I ONLY CAUGHT A COUPLE OF MINUTES of Hugh Hewitt on Larry King before the Insta-Daughter switched to “Fresh Prince” reruns. He was pushing his new book, Painting the Map Red, and talking about immigration. He’s been saying for a year that this is the Achilles’ Heel for the GOP in 2006, and he seems to be right.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

The Presidential political chess game with the Clintons in 2008 will involve a third party. It is too early to know the issue but it could be immigration.

The Clintons know the democrats cannot win a two candidate race in a national election. The red state blue state problem for democrats is getting worse, not better. The blue states are shrinking in population ratio to the red states at a time when the current ratio will not elect democrats. This is a generational trend that won’t change in Hillary’s political lifetime.

Bring in the third party candidate that erases the red state electoral advantage. Is it risky? Sure it is – a third party could pull more from the democrat base than republican but it depends on the issue.

Reagan is still defeating the democrat party in the south. The true Reagan Democrat (me) is a southern conservative ideologue who chooses common sense over ACLU causes. The democrats may never get us back – but a third party can. An articulate public figure could turn an issue like immigration into a rallying cry for Jacksonian and Reagan Democrats.

Perot did this with the NAFTA issue.

It could happen again.

Yes, the conditions are ripe (see below) for a third party challenge, and immigration is a strong issue.

SUPPORT FOR BANNED AUTHORS — from Borders?

SOME THOUGHTS on the first obligation of educators in times of disorder.

THOUGHTS ON religion, Starbucks, and a temple of the law.

IN BRITAIN, a “secret cabinet document” on avian flu is getting a lot of press, and it offers a rather apocalyptic scenario, though I detect the scent of politics in places. Of course, bird flu may never become human-transmissible at all, but this should certainly encourage governments to take the task of preparing for new outbreaks of disease more seriously. Bill Frist and Ray Kurzweil are behind such an effort.

MICKEY KAUS on Brad De Long on immigration.

MARK STEYN:

But, while Charlie Sheen is undoubtedly a valiant leader, you couldn’t help noticing it was followers the anti-war crowd seemed to be short of on the third anniversary. The next weekend half a million illegal immigrants — whoops, sorry, half a million fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community– took to the streets, and you suddenly realized what a big-time demonstration is supposed to look like. These guys aren’t even meant to be in the country and they can organize a better public protest movement than an anti-war crowd that’s promoted 24/7 by the media and Hollywood.

Well, OK, half the anti-war crowd aren’t meant to be in the country either, if they’d kept their promise to move to Canada after the last election. But my point is there’s no mass anti-war movement. Some commentators claimed to be puzzled by the low turnout at a time when the polls show Iraq increasingly unpopular. But there are two kinds of persons objecting to the war: There’s a shriveled Sheehan-Sheen left that’s in effect urging on American failure in Iraq, and there’s a potentially far larger group to their right that’s increasingly wary of the official conception of the war. The latter don’t want America to lose, they want to win — decisively. And on the day’s headlines — on everything from the Danish cartoon jihad to the Afghan facing death for apostasy — the fainthearted response of “public diplomacy” is in danger of sounding only marginally less nutty than Charlie Sheen. . . .

To win a war, you don’t spin a war. Millions of ordinary citizens are not going to stick with a “long war” (as the administration now calls it) if they feel they’re being dissembled to about its nature. One reason we regard Churchill as a great man is that his speeches about the nature of the enemy don’t require unspinning or detriangulating.

Read the whole thing, especially the last paragraph. Bush’s problem on the war is that he’s losing the Jacksonian base, which is no longer confident that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to win, regardless of foreign or public opinion.

UPDATE: Reader Barry Dauphin emails:

It does sound like the Jacksonians might be bailing on the President, but then they aren’t able to live up to Jackson. This isn’t 1940s where dissemination of information was controlled through filters called “editors” and prior to the plethora of relativisms of contemporary times. If the Jacksonians have another candidate in mind, let them name him/her. The silence will be deafening. If the Jacksonians truly believe their rhetoric, it’s time to suck it up and carry some of the rhetorical weight that someone like Steyn have been carrying. Too many are sounding retreat or simply grousing. Is this a long, hard slog or not? If it is, then the tough Jacksonians should stop acting like whining, ninny wimps and instead be constructive. Dealing with the anti-war rhetoric or with policy that is not exactly to their liking is surely easier than actually crafting and implementing policy in these times.

This is a fair criticism up to a point. But nobody but the President can be President, and you can understand people who would support a full-hearted war being unwilling to support a half-hearted one. On the other hand, I remain unconvinced that now is the time to go all Duncan Black on the mideast, and am reluctant to second-guess too much on that account.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Harmon Dow thinks the GOP has earned a loss in 2006:

Speaking as a card-carrying Jacksonian (Southern boy, Scottish on mother’s side, both families in their 4th century as Americans, & a military brat to boot) let me tell you what I’ve been thinking lately. My problem isn’t with Bush. I can live with him – I tell my liberal friends here in Chicago that he’s really really a moderate, but they can’t seem to grasp that.

My problem is with the Republicans who don’t back Bush. They didn’t back him on Social Security, they don’t seem to be backing him on immigration, & I don’t think they are stepping up to the plate & backing him on the war.

So this Jacksonian is thinking “why bother with the Republicans?” After the fall, we’ll have two more years with Bush in the White House. He’s not going to budge on the war. I expect I’ll just sit this one out.

The Congressional Republicans don’t seem to have put themselves in a good position. Bush haters won’t vote for them. But Bush-lovers may not either. Meanwhile, reader Fred Butzen writes:

You write, “… you can understand people who would support a full-hearted war being unwilling to support a half-hearted one.”

That is half correct. Large numbers of paleo-conservatives (e.g., W. F. Buckley) would be much happier with a Kissingeresque put-in-a-strongman-and-nail-down-the-lid strategy for the Middle East. They want no war at all.

What the paleos don’t understand is that since 1989, the world has changed utterly. Societies that are in juxtaposition influence each other and, sooner or later, arrive at an equilibrium; with the advent of globalization and the Internet, all societies now are juxtaposed. Bush grasps what so many of his critics on the right miss: either we will make them more like us, or inevitably they will make us more like them.

Iraq is the first step on a long road to making them more like us. It may be too little, it may be too late; but it’s a strategy, which is more than the isolationists of the left or right are offering.

I’ve always felt that Kissinger’s reputation exceeded his accomplishments. And yes, the alternative is surrender, or megadeaths. Meanwhile, here’s more on how things are going and what that means for strategy.

UPDATE: More thoughts on what we ought to be doing — more aggressive combat in Iraq, basically — here, along with a worry that America doesn’t have the stomach for it. You can’t win a war if you’re not willing to fight; Bush can be blamed for not being aggressive enough, of course, but he hasn’t had a lot of support at home.

I’m no expert, and hence don’t offer a lot of military suggestions, but I wonder if a Pablo-Escobar style campaign against the Iranian mullahs — going after their business interests, vacation homes, etc. using irregular forces — might be more effective than air strikes or an invasion, with less risk. For that matter, such an approach might work against some of the Saudi supporters of terror.

UNSCAM UPDATE: Claudia Rosett has coffee with Benon Sevan, a key figure in the oil-for-food scandal.

KARL ROVE’S MOLES ARE EVERYWHERE: Some places are banning the American flag to prevent “antagonism.”

As Jim Bennett says: Democracy, immigration, multiculturalism. Pick any two.

TOM ELIA ASKS: “Is it possible that professors and graduate students as a group are more depressed than the overall population? That’s the only conclusion I can come to after reading this particular story about a University of Texas zoologist who thinks the Earth would be better off if 90% of humans died.”

Given that academics’ lives are generally pretty good, it’s hard to see why academics should be more depressed. It’s perhaps better to say that academics’ negative statements get more media attention. The media tend to focus on the negative, even when it’s not really there.

And people in the media have good reason to be depressed, based on their declining readership/viewership.

JOE GANDELMAN thinks that the Jill Carroll case is a black eye for blogging. I do think that people are too quick off the mark sometimes, and that’s a phenomenon that seems to apply to bloggers on both left and right. On the other hand, it’s a phenomenon that seems to apply to non-bloggers, too. Still, bloggers should try to think about this stuff first, and — of course — should be quick to correct when they’re wrong. Just as Big Media should.

UPDATE: Paul Mirengoff wonders about the people who don’t have guns to their heads.

A BOTCHED SUICIDE BOMBING IN TORONTO? Nicholas Packwood emails this report:

The heart of Toronto’s trendy Yorkville shopping district was shocked to a standstill Sunday after an explosion killed one man at a Tim Horton’s outlet.

Police would not confirm early reports that a man had entered the washroom shortly before the blast with explosives strapped to his body.

Early reports are often wrong, so keep that in mind.

UPDATE: Reader John MacDonald emails:

While it’s not online yet, the Police Chief had a short press conference a half hour ago. They are only in the early stages of the investigation but he says the fire Dept told him there was an “intense flash”. He wouldn’t confirm whether it was an explosion or not.The deceased is still in there (washroom). They are sort of downgrading it to an accident or someone just trying to do themselves in. So early reports may or not be right.The eye witnesses described it as an explosion at first.

Stay tuned.

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE: “The active-duty Army and National Guard have met their recruiting goals for the past five months.”

ARMY OF DAVIDS AGGREGATION UPDATE: I’ve kind of fallen behind on this in recent days, but here’s an interview about the book in the latest U.S. News & World Report, and here’s another by Robert Bluey.

MICHIGAN’S ATTORNEY GENERAL is investigating the Ford Foundation. I don’t know anything about the specifics of this case, but I suspect we’ll see a lot more nonprofits coming under this kind of scrutiny given the growth in the nonprofit sector in recent years and the often insiderish and back-scratching nature of nonprofit governance. (Via newsalert). See this earlier post on the Ford Foundation and nonprofits generally, too.

THE CARNIVAL OF CARS is up!

BRIAN DUNN recommends the military site Stand-To!

THE FUNERAL’S OVER. IT WENT WELL, if you can say that about a funeral. Reader Thomas Stege wrote yesterday:

If you are like me, I think you will find the funeral and its aftermath to be somewhat of a happy event, what with catching up with aunts, uncles, cousins and friends that you wouldn’t normally see. 91 years is a long life. I’m sure you gave her much joy.

It did turn out that way: like a family reunion of sorts. That was her final gift to us, I guess. And yes, it was a long life, well-lived, but I’m still sorry she’s gone.

ANOTHER CIVIL RIGHTS VICTORY: “Yesterday the Nebraska legislature defeated a filibuster, and passed a Shall Issue law for licensing the carrying of concealed handguns by adults who pass a background check and a safety class. Nebraska’s governor has said he will sign the bill into law.” Read the whole thing for a summary of how things stand nationwide. Plus Jim and Sarah Brady shift to a far more reasonable position, assuming they mean what they say.

Amusing question in the comments: “If the GCA/Brady system doesn’t violate the rights of gun owners, then what possible objection could there be to implementing the same system for voting?”

ANN ALTHOUSE on blogging and the pro-Test movement. “I love the idea of one guy, alone on the other side of a big, active demonstration, and, instead of being outnumbered, using a blog to draw out the numbers on his side that exist, out there, dispersed in the general population.”

Here’s the pro-Test blog.

DARFUR UPDATE:

The violence in Darfur continues to spread into neighboring Chad. The fighting along the Sudanese border not only involves Chad rebel groups, but also pro-Sudanese government militias that have been raiding the refugee camps just across the border in Chad. To further complicate matters, Sudanese rebel groups have been coming to the refugee camps, to recruit, and to get supplies.

It still seems to me that arming the victims would be a good idea, although Jim Dunnigan has said otherwise.

And here, by the way, is a Darfur website recommended by U.Va. law student Mark Finsterwald.

DANNY GLOVER LOOKS AT the downside of a famous name.

NOT ENOUGH BOOTS ON THE GROUND:

The gangs of Haiti have become less political, and more just criminal and mercenary. The gangs make economic growth impossible, and play a major role in keeping everyone poor. It’s believed that at least 20,000 police are needed to regain control of the streets from the gangs, but only 7,000 cops are available. The UN also has 1,750 foreign police available, who are limited by their limited language and cultural skills. The 7,300 UN peacekeepers really can’t police, and are instead used for general security and raids on major gang operations. It would take 3-4 years to recruit and train 20,000 police. Even then, given Haiti’s two century history, there’s no assurance that this large police force would not be as corrupt as in the past. The biggest problem in Haiti is that no one has any new ideas that seem likely to break the cycle of corruption, poor government and poverty that has cursed the country since its founding.

Unfortunately, the place is hard to ignore, too. Culture, alas, does turn out to matter.

CANADA’S WESTERN STANDARD is a breath of fresh air on the Canadian media scene. It also needs your help.

RAMESH PONNURU:

1) Republicans are preparing to bring the Federal Marriage Amendment to a vote. So I guess the plan from now on is to do this in all even-numbered years, and then throw the idea aside in odd-numbered ones? I know a lot of people support the FMA for principled reasons, but a decisive number of Republicans are clearly just picking on gays for political profit.

2) Republicans are leading a charge to subject “527 groups” to onerous regulations. A minority of them, again, have sincere and above-board reasons for doing this. Most of them just want to shut down groups that are trying to beat them in elections. For a majority to restrict the freedom of others to try to boot them out is pretty much a textbook definition of the abuse of power, isn’t it?

Indeed.