Why do they keep letting her in the White House?

Helen Thomas says she'll "kill herself" if Dick Cheney runs for president.

It wasn't a serious threat. She was ranting.

I will not say "Run Dick! Run!" Wouldn't be nice. Wouldn't be Christian. Wouldn't be...

See Dick. See Dick run. See Helen. See Helen croak herself.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE (Monday, 8/1/05, 8:10 AM)

Oooooh. Now Helen's really mad.

I've been discovered!

I'm so happy (Sob!).

Michael Silence at the Knoxville News Sentinel, doing his "No Silence Here" feature on the newspaper's website, has been checking my site and has highlighted me two times in the last week: here and here. Thank you, Michael.

Which reminds me, I need to add a Knoxnews link to my sidebar to catch local news and writers more easily.

Am I the only one troubled by this?

Federal District Judge John Coughenour in Los Angeles yesterday sentenced a would-be bomber to a twenty-two year sentence. The man could be free in fourteen years. After this, the Judge Coughenour proceeded to use the courtroom venue not as a place to consider the law, but to weigh in on security, military, and partisan political issues.

While sentencing the convicted bomber, Coughenour read (in his prepared statement): "We did not need to use a secret military tribunal, detain the defendant indefinitely as an enemy combatant or deny the defendant the right to counsel... The message to the world from today's sentencing is that our courts have not abandoned our commitment to the ideals that set our nation apart."

The bomber was an Algerian national named Ahmed Ressam. He was trained in Afghanistan. He was a terrorist making war against our country in a conflict nobody wanted to acknowledge existed prior to 9/11.

Several points, therefore:

1. By handing down a sentence that allowed this guy an opportunity to do anything besides immediately meet his seventy virgins, Judge Coughenour established that perhaps the case would have been handled better by a military tribunal.

2. By offering political commentary from the bench, Judge Coughenour punctures any illusion of judicial objectivity. Federal prosecutors should object strenuously to having him handle any cases touching upon terrorism or national security in the future.

3. The Ressam case is different from that of the Gitmo vacationers. First, he was apprehended before 9/11. Second, he was captured in the United States, not in a foreign war zone.

4. The prosecutors wanted thirty-five years. That might have been the most they could ask for, considering the guy didn't succeed in killing anyone, bit it was still too easy. Terrorist activities should be a capital offense.

5. Prosecutors say that they tried to make a deal with Ressam so they could get information to extradite two other captured terrorists. Ressam quit cooperating and now prosecutors say they will have to drop extradition. Why didn't the judge hit Ressam with the maximum 35 years for that alone?

6. The message Judge Coughenour sends to the world is not: "...Our courts have not abandoned our commitment to the ideals that set our nation apart." Rather, the message he sends is: "Our courts oppose prudent national security measures and also are easy on convicted terrorists. Come make war on our nation!"

I guess she wants us to forget Hanoi...

...By siding with our enemies in Iraq.

Jane Fonda is planning an anti-war tour. Better yet, she wants to do it in a bus fueled by vegetable oil.

If it wasn't on the AP wire, I'd swear that ScrappleFace was making this up.

Will John Kerry sit near her at rallies like in the old days?

Will Dennis Kucinich give her tips on how to do over-aged hippie buses?

Better yet, will he ride with her so he can have nostalgic flashbacks of the 2004 campaign?

Wait! They are both single again, aren't they? Maybe this is Fonda's way of saying: "Hey Dennis, I really dig skinny little guys who have forgotten what decade they live in."

We can't call her "Baghdad Jane" because she hasn't actually gone overseas and done publicity shots manning weapons intended to kill U.S. servicemen. Then again, nobody has given her an opportunity to pose with an RPG-7 labeled "Hit that Hummer!" yet.

But since she wants to use the vegetable oil bus, it's not too soon to call her "Crisco Jane".

Okay, NOW I'm worried about Roberts

Hillary Clinton has endorsed him. Maybe Ann Coulter was right.

If that is so, then abortion, porn, flag burning, pledge mangling, gay marrying, prayer prohibiting, decalogue deconstruction, and all the rest will either stay legal or continue on their merry way to judicial recognition.

Right now, it's all a time-will-tell situation.

Ten years from now, I'll either remember the Roberts nomination as one of the high points of the W. Presidency, or as the biggest mistake he ever made.

Yes, I know it's a tragedy.

But this quote from a story covering the aftermath of the killing of a Brazilian worker mistaken for a terror suspect is still priceless:

"On Sunday, ministers and senior police officers defended a policy of shooting dead individuals suspected of being suicide bombers..."

From now on, maybe they should shoot only live individuals.

Kerry wants documents on Judge Roberts

And ScrappleFace covers it so well.

And as always: yes, it is satire.

Bobbies Packing Heat, Part II

The dead guy was a Brazilian!

I had discussed the matter earlier, wondering whether the dead man was a bomber, a decoy, or an idiot. All due respect for the dead, I still think he was one of those three. Probably the last.

Why was he wearing a heavy coat in July?

Did the police identify themselves? If so, then why didn't the suspect stop when ordered?

What was he doing in a suspected terrorist hideout?

Unless we have Moslem extremists immigrating to Britain from Brazil (doubtful) we have a tragedy. At the same time, I am not ready to condemn the British police without knowing all the facts. Why? Because in a state of emergency, when these guys are putting their lives on the line for us, we do owe them the benefit of the doubt.

And maybe even a couple of doubts.

Why is this guy walking the streets?

Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, the outspoken Moslem cleric who has simultaneously (1) supported the bombings in Britain but (2) condemned the killing of women and children and (3) blamed the attacks on every British subject who ever voted Labour while (4) calling for additional attacks around the world and (for good measure) (5) praises the 9/11 attacks in the United States-- has now announced his desire to see a Moslem flag waving over every capital in the world.

The man's lunacy speaks for itself, and I won't bother addressing it. But I do have some questions for authorities in Britain.

Why is he walking the streets?

What does he have to say to violate sedition laws?

Why wasn't he deported back to Syria long ago?

Does anybody watch him?

Or the people around him?

Or whatever mosque he hangs his shingle at?

And how many of the known bombers worshipped at the Mosque where he preaches?

And how many bombers have to have hung out there before that Mosque can be considered a terrorist headquarters?

And shouldn't the people who consent to listen to him when he preaches be considered likely terrorist material?

And might there not be probable cause to keep folks who listen to him under surveillance?

With phone wiretaps and house searches?

Or (to make it all easier) fly them all back to whatever God-forsaken/Allah-beloved country they came from?

Or (better yet) to club Gitmo?

To sum it up: when will the people of England (and America as well) realize they are in a war far bigger than the one in Iraq, which has been going on long before the Iraq War started, and in which the battlefield and the enemy are in England and the United States as well as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bobbies Packing Heat

There was a shooting incident this morning on the London Underground. Police attempted to detain an Arab-looking person wearing an oddly heavy coat. The man ran; the police chased him down and; hesitating not a moment, used deadly force on him.

Obviously, they shot him to prevent his detonation of any bomb which he might have carried, concealed under his coat.

Of course, the Moslem community in Britain is howling.

Let them howl. Whether the dead man was carrying explosives under his coat or not, I think it was a good call by the police given the man's dress and his response to police attempts to detain him peacefully.

The police are doubly justified given the bombings yesterday and three weeks ago.

But, gosh: those mean police officers obviously had that poor guy racially profiled.

Sorry folks, but my patience has run out for Moslems who refuse to condemn terrorism but angrily oppose anything resembling prejudice against their religion. In my mind, a South Asian or Middle Eastern man who wears a heavy coat in July during a terror alert and then runs from police is probably a pretty good candidate for the Darwin Awards.

London Bombed Again

Four bombs; coordinated, but smaller blasts; no deaths. Story here.

Looks like copy cats. Which means a whole, separate investigation.

Communities United Against Terror

I came across a blog link to these guys while surfing on Blog Explosion. At first glance (and only a glance) the concept didn't seem too terribly impressive, and I left behind a comment saying so. This prompted one of those heated responses which challenged me to take a second look. They may have something.

Communities United Against Terror, according to Brit blogger John Holroyd, "Is an unapologetic stance against terror. We are not going to sit around and listen to those who tell us that somehow this is our own fault, that suicide murderers are really people we can negotiate with, it is about telling politicians that we don't want appeasement because we don't believe appeasement is possible... And that we won't accept our politicians removing our freedoms in the name of security."

From looking more closely at the site, and from the comments made by John H., it appears that CUAT is attempting to drum up an international grass roots response to terrorism; an effort to put some pressure on those democracies which are nominally opposed to terrorism but otherwise inactive; perhaps an effort to make the "Coalition of the Willing" a little more willing.

You might say they want to be like the International Red Cross or Amnesty International, only they won't be trying to help the enemy.

They have a petition on their front page with an attached list of signatories chiefly from the U.S. and the U.K., although I've seen Italians, Brazilians and others included as well.

It may be a worthwhile effort. I will subscribe to the weekly bulletins to this group and give my impression of them from time to time. I will also add a link to their organization on the sidebar.

And to John Holroyd at Towards a Free World: I apologize for my hasty judgment and thank you for challenging me to take a second look.

People of Germany:

Hide your children.

Here is one man you don't want saying: "Ich bin ein Berliner."

HT: Drudge.

Cutting-Edge Artwork

The California state attorney general has some interesting taste in the art he hangs in his offices. Here is a piece in the cafeteria.

No worries about political partisanship at the attorney general's office, are there?

Ann Coulter opposes Roberts

Drudge has the news flash here.

As I write this, Coulter's website seems to be down, or crashed, or something.

And the Drudge flash will not presently link to the actual release, either.

According to Drudge, Coulter's argument seems to be that Roberts might be a Trojan Horse, or a Trojan Nominee, or a Trojan Conservative.

Per Drudge, Coulter says (at various points): "Stealth nominees have never turned out to be a pleasant surprise for conservatives. Never. Not ever... It means nothing that Roberts wrote briefs arguing for the repeal of Roe v. Wade when he worked for Republican administrations... Roberts has specifically disassociated himself from those cases... Roberts has gone through 50 years on this planet without ever saying anything controversial. That's just unnatural."

That is: She thinks Roberts is a lib in conservative clothing.

Or a blue in red clothing?

Whatever the case is, it's darn weird that criticism of the president's choice should come from the right instead of the left, and that Coulter's site should be down right now, of all times.

Is Coulter serious? Or is she purposely trying to diffuse what promises to be a perfect liberal storm of opposition to this nomination?

Imaginary message from chubby evil genius Karl Rove to beautiful sinister accomplice Ann Coulter:

"Ann, pretend you hate John Roberts. If you hate him, the liberals will think he must be another Souter. If anyone asks, I never told you this. And by the way, thanks for making those calls about Plame for me."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ONE MORE THOUGHT (Wednesday, 7/20/05, 2:15 PM): I entertained the notion of Coulter's opposition-as- hoax because it occurred to me as a humorous, though highly unlikely, explanation for her comments. The more I think of it, however, the more unlikely it becomes. Probability would approach zero. Why? Because for her to perform a hoax of that nature would permanently end her career as a major opinion maker. Nobody-- conservative or liberal-- would ever take her opinion seriously again.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ALSO (2:40 PM): Here is the text of Coulter's column. Found it on Worldnet Daily.

It will be a tough fight

I've got more on Judge John Roberts on my religion blog here. I put it over there because, I am quite certain, his Catholicism will become an issue.

People: the Senate fight over this nomination will make "The War of the Worlds" look like "The Care Bears Tea Party".

My favorite kind of enemy...

...would be someone like the radical Moslem leaders in Britain, Omar Bakri Mohammed and Anjem Choudary, who weighed in with their opinions of the recent terrorist attacks on London by laying blame squarely at the feet of every British subject who voted Labour and kept Tony Blair in office.

I don't know about Brits, but in America, remarks like that would cause popular support for someone like Blair to be redoubled.

Assuming Mohammed and Choudary aren't themselves terrorists or material accessories to the terror attacks, they are exactly the sort of fellows who should be free to shoot off their mouths all they want.

Hot dog!

Folks, we're going to have a fight, and I can't wait.

According to the Drudge Flash:

President Bush went to Denmark on July 5 with 11 names of top candidates under consideration. In the last few days, he interviewed five -- one on Thursday, two on Friday -- including Judge Roberts, who got a presidential tour of the residence, including the Lincoln Bedroom, during his one-hour visit -- and two on Saturday. Bush made his decision last night, finalizing it this morning. During lunch with Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Bush stepped out the room and called Roberts. When he returned, he said to the group, which included the leaders' wives: "I just offered the job to a great, smart 50-year-old old lawyer who has agreed to serve on the bench." And despite the intense scrutiny at the White House, Judge Roberts and his wife came to the presidential residence for dinner tonight. At 7:30 tonight, Bush began notifying congressional leaders.

That would be John Roberts, fifty-years-old, staunch conservative, pro-life. He is on record saying: "We continue to believe that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overruled."

I wonder if John McCain will keep his pledge to support the president on this one? I'm quite certain the Dems have already decided these are the exact sort of circumstances justifying them breaking their pact and starting another filibuster.

It makes me glad I didn't get into speculating on the other two other rumored candidates today.

I suspect all the different names were not trial balloons, but very conscious and well orchestrated misdirection directed at the media so they wouldn't unleash a premature feeding frenzy on Judge Roberts.

And that means that the "d'Affair Plame" has not thrown Karl Rove off his stride.

Speaking of which, the nomination will likely end the Rove/Plame hysteria, at least for now. The libs will have bigger fish to fry. Or will they get fried?

Something else: the President has kept his promise to the pro-life community. He has also gone a long way toward mending fences with the conservative community with this move. I'm grateful. Triumphant, even.

This may be a turning point in the culture wars.

The battle begins.

More on Terrorism

An interesting summary of an academic analysis of modern terrorism is found here. I found two very good points:

"...the willingness to sacrifice one's life in such a mission is not, in itself, irrational. In fact, suicide attackers are rarely subject to pathological or suicidal motivation."

That's good. It means we can exterminate these guys without any qualms about them being poor victims of mental illness.

"...in practice, the religious legitimacy of suicide now seems to be widely accepted, even if it remains controversial."

Translation: yes, there is something screwed up about Islam.

There were also a couple points I found highly suspect:

"Islam-inspired missions account for only 34.6% of attacks carried out between 1981 and September 2003."

I wonder whether they classify Chechen and Palestinian terrorism as "Islam-inspired" or politically motivated?

"More relevant, he argues, are feelings of inferiority and resentment."

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but it sounds like the author is saying that the little darlings just have a self-esteem problem.

I do want to understand more about terrorists, especially if it helps in the task of annihilating them.

Speaking of Terrorists

This guy is a terrorist, too. I don't care why he does it.

The Ends of Terror

Some Shiite clerics in Iraq are threatening a generalized attack upon the Sunni's,who dominated the government under Saddam Hussein and who makeup the majority of the terrorists plaguing that country now.

If the Shiite fire eaters get their way, it would represent a victory for the terrorists.

Terrorists get to murder people-- which really turns them on-- but is not their objective.

Terrorists drain the resolve of those forces of law and order whom they oppose, which helps their cause, but still is not their objective.

The true objective of a terrorist is to cause a massive overreaction by state authorities which, they hope, will prompt civil war, anarchy, and a complete reorganization of the society they are terrorizing. In short: they hope to cause a revolution.

Abolitionist John Brown attempted to start a civil war in the 1850s by going on a murder rampage in Lawrence, Kansas. After failing there, he went after a more sensitive target: the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry in Northern Virginia. Though he was captured and hung, the paranoia he provoked accelerated the rate of political disintegration in the Union and ultimately prompted a bloody, chaotic civil war and an achievement of his objectives: the abolition of slavery in the United States.

Anarchists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries plugged away at their little shootings and bombings until they finally hit a major nerve in Sarajevo in 1914. The resulting world war, prompted by the murder of Archduke Frederick Ferdinand, plunged Europe into chaos, caused the collapse of the German, Austrian, Russian, and Ottoman empires, and created the power vacuum which resulted in the Bolshevik takeover of Russia, the projected misery of the Balkan Wars, the near victory of communists in Germany and, ultimately, the real victory of the Nazis in that same Germany.

The terrorists in Palestine are hoping, ultimately, that their continued murders will cause an Israeli Army offensive which will prompt an intervention by the other Arab states, the annihilation of Israel, and the reestablishment of the old, full sized Palestine upon the ashes and corpses of their enemies.

What do the terrorists want in Iraq? America pulling-out would be nice, but they wouldn't stop there. What they really hope for is civil war. That way, the former Baathists and their allies among a small portion of the Sunnis hope to get Syria's help to reinstall the Baath Party and, in their dreams, settle all scores and get back to business as usual.

The Shiite clerics wouldn't mind the civil war part. Only in their scenario, they get Iran's help to wipe out the Sunnis and establish an Islamic republic along the lines of Iran or the old, Taliban -dominated Afghanistan.

Either way, it depends on the U.S. pulling out or over-reacting, and the current, democratic government overreacting and being overthrown.

How could the U.S. overreact? By accelerating the war so far as to cause a backlash in the United States followed by the Democrats winning back congress and the presidency and the U.S. then pulling out of Iraq entirely.

I hear people like Michael Savage often call for the annihilation of a city or two in Iraq or elsewhere. While the idea of the Kabba in Mecca transformed into smoking ruins does give me a certain satisfaction (especially after some major terrorist attack), it would be a big mistake. If we did such a thing, some loser farther to the left than Dennis Kucinich would be our next president, and the entire Arab would soon be dominated by folks who make the Taliban look like Cub Scouts.

What do we do? Root them out, destroy their supply and manpower sources, empower the forces of law and order, wait for them to make mistakes and capitalize on those mistakes.

If we get vicious, it should be in security measures. The Israelis did the right thing with their security wall. If we pinpoint terrorist recruit or supply depots in Syria or Iran, we should hit them. Hard. If we pinpoint such bases in Pakistan, we should give the government there exactly one chance to cooperate with us in destroying those targets. Not just air strikes; but men with bayonets doing search and destroy.

But we should not nuke anybody. Nor should we hit any target which does not provide direct support for the terrorists.

More than anything, we need to show endurance as a society.

Unfortunately, that endurance is sapped by the lefties and antiwar activists who resemble hyperactive four-year-olds who can't stop talking. They go on and on with: "George Bush is an idiot and there were no WMDs and Karl Rove leaked on Valerie Plame and Gitmo is the new Gulag and Iraq is a quagmire and we support the troops even though they are in the wrong war at the wrong time and will never win and they are always committing atrocities and..."

We are the strongest country in the world. Nothing can defeat us but defeatism.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ONE OTHER THING (Monday, 12:47 PM): Abolition was a very good thing. But John Brown was still a psychotic killer whose appointment with the hangman was long overdue.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE (Monday1:53 PM): Speaking of nuking Mecca (bad idea) some Republican Congressman just had the same bad idea. Basic principle: never threaten an act you aren't willing to carry out. Bluffing with nukes is never a smart move.

A good man passes to his reward

James Stockdale was a good American.

Patriot. Naval Officer. POW. Hero.

Lousy V.P. candidate.

In some ways, television proved more cruel than the Communists who held Stockdale prisoner for so many years.

I can't believe I scored as high as I did

I found this test at Lex Communis which supposedly told me whether or not I was a hippie. Of course, I flunked the test, which means I'm not a hippie. But how did I get that 22%? It must have been that tie-die shirt I made as a second grade class project in 1968. See my results and link to the test below.

I am 22% Hippie.

You must be some sort of a Republican. Why did you even bother taking this test, you lousy ditto-head? Probably insecure about your orthodoxy. Just go back to your stinkin' George W. Bush fan club and tell them you wasted 10 minutes of your life. One consolation: at least you don’t smell bad.

Take the
Hippie Test
@ FualiDotCom

I expected this from China, but not so soon.

A top Chinese general has warned that any effort by the U.S. to help Taiwan when China proceeds with its seizure of Taiwan will result in nuclear strikes by China against the U.S.

In short, the U.S. can't defend Taiwan unless it is willing to risk getting nuked.

It was supposed to be the general's personal opinion only. However, if it was only his opinion, he would be off either in retirement or getting himself "re-educated" right now. Also, the Chinese government would have denounced his words. This is clearly a threat by Peking for us to stand back as they take over the last bastion of free China.

I had expected this, and talked about it in earlier posts, but the Chinese seem to be moving faster than I thought they would. I didn't think they would go after Taiwan until a new president takes office here. Perhaps they believe they need to move before we are done with Iraq.

It may be that before the year is out we will all wake up to news reports of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Are we willing to risk everything for Taiwan? That can be avoided if we make it abundantly clear to the Chinese that they would, indeed, have to get through our fleet to get to Formosa.

And it might not hurt to formally withdraw our recognition of the PRC as the legitimate government of China and return that recognition to Taiwan, inasmuch as China is pursuing a policy of military aggression against it's neighbor states.

You know, this all started with President Carter formally recognizing the PRC in the first place. We are still paying for his presidency.

Limbaugh does a Flame on Plame

Good article here on the D'affair Plame by David Limbaugh.

But really, I was just looking for a good excuse to say "Flame Plame".

Sometimes I wonder if the Patriot Act goes far enough

Especially when I hear that some joker who goes by the handle "Arabic Terrorist" has made his living screening bags for the TSA for the last six months.

When I was a kid, my father always warned me never to make hijack or bomb jokes on an airplane or on airport property. I guess I would be fine cracking jokes in front of this fellow. My only fear is that I might inspire him to blow up the plane himself.

HT: Drudge.

Sometimes, the mask slips

I wish I had a dime for every time I have heard some liberal say that "I support the troops but hate the war."

I know it is a lie, and every now and again evidence emerges about how great a lie it is.

This week in San Francisco, the city Board of Supervisors voted against receiving the retired battleship, USS Iowa, for permanent berthing in San Francisco Bay. Members of the board cited opposition to the war in Iraq and opposition to United States policy regarding homosexuals in the military.

Maybe the city supervisors never studied the history of the Iowa. Maybe they thought that Saipan, Tinian, Guam, Leyte Gulf, and Okinawa were all battles fought in Iraq. Maybe they got the impression that the pilots on all those kamikazes launched at the Iowa and other ships late in WWII were actually Moslem insurgents.

I'm surprised that nobody brought up the 1989 turret explosion on the Iowa, which killed 47 crewmen and was first blamed on a jilted homosexual sailor. Later, the incident was filed under "cause unknown" after numerous howls of protest by activists. My bet is that the Board of Supervisors knew too little of the Iowa's history even to remember that incident, so it never would have occurred to them that the ship might be a fitting device in San Francisco to raise consciousness regarding gays in the military.

Not that the use of the ship in that way wouldn't really tick me off, as well.

Bottom line: the liberal leaders in San Francisco are willing to insult the men who have served on that venerable old battleship for six decades just so they can launch an insult in President Bush's direction. They might hate the president and the war, but they also hate the military-- both past and present.

And they hate their country.

Bill Clinton says it perfectly

I'll give the devil his due. While defending Hillary before a lefty student group for his wife's pretense at moderation on the abortion issue, the former president said:

"...if you're a Democrat and you have sort of normal impulses, you're a sellout..."

Why is it that a Dem with "sort of normal impulses" sounds like a rare bird indeed?

Karl Rove really IS an evil genius!

So why doesn't that make me lose sleep at night?

The saga which has come to be known as the Valerie Plame Affair has all the makings of a great suspense story. Seriously. It includes international crisis, questions of war and peace, mysteries over atomic bomb materials, secret connections, secret leaks, spies, and new revelations every few months. To recap:

In the months leading up to the Iraq War, President Bush asserted during his annual State of the Union Address that British intelligence had told the U.S. that the Iraqis had been trying to buy weapons grade plutonium in Africa.

This bolstered his claim that Saddam Hussein was trying to build weapons of mass destruction which could be used to destabilize the Middle East more than it already was, to attack Israel, or even to arm terrorists on missions to the United States.

Former dipmlomat Joe Wilson loudly responded in the days following the State of the Union Address that he personally had investigated those claims at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney, and that no Iraqi agents had been trying to buy plutonium in Africa.

Journalists covering Wilson's claims, most notably Robert Novak, revealed in their investigations that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was actually a CIA employee and that it was she, and not the vice president, who had arranged his investigative trip. Furthermore, his trip was not so much an investigation into weapons trafficking as it was an opportunity to get a little vacation while networking and claiming to be on the scene of international events.

Because of the British intelligence connection, and a massive media over-reaction to those claims in Britain, civil servants started committing suicide and media execs began getting fired on the Sceptered Isle. As a result, the BBC received a black eye bigger than the one handed to CBS over the Dan Rather fiasco.

Wilson (still loud, still complaining) charged that Robert Novak had blown his wife's cover as a CIA operative, endangering her life, compromising United States Security, and breaking the law.

Federal investigators moved in. Novak cooperated with them, and never suffered any recriminations for his reporting. However, Reporters Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine refused on principle to reveal their sources, and were prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Amid all this maneuvering, a successful war was prosecuted in Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power. However, no weapons of mass destruction were found, bolstering Democratic claims that the war was based on a lie. Meanwhile, an ongoing insurgency waged by ruthless terrorists was unleashed against American forces and Iraqi citizens attempting to facilitate the creation of a stable democracy in that troubled land. Despite this setback, the president was reelected, due in large part to the outstanding political strategizing of his trusted campaign manager, Karl Rove.

After a series of investigative and judicial maneuvers reminiscent of the television series "Law and Order", Federal investigators finally secured the information that at least some of the information which led to the possibly illegal exposure of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative came from none other than the president's trusted advisor, Karl Rove.

Which brings us to this week.

What do we have?

Apparently, Rove revealed the existence of a CIA agent in the context of relating the circumstances of Joe Wilson's trip to Africa. However, he did not reveal the agent's name. If he revealed the existence of that agent with the purpose or expectation that his partial revelation would lead to a full identification, then what he did might, in fact, be illegal. If he did it, however, for the purpose of preventing a lie from being told against the administration, then he did nothing wrong. Whether a criminal intent can be established in court is a wholly separate question. I'm not sure it can be proven.

Wilson was using the United States intelligence services not to bolster the national security of the nation he serves, but to embarrass a president whose agenda he opposed. No Prince Valiant there.

Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame (does she have something against using her husband's last name?) was not so much a CIA agent as a diplomat's wife in a privileged, sinecured position. Her exposure did not endanger her, but did underline the need for a serious reform in that agency where much of the intelligence information accrued is not merely worthless, but is often used for partisan political purposes. When Robert Novak published Valerie Plame's identity, he did the nation a service. Wilson was no Prince Valiant, and his wife was no distressed damsel.

Reporters Judith Miller of the Times and Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine where placed in the ironic position of protecting a source whose information helped a president opposed by their publications. That's what I see as the bizarre beauty of this whole thing. Rove manipulated his media contacts so that the opposition press actually helped the administration which they despised.

This is where the evil genius in the movies gets to cackle while rubbing his hands and monologing: "You fools! You played right into my hands from the beginning! Now, all that you love and cherish belongs to me! And you are in jail and I am free! Congratulations: I couldn't have done it without you! Now I'm off to complete my plan to conquer the universe!"

As an American, I suppose I should be outraged at this. But I'm not. First: I support the war effort. I support it whether there was uranium to be bought in Africa or not. I support it because Saddam Hussein was part of a Middle Eastern order which perpetually supported international terrorism, opposition to the United States, and undermined the American economy. This is not to mention that Hussein was a murderous dictator and enemy of democracy.

Second: and on a more puerile note, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, Judith Miller, and Matthew Cooper are all smart-alecks of the leftist intelligentsia who have spent their entire careers cynically proclaiming their love of America while finding some reason to hurt their country just about every chance they get. I simply love the idea that they have all been out-maneuvered by those whom they look down upon as so many numbskulls.

Here is what would make the whole thing perfect. The president orders Rove to resign. On the eve of a Federal indictment being handed down, Rove receives a blanket pardon for anything he might have done in connection with the Plame affair. He takes a year or two off, and resurfaces in mid 2007 as Jeb Bush's campaign manager for the 2008 presidential election.

Why don't I feel guilty or ashamed? In all his manipulative cynicism, Rove is not one bit worse than Wilson, Plame, and company. Indeed, I think Rove is somewhat better than our former evil-genius-in-chief, Bill Clinton, and his old sidekick, James "Watch-Me-Sneer" Carville. At the same time, there are two major differences between Rove and his opponents. First: Rove is successful at what he does. He gets the president reelected, promotes his policies, and keeps him out of trouble. Not only does President Bush have "plausible deniability", but I really do think he stayed out of the infighting. Second: Rove is working to build the republic up, not tear it down.

Now that Rove has been exposed, can it hurt the Republicans? Possibly: in two ways. First, it can be used to further undercut the war on terror. Second, it can hurt any conservative presidential candidate who campaigns to follow in the footsteps of George W. Bush in 2008.

Both these contingencies, in my mind, would not only hurt the Republicans, but would hurt America as well.

And yet, the drama is fascinating.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update (Saturday, 7/16/05, 5:30 pm)

I just figured out that Joe Wilson was never a U.S. Senator, and have made appropriate editing changes above. It would be better if I used a strike-out wherever I wrote "Senator", but I haven't figured that little trick out, yet. Bad blogger. Bad, bad blogger.

On the London Bombings

I followed the news of the terror attacks while at a family reunion in northern Ohio. I have no idea what the long term response of the English people will be. My hope is that these event will stiffen their resolve to stand firm against Islamic terrorism. There is one thing I am sure of, however, and that is that the English are very, very fortunate to have Tony Blair still running their government.

He packs far more backbone and is far more resourceful than people give him credit for, and I don't think he'll be out of office nearly as soon as anyone expects. Blair's enemies, I believe, perform the same exercise of "misunderestimating" him as the lefty Dems often do with George W. Bush in the United States.

Taking a Break

I'll resume blogging on Monday, July 11.