Howard Dean looks like the probable selection for Democratic National Committee chairman. Donald Lambro of the Washington Times thinks that the selection of such a fire-brand leftist will likely hurt the party. Robert Novak and Dick Morris agree. Even leftist Harold Meyerson thinks that Dean "shlepps too much baggage" but adds that it normally doesn't matter who the party chairman is. (Old-timers like my conservative cousin will enjoy the quiz question at the beginning of Meyerson's piece).

For his part, Dean is making an interesting play by seeking the job. He must be betting that the Democrats will do well in the 2006 elecions. That's not a bad bet -- an incumbent president's sixth year is usually a great year for the opposition. If that pattern holds, Dean will emerge as a hero and will be relatively well-position to run for his party's nomination in 2008. In this scenario, Democrats will convince themselves that they can win from the left. And Hillary will have to move back to the left to contend with Dean, just as John Kerry did. Thus, the Democrats may be worse off if Dean succeeds in 2006 than if he fails.

Will Dean be a liability in 2006? Perhaps at the margin. But 2006 will be a referendum on the economy, the war on terrorism, and the situation in Iraq -- not a referendum on Howard Dean.

UPDATE: One blogger points out that Dean has said that, if selected chairman, he will not run for president in 2008. In addition, the chairmanship is a four-year commitment. However, the fact that Dean had to promise not to run in 2008 shows that being chairman is no bar to such a run. Whether his promise is good under all circumstances remains to be seen. The same blogger wonders why the right hates Dean. I don't think I hate him; in fact I kind of like his style. However, he seems to hate me.

Jihad Watch has the latest on the Armanious murders in Jersey City, the mainstream media's best-kept secret, courtesy of a friend and some relatives of the Armanious family who viewed the bodies.

The American Enterprise magazine is one of our favorites; under Karl Zinsmeister, it has become a premier public policy publication. So we were happy when Karl asked us to contribute an article to the magazine's current issue, which focuses on the Ownership Society. The March issue is now available, and our contribution, "Broad Ownership Needs Broad Taxpaying," is here.

The thesis of the article is that, while giving Americans ownership over their retirement and medical savings accounts is in most respects a great thing, there is one possible undesirable consequence: most taxpayers are tethered to financial responsibility for federal expenditures only through payroll taxes. If payroll taxes take the form of personal accounts, and the remainder of federal services are funded overwhelmingly through the personal income tax, a large majority of citizens will have little financial incentive to restrain the growth of government. Check it out.

For the fifth time in the last six months, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and its columnists defamed us today. The miscreant this time was one "Camille J. Gage," who was a student in a class at the University of Minnesota that I gave a guest lecture to last fall.

The piece accuses us of a failure to fact-check. The author refers to a news story we linked to last October which related to voter fraud in Wisconsin, and says that she "made a few phone calls" and determined that "[t]here was no factual basis for the voter fraud allegations." No hint as to whom she called, or what information she learned that demonstrated that the allegations in the news story were false.

We are, of course, preparing a response. It will focus, I think, on the fact-checking that the Strib did before they printed Ms. Gage's attack on us. I talked to Commentary Editor Eric Ringham today, and he acknowledged that the Strib didn't do any fact-checking at all before they accused us of not fact-checking. That's right: None. Zilch. Zippo. Nada. And Ms. Gage, if that's really her name, has no knowledge about the voter fraud scandal which has now resulted in a federal criminal investigation.

This should be fun, but, frankly, I'm getting tired of investing my time in responding to baseless libels by the Star Tribune.

UPDATE: A reader writes in with a link indicating that Ms. Gage is a Howard Dean contributor. What a surprise.

Suzanne Fields in the Washington Times discusses the reinvention of Hillary Clinton. I haven't had much to say about Hillary's latest act of reinvention -- her expression of "respect" for people who oppose abortion under all circumstances -- because it struck me as inconsequential. Given her opposition, for example, to the ban on partial birth abortion, it's difficult to see how Ms. Clinton is going to score any points by "feeling the pain" of those who are pro-life. Only ardent feminists who demonize the pro-life movement are likely to be impressed, and not favorably. In short, this was not a Sister Souljah moment.

Perhaps, though, one should view Hillary's statement in the context of a larger effort to create a buzz that she is moderating. If journalists talk about her this way often enough, it may become the conventional wisdom. And if she periodically throws out statements that, however superficially, sound moderate, journalists can be expected to talk about her this way. In terms of domestic policy and values, Hillary will never succeed in looking like a new Democrat the way her husband (an unknown quantity at the national level) did. However, as Fields points out, there are many young voters for whom values matter. During the next few years, these folks will be looking at Hillary essentially for the first time. Thus, it can't hurt for her to make conciliatory noises.

Foreign policy and national security issues provide Hillary a better opportunity. Hillary's fixed image as an ardent liberal never extended to this realm. Thus, she plausibly can present herself as tough-minded here (more than plausibly perhaps -- few have ever questioned her toughness). And if she continues to project that image, her liberal image on domestic issues, and even on values, will not pose an insuperable obstacle to her quest to become our next president, assuming her party is willing to nominate a fairly hard-liner.

If you have a kid who has taken American history in high school, you know that a book answering to the description of A Patriot's History of the United States is badly needed. I can't vouch for the one coauthored by Professor Larry Schwekart that has just been published, but Frontpage carries an interesting interview with him this morning.

The recently published Politically Incorrect Guide to American History appears to be a disappointment. See John Kienker's comment on The Remedy, the blog of the Claremont Institute. Rocket Man is reading the Schweikart book and will be able to provide an update with his views sometime soon.

HINDROCKET adds: We've corresponded with Professor Schweikart and intend to have him on our radio show within the next few weeks. I've looked at the Patriot's History, and, while I haven't yet had time to read it cover to cover, it looks excellent.

The New York Post carries two excellent columns that consider yesterday's historic election in Iraq, one by Deborah Orin on the courage of the Iraqis who voted, and one by John Podhoretz on the Democratic reaction.

Jonathan Last is the online editor of the Weekly Standard and has invited the three of us to submit columns on a rotating basis to The Daily Standard, the Standard's online site. The Standard has posted my column on the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State last week: "Birmingham's new legacy." Please check it out.

Yesterday, I speculated about the future of Europe in a post called "Can Europe Turn the Corner?" In doing so, I referred to a piece in the February issue of Commentary (not yet available online) by Arthur Waldron. The portions of Waldron's piece on which I relied dealt with the economic situation in Europe. But Waldron also suggested that Europe seemed to be turning the corner in its attitude towards combating terrorism. The key event, Waldron thought, was the murder of Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh by a Dutch Muslim as retribution for his film Submission about the abuse of women under Islam. As I read Waldron's argument, it occurred to me that the Europeans were just as likely, Spanish style, to respond to van Gogh's murder by curtailing works of art offensive to Muslims as by becoming more resolute. But what I do I know?

Today, the same day on which millions of Iraqis disregarded security concerns and went to the polls, the BBC reported that Submission has been pulled from the Rotterdam film festival due to security concerns.

In Minnesota we've had the opportunity to get to know Senator Mark Dayton up close and personal. In mid-2003 we took a look at the theological musings set forth in the senator's homily ("If we're so right, why are there so few of us left?") at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in Minneapolis. The text Senator Dayton chose for his homily was, somewhat surprisingly given the occasion and the venue, the Bhagavad Gita. Thus spake Senator Dayton:

Our country has moved decidedly to the right. Our citizens, many are less involved. Our social system is less compassionate, government is less effective and liberalism is more distrusted....Where is God in the midst of all this injustice? I don't have a clue. I don't know if He, or She, or Whatever doesn't exist, died, is incompetent, doesn't care, is laissez faire, or has a master plan I don't understand.

We commented:

Yeah, that's the problem with God. She's too incompetent to smite Republicans the way she ought to. In normal times, this would be considered extraordinarily pathetic. These days, it's pretty typical Democratic hysteria. But Dayton has all the earmarks of a one-termer.

In June 2003 Senator Dayton visited Iraq. At a telephone press conference held with Twin Cities reporters Senator Dayton unburdened himself:

The contrast between these oil fields, which are just 15 minutes away, and the total poverty of the people living in that region, was just unbelievable. They're now waiting up to nine hours in line to get gasoline for their vehicles, which is pretty absurd when you have all of this oil 15 minutes away.

In May 2004 the whole country witnessed Senator Dayton's weirdly dissociated performance at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing with Secretary Rumsfeld. Dayton hectored Rumsfeld:

You're increasing the number of forces, the number of tanks over there. How can this have anything to do but to escalate the level of violence, the opposition of Iraqis, intensify the hatred across the Arab world to the United States, and more atrocities? How can this have any result other than to put us deeper into this situation and make the conditions there worse for our forces and for our nation and for the world?

Last September the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported on Senator Dayton's telephone press conference announcing his intention to boycott Prime Minister Allawi's speech to Congress:

Dayton described the speech as "a production" staged by the Bush administration and said that Allawi "ought to be over there running his country."

On October 12 Dayton became a national laughingstock when he evacuated his Washington office in the face of what he declared to be "a heightened risk" of terrorism. Fox News correspondent Brian Wilson archly referred to the hallway outside Dayton's office in the Russell Senate Office Building as the "Zone of Death." We noted the evacuation in "Yellow alert" and posted Dayton's Star Tribune column explaining the rationale for the evacuation of his office in "Terminated with extreme precaution."

Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist Nick Coleman took up the defense of Dayton in his column "Dayton fires back at 'rats'" (now unavailable). The column quoted Dayton defending his actions, first before a Minneapolis Rotary Club audience and then a teachers' union gathering:

"They try to destroy you in order to defeat you," he says with anger in his voice. "They are sewer rats, and they're down in the sewer. If people want their politics down in the sewer, they're going to end up with sewer rats rather than public servants."

Dayton, 57, isn't up for reelection this year but has inadvertently found himself in the cross hairs in a brutal election battle fought against a backdrop of muddled terror threats and juvenile name-calling.

The scion of a wealthy department-store family, Dayton sometimes seems wide-eyed, has a stiff, formal manner and sometimes stumbles over his syntax - making him a popular target for right-wing hatchet bloggers [Ed.: He was talking about us -- the guy really has a way with words, doesn't he?] and operatives...

Coleman then moved on to Dayton's appearance before the Minnesota teachers' union:

Dayton gives the teachers a rousing talk, telling them that the toughest job he ever had was as a public school teacher in New York City and amusing them with a reference to keg parties at Yale, where the president of his fraternity was one George W. Bush. "I've seen the president take positions that none of you have," he jokes. [Ed.: Dayton is not known for his sense of humor.]

When he is done speaking, a teacher from Minneapolis comes up to say, "I commend you for the courage to shut your office and for the courage to be different." [Ed.: "The courage to shut his office..." Sounds like a campaign slogan!] In politics, however, being different can be risky. Except for West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, few Democrats have come to his aid. With his friends leery, it is no surprise his opponents smell blood and have seized the issue to soften him up for 2006, when he will be up for reelection.

The same kind of gutter talk aimed at him has been aimed at other Democrats in recent years, he says, including Senate colleagues John Kerry and the late Paul Wellstone. His attackers, he says, accuse him of what they fear in themselves.

"They don't see me," he says. "They don't know me. There's a Zen saying: 'If a pickpocket sees the Buddha, all he sees is pockets.' [Ed.: Heavy! Maybe he'll use it for his next homily at St. Joan of Arc.] They are reflecting themselves with their verbiage. They are just sewer rats who have never done anything themselves or won anything themselves, and they just want to put a notch on their belt. They want to destroy me in order to defeat me. In some places, they assassinate leaders, but here they don't want to go to prison, so they character-assassinate their leaders."

Coleman then quoted Dayton addressing the question of his mental balance, but it is not clear if this was in response to Coleman's question or part of his talk to the teachers' union:

As to insinuations about his mental health that surfaced in his 2000 campaign and have returned with the storm over his office closing, Dayton says:

"I'm 57, I know myself pretty well, and I know I'm a lot healthier than most politicians I'm around. I've never been arrested; I've never acted irresponsibly or inappropriately. I've talked freely about my two divorces and my recovery from alcoholism, but don't owe my personal medical history to anyone. I'm not running for president. I've been in public service for three decades, and I've performed honestly and honorably, and I've never disgraced the public cause [Ed.: I think we'll be the judge of that], and I'll stand on that record.

"That's what people are entitled to from me."

Coleman then returned to Dayton's address to the Rotarians:

"It should be considered unpatriotic," he says, "to brag at the country club about not paying taxes." [Ed.: We still have no clue whom he was talking about.]

The Rotarians listen respectfully, then brace themselves when he finally is asked why he closed his office.

He explains that, given the terror briefing he attended, he could not let his staff remain in Washington while he and the rest of Congress were back home, politicking. It would be immoral and cowardly for him to leave "other people's sons and daughters" at risk while he was safe at home.

"I pray to God I'm wrong," he says. "I probably am." [Ed.: And not just about that!]

The Rotarians relax and seem reassured that their senator is not from another planet.

We didn't entirely credit Coleman's interpretation of the Rotarians' response to Dayton. Indeed, Coleman's spin suggests why we describe Coleman as a reliably partisan hack. But we understood Coleman's message: Minnesotans were to join the teachers and the Rotarians in appreciating Senator Dayton's special brand of courage, "the courage to shut his office."

Coleman is by far the Star Tribune's worst columnist, but last week Star Tribune columnist Doug Grow took the baton from Coleman in detecting courage in the senator where it would not otherwise have been apparent: in opposing the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State. Grow's column is "Sen. Substance lays it on the line." Grow admiringly quotes Senator Dayton's floor speech on Rice last week:

Mark Dayton was speaking, from his soul, on the hallowed floor of the U. S. Senate.

The Minnesota Democrat's passionate speech was delivered Tuesday in the so-called debate over whether the Senate should confirm the nomination of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state.

"I don't like to impugn anyone's integrity," Dayton said in the final moments of his speech. "But I really do not like being lied to repeatedly, flagrantly, intentionally. It is wrong. It is undemocratic. It is un-American and it is dangerous. It is very dangerous and it is occurring far too frequently in this administration."

Grow adds a quotation from a follow-up phone call:

In a phone conversation Wednesday morning, Dayton recalled a pre-war meeting he had on Sept. 28, 2002, with Rice, then-CIA Director George Tenet and four senators.

"They passed around a 6-inch section of a metal tube," Dayton said. "They repeatedly said that this was absolute proof that Iraq had a program" for building nuclear weapons.

"I learned later that even their own experts didn't agree with that assessment. If she [Rice] didn't know it at the time, she certainly knew it later, but there was never a call saying, 'We misinformed you.'"

That's good enough for Grow, although it leaves a few questions in my mind regarding the courage necessary to impute deliberate dishonesty to a high government official who appears to have been operating on the same intelligence information that other government consumers of intelligence were.

Last summer the Senate Intelligence Committee released its 511-page report on the intelligence community's pre-war assessment of Iraq (click here for the report in PDF). At the time of the report's release, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts stated (click here for the CNN story):

"The committee found no evidence that the intelligence community's mischaracterization or exaggeration of intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities was the result of politics or pressure."

You might expect Dayton to understand what it means to be the victim of imperfect intelligence, and of the responsibility to take action that errs on the side of safety for those whose safety is in your hands, but you would of course be mistaken. Such an expectation would be based on the assumption that Dayton's public comments on the evacuation of his office were bona fide, or that he applies a principle of consistency to his actions.

In his opposition to the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice last week, Senator Dayton stood shoulder to shoulder with former Ku Klux Klan Grand Kleagle Robert Byrd as well as eleven other Democrats. Recall that Dayton is the occupant of the senate seat once held by Hubert Humphrey. The word that comes to my mind in connection with Dayton's remarks and his vote against Condoleezza Rice is not "courage," but rather "disgrace."

HINDROCKET adds: Reader Tom Mckeown makes a good point:

Was any other Minnesotan struck by the contrast in courage between the Iraqi women waiting in line to vote today with the retreat from Washington by Senator Mark Dayton on the hint of some threat, which was ignored by every other elected official in DC...Such courage by our sentaor would not merit a chapter in "Profiles in Courage" and deserves his early retirement.

UPDATE: Reader Mary Ledbetter writes to point out that St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church is not "Catholic" in the sense that it is in union with the Church of Rome. Rather, it appears to be a Christian "new age" church (my interpretation of its mission statement at the linked site). Reader Mitch Gossman describes the church as the local epicenter of so-called "liberation theology."

On a note related to the post above, Monday's Star Tribune carries an article reporting that Dayton's approval rating among Minnesotans has dropped 15 points, to 43 percent.

UPDATE 2: Another reader who asks to be left unidentified writes:

Hi! I'm a faithful reader of your blog. I hate to correct your other readers, but Joan of Arc parish in Minneapolis is a Catholic parish. It is listed on the archdiocesan website as such.

It's sad, because clearly they have completely departed from anything resembling Catholic liturgical practice and belief. I have e-mailed the archdiocese linking them to this Dayton nonsense, as having non-biblical readings and lay people giving political speeches is utterly and absolutely verboten in Catholic liturgical celebrations. I know this because I am a Catholic priest!

A reader pointed out this thread at Democratic Underground, where the innermost core of the Democratic Party is on display. Some of the posters, like the one who started the thread, are over the top:

All the media keeps talking about is how happy the Iraqis are, how high turnout was, and how "freedom" has spread to Iraq. I had to turn off CNN because they kept focusing on the so-called "voters" and barely mentioned the resistance movements at all. Where are the freedom fighters today? Are their voices silenced because some American puppets cast a few ballots?

I can't believe the Iraqis are buying into this "democracy" bullshit.

That's the American left in its natural habitat. At least one poster, though, had some sensible thoughts about the future of the Democratic Party:

If you want to cheer on a bunch zealots who stone gays and beat women or power-mad fascists, then go over to Pat Robertson's or the neo-Nazi's website. It's that kind of anti-democratic Democratic thinking that is turning the DNC into the minority party everywhere.

If what happened today in Iraq is screwing up the world, then we've got to figure out how to screw it up faster. Maybe if we could screw up mainland "company town" China their workers could have real unions and be able to bargin for better conditions. Let's screw up Iran next. After their wars women are enough of a majority there they might could elect some feminists.

Why does Bush say he wants to spread freedom around the world? If that's what American's want to here, then let's get out in front of it and complain from the cutting edge that the conservatives are too slow. Tell people that if they want to make sure its done right then who better than the party of Jefferson and Wilson and Roosevelt.

This short-sighted "the enemy of my political oponent is my friend" obsession is not only going to alienate voters, it's going to destroy an otherwise great opportunity to spread democracy around the world.

It's not enough to say that Bush's inaugural speech sounded pretty but he doesn't mean it, you have to follow it up by saying "BUT WE DO, we have a track record of 2 centuries of success, and if you give us a chance we'll show you again." How many people are going to be inspired by following it up with "and we'll protect your Social Security better?" Deep down people need to be a part of something greater than themselves. Maybe "fighting to blow up hopeful voters" seems great to a few people, but "fighting to make sure the bravery of hopeful voters is not wasted or betrayed" sounds better to me. I'll bet it sounds better to a lot of swing voters too.

As far as people "betraying their country" by wanting to vote... How the (&@(#& is that kind of nationalist thinking progressive?

But in the inner precincts of today's Democratic Party, that guy is in the minority.

We knew that, of course. But it's heartening to see the New York Times report that "Voting, Not Violence, Is the Big Story on Arab TV":

Sometime after the first insurgent attack in Iraq this morning, news directors at Arab satellite channels and newspaper editors found themselves facing an altogether new decision: should they report on the violence, or continue to cover the elections themselves?

After close to two years of providing up-to-the-minute images of explosions and mayhem, and despite months of predictions of a bloodbath on election day, some news directors said they found the decision surprisingly easy to make. The violence simply was not the story this morning; the voting was.

Overwhelmingly, Arab channels and newspapers greeted the elections as a critical event with major implications for the region, and many put significant resources into reporting on the vote, providing blanket coverage throughout the country that started about a week ago. Newspapers kept wide swaths of their pages open, and the satellite channels dedicated most of the day to coverage of the polls.

Often criticized for glorifying Iraq's violence if not inciting it, Arab news channels appeared to take particular care in their election day reporting. Far from the almost nightly barrage of blood and tears, Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera, the kings of Arab news, barely showed the aftermath of the suicide bombings that occurred in the country.

Violence in the Arab world is a sadly familiar, dog-bites-man story. Even Al Jazeera couldn't escape the fact that the spread of freedom is the news of the day.

Austin Bay alerts us to the second biggest story of the day: the upcoming May reunion of the short-lived sixties supergroup Cream at the Royal Albert Hall in May. Austin's post is "CREAM dream reunion." Cream is most famous for its role in launching Eric Clapton to rock stardom, but in the linked post Austin accurately describes the band's achievement.

Intending to live blog the first few hours of the Iraqi election, I was actually sleeping in front of the television when Geraldo Rivera roused me at around 1:00 a.m., stating in effect that I was missing the equivalent of the fall of the Berlin wall and the entire civil rights voting rights movement. Thus spurred, I quickly began blogging, starting with this post. Geraldo's adrenaline kept me going for almost two hours.

Let's give credit where credit is due. Geraldo Rivera had the right line on the election almost immediately after it began, and was enthusiastically communicating it to the American people within an hour. Here, via Johnny Dollar is the transcript of the report that served as my wake-up call. Thanks Geraldo.

We might also even given a little credit to Christiane Amanpour. By the time the polls closed, she was saying basically the same thing as Geraldo. With less gusto, to be sure, but not grudgingly. The work of these reporters will help us keep faith with the Iraqi people. It's hard to imagine the American people turning their backs on the Iraqis at this point, after witnessing the courage they displayed today.

The process by which we succeed in Iraq (if we do) can be thought of as a series of events by which one party keeps faith with the others. First, we kept faith with the people of Iraq by remaining in force to rebuild the country after we toppled Saddam and carried out our search for WMD. Then, the Shiite majority kept faith by rejecting the radical elements when they rose up against the occupation. We then kept faith with the Shiites by scheduling elections and seeing them through as scheduled. And today, the Iraqi people kept faith by turning out and voting.

Further acts of faith will be required. The Shiites must now keep faith with the U.S. and the Sunnis by developing a consititutional system that respects (both on paper and in practice) Sunni interests. The Sunnis must keep faith by participating in that system. The U.S. must keep faith by continuing to provide security, train Iraqi forces, and assist with the reconstruction. Even if these things happen, the insurgency probably will not end. But Iraq will develop the institutions and the forces that should enable it to deal with the insurgency with far less help from us.

Will the parties continue to keep the faith? I don't know. But so far, every time a party has needed to rise to occasion, it has. And never more spectacularly than today.

I just saw this on InstaPundit. Today's Day By Day cartoon:

Click here for the brief statement President Bush has made on the election today in Iraq.

HINDROCKET adds: Ted Kennedy issued a statement today, too. The election was a disaster for Kennedy and his fellow defeatists, so Kennedy says that President Bush "must look beyond the election." Yes, the sooner everyone forgets the triumph that today's election repressents, the better! The complete text of Kennedy's statement doesn't seem to be available online, but this much is quoted in the linked article:

The best way to demonstrate to the Iraqi people that we have no long-term designs on their country is for the administration to withdraw some troops now and to begin to negotiate a phase-down of our long-term military presence.

Actually, most Iraqis are not as dim-witted as Kennedy, and they figured out long ago that we have no "long-term designs on their country." Most Iraqis want exactly what President Bush and most Americans want: for our troops to leave as soon as reasonably possibe, but not prematurely so as to compromise security.

Reader Haider Ajina has spoken with his family in Iraq and writes us from his home in California:

I just finished my phone call to my Father in Baghdad, Iraq. He voted, my 84-year-old Grandmother voted, my uncles and aunties voted, my cousins voted. They were elated, happy, energized, empowered and grateful.

To all the men and women who have served and serving in Iraq, to all the families of those who have paid the ultimate price to all those who have suffered during their service in Iraq, my family’s and my deepest thanks, gratitude and pride both from the U.S. and Iraq for all the sacrifices, endurance and service for our great country and Iraq and the Iraqis. God bless all of you and keep you safe.

God bless this great country of ours, and God bless our leadership who have the courage to free oppressed people in our times.

All across Iraq, long lines formed at polling places as a stunningly high proportion of Iraqis defied the terrorists to exercise their right to vote. Here are some photos from a variety of cities; click to enlarge:

Everywhere in Iraq, citizens proudly displayed their ink-stained fingers to show that they had voted:

It is hard to imagine a more complete repudiation of the terrorists and their allies among western leftists who denounced the elections as a sham.

In his magnificent recording of "America the Beautiful," Ray Charles distills the essence of American popular music in his patented style. In order to overcome the familiarity that prevents us from hearing the words of such songs, Charles begins with the song's relatively unknown third verse on martial sacrifice -- the verse that seems particularly appropriate today:

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self the country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success
Be nobleness
And every gain divine!

A special thank you to all our forces whose service has brought this great day to pass.

For first-hand reaction to today's election, check out the Iraqi bloggers: Iraq the Model, of course; The Mesopotamian; Hammorabi; Diary From Baghdad; Iraqi Humanity; Baghdad Dweller; Democracy In Iraq; Free Iraqi.

And Friends of Democracy has nonstop coverage of the election.

John Kerry appeared on NBC News' Meet the Press this morning and MSNBC has posted the transcript. On the matter of today's election and our efforts in Iraq it makes predictably painful reading.

On a matter of special interest to us, Tim Russert gets around to asking Kerry questions about Kerry's bogus journey to Cambodia with an unfortunately lengthy windup. Russert is a little late to this particular party, but I wonder if Kerry didn't have the thought running through his mind -- "What are these crazy questions they're asking of me?" -- from the old Randy Newman song. Here's the exchange:

MR. RUSSERT: You cast yourself as a potential commander in chief during the campaign, particularly at the convention, "I am John Kerry reporting for duty." What effect do you believe this book, "Unfit for Command," and the Swift Boat Veterans had on your candidacy?

SEN. KERRY: Well, that's for others to judge, Tim. I don't know. I mean, obviously I could have and should have responded faster and more forcefully, I think, to that. But lies and smears were proven in the front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal. My crew, others, all spoke to those lies and will continue to. But, you know, there's a new communication structure in America. And I think we could have done a better job of addressing it obviously. But that wasn't--you know, what decided this race in the end was really 9/11. And, you know, I am not going to worry about the past. I am going to go forward to the future.

MR. RUSSERT: See if you could clear up one issue that I think has been left over from the campaign. And that is Steve Gardner, who was a foregunner on your PCF-44 boat, cut a commercial for the Swift Boat Veterans and made a very specific charge. Let me just show that and you can come back and talk about it a little bit.

(Videotape, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad):

MR. STEVE GARDNER: John Kerry claims that he spent Christmas in 1968 in Cambodia, and that is categorically a lie. Not in December, not in January, we were never in Cambodia on a secret mission ever.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Now, the New York Daily News editorial wrote an editorial, and it said this. "As for Kerry, he might ask why the Swifties' attacks have been effective. The answer is his propensity to exaggerate. ... It's looking more likely that he exaggerated, if not worse, when he claimed through the years that he was in Cambodia on Christmas Eve '68. He said the memory was `seared' into him, but it's now clear Kerry was elsewhere, at least at that time. He has yet to explain. Until he does, the Swifties will have a powerful weapon in their arsenal."

And they refer, Senator, to a speech on the floor in which you said that you were there, that the president of the United States was saying you were not there, that there were troops in Cambodia. You have the memory seared in you. In a letter to the Boston Herald, you remember spending Christmas Eve '68 five miles across the Cambodian border. You told The Washington Post you have a lucky hat given to you by a CIA guy "as we went in for a special mission to Cambodia." Were you in Cambodia Christmas Eve, 1968?

SEN. KERRY: We were right on the border, Tim. What I explained to people and I told this any number of times, did I go into Cambodia on a mission? Yes, I did go into Cambodia on a mission. Was it on that night? No, it was not on that night. But we were right on the Cambodian border that night. We were ambushed there, as a matter of fact. And that is a matter of record, and we went into the rec-- you know, it's part of the Navy records. It's been documented by the other guys who were on my boat. And Steve Gardner, frankly, doesn't know where we were. It wasn't his job, and, you know, he wasn't involved in that. But we did go five miles into Cambodia. It was on another day. I jumbled the two together, but we were five miles into Cambodia. We went up on a mission with CIA agents--I believe they were CIA agents--CIA Special Ops guys. I even have some photographs of it, and I can document it. And it has been documented.

MR. RUSSERT: You'll release those photographs?

SEN. KERRY: I think they were shown. I gave them to the campaign, but...

MR. RUSSERT: And you have a hat that the CIA agent gave you?

SEN. KERRY: I still have the hat that he gave me, and I hope the guy would come out of the woodwork and say, "I'm the guy who went up with John Kerry. We delivered weapons to the Khmer Rouge on the coastline of Cambodia." We went out of Ha Tien, which is right in Vietnam. We went north up into the border. And I have some photographs of that, and that's what we did. So, you know, the two were jumbled together, but we were on the Cambodian border on Christmas Eve, absolutely.

MR. RUSSERT: Nixon was president-elect, not president, at that particular time. He wasn't sworn in until...

SEN. KERRY: In 1968, he wasn't sworn in yet.

MR. RUSSERT: But he was president-elect, not president.

SEN. KERRY: That's correct.

Kerry fails to name a single individual who was on the bogus journey with him and Russert apparently doesn't know that none of Kerry's band of brothers has backed his story. Russert appears not to be aware of the absence of any such story in the account of Kerry's Vietnam service by Kerry's authorized hagiographer Douglas Brinkley, or in Kerry's diary of his service as rendered in Brinkley's book or the Boston Globe's series on Kerry. That's where Russert leaves Christmas in Cambodia; not exactly a model of rigorous preparation or questioning.

Russert then picks up the question of Kerry's unreleased military records -- the records that will document his bogus journey, I guess. They might have come in handy for Kerry last year. Wonder why he didn't sign that Form 180 and publicize the records. Here's the exchange on Kerry's military records immediately following the last answer above:

MR. RUSSERT: Many people who've been criticizing you have said: Senator, if you would just do one thing and that is sign Form 180, which would allow historians and journalists complete access to all your military records. Thus far, you have gotten the records, released them through your campaign. They say you should not be the filter. Sign Form 180 and let the historians...

SEN. KERRY: I'd be happy to put the records out. We put all the records out that I had been sent by the military. Then at the last moment, they sent some more stuff, which had some things that weren't even relevant to the record. So when we get--I'm going to sit down with them and make sure that they are clear and I am clear as to what is in the record and what isn't in the record and we'll put it out. I have no problem with that.

MR. RUSSERT: Would you sign Form 180?

SEN. KERRY: But everything, Tim...

MR. RUSSERT: Would you sign Form 180?

SEN. KERRY: Yes, I will. But everything that we put in it, Tim--everything we put in--I mean, everything that was out was a full documentation of all of the medical records, all of the fitness reports. And I'd call on those who have challenged me, let's see their records. I want to see the records of each of those people who have put up a challenge, because some of them have some serious questions in them, and it hasn't been appropriate...

MR. RUSSERT: So they should sign Form 180s for themselves as well?

SEN. KERRY: You bet.

It would have been nice if Russert had noted that Kerry had promised to release all his records during his last appearance on Meet the Press during the campaign. We're still waiting, and I'm not holding my breath.

HINDROCKET adds: It's interesting that Kerry backs off the obvious lie that he spent Christmas Eve of 1968 in Cambodia, but he still can't bring himself to tell the truth. He doesn't want to admit that he simply fabricated the Christmas Eve story that was "seared into his memory," so he tries to pretend that the story is almost true: "[W]e were right on the Cambodian border that night. We were ambushed there, as a matter of fact." But, as Kerry himself recorded contemporaneously in his journal, he spent that Christmas Eve at Sa Dec, fully fifty miles from the Cambodian border. And his boat wasn't ambushed that night; he wrote that he had "visions of sugar plums" dancing in his head.

Only because mainstream reporters are so lame can Kerry get away with these serial lies.

ONE MORE THING: Many readers have written to point out the absurdity of Kerry's claim that he "delivered weapons to the Khmer Rouge," a Communist insurgent group. Previously, Kerry has said that he was shot at by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, a slightly more plausible claim, although it is not clear that there were any Khmer Rouge conducting military operations as early as December 1968. Presumably Kerry's claim to have delivered weapons to the Khmer Rouge was a slip of the tongue, but it highlights the inconvenient chronology of Kerry's Cambodian fantasy. There was a time, as Kerry related in his famous "seared, seared" Senate speech, when President Nixon assured the American people that there were no military personnel in Cambodia. But that was years later, long after Kerry had left Vietnam. During Kerry's truncated, four-month tour of duty in Vietnam, nothing was happening in Cambodia that could explain why he would have been "gun running" in support of anyone. On a number of levels, Kerry's fable makes no sense.

Mohammed and Omar are as joyful as you would expect:

We had all kinds of feelings in our minds while we were on our way to the ballot box except one feeling that never came to us, that was fear. We could smell pride in the atmosphere this morning; everyone we saw was holding up his blue tipped finger with broad smiles on the faces while walking out of the center.

I couldn't think of a scene more beautiful than that.

From the early hours of the morning, People filled the street to the voting center in my neighborhood; youths, elders, women and men. Women's turn out was higher by the way. And by 11 am the boxes where I live were almost full!
Anyone watching that scene cannot but have tears of happiness, hope, pride and triumph.

The sounds of explosions and gunfire were clearly heard, some were far away but some were close enough to make the windows of the center shake but no one seemed to care about them as if the people weren't hearing these sounds at all.

How can I describe it!? Take my eyes and look through them my friends, you have supported the day of Iraq's freedom and today, Iraqis have proven that they're not going to disappoint their country or their friends.

Is there a bigger victory than this? I believe not.

I walked forward to my station, cast my vote and then headed to the box, where I wanted to stand as long as I could, then I moved to mark my finger with ink, I dipped it deep as if I was poking the eyes of all the world's tyrants. I put the paper in the box and with it, there were tears that I couldn't hold; I was trembling with joy and I felt like I wanted to hug the box but the supervisor smiled at me and said "brother, would you please move ahead, the people are waiting for their turn".

Yes brothers, proceed and fill the box!

These are stories that will be written on the brightest pages of history.

It was hard for us to leave the center but we were happy because we were sure that we will stand here in front of the box again and again and again.
Today, there's no voice louder than that of freedom.

Check out their pictures, too.

The road to democracy and to a normalized society in Iraq, and throughout the Middle East, will be a long one. But for now, let's just celebrate the stunning success of today's Iraqi election. Turnout is being estimated at around 72 percent of eligible voters. If this is anywhere near correct, it's an astonishing number, far exceeding the turnout of eligible voters in any recent American Presidential election.

This Reuters account, hot off the press (so to speak), conveys the joyousness of the event:

Some came on crutches, others walked for miles then struggled to read the ballot, but across Iraq, millions turned out to vote Sunday, defying insurgents who threatened a bloodbath.

Suicide bombs and mortars killed at least 27 people, but voters still came out in force for the first multi-party poll in 50 years. In some places they cheered with joy at their first chance to cast a free vote, in others they shared chocolates.

Even in Falluja, the Sunni city west of Baghdad that was a militant stronghold until a U.S. assault in November, a steady stream of people turned out, confounding expectations. Lines of veiled women clutching their papers waited to vote.

"We want to be like other Iraqis, we don't want to always be in opposition," said Ahmed Jassim, smiling after he voted.

In Baquba, a rebellious city northeast of Baghdad, spirited crowds clapped and cheered at one voting station. In Mosul, scene of some of the worst insurgent attacks in recent months, U.S. and local officials said turnout was surprisingly high.

One of the first to vote was President Ghazi al-Yawar, a Sunni Muslim Arab with a large tribal following, who cast his ballot inside Baghdad's fortress-like Green Zone.

"Thanks be to God," he told reporters, emerging from the booth with his right index finger stained with bright blue ink to show he had voted. "I hope everyone will go out and vote."

Even in the so-called "triangle of death," a hotbed of Sunni insurgency south of Baghdad, turnout was solid, officials said.

In mainly Shi'ite Basra, Iraq's second biggest city, hundreds of voters queued patiently at polling centers. "I am not afraid," said Samir Khalil Ibrahim. "This is like a festival for all Iraqis."

Samir Hassan, 32, who lost his leg in a car bomb blast in October, was determined to vote. "I would have crawled here if I had to. I don't want terrorists to kill other Iraqis like they tried to kill me. Today I am voting for peace," he said, leaning on his metal crutches, determination in his reddened eyes.

There was scattered violence today, but that was barely a footnote. The terrorists, relying on the power of fear, had intended to destroy the democratic process. They didn't make a dent. President Bush, conversely, bet his legacy on the power of freedom. While, as everyone keeps saying, there is a long road ahead, right now that's looking like a pretty good bet.

In the photo below, an Iraqi mother lets her daughter put her ballot into the box:

Robert Fisk has surfaced just in time to render judgment on the election in Iraq: "What a bloody charade." The column reads like an over the top parody of the British journo who gave his name to the phenomenon of "fisking."

Fisk sees the Iraq election as a "fantasy" (why?), notes that the terrorists have not been defeated yet (though Fisk's reference to the "occupiers" suggests he supports them), and bizarrely summons the ghost of Vietnam:

The reality is that much of Iraq has become a free-fire zone (for reference, see under "Vietnam") and the Americans are conducting this secret war as efficiently and as ruthlessly as they conducted their earlier bombing campaign against Iraq between 1991 and 2003, an air raid a day, or two raids, or three. Then they were attacking Hussein's "military targets" in Iraq.

Fisk appears to have recovered fully from the famous beating he took in 2001. His column memorializing that event is "My beating by refugees is a symbol of the hatred and fury of this filthy war." That "filthy war" was of course the war that liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban. Fisk wrote regarding his beating:

I couldn't see for the blood pouring down my forehead and swamping my eyes. And even then, I understood. I couldn't blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were the Afghan refugees of Kila Abdullah, close to the Afghan-Pakistan border, I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find.

Is it wrong to wonder if Fisk might enjoy another such opportunity to express solidarity with his victimizers before he leaves Baghdad?

Roger L. Simon threw his inhibitions overboard and live blogged the Iraqi election via the television coverage on Fox News and CNN last night. I think Roger is somewhat further along in his anger management therapy than I am, but his live blogging is equally adept in its media commentary and celebration of the event. Here's a sample (the times from last night are Pacific):

I am watching Fox News where Geraldo has been up since before dawn in Baghdad covering the election. Rivera gets a lot of bad press, but the man has guts and he has a heart. In the old days he was considered a liberal... and he still is in my book. It's his critics who have gone the other way. I'm glad to have him as my guide to Iraq this morning (night here in LA) because I know that democracy is more important to him than party poltics, as it should be for all of us. I'm exceited. More to come.

CNN has Amanpour, a woman who makes my stomach turn...

8:07 - Some asshole on CNN has just announced that this is the "nightmare scenario" because some polling place in Baquba isn't open yet. This character... don't know his name... seemed almost smug that something was going wrong.

8:11 - Great day for the Kurds. They deserve it!

8:13 - It's amazing that CNN still uses Brent Sadler for its coverage. Doesn't he miss his buddy Saddam?

8:15 - Fox is not as good as CNN at location coverage. Murdoch doesn't seem to care. Too bad. This leaves a real hole in American television journalism. Maybe the blogosphere will fill it some day.

8:22 - Everyone is saying this vote is far from perfect, but what is a perfect vote anyway? I have no idea...

8:45 - It's weird watching an election when you really have no horse in the race (no candidate). You're only hoping a lot of people will vote and that they will be safe.

8:50 - Looks like a real line to vote in Sadr City. (Not as long as the one I saw today in front of NBC in Burbank waiting to be on some reality show, but long enough.)

8:55 - The idea that anyone is still interested in Jesse Jackson's opinion about anything amazes me.

9:00 - Frankly, I miss Geraldo. He is still the best guide for this event.

9:01 - Yes! Geraldo back from a jammed polling place. He's inspired. It's the Berlin Wall and the Civil Rights era... I want to believe you Geraldo. I want to believe! Now he's calling it Rocky.

Roger peaked again just before he signed off last night:

9:40 - Mubarak is getting dissed on Fox. He deserves it. Iraq gets democracy. Why not Egypt? Time to eliminate hypocrisy from foreign policy. We're on the way.

9:43 - There is an appalling Baghdad correspondernt on CNN who seems almost desperate for things to go wrong, but they're not. He keeps going on and on about the danger.

9:54 - Of course, this is also a great day for Paul Wolfowitz. It vindicates him.

9:55 - Susan Estrich is a tone deaf reactionary. What kind of bullshit is she talking right now about we didn't go to Iraq to bring democracy. Speak for yourself Susan. IF you expect people like me to ever go back to the Democratic Party, wise up. You sound stupid and out of it.

Somehow, I had missed the fact that Iraqi expatriates are voting in Syria. Thus, Iraqis living in Syria can participate in a democratic process, but Syrians can't. A bit odd, that, but it's another example of the impact this election could have in the Arab world.

The election should also have a major impact in the U.S. If Americans see that Iraqis thirst so much for democracy that they will risk their lives to vote, it's difficult to imagine a majority supporting the Ted Kennedy cut-and-run position any time soon.

that hardly anyone is voting in Ramadi which, it says, is essentially an active war zone (there was a fire fight yesterday near a polling station) and ground zero of the insurrection right now.

A substantial number of women are present in nearly every picture I see of Iraqis lined up to vote. This makes me think of Fern Holland. Fern was a lawyer (and my opposing counsel in a labor law case) who went to Iraq on behalf of the State Department to promote women's political empowerment. Terrorists killed Fern a year ago. Today we are seeing the fruits of her labor.

I've been watching the Iraqi election coverage on Fox. After two hours, the story seemed to (a) excellent turnout and (b) plenty of explosions. In one sense it sounded like business as usual -- Iraqis going about their business amidst the violence. But this time, crucially, the business is voting. Amazing.

By the way, this has got to be Geraldo Rivera's finest hour. Wearing an ear-to-ear grin, his face glowing, he compared this event to the fall of the Berlin wall and the voting rights movement in the South. I think he used the word heart-warming three times in a five minute report. Geraldo may not quite be a real journalist, but today it seemed to me that he was something more.

MEANWHILE ON CNN: While the cameras showed joyous voters in Buquba standing in line singing, the CNN correspondent, who could barely be heard, worried that too a high a proportion of voters in this mixed neighborhood seemed to be Shiites.

MORE FROM CNN: CNN reports that the explosions in Baghdad have "overshadowed the voting." CNN provides no evidence that the explosions in question were anything but noise, and to my knowledge there are no reports at this time of voters being killed or injured. But forget all that. If Iraqis are voting in the face of these explosions, then the story has to be that the voting is overshadowing the explosions.

UPDATE: Fox is now reporting that four people were killed by a suicide bomber in a voting line. Fox also says that at least one person was killed in a separate such incident.

...in Iraq, a good place to go for continuing coverage is Friends of Democracy. Voting is underway; so far, so good.

I can't improve on the critiques of Ted Kennedy's "cut and run" speech on Iraq by readers Haider Ajina and Emidio Moglia. However, I would like to address the strange logic Kennedy employed. Kennedy argued that the "indefinite presence [of U.S. troops] is fanning the flames of conflict" and that "the war in Iraq has become a war against the American occupation." These premises may true at some level, but how do they support Kennedy's conclusion that we should leave Iraq? Leaving will extinguish the "flames of conflict" only to the extent that it enables the bad guys win. If that's acceptable to Kennedy, he should say so instead of pretending that ending the American occupation is the sole aim of the insurgents, as opposed to just a means to their Islamofascist ends.

The U.S. occupation of the South after the civil war helped fan the flames of conflict there. But the alternative was the subjugation of the freed slaves, which occurred in short order after U.S. troops left. Nearly a century later, the Kennedy Justice Department helped end the vestiges of that subjugation. But today, the surviving brother of those Kennedys wants to leave the Iraqis to their fate, and is too gutless to admit that their likely fate would be subjugation by our mortal enemies.

Earlier this month, I wrote a post called "Europe, the Future That Works?" in which I expressed skepticism about the emerging claim that the European vision of the future will eclipse the American dream and bring an end to our supremacy. I suggested that Euro-triumphalsim in this country may be, in part, a fantasy of the Bush-haters (and America-dislikers), in which our condign punishment for rejecting the European approach to Iraq, and the "Euorpean" candidate in last year's election, is the rise of Europe and the decline of the U.S.

Today, Jonathan Rauch expresses his own less flamboyant skepticism in a piece in the National Journal called "Europe Is the Next Rival Superpower. But Then, So Was Japan." As turned out to the case with Japan, Rauch sees a future in which the Europeans move away from rivalry and begin to learn from the U.S. (and the U.S. from them).

As Rauch observes, one difference between Japan then and Europe now is that Japan, at least, was doing well economically when its admirers pronounced it a rising superpower. Europe, by contrast, looks more like a sick man than the next dynamo. Arthur Waldron, in the February 2005 issue of Commentary (not yet available online), provides the evidence. From 2001-2003, cumulative "Eurozone" growth was 3 percent, compared to 5.5 percent for the U.S. Eurozone growth in 2004 again looks to be running at about half the U.S. rate. Unemployment in France is at about 10 percent; in Belgium it is even higher, and runs at 22 percent in Brussels, the seat of the European Union. Moreover, the EU fertility rate is 1.46 children, compared to 2.06 in the U.S. This means, in Waldron's words, "that more immigrants will be required and, as longevity increases, the young will increasingly be burdened by the old." If the European dream is so attractive, why don't European women want to pass it down to another generation?

Despite the gloomy numbers, Waldron ends up in the pretty much the same place as Rauch. He detects a serious desire among Europeans to engage in economic reform, as leading thinkers come to understand that for the EU to fulfill its grandiose ambitions it must remove barriers to entry into business and embrace the concept of economic freedom. It must, in short, alter its economic vision, the one that American leftists are insisting is superior to ours, and become more like the U.S. In addition, it seems to me, Europe could use a spiritual rebirth, the kind that will make Europeans feel like procreating at a rate in excess of 1.46 children per female. From where I sit, it's assuming a lot to expect Europe to embrace both the reformist economics and the spiritual rebirth.

I'm going to be on Larry Kudlow's syndicated radio show tomorrow morning at around 11:05 central time. (That leaves me just enough time to get home after teaching Sunday School, the Book of Ruth--amazingly enough to those who knew me when). The topic under discussion will be the election in Iraq. I can't improve on Larry's own piece on Real Clear Politics:

Osama bin Laden and Zarqawi both know that free-election democracy is the death knell of terrorism. They also know that the potential impact of free Iraqi elections on the rest of the region -- including Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia -- is incalculable. The Iraqi elections will reverberate throughout the entire Muslim world, including Indonesia, Malaysia, and the whole South Asian tsunami zone.

Sophisticated policy observers know full well that rather than plotting a worldwide military invasion, Bush is constructing a statement of principles; that he is setting new standards and diplomatic benchmarks that will govern our foreign policy for decades to come.

Polling and reports on the ground in Iraq indicate there will be a blowout turnout for Sunday’s election. The Iraqi election results for a new government and constitution-writing parliament will produce a pluralistic coalition that will end fears of a mullah-based theocracy or any return of Saddamite Baathism.

Bush’s inaugural vision will be proven right. His speech will be vindicated, and along with it will come a foreign-policy triumph of moral idealism, human rights, and freedom over the cynical “realist” view that after all we have seen in the past 25 years we can still do business with dictators and despots in the name of stability.

President Bush is not content to be the best President since Reagan; he wants to be the greatest President since Lincoln. I still think he has a shot. The next few months will tell a great deal.

A break from the serious: We Minnesotans tend to shake our heads over "polar bear" clubs, where people go swimming on, say, New Year's Day, usually in climes that by our standards are pretty mild. San Francisco Bay, say. We're not impressed: in Lake Superior, even in the summer, life expectancy is measured in minutes if you should fall off a boat. In January, no one here goes swimming. Well, you can't, really, since bodies of water are frozen solid.

Here, however, courtesy of Yahoo News photos, we have a "polar bear" who earns our admiration on all counts, Patricia Archdeacon of Clarksburg, Md.:

This is no wimpy swim. Note the ice in Chesapeake Bay off Annapolis, MD, where I spent two delightful summers in my youth, living with an uncle who was a spy. The main hazard then was jellyfish; I doff my hat to those who brave the ice.

Iraqi blogger Ali talks about tomorrow's election:

Now, and thanks to other humans, not from my area, religion and who don't even speak my language, I and all Iraqis have the real chance to make the change. Now I OWN my home and I can decide who's going to run things in it and how and I won't waste that chance. Tomorrow as I cast my vote, I'll regain my home. I'll regain my humanity and my dignity, as I stand and fulfill part of my responsibilities to this part of the large brotherhood of humanity. Tomorrow I'll say I'M IRAQI AND I'M PROUD, as being Iraqi this time bears a different meaning in my mind. It's being an active and good part of humanity. Tomorrow I and the Iraqis that are going to vote will rule, not the politicians we're going to vote for, as it's our decision and they'll work for us this time and if we don't like them we'll kick them out! Tomorrow my heart will race my hand to the box. Tomorrow I'll race even the sun to the voting centre, my Ka'aba and my Mecca. I'm so excited and so happy that I can't even feel the fear I though I would have at this time. I can't wait until tomorrow.

That hudna spirit is breaking out all over Gaza: "Shootout: Hamas rally erupts into violent shootout with rival Fatah faction, wounding more than 25." As Charles Johnson never fails to exlaim, by all means let's give these people a state!

The 1969 movie "Z" by Costa-Gavras depicts the assassination of a popular Greek politician at a campaign rally and the investigation that followed it. The investigating magistrate serially interrogates buffoonish military officers who describe the assassin jumping out of the crowd, "lithe and fierce, like a tiger." The identical description provided by each of the officers is a key to the unravelling of the assassination conspiracy in which they were participants.

Yesterday a reader forwarded us a link to an extremely interesting photographic study at Obsidian Order of an apparent car bomb exploding outside a polling station in Iraq: 'A very special effect." My guess is that the photographers would describe the bomber running from the scene "lithe and fierce, like a tiger."

It was apparent to me in the course of the 2000 presidential campaign that George W. Bush was a sophisticated student of Ronald Reagan who had learned much more from Reagan than his father had. In his 1988 acceptance speech at the Republican convention, President Bush (41) showed that he seemed to have thought more about how he might distinguish himself from Reagan to his own advantage than how he might claim Reagan's legacy as his own. When he casually broke faith with his supporters and supported a tax increase in the fall of 1990, I thought that he deserved to lose to whoever his eventual opponent would be.

Today's Washington Times features Bill Sammon's summary of President Bush's interview with Brian Lamb for C-SPAN: "Bush calls Reagan mentor, Lincoln greatest." The president's comments during this interview provide additional evidence that Bush has thought hard and long about how he might benefit from the example of Reagan's leadership.

I've grown accustomed to Deacon's deconstruction of the Washington Post's usual mischief, but he didn't get around to spoonfeeding me the analysis necessary to understand the damage the Post sought to do to the president's inaugural address in its "analysis" of the speech. In the new issue of the Weekly Standard, Professor Peter Berkowitz does the honors in an article that is valuable to those who, like me, are incapable of detecting the Post's misdirection on their own: "They always bash Bush first."

Of all the human rights organizations with which I am familiar, the one that has the most credibility is Freedom House. Yesterday its Center for Religious Freedom released an 89-page report on Saudi government publications in the United States (click here for the press release, here for the report in PDF).

Today's Washington Times carries an excellent account of the report: "Group cites Saudi hate tracts." Here are the first two paragraphs of the Times article:

The government of Saudi Arabia is spreading "hate propaganda" in religious tracts sent to mosques throughout America, telling Muslims to hate Christians and Jews and to kill any Muslim who converts to another religion, a leading human rights group charged yesterday.

Saudi government literature collected during the past year from American mosques also tells Muslims living in the United States to "behave as if on a mission behind enemy lines," says an 89-page report released by the Human Rights Group Freedom House.

And here's the reaction of the Saudi embassy official reached by the Times:

Abdulmohsen Alyas, a spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, said he had not seen the Freedom House report.

When told of the report's contents, Mr. Alyas said, "Saudi Arabia recognizes that extremism is part of a worldwide problem that all nations must work on diligently to bring to an end.

"Saudi Arabia condemns extremism or hateful expression among people anywhere in the world."

I'm confident Mr. Alyas will get right on the case, but isn't this act wearing a little thin three years after 9/11?