Freedom's Watch Falls Short on Expectations

One conspicuous element of the current changes in American politics is the role of online advocacy organizations like MoveOn.org, and to a similar extent blogs like Daily Kos.

Interest group politics has moved online in many respects, especially on the hot-button issue of the war in Iraq. But the movement's been most prominent for left-wing partisan mobilization, as today's New York Times article on Freedom's Watch indicates:

The conservative group Freedom’s Watch, headlined by two former senior White House officials, had been expected to be a deep-pocketed juggernaut in this year’s presidential election, heralded by supporters on the right as an aggressive counterweight to MoveOn.org, George Soros and the like.

But after a splashy debut last summer, in which it spent $15 million in a nationwide advertising blitz supporting President Bush’s troop escalation in Iraq, the group has been mostly quiet, beset by internal problems that have paralyzed it and raised questions about what kind of role, if any, it will actually play this fall.

The group was conspicuously absent this week as Gen. David H. Petraeus, the United States commander in Iraq, returned to Congress to testify. Moreover, the troubles at Freedom’s Watch come as some Democratic-aligned groups are seeking to take the offensive, with one group, Progressive Media USA, planning to raise $40 million to spend on advertisements and other efforts to undermine Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Independent groups not constrained by the limits placed on campaign contributions to candidates and parties have increasingly become major players in races for federal offices. Those known as 527s, named for the section in the tax code they fall under, raised more than $400 million in the 2004 election cycle alone, according to the Campaign Finance Institute. Such efforts could be especially beneficial for Mr. McCain, who has badly trailed his Democratic counterparts in fund-raising.

Backers of Freedom’s Watch once talked about spending some $200 million, a figure that officials now say was exaggerated. Lending to the aura of ambition, the organization moved into a state-of-the-art 10,000-square-foot office in Washington and hired a staff of about 20, with talk of bringing in scores more for a vigorous campaign to promote conservative issues.

Behind the scenes, however, Freedom’s Watch has been plagued by gridlock and infighting, leaving it struggling for direction, according to several Republican operatives familiar with the organization who were granted anonymity so they could be candid about the group’s problems.

Although the organization was founded by a coterie of prominent conservative donors last year, the roughly $30 million the group has spent so far has come almost entirely from the casino mogul Sheldon G. Adelson, the chairman and chief executive of the Sands Corporation, who was recently listed as the third-richest person in the country by Forbes magazine.

Mr. Adelson has insisted on parceling out his money project by project, as opposed to setting an overall budget, limiting the group’s ability to plan and be nimble, the Republican operatives said. Mr. Adelson, who has a reputation for being combative, has rejected almost all of the staff’s proposals that have been brought to him, leaving the organization moribund for long stretches, the operatives said.

“What has happened here is pretty much you had a single donor who essentially dictates the way things occur or do not occur,” said one of the Republican operatives.

A spokesman for Mr. Adelson said he was unavailable for comment. But Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary who sits on the group’s board, suggested that Mr. Adelson’s refusal to finance certain projects was tied to his dissatisfaction with the leadership.

“Sheldon has a proven track history of being fantastically generous,” Mr. Fleischer said. “What’s important is to always earn his confidence.”

Whatever the explanation, with prospects of the group’s going full bore in the presidential campaign seeming to dim, Republican strategists cited a lost opportunity. “Now we’re at a stage in the presidential campaign, if there was a group that could effectively advocate for the issues that are important to John McCain, it would be a good thing,” said Terry Nelson, who was Mr. McCain’s campaign manager until last summer and was political director for President Bush’s campaign in 2004. “But there’s nobody there that’s ready to do it. I think people hoped Freedom’s Watch would play that role.”

The difficulties at Freedom's Watch should trouble conservatives intent on balancing the extremities of the left.

It could be that the strength of such online advocacy groups is correllated to which party holds the White House.

Online interest group activity has surged in importance during the Bush years. Perhaps an Obama adminstration will kindle conservative grassroots Internet organzation during an era of hard-left partisan dominance in Washington.

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Extra: Note what Oliver Willis says about the hard-left advocacy organizations:

MoveOn was founded by normal Americans, built a huge grassroots membership, then became an institution on the left. Freedom’s Watch, like the right often tries, skipped the whole messy grassroots bottom-up segment and leapt right into being an institution of the right with its financing by the same money barons who fund so much of the right.

My guess is that Willis is not familiar with George Soros, who, of course, is a real down-home kind of a guy.

But Willis also includes Daily Kos in his category of "normal people." Perhaps wanting to gas Jews is a "normal" aspiration for those on the hard-left end of the spectrum.

See also, "Conservative Group Thinks it Has Answer to MoveOn.org."

Hat tip: Memeorandum

French Exhibition to Commemorate 9/11

MEMENTOS: Keys from the World Trade Center are among the items representing the 2001 attacks to be shown in the French city of Caen.

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Like many Americans, I wasn't pleased with the French pursuit of narrow national self-interests in the run-up to Iraq. On the other hand, I wasn't so pleased with all the French-bashing we saw on this side of the Atlantic in the aftermath.

France, for all it's aspirations to international grandeur and puissance, is one of the world's great nations, with contributions to Western civilization too numerous to recount. French politics veers much too far to the left on occasion, but there's a history and culture to the nation that remains one of the world's most fascinating.

The French people, moreover, do indeed appreciate their centuries-old partnership with America. The strength of those ties seem to wax and wane at times, especially amid periods like the backlash against Iraq, but the fundament's still there, sturdily under the surface.

French respect for the United States will be on display this summer, when a new historical exhibition opens in city of Caen, on the coast of Normandy. The exhibition, "A Global Moment," is covered in today's Los Angeles Times:

On the shores of Normandy where thousands of Americans died in the cataclysm that was D-day, a museum that aims at being more than a collection of rusting relics is preparing to commemorate another day that changed the world: Sept. 11, 2001.

More than 120 mementos, including building keys and a smashed-up vehicle, are being shipped from New York to the French city of Caen for the first exhibition outside the United States, and the largest anywhere on the attack, its roots and aftermath.

That France is playing host to the exhibition might surprise Americans who remember the "freedom fries" uproar that greeted Paris' opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which the Bush administration tied to its war on terrorism. But the director of the Caen Memorial, a museum of conflict and peace, said the show would have neither an American nor French take on events surrounding Sept. 11, but rather a global view.

"The people who died in those buildings were from 16 countries and every religion," Director Stephane Grimaldi said. "It was an attack against America. It was an attack against democracy and human rights. We want to tell that story."

The exhibition, titled "A Global Moment," is expected to open June 6 at the museum, which was built to remember those who died on that date in 1944 and in the Battle of Normandy that began with the landings.

Grimaldi said that although the relationship between the French and Americans has been complicated by post-Sept. 11 politics in recent years, museums that try to explain the meaning of war are valuable as a way to discuss peace and shared democratic values.

"The American troops' coming to Normandy to free Europe was a turning point in World War II," he said during an interview in Paris. "While we still don't know the historical significance of 9/11, we know it is a turning point and it is time to begin to understand and explore it together."

Grimaldi said he chose the 9/11 exhibition to mark the 20th anniversary of the French museum because the act of terrorism that day in 2001 is so important to contemporary politics and everyday life around the world.

"The world today is the world of 9/11," he said, "and our museum is here not to be just another collection of things from the past, of old tanks and helmets, but to understand the world of today that is so marked by terrorism."

Read the whole thing.

The article notes the stress of relations surrounding the Iraq war, but notes as well that French President Nicolas Sarkozy 's getting Franco-American relations back on track.

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

Radical Roundup - April 11, 2008

Just when Barack Obama's actually made a decent foreign policy statement (pledging not to negotiate with Hamas), a leading lefty blogger argues, "one has to wonder why he's taking such a hard line."

Oh sure, that's a tough one. Hamas' ultimate depravity couldn't have been a deciding factory, right? In march, for example, Hamas cheered the murdering of eight students at the seminary in Jerusalem, saying "We bless the operation. It will not be the last."

In addtion, here's the BDS line of the day (courtesy of The Reaction):

Sadly, it's looking less, and less, likely that we will see him exit the White House, handcuffed, in a perp walk - as he so richly deserves.

A presidential "perp walk"!

That's a new one, but not to be outdone, here's Juan Cole on our Republican "dictatorship":

War turns Republics into dictatorships. The logic is actually quite simple. The Constitution says that the Congress is responsible for declaring war. But in 2002 Congress turned that responsibility over to Bush, gutting the constitution and allowing the American Right to start referring to him not as president but as 'commander in chief' (that is a function of the civilian presidency, not a title.)

Now Bush has now turned over the decision-making about the course of the Iraq War to Gen. David Petraeus.

So Congress abdicated to Bush. Bush has abdicated to the generals in the field.

That is not a Republic. That is a military dictatorship achieved not by coup but by moral laziness.

I think Bush's decision-making's trumped by Cole's intellectual laziness.

I mean, this is sure one lousy dictatorship! Bush is now generally considered a lame duck, with approval rating dropping to record lows on top of that. Geez, you'd think the "Decider" would be able to manufacture a little more consent than that!

But don't take my word for it: "A man who didn't decide he wanted to be president until well into his forties certainly is an unlikely tyrant" (source).

But hey, what more fitting way to conclude a "radical roundup" that with some afternoon FDL, on Michael Yon:

All the while Michael Yon's been saying we're winning, over 2200 Americans have been killed. So what I wanna know is -- at what point will war cheerleaders propagandists like Michael Yon feel enough shame to finally STFU?

In 1945, 6,800 died at the Battle of Iwo Jima, but, of course, that was the "good war."

Those were the days I guess...

Photo Credit: "Gunman in Jerusalem Attack Identified, New York Times

Democrats Sabotage War They Voted to Authorize

David Horowitz and Ben Johnson have posted the introduction to their new book, Party of Defeat, at FrontPageMagazine.

Here's the editors' background blurb from the post:

The following is the introduction from the new book Party of Defeat by David Horowitz and Ben Johnson. The introduction lays out the book's thesis: that the opposition to the war in Iraq has crossed a troubling boundary. For the first time, a large number of national leaders have not merely opposed a war; that would be their inalienable right under the U.S. Constitution. Instead, they have actively sabotaged an ongoing war they voted to authorize and which our troops are currently winning. Party of Defeat is available from the FrontPage Magazine Bookstore for $15, less than Amazon.com. -- The Editors.

Here's a key passage from the introduction:

The object of war is to break an enemy’s will and destroy his capacity to fight. Therefore, a nation divided in wartime is a nation that invites its own defeat. Yet that is precisely how Americans are facing the global war that radical Islamists have declared on them.

The enemies who confront us are religious barbarians, armed with the technologies of modern warfare but guided by morals that are medieval and grotesque. Their stated goal is the obliteration of America and the conquest of the West. They have assembled a coalition that includes sovereign states such as Iran and Syria, Muslim armies such as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas, and terrorist cells that are globally dispersed and beyond counting....

Striking America’s homeland on September 11, 2001, jihadists murdered thousands of unsuspecting civilians, and came within a terrorist attack or two of destabilizing the American economy and unleashing chaos.

As the victim of these unprovoked and savage attacks, and as the defender of democratic values in three world wars, America would seem a worthy cause. Instead, America is on the defensive, harshly criticized by its traditional allies and under political attack by significant elements of its own population.

In this epic conflict Americans appear more divided among themselves than they have been at any time in the century–and–a half since the Civil War. Never in those years was an American commander-in-chief the target of such extreme attacks by his own countrymen with his troops in harm’s way. Never in its history has America faced an external enemy with its own leaders so at odds with each other.

Even as American soldiers have fought a fanatical enemy on the battlefields of Iraq, their president has been condemned as a deceiver who led them to war through “lies”; as a destroyer of American liberties; as a desecrator of the Constitution; as a usurper who stole his high office; as the architect of an “unnecessary war”; as a “fraud”; as a leader who “betrayed us”; and as a president who cynically sent the flower of American youth to die in foreign lands in order to enrich himself and his friends.

These reckless, corrosive charges are made not by fringe elements of the political spectrum, but by national leaders of the Democratic Party, including a former president, a former vice president and presidential candidate, and three members of the United States Senate (among them a one-time presidential candidate). These attacks occurred not after years of fighting in Iraq, when some might regard the result as a “quagmire,” but during the first months of the conflict, when the fighting had barely begun. They were made not over a war that was forced on Americans, or surreptitiously launched without their consent, but a war authorized by both political parties. They were directed not merely at its conduct, but at the rationale of the war itself—in other words, at the very justice of the American cause.

Although they voted for the bill to authorize the war, leaders of the Democratic Party, such as Senator Hillary Clinton, turned around after it was in progress and claimed that it was “George Bush’s war,” not theirs. They argued that Bush alone had decided to remove Saddam, when in fact it was a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who made regime change the policy of the United States. They argued that the war was “unnecessary” because Iraq was “no threat.” But who would have regarded Afghanistan as a threat before 9/11? They maintained that because the war in Iraq was a war of “choice,” it was therefore immoral. But every war fought by America in the twentieth century, with the exception of World War II, was also a war of choice.

Cartoon Credit, Nice Deb, "Once Again, Encouraging Words From Dingy Harry On Iraq."

(Harry Reid voted for the 2002 Iraq war authorization in the Senate, and has justified his shift to Democratic defeatism saying, the "evidence at the time was persuasive.")

American Economy Hasn't Bottomed Out, Forecast Shows

I've noted a few times that despite arguments to the contrary, the U.S. is not technically in a recession. I've noted, further, that UCLA's respected Anderson forecast recently discounted recession fears.

Now, there's no doubt we're having dramatic economic instability, but at 5.1 percent the unemployment numbers are nowhere near the levels of labor market dislocations of previous economic downturns.

What to do?

Let me refer readers to the Wall Street Journal's forecasting survey of economists who suggest the U.S. economy's yet to hit bottom (via Memeorandum):

The weakening U.S. economy has further to fall, according to the majority of economists in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey.

By a 3-to-1 ratio, respondents said the economy is in a recession, and almost three-quarters said the economy hasn't yet hit bottom. "It's hard to say," said Lou Crandall of Wrightson ICAP, because "it doesn't feel like anything we've experienced in decades."

Well, with this economic consensus, perhaps Hillary Clinton's not precipitous in her suspected abandonment of the 1996 welfare reform legislation.

Readers should drop me a line should they find women and children sleeping on grates.

In Hardball McCain Smears, Obama Casts Doubts on Transcendental Appeal

Barack Obama, who repeatedly refuses to denounce left-wing smear attacks against eventual GOP nominee John McCain, looks more and more like a run-of-the-mill politician, rather than the image of some transcendent political star he's tried to cultivate.

Steve Huntley makes the case:

The best indicator of Republican John McCain's surprisingly strong presidential prospects in what should be a slam-dunk Democratic year is not his solid general-election poll numbers but rather the increasingly shrill attacks from Democrats.

The latest was a grotesque slam from Barack Obama supporter Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia. In a newspaper interview in his home state, Rockefeller let loose this stinker: "McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues."

Never mind that laser-guided missiles hadn't been invented during the Vietnam war. Bombing is a part of warfare, and McCain was serving his country as have legions of other bomber airmen. Rockefeller smeared them all. One further point: McCain was a prisoner of war in Hanoi when U.S. planes bombed the city, on the orders of McCain's admiral father.

So wrong was this that Rockefeller not only quickly apologized, but his office also later made a point of saying that McCain had accepted his apology.

For his part, Obama said nothing, but his campaign issued a statement that he "does not agree" with Rockefeller's remarks.

It wasn't the first time Obama let his campaign do the talking when one of his supporters crossed the line. Last week, liberal radio talk show host Ed Schultz, speaking at a political event before Obama, called McCain a "warmonger." It was another shameful slur on a war hero. Inconveniently for Schultz, the New York Times carried a story a few days ago that McCain's Marine Corps son had just served a tour of duty in Iraq.

The day after this ugly character assassination, Obama twice declined to repudiate Schultz's statement, according to the Los Angeles Times. His campaign finally had a spokesman say, "John McCain is not a warmonger and should not be described as such."

Contrast that to McCain's handling of his own episode with a conservative talk show host shooting off his mouth. After learning that Bill Cunningham had, at a McCain rally, repeatedly referred to the Democratic candidate as "Barack Hussein Obama," McCain immediately stepped forward to condemn Cunningham's behavior. This took political courage because McCain already had problems with the right-wing talk show circuit, which considers him insufficiently conservative.

Obama has himself attacked McCain with a flagrant distortion, accusing him of wanting to bog America down in Iraq fighting for 100 years. The respected Annenberg Political Fact Check Web site said Obama had "twisted" McCain's words. Answering a question about how many years U.S. forces would be in Iraq, McCain said, "Make it a hundred. . . . We've been in Japan for 60 years. We've been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That would be fine with me, as long as American, as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed."

Obama, who complains about "snippets" of anti-American talk misrepresenting the whole career of his spiritual mentor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has no problem quoting McCain out of context.

Be prepared for more of this. Wealthy Democrats plan to fund a $40 million, four-month attack barrage against McCain, reports Politico. It will be independent of whoever is the Democratic nominee, but is yet another sign of Democrats' worry about McCain.

The recent attacks could be written as standard political hardball in a hotly contested race. But, as McCain points out, Obama has promised a campaign of hope, free of the cynicism and divisive ugly politics of the past. True, good intentions tend to go by the wayside when you're battling for the most powerful job in the world. And the line between legitimate electioneering and reckless politics can be fuzzy. Still, all this does leave Obama looking a bit more like just another politician.

See also, "Obama's Nebulous Campaign Funding Operation."

Think Progress Continues its Spurious Reporting

It seems Think Progress can't break away from the style of shoddy reporting and pseudo-scoop smears against the McCain campaign that's tarnished its reputation in recent weeks.

The latest bit to that effect is its report on the Pentagon's "stop-loss" policy that's been blown out of context in recent antiwar debates:

On Sept. 14, 2001, President Bush issued Executive Order 13223, allowing the administration to implement a “stop-loss” policy. Under stop-loss, “military personnel can be prevented from leaving the armed forces upon completing their enlistment terms.” Stop-loss policies were created after the Vietnam War. However, the Bush administration has overstretched the military by extensively using these orders to make up for declines in re-enlistment as the Iraq war drags on.

Yesterday on PBS’s Newshour, ret. Lt. Col. Ralph Peters — who now advises Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign on national security affairs — called the dangers of stop-loss policies a “myth of the left.” “Stop-loss is old,” said Peters. “This is not a new thing. In time of crisis, soldiers can be extended. They know it.”

Peters was sharply rebutted by Bobby Muller, president of Veterans for America, who pointed out that many high-ranking military officials have also warned that the Bush administration’s policies are overstretching the armed forces...

Peters, a retired United States Army Lieutenant Colonel, is a respected analyst of civil-military relations. The debate here looks, well, like a debate ... one in which the competing interpretations of stop-loss look less scandalous than Think Progress would have us believe.

Here's another interpretation on the stop-loss policy, from Urban Grounds:

My little brother and I enlisted in the US Army together in August of 1990.

The recruiter who signed us up went over our contract with us very thoroughly.

As the United States had just declared war on Iraq, he also explained the portion of our enlistment contract that detailed the Army’s Stop-Loss policy.

While I knew plenty of Soldiers who didn’t like the policy, I didn’t know any who didn’t know about it and that it was a part of their enlistment contract.

See also Gateway Pundit, "'Think Progress' Publishes Misleading Troop Withdrawal Post."

Obama's Nebulous Campaign Funding Operation

There's a lot of disparate stories coming in on Barack Obama's nebulous network of campaign finance.

For one, the Washington Post notes, Obama's got some big money bundlers of various origins who are casting doubt on the campaign's claim that the preponderance of its support is in small contributors and middle American common folk (via Memeorandum):

Sen. Barack Obama credits his presidential campaign with creating a "parallel public financing system" built on a wave of modest donations from homemakers and high school teachers. Small givers, he said at a fundraiser this week, "will have as much access and influence over the course and direction of our campaign that has traditionally been reserved for the wealthy and the powerful."

But those with wealth and power also have played a critical role in creating Obama's record-breaking fundraising machine, and their generosity has earned them a prominent voice in shaping his campaign. Seventy-nine "bundlers," five of them billionaires, have tapped their personal networks to raise at least $200,000 each. They have helped the campaign recruit more than 27,000 donors to write checks for $2,300, the maximum allowed. Donors who have given more than $200 account for about half of Obama's total haul, which stands at nearly $240 million.

The Post article highlights the model of campaign finance that's emerged in presidential elections since George W. Bush's 2000 campaign, which was the first to eschew public financing in the primaries.

The campaign bundling's not as controversial as the hypocrisy of the message of preponderant grassroots support, Obama's scam of a "parallel public financing" system, and not to mention the large contributions that Obama's getting from Iraq defense contractors, donations which certainly raise questions as to Obama's fidelity to the hardcore base of antiwar supporters which has mobilized heavily to his banner.

The Wall Street Journal's got an editorial on Obama's shifting campaign fianance associations:

Mr. Obama has also made much of his campaign's pledge not to accept money from political action committees, raising the majority of his funds from small private donations. PACs typically make up less than 1% of overall election donations to Presidential candidates, so that's no sacrifice.

Industry PACs may not give directly to his campaign, but employees of industries may do so, and many of his contributors have come from executives and their spouses. For example, Mr. Obama leads all candidates in donations from the pharmaceutical industry and commercial banks, among other industries. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks fundraising in elections, Mr. Obama has received $528,765 from people in the pharmaceutical industry and $1,380,108 from commercial banks. He comes in second to Mrs. Clinton in donations from lawyers with $13,690,170, just over a million shy of her total.

There is in fact a real parallel financing system already in place and ready to support Mr. Obama. It's called George Soros and so-called 527 groups such as the Democrat-supporting Fund for America or the newly named Progressive Media USA. Progressive Media recently announced plans for a $40 million, four-month campaign against Mr. McCain, and that's only one group in the game.

The Politico reported yesterday on the Progressive Media Group's planned big-money smear campaign against John McCain, "Dems plan $40M hit on McCain."

But check out Chris Cillizza's post yesterday on the anti-McCain efforts:

The Fund for America, a political organization aligned with several major players in Democratic politics, has raised better than $11 million -- largely from wealthy individuals -- since its inception last November and doled out nearly half that sum to various progressive organizations around the country.

FFA, as its known in Democratic circles, is set to report collecting $4.1 million between Jan. 1 and March 31 when its report is due with the Internal Revenue Service on April 15. As a 527 organization, the group can take unlimited donations from individuals but must disclose the names of its contributors.

The vast majority of that cash comes from a stable of well-heeled donors who are familiar to any political junkie....

FFA is organized as a grant-giving organization -- using the cash it collects to fund a variety of progressive causes. Its founders insist it is not primarily an election-year vehicle but rather an attempt to put into place a longer-term conduit for major donors to fund key activities and groups throughout the country.

"FFA was created to promote and support the long-term strength of the progressive movement," said Amy Dacey, the group's executive director. "Beyond our efforts this year, we intend to raise and distribute funds in 2009, 2010, 2011 and beyond. We've got our eye on the long-term success of the progressive movement against the more established and aggressive conservative movement, and we'll settle for nothing less."

To that end, FFA's largest grants during the first three months of 2008 went to national groups with an eye on the presidential election.

FFA sent $2.5 million to Campaign to Defend America, a 501(c)(4) organization headed by former Moveon.org Washington director Tom Matzzie. That group -- and its plans for the fall -- remain something of a mystery to even some Democratic party insiders although the group did run ads last month in Ohio and Pennsylvania that labeled Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) as the "McSame" as President Bush on a variety of key issues. The ad buy was estimated at $1 million.

I wrote about these developments the other day, indicating how Mattzie's moved away from the discredited "Betray Us"-style of attack mobilization to a newer model of radical electoral agitation politics.

All of these trends point to Obama's operation as extremely opportunistic - even Machiavellian - in merging mainstream big-money bundling operations with hardline antiwar factions who're notorious political tools for the Democratic Party establishment.

Newly Sworn In, Speier Blasts Iraq War in First House speech

Democrat Jackie Speier, just elected to Congress this week in a special election, attacked the Iraq war in a burst of first day partisanship on Capitol Hill:

For a few feel-good moments on the floor of the U.S. House today, Jackie Speier basked in bipartisan applause as she was sworn in as its newest member. Her family, supporters and kids cheered as she embraced her new colleagues.
Then, in her first speech in Congress, Speier spoke out about Iraq, and the boos and hoots began from the Republican side of the aisle.

"When will we get out of Iraq?" was the most frequent question she heard, she told the House, while campaigning in the special election she won Tuesday to succeed the late Rep. Tom Lantos.

"The process to bring the troops home must begin immediately," she said, as several Republicans loudly booed. Rep. Darrell Issa, a Vista Republican, bolted from his seat and left the floor.

The hoots grew in volume as Speier, a Hillsborough Democrat, continued.

"The president wants to stay the course and a man who wants to replace him suggests we could be in Iraq for 100 years," she said, a reference to Republican John McCain's assertion that U.S. forces could be there decades, if they are not under attack.

The San Francisco Chronicle has more:

Newly elected Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier of Hillsborough was sworn into Congress Thursday morning and promptly gave a fiery speech criticizing the Iraq policies of President Bush and likely GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, leading some Republicans to boo and walk out of the House chamber.

Speier, who won a special election Tuesday to finish the term of the late Rep. Tom Lantos, has always been an outspoken lawmaker in her years as a San Mateo County supervisor, state assemblywoman and state senator. She served notice Thursday that she plans be just as aggressive as a member of the House.

"The process to bring the troops home must begin immediately," Speier told a packed House presided over by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco. "The president wants to stay the course and a man who wants to replace him suggests we could be in Iraq for 100 years. But Madam Speaker, history will not judge us kindly if we sacrifice four generations of Americans because of the folly of one."

While Democrats applauded, Republicans began a chorus of low boos. Some Republicans who had congratulated her just moments before, including Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista (San Diego County), walked out of the hall in protest.

Speier's 13-year-old daughter, Stephanie, who was watching from the House gallery, asked, "Why are they booing my mom?"

After her speech, Speier said she had held more than 60 public meetings while campaigning for the 12th Congressional District seat and the most common question was, "When will we get out of Iraq?" She said didn't expect the negative reaction from Republicans, but it didn't bother her.

"That's the combat that goes on here," she said. "I'm not a newbie to this process."

Wearing a bright red overcoat, the 57-year-old Democrat was met with hugs from colleagues, including some Republicans, when she walked into the House chamber Thursday morning. Her friend, Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, gave her a kiss.

After being sworn in by Pelosi, Speier began her speech by praising her predecessor, Lantos, who died in February of esophageal cancer after serving in Congress for 27 years. Speier said she recently corrected a speaker in her district who said she was "replacing" Lantos.

"I had to laugh," she said. "I was elected to succeed Congressman Lantos. No one will ever replace him."

Well, let's hope not.

Just last September Lantos attacked General David Petraeus during the Iraq commander's congressional testimony, in what can best be recalled as a circus atmosphere of antiwar hysteria.

Speier's apparently already hard at work to "replace" the Lantos legacy.

Photo Credit: San Jose Mercury News

Hillary Clinton May Seek 1996 Welfare Act Dismantling

Think back to 1996.

The Clinton administration was on the verge of signing the most important social policy legislation since the 1960s - a law that would end the welfare entitlement that had locked poor Americans in a cycle of dependency for decades - and stalwart liberals were railing against the bill as a pending calamity: Women and children would be sleeping on grates. The shift to federalize the program would create a "race to the bottom" as states beat each other to the finish line in the abandonment of the poor.

Peter Edelman, a top advisor to President Clinton on domestic policy, resigned his post, and wrote a blistering attack on the legislation in the Atlantic, "The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done."

"Wait until the next recession," opponents screamed. We'll be back in the 1930s.

Well, amid the current economic uncertainty - with all the talk about a Bush "depression" descending over the land - talk of a welfare policy calamity's making a comeback.

This morning's New York Times has an important piece that suggests Hillary Clinton's rethinking her support for the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA):

In the summer of 1996, President Bill Clinton delivered on his pledge to “end welfare as we know it.” Despite howls of protest from some liberals, he signed into law a bill forcing recipients to work and imposing a five-year limit on cash assistance.

As first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton supported her husband’s decision, drawing the wrath of old friends from her days as an advocate for poor children. Some accused the Clintons of throwing vulnerable families to the winds in pursuit of centrist votes as Mr. Clinton headed into the final stages of his re-election campaign.

Despite the criticism and anxiety from the left, the legislation came to be viewed as one of Mr. Clinton’s signature achievements. It won broad bipartisan praise, with some Democrats relieved that it took a politically difficult issue off the table for them, and many liberals came to accept if not embrace it.

Mrs. Clinton’s opponent in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Barack Obama, said in an interview that the welfare overhaul had been greatly beneficial in eliminating a divisive force in American politics.

Mrs. Clinton, now a senator from New York, rarely mentions the issue as she battles for the nomination, despite the emphasis she has placed on her experience in her husband’s White House.

But now the issue is back, pulled to the fore by an economy turning down more sharply than at any other time since the welfare changes were imposed. With low-income people especially threatened by a weakening labor market, some advocates for poor families are raising concerns about the adequacy of the remaining social safety net. Mrs. Clinton is now calling for the establishment of a cabinet-level position to fight poverty.

As social welfare policy returns to the political debate, it is providing a window into the ways in which Mrs. Clinton has navigated the legacy of her husband’s administration and the ideological crosscurrents of her party.

In an interview, Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that “people who are more vulnerable” were going to suffer more than others as the economy turned down. But she put the blame squarely on the Bush administration and the Republicans who controlled Congress until last year. Mrs. Clinton said they blocked her efforts, and those of other Democrats, to buttress the safety net with increased financing for health insurance for impoverished children, child care for poor working mothers, and food stamps.

Mrs. Clinton expressed no misgivings about the 1996 legislation, saying that it was a needed — and enormously successful — first step toward making poor families self-sufficient.

“Welfare should have been a temporary way station for people who needed immediate assistance,” she said. “It should not be considered an anti-poverty program. It simply did not work.”

During the presidential campaign, she has faced little challenge on the issue, in large part because Mr. Obama has supported the 1996 law. “Before welfare reform, you had, in the minds of most Americans, a stark separation between the deserving working poor and the undeserving welfare poor,” Mr. Obama said in an interview. “What welfare reform did was desegregate those two groups. Now, everybody was poor, and everybody had to work.”

Mr. Obama called the resulting law “an imperfect reform.” Like Mrs. Clinton, he called for an expansion of government-provided health care, child care and job training to assist women making the transition from welfare to work — programs he says he helped expand in Illinois as a state senator.

Asked if he would have vetoed the 1996 law, Mr. Obama said, “I won’t second guess President Clinton for signing.”

Among some advocates for the poor, the growing prospect of a severe recession and evidence of backsliding from the initial successes of the policy shift have crystallized fresh concern. Many remain upset that Mrs. Clinton, once seemingly a stalwart member of their camp, supported a law that they contend left many people at risk.

“If there is no national controversy about welfare reform, we paid an awfully high price,” said Peter Edelman, a law professor at Georgetown University who has known Mrs. Clinton since her college days, and who quit his post as assistant secretary of social services at the Department of Health and Human Services in protest after Mr. Clinton signed the measure.

“They don’t acknowledge the number of people who were hurt,” Mr. Edelman said. “It’s just not in their lens. It was predictably bad public policy.”

Forcing families to rely on work instead of government money went well from 1996 to 2000, when the economy was booming and paychecks were plentiful, economists say. Since then, however, job creation has slowed and poverty has risen. The current downturn could be the first serious test of how well the changes brought about by the 1996 law hold up under sharp economic stress.

“We should have enormous concern about the lack of a fully functioning safety net for families with children,” said Mark H. Greenberg, director of the Poverty and Prosperity Program at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research group.

Notice the language here, of "forcing families" to work rather that receive government handouts, and of the "current downturn" that's now a test of how well the PRWORA will hold up under "current economic stress."

This is truly an amazing spin.

First, Hillary Clinton, as the Times piece notes, was one of the biggest backers of welfare reform and praised the legislation in her memoirs. Indeed, her support for "ending welfare as we know it" strained her relationship with top welfare entitlement advocates like Marian Wright Edelman (the wife of Peter Edelman).

Clinton's new welfare focus contrasts with her campaign's appeal to the middle class; it is a bid to capture the support the Democratic Party's big government constituencies who were attracted to John Edwards' two America's class warfare campaign.

But note, too, that here we are, not even 18-months since the 10th anniversary of the 1996 reform, when the economy's not even officially been declared in recession, and we're seeing serious discussion on the left of dismantling the most important domestic policy legacy of the Bill Clinton administration.

In the summer of 2006, National Review argued that the Clinton welfare law was "the most successful transformation of social policy in 50 years."

It still is, and it's way too early to rejuvenate left-wing big government social programs ostensibly designed to allieviate poverty. The underlying attack on AFDC-style welfare programs is that they stifle individual responsibility and self-sufficiency. This has become bipartisan consensus in the last couple of decades, at least among Democratic party centrists.

Not just that. The economic situation hardly merits calls to renew welfare entitlements:

Unemployment's creeped back up to 5.1 percent in the most recent statistics, a level that's far from some purported calamitous endpoint. I see "help wanted" signs wherever I go, at good, attractive retail businesses. People are working and making do, and we've yet to see stories of women and children sleeping on grates.

We may face some difficulties yet, but it seems awfully early to move toward a counter-revolution on welfare handouts.

All of this goes to show how incredibly opportunistic and shallow are contemporary left-wing policy debates.

In November 2006, the Atlantic ran a long feature essay on Hillary Clinton's political achievements during her first term in the Senate, glorifying her staunch fidelity to DLC-style political moderation of 1990s.

Now look where she is, scoring cheap political points demonizing a program that not even two years ago her husband Bill Clinton was pumping up as "creating a new beginning for millions of Americans."

Photo Credit: New York Times

Focus on the War We Are Winning Today

Michael Yon, at the Wall Street Journal, argues that the Iraq debate in Congress this week focused on the conventional wisdom of 2004-06, when violence was on the rise and the mission was truly at a dangerous risk of collapse.

That's changed over the last year, but war critics continue to yammer away with the meme of the war's a "fiasco." As such, continual talk of troop withdrawals misses the point. We've achieved a phenomenal turnaround, and we should be thinking of ways to consolidate and preserve it:

I may well have spent more time embedded with combat units in Iraq than any other journalist alive. I have seen this war – and our part in it – at its brutal worst. And I say the transformation over the last 14 months is little short of miraculous.

The change goes far beyond the statistical decline in casualties or incidents of violence. A young Iraqi translator, wounded in battle and fearing death, asked an American commander to bury his heart in America. Iraqi special forces units took to the streets to track down terrorists who killed American soldiers. The U.S. military is the most respected institution in Iraq, and many Iraqi boys dream of becoming American soldiers. Yes, young Iraqi boys know about "GoArmy.com."

As the outrages of Abu Ghraib faded in memory – and paled in comparison to al Qaeda's brutalities – and our soldiers under the Petraeus strategy got off their big bases and out of their tanks and deeper into the neighborhoods, American values began to win the war.

Iraqis came to respect American soldiers as warriors who would protect them from terror gangs. But Iraqis also discovered that these great warriors are even happier helping rebuild a clinic, school or a neighborhood. They learned that the American soldier is not only the most dangerous enemy in the world, but one of the best friends a neighborhood can have.

Here's more:

We know now that we can pull off a successful counterinsurgency in Iraq. We know that we are working with an increasingly willing citizenry. But counterinsurgency, like community policing, requires lots of boots on the ground. You can't do it from inside a jet or a tank.

Over the past 15 months, we have proved that we can win this war. We stand now at the moment of truth. Victory – and a democracy in the Arab world – is within our grasp. But it could yet slip away if our leaders remain transfixed by the war we almost lost, rather than focusing on the war we are winning today.

I made a similar argument yesterday. See, "The Historical Significance of General Petraeus."

Thoughts on Barack Obama's Radicalism

Gateway Pundit has a YouTube mashup of Barack Obama's conflicting statements on race and whiteness.

I'm not always so thrilled by these video clips, so check it out yourself.

But Gateway's commenter, "The Elector of Saxony," summarizes some of my recent concerns on Obama's suspicious connections to radical organizations:

The more I learn about Obama, the more there is to dislike. When you read the description of Barack's home life, it is hard to square his background with someone who views America as a racist, oppressive society....

You would think that such a man would view America as Ronald Reagan did, or at least as JFK did. After all of the riches, power, and accolades bestowed upon him, he and his family still see America through the eyes of Kruschev, Castro, and Ahmedinijad.

Isn't that the most alarming thing about the man? He a walking, breathing exemplar of what is great about America, and yet he believes ( or pretends to) that it is a cruel, unfair, and racist nation and fosters this notion in the minds of others.

Check out the whole post at Gateway.

See also, Just One Minute, "Obama's Appeal (The Secret Thereof)."

Plus, don't forget my post from yesterday, "Palestinians See Obama as Close Ally."

The Historical Significance of General Petraeus

I noted yesterday that General David Petraeus, the Supreme Commander of the Multi-National Force Iraq, is the architect of one of the greatest military comebacks in American history.

Future academic research will have to deliver the decisive verdict on this point, but Retired Col. Ken Allard makes the case for Petraeus' historical brilliance in an essay today at the San Antonio Express-News:

There he was, this generation's equivalent of George Marshall, the brilliant proconsul testifying before Congress to underline the improbable but now indisputable victory over al Qaida.

In military history, the turn-around David Petraeus has commanded in Iraq rivals MacArthur's surprise landing at Inchon....

An earlier and more attentive generation might have idolized Petraeus. This one barely grasps his victory and has no idea who he is. The Pew Research Center reports that 55 percent of the public cannot even recognize his name — roughly the same percentage as those who wish the war would just fade away.

For most Americans, Iraq is distant thunder, an unpleasant interruption troubling the nightly news. Even if war coverage finishes above the producer's cut-line, the dots are rarely well connected for an audience in which military illiteracy is always a working assumption.

An example over the last fortnight has been the Shiite revolt in Basra and other parts of Iraq. Ever since Saddam's overthrow, well armed sectarian militias have been a basic fact of Iraqi life — so much so that it once seemed as though the country might be partitioned along ethnic and religious lines: Kurd, Sunni and Shiite. The surge changed all that, particularly when reinforced by the recreated and resurgent Iraqi military — the key to any American exit strategy worthy of the name. The new correlation of forces created the stable platform on which both military and political progress might be made.

Those developments could first be seen in the astonishing Sunni uprising against al Qaida, although the logic was pure Machiavelli: Where tribalism reigns, simply become the strongest, meanest tribe in the neighborhood.

Similarly, the authors of the new counterinsurgency strategy also seemed to have learned something from the Untouchables: When the enemy sends three of yours to the hospital, send five of his to the morgue. But al-Qaida clearly understood what the media and their notoriously fickle audiences did not: Americans had finally become serious about winning.

Victory has its own logic, eventually prompting the long overdue fight against the Shiite militias. However clumsy and ill-timed by the Maliki government, however uneven the skills of the adolescent Iraqi military, the assault against Shiite strongholds was exactly what was so loudly demanded on Capitol Hill this week: An unmistakable harbinger of Iraqi political progress.

How will history remember these successes?

I think the long-run legacy of Petraeus will mirror shifting historical interpretations of the war.

Short-term journalistic assessments remain dourly dismissive of American military and political capacity, a pessimism rooted in a thinly disguised antipathy to America's assertive international preponderance.

Yet, we will see, over the next few years, the U.S. wind down the mission, and Iraq's own forces of democracy and security will consolidate into a stable regime, with an increasing sense of national identity and political cohesiveness.

I'm more sure of it now than ever.

As noted today, by Samir Sumaida'ie, Iraq's Ambassador to the United States:

Those who argue that Iraq is fractured and hopelessly broken – a Humpty Dumpty that can never be put together again – are wrong....

Iraqi national identity has been weakened, but it is alive and kicking, and will embarrass all of those who rushed to write its obituary.

Opponents of the war have been writing Iraq's obituary since late 2003.

Meanwhile, the war's supporters have mounted a Herculean effort in resisting incessant demands for retreat and surrender. But with the Petraeus turnaround, endorsed here by Ambassador Sumaida'ie, the potential for the consolidation of Iraq's democratic federal system is no longer in question.

Iraq will be the standard against which other Arab governments are judged, and General David Petraeus will go down as one of the most important wartime commanders U.S. military history.

Professor's Office Postings Called "Unprofessional and Insubordinate"

Inside Higher Ed has the story of Richard Crandall, a professor at Lake Superior State University, who was pressured by his administration to remove politically incorrect materials from his door in 2007 (via Memeorandum):

Getting one’s own office can be a rite of passage right up there with defending a dissertation or receiving tenure — and many professors’ lairs are reflections of their own attitudes and beliefs. Usually, it takes just a quick glance at the door, as anyone who’s taken a stroll down the hall of an academic building can attest: What a professor finds amusing, outrageous or just plain interesting is there for all to see.

At a public university, such common displays of individual preference would presumably fall under the protections of the First Amendment. But not when such displays are offensive to others, according to officials at Lake Superior State University, which threatened to reprimand a tenured professor whose door boasted cartoons and other images of a conservative political bent. In a March 26 letter to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which had been monitoring the case and publicized it on Wednesday, an outside lawyer representing the university reiterated its argument that because the professor “acted in an unprofessional and insubordinate manner, his actions cannot be considered protected speech.”

The first complaints date back to 2005, and the professor, Richard Crandall, was ordered to remove the materials from his door in 2007 (he eventually complied). Items included a photo of Ronald Reagan, pictures mocking Hillary Clinton, a sign posting a “Notice of the Weekly Meeting of the White, Male, Heterosexual Faculty and Staff Association (WMHFSA),” and various cartoons about abortion, Islamic terrorism and other topics. One depicts two hooded women looking over a photo album. One says, “And that’s my youngest son, Hakim. He’ll be martyring in the fall.” The other replies, “They blow up so fast.”

The university argues that the postings contribute to a hostile environment and therefore do not fall under First Amendment protections, although such arguments have not fared well historically in the courts. No lawsuit has been filed, but in the past some professors whose cases have been publicized by FIRE have pursued legal action. The university did not respond to requests for comment.

FIRE and Crandall, who could not be reached for comment, point out that other professors at the university are able to post politically charged pictures and phrases on their doors without consequence, presumably because their perspective is liberal or leftist rather than conservative or right-wing. (The university appeared to argue that it wasn’t the political perspective but the denigration of religious minorities that was the problem.) In photographs provided to FIRE, one Lake Superior State professor’s door features an “Exxpose Exxon” slogan and an “Honor Veterans: No More War” bumper sticker, while another door bears a sign asking if the Bush administration works for “Big Oil and Gas.”

“We really think this is a case that’s amenable to public pressure because the double standard here is so transparent,” said Robert L. Shibley, FIRE’s vice president. “The fact is that clearly other professors are allowed to express their political views on their door, which is very common ... it seems only Professor Crandall is the one who’s the problem.”

My department floor hosts a classic amalgam of politically-charged office-door postings.

See also Glenn Reynolds, and his reader's comment:

The professor's-door-as-billboard is one of the most important course-scheduling tools a student has. When I was a history major and law student walking down Office Hall for whatever reason, a door plastered with Tom Tomorrow cartoons was a good marker for what professors - and hence courses - to avoid like the plague.

McCain Won't Rule Out Preemption

John McCain, the GOP nominee-in-waiting, has refused to rule out the use of preemptive military force against America's enemies, MSNBC reports:

Republican Sen. John McCain refused Wednesday to rule out a pre-emptive war against another country, although he said one would be very unlikely.

The likely Republican presidential nominee was asked Wednesday at a town-hall style meeting if he would reject "the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war," a reference to Bush's decision to invade Iraq without it having attacked the United States.

"I don't think you could make a blanket statement about pre-emptive war, because obviously, it depends on the threat that the United States of America faces," McCain told his audience at Bridgewater Associates Inc., a global investment firm.

If someone is about to launch a weapon that would devastate America, or have the capability to do so, obviously, you would have to act immediately in defense of this nation's national security interests."

McCain said he would consult more closely and more carefully "not with every member of Congress, but certainly the leaders of Congress."

Photo Credit: MSNBC

Hat tip: Great Satan's Girlfriend

Palestinians See Obama as Close Ally

Today's Los Angeles Times has a troubling story on the history of Barack Obama's personal relationship with a number of Palestinian activists, including the late Professor Edward Said.

While the Times piece bends over backwards to portray Obama's connections to Palestinian constituencies as the normal activities of a politically ambitious grass roots activist, in the context of Obama's other questionable relationships - to Antoin Rezko, the Weather Underground, and his pastor of hate, Jeremiah Wright - today's expose provides further support for claims that an Obama administration might not maintain rigorous fidelity to American's traditional security interests and partnerships:

It was a celebration of Palestinian culture -- a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.

A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.

His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."

Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years.

And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.

The article goes to great lengths in painting Khalidi as a moderate on the Arab-Israeli conflict, but some passages raise flags over Khalidi's loyalties:

At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."

Even further:

In the 1970s, when Khalidi taught at a university in Beirut, he often spoke to reporters on behalf of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. In the early 1990s, he advised the Palestinian delegation during peace negotiations. Khalidi now occupies a prestigious professorship of Arab studies at Columbia.

He is seen as a moderate in Palestinian circles, having decried suicide bombings against civilians as a "war crime" and criticized the conduct of Hamas and other Palestinian leaders. Still, many of Khalidi's opinions are troubling to pro-Israel activists, such as his defense of Palestinians' right to resist Israeli occupation and his critique of U.S. policy as biased toward Israel.

Other sources suggest Khalidi might not be so "moderate."

As FrontPageMagazine reports, Khalidi's been at the forefront of the post-911 movement among activists condeming the United States as the world's leading terrorist state:

As the radical activists of the 1960s have aged and moved on, in significant numbers, to prominent positions in the faculties and administrations of American universities, the political atmosphere in college classrooms from coast to coast has become palpably anti-American. Throughout academia, leftist professors with captive audiences of young adults seamlessly transmit their own political worldviews from one generation to the next.

Consider what is occurring at Columbia University, which recently appointed professor Rashid Khalidi – a longtime, outspoken critic of the United States – to the anonymously endowed Edward Said Chair in Middle Eastern Studies. Depicting a nation that can scarcely do anything right – either at home or abroad, Khalidi calls the US a land “where routine media abuse of Arab-Americans, violations of their rights, and racist stereotyping and caricatures have only grown more prevalent since September 11th of [2001].... ”

Khalidi blames the horrors of 9-11 on none other than the US. “[F]or decades the United States itself helped to foster some of the radical-extremist Islamic tendencies that gave rise to the horrific attacks on US cities,” he says. “[I]f there is . . . hatred for the United States in many countries in these [Middle Eastern] regions, it is not necessary to look at Islamic doctrine [or] the supposed centrality of the concept of jihad to Islam for the causes.

The Los Angeles Times also mentions Obama's relationship to Said, an outspoken Palestinian rights spokeman, who has been identified as openly supporting terrorism against the United States:

Obama in 1998 attended a speech by Edward Said, the late Columbia University professor and a leading intellectual in the Palestinian movement. According to a news account of the speech, Said called that day for a nonviolent campaign "against settlements, against Israeli apartheid."

The use of such language to describe Israel's policies has drawn vehement objection from Israel's defenders in the United States. A photo on the pro-Palestinian website the Electronic Intifada shows Obama and his wife, Michelle, engaged in conversation at the dinner table with Said, and later listening to Said's keynote address. Obama had taken an English class from Said as an undergraduate at Columbia University.

There's been a frustrating - even insidious - tendency in Barack Obama's career to associate with some of the greatest anti-American individuals and groups of recent years. Yet, we've heard, over and over by Obama defenders, throughout the Wright controversy, for example, that "guilt by association" is not a legitimate basis of criticism against the Illinois Senator.

Yet, it's clear that these associations with outspoken and radical critics of the United Sates are part of a pattern: Obama has gravitated to - and moved within - some very suspicious circles of America's underground subversives.

Note too, that while the Los Angeles Times strikes an overall balance in its account of Obama's Palestinian ties, the conclusion to the article is telling:

Nationally, Obama continues to face skepticism from some Jewish leaders who are wary of his long association with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who had made racially incendiary comments during several sermons that recently became widely known. Questions have persisted about Wright in part because of the recent revelation that his church bulletin reprinted a Times op-ed written by a leader of Hamas.

One Jewish leader said he viewed Obama's outreach to Palestinian activists, such as Said, in the light of his relationship to Wright."

In the context of spending 20 years in a church where now it is clear the anti-Israel rhetoric was there, was repeated, . . . that's what makes his presence at an Arab American event with a Said a greater concern," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director for the Anti-Defamation League.

This story deserves wide attention and deep investigation.

The more I read about Barack Obama's relationships, the more I question this man's judgment.

Recall the old saying, "birds of a feather flock together?" Well, the associational plumage surrounding Obama's group ties is looking less pro-American all the time.

Photo Credit: New York Times, "Obama Says Real-Life Experience Trumps Rivals’ Foreign Policy Credits."

The Blogger Mom: New Career Trajectory for the Internet Set

As I always say, blogging's not my full-time job (right!), but there's hope!

Just think: You too can be the next stay-at-home blogging sensation! Your spouse can quit work as your blog rockets up the Technorati rankings and you rake in the ad revenues of upwards of $40,000 a month!

The Wall Street Journal's got the rags to riches story of "mommy-blogger," Heather Armstrong":

Lots of businesses get hate mail, but few owners react the way Heather Armstrong does. She prints out nasty emails, puts them in her driveway and drives over them with her car. "That's the attitude I have," she says, "and it's made my life a thousand percent better."

Steeling herself against vitriol is one of the challenges of being, by many measures, the nation's top parenting blogger. The 32-year-old at-home mother's irreverent, occasionally profane and often hilarious musings on prosaic topics from potty-training to postpartum depression have propelled her blog, Dooce.com, to No. 59 among the Web's top 100 blogs, according to Technorati, a blog search engine. The Salt Lake City resident enjoys enviable influence and enough ad revenue that her husband Jon quit his job in 2005 to manage advertising for Dooce (rhymes with moose).

Among the Web's 200,000-plus bloggers on parenting and family, few have succeeded to the extent of Ms. Armstrong; countless at-home parents would love to be in her position. But less obvious is the behind-the-scenes price an at-home mom pays to shoulder her way to prominence in the blogosphere -- giving up her privacy, sustained time off and any remnants of work-family boundaries at all.

Most powerful individual bloggers, such as Arianna Huffington of HuffingtonPost.com on politics, or Mario Lavandeira of PerezHilton.com on celebrities, keep a measure of personal distance by blogging on public topics. In contrast, Ms. Armstrong writes about herself, her husband, her 4-year-old daughter Leta, clashes with her parents and the escapades of her dog Chuck. She has the ability "to make the mundane seem interesting," says Pete Blackshaw, an executive vice president at Nielsen Online. In a measure of fans' devotion, a recent post on removing a raccoon from her chimney drew 530 comments.

TOP MOTHERHOOD BLOGS

Accounts from the home front that can be real, revealing and sometimes raw.
• Dooce.com
• 5minutesformom.com
• designmom.com
• parenthacks.com
• scribbit.blogspot.com
• fussy.org
• notesfromthetrenches.com
• stirrup-queens.blogspot.com
• izzymom.com
• suburbanbliss.net
Source: Technorati

Mommy blogs in general tend to be everyday diaries of details one might share over coffee -- baby's first step or the perils of finding a preschool. Most are blander than Dooce, less humorous and significantly less profane.

Most Web diarists, for example, are too reserved to report, as Ms. Armstrong does, that she's "married to a charming geek," had "lived life as an unemployed drunk" for a while, or landed briefly in a mental hospital for postpartum depression. Some mommy-bloggers find her cursing and vulgarity offensive. But it's that outrageousness, humility and raw honesty that also feed her bond with readers, making her dominant in an emerging Web sector Mr. Blackshaw calls "The Power Mom."

Ms. Armstrong's fan base is a powerful lure for advertisers. Neither she nor her husband will discuss ad revenue, but they and the Internet rating service Quantcast say that Dooce draws about four million page views per month. In a "quick back-of-the-envelope guesstimate," Shani Higgins, Technorati's vice president, business development, estimates the site could yield $40,000 a month in revenue from companies coveting her traffic, such as BMW and Verizon.

Ms. Armstrong's product endorsements -- bestowed only on items she's purchased, she says -- wield impressive clout. Yukiko Kamioka in Colchester, England, says she was struggling with only 10 visitors a day to her Web site, seabreezestudio.co.uk, until Dooce endorsed her handmade bags; 3,000 visitors immediately swamped her site, and she soon sold out of her merchandise.

The life of a blogger, though, inflicts significant strain. A scathing parody on ViolentAcres.com, set up as a letter to her daughter Leta, said, "Since your father and I started exploiting you for cash, neither one of us has had to work a real job for a few months now. Score!" Last week, another popular blogger on parenting, Boston writer Steve Almond, quit his BabyDaddy blog on Babble.com, citing "angry and aggrieved" responses to his writings.

Behind her hip façade, Ms. Armstrong feels similar pain. She says she has sought therapy to cope with vitriolic posts. "The hate mail will invariably happen, and when it does your entire world will crumble around your ears," she says. In one example, she says a person she thought was a friend posted a comment saying she "wanted to punch me in the face because she hated me so much." She adds she can understand why "famous people turn to drugs or commit suicide."

Hey, who disabled my comment moderation!

No, wait, Dr. Phil, yo, can you fit me in?!!