The Democratic National Committee's Rules Committee decided today, following a televised hearing, to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations at the party's August convention, but give them all a half vote apiece. This was construed as a defeat for Hillary Clinton, who gained delegates but, pundits say, not enough. Later, it was reported that the Obama campaign is negotiating with Hillary to give her a cabinet-level position supervising health care reform if she withdraws from the race. Maybe I should have titled this post "Recreate '93;" I can think of some things more off-putting to voters than another run at Hillarycare, but not many.

Clinton supporters demonstrated outside the DNC; this was pretty typical:

Quite a few Clinton supporters are threatening to defect to McCain in the general election. Not many will, but not many would have to for a few swing states to go red. Best of all, for us Republicans, is the report that Hillary is preserving her options:

“Mrs. Clinton has instructed me to reserve her rights to take this to the credentials committee,” [Harold] Ickes said before the final vote, raising the specter of a fight until that committee meets, at the end of July. Others say the fight could go all the way to the convention in Denver.

What we'd really like to see is a credentials battle over the Florida and Michigan delegations at the Democratic convention, complete with demonstrations, walkouts, and chaos in the streets. That's probably too much to hope for, but for Obama to announce that he's putting Hillary in charge of health care is a close second.

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Barack Obama announced tonight at a press conference that he is leaving Trinity United Church of Christ. Apparently Rev. Pfleger was the last straw. Obama's explanation was characteristically self-pitying and evasive:

It's clear that now that I am a candidate for president, every time something is said in the church by anyone associated with Trinity, including guest pastors, the remarks will be imputed to me, even if they totally conflict with my long-held views, statements and principles.

Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't choose to attend a church where sermons are constantly preached that not only "totally conflict with my long-held views," but rightly offend many millions of people. The question that is still left hanging, of course, is why they didn't offend Obama until they appeared on YouTube.

The national media have already twice hailed Obama for skillfully handling the Trinity "distraction" and putting it behind him. Obviously the voters saw it differently. Even our mainstream reporters may have a hard time congratulating Obama on his third new position on the issue in, what, 60 days? So press reaction is likely to be muted.

Pundits often talk about whether a candidate has put an issue behind him, but I'm not sure whether this ever really happens. The Rev. Wright fiasco has done permanent damage to Obama. The most he can expect to gain from his disavowal tonight is that the next time some fruitcake gives an offensive sermon at Trinity, he won't have to answer questions about it.

Voters will continue to wonder, however, what Obama was doing there for twenty years, and what his embrace of the theology of hate that was so often on display at Trinity tells us about him.

PAUL adds: Obama left Trinity Church for the same reason he joined it -- political opportunism. The theology was always something he could take or leave. Both phenomena, the opportunism and the fact that he could take Rev. Wright's brand of black liberation theology, reflect very poorly on Obama.

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Kobe Bryant has led the Los Angeles Lakers back to the NBA finals. As a result, Bryant is once again the toast of the league. An article in the current issue of Sports Illustrated, for example, contends that no current NBA player can compare to Bryant and implies that the proper comparison is to Michael Jordan. As for Lebron James, the article quotes one NBA scout as follows: "The difference between Kobe and LeBron James is the difference between a Maserati and a Volvo."

However, a look at this year's regular season statistics suggests otherwise. I am not aware of statistics that meaningfully measure defensive performance (for what it's worth the two players' steals per game are identical and LeBron has more than twice as many blocked shots). But when it comes to statistics that measure offense and rebounding, LeBron clearly does not take a backseat to Kobe; if anything it may be the other way around.

Here are the numbers (minutes per game are nearly the same):

Points per game -- LeBron 30.0; Kobe 28.3
Rebounds per game -- LeBron 7.9; Kobe 6.3
Assists per game -- LeBron 7.2; Kobe 5.4
Assist to turnover ratio -- LeBron 2.11; Kobe 1.72
Two point shooting percentage -- LeBron .531; Kobe .490
Three point shooting percentage -- LeBron .315; Kobe .361
Blended shooting efficiency -- LeBron .518; Kobe .503
Free throw shooting percentage -- LeBron .713; Kobe .840
Made free throws per game -- LeBron 7.3; Kobe 7.6

Thus, the only areas where Kobe has a significant advantage are three point shooting percentage and free throw percentage. But LeBron's superior two point shooting percentage more than offsets Kobe's edge from beyond the three point line. This is shown by the blended shooting efficiency number, which takes into account the extra value of the three point shot (in other words going 3 for 5 on two point shots becomes the equivalent of going 2 for 5 on three pointers because in both cases 5 shots produce six points). And Kobe's edge in accuracy from the free throw line is offset to a significant degree by the fact that LeBron gets to line 1.3 times per game more often than Kobe (10.3 attempts compared to 9.0 attempts).

To be sure, Kobe has led his team to the NBA finals. But LeBron did this last year. And this year, his team was a few bounces away from defeating the Boston Celtics in the playoffs. The Celtics have the best record in the NBA and will face the Lakers in the finals.

At age 23, LeBron has demonstrated that he can take a mediocre supporting cast deep into the playoffs. Kobe, when surrounded by a mediocre cast (about which he complained incessantly) during the three seasons before this one, missed the playoffs once and was eliminated in the first round twice, albeit in a tougher conference. Kobe may be better than LeBron, but I couldn't find objective evidence that shows this to be the case.

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The widespread conviction among Democrats that we are destined to fail in Iraq was the key to Barack Obama's emergence as Presidential front-runner. He postured himself as the candidate who had opposed the war from the beginning. But what helped Obama in the Democratic primaries may prove his undoing in the general election. Through the months when Obama's dedication to failure was bringing him closer to the nomination, conditions in Iraq were improving, not worsening. This contradiction is now becoming acute, and Obama faces it squarely as he tries to decide whether, how and when to go to Iraq.

The McCain campaign understands Obama's discomfiture; hence McCain's invitation to Obama to accompany him on a trip there, and the campaign's running tally of the number of days since Obama visited Iraq in 2006. The problem for Obama is that it is hard to see how he can go to Iraq without acknowledging that the surge has succeeded, violence has been reduced, and the Iraqis are making considerable political progress. If he goes to Iraq, he has to meet with generals, soldiers and Marines, and they will tell him these things. But if Obama admits that we are succeeding in Iraq, he is admitting that John McCain was right all along. He can't do that.

For the time being, Obama can dodge the problem by staying away from Iraq and speaking in platitudes before adoring audiences of hard-core Democrats. But the problem won't go away. Obama's Iraq policy is increasingly at odds with realities on the ground, and more and more voters are becoming aware of that fact. Obama can't stay away from Iraq until November. His advisers must be trying to figure out how to fit such a trip into a narrative that will hold water through the election. For now, they may just be hoping for things to get worse. But when they do finally announce a trip to Iraq, the nature of that visit will likely hold the key to how Obama intends to handle the increasingly dangerous (for him) issue of Iraq in the fall.

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Kathryn Jean Lopez finds Barack Obama befuddled by Hollywood wizardry on his visit to Mount Rushmore last night:

He express[ed] curiosity about the filming of a chase scene in "North by Northwest," Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 classic starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint that included a death-defying scramble over Rushmore's presidential faces.

"How did they get up there in the first place?" he asked ranger Wesley Jensen.

"They didn't. It was a movie set," Jensen told him.

"Pretty spiffy, isn't it," said the Illinois senator, summing up his overall impressions.

Perhaps we should be impressed by Obama's knowledge of cinema classics such as "North by Northwest." I would add, however, that Obama appears to be more familiar with cinema history than he is with American history.

UPDATE: Roger Simon chides me for giving Obama too much credit: "Anyone who doesn't know that was shot on a set is a relative cinematic idiot. In fact, Hitchcock practically always used sets quite deliberately and famously. No kudos to Obama on that one."

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This week, the Supreme Court decided two employment law cases involving the issue of “retaliation.” Retaliation occurs when an employer takes adverse employment against an employee because he or she complained about discrimination or otherwise exercised rights under an anti-discrimination law. The issue in one case was whether a Reconstruction-era statute banning racial discrimination also prohibits retaliation. The Court held by a 7-2 majority (Justices Thomas and Scalia dissenting) that it does. The issue in the other case was whether a law banning age discrimination against federal employees also prohibits retaliation. The Court held that it does. This time the vote was 6-3, with Chief Justice Roberts joining Thomas and Scalia in dissent.

A law against employment discrimination should include protection against retaliation. Otherwise, at least in the absence of some other mechanism providing such protection, the employer may well be able to deter employees from exercising their right to challenge prohibited discrimination by creating the fear that such a challenge will cost them their job (for example). This is more than a hypothetical concern. In my experience, supervisors are fairly prone to strike back at employees who accuse them of misconduct. This is a natural human reaction, far more natural than mistreating employees and applicants based on an irrelevant characteristic such as race or gender (though this too still occurs from time to time).

But the question for the Supreme Court was not whether retaliation should be prohibited but whether Congress, in the two statutes at issue, actually prohibited it. In my view, the Supreme Court got both cases wrong.

Let’s start with the case, CBOCS West v. Humphries, involving the Reconstruction-era statute. That act guarantees all persons “the same right. . .to make and enforce contracts. . .as is enjoyed by white citizens.” Nothing in this language suggests protection against retaliation; the law plainly protects individuals based on who they are, not what they do. It bans discrimination based on race. Retaliation is not discrimination based on race.

What made this a close case was Supreme Court precedent interpreting another Reconstruction-era statute as protecting against retaliation. The majority (in an opinion by Justice Breyer) viewed this precedent as triggering the doctrine of stare decisis. It stated that “considerations of stare decisis strongly support” finding that the old statute in question here provides protection for retaliation. But as Justice Thomas pointed out, CBOCS West is a case of first impression – the Court has never decided whether the particular statute at issue protects individuals from retaliation. While case law on related issues did point in favor of the conclusion reached by the majority, that precedent also involved the misconstruction of plain statutory language. To quote Justice Thomas, “erroneous precedents need not be extended to their logical end, even when dealing with related provisions that normally would be interpreted in lockstep.”

The other case, Gomez-Perez v. Potter – involving retaliation against federal employees who raise claims of age discrimination – is noteworthy in part because Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion and Chief Justice Roberts wrote the dissent. Indeed, it’s interesting to see Alito, vilified by the likes of Senator Kennedy for consistently ruling “against” employees as an appeals court judge, bending over backwards (it seems to me) to infer that Congress conferred rights on employees.

In the age discrimination context, Congress expressly granted a cause of action for retaliation to the employees of private employers. A few years later, when it came time legislate against age discrimination in the federal sector, Congress wrote the statute differently, declining to include a specific provision protecting employees from retaliation. But this did not create a significant gap in employee protection -- retaliation in the federal workplace can be, and typically is, addressed through the established civil service system with its comprehensive protection for government workers.

Under these circumstances, the majority would seem to have reached the wrong result in this case. The statutory scheme clearly indicates an absence of a cause of action for retaliation under the federal statute, and that absence is easily explained by the existence of other protection.

These cases, of course, are not big deals in themselves. They do, however, provide further evidence that the four "conservative" Justices do not constitute a monolith, and that claims that the Roberts Court is "hostile" to workers are unfounded. But the real wild-card may prove to be what Justice Thomas calls the "ersatz stare decisis" theory that carried the day (and the Chief Justice) in CBOCS West.

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Assaf Gal of PrimeTimePolitics has posted the one-hour video of Mark Steyn on Ottawa's Michael Coren Show. Mark and guest host Tim Denis talk about everything from the post 9/11 world to multiculturalism and the Human Rights Commission case against him. Assaf describes it as "another brilliant hour with Mark Steyn."

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The new issue of the Weekly Standard carries Tom Joscelyn's review of Andrew McCarthy's important book Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad. The new issue of National Review carries Bruce Thornton's review of the book (subscribers only) as well. Both reviews are excellent. McCarthy was the chief federal prosecutor of the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center attack, their spiritual leader Omar Abdel-Rahman ("the blind sheikh") foremost among them. In the book McCarthy recounts the story of the investigation of the attack and the prosecution of the perpetrators.

Despite ample opportunities to prevent the attack, those in a position to thwart it turned a blind eye. In the aftermath of 9/11 have we now opened our eyes? Both Joscelyn and Thornton note McCarthy's lament for the "willful blindness" that continues to bedevil us. Joscelyn writes:

The strategic failure McCarthy exposes is ongoing, and extends even to something as basic as naming the enemy. Just as Willful Blindness was released, the State Department and other agencies published an edict banning the use of the word "jihadist" (as well as similar terms) from the government's lexicon. The thinking is that the terrorists like to call themselves "jihadists," thereby appropriating an Islamic term which can have far more benevolent meanings, such as the struggle for spiritual betterment or simply to do good.

It is true that, in some Islamic traditions, "jihad" has been endowed with such inoffensive meanings. But as McCarthy rightly argues, "jihad" has far more frequently been used to connote violent campaigns against infidels since the earliest days of Islam. When Sheikh Rahman called on his followers to wage "jihad," they knew that their master did not mean for them to become absorbed in prayer.

Moreover, Washington is apparently too obtuse to notice that Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda's terrorists, Tehran's mullahs, and Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi clerics have called for a militant brand of jihad persistently over the past several decades. All of these parties know how their words will be interpreted by the Muslim masses, and no fiat from the Washington bureaucracy will undo this widely accepted meaning.

Thornton writes:

This jihadist ideology motivated Abdel Rahman and the 9/11 jihadists, and continues to motivate Islamic terrorism today. But, then and now, this obvious traditional belief is ignored or rationalized away by those entrusted with our security: The secretary of state publicly croons that Islam is the “religion of peace and love,” and the State and Homeland Security departments instruct their employees not to use words like “jihad” or “mujahedeen” (holy warrior) in their communications. In contrast to this delusional thinking, McCarthy bluntly, and correctly, states the obvious: “Islam is a dangerous creed. It rejects core aspects of Western liberalism: self-determination, freedom of choice, freedom of conscience, equality under the law.” We refuse to face the truth about Islam, and thus we disarm ourselves before “a doctrine that rejects our way of life and a culture unwilling or unable to suppress the savage element it breeds wherever it takes hold.”

In the Bush administration, the "willful blindness" takes the form of political correctness. This political correctness, however, is more than an intellectual failure. On the one hand, the administration has supported the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation and the naming of CAIR and the Islamic Society of North America as HLF's unindicted co-conspirators supporting Hamas. On the other hand, the adminstration continues to treat CAIR and ISNA, for example, as respectable organizations and occasional partners.

On the Democratic side, the failure runs deeper. Listening to the Democratic debates over the past year, one could not help but be struck by the candidates' understanding of the Bush administration as an enemy far more formidable than any we are facing beyond our borders. Next to the Bush administration, the threats posed by Iran, Syria and their terrorist proxies pale in comparison. Should the Iranian Revolutionary Guard be designated a terrorist group? According to Barack Obama, this is going too far: the Bush administration is merely engaged in "saber rattling." He would prefer to rattle the tea cups with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran.

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Earlier today I participated in a conference call with Senator Jon Kyl and Randy Scheunemann of the McCain campaign. The purpose of the call was to respond to the Obama campaign's attacks on statements McCain made yesterday:

I can tell you that it [the Surge] is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it's succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr City are quiet, and it's long and it's hard and it's tough and there will be setbacks....

I've been on a lot of similar calls in the past, generally with a "blogger" group. This time, most of the journalists on the call were from the conventional media--the Associated Press, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, NBC News, and others. Senator Kyl and Scheunemann made what struck me as a reasonable pitch: McCain's error was a slight one, in that troops are being drawn down and they are projected to reach pre-surge levels in July; they are not yet, however, "drawn down to pre-surge levels."

Whether this is a significant error or a case of "nit-picking" over verb tenses as McCain's spokesmen characterized it is, I suppose, a judgment call. But on the most liberal judgment, McCain's error can't be one millionth as significant as this blindingly obvious fact: McCain supported the surge, predicting that it would reduce violence, while Obama opposed the surge, predicting that it would cause violence to increase. McCain was right. Understandably, Obama wants to focus on what McCain's campaign calls nit-picking in order to distract voters from the fact that he was indisputably wrong on the most important foreign policy issue that has arisen during his brief Senate tenure.

What was striking about the call was how eager the conventional reporters were to lend the Obama campaign a hand. Virtually every question they asked during the press conference dripped with hostility toward McCain. The tone can't fully be conveyed by a cold transcript, but I think you'll get the picture. Here are some of the questions the reporters asked, verbatim:

QUESTION: Randy, I'm a little confused here, because if the question is a change of -- a question over the tense of the statement, why is he not wrong?

QUESTION: Back to this point about pre-surge level, I mean, isn't this thing -- I know you're casting this as sort of this nitpicking, as Senator Kyl said, I believe. But isn't this significant, because Senator McCain's whole argument here is that he knows -- like you say, he knows the facts on the ground, he knows every detail of this, he's been to Iraq five times since Senator Obama last went?

You guys were counting the specific days since Obama's last trip. I mean, this isn't some small distinction, it seems to me.

QUESTION: Yes, first on the question of verb tenses, and it seems to be more important than you might suggest. If Bush had said, "The mission will be accomplished," and had not said, "Mission accomplished," those are two completely different things with completely different meanings.

Secondly, on McCain's points about everything being quiet in Mosul, the Obama campaign is saying that there were two suicide bombings there yesterday or in the vicinity. Do you regard that as all quiet in Mosul?

QUESTION: No, but it's not just a matter of simply verb tenses. I mean, if you say something "will be accomplished," things can change in Iraq, as we have seen. Just because a decision is made, decisions have been made all along for the past five years that have had to be postponed, revised.

We don't know what is going to happen between now and when the troop numbers are drawn down to the level that has been promised. A lot can happen. Verb tenses can be quite important. It's not just a matter for nitpicking things.

QUESTION: But the way you're trying to spin it, something "will" happen and something "has" happened are two completely different things. And that is not nitpicking to point that out.

QUESTION: Hey, sorry about the background noise here and sorry to return to verb tenses. But when he said that it is quiet in Mosul, just to follow up Michael, was that also a verb tense issue? Or is that just something that changed yesterday?

It's no secret that the press is running interference for Obama, but it was interesting to see it in action. You can read the AP's story on the controversy, including today's phone call, here. The Washington Post's story, which purports to fact-check McCain and gives him three "Pinocchios," is here.

This was Obama's parting shot:

"Today, Sen. McCain refused to correct his mistake," Obama said in remarks prepared for a rally Friday in Great Falls, Mont. "Just like George Bush, when he was presented with the truth, he just dug in and refused to admit his mistake."

Really? And when has Obama admitted that he was mistaken when he said that the surge would fail and would cause an increase in violence in Iraq? Do you suppose these same reporters will ask that question when they are next on a conference call with Obama's campaign? No, I don't think so either.

Jennifer Rubin was also on the call and comments here.

PAUL adds: I couldn't get free for the call, so perhaps I shouldn't comment. But I don't get why there was a call or a "verb tense" defense. Shouldn't McCain have simply corrected his misstatement and moved on?

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My friend, fellow Dartmouth alum, and novelist-screenwriter Roger Simon has a post up called "Mirengoff in 08." He's referring, of course, to the Dartmouth election campaign which, mercifully, is drawing to a close.

Meanwhile another Dartmouth alum, Angus King the former governor of Maine, states the case for our Parity Slate and explains why the lawsuit we pledge to maintain is the only way of preserving parity:

No one is in favor of suing their college—unless an important principle is at stake and you are given no other alternative. And unfortunately, no other alternative is exactly this case. Last fall, the Board abrogated the right of the alumni to elect half the Trustees and effectively closed all avenues to question, let alone reverse, this decision. Hence, the lawsuit. To blame the suit on those who brought it, it seems to me, has it exactly backwards. By your logic, if someone defrauds you in business and refuses to make good on your loss, you are the bad guy for bringing suit to recover your property. This position doesn’t pass the straight face test.

The simple issue is not the lawsuit, it’s the incredibly high-handed and short-sighted action of the Board last fall which vitiated the 100 year old practice—based upon an agreement between the College and its alumni—of providing the alumni with equal representation on the Board. Parity is the issue and those who believe this principle to be important and worth maintaining had no other choice but to bring the suit—because the College and the majority of Trustees made it clear that they had no interest in seeing this principle honored. Indeed the very purpose—the whole idea—of the Board’s action last fall was to nullify this principle. And as near as I can tell, until the suit was filed neither the Board majority nor the administration had the slightest interest in “working within the Dartmouth family to address their concerns”.

Two additional points. First. I’m still astonished at the action of the Board from the point of view of process. After losing three or four elections in a row, including the ill-fated effort a couple of years ago to rig the alumni constitution, instead of responding to the issues being raised by the insurgent trustees and the large number of alumni who kept electing them, the majority of the Board simply abrogated the process itself. I thought we left “if I don’t get my way, I’m taking my bat (or in this case, ballot box) and going home” on the sandlots of our youth.

I have some first hand experience with this democracy stuff and it is often cumbersome and sometimes downright annoying. But when you lose elections and keep losing, the idea is to figure out why and respond to the issues being raised, not simply change the rules so you don’t have to cope with that pesky majority which disagrees with you. We all would deplore such an act in a developing country (“Ruling junta cancels elections; cites expense and chaos of recent balloting”); it is this action which has shamed Dartmouth, not the lawsuit whose purpose is to rectify it.

Regardless of one’s position on any of the underlying issues, I don’t see how anyone can defend what these folks did last fall. It’s just plain wrong to cancel an established democratic process because you lose a couple of elections and both of us know it.

My second and concluding point is that for the life of me, I can’t figure out why you or any other alumnus/alumna would for a minute support the College administration in abrogating our own power in the governance of the college. It just doesn’t make sense. I can understand the administration’s motives—no executive likes an activist board which questions its prerogatives and power. But for any alumnus to sit still for this—and in many cases actively abet it—I just don’t understand. For if this is allowed to stand, the time will come—sooner rather than later in my opinion—when decisions will be made which you and I and the majority of alumni will strenuously oppose, but we’ll be powerless to stop them.

For once you have laid your sword and buckler aside—once the suit is dismissed—they cannot be taken up again, and something important will have been lost.

So let’s be honest—this vote is about parity, not the lawsuit. If the establishment slate (for want of a better term) is elected, the lawsuit goes away, and if the lawsuit goes away, parity goes away. It’s that simple. And I’m still listening and waiting for a reason parity should be abandoned. So far, I haven’t heard it.

An award winning author and a two-term Independent state governor. Not a bad pair of supporters.

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With the Democrats about to resolve the delegate dispute in Florida and Michigan, and with their primary season about to end, it's quite possible that the Obama-Clinton clash of the titans will soon expire. When this happens, the party will begin to rally behind Obama, and his standing in the head-to-head polls with McCain (already fairly good) may well improve.

At that point, we'll hear more of the already persistent claim that McCain has failed to take advantage of the time available to him during the extended Democratic civil war. But does this claim have merit?

This year's presidential race is, above all, a referendum on two things: the Bush presidency (and the associated years of Republican control) and Barack Obama. The next most important factor is the McCain "brand." This, in fact, is all that's standing between McCain and a deficit in the polls of ten percentage points or more, but it still runs a clear third in the campaign hierarchy.

There isn't much McCain can do to affect the referendum on Bush. Obviously, distancing himself from the president wouldn't hurt, but he has done this over the years -- it's a key part of the McCain brand. To take extra steps now to distance himself would risk alienating the Bush supporters in the "base." In addition, breaking with Bush on new matters, or changing his tone, would hurt the brand.

There are also limits to what McCain should do to affect the referendum on Obama. During the Obama-Clinton struggle, he has clashed with Obama on some important substantive issues. But to become involved in the more "personal" stuff would come across as unseemly, to the detriment of the brand.

The two obvious agenda items for McCain are (1) rally the skeptical conservative base and (2) establish his credentials on economic issues. But here again there are limits. To succeed in November, McCain must keep most of the base on his side, while retaining his appeal to independents and swing-voters including the many whose recent conversion are swelling the ranks of the Democratic party. Thus, he can only go so far to appease the base.

The best solution is to be McCain. For McCain is conservative on enough major issues to prevent large-scale defections where the only meaningful alternative is Obama. And McCain has done a reasonably good job of speaking forcefully on some of these issues. His speech on the judiciary is a good example. But McCain should not venture further and embrace conservative positions with which he is not comfortable.

As to the economy, McCain seems to have used the past few month to shore up his knowledge, and to issue serious pronouncments on several key economic/domestic issues. Not surprisingly, some of his positions are conservative; others are not.

In either case, this isn't the kind of stuff that makes a splash, the way a punchy attack on Obama or a major shift in position would, which helps explain why some see the campaign as listless. But in McCain's position, less splash is more. He's the candidate with the clear and longstanding positive image. Obama is the one whose image, still being defined, is already less positive. The key for McCain is to protect his image (and indeed to reinforce it by taking on Obama in respectful, non-personal terms), while hoping for continued good news from Iraq and better news about the economy.

UPDATE: Obama reportedly steered a $100,000 earmark to his friend the toxic Rev. Pfleger. Earmarks, of course, are a core issue with McCain. Thus, depending on the facts, this may be one case where McCain can go after Obama on a matter that doesn't strongly relate to policy without being perceived as resorting to a personal attack.

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One of our readers makes the point that the Scott McClellan-Peter Osnos affair has the earmarks of communist thought control, as in Darkness at Noon. In this process, one offers the prisoner better food, to be sure, but most importantly helps him understand where his thinking was wrong, and then leads him to "right thinking." The process is easier if, as here, the captive's knowledge of fact and his convictions were weak to begin with. Apparently, there is a whole literature on this.

In this account, McClellan's editors helped him come to believe that he was doing the right thing, not just making a buck.

UPDATE: It turns out the Osnos has been quite explicit about the way in which his editing process re-shapes the thoughts of public figures who write books for his company. Months ago, Osnos wrote:

In nearly 25 years of editing books by public figures intended to provide historical perspective, I have learned that the full story only really emerges in the final editing. Even people who have lived through an experience in, say, The White House, The Pentagon or the Kremlin, can't completely fathom what they've been through. They need help in explaining "what happened" -- which is why that is McClellan's title. . . .[Scott] is very hard at work on the manuscript. We'll then help him be as clear as he can possibly be about what he has concluded.

This sounds a bit like the kind of help Zinoviev and Kamenev needed.

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...are beginning to seep into the mainstream media. Today, the Washington Post reports on its interview with CIA Director Michael Hayden, in which Hayden described the problems that have beset al Qaeda:

In a strikingly upbeat assessment, the CIA chief cited major gains against al-Qaeda's allies in the Middle East and an increasingly successful campaign to destabilize the group's core leadership.

While cautioning that al-Qaeda remains a serious threat, Hayden said Osama bin Laden is losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Islamic world and has largely forfeited his ability to exploit the Iraq war to recruit adherents. Two years ago, a CIA study concluded that the U.S.-led war had become a propaganda and marketing bonanza for al-Qaeda, generating cash donations and legions of volunteers.

All that has changed, Hayden said in an interview with The Washington Post this week that coincided with the start of his third year at the helm of the CIA.

"On balance, we are doing pretty well," he said, ticking down a list of accomplishments: "Near strategic defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaeda globally -- and here I'm going to use the word 'ideologically' -- as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam," he said.

Hayden also noted that several top-ranking al Qaeda leaders have been killed by Predator drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Hayden complained about the fact that criticism of the methods we use to combat terrorism is more common than acknowledgement of how successful those methods have been:

"The fact that we have kept [Americans] safe for pushing seven years now has got them back into the state of mind where 'safe' is normal," he said. "Our view is: Safe is hard-won, every 24 hours."

Hayden, who has previously highlighted a gulf between Washington and its European allies on how to battle terrorism, said he is troubled that Congress and many in the media are "focused less on the threat and more on the tactics the nation has chosen to deal with the threat" -- a reference to controversial CIA interrogation techniques approved by Hayden's predecessors.

That, of course, ties in closely with what we wrote here.

UPDATE: The Associated Press has now put out its own report on the Post's story. True to form, the AP thought the Post's account of Hayden's interview left too positive an impression, even though the Post also quoted several other terrorism experts. So the AP went looking for someone who would contradict Hayden. They knew where to look, of course; former CIA official Bruce Riedel is a Bush administration critic who is on record as saying that the Iraq war has helped al Qaeda. So the AP contacted Riedel and highlighted his response, suggesting that he speaks for a unanimous group of "analysts":

Analysts, however, said Al-Qaeda's safe havens in Pakistan have grown larger, not smaller, in the past year, giving the group the space it needs to operate, even in the face of stepped up attacks by unmanned US aircraft.

"I think that the administration very much wants to paint a picture of success, particularly as it gets close to the end of eight years," said Bruce Riedel, a longtime former CIA analyst now with Brookings Institution.

"So I'm not surprised we're seeing an effort to portray it in the most optimistic, possible way," he said, calling it "a pretty large dish of wishful thinking."

Riedel went on to praise "Al-Qaeda's remarkable strengths." That's the "news" as hundreds of newspapers will print it tomorrow.

An English professor at Dartmouth used to say, "I don't really know what I think until I write it." He was referring to the fact that thoughts crystallize when subjected to the rigors of the English language and its rules of usage and grammar. And he was paying homage to the magic of the lonely, and in his mind sacred, encounter between author and (in those days) paper.

Scott McClellan seems to be relying on the same point. He claims that he did not set out to write a memoir sharply critical of the administration but that in the process of actually writing the book, the scales dropped from eyes. This would explain, I suppose, why McClellan's book so flatly contradicts many of his public (and to colleagues, private) pronouncements. He never really knew what he thought until he wrote it.

There are a few problems with this defense, however. First. my English professor wasn't making the absurd claim that facts change when you write them. Second, McClellan's book is not the product of a lonely encounter with his keyboard; he had help. The help came from, among others, Peter Osnos, a former Washington Post writer. Osnos is the head of the liberal publishing company that published McClellan's book. It is he who helped transform McClellan's early concept -- a "not very interesting , typical press secretary book" -- into a vitriolic attack on the Bush White House.

Osnos denies that he ghost-wrote or heavily edited McClellan's book. However, he does take credit for making sure that the book "pass[ed] our test for independence, integrity, and candor."

The question then becomes, what would that test look like as applied by Osnos. Here, we encounter the fact that, according to Brett Baker of Newsbusters, Osnos' publishing house is affiliated with the far-left The Nation magazine and is the publisher of books by George Soros. It also published The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. Since that book apparently passed Osnos' test for integrity and candor, one can infer that McClellan's original account of his time in the Bush administration did not, and that a major shift in tone and content was required of him before the book could see the light of day. In this regard, Osnos admits to having worked very closely with McClellan and the book's official editor, Lisa Kaufman.

Based on this information, and perhaps on his time at the White House too, one might truly say that Scott McClellan never really knows what he thinks until someone else tells him what that ought to be.

UPDATE: Some may wonder whether bloggers know what they think before they write it. Bloggers actually rely on a different sort of magical process: we not only know what we think before we write it, we know what we think before it happens.

Seriously, though, as a blogger and writer of legal briefs, I've learned to think in complete paragraphs. But the paragraphs often do change, or lead to additional paragraphs, when it comes time to write them.

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This morning's New York Post has an op-ed by me that is an edited version of our post Are We Safer?.

To comment on this post go here.

Several readers wrote in response to "Motor City madness" yesterday that the video of the encounter of Detroit City Council member Monica (Mrs. John) Conyers was no longer available in our original post. Reader Corky Boyd kindly found us another video via Son of Baldwin.

On Tuesday the Wall Street Journal's Katherine Rosman caught up with the lesson in civility Mrs. Conyers had received from 13-year-old Keiara Bell. When reading of the close division on the Detroit City Council between supporters and opponents of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's continued service as mayor, one somehow knew that Mrs. Conyers would turn out to be, as she in fact is, one of Kilpatrick's key supporters. The Journal also editorialized on the controversy over Mayor Kilpatrick's continued service in "Lying about sex."

Today's news includes a report on the pundits' consensus that Mayor Kilpatrick will probably not be campaigning with Barack Obama this fall. I would add only that Obama will probably not be appearing on Father Michael Pfleger's pulpit this fall either, or in the pews of Trinity United Church, the scene of Father Pfleger's recent disgraceful tirade regarding Hillary Clinton and the unbearable whiteness of evil.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin compiles a roster of "All of Barack Obama's men of bad faith."

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Yesterday, I said it will be interesting to compare the degree to which the MSM reports on Scott McClellan's new book, including its discussion of the Iraq war, with the negligible extent to which it has reported on Douglas Feith's inside look at the same war, as well as the overall war on terrorism. The early returns are now in, and they come as no surprise.

As this report by Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post shows, McClellan’s book is a topic of intense discussion not just at the Post but at USA Today and the New York Times. The latter two organs have refused to report on Feith’s book (the Times turned down three separate stories by star reporter James Risen), and the Post has refused to review it. Yet, for reasons discussed below, there can be little question as to which book is more valuable when it comes to understanding why we went to war in Iraq and whether it made sense to do so.

Kurtz refers to McClellan’s book as an example of the “tell-all” genre. Now, it may be true that McClellan is revealing all of his current opinions about, say, the war in Iraq, along with whatever he happens to know about the decision-making relating to that war and the evidence supporting the ultimate decision. But whether this amounts to a “tell-all” depends on how much McClellan actually knows, and this is the subject of considerable doubt. Though I haven’t read his book, I do know that it is devoid of footnotes, endnotes, and supporting documentation. Nor, as John has pointed out, do McClellan’s media appearances suggest that he’s knowledgeable enough to have written a tell-all, at least on this subject.

Feith’s book stands in sharp contrast. First, unlike McClellan, Feith was at the center of the policy-making at issue. Second, his book provides detailed accounts of key meetings based on contemporaneous notes. And it includes more than 30 pages of original source material plus almost 90 pages of endnotes. Readers can thus determine for themselves whether the author is providing a reliable account or merely settling scores and/or trying to make a buck (Feith, by the way, is donating all proceeds from his book to help Iraq war veterans). Yet the MSM is breathless over McClellan’s book, while it continues studiously to ignore Feith's.

For Kurtz and the rest of the MSM, then, the concept of “tell-all” has little to do with the amount of actual information revealed, or its quality. The key, instead, is the amount of vitriol directed at (in this case) a president the MSM dislikes.

Though newspapers were once thought to be in the information business, politics, not information, seems to be the touchstone when it comes to dealing with books by public figures. I can think of no other explanation for the disparity in the treatment of the recent works of McClellan and Feith.

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Amazingly enough, there are still a few remote areas in the world where primitive tribes live without any contact with civilization. What is odd, I think, is that this is widely considered a good thing. There was a news story today about the aerial spotting of such a group in Brazil, near the border with Peru:

One of Brazil's last uncontacted Indian tribes has been spotted in the far western Amazon jungle near the Peruvian border, the National Indian Foundation said Thursday. The Indians were sighted in an Ethno-Environmental Protected Area along the Envira River in flights over remote Acre state, said the government foundation, known as Funai.

Funai said it photographed "strong and healthy" warriors, six huts and a large planted area. But it was not known to which tribe they belonged, the group said.

This beautiful photo apparently is of the group in question:

It's interesting, isn't it, that the governments and NGOs who explore these remote territories and photograph these reclusive people instinctively assume that contact with us would be bad? They evidently believe that these ragtag bands of primitive people would take a turn for the worse if they knew about our culture; our philosophies; our religions; our way of life. At one time, this assumption would have been considered very strange.

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“J Street” is the name of a new lobbying group and political action committee that says it will represent the interests of liberal American Jews. Its premise is that sensible mainstream of pro-Israel American Jews have been ill-served by the main pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. -- the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). J Street regards AIPAC as pushing a right-wing agenda. By contrast, J Street’s “sensible mainstream” agenda includes having the U.S. negotiate with Hamas.

As James Kirchick demonstrates, however, AIPAC is not out of step with mainstream (i.e., liberal) American Jewish sentiment. Rather, AIPAC’s skepticism about a negotiated Middle East settlement in the near future is consistent with American Jewish thinking. Thus, nearly three-quarters of American Jews do not believe that Israel can "achieve peace with a Hamas-led, Palestinian government." Indeed, 55 percent believe that even negotiations between Olmert and Abbas "cannot lead to peace in the foreseeable future." And 82 percent agree that "the goal of the Arabs is not the return of occupied territories but rather the destruction of Israel."

Moreover, AIPAC is not dominated by political conservatives. Steve Grossman, AIPAC's president from 1992 to 1996 and later the chairman of Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign, told Kirchick that the notion that AIPAC is a right-wing organization strikes him as ridiculous.

In reality, it is J Street, not AIPAC, that’s out of step, to the point that it can fairly be characterized as a fringe group (the fact that even Barack Obama won’t advocate negotiating with Hamas is a give-away). Kirchick notes that one of the most prominent Israelis involved with the group, Avrum Burg former speaker of the Knesset, has said that "to define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end." He has also compared contemporary Israel to pre-Nazi Germany. Another key J Street member, Henry Siegman, has compared Israel to apartheid South Africa, accused Israeli leaders of having the U.S. government "in their pockets," and claimed that the 2000 intifada "was not planned by Arafat, but a spontaneous eruption of Palestinian anger." It’s enough to make you wonder whether the “J” in “J Street” stands for Jimmy Carter.

There’s nothing wrong, of course, with Carteresque Jews forming a lobbying group. But it would be nice to see a little bit of truth in their advertising.

Barack Obama has professed himself "deeply disappointed" in Father Pfleger's merciless racial mockery of Sen. Clinton from the pulpit of Obama's church in Chicago. Although Obama has known Pfleger for some 20 years and Pfleger has been involved in Obama's campaign, Obama's statement sounds detached from Pfleger and the substance of Pfleger's remarks. It is almost as though Obama and Pfleger are at best distant acquaintances. This afternoon Obama announced:

"As I have traveled this country, I've been impressed not by what divides us, but by all that that unites us. That is why I am deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric, which doesn't reflect the country I see or the desire of people across America to come together in common cause."

In the video of Pfleger's remarks from the pulpit of Trinity United Church, Pfleger is apparently introduced by Pastor Otis Moss. Aaron Klein, in any event, identifies the speaker as Moss. Moss praises Pfleger effusively before his remarks. "We thank God for the message, and we thank God for the messenger. We thank God for Father Michael Pfleger, we thank God for Father Mike," Moss says after Pfleger's tirade.

In his April 29 press conference on Jeremiah Wright, Obama described Moss as TUC's "wonderful young pastor" to explain his continuing allegiance to the church. Does Obama know his friends?

We noted yesterday that the Barack Obama campaign arrogantly dismissed John McCain's suggestion that the two candidates go to Iraq together. This morning, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs clarified that Obama isn't necessarily averse to traveling to Iraq--he was there once, for two days in 2006--it's just that he and McCain have different agendas when they talk to our commanders and soldiers there:

You know, I don't think we'll be taking that trip with John McCain, because, as Senator Obama said yesterday, the work that the men and women in our military are doing over there is just far too important for them to be props in some sort of political stunts or photo-op.

You know, what they're doing over there is separated from their families, giving for their country. It's truly, truly amazing.

And I think we would want to go over there and talk to them and see what sort of difficulties they're facing and see how it is that we can begin to carefully remove them and carefully bring them back to their families and bring them back to the United States.

This is consistent with the Democrats' irrational commitment to failure. Obama won't go to Iraq to size up the situation; to get our commanders' ideas on how to bring the mission to a successful conclusion; to hear from the thousands of service members who would tell him that their mission is critically important and should not be abandoned. No: the only reasons Obama can imagine for going to Iraq are to "see the difficulties" our troops are facing and to determine how to "carefully" bring the troops--all of them, seemingly--home. In defeat.

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These days, Al Franken is one of the more reliable sources of good news, if you're a Republican. On the brink of endorsement by the DFL party, Franken has suffered one blow to his image after another, due to his own business incompetence and checkered past. The latest is a pornographic article he wrote for Playboy magazine eight years ago. Somewhat to my surprise, Franken's fellow DFLers seem genuinely concerned about nominating a pornographer to the U.S. Senate:

Rep. Betty McCollum, who supported the comedian's rival Mike Ciresi until he dropped out of the race for the party's nomination for the Senate, complained Thursday that she and other Minnesota Democrats will be on the same November ballot as a candidate "who has pornographic writings that are indefensible."

"Do they spend all of their time defending him, or do they spend their time talking about issues that are important to this election?" McCollum told The Associated Press in an interview. "The whole story was a shocking surprise."

This explains the Democrats' concerns, I think:

"I told him this is a serious problem," [McCollum] said. "I told him my cell phone's ringing off the hook. Union leaders call me, state House members are calling, I've had people in the coffee shop approach me, very concerned about this. They really feel this article is politically radioactive."

Franken's response is telling, no doubt inadvertently so:

"Al understands, and the people of Minnesota understand, the difference between what a satirist does and what a senator does," Franken campaign spokesman Andy Barr said.

That's right; and the more Minnesota voters focus on the difference between a Senator and a satirist, the more secure Norm Coleman's re-election bid will be.

To comment on this post go here.

Scott McClellan's appearance on the Today Show this morning had elements of comedy, as McClellan wanted to talk about bipartisanship while Meredith Vieira desperately prodded him to say something controversial, or, failing that, something specific. The most concrete anti-Bush statements were quoted by Vieira, from McClellan's book, under the headline "Weapons of Mass Destruction:"

Bush and his advisers knew that the American people would not support a war launched primarily for the ambitious purpose of transforming the Middle East. Rather than open this Pandora's Box...the administration chose a different path...not employing out and out deception, but shading the truth...in an effort to convince the world Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction....The administration used innuendo and implication and intentional ignoring of intelligence to the contrary.

Ironically, McClellan addressed this very subject in his last briefing as press secretary. At that time, before he was trying to sell books and ingratiate himself with liberals, he rightly condemned the revisionist history that is peddled by the left:

Q Some people seemed to take out their frustrations yesterday on Secretary Rumsfeld. What did the President think about that exchange? And does it change his opinion at all about the Secretary?

MR. McCLELLAN: People have a right to express their views, but I think you ought to step back and review history a little bit, not try to rewrite history. Saddam Hussein's regime was a threat. It was a threat to the region, it was a threat to the world. And in the aftermath of September 11th, this President made a determination that we were going to confront threats before they fully materialized, before it was too late.

And this President has led the way. We all saw the same intelligence. Now, the intelligence was wrong, but it was the collective judgment of the intelligence community that decisions were made upon. And this President took steps to appoint a bipartisan independent commission, and that commission took a look at the intelligence because it's vital in this dangerous time we live in when there are terrorists who still want to strike America, that we make sure we have the best possible intelligence.

*** And regardless of where you stood before, this is a time when we all need to be coming together to support our troops in Iraq and to support our plan for victory in Iraq, because success in Iraq is critical to winning the war on terrorism. It is the central front in the war on terrorism. The terrorists recognize that. They recognize how high the stakes are, and you see the Zarqawi video. We must continue to move forward and help the Iraqi people who have shown that they want to build a brighter future, that they want to live in freedom, when 12 million people show up at the polls, and when a group of leaders that they elected comes together and forms a national unity government. ***

Let's look at the collective judgment of the intelligence community. It was outlined in the National Intelligence Estimate, and it was provided to members of Congress, too, so that they could look at. Intelligence around the world, in different countries around the world, was the same kind of intelligence that we saw. And the world recognized that Saddam Hussein's regime was a threat.

Of course, if McClellan had repeated in his book what he knew to be true in April 2006, the Today show wouldn't be calling him, and his book would have gone straight to the remainder table. A shameful performance.

UPDATE: At NRO, Peter Wehner notes the post-modernist flavor of McClellan's narrative. He concludes:

George W. Bush is an imperfect man, as are we all, and our administration certainly made mistakes over the course of two terms. Many of us, in fact, feel quite free to talk about them. But the president is, at his core, a decent and honorable man. His presidency will, I think, be judged much better by history than it is being judged right now, though of course much depends on how circumstances play out in Iraq and elsewhere (it’s puzzling that Scott seems to have turned against the war at a time when, thanks to the surge by the president and the leadership by General Petraeus and others on the ground, we’ve seen remarkable progress on almost every front and a good outcome in Iraq is achievable). But regardless of history’s verdict, what Scott McClellan has done — which is to both turn on the president and in the process to paint a false and misleading picture — is doubly dishonorable.

Scott claims he is on a journey to discover “his” truth. But what he has done is do injury to the truth. The vast majority of us who served in the White House and for President Bush are very glad and grateful we did — and we will always consider it to have been the professional honor of a lifetime.

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As I noted in this post, Jeremiah Wright isn't the only religious figure from whom Barack Obama draws inspiration. Obama also has ties with Rev. Michael Pfleger, the Catholic pastor at St. Sabina on the south side of Chicago. Like Wright, Pfleger is is a supporter of Louis Farrakhan.

Post below is video of Rev. Pfleger preaching at Obama's church. Pfleger argues that whites must give up their 401(k) money in order to have any hope of atoning for the sins of their ancestors. He also maintains that Hillary Clinton's unhappiness over losing out to Obama is specifically related to his race. In other words, Clinton would have been less distraught had, say, John Edwards bested her. In this account, of course, Clinton is a racist.

Here's the video, which I think needs to be seen to be believed:

To comment on this post go here.

Blogging has changed some in the six years we've been doing it, but for me the essence remains the same. You read, see, or hear something that offends you and then, after a period of steaming, write what you hope is a pointed but under-control refutation.

My friend and law partner Dan Joseph has seen me in mid-process several times on the way to work, Washington Post in hand, on the metro. But last week, it was Dan who was steaming over an on-line chat with Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post. The topic was Hillary Clinton's reliance on an AP article which, she said, found that

Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans is weakening again, and. . .whites in both states [West Virginia and Kentucky] who had not completed college were supporting me. . . .There's a pattern emerging here.

That comment led to this exchange between Dan and Marcus:

Dan: Please explain how your opinion of Hillary Clinton is affected, if at all, by her explicit appeal to "white" voters. I believe there has not been an explicit racial appeal like this in presidential politics since Strom Thurmond's in 1948, although of course some -- particularly Richard Nixon -- have made veiled racial appeals. Thanks.

Marcus: Oh, please. It is completely unfair to Sen. Clinton to compare her to Sen. Thurmond in 1948. I think she, her campaign and her husband have said some dumb things, but they are not segregationists or anything close.

To provide Dan with the true "blog experience," not to mention the last word, I invited him to respond. After correctly noting that he had received "the brush-off," particularly given that he did not accuse Clinton of being a segregationist, Dan wrote:

The fact remains that Hillary has used explicit racial themes go gain votes – the same thing that Thurmond did. He also had a lifelong stance as a racist – which he changed when it became politically convenient for him after enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Hillary has had a longtime political career as an anti-racist, which appears to have changed, at least partly, when it became politically convenient for her in running against Barack Obama. That’s enough similarity to be thought-provoking and disturbing. Brushing off this racist appeal as “dumb” is unconvincing, given that Hillary Clinton is one of the smartest politicians on the scene, and is indeed criticized for the perceived domination of her brains over other faculties. It may have been dumb in the sense of unsuccessful, but it was not dumb in the sense of being the unintended product of a subpar intelligence. In using the term, Marcus was trying to make an inconvenient question disappear without answering it.

If someone at a dinner party blurts out a hideously offensive remark, maybe those attending can get past the difficulty by simply ignoring it. I would not think that that remedy would be available in an election.

It isn't, Dan, except to the extent that the MSM, or a particular member of it, favors your candidacy.

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We met up with Mrs. John Conyers when an eighth grade visitor to the Detroit City Council chambers instructed her in the basics of civil discourse. Mrs. Conyers put up a bit of a fight, but 13-year-old Keiara Bell had the better of the argument. On Tuesday Katherine Rosman caught up with the story in the Wall Street Journal. It turns out that Mrs. Conyers is a key City Council supporter of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, whose misconduct has directly cost the city millions of dollars in legal settlements. Mayor Kilpatrick is still on the job working hard -- to beat the related perjury rap. Richard Burr summarizes the case in "Motor Mouth City."

In the most recent developments of the story, the Detroit City Council voted 5-4 to call for Governor Granholm to remove Kilpatrick from office. Still on the job, however, Mayor Kilpatrick has vetoed the resolution. The Detroit News reports:

In a 10-page letter sent Tuesday vetoing a resolution asking Gov. Jennifer Granholm to remove him, Kilpatrick warned that ousting an elected official is "irresponsible" and deprives voters of their rights. The city charter doesn't allow him to veto the resolution calling for the start of impeachment-like proceedings next month, but Kilpatrick called the move "legally deficient."

Kilpatrick's letter, drafted by the Law Department, claims the council can only remove him if he was convicted of a felony or "lacked qualifications" to serve in office.

The argument is "brainless," said William Goodman, an attorney hired by the City Council to investigate the $8.4 million text-message scandal that has engulfed City Hall since January. The city charter clearly supports both actions, Goodman said.

It wasn't immediately clear late Tuesday if Kilpatrick's action carried any weight. Liz Boyd, a spokeswoman for Granholm, declined comment. Some observers called it more saber rattling than a serious effort to derail the council's efforts, since state law only requires the governor receive a sworn statement from one person to begin considering removal of officials.

In the spirit of Keiara Bell, the Detroit Free Press has provided intelligent commentary on the proceedings. In today's editorial, the Free Press observes:

Kilpatrick's behavior Tuesday is all about self-preservation and aggrandizement. What else could explain a move so futile, so redolent of the fantastical ploys you'd be more likely to find in an Alice-in-Wonderland type of story?

On what basis does the mayor really believe he might veto an effort that attempts to remove him for misconduct? It's absurdity gone wild.

And a compelling case study in the challenges of democratic self-rule.

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I noted earlier today that Tony Snow, who succeeded Scott McClellan as White House press secretary and did a far better job, came away deeply impressed by President Bush. As an antidote to today's frenzy over McClellan's hatchet job, here is an interview that I did with Snow in October 2006. He talks about President Bush beginning at around the six minute mark. Just click to play.

Kathryn Lopez notes that Tony appears to be very ill. Please pray for him.

To comment on this post go here.

As the election for executive positions on the Dartmouth Association of Alumni draws to a close, we on Parity Slate have received two disturbing reports. First, a few alums have said they did not receive ballots. When one of them inquired about this, the college informed him that he has been classified as "not interested" in receiving it.

Second, some alumni say they have received mail from the "Dartmouth Undying" slate, but not from Dartmouth Parity. If this is true, it presumably means that our rival slate is using the official Dartmouth mailing list. Our slate does not have access to this list.

To get a better handle on these concerns, I'm asking our Dartmouth readers to inform us (1) if you have not received a ballot or (2) if you have received Dartmouth Undying mail but not Dartmouth Parity mail (note that the letter sent by the trustees is not Dartmouth Undying mail even though it advocated on behalf of that slate).

Our email address is powerlinefeedback@gmail.com.

Thanks.

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During his commencement address at Wesleyan College this weekend, Barack Obama told the assembled graduates:

But during my first two years of college, perhaps because the values my mother had taught me –hard work, honesty, empathy – had resurfaced after a long hibernation; or perhaps because of the example of wonderful teachers and lasting friends, I began to notice a world beyond myself. I became active in the movement to oppose the apartheid regime of South Africa. I began following the debates in this country about poverty and health care. So that by the time I graduated from college, I was possessed with a crazy idea – that I would work at a grassroots level to bring about change.

I wrote letters to every organization in the country I could think of. And one day, a small group of churches on the South Side of Chicago offered me a job to come work as a community organizer in neighborhoods that had been devastated by steel plant closings. My mother and grandparents wanted me to go to law school. My friends were applying to jobs on Wall Street. Meanwhile, this organization offered me $12,000 a year plus $2,000 for an old, beat-up car.

And I said yes.

But Obama did not go from college to the "grassroots," as his statement at Wesleyan would lead one to believe. Upon graduating from Columbia in 1983, he worked first at Business International Corporation and then at New York Public Interest Research Group, both in New York City. Obama didn't take the community organizing job and move to Chicago until 1985. After three years in that capacity, he enrolled in law school.

Obama seems to consider the fact that he didn't apply to law school or work on Wall Street until several years after graduating from college a sign of particular distinction. In fact, as those of us acquainted with recent college graduates and/or who interview law students for employment know, it is quite common for law school-bound college grads to work for a while first, and not on Wall Street. This work often consists of "public interest" activity and, in any event, typically pays quite modestly.

Obama may justifiably be proud of what he did between college and law school, but it is hardly the stuff of legends.

JOHN adds: At The Corner, Jim Manzi points out that Obama earned over $4 million last year, so the public service route has worked out pretty well for him. Manzi writes:

I’m pretty far from being a John McCain booster, but does Obama not get that he’s running against a guy who spent the directly analogous years of his life in a fetid jungle prison being hung upside down and beaten with sticks until his bones broke?

And I said yes. Cry me a river, pal.

To comment on this post go here.

John McCain invited Barack Obama to go with him on a trip to Iraq; Obama's spokesman, Bill Burton, responded dismissively:

John McCain's proposal is nothing more than a political stunt, and we don't need any more 'Mission Accomplished' banners or walks through Baghdad markets to know that Iraq's leaders have not made the political progress that was the stated purpose of the surge. The American people don't want any more false promises of progress, they deserve a real debate about a war that has overstretched our military, and cost us thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars without making us safer.

Jim Geraghty notes that Obama has been to Iraq once, for two days in 2006. Geraghty makes the legitimate point that Obama seems to be willing to meet with just about anyone in the world except our generals in Iraq:

And isn't Obama vulnerable to the argument that a man who's pledged to meet unconditionally, one-on-one, face-to-face with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad really ought to meet at least once one-on-one with Gen. David Petraeus?

Fair enough, but what is most striking to me is the unattractiveness of Obama's reply to McCain. Burton sneeringly suggests that when McCain has gone to Iraq it was merely a "stunt," not a legitimate effort to understand conditions on the ground. And Burton displays the combination of arrogance and ignorance that is the trademark of the Obama campaign, declaring, as an article of faith and contrary to the facts, that the Iraqis are making no political progress. Burton's retort is a naked expression of the blind faith in defeat that has become one of the ugliest features of contemporary liberalism.

PAUL adds: McCain should raise this matter with Obama directly when they debate, and hope that Obama delivers an answer similar to Burton's.

The question of visiting Iraq won't go away if Obama is elected, either; in fact it will become more acute. If Obama hopes to retain respect from our armed forces and their leaders, he will have to visit Iraq before he abandons the country. But, depending on the situation in Iraq and what Obama learns on a visit, he could lose this respect if he abandons the country following a visit.

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When Scott McClellan was the president's press secretary, I usually winced when I heard him speak. The wincing finally ended when Tony Snow replaced McClellan.

Now, with the publication of his new book, we get the chance to wince once more. It's an opportunity I intend to pass up.

It will be interesting, though, to compare the degree to which the MSM reviews and reports on McClellan's book with the negligible extent to which it has reviewed and reported on Douglas Feith's inside look at the conduct of the war on terrorism during the first Bush 43 administration.

JOHN adds: McClellan was a lousy press secretary. A much better spokesman, Tony Snow, once told me that the best thing about his job was the opportunity to follow President Bush around and observe his conduct of the Presidency. Tony said that he came away with a deep appreciation of President Bush's character, judgment and knowledge of the issues. Unless McClellan can come up with some facts to back up his claims--facts have been notably absent from the press accounts I've seen of his book--I think Tony's assessment is considerably more reliable.

PAUL adds: McClellan's predecessor as press secretary, the far more able Ari Fleischer, wrote a book about his time in the post. Rich Noyes at Newsbusters reminds us that Fleischer's book went virtually unnoticed by the MSM.

When he is not accusing American Jewish leaders of McCarthyism, Zgibniew Brzezinski keeps busy by advocating the appeasement of Iran. In this Washington Post op-ed, for example, Brzezinski (along with William Odom) writes:

Given Iran's stated goals -- a nuclear power capability but not nuclear weapons, as well as an alleged desire to discuss broader U.S.-Iranian security issues -- a realistic policy would exploit this opening to see what it might yield.

The problem, though, is that no policy that takes Iran's stated goal seriously (i.e., sees it as an "opening") can be considered realistic. Indeed, it appears that even Brzezinski (the top foreign policy adviser to Jimmy Carter who concluded that the Soviet Union wouldn't invade Afghanistan because it promised not to) isn't a big enough fool to believe that Iran wants only nuclear power, not nuclear weapons. Thus, he begins his essay by referring to Iran's "desire to have its own nuclear arsenal." (Naturally, Brzezinski asserts that current U.S. policy is "intensifying" that desire, but he doesn't claim the desire doesn't exist, nor could he with a straight face).

Moreover, Brzezinski quickly moves away from the premise that Iran's goals don't include obtaining nukes. His fall-back position is that a nuclear Iran is not problematic because "the traditional policy of strategic deterrence, which worked so well in U.S. relations with the Soviet Union and with China and which has helped to stabilize India-Pakistan hostility" will also "work in the case of Iran." Brzezinski asserts that "the widely propagated notion of a suicidal Iran detonating its very first nuclear weapon against Israel is more the product of paranoia or demagogy than of serious strategic calculus." But, of course, this notion finds support in statements by leaders of Iran. One can argue that these statements shouldn't be taken seriously. But Brzezinski would rather not rely on this counterintuitive argument. Thus, he ignores the statements by Iran's leaders and resorts to name-calling. The intellectual dishonesty does not come as a surprise.

If it is true, however, that we have little to fear from a nuclear Iran, then why should we "accommodate its. . .interests" in order to avoid this outcome, as Brzezinski advocates? Here, Obama's mentor indulges in fantasy. He postulates that his accommodationist approach

could help bring Iran back into its traditional role of strategic cooperation with the United States in stabilizing the Gulf region. Eventually, Iran could even return to its long-standing and geopolitically natural pre-1979 policy of cooperative relations with Israel.

But this traditional, longstanding Iranian role pre-dates the 1979 revolution (the one that Carter and Brzezinski saw as insufficiently threatening to warrant backing the Shah of Iran). Brzezinski provides no reason to believe that the current regime or any spin-off thereof will opt to help the U.S. stablilize the Gulf region, much less cooperate with Israel.

Clearly, only regime change (in the strong sense) provides any prospect of bringing about Brzezinski's rosy scenario. And that is why a policy that promotes such change seems vastly superior to one that seeks to accommodate the existing regime's interests.

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Next week, the Senate will vote on the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade climate control bill. The proposed statute is a nightmare that would devastate our economy. The Wall Street Journal calls it "the most extensive government reorganization of the American economy since the 1930s."

The EPA estimates that by 2030 it will reduce GDP by 0.9% to 3.8%, and that is based on assumptions that appear hopelessly optimistic. Even the EPA's assumptions contemplate an additional increase of 44% in the cost of electricity over what would occur without Lieberman-Warner.

The Chamber of Commerce has charted the various regulations, mandates and timelines that Liberman-Warner would dictate; click to enlarge:

The idea that American voters can change the Earth's climate is folly. The danger that voters could choose to cripple our economy is, however, very real.

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In his Impromptus at NRO this morning, Jay Nordlinger notes that a friend of his has purchased a rare, signed baseball card featuring Fidel Castro. Jay adds that his friend has noted on the Castro card that the man is a dictator, murderer, and tyrant: "He has even noted that Oscar Elías Biscet, the imprisoned dissident, won the Presidential Medal of Freedom (from GWB, of course)." Taking a page from Rush Limbaugh, he is auctioning it here on eBay. The proceeds will go to the Center for a Free Cuba. Jay calls the venture "an unusual, nervy, imaginative, semi-thrilling thing."

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As Charles Krauthammer noted last week, since the Democrats' CNN/YouTube debate lst summer, Barack Obama has been touting the wisdom of presidential meetings with America's sworn enemies during his first year in office. In Portland on May 18, Obama portrayed President Kennedy's summit conference with Khruschev in Vienna as one of the presidential meetings that led to the triumph of the United States in the Cold War (video above, via Hot Air).

By all accounts, however, including Kennedy's own, the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit in Vienna was a disaster. Historians continue to add to the record, but the record has been clear on this point for a very long time. Historian Robert Dallek provides an updated account of the conference in his 2003 JFK biography An Unfinished Life. Approaching the question from the side of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev biographer William Taubman took a skeptical look at the conventional wisdom regarding the summit and arrived at a conclusion consonant with Kennedy biographers and historians. Nathan Thrall and James Wilkins skimmed the surface of the relevant history regarding the Vienna conference in a New York Times op-ed column last week.

Given the record, what are we to make of Obama's assertions regarding the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit? It seems to me that there are only two alternatives. Either Obama is familiar with the history and is deliberately exploiting the ignorance of his supporters, or he has no idea what he is talking about. I incline to the latter view, which I set out to establish in detail in "The Kennedy-Khrushchev Conference for Dummies" at the Weekly Standard site this morning.

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Occasional contributor Bill Katz now posts daily at Urgent Agenda, though he saves his longer reflections on life and politics for us. Today he critically examines comparisons between Barack Obama and JFK:

I will claim to have a good memory. It's not a memory, to be sure, that's very effective in the short run. I really can't recall why I walked across this room a few minutes ago. But I can remember details from decades ago, and one of the things I recall well is that small number of presidents, in my lifetime, who excited the nation and became revered.

I'll exclude Franklin D. Roosevelt from the list. I was too young to understand. In fact, only two men in my adult lifetime qualify -- John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Yes, Harry Truman's stock rose dramatically after he left office, but excitement was not his game. Dwight D. Eisenhower was highly respected, and regard for his presidency has risen in recent times, but no one ever accused him of exciting anyone. He was revered primarily as the wartime general who organized victory in Europe. The others? Well, try to get excited about Jimmy Carter and see what happens to your pulse rate. I can't deny Lyndon Johnson his achievements, especially in legislation, but no one ever fainted in ecstasy at a Johnson rally.

I mention these things because of the absurd hype surrounding Barack Obama. And the most absurd part of it is the comparison made with John F. Kennedy. The Kennedy family has joined in this, to my dismay. Caroline Kennedy, the president's daughter, has always struck me as sane and reasonable, but she too has drunk from the silver cup and and has come to the altar to worship the divine Barack.

There are, of course, some similarities between Kennedy and Obama, a few not the kind worshippers might want to stress. History will note that both men ran for president in their forties. Both attended Ivy League schools. Both served in the Senate, where both had mediocre records. Both wrote books. And both benefited from the largesse of the Daley machine in Chicago. Obama is a product of that machine. Kennedy may have owed his election in 1960 to creative balloting by Richard Daley's legions. And both are marked by their
ability to inspire youth.

That's pretty much it for the similarities. It's the differences that make the comparison ludicrous. Take, for example, the ability to inspire youth. Among the youth that Kennedy inspired were members of the armed forces. After his assassination, it was common for soldiers to leave their hats at his grave. Kennedy served in war, was wounded and decorated, was widely considered a combat hero. His brother had been killed. Many servicemen
considered him one of their own.

Barack Obama, by contrast, seems to feel no link to the military. He is at the other end of the culture. How else do we explain his strident comments, made while American soldiers are being killed in Iraq, that the war should never have been fought at all? Did he ever consider the effect on soldiers' morale when making that statement? Can you imagine Kennedy making it? It's striking that when Obama's ability to inspire youth is brought up, members of the armed forces aren't even included. Indeed, in his commencement address at Wesleyan University this past Memorial Day weekend, Obama stressed national service, but never mentioned the armed forces once. Incredible.

Kennedy inspired youth actually to do something. I was in the hall in Chicago on November 4, 1960, when he proposed the Peace Corps. Young people did volunteer, and for many it became a key point in their lives. Precisely what are Barack Obama's youthful legions prepared to do, except work for the election of the glorious leader? Has he given them a route? Some details? Some vision of the future? I'd like to see something a bit more substantive than "Yes we can."

Kennedy ran to the right of the Republican Party on defense in 1960. He was a hawk. Barack Obama is running to the left of, well, of everybody. If nominated, he'd be the most dovish major-party candidate since George McGovern in 1972. Just picture Obama descending the stairs of the Marine helicopter on the White House lawn, and trying to salute the Marine standing guard. Would he do it? Would he know how? Would anyone watching believe it? Would these questions be asked of Kennedy?

People note that Obama, like Kennedy, has written books. But Kennedy, in Why England Slept and Profiles in Courage, the latter ghost written by Theodore Sorensen, wrote about history. Obama writes about himself or, in The Audacity of Hope, writes a campaign statement.

Kennedy had a wry, ironic sense of humor. I've never heard Obama say anything even vaguely humorous, and that worries me. Lincoln was known for cracking jokes. So was FDR. Reagan was famous for it. I wonder about a man like Obama who seems to take himself so very, very seriously, and to regard every word as golden.

Kennedy, when he ran in 1960, was widely seen as too inexperienced for the presidency, especially by Eleanor Roosevelt, who questioned his record publicly. Yet, Kennedy's experience towers over Obama's. Kennedy had served in Congress for 13 years. He'd been elected twice to the Senate. True, his record had not been outstanding, and he hadn't been considered a Senate leader. True, he'd had a dalliance with McCarthyism. But he'd also seemed to grow in stature, had a decent war record, and had watched history firsthand as the son of the American ambassador to Britain in the years leading up to World War II.

Obama was elected to the Senate in 2004, and has been running for president ever since. His record is thin. In the one national office he has held, he has been decidedly undistinguished. He clearly lacks Kennedy's sophistication on foreign policy and knowledge of history. I don't recall Kennedy having to fire one adviser after another, or having to explain statement after statement. I do recall that Kennedy had a catastrophic first year in office, despite his background. He blundered at the Bay of Pigs. He was rolled by Khrushchev at the Vienna Conference only months later. I shudder to think of a President Obama sitting down with the dictators he seems so eager to engage. What will he tell them? "I'm the change you've been waiting for"?

Finally, there is an issue of personal quality. Kennedy, with all his failings, with his scandalous private habits, with the arrogance of privilege that sometimes touched him, had an ability to look at himself. He knew he'd failed in that first year. He said so. And he had the dignity and understanding of power to acknowledge publicly what had happened. He was asked at a press conference to assess blame for the Bay of Pigs. Whose fault was it? He replied, "I am the responsible officer of the government."

When something goes wrong in the Obama Crusade, Obama normally attributes it to staff problems. History, if he becomes president, will read his blunders differently.

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Here is the audio clip of my appearance on Bill Bennett's radio show this morning, talking about our post, Are We Safer?. The clip is courtesy of Bill's great producer, Seth Leibsohn. Click to play:

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Douglas Feith, author of the invaluable book War and Decision, has a piece in today's Wall Street Journal criticizing the way President Bush "sold" the war in Iraq. Feith writes:

In the fall of 2003, a few months after Saddam Hussein's overthrow, U.S. officials began to despair of finding stockpiles of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The resulting embarrassment caused a radical shift in administration rhetoric about the war in Iraq.

President Bush no longer stressed Saddam's record or the threats from the Baathist regime as reasons for going to war. Rather, from that point forward, he focused almost exclusively on the larger aim of promoting democracy.

Feith actually quantifies this shift, using a chart he developed for his book (page 476):

In the year beginning with his first major speech about Iraq – the Sept. 12, 2002 address to the U.N. General Assembly – Mr. Bush delivered nine major talks about Iraq. There were, on average, approximately 14 paragraphs per speech on Saddam's record as an enemy, aggressor, tyrant and danger, with only three paragraphs on promoting democracy. In the next year – from September 2003 to September 2004 – Mr. Bush delivered 15 major talks about Iraq. The average number of paragraphs devoted to the record of threats from Saddam was one, and the number devoted to democracy promotion was approximately 11.

One can understood why, after it started to seem unlikely that we'd find significant stockpiles of WMD in Iraq, the administration was relunctant to talk about WMD. However, the administration still could have talked about the more general threat Saddam Hussein posed and explained how our presence was enhancing our security. Instead, he chose to focus on what our presence was doing for the Iraqis.

Feith points to three ways in which the administration's dramatic shift in rhetoric hurt its position. First, by shifting ground, the administration lost credibility. As Feith puts it, "The stunning change in rhetoric appeared to confirm his critics' argument that the security rationale for the war was at best an error, and at worst a lie."

Second, the administration's shift signaled to its critics that the administration would no longer talk about past. It gave them confidence, for example, that President Bush would not cite the prior hawkish statements of his critics back at them. Thus, his critics and opponents were emboldened to rewrite history.

Finally, the administration redefined the goal away from something we indisputably had accomplished (the overthrow of a deadly anti-American, terrorist-supporting dictator) to something we were having a difficult time accomplishing (establishing a functioning democracy in Iraq). It is the administration's change in the definition of success that Feith believes produced the most deleterious consequences.

Feith concludes with this lesson:

To fight a long war, the president has to ensure he can preserve public and congressional support for the effort. It is not an overstatement to say that the president's shift in rhetoric nearly cost the U.S. the war. Victory or defeat can hinge on the president's words as much as on the military plans of his generals or the actions of their troops on the ground.

I don't know whether there was any rhetoric capable of maintaining support for the war as the military situation deteriorated. It's clear, however, that the administration did itself, and the country, no favor when it changed the way it defended the war.

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Zbigniew Brzezinski has accused members of the American Jewish establishment of "McCarthyism" in their attitude towards critics of Israel, and has accused American supporters of Israel of being too ready to accuse critics of Israel of "anti-Semitism." Ed Lasky exposes a key factual misrepresentation in Brzezinski's statement -- contrary to his claim, AIPAC does favor a two-state solution in the Middle East. Brzezinski's misrepresentation does not come as a surprise.

Brzezinski does not appear to have cited examples of American Jews accusing Israel's critics of anti-Semitism. In my readings, I find that this charge is typically reserved for critics who actually have attacked the Jewish religion, such as Louis Farrakhan and their admirers, such as Jeremiah Wright. Brzezinski, then, appears to be engaging in the familiar dodge of responding to the charge of being anti-Israel by falsely complaining of being accused of being anti-Jewish. His intellectual dishonesty does not come as a surprise.

Normally, it is only the anti-Israel charge that I see leveled (and level myself) against strident critics of Israel such as Brzezinski. Nor is this charge made lightly. More is required than mere criticism of Israel or calls on the Israeli government to make new concessions to its enemies. That "more" is supplied when, for example, Samantha Power blames deference to Israel at least in part for the U.S. invasion of Iraq; calls for the U.S. to send a "mammoth" military force into Israeli held territory for the purpose of imposing a Palestinian state; calls, in addition, for a cut-off in U.S. aid to Israel with the money to be given to the Palestinians; and criticizes the New York Times for not sufficiently emphasizing "Israeli war crimes" in an article that had tried to correct false reports that Israel committed a massacre in Jenin.

It is improper, however, to conflate even this virulent kind of Israel bashing with anti-Semitism. One can view Israel as a very bad actor without disliking Jews. Again, I don't know of instances where the conflation has occurred and Brzezinski does not appear to have pointed to any.

When criticism of Israel is accompanied by criticism of American Jews who strongly support Israel, one arguably enters a gray area. But even harsh criticism of these Jewish Americans should not be viewed as necessarily indicating anti-Jewish animus, as opposed to animus against Jews who strongly support Israel.

One can conceive of criticism of Israel's American Jewish supporters that is so over-the-top as to strongly suggest anti-Semitism. Indeed, some (including Eliot Cohen) have plausibly argued that the attacks on "the Jewish lobby" by Professors Walt and Mearsheimer rise to this level.

Brzezinski, according to Ed Lasky, is an outspoken supporter of Walt and Mearsheimer. This doesn't prove that Brzezinski anti-Semitic, but it certainly makes him someone best left on the sidelines when it comes to influencing America's foreign policy with respect to Israel, at a minimum. Unfortunately, Brzezinski (along with Samantha Power) is one of Barack Obama's foreign policy mentors. Obama calls Brzezinski "someone I have learned an immense amount from." Supporters of Israel should be very afraid about the content of Brzezinski's lessons.

Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus addressed the National Press Club today, talking about his book Blue Planet in Green Shackles, which has just been translated into English. Klaus speaks from a unique perspective, as an economist who lived under Communism and who places the current wave of environmentalist extremism squarely in that tradition. Introduced as a global warming skeptic, Klaus objected:

I'm just surprised to hear that I'm skeptical vis-a-vis environmentalism. I'm not skeptical. I am totally against it. "Skeptical" is an understatement which I would never, never use.

To my knowledge, Klaus's talk is not available online; sadly, we can't post it