Right Wing Nut House

My latest is up at PJ Media and I take a look at the mostly GOP phenomena of the “inevitability” factor in the nominating process — usually the establishment candidate being anointed prematurely.

A sample:

Matt Bai, one of America’s premiere political writers, took a shot at defining the GOP establishment in a recent New York Times Magazine article:

Today’s establishment is really a consortium of separate and overlapping establishments: a governing establishment of those who have served in administrations or in Congress; a political establishment of campaign consultants; a media establishment dominated by Fox News or the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal and a policy establishment at organizations like the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

If there is any one power center that connects all of these, though, it’s what you could call the money establishment — the group of senior Republicans, many of whom came to Washington as ideological warriors in the 1980s or early ’90s, who now make their living principally through the business of government. They wield quiet power as corporate lobbyists or regulatory consultants or prolific fund-raisers, or often as all of these at once.

The scenario that has run in past campaigns appears to be on track in 2012. Mitt Romney is getting a head start on the “inevitability” riff in this familiar composition. Despite lukewarm support from the Republican establishment, almost dutifully, those movers, shakers, spenders, bundlers, and thinkers who run the party are laying aside their doubts and have begun the drumbeat in the press about Mitt Romney’s “inevitability.”

They picked a lousy time for it. Two recent national polls show Herman Cain ahead of Romney, while several state polls also show the Georgia businessman beating out the establishment’s reluctant choice. But this doesn’t seem to make a dent in what is nothing short of a media blitz to crown the former Massachusetts governor before any challenger can truly make a game of it.

Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin points out that there are already 1.98 million Google search results for the term “Romney inevitable.” She also notes:

[T]he notion that any candidate’s win is “inevitable” months before votes are cast is silly. Romney is without a doubt the front-runner with considerable momentum and weak opposition. But lots can happen, and there are dangers from attaining not only front-runner but media-denominated “inevitable” status.

Not exactly “silly” if one looks at the recent history of the GOP nominating process, but certainly Herman Cain and Rick Perry would strenuously disagree. As Rubin writes, Romney could easily stumble as early as Iowa and will have a real fight on his hands in South Carolina. Those early contests could easily wipe the patina of “inevitability” from his campaign posters and see the candidate fighting for his political life in relatively unfriendly states like Florida (1/31/12) and Missouri (2/7/12). Another factor working against the “inevitable” candidate this time out is the elimination of “winner-take-all” primaries. With proportional delegate selection, any candidate who is trailing the front-runner can claim a significant portion of a state’s delegates even by losing.

My latest is up at FPM and it’s about the discomfiting reality facing Christians in Egypt and the Middle East at large.

With the advent of the “Arab Spring,” radical Muslims have been unleashed from decades of their own oppression and allowed to rampage through Christian communities burning churches, murdering, and destroying Christian homes.

In Egypt, the Copts have watched as a systematic effort to destroy their churches and terrorize their communities has been underway since the fall of Mubarak. A riot on Sunday killed nearly 20 and wounded 400. And the hell of it is, the authorities are ignoring the persecution, currying favor with the radicals.

A sample:

On September 30, “some three thousand Muslims rampaged the church, torched it, and demolished the dome; flames from the wreckage burned nearby Coptic homes, which were further ransacked by rioting Muslims.” Predictably, the Governor of Aswan blamed the Christians for the violence, pointing out that the Copts were building the roof of the church 3 meters too high. “Copts made a mistake and had to be punished, and Muslims did nothing but set things right, end of story,” said the governor.

Coptic Christians were second class citizens under the Mubarak regime, but their churches were protected and radical Islamists were reined in. But since the “Arab Spring,” the authorities have turned a blind eye as Muslims have run wild, burning churches, murdering Christians, and rampaging through Christian communities.

According to the Associated Press, here’s a partial list of attacks on Copts since the beginning of 2011:

• A New Year church attack left 23 dead.
• On February 23, a Coptic priest was found murdered. The assailants reportedly shouted “Allahu-Akbar” upon leaving the dead priest’s house.
• In March, a Muslim-Christian love affair led to the burning of a church south of Cairo. When Copts protested the church attack, a mob of Muslims wielding knives and clubs attacked killing 13 and injuring 140.
• In April, thousands of Muslims in Qena protested the appointment of a Coptic governor. The authorities caved in and appointed a Muslim.
• In May, another church was burned, this time in Cairo, by a mob angered over another Christian-Muslim love affair. Twelve were killed.

There have been no prosecutions relating to any of these attacks. In fact, as Ibrahim reports, “Even if sometimes the most rabid church-destroying Muslims get ‘detained,’ it is usually for show, as they are released in days, hailed back home as heroes.”

These scenes of destruction and murder have been repeated all over the Middle East. Whatever one can say about tyrants like Saddam Hussein and Hosni Mubarak, they feared the Islamists and kept them from causing the kind of mayhem that is afflicting Christian populations across the region. And the destruction of churches and murders of Christians are not isolated incidents. There has been a systematic targeting of Christians in Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Iran, as well as Egypt. The attacks are inspired by extremist clerics, and condoned to one degree or another by authorities.

Despite Christians living and worshiping in the Middle East for 2,000 years, those communities are now in danger of disappearing. A report by the Egyptian Federation of Human Rights reveals that 100,000 Christians have fled Egypt since March, with 250,000 expected to leave before the end of 2011. In Iraq, it’s even worse. A State Department report last year on religious freedom around the world showed that 50% of Iraqi Christians had left the country since the US invasion. And in Sudan, tens of thousands of Christians in the Nuba Mountains are being bombed daily by Sudanese military forces and suffer house to house raids at the hands of President Bashir’s forces.

One is forced to confront an uncomfortable reality: if any other minority group — racial, ethnic, or tribal — was suffering from government-condoned persecution carried out by out of control mobs, the outrage in the Western press and from Western governments would be loud and sustained. So why don’t Christians in the Middle East rate that kind of concern?

I have another piece up at FPM - this one is on the recent news reports that top US officials met with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. I also look at the coming parliamentary elections in Egypt.

A sample:

Why would high ranking officials of the US government sit down with an organization that created a terrorist group like Hamas? Was it simply a matter of real politik – a realization that since the MB was going to come out on top in the coming elections anyway that it was better to have contact with them than give them the diplomatic cold shoulder?

That could be one reason. But there may be another, simpler reason; the administration of President Barack Obama doesn’t believe that the Muslim Brotherhood is a threat to anyone and that their disavowal of terrorism can be trusted.

Recall the testimony of the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper last February when, appearing before House Intelligence Committee he startled onlookers and Members of Congress by saying the the MB was “largely secular” and that they had pursued “social ends,” and “a betterment of the political order in Egypt.”

“In other countries, there are also chapters or franchises of the Muslim Brotherhood, but there is no overarching agenda, particularly in pursuit of violence, at least internationally,” he told the committee.

Flash forward to a mass rally in Tahrir Square held at the end of July where tens of thousands of Salafists demonstrated, including masses of Brotherhood members, chanting Islamist slogans calling for the implementation of Sharia law, and warning that the constitution that will be written must be based on Koranic law.

Even in the clarification Clapper’s media office released a few hours after those shocking statements, he made it clear that he didn’t think there was much to worry about when it came to the Muslim Brotherhood. “To clarify Director Clapper’s point – in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood makes efforts to work through a political system that has been, under Mubarak’s rule, one that is largely secular in its orientation,” the statement said. Mubarak’s regime literally arrested MB members on sight. How that translates into working “through a political system” Clapper didn’t elaborate on.

What could have possessed the DNI — a man with the most sophisticated intelligence analyses at his fingertips — to make such a ridiculous statement? It is apparent that the administration has made a decision to treat the Brotherhood as a political party rather than an Islamist organization hell bent on the destruction of Israel, and the establishment of a Sharia-compliant Egyptian government.

In an interview with Egypt’s Al-Hayat TV last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made it plain exactly how the administration will be dealing with the Islamists in Egypt:

We will be willing to and open to working with a government that has representatives who are committed to non-violence, who are committed to human rights, who are committed to the democracy that I think was hoped for in Tahrir Square.

ince the MB and their Islamist allies will almost certainly come out on top in the elections next month, it seems clear that Clinton believes that the Muslim Brotherhood is “committed to non-violence,” and “democracy.”

This also appeared to be the attitude of our diplomats who met with the FJP. They included Prem G. Kumar, the National Security Council Director for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs and Amy Destefano, the First Secretary of the US Embassy in Cairo. Their host was Dr. Mohamed Saad Katatni, the Secretary General of the FJP. Katatni apparently lectured our diplomats on the new state of affairs in Egypt, reportedly telling them,“If America wants to build balanced relations with the countries of the region after the Arab Spring, it should re-read the new scenario in accordance to the will of the peoples of the region.”

No doubt this sentiment went over well with the diplomats as Kumar told Katatni that the US “is seeking dialogue with all the political forces in Egypt, especially after the changes post-revolution.”

Barry Rubin suggests that we employ a program similar to one conducted by the CIA after World War II in France and Italy to forestall a Communist takeover in those countries. We funneled money and expertise to the more moderate, right wing, and conservative parties, helping them build coalitions to defeat the Marxists.

Could such a plan work in Egypt? The one unifying factor of the opposition to MB taking over the government is the belief that religion should have a small or non existent role in the new government and constitution. That may be a basis to forge alliances among the secularists and moderates who have been frozen out of negotiations between the military and the MB.

It’s too late for this sort of thing to work for the parliamentary elections scheduled for next month. But it might be worth a try for the presidential elections now put off until 2013.

My latest is up at FPM and I look at the assassination attempt against Hamid Karzai and the security pact signed between Afghanistan and India.

A sample:

This is the third serious assassination plot against President Karzai. In 2002, another presidential bodyguard opened fire on Karzai but missed him, killing two others and wounding an American special operations member who was guarding the president. And a 2008 attack by Haqqani during a military parade Karzai was attending came close to succeeding when several bystanders near the president were killed.

The revelations regarding the plot come on the heels of charges made by the governments of Afghanistan and the United States that the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) has close ties to Haqqani, as well as other charges made by Afghanistan tying the Haqqani network specifically to the assassination of the government’s peace envoy to the Taliban, former President Burhanuddin Rabbani.

Several other high profile assassination attempts in Afghanistan have succeeded recently, all tied to either the Taliban or Haqqani. In addition to the death of Rabbani, which has resulted in the suspension of peace talks with the Taliban, the president’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was killed by his own bodyguard in July. Less than a week later, Jan Mohammad Khan, a senior aide to the president, was killed in an attack on his home in Kabul. The Taliban is suspected of having a hand in both assassinations, with the possible knowledge of the ISI.

And as if the relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan couldn’t get any rockier, President Karzai’s surprise trip to India on Wednesday to sign a security pact with New Delhi, will no doubt roil the already tense relationship with Islamabad. According to the Washington Post, the pact will “step up cooperation in counterterrorism operations, training of security forces and trade.” The pact will also increase cultural and political exchanges as well as offer assistance to Afghanistan in stabilizing the country.

The security pact will no doubt anger the civilian government of President Zardari in Pakistan, and cause great concern in Pakistan’s military and intelligence services. Any move to draw closer to India by Afghanistan is likely to be seen as a betrayal in Islamabad. It is also the realization of the Pakistani military’s worst nightmare; a more independent Afghanistan with close ties to their mortal enemy India.

“[A]ny military or intelligence role for India will not be tolerable for Pakistan,” said former ambassador Maleeha Lodi in an interview last summer. While no active role is seen for India in peace talks, Karzai’s move to engage with New Delhi on security matters will worry Pakistan, who wishes a weak, compliant vassal state after America pulls out in 2014. In effect, Karzai is showing Islamabad that he has some diplomatic and military cards to play as well. If Pakistan continues its attempts to destabilize Afghanistan through the use of their proxy terrorists in Haqqani and the Taliban, the Afghan government won’t hesitate to expand their ties with India.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative political talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, I welcome Jazz Shaw of Hot Air, Rich Baehr of the American Thinker, and Monica Showalter of IDB. We’ll discuss the latest from the GOP presidential field and the “Occupy Wall Street” protest.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

I just got a weather forecast for hell: temperatures are dropping and a deep freeze is expected.

Glenn Greenwald is right:

It was first reported in January of last year that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens whom the President had ordered assassinated without any due process, and one of those Americans was Anwar al-Awlaki.  No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was “considering” indicting him).  Despite substantial doubt among Yemen experts about whether he even has any operational role in Al Qaeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt.  When Awlaki’s father sought a court order barring Obama from killing his son, the DOJ argued, among other things, that such decisions were “state secrets” and thus beyond the scrutiny of the courts.  He was simply ordered killed by the President: his judge, jury and executioner.  When Awlaki’s inclusion on President Obama’s hit list was confirmed, The New York Times noted that “it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing.”

After several unsuccessful efforts to assassinate its own citizen, the U.S. succeeded today (and it was the U.S.).  It almost certainly was able to find and kill Awlaki with the help of its long-time close friend President Saleh, who took a little time off from murdering his own citizens to help the U.S. murder its.  The U.S. thus transformed someone who was, at best, a marginal figure into a martyr, and again showed its true face to the world.  The government and media search for The Next bin Laden has undoubtedly already commenced.

The problem that the president has ignored and that those cheering the death of this scumbag have forgotten is that al-Awlaki is not a terrorist. He has not even broken the law. He is innocent.

Until he is indicted, tried, and convicted of crimes by a jury of his peers.Then we can drag his terrorist hide to the execution chamber, strap him down, and give him the hot shot. I have no problem with that scenario at all. If there is going to be a death penalty in America, certainly those who advocate the mass murder of American citizens and work to carry it out deserve it the most.

If al-Awlaki had been killed in a drone attack in a cave where he just happened to be hiding along with other AQAP terrorists, we could all hold our noses and say it was a legal hit — despite knowing it to be a transparent fiction — simply because there was no stated intent to single out the terrorist for assassination. A patina of plausible deniability encompasses the act; not satisfactory to purists like Greenwald but good enough as a legal defense.

Recall that our efforts to target Saddam’s and Gaddafi’s known hideouts and bomb shelters could be similarly justified because we were hitting “command and control” targets. If they happened to be where the bombs were falling — a wish devoutly hoped for — well, c’est la guerre.

Indeed, we are at war. And if an American citizen chooses to fight on the other side, he takes his chances like the rest of the enemy combatants.

But knowingly, coldly and with malice aforethought, if we put his name on a missile and use it to kill him, it becomes a shocking transgression against the Constitution and flies in the face of 222 years of American law and tradition. Al-Awlaki was not a terrorst. No court said he was. No prosecutor ever indicted him. No jury ever convicted him. He was, as I said, an innocent American citizen under the law.

Would I be making the same argument if Bush were president? I would hope so. The case of Jose Padilla was similar in the sense that Padilla was innocent, although he was eventually indicted, tried and convicted (not of trying to detonate a dirty bomb). But at the time that he was picked up and indefinitely detained, his rights were trampled upon by a government that used the excuse of being at war to justify his unconstitutional detention.

Targeting foreigners is one thing. Targeting your own for assassination is what the Soviets, Gaddafi and the Iranians do to their citizens.

I hardly think following their example makes us very “exceptional,” do you?

My latest is up at FPM and I take a look at Admiral Mullen’s comments about Pakistan’s involvement in terror attacks on US citizens and where the relationship might go from here.

A sample:

Admiral Mullen made some other interesting comments at that senate hearing as well. He said, “With ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted that truck bomb attack” on September 10 that killed 5 and wounded 77 coalition soldiers. Mullen added, “We also have credible evidence that they were behind the June 28th attack against the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul and a host of other smaller but effective operations.”

The State Department leaked to the Washington Post: “Adm. Mike Mullen’s assertion last week that an anti-American insurgent group in Afghanistan is a ‘veritable arm’ of Pakistan’s spy service was overstated and contributed to overheated reactions in Pakistan and misperceptions in Washington.”

What “misperceptions” could there be? An arm of the Pakistani government is colluding with terrorists to kill Americans. To most, that would seem a straightforward problem with which our government should be dealing. David Goldman (aka “Spengler”), writing on his blog at PJ Media, quotes another unnamed diplomat saying, “The administration has long sought to pressure Pakistan, but to do so in a nuanced way that does not sever the U.S. relationship with a country that American officials see as crucial to winning the war in Afghanistan and maintaining long-term stability in the region.”

Goldman adds:

The Pakistanis, in short, continue to murder Americans with impunity by threatening us with their own failure. It’s the geopolitical equivalent of the scene in Blazing Saddles in which the black sheriff intimidates a lynch mob by holding a gun to his own head and threatening to shoot himself.

The Pakistani military’s response to Mullen’s comments and the support he received from the Congress and notable pundits for his accusations has been sharp and without precedent. Not only has the Pakistani military angrily dismissed the charges made by Mullen, the it has flatly refused an American request to go after the Haqqani network in North Waziristan, while cozying up to China at the same time.

The civilian government, racked by corruption and seemingly powerless to control the military, was less direct in its criticism. It is trying to turn the issue into a question of nationalism and sovereignty, appealing to the people’s anti-Americanism and patriotism. Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said at the UN that “Pakistan’s dignity must not be compromised.” And thousands of protesters poured into the streets across the country on Tuesday chanting anti-American slogans and burning American flags. A speaker at one of the protests said, “We warn US not to indulge in any misadventure with us, or the whole nation will stand united to defend our country.”

To tap into this sentiment and build support, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani will chair an all-party conference on Thursday to come up with a position on fighting terror and the course of future relations with the US. This will give an opportunity for the politicians to posture against America while fanning the flames of patriotism and nationalism. How that will quiet the situation remains to be seen.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative political talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, I welcome Jazz Shaw of Hot Air, Vodkapundit Stephen Green, Jeff Dunetz of the Lid Blog. We’ll discuss Rick Perry’s troubles and the Palestinian statehood issue.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

My latest at FPM deals with the expected return of Vladimir Putin to the presidency of Russia, The stage managed announcement at the United Russia party congress on Friday, surprised few people, despite current President Dimitry Medvedev’s desire for a second term. It was apparently always going to be Putin and in the piece, I speculate about a third presidential term for him.

A sample:

Putin is supporting Medvedev for prime minister, which has caused a rift in the senior levels of government with reformers. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, one of the only officials trusted by foreign investors in the Russian government, says he would step down if Medvedev was made prime minister. Kudrin wanted the office for himself and would chafe at serving under Medvedev again, given their disagreements over liberalization.

It is unlikely that Putin will radically change course, continuing the reforms begun by his successor, simply because he will have to. “Russians will continue down the road of privatization and diversification away from oil, not because they like to, but because they will be forced to,” said Ivan Tchakarov, chief economist for Renaissance, a Moscow investment bank.

Might economic problems at home curtail Putin’s aggressively anti-Western foreign policy? Closer to home, this might be the case. Russia will always see the former Soviet republics in its sphere of influence and open to meddling, but Eastern Europe could be a different story. It is likely that Putin will refrain from openly threatening the former Soviet satellites, as he did when he bullied Poland and the Czech Republic into refusing the offer of a US missile shield. As much as his nationalist outlook would cause him to seek to influence former Warsaw Pact nations, he will need their investment and markets in the next few years as Russia moves from an export to an import economy.

But it is in the Middle East where Putin will cause the most trouble. He will no doubt continue the current policy toward Iran, partnering with the Islamic Republic on weapons sales and the transfer of nuclear technology. This almost certainly means there isn’t much chance of Russia voting for more stringent sanctions against Iran at the UN to prevent them from building a bomb. Russia is already playing a key role in the Iranian nuclear industry, agreeing to remove used fuel rods from the now operational reactor at Bushehr and taking them back to Russia for processing. Russian technicians are also training Iranian personnel at the plant, which would make a military strike on the reactor very hazardous, as it would likely lead to the death of Russian citizens.

The White House is putting on a brave face regarding Putin’s expected return to the presidency. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said that “the reset has always been about national interests and not individual personalities.” This may be true, but it was also clear that the administration and the State Department preferred dealing with President Medvedev, he being seen as more pragmatic and reform-minded. The US also believed that it might even wean Medvedev from Putin’s control.

In truth, as the Guardian points out, this was wishful thinking:

Over the past four years Medvedev has done nothing to dispel the impression that he is anything other than a useful seatwarmer, his time in the Kremlin a legalistic blip in an epoch of endless Putin rule.

If anything, the orchestrated announcement that Putin would be a candidate for president shows that it was always Putin in the driver’s seat and Medvedev a very junior partner in their “tandem” governing arrangement.

A Republican in the White House would make a difference in our relations with Russia only at the margins. Unless it was a hard core conservative ideologue, arms control would still be a priority as would cooperation on issues relating to nuclear proliferation. These  are  so clearly in the interest of the US that only someone besotted with ideological fervor would cut off our nose to spite our face and ignore them.

I think a Republican president might have second thoughts about sponsoring Russia for membership in the WTO - or at least try to tie our support to an issue like Iran sanctions or Russian assistance with peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. But it apparently wouldn’t bother Putin that much if we refused to sponsor Russia’s membership since he doesn’t think much of the organization.

If Obama is re-elected, the danger I see with Russia is his overarching desire to leave a mark on history. This could lead to too many dangerous concessions in arms control agreements at a stage in negotiations where it is critical we maintain some semblance of a useful deterrent. Of course, this desire is not unknown among presidents from Washington to Bush. But Obama truly sees himself as a world-historical figure and his high opinion of himself may lead us into dangerous territory.

Russia hasn’t been anything like a democracy in the last 15 years. Our own diplomats, according to Wikileaks, refers to the Putin-Medvedev tandem as a “mafia government.” A third Putin term will see further consolidation of state control and an erosion of what’s left of freedom.

Has it really been 7 years? Nearly 3,700 posts, 4 million visitors, 5.5 million page views and a lot of emotional energy expended in that time.

Numbers don’t tell the story. When I started this blog, September 23, 2004, we were in the midst of a hard fought presidential campaign that was in doubt until well into election night. The Dan Rather Affair had just hit the blogosphere and after reading everything I could about the matter, commenting on blog posts didn’t seem to be enough. With the encouragement of Ed Morrissey, I opened a Blogger account and began posting. Until about a year ago, I rarely missed a day.

What followed was not quite the “Rise and Fall” of a blogger - more like a journey of self discovery. Turning inward, I found my voice. It was not a voice that many on the right wanted to listen to — a fact that me in my towering ignorance never expected. Nor did I help my cause much by lashing out on occasion against my detractors.

But it is, what it is, and that’s that. I found to my delight that there was still a market for rational, less ideological analysis, albeit a smaller and less profitable one. But with my two jobs at American Thinker and PJ Media, along with other independent articles sold to a couple of sites, I am making a better living than I ever thought possible as a writer/editor. And with a book in the works, who knows what the future will bring?

I have nothing really profound to say about the last 7 years. Blogs have changed dramatically — fewer links (sharing), many more bloggers, but still room for important voices to rise up and be heard. It is much harder to accomplish that today. And the Twitterverse and Facebook revolutions have altered the landscape even more.

A little over a year ago, I realized I was burned out and began writing less. That is going to change — as soon as I can divest myself of one of my jobs. The problem now isn’t so much that I’ve lost the desire to write but rather I have no time to do it. I am gearing up to restart this blog; a redesign, a new domain name (rickmoran.com), and much more frequent and extensive postings. In short, I am going to try and raise my profile on the right, hoping that there is a larger audience for my kind of comment and analysis than there was previously.

In previous years, I have used this occasion to thank those who have helped me along the way. I see no sense in repeating myself. You know who you are, and you know I will be eternally grateful.

The number 7 has had a mystical history in the history of the civilized world. All sorts of good things have been associated with the digit — except perhaps the Seven Deadly Sins, of which I am on number 5 and striving hard to finish before I flee my mortal coil and join my fellow demigods on Olympus. But I am hoping that that this will indeed be a Lucky 7 year and that you - my most loyal and beloved readers — will join me in the adventure.