DEMOCRATS MAKE CASE for voting Republican.

WHAT’S GOING ON IN BAGHDAD: Richard Fernandez of The Belmont Club interviews Iraqi blogger Omar of Iraq the Model.

UPDATE: Ralph Peters looks at the Zarqawi documents and finds a surprise.

Meanwhile, Michael Ledeen thinks the Zarqawi documents are fake. “I think the Iranians put out this sort of nonsense so that we’ll have trouble figuring out what’s real. And by the way, it wasn’t found in Zarqawi’s house, contrary to the triumphant announcement from the office of the Iraqi prime minister. So it’s certainly not a Last Testament. It’s just nonsense.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Marc Landers emails:

Glenn, if the documents are fake, as some are now claiming, how do we account for the over 700 terrorists captured, 140 killed and 28 weapons caches discovered since the Zarqawi documents were found? Not the mention the near 500 raids mounted as a result of capturing those documents.

One could take each “inaccuracy” in the documents that Leeden points out and argue that Zarqawi was writing to his audience, not us, and was using his arguments to rally his troops. Zaraqwi could have been saying to his troops, look attacks are down, more countries are starting to support the US and therefore we need to do a better job of increasing attacks, infiltrating the National Guard and stop countries from supporting the US.

Then again, the documents could be both fake and real. The real parts led us to a lot of terrorists and weapons caches and our side could have inserted the fake parts, which makes us look good. It’s baffling though, that if the “inaccuracies” are as blatant as Leeden asserts, why did someone do such a poor job of faking them?

I blame Dan Rather.

Hmm. He is looking for a new job . . . .

THE PAJAMAS MEDIA Blog Week in Review podcast is up!

PEOPLE wonder if I’m using the Nikon for these pictures. Nope — just this little Sony pocket camera. Every year I say I’m going to do some serious photography, but every year I just bring the little camera and snap a few pictures along the way. It’s vacation!

AUSTIN BAY: “The Iraqis know what their enemies want. Their enemies want (1) capitulation to fear and hopelessness and (2) civil war along sectarian lines (with that war possibly expanding into a regional war with Sunnis fighting Shias). But the Iraqis also know their enemies are failing. The courage and determiniation of people like Mr. al-Saghir are one very important reason.”

GEORGE W. BUSH: Gun felon?

MICHAEL BARONE:

It has been a tough 10 days for those who see current events through the prisms of Vietnam and Watergate. First, the Democrats failed to win a breakthrough victory in the California 50th District special election–a breakthrough that would have summoned up memories of Democrats winning Gerald Ford’s old congressional district in a special election in 1974. Instead the Democratic nominee got 45% of the vote, just 1% more than John Kerry did in the district in 2004.

Second, U.S. forces with a precision air strike killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on the same day that Iraqis finished forming a government. Zarqawi will not be available to gloat over American setbacks or our allies’ defeat, as the leaders of the Viet Cong and North Vietnam did.

Third, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announced that he would not seek an indictment of Karl Rove. The leftward blogosphere had Mr. Rove pegged for the role of Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. Theories were spun about plea bargains that would implicate Vice President Dick Cheney. Talk of impeachment was in the air. But it turns out that history doesn’t repeat itself. George W. Bush, whether you like it or not, is not a second Richard Nixon.

Nope. Read the whole thing.

WILLIAM JEFFERSON UPDATE:

Democrats voted last night to strip Rep. William J. Jefferson (La.) of a plum committee assignment while he is embroiled in a federal bribery investigation.

The 99 to 58 vote followed weeks of public and private wrangling, as Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) sought to take a strong election-year stance on ethics, while Jefferson’s allies — mainly fellow members of the Congressional Black Caucus — protested that he was being singled out for unfair treatment.

It’s that culture of corruption in Washington.

IS REP. MURTHA in trouble at home?

VARIOUS PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW what I think about the Supreme Court’s decision in Hudson v. Michigan, the knock-and-announce case. Being on vacation, I haven’t read the opinions yet, just the SCOTUSBlog summary.

I think, though, that it’s defensible legally, but not morally. That is, it’s not much of a stretch from the existing caselaw, but it produces a rule that seems inconsistent with the original meaning of the constitution, and common sense.

However, the exclusionary rule is a lousy remedy for these kinds of things, since it doesn’t protect those innocent of any crime. (If you’re innocent, there’s nothing to exclude). I’d rather see a rule that disciplines officers for improper behavior without regard to the exclusion of evidence.

I don’t see the Supreme Court fixing this any time soon. Congress could limit officers’ ability to barge in without announcing themselves (by banning it, say, except where there’s a serious risk of danger to people’s lives) by legislation. I doubt it will, though. States could do the same, of course, as regards state law enforcement. I think that they should.

If the fourth amendment’s right to be secure against unreasonable searches means anything, it should mean that citizens shouldn’t be at risk for having their doors kicked down unannounced except in truly extraordinary circumstances — and it should mean that when that happens, those citizens should have a remedy against the offending officers for any misbehavior without the judicially-created, and constitutionally unrooted, barriers of official immunity and the like. If it were up to me, I’d make the officers strictly liable for any damages resulting from any misbehavior. But I think we’ll only see this sort of thing, or any remedy at all, if Congress acts. I don’t think the Supreme Court is likely to fix this mess any time soon.

For some other stuff, which I generally agree with, see Radley Balko here and here.

ANOTHER LEGISLATIVE DEFEAT for the pullout crowd:

The Senate rejected a call for the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq by year’s end on Thursday as Congress erupted in impassioned, election-year debate over a conflict that now has claimed the lives of 2,500 American troops.

The vote was 93-6 to shelve the proposal, which would have allowed “only forces that are critical to completing the mission of standing up Iraqi security forces” to remain in 2007.

93-6. Kind of makes you wonder what all the fuss is about.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Andy Roth reports that Brian Bilbray has broken his word, voting for a bill full of secret earmarks after opposing them during his election:

Despite these strong words to clean up the earmark process, Bilbray promptly voted YES on the T-THUD appropriations bill yesterday, which contained over 1500 earmarks ($), most of which weren’t even in the final bill, but secretly hidden in committee reports.

Plus, he voted NO and NO and NO and NO on each of Jeff Flake’s anti-pork amendments.

Bilbray claims to be a fiscal conservative, but so far he’s off to a bad start.

Not very impressive in a guy who’s only been in office for a couple of days. But maybe he’ll do better, now that he realizes people are watching. If not, there’s another election in November.

Matthew Hoy is saying “I told you so.”

UPDATE: In the comments to Hoy’s post I see that some people in Bilbray’s district are talking about putting up a write-in candidate against him in November as a result of these shenanigans. Hope his office takes note.

HOWARD KURTZ featured this comment from USA Today Baghdad correspondent Cesar Soriano:

To all the Chairborne Rangers advancing the vast ‘negative media’ conspiracy from the safety and comfort of their parents’ basements: If you think you can do better, I’ve got a spare bed in the Baghdad bureau.

Blackfive offers a tart response. And here’s an email from Bill Roggio:

Hello Cesar,

I’d take you up on the offer of “the spare bed in the Baghdad bureau” but this Chairborne Ranger is currently embedded in Kandahar, Afghanistan. I’ll head back to Iraq for the second time this year after I make my next stop in the Horn of Africa. No doubt Michael Totten and Michael Yon, two other notable Chairborne Rangers, have similar plans.

You should also ask another group of Chairborne Rangers, such as Smash, Greyhawk, OpFor, and the other military bloggers who did their blogging from the combat zones to see if they need a rack. Oh, and I’ll be bypassing Baghdad to go outside the comfort of the hotel, so you can keep the spare bed.

Best wishes, be safe and enjoy the pool!

Ouch. I don’t know what J.D. Johannes would say. Appropriately enough, the title of Kurtz’s post is “Overshadowed” . . . .

UPDATE: Reader Michael Russo notes why this matters:

Notice strategy number one for Al Qaeda based on the Zarquawi safe house documents:

“1. To improve the image of the resistance in society, increase the number of supporters who are refusing occupation and show the clash of interest between society and the occupation and its collaborators. To use the media for spreading an effective and creative image of the resistance.”

Interesting that leveraging the western media before all else is (and presumably has been) Al Qaeda’s top strategy. And shitty how many people have bit hook line and sinker. I bet this will be head line news… or not.

Terrorism is an information war disguised as a military operation. The press plays a symbiotic role, and isn’t willing to address that.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More email here:

The folks who have screamed the loudest about the biased and negative media coverage of the Iraq War are by and large people like myself, servicemembers who have spent their time in the dustbowl of Iraq and know firsthand what an exceptionally poor job the media has done covering our actions. How poor do those who have been to Iraq perceive the coverage? Well, speaking for myself, there have been many times I have wondered if the reporters in Iraq were on the payroll of the insurgency. . . .

I don’t speak as someone who was confined to the relative safety of a basecamp during my deployment. I commanded a company running convoys throughout Iraq, and while on the roads we saw the worst of the insurgency – IEDs, mortars, and a couple of large ambushes. Despite the numerous engagements with hostile forces that I was involved in, I still have no doubt that the media coverage has been excessively negative, and I know that my opinion is shared by the overwhelming majority of folks who have worn the uniform in Iraq.

Read the whole thing.

MORE: What do I mean by “symbiotic?” Something like this:

More ink equals more blood, claim two economists who say that newspaper coverage of terrorist incidents leads directly to more attacks.

It’s a macabre example of win-win in what economists call a “common-interest game,” say Bruno S. Frey of the University of Zurich and Dominic Rohner of Cambridge University.

“Both the media and terrorists benefit from terrorist incidents,” their study contends. Terrorists get free publicity for themselves and their cause. The media, meanwhile, make money “as reports of terror attacks increase newspaper sales and the number of television viewers.”

The researchers counted direct references to terrorism between 1998 and 2005 in the New York Times and Neue Zuercher Zeitung, a respected Swiss newspaper. They also collected data on terrorist attacks around the world during that period. Using a statistical procedure called the Granger Causality Test, they attempted to determine whether more coverage directly led to more attacks.

The results, they said, were unequivocal: Coverage caused more attacks, and attacks caused more coverage — a mutually beneficial spiral of death that they say has increased because of a heightened interest in terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001.

(Via MediaBistro.) Yet the press — which can be exquisitely sensitive about being manipulated when it cares — isn’t worried about the way it’s being used here, at least not enough to matter in its coverage. But why should it be? Ethics might cost money.

God help ’em if the trial lawyers get ahold of this information. . . .

MORE: I wondered what J.D. would say, and he emails:

Bunk in the Baghdad Bureau?

A bunk? Air conditioning? Warm food? Cold water? Internet access?Satellite phone?

That sounds more comfortable than my mother’s basement.

I should be back in Iraq for a hitch this Fall and will probably spend most of my days and nights outside the wire–baking in the sun, eating MRE’s, sleeping in the dirt and enjoying nature in the fertile crescent.

Maybe you can drop in on Cesar and beg a cold beer.

AN INTERVIEW with independent military documentarian J.D. Johannes.

EUGENE VOLOKH: Stop playing so well, Harrison Bergeron!

ISLAMISTS RUN RAMPANT, but the Belgian authorities are cracking down on homeschoolers — including Paul Belien of Brussels Journal.

MICKEY KAUS: “Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias are skeptical of the Daily Kos crowd’s enthusiasm for Virginia’s ex-Gov. Mark Warner. Indeed, isn’t Warner a Democratic Leadership Council type of the sort the Kossacks ordinarily loathe? (The one time I’ve seen Warner in person was at a DLC event during the 2004 Democratic Convention, where he was proudly presented by DLC chief Al From).”

I had a phone call from Warner a couple of weeks ago, and found him fairly engaging. I think this is just more evidence that Kos is tacking to the center!

UPDATE: Related post on Kos and Warner from Chris Nolan. (Via Ed Cone).

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Bill Frist proposes “bold structural reform” to stop over-spending:

First, the Stop Over-Spending Act would give President Bush the line item veto. Pork thrives in Washington because it can be tucked away inside massive appropriation bills without any public deliberation or meaningful transparency. But, armed with special, fast-track procedures guaranteeing an up-or-down vote in Congress to specific spending cuts that the President proposes, we can subject pork barrel spending to the bright light of public scrutiny. Governors in 43 states have the line item veto and so should President Bush.

Second, the Stop Over-Spending Act would also put the American government on a two-year budget cycle – a proposal that I’ve strongly supported ever since I first entered the Senate eleven years ago. The American people deserve careful oversight of their tax dollars. Yet, over 15% of all federal spending, $160 billion, takes place without oversight or even formal permission to be funded. And the Office of Management and Budget reports that over a quarter of all federal programs either don’t work or can’t show any evidence that they do. Under biennial budgeting, Congress would have more time to cut bad programs, expand good ones, and root out waste.

Third, the Stop Over-Spending Act would reestablish statutory caps for discretionary spending – enforced by automatic, across-the-board spending reductions – as well as mandate a cap on the federal deficit (as a percentage of our GDP) – ultimately enforced by automatic, across-the-board reductions in entitlement spending.

Hmm. The line-item veto is pretty clearly an ineffectual gimmick, even if it can be done Constitutionally by statute. I’m not sure about the other proposals. Thoughts?

Meanwhile, Bill Allison says that Dennis Hastert has an earmark problem.

UPDATE: Reader Jonthan Hamlet likes the two-year budgeting program:

I’m a Federal Contracting Officer, so I actually spend the goverment’s money myself by awarding contracts and doing purchases, and I can say with authority that a two-year budget would do so much to cut down on federal expenditures and waste that it would eclipse any anti-pork movement. Why? Well, currently we have the infamous end of the fiscal year crunch in September where you have to spend all the money by the 30th or it “expires.” This leads to spending decisions at the program level that are apallingly stupid, like the warehousing of computers and cell phones and furniture and ordering pointless studies and mounds of unnecessary software or generally just hiring a bunch of contractors to perform unnecessary support services.

Aside from the general fact that the government isn’t the best at deciding how to spend its, a lot of this is driven by how little planning time program managers have. Before Congress actually passes a budget, they can’t do anything and what they’re going to get is up in the air. Usually the money doesn’t roll in until a budget is passed, passes through OMB, and then passes through whatever equivalent Department Secretary there is, which is usually sometime around March. This gives them about a six month window to spend what is supposed to be a year’s worth of money, as the rest of the time they are on continuing resolution funding, which is usually a deeply cut version of last year’s budget that prevents them from actually doing any new projects or activities. Six months is barely enough time to actually get together a plan for spending the money at all, let alone in a smart way.

I worked at the EPA for awhile, and they had so-called two year money. It was spent in an infinitely smarter way. Managers had a chance to plan the expenditures and take their time finding the best goods or services. They didn’t pointlessly buy stuff they didn’t need just so the money wouldn’t disappear. Switching the whole government over would make the financial management and the planning of all the expenditures much more sound. Right now it’s pretty much six months of guessing what we’ll get then an absolute feeding frenzy once we get it.

Are things really this bad? If so, then maybe this is more than a gimmick. Wouldn’t we lose a lot in terms of flexibility, though?

Another reader is less enthusiastic: “While a two year budget cycle may have some merit, I can’t see how it reduces spending. The issue here is a lack of discipline and will power, not a lack of time.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader who asks anonymity — but who knows a lot about budgeting — emails:

Hey Glenn – I thought I’d weigh in very quickly on the two-year budgeting debate. The immediate goal of two-year budgeting is not necessarily to cut spending (if Congress just wanted to cut spending, it has the means to do it right now!).

The immediate goal of two-year budgeting is to dramatically increase oversight of money that is spent by the government. Congress barely gives itself enough time each year to spend all of your money, let alone investigate how your money was spent last year. By requiring Congress to spend an entire year doing oversight (two-year budgeting requires Congress to do appropriations in one year and oversight in the next year), two-year budgeting will result in greater spending oversight and accountability.

One more thought – the overall reform bill is fantastic. It also includes “PAYGO” for emergency spending above a specified limit, multi-year statutory spending caps, and BRAC-style sunset commission for federal programs. Whatever one thinks about the line-item veto, the overall reform bill is definitely a step in the right direction.

Other thoughts, anyone?

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Ed Morrisey has much more on Hastert.

IS GOOD NEWS FOR BUSH GOOD NEWS? Not for everyone.

EMILY YOFFE: “In our society parents do a wonderful job of portraying the difficulties of having children: the financial burdens, the time drain, the guilt, the exhaustion. But we do a lousy job of getting across something else about parenthood: It’s fun!”

Read the whole thing, which is quite good, especially her comment on a guy who says he’s childless because he read Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb. (“This man didn’t have children because of a book that turned out to be wrong! Even Paul Ehrlich, who predicted that by the 1970s the world would be in the grip of catastrophic famine, had a child!”)

Related items here and here.

KARL ROVE SPEAKS OUT: Patrick Hynes has the video.

MORE KIDNEYBLOGGING, from Virginia Postrel.

AMAZON IS SELLING GROCERIES NOW: If anybody can make the Internet grocery business work, it’s them.

ILYA SOMIN: “I don’t often agree with Alan Dershowitz. But he is absolutely right to note the double standards inherent in the near-universal praise for the the recent targeted killing of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi when contrasted with the near-universal condemnation of Israel’s very similar targeting of top Hamas terrorists.”

Personally, I’m okay with targeting both.

UPDATE: More thoughts from Austin Bay.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s an article on targeted killing as legitimate self-defense from the Case Western Law Review.