Right Wing Nut House

“The rhetoric has changed but not the behavior, and the behavior has gotten worse in the sense that while they are pretending to reform things, they are still groveling in the trough.”
(Winslow T. Wheeler, CDI)

I swear that most Congresscritters missed their calling. Serving in Congress is swell I’m sure. But if this were a different world, we might see many of those ladies and gents in nightclubs plying their craft as magicians.

It’s the old sleight of hand trick. Replace one bunch of greedy, grasping, politicians from one party with a sneaky, conniving, yet equally greedy and grasping set from another party. Hard to tell the difference in the end. The result is the same; unaccountability and a lack of discipline in spending our tax dollars.

This is because despite running on a platform that included solemn promises to halve the number of earmarks included in appropriations bills, as well as reforming the way they were ordered to insure transparency and accountability, the Democrats were apparently struck a severe blow to the head, having suffered a massive memory loss as a result and are carrying on pretty much as before.

That “as before” refers to the way that Republicans purloined tens of billions of dollars from the Federal government via the earmark gravy train - something the Democrats had a gay old time bashing them over the head with in the lead up to the election last November. And rightly so. The practice of slipping a Congressman’s pet project anonymously as an addition to appropriations bills at the last moment - behind closed doors in conference or even after the bill was passed - with little or no chance for debate (not to mention little scrutiny about who exactly was going to benefit) was an out of control outrage, an affront to the principles of good government, and a significant contributing factor to the deficit.

So, of course, the Democrats just had to give it a try:

When the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives passed one of its first spending bills, funding the Energy Department for the rest of 2007, it proudly boasted that the legislation contained no money earmarked for lawmakers’ pet projects and stressed that any prior congressional requests for such spending “shall have no legal effect.”

Within days, however, lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) began directly contacting the Energy Department. They sought to secure money for their favorite causes outside of the congressional appropriations process — a practice that lobbyists and appropriations insiders call “phonemarking.”…

Upon taking control of Congress after November’s midterm elections, Democrats vowed to try to halve the number of earmarks, and to require lawmakers to disclose their requests and to certify that the money they are requesting will not benefit them.

But the new majority is already skirting its own reforms.

It isn’t just the spectacle of rank hypocrisy that the Democrats are making of themselves. It is the supreme arrogance of power that sneeringly tells the rest of us to mind our own business and leave the lawmakers alone when they are planning to rob us blind:

Perhaps the biggest retreat from that pledge came this week, when House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.) told fellow lawmakers that he intends to keep requests for earmarks out of pending spending bills, at least for now. Obey said the committee will deal with them at the end of the appropriations process in the closed-door meetings between House and Senate negotiators known as conference committees.

Democrats had complained bitterly in recent years that Republicans routinely slipped multimillion-dollar pet projects into spending bills at the end of the legislative process, preventing any chance for serious public scrutiny. Now Democrats are poised to do the same.

“I don’t give a damn if people criticize me or not,” Obey said.

Obey may have the safest seat in Christendom. He also may be one of the more arrogant SOB’s on the Hill. The combination of the two give the Congressman the confidence to give the rest of us the finger just for trying to hold he and his Democratic friends accountable for how they spend our money.

The Examiner shows how Obey’s “reforms” will work in practice:

The same day, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., disclosed that earmarks will be inserted into bills only after they’ve been approved by the House and sent to conference committees with the Senate. Under this newly rigged process, there won’t be any of those pesky amendments against things like the Bridge to Nowhere. In fact, House members will only be voting on conference committee reports, not on the thousands of earmarks that will be inserted into the bills covered by those reports. In other words, after some tentative moves in the right direction earlier this year, Democrats are now putting the corrupt system disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff called the congressional “favor factory” back behind closed doors.

Obey sounds like he’s a little overworked and under appreciated here:

“I have to sign off on that stuff,” Obey said. “And I’m going to make damn sure that we’ve done everything we can do to make sure that they’re legitimate projects, so that you don’t get embarrassed by some idiot who is putting in money for a project that happens to benefit himself and his wife.”

Those words would carry a helluva lot more weight if you held you own party leader accountable:

Another key Democratic reform requires House members seeking earmarks to certify that neither they nor their spouses have any financial interest in the project.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did just that when she requested $25 million for a project to improve the waterfront in her home district of San Francisco. Her request did not note that her family owns interests in four buildings near the proposed Pier 35 project.

Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Pelosi, said that any suggestion of a conflict of interest is “ridiculous.” He said that Pelosi was passing along a spending request from the Port of San Francisco and that she would not benefit from it.

Nice try, Brendan. Did you forget the fact that the four buildings will almost certainly increase in value as a result of the improvements? Maybe we should ask how difficult it would be for the Speaker of the House to buttonhole some Port of San Francsico flunkie and get him to make the request in the first place? Of course, that kind of thing never happens, now does it?

The point is not to get rid of earmarks entirely. There are legitimate projects that for one reason or another, the Executive Branch refuses to fund. By having the power to override the objections of federal departments on spending matters, the Congress exercises a form of oversight that is both legal and, in rare cases, necessary.

But you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that 13,000 earmarks are a scandal. And the way they are approved is an invitation to corruption. Just ask Duke Cunningham. The California Congressman is spending 8 years in prison for using earmarks to personally enrich himself and his cronies. I wonder how long it will be before we start seeing the same kind of abuses by the Democrats that we got sick to death of under Republicans?

In this, the longest, the strangest, the most expensive, perhaps the most important Presidential campaign season in history, Republican candidates from Rudy to Ronnie seem to be spinning their wheels, trying to find an issue where they can successfully get off the defensive and attack their opponents.

So far, they aren’t doing too well.

The tried and true liberal attack lines of the past sound old and strangely out of place. Pointing out that Hillary is anti-capitalist as one candidate did at last night’s debate is silly. Of course she’s anti-capitalist. She’s a liberal Democrat. And the problem is that the right has done an excellent job over the years of defining liberals in such a way as to make their stupidity on economic issues plain as day. Weak foreign policy, ditto. The American people don’t need to be reminded of these things because two decades of conservatives have successfully tagged the Democrats for what they are; a statist party in love with big government, tax raising, and the idea that everything in the world that can be blamed on America, should be blamed on America.

If this is the best a Republican nominee can do in what is sure to be a battle royale over the future of this country then Republicans will almost surely lose. For in the end, the American people will not only want a candidate to offer concrete solutions to our problems but also verbalize the spirit and optimism that denotes a “can do” attitude toward the future. This, after all, is what Presidential campaigns in this country have always been about. Coupling political attacks with a vision for where the nominee wants to take the country - a powerful, positive, optimistic vision - usually spells the difference between victory and defeat.

The Democrats, God bless ‘em, will spend the next year and a half telling the people how badly the Republicans have screwed up. In this, they will have plenty of evidence and ammunition. In fact, the real danger for the Democrats is that they get so caught up in their GOP/Bush bashing that they forget about that “vision thing” as George Bush #41 put it and fail to articulate a positive message that will give the people an idea of what kind of country they want the United States to be.

But that may still be enough for victory given the paucity of ideas coming from Republican candidates in these debates. Of course, part of the problem is the way the debates are structured. But outside of Duncan Hunter’s “Zero Tax” on American manufacturing and a few scattered initiatives from Romney, McCain, and Guiliani, no candidate as yet has been able to break out of the pack with a clear conceptualization of what kind of nation they want to lead.

This time out, it is not going to be enough to simply point at the Democratic nominee and scream “LIBERAL! LIBERAL! LIBERAL!” The last eight years will have given the American people a sour taste about the Republican party and any GOP nominee will have to remove that unsavory memory by making people look to the future and think about our security, our economy, and our culture in ways that are optimistic and positive.

A very tall order, that. There’s always the danger of overdoing it and leaving oneself open to counter charges of being too Pollyanish about the future. But there is little doubt that a bit of cockeyed optimism can blunt some of the more outrageous criticisms that will come the GOP’s way via the Democrats who can then be portrayed as being too grouchy, too negative about the future to deserve the reins of government. A delicate balance to be sure but one that the Republicans must seek out if they are to have any chance at all of recapturing the Congress.

As for the debate last night, Romney may have come closest to articulating a positive vision of the future. But there’s a reason he’s mired in 3rd place behind Guiliani and McCain; there’s just something too set, too perfect about his delivery and his personae. Not that he should seek to be some kind of rough hewn good ole boy, backslapping and “aw shucksing” his way to the nomination. But he exudes little warmth and less humanity. He comes off as a competent technocrat and not much else. Mitt could’ve used that “Rudy Moment” last night in going after Ron Paul for his obscene statements about 9/11. It would given him some personality.

Rudy did much better than he did last week in California. He needed to. He may have benefited most from the fact that the adults at Fox News were asking terrific questions designed to flesh out a candidates position on a particular issue rather than trying to create a “gotchya” moment as Chrissy Matthews constantly strove for on MSNBC the week previously. His answers were smoother and more intelligently formulated than the sputtering responses he gave the week before. And of course, his flash of temper at Ron Paul was the viral video highlight of the evening. I think Allah nails it here:

A more thoughtful response would have been to ask him what his studiously noninterventionist “constitutional” option would have been when Saddam invaded Kuwait. But that’s all gravy; Rudy’s answer suffices as an expression of the palpable disgust most Americans (or at least most conservatives) felt at that moment for that Bircheresque crank, which is why he got the reaction he did. You can hear Mitt at the end over the din demanding that Rudy not be given the extra 30 seconds he requested, and with good reason — he might have walked away with the nomination right there.

I mentioned last night while liveblogging the debate at Heading Right that Rudy’s Moment was reminiscent of Reagan’s loss of temper in Nashua, New Hampshire when the Publisher of the Nashua Telegraph, Jon Breen, sought to cancel a debate between he and George Bush because Reagan had invited other candidates to the event - an event he ended up paying for when the Telegraph bowed out of sponsoring it. When Breen ordered the microphones turned off, Reagan, in a flash of temper, grabbed one of the mikes and said “I’m paying for this microphone, Mr. Green (sic).” With those words, Reagan’s campaign destroyed George Bush’s “Big Mo” and he went on to victory. So Allah’s thought that Romney’s demanding Rudy be denied his extra 30 seconds lest he grab the nomination then and there is probably true.

Did Rudy “win” the debate? For that moment alone, he stood out and therefore probably did himself the most good. Better yet, he matches a similar viral video bit with Fred Thompson absolutely skewering Michael Moore over an open pit. Thompson’s piece has taken the righty blogosphere by storm and from what I can tell, Rudy’s bit has equally electrified conservatives.

And what about The Absent One? Despite Thompson’s response to Moore, the longer he stays away from debates and delays formally declaring for office, the more he risks appearing wishy washy about the whole idea of being president. It may be time for Fred to jump in with both feet and begin the race in earnest. Right now, he’s not damaging himself by staying away and may even be doing himself some good by not suffering by comparison with the other candidates. But that glow around him won’t last much longer. Eventually, he’ll have to commit. And the sooner the better.

McCain also did much better, again largely as a result of the kinds of questions that were being asked by the Fox journalists. I thought his response to the hypothetical “ticking bomb” scenario was especially good. As a man who himself experienced torture, I thought his answer regarding whether a president should order torture for captured terrorists with knowledge of an impending attack especially poignant and morally defensible. It may not have sat well with some conservatives but I know quite a few who aren’t holding his position on the issue against him.

As for the rest - forget them. With the possible exception of Duncan Hunter who I believe would make an excellent conservative Vice Presidential candidate for either Mitt or Rudy, Tommy Thompson, Tom Tancredo, Jim Gilmore, Mike Huckabee (who gave the most spirited anti abortion defense among the lot), and Sam Brownback failed to distinguish themselves in any way and a couple - Tancredo and Thompson - should look at a tape of that debate and then withdraw quietly. Not that anyone would notice anyway.

Ron Paul should not be invited to any more Republican debates. His truther position on 9/11 is so far beyond the pale of rationality and logic that including him does a disservice to the entire presidential selection process - and not just for Republicans. We have to find a way to place people like Paul so far out on the fringes of American politics that they fall off of a cliff and disappear. And not inviting him to another debate would be a good start.

This time out, a little better, sharper focus by all the top candidates which made them look slightly more “presidential” but failed to excite too many of us. I’m anxious to see a smaller field so that some of the candidates answers can be fleshed out more and we get a better idea of the quality of their minds. Right now, they barely have enough time to relay their talking points on the issues. A little more depth, please.

And a note to Fred!: C’mon in. The water’s fine.

UPDATE

Hugh Hewitt has some interesting thoughts about the debate last night, specifically John McCain’s trouble with responding to Mitt Romney’s criticism of McCain-Feingold:

Few analysts have focused on Senator McCain’s nearly incoherent response which asserted that there was too much money in politics and that money had corrupted the GOP. Both assertions are simply false, and though the MSM nods along, GOP voters absolutely reject both assertions. There isn’t too much money in political campaigning, they think, there’s too much money from the hard left represented by Soros. Further, the party faithful don’t think of themselves as corrupt, or even of the party generally. They believe that the GOP’s corrupt Congressmen weren’t corrupted by soft money or campaign donations but by cold cash and perks in exchange for favors.

That much is true - as far as it goes. McCain will get no praise from me for his ideas on how campaigns should be regulated. His ideas, as Hugh makes clear, are anti-Democratic and fly in the face of conservative thought.

But most Americans recognize that something must be done about the way that money is raised. In my review of the new book on the Duke Cunningham scandal, I point out that earmarks are not just being used for pork barrel politics but rather as a way to fill the campaign coffers of Republicans (and soon, Democrats) with hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions. That “cold cash” Hugh speaks of makes its way into campaigns via lobbyists in exchange for favors (earmarks) - as close to bribery as you can get without actually being frog marched out of the Capitol Building and straight to prison.

McCain’s presecriptions are draconian, restrictive, and Professor Hewitt says unconstitutional. I defer to his knowledge and experience in that regard but find his defense of the GOP ringing hollow. It has been Republican strategy since 1994 to use the Appropriations process to wring contributions from lobbyists by selling earmarks. This is not a secret nor is it illegal. But it stinks to high heaven and has corrupted the budget process. And as Duke Cunningham proved, it can corrupt individual congressmen as well.

Is there a “conservative” reform program for campaign finance? Unlimited contributions with immediate and full disclosure is about the only idea I’ve heard regarding FEC reform. To say that this is a prescription for permanent incumbency is a given unless the earmark process is reformed as well. And there are too few lawmakers - McCain is one of them - who sees the need to reform both parts of the whole.

So yes, skewer McCain for his folly. But recognize the problem and figure out a way to do something about it before what little integrity our political process and government have left disappear.

The Wrong Stuff: The Extraordinary Saga of Randy “Duke” Cunningham, The Most Corrupt Congressman Ever Caught: A Review

Disclaimer: One of the authors of this book, Jerry Kammer, is an old friend of the family. It was he who sent me a free copy of the book to review.

This articile originally appears in The American Thinker

It is “the biggest case of Congressional corruption ever documented.” Shocking in its scope and in the brazenness of its conspirators, the Duke Cunningham bribery caper is a tale not only of individual malfeasance that would make a grifter cry but also of a culture in Washington, D.C. that threatens the integrity of government itself.

The saga of Duke Cunningham from a popular, athletically inclined small town boy to war hero, to Congressman, to convicted felon is told in a new book by the Pulitzer Prize winning reporters who broke the story. Marcus Stern, Jerry Kammer, and George E. Condon, Jr. of Copely News Service and Deal Calbreath of the San Diego Union Tribune shared the award for National Reporting in 2006 with James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times who won for exposing the top secret NSA program to spy on terrorists.

What Stern et. al. uncovered in their investigation of Cunningham’s criminality went far beyond the rather seedy yet spectacular corruption of one Congressman. The authors have written a brief against the budget device that led Cunningham (and no doubt others) down a primrose path toward temptation and ultimately, a moral surrender to turpitude; a device that threatens the foundations of trust in our elected officials; a belief that they are acting in the interests of their constituents and not to line their pockets with gifts and cash from the legions of lobbyists whose only job is to wring as much of our tax dollars as is humanly possible from the government and deposit it in the bank accounts of their clients (keeping a healthy portion of pork for themselves).

It’s earmarks, of course. And if you can come away after reading this book and not be shaking in anger at the unadulterated and transparent corruption that earmarks have fostered, then you don’t pay taxes or simply don’t care.

In truth, there is nothing illegal about earmarks and, as the authors point out in a brilliant chapter on the practice, they can be used for good at times. As an example of earmarks being used for a beneficial purpose, a lone Texas Congressman steered billions of dollars to the Afghan resistance fighting Soviet occupation in the 1980’s. Said Representative Charlie Wilson (whose story was told in the hugely entertaining Charlie Wilson’s War) “There are three branches of the government and you have to explain that to the executive branch every once and a while and earmarks are the best way to do that.” Wilson believed that the Afghan resistance would never have triumphed without earmarks because the CIA would not have spent the money effectively.

But the authors make the case it is not necessarily what earmarks are for that is the problem. After all, one man’s earmark is another man’s necessary expenditure. What may look like a pork road project to one person living far away from where construction would take place could in fact be a “quality of life” issue to someone directly affected by the increased traffic flow and safer driving that a particular earmarked project would bring.

Rather it is the way that earmarks are included in the budget process that cries out for radical reform. Earmarks are usually dropped into spending bills anonymously and are rarely debated on the floor of the House. Or they are added during mark-up sessions or even during House-Senate conferences. Sometimes, they are included in the Committee’s report on the final spending bill and not even passed on to the President when he signs it.

Earmarks were a problem going back in the 1980’s. For example, the authors point to the 1987 Transportation bill vetoed by an astonished Ronald Reagan who counted no less than 121 earmarks in the bill. Both the House and Senate - Democrats and Republicans - shrugged off the Gipper’s disapproval and passed the bill over the President’s veto overwhelmingly. In 1991, the number of earmarks in the pork laden Transportation bill had grown to 538; 1850 by 1998; and by 2005 the total number of earmarks reached a mind numbing 6,373 costing an additional $24.2 billion. (Source: Taxpayers for Common Sense).

Newt Gingrich and the Republicans saw the earmark as a ticket to a permanent majority. The Republicans would place newer or more vulnerable members on one of the Appropriations Committees which would give them access to the lobbyists who, in exchange for an earmark, would fill their campaign coffers with cash as well as shower the member with gifts, junkets, and other goodies.

It is a sordid, depressing, but perfectly legal practice. But to a man like Duke Cunningham, it was a goldmine, a path to the riches and lifestyle he had craved since a boy in a small Missouri town where he grew up. Graduating from the University of Missouri, Cunningham got married to his college sweetheart and took a job in Hinsdale, Illinois as an assistant coach of the swim team. At that time, the Hinsdale swim team was coached by the legendary Doc Watson who won 12 straight state swimming titles and sent several of his athletes to the Olympics. Cunningham was later to brag that he was responsible for much of the team’s success - a statement belied by both former athletes he coached as well as Doc Watson himself.

But that was Duke. And after losing a close friend in Viet Nam, Cunningham decided to enlist in the Navy and fly jets. Proving himself a dedicated aviator, Cunningham’s diligence was rewarded on one spectacular day in May of 1972. On May 10th, in a dogfight immortalized by the History Channel’s “Aces of Vietnam” documentary, Cunningham engaged and shot down 3 enemy MIG’s. Coupled with the two he shot down earlier in the year, that made Lt. Randy Cunningham an air ace - the only naval ace of the war.

But there were troubling indications that Duke Cunningham had a moral weakness when it came to money even back then. Prior to receiving the Navy Cross for the action that made him an ace, Cunningham and his backseat man Willie Driscoll informed their commanding officer that they were going to refuse the most prestigious decoration the Navy awards and “hold out for the Medal of Honor.”

Apparently, Duke had been promised by a Washington bureaucrat that he would receive the Medal of Honor and felt he deserved it - and the $100 a month that came with it. And even though his commanding officer disabused Duke and Driscoll of the notion that they were going to be awarded the MOH, to many who became aware of the story, this early indication of Cunningham’s moral blindness was telling indeed.

Being feted after the war as a hero and role model, Cunningham also saw how the rich lived and craved that lifestyle until it became an obsession. Barely elected to Congress in 1990, Cunningham set out to get the most out of his position of trust.

The story of his bribery is told in a spare, no nonsense manner by the authors. It traces Cunningham’s relationships with his co-conspirators Mitchell Wade, Brent Wilkes, and Thomas Kontogiannis and how they milked the government for federal contracts using earmarks - often in the “black budget” of classified projects - while Cunningham was paid for his services in cash.

The most unbelievable piece of evidence against Cunningham was the so called “bribery menu” where the Congressman actually wrote down on a piece of Congressional stationary how much he expected in kickbacks for each kind of earmark he successfully pushed through Congress. The menu showed that Cunningham wanted a $140,000 yacht for the first $16 million in government contracts. Thereafter, he expected $50,000 in bribes for each additional million in contracts.

Missing this piece of evidence the first time around, prosecutors got a tip about the document and deciphered it. The Congressman, who had been proclaiming his innocence, buckled at that point and agreed to plead guilty. He is currently serving an 8 year sentence - the longest prison sentence ever given to a Congressman for bribery.

But the question that the authors never quite answer and seem to dangle in front of the readers, tempting them perhaps to make their own judgement, goes to the heart of the debate over earmarks. Did the earmarks themselves corrupt Cunningham or did they simply act as a catalyst for his already warped sense of entitlement?

If it is the latter, then this is a story of one more venal politician caught with his hands in the cookie jar. But what if it’s the former? What if earmarks themselves (and the way they are currently being used and abused) is at bottom, an overwhelming temptation to members and literally irresistible to all but the most incorruptible.

There are now 35,000 lobbyists in Washington, D.C. whose ability to deliver tens of thousands of dollars to Congressional campaigns means that members must pay obeisance to them or lose out on the gravy train. It is a broken system that no one can figure out how to fix. Some see government financed elections as the answer - unsatisfying because most experts agree that it would make races even less competitive than they are now. Others see unlimited contributions with full and immediate disclosure on the internet. This would be another invitation to permanent incumbency.

The authors sensibly do not offer any grandiose solutions to this dilemma. They are, after all, reporters not policy wonks. All they’ve done is uncovered the facts and told a story - a maddening, frustrating, sad, and yet riveting story of one man’s fall from the heights of power and privilege to the absolute lowest depths of prison and disgrace. It is a compelling human drama told in an entertaining manner. And in a way, like all good journalism, it is a call to action - to address the problem of earmarks before the corruption they engender destroys what credibility our lawmakers and government have left.

Addendum: I interviewed Jerry Kammer, one of the authors of the book, on my radio show. The podcast is available here.

My show with Pulitzer Prize winner Jerry Kammer, co-author of The Wrong Stuff - a new book about the Duke Cunningham scandal - was outstanding despite some technical problems at the beginning. I also welcomed my brother Jim to talk with his best friend from college.

The Wrong Stuff is a readable and fascinating look at both Cunningham and the process of earmarks that the authors rightly believe are a threat to the very integrity of our goverment. You can order the book from Amazon here.

The podcast of the show is available here.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

In this, the season of Republican discontent, the various tribes that make up the GOP have been slapping on the war paint and dancing the war dance while getting ready for the big day.

No, not election day. The real fun begins the day after the vote when the recriminations following a probable Republican loss of the House (and perhaps the Senate) will explode into the kind of internecine warfare not seen by the GOP since the Goldwater debacle of 1964. Many conservatives will have the long knives out hunting for scalps, looking for scapegoats, and readying the hot tar and feathers for use against some very special targets.

The immediate butt of their ire will be a small but influential group of pundits who, to one degree or another, are predicting a GOP loss prior to the election while intimating in so many words that perhaps this is the best thing that could have happened to the party at this time. The logic (or insanity depending on one’s world view) used to justify this position is that a thoroughly chastened GOP will magically reform itself in two years, kick out the deadwood in Congress, throw up a new generation of dynamic conservative leaders who will take the party back to the promised land in 2008.

Yeah. Right.

It should be noted that there is a difference between those, like Richard Baehr, Chief Political Correspondent for The American Thinker, whose coldly rational and logically devastating look at Republican prospects in November points to a probable takeover by Democrats of the House and those who actually look forward to a GOP defeat, believing that it would be good for the party. After all, with a half dozen seats written off already due to the malfeasance or turpitude of the GOP member, the historical forces at work during the off year election of a second term incumbent become extremely difficult to overcome when the margin for error is as small as it is for the GOP.

I have dubbed this group of GOP curmudgeons Reynoldistas after Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds whose “Pre Mortem” post on the election raised the hackles of many conservatives who felt the blogger was being a defeatist by listing the reasons for the GOP’s probable downfall. Reynolds makes it clear that he believes that the GOP deserves to lose while also saying that the Democrats don’t deserve to win. Is this defeatist? Or realism? Or, as Mr. Reynolds claims, is it simply analysis?

It is perhaps unfair to lump Reyonolds in with other pundits who are actually urging people to sit on their hands on election day in order to teach the GOP ” a lesson.” The problem is that the effect that Reynolds has on the thinking of other bloggers and, more importantly, the fact that he is widely quoted by the opposition, does tend to raise the visibility of questions surrounding conservative commitment to voting on election day. Whether he realizes it or not, many see his belief that Republicans deserving defeat is no different than those Republicans who believe a Democratic takeover would somehow be good for the party.

As a counterpoint to the Reynoldistas, there are many conservatives who are dismissing the polls out of hand while confidently predicting that the GOP will hold on to both Houses of Congress despite the seeming lack of evidence for such optimism. I have dubbed these sunny side of the street Republicans Hewittonians after the most enthusiastic and eternally optimistic Hugh Hewitt. Again, it may be unfair to Mr. Hewitt to lump him together with some of the mindless partisans who refuse to recognize the dire straits that the GOP finds itself in three weeks out from the election and viciously attack anyone who they believe isn’t showing sufficient enthusiasm for the coming GOP victory. But for those who hunger for hope and a reasonable analysis, Hewitt supplies the antidote to the Reynoldistas relentless pessimism.

But the question is are both camps doing a disservice to the party? Or, are they both serving a vital purpose to prepare the party faithful for both the election and its aftermath?

A GOP loss will, from a purely political standpoint, be a devastating blow. The inevitable finger pointing and scalp hunting that would follow a Republican debacle on election day would almost certainly encompass the current leadership in the House and open the door to new leadership who, it is hoped, will have learned a thing to two about satisfying the base not to mention how to govern according to conservative principles. In this respect, the Reynoldistas are correct that a loss at the polls would probably make the GOP a better, smarter party.

But is an electoral loss necessary to achieve that goal? The Hewittonians are convinced that party reform could best be accomplished as a majority, albeit a chastened one. Wholesale turnover of the leadership would not be in the cards but that doesn’t mean that meaningful change couldn’t be accomplished in other areas, especially on the issues of pork and earmarks.

In the end, both the pessimists and optimists make it clear that they only have the good of the party at heart. This is all well and good except when it comes to the real world consequences of a Democratic takeover of the House. It is when thinking of what handing the reins of power over to a group of irresponsible, unserious, conspiracy mongers in the Democratic party that one should pause and think very carefully about teaching the GOP “a lesson” about anything.

Criticizing the Administration for their failures in Iraq and the War on Terror is one thing. There are many of us who wish that the War was prosecuted much more vigorously and with more passion. Now imagine a party in power that doesn’t believe we are at war at all, that the War on Terror is a political ploy being used by the White House to win elections and gather power for the executive at the expense of the other branches of government.

It is simply unconscionable to advocate for the defeat of the only party that wishes to engage the enemy in battle, confront rogue states that support terrorism, and do everything that the Constitution allows to keep the homeland safe. We can quibble about details regarding strategy or tactics. But in the end, the election of Democrats would mean a radical change in the way that the War on Terror will be fought. A newly hatched Democratic Congress, driven by their far left net roots who will take full credit for any electoral victory by the party, will disengage from Iraq, end programs that have proven themselves over time to have kept us safe from attack at home, while turning to the United Nations for directions on what to do about Iran and North Korea.

It is perhaps inevitable that there is enormous discontent among conservatives with this Congress and even with the President. But conservative angst about their performance and translating that dissatisfaction into election day pouting absolutely must take a back seat to what the alternative would be. For if the Democrats take control, the blame for such a turn of events will be shared by both Congress itself and those who believe that reforming the party takes precedence over the safety and security of the United States.

Those are the stakes. Now quit your griping and go vote.

In what has to be considered something of a shocker, the Washington Times is calling on House Speaker Dennis Hastert to resign for his inaction and dissembling over the Foley matter:

Now the scandal must unfold on the front pages of the newspapers and on the television screens, as transcripts of lewd messages emerge and doubts are rightly raised about the forthrightness of the Republican stewards of the 109th Congress. Some Democrats are attempting to make this “a Republican scandal,” and they shouldn’t; Democrats have contributed more than their share of characters in the tawdry history of congressional sexual scandals. Sexual predators come in all shapes, sizes and partisan hues, in institutions within and without government. When predators are found they must be dealt with, forcefully and swiftly. This time the offender is a Republican, and Republicans can’t simply “get ahead” of the scandal by competing to make the most noise in calls for a full investigation. The time for that is long past.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once. Either he was grossly negligent for not taking the red flags fully into account and ordering a swift investigation, for not even remembering the order of events leading up to last week’s revelations — or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away. He gave phony answers Friday to the old and ever-relevant questions of what did he know and when did he know it? Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance.

Hastert has presided over what will probably go down in history as the most inept, corrupt, cynical, and arrogant Congress since perhaps near the turn of the 20th century when the robber barons held sway in Washington and openly bought and sold votes on the floor.

Hastert himself - a genial, if clueless sort - is probably one of the least blameless members in this camper’s stew of corruption and irresponsible lawmaking. His leadership style has been one of staying above the fray while allowing his whips full reign to twist arms and necks to get Republican majorities on major legislation. This allowed stronger personalities like Tom DeLay and Roy Blunt to dominate at times, making Hastert appear to be an appendage, especially to the publicity hungry DeLay. In short, Hastert never really seemed to be in charge - something that was exposed during the Foley matter as it still isn’t clear whether anyone ever bothered to inform the Speaker personally about Foley’s emails to the former page, telling his staff instead who may or may not have informed him.

I’m not sure the resignation of Hastert is either necessary or desirable. The voters will almost surely take care of Mr. Hastert and the Republicans come November. In fact, it seems pretty much of a lead pipe cinch at this point as the universal disgust over Foley and the leadership’s tone deaf response to the emails and their potential import becomes widely known. The only question now is how big a majority the Democrats are likely to be handed as the new Congress sits next January.

It should go without saying that if the Democrats presented anything like a positive agenda for the country, their victory would be of historic proportions, almost certainly surpassing the Republican gains of 1994 and approaching their own electoral tidal wave of 1974. But a combination of Republican advantages in redistricting and voter doubts about their national security bona fides will probably hold Democratic gains to a narrow majority in the House and a possible one seat advantage in the Senate, the latter by no means a certainty but the polls breaking that way of late.

None of the blame for this should necessarily fall entirely on the shoulders of the Speaker. But as a symbol of Republican malfeasance in the Foley matter, it may be hard for him to escape walking the plank. Most conservatives have expressed disgust with the leadership over everything from earmarks to their curious incuriosity when it comes to oversight - my own beef being the horrific waste already revealed in war reconstruction spending. New leadership will hardly have time to get settled before their almost certain replacement by Democrats. So I suppose my point is - what’s the point?

If it is to make a statement that we won’t tolerate this kind of malfeasance then we are all a little late to that party. These people have been playing patty cakes with the truth, with parliamentary procedure, with House rules, and with the faith and trust of the American people for going on 6 years. It is a little late for resignations and mea culpas.

What is needed is a reckoning - a settling of accounts by the voters for all the broken promises, the wasteful spending, the arrogant mismanagement, and the irresponsible lawmaking which have combined to bring the Republican party to its sorriest state I’ve seen in my 30 years of membership.

Let the voters change the leadership in Congress. And then let the chips fall where they may.

When the government of a free people is flush with almost two trillion dollars of its citizen’s monies, the very smell of all that largess draws the hucksters, the flim flam men, the fakes and phonies in addition to the virtuous to Washington.

The city is awash with cash money. Cash for campaigns. Cash for lobbying. Cash for fat federal contracts. Cash for government consulting. Cash for consulting with businesses doing business with the government. Cash for showing businesses how to get fat federal contracts in the first place. Cash for the native guides who, like the Himalayan Sherpas assisting climbers of Mount Everest, shepherd the bewildered yokel through the maze of federal regulations and the dizzying array of alphabet soup monikered bureaucracies, all manned by self important little people with an agenda and a fiefdom to protect so that their clients can reach Nirvana; the federal teat.

Like some kind of out of control pyramid scheme, the cash moves up the chain from bottom to top with the most lucrative business going to the small cadre of lobbyists who can grab the brass ring - your very own, personal earmark or tax exemption, or legislatively friendly line hastily written in the dead of night into some innocuous bill worth millions of dollars to your company.

Whose keeping track? A few million here. Several hundred thousand there. Since no one sweats the small stuff, the game continues and it adds up somehow to billions coursing through the cracks in the system opened by greed, apathy, and a cynical belief that no one cares because no one is really paying attention.

And the physical manifestation of this rape and sodomy of the taxpayer is on display in the conspicuous consumption of the inhabitants who live, work, play, and spend their money in the surrounding suburbs of Sodom:

The three most prosperous large counties in the United States are in the Washington suburbs, according to census figures released yesterday, which show that the region has the second-highest income and the least poverty of any major metropolitan area in the country.

Rapidly growing Loudoun County has emerged as the wealthiest jurisdiction in the nation, with its households last year having a median income of more than $98,000. It is followed by Fairfax and Howard counties, with Montgomery County not far behind.

That accumulation of suburban wealth, local economists said, is a side effect of the enormous flow of federal money into the region through contracts for defense and homeland security work in the five years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, coming after the local technology boom of the 1990s. “When you put that together . . . you have a recipe for heightened prosperity,” said Anirban Basu, an economist at a Baltimore consulting firm.

The result is that the Washington area’s households rank second in income only to those in San Jose, eclipsing such well-heeled places as San Francisco and the bedroom suburbs of New York.

Of course, not all of this is the result of ill gotten or undeserved wealth. In fact, I would hope that the overwhelming portion of it was skimmed legitimately from the government. It’s just that it should be very distressing to anyone who loves liberty and its necessary companion of honest government to stand on a hill and look down on this scene feeling absolute horror and frustration at the place that the American government has come to rest in the early 21st century. Viewed from afar, one feels helpless, almost catatonic when contemplating the enormous effort that goes into devising ever more elaborate and inventive ways to separate the taxpayer’s money from government.

Certainly there are necessary and vital expenditures and businesses that cater to government in a variety of ways and serve the nation honorably in that respect. But then there are the shysters, the gimlet eyed lobbyists like Abramoff who, given enough money, can work miracles with politicians and bureaucrats. Those miracles can take the form of tax breaks geared specifically to your industry or even your individual business; earmarks that crowd legislation with unnecessary expenditures; and even re-arranging a few words or sentences in bills that could spell the difference of millions for a wealthy contributor or golfing buddy.

But the Ambramoffs of Washington are unimportant in the larger scheme of things. It’s the Duke Cunninghams with their reach into the bureaucracies where the real moneychangers operate. The discreet call from a hometown Congressman to the government contracts bureaucrat. Perhaps an invite to lunch or dinner. The shuffling of a few papers. And voila! Not quite illegal. Not entirely unethical. But the deed is done and the constituent is served.

They call it “taking care of the home folks.” What the taxpayers would call it if given the chance is unknown.

I am very happy for the people who live in those three counties around Washington that have now been declared 3 of the wealthiest places to live in the United States. And like good little capitalists, the denizens of those counties have recognized opportunity and grabbed for it. The overwhelming majority of them are blameless, only wanting success and to take care of their families the best way they know how.

But who do you blame? The system? Jesus Christ himself may have thrown up his hands in frustration at doing anything about these defilers of the temple of liberty.

Too much money. Too many compromises with ethics. Too much skirting on the edge of legality. Too many with their hands out and too many with their hands in the cookie jar.

Something has got to change. And the depressing thing is, I don’t even know where to begin.

Despite the recent uptick in both the President’s approval rating and the GOP’s performance against the Democrats on a “generic” ballot of party choice, things are not looking good for Republicans in November.

The most recent Evans-Novak report has 39 Republican seats at risk. Of course, only in an absolute electoral meltdown would the GOP lose that many House members. But since the Democrats only have to net 15 seats to make Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House (if she’s not successfully challenged), Republicans by any measure have an uphill climb to keep control of the lower chamber.

Things look a little better in the Senate but it is almost certain that the Republican advantage will decrease by as many as 2 and possibly 4 members. Such an outcome could set off the Jefford’s scenario; the Democrats courting two or perhaps even three Republican Senators to switch parties, an admittedly remote possibility but not out of the realm of the possible.

The most obvious candidate for such a switch, Lincoln Chaffee, is up for re-election this year and would find it hard if not impossible to switch parties after running and winning as a Republican. However, if the Democrats fall one Senator short of a majority, they’d be stupid not make the attempt. Jeffords was bought off rather cheaply. He was given the chairmanship of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee which he lost when the GOP reestablished control of the Senate in 2002. Chafee already has a seat on that backwater Committee as well as seats on the much more important Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committees. Since Joe Biden will use the high profile media access that the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee gets as part of his Presidential nominating strategy, it is unlikely he would step down.

But how about the Homeland Security Committee? The current ranking member for the Democrats is Joe Lieberman, who has been promised by Harry Reid that he will not lose his Chairmanship if he wins as an independent. So unless they offer Chafee a backwater Committee chairmanship (or perhaps a chance to keep his Foreign Affairs seat), it would be highly unlikely that despite the Senator’s discomfort at being around a bunch of goober chewing, red neck yahoos from Red State America, that he would be eager to leave a party in which he has built up so much seniority.

The House however is a different story. Evans-Novak:

The overall House picture for Republicans is bleak, although not hopeless. The British apprehension of the sky-bombing plotters has at least briefly helped Republicans catch up with Democrats in the generic ballot survey. But aside from that spike, if the election were held today, the GOP would probably lose 26 seats and their congressional majority.

There is still time left, but the buzz on the Hill is that many Republican staffers — including those working for safe members — are seeking employment elsewhere, dreading the miserable possibility of life in the congressional minority.

The Democrats’ chances at the House are very real right now. Republicans are hobbled by the fact that they have so many shaky seats to defend and so few that they can legitimately target. If they are to tighten the gap — and a USA Today poll released Tuesday indicates that they may now be doing so on the generic ballot — they must give voters a reason to come to the polls for them. They will probably lose any election that merely pits them as the status quo against Democrats who could be even worse — who could, for example, impeach President Bush. Republicans must also offer something positive to voters, but their lack of legislative accomplishments in this Congress makes it difficult.

The big X-factor is the Republicans’ vaunted micro-targeting turnout program, which is light-years ahead of anything the almost non-existent Democratic National Committee will be able to put together this year. The GOP turnout program produced a minor miracle in 2004, as new Republican voters showed up in droves. How many of those new voters will show up again this year? Republicans are honing the 2004 model and will experiment with new methods, as they typically do in off-year elections. Given the historically low turnout in mid-terms, how much this could soften the blow of 2006 is unknown.

I might mention that it is SOP for staffers to retool their resumes prior to any election for the simple reason that you never know when opportunity will come a’knocking. Elections always scramble things on the Hill with some people leaving for Committee work, others move on to think tanks, with many others taking lucrative lobbying jobs. This kind of churning before an election is not unusual.

As for turnout, there are pundits like Michael Barone who say that the outcome of midterms can be predicted based on turnout from previous election cycles. Barone points out that the Rovian magic formula could turn the predictions of all the prognosticators on their heads:

The slight uptick in Republican percentages in 2002 and 2004 can be explained by higher Republican turnout. Looking ahead to next November, there is reason to believe that the Republican base is turned off — by high spending, by immigration — and may not turn out as heavily. But if so, how much difference will that make?

Polls are not good predictors of turnout — only elections are. Last week, we had a special election in the 50th district of California, whose Republican congressman resigned in disgrace and went to prison. In 2004, the 50th district voted 55 percent for George W. Bush and 44 percent for John Kerry. Last week, the district voted 53 percent for Republicans (there were 14 candidates, the winner among whom goes on to a June 6 runoff) and 45 percent for Democrats. There were only two of them, and the leader, Francine Busby, got 44 percent of the vote — the same percentage as Kerry. That may be 1 percent higher when the last absentees are counted.

Republican turnout was down more than Democratic turnout, but only very slightly. Of course, things may change by November. But it looks like Hypothesis Two is still in force, and if so, Democrats will have a hard time winning control of the House.

One might note that the Evil One has almost dropped out of sight in recent weeks. This is not exactly true as Rove is criss crossing the country speaking before small groups of GOP activists, bucking up morale as well as laying the groundwork for the most sophisticated “Get out of the Vote” operation in the history of American politics. Can he do it again? Is there one more miracle up his sleeve, one more rabbit in the hat?

Alas, no matter how sophisticated Rove’s GOTV operation may be, you still have to have a base that’s motivated to go to the polls in the first place. It is not at all clear that in many of these “in play” races, that GOP voters could find a reason to support more of the same from incumbents who spend like drunken sailors, pork out with earmarks, and appear to be beholden to a bunch of fat cat lobbyists. A drop off in turnout of even 5% could doom most of the vulnerable Republican candidates.

Democrats on the other hand, energized for the first time in a decade and mad as hornets will almost certainly match and probably exceed their turnout numbers from 2002. And even though they haven’t advanced a single concrete idea on any national issue and continue to shoot themselves in the foot on national security matters, there is a clear sense in the country born out in poll after poll that the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Already, several high profile incumbents have been defeated in primaries, a sure sign of voter discontent. Whether that translates into a Democratic victory in November will not be up to either party because as it stands now, both Republicans and Democrats are hostage to events.

Gas prices, Iraq, inflation, terror plots, the Middle East, and most especially Iran could push and shove the electorate this way and that between now and election day. Since neither party is running on any grand ideas, these events will shape voter perceptions right up until the individual voter walks into the booth.

Most of those issues mentioned above are trending against the GOP which makes their problems even more difficult. On some level, the competence of the President is involved in each of those issues. The Democrats may not succeed in “nationalizing” the election by making Bush a major issue. But you can’t completely eliminate him from the mx either. Bad news on any of those fronts means bad news for Republicans.

With 10 weeks to go, the Democrats are confident and appear to be taking nothing for granted. The electorate seems to be moving their way. And perhaps not even the magic of Karl Rove can save the Republicans this time.

Now that we’ve had nearly 24 hours to digest the Supreme Court’s Hamdan decision, here are a few points about it that are emerging both interesting and troubling.

First, it can generally be said that when it comes to interpreting what the Supreme Court has decided, both right and left see exactly what they want to see and ignore anything that doesn’t buttress their arguments that (left) Bush is a lying weasel who acted illegally or (right) that the Supreme Court has entered into a treaty with al Qaeda and we’re doomed! Doomed, I say!

As Allah points out in this sober analysis (well…at least the analysis was sober. I don’t know about Allah.), the decision has both an upside and a downside. First, he quotes this passage from Steven’s opinion:

We have assumed, as we must, that the allegations made in the Government’s charge against Hamdan are true. We have assumed, moreover, the truth of the message implicit in that charge—viz., that Hamdan is a dangerous individual whose beliefs, if acted upon, would cause great harm and even death to innocent civilians, and who would act upon those beliefs if given the opportunity. It bears emphasizing that Hamdan does not challenge, and we do not today address, the Government’s power to detain him for the duration of active hostilities in order to prevent such harm. But in undertaking to try Hamdan and subject him to criminal punishment, the Executive is bound to comply with the Rule of Law that prevails in this jurisdiction.

Allah tell us what this means:

If Bush dispensed with tribunals altogether and ordered the Gitmo gang held without trial for the duration of the WoT as prisoners of war, arguably that would be constitutional. As it is, if he wants tribunals, he has to go to Congress and get explicit approval. (Stevens says at the bottom of page 37 that if Congress wants to make special wartime exceptions to legal procedures, it has to be specific. The AUMF alone is too vague. Breyer’s two-paragraph concurrence on page 82 emphasizes the point.)

This is the good news. Even though they struck down the concept of tribunals, the Supremes are inviting the executive to go hat in hand to Congress and ask for that specific authority. And even if many Democrats don’t believe we’re at war, by acknowledging the right of the executive to hold the Gitmo detainees “until the end of hostilities,” the Supreme Court accepts that fact which makes lefties look pretty stupid as they praise a decision that, as they see it, establishes limits on the President authority.

I’m all for limiting the executive’s authority. But the question I have is did the Supremes use a hatchet where a scalpel was required? It seems pretty clear that, unlike many past decisions of the Court, Stevens wanted to broadly address many of the questions regarding executive power that the Bush Administration has raised with its actions. As Allah points out, this includes the NSA intercept program that apparently has had its legal underpinnings knocked off:

Think Progress notes, correctly, that the Court’s unwillingness to read implicit grants of executive power into the AUMF might mean the end of the NSA warrantless wiretapping program, which Gonzales has said is based on that very statute. The issue’s likely moot, though: Arlen Specter told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that Bush was already leaning towards submitting the program to the FISA courts, and now that this has come down, his hand will probably be forced. I doubt Think Progress’s point will ever be adjudicated, and if it is, the case is likely to be decided on constitutional (read: Fourth Amendment) grounds, not the specificity of the AUMF.

Personally troubling to me is if Bush is willing to now use the FISA court to get warrants, why couldn’t he have done it before? The implied explanation was that it would have involved dozens, maybe hundreds of decisions by the FISA court which would have delayed monitoring considerably. Is there a “compromise” that Senator Specter has come up with that addresses that or has Bush simply caved on the entire warrant issue?

We don’t know the answer to this and I imagine that any compromise would lie in manipulating some of the technical details of the program - details that are still secret. But personal doubts aside, the fact that the Supreme Court has pretty much confirmed the Administration’s policies of holding detainees indefinitely, albeit as POW’s, should be seen as a huge plus. At least we won’t have to open the doors at Gitmo and let these guys walk. (I still would like to see a judicial review of many of these cases in that from what we’ve heard, not all of these men were captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan and some may be held without cause.)

The downside of this decision has to do with the Court arrogantly assuming powers and prerogatives reserved for the Congress and/or executive. Allah points to the Court’s citing the Geneva Convention, specifically this from Article 3:

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

Allah slams the door:

Afghanistan is a High Contracting Party, so the question for the Court was whether Al Qaeda operatives captured there are subject to the Article. Answer: yes. “But,” you say, “it says it applies only to conflicts ‘not of an international character’ and the war on terror is as international as they come.” Indeed — but the Court is reading “international” in its literal sense, i.e., “between nations.” Al Qaeda isn’t a nation. Which means no matter how global the jihad might be, so long as a jihadi is captured within the territory of a signatory to the Conventions, he’s entitled to the protections of Article 3.

Those protections include not being subjected to torture or, much more broadly, “humiliating or degrading treatment.” And even if al Qaeda could give a tinker’s damn about the Geneva Convention, the United States has been forced into complying with it by the Supreme Court:

Even if it’s not, it’s “degrading” and therefore, per subsection (c), illegal. There’s no condition of reciprocity in the Article, either: unlike a contract, which dissolves for both sides if one party breaches it, we’re bound no matter how many heads AQ hacks off and irrespective of the fact that they’re not a High Contracting Party themselves. Amazing.

[snip]

But if you’re dealing with a political entity that’s explicitly transnational and that’s rejected the Conventions repeatedly by deed if not in word, why deem them included? Article 3 leaves you with the absurd paradox of affording more protection to Al Qaeda members caught inside a signatory country than to members of a hypothetical group that scrupulously follows the Conventions operating inside a nation that’s not a High Contracting Party.

In the end, as Allah rightly shows, the idea that the War on Terror is a law enforcement problem has apparently won the day - for the moment. What is truly depressing to me is that if we are ever hit with another 9/11, we will have to rehash these same arguments again, perhaps with even more controversy. As Justice Thomas states in his magnificent dissent:

We are not engaged in a traditional battle with a nation-state, but with a worldwide, hydra-headed enemy, who lurks in the shadows conspiring to reproduce the atrocities of September 11, 2001, and who has boasted of sending suicide bombers into civilian gatherings, has proudly distributed videotapes of beheadings of civilian workers, and has tortured and dismembered captured American soldiers. But according to the plurality, when our Armed Forces capture those who are plotting terrorist atrocities like the bombing of the Khobar Towers, the bombing of the U. S. S. Cole, and the attacks of September 11—even if their plots are advanced to the very brink of fulfillment—our military cannot charge those criminals with any offense against the laws of war. Instead, our troops must catch the terrorists “redhanded,” ante, at 48, in the midst of the attack itself, in order to bring them to justice. Not only is this conclusion fundamentally inconsistent with the cardinal principal of the law of war, namely protecting non-combatants, but it would sorely hamper the President’s ability to confront and defeat a new and deadly enemy.

Is the President, as Commander in Chief, hamstrung by this decision? Have some of his vital war powers been stripped as some on the right are saying?

I think its clear the Court wanted to make a statement about this Administration and its ever growing use of untrammelled executive power. Granted (and the President’s enemies will never do so), I believe a very good case can be made that Bush’s aggressive use of the powers of the executive may have staved off another attack during the last 5 years. But at what cost? I am not as cavalier in charging the Administration with overstepping the bounds of legality and constitutionality as most of those on the left seem to do, although I recognize and accept some of their arguments. The fact that I believe they do so to score cheap political points at the expense of our security sometimes angers me. Because this is a debate that needs to take place. If we are going to have both liberty and security, some kind of consensus must be achieved or we will get what we got yesterday from the Supreme Court; a bludgeoning of the executive at the possible expense of our ability to protect ourselves.

First and foremost, the left must acknowledge we are at war - like the Supreme Court did - and that some grant of executive authority must be vouchsafed the President in order for him to do his job. The war is not some gigantic political ploy that Karl Rove is using to win elections. The threat is real and immediate. And to date, I have yet to see even a hint from the netnuts and even many in Congress that this threat is taken seriously.

We are lectured that the war is more than a military campaign. We are also lectured that just about any effort we make in the law enforcement area is subject to so many pie-in-the-sky, impossible dream civil liberty absolutist nonsense that if the FBI looks sideways at a suspected terrorist, they scream for the President’s impeachment. In short, the left has yet to prove that it is serious about defending America. And until they can show the American people more than the simple, mindless criticism of anything and everything the President has done to prevent another 9/11, they will not win no matter how many Iraqs or deficits or Abramoffs or DeLays or Plames or earmarks the Republicans stumble and fumble with.

Whatever the long term consequences of this decision, in the short term I believe it has given heart to our enemies. Too bad I didn’t see that issue addressed by Stevens in his opinion.

The spate of good news being enjoyed by the White House this week has been a welcome respite from the gloom and doom of the previous months. And while the death of Zarqawi, the frogless non march of Karl Rove, and Bush’s surprise trip to Baghdad have lifted the funeral pall from the White House, there remain the same problems and issues that have led Republicans to their current perilous state and which must successfully be faced if the Bushies are going to turn GOP fortunes around.

But like an addict on the rebound, the Administration would be best served if they took things one day at a time and not try and get too far ahead of themselves. In other words, it is probably best not to start planning the victory party for November until some major mileposts are passed on several issues.

THE WAR

The death of Zarqawi and, more importantly, the naming of the rest of the Iraqi cabinet has been a catalyst for hope. But the task faced by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki would tax the abilities of a Nebuchadnezzar. The sectarian violence has caused more than 100,000 Iraqis to flee their homes in terror. Kidnappings are rampant. In the south, Shias have begun to carve out an independent enclave where Sharia law rules and militias have joined with police to enforce the will of bodies not answering at the moment to Baghdad. In the north, especially around the oil city of Kirkuk, Kurds and Shia Arabs are jostling for control of that oil rich area with the feuding sometimes erupting into open gunfire.

Then there is the endemic corruption that has engulfed the oil and other ministries as well as a problems with electricity and water, the solving of which would go a long way toward instilling confidence in the government.

All of this does not include the problem with the insurgency and with al-Qaeda in Iraq who, while apparently not cooperating to any great degree, nevertheless pose a very serious threat to public confidence and order.

On the plus side, there’s Maliki himself. The picture that is emerging of the PM is one of a tough pragmatist, a perfect compliment to the religious leader Ayatollah al-Sistani. They seem to be in agreement on several vital issues including trying to keep Iraq as secular as possible under a constitution that recognizes some aspects of Sharia law. Al-Sistani’s reputation is being rehabilitated following a rough patch after the bombing of the Shrine in Samarra where many Shia Iraqis saw his calls for calm and brotherhood a betrayal of sorts. But with both Miliki and al-Sistani on the same wavelength, there’s a very good chance that some very touchy issues regarding the Shia militias (which after all, are at bottom, religious militias) can be resolved fairly quickly.

What won’t happen quickly is an end or even a beginning of the end of the violence. The problems relating to criminal gangs who are more interested in kidnapping and ordinary theft will be the easy part of the security puzzle. Much more problematic will be reining in the militias and their allies in the police (Interior Ministry) who seem to never tire of murdering ordinary Sunnis. This results in revenge killings and the cycle continues. The fact is, the Sunnis will never stop fighting until they can be assured they won’t be murdered in their beds by Shias. And for that to happen, Miliki will have to do some serious bridge building to the Sunni community.

How much can the Americans really do to help? The problems in Iraq have been of a political nature almost since Saddam’s statue fell. All we can do is pretty much what we have been doing; training the police and army to fight crime and the insurgents until enough of them become competent so that we can start drawing down our forces. On the political front, we can help with reconstruction but, as the cabinet crisis proved, there is very little we can do about telling the Iraqis how to manage their affairs.

So with the war, at least, Bush is at the mercy of events and the competence (or lack thereof) of the Iraqi leaders.

IMMIGRATION

If Bush wants an immigration package, he will probably have to give up his amnesty plan, at least in its present form. Speaker Hastert has made it clear that substantial changes will have to be made in conference for the bill to pass muster in the House including the adoption of the House’s much more stringent border security measures.

Bush will give a little on amnesty but not entirely which means that the entire issue will either die a very public death with recriminations being hurled back and forth between the White House and GOP lawmakers or, the amnesty provision will be so watered down as to be meaningless, in which case Bush gets zero credit from the very constituencies he’s trying to please while continuing to anger the GOP base.

Heads they win, tails you lose, Mr. President.

“CORRUPTION”

While this issue is currently a loser for both sides, there’s a real possibility that this could change as Abramoff continues to sing and two other prosecutors are sharpening their knives. Why the Republicans are so inert on the issue of ethics is beyond me. I put it down to poor leadership by Hastert and Frist. Somehow, I can’t imagine Bob Michel and Bob Dole putting up with this tomfoolery.

Are the Republicans and Democrats in Congress so in love with their perks and privileges that it has blinded them to the outrage felt by good citizens of both parties who see the trips, the meals, the boxing matches, and the golf games as little better than outright bribery?

A GOP led ethics reform movement would help. But this is a long term process that also needs to address “earmarks” and other blatant gifts to the powerful that will have to stop before people start trusting anybody in Congress again.

One final thought. At present, the demographics favor the Republicans so much that even with their horrific performance in Congress and the White House, their chances of losing both Houses of Congress are slim. But those numbers could easily change prior to the next census which could spell real trouble for Republicans when districts are redrawn in 2010. The country is restless under Bush and the GOP. Every major indicator that measures how satisfied people are has gone down over the last 5 years. And the siren call for change is getting stronger. If not this year, then certainly the election of 2008 could be seen as a watershed unless Republicans can somehow regroup and re-energize both their base and their wellspring of ideas.

One week of mildly good news will not affect the future substantially. And that’s why for the foreseeable future, Bush and the Republicans are going to have to take things one day at a time.