Libertarian Leanings

Extraordinarily good at writing law

That's what a Time magazine puff piece says about Democrat Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.  Oliver North does not agree.

Notwithstanding Waxman's billing as a legislator who loves to "write laws, and he has been extraordinarily good at it," only three of the 95 bills he has sponsored in the past decade have been enacted. Seventy-seven of them were so good that they didn't even make their way out of committee.

According to Colonel North, Time magazine thinks so highly of Representative Waxman, that the Time Warner Political Action Committee donated $13,500 to Waxman's 2006 re-election campaign.  Oddly enough Time did not consider that fact germane to the article.

Significant shifts

The recent regime change in France, replacement of Jacques Chirac by President Nicolas Sarkozy, has created a shift in the balance of forces in Europe, according to Charles Krauthammer.  Sarkozy is ready to work in conjunction with the United States, a turnabout from France's tradition of "permanent anti-Americanism."

On the largest possible stage -- the U.N. General Assembly -- President Nicolas Sarkozy put Iran on notice. His predecessor, Jacques Chirac, had said that France could live with an Iranian nuclear bomb. Sarkozy said that France cannot. He declared Iran's nuclear ambitions "an unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world."

His foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, had earlier said that the world faces two choices -- successful diplomacy to stop Iran's nuclear program or war. And Sarkozy himself has no great hopes for the Security Council, where China and Russia are blocking any effective action against Iran. He does hope to get the European Union to join the U.S. in imposing serious sanctions.

"Weakness and renunciation do not lead to peace," he warned. "They lead to war."

Why we are winning

Frederick W. Kagan, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, explains why we are winning in Iraq.

Many politicians and pundits in Washington have ignored perhaps the most important point made by Gen. David Petraeus in his recent congressional testimony: The defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq requires a combination of conventional forces, special forces and local forces. This realization has profound implications not only for American strategy in Iraq, but also for the future of the war on terror.

As Gen. Petraeus made clear, the adoption of a true counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq in January 2007 has led to unprecedented progress in the struggle against al Qaeda in Iraq, by protecting Sunni Arabs who reject the terrorists among them from the vicious retribution of those terrorists. In his address to the United Nations General Assembly Wednesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki also touted the effectiveness of this strategy while at the same time warning of al Qaeda in Iraq's continued threat to his government and indeed the entire region.

Yet despite the undeniable successes the new strategy has achieved against al Qaeda in Iraq, many in Congress are still pushing to change the mission of U.S. forces back to a counterterrorism role relying on special forces and precision munitions to conduct targeted attacks on terrorist leaders. This change would bring us back to the traditional, consensus strategy for dealing with cellular terrorist groups like al Qaeda--a strategy that has consistently failed in Iraq.

Methinks Mr. Kagan is much too generous toward congressional Democrats who push to change the mission in Iraq.  They have not missed the general's point.  They get it very well, and they know the counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, but success in Iraq is not good news for the Democrats.  Anti-war Democrats want the mission in Iraq to fail.  Having bet their political fortunes on it, they use every ploy they can think of to make failure in Iraq a reality.

Four boneheaded biases

Bryan Caplan explains the four boneheaded biases of stupid voters in Reason Magazine.

The evidence—most notably, the results of the 1996 Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy—shows that the general public’s views on economics not only are different from those of professional economists but are less accurate, and in predictable ways. The public really does generally hold, for starters, that prices are not governed by supply and demand, that protectionism helps the economy, that saving labor is a bad idea, and that living standards are falling.

Those aren't biases.  They're official left wing doctrine.

It was a good night...

So says Bill Kristol.  He's talking about the Democratic presidential debate and he says it was a good night for Republicans.

Last night, for the first time this election cycle, I watched a Democratic presidential debate. It was appalling. But it was also, in a way, encouraging. Before last night, I thought it was 50-50 that the Republican nominee would win in November 2008.

Now I think it's 2 to 1. And if the Democrat is anyone but Hillary, it's 4 to 1.

Here, judging from the debate, is what the 2008 Democratic nominee is likely to be for. Abroad: ensuring defeat in Iraq and permitting a nuclear Iran. At home: more illegal immigration, higher taxes, more government control of health care, and more aggressive prosecution of the war on smoking than of the war on terror...

The Hsu fits

Captain's Quarters is staying right with Norman Hsu and his controversial fund raising for Hillary.  Regarding a Boston Globe story on the list of Hsu benefactors Ed Morrissey says,

This revelation shows that Hillary and her campaign didn't just passively receive funds from Hsu. The campaign actively worked with Hsu to distribute the funds to other campaigns, and in return, Hillary bought endorsements with the stolen money. And since the Boston Globe did the reporting, this can't be chalked up to some conservative hit piece, either.

Al Qaeda’s last bastion in Baghdad

According to Bill Roggio the battle against al Qaeda rages in southwestern Baghdad.

“The tide of anti-al Qaeda cooperation has rolled from Anbar province to the south of Baghdad and now into Baghdad itself,” said Coffey. “But it will take time.”

Continuing leftward drift at the Gray Lady

According to Andrew C. McCarthy, the New York Times coverage of Judge Michael B. Mukasey, President Bush's nominee to replace outgoing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, has been dreadful -- but predictable.

The Times, however, can’t keep it to the opinion pages. Day after day, news coverage in a once-great newspaper devolves into Left-wing polemic, to the point where there is no longer a qualitative difference between the Times and The Nation. Save one: The Nation, self-described “flagship of the left,” has no pretensions about being anything other than the Nation; the Times still pretends to be the Newspaper of Record — and continues to be treated that way by the “mainstream” press (which itself still pretends to be mainstream).

The problem, of course, is that we are supposed to get an accurate account of what the record is before we start a partisan brawl about what it means. That’s not possible with the Times anymore. Monday’s hatchet job on Michael B. Mukasey, the former federal judge tapped by President Bush to be the nation’s next attorney general, is proof positive.

Taliban waves the olive branch

According to FrontPage Magazine, the Taliban are ready to enter into peace talks with the Afghan government.

Diplomacy, defense and development.

The three Ds that have made up the West’s strategy in the war in Afghanistan are now starting to pay dividends nearly six years after the US-led invasion toppled the brutal Taliban regime. Earlier this month, greatly underreported by the media but ground-breaking nevertheless, the Taliban signaled its readiness to start peace negotiations with the Kabul government, indicating a setback if not defeat. The Taliban’s preparedness to discuss peace, dropping its long-standing demand that NATO troops must leave the country first, came only two days after Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, said he was willing to hold talks.

“For the sake of national interests…we are fully ready for talks with the government,” Yousuf Ahmed, a Taliban spokesman, was quoted as saying.

This striking and significant breakthrough in the Afghanistan conflict came after last month’s “jirga” (tribal meeting) in Kabul.

Clinton expands lead in New Hampshire

Hillary has jumped out to a 2 to 1 lead over Barack Obama among New Hampshire Democrats.

As Democrats ready for a key debate at Dartmouth College tonight, a new poll released yesterday shows support for Sen. Hillary Clinton among likely Democratic presidential primary votes has soared and she now has a more than two-to-one lead over Sen. Barack Obama.

A University of New Hampshire poll completed for WMUR and CNN shows that with non-candidate Al Gore in the survey, Clinton is supported by 41 percent of those polled to 19 percent for Obama. Without Gore in the mix, it's Clinton with 43 percent and Obama with 20 percent,

Today, the New Hampshire Union Leader has learned, UNH will release a poll done for the same television outlets showing that John McCain has gained on front-runners Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani.