Fire Hydrant of Freedom

This guy gets the Big Chutzpah award.
=============================


srael has legitimised the killing of its children
The Times

January 6, 2009

Hamas: Israel has legitimised the killing of its children


Fighting intensified on the northern outskirts of Gaza City yesterday as a Hamas leader warned that the Islamists would kill Jewish children anywhere in the world in revenge for Israel’s devastating assault.

“They have legitimised the murder of their own children by killing the children of Palestine,” Mahmoud Zahar said in a televised broadcast recorded at a secret location. “They have legitimised the killing of their people all over the world by killing our people.”


Mr Zahar made his first appearance since Israel launched its offensive. Dressed in a dark suit, he declared: “Victory is coming, God willing.”

As night fell on the territory, most of which is without electricity, the sky above Gaza was illuminated by explosions and flares from the pitched battle on Gaza City’s northern fringes, where Israeli tanks, helicopters and artillery fought to dislodge Hamas guerrillas. Witnesses said that the battle had, for the first time, spilled into Gaza City itself, where the head of Hamas’s armed wing warned that thousands of his fighters were waiting.


The Israeli military said last night that three of its soldiers were killed and 24 wounded by a shell from one of its own tanks in a battle near Gaza City.

Abu Obeida, the leader of Hamas’s military wing, made his first appearance on Gaza television, his face masked in a red and white scarf, to goad Israeli forces massed outside the teeming city of 400,000 people. “We have prepared thousands of brave fighters who are waiting for you in each corner of the street and will welcome you with fire and iron,” he said.

Despite growing international calls for a ceasefire, neither side has shown the slightest intention of backing down. Israel, supported by the outgoing Bush Administration in the United States, rejected European calls for an immediate ceasefire reiterated during a peace mission by President Sarkozy of France. Israel argues that it needs to break Hamas’s military capacity if a durable ceasefire is to be negotiated. “We cannot accept a compromise that will allow Hamas to fire \ against Israeli towns in two months’ time,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Mr Sarkozy last night.

Hamas, meanwhile, kept firing rockets into southern Israel, launching about 40 of its home-made Qassam rockets and more sophisticated Grad missiles. They again hit Beersheba, about 25 miles from Gaza. While Israeli forces have stormed into the northeastern area of the Strip, from where Hamas usually launches its projectiles, the Islamists have maintained their fire from within Gaza City.

Many analysts believe that Hamas wants to goad Israel into its stronghold, a hellish landscape for urban combat, which the Islamists have had 18 months to prime with booby traps, ambushes and tunnels.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Israeli soldiers raided the house of a Hamas militant only to find three tunnels underneath through which their quarry escaped. It added that Hamas’s reports of kidnapping an Israeli soldier stemmed from an incident in which the soldier became separated from his unit and the militants tried to drag him down a tunnel. He escaped after a scuffle, it said.

Mr Sarkozy, part of a high-level EU effort in the region to negotiate a truce, told Israel that “the violence must halt”. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President and Fatah leader, whom he met in Ramallah yesterday, also called for an unconditional truce.

Mr Sarkozy ran foul of Hamas when he said that it must bear most of the blame for the increasingly miserable plight of the 1.5 million Gazans it rules over. “Hamas acted in an irresponsible and unforgiveable manner . . . Hamas is to blame for the suffering of the Palestinians,” he said. A Hamas spokesman accused Mr Sarkozy of “total bias” towards Israel.

Casualty figures

550 Palestinians have been killed in Operation Cast Lead

100 of the dead are children

2,500 Palestinians have been wounded

4 Israeli civilians have been killed since the operation began, and four Israeli soldiers. Seventy-seven soldiers have been injured

Source: Gaza medical services, Israel Defence Forces

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle5454204.ece

Influx of black renters raises tension in Bay Area
Email this Story

Dec 30, 3:24 PM (ET)

By PAUL ELIAS



ANTIOCH, Calif. (AP) - As more and more black renters began moving into this mostly white San Francisco Bay Area suburb a few years ago, neighbors started complaining about loud parties, mean pit bulls, blaring car radios, prostitution, drug dealing and muggings of schoolchildren.

In 2006, as the influx reached its peak, the police department formed a special crime-fighting unit to deal with the complaints, and authorities began cracking down on tenants in federally subsidized housing.

Now that police unit is the focus of lawsuits by black families who allege the city of 100,000 is orchestrating a campaign to drive them out.

"A lot of people are moving out here looking for a better place to live," said Karen Coleman, a mother of three who came here five years ago from a blighted neighborhood in nearby Pittsburg. "We are trying to raise our kids like everyone else. But they don't want us here."

City officials deny the allegations in the lawsuits, which were filed last spring and seek unspecified damages.

Across the country, similar tensions have simmered when federally subsidized renters escaped run-down housing projects and violent neighborhoods by moving to nicer communities in suburban Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles.

But the friction in Antioch is "hotter than elsewhere," said U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development spokesman Larry Bush.

An increasing number of poor families receiving federal rental assistance have been moving here in recent years, partly because of the housing crisis.

A growing number of landlords were seeking a guaranteed source of revenue in a city hard-hit by foreclosures. They began offering their Antioch homes to low-income tenants in the HUD Section 8 housing program, which pays about two-thirds of every tenant's rent.

Between 2000 and 2007, Antioch's black population nearly doubled from 8,824 to 16,316. And the number of Antioch renters receiving federal subsidies climbed almost 50 percent between 2003 and 2007 to 1,582, the majority of them black.

Longtime homeowners complained that the new arrivals brought crime and other troubles. In 2006, violent crime in Antioch shot up about 19 percent from the year before, while property crime went down slightly.

"In some neighborhoods, it was complete madness," said longtime resident David Gilbert, a black retiree who organized the United Citizens of Better Neighborhoods watch group. "They were under siege."

So the Antioch police in mid-2006 created the Community Action Team, which focused on complaints of trouble at low-income renters' homes.

Police sent 315 complaints about subsidized tenants to the Contra Costa Housing Authority, which manages the federal program in the city, and urged the agency to evict many of them for lease violations such as drug use or gun possession. Lawyers for the tenants said 70 percent of the eviction recommendations were aimed at black renters. The housing authority turned down most of the requests.

Coleman said the police, after a complaint from a neighbor, showed up at her house one morning in 2007 to check on her husband, who was on parole for drunken driving. She said they searched the house and returned twice more that summer to try to find out whether the couple had violated any terms of their lease that could lead to eviction.

The Colemans were also slapped with a restraining order after a neighbor accused them of "continually harassing and threatening their family," according to court papers. The Colemans said a judge later rescinded the order.

Coleman and four other families are suing Antioch, accusing police of engaging in racial discrimination and conducting illegal searches without warrants. They have asked a federal judge to make their suit a class-action on behalf of hundreds of other black renters. Another family has filed a lawsuit accusing the city's leaders of waging a campaign of harassment to drive them out.

Police referred questions to the city attorney's office.

City Attorney Lynn Tracy Nerland denied any discrimination on the part of police and said officers were responding to crime reports in troubled neighborhoods when they discovered that a large number of the troublemakers were receiving federal subsidies.

"They are responding to real problems," Nerland said.

Joseph Villarreal, the housing authority chief, said the problems in Antioch mirror tensions seen nationally when poor renters move into neighborhoods they can afford only with government help.

"One of the goals of the programs is to de-concentrate poverty," Villarreal said. "There are just some people who don't want to spend public money that way."

Tensions like those afflicting Antioch have drawn scholars and law enforcement officials to debate whether crime follows subsidized renters out of the tenements to the suburbs.

Susan Popkin, a researcher at the nonprofit Urban Institute, said she does not believe that is the case. But the tensions, she said, are real.

"That can be a recipe for anxiety," she said. "It can really change the demographics of a neighborhood."

PD WSJ

How Burris and Franken Became a Matched Set

There was a reason that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told NBC News yesterday he is willing to "negotiate" a solution to the seating of Roland Burris, the Illinois Democrat appointed to take the vacant Senate seat held by Barack Obama until November.

"I'm an old trial lawyer," Mr. Reid said. "There's always room to negotiate." That's curious, given Mr. Reid's formerly adamant stance that Mr. Burris's appointment is fatally tainted because it was made by disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

One explanation for Mr. Reid's flexibility may be the political heat Senate Democrats would take for failing to seat an African-American in a body that currently has no blacks as members. But another is that Democrats might face charges of hypocrisy if on the same day they refuse to seat Mr. Burris, they move to seat Democrat Al Franken as the senator from Minnesota. A key argument Democrats are using to justify not seating Mr. Burris is that the Illinois Secretary of State is refusing to issue a certificate of appointment. But Mr. Franken, who currently leads Republican Norm Coleman by 225 votes, will lack a certificate of election from his state's Secretary of State when the Senate convenes tomorrow. While the state's canvassing board will likely declare Mr. Franken the winner today, Minnesota law holds that the Secretary of State can't certify Mr. Franken as the official winner until Mr. Coleman's expected legal challenge of the result is resolved.

But that hasn't stopped leading Democrats from moving to have Mr. Franken seated anyway. "With the Minnesota recount complete, it is now clear that Al Franken won the election. The Canvassing Board will meet tomorrow to wrap up its work and certify him the winner, and while there are still possible legal issues that will run their course, there is no longer any doubt who will be the next Senator from Minnesota," New York Senator Chuck Schumer said yesterday, echoing comments made last week by Minnesota's own Senator Amy Klobuchar.

If Democrats want to seat Mr. Franken despite the cloud hanging over the disputed recount that gave him a narrow lead only last week, they will have trouble explaining why they are denying Mr. Burris his seat, even though he had no role in Governor Blagojevich's alleged attempts to sell a Senate appointment. That's why Senator Reid now says the Senate could accept Mr. Burris if the appointment were made by a new Illinois governor or by Lt. Governor Pat Quinn, who is expected to become governor after Mr. Blagojevich is removed from office.

That says to me Mr. Quinn is being leaned on by Mr. Reid to signal that he would choose Mr. Burris if he becomes governor, thereby giving Democrats an out. But Mr. Quinn would simply be rubber-stamping the same choice that Senate Democrats thought unacceptable just last week. Senate Democrats should not be allowed to wiggle free of their previous position so easily, especially if they simultaneously try to seat Mr. Franken over the objections of Senate Republicans.

"But of all the views of this law none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty. For this purpose the reading in the first stage, where they will receive their whole education, is proposed, as has been said, to be chiefly historical. History by apprising them of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views."

--Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781

Strange things keep happening in Minnesota, where the disputed recount in the Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken may be nearing a dubious outcome. Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victor.

 
APMr. Franken started the recount 215 votes behind Senator Coleman, but he now claims a 225-vote lead and suddenly the man who was insisting on "counting every vote" wants to shut the process down. He's getting help from Mr. Ritchie and his four fellow Canvassing Board members, who have delivered inconsistent rulings and are ignoring glaring problems with the tallies.

Under Minnesota law, election officials are required to make a duplicate ballot if the original is damaged during Election Night counting. Officials are supposed to mark these as "duplicate" and segregate the original ballots. But it appears some officials may have failed to mark ballots as duplicates, which are now being counted in addition to the originals. This helps explain why more than 25 precincts now have more ballots than voters who signed in to vote. By some estimates this double counting has yielded Mr. Franken an additional 80 to 100 votes.

This disenfranchises Minnesotans whose vote counted only once. And one Canvassing Board member, State Supreme Court Justice G. Barry Anderson, has acknowledged that "very likely there was a double counting." Yet the board insists that it lacks the authority to question local officials and it is merely adding the inflated numbers to the totals.

In other cases, the board has been flagrantly inconsistent. Last month, Mr. Franken's campaign charged that one Hennepin County (Minneapolis) precinct had "lost" 133 votes, since the hand recount showed fewer ballots than machine votes recorded on Election Night. Though there is no proof to this missing vote charge -- officials may have accidentally run the ballots through the machine twice on Election Night -- the Canvassing Board chose to go with the Election Night total, rather than the actual number of ballots in the recount. That decision gave Mr. Franken a gain of 46 votes.

The Opinion Journal Widget
Download Opinion Journal's widget and link to the most important editorials and op-eds of the day from your blog or Web page.
Meanwhile, a Ramsey County precinct ended up with 177 more ballots than there were recorded votes on Election Night. In that case, the board decided to go with the extra ballots, rather than the Election Night total, even though the county is now showing more ballots than voters in the precinct. This gave Mr. Franken a net gain of 37 votes, which means he's benefited both ways from the board's inconsistency.

And then there are the absentee ballots. The Franken campaign initially howled that some absentee votes had been erroneously rejected by local officials. Counties were supposed to review their absentees and create a list of those they believed were mistakenly rejected. Many Franken-leaning counties did so, submitting 1,350 ballots to include in the results. But many Coleman-leaning counties have yet to complete a re-examination. Despite this lack of uniformity, and though the state Supreme Court has yet to rule on a Coleman request to standardize this absentee review, Mr. Ritchie's office nonetheless plowed through the incomplete pile of 1,350 absentees this weekend, padding Mr. Franken's edge by a further 176 votes.

Both campaigns have also suggested that Mr. Ritchie's office made mistakes in tabulating votes that had been challenged by either of the campaigns. And the Canvassing Board appears to have applied inconsistent standards in how it decided some of these challenged votes -- in ways that, again on net, have favored Mr. Franken.

The question is how the board can certify a fair and accurate election result given these multiple recount problems. Yet that is precisely what the five members seem prepared to do when they meet today. Some members seem to have concluded that because one of the candidates will challenge the result in any event, why not get on with it and leave it to the courts? Mr. Coleman will certainly have grounds to contest the result in court, but he'll be at a disadvantage given that courts are understandably reluctant to overrule a certified outcome.

Meanwhile, Minnesota's other Senator, Amy Klobuchar, is already saying her fellow Democrats should seat Mr. Franken when the 111th Congress begins this week if the Canvassing Board certifies him as the winner. This contradicts Minnesota law, which says the state cannot award a certificate of election if one party contests the results. Ms. Klobuchar is trying to create the public perception of a fait accompli, all the better to make Mr. Coleman look like a sore loser and build pressure on him to drop his legal challenge despite the funny recount business.

Minnesotans like to think that their state isn't like New Jersey or Louisiana, and typically it isn't. But we can't recall a similar recount involving optical scanning machines that has changed so many votes, and in which nearly every crucial decision worked to the advantage of the same candidate. The Coleman campaign clearly misjudged the politics here, and the apparent willingness of a partisan like Mr. Ritchie to help his preferred candidate, Mr. Franken. If the Canvassing Board certifies Mr. Franken as the winner based on the current count, it will be anointing a tainted and undeserving Senator.

 

 

By JONATHAN GURWITZ
San Antonio

When Judith Markelz took a job as program manager for the Soldier and Family Assistance Center at Fort Sam Houston, she thought she was signing up for a temporary position. The hope in 2003 was that the center here -- which coordinates care for soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, and helps their families navigate the military's health-care system -- could close its doors within six months.

It's been five years now and Mrs. Markelz is still on the job.

In the interim, more than 4,000 wounded soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen have received treatment at the nearby Brooke Army Medical Center. Many of them have come through her door looking to find everything from books and movies to pass the time, to a place where members of their families can stay while they recuperate.

For wounded warriors, arriving at the center coincides with the start of a sometimes months-long, painful rehabilitation. Depression and boredom are common.

"They are amazing people, with strength beyond anything I have ever seen," Mrs. Markelz tells me. "They cry at night, but they don't cry during the day."

Mrs. Markelz is a counselor, activity director and surrogate mother to all the soldiers in the center. "This is a new group of young men and women," the former schoolteacher says. "We need to be meeting their needs in any way we can."

The facility, which has been renamed the Warrior and Family Support Center, is a multipurpose community room, refuge and second home for wounded soldiers and their families. Enter it, and you can't help being overwhelmed by the bravery of the young men and women in uniform, and the outpouring of support from religious groups, businesses and individual volunteers who enrich it.

But for years you also couldn't help notice that the facility was too small for the number it cares for -- crammed into a 1,200-square-foot office in a guest house on post. This was suitable, perhaps, for a "temporary" center, but inadequate for something that had become an integral part of the military's health-care system.

Private donors are already doing a lot to help recuperating soldiers in San Antonio. In recent years, two "Fisher Houses" were built near Brooke Army Medical Center by the Fisher House Foundation to give family members of injured soldiers a place to stay. And across the street from Mrs. Markelz's facility is the gleaming new Center for the Intrepid, a state-of-the-art amputee and burn-victim rehabilitation facility built with private funds and donated to the Army.

"I'm not spiritual," Mrs. Markelz says when asked if she ever wondered whether the needs of her own facility would be met, "but there's magic in this room, and I don't know where it comes from. If I say something, if I say we're out of cookies, cookies walk in."

Les Huffman, a commercial developer, walked in one day in late 2006 and was overwhelmed -- by the spirit of the military personnel, by the devotion of the staff and volunteers, and by the obvious need for more space. Mr. Huffman and his brother Steve, sons of a career Air Force officer, decided to lead an effort to build larger quarters for the center.

In short order they created a nonprofit organization -- the Returning Heroes Home -- pulled together a board of directors, made a proffer to the Army, and started raising money. They sought input from the wounded soldiers, staff, doctors and rehabilitation specialists for the design.

The nonprofit raised $3.6 million in cash contributions and another $1.5 million worth of in-kind contributions that included 275 tons of limestone, computers, audio-visual equipment and more. More than 5,000 individuals, businesses and foundations donated in one way or another.

A little more than a year after breaking ground, the new Warrior and Family Support Center was complete. On Dec. 1, Mrs. Markelz began moving into her new 12,000-square foot home.

"The mission of this facility is to have an impact on the lives of these kids -- do something positive that's uplifting, get them out of the environment of depression in those barracks," Steve Huffman says.

A 24-foot Christmas tree stands in the lobby, decked with red, white and blue ornaments. Mrs. Markelz says, "It's not my new home. It belongs to the wounded warriors and their families. . . . It's not about me. They deserve it -- big time."

Critics ask why private efforts are needed, why the military isn't building these centers on its own. Paul Begala, for one, has said "t is an obscenity that a government that can find billions in no-bid contracts for Halliburton . . . cannot find a few million dollars to bind up the wounds of its heroes." Sen. Chris Dodd (D., Conn.) has sounded similar notes.

In Today's Opinion Journal
 

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Harry Reid v. the ConstitutionCredit Default Swamp

TODAY'S COLUMNISTS

Declarations: In With the New
– Peggy NoonanPotomac Watch: The Senate Goes Wobbly on Card Check
– Kimberley A. Strassel

COMMENTARY

The Weekend Interview: London's Mayor Issues a Challenge to Gordon Brown
– Matthew KaminskiObama Will Find the White House Is a Lonely Place
– Jay WinikLet's Commit to a Nuclear-Free World
– Dianne FeinsteinCross Country: Government Alone Can't Do Right by Our Wounded Soldiers
– Jonathan GurwitzBlame Television for the Bubble
– Jim SollischSteve Huffman offers a partial answer to these critics. He says that the government recognizes the needs of the troops, as evidenced by its huge investment in military medicine, but it has to prioritize its spending and can't always fill in the gaps.

"I like to paraphrase what Arnold Fisher [the driving force behind the Center for the Intrepid] said," Steve Huffman told me. "This is not about philanthropy, this is not a gift. It's an obligation. It's a partial repayment on a debt we owe these guys."

We live in an era of earmarks and ever-expanding bailouts where there is seemingly little that the government is incapable of doing. But you cannot earmark bravery or budget patriotism. And perhaps that is the best justification for what citizens -- and not government alone -- should do to aid those who have volunteered to defend their freedoms.

Through the Returning Heroes Home Foundation the Huffmans are now raising money to create fitness trails on property adjacent to center they've just built. Steve Huffman explains the motivations for all of his efforts this way, "This is the most important thing I've ever done in my life."

Mr. Gurwitz is an editorial board member of the San Antonio Express-News.

A good question.  Please answer it at http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=978.150

Back in the 70s I subscribed to the Economist and still occasionally buy it when flying.  Its still a good magazine, but IMHO has drifted considerably towards fashionably wooly-headed thinking.  This piece IMHO displays that tendency.
======================

By MARGARET COKER
JERUSALEM -- As Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip entered its seventh day Friday, fighter jets targeted homes of Hamas political leaders across the territory and some of the mosques they have been known to pray in, while Palestinians and Israelis on both sides of the border feared that they would join the growing list of casualties suffered in the conflict.

With Hamas vowing "a day of rage" in retaliation for the bombardment that has killed more than 400 Palestinians and wounded approximately 2,000 others, Israel sealed the West Bank, prohibiting the movement of the more than 3 million Palestinians living there to prevent what the army feared would be massive protests at the bloodshed. Four Israelis have been killed by Hamas rockets, and dozens more injured in the week of fighting.

 
Reuters
Palestinians survey destroyed houses following an Israeli air strike in Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused the militant Hamas organization of holding the people of Gaza hostage Friday and said the U.S. continues to seek a "durable and sustainable" cease-fire.

Speaking to reporters in the White House driveway after a meeting with President George W. Bush, Ms. Rice also said that the U.S. remains "very concerned about the situation there and is working very hard with our partners around the world."

But she reiterated the Bush administration argument that any cease-fire must hinge on the willingness of Hamas to stop firing rockets into Israel. "We are working toward a cease-fire that would not allow a re-establishment of the status quo…where Hamas could launch rockets," she said.

Elsewhere across the Middle East, anger that has been building against the Israeli onslaught was expected to be channeled in fiery Friday sermons, leading to demonstrations and heightened tensions across the region.

In airstrike after airstrike early Friday, Israeli warplanes hit some 20 houses believed to belong to Hamas militants and members of other armed groups, Palestinians said.

In what appeared to be a new Israeli tactic, the military called at least some of the houses ahead of time to warn inhabitants of an impending attack. In some cases, it also fired a sound bomb to warn away civilians before flattening the homes with powerful missiles, Palestinians and Israeli defense officials said.

Israel launched the aerial campaign last Saturday in a bid to halt weeks of intensifying Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza. The offensive has dealt a heavy blow to Hamas, but failed to halt the rocket fire. New attacks Friday struck apartment buildings in a southern Israeli city. No serious injuries were reported.

After destroying Hamas's security compounds, Israel has turned its attention to the group's leadership.

They said the Israelis either warned nearby residents by phone or fired a warning missile to reduce civilian casualties. Israeli planes also dropped leaflets east of Gaza giving a confidential phone number and e-mail address for people to report locations of rocket squads. Residents stepped over the leaflets.

Israel used similar tactics during its 2006 war in Lebanon.

Most of the targeted homes Friday belonged to activist leaders and appeared to be empty at the time, but one man was killed in a strike that flattened a building in the Jebaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza.

Three Israeli civilians and one soldier have also died in the rocket attacks, which have reached deeper into Israel than ever before, bringing one-eighth of Israel's population of seven million within rocket range.

One of the mosques destroyed Friday was known as a Hamas stronghold, and the army said it was used to store weapons. It also was identified with Nizar Rayan, the Hamas militant leader killed Thursday when Israel dropped a one-ton bomb on his home.

The hit on Mr. Rayan's home obliterated the four-story apartment building and peeled off the walls of others around it, carving out a vast field of rubble.

Mr. Rayan, 49, ranked among Hamas' top five decision-makers. A professor of Islamic law, he was known for his close ties to the group's military wing and was respected in Gaza for donning combat fatigues and personally participating in clashes against Israeli forces. He sent one of his sons on an October 2001 suicide mission that killed two Israeli settlers in Gaza.

Israel's military says the homes of Hamas leaders are being used to store missiles and other weapons, and it said the hit on Mr. Rayan's house triggered secondary explosions from the stockpile there.

Israeli defense officials said the military had called Mr. Rayan's home and fired a warning missile before destroying the building. That was impossible to confirm. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss military tactics.

Israel has targeted Hamas leaders many times in the past, but halted the practice during a six-month truce that expired last month.

Most of Hamas's leaders went into hiding at the start of Israel's offensive. Mr. Rayan, however, was known for openly defying Israel and in the past had led crowds to the homes of wanted Hamas figures -- as if daring Israel to strike and risk the lives of civilians.

The offensive hasn't halted rocket fire at Israel, and a barrage landed in the city of Ashkelon early Friday. Two rockets hit apartment buildings, lightly wounding one man, police said. Sirens warning Israelis to take cover when military radar picks up an incoming rocket have helped reduce casualties in recent days. The military said aircraft destroyed the three rocket launchers used to fire at Ashkelon.

Israel has been building up artillery, armor and infantry on Gaza's border in an indication the punishing air assault could continue with a ground incursion. At the same time, international pressure is building for a cease-fire that would block more fighting.

Israel appears to be maintaining an opening for the intense diplomatic efforts by leaders in the Middle East and, saying it would consider a halt to the fighting if international monitors were brought in to track compliance with any truce with Hamas.

But political jockeying in Israel appears to be complicating efforts to end the conflict. Rival camps in the ruling government -- both contesting a February general election to lead the country -- have signaled their backing for different negotiating tracks over a possible cease-fire.

The staff of Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a former prime minister and longshot contender to lead the country, earlier in the week raised the possibility of a French-brokered, 48-hour lull in fighting with Hamas. That proposal was shot down Wednesday by Mr. Olmert and his second-in-command, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who is also running to lead the next government.

On Thursday, Ms. Livni was in Paris for talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy as part of a push for international support for what she characterizes as Israel's fight against terror. Ms. Livni said Thursday that a temporary halt to hostilities in Gaza to allow in humanitarian supplies would be harmful to Israel.

"There is no humanitarian crisis in the Strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce," Ms. Livni said, according to the Foreign Ministry.

Concerned about protests, Israeli police said they would step up security and restrict access to Friday prayers at Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque. Devout Muslims attend large, communal prayers on Fridays.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said thousands of police would be deployed throughout the city, and that only Palestinian men over the age of 50, along with women of all ages, would be permitted to enter. He also said that police were in contact with Muslim leaders to ensure things remain quiet.

The army also imposed a closure on the West Bank, barring nearly all of the area's more than two million Palestinians from entering Israel.

—Jay Solomon, Joshua Mitnick and the Associated Press contributed to this article.

By PETER BERKOWITZ
After their dismal performance in November, conservatives are taking stock. As they debate the causes that have driven them into the political wilderness and as they contemplate paths out, they should also take heart. After all, election 2008 shows that our constitutional order is working as designed.

The Constitution presupposes a responsive electorate, and respond the electorate did to the vivid memory of a spendthrift and feckless Republican Congress; to a stalwart but frequently ineffectual Republican president; and to a Republican presidential candidate who -- for all his mastery of foreign affairs, extensive Washington experience, and honorable public service -- proved incapable of crafting a coherent and compelling message.

Indeed, while sorting out their errors and considering their options, conservatives of all stripes would be well advised to concentrate their attention on the constitutional order and the principles that undergird it, because maintaining them should be their paramount political priority.

A constitutional conservatism puts liberty first and teaches the indispensableness of moderation in securing, preserving and extending its blessings. The constitution it seeks to conserve carefully defines government's proper responsibilities while providing it with the incentives and tools to perform them effectively; draws legitimacy from democratic consent while protecting individual rights from invasion by popular majorities; assumes the primacy of self-interest but also the capacity on occasion to rise above it through the exercise of virtue; reflects, and at the same time refines, popular will through a complex scheme of representation; and disperses and blends power among three distinct branches of government as well as among federal and state governments the better to check and balance it. The Constitution and the nation that has prospered under it for 220 years demonstrate that conserving and enlarging freedom and democracy depends on weaving together rival interests and competing goods.

Unfortunately, contrary to the Constitution's lesson in moderation, the two biggest blocs in the conservative coalition are tempted to conclude that what is needed now is greater purity in conservative ranks. Down that path lies disaster.

Some social conservatives point to the ballot initiatives this year in Arizona, California and Florida that rejected same-sex marriage as evidence that the country is and remains socially conservative, and that any deviation from the social conservative agenda is politically suicidal. They overlook that whereas in California's 2000 ballot initiative 61% of voters rejected same-sex marriage, in 2008 only 52% of voters in the nation's most populous state opposed the proposition. Indeed, most trend lines suggest that the public is steadily growing more accepting of same-sex marriage, with national polls indicating that opposition to it, also among conservatives, is weakest among young voters.

Meanwhile, more than a few libertarian-leaning conservatives are disgusted by Republican profligacy. They remain uncomfortable with or downright opposed to the Bush administration's support in 2004 for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, and its continuation of the Clinton administration's moratorium on government funding of embryonic stem-cell research.

In addition, many are still angry about the Republican-led intervention by the federal government in the 2005 controversy over whether Terri Schiavo's husband could lawfully remove the feeding tubes that were keeping his comatose wife alive. These libertarian conservatives entertain dreams of a coalition that jettisons social conservatives and joins forces with moderates and independents of libertarian persuasion.

But the purists in both camps ignore simple electoral math. Slice and dice citizens' opinions and voting patterns in the 50 states as you like, neither social conservatives nor libertarian conservatives can get to 50% plus one without the aid of the other.

Yet they, and the national security hawks who are also crucial to conservative electoral hopes, do not merely form a coalition of convenience. Theirs can and should be a coalition of principle, and a constitutional conservatism provides the surest ones.

The principles are familiar: individual freedom and individual responsibility, limited but energetic government, economic opportunity and strong national defense. They are embedded in the Constitution and flow out of the political ideas from which it was fashioned. They were central to Frank Meyer's celebrated fusion of traditionalist and libertarian conservatism in the 1960s. And they inspired Ronald Reagan's consolidation of conservatism in the 1980s.

Short-term clashes over priorities and policies are bound to persist. But championing these principles is the best means over the long term for conserving the political conditions hospitable to traditional morality, religious faith, and the communities that nourish them. And it is also the best means over the long term for conserving the political conditions that promote free markets, and the economic growth and expanded opportunity free markets bring.

Moreover, a constitutional conservatism provides a framework for developing a distinctive agenda for today's challenges to which social conservatives and libertarian conservatives can both, in good conscience, subscribe. Leading that agenda should be:

- An economic program, health-care reform, energy policy and protection for the environment grounded in market-based solutions.

- A foreign policy that recognizes America's vital national security interest in advancing liberty abroad but realistically calibrates undertakings to the nation's limited knowledge and restricted resources.

- A commitment to homeland security that is as passionate about security as it is about law, and which is prepared to responsibly fashion the inevitable, painful trade-offs.

- A focus on reducing the number of abortions and increasing the number of adoptions.

- Efforts to keep the question of same-sex marriage out of the federal courts and subject to consideration by each state's democratic process.

- Measures to combat illegal immigration that are emphatically pro-border security and pro-immigrant.

In Today's Opinion Journal
 

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

The Euro Decade and Its LessonsTreasury to Ford: Drop Dead

TODAY'S COLUMNISTS

Declarations: In With the New
– Peggy NoonanPotomac Watch: The Senate Goes Wobbly on Card Check
– Kimberley A. Strassel

COMMENTARY:

Conservatives Can Unite Around the Constitution
– Peter BerkowitzLet's Be Worthy of Their Sacrific
– Karl RoveLet's Write the Rating Agencies Out of Our Law
– Robert RosenkranzObama Promises Bush III on Iran
– John R. BoltonIsrael's Policy Is Perfectly 'Proportionate'
– Alan M. Dershowitz- A case for school choice as an option that enhances individual freedom while giving low-income, inner-city parents opportunities to place their children in classrooms where they can obtain a decent education.

- A demand that public universities abolish speech codes and vigorously protect liberty of thought and discussion on campus.

- The appointment of judges who understand that their function is to interpret the Constitution and not make policy, and, therefore, where the Constitution is most vague, recognize the strongest obligation to defer to the results of the democratic process.

If they honor the imperatives of a constitutional conservatism, both social conservatives and libertarian conservatives will have to bite their fair share of bullets as they translate these goals into concrete policy. They will, though, have a big advantage: Moderation is not only a conservative virtue, but the governing virtue of a constitutional conservatism.

Mr. Berkowitz is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. An expanded version of this article is forthcoming in Policy Review.

If Iran unleashes Hezbollah in the north if/when Israel goes into Gaza, we could see a real excrement storm.
======================

By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
Israel's actions in Gaza are justified under international law, and Israel should be commended for its self-defense against terrorism. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter reserves to every nation the right to engage in self-defense against armed attacks. The only limitation international law places on a democracy is that its actions must satisfy the principle of proportionality.

Since Israel ended its occupation of Gaza, Hamas has fired thousands of rockets designed to kill civilians into southern Israel. The residents of Sderot -- which have borne the brunt of the attacks -- have approximately 15 seconds from launch time to run into a shelter. Although deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime, terrorists firing at Sderot are so proud of their actions that they sign their weapons.

When Barack Obama visited Sderot this summer and saw the remnants of these rockets, he reacted by saying that if his two daughters were exposed to rocket attacks in their home, he would do everything in his power to stop such attacks. He understands how the terrorists exploit the morality of democracies.

In a recent incident related to me by the former head of the Israeli air force, Israeli intelligence learned that a family's house in Gaza was being used to manufacture rockets. The Israeli military gave the residents 30 minutes to leave. Instead, the owner called Hamas, which sent mothers carrying babies to the house.

The Opinion Journal Widget
Download Opinion Journal's widget and link to the most important editorials and op-eds of the day from your blog or Web page.
Hamas knew that Israel would never fire at a home with civilians in it. They also knew that if Israeli authorities did not learn there were civilians in the house and fired on it, Hamas would win a public relations victory by displaying the dead. Israel held its fire. The Hamas rockets that were protected by the human shields were then used against Israeli civilians.

These despicable tactics -- targeting Israeli civilians while hiding behind Palestinian civilians -- can only work against moral democracies that care deeply about minimizing civilian casualties. They never work against amoral nations such as Russia, whose military has few inhibitions against killing civilians among whom enemy combatants are hiding.

The claim that Israel has violated the principle of proportionality -- by killing more Hamas terrorists than the number of Israeli civilians killed by Hamas rockets -- is absurd. First, there is no legal equivalence between the deliberate killing of innocent civilians and the deliberate killings of Hamas combatants. Under the laws of war, any number of combatants can be killed to prevent the killing of even one innocent civilian.

In Today's Opinion Journal
 

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

The Euro Decade and Its LessonsTreasury to Ford: Drop Dead

TODAY'S COLUMNISTS

Declarations: In With the New
– Peggy NoonanPotomac Watch: The Senate Goes Wobbly on Card Check
– Kimberley A. Strassel

COMMENTARY:

Conservatives Can Unite Around the Constitution
– Peter BerkowitzLet's Be Worthy of Their Sacrific
– Karl RoveLet's Write the Rating Agencies Out of Our Law
– Robert RosenkranzObama Promises Bush III on Iran
– John R. BoltonIsrael's Policy Is Perfectly 'Proportionate'
– Alan M. DershowitzSecond, proportionality is not measured by the number of civilians actually killed, but rather by the risk posed. This is illustrated by what happened on Tuesday, when a Hamas rocket hit a kindergarten in Beer Sheva, though no students were there at the time. Under international law, Israel is not required to allow Hamas to play Russian roulette with its children's lives.

While Israel installs warning systems and builds shelters, Hamas refuses to do so, precisely because it wants to maximize the number of Palestinian civilians inadvertently killed by Israel's military actions. Hamas knows from experience that even a small number of innocent Palestinian civilians killed inadvertently will result in bitter condemnation of Israel by many in the international community.

Israel understands this as well. It goes to enormous lengths to reduce the number of civilian casualties -- even to the point of foregoing legitimate targets that are too close to civilians.

Until the world recognizes that Hamas is committing three war crimes -- targeting Israeli civilians, using Palestinian civilians as human shields, and seeking the destruction of a member state of the United Nations -- and that Israel is acting in self-defense and out of military necessity, the conflict will continue.

Mr. Dershowitz is a law professor at Harvard. His latest book is "The Case Against Israel's Enemies" (Wiley, 2008).

http://www.maniacworld.com/are-you-going-to-finish-strong.html

Mexico: Cartel Sources in High Places
Stratfor Today » December 29, 2008 | 1834 GMT


A Mexican army major has been arrested for allegedly passing information to the Beltran Leyva drug-trafficking organization. The arrest represents a double blow to the Mexican government and demonstrates the reach of the country’s cartels.


Mexican army Maj. Arturo Gonzalez Rodriguez was arrested the week of Dec. 21 for allegedly assisting Mexican drug trafficking organizations for $100,000 per month, the Mexican attorney general’s office announced Dec. 26. Gonzalez was assigned to the Presidential Guard Corps, the unit responsible for protecting Mexico’s president. Based on statements from a former cartel member turned witness code-named “Jennifer,” the attorney general’s office has accused Gonzalez of passing information related to the activities and travel plans of Mexican President Felipe Calderon to the Beltran Leyva organization (BLO). Gonzalez also stands accused of leaking military intelligence, training BLO hit men through a private security company and supplying military weapons to various drug-trafficking organizations, including Los Zetas.


In light of other high-level Mexican government corruption charges over the past months, this case is unsettling but certainly does not come as a surprise.


The revelation that Gonzalez was providing intelligence and materials to drug cartels represents a double blow to the Mexican government. First, the fact that a member of an army unit responsible for protecting the president was passing information about presidential movements to the cartels exposes a potentially fatal gap in Calderon’s protective detail. While it is not known what specific information Gonzalez had access to, or what exact details he was passing to the cartels, this is a security breach at the highest level. According to the attorney general’s office, the informant Jennifer has said the cartels were tracking the president’s movements with the intent of avoiding the high level of government security that surrounds him, but had no specific plan to target Calderon. But capability is more important than intent, as intent can change quickly. Tracking Calderon’s movements to avoid him could easily have been altered to targeting Calderon if the need arose.


It is unclear exactly how involved Gonzalez was in the daily movements of Calderon. Because he was on the staff, it is safe to assume that he was at least involved in briefings and the general movements of the president, but this information would not necessarily be enough for the cartel to have been able to assassinate Calderon. Most valuable to such a plot would have been information related to presidential transport strategy, namely, how the guard worked to protect Calderon, how it arranged transportation, and how it gathered intelligence on specific threats. Insights into how the guard operated would have given the cartels a glimpse into Calderon’s security vulnerabilities — something far more dangerous to Calderon than simply the knowledge of where the president would be at any given time.


The second aspect of the blow is that Gonzalez apparently had been on the cartel payroll since 2005, during which time he held different positions in the government. As he changed assignments, he was kept on as a cartel asset, and the nature of his involvement with the cartels changed. It is entirely feasible that he fed information on other departments of the army (not just the Presidential Guard Corps) over his three-year relationship with the cartels.


A primary reason for the Mexican government to rely on the military to fight the cartels is because state and local law enforcement are considered far too corrupt to be trusted. One of the military’s strengths was its perceived lower level of corruption due to its low-level involvement with the cartels, but this case (along with other military corruption arrests this year) confirms that members of the Mexican military also are prone to corruption.


More details must emerge about Gonzalez’s exact role in the Presidential Guard Corps and the nature of the intelligence he passed to the BLO in order to more accurately assess the threat he posed to the president. Even so, the fact remains that the cartels’ intelligence capabilities have extended to those charged with protecting Mexico’s president — and hence to Mexico’s political stability.

Second post of AM

Part 3: Making It on Its Own
December 19, 2008 | 1218 GMT
Summary
Constrained by its geography since its inception in 1947, Pakistan has found it virtually impossible to develop a strong economy, so it has had to think outside the box. One effective strategy has been to leverage the political and security aspects of its geography, posed by the confluence of countries and cultures in the region. This mix of Iran, India, Afghanistan, Shiite Islam, Sunni Islam and Hinduism has meant that powers beyond Pakistan’s immediate frontiers have had a vested interest in its survival. But this could be changing as the world moves away from Pakistan and as it moves closer to its day of reckoning as a functioning nation-state.

Analysis
Related Special Topic Page
Countries In Crisis
Related Links
Part 1: The Perils of Using Islamism to Protect the Core
Part 2: A Crisis in Indian-Pakistani Relations
The Geopolitics of India: A Shifting, Self-Contained World
Editor’s Note: This is the third part of a series on Pakistan.

Very few developing states boast strong economies. Even those that do, such as Brazil, suffer from a host of problems, including insufficient infrastructure and technical personnel, high levels of corruption, shallow local capital markets, currency risk and overdependence on commodities. Pakistan suffers from all of these ailments — and more, as we have discussed in earlier installments of this series.

As we look at the economic factors contributing to Pakistan’s problems, we will first evaluate the Pakistani economy on its merits (or lack thereof). Then we will explain how things are just about as good as they can possibly get.

Security, Debt and Deficit
Pakistan historically has been an economically weak, mismanaged and corrupt state. The Pakistani military elite, deeply entrenched in the economy, holds much of the country’s wealth as well as a number of key assets in the corporate and real estate sectors. The agricultural industry remains the country’s economic backbone, employing some 44 percent of the population, yet accounting for only 21 percent of Pakistan’s gross domestic product (GDP). The remainder of the GDP comes from services (53 percent) and industry (27 percent).

Pakistan’s most fundamental economic problem is that it has very few natural resources to tap in the first place. And it is not necessarily a matter of lacking the resources; security issues in the country’s northwest have long constrained even basic exploration in much of the country, going back to times that predate the British colonial experience. In order to industrialize, therefore, Pakistan has been forced to import whatever materials it needs without first being able to establish a source of income. The unavoidable results are high debt and a sustained, massive trade deficit. As of 2008, the country’s national debt was more than 60 percent of GDP, and the trade deficit about 9.3 percent of GDP.

Even agriculture, the cash cow of many developed states, is a bit of a no-go for the Pakistanis. The Indus River Valley might be productive — indeed, Pakistan has leveraged it to become the 11th-largest producer of wheat — but the country remains a net importer of foodstuffs largely due to the a burgeoning population of 168 million. Though Pakistan is the fifth-largest exporter of rice and 14th-largest exporter of cotton, floods and pest pressure over the past year have hit rice and cotton production hard, with the growth rate last reported by the agricultural sector (for fiscal year 2008) at a dismal 1.5 percent.

Related Links
Pakistan: Grabbing the IMF Lifeline
Pakistan: Biting the IMF Bullet
Pakistan: IMF the Only Option
Pakistan: Flirting With Bankruptcy
The bulk of Pakistan’s exports come from low-value-added products such as textiles and chemicals, but the relative income from such sources has been declining for three decades and is somewhat in danger of disappearing altogether. Pakistan used to enjoy access to the broad Commonwealth market, but starting in 1973, when the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community (EEC, a predecessor to the European Union), that market evaporated, forcing Pakistan to compete internationally on its own merits. And now that textiles are subject to the full/normal trading rules of the World Trade Organization, Pakistan lacks much of a competitive advantage. China, Bangladesh and India can regularly produce textiles at lower cost. In fact, the only true growth industry in Pakistan is its near-monopoly on fuel supply to NATO forces in Afghanistan. Aside from refining, nearly all of Pakistan’s economic sectors face massive challenges at best, and are flirting with collapse at worst.

The net result is not only a low level of development (with the notable exception of Karachi, the center for Pakistan’s international trade, and Lahore, the country’s agricultural capital), but also a chronic lack of capital to invest in the sorts of projects, such as infrastructure, education and finance, that could enable Pakistan to make true economic progress. Pakistan’s only substantial source of capital comes from abroad, and access to that capital is dependent upon factors such as currency rates, the global economic situation and the price of oil — factors that remain firmly beyond Islamabad’s influence.

And the need for new sources of capital is now greater than ever. In recent years, Pakistan has witnessed a collapse of its infrastructure, with power outages of up to six hours a day across the country. The 2008 spikes in energy and food prices almost bankrupted the state. In the year to date, Pakistan’s food bill has jumped by 46 percent over 2007 figures, and its oil bill by 56 percent. Simultaneously, the deteriorating security environment has manifested itself in major cities in the form of suicide bombings — Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi have not proved immune — and has done an excellent job of chasing away foreign and even domestic investors. Foreign direct investment (FDI) per capita in Pakistan has plunged to a barely noticeable US$32 per year. (By comparison, sub-Saharan Africa’s per capita FDI is US$50 per year.)

Pakistan is holding the line only by spending money that it does not have to spare. What social stability that remains can largely be credited to food and energy subsidies, which have contributed to an annual inflation rate of more than 25 percent. The costs of those subsidies, along with ongoing military deployments, have landed the budget in deficit to the tune of 7.4 percent of GDP, among the world’s highest. Recent spending has reduced Pakistan’s foreign currency reserves by 75 percent in the course of one year to US$3.45 billion. This is only enough to cover one month of imports, bringing the country dangerously close to defaulting on its debts. Though it has seen some respite in the form of sharply declining oil prices, Pakistan’s ability to finance the debt through bond issues has effectively ended; during a credit crisis, few investors want to lend to well-managed countries, much less a badly run country like Pakistan.

The Economic Limits of Geography
What truly sets Pakistan apart from other countries in terms of economic performance is a geography that greatly curtails its economic opportunities. Of Pakistan’s cities, only Karachi remains globally competitive by most measures. Karachi is the country’s only real port and has easy access to major trade lanes. Moving north along the Indus Valley, one becomes tightly hemmed in by marshes and deserts to the east and arid highlands to the west. The result is that Karachi functions as a city-state unto itself, with the bulk of Pakistan’s population found much farther upstream, where the Indus Valley widens.

The upper Indus is where the country’s best infrastructure is located and where any deep, integrated development might take place. But such development is impossible for three reasons. First, the region’s high population has required extensive irrigation, which has drawn down the Indus’ water level, making it unnavigable by any but the smallest of ships. The upper Indus region is, in effect, cut off from Karachi except by far more expensive rail or road transport. Second, the upper Indus’ natural market and trading partner is none other than India. Indian-Pakistani hostility denies the region the chance for progress. Finally, what water the Indus does have is not under Pakistan’s control; the headwaters of not just the Indus but nearly all of its major tributaries lie not in Pakistan, but in Indian-controlled territory. India is damming up those rivers, both to generate electricity and to further tilt the balance of power away from Pakistan.

The remainder of Pakistan’s population is split off (or perhaps more accurately, sequestered) into the mountainous region of the North-West Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a region that is simply too remote to justify developing under normal circumstances. With the notable exception of Karachi, economic development in Pakistan is virtually impossible without the country somehow getting past its conflict with India.

Thus, the question must be asked: How is Pakistan able to survive? Economic development has been nearly impossible since partition from India, and certainly since the United Kingdom joined the EEC. The answer, put simply, is that Islamabad has been very creative. What Pakistan has succeeded in doing is leveraging the political and security aspects of its geography in order to keep its system going. Just as geography has been Pakistan’s curse, to a great degree it also has become its lifeline. Pakistan sits at the intersection of many regions, countries and cultures, including Iran, India, Afghanistan, Shiite Islam, Sunni Islam and Hinduism. This mix makes ruling Pakistan a major headache on the best of days, but it also means that powers beyond Pakistan’s immediate frontiers have a vested interest in seeing Pakistan not fail.

British diplomatic and economic support has maintained the Pakistani-Indian balance of power. All manner of Chinese support, including the sharing of nuclear technology, has strengthened Pakistan against a far superior India. Economic and energy support from Arabs of the Persian Gulf has lent strength to Pakistan when it seemed that India would overwhelm it. And support from the United States, which proved critical in backing the Pakistanis against the Soviet-leaning Indians during the Cold War, continues today in exchange for Pakistan’s support in the war against militant Islamism.

Islamabad’s success in leveraging its geography means that the country has not had to succeed economically on its merits for decades. Put another way, Pakistan has leveraged its geopolitical position not only to push for softer security policies from the United States or India, but also to pay the bills.

This has certainly been replicated in current times. None other than U.S. Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus was reported to have personally intervened with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to ensure that Pakistan received a US$7.6 billion loan in November, a loan for which Pakistan certainly did not qualify. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates chipped in another US$2 billion in credit, while China contributed US$500 million and the Asian Development Bank provided another US$300 million — all in the past few weeks.

While these funds certainly will delay Pakistan’s day of reckoning, they are unlikely to prevent it. Pakistan’s economy is flirting with becoming nonfunctional, and it cannot operate in the black any more. Doing that would at a minimum require slashing military and subsidy expenditures, an impossible move for a socially seething country operating on a war footing (and, incidentally, a move the IMF loan supposedly will require).

But the real danger is that the world is shifting away from Pakistan, and with that shift, Pakistan’s ability to leverage its geography diminishes. The United States views Pakistan to be as much part of the problem of the Afghan insurgency as it is part of the solution. Oil prices have dropped by US$100 a barrel in less than five months, drastically limiting the Gulf Arabs’ ability to dole out cash. China has many concerns, and fighting Islamist extremism that has leaked into its own western provinces is something Beijing is now weighing against its commitment to Pakistan. The result might not prove to be a total cutoff of funds, but a slackening of support certainly seems to be in the offing. And without such outside support, Pakistan will have to make it or break it on its own — something it has never proved capable of doing.

 

Part 1: The Perils of Using Islamism to Protect the Core
December 17, 2008 | 1203 GMT
Summary
The fundamental challenge to Pakistan’s survival is twofold. First, the only route of expansion that makes any sense is along the Indus River Valley, the country’s fertile heartland, but that path takes Pakistan into India’s front yard. Second, Pakistan also has an insurmountable internal problem: In its efforts to secure buffers, it is forced to include various ethnic groups that, because of mountainous terrain, are impossible to assimilate. When the government used religion as a tool to unify the buffer regions with the Indus Valley core, it did not anticipate that the strategy would threaten the state’s survival.

Analysis
Related Special Topic Pages
Countries In Crisis
Pakistani Democracy and the Army
Related Link
The Geopolitics of India: A Shifting, Self-Contained World
Editor’s Note: This is the first part of a series on Pakistan.

While Pakistan’s boundaries encompass a large swath of land stretching from the peaks of the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea, the writ of the Pakistani state stops short of the country’s mountainous northwestern frontier. The strip of arable land that hugs the Indus River in Punjab province is the Pakistani heartland, where the bulk of the country’s population, industry and resources are concentrated. For Pakistan to survive as a modern nation-state, it must protect this core at all costs.

But even in the best of circumstances, defending the Pakistani core and maintaining the integrity of the state are extraordinarily difficult tasks, mainly because of geography.

The headwaters of the Indus River system are not even in Pakistan — the system actually begins in Indian-administered Kashmir. While Kashmir has been the focus of Indo-Pakistani military action in modern times, the area where Pakistan faces its most severe security challenge is the saddle of land between the Indus and the broader, more fertile and more populated Ganges River basin. The one direction in which it makes sense to extend Pakistani civilization as geography would allow takes Pakistan into direct and daily conflict with a much larger civilization: India. Put simply, geography dictates that Pakistan either be absorbed into India or fight a losing battle against Indian influence.

Controlling the Buffers
Pakistan must protect its core by imposing some semblance of control over its hinterlands, mainly in the north and west, where the landscape is more conducive to fragmenting the population than defending the country. The arid, broken highlands of the Baluchistan plateau eventually leak into Iran to the southwest. To the north, in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA), the Federally Administered Northern Area (FANA) and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), the terrain becomes more and more mountainous. But terrain in these regions still does not create a firm enough barrier to completely block invasion. To the southwest, a veritable Baluch thoroughfare parallels the Arabian Sea coast and crosses the Iranian-Pakistani border. To the northwest, the Pashtun-populated mountains are not so rugged that armies cannot march through them, as Alexander the Great, the Aryans and the Turks historically proved.

To control all these buffer regions, the Pakistani state must absorb masses of other peoples who do not conform to the norms of the Indus core. Russia faces a similar challenge; its lack of geographic insulation from its neighbors forces it to expand to establish a buffer. But in Pakistan, the complications are far worse. Russia’s buffers are primarily flat, which facilitates the assimilation of conquered peoples. Pakistan’s buffers are broken and mountainous, which reinforces ethnic divisions among the regions’ inhabitants — core Punjabis and Sindhis in the Indus Valley, Baluch to the west and Pashtuns to the north. And the Baluch and Pashtuns are spread out over far more territory than what comprises the Punjab-Sindh core.

Thus, while Pakistan has relatively definable boundaries, it lacks the ethnic and social cohesion of a strong nation-state. Three of the four major Pakistani ethnic groups — Punjabis, Pashtuns and Baluch — are not entirely in Pakistan. India has an entire state called Punjab, 42 percent of Afghanistan is Pashtun, and Iran has a significant Baluch minority in its Sistan-Baluchistan province.

Thus, the challenge to Pakistan’s survival is twofold. First, the only route of expansion that makes any sense is along the fertile Indus River Valley, but that takes Pakistan into India’s front yard. The converse is also true: India’s logical route of expansion through Punjab takes it directly into Pakistan’s core. Second, Pakistan faces an insurmountable internal problem. In its efforts to secure buffers, it is forced to include groups that, because of mountainous terrain, are impossible to assimilate.

The first challenge is one that has received little media attention of late but remains the issue for long-term Pakistani survival. The second challenge is the core of Pakistan’s “current” problems: The central government in Islamabad simply cannot assert its writ into the outer regions, particularly in the Pashtun northwest, as well as it can at its core.

The Indus core could be ruled by a democracy — it is geographically, economically and culturally cohesive — but Pakistan as a whole cannot be democratically ruled from the Indus core and remain a stable nation-state. The only type of government that can realistically attempt to subjugate the minorities in the outer regions, who make up more than 40 percent of Pakistan’s population, is a harsh one (i.e., a military government). It is no wonder, then, that the parliamentary system Pakistan inherited from its days of British rule broke down within four years of independence, which was gained in 1947 when Great Britain split British India into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India. After the 1948 death of Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, British-trained civilian bureaucrats ran the country with the help of the army until 1958, when the army booted out the bureaucrats and took over. Since then there have been four military coups, and the army has ruled the country for 33 of its 61 years in existence.

While Pakistani politics is rarely if ever discussed in this context, the country’s military leadership implicitly understands the dilemma of holding onto the buffer regions to the north and west. Long before military leader Gen. Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq (1977-1988) began Islamizing the state, the army’s central command sought to counter the secular, left-wing, ethno-nationalist tendencies of the minority provinces by promoting an Islamic identity, particularly in the Pashtun belt. At first, the idea was to strengthen the religious underpinning of the republic in order to meld the outlands more closely with the core. Later, in the wake of the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan (1978-1989), Pakistan’s army began using radical Islamism as an arm of foreign policy. Islamist militant groups, trained or otherwise aided by the government, were formed to push Islamabad’s influence into both Afghanistan and Indian-administered Kashmir.

As Pakistan would eventually realize, however, the strategy of promoting an Islamic identity to maintain domestic cohesion while using radical Islamism as an instrument of foreign policy would do far more harm than good.

Militant Proxies
Pakistan’s Islamization policy culminated in the 1980s, when Pakistani, U.S. and Saudi intelligence services collaborated to drive Soviet troops out of Afghanistan by arming, funding and training mostly Pashtun Afghan fighters. When the Soviets withdrew in 1989, Pakistan was eager to forge a post-communist Islamist republic in Afghanistan — one that would be loyal to Islamabad and hostile to New Delhi. To that end, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency threw most of its support behind Islamist rebel leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar of Hizb i-Islami.

But things did not quite go as planned. When the Marxist regime in Kabul finally fell in 1992, a major intra-Islamist power struggle ensued, and Hekmatyar lost much of his influence. Amid the chaos, a small group of madrassah teachers and students who had fought against the Soviets rose above the factions and consolidated control over Afghanistan’s Kandahar region in 1994. The ISI became so impressed by this Taliban movement that it dropped Hekmatyar and joined with the Saudis in ensuring that the Taliban would emerge as the vanguard of the Pashtuns and the rulers of Kabul.

The ISI was not the only one competing for the Taliban’s attention. A small group of Arabs led by Osama bin Laden reopened shop in Afghanistan in 1996, looking to use a Taliban-run government in Afghanistan as a launchpad for reviving the caliphate. Ultimately, this would involve overthrowing all secular governments in the Muslim world (including the one sitting in Islamabad.) The secular, military-run government in Pakistan, on the other hand, was looking to use its influence on the Taliban government to wrest control of Kashmir from India. While Pakistan’s ISI occasionally collaborated with al Qaeda in Afghanistan on matters of convenience, its goals were still ultimately incompatible with those of bin Laden. Pakistan was growing weary of al Qaeda’s presence on its western border, but soon became preoccupied with an opportunity developing to the east.

The Pakistani military saw an indigenous Muslim uprising in Indian-administered Kashmir in 1989 as a way to revive its claims over Muslim-majority Kashmir. It did not take long before the military began developing small guerrilla armies of Kashmiri Islamist irregulars for operations against India. When he was a two-star general and the army’s director-general of military operations, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf played a leading role in refining the plan, which became fully operational in the 1999 Kargil War. Pakistan’s war strategy was to infiltrate Kashmiri Islamist guerrillas across the Line of Control (LoC) while Pakistani forces occupied high-altitude positions on Kargil Mountain. When India became aware of the infiltration, it sought to dislodge the guerrillas, at which point Pakistani artillery opened up on Indian troops positioned at lower-altitude base camps. While the Pakistani plan was initially successful, Indian forces soon regained the upper hand and U.S. pressure helped force a Pakistani retreat.

But the defeat at Kargil did not stop Pakistan from pursuing its Islamist militant proxy project in Kashmir. Groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Al Badr spread their offices and training camps throughout Pakistani-occupied Kashmir under the guidance of the ISI. Whenever Islamabad felt compelled to turn up the heat on New Delhi, these militants would carry out operations against Indian targets, mostly in the Kashmir region.

India, meanwhile, would return the pressure on Islamabad by supporting Baluchi rebels in western Pakistan and providing covert support to the ethnic Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance, the Taliban’s main rival in Afghanistan. While Pakistan grew more and more distracted by supporting its Islamist proxies in Kashmir, the Taliban grew more attached to al Qaeda, which provided fighters to help the Taliban against the Northern Alliance as well as funding when the Taliban were crippled by an international embargo. As a result, al Qaeda extended its influence over the Taliban government, which gave al Qaeda free rein to plan and stage the deadliest terrorist attack to date against the West.

The Post 9/11 Environment
On Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon were attacked, the United States put Pakistan in a chokehold: Cooperate immediately in toppling the Taliban regime, which Pakistan had nurtured for years, or face destruction. Musharraf tried to buy some time by reaching out to Taliban leaders like Mullah Omar to give up bin Laden, but the Taliban chief refused, making it clear that Pakistan had lost against al Qaeda in the battle for influence over the Taliban.

Just a few months after the 9/11 attacks, in December 2001, Kashmiri Islamist militants launched a major attack on the Indian parliament in New Delhi. Still reeling from the pressure it was receiving from the United States, Islamabad was now faced with the wrath of India. Both dealing with an Islamist militant threat, New Delhi and Washington tag-teamed Islamabad and tried to get it to cut its losses and dismantle its Islamist militant proxies.

To fend off some of the pressure, the Musharraf government banned LeT and JeM, two key Kashmiri Islamist groups fostered by the ISI and with close ties to al Qaeda. India was unsatisfied with the ban, which was mostly for show, and proceeded to mass a large military force along the LoC in Kashmir. The Pakistanis responded with their own deployment, and the two countries stood at the brink of nuclear war. U.S. intervention allowed India and Pakistan to step back from the precipice. In the process, Washington extracted concessions from Islamabad on the counterterrorism front, and official Pakistani support for the Afghan Taliban withered within days.

The Devolution of the ISI
The post 9/11 shake-up ignited a major crisis in the Pakistani military establishment. On one hand, the military was under extreme pressure to stamp out the jihadists along its western border. On the other hand, the military was fearful of U.S. and Indian interests aligning against Pakistan. Islamabad’s primary means of keeping Washington as an ally was its connection to the jihadist insurgency in Afghanistan. So Islamabad played a double game, offering piecemeal cooperation to the United States while maintaining ties with its Islamist militant proxies in Afghanistan.

Related Links
Pakistan: Islamists and the Benefit of Indo-Pakistani Conflict
Pakistan: Anatomy of the ISI
The Jihadist Insurgency in Pakistan
Pakistan and Its Army
But the ISI’s grip over these proxies was already loosening. In the run-up to 9/11, al Qaeda not only had close ties to the Taliban regime, but also had reached out to ISI handlers whose job it was to maintain links with the array of Islamist militant proxies supported by Islamabad. Many of the intelligence operatives who had embraced the Islamist ideology were working to sabotage Islamabad’s new alliance with Washington, which threatened to destroy the Islamist militant universe they had created. While the ISI leadership was busy trying to adjust to the post-9/11 operating environment, others within the middle and junior ranks of the agency started to engage in activities not necessarily sanctioned by their leadership.

As the influence of the Pakistani state declined, al Qaeda’s influence rose. By the end of 2003, Musharraf had become the target of at least three al Qaeda assassination attempts. In the spring of 2004, Musharraf — again under pressure from the United States — was forced to send troops into the tribal badlands for the first time in the history of the country. Pakistani military operations to root out foreign fighters ended up killing thousands in the Pashtun areas, creating massive resentment against the central government.

In October 2006, when a deadly U.S. Predator strike hit a madrassah in Bajaur agency, killing 82 people, the stage was set for a jihadist insurgency to move into Pakistan proper. The Pakistani Taliban linked up with al Qaeda to carry out scores of suicide attacks, most against military targets and all aiming to break Islamabad’s resolve to combat the insurgency. A major political debacle threw Islamabad off course in March 2007, when Musharraf’s government was hit by a pro-democracy movement after he dismissed the country’s chief justice. Four months later, a raid on Islamabad’s Red Mosque, which Islamist militants had occupied, threw more fuel onto the insurgent fires, igniting suicide attacks in major Pakistani cities like Karachi and Islamabad, while the writ of the state continued to erode in the NWFP and FATA.

Musharraf was forced to step down as army chief in November 2007 and as president in August 2008, ushering in an incoherent civilian government. In December 2007, the world got a good glimpse of just how dangerous the murky ISI-jihadist nexus had become when the political chaos in Islamabad was exploited with a bold suicide attack that killed Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. Historically, the Pakistani military had been relied on to step in and restore order in such a crisis, but the military itself was coming undone as the split widened between those willing and those unwilling to work with the jihadists. Now, in the final days of 2008, the jihadist insurgency is raging on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, with the country’s only guarantor against collapse — the military — in disarray.

Kashmiri Groups Cut Loose
India has watched warily as Pakistan’s jihadist problems have intensified over the past several years. Of utmost concern to New Delhi have been the scores of Kashmiri Islamist militants who had been operating on the ISI’s payroll — and who had a score to settle with India. As Pakistan became more and more distracted with battling jihadists within its own borders, the Kashmiri Islamist militant groups began loosening their bonds with the Pakistani state. Groups such as LeT and JeM, who had been banned and forced underground following the 2001 Indian parliament attack, started spreading their tentacles into major Indian cities. These groups retained links to the ISI, but the Pakistani military had bigger issues to deal with and needed to distance itself from the Kashmiri Islamists. If these groups were to continue to carry out operations, Pakistan needed some plausible deniability.

Over the past several years, Kashmiri Islamist militant groups have carried out sporadic attacks throughout India. The attacks have involved commercial-grade explosives rather than the military-grade RDX that is traditionally used in Pakistani-sponsored attacks, another sign that the groups are distancing themselves from Pakistan. The attacks, mostly against crowded transportation hubs, religious sites (both Hindu and Muslim) and marketplaces, were designed to ignite riots between Hindus and Muslims that would compel the Indian government to crack down and revive the Kashmir cause.

However, India’s Hindu nationalist and largely moderate Muslim communities failed to take the bait. It was only a matter of time before these militant groups began seeking out more strategic targets that would affect India’s economic lifelines and ignite a crisis between India and Pakistan. As these groups became increasingly autonomous, they also started linking up with members of al Qaeda’s transnational jihadist movement, who had a keen interest in stirring up conflict between India and Pakistan to divert the attention of Pakistani forces to the east.

By November 2008, this confluence of forces — Pakistan’s raging jihadist insurgency, the devolution of the ISI and the increasing autonomy of the Kashmiri groups — created the conditions for one of the largest militant attacks in history to hit Mumbai, highlighting the extent to which Pakistan has lost control over its Islamist militant proxy project.

Summary
Artillery rockets impacted the Israeli town of Beer Sheva on Dec. 30, much farther than Hamas’ rocket arsenal was thought to be able to reach. Their impact offers clues to the status of the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Analysis
Related Links
Israel, Palestinian Territories: Hamas and the Israeli Offensive
Geopolitical Diary: The Latest Phase of Israeli-Palestinian Fighting
Israel: Countering Qassams and Other Ballistic Threats
Geopolitical Diary: A New Shield for Israel
The Geopolitics of Israel: Biblical and Modern
Related Special Topic Pages
Israel’s Military
Israeli-Palestinian Geopolitics and the Peace Process
Two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip exploded in Beer Sheva, Israel, some 25 miles from their point of origin, Haaretz news reported Dec. 30. This is the farthest inside Israel a Palestinian rocket has ever reached from Gaza. It almost certainly indicates a larger rocket than Hamas and the jihadist groups in Gaza were previously thought to possess.

For years, Palestinian militant groups in the Gaza Strip have used Qassam rockets, which are made out of materials readily available in the territory and essentially assembled in garages. Last year, there were indications that changes to the fuel mixture had given a new version of the Qassam a greatly increased shelf life. (Older versions had to be fired a few days after being assembled.) Though range varies, Qassams have a range of around 6 miles.

Also last year, there were indications that Hamas had obtained a quantity of 122mm BM-21 Grad artillery rockets. These rockets, while crude, are manufactured to comparatively exacting military standards in a number of countries and have proliferated widely. They have a range of more than 12 miles.





(click image to enlarge)
The 25-mile range indicated by the latest strikes in Beer Sheva is more than favorable wind conditions could likely account for, suggesting a larger rocket in Hamas’ arsenal. The range is consistent with the Iranian-made Fajr-3, though of course there are multiple rockets that could reach 25 miles.

While this is still far short of the roughly 50-mile distance to Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Dimona (home to the Israeli nuclear weapons program), this escalation in Hamas’ reach will be a major concern for Israel.

But what matters most is not where the rockets came from, but what the rocket strike in Beer Sheva says about the progress of the Israeli campaign in Gaza. As artillery rockets increase in range, they also generally increase in size and weight. A single Grad rocket (there are multiple variants) is more than 10 feet long and weighs in at 100-175 pounds, and requires multiple people to carry it. Whatever hit Beer Sheva at the end of the fourth day of the Israeli operation was almost certainly larger.

Destroying these rockets should have been one of the first objectives of any Israeli military assault on Gaza. While Israel was never going to destroy every last cache of rockets, especially from the air, it does not bode well for Israel that Hamas is demonstrating a new capability at the end of several days of bombardment by the Israeli Air Force — which is specifically targeting, among other things, that very rocket arsenal.

Of course, a potential ground incursion is looming. Israel has already called up some 7,000 reservists and moved tanks and armored vehicles to the border, and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak reportedly has asked for the authority to activate an additional 2,520. The Israel Defense Forces are preparing for weeks of protracted fighting to eliminate as much of Hamas’ fighting capability as they can. But the “use-it-or-lose-it” moment for Hamas with its rocket arsenal likely already has passed. The Dec. 30 strike is probably better understood as a defiant Hamas demonstrating how much capability it has retained, which suggests that Israeli air power and intelligence may not have achieved early hoped-for gains.

Whether more of these longer-range rockets appear as the conflict continues will be telling. If Hamas had only two left, and the rest have been destroyed, that is one thing. But if the longer-range barrage continues unabated, then it says something very different about the Israeli campaign. Indeed, the 40 shorter-range rockets that struck the western Negev on Dec. 30 alone also do not bode well for the success of the Israeli air campaign.

Ultimately, Barak’s push to activate more reservists suggests the Israelis know they have probably achieved what can be achieved from the air, and now are preparing for extended ground raids.

Rachel:

I deeply value your presence here and our mix is greatly improved by your contributions.

The Adventure continues,
Marc

And we know how it turned out for her-- which is why I am a "Never Again Jew".

Second post:

By TRENT ENGLAND
Olympia, Wash.

Sorry Minnesota, but the sequel is never as good as the original.

For those who watched the Washington State governor's race recounts in 2004, the ongoing recount drama in Minnesota is just another rehash of the same script -- albeit for a U.S. Senate seat that might put Democrats one vote away from a filibuster-proof majority.

Four years ago in Washington, Democratic Party candidate Christine Gregoire lost the first count, lost the recount, and then won a second, highly dubious recount by 133 votes. In Minnesota, where Sen. Norm Coleman is defending his seat against comedian-turned-candidate Al Franken, the first count showed Mr. Coleman up 725 votes. Today, thanks to another dubious recount, Mr. Franken is apparently in the lead.

Razor-thin margins like these put election systems to the test. As the old proverb goes, they are a crisis and an opportunity. Yet the crises keep coming and the opportunities continue to be squandered. It's time to learn the lessons of the recount wars and address the systemic flaws in our election processes. Indeed, the price of a continued decline in voter confidence is too troubling for most Americans to comprehend.

In Washington's 2004 gubernatorial election, at least 1,392 felons illegally voted, 252 provisional ballots were wrongly counted, and 19 votes were cast from beyond the grave, according to Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges's opinion in a case brought by Dino Rossi, Ms. Gregoire's Republican opponent.

The Opinion Journal Widget
Download Opinion Journal's widget and link to the most important editorials and op-eds of the day from your blog or Web page.
Election workers in King County (where Seattle is located) "enhanced" 55,177 ballots to make it easier for tabulating machines to read them -- even though the county had failed to establish written procedures as required by state law. In some cases, individual election workers modified voted ballots using black felt markers and white-out tape while observers were kept at a distance that prevented meaningful observation. Nine separate times, King County "discovered" and counted unsecured ballots.

Nevertheless, Ms. Gregoire lost to Mr. Rossi by 261 votes.

An automatic recount reduced Mr. Rossi's lead to just 42 votes. The Gregoire campaign demanded a state-wide hand recount, a time-consuming and expensive process that state law says the challenger must pay for (if the result changes, the challenger is reimbursed). Big labor unions joined with far-left groups like MoveOn.org to put up the money for Ms. Gregoire's third-time's-the-charm ballot shuffle.

During the recount process, five counties found new, uncounted, unsecured ballots and added them into their totals. King County officials admitted publicly that ballot reconciliation reports were falsified in an attempt to conceal variations between the number of votes counted and the number of voters who voted (two elections workers were disciplined as a result).

By the end, 3,539 votes more than the number of voters who voted were tabulated. Four other swing counties provided an additional 4,880 mystery ballots. Ms. Gregoire was the victor by a margin of 133 votes.

That margin -- 133 votes -- happens to be the same number of ballots that Minneapolis election officials are currently missing. The initial vote tally in one Democrat-leaning precinct counted 133 more ballots than officials have been able to find for the Senate recounts. The Minnesota canvassing board decided on Dec. 12 to allow Minneapolis simply to ignore the recount and go with the original number. This provided a 46-vote boost for Mr. Franken, about the same as his current projected lead. The board also "requested" that counties reconsider rejected absentee ballots, a new and novel part of the recount procedure that is also expected to favor Mr. Franken.

Something is wrong when a victorious candidate owes more thanks to vote counters than to voters. Such was the case in Washington in 2004, and Minnesota is poised to follow in its footsteps in 2008.

It need not be this way. After 2004, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation produced a 42-page report offering a dozen solutions. While a few were implemented, most were simply ignored by officials content to cross their fingers and hope the next close election is in someone else's jurisdiction.

Some reforms are simply educational and cultural; others are fundamental and essential. Election officials need to understand current federal and state laws and regulations governing the entire election process, including recounts. Those responsible for elections must also inculcate a culture of compliance among election staff, including temporary staff hired at election time.

From the moment they are printed, ballots should be isolated and guarded and their chain of custody recorded. Officials with rule-making authority are responsible for establishing processes that clarify how ballots are to be handled, stored, counted, and, if necessary, recounted.


Most important to maintaining and increasing public faith in elections is improving openness, especially leveraging Internet technology to make anyone a potential election observer. The Minneapolis Star Tribune's project to put all 6,700 contested ballots in the Senate race on the Web, so people can compare their own judgments to those of the canvassing board, is but one example. Election officials who have nothing to hide should be putting as much as possible online as quickly as possible.

Citizens and the media might also take a closer look at some of the individuals and organizations involved in monkeying with and even overturning elections. Both Mr. Franken and Ms. Gregoire were endorsed by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now -- Acorn -- a group under investigation in several states for suspected voter registration chicanery.

The man overseeing the Senate recount, Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, was also endorsed by Acorn, and his election campaign in 2006 was funded in part by something called "The Secretary of State Project." This latter group, founded by MoveOn.org's former grass-roots director, exists solely to install far-left candidates as secretaries of state in swing states.

Close elections will always stir controversy. They will often require recounts to validate the results. Yet the Washington and Minnesota recounts offer cautionary tales. The democratic process is too important to be disregarded until a virtual tie forces us to pay attention. Regardless of which candidates win our elections, the voters -- not the vote counters -- should win every time.

Mr. England is director of the Citizenship and Governance Center at the Evergreen Freedom Foundation.

For those who thought the new era of Democratic governance would be dull, we present this year's Senate replacement follies. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich kept the entertainment going yesterday by defying just about everyone and nominating former state Attorney General Roland Burris to the seat being vacated by President-elect Obama.

Recall that federal prosecutors had gone public with their criminal complaint against Mr. Blagojevich earlier this month expressly to deter him from making such an appointment. Mr. Obama had then declared that the Governor should not make an appointment, and Senate Democrats had said they wouldn't seat anyone Mr. Blagojevich did appoint. Majority Leader Harry Reid repeated that pledge yesterday regarding Mr. Burris, who lost to the Governor in a primary in 2002 but then was vice chairman of his transition team.


Democrats who run the state assembly are still trying to impeach Mr. Blagojevich, but meantime they've stepped back from allowing a special election for the seat. Democrats hope to dump the Governor and then have his replacement appoint a different Democrat. No doubt they're afraid Republicans might win given this exquisite display of competent, honest Democratic government.

Meanwhile, Democrats in New York are fighting over Caroline Kennedy's campaign to be appointed to the Senate seat being vacated by Secretary of State nominee Hillary Clinton. Former Democrat and former Republican and now independent Mayor Mike Bloomberg is all for the idea, as reportedly is Mr. Obama, whom the daughter of JFK and niece of Senator Ted Kennedy endorsed at a crucial moment during the Presidential primaries. Not so happy is New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the son of a former three-term Governor, who would like the seat himself and was once married to a Kennedy.


Caught in the middle is Democrat David Paterson, who will appoint a new Senator but is Governor himself only because Eliot Spitzer flamed out with a prostitute. Ms. Kennedy hasn't helped herself with a recent spate of interviews showing she doesn't know very much about many public issues. But then how much worse could she be than the professional politicians who populate Albany or represent New York in Washington? Democrats will outnumber Republicans in New York's House delegation next year, 26-3, and it speaks volumes about their abilities that Mr. Paterson might choose a dynastic neophyte over any of them.

Lest it be overlooked, there's also the spectacle in Delaware, where the soon-to-depart Joe Biden has arranged to have a crony appointed to take his Senate seat of 36 years. Edward "Ted" Kaufman, a former aide to Mr. Biden, is expected to keep the seat away from a more ambitious Democrat for two years, until Joe's son Beau Biden, the state attorney general, can return from his National Guard tour in Iraq and run in 2010 to maintain the family business.

And don't forget Colorado, where a mooted Senate replacement for Secretary of Interior nominee Ken Salazar is his brother, Congressman John Salazar. Democratic Governor Bill Ritter, who has benefited from the money and organization of the Salazar political machine, will make that appointment.

So to recap all of this change you can believe in: A Kennedy and Cuomo are competing to succeed a Clinton in New York; the skids are greased for a Biden to replace a Biden in Delaware; one Salazar might replace another in Colorado; and a Governor charged with political corruption in Illinois wants one of his cronies to succeed the President-elect. Let's just say we're looking forward to 2009.

In today's Political Diary:

- Note to Readers
- Obama Senate Seat Becomes a Test of 'Chicago Politics'
- Republicans vs. Bailout Nation
- Fannie, Freddie and Hankie (Quote of the Day I)
- Nosey Parker (Quote of the Day II)
- Advice from Voters for the GOP


Note to Readers

PD will be getting an early start on goofing off in '09. We'll be back on Monday. Happy New Year!

-- The Mgmt.


Where Obama Comes From

Barack Obama's Senate seat has been vacant for a month now and looks like it will remain vacant as long as embattled Governor Rod Blagojevich resists efforts to remove him from office or persuade him to resign. The governor has said he won't be naming anyone to fill the Obama vacancy because the U.S. Senate wouldn't likely seat such a tainted appointee.

A special election to fill the vacancy was initially proposed by leading Democrats such as U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, Lt. Governor Pat Quinn and Senate President Emil Jones. But they backed off as realization dawned that Republicans might actually have a chance of winning a special election in the person of Congressman Mark Kirk, a respected moderate from the Chicago suburbs who has $5 million in his campaign fund.

So Democrats are stuck. As long as Mr. Blagojevich remains in office, Illinois will have only one senator and the voting public will be upset at the failure to call a special election.

That's why one Democratic state legislator is proposing a stopgap solution. Chicago Democrat Will Burns is introducing a bill that would require anyone Governor Blagojevich might appoint to the Senate to undergo hearings before both houses of the state legislature, followed by a confirmation vote. "Balancing the fiscal problems the state is facing with the need for more disclosure and a better process, I thought that this hybrid proposal provides the public with more transparency," Mr. Burns told Illinois Public Radio.

But his bill doesn't envision any long-term change in the process by which vacated U.S. Senate seats are filled in Illinois. The new bill would be a "one ride only" piece of legislation applying solely to the Obama vacancy.

Illinois pols can come up with any number of Rube Goldberg solutions to avoid a straightforward special election that would put the choice in the hands of voters. But if a special election were called, it could be held in conjunction with local elections already scheduled for most of the state in February or April. The cost would be minimal and voters would have real input in who will be representing them in Washington. Of course, that would mean the pols would lose control of the process, something which can't be allowed to happen in machine-dominated Illinois.

-- John Fund


The Bush Hangover

The Republican National Committee, which consists of two representatives from every state and territory, is technically the governing body of the Republican Party. In reality, it has normally been a rubber-stamp for the incumbent president whenever the White House is in GOP hands. "I've never seen much of any debate, much less a contested vote, in the years I've been on it," one RNC member told me.

But the debacle of the last two election cycles, coupled with an increasingly erratic set of policy choices by the Bush White House, is finally prompting a mini-revolt. A group of RNC members has initiated a special meeting to hear presentations from the six candidates running for the job of chairman. Even more significantly, the RNC's vice chairman and other officials are sponsoring a resolution that will oppose the Bush White House's support of seemingly bottomless bailouts for Wall Street and the auto industry.

"We can't be a party of small government, free markets and low taxes while supporting bailouts and nationalizing industries, which lead to big government, socialism and high taxes at the expense of individual liberty and freedoms," Solomon Yue of Oregon, a cosponsor of the resolution, told the Washington Times. The resolution was written by James Bopp, a noted constitutional law attorney who is the RNC's national vice chairman.

"Articulating a political philosophy is equally important as applying it consistently," says Mr. Yue. "Failing to do so, we have today's identity crisis, which resulted in our losses in 2006 and 2008."

The resolution is scheduled to be presented during the RNC's next general meeting in Washington D.C., which will be held between January 28 and 30. While the fact that some RNC members have finally developed a policy backbone is commendable, their declaration of independence comes a bit late. The Bush administration will be safely out of town by the time the resolution comes up for a vote.

-- John Fund


Quote of the Day I

"By mid-2006 there was a new actor in this long-running drama: Hank Paulson, the former Goldman Sachs C.E.O. who had just become Treasury secretary. Unlike the advisers who surrounded Bush, Paulson did not believe that the G.S.E.'s [government-sponsored enterprises, notably Fannie and Freddie] were the bogeymen of the financial system. After all, they had been major clients of his for years, and the ties between Goldman and Fannie ran deep. Nor did Paulson want any part of what he called 'the closest thing I've witnessed to a Holy War.' Paulson quickly began to move away from what one observer calls the 'extreme rigidity' of the administration's position. . . . 'I was aghast,' says a longtime G.S.E. foe, expressing a common attitude. 'Here we were fighting trench warfare with Fannie and Freddie, and Paulson says, "Let's cut a deal and say we won." Some of us really did believe they were a house of cards''' -- Vanity Fair writer Bethany McLean, on the federal government's failure to rein in mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.


Quote of the Day II

"Given the holidays and the press of business in preparation for the new administration, we have not reconstructed the circumstances behind each ticket. However, Congressman Rangel is confident that the National Leadership PAC and Rangel for Congress complied with all applicable laws and regulations in connection with these expenses, which were fully reported consistent with FEC requirements" -- Emile Milne, spokesman for Rep. Charlie Rangel, on revelations that Mr. Rangel used campaign funds to pay $1,540 in parking tickets in the District of Columbia, an illegal use of donations unless the fines were incurred as part of campaign events.


The GOP's 12 Steps to Recovery

The first comprehensive poll on why voters voted the way they did in November has just been released by the communications firm Target Point Consulting. I received a full briefing from the pollster Alex Lundry on what these 1,000 voters think of Republicans. The short answer is: not much.

The GOP is "in great disfavor with the electorate right now. Republicans are blamed for fiscal mismanagement, overspending, and the bad economy," says Mr. Lundry. "Democrats are seen as a center-right party, while Republicans are seen as dominated by the right."

That's a big problem because even though 84% of voters say they are center or right on the ideological spectrum, the 48% in the middle, i.e., independents, are tilting heavily toward Democrats. The fairly narrow victory by Barack Obama in the popular vote disguises an "enthusiasm gap" among Democratic and Republican voters. Some 65% of Obama voters "strongly supported" him, whereas only 33% of John McCain voters "strongly supported" the Arizona Republican. This helps explain the river of money for Mr. Obama and the massive grassroots advantage for the Democrats.

But the biggest problem revealed by the poll for Republicans is that "voters no longer believe that the party cares about the middle class in a meaningful or credible way," Mr. Lundry explains. "Democrats cleverly frame every issue as for the middle class."

What issues have Republicans hurt themselves most on? Three that jump out are immigration, where Republicans are seen as too strident; the War in Iraq, where voters are eager for closure; and bailouts, where voters have become angry and resentful at throwing money at failing giant corporations. Furthermore, as economic anxieties have escalated, independent voters are now more favorably inclined toward protectionist trade policies. Free marketeers need to make a better case for the positive benefits of international trade or more restrictions are certainly on the way.

The good news is that voters are very fearful that Democrats will go too far with their liberal agenda. When voters are asked what they "like least about the Democrats," the most common answers volunteered were: "taxes going up," "big government," "liberal," "raise spending," and even "socialism." These broad economic and fiscal principles appear to present the GOP with its biggest opening.

The poll also reveals that Republicans can win back voters by opposing Democrats on several specific policies coming down the pike in 2009: card-check labor union elections, bailouts for banks and auto makers, welfare expansions and affirmative action.

The key for the months ahead is for Republicans to posture themselves, advises Mr. Lundry, "not as obstructionists, but as a check on the Obama agenda."

-- Stephen Moore

Stratfor
---------------------------

 

GEOPOLITICAL DIARY: THE LATEST PHASE OF ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN FIGHTING

The Israeli military attacked Hamas-controlled Gaza this weekend. On Friday, Hamas had terminated its unilateral truce with the Israelis. The decision was accompanied by rockets fired into Israel and claims by Hamas that it had longer-range rockets capable of striking even deeper into the country. The Israelis responded with a massive attack that was designed to smash Hamas' infrastructure, impose heavy penalties on Gaza for Hamas' decision, and attempt to preempt not only rocket attacks but also a new campaign of suicide bombers. Whether the campaign will achieve Israel’s goals or trigger an escalation from the Hamas side is now the issue. What is not at issue is that a new round of fighting in Gaza had been expected for weeks. Hamas had made it clear that it was going to end the truce, and Israel had made it clear that it would consider the war resumed and respond accordingly.

The first question is why Hamas chose to end the truce, opening the door to an Israeli attack. The answer might lie in the fact that Palestinian elections are coming up. While Hamas was a pure opposition party, it was an effective critic of Fatah's governance. But having been responsible for Gaza for a while, Hamas now bears criticism for the conditions there, and thus the party's popularity had slipped. Having failed to make significant inroads into the West Bank -- where Fatah dominated -- and having drawn criticism for its administration in Gaza, Hamas saw its momentum blunted.

Hamas was much more effective as a combat party, fighting the Israelis, than as an administrative party dealing with the intractable problem of Gaza. The longer it remained passive toward the Israelis and the longer it remained responsible for Gaza, the less it was likely to appeal to Palestinian voters. Hamas made a strategic decision to re-establish its credentials as the only Palestinian force effectively fighting Israel. In doing so, it also reinforced the perception of Fatah as collaborating with the Israelis (and an Israeli attack is also a mechanism to prompt Palestinians to rally behind Hamas). From Hamas' point of view -- facing a hopeless situation governing Gaza and a showdown with Fatah -- ending the truce made sense in the long term, on the premise that a conventional attack by Israel would not decisively break Hamas' capability.

The Israeli response was also, on one level, driven by public opinion. Hamas' ability to attack Israeli positions with rockets, or potentially to launch another round of suicide bombings in Israeli population centers, was quite real. If it happened, Israeli public opinion not only would create a crisis for any Israeli government, but also would strengthen those forces that felt that any peace process with the Palestinians was impossible.

Ehud Olmert, still prime minister pending a new government, saw the Hamas move as an opportunity. Hamas created a situation that had to be dealt with. Waiting for his successor to deal with the problem would bog that successor down in an issue with the international community that would cripple any ongoing diplomacy. Launching a security campaign as a lame-duck prime minister takes the issue off his successor's plate. In an odd way, this increases the chance of some sort of settlement with the Palestinians, by allowing Olmert to be cast as a villain.

If this seems more complicated than it should be, that is not an incorrect impression. Underneath all of this is a core reality: A Palestinian state on the 1948 borders is an impossibility for both Palestinians and Israelis. For the Palestinians, it would mean a state divided physically between Gaza and the West Bank, without an independent economic foundation. It would be a fiasco. For the Israelis, the 1948 borders would allow the Palestinians to rocket Tel Aviv easily, with no guarantee that a Palestinian state would or could put a stop to it. The Palestinians need more than the 1948 borders, and the Israelis can't even give that.

Therefore, the current cycle of violence is simply one of many such cycles that are hardwired into the geography of Israel and Palestine and from which there is no escape. It is almost unnecessary to go through the political reasoning that has led each side to this point, except to explain why it is happening now instead of earlier or later. The politics simply determine the time and shape of conflict. Geography determines that the conflict is intractable.

"She is the federal employee who Monica Lewinsky took her tale of presidential trysts to."

"She is the federal employee to whom Monica Lewinsky took her tale of presidential trysts." 

I must be slow this morning , , , I am still not understanding.

Thank you.

Who is Lucianne?

Speaking of the American Creed, here's this:
==============================

By FOUAD AJAMI
The last of Samuel Huntington's books -- "Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity," published four years ago -- may have been his most passionate work. It was like that with the celebrated Harvard political scientist, who died last week at 81. He was a man of diffidence and reserve, yet he was always caught up in the political storms of recent decades.

 
Zina Saunders"This book is shaped by my own identities as a patriot and a scholar," he wrote. "As a patriot I am deeply concerned about the unity and strength of my country as a society based on liberty, equality, law and individual rights." Huntington lived the life of his choice, neither seeking controversies, nor ducking them. "Who Are We?" had the signature of this great scholar -- the bold, sweeping assertions sustained by exacting details, and the engagement with the issues of the time.

He wrote in that book of the "American Creed," and of its erosion among the elites. Its key elements -- the English language, Christianity, religious commitment, English concepts of the rule of law, the responsibility of rulers, and the rights of individuals -- he said are derived from the "distinct Anglo-Protestant culture of the founding settlers of America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries."

Critics who branded the book as a work of undisguised nativism missed an essential point. Huntington observed that his was an "argument for the importance of Anglo-Protestant culture, not for the importance of Anglo-Protestant people." The success of this great republic, he said, had hitherto depended on the willingness of generations of Americans to honor the creed of the founding settlers and to shed their old affinities. But that willingness was being battered by globalization and multiculturalism, and by new waves of immigrants with no deep attachments to America's national identity. "The Stars and Stripes were at half-mast," he wrote in "Who Are We?", "and other flags flew higher on the flagpole of American identities."

The Opinion Journal Widget
Download Opinion Journal's widget and link to the most important editorials and op-eds of the day from your blog or Web page.
Three possible American futures beckoned, Huntington said: cosmopolitan, imperial and national. In the first, the world remakes America, and globalization and multiculturalism trump national identity. In the second, America remakes the world: Unchallenged by a rival superpower, America would attempt to reshape the world according to its values, taking to other shores its democratic norms and aspirations. In the third, America remains America: It resists the blandishments -- and falseness -- of cosmopolitanism, and reins in the imperial impulse.

Huntington made no secret of his own preference: an American nationalism "devoted to the preservation and enhancement of those qualities that have defined America since its founding." His stark sense of realism had no patience for the globalism of the Clinton era. The culture of "Davos Man" -- named for the watering hole of the global elite -- was disconnected from the call of home and hearth and national soil.

But he looked with a skeptical eye on the American expedition to Iraq, uneasy with those American conservatives who had come to believe in an "imperial" American mission. He foresaw frustration for this drive to democratize other lands. The American people would not sustain this project, he observed, and there was the "paradox of democracy": Democratic experiments often bring in their wake nationalistic populist movements (Latin America) or fundamentalist movements (Muslim countries). The world tempts power, and denies it. It is the Huntingtonian world; no false hopes and no redemption.

In the 1990s, when the Davos crowd and other believers in a borderless world reigned supreme, Huntington crossed over from the academy into global renown, with his "clash of civilizations" thesis. In an article first published in Foreign Affairs in 1993 (then expanded into a book), Huntington foresaw the shape of the post-Cold War world. The war of ideologies would yield to a civilizational struggle of soil and blood. It would be the West versus the eight civilizations dividing the rest -- Latin American, African, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu, Orthodox, Buddhist and Japanese.

In this civilizational struggle, Islam would emerge as the principal challenge to the West. "The relations between Islam and Christianity, both orthodox and Western, have often been stormy. Each has been the other's Other. The 20th-century conflict between liberal democracy and Marxist-Leninism is only a fleeting and superficial historical phenomenon compared to the continuing and deeply conflictual relation between Islam and Christianity."

He had assaulted the zeitgeist of the era. The world took notice, and his book was translated into 39 languages. Critics insisted that men want Sony, not soil. But on 9/11, young Arabs -- 19 of them -- would weigh in. They punctured the illusions of an era, and gave evidence of the truth of Huntington's vision. With his typical precision, he had written of a "youth bulge" unsettling Muslim societies, and young, radicalized Arabs, unhinged by modernity and unable to master it, emerging as the children of this radical age.

In Today's Opinion Journal
 

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

The Wizards of OilThe Philanthropy ShakedownYou Are Your Record

TODAY'S COLUMNISTS

Global View: Hamas Know One Big Thing
– Bret StephensMain Street: New Jersey Is the Perfect Bad Example
– William McGurn

COMMENTARY

Samuel Huntington's Warning
– Fouad AjamiWhy Detroit Has an Especially Bad Union Problem
– Logan RobinsonObama Will Ration Your Health Care
– Sally C. PipesThe FDA Is Killing Crohn's Patients
– Gideon J. Sofer
If I may be permitted a personal narrative: In 1993, I had written the lead critique in Foreign Affairs of his thesis. I admired his work but was unconvinced. My faith was invested in the order of states that the West itself built. The ways of the West had become the ways of the world, I argued, and the modernist consensus would hold in key Third-World countries like Egypt, India and Turkey. Fifteen years later, I was given a chance in the pages of The New York Times Book Review to acknowledge that I had erred and that Huntington had been correct all along.

A gracious letter came to me from Nancy Arkelyan Huntington, his wife of 51 years (her Armenian descent an irony lost on those who dubbed him a defender of nativism). He was in ill-health, suffering the aftermath of a small stroke. They were spending the winter at their summer house on Martha's Vineyard. She had read him my essay as he lay in bed. He was pleased with it: "He will be writing you himself shortly." Of course, he did not write, and knowing of his frail state I did not expect him to do so. He had been a source of great wisdom, an exemplar, and it had been an honor to write of him, and to know him in the regrettably small way I did.

We don't have his likes in the academy today. Political science, the field he devoted his working life to, has been in the main commandeered by a new generation. They are "rational choice" people who work with models and numbers and write arid, impenetrable jargon.

More importantly, nowadays in the academy and beyond, the patriotism that marked Samuel Huntington's life and work is derided, and the American Creed he upheld is thought to be the ideology of rubes and simpletons, the affliction of people clinging to old ways. The Davos men have perhaps won. No wonder the sorrow and the concern that ran through the work of Huntington's final years.

Mr. Ajami is professor of Middle East Studies at The Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies. He is also an adjunct research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

 

The book "Liberal Fascism" (the author's name slips my mind at the moment) discusses TR at some length.  TR was McCain's idol/hero.  After McCain's terrible response to the market meltdown I'm finding it less upsetting that he lost.

Bush, McCain, and BO all were/are Keynesians and with the utter stupidity, vapidity, and disingenuity of how the story of the meltdown is being told (the market did it ) it looks like we are set to repeat the same policy errors of FDR and with the same results of FDR and the Japanese's "lost decades".

Our cultural memory of what this country is about grows dimmer and dimmer.