Fire Hydrant of Freedom

I heard General Petraeus interviewed on the radio yesterday and found it to be a worthwhile listen or read for what is happening there right now.
Audio link (34 minutes)here: http://www.townhall.com/talkradio/Show.aspx?RadioShowID=5
Transcript: http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/Transcript_Page.aspx?ContentGuid=484182dc-bf7c-42a7-ac74-9e270a9ef0f2

The North Koreans shut down a known reactor and the South Koreans delivered oil to them.  The difference between this and the Clinton agreement is that this administration is reacting with caution, acknowledging that other covert reactors may still exist.  Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright reacted with an end zone dance that could have made Randy Moss blush.

What I fail to grasp is why a rogue NK is useful to China in 2007. 
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National Security Director Steven Hadley on Fox News Sunday: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,289361,00.html

"It's a first step in implementing an agreement that was reached last February, which is part of an overall framework of a year ago September, and under that framework, they need to give up their entire nuclear program."

[Understood. But what effect — what practical effect does the shutdown at Yongbyon have on their ability to continue to produce nuclear devices?]

"It means they will no longer be able to process to produce the plutonium from which they — of those nuclear weapons that are made out of plutonium.  We have concerns they may have a covert enrichment program. That will be the next subject of discussions..."

[And that's a uranium deal, right?]

"This is basically enriching uranium to the point where it can be used for nuclear weapons."

[Harder to do than with plutonium, correct?]

"Harder to do. We've had concerns they have a covert program. They at one point admitted that program.  But the route that they have used to date is the reprocessing route. That will be shut down. That route will be cut off, assuming these facilities are shut down.  We will then pursue to work through toward disabling, ultimately dismantling that program, getting a full accounting of what they've been doing with any covert enrichment program, and finally getting them to turn over any nuclear materials from which nuclear weapons have or could be made."

I don't know what happened to Paul Craig Roberts but I liked him better before.  He enjoys the by-line of working for Reagan and the WSJ in the past but didn't get those jobs by advancing the types of views he writes now for anti-war.com and for 911 conspiracy sites.  His impeach-now view would make sense if he backed up his Bush staged the terrorism claim with a shred of evidence. No matter what actions Bush does or does not take with Iran, we aren't going to be in a "dictatorial police state" next year.  The '08 elections will be held on schedule, and it was misguided Jihadists, not an American conspiracy, who brought down the towers. JMHO.

Replying to a couple of recent posts here:

"Is he (Dick Morris) suggesting the individual cap gains should be taxed at the same rate as income?!?" - I think he is comparing her to the further left positions of Obama and Edwards.  Also, I think 50 states tax capital gains same as ordinary income (a crime IMO); the states were laughing to the bank when the fed rate was cut.

"Does anyone know what rate corporations pay on cap gains?" - 35% vs. 15% individual: http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_comment/kerpen200604110850.asp

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Commenting on the Richard Viguerie piece attacking Fred Thompson as no conservative leader:

First evidence shown is his former support for McCain Feingold, terrible legislation.  He now agrees at least parts of that were a mistake.  To me that was already the biggest issue that I disagree with Fred on, so the criticism provides no new light and skips intentionally the fact that he has had second thoughts.

Viguerie admits Thompson is more conservative than Giuliani, McCain or Romney.  From a conservative point of view, isn't that the point.  He goes on to show how Thompson with his moderate friends can't be painted into a far-right corner.  Isn't that the rest of the point - winning.

Thompson isn't pro-life enough? He's running against Giuliani - prochoice.  Then against Hillary Clinton most likely.  The President's role in this is to appoint good justices.  Seems to me both Giuliani and Thompson would do that.  Thompson played a leading role with the John Roberts confirmation.

A ho-hum career in the senate.  Yes, each vote can be picked apart.  Likewise for Hillary and Obama.  Great senators have different skills and strengths than great Presidents.  Thompson didn't find a permanent place for himself in the senate even though he could have easily won another term.  At 8 years he is still on par with his likely opponents.

I noticed the anti-Thompson opinions have picked up since both Rasmussen and Zogby show Thompson slightly edging Giuliani in their latest polls.  All before announcing.  http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/republican_presidential_nomination-192.html

I find that Thompson has quite a gift for expressing conservative views unapologetically. Viguerie says he doesn't have prominent conservatives in his inner circle.  In that case, like Reagan, it must be Thompson himself writing his own very clearly articulated conservative views.

VDH wrote about the threat to civil liberties this past week.  Always a worthwhile read IMO.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/07/the_real_threat_to_civil_liber.html
July 02, 2007
The Real Threat to Civil Liberties
By Victor Davis Hanson

A common liberal complaint against the Bush administration is its supposed trampling of civil liberties. The Patriot Act, wiretaps, and Guantanamo supposedly have undermined our freedoms--or so we are warned ad nauseam by liberal watchdogs.

True, we have not received any detailed analysis or cost/benefit ratios of how many deadly terrorist plots have been circumvented by these new controversial measures. The administration's past defense of tough interrogations abroad of suspected terrorists sounded to many a lot like an endorsement of torture-light. In any case, as the danger of another 9/11 fades after almost six years, the public seems to be backing off from such anti-terrorism measures--at least until another such mass murder takes place on our shores.

But at least the Patriot Act passed both houses of Congress with wide public support. In contrast, there are a variety of other assaults on personal freedoms, due process, and the sanctity of the law that leftwing moralists not only ignore, but often seem to endorse--as if the liberal ends should justify illiberal means.

First, take illegal immigration. Not only have we neglected to enforce federal immigration statutes, but also local communities, due to pressures from Hispanic lobbyists and tacit approval from employers, have passed local codes barring arrests of suspected illegal aliens.

Tens of thousands of regional and local government officials, along with law enforcements, have taken the law into their own hands by simply deciding not to enforce it.

Both employers and aliens--the former for profit, the latter with the expectation of ethnic solidarity and support--have simply flaunted the law with impunity. We don't talk about massive fraud in our Social Security system due to false names and numbers used by illegal aliens, but only in pragmatic terms of whether such flagrant disregard ultimately puts more into the system than it takes out.

The result is one of the most grievous examples of civil disobedience in our nation's history--with 12 million de facto exempt from the law. In fact, we haven't seen state and local government defy federal laws in such blatant fashion since the Jim Crow days when the states of the Old Confederacy were openly insurrectionist.

Second, every bit as dangerous as wiretaps are prosecutors who manipulate the law, either for personal, ideological or political reasons. And here too reappears a pattern in which perceived political liberalism seems to trump adherence to the spirit of the law.

In the so-called Duke rape case, now disbarred District Attorney Michael Nifong withheld evidence in his holy crusade to convict three innocent Duke Lacrosse players--in hopes of appeasing the lynch mob of local black activists and self-righteous university professors. But even before evidence was adduced--all exculpatory to the defendants--liberal forces had tried and convicted the falsely accused in the media in furtherance of their own leftwing race, class, and gender agendas.

In the case of Valerie Plame, a special prosecutor was selected to find out who outed supposedly covert status at the CIA. The common liberal allegation was that administration lackies had stooped to hound a CIA employee for the anti-war politicking of her husband Joe Wilson.

But very early on in Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald's investigation, two inconvenient truths emerged. Ms. Plame was not a covert agent as envisioned by the original mandate of the special prosecutor. And second, the culprit who disseminated knowledge of her employment in with the CIA was almost immediately revealed--former State Department official Richard Armitage.

But no matter. Armitage was out of office and had voiced misgivings about the Iraq war. Thus his early conviction would have earned little public attention, but might instead have ended the investigation before it could snowball in the daily press.

So Fitzgerald barreled ahead anyway on a new mission to satisfy the partisan lust for high-value scalps--hoping to find some top administration official guilty of something else in the growing labyrinth of competing testimonies.

Presto! Scooter Libby, Chief of the Vice President's staff was found to have offered contradictory evidence, and thus convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice. We tend to think of smooth Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald as far more professional than the buffoonish Nifong. Maybe. But as was true of Nifong in the Duke rape case, Fitzgerald knew of information that might be fatal to his case--that early on Richard Armitage confessed to the leak--and yet neither apprised the public nor shut down his investigation.

Prosecutors pick and choose what charges to bring. When they either act unprofessionally or beyond their mandates, they have enormous, unchecked powers to undermine the very legal system that employs them.

Everyone has their own particular complaint about the modern Supreme Court's propensity to legislate new rather than interpret existing laws. But two years ago this June, they dismantled much of the constitutional protections of the right to hold private property.

In the Susette Kelo case, the court gave state and local officials unchecked rights of eminent domain to expropriate her house. The property was not condemned for a necessary bridge or public highway. Instead it was seized for "urban redevelopment"--even when the property in question was not blighted, and the urban renewal project was of questionable viability.

City officials were delighted. Their stock and trade have been to confiscate properties, sell them in sweet heart deals to wealthy insider developers--and paper over the entire shanigan with utopian rhetoric about helping the underclass.

Fourth, most recently Democrats have discussed reinstating some sort of "fairness" doctrine aimed at regulating talk radio. They are furious that the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Bill Bennett, Michael Savage, and a host of other conservatives dominate the AM airwaves--while Air America, Jerry Brown, Jim Hightower, Mario Cuomo, and other liberals have failed utterly to carve out a comparable audience in the marketplace of ideas and entertainment.

Once again, liberal civil libertarians are not so liberal about free speech when it is a matter of the public not buying into their own progressive agendas. We should remember that the public is free to choose--and advertisers respond accordingly--about what they wish to hear. Apparently, whiny sermons by nasal-droning elites about the illiberal nature of the yokel middle class is exactly what most on their way to work do not wish to endure.

Of course, conservatives likewise lament the imbalance of left-leaning public radio and television, the major networks such as NBC and CBS, the predominantly liberal print media, universities, the entertainment industry, and foundations. But the difference is that for the most part they are not calling for the government to mandate "fairness" by empowering federal bureaucrats to curb the liberal biases of these institutions.

It is stereotypically easy to identify authoritarians who seek restrict civil liberties during war in the name of "national security." But it is much harder to take on crusading special interest groups, district attorneys, court justices, and liberal Senators who ignore, twist, or subvert our constitutional freedoms under the liberal clarion call of helping minorities, stopping the war, or championing the underclass.

If we are to lose our civil liberties, it won't be all of sudden due to Patriot-Act zealots in sunglasses and flattops, but rather insidiously and incrementally by egalitarian professors, moral crusaders, muckraking journalists, and government utopians all unhappy that constitutional justice is too little and too late for their ever impatient desire to ensure heaven on earth.
Victor Davis Hanson

Here is a short podcast audio of Fred Thompson taking on Harry Reid regarding comments and policies in Iraq. Not exactly a fair fight IMO.  Besides calling Harry Reid on the carpet, he is obviously practicing his aim for Hillary where the same points would apply. Click the link at Powerline and click play. Just takes a couple of minutes.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/017975.php

For a negative story on Fred Thompson, see George Will from last week: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19140623/site/newsweek/page/2/

Will says Thompson is 99% charm, 1% substance.  I disagree.  I think it's the opposite.  He has been speaking out very frankly on the key issues of the day.  Will's only example that Thompson lacks substance:

"Thompson expressed a truly distinctive idea about immigration. Referring to the 1986 amnesty measure that Reagan signed into law, he said: "Twelve million illegal immigrants later, we are now living in a nation that is beset by people who are suicidal maniacs and want to kill countless innocent men, women and children around the world."

Maybe that quote and context is inarticulate or he failed to explain his thought, but I think plenty of people can see a potential connection between unchecked entrances and our next catastrophe.

Getting back to what Denny (Captainccs) wrote, thank you very much for the first hand explanation.  Your recap of recent history is very helpful. 

My understanding and recollection is that the recall vote was going against Chavez 40-60 in exit polls but tht Chavez vote won by 60-40on the state count,a 40 point swing.  International observer Jimmy Carter declared the results good to go.  Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell quickly recognized the result. 

Curious what your take on that was and wondering if anyone has seen Powell express any second thoughts.

Jumping in with my 2 cents, I would put a distinction between single women and single moms.  I doubt single women who are childless are less educated or much poorer than male counterparts.  I found CCP's title to be provacative: "girls can marry a guy to take care of them - or vote for the Hillary". Not speaking for him, but it could be interpreted generously to mean that some women find a man of equal or similar income to her own, they take care of each other, live well as we know it, travel, buy and furnish a nice home, raise children, invest, pay for college, heath care, cars, insurance, retirement, etc. Single women as a group see more of a state role in financial security, particularly in health care and retirement security even if they have high incomes.

Single moms might be most likely to appreciate laws that force businesses to give time off with pay for childbearing as well as likely to support programs such as child support enforcement, welfare, food stamps, section 8 housing, WIC, free school lunches,and most safety net programs  There are plenty of exceptions I'm sure; I am a single Dad raising a daughter and my personal views certainly don't fit that description.

The conservative argument as I see it is that assistance skews the incentives and removes responsibility from individuals.  As an inner city landlord, I have seen families hide the father to qualify for a program and had pregnant applicants point out how their income will go up after the next baby is born.  Where you find multi-generational poverty, you tend to find women who see government as the provider of security more than the (missing)husband/father and you tend to see the man who passed on that responsibility filling his time and energy with less desirable activities. Crime and prison statistics seem to bear that out.

Yes, a single woman might be more likely to support current abortion law that requires no input whatsoever from the unborn's father.  I have no data but doubt that pro choice passions trump pocketbook issues for most ordinary, single women.

The Prime Minister of Iraq wrote an op-ed published yesterday in the WSJ, posted below.  Very worthwhile read IMO.  First my comments on the previous 2 posts here.

My conclusion from the Strat piece, if they are correct, is that the Americans are now allied with the Sunni, Shia and Kurd political leaders and populations along with the Iraqi government and the Iraqi security forces, and are fighting against mainly foreign jihadists and Shia militias. Sounds like the political side is going well but violence continues because the enemy believes that continuing war is  their victory.

The Gore video is amazing.  He strongly attacks Bush I for being soft on Saddam in years prior.  It is perhaps easier to understand as a 1992 Clinton attack piece in the general campaign with the VP candidate with his 'hawk' credentials delivering the attack. Amazingly they weakened Bush for raising taxes when they would raise them more and for being soft on tyrants when they would be softer.  Masterful political selling if deception is your product.

Here is the Prime Minister of Iraq from yesterday:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010203

Our Common Struggle
America had its civil war. Why expect freedom to come easy to Iraq?

BY NOURI AL-MALIKI
Wednesday, June 13, 2007

BAGHDAD, Iraq--Americans keen to understand the ongoing struggle for a new Iraq can be guided by the example of their own history. In the 1860s, your country fought a great struggle of its own, a civil war that took hundreds of thousands of lives but ended in the triumph of freedom and the birth of a great power. Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation signaled the destruction of the terrible institution of slavery, and the rise of a country dedicated, more than any other in the world of nation-states then and hence, to the principle of human liberty.

Our struggle in Iraq is similar to the great American quest, and is perhaps even more complicated. As your country was fighting that great contest over its unity and future, Iraq was a province of an Ottoman empire steeped in backwardness and ignorance. A half a century later, the British began an occupation of Iraq and drew the borders of contemporary Iraq as we know them today. Independence brought no relief to the people of our land. They were not given the means of political expression, nor were they to know political arrangements that respected their varied communities.

Under the Baath tyranny, Iraqis were to endure a brutal regime the likes of which they had never known before. Countless people were put to death on the smallest measure of suspicion. Wars were waged by that regime and our national treasure was squandered without the consent of a population that was herded into costly and brutal military campaigns. Today when I hear the continuous American debate about the struggle raging in Iraq, I can only recall with great sorrow the silence which attended the former dictator's wars.

It is perhaps true that only people who are denied the gift of liberty can truly appreciate its full meaning and bounty. I look with admiration at the American debate surrounding the Iraq war, and I admire even those opinions that differ from my own. As prime minister of Iraq I have been subjected to my share of criticism in that American debate, but I harbor no resentment and fully understand that the basic concerns of Americans are the safety of their young people fighting in our country and the national interests of their society. As this American debate goes on, I am guided and consoled by the sacred place of freedom and liberty in the American creed and in America's notion of itself.

War being what it is, the images of Iraq that come America's way are of car bombs and daily explosions. Missing from the coverage are the great, subtle changes our country is undergoing, the birth of new national ideas and values which will in the end impose themselves despite the death and destruction that the terrorists have been hell-bent on inflicting on us. Those who endured the brutality of the former regime, those who saw the outside world avert its gaze from their troubles, know the magnitude of the change that has come to Iraq. A fundamental struggle is being fought on Iraqi soil between those who believe that Iraqis, after a long nightmare, can retrieve their dignity and freedom, and others who think that oppression is the order of things and that Iraqis are doomed to a political culture of terror, prisons and mass graves. Some of our neighbors have made this struggle more lethal still, they have placed their bets on the forces of terror in pursuit of their own interests.

When I became prime minister a year and a half ago, my appointment emerged out of a political process unique in our neighborhood: Some 12 million voters took part in our parliamentary elections. They gave voice to their belief in freedom and open politics and their trust imposed heavy burdens on all of us in political life. Our enemies grew determined to drown that political process in indiscriminate violence, to divert attention from the spectacle of old men and women casting their vote, for the first time, to choose those who would govern in their name. You may take this right for granted in America, but for us this was a tantalizing dream during the decades of dictatorship and repression.

Before us lies a difficult road--the imperative of national reconciliation, the drafting of a new social contract that acknowledges the diversity of our country. It was in that spirit that those who drafted our constitution made provisions for amending it. The opponents of the constitution were a minority, but we sought for our new political life the widest possible measure of consensus. From the outset, I committed myself to the principle of reconciliation, pledged myself to its success. I was determined to review and amend many provisions and laws passed in the aftermath of the fall of the old regime, among them the law governing de-Baathification. I aimed to find the proper balance between those who opposed the decrees on de-Baathification and others who had been victims of the Baath Party. This has not been easy, but we have stuck to that difficult task.

Iraq is well on its way to passing a new oil law that would divide the national treasure among our provinces and cities, based on their share of the population. This was intended to reassure those provinces without oil that they will not be left behind and consigned to poverty. The goal is to repair our oil sector, open the door for new investments and raise the standard of living of Iraqi families. Our national budget this year is the largest in Iraq's history, its bulk dedicated to our most neglected provinces and to improving the service sector in the country as a whole. Our path has been made difficult by the saboteurs and the terrorists who target our infrastructure and our people, but we have persevered, even though our progress has been obscured by the scenes of death and destruction.

Daily we still fight the battle for our security. We lose policemen and soldiers to the violence, as do the multinational forces fighting along our side. We are training and equipping a modern force, a truly national and neutral force, aided by our allies. This is against the stream of history here, where the armed forces have traditionally been drawn into political conflicts and struggles. What gives us sustenance and hope is an increase in the numbers of those who volunteer for our armed forces, which we see as proof of the devotion of our people to the stability and success of our national government.

We have entered into a war, I want it known, against militias that had preyed upon the weakness of the national government and in the absence of law and order in some of our cities, even in some of the districts in Baghdad, imposed their own private laws--laws usually driven by extremism and a spirit of vengeance. Some of these militias presented themselves as defenders of their own respective communities against other militias. We believe that the best way to defeat these militias is to build and enhance the capabilities of our government as a defender of the rights of our citizens. A stable government cannot coexist with these militias.

Our conflict, it should be emphasized time and again, has been fueled by regional powers that have reached into our affairs. Iraq itself is eager to build decent relations with its neighbors. We don't wish to enter into regional entanglements. Our principle concern is to heal our country. We have reached out to those among our neighbors who are worried about the success and example of our democratic experiment, and to others who seem interested in enhancing their regional influence.

Our message has been the same to one and all: We will not permit Iraq to be a battleground for other powers. In the contests and ambitions swirling around Iraq, we are neutral and dedicated to our country's right to prosperity and a new life, inspired by a memory of a time when Baghdad was--as Washington is today--a beacon of enlightenment on which others gazed with admiration. We have come to believe, as Americans who founded your country once believed, that freedom is a precious inheritance. It is never cheap but the price is worth paying if we are to rescue our country.

Mr. Maliki is prime minister of Iraq.

The key phrase to me was not the news in the news story, that the opposition was voicing opposition, it was the background information that concerns me:

"Congress, which has granted Chavez the power to rule by decree..."

I will look into the points you made and I hope others will post, especially Denny, who is there.  By his cartoon post that shows Chavez speaking on all channels, I don't think he agrees with you, but hopefully we will get a first-hand account in his own words.

Thanks for the Newt speech.  I would like to read it closer and offer my comments later.

Here is a new Obama speech.  Near as I can tell he is going after the Edwards' 'Two Americas' theme. He says he has new ideas, but blames American poverty on the war, and mainly supports expanding federal programs in order to 'strengthen the family'.  In the end it all comes back to what I would call socialized medicine. Also, by my read, he is saying he has God on his side, then mentions Pat Robertson in the next breath.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/06/quiet_riots_in_america.html
(Post was too long; read the speech at the link, if interested.)

Adding to the questions and challenges that GM posted, I disagree with the  'October surprise' part of Brian's post:

Quoting:"
If you will recall during the Iran Hostage Crisis, Ahmedimjad was one of the captors.  The hostages were released on the 444th day after Regan’s inauguration.  This is known as the 'October Surprise.' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_surprise#1980_Carter_vs._Reagan A deal was supposedly made between the terrorists and the Regan administration (Karl Rove) to NOT release the hostages until after Regan defeated Carter in the election!"

The wikipedia statement admits it lacks a citation.  The phrase 'October surprise' was supposed to be the opposite - the incumbent would time some major event, such as the negotiated release of the hostages, with the final weeks of the campaign to steal the momentum.  There is no reference to Karl Rove at the link and no credible mark in history tying the Reagan campaign to delaying the release of the hostages. 

The hostage crisis was the captors fault.  The fact that America was incapable of solving it was a symbol of the weakness that Reagan was running against.

This could go under humor or politics or just left alone, but I'll stick it here for the media perspective.  I saw Al Gore on the PBS News hour yesterday.  I'm no linguist, but when Gwen Ifill tried to pin Gore down on whether we were lied into war, Gore said that Bush made an "explicit implication...",  I couldn't help but wonder where that slip would have been re-broadcast if Bush had fumbled those words.  Probably all over Letterman, Leno, etc., maybe the NY Times.

I found the PBS transcript and emailed the tip to OpinionJournal, who did the following piece ripping Gore pretty badly with it yesterday, and gave me a credit at the end for the tip.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110010147

Assaulted Nuts

Is Al Gore a genuine intellectual, as he would like us to believe, or is he just pretentious à la John Kerry? He has a new book out called "The Assault on Reason," and we suppose reading it would shed some light on the question. But life is short.

Here's an excerpt from an interview Gore gave Gwen Ifill of PBS's "NewsHour":

    Ifill: You write of a "determined disinterest" in learning the truth, on the part of the Bush administration on pre-war intelligence. You accuse the White House of an "unprecedented and sustained campaign of mass deception," very strong words. And you say that President Bush "outsourced the truth." Are you suggesting that President Bush deliberately misled the American people when it comes to the Iraq war?

    Gore: Well, there was certainly a coordinated effort in the White House and in the Department of Defense simultaneously to convey the image of a mushroom cloud exploding over an American city and to link it to a specific scenario, the very strong and explicit implication that Saddam Hussein was going to develop nuclear weapons and give them to Osama bin Laden, and that would result in nuclear explosions in American cities.

"Explicit implication," huh? How do you know it wasn't an implicit explication? Such slipshod thinking leads one to think that Gore does have more in common with Kerry than with, say, Pat Moynihan.

CCP, I see your post came through as I was writing - looks like our observations overlap...

I like David Gordon's site and I appreciate the link to maplight.  It's important to track money and watch over the people's representatives as closely as we can.  After that, I just don't follow their logic to its conclusion.  For example, if a pro-life organization gives to a pro-life congressman, or a trade group gives to a free trade supporting congressman, and they vote in the way that they already said they would vote, what have we uncovered?  It seems that this system needs to track at least one more variable, such as changing a position in correlation with timing of the money in order to support the claim that "money buys votes".

Quoting the original post: "I probably sound absurdly naive here. But truth is, I can't quite figure out why these contributions are even legal."

My answer:  Likewise, maybe I'm missing something, but let's say you have a legitimate business and the regulators are considering legislation that you think is unwise, unfair and would devastate or destroy your investment and lifework.  This kind of thing happens all the time.  Shouldn't you have the same right to vote, to speak, and to contribute to campaigns that everyone else has?

Let's take his example: "You find out that on H.R.5684, the U. S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement, special interests in favor of this bill (including pharmaceutical companies and aircraft makers) gave each senator an average of $244,000. Lobbyists opposed to the bill (such as anti-poverty groups and consumer groups) coughed up only $38,000 per senator.  Surprise! The bill passed."

I've admitted my pro-free-trade views, so forgive me but I have no idea why an anti-poverty or pro-consumer group would oppose a free trade agreement with Oman or how they would justify soliciting money from their members to oppose the sale of American, life saving medications into a friendly foreign market or even into a questionable one.  In my view, it's too bad a pharmaceutical or aircraft maker feels they need to contribute to a campaign for the right to sell American products overseas.  The fact that there is more money on one side of the issue doesn't tell me anything about whether of not money changed a vote or whether or not the greater public interest got a bum deal.

I'm not saying there is no corruption of motives, but money also plays a positive influence.  We saw recently a roomful of Republican candidates debate, share the stage and microphone and receive equal time, no matter how little support they really had.  It takes serious amounts of money to run for high office and mount a winning campaign, so contributions raised are one indicator of which candidates are connecting in the campaign. As they see they aren't connecting, some hopefully will drop out voluntarily along the way.  If anti-special interest people want campaigns to be public financed in equal amounts, then we might see a hundred or a thousand candidates share the stage and demand equal time. 

Don't we spend more money getting out the message on laundry detergent than we do on candidates and positions on public policy?

If we could get the money out of politics, we would then have the pundits, editors and news anchors controlling the message.  Some might think that would be better.  I don't.

Gingrich rips the Bush Administration

(First, a poll update: Rasmussen has Romney passing McCain, just slightly,for second place of the Republicans.) http://rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/2008_republican_presidential_primary

Gingrich picks a fight with the White House. If interested, read The New Yorker article "Party Unfaithful - the Republican Implosion" for context.  I understand the strategy of separate from Bush, but I don't follow him on all the details.  Basically he attacks Rove for a bad strategy in 2004, but in 2004 Bush added 25% to his 2000 vote and held the house and senate.  To me it would make more sense to criticize everything they did after successful reelection.  As we look back now at the Gingrich congress, there is plenty of open criticism between Newt, Delay and Dick Armey, among others.  Unfortunately, each point has some validity IMO.  (I see Newt as a policy and strategy expert; I don't see him as a future President.)
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Excerpt from the article, regarding Newt: "...he blames not only Iraq and Hurricane Katrina but also Karl Rove’s “maniacally dumb” strategy in 2004, which left Bush with no political capital. “All he proved was that the anti-Kerry vote was bigger than the anti-Bush vote,” Gingrich said. He continued, “The Bush people deliberately could not bring themselves to wage a campaign of choice”—of ideology, of suggesting that Kerry was “to the left of Ted Kennedy”—and chose instead to attack Kerry’s war record.

The only way to keep the White House in G.O.P. hands, Gingrich said, would be to nominate someone who, in essence, runs against Bush, in the style of Nicolas Sarkozy, the center-right cabinet minister who just won the French Presidency by making his own President, Jacques Chirac, his virtual opponent."

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/06/04/070604fa_fact_goldberg
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Bush could have run on tax cut success or on getting another shot at re-making social security, but the issue of the day was war, and backbone on war was the weakness of his opponent.  Bush needed to win on that question in order to ever have any say on the rest.

Crafty and all, My two cents of personal experience with the Dutch system.  Amsterdam had a nice reputation for being mostly free of violent crime because of so-called legalization of prostitution and drugs, but I was attacked there while walking down a city street in December 1991.  As the article suggests, hard drugs and trafficking were still illegal and so the associated crime still existed, like anywhere else.  I can only speculate on my attackers, but they were not Dutch.  People there who I told the story to believed them to be "North Africans" and most likely feeding a heroin habit or involved in trafficking.  Short story is that they did not get any money from me, but I did need my head stitched up afterward in a Dutch hospital.  Wish I had been traveling with one of you that day.

The Great Forgotten Debate
Forty years ago, Reagan taught RFK a lesson that ought to be remembered.
By Paul Kengor
National Review referred yesterday to this historic debate with excellent  commentary and context:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTZkMjI1MjJmMmVlNjYyZDU0MzhkZmVhMjAxGI0NmU=

You can read the text of the debate here: http://reagan2020.us/speeches/reagan_kennedy_debate.asp

My take, rather than a win or a loss, was that the answers from the two main players were far more civil than we see in the arguments of today.

Interesting post, thanks for bringing up a number of issues for discussion.  In general, I am pro-free-trade both for economic growth, but also I believe the right to buy and sell goods and services is a basic economic liberty.  Reasonable exceptions for me are fine and would include national security concerns or preventing support for slave labor, etc.

If you believe as I do that the USA is the greatest nation on earth, then by definition all trading partner nations are flawed to some extent, even worse than us.  We still should allow transactions between consenting adults unless harm is caused, like selling technology to enemies, etc.

Be careful with labels.  Globalization in terms of economics is a fact and I think beneficial.  Loss of sovereignty is another matter.  Weve lost enough control over self government to Washington from the states and local jurisdictions and should not give any conrol over our nation to international bodies.

I think the federal reserve is a system that has performed well at least since the stagflation of the 1970s.  I dislike certain players and disagree with certain moves of the Fed, but the overall record has generally been good IMO.  I favor a single currency for the nations of North America called the US Dollar. That choice belongs to the others.  Economies of the Far East have done very well tying their currency to the dollar.  Canada has its pride and Mexico is not even an ally of the US right now, so other than cross border trade and wanting them to solve their own problems, I wouldn't tie our nations together any closer.

"A world currency and a 'new economic order' are also part of the elites plans for global governance." - Again, I think a distinction can easily be made between allowing global trade and losing national sovereignty.  Yes there are elites who envision global governance and they are already starting by proposing global regulations and 'global' taxes (on the 'rich').  They should be opposed aggressively at every turn.  A better strategy is the so-called association of democracies where we could make voluntary agreements and cooperations with countries that maintain certain minimal levels of human liberty and decency.

I am closer to Newt than any of the others on the issues.  He loves to say "This is not about Newt Gingrich."  Once he enters the race it is about him and he has high negatives, plenty of enemies and very little crossover appeal IMO.  The 1994 Republican takeover of congress was amazing.  They had some great accomplishments in the majority such as capital gains rate cuts and  welfare reform, while constrained by an opposing president.  Other important things never got done such as reforming the budget process and rules.  Tax cuts are still limited by false forecasting methods that were never ended at CBO.

Unfair as it is, I think Giuliani or even McCain might get a pass on past marital issues where Newt will forever be punished, mostly because of the timing of his in relation to the Clinton impeachment (which wasn't even about infidelity).
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CD wrote: "...stupidities of McCain-Feingold Act (Shame on McCain and the US Supreme Court!"  - Agree wholeheartedly!  The name alone is a clue, partnering with Feingold on campaign rules or Kennedy on education policy is a sign you are headed in the wrong direction from my point of view.  Shame on Bush for signing this when he already made clear that he saw everything flawed in it. 

I wish those in politics or on the court who don't like the constitution would go through the process of amending it rather than arbitrarily declaring which rights and provisions we have outgrown and are no longer operative.

Crafty made the following comment as part of a preface to an editorial on a current homeland security proposal:

"... but a President who chose and stands by an Attorney General who doesn't belive that habeas corpus is a Constitutional right has credibility problems of his own too."

Crafty, can you expand on what you meant.  I searched and found what you are likely referring to - the following exchange between Gonzales and Sen. Specter in a committee meeting this January:

Gonzales: There is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There's a prohibition against taking it away. ...

Specter: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. The Constitution says you can't take it away except in cases of rebellion or invasion. Doesn't that mean you have the right of habeas corpus unless there's an invasion or rebellion?

Gonzales: I meant by that comment, the Constitution doesn't say every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas. Doesn't say that. It simply says the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended except...

Specter: You may be treading on your interdiction and violating common sense, Mr. Attorney General.

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I'm not an attorney, but wondered if Gonzales was making a correct technical point while creating a public relations blunder, or is there a real difference in views here.

In the US Constitution under the heading of 'Limits on Congress'  I see the only reference: "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

To the untrained eye, it would seem that a) the right of habeus, to not be detained long without charges filed, is presumed in the constitution, b) the limit placed is on Congress and not on the Commander in Chief in wartime, and c) the context of the threat of terrorism against public safety at this moment in time might persuasively be argued to comprise a "Rebellion or Invasion".

Presuming a right by reading the limits placed on it in the constitution didn't cut it in the (faulty) Kelo decision allowing taking of private property to give/sell to other private concerns.   I think it was the Justice Thomas dissent that pointed out the irony and tragedy that they couldn't have even entered or searched without permission or a warrant and they couldn't have gotten a warrant without probable cause, yet the majority ruled that they could take title and demolish it.  I wouldn't want to bet my life on presumed rights under activist judges.

Look forward to reading the thoughts of others on this.

This personal account is from an Oakland Univ. Prof in Michigan.  I find it analogous to the advance concerns about Cho and to illustrate CCP's comment about not know which sociopaths will be dangerous and which just have strange behaviors.

Op-Ed Contributor (NY Times)
The Killer in the Lecture Hall

By BARBARA OAKLEY
Published: April 19, 2007

Rochester, Mich.

THE sticky note on my door was wiggling. It was a gift from a student.

Glued to the middle of it was a cockroach.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t that I was an unpopular professor. To the contrary — according to student evaluations, I might as well have had a sign on my forehead that said “Kindly.”

I was told later that the cockroach was a symbol of love from — well, let’s call him Rick. Rick had recently moved into the lab across the hall from my office, where he spent the night in a sleeping bag under one of the benches.

Rick, who had been a student for more than a decade, sometimes whiled away his time discussing guns and explosives with some of the more munitions-inclined faculty members. He admitted that he kept his basement stocked with a variety of “armaments.”

Sometimes I wished I had an armament, although, like Virginia Tech, my university does not allow firearms on campus. I wished that because, not only did Rick attach love-cockroaches to my door and live across the hall from my office and possess a small armory, but Rick watched me all the time. Sometimes he followed me out to my car — just to make sure I was safe.

When I complained about Rick to the dean of students, I was told there was nothing to be done — after all, “students have rights, too.” Only after appealing to that dean’s boss and calling a raft of fellow professors who had also come to fear Rick’s strange behavior was I able to convince the administration to take grudging action; they restricted his ability to loiter in certain areas and began nudging him toward the classes he needed to graduate.

In a strange way, I could see the administration’s point. Rick looked fairly ordinary, at least when away from his sleeping bag and pet cockroaches. It must have seemed far more likely that Rick could sue for being thrown out of school, than that I — or anyone else — could ever be hurt. The easiest path, from their perspective, was to simply get me to shut up.

Many professors have run across more than their share of Ricks. At least one Virginia Tech professor noticed that Cho Seung-Hui, who killed 32 people on campus on Monday, was potentially dangerous and did her best to warn the administration and the police. (So did at least two female students.) But there is only so much a teacher can do — “students have rights, too.”

It’s a simple fact that, for every deranged murderer like Mr. Cho there are thousands more oddballs just below the breaking point. I know one quasi-psychopathic incompetent, for example, who remained on the campus payroll for over a dozen years simply because his supervisor was afraid of being killed if he was fired.

It’s long been in fashion to believe that people are innately good, and that upbringing and environment are responsible for nasty personalities. But research is beginning to show that mean, sometimes outright evil behavior has a strong genetic component. Some of us, in other words, are truly born bad.

Researchers at King’s College London have recently determined that if one identical twin shows psychopathic traits, the other twin, who coincidentally shares precisely the same set of genes, has a very high probability of having the same psychopathic traits. But among fraternal twins, who share only half their genes, the chance that both twins will show psychopathic traits is far smaller. In other words, there is something suspiciously psychopath-inducing in some people’s genes.

What could it be? Medical images of the brain give tantalizing clues — the amygdala, the “fight or flight” decision-making center of the brain, may be smaller than usual, or some areas of the brain may glow only dimly because of low serotonin levels. We may not know precisely what set Mr. Cho off, but we are beginning to home in on the unusual differences in certain neurochemistries that can make people act in bizarre and dysfunctional ways.

Still, the Virginia Tech shootings have already led to calls for all sorts of changes: gun control, more mental health coverage, stricter behavior rules on campuses. Yes, in a perfect world, there would be no guns, no mental illness and no Cho Seung-Huis. But the world is very imperfect. Consider that Britain’s national experiment with gun-free living is proving to be a disaster, with violent and gun crime rates soaring.

In other words, most of the broad social “lessons” we are being told we must learn from the Virginia Tech shootings have little to do with what allowed the horrors to occur. This is about evil, and about how our universities are able to deal with it as a literary subject but not as a fact of life. Can administrators and deans really continue to leave professors and other college personnel to deal with deeply disturbed students on their own, with only pencils in their defense?

Barbara Oakley, a professor of engineering at Oakland University, is the author of the forthcoming “Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend.”

GM, Thanks for that. I was hoping to draw out why you felt that way and I likewise agree with your points.  I see most of the failures coming from the cumbersome nature of this huge democracy with our limits on power and multiple viewpoints trying to exert itself.  The electorate can't fully support the mission when the leaders are sloppy and inconsistent in explaining it.  Authorization of congress for the Iraq war would not have passed with bipartisan support without the promise to take it to the security council.  The approval of the security council would not have happened without framing the justification in terms of WMD and violations of the UN's previous resolutions.  The Iraq mission would not have bogged down so badly had we not given Saddam months and months and months to clean up weapons sites and prepare for an insurgency that would outlive him andif the enemy didn't know that support erodes with every American they kill.  The Syrians and Iranians cannot seriously feel militarily threatened by America when they see the quagmire in Iraq, the disapproval polls, and the anti-war momentum broadcasted continuously.  In the face of all that I guess I have even more admiration for the resolve of the leaders of this effort, though again, not their ability to communicate.  I think the above explains why Pakistan, Syria and Iran no longer feel heat from the promise that "either you are with us or you are against us".

I agree whole heatedly with your point about borders. National security is the reason IMO to support borders enforcement as tight as you so graphically describe. lol.  I am pro-free-trade, pro-legal-immigration and pro-guest-worker etc, but only in the context that America chooses and controls the numbers and needs that we fill with approvals for legal entry.  How can we possibly invest so much in security - hundreds of billions or trillions(?) of dollars, lose our right to walk from the ticket counter onto an airplane etc, and then have no idea who, why, where from, or how many people are entering our country???  Up here (MN) we joke about those pesky Canadians procuring our medical services and infiltrating our hockey games.  Other places they may complain about Mexicans.  But when we allow an illegal industry to flourish to the point of becoming organized crime, how can we not think we are also welcoming the next wave of terrorists?

Border politics, they say, is tricky.  You can't risk offending today's Hispanic-Americans or future voters who my be legalized along the way.  To me, an Hispanic American citizen is one of us,  not a minority.  I find it condescending to think people of certain origin cannot see a connection between border control and national security.  (Comments welcome)

My opinion is that the labels ARE helpful even when exceptions are available.  Pelosi is the highest ranking Democrat.  Can't we just all talk and get along is a philosophy from her side of the aisle - primarily.  Bush, not these few congressmen, was chosen to represent his side of the aisle to run for Pres and lead foreign policy if elected.  The Bush policy for the most part seeks to avoid adding stature to thugs like Assad and Ahmedinajad and for the most part I agree.

In hindsight(IMO), the valid correction - that a few R's were included and the fact that labels don't tell the whole story - could have been added to the discussion without blame for omission.  FWIW, I have seen CCP dish out plenty of criticisms at either side of the aisle at his own choosing.

Crafty, I agree with you on Rudy. Wrong to my taste on too many issues to support him in the primaries, but I will certainly join up if/when he secures the endorsement.  I also oppose gun control, but if I favored it and was President, I hope I would be principled enough to propose amending rather than stomping on the constitution.  Rudy has talked the talk on strict constructionist judicial appointments, but that contradicts his own position on gun control and on a mother's right to choose. 

Back to tax issues, in the 2000 campaign John McCain opposed candidate Bush's tax cut proposal.  Now McCain says make most of them permanent and Rudy sounds like he may go further into cutting and simplifying. And those are the moderates (RINOs). That is a step forward IMO. Still, McCain is feuding with Club for Growth (who I recently joined) over his previous anti tax cut votes.  It is not just the 'no' votes, but the rhetoric that helps gives credibility and cover to the left.  Specifically, McCain words and votes were cited often by the Dem here in our most recent senate race to demonstrate that she wasn't some extreme leftist.
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Club for Growth Calls on McCain to Apologize for Tax Votes

Washington - The Club for Growth called on Senator McCain to renounce his 2001 and 2003 votes against the Bush tax cuts and apologize for his vocal class-warfare-laced opposition to them.

In 2001, Senator McCain was 1 of only 2 Republicans to oppose the Bush tax cuts (Roll Call #170, 05/26/01) and 1 of only 3 Republicans in 2003 (Roll Call #196, 05/23/03).  He even went so far as to adopt the class-warfare rhetoric of the Senate’s most liberal Democrats, arguing in a 2003 Face the Nation interview that “the reason why I opposed the last round was because the—what I felt was a disproportionate favoring of the wealthiest 1 percent, 10 percent of Americans.  If that's continued, obviously, then I wouldn't support that.”    http://www.clubforgrowth.org/

Hillary in the news - today's talking point was 'universal healthcare'.  I'm sure we'll get to that in the campaign.  First I want to criticize her proposal from last week for a "Foreclosure-Timeout" in response to the trouble in the housing market.  I read it first in 'The Economist' but here is a short version from NPR Morning Edition:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8951674

Democratic Hopefuls Weigh In on Subprime Loans

Morning Edition, March 16, 2007 · "With foreclosure rates at their highest level in four decades, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York is calling for a "foreclosure timeout." Another Democratic presidential hopeful — Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, the Senate Banking Committee chairman — says he will hold hearings on the subprime crisis. In recent weeks at least 20 companies who specialize in high-risk mortgages have gone bust."
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Let's walk through this.  A customer with a credit issue or low down payment, who would not qualify for the lowest risk - lowest interest rate mortgage, is able to buy a house they otherwise couldn't, by paying a premium on the interest rate to compensate the mortgage company for the higher risk.  It's a highly regulated business and the transaction is all legal.  The mortgage company pays out let's say $189,900 for the customer to buy the house in exchange for the right to receive scheduled payments and take the first position lien on the house for collateral.  Now let's say the customer with the higher risk defaults on his payments.  That happens; he did have a credit problem and/or insufficient savings. The mortgagecompany is powerless except to follow the contractual and highly regulated processs of mitigating its loss with a foreclosure and take back the property to re-sell.  During the long process they receive no further payments as the loan in in default.  The process takes some 6 months to a year(?) while the mortgage company has no right of possession, receives no money and keeps incurring costs.  Now enter new President Hillary who says they can't even do that.  She declares a 'foreclosure timeout'.  The customer stays in the house.  Payments in default don't need to be made.  The mortgage is prevented fom exercizing its right under the contract and under the law.

It reminds me of the Nixon Price Wage freeze of 1971.  So, the crisis includes lenders going broke and her answer is a foreclosure-timeout.  I don't know if these people hate capitalism or just don't understand it.  I can't say this stongly enough, but IMO, if you favor economic freedoms and the right to enter into binding, legal contracts - these policies are exactly the opposite.