Despite being at war and getting hit pretty hard by Mother Nature this year, James Glassman outlines why 2005 was a very good year.

Here's to 2006! Everyone have a safe and happy New Year's Eve.

Via The State.com:

South Carolina fails to ensure the state’s youngest children are prepared for the academic challenges they will face in public schools, a Circuit Court judge ruled Thursday.

Aww, that's nice. And no doubt true. Too bad this isn't for a judge to decide.

Pri. Va. Tize. Your. Schools.

Bang. Head. Against. Wall.

...not having lawmakers around the last couple weeks passing needless legislation?

President Bush has been criticized for "mission creep" in Iraq by opponents and even some supporters virtually since the war began, but here's a report we should all be able to live with.

Via CNN:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- When troops from the Georgia National Guard raided a Baghdad home in early December, they had no idea that their mission in Iraq would take a different turn.

As the young parents of an infant girl nervously watched the soldiers search their modest home, the baby's unflinching grandmother thrust the little girl at the Americans, showing them the purple pouch protruding from her back.

Little Noor, barely three months old, was born with spina bifida, a birth defect in which the spinal column fails to completely close. Iraqi doctors had told her parents she would live only 45 days.

[...]

The soldiers brought Noor to a U.S. military base for medical examinations and got friends and charities in the United States to help get her the surgery that could save her life.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and his office are working to speed up the process of getting a visa for Noor's grandmother, who will accompany her to Atlanta.

Regardless of what you think about the Iraq war, it is indisputable that no nation in the history of the world has ever done as much as the United States when it comes to abiding by the rules of war, engaging the enemy with honor, minimizing civilian casualties, and doing just as much to rebuild countries as it did to destroy them. The moral compass of our country is directly reflected by the actions of our armed forces, and for that no country can be prouder.

I believe it was National Review's Jay Nordlinger who once said, and I paraphrase, the U.S. can't catch every sparrow that falls from the tree, but no nation has ever tried to catch so many. I know there are many Americans who believe we shouldn't go sticking our collective nose into other people's business, even if that means rescuing millions from the repressive and murderous grip of brutal tyrants if we have the chance, but I just can't buy into that line of thinking yet.

[HT: Michael Yon.]

I stumbled across a website today that is just too cool. NationMaster is a central data source that graphically compares nations using statistics on just about everything. Bookmark it now and have fun playing around with it.

Here's a chart correlating life expectancy and economic freedom. This might be a handy reference the next time some "charitable" politician (say, maybe Hillary in a couple years) starts yapping away about the viability of nationalized health care.

I've only begun to fool around with the statistics here, but I thought this page was even better. It simply lists countries by economic freedom. Interestingly, the U.S. ranks seventh. But what's even more interesting is that you can read bottom up for a good indication of how economic freedom directly correlates to political freedom. It's no coincidence that North Korea - currently the world's most brutal and repressive regime - ranks last.

Here's one of my favorite passages from Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom:

Economic arrangements play a dual role in the promotion of a free society. On the one hand, freedom in economic arangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself. In the second place, economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.

Clearly political and economic freedom are not mutually exclusive concepts. But here's an interesting question: Why does Friedman say that economic freedom is a means to the end of political freedom, and not the other way around?

Political freedom originates with the state. In the early 20th century Fascist Italy and Fascist Spain were hardly politically free societies, yet in both countries capitalism was the primary economic arrangement. On the other hand, economic freedom originates with the individual. A nation that grants its people the right to vote - that operates essentially as a democracy - can nevertheless continually centralize its economy to the point where its citizens eventually become wards of the state.

By definition, economic freedom ensures that each individual can pursue his preferred occupation absent limitations imposed by the state, where one becomes most politically free and therefore achieves maximum total freedom.

Michelle Malkin points to a new Rasmussen poll showing that 64% of Americans believe the NSA should be allowed to intercept phone calls between terrorism suspects abroad and people living in the United States.

This could be because the practice is apparently legal, as the guys at Power Line explain. Whether it should be, however, may be another matter. Libertarians like Jacob Sullum argue that we should all worry about what he calls Bush's "sweeping assertion of executive power," and such healthy skepticism is, well, healthy. But at the same time, the civil libertarian watchdogs need to start offering some viable, non-invasive alternatives to wiretapping that will allow us to effectively identify terrorist threats before they materialize in the form of mushroom clouds or more disintegrated skyscrapers. I suspect this is where the confusion begins.

What happens when you think both critics and supporters of President Bush's prosecution of the domestic war make good points? Federal court deliberations are usually preferable to flipping a coin when determining the legality of government action (though all too often it seems the latter method is employed), and at his point, at least, it looks like Bush has the legal authority to order surveillance of communication between suspected terrorists and their enablers in the U.S.

Though most libertarians oppose the war in Iraq, most likewise favored the use of military force in Afghanistan. However, an important question remains: If we were wrong to invade Iraq with the intention of confronting and killing terrorists, yet the commander-in-chief should also be prohibited from surveilling on the home front suspects who might turn out to be innocent, where does this leave us? I don't know if I have the answer to this, unless of course that answer is "Sitting on our thumbs," but if worthwhile tactics are abundant it would seem like we'd hear about them every now and again.

Certainly one very effective means of collecting intelligence on prospective terrorists is to use informants, and though Bill Clinton virtually put an end to such practices I don't believe we employ them to a large extent today. I've read that intel agents prefer monitoring satellite feeds through plasma TVs in Langley to "diarrhea duty" in the desert, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn that agencies like the NSA and CIA - so often hostile to Bush administration policies to begin with - retain the Clinton restrictions on cutting deals with criminal informants in exchange for vital intelligence (giving the impression of "rewarding" unsavory behavior is apparently worse than sustaining preventable terrorist attacks).

Given the classified nature of intelligence activity, it's difficult if not impossible to tell how effectively we're gathering information on our enemies. And despite the glee most liberals exhibit whenever Bush seems to be faced with a dilemma, I strongly welcome a debate on acceptable levels of executive power in a time of war. I just hope that in the process we can place the welfare of the country and its citizens above our quest to malign a sitting president.

It's incredible that liberals decry the Bush tax cuts as unfairly targeting the poor when the poorest Americans receive the biggest percentage cuts. But such shrieks of alarm are rendered all the more useless when federal tax receipts for October and November have risen for the third year in row, according to Jerry Bowyer.

Federal tax receipts for October and November (the first two months of fiscal 2006) were $288 billion. This is up from the first two months of fiscal 2005 ($271 billion), 2004 ($254 billion), and 2003 ($244 billion).

The Laffer Curve, invented by Arthur Laffer, depicts the point at which the government collects maximum revenue while people continue to work hard. Over the past three years, the federal government has continually increased its tax revenues while cutting taxes. And as Bowyer notes, these increases suggest that we're still on the wrong side of the curve, where tax rates are too high.

Jacob Sullum has the scoop on the 4th Circuit's rebuke of the Bush administration over its attempt to evade the Supreme Court.

The 4th Circuit case involves Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in 2002. Declaring that the arrest had foiled a plan to detonate a radiological bomb in the U.S., the government soon transferred Padilla to military custody, where he has remained ever since.

[...]

In a September decision, the 4th Circuit concluded that Congress' post-9/11 resolution had given the president the authority to keep Padilla in military custody, assuming the allegations against him were true. But two months after this decision, the Bush administration unveiled a criminal indictment of Padilla, asked the 4th Circuit for permission to transfer him to civilian custody, and said the court's ruling should be withdrawn because it was no longer necessary. Taken aback at the government's reversal, the court said no.

In an opinion by J. Michael Luttig, the three judges who had upheld the president's detention authority said they were disturbed by the appearance that the government was trying to avoid Supreme Court review. They also noted that Padilla's indictment, which charges him with conspiring to support terrorism and commit violence abroad, "made no mention of the acts upon which the government purported to base its military detention of Padilla."

Luttig wrote that by keeping Padilla in a brig for three and a half years without trial, then deciding to try him after all once a court approved the detention, the government "left the impression that Padilla may have been held for these years, even if justifiably, by mistake." By pressing the claim that the president has the authority to indefinitely detain anyone he labels an enemy combatant and then seeming to back away from that claim, Luttig said, the government left the impression that "the principle in reliance upon which it has detained Padilla...can, in the end, yield to expediency with little or no cost to its conduct of the war against terror."

Sullum writes that we're witnessing a backlash as a result of President Bush's disregard for other branches of government, and that the courts may be growing more skeptical of the executive. This may well be true. However, I think there's an important point here that should not be overlooked. Mr. Sullum insinuates that if even Michael Luttig, who was and may still be on Bush's short list of SCOTUS nominees, rebukes the president, then Mr. Bush must certainly be guilty of abusing his own powers.

We have a court system in place specifically to check the authority of both the executive and legislative bodies, just as the latter branches are responsible for checking the former. What should be emphasized here, I think, is not the idea that Bush is some wanton villain eager to corral innocent Americans (and I am not suggesting this is what Mr. Sullum implies), but that Judge Michael Luttig - a conservative who draws the ire of liberal ideologues - is committed to adhering to the rule of law.

Readers of this blog know that I chafe at the idea of "liberal" vs. "conservative" judges, as both labels suggest that all judges are beholden to a particular party that will ultimately expect them to apply its agenda in the courtroom. But the point is this: Liberal judges are far more likely to view the Constitution as a "living document," open to interpretation suitable to today's pet causes of the Left, than are conservative ones, who, as we've seen in this case, are beholden to the law - even if their decisions at times run counter to the wishes of their biggest fans.

I have the distinct honor of guest blogging for the next couple days over at the Club For Growth (scroll up) for my good buddy Andy Roth, who is doing some holiday canvassing of the midwest this week and experiencing the dismay associated with dial-up internet connectivity. I can't hold a candle to Andy's economic sense, but I'll do my best in his stead and I appreciate the invite.

A New York Times op-ed by pro-nationalized healthcare Robert Fitch, “Big Labor’s Big Secret,” argues in favor of U.S. automakers reducing their costs by $1,300 per vehicle by enacting a nationalized health plan. Fitch points out, however, that big private unions, and health providers and insurance companies, profit too much from operating their own health plans, so are not in favor of losing this cow of legal and shady aggrandizement. As Fitch says,

“most [private-sector unions] have created huge companies to administer their workers’ plans, giving them a large and often corrupt stake in the current system.”

In 1990, I audited the voluntary health benefit plans offered by a major union’s local. There were about three-dozen such offerings, most duplicative, of overpriced-underbenefited policies for odd diseases and treatments, from which substantial “administrative fee” commissions were paid the union local, and several union employees garnered employment to process. I recommended replacing them all with three or four better plans, allowing also the elimination of the several union processors. One of the major insurance providers ran to the union local president reminding him of the amount they paid into his treasury. I was immediately fired, none of the lousy plans were eliminated, and the fees and jobs continued. Workers’ welfare be damned.

Lest anyone think that I am reflexively anti-union, I come from a union family. It’s ingrained in me that I have never crossed a picket line, though this is more in solidarity to the very elderly among my family who led and participated in early unionization.

My previous three posts (here, here, and here) on the excessive costs from public unions’ pension and health plans bankrupting state and local governments reflect more on our elected representatives’ irresponsibility in thinking they could electorally profit from these overcozy deals and pass the costs on to present and future taxpayers, and less on union leaders whose role is to negotiate for the most they can get.

Similar insensitivity obtained among private companies’ leaders in allowing cushy pension and health deals. Granted in return for labor peace at an earlier time when the pricing of their products was not subject to foreign competition, so the costs could be passed on to consumers, these plans are now bankrupting our largest companies, the auto companies most noticeably.

The response during the early ‘90’s from our largest corporations was to initially support Hillarycare, to pass these costs over to the taxpayers. The largest insurance companies also initially agreed, to pass their claims liabilities on to the taxpayers while profiting from claims paying contracts with the government. The revolt by smaller insurance companies and insurance brokers, and among firmer Republicans and those seeking partisan advantage, derailed Hillarycare. Since, various legislation has driven most of the smaller health insurance companies out of many markets, and insurance companies have halved commissions to brokers who are now a less powerful political force.

So, large private companies are now fighting with their unions to trim benefits costs, under threat of bankruptcy proceedings. But, at the same time they are still quietly pushing for federalization of their legacy costs through nationalized health schemes.

There may now be little tax treasury momentum favoring them, but watch out if somehow the public’s tax treasuries' balances blossom due to strong economic growth or some other factor.

The New York Times reports on the different rates of clean-up in the hurricane-ravaged gulf coast.

PASCAGOULA, Miss. - There is an eerie stillness here on Edgewood Avenue. Toys, broken glass and random pieces of furniture are strewn across yards. Not a single person is in sight. The only movement, nearly four months after the passing of Hurricane Katrina, comes from the stray cats that jump in and out of the ripped-open homes.

Just west down the Gulf Coast, on Oak Street in Biloxi, the ground vibrates and the air is filled with the smell of diesel exhaust as laborers, on excavators, clean up after the storm, leaving behind empty lots, ripe for redevelopment.

There are many reasons for the difference between the lack of progress in Pascagoula and the quick cleanup in the Biloxi area. But officials here point fingers at what they consider the No. 1 culprit: the federal government and, in particular, the Army Corps of Engineers.

There are likely not too "many" reasons for the difference in clean-up progress (or the lack thereof). There is simply no comparison between outfits subsidized by tax dollars and those that operate for profit when it comes to efficiency and proficiency.

Damn that "greedy" private sector!

Radley Balko points to the GOP's continuing attack on the free market in the form of Congressman John Boehner's plan to further protect the student loan business from competition.

Balko nails it here:

The student loan business is government ineptitude in action. In deciding that "everyone who wants to should be able to go to college," the federal government distorted the college education market. With all that "free money" available, colleges and universities could jack up tuition prices with virtually no correction. Everyone wanted to go to college. And everyone could find financing to do so. So we've had a 25-year (at least) seller's market. Which means that many of the people who likely could have afforded college on their own before all of this happened now have to take on debt. Oh, and because everyone's now getting a bachelor's degree, the degree itself is devalued. It's what a high school diploma once was. And so we've created a generation of young adults saddled with massive student loan debt (disclosure: I'm one of them).

To make matters worse, government then grants monopolies on the lending side, and puts all sorts of restrictions on refinancing. It amazes me that if a private institution wants to let me consolidate my private and public loans by paying them off, then taking me on as a client on terms more preferable to me -- a transcation that would benefit both me and the lender -- the government won't let it happen.

When I taught at the College of Southern Maryland - a two-year community college - over half the students in my college writing class were using CSM as an affordable springboard to a four-year school, as many fiscally responsible folks have been doing for years. And others were simply getting an associate's degree under their belt while they figured out what they wanted to major in. Not everyone can afford Harvard (I certainly couldn't), and not everyone belongs at Harvard (I certainly didn't). But unfortunately we've adopted the attitude throughout society that it's somehow "unfair" that certain people can acquire things other people can't - and that it's the government's responsibility to jump in and bridge the gap.

Balko is exactly right to imply that Congress simply views higher education as another entitlement, origins of which began years ago when the Carter administration created the Department of Education, which gave federal lawmakers license to butt their noses into state and local schooling. In short, if you want to go to college, it's virtually just another "right" that the state is obligated to provide.

There is a fiscal Katrina – from unfunded promises to public union employees for generous pensions and health benefits -- that will overwhelm most cities and states finances, and thus wipe out either or both their taxpayers or their social services and infrastructure.

On top of the roughly half-trillion dollars of underfunding in city and state defined benefit pension plans, they have incurred an even larger unfunded liability for their employees’ retiree health costs.

I’ve written on this twice recently. First, I reminded readers how this came to pass. Here, I recounted what legendary Transport Worker Union founder Mike Quill told me in the late 1950’s:

“At the table, Mike Quill explained to me how government works: It’s all just politics among friends, all out to make their constituents happy, and to hell with the beancounters…”

Then, I pointed out here that:

“[Democrats] are so beholden to public unions as to bear almost the entire responsibility for the breakdown of the social contract with the rest of the urban citizenry through oversize public union wages and benefits starving the budgets for other needs.”

Today’s New York Times reports “Huge Rise Looms for Health Care in City’s Budget.” New York City and State face having to reveal on their books an annual liability five to ten times larger than they have been, on the order of $10-billion a year and more, for the promises of retiree health care they’ve made. “These are huge numbers, not a one-time cost.” Across the country, such huge unfunded liabilities must be revealed over the next several years by cities and states, under new accounting rules for public entities.

As I wrote, and the New York Times repeats, “a failure to find a way to finance the yearly total will eventually hurt their ability to borrow money affordably.” This 5-10% of city and state budgets for retiree health care, plus huge amounts for funding pension promises, must either be funded by higher taxes, curtailments of services, and – after colossal battles with public unions, who are not backing down – increased contributions toward their own retirement by the tens of millions of civil service workers.

If you think the domestic battles and divisions over Iraq, or the search for fault after Katrina, are something, just stand by for far larger battles over public pensions and healthcare.

UPDATE: My posts on the liabilities for public employees’ pension and health retirement plans drew many comments. Two are particularly interesting.

Mark Tapscott reminds us that the federal civil service retirement system initiated reforms several decades ago to move toward a more defined contribution arrangement, so the federal liabilities today are not so crushing as at the city and state levels. The cities and states cannot expect, for this and other reasons, a federal taxpayer bailout.

Dana, at Common Sense Political Thought, seems to agree with me about the magnitude of the problem, but appears defeatist as to solving it because civil service workers can’t be replaced or competed with from abroad. I beg to differ. At some point, locality-by- locality, private sector replacements will be found for many civil service workers, and much non-front line functions can be outsourced, even overseas, or automated. Some functions can be privatized. Sure, police and firefighters won’t be replaced or outsourced, but even some of their back office work can be. It may take months to train safe bus drivers and train conductors, and they will be, and as the NYC MTA already is aiming to toll takers and others can be automated out.

Dana also posits that bankruptcy is not an option, as with private companies. Again, as in NYC during the '70's and Orange County in the '90's, and San Diego functionally today, this is not so. When Wall Street refuses to underwrite profligacy and the bills for payrolls and public services can't be met, radical reforms are forced upon ostrich-like mayors and city and county councils.

In the interest of disclosure, both my poor mother and her better off sister are retired NYC workers, whose retiree benefits have been wonderful, for them and their children not having to step in. There will be many Republicans, as with the much smaller battles over PBS funding, who will find it self-servingly comfortable to buck restraints. However, the buck must stop somewhere, and will.

“In cities across the country, voters may cast ballots, but it’s really the employees who rule.” So says Joel Kotkin and Harry Siegel in The December 21 New Republic’s, “The Transit Strike and Democrats.” (Behind the New Republic’s subscription wall, but available at Joel Kotkin’s website.)

“During the past 30 years, public employee unions have largely won the battle for urban political power by default,” as “other traditional power centers…have over time receded from urban politics.” Although “Democrats are usually seen as the beneficiaries of this situation,” they now are so beholden to public unions as to bear almost the entire responsibility for the breakdown of the social contract with the rest of the urban citizenry through oversize public union wages and benefits starving the budgets for other needs. “It is Democrats who control most big city halls. It is Democrats who are tied most intimately to the public center unions. And it is Democrats who will lose out most when cities they run no longer work.”

The New York Times reports the “Transit Strike Reflects Nationwide Pension Woes.” As the report sums, “Many officials and fiscal experts assert that across the nation government pension plans face a shortfall of hundreds of billions of dollars.” Nonetheless, “Labor unions, for their part, say that the worries are overblown.”

Interestingly, although staunch supporters of Democrat taxes that would squelch economic growth, their hope lays in Wall Street: “They argue that much of the shortfall in pension financing could be erased by a strong stock market in the next several years.” As the creditworthiness of our cities crumbles under the weight of public employee wages and benefits eating up from 60-80% of the budgets, and basic social services – from education to roads to parks and libraries – suffering, Wall Street is leery of loaning more, putting more pressure on public employee beholden politicians to act more responsibly.

“Nationwide, 90 percent of public-sector workers have traditional [defined] benefit plans … while just 20 percent of private-sector workers do.” At the same time these gold-plated watch wearers’ health plans are so generous as to cost two to four times the cost of private sector plans. They are simply unaffordable, regardless of how nice for them.

The other major beneficiary of comparatively generous pension and health plans are in academia, pushing up tuitions by rates treble and quadruple the rate of general inflation or of wage increases in the private economy, and sorely pressing families’ budgets. Again, there are limits to taxes, and parents’ raided retirement savings, and loans that weigh down graduates.

It is inevitable that public unionists and academics will have their benefit programs trimmed, and they have to more frugally budget and save just as the rest of Americans.

As this happens, their responsiveness to Republican principles favoring lower taxes and higher savings, assuming that Republicans reassert these core platform programs, will whittle at two main legs of the Democrat Party. (Minorities traditionally Democrat who work in the private sector are, also, slowly turning Republican, as they realize personally where their future security is.)

The rule by public employee unions of the Democrat Party will be either America’s or the Democrat Party’s ruin.

2006 can be a telling year of political realignment, if the Democrats continue on their path and if Republicans refind theirs.

The three main legs of the Democrat Party, in running counter to the basic jobs of government to provide for national security and core social services, are vying for the Party’s destruction. The new year may see that self-immolation pick up speed.

The Moveon-Pelosi-Reid-New York Times defeatocrat wing of the Democrat Party alienates many Americans by its harping opposition to firmness in confronting any foreign threat, and its influence over the news is lessening as it exhibits more desperation. The academic enclave claimed by graduates of the ‘60’s protest movements is seldom taken seriously anymore in public policy debates, its students are increasingly organizing to counter ideological uniformity, and financially beleaguered parents, alumni and public treasuries are imposing greater demands for accountability. The public employee unions bankrupting of budgets, which denies civic and social services to all, especially urban dwellers, are enraging tax-payers and other Americans.

The often extreme programs of secularism, moral relativism, and social liberalism that cuts across these three legs of the Democrat Party, also serves to chase away those observant of the sense of thousands of years of decency in Western civilization.

Republican principles and organization, and the independent development of the alternative new media, can take much of the credit for the shift in voter perceptions. But, far more, it is the Democrat Party itself that deserves most of the credit.

The primary factor that can either speed or slow the Democrat Party’s hoisting by its own petard is the Republican Party’s own failure to get its act together. As the Party, at least nominally, in control of the Congress and most State offices, Republican’s “big tent”, which has and will work to its electoral benefit, at the same time allows many in whose primary interest is neither the Party’s nor the nation’s.

That includes the corruptions of profiteering that a few of those privy to the levers of power abuse. That includes the self-serving pork and program spending supported by many Republicans, regardless of merit, while tilting away from social spending programs necessary to the mobility of a strong society toward those benefiting the more financially able. That includes unwillingness by some who control the margin of Congressional votes to follow through in support of fundamental intelligence and armed preparedness.

The “big tent” was erected on a foundation of fundamental values of governance. Permitting political termites to undermine the integrity of that foundation is the primary threat to continued Republican ascendancy, and the primary aid to slowing the self-arson to which the Democrat Party is subjecting itself. Unless Republican leaders strongly return to these fundamental integrity values, instead of 2006 becoming a year of realignment it will just be another teeter-totter over the abyss of confused domestic weakness and increased national perils abroad.

I'm just getting around to the computer today after running around trying to secure my wife's Christmas gift. I figure I can link to the present since she doesn't read this blog (the nerve of some people).

My friend Andy Roth will be on the John Batchelor radio show Monday night at 8pm EST, so be sure to check it out here if you're not still in your ham- and turkey-induced coma. Andy's always got intelligent stuff to say on the topic of economics.

We're supposed to be at our friends' house as we speak for a holiday party tonight, and my wife just walked in from a family party, so I'd better get going.

I plan on being on the computer over the weekend, but in case you'll be taking a hiatus from reading, I'll wish you a merry you-know-what now.

As a proud American, Marine and Jew, I love this drawing substituting the raising of the Chanukah Menorah, instead of the American flag, at Iwo Jima. Judaism introduced the concept of G-d, Honor, Country to the world, and Chanukah celebrates that.

Let me quote some excerpts from the narrative of this drawing:

Did Chanukah happen years ago, or is it happening now? Looking at the events today, you start to wonder. The story of a little candle pushing away the monster of frightening darkness, of human sensibility overcoming terror and brute force, of life and growth overcoming destruction -- the battle is very much alive within each of us, and in the world outside of us.
After all, the victory of light over darkness is the cosmic mega-drama -- the ongoing story of all that is. It reoccurs at every winter solstice, at every dawn of each day, with every photon of sunlight that breaks through the earth's atmosphere bringing it warmth and life-nurturing energy. With every breath of life, every cry of a newborn child, every blade of grass that breaks out from under the soil. With every flash of genius, every stroke of beauty, every decision to do good in the face of evil, to be kind where there is cruelty, to build where others destroy, to move humanity forward when others pull us toward chaos. And that is Chanukah.

Chanukah is about not being afraid of the dark. We need that even more today, when the enemy is terror itself. Our own media fuels the fire, spreading fear throughout the land. Yet we go on with life, refusing to be terrified of every letter in the mailbox. And in a precious country half way around the world, our brothers and sisters defend themselves from an enemy that has no borders and knows no rules.
Our challenge, whether we are manning the front lines or fighting rush hour at home, is to strike a match and light up the dark. That's all it takes to discover that this is not a dark closet after all. It is a magnificent creation, full of wondrous things. In fact, that is why darkness was allowed in this world to begin with: So that we would learn the power of the light each one of us holds within, and appreciate the beauty that stands around us.

King Solomon writes, "Everything has its season& A time to be born, a time to die & a time for war, a time for peace." Truth does not lie at any extreme, but in a wise and careful balance. In Judaism, peace is the ultimate ideal. Yet, if one is being attacked, Jewish law forbids a passive stance. Peace and the sanctity of humanity requires, at times, that one must defend oneself, family, and country. We must not only work to build a world of light, peace and freedom; we must also defend it.
At the time of the ancient Greeks, the world could tolerate evil. Not so today. Human technology has reached a point where humanity can no longer coexist with evil and survive.

At one time, the state of technology was such that the most lethal weapon known to humankind was a wooden stick with a sharp stone tied to one end of it. Eventually, the most lethal weapon was a stick of TNT with a fuse lit at one end of it. Until recently, it was a missile with a nuclear device at one end of it.
Today? A comb with a razor blade tied to one end of it?
No. Today, the state of technology is such that the most lethal weapon of mass destruction ever created is a human being who believes that death is the gateway to paradise. Before such a creature, the security forces of the world are as tissue paper against a savage spear.

The Maccabees felt they had no choice but to stand up against the oppressor, despite all odds. Today, humanity has no choice but to destroy evil, whatever it takes. It is no longer a dream, but a necessity.

Not that Mexico is alone among nations in practicing hypocritical foreign relations, but Mexico must take a top spot with regard to its emigration and immigration policies. The U.S. refusal to enforce employment controls must also rank right up there.

As Mexico’s presidential elections approach, the ineptitude weakened PAN President Vicente Fox stirs up nationalism and fear among the population of losing escape to better economics and hope. Fox calling the U.S. House’ passage of another 700-miles of border fencing as “shameful”, the “Mexican government has taken out ads urging Mexican workers to denounce the United States. It also is hiring an American public relations firm to…counter growing U.S. concerns about immigration,” and is “recruiting U.S. church, community and business groups against the proposal.” His Foreign Minister echoes, “Mexico…will not allow a stupid thing like this wall.” The report cites one Mexican as saying he “felt betrayed” because “We have a binational life….It’s against what we see as part of our life, our culture, our territory.”

Meanwhile, “Mexico's federal Human Rights Commission acknowledged yesterday that the country mistreats many immigrants – mainly Central Americans – and uses some of the same methods on them that it opposes in the United States.” A national inspector for the rights commission says, Mexico’s “population law [Article 123] does include prison terms [and “fines up to $28,220”] for illegally entering the country,” compared to criminal penalties proposed in the U.S. House bill. The report continues: “The commission presented a report that found overcrowding, poor treatment and generally bad conditions at many of the country's 51 immigration detention centers and 68 other holding facilities. The detention areas hold mainly Central American immigrants before they are deported back to their home countries. The facilities often lack working restrooms, blankets, sleeping mats, adequate food and medical care.”

Another version of this AP report carries this:

“Jose Luis Soberanes, president of the rights commission, said that Mexico also uses many government agencies, such as the police and the military, to detain undocumented migrants, even though Mexican law technically doesn't allow that. "One of the saddest national failings on immigration issues," Soberanes told a news conference, "is the contradiction in demanding that the North (the United States) respect migrants' rights, which we are not capable of guaranteeing in the South," along Mexico's border with Guatemala.”

For more about Mexico’s treatment of illegal immigrants into Mexico, see Mexidata.Info, and Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch.

Also, see the report from the Heritage Foundation on “Strengthening America’s Southern Flank Requires a Better Effort” for a serious detailed examination of national security implications of a sieve-like border.

For more discussion of border fences, research the contradictions among European and other international condemners of Israel’s fence restricting murderers from waltzing into its markets and hotels, for example, here, also referencing EU proposal to fence off the Eastern borders of Poland and Hungary to keep out job seekers from Belarus and the Ukraine. Or, here, how the fence erected by Spain has reduced illegal African entry from 10,000 to a few hundred a year. Or, here, about India erecting fences along its border with Pakistan. Or, here, about agreed fencing between Thailand and Malaysia.

I live in San Diego, where its highway caution sign drawing of illegal immigrants running across the road became an international hoot, but where erection of border fences has reduced the flow significantly. Unfortunately, the incidence of deaths of illegal crossers in the searing desert inland has increased, as has their victimization by “coyote” guides. Mexican authorities have responded by distributing safety guidebooks to illegal crossers. Increased fencing and border patrols, in the House bill, may reduce some of this.

What with Mexico’s rampant political corruption, its state petroleum industry also only benefiting politicians, and the exodus of manufacturing jobs from there to Asia, the in excess of $20-billion a year and growing of remittances from its illegals working in the U.S. is one of the top props of the otherwise crumbling regime.

Lastly, see the fairly thorough, and fairly long, fact-full analysis of illegal immigration’s impact that I wrote last May for the Augusta Free Press, along with the list of recommendations for reforms.

Ultimately, neither fences, nor patrols, nor criminalization of those caught will do more than partly stem the tide. Only serious penalties and enforcement against U.S. employers, including homeowners, and serious reforms within Mexico, will stem the tide. Most of the social welfare, education and healthcare costs to the U.S., overwhelming the many net economic and productivity benefits from the more educated, come from those with less than High School education even though these latter are mostly admirably very hard-working, industrious, and merely want to improve their wages by coming here. It’s just a fact of life that the U.S. no longer offers near the extent of jobs for the uneducated nor upward mobility steps, and that our own budgetary needs are sorely stretched and becoming direly more so.

At the same time, it is in the U.S. interests to have a stable neighbor to its South. But as we’ve learned in the MidEast after 50-years of propping up corrupt regimes, stability isn’t near enough. Instead of investing many billions in border sealing, I’d rather see bold initiatives to agree on economy building measures in Mexico that also require major political reform there. The billions we are spending would be better used for that.

Cafe Hayek's Don Boudreaux takes NYT columnist Paul Krugman to task today over his contention that America's rich get rich at the expense of the poor, and substantiates such an absurd claim by pointing to a piece in yesterday's Wall Street Journal by Stephen Moore and Lincoln Anderson, who show that folks in all income categories have grown wealthier in recent decades.

The problem with the reasoning of people like Krugman is that they believe wealth creation is a zero-sum game, like checkers, where there has to be a loser for every winner. I.e., that there is some fixed pot of money available from which we all draw, where every dollar grabbed automatically leaves one less for someone else to snatch.

Certainly under a socialist economic model or any dictatorship Krugman's ideas make sense. But when it comes to capitalism, where dynamic interactions between individuals specializing according to their comparative advantages create continual opportunities for new wealth, he is simply out of touch.

“Domestic spying” – that’s what the MSM is calling the secret National Security Agency program monitoring outgoing and incoming international phone calls of suspicious persons inside the United States. What a great characterization if it’s your aim to mislead the public into believing that the bogey-man Bush is lurking around the corner constantly spying on you. Frankly, the government isn’t efficient enough to monitor every international call, which means they have to choose their subjects and calls wisely. Whether such a program is legal has been covered by our own Bruce Kesler, by Orin Kerr extensively at the Volokh Conspiracy here, and here. Even the New York Times reports that surveillance of international calls is a gray area where the Supremes haven't given us much clue as to whether it's constitutional.

I am thankful that the Senate extended the Patriot Act for six months, because its tools are absolutely essential to our continued fighting of the enemy, however the filibustering that Republican Senators Chuck Hagel (Neb.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), John E. Sununu (N.H.) and Larry E. Craig (Idaho) did against our President, who sought a permanent extension, was absolutely inexcusable. Similarly, those Senators calling for hearings on a top-secret NSA program that has been part of the strategy leading to the United States not being attacked again since September 11 are feckless media sluts who wake up each morning, look in the mirror, and imagine the seal of the presidency emblazoned on their chest. But Americans are no fools, there is a reason we chose Bush over Kerry, Reagan over Carter, Ike over Stevenson, and Truman over Dewey: because when Americans enter the ballot box, they want men who aren’t fickle, who don’t flitter with the wind. Dick Durbin: you’ll never be president.

Via Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate leaders reached a bipartisan agreement on Wednesday to extend for six months key provisions of the anti-terrorism USA Patriot Act set to expire in 10 days.

The accord, to be voted on later on Wednesday, would provide time for Congress to try to resolve differences over safeguards for civil liberties before making most of the provisions the Bush administration deems necessary for its war on terror permanent.

While the senators deliberate, they should read this article by John Schmidt, who served under President Clinton and explains why Bush had the legal authority to authorize wiretaps on incoming international calls.

David White, an editor for American Enterprise and former administration speechwriter at HUD, today wrote an op-ed for the New York Sun, “The White House Wakes Up,” (available here, instead of at the Sun’s site due to its blockage on non-subscribers) that is the most cogent summary of the frustrating White House non-communications strategylessness during the past year.

As White points out:

“[T]he president and his team finally may have realized that they have been a punching bag for far too long, and they actually have a case to make. Over the past few years, the hardest thing for any conservative journalist to admit is that the White House has been entirely unhelpful….If it weren’t for FOX News, talk radio, conservative magazines, and the blogosphere, it’s doubtful that any good news would be heard over the chorus of the administration’s critics.”

I may be one of those White refers to who has not been willing to admit the feebleness of Bush’s communications. He and I have argued about it, as I have with several other experienced journalists. I took the position that a President cannot be always combative, as it becomes strident, that there are values – civil and practical – in always trying to give the benefit of the doubt and try to engage in polite discourse, and Americans appreciate that, that this President is not always a hard conservative and deserves leeway, and that there are arguments better left to others at times (i.e., the Swiftees’ deracination of Kerry’s false self-hagiography).

Nonetheless, although I still maintain those beliefs, White is correct that the White House had drifted far too far away from sustaining the commitments to which it pledged itself, the nation, and the administration’s most willing supporters.

It is now all too evident, even to me, that the adamant and vicious, meanspirited and mealy-mouthed, underhanded and mendacious opposition by the Democrat leadership and its many camp-followers in the mainstream media is unrelenting regardless of the issue, its factual basis, or the prosperity and national security of America. In short, the left has waged a vicious communications war on a largely undefended battlefield before now.

As White concludes:

”With the 2006 elections just around the corner, today’s Democrats are poised to launch their third consecutive antiwar campaign. If the White House is serious about once again engaging with the mainstream press and the American people, then 2006 may actually turn out well. Because as long as the Deaniacs control the Democratic Party, it’ll be like watching Groundhog Day over and over again.”

At this point in the administration, in the delicate balance of accomplishment in the MidEast, in the serious erosion of our economic future promised by runaway spending and entitlements, the stakes for the next generation – here and abroad – are too high not to blast off the communications battlefield the Democrats' dangerous pretensions to actually caring.

The New York Sun’s editorial yesterday said should the Metropolitan Transit Authority “reward the union’s illegal behavior” it would send a “message of appeasement” elsewhere. The Sun continues, that’s “how they used to work in the New York of the 1960’s and 1970’s.” But, the Sun said, “it is not a way to run a successful city in the competitive global economy.”

I laugh, at just 58, at another of my Forrest Gump moments. The Sun’s editorialist missed that this began, actually, back in the 1950’s, and I’m a witness to how.

It was 1958 or ’59, and my social studies assignment from P.S. 246, Walt Whitman Junior High School in Flatbush, Brooklyn, was a term paper about how local government works.

Not having much of a clue, I went to New York City Hall to find out and wandered about asking people in the halls. They all rushed by, with puzzled and frustrated looks on their faces how to quickly respond. In a big conference room, the famous, feisty, Irish orator who built and led the Transport Workers Union, Mike Quill, a genuine New York-style colorful character, was in one of his fascinating harangues of the press threatening a strike if he didn’t get what he wanted, and he’d bring the city and mayor to their knees as he beat them with his union shillelagh.

As the crowd cleared, I asked Mike Quill my broad question. He flashed his broad smile and said I looked familiar, probably thinking me Irish due to my red hair and freckles. I told him I’d seen him speak years before at the Jewish Workmen’s Circle, while my grandparents’ cousin, David Dubinsky, founder of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, was bouncing me on his knee. I guess that vouched for my membership in the socialist workers movement that Quill had been active in since his youth, so Mike Quill invited me to join him and his crew at lunch, at a neighborhood restaurant on 14th Street that served heaping portions of the best corned beef and cabbage I’ve ever had.

At the table, Mike Quill explained to me how government works: It’s all just politics among friends, all out to make their constituents happy, and to hell with the beancounters, and tories, and other allusions to old enemies and battles.

When I turned in my termpaper, all I got was an incredulous look from my teacher, a shake of the head, and note that I’d missed the assignment’s requirement to discuss the structures and laws. I received a C.

After I told this story to a younger New Yorker last night, I checked my memory online, finding this entry at Wikipedia:

“Quill and the TWU became even more important figures in New York City politics in the 1950s. He was a key supporter of Robert F. Wagner, Jr.'s campaign for mayor of New York and became a lightning rod, based on his radical past, for Wagner's Republican opponent and unfavorable press attention. While the union repeatedly threatened to take the subway workers out on strike, it managed to settle with the Wagner administration short of a strike on each occasion.”

The ground was laid in the 1950’s, as the New York Times reports, that New York City’s current “pension outlays for the transit workers have soared to $453 million this year, triple the amount in 2002.” The Metropolitan Transit Authority’s director of labor relations summed its negotiation objective: “If you know a tidal wave is coming and you can still play around in the surf because it’s not here yet, anyone would think that’s foolishness.” A two-tier pension plan is offered, trimming costs of pensions for future workers. The current union president says that would “sell out the ‘unborn.’ “ A former NYC labor commissioner reflects the city “might have picked a union that was more willing to consider the subject.”

The Christian Science Monitor editorializes, “Public Unions On Trial in the Big Apple.” The current pension plan allows full retirement at 55, which the union wants lowered to 50, in addition to wanting a 24% pay raise over the next 3-years on top of the current base wage scale of $47-55,000. Commenting that, in addition, “healthcare costs for state and local government workers are almost double that of private workers,” the Monitor points out that, “Only the political will of elected leaders can resist the well-monied clout of unions and serve society as a whole.”

Sorry, but that’s not enough, as we here in San Diego have learned to our rue. San Diego has a $2-billion shortfall in meeting pension and healthcare contracts arranged cozily between our mostly Republican councilmen at the time and unions, in a city that spends 80% of its budget on labor costs and cuts back all other services. Only reaching that extreme, exposing the backroom deals, and the refusal by Wall Street to lend any more, has led to the problem even being addressed by our current leaders. They are still hemming and hawing, and their promised reforms only promise relatively minor future restraints. Two council seats up for election pit major union-funded candidates who may well win, against more moderate candidates who make hazy promises of reforms.

Sorry, but that’s not enough, even when a leader takes a stronger stand. California’s Governor Schwarzenegger was only able to mount a $35-million campaign for the initiatives that would restrain the public unions’ power that’s all admit controls California, versus their $150-million, and lost. That’s not terribly surprising, not only given the relative fund-raising strength of public unions and their fierce determination to maintain their power, but also that today in America there are as many net beneficiarees of government spending programs as there are taxpayers.

Such severe deficits are becoming the norm across cities and states. Most have more limitations on their tax powers than at the federal level, and their shortchanging of local services is more immediately evident and painful to voters. Most are dependent on Wall Street financing to meet operating and other needs. Over the next several years, both due to increased investigation and revealment of the huge unfunded liabilities the states and cities have ammassed, over $1/2-trillion and rapidly growing, and the new requirements to accurately carry these liabilities openly on their books, Wall Street may prove the savior forcing restraining runaway public union emptying of everyone else’s pocket.

That day is rapidly approaching at the federal level as well, and another trillion or so dollars of unfunded Social Security and Medicare promises come due over the next decade. Defense spending, even with our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, is a far smaller percent of our GNP than in the ‘80’s. Calls by supporters and critics for a larger military able to meet those and other commitments more effectively and at less disruption of reservists’ civilian lives are unlikely to be afforded. Other domestic programs will increasingly feel the scapel. Pork projects, loved by benefitting locals, and by the legislators who use it to get reelected, will have to be more restrained, causing evident discomfort to voters. Taxes will increase, as will interest rates affecting all consumers of everything. The increasingly competitive international economy does not permit the U.S. the luxery of crippling our economy under increased tax burdens on our productivity.

The “unborn” transit workers the NYC transit union president feigns concern for are directly in conflict with all the other unborn, not to mention all the born citizens of America who wish to earn enough and to retain enough of their earnings and public services to live in a reasonably comfortable society.

As my friend concluded our reminiscences and discussion last night:
“It is unfortunately the case that the ideas that were advocated as reforms in the early 20th century turned out to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. The added nonsense involves taking the dead goose and running a car over it.”

The public employee union power that has been building since the 1920’s, that took off in the affluent 1950’s, is now bankrupting America and increasingly sucking the wherewithal out of the very social services that union-supported politicians love.

Don't laugh too hard.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- In an extended courtroom outburst, Saddam Hussein charged Wednesday that he has been beaten "everywhere on my body" while in detention and has the marks to prove it.

Hussein also alleged that his codefendants also had been beaten and "tortured" by Americans.

One of the co-defendants, Hussein said, was beaten with the butt of a rifle "until he fell down."

And U.S. forces aren't in Baghdad either, right?

And everyone suffers.

John Stossel has a great piece today criticizing the legitimacy of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which forces companies to spend money on wasteful, growth-inhibiting accounting regulations that they could otherwise reinvest in their company or elsewhere.

The law's defenders claim its good consequences outweigh its costs. But if that's so, why not let investors figure it out? If certain accounting practices make companies better investments, investors will put their money in companies that use those methods. If having your accountant grill you for not having a written policy on hiring and firing will make your business sounder, you don't need the federal government to force you to do it.

[...]

We don't need the government to force businesses to spend half their profits on accountants, because free markets police themselves. Those that serve customers well are rewarded with more customers; those that do well for investors attract them. Bad guys who cheat get a reputation for cheating. They lose customers, lose investors and go out of business. [...] Enron and the other recent business disasters are evidence of the market working. Government regulators didn't discover the deceit. Enron's lies were revealed when private security analysts raised questions and private investors started dumping the stock.

Sarbanes-Oxley reminds me of the days when I taught fourth grade (and I apologize if this is a clumsy analogy). I confess that there were a handful of times when some of the kids got so out of control that I threw my hands up in the air and made everyone just put their head on their desk. Game over. Time to shut up. Everyone suffers.

For the most part, my strict disciplinary policies were enough to compel even the snottiest little punks to toe the line. But in a school largely composed of kids from single-parent families, even the best teachers were destined to struggle with student behavior from time to time. Still, that never seemed like a good enough excuse to justify punishing kids who behaved at the expense of those who didn't. So I figured out ways to punish only those who deserved to be punished.

Most of the time I kicked the bad apples out of class and made them sit in the hallway until they decided to behave. Other times I would surprise the kids who consistently behaved with some type of reward. Right in front of everyone. And especially in front of the kids who rarely behaved. (For the record, I absolutely hate it when teachers center their behavior policies around reward systems from the get-go, like passing out candy in return for X amount of good behavior.)

My expectation of respect and reputation for well-disciplined students found me constantly "rewarded" with some of the most challenging students each year, which tended to make any accomplishments that much harder to achieve. However, the few times I unfairly ended up taking my frustrations out on all students simultaneously were nevertheless exceptions to my own rules, not policy.

Sarbanes-Oxley disgracefully punishes honest companies for the unlawful actions of a few. Whether you're a schoolteacher or politician, you should be able to see why that's a terrible way to do business.

Barely.

The Senate narrowly passed a $40 billion budget-cutting bill today, with Vice President Cheney casting the deciding vote after the chamber split 50-50 on the measure.

Taking his seat as president of the Senate after cutting short a trip to the Middle East, Cheney announced he was voting for the legislation, making the final tally 51-50 in favor of passage.

Why was Dick Cheney forced to cast the deciding vote? Because Senate RINOs continue their obstruction to what little fiscal responsibility the Republican Party attempts to retain.

The five maverick Republicans-- Susan M. Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Gordon Smith of Oregon, Mike DeWine of Ohio and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island -- joined James Jeffords, an independent from Vermont, and all Senate Democrats in opposing the bill, which would allow states to impose new fees on Medicaid recipients, cut federal child support enforcement funds, impose new work requirements on state welfare programs and squeeze student lenders.

I just love how the media so casually refer to these "moderate" Republicans as "mavericks," as if they're somehow nobly bucking a party that everyone knows is just itching to screw the poor and the elderly. Entitlement spending has spiraled out of control since Republicans assumed control of Congress in 2002.

Republicans took heat a couple days ago for attaching ANWR drilling to the 2006 defense bill, which Senate Democrats are still attempting to filibuster. But with squishy "maverick" Republicans capitalizing on waning Republican commitment to fiscal sanity, such a maneuver was just as likely a motion against dissenting Republicans as Democrats.

UPDATE (5:14): Despite the budget bill's passage, Tim Chapman explains how Democrats have won on a technicality for the time being.

[HT: Mark Tapscott.]

Now you can get a traffic ticket in Prince George's County, Md. without even being in your car.

Oy vey.

[HT: Radley Balko.]

I meant to link to this video at Michael Yon's website the other day, so here's a better-late-than-never post.

I'm anxiously awaiting his impending dispatch on the Iraqi elections from December 15. In the meantime, check out this great piece today by Alan Dowd in The American Enterprise Online.

Iraq continues its relentless, rapid, and remarkable march from repression to representative democracy not because of vote-counting bureaucrats, but because the Iraqi people are courageous. They have defied mass murder and mayhem, terror and torture, to vote. They had to walk to the polls because of a nation-wide Election Day ban on automobiles (aimed at preventing car bombs). In fact, even though car bombs killed policemen and mortars rained down on schoolhouses in the days preceding the election, three out of four Iraqis stood exposed to the terror—and faced it down yet again.

If, as one Iraqi voter told the New York Times, “Iraqis aren’t used to democracy, we have to learn it,” then they are quick learners. In fact, we could learn something from them. Few Americans would walk to their polling places; fewer still would risk their lives to vote. After all, lines and rain are enough to keep millions of us away from the ballot box.

How true.

Andy Roth is pleasantly surprised at Mayor Mike Bloomberg's tough stance against New York transit "workers" who walked off the job this morning.

Ditto that. But I'd like to see Bloomberg take the next step. Every TWU picketer in the city should be fired today. Every single one of them signed a contract knowing full well that state law prohibits strikes by public employees. And I can't help myself, but I wonder how much less efficient the MTA is today than it is on any other day when its employees actually show up for work.

Mayor Bloomberg, a millionaire many times over, should shut down the MTA and purchase it from the city with his own money. After all, union president Roger Toussaint inadvertantly summed up the problem with public transportation yesterday when he said, "If we're not afraid of the rats in the subway, we're not afraid of the rats above the subway."

Private companies have an incentive to keep their employees happy, meet transportation schedules, and keep their properties clean and functional. If they don't, they don't make any money. Publicly funded operations, on the other hand, have little incentive to provide quality service when revenue is guaranteed. And when unions demand inflated wages for marginal service, they can expect to receive little sympathy from the people footing the bills as well.

Is the international wiretapping just revealed legal? I offer my opinion that it will not be ruled by Congress as illegal but will be restricted further by Congress. Further, the President may build on his success at sawing off the extreme Democrats’ limb on this issue as he has on their overharping exaggerations regarding 2002 intelligence, but must be careful not to go out on his own limb by overdefensiveness of his wiretapping actions.

The outcome of this latest brouhaha will be judged in the political sphere, and that’s where it belongs.

Lawyers don’t and won’t agree among themselves on the laws involved here, and commentators have only a glimmer of what specific national security threats or benefits may be involved and may never if so sensitive. Their contributions to the political debate – as opinion leaders -- will be important, if not crucial, however. More important will be the crystallization of public sentiment – usually of greater collective common sense -- as imperfectly measured by various polls and elections.

Indeed, the sooner that public opinion is moved toward a conclusion the better, both for our national security and our nation’s ability not to be overly distracted from other pressing priorities at home and abroad.

Those opposed to or critical of the President’s actions appear to have the weight of momentum on their side at present, particularly in Congress and the mass media. The stubbornness on both sides of the aisle to allow anything but Marquis of Queensbury rules to apply to interrogations of foreign terrorists caught in the act, and the only slim majority of Senators voting cloture on the filibuster of extending the Patriot Act by those who want tighter judicial restraints, strongly indicates a less than overwhelming support for war time firm measures.

This is consistent with the proper inclination among Americans and our representatives in favor of protecting civil liberties.

It is also consistent with, to Congress’ discredit, its pattern of second-guess grandstanding regardless of the injurious consequences to effective intelligence or to fulfilling its oversight role. The disinclination of Congress to reform itself in accord with the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations – even as it shuffled the intelligence agencies deck and created additional bureaucracy – indicates its lackadaisical devotion to provide for more efficient oversight and direction of intelligence. Surely this reading of Congress’ usual reluctance to specifically preauthorize explicit firm measures, coupled with its sievelike irresponsibility toward national security secrets, fed into the administrations’ reluctance to return to the well for additional authority from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or, later, the Patriot Act.

Public opinion polls show less support for such genteel or responsibility-avoidance Congressional deliberations, but not a public uproar at they being too extreme. The President has lately tried with some success to increase public support for his firmness. But, sadly, overwhelming public outrage at the excess neutering of American intelligence would only follow another catastrophe tied to feeble intelligence, and would probably be as relatively short-lasting.

The predictable instant calls for impeachment from the furthest left Democrats, the same who ideologically find fault with anything done in the nation’s defense, are telling only of their own 10-30% of the public (depending on the issue). More serious, and to be seriously respected, is the larger proportion of the opinion elites – liberal, middle-of-road and many conservative – concerned at defense of basic American values of civil liberties, and most believing that defense of them is on or pretty near par with defense of national security. There is a fundamental respect for due process among Americans that cannot be denied nor discouraged, nor should it be as it is in the interest of everyone, of all stripes, over time in a vibrant and stable democracy.

There are many side issues that will be considered, not least of which is the clearly illegal exposure of national security secrets, especially in a long line of such by intelligence agency employees opposed to official policies, and the selective exploitation of these disclosures in ways and timed by the mass media targeted at political influence.

Before offering my suggestions, here I reveal my inclinations toward automatic defense of civil liberties except in extreme overriding instances, for strong congressional responsibility and accountability for exercising constitutional oversight, deference to presidential judgments subject to constitutional and traditional restraints and guidance, unswerving insistence on sustaining process to provide for both lasting fairness and soberly moral ends, and the overriding importance of national security when warranted in deciding the specific course of interpreting the above.

The proactive posture by the President that will be most effective, for the preservation of national security, political peace, presidential and Congressional authority, and the enlargement of public education and support of an energetic defense posture, will be:

1. As he has learned, to his rue from prior reliance on others to carry the defense of our Iraq engagement, and corrected to a turnabout in public perceptions, a vigorous public defense by the President of both the vital necessity and legality of his tapping actions, coupled with as much detail as deemed prudent;
2. The President should quickly propose a highly specific Act to Congress both empowering emergency and fast-reaction intelligence measures and at the same time agreed, secure means of follow-up review and authorization by foreign intelligence judges, with consultation with a responsible joint intelligence committee of Congress that is also held to strict penalties for disclosing secrets. This is consistent with the constitutional authorities, issues, and political and public dispositions involved. It will defuse all but the most extreme hawkers of crassly exploitive power abuse charges, and put them on the defensive. Such cooperative legislation is analogous in some respects to the precedent of the War Powers Act, where deference to its Congressional intent is provided by additional formal consultation with Congress and agreement to Congressional acts authorizing armed forces abroad “concurrent with” instead of “pursuant to” the War Powers Act. It is also, more currently, consistent to the administration’s, albeit reluctant, acquiescence to the principle that the constitutional term “reasonable” in terms of treating captured terrorists provides emergency latitude to the president.

This two-pronged offensive will constructively both sanely frame the debate and force appropriate responsibility and accountability upon Congress, while focusing public attention on the core critical issues in faith at its usual collective sense in judging national priorities. Extremists of the left and the Democrat Party will be further exposed as acting in ways irresponsible and contrary to American interests in domestic and international security, and further isolated.

The management and proper treatment of secret intelligence wiretaps is not a legal matter, nor should it be as the law is not specific enough. This is a political matter – the proper realm of cooperative negotiation and of encouragement of public support for necessary national security measures that also reasonably defend our basic values.

In a refreshing fit of sobriety, The New York Times reminds us that the Democratic Party was the party of racism, slavery, and Jim Crow.

In the period immediately after the Civil War, the Democratic Party-ruled government in Wilmington, which was then North Carolina's largest city, was displaced by a coalition that was largely Republican and included many blacks. The loss of power stirred dissatisfaction among a faction of white civic leaders and business owners.

The tensions came to a head on Election Day, Nov. 9, 1898, when the Democrats regained power, according to historians largely by stuffing ballot boxes and intimidating black voters to keep them from the polls. Not waiting for an orderly transition of government, a group of white vigilantes demanded that power be handed over immediately. When they were rebuffed, in the words of the report, "Hell jolted loose."

Truly interesting - and pathetic - that modern Democrats are the ones who spin the sins of their past onto Republicans today, insinuating that common sense measures like requiring identification to vote could even come close to firing into the home of a black family or sticking the butt of a rifle into the face of a man trying to cast his vote.

Read the whole thing.

Freedom House, that elite human rights organization founded by Eleanor Roosevelt and managed by the likes of Jim Woolsey and Mark Palmer has released its annual Global Survey on the state of freedom in the world.

There's great news to report:

On the whole, the state of freedom showed substantial improvement worldwide, with 27 countries and one territory registering gains and only 9 countries showing setbacks. The global picture thus suggests that the past year was one of the most successful for freedom since Freedom House began measuring world freedom in 1972.

Although the countries of the Middle East lag behind other regions in areas such as adherence to democratic standards, independent media, the rights of women, and the rule of law, the past year witnessed modest positive trends. Lebanon experienced the most significant improvement; its status improved from Not Free to Partly Free due to major improvements in both political rights and civil liberties that followed the withdrawal of Syrian occupation forces. Elections exhibiting increased competition in Iraq, Egypt, and the Palestinian territories; the introduction of women's suffrage in Kuwait; and improvements in Saudi Arabia's media environment are among other encouraging signs in the region.

According to the survey, 89 countries are Free, the same as the previous year. These countries’ nearly 3 billion inhabitants (46 percent of the world's population) enjoy open political competition, a climate of respect for civil liberties, significant independent civic life, and independent media. Another 58 countries representing 1.2 billion people (18 percent) are considered Partly Free. Political rights and civil liberties are more limited in these countries, in which the norm may be corruption, weak rule of law, ethnic and religious strife, and a setting in which a single political party enjoys dominance. The survey finds that 45 counies are Not Free. The 2.3 billion inhabitants (35 percent) of these countries are widelytr and systematically denied basic civil liberties and basic political rights are absent.

Aside from the Middle East, countries in the former Soviet Union were most notable for improvements in freedom during 2005. In addition to Ukraine, improvements were noted in Kyrgyzstan, whose rating improved from Not Free to Partly Free, and Georgia. Positive change was also noted in Latvia and Lithuania, two states where democratic freedoms had already been consolidated.

But the report finds fault with the United States' "widespread use of sophisticated forms of gerrymandering," which "reduced competitiveness in congressional and state legislative elections." Of course, the Reuters article linked to above make sure to note that "the US Supreme Court agreed to hear a case dealing with redistricting in the state of Texas engineered by former House Republican majority leader Tom DeLay that allowed Republicans to pick up six more seats in the House of Representatives in the 2004 elections."

There are few sites on the Internet with writers more committed to the concept of one person, one vote than this one. However, if Freedom House was taking a snipe at the Texas redistricting plan, than their critique is misplaced. Prior to Delay's so-called gerrymandering plan, Democrats held a majority of the congressional seats in Texas, despite the fact that Texas consistently voted Republican for president, and every statewide official was Republican. Who did the gerrymandering? Was it DeLay or the prior Democrat legislature? Whose votes were being inflated by artificial lines?

It has been awhile since I've blogged regularly on this site, despite being the so-called CEO of the organization that manages the site. However, the past few weeks, the hope and courage exhibited by our Iraqi friends, and Mr. Bush's strong and forceful defense of our efforts there and for freedom and democracy globally, have inspired me to come back -- to work harder each day to fight for the freedom of those persons living in China, North Korea, Cuba, and everywhere else where freedom doesn't ring.

I'm not one to take polls too seriously, but I have got to believe that there is a correlation between Mr. Bush's markedly improving poll numbers and his and Mr. Cheney's vigorous defense of our efforts in Iraq. Frankly, Mr. Bush and I both got lazy in 2005. I let valiant patriots like Bruce Kesler and Trevor Bothwell carry the flag, and boy did they ever carrying our site to new heights not reached before. But I want back in the game, to defend democracy here and globally, and in 2006 I aim to fight with my president.

Update: R.J. Rummel at his Democratic Peace blog has even more on the Freedom House study here. And I commend those of you who haven't read the findings of the ADVANCE Democracy Act, which has passed the House, but is lingering in the Senate, to do so. The Act's findings verify Rummel's post that democracies make peaceful neighbors because their citizens live in greater prosperity and less strife than countries ruled by dictators.

Via The Washington Post:

In a bleary, pre-dawn vote today, the House narrowly passed a sweeping, five-year budget plan for cutting spending for Medicare and other entitlement programs by $39.7 billion, shortly after voting to open the Alaskan wilderness to oil drilling.

The authority to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration -- long sought by President Bush, energy companies and Republican leaders -- was attached to the fiscal 2006 defense spending bill that has widespread support in both parties because of its funding for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The defense bill passed at 5:04 a.m. by a 308-106 vote after a bipartisan parliamentary maneuver to scuttle the bill over the drilling provision fell 13 votes short. The budget bill passed the House at 6:07 a.m. on a 212-206 vote, with nine Republicans joining a united Democratic Party in opposition.

This budget vote was part of a conference agreement on the Deficit Reduction Act, which originally passed the House last month only after provisions for drilling in ANWR were stripped by "moderate" Republicans.

In a controversial but nifty move, however, Republicans attached authority to drill in ANWR to the 2006 defense bill, eliciting complaints from Democrats like Harry Reid, who accused Republicans of daring Dems to vote against a defense bill and complained that this was an unrelated provision that violated Senate rules. Such a maneuver might have stretched legislative rules, but I think it's even more of a stretch for Democrats to claim that reducing our dependency on foreign oil - namely oil purchased from the Middle East - isn't a national security matter.

That said, this was my favorite part of the report:

"This [budget] bill is the largest raid on student aid in history," said Rep. George Miller (Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House education committee. "At a time when millions of American families are struggling to keep up with skyrocketing tuition costs, it is shameful for Congress to raid student aid in order to pay for tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans."

It amazes me that liberals are incapable of understanding (or at least unwilling to admit) that federal subsidies - guaranteed money for universities - are one direct cause of rising tuition prices.

Over the past three years, domestic opponents of the U.S. in Iraq have seen their negativity proved hollow or overblown time and again – from their predictions of fierce armed resistance from Saddam’s army and major U.S. casualties, or he blowing up the oil fields, to presenting the insurgents as undefeatable, to expectations that most Kurds and Shia would be vengeful, to saying that Iraqis don’t care about participating in free elections.

These opponents current negativity is focused on expectations of civil war in Iraq that will destroy freedom’s chances.

Paul Starobin asserts that “Iraq is now well into the bloody sequence of civil war.” But, he inflates the scale of conflict to do so, by associating Sunni insurgents with all Sunni, and being in opposition to all Shia and Kurds, and they to Sunnis.

Developments in Iraq instead are more positive, as most Sunnis, Shia and Kurds, and those less sectarian, separately target building their electoral power, in order to negotiate acceptable power-sharing arrangements with each other.

Readers of the mainstream press can expect many dire articles over coming months describing the intense jockeying for position in the coming parliamentary coalition, vituperous arguments over amending the constitution to be either more inclusive or more protective of past and current power positions, and sporadic vigilanteeism coupled with irredentist insurgents seeking to spur internecine hatreds.

Six months or a year from now, those hair-raising media features will also prove excessive, and – barring a wholesale conversion of most of the media to optimism or more honest reporting – will miss the true trend toward expanding democracy and peace in Iraq, and its beneficial effects elsewhere in the MidEast.

To appreciate the issues it is instructive to consider the theoretical underpinnings among differing foreign policy experts.

The debate between “imperial” or “democratic” peace (between power imposed compared to values created peacefulness)is a more internationalist version of the domestic foreign policy debate between “realists” and “neoconservatives” (between measures strictly defined and limited to the immediate threats to our homeland and a more proactive and preventive approach).

Whether called “realist”, “neoconservative”, “imperialist” or “democratic”, these schools of thought are aligned on there being real foreign threats to U.S. and world security and that it is necessary to present a firm and sometimes forceful political and military counter. The imperial and realistic schools focus more on resources and costs, while the democratic and neoconservative schools focus more on benefits.

Notably self-excluded from these schools are the pure pacifist and isolationist schools, relatively minor threads, and the larger coalition of adherents to foreign or far-left causes opposed to America and American ideals, the timid and self-involved who always find reasons (excuses) for feeble or no action, combined with some politicians and opinion elites whose agenda is more focused on exploiting natural domestic unease at the face of forceful argument or battle. Their antipathies to American and Iraqi success are irredeemable. Their impact will remain troublesome, but unsuccessful as long as progress is seen made in Iraq.

The leading academic proponent of the imperialist peace is history professor Niall Ferguson, author of Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power. He argues that the U.S. is the most powerful empire ever, and considers American selflessness basically beneficial for the world. However, he worries about our short attention span, feet of clay, and refusal to get our domestic spendthrift politics in order to support empire requirements. Ferguson believes:

“Anglophone imperial power, engaged in what we now call ‘nation-building,’ but which a hundred years ago was called ‘empire,’ can successfully transform the institutions of failed states or rogue regimes, and lay the foundations for the things that both British and American empires believe in: namely, free markets, the rule of law, noncorrupted administration, and ultimately, a representative government. The lesson of the British imperial experience is that this can, indeed, be achieved, but it takes really quite a long time for this to happen.”

Ferguson says in Monday’s L.A. Times that “democratic peace”, however, in Iraq is a neoconservative misconception:

“The region could be stabilized (and the security of Israel enhanced) by a forcible democratic revolution, beginning in Iraq….The ‘democratic peace’ theory states that two democracies are always and everywhere less likely to go to war with one another than two dictatorships, or a democracy and a dictatorship….what the democratic peace theory doesn’t tell you is the number of countries that have plunged into civil war after democraticization….[After pointing at Lebanon in the late ‘70’s] If the history of 20th century Europe is anything to go by, all the ingredients are now in place for the biggest conflagration in Middle Eastern history. The only good news is that the first thing to go up in smoke will be the theory of democratic peace.”

In this view, the most we should realistically expect from Iraq and the Middle East is less direct threat to the U.S. but unleashed ongoing internal and regional turmoil and bloodshed. One might say this outcome would fulfill minimal “realist” expectations, and be enough for U.S. security interests. Any better will be lucky.

Indeed, even this would be quite an improvement over the previous state of affairs: hundreds of thousands of Iraqis murdered and brutally tortured by the Saddam regime, it starting a war with Iran that killed hundreds of thousands more, invading Kuwait, fermenting war and terror in other MidEast states, accumulating WMD’s and the technology to quickly rebuild them, not to mention the unleashing of greater freedom in Lebanon, peacefulness in Libya, and less repression in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

The proponents of “democratic”, compared to imperial, peace are more expansive in their goal. President Bush states: “History has shown that free nations are peaceful nations.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice points out, “Why Promoting Freedom is the Only Realistic Path to Security,” because “centuries of international practice and precedent have been overturned in the past 15 years.” In contrast to the predominant nation state, today severe threats also arise from nonstate actors, and in contrast to the age of empire from which Ferguson draws his lessons, mere suppression of ethnic rivalries within states is nonlasting and breeds fiercer explosions once the repressive state is dissolved – as seen in the Balkans. Indeed, contrary to Ferguson’s example of Lebanon, ethnic conflict erupted there when external actors – Palestinian and Iranian attackers of Israel basing there, they stirring Israeli invasion, then Syrian occupation – overthrew the peacefully arranged accommodations among domestic ethnic and religious groups.

As Rice says, “The Promise of Democratic Peace” is “that democracy is the only assurance of lasting peace and security between states, because it is the only guarantee of freedom and justice within states….[S]tability without democracy will prove to be false stability.”

That’s another key distinction of democratic from Ferguson’s imperial peace -- aside from the unstable repression of ethnic differences and its failure to develop accommodations, which ultimately undermine peace. American goals today are not Britain’s 19th century goals. We are not primarily struggling over natural resources, as alternate sources and types of energy are available, and reasonable conservation can reduce current needs drastically. We are basically struggling for elemental American and Western ideals and way of life, for freedom and human dignity, and the security to enjoy and enlarge those. As President Bush has judged:

“The terrorists do not merely object to American actions in Iraq and elsewhere, they object to our deepest values and our way of life. And if we were not fighting them in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Southeast Asia, and in other places, the terrorists would not be peaceful citizens, they would be on the offense, and headed our way.”

It is unclear whether and to what extent the interregnum between repression and freedom, and how far along the path to freedom, is most dangerous to unleashing civil war. But, it is clear from both the statistics and the history of democracy that the further along the way a nation is, the less likely is a significant outbreak that will reverse the course.

Again quoting President Bush:

”From the outset, the political element of our strategy in Iraq has been guided by a clear principle: Democracy takes different forms in different cultures. Yet in all cultures, successful free societies are built on certain common foundations -- rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, a free economy, and freedom to worship. Respect for the belief of others is the only way to build a society where compassion and tolerance prevail. Societies that lay these foundations not only survive, but thrive. Societies that do not lay these foundations risk backsliding into tyranny.”

A betting man will be prudent, and lay odds on an outcome somewhere between the imperial and democratic peace. In either case, America, the West, and the MidEast will be the winner. However, a betting man interested in larger outcomes will bet on, and work for, and persevere in, maximizing the chances for developing fuller freedoms and democracy in Iraq and its environment. That is President Bush. The price of both bets is similar, with the sole difference being the faith and determination behind one or the other.

________________

Footnote: Dimensions of Nations, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1976; National Attributes and Behavior: Dimensions, Linkages and Groups, 1950-1965, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1979; “Dimensions of conflict behavior within and between nations,” General Systems: Yearbook of the Society for General Systems, VII (1963), 1-50; “Testing some possible predictors of conflict behavior within and between nations,” Peace Research Society, Papers I, Chicago Conference, 1963, 79-111; “Dimensions of conflict behavior, 1946-1959,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, X (March, 1966), 65-73; “Dimensions of foreign and domestic conflict behavior: a review of empirical findings,” Theory and Research on the Causes of War. Edited by Dean G. Pruitt and Richard C. Snyder. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1969, 219-228.

Mine certainly isn't. According to The Club For Growth's 2005 congressional scorecard, which gives a partial view of each lawmaker's voting record, Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) scores a fat 0% - one big fat goose egg - on the Club's gauge of fiscal responsibility.

Hoyer, who masquerades around southern Maryland as a champion of the military in order to gain support from civilian employees at Pax River NAS - and likewise has way too many people down here fooled into believing he actually has conservative tendencies (!) - couldn't even muster a vote in favor of an eminent domain amendment (HR 3058), a bill that merely seeks to protect private property rights.

Click here for a description of each bill referenced by the Club's scorecard.

Don Boudreaux nails the misinformed media for promulgating the myth that trade deficits are synonymous with debt.

Singer Mary J. Blige trashes America in London's Guardian.

"The blacker you are, the worse it is for you. If you're mixed, you've got a shot. If you cater to what white America wants you to do and how they want you to look, you can survive. But if you want to be yourself, and try to do things that fit you, and your skin, nobody cares about that. At the end of the day, white America dominates and rules. And it's racist."

I also hear that the dumber you are, the worse America is for you.

[HT: Drudge.]

Rep. John Murtha speaks out again, this time in an op-ed in The Arizona Republic.

Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course with our military entrenched in open-ended nation building. Continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region.

I'm almost at a loss for words. What an incredibly obtuse statement on the heels of one of the most profound accomplishments in the history of the Middle East just last week.

Murtha quotes a parent of a "military member" who is in Iraq:

When the Bush administration "was selling this war to our nation on TV with talk of a 'mushroom cloud' over an American city, I fully supported doing whatever it took, and no sacrifice would have been too great. But now that it's apparent that we were all 'misled,' I can no longer justify nor rationalize the sacrifice of one more of our 'country's finest' while this administration attempts to figure out how to save face!"

I've said this before, and it apparently needs to be repeated over and over, but if John Murtha actually believes President Bush willfully misled the American people in order to justify our invasion of Iraq - if he knew Saddam Hussein posed no potential threat to the security of the United States but put our troops in harm's way for months on end anyway - then he should draft a bill to impeach the president. He not only has the right to do so, but he is obligated. If he's not prepared to act on what are otherwise baseless slanders, his opinions aren't worth as much as the ink they're printed with.

As Thomas Sowell noted recently, never before in history were people foolish enough to think that you could predict when you'd be able to pull out of a war zone or that you'd ever announce it to your enemies even if you could.

Murtha's disdain for our involvement in Iraq is so transparent that he can offer no better excuses for cutting and running than these:

The war in Iraq has caused huge shortfalls at our bases in the United States.

Much of our ground equipment is worn out and in need of either serious overhaul or replacement.

We must rebuild our Army. Our deficit is growing out of control.

This is outright silliness. Who doesn't realize countries face shortfalls at their home bases when its troops are deployed overseas? And if our equipment truly is "worn out" and needs to be replaced, or if we need to rebuild or increase the size of our army, then by all means we should remedy these problems. After all, the Constitution actually calls for providing the national defense.

But our deficit is not growing due to military spending. Our deficit is growing because people like John Murtha - who unfortunately reside on both sides of the aisle - believe that the federal government should simultaneously fund welfare programs like Social Security and Medicare and drop billions of dollars every year on education.

True to form, Murtha chooses to highlight only the negative aspects of the war, which in any debate renders his outlook virtually useless.

Michelle Malkin notes Time's lame choices for "Persons of the Year."

In what has become an annoying trend, President Bush has again capitulated to the fancies of his detractors. Only this time, his capitulation could cost American lives, both on the battlefield and off.

Via The Washington Post:

President Bush reversed position yesterday and endorsed a torture ban crafted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) after months of White House attempts to weaken the measure, which would prohibit the "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment of any detainee in U.S. custody anywhere in the world.

This "torture ban" was unnecessary. Torture is already illegal, evidenced by the United States' ratification of the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment (UNCAT) in 1994. As National Review's Andy McCarthy explai