As Senate Democrats continue to make a mockery of the judicial confirmation process, the arguments of their allies in liberal advocacy groups and on editorial boards become increasingly frivolous. In this piece for National Review Online, Robert Alt takes on the latest such argument -- that certain Bush nominees are federalists, and that federalism is just a code word for a rigid states rights philosophy, which in turn is a pretext for a virulently reactionary form of conservatism. Alt patiently demonstrates that federalism does not necessarily produce conservative outcomes; rather it is an outcome-neutral set of constitutional rules. His analysis is worth reading, but ultimately beside the point when it comes to the plight of the Bush nominees. The Senate Democrats and their boosters don't care what federalism is or is not. They are prepared to argue anything, and more importantly do anything, to block confirmation. Their effort to prevent the Senate from fulfilling its role in the confirmation process is as disgraceful as it is unprecedented. The Republicans need to settle on, and implement, one of the available strategies for countering the Democrats' behavior, and they need to do this sooner rather than later.

Yesterday the Supreme Court decided an important case upholding the constitutionality of a 1996 law mandating the detention of certain non-citizen permanent resident aliens who are the subject of deportation proceedings. The New York Times story is handy because it links to the text of the Court's decision and the four other opinions in the case: "U.S. can hold immigrants set to be deported, Supreme Court says."

The Court's opinion is written by Chief Justice Rehnquist and divided into two parts. The opinion is unusual in that in part one the opinion is joined by Justice Kennedy and the four liberals, while part two is joined by Justice Kennedy and the other three justices with the four liberals dissenting.

The Court's opinion does not address any of the controversial provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act that expand the government's power to detain aliens, but Part II of the Court's opinion sets forth the law bearing on the subject in a manner that is highly favorable to the government's exercise of congressionally granted powers in this area, especially in time of war. The Court reaffirms the fundamental proposition that "any policy toward aliens is vitally and intricately interwoven with contemporaneous policies in regard to the conduct of foreign relations, the war power, and the maintenance of a republican form of government."

Chief Justice Rehnquist has something of a sixth sense in devoting himself to the study of issues that appear of purely scholarly interest but that prove incredibly timely. In 1992 he wrote a study of impeachment proceedings, long before he could have foreseen that he might himself be called on to preside over the impeachment trial of a president. In 1998 he wrote an excellent study of the constitutional law of civil liberties in wartime. My reading of his 1998 book suggests that he is looking for an opportunity to make a contribution to constitutional law in the direction of the protection of civil liberties in wartime. Until one of the several pending cases raising such issues works its way up to the Court, yesterday's opinion in the Kim case provides food for thought.

The best story on jury selection in the retrial of Lemrick Nelson is from the weekly Jewish newspaper Forward: "Third trial in '91 riot shows race still divides."

Last night, my daughter asked me to watch the television show American Idol while she did her homework so that I could call her when her favorite performer, Kimberly Locke, appeared. I obliged. I had never seen this program before and was impressed by the talent of the contestants (especially that of Kimberly), but a bit put off by the ethos of the show. Much later in the evening, after the Lakers-Timberwolves game turned into a rout, I stumbled on the country music version of American Idol, a program called Nashville Star. Again, I enjoyed the performances and this time I liked the ethos (graciousness and humility among the performers and kindness among the judges) as well. "The country of country," as Trunk likes to call it, is unfamiliar territory to me, but it seems like a pretty congenial place.

With the war in Iraq winding down, the daily photos in Army Times include scenes of joyful homecomings. Below, the guided missile destroyer Coles enters Port Everglades in Broward County, Fla. And at bottom, evidence that being a sailor isn't all bad.

I guess it's an old story, but I can't help being shocked at the irresistible march of political correctness through the country's education establishment. The latest manifestation: just-announced revisions to California's textbooks to eliminate politically incorrect words and images.

The results are remarkable: no more "jungle," "Founding Fathers," or "snowman." No more references to Mount Rushmore, hot dogs or butter. No more images of Indians with braids, living in rural areas or on reservations.

California's curriculum chief defends the changes: "I think our textbooks should to our greatest capacity be free of any type of stereotyping. We need to make sure that all ethnicities are represented. We need to make sure that both males and females are represented. We need to make sure that our materials cover the full gamut." Well, maybe not quite the full gamut. No hot dogs or Indians on reservations, for example. No doubt there are other, more important omissions. Like conservative ideas and a recognition that American history is, for the most part, an inspiring story of progress, success and idealism.

The Washington Post reports that President Bush has nominated a pair of African-American candidates to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. This court serves the states of Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and the Carolinas, and, as the nation's most conservative federal appeals court, serves them well. One of the nominees, Claude Allen, is a strong conservative. The other nominee, Allyson Duncan, was a colleague and friend of mine when I worked at the EEOC in the late 1970s. Many years later, in a brief incarnation as a telecommunications lawyer, I appeared before her when she was a commissioner of the North Carolina public utilities board. She has also been a judge on the North Carolina Court of Appeals.

Allyson is bright and fair-minded, and I would expect her to be a good judge. However, I have no knowledge as to her current political views. Unlike Allen, she does not appear to have a record that clearly shows her to be a conservative. Her home state Democratic Senator, none other than John Edwards, supports her nomination, so she surely will be confirmed. It is less clear that Allen will be, although the Post article suggests that his race may put him over the top. Let's hope that Allen makes it. It would be unfortunate if the Senate continues its pattern of blocking strong conservative nominees while confirming those whose conservatism is less clearly established.

Yesterday it was announced that, with the threat from Iraq gone, the U.S. will pull its troops out of Saudi Arabia. Today Donald Rumsfeld confirmed that we will also be removing our troops from Germany. It will be interesting to see whether they are pulled out of Europe altogether, or moved to friendlier environs in Eastern Europe.

John Kerry is trying to back off his comment, in a campaign speech in New Hampshire, that ''What we need now is not just regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States." Kerry now says that it was intended as a "quip" or "lighthearted remark." And, of course, he reminds us of his military service: ''When I fought in Vietnam and fought for my country, I didn't give up my right to make quips and to participate in the debate."

Kerry must have taken a lot of heat for his call for "regime change." All I can say is, I saw a tape of the speech, and it wasn't a quip--it was an applause line.

The appointment of Abu Mazen as Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority has received a lot of publicity, some of it optimistic, but Haaretz reports that in Israel, little change is expected:

"Military Intelligence told the political echelon at the beginning of the week that the new Palestinian government headed by Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) has no intention of uprooting the terrorist infrastructure."

Haaretz also anticipates that the states and other organizations that support Palestinian terror will be exerting strong pressure for more violence:

"As far as the terror organizations are concerned, the coming months will be an all-out race. After the defeat in Iraq and the total lack of violent resistance to the American powers in Iraq, the main focus returns to Israel and the territories. For the elements that direct the Palestinian terror from outside the territories - Syria, Hezbollah and especially Iran - there is enormous importance to a renewal of the terror against Israel now, especially in light of Tehran's fears that Damascus might concede to American pressure and limit activity of the terror organizations in Damascus."

This Christian Science Monitor article on the volunteers from other Arab countries who went to Iraq to fight in the war centers on an interview with a young Syrian who made his way to Baghdad just before the city fell. He was interviewed in a hospital, having been paralyzed in an exchange of fire with American troops. The Syrian says:

"I was shocked how easily Baghdad fell because I thought that Saddam Hussein could resist. The treason of the Republican Guard led to the collapse. I saw no Iraqi soldiers, except for the officers who told us where to go. All the fighting in Baghdad was by volunteers like me."

I noticed Hillary Clinton's tirade the other day, in which she compared President Bush to Herbert Hoover, but didn't have anything useful to say about it. Ben Shapiro, a college student, syndicated columnist and occasional blogger, does. He points out that Hillary's economic policies are a dead ringer for Hoover's.

French writer Bernard-Henri Levy has just published a book titled Who Killed Daniel Pearl?. Based on news accounts, the book appears to be heavy on speculation. Levy's theory--by no means unique to him--is that Pearl was hot on the trail of a connection between al Qaeda and Pakistan's intelligence service: "My hypothesis is that bin Laden, this scarecrow of whom we are quite rightly afraid, is in some respects a puppet. He is there on stage but behind him are more secret, but more important, individuals who are his inspiration."

Levy's views on Islamofascism are sound: "Radical Islam is as much to be feared today as the communist and fascist totalitarianisms of yesterday were. Everything must be done to stop a frontal collision between the west and Islam in general. The only war of civilisations must be within Islam, between the democrats and the fascists."

...is the title of Michelle Malkin's latest column. Noting the press hysteria over Ashcroft's assertion of Justice Department authority to detain illegal aliens who "pose a danger or a flight risk," Malkin points out that under the current non-enforcement regime, illegal aliens, when caught, are merely ordered deported. Actually leaving, however, is entirely up to them. The vast majority simply walk out of court and disappear: "87 percent of all aliens released from immigration custody were never caught again, and were never deported."

America's immigration laws are woefully lax, but even more disturbing is the constant opposition by liberals to enforcement of the laws already on the books.

Democrats announced yesterday that they will filibuster the nomination of Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Tom Daschle said that "her record is so egregious that we have no choice but to filibuster;" no hint as to what that egregious record might be.

Another nominee, Jeffrey S. Sutton of Ohio, was confirmed to the 6th Circuit yesterday, on a nearly party-line vote, with only two Democrats voting for confirmation. While nothing the Senate does is (or should be) entirely free from politics, for two hundred years the judicial confirmation process was perceived as being mostly about the nominees' professional qualifications. The Democrats have now abandoned all pretense that the process is about anything other than political warfare.

Next month will mark the second anniversay of the nominations of Miguel Estrada, Priscilla Owen and nine other judicial candidates. Five of the eleven have still not received votes.

Mark Steyn's most recent column explores a theme close to our hearts: "The United Nations: Unfit to govern."

James Webb reviews some painful history regarding the Vietnam-era antiwar movement: "Sleeping with the enemy." Webb says: "In retrospect it’s hard even for some of us who went through those times to understand how highly educated people—most of them spawned from the comforts of the upper-middle class—could have seriously advanced the destructive ideas that were in the air during the late ’60s and early ’70s."

On the first day of testimony in the current trial of Lemrick Nelson, two police officers who observed Nelson after he murdered Yankel Rosenbaum said they saw no signs he had been drinking. The New York Post headline of course puts it more colorfully: "'Drunk' Lemrick a crock: Cop duo."

Dafydd ab Hugh has alerted us to today's Washington Post story by Linton Weeks on Hillary Clinton's soon-to-be-published memoirs: "Senator Clinton's memoir to hit stores in June." Mr. ab Hugh reports that he phoned Weeks to follow up on his suspicions that the manuscript may not exist. Mr. ab Hugh's account follows:

I just got off the phone with Linton Weeks, the reporter at the Post who wrote the story about Hillary's book. It was a very odd conversation. When I asked if he had actually asked the publisher or editor or anyone whether the manuscript had actually been handed in, his response was, "what is the motive for you asking me this question?"

I pressed him, noting that the simple statement had not appeared in his story, and he said, "well, people I trust said the book was at the printer. They wouldn't have said that if there weren't a book, would they?"

I said there are several steps: the manuscript must be handed in, edited, typeset, and then finally sent to the printer. Again I asked, did anyone at S&S actually say that the manuscript had been plopped down on someone's desk.

"Well I don't know," said Weeks; "it could have been sent electronically."

(Sigh) "Mr. Weeks, I'm just trying to find out whether a manuscript was actually, physically received by the publisher. I've written many books, and I always send a manuscript, whether electronically or on paper. Did you actually ask anyone whether there was a manuscript received?"

"People I trust said the book was at the printer. I guess I don't understand your motive for asking this question."

"I'm just trying to find out. I thought it was a little strange that neither in your story today, nor in the story published yesterday, did a simple statement appear that a manuscript had been delivered."

"I've written dozens of stories about books, and I have /never/ written
such a sentence!"

"Look, we've all be awaiting J.K. Rowling's fifth Harry Potter book, right? Well, when she finally handed in the manuscript for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, that was the lead line in nearly every story: that she had finally handed in the manuscript we'd been awaiting. Now we've been waiting for a Hillary manuscript for a couple of years now... I just want to know whether you asked the editor or publisher the question, 'did she actually send a manuscript?'"

"I don't know if she personally sent it. Maybe somebody else sent it."

"But did you ask if a manuscript arrived?"

"I think I've already answered your question. What is your motive for asking it?"

"I guess that's the best I'm going to get. I'm sorry for taking up so much of your time, Mr. Weeks."

"Can you please spell your name?"

now that corporate America, the military, academia, and the rest of the elites have spoken, but 64 percent of Americans believe that racial minority group members should not receive preferential admission to colleges, accordng to the results of a survey released by the Chronicle of Higher Education, as reported by the Washington Times. The president of the American Council on Education responds that these survey results are the product of a misunderstanding of how affirmative action works. However, as I read the Times' story, the issue in the survey was whether minority group members should be admitted over whites with higher test scores and grades. That, of course, is precisely how the affirmative action practiced by institutions like the University of Michigan works.

The unearthing of documents in Iraq linking al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein provides the occasion for Mansoor Ijaz, writing for National Review Online to describe the Clinton Administration's intelligence failures during the months leading up to the 1998 bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. During this period, the new Sudanese intelligence chief offered, unconditionally, to provide the U.S. with comprehensive information about the terrorists that had lived in or passed through Sudan. According to Ijaz, our government initially accepted the offer, but the Clinton National Security team and the State Department subsequently reversed course. The State Department not only refused the Sudanese invitation, but also blocked the FBI from obtaining the intelligence in question. Duing this same period leading up to the embassy bombings, it now appears that key al Qaeda operatives in Sudan were in contact with Iraqi intelligence officials. Ijaz believes that Saddam's regime was providing financial, logistical and intelligence support to the terrorists who carried out the bombings, and that the Sudanese intelligence chief, who was monitoring the radical Islamist communityin Khartoum, had picked up signals that something significant was in the works. In any event, none of the key players in the Clinton Administration -- Madelaine Albright, Sandy Berger, and Susan Rice -- has ever explained the decision to turn down the unconditional Sudanese offer that our government originally was prepared to accept.

The review of Anne Applebaum's "Gulag: A History" by Stephen Sestanovich in the Wall Street Journal today is superb, a tribute both to Applebaum's history and the shattering book that made it possible: "Chain of misery." Here is Sestanovich's conclusion: "Compared with its predecessor, 'Gulag: A History' is a mere book, not an experience. But it is a valuable and necessary book, the kind that Mr. Solzhenitsyn hoped for and that he, 30 years ago, did much to make possible."

In addition to the piece by Randy Barnett, National Review Online also features David Frum's excellent diary entry from London. In the most substantive part of the entry, Frum reports that friends in London are wondering why the U.S. apparently is keeping quiet about the upcoming series of referenda in which seven Eastern European countires will vote on whether to accede to the European Union. Frum does not necessarily advocate attempting to sabotage the negotiated agreement of these countries to join the EU. However, he wonders whether we shouldn't "at least be talking to the peoples of Eastern Europe about the dangerous course the EU took in the past year -- and on the reforms we hope they will be pressing for if they do vote in favor [of joining]." My view is that once these countries join the EU, they will be invited (as they were by Chirac last winter) to "keep quiet" and that, fairly quickly, they will fall into line. Indeed, the EU experience seems to have an Invasion of the Body Snatchers quality to it. Ultimately, I think, the fate of the EU will turn on whether it can deliver the economic goods, not on the reformist impulses of new Eastern European members.

Frum also comments on Colin Powell's non-denial of the charge that the State Department concealed from the rest of the administration information that North Korea had confessed to reprocessing nuclear material. And don't miss Frum's opening shot at Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation.

Law professor Randy Barnett offers a strategy for combatting the Senate Democrats' successful efforts to prevent the Senate from confirming President Bush's conservative judicial nominees. The strategy, which has also been proposed by our hero Hugh Hewitt, is to use the power to make "recess-appointments." Through this power, the president can fill vacancies on the bench until the end of the congressional session. Although the appointment is temporary, the judges can participate fully in opinion writing while they are on a given court, and thus can make a big difference. If necessary, new recess-appointments can be made next year.

Barnett is aware that the most promising candidates for judgeships will not want to take a recess-appointment because it confers a second-class status, and may make them unconfirmable in the future. However, he notes that there is a core of ideological conservatives and libertarians who, for various reasons, do not aspire to become permanent judges. Moreover, the mere (credible) threat to fill existing vacancies with a more conservative group of individuals than those President Bush has nominated might well break the log-jam in the Senate.

After giving us a lesson on how to read the Washington Post last week, our eagle eyed reader Dafydd ab Hugh now gives us a lesson on how to read a Clinton press release circulated via the Washington Post. Yesterday's Post carried the AP story regarding the Clinton memoirs scheduled for a June 9 release: "Hillary Clinton's memoirs to hit stores."

Mr. ab Hugh writes: "[T]here is something intriguing about the WaPo story. Did you spot it? Read carefully. Yep, you got it... nowhere in the story does the Post actually say, in plain English, that Hillary has actually handed in a manuscript! They mention the print run (a million copies), the title, the number of pages, even the price S&S will charge for the book. But they never actually say, flat out, that Hillary Rodham has actually turned anything in, even though that's clearly what they want everyone to infer.

"So why not just come out and say it? A simple sentence like 'Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham handed in her long awaited memoirs to Simon & Schuster yesterday, and boy, did she use el cheapo paper,' or somesuch would have been far less peculiar (eerie?) than several paragraphs of blather about the presumed book without any frank indication whether it exists anywhere except her lawyer's press release."

At the third trial for the 1991 murder of rabbinical student Yankel Rosenbaum, the attorney for Lemrick Nelson admitted in his opening statement, 12 years after the murder, that Nelson in fact murdered him. In 1992 Nelson was acquitted for the murder when his attorneys successfully fabricated the claim that the New York police had framed Nelson with incriminatng evidence.

According to Nelson's present attorney in a retrial on the federal civil rights charge deriving from the murder, "What happened that night was not something that he was proud of. It was not something he was happy about." It sounds to me like Nelson plans to take the witness stand at this trial and issue a tear-filled apology: "In a twist, defendant admits to stabbing in '91 racial unrest."

Nelson's formal defense at this trial on the civil rights charge is that, although he murdered Rosenbaum, he did not murder Rosenbaum because he was Jewish and therefore did not violate his civil rights. You can infer another aspect of the defense strategy in Saturday's New York Times story on jury selection for the trial: "Painstakingly picking a jury in 3rd trial for race killing." You can infer one more aspect of the defense strategy by comparing the photo of Nelson from his 1997 trial in the first story above with the photo of Nelson entering the court during his current trial from today's New York Post story: "I killed Yankel."

In an editorial that was clearly written by Tony Blankley, the Washington Times lends its support to Newt Gingrich in the debate that he initiated on the adequacy of the department in representation of American interests. As with most of Blankley's columns, the editorial is worth reading both for its thoughtfulness and its bite: "The crippled State Department."

Just before she became a star in the mid-'90's, Shawn Colvin released "Fat City," a set of songs with one knockout after another, brilliantly produced by John Leventhal and Larry Klein. Listening to the radio in my car yesterday, I happened to hear "Polaroids," the first song on the disk, and it grabbed me powerfully like a work of art can do when you least expect it. Set to a beautiful, languorous melody that borrows from "Son of a Preacher Man," the lyrics are about as good as it gets this side of the Beatles or Bob Dylan:

"Now I am always amazed
Words can fill up a page
Pages fill up the days
Between him and me
But the vows that we never keep
From bedrooms to business-speak
Make me remember how cheap
Words can be"

Like so many fine things in life, the lyrics to "Polaroids" are available in their entirety (with the rest of the songs from "Fat City" and the most popup ads I've ever had to fight through on one site) for free on the Internet: "Polaroids lyrics."

Here, courtesy of Real Clear Politics, is Daniel Pipes' piece in the New York Post calling on the U.S. to select a "democratically-minded strongman" to rule Iraq. Pipes cites Ataturk in Turkey and Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan as models. This solution makes sense if, as Pipes believes, the alternative is an Iranian-style militant Islamic state. But, with all respect to Pipes who is far better informed on these matters than almost anyone, this belief strikes me as premature at this point.

The May issue of Commentary contains an excellent analysis of the "road map" to peace in the Middle East by Abraham Sofaer, a former federal judge and legal advisor to the State Department under President Reagan, who is now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute. Unfortunately, this article is not available on Commentary's website.

The essence of Sofaer's analysis is that the road map is fatally flawed because it "expects to bring an end to Palestinian violence against Israel without addressing the reasons why the Palestinians have deliberately and repeatedly [resorted to violence]." Prominent among these reasons, according to Sofaer, are the policies of the United States. These policies include our support for United Nations programs that foster Palestinian terrorism, such as the refugee camp program and the Palestinian educational system. Sofaer also cites our State Department's frequent censuring of lawful Israeli responses to terrorism. More fundamentally, he finds that we have encouraged Arab revanchism by refusing to take certain issues off the table during negotiations. In this regard, Sofaer argues that we should recognize Jerusalem as Israel's legitimate capital (without foreclosing discussion about the status of East Jerusalem); make clear that there will be no right of return for Palestinians to Israel proper; and abandon the "road map's" dogmatic insistence of pre-1967 borders in favor of a pragmatic approach to Jewish settlements. Finally, we should more forcefully oppose Israel's ostracism by international bodies and the world community. Clearly, there can be no peace until the Arabs of the region openly acknowledge the existence of Israel as a permanent, sovereign state. Yet the U.S. has often acquiesced in the refusal of Israel's Arab enemies to do so. Sofaer asks, "Are we to go on approving, by our silence, a situation wherein a true pariah state like Libya can serve a term as chairman of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights while democratic Israel is refused the right to participate in multilateral affairs?" Unfortunatley, the "road map" has little to say about these sorts of grotesque, but all too typical, charades.

Sofaer sagely concludes as follows: "A road map to peace is a fine thing, but if it is based in denial and wishful thinking it will be rightly doomed. The task for diplomats and all other interested parties is to force an end to the murder of Jews and to the effort to destroy the Jewish state. In pursuit of that goal, it is as necessary to delegitimize Palestinian violence as it is to prevent and repudiate the delegitimization of israel. When that necessary condition is met in word and deed, all manner of desirable and mutually beneficial outcomes will become negotiable; but not before."

Reuters reports that an Egyptian sailor on his way to Canada appears to have died from exposure to anthrax contained in his suitcase: "Egyptian sailor dies in Brazil from anthrax." (Courtesy of Laurie Mylroie.)

In this Washington Post op-ed piece, Rachel Belton explains why rebuilding Iraq is "no job for a coalition." Belton, who is writing a book on nation-building, notes that the only two successful attempts at postwar democratization occurred in Japan and Germany, where defense officials took full responsibility. She attributes this to the fact that "the centralized defense structure allowed America's core values to remain consistent and penetrate every aspect of the mission." Also, "unlike international organizations, whose entire job is to 'help' other countries, the Pentagon has other work to do." Thus, "it has every incentive to create a viable local government and then allow it the autonomy to function on its own."

Mark Steyn seems to have been inspired by recent disclosures involving Labour MP George Galloway: "I have excellent Korea prospects -- I mean career prospects." William Safire, on the other hand, has been inspired by the invective aimed at Newt Gingrich that Deacon referred to below: "Invective's comeback."

On National Review Online, Professor David Schaefer offers an informative history lesson on the intellectual perils of pacifism: "What did Gandhi do?" Was it not our political hero Winston Churchill who called Gandhi a half-naked fakir?

Two hundred Iraqi prisoners of war are released from an internment camp in the desert near the southern port of Umm Qasr:

"Chanting 'Saddam no, Bush yes,' some 200 Iraqi prisoners of war were let go Sunday at the coalition's main internment camp....

"The men, many of them barefooted, shook hands with the American soldiers guarding the camp before boarding buses and trucks to be driven to nearby Basra, southern Iraq's largest city.

"The men gave thumbs-up signs and peppered journalists with questions: 'No more Saddam statues?' 'No more military service?' 'No more executions?'

"Hussam Abbas, from Basra, said all he had known in his 25 years were prisons and military service. 'I gave myself in so that I would have a chance to be evacuated and not to come back to Iraq,' he said. 'But now, I am happy. We got rid of Saddam who oppressed us.'

"Hanging out a bus window, Mussalam Hassan, 22, shouted happily: 'We did not fire a single shot!'

"Before Atheer Abdul-Karim, 25, joined his fellow Iraqis in singing a folk song on board a departing bus, he shouted out: 'They paid us 17,000 (Iraqi dinars a month) to fight Americans. I would have killed Saddam for one dollar.'"

Via InstaPundit.

One of my least favorite locutions in politics is the statement by an official or politician that someone's criticism of government policy is "unhelpful." The statement implies that the spokesperson and the critic share a common mission but that the critic has failed to see the big picture and, as a result, has spoken rashly. In reality, however, the critic has usually identified serious flaws in a policy with which he or she disagrees and the spokesman, having no presentable answer on the merits, is responding with a condescending and misleading pragmatism.

Such appears to be the case with the responses to Newt Gingrich's criticism of the State Department, as reported in this Washington Post story. The story contains quotes from two former Gingrich allies, Vin Weber and Jack Kemp. Weber is quoted as saying that Gingrich's remarks were "unhelpful on so many fronts that he cares about, I can only guess he was free-lancing." Kemp's reported reaction is that the speech did "enormous collateral damage" to President Bush. Deputy State Department Secretary Armitage was a bit more direct when he reportedly said, "it is clear that Mr. Gingrich is off his meds and out of therapy." If Weber, Kemp, or Armitage offered any substantive argument against what Gingrich had to say about the State Department, the Post did not report it.

Indeed, it seems clear that the Post, like the State Department would like to change the subject and focus on Gingrich himself. The article contains the least flattering picture of Gingrich I have ever seen. And, apart from the quotations mentioned above, it is largely devoted to a discussion of Gingrich's past, and speculation about whether the White House has asked Gingrich to drop the subject and whether Donald Rumsfeld had a hand in the formulating the criticism. We can only hope that these attempts to slough off the important concerns raised by Gingrich will prove unsuccessful and that the substantive debate he hoped to trigger will occur.

Our eagle eyed reader Dafydd ab Hugh has alerted us to this deeply troubling story from Phillyburbs.com: "A shadowy figure aboard flight 722."

If your Spanish is better than mine, take a look at the promising new blog HispaLibertas.

A day or two ago we blasted Lincoln Chafee for opposing the President's tax cut proposal on the theory that raising taxes is good for the economy. The Linc said:

"...when President Clinton came in, .. he did raise revenues, he did address the revenue side of our budget and the economy took off. And then when this administration came in, they had big tax cuts in the spring of 2000 and the economy has been faltering..."

Reader Clark Erwin points out that we could have jumped on the Missing Linc harder than we did:

"1. The economy was already growing when the lamentable Clinton crowd reached Washington. The business-cycle dating arbiters of the National Bureau of Economic Research (www.nber.org) say the 1990-91 recession ended in March 1991 and the expansion began at that time -- a year and a half before the nauguration of Sen. Chafee's supposed revenue raiser.

"2. 'This administration' didn't have a big tax cut in spring 2000. G.W. Bush wasn't inaugurated until January 2001. And with its phase-in provisions, the cut wasn't that big.

"3. In what Sen. Chafee is no doubt pleased to call his mind, the Reagan tax cuts probably had nothing to do with the creation of 18 million new jobs in the 1980s..."

It is really remarkable that a United States Senator can have such a shaky grasp of history--not ancient history, but events of the last few years.

As this column in the Washington Times by Debra Saunders reports, a court in the Netherlands has sentenced the killer of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn to 18 years in prison, with the expectation that he will be released after serving just 12. Volkert van der Graaf shot Fortuyn five times at point blank range nine days before the Dutch election in 2002. Fortuyn, a candidate for prime minister, was running second in the polls. The 18-year sentence was imposed by a three-judge panel. As in much of Europe, there are no jury trials in the Netherlands.

The incredibly light sentence is probably the product of two disturbing trends in European jurisprudence. First, EU countries not only bar the death penalty, they strongly discourage life sentences for murderers. As Saunders points out, the EU has issued a policy paper that criticizes life sentences and calls for "keeping imprisonment to an absolute minimum." Second, criminal sentencing is too often influenced by considerations of political correctness. Fortuyn was not politically correct because, among other things, he referred to Islam as a "backward religion" and called for a moratorium on immigration. He also wanted to re-legalize the breeding of animals for fur. Although I cannot prove that Fortuyn's politics influenced his sentence, it is difficult otherwise to understand the imposition of such a lenient sentence on a killer who, according to Saunders, never acknowledged that killing Fortuyn was wrong. I also know that in war crimes trials, international courts sometimes cite factors such as the criminal's impoverished upbringing as grounds for imposing light sentences.

Which brings us to the Treaty of Rome and the International Criminal Court. Conservatives usually cite the absence of fundamental due process protections in proceedings before that tribunal as their basis for not wanting to sign on, and indeed, this is sufficient reason not to do so. However, the substantive gap between European and American views on crime and punishment constitutes another sound reason.

As regular readers know, Minnesota faces a budget deficit like most states, and our Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty, was elected last November largely on the basis of his pledge to balance the budget without raising Minnesota's already sky-high taxes. Budget bills are now working their way through the legislature, and, as was widely predicted, the local news media are awash in predictions of doom. Liberal interest groups are pursuing a "Victim du Jour" strategy, highlighting the alleged horrors that will result if the state's spending does not continue to grow at a record-shattering pace (actually, the budget proposed by Governor Pawlenty provides for a 6% spending increase over the next two years.)

Today, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports on a "Poor People's March" on the State Capitol by about 1,000 protesters yesterday. Speakers at the rally denounced the Governor's budget, alleging that "cuts will result in more poverty, disillusionment and crime." The always-helpful Strib recycled a DFL press release, noting that "Senate DFLers have called for a balance of spending cuts and tax increases on the most affluent Minnesotans -- those who benefited the most from past-year tax rebates -- to balance the budget."

Meanwhile, columnist Doug Grow devoted today's column--as he has all his recent columns--to bewailing the impact of proposed budget cuts on Minnesotans dependent on state largesse. This time it's a teenage nightclub in Burnsville that could lose its state subsidy. Grow, befuddled by Minnesota's steady swing toward the political right in recent years, pines for the "old Minnesota" and warns that the "new Minnesota" will be a "cold Arkansas."

Meanwhile, today's St. Paul Pioneer Press headlines the Children's Defense Fund Minnesota's claim that "the well-being of Minnesota's children would be jeopardized if Gov. Tim Pawlenty's budget proposal were enacted."

And finally, a lawn sign campaign promotes higher taxes--see the photo below. The state is not exactly awash in protax signs, however, especially since the signs imply a willingness to have one's own taxes raised. Those who advocate higher taxes are usually talking about someone else's.

This Fox News Interview with Ahmad Chalabi is worth reading. Chalabi says that Saddam and his two sons are all alive, but he has intelligence about their recent whereabouts and thinks "the coalition forces will be able to catch them pretty soon." Chalabi also adds to what has recently been revealed about the relationship between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda, saying that "we have specific information about visits that leaders of Al Qaeda made to Iraq in as late as 2000, and the requests for large amounts of cash."

How good Chalabi's sources of information are, I have no idea. But it's an interesting interview.

Drums of chemicals believed to be the nerve gas sarin and a "blister agent," likely mustard gas, were found in northern Iraq earlier today. Soldiers also found two mobile laboratories with equipment for mixing chemicals, but they "appeared to have been ransacked by looters."

Thanks to the Star Tribune this morning for running a piece by Apple Valley IT technician Taylor George that casts doubt on the wisdom peddled relentlessly in the paper's editorials several times a week: "Too much government can hurt." Star Tribune readers also get the better of the Star Tribune's cheerleading "reader representative" as he responds incredibly lamely to their complaints regarding recent Star Tribune stories promoting France: "Some readers say they want no part of stories about France nowadays." Inspirational reader comment: "I wouldn't be surprised to see a story about the resurgence of French kissing."

More useful in understanding the political scene today than the news and commentary out this morning is the essay by Sidney Milkis on the election that made Woodrow Wilson president, from the winter issue of the Claremont Review of Books: "Why the election of 1912 changed America." To round out the picture, consider also from the same issue Frederick Kagan's timely review of two new books on foreign policy issues with a Wilsonian inflection, "Wilson's new world disorder," and the note by Ronald Pestritto on the restoration to print of Wilson's Constitutional Government in the United States, "Reading Wilson."

London's Sunday Times reports that "France gave Saddam Hussein's regime regular reports on its dealings with US officials....The conservative British weekly said the information kept Saddam abreast of every development in US planning and may have helped him to prepare for war."

This link is to a summary of the Times article, since the Times requires registration. The Times account is based on "files it had found in the wreckage of the Iraqi foreign ministry." I still think it's very strange that newspapers have access to Iraqi government buildings and apparently are able to paw through files in search of stories. I don't know, maybe it's a good thing--but very odd.

George Will notes the steadily increasing ranks of African-American Republicans holding significant elective and appointive office:

"Last year three African Americans running statewide for offices in the same state were all elected, something that had never happened before in any state, even during Reconstruction. The African Americans are Democrats, and the state is one of those proudly, reliably liberal ones -- Massachusetts, perhaps, or California, right?

"Wrong. The state is Texas, and all three winners are Republicans."

"Before the 2000 election, the most prominent African American in public life was Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who is prominent because of a Republican, the first President Bush. Never have African Americans been as prominent in a presidential administration as they are in the current one, given the war against terrorism and the prominence of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice in the waging of it. Before the war eclipsed domestic policy, the president was particularly interested in education policy, which is the purview of Secretary of Education Rod Paige, an African American.

"Britain's Conservative Party gave the country a Jewish prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, and a female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. The second African American elected governor of an American state since Reconstruction -- Douglas Wilder was the first, in Virginia in 1989 -- may come from America's conservative party, the ranks of whose elected and appointed officials are decreasingly monochrome. And the successes of African American Republicans in statewide elections will begin to produce modest -- and tremendously consequential -- Republican gains among African Americans in presidential elections."

The annual correspondents' dinner is generally a jokey roast-type affair, especially when the President is a Republican. This year the President had some more serious comments, especially about the relationship--contentious for a generation--between journalists and the American military:

"'I think it is fair to say the journalists grew to respect the skill and bravery and decency of the men and women who wear our nation's uniform,' Bush said, prompting applause from the audience. 'And I am certain that our military gained greater respect for the journalists traveling with them, who showed a tenacity and courage of their own,' he said, prompting more applause.

"'Because of journalists who accepted risk and hardship, the first draft of history has been vivid and has been moving,' Bush said.

"Bush paid tribute to 13 journalists who died covering the war and singled out two: Michael Kelly, editor-at-large for The Atlantic Monthly magazine and a columnist for The Washington Post, and NBC News correspondent David Bloom.

"Bush called Kelly 'a soldier's journalist,' and said Bloom was 'the perfect man to carry viewers along on the charge to Baghdad.'"

Documents discovered by The Telegraph in the bombed-out headquarters of Iraq's intelligence service appear to definitively prove the link between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda. The documents show that Iraq invited an al Qaeda envoy to Baghdad in 1998 to establish a relationship and explore means of cooperation. The meeting went so well that it was extended for a week and resulted in an invitation being extended to bin Laden.

Here is what I don't understand: The Telegraph "found the file on bin Laden inside a folder lying in the rubble of one of the rooms of the destroyed intelligence HQ." This isn't the first sensational discovery made by the Telegraph. Are reporters just rooting around in the former Iraqi intelligence headquarters? Shouldn't we secure buildings like this and systematically inventory their contents? This kind of discovery seems very odd.

UPDATE: This Telegraph article explains how the reporter got in and indicates that the building is guarded, at least. Still seems odd to me.

President Bush is shown below addressing workers at a company in Ohio, as part of his tour promoting his tax cut proposal. Here is how the Associated Press describes the President's efforts: "In timeworn tradition, U.S. presidents keep hitting the road on attempted end runs around Congress." Have you noticed how the stature and nobility ascribed to Congress in the media fluctuate back and forth depending on which party controls the White House?

While I was out of town, the Supreme Court agreed to decide a case on the scope of its Miranda ruling. The issue is whether physical evidence discovered because of what a suspect tells the police without being fully informed of his Miranda rights is admissible in court. The Supreme Court agreed to review a Court of Appeals decision excluding such evidence. Here is the Washington Post's story about the case.

At one level, it is surprising that the Court took the case for review. Last term, in the Dickerson case, the Court seemed to rule (by a 7-2 vote) that the Miranda warning is more than just a very good way of making sure that the police does not coerce confessions from suspects in violation of the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination -- the Court apparently ruled that the warning is a constitutional requirement, and that confessions obtained in the absence of the warning violate the Fifth Amendment and are inadmissible. Once one accepts this piece of judicial overreaching, it follows that physical evidence obtained in the absence of a Miranda warning is inadmissible. Under the Fifth Amendment, the police can no more coerce suspects into disclosing the whereabouts of incriminating evidence than it can coerce them into confessing. So if un-Mirandized confessions are necessarily coerced, and thus inadmissible, then so too are un-Mirandized statements about where incriminating evidence can be found. In sum, the criminal defense lawyer quoted in the Washington Post is correct in saying "now that the court has said Miranda is constitutionally compelled, it's hard to see how you can take un-Mirandized statements and use them without violating the right against self-incrimination."

But, the Supreme Court being what it is, this does not mean that it will affirm the appeals court decision excluding the evidence. In fact, my friend Bill Otis, an expert in this area, predicts that the Court will reverse that decision. This could happen in one of two ways. First, the police apparently began reading the Miranda warning to the suspect in the case at hand, but the suspect said he had heard the warning before and didn't need to hear it again. It is possible that the Court will rely on this fact and duck the deeper legal issue. But even if the Court gets to that issue, Otis thinks it will probably find that the physical evidence should have been admitted. Prior to the Dickerson decision, the Court had tended to permit the admission of such evidence, thus suggesting that the Miranda warning is not constitutionally compelled. In Dickerson, the Court danced around these cases, and it can just as easily dance around Dickerson if it is so inclined. The Court clearly is loathe both to do away with Miranda and to impose the full logical consequences of that decision on the police. So it may well be willing to forgo doctrinal consistency in order to accomplish its competing policy objectives.

All of which is consistent with my view that the Rehnquist Court is as much a legislative-type body as the Warren Court was. The Warren Court legislated through rulings that mandated sweeping social change. The Rehnquist Court (which might more accurately be called the Powell/O'Connor Court) legislates by finding various policy-based compromise solutions to limit the damage brought about by the Warren Court's "legislation."

Yesterday, I posted a piece by Victor Davis Hanson about the prospects for post-war Iraq. I called my blog "Winning the Peace." It occurs to me, though, that the notion of "winning a peace" may be pseudo-concept, as Rocket Man used to say. It is easy enough in nearly all cases to determine who has won a war. However, I do not know of any criteria for determining who has won a peace. No doubt, this is why liberals have recently embraced the phrase. They can't deny that President Bush has won his two wars, and won them resoundingly. But liberals still can make the nebulous, unverifiable claim that he has lost, or will soon lose, the peace. Conservatives too may have some use for the phrase. They can praise the Department of Defense for winning wars, while blaming the State Department for losing the peace.

To the extent that commentators mean anything more profound when they talk of losing a peace, they probably mean that less good came out of the preceding war than might reasonably have been expected. Thus, World War I not only failed to make the world safe for democracy, it did not lead to lasting positive change in Germany, quite the contrary. World War II did lead to such change, but did not result in the liberation of Eastern Europe. The first Gulf War liberated Kuwait, but did not bring about regime change in Iraq. The war in Afghanistan did not rid that country of war lords. In each case, one can argue that we lost the peace or that we won it. Indeed, since all wars are followed by both good and bad developments, one can always argue both sides of the "did we win the peace" issue without much fear of being conclusively proven wrong. That's why I think the notion is a pseudo-concept.

There is, perhaps, one lesson to be learned from discussing who won various instances of peace, however. In each of the examples mentioned above, if the peace was lost -- if less good than expected came out of the war in question -- it was probably due in large part to the way in which the war itself was conducted. In World War I, we didn't crush the German military the way we did in World War II. In World War II, we lost the race to Eastern Europe. In the first Gulf War, we didn't push on to Baghdad. In Afghanistan, we never sent in enough troops to exercise substantial influence outside of Kabul. From this, I conclude that we enhance our chances of "winning the peace" in Iraq to the extent that our military remains a major presence in Iraq and is not bashing about exerting itself. In other words, as in past instances, we can best accomplish our post-war objectives by doing that which many liberals claim will cause us to lose the peace.

The New York Times reports on documents that were recovered when the Ansar al-Islam base in northern Iraq was overrun by American and Kurdish soldiers. The materials include training manuals in bomb-making and poison manufacture that are more or less identical to those recovered from al Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan.

There is some history here: "Documents gathered in 2001 by a correspondent for The New York Times 1,300 miles away in Kabul, the Afghan capital, suggested that Al Qaeda was then helping to unify the Islamic groups that became Ansar and was encouraging them to establish strict Islamic rules in villages they controlled."

These efforts bore fruit in the form of Ansar, which controlled a portion of northern Iraq. The links between Ansar and al Qaeda are clear: "Interviews with prisoners and translations of internal documents and computer disks show that Ansar possessed manuals from Al Qaeda in printed and digital form, ran two training bases with curriculums strikingly similar to those taught in Afghan camps, and managed its affairs much as Al Qaeda did....Moreover, Al Qaeda seeded Ansar with experienced fighters who helped organize the group's training, administration and ambitions...."

The Ansar discoveries illustrate one of the difficulties of fighting Islamofascism, as described by an American Special Forces officer: "They had Al Qaeda instructors with them, they had an Al Qaeda cadre. One of the problems with Al Qaeda is that it is not a clearly identifiable organization. They don't wear an Al Qaeda uniform or carry an Al Qaeda passport, but they launch out these professionals who train and start groups."

And the pan-Arab nature of the Islamofascist movement is evident in the nationalities of Ansar's members: "[T]he documents also include passports, driver's licenses, identification cards or university transcripts from young men from Algeria, Sudan, Syria, Morocco, Tunisia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Spain, Italy and Canada."

After nearly three months in Alaska, my work is coming to an unexpectedly swift conclusion. It looks like I'll be back home no later than Friday of next week. It's been fun, for the most part, and Alaska is a fascinating place. Especially once you get past March. But it will be great to be home.

Jeff Swanson has alerted us to an interview with Victor Davis Hanson from the Naval Institute Proceedings.

Yesterday's Star Tribune carried a warm profile of Ray Bradbury by Graydon Royce in connection with the bilingual staging of a dramatized version of one of Bradbury's stories: "Ray Bradbury's more than a science fiction writer."