Rightroots Has Cracked $200,000!

In Border Fence's Path, Congressional Roadblocks

Galley Slaves

Game: Chaos Faction

Harold Ford Called Self A Lawyer But Did Not Pass Bar Exam

Juche Blog

Musing Minds

The People's Cube

Polipundit

Political Mavens

Power Line

Reddit

Shots Across The Bow

Video: Mad TV Does An Al-Jazeera Parody (This Is Hilarious!)

-- Maybe this guy should have gone in a different direction with his legal strategy:

"A Chicago man apologized for spreading his feces around a courtroom during his trial on drug charges."

-- This is sort of a good news, bad news story:

The federal budget deficit estimate for the fiscal year just completed has dropped to $250 billion, congressional estimators said Friday, as the economy continued to fuel impressive tax revenues.

The Congressional Budget Office's latest estimate is $10 billion below CBO predictions issued in August and well below a July White House prediction of $296 billion.

The improving deficit picture -- Bush predicted a $423 billion deficit in his February budget -- has been driven by better-than-expected tax receipts, especially from corporate profits, CBO said.

On the one hand, because tax cuts have driven up government revenues (Thank you for explaining how that works, Laffer Curve), the deficit is much smaller than expected. On the other hand, it's still 250 billion. On the upside, at least we're going in the right direction. That should count for something

-- You know, I see a lot of bloggers raving about the predictive power of Tradesports, which allows betting on political races. While it is interesting to occasionally take a look at how the money is coming down on particular political outcomes, I have yet to see any evidence that the Tradesports numbers represent anything more than just the run-of-the-mill conventional wisdom. Since that's the case, I don't think it merits these, "ooohs and aaahs," some people seem to give every time the numbers move a few points in a particular direction.

-- Over at The Corner, Byron York says, "There seems to be a general feeling that the Foley scandal is losing steam today."

He's right. The story was being driven for the first few days by new revelations about Foley's activities and by the possibility that Hastert would resign his leadership position. Now that it has been established that Foley is a perv and that Hastert doesn't look likely to step down, the story is losing momentum.

-- Check out this wacky comment from NewsVeiws in the, "Foley Cybersex With Teen Part Of A Prank?"

"Here is how it works folks; It's all about ''clickthroughs''. Ad traffic. If bin laden (AND THE REST OF PAKISTAN) spends every waking moment clicking on ad after ad I'd be happy.
I'd be even happier if we ''bring the freedom'' to the sunni muslims to kill as many shi'ite muslims as possible.

And we also ''bring the freedom'' to the shi'ite muslims to kill as many sunni muslims as possible as well.

We've seen this over and over again, THE ONLY SOURCE OF JOY to muslims is the desire to kill non-muslims.

The ULTRA-LIBERALS like John Kerry Hawkins (who actually wants ''speaker nancy pelosi'') and Duhbya who is merely waiting for his (and John Kerry Hawkins) to have ''a fully-vested retirement package''..."

This guy, who has always struck me as a Paleocon, has been posting here for a while and has gotten progressively nuttier. So what do you think? Is he a crank or a parody troll?

-- Woah. Is Kos about to step out of the political blogging game?

"An activist who has succeeded in mobilizing so many passionate users might next head for a career inside the political machine. Run for office. Start a PAC. Become a consultant. But no. At what's arguably the top of his game, Moulitsas says he's "going offline" next year, taking his obvious knack for building online communities and applying it to that other great American pastime: sports. And once he gets his network of sports blogs ramped up, he'll turn to building communities in the real world, a chain of giant meeting places "replicating megachurches for the left" – complete with cafés and child care. Moulitsas has shown he can harness people's enthusiasm, but he says he doesn't want a leadership role in these "democracy centers."

PS: Ana Marie Cox AKA as the original Wonkette, doesn't get a lot of credit for her writing. People have always thought she got where she was because she worked for Nick Denton, is hot, and made a lot of jokes about anal sex. But, I've always thought Cox was funny and had a real talent for snark. This biting excerpt from the Kos piece, which you can be sure that few other left-of-center writers would have included, gives you a little taste of what Cox does so well.

"He's conflicted about the job. "I'm kind of at the top of my game right now," he says. "But I have no desire to be the face of the Democratic party. I think there are better spokespeople out there."

Indeed, for someone as written-about as Moulitsas, he's a lousy frontman. There's the paranoia and the ranting, of course. And he can seem uninterested in the details. The day after Lamont's win, Moulitsas came to lunch in a Lamont T-shirt. But he fumbled when a woman walked over to our table, pointed at his shirt, and said, "Can you tell me anything about that guy other than he's antiwar?" He couldn't."

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem impossible to imagine something like this in America's future:

"Radical Muslims in France's housing estates are waging an undeclared "intifada" against the police, with violent clashes injuring an average of 14 officers each day.

As the interior ministry said that nearly 2,500 officers had been wounded this year, a police union declared that its members were "in a state of civil war" with Muslims in the most depressed "banlieue" estates which are heavily populated by unemployed youths of north African origin.

It said the situation was so grave that it had asked the government to provide police with armoured cars to protect officers in the estates, which are becoming no-go zones.

The number of attacks has risen by a third in two years. Police representatives told the newspaper Le Figaro that the "taboo" of attacking officers on patrol has been broken.

Instead, officers – especially those patrolling in pairs or small groups – faced attacks as soon as they tried to arrest locals."

How did the French get in that situation? They have large numbers of immigrants coming into their country, living in separatist enclaves, and they've done a poor job of assimilating them or getting them jobs. The unemployment rate in these Muslim ghettos is staggering, many of the people there don't feel like they're part of French culture, and the police just don't want to deal with them. Put it all together and it's not surprising that you're seeing violence erupt.

But, aren't most of those elements in place here as well?

You've got millions of illegal immigrants in this country who don't speak English, don't feel like they're a part of this country, and live in their own enclaves. They're holding rallies in the street, waving Mexican flags, chanting slogans in Spanish, and letting everyone know that they don't feel bound by our laws -- and don't forget illegals commit an enormous amount of crime in this country as it is.

Of course, because we haven't had these sort of murderous riots here already, many people will just assume that it couldn't happen here. That reminds me of something Machiavelli once wrote,

"And what physicians say about disease is applicable here: that at the beginning a disease is easy to cure but difficult to diagnose; but as time passes, not having been treated or recognized at the outset, it becomes easy to diagnose but difficult to cure. The same thing occurs in affairs of state; for by recognizing from afar the diseases that are spreading in the state (which is a gift given only to a prudent ruler), they can be cured quickly; but when they are not recognized and are left to grow to the extent that everyone recognizes them, there is no longer any cure." -- Niccolo Machiavelli

Don't you think that France wishes they had handled immigrants coming into their country differently given what's going on there now? Well, the situation there should be a warning to us about the potential problems that can be caused by massive amounts of illegal immigration in this country. Let's hope we're wise enough to learn from France's mistakes.

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For a moment, let's set morals aside and coldly consider whether it would be politically smart to get rid of Dennis Hastert right now.

First of all, let's be clear: this scandal is a negative for the GOP any way you slice it. The American people generally think that Congress is corrupt, partisan, and doing a poor job. Now, they have a sex scandal and allegations, flimsy though they may be, of a cover-up that seem to confirm a lot of the negative impressions that they already have. Moreover, the more time we spend talking about Mark Foley, the less time we spend talking about the war on terrorism and the foibles of the Democratic Party. In other words, the environment for the GOP wasn't very good to begin with and no matter what happens to Dennis Hastert, this scandal has made things worse.

That being said, you have to realize that if Dennis Hastert is thrown over the side, it will cement a completely false idea into the minds of the voters: that the GOP leadership covered up for a sexual predator. In the minds of the voters, if Hastert steps down, it will mean that the allegation must be true. Why else would he step down?

Furthermore, people need to understand that getting rid of Hastert WILL NOT put an end to the story. To the contrary, the Democrats and these masochistic Republicans calling for blood will just start casting a wider net. After all, if Hastert deserves to step down, even though he handled things properly given what he knew back in 2005, then why shouldn't Rodney Alexander, John Boehner, John Shimkus, and Tom Reynolds get thrown under the bus, too? Once you get these sort of Salem Witch trials started, there's no reason to believe that they'll be easy to stop. The Democrats and the mainstream media have motivation to try to keep this going and let's face it, if the Republicans calling for Hastert to step down were thinking rationally, they wouldn't be calling for his resignation in the first place. So, how many Republicans will they want to purge for no good reason whatsoever?

It's also important to remember that Foley has already resigned and that the drama now is over whether Hastert is going to step down from his leadership position. If it becomes clear that Hastert isn't going anywhere, then the story is going to start to lose momentum unless something new comes out that shows the House Leadership knew more or that other members are involved. Even if more evidence about Foley comes out, well, we already knew he was a sicko. So, that doesn't move things forward that much.

So putting it all together, if Hastert resigns, it is in effect a false admission that the GOP Leadership covered up for Foley and it will extend the story as other Republicans that were tangentially involved in the whole thing like Alexander, Boehner, Shimkus, and Reynolds are attacked as well.

That means politically, the best thing the GOP can do is continue to bash Foley for immoral and unethical behavior, continue to push for this whole sorry episode to be thoroughly investigated, and continue to rally around Hastert. Setting politics aside, those happen to be the right things to do as well.

From:Gerardo Montaño (gerardo@*****)
Subject: THE STATE OF MY NATION

NOT ONLY IS IT EXCITING TO READ POLITICAL BLOGS, BUT IT’S ALSO A GREAT PLACE TO ENGAGE CITIZENS ABOUT WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON AT THE MOST POWERFUL LEVELS AND AGENTS OF CHANGE…STATE AND FEDERAL ELECTED (PAID IN) REPRESENTATIVES.

By the way… what exactly defines a terrorist John? I see that some sort of statement was made towards Democrats and posted on your little blog-

Tell me John the Hawk; does your Emperor look or smell like a terrorist? Does he act like a terrorist to you when he drops tons of bombs on poor innocent peoples?

Did Emperor Bush, and does he still not order violent attacks against others?

What the F*ck makes you so F*ckin’ sure you’re on the right side you Republican piece of shit????????

Ethnocentric terrorist!

I hope they send you to the front lines you republican coward *ss!

You my friend are a disgrace to my beautiful Nation, a Nation built by immigrants!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

e-mail me back Hawk!

From: (DEVITT9@**********)
Subject: TYPICAL HYBRID "WANNABE CONSERVATIVE"

READ WND ARTICLE ON BUSH PUSH TO HAVE MEXICO LEGITAMISE ALONG WITH THE ILLEGAL ALIEN CRIMMINALS IT'S INVASION OF U.S.WE DIDN'T KNOW "HYBRID BUSH WOULD KISS KENNEDY'S *SS,PUT BIMBO UP FOR SUPREME COURT,BUDGET LIKE A LIBERAL,LEAVE IT UP TO SUPREME COURT TO USURP CONSTITUTION,KISS FOX'S *SS AND NOT HURT ANYBODY'S FEELINGS EXCEPT(CONSERVATIVES) TIME AND TIME AGAIN ie.TANCREDO YOU PIN HEAD HYBRID KEEP SUPPORTING THIS QUISLING AND YOU WILL GET JUST WHAT YOU DESERVE.YOU AND YOUR HYBRID ILK ARE QUISLING LEMMINGS.

From: David Burnett (fishlens@*******)
Subject: re: Celebrity Quotes page

Thanks for putting that celebrity quotes page up. The more people against BUSH the better.

Your so f*cking wacked out that you don't even know how that HELPS the democrats.

IMPEACH the f*cking NAZI BUSH. The F*CKING PR*CK has got to GO.

F*cking Right Wing Nazi *ssholes.

From: me youyou (bootersarechickensh*t@********)
Subject: JBS IS CONSERVATIVE, YOU'RE NOT.

WE ALL KNOW YOU'RE JUST ANOTHER SHILL FOR THE ISRAEL LOBBY (THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN, AS JESUS CHRIST CALLED YOU).

We're moving right up to the $200,000 mark with Rightroots and I encourage you to continue chipping in. But, if you've already given money to Rightroots and are looking for some other conservative candidates to support, here are some other non-incumbents that I think are worth helping, even though they're not Rightroots endorsed.

Mac Collins (GA-03): Mac Collins has a decent shot to knock off incumbent Democrat Jim Marshall in a Republican district.

Bob Corker (TN): Corker is in a real dogfight with Harold Ford for Bill Frist's Senate seat. This is a crucial race because if Corker wins, and right now, this looks to be about an even race, it probably puts a Senate takeover out of reach for the Democrats.

Randy Graf (AZ-8): The Republican Party really put him in a bad spot by backing his opponent in the primary and then throwing a tantrum and refusing to spend money on him after he won. But, after starting out down by 19 points, he has cut it down to 8 points and since he's in a Republican district, there is no reason to think he's done yet. It's not going to be easy, but Graf can still pull it out.

Joe Negron (FL-16): Negron is replacing Mark Foley and unfortunately, in order to vote for him, people have to pull the lever for Foley. On the other hand, it's a strongly Republican district, Negron has plenty of money, and the generic polling after Foley stepped down, but before Negron replaced him, wasn't bad. People are saying this seat is lost, but from where I'm sitting, Negron has a better than 50/50 chance to save the seat.

Martha Rainville: (VT-at large) Rainville is a bit of a RINO, but you know, it's Vermont, so she's probably the best we can do under the circumstances. Besides, it would be really nice to replace a socialist like Bernie Sanders with a Republican and Rainville is still in the hunt.

Vernon Robinson (NC-13): Robinson is up against Brad Miller in a slightly Democratic leaning district. Robinson is running an excellent campaign and although there is no polling out of the district yet, he should be in the hunt.

Looks like we upset our lousy neighbors to the South by having the audacity to try to keep their citizens from illegally entering our country with a wall:

"Mexico says it may go to the United Nations to challenge US plans to build hundreds of kilometres of fences on its southern border.

The Foreign Secretary, Luis Ernesto Derbez, said the plan was offensive.

Asked if he would take up the issue with the UN, a step some Mexican politicians have called for, Mr Derbez replied: "Without a doubt, we are examining, with the foreign relations legal team, what options are open at an international level and we will take them."

...The outgoing Mexican President, Vicente Fox, has called the plan "shameful" and compared it to the Berlin Wall. Mr Fox has spent his six-year term lobbying for a new guest worker program and an amnesty for Mexicans working illegally in the US.

....The president-elect, Felipe Calderon, who takes office on December 1, has also attacked the plans.

"One could stop more migrants with a kilometre of new roads and development than with a wall," he said."

Don't you love these indignant, ranting Mexican officials? They're like a bunch of burglars who are outraged, outraged I tell you, that people are starting to put locks on their doors and get guard dogs. Who do those people think they are trying to keep burglars out of their houses?

Oh, and they're going to call the UN on us! Ha, ha, ha, please don't call the mean, old UN! Please! Anything, but that! They might send us a sternly worded letter or something...well, if we allowed it. We are on the Security Council, ya know. Ha, ha! Chumps!

Well, take heart, folks -- if the wall is upsetting Mexico this much, that means that they think it's going to work. So, we may have a lot more work to do to take care of the illegal immigration problem, but the wall will be one of the biggest steps in the right direction that we've taken in decades.

Battle For Baghdad ‘a Critical Point’ In The War

France: Muslims Are Waging Civil War Against Us, Claims Police Union

Tribes Heed Call to Join Battle for Iraq (Free LA Times Reg Req)

Dow Hits 3rd Straight Record Close

John Mark Karr Porn Charges Dismissed

Ashcroft blasts 9-11 Commission

Human Rights Campaign Involved In Gay GOP Witchhunt

Page's Family: Leave Our 'Hero' Son Alone

Three More Former Pages Accuse Foley of Online Sexual Approaches

Dick Cheney: “It Makes No Sense” For House Speaker Dennis Hastert To Resign.

Internal Poll Suggests Hastert Staying On Could Devastate GOP (I Think That's Exactly Backwards)

Hastert Will Resign If It Helps The GOP In Nov.

Hastert Takes Blame For Page Scandal. House Speaker Says Will Work To Protect Teens Working For Congress

The House Ethics Committee Approved Nearly Four Dozen Subpoenas Thursday As Its Investigation Of A Page Sex Scandal

FBI Disputes Claims Of Soros Funded Group On E-Mails

Istook Aide Involved In Page Scandal

Public Opinion Strategies Poll: Cardin 47% Vs. Steele 43%

Robert Menendez: Tom Kean 46% Vs. Robert Menendez 41%

Democratic Organizer Quits After Calling Allen 'Macacawitz' (Free WAPO Reg Req)

Pics Come Out. West Virginia Democrat Nude, While Others Show At Least Two Men Whose Bodies Were Painted

Jonah Goldberg: The Case for Lightening Up

Future Women Leaders Of America: Beware Of Photoshop (This Is Great)

Patrick Hynes: GOP Crackup. One Libertarian's Dire View

Mike Gallagher: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Barbra Streisand Mocks Bush During Concert

Nazi Phrase Gets Football Coach Benched. Suspended A Game For Posting It On Players' Lockers

Students March To Demand An End To Protests (Funny)

The Dilbert Weasel Awards

Humor: Mark Foley Falls Victim To Fitter Species

Humor: In My World -- The Gay Menace

Website Of The Day: Althouse

According to the Drudge Report...

"According to two people close to former congressional page Jordan Edmund, the now famous lurid AOL Instant Message exchanges that led to the resignation of Mark Foley were part of an online prank that by mistake got into the hands of enemy political operatives, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.

According to one Oklahoma source who knows the former page very well, Edmund, a conservative Republican, goaded Foley to type embarrassing comments that were then shared with a small group of young Hill politicos. The prank went awry when the saved IM sessions got into the hands of political operatives favorable to Democrats. This source, an ally of Edmund, also adamantly proclaims that the former page is not a homosexual. The prank scenario was confirmed by a second associate of Edmund."

Guess what? Somebody actually called this. In the Conservatives With Attitude Podcast Roundtable that I participated in Tuesday night, high school teacher Betsy Newmark said that she thought it was a prank.

I "respectfully disagreed" with her because I didn't want to give the impression that we were blaming the victim and because, honestly, I didn't think that the average heterosexual high school kid would actually go so far as to have cybersex with a gay man as part of a prank. But, Betsy apparently figured out what was going on. It must be because she spends all day teaching kids that are around that age.

Here are Betsy's comments:

"Foley is a complete sleaze, he has got a real problem, but let me say, this kid is not an innocent kid. You read those things, he's leading him on. He's like a little Lolita. And what I picture, I picture this kid, he's in his dorm room, or wherever he is, and he has got 3 or 4 friends on and they're just giggling themselves silly. "Look what I got this Congressman to say." That's why he saved these IM messages, so he could send it around to all his friends and they could laugh at this poor, middle-aged Congressman who is so pitiful and has got some real sick problems. It just seems to be the type of thing that teenaged boys would have thought was so funny. This isn't some kid who is innocently appalled at what he's getting. He's leading that guy on."

What can I say other than, "Here's to Betsy; she nailed it right on the nose."

PS: Do keep in mind that Foley did send other disgusting messages to pages -- and those were still his words, even if he was getting pranked (So, he still should have resigned), but this definitely puts this thing in a different light. Were Foley's messages still disgusting? Yes. But, it appears, at least with this page, that he wasn't victimizing an innocent kid, he was being led on as part of a prank.

Update #1: Here's an update from Betsy Newmark.

One of the downsides to the internet age is that sometimes things that are better left private, end up splashed all over the blogosphere and the Drudge Report. Just to give you one example, the mainstream media may guard the name of any women involved in a high profile rape case, but these days their names almost always end up being ferreted out on the internet and can usually be found after doing minimal research. Some people may think that's appropriate since the name of the accused rapist is never shielded by the press, but good or bad, it's the reality we have to live with.

Another reality is that you have scumbags, like David Corn, out there spreading rumors about gay Republicans up on Capitol Hill. Corn did this in a particularly underhanded manner. He said that there was a list of gay Republican staffers on the Hill, said he wasn't going to reveal who they were, and then pointed out what offices some of the staffers worked in. In other words, Corn is trying to generate enough buzz to guarantee that the list goes public while simultaneously trying to pretend that his hands are clean.

Just exactly what is the relevance of revealing that "nine chiefs of staffs, two press secretaries, and two directors of communications," are supposedly gay, especially if they don't want people to know? It's nothing but a sleazy and malevolent attempt to personally go after people for the "crime" of being gay Republicans.

You'd think that at some point, people like Corn would realize that the behind the scenes sexual exploits of some press secretary or chief of staff is exactly as relevant as say, the behind the scenes sexual exploits of David Corn, Markos Zúniga, or John Aravosis. In other words, if the sex lives of mere Republican staffers and people like Jeff Gannon are going to be treated as fair game, why shouldn't the sex lives of liberal staffers, bloggers, and reporters be just as open to investigation?

That's not something I approve of, but it's the sort of vicious environment that people like Corn and these other liberal bloggers are creating...and we're already starting to see it happen.

There's a conservative blog out there called Passionate America that has revealed the identity of the page Foley had an explicit instant messenger session with.

While Passionate America deserves credit for doing some original research and for revealing that the page was 18 years old when the now infamous explicit conversation happened, they also have the kid's real name, his picture, and his AIM handle up. That is just totally irresponsible and a violation of the ex-page's privacy.

Bloggers should really start to think long and hard about the ramifications of outing people, posting their AIM handles, investigating the sex lives of non-politicians, and for that matter, posting people's home addresses online. The precedents that are being set today may turn into common practices in a few years and I can tell you, that is not something that anyone, especially members of the media, should want to see happen.

PS #1: It was hard to decide whether to link Corn and Passionate America, but since they're both linked in so many other places at this point, I think the cat is already out of the bag.

PS #2: While it is significant that Foley's most infamous perverse IM exchange with the page occurred after he was 18, don't forget that Foley seduced the kid when he was younger. Moreover, it's simply not appropriate for a 51 year old Congressman to be hitting on a page, male or female, under any circumstances.

Fred Phelps and the rest of his God Hates F*gs lunatics have cancelled their plans to protest at the funeral of those Amish children killed by a deranged gunman:

"A Kansas church group that planned to demonstrate at the funerals of five Amish girls killed in an attack on their one-room schoolhouse has dropped the picket plans, a reversal that came hours after Pennsylvania's governor offered the Amish police protection.

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church issued a statement today saying a representative will appear on a nationally syndicated radio talk show hosted by Mike Gallagher instead of picketing the funerals.

Gallagher's website indicated the group was offered an hour of airtime tomorrow in exchange for dropping the planned demonstration.

...In a statement on its website, the church blamed Rendell for the deaths of the Amish children because of comments he made about the Westboro group on national television several months ago.

"They're insane," Rendell responded when asked about the group's statement."

Mike Gallagher is a real hero here for keeping these monsters from ruining the funerals of those little girls. On the other hand, he has to have these pieces of human garbage on his show for an entire hour. Yeesh, poor guy...

Check out Larry Elder's latest column, "Virginia's Senator Allen suffers from double standard on racism," mentions some N-bomb quotes from Webb's books. So, it looks like the post I did on the topic finally broke out of the blogosphere to a wider audience.

How long will it be before our tax dollars here in the states end up being spent on "art" of this sort?

"The Melbourne-based Snuff Puppets company – which receives up to $50,000 in public funding – will put on a charity performance of The Twin Towers Show on Friday.

Snuff Puppet artistic director Andy Freer said the show included black humour and violence.

Performers use large puppets representing an Arab, an aircraft and the two World Trade Centre towers which come crashing down.

US President George W. Bush is represented by a shrub wearing a Texan hat. "It can be shocking, it's very black humour," Mr Freer said.

"Humour is obviously a good way to get a message across. It is controversial and of course people are going to be sensitive to it, but obviously that is the way we work."

The word "humor" gets mentioned a lot there, but what sort of human beings think mocking the deaths of the innocents who died on 9/11 is funny?

Oh, and when are the "Snuff Puppets Company" coming to America so they can get in on that crazy National Endowment of the Arts money? Hey, if they'll pay to stick a crucifix in urine, how much of a jump is this sort of thing, really?

PS: On a related note, in rich Western countries like Australia and the US, why should the government be in the business of paying for art? If the art isn't good enough to get by without some government bureaucrat doling out money for it, then it probably doesn't deserve to be seen by a wider audience anyway?

Hat tip to Tim Blair for the story.

"But now, the same Democrats who are incensed that Bush's National Security Agency was listening in on al-Qaida phone calls are incensed that Republicans were not reading a gay congressman's instant messages.

Let's run this past the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: The suspect sent an inappropriately friendly e-mail to a teenager -- oh also, we think he's gay. Can we spy on his instant messages? On a scale of 1 to 10, what are the odds that any court in the nation would have said: YOU BET! Put a tail on that guy -- and a credit check, too!

When Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee found unprotected e-mails from the Democrats about their plan to oppose Miguel Estrada's judicial nomination because he was Hispanic, Democrats erupted in rage that their e-mails were being read. The Republican staffer responsible was forced to resign.

But Democrats are on their high horses because Republicans in the House did not immediately wiretap Foley's phones when they found out he was engaging in e-mail chitchat with a former page about what the kid wanted for his birthday.

The Democrats say the Republicans should have done all the things Democrats won't let us do to al Qaeda -- solely because Foley was rumored to be gay. Maybe we could get Democrats to support the NSA wiretapping program if we tell them the terrorists are gay." -- Ann Coulter

US Border Fence Signed Into Law

Dow Hits 2nd Straight Record-High Close

Pennsylvania Man Charged Al Qaeda Plot Attempt

Court Says Eavesdropping Program Can Continue

Libs Rush The Stage To Prevent The Minutemen From Speaking

Brent Scowcroft: Bob Woodward Made Up Quotes Attributed To Me

Ex-Aide To Foley Says He Alerted Hastert's Office That Foley Was “Way Too Friendly” Toward The Pages". Hastert's Chief Of Staff Says It Never Happened (Free WAPO Reg Req)

House GOP Leaders Ask For Probe Into Alleged Foley Dorm Visit

ABC Online Glitch Leads To Identity Of Foley Accuser. Infamous IM Sex Chat Exchange Was With 18 Year Old

Alexander Backs Off Claim Hastert Knew

Pence Defends GOP Leaders In Page Scandal

More Foley Fallout: The Gay GOP Witchhunt Begins

Ally Calls For Hastert To Suspend Page Program

The Bogus Blog Behind Foley's Fall

China Tried To Poach Supergun Inventor

Britain: Muslim Police Officer Has Been Excused From Guarding London's Israeli Embassy

Marist Poll For 2008 Candidates

The Newest Michael Steele Ad: Taking Out The Trash

'Disgusted' Jeb Bush: Joe Negron Can Win Foley's House Seat

Robert Novak: The Current Political Outlook (Dems Gain 12 In The House, Gain 3 In The Senate, & Gain 3 Governorships)

Ann Coulter: Who Knew Congressman Foley Was A Closeted Democrat? (Awesome)

Andy McCarthy: 20-20 Hindsight

Michelle Malkin: It's The Predation, Stupid

Foley Won't Depress GOP Turnout

R.W. Apple Jr. Dies (RIP)

Stock Market At All-Time High, But....

Those IMs Aren't As Private As You Think

Original Photo For Michelle Bikini Photoshop Located

Spaniards Tone Down Exploding Mohammed At Fiestas

Jackals Attack Indian Village Injuring 35

Humor: Left Seeks "Conversion Camps" To Change Gays' Orientation

Website Of The Day: Lucianne

-- Right now, Robert Novak is projecting that the Democrats will pick up 12 seats in House, 3 seats in the Senate, and 3 Governorships. If that were the case, the GOP would keep control of Congress.

-- Speaking of which my current projections have the GOP losing 5 seats in the Senate, 9-14 in the House, and 3-5 governorships (Of course, those numbers can and will change). The good news is that the Foley scandal probably isn't going to keep going too much longer unless there's more info out there that implicates people in the House other than Foley. Also, the GOP's money edge should start to make a difference from about this point on.

-- Given how badly things are going right now, here's how I view things on the day after the election:

* Republicans retain control of the House and the Senate. That's good news.

* The Republicans only lose 7-12 seats in the House and 3-4 seats in the Senate. That's great news.

* The GOP only loses 4-7 seats and 1-2 seats in the Senate. That's almost an ideal scenario given how poorly this last election cycle has gone.

-- On the other hand, given that almost everything has broken the Democrats' way, failing to take back Congress should prompt some real soul searching. After all, if they can't take back the house in an environment as favorable to the Democrats as this one, that indicates that they have some serious problems.

-- Given how much the Republican base dislikes John Murtha and that the newest poll which shows Diane Irey within 10 points of him even though Murtha has an enormous cash advantage, the GOP should really consider trying to give her some help. Get some big names down there to campaign for her, do a big ad buy, give her some support. After going all out for people like Lincoln Chafee and incompetently damaging Randy Graf's campaign, getting behind someone like Irey would be a good idea.

-- Speaking of Chafee and the AZ-08 district where the Republican Party backed Rino Steve Huffman, isn't it time for the Party to take an official "hands off" policy in the primaries?

-- The people calling for Hastert to step aside now over the Foley scandal are not just wrong, they are holding him to a standard that is so bizarre and irrational that it would practically require the House Leadership to step aside every time a member of the Party engaged in illegal or unethical behavior. But, any way you slice it, this is a damaging blow for Hastert. He wasn't popular before this whole scandal and would have probably faced a challenge to his leadership position after the elections. Although it would be an ENORMOUS MISTAKE for him to step down right now, the spin on this incident almost guarantees that when that challenge happens, he's going to lose.

-- I like George Allen and given that the two latest polls have him up by 6 points after the dueling "N-Bombs" contest in Virginia, I think he's going to win. However, he has been tarnished enough by the accusations of racism and the poor handling of his campaign against Webb, that he's probably toast as a presidential contender. Who benefits from that? From what I'm seeing so far, Newt Gingrich, who is now the default "conservative" candidate in the race may be grabbing some of Allen's support -- and Mitt Romney also seems to be getting some new looks from people who are too turned off by McCain's treachery, Rudy's liberalism, and Newt's personal baggage to consider voting for them.

One of the many differences between the Republican and Democratic parties is the way that they deal with scandals. The Democrats' first instinct is always to circle the wagons and lash out furiously at anyone who attacks "their guy."

On the other hand, Republicans have a much different approach. Although, in all fairness, we do tend to be sympathetic to people on "our side," we're also much more willing to unload both barrels on fellow conservatives when we think it's deserved.

As a general rule, this policy serves Republicans well. It gives us more credibility with the general public, it helps cut down on hypocrisy, and it influences Republicans to behave better because they know that they can't count on the support of the people in their party if they do the wrong thing.

Moreover, it leads to better policy. Because Republicans complained so bitterly, we got Samuel Alito instead of Harriet Miers -- and we now have a wall that made its way through Congress instead of an illegal alien amnesty.

However, there are downsides to the Republican way of dealing with scandal.

First of all, it leads to a double standard that regularly allows Democrats to get away scot free with gaffes that destroy Republican careers. Although that's certainly unfair, it's probably a plus overall for the GOP. After all, because Democrats do regularly give each other passes on ethical issues they have a member of the KKK, a guy who a left a woman to drown to death, and a congressman who stuck $90,000 in bribe money into his freezer representing them up on Capitol Hill.

But then, there's the flip side of that equation: the frenzied bursts of pointless self-flagellation that the Republican Party seems to engage in every so often. We have Republicans turning on each other, like a school of piranha out of their minds with bloodlust, for the flimsiest of reasons -- and that's exactly what we're seeing happen in the aftermath of the Mark Foley scandal.

Mark Foley? He's a sexual predator who treated the Congressional Page program like a dating service. For that reason alone, he doesn't belong in Congress and if it turns out he broke the law, they should throw the book at him.

But, Dennis Hastert? Look at the situation he was put in back in 2005. He has someone come to him with slightly creepy, inappropriate emails from a Congressman to a page. But, the emails weren’t sexual, weren’t illegal, weren’t an ethics breach, and Foley didn't ask for a meeting with the page.

So, what is Hastert supposed to do about this other than have Foley told not to contact the page in question any more? Could he contact the Capitol Hill Police? Well, again, the emails weren't criminal. Could he refer the matter to the ethics committee? Why? There was no ethical breach. There have been suggestions that Hastert should have started an investigation into Foley's sex life, but that's ridiculous given what he had to work with. If you're going to start peering through someone's files, listening in on his phone calls, and asking dozens of people questions like, "Has Mark Foley ever touched you or made inappropriate sexual advances," then you better have more evidence than an email asking a page for a picture.

It's funny, if you think about it. We have had Democrats up in arms about listening in on the phone calls of foreign terrorists or using data mining to ferret them out -- and Republicans have bitterly criticized them for it. But now, we have Democrats and even some Republicans who are claiming that Dennis Hastert should resign his leadership position because he didn't start an exhaustive investigation into the background and sexual conduct of a gay American congressman based on nothing more than the fact that he sent some "overly friendly" emails to a page.

The FBI? They received these emails and didn't take it any further because they decided that there was nothing there. The hostile, liberal media? They got these emails and didn't publish them because they decided that there wasn't enough to go on. But, Dennis Hastert? He's supposed to look at these exact same emails, instantly decide -- perhaps by using Nostradamus-like psychic powers -- that Foley was guilty and then start looking for evidence to prove his hunch right.

This is the insane standard that normally sensible conservatives like Maggie Gallagher, Tony Blankley, and Michael Reagan are applying to Dennis Hastert -- and not only are they wrong, they're setting a terrible precedent, falsely accusing members of the House Leadership of choosing to look the other way while a sexual predator worked, and smearing the entire Republican Party by association with this malicious accusation. So maybe, just maybe, some of the people wildly raving about the Republican House Leadership should take off the hairshirts, calm down, and wait for all the facts to come out before they start calling for the heads of Republicans like Dennis Hastert who have, in the eyes of most Republicans, handled this matter properly from beginning to end.

The Smirking Chimp is an extremely popular liberal weblog. Just to give you an idea of how popular it is, it pulls roughly 4 times as much traffic as Right Wing News does. So, it's very fair to call it a mainstream liberal weblog.

So, what sort of "mainstream" ideas does this "mainstream" liberal blog promote? Well, what you're going to read below are some quotations from articles on the front page of the Smirking Chimp. Keep in mind that every single quote you're about to read comes from the authors of the posts on the front page, not from the commenters. So, it's fair to say that the sentiments you are about to read are representative of their opinion....and oh, what opinions they are!

As you read what the people over at the Smirking Chimp have to say, just remember that the people writing these remarks are not that dissimilar in mentality to the Democratic staffers up on Capitol Hill, the Democratic Party activists, and indeed, the very people who will take the reigns of power in the United States if the Democrats do well enough at the polls in November.

This is what most liberals in America believe today. Read it and weep.

"There have been too many instances in our nation's history when fear has led to gross violations of civil liberties. If you still believe that dissent is the highest form of patriotism, there's probably a spot in Bush's gulags for you. And depending on where you live, most of your neighbors won't even notice nor care if you disappear." -- Randolph T Holhut

"So we're here. No more shilly-shallying about whether America is beginning to resemble a fascist society. We're now plopped right down into it.

The slide into our particularly American brand of fascism is not total. There still are areas that, at least for a time, remain relatively free. And dissent is tolerated -- up to a point. (That point, by the way, is when that dissent starts becoming effective; watch the number being done on MoveOn.org, for example.)

On the issues that really matter, America is fast moving itself into an authoritarian, militarist, imperial state, one that has more in common with Stalinist Soviet Union and Hitlerian Germany than with traditional American society." -- Bernard Weiner

"Paris: They don't like the U.S. here. It's not personal. Except for an occasional rude snot, the French are friendly to individual Americans. They're not xenophobes. They just don't like our government. Regard George Bush as an obnoxious paysan.

What's new? A lot of Americans also believe that Bush is a blundering peasant.
Particularly those of us who don't spend hours each day glued to Fox News. What's changed is that France, Britain, and most of the other EU countries have moved on beyond dislike. Learned they can do without us. America's become the obnoxious cousin with the drinking problem that everyone tolerates because they're family. We continue to have our place at ceremonial occasions. Still show up in group photos. On the surface we appear to be part of the family. Only, we're not. We've become etranger. The French have grown tired of trying to figure us out. Given up and gone their own way." -- Bob Burnett

"Who would have guessed that after 6 years of slaughtering and torturing people in their own countries, the American people could be so incensed about one rogue congressman bumping boys in his off-hours. It just shows what trivial people we’ve become." -- Mike Whitney

“And so all of this,” I said, “all of it, is spun and sanitized and sexed-up and spoon-fed in sensationalistic and sugarcoated sound bites to you and your fellow phony patriots, assuring you it’s all part of a grand scheme to keep you safe from some scary plan of world domination by ‘Islamofascists’ that exists only in your masters’ heads.

“You buy the lies and then, worse, spread them, repeating them until they’ve become gospel, thereby making possible both the transformation of a land that once held forth truly lofty ideals into a neo-feudalistic, murderous rogue nation, and the perpetuation of catastrophic atrocities like Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, and next, Iran, where your heroes fully intend, soon, to use nuclear weapons.” -- Mark Drolette

"Bush is a lying, immoral coward who uses religion to spread hate and division. He is a vile, irredeemable fraud, and like most of those who crave dictatorial power, a mistake of history whose arrogance and megalomania are substitutes for leadership and decency.

America better wake up in a hurry or we are going to find ourselves sliding deeper into a fascist state and then wondering, "Gee, how did this happen?" And like many of the fascist experiments in the 20th century, the dictators get their dirty deeds done with the complicity of a cowardly legislature." -- Bill Gallagher

It's time to reevaluate the Senate races again, although it's still early and these rankings will change between now and the election. The higher the rating is, the greater the chance is that the seat might change parties.

Dark Horse Races: (These are real long shot races)

15) Jon Kyl* (R) vs. Jim Pederson (D)
14) John Ensign* (R) vs. Jack Carter

Competitive: (The challengers are behind, but within striking distance.)

13) Mark Kennedy (R) vs. Amy Klobuchar (D) (Dem Seat)
12) Maria Cantwell* (D) vs. Mike McGavick (R)
11) Debbie Stabenow* (D) vs. Mike Bouchard (R)
10) George Allen* (R) vs. James Webb (D)
9) Michael Steele (R) vs. Ben Cardin (D) (Dem Seat)

Dogfights: (If election were today, it would be a coin flip.)

7) Bob Corker (R) vs. Harold Ford (D) (Rep Seat)
7) Robert Menendez* (D) vs. Tom Kean (R)
6) Lincoln Chafee* (R) vs. Sheldon Whitehouse (D)
5) Jim Talent* (R) vs. Claire McCaskill (D)

Danger Zone: (If the election were today, there would be a take-over.)

4) Mike DeWine* (R) vs. Sherrod Brown (D)
3) Rick Santorum* (R) vs. Bob Casey (D)
2) Conrad Burns* (R) vs. John Tester (D)
1) Joe Lieberman* (I) vs. Ned Lamont (D) vs. Alan Schlesinger (R)

PS #1: Incumbents are marked with an asterisk.

PS #2: Lieberman's seat would flip if he won, since he is running as an independent.

PS #3: A Senate seat wild guesstimate based on the numbers that are out today: Republicans (50), Democrats (48), and Independents that would vote for Democratic control of the House (2).

PS #4: The GOP money edge should start to become apparent over the next couple of weeks. Cross your fingers and hope that helps.

PS #5: Lieberman is pounding Lamont, Burns is running an awful campaign, Santorum's momentum seems to have died, DeWine is gaining on Brown, Ford is running an excellent campaign, Kean can win if he doesn't run out of money, Steele is running an excellent campaign, Allen seems to be recovering nicely from the N-bomb controversy and Bouchard, McGavick, and Kennedy need to start closing the gap ASAP or they're going to be in the dark horse category in another two weeks.

Also see,

The Most Competitive Senate Races For 2006 (1st Edition)
The Most Competitive Senate Races For 2006 (2nd Edition)
The Most Competitive Senate Races For 2006 (3rd Edition)
The Most Competitive Senate Races For 2006 (4th Edition)

Correction: I forgot about Bernie Sanders. With him included, there are 3 independents voting as Democrats.

Correction to the correction: I was right the first time, there are only 2 independents running. Sanders will replace Jeffords. Doh!

Last night, I got together with Lorie Byrd , Betsy Newmark , and Ed Morrisey for a GOP USA Northeast Conservatives With Attitude Podcast roundtable on the Mark Foley scandal.

The podcast runs about 35-40 minutes and it wasn't bad for a blogger podcast, especially since I managed to drop the term, "naked piggy pile," and suggested, "hurling that baby as far as we can throw it," towards the end of the show. If you just can't get enough Mark Foley coverage, make sure to check it out here.

According to the Times Online....

"THE followers of Moqtada al-Sadr believe that the US invaded Iraq to prevent the return to Earth of their sect’s messiah-like figure, the Mahdi, or 12th imam.

Hojatoleslam al-Sadr claims that his militia is preparing for the day when the Mahdi, the last direct descendent of the revered Shia figure Ali, reappears. Shia believe that the Mahdi, who disappeared in 868, will bring justice to Earth.

At a prayer service in the central Iraqi city of Kufa on September 15, the cleric told a crowd of thousands that the Americans were collecting a dossier on the Mahdi to prevent his return. “Did you ever ask yourself about why all of this, the bloodshed and the prisons? Why are the brothers fighting each other for a political game planned by the Americans? This all happened because they (the Americans) are waiting for the Mahdi. This planning started ten years ago. They have a big file for Imam Mahdi and they just need his picture to complete it.”

So, we didn't do it for the oil, we did it for the Mahdi? That's a unique conspiracy theory, but isn't that one a little too farfetched even for the sort of dimbulbs that follow Moqtada al-Sadr around? After all, Muslims may consider Jesus to be a prophet, but the Christians don't view Muhammad the same way.

To Christians, Muhammad is a just a warlord who tricked a bunch of bandits into following him by making up a false religion. And the Mahdi? Christians, those who have even heard of the Mahdi, don't believe he's coming back.

Now generally, Christians -- especially in the United States where respect for people's religious beliefs is considered to be a virtue so important that it was enshrined in the First Amendment -- prefer not to make a big hairy deal out of the fact that they don't buy into other people's religions. But, when you have Muslims actually forming conspiracy theories that are based around Christians accepting Islamic religious beliefs, it seems prudent to clarify matters a bit.

"IT'S important we remember not just the big ideological struggles but also the individuals who took up the cause of cultural freedom and the defence of liberal democracy against its enemies.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Soviet communism, it became all too easy to pretend that the outcome of the Cold War was an inevitable result of large-scale, impersonal forces that ultimately left totalitarianism exhausted and democratic capitalism triumphant.

Nothing could be further from the truth. This was a struggle fought by individuals on behalf of the individual spirit. It's worth recalling just some of the philo-communism that was once quite common in Australia in the 1950s and '60s:

* Manning Clark's book Meeting Soviet Man, where he likened the ideals of Vladimir Lenin to those of Jesus Christ;

* John Burton, the former head of the external affairs department, arguing that Mao's China provided a model for the transformation of Australia;

* All those who did not simply oppose Australia's commitment in Vietnam but who actively supported the other side and fed the delusion that Ho Chi Minh was some sort of Jeffersonian Democrat intent on spreading liberty in Asia.

There is a view that the pro-communist Left in Australia in decades past was no more than a bunch of naive idealists, rather than what they were: ideological barrackers for regimes of oppression opposed to Australia and its interests. They were right in principle and part of a noble and moral cause.

The influence of the pro-communist Left in Australian cultural circles did wane over time - after Hungary and (Nikita) Khrushchev's secret speech in 1956 and further still after the brutal suppression of the Prague spring in 1968.

In the '60s and '70s, it largely gave way to a new Left counterculture, where again Quadrant served as a beacon of free and sceptical thought against fashionable leftist views on social, foreign policy and economic issues. In the eyes of the new Left, the Cold War became a struggle defined by moral equivalence, where the Soviet bloc and the American-led West were equally to blame, each possessing their own dominating ideologies. It became the height of intellectual sophistication to believe that people in the West were no less oppressed than people under the yoke of communist dictatorship.

In time, the world would luckily see the emergence of three remarkable individuals whose moral clarity punctured such nonsense: Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II. All of us here tonight owe a particular debt of gratitude to these three towering figures of the late 20th century." -- John Howard

PS: Everything Howard said about the lefties in Australia is even more applicable to the liberals in America.

New Foley Instant Messages; Had Internet Sex While Awaiting House Vote

Bush In Favor Of Foley Investigation

Attorney: Clergyman Molested Foley As Teen

Gingrich Says Hastert Shouldn't Resign Over Handling Of Page Scandal

Top 10 Democrat Sex Scandals in Congress

Miami Herald Publisher Resigns; Journalists Paid For Promoting Cuban Democracy

Public Opinion Strategies: John Murtha 55% Vs. Diane Irey 45% (Go Diane, Go!)

Caught On Video: John Murtha Openly Considers Taking A Bribe

MTSU Poll For The TN Senate Race: Corker 43% Vs. Ford 42%

Maria Cantwell Was The "Other Woman" In Lobbyist's Divorce

Lieberman Says He Has Been Promised Seniority

James Dobson: Romney's Mormon Faith Could Hinder Presidential Bid

'Tragic' Day For U.S. In Baghdad. 8 Troops Killed In Iraq's Capital

Plane Hijacked In Greece Lands In Italy

North Korea Says It Will Conduct Nuclear Test

Aussie PM John Howard Has Launched A Scathing Attack On Australia's Left-Wing Intelligentsia, Questioning Its Loyalty To The Nation Over The Past Decades

House Speaker Hastert Should Stay

Cal Thomas: Scandal? What Scandal?

Jane Galt: Just How Bad Is Our Fiscal Position?

Forensic Psychologist, Dr. Helen Smith, On The Shooting In The Amish School Today

Paul Farhi: The Redder They Are, The Harder They Fall

The Blogger Boobiethon

Humor: Top Ten Results Of North Korea's Nuclear Test

Humor: October Is Always Full Of Surprises

Video: You Ain't Woman Enough To Run This Land

Website Of The Day: Vets4Irey

"The (Washington) Times just lost its human resources manager because he tried to seduce a 13-year-old girl online. Using the logic of the Times, there is only one thing to do: Wesley Pruden, editor in chief, must resign." -- Don Surber

Update #1: Here's part of the description of the Daily Kos's dkosopedia on Gerry Studs, a Democratic Congressman who had sex with a male page. This is the April version of the entry. Since the Foley scandal broke and the Democrats decided to use it as a political issue, there have been a series of edits and this section has been removed.

"On July 20, 1983, Gerry was censured for having an affair 10 years earlier with a male page. He...turned his back] as the charges against him were read. The anti-gay crew had worked hard to demonize him (as they would [[Barney Frank]] several years later over allegations of a male prostitute having clients in Frank's apartment). Gerry held a press conference with the page and admitted to a relationship. They each firmly stated that what had gone on in their bedroom was their business, and absolutely no one else's."

That's right, folks. According to the people at the Daily Kos before the Foley scandal, criticizing a Congressman for having sex with a 17 year old page was nothing but the, "anti-gay crew (working) hard to demonize him."

Now today, the very same liberals who have that morally bankrupt view are insisting that people like Dennis Hastert resign for not figuring out sooner, with no hard evidence whatsoever, that Foley was another Studds.

Update #2: This is interesting. When I posted the material above, the most current edit of the paragraph above read:

"On July 20, 1983, Studds was censured for having an affair 10 years earlier with a male page. At the same time, Rep. Dan Crane (R-IL) was censured for having a relationship with a female page in 1980. Studds refused to apologize for his conduct and turned his back as the charges against him were read. He later held a press conference with the page and admitted to a relationship, and they each stated that what had gone on in their bedroom was their business, and absolutely no one else's."

Since then, the, "The anti-gay crew had worked hard to demonize him," has been put back in. Looks like they're embarrassed that they got caught.

John Ashcroft has a new book out called, Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice. As part of his promotional efforts, he did a teleconference with some bloggers, myself included.

Here are the notes that I took on Ashcroft's comments (These are not quotes). Enjoy!

-- The idea that wartime detainees must be charged as criminals is foreign to the history of the way the world is run. Furthermore, it would be immoral to release these people. It's like saying, "You failed your first time in an attempt to kill us, so we're going to give you another try." That's morally bankrupt.

-- The fact that these terrorists haven't obeyed the rules shouldn't elevate their status. Why should they get better treatment than a normal combatant?

-- The alternative to taking prisoners is killing them on the battlefield. So taking them as prisoners, no matter how long they stay there, is an act of mercy.

-- People who join an ill-defined fight, who join up with terrorists should have to bear the risks. Since we don't know when the war will be over, that's their problem, not ours. If they didn't want to risk sitting in a cell for the rest of their lives, they shouldn't have gotten involved.

-- I am distressed that the Supreme Court has applied the rules of the Geneva Convention to terrorists. Why should someone comply with the rules when you get all the benefits without complying?

-- These leaks are damaging to our national interests. In the deadly game of hide and seek, when the hiders know where the seekers are going to look, they won't hide there anymore. When the terrorists find out where we are looking because of these leaks, they stop hiding there.

-- Are we supposed to take people off the battlefield to testify that some terrorist was carrying a Kalashnikov instead of a hoe? These cases don't belong in a court room.

-- Think carefully about whom you vote for. Do you really want Nancy Pelosi running the House? You're never going to get perfect representation; all you really ever get to do is make the choice between two options. People can say, "Enough is enough," but they should ask if what they're getting is better.

Also see,

Mary Katharine Ham
Ace of Spades HQ

The Republican National Committee has sent out the email for Rightroots that they promised us when we met our goals in the 15 days challenge.

It went out this afternoon and we were at roughly $130,800 when they sent it out. At the moment, we're at $144,826 and rising. It'll be interesting to see where we end up when the momentum finally slows down.

As a side note, feel free to chip in a few bucks yourself. None of these candidates are incumbents and with the bucket of sewage that is the whole Foley scandal being tossed over Republican candidates, they could certainly use the help.

Update #1: Here's the text of the email:

First of all, thank you.

Because of you, the RNC shattered its online fundraising and volunteer recruitment goals for September and we are strongly positioned to maintain our majorities as we head into the final stretch of the 2006 election. With your help over the next 35 days, we will send a new generation of conservative reformers to Washington to stand up for our Party's core principles.

Maintaining our majorities is a team effort, and I want to call your attention to an innovative online effort to help our Party's rising stars win some of the most competitive House and Senate contests in America. It's called Rightroots, and it enables you to directly support the candidates of your choice in the races that will decide this election.

Take a moment to learn more and support our Party's rising stars today.

Control of Congress could come down to a few seats. Our candidates in these close races need all the support they can get. Can we afford to wake up on November 8 and learn that we fell short because one candidate didn't have the resources they needed to close the gap against an out-of-touch Democrat funded by unions and trial lawyers?

See the full list of candidates and help support our Party's rising stars.

For the first time ever, Rightroots gives conservatives the power to contribute directly to the most competitive Republican campaigns from a single Web site. Powered by ABC PAC and organized by the Web's most respected bloggers, the Rightroots-endorsed candidates represent some of the best new ideas from outside the Washington Beltway. These are bright, energetic candidates who are taking the fight right to the Democrats, and they deserve our support. Even $5 or $10 to each candidate on the list will make a difference.

Read more about each of our candidates in some of the most exciting races in America. Support the ones that interest you the most, or chip in a little bit to each one. And bookmark the site to keep track of our candidates' progress as Election Day nears.

Thanks again for your continued support of the RNC and all of our Republican candidates.

Sincerely,

Ken Mehlman
Chairman, Republican National Committee

P.S. Want to lend your support to the most competitive Republican candidates in America? Make a secure online contribution to the candidates you are care about all on one site - Rightroots, powered by ABC PAC. Thank you.

Maybe the Washington Times thinks the Democratic Party is going to take over in November and they want to get on their good side or maybe they just want to hold their heads high for once when they go to DC cocktail parties with their liberal pals. But, whatever the motivation behind it may be, the editorial that the Times wrote demanding that Dennis Hastert step down in response to the way the Foley scandal was handled is completely and utterly irrational. Here's a taste:

"The evidence was strong enough long enough ago that the speaker should have relieved Mr. Foley of his committee responsibilities contingent on a full investigation to learn what had taken place, whether any laws had been violated and what action, up to and including prosecution, were warranted by the facts. This never happened.

Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois, the Republican chairman of the House Page Board, said he learned about the Foley e-mail messages "in late 2005." Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the leader of the Republican majority, said he was informed of the e-mail messages earlier this year. On Friday, Mr. Hastert dissembled, to put it charitably, before conceding that he, too, learned about the e-mail messages sometime earlier this year. Late yesterday afternoon, Mr. Hastert insisted that he learned of the most flagrant instant-message exchange from 2003 only last Friday, when it was reported by ABC News. This is irrelevant. The original e-mail messages were warning enough that a predator -- and, incredibly, the co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children -- could be prowling the halls of Congress. The matter wasn't pursued aggressively. It was barely pursued at all. Moreover, all available evidence suggests that the Republican leadership did not share anything related to this matter with any Democrat.

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

What the Washington Times is actually calling for is a standard of justice that makes the Salem Witch Trials look calm and measured. What did Dennis Hastert and the House Leadership have back in 2005? Some emails from a congressman to a page that weren't sexual, didn't ask for a meeting, and didn't suggest any illegal activities. In and of themselves, the emails weren't criminal or an ethics breach, the parents didn't want the matter pursued, and the newspapers that were given the text of the emails found them to be of such little interest that they didn't even bother to print them.

Yet, AFTER the explicit instant messages become available, then the Washington Times determined, with the full benefit of hindsight, that the original "overly friendly" emails were such ironclad proof of sexual misconduct that the House Leadership should have started a far ranging investigation. The standard that the Washington Times is suggesting is so irresponsible that it would make even Tailgunner Joe raise an eyebrow. If that sort of flimsy evidence of misconduct were all it took to prompt a congressional investigation, you'd literally see thousands of investigations every year.

It's really a sickening spectacle. You have a scumbag like Foley who is preying upon pages and yet, the Democrats, for purely political purposes, are trying to pin his sick activities on the Republican Leadership and the press is going along with them. Meanwhile, Hastert, who seems to have handled this thing very well given what he knew at the time, is being pummeled by other Republicans as much as anything -- in my opinion -- because they don't think he's done a good enough job of restraining spending and because they don't like how he handled the William Jefferson investigation. In other words, a lot of the attacks on Hastert from the right have much more to do with political opportunism than they do with the particulars of this case. Although I'm not a big fan of Hastert either, falsely accusing him of covering up for a sexual predator so he can be kicked under the bus and replaced is a little too vulgar, even for the brass knuckled world of Washington Politics.

PS #1: Isn't it time to kill the page program? This is the second sex scandal related to these pages. Moreover, do we really want 16 year olds "learning about the real world," from the likes of Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank, Tom Foley, Robert Byrd, and William Jefferson?

PS #2: Just in case you're wondering, "Pulling a McCain," means to criticize a fellow conservative or Republican, undeservedly, for no other reason than to try to score points with liberals.

Over at the Weekly Standard, Ross Douthat & Reihan Salam acknowledge that conservatives are deeply unhappy with George Bush's reckless spending, but, yet and still, they seem to be trying to make the argument that Republicans should embrace big government policies and deficit spending:

"Rather than target the "supply-side" of government, or the amount of government spending, Bush's focus was on the "demand-side," or the need for government services. Personal accounts carved out of Social Security would build wealth and reduce reliance on government checks. Dividend tax cuts would reward a growing "investor class" while helping to build a self-sufficient "ownership society" in which the goods of American life were widely dispersed. Marriage promotion would foster stable families and diminish demand for welfare services.

All these ideas, of course, would mean more government spending (or larger deficits) in the short term. But their appeal was crucial to Bush's political success, and the expansion of the GOP majority that followed. Any post-Bush reckoning needs to begin with this reality--and with the acknowledgment that the president's spending heterodoxies saved the GOP from slipping back into minority status.

Bush's conservative critics often admit that his deviations from the small-government line bought him a temporary majority. But they insist he has sowed conservative disaffection that will leave the party worse off than when he found it. "It is largely the defection of conservatives that is driving the president's poll numbers to new lows," Richard Viguerie argued recently. The "opportunism" of compassionate conservatism, Andrew Busch suggested in a recent issue of the Claremont Review of Books, "will bring its own punishment. Indeed, it is already doing so."

No doubt there is conservative disaffection today. But it failed to manifest itself during Bush's first five years in office, when he was no less of a spender than he is now. If conservative voters have turned against their president, it's because of his perceived incompetence--over Iraq and Katrina--and his support for immigration reform, not No Child Left Behind or the prescription drug entitlement. Indeed, if there's any lesson to take from Bush's sky-high popularity among conservatives for most of his presidency, it's that the movement's rank and file cares far less about government-cutting than its activists do.

...None of this is to say that conservatives should be happy about Bush's spending choices. But it is to say that the president's domestic policy is in shambles not because he duped small-government conservatives into voting for big government, but because he hasn't delivered on the kind of big-government reforms he promised during the 2000 and 2004 campaigns. His administration has gone astray not because it has spent too much money, but because it has spent money badly."

This is a rather bizarre rewrite of history.

The prescription drug plan? There wasn't any enthusiasm for it from the base or the public, before or after it was passed. That monstrosity was shoved through Congress by the GOP for no other reason than to take a potential political issue away from the Democrats. No Child Left Behind was more popular, but again, it wasn't a big factor on election day.

To the contrary, George Bush and the GOP managed to make gains at the ballot box in 2002 and 2004, primarily because of National Security -- and, to a lesser extent in 2004, tax cuts and the gay marriage issue.

There are a lot of different problems that the GOP has had since then, but if you really boiled it all down to the simplest level, it would be:

1) The American people haven't been pleased with how things are going in Iraq and since there hasn't been a major terrorist attack in the US, they've become complacent about the threat from Al-Qaeda. This has significantly reduced the effectiveness of national security as an issue.

2) Tax cuts and gay marriage, two domestic areas where George Bush is strong, have been overtaken in importance by deficit spending and illegal immigration, two areas where George Bush is extremely weak.

3) Gas prices have soared.

Moreover, the idea that spending money hand over fist "on the right things" is some sort of magical election elixir for the GOP would seem to be disproven by the fact that the GOP is desperately struggling to keep control of Congress in a year when deficit spending is perhaps the single biggest factor, just ahead of illegal immigration, that's killing the base's enthusiasm.

The hot issues of the day? They come and go. But, getting control over spending is a conservative principle and eventually, if a Republican ignores that principle, there is going to be hell to pay -- which is something that George Bush and the GOP in Washington are going to see later on this year. They've spent 6 years dancing with the devil on spending and in November, the check is coming due. All we can do at this point is hope that the tab isn't so big that it costs them control of Congress.

Over at the WAPO, Susan E. Rice, Anthony Lake and Donald M. Payne argue that the United States should bomb Sudan into submission if need be in order to stop government sponsored massacres in that country:

"After swift diplomatic consultations, the United States should press for a U.N. resolution that issues Sudan an ultimatum: accept unconditional deployment of the U.N. force within one week or face military consequences. The resolution would authorize enforcement by U.N. member states, collectively or individually. International military pressure would continue until Sudan relented.

The United States, preferably with NATO involvement and African political support, would strike Sudanese airfields, aircraft and other military assets. It could blockade Port Sudan, through which Sudan's oil exports flow. Then U.N. troops would deploy -- by force, if necessary, with U.S. and NATO backing.

If the United States fails to gain U.N. support, we should act without it. Impossible? No, the United States acted without U.N. blessing in 1999 in Kosovo to confront a lesser humanitarian crisis (perhaps 10,000 killed) and a more formidable adversary. Under NATO auspices, it bombed Serbian targets until Slobodan Milosevic acquiesced. Not a single American died in combat. Many nations protested that the United States violated international law, but the United Nations subsequently deployed a mission to administer Kosovo and effectively blessed NATO military action retroactively."

This is an ironic argument on a number of different levels.

First off, you have Democrats who are basically saying, "To hell with the UN and international opinion, bomb Sudan if that's what it takes to get the job done." But isn't that exactly the same argument Republicans have been making about Iraq while Democrats have loudly protested? Indeed, it is.

Next up, we've told by the left, almost since day one that getting rid of Saddam and leaving a Democracy in our wake isn't worth the life of our soldiers. Moreover, Bush extensively talked about Saddam's brutality and the number of Iraqis he was murdering on a day in and day out basis. What was the reaction? Liberals poo-poo'd him. Well, OK, being consistent here, if they think that's the case, why in the world would they want us to go into Sudan? We have no interests at stake. There's nothing there worth the life of a single American soldier. If the liberal arguments apply to Iraq, they should apply to Sudan as well.

It's also important to note that the left never shuts up about the importance of our allies. Any effort we make that doesn't have the support of 60 or 70 nations, is supposed to be pointless. All right, so if our allies are so valuable, why do they need us to get involved? After all, we are kind of busy right now in Iraq and Afghanistan. If all it's going to take is a few bombing runs and a blockade to bring Sudan to heel, what do they need us for? Don't our allies have planes and ships? If our allies are such a big deal, why do they need us to deal with a nation as militarily insignificant as Sudan?

Those are questions for liberals, but if you're wondering what I think, I don't want the US to get involved militarily in Sudan for a variety of reasons, most of which I've already touched on. But, to break it down more clearly:

-- Our national interests aren't at stake.
-- There's nothing in Sudan worth losing a single American life over.
-- Our military is already busy elsewhere.
-- Our allies shouldn't need our help to handle this situation.
-- As we learned after our failed intervention in Somalia, it's not worth it to get involved unless we're willing to go all the way, because it encourages our enemies if we leave a job undone.

Would I support using US diplomacy to try to solve the situation? Sure -- and by the way, we're already doing that. Would I support sanctions against Sudan? Sure. Would it be appropriate for the US to play a support role for other nations that intervene in Sudan? Sure. But, our military? They don't need to be bombing Sudan, blockading Sudan, or on the ground in Sudan. That's a job for other nations to handle.

"Majority Watch has already taken a post-resignation poll in Foley's district -- on Sunday, Oct 1...The result is:

Mahoney (D)--50%
Foley (R) -- 43%

True, Sunday was maybe a bit early for the anti-Foley voter reaction to have peaked. On the other hand, the GOPs have a whole month for Republican voters to drift back home, especially when they are told that a vote for "Foley" is in fact a vote for a new GOP candidate, Joe Negron.... Actually, Majority Watch did a second poll,--but this time told voters that "[v]otes for Foley will count as votes for a new Republican nominee to be determined next week"--and the result was

Mahoney (D)--49%
Foley (R)--46%

Seems like a margin that can be made up in a district that, per Majority Watch, is 47-32 Republican, no?" -- Mickey Kaus

"But in today's politically correct culture, it's easy to understand how senior Republicans might well have decided they had no grounds to doubt Mr. Foley merely because he was gay and a little too friendly in emails. Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert's head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys. Are these Democratic critics of Mr. Hastert saying that they now have more sympathy for the Boy Scouts' decision to ban gay scoutmasters? Where's Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on that one?

...Yes, Mr. Hastert and his staff should have done more to quarantine Mr. Foley from male pages after the first email came to light. But if that's the standard, we should all admit we are returning to a rule of conduct that our cultural elite long ago abandoned as intolerant." -- The Wall Street Journal

Hastert Defends Handling of Page Scandal

FBI Knew In July About The "Overly Friendly" Foley E-Mails To Teen But Didn't Investigate Because, The Emails "Did Not Rise To The Level Of Criminal Activity."

E-Mails Show Foley Sought To Rendezvous With Page

Foley: The Democratic Playbook

Page Disputes Warning About Rep. Foley

Bush To Sign Bill To Prevent Internet Gambling

FBI Worries About Al-Qaida Ties To Mob (Free LA Times Reg Req)

Iraqi Tribes Launch Battle To Drive Al-Qaida Out Of Troubled Province

Hamas And Fatah Resume Gun Battles

Bill Frist: America Will Never Negotiate With Terrorists Or Support Their Entry Into Afghanistan’s Government

TN Senate Race: Ford(D) 48% Corker(R) 43%

Boehner Tells Hannity: GOP Has Lost House Seat In Florida

Allen Seeks To Refocus Campaign With Long Ad (Free WAPO Reg Req)

Mark Levin: Another Shake-Up?

Michelle Malkin: Reflections Of A Former Intern

Investor's Business Daily: Did Democrats Page Mark Foley?

Strategy Page: The Joke's on Osama

National Review: It Could Have Been Worse

Sebastian Mallaby: A Party Without Principles

The Wall Street Journal: The GOP Record. The Roots Of Republican Failures In Congress

Michael Barone: The Disappearing "US"

Clinton Had Eyes For Demi, Says Kutcher

Vlog: Bethany Talks Political Ads At Hot Air

Game: Invasion 3

Website Of The Day: Mary Katharine Ham's Blog

Over at the WAPO, Sebastian Mallaby has blasted the Democratic Party from the left for having no principles:

"After years of single-party government, the prospect of a Democratic majority in the House ought to feel refreshing. But even with Republicans collapsing in a pile of sexual sleaze, I just can't get excited. Most Democrats in Congress seem bereft of ideas or the courage to stand up for them. They clearly want power, but they have no principles to guide their use of it.

...If Democrats cared about poor women and minorities, they would be clamoring to reform Social Security. But instead they get a childish gratification out of stamping their feet and refusing to discuss the subject. They can't muster the courage to block the suspension of habeas corpus. But when it comes to blocking entitlement reform, the Democrats ride out to battle.

I'm not saying that Republicans are at all better, and of course elections breed some policy timidity. But the infuriating thing about the Democrats is that, just a decade ago, they knew how to empathize with voters' economic insecurities without collapsing into irresponsibility; they combined attractively progressive social policies with sensible pro-market fiscal responsibility. Now many in the party have lost interest in this necessary balance. If the Democrats win a measure of power next month, it's hard to see what they will do with it."

The column is worth checking out, but what's really fascinating is the reaction that some of the people on the left side of the blogosphere had to what Mallaby wrote. Predictably, they bashed Mallaby for attacking them, they bashed Republicans (because that's just what they do) -- but then, believe it or not, they went on to grumpily agree that the Democratic Party doesn't stand for anything. Here are three examples:

"We liberals tend to rate our candidates on campaign performance, which mostly boils down to how effectively our candidates smack down whatever lies the Right is spreading about them. It can be hard to explain to voters who you are when most of your time is taken up explaining who you aren’t. But that’s how it is, and we need to be better prepared for it. One way we could be better prepared is if the Democratic Party collectively used the time between elections to articulate a short list of basic principles. And, once articulated — repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. Until every voter in America can recite that list by heart.

It’s been a long time since Democrats have done that. Even Bill Clinton won mostly on conservative talking points about ending welfare and reducing deficits, not on uniquely Democratic Party principles." -- The Mahablog

"Republicans are typically given a pass for governing from an agenda unmoored from their small-government, strong-defense, fiscal responsibility platitudes -- indeed, those platitudes are championed as evidence that the party "knows what it stands for." It’s as if the espousal of principles matters more than adherence to them. Democrats, meanwhile, are expected to have a detailed philosophy and point-by-point plan that’s internally consistent. Power for power’s sake is only acceptable when Republicans rule." -- Sam Rosenfeld at Tapped

Hopefully Democrats will take over the House in November, the Senate and Executive is 2008 and overcome the objections from corrupt Republicans and every-bit-as-corrupt DLC monstosities to pass John Tierney's campaign finance bill. After that a reasonable discussion of principles can ensue. -- DownWithTyranny!

Look at this: you've got partisan, liberal Dems here saying that the Democratic Party doesn't even have a, "short list of basic principles," that they're seeking, "Power for power’s sake," and that maybe the Democrats can come up with some principles after the election -- and all this is supposed to be pushback against an article slamming them for not having any principles.

But -- but -- isn't it true that they do have principles, and that what they're really afraid of is openly articulating those principles to the American public?

Isn't it true that if you took -- let's say, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Michael Moore, Kos, Jane Hamsher, Nancy Pelosi, Maureen Dowd, Sean Penn, & Jesse Jackson -- put them all in a room together, and asked them what they thought about abortion, gay marriage, the United Nations, Wal-Mart, the Bush tax cuts, among other issues -- that most of them would give you about the same answer?

So, just like conservatives, they do have a common philosophy. Now, conservative Republicans? They tend to get in trouble for telling everyone what they believe in and then not living up to their principles.

But, Democrats? They have an entirely different problem: their principles are unpopular. That's why they don't want to come out and say, "We're for big government, more regulation, higher taxes, gay marriage, unrestricted abortion, gun control, Affirmative Action, massively increasing legal and illegal immigration, more lawsuits, a weaker US military, Kyoto, the International Criminal Court, and socialized medicine."

If the Democrats were as honest as Republicans about what they stand for, it would destroy them as a political party in the United States -- and they know it -- hence their knee jerk opposition to Republicans & their refusal to discuss their principles. The only way Democrats can get into power in most of the United States is by being dishonest about what they really believe and then hoping to get in power and make changes before the voters figure out what they're doing and kick them out.

It's not that they don't have any principles, as Mallaby says, it's that many of their principles are anathema to the American people.

Given the proximity of the election, it's not surprising that the Republican House Leadership has been smeared for how they handled the Mark Foley situation, but it is unfair.

Let's delve into this a bit.

Back in 2005, the House Leadership is alerted that Mark Foley has written some "overly friendly" emails to a page, that the page's parents want the emails to stop, and that they don't want to take this any further.

Here are the emails in question.

Now, are these emails a little creepy, inappropriate, "overly friendly," for a Congressman to be sending to a 16 year old page? Yes. But, let's talk about what these emails aren't: they're not sexually explicit or illegal and Foley didn't attempt to set up a meeting.

So, what action do you take if you find out about these emails? Do you refer them to Capitol Hill Police? Why would you? No crime had been committed.

Do you refer them to the ethics committee? Why would you? The emails aren't an ethics breach.

So, what ended up happening?

"(T)he Chairman of the House Page Board and the then Clerk of the House confronted Mr. Foley, demanded he cease all contact with the former page as his parents had requested, and believed they had privately resolved the situation as the parents had requested."

That seems like a totally appropriate way to handle it given the non-sexual nature of the emails and the fact that the parents didn't want it taken any further?

But, what about the sexual instant messages Foley sent to a page? The House Leadership learned about them not in 2005, but last week, just like everyone else, and they reacted appropriately to them:

"Unlike the first communication, the second communication was a set of instant messages that contained sexually explicit statements and were reportedly generated three years ago. Last week, ABC News first reported these sexually explicit instant messages which led to Representative Foley's resignation. These sexually explicit communications warrant a criminal referral in two respects. Initially, since the communications involve interstate communications, there should be a complete investigation and prosecution of any federal laws that have been violated. In addition, since the communications appear to have existed for three years, there should be an investigation into the extent there are persons who knew or had possession of these messages but did not report them to the appropriate authorities. It is important to know who may have had the communications and why they were not given to prosecutors before now.

Therefore, I also request that the Department undertake an investigation into who had specific knowledge of the content of any sexually explicit communications between Mr. Foley and any former or current House pages and what actions such individuals took, if any, to provide them to law enforcement. I request that the scope of your investigation include any and all individuals who may have been aware of this matter-be they Members of Congress, employees of the House of Representatives, or anyone outside the Congress."

So, did the House Leadership handle this issue correctly back in 2005? Yes, they did. Are they handling it right today? Yes, they are.

PS #1: Obviously someone has known about those explicit instant messages for quite a while and timed their release for maximum impact -- and of course, that would have to be a liberal group. So, who's really looking out for the teenage pages? The House Leadership which called for a criminal investigation the moment they found out about them or the liberals who kept those messages private for months in order to play political games with them?

PS #2: The St. Petersburg Times had the same emails that the Republican Leadership did back in 2005. They found them to be so innocuous that they didn't even bother to run a story on them. That's rather significant. If even liberal journalists are looking at these emails and saying, "there's nothing there," that tells you a lot.

Over at Cato, Kos is making one of the most ridiculous arguments ever: "The Case for the Libertarian Democrat."

"(T)here’s a whole swath of Americans who are uncomfortable with Republican/conservative efforts to erode our civil liberties while intruding into our bedrooms and churches; they don’t like unaccountable corporations invading their privacy, holding undue control over their economic fortunes, and despoiling our natural surroundings; yet they also don’t appreciate the nanny state, the over-regulation of small businesses, the knee-jerk distrust of the free market, or the meddlesome intrusions into mundane personal matters.

Like me, these were people who didn’t instinctively reject the ability of government to protect our personal liberties, who saw government as a good, not an evil, but didn’t necessarily see the government as the source of first resort when seeking solutions to problems facing our country. They also saw the markets as a good, not an evil, but didn’t necessarily see an unregulated market run amok as a positive thing. Some of these were reluctant Republicans, seeking an excuse to abandon a party that has failed them. Others were reluctant Democrats, looking for a reason to fully embrace their party. And still others were stuck in the middle, despairing at their options—despondent at a two-party system in which both parties were committed to Big Government principles."

The problem with the idea of a "Libertarian Democrat" is that philosophically, Democrats and Libertarians could not be farther apart. Libertarians believe in having a weak federal government and minimal government interference in people's lives. That's just the antithesis of what the Democrat Party has stood for over the last 70 years.

The Democratic Party supports a powerful, centralized form of government that regulates, spends, and taxes with absolute abandon. States rights? They give a little lip service to them if the state is doing something they like. Nothing more. The free market? The Democratic Party views corporations as evil, cash cows that are to be milked of their money to use for social programs.

Of course, that's not to say that Libertarians and Democrats have no similarities. They do, but the philosophical underpinnings are different.

On civil liberties, Republicans are more concerned about them than Democrats, but sometimes that doesn't show because both parties have different priorities. Republicans get worried about serial killers and rapists. Democrats get worried about people protesting abortion. Republicans get worried about terrorists flying planes into our buildings. Democrats worry about law abiding citizens who have guns. It's just hard to paint the Party of paging through the FBI files of political opponents, the Fairness Doctrine, and gun control laws, as a party akin to Libertarians on civil liberties issues. The truth is that the Democrats have few qualms about curbing civil liberties, they're just on the same side as Libertarians on some issues because #1) Democrats aren't serious about protecting us from terrorists #2) There are Republicans in office and Democrats tend to disagree with them on everything for no other reason than because they're Republicans.

Then there are social issues like abortion, gay marriage, and drug laws, where Libertarians and Democrats do find some common ground. But again, look to the philosophy. Libertarians oppose these laws because they believe that the government shouldn't be involved in them. Democrats have no problem with getting the government involved; they're just pro-abortion, pro-drug use, and pro-gay marriage.

That's not to say that Republicans align perfectly with Libertarians either. But, philosophically at least, conservatives and Libertarians are on the same page with regard to the size and power of the government and spending even if, in practice, it doesn't always work out that way.

In any case, the point is that "Libertarian Republicans" of the Ron Paul or Dick Armey persuasion may not be that common, but the moniker "Libertarian Democrats" is an oxymoron.

Correction: The original article blamed the Democrats for Ruby Ridge. While the Ruby Ridge trial occured during the Clinton administration, the actual event occurred while Bush Sr. was in office. So, since that was the case, the reference to Ruby Ridge was removed.

There are a lot of privacy zealots on the net -- and that's fine to a point. People shouldn't have spyware on their computers telling ad companies where they go. They shouldn't have search engines keeping a running tally of what their account or IP is looking for. People should be able to buy things online without having to worry about someone getting access to their credit card.

But, there's a real dark side to this zest for privacy on the net as well. For example:

"Authorities are searching for whomever posted a long list and description of supposed sexual encounters between dozens of high school students on the online networking site MySpace.com.

Oconee County Sheriff's officials said they were investigating who posted the gossip about North Oconee High School students Sept. 1-9. Since gossip isn't a crime, the sheriff's report lists the offense as distributing obscene materials to minors. The list describes sexual encounters and could be accessed by people younger than 18.

...Kilpatrick said that MySpace gave him the e-mail address of the person who created the site, but that it was an anonymous Yahoo account. He said he would subpoena BellSouth, the Internet service provider used to create the e-mail address, to try to determine who paid for the Internet service."

Obviously, if the person putting up this website would have had to have his name attached to it, it would have never seen the light of day. The same goes for trolls and people who post libel anonymously. Every time I read about an anonymous email remailer or some browser that hides IPS, I can't help but think that it makes it that much harder to get rid of disruptive people in the comments section or track down the people responsible for death threats.

Oh, and while we're on death threats, why is it not uncommon for people to get death threats on the net? Because people can post anonymously. Why is the internet so rude compared to "the real world?" Because you can post anonymously. Why do hackers break into people's computers? Because they think they can do it anonymously without getting caught. In fact, a lot of the worst things about the net are related, in some form or fashion, to the anonymity that the internet provides.

So, does that mean that this post is a call for legislative action? No. But, it is an attempt to counter the whole, "more privacy is always better," attitude that seems to be the default position of most netizens. If anything, we may have gone a little (not a lot) too far in that direction.

Is it wrong to root for a Fatah/Hamas Civil War in the disputed territories? Well, if it's wrong, I don't want to be right.

Let's face it: there will never be peace between the Israelis and Palestinians until the government has a monopoly on violence in the territories. That means, at a minimum, that Hamas or Fatah has to be destroyed. Plus, as an extra added bonus, the more time they spend fighting each other, the less time they get to spend murdering Jews.

"Heavily armed Hamas militiamen's efforts to break up anti-government protests on Sunday sparked gunbattles across the Gaza Strip that killed seven people in the worst internal Palestinian violence since Hamas took power.

Fatah group retaliated by torching the Palestinian Cabinet building in the West Bank. The violence comes amid growing frustration over forming a national unity government that could end crippling economic sanctions.

The fighting continued throughout the day and sent schoolchildren and other civilians in downtown Gaza City fleeing for cover."

You know, it's a little ironic that part of the appeal Hamas was supposed to have to the Palestinians was that they would be less corrupt than Fatah. However, Fatah may have been corrupt, but the government has been completely non-functional under Hamas. They have no money coming in, they have terrorists shooting at each other in the streets, they've lost a lot of sympathy in the international community, and Israel has beaten them into the ground, largely without a big outcry, because the conflict in Lebanon got all the attention.

But, whom do so many people blame for this? The people building a wall between their country and the Palestinian insane asylum on the other side. Trust me, if you lived there and you didn't want to run the Palestinians out of the area and take their land, you'd build a wall, too.

"Robert Redeker, 52, is receiving round-the-clock police protection and changing addresses every two days, after publishing an article describing the Koran as a "book of extraordinary violence" and Islam as "a religion which... exalts violence and hate".

He told i-TV television he had received several e-mail threats targeting himself and his wife and three children, and that his photograph and address were available on several Islamist Internet sites.

"There is a very clear map of how to get to my home, with the words: 'This pig must have his head cut off'," he said." -- Scholars For Peace in the Middle East

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Clemens Is Named In Drug Affidavit. The Star Pitcher And Five Other Players Used Performance-Enhancers, According To A Former Teammate Who Took Steroids, Prosecutors Say

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