes that if the Republicans win in Missouri, then Jim Talent will be seated immediately because the Democratic incumbent was appointed, not elected. This would give Republicans control of the Senate at least until January and enable President Bush's pending judicial nominees to be confirmed. The Democrats might be able to prevent this through a "switch in time" by Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, in which case Bush might well resort to recess appointments.

The best source of information on the Bali bombing and Australia's reaction to it is Australian blogger Tim Blair. The rage being felt by Australians is the same as what Americans experienced after September 11, and there, as here, a minority asks, "Why do they hate us?" and argues for appeasement.

Diversity is beautiful update: Yesterday's Star Tribune featured another story in its never-ending series on the unadulterated beauty of the continuing streams of immigrants from Africa, Asia, and anywhere else that the native culture may make assimilation difficult. The story, "Citizenship ceremony ever so sweet after paperwork foulup," recounts the ordeal of a lady who emigrated from Eritrea to Minneapolis and has become a popular teacher. The teacher's story is admirable and she herself seems like an inspirational figure. The bomb in this story is provided by Minnesota federal district judge Donovan Frank, who has imbibed his wisdom deeply from the pages of the Star Tribune. In swearing in the teacher from Eritirea, the Star Tribune notes: "Judge Frank told the students that Miss Meaza (pronounced May-ah-za), as she's called at school, doesn't have to give up her love for her homeland and shouldn't forget the food and dances of Eritrea now that she's an American. 'I want you to share the memories and culture of your former land with the people of your new country,' he said. 'Diversity is what makes this country strong; different languages, different religions, different clothing, different games.'" Gosh, Judge Frank, isn't it that same beautiful tribal diversity that led her to flee Eritrea in the midst of a civil war?

Not Torchgate's revenge: Rocket Man called it. Looks like Tim Pawlenty lives to fight another day. The Star Tribune's story is "Pawlenty campaign hit with $600,000 penalty." The campaign finance practices board didn't want to inflict a lethal blow to Pawlenty outright, it just wanted to cripple him. Rocket Man to the contrary notwithstanding, this seems to me like the worst of all possible outcomes. I think my analysis was overly optimistic, which is usually Rocket Man's function, but I do want to acknowledge the error in my analysis of yesterday evening. I had already been proved wrong at the time I posted my predictions; that should not technically be possible.

More on Torchgate's revenge: D.J. Tice of the Pioneer Press has a timely and brilliant column on the Pawlenty fiasco, "Campaign board ruling illustrates how law is flawed." Stay tuned...

Not to worry, Trunk. Pawlenty is fine. There will be enough money to finish out the campaign, and he is up by six points in the latest (post-finance problem) polling. This should be a bump in the road, not exactly minor but by no means fatal.

Torchgate's revenge: While I was out of town visiting Little Trunk, the campaign of Minnesota's Republican candidate for governor, Tim Pawlenty, melted down. Having agreed to abide by statutory spending limits, Pawlenty's campaign was found by the state's campaign finance practices board to have coordinated illegally with the Republican party to circumvent the applicable spending limits. The board's finding was reported last Friday in a Star Tribune story by Dane Smith, "Pawlenty campaign takes a big hit on ads." The penalties associated with the violation that has been found have not been imposed yet, but they are being negotiated with the Pawlenty campaign. On Saturday, the Star Tribune reported that the Pawlenty campaign would not contest the campaign practices board ruling. As these stories make clear, the impending financial penalties are staggering. We like Tim, we may be wrong, and we say with absolutely no joy that anyone who can add will deduce that the Pawlenty campaign is dead in the water. Read the linked stories.

Under Minnesota law, the party can substitute candidates in the event that the previously endorsed candidate withdraws, virtually up to the day of the election. In 1990, Arne Carlson waged a successful seven-day campaign for governor after the previously endorsed candidate withdrew. We predict that within the week, Tim will withdraw and our friend Brian Sullivan, who lost the endorsement by a hair to Tim, will be asked to take his place. We emphasize that we convey these predictions as simple deductions from the reports above. We ask you to stay tuned to the Power Line as events unfold. As Matt Drudge says, impacting...

More on Mister Peanut: Thank you, Rocket Man. Carter proves my newly minted adage: once an ass clown, always an ass clown. Now let's move on to the Swedes. Remember? As between Hitler and Churchill, they were neutral...

The Trunk thought we weren't quite tough enough on Jimmy Carter. OK, here is a photo that sums up Carter's ignominious post-presidential career; he's sucking up to a murderous tyrant while also staging a self-promoting photo op.

Someone should tell Carter that team is about to be contracted.

Right, Deacon. Saying that going after Iraq is bad for the war on terror is incomprehensible, like saying that going after cancer is bad for the war on disease. Beyond the obvious--Iraq is one of several sources of terrorism--lies another dark reality. Since the fall of the Soviet empire, terrorists have had no protector powerful enough to give them a safe haven. However, should Saddam Hussein stay in power and obtain nuclear weapons, he would be able not only to "harbor" terrorists as the Taliban did; his nuclear deterrent would allow him to actually protect them from retaliation, as the Taliban could not. Avoiding this situation is essential to ultimate victory in the war.

Reuel Marc Gerecht responds to the argument that a war with Iraq would compromise America's war on terrorism. Gerecht argues that the war will not impair our ability to obtain European assistance in countering terrorists because the Europeans understand that they too are the targets of Al Qaeda and thus have a strong interest in cooperating with us. The Europeans might like to make a behind-the-scenes deal with Al Qaeda, but they realize that this is impossible. As to Middle Eastern cooperation, Gerecht contends that it will actually increase with a victory over Iraq. Fear of the American power is what motivates whatever cooperation we get from the dictators in this region. Defeating Iraq will increase that fear. Not fighting Iraq would demonstrate that there is no reason to cooperate with us and, indeed, nothing to fear from cooperating with Al Qaeda.

The latest Zogby poll showing Paul Wellstone with a nine-point lead over Norm Coleman in Minnesota's key Senate race has caused something of a stir, especially since his last poll, done in September, showed Coleman up by six. Local insiders, however, give the Zogby numbers little credence. Both the Republicans' polling and the Democrats' polling have consistently shown Coleman and Wellstone within a point or two of each other, with no major recent shift. The race remains a toss-up and will likely be determined by which side does a better job of turning out its voters.

Clayton Cramer (via InstaPundit) explains why the Islamofascists cannot be appeased and must be fought. Check out the last paragraph.

The South Dakota voter fraud scandal appears to be expanding. Initially a single "contractor" was said to be involved, now at least three are found to have submitted fraudulent Democratic registrations.

Brian Sullivan points out that in the latest Senate Zogby polls, as reported at Real Clear Politics, John Thune has edged into a narrow lead against Tim Johnson and Jim Talent has opened a significant lead over Jean Carnahan. On the negative side, Zogby reports Paul Wellstone with a sudden nine-point lead over Norm Coleman. This kind of a swing is hard to explain; nothing has happened recently to explain such a dramatic change other than, perhaps, Wellstone's vote against the Iraq resolution. I don't believe Zogby's numbers, but if they reflect a real trend in Wellstone's direction, it may support my speculation of a few days ago that Wellstone voted against the resolution out of political calculation.

More on Mister Peanut: While on campus this past weekend I learned a new term that I think will frequently come in handy. The term recognizes students who are more than mere brownnosers. Students who suck up to their professors with notable intensity over a long period of time are dubbed "ass clowns." Peter Schweizer is a scholar of the Reagan presidency who has been digging in the archives related to Reagan's predecessor. He has written a new book ("Reagan's War," out tomorrow) on Reagan's strategy for the defeat of Soviet Communism. In a column based on the book, Schweizer demonstrates with considerable restraint that as president Mister Peanut was an ass clown for Communist tyrants. The column is entitled "Troubling Trophy."

In addition to "Troubling Trophy," National Review Online carries two other columns that should not be missed. In "Remembrance of Things Past" Victor Davis Hanson reviews the recent criticism of President Bush made by German politicians in the election that was just concluded. Hanson's piece is powerful and provocative. Also not to be missed is the column "Like an owl exploding" by John Derbyshire. In the column Derbyshire gives a careful reading to the the sickening 9/11 "poem" by New Jersey's poet laureate (sic), Amiri Baraka, the former Leroi Jones. I have read a lot about the poem, which has become something of a cause celebre, but Derbyshire's column is really in a class by itself. The column concludes with a parody of Baraka's poem that I will take the liberty of quoting in its entirety:

Somebody Stuck It To New Jersey Taxpayers
by John Derbyshire

Who took help from Jews when getting his scam started
Then turned and spat on them when a cozy sinecure came along
Who praises despots, wreckers of nations
Murderers, despoilers of innocence — Kabila, Lumumba, Lenin, Che
Who thinks Nkrumah was a benefactor of anyone but himself
Who believes the most transparent driveling anti-Semitic lies about 9/11
Who thinks "Tom Ass" is a really, really funny way to write "Thomas"
Who mau-maued the governor
Who put one over on the guilty white liberals at those fool Art Councils
Who's an illiterate moron
So stupid he can't even keep his racism straight...

Studies in liberal governance: As predicted by Mark Helprin, the "homeless" have made a major comeback since the inauguration of a Republican president. In New Haven, the homeless now are allowed to pitch their tents on the New Haven green in the middle of downtown. The green has been the traditional center of town since its founding in the seventeenth century. Now the liberal powers-that-be suck their thumbs as they try to figure out whether anything can be done to resolve this highly complex issue. In short, as reported in the Yale Daily News story"In city on the Green, no simple answers," the answer is, well, "no."

This is of course not an isolated phenomenon. Today's New York Times carries a similar story, "New York's homeless, back out in the open." Can the squeegee men be far behind?

When former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak spoke at Yale last Thursday, he drew a packed audience of interested students. And his remarks seems to have lived up to the expectations of his audience. What I found most interesting in the story on his speech carried in the Yale Daily News was the account of the security precautions.

Competing with Barak for the attention of the students on Thursday was retired Princeton Professor Robert Fagles, the most prominent living translator of Homer. Fagles spoke to an an enthususiastic audience of freshmen students in Yale's Directed Studies program in the classics of Western civilization. Students hung banners over the ledge of the balcony avowing their love of Fagles.
"Fagles feels the love from D.S. students" tells the story. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe it. But I did.

Some say that we are too simplistic in viewing the war against Islamist terror as a straightforward case of good against evil. I don't think so. Here is a reminder of the stark contrast between terrorists and normal, sometimes heroic, people.

Al Qaeda appears to be back with a vengeance. Beginning with Zawahiri's taped statement on al Jazeera a week ago, we have seen the attack on the oil tanker Limburg; the suicide attack on American marines in Kuwait; a bombing in the Philippines; three separate attacks in Indonesia; and, perhaps, a suicide bomber in Finland. We do not yet know how many of these attacks are attributable to al Qaeda, but that is a pretty academic question. The Islamofascists are a loosely organized coalition more than a single, tightly controlled organization. The timing of these attacks seems calibrated to Congress' vote to support the Administration on Iraq, which may suggest Iraqi involvement with al Qaeda, or may just be another manifestation of the many links of sympathy and tactics among the Islamofascist groups. The most horrific of these attacks was the car-bombing of the Sari Club in Bali, Indonesia. The Sari Club was a hedonistic, western-oriented bar that was described in an online review as "a bit feral." As such, it was a prime Islamist target. More people were killed at the Sari Club than in the Oklahoma City bombing, and the death toll is sure to rise, as there are more than 200 Australians alone still missing. I haven't done the math, but undoubtedly Australia lost more citizens, as a percentage of its population, than the U.S. did on September 11. So far the Australian reaction has been strong; see the coverage in the Sydney Morning Herald. The immediate effect will be to make Australia a stronger supporter of the war on terrorism. Australia has already offered to help Indonesia search for the killers. Indonesia has more Muslims than any other country; despite this fact (or because of it), it has consistently denied that terrorist groups operate there. The photo below shows the Sari Club on fire after the bombing.

More on Mister Peanut: Steven Plaut of Haifa University delivers a serious fisking to Mister Peanut in "Dishonoring America and Peace." The piece is too short either to help us in our anger management therapy or to do full justice to events, but it is a helluva beginning: "Carter's stupidity is still a matter of bitter humor. We recall his infantile attempt to be an Alpha male and talk about his lusting after women, a matter which led to that famous cartoon of him gazing at the Statue of Liberty and imagining her naked. This was the peanut-brain from Plains, the dumber brother of Billy Carter."

More on "Barbershop": Today's New York Times has a good profile of Cedric the Entertainer, the comedian who brought Eddie the Barber to life. In "Cedric the Entertainer, the Old School Comedian," A.O. Scott observes: "Cedric's rotund frame, clearly built for comfort, not for speed, nonetheless moves with a smooth agility that recalls Jackie Gleason, and he shares the Great One's gift for quick changes of mood and character."

Elsewhere in the Times today, editorialist Brent Staples also pays homage to the movie in "Lessons in Brutal Honesty at the Barbershop." Staples's political correctness is so finely tuned that you can be assured his defense of the filmmakers is unnecessary at this point. Jesse Jackson has been routed in his attack on the movie.

I have just returned from a long Parent's Weekend in New Haven with Little Trunk, where I went cyber cold turkey. Ouch! This afternoon I have been catching up with our blogs since my Wedndesday morning, 4:00 am pre-departure post for Brian Sullivan. To paraphrase the proprietors of the Hair Club for Men, I am both a "customer" and "owner" of the Power Line. Hats off to Rocket Man and Deacon for the awesome coverage of the past five days!

I don't think we have yet done justice, either through our links or through our commentary, on the Jimmy Carter/Nobel Peace Prize phenomenon. Jimmy Carter is easily one of the worst presidents in American history, but observing that places him on a continuum with other more respectable though execrable past presidents such as James Buchanan. His post-presidential career, however, clearly reveals him to be something like the first anti-American, postmodern president--a president who has "transcended" his country in favor of world citizenship. In so doing he has become a useful idiot to every left-wing dictator, tyrant, and butcher holding power in the world today, even including such classic third world kakistocrats as Libya's Mohammar Khadaffy, whose thugocracy lacks the leftist ideological component Carter otherwise esteems.

In honor of Jimmy Carter winning the Nobel Peace Prize, National Review Online has republished this piece from Jay Nordlinger. Deep into the piece Nordlinger makes the essential point that Carter has never met an anti-U.S. dictator he doesn't like. The list of such dictators includes Romania's barbaric Ceausescu, North Korea's Kim Il Sung, Daniel Ortega, anyone associated with China and, of course, Arafat. Nordlinger also reminds us that Carter's one positive foreign policy accomplishment, the Camp David accords, was worked out by Sadat and Begin before Carter was ever approached. This was after Carter had publicly taken the position that any worthwhile deal would have to include the Palestinians.

It doesn't bother me that a few Scandinavian socialists have given Carter the discredited Nobel Prize. But it is a bit annoying to hear American talking heads endlessly calling Carter "our best ex-President." Let's give these commentators the benefit of the doubt and put this assessment down to stupidity, rather than a shared-love of anti-western strongmen. By the way, my candidate for best ex-president is also an odd one-termer, John Quincy Adams. JQA landed in Congress where he became a tireless enemy of slavery. The difference between Adams and Carter is the difference between the moral and the moralistic.

The link Rocket Man perceives between the Islamofascists and the left was also drawn by Francis Fukuyama in the September issue of Commentary. I summarized Fukuyama's discussion in a blog on September 1. (I couldn't link to the article and still can't). Fukuyama traces Al Qaeda back to the Muslim Brotherhood whose roots, in turn, can be found in European fascism and its cousin European communism. He also contends that both Islamism (to use Fukuyama's term) and the European totalitarian ideologies stem from the same sort of social transformation caused by villagers moving en masse to large cities.

Rocket Man, your insight that the Islamofascists and the American left are animated by the same thinking is profound. It probably explains, among other things, why the American left is constantly imploring us to consider what animates the Islamofascists.

The Middle East Media Research Institute performs an invaluable service by translating excerpts from the Arab press. Yesterday, MEMRI posted a number of Arab responses to Condoleezza Rice's call for freedom and democracy in the Middle East. The responses come from a number of countries and from both government and independent (to the extent it is possible to be independent in an Arab country) sources. They are well worth reading in their entirety, but the thing that was most striking to me is how familiar the anti-Americanism of the Islamofascist press sounds. Virtually the entire anti-American catechism has been lifted wholesale from the teachings of the American left. It is all there: slavery, oppression of the Indians, Viet Nam, segregation, the Montgomery church bombing, Hiroshima, racial profiling of Muslims, and on and on. Oh yes, and Rice's boss, the President, is a cowboy. Nor is Marxism left out: "Democracy is an idea for the road to power...and nothing else. It is the ideology of the greatest power on earth." From Cairo to Riyadh, these editorialists sound amazingly like Noam Chomsky. It is hard to escape the conclusion that for the Islamofascists, as for western leftists, notwithstanding the supposedly vast gulf that divides their ideologies, the real animating passion is sheer hatred for America, for freedom, and for democracy.

David Tell weighs the Democrats on national security and finds them wanting.

Here is more on the voter South Dakota voter fraud scandal from the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. The Democrats hired up to 100 independent contractors to register new voters, particularly Indians, and paid a bounty for each purported new voter who was registered. Apparently the bounty was paid whether the registration was valid or fraudulent, and regardless of whether the new "voter" actually existed. Appoximately 17,000 new voter registrations have come in since the primaries, an extraordinary number in a state whose population is only around 700,000. So far, it is unknown how many of those registrations are fictitious. It is also unknown how many fake absentee ballots have already been received. A Democratic spokeswoman said that "the Democratic Party thinks that every eligible voter needs to exercise their right to vote and participate." No reference to the fact that to be an "eligible voter" you have to be a human being who actually exists and is not deceased. The chairman of the state Republican party said, "We have known for some time that there is a lot of fraudulent voter registration taking place. There is some indication there's ties to the Democratic Party in this."

Rocket Man has asked me how we're getting along in suburban Washington D.C. where sniper killings have become an almost daily event. The killings started at two locations less than three miles from where I grew up in Montgomery County. They have spread as far as Fredericksburg, Virginia near where I attended a debate tournament with my younger daughter on Saturday. However, I don't detect the kind of general panic that is being portrayed in the media. That said, my wife reported that downtown Bethesda, Maryland was awfully quiet for a Friday night.

I don't have any particular insight into what's going on, nor do I know much about law enforcement. I should like to follow the excellent example of Big Trunk during the recent Minneapolis race melee and report on local print media coverage of the shootings. However, that coverage has been mostly unexceptionable apart from this preposterous headline from the Washington Post early in the affair -- "Five Shooting Victims Reflect Montgomery's Growing Diversity."

The Washington Post has also jumped on our County's top law enforcement officer, the excellently named Chief Moose. His sin is rudeness to journalists. Here, a local Post columnist informs us that Chief Moose has a history of "anger management" problems and difficulties handling pressure. But it isn't just the Post that one hears raising questions about the Chief. Moose is African-American and it may be that some of the unease stems from concern about whether he was hired due in part to his race -- a concern that would be heightened if the Post's reports about problems in past jobs are true. That's one of the insidious things about affirmative action. Its widespread use tends to create these sorts of doubts even when they are entirely unjustified, as they may well be in this instance. In any case, the problem now encompasses all of the Washington area and extends half way to Richmond. Thus, little depends on Chief Moose anymore.

Television coverage seems fixated with "profiling." Profilers are endlessly interviewed and seem to have nothing much to say other than that the killer isn't a nice individual. Actually, they say he isn't a nice man. I haven't heard any of the television profilers opine about the killers race, athough it may be that the real profilers are guessing about this too. No one seems to find profiling objectionable here, despite its bad name in the press. What I'm hearing tends to reinforce my view that, generally speaking, profiling (including racial profiling) can be a legitimate, but not terribly helpful, investigative tool.

Early on, Montgomery County publicized the fact that it had obtained a "geographic profile" of the killer which located his base of operations not far from where I grew up. This too had a "no sh_ _, Sherlock" quality to it, since this was the area where the murders to date had occurred. To the extent, if any, that the profile was insightful, one also wondered why the police would tell the killer where they were looking for him. Since then, the killer has not struck again in our county, which may have been Chief Moose's intent. Who knows? In any case, the killer seems to feel invincible and thus should be caught soon. Let's pray that this happens before anyone else is murdered.

This may be a huge story: the FBI is investigating "massive voter fraud" in South Dakota. The fraud centers on Indian reservations and surrounding areas, where the Democratic Party has mounted a "voter registration" drive in anticipation of a close race between Tim Johnson and John Thune. The Democrats are denying responsibility for the fraud, the full extent of which is not yet known. It involves, among other things, registration of dead and non-existent people as Democrats. We can add this to the list of things the Democrats are willing to do to retain control of the Senate. But it shouldn't be a surprise. The real story of the 2000 election, which was unfortunately overshadowed by the Florida election contest, was voter fraud in a number of states, perhaps the most extensive ever. There is no reason to expect fraud to diminish this year, as nothing has been done in most states to assure ballot integrity. It will be interesting to see whether the South Dakota scandal hurts the Democrats there, and whether voters around the country will start to see a pattern.

Did Carter seek U.N. permission to attempt to rescue our hostages in Iran? Come to think of it, even a U.N. mission would surely have been better conceived than the one Carter launched. I doubt that the Democrats are pleased to see Carter getting "air time" just now.

Speaking of the election, my cousin from New York tells me that he saw an ad for Forrester in which a high school student about to take an exam asks his teacher if Frank Lautenberg can take it for him if he fails. Not bad humor, but I wonder if the ad will help Forrester. My cousin also reminds me to "beware of Lincoln Chafee" when it comes to regaining control of the Senate. Indeed, it seems quite possible that Chafee will pull a "Jeffords" if the Republicans get back to 50 seats.

Further Update: Sure enough, Jimmy Carter's first act upon being awarded the Peace Prize was to announce on CNN that he would have voted against the Iraq resolution. He said he agreed that the United States has an obligation to ensure that Saddam does not possess weapons of mass destruction, but that "it should all be done through the United Nations and not unilaterally by the United States." So the U.S. has the "obligation," but can only carry out its obligation with the permission of France, Russia and China? President Bush has repeatedly made it clear that his preference is to proceed under the U.N. umbrella. The question is, what happens if France, Russia or China, for whatever reasons of perceived self-interest, makes that impossible? As usual, Carter has nothing beyond platitudes to contribute to the debate.

Right, Deacon. We'll see how the French respond to having one of their ships attacked. As I recall they reacted strongly when it was done by Greenpeace. But the Islamofascists are a lot more formidable than the greens.

It's now official. Traces of TNT and pieces of the boat that delivered it have been found inside the French oil tanker Limburg. An American official has confirmed that the explosion was a terrorist act, likely carried out by al Qaeda. Which again raises the question posed here a couple of days ago: Why is it that government officials seem to have a reflexive desire to deny terrorist links to violent acts? The photo below is a close-up of the hole that was blown in the Limburg's hull by a small boat loaded with explosives.

Rocket Man, I checked out your post from yesterday's Times of London about France. I think the Times got it mostly right -- France is moving "considerably closer to Washington's position on Iraq." Why? Because, realizing that Saddam has no future, it wants to be a player in the post-Saddam Iraq. In this respect, France is a less stand-up version of Pakistan, which worked with the Taliban for years until it saw the writing on the wall. In short, with apologies to my french wife, France is not a true ally but rather a supremely opportunistic nation that we can occasionally work with.

Trent Lott has announced that he will not be attending the Oct. 24 dinner for Harry Belafonte, on account of the singer's vicious attack on Colin Powell. I hadn't realized until this recent outburst that Belafonte is a Stalinist.

Jimmy Carter has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The timing could hardly be worse; it shows how out of touch the Nobel committee is. The Wall Street Journal has re-run Gabriel Schoenfeld's review of Carter's book, Living Faith. It pretty well sums up Carter's cluelessness, both as President and thereafter. In recent years, some of Carter's actions, especially concerning Cuba, have been borderline treasonous. I wouldn't be surprised if the award becomes the occasion for some outrageous statements by Carter about Iraq and the war on terrorism generally. Nor would I be surprised if that's what the Nobel committee had in mind.
Update: That's exactly what the Nobel committee intended. The committee's chairman has confirmed that the award to Carter was made "relevant" by the situation in Iraq, and that the award was intended to "send a message to Washington." Disgusting.

OK, here is a link to the Baucus/Taylor ad, courtesy of The Smoking Gun. It definitely contains a couple of gay moments. But I still say the story here is more about inadequte candidate recruitment by the Republicans than homophobia by the Democrats.

The most recent poll data, as collected by Real Clear Politics, indicate that the Carnahan/Talent race in Missouri is a dead heat; Forrester may have a shot against Lautenberg in New Jersey; Allard, the Republican, has regained a slight lead in Colorado; Shaheen may have pulled into the lead in New Hampshire; and Cornyn is burying Kirk in Texas, where hopes of a Democratic pickup were always far-fetched. In Iowa, the illicit taping scandal has cut into Harkin's lead, but probably not enough to matter. With the local prosecutor declining to take action, the issue has probably peaked. Here in Minnesota, our friend John Kline holds a narrow lead over the incumbent Democrat, Bill Luther, in what is now a strongly Republican district. Among voters who know who the candidates are, John's lead is overwhelming. This should be a Republican pickup in the House.

In these pages and elsewhere, Trunk has written of the State Department's studious efforts to ignore or explain away Yasser Arafat's terrorism against U.S. targets. Here, Jim Hoagland, the Washington Post's foreign policy columnist, writes about past "attempts by officials to bury or explain away menacing information about Iraq." Hoagland, who is hardly a conservative, has been writing of Saddam's atrocities for years. He has found the State Department and the CIA "institutionally wary and dismissive of the extensive intelligence about Saddam Hussein and his crimes." In fact, Colin Powell last year publicly dismissed information published by Hoagland about the increasing tempo of Iraq's efforts to shoot down American and British pilots over no-fly zones. Hoagland also describes the "exasperation" of his editor at the Post with Hoagland's efforts to to describe Iraq's "unique evil." Hoagland concludes that, while there was "little new" in President Bush's speech to the nation about Iraq, our government's willingness to pay attention to old news about Iraq is indeed new.

I agree with you on the Montana race, Rocket Man. When I first heard the story, I thought it wasn't so bad because Taylor apparently wasn't providing real competition anyway. But, as you point out, how can the Republicans not be competitive in Montana, one of the most conservative states in the nation? And against a liberal like Baucus, China's friend in the Senate. Amazing.

Yesterday's strangest story was the withdrawal of the Republican Senate candidate in Montana, Mike Taylor, after the Democrats released an ad showing Taylor--who owned some salons during the 1980's--working as a hairdresser. Taylor denounced the ads as a slur, intended to suggest that he was a homosexual, and dropped out of the race against Max Baucus. Baucus will now presumably be unopposed, since the deadline to replace Taylor has passed. Some commentators, most notably Andrew Sullivan, have joined Taylor in denouncing the ad as a homophobic slander. I'm not so sure; I haven't seen the ad. If I run across it later in the day, I'll link to it. From descriptions I've read, the ad would make Taylor look dumb, but homosexual? I don't know. The more fundamental story appears to be that the Republicans have once again run a weak candidate in an important race. Baucus was not unbeatable and there is no shortage of Republicans in Montana. This was, after all, not a race for some obscure local office, but for the United States Senate. And the best the Republicans could do was a guy who could be driven out by the revelation that he used to be a hairdresser? It is a basic rule of politics that if you run against a Democrat, you should be prepared to be slandered. It is hard to understand how the Republicans nominated someone who didn't see this one coming.

The London Times says France maybe isn't so bad after all. I'm not sure I buy it, but judge for yourself.

Thanks to Steve Nygard, my good pal, Power Line reader and amazing techno-whiz for help with our recent site upgrades.

Bret Stephens is a brilliant columnist for the Jerusalem Post but is, I think, little known in America. Today he brings us bad news from Latin America: "It is no small thing when an entire continent goes the way of Africa, not that many of us have given more than passing notice. How did it happen?" Along the way, Stephens has kind words for Augusto Pinochet. Check it out.

Joel Mowbray has written several articles critical of the State Department's issuance of visas to Saudis and others who turned out to be terrorists. Now National Review has obtained copies of the September 11 hijackers' actual visa applications, and Mowbray, writing in National Review Online, has analyzed the applications and concluded that 15 of the 19 applications should have been denied. The article includes links to photos of six of the applications, so you can see for yourself how absurd it was to accept them. One application omits such basic information as age and gender. Most of the applications gave only the vaguest indication of where the applicant intended to live in the United States: "California," "New York," "Hotel." One applicant identified his destination in the U.S. as "No." He was issued a visa anyway. One applicant indicated he intended to stay in the U.S. for three years; this was a problem because the longest legal stay is two years. Not to worry: he returned a few days later with a new application that indicated an intent to stay for one year, and the visa was issued. Anyone who reviews these applications will conclude that the application process was strictly pro forma, and that anyone who asked for a visa got one. Clearly no one was thinking about security.

The Jerusalem Post reports on a poll regarding support for Israel among subgroups in the U.S. The poll finds that 62 percent of Christian conservatives and 67 percent of Republicans say they support Israel. Only 46 percent of Democrats say the same thing. The survey finds that President Bush is making significant headway among Jewish voters. 53 percent of American Jews now have a favorable view of him. While this number is far lower than that for Americans as a whole, it represents progress nonetheless.

The House passed the President's Iraq resolution by a vote of 296-133. About 60% of House Democrats opposed the resolution; almost all Republicans voted for it.

Rocket Man, the Ann Coulter piece you posted is terrific. Here's an article by the Weekly Standard's Noemie Emery on why President Bush drives Democrats like Tom Daschle crazy. As Emery notes, "Bush has a history of driving people who are sure they're much smarter than he is to incredibly silly and sefl-immolating acts." Ask Ann Richards or Al Gore. Despite this history, Bush's opponents still feel certain that "if Maureen Dowd turns the smirk up one notch, if Frank Rich reviews Bush like another bad movie, the unwashed will awake and see reason." When this doesn't happen -- when the vast majority of the public refuses to regard Bush as a lucky, out-of-touch moron -- the reaction from Bush's adversaries isn't at all pretty.

Here is video footage of Paul Wellstone inciting union thugs to rough up a Republican who was filming Wellstone's campaign appearance with a camcorder. The scariest thing about the video, though, is Wellstone's 60's-era rant about "marching" and "fighting."

The Zawahiri tape "appears to be genuine," according to the Administration, and--although I still haven't seen a complete transcript--is said to contain references that are clearly contemporary. The news reports haven't indicated whether Zawahiri's identity has been verified by voiceprint analysis, but I assume that's what Administration spokesmen mean when they say it is apparently genuine. If so, Zawahiri is, regrettably, alive. It is interesting, however, that the alleged bin Laden audio tape that recently surfaced contains no contemporary references at all, suggesting that it was made a long time ago. If Zawahiri's tape is genuine, it means that the al Qaeda leadership has access to recording equipment and is willing to take the risks inherent in surfacing, at least to that extent. That being the case, the fact that they have not been able to produce a recent bin Laden tape likely confirms that he is dead, as was recently reported by a pair of Tora Bora survivors.

Ann Coulter carpet-bombs the Senate Democrats on Iraq.

Byron York reports on another ambush by Senate Democrats of a Bush judicial nominee. This time the victim is Dennis Shedd, who has been nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and has served as a federal district court judge for more than ten years. According to York, Senator Leahy had promised that the Shedd nomination would get through the Judiciary Committee, but changed his mind after "civil rights" groups increased their attacks on Shedd. Imagine that.

Meanwhile, Michael Kinsley contends that Senators should oppose judicial nominees with whom they disagree over ideology and/or judicial philosophy. According to Kinsley, this will force presidents to compromise with Congress, leading to the appointment of moderate judges. Does anyone recall Kinsley making this argument when a Democrat was President and the Republicans controlled the Senate? I don't.

On the merits, Kinsley's approach has superficial appeal. And Republicans eventually could probably live with it since, in the future, the Republicans are at least as likely to control the Senate as the White House. However, there are sound objections to a regime in which Republican presidents may be unable to appoint mainstream conservative judges and Democratic presidents may be unable to appoint mainstream liberals. First, Kinsley's assumption that presidents will compromise with Congress is questionable. In some situations, presidents may well hold out for nominees who share their philosophy, while hoping that control of the Senate will pass to their party and using recess appointments to fill some vacancies. Second, in Kinsley's world the permanent federal judiciary will tend to be comprised disproportionately of judges appointed during periods of ascendency by one party. For example, in the year 2020, an unusually large percentage of judges may be appointees from 2011-2013. It seems better to have judges, liberal and conservative, who reflect organic shifts in political trends over time. Third, there don't seem to be a lot of high quality "moderate" judicial candidates out there today. Most top lawyers and legal thinkers have strongly held beliefs and are either liberals or conservatives. This is particularly true of those who are likely to sponsored for appointment to the federal bench. Typically, these individuals are friends of the senator from their state (nowadays almost invariably a liberal or a conservative senator) or people who have come to the attention of the president's top lawyers through service to the party or its favorite causes. Would we be better off with a Supreme Court made up of nine non-opinionated hacks or a Supreme Court divided roughly equally between top-notch liberals and conservatives? I'd prefer the latter.

Finally, a system where judicial nominees are vetoed or approved largely on straight party line votes would tend to de-legitimize the judiciary in the public's mind. Courts decide many of the most divisive issues we face as a society. Their decisions need not, and should not, end public disagreement over these matters. However, the decisions must be accepted at some level or else the rule of law will fail. To some extent, federal judges are political creatures and should be viewed as such. But it is not healthy if they are viewed as nothing more than political creatures. The regime that Senate Democrats seek to impose, and that Michael Kinsley now applauds, will foster that perception and thus go too far in undermining public confidence in the federal judiciary.

Rep. James McDermott is the most disgraceful of all the Congressional Democrats. A week ago I saw John McCain being interviewed on Fox News; he was asked to compare the McDermott/Bonior treachery to Jane Fonda's appearance atop an anti-aircraft gun while McCain was a POW in Hanoi. McCain's response was measured but devastating; he said that he thought McDermott and Bonior were worse. After all, Miss Fonda was just a "troubled young actress," whereas the Democratic trio were not only adults but Congressmen, one of them, Bonior, a long-time member of the Democratic leadership. Here you see a photo of McDermott marching in Seattle in front of a sign labeling President Bush a "terrorist." In the accompanying article from the Seattle Times, McDermott says that President Bush is carrying out a "silent, bloodless coup" to "become an emperor." I agree with McCain. This is worse.

Like most bloggers, we have linked to InstaPundit from time to time, and Prof. Reynolds has linked to us as well. This time, rather than linking, I am reproducing in its entirety an email the Pundit received from an active-duty serviceman commenting on the faux concern for his safety expressed by certain anti-war Congressmen:

"As a servicemember, I'm continually amazed by the lengths that some will go to 'use me' as a prop for their point of view. To wit, the quote from Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, commenting on the President's speech last night: 'If the quality of his evidence matched the quality of his oratory, I'd be "ready to roll." But his repeated references to 9/11, despite his advisers' admission that no such link to this terrorism exists, show how very weak the case for war now really is. My concern is that a near-unilateral land invasion of Iraq will endanger thousands of young Americans now while exposing our families to terrorism for years to come in what will be perceived by too many as a new crusade against Islam.'
My primary beef, aside from the usual 'weak case' rhetoric, is with this rather shameless use of the 'young Americans' scare tactic. It pains me to be seen as a pawn in this game, especially since the servicemembers that I know are not really interested in how much danger we might face -- as long as we can go in with the right tools, support and mission, we don't mind danger. After all, isn't that what we're trained for?
However, Rep. Scaremonger has no interest whatsoever in my well-being, or else he'd have complained more vociferously about the last president's little escapades. The rhetoric is not matched by any sign of real concern, such as seeing to it that my ships get the gear they need or my men get the support they need. Guess that wasn't on his 'to do' list.
Bottom line: The Armed Forces of the United States are ready, willing and able to take out the targets directed by the President. No amount of armchair QB'ing by the donks will change that, nor will their shameless use of the 'danger' that I may face affect my readiness."

The Trunk has written an excellent expose of the State Department's longstanding whitewashing of Yasser Arafat's murder of Americans; see the "Arafat" link to the left. Now the State Department praises religious tolerance in the Palestinian Authority. Yeah, the PA is highly tolerant of infidels, as long as they aren't pigs or monkeys. This illustrates what a daunting task the Administration faces in attempting to implement rational policies over the resistance of a deeply entrenched and reality-free bureaucracy.

As we predicted, Tom Daschle has indicated that he is "inclined to support" the Iraq resolution. Opposition appears to be crumbling, consisting now of a handful of Democrats with safe seats, a few hard-left relics like Paul Wellstone, and the eternally clueless Lincoln Chafee.

This piece by Michael Kelly combines insight with fallacy in discussing the Bush Doctrine. Kelly is insightful in drawing the analogy between the foreign policy of President Bush and that of President Kennedy. And Kelly is surely correct in arguing that the Bush Doctrine is neither imperialistic nor an extreme departure from American practice and American values. However, I believe that Kelly is wrong to refer to the President's policy as "armed evangelism," just as he would be wrong to call President Kennedy's policy that. As far as I can tell, Bush is not out to "make the world safe for democracy." His goal is to make the world safe for our democracy. To be sure, we are safer in a world full of democracies. But that does not mean we are, or should be, on a crusade to bring democracy to the world. In Iraq, for example, our goal is to topple Saddam Hussein and to rid his country of weapons of mass destruction. We hope that, in the process, Iraq and maybe even its neighbors will become far more democratic, and we may be willing to devote considerable effort to try to bring that about. However, the extent to which we will do so has yet to be determined, as far as I can tell. Presumably, it will depend on the "facts on the ground." And nothing in the Bush Doctrine, as it has been publicly articulated, commits us one way or another on this matter. Thus, Kelly is wide of the mark in comparing the President's policy with the selective "evangelism" of President Clinton as manifested in Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo.

Tony Blankley provides a characteristically insightful piece about the statesmanship of President Bush and the maturity of the American public -- "the world's bulwark against chaos" -- that supports him.

Last night we discovered that our favorite Minnesota businessman/politician, Brian Sullivan, is a faithful reader of the Power Line. He came within a hair of being the Republican party's candidate for governor of Minnesota this year, and we suspect that even more important political missions than being governor of the state lie in his future. We predict that in at least one of those missions his success as a businessman will be an asset rather than a liability.

This morning's Pioneer Press carries D. J. Tice's weekly column. His column this week is devoted to an assessment of the candidates in the Minnesota race for governor. Brian, this one's for you.

The end of Torchgate: As previously announced, I'm not getting over it. I'm not moving on. And I am frequently consulting Diana West's hilarious column "Last Rites for Torricelli" to help me stay focused.

Fred Barnes' take on the battle for control of the Senate. The Republicans need a net pick-up of one seat. Barnes identifies four states where the Republicans could gain a seat (New Jersey, Missouri, Minnesota, and South Dakota). Barnes sees Lautenberg as the probable winner in New Jersey and the other three states as basically toss-ups. There are also four states where the Democrats could pick-up a seat (New Hampshire, Colorado, Arkansas, and Texas). Texas is a long-shot, but Barnes sees the other three as toss-ups. Thus, if he is correct in his assessment of the individual races, the math narrowly favors the Democrats. However, there is still a long way to go.

Beginning with his great book on the Lincoln-Douglas debates, "Crisis of the House Divided," Professor Harry Jaffa has taught many of us virtually everything we think we know about American politics. Professor Jaffa's long-awaited sequel to that book is "A New Birth of Freedom." Professor Diana Schaub's review of "A New Birth of Freedom" brilliantly explicates the book and lucidly explains why you must read it.

Steve Sailer's thoughtful and informative review of the book "The Emerging Democratic Majority" is worth reading. The book and the review address the political effects of current demographic trends. The review can profitably be read in conjunction with Michael Barone's most recent discussion of "Latino voters and American politics."

Whatever one thinks of Dick Morris, he is an expert on the uses and abuses of polls. Here, he exposes the latest New York TImes poll about Iraq and the public's concern over the economy as a "push" poll. As Morris explains, push polling is the use of polls "to generate a predetermined result, and so to vindicate a specific point of view." Politicians sometimes use this technique, but clearly jounalists never should. However, if taken seriously by politicians, the poll could backfire by causing Democrats to over-estimate the value of talking about the economy. Morris claims that similar polling led the Democrats astray during the summer when they lost ground by criticising President Bush's policy on Iraq. So, if Morris is correct, in deliberately misleading the public, the Times risks misleading its Democratic allies as well.

This piece by James Robbins compares President Bush's speech to a prosecutor's closing argument in a jury trial. The analogy is useful and prompts the question, what would the "defense's" closing argument sound like. I'm not talking about the kind of carping questions that I heard following the speech ("why now" and "what happens after"), but a real full-blown argument, of a seriousness comparable to the President's, against taking military action in the near future. Maybe we'll hear it when Senator Wellstone speaks in the Senate. But, to paraphrase Tom Daschle, so far the opponents of military action haven't made their case.

President Bush's great speech this evening, on the first anniversary of our strike against the Taliban, seems to me to mark something like the end of the beginning. I listened to it live on the radio and only want to note four points that struck me while listening to it. First, it was the speech of a serious leader. The president's statement that we will not live in fear must itself strike fear into the heart of our enemies. Second, the speech was a war speech. The president's warning to Saddam Hussein's generals that they will be held accountable for war crimes suggests that action is imminent. Third, in drawing the character of Saddam Hussein, President Bush made the striking point that Saddam is a student of Stalin. This point forms the heart of Mark Bowden's article in the Atlantic Monthly last spring, an article that we posted on the Power Line at the time of its publication. Fourth, when making the case that the war against Saddam Hussein is "crucial" to the war on terrorism and not a diversion from it, President Bush noted that Saddam Hussein is sheltering terrorists. He specifically named Abu Abbas, the head of the Palestine Liberation Front who is holed up in Baghdad, and recalled Leon Klinghoffer, his American victim. This is a connection that we have seen drawn nowhere else previously and it speaks volumes to us about the terrible truth at the heart of the president's speech, as well as the awesome character of the speaker.

God bless President Bush, and the United States of America.

For those of you who remember the Trunk's post on the Museum of Sex--I know, our memories aren't what they used to be either--here is a photo of a costume display at the museum, courtesy of Yahoo news photos.

Debka File says the explosion of the French oil tanker Limburg was a copy of al Qaeda's attack on the U.S.S. Cole two years ago, and was carried out by al Qaeda with possible assistance from Iraq. The governments of Yemen and France were quick to say that there is no evidence of terrorism; the Yemenis claimed the explosion resulted from an oil leak. However, the captain and other witnesses on board the Limburg reported seeing a small boat strike the oil tanker just before it exploded. Why a two-year-old, double-hulled tanker would suddenly spring a leak has not been explained by Yemen or France. (The photo below shows the Limburg. On a more general note, I do not understand why governments around the world seem to reflexively deny that violent incidents are connected to terrorism. Recall the Hadayet case at the Los Angeles airport, for example. Violent incidents may or may not be terrorist, and may or may not be connected to al Qaeda, but where this heavy presumption of non-terrorist origin comes from, I don't understand

Right, Trunk. Before starting with the sarcasm, I should have commended you for posting the Star Tribune article which, as you said, is very revealing.

For those who think media bias thrives only in New York, Washington and Los Angeles, check out the Sioux Falls Argus Leader's lengthy (interminable, actually) tribute to the virtues of Tim Johnson. Note, too, the emphasis on Johnson's ability to bring home the bacon for South Dakota. No one's taking the chance that the voters might vote on principle.

Deacon, the "reality" I was alluding to as creeping through in the Star Tribune's article on immigration was that our current wave of immigrants does not appear to be overflowing with patriots. Like you, I'm pretty sure we don't need a lot of help from recent immigrants in understanding why the rest of the world doesn't like us, even if it is what the Star Tribune thinks it is what they have to offer.

Here is the New York Times' take on the neck-and-neck Senatorial race between Norm Coleman and Paul Wellstone. The Times is right that the race is being dominated, at least for now, by Iraq. And although the Times would never put it this way, their report is also consistent with my theory, articulated here a day or two ago, that Wellstone calculates that his opposition to the Iraq resolution may represent his best hope for re-election. I also enjoyed the article's description of Gordon Shumaker--formerly an excellent trial judge in St. Paul, now an excellent appellate judge--as one of a group of "bearded men in black leather" supporting Coleman at a "freedom rally" sponsored by the Minnesota Motorcycle Riders' Association.

Trunk, I take a back-seat to no one in wishing to understand the "deep-rooted reasons" why "foreigners don't like us." I'm just not sure that we need mass immigration to get to the bottom of this. First, we have our own indigenous liberals who are perpetually eager to enlighten us on this score. Second, why can't we just let in a few virulently anti-American immigrants (preferably good restauranteurs) from each country? While we're at it, maybe we could find some immigrants who can explain the deep-rooted reasons why so many American liberals don't like America.

Two news stories over the weekend purported to add credence to the claim that bin Laden is still alive. The first related to an intercepted cell phone conversation involving Mullah Omar. There were numerous headlines like this one in the U. K. Observer: "Bin Laden still alive, reveals spy satellite." However, the article indicates that this claim is based entirely on Omar's statement to the other participant that "The Sheikh sends his [greetings]." The Observer claims that "voice analysis appears to corroborate the identification of bin Laden," but this is incomprehensible since bin Laden's voice was not on the tape. (The most interesting question is: who leaked this news about an interception by an American spy satellite, and why?) The second news item was al-Jazeera's broadcast of a two-minute audio recording, purportedly made by bin Laden. Here again, the report was accorded considerable credibility; the UPI story was headlined in the Washington Times: "Bin Laden Threatens More Attacks." But again, the story concedes that "United Press International has not been able to determine whether the speaker is bin Laden or when the tape was recorded." My guess (and it is purely a guess) is that the voice will prove to be bin Laden's. But there is nothing in the tape to prove that it was made subsequent to last December, the last time bin Laden was known to be alive. The tape refers to the September 11 attacks, but, so far as news accounts have indicated, nothing thereafter. In short, these stories contain little or no hard information. I still think he's dead.

In his weekly Wall Street Journal column this morning Robert Bartley addresses the issue I have been trying to raise regarding (to put it one way) the proper relationship between the United States and the United Nations. All honor to him for beginning his column at the beginning--with the founding of the United States on the self-evident truths recognized in the Declaration of Independence. His column, "Who elected the UN?," is mandatory.

Richard Poe answers the question: "Why is the blogosphere conservative?" His piece, with lots of links, is a good introduction to the blogosphere for those who are just becoming familiar with the phenomenon. The essential answer, of course, is that the blogosphere is mostly conservative because it is a free, competitive medium in which only ideas matter.

Virtually every week the Minneapolis Star Tribune runs an article regarding immigrants in Minnesota, always with a subtext of how wonderful they are and how wonderful the transformation of Minnesota or the United States by these immigrants is. Today's story--"Africans struggle to make new home"--is utterly typical. It discusses the burgeoning population of Somalis and Ethiopians in the Twin Cities. One of Minnesota's main attractions for such immigrants--Minnesota's Swedish style welfare system--is cloaked in euphesism. The expressly touted advantages these immigrants bring to Minnesota are--what else?--confined to their "diversity" ("diversity of immigration enriches the Twin Cities area, said Carol Engebretson Byrne, executive director of the Minnesota International Center"). And even though the reporters' intentions are otherwise, reality does creep through if the reader sticks with this very long story to the end:

"Eric Damien, a Frenchman who serves as executive director of the Alliance Francaise de Minneapolis-St. Paul, said he was surprised to arrive here after stints in India and South Africa and find such a profusion of different nationalities.

"'I wouldn't have expected as many Hispanics or Hmong or Somalians,' he said. 'I didn't know they were coming to Minnesota.'

"The presence of foreigners, he said, can widen the horizons of Americans as they try to understand the rest of the world.

"'I was very surprised that the reaction of so many Americans to 9/11 was "''Why don't they like us?'" he said. 'There are deep-rooted reasons for this, and immigrants can help Americans to understand.'"

I spent yesterday in Fredericksburg, Virginia at a Student Congress tournament for high schoolers. It was somewhat depressing listening to otherwise intelligent kids insisting on "hands off Iraq," calling the U.S. arrogant and a bully, and fretting over our "lack of friends" in the world. One guy even attacked my hero, Charles Krauthammer. At the end of the day, though, two out of three Congresses were won by good conservatives, one of whom is my daughter.

I'm not getting over it. I'm not moving on. They want to discuss the "issues," but the New Jersey perps and their Democratic enablers are the issue. Nevertheless, while I sort it out, I'm trying to lighten up.

Steve Dunleavy of the New York Post is a crusty columnist who specializes in punchy one-sentence paragraphs and self-deprecating humor. His column today--about New York's newly opened "Museum of Sex"--made me laugh. The column is headlined "Getting some was so easy--or so my friends tell me." Here's his lead: "Because of the cruel, unforgiving gallop of the calendar, the name 'Museum of Sex' appears apt for so many of us." The rest of the column will keep you smiling.

Mickey Kaus delivers a fisking to Paul Krugman, formerly a bad economist, now a bad columnist for the New York Times. Uncovering Krugman's many errors has become a staple of the blogosphere. Among other things, Kaus points out that Administration critics like Krugman, who accuse Bush of inaction on the economy and call for "fiscal stimulus," never acknowledge that the economy is benefiting right now from the fiscal stimulus provided by Bush's tax cut. In enacting the tax cut, partly, as he said, to stimulate the economy, Bush was ahead of his liberal critics. (By the way, Mickey, thanks for linking to us on Thursday.)

This past summer we corresponded with a gifted young man named Josh Chafetz, founder of Oxblog, to express our admiration for his site; we link to the Oxblog site over to the left. Josh is a Yale grad studying politics on a Rhodes scholarship at Oxford. Today Josh is justifiably proud that his brilliant piece "The Immutable Laws of Dowd" (originally published on Oxblog) has been published in the new issue of the Weekly Standard, out this morning. We extend Josh our sincere congratulations. In our correspondence with Josh this summer we urged him not to forget to return to the US when he completes his studies at Oxford; his country needs him.

I get the impression, probably mistaken, that Mark Steyn may be losing or stifling his sense of humor as the war with Iraq comes closer. I have been hoping he would address himself to the shenanigans in New Jersey in a way that would help me "move on." In his weekly Spectator column today, however, he discusses European anti-Americanism, and he sounds utterly fed up with it: "America could project itself anywhere and blow up anything, but it doesn’t. It could tell the UN to go fuck itself, but it’s not that impolite." He taunts the kakistocrats of Europe to act in a manner consistent with their anti-Americanism. His column is helpfully headlined "Put up or shut up."

A number of states, including California, have filed amicus briefs in the Supreme Court, urging the Court to overturn the New Jersey decision allowing candidate-switching after the deadline has passed. They make excellent arguments, but I still think the Court's wariness of becoming a full-time election referee will prevent it from acting.

Peter Ferrara in NRO highlights Tom Daschle's role as a sponsor of corporate corruption and crony capitalism. But this isn't the worst; Daschle is an old-fashioned bribe-taker, which is why he steadfastly refuses to release his tax returns. He has the checks made out to his wife, who is a "lobbyist," i.e., his wife.

The Star Tribune's James Lileks is a brilliant satirist who saves his best stuff for his Web site. He also has an incredibly high threshold for pain that has allowed him not only to read Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone's rumimations on Iraq in their entirety, but also to parse them in detail. Lileks places his comments on Wellstone's speech under the part of his site he calls "The Screed (a sporadic attempt to disassemble the indefensible)." In the following paragraph he's just getting warmed up as he addresses a point we have been seeking to articulate today and in several of our previous items, but the whole piece is just terrific:

"[T]here are two parties nowadays: the US party, and the UN party. The former includes Republicans and Democrats who have an inordinate, romantic, and almost quaint attachment to the Constitution and the notion of national sovereignty. The latter regard nation-states as subsets of a global construct that values unanimous impotence over individual effort, and values procedure over results. The US party calls in mortar fire on the enemy positions. The UN party stands up, climbs over the lip of the trench, and recites Robert’s Rules of Order as it approaches the machine-gun positions. Yea, though I walk through the shadow of death I shall fear no evil, for evil is specifically prohibited under Article 4, subclause B."

Meanwhile, Jonathan Rosenblum, writing in the Jerusalem Post, emphasizes the religious roots of President Bush's staunch support of Israel and the continuity between the President's world-view and that of the Founders. Echoing comments we have made on this site, he sees Bush's vision for the Middle East as one of liberation, comparable to Reagan's successful effort to liberate Eastern Europe.

Even the most casual Power Line reader has noted that we are strong defenders of Israel. We have viewed with alarm the worldwide tide of anti-Semitism that has risen over the past several years. I, for one, fear that the United States may be the only power standing between the Jewish people and another calamity. If this sounds alarmist--and I certainly hope it is--check out this item from The Volokh Conspiracy. Canadian customs authorities have seized pamphlets advocating Israel's right to exist as possibly illegal "hate propaganda." The seized materials can be viewed here. This is the kind of sinister effort to undermine Israel's legitimacy, presumably as a prelude to its obliteration, that is going on in many countries. It also offers a glimpse of where America's current infatuation with the concept of "hate speech" will lead if it is unchecked.

Ramesh Ponnuru agrees with Rocket Man's view that New Jersey Republican Doug Forrester should take on the Lautenberg candidacy before the voters, not the Supreme Court. Otherwise, Ponnuru contends, he will play into the hands of Democratic charges that he has nothing to offer other than not being Torricelli. Robert Levy of the Cato Institute also believes that "recourse is better left to the judgment of New Jersey voters than to the U.S. Supreme Court."

I concur with Gene Allen's excellent analysis of why the current three-member coalition against Iraq is ideal. I also perceive another advantage to proceeding with that limited coalition -- to show our enemies that we are willing to go it more or less "alone." The only real defense that our enemies in the Middle East have against our power is the ability to hide behind "world opinion" to the extent that we are willing to be restrained by it. If our actions with respect to Iraq show that we are not willing to be so restrained, they are more likely to convince countries like Iran and Syria to become part of the solution to anti-American terrorism instead of remaining part of the problem.

Paul Wellstone, as expected, has come out against the Senate resolution authorizing the President to act against Saddam Hussein. The interesting question is why. Wellstone's principal argument is that we should take action as part of a coalition, not alone; he appears to be the last person to notice that we already have a coalition, and it is sure to grow (although, as Gene Allen points out, this is a mixed blessing). Given his arguments--which ritually acknowledge the desirability of getting rid of Saddam and are not explicitly pacifist--Wellstone could easily have signed on to the resolution with a furrowed brow and grave muttering about "concerns," as Tom Daschle will do when the time comes. Why did he oppose it? Two possibilities: maybe he is so reflexively opposed to the United States that he just can't help himself, logic be damned; or else he did it out of political calculation. This last possibility is intriguing. Wellstone has always been more popular in Minnesota for his personality than for his left-wing views. Many people who disagree with him on various issues have been tolerant, and willing to vote for him, because he has been perceived as honest, principled, a fighter for the underdog, determined to do the right thing regardless of political consequences, etc. Whether this image was ever accurate is debatable, but more to the point, the image has lately lost much of its luster. In this election cycle, Wellstone has appeared old and tired, with nothing new to add to the public debate. Worse, his violation of his two-term pledge has taken away the aura of the disinterested outsider that was the key to his early popularity. Right now, he looks like just another tired pol fighting to stay in office. As a result, he is trailing Norm Coleman--a younger, fresher and more vigorous face--in the polls. Wellstone's speech announcing his opposition to the Senate resolution was poorly written; in fact, scarcely coherent. And as he delivered the speech in a surprisingly flat monotone, he sounded tired. I couldn't help thinking that this speech represented a last effort to revive his image as a maverick and a crusader, and fire up his troops for one more election.

Here is the Charles Krauthammer piece that Trunk tried to post earlier (when I clicked on the link I got the Podhoretz column). Krauthammer is wrong in one respect. He finds no logic in the Democrats' insistence on permitting Security Council members to serve as arbiters of American national security policy. In fact, there is a coherent logic, although one the Democrats won't articulate. Many Democrats view America as a menace. They fear any projection of American power except for purely "humanitarian" purposes (to establish the purity of our motives, the victims we are protecting should be Muslims, Africans, or other people "of color," such as Haitians). Essentially, they view America as a giant Gulliver that needs to be tied down by the less powerful nations of the world. If one holds this view, it is entirely logical to grant countires like France, Russia, and China veto power over America's right to intervene militarily.

Our faithful reader Gene Allen has his own reflections on unilateralism/multilateralism that may help up pursue the issue in a way that will clarify our thougts. Gene's analysis distinguishes between the instrumental use of mulitilateralism--multilateralism pursued with the sole intention of achieving America's national objectives--and multilateralism in principle--mulitilaterlism pursued for its own good even when it conflicts with America's national interest. We believe in the former; the latter is the ideology of national suicide, i.e., liberalism. Gene writes as follows:

Three’s a Coalition, Four’s a Crowd

Senator Paul Wellstone took to the floor of the Senate on Thursday to criticize President Bush’s Iraq policy and argue that the United States should not invade Iraq without first exhausting every possible diplomatic effort, and then only by assembling a large coalition to conduct the operation. The time for diplomacy has passed and the task of forming a coalition is already complete.

Saddam continues to thumb his nose at the United Nations and the United States. Meanwhile President Bush has already assembled a coalition comprising Great Britain, Israel and the United States. Adding any more members at this juncture would exponentially increase the political and military risks associated with the operation. However, there is virtually no added benefit to expanding the coalition beyond what is already the most powerful and cohesive military alliance in the history of the world.

Military risks include information leaks, lost time, increased casualties and an ever-expanding list of nations for whom the United States must provide protection. Each addition to the coalition increases the possibility that there will be security breaches, miscommunication or casualties from friendly fire.

The political risk of adding more coalition members is that members may disagree about the scope, timing and duration of the mission. Thus anytime a coalition member disagrees with U.S. policy it has the potential to split the coalition or delay essential action.

Finally, being a member of the coalition presents risks to potential member nations. A nation may wish to join the coalition but, especially for neighbors of Iraq, there may be a price to pay in terms of potential unrest and terrorist activities in those nations. It would be best for all nations if the United States, Great Britain and Israel conduct the operation. After the mission succeeds there will be plenty of time for other nations to ratify the mission and sign on after the fact without subjecting their respective countries to the political and military risks associated with bringing about a regime change in Iraq. These nations may then take part in the humanitarian efforts associated with rebuilding Iraq and improving living conditions for the Iraqi people who will then be free from Saddam’s oppression.

The United States of America has all of the military and political power necessary to conduct the military operation to neutralize Saddam and rid the world of his weapons of mass murder. Great Britain and Israel are capable and trustworthy partners. A coalition of three is the perfect size.

John Podhoretz details how President Bush outsmarted the Democrats on Iraq.

Like me, George Will is angry about the Democrats' New Jersey shenanigans. Unlike me, he is capable of shedding both heat and light on them. Will's column, "Brewing up recipe for electoral anarchy," climaxes with this rousing statement: "A political party's enthusiastic embrace of the likes of Torricelli should be like getting drunk -- a wretched excess that carries its own punishment. The party should stay locked in the embrace it voluntarily entered into with a reprobate, until voters are given a chance to render their judgment on the party's judgment." Will also draws the link between these shenanigans and the party's attempt to hijack the past presidential election.

John Podhoretz comes this morning to praise President Bush for his skill in outmaneuvering the evil geniuses of the Democratic party to secure victory for the congressional resolution regarding Iraq. His column, "'Strategery' Triumphs," also has the humorous bite we are looking for this morning to leaven our anger at the partisans who fiddle while America burns.

Charles Krauthammer's column this morning pursues the issue of unilateralism versus multilateralism that so far has lacked the kind of serious analysis that Krauthammer always contributes. In "The Myth of 'UN Support'" Krauthammer states home truths with historical context that is devastating to the utterly frivolous arguments advanced by the Democrats.

Democrats are trying to fend off outrage at their New Jersey maneuvering by citing alleged precedents involving Republicans. The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz relies on one of the low points in recent Minnesota history as Exhibit A:

"By the way, before Republicans get too indignant, they might recall (as CNN's Jeff Greenfield noted) that in October 1990, Jon Grunseth withdrew as the GOP nominee for Minnesota governor after reports of an affair and swimming naked with two teenagers. He was replaced on the ballot by Arne Carlson, who won the election."

As an analogy, this is extremely lame. Grunseth dropped out thirteen days before the election. Under Minnesota law as it then existed (Sec. 204B.13(2)), "A vacancy in nomination of a major political party may be filled by filing a nomination certificate not later than four days before the general election...." Further, the statute provided that vacancies could be filled by a specified committee of a political party, or if no such committee has been formed, "the vacancy shall be filled by the candidate who received the next highest number of votes at the primary for that office...." (Sec. 204B.13(3)) When Grunseth dropped out, Carlson--who was already running a write-in campaign--promptly applied to the Minnesota Secretary of State (a Democrat) to replace Grunseth on the ballot, since Carlson was the second-place finisher in the Republican primary. His request complied fully with Minnesota's election laws, and the Secretary of State put his name on the ballot in place of Grunseth's. The difference between this scenario and what is happening in New Jersey is obvious. In Minnesota, the nominated candidate withdrew within the deadline provided by law; in New Jersey, he did not. In Minnesota, the election laws were scrupulously followed; in New Jersey, they were not. We have here the subtle distinction between following the law and ignoring the law--a distinction that Democrats increasingly find mystifying.

Later today, the Republicans apparently will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the New Jersey Supreme Court's decision in the Torricelli case. I think this is a mistake. I don't think the Supreme Court will get involved, and if they don't their inaction will be perceived as validation of what the Democrats have done. Also, the Supreme Court appeal is too reminiscent of Florida. Everyone talks about how the New Jersey situation is like Florida two years ago, but the key difference is that in Florida the Democrats tried to steal the election after it was over. Here, they are bending the law for the same purpose, but before the election takes place. In Florida, the Republicans had no alternative but to fight in the courts. In New Jersey, they do have an alternative: to take their case to the voters and try to rally public sentiment against the Democrats' corruption and lawlessness. That's what they should do. See also
Andrew Sullivan's excellent analysis.

Astute reader Gene Allen points out that I prematurely retired Governor Bill Janklow of South Dakota. He is both a former governor, having served from 1979-1987, and also the current governor, having been elected again in 1994 after a tour of duty in the private sector. Gene agrees with me that Governor Janklow is going to win the South Dakota House seat.

John Fund has sobering reflections on the tide of election-through-litigation that Al Gore may have unleashed through his contest of the 2000 Florida results.

Stuart Rothenberg runs the numbers and concludes that unless the dynamic changes dramatically, the Democrats can't retake the House. Among other things, his analysis highlights the importance of our friend John Kline's race in Minnesota's 2nd. He also agrees with Deacon that Connie Morella will probably be defeated, but thinks she still has a chance. In at least one instance, I think Rothenberg's analysis is too favorable to the Democrats. Crediting recent poll numbers, he gives Stephanie Herseth the edge over ex-Governor Bill Janklow in South Dakota. I will have to see this to believe it; Janklow has been the most popular politician in South Dakota for the last twenty years, and has done nothing to forfeit that popularity. I don't believe he can be beaten by a Democratic rookie.

The Washington Times explains how President Bush outmaneuvered Tom Daschle on the Iraq resolution.

I am afraid that today will be remembered as the day when the midterm electoral tide turned decisively in the Democrats' favor. Lautenberg should be a shoo-in to defeat Forrester; news coverage of Torricelli will no longer be an albatross; the Democrats' Congressional leadership has taken a major step toward getting Iraq off the table as an election issue; the stock market continues to slide; and the economy shows no signs of recovery. As noted here previously, generic Congressional preference polls turned sharply toward the Democrats two weeks ago. Over the next month they will pull out all the stops, and it is much easier to imagine last-minute developments that will hurt the Republicans--setbacks in the war, further erosion of the economy--than the Democrats. I hope I'm wrong, but the picture appears to be darkening.

The latest Maryland poll, commissioned by the Baltimore Sun and the Bethesda Gazette, shows the state's two key races "too close to call." Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend leads Bob Ehrlich 45-43 in the gubernatorial race. In my congressional district, Democrat Chris Van Hollen leads Republican incumbent Connie Morella 43-40. Morella's campaign says that its internal poll puts her ahead by a margin of 48-42. Morella has much more money left to spend than Van Hollen does. However, my guess right now is that the reconfiguration of the district by the Democrats, coupled with the polarized political climate, will see Morella lose in this overwhelmingly liberal district.

The House leadership has now agreed with President Bush on a perfectly acceptable resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq if necessary. A bipartisan group of Senators including John McCain and Joe Lieberman have introduced the same resolution in the Senate, where it seems certain to pass easily. Tom Daschle was left out in the cold as, the Washington Post reports, "senior members of both parties and chambers praised Bush's leadership."

The New Jersey Supreme Court has just ruled that the Democrats can replace Torricelli on the ballot.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking to us. Nothing like an InstaPundit link to spike a blog's hits.

Thomas Sowell on the taboo subject of race and IQ scores. Sowell points out that, if successful, the attempts of black "leaders" and their white "friends" to block research in this area would have prevented the discovery of evidence that large IQ differences between blacks and whites need not be attribued to genetics. In others words, as Sowell concludes, allegedly racist researchers like Arthur Jensen had more faith in black children than "black leaders" do.

The Trunk reminds me of these genuine lines from Julius Caesar:

"O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
***
Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial."

Yet another hoax in the news: You've probably heard that Barbra Streisand, at the Democratic fundraiser in Hollywood, purported to quote Shakespeare in support of her anti-war position and later admitted that she had fallen for an internet fabrication. Until today, however, I hadn't seen the quote that she attributed to Shakespeare. Here it is:

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind…And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."

Putting aside the fact that Shakespeare wrote never wrote anything this pedestrian, the language employed is obviously contemporary, not Elizabethan. No one who is even slightly familiar with Shakespeare could be deceived by this hoax for a moment. Attributing this quote to Shakespeare is like crediting a Guns'n'Roses song to Mozart; it requires a spectacularly deaf ear. Just another indication of the cultural level that prevails in Hollywood. And these are people who look down on conservatives because they think we're dumb.

Wow, this is a relief. Another hoax debunked. I must say the readiness of reporters to fall for these hoaxes is unnerving, even to skeptical conservatives like us.

Here's an analysis of the Texas races for Senator and Governor by David Guenther, managing editor of the Lone Star Report. Guenther sees Republicans winning both. The Senate race was neck-in-neck most of the year, but Republican John Cornyn now is 12 points up in the Zogby poll. Particularly gratifying to me is Guenther's suggestion that the defeat of Bush judicial nominee Priscilla Owen (a Texan) played an important role in the decline of Democrat Ron Kirk. However, Kirk's biggest problems apparently have centered on the issue of Iraq, which is also gratifying. Guenther predicts a five to ten point victory for Cornyn.

Deacon has posted some interesting comments about whether Al Gore's opportunistic flip-flops on Iraq, and national security policy generally, are the most shameless in American history. Here, courtesy of Vin Weber, is more evidence:

Al Gore on Monday:

"Now, back in 1991, I was one of the handful of Democrats in the United States
Senate to vote in favor of the resolution endorsing the Persian Gulf War, and I
felt betrayed" -- betrayed! -- "by the first Bush administration's hasty
departure from the battlefield even as Saddam began to renew his persecution of
the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south, groups that we had, after
all, encouraged to rise up against Saddam."

Al Gore on April 18, 1991:

"I want to state this clearly: President Bush should not be blamed for Saddam
Hussein's survival to this point. There was throughout the war a clear consensus
that the United States should not include the conquest of Iraq among its
objectives. On the contrary, it was universally accepted that our objective was
to push Iraq out of Kuwait, and it was further understood that when this was
accomplished, combat should stop."

Via Instapundit, blogger Shiloh Bucher explains how Torchgate validates her decision, several years ago, to leave the Democratic Party: "This time control of the Senate is at stake and the 'party of the people' is again attempting to use a state supreme court loaded with Democrats to shamelessly keep themselves in power." Following her post is a long series of comments by fellow party-switchers. It's pretty heart-warming.

The end of Torchgate: As the Democrats invite the courts to commit fresh outrages as part of the Torchgate denoument, today's columns provide both entertainment and instruction regarding the Torch's flameout. My new must-read guy is the perfectly named Cragg Hines of the Houston Chronicle. He rises to the occasion with a burst of perfectly fitted cruel hilarity. Michael Barone has a characteristically dead-on assessment in this morning's Wall Street Journal.

To our surprise, this morning's New York Times has a powerful condemnation of the Democratic maneuvering to change the New Jersey match-up by Professor William Mayer of Northeastern University. Professor Mayer concludes by stating: "[T]he failures of Mr. Torricelli should not be used to confer an unfair advantage on a party that deserves to be held accountable for its past decisions." I guess I don't need to remind you what party that is. In "The Old Switcheroo" on the Weekly Standard's online site Fred Barnes does a nice job of decrying the shenanigans of--which party was that again?--the Democrats.

Courtesy of a kind deed by a good friend I attended Bruce Springsteen's concert last night at St. Paul's Xcel Center. The concert was laced with powerful renditions of Springsteen's 9/11 songs from his current recording "The Rising." I was struck by how many in the packed audience of 19,000 already knew the songs from "The Rising" and were able to sing along with the performances. Add to the wallop of those songs the impact provided by Bruce being backed by the E Street Band, all the folks he played with in the '70s and '80s as he made his reputation and became famous: Steve Van Zandt, Roy Bittan, Danny Federici, Nils Lofgren, Garry Tallent, Max Weinberg, and the Big Man, Clarence Clemons. It felt a little like a historic occasion.

Given Bruce's songbook and his gift for writing anthemic songs, it was inevitable that lines from his old songs would find a new resonance in this show. Thanks to the venue and the sentiments expressed in the song, Bruce's performance of "Badlands" brought down the house: "...it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive."
Brian Lambert's review in the Pioneer Press comes closest to capturing the experience. We also ran into Pioneer Press reporter and Bruce fanatic Rick Linsk, whose "The Rites of Springsteen" had helped get us in the right frame of mind.

More on the "melee:" We have sought to follow the money trail from the politicians to the race hustlers at The City Inc. since Minneapolis's first race riot in ten years this past August. Following the riot, the Hennepin County Board promptly funnelled $25,000 to Spike Moss and the gang to pick up trash in north Minneapolis, where several white reporters were assaulted in connection with their coverage of the execution of a search warrant at a notorious crack house. One of the reporters who successfully hid herself from the rioters and escaped unhurt is our friend Judy Borger of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Judy's car wasn't so lucky; to borrow a term from our continuing scandal coverage, it was torched by the rioters.

We almost missed Judy's story today in the Pioneer Press. According to Judy's story, The City Inc. trash pickup netted 90-100 bags of trash. By our calculation, that works out to roughly $250 per bag of trash. (Thanks to our faithful reader Ed Patton for pointing the story out.)

This ridiculous New York Times editorial has rightly been greeted with derision throughout the blogosphere. The Times argues that "[t]he Democrats, led by Gov. James McGreevey, must move quickly to find a credible replacement. The courts must then expeditiously approve the ballot substitution, which in turn will clear the way for an energetic one-month campaign that, with Senator Torricelli out of the picture, can focus tightly on loftier issues than his seamy behavior." (Emphasis mine.) The Times' opinion as to what the courts "must" do is not based on any reference to, you know, anything so prosaic as the actual "law." On the contrary, the Times opines that "legal wrangling over ballot access cannot be allowed to obscure the central issue, which is one of democracy." Following the law is now "legal wrangling." I suppose this gives us some insight into the Times' rabid support of Al Gore during the 2000 post-election proceedings. The law can be inconvenient when it isn't on your side, but you can't let that stand in your way when political power is at stake. The Times has turned into a bad joke.

Mark Steyn's latest on the Democrats and Iraq. This one had me laughing out loud.

The end of Torchgate: I am mourning the end of Torchgate. Given the Democrats' high-minded execution of the Torch and their prospective shenanigans to replace him on the ballot, all in honor of the sacred imperative of maintaining their Senate majority and obstructing the war effort, I want to say this is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, of Torchgate. But in fact the coming events in New Jersey will deserve a nom de scandal of their own. We shall see.

I have previously written about the outstanding young Ivy Leaguers who have signed up for summer training in the Marines' Officer Candidate School. This story from the Yale Daily News, "A military life for some Yalies," tells a piece of the story; I commend it to your attention as a mood lifter.

Dennis Prager is as insightful as ever, this time in deploring Hollywood's silence on terror against Israeli Jews. As Prager notes, almost everyone in Hollywood has signed on to causes ranging from gun control to higher taxes to saving whales to undoing global warming to protesting the wearing of fur. Yet Hollywood has been silent on the Palestinian/Arab/Islamic war to destroy Israel. Prager attributes Hollywood's silence to typical liberal confusion coupled with lack of courage. He concludes that this silence "will be a long-lasting stain on Hollywood's moral record."

Over the last couple of weeks the Democrats have seemed to be in disarray, and commentators have universally claimed that antiwar speeches by Daschle, Gore, Kennedy et al. have hurt their electoral chances. It turns out the Democrats may not have been so dumb after all. The most recent generic Congressional preference polls, taken at the same time these supposedly suicidal speeches were being given, show a strong trend in the Democrats' favor.

George Will on the "American collaborators," McDermott and Bonior. The collaborators' statements are shocking not only for their poisonous malice, but for their sheer ignorance of recent (post-1990) history. Has a single Democrat disavowed or criticized McDermott and Bonior? Not that I know of. This illustrates a pervasive tactic on the Left: "extremist" Democrats (McKinney, Bonior, etc.) make unfounded, slanderous charges against the Administration, which receive vast publicity in liberal (i.e., all) newspapers; "mainstream" Democrats don't repeat the charges, but don't disavow them either, thereby hoping to benefit quietly from them.

The other day, I speculated that Al Gore's flip-flopping on matters of war and peace might be something new in our political history. However, my cousin George Chimes, who knows more about American history than I can ever hope to, reminds me that "Gore's weasel words on issues of war and peace are part of a long Democratic tradition." He cites Woodrow Wilson's 1916 campaign pledge to "keep us out of war" and FDR's 1940 Boston campaign speech in which he vowed never to send troops abroad. George notes that both Wilson and FDR were actively trying to involve the U.S. in war "but wouldn't own up to it for fear of offending elements of their electoral coalitions."

I take George's point. Still, there seems to be something different about Clinton and Gore, though less than what I tentatively claimed. Wilson and FDR were trying to hide the ball. With Clinton and Gore, it's not apparent that there is a ball. For them, issues often seem to lack reality other than as play-things to be manipulated for political purposes. Consider Clinton's response to the question of how he would have voted on the 1991 congressional resolution concerning Iraq. Clinton said he would have supported the pro-war resolution if the vote was close, but that the opposition had the better arguments. It's hard for me to imagine Wilson, FDR, or any other elected high official from the past making a statement like this on the issue of whether to go to war. The statement betrays a lack of seriousness that no past politician could admit to and that, I suspect, few could consciously entertain.

What I take to be the Clinton-Gore lack of seriousness about issues has parallels in modern (or should I say post-modern) intellectual and academic thought. In that world, "texts" (e.g., great literature, philosophy and even laws and judicial opinions) are not valued in their own right, but rather exist only to be appropriated by creative "scholars" for whatever purposes they see fit. Everything is up for grabs. The only limit on valid interpretation is the imagination, and political correctness quotient, of the interpreter. I fear that we are starting to see this sort of "deconstructionist" approach spilling into our politics (recall "it depends on what the meaning of is is"). And if this approach works as well for Gore as it did for Clinton, Republicans are likely to adopt it. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to work very well for Gore. The reason may be that Clinton actually enjoyed the deconstruction game; Gore just seems driven to play it.

Whether the Democrats will be able to field a substitute candidate for Torricelli is unclear. The Democrats reportedly believe the New Jersey Supreme Court will come through for them, but I can't imagine how this can be achieved in five weeks. Here is the latest from the Washington Post. My favorite quote is from Doug Forrester, who says: "The laws of the state of New Jersey do not contain a 'we think we're going to lose so we get to pick someone new' clause."

Here is evidence that democracy may not be doomed.

Donald Lambro of the Washington Times reaches the same conclusion as Rocket Man regarding Tom Daschle's recent outburst -- it "had more to do with his political frustration over Iraq's dominance in the election debate than with President Bush's slap at Senate Democrats on national security." Lambro cites some significant poll results. A Gallup Poll shows that, by a margin of 49 percent to 41 percent, voters are more worried about Iraq than the economy when it comes to deciding how to vote in the upcoming House and Senate races. This represents a 16-point shift since last month. And an Ipsos Public Affairs poll (whatever that is) shows that, by a 6-point margin, Americans now think that the country is moving in the right direction. This represents a 13-point shift.

In order to cope with this sentiment and still appease their liberal base, Daschle and Gore want to persuade folks that one can care about our security and still be opposed to war with Iraq. But Gore recognized that this refrain, by itself, won't cut it. Thus, he tried to argue that he has a better plan for protecting our security -- ongoing pursuit of Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan and elsewhere. This required him to argue that current pursuit of these terrorists is inadequate. But most Americans (with some conservatives dissenting) believe that administration policy in Afghanistan has been a clear success and that Al Qaeda is already very much on the run. Consequently, Gore looked petty and foolish trying to argue otherwise.

The reality is that, in practice, the Democrats do place less of a priority on national security than the Republicans. Neither party places security considerations above all others under all circumstances. For example, neither advocates doubling the size of the armed forces or implementing a police state. But, compared to the Democrats, the Republicans advocate more resources for the military and greater constraints on civil liberties. Moreover, as we have documented during the past few months, Democratic policy on issues of high importance to their favorite interest groups, such as immigration and tort reform, does not consistently seek to maximize national security. These specifics are not understood by the public because they are not reported in the mainstream press. But the public seems to understand instinctively that the Democrats are more willing than the Republicans to trade-off security concerns. And every time a Democrat whines that the Iraq debate is shifting attention away from economic issues, he or she reinforces this understanding.

The Associated Press confirms that Torricelli is dropping out of the race. Speculation over possible replacement candidates focuses on former Senators Bill Bradley and Frank Lautenberg and current House members Bob Menedez, Frank Pallone, and Rob Andrews (the latter has been an ardent Bush supporter when it comes to Iraq). But state law apparently is an obstacle to replacing a candidate this late in the game, absent extraordinary circumstances such as the death of the candidate. Terminal corruption is not an extraordinary circumstance, at least not among Democrats in New Jersey.

It appears that Torricelli may pull out of his Senate re-election race. HIs campaign manager says a press conference is planned for this afternoon. I assume he won't hold a press conference to announce that he is staying in. Apparently this is being engineered by the national Democratic party; no doubt they have a plan to substitute another candidate, but it is awfully late in the day for that.

Here's a nice piece about the film "Barbershop" by an African-American writer. She finds the movie "reassuring," not offensive. She sees "Barbershop" as evidence that the new generation of African-American artists (and its audience) no longer "fears the truth" and, not coincidentally, is no longer taking its cues from the old civil rights leadership.

Debka File has a fascinating account of diplomatic progress in the Persian Gulf: "On the quiet, Washington has made important strides in the bid to assemble an Arab-Muslim coalition for its war effort. Egypt and Saudi Arabia were the first to climb on board." Debka File reports that Egypt has turned its Cairo West military base over to the US war command, while American warships are freely traversing the Suez Canal. Meanwhile, "the Saudi Prince Sultan air base northeast of Riyadh is now an American forward base for air raids over southern Iraq." But the chief coup is enlisting Iran in support of the effort against Iraq. Debka File claims that "Months of laborious bargaining have produced a secret US-Iran military cooperation agreement for the operation to overthrow Saddam's regime." Debka reports that Iran has already inserted special forces into Iraq, and that when Iraq's foreign minister traveled to Tehran yesterday seeking support against the US, he was coldly rebuffed. Debka evaluates the current Persian Gulf coalition as "weightier than the one which confronted Iraq in 1991."

More on Torchgate: In National Review Online Allison Hayward has the first really good column on the latest revelations.

Some time after the fall of the Soviet Union the New York Review of Books became worth reading. The current issue has a fine essay/review by Pico Iyer on William Buckley and his three most recent books. I am struck by the open-hearted appreciation of Buckley as a person that comes through in Iyer's review and in his reading of these books. To my surprise I see that this review is one of the pieces from the current issue that the magazine posts on its relatively new Web site, and I am delighted to be able to bring it to your attention.

More on Torchgate: The Trenton Courier Post has a terrific summary of the situation as of today, "Ethics blows have Torricelli battered and on the brink." Among other things, the story notes a poll showing the Torch now down 13 points to his invisible Republican opponent. The story also notes another fact I had missed: "Democrats announced Friday that Torricelli had been selected to make the Democratic response to President Bush' s weekly Saturday radio broadcast."

The Torch is indeed the perfect spokesman for the Gore/Dasche Democratic party. Perhaps the guy can join Steve Van Zandt on "The Sopranos" after he gets blown out of office. Rocket Man, do you remember the song Bruce Springsteen wrote for Steve Van Zandt in his previous incarnation as the rocker Little Stevie? "Trapped Again..."

The Washington Post editorial that Deacon linked to earlier isn't bad; it concludes that voting to confirm Miguel Estrada is "an easy call." In typical fashion, however, the Post can't bear to criticize unequivocally the Democratic smear campaign against Estrada. Instead, the Post casts Republicans and Democrats as equally blameworthy. The Republican sin, apparently, is praising Estrada as "a kind of Horatio Alger story." In the Post's view, praising a well-qualified candidate and groundlessly defaming him are somehow the same. More important, however, is the central point of the Post's editorial: "Both sides should remember that there is no Hispanic manner of deciding cases." This proposition is obviously true if you're a conservative; coming from the Post it is a breathtaking admission. Leaving aside the implications of this proposition for affirmative action generally, I can't resist noting how differently Clarence Thomas would have been treated if the Democrats in general, and the Post in particular, had been willing to acknowledge that there is no black manner of deciding cases.

Trunk, you beat me to Mark Steyn's hilarious column, but I want to add one correction: Tom Daschle's theme song, "How Can I Be Sure?," was recorded not by David Cassidy but by the immortal Rascals.

Here is a tribute to this year's Minnesota Twins from their ancestral home. Washington Post sportswriter William Gildea, who is old enough to remember when the Twins were the Washington Senators, finds immense satisfaction in the Twins' season. He is also pleased that two other less than glamorous franchises -- the Oakland A's and the Anaheim Angels -- have joined the Twins in the playoffs.

Maybe I shouldn't cancel my subscription after all. The Washington Post calls for the confirmation of Maguel Estrada to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. As to claims that Estrada black-balled non-conservative applicants for judicial clerkships, the Post finds that "it is terribly wrong to demand that Mr. Estrada answer charges to which nobody is willing to attach his or her name."

George Will calls for tort reform now. He notes that "by preventing agreement on reasonable limits to liability for terrorism insurance purposes, the trial bar and its poodle, the Democratic party, are casuing delays or cancellations of $10 billion in construction projects," thus sacrificing "hundreds of thousands of jobs."

Do you believe that Senator Robert Torricelli (D-unmarried, no kids) drinks milk? If you do, you won't be troubled by this story.

I believe we failed to note that Senator Tom Harkin's campaign manager has now resigned over the campaign's dirty trick that neither he nor Senator Harkin had anything to do with. The Des Moines Register had the story yesterday.

To be thorough in our continuing scandal coverage, we should note that on Friday the Star Tribune reported that Bill "Luther sticks with campaign aide who helped bogus candidate."

Unlike me, Mark Steyn has not lost his sense of humor watching the Democratic party's leading political pygmies play the angles in the "debate" over Iraq. In his Chicago Sun-Times column this morning, "Dems Irrelevant on Iraq," he reviews the musings of each of the party's leading lights and sums up:

"The sight of the Democratic Party wrestling with its conscience is like some old-time carnie freak show: It's strangely compelling, but you can't help feeling it's cruel to put these poor misfits on public display. A week ago, most of the bigshot Dem senators seemed to have wised up: The sooner we stop talking about why we don't want to talk about Iraq, the sooner we can start talking about Iraq. The sooner we do that, the sooner we can neutralize it as a political issue and move on to vital issues like a prescription drug plan plus dinner theater with Robert Goulet for America's seniors. Sure, in the political order of battle we're behind Bush, Blair, the Aussies, Italians, Turks, French, Canadians and even Saudis, but better late than 'Hang on, we've still got a few more questions.'''

Tom Harkin is another politician who "takes full responsibity" for an incident that he would prefer to get out of the news so that we can all "move on" to discuss "the issues." Rob Borsellino of the Des Moines Register says "Harkin waited too long to talk." Harkin, the Torch, and Bill Luther all appear to be running the same play out of the Clinton playbook.

Rocket Man, excellent blog about South Dakota politics and the Daschle meltdown. I'd been meaning to ask you what's going on in your old state, and why it keeps sending people like McGovern, Daschle, and Senator "Arab-League" (or whatever his name was) to Washington. The question is important because it is the upper Midwest that keeps the Republicans from a commanding position in the Senate. When the parties are equal in popularity, as they were in 2000, the Senate should be Republican, as demonstrated by the fact that Bush carried more states than Gore. To my knowledge, the states that Bush carried comfortably but that send Democrats to the Senate (and often liberal Democrats at that) are basically the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Montana.

I had suspected that there was a strain of isolationism and/or anti-militarism in the upper Midwest. After all, Kentucky and Arizona don't send McGoverns, Gene McCarthys, or Tom Harkins to Washington no matter how good they are on tobacco or water issues. And I've read some scholarly writings that purport to trace alleged anti-interventionism in the upper Midwest back to New England and forward to the upper Northwest (which gave us Wayne Morse and Mark Hatfield but, in fairness, also Scoop Jackson). That's why I was happy to read your blog and especially happy about the poll you cited from the Sioux Falls paper. The good people of South Dakota seem to be fully in accord with the national sentiment when it comes to self-preservation.

Today's NY Times has a story on the memo released yesterday summarizing the federal prosecutors' evidence against Senator Robert Torricelli, "Support found for claims by Torricelli donor." The NY Daily News has a reaction piece that does not summarize the memo. Maybe it's elsewhere in the paper, but I can't find it. I love the headline: "Ethics flap gettin' old, saysTorch." The NY Post's story is "Torricelli still lying, says foe."

Bernard Lewis is the dean of scholars of the Middle East, perhaps the finest ever. His piece on Iraq from Friday's Wall Street Journal, "Time for Toppling," is also on OpinionJournal this morning (registration required).

I don’t want to overdo the Al Gore commentary, but William Bennett's piece on OpinionJournal this morning is worth reading (The link wasn't working earlier but should be now). I especially like this quote:

Let us get one thing straight, once and for all: Allies are good to have, but at the end of the day, it is Great Britain and the U.S. that matter. When oppressed people protest their dictators, they do not march with symbols of the Eiffel Tower and statements from Otto von Bismarck: they march with papier-mâché Statues of Liberty and excerpts from the Declaration of Independence.

Nice history lesson, Deacon. I think you're right; I'm sure Rocket Prof will let us know if he dissents. Here is the latest on our friend John Kline's Congressional race. You may remember that the race includes a "dirty tricks" angle--the campaign manager for John's opponent, incumbent Bill Luther, recruited a long-time DFL activist to file under the banner of the nonexistent "No New Taxes" party in order to siphon off conservative support from Kline. Luther has now become the latest in a long series of public figures to "take full responsibility" for a scandal without actually, you know, taking any responsibility. Like so many others, he "takes responsibility" strictly as a prelude to the inevitable plea that it is time to "move on."

Al Gore's speech, and the excellent critiques thereof by Rocket Man, Michael Kelly, and Charles Krauthammer, got me thinking about whether Gore is merely one of the most slippery politicians of this era or whether, along with Bill Clinton, he surpasses all past generations of American politicians in this regard. There certainly have been many politicians more corrupt than Gore and there have been bigger overall scoundrels (e.g., Aaron Burr). And, while the smear tactics of Gore are reprehensible, they hardly seem unprecedented. But did past politicians flit from position to position on key issues the way Gore and Clinton have? I don't know enough about American history to answer definitively, but I'm going to suggest that Gore and Clinton have made a unique contribution when it comes to prevarication on substantive issues.

Our history is full of significant shifts in position by famous politicians. Calhoun started as a nationalist and ended up advocating the right of secession. Webster may have flirted with New England secessionists but he ended up a great nationalist. Clay started as a "war hawk" and ended up quite dovish. Goldwater can be said to have followed a similar path. Van Buren was solicitous of slave interests when he was a Democrat but later was the Free Soil party candidate for president. Seward began as a stong anti-slavery "conscience Whig" and ended up a loyal member of Andrew Johnson's cabinet. Nixon was considered a "red baiter" when he started out but would eventually appease the Soviet Union and go to China. Even Jefferson is sometimes said to have compromised his states rights principles when he purchased Louisiana. (I'm going to rely on the Rocket Prof and other historically astute readers to correct any errors I have already made or will make as I proceed).

Some of these changes were opportunistic; others simply reflected genuine personal evolution and/or changed conditions. Rocket Man, Trunk, and I all started out on the "left". None of us changed our views to advance a political career.

What is perhaps unique about Gore is his willingness to take flagrantly inconsistent positions within a short period of time on the most crucial issue in politics -- war and peace. To be sure, many politicians changed their tune on the Vietnam war within the space of a few years. However, this was the product of new conditions -- we appeared to be losing the war. Politicians also sometimes start out opposed to a war but reluctantly fall into line behind the president as the shooting is about to start. But Gore's flip-flops on Iraq are based neither on changed conditions (other than political ones) nor on patriotism. Both in 1991 and this year, he spoke out of both sides of his mouth well before war was about to begin. Gore's shifts represent pure jockeying.

I can think of one somewhat comparable situation It involves Henry Clay and the Mexican War. In 1844, popular sentiment strongly favored annexing Texas, even though it would mean war with Mexico. Clay did not. Fortunately for him, neither did Van Buren who was considered almost certain to be his opponent in that year's presidential election. Some historians believe that Clay and Van Buren (who, as founders of the Whig and modern Democratic party respectively were bitter, if largely genteel, rivals) reached a secret agreement not to advocate annexation during the campaign. The only probem was that Andrew Jackson strongly favored annexation. When Van Buren would not advocate it, Jackson abandoned his long-time friend and protege and helped bring about the nomination of James Polk ("Young Hickory"), a strong hawk on the issue. This left Clay in an extremely close election against a candidate who had a far more popular position on this critical issue. In the latter days of the campaign, Clay waffled on annexing Texas, particularly in his "Alabama letters." The first letter stated, "Personally I could have no objection to annexing Texas, but I would be unwilling to see the union dissolved or seriously jeopardized for the sake of acquiring Texas." When this statement caused an uproar, he issued a second suggesting that he would simply be guided by public opinion on the issue. Clay narrowly lost the election and then lost a son in the ensuring Mexican War.

Although Clay waffled on Texas, the differences between his conduct and Gore's are telling. First, Clay did not set out to "demagogue" the issue. Indeed, he may have reached an agreement with Van Buren not to do so. Second, Clay did not advocate war one month and peace the next. As I understand it, his biggest concern was avoiding the threat to the union that would be posed when Texas was acquired as a slave state. This is a concern he continued to express until the end. Ultimately, then, I see only a superficial resemblance between Clay's conduct and Gore's. Aside from the posturing of Bill Clinton, I can think of no historical precedent for Gore's unprincipled flip-flopping on matters of war and peace.

I grew up in South Dakota when George McGovern was in the Senate. I doubt that more than a small minority of South Dakotans had any idea that their Senator was regarded as the most liberal politician in America, the darling of leftists from Hollywood to Manhattan. When he was in South Dakota, all McGovern ever talked about was farm policy. Times have changed, and it is not so easy nowadays to keep the folks at home from knowing about the speeches you give in Washington. This has always been one of Tom Daschle's problems, and he has solved it--so far--by avoiding ideology and running for office on the basis of the money he brings into his home state. This approach, while not pretty, has been effective; yet it is a mean, small-minded strategy crafted for placid times. There has been a lot of speculation in the press and the blogosphere about the causes of Daschle's meltdown, but I think one key element is that he is frustrated, and feels wronged, to find that his small-beer strategy will no longer serve. We no longer live in placid times, and an ability to bring home the federal bacon may not trump his constituents' overriding desire for security and--even more important--for victory over the forces of evil. This "Dakota Poll" from the Sioux Falls Argus Leader highlights Daschle's dilemma. Daschle's constituents support "a United States invasion of Iraq in order to remove Saddam Hussein from power" by better than two to one. President Bush is much more popular than Daschle in South Dakota, and 49% of the men in South Dakota rate Daschle's performance either "fair" or "poor." This is, I believe, the source of the meltdown. If our politics moves from penny-ante graft to great issues of right and wrong, and the survival of our civilization, a small-timer like Daschle will be swept away by the tide. Hence the hysteria that he betrayed on the Senate floor. But childish tantrums will not stem the flow of history.

The Harkin plot thickens. This race was once thought to be competitive, but had turned out not to be. This could put it back into play.

I have combed the Web for a summary of the information contained in the evidentiary memorandum, released today, that Senator Robert Torricelli had sought to suppress, at least until after the election. The only report I can find at this time is from the Bergen Record, but it's a good one. Is it possible that New Jersey voters would knowingly return this disgusting crook to office? The guy should be doing time.

Today's NY Times has an interesting story by Adam ("big-time") Clymer on the two competitive races, in Minnesota and Maryland, that we have noted today. It also has good photographs of John Kline and Bill Luther prospecting for votes at a parade in New Prague, Minnesota.

I live in one of the few congressional districts where there is a competitive race. We are represented by Republican Connie Morella, who lives in my neighborhood. Connie is no John Kline. If she were, she would never have been elected to Congress in our district, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by something like 2-1 and liberals outnumber conservatives by an even larger ratio. Connie nearly always votes with the Democrats and spends much of her time on "women's issues." On the other hand, she votes for a Republican for Speaker every two years and occasionally casts moderate to conservative votes (she tends to support tax cuts, for example). Connie also excels in constituent services and I have never met anyone who doesn't like her personally. In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that my daughter worked in her district office.

Morella has represented the district since 1986, if memory serves. The only time she had a race that was even somewhat close occurrred in 2000 when she faced an extremely well-financed opponent who benefitted from a heavy pro-Gore turnout. Even under these circumstances, she won by about 4 percentage points. However, this year the Democrats re-drew the district, removing a semi-Republican enclave and adding some areas with heavy concentrations of African-American voters. Since Connie's spectacular ability to win over Democratic voters may not extend to black Democratic voters, the expectation has been that she faces a decidely uphill battle this time. However, she may have gotten a break when Mark Shriver (a Kennedy nephew) lost a close primary race to Chris Van Hollen. Shriver is more popular than Van Hollen among African-Americans, so the Republicans hope that Connie won't lose quite as badly with that group as had initially been feared. In addition, Van Hollen had to spend much of his war-chest in the primary.

I'm not aware of what the polls say about this race. The people I know who follow these things just say it's a toss-up. In a normal election year, most conservatives probably wouldn't care who wins. But the way things stand with the House races this year, all conservatives have reason to pull for Connie.

Last weekend I posted the story of the Scottish yeshiva student who was murdered in the Tel Aviv suicide bus bombing and whose family donated his kidney to save the life of a six-year-old Palestinian Arab girl. We said that this incident was symbolic of the fact that the war against Israel, like the war against the United States, is a war of barbarism against civilization.

Someone here other than us has finally picked this story up. Mona Charen's column today tells the story and adds some telling details.

For a lucid explanation of why so few congressional districts have competitive races, check out Steve Sailer's interview with Daniel Polsby. As Polsby points out, the art of the gerrymander is another instance with respect to which the constitutional order has been turned on its head.

Here is Byron York's take on the Senate Democrats' ambush of Miguel Estrada, President Bush's conservative nominee for the federal court of appeals in Washington D.C. As I reported last night, the Dems hit Estrada with allegations that he blocked liberal candidates for judicial clerkships. They did this after first getting Estrada to deny having done so. York expresses the same fear I tried to articulate -- that this will become a fight about Estrada's credibility. York also conveys his disappointment with the Republicans on the judiciary committee for not having prepared Estrada for the ambush. I also like the part where one of Estrada's unnamed alleged "victims" protests that he is just a "moderate Democrat."

One of the few competitive congressional races in the country is the race of our friend, former Marine Col. John Kline, against incumbent Democrat Bill Luther in Minnesota's redistricted sixth district. As part of his Marine service John carried the nuclear football for President Reagan and is a great American. The district leans Republican, and Luther therefore resorted to the almost unbelievble tactic of recruiting a bogus "no new taxes" third candidate to siphon votes from Kline in the upcoming election. The participation of Luther's campaign in formulating and implementing this disgusting tactic has not been entirely clear. Today's Star Tribune begins to get to the bottom of the story.

Hindrocket and I both had the privilege of working with John when he served as executive director of the Center of the American Experiment in Minneapolis. The Hindrocket family has proudly marched with John's brigades at campaign events this year. We trust John will remember us when he makes it back to Washington.

Charles Krauthammer's take on one of the two recent despicable speeches by contemptible men (Al Gore's, not Tom Daschle's) in today's Washington Post is a demolition job. I love this paragraph toward the end: "The New York Times reports that Gore wrote the speech 'after consulting a fairly far-flung group of advisers that included Rob Reiner.' Current U.S. foreign policy is the combined product of Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz and the president. Meanwhile, the pretender is huddling with Meathead."

In "Daschle's Breakdown" John Podhoretz covers the despicable speech by the other contemptible man in his column in today's NY Post.

Deacon, your post is admirably dispassionate, but I must say the Democrats' conduct is sickening. Can anyone imagine a world in which a liberal's working to advance the cause of liberalism would disqualify him from becoming a judge? I can't.

The Senate Democrats may have found the ammunition (or, more accurately, the fig leaf) with which to shoot down Miguel Estrada's nomination to the federal judiciary. As noted in previous blogs, the Dems are trying to prove that Estrada is a "conservative ideologue." At today's hearing, they relied on allegations that Estrada blocked liberals who wanted to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Kennedy from being considered. Federal judges take on recent law school graduates as clerks. The clerks do legal research and often draft the opinions of the judges, who then edit the drafts as they see fit. Estrada clerked for Justice Kennedy and later served on a committee that helps screen applicants for future clerkships with the Justice. Again, the allegation is that Estrada would not pass along applications if he thought the candidate was too liberal.

I don't know many of the facts, but in principle there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with what Estrada is said to have done. Other things being roughly equal, Supreme Court Justices of all political persuasions are best served by like-minded clerks. And, because a Supreme Court clerkship is so coveted, things will always be roughly equal -- that is, there will always be extremely well qualified liberal, conservative, and moderate candidates to select from. Estrada did Justice Kennedy no disservice unless (a) Kennedy told him he didn't care about the ideology of his clerks or (b) Estrada excluded candidates whose ideology differed from his own but not significantly from Kennedy's (Kennedy being conservative but not that conservative). However, since the Dems don't need much of a pretext to sink conservative nominees, this flap may be enough. Moreover, Estrada was asked today to admit or deny making various statements that allegedly have been attributed to him by people involved in the clerk selection process. Thus, if the Dems can't get traction on the merits, they can always say it's about credibility. Stay tuned.

Today the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a sentencing memo describing illegal contributions from David Chang to Robert Torricelli, as well as describing Chang's cooperation with the police prior to his sentencing, must be released to the public immediately. This is very bad news for Torricelli, who tried to keep the Chang memo secret until after the election. Recent polls have shown Forrester with a substantial lead; this setback for Torricelli could prove decisive.

There are certain weird aspects to the Iraq situation. For some weeks, the Administration has been announcing its plans to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Various details of strategy and tactics, including movements of troops and other military assets, are in the news nearly every day. Iraqi officials, meanwhile, give interviews to the Washington Post in which they detail their defensive strategy. They will not defend the desert, as in Desert Storm: "Take the desert. What's in the desert?" they ask. Instead, they will try to lure American troops into Baghdad, where air power will be neutralized and building-by-building fighting will claim American lives. Ordinarily, nations contemplating war do not give interviews so that their battle plans will appear in newspapers. What is happening here, of course, is that we are announcing our plans for the benefit of the Iraqi audience. We want Iraqi officials and soldiers to know that Saddam Hussein is finished and they should not sacrifice their lives to defend his regime, nor should they obey his orders if he tries to unleash biological and chemical weapons. Our constant leaking of war aims and strategies is intended for an audience in Iraq. Saddam Hussein, meanwhile, is doing exactly the same thing. When his officials describe their urban warfare strategy to the Washington Post, they are playing to an American audience. They are trying to furnish ammunition to antiwar Democrats in hopes that they will be able to frustrate the Administration's desire to overthrow Saddam's government. Whether either side's actual tactics in the war, should it come, will resemble the ones they leak to newspapers, remains to be seen.

The jury is still out on Tom Daschle's performance in the Senate yesterday. Hugh Hewitt considers it a "Muskie moment" that will seriously damage Daschle's career. I don't know; the newspaper headlines I've seen have been along the lines of "Daschle Rips Bush," not "Bizarre Near-Breakdown in Senate." Why did he do it? The ostensible point of the speech was to complain about something that Bush never said; in fact, Bush never even came close. Daschle is a man who doesn't get out of bed in the morning without consulting a poll, so he is no doubt aware that by a two to one margin, Americans are more likely to think the Democrats are playing politics with Iraq than the President. I assume he thought it would be helpful to the Democrats' prospects in November to try to narrow that gap. Whether he succeeded, I have no idea. I doubt that in today's America, the sight of a male politician getting in touch with his feelings on the evening news will damage his career. Whether Daschle achieved his larger goal of narrowing the credibility gap on the war, we will see when the next polls come out--and ultimately, of course, in November.

Here's another fine column by Bret Stephens of the Jerusalem Post. The subject is the "Third Way" (the reformed Left), and three of its leading figures, Al Gore, Tony Blair, and Gerhard Schroeder. Among other insights, Stephens provides a plausible explanation as to why, of the three, only Blair has taken a consistent and coherent position on Iraq. For those who don't make it to the end of the column, here is Stephens' thought-provoking final paragraph: "Third Way politics have offered a lifeline to the ailing Left, in Europe and American alike. For the sake of democratic pluralism, this has been salutary. As a style of governance, it is somewhat refreshing. In the face of radical evil, it is downright dangerous. Between civilization and barbarism, there is no third way."

Yesterday, I posted a piece by Byron York about the looming confirmation struggle over Miguel Estrada. According to that article, virtually the sole source of the charge that Estrada is too much of a conservative ideologue to be a federal judge is Paul Bender, Estrada's former supervisor at the Justice Department's Office of the Solicitor General (who, by the way, always gave Estrada high marks in written performance evaluations). In today's National Review Online, Robert Alt exposes Bender as a liberal ideologue. Bender was the "political deputy" in Estrada's office, which sounds like a polite way of saying that he was there impose the liberal biases of the Clinton administration on the career lawyers in the Solicitor General's office. (Without engaging in excessive "lawyer talk" and at the risk of oversimplifying, I should explain that the Solicitor General argues the positions of the U.S. government before the Supreme Court. To some extent, the Solicitor General necessarily is a political creature, but members of the office have always tried above all else to be fair-minded lawyers, and the office retains a strong reputation for professionalism). Alt's piece demonstrates Bender's "unabashed liberalism," which manifested itself in the reversal of the office's position on child pornography, to cite one example. According to Alt, Bender was later booted from his role as neutral arbitrator in a dispute between the Arizona Gaming Control Board and Indian tribes based on "serious concerns" by the American Arbitration Association "regarding Bender's attitude and approach" including "inappropriate communications" with one of the parties. But most significantly, for purposes of evaluating Estrada's qualifications for the bench, Bender's boss, former Solicitor General Seth Waxman (a liberal in his own right), has written to the Senate Judiciary Committee to disagree with Bender's assessment of Estrada and to laud Estrada's professionalism and judgment.

According to Stanley Kurtz in National Review Online, Kenneth Pollack, a member of Clinton's National Security Council and its chief expert on Iraq, is taking the position that Saddam Hussein must be deposed by an invasion. In his book The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, Pollock grudgingly concludes that the post-Gulf War policy of containing Saddam has irretrievably broken down, according to Kurtz. Pollock's case for invasion apparently focuses on the likelihood that Saddam will develop nuclear weapons that will enable him to seize Kuwait and then threaten to nuke the Saudi oil fields. This will leave him in control of the world's oil supply. Pollock also makes the point that allowing our fear of Saddam's current weapons of mass destruction to hold us back will signal to every rogue nation that they can neutralize the power of the United States with even a small stock of chemical or biological weapons. Pollock rates the prospect of Saddam passing weapons of mass destruction to terrorists for use against the U.S. as "unlikely" but certainly not impossible. Pollock argues that if Saddam believes the probability of the attack being traced to him is quite low, then "he might well decide" to work through terrorists to attack the U.S. Kurtz adds that Condolezza Rice has said that Saddam is now sheltering members of Al Qaeda and helping them develop chemical weapons.

Here is something I don't understand. Articles like this one in the Washington Times say the Republicans have a huge advantage in cash on hand, and apparently are in a position to out-spend the Democrats by a two to one margin on Senate races. Yet in the races I observe, the Democrats seem to be spending more. I haven't seen any hard numbers, but the Norm Coleman camp says Paul Wellstone outspent them three to one over the summer. And my sources in South Dakota say Tim Johnson ads outnumber John Thune ads by two to one; yesterday, the Sioux Falls newspaper published a poll that showed a three point lead for Johnson. If the Republicans' cash isn't going to support key candidates like Coleman and Thune, what good is it? I think part of the answer is differing tactics; Republican strategists seem to favor last-minute blitzes, while the Democrats believe that money spent early, before public perceptions of candidates have hardened and everyone is sick of political ads, can be most efficient. I fear that experience supports the Democrats' strategy.

In August Minneapolis had its first race riot in ten years. A Minneapolis police officer and several white reporters were assaulted while Minneapolis officers executed a search warrant at a notorious north Minneapolis crack house. The Minneapolis mayor, chief of police, and city council have reacted with a display of spinelessness that we thought must be most encouraging to the thugs and gangbangers who have made Minneapolis their home. I may be mistaken, but I have yet to see the perpetrators of the assaults identified or apprehended.

The response of Minneapolis's public authorities has been a disgrace. The most absurd of the responses has been the funnelling of cash to Minneapolis's own Jesse Jackson, one professional race hustler named Spike Moss who operates as an officer of a nonprofit inner city organization named The City Inc. In time-tested 1960's fashion, the chief funnelled thousands of dollars to the organization to hire north Minneapolis kids to pick up trash. The Minneapolis city council has now blessed this arrangement.

We have posted every published story regarding the riot because we thought that in many respects it was an omen of ill tidings for Minneapolis. In a sequel whose details are still not clear, and which we have therefore refrained from commenting on, a 19-year-old University of Minnesota football player was murdered by a known gangbanger in downtown Minneapolis shortly after the riot. The University of Minnesota football player was from Detroit. It seemed to us a sickening sign of Minneapolis's deterioration that that young man had survived what must have been some hard years in Detroit only to lose his life weeks after coming to Minneapolis to go to college on a scholarship.

Years ago many of us learned everything we needed to know about The City Inc., after Minneapolis police officer Jerry Haaf was murdered by associates of a notorious gangbanger named Sharif Willis. In 1992 Officer Haaf was shot in the back as he was eating at the Pizza Shack on Lake Street, one of Minneapolis's main thoroughfares. In 1994 Willlis was arrested in connection with another offense and was found driving a Mercedes registered to The City Inc., where he then worked. One would think that Willis's relationship with The City Inc., whatever it was, would forever discredit the organization in the eyes of the chief of the Minneapolis Police Department.

Yesterday a man standing outside the Pizza Shack was shot in the head in an apparent gang-related drive-by shooting. This morning's Star Tribune has the story.

This news item in the Washington Times reports that Joseph Lieberman, John Edwards, and the desperate Bob Torricelli have disagreed with Al Gore's remarks about President Bush's policy on Iraq. Tom Daschle, on the other hand, has echoed them. The Times story also points to additional conflicting statements by Gore about Iraq (see the post from the Weekly Standard below). According to the Times, in a February 2002 speech before the Council on Foreign Relations, Gore acknowledged that the war on terrorism would require a "final reckoning" with Saddam. Yet as President Bush moves towards the required final reckoning, Gore accuses him of trying to please the "far right at the expense of solidarity among all Americans" and with our allies. Gore could try to reconcile these statements by arguing that the final reckoning should await the destruction of Al Qaeda. But, as Rocket Man explained a few days ago, if a final reckoning with Saddam is required, it is because of the danger he poses to our security. That being the case, the reckoning cannot await a hypothetical future day when Al Qaeda is out of business.

And what can Gore mean when he criticizes President Bush for developing his policy "at the expense of solidarity among all Americans?" Most Americans believe that Saddam poses an intolerable threat to the security of this nation and to the safety of its citizens. A policy that ignored this threat, or that entrusted dealing with it to U.N. inspectors, or that postponed dealing with it until the last Al Qaeda terrorist is rounded up clearly would not create "solidarity among all Americans."

Given the incoherence of his speech and all of his flip-flops, it is hard to avoid concluding that Gore has now calculated he can become president only if the war with Iraq goes badly, in which case he will need to have opposed that war from the beginning. This is a debatable calculation on Gore's part. The first President Bush lost the 1992 election less than two years after his highly successful war against Iraq. But, as a presidential candidate, Al Gore is no Bill Clinton.

More on "Barbershop:" Frontpagemag has a thoughtful column by Toronto attorney Marni Soupcoff on Jesse Jackson's complaint. You may recall that Jesse Jackson's current demand is that the politically incorrect, utterly hilarious monologues of Eddie the Barber be deleted from the film.

We have scrupulously sought to maintain the Power Line as a family publication. We ask your forebearance to violate this policy by quoting Ms. Soupcoff's conclusion that says almost everything that needs to be said here: "At one point in Barbershop, one of the customers warns Eddie that he'd better not let Jesse Jackson hear his iconoclastic remarks, but Eddie is not cowed. 'F*** Jesse Jackson!' he says."

The Weekly Standard has collected some of Al Gore's "conflicting statements" about Iraq over the years. I know that Rocket Man and Trunk don't deal in rumors, and I have tried to honor that policy. But here I cannot resist mentioning the persistent Washington rumor that, in 1991 when Al Gore was trying to decide how to vote on the Gulf War resolution, Gore conditioned his agreement to vote for President Bush's resolution on Bob Dole's agreement to give him a good television time in which to deliver his speech on this issue.

During the past few weeks, we have covered the confirmation battle over MIchael McConnell, President Bush's distinguished nominee to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. The next confirmation struggle will be over the excellent hispanic lawyer, Miguel Estrada, who has been nominated to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Byron York presents a useful if somewhat depressing analysis of the Estrada situation. However, the title of York's article -- "A Battle Over Nothing" -- mischaracterizes the stakes. Estrada is a conservative, even if there is no paper trail to prove it, and he is being opposed solely for being a conservative. So the issue is whether a Republican President can successfully nominate highly qualified conservatives to the federal bench. And before too long, the issue is likely to be whether a Democratic President can successfully nominate highly qualified liberals.

More on "Barbershop:" Rod Dreher of National Review Online addresses Jesse Jackson's complaint.

I recently wrote about a movie I enjoyed seeing with my kids, the hit movie "Barbershop." There are several good things about the movie, but the best is the character who steals the movie--the ancient barber Eddy. Eddy is a Falstaffian comic character who is a paragon of political incorrectness. Jesse Jackson, who is himself one of the butts of Eddy's humor, is now demanding that producers of the movie delete Eddy's hilarious monologues from video and DVD versions of the movie. I urge you to see the movie while you can see it whole.

The Coleman-Wellstone race is heating up. Coleman has been under intense pressure to be more aggressive and has hired a new ad agency. I assume this is the result. The Minneapolis Star Tribune's account is naturally favorable to Wellstone; I haven't seen the ads and can't comment on their likely effect. The basic question is, if the campaign stays aggressive and both candidates' negative perceptions are driven up, who benefits? Notwithstanding the advice that he has gotten from nearly every quarter, I'm not sure the answer is Coleman. Wellstone's negatives are already high, and political ads aren't likely to dent his solid base of support. Mud thrown at Coleman, on the other hand, may dissuade swing voters who are prepared to vote for someone else--especially after Wellstone broke his two-term pledge--but may conclude Coleman isn't the man.

Our friends at the invaluable RealClearPolitics site have posted a terrific column by a Houston Chronicle columnist I had not heard of before, a gentleman evocatively named Cragg Hines. In his column today on the German election, "We've done it before, could do it again," Mr. Hines eloquenty expresses his righteous indignation at those whom he calls "our good friends" in Germany.

It is extremely gratifying to read a published assessment of Al Gore's recent speech that does some kind of justice to Gore and to the speech. The Seattle Times headlines Michael Kelly's column today "A despicable speech from a contemptible man," allowing even me to figure out what the subject of the column is. Wonderful!

The Boston Herald's editorial on Gore's speech, "Al Gore mouths off unhelpfully on Iraq," makes several of the same points I did in response to Rocket Man's assessment the day of the speech.

This isn't a parody. Really.

Several days ago, I noted that Maryland gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Kennedy Townsend had been forced to fire a consultant who vowed to portray her Republican opponent Bob Ehrlich as a "Nazi" to black voters. I predicted that, while the consultant would go, the tactic would stay. It turns out that I may have been wrong on the first count. If the consultant is to be believed (a big "if" to be sure), Democratic officials asked him to continue working "undercover" for Townsend. The Washington Post reports that the consultant is claiming he was told by the campaign that "the Jewish community is so up in arms that [we] have to get rid of [you]. But we still want you to work undercover and we'll work it out. We'll pay you some kind of way."

Fareed Zakaria expands on one of the points made by Charles Krauthammer in an article I posted a few days ago, namely that "France and Russia have turned the United Nations into a stage from which to pursue naked self-interest." However, my quarrel with France and Russia is not that they view the United Nations this way. Any rational nation will treat the U.N. as a means to pursue its ends, not as an end in itself. My quarrel with France and Russia is with their decision to make collusion with Saddam Hussein one of their ends. If decisions like these make it too difficult for the United States to pursue its ends through the U.N., then, as Trunk suggests, it truly will be time to revisit the underlying issue of our participation in that organization.

In New Hampshire, the most recent poll data show Rep. Sununu with a surprising (to me, anyway) nine-point lead over Governor Shaheen.

In one of this year's most closely watched Senate campaigns, Norm Coleman has opened up a six-point lead over Paul Wellstone, according to the latest MSNBC/Zogby poll. This is despite being badly outspent, so far, and despite a media campaign that nearly everyone considers lackluster. I was initially pessimistic about this race, and still am to some extent. But the race is mostly about Wellstone, not Coleman. If these latest poll numbers are accurate, Wellstone has worn out his welcome with lots of Minnesotans.

For those interested in more on Gore, here is Andrew Sullivan's harsh but entirely fair assessment. He also relates Gore's speech to the David Brooks column we linked to a day or two ago.

Here is a link to the complete dossier on Saddam Hussein that Tony Blair released this morning.

The ongoing debate over Iraq has highlighted serious questions about the legitimacy of the United Nations as an institution. I have wondered why so few conservatives have sought to revisit underlying issues regarding the UN including the most basic one, the political theory of world government. The UN is the product of a kind of utopian liberal internationalism that seeks to transcend the nation and to produce the homogenous universal state. I also do not understand the "one nation, one vote" principle that reigns in the UN's various bodies, including the General Assembly. George Will has recently noted how obsolete the structure of the Security Council is, with its permanent members reflecting the world of 1945 or so. Perhaps the reluctance of conservatives to undertake a thoroughgoing examination of the legitimacy of the UN is the difficulty of doing so without sounding like a kook.

In his weekly column in today's New York Post, the incomparable Daniel Pipes goes as far as any conservative has gone recently in raising questions that go to the heart of the project represented by the UN. Pipes's column summarizes an article by John Fonte from the current issue of Orbis that begins to raise the kind of radical questions we urgently need to address. I wonder if other serious conservatives will follow Pipes's lead in pursuing these issues.

The article by David Brooks that Rocket Man posted earlier today is well worth reading. I was particularly taken with Brooks' observation that President Bush's liberal critics are "playing culture war" and not really "arguing about Iraq." Ever since Trunk posted articles by Mark Helprin and Angelo Codevilla denouncing Bush's efforts against terrorism as a "failure" and a "phony," I have been thinking that some conservatives too are having trouble distinguishing between the culture war and the war against terrorism.

There clearly is a relationship between between how well conservatives are faring in the culture war and how well equipped the nation is to combat terrorism. The inroads made by tendencies that go by names like multiculturalism, multilateralism, and political correctness have made it more difficult to prosecute the war on terrorism. Ten years of sponsoring the Middle East "peace process" haven't helped either. Nor have decades of under-funding the military. If conservatives were doing better in the culture war, we wouldn't be searching non-Arab grandmothers in airports and we wouldn't have wasted time and energy by sending Colin Powell to Israel to negotiate with Arafat. Who knows, Colin Powell might not even be the Secretary of State.

It is certainly proper, moreover, for conservatives to criticize President Bush whenever the tendencies described above cause his administration to be diverted from effective action against terrorism (although conservatives should not ignore Bush's progress in overcoming some of these tendencies). But Helprin and Codevilla go much further. To Helprin, Bush has already "failed the test of September 11." To Codevilla, his war on terrorism is a "phony," deserving nothing more than a "postmortem." Helprin and Codevilla concede defeat to terrorism even though there has been no successful follow-up attack against the United States; even though we have toppled the regime that most directly supported Al Qaeda and will probably soon topple the regime most capable of providing lethal support; and even though we may well have killed the head of Al Qaeda and undoubtedly have killed and captured many Al Qaeda members including some high-ranking ones.

How, on this record, do Helprin and Codevilla establish that the war is failing? The same way that, according to David Brooks, Bush's liberal critics attack his policy on Iraq -- by "repeating the hatreds [they have] cultivated." In Codevilla's case, it is hatred of, among other things, the vision of an orderly multicultural international community, the peace process, our failure to support the Shah of Iran, our deference to Saudi Arabia, and the way the CIA gathers intelligence. In Helprin's case, the list is similar. He even invokes the war in Vietnam, which Brooks implies is also the origin of the liberal hatreds at play in the Iraq debate.

Codevilla and Helprin are right to despise most of the tendencies they despise. They are also justified in pointing out how these tendencies interfere with the fight against terrorism. But they are on shakier ground when they assume that the war on terrorism is being lost, or will be lost, due to these tendencies. Conservatives should be careful not to commit the same fallacy as Brooks' liberals. To borrow Brooks' words, our demons should not occupy our entire field of vision, leaving no room for analysis of anything beyond, such as what is happening in the real world.

Rocket Man, discrimination against whites males is indeed illegal. Taylor's brief discussion of the limited circumstances under which an employer can defend such discrimination based on an alleged need to assist minorities is accurate. Based on Taylor's article and an article that I posted a few weeks ago by Terry Eastland, it sounds like this lawsuit has a good chance of succeeding. If the case is as strong as it sounds, then it may settle on favorable terms to the white plaintiffs. You may recall that the Clinton administration threw money at a white teacher from New Jersey in order to settle her case of "reverse discrimination" before it got to the Supreme Court. However, Taylor says that the plaintiffs in this case aren't seeking any money; supposedly they just want their agency to stop discriminating. The Bush administration will be under great pressure not to agree to a settlement that could affect other federal govenment "affirmative action" programs.

Bret Stephens, a brilliant columnist who writes for the Jerusalem Post, assesses the position of Germany and Gerhard Schroeder following the election. He notes that Schroeder was endorsed by the Al-Iqtisadi newspaper in Baghdad and by neo-Nazi Franz Schoenhuber--not "exactly the endorsements...Schroeder was looking for." More fundamentally, Schroeder and his government are in the deep freeze as far as America and its more reliable allies, like Italy, are concerned. Worst of all, news of Schroeder's victory caused Frankfurt's stock market index to fall 4.9% as shareholders--"dismayed by the prospect of another Schroeder government"--sold in droves. Stephens quotes Karl-Heinz Nassmacher of Oldenberg University saying, "What we need is a German Margaret Thatcher, but where are we going to find her?" On the whole, German prospects are not bright: "After a decade of stagnation, the country is no longer the economic powerhouse of former days. And with its stance over Iraq, the seriousness of its foreign policy may now be called into question as well."

On a wholly different topic, Stuart Taylor writes about a class action suit filed by Dennis Worth against HUD and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of white men, alleging race and sex discrimination. It is an interesting story, and the statistics are mind-boggling: 42 out of 43 people hired or promoted in Worth's division were either African-American or women. I find the claim of discrimination highly plausible--all of us can vouch for the reality of such discrimination based on our experience in the business world--but what I don't know is whether this lawsuit has a chance to succeed. Is discrimination against white men legal or not? I'm not sure, but Deacon is one of the country's leading experts in this field. Hopefully he can enlighten us.

Thanks, Trunk. If anyone is hungry for more, VodkaPundit offers a less tolerant assessment of Gore's speech.

Rocket Man has said everything important that needs to be said about Gore's speech, including Gore's obliviousness to any consideration but politics in saying what he said. But I find the political calculation here unfathomable. First, as Rocket Man has noted, the Democrats lose ground so long as Iraq remains the focus of public discussion. Second, Gore made himself a viable national candidate by voting in favor of the 1991 war resolution for which the first President Bush had asked. Third, whatever Gore's speech means, what he says is wrong. Fourth, the current problem of Saddam Hussein is as much a legacy of President Clinton's frivolousness as it is the first President Bush's misjudgment. Fifth, the distinction between the war on terrorism and the war against Saddam Hussein is nonexistent. Saddam Hussein and the mullahs of Iran are the foremost state sponsors of terrorism, and Saddam Hussein has never ceased waging his war against the United States through terrorist instrumentalities. Sixth, as a matter of pure political calculation, wouldn't it be wiser for Gore to remain silent or respectfully supportive of President Bush? Isn't his speech stupid politically as well as substantively? Maybe the politics involved here are purely intraparty, but I still don't understand them.

As to the connection between Saddam Hussein and terrorism, I note coincidentally in tomorrow's Ha'aretz an amazing story, "Shin Bet arrests three suspects who trained in Iraq." According to the story, the three suspects are members of the Palestine Liberation Front who trained in Iraq with terrorist mastermind Abu al-Abbas. Abu al-Abbas has been hiding out in Bagdhad in Saddam Hussein's sheltering arms. Alththough the story does not mention it, it should be noted that when last seen in 1985, Abu al-Abbas and the PLF had hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship and thrown an American citizen, Leon Klinghoffer, overboard in his wheelchair into the Mediterranean. After trial in absentia, Abbas was convicted of the crime in an Italian court. That he remains at large in Baghdad says virtually everything that needs to be said on this particular subject, and is a disgrace.

Al Gore has gotten lots of publicity by by criticizing President Bush on Iraq. I haven't seen the whole speech yet; maybe it makes more sense if you read it in its entirety. But based on what has been reported, it is very difficult to see what Gore's point is. CNN reports that he "[backed] Bush's overall goal of ousting Saddam and eliminating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," but "questioned the timing of a military strike." Since the timing of any strike is not known, it is unclear what Mr. Gore was questioning. Gore appears to be making the same argument that Bill Clinton made a week or two ago--that we should do nothing about Saddam Hussein until every last al Qaeda operative has been hunted down. In his usual inflammatory style, Gore said that "Great nations persevere and then prevail. They do not jump from one unfinished task to another." This is just stupid. It will surely be impossible to kill every member of al Qaeda, and even if possible, it would take many years. It is ridiculous to suggest that if Saddam Hussein threatens our security--as Gore admits he does--we should nevertheless be paralyzed until some arbitrary threshold of success in destroying al Qaeda has been met. (This, of course, is quite apart from the fact that Saddam's terrorist activities have often merged with those of al Qaeda and other Islamofascists.) The heart of Gore's criticism seems to be directed against Bush's policy of pre-emptively destroying terrorists before they can destroy us. But what is the alternative? Does Gore seriously argue that we cannot move against Saddam's nuclear program until after Saddam has destroyed one or more of our cities? Apparently so, except that Gore never seriously argues anything. He is the most purely political animal of our time, as this speech demonstrates once more. Gore's performance illustrates why no one takes the Democrats seriously on issues of national security.

David Brooks dissects the anti-war left, focusing on the left's eerie silence about the risks posed by Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

One of the basic tenets of the liberal faith is the beauty of "diversity." Every day the dogmas of multiculturalism are promulgated relentlessly by our schools, newspapers and media, and public authorities. The transformation of the United States by waves of immigration from non-European countries is always depicted as a phenomenon to be celebrated, as are the immigrants' religions and cultures.

Minneapolis and St. Paul have been deeply affected by the large number of Somali and Hmong immigrants who have made the Twin Cities metropolitan area their home. The occasionally disturbing cultural practices of these groups and the related social costs are never publicly discussed. Despite the liberal dogmas of multiculturalism, for example, one of Minnesota's leading left-wing legislators was responsible for introducing legislation criminalizing the Somali practice of female genital circumcision in Minnesota in 1994. (Her feminism trumped her multiculturalism.) You can take a look at the statute here. Female genital mutilation was not much of a problem in Minnesota before Somalis settled here in the 1980's and 1990's.

The cultural practices of the Hmong have also proved extremely troubling. Animal sacrifice, teenage marriage, and polygamy are a few of the practices that have had secondary effects that expose them to public view if not discussion. Today's St. Paul Pioneer Press carries an account of a wife's murder of her husband because he was about to take a second, much younger wife. The story makes it clear that the Hmong frequently practice polygamy.

The Republican Party was established in the mid-1850's in profound opposition to what its founders believed to be the moral evils of slavery and polygamy. The Republican Party platform of 1856 therefore equally condemned the "twin relics of barbarism--Polygamy, and Slavery."

I wonder how long it will be before the doctrinal imperatives of multiculturalism will prevail and its proponents will demand that we respect the practice of polygamy, as they demand that we respect the practice of homosexuality, or if the understanding of those who founded the party that saved the Union can be restored to its rightful prominence in American public life.

Today's Jerusalem Post carries the story of a seven year old Palestinian Arab girl whose life has been saved by a kidney transplanted from the 19-year old yeshiva student from Scotland who was one of the victims of the Tel Aviv suicide bus bombing. Although the article doesn't say so, the hospital at which the transplant was performed was of course Israeli and the surgeons Israeli Jews. I hope you will forgive me for stating the obvious conclusion: that the war now being waged against Israel is not only a war for Israel's survival, but also a war of barbarism against civilization.

The Freedom Club is a group of Minnesota businessmen who banded together about seven years ago to promote conservative causes and candidates. Naturally, its existence is regarded by local media as a sinister phenomenon. Every two years the Minneapolis Star Tribune runs a piece on the Club. This year there is a series of articles on the Freedom Club and its liberal counterpart (sort of), the teachers' union. These two groups are accused of "dominating Minnesota politics." The articles actually aren't too bad; maybe the Strib is getting used to us. I'm quoted at the very end of the principal article.