Stupidity of the day

This one comes from the sports world.

Buster Olney, former Yankees beat writer for the NY Times (and the best one it ever had) and current contributor to ESPN the Magazine, is usually sharp. Nearly in the Verducci/Gammons class of analysts. But today he spat the dummy on Mike&Mike in the Morning on ESPN radio. Why? He claimed the Yanks are in trouble because their playoff race is not in their hands since they were 1.5 behind the Indians and the Indians have 7 games left with the Royals. Coming into tonight's games, the Indians were 82-61; the Yanks are 80-62 (they didn't play).

So much for all that.

Danny Haren blanked the Indians, so now Cleveland is tied with the Yanks in the loss column. That means that if both teams win out (unlikely -- they wouldn't be wild card candidates if they were that good), they will be tied at 100-62. Thus, they'd play a one-game playoff. In other words, the Yanks now have their destiny in their own hands.

There's a reason that commentators call it the "all-important loss column". The Yanks have two extra games viz. the Indians and they can make up a two-game win deficit by playing, they could not do the same if they were two back in the loss column.

Simply stated, the Yanks were in trouble b/c their fate was out of their hands until Danny Haren pitched a gem tonight.

Buster should know better than climbing out on that limb.

The Katrina reaction: what's the real truth

Jack Kelly of the frequently contrarian Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (if you can find their editorial obit of Katharine Graham -- it's a classic) asks the question if FEMA's reaction, and the National Guard deployment, were better than expected. Here are some clips:

For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla. after Hurricane Andrew hit in 2002. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three.

Journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is involved in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, telecommunications are out, no gasoline is available, bridges are damaged, roads and airports are covered with debris, and apparently have little interest in finding out.

So they libel as a "national disgrace" the most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history.

I write this column a week and a day after the main levee protecting New Orleans breached. In the course of that week:

More than 32,000 people have been rescued, many plucked from rooftops by Coast Guard helicopters.

The Army Corps of Engineers has all but repaired the breaches and begun pumping water out of New Orleans.

Shelter, food and medical care have been provided to more than 180,000 refugees.

And the blog Moltenthought, which Kelly quotes, contains these thoughts on the relief effort (with some emphases added):

As a former Air Force logistics officer, let me clarify the following for the idiots in the Left Wing Media:

1. Things can get destroyed far more swiftly than they can get fixed.
2. The United States military can wipe out the Taliban and the Iraqi Republican Guard far more swiftly than they can bring 3 million Swanson dinners to an underwater city through an area the size of Great Britain which has no power, no working ports or airports, and a devastated and impassable road network.
3. You cannot speed recovery and relief efforts up by prepositioning assets since the assets are endangered by the very storm which destroyed the region.
4. We do not yet have teleporter nor replicator technology like you saw on "Star Trek" in college between hookah hits and waiting to pick up your worthless communications degree while the grownups actually engaged in the recovery effort today were studying engineering.
5. Getting people out of the stricken areas is the most pressing concern, since we cannot get enough supplies into it to safely sustain them.
6. Getting the airport, bridges, and roads repaired is the next priority, since the supplies and people needed to fix levees, drain the city, and repair the infrastructure cannot be transported via aircraft. You need to truck them in.
7. Once the infrastructure is repaired, it is vital to get the ports in working order. Equipment and supplies can only be moved into the area in large quantities by sea.
8. Only then can recovery efforts begin in earnest.
9. The above will take weeks and months, not days or hours.
10. No amount of yelling, crying, and mustering of moral indignation will change any of the facts above. Facts are facts. Opinion is cheap.
11. You could do more help actually keeping your damned satellite trucks out of the way of the folks doing the real work.
12. If you must vent your indignation, how about targeting the Louisiana officials who did absolutely nothing to protect their constituents? At least you can help ensure the populace doesn't elect these clowns again.

HT: Protein Wisdom.

9-11, Four years on

Mark Steyn discusses reality and its denial, four years later:

Sept. 11, 2005 -- the fourth anniversary of the start of the war. That is, if you believe it's a ''war'' A lot of people didn't want to, even in those first days.

About a week after, one of my local radio stations held a fund-raiser and this is how their trailer for it opened. Cue the terminal-illness-movie-of-the-week soupy piano. Then:

''After the tragic events of Sept. 11 . . .''

And, by the time I'd heard it half-a-dozen times, I retuned the dial and never listened to the station again.

It wasn't a "tragic event" or even one of a series of unfortunate events. It was an "attack," an "act of war." I sat at the lunch counter with a guy who'd tuned out the same station on the grounds that "I never heard my grampa talk about 'the tragedy of Pearl Harbor.' " But, consciously or otherwise, a serious effort was under way to transform the nature of the event, to soften it into a touchy-feely, huggy-weepy one-off. As I wrote last year: "The president believes there's a war on. The Dems think 9/11 is like the 1998 ice storm or a Florida hurricane -- just one of those things."

* * *
On this fourth anniversary we are in a bizarre situation: The war is being won -- in Afghanistan, Iraq, the broader Middle East and many other places where America has changed the conditions on the ground in its favor. But at home the war about the war is being lost. When the media look at those Bush approval ratings -- currently hovering around 40 percent -- they carelessly assume the 60 percent is some unified Kerry-Hillary-Cindy bloc. It's not. It undoubtedly includes people who are enthusiastic for whacking America's enemies, but who don't quite get the point of this somewhat desultory listless phase. If the "war" is now a push for democratization and liberalization in Middle East dictatorships, that's a worthy cause but not one sufficiently primal to keep the attention of the American people. You'd have had the same problem in the Second World War if four years after Pearl Harbor we were postponing D-Day in order to nation-build in the Solomon Islands.

* * *
Only a tiny minority of Muslims want to be suicide bombers, and only a slightly larger minority want actively to provide support networks for suicide bombers, but big majorities of Muslims support almost all the terrorists' strategic goals: For example, according to a recent poll, over 60 percent of British Muslims want to live under sharia in the United Kingdom. That's a "moderate" Westernized Muslim: He wants stoning for adultery to be introduced in Liverpool, but he's a "moderate" because it's not such a priority that he's prepared to fly a plane into a skyscraper.

As with IRA killers and the broader Irish nationalist population, these shared aims provide a large comfort zone in which terror networks can operate. And it enables the non-violent lobby groups to use the terrorists -- or the threat of terrorists -- as part of a good cop/bad cop routine. Thus, the Islamic lobby groups pressure governments to make concessions to them rather than to the terrorists -- even though both elements share the same aims. You can pluck out news items at random: In London, a religious "hate crimes" law that makes honest discussion of Islam even more difficult; in Ontario, the moves toward sharia courts for Muslim community disputes; in Seattle, the introduction of gender-separate, Muslim-only swimming sessions in municipal pools. The 9/11 terrorists were in favor of all these things.

So four years on we're winning in the Middle East and Central Asia, floundering in Europe and North America. War is hell, but a war that half the country refuses to recognize as such staggers on as a very contemporary kind of purgatory.

Challenging the orthodoxy

Interesting piece in the WSJ's Taste page (free at Opinion Journal.com) about the newest Jewish emigres to the US and their politics -- seems the Eastern European Jews who lived under the Communist boot have little use for the Left's pieties.

Schumer disgrace - Fire Brown and give us money

I had heard about this but the Captain found a link.

WASHINGTON - A new Democratic effort to whip up indignation about the Bush administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina also tried to raise money for Democratic candidates.

Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat and the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, issued an appeal Thursday urging people to sign an online petition to fire the Federal Emergency Management Agency's director over his handling of the Katrina response.
...
When recipients clicked on a link to the petition, the top center of the screen — above the call to "Fire the FEMA director" — had asked for a donation to the DSCC.

After an inquiry from the Associated Press, the DSCC quickly pulled down the page and said they would give the Red Cross any money raised by the anti-FEMA petition.

Just about says it all about the Democrats. A new low.

Army Corps of Engineers spending in Louisiana

was the highest in the nation:

In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times larger.

Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate.
***
But overall, the Bush administration's funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration's for its past five years. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were only designed to protect against a Category 3 storm.

HT: LGF

Why troop deployment on Katrina was delayed

The Grey Lady has a good, balanced article on why deployment to Louisiana of troops were delayed as the situation deteriorated in New Orleans last week. [One must give credit where its due even if it is the NY Times.]

For reasons of practicality and politics, officials at the Justice Department and the Pentagon, and then at the White House, decided not to urge Mr. Bush to take command of the effort. Instead, the Washington officials decided to rely on the growing number of National Guard personnel flowing into Louisiana, who were under Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco's control.

The debate began after officials realized that Hurricane Katrina had exposed a critical flaw in the national disaster response plans created after the Sept. 11 attacks. According to the administration's senior domestic security officials, the plan failed to recognize that local police, fire and medical personnel might be incapacitated.

As criticism of the response to Hurricane Katrina has mounted, one of the most pointed questions has been why more troops were not available more quickly to restore order and offer aid. Interviews with officials in Washington and Louisiana show that as the situation grew worse, they were wrangling with questions of federal/state authority, weighing the realities of military logistics and perhaps talking past each other in the crisis.

To seize control of the mission, Mr. Bush would have had to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president in times of unrest to command active-duty forces into the states to perform law enforcement duties. But decision makers in Washington felt certain that Ms. Blanco would have resisted surrendering control, as Bush administration officials believe would have been required to deploy active-duty combat forces before law and order had been re-established.
***
But just as important to the administration were worries about the message that would have been sent by a president ousting a Southern governor of another party from command of her National Guard, according to administration, Pentagon and Justice Department officials.

"Can you imagine how it would have been perceived if a president of the United States of one party had pre-emptively taken from the female governor of another party the command and control of her forces, unless the security situation made it completely clear that she was unable to effectively execute her command authority and that lawlessness was the inevitable result?" asked one senior administration official, who spoke anonymously because the talks were confidential.

Officials in Louisiana agree that the governor would not have given up control over National Guard troops in her state as would have been required to send large numbers of active-duty soldiers into the area. But they also say they were desperate and would have welcomed assistance by active-duty soldiers.
***
Aides to Ms. Blanco said she was prepared to accept the deployment of active-duty military officials in her state. But she and other state officials balked at giving up control of the Guard as Justice Department officials said would have been required by the Insurrection Act if those combat troops were to be sent in before order was restored.

In a separate discussion last weekend, the governor also rejected a more modest proposal for a hybrid command structure in which both the Guard and active-duty troops would be under the command of an active-duty, three-star general - but only after he had been sworn into the Louisiana National Guard.
***
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales urged Justice Department lawyers to interpret the federal law creatively to help local authorities, those officials said. For example, federal prosecutors prepared to expand their enforcement of some criminal statutes like anti-carjacking laws that can be prosecuted by either state or federal authorities.

On the issue of whether the military could be deployed without the invitation of state officials, the Office of Legal Counsel, the unit within the Justice Department that provides legal advice to federal agencies, concluded that the federal government had authority to move in even over the objection of local officials.

The right move here, in my view and in retrospect, was to send the troops in and worry about recriminations later but Times illustrates the significant legal issues involving the equivalent of nationalizing the Louisiana Guard.

Padilla back to the brig

The Fourth Circuit, per Supreme Court potential nominee Michael Luttig, reversed the the South Carolina district court's decision that rejected Pres. Bush's determination that Jose Padilla -- the American al-Qaeda operative held by the Defense Department -- is an enemy combatant. The Fourth Circuit made clear that the District Court's decision, from its premises to its conclusions, had no merit.

Most notable, to me, were three of the amici curiae for Jose Padilla: Janet Reno, Philip B. Heymann and Eric Holder -- the former Attorney General and two deputy AGs in the criminal division of the Justice Department under Reno.

Speaks for itself.

Common Sense in a disaster

Bobby Jindal, the highly regarded Congressman from Louisiana, who very nearly won the governorship in 2002 wrote in the OpinionJournal today:

BATON ROUGE, La.--Over the past few days, America has been both moved and disturbed by television footage of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath. But for those of us in Louisiana still struggling to cope, the troubling images are of opportunistic politicians playing the blame game while there is so much real work to do.

Rather than point fingers, we should be fixing the situation on the ground. And that will include taking steps to ensure that red tape doesn't stifle the continued security and rebuilding efforts.

There have already been a number of instances in which an overly inhibitive bureaucracy prevented an appropriate response to the disaster. For example, on Wednesday of last week a company called my office. With only three hours before rising waters would make the mission impossible, they were anxious to send a rescue helicopter for their stranded employees. They wanted to know who would give them a go-ahead.

We could not identify the agency with authority. We heard that FEMA was in charge, that the FAA was in charge, and that the military was in charge. I went in person to talk with a FEMA representative and still could not get a straight answer. Finally we told the company to avoid interfering with Coast Guard missions, but to proceed on its own. Sometimes, asking for forgiveness is better than asking for permission. [emphasis added.]

I don't think you could have a better summation than that.

Jindal hits the nail on the head with regard to leadership:

That's why we need, in the future, a single, strong leader with the power to override the normal process restrictions and get things done. That individual must be identified from the very beginning. But below that person, other individuals up and down the line need to know they can make obvious and sensible calls in an emergency.

If I have a beef with the federal response, this is it. If a situation looks increasingly parlous and the local leadership is rudderless and indecisive (Nagin and Blanco) then the right decision for President Bush would have been to say: "Governor, I cannot give you 24 hours, I am nationalizing the Louisiana National Guard RIGHT NOW." It flies against federalism and states' rights for which the LEFT would have roundly criticized him but it would have been the right thing to do and may have saved lives.

Finally it seems, as usual, the media prefers to concentrate on the bad rather than the good:

Spending my days on the ground in Louisiana last week, I did not see much television. But I understand that some media let the violent and destructive acts of a few overshadow the many acts of compassion and heroism.

Contrary to the pictures you may have seen, the vast majority of New Orleanians did not take to the street with weapons--far more risked their own safety to help neighbors and strangers.

When first responders said they needed more flat boats to pick people out of the water, they were overwhelmed by the line of volunteers. When people at a shelter in Baton Rouge announced they needed drinks, within hours they were flooded with more Gatorade than they could possibly use.

Churches throughout Louisiana opened their doors to take in evacuees. Individuals organized a network to open their homes to strangers, using phone trees and the Internet to link up those in need with those who care. Evacuation centers are flooded with volunteers and supplies.

Many rescue and relief workers, themselves victims of Katrina, have not left their posts for days. Health-care staffers have hand-ventilated patients. Law enforcement officials braved high waters and violence. People from all over the nation are contacting me, especially people in areas recently devastated by their own tragedies, to offer assistance.

California betrayal - UPDATED

UPDATE: Governor Schwarznegger has announced he will veto the bill. NRO reports that the bill was done purely to put Arnold in a bad position.

*******************************************************************************

The California Assembly, voting along party lines, narrowly passed a bill to legalize gay marriage by defining marriage as a union between 'two persons' rather than a man and a woman.

This contravenes the intentions of the people of California who voted overwhelmingly (61% of the vote) in 2000 that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

What is especially notable here is that the passage of the bill was secured through a bit of skulduggery:

Assemblyman Leno, among six openly gay lawmakers in Sacramento, revived the bill through a controversial parliamentary maneuver known as "gut and amend" after the bill failed to pass the Assembly in June.

Mr. Leno essentially inserted the marriage bill's contents into another bill regarding marine fisheries that was pending in the Senate and stripped of its content. When the bill passed the Senate, Mr. Leno and his allies then persuaded three Democratic members of the Assembly who had abstained in June to vote for the new version.

Governor Schwarzenegger should veto this bill, outrageously named the "Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act" immediately.

[We pillory the New York Times here often but on this issue its coverage was significantly more balanced than the WaPo's which failed to mention the results of Proposition 22 as well as the 'gut and amend' procedure.]

Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

The Monk's better half, Monkette2B, has had just about enough of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's ranting on Katrina and sent her the following open letter:

I am a resident of the great state of Texas. As a good neighbor, this state has taken responsibility for many of the citizens of Louisiana displaced byHurricane Katrina. Why were we able to do this so effectively? Because Texas state and local authorities have a natural disaster plan that it could use and are using.

I have heard a great deal from you in the press about how President Bush and the Federal Government failed the states hit by Katrina. I cannot, however, recall hearing you speak out about the lack of support from the state and local governments. The officials who should know their citizens' needs better than the President or some government bureaucrat hundreds of miles away. The individuals who are uniquely aware of the needs of many of its residents.

The President did not turn tail and run leaving thousands of poverty stricken people stranded when they could have been bused out in advance. That would be the state and local officials you seem so hesitant to hold responsible in any form. Ms. Pelosi, we elect our state and local officials to do more than just run their mouths for the term. Just a little tip from those of us who live in the South. Nobody was really that surprised when the government of Louisiana failed to protect its citizens during a time of crisis, because the government of Louisiana fails to protect its citizens during the course of every day life. So while you are out there screaming for people to be fired, why don't you throw some of them into the mix. You don't really need a big expensive task force to determine who should take the bulk of responsibility for this matter.

As House Democratic leader I would expect that you should use this unfortunate situation as an example of why it is so important to have strong local and state leaders. To discuss the importance of strong communities so that when some of the citizens regress into lawlessness and 400 to 500 local police run for the hills, they will help each other.

There were things that went wrong on all levels and things will continue to not be perfect. As Americans we will overcome and we will be better for it. It is not the Federal government's job to fix everything. At least it shouldn't be. I do not want a big Federal babysitter making sure I never stumble and hurt myself. That is part of growing up for people, as well, as countries.

Nagin's and Blanco's failures

After the buzz this column received in The Corner and on the 'Net yesterday upon publication in the WSJ and on the subscriber-only WSJ website, Opinion Journal released it today for free.

The author, Bob Williams, represented the area most affected by the various Mt. St. Helen's eruptions in Washington state in 1980. Here is his take on the New Orleans fiasco (with emphases added):

The actions and inactions of Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin are a national disgrace due to their failure to implement the previously established evacuation plans of the state and city. Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin cannot claim that they were surprised by the extent of the damage and the need to evacuate so many people. Detailed written plans were already in place to evacuate more than a million people. The plans projected that 300,000 people would need transportation in the event of a hurricane like Katrina. If the plans had been implemented, thousands of lives would likely have been saved.

In addition to the plans, local, state and federal officials held a simulated hurricane drill 13 months ago, in which widespread flooding supposedly trapped 300,000 people inside New Orleans. The exercise simulated the evacuation of more than a million residents. The problems identified in the simulation apparently were not solved.

* * *
Mayor Nagin was responsible for giving the order for mandatory evacuation and supervising the actual evacuation: His Office of Emergency Preparedness (not the federal government) must coordinate with the state on elements of evacuation and assist in directing the transportation of evacuees to staging areas. Mayor Nagin had to be encouraged by the governor to contact the National Hurricane Center before he finally, belatedly, issued the order for mandatory evacuation. And sadly, it apparently took a personal call from the president to urge the governor to order the mandatory evacuation.

The city's evacuation plan states: "The city of New Orleans will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas." But even though the city has enough school and transit buses to evacuate 12,000 citizens per fleet run, the mayor did not use them. To compound the problem, the buses were not moved to high ground and were flooded . . .

The evacuation plan warned that "if an evacuation order is issued without the mechanisms needed to disseminate the information to the affected persons, then we face the possibility of having large numbers of people either stranded and left to the mercy of a storm, or left in an area impacted by toxic materials." That is precisely what happened because of the mayor's failure.

Instead of evacuating the people, the mayor ordered the refugees to the Superdome and Convention Center without adequate security and no provisions for food, water and sanitary conditions. As a result people died, and there was even rape committed, in these facilities . . . In an emergency the first requirement is for the city's emergency center to be linked to the state emergency operations center. This was not done.

The federal government does not have the authority to intervene in a state emergency without the request of a governor. President Bush declared an emergency prior to Katrina hitting New Orleans, so the only action needed for federal assistance was for Gov. Blanco to request the specific type of assistance she needed. She failed to send a timely request for specific aid.

In addition, unlike the governors of New York, Oklahoma and California in past disasters, Gov. Blanco failed to take charge of the situation and ensure that the state emergency operation facility was in constant contact with Mayor Nagin and FEMA. . . The [state disaster] plan clearly gives the governor the authority for declaring an emergency, sending in state resources to the disaster area and requesting necessary federal assistance.

Notice how Haley Barbour and the Mississippi Gulf Coast localities are not subject to these stinging commentaries. Why? Because they acted promptly and properly after Hurricane Katrina slammed Mississippi.

It's the local leadership, stupid.

From the one week too late files

NOW Ray Nagin is ready to use all available means to evacuate everyone out of New Orleans.

Katrina response

This comprehensive and exhaustive look at the Katrina response timeline shows how much the Federal government did, tried to do and was prevented from doing in response to the Hurricane; the steps taken and not taken by Louisiana and New Orleans versus the actions taken by Mississippi; and who said what and when. The Federal government comes off MUCH better in this compilation of news reports than in the recent "perspective" news pieces that fail to address the facts that were known and actions taken just 7-10 days earlier.

In addition, read this piece from Craig Martelle, who has received FEMA training. His main point (and one not heard enough in the news): FEMA IS NOT A FIRST RESPONDER! The whole disaster response system relies on the states first, FEMA later. That's why you don't remember hearing cries about Pres. Bush's mismanagement of the Florida hurricanes last year -- his brother capably handled the disasters. Ditto 9/11 New York: Giuliani, the FDNY and the NYPD all acted responsibly and capably. Compare that to Ray Nagin, the NOPD and the execrable Kathleen Blanco.

And, as Mark Steyn notes, this fact is becoming more apparent: "To give the city credit, it has a lovely "Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan" for hurricanes. The only flaw in the plan is that the person charged with putting it into effect is the mayor. And he didn't."

Indeed, the signature image of this disaster will likely end up being the infamous Flooded Schoolbuses photo that I linked to earlier. More Steyn to sum up:

Consider the signature image of the flood: an aerial shot of 255 school buses neatly parked at one city lot, their fuel tanks leaking gasoline into the urban lake. An enterprising blogger, Bryan Preston, worked out that each bus had 66 seats, which meant that the vehicles at just that one lot could have ferried out 16,830 people. Instead of entrusting its most vulnerable citizens to the gang-infested faecal hell of the Superdome, New Orleans had more than enough municipal transport on hand to have got almost everyone out in a couple of runs last Sunday.

Why didn't they? Well, the mayor didn't give the order. OK, but how about school board officials, or the fellows with the public schools transportation department, or the guy who runs that motor pool, or the individual bus drivers? If it ever occurred to any of them that these were potentially useful evacuation assets, they kept it to themselves.

So the first school bus to escape New Orleans and make it to safety in Texas was one that had been abandoned on a city street. A party of sodden citizens, ranging from the elderly to an eight-day-old baby, were desperate to get out, hopped aboard and got teenager Jabbor Gibson to drive them 13 hours non-stop to Houston. He'd never driven a bus before, and the authorities back in New Orleans may yet prosecute him.

Katrina in perspective

James Taranto explains the Katrina devastation to an Australian readership and debunks a bushel of Angry Left myths.

Solid obit for Chief Justice Rehnquist

Although the statement by Evan Thomas and Stuart Taylor in their Rehnquist obituary that "he will not be remembered as a giant of the law" is questionable (and syntactically mean-spirited), the rest of the piece is a nice discussion of the legacy and the life of the late Chief Justice.

Chief Justice Roberts

Chris asked for it, so he gets it: my reaction to Pres. Bush deciding to put John Roberts up to replace Chief Justice Rehnquist instead of Justice O'Connor.

First, I think this is a matter of expediency. Roberts is at the eve of his Senate hearings, the workup has been done and there is a gap in leadership in the Court, so Bush wants to fill that space first, then worry about what to do next. The nomination also stops the O'Connor for Chief nonsense in its tracks. Plus, the fact that Roberts is likely to sail through confirmation (to the extent that any Republican nominee can) is crucial -- there is symbolic importance to the Chief Justice post that outweighs the actual influence that the position affords.

Second, the main responsibility for the Chief Justice is assigning opinions and the likelihood is that the President doesn't want that responsibility to fall into Justice Stevens' hands for whatever short period he'd have it (as the senior Associate Justice).

Third, the Chief Justice appointee draws more fire -- that's why the Reagan White House miscalculated by sending Scalia up at the same time as Rehnquist's Chief Justice nomination instead of Bork. Bork would have flown under the radar, Scalia was a dead-bang conservative but the nomination process was MUCH less poisonous in the 1980s, therefore he would have skated in easily even on a lone nomination (he passed without opposition as a nominee for Rehnquist's seat). This allows Pres. Bush to potentially send up a more controversial nominee for O'Connor's seat. My choice is still Emilio Garza if Bush is counting on nominating the first Latino justice.

RIP: William Hubbs Rehnquist, 1924-2005

Last night Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist died from cancer. One of the giants of American jurisprudence during my lifetime and the life of the nation, he will be remembered by history as one of the great justices of the United States Supreme Court, fully deserving of a place on a roll call that includes William Brennan, Louis Brandeis, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Charles Evans Hughes, Hugo Black and Earl Warren on the list of most influential justices of the 20th Century.

Rehnquist succeeded John M. Harlan III, a justice with great intellectual integrity. What Nixon's appointment netted for the Court and the country was another jurist who would balance the Court from its far-leftward tilt of the mid-late 1960s.

Rehnquist's career on the Court can be divided into his two offices: Associate Justice from 1972-1986 and Chief Justice from 1986-2005. As an associate justice, Rehnquist was Scalia-with-a-smile -- a sharp conservative who believed in the exceptionalism of the American Constitution, the limits it placed on the states and the Congress, the need for both intellectual exactitude and restraint in the Court's decision-making process.

As Chief Justice, Rehnquist will be remembered for presiding over some of the most controversial cases in the nation's history: abortion rights (time and again), the Kelo and Roper decisions (where Rehnquist ended up in the minority but on the right side of the issue), the two flag-burning cases of 1989 and 1990 (where Rehnquist wrote stinging, albeit wrong [to the Monk], dissents) and the most political cases of the past 20 years: the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton and the 2000 proceedings in Bush v. Gore. During these years Justice Scalia (who Pres. Reagan nominated to Rehnquist's seat when Rehnquist received the Chief Justice nomination) carried the conservatives' intellectual standard on the Court. Chief Justice Rehnquist did advocate strongly for more resources for the Federal Courts. Unfortunately, he concurrently led a somewhat unprecedented diminution of the Supreme Court's docket to far less than 100 cases per year (something that his successor will hopefully rectify). Of the three Chief Justices directly elevated from an Associate Justice position, his was probably the smoothest-run and least-fractious court of the three (viz. Edward White's tenure or the bicker-a-thon under Harlan Fiske Stone) despite the vast differences in the various justices' jurisprudential outlooks -- a tribute to Rehnquist's personality.

Here is a short statement by the President upon hearing of the Chief Justice's death. It's understated but to the point. Somehow fitting for the man himself.

The Monk would like to see Pres. Bush nominate Rehnquist's replacement as soon as feasible and tasteful. My personal first choice (other than Emilio Garza) is J. Harvie Wilkinson III, whom I touted here and here.

A disastrous government in Louisiana

The governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans are liberally slathering blame on the Federal government for its alleged failures but there are a number of inconvenient facts that make Kathleen Blanco and Ray Nagin look absolutely horrible in their reactions to the Katrina disaster:

(1) The federal system and its allocation of authority places primary authority in the hands of the governor of the state that declares the emergency. Jeb Bush and Haley Barbour have successfully handled major disasters in Florida and Mississippi; Blanco's performance is an abject failure.

(2) Blanco has been resisting Federalization of the evacuation and assistance of New Orleans for political reasons (see article in link).

(3) Even though New Orleans ordered an evacuation, this picture shows no less than 200 schoolbuses in a flooded lot in New Orleans -- as DRUDGE notes:

Louisiana disaster plan, pg 13, para 5 , dated 01/00

'The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating.'

(4) Compare what we know about Louisiana and what we know about Mississippi, which was hit just as hard by the storms: looting = Louisiana, WIDESPREAD; Mississippi, minimal; government services = Louisiana, poor to middling and needing a LOT of help from Texas; Mississippi, fairly efficient. The difference: Haley Barbour doing a VASTLY better job than Kathleen Bianco.

Time to put some serious blame on the heaving shoulders of Louisiana's weepy governor, and saddle Barbour with some hosannas.

Lost in the shuffle: the failures of the 9-11 Commission

Captain Ed now has a gig contributing to The Weekly Standard and this entry is highly interesting: the connections that Iran and Iraq had to 9-11 terrorists and the shockingly prescient warnings from Mary Jo White, the State Department and from sources in Iran and Iraq -- some of which pre-dated the attacks by 4+ years. Here's the key point:

INSTEAD OF BEING THE DEFINITIVE WORD on September 11, the report has begun to resemble a literary equivalent of Swiss cheese as more and more data came out about what else the Commission missed in its report, either by chance or by design. These data points, or dots as the Commissioners themselves called them, did not have the opportunity for connection in their report:

* The target=_blank>trial and conviction of Mohammed Afroze in India, for his part in a conspiracy to use airplanes to bomb four overseas targets on 9/11/01 using commercial flights out of Heathrow Airport in London.

* The second memo from U.S. District Attorney Mary Jo White in response to the notorious memo from Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick, warning that the implications of the memo will create insurmountable obstacles for prevention of terrorist attacks in the United States. In fact, the report barely mentions the Gorelick memo at all. It certainly never mentions the fact that the Gorelick memo was sent to the Office of Intelligence and Policy Review, which provided legal advice to all government agencies on the use and sharing of intelligence information with Department of Justice agencies.

* A July 21, 2001 editorial in a state-run Iraqi newspaper, al-Nasiriyah, which predicted the three targets of the September 11 attacks two months beforehand. This editorial read was read into the Congressional record by Senator Fritz Hollings on September 12, 2002.

* On July 26, 2001, an Iranian espionage agent told CIA agents in Baku, Azerbaijan, that Osama bin Laden would attack the United States on 9/11 using six men who had already entered the country via Iran. When pressed for his sources, the agent told them that Iranian intelligence knew all about the plot.

* The discovery and arrest of two Iraqi spies in Germany in February 2001, which the Germans claimed at the time exposed an extensive Iraqi espionage network operating in several German cities--at the same time three of the four 9/11 lead hijackers traveled to or through Germany, the only time it ever happened after their successful entry into the United States. Almost six moths to the day before the 9/11 attacks, an Arabic newspaper in Paris described the arrests as relating to the suspicion that radical Islamists, and specifically Osama bin Laden, had started working with the Iraqis to target American interests around the world.

* A memo from the State Department warned Bill Clinton in 1996 that its intelligence services had determined that the United States had to stop Osama bin Laden from relocating to Afghanistan, or al Qaeda would grow into an even more dangerous threat. The report also fails to mention a later Clinton administration effort to offer the Taliban official recognition if they handed bin Laden over to our custody.

* German intelligence analysts concluded in 2002 that radical Islamist terrorists such as al Qaeda worked with Iraqi intelligence services through contacts in the German neo-Nazi community.

* As Stephen Hayes points out, the Commission failed to include Ahmed Hikmat Shakir and Abdul Rahman Yasin--despite their connections to the first World Trade Center bombing and the 9/11 hijackers.

None of the above data points is mentioned in the Commission's final report. They all indicate a possibility that other state sponsors had close ties to al Qaeda. They also indicate that the scope of the Islamist war has little to do with American policy but instead with the establishment of a latter-day caliphate for the ummah, and after that, global Islamist domination. More to the point, however, they all demonstrate--along with Able Danger--that the intelligence services had recognized the threat and tried to take at least some action to stop it before it could fully form against the United States.

CNN v. Fox

Jack Cafferty's meltdown on CNN will soon become the stuff of legend.

And hanging-out-in-the-studio-and-whinging anchor Kyra Phillips isn't doing much better, according to The Rail.

I saw Shep Smith for awhile on Fox's coverage and he seemed to handle himself in New Orleans pretty well, especially considering he's a Gulf Coast native.

Oyster safe

Our lefty ombudsman Oyster from Right Hand Thief rang in yesterday in a comment to say he's safe and sound in Florida.

That's today's sign of the apocalypse: having to go TO Florida to escape hurricane damage.

Good to know that buzzing in our blogospheric left ear continues.

Neekarahgua

"Neeka-rah-gua" was how my liberal classmates from high school insisted on pronouncing 'Nicaragua' back in the bad old days when the Sandinistas were in power. It was, for them, a way they could be closer to heroic Sandinista freedom fighters struggling against the evil Reagan administration supported contras.

Jay Nordlinger, in an excellent Impromptus, inveighs against the use of "Torino" where the Winter Olympics will be held next year. The proper English term is 'Turin' as in Shroud of Turin.

As long as we are speaking and writing ENGLISH we should use the appropriate English pronunciation and spelling. To wit, we should say and write 'Germany', not "Deutschland" and 'Spain' not "Espana". We need to teach our children to write and speak English and GREAT for them if they learn another language and can use foreign language terms when appropriate not when its fashionable or politically correct.

Tampa Bay disgrace

The Yanks have fallen 3.5 games back of the Bosox after dropping a 5-1 decision to the Mariners while the Sox swept Tampa Bay.

Boston is 11-4 vs. the Drays so far this year while the Yanks are a disgraceful 4-9.

'enuf said.

Parody and reality in New Orleans?

There is an old parity headline describing the seemingly disproportionate attention given to women and minorities by the mainstream media when a disaster happens: End of the World Happens, Women and Minorities Suffer Most.

And that does encapsulate both a certain outlook that the media has (take the angle that shows the poor and downtrodden's problems), and mocks the worst instincts of the media to take a tragedy that affects many people (of all types) equally but concentrate only on its pet causes. Both James Taranto and much of The Corner have mocked some

In New Orleans, however, there is something different happening: the parody approaches reality.

Look at the news coverage from the man-on-the-scene reports and what do you see? Black faces everywhere, white faces rarely. Why? Jack Shafer, Slate's perspicacious media critic, notes that 67% of New Orleans' population is black, and no place has been hit worse than New Orleans.

Much of that population is itself Creole blacks who have been in New Orleans for hundreds of years. The New Orleans black community is still largely poor and uneducated. This is a result of rampant racism (that often continues to this day -- as one Monkish interracial family member, MonkCuzN, knows from personal experience), political corruption and entrenchment of an underclass in the city over the course of centuries. And of course there's the usual white flight in the 60s and 70s when the white folks moved to the suburbs.

New Orleans is also an OLD city, unlike most of the major southern/southwestern metropoli (Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte, Jacksonville, Phoenix; Miami is not "southern" in the same sense I describe below). That means a number of things: first it is more tightly constructed and not spread out thereby choking in the flooded water; second, it is easier to get around than the sprawling mini-states like Houston or Atlanta or Jacksonville so there will be higher incidence of people who do not have cars; third, it is not a job destination like Dallas, Houston or Atlanta, instead New Orleans has a history of malignant municipal corruption that has deterred higher-end commercial development in comparison to some of its neighbors.

Thus, the people hurt worst in the Katrina-levee fiasco is the group that has deep roots, little money, few possessions and probably fewer means of rebuilding after the hurricane and the levee break. That's why they stayed, and why they were the hardest hit. As Shafer notes, it's not racist to say this, it's reality.

Thanks Gerhard Schroeder

As Germany moves towards key elections in three weeks, Kenneth Timmerman at the National Review online reminds us of the perfidy and idiocy of Social Democratic Prime Minister Gerhard Schroeder. Three years ago Schroeder played the anti-US card to narrowly defeat his CDU opponent Edmund Stoiber. Then he and Chirac led the obstructionists against the US making the Iraq effort much more difficult. Schroeder is going to the well once again.

Here's what a senior Iranian said about the 'negotiations' that Schroeder championed:

In December 2004, Iran's IAEA delegate, Hossein Mousavian, told reporters in Vienna that such violations were Iran's right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. "It is natural that the Islamic Republic continues all its nuclear activities. Iran has only suspended the fuel cycle voluntarily, in the framework of its policy to build trust, without any legal obligations," he said.

On the eve of an emergency session of the IAEA's board of governors in Vienna earlier this month, Mousavian revealed to an Iranian television interviewer that Tehran had used the Europeans to "buy time" to complete their nuclear facilities. This is exactly what the Bush administration had been warning about for more than a year.

The IAEA had initially given Iran a 50-day ultimatum to cease all nuclear-fuel activities, including work on centrifuges and construction at the uranium-conversion facility (UCF) in Isfahan. "But thanks to the negotiations with Europe we gained another year, in which we completed the [UCF] in Isfahan," he said.
...
"We suspended the UCF in Isfahan in October 2004, although we were required to do so in October 2003," he said. "If we had suspended it then, [the UCF] in Isfahan would have never been completed. Today we are in a position of power: [The UCF] in Isfahan is complete and UF4 and UF6 gases are being produced. We have a stockpile of products, and during this period we have managed to convert 36 tons of yellowcake into gas and store it. In Natanz, much of the work has been completed. Thanks to our dealings with Europe, even when we got a 50-day ultimatum, we managed to continue the work for two years."

New Orleans/Bayou flood help

If you are interested in organizations helping the victims of Hurricane Katrina, please click the link at the title of this post to go choose an organization from the large list that Instapundit has prepared.

How Europe harms the world's poor

This has been going on for years: the European fear-mongering about genetically modified crops infects Europe's foreign policy to the extent that EU nations have warned poor African countries, whose citizens are starving (notably Mozambique and Namibia in recent years) to not accept US food aid because it might have some GM crops in it. The EU's irrational anti-GM crop position (have you ever had broccoli or yellow corn? then you've had GM food, period) has led it to threaten food aid and production help to any poor country accepting food (i.e., US food aid) that includes any GM crops whatsoever.

Ron Bailey discusses GM advances in food productivity and the benefits of certain GM foods, and Europe's heinous position that leads to just more death and poverty.

Be Kind to al-Qaeda Party

That's the Democrats new appellation, thanks to the inestimable James Taranto.

A true democrat in Europe

Vaclav Klaus, second president of the Czech Republic, is our new hero here at TKM. Why? Because he has the intellectual honesty and intestinal fortitude to challenge the new socialism and anti-democratic nature of the EU -- something that other Eastern European leaders see and fear but will not speak against. Some cuts from his recent speech to the Mont Pelerin Regional Society Meeting in Reykjavik:

Fifteen years after the collapse of communism. I am afraid more than at the beginning of its softer (or weaker) version, of social-democratism, which has become – under different names, e.g. the welfare state or the soziale Marktwirtschaft – the dominant model of the economic and social system of current Western civilization. It is based on big and patronizing government, on extensive regulating of human behavior, and on large-scale income redistribution.

* * *

Illiberal ideas are becoming to be formulated, spread and preached under the name of ideologies or “isms”, which have – at least formally and nominally – nothing in common with the old-styled, explicit socialism. These ideas are, however, in many respects similar to it. There is always a limiting (or constraining) of human freedom, there is always ambitious social engineering, there is always an immodest “enforcement of a good” by those who are anointed (T. Sowell) on others against their will, there is always the crowding out of standard democratic methods by alternative political procedures, and there is always the feeling of superiority of intellectuals and of their ambitions.

I have in mind environmentalism (with its Earth First, not Freedom First principle), radical humanrightism (based – as de Jasay precisely argues – on not distinguishing rights and rightism), ideology of “civic society” (or communitarism), which is nothing less than one version of post-Marxist collectivism which wants privileges for organized groups, and in consequence, a refeudalization of society. I also have in mind multiculturalism, feminism, apolitical technocratism (based on the resentment against politics and politicians), internationalism (and especially its European variant called Europeanism) and a rapidly growing phenomenon I call NGOism.

All of them represent substitute ideologies for socialism. All of them give intellectuals new possibilities, new space for their activities, new niches in the market of ideas. To face these new isms, to reveal their true nature, and to be able to get rid of them, may be more difficult than in the past. It may be more complicated than fighting the old, explicit socialism. Everyone wants to have healthy environment; everyone wants to overcome loneliness of the fragmented post-modern society and to participate in positive activities of various clubs, associations, foundations and charity organizations; almost everyone is against discrimination based on race, religion or gender; many of us are against the extensive power of the state, etc. To demonstrate the dangers of these approaches, therefore, very often means blowing against the wind.

Read it all.

HT: Instapundit who hat-tipped Brussels Journal.

Cindy Sheehan's Puppeteer

Byron York discusses radical socialist organizer and veteran agitator Lisa Fithian's connections to and work with Cindy Sheehan. A one-mom protest? Is not now and never was.

Howard 1, Blair 0

With characteristic Aussie bluntness, Australia's Education Minister Brendan Nelson told Muslim immigrants that they should either accept Australian values and culture or "clear off." In other words, no more of the multi-culti nonsense: if you want to live in Australia, then BE an Australian. Here's his point writ large:

“We don’t care where people come from; we don’t mind what religion they’ve got or what their particular view of the world is. But if you want to be in Australia, if you want to raise your children in Australia, we fully expect those children to be taught and to accept Australian values and beliefs.”

Note that the LEAST radicalized Muslims immigrants in any western country are the ones in the United States. Why? Because we encourage assimilation, not mere immigration. Unlike Canada (which allows Muslims to run shari'a courts in Ontario), Britain (which has huge self-enclosed Muslim enclaves throughout its major cities), France (which houses its North African Muslim immigrants in crappy housing ringing its largest cities) and Netherlands (which never sought to promote Dutch cultural values to its Muslim immigrant population), the US has the lowest relative incidence of Muslim radicalism because fewer Muslim immigrants are interested in following the terrorist path.

Now Australia is sounding the right (albeit, indelicately phrased) note: be an Aussie or don't come to Australia:

“It is very hard for a government or any of its agencies to penetrate every aspect of life, and we don’t want to interfere with people’s enjoyment of life,” [Prime Minister John Howard] said.

“But equally, if people are not willing to give their first loyalty to this country, they obviously must understand that that will arouse enormous concern within the rest of the Australian community.”

A proper stance.

HT: Jawa and CaliCon.

Good Luck Oyster

The Monk and I just want to wish Oyster and family Godspeed and good luck as they evacuate the Crescent City as Hurricane Katrina, alternating between category 4 and category 5, bears down on New Orleans.

Oyster, one of our faithful readers and commenters, runs this blog and we hope to hear from him again soon.

Note to Texas jurors: you know not what you do

Richard Epstein, Professor of Law at the U. of Chicago, rips the jurors in the now-infamous Vioxx case, Ernst v. Merck, and the chicanery they bought into:

Forget the jury's whopping quarter-billion-dollar verdict in Ernst v. Merck, because it's cut 90% by the caps that Texas law places on punitive damages. Still, where do $25 million in actual damages come from? Robert Ernst died in his sleep, without pain and without medical bills. His lost income as a Wal-Mart employee was small. But the $24 million price tag for anguish and loss of companionship to his widow, Carol, is off the charts. And for what?

Not the death of her husband, whose arteries were 70% clogged and who died, so Dr. Maria Araneta's death certificate states, of arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat. No mention of any heart attack. But in his dramatic 11th-hour maneuver, Mr. Lanier whisked Dr. Araneta back from the Arabian peninsula to testify conveniently that she really thought that an undetected blood clot had caused the death, but had been dislodged in the last-ditch efforts at resuscitation.

Pretend that this new account is true, and it still doesn't show that Vioxx caused the blood clot. Long before Vioxx, people died of heart failure from all sorts of causes, including physical exertion and dehydration. That second causal link to Vioxx was not made even if the first one to a blood clot is generously presumed. Carol Ernst's lawsuit should be dead on arrival right here, but a clever set of jury instructions allowed the jury to say that Vioxx may have been a contributory cause of death.

* * *
To understand the Angleton verdict, one would think that Vioxx were the moral equivalent of mustard gas. But in truth, we should be grateful to any firm that speeds its product to market when its anticipated use promises many more benefits than adverse side-effects. Merck should not apologize for pushing hard to win quick market acceptance; before Vioxx was withdrawn, countless people with chronic pain were able to get on with their lives. Now these folks are left far worse off because of a double whammy: a Food and Drug Administration that yanks too many drugs off the market because it has no idea how to evaluate risk, and individual jurors who think it is their solemn duty to "send a message" to the drug companies on whose products we so desperately depend.

* * *
So, in return, I would like to send my message to Mr. Lanier and those indignant jurors. It's not from an irate tort professor, but from a scared citizen who is steamed that those "good people" have imperiled his own health and that of his family and friends. None of you have ever done a single blessed thing to help relieve anybody's pain and suffering. Just do the math to grasp the harm that you've done.

Right now there are over 4,000 lawsuits against Merck for Vioxx. If each clocks in at $25 million, then your verdict is that the social harm from Vioxx exceeds $100 billion, before thousands more join in the treasure hunt. Pfizer's Celebrex and Bextra could easily be next. Understand that no future drug will be free of adverse side effects, nor reach market, without the tough calls that Merck had to make with Vioxx. Your implicit verdict is to shut down the entire quest for new medical therapies. Your verdict says you think that the American public is really better off with just hot-water bottles and leftover aspirin tablets.

. . . [The investment community] realizes that any new drug which treats common chronic conditions can generate the same ruinous financial losses as Vioxx, because the flimsy evidence on causation and malice you cobbled together in the Ernst case can be ginned up in any other. Clever lawyers like [Ernst attorney Mark] Lanier will be able to ambush enough large corporations in small, dusty towns where they will stand the same chance of survival that Custer had at Little Big Horn.

Your appalling carnage cries out for prompt action. Much as I disapprove of how the FDA does business, we must enact this hard-edged no-nonsense legal rule: no drug that makes it through the FDA gauntlet can be attacked for bad warnings or deficient design. In plain English, Mr. Lanier, you're out of court before you make your opening statement.

I don't think the legal rule Prof. Epstein advocates is hard-edged; instead it is common-sensical. We entrust the FDA to force manufacturers to prove the safety of their products and run a bureaucratice gamut to do so: design approval and three stages of drug trials costing as much as $100,000,000. Once the company has complied with these tests and satisfied the FDA's gatekeepers, they should receive a certain amount of legal protection from claims that essentially are based upon the drug's side effects. In this case, the Vioxx tests that led Merck to pull the drug off the market identified elevated heart attack risks for patients who took it for 18+ months. Mr. Ernst took it for 8 months and died of arrhythmia.

Here's hoping this gets flipped on appeal, but like Bendectin and Dow Corning breast implants, appellate reversals can never undo the damage caused by runaway jury verdicts.

Hitchens: Stand up and defend what's right

Christopher Hitchens, the heretic outcast from The Nation and one of the few liberals who has stood foursquare behind the deposing of Saddam has a fine piece on why the liberation of Iraq is "A War to be Proud of". And here are some of his top reasons:

We need not argue about the failures and the mistakes and even the crimes, because these in some ways argue themselves. But a positive accounting could be offered without braggartry, and would include:

(1) The overthrow of Talibanism and Baathism, and the exposure of many highly suggestive links between the two elements of this Hitler-Stalin pact. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who moved from Afghanistan to Iraq before the coalition intervention, has even gone to the trouble of naming his organization al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

(2) The subsequent capitulation of Qaddafi's Libya in point of weapons of mass destruction--a capitulation that was offered not to Kofi Annan or the E.U. but to Blair and Bush.

(3) The consequent unmasking of the A.Q. Khan network for the illicit transfer of nuclear technology to Libya, Iran, and North Korea.

(4) The agreement by the United Nations that its own reform is necessary and overdue, and the unmasking of a quasi-criminal network within its elite.

(5) The craven admission by President Chirac and Chancellor Schröder, when confronted with irrefutable evidence of cheating and concealment, respecting solemn treaties, on the part of Iran, that not even this will alter their commitment to neutralism. (One had already suspected as much in the Iraqi case.)

(6) The ability to certify Iraq as actually disarmed, rather than accept the word of a psychopathic autocrat.

(7) The immense gains made by the largest stateless minority in the region--the Kurds--and the spread of this example to other states.

(8) The related encouragement of democratic and civil society movements in Egypt, Syria, and most notably Lebanon, which has regained a version of its autonomy.

(9) The violent and ignominious death of thousands of bin Ladenist infiltrators into Iraq and Afghanistan, and the real prospect of greatly enlarging this number.

(10) The training and hardening of many thousands of American servicemen and women in a battle against the forces of nihilism and absolutism, which training and hardening will surely be of great use in future combat.

Army Retention Rates in Iraqi Units High

The MSM has devoted quite a bit of press on how US Army recruitment efforts are falling short of target due in large part to the casualties in Iraq. A WaPo article highlighting his though includes a gem - the retention rates of Army units in Iraq are quite strong:

Schoomaker said recruiting problems are offset by high retention among active divisions, especially in units that have served or are serving in Iraq. He said the Army has exceeded its personnel retention goal by 9 percent, with soldiers in the Third Infantry Division -- now on its second tour in Iraq -- reenlisting at 112 percent of the goal. The First Cavalry Division has the highest reenlistment rate, at 138 percent of the goal, according to the Army. All 10 of the Army's divisions are surpassing retention estimates.

Seems the soldiers on the ground believe in the mission but don't expect this to get any airtime now that Mother Sheehan is back at Crawford.

HT: The Corner

Rick Short Watch .389

For the love of the game we are instituting the Rick Short watch here. Short, as we indicated yesterday, is the New Orleans Zephyrs player who is chasing the magical .400. Short went 0-3 in the first game of a doubleheader and was a DNP in the second. Average stands at .389 with 13 games to go.

Who's protecting the consumers from consumer protectors?

That's the question that Radley Balko asks in this interesting and entertaining review of The PayPal Wars.

Don't close the military bases

In OpinionJournal today Peggy Noonan comes out strongly against the recommended base closings that are making news. Her thesis: Think dark. Specifically of a grim scenario sometime in the future where the United States is attacked in a devastating way - Noonan imagines simultaneous WMD/dirty bomb strikes in half a dozen cities, crippling cyber attacks and assassinations - where the presence of the military in many different places may make the difference between chaos and survival.

We don't need these bases for sentimental reasons. We don't need them because local congressmen want the jobs and money they provide. We don't need them because we must never change the structure and operations of our defense system. We need them because someday they may very well help us survive as a nation. Seems worth the price, doesn't it?

This of course is pure guessing on my part. I can't prove it with data. My gut says that when things turn dark, we will need all the help we can get.

Another reason to have bases well distributed is that it anchors the military in a symbiotic way to the country. A major military base serves as an economic and political anchor for a given area; it's much easier for people to understand what the military does in peacetime and wartime if, well, the military is part of their everyday lives. In that way the intangible benefits of many bases in many states is better for the body politic than to have fewer perhaps more efficient 'super' bases.

For the Love of the Game

The WaPo has a great story today about Rick Short, a career minor leaguer (12 seasons) in the National's organization who is hitting .392. With two weeks left in the season he's chasing the magical .400 which hasn't been done in the minors since 1961 and not in the majors since Ted Williams in 1941.

Rick Short has been up to show twice, both this year, for four games.

"He belongs in the big leagues," New Orleans Manager Tim Foli says. He bases this judgment on one of baseball's most tired cliches: "He plays the game right." But in this case it might just apply. The Zephyrs are still talking about a game a few nights ago, when Short -- hitting .399 at the time -- kept trying to hit ground balls to the right side of the infield to move a runner from second to third, eventually grounding out to the first baseman.

"He could easily have swung away right there and tried to get his hits," says New Orleans teammate Marlon Byrd, who played 56 games for the Nationals this season. "Most guys, if you're going for .400, you're swinging to get your hits."

Every night Foli makes his plea to Nationals management: Take him, even as a pinch hitter, if nothing else. When the Zephyrs' season ends Sept. 5 and the Nationals are allowed to expand their roster beyond the 25-man limit, he likely will be called up.

Good Luck.

Last Chewable Meal for 4-6 weeks

It's official: the last chewable meal before you get jaw surgery is . . .

Bar-B-Q.

At least down here deepinnahearta . . .

And evidently the day before surgery must be spent at the Red Door Spa running up a Monk's MasterCard tab. Anything for my little Monkette2B.

The Iraqi draft Constitution

Click the title for a copy of the draft courtesy of the New York Times. It's surprisingly concise actually.

NRO's Andy McCarthy who was very disturbed yesterday feels better today.

This is quite encouraging:

Article 151

No less than 25 percent of Council of Deputies seats go to women.

We don't support quotas here at TKM but for this we will make an exception.

Lisa Ramaci-Vincent rips Juan Cole

Juan Cole, a ranting anti-Bush Islamapologist professor at Michigan and self-styled expert on the Middle East, took a gratuitious swipe at murdered journalist Steven Vincent. We took issue with that here.

The Murdoc Online blog has run the full text of a letter from Lisa Ramaci-Vincent, Steve Vincent's widow, to Juan Cole. Cole will need about a hundred stitches to close the new rectal orifice that he now sports courtesy of Lisa Vincent.

After she crushed the assumptions Cole made in his swipe,

I did not see your blog until tonight. I was busy doing other things - fighting the government to get Steven's body returned from Basra days after I was told he would be sent home, planning the funeral, buying a cemetery plot, choosing the clothes to bury him in, writing the prayer card, fending off the media, dealing with his aging parents, waking and then burying him - but I could not let the calumnies you posted so freely against two total strangers go unchallenged.

You strike me as a typical professor - self-opinionated, arrogant, so sure of the rightness of your position that you won't even begin to consider someone else's. I would suggest that you ought to be ashamed of yourself for your breathtaking presumption in eviscerating Steven in death and disparaging Nour in life, but, like any typical professor, I have no doubt that you are utterly shameless.

Read it all. (Juan Cole has not replied on his blog)

HT: Jonah at NRO.

Editor's Note

My blogging will either resume in full force on Thursday/Friday or be absolute zilch. HRH the Monkette2B is having orthognathic surgery, which is nearly as nasty as it sounds -- a jaw reconfiguration. Ultimately, once she has healed, this will make The Monk/Monkette2B pulchritudinal disparity nearly reach Lyle Lovett/Julia Roberts levels. (Uh, I'm the Lovett-esque troll, for those of you who aren't clear on the concept -- I'm sure Oyster and Wongdoer can attest to that). Until then, The Monk will have either to run errands for her, blog while she sleeps it off (if I'm not catching up on a work backload that really sucks right now), or end up perpetually cleaning up what the cats are doing whilst Her Highness is not mothering them.

Anyway, just wanted to let all our regular readers (Hi Mom and Dad! and . . . hmm, any others?) know what's going on if the absence (or increased presence, it all depends) of The Monk is actually noticed.

Steyn on Sheehan

Mark Steyn takes on the jackals who have surrounded Cindy Sheehan. Among others he dismisses the deranged-left notion that soldiers who have died are 'children':

Cindy Sheehan's son Casey died in Sadr City last year, and that fact is supposed to put her beyond reproach. For as the New York Times' Maureen Dowd informed us: ''The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute."

Really? Well, what about those other parents who've buried children killed in Iraq? There are, sadly, hundreds of them: They honor their loved ones' service to the nation, and so they don't make the news. There's one Cindy Sheehan, and she's on TV 'round the clock. Because, if you're as heavily invested as Dowd in the notion that those "killed in Iraq" are "children," then Sheehan's status as grieving matriarch is a bonanza.

They're not children in Iraq; they're grown-ups who made their own decision to join the military. That seems to be difficult for the left to grasp. Ever since America's all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterize them as "children." If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that's her decision and her parents shouldn't get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the broadloom in Bill Clinton's Oval Office, she's a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year-old is serving his country overseas, he's a wee "child" who isn't really old enough to know what he's doing.
...
The infantilization of the military promoted by the left is deeply insulting to America's warriors but it suits the anti-war crowd's purposes. It enables them to drone ceaselessly that "of course" they "support our troops," because they want to stop these poor confused moppets from being exploited by the Bush war machine.

I resisted writing about "Mother Sheehan" (as one leftie has proposed designating her), as it seemed obvious that she was at best a little unhinged by grief and at worst mentally ill. It's one thing to mourn a son's death and even to question the cause for which he died, but quite another to roar that he was "murdered by the Bush crime family."

Also: "You tell me the truth. You tell me that my son died for oil. You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich. You tell me my son died to spread the cancer of Pax Americana . . . You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine."
...
Contrast this with a statement from the family. Casey Sheehan's grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins put out the following statement:

"The Sheehan Family lost our beloved Casey in the Iraq War and we have been silently, respectfully grieving. We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son's good name and reputation. The rest of the Sheehan Family supports the troops, our country, and our President, silently, with prayer and respect."

[H]ow about Casey's father, Pat Sheehan? Last Friday, in Solano County Court, Casey's father Pat Sheehan filed for divorce. As the New York Times explained Cindy's "separation," "Although she and her estranged husband are both Democrats, she said she is more liberal than he is, and now, more radicalized."

Toppling Saddam and the Taliban (Mrs. Sheehan opposes U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, too), destroying al-Qaida's training camps and helping 50 million Muslims on the first steps to free societies aren't worth the death of a single soldier.
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Casey Sheehan was a 21-year old man when he enlisted in 2000. He re-enlisted for a second tour, and he died after volunteering for a rescue mission in Sadr City. Mrs. Sheehan says she wishes she'd driven him to Canada, though that's not what he would have wished, and it was his decision.

And here's Frank Rich, a guest opiner for the New York Times, who amazingly packs an extraordinary amount of mad-left drivel into "The Swift-Boating of Cindy Sheehan." [He needed two pages for this and, naturally, it's the most emailed article in the past 24 hours]. Here's a sample:

THIS summer in Crawford, the White House went to this playbook once too often. When Mr. Bush's motorcade left a grieving mother in the dust to speed on to a fund-raiser, that was one fat-cat party too far. The strategy of fighting a war without shared national sacrifice has at last backfired, just as the strategy of Swift Boating the war's critics has reached its Waterloo before Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury in Washington.

No, Frank. I think when Cindy caterwauls about the Bush Crime Family and the Daily Kos wants to call her "Mother Sheehan" sane folks start to tune out.

The Latest on Iraq

Check Iraq the Model blog. This is a pretty well known and respected local blog.

They have a better spin on the Islamic republic issue but we shall see shortly:

Regarding Islam and the constitution: it was agreed upon that no laws that are against the widely agreed upon values of Islam can be issued and no laws that are against the values of democracy and human rights can be issued.
Natural resources according to the draft will be managed in cooperation between the central government and the local administrations of the federal states/provinces.

Iraqi Constitution - Big Mistake?

There is disturbing news coming out of Baghdad as negotiators are trying to hammer out a draft Constitution by the deadline of midnight tonight local time (430pm EDT). According to radio reports and the WaPo:

The draft also stipulates that Iraq is an Islamic state and that no law can contradict the principles of Islam, Shiite and Kurdish negotiators said. Opponents have charged that last provision would subject Iraqis to religious edicts by individual clerics.

The Shiite and Kurdish negotiators also said draft calls for the presence of Islamic clerics on the court that would interpret the constitution. Family matters such as divorce, marriage or inheritance would be decided either by religious law or civil law as an individual chooses -- a condition that opponents say would likely lead to women being forced into unfavorable rulings for them by opponents demanding judgments under Islamic law.

If this is true this could be a disastrous misstep for the Bush administration and significantly impair our efforts to create a democratic, secular and pro-Western country in the heart of the Middle East.

It appears that the Bush administration, which has doggedly worked within timelines that it has set, e.g., the handover of sovereignty and the national elections , may have followed its heretofore formula too faithfully this time:

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad kept up days of pressure on negotiators to complete the constitution, giving his sanction to the provisions on Islamic law, negotiators said.

Washington has been pushing hard to stick to a timeline on government-building that would allow for a significant troop withdrawal as soon as early next spring.

In its effort to stay within the timeline and the belief that any delays would only encourage the terrorists the US may have compromised too much. We have NO BUSINESS in encouraging the formation of an Islamic Republic where Islam the primary or main source of legislation. Clerics certainly should not be serving on the equivalent of a Supreme Court. Better I think to force them back to the negotiating table and eat more delays or perhaps even another election.

The thoughtful Andrew McCarthy at NRO had this to say:

For what it’s worth, this is where I get off the bus. The principal mission of the so-called “war on terror” – which is actually a war on militant Islam – is to destroy the capacity of the international network of jihadists to project power in a way that threatens American national security. That is the mission that the American people continue to support.

As those who follow these pages may know, I have been despairing for a long time over the fact that the principal mission has been subordinated by what I’ve called the “democracy diversion” – the administration’s theory that the (highly dubious) prospect of democratizing Iraq and the Islamic world will quell the Islamists...

Now, if several reports this weekend are accurate, we see the shocking ultimate destination of the democracy diversion. In the desperation to complete an Iraqi constitution – which can be spun as a major step of progress on the march toward democratic nirvana – the United States of America is pressuring competing factions to accept the supremacy of Islam and the fundamental principle no law may contradict Islamic principles.
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But even if I suspended disbelief for a moment and agreed that the democracy project is a worthy casus belli, I am as certain as I am that I am breathing that the American people would not put their brave young men and women in harm’s way for the purpose of establishing an Islamic government. Anyplace.

It is not our place to fix what ails Islam. But it is utter recklessness to avert our eyes from the fact that militant Islam thrives wherever Islam reigns. That is a fact. When and where militant Islam thrives, America and the West are endangered. That is also a fact. How can we possibly be urging people who wisely don’t want it to accept the government-institutionalized supremacy of Islam?

Indeed the Sunnis can stil block the Constitution if two thirds of the voters in any three provinces vote against it. I'd hate to leave the future of Iraq in the hands of the Sunnis, many of whom have supported the terrorists and hope they do the right thing.

More enlightened Europeans

More racism writ large from Europe as Liverpool is petitioning UEFA regarding the monkey noises from Bulgarian fans everytime black Norwegian player Djibril Cisse touched the ball after scoring.

And before you think this is a mark of the unenlightened Eastern Euros, remember how the Spanish fans treated black English players last year in a Spain-England friendly match.

Weld to run for NY governor

The New York Times is reporting that Bill Weld, the former popular Republican governor of Massachusetts, will be running for Governor of New York. Weld, with his name recognition and proven ability to win as a Republican (albeit of the liberal wing) twice in Taxachusetts becomes a legitimate opponent of grandstanding attorney general Eliot Spitzer who has felt surely that he was a mortal lock for the governor's mansion.

Weld still faces an uphill battle in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans something like 4 or 5 to 1. Weld is a serious candidate and is almost certain to get the backing of Giuliani, Bloomberg, Pataki and draw the interest of the national party who may now think that the Reps have a fighting chance.

Spitzer who customarily avoids battles by using the power of his office as well as threat of class action suits to compel plea bargains, now may have a real fight on his hands.

Good analysis, on the rocks

Vodkapundit is pretty accurate in his analysis of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Here's the intro:

What's Israel get for getting out of Gaza? Let's take a look, but first let's scratch off what Israel won't get:

1. Increased respect from the international community.
2. Increased domestic security.
3. Increased domestic tranquility.

In fact, Israel will suffer a decrease in all three of those items.

The Monk has been quiet during this pullout because his position is and has been clear: the whole "Peace Process" from Madrid to Oslo to Camp David to the Road Map to the Withdrawal is a tragedy for Israel of hope over experience and fantasy over reality. Now Israel has accepted the principle that Gaza must be judenrein, that Arabs cannot have their own state where Jews reside, that land-for-peace is a worthwhile exchange when the former is given and the latter remains a pipedream, that it should obey the cries and wailing of the international community while making itself less safe with a post-Oslo armed terrorist nation on its border, and that peace at any price is a governmental policy that should be rammed down the collective throats of the lone democratic polity in the Middle East.

Wrong all around.