Hillary Clinton?

Michael J. Totten is considering if Hillary Clinton might be the sort of centrist he could support for 2008. Michael has been positioning himself as a centrist, and there is a certain sort of politician he admires:

Very few politicians make the short list of those I actually admire and appreciate on some level. Hillary isn’t one of them. Those who do make the list: Barack Obama, Harold Ford Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and John McCain.

A huge fight has been raging inside the Democratic Party for many years about whether they should tack left and pump up the base or move to the center and win the hearts and minds of the swing voters. Moveon.org wants to go left. The Democratic Leadership Council wants to squat in the center. The fight gets truly nasty at times, and the Democrats lose voters to both the Republicans and the Green Party because of it.

So where does he go from here?

Swing voters will never love Hillary Clinton. But swing voters don’t have to like who they vote for. They just need to dislike their candidate less than they dislike the other party’s candidate.

Last month I had beer with another local blogger who voted for Bush. He said he couldn’t think of a single Republican politician who stands a chance in the 2008 primary that he would be willing to vote for. “I think I may have to vote for Hillary Clinton,” he said.

“I’m surprised to hear you say that,” I said.

“Oh, I can’t stand the bitch,” he said. “But I might not have any choice.”

Spoken like a true swing voter.

The center will never go ga-ga over Hillary Clinton. She'll do, though, perhaps, if the Republicans also pick someone unlikable.

Ann Althouse is staying loyal to Blogads and Henry Copeland

I can understand why Ann Althouse is staying loyal to Blogads and the proprietor, Henry Copeland. Since he never has been interested in what I am doing, I am open to working with Pajamas Media, if that ever happens. I keep hearing that Pajamas Media, in whatever form it takes is close to happening, I hope to be involved, if they will take someone with less than a 1,000 sitemeter visits a day.

Ed Morrissey writes some more about the President's legislative accomplishments

With the Energy Bill, and the impending reauthorization of the Patriot Act, the President has achieved a great deal of his legislative agenda. Ed Morrissey, at Captain's Quarters, writes more on the subject.

What a difference a few weeks make! Less than two months after the Washington Post wrote off the second Bush term as moribund and Bush himself as a lame duck, the Post now joins the New York Times and AP in recognizing that rumors of Bush's political death are just a wee bit premature:

After years of partisan impasses and legislative failures, Congress in a matter of hours yesterday passed or advanced three far-reaching bills that will allocate billions of dollars and set new policies for guns, roads and energy.

The measures sent to President Bush for his signature will grant $14.5 billion in tax breaks for energy-related matters and devote $286 billion to transportation programs, including 6,000 local projects, often called "pork barrel" spending. The Senate also passed a bill to protect firearms manufacturers and dealers from various lawsuits. The House is poised to pass it this fall.

Combined with the Central American Free Trade Agreement that Congress approved Thursday, the measures constitute significant victories for Bush and GOP congressional leaders, who have been frustrated by Democrats in some areas such as Social Security. As senators cast vote after vote in order to start their August recess, Bush applauded Congress, saying the energy bill "will help secure our energy future and reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy."

Ed concludes with the following assessment:

And Bush won all of these legislative victories while having the lowest approval ratings of his presidency.

The Post notes that the GOP controls both houses of Congress as well as the White House, and that these victories should be seen in that light. True enough. However, that has not stopped the Democrats from blocking most of this legislation in the past, especially the energy bill and the Patriot Act extensions. The Democrats assumed that with his poll numbers falling and their legislative stall tactics working, Bush would fold his tent and retreat.

That's what the Post expected, too, at the end of May. Now they realize that they too "misunderestimated" George Bush, to their embarrassment.

All four July 21st bombers have been captured

The big news today is that all four July 21st attempted bombers are now in custody. Three were taken, today. One was captured in Rome. Some or all are Somalis. Ed Morrissey has the story at Captain's Quarters:

Londoners have heard shots and explosions -- as many as six -- coming from a raid which British authorities say is connected to the July 21 bombing investigation:

Officers carrying machine guns and wearing gas masks moved in and a loud explosion was reported in the Ladbroke Grove area. ...

Witnesses said the police swooped at 11.30am and sealed off Tavistock Road and the adjoining crescent.

Tavistock Road runs close to Westbourne Park Tube station where the man who attempted to blow himself up on a train near Shepherd's Bush on July 21 got on to the network.

Ed concludes:

UPDATE IV: The updated BBC report now says that all four July 21 bombing suspects have been arrested. The fourth one was apprehended by Italian police in Rome:

The fourth suspect, wanted for the attempted Shepherd's Bush Tube attack, has been arrested in Rome and named as Somali-born UK citizen Osman Hussein.

Those British passports came in handy to the terrorists, didn't they? It makes the lightning-quick captures of the AQ operatives and a good portion of their network all the more amazing.

Run, Dick, Run

Drudge reports that Helen Thomas is threatening to kill herself if Dick Cheney runs for president: run, Dick, run. (We don't take Helen Thomas seriously)

Ed Morrissey writes about the non-lameduck Bush

The Democrats and their MSM buddies had been saying that President Bush's agenda was going nowhere. Now, after losing two fights (Energy Bill and CAFTA), President Bush showed that he was still in control. Ed Morrissey has a piece on the non-lameduck status of President Bush.

After declaring George Bush a lame duck in the opening months of his second term, the media has had to backtrack after the last couple of weeks. Instead of being a lame duck and despite sagging poll numbers, two separate media analyses now acknowledge that Bush has done remarkably well in pushing his legislative agenda. The New York Times reports in tomorrow's edition that Congress continues to bend to his will:

In a flurry of last-minute action as it prepared to recess, Congress on Thursday passed or stood at the brink of final action on several hard-fought measures that had been at the top of Mr. Bush's summer to-do list and that at times had seemed to be long shots. The House narrowly approved a new trade deal with Central American nations early on Thursday morning, the final hurdle for a pact that was one of the administration's top economic priorities this year.

Dr. Z is concentrating on one blog for his programming language writing

I have noticed that Dr. Z has switched to writing on his blog Abstract Software Development Language. Up until early July, he was writing here and on the C++ Wish List. He continues to concentrate on programming language features and design considerations. The idea is that you use a language that is theoretically sound, and you will be equipped to develop better software. If you use languages that are unsound, you are risking having fundamental problems. Most recently, Dr. Z wrote about threading models:

Object-oriented model of threading

Threading mechanism is not a function of a programming language. Therefore, a system programming language like C++ should only provide library support for developing concurrent system software. Third party libraries can also provide multi-platform synchronization mechanisms for the set of platforms that are close enough in system calls and related facilities.

The abstraction described here is only possible due to the fact that the Z++ virtual processor supports its own mechanism for threading. This capability of the virtual processor is part of its design to support a universal abstract language for developing application software. In particular, Z++ executables remain multi-threaded even on platforms that do not provide any mechanism for concurrence.

Marc Cooper doesn't think much of the CAFTA deal

Marc Cooper believes that the 15 Democrats who voted for CAFTA voted the wrong way. Marc argues that this will continue to drive wages lower in the US and put low-end farmers in Central America out of business.

Apparently the job-killing effects from the 1994 NAFTA shafting wasn’t enough.

On Wednesday night, the House of Representatives narrowly approved the Bush-backed Central American Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA. This will now make it that much easier for American workers to compete with Honduran and Salvadoran sweat-shop workers and should help allay Pope Alan Greenspan’s expressed fears of increasing labor costs.

Here’s one little factoid that caught my attention: while 27 Republicans voted against their President’s bill, 15 Democrats voted for it. That’s fewer than in previous free trade pacts. But CAFTA passed by only a 2 vote margin, 217-215.

So all you Democrats out there whose funny math tells you that Nader "stole" the 2000 election from Gore will now have to accept the fact that CAFTA passed only because of the Democrats who voted for it.

Marc Cooper and Mickey Kaus are not Hillary fans

Marc Cooper comments on Mickey Kaus's opinion of Hillary Clinton as a candidate. He apparently doesn't like her "all things to all people" approach to politics (in the Bill Clinton mode). Marc, our favorite leftist intellectual, would like a candidate who really believes in something. Running for president is not just a popularity contest.

Fill of Hill

Good pal Mickey Kaus gets right to the point about Candidate Hillary: “Her substance quotient hovers close to zero…[her] biteless rhetoric is almost totally uninspiring.”

Here’s Hill’s speech the other day to the conservative Democratic Leadership Council. I dare anyone to actually read through the whole thing without starting to yearn for the feisty speechmaking of Lt. Kerry.

Kaus ably points out that the media’s framing of the Hillary “moving to the center” story is way off track. Only in the fever swamps of the Fringe Right has she ever been considered to be on the Left.

No, I take that back. As we move closer to the next election cycle, more and more liberals will talk themselves into believing that Hillary is actually a wonderful, inspiring, life-changing candidate – just as they went into a trance last year chanting that John Kerry was “electable” [insert laugh track here].

Jeff Jarvis (Buzz Machine) was NPR last night

I heard Jeff Jarvis on the local NPR outlet in Dallas. I believe he was on Market Place (actually from APM). Jeff talked about his latest post, regarding the implosion at TV Guide. Jeff is knowledgable, as he actually worked at TV Guide a decade ago. He writes:

Will the magazine work as a general-interest entertainment pub next to People, US, and many others, including its own new title? Time and money will tell.

But this is an important moment in the history of TV, pop culture, and publishing. This is the official end of the mass market.

: Here is the TV Guide press release.

: And a few comments are waxing nostalgic about TV Guide as an American cultural icon. Any fond memories?

I think of all those people used to I see on the subway with highlighters marking their lives for the week to come and wonder whether they will be set adrift or whether they’ve already gone digital.

The New Donkey says that the DLC meeting is going well

The New Donkey blogger writes that the DLC meeting in Columbus is going well. He says that the consistent story told by the speakers bodes well for future Democratic chances. I would agree that if the DLC story would predominate in the Democratic party, they probably would do better in elections. It really was a winning strategy at the national level in the 1990's. Once they turned away from that, they were in trouble, and remain in trouble. He concludes by writing:

But the same speakers consistently warned that Democrats can't simply offer negative critiques or counter-polarize, even if that makes unity a bit easier. Bayh described the need for positive alternatives as a party responsibility to the country. Vilsack suggested it's the only way to truly contrast Democratic with Republican values. And Clinton argued that we need to remind voters Democrats did govern the country in a vastly better manner in the 1990s, and can do it again.

I can tell you authoritatively that the DLC did not script these speeches at all. Their consistency on both the positive and negative aspects of the Democratic message are mainly attributable to objective reality, and the common conclusions that smart and principled pols tend to reach from their different perspectives. It's a very good signpost for our political future.

The New Donkey says that the DLC meeting is going well

The New Donkey blogger writes that the DLC meeting in Columbus is going well. He says that the consistent story told by the speakers bodes well for future Democratic chances. I would agree that if the DLC story would predominate in the Democratic party, they probably would do better in elections. It really was a winning strategy at the national level in the 1990's. Once they turned away from that, they were in trouble, and remain in trouble. He concludes by writing:

But the same speakers consistently warned that Democrats can't simply offer negative critiques or counter-polarize, even if that makes unity a bit easier. Bayh described the need for positive alternatives as a party responsibility to the country. Vilsack suggested it's the only way to truly contrast Democratic with Republican values. And Clinton argued that we need to remind voters Democrats did govern the country in a vastly better manner in the 1990s, and can do it again.

I can tell you authoritatively that the DLC did not script these speeches at all. Their consistency on both the positive and negative aspects of the Democratic message are mainly attributable to objective reality, and the common conclusions that smart and principled pols tend to reach from their different perspectives. It's a very good signpost for our political future.

Daniel Drezner has a piece about the "IT Job Market"

Daniel Drezner has long thought that the flap over overseas outsourcing was overblown. He has a piece today that contends that the IT job market in the US is improving. My personal experience is that the IT job market, even in Dallas, must be good enough that pay rates for contract work are rising.

Six months ago I posted on how the IT sector seemed to be thriving as of late despite the rise of offshore outsourcing.

Here's some more evidence from Thomas Hoffman at ComputerWorld:

A strengthening U.S. economy that's fueling increased IT spending and creating a tighter labor market has led to moderate pay gains for technical workers such as application developers and database administrators, according to new research and interviews with IT executives last week.

"There is a noticeable wage increase" for technical skills, said David Myers, director of project management at Solo Cup Co. in Highland Park, Ill.

Myers said he believes that the pay gains are the result of a general rise in IT capital spending, which has resulted in more projects being launched and a decreasing supply of available domestic IT labor....

Marc Cooper writes about the shame that is Castro's Cuba

Fidel Castro came to power promising to do great things for the Cuban people, but I remember that one of the first things he did was to start shooting people. Marc Cooper writes about the failed revolution in Cuba:

The sorry news comes, ironically, just as I have been solicited to give some money to a Pastors for Peace solidarity caravan to Cuba. I have always opposed the Cuban embargo. But how can I feel solidarity with a regime that locks people up for their mere opinions?

If the Pastors could find it in their righteous souls to show some support for these Cuban political prisoners along with the “Cuban people” then we might have something to talk about.Take a look at compere Doug Ireland’s comprehensive posting on the latest wave of repression. Doug’s got some great links there. In the meantime, how I wish George W. Bush would find some reason to make nice with Castro. Then maybe a strong liberal-left chorus of voices could find the courage to say oonce and for all: “Cuba Si! Fidel No!”

Marc Cooper thinks that the break in the labor movement is a good thing

Marc Cooper, whose activist daughter is working with the SEIU, thinks that the labor movement will be helped by the split that is happening.

Breaking Away

The break within organized labor is just about official. On Sunday afternoon, press reports said that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Teamsters would – on Monday—announce their official departure from the AFL-CIO.

Two other dissident unions, the Hotel Workers and the Food Workers may immediately follow suit. These four unions have already decided to boycott the AFL convention which formally opens on Monday.

The showdown, which has been brewing for months, now seems to be coming to a head. In my world, this is Big News.

I am among those who are encouraged by and who fully support the break. It’s not only because my wunderdaughter is on the SEIU team. But also because it is now or never for American labor. The dissidents argue, and I agree, that a new labor movement must be more consolidated, more powerful, more focused, more committed to organizing and less a political satellite of the Democratic Party.

My main interest would be to see a change from the status quo, as the status quo is not helping anyone, even the intended beneficiaries. Marc concludes:

So can you imagine…? instead of wanking over the Downing Street Memos if these same Democrats had come together in 350 national meetings to discuss what the hell is going on in the labor movement this same weekend and what they should and could do about it?

Oh… you say you can’t imagine such a thing? No kidding. The sad truth is that there are damn few links between organized labor and liberal activism. Most of those huddled Democrats wouldn’t know what to think about organized American workers because they have no real connection to them in any case.

It means that both the Democrats and Big Labor need to undertake some serious changes. At least a portion of the latter – the unionists willing to break with the AFL-CIO – have taken a first step.

(oodles of links on the break)

Ed Morrissey points out that the current attacks have nothing to do with Iraq

You are not hearing about this, for good reason. Ed Morrissey writes about the conviction of a man who tried to organize attacks in Britain, Australia, and India, on September 11, 2001.

In a little-noticed blurb in yesterday's London Times, Britain sentenced an al-Qaeda operative for his participation in the 9/11 attacks. Mohammed Afroze got seven years for plotting attacks overseas on 9/11 to coincide with the attacks on America. However, Afroze's choice of targets certainly bears review, as Melanie Phillips and RattlerGator point out

AN INDIAN man was jailed in Bombay yesterday for plotting to fly passenger jets into the House of Commons and Tower Bridge in London on September 11, 2001. Mohammed Afroze was sentenced to seven years after he admitted that he had a role in an al-Qaeda plot to attack London, the Rialto Towers building in Melbourne and the Indian Parliament.

AQ targeting of India shows quite clearly (as does its attempt to strike Australia) that the analysis of American causality as the origin of the 9/11 attacks and the London bombings clearly do not make sense. If anything, India's targeting shows that AQ doesn't just dream of an Arabian peninsula under its tyrannical control, but an Asian and African continent ruled by a new Caliphate. That has nothing to do with American interest in the Middle East, but rather an old dream of world conquest that has haunted the consciousnesses of lunatics for centuries.

And here's a good question for our media -- why haven't we heard about Mohammed Afroze? Why hasn't his conviction for targeting India and Melbourne made headlines in the United States? Could it be that the media understands all too well what Afroze's conviction means for its meme of American provocation of al-Qaeda and have chosen to remain quiet rather than prove itself tragically wrong?

When will they learn...

After advertising that they had illegally leaked documents, the Cleveland Plain Dealer published them. After an alternative weekly ran the story, the Plain Dealer published their story. Now, they are complaining that they shouldn't be in trouble for publishing documents that a judge had sealed. They knew that they would probably be in trouble, but went ahead, anyway. What is there to complain about? Kevin Drum, in the Washington Monthly clearly thinks that it should have been acceptable to publish, despite the seal.

U.S. Attorney Gregory White said in the filing Thursday that it appeared from stories in Thursday's Plain Dealer and this week's Scene magazine that at least three documents a federal judge sealed were improperly disclosed.

Attorney White said Thursday night that the disclosure "has the potential for compromising an ongoing investigation."

"Clearly somebody violated a court order here," he said. "We have to address that in one way or another. We're not just willing to walk away from it."

Editor Clifton is now sorry he ever said anything about this. I don't blame him. White hasn't issued any subpoenas yet, but if he does let's hope Ohio's shield law is strong enought to protect reporters at both the Plain Dealer and the Scene.

The New Donkey has a piece about the Republican mayors of New York

The New Donkey reviews Fred Siegel's book Prince of the City. The New Donkey is a friend and admirer of Fred's. The key point is:

Fred's a lifelong Democrat, if often a heretical Democrat, and I think the most important message of his book is about how a city with a 4-1 Democratic registration margin has voted three straight times for Republican mayors, and if current polls are any indication, may do so again later this year. It takes a lot of Democratic dysfunction to make that happen, even if the beneficiary is a man with so many progressive impulses as Rudy, and especially if it's Mike Bloomberg. Prince of the City is, more than anything else, a matchless cautionary tale for Democrats everywhere.

Razib, at Gene Expression, reformats the Telegraph poll of Muslins in Britain

Razib has reformatted the Telegraph poll, putting the results in a more interesting order. The goofballs who think that the bombings were a good thing are looking for trouble for their community, as they are having the side effect of radicalizing the younger Britons. He concludes (I have included the last results):

Q: How much responsibility do you think Muslims show now take on for peventing such crimes and bringing to justice those who commit them? 32%- A great deal of responsibility 34%- Some responsibility 10%- Not much 14%- None at all 1% - Don't know I left the last three poll questions off because I don't think they were that interesting and this post is a bit long. You can find them at the link above. My only comment is that many of these people expressing sympathetic opinions about the terrorists must be grotesquely stupid, since they surely knew that the results would be made public and perhaps generate further animus toward their community as a whole.

A great Al Gore-James Donald (DSC Communications) story

I have a passing acquaintance with the former DSC Communications that was located in Plano, TX. It has since been acquired by Alcatel, as I understand. Bob Woodward had a classic story about Al Gore and Democratic fundraising in the 1990's that pulled out a substantial contribution from James Donald, former president of DSC Communications. The story is about Al Gore and the Democrat fundraising machine at its worst. Al Gore was even moderately embarrassed by the operation.

Victor David Hanson has a hard-hitting piece on the war we are in

Victor David Hanson writes about the war that we are in with the Islamists.

And Then They Came After Us We’re at war. How about acting like it? by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online

First the terrorists of the Middle East went after the Israelis. From 1967 we witnessed 40 years of bombers, child murdering, airline hijacking, suicide murdering, and gratuitous shooting. We in the West usually cried crocodile tears, and then came up with all sorts of reasons to allow such Middle Eastern killers a pass.

He concludes by writing:

It is time to relearn the lessons from the Cold War, when we saw millions of noble Poles, Romanians, Hungarians, and Czechs as enslaved under autocracy and a hateful ideology, and in need of democracy before they could confront the Communist terror in their midst.

But until the Wall fell, we did not send billions in aid to their Eastern European dictatorships nor travel freely to Prague or Warsaw nor admit millions of Communist-ruled Bulgarians and Albanians onto our shores.

©2004 Victor Davis Hanson

Rene Montagne was almost incoherent

Rene Montagne was interviewing a woman in London who is with the AP about the latest developments. I have been disappointed with the level of talent presently broadcasting with NPR. Robert Siegel, with All Things Considered, is always able to speak in whole sentences, but Rene was struggling this morning. The other thing that I have noticed is that the interviews in the morning are sad. I understand talking without a script and carrying on a conversation is more difficult, but the pros seem to do their homework and have questions ready to pursue. My impression is that NPR currently has staffed the broadcast staff with politically reliable (extreme left wing) people, rather than looking for experienced talent.

You have to wonder what is happening in London

Something odd, that seems on the face of it like failed terrorist attacks, has happened in London. Ed Morrissey writes about what is known.

It appears that terrorists have attempted a second wave of bombings targeting London's transport systems, but in this case failed to do much damage. The BBC reports that several incidents occurred in subways and buses, but that the only explosions came from the detonators and not from any other explosive material:

Minor explosions using detonators only have sparked the evacuation of three Tube stations and the closure of three lines, a BBC correspondent has said.

Police cordoned off large areas around Warren Street, Oval and one of the Shepherd's Bush Tube stations.

A route 26 bus in Hackney Road in Bethnal Green had its windows blown out by a blast. There were no injuries.

Police in London say they are not treating the situation as "a major incident yet".

A recent addition: Michael Yon reporting from Iraq

Michael Yon has recently been mentioned by many high-profile bloggers. He has been mentioned for good reason: he has been providing quality reporting on what is happening in Iraq. In his latest post, he writes about the discovery of a munitions factory and stash in Mosul. He has a lot more than just that in his post. For example, how many people know that when a rocket or mortar is fired at a US target in Iraq that they almost immediately have target information that will allow counter-battery fire? He also has great pictures as well as a rave about how good the US gym facilities are in Iraq!

Marc Cooper says that President Bush is a good poker player

Not only does Marc Cooper thinks that President Bush is a good poker pleyer, but he thinks his opponents are boobs. Marc is an opponent of President Bush, but he admires skill.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Roberts: The Big Suck-Out

My latest L.A. Weekly column to be posted Wednesday night will read pretty much like this:

George W. Bush may, indeed, be a lousy President but he’s turning out to be one helluva poker player. When Dubya retires he might consider partnering up with fellowTexan and legendary card player Doyle Brunson who was last seen trying to buy up the World Poker Tour.

When Bush’s hand was finally called it wasn’t a Lady. Wasn’t a Spade, if you can stand the pun. Wasn’t even a half-cocked cowboy like Alberto Gonzalez. The President finally turned over his cards Tuesday night and the Joker turned out to be none other than Judge John G. Roberts Jr. Judge who?

This is what “Texas Dolly” Brunson, who after all wrote the veritable bible of Texas Hold-em, would call a classic suck-out. You deftly underplay your hand, egging on your over-confident opponent to bet wildly, goading him to escalate on each turn and finally to toss in a mile-high stack of chips. But then you quietly reveal what you had in the hole and sweep the pot off the table leaving your shell-shocked rival to glumly and numbly stare off into middle space.

Bill Dyer likes John Roberts

Bill Dyer (at Beldarblog), likes John Roberts as a Supreme Court nominee.

Why I'm not worried that Judge John G. Roberts will become "another Souter"

Conventional wisdom is that all other things being equal, the single best predictor for how a SCOTUS nominee will behave as a Justice is that nominee's written opinions as an appellate judge on a lower court. Even then, because those lower courts lack the full range of powers that SCOTUS has, there are limits to how confidently such predictions can be made. But many conservatives had hoped that Dubya would pick a nominee (e.g., the Fifth Circuit's Edith Jones) with a long, deep record of writing on controversial issues from, for example, a seat on one of the federal courts of appeals.

He concludes:

Thus, through people like former Solicitor General Ken Starr (and, perhaps, Chief Justice Rehnquist?) with whom John Roberts has worked very closely, and through privileged documents that Judge Roberts must have written himself while a government lawyer, Dubya and his staff certainly know vastly more about Judge Roberts' character and core beliefs than, for example, Poppy Bush ever could have known about David Souter or than the Gipper ever could have known about Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy. Instead, Dubya and his staff have the same kind of first-hand, pertinent, and highly reliable knowledge about John Roberts that Richard Nixon and his staff had about William Rehnquist. And that worked out pretty well over time, didn't it?

Ann Althouse writes about "Roberts and Reasoning"

Ann Althouse has a piece about Supreme Court nominee John Roberts and a critique of him.

Here's an interesting assessment, by Harvard lawprof William Stuntz, of Bush's Supreme Court nominee. (I think that link will work for nonsubscribers to TNR.)

Roberts is a career litigator used to winning cases, not advancing theories--by all accounts intelligent, but without a reputation for flights of abstraction. He is less creative than Michael McConnell, another name often mentioned for the Supreme Court, but also more predictable than someone like McConnell, less likely to change his mind about premises and so end up with different conclusions....

President Bush's choice is John Roberts

Ann Althouse writes about President Bush's choice for the Supreme Court, John Roberts. He was suggested by Joe Lieberman as a compromise candidate, although the rabid left (Leahy, Schumer, Kennedy, and Durbin) in the Senate doesn't like him. That is a good enough recommendation for me.

Our liberal buddies easily become hysterical

Razib, at Gene Expression, points out that the child camel jockies, were helping their families by sending money home. Our liberal buddies were hysterical about "child camel jockies", so that ruined their business.

Christopher Hitchins on "the Plame affair"

To say it mildly, Christopher Hitchins doesn't think much of the current flap that is being created by the MSM and Democrats on the hill. He never disappoints:

Rove Rage The poverty of our current scandal. By Christopher Hitchens Posted Monday, July 18, 2005, at 1:10 PM PT

Writing to a friend in 1954, P.G. Wodehouse commented:

Are you following the McCarthy business? If so, can you tell me what it's all about? "You dined with Mr. X on Friday the tenth?" "Yes, sir." (Keenly) "What did you eat?" "A chocolate nut sundae, sir." (Sensation) It's like Bardell vs Pickwick.

Wodehouse of course was only affecting ignorance and making light of a ludicrously pompous and slightly sinister proceeding. But he was essentially correct in his lampooning of the McCarthy hearings, since even the most convinced anti-communist would not learn anything from the spectacle that he did not already know, and since the show trials managed to go on without producing either any evidence of any crime, or any evidence of any perpetrator, or any evidence of any victim.

He concludes:

But the coverage of this non-storm in an un-teacup has gone far beyond the fantasy of a Rovean hidden hand. Supposedly responsible journalists are now writing as if there was never any problem with Saddam's attempt to acquire yellowcake (or his regime's now-proven concealment of a nuclear centrifuge, or his regime's now-proven attempt to buy long-range missiles off the shelf from North Korea as late as March 2003). In the same way, the carefully phrased yet indistinct statement of the 9/11 Commission that Saddam had no proven "operational" relationship with al-Qaida has mutated lazily into the belief that there were no contacts or exchanges at all, which the commission by no means asserts and which in any case by no means possesses the merit of being true. The CIA got everything wrong before 9/11, and thereafter. It was conditioned by its own culture to see no evil. It regularly leaked—see any of Bob Woodward's narratives—against the administration. Now it, and its partisans and publicity-famished husband-and-wife teams, want to imprison or depose people who leak back at it. No, thanks. Many journalists are rightly appalled at Time magazine's collusion with a prosecutor who has proved no crime and identified no victim. Far worse is the willingness of the New York Times to accept the demented premise of a prosecutor who has put one of its own writers behind bars.

Yes, I agree that we should be allies of India

Daniel Drezner thinks that we should be allies of India, and I agree. Apparently, many disagree with the idea He writes:.

The U.S.-India entente

So, dear readers, who do you agree with -- John Bolton or George W. Bush? I ask because of this Washington Post story by Dana Milbank and Dafna Linzer:

President Bush agreed yesterday to share civilian nuclear technology with India, reversing decades of U.S. policies designed to discourage countries from developing nuclear weapons.

He concludes:

The Bush administration's calculus is pretty obvious -- they think the geopolitical benefits of a close relationship with India outweigh whatever norm violation has taken place because of how India acquired nuclear weapons. According to the Post article, a Carnegie Endowment paper by Ashley J. Tellis, "India as a New Global Power: An Action Agenda for the United States," spells out the administration's logic.

Comment here on whether you think the tradeoff is worh it. My guess is that foreign policy analysts, regardless of idelology, will be split on this. Full disclosure: I've repeatedly advocated this move in a number of fora. The nonproliferation genie cannot be put back in the bottle for the subcontinent, and this move merely acknowledges reality [But what about the nonproliferation norm?--ed. Yeah, I don't assign a whole lot of explanatory power to that.]

Our buddies, the Germans

The German justice system is working against combatting terrorism. Ed Morrissey has the story.

Why The Law Enforcement Approach To Terrorism Doesn't Work

Germany has shown once again why using a law-enforcement approach with terrorists ultimately fails to protect Western nations. A German court released suspected terrorist financier Mamoun Darkanzli because of a dispute over an extradition request and the reversal of a newly-passed German law intended to strengthen legal tools to fight terrorism:

In a ruling seen as a sharp blow to coordinated counterterrorism efforts in Europe, Germany's highest court refused Monday to turn over to Spain a citizen suspected of aiding Al Qaeda, arguing that a recent European agreement to streamline extradition procedures violated the rights of German citizens. ...

But on Monday the German Constitutional Court declared the law creating the European warrant void, even though it was ratified by the German Parliament in November. The court reasoned that the law infringed on the right of every citizen of Germany, enshrined in its Basic Law, to a court hearing in this country before extradition can take place.

The ruling will surely be seen as a setback in a Europe that has closer coordination to prevent terrorism at the top of the public agenda and is still reeling from the terrorist attacks in London this month.

Marc Cooper has more on "Framing"

Marc Cooper has responded to Professor Lakoff, before. He writes more, in response to an article by Matt Bai that quotes Marc.

Matt Bai has a good piece in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine on the “framing” debate now whipping through the Democratic Party. It’s particularly worthwhile because Bai has the good sense to quote my work earlier this year criticizing framing guru George Lakoff. Says Bai:

In a devastating critique in The Atlantic's April issue, Marc Cooper, a contributing editor at The Nation, skillfully ridiculed Lakoff as the new progressive icon. ''Much more than an offering of serious political strategy, 'Don't Think of an Elephant!' is a feel-good, self-help book for a stratum of despairing liberals who just can't believe how their common-sense message has been misunderstood by eternally deceived masses,'' Cooper wrote. In Lakoff's view, he continued, American voters are ''redneck, chain-smoking, baby-slapping Christers desperately in need of some gender-free nurturing and political counseling by organic-gardening enthusiasts from Berkeley.''

Lakoff doesn't have much patience for criticism (he's a tenured professor, after all), and he keeps at his disposal a seemingly bottomless arsenal of linguistic and philosophical theories with which to refute such attacks.

Marc concludes by writing:

Anyway, Bai does a thorough, commendable job of exploring this Democrat dilemma. You can read the whole piece on the Article Saver website by clicking here. You have to scroll down three articles, but you’ll find it if you're rational and material. Otherwise, you can just try and wish it into being.

I found myself agreeing with Allan Sloan, today

Allan Sloan expressed the opinion about Bernie Ebbers nn his "The Sloan Sessions" segment on the Marketplace Morning Report on the local NPR station. He was saying that no useful purpose is served by sending Bernie Ebbers to jail for 25 years. My opinion is that it is strictly political. The accounting irregularities business has been demagogued by certain politicians (and the NY State Attorney General) for all its worth. That is part of the rationale for sending (or attempting to send) CEO's to jail for long periods. It is all part of the anti-business sentiment that has been holding back business investment and therefore, the economy over the last four years. The mystery has been why businesses are accumulating money rather than hiring and investing. I believe that the post-2001 anti-business furor has been the reason. The SEC under Donaldson and the accounting law were side effects.

Godwin's Law is well-known on Usenet

In the world of news groups on Usenet, Godwin's law is well-known. The basics are that it is inevitable that any discussion thread will eventually bring up Hitler and Nazis. At that point, all discussion in the thread should cease when Godwin's law is invoked. Ed Morrissey says that Godwin's Law should be inforced in Congress:

Will Someone Please Teach Godwin's Law To Congress?

Can ... we ... PLEASE ... get Congressmen and Senators to throw away the Nazi analogies?

Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ) became the latest idiot to get impaled on a historical swastika when he attempted to paint Islamofascist terrorists as worse than Nazis. That may have escaped notice, but then LoBiondo decided to up the ante by crediting Hitler with a rational motivation for killing six million Jews:

Congressman Frank LoBiondo apologized for suggesting that Guantanamo Bay detainees were worse than Adolf Hitler because the Nazi dictator "sort of had a political rationale about what he was doing."

Bill Dyer says that we should just allow the system top work

Bill Dyer (Beldarblog) writes that we should allow the legal system to work to determine the outcome of the Plame affair. Everyone is trying to debate the subject and influence either public opinion or the outcome. Bill writes:

Any blogger, pundit, cable-TV talking head, talk-radio jock, national print or electronic media columnist or reporter, major- or minor-party chairman, or flack from any part of the socio-ecopolitical spectrum, or anyone else who claims to know all about — or even to have any deeply penetrating and almost-certainly-valid insights into — the entire Plame/Wilson/Niger/Novak stuff ... is farting through his/her hat and trying to convince you that it's gospel singing.

I'm tired of reading and listening to it, I'm tired of pretending that it's well modulated or that any of it smells sweet, and I'm still not going to play the gossip-and-speculation game about "how it's all going to turn out." In fact, the one thing we can be abso-positively-freakin'-lutely certain about is that not even any of the principals — whether Amb. & Mrs. Wilson, Messrs. Novak, Rove, Libby, Cooper, and Fitzgerald et al., Mlle. Miller, His Honor Hogan, Dubya, and/or the D.C. Dogcatcher — know how this is likely to turn out either.

So just respect the process, people!

The process is designed to figure out whether there's enough reason to believe that a crime has been committed in order to charge someone with that, and then to figure out whether he/she is guilty. The process doesn't always work perfectly, and it rarely works quickly. But it works far better than anything else anyone's come up with yet. We've been polishing it up for hundreds of years. And in this particular set of matters, it's way far from being finished yet.

Ace writes about Irshad Manji

Ace has a good piece about a woman who is television producer in Canada. Her name is Irshad Manji, and traditional Muslims do not like her.

Osama bin Ladin and a lipstick lesbian in the same story. Honestly, I'd have to link it even if it wasn't very good. But it is pretty interesting:

No wonder Irshad Manji has received death threats since appearing on British television: she is a lipstick lesbian, a Muslim and scourge of Islamic leaders, whom she accuses of making excuses about the terror attacks on London. Oh, and she tells ordinary Muslims to “crawl out of their narcissistic shell”. Ouch.

Not what we want to hear in Texas

Charles Johnson has a post about the reputed plot to bring explosive-laden trucks into the US, presumably for terrorist attacks. Presumably, Dallas, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio would all be targets, as well as the oil refineries. If you have money, there are people out there, especially in northern Mexico, to do what you want.

BI bulletin outlines possible terrorist plot at Texas border. (Hat tip: Ron.)

DALLAS - (KRT) - Dirt roads trace pale lines across a desolate landscape of bald peaks and plunging canyons near Texas’ Big Bend and bridge the international boundary at dozens of improvised crossings. For decades, these routes have been used to smuggle drugs and humans. Now there is growing concern they could become deadly conduits for terrorism.

Clayton Cramer says that it is not just the history journals that behave strangely

Apparently prestigious and respected science journals can behave strangely. Clayton Cramer had seen issues when dealing with history journals, but hadn't expected that you would see similar issues in science. He as a post:

So It Isn't Just The History Journals... I'm reading Gina Kolata's Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999) at the moment. My wife wasn't thrilled with the writing, but I'm generally pleased with it. Kolata is a journalist with a degree in microbiology, and where she is covering the scientific aspects of the hunt, she does a really good job of explaining the what, the how, and the why. On the other hand, chapter six, where she covers the bureaucratic processes and legal battles over the 1976 swine flu immunization program, was perilously close to a chronicle of events, and it dragged as a result. Anyway, there is one discussion on pages 216-17 of what happened when scientists at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology successfully retrieved the 1918 influenza epidemic virus from tissues samples of that time, and started mappping its genes. They submitted a paper about what was clearly a major and important scientific success to both Nature and Science, and in both cases, were basically blown off by the editors:

Only after some senior scientists intervened on Taubenberger's behalf was his paper sent out for review. Then, he said, the reviewers were enthusiastic about the paper and it was accepted for publication. But Taubenberger was shaken by the experience. "It scared the hell out of us," he said. "I thought it would never get published." After all, he adds, he had no experience with high-profile science and he just assumed that if he did something really important, major journals would jump at the chance to publish it.

The New Donkey is as focused on Karl Rove as any other Democrat

The New Donkey writes about the Karl Rove flap. Karl Rove has cleaned the Democrat's clock so many times that they obsess about getting him. If they ever did succeed in nailing him, they would be insufferable (as if they already are not). It just shows how the Democrats have latched onto the Plame affair as a vain hope that they might get major points, when nothing else seems to be working. The New Donkey writes:

I'm not much in the habit of reading the RNC's web page, so I'm glad Josh Marshall gave a heads-up about the special cavalcade of quotes defending Karl Rove that went up on the site today.

Each of these quotes has its own special taste of unintended humor, but there are two big howlers running throughout: (1) Senate Democratic criticism of the silly little business about Rove is detracting from all the big, important things the GOP is trying to do for The People; and (2) Democrats are unaccountably and without provocation acting partisan.

For programmers, Dr. Z has a discussion of exception mechanism correctness

Dr. Z, writing at Abstract Software Development Language, has a piece about exception mechanisms in C++-like languages, and how a correct implementation should behave. He starts off by writing:

A compiler deals with several notions of correctness, with syntactic correctness paramount in its list. In this note I would like to discuss a notion of correctness regarding exception mechanism.

We have learned the hard way that even expensive testing can miss uncaught exceptions with disastrous consequences. Therefore, the following notion of correctness seems justified.

Are all thrown exceptions caught?

That is, how can we direct the compiler to verify that all thrown exceptions are actually caught?

Note that the compiler can only be responsible for exceptions raised by the application. For instance, division by zero is an exception that the underlying system may throw at any point. The compiler would not know where to assume that catching such an exception is related to correctness. For instance, we may only perform a division after testing that the object in the denominator has a value more than 77. In such cases we are responsible for proper error checking.

Let us abbreviate the notion of correctness we are seeking to Exception Mechanism Correctness (EMC).

For those who have an interest in these sorts of discussions, Dr. Z is always worth a read.

Ann Althouse writes about "What emboldens terrorists"

Ann Althouse has a post about "What emboldens terrorists". She points out a column by Tony Parkinson:

Normblog points to this Tony Parkinson column that soundly responds those who say that without Blair's alliance with Bush in Iraq the London bombings would never have happen. You should read it. It is well-argued -- especially this:

Chasing American forces out of Somalia in 1993 was held up as one of the first, great victories for the new wave of radical Islam. In the myth-making of the Middle East, it allowed the West to be portrayed as weak and irresolute.

To that extent, President Bill Clinton made the same strategic error as Ronald Reagan a decade earlier when American forces were pulled out of Lebanon after a massive Hezbollah suicide attack on US barracks in Beirut. It reinforced the idea that democratic societies didn't have the stomach to counter this vicious style of asymmetrical warfare.

For the same reason, Iraq today represents a critical test of will.

Conceding strategic victories to this mindset will not protect a single innocent life, in Iraq, the West or elsewhere. More likely, it will embolden those behind these acts of savagery.

I have never heard anything from the anti-war side that comes anywhere near responding to this.

How about Ted Nugent for Governor of Michigan?

The American Princess writes about having Ted Nugent running for Governor or Michigan (against "the moled wonder", Jennifer Granholm):

So while I have complete faith in a candidate like Dick DeVos, there's always that dream candidate out there. A guy who really represents your views, who's brutally honest, unabashedly partisan, and who says what he means, and means what he says.

A candidate like Ted Nugent.

No. I am not kidding.

Yes, sir. The Nuge, the Motor City Madman, may be throwing his camouflage cowboy hat with the real 'coon tail into the ring to take on the Moled Wonder.

From Political Wire (via alert reader, Richard--thanks guys, by the way. Its been a busy week and my wire reading has taken a significant dive. I appreciate it so much!): He's flirted with running for political office before, but now the Corpus Christi Caller Times quotes musician Ted Nugent saying, "I'm getting real close to deciding to run for governor of Michigan and that will be determined here with in the next few weeks."

Not that the Nuge isn't qualified, he's written for more than 40 publications and is author of "God, Guns and Rock n’ Roll," "Kill It and Grill It" and the newly released "BloodTrails II." He’s serving his fourth term on the National Rifle Association’s board of directors, and is president of the Ted Nugent United Sportsmen of America. And if that wasn’t enough, his No. 1 voted hunting show "Spirit of the Wild" on the Outdoor Channel. He's the national spokesman for D.A.R.E. and he's got a solid political outlook

Jack Kelly is on to something with Plamegate

Jack Kelly has a long piece about Plamegate and what Judith Miller is protecting. This is worth more coverage, as it is such a hot topic. He writes:

The two great questions in PlameGate are:

1. Why is the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, pursuing this case so vigorously, when there is little likelihood that the leaker or leakers committed a crime?

2. Who is New York Times reporter Judith Miller protecting? Why?

These questions may be answered in the fullness of time, but they also may not.

He then speculates about what it is all about:

Fitzgerald already has a major bone to pick with Miller. He believes she materially and dangerously impeded his investigation into a terrorist-financing scheme run by the Holy Land Foundation.

When Miller found out that Fitzgerald was on the verge of indicting Holy Land, she called the Foundation for comment -- and right after her call Fitzgerald believes the Foundation may have commenced a shredding party that ensured prosecutors would find little paperwork to go on when they raided the Holy Land offices.

Fitzgerald's motivations are key. There is nothing in his biography to indicate that he is either an idiot, or a left-wing zealot.

If Fitzgerald is not an idiot, he must know that it will be all but impossible to prove that the leaker or leakers committed a crime.

To prove a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which was passed in 1982 in response to rogue CIA officer Philip Agee's publication of undercover CIA officers, one of whom was later assassinated, Fitzgerald must prove:

First, that the leaker obtained his or her information about the covert status of a CIA operative from authorized sources. Cocktail party gossip doesn't count. This is why I don't think Miller is the leaker. I'm sure she knew of Plame's identity. But as a journalist, she has no authorized access to classified information. And if Luskin is telling the truth, it also takes Rove off the hook. If he didn't know Valerie Plame's name, he must have found out about her from an unofficial source. No one is listed on the NOC list as "Joe Wilson's wife."

Second, Fitzgerald must prove that the purpose of the leak was to out Valerie Plame. The context of Rove's conversation with Cooper, as recounted both by Luskin and by Cooper's own notes, indicates that that wasn't his purpose. It's highly doubtful that Judy Miller or Novak's CIA source intended for harm to come to Plame, either.

Third, Fitzgerald must prove that Plame is a "covert agent" under the statute. The statute defines a covert agent as someone who is operating under cover overseas, or who has done so in the last five years. But Plame -- who was outed by (CIA traitor) Aldrich Ames in 1994 -- has been manning a desk at Langley since 1997. Math is not a long suit for most journalists, but it isn't hard to determine that 2003 is six years after 1997.

Finally, Fitzgerald has to prove that Plame's occupation was a secret until Novak disclosed it. Since an awful lot of journalists on the D.C. cocktail party circuit knew it, that's a tough row to hoe.

So if Fitzgerald isn't pursuing a vendetta against Miller, he must be pursuing a related crime. Perhaps someone fudged, or lied outright, in grand jury testimony, and Fitzgerald can hang them on a Martha Stewart offense.

If so, I doubt that Rove lied. A first year law school student should be able to get him off on the leaking rap, so he'd be a fool to lie. The worst that could happen to him is that he'd get fired, and he'd have no difficulty finding other, more lucrative employment.

It's also pretty plain that Miller is protecting someone else, and -- if Fitzgerald isn't just being a jerk -- he's done something pretty bad. I think the biggest shoes are yet to drop in this case, and that the news media won't like them when they do.

Marc Cooper on the fallout from the latest political action

Marc Cooper first says:

I very much like what Juan Cole has to say about Karl Rove. He deftly cuts to the core issue, pushing aside all the temporizing we now hear from the die-hard apologists of All Things Bush.

But Marc temporizes that with his money quote:

I'm rather (morbidly) fascinated by the dark depths that knee-jerk partisanship has reached in American politics. Is there anyone still around who can form an actual, reasoned opinion without first checking his or her voter reg card? The same Republicans who were willing to impeach Bill Clinton because he lied on a deposition (something I thought he should resign over) cannot bring themselves to see absolutely anything awry whatsoever with the Bushies. Torture? What torture? Fabrication of intelligence? Certainly not. Character assasination by Karl Rove while toying with national security? Oh, heavens no. Who will be the first prominent Republican to cut bait on Karl Rove? Will there be one?

On the other side, we see Democrats who suddenly love the most anti-democratic procedure of all, the fillibuster. Or Democrats like the yik-yaks on Air America who defended the leak of the Pentagon Papers but today were gloating over Judith Miller being in jail because they didn't like her reporting on Iraq.

It's not hard to figure out why Americans hate politics. Why 100 milliion don't bother to vote.

Is Judith Miller in jail to keep the Rove story alive?

An interesting theory from the JunkYardBlog is that Judith Miller is in jail to keep from exonerating Karl Rove (and to protect herself from worse)!

And it all brings us back around to the question at the top--Who is Miller sitting in jail to protect? Most likely, herself. Most of upper crust DC knew who Plame was and that she worked for the CIA before Novak's story ever hit. Miller herself never even wrote about Plame directly. She had done quite a bit of Iraq WMD reporting, though, using CIA sources, so it's reasonable to conclude that she knew Plame as a CIA WMD monitor, or at least knew of her work. And therefore she knew of Wilson's connection to Plame without having to hear it obliquely from Karl Rove. And Wilson's connection to Plame, about which he lied repeatedly to the press when he denied her role, was and is very much relevant to the story because it addresses his credibility as a fact-finder. The fact is, Plame used her CIA job to send her out-of-work husband on a ringer's job to "investigate" and debunk any claims that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger. The job wasn't sanctioned by anyone higher than Plame's immediate colleagues. The press hasn't bothered to ask why Plame and her little clique did this?

Now, I wish I could take credit for the Miller-is-Miller's-source line of reasoning, but the truth is I gleaned it from reading several blogs and stories and honestly don't remember which one or ones ran this particular line to ground. If I remember, I'll link and praise. If you see it, drop me a note.

UPDATE: John Podhoretz likes the theory, and adds some background that makes it much more plausible:

What if -- and here's where it gets really interesting -- what if the real object of interest where Fitzgerald's investigation is concerned is now none other than the jailed Judith Miller of the New York Times? What if she let it all slip and in the giant game of telephone around the nation's capital, Miller was the original source of the "Plame's in the CIA" info? What if Fitzgerald needs her notes to discern whether Miller knew or didn't know of Plame's supposedly covert status?

Fitzgerald already has a major bone to pick with Miller. He believes she materially and dangerously impeded his investigation into a terrorist-financing scheme run by the Holy Land Foundation.

When Miller found out that Fitzgerald was on the verge of indicting Holy Land, she called the Foundation for comment -- and right after her call Fitzgerald believes the Foundation may have commenced a shredding party that ensured prosecutors would find little paperwork to go on when they raided the Holy Land offices.

As the Washington Post put it, "On Dec. 3, 2001, Times reporter Judith Miller telephoned officials with the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a Texas-based charity accused of being a front for Palestinian terrorists, and asked for a comment about what she said was the government's probable crackdown on the group. U.S. officials said this conversation and Miller's article on the subject in the Times on Dec. 4 increased the likelihood that the foundation destroyed or hid records before a hastily organized raid by agents that day."

Fitzgerald sought her phone records on that occasion to uncover the source of a potential leak in his own office and was blocked by a liberal New York judge named Robert Sweet. Miller didn't get so lucky this time. Fitzgerald thinks Miller has a loose tongue, and for good reason. It's possible he's trying to figure out what other mischief her loose tongue might have caused.

Now ain't that curious.

Jack Kelly on Rove and "Plamegate"

Jack Kelly is a well-known columnist with conservative leanings. His blog is called "Irish Pennants". Today, he has a post about Karl Rove and the Plame affair.

The New York Times has a long, long story on the affair today, with -- as Michelle Malkin notes -- the important stuff buried near the end:

The e-mail message from Mr. [Matthew] Cooper to his [Time] bureau chief describing a brief conversation with Mr. Rove, first reported in Newsweek, does not by itself establish that Mr. Rove knew Ms. Wilson's covert status or that the government was taking measures to protect her.

Based on the e-mail message, Mr. Rove's disclosures are not criminal, said Bruce S. Sanford, a Washington lawyer who helped write the law and submitted a brief on behalf of several news organizations concerning it to the appeals court hearing the case of Mr. Cooper and Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times. Ms. Miller has gone to jail rather than disclose her source.

"It is clear that Karl Rove's conversation with Matt Cooper does not fall into that category" of criminal conduct, Mr. Sanford said. "That's not 'knowing.' It doesn't even come close."

There has been some dispute, moreover, about just how secret a secret agent Ms. Wilson was.

"She had a desk job in Langley," said Ms. Toensing, who also signed the supporting brief in the appeals court, referring to the C.I.A.'s headquarters. "When you want someone in deep cover, they don't go back and forth to Langley."

He concludes:

Since this is so, it follows that "the uranium business could still be true."

When the Wilson brouhaha broke, the British established a commission under Lord Butler to investigate prewar intelligence on Iraq from MI5 and MI6:

We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government’s dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded. By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that:

The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa was well-founded. (Paragraph 499)

The Senate Intelligence Committee report and the Butler Commission report are both easily accessible on the Web. Yet Kurtz and his colleagues continue to lie.

And no, Howard, the White House "didn't promise to fire anyone who was involved in the leak." The president promised to fire anyone who violated the law. Trust journalists not to understand the difference.

Yes, we are in a clash of civilizations...sorry about that!

Charles Johnson has a piece about what we are seeing all too much. He writes in his Little Green Footballs blog. The Left in the US is in a schizophrenic state, because they think that Islamic hate speech is acceptable, while criticism of things like homosexuality are not. This is some of what Charles pointed out:

In a sermon about the London terror attacks, an unnamed imam on United Arab Emirates TV almost sounds sane—until that inevitable moment when you become aware of the vast yawning gulf between his world and ours.

Preacher: What happened in a certain country, which was mentioned in the media yesterday, is a clear act of aggression, which is totally devoid of any logic, and is entirely unjustified. Whoever carries out such an act is not a Muslim, nor is he a religious person. This is the kind of criminal act that serves only those who wish to destroy mankind, and to thwart civilization and progress. Igniting civil strife and using the tools of war and destruction is the habit of the despicable Jews and Christians of the ancient nations, and the Koran has already deplored them for that.

Courtesy MEMRI TV.

Clayton Cramer points out that Al-Qaeda "has a tin ear" about politics

Clayton Cramer writes about Al-Qaeda and the attacks in London. They have succeeded in changing British attitudes more towards taking action against the Islamic radicals.

The net effect of the London bombings? About what happened in America after 9/11, according to this poll conducted the day after: Not surprisingly, people's willingness to see the authorities taking whatever steps are necessary to apprehend and, if need be, detain potential terrorists has risen sharply.

More than 80 per cent believe the threat is so serious that the authorities should act against suspected terrorists even if they have not committed any offence.

The survey also reveals increased support for identity cards. Compared with last week, support for ID cards has increased significantly, almost certainly as a result of the attacks. Even so, people by a wide margin remain unconvinced that the introduction of cards would help prevent terrorist acts.

Dafydd, writing at Captains Quarters, says that Hillary will never even be nominated for president

I am less certain, but Ed Morrissey's guest blogger, Dafydd, thinks that Hillary will never be president. He even says that she couldn't be nominated. He writes:

I absolutely believe, conventional wisdom notwithstanding, that Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham will never be the Democratic nominee for president. (She might not even be a candidate, if she thinks she's going to lose; but her ego may compel her to try, just as John Kerry's did.)

He concludes:

It might be different if there were absolutely nobody to carry the banner of the Democratic Left. She might be nominated then, though she would still lose the general election. But that simply is not the case; there are any number of better-qualified liberals willing to run, starting right at the top with Howard the Dean. Despite his promise not to run if he were chosen as chairman of the DNC, there is actually no law against it. And he is a governor and a former presidential candidate with a proven base of support. Then there is also Gephardt, Biden, Gore, and possibly even Tom Daschle. Slightly more moderate Dems like Mark Warner will probably appeal to the crossover constituency that Hillary is comically trying to woo at the moment.

I believe that Hillary will end up being the forgotten women in 2008. Her borrowed cloak of power will be moth-ridden and threadbare, and she will be "just another senator," one of a hundred, and not a very powerful one at that.

And she will not be the Democratic nominee -- then or ever.

I heard a conservative listener comment on KERA radio, this morning

This morning, I was pleasantly surprised that there was an articulate conservative listener making the points about NPR and PBS bias that I have consistently thought, but was not able to articulate as well as this. I listen to KERA radio (90.1 FM) in the Dallas area. We used to be big supporters of KERA radio, prior to when then shifted format away from local folk music to the national news feed (extermist left-wing talk radio). Now, they wonder why they have trouble getting financial support.

Razib writes a piece called "Beyond Languages" (presumably)

The title of Razib's piece at Gene Expressions must be "Beyond Languages", although what he actually wrote seems mangles. I have some interest in the peoples back beyond 5,000 years ago. Razib writes that some of our names for languages might not be that accurate, as we only know what has survived to our times, and that there may have been other languages which died out a long time ago.

One area where this is important is that of historical linguistics, because the terms are often confusing and there is no overall system for nomenclature, at least for older terms that are still central to the discourse (say like in organic chemistry). For example, the names of some branches of the Indo-European languages have strong geographical connotations. "Iranian" speakers live in Iran (roughly speaking, the historical Persia) and Indo-Aryan speakers reside in the Indian subcontinent. But these appellations cause problems when one speaks of the ancient Scythians, who ranged on the Black Sea Steppe, or their successors, the Sarmatians, who eventually settled upon Hungarian plains. Both are often classified as "Iranian" because of the features of their language. But the term elicits in the mind of the target audience outside of linguistics the geographical term, so many assume that the Scythians and Sarmatians swept out of Persia via the Central Asian steppe or up through the trans-Caucasian plains. An even more vexing issue is that of "Indo"-Aryans. Several decades ago an Indo-Aryan group was found to have settled in the kingdom of the Mitanni, roughly the upper regions of the Euphrates now within the borders of Syria. There were terms within the predominantly Hurrian language of the Mitanni, which was non-Indo-European (and not Semitic either, it was one of the many hard-to-classify languages which existed prior to the recent expansion of both the aforementioned language groups), which were clearly Indo-Aryan.

The Belmont Club blogger is no longer anonymous

As many bloggers become more widely known for their writing, many have chosen to shed anonymity. Richard Fernandex, AKA Wretchard, is the lastest. He writes about himself on his blog, The Belmont Club:

Anonymous blogging has proved a good buffer against the petty vanities of authorship. The deal is you don't do radio interviews, signed articles etc. The upside is that you have no ego to protect. The ideas you articulate are separated from your own personality.

This model is only partially functional now. People who knew me in the past, as well as my colleagues at Pajamas Media, know perfectly well "who" I am, although I think that information is totally irrelevant. Since the model of anonymity is failing, I'll disclose the boring details. My name is Richard Fernandez, of Filipino birth and Australian citizenship. My interest in history probably began at Harvard, from which I graduated with a Masters in Public Policy. Wretchard is the name of an imaginary cat, the symbol of that entire race of stoic, yet somewhat foolish creatures. Belmont is the name of a suburb I roomed in while at Cambridge, Mass.

Razib, at Gene Expression, writes about a Catholic Cardinal

Razib, at Gene Expression, has a post about a Roman Catholic Cardinal who has spoken about evolution.

It seems a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church has been reading Intelligent Design talking points. This has many individuals worried, both Catholic and non-Catholic, as the Church's general stance in favor of common descent has been a valuable arrow in the arsenal of those who wish to move beyond the conception that evolutionary theory, broadly speaking, excludes theism.¹ For me the key point to hone in on is that the Cardinal states that evolution is purely a process of "of random variation and natural selection." The emphasis on the perceived "random" aspect of evolutionary theory is something that many critics like to linger upon because it is a clear philosophical wedge that can be used to peel away theists who believe in a personal Creator. But it is a philosophical issue in the end, and I am confident that Roman Catholic theologians can uphold the Kantian division between the two realms (the means are irrelevant to me as I am not a believer, I have faith in Jesuitical cleverness). An important point to remember though is that natural selection is not random, and I suspect that Stephen Jay Gould's quip that if you rewound the clock of life and allowed evolution to proceed once more that the diversity of the world would flower in a wholly unrecognizable form is probably a minority view among evolutionary biologists.

Marc Cooper backs Andy Stern in his fight against the AFL/CIO

My sympathies often lie with the underdog and rebel, particularly when is rebelling against something worth beating. The AFL/CIO has been run as a purely political organization, ignoring the needs of ordinary union members. Marc Cooper support Andy Stern in his rebellion. Marc writes:

Here's one reason why I'm delighted to support Andy Stern's rebellion against the AFL-CIO. Stern is prepared to state a very simple truth that somehow keeps gettting overlooked. Electing Democrats, in it itself, is hardly synonymous with effecting political and social change. This rather obvious truth has been increasingly overlooked by too many who have forgotten that Democrats can be just as awful as Republicans, especially when it comes to core economic issues. (Shall we note the Democratic capitulation on CAFTA just last week?)

Marc then quotes Andy Stern (he has a lot more on his blog):

During a briefing Thursday, Stern said politics is only part of labor's strategy. He said "electing Democrats and taking back the House or getting rid of (House Majority Leader) Tom Delay" are not enough to answer workers' problems.

"It certainly would help, but we don't think it's the answer," Stern said. (more)

Bruce Thornton, writing at VDH's Private Papers, says that we are back into the war between Christendom and Islam

Bruce Thornton writes, at Victor David Hanson's Private Papers, that what we are experiencing is simply the reignited war between Christendom and Islam that was fought over what he says was 14 centuries.

he slaughter in London is another grisly wake-up call that likely will go as unheeded as earlier ones. Already the standard narrative is being trotted out: evildoers created by what the New York Times predictably called the “root causes of terrorism”: autocracy, or economic stagnation, or Palestinian suffering, or globalization's dislocations, or Western historical sins, or the war in Iraq (the cause will depend on the political prejudices of the pundit) have “hijacked” Islam and distorted its peaceful message. And now they are using Islam to justify murder in order to further their own ambitions or dysfunctional psychic needs. Given this explanation, so the story goes, we must be careful not to demonize all Muslims and assure them that we respect their religion and culture. The tale is then wrapped up with fierce threats against the terrorists and protestations of admiration for Islam.

Believing this delusion requires that one ignores fourteen centuries of Islamic jihad against the West, a war of conquest and colonization ratified by centuries of Islamic theology and jurisprudence. Indeed, what we call Islamic radicals are in fact Islamic traditionalists; it is the so-called “moderates” — those wanting to compromise Islam so it can coexist with Western ideas such as secular government, separation of church and state, and human rights — who are the radicals and innovators. The terrorists are simply fulfilling the traditional and orthodox command of their religion to battle the infidels who resist the revelation of Mohammed and the global socio-political order mandated by Islam.

Christopher Hitchins on Islamic Terrorism

Christopher Hitchins explains, in the Mirror, why there is no political solution to the war on terror. He puts the attacks in London in context:

I'm writing this in the early aftermath, but I would be willing to bet there will have been little or no bloody foolishness, either: no random attacks on mosques or shops or individuals. After all, devices on our buses and tubes are an open proclamation that the perpetrators don't care if they kill Muslims. Which, of course, is part of the point. When we use the weak and vague word "terrorism" we imply indiscriminate cruelty directed at civilians.

He then explains:

I remember living in London through the Provisional IRA bombing in the 70s. I saw the very first car-bomb explode against the Old Bailey in 1972. There was no warning that time, but after a while a certain etiquette developed.

And, even as I detested the people who might have just as soon have blown me up as anyone else, I was aware there were ancient disputes involved, and that there was a potential political solution.

Nothing of the sort applies in this case. We know very well what the "grievances" of the jihadists are.

The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law. The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London. The grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won't abandon lands in Darfur. The grievance of the existence of homosexuals. The grievance of music, and of most representational art. The grievance of the existence of Hinduism. The grievance of East Timor's liberation from Indonesian rule. All of these have been proclaimed as a licence to kill infidels or apostates, or anyone who just gets in the way.

I wondered about the real names of the Fraters Liberats guys

I was just reading Fraters Libertas, a habit I formed during my last year in Minnesota. I looked, again, at their pen names, and wondered who they are. At least some of them are uncovered in a St. Paul Pioneer Press piece from January. There is also a good post with pictures of many of the Minnesota and NARN crowd. NARN is short for the Northern Alliance Radio Network. Hugh Hewitt was apparently responsible for naming the Minnesota bloggers "The Northern Alliance". That is found on David Strom and Margaret Martin's blog "Our House".

Marc Cooper on the attacks in London

Marc Cooper has a good, level-headed piece on the attacks in London on July 7th. He writes:

The savage bombings in the London underground are a stark and bloody reminder that, alas, we live in a complicated world in which civilization is threatened on many fronts. How nice it would be to inhabit a more simplistic bi-polar fantasy, say, of the Maoist bent. It was the Great Helmsman himself who harrumphed that "The primary contradiction is between U.S. imperialism and and all the worlds' peoples."

Chairman Mao conveniently forgot all those other "secondary" contradictions. You know, like the one between his totalitarian state and the 17 million people it killed. Or the one between the Russians and the Chinese. The Vietnamese and the Chinese. The Vietnamese and the Cambodians. Rich versus poor. White versus black. Hutus against Tutsis. The sacred against the profane. The religious fanatics versus secular democracy.

Which brings us back full circle to the savagery in London. It was bad enough listening to the reports of the bombings themselves. That pain was aggravated by the politicization of the events. From the Idiot Right were the numbskulls arguing over Shock Radio that the bombings somehow justified the war in Iraq. From the Idiot Left came Janeane Garfolo's shriekings over Air America that somehow these bombings could be traced back to the Bush administration's supposed countenance of terrorism.

Pathetic, really. Whatever one thinks of Bush (and I hold him in very low esteem) the London bombers are monsters who are fully responsible for their butchery. Period.

The British knew of the threat of attacks before they happened

We believe, now, that the British had some warning prior to the bomb attacks today. There is an AP story on Yahoo News breaking this story. We only know about the warning because of an Israeli connection.

How to get listed on Google: put Google AdSense ads on your site

I think that being able to show up in Google simply because you put Google AdSense ads on your site is pretty bad, but I have seen it work for Dr. Z (C++ Wish List). It also seemed to be the case that he was removed from Yahoo at the same time. Originally, he seemd to have been nailed by the Google Sandbox phenomenon, but putting ads on his blogs cured that problem (seemingly). I would like to think that this is not the case, but it sure seems to be true.

Kevin Drum, at Washington Monthly can't understand why Matt Cooper is testifying

Kevin Drum, at The Washington Monthly, doesn't understand why Matt Cooper, of Time Magazine, would testify, rather than go to jail over anonymous sources. Kevin's world view, which assumes that Carl Rove is the Plame leaker, doesn't account for Matt's testimony. Carl Rove has told everyone that they are free to testify, and that disconnects with our lefty friend's hope and assumption that Carl Rove is the leaker. Kevin writes:

COOPER IS TESTIFYING....Weird, weird, weird. As I mentioned yesterday, Karl Rove's lawyer says that Rove has signed a waiver allowing reporters to testify about their conversations with him in the Valerie Plame case. However, the nature of the waiver was unclear, and Matt Cooper still intended to refuse to testify about his source anyway.

The American Princess has a post about "walls having ears"

The American Princess has fun with what is happening when some of the more obnoxious people have been overheard saying things that they will live to regret:

You just never know who might be listening, but if you are a high powered political player, you should probably know that already (or if you happen to have lived through high school as a female).

But apparently the memo missed Jacques Chirac yesterday, as he offered this beauty:

"The only thing that they have ever done for European agriculture is 'mad cow' disease," Chirac said of the British.

"You cannot trust people who have such bad cuisine. It is the country with the worst food after Finland," he told amused colleagues Sunday during a ceremony to mark the 750th anniversary of the founding of Kaliningrad, Russia

She also writes:

Now Senator Schumer, he should know better.

Lucky for Republicans, hubris is a prized quality in liberals.

Especially when it happens to work its way into a cell phone conversation.

Senate Judiciary Committee member Chuck Schumer got busy plotting away on the cellphone aboard a Washington, DC-New York Amtrak -- plotting Democrat strategy for the upcoming Supreme Court battle. Schumer promised a fight over whoever the President’s nominee was: “It's not about an individual judge…It's about how it affects the overall makeup of the court.”

Schumer proudly declared (on a cell phone conversation with an unknown ally): “We are contemplating how we are going to go to war over this.” Schumer went on to say how hard it was to predict how a Supreme Court justice would turn out: “Even William Rehnquist is more moderate than they expected. The only ones that resulted how they predicted were [Antonin] Scalia and [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg. So most of the time they've gotten their picks wrong, and that's what we want to do to them again.”

Rob, writing at Wizbang!, quotes a Kenyan economist

Rob Port (of the Say Anything blog) has a good piece at Wizbang! about the situation in Africa. he has a long quote from a Kenyan economist:

Excerpt from a Spiegel interview with Kenyan economist James Shikwati

SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa...

Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

Read the whole thing.

Like I said before, if we want to solve the problems facing Africa we need to stop simply throwing money at the continent and start pushing for political changes that will bring to power truly free and democratic governments.

(via Outside The Beltway)

Rob Port owns and operates Say Anything.

Bill Dyer (Beldar) has a good piece on Judith Miller and Matt Cooper

Bill Dyer, our favorite Houston lawyer (?) , has a good piece about the attempts by Judith Miller and Matt Cooper to have an easy time while defying a judge. He concludes, while quoting the prosecutor:

Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald had a similar reaction to mine, but was much more wryly polite and less snarky:

Mr. Fitzgerald opposed those requests today, saying that the local jail in the District of Columbia "or some other nearby federal facility" would be more appropriate....

Mr. Fitzgerald, whose public filings to date have been restrained, was harshly critical of the legal position taken by Ms. Miller and of The New York Times's statements in support of her. His response to Mr. Cooper was barely 4 pages; to Ms. Miller, 21 pages....

... "Forced vacation at a comfortable home is not a compelling form of coercion," [Mr. Fitzgerald] wrote.

To which, Beldar replies with that hoary Latin legal phrase: "Bingo."

Razib, at Gene Expression, is skeptical of claims of 40,000 year old foot prints in Mexico

I have long been interested in pre-history in the Western Hemisphere. It was only relatively recently that I had understood that Thor Heyerdahl had been trying to prove that in ancient times that people had crossed the Pacific to South America. There is some evidence to believe that in the last 6,000 years that people had landed on the west coast of South America, in Chile. We do know that there were people in the Western Hemisphere 12-14,000 years ago. They played a role in the Science Fiction series about the "Time Traders". Razib doesn't believe in the "Polynesian island hopping" theory. Razib writes:

40,000-year-old footprint of first Americans. I don't really believe it, and the "island hopping" thesis via Polynesia seems ludicrous to me (if such a thing occurred phylogeneticists should find a previous extinction or bottleneck event prior to the arrival of Polynesians for many species I would think). But that this research gets any play is an indicator as to the unsettled nature of New World paleoanthropology. Nature has some voices of skeptics in their article....