As reported here over the last several days, the Minneapolis Star Tribune concedes that Norm Coleman's campaign is drawing crowds and gaining momentum. We believe that Coleman is now leading Mondale in both the Democrats' polls and the Republicans' polls. We will report further as soon as we have more inside information.

The Washington Times offers an optimistic take on the FBI's progress in infiltrating and neutralizing al Qaeda cells in the U.S.

By the way, Deacon, we should tell our readers that Michelle Malkin is a Power Line reader. She sent us an email saying we have "a GREAT blog!" We, of course, are far bigger fans of her than she is of us.

Michelle Malkin is a great favorite of Power Line, especially for her efforts on immigration issues. In this piece, she notes that no one seems to know how old accused sniper John Lee Malvo really is. This uncertainty points to a basic problem in our immigration system. As Malkin explains, minors who enter the U.S. illegally qualify for exemption from immediate deportation. They are automatically released to any family member living in the U.S. pending deportation hearings that often do not occur for many months. How does the INS determine the age of illegal immigrants who claim to be minors? According to Malkin, INS policy calls for the use of dental records and wrist bone X-rays. But liberal advocacy groups have attacked these tests as inhumane. One such group is the Northwest Immigrants Rights Project, which came to Malvo's aid when he was in INS custody. So what Malkin wants to know is, how did INS verify Malvo's age "before sending him on his merry way."

Yup, Deacon, he's dead. Bin Laden's been laiden six feet under (apologies, for the third time, to Mark Steyn). After the election is over, we'll go back to a more eclectic style of commentary. For the moment, before we return to the various hot Senate races, I want to note this contretemps. England's Culture Minister has denounced this year's Turner Prize entrants as "conceptual bullshit." This drew predictable howls from the artiste community. Unfortunately, along the way toward a balanced article, the London Times is required to describe the "art works" in question. Which resolves the debate in favor of the Culture Minister.

James Robbins, a National Review contributor on security issues, finds evidence that al Qaeda is in disarray. For example, some al Qaeda money is missing, apparently looted by middlemen no longer committed to the struggle. And al Qaeda no longer appears to be speaking with one voice. According to Robbins, its messages are uncoordinated and sometimes contradictory, varying in tone and style. Robbins suspects that bin Laden is dead and that a power struggle is underway for leadership of al Qaeda.

The invaluable Real Clear Politics brings together the latest poll data. President Bush's numbers are holding remarkably steady in the mid-60's, notwithstanding Dick Morris' moment of hysteria a few days ago. Bush is doing the right thing by touring the country, helping his party to hold the House and, we hope, take back the Senate from its unelected, illegitimate obstructionists. The generic Congressional preference poll is dead even, a good sign for Republican candidates.

More on the Wellstone death rally: The Star Tribune's top state political reporter is Dane Smith. I called him to ask about the Capitol Hill Blue story that we post below and offered to e-mail it to him. After cross-examining me regarding my identity and my employer, he asked me to summarize the story. He interrrupted me to say that he knew the story was false. I asked how. He said because he knows the local DFL officials, because they had told him so, and because he knows they could not orchestrate an event like that. And to think some people consider the Star Tribune's political coverage biased...

Matt Drudge has obtained the text of Walter Mondale's first radio ad, which is just now hitting the airwaves. Mondale has lost no time in going negative; the ad attacks Norm Coleman for promoting free trade. The strange thing about this is that Mondale has spent most of the last eighteen years as a lawyer in private firms, specializing in international law. At Dorsey & Whitney, a Minneapolis law firm, his practice consisted largely of trying to facilitate international business transactions on behalf of American corporations. It is simply weird for him to morph suddenly into a protectionist. Nor does it seem like a particularly smart strategy. Talking about foreign steel competition may help shore up Mondale's base on the heavily-Democratic Iron Range, but Coleman wasn't going to get a lot of votes there anyway. On the other hand, the Americans most committed to free trade are farmers, who sell their grain everywhere--and need to, since they produce far more than Americans can consume. The biggest unknown in this race has always been how well Coleman will do in Minnesota's rural areas; there are lots of Republican-leaning voters there, but they haven't all jumped to support Coleman because of his urban background and image. Mondale's attacking free trade may help to cement Coleman's support among farmers and other residents of rural areas.

Speaking of George McGovern, my cousin from New York wonders whether, with Tim Johnson apparently trailing in South Dakota, the Democrats will substitute McGovern as their Senate candidate.

More on the Wellstone death rally: Now the lying about it, exposed courtesy of Capitol Hill Blue's "Democratic operatives planned, engineered Wellstone political rally." They even planned Jeff Blodgett's "apology."

More on the Wellstone death rally: Trunk and Rocket Man have already made the most salient points about the disgusting memorial rally for Senator Wellstone. As an aside, I would add that the event may have been, in part, a release of pent up frustration among middle-aged Democrats who yearn to be back in 1972 nominating George McGovern. To Democrats like Clinton, Gore, and Harkin, Wellstone must have seemed like the one true-believer who never "sold out" his McGovernite ideals, not even when locked in his tight race with Norm Coleman. In paying tribute to Wellstone, these faux "New Democrats" apparently couldn't resist returning to their McGovernite roots and putting on a display that, like the 1972 Democratic convention, alienated mainstream voters. I'm not denying that the primary force at work was sheer opportunism. But it's possible that the subconscious desire to roll back the years to a time when left-wing Democrats could be unabashed left-wing Democrats helps explain the lapse of judgment that led to Tuesday's shocking display.

UPDATE: Deacon, you are right on the button. Life has been pretty depressing for leftists for quite a while-- Reagan, the Berlin Wall, the fall of Communism, prosperity in the West, and so on--but there was something about Wellstone that took aging leftists everywhere back to their roots. For one brief moment (not so brief, of course, for those of us who sat through the whole three-hour marathon), the leftists could pretend that they were back in Selma, Alabama or congregating on the Mall to oppose the VietNam war. They have been yearning for this for a long time.

Trunk's comments on Alan Page cause me to think about the current campaign by "civil rights" lawyers, including Johnnie Cochran, to coerce the NFL into hiring more African-American head coaches. The NFL is negotiating with Cochran and his colleagues over this. Cochran's group is pushing a plan whereby teams that hire African-Americans will be awarded extra draft picks. The Washington Post reports that Players Association president Gene Upshaw, an African American and NFL contemporary of Alan Page, is "vehemently opposed" to this plan. Good for him. The plan amounts to bribing teams to hire African Americans. By the same token, it punishes teams that hire white coaches they honestly consider the best available candidate. In addition, it would probably create bidding wars for highly qualified Africian American candidates, thus artificially inflating their salaries. In other words, if the plan works as intended, it will create racial discrimination with respect to both hiring and compensation. This is what passes for "civil rights" these days.

The Economist is no friend of Israel, in my estimation. However, its take on the Labor Party's departure from the national unity government is quite similar to those of the Jerusalem Post and DebkaFile that appear below. The Economist notes that Labor Party leader Ben-Eliezer had been looking for a pretext to leave the govenment for some time, in order to bolster his sagging popularity within his party. It reports that Sharon has said he may replace Ben-Eliezer as Defense Minister with retired General Shaull Mofaz, who has advocated deporting Arafat (I'm not holding my breath on that one). The Economist predicts that the next election will produce a new coalition government.

Don Lambro of the Washington TImes reports that the big-three Democratic strategists -- Carville, Shrum, and pollster Stanley Grennberg -- are advising Democratic candidates not to play up the economy as an election issue in the final days of the campaign. Why? Because Greenberg's polls show that the Republicans have a one-point lead on who can best handle the economy. Lambro cites the Georgia Senate race as exhibit A. Democratic incumbent Max Cleland has apparently lost all of what was once a large lead over Republican Saxby Chambliss, who is campaigning on abolishing the capital gains and death taxes. The larger point, as Lambro notes, is that the swing voters most likely to base their decisions on economic issues are members of the new investor class. These folks tend to understand economic issues and, for the most part, cannot be "spooked by class warfare."

Hugh Hewitt on the death rally: As part of our continuing effort to dwell on the significance of the Wellstone death rally of Tuesday evening, we respectfully direct your attention to Hugh Hewitt's outstanding World Net Daily column, "Using tragedy for political gain."

Mike Erlandson, Chairman of the Minnesota Democratic Party, was on the radio this morning talking about the backlash against the Wellstone pep rally. His repeated mea culpas failed to mollify the callers, all of whom were hostile. The most significant point, however, was that Erlandson was twice asked how, according to current Democratic polling, the backlash was affecting the Coleman/Mondale race. Erlandson acknowledged that there had been "damage," but refused to answer the question. Presumably if the Democrats' polling showed Mondale ahead, he would have said so.

Robert Novak has a column this morning in which he reports that Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page was interested in replacing Senator Wellstone as the Democratic candidate. Based on anonymous Democratic sources, Novak reports that "the DFL apparently did not want to risk running the African-American Page in an overwhelmingly Caucasian state, and Page was swiftly discouraged." The column is "Mondale gambit shows Dems' audacity." Novak's strength as a columnist is his shoe leather reporting, and he may well be right. But I wonder if this story has any basis in fact.

Alan Page is the most popular Democrat in Minnesota. Unlike every other Minnesota Supreme Court justice, he was originally elected--not appointed--to his position on the court. Did he really want to resign from his position on the court to undertake the race against Coleman? Novak fails to report that Justice Page declined to resign and enter the race to be the Democratic candidate against a weak Rod Grams in 2000. Justice Page has never run for political office, and a short campaign as the party's endorsed nominee would help cover his weaknesses as a novice candidate, but I doubt (based on no information) that he would have been willing to leave the court to take a flier.

Novak refers to Justice Page as a "law-and-order" liberal. Novak provides no evidence for this characterization of Justice Page, and I am aware of none. The "law-and-order" part is pure hokum. Only the description of him as "liberal" is correct. Novak sounds to me like he's making this stuff up as he goes along.

The imputation of racism to Minnesotans as the Democrats' reason for not selecting Page also rings false to me. When he most recently stood for reelection, Justice Page was the leading vote-getter in the state. He is personally popular; as a Minnesota Viking, he was the NFL's first defensive Most Valuable Player--around the time Fritz Mondale last ran a statewide campaign. The imputation of racism to Minnesotans as a reason for rejecting Justice Page as a candidate sounds like something Democratic bigwigs would say in this context to justify dissing Justice Page, so Novak's story is plausible in that sense. But without some evidence to support the story, I don't believe it.

Recap on the Star Tribune Minnesota Poll: Tuesday's "memorial rally" for Senator Wellstone was the buzz yesterday, and the aftershocks are reflected in the Star Tribune today. The coverage is so lame, however, that it is barely worth a look. The news recap lets the senator's campaign manager "take responsibility" for what transpired, without exactly exploring what that might mean. The story is "GOP demands equal time; Wellstone aide apologizes; Ventura upset" In its editorial this morning, "The Speech/Straying from memorial to rally," the Star Tribune instructs those of us who were revolted by the offenses against taste, decorum, and courtesy that the Democrats put on national display Tuesday night in Minneapolis to "try to put it aside." The editorial's focus on the egregious Rick Kahn conveniently ignores the other stemwinders from the senator's son and from Tom Harkin as well as the booing of Republican dignitaries. Rather than to try to "put it aside," we intend to dwell on it.

Which brings us to yesterday's Star Tribune Minnesota Poll on what is now the official Mondale/Coleman race. The poll showed Mondale up 47-39, with an 8-point lead. We wrote yesterday at great length about both the patent and latent defects of the poll. For the details see our posts under yesterday's date. There are two problems with yesterday's poll. Here is a summary of our take on it.

First, unlike most good political polls of which we know, the Minnesota Poll does not attempt to locate a representative sample, assess the "likely voters" among the sample, and break down the preferences of the likely voters. Rather, the Minnesota poll applies formulas to adjust the raw data it obtains from its survey. We think that as a result of these adjustments the reported result of the poll understates Republican strength generally and Coleman's strength specifically. The leading example of this phenomenon is the Minnesota Poll's final (November 5, 2000) pre-election Gore/Bush poll showing Gore with a 10-point lead in Minnesota; in the actual Minnesota popular vote, Gore edged Bush by 2.5 percent. We think much if not all of that margin was produced by the Star Tribune's own erroneous poll.

Second, the Mondale/Coleman Minnesota Poll reported yesterday had an exaggerated sample of Democratic respondents. The Minnesota Poll's last Wellstone/Coleman poll had a sample that was 40 percent Democratic; yesterday's Minnesota Poll had a sample that was 51 percent Democratic. Below we reproduce verbatim the "explanation" provided by the director of the Minnesota Poll, Rob Daves. We also provide the response of Coleman campaign manager Ben Whitney to Daves' "explanation." We think Ben has the better of the exchange, but you can judge for yourself.

Daves' "explanation" reminds me of the late comedian, Professor Irwin Corey. Corey's specialty was speaking in the peculiar gibberish of professorial expertise. However, Professor Corey was intentionally hilarious; Daves is funny only accidentally.

I spent a good part of the evening watching national news programs that talked about the Minnesota Senate race. I noticed that all of the Democrats who were interviewed had been given the same talking points. They all said that 1) prior to Wellstone's death, Norm Coleman had engaged in a vicious, negative campaign against Wellstone; and 2) Coleman did not observe a truce following Wellstone's death, as the Democrats did. Both of these claims are flat-out lies, as any Minnesotan could tell you. The Coleman/Wellstone race was vigorous and hard-fought, and appropriately so. But the most "negative" campaigning in that race was by Wellstone, who ran a series of ads that attacked Coleman personally, based on the fact that Coleman changed parties years ago. Even more absurd is the claim that Coleman failed to observe the campaign embargo. On the contrary, Coleman suspended all campaigning from the moment of Wellstone's plane crash until today. Not only did he not campaign, he was as gracious as could possibly be expected and repeatedly paid tribute to Wellstone as a gallant foe. Last night, while the Democrats engaged in their partisan orgy, Coleman remained silent. Only today has he resumed his campaign. There were, in fact, several Minnesota campaigns that failed to observe the cease-fire agreed to informally by the parties. All of these campaigns, without exception, were by Democrats, as even the partisan Minneapolis Star Tribune was forced to acknowledge. All Republicans scrupulously observed the cease-fire. These are not opinions, these are facts which any Minnesotan can verify. Nevertheless, the national Democratic party has sent its representatives out to be interviewed, armed with talking points that are, quite simply, false. What does one make of a party that cannot tell the truth--not about events of the dim historical past, but about events that occurred during the last few weeks and days?

We've posted a lot on the Minnesota Senate race over the last two days, and I thought it might be helpful to try to synthesize where we think things currently stand. The most fundamental point is this: The Democrats had hoped that there would be no campaign following Wellstone's death; that six quiet days would pass by without controversy, and that Walter Mondale would then be crowned Senator. This morning's Minneapolis Star Tribune warned the Republicans strongly against campaigning against Mondale. The same paper helpfully offered up a poll intended to show that Mondale has the race in the bag, so there is no need for a campaign. Now, this plan may never have worked in any event, but it was blown sky-high by last night's fiasco. A huge backlash against the Wellstone rally is in progress. Governor Ventura has blasted the Democrats harshly, as have various media figures in the Twin Cities. A local TV station has planned a debate for Friday night, and has announced that either Mondale will appear, or he will be represented by an empty chair and Coleman will have the time to himself. Meanwhile, Tim Russert has offered to come to Minneapolis on Saturday to moderate a debate. It should now be impossible for the Democrats to avoid one or more debates. The legitimate polls show the race to be a virtual dead heat, prior to last night's disaster. The Democrats have stumbled badly and are now engaged in damage control, trying to apologize for the rally. But the significant fact is that if they ever could have finessed the election and slipped it past the voters without a real campaign, that is impossible now. The Democrats are beginning with an even start, and are in for a tough six days.

Two polls sponsored by the Baltimore Sun and the Bethesda Gazette contain good news for Republicans here in Maryland. First, Bob Ehrlich leads Kathleen Kennedy Townsend by 46% to 42%. This spread slightly exceeds the margin of error. Second, Republican incumbent Connie Morella leads Chris Van Hollen 44% to 42% in the 8th Congressional District. Morella's support among African-Americans, an important constituency in her newly configured district, has risen from 17% to 32%, if the poll is to be believed. And her support among moderates has risen from 37% to 57%. In the end, however, voter turnout is the key to both of these races.

The Wellstone rally showed bad taste and bad judgment, but this is simply insane: Andrew Sullivan looks at the "Wellstone was murdered" theorists.

The Denver Post reports on the latest Zogby poll in the Colorado Senate race. The poll has Republican incumbent Wayne Allard leading Democrat Tom Strickland by 41 percent to 39 percent. Zogby views this as "terrible news" for Allard because "the undecided normally break against the incumbent." Zogby is also predicting a Mondale victory. However, he sees the Republicans retaining control of the House.

Usually we rely on Rocket Man to bring us the latest from DebkaFile, an Israel-based internet publication devoted to reporting and analysis of intelligence, security, and terrorism issues. However, with Rocket Man working diligently to get to the bottom of the Star Tribune's treatment of "leaners," it is left to me to present DebkaFile's analysis of the Labor Party's walkout from the Israeli government. Its basic take is similar to the Jerusalem Post's discussed below -- key Labor Party minister Ben Eliezer walked out to salvage his faltering position within the Party. However, in typical fashion, DebkaFile adds twist upon twist to the analysis. First, it reports that Ben Eliezer's ploy isn't working; he is actually losing ground within his party. Second, DebkaFile sees the influence of the European Union and the State Department behind the walkout as part of plan to replace Sharon with a left of center government that can work with Arafat. But third, DebkaFile argues that Arafat would actually rather see Sharon in power, inasmuch as Sharon has decided not to harm Arafat, so he can go on playing the victim of a "repressive" govenment. Nonetheless, Arafat is happy to see the breakup of the coalition government because it makes it more likely that Sharon will be further ostracized by the international community.

My view is that there's a war coming in the region that will shake things up in ways that will render irrelevant the games being played in connection with the walkout.

Hugh Hewitt relates the Wellstone memorial fiasco to the general deterioration of the Democrats under the leadership of Bill Clinton, Tom Daschle et al. Hugh's article is called "Using Tragedy for Political Gain."

Rocket Man, we report, you decide. The Coleman campaign shares your skepticism. Here follows the Coleman campaign's response to Daves, received a moment ago:

"You admit that there was a 100% increase in the partisanship measure (to 10%) from your last poll and from what is historically valid per exit polls (which is 5%). This ignores that you generated another 5% of imbalance by not considering leaners a part of their party - which I find inexplicable and inconsistent with what many other pollsters do. In your news article you refer to them as Democrats/Republicans so why are the leaners not worthy of consideration as members of their party with respect to your polling? If you include them you created a 15% over sample of Democrats. The fact that you had the same number of hard D's from your last poll is really irrelevant. It is the relative partisanship that matters - so you did oversample Democrats compared to Republicans. If the goal was to accurately inform readers, then you failed. Finally, you did not explain why this absolutely critical issue of your sampling is never explained to readers. You manage to reveal in the news articles how many phone lines are in each household you sampled, but neglect to discuss what is the easiest way to generate a distorted result for the poll. I do not get it..."

Trunk, if you can make head or tail of Daves's explanation, you're a better man than I am. He goes on and on about how they allocate "leaners," but presumably they allocated leaners in their prior poll as well, so that can't explain why the percentage of Democrats in the sample went from 40% to 51%. And he keeps saying that the percentage of "strong Democrats" in their most recent poll is EXACTLY the same as the Voter News Service percentage in 2000. That, of course, proves nothing unless we know how the remaining voters (a large majority of the sample) were allocated. In short, Daves gives no coherent explanation of why the Democratic proportion of the sample went from 40% to 51% in twelve days.

Even more on today's Star Tribune Minnesota Poll: The Star Tribune's Mondale/Coleman poll is obviously the story of the day and bears further examination. One of the mysteries of the the Star Tribune's Minnesota Poll is the various formulas it employs to adjust raw survey results. I believe they are proprietary, like the formula for Coca-Cola. The formulas are in any event applied invisibly to the raw data to obtain the published poll results. But on occasion the published results themselves have visible problems, and today's results provide a good example.

Today's survey results are based on a survey sample that was 51 percent Democratic (16 points over the Republican share), as opposed to a survey sample that was 40 percent Democratic in the last published Wellstone/Coleman Minnesota poll.

Rob Daves is the director of the Minnesota Poll for the Star Tribune. Daves has received an irate e-mail message from the Coleman campaign noting that the Minnesota Poll survey sample for the poll reported in today's Strib was 51 percent Democratic, versus 40 percent Democratic in the Strib's last reported Wellstone/Coleman poll. The Coleman campaign has further noted that no Minnesota exit poll has shown Democrats to exceed Republicans by 16 points. We have contacted Daves regarding this issue and Daves responds as follows:

"The [Minnesota Poll survey] sample was 51 percent DFL and those who leaned to the DFL, 36 percent GOP and those who leaned to the GOP. Exit polls normally don't break out leaners separately from independents, as we do...

"If you treat the leaners in our poll as independents, the way the VNS exit poll does, then our sample was 36 percent DFL, 26 percent GOP, and 38 percent Republican[sic--this should read "Independents"]. But remember that exit polls have a pretty big margin of sampling error, usually bigger than our poll, so their numbers are not exactly a gold standard. [Daves referred to and attached a table we are omitting.]

"As you'll notice, the percentage of strong partisans is remarkably stable between the two polls, one done over a 5-night period with call backs, refusal conversions and all of the standard techniques we use to get a good sample...The differences come in the fluidity of the leaners, who typically bounce in and out of weak partisanship anyway. And our percentage of strong DFLers in the Oct. 28 poll is EXACTLY what the VNS percentage was in 2000 -- hardly a Democratic bias.

"The 2000 VNS exit poll showed a 5-point advantage for DFLers over Republicans. Our Oct. 11-16 poll showed 5-point advantage for DFLers over Republicans, when comparable measures are used. Our Oct. 28 poll showed a 10-point advantage, but not because there were too many DFLers (that percentage was EXACTLY what the 2000 VNS percentage was).

"Moreover, a look at our unweighted demographics for the two polls shows a remarkable similarity in the proportions for education, ideology (liberal/moderate/conservative), and geography. The overnight sample slightly undersampled men and 35-44 year olds, compared with the Oct. 11-16 sample, but we weight on those variables to bring them into Census proportions anyway, just as I'm sure Glen does. If you just look at unweighted ideology, the proportions are virtually identical in the two polls.

"Sorry, but I don't buy [the Coleman campaign's] criticism of the poll's sample."

The backlash against the Democrats' political rally last night may not be limited to Minnesota. A reader from Atlanta writes, "I cannot express how shocked we were as we watched that campaign rally unfold on Fox News. I've voted both sides of the aisle all my adult life, but I was so appalled by the blatant attempt to capitalize on the death of a fine man and the others who died...that I might never vote for a Democrat again."

It appears that a significant backlash against the Democrats' over-the-top performance at the Wellstone "memorial" last night is developing. This morning Tom Barnard, the Twin Cities' dominant radio personality, said the phone lines were "burning up" with callers expressing outrage over the Williams Arena pep-fest. Call volume was so heavy that the show had to cancel a contest because the winner couldn't get through. Barnard said that he was born and raised a Democrat but is 100% Republican after the Democrats' sorry performance last night.

There is a lot of buzz this morning about the fact that television cameras showed Jesse Ventura and his wife, Terry, getting up and wallking out on the Democrats' pep-fest at Williams Arena last night. I heard Ventura being interviewed on the radio this morning. He said that he found the Democrats' misuse for partisan ends not only of Wellstone's death, but of the families of the other victims of the crash, to be deeply offensive. He said that his wife was so shocked and offended by the Democrats' conduct that she was brought to tears, prompting their walkout.

Republican former Congressman Vin Weber is our friend and a guy who has maintained frienships across party lines for many years. Yet Vin was not only sickened by the Democratic faux "memorial" rally yesterday, he expressed his disgust to a reporter. In the Star Tribune's "Memorial Service" supplement this morning, Vin is quoted prominently as follows: "What a complete, total, absolute sham. The DFL clearly intends to exploit Wellstone's memory totally, completely and shamelessly for political gain. To them, Wellstone's death, apparently, was just another campaign event." Didn't they forget to drop the balloons though? In any event, the story is "Republicans decry service as political."

Here's the Jerusalem Post's report on the departure of Israel's Labor Party from Ariel Sharon's government. All of the Labor ministers, including Defense Minister and party leader Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, have resigned, ostensibly over a dispute regarding budget allocations to Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, the article views the dispute as insubstantial. It suggests that Ben-Eliezer left the government in order to bolster his position in the upcoming Labor Party primaries. Polls show Ben-Eliezer trailing two more dovish challengers. Moreover, the article notes that Labor was always expected to bolt the coalition eventually in order to position itself as a "moderate" alternative to Sharon. Labor's departure will not topple Sharon's government, but will force Sharon either to rely on "small far-right parties" or call for early elections. Right now, elections are scheduled for November 2003.

The Washington Post on how Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is keeping Bob Ehrlich on the defensive in their toss-up race for Maryland governor by proposing yet new restrictions on the sale of guns. Even the Post voices skepticism about efficacy Townsend's various proposals on the subject.

The Washington Times on why Muhammad and Malvo should be prosecuted "anywhere but Maryland." It comes down to the death penalty. As I noted last week, it is basically a dead-letter in Maryland. In fact, currently there is a moratorium on the death penalty here. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Kennedy Townsend was a prime-mover for the moratorium, although she is now saying that the death penalty is a "no-brainer" in Muhammad's case. Moreover, moratorium or not, Maryland cannot execute Malvo because he is under 18. And, as the Times explains, it is far from clear that it can execute Muhammad because, believe it or not, his crimes may not be sufficiently "aggravated" to meet the limited conditions under which the death sentence can be imposed in ultra-liberal Maryland. "No-brainer," indeed.

Bill Whelan of the Hoover Institution reports on the Callifornia gubernatorial race. A federal judge has released letters from attorneys representing a convicted state coastal commissioner alleging that, a decade ago, he and Gray Davis schemed to obtain campaign donations from developers in exchange for political favors. However, Whelan questions whether these allegations, though shocking, will have shock value, since this is what voters have come to expect from Governor Davis. The most recent poll shows Davis leading Republican Bill Simon by ten percentage points, but stuck at only 41 percent. Perhaps the most significant point in Whelan's piece relates to voter turnout. According to Whelan, next Tuesday's vote will challenge the midterm electin of 1942, when only 35.7 percent of voters participated, as the lowest attended election in American history. This could give the Republicans an advantage in California and elsewhere.

The Washington Post reports on the tight congressional race in Baltimore County between Republican Helen Bentley and Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger. The Republicans may need to win at least one of the two hot Maryland races, the other one being the race in ultra-liberal Montgomery County between Republican incumbent Connie Morella and challenger Chris Van Hollen. I have always thought that Republican chances are better in the Baltimore Country race. But the Post calls that one a toss-up and says that Ruppersberger is slightly ahead in the most recent poll. The bad news is that Democrats have a heavy advantage in registered voters. The good news is that Republican Bob Ehrlich, who has represented the district for the past eight years, is leading Kathleen Kennedy Townsend in the district by 20 points. This should help Bentley, who represented the district prior to Ehrlich.

Apparently I wasn't the only one who was appalled by the Wellstone "memorial service." The Associated Press reports that "Wellstone Memorial Turns Into Rally". Note that the AP repeats the results of the Star Tribune's Minnesota Poll and declares Mondale to be "comfortably ahead." The Democrats will do everything possible to create an air of inevitability around Mondale and prevent a real campaign from breaking out over the next six days.

More on the Star Tribune Minnesota poll: The news of the day is the Mondale/Coleman race and the Star Tribune's poll showing Mondale with an eight-point lead. There are a couple of funny things about the Star Tribune's coverage here. What strikes me first is that, according to the poll results, Mondale has simply succeeded to Wellstone's support, whatever it was. The story posted by Rocket Man below that reports the Star Tribune's Minnesota poll results lacks a description of the poll's methodology that accompanies such stories and that we have previously posted verbatim.

The methodology employed by the Minnesota poll has at least a couple of peculiarities. First, it asks a series of questions to determine the likelihood that a particular respondent will vote and then, based on the respondent's answers to these questions, it "weights" his answers "to model a probable electorate." The Star Tribune does not say today what its turnout projection is; when it said so last, its poll results were based on a projected turnout of 55 percent. Lower turnout would favor the Republicans; higher turnout would favor the Democrats. According to the Star Tribune, the adjustment or weighting of responses is "based on formulas verified in past elections."

Second, the poll further adjusts the survey results based on the particular poll respondents' household size, number of phone lines, and "variations because of sampling in gender, age, education, and geography." As I have said before, there is obviously much room for error and and for mischief here. Because today's reported Minnesota poll results suggest that as of Monday evening (when the poll was taken) Mondale has simply succeeded to Wellstone's support as previously measured by the Star Tribune, I think our previous discussion of the Minnesota poll bears repetition here. For the benefit of readers who are looking for help in interpreting today's reported Minnesota poll results, the following paragraphs below reiterate my discussion of the Minnesota poll from last week.

The Star Tribune Minnesota poll has a long and inglorious history in Minnesota. Most famously, in 1978 the Minneapolis Tribune (as it then was) called all three major state races wrong by a wide margin on the basis of its Minnesota poll. According to the Tribune on the Sunday before the election, the Democrats were about to sweep the gubernatorial and two Senate races. Instead, 1978 was the year of the "Minnesota massacre." The Democrats were routed; Republican Al Quie was elected governor, and Republicans Dave Durenberger and Rudy Boschwitz were elected Minnesota's senators. Following the election, as I recall, the Tribune apologized to its readers, accounted for the errors it had made, and vowed to put its house in order. Rob Daves was hired to run the poll in 1987, when the Star Tribune states the poll "returned to the newsroom," and the poll has employed a computer-assisted telephone interviewing method to conduct the poll since 1990.

I complained a couple weeks ago about the persistent Republican undersampling in the Star Tribune Minnesota poll. Such undersampling is generally difficult to prove, because election day results that differ from final pre-election poll results can simply be explained away as reflecting post-poll shifts in voter sentiment. I have previously observed that the Star Tribune's final year 2000 pre-election presidential poll results were strikingly discrepant with the actual election results in a way that was inconsistent with every national poll. I would now like to review the details.

The Strib's final pre-election poll results were published on Sunday, November 5. 2000, two days before the election. The story reporting the poll results ran on page one as "Gore takes 10-point lead in state." The story dramatically reported that in a race that had been neck and neck, Gore had opened a 10-point lead over Bush, 47 percent to 37 percent; the poll had been taken from October 31 to November 3. The story reported that the race was "still-volatile" and quoted University of Minnesota political science professor Steve Smith as saying, "Gore's in the driver's seat in Minnesota. It appears a number of Minnesotans came back to Gore--where a lot of people expected them to be all along." On election day, however, the race was in fact neck and neck; Gore edged Bush in Minnesota by only 60,000 votes out of 2,450,000 votes cast, 47.9 percent to 45.5 percent.

I don't think the Star Tribune Minnesota poll can have been accurate, and the effect of the poll on Republican voters must have been demoralizing. The remarkable fact about the 2000 presidential election is that Bush's pre-election lead, measured in every national poll, evaporated in the days before the election. In their post-election recap "Gore's Closing Surge" in the Weekly Standard (November 27, 2000), Jeffrey Bell and Frank Cannon wrote, "Natonal pollsters are nearly unanimous in believing that a George W. Bush lead of perhaps 5 percentage points at the end of October turned into the dead heat in the popular vote that was cast on November 7." The article reviewed final shifts in voter sentiment in detail, showing that Gore's closing surge varied in size around the country; his gains were widespread but not uniform.

I thought at the time, and still do, that the Star Tribune's final pre-election poll was wrong and probably affected the election result in Minnesota. I called Rob Daves to say as much and to complain about it. I also summarized the Bell and Cannon article that belied the Strib poll results. With no evidence other than his own poll, Daves stated that Minnesota was an exception to the national trend; in Minnesota, Bush had a closing surge.

If I were Rob Daves, I would have been mightily embarrassed by the discrepancy between the final pre-election Minnesota poll results and the election results. When I called Daves, however, he unapologetically defended the accuracy of the poll results, though without the citation of any relevant evidence. I was appalled by his sheer lack of professional introspection in the face of substantial evidence that contradicted his assertions. He was also utterly unconcerned about the impact of his poll on voters even if it was inaccurate.

If I were the owner of the Star Tribune, I would be seriously concerned about the quality of my product. If the Strib's poll product were edible instead of legible, it would long ago have been recalled as dangerous to human health, or it would have killed off its customers. We can only hope that someday the Star Tribune cares as much about the quality of its news product as McDonald's does about the quality of its hamburgers.

The problem persists to this day. When I called Daves a couple weeks ago to reiterate the point I made to him two years ago, he again cited the literature supporting the poll's methodology. As stated above, the poll's methodology employs a weighting of responses for the likelihood that a particular respondent will vote and an adjustment of results for the estimated percentage of eligible voters who are likely to vote. I don't think the Star Tribune has publicly disclosed the bases for whatever weighting and adjustment it applies to its poll results. Daves has declined my bet for dinner at a restaurant of his choosing that Coleman would do five points better than the Strib's final pre-election poll.

In his conversations with me Daves has generally referred to the accepted social science research that supports the Minnesota poll methodology. Even if the poll's theoretical underpinnings are sound, however, the evidence of actual election results strongly suggests that the poll errs in practice, consistently, in favor of the Democrats by about five to seven points.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has released its latest Minnesota Poll; the headline trumpets the claim that "Support Shifts to Mondale," while the body of the story says that "Dramatic political developments since Wellstone's death Friday have had little effect on voters' leanings in the U.S. Senate race." I guess the Strib's headline writers just can't restrain themselves. The poll says that Mondale leads Coleman by 47% to 39%. The Trunk dissected the Minnesota Poll's methodology in a series of posts a few days ago; the bottom line is that the Strib's poll appears designed to overstate Democrats' support by about five per cent. Taking that bias into account, the results of this poll are essentially the same as the two polls taken by Republican pollsters over the last 48 hours. The race, in other words, is at present a dead heat, as it was before Wellstone's demise. The Strib's poll also confirms the finding of the Republicans' polls that the Wellstone situation is not benefiting other Democratic candidates, specifically Roger Moe, who is trailing Tim Pawlenty in the race for Governor. The Strib's results confirm that Tim Penny has fallen out of contention, and their poll's four point lead for Pawlenty probably translates into a seven to nine point lead in reality.

Update: The word on the street is that Walter Mondale has cashed in approximately $6 million in stock options on shares of United Health Group, the HMO on whose board of directors he has served for several years. This is potentially explosive because Mondale's wealth has come not as the result of many years of hard work, but rather by selling his name and attending a few board meetings. In short, this appears to be exactly the kind of sweetheart deal that is fairly characterized as "crony capitalism." This has the potential to be the issue that blows Mondale's candidacy sky-high. We will be on top of the issue as the facts develop.

Somewhat surprisingly, Minnesota's Democrats are running scared. The lawsuit filed earlier today, which I posted on below, requests that absentee ballots cast for Paul Wellstone be construed as votes for Walter Mondale. The Democrats' position is too ridiculous to require refutation. How a voter could be "deemed" to have voted for a candidate who was not even in the race at the time the voter filled out the ballot is incomprehensible. At the same time, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a semi-official voice of the DFL party, says that "all Minnesotans" are "lucky to have [Mondale]" as a candidate and warns the Republicans against attacking Mondale in the few remaining days of the campaign. Apparently the Democrats are afraid that after eighteen years of retirement from public life, Mondale will be unable to meet the rigors of even a six-day campaign. It will be interesting to see how the Star Tribune responds when Mondale declines Coleman's challenge to debate the issues of the day.

The Democrats' "memorial service" for Paul Wellstone is in progress now, being televised on every Twin Cities station. I watched only the first few minutes; it was a pep rally, not a memorial service. It is at Williams Arena, home of the Minnesota Gophers basketball team, and as it began, a parade of celebrities entered the arena to wild applause and raucous pop music. Bill and Hillary are there, Ted Kennedy, most Democratic Senators and some Republicans. One person who isn't there is Dick Cheney, who was disinvited by the Wellstone family on a flimsy pretext. I turned it off, so I don't know whether it later resembled a memorial service more than a rock concert. Whether any votes will be swayed by this extravaganza remains to be seen. The tastelessness and open partisanship of the part I saw will certainly turn off some voters.

Here comes more voter fraud, this time in Michigan.

The Democrats commenced a lawsuit in the Minnesota Supreme Court this morning, seeking to overturn the bipartisan plan for handling absentee ballots that was agreed upon by Democratic Attorney General Mike Hatch and Republican Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer. As discussed below, there are relatively few votes at issue here; it is fair to infer that, notwithstanding their professed confidence, the Democrats are expecting a very tight Senate race.

The non-Israeli Jews and Jewish refugees of the Arab Middle East are not exactly a popular or well-known victim group, though not because they have not been horrifically persecuted in their countries of origin. By contrast, anyone who has ever visited Israel must be struck by the manner in which Arab Israelis participate in the civic and commercial life of the country. The contrast with their Jewish counterparts in Arab countries tells you almost everything you need to know to understand the source of the Middle East's intractability. For the telling story of one refugee, check out "Libyan Jewish refugee shares story." The story ran in the Yale Daily News with a fine companion column by a Yale freshman, "Locating intolerance in the Arab world."

Speculation is rife that Walter Mondale's eighteen years in private life may have made him vulnerable as a political candidate, and that the Democrats may have acted hastily in selecting Mondale before thinking through what skeletons may be in his closet. Mondale has been on the board of directors of an HMO for some years, and it is being reported that over the last several years, he has sold several million dollars worth of stock. This is still rumor at this stage, and it is not clear how stock sales by Mondale and other insiders may correlate to losses suffered by outside investors. But it is obvious to all who know Mondale that, for better or worse, he is no Paul Wellstone. One can only speculate how Wellstone's partisans will react when they learn about Mondale's business dealings over the past two decades.

The first two rounds of polling subsequent to Paul Wellstone's fatal accident have been completed. As reported in the Washington Times this morning, and as posted below, the Republican Senatorial Committee's poll, conducted Sunday night, showed Walter Mondale with a 45%-43% lead over Norm Coleman. The Minnesota Republican Party did its own polling Sunday and Monday nights, using a different pollster, which showed the race to be a dead heat. Speculation is that the "Princess Diana effect" has peaked and is now ebbing. The party's polls also indicate that the outpouring of sympathy for the Wellstone family has had no impact at all on the other Minnesota races. Gubernatorial candidate Tim Pawlenty and House candidates Mark Kennedy and John Kline continue to lead their races.

Here is an important piece by Hugo Gordon of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Gordon explains the anti-democratic machinations of the European Union. In this instance, Ireland is re-voting on whether to agree to the Treaty of Nice, which involves a massive transfer of power from the people of Europe to the unelected authority in Brussels. The Irish rejected this once, but under the Euro rules, only a "yes" vote is permanent. When the "plebs" vote no, they are considered to have "got the answer wrong" and "are asked the question again after a period of re-education." Gordon says that the United States should care about this because it is part of a larger campaign to "demolish the concept of national sovereignty" against which the U.S. is the ultimate target.

Could it be any clearer that France and Germany, the two driving forces behind this campaign, are no longer our strong allies? Few tears need be shed over this realization. Why were they our allies in the first place? Not, I would argue, because of shared values and democratic traditions. When the alliances were formed, we shared few values or traditions with Germany (to say the least) and France had little history of stable democratic rule. It seems to me that we became allies of these two nations primarily because they were the key states to be allied with in our struggle with the Soviet Union. Today, though, our struggle is with a different force, and France and Germany are by no means the most important allies to have in that struggle. Israel, Russia, Turkey, and Pakistan and/or India are far more relevant. Much of Europe may become what India was during the Cold War -- a large and sanctimonious irrelevancy.

John O'Sullivan notes that "If we had to rely on the U.S. government and major news media for enlightenment, we would be utterly mystified as to why John Muhammad and John Malvo allegedly went on a killing spree. They are pretty sure that it has nothing to do with Islam or illegal immigration. Aside from that they are baffled." O'Sullivan points out that there never was any evidence to support the "angry white male" profile, and that three columnists--Michelle Malkin, Andrew Sullivan and Mark Steyn--provided more reliable information and sounder analysis than the entire mainstream media. Why? Because "they were not wearing ideological blinders when they looked at [the] facts." O'Sullivan concludes that Sullivan, Steyn and Malkin demonstrate that "reporting is too important to be left to the reporters," a sentiment that will meet with no objection in the blogosphere.

Dick Morris notes that President Bush's approval rating has dropped significantly. He attributes this partly to the fact that Bush is using presidential capital in hotly disputed congressional races (as he should be doing). The other main cause, as the charming Mr. Morris expressed it on national television last night, is that Bush is perceived as "a pussy" on Iraq because he's "dancing" with France and Russia after convincing the country that we need to invade.

During his television appearance, Morris predicted that a Mondale-Wellstone race would be very close. Morris claimed that he didn't know of any poll results. He said he based his prediction on the fact that Mondale "was never that popular in Minnesota" and is an ancient laborite hack, rather than a populist like Wellstone.

Our friends at Real Clear Politics have pulled together the latest generic Congressional preference polls and find that, on the average, the Democrats lead by two points, 44% to 42%. This difference is insignificant, except that it fails to show any late surge in the direction of either party. The significant issue, as always, will be voter sentiment in the relatively few competitive districts. Meanwhile, the right direction/wrong direction polls are showing a trend in favor of "right direction." I generally find this poll question to be unhelpful; however, a number of pundits have purported to find signs of an anti-incumbent wave, which these numbers do not support.

According to the poll reported in the Washington Times this morning in the story Rocket Man links to below, the Mondale/Coleman race is a statistical dead heat. The story includes the following observation, consistent with Rocket Man's (and Hugh Hewitt's) take on the race: "'What's been lost in the coverage of this tragedy is the strength of Coleman's candidacy,' said Dan Allen, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. 'Minnesota remains hugely competitive, no matter who the Democrats select later this week.'"

The Republicans conducted a telephone poll Sunday night, which showed Mondale with a narrow 45%-43% lead over Norm Coleman. The results were given to the Washington Times, presumably to deter a sense of inevitability--"coronation," as the Trunk put it--about Mondale's candidacy. This is anybody's race, I think.

The New York Times this morning has a piece on the impact of Senator Wellstone's death on the three-way gubernatorial election, "Senator's death reverberates in race for Minnesota governor."

Among the signs of the return to something close to politics as usual this morning is the return to politics as usual on the news pages of the Star Tribune. The Strib discounts Mondale's age as an impediment to his appeal to voters in "Mondale's age not seen as big issue." In the spirit of scholarship the story helpfully explains, "Historians note that the word Senate is derived from the Latin for 'council of elders.'"

Lovers of words such as the proprietors of the Power Line also note that the word Senate shares the same Latin root ("senex") as the English word "senile." My authoritative Cassell's New Latin Dictionary also includes the related Latin word "senium," noting in italics that it means "old age, especially the weakness of old age, decline, decay." See, children, Mr. Mondale is perfectly qualified to be our "senator," exactly as the Star Tribune "news" story suggests.

Senility is also the key to the Democrats' strategy in pulling out the incredibly foreshortened Mondale/Coleman race. Note the focus on getting "supplemental absentee ballots" to the nursing home set in "Hatch, Kiffmeyer resolve ballot issues."

The comedy continues in "A truce in politics? Not for long." One must read almost to the end of this carefully structured story to hear it alleged--gosh, I guess the three reporters who share the byline couldn't verify it themselves--"Apparently, the only candidate or party ads that have sneaked through the weekend and Monday were by DFLers, Republicans said." When it comes to politics, as opposed to policy involving that silly old Saddam Hussein, the Democrats deeply believe in the disarmament of their enemies.

President Bush, on the other hand, believes in putting up a fight. The Strib reports that "Bush reportedly to campaign in Minnesota on Sunday." I vaguely recall that President Bush the elder campaigned in Minnesota on the weekend before the gubernatorial election in the similarly foreshortened Perpich/Carlson race of 1990 that Arne Carlson narrowly pulled out. As we said earlier in this context: May it be a portent!

In Minnesota we are fortunate to get Hugh Hewitt's great drive-time radio show on 1280 AM The Patriot. The show is outstanding in many respects, all related to the respect with which Hugh treats his incredibly loyal audience. We are therefore especially proud that in order to keep his finger on the pulse of the fast-breaking political developments which we are in the middle of here, Hugh invited Rocket Man to join him on the show this evening, with more to come during his visit to Minnesota on Friday. Rocket Man batted 1.000 answering Hugh's questions. We want to tip our hats both to Hugh and to the Power Line proprietor who made us proud.

More attention is being focused on the absentee voter issue in the Minnesota Senate race. Apparently the Secretary of State's office is working on a system whereby absentee voters will be allowed to show up at the polls and cast a vote for Mondale if they had mailed in their ballots before Wellstone's accident. This is, of course, totally contrary to the usual procedure with absentee ballots, and the mechanics would seem to be problematic. We will post further when we have details on the Secretary of State's plan. Absentee ballots will probably be the main source of controversy if, as I expect, the election is very close.

More on the Moussaoui connection: On Saturday we noted the weird fact that the co-pilot on Senator Wellstone's plane (Michael Guess) had worked at the same Eagan, Minnesota flight school that Zacarias Moussaoui attended. Here is the Star Tribune story on the overlap between Moussaoui and the co-pilot, "Co-pilot played minor role in story of Moussaoui."

Now Jesse Ventura is saying that he expects litigation to arise out of the Minnesota Senate race. He objects specifically to the fact that under Minnesota law, as we discussed earlier, absentee ballots cast for Coleman will naturally be counted for Coleman, while absentee ballots cast for Wellstone will not count for Mondale. "That to me right there creates an unfair election," Ventura says. Ventura has usually sided with the Democrats throughout his four-year term, and could be a useful front man for the Democrats if they lose the election and decide to challenge the result in court.

Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review considers Mondale beatable. In fact, he predicts that after the first polls of the race are taken, the Republican party will increase, rather than decrease, its commitment to Minnesota.

Thanks for the response on Jews in Minnesota, Rocket Man. You make what I think is an essential point -- the absence, as of now, of meaningful bias against Jews in America's heartland. Of course many on the left don't see this as refuting the notion that America is a land of bigotry and prejudice because they see Jews as part of the "oppressor class." But what of the Jews themselves? It never ceases to amaze me when my fellow eastern urban Jews rail against the Christian Right and worry about anti-semitism in the nation's heartland. They lack any appreciation of the historically unprecedented manner in which Christians have embraced Jews in this country or of the fact that religious awakenings here generally do not produce a rise in anti-semitism as they do elsewhere. Perhaps most disturbingly, liberal Jews seem oblivious to the fact that the most virulent anti-semitism in this country is to be found among core Democratic constituencies. It is reasonable for Jews to avoid complacency even as to the attitudes of their friends. But surely we must also be able to figure out where future trouble is most likely to come from.

John Eastman of the Ashbrook Center makes a good point (scroll down) that we haven't seen anywhere else about the Minnesota Senate race. An unknown number of absentee ballots have already been cast; under Minnesota law, those cast for Coleman will count for him, while those cast for Wellstone will not count for Mondale. Eastman assumes a 2.3 million voter turnout, 30% absentee ballots (based on the nationwide Democratic efforts to get the absentee total that high), and assumes further that 70% of those absentee ballots have already been cast, or will be cast using the original absentee ballots. On those assumptions, Eastman calculates that "Mondale would have to win by more than 10 percentage points on election day in order to prevail." He hypothesizes that this may be why Mondale has not yet officially accepted the offer to run. Eastman's point is valid, but I am afraid his assumptions are too optimistic. Coleman will have a lead based on absentee ballots already cast, but it is unlikely to be that large. In the last election, only 6% of Minnesota's ballots were absentee. Even if one assumes that will double to 12%--a liberal assumption--that is only around 276,000 votes. Further, while there is no way to know how many of those ballots have already been returned, 70% seems very high to me. If you assume that 12% of the voters will vote by absentee ballot this year; that 50% of those ballots have been returned or will be returned using the original form; and Coleman gets 45% of those absentee ballots, he has a head start of 62,100 votes. To offset that lead, Mondale would have to win by 3 percentage points, so that 49% for Mondale, 46% for Coleman and 5% for third parties would allow Mondale to squeak by. So I think Eastman's numbers are too optimistic, but his basic point is valid. If I am right and the Coleman/Mondale race turns out to be closer than most people expect--not a "coronation," as the Trunk believes--absentee ballots could make the difference.

Here is an excellent piece by Times of London columnist TIm Hames. Hames argues that "the War on Terror is proceeding far better than it is fashionable to acknowledge" because leaders who might have been inclined to provide refuge and resources to terrorist bodies have been obliged to abandon such ambitions. The exception, says Hames, is Arafat who "has a series of connections with armed fanatics that are not dissimilar to those which existed between Mullah Omar and bin Laden." Hames also takes French President Chriac to task for his "grotesque grandstanding" on the U.N. resolution.

A large part of me hopes that France blocks the resolution. When we proceed anyway, the media and the Democrats will characaterize our action as "going it alone, without the support of the international community." But most people will realize that we are merely "going it without France." People will also understand that, under the liberal-internationalist regime, Congress can authorize military action even if both Senators from up to 24 states vote "no," yet the single vote of France or Russia or China can block action. This would be a salutary lesson.

In his terrific National Review Online Impromptus column this morning, Jay Nordlinger notes the Nazi-like anti-Semitism that permeates the mainstream of the Arab world: "I bring you good news from the Middle East! Egyptian television is airing a blockbuster series based on 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' that 19th-century czarist forgery that has acted so widely — and so long — as a poison. And The Matzah of Zion, the blood-libel-perpetuating tract by the Syrian defense minister — Mustafa Tlass — continues to sell like hotcakes. It was the big hit at the recent Damascus book fair (helluva selection there, must have been).

"Ladies and gentlemen, the fact is unavoidable: The Arab region is psychotic. And ain’t nothing that no one can do about it. That one can see, anyway."

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Minnesota's Republican candidates will resume campaigning on Wednesday. The quotes from party chairman Ron Eibensteiner indicate that the Coleman campaign will emphasize Coleman's youth and vigor, and the fact that Mondale has been on the sidelines for nearly twenty years. Curiously, the Republicans also intend to point out that Mondale is not as liberal as Wellstone. Coleman's campaign manager is talking about pressing for a debate with Mondale, which presumably means the Coleman campaign shares the conventional view that Coleman will be the underdog against Mondale.

Real Clear Politics pointed us to this piece in the Miami Herald, which nicely makes the point that the anti-war left isn't so much anti-war as it is anti-Bush.

The Washington Times assesses the possibility that al Qaeda may already possess various types of nuclear devices.

The Trunk would know this exactly, but the Jewish vote in Minnesota can't be over 2%. For those who persist in labeling America a land of bigotry and prejudice, it is noteworthy that, notwithstanding this tiny percentage, both of the last two holders of the Senate seat now at issue, Wellstone and Boschwitz, were Jewish, as were both of the contenders for the seat this year, Wellstone and Coleman--a fact which has not been deemed politically significant in any of the last four elections. The problem with Boschwitz's "Jewish letter" was not that it alienated Jewish voters, but that it was more broadly construed as an attack on his opponent's religious faith, or lack thereof. By way of comparison, imagine the firestorm that would erupt if a candidate were to produce literature urging voters to support him because he is a better Christian than his opponent, and concluding with the words, "a Christian you can be proud to vote for." This is what Wellstone did.

As Trunk likes to say, we are consumers as well as producers of this site. Today, I'm mainly a consumer, and I'm learning a great deal about recent Minnesota political history. I had no idea that things Jewish could prove decisive in Minnesota elections. What percentage of the Minnesota vote is Jewish? How did Rudy do with Jewish voters in elections before and after the letters? What did non-Jews in Minnesota make of all this, if anything. I don't suppose it's possible to post the 1990 letters and the news stories regarding them but if anyone can do it, Rocket Man can. Maybe you guys would rather not, in any case.

Trunk, I think your description of Mondale as "a perfect fool" is itself perfect. Offhand, I can't think of anyone who got so far in American politics yet seemed so mindless. He strikes me as just about the only Democratic politician of note who couldn't figure out that old-fashioned liberalism had to be repackaged. Everyone else either became a "new Democrat" or a strident class warrior. Mondale just kept serving up affable liberal platitudes. I recall his debate with Bob Dole in 1976 pretty well. Mondale kept talking about the "tremendous problems" we faced and how the government needed to solve them. Dole seemed to become irritated by the sheer idiocy of what Mondale was saying and couldn't resist taking shots at him. In the end, Dole was perceived as mean-spirited and Mondale was proclaimed the victor. Mondale reminds of the guy who goes for a walk, whistling all the way. Alll sorts of horrible things are happening around him, but he doesn't notice and isn't at all affected. He arrives at his destination with a his hair perfectly in place and a big smile. I fear that this time his destination, once again, is Washington D.C.

More on Walter Mondale and the Wellstone Succession: Rocket Man, as always, your memory is perfect, and the story does not get much less painful through the lapse of time. As to the need for a Democratic president for Lillehaug to become a judge...I invite Deacon to weigh in.

Now that the Mondale succession to Senator Wellstone's candidacy is a done deal, I want to weigh in briefly on Mondale's return to public life. Like many Minnesotans, I have a relationship with him that extends back quite a ways. When I graduated from high school in June 1969, I went to work as an intern for the summer in his Washington office. Like all such senate offices back then, his was relatively small and informal. I worked directly for his chief of staff, Mike Berman. Mike is now a Democratic consultant who is frequently quoted in background stories on Mondale.

Given his personal rectitude, his longevity as an officeholder, and the offices he has held, Mondale has become the elder statesman of the Democratic party in Minnesota and perhaps nationally. As the vice president and a vital member of what was to that time the worst administration in American history, Mondale is an ideal barometer of the liberalism of our era. When he talks about the comprehensive domestic and foreign policy catastrophes that brought down the Carter administration--unprecedented inflation/recession, the Iranian hostage taking, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan--he talks about them sincerely as if they were a plague of locusts that descended from the sky, unrelated to the policies of his own administration. He is a perfect fool.

Fast forward to 1996. As Bill Clinton found himself immersed in the campaign finance scandals that revealed his adminstration to be the most corrupt in American history, he called on Walter Mondale to head a commission that would provide him the political cover he felt he needed to ride out the scandals. As such, Mondale became the butt boy (or ass clown) of the Clinton administration.

Mondale was of course the right guy for the job of heading the commission. As a member of the senate in 1974, Mondale had been a leading advocate of the campaign finance reform law that governed in 1996. In accepting the job, Mondale characterized the regime of campaign finance law that he was partially responsible for as a "nightmare" without himself or anyone else noting its direct relationship to the "reform" he had sponsored as a senator.

Even greater irony is suggested by the fact that as a University of Minnesota Law School student in 1956, Mondale had published an incredibly astute law review note criticizing Minnesota's campaign finance law on grounds that applied generally to laws like the 1974 law (and to the reform law adopted this year). Mondale himself was aware of the irony; in 1979 he had contributed an autographed copy of the law review note to a University of Minnesota Law School fundraiser (I bought it--cheap).

When Mondale stepped into his role as head of Clinton's campaign finance commission in 1996, Rocket Man and I wrote a long article about all this for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The article appeared there as well as in a shorter form in the Washington Times. I'm taking the liberty of posting the shorter version of the article for whatever interest it may have in this context. The piece is "Fritz '56: Reflections of the Young Mondale on Campaign Finance Reform."

This photo of a typically angry, smug-looking anti-war protester marching in front of a "Books Not Bombs" poster reminded me of one of the saddest stories I've ever read. Shortly after the liberation of Afghanistan, the Washington Post ran an article about a man who was arrested by the Taliban because he had books in his house other than the Koran. He was imprisoned and hideously tortured for two years; miraculously, he was still alive when Afghanistan was liberated, and he was released from prison. The constant beatings, electric shocks and other tortures inflicted upon him took a fearful toll; at the time he was interviewed by the Post, he was brain-damaged, incontinent, suffered from severe back injuries and could walk only with difficulty. He was twenty-six years old. At the end of the interview, the man said: "I never want to see another book." I have no idea what the protester carrying that idiotic sign meant by it, but if he truly wants to bring books to Iraq in place of the daily terror that exists there now, he should be supporting President Bush.

Consider yourself recognized, Trunk. You called it first. You're right about Lillehaug too; but before he can be a judge they've got to get a Democratic president.

The Trunk's comments on Paul Wellstone's funeral arrangements are not merely personal. The Trunk was no doubt recalling how Wellstone got his big break in politics. When Wellstone received the Democratic nomination to challenge Senator Rudy Boschwitz in 1990, he was relatively unknown. As his views and his persona both became better known, he was widely regarded as a goofball. However, he ran a populist, "cute" campaign that was the model for Jesse Ventura's effort in 1998. Still, as election day approached he was a distinct underdog. A week or two before the election, Wellstone sent a letter to more or less every Jew in Minnesota which attacked Boschwitz, implied that Wellstone was a better Jew than his opponent, and concluded by urging its recipients to support Wellstone, "a Jew you can be proud to vote for." Wellstone's letter enraged some of Boschwitz's Jewish supporters, who sent a responsive letter to the same mailing list. This letter pointed out that Wellstone (unlike Boschwitz) had never played any part in Minnesota's Jewish community; it may also (I can't now remember) have questioned whether Wellstone was a practicing Jew at all. Wellstone then collaborated with the local newspapers in turning the Boschwitz letter (Rudy did not write the letter but did, as I recall, know about it) into a major cause celebre. The controversy over Boschwitz's "Jewish letter" was widely credited with tipping the balance of the election in Wellstone's favor. You had to study the fine print in the newspaper accounts very carefully to glean the fact that Boschwitz's supporters were responding to a Wellstone letter that implied that Boschwitz--a devout man who was also, as I once heard Benjamin Netanyahu say, one of the most important supporters of Israel in the United States--was not a good Jew. The story was reported in such a way that the vast majority of voters never even heard about Wellstone's letter. Anyway, this is how Wellstone got his start in politics, and this is why the eulogies to his wonderful integrity leave my cold. Trunk will correct me if my memory of these events is inaccurate in any detail.

The Star Tribune's big page-one story this morning is Eric Black's "Mondale close to yes." Will somebody please recognize me for reading the tea leaves correctly as early as Friday at 6:15 p.m.?

Rocket Man should note the key role played by his acquaintance David Lillehaug, originally of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in the deliberations here. I have the sense that David might be willing to make himself available should Mondale call on him to play a role when he returns to office, and that David's long-sought judgeship is now so close he can taste it. Rocket Man, what say you?

Mark Steyn on the theme sounded by Rocket Man the other day -- the failure of the media and of law enforcement to contemplate that the sniper might "be named Mohammad rather than Bud" and the apparent failure to contemplate the possible implications once he turned out to be named Mohammad. Steyn concludes that "given the performance of the FBI, the Immigration Service and other federal agencies, it may be time for at least one white male to get a little angry: the President."

Fox News is reporting that Mondale is on board to run; Tom Daschle is in St. Paul and, along with Wellstone's two sons, has been lobbying Mondale hard. Fox News says, however, that the official announcement may not come until Wednesday.

It's not okay to write unguardedly about Senator Wellstone yet, so I will simply say that I was interested to see where Senator Wellstone's funeral would take place. The Star Tribune has what are to me two interesting stories today about the funeral arrangements. The first is credited to the AP and alludes to some of the diplomacy involved here, "Two faiths might make Wellstone burial tricky." This story quotes my friend Rabbi Raskas (he married me and Mrs. Trunk; when he blessed Little Trunk at Saturday morning services after she was born in 1984, we had to ask him not to give his then-weekly anti-Reagan sermon) as saying Senator Wellstone was "thoroughly Jewish." On this score, I will simply observe that Senator Wellstone's son Paul David appears to have been named after the senator. Naming a child after a living person is prohibited by Jewish law, which is why you have never met a Jewish "junior." Folks who self-identify as Jews don't do it. The second story, by Martha Sawyer Allen, discusses the arrangements for Senator Wellstone's funeral. The story is "Wellstone family to hold private Jewish service."

It's so important that the Democrats retain control of the Senate that the New York Times has its two biggest political reporters assigned to help the Democrats think through the Wellstone succession issue. In this morning's Sunday Times, Adam ("big-time"--Vice President Cheney) Clymer and Adam ("small-time"--Big Trunk) Nagourney have "Mondale associates say he is likely to agree to pursue senate seat."

Rocket Man, I agree that Wellstone was wrong about virtually everything and that this is the most publicly-relevant test of him as a politician. I certainly would voted against him if I lived in Minnesota and would llikely have devoted time and money to the campaigns of those who ran against him. However, from what I could tell (and not having followed him that closely I may be wrong), Wellstone had the courage of his convictions, which I find admirable. Such courage, if he had it, might not have distinguished him from Helms and Jackson, Jr., but it would have distinguished him from Daschle, Gore, and so many others.

Speaking of geriatric former Senators who have been thrust onto the comeback trail, the latest New York Times poll shows Frank Lautenberg leading Doug Forrester by a margin of 48 percent to 36 percent. According to the poll, Lautenberg has picked up the overwhelming majority of voters who were undecided when Torricelli was in the race, but who have now made up their minds. Moreover, many voters still do not know who Forrester is.

Meanwhile, in the New York gubernatorial race, George Pataki is running away from his Democratic opponent Carl McCall. Pataki is at 44 percent; McCall is at 29 percent; and billionaire businessman Tom Golisano is at 23 percent. My conservative cousin in New York is impressed but not pleased with Governor Pataki's showing. He notes that New York's bond rating is "almost as low as Louisiana's, upstate is a disaster area economically and, with Wall Street in the tank, the City's economic boom has ground to a halt." How has Pataki managed to flourish? According to my cousin, by running as a "pro-organized labor Democrat." Specifically, "in exchange for outrageous giveaways that will burden the state for years, he's garnered the support of the Teachers and Hospital Workers unions. The Empire State Gay Pride organization has endorsed him. In exchange, the Republican-controlled State Senate will approve a gay rights bill that had been vigorously opposed by the GOP leadership for decades." My cousin concludes that Golisano is the only candidate in the race who is running as a traditional Republican, "supporting tax and spending cuts while calling for an end to the corporate welfare and payoffs to union bosses that have contributed to New York's economic decline. Golisano is doing well enough that Pataki will start running negative ads against him, but not well enough to have any chance of winning. Pataki is looking like the new Nelson Rockefeller from whose adminstration, my cousin will tell you, New York has never fully recovered.

There are many excellent blogs; here is one called Carthaginian Peace. Scroll down a little and note the photos of the anti-anti-war protesters in Washington, many of whom are Iraqis who long for their country to be free.

Deacon, you are probably right about the Maryland race, and this is shaping up as a bad year for the Republicans in governorships generally. But it is striking that Townsend can't do any better than a dead heat, under the circumstances.

And I won't say anything further about Wellstone, simply because he is deceased, except to note that in my opinion, all politicians are sincere in that they all believe that the world will be a better place if they are elected. How Wellstone was different from anyone else, from Jesse Helms to Jesse Jackson, Jr., escapes me. The only publicly-relevant test of a politician is whether his proposals and his arguments make sense. Wellstone's didn't. That his death was a tragedy for his family goes without saying, as were the deaths of his wife and daughter and the others on board Wellstone's airplane--about whom, by the way, the press has reported virtually nothing. Wellstone's status as a Senator neither adds to nor detracts from the personal tragedy of his premature death; neither does his premature death either add to or detract from his status as a politician who was wrong about virtually everything.

Here in Maryland, I had expected Kathleen Kennedy Townsend to open a lead over her Republican gubernatorial opponent Bob Ehrlich following her fiercely negative campaigning. It hasn't happened. This report from the Washington Post shows that the two are dead even in the latest poll, each with 47 percent. Under these circumstances, the Post seems clearly correct in stating that the outcome will depend on "turnout." With whites favoring Ehrlich by a 58-38 margin and blacks favoring Townsend by 85-7, black turnout, which has fluctuated dramatically in past gubernatorial races here, will tell the tale. My guess is that black turnout, either actual or "constructive," will give Townsend the victory. But my pessimism may just be the result of a lifetime of witnessing Democratic victories in this state.

I'm not really qualified to opine on how Mondale will do in Minnesota, but it strikes me that Mondale gets basically every vote Wellstone would have gotten plus the votes of those who would have voted against Wellstone because he broke his "only two-terms" promise. Trunk, I enjoyed the account of your meeting with Wellstone. It doesn't surprise me that he created a warm feeling. I've heard he was very popular among the kids here in the Washington, D.C. area who worked in the Senate during summers. I confess to having admired the guy simply because, unlike so many other Democrats, he seemed to stand for something. I also believe that it was a good thing to have an articulate leftist in the Senate except to the extent that it created a Democratoc majority, as it did the past two years. I'm sure if Wellstone had been my Senator I would have disliked him, but from a distance I kind of had a soft spot for him, as was probably clear from my attempt at a report on his last debate with Coleman.

Our friends at Real Clear Politics are convinced that Mondale wins going away; the Trunk seems to agree. Maybe, but I'm not so sure. Mondale has been out of public life for eighteen years and is not very well known to a whole generation of voters. I agree he'll carry the geriatric set, but Wellstone would have done that too. A lot depends on how much Wellstone's negative ads have hurt Coleman. From a standing start, I think Coleman would beat Mondale. Most voters are ready for a new generation of leadership, I think. Anyway, I could be crazy, but I'm not so sure Mondale will run better than Wellstone would have, and if he doesn't it's anyone's race.

Sunday's Star Tribune strongly suggests that Walter Mondale will replace Paul Wellstone as the Democratic candidate for Senator Wellstone's seat. The triple-bylined story is "Speculation builds that Mondale will be on ballot." The coronation is on November 5.

I met Senator Wellstone only one time, but it was memorable to me. It was the day after the Jewish new year three or four years ago. We had just had my family over for the holiday, including Alan Einisman. Alan is the brother of a cousin-in-law and had worked as an aide to the senator in Washington. (This should be just the right connection to get my cousin booked to talk about Senator Wellstone on Larry King.) Alan told me at length how much he liked the senator and how much he had enjoyed working for him. The next day I was at at the airport leaving town, and looked into the news stand on the concourse I was departing from. I noticed someone plunking down one copy of each daily newspaper the stand carried, and looked up to see it was the senator. I said hello, introduced myself, and he greeted me warmly. I told him I'd been campaign treasurer for Rudy Boschwitz in his second race against him, the one in which he had whomped Rudy. He turned down his friendliness only a little, but inquired in detail about Alan. Much as I was predisposed to dislike him, and much as I wanted to, I left with a warm feeling for him personally and know I would have enjoyed talking with him at greater length. Although I was struck in person by how short he was, unlike most other politicians whom I have met personally, he was larger--not smaller--than life.

Weird beyond immediate comment is the fact that the co-pilot on Senator Wellstone's plane worked at the same flight school that Zacharias Moussouai attended last year, apparently at the same time he attended the school. The Star Tribune story has a profile of the co-pilot without any mention of their overlapping at the school, and I can't find anything via Google either. The Star Tribune story is "Co-pilot was living his dream before doomed flight."

Wake up and read the tea leaves: "Walter Mondale seen as possible Wellstone replacement on ballot." I could tell you why the stuff about Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page is a feint, but, as President George H.W. Bush used to say courtesy of Dana Carvey, I'm not gonna do it, it wouldn't be right.

The Boston Globe (courtesy of Instapundit) has a useful account of the Bellesiles affair, "With research in doubt, Emory historian resigns post." The affair is of interest in several respects beyond the particulars here, including insight into the whole apparatus of celebrity that awaits the pious fraud who plausibly caters to liberal prejudices. Also useful in this respect is the Fox News recap by Instapundit himself, Glenn Reynolds, "Fawning critics don't say book was fraud." Where's the Kingsley Amis or Randall Jarrell who can do justice to the comedy here?

An anti-war demonstration is going on in Washington; the photo below depicts some of the protesters dressed as ghosts, with signs saying things like "Ghost of an Innocent Iraqi." The protester isn't referring, of course, to the many thousands of innocent Iraqis who have been murdered by Saddam Hussein. As was the case in Afghanistan, ending the savage Saddam regime would save many more lives than it would cost. Given the left's total lack of interest in Iraq until the moment when President Bush started talking about the need for regime change, it is hard to take seriously the protesters' alleged compassion for innocent Iraqis.

This Wall Street Journal editorial documents how voting fraud by the Democrats has spread to the normally clean state of Wisconsin. It seems that Democratic operatives have been caught handing out free food and money to residents of a home for the mentally ill in Kenosha. The residents are then taken into a separate room and given absentee ballots. In 2000, Democrats were caught bribing homeless people in Milwaukee with cigarettes to vote for Gore. As Rocket Man has pointed out, such fraud by Democrats is quickly becoming (or, perhaps more accurately, being revealed as) a nationwide scandal.

We are not prone to second-guess police work, but the sniper investigation seems to have been marked by confusion and worse. The Washington Post reports that the snipers' vehicle's license plates were checked by police at least ten times, but apparently no one tabulated these sightings and noted that the snipers' Caprice was repeatedly spotted under suspicious circumstances. Most readers have probably seen the deeply offensive statement by the District of Columbia's Chief of Police--"We were looking for a white van with white people, and we ended up with a blue car with black people"--but the worst thing about the authorities' obtuseness isn't that it was bigoted, but that it was stupid. There was no reason whatsoever to assume that the snipers were white. There is nothing wrong with racial profiling; what is inappropriate is irrational racial profiling, as occurred here. Further, the authorities' premature fixation on the mythical white van seemingly blinded them to evidence inconsistent with their assumption. Just ten seconds after the shooting on October 3, a witness saw a dark-colored Chevrolet Caprice "creep away from the scene with its lights off." At least one other witness saw the Caprice, but did not report it; that individual now says that at the time, "I didn't know that [the Chevrolet] was important...and I didn't know if I wanted to get involved. And everybody's 'white van' this, 'white van' that." If more attacks of this type occur, police work will have to be better.

The Washington Post thinks Mondale's the one -- at least the one that the key Democrats seem to want and the one who isn't saying "no". It also mentions Skip Humphrey and ex-footballer Alan Page as possibilities. The Post finds the field of available Democrats to be indicative of a state party in decline. It also notes that Jesse Ventura could determine who controls the lame-duck Senate.

Egyptian television will air a "blockbuster" series based in part on the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" during the peak Ramadan viewing period, the New York Times reports.

Last weekend we posted the most widely read law review article of all time by Professor James Lindgren of Northwestern University Law School. The article demolished not just the analysis, but also the scholarly bona fides, of Michael Bellesiles (whose name I'm afraid I misspelled in my post) and his Bancroft Prize-winning anti-gun book, Arming America. Bellesiles was a professor of history at Emory University. Yesterday Emory University released the report of the distinguished panel of inquiry it had convened on the affair. The panel report found Professor Lindgren's article to be of great use in performing its task. The report was released yesterday, simultaneously with Bellesiles' resignation from Emory. The new issue of the Weekly Standard is out this morning and its Scrapbook section recaps the affair in the last item, "Ready, Aim, Fired."

With the rush of news in the last few days, one story that has been overlooked is the ever-expanding South Dakota voter fraud scandal. Democratic operatives in more and more counties have been found to have submitted fraudulent voter registrations. The Rapid City Journal reports on the spreading scandal and the Democratic Party's efforts to minimize what can only be described as a massive campaign of voter fraud. Not coincidentally, South Dakota insiders say that John Thune is pulling ahead in his Senate race against incumbent Tim Johnson.

The Chechnyan terrorist attack in Moscow is over, as Russian special forces appear to have done an excellent job of killing the terrorists without undue casualties among the hostages. The Washington Post reports that the Russian authorities moved on the occupied theater after the terrorists started murdering hostages.

The Star Tribune has posted a longer piece credited to the AP on the possible successor candidates to Senator Wellstone, naming a few folks I had not thought of. The piece is "Democrats to decide who will replace Wellstone on ballot," Another story in tomorrow morning's paper is by two of the Strib's political reporters and quotes all the relevant officeholders on the legal issues involved. Republican secretary of state Mary Kiffmeyer appears to be lost in a cloud of unknowing. The story is "Wellstone off the ballot, DFL will name a replacement," but in fact the story leaves open the possibility that the senator's name will remain on the ballot. I stand by my reading of the tea leaves for a variety of reasons, all of them cynical.

The authorities have been quick to say that there is no indication that John Muhammad was connected to al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization. This simply isn't true. This story from the Bellingham, Washington Herald has not been widely reported, but almost exactly a year ago, a man who knew Muhammad called the FBI to report him as a possible terrorist. Despite living in a homeless shelter, Muhammad flashed wads of cash and frequently took airplane trips on purported business. The man who reported Muhammad says that: "I felt like he was part of an organization. I felt like he had some connection with terrorists....I said he's got connections somewhere with somebody who's got money." It remains to be seen whether Muhammad was connected to a terrorist organization, but it is ridiculous to suggest that there is no indication that he may have been.

The signs so far this afternoon and early evening suggest to me that the DFL party will name a successor candidate to Sentor Wellstone. The Star Tribune Web site carries an AP story stating "Democrats to decide who will replace Wellstone on ballot." The KARE 11 news site has "Politicians scramble to deal with Wellstone succession." The Pioneer Press story, "Different candidate's name likely to appear on November ballot," baldly states that Senator Wellstone's name will not appear on the ballot. Reading the tea leaves here, it seems to me that former Vice President Walter Mondale (groan) is waiting to enter, stage left. Rocket Man, did we really have to write that Star Tribune column mocking such a revered elder statesman?

The Jerusalem Post has another worthwhile columnist in Caroline Glick. Here Glick describes the "messianic" war waged by the Israeli left against its enemies at the other end of the nationn's political spectrum, especially the Jewish settlers. According to Glick, this war has been the vehicle through which the left has sought to divert attention from, and even excuse, Palestinian terrorism. As the latest example, she cites the recent face-off between settlers and Israeli security forces near Nablus. Glick claims that the face-off was unnecessary and was orchestrated by Defense Minister Ben-Eliezer in order to renew the left's war with the right and to placate the dominant pro-Oslo element within Labor that Ben-Eliezer needs to retain his leadership of that party.

Here is another possibility in the Minnesota Senate race. While we think the natural reading of the relevant statute is that the Democrats have to put up a new candidate, there is a possible argument to the contrary. The argument would run as follows: The statute that we linked to below, Sec. 204B.13, provides that a party has the "authority" to substitute a new candidate if its nominee dies more than four days prior to the election. The Democrats could argue that this provision is permissive, and the party is not required to substitute a new candidate. Then, if Wellstone stays on the ballot and wins, a "vacancy" will be created as of January. The Minnesota Statute providing for vacancies in Senate seats unhelpfully defines "vacancy" to mean "vacancy." So it is not impossible to argue that upon the election of a deceased candidate, a vacancy exists. The Minnesota statute then provides that a special election will be held the following November, and the governor appoints someone to serve in the interim. This would give the Democrats a year rather than ten days to reorganize with a new candidate. While we do not think this is the correct analysis, it is not entirely implausible either. However, there are three huge problems with this approach. First, the Minnesota Supreme Court likely would rule that the Minnesota statutes implicitly require a party to substitute a candidate if it is possible to do so (or else forfeit the election), and that the election of a deceased person does not create a "vacancy." Second, even if the state court were willing to interpret the Minnesota statute as suggested above, a substantial Constitutional issue would remain; as noted below, we think the Constitution pretty clearly requires a successful Senate candidate to be a living person. And third, it is unlikely that Minnesota's next governor will be a Democrat. So even if the Democrats think they have a plausible statutory argument, leaving Wellstone on the ballot would be a very high-risk strategy.

A couple other possible candidates who will probably be considered by the DFL central committee if it decides to name a candidate in place of Senator Wellstone are former Minnesota Attorney General Skip Humphrey and present DFL centimillionaire Vance Opperman. Both have obvious pluses and minuses, but their names should probably be thrown into the hopper at this point.

I am indebted to Rocket Man for many things, including his introducing me to the work of Bret Stephens in the Jerusalem Post. Here is a scholarly and insightful column by Stephens about Indonesia. Stephens notes that President Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter the odious Sukarno (Mr. Non-Aligned) has finally joined the war on terrorism, having recognized that her country's "curious national identify can only be preserved by resisting radical Islam." Rocket Man has been on top of this development (see posts of Oct. 21), but Stephens' column covers much more, including a chilling discussion of the tragic decisions made by Third World leaders like Sukarno 40 years ago, and the enduring tragic consequences.

As a result of Senator Wellstone's death, the Minnesota Republican Party has suspended all campaign activity--not only in the Senate campaign, but in all other campaigns as well. Several significant campaign events have been canceled, including events intended to benefit candidates for governor and other constitutional offices. This cessation could potentially affect races for the House and for governor, as well as the Coleman race. It is not yet clear whether these other candidates will also suspend their campaign activities, or whether the suspension will be limited to the party.

The Minnesota statute that we think governs the situation created by Senator Wellstone's unfortunate and untimely death is Minnesota Statute section 204B.13, subdivision 2. We are linking to it so that you can take a look yourself. As of this moment, Governor Ventura can appoint someone to assume the seat, but not for the six-year term that should be determined at the election on November 5. We may be missing something here, but it appears that Minnesota's DFL party needs to name a candidate to contest the election against Norm Coleman on November 5. Many Minnesotans have of course already voted by absentee ballot, a consideration that is beyond our analysis at this point.

Paul Wellstone has been killed in a plane crash along with his wife, his daughter and several aides. While Power Line readers know that we were not fans of Senator Wellstone, we extend our sincere sympathy to his family, especially to his two surviving sons. Under Minnesota law, the Democrats can replace Wellstone with a new candidate up to four days prior to the election. Given this statute, we think the Democrats pretty much have to replace Wellstone on the ballot. The Carnahan model would not seem to apply; under Minnesota law, as we understand it, the governor (who is not a Democrat in any event) has no role, and the election a week from Tuesday will be for a full six-year term. Moreover, if the Democrats did try to keep Wellstone on the ballot with the expectation that someone else would somehow serve the term, they would encounter Constitutional language which rather clearly implies that only a living person more than thirty years old can be elected to the Senate. John Ashcroft refused to challenge Carnahan's posthumous election in Missouri; we are quite certain that Minnesota Republicans would mount a Constitutional challenge if the same maneuver were attempted here. So we think the Democrats have to put up a new candidate. They could select one of Wellstone's sons--about whom we know nothing at all--but it is doubtful whether sympathy alone would be enough to elect a complete unknown to a six-year Senate term. It seems more likely that the Democrats will choose someone well-known enough to run a strong race despite having essentially no time to campaign. This could be either someone like Mike Hatch, the current Attorney General, or an elder statesman like Walter Mondale. The problem with nominating a partisan figure who is well-known in his own right is that doing so may largely dissipate the sympathy factor. Hatch, in particular, is a polarizing figure, and while it is entirely possible that he might beat Coleman, it is hard to imagine many people voting for him out of sympathy for Wellstone. When we first heard about Wellstone's tragic death, our instinct was that the Democrats had been handed the election. Upon reflection, we think that is not so clear.

Our faithful reader Peter Swanson writes us as follows about the difficulties law enforcement authorities had in apprehending the DC murderers, even when they had them in their grasp: "When I heard that police overlooked the snipers because they were looking for a white guy, it occurred to me that this was the first case of actual racial profiling I had seen. The psychologists and sociologists had all 'profiled' various aspects of the sniper's personality, including that he was probably a white loner. Then law enforcement adjusted their investigation based on this profile. This is more than the standard alleged disparate impact that normally passes for racial profiling." For more on this subject, see the Seth Gitell column we posted last night.

Here is Michelle Malkin's piece on how the INS let Malvo remain illegally in this country. And still the Democrats are preventing passage of Homeland Security legislation because they can't accept giving the president authority to remove incompetent INS and other government bureaucrats.

Please don't miss "Enemies within" by Stephen Scwartz from this morning's New York Post.

Charles Krauthammer contrasts the liberal and conservative approaches to foreign policy in "The Clinton paper chase." One difference between the conservative and liberal approaches that is not explicitly noted by Krauthammer in this column is also illustrated by the divergent foreign policies of Presidents Clinton and Bush. The difference I have in mind has to do with the use of force by the United States. President Clinton believed it was proper to use military force only for humanitarian purposes; President Bush believes it is proper to use it on behalf of the United States.

This morning's Star Tribune Wellstone/Coleman story is about the money the campaigns are raising and spending, "Wellstone-Coleman race sets money record: $19.4 million." Wellstone will outspend Coleman, and didn't have to lift a finger to acquire the funds with which to offset the "mysterious" ad buy in support of Coleman. The Strib also has an extremely misleading headline on its Wellstone/Coleman story regarding the candidates' stand on education issues, "School vouchers find no supporters in Senate race." The text of the story suggests that Wellstone and Coleman have take opposing stands on every relevant education issue. Finally, the Strib notes that President Bush will be back to support Norm, "Bush will make two more Coleman campaign stops before election." The White House must think this race is closer than the Star Tribune's Minnesota poll shows. Hmmm....

Some of you have probably seen the Democratic ad in which President Bush pushes a wheel-chair bound lady to her death. This could be considered a new low in the history of American democracy, except that new lows come so fast and furiously that it's hard to keep track of them. Anyway, here is the Republicans' response. It's not bad, but, as Insta Pundit pointed out today, it's a little late to have much impact.

I've been in North Carolina on business for a couple of days, and missed all the excitement. I woke up this morning to the news that the sniper has finally been caught. The story apparently combines several important elements. "Muhammad," the adult villain, was apparently a Black Muslim. This is a group whose entire ideology could reasonably be classified as "hate speech." They allege that white people were created by a mad scientist on an island somewhere and are inherently inferior. Muhammad's sidekick is an illegal Jamaican immigrant who was apprehended some time ago, but not considered enough of a priority to prevent him from carrying out a series of murders. It remains to be seen whether anyone will become angry about this--other than Michelle Malkin, one of our heroines, who has been appropriately angry for some time. In recent days the authorities have issued a series of more or less incoherent statements and exhortations; at one point they urged illegal immigrants to come forward and promised them amnesty if they had information about the killers. I infer that the authorities knew that at least one of the individuals involved was an illegal immigrant. One can only wonder how much the police knew about the perpetrators and didn't tell us, for fear, I guess, of arousing our purported vigilante instincts.

It looks like I was incorrect when I said that Malvo missed his deportation hearing. It seems that Malvo was picked up in January 2002 but was released pending a hearing set for ten months later, in November of this year. So he can still make his hearing. Amazing.

I don't see Michelle Malkin's piece about Malvo and the INS yet on Jewish World Review. But here is a speech JWR has posted by Benjamin Netanyahu about creating a humane Middle East through democracy. Netanyahu was to deliver the speech in Montreal. Unfortunately, the event was cancelled due to safety concerns after Arabs, showing their regard for freedom and democracy, went on a rampage.

There has been speculation that if Jim Talent unseats Senator Carnahan in Missouri, as is now expected, he will be seated immediately, the Republicans will regain immediate control of the Senate, and President Bush's judicial nominees all will promptly be confirmed. Under the law, Talent should, indeed, be seated immediately because Carnahan was appointed, not elected, to the Senate. However, this story in the Kansas City Star suggests that the full scenario described is unlikely to occur. First, the Star reports that the Democratic Governor of Missouri, Bob Holden, might hold off certifying Talent's election. Holden says that if Talent is elected, "we'll get our attorneys together to see what appropriate action should be taken." Don Ritchie, the associate historian of the Senate, says he cannot imagine a governor trying to stall the seating of a Senator properly elected by the people of his state. However, it is not clear how much experience Ritchie has with Democratic lawyers. In any case, Ritchie points out that the Republicans may not have enough time to reorganize the Senate to give them the committee chairmanships (e.g. the Judiciary Committee). And even if they get this done, Ritchie believes the Democrats could obstruct meaningful action in the limited time available, given the tiny margin the Republicans would have. Finally, although the Star article doesn't mention this, Republican (for now) Lincoln Chafee might not support the Republican agenda. We hope that all of this will become academic when the Republicans gain outright control of the Senate for the next two years. As I suggested earlier today, though, the Republicans may have to win nearly all the toss-up races for this to occur.

This is the Gitell column referred to below by Trunk. Gitell gives credit to Michell Malkin for her early critique of "the angry white male" theory.

I just saw Michelle Malkin, one of our favorite new columnists, on television. She has discovered that John Lee Malvo, the 17 year-old alleged sniper or accomplice, is an illegal immigrant who was picked up by INS in the state of Washington. According to Malkin, instead of being detained and deported, he was released pending a deportation hearing for which, of course, he never showed up. I understand that Malkin's piece is going to be posted tonight on Jewish World Review. We're also hearing that the Malvo and Williams were stopped by the police but not detained because they didn't fit "the profile" in that they were not white males.

Our friends at RealClearPolitics have posted an excellent column by Seth Gitell of the Boston Phoenix on the DC shootings , "So the sniper may not have been an angry white male, after all."

Steve Sailer has written a fascinating, brief analysis of the political implications of major demographic trends for UPI. The piece is called "Election 2002: The demographic trends."

There is a great sense of relief here in the Washington, D.C. area, where the authorities appear to have apprehended the two guys responsible for the sniper killings. If the two are indeed the perpetrators, one hopes the death penalty awaits them. Maryland rarely executes anyone and currently has a death penalty moratorium. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend supports the moratorium; Bob Ehrlich, her Republican guberantorial opponent, does not. Willl this become a last minute election issue? Virginia has no moratorium and is not particularly bashful when it comes to the death penalty. One of the apparent participants is 17 years old. Death penalty opponents understandably take particular exception to the execution of teenagers. Depending on the facts, though, the case for executing this 17year-old might become compelling to those with an open mind on the issue. We still don't know much about what motivated the alleged sniper team. If it turns out to be some combination of extortion and sympathy for Al Qaeda, many liberals may be reluctant to argue against the death penalty in this case.

National Review's political reporter John Miller provides the latest poll results for the key Senate races. Miller suggests that the Republicans need to win the three races he considers true "toss-ups" -- Colorado, New Hampshire, and South Dakota -- or win two of these three races and "come-from-behind" in Minnesota or Arkansas. If Lincoln Chafee switches parties, the Republicans must win all three of Miller's toss-ups plus a come-from-behind race. And, of course, the Republicans must not suffer a come-from-behind defeat in Missouri, Texas, or elsewhere.

Why does it take a London newspaper to take note of the interesting phenomenon occurring in front of our eyes? Thanks to our friends at RealClearPolitics for bringing us "This is a vote that George Bush simply can't lose" from the London Times.

May it be a portent: A week before the election in 1994, Charlton Heston was the main attraction at a fundraising dinner for Rod Grams in Bloomington, Minnesota. Heston stated that, when he was training for the chariot scene in Ben-Hur prior to filming, his director had no patience for Heston's questions about the details of the scene. Heston recalled him exploding, "Just don't fall out of the chariot! You're going to win the damned race!" Heston's advice to Grams was the same, and he was right.

Yesterday Heston attended the NRA convention in Duluth and addressed a crowd of 1,500 in support of Norm Coleman. Now hampered by Alzheimer's, Heston was nevertheless able, though more haltingly, to tell the same story, and to give Norm the same advice. Try not to let the reporter's editorializing bother you too much if you read the Star Tribune story, "Heston brings NRA message to Duluth."

Tim Pawlenty must have a hell of an effective ad supporting commonsense state law measures against terrorism, because his opponents are trying to make an issue of it, and I would guess the Strib will weigh in editorially (on the editorial page) soon. The story is worth reading: "Pawlenty ad on terrorism causes a stir." As almost always on stories like this, the St. Paul Pioneer Press version is more balanced. The Pioneer Press story is also worth reading, "Pawlenty ad fuels fears, rivals say." Also of interest today is Dane Smith's profile of Pawlenty in the Strib this morning, "Pawlenty's ID: 'Contemporary conservative.'"

Saving the best for last, our friend and faithful reader Brian Sullivan, who lost the Republican endorsement to Pawlenty by a hair, writes a magnanimous piece in support of him on the Strib's op-ed page today in "Only Pawlenty offers voters alternative to tax-prone rivals."

Tod Lindberg of the Washington Times provides his take on the book "The Emerging Democratic Majority" by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira. Lindberg is both skeptical and fearful that such a majority will emerge. While Lindberg does not make the point, others have noted that Judis and Teixeira fail to appreciate the extent to which American electoral politics is a "zero sum game." For example, the Democrats are unlikely to stretch their electoral advantage among single women without falling further behind among men and perhaps married women. Similarly, it will be difficult for the Democrats to gain an increased advantage among well-educated women without further eroding their position among less educated white males, still an important group.

Given this reality, the ability of modern parties to accumulate finely-tuned information about voter preferences, and the adaptability of the parties, "emerging majorities" are surely easier to write about than to create. I can think of three reasons why a new majority might emerge (I do not include the increasingly visible problem of voter fraud, which can swing close elections but probably cannot provide the foundation for creating an enduring majority in this country). First, a party can totally discredit itself over a cataclysmic event. The Democrats and the Civil War comes to mind. The Democrats and Jimmy Carter may be a lesser example. Second, a perennially "misaligned" group can finally defect from a party that has stopped representing its interests. This is how Kevin Phillips' Republican majority emerged, when the white South and some "ethnic" Democrats finally realized that the Democrats had abandoned them. Today the only obviously "misaligned" group I can think of is the Jews, a group which is neither large nor likely to wake up soon. Third, a sea change can occur if an entirely new voting group throws its weight overwhelmingly behind one party without creating a large backlash.

In the current environment, I see no reason to believe that either of the first two conditions discussed above will create a new Democratic majority. Both parties are playing with fire when it comes to the war on terrorism, but I don't think I'm being unduly partisan in believing that the Democrats are more likely than the Republicans to be burned. The third condition is another matter. The emergence of an essentially new voting group -- Latin American immigrants -- does indeed provide Democrats with the hope of a significant breakthrough. In sum, Lindberg is right to be both skeptical and fearful of the prospects for an emerging Democratic majority.

More on the Star Tribune Minnesota poll: The Star Tribune Minnesota poll has a long and inglorious history in Minnesota. Most famously, in 1978 the Minneapolis Tribune (as it then was) called all three major state races wrong by a wide margin on the basis of its Minnesota poll. According to the Tribune on the Sunday before the election, the Democrats were about to sweep the gubernatorial and two Senate races. Instead, 1978 was the year of the "Minnesota massacre." The Democrats were routed; Republican Al Quie was elected governor, and Republicans Dave Durenberger and Rudy Boschwitz were elected Minnesota's senators. Following the election, as I recall, the Tribune apologized to its readers, accounted for the errors it had made, and vowed to put its house in order.

I complained a couple days ago about the persistent Republican undersampling in the Star Tribune Minnesota poll. Such undersampling is generally difficult to prove, because election day results that differ from final pre-election poll results can simply be explained away as reflecting post-poll shifts in voter sentiment. In my post on Sunday I referred to the Star Tribune's final year 2000 pre-election presidential poll results as strikingly discrepant with the actual election results in a way that was inconsistent with every national poll. (The Strib year 2000 Minnesota poll was directed by Rob Daves and employed the same methodology as it does today.) I would now like to review the details.

The Strib's final pre-election poll results were published on Sunday, November 5. 2000, two days before the election. The story reporting the poll results ran on page one as "Gore takes 10-point lead in state." The story dramatically reported that in a race that had been neck and neck, Gore had opened a 10-point lead over Bush, 47 percent to 37 percent; the poll had been taken from October 31 to November 3. The story reported that the race was "still-volatile" and quoted University of Minnesota political science professor Steve Smith as saying, "Gore's in the driver's seat in Minnesota. It appears a number of Minnesotans came back to Gore--where a lot of people expected them to be all along." On election day, however, the race was in fact neck and neck; Gore edged Bush in Minnesota by only 60,000 votes out of 2,450,000 votes cast, 47.9 percent to 45.5 percent.

I don't think the Star Tribune Minnesota poll can have been accurate, and the effect of the poll on Republican voters must have been demoralizing. The remarkable fact about the 2000 presidential election is that Bush's pre-election lead, measured in every national poll, evaporated in the days before the election. In their post-election recap "Gore's Closing Surge" in the Weekly Standard (November 27, 2000), "Natonal pollsters are nearly unanimous in believing that a George W. Bush lead of perhaps 5 percentage points at the end of October turned into the dead heat in the popular vote that was cast on November 7." The article reviewed final shifts in voter sentiment in detail, showing that Gore's closing surge varied in size around the country; his gains were widespread but not uniform.

I thought at the time, and still do, that the Star Tribune's final pre-election poll was wrong and probably affected the election result in Minnesota. I called Rob Daves to say as much and to complain about it. I also summarized the Bell and Cannon article that belied the Strib poll results. With no evidence other than his own poll, Daves stated that Minnesota was an exception to the national trend; in Minnesota, Bush had a closing surge.

If I were Rob Daves, I would have been mightily embarrassed by the discrepancy between the final pre-election Minnesota poll results and the election results. When I called Daves, however, he unapologetically defended the accuracy of the poll results, though without the citation of any relevant evidence. I was appalled by his sheer lack of professional introspection in the face of substantial evidence that contradicted his assertions. He was also utterly unconcerned about the impact of his poll on voters even if it was inaccurate.

If I were the owner of the Star Tribune, I would be seriously concerned about the quality of my product. If the Strib's poll product were edible instead of legible, it would long ago have been recalled as dangerous to human health, or it would have killed off its customers. We can only hope that someday the Star Tribune cares as much about the quality of its news product as McDonald's does about the quality of its hamburgers.

The problem I have described above persists to this day. The Strib's Wellstone/Coleman poll published this past Sunday showed Wellstone vaulting into a 47-41 lead after running neck and neck with Coleman for the past several months. I don't believe it; I think the race remains neck and neck, as the party's internal tracking polls show, with 10-12 percent of voters undecided. When I called Daves on Monday to reiterate the point I made to him two years ago, he again cited the literature supporting the poll's methodology. The poll's methodology employs a weighting of responses for the likelihood that a particular respondent will vote and an adjustment of results for the estimated percentage of eligible voters who are likely to vote. (See the Strib's description of its methodology quoted below.) I don't think the Star Tribune has publicly disclosed the bases for whatever weighting and adjustment it applies to its poll results, and they obviously seem to leave much room for error, if not mischief. (Moreover, as I stated on Monday, Daves declined my bet for dinner at a restaurant of his choosing that Coleman would do five points better than the Strib's final pre-election poll.)

In his conversations with me Daves has generally referred to the accepted social science research that supports the Minnesota poll methodology. Even if the poll's theoretical underpinnings are sound, however, the evidence of actual election results strongly suggests that the poll errs in practice, consistently, in favor of the Democrats by about five to seven points. It is past time that the Star Tribune is called to account.

Does anyone detect a note of hysteria in the Strib "news" story on the pro-Coleman ad buy posted by Rocket Man below? Or is it just me? Ben Whitney, Norm's campaign manager, does a great job of pointing out the hypocrisy of the Democratic whining here. Stay tuned for more of the same from the Strib, but worse, if this race appears to be within Norm's reach...

Joel Mowbray of National Review Online found the bonuses paid to State Department officials who improperly approved visas to the 9/11 terrorists and others a fit subject of inquiry at a State Department briefing yesterday. The State Department spokesman didn't. National Review Online has posted the transcript. Why isn't this news?

Great news for Norm Coleman. Until now, a torrent of money flowing into Minnesota from liberal special-interest groups has given Paul Wellstone a clear edge in media presence. But a group called Americans for Job Security has reportedly made a $1 million radio and television buy on Coleman's behalf. If true, this would give Coleman the greater media presence through the last two weeks of the campaign. The Democrats have tried to make an issue of the fact that Americans for Job Security--like many of the liberal groups that support Wellstone--does not release the names of its donors. The Minneapolis Star Tribune joined with the Democrats by terming Americans for Job Security a "mysterious group" in its headline. But Wellstone has made no complaint about the content of the ads. The text of the current radio ad, which criticizes Wellstone's support for the estate tax, is here.

Oriana Fallaci spent years reporting from the Arab world and established her reputation by having the nerve to tell the truth about what she saw with her own eyes. She is a paragon of political incorrectness. I vividly recall reading an interview with her in which she discussed Yasser Arafat's unmistakable pedophilia. (The internet has been abuzz for months with speculation regarding the uses of the ever-present Wet Wipes that appear in photographs of Arafat in his compound.) Ms. Fallaci has written a book regarding the Islamic war on the West that has made her a celebrity (and a defendant) again in Europe. She is now in Washington promoting the publication of her book, and the Washington Times has an interesting account of her remarks at an appearance yesterday: "Italian author slams Islam's 'hate' for West."

Tony Blankley descends to what he calls "low humor"--the kind I like best, I'm afraid--to capture the welter of voices, sometimes emanating from the same person, regarding the administration's policy on Iraq. His column this morning is "A vaudeville act on Iraq."

The latest Democratic effort to maintain the party's Senate majority through the democracy of the dead appears to have come to light in Arkansas. The first story I have found on this one is the Washington Times's "Arkansas GOP charges vote fraud." It is the same story Rocket Man links to in the post below. Does anyone notice a pattern here?

Another case of voter fraud is emerging, this time in Arkansas, where once again dead people--and even a handful of businesses, like "Reed's Wrecker"--have been registered to vote. In Arkansas as in South Dakota, local Democrats say the violations are aberrational and they are cooperating with the authorities. As in South Dakota, Arkansas Democrats say that Republicans are trying to "disenfranchise" minority voters when they complain about voter fraud. The fraud that we are seeing now in connection with registration is nothing compared to the fraud that will occur on Election Day, especially in states that permit same-day registration. Voter fraud is the great, unacknowledged issue in American democracy; nothing serious is being done about it; and a very real danger results that the entire electoral process will lose its legitimacy. I believe that the root of the problem, as explained by Deacon a few days ago, is that major constituencies of the Democratic Party simply do not recognize an obligation to follow rules.

Rocket Man has previously noted the resurgence of anti-Semitism in events related to American policy in the Middle East. This morning Andrew Sullivan has a comprehensive review in an absolutely brilliant column that hits much too close to home for my taste. Thanks to the folks at Frontpagemag for Sullivan's "The Wages of Hate." Please don't miss it.

The Washington Post reports on a street demonstration in Iraq. Relatives of political prisoners who were not freed in the recent amnesty--most likely because they are dead--protested and demanded information about their whereabouts. The Post reports that the demonstration "shocked political observers here and left them wondering about its meaning." A professor at Baghdad University says that "Something like this has never happened before." The demonstration was broken up after a half hour by a policeman wielding an AK-47. Well, it's a start, I guess. If and when the war starts, I think the floodgates will open quickly, and Saddam will be fleeing for sanctuary like Idi Amin and the "Cannibal Emperor" Bokassa.

With Rocket Man's enthusiasm about Steve Sailer, I will also commend his excellent column on "Hispanic Republicans--A Media myth." Although the column is from a few weeks back, I am afraid the subject will remain timely for quite a while.

You're right about Steve Sailer, Trunk. He is an amateur pundit, if I am not mistaken, but one of the most insightful writers around. The first time I noticed him was when he wrote an article for National Review called "Why Lesbians Aren't Gay," about the differences between male and female homosexuals. It was brilliant and irreverent.

The obvious fairness of the Pioneer Press editorial endorsement of Pawlenty contrasts markedly with every endorsement the Star Tribune editorial board makes. The Strib is a relentless, belligerent, bullying organ of Democratic liberalism. Without fail it supports the leftwardmost viable candidate (here I am borrowing William Buckley's classic formulation) for every office, including nonpartisan offices. If I were the publisher of the Strib and controlled its editorial board, I would order it to do roughly the obverse of what the Strib does and support the rightwardmost viable candidate for every office, with the exception of certain nonpartisan offices.

The truly galling thing about the Star Tribune editorial board and its endorsements is their sheer dishonesty. They hold themselves out as a kind of neutral arbiter and voice of reason, impartially weighing the merits of candidates regardless of party. Monday's Star Tribune editorial endorsement of the Independence Party candidate for state auditor is classic in its dishonesty. As both Arne Carlson and Mark Dayton have proved, the state auditor position can be a great springboard to higher office. The Democratic candidate for this office, however, is a complete cipher with no chance of winning. The Republican candidate, Eagan Mayor Pat Awada, is a bright, attractive, articulate conservative who has the potential of using the office as Carlson and Dayton did. The Star Tribune has therefore discovered almost Periclean virtues in the Independence Party candidate that elicit the Strib's endorsement. If you know the folks involved, the editorial is almost funny: "Hatch, Hutcheson get our [Olympian] nod."

Minnesota poll update: D.J. Tice of the St. Paul Pioneer Press has pointed out to me what is perhaps the most notable element of Dane Smith's story on the poll subjects' evaluation of the Minnesota gubernatorial candidates debate last night. (The story is posted below.) D.J. notes that "a major result of [the poll group's evaluation of the debate]--maybe THE major result --is that Penny did very badly in [the] sample, with his support cut in half. Since he is really in the hunt, this trend, if representative of debate viewers generally, could really matter." Incidentally, in what strikes me as a genuinely fair editorial, the Pioneer Press endorsed Republican candidate Tim Pawlenty for governor this past Sunday. The editorial is "Pawlenty is best eqipped to lead in tough times."

Steve Sailer is an interesting guy. He believes in diversity--the real kind, not the kind touted eupehmistically on university campuses--as well as something he calls human biodiversity, the observable differentiation of humankind into races. He appears to be a student of evolutionary theory, a subject on which I am temperamentally skeptical but almost completely ignorant. Nevertheless, I appreciate Sailer's research methodology: "I've become pretty discerning due to thirty years of girl-watching. For example, I've observed so many waitresses in both Thai and Vietnamese restaurants that by now I can tell Thais and Vietnamese apart."

His most recent column, on the subject of race, is both funny and interesting. In it he answers two questions: Who is Malvina Hoffman, and why have you never heard of her? The column is called "Racial correctness: The case of Malvina Hoffman."

When President Bush gave his speech to the United Nations, he could not have been much blunter about our intentions to defend ourselves with or without the blessing of the United Nations. I wish our political leaders would follow the train of the argument that subordinates the supposed imperatives of the United Nations, or of "world opinion," to the national interest of the United States.

I am not a fan of Dick Morris, but his New York Post column today makes the commonsense case against rhetorical subservience to the United Nations that I long to see our political leaders make. In noting the obstruction of France to the UN resolution that we desire, Morris says: "Who appointed France the arbiter of our foreign policy? Paris only has a veto in the Security Council through U.S. generosity and our desire to soothe the wounded ego of the defeated and largely collaborationist nation after World War II. Why does the United States seem so helpless in the face of French opposition to our intention to invade Iraq?"

Admittedly these are not the brilliant thoughts of a master diplomat, but they begin to address in a serious manner the reigning confusion that is fostered by the public discourse on this important subject. Morris's column is "A deadline for Iraq."

Katherine Kersten is both our friend and our Center of the American Experiment colleague. She is in addition an intellectual dynamo. In her Star Tribune column tomorrow, Kathy joins Dick Morris in addressing the rightful place of the United Nations in our present deliberations. Her column is "UN is hardly voice of morality on matter of Iraq."

Star Tribune poll update: Minnesota's gubernatorial candidates debated last night, and by my best estimate 233 Minnesotans watched. They were the folks whom the Star Tribune successfully recruited to watch the debate from among those whose opinions it had surveyed in its most recent Minnesota poll. In this subset of the Strib poll group, Republican Tim Pawlenty won by a handy margin. Dane Smith does his best to discount the result in "Viewers rate the gubernatorial candidate debate."

Rick Atkinson is a former Washington Post reporter and the author of an absolutely riveting book on the West Point class of 1966, The Long Gray Line. (Among other things, that book unforgettably recounts the sickening, unavenged murder of Captain Arthur Bonifas, of the class of '66, by North Korean goons in August 1976.) He is now writing military history full time, and has a new book (the first of two) on the American war against the Germans in WWII. Our friends at RealClearPolitics have posted a fascinating excerpt from the new book that appears in this week's US News & World Report, "Ike's Dark Days: How an unlikely leader taught an unprepared army to fight."

One other piece that is particularly worthy of your attention this morning is an extraordinarily thoughtful column on the difficult statesmanship of pre-emption that appears in this morning's Washington Times. In "Pre-emption and post-analysis," security analyst David Isby takes as the starting point for his discussion Winston Churchill's decision to attack the French naval fleet in 1940.

This morning's Star Tribune has an interesting account of Sara Jane Olson's life in prison, "Kathy Soliah, then Sara Jane Olson, now prisoner W94197." The story also refers to her local Twin Cities supporters, the folks we called Kathy's Clowns in the linked piece over on the left that we wrote about her a couple years ago. At that time they wouldn't shut up; now they aren't talking.

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, Bu