Libertarian Leanings

Have a little faith

Josh Marshall has what he would consider a penetrating post on Talking Points Memo.  Sticking out like a sore thumb is that characteristic lack of faith that drives the liberal philosophy.  In a surprising post Marshall says a Hillary Clinton presidency would not be a good thing.  I agree, but for reasons that differ from his.  His problem, he says, is that dynasties are a bad thing.

George H. W. Bush left office to be followed by two terms of Bill Clinton. He in turn was followed by two terms of Bush's son. If those two terms of the son are followed by the election of Clinton's wife, I don't see where that's a good thing for this country. It ceases to be a fluke and grows into a pattern. It's dynasticism.

At the root of this is the Marshall conviction that voters are thoroughly clueless.  Presidents get to the White House through some combination of thievery and deception.  Candidates skillful enough at manipulating those mindless things called voters are rewarded by four years in the White House.  Clearly the Bushes and the Clintons are skillful manipulators in the Marshall view.

We the people are really quite stupid and incapable.  We need a grand liberal government to support us and prevent us from killing each other with guns.  The problem is that we're just too stupid to recognize that obvious fact.  That's what this Alito confirmation battle is all about.  With fewer liberal justices on the Supreme Court the ability to counteract the influence of the stupid voters is badly damaged.  For some utterly incomprehensible reason, liberals continue to lose elections and as a result, liberal policies are less and less likely to be employed.  Those voter thingies have gotten quite unpredictable.  It's a mystery.  The mystery that has liberals believing in fairy tales of electoral dynasty.

Via the New York Observer.

Carnival of the Clueless

Rick Moran has his Carnival going over at Rightwing Nuthouse.  It's the Carnival of the Clueless, featuring this weeks treasure trove of moonbats, idiots, and morons.

Alito nomination goes to the full Senate

The nomination of Samuel A. Alito for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court has been given a favorable recommendation by the Senate Judiciary Committee in a vote that went straight down party lines.  Democrats are not expected to filibuster, but their party line vote against Judge Alito may have negative repercussions for them anyway.

If Democrats want to make judges a campaign issue, "we welcome that debate on our side. We'll clean your clock," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C...

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., warned that Republicans would remember a party-line Alito vote in future Supreme Court nominations, considering several Republicans voted for Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who were nominated by President Clinton.

"It is simply unrealistic to think that one party would put itself at a disadvantage by eschewing political considerations while the other party almost unanimously applies such considerations," Kyl said. "So I say to my Democratic friends: Think carefully about what is being done today. Its impact will be felt well beyond this particular nominee."

Senator Dianne Feinstein's apparent response was to make excuses for the behavior of Democrats.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said things are different from when the Senate considered Breyer and Ginsburg, who were confirmed 87-9 and 96-3 respectively. "There was not the polarization within America that is there today, and not the defined move to take this court in a singular direction," Feinstein said.

Yes, when Breyer and Ginsburg were confirmed, things were different.  When Democrats were power there were adults in the opposition party.  Now that they're unable to have there own way, Democrats throw temper tantrums and make up stories.  Republicans, they will say, made them do ti.  Yes, they'll say, Republicans have polarized America by nominating an ideological Supreme Court candidate.  They'll expect that we, who are for the moment on the sidelines, will ignore the unanimous vote by the American Bar Association Standing Committee that rated Judge Alito "Well Qualified".  As if the ABA is is some arch conservative organization. 

This often repeated routine of the Democrats gets pretty tiresome.  Mercifully, we can give them their well deserved spanking at the polls this November.

Chilled? Not likely.

The Associated Press reports misgivings among members of our mainstream media over the direction taken by Scooter Libby's defense team. 

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the defense's strategy is no surprise but still alarming.

"Every key witness in this case is going to be a reporter," Dalglish said. "It's an absolutely ugly situation, ... putting reporters in a very, very bad position, ... and it should send a chill up the spine of American citizens across the country."

Nope.  No chill here.  Up to now editors and reporters have had inordinate power to select our leaders for us by imposing their prejudices on us and calling it news.  Now they hope to use the First Amendment to shield their efforts to bring down an administration.  I'm not at all worried that this trial will in any way hobble our free press.  It will more likely improve things by imposing some accountability.  This could be pretty entertaining.

Via Opinion Journal.

Bush disputes mischaracterization

In a speech yesterday at Kansas State University, the President aggressively defended his authorization to monitor international phone traffic of suspected al Qaeda terrorists.  The program is invariably called "domestic spying" by the mainstream press and the Democrats.

Opening a three-day White House offensive to defend his decision to create the covert program, the president told nearly 10,000 people at Kansas State University that he has the authority under the Constitution to conduct foreign intelligence, as well as legislative approval granted by Congress three days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"Congress gave me additional powers to use force, but it didn't prescribe the tactics," Mr. Bush said, adding a protest against one of the most common ways to describe the program -- "domestic spying."

"I repeat to you, even though you hear words, 'domestic spying,' these are not phone calls within the United States," he said, insisting that the program is "what I would call a terrorist surveillance program."

Meanwhile Democrats continue to accuse Bush of acting illegally. 

Shortly after the president's speech, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid implied that Mr. Bush is breaking the law and criticized the "president's continued refusal to come clean with the American people about domestic spying."

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean went further, "The question remains: Why did President Bush deliberately choose to break the law?"

The president dismissed the criticism with a rhetorical question. "You know, it's amazing, when people say to me, 'Well, he was just breaking the law' -- if I wanted to break the law, why was I briefing Congress?"

The crowd of 6,000 students, 1,000 military personnel from Fort Riley and others responded with laughter and applause.

I can't imagine the Democratic Party Line is going to play all that well as we approach the midterm elections.  I'm looking for another smackdown of the Democrats -- Abramoff notwithstanding.

Anniversary reporting

As I drove in to work yesterday morning WBZ radio reported that the President would speak to anti-abortion protest groups on the occasion of the Roe v. Wade anniversary.  Twice the news reader referred to Roe v. Wade as the decision that made abortion "legal", then played the network tape which called it the "legalization" of abortion. 

The fact of the matter is that when Roe v. Wade was decided, abortion was already legal.  States were already moving toward loosening abortion restrictions, but not all of them had gotten around to it.  Abortions were legally available in New York state then, but against the law next door in Vermont.  What Roe v. Wade did was elevate abortion to a constitutional right, a status that put it beyond the reach of legislators.  Overturning Roe v. Wade would put abortion back into the legislative realm where it's unlikely that it would be outlawed, but probably subjected to varying levels of control. 

Clearly news readers are opposed.  They would have us automatically conclude the alternative to Roe v. Wade is a sharpened coat hanger.

Symphony of our best

The Best of Me Symphony is a carnival of past blog posts considered by their authors to be quality work.  You can find it at the Owners Manual.

The Hurdle

I rely heavily on Strategy Page for assessments of the progress of reform in Iraq.  Maybe too heavily.  But Strategy Page observations seem to make sense when they make them, and often come true later on.  Here they are with another one.

...it is becoming increasingly obvious that the biggest threat to Iraq is the corruption of those who run the government. This corruption, in turn, springs from customs that tolerate the use of bribes and coercion in commercial dealings. These customs are common throughout the Middle East, and have long been one of the causes of misunderstandings and confusion in dealings between Middle Easterners and outsiders. Such corruption is thousands of years old, and common in many other parts of the world. But the corruption is becoming a major issue as it is realized that the economic and military superiority of the West springs, in large part, from the rule of law and a government system that enables business, and especially entrepreneurs, to flourish. The corruption has to go if Iraq is to thrive, and at the moment, no one is quite sure how to make the corruption go away.

It's worth reading the whole thing.

Document release

Steven Hayes of the Weekly Standard reports that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra requested 40 captured Iraqi documents over two months ago.  Last Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence let him have 39 of them.  Maybe the chances we'll see some mainstream news coverage are improving.  Mr. Hayes' reported earlier that thousands of terrorists were trained in Iraq while Saddam Hussein was in power, but somehow that hasn't made much of a splash.  Here's the list of titles that Congressman Hoekstra requested:

1. Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) Correspondence to Iraq Embassy in the Philippines and Iraq MFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
2. Possible al Qaeda Terror Members in Iraq
3. IIS report on Taliban-Iraq Connections Claims
4. Money Transfers from Iraq to Afghanistan
5. IIS Agent in Bulgaria
6. Iraqi Intel report on Kurdish Activities: Mention of Kurdish Report on al Qaeda--reference to al Qaeda presence in Salman Pak
7. IIS report about the relationship between IIS and the Kurdish Group Jalal Talibani [sic]
8. Iraqi Mukhabarat Structure
9. Locations of Weapons/Ammunition Storage (with map)
10. Iraqi Effort to Cooperate with Saudi Opposition Groups and Individuals
11. Order from Saddam to present $25,000 to Palestinian Suicide Bombers Families
12. IIS reports from Embassy in Paris: Plan to Influence French Stance on U.N. Security Council
13. IIS Importing and Hiding High Tech Computers in Violation of UN
14. IIS request to move persons, documents to private residences
15. Formulas and information about Iraq's Chemical Weapons Agents
16. Denial and Deception of WMD and Killing of POWs
17. 1987 orders by Hussein to use chemical weapons in the Ealisan Basin
18. Ricin research and improvement
19. Personnel file of Saad Mohammad Abd Hammadi al Deliemi
20. Memo from the Arab Liaison Committee: With a list of personnel in need of official documents
21. Fedayeen Saddam Responds to IIS regarding rumors of citizens aiding Afghanistan
22. Document from Uday Hussein regarding Taliban activity
23. Improvised Explosive Devices Plan
24. IIS reports on How French Campaigns are Financed
25. French and German relationships with Iraq
26. IIS reports about Russian Companies--News articles and potential IIS agents
27. IIS plan for 2000 of Europe's Influence of Iraq Strategy
28. IIS plans to infiltrate countries and collect information to help remove sanctions
29. Correspondence from IIS and the stations in Europe
30. Contract for satellite pictures between Russia, France and Iraq: Pictures of Neighboring Countries (Dec. 2002)
31. Chemical Gear for Fedayeen Saddam
32. Memo from the IIS to Hide Information from a U.N. Inspection team (1997)
33. Chemical Agent Purchase Orders (Dec. 2001)
34. Iraq Ministry of Defense Calls for Investigation into why documents related to WMD were found by UN inspection team
35. Correspondence between various Iraq organizations giving instructions to hide chemicals and equipment
36. Correspondence from IIS to MIC regarding information gathered by foreign intelligence satellites on WMD (Dec. 2002)
37. Correspondence from IIS to Iraqi Embassy in Malaysia
38. Cleaning chemical suits and how to hide chemicals
39. IIS plan of what to do during UNSCOM inspections (1996)
40. Secret Meeting with Taliban Group Member and Iraqi Government (Nov. 2000)

Might make for some interesting reading.

Rumsfeld's Pentagon

Pentagon top brass give Rumseld high marks for largely staying out of their discussions on fighting Islamic terrorists and reconfiguring the military.

"Four years ago, we could not have had a discussion like this without people getting into parochial interests," said a senior defense official. "Rumsfeld didn't steer the discussion. They all went at it."

The Pentagon conference room was full of top brass Mr. Rumsfeld handpicked during the past five years in a search for out-of-the-box thinkers who would "lean forward" in a war against Islamic terrorists.

It is clearly Mr. Rumsfeld's Pentagon today, but it was not always that way. Mr. Rumsfeld inherited Joint Chiefs and four-star combatant commanders, in this case ones promoted by President Clinton. "Rummy would have to drive the discussion at earlier commanders' conferences," said the defense official.

In those days, Mr. Rumsfeld did not always share his thinking with them, and in some cases had outright clashes, such as with Gen. Eric Shinseki, the former Army Chief of Staff.

You hardly ever get any news about Rumsfeld that doesn't quote somebody saying he ought to be fired.  Maybe people are catching on.  The man's brilliant.