Now he’s gone and done it.

President Bush today named appeals court Judge Samuel A. Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court. Alito, 55, serves on the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, where his record on abortion rights and church-state issues has been widely applauded by conservatives and criticized by liberals.

Alito, appointed to the appeals court in 1990 by George H.W. Bush, has been a regular for years on the White House high court short list. He was also among those proposed by conservative intellectuals as an alternative to Harriet Miers, the White House counsel who withdrew as the nominee last week.

Some Democrats, including minority leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev), have threatened to oppose Alito, however.

It’s War! War! Cry Havoc and let slip the dogs of ditto!

Now, a fat, old, curmudgeonly man such as myself might ask a simple question like “Hey George! Why didn’t you nominate this guy the first time around?” You and I might not like the answer to that one so let’s just let sleeping dogs lie and concentrate on the upcoming Fight of The Century.

If you think you’ve heard apocalyptic rhetoric from the loons on the left prior to this, I’ve got news for you; the outpouring of invective, gloom, doom, and hand wringing on the part of liberals will make anything previously pale in comparison. Listening to them, you may be fooled into thinking that securing the nomination of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court will end all life on earth or, at the very least, cause the sky to blacken, the moon turn red as blood, the stars fall from their sphere’s in the sky, and the sun to grow dark. In short, even though many of the Moveon crowd would be angry at the comparison, their rhetorical excesses will evoke images from the bible, the Koran, and probably the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead.

I’m laying odds that the first commercial showing a pregnant woman slinking down a dirty back alley to be met at a door by a Dr. Frankenstein look-alike with a rusty saw in his hand will be out by next week. And don’t forget the weeping celebrities who will threaten to move out of the country if Alito is confirmed. This time, let’s send them one way tickets to to Kathmandu just to shut them up.

On a more serious note, the blood left on the floor after this fight will probably mean that Republicans will keep control of the Senate next year. As long as other issues like the economy and the war don’t get much worse, enough of the base will be energized to come out and vote to keep the Republican majority in the upper house secure for 2 more years. While this is good news, it is legitimate to ask about the long term effects of 1) the probable use of the nuclear option to ram the nomination home, and 2) electoral prospects for Republicans in 2008.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the nuclear option will be necessary to confirm Judge Alito. There is no way enough Senate Democrats can be peeled away from their addiction to the far left money machine represented by Moveon, International ANSWER, George Soros, and the Kos Kids to name a few, not to mention the real political power of NOW and NARAL that can be exercised within the party’s presidential nomination process, so that a filibuster can be beaten. Abortion rights is an Ur issue with these groups and they will make it known that they will be absolutely pitiless toward any Democrat who votes to confirm Alito. As the potential deciding vote on overturning Roe, the leftist interest groups simply cannot take a chance that he would vote to negate the decision.

As far as 2008, there is a real possibility that the use of the nuclear option will be seen as the kind of raw exercise of power that the American people so mistrust in politicians. So while Republican prospects in 2006 may not be affected, the breaking of the filibuster by invoking the nuclear option could hurt the party’s chances in 2008. As we’ve already seen, the Democrats will use apocalyptic rhetoric against the breaking of the filibuster as they did last May prior to the agreement involving the “Gang of 14.” Look for the same kind of nonsense used here as well as the Democrats attempt to make it an issue during the Presidential election of 2008.

I’ll leave it to others to dissect Alito’s abilities as well as his decisions. But the political impact is clear already. As Cypher says after Neo takes the red pill in The Matrix:

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin had the story early and does her usual extraordinary job rounding up both MSM and blog reaction.

The Captain seems a bit optimistic:

I expect that the Democrats will get 30-35 votes in favor of a filibuster once Alito gets out of committee. If they do consider a filibuster, too many of them will realize that Stevens might get replaced during this term (he’s 85 years old). They need that potential stop on Senate business to protect a genuinely liberal seat on the Court—and enough of them won’t agree to tossing it aside before the 2006 elections, when they might narrow the gap in the Senate, in order to keep Alito off the bench. They also won’t want to fight over obstructionism again during the next cycle, or the Democrats might well lose more Senate seats in the midterms.

Expect Alito to get confirmed, 65-35.

I hope he’s right. The question is, how many Democratic Senators are beholden to their base for money and votes? If you answered all of them, you win a cookie. There will be a filibuster unless Harry Reid, George Soros, and women’s groups all have a press conference announcing they are supporting Alito. In fact, the prospect of an internal fight within the Democratic party over the use of the filibuster could be in the offing.

In a series of articles I began last July entitled “The CIA Vs. The White House,” I have tried to give context and meaning to the CIA’s war against the Administration and how that war has its roots in both partisan politics and bureaucratic infighting. But at bottom, what the Plame Affair reveals about the CIA is a culture of incompetence whose principals will do anything to avoid responsibility for their mistakes.

This is more than just simple bureacratic CYA. It is one thing for officials to hide some boondoggle or another in the Department of Health and Human Services. It is quite something else to miss 9/11 or be wrong about Saddam’s WMD’s.

One would think that by this time, the CIA would be used to owning up to its spectacular incompetence. Blessed with technical intelligence gathering capabilities that boggle the mind as well as some of the best minds in the country, one would believe that the CIA has its finger on the pulse of events around the world and with penetrating analysis, give our elected leaders a heads-up about what is coming down the pike that might be a threat to the United States and our vital interests.

Think again. While it is undoubtedly true that the CIA has assisted in heading off many threats to the US and its interests, it has also had several conspicuous and, in hindsight, puzzling failures. What these failures reveal is a system that does not punish incompetence – even when mistakes lead to the kind of tragedy we experienced on 9/11. Rather, a huge amount of effort is expended in either trying to explain away the errors or worse, attack those who attempt to find an explanation for the incompetence.

We have seen both tactics on display in the Plame Affair. The CIA’s failures in Iraq go all the way back to the first Gulf War when the Administration of George Bush #41 was taken completely by surprise when Saddam invaded Kuwait. This despite a huge build-up of Iraqi forces on Kuwait’s border prior to the invasion as well as many overt threats by Saddam against the Kuwaiti’s for pumping too much oil thus keeping the price depressed.

Following tactics that they repeated when it was discovered that Saddam’s huge stockpiles of WMD were a chimera, the CIA began to leak cherry-picked analysis which revealed that the the Agency did indeed believe that Saddam was going to invade, that it was the policymakers who missed the clear signals emanating from Langely. The problem, of course, is that those analyses were ignored in the run-up to the invasion as both the State Department and the CIA were telling the White House that Saddam was simply doing some saber rattling in order to get the Kuwaitis to cut back oil production.

The consequences of the CIA’s mistaken analysis about Saddam’s intentions were huge. It has since been revealed by former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that Saddam never anticipated the angry reaction from the United States that led to war. Just imagine what a strong statement from President Bush warning Saddam about the consequences of an invasion could have accomplished.

What the CIA analysis of Saddam’s intentions at that time revealed was a clear bias toward what has become known as the realpolitik faction in government who believed that Saddam was a vital ally and bulwark against radical Islam. There may have been a case to be made for such thinking prior to 9/11 as several high level Bush #41 Administration officials such as National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State James Baker believed. But as Howard Fineman points out in this article from October, 2003 in Newsweek, opposition to that policy came from the Department of Defense which, at that time, was headed up by current Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney:

Behind the scenes or openly, at war or at peace, the United States has been debating what to do in, with and about Iraq for more than 20 years. We always have been of two minds. One faction, led by the CIA and State Department, favored using secular forces in Iraq—Saddam Hussein and his Baathists—as a counterweight to even more radical elements, from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to the Shiite ayatollahs in Iran to the Palestinian terrorists in the Levant. The other faction, including Dick Cheney and the “neo-cons,” has long held a different view: that, with their huge oil reserves and lust for power (and dreams of recreating Baghdad’s ancient role in the Arab world), the Baathists had to be permanently weakened and isolated, if not destroyed. This group cheered when, more than 20 years ago in a secret airstrike, the Israelis destroyed a nuclear reactor Saddam had been trying to build, a reactor that could have given him the ultimate WMD.

The “we-can-use Saddam” faction held the upper hand right up to the moment he invaded Kuwait a decade ago. Until then, the administration of Bush One (with its close CIA ties) had been hoping to talk sense with Saddam. Indeed, the last American to speak to Saddam before the war was none other than Joe Wilson, who was the State Department charge’ d’affaires in Baghdad. Fluent in French, with years of experience in Africa, he remained behind in Iraq after the United States withdrew its ambassador, and won high marks for bravery and steadfastness, supervising the protection of Americans there at the start of the first Gulf War. But, as a diplomat, he didn’t want the Americans to “march all the way to Baghdad.” Cheney, always a careful bureaucrat, publicly supported the decision. Wilson was for repelling a tyrant who grabbed land, but not for regime change by force.

Choosing Wilson then to go to Niger to check out the yellowcake story does not seem such a stretch when placed in the context of a faction at the CIA who thought that their judgment about what kind of threat Saddam presented was superior to that of individuals who the American people elected to make those kinds of decisions. By sending Wilson, the CIA knew full well what the result of his “investigation” would be. So why weren’t Wilson’s conclusions widely disseminated by the CIA? Speculation in this regard has run the gamut from a CIA “set-up” of the Administration to simple bureaucratic incompetence. Given a choice, I would settle on the latter. While it may be true that the CIA was trying to undercut the Administration’s case for war, it would be a stretch to believe that they knew there were no large stockpiles of WMD and thus, any use of Wilson’s “report” would be to demonstrate the “twisting” of intelligence charged by many on the left.

What may be true is that by not having Wilson sign a confidentiality agreement, they wished his “findings” to receive the widest possible distribution. Wilson’s contacts in the press included both Walter Pincus of the Washington Post and Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times, two reporters who eventually did publish very selective information about his trip Wilson himself admits to shopping his story to reporters for months prior to his OpEd in the New York Times in early July, 2003. This would seem to indicate that the selective leaking of classified information carried out by a partisan cabal at the CIA for more than a year prior to the election last November was done not just to discredit the Administration’s Iraq War case but also to politically damage the President so as to cause his defeat for re-election.

For those who were puzzled by why the Bush Administration was trying to push back against Wilson more than a month prior to his public acknowledgment of the Niger trip as both Cheney and Libby were discussing Wislon-Plame in early June, one need look no further than the Administration’s recognition that they were in the midst of a partisan political attack by a known Democratic party sympathizer who was running around Washington trying to discredit the Bush Administration by giving a skewed account of his CIA “mission” to national security reporters. If they could connect Wilson to both the nepotistic actions of his wife and the partisan cabal in the CIA who, along with those seeking to cover up the Agency’s incompetence with regard to WMD’s wanted to show the Administration “twisted” intelligence on Iraq, Cheney-Libby would be able to blunt the impact of the attack.

What is the connection between lack of WMD and the Administration countering of Wilson? The answer is Valerie Plame whose associates in the Counterproliferation Department at the agency were responsible both for sending Wilson to Niger and giving the Administration uncredible reports with regard to WMD in Iraq in the first place. Any attempt to understand the prosecution of Libby must begin with Valerie Plame herself and her part in the leaking and bureaucratic backbiting that led the Administration to its current dilemma.

Will this part of the story ever fully be revealed? If Scooter Libby goes to trial rather than take a plea deal, it is very possible that the full role of the CIA and their war against the Administration will be revealed. Otherwise, the entire matter will simply remain an interesting footnote in the history of the Iraq War.

UPDATE

Powerline “gets it”...

“...[Is] there a serious journalist among the mainstream media who thinks the story in the Libby case might be the CIA’s efforts to defeat the president. Isn’t that the big story?”

Does Glenn Reyonolds “get it?”

“This leaves two possibilities. One is that the mission was intended to result in the New York Times oped all along, meaning that the CIA didn’t care much about Plame’s status, and was trying to meddle in domestic politics. This reflects very badly on the CIA.”

Once again, Mr. Reynolds proves that his gift for understating the obvious with devastating effect is the best around.

How about Tom McGuire?

Come on, we see through this – if the CIA prepared a formal report, it would be subpoenaed as evidence, and the jury would laugh out loud at the “no damage” assessment. So the CIA filed a criminal referral in 2003, got the White House tied up in a two year investigation, and now they are laughing out loud. Well played, especially if you like a spy service that shrugs off executive oversight by inventing crimes and playing dirty tricks.

Perfectly said.

There is a fine line between being clueless and being just plain stupid. The difference can be calculated based on several criteria, usually subjective but also a mathematical sliding scale I call “The Clueless Quotient.”

For instance, Air Force football coach Fisher DeBerry exhibited unbelievable stupidity this past week when he said during an interview that the school needed to recruit more speedy players and that there was a dearth of minority athletes in the football program. When asked what relevance that had to football, DeBerry said “”African-American kids can run very well. That doesn’t mean that Caucasian kids and other descents can’t run, but it’s very obvious to me that they run extremely well.” (HT: Steve Anastasoff )

Forget for a moment that what DeBerry said was true statistically. Forget that what he said is true by observation. Forget that what he said is true according to the record books. DeBerry exhibited incredible stupidity because he forgot that the racialists and their PC allies in the media would give him such a hard time because in their cuckoo la la land, there might be a way the statement could be twisted to mean that the only thing black kids can do is run or some such nonsense.

So DeBerry being stupid rather than clueless gets a Clueless Quotient (CQ) of 2 out of a possible 10. On the other hand, our Cluebat of the Week is given collectively to the Toronto School Board who banned Halloween celebrations in classrooms because they may offend Wiccans:

“Many recently arrived students in our schools share absolutely none of the background cultural knowledge that is necessary to view ‘trick or treating,’ the commercialization of death, the Christian sexist demonization of pagan religious beliefs, as ‘fun,’ ” says the memo.

It gets better:

The memo goes on to remind teachers that, “Halloween is a religious day of significance for Wiccans and therefore should be treated respectfully.”

For other students, “food products that are marketed heavily during the Halloween period” may conflict with dietary habits that children know from home. An alternative to eating sweets in class would be to “write health warnings for all Halloween candies.”

The memo also warns teachers that “some students have had first-hand traumatic experiences of violence that make talking about death, ghosts, etc. extremely alienating.”

I’m sure you can tell the difference between the stupidity exhibited by Coach DeBerry and the total cluelessness exhibited by the Toronto School Board. I’d give them a CQ of 10 but that just wouldn’t do justice to the utter inanity of not only writing the memo but also discussing the idea in the first place. True, total cluelessness.

Why not play along and assign your own CQ to the fantastic posts below that make up this week’s Carnival? Perhaps some of you that are more scientifically inclined could improve upon the CQ by adding gradations and subtleties so that we can all get a truly accurate picture of cluelessness from each and every cluebat out there.

“There are only two ways by which to rise in this world, either by one’s own industry or by the stupidity of others.”
(Jean de la Bruyere )

Hey Jean! I see you’ve met Bill Clinton.
(Me)

********************************************************************************
Pat Curley smacks Mama Sheehan around for her continuing efforts to extend her moment in the sun. This time she’s protesting the 2,000 American death in Iraq. Pat has pictures that show exactly what 2000 dead Americans look like.

Orac is spanking a young lady who wrote a most clueless screed about how classroom education is bunkum. Would it surprise you to learn that the young lady is a Journalism student who wants to learn “the journalistic writing style…??”

Kender (Posting at The Wide Awakes) shows how the European Union’s claims to be so generous with foreign development aid are a crock.

Van Helsing ventures into cluebat Transylvania (San Francisco) and flashes a crucifix at Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle who exhibits the kind of bigoted cluelessness only a liberal could.

Here’s some great satire by Mr. Right: “A Halloween Calvacade of Horrors.”

Those preternatural pachyderms at Elephants in Academia have the absolute latest on Cluebat Hall of Famer Ted Kennedy and his asinine reaction to the Libby indictment.

Don Surber is talking about er…sex. Metrosexuals that is. And a new animal called “ubersexuals.” Oooh…gimmie some!

The last I heard, our intrepid Carnival Pin-Up Girl Pamela was in the Bahamas watching as hurricane Wilma started to make her life interesting. But she found time to post about the cluelessness of the MSM and their miasma regarding the 2,000 casualty of the Iraq war.

I love it when people are politically incorrect. And Fred Fry gets about as un-PC as you can get with his post on poverty and the fallacy that poor people can’t afford a picture ID so that voter fraud can be prevented.

The Palmetto Pundit alerts us to a change of schedule for Mother Sheehan and her “die in” that at one time was a “tie in.” Sure sign of moonbattiness is an inability to make up one’s mind.

Random 10 is keeping track of the latest idiocy from John Edwards. This time, the coiffed one is at Madison Square Garden talking about “the poor.”

Iris Blog brings us some jaw dropping stuff from the AP in a post that says it all: “AP Sets Record for Most Bias Crammed into Smallest Space.” Tough record to break.

The Nose on Your Face actually gives us a real story this week. It’s about the most clueless criminal in history whose love for NBA great Larry Byrd knows no bounds. Of course, they give the story that special spin that only the guys at TNYF can give it.

More fun at a new Carnival entrant “The Peace Moonbeam Chronicles.” Great stuff!

Jimmie K has a Michael Totten piece about banning piggybanks in Great Britain. Says Jimmie; “...stop condescending to minorities, and put the piggy banks back.” Yes please.

Two Dogs tears apart my home state moonbat Senator Barak Obama so you don’t have to. And this guy is the future of the Democratic Party? Yikes!

AJ at The Strata-Sphere has more school board tomfoolery this time from Florida and how one school district dealt with a request from terrorist supporting CAIR regarding including a Moslem religious holiday.

Justin of the blog The View from the Cheap Seats has the story of some cluelessness of a local politician and an accusation of conflict of interest…that isn’t.

You’ve heard of liberal guilt? Well Ze’ev of Israel Perspectives has “The Misplaced Jewish Guilt Syndrome.”

Adams Blog has a bizarre bit of cluelessness on the part of an auto dealer who apparently doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone.

Finally, I take the UN to task for burying an important piece of evidence in the Hariri assassination investigation that implicates the Palestinians in the murder.

NOTE: My email has been kind of screwy this week for some reason. If you sent me an entry and it’s not included, send it to me again and I’ll put it in.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

The withdrawal of Harriet Miers to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States was due in no small part to a tiny, but very influential group of conservative writers and thinkers who viewed the nomination of the President’s personal lawyer as a betrayal of both conservative principles and the President’s own election year promise to nominate strict constructionists to the high court. And now that these advocates have succeeded, the question must be asked of them: What have you gained?

The President has been humiliated and weakened. Democrats have been strengthened and emboldened. The conservative movement is in disarray. And the chances of actually confirming one of their favorites – either Judge Janis Rogers Brown or Priscilla Owens – are about as likely as my pet cat Snowball being capable of reciting the Gettysburg Address.

In fact, I am hard pressed to think of anything the opponents of Miers have gained either for themselves or the conservative movement. Putting on a brave front and declaring that the withdrawal of Miers is a victory for conservative principles is wishful thinking. A fat lot of good those principles will do you when the fallout from this Presidential humiliation depresses turnout in next year’s election and hands the Senate to the Democrats. Of course there are other factors at play when it comes to elections but for good or ill, the base of evangelical Christians who have been the President’s strongest supporters – and the most difficult voters to get to the polls in the first place – were the biggest and most enthusiastic supporters of the nomination. They may decide that their interests lie elsewhere on election day.

I can understand the comeback from Miers’ opponents that the President himself is to blame for nominating her in the first place. There is much truth in that statement as I devoutly wish the President could have seen his way clear in nominating a Brown, an Owens, or a Luttig. Any of those worthies would have been a fine choice for conservatives. Such a selection would have been praised and eagerly supported by the very same folks who opposed the Miers nomination.

But politics is the art of the possible. I daresay that prior to the Miers nomination, it would have been a bruising, uphill battle to get 50 votes for one of those nominees in the Senate. And, since it is extremely likely that the Democrats would desperately oppose the nomination of any conservative of that stripe given that their base would be insistent on countering any move that had the slightest chance of putting a Justice on the Supreme Court who would tip the balance against Roe v Wade, the only option available to the Republicans in the Senate would be the use of the so-called “nuclear option” to break a left-wing filibuster.

Would Majority Leader Frist have the 51 votes necessary to break the log jam? If he couldn’t get the caucus to vote for it last May prior to the deal on lower court nominations made by the so-called “Gang of 14,” how could they possibly believe that Frist would have the votes now? The President is weaker. Republicans are weaker. And we’re that much closer to the 2006 mid terms. Every poll taken on the use of the nuclear option has shown a clear majority of Americans opposed to it. And it is not at all clear that Republican moderates like Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Lincoln Chaffee, and others wouldn’t oppose both the nomination of a Pro-Life candidate and the use of the nuclear option to end any filibuster.

Now the withdrawal of Miers has made the nomination of any strong conservative extremely problematic. Democrats smell blood in the water and, given the President’s weakened position,would feel no compunction about a filibuster, daring Republicans to break it. There is little doubt that the left-wing base of the Democratic party would hold their Senator’s feet to the fire in order to prevent at all costs the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice who would vote to overturn Roe. It is the Ur issue for almost all the interest groups who spend so much in “independent” ads on behalf of Democrats.

And yet, the Miers opponents have not seemed to grasp the fact that by opposing her nomination and now causing her withdrawal, it has cut the legs from underneath the President and the party at a crucial time. Is there much doubt as to the timing of Mier’s withdrawal what with the Special Prosecutor’s indictments coming today? The President, as all Presidents must do, has cut his losses by accepting (or asking for) the withdrawal in order to clear the decks to face what is going to clearly be the crisis of his Presidency. These indictments will dominate the news for weeks. And if what I’ve heard coming from Administration surrogates over the past few days about how the charges will not be serious, that the crime of outing a covert CIA agent has been proven wrong, then the White House is seriously underestimating the impact these indictments will have on voters.

Fairly or unfairly, Republicans are in no position to talk about perjury being an inconsequential criminal act. No matter the whys and wherefores of the charges, the American people would see any such effort by Republicans to paint the transgressions of Libby, Rove and the rest as a case where “everybody does it” or worse, “it’s not that serious of an offense” as rank hypocrisy given the Clinton troubles.

The President may have lanced a boil on his Administration by killing the Miers nomination but at what cost? Given that the nomination of a strong conservative is not in the offing, who are we likely to get?

It would have to be someone who has already been vetted for the high court since the White House plans on announcing another choice as early as this weekend. And like it or not, the demands of “diversity” on the court by both the press and the Democrats resonates with a majority of Americans. Plus, it is apparent that the President would love to nominate the first Hispanic Justice. If not a woman, then how about Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez?

These same conservatives who opposed Miers have largely made it clear that Gonzalez would be unacceptable. The Attorney General supports affirmative action and is identified as a moderate on some social issues. Sound familiar? If you thought you heard the same things about Harriet Miers you are correct. Gonzalez would be grilled mercilessly by Democrats on the Judiciary Committee over the so-called “Torture Memos” where, in the first days of the War on Terror the Administration was groping for a policy on detainees and the memos offered options and opinions on what was legal and what should be done. But in the end, like Justice Roberts, Gonzalez may be able to garner enough Democratic votes to kill any possibility of a filibuster.

This is what the President needs at this moment; a slam dunk, fairly easy win. Conservatives have stepped up the rhetoric over the last 24 hours and seem eager for a fight. But did it ever occur to them that maybe the President isn’t quiet as enamored of the idea of going to war with the Democrats in the Senate? Perhaps the President is interested in getting some of his dormant legislative agenda enacted for this term? Any long, drawn out fight in the Senate over a Supreme Court nominee would derail the efforts to reform social security, enact tax reform, or any number of other issues near and dear to the President’s heart.

The clock is ticking on the Presidency of George Bush. I’m sure he is painfully aware of that fact. The derailment of the Miers nomination has speeded up that clock which is now ticking toward a day when the President’s power to affect that national agenda is severely limited by his lame duck status.

While the President’s troubles are not all of their doing, the opponents of the Miers nomination have been most unhelpful. And the fact that they have gained little but ideological satisfaction from their actions makes me question whether or not they truly realize the damage they have done to the Presidency of a man they still profess to support and admire.

The votes are in from this week’s Watcher’s Council and the winner in the Council category is The Glittering Eye for “A Sketch History of U.S. Military Bases in the Middle East: The Overthrow of Mossadegh.” Finishing second was The Gates of Vienna for “The Counterterrorism Blog Looks Into the Face of Evil.”

In the non-Council category, the winner was Iraq the Model for “Iraqis Preparing to Decide.”

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

The withdrawal of Harriet Miers from consideration for Supreme Court Justice is the best possible outcome to a messy, family quarrel. The damage to the President will be minimal within the party although how it will play in the hinterlands is an entirely different matter. The important thing is that a source of friction in Republican ranks will have been eliminated at a most opportune moment.

I have little doubt that the White House sees the writing on the wall with regards to the Special Prosecutors impending indictments of high level administration officials in the Plame Affair. They perhaps even have advanced knowledge of who might be on Fitzgerald’s chopping block. All signs point to at the very least an indictment on perjury for Scooter Libby along with probable obstruction of justice charges. But the President’s real worry is the possible exposure of his top aide Karl Rove to charges of perjury.

In this context, the withdrawal of Miers can be seen as strengthening the President’s hand as now there will be no excuse for Republicans not to stand shoulder to shoulder with the President through what is going to be the roughest part of his Presidency. The storm about to break in Washington among the media and the left will be loud and long. The indictments will dominate the news for weeks. A united party will help offset the drumbeat of criticism that is sure to follow any actions by the Special Prosecutor.

If Rove especially has to walk the plank, Republicans must close ranks around the President to avoid a disaster – near term, anyway. Any hint of Republican disunity could doom the President’s legislative agenda for the remainder of his term. As I wrote here, any fracturing of the Republican party at this point would make Bush a lame duck long before his time. And the question of how this will play in the 2006 midterms is anyone’s guess but I suspect that much will be forgotten by next November and any pickups by the Democrats will be as a result of depressed Republican turnout.

That depressed turnout will be traced to the President’s continuing refusal to address spending and immigration issues – both near and dear to the hearts of his base supporters. And as I suspect that the President many now nominate a Supreme Court Justice even more unacceptable to those who opposed Miers (Justice Gonzalez?), Bush may be faced with more internal problems in the future. But for the moment, Republicans can be one big happy family again – something that will be of comfort to the President after the Special Prosecutor drops the other shoe.

Miers was not just a poor choice, she was the wrong choice. The President has a chance to do things better the next time around, but don’t hold your breath waiting for the nomination of a constitutionalist to the Court. With the Administration on the run because of the coming indictments, Democrats will smell blood in the water and attempt to draw out the nomination battle of such a nominee until after the 2006 elections where they hope to get a majority in the Senate. This would insure a more moderate Justice coming before the Senate for approval.

The opponents of Miers believe they have won. Perhaps they can inform me of exactly what it is they find in victory that makes them happy? The President, temporarily humiliated, the Democrats strengthened, and the probable nomination of someone even more objectionable to them would not seem to be parameters of winning – at least not in my neck of the woods. So beyond ideological satisfaction, what have you really accomplished?

You may have guaranteed a more liberal court than we have now or would have had with Miers. Congratulations, guys. What do you do for an encore?

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin exclaims “Relief!” and links to dozens of others who weigh on on the bad news.

The Captain also seems relieved and writes “Now can we nominate a candidate whose qualities and track record presumes we control the Senate?

Good luck on that one, Ed.

They began to gather in the parking lot across from US Cellular Field almost as soon as the last out was recorded. The young, the old, the black, the white, the brown, – Chicagoans of every size, shape and color streamed toward the site as if on a pilgrimage to Lourdes.

They came despite a cold, steady, soaking rain that seemed a metaphor for the entire event as 88 years of absolute and utter baseball futility was washed away by a tide of powerful emotions, sweeping through the city like rampaging flood waters hell bent on destroying all the fruitless years of dashed hopes, bitterness, and betrayal.

The Chicago White Sox are World Series champions.

The significance was not lost on some of us who recall that the parking lot gathering place was in fact the site of old Comiskey Park , torn down more than a decade ago to make room for the new ball yard but still a sacred site for White Sox fans whose allegiance extends back through the decades. The ghosts of Luke Appling, Chico Carrasquel, Shoeless Joe, Eddie Collins, and the rest can be at peace now. Their futility has been redeemed by the most remarkable team in the history of Chicago baseball. More remarkable than the 1969 Cubs team whose historic collapse in September allowed the “Miracle Mets” to make their own mark on the history books.

That team epitomized Chicago baseball; lovable losers. With the most beloved players in Chicago baseball history, including Billy Williams, Ron Santo, Don Kessinger, and the irrepressible Ernie Banks, the ‘69 Cubs team first confounded, then captured, and finally broke the hearts of Chicagoans by allowing a 9 1/2 game lead over the Mets on August 14 to dribble away to nothing until, in a final ignominious coda to that frustrating season, saw both the Mets and the St. Louis Cardinals pass them in September.

What does it say about a city that celebrated such utter failure? When toting up success in baseball, Chicagoans have always considered “the near miss” as good as winning. After all, when losing is the norm, people will go to great lengths to create the illusion of success. It gives meaning and purpose to life if, when waiting ‘till next year, you can spend that period between disappointment and hope fooling yourself into believing that there is a relationship between coming close one year and actually capturing the brass ring the next.

But baseball is a game designed to break your heart. The 1970 Cubs never even sniffed first place and finished far off the pace.

For the White Sox – the second team in the second city – no such nonsense was vouchsafed by its tough, working class fan base. The Cubs would still pack the “friendly confines” of Wrigley Field even if the Northsiders were the laughingstock of the league – as they usually were. Sox fans were much more discriminating and as a result, intolerant of losers. In fact, the teams were so bad at the end of the 1970’s and the falloff of fan support so precipitous, that serious consideration was given to the idea of moving the team to Florida. Only the last minute intervention by the a group headed up by current owner Jerry Reinsdorf kept the team in Chicago.

Now Reinsdorf and his club are world champions. And they did it last night by playing the kind of old-fashioned baseball that has had an enormous appeal to the cynical but hugely knowledgeable working class fans that have formed the basis of the team’s support since they came into being at the turn of the last century.

Casual fans of the game probably found last night’s 1-0 White Sox victory a bore. But for the purist, there is no more sublime example of the way the game should be played. Baseball is the only game where the defense has the ball which is why great pitching can overcome a multitude of sins and win championships. And last night’s pitchers, Garcia for the Sox and Backe for the Astros, proved the adage that the other team can’t win if they can’t score.

The tension engendered by a 0-0 baseball game is the most deliciously drawn out feeling in sports. As the game progresses, each pitch carries a significance far beyond the normal until by the late innings, one is sitting on the edge of their seat in unbearable anticipation of either uplifting triumph or devastating disaster. And by the eighth inning last night, both pitchers had the fans wrung out like a wet wash rag, whipsawed with emotion as every baserunner represented either victory or defeat.

The Astros buckled under the stress as they appeared to do throughout the last two games. After pitching seven brilliant innings, manager Ozzie Guillen lifted White Sox starter Freddie Garcia for a pinch hitter in the top of the eighth. Willie Harris then became the latest in a long line of unlikely White Sox heroes when, pinch hitting for Garcia, he singled sharply to left. Bunted to second by Scott Podsednik and sent to third on a ground out by Carl Everett, it was left to series MVP Jermaine Dye to single Harris home for the only run of the game.

Houston threatened to score in the eighth, but the threat was snuffed out on a nifty defensive play by shortstop Juan Uribe. Then in the ninth, following a broken bat single to center by Jason Lane and a sacrifice bunt, Uribe made two stellar plays to save the game. First, he literally dove into the fifth row of the stands along the left field line to catch a foul pop up off the bat of Chris Burke. And then, with the tying run on third base, pinch hitter Orlando Palmeiro topped a ball into the rock hard dirt in front of home plate causing the ball to bound high in the air and just over the glove of pitcher Bobby Jenks. As the ball landed 10 feet behind the pitcher’s mound, it looked like a sure infield hit to tie the score. But Uribe, streaking in from his shortstop position gloved the ball and in a blur of motion fired it with all his might to first to nip Palmeiro by half a step.

A fitting end to a marvelous game and stellar season for the Southsiders.

The victory was also something of a bittersweet moment for many of us whose first thoughts were for parents and grandparents who had already passed on and were unable to share the joy and fulfillment of a World Series triumph. Chicago baseball fans have become inured to the idea that such miracles will not occur in their lifetimes. So to see the dancing, celebrating players on the field brought a flood of memories of my own parents and grandparents who had handed down a love of the game and of the White Sox to many of their offspring. I’m quite sure that my father’s stoicism would have melted and a huge grin would have creased his face after that last out was recorded. And my other relatives who were as proud of the allegiance to the Sox as they were of their Irish heritage would have seen the victory as an occasion to celebrate. I’m quite sure the telephone wires would have been hot with calls between all of us as we each, in our own way, shared a moment of pure, unadulterated joy.

But even those bittersweet thoughts will not dampen the enthusiasm for those of us whose loyalties lie with the baseball club from the Southside of Chicago. Perhaps in the spring when the mulberries are flowering and the dogwoods are blooming, I’ll pay a visit to some of their gravesides to tell them about it. After all, one thing that a long losing streak does is connect generations to a common goal; winning out in the end. And perhaps that’s the real lesson to be drawn from the team’s triumph.

Good things come to those who wait.

UTILITY MAN GEOFF BLUM GOLFS A HOME RUN IN HIS FIRST WORLD SERIES AT BAT DURING THE 14TH INNING OF LAST NIGHT’S 7-5 WHITE SOX VICTORY

Chicago awoke this morning bleary-eyed and feeling a touch hung over. It was as if most of the city had spent a restless night tossing and turning with no amount of sheep counting or log sawing any help in bringing about the peaceful, blissful sleep that so many desired but were, for some reason, denied.

If one had taken a ride on the city’s “L” train system this morning, an observant stranger might have noticed something a little odd; many more people than normal with tall, steaming cups of hot coffee, their eyes bloodshot and big, black circles under the sockets which gave the impression that most of the city was wearing a mask.

And every once in a while, people would look at each other, recognize the symptoms , and despite being tired to the very marrow the their bones would exchange knowing smiles:

“Go Sox.”

“Yeah…one more will do it.”

“Didja see that game?”

To the detriment of the city’s productivity for the day, many did indeed see the game. And when Mark Buerhle induced Houston’s Adam Everett to pop out to short and give the Sox an exhausting, 14 inning marathon 7-5 victory the time was nearly 1:25 AM. For the briefest of moments, it was almost as if White Sox fans who were watching the game weren’t quite sure whether they were truly awake or if they were in that delicious pre-wakeful state where the marvelous dream you were having tickles the conscious mind with the possibility that perhaps, it is not a dream after all; perhaps…just perhaps you really can fly or you are a Hollywood star or that gorgeous woman really is laying in bed next to you.

So you pinch yourself awake and the dream disappears, dissipating into the ether like the smoke that used to blow from the foundries and furnaces that nurtured this city in fire and sweat for a hundred years. Tough work for tough people, that. The people who gave the town its moniker “The City that Works” knew full well that the irony inherent in that slogan was that it was the many who did the working while the few did the crowing. Whether spending all day in the slaughterhouses amidst the unspeakable carnage of animal sinew and flesh to feed the nation or toiling on the night shift at the mill, death and injury wearing a thousand different faces and the cinders from the white-hot molten steel scarring the faces and hands and melding flesh to metal until the workers became one with their work.

These were the typical White Sox fans the last time the team was one victory away from a World Series Championship. In the autumn of 1917 as American doughboys rolled up the Kaiser’s best troops in France and Germany’s General Von Luddendorf slipped into defeatism and despair as the fresh faced Americans from farms and factories attacked his troops with a terrifying resolve and optimism, another White Sox team stood where today’s team now proudly stands; a single stride from destiny.

Back then, the hard working men who followed the fortunes of their Southside baseball club didn’t see baseball as an innocent diversion, a nice way to pass one’s leisure time. For when you work 10-12 hours a day, six days a week, “leisure time” takes on a whole new meaning. Going to the ball game was an occasion. Carefully dressing in your best clothes and taking the wife and kids to the ballpark was a large part of the working class world. Immigrants who barely understood English knew how many RBI’s Eddie Collins had and Shoeless Joe Jackson’s batting average. They knew that Ed Cicotte could wiz a fastball by any hitter in the league. And they could appreciate the smooth fielding and timely hitting of shortstop Buck Weaver.

It was a colorful crowd, swearing at umpires in a dozen different languages while eating picnic lunches featuring food from every ethnic group imaginable. And there was drinking and gambling too. People would bring their own buckets of beer to the park and quaff away as the gamblers and the shysters circled around them like vultures. Baseball had seen the odd gambling scandal every now and again and there were always rumors floating around about this or that player being “on the take.” For most, however, gambling was as much a part of baseball as the infield fly rule.

That year of 1917 saw the White Sox cruise through American League competition and win the World Series in six games over the New York Giants. Two years later, Cicotte, Weaver, and Shoeless Joe along with 5 other players took money to throw the 1919 series against Cincinnati. For the working class fans of the ballclub it was a betrayal of monstrous proportions, akin to finding out that not only is there no Santa Claus, but that Christmas was a fraud. In many ways not understood by most outsiders, the city never, ever forgave the team for that treachery. In fact, to this day, rooting for the Cubs is a form of payback for the thrown series, a way to stick it to the Soutsiders who so treasonously played with the loyalty and love of the fans.

All of that may be about to change. With the White Sox poised to take the title, the city seems ready to finally and forever forgive the team their sordid deed. Given how much ink has been spilled over the Black Sox Scandal of 1919, it may also once and for all put to rest the issue of the thrown series with the national sports media.

Any way White Sox fans look at it, something wonderful is about to happen. It’s going to be one of those rare times in one’s life when pinching yourself awake doesn’t help. The reason being, the dream is reality.

Calling all bloggers!

You have until tonight at 11:00 PM to get your entries in for this week’s Carnival of the Clueless.

Last week’s Carnival was the best yet with 29 entries from both the right and left side of the political spectrum hammering those individuals and groups among us who are truly clueless.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

Each week, I’ll be calling for posts that highlight the total stupidity of a public figure or organization – either left or right – that demonstrates that special kind of cluelessness that only someone’s mother could defend…and maybe not even their mothers!

Everyone knows what I’m talking about. Whether it’s the latest from Bill Maher or the Reverend Dobson, it doesn’t matter. I will post ALL ENTRIES REGARDLESS OF WHETHER I AGREE WITH THE SENTIMENTS EXPRESSED OR NOT..

You can enter by emailing me, leaving a link in the comments section, or by using the handy, easy to use form at Conservative Cat.

As Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald methodically goes about the business of deciding whether to indict one or more White House officials in L’Affaire d’Plame, it is becoming increasingly clear that no one is going to jail for telling reporters that Ambassador Joe Wilson’s wife convinced the CIA to send him on a mission to Niger to give his consulting business a boost. Rather, it appears that in what can only be described as the cruelest of ironies, Scooter Libby and perhaps (although not very likely) Karl Rove will be charged with crimes related to the investigation of the leak.

Libby especially is in jeopardy thanks to his too cozy relationship with New York Times reporter Judith Miller. It appears that Libby is a typical Washingtonienne, a gossip extraordiaire who cultivates his relationship with reporters by passing along juicy personal tidbits about players in both politics and the bureaucracy. The cozy breakfasts, the intimate lunches, perhaps even the late night cocktails at the Mayflower Hotel bar or some other quiet corner of Washington are the standard venues for the purveyors of this gossip. For people like Libby, it gives them a special thrill when they see the tidbits published in important papers like the Washington Post or New York Times – almost as if their names were in the paper. At the very least, they know that the gossip mongers will then be speculating about who let that particular cat out of the bag and the cycle repeats itself.

Only this time, Libby has apparently not been able to keep the timeline regarding his gossip mongering straight. Or, just as likely, he fudged that timeline a bit to protect his boss, the Vice President, from being dragged into the leak investigation in the first place. Either way, it appears that Mr. Libby is toast. This article in today’s New York Times reports that Vice President Cheney knew about Joe Wilson’s wife almost a month before Wilson went public with his tantrum against the administration for not recognizing his brilliance in cracking the Niger-Iraq uranium caper:

. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby’s testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war.

Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Mr. Libby’s notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson’s undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent’s identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent’s undercover status.

A couple of things to note from this article. The fact that Cheney probably asked Tenet about Plame makes perfect sense when one considers the circumstances surrounding Joe Wilson’s curious campaign for recognition and self-aggrandizement in the months following his trip to Niger.

By Wilson’s own admission, he had been shopping the story of his Niger trip to reporters for months before his OpEd in the Times:

I was determined that the story was going to have to get out. I did not particularly want the story to have my name on it. I wanted the U.S. government to say what they said on July 7, that the 16 words should never have been in the State of the Union address. So I began responding to reporters’ inquiries, but always on background. I didn’t want the publicity, but more to the point, there is a nasty habit in Washington of attempting to destroy or discredit the message by discrediting the messenger, and it was important to me that the message have legs before those who would want to discredit the messenger found out who the messenger was. So I spoke to a number of reporters over the ensuing months. Each time they asked the White House or the State Department about it, they would feign ignorance. I became even more convinced that I was going to have to tell the story myself.

Now, put yourself in the White House’s shoes. Here you have this loose cannon running around town 1) blabbing about a classified matter, and 2) spreading falsehoods about what actually happened. As early as May, Wilson had succeeded in getting Administration critic Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times to write a column about his “secret” trip to Niger in search evidence that Iraq tried to buy yellow cake uranium to restart their nuclear program. Kristoff, with his ties to several current and former CIA employees – many of whom have turned out to be partisan Democrats – had been getting selective, cherry picked leaks for months regarding the CIA’s innocence in telling the Administration of Iraq’s WMD capability. This fit in perfectly with Kristoff’s invented narrative that the Administration had “twisted” intelligence to make the case for war with Iraq.

As if to confirm what I have been writing about for months regarding this bureaucratic war between the White House and the CIA, the Washington Post, on the eve of the probable indictments of Administration officials in the Plame case, have finally come out and given context to the entire matter by showing that the Administration push-back against the CIA and not any personal motive of revenge against Wilson was the reason officials tried to discredit him:

The alleged leaking of a CIA operative’s name had its roots in a clash over Iraq policy between White House insiders and their rivals in the permanent bureaucracy of Washington, especially in the State Department and the CIA.

As the investigation into the leak reaches its expected climax this week with the expiration of the grand jury’s term, the internal disputes have been further amplified by a recent string of speeches and interviews criticizing the administration’s handling of Iraq, including by former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and State Department diplomats, and other officials involved in the early efforts to stabilize Iraq.

The article glosses over the election power play made by a group of CIA partisans – probably centered in Valerie Plame’s WINPAC division at the CIA - who sought to interfere in the election of an American President by selectively leaking information about the Iraq WMD to friendly reporters. All along, we’ve gotten hints that have led to speculation that the real reason for Wilson’s trip (besides his wife’s attempt to help get his fledgling consulting business get off the ground) could have been an attempt to embarrass the President. My friend AJ at Strato-Sphere, who has been on top of this case from the outset, has a link to a UPI report that show Fitzgerald was investigating the source of the so-called Niger forgeries; documents that purported to show Iraqi attempts to buy Niger yellow cake.

What makes this effort by Fitzgerald significant is Joe Wilson’s public claim that he knew they were forgeries because “the dates and names” were wrong. Only one problem there: Wilson never saw the Niger forgeries:

Wilson has also armed his critics by misstating some aspects of the Niger affair. For example, Wilson told The Washington Post anonymously in June 2003 that he had concluded that the intelligence about the Niger uranium was based on forged documents because “the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.” The Senate intelligence committee, which examined pre-Iraq war intelligence, reported that Wilson “had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports.” Wilson had to admit he had misspoken.

“Misspoken” may be the understatement of the week. Wilson out and out lied. What is curious is where he would have gotten that information because indeed, the documents list as Prime Minister of Niger someone who had been out of office for years. In other words, Wilson did not “misspeak” anything; he was simply repeating what he had been told by someone with access to the secret documents. The fact that he falls asleep every night next to someone with access to that classified information should tell you all you need to know about Wilson’s role in this entire affair.

In short, Wilson has been acting like the classic CIA errand boy – a conduit to the outside world who can leak to reporters all sorts of classified information while shielding his masters at the CIA from charges that they violated their oaths not to reveal the nation’s secrets. He has perhaps proved himself a little more flamboyant than his friends at the agency would have preferred with a photo spread in Vanity Fair not to mention a book deal and appearances on every political talk show in Christendom. But he has served his purpose well.

How far Fitzgerald will go in his indictments remain to be seen. He could only charge Libby with making false statements and obstruction. Or, if the Special Prosecutor is going to cast a wider net, he may simply drag 5 or 6 Administration officials before a judge on conspiracy charges. Even though no crime was committed in outing Plame, Fitzgerald may try to make a case that there was a conspiracy to keep him from finding out who said what to whom. If that is the case, expect the worst if you’re a Republican and euphoria if you’re a Democrat.