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Thursday, August 31, 2006

WSJ: Presumptive Democratic House Chairmen WSJ: Presumptive Democratic House Chairmen

WSJ: Back to the Congressional Future: Let's think about how the Democrats would govern lists the presumptive committee chairs should the Democrats retake the House. For example:
  • John Conyers: Judiciary. His primary goal would be to impeach the President. His recently released report accuses the Administration of violating no fewer than 26 laws and regulations.

  • David Obey: Appropriations - Faulted Clinton for a balanced budget.

  • Charlie Rangel: Ways and Means - avid protectionist and recently voted against free trade with Oman.

  • John Dingell: Energy and Commerce - Bailouts for the automakers and more restrictions on the Internet.

  • George Miller: Education and Labor - proposed a law to ban secret union ballots.

  • Henry Waxman: Government Reform.

  • Alcee Hastings: Intelligence Committee - impeached as federal judge for taking bribes.
I sometimes think that the Republicans should just sit back and let the Democrats retake the House. This pack of jokers is almost guaranteed to give the Republicans another decade in control of that House.

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Wednesday, August 30, 2006

[Car] Dealer's Choice [Car] Dealer's Choice

A New Yorker article: Dealer's Choice points out some of the problems that the American car manufacturers face through inflexibility on account of their dealer networks.
The irony in all this is that G.M. and Ford adopted the dealer system because they thought it would make their lives easier. A dealer who owned his own business would work harder than a mere employee, the thinking went, and would not require a lot of outside monitoring. But the benefits that the car companies reaped from franchising cost them a lot in terms of control and flexibility. There are now many things that G.M. can’t do (like shut down Buick) that it could do easily if it owned its own dealers. Car companies might like to change this—in the late nineties, both G.M. and Ford tried to start buying up dealerships. But, at this point, the system is self-protecting; dealers revolted, state regulators started nosing about, and the automakers gave up. They made a devil’s bargain some eighty years ago, and now they’re stuck with it. Call it the revenge of the middleman.

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The Dems' Middle Class Crisis The Dems' Middle Class Crisis

Democratic Strategist article titled: Message of Misery takes their party to task for totally missing the middle class with its message.

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Our Schools Need Competition Now Our Schools Need Competition Now

John Stossel in: Our Schools Need Competition Now points to some of the problems that are inherant in our monopoly public education system:
This week's back-to-school ads offer amazing bargains on lightweight backpacks and nifty school supplies. All those businesses scramble to offer us good stuff at low prices. It's amazing what competition does for consumers. The power to say no to one business and yes to another is awesome.

Too bad we don't apply that idea to schools themselves.
I am a firm believer in competition, and, for that reason, pay the money to send my kid to private school. Because of competition for tuition monies, private schools are far more accountable than are public schools. They keep their eyes on what is important: preparing their students for college and an information based economy.

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Wal-Mart as a Political Diversion Wal-Mart as a Political Diversion

Economist Robert Samuelson in: Wal-Mart as a Political Diversion makes some more points about the silliness of so many Democrats attacking Wal-Mart. He points out some of the economic benefits that the company has provided our economy, and then concludes with:
No company should be above public scrutiny. But much of the political criticism of Wal-Mart is shallow and, if followed, undesirable. Wal-Mart doesn't pay high wages and benefits mainly because it's in an industry (retailing) where those are rare. In 2005, average hourly wages were $10.85 for food stores, $10.63 for clothing stores and $10.84 for department stores. As General Motors and Ford are now discovering, companies that pay above-market labor costs ultimately shrink and destroy jobs. The efforts of some local governments -- notably the Maryland Legislature and Chicago City Council -- to mandate higher labor costs on Wal-Mart are shortsighted.

There may even be political pitfalls to this crusade. By Wal-Mart's estimate, 85 percent of Americans shop during the year at the chain; in opinion polls it generally receives high ratings. People are voting with their pocketbooks. On any list of major national concerns, the "Wal-Mart problem'' would not rank in the first 50. Why, then, are some leading Democratic politicians spending so much time talking about it? People who ask that question may conclude that Wal-Mart, though a tempting target as a symbol, is mostly a diversion from weightier issues where what politicians do really matters.

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Green Helmet Award Green Helmet Award

Pajamas Media: Katie Couric Fauxtography Slimmers Confess!: gives a "Green Helmet" award to CBS for slimming a picture of the perky Katie Couric. I like the idea of the "Green Helmet" award, though must point out that the "Green Helmet Guy" didn't photoedit, as was done here, but rather staged photos for Hezbollah. Two different ways to manipulate the MSM with fake photos, both coming out of the Israeli incursion into Lebanon.

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Facing the Central Questions of Our Time Facing the Central Questions of Our Time

Remarks by Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, before the American Legion national convention titled: Facing the Central Questions of Our Time ask a lot of good questions:
  • With the growing lethality and availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow vicious extremists can be appeased?
  • Can we really continue to think that free countries can negotiate a separate peace with terrorists?
  • Can we truly afford the luxury of pretending that the threats today are simply "law enforcement" problems, rather than fundamentally different threats, requiring fundamentally different approaches?
  • And can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America -- not the enemy -- is the real source of the world's trouble?
He also points out that we find ourselves in a strange time:
  • When a database search of America's leading newspapers turns up 10 times as many mentions of one of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib who was punished for misconduct, than mentions of Sergeant First Class Paul Ray Smith, the first recipient of the Medal of Honor in the Global War on Terror;
  • When a senior editor at Newsweek disparagingly refers to the brave volunteers in our Armed Forces as a "mercenary army";
  • When the former head of CNN accuses the American military of deliberately targeting journalists and the former CNN Baghdad bureau chief admits he concealed reports of Saddam Hussein's crimes when he was in power so CNN could stay in Iraq; and
  • It is a time when Amnesty International disgracefully refers to the military facility at Guantanamo Bay, which holds terrorists who have vowed to kill Americans and which is arguably the best run and most scrutinized detention facility in the history of warfare, as "the gulag of our times."

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Au Revoir, Les Entrepreneurs Au Revoir, Les Entrepreneurs

TCS Daily article Au Revoir, Les Entrepreneurs by Nima Sanandaji points out why France is falling behind economically. It penalizes wealth formation and protects workers to the extent that companies operating there have almost no workforce flexibility.

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Reynolds: FX May Soon Be Short for Faux Reynolds: FX May Soon Be Short for Faux

The picture here is of "Green Helmet Guy", who showed up in so many photos published by the MSM about the Israeli incursion into Lebanon in response to Hezbollah firing missles into their country. This guy not only showed up in a lot of photos as a "rescuer" or "civil defense worker", but also apparently staged most of the shots too. Unfortunately, for Glenn Harlan Reynolds' point, this photo is staged, not faked. Glenn in a TCS Daily article: FX May Soon Be Short for Faux asks where we are going with news photos being so easy these days to stage and fake.

Regardless of using a staged instead of faked photo with his article, Glenn makes a good point. It is becoming ever harder to determine whether what we see is real or not, and in the case of Hezbollah, whether it was pure propoganda, as was so often the case there. Hezbollah's problem was that their minions were just not that good at it - yet. It was apparently fairly easy to detect the faked photos, and a lot of the staging has been disclosed by careful work of the blogosphere.

One question that Glenn asks that I think is important is why do the MSM outlets participate in it? Al Reuters is still trying to pass off pictures of an old junked press SUV as the one they claim was shot up by the Israelis, despite being a different color, showing so much rust, etc. Such fakery has to ultimately cheapen their brand as people begin to doubt everything they publish. I would think that it would be a much better business plan to try to guarantee accuracy, esp. for a news agency like al Reuters that resells news for a living.

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Plamegate's ridiculous conclusion Plamegate's ridiculous conclusion

Slate Magazine article by Christopher Hitchens: Plamegate's ridiculous conclusion points out the absurdity of the Plame scandal. Her identity was first disclosed by Secretary of State Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, one of the most outspoken critics within the Administration of the invasion of Iraq. And, very quickly this was known to both his boss and the CIA director, Tenet. Long before Tenet made the referral to the DoJ that ultimately resulted in the appointment of a special prosecutor. So, in the end, we have the State Dept. and the CIA playing games, trying to discredit the neoconservatives in the Administration, and shift the blame, esp. in the case of the CIA, away from its screwups on 9/11. Bobs Novak and Woodward knew this all along, being tight with Armitage, and, indeed, getting their initial leaks from him.

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Fixing surveillance Fixing surveillance

Heritage Foundation article titled: Fixing surveillance by James Carafano reiterates what I have been saying for a long time: FISA was designed for different technology and to meet a very different threat.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is no longer adequate. Passed in 1978, FISA didn't anticipate the development of global communication networks or advanced technical methods for intelligence gathering. Congress should amend FISA to provide for programmatic approvals of cutting-edge technologies -- including automated monitoring of suspected terrorist communications....

Nevertheless, what is clear is that the existing FISA procedures are themselves inadequate to authorize the use of advanced technical methods against global terrorist threats. The critical question being overlooked in the partisan bickering is whether there's a better way to stay one step ahead of the terrorists as well as protect the liberties of American citizens. There is.

FISA is cumbersome. It requires individual application to a judge for authorization to target a specific individual or source based on showing a connection to a foreign power or foreign terrorist. Although FISA permits applications to be made after the fact in certain cases, it doesn't provide a mechanism for programmatic pre-approval of technical methods like automated data analysis.

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TCS: Wal-Mart and Toddler Economics TCS: Wal-Mart and Toddler Economics

TCS Daily: Wal-Mart and Toddler Economics agrees that it is important to look at how Wal-Mart makes its money, but then goes on and compares Costco to Wal-Mart. The basic dynamic is that Cosco pays 1/4 the number of employees per dollar of sales twice as much each, thus resulting in a better labor cost, while paying a "living wage". Fine, as far as that, but this is a customer oriented business, and the Costco way is to have the customers do all the work, including heaving heavy bags of furtilizer, whereas Wal-Mart provides an army of helpful employees. If Wal-Mart were to follow the Costco model, it would have to fire nearly a million of its associates. As with pretty much of economics, there is no free ride.

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Monday, August 28, 2006

USNews.com: For U.S. troops, this may be the last chance to head off a full-blown civil war. There's a plan, but will it work? USNews.com: For U.S. troops, this may be the last chance to head off a full-blown civil war. There's a plan, but will it work?

USNews.com: For U.S. troops, this may be the last chance to head off a full-blown civil war. There's a plan, but will it work? Seems a bit clueless, given the successes we saw over the last couple of weeks in beefing up our presence in Baghdad, esp. with the introduction of a Stryker brigade there. At a minimum, Strategy Page should be required reading of any MSM journalist opining about the War in Iraq, and esp. this idiotic notion as a civil war there. Back on August 4, a Strategy Page article entitled: "The Civil War Myth" pointed out:
August 4, 2006: People who should know better, including diplomats, and those just looking for an exciting headline, are talking up civil war in Iraq once more. You can't have a civil war if one side is so weak that it's unable to raise an army and put up much of a fight. In that case you have the weaker side expelled, wiped out, or forced to accept whatever terms the stronger side will grant. In this case, the Sunni Arabs of Iraq have the short end of the stick. The Sunni Arabs in Iraq never comprised more than 20 percent of the population. Emigration in the past three years, to avoid the violence, and vengeance of Shia and Kurds, has reduced that to fifteen percent. But the worst thing that's happened to the Sunni Arabs, is the creation of an effective non-Sunni Arab army and police force. The Sunnis Arabs are outnumbered and outgunned, and facing the growing threat of massacre and expulsion from Iraq.

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ACLU v NSA - reson #2 why case will be reversed ACLU v NSA - reson #2 why case will be reversed

Probably the biggest reason that the MI ACLU v. NSA case will be reversed upon appeal is that Judge Taylor, while giving lip service to the State Secret privilege Doctrine, never did the type of filtering that it woud require The ACLU suggested that it would be possible to come to a decision (in their favor) despite the privilege, and this implies filtering out of any evidence that could be affected by the privilege. As noted, she agreed that this could be done, but then didn't bother to show what evidence was left after filtration. The appeals courts are thus left guessing as to whether any inadmissibe evidence was used by her in coming to her decision in favor of the ACLU.

The ACLU didn't rebut most of the government's specific assertions of where the State Secret privilege would apply, but rather, tried to rebut the government case through generalities such that the privilege is very limited, etc. For example though, the government asserted that the evidence of the three plaintiffs who claimed a good faith belief that they had been surveiled is inadmissible because the way to rebut that would be evidence whether these plaintiffs were indeed electronically surveiled by the TSP, and that evidence is protected by the privilege, and is therefore inadmissible. The government then asserted that as a result, this testimony by those three plaintiffs is also inadmissible.

It is this sort of item by item analysis that is missing from Judge Taylor's decision, and, thus, the appeals courts are left guessing exactly what evidence she used to come to that decision.

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Vail Resort Season Passes Vail Resort Season Passes

The current Vail Resorts prices for Season Passes help explain the 100% Wind Power claim in my previous blog entry. An adult five mountain pass costs $1,799. Luckily, a three mountain pass for those of us who don't want to drive over Vail Pass only runs $379, and should be a bit cheaper right after Labor Day. Also, it usually only costs about $100 to add on 10 days to Vail and Beaver Creek. Last year, I only made it over once, so that would be plenty for me. Why spend a half an hour driving, pay another $20 for parking over a mile from the slopes, when I can get to Keystone in about 10 minutes, and park in the employee lot, about 100 yards from a lift?

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Vail Resorts- 100% Powered By Wind Vail Resorts- 100% Powered By Wind



According to this: SKI WITH THE WIND: Vail Resorts- 100% Powered By Wind, this year's visitors to Vail, Beaver Creek, Keystone, Breck, etc. can expect to see wind turbines sprouting from the tops of the ridges. I did check out the window just now, and, no, there still aren't any wind turbines on the ridges on the Ten Mile Range above Breckenridge. We could, of course, hope that the company had left them all on the west side of Vail Pass, saving us from the site of all those turbines. They claim:
Vail Resorts has chosen to offset 100 percent of its energy use by purchasing nearly 152,000 megawatt-hours of wind energy annually for its five mountain resorts, its lodging properties including RockResorts and Grand Teton Lodge Company, all of its 125 retail locations (operated through Specialty Sports Venture) and its new corporate headquarters in Broomfield, Colorado.
But of course, when you read a bit further, the truth comes out:
By purchasing renewable energy credits equal to the company's entire electricity use, Vail Resorts becomes the second largest purchaser of wind power of all corporations in the United States.
They aren't purchasing wind power, because there isn't enough wind power close to them to make a difference. Rather, they are buying "renewable energy credits". This is the same type of slight of hand practiced by Al Gore in his travels by private jets and limosines.

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ACLU v NSA - one reason why case will be reversed ACLU v NSA - one reason why case will be reversed

I just finished reading all of the relevant pleadings in the MI ACLU v. NSA case that Judge Taylor decided in the ACLU's favor a little over a week before, and I still find the decision lacking.

One of my big problems all along has been the question of who was injured, esp. in the 4th Amdt., FISA, and Title III (Wiretap Act) claims. I can accept the injury of the plaintiffs in their 1st Amdt. claim, on which the Court found standing - which was that communications with people publically described as being likely candidates for TSP surveilance quit communicating with the plaintiffs as a result of the disclosure of the TSP, though I believe that this claim will ultimately be rejected as a matter of law (because, plaintiffs essentially claimed a 1st Amdt. right to unfettered electronic communications with designated enemies during a time of war).

But the problem remains, who received 4th Amdt., FISA, or Title III injuries as a result of the TSP? Plaintiffs seem to have two theories. First, specific plaintiffs are claiming that they were injured by the knowledge of the TSP, regardless of whether they were indeed surveiled by the TSP. And, secondly, that there are so many of them, esp. in the group of defense attorneys, that some must have been surveiled by the TSP, or if not yet, will be.

Contrary to popular Web knowledge, the government did address both of these claims for injury. In the case of the few plaintiffs claiming a good faith belief that they were surveiled, the government asserted that this is purely speculative, and whether they were actually surveiled is the important issue, and that cannot be determined without recourse to information protected by the State Secret privilege. In the second case, the problem is that it is purely speculative, and there are no identifiable parties who have been surveiled by the TSP. Everything is conjecture, and these types of violations require specific instances of surveilance of specific identifiable people to be actionable. And, plaintiffs haven't made such claims. The government's briefs indicate that they believe that plaintiffs have moved from a claim of the first type to a claim of the second type, as the case has progressed.

Regardless, Judge Taylor's decsion doesn't answer the question of who she felt had been injured, and by what actions of the government. Was it of the specific plaintiffs claiming a good-faith belief in being surveiled? Or was it the general class who might be surveiled in the future, if they hadn't been surveiled by the TSP already?

The opinion is silent here, and, for that reason, I think it highly likely that the judge's decision will be reversed. After all, how can the appeals courts ratify that injury did occur, if they can't determine from the opinion who the injured parties were from the opinion?

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Michael J. Totten: Israel's other rocket war Michael J. Totten: Israel's other rocket war

Michael J. Totten: Eyeless in Gaza talks about the other rocket war that Israel is fighting - this time in the south, with homemade rockets being fired from Gaza. Apparently, when Hezbollah started shooting all those bigger rockets from Lebanon into Israel, most of the reporters went north, and, absent them, the number of rockets being shot into Israel from Gaza dropped significantly. But they are still coming in, causing some damage, injuries, and loss of life.

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Shopping for Support Down the Wrong Aisle Shopping for Support Down the Wrong Aisle

WaPo: Shopping for Support Down the Wrong Aisle questions why so many Democratic politicians are so quick to attack Wal-Mart.
Once upon a time, smart Democrats defended globalization, open trade and the companies that thrive within this system. They were wary of tethering themselves to an anti-trade labor movement that represents a dwindling fraction of the electorate. They understood the danger in bashing corporations: Voters don't hate corporations, because many of them work for one.
I should add that another big part of the problem is that so many of the voters that the Democrats want to attract happily shop at Wal-Mart because of its low prices and great selection. Yes, it doesn't typically carry the quality that the big Democratic donors and major politicians demand, but, then again, the average Democratic voter can't shop where the big donors and politicians shop either.

It has been well known for a long time that the typical stores in the inner cities have minimal selection and very high prices. And these stores are precisely the type that are run out of business when Wal-Mart comes into town. Thus, the Democratic attacks on Wal-Mart hurt precisely those that it helps the most, and are the likely voters that these Democrats are hurting by such, and to some extent alienating.

I should note that I was pleasantly surprised to find identical prices at the Sam's Club in Scottsdale, AZ, as I find in Phoenix and Denver, including the $1.50 quarter pound hot dog and 32 oz drink that I avail myself of whenever I go shopping at one of those stores.

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Novak: Eavesdropping Ruling a Judicial Farce Novak: Eavesdropping Ruling a Judicial Farce

RealClearPolitics article by Bob Novak: Eavesdropping Ruling a Judicial Farce:
The background of a federal district court declaring President Bush's national security eavesdropping unconstitutional was a conservative's fantasy. The judge, a former Democratic politician and civil rights activist, wrote what read more like a political manifesto than a judicial opinion. What's more, she was responsible for contributions to an organization that was a plaintiff in the case she decided.

District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's decision has been stayed and probably will be reversed by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. Nevertheless, she was playing more than a cameo role on the stage of history. For this opinion ever to have been issued by an activist judge in Detroit, in the opinion of several legal scholars and distinguished lawyers whom I contacted, shows the judiciary in a state of chaos.

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Judge Taylor: A law unto herself Judge Taylor: A law unto herself

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Jack Kelly: A law unto herself about Judge Taylor's decision in the MI ACLU v. NSA litigation points out why:
Judge Anna Diggs Taylor illustrates why Democrats cannot be trusted with political power in time of war.
He goes on to say:
Her ruling was praised by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and other prominent Democrats.

"With a careful, thoroughly grounded opinion, one judge in Michigan has done what 535 members of Congress have so abysmally failed to do," The New York Times gushed in an editorial Aug. 18.

But the Times was pretty much alone in its opinion that Judge Taylor's decision was "careful" and "thoroughly grounded."

In its editorial the same day, The Washington Post said Judge Diggs' decision "is neither careful nor scholarly, and is hard-hitting only in the sense that a bludgeon is hard-hitting."

"There is poor reasoning, and then there is head-spinningly, jaw droppingly poor reasoning," said The Washington Times.

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A tax that lands like a meteor A tax that lands like a meteor

The Seattle Times: Editorials & Opinion: A tax that lands like a meteor faults the "death tax" for all of its well known problems. But interestingly, Washington state has its own 19% tax on top of the maximum federal tax of 55%, resulting in a combined maximum tax of 74%. Scary. I have for a long time given Bill Gates a lot of credit for setting up to give over 99% of his huge fortune to charity. He makes a good case, absent this tax, but the prospect of giving almost 3/4 of it to the government (being a Wash. state resident), may have also factored into his decision.

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TCS Daily - Txt Msg Tax = :-( TCS Daily - Txt Msg Tax = :-(

TCS Daily: Txt Msg Tax = :-( faults a proposal by a French MEP to tax email and instant messages to shore up EU finances. I think that it gives the spam prevention possibilities of such a tax on email providers, but otherwise makes sense. The problem with taxing email though as a spam prevention measure is that they are left with the problem that whatever spam that does originate in the EU would just move outside their reach.

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TCS: Three Can't-Miss School Reforms TCS: Three Can't-Miss School Reforms

TCS Daily: Three Can't-Miss School Reforms that seem common sensical:
1. External Examinations
2. Interactive Textbooks on the Web
3. Independent Study and Guided Study

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TCS: Categorical Errors: Pluto TCS: Categorical Errors: Pluto

TCS Daily: Categorical Errors discusses how we lost a planet and gained something else, through a reclassification of Pluto. The line had to be drawn somewhere, and it just became too obvious that the same category that included four giants should also include an object that is not that roundish, not very big, and not in an almost circular orbit.

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TCS: Hit or Missile TCS: Hit or Missile

TCS Daily: Hit or Missile points out some good news: we do have the start of a missle defense system. The bad news is that there is a long way to go.
The longer-range rockets Hezbollah used (for example, Russian FROG-7 variants) can be classified as short-range or "battlefield" ballistic missiles. With range exceeding 100 hundred kilometers, these missiles can strike well beyond the frontline.

There is good news. The United States isn't completely vulnerable. It possesses a nascent, "thin shield" ballistic missile defense.

The defense consists of bits and pieces of tactical and theater-level anti-missile programs supported by a dozen or so long-range missiles positioned in Alaska and Hawaii.

This defense has layers. The Patriot PAC-3 is designed for short-range, "point-target defense. The Patriot PAC-3 is a completely different missile from the Gulf War's Patriot PAC-2. The PAC-2 was an "enhanced" and "upgraded" anti-aircraft missile. The PAC-3 is a genuine anti-ballistic missile (ABM).

The Army's THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Air Defense) missile and the Navy's Standard-2 and Standard-3 missiles extend the "anti-missile umbrella." The Navy systems are particularly useful. They can be deployed on Aegis cruisers and destroyers. The Navy systems can quickly place anti-missile firepower in the Persian Gulf (to thwart a shot from Iran) or the Sea of Japan (to intercept a North Korean launch).

The Standard-3 missile had a highly successful missile test in June. In a July test at the Army's White Sands range, a THAAD intercepted a SCUD-type ballistic missile.

The nascent defense, however, is an inadequate defense -- I don't think that's a debatable point.
Our limited anti-missile system isn't what it should be or could be, and yes, myopic, wrong-headed politics played a key role in delaying program funding, testing and deployment.

The anti-ABM cant of certain influential major media -- in the case of The New York Times, a fossil of its 1980s opposition to the Reagan administration -- certainly hindered development.

Resistance from McGovernite Democrats was a potent and problematic factor in Washington. The Cold War's "balance of terror" strategy created a "strategic culture" wedded to the notion of "Mutual Assured Destruction" (appropriately named MAD). If the Soviets launched a missile strike against the United States, U.S. retaliatory capabilities ensured that Moscow would be turned to radioactive glass. An ABM, in the MAD minds, altered the certainty of mutual Armageddon. An ABM "destabilized" the ability to assure Moscow and Washington they would both perish in a nuclear exchange.

The rise of rogue states and fanatic, "suicide" terrorist organizations, combined with the proliferation of ballistic missiles and WMDs, turned MAD into utter madness.

A suicide bomber cannot be deterred by the threat of "mutual destruction."

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Friday, August 25, 2006

IraqPundit: Mean Streets IraqPundit: Mean Streets

IraqPundit: Mean Streets
So in the last few days WaPo ran a story asserting that "the debate is over" and the Iraqi Civil War is officially raging, and the NYT ran a story claiming that "by almost all measures," Iraq's insurgency is getting worse. So how is it that people in Baghdad are telling ABC News that they feel safer than they've felt in a long time?

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Thursday, August 24, 2006

ACLU v NSA - more useful links ACLU v NSA - more useful links


I will be adding to this as I find more relevant links.

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One of Judge Taylor's more nonsensical statements One of Judge Taylor's more nonsensical statements

The following from Judge Taylor's decision in the ACLU, et al. v. the NSA, is one of her more nonsensical statments:
As long ago as the Youngstown case, the Truman administration argued that the cumbersome procedures required to obtain warrants made the process unworkable.56 The Youngstown court made short shift of that argument and, it appears, the present Defendants’ need for speed and agility is equally weightless. The Supreme Court in the Keith57, as well as the Hamdi58 cases, has attempted to offer helpful solutions to the delay problem, all to no avail.
I think what is obvious here is that the judge has most likely not read any of the cited cases. Yes, the Youngstown case was decided during the Korean War. But it didn't involve warrants at all, nor did it involve surveilance of any kind, and esp. not electronic surveilance of international and foreign communications. Rather, that case revolved around the Truman administration's attempt to seize and operate steel mills when their workers went on strike. The other two cases don't help her point much more than did the Youngstown cite.

The relevance of Youngstown to the debate is most likely in Justice Jackson's concurrence, in which he divides Executive action into three categories, depending on how it interacts with Congress. The TSP presumably falls into Category III in respect to FISA, since Executive power here would directly countervene Congressional action, and, thus, be at its lowest ebb in such a case.

But of course, in Hamdi, only two of the most liberal Justices picked up Jackson's Youngstown concurrence. It was only in the uncited Hamdan case that a majority gave it luke warm support.

As an addendum, it is also interesting to note that the government did address Youngstown in its motion to dismiss (p. 36):
The classified record would further demonstrate, in particular, that the President's action in authorizing the TSP is not fairly comparable to the presidential action at issue in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, supra. There, the President's action to seize a steel mill was deemed too attenuated from his core Commander in Chief authority, see 343 U.S. at 587, and to extend into the sphere of Congress's power to regulate domestic matters under the Commerce Clause, id. at 588. The facts underlying the TSP demonstrate that the activities authorized by the President are not several steps removed from the actaul conduct of a military campaign but are an essential part of that campaign. Yet to demonstrate that this is so would require an exposition of evidence that cannot be publicly disclosed.

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Navy's New Tack on Mine Warfare Navy's New Tack on Mine Warfare

Military.com article: Navy's New Tack on Mine Warfare discusses the advances being made in this most unglamorous, but absolutely critical, naval mission. I think it likely that naval mines are the unattended car bomb of the future for terrorists. Not surprisingly, it looks like the U.S. is one of the few countries truly addressing this problem.

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Hillary may have to hide her brothers Hillary may have to hide her brothers

Canada Free Press article: Hillary may have to hide her brothers reminds us that Hillary has family problems herself, in the guise of her brothers and her husband's brother. The Rodham boys were instrumental in gaining pardons for various nefarious criminals shortly before their brother-in-law left office, thereby gaining them nice bonuses. It should be interesting.

My biggest problem with Mrs. Clinton all along has been her crass venality. I have often noted in the past that when a Clinton scandal erupted, if it involved sex, Bill was the one involved, but if it involved either money or abuse of power (other than to get sex), it involved Hillary. Her brothers seem to be cut from the same cloth. The problem is that if she is elected president, we will have three Rodhams in or around the White House, plus her husband's as corrupt, but less adroit, brother.

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The Battle of Baghdad The Battle of Baghdad

WSJ article: The Battle of Baghdad by Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, outlines our plan to combat the increased violence in Baghdad.

The plan is already bearing fruit. ABC News finds that the U.S. re-deployment of troops to Baghdad, and their placement in large numbers in the most dangerous neighborhoods, appears to be working. Preliminary reports show a significance decrease in violence. Iraqi authorities say the number of violent attacks has gone down by 30 percent. The U.S., using different calculations, says such attacks have decreased by 22 percent.

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Politics over justice Politics over justice

MySA.com article: Commentary by Jonathan Gurwitz criticizes the recent ACLU v. NSA decision:
"Taylor might have made a valuable contribution to this ongoing legal debate. Instead, she put partisan interest above national interest to render a decision that reveals the dangers of allowing more judges like her to reach the federal bench."

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Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Conflict of Interest Is Raised in N.S.A. Ruling Conflict of Interest Is Raised in N.S.A. Ruling

New York Times article: Conflict of Interest Is Raised in N.S.A. Ruling discloses that
The federal judge who ruled last week that President Bush’s eavesdropping program was unconstitutional is a trustee and an officer of a group that has given at least $125,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union in Michigan, a watchdog group said Tuesday.
But not surprisingly, the legal ethicists whom the NYT consulted mostly didn't think that being a trustee of an organization that gave the prevailing plaintiff in this case money is a conflict of interest, though they unanimously agreed that Judge Taylor should have disclosed this "appearance" of a conflict.

Now, I am not an expert on legal ethics, but it seems a bit ludicrous that the legal ethicists think that she should have disclosed this appearance of a conflict, but not voluntarily recused hersef. But then, if she had disclosed this, she faced the liklihood that the Government might ask that she recuse herself, and doing that would risk having the case transferred to a judge more sympathetic to the government's cause (i.e., one who wasn't appointed by President Carter). And, we know what she thinks about that, in her attempted grab of one of the U. Mich. racial quota cases when she was Chief Judge of the District.

So, no, this didn't do Judge Taylor's image any good here at all.

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Court: Nader Must Pay for Election Suit Court: Nader Must Pay for Election Suit

New York Times reports in an article titled: Court: Nader Must Pay for Election Suit that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ordered Ralph Nader and his running mate to pay more than $80,000 for filing fraudulent petitions to get themselves on the PA ballot in 2004. It seems that luminaries like Mickey Mouse and Fred Flintstone may have mistakenly signed multiple petitions. A lawyer for Nader, contending that Truth, Justice, and the American Way demand that the question of who actually signed the petitions is irrelevant, went on to suggest that 'The decision will force any future third-party candidate to decide "whether or not he wants to bet his family home in an effort to have his political views heard,"'.

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Hezbollah sinks Australian warship Hezbollah sinks Australian warship


In a startling article titled: Hezbollah sinks Australian warship, the Herald Sun has disclosed that Hezbollah has mistakenly sunk an Australian warship, instead of the Israeli one they had claimed sunk. Maybe worse, it turns out that the Royal Australian Navy destroyer-escort HMAS Torrens was sunk in 1998, instead of 2006.

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ACLU v NSA pleadings, etc. ACLU v NSA pleadings, etc.

This is most of the ACLU v. NSA pleadings, etc. that I can find so far:

Note that this is an incomplete list of documents. First, I didn't bother with all of the amici briefs as they have no real legal import. Secondly, a lot of the government's pleadings are, at present, missing here, as the ACLU mostly put up their own pleadings. Also, some of these documents are from a post by Orin Kerr at volokh.com.

The ACLU put its documents up on its website in .pdf format straight from conversion from a word processing document. As a result, they consist of text and formatting information. As a result, it is possible to copy text out of these documents for insertion elsewhere. That is not the case with the .pdf files generated by the government. As a result, instead of consisting of text and formatting, the government .pdf files are scanned images. The result is that you can't copy text out of them as text. For that reason, I am in the process of converting those documents to Word format through OCR. Unfortunately, correcting the resulting Word documents is laborious, and, thus, takes awhile. Also, note, that I am not fixing formatting, and, thus, these documents look different. I have, however, maintained pagination - but use the bottom page numbers, not the top ones, to navigate.

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Rearranging The Deck Chairs Rearranging The Deck Chairs

Investor's Business Daily article: Rearranging The Deck Chairs pans the Democratic Party's recently announced changes to its presidential nominating process, giving Nevada and South Carolina voters an early say in their party's presidential nominee. I like this:
"Pushing the party to the left," [Cokie] Roberts said, "is pushing the party to the position from which it traditionally loses."

The American people may not be happy with events in Iraq. But they do know, especially after events in Lebanon and the foiled British bomb plot, that we're in a war in which failure is not an option and for which repeating "Bush lied" is not a strategy.

Americans will not put in power a party that accepts the proposition that global warming is a greater threat than terrorism, that thinks Wal-Mart is a plague on the poor and that wants to repeal the job-creating, economy-boosting and deficit-cutting Bush tax cuts.

They will not put in power a party that thinks death is a taxable event and that success should be punished. They will not pass the reins to a party that denies us access to energy reserves offshore and in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and which thinks energy independence means building windmills and hugging caribou.

This is a party that thinks Dunkirk was a British redeployment and that doesn't understand why Bush doesn't just sit down and make nice with nuclear madmen like Korea's Kim Jong-il and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

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A Law Unto Herself A Law Unto Herself

Ann Althouse has outdone herself today in a NYT op-ed: A Law Unto Herself. I am, of course, an avid Althouse fan. Indeed, she is probably my favorite blogger (bloggeress?) It is esp. timely to juxtapose this with Laurence Tribe's recent letter which applauded the results of the recent decision by Judge Taylor that the NSA's TSP was illegal, but questioned the quality of the opinion. Tribe suggests that we don't look under the lady's robe to see the legal analysis, as long as she comes to the right result. Ann counters this and points out that the "soft power" of the judicary is a result of the public's belief that the Judiciary is dispassionate and unpartisan when performing its duties, and, in particular, when it is determining the limits of power for the two elected branches of government, and, thus, Judge Taylor's decision here, whether right or wrong, works to lessen the power of the Judiciary, by disabusing us of our belief that the unelected is disppassionate and unpartison in its analysis.

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Sunday, August 20, 2006

Look and Feel of blog (#3) Look and Feel of blog (#3)

I am really getting to like the new look and feel of my blog. The big thing that it gives me is the ability to include long posts without having to scroll down forever to find anything, as you have to do in most other blogs. What is really nice is navigating the Archives - just the title and one display option line per entry. Next step is to repackage it so that I can make it available for other uses of Blogger.

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Making docs available on web site Making docs available on web site

I finally got around to making some documents available on my web site. It turned out to be very easy.
  1. I created a new directory under my public HTML directory ("docs")
  2. I loaded the files to be made available in this diretory using FTP, just as I do to update the web site itself, except I put them in the new directory.
  3. I put "softpats.com/docs/" in the address window of Mozilla, and clicking on it, got a list of the documents in that directory.
  4. Then, I could right click on each document in the directory, and copy its URL to the clipboard.
  5. Which could be inserted, as usual, into the post I was creating, by selecting the text for the link, hitting the "Link" button, and copying the URL from the clipboard into the URL location in provided.
Simple.

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Taylor NSA TSP decision documents Taylor NSA TSP decision documents

The ACLU seems to move things around, so here are the documents for the Taylor NSA TSP decision that I have at this point from the litigation:

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Saturday, August 19, 2006

Baseball Crank: The NSA Decision: Judging Without Facts or Law Baseball Crank: The NSA Decision: Judging Without Facts or Law

Baseball Crank goes through the TSP decision fairly thoroughly, and finds it lacking: The NSA Decision: Judging Without Facts or Law. For example:
This is the point at which I would, ordinarily, address Judge Taylor's reasons for coming to the opposite conclusion that I did - first and foremost, why she thinks that the program violates the Constitution - but her analysis is so flimsy that it is hard to even discuss. As I noted in my prior discussion, the touchstone of any Fourth Amendment analysis is reasonableness, not the presence of a warrant, and the courts have upheld this rule. This is the basis, for example, for many exceptions to the Fourth Amendment recognized by the Supreme Court, such as the exigency requirement. Yet Judge Taylor, without any citation at all, baldly asserts that the Fourth Amendment "requires prior warrants for any reasonable search, based upon prior-existing probable cause, as well as particularity as to persons, places, and things, and the interposition of a neutral magistrate between Executive branch enforcement officers and citizens." Slip op. at 31. She then turns to discuss FISA, ignoring the fact that if a search is constitutionally valid, it does not become invalid simply because a statute says otherwise (it may violate the statute, but that's a separate issue).

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Althouse: The shocking decision in ACLU v. NSA. Althouse: The shocking decision in ACLU v. NSA.

Everyone is panning the recent decision by Judge Anna Diggs Taylor that the NSA TSP is illegal. Indeed, after applauding the decision yesterday, even the NYT came around today. But the best job at it that I have read yet is Ann Althouse's post today: The shocking decision in ACLU v. NSA. My favorite quote is:
"At this point, with many issues left to discuss -- including the rest of the standing doctrine and all of the questions of statutory and constitutional law relating to TSP -- the writing falls headlong off a cliff".

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Friday, August 18, 2006

Southern audience delights in a visitor from North Southern audience delights in a visitor from North

Mass. Gov. and presidential hopeful Mitt Romney went south, according to an article in the Boston Globe: Southern audience delights in a visitor from North. Romney apparently did well. I liked the end of the piece:
``Some people might say, `the governor of Massachusetts?' Well, yes, and a great governor of Massachusetts," Lott said. ``They're not all Kennedys and Kerrys up there."

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New blog look and feel #2 New blog look and feel #2

A slight tweak tonite that only took two lines of Javascript, but is quite nice. It used to be that when I would open or close a post, the post stayed where it was, which was often someplace right in the middle of a post. The enhancement was to scroll to the top of a post whenever I opened, chopped, or closed a post. All I had to do was add:
self.scrollTo(0,post.offsetTop);
and the entire Javascript is now:
var PostClassNone = "Post-None";
var PostClassFoot = "Post-Foot";
var PostClassChop = "Post-Chop";
var PostClassFull = "Post-Full";
function SetPostType(postid,postclass)
{
var post = document.getElementById(postid);
if   (post)
   {
   post.className = postclass;
   if (post.offsetTop>0)
      self.scrollTo(0,post.offsetTop);
   }
}
function PostFull(postid)
 {SetPostType(postid,PostClassFull);}
function PostChop(postid)
 {SetPostType(postid,PostClassChop);}
function PostFoot(postid)
 {SetPostType(postid,PostClassFoot);}
function PostNone(postid)
 {SetPostType(postid,PostClassNone);}
I have a DIV around each entire post, with an assigned "ID" and "CLASS". The four possible classes are shown at the top of the Javacode. Then, down at the footer for each post, I assign anchors (A) to each of the four sets (corresponding to the four CLASSes) of three possible selections, with the anchor (A) invoking the appropriate one of the last four Javascript functions at the bottom of the listing, with the ID for the relevant DIV as its parameter. The CLASS of each DIV is initially set based on the type of display - regular posts get "Post-Chop", posts w/i comments get "Post-Full", and posts w/i an archive listing are assigned "Post-None". The rest of the job is done through CSS turning on and off displays of text within the DIV based on its current CLASS.

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RCP: Skip the Grannies: The Case for Airport Profiling RCP: Skip the Grannies: The Case for Airport Profiling

RCP article: Skip the Grannies: The Case for Airport Profiling:
Five years removed from 9/11, it's time to admit that profiling is not a dirty word.

Profiling is street smarts by any other name. It's the common-sensical recognition that while America is not threatened by an entire community, she is under siege by a certain element of an identifiable group, and law enforcement needs to target its resources accordingly.

The failure to profile is a dereliction of duty on the part of an administration that has otherwise been willing to incur the wrath of civil libertarians as it aggressively fights the war on terror.

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TSP Decision Appealed TSP Decision Appealed

Redstate article: Decision Nixing Terrorist Surveillance Program Appealed:
Wasting little time, the Justice Department has appealed today's ruling on the Terrorist Surveillance Program and parties have also agreed to a stay of the injunction:
The Terrorist Surveillance Program is a critical tool that ensures we have in place an early warning system to detect and prevent a terrorist attack. In the ongoing conflict with al- Qaeda and its allies, the president has the primary duty under the Constitution to protect the American people. The Constitution gives the president the full authority necessary to carry out that solemn duty, and we believe the program is lawful and protects civil liberties. Because the Terrorist Surveillance Program is an essential tool for the intelligence community in the war on terror, the Department of Justice has appealed the District Court's order. The parties have also agreed to a stay of the injunction until the District Court can hear the Department's motion for a stay pending appeal.

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White House response to TSP ruling White House response to TSP ruling

STATEMENT BY THE PRESS SECRETARY

Last week America and the world received a stark reminder that terrorists are still plotting to attack our country and kill innocent people. Today a federal judge in Michigan has ruled that the Terrorist Surveillance Program ordered by the President to detect and prevent terrorist attacks against the American people is unconstitutional and otherwise illegal. We couldn’t disagree more with this ruling, and the Justice Department will seek an immediate stay of the opinion and appeal. Until the Court has the opportunity to rule on a stay of the Court's ruling in a hearing now set for September 7, 2006, the parties have agreed that enforcement of the ruling will be stayed.

United States intelligence officials have confirmed that the program has helped stop terrorist attacks and saved American lives. The program is carefully administered, and only targets international phone calls coming into or out of the United States where one of the parties on the call is a suspected Al Qaeda or affiliated terrorist. The whole point is to detect and prevent terrorist attacks before they can be carried out. That’s what the American people expect from their government, and it is the President’s most solemn duty to ensure their protection.

The Terrorist Surveillance Program is firmly grounded in law and regularly reviewed to make sure steps are taken to protect civil liberties. The Terrorist Surveillance Program has proven to be one of our most critical and effective tools in the war against terrorism, and we look forward to demonstrating on appeal the validity of this vital program.

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Thursday, August 17, 2006

Volokh Conspiracy on Taylor TSP opinion Volokh Conspiracy on Taylor TSP opinion

So far, these are the blog entries at volokh.com for discussion about today's NSA TSP opinion by Judge Taylor:

  1. Federal District Court Decision Striking Down NSA Eavesdropping Program

  2. The NSA Eavesdropping Opinion and the Fourth Amendment

  3. The NSA Eavesdropping Opinion and the First Amendment

  4. The NSA Eavesdropping Opinion, the FISA Claims, and the Separation of Powers / Inherent Power Claims

  5. Jack Balkin on the Eavesdropping Opinion

  6. The NSA Domestic Surveillance Program Opinion

  7. The Fourth Amendment and the NSA Domestic Surveillance Opinion

  8. The NSA Eavesdropping Opinion and Standing

  9. Lower Court Opinions Are Briefs to Higher Courts

  10. Question About the Original Meaning of 4th Amendment

  11. Originalism and the Fourth Amendment

  12. Washington Post Editorial on the NSA Eavesdropping Decision

  13. The New York Times Praises the NSA Eavesdropping Decision

  14. Hardly a "Hard-Left" Position

  15. Should We Care About The Reasoning In Judge Taylor's Opinion?

  16. NY Times article on NSA wiretapping quotes bloggers

  17. A Question about FISA and Injunctive Relief

  18. What will the Sixth Circuit Do on Appeal in the NSA Surveillance Case?

  19. More on the NSA Domestic Surveillance Case and Its Chances on Appeal

  20. Ann Althouse on the NSA Case in the NY Times

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President Taylor President Taylor

WSJ article: President Taylor:
A federal judge rewrites the Constitution on war powers
takes Judge Anna Diggs Taylor to task for her decision Thursday that NSA's TSP is illegal. Especially of note:
Take the Fourth Amendment first. The "unreasonable search and seizure" and warrant requirements of that amendment have their roots in the 18th-century abuses of the British crown. Those abuses involved the search and arrest of the King's political opponents under general and often secret warrants.

Judge Taylor sees an analogy here, but she manages to forget or overlook that no one is being denied his liberty and no evidence is being brought in criminal proceedings based on what the NSA might learn through listening to al Qaeda communications. The wiretapping program is an intelligence operation, not a law-enforcement proceeding. Congress was duly informed, and not a single specific domestic abuse of such a wiretap has yet been even alleged, much less found.

As for the First Amendment, Judge Taylor asserts that the plaintiffs--a group that includes the ACLU and assorted academics, lawyers and journalists who believe their conversations may have been tapped but almost surely weren't--had their free-speech rights violated because al Qaeda types are now afraid to speak to them on the phone.

But the wiretapping program is not preventing anyone from speaking on the phone. Quite the opposite--if the terrorists stopped talking on the phone, there would be nothing to wiretap. Perhaps the plaintiffs should have sued the New York Times, as it was that paper's disclosure of the program that created the "chill" on "free speech" that Judge Taylor laments.

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Carter judge rejects NSA program Carter judge rejects NSA program

Today, Clinton appointeee, Federal District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, of the Southern Division of the Eastern District of Michigan, in a suit brought by the ACLU, CAIR, etc., rejected the government's arguments for its NSA Terrorist Surveilance Program (TSP) and issued a permanent injunction against the program. The Opinion has to set a record for circular logic:
  • The State Secret privilege doesn't protect the government as to the TSP program because the plaintiffs can show damage despite this, without access to classified material, in the chilling effect that the illegal TSP program had on the plaintiffs' ability to communicate electronically with known or suspected terrorists.
  • The plaintiffs have standing because their communciations with known or suspected terrorists has been chilled, which is a 1st Amdt. violation.
  • Their 1st Amdt. rights have been violated because their ability to communicate with the known or suspected foreign terrorists has been chilled by the illegal TSP program.
  • The TSP program is illegal since it violates the 4th Amdt., and in particular, plaintiffs' reasonable expectation of privacy resulting from FISA.
  • The court doesn't have to review whether the TSP violates FISA, or whether FISA is Constitutional, since the government has already violated the 1st and 4th Amdt. Constitutional rights of the plaintiffs.

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JonBenet Ramsey murder arrest in Rocky Mountain News JonBenet Ramsey murder arrest in Rocky Mountain News

Following has been copied from the Rocky Mountain News today in order to preserve it here.

The decade-long search for her killer came to a startling end in Thailand Wednesday.
'I was with JonBenet when she died'

Former schoolteacher John Mark Karr has admitted to killing 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey and will face charges of murder, kidnapping and child sexual assault in Colorado, officials said Thursday.Updated story



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Presenting false images? Presenting false images?

Washington Times article: Presenting false images? suggests that the false images that were so prevalent in the Israeli incursion into Lebanon are an endemic problem in the Arab world. This sort of thing has apparently been going on on a massive scale for a long time there, esp. in areas controlled by terrorist organizations, and that MSM journalists have been complicit in it all along.

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Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Bassem Mroue - part of the reason that the MSM biased its reporting Bassem Mroue - part of the reason that the MSM biased its reporting

This picture on Bassem Mroue's blog is indicative of the anti-Israeli sentiment that colored much of the reporting on Lebanon.

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Strategy Page on Iraq Strategy Page on Iraq

I find that Strategy Page is one of the best resouces on figuring out what is really happening in Iraq. It is full of a lot of little, relevant factoids that are important to what is going on there. For example, I was surprised to learn that the Kurdish portion of Iraq was traditionally part of Turkey itself, and was appended to the new Iraq by the British when oil was found there - presumably in order to deprive the just defeated Turks of that revenue. This is very similar to those disuputed valleys that France obtained from Germany after the First World War. In both cases, part of the intent was to hobble the recovery of former enemies of that war, presumably to try to keep them from further agression (it apparently worked a lot better with Turkey than it did with Germany, which used their stolen land as part of their justification for their agression up to and in WWII).

Another interesting point made there is that a true civil war in Iraq is unlikely because the Sunni Arabs just don't have the power. Rather, it seems more like ethnic cleansing. Some 25% of the Sunni Arabs have fled since we went into Iraq, leaving them with somewhere around 15% of the population. That may have been enough if they still controlled the military and police, like they did for some 300 years, but they don't. The military and police are now almost exclusively composed of Shite Arabs and Sunni Kurds. So, you have 85% of the population with most of the guns against 15% of the population without as many guns. And, thus, my suggestion that it is closer to ethnic cleansing than a civil war. But also missed by the MSM is that most of the fighting is between Sunni Arab gangs and radical Shiite militias, being backed by Iran. The Shiite militias go into Sunni areas, grab and ultimately kill former Baathists, etc., and the Sunni Arab gangs retaliate through car bombing innocent civilians.

Finally, the MSM has missed the story that al Qaeda in Iran has been virtually destroyed since Abu Musab al Zarqawi was killed. As of June 16, nine days after the house he was hiding in was destroyed by two American bombs, a thousand al Qaeda suspects had been killed or captured. It wasn't the death of Zarkawi that did it, but rather the capture of his address book, combined with al Qaeda planning documents. Our military is trained to rapidly feed this sort of information to special units that take it, select prime targets, and immediately go and start rolling up networks. The pace of the al Qadea was so fast and furious that we had to rely on the Iraqi military for 1/3 of the raids. (BTW, this is also apparently one of the sources for the NSA targets in their foreign/international electronics surveilance program that has our civil libertarians so much up in arms).

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NYT: New Lieberman Retooling Race as Independent NYT: New Lieberman Retooling Race as Independent

NYT article titled: New Lieberman Retooling Race as Independent should scare a lot of Democrats right now. No wonder they are trying to scare him off (see my previous blog entry). In a state where independants and Republicans make up a bulk of the electorate (though Republicans are outnumbered by Democrats), Sen. Lieberman is positioning himself right in the middle, taking on the Republicans on some issues, and the Democrats on others.

I find it quite amusing - Hillary apparently admitted that Lieberman has better than a 50/50 chance of willing. Other Democratic pols are saying similar things. This is a rash admission - indicating that his chances of winning are, right now, well above 50%. This is confirmed by the polls that show him with a decent lead over Ned Lamont, the Democratic nominee.

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Dem plan revenge against Lieberman Dem plan revenge against Lieberman

Article in The Hill: Dem angst escalates shows the Democrats in the Senate starting to play hardball with Sen. Lieberman, threatening to strip him of his seniority, should he win reelction - ostensibly to keep him from chairing the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, but in reality, to punish him for daring to challenge the results of his very close primary loss to Lamont. Nasty.

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Watching the Watchdog Watching the Watchdog

A book out by Stephen D. Cooper titled: Watching the Watchdog: Bloggers as the Fifth Estate asks a lot of good questions that are extremely relevant today, in view of yet another instance of the press, as the self-proclaimed watchdog of our government, itself engaging in suspect activities.
CBS News. In 2004, the network came into possession of allegedly authentic National Guard documents which claimed that President Bush had failed to perform his duties when he was in the National Guard during the Vietnam War. But the documents were forged, and bloggers, not the media, broke that story.

From the Introduction: The metaphor of watchdog has long been popular as shorthand for the structural role of the free press in a representative democracy. Should government officers fail in their responsibility to exercise power on behalf of the general public, that watchdog would alert the citizens at large to that malfeasance. ...

But what of that watchdog’s leash? If the people need a watchdog to make sure the institution of government does not abuse the power they have granted it, would there not be a need for a comparable check on the press, as a social institution with power in its own right? ...

[B]logs lack direct control over the activities of the mainstream press, yet many of them monitor the mainstream press ... . [T]he watchdog’s bite is the threat of diminished credibility, manifest as lost votes for politicians and as reduced consumption of their media products for the mainstream press. ...

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Fauxtography - my thoughts Fauxtography - my thoughts

In my previous post, I cited an article by Michelle Malking and the Charles Johnson's LGF site concerning what Johnson has termed "fauxtography". What was really troubling to me were Michelle's quotes of CNN's Anderson Coooper. If you watch CNN, his is one of those faces that you recognize - in short, not a stringer like Adnan Hajj (the Photoshop guy fired by al Reuters after his Photoshopping was disclosed). I had heard the interview earlier, but had forgotten who it was being interviewed.

What is troubling to me is the complicity of the MSM in this. Cooper admits that these shots of ambulances were staged, but then goes on to defend the practice apparently on the grounds that Hezbollah doesn't have as effective PR machine as does Israel, and, thus, the MSM had to help them out here in order to level the playing field.

So, as a result, we have a constant barrage of gruesome pictures arriving on the front pages of our papers or on our TV sets depicting Israeli brutality - but then come to find out that a large number of those pictures were staged (or even faked) for effect by Hezbollah with the active complicity of those taking the pictures. Hezbollah staged them, and the MSM knew that they were fake, but eagerly printed and broadcast them anyway.

The press has come a long way from Earnie Pyle chronicling the tribulations of our GIs in WWII to this point where it is the enemy who is being glorified, and our own soldiers and allies being deominized. Imagine for a minute how WWII might have been different if instead of reporting on the bravery of American soldiers, sailors, and marines, the press of the time had concentrated on, for example, the German bombing campaign. What if the iconic images that the Americans saw had been the fire-bombing of Dresden, instead of the flag raising on Iwo Jima.

Not surprisingly, there seems to be a lot of the RatherGate "Fake but Accurate" philosphy being practiced right now in the MSM. They know who they believe are the villians here (the wicked Isrealis), and the fact that they can't find that many atrocities on their own just means that they have to publish faked atrocities to make up for it. (And part of what is scary there is that Mary Mapes still can't figure out why she was fired by CBS almost two years ago).

This "fake but accurate" reporting wouldn't be bothersome, except that then those doing it pretend that they are intrepid journalists, reporting unbiased reality, when, in truth, they have become advocates for one side of the conflict. Worse, their advocacy is invariably against the U.S. and its allies and towards its enemies.

The one glimmer of hope is that the newspapers, TV stations, etc. doing the agenda journalism here are businesses, mostly with stockholders, and in many cases, the stockholders get to vote. As more and more people discover the sort of advocacy being sold to them as journalism, the level of scepticism rises, and the value of the newspapers, et al., continues to decline. And, eventually, some of them are going to figure out that the way out of their death spiral is to reorient and to fire all those participating in this sort of agenda faux journalism. Demonizing Fox News only works for so long - while everyone on the left screams about their biases, Fox continues to increase market share and make money, while those participating in or condoning the left wing faux journalism lose market share and ever more money.

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Fauxtography: The Media Scandal Continues Fauxtography: The Media Scandal Continues

Michelle Malking in her column at RedStatesUSA.com titled: Fauxtography: The Media Scandal Continues adds more detai to the Lebanon fauxtography scandal, including citing CNN's Anderson Cooper who admitted that:
"I was in Beirut, and they took me on this sort of guided tour of the Hezbollah-controlled territories in southern Lebanon that were heavily bombed . . . they clearly want the story of civilian casualties out. That is their -- what they're heavily pushing, to the point where on this tour I was on, they were just making stuff up. They had six ambulances lined up in a row and said, OK, you know, they brought reporters there, they said you can talk to the ambulance drivers. And then one by one, they told the ambulances to turn on their sirens and to zoom off, and people taking that picture would be reporting, I guess, the idea that these ambulances were zooming off to treat civilian casualties, when in fact, these ambulances were literally going back and forth down the street just for people to take pictures of them."
Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs continues to document the continuing revelations about fauxtography. In particular, Green Helmet Guy is finally identified as Salam Daher. He was apparently the choreographer of many of the staged photos - but gave the game away by starring himself too often for coincidence, and, thus, alerting those questioning the photography coming out of the war.

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Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Don't Trust If They Won't Verify Don't Trust If They Won't Verify

Intentionally really bad job of photoediting by Ray Patnaude of TCS:

He said (quoted in Powerline):
Thanks for the kind words about my illustration for Glenn’s article today. That image, like all illustrations at TCS Daily are done by me- Ray Patnaude, Art Director for TCS (except when I am on vacation and such). I’m glad you liked it, it was a fun challenge to try to deliberately do *really*, comically bad Photoshop, leaving stray pixels everywhere, and sloppy cutout lines. I am particularly proud of the checkered Photoshop background visible behind some replicated smoke. And of course Mickey’s pose perfectly mocks Professional House-Got-Knocked-Down Woman’s.
Article Ray is talking about is by Glen Reynolds at TCS Daily titled: Don't Trust If They Won't Verify and it takes the MSM to task for being complicit in the Lebanon fauxtography.

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Monday, August 14, 2006

Guardian: Bush's belief in a worldwide Islamist conspiracy is foolish and dangerous Guardian: Bush's belief in a worldwide Islamist conspiracy is foolish and dangerous

Guardian article by Max Hastings: Bush's belief in a worldwide Islamist conspiracy is foolish and dangerous has some interesting points, but is, at least to me, unpersuasive. His solution essentially is to listen to the various bands of terrorists, answer their concerns, and that will end terrorism. I consider that, at a minimum, utopian. I also find fault in his suggestion that the root cause of Islamic terrorism aimed at the U.S. is failed colonial policies, since if that were true, the object of such terrorism would be the former colonial powers, and not the U.S. or Israel. Probably more interesting than the article however are the comments. A majority seem to support Hastings, but there are plenty who take him to task.

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TCS: News You Can Abuse TCS: News You Can Abuse

TCS Daily article: News You Can Abuse discusses some of the ramifications of the al-Reuters photo editing scandal.
First, it wasn't the first time that such fakery has occurred in the so-called mainstream media, and the phenomenon doesn't seem to be random, as it might be if it were a simple mistake, or breakdown in the vetting process. The fabricated images always seem to have the effect, intended or otherwise, of propagandizing against the West (in this case, the state of Israel, in the other example, President Bush).

The second thing that was disturbing is that, also like the previous cases, it took bloggers to point out what should have been an obvious tampering with the photo. Are major media editors really that incompetent (which gets back, of course, to disturbing concern Numero Uno)? This last isn't an unreasonable question, given that this is the news agency that famously said that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

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Dillon today Dillon today

Dillon Colorado today. View is mostly from the bike path right below where I live, above the marina. Photos start to the south, then rotate clockwise with the direction of each indicated by (S).

(S) Quandry peak (>14k feet) behind Breckenridge.

(SW) End of Ten Mile Range above Breckenridge - ski area is on Peaks 7-10 and is visible in middle of picture.

(WSW) Ten Mile range extending from Frisco south to Breckenridge.

(W) Ten mile canyon running from Frisco up to Copper Mountain, and then to Vail Pass.

(NW) Buffalo Mountain above Silverthorne.

(NNW) Eagles Nest Wildnerness Area down Blue River beyond Silverthorne.

(NE) Tenderfoot mountain.

(E) Marina in foreground, and top of Keystone Ski Area in background.

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Sunday, August 13, 2006

Kennedy disses Rumsfeld Kennedy disses Rumsfeld

Sen. Kennedy in an article: Cheney Paints Lamont Victory As Helping Terrorists faults SecDef Rumsfeld:
The comments he made on the result of the Connecticut Democratic primary - that it might encourage "the al-Qaida types" who want to "break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task" - are an attack not just on Democrats, but on democracy itself.
Apparently is is beyond the pale for the SecDef to point out that cutting and running would embolden the enemy, when Kennedy has said much worse about Republicans.

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WaPo: Success in Iraq Is Up to the Iraqis WaPo: Success in Iraq Is Up to the Iraqis

WaPo article: Success in Iraq Is Up to the Iraqis by a former Democratic Congressman and a Brookings Fellow is a viable Democratic position in response to the Administration's plan for Iraq. Of course, because it is so reasonable, it is highly unlikely to gain much support in the Democratic party that recently nominated Ned Lamont over three term Senator Joe Lieberman. Nevertheless, it is the type of thinking required if that party ever wants to be taken seriously about national security.

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NYT: Hezbollah's Other War NYT: Hezbollah's Other War

New York Times article: Hezbollah's Other War covers the recent history of Lebanon and Hezbollah in fairly good depth and gives a pretty good explanation of why the country went so quickly from the Cedar Revolution to what we are seeing there today.

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NYT Lied About Timing Of NSA Article NYT Lied About Timing Of NSA Article

Captain's Quarters article: Calame: Times Lied About Timing Of NSA Article points to a recent NYT article by Byron Calame titled: "Eavesdropping and the Election: An Answer on the Question of Timing" to reopen the question of why the NYT delayed publication of their story disclosing the NSA international electronics communications surveilance program for a couple of week until after the 2004 presidential election. It suggests that instead of Keller trying to keep Bush in office, the timing was for just the opposite effect - to give Kerry a better shot at the presidency.
Left-wing pundits and bloggers have insisted that Keller spiked the story to keep George Bush in office. Keller, however, has a different take on his decision. He insists that the news would have likely helped Bush rather than hurt him, and the public support for this program after its delayed revelation last December supports that analysis. John Kerry and the Democrats had castigated Bush for the lack of visible effort to find and track terrorists, and the program's exposure would have forced Kerry to recant and suddenly argue that Bush had been too enthusiastic about fighting terrorism, a tough pirouette to execute in a grueling presidential campaign.

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Desire is strong in Dems to impeach Desire is strong in Dems to impeach

Arizona Republic article suggests that Desire is strong in Dems to impeach. The saner heads, of course, are playing this down. Rep. Conyers has been extremely vocal about this, holding mock hearings a couple of months ago, and he released a 350-page "investigative report" full of moonbat consipriacy theories last week. Minority Leader Pelosi apparently called him on the carpet for it - but if the Democrats regain the House, he will most likely be the Judiciary Chairman, and she won't be able to stop him.

My prediction is that if the Democrats do retake the House, and Conyers, as the new Judiciary Chairman has his way, and gets his impeachment hearings, he won't get his impeachment, and the Democrats will go into minority status for at least the next twenty years. A big part of the problem is that in order to retake the House, most of their new seats would be from districts that voted for George Bush in 2000 and 2004.

Here in CO, before the 2004 election, the Republicans had a 5-2 majority in our Congressional delegation, and the Democrats have a decent chance at reversing this in 2006. John Salazar won the fairly conservative Western Slope by appearing significantly more conservative than his brother running for the Senate. The Democrats have a decent chance at winning two more seats this time - in particular, Ed Permutter has a very good chance to win the seat being vacated by Bob Beauprez in his run for Governor. Permutter has a very strong reputation from his time in the state legislature as being moderate and working well with Republicans. If all three Democrats win this election, which is very possible right now, they are likely to be crushed in 2008 if they vote for impeachment, and even somewhat likely to lose even if they don't (though Salazar has enough swing votes to maybe protect himself if he votes against impeachment, as I predict he would).

These are precisely the types of seats that the Democrats need to win and keep the House. Their voter registrations are split almost evenly between the parties, voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, and are highly likely to punish any Democrat who votes for impeachment based on what is in reality purely a political dispute, and might even be punished if they vote against it.

I should add that, absent finding true venality in the Bush Adminisration, of which there is absolutely no evidence yet, the Senate, even if the Democrats retake it, won't convict either Bush or Cheney on Articles of Impeachment voted out by a Democratic House. There is zero chance of this, because the Democrats are not about to get the 2/3 required - they will be lucky to get a bare majority in the upcoming election.

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Saturday, August 12, 2006

Stephen Colbert defines "wikiality" Stephen Colbert defines "wikiality"

According to a Newsvine article: Stephen Colbert Causes Chaos on Wikipedia, Gets Blocked from Site. 'Colbert praised Wikipedia for "wikiality," the reality that exists if you make something up and enough people agree with you - it becomes reality'. Link thanks to Freakonomics Blog.

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Freakonomics: Power Rangers getting smarter Freakonomics: Power Rangers getting smarter

Levitt pointed out that: One thing noticed today. When the show started in the early 1990s, the Power Rangers didn’t wear seat belts.

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Freakonomics: Teen Sex Apparently Driven By Music, Not Libido Freakonomics: Teen Sex Apparently Driven By Music, Not Libido

Freakonomics Blog: Teen Sex Apparently Driven By Music, Not Libido suggests that maybe what is going on with the recent studies about sex and music is correlation and not causation, but:
On the other hand, if the findings of this study are true, it sure makes things easier on all the people who are promoting birth control, safe sex, abstinence, and the like. Instead, they can just ban all the sexy music.
I have fallen behind on my Freakonomics reading, and it is fun to catch up.

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Should the U.S. reconsider assassination? Should the U.S. reconsider assassination?

Michael Rubin in an American Enterprise Institute article titled: An Arrow in Our Quiver: Why the U.S. Government Should Consider Assassination asks whether the prohibition against assassination put in place by President Ford, and strengthened by President Reagan should be reevaluated.

Part of the problem is that our tolerance for casualties has dropped significantly in the last 60 or so years. In WWII, 30 million civilians died. 4 million in the Korean War. A million or so in Vietnam. But fewer than 1,000 have probably died as a result of Isreal's incursion into Lebanon, and the world is outraged at that brutality.

The problem is that targetted assassination does work, as evidenced by Isreal's success against Islamic terrorists in the second Intefada. It was only when they suspended the program that they ended up where they are now. And, there is a certain amount of justice in targetted assassinations - only the most responsible suffer, and these are often those who suffer the least in more conventional warfare.

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Surreal Rules for fighting the War on Terror Surreal Rules for fighting the War on Terror

Victor Davis Hanson suggests in Surreal Rules that the rules we face when fighting terrorists are surreal:
  1. Any death — enemy or friendly, accidental or deliberate, civilian or soldier — favors the terrorists.
  2. All media coverage of fighting in the Middle East is ultimately hostile.
  3. The opposition — whether an establishment figure like Howard Dean or an activist such as Cindy Sheehan — ultimately prefers the enemy to win.
  4. Europeans have shown little morality, but plenty of influence, abroad and here at home during Middle East wars.
  5. To fight in the Middle East, the United States and Israel must enlist China , Russia , Europe , or any nation in the Arab world to fight its wars.
  6. Time is always an enemy.

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Lamont picks up national, but not local support Lamont picks up national, but not local support

NYT article: Connecticut Feels Strain of a Rematch at the Polls points out that even though a lot of high profile, national, Democrats have switched their support from Lieberman to Lamont in the wake of the later's primary win, it appears that, at least now, a lot of Lieberman's supporters in his own state have not, and in all likelihood will not.

This poses a major delimma to the national party Democrats. Should they give Lamont the support that a Democratic Senatorial candidate would normally get from them? Or should they sit on the sidelines and let the best man win? The problem with the first alternative is that, at present, Lieberman is likely to retain his Senate seat. And yes, he will continue to vote with the Democrats. But the national party would have little power over him, if they actively support Lamont.

Lamont's problem here is that the bulk of Conn. voters are independent, and he would have to carry a bunch of them to win, esp. if Lieberman can retain a lot of his primary support with blue collar Democrats. Yet, they have voted overwhelmingly for Lieberman in the past. Worse, there are likely to be a number of Republicans voting for Lieberman too this time, as the Republican candidate is fairly weak, and Lieberman isn't carrying the "D" this time on the ballot.

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