Right Wing Nut House

If, as Cicero wrote, “Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things,” then it is safe to say that the farther away our world moves from 9/11, the more our memories of that day should enrich us and keep us from taking actions that will make another equally devastating terrorist attack more likely.

Alas, the old Roman republican never knew a country like America. If he had, he would almost certainly have found an exception to his logic. For us, the past has always been an annoyance that gets in the way of our determined and dedicated march to the future. There is no malice in it, this flight, this mad dash from our history. In some ways, it is necessary for us to forget or ignore what has transpired in order to be free of the consequences the past sometimes imposes on those who would use our collective memory to keep the future at bay, standing in the way of progress in the name of hidebound “tradition” or “custom.”

So it has come for 9/11, a date but 6 years in the past and already seeing the effects of what James Earl Jones in the film Field of Dreams referred to as the erasure of history:

And they’ll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game and it’ll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again.

Jones’ character was talking about baseball as a cultural touchstone by which each succeeding generation maintains contact with the past. But even here, that paean to baseball neglects the very real history of the game. Jones himself grew up during a time when members of his race were barred from playing the game. To say that baseball “reminds of us of all that once was good” ignores the fact that even a cursory glance at the historical record would flip those words and posit that baseball, in fact, also reminds us of all that once was bad about America.

It is this kind of schizophrenia - a duality of mind regarding our past - that so angers and fascinates many of us who love American history. We can glory in the words of the Declaration of Independence while realizing the hypocrisy of demanding freedom as we kept three million human beings in bondage ourselves. Similarly, we can marvel at the elegance and simplicity of the Constitution while acknowledging that its words still ring hollow for so many and have for so long.

Although aware of the dichotomies, the Founders gave these little discrepancies scant thought, believing it would be up to future generations to right the wrongs that they had neither the political or moral will to fix themselves. Right or wrong, much of American history is carelessly strewn about our national attic like a bunch of old steamer trunks and hope chests, examined (if at all) not for what the curios inside can teach us about ourselves but rather how their contents can be used in the present to propel us into the future.

And now this battle between the past and future has come for 9/11 as the open wounds of that day scab over and the emotional impact of the event becomes hard for even the vividness of searing memories to arouse in our breasts the same feelings of anger, outrage, and the terrible, aching sadness felt by virtually all Americans. For many of us, what remains is a determination not to forget and a realization that “The Long War” is upon us. For others, remembering 9/11 is an unwelcome intrusion or worse, a political construct to try and revivify feelings of patriotism and the war spirit. To these citizens who cling to the latter - most of whom could fairly be said are on the left - identification of 9/11 with their rabid opposition to the Administration of George Bush and the Iraq War builds an unreasonable resentment about remembering the attacks at all.

This excellent article in the New York Times by N.R. Kleinfield about the battle over how to best remember the history of 9/11 reveals both the pathos and the agony memories of that day engender as well as the desire by many to try and simply wish those memories away:

Each year, murmuring about Sept. 11 fatigue arises, a weariness of reliving a day that everyone wishes had never happened. It began before the first anniversary of the terrorist attack. By now, though, many people feel that the collective commemorations, publicly staged, are excessive and vacant, even annoying.

“I may sound callous, but doesn’t grieving have a shelf life?” said Charlene Correia, 57, a nursing supervisor from Acushnet, Mass. “We’re very sorry and mournful that people died, but there are living people. Let’s wind it down.”

Some people prefer to see things condensed to perhaps a moment of silence that morning and an end to the rituals like the long recitation of the names of the dead at ground zero.

But many others bristle at such talk, especially those who lost relatives on that day.

“The idea of scaling back just seems so offensive to me when you think of the monumental nature of that tragedy,” said Anita LaFond Korsonsky, whose sister Jeanette LaFond-Menichino died in the World Trade Center. “If you’re tired of it, don’t attend it; turn off your TV or leave town. To say six years is enough, it’s not. I don’t know what is enough.”

It isn’t just family members who wish to commemorate 9/11 as solemnly and fully as possible. However, the “moral authority” of those who lost loved ones that tragic day should be respected. They are stand ins for the rest of us who still see 9/11 as a day that changed America in ways that a mere 6 years after the event we are still trying to understand.

Superficially, there is the debate over increased domestic security. Even the wars currently being fought by our military in Iraq and Afghanistan are only surface manifestations of something fundamental that is altering our political and cultural landscape as I write this. In this respect, it doesn’t matter if Hillary Clinton or other Democrats want to take us back to a 9/10 world where the threat of terrorists and those who support and enable them occupies a much smaller space in our national politics.

Whether or not they realize it, the 9/10 Democrats can try all they wish to make 9/11 disappear into the mists of memory by downplaying its significance so that rather than a rallying cry it becomes a day marked by an inexpressible sadness with overtones of guilt that the attacks were actually our fault. They will not succeed because our enemies will not let them.

Sooner or later, our perfect record of preventing another terrorist attack on American soil will bump up against the reality that we can succeed a thousand times in thwarting the designs of those who contemplate mass murder but our enemies need to win only once. And then those memories that we have carefully stored in our national attic will come back in a rush and we will wonder if we shouldn’t have dusted them off every once and a while in order to glean whatever lessons in preparedness we might have missed the first time around.

To be sure, it is human nature to try and push unpleasant memories to the back of our minds lest the pain they cause become a part of our everyday lives. And we shouldn’t blame those who wish that 9/11 be relegated so soon to the status that other days of national tragedy have fallen:

Few Americans give much thought anymore on Dec. 7 that Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941 (the date to live in infamy). Similar subdued attention is paid to other scarring tragedies: the Kennedy assassination (Nov. 22, 1963), Kent State (May 4, 1970), the Oklahoma City bombing (April 19, 1995).

Generations, of course, turn over. Few are alive anymore who can recall June 15, 1904, when 1,021 people died in the burning of the steamer General Slocum, the deadliest New York City disaster until Sept. 11, 2001. Also, the weight of new wrenching events crowds the national memory. Already since Sept. 11, there have been Katrina and Virginia Tech. And people have their own more circumscribed agonies.

A strong argument could be made that none of those other days of tragedy had the raw, emotional impact of 9/11. Perhaps the Kennedy Assassination echoes the surprise of what happened on 9/11. And Pearl Harbor certainly aroused similar feelings of anger and determination.

But 9/11 stands alone as a date that tears at our souls and requires us to re-examine uncomfortable truths. We are at war. Remembering or not remembering 9/11 won’t change that fact nor will denying the reality of that statement make it less true. The reason is simple. It takes two sides to make war. And our enemies will find ways to remind us that our denial is silly, stupid, and self defeating as often and as painfully as we let them.

It may be a different kind of war but war it is and pushing the proximate cause of the conflict into the recesses of our memory because remembering is too painful, or too much a bother, or gives political advantage to one side or another is simply putting off the day of reckoning when those in denial will be forced once again to look 9/11 full in the face and realize the overwhelming truth that America is in danger. And if we are vouchsafed the time to allow the emotional scars of 9/11 to heal, we should also use that time to prepare for the next onslaught while doing everything in our power to prevent it.

Once again, America is steamrolling our history into a flattened state of forgetfulness. This time, it is happening in record time and partly being done so that any political advantage in remembering 9/11 can be neutralized by an opposition that plays upon the emotional weariness of the voters in fighting a war few understand and many wish would just go away. Part of this problem can be laid at the feet of the current Administration who has, at times (not as often as they have been accused), employed the imagery and played upon the emotions that 9/11 brought to the surface; feelings of patriotism and unity that seem somewhat quaint when we look back on them today. Not because they were not genuine but because the opposition has determined that these emotions are inappropriate and not germane to the political realities of today.

Instead, the dominant emotion we should be feeling about 9/11 is outrage. Not at Osama Bin Laden but at George Bush for using 9/11 as an “excuse” to get us embroiled in the morass that is Iraq and to skirt the limits of Constitutional authority in order to protect the homeland from further attacks. This is what the Democrats will run their campaigns on in 2008. It remains to be seen whether they will be successful or not.

Meanwhile, the 6th anniversary of 9/11 approaches and once again we will try and conjure up what it felt like to be alive and an American that day. Whether the exercise in remembrance is useful or not is immaterial to those who lost loved ones on that horrible day. For them, the war to remember 9/11 is irrelevant to their bereavement. They are beyond comforting and need only our understanding. I would hope that both sides in this battle for the degree of poignancy with which we recall September 11, 2001 keeps them in their thoughts and prayers as the history of that day fades into myth and legend, becoming a touchstone for all we hold dear as Americans.

More tidbits of information are being gathered by an aroused press corps about former fugitive Democratic financier Norman Hsu that would seem to suggest some rather strange and significant connections in his past.

This Los Angeles Times piece provides the shockers of the day:

The most obvious red flag: A check of a commonly used database produces a 1990 San Francisco Chronicle news story detailing how Norman Hsu had been kidnapped by gang members in the San Mateo County suburb of Foster City. A second widely used database discloses that Norman Yuan Yuen Hsu of Foster City had a bankruptcy in 1990.

Having established that he lived in San Mateo County, a check of the San Mateo County Superior Court’s website reveals that Norman Yuan Yuen Hsu had a criminal case.

“Kidnapped by gang members…?” And he lived to tell the tale? What kind of gang? The Wall Street Journal fills in the details:

In 1990, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that a group of Chinatown gang leaders had been arrested for kidnapping Mr. Hsu. The article said the alleged kidnappers were stopped after speeding through a red light, and Mr. Hsu took the opportunity to tell police he was being kidnapped. The article said he owned a restaurant and clothing businesses throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

Some of the Chinatown Triads have ties to legitimate Chinese businesses like the state owned China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) which has a history with the People’s Liberation Army. COSCO has subsidiaries all over northern California and has been allegedly involved in smuggling arms to gangs here in the US.

I bring up COSCO because as an importer, Hsu would have been familiar with such a large shipping concern and may have even done business with them.

No doubt Hsu was extremely lucky if he really was being kidnapped. We can only speculate on the reason for his kidnapping but it could have had something to do with a refusal to pay “protection” or even a failure to hire a gang member to work at one of his businesses.

Or, Hsu himself could have been a member of a rival triad.

And the fact that Hsu claimed bankruptcy in 1990 and then emerges 2 years later as Managing Director of Newton Enterprises Ltd in Hong Kong is also rather amazing. As is the news that he evidently never made restitution to the investors he swindled:

In a separate matter, Mr. Hsu turned himself in at State Superior Court in California, where he faced three years in jail before vanishing in the early 1990s. Mr. Hsu had raised more than $1 million from investors to import latex gloves from Asia and resell them for a profit, according to Ronald Smetana, the deputy California attorney general who handled the case.

James Brosnahan, an attorney for Mr. Hsu, released a statement saying his client “has pledged to deal forthrightly with this 15-year-old legal issue” and “is having preliminary productive discussions with the Attorney General’s office.” He added that Mr. Hsu “is hopeful that the matter will be resolved shortly to everyone’s satisfaction.”

Mr. Brosnahan said the $2 million bail “can also be used for restitution to any persons who might still be unpaid.”

According to the article, there are at least a few investors swindled by Mr. Hsu who didn’t receive restitution. Along with his 1990 bankruptcy, one of the legitimate questions being asked by the Justice Department in their probe into Mr. Hsu’s activities must be where did he get the money? One would think that his assets were frozen as a result of the verdict in his criminal trial. Judging by the property he has owned in New York City since his return from Hong Kong, his fortune must be considerable. And while there is no doubt the “Managing Director” of an import company might receive a considerable salary, it is unlikely that it would have been enough to allow for the multi-million dollar property deals he cut upon his return to New York City.

For once, the smell of a good story has overridden the reluctance of the press to cover a Democratic party scandal. We’ll see how far they go when more information about Mr. Hsu is discovered.

UPDATE

Just noticed something strange in that Wall Street Journal account of Hsu’s kidnapping. The report from the San Francisco Chronicle apparently mentions “gang leaders” in the car that supposedly kidnapped Mr. Hsu.

Why would the leaders of gangs be cooperating in a kidnapping of some nobody? More bizarre yet, why would gang leaders be doing their own dirty work? One would think that the leaders of gangs would avoid taking on such tasks for the very reason they made the paper; the chance of getting caught.

This raises the possibility that Hsu was not being kidnapped at all but was being escorted to a gathering of some kind involving all of the Chinatown gangs. Could Hsu himself be one of those “gang leaders?”

Just asking…

Bizarre times we live in, no doubt about it. While the left obsesses over the bathroom antics of a relatively obscure Idaho senator and the social right gets their opportunity to wag a finger in disapproval at the hapless hypocritical closet case, a genuine scandal involving a Democratic fundraiser who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money and raised hundreds of thousands more all for Democratic candidates perks along growing stranger by the hour.

Norman Hsu is a man with apparently no known source of income who also may have knowingly tried to skirt campaign finance laws. At the very least, questions should be asked by the FEC about various business addresses given by Mr. Hsu on his disclosure forms, all of which lead to dead ends. Various companies Mr. Hsu claimed to be operating do not exist now nor is it clear that they ever existed at all.

Investigators believe that after Mr. Hsu skipped his court appearance in 1992, he went to his native Hong Kong and then continued working in the garment trade. At some point, Mr. Hsu, a naturalized American citizen, returned to New York and in 2003 made the first of what became hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions to Democratic campaigns around the nation.

People who met him said they knew only that he ran an apparel business. Efforts to learn more about his trade hit dead-ends yesterday. Visits to companies at addresses listed by Mr. Hsu on campaign finance records provided little information. There were no offices in buildings in New York’s garment district whose addresses were given for businesses with names like Components Ltd., Cool Planets, Next Components, Coopgors Ltd., NBT and Because Men’s clothing — all listed by Mr. Hsu in federal filings at different times.

At a new loft-style residential condominium in SoHo that was also listed as an address for one of his companies, an employee there said that he had never seen or heard of Mr. Hsu. Another company was listed at a condo that Mr. Hsu had sublet in an elegant residential tower in Midtown Manhattan just off Fifth Avenue, but an employee there said Mr. Hsu moved out two years ago, after having lived there for five years. The employee, who was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about residents, said he recalled that Mr. Hsu had received a lot of mail from the Democratic Party.

Could the People’s Liberation Army in China be up to their old tricks of trying to buy influence in the Democratic party?

Here’s a fellow who never gave a dime to a political campaign before returning from Hong Kong 4 years ago. With no known source of income and some demonstrably confusing - perhaps even shady - FEC disclosure practices, the entire matter is beginning to stink of some kind of slush fund. Hsu could be a front man for some other fundraiser. Or he could be a foreign agent. But at this point, it is fair to say he is not who he claims to be.

You might recall the 22 individuals - many of them prominent Clinton-Gore intimates and supporters - who were convicted of fraud or funnelling Asian money into the 1996 campaign. It was a massive effort by the PLA to influence the Clinton Administration and steer hardware and technology - some of it on a restricted list from the Department of Commerce - to the PLA. Corporate fundraisers like the Loral Corporation were allowed to transfer restricted satellite and missile technology to the PLA while other security controls on trade with China were either enforced in a lax manner or thrown out the window altogether.

Of course, it was impossible to prove that the Clinton Administration had been bribed by the PLA but the inference was plain as day. In exchange for contributions to the Clinton campaign, his presidential library, and his personal legal defense fund, the Chinese got access to restricted technology and hardware. It was one of the the biggest (and most underreported) campaign financing scandals in American history.

The Chinese denied everything - and then quietly went about the business of reforming the PLA by divorcing the army from any commercial enterprises. Apparently, the profit motive was at work in the scandal as much as the desire to steal technology. By 2000, the PLA was completely free of any commercial taint.

Enter our friend Mr. Hsu who apparently fled the United States to avoid jail time in his swindling case in 1991. He arrived in Hong Kong where investigators believe he went into the garment industry. Could he have made a fortune in the cutthroat Far East garment industry? As a naturalized American citizen, he almost certainly would have been at a disadvantage in the tightly knit, familial Chinese society - unless he was able to acquire valuable contacts to help him in that hyper competitive market.

It might be interesting to find out who those contacts might be. I am also curious to discover if prosecutors seized any of Mr. Hsu’s assets following his no contest plea in the 1991 swindling case. If he hid any money as a result of any judgments against him, that too, would be a crime. Otherwise, one might question where he acquired the capital to go into business in Hong Kong.

And then there is the matter of the Paw family and questions about how this middle class family has been able to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars over a 3 year period to the Democratic party. The fact that the amount of many of those donations closely track the amounts given by Mr. Hsu would seem to indicate that Hsu may have reimbursed the Paw family for their contributions.

Just recently, Hsu hired William Paw’s 35-year-old son, Winkle Paw to work for “several of his apparel businesses” according to the Wall Street Journal yesterday. As the New York Times reports today, those “apparel businesses” are fictitious. It would be a legitimate inquiry to try and determine if the “salary” being paid to Winkle Paw isn’t part of a deal to repay the Paws for their contributions.

Mr. Hsu is a cipher. With Democratic politicians scrambling to return his direct donations to their campaigns, one wonders how long it will be before they are forced to return monies that he “bundled” for these same candidates thanks to his attempts to skirt FEC regulations.

The last question would have to be when is the media going to get serious about this story? The laughable notion that Senator Craig’s stupidities should take precedence over this developing scandal is ridiculous. And yet, the Washington Post has no stories listed on its website involving Mr. Hsu. They do, however, have two stories and a couple of columns on Larry Craig.

The New York Times, to their credit, is apparently looking into the story as is the Wall Street Journal. The San Francisco Chronicle has the local angle detailing Hsu’s contributions to races involving assemblymen and the mayors of Los Angeles and San Francisco. The Washington Times carried a story culled mostly from wire service reports.

Perhaps when the press is done flogging Mr. Craig and his errant toe tapping, they will concentrate on something a little more important:

Just who is Mr. Hsu?

UPDATE

Ed Morrissey asks the same questions about the source of Hsu’s largesse while detailing the comical explanations of Democratic politicians about why they took money from a convicted con man:

Bob Kerrey has the most laughable explanation, however. The former Senator runs the liberal New School, which made him a trustee after Hsu started showering Democrats with cash. Kerrey explained that he added Hsu to the trustee roster because “I liked his personal story, coming from China, and he had an interest in fashion as well.” All it takes to become a trustee at the New School is to be an immigrant who has an eye for the runway. That says much more about the New School than Kerrey intends.

All of this begs the question: where does Hsu get the money? All of his supposed resources are frauds. Hsu himself is a convicted con man, but the money he threw around was very real. Where did it come from, and what was its purpose?

UPDATE II

Allah is also asking where Hsu is getting his money while linking to this LA Times piece I missed that has some additional information about Hsu’s phantom businesses:

Hsu was affiliated with two businesses — Components Ltd. and Coopgors Ltd. — that have listed addresses on Fifth Avenue. But the building actually houses luxury apartments, not commercial offices, according to a doorman, who has worked there for the last 15 years. The doorman said Hsu lived in the building for a few years but moved out about four years ago.

He moved into the office about two years ago but never unpacked his boxes, said Ken Mulligan, 31, a sales executive for J.P. Doumak, a fabric supplier. He said Hsu would not visit the office space for months, then would show up for a few hours, say “hello,” check his mail, make a few phone calls and leave.

My newest column at PJ Media is up and in it, I use my harrowing experience with last week’s flood as a parable to highlight the need for disaster preparedness for you and your family.

A sample:

Crystal Creek, a normally quiet little burn that meanders through our property just before emptying into the Fox River less than a hundred yards from our front door, was looking more like the Colorado River rapids than the lazy stream Sue and I would fish on during relaxed summer weekends. And as the river downstream from our creek rose, the water began to back up. First, it flooded the brand new Cornish Park across the street from our little house. And then slowly, ominously, the brown torrent began to slide over the brand new retaining wall put in by the Army Corps of Engineers just last fall and inch its way up our newly sculpted back yard. The Corps had landscaped the yard so that there was a much more pronounced hill in front of the house which was supposed to protect us from all but the worst case flooding scenarios.

Sure enough, at 5:45, a knock at the door. It was the police telling us it was time to go. We had until 2:00 AM to pack up whatever we could and leave.

The votes are in from this week’s Watchers Council and the winner in the Council category is yours truly for my post “Is the United States an Imperialist Power and Does It Matter?” Finishing second was “St. Nietzsche” by Done With Mirrors.

Finishing first in the Non Council category was my PJ Media colleague Richard Miniter for “How The New Republic Got Suckered.”

If you’d like to participate in the weekly Watchers vote go here and follow instructions.

After all the sound and fury, the bombastic rhetoric thrown around by Democrats over the supposed partisanship of Fox News, comes this stunner of a study done by the conservative Media Research Center about coverage of the presidential campaigns on the three biggest morning shows on television.

In a word; mindboggling:

The study found that 55 percent of campaign stories on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” CBS’s “The Early Show” and NBC’s “Today” focused on Democratic candidates while only 29 percent focused on Republicans. The remaining 16 percent were classified as “mixed/independent.”

The morning shows aired 61 stories focused exclusively on Sen. Hillary Clinton, 44 stories on former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, and 41 stories on Sen. Barack Obama, all of whom are seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. Former Vice President Al Gore, who is not officially running, was the subject of 29 stories.

Republican candidates received less attention, according to the study. Sen. John McCain was the focus of 31 stories. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was the focus of 26 stories and former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney was the focus of 19 stories.

Bring back the Fairness Doctrine!

And it isn’t just the number of stories being aired about Democrats that demonstrates an inherent bias bordering on cheerleading by the Big Three networks. Interviews with Democratic candidates or their representatives took up more than twice as much time on the air as those done with Republicans. What’s more, the tone and tenor of that coverage was almost worshipful; Hillary being referred to as “unbeatable” or Obama being called a “rock star” by grown up journalists would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

The effect of all this coverage is to make the Democratic candidates into celebrities, creating an aura of invincibility around their campaigns. By contrast, most of the stories on John McCain’s candidacy revolved around the sinking nature of the campaign - because of his support of the mission in Iraq according to the networks.

I guess his authorship of the immigration bill, his stubborn defense of McCain Feingold, and his tepid support for conservative judges had nothing at all to do with the collapse of his campaign.

No doubt McCain’s imploding campaign is newsworthy. But contrast the death watch nature of McCain’s coverage with the worshipful devotion to Silky Pony’s equally hopeless effort. Edwards got his very own Town Hall meeting broadcast live on ABC.

Gee. No favoritism there.

More subjectively, MRC tried to measure the way questions were framed to candidates or their representatives and came away with the conclusion that they were “friendly” to Democrats and “actively promoting the liberal agenda.” I’m not really concerned about that kind of criticism. Politicians go on those morning programs because they are generally treated in a more “friendly” fashion in the first place. And as far as questions “promoting” a liberal agenda, that very well may be in the eye of the beholder.

But that kind of partisan critique pales next to the very real discrepancy - huge discrepancy - in time devoted to coverage of Democrats versus that given Republicans. It appears to me that the morning shows on the network haven’t even made an effort to be fair and balanced. The thought never entered their heads.

A case can be made for slightly unbalanced coverage in favor of Democrats due to the historic nature of the Clinton and Obama candidacies. But clearly not on the scale uncovered by the MRC study. In fact, a good case can be made the the Giuliani candidacy has as many newsworthy/gossipy elements to report on as any Democrat in the race. And the Romney campaign has many compelling storylines to it as well.

Nearly 12 million Americans still tune in to the morning news shows to tell them what is happening in the world, dwarfing the audience on cable shows for the same time slot. One would think that the Big Three news shows might take their responsibilities as journalists a little more seriously and cover the campaigns in order to inform the American people of the choices they will have to make on election day. Instead, the perception that the network news departments have become an extension of the Democratic National Committee and mouthpieces for liberal candidates is fostered by the doting coverage they give presidential candidates belonging to only one of the two parties.

Somehow, I don’t think we’ll hear yelps of fake outrage from the netnuts and their minions about this kind of bias. After all, the Democratic party brand of favoritism has been the hallmark of network television since at least the 1960’s. To them, it must seem as if all is right in the world. God is in the universe, the sun is rising in the east, setting in the west, and network news is showing a ridiculously biased face to the American people.

Incredible as it may seem, my spam catcher Askimet has prevented more than one million spam trackbacks and comments from appearing on this site. The time period was 16 months.

Caught Spam
Akismet has caught 1,001,123 spam for you since you installed it.

You have no spam currently in the queue. Must be your lucky day.

There are times when the spam is coming in so quickly - 60 to 80 a minute - that site loading slows to a crawl.

When I move to my new hosting company, I hope the spam situation will get better. But I’m not crossing my fingers.

My latest sports column is up at Pajamas Media. In it, I lay into Michael Vick and tell the story of how the prosecutors were able to pressure him into pleading guilty.

A sample:

Michael Vick will be out of football this season and almost certainly next season as well. And if it comes out that his Bad Newz Kennels was involved with even shadier characters and practices, that suspension could become permanent. But whatever punishment meted out to the young man, it pales in comparison to what he put those helpless animals through during their short, brutal lives.

For that, there is nothing in the United States Code that covers the cruelty and depraved indifference shown by Vick toward those animals nor the manner in which he sought to deceive everyone about his nefarious and heartless enterprises.

I have made no secret on this blog of my distaste for the Republican strategy of pushing opposition to abortion and gay marriage as litmus tests for GOP candidates and as “wedge” issues to use in campaigns.

While I acknowledge there are many millions of sincere, devout Christians (and other social conservatives) who see these issues as vital to the moral fiber of the nation and thus worthy of standing them up front and center as the party’s main identity, from a personal standpoint, I strenuously disagree.

Abortion, I can understand. The religious underpinnings that can rationalize life at conception are well known to me, having grown up Catholic. But the Republic or the “sanctity of marriage” being in danger because two people in love want to get married? That’s a stretch. There may be other reasons to keep gay people from marrying but the more I think about it, the more I believe that it’s really no body’s business who loves who and what sex they are. There may be sticky legal issues involved but I’m no lawyer and can’t speak to them. All I can look to is common sense. And common sense tells me that gay people should be able to do anything in this free country that anyone else can do.

Beyond common sense, there is politics. And while I am not calling for dropping these planks from any GOP platform, these issues are no longer “wedge” issues. They are “loser” issues. They are “recipe for electoral disaster” issues. They are driving people away from the Republican party.

Another time I might make the argument that they are not even conservative issues but such a post is not in my pen tonight. Instead, I want to talk about the regularity with which conservative Republicans seem to get themselves into trouble over sex. The latest is Idaho Senator Larry Craig who was arrested in a Minneapolis restroom for “lewd conduct.”

“At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moves his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly. While this was occurring, the male in the stall to my right was still present. I could hear several unknown persons in the restroom that appeared to use the restroom for its intended use. The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area,” the report states.

Craig then proceeded to swipe his hand under the stall divider several times, and Karsnia noted in his report that “I could … see Craig had a gold ring on his ring finger as his hand was on my side of the stall divider.”

Karsnia then held his police identification down by the floor so that Craig could see it.

“With my left hand near the floor, I pointed towards the exit. Craig responded, ‘No!’ I again pointed towards the exit. Craig exited the stall with his roller bags without flushing the toilet. … Craig said he would not go. I told Craig that he was under arrest, he had to go, and that I didn’t want to make a scene. Craig then left the restroom.”

The conduct doesn’t seem lewd to me and the whole story reeks of something very fishy. But the fact is, the Senator pled guilty and probably thought that it would stay out of the papers if he didn’t make a fuss.

The point really isn’t whether he’s guilty or innocent. The point is that this sort of thing becomes a huge issue because of the way the party talks about gays and the way many GOP stalwarts like Reverend Robertson and James Dobson talk about sex. The perception that Republicans are a bunch of bigoted blue noses stuck in the 19th century with Victorian sensibilities about the bedroom turns off a lot of voters - especially the young.

A brief look at this eye popping poll that shows the vital 18-29 year old group turning up their noses at Republicans is very significant. I was in that age group when I became a Republican and many of my fellow Reaganites were also young, eager conservatives who drank in the enormous intellectual ferment that bubbled up from dozens of places in Reagan’s Washington. We were on the cutting edge and we knew it.

Nowadays, I don’t blame young people for turning off the GOP. The corruption, the hypocrisy, the sanctimony, and the tired old men pushing tired old ideas to an ever shrinking number of wealthier, whiter, men has the GOP in deep, deep, trouble. If I were that age again, I probably wouldn’t support Republicans either.

Perhaps the predicted disaster in 2008 will wake a few people up. Not likely based on what happened in 2006. As the left did for 30 years, the push will be for more ideological “purity,” more fealty to what passes for conservative issues today.

Just at the moment that our country needs the right’s commitment to fight a war against an implacable, unyielding foe, our own stupidity is going to allow the milquetoast left to ascend to power. For that, our children and grand children may curse us for our folly.

/off

UPDATE

Ed Morrissey also sees disaster for the GOP in 2008 - at least in the Senate.

The Republicans already have a 21-12 disadvantage in next year’s Senate contests. His was one of the seats the GOP hoped to hold, and his party had been pushing to keep him from retiring. I suspect they’re looking for Plan B at the moment.

And Allah gets off the line of the day.

(From the Roll Call article) “At one point during the interview, Craig handed the plainclothes sergeant who arrested him a business card that identified him as a U.S. Senator and said, ‘What do you think about that?’ the report states.”

(Allah): I think he can probably start throwing away those cards now.

I would love to say that the agreement reached yesterday by the Iraqi leadership is a huge step on the road to peace and reconciliation. But I don’t see how anyone who has watched this crew in action over the last year can honestly say what was agreed to yesterday by the major sectarian factions is anything except Washington-inspired window dressing:

Iraq’s top Shi’ite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish political leaders announced on Sunday they had reached consensus on some key measures seen as vital to fostering national reconciliation.

The agreement by the five leaders was one of the most significant political developments in Iraq for months and was quickly welcomed by the United States, which hopes such moves will ease sectarian violence that has killed tens of thousands.

But skeptics will be watching for action amid growing frustration in Washington over the political paralysis that has gripped the government of Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

While certainly significant in the sense that they were all able to sit down in the same room and basically agree that there are things that must be done to start Iraq down the road to peace, the devil, as always, is in the details:

Iraqi officials said the five leaders had agreed on draft legislation that would ease curbs on former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party joining the civil service and military.

Consensus was also reached on a law governing provincial powers as well as setting up a mechanism to release some detainees held without charge, a key demand of Sunni Arabs since the majority being held are Sunnis.

The laws need to be passed by Iraq’s fractious parliament, which has yet to receive any of the drafts.

Again, I hate to be a party pooper, but these laws have been in “draft” form for months - some of them for more than a year. The oil revenue sharing law was passed in the spring and has yet to be taken up by Iraq’s parliament. In fact, precious little has been taken up by Parliament which usually has trouble finding a quorum of members to conduct business.

And frankly, it remains to be seen how much sway these gentlemen have with their various factions. Maliki has only nominal control over the Shia coalition that runs the Parliament. Vice President al-Hashemi has problems with his own party, the Iraqi Accordance Front, who walked out of the government last month over Maliki’s rank sectarianism.

As for the Kurds, as always, they have their own fish to fry. Since their long term goal is an independent Kurdish state, they can afford to be generous to the Sunnis while cooperating with the Shias when it suits them. They will support any deal that maintains their virtual independence from Baghdad.

In short, the senior Iraqi leadership has given General Petreaus one more arrow in his quiver when he gives his report to Congress in about two weeks. In addition to some progress in the security situation about which Petreaus will be able to boast, he can now claim that his deals with many of the Sunni tribes and this latest accord in Baghdad proves that his counterinsurgency strategy is working.

Unfortunately, Petreaus and the military cannot address the huge political and security problem brewing in the south as the British continue their withdrawal:

Shiite militiamen from the Mahdi Army took over the police joint command center in Basra on Sunday after British soldiers withdrew from the facility and handed control to the Iraqi police, witnesses said.

Police left the building when the militiamen, loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, arrived, the witnesses said.

The British military disputed the reports, saying they had been in contact with the Iraqi general in charge of security in Basra, who has said the Mahdi Army was not there.

But the witnesses said the Mahdi Army emptied the building — taking generators, computers, furniture and even cars, saying it was war booty — and remained there in the early evening.

This is the tip of the iceberg. Until Maliki can enforce the will of the central government in the south, all the reforms and agreements between the factions wil largely be moot. The writ of Baghdad law does not run in Basra and other towns and villages where the Mahdi and other militias are fighting for control - an intolerable situation that has gotten worse since the British have pulled back their forces and allowed the militias to move in.

This means a final and direct confrontation with Maliki’s friend and supporter, Moqtada al-Sadr is in the offing. Will the Mahdi be the next target for Petreaus if Congress gives him the go-ahead to continue the surge? One would think that the General would be forced to deal with the Mahdi if for no other reason than to plug the holes that will be left by the British drawdown of troops. That would mean some very hard fighting for our boys.

Cynics will question the timing of these accords as well as their utility. Coming two weeks before Petreaus’s report to Congress, the agreement smacks of gamesmanship by both the Iraqi and American governments. The parties all know that the Iraqi parliament will be months, perhaps even years, examining, debating, and amending these laws. For that reason alone, Congress should give little weight to this agreement when the debate over funding the surge picks up next month.