Libertarian Leanings

The administration keeps leaking

According to the Washington Times, on the eve of the Bush Maliki summit in Amman Jordan, Maliki backed out because of a memo written by Stephen Hadley that was leaked to the press.

AMMAN, Jordan -- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki abruptly canceled the first round of face-to-face meetings scheduled here last night with President Bush, just hours after publication of a classified memo from the president's top security aide that says the Iraqi leader is either "ignorant," devious or incapable of governing right now.

The White House said the events were not related, said the cancellation was not a snub, and said the two men will have enough time together this morning, when they have a working breakfast and meeting planned.

"No one should read too much into this," said Dan Bartlett, senior counselor to Mr. Bush.

What I read into the leak of the memo is that there is someone in the administration actively working to sabotage American efforts in Iraq -- even diplomatic efforts.

The Aussies know how it's done

Claudia Rossett, who broke the U.N. Oil for Food story, reports that at least in Australia they know how to conduct an investigation.  Australia’s Cole commission completed a year-long inquiry into an alleged $220 million in kickbacks paid by the Australian Wheat Board to Saddam Hussein under the U.N. Oil-for-Food program.

But some lessons are clear already. For starters, the Cole inquiry has set a standard of clarity and transparency that the U.N. itself has yet to adopt — and shows no signs of doing so. The Cole commission conducted public hearings, and appears to have posted the vital underlying documents in full on the web. The interviews of the U.N.-authorized inquiry into Oil-for-Food, chaired by Paul Volcker, were all done in secret, with snippets released at the sole discretion of Volcker and his team. And although Volcker’s $35 million inquiry — the only investigation with full access to the U.N. itself — went to the trouble of amassing an archive of some 12 million pages, much of that digitally searchable, Volcker never released many of the vital underlying documents. He now appears poised to hand the trove back at the end of next month to the same U.N. where Annan’s former chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, spent months shredding executive office papers potentially relevant to the investigation.

Will on Webb

George Will is mightily unimpressed by Jim Webb, Democratic senator-elect from Virginia.

Webb certainly has conveyed what he is: a boor. Never mind the patent disrespect for the presidency. Webb's more gross offense was calculated rudeness toward another human being -- one who, disregarding many hard things Webb had said about him during the campaign, asked a civil and caring question, as one parent to another. When -- if ever -- Webb grows weary of admiring his new grandeur as a "leader'' who carefully calibrates the "symbolic things'' he does to convey messages, he might consider this: In a republic, people decline to be led by leaders who are insufferably full of themselves.

Unfortunately Virginia and the nation are stuck with this guy for the next six years after which as the incumbent he will be difficult to unseat.

It won't be McCain

There was a time when I thought John McCain was merely misguided in his desire to promote Campaign Finance Reform.  David Hill thinks not, and I'm now inclined to agree.

Pols and pundits enamored by two presidential frontrunners inside the Beltway, namely Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), are ignoring the competitive advantages that governors and other non-senators have enjoyed in recent decades. If you are looking for better odds in 2008, think about someone like outgoing Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a rising star in conservative Republican circles.

Huckabee gave us a reason to pay attention recently when he took on the issue of campaign finance reform. This could be a key to derailing McCain’s straight-to-the-nomination express train. Huckabee called out the Arizonan for fashioning a “reformed” system that allows senators like McCain (and Clinton) to transfer money from Senate committees to presidential efforts. Meanwhile, governors like Huckabee can’t move their state funds into federal accounts.

The federal funds transfer loophole is only one of the defects of the system that McCain and his liberal partner Russ Feingold fashioned. And it’s not even the worst.

Also known as the Incumbency Protection Bill, Campaign Finance Reform certainly seems to favor Washington insiders, but even with that I don't see McCain gaining the Presidency in '08.

A test of Islamic bullying

According to the Washington Times federal air marshalls fear that passengers will be reluctant to report suspicious behavior for fear of being called racist after Muslims made exactly that charge in a press conference at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.  At issue is the detention of the Minneapolis Six.  Rabiah Ahmed, spokeswoman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), claims Muslims "walk around on eggshells" for fear of arousing suspicions.

"Because one person misunderstood the actions of other law-abiding citizens, they were able to trigger a very long and daunting process for other travelers that were pulled off the plane in handcuffs and detained for many hours before they were cleared."

The imams say they were removed from the Phoenix-bound flight because they were praying quietly in the concourse. They had been in Minnesota for a conference sponsored by the North American Imams Federation.

But other passengers said the imams were testing the limits of what passengers and flight crew would put up with. 

The imams, they said, tested the forbearance of the passengers and flight crew in what the air marshal called a "[political correctness] probe."

"The political correctness needs to be left at the boarding gate," the marshal said. "Instilling politically correct fears into the minds of airline passengers is nothing less than psychological terrorism."

The passengers and flight crew said the imams prayed loudly before boarding; switched seating assignments to a configuration used by terrorists in previous incidents; asked for seat-belt extensions, which could be used as weapons; and shouted hostile slogans about al Qaeda and the war in Iraq.

Flight attendants said three of the six men, who did not appear to be overweight, asked for the seat-belt extensions, which include heavy metal buckles, and then threw them to the floor under their seats.

Robert MacLean, a former federal air marshal, expressed the fear yesterday that the situation "will make crews and passengers in the future second-guess reporting these events, thus compromising the aircraft's security out of fear of being labeled a dogmatist or a bigot, or being sued."

File this one under Religion of Peace.

Dowry Disgrace

From Abigail Lavin in the Weekly Standard,

THE LARGEST PRISON in Delhi, Tihar Jail, has a "mother-in-law" cell block, currently home to roughly 120 women, some of whom are serving 20-year sentences for murdering their daughters-in-law. The majority of these crimes stem from disputes over dowry: A bride whose dowry payments are viewed as inadequate is burned to death by her in-laws or husband, the cause of death listed as "kitchen accident." According to India's National Crime Record Bureau, one dowry death is reported every 77 minutes. The bureau recorded 7,026 dowry deaths in 2005 alone.

Terrorist probe

The Washington Times has the story on those imams who were bumped from a Minneapolis flight.  Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas Democrat, has accused the airline of racial profiling in the incident, but security officials tell another story.

Muslim religious leaders removed from a Minneapolis flight last week exhibited behavior associated with a security probe by terrorists and were not merely engaged in prayers, according to witnesses, police reports and aviation security officials.

Witnesses said three of the imams were praying loudly in the concourse and repeatedly shouted "Allah" when passengers were called for boarding US Airways Flight 300 to Phoenix.

"I was suspicious by the way they were praying very loud," the gate agent told the Minneapolis Police Department.

Passengers and flight attendants told law-enforcement officials the imams switched from their assigned seats to a pattern associated with the September 11 terrorist attacks and also found in probes of U.S. security since the attacks -- two in the front row first-class, two in the middle of the plane on the exit aisle and two in the rear of the cabin.

"That would alarm me," said a federal air marshal who asked to remain anonymous. "They now control all of the entry and exit routes to the plane."

A pilot from another airline said: "That behavior has been identified as a terrorist probe in the airline industry."

Via Captain's Quarters.

From Beirut to Baghdad

Christopher Hitchens:

Listen to us, say the Ahmadinejads and their proxies, we will always be here. Can you say the same for the Americans? Many considerations, including intense inter-Islamic Shiite-Sunni hatred, divide Ahmadinejad and Assad from the forces of al-Qaida, which would also prefer to see Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan in ruins than have these countries get a chance of modernism and secularism. But on this essential point, they are in agreement, and their wrecking activities tend toward the same objective. In due course, they will certainly fight each other. But the ruins over which they will be disputing will, they believe, have at least been abandoned by the West, as Afghanistan was after 1989. And the interest of human-rights monitors and others will have slackened accordingly.

If this indeed proves to be the outcome, the victors will be able to rub their eyes at how easy it was. Barely five years after the eviction of the Taliban, three and a half years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, and a year and a half after the Syrian army was forced out of Beirut by a show of mass popular and democratic unity, the memory of those brave fingers marked with the purple ink of the franchise has almost vanished. Tribalism and gangsterism are back, in a big way, with heavy state support from across the frontiers. And the United States, it seems, cannot wait to confirm the impression that it would rather deal with the aggressors.

The Commission

Newt Gingrich speculates on the usefulness of the Baker Hamilton Commission.

Will the Baker Hamilton Commission make a real contribution in helping us win the war against the fanatic wing of Islam? Or will it be simply one more establishment effort to hide defeat so the American political system can resume its comfortable insider games without having to solve real problems in the larger world?

According to Newt, if their proposal includes asking Iran and Syria for help it will be an admission of defeat and a sign that the commission's goal is merely to save face.

Mandate for change

In an article that claims Democrats regained power on "a mandate for change,"

Voters handed Democrats a mandate for change on Nov. 7, politicians and analysts agree...

The Washington Post explains why they will now do nothing.

"The elections definitely have raised expectations in immigrant communities that real reform is possible," said Josh Bernstein of the National Immigration Law Center, which supports broad-based changes to help illegal workers. "But it's still too early to say whether that will translate into actual legislation."

A major rewrite of immigration laws "is enormously complicated," Bernstein said, "and has deep effects on our economy, our identity, the kind of country we're going to be. There are a lot of interests that are very legitimate, whether it's business, worker unions or immigrants from different countries. . . . It's highly emotionally charged on all sides."

Congressional Democrats also are moving carefully on Bush's policy of allowing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without obtaining warrants on communications between the United States and abroad in the name of combating terrorism. Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), who will chair the Senate intelligence committee, recently said he will have the panel sift through information and arguments before taking any legislative steps.

"We must insist on full access to the NSA warrantless surveillance program and the CIA detention and interrogation program," Rockefeller said. "Only then can we conduct thorough oversight of these programs and determine whether they are legal, appropriate and effective and what, if any, legislative action must be taken."

But Rockefeller is not ready to schedule hearings, draw up witness lists or indicate who might be subpoenaed, said his spokeswoman, Wendy Morigi. "We're not there yet," she said.

Translation:  With the election over the focus switches to re-election.  Since they had no plan going in, other than we're-not-Bush, they'll need some time to make one.  But it will be about consolidating power.