When CAIR launched its campaign to get Michael Graham kicked off of WMAL radio in Washington, DC, it managed to win a suspension, without pay, for the talk show host who called modern Islam a "terrorist organization." Graham wrote that in a column in Jewish World Review (see this post from yesterday, or scroll down).

But word now is that CAIR's campaign amounted to, at most, a few hundred emails and phone calls to the station. Graham's supporters, on the other hand, have responded with a huge campaign of their own, and Graham reports this morning that over 10,000 fans have emailed or called WMAL to demand his reinstatement. He says that, although the station hasn't contacted him, the "back chatter is getting much more positive."

Stay tuned.

Update: Judith Apter Klinghoffer, who linked to and commented on yesterday's post by DP contributor Gordon Cucullu, has no sympathy for CAIR, but thinks Graham stepped over the line with his comments. She argues, too, that applying the Geneva Conventions to terrorists would be a major error. She blogs at the History News Network.

At a Freedom House sponsored symposium held on a sweltering July day in Washington, DC, acclaimed human rights activist Natan Sharansky publicly challenged the Kim Jong Il regime in North Korea. “You confront evil,” the former Soviet dissident said in a ringing voice, “you do not negotiate with it.” Sharansky firmly rejected the notion that it is better to be friendly with a dictatorship that oppresses its people in the manner that North Korea does. “It is better to deal with a democracy that hates you,” he thundered, “than with a dictatorship that says it ‘loves’ you.”

Reflecting the views of the majority of the speakers and participants at the North Korea Freedom Day symposium, Sharansky lobbied for a diplomatic device similar to the Helsinki Accords to be put in place regarding North Korea. What he meant by this was that for years the US and Western allies in dealing with the Soviet Union chose to disengage strategic concerns from human rights issues. In other words, we would discuss strategic arms limitations but studiously avoid mentioning the gulag. Other organizations, mostly NGOs, demanded human rights reform but were disinterested in strategic issues. Only when the two themes were linked by a concert of nations at Helsinki, Sharansky reminded, was sufficient pressure generated on the Soviets that it eventually collapsed the regime. Such ought to be the case in Northeast Asia, he suggested. And regime change, he continued, is what is necessary for the North Korean people to be free.

There were a few voices that cautioned about “immodest expectations,” including that of Congressman Jim Leech. An outspoken proponent for human rights in North Korea, Leech is, perhaps because of his position as Chairman of the House Subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific, reluctant to sound too aggressive about dumping Kim Jong Il. The juxtaposition of his caution next to Sharansky’s uncompromising position, reinforced the point that the latter was trying to make. “I do not agree,” Sharansky said, “that if the issue of human rights is raised [with North Korea] that it will jeopardize peace on the peninsula.” Yet that is exactly what those who opt for a too-cautious, appeasing approach hypothesize. But the principal involved powers: South Korea, the US, Japan, China, and Russia have temporized, equivocated, and tried diplomatic buyoffs with poor results. The North has continued its dangerous programs and the people continue to suffer.

In contrast, Sharansky favors a blunt approach. He was thrilled when he heard President George W. Bush include the Pyongyang regime in his famous Axis of Evil speech. “Our happiest day in the gulag,” he reflected, “was when we passed around the news that the American President Reagan had called the Soviets an ‘Evil Empire.’ Finally, we told each other, there was someone who recognized the reality of the situation.” Such information was the key to changing the minds of what the calls the majority population in any repressed society, the “double-thinkers” who outwardly give support to the totalitarian regime, primarily out of fear, but secretly oppose it. Give them the proper information, Sharansky says, and they will grow embolden to oppose the regime.

Information, all agreed, is exactly what the suffering people of North Korea need. As starved as their bodies have become, they are even hungrier for the truth. Several participants voiced strong support for increased information flow to North Korea. Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), himself a proponent for regime change, asked panelist Kang Cheol-Hwan for recommendations to get information into North Korea. Kang is a noted North Korean defector who spent a decade in the infamous Yodok concentration camp. He is author of Aquariums of Pyongyang, and met recently in a highly publicized dialogue with President Bush. Kang spoke of the need to increase radio broadcasts into North Korea similar to Voice of America programming that Sharansky had said was so helpful to the refusniks in the USSR. Kang cited the need also for radios since the regime allows only those with a frequency fixed onto the state approved stations to be distributed.

If something as small as an Ipod can do all the things that tiny device is capable of doing then a functioning AM/FM radio with antenna ought to be fashioned that could be manufactured cheaply and anonymously and smuggled into North Korea by the hundreds of thousands. If as Kang and Sharansky say, and other refugees affirm, information is the key to ultimate freedom then we in the free world ought to devote much more resources to ensure that we can fulfill the promise of JFK to “let the word go forth from this day forward…” I’ll guess that we could manufacture and distribute a million tiny radios cheaper than the cost of one smart bomb strike.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, deputy of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, spoke with deep emotion of the atrocities taking place in North Korea. “Whenever we hear stories of gas chambers,” he said, voice trembling in intensity, “then you can be certain that we are going to demand answers.” What is needed to focus attention to the human rights crimes of Kim Jong Il, Cooper said, is to institute an Office of Special Investigations, similar to that which exists inside the Justice Department focused on Nazi crimes. “The creation of an OSI that will investigate, verify, and document crimes against humanity – from high officials down to the level of the petty functionary – will cause great concern within the North Korean hierarchy. They will know that they will be held accountable for their crimes.”

Members of the symposium demanded more action from North Korea’s twin, South Korea. “The continued prevailing silence coming from South Korea about the abhorrent situation in the North is unacceptable,” Cooper said, “ It is based on willful ignorance.” National Assemblyman Kim Moon Soo, Grand National Party, one of the few vocal human rights champions in the South, apologized for what he described as an abhorrent attitude of disregard by the South Korean government for the North Korean people. “I pledge to work even harder for our fellow Koreans in the North,” he said emotionally. Let it be known that Assemblyman Kim has been a tireless proponent for the suffering people of North Korea. Without his strong, unwavering voice, the despicable, cowardly appeasement policy of the current South Korean government would be promulgated unchallenged. Kim Moon Soo and his like-minded colleagues demand responsibility and accountability from the ruling party. And the US government needs to support their efforts. But already we are seeing steps taken by the Roh Moo Hyun government in South Korea to buy off the blustering, bullying Kim Il Sung regime with enormous shipments of rice, fuel oil, electric power, and other supplies. In return Kim is supposed to give assurances of “suspension” of his nuclear program.

On a darker, more ominous note, South Korean companies are supposed to have in return access to North Korean mineral resources, timber and other raw materials. Can there be any doubt that these commodities will be supplies by other than slave labor? The policy of endless appeasement must cease. Without this support the Kim regime will collapse. It will implode from its own rottenness. As Natan Sharansky and the members of the conference demand, “The People of North Korea must be Free!”

Reader Bruce Kesler sends word that pressure from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has resulted in suspension without pay by Washington, DC, radio station WMAL of talk show host Michael Graham. Graham, who is also a columnist at the Jewish World Review (JWR editor Binyamin Jolkosvsky has written an article on this matter), wrote a column for JWR that included these charged words:

I take no pleasure in saying it. It pains me to think it. I could very well lose my job in talk radio over admitting it. But it is the plain truth:

Islam is a terror organization.

For years, I've been trying to give the world's Muslim community the benefit of the doubt, along with the benefit of my typical-American's complete disinterest in their faith. Before 9/11, I knew nothing about Islam except the greeting "asalaam alaikum," taught to me by a Pakistani friend in Chicago.

Immediately after 9/11, I nodded in ignorant agreement as President Bush assured me that "Islam is a religion of peace."

But nearly four years later, nobody can defend that statement. And I mean "nobody."

Certainly not the group of "moderate" Muslim clerics and imams who gathered in London last week to issue a statement on terrorism and their faith. When asked the question "Are suicide bombings always a violation of Islam," they could not answer "Yes. Always." Instead, these "moderate British Muslims" had to answer "It depends."

Precisely what it depends on, news reports did not say. Sadly, given our new knowledge of Islam from the past four years, it probably depends on whether or not you're killing Jews.

And these:

And the reason Islam has itself become a terrorist organization is that it cannot address its own role in this violence. It cannot cast out the murderers from its members. I know it can't, because "moderate" Muslim imams keep telling me they can't. "We have no control over these radical young men," one London imam moaned to the local papers.

Can't kick 'em out of your faith? Can't excommunicate them? Apparently Islam does not allow it.

Islam cannot say that terrorism is forbidden to Muslims. I know this because when the world's Muslim nations gathered after 9/11 to state their position on terrorism, they couldn't even agree on what it was. How could they, when the world's largest terror sponsors at the time were Iran and Saudi Arabia — both governed by Islamic law.

His conclusion is more conciliatory, but still blunt:

As I've said many times, I have great sympathy for those Muslims of good will who want their faith to be a true "religion of peace." I believe that terrorism and murder do violate the sensibilities and inherent decency of the vast majority of the world's Muslims. I believe they want peace.

Sadly, the organization and fundamental theology of Islam as it is constituted today allows for hatreds most Muslims do not share to thrive, and for criminals they oppose to operate in the name of their faith.

Many Muslims, I believe, know this to be true and some are acting on it. Not the members of CAIR, unfortunately: As Middle East analyst and expert Daniel Pipes has reported, "two of CAIR's associates (Ghassan Elashi, Randall Royer) have been convicted on terrorism-related charges, one (Bassem Khafegi) convicted on fraud charges, two (Rabih Haddad, Bassem Khafegi) have been deported, and one (Siraj Wahhaj) remains at large."

But Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf admits what CAIR will not. He's called for a jihad against the jihadists. He's putting his life on the line (Islamists have tried to assassinate him three times) in the battle to reclaim Islam and its fundamental decency.

He remembers, I'm sure, that at a time when Western, Christian civilization was on the verge of collapse, the Muslim world was a bastion of rationalism and tolerance. That was a great moment in the history of Islam, a moment that helped save the West.

Let's hope Islam can now find the strength to save itself.

All this sent CAIR into full attack mode, and they posted a call for Graham to be reprimanded by WMAL on their web site, which provides contact information for Graham's bosses and, at the bottom of the page, a donation form or CAIR.

CAIR has long used legal and commercial means to silence its critics, and over the years few have come in for more vitriolic attacks than Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia. Just yesterday, Dan posted this piece on CAIR's origins. You'll want to read the whole thing. Dan maintains a running this eye-opening compendium on CAIR which shows, among other things, how the organization that demanded Michael Graham's head distributed to the Los Angeles public school system a translation of the Quran that includes overtly anti-Semitic footnotes, including this one:

"The Jews in their arrogance claimed that all wisdom and all knowledge of Allah was enclosed in their hearts.... Their claim was not only arrogance but blasphemy."

This edition has been handed out to LA libraries, free of charge, since 2002.

Update: Reader D. Finley called my attention to an error I made in the first link to Dan Pipes's work. I have corrected the link.

In a Freedom House-sponsored conference in Washington, DC, two weeks ago, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Deputy Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, strode to the podium carrying an empty chair. He placed the chair down firmly and declared that it was the symbolic seat for the “seventh participant at the Six Party talks, the voiceless people of North Korea.” At the first formal meeting of the Six Party talks in more than a year, held on July 26 in Beijing, the participants not only ignored the chair, they tipped it over. In a display of cynical cruelty both American and South Korea diplomats – who supposedly have the moral foundation and fortitude needed to stand up for the downtrodden – not only disregarded the wellbeing of the starving, imprisoned people of North Korea but had the audacity to behave as if the meeting was a huge success.

Stunningly, any reference to human rights was intentionally kept off the agenda, but even worse, the South Korean representative, Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min Soon, had the gall to lay down the law to Japan. The Japanese people have been especially upset about North Korean admissions that its agents have kidnapped scores – perhaps hundreds – of innocent civilians from Japan over the past few decades. Many of the abductees are women and children who are used to train North Korean agents. These agents are either dispatched to conduct espionage within Japan or are used in active terrorist operations and fall back on a Japanese “cover” if apprehended. This issue has raised such a firestorm within Japan that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi refused to eat with Kim Jong Il at their last meeting, and instead brought his own food as a protest against the intransigence of the North Korean regime.

So for a South Korean foreign ministry official to warn Japan that “it would definitely not be desirable to take up issues that would disintegrate the focus of the talks,” was an arrogant statement that reaffirmed what analysts suspected all along: that strategic weapons issues and economics would once again overrule human rights in the mendacious atmosphere of the Six Party talks. Naturally the US representative, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, went along with the flow. All of his comments dealt with delusional “progress.” Tellingly, Hill abjectly conceded the initiative to the North when he said “we do not have the option of walking away from this problem [of North Korean nuclear disarmament].”

Not that America has ever had the initiative in these talks. For years Kim Jong Il has been yanking the US chain harder than a model in a Bow Flex commercial. US representatives to the Six Party talks make public pronouncements as if they are in control. But whenever Kim Jong Il is pressured and needs to delay, he feigns a fit of pique and boycotts the talks. If his hollow economy squeezes too hard and he needs some material support he grandiosely announces he will attend “in return for security concessions by the imperialists.” US officials waffle like a sine wave in reaction to Kim’s calculated mood swings. They cling to the delusion that while Kim turns the crank on the organ, and they beg pennies with a cup, that somehow the monkey is in control of the operation. What is extraordinarily reprehensible is the State Department’s inability to do what it is supposed to do best: control diplomatic negotiations.

Meanwhile, the bureaucracy disregards explicit policy guidance. Late last year both houses of Congress unanimously passed the North Korean Human Rights Act. It was immediately signed into law by President Bush. The law demands that in all dealings with the North Koreans that human rights for the long-suffering people of North Korea be placed on the table for discussion along with any other issues, nuclear, chemical, or missile. This is not mere policy or guidance – either of which would demand obedience from a loyal staff - but is the law of the land, duly filed and recorded.

The flagrant, offhanded disregard for this law is stunning but not unusual. Readers know that I am consistently critical of the State Department (closely followed by the CIA and FBI) as being the most dysfunctional of all Executive Branch agencies. Officer selection is anachronistic, training is incestuous, arrogance is consummate, and the union flies top cover for all FSOs deflecting criticism and threats of dismissal. Nevertheless, a great deal of responsibility for the behavior of the middle managers lies with a leadership failure at the top, at the levels appointed by the President. This includes, to my acute disappointment, Secretary Rice and her appointed staff. To be fair it is terribly difficult to be a cabinet secretary and conduct a top-to-bottom house cleaning of such a key department. Nevertheless, someone at must eventually say that enough is enough and take on the challenge for reform.

Meanwhile, those of us who read reports that North Korean people have had their meager government food ration cut to 200 g daily (520 g is the world standard for survival), while well-fed diplomats preen around conference tables and pose for grip-and-grin photo ops, grind our teeth in frustration. As long as the Six Party talks continue on a flawed policy of separation of strategic arms discussion from human rights issues – which are catastrophic in North Korea – then the outcome of the talks is predestined to failure. Such luminaries as Natan Sharansky, who has through his own experience seen what happens in such a case, call for a gathering of nations to produce a policy similar to the Helsinki Accords that linked human rights to strategic issues and in so doing finally brought about freedom for Eastern Europe and collapsed the Soviet Union. Such an accord would be incredibly more productive that the current failed Six Party talks and would recognize our moral responsibility to free the people of North Korea.

Update: Judith Apter Klinghoffer (whose blog is at the History News Network), is guest blogging for Andrew Sullivan while he's on vacation, and has linked to this post. She tells an apt tale from her days in Beijing that you'll find both interesting and disturbing.

John McCaslin reports this morning that disgraced journalist Peter Arnett thinks the Iraq war was unnecessary because Saddam was checking out soon anyway:

Veteran war correspondent Peter Arnett, who was fired by NBC in 2003 after declaring on Iraqi TV that the U.S. war plan in Iraq had "failed," suggested yesterday that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was unnecessary because "Saddam was on his way out."

Surfacing early yesterday morning on CBS' "The Late Late Show," Mr. Arnett told host Craig Ferguson that he thinks Saddam Hussein, who awaits trial in Iraq, would have been knocked from power within "five years" even without U.S. troops entering Baghdad.

Asked how long he thought the U.S. military would need to remain in Iraq, the war correspondent, who divides his time between homes in Virginia and Baghdad, said "a very long time" because, as he put it, "the country is on the brink of civil war."

Mr. Arnett told the host that while most reporters live in Baghdad's heavily secured green zone, he resides in downtown Baghdad's "business district," surrounded by what he calls "protective neighbors."

For transportation, the correspondent whom critics accused of being a "stooge" of Saddam said he simply walks out onto the street and hails a taxi, explaining, "Terrorists don't want to blow up a $200 taxi; their explosives cost more."

"It's worked so far," Mr. Arnett said.

Asked whether Saddam was what "propaganda" had made him out to be — "a guy who bit the head off of puppies," said Mr. Ferguson — Mr. Arnett said the first time he interviewed Saddam during the 1991 Persian Gulf War he found him to be a "very elegant, diplomatic guy."

An "elegant, diplomatic guy"? Never let it be said that Peter Arnett isn't loyal to his friends.

More: McCaslin's column this morning is the gift that keeps on giving. Seems that a thirsty Brit somehow mistook a profound, intellectually ponderous work of art by American hack Wayne Hill for a bottle of water. Perhaps that's because the "art" was, well, a bottle of water.

Amidst their struggles with terrorists, British residents had cause to chuckle this week when an exhibit "sculpture" on global warming — a plastic bottle of water from melted ice in the Antarctic — was misinterpreted by a presumably thirsty visitor.

Steven Morris wrote in yesterday's edition of the Guardian that although the sculpture was "intended to be a telling comment on the dangers of global warming ... the visitor is believed to have drunk the piece."

"The sculpture was the creation of the American-born artist and writer Wayne Hill," Mr. Morris said. "He brought back two litres of melt water from the west Antarctic and designed a bottle to hold it."

Tracked down, Mr. Hill said: "If you put something in a frame or on a plinth people usually recognize it's a piece of art and treat it with respect."

Police in Devon and Cornwall have been called in to investigate. A spokesman confirmed: "We are looking at the possibility someone drank the water without knowing it was a piece of art."

For those of you who have followed the happenings of this blog for some time, I am pleased to report that the ADVANCE DEMOCRACY Act of 2005 passed the House of Representatives last Thursday as part of the State Department's reauthorization legislation. As I have written here and here before, the ADVANCE bill is a groundbreaking achievement in that it mandates that the State Department give up its old ways of coddling dictators and promote freedom in nondemocratic regimes.

You might ask how? Through a number of innovative methods including mandating that ambassadors spend a substantial portion of their time at the universities in the country which they are stationed for the purpose of explaining American policies to the young people. As we know anti-Americanism is rampant across the world, but it is misinformation and half-truths that drive these beliefs. Onward to the Senate!

I was out of town over the weekend to work on my impending move to The American Enterprise, a publication of the American Enterprise Institute, so blogging had to take a back seat for a few days.

During that time, the story that strikes me as most revealing of the political left's contempt for, and distance from, even the elite right's culture is the controversy over John Roberts's association with two institutions deemed suspect by the left: the Catholic Church and the Federalist Society.

To handle the simpler case first, efforts to harm Roberts by associating him with the Federalist Society will work only to the degree to which the right acts as if membership in Gene Meyer's band of lawyers is something about which anyone should be embarrassed. If Ruth Bader Ginsberg can work for the ACLU, then John Roberts can snuggle up to the Federalist Society if he wants. And, as Michael DuBow emailed to Joe Knippenberg (who has another great post on this matter here), the very existence of a shadow legal academy should tell us much about the degree to which "mainstream" institutions, such as the ABA, have become partisan players.

As for the religious question, Roberts and his wife are of course practicing Catholics. In this, they join about 65 million other people in America, and over a billion more souls around the world. The Church has been around a couple thousand years, and it has even played a role in Western and world history. In fact, there's most likely an outpost of this organization not too far from where you sit. It would be called, in common parlance, a church.

Now, membership in this outfit still raises eyebrows here and there: among certain sects of far-right fundamentalists who're convinced the Catholic Church is a tool of Satan, the pope the Anti-Christ, and all Catholics hell-bound. Their mirror image on the secular left includes groups like NARAL, NOW, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, People for the American Way, and individuals like, oh, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, lately in the news for comparing American troops to Nazis, Communists, and mass murderers in Cambodia.

One might think that Sen. Durbin, still wiping away the tears from his non-apology apology for making that comparison, might parse his words just a bit when speaking of another man's religion. (I know Durban's a Catholic too, but for political purposes, he seems to regard folks like Roberts as the Other.) But according to George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley and others, Durbin has revived something resembling the old religious test for Roberts, lest a zealot who takes his church's teachings seriously endanger the republic by gaining high position.

Turley penned his now widely-circulated article in an effort to damage Roberts's nomination. But the key charge Turley makes -- that Roberts told Sen. Durbin that he would recuse himself from some decisions involving abortion or the death penalty -- has been denied by Sen. Durbin himself. This turnaround, which is damaging to Turley's own credibility, doesn't lessen the seriousness of Durbin's original question into whether or not Judge Roberts would allow his religious beliefs to guide his judicial decision-making.

If such questions aren't a violation of the prohibition of religious tests in Article VI, then how must that Article be interpreted? It's analogous to the ethnic test applied to Jews by some on the far right and far left: are you now or have you ever been a friend of Israel? If a policy wonk or diplomat answers yes, he may be considered an untrustworthy neocon. For the likes of Durbin -- if we're to believe Turley -- an affirmative answer to taking one's religion seriously is an obstacle to trustworthy juridical work. We saw this played out with Chuck Schumer's bigoted opposition to Judge Bill Pryor's "fervent personal beliefs," which was merely a thin veil for the expression of the Senator's anti-Catholic beliefs.

Back when Jim Crow ruled in the South, not every black man and woman was blocked from the polls through over violence. The white establishment employed subtler ways, including poll taxes, property ownership requirements, anti-miscegenation laws, literacy tests, and other means to exclude African Americans from exercising their Constitutional right to vote. Numerous pieces of legislation passed in Southern states from the 1870s forward worked to ensure that blacks were barred from the political process.

Of course, we haven't seen any laws passed that overtly prevent Catholics or other Christians from engagement in civil society. But if Roe v. Wade continues to be employed as a litmus test by the left, the effects on appointments to the federal judiciary are disturbingly similar to restrictions such laws might overtly impose. Sure, religious men and women may be elected to the highest offices in the land. But will the federal bench reflect these electoral victories? That's the crux of the current campaign to keep Roberts and like-minded jurists from attaining positions of influence in the courts. And as Bill Pryor and others (including Judge Roberts himself) could tell you, non-legislative bans can be pretty darned effective at weeding out candidates the left deems inferior.

You'll remember Larry Neace, the Dacula, Georgia, high school physics teacher who was fired this past spring for demanding that a football player stay awake in class. (I posted on Neace many times; see especially this post, and this one.)

Great news: he's been hired to teach at Apalachee High School in Winder, Barrow County, Georgia. Here's the AJC's take on the story:

Neace will teach physics and physical science at Apalachee High School in Winder, said Lisa Leighton, spokeswoman for the Barrow County school system.

Neace said he plans to attend teacher pre-planning meetings at the school next week. Barrow County students return to school Aug. 1.

"I feel like I'm walking on a cloud," Neace said. "I will miss my students and my colleagues from Dacula [High School], but I left the school in a bad situation. Now I'm walking into something really fantastic. I'm really, really looking forward to it."

Neace plans to meet with Apalachee High administrators next week to discuss his long-standing grading policy, which led to his dismissal from Dacula High. Neace taught at Dacula for 23 years.

"If there is a problem they have with it, I will modify it," Neace said.

Barrow County lies just to the east of Gwinnett county, where Neace taught for 23 years. This map shows both Dacula, Neace's old haunts, and Winder, where he'll begin teaching next month. The proximity means that Neace won't face the expense and trouble of relocating.

Clearly, the folks in Winder knew a good teacher when they saw him, and they should be applauded for picking up Neace after he was treated so shamefully by his former employers. His addition to the faculty at Apalachee speaks well of that school's principal, who through his action demonstrates that, unlike Dacula principal Donnie Nutt, he has no problem hiring smart teachers who enjoy teaching smart students. The unprofessional, anti-intellectual atmosphere fostered by Nutt hasn't polluted neighboring school systems, thankfully.

I'll continue to follow this story as it develops. The next big step for Neace, other than reporting for his new job, is his August 16 hearing before the State School Board, where his lawyers will appeal his dismissal.

Update: Here's the web site of Apalachee High. Note that it's a huge new building, which is no surprise given the explosive growth of the Atlanta suburbs over the past few decades. The principal is Dr. Dennis Clarke, who appears on this site, and this one.

I'm not the only conservative of Southern extraction who's taking exception to recent efforts to re-write the region's history. In one of the more thorough fiskings I've seen recently, Feddie from Southern Appeal utterly deconstructs an essay by one Steve Suitts, a biographer of former Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black.

It's a complicated but interesting and important story, so you'll want to read Feddie's entire post. In brief, Suitts not only defends Hugo Black's dark period when he was a member of the KKK, but attempts to tar Judge William H. Pryor, Jr., in the process. As you might expect, he's no more successful in whitewashing the past to suit contemporary sensibilities than were Vanderbilt's leaders in their recent, and similar, efforts (see below). In the first case, objections to Southern history led some to try sand blasting a chapter of history they found offensive; in the second, a modern apologist for a liberal icon wants to engage in a bit of historical revisionism and moral relativism.

Both stories highlight the need to write history, as best we can, truthfully with no attempt to distort what we can learn from the evidence. And both demonstrate that, in modern America, the left is far more likely to engage in such distortion for political ends than is the right.

This morning's Washington Times carries an op-ed that I wrote titled "Vanderbilt Goes PC." It charges the Nashville school with attempting to re-write history through its plans -- now thwarted -- to sand blast the word "Confederate" from the frieze of Confederate Memorial Hall. The University was sued by the original donors, the subversive United Daughters of the Confederacy, which, during the Depression, donated $50,000 toward the building's construction. The Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled that Vanderbilt could proceed with plans, announced in 2002, to remove the offending word, but only if it repaid the UDC in 2005 dollars. Since that amounted to a cool $1 million, the school dropped their plans. However, in campus literature and maps, the C-word is no longer used.

If you read the essay, you'll note that my by-line is "managing editor of The American Enterprise magazine, a publication of the American Enterprise Institute." I'm very excited to report that, indeed, I've accepted that position with the magazine and will begin my duties full-time this fall. Already I'm engaged in a variety of projects for TAE, a very fine magazine with which I'm proud to be associated. The magazine's long-time editor-in-chief is Karl Zinsmeister, a prolific journalist who's written on, among other things, his experiences as an embedded reporter with US forces in Iraq.

For the immediate future, nothing will change here at the Democracy Project blog, except perhaps for the addition of some new bloggers (more on that as it happens). So I hope you'll continue to stop by often for daily commentary and analysis. And, as always, I thank you for making us part of your reading material.

Before the dust had settled in the London subways and the wounded evacuated much was already being made by breathless commentators about the "increasing sophistication" and technical expertise of the terrorist killers. These kind of coordinated attacks, we were assured, presuppose a highly intelligent, highly skilled group of terrorists. The implication is that we are losing ground and are increasingly helpless in the face of such professional competence. We have been forced into a reactive mode to an invincible terrorist threat. Well, that's simply not the case.

In fact, to judge by the sophistication levels of terrorist attacks they reached the pinnacle with the simultaneous hijacking of airliners and converting them into homicide missiles on September 11, 2001. The terrorists have been unable to equal that attack and since then the degree and sophistication of terrorist offensives have declined. Frankly, it is no great shakes for a jihadist revolutionary movement with the kind of funding al Qaeda receives from sheiks in Saudi Arabia and mullahs in Iran to blow up a few bombs individually or simultaneously. It does not take loads of sophistication to pack a car with explosives, drive it to a target, and close an electrical circuit. Nor can it be anything other than sheer desperation to rely on terrorists who kill themselves along with their victims. Use of suicide bombers is a strategy of self-imposed attrition that can only result in organizational self destruction. Horrific, yes; advanced, no.

Where we see - or think we see - a growing sophistication of the terror movement is in organization and communication. Again, commentators speak in hushed tones of the use of the Internet for communications by al Qaeda, as if this is some amazing technological feat. What would really be amazing would be a terror organization that eschewed use of cell phones, PDAs, e-mails, wire transfers, and other everyday technologies that we all employ.

The origin for this odd attitude can be found in the commonly-held stereotype that these terrorists are poverty-stricken, ignorant refugees, fleeing from a life so cruel and unfair that killing Westerners is the only avenue open to them. A brief look at the biographies of these killers ought to be sufficient to disabuse that notion.

In a rather small set of terrorists - the 520 detainees held by US forces at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - one will find men with advanced degrees in engineering, economics, finances, and philosophy. One will find computer geeks capable of creating complex software programs or innovative methods of triggering explosives. Locked away in the GITMO cells are practical, hands-on technicians who can wire up a bomb in the dark as adroitly as they can behead a helpless hostage. There are a few men from the rougher classes of the 17 countries represented in the camp, but most are educated, intelligent, and, in their own twisted world, highly creative.

Initially much was made of the fact that in the London bombing all of the explosions went off within a minute of each other. Folks, that is what timers are designed to accomplish. One commentator noted that "in Madrid the bombs went off within two minutes of each other. (In London) they went off within a minute. That shows remarkable capability." Again, the question has to be raised: does it really?

Perhaps, if the explosions were under the desks of heads of state, inside key communications facilities, or capable of taking down an electrical grid and all blew simultaneously we could credit al Qaeda with highly increased sophistication. Not for the timing devices - these are fairly easy to rig and detonate - but for the placement of the explosives. But in London we saw none of this. Rather we saw the most basic kind of terrorist attack: random bombing of innocent civilians in the most public of places, subway trains and busses.

The late explosion - the bus explosion - was observed by witnesses as the terrorist fiddled inside of the pack containing the explosives. Was he trying to disarm the explosive or detonate it? Interesting question, because even though the terrorists have been labeled as "suicide bombers" by the police there remains an open - perhaps insoluble - question: could these bombers have been fooled themselves? Suppose they were directed to enter the public conveyances, place the backpacks in a crowded location, then leave? The timers, which they might have been told were set to go off a half-hour or so later, were then rigged to detonate early and convert their attack into a "martyrdom" operation.

Is this a frivolous notion? Not necessarily. Recall that post-911 we saw video of Usama bin Laden entertaining a visiting sheik. Bin Laden was regaling his visitor with stories of how he pulled off the September 11 attacks. In the course of the conversation bin Laden mentioned - with a half-smile - that several of the attackers "did not know that this was a martyrdom operation." In other words, even on what to date has been the most complex al Qaeda operation only a restricted few were privy to the real nature of the attack. This is certainly in keeping with what is known in the business as "tradecraft," reflecting precautions of compartmentalization and "need to know." Once committed to the World Trade Center attack there was no opportunity for the terrorists to back out. Had they known all along that it was a suicide operation might one or two chickened out? It is always a possibility, one neatly checkmated by the simple act of lying to the operative.

Given the backgrounds of the British-Pakistani men involved in the London terrorist attack it seems suspicious that they all four would have agreed to be homicide bombers. In my opinion, it is highly likely that they were intentionally misled by their al Qaeda control. If al Qaeda is now at the point where it cannot even recruit simple homicide bombers then it is struggling indeed. Regardless, we must be careful that while we give ample credit to the cunning, commitment, and aberrant ideology of our Islamist enemy we do not overstate their capabilities. We have them on defense and need to keep hounding them till we kill or capture the last one.

[Note: Visit Col. Cucullu's web site for more information or to purchase his latest book, Separated at Birth: How North Korea Became the Evil Twin.]

Although the shrill left is sure to oppose John Roberts on grounds real and imagined, the President refused their bait (give us a "moderate" and we'll love you forever) and remained true to his word, given during each campaign, that he would appoint a conservative to the Court. Taking on Roberts's jurisprudential philosophy won't be easy for a party accustomed to slander rather than debate, hyperbole in lieu of reason. "He lied," "there's no there, there," "he'll kill all of us," or the like won't wash with this cerebral, well-educated, even-tempered man who appears to live the type of life many bitter liberals envy.

We're sure to hear that Roberts is evasive, but only after liberals on the Judiciary Committee pepper him with questions no candidate for the Court could answer, and that Ruth Bader Ginzberg rightly refused to address during her own hearings. Given that the Senate confirmed Roberts unanimously to the D.C. Circuit Court, we'll see what "newfound evidence" the likes of Ted Kennedy, Dick Durban, Charles Schumer, and the other leading intellects of the left can unearth to provide cover for voting against him this round. They'll be joined and supported by an array of pseudo-intellectuals and camp followers, i.e., "the groups" and their email recipients.

But it'll all be for naught, as it's virtually certain that Roberts will join the Court in time for its fall session. And whether or not Bush appoints a woman or an ethnic minority to fill future seats, it's an added bonus that he ignored the newly developed doctrine of succession, by which each retiring candidate must be replaced by one of the same sex, race, or ethnicity. While I can't imagine that he won't appoint a woman or minority if he gets another opportunity, the Republic will survive quite nicely without media and Democratic-sponsored racial and gender quotas for the Supreme Court.

Excellent commentary may be found by John Hinderaker at Power Line, Hugh Hewitt, Fred Barnes (who thinks Roberts is a safe pick), and Bill Kristol (who says he's a courageous pick). From where I stand, he is simply a smart choice.

Most readers of this blog probably know of the work of Daniel Pipes, founder and director of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia. For years, Pipes has spoken and written about the threat Islamists pose to the US and the world. Son of the noted Harvard historian of Russian, Richard Pipes, and a scholar of the Middle East, Dan Pipes has taken the intellectual fight straight to Islamists and their Western (usually academic) apologists.

Needless to say, standing up to thugs has its risks, not the least of which is the creation of mendacious stories about Pipes's thoughts, his character, and his history. As he explains in this essay, however, not every such tale ends predictably, i.e., with the liars refusing to examine evidence that undermines their charges:

Wahida Valiante of the Canadian Islamic Congress, an Ontario-based group, on April 29, 2005, wrote in her organization's weekly bulletin that I am a follower of Hitler, that I use the tactics of Hitler, and that I want "to ethnically cleanse America of its Muslim presence."

Did I really need to point out that this representation of me is, in the words of a National Post editorial, "a vicious calumny that Ms. Valiante plucked from thin air"? Must I insist that I really do execrate Hitler? Aver my horror of genocide? Protest that I never espoused expelling or murdering Muslim Americans?

I thought not. Rather than take these demeaning and surely futile steps, I took a different route. Backed by the Heenan Blaikie law firm of Toronto and the CanWest Global Communications Corporation, Stan Fisher of Heenan Blaikie sent a libel notice in early May to Ms. Valiante, the CIC, and the CIC's chairman, Mohamed Elmasry.

This resulted in a rather remarkable retraction and apology:

In the April 29, 2005 edition of the Friday Bulletin, the Canadian Islamic Congress and Ms. Wahida Valiante published on its website an article entitled Worth Repeating: Media Propaganda: Hitler, Bush and the "Big Lie". The Canadian Islamic Congress and Ms. Valiante apologize without reservation and retract remarks in the column that suggest that Dr. Daniel Pipes is a follower of HItler [sic] or that he uses the tactics of Hitler or that he wants to ethnically cleanse America of its Muslim presence.

Dan puts this retraction into historical perspective:

Never before have they apologized for having libeled someone The CIC retraction breaks the Islamists' spell of privilege and their miasma of immunity. It establishes, at least in Canada and at present, that Islamist groups do not have impunity to fabricate lies about their opponents. The rule of law does prevail and it applies even to them.

For those who fear the growth of radical Islam, this episode offers encouragement that its forces can be contained and defeated. I hope others will join me in standing up to the new totalitarianism.

Backbone, a sense of pride, and a team of good lawyers, operating in a country that, whatever the troubles of its political class, still lives under the rule of law, made this victory possible. Lying radicals don't always win; bullies can be taught a lesson. And bully for Dan Pipes.

The Anchoress is a superb, and anonymous, blogger who has a knack for seeing beyond the superficial and, in her posts, capturing a bit of the eternal. Not that we'd expect any less from an anchorite, of course, even one with a family who's a Yankees fan.

She links to Varifrank, who posts and then translates a CBC story on Nadagate, and a gifted translator Varifrank proves to be. Here's a sample:

A new report in the U.S. media is once again linking Karl Rove to the unmasking of an undercover CIA agent. Rove, 'Bush's brain' as he is often called, is legendary for his ability to get his boss elected and his political enemies destroyed.

Now Democrats are hoping to turn the tables with some new ammunition in this week's Time magazine. Journalist Matt Cooper reports it was Rove who told him him that Joe Wilson, a prominent critic of the Bush administration, was married to a CIA agent later identified as Valerie Plame. "After that conversation [with Rove] I knew she worked at the CIA and worked on WMD [weapons of mass destruction]," said Cooper. It is one more twist in a tangled story that began when Saddam Hussein was accused by President George W. Bush of trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa. The charge was used to justify invading Iraq but it was later discredited by Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador and who in 1990 was U.S. charge d'affaires in Baghdad, who investigated the claim and wrote an article in the New York Times saying it was false. . . .

Now, please allow me to translate for you what it is I got out of all of these stories over the past two years:

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Karl Rove blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah ‘Bush's brain’ blah blah blah oh thats funny, never heard that before blah blah blah blah blah

Blah blah blah Democrats are hoping to turn the tables blah no kidding! really? blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Saddam Hussein was accused by President George W. Bush of trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa.blah blah blah blah blah. Blah! blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, bl-bl-blblah. Blah, blah blah blah! Oh, blah blah! Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Kennedy wannabe alert blah blah I believe very clearly that Karl Rove ought to be fired," said Massachusetts Senator John Kerry blah who talks like that blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Political analyst Stuart Rothenberg says there could be a backlash for the Democrats, Ha! the bitter flat beer taste of blowback will make Harry Reids face disappear into his hairline with the pucker this sour sucker of a story is going to generate He he he ho ho ho he hehe.

Now that's the art of getting to the bitter center of a story!

Also, if you haven't already read Michael Barone's piece, "Our Titus Oates," do so.

Scare headlines have once again warned of the dire consequences of foreign countries or their citizens buying or taking significant investment positions in U.S.-owned enterprises.

In this instance, we are warned of the threat to our national security presented by the prospect of The China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), a 70% the state-owned Chinese oil company, should it succeed in its quest for Unocal, a large California-based integrated oil company. CNOOC presented Unocal with an unsolicited bid of $18.5 billion, some 9% higher than a previous bid submitted by Chevron, and the politicos in Washington are aghast.

So let’s understand what is happening here: China, by successfully selling goods and services to Americans, has earned an excess of US dollars. (Simply put, they've been trading us goods in return for our paper currency). What is China to do with these extra dollars?

Well, there are three things that they are most likely to do: 1) purchase goods or services from US companies; 2) invest the dollars in dollar-denominated liquid assets, such as Treasury obligations; or 3) invest the dollars in dollar-denominated assets that aren't highly liquid, such as land and U.S. businesses.

It seems that option # 1 is the only one that is acceptable to our governing elite since option # 2 presents us with the fear that China may one day decide that investing in Treasury obligations is, after all, too risky and they will sell their bonds and take their hard-earned money somewhere else (where they might take it is an interesting question but not often discussed). Option #3, that is investing in long term assets and businesses within the United States, should be the most desirable since it bespeaks a much higher level of trust on the part of the investor (China, in this instance) and could even serve to dampen any tendencies toward armed conflict between the two countries as there would exist additional costs and risks to both sides as investments create ever closer economic ties and mutual dependencies. (Any concerns regarding the sale of assets directly affecting our national security can be addressed on a case-by-case basis.) Alas, our leaders fear these investments as well. Already a small group of U.S. lawmakers have urged the Bush administration to scrutinize the deal and the pundits are offering dark and ominous warnings.

During the oil crisis of the 1970’s similar fears were expressed that the Saudi’s and other oil-rich sheikdoms, which suddenly found themselves with an embarrassment of riches, would “buy” all of the United States and we would be even more beholden to them than was perceived by those countries dominant position in the oil business.

Similarly, during the boom days of Japan, fears were expressed that we would soon be owned by “Japan, Inc.”

History has shown us that free trade, and its concomitant surpluses and shortfalls of funds resulting from the inevitable “imbalance” of trade in goods and services between countries, only presents new and beneficial opportunities for all parties.

As an example, during the post WW II years, the US experienced a significant surplus in its balance of trade since it was the economic engine providing the goods and equipment necessary to rebuild both Europe and Japan. These excess funds were invested all over the world, bringing both capital for new businesses but, equally importantly, an interchange of ideas regarding business tactics, management, etc. All parties prospered to varying degrees. A few years later, our now tired and overworked industrial plant started to be overcome in efficiency and quality by the European manufacturers (utilizing the modern plants and equipment that had been acquired primarily from the U.S.) and calls for tariff protection and other forms of protectionism were heard across the land. To its everlasting credit, the Eisenhower administration essentially told the U.S. steel industry that it must solve its own problems and, within a few very difficult years, the cycle had turned and once again the U.S. steel industry became more efficient than that of the Europeans with their, by then, aging plants.

I remember proposing back in the 70’s that we should sell AT&T to the Saudis since it would have committed them to telephone poles, plant and equipment that would have forced them to share in the cost of increasing oil prices. I still share that view in principle but, I guess, the Saudis were too clever to accept my offer of AT&T which now seems to be in its last incarnation.

The real problem lies not in trade nor any form of free exchange; rather it lies in our profligate government policies whereby we run enormous domestic budget deficits, borrow the money from trade partners such as China and then become concerned that they have loaned us so much money. It strikes me as the height of ingratitude to blame the lenders who have, at our request, loaned us the means of maintaining our spending habits beyond our means. If we continue to do this, these lender-nations will certainly decide in the future that we are not worthy of their trust and will cease lending to us. You can be certain, however, that when that occurs, we will blame them for not trusting us.

Mr. DeRussy is an equipment leasing executive who writes from his home in Bronxville, NY.

Monday: JENNIFER ROBACK MORSE, author of the new book, SMART SEX: Finding Life-Long Love in a Hook-Up World. A Ph.D. in economics, Dr. Morse’s analyses contemporary problems in love, marriage, sexuality, and the family in a lively and logical way, and offers insight and hope about finding lasting love in the modern world. The inspiring Chuck Colson wrote the Foreword to this fine book.

Before she became a mother, Jenny was a committed, successful career woman. She taught economics for fifteen years at two of the nation’s most prestigious universities, Yale and George Mason University. But in 1991, her worldview was radically transformed, when she adopted a two-year-old Romanian boy and gave birth to a baby girl. Jenny realized that being a mother merited and demanded becoming her highest priority; she also found that this investment of her talents offered her the greatest return on her investment of time & energy. She left full-time teaching in 1996, moving with her family to California and is now a full-time mother as well as a Research Fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Jenny’s previous book, Love & Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn’t Work, was a hit with TN listeners when it appeared in 2001.

Much as I admired Jenny’s first book, I think my listeners will enjoy and appreciate SMART SEX even more. If you know a young person who’s going off to college or going back to college, this is a great gift for them. With the 50% discount available at Spence’s website, the book will cost only $13.98 (+ S&H)—slightly more than that popcorn-popper or hotdog-electrocuter you’re thinking of giving them for their dorm room. While eating popcorn & running current through pork products are activities that delight the average undergraduate, this book could make a real, and serious, difference in the recipient’s life. (The average university of the 70s was a nunnery, compared to what’s going on today.) Jenny explains why “reproductive freedom” is an illusion; why recreational sense isn’t actually fun; and why sex is neither morally neutral nor essentially private. Jenny talks about finding and preserving love, about why to marry and how to stay that way. And all this is in a lively, readable style.

I couldn't recommend this book more highly. Go to Spence’s site, where you can get this book for half-price:

Tuesday: BILL SAYRE, formerly with the U.S. Federal Reserve, now a Member of the Board of Directors of Associated Industries of Vermont; of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce; and of the Vermont Forest Products Association. A student of Milton Friedman's (among other Nobel Laureates), Bill received his MBA in economics/finance from the University of Chicago. We’ll be discussing what’s top-of-the-fold in the headlines this week.

Wednesday: PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY is President of the Eagle Forum. Her latest book is THE SUPREMACISTS: The Tyranny of Judges, and How to Stop It. Mrs. Schlafly, who celebrated her 80th birthday last fall, has been a national leader of the conservative movement since the publication of her best-selling 1964 book, A Choice, Not An Echo. She founded her pro-family organization, the Eagle Forum, in 1972, and is one of the nation’s most articulate and successful opponents of radical feminism. Her syndicated column appears in over a hundred newspapers, and she also is the host of her own talk radio show. The Ladies’ Home Journal named her one of the 100 most important women of the 20th century. We’ll be talking about the Supreme Court, about opportunities and concerns raised by the retirement of Justice O’Connor.

Thursday: JOHN McCLAUGHRY, President of the Ethan Allen Institute, whose mission is “to influence public policy in Vermont by helping its people to better understand and put into practice the fundamentals of a free society: individual liberty, private property, competitive free enterprise, limited and frugal government, strong local communities, personal responsibility, and expanded opportunity for human endeavor.” John is one of the finest political commentators you’ll read in Vermont, or anywhere—informed, clear, trenchant, and often extremely funny.

If you’re interested in Vermont politics, John’s monthly Newsletter is a must-read. Membership starts at only $30 per year, and gets you twelve newsletters, periodic email bulletins, and invitations to all events. You can sample some of John’s commentaries here.

Here are a few lines from John’s commentary on the infamous Kelo decision. You can read the commentary in its entirety on the website. Note John’s excellent recommendation at the very end:

Eight states expressly prohibit the use of eminent domain for economic development unless the area is clearly blighted. Vermont is not one of them. Vermont’s constitution makes private property “subservient to public uses, when necessity requires it.” To date, Vermont cities have rarely if ever sought to use eminent domain to confiscate property from A and turn it over to B, as in the New London case.

Now a U.S. Supreme Court majority has defined away the prohibition against takings for revenue enhancing purposes. The Vermont Supreme Court has shown itself willing to uphold almost any regulatory taking of land values. Given these unpleasant facts, property owning Vermonters should start thinking about adopting a constitutional amendment to protect their rights. Their 18th century constitutions are on their side, but their supreme courts, in thrall to the “diverse and always evolving needs of society”, are clearly not.

….By the way, if the cadence of John’s eloquent and persuasive prose sounds familiar—a little Reaganesque, perhaps?—it’s not without reason: for four years, John was, indeed, Ronald Reagan’s speechwriter. After the election, President Reagan’s made John head of his Cabinet council on food and agriculture—another mark of the late President’s wisdom.

Friday: JIM BARNETT, Vermont Republican State GOP Chairman.

How to contact the show:

Waterbury/Montpelier, Vermont, area: 244-1777

Long distance from anywhere: 1-877-291-TALK or 1-877-291-8255

How to hear the show:

Tune in to WDEV 550 AM/96.1 FM or to WSYB 1380 AM to hear TRUE NORTH live, from 11:05 a.m. till noon, Monday through Friday.

Should you miss a show, don't forget--each week we post the previous week's shows on our website, so you can listen to those you missed online. Just go to truenorthradio.com, and click on ARCHIVES.

Given the bloody violence in Iraq, it would be easy to conclude that the entire country is in a state of civil war and chaos. And that it's Karl Rove's fault.

But it's Monday, and that means that Part 31 of Arthur Chrenkoff's "Good News from Iraq" is up. From progress writing a constitution, to involvement of the Sunnis, to the emergence of a hallmark of democracy -- parliamentary debate -- there really is good news from Iraq.

If you're not a regular reader of Arthur's good news series from Iraq and Afghanistan, scroll through his latest post. It's no sugar-coated, vacuous, sentimental rendition of obscure news items. Rather, it serves to bring into sharper focus the bravery, sacrifices, and determination of the people of both nations, who are working hard to overcome decades of brutal dictatorship. Civil society isn't built in a day, and critics of Iraqis and Afghans who expect each country to be as calm as Iowa aren't merely unfair: they're mendacious, for they must know that constructing peaceful societies is a long-range plan. Whatever the mistakes American or native decision-makers have made, real progress is being made, and failure to acknowledge that fact simply makes critics look small.

Good work again, Arthur. Another member of the alternative media gets it right.

Disrupt the G8, bring down Tony Blair, get the Brits to withdraw from Iraq. How to make a convincing argument for such radical policy changes? By bombing civilians, of course. Randomly slaughter as many innocents as possible on their way to work. That will induce such fear into the infidels that they will bend to our will. Such is the mindset of our enemies, radical Islamist jihadists.

Barbaric terrorism can be effective. Egypt just pulled its embassy from Baghdad after its ambassador was kidnapped and murdered. The Philippines withdrew its small, mostly symbolic contingent to ransom hostages. Most egregiously, the Spanish election was flipped by terrorists who then were rewarded for their disgusting killings by immediate withdrawal of Spain’s military contingent in Iraq. Fortunately these are exceptions. More commonly, random terror attacks steel the backbones of the target population. America came together after September 11, 2001 just as it had after Pearl Harbor. Israel has endured decades of pounding but remains stalwart. Expect London and the entire United Kingdom to be one of the tougher nuts for the terrorists to crack.

In many ways the fundamentalist Islamic terrorists fall victim to their own propaganda. They have been fed the line of the “decaying, corrupt West,” of “decadent Crusaders” so much that they have come to believe that through one push, one spectacular or particularly brutal attack, they can cause the entire rotten structure of Western civilization to implode upon itself. This is part of the expectations for 911. This motivates them to continue use of random terror attacks. Admittedly they achieved some tactical success, but terror as a weapon has proved to be a strategic disaster for the Islamist movement internationally. But don’t expect the stark fact that they are losing the war to subdue them. Failure, processed through the mindset of the Islamofascist zealot will only drive them to greater fanaticism. Only by their deaths will this war be won. Despite this reality many in the West have yet even to acknowledge that we are at war.

Recite the dismal laundry list of terrorist attacks that have taken place globally since the late 1990s. We have read the names so many times that we have almost become jaded to them but we can’t let that happen. We need to remind ourselves of Lebanon, the Achille Lauro, Munich, Israel, the World Trade Center, Iraq, Oklahoma City, East Africa, Somalia, Sudan, Bali, Madrid, Holland, the USS Cole, Lockerbie, Philippines, Egypt, Libya, Teheran, Pakistan, India, Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan. Now we can add London to that sad list. We must recognize a stark fact that too many of the self-styled intelligentsia seem not to comprehend: regardless of what we do the terrorists are coming after us. They are coming not to negotiate, not to seek accommodation or understanding, not to learn how to work together: they are coming to kill and destroy.

Unless we grasp the enormity of that fact, accept it, and hold it close we will lose this war. For war it is. Not crime, not misunderstanding, not something than can be resolved on a psychiatrist’s couch or with an anti-depressant medication. From time to time we drift away from our purpose, forget what started this war in the first place. We get ourselves bogged down in meaningless semantics. We argue over whether a particular Islamist terrorist organization really is a member of al Qaeda or not, as if that fact makes it less dangerous or mitigates its actions. We use all of our prodigious, misguided legalistic skills to parse the relationship between dictators like Saddam Hussein, Bashar Assad, Kim Jong Il, and the Iranian mullahs to terrorist organizations and leaders, as if they are in the docket at a criminal trial instead of loading the gun that others will hold to our heads.

Worst of all, we pretend that this war is somehow a war against “terror” rather than a brutal war to the death against rabid ideologues who have declared the war against us and intend to destroy us and our way of life. This is not a war against Islam per se, but as Paul Marshall notes “the root of this wave of terrorism is extremist religion.” These terror leaders have said that they intend to impose their twisted version of Islam upon us. We need to listen to what these people say and be candid in our own thoughts and speech. No longer can we go to ridiculous lengths to avoid offense, or to deceive ourselves that we are dealing with a “religion of peace.” Ayatollah Khomeini said, back when all this began in earnest, “we did not create a revolution to lower the price of melon.” More recently Hussein Massawi, former leader of Hezbollah, made terrorist intentions clear: “We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.”

The wave of attacks in London ought to have been a wake up call – again! How many of these will we require before we act against the root cause? So far we in America have been fortunate. Our Muslim immigrants have for the most part been professionals eager to assimilate into our society and become Americas in thought as well as in citizenship. European experience stands in stark contrast. On the Continent as well as in the UK a significant number of Muslim immigrants are workers and peasants. They are not educated, are held in ignorance and poverty by their religious leaders, and are proselytized mightely on the need to remain “pure to their faith” and by perseverance “overcome the infidel.” In other words, they come to Europe not to assimilate but to conquer.

Fundamentalist mosques across Europe have become platforms for terrorism and revolution directed against the host countries. To date the British, the French, Dutch, Germans, and others have pretended that these threats don’t exist. They cover up the Islamist rhetoric with politically correct rhetoric of their own despite the overheated climate in the mosques and ghettos. London attacks did not occur in a vacuum. They were no doubt encouraged by al Qaeda leaders abroad, perhaps even assisted with funding and training, but they could only have taken place in an atmosphere of growing hostility to the West.

Fortunately the terrorist attack in London will not rattle the majority of Britons nor will it shake the American-UK alliance. For a brief time at least, we are again tragically reminded that this is war. But how many wake up calls do we need to galvanize our will? Will it require a nuclear, poison gas, or biological attack before we at last have the moral courage to recognize our enemy for who and what he is? If the London attack can produce that result then the lives will not have been spent in vain.

Betsy Newmark comes to the rescue:

"My Wife is a Covert CIA Operative" t-shirts;

And there's one for wives to wear, too.

No Nadagate shirts yet?

One of the most remarkable modern sculptors, Frederick Hart, carved one of the modern era's most remarkable sculptures, Ex Nihilo, which graces the main portal of Washington National Cathedral.

As most of you already know, Ex Nihilo (out of nothingness) is a creation scene; in fact, THE creation scene, from Genesis.

But it seems that the Washington media, joined by the national breathless left, have engaged in their own attempt at creating something from nothing over the past week. Not being God, however, their efforts led not to creation out of chaos, but to manufactured stories out of nothingness.

The most concise writing on this I've found is John Tierney's op-ed in today's New York Times. It's accurate, humorous, and it does what few columns can do; it coins a word to describe the contents of this horrendous scandal. Welcome to Nadagate.

Mr. Wilson presented himself as a courageous truth-teller who was being attacked by lying partisans, but he himself became a Democratic partisan (working with the John Kerry presidential campaign) who had a problem with facts. He denied that his wife had anything to do with his assignment in Niger, but Senate investigators found a memo in which she recommended him.

Karl Rove's version of events now looks less like a smear and more like the truth: Mr. Wilson's investigation, far from being requested and then suppressed by a White House afraid of its contents, was a low-level report of not much interest to anyone outside the Wilson household. . . .

For now, though, it looks as if this scandal is about a spy who was not endangered, a whistle-blower who did not blow the whistle and was not smeared, and a White House official who has not been fired for a felony that he did not commit. And so far the only victim is a reporter who did not write a story about it.

It would be logical to name it the Not-a-gate scandal, but I prefer a bilingual variation. It may someday make a good trivia question:

What do you call a scandal that's not scandalous?

Nadagate.

A divine way of summing up the vacuity of the political left.

Allison Hayward at Skeptic's Eye sends out word that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has reached a decision in this important case.

It's just up, so, as Allison says, Gentlemen, commence reading!

Update: Follow the link above to Skeptic's Eye, as Allison is updating with interpretations of the decision.

Update II: The Lonely Centrist has some thoughts on campaign finance reform, and why it's a bad deal for everyone in the political arena, left or right.

Update III: The Lonely Centrist has posted further thoughts on the Court ruling, and he thinks it bodes ill for bloggers:

Bloggers Beware: When the Reform Advocates Claim that they don't want to get you, they are probably not telling the truth . . . This case strongly suggest that the mere fact that bloggers may not spend any money to blog does not insulate them from regulation - or even give the FEC the authority to ignore their activities.

Update IV: The Campaign Legal Center's press release on the decision is ecstatic, which should worry anyone who values free speech in the politial arena. Here's the full text:

Appeals Court Upholds Lower Court Decision Striking Down
FEC's Regulations for BCRA

A Major Victory for Congressional BCRA Sponsors

Washington, D.C. — The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals today affirmed "in all respects" a lower court decision striking down fifteen regulations enacted by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to implement the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA).

The lawsuit was brought by the lead House sponsors of BCRA, Reps. Christopher Shays (R-CT) and Marty Meehan (D-MA), who successfully argued that regulations adopted by the FEC to implement BCRA undermined the law's effectiveness.

The Campaign Legal Center serves as counsel in the case to BCRA's principal Senate sponsors, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Russ Feingold (D-WI), who filed an amicus brief supporting Shays and Meehan in the suit.

According to Gerald Hebert, the Legal Center's executive director and director of litigation, "This is a major victory for BCRA's sponsors, and another in a series of court decisions to emphasize that the FEC has often undermined, rather than enforced, campaign finance law."

In the September 2004 lower court decision that was affirmed today, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly held that many of the challenged FEC regulations were arbitrary and capricious and therefore contrary to law. The district court characterized one provision as having no "rational basis," said another would "render the statute largely meaningless" and noted that another "severely undermines FECA" and would "foster corruption." Another, the district court said, "runs completely afoul" of campaign finance law.

The FEC appealed the district court decision with regard to five of the invalidated rules. The FEC also challenged the right of BCRA's congressional sponsors to bring the lawsuit, asserting that Reps. Shays and Meehan lack legal standing to file the suit and that their legal claims were not yet ripe for consideration.

Echoing the tone of the district court, the appellate court found one rule "arbitrary and capricious," noting that "the Commission offered no persuasive justification for the provisions challenged by Shays and Meehan." With regard to another of the FEC's regulations, the court held that "Congress has clearly spoken to this issue and enacted a prohibition broader than the one the FEC adopted." The court held that another FEC rule "contradicts BCRA's plain text" and another "makes no sense."

Update V: Mark Tapscott has read through the decision and asks, "What hath the DC Circuit Court wrought?" Or, as he quoth the Puritan divne, John Cotton, "If you tether a beast at night, he knows the length of his tether before morning."

What's in a headline? Or better, can you judge an article by its header? Sometimes not, since reporters don't write their own headlines. But sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar.

Joe Knippenberg lists three headlines on the Rove affair from three different papers (I've added some commentary):

NYT: Rove Reportedly Held Phone Talk on CIA Officer

(Rove's a big boy, so I hope the officer wasn't hurt.)

WaPo: Rove Confirmed Plame Indirectly, Lawyer Says.

(I didn't know Rove was ordained, and don't they still have to lay on hands?)

WashTimes: Rove Learned CIA Agent’s Name From Novak (no link)

(See again this editorial from Wednesday's WSJ.)

And don't miss this:

A former CIA covert agent who supervised Mrs. Plame early in her career yesterday took issue with her identification as an "undercover agent," saying that she worked for more than five years at the agency's headquarters in Langley and that most of her neighbors and friends knew that she was a CIA employee.

"She made no bones about the fact that she was an agency employee and her husband was a diplomat," Fred Rustmann, a covert agent from 1966 to 1990, told The Washington Times.

"Her neighbors knew this, her friends knew this, his friends knew this. A lot of blame could be put on to central cover staff and the agency because they weren't minding the store here. ... The agency never changed her cover status."

Mr. Rustmann, who spent 20 of his 24 years in the agency under "nonofficial cover" -- also known as a NOC, the same status as the wife of Mr. Wilson -- also said that she worked under extremely light cover.

In addition, Mrs. Plame hadn't been out as an NOC since 1997, when she returned from her last assignment, married Mr. Wilson and had twins, USA Today reported yesterday.

The distinction matters because a law that forbids disclosing the name of undercover CIA operatives applies to agents that had been on overseas assignment "within the last five years."

"She was home for such a long time, she went to work every day at Langley, she was in an analytical type job, she was married to a high-profile diplomat with two kids," Mr. Rustmann said. "Most people who knew Valerie and her husband, I think, would have thought that she was an overt CIA employee."

It has been over a year since American journalist Paul Klebnikov was gunned down on a Moscow street. Klebnikov, 41, was founding editor of Forbes Russia when, as he left work, he was shot ten times at close range in a gangland-style killing. He left behind a wife and three young children. His murder remains unsolved, at least in any way that dispassionate observers find convincing.

For that reason, some of his friends, joined by responsible journalists from several news organizations, have joined to launch Project Klebnikov, which debuted Monday, July 9, the one-year anniversary of his death. This Wall Street Journal story ($), the first I've read of the Project, notes that "Russian prosecutors have alleged that a fugitive Chechen warlord hired Chechen contract killers to carry out the attack, and two of the alleged killers are in custody. Relatives of Mr. Klebnikov are skeptical about this version of events." Some participants in the project are working on background; institutions on record as supporting it include Forbes, Vanity Fair, and Bloomberg.

An excellent description of both Project Klebnikov's aims and the lawless situation in Russia that allowed for his contract murder is the Project's first press release, dated July 11. As to why he became the only American journalist to be murdered in Russia, the Project's biography of him notes:

He eventually moved to Moscow to become the first editor of Forbes Russia. The magazine’s premier issue, in May 2004, included a list of the 100 richest Russians -- a controversial revelation in a country where too many people on the list earned their money the old-fashioned way – by looting. Even so, Klebnikov was an optimist. He wrote in the magazine that he believed that Russian society had turned the corner and was entering a healthier period.

In addition to his articles, Klebnikov authored two books: “Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia,” and “Conversation with a Barbarian,” a series of his interviews with Chechen rebel leader and onetime Moscow gang boss Khozh-Akhmed Nukhayev, who was recently identified by the Kremlin as the mastermind of the Klebnikov murder. (The announcement, with no evidence to support it, has been met with some skepticism.)

Needless to say, Klebnikov had many enemies in a nation ruled not by laws, but by men. The Project's web site also contains this incisive (and Burkean) commentary on modern Russia:

Putin has promised to bring a “dictatorship of law” in Russia, and he is making progress on numerous fronts. But, as even Klebnikov understood, “a real democracy can be built only on the foundation of a vigorous civil society -- hundreds of thousands of institutions and associations operating independently from the state.” Otherwise, he added, “the role of people is like the role of the crowd in a football match…. it will take years, perhaps a whole generation, to develop Russia’s civic infrastructure.”

This need for civic institutions is demonstrated not only by the murder of Klebnikov, but of the pattern into which his killing fits:

At least 12 reporters have been murdered in contract-style hits since the Putin government came to power - the latest on June 28 - and not a single case has been solved, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which just completed a conference in Moscow with the families of the victims. As Paul himself wrote about how the big business of murder was undermining Russia: “The police solve only a fraction of these contract killings. There simply is no political will to enforce the law.”

Given the extraordinarily poor performance of the White House press corps and their petulant, even amateurish efforts to bring down Karl Rove (and, therefore, the President) over a non-issue (see yesterday's WSJ editorial on this matter), it's important to remember that not all journalists are so petty and self-important. For those working in Russia, investigative reporting of the kind that uncovers facts can be a lethal game. Let's hope that Paul Klebnikov's colleagues get to the bottom of this case, and that the phrase "Russian civil society" rings less hollow in the years ahead.

Update: Mark Tapscott has some incisive commentary and information about the press's inability to concentrate on real stories rather than pursue partisan ends.

Did Saddam Hussein harbor 4,000 terrorists in the half-year leading up to his ouster by American and coalition forces? That's the claim being made at Move American Forward, the nonprofit that Sen. Dick Durban's staffer suggested could be in for an IRS audit.

The full story is here; obviously, I can't vouch for its accuracy, but with Abul Nidal, Zarqawi, and others most certainly given shelter by Saddam, it's unlikely they were the only members of the international terrorist community in his Iraq.

Let's see how much media attention, good or bad, this report receives.

In the aftermath of the London bombings, it's important to remember the citizens of another democracy who are more frequently targeted by suicide bombers than those of any other nation: Israel. We should recall their travails not to diminish the horror of what happened in the UK (or Bali, Tanzania, Madrid, Beslan, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, Sri Lanka, Munich, Uganda, the USS Cole, NYC, Washington, Pennsylvania, or the other areas where terrorists have struck). Rather, remembering the Israeli victims of crazed ideologues helps us better understand the global nature of this war, and the fight that links us to civilized nations everywhere.

White House press spokesman Scott McClellan came in for an absurd drilling yesterday over the non-story of Karl Rove's role in outing Valerie Plame (see the post below). Less remarked upon is his statement on the Netanya bombing, so here's a brief excerpt:

EXCERPT FROM WHITE HOUSE PRESS BRIEFING

July 12, 2005

SCOTT McCLELLAN: I would point out that apparently there was a suicide bombing in Natanya at a shopping mall just a short time ago. We condemn in the strongest terms this vicious attack. There is no justification for the murder of innocent civilians -- men, women and children. We express our condolences to the Prime Minister of Israel and to the people of Israel. Those who have been injured are in our thoughts and prayers, and those who have been killed in this terrorist attack, we express our condolences to their families.

Terrorists are seeking to derail the peace efforts in the Middle East, and all parties must step forward and combat terrorism. The Palestinian Authority needs to act to dismantle terrorist organizations and to stop attacks from happening in the first place. We condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms.

The media's attempt to hang, at long last, their favorite bete noir, Karl Rove, is a textbook example of groupthink in action. (Then again, the MSM's MO has long followed that route, hasn't it?) Damn the terrorists; forget about the war; it's ROVE we're after.

Two commentaries deserve special attention. The first, this editorial in today's WSJ (free) clearly and patiently reveals the absurdity of this exercise in self-immolation. The second (brought to my attention by Wilfred McClay) is by John Podhorezt, the best thing to happen to The Corner since its launch. He wonders if Judith Miller isn't cooling her heels in jail in order to cover for none other than Joe Wilson, who had every reason to work in cahoots with Miller as he shopped around his own version of the Niger story. Podhoretz makes a strong argument, but you should read it for yourself.

Herb London's essay, "Fighting a War Against Fanatics," is a bracing morning read. Herb drives home a point that can't be emphasized often enough: we cannot afford the burden of political correctness when such willful ignorance costs innocent lives. Until we're willing to recognize the enemy for who he is, he argues, we open ourselves to future loss of life and limb:

With another 700 injured and at least 50 killed, it is time to face this truth. These fanatics are intent on killing and maiming as many people as they can. Negotiations are not possible. With whom would one negotiate in any case?

As long as the West is saddled with political correctness there will be a reluctance to deal with the enemy in our midst. Difficult as it may be for well meaning liberals to accept, jihadists are different from those of us who share Judeo-Christian principles. They are at war with the West and it is a war in which civilization itself is at risk.

Once that idea is imbibed, once it goes beyond the conscious level to the very heart and soul of our being, we will realize that every means at our disposal must be employed to destroy this enemy. ACLU prescriptions must be ignored. And the absurd conjunction of fantasies about reformation and “aren’t we all human” must be abandoned in favor of genuine stability.

In fact, the jihadists are not human in any sense of the word since they want to kill any human who does not embrace their religious fervor.

A call for realism is in order. We can no longer tolerate sermons from mosques that justify slaughter or martyrdom. We can no longer allow fanatics to live in our nation or any civilized nation where they plan attacks or marshal support for attacks. We can no longer simply assume that through Herculean effort radical Muslims will embrace the essential creed of our civilization. We can no longer allow our Constitution to be used against Americans. Freedom of religion is not freedom to promote carnage. The Constitution is not a suicide pact.

And:

After all, this is not merely a war for hearts and minds, it is a war of life and death. Remarkably even those I consider sensible refuse to consider current reality. The West is at the crossroads. It is one thing to say, as Tony Blair has, that we will prevail. How we will prevail; what we must do to prevail? These need to be answered.

I should note here that my comments are not a function of retribution. They are based on a dispassionate analysis of what it will take to defeat a relentless foe intent on destruction. Those who are not humane do not deserve humane consideration.

Many people I’ve talked to after the London attack share my basic opinion, yet very few are willing to say so. They have been chastened by the orthodoxy of liberalism, fearful of being called reactionary or racist.

It is instructive that MI5 reports that “only 1 percent of Muslims in the U.K. are extremists.” However, that one percent translates into 16,000 potential terrorists. The “only” in the intelligence report speaks volumes about British political correctness.

Herb is exactly right: we have, for far too long, allowed the self-doubting, self-loathing left to intimidate us into a corner from which there is no escape. Does anyone doubt that, in certain quarters of the cultural and intellectual left, people believe that the death and destruction we saw last week in London, and previously around the world, including here, are the costs advanced society must pay for its own history? Shrugging off the deaths of innocents is possible only when a group's moral compass is so skewed, its soul so disordered, that ideology trumpets all else, including life itself.

We've seen this before in the century past, wherein Nazis, Communists, and their opportunistic minions slaughtered tens of millions in order to create the perfect man, the rightly ordered society. In the West, intellectuals often ignored Hitler until the shooting started, and even today some continue to apologize for the actions of Lenin, Stalin, Che, Fidel, Mao, and countless other thugs who, through their supposed opposition to Western values, earned a pass from Western intellectuals. Lenin called such "thinkers" useful idiots, and indeed they are useful for anesthetizing us to the true nature of all ideologies that necessarily sacrifice millions of lives to their greater cause.

I'll close with Herb's concluding words:

This war depends on an all-out effort to win. Half measures won’t do, nor will good-will. The time has come to remove our ideological shackles and fight this war with every ounce of strength we, as a people, can muster. Our destiny and the destiny of our civilization depend on it.

On the heels of his vicious remarks regarding the character of American troops, word now comes that Illinois Senator Dick Durban's office has hinted that Move Forward America, a nonprofit organization that has challenged Sen. Durban's statements comparing US troops to Nazis, Communists, and Pol Pot's killers, may undergo special IRS scrutiny.

At Townhall, CNS News is reporting that a staffer in the Senator's office suggested that an audit may lie in Move Forward's future:

Durbin's office is trying to silence Move America Forward, the group says, by hinting to an Illinois newspaper (the Northwest Herald of Crystal Lake) that the Internal Revenue Service should audit Move America Forward.

Someone from Durbin's office was quoted as telling the newspaper - in connection with Move America Forward -- "Have you ever seen that H&R Block commercial where the guy leans in and says, 'I see an audit'?"

"For the office of a United States senator to threaten reprisals from the IRS against an organization that is supporting our troops in harm's way is absolutely reprehensible," said Mark Washburn, executive director of Move America Forward.

"One of the grounds used to threaten impeachment of President Richard Nixon was that he politicized the IRS and tried to use IRS audits of his political enemies to shut them down or silence them. That is precisely what Senator Durbin's office is doing now, Washburn said.

"There is no place for that in American politics, and Senator Durbin must be held accountable."

Perhaps this is nothing more than one smart-aleck young staffer's sense of humor. But with power comes responsibility, and no one connected to a US Senator's office should make such statements lightly, particularly on the record. If the staffer was out of line, Sen. Durbin needs to say so. That said, given the extraordinary lack of common sense, decorum, and sense of proportion -- decency, in a word -- demonstrated by the Senator himself, who can be surprised that he would hire staffers who share his vices?

One thing's for certain, however: if Move Forward America is audited, we'll all know who's responsible.

When reduced to its elemental structure, all the pompous posturing and pseudo-intellectual pontificating of the pro-"reform" lobby, otherwise known as the McCain-Feingold backers, amounts to little more than four words: You can't say that!

In spite of the clarity of the First Amendment, we all know that Congress passed, the President signed, and the Supreme Court upheld the 2002 BCRA, which did precisely what the Constitution forbids: regulate political speech. By taking this step, the political class, broadly defined, has done immense harm to democracy in order to further ensconce itself in power.

The winners: career politicians, big media, and their helpers in foundations and universities. Their enablers: liberal trusts such as Pew, Ford, and George Soros's Open Society. Their defenders: a broad range of pundits, from those who should know better to those who know little; politicians; judges; and, again, big media.

I revisit this topic today because the Washington Post has turned, for at least the third time this year, to free lancer Brian Faler to pen a story on the FEC and the future of blogging. Today's article follows the path cleared by Faler back in March and May. He interviews, without properly identifying, sources who receive money from Pew -- that is, who are overtly part of Pew's grand strategy to restrict the efficacy of the franchise by manufacturing what John Fund called an "Astroturf" campaign for campaign finance reform. You'll recall that we learned of this thanks to Sean Treglia, the former Pew officer whose too-candid speech in March 2004 was recovered by Ryan Sager a year later. (Mark Tapscott wasn't too impressed with Faler back in May.)

For example, Faler again quotes Larry Noble, who heads the Pew-funded Center for Responsive Politics. But the bigger story this round is Faler's use of Carol Darr of the Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet at George Washington University. Who funds IPDI? You guessed it: Pew. Who helps run IPDI? Sean Treglia and Larry Noble, both of whom sit on IPDI's board.

By now, even skeptics might take note of this well-established pattern, which I and many others have written about often. Liberal foundations, the institutes they fund, and many of the reporters who cover the fields those foundations support, aren't fond of the notion that you or I can voice our opinions on politics, either via the Internet or, as they decreed years back, through campaign donations.

But of course there are liberals who are as opposed to these efforts, and of these none has stood out more than Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, who runs the immensely popular blog Daily Kos. Markos has had several run-ins (see also here) with the Carol Darr mentioned above, one of which led Darr to pen this petulant June letter to FEC Chairman Scott Thomas.

No surprise there, however, since Darr is on record as calling blogs "crack dens for political junkies." Blogs have, you see, "coarsened the political dialogue," because they've "lowered the barriers into entry into politics."

And that's just the problem, according to people such as Darr, Noble, Treglia, Trevor Potter, John McCain, Russ Feingold, Christopher Shays, Marty Meehan, and a host of others who've devoted considerable portions of their careers to reigning in political speech. The Internet has leveled the playing field for political commentary to such a degree that these guardians of the old regime feel threatened, and with good reason. And, as we've seen, they'll stop at nothing to protect their privileged positions atop the political class. But, given their collective actions, these days it isn't the vulgar and rude (fr. vulgus and rudis) who're acting like peasants guarding the keg.

Update: Mark Tapscott links to this letter to the FEC. Written by the leaders of several conservative organizations, it calls on the FEC to do the right thing and simply leave the Internet alone.

Update II: The Lonely Centrist, who began blogging yesterday and uses the pseudonym "the Centerman," served in Democratic and Republican administrations and says he's "modestly famous." Whoever he is, he already has three good posts on the dangers of campaign finance "reform." Part I, Part II, and (you guessed it) Part III. If he keeps blogging at this rate, he'll amass quite an archive in short order. Be sure to add him to your blogroll.

Update III: Via Mark Tapscott, Paul at Power Line has the text on John McCain's extraordinarily rude public treatment of FEC commissioner Brad Smith. Keeping to his fear of Smith, McCain refused to shake his hand (in fact, withdrew his quickly upon recognizing Smith) and called him "corrupt." Allison Hayward, now an ace blogger at Skeptic's Eye (and a superb source on all things FEC), at that time worked for Brad and witnessed the event. I chronicled McCain's longstanding opposition to Brad Smith in early March.

“I’m on base,” the slower kindergarten kid says, “and you can’t tag me.” The faster kid chafes with frustration but often grudgingly accepts the terms dictated in order to continue with the game. Sometimes political interactions assume similar contrived kindergarten playground characteristics. On the one hand it might be a way of informally handicapping the game; on the other it masks the truth: the kid hiding save on base really could not compete fairly without the imposition of artificial restrictions. In the political battlefield we occasionally see a particular phraseology unfairly removed from terms of discourse by one party.

“You are questioning my patriotism!” is the latest adult manifestation of the kindergarten “base” concept. By classifying patriotism as an unchallengeable characteristic, one side gives itself free reign to say anything regardless of how egregiously damaging to our country. When called to account for their statements, the parties then assume the mantle of aggrieved victims. They seek refuge on “questioning patriotism base,” defying anyone to tag them as unpatriotic. As ridiculous as this posturing might seem, so far it has worked. People, including elected officials, have called the president, the vice-president, other officials, American service men and women, and our country in general the most repulsive names.

Senators like Dick Durbin and Ted Kennedy have raised Hitler’s ghost and resurrected the Cambodian killing fields and the Soviet gulags in order to destroy the image of the American military around the world. They have impugned the integrity, honesty, and loyalty of every American military member and of the entire chain of command from President Bush down to the newest-minted muddy boot grunt. Nor have such statements been, as they are occasionally rationalized, a mere “misstatement” or slip of the tongue. Such men as the above named Senators, Congress members like Nancy Pelosi, Charles Rangel, un-elected officials such as Howard Dean, and former officials like Al Gore, all have contributed to the hyperbole of the accusations all the while adroitly dodging personal accountability for their statements by using the “questioning by patriotism” dodge.

So, okay, let’s break the kindergarten standards by which they and others have managed to slip the bounds of responsibility: When people of their stature and position make the kinds of statements that they have done, flinging wild, unsubs