Despite a mortal terrorist threat against America, Dem contenders see no evil

Whew, that was a close one. We suffered a big attack and were in mortal danger for a while, but we are safe now. Thank God, the war on terror is over. There are no Islamic extremists. Homeland security is not an issue. The only problem in Iraq is how to get out.
Wait, this is news to you? Then you didn't watch the Democratic debate Thursday. Or maybe you did watch, but since those unpleasant topics were completely or mostly ignored, you assumed the war was over and went to bed believing peace is at hand and Santa Claus is busy making toys at the North Pole.
It's not your fault. It's the Democratic presidential candidates who are sleepwalking through history.
As befitting a scrum with too many people and too little time, the debate touched on everything and illuminated nothing. Sen. Hillary Clinton made headlines by defending herself and for finally taking a position against driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, but the gaping hole was the absence of any serious reference to the war on terror. It's long been that way on the campaign trail, and now Dem debates reflect the dangerous drift.
A New York Times language tracker tells the tale. Neither "homeland security" nor "war on terror" were mentioned. Osama Bin Laden was a no-show and Al Qaeda got one mention. "Terrorism" got three, two of them by audience members asking questions, as did "extremists," with two of those in a single answer by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. On the other hand, "health" got 45 mentions and "education" 20.
It is remarkable how far the party and much of the country have strayed from the national unity of 9/11 (three mentions). While Bush's flawed handling of Iraq is a main reason, the unwillingness to separate his failure from the overriding truths of the continuing terror threat will come back to haunt not only Democrats, but the nation.
Consider that what was once called a generational war against an existential threat is now by unanimous consent of the candidates only a misguided Republican war in Iraq that must be ended immediately. What was once a bipartisan concern about the new phenomenon of lethal nonstate actors such as Al Qaeda has been reduced to denunciations of waterboarding and attacks on the Patriot Act. Thursday produced only one reference to Islam — when Sen. Joe Biden complained that Bush acts as though America is at war with the whole religion.
The one mention of the troop "surge" came from New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. He declared it "is not working," no matter what the facts say, and Obama made a similar point without using the word. Meanwhile, anything wrong in Iraq or the world is America's fault.
Threats from Iran were discussed, as was the crisis in Pakistan. But beyond the insufficient answers about those troubled nation states, answers best summed up by Clinton's promise of "aggressive diplomacy," whatever that means, the debate never touched the major development that even old Europe is taking seriously. The rise of backpack bombers and homegrown terror cells is a menace our allies are addressing and we are ignoring.
Last week, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced sweeping security measures that include searches and bag screenings at railroad terminals and car bomb barriers at airports and malls. Theaters, restaurants, hospitals, stadiums, schools and places of worship — any place where crowds gather — will get advice on how to train employees to carry out searches and evacuation drills, the Guardian newspaper reported. Other beefed-up measures focus on who is entering the country and where they go.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy told Congress that "we must fight terror together."
Germany is giving its security authorities more power after a group of Islamists were charged with violent plots and a government report said 900 members of Hezbollah were in the country. The sudden sense of danger is a shock, with one woman telling USA Today that Germany's refusal to fight in Iraq lulled the country into thinking Islamic terrorists would focus elsewhere; "we assumed that if we behaved well in the world, nothing would happen to us," the woman said.
Ah, if that woman lived here, she could run for President of the United States. I know which party would have made her feel right at home.

Harry "Dingy" Reid "We Must Lose in Iraq"

We have Dingy Harry yesterday (Thursday, November 15th), he had a press conference on Capitol Hill, and a reporter said to him, "[Dingy] Harry, do you have expectations that you'll be able to get 60 votes for this latest anti-war resolution of yours?" and Dingy Harry says, "I always have expectations to get 60 votes," and then added this.

REID: "I would hope that the Republicans have gotten the message the American people have had enough of this war and we've gotta bring our troops home. Bringing our troops home will be good for our military, but it will also be good for the American taxpayer. We cannot afford this war $12 billion dollars a month? We just can't -- we can't continue."

Readers, this man has literally taken leave of his senses. We're not spending $12 billion a month on the war. We're not spending $1.5 trillion dollars on the war, like the Democrats are saying. T The reason he wants out is because we are winning!

The surge is working, and they (the Democrats) can't withstand that politically. There has never been -- well, this is hard to say -- I think there's been very clear illustrations of the Democrat position on prior occasions, but this shows how invested in defeat that they are. We have stability in Baghdad. Al-Qaeda has been run out of there except for 13% of it. We have Petraeus representatives that are going to sit down with Mookie al-Sadr, other provinces, it's all going great. The word "victory" is starting to show up on certain people's lips, and this scares Harry Reid all to hell. This is sabotaging victory, pure and simple.

Also obvious: There are fewer votes now in Congress -- and less cause -- to cut off funding for the war than there were last Spring. A renewed campaign on the part of the hapless Democratic leadership to cut off the supplemental funds will only increase the public sense of Democratic futility. It will also play into the very real, and growing, public perception that Democrats are too busy wasting time on symbolic measures (like trying to cut off funds for the war) and shoveling pork (the water projects bill) to pass anything substantive for the public good. Too much time, and political capital, has been wasted fighting Bush legislatively on the war. I'm sure the President and the Republican Party are salivating over the prospect that Democrats will waste more time and capital over it this month...especially at a moment, however fleeting, when the situation on the ground seems to have improved in Iraq.

Democrats need to think this over very, very carefully before they proceed." Joe Klein, TIME Magazine, sounding a warning. This is the second. Richard Benedetto at The Politico.com yesterday issued the first warning to the Democrats, don't do this again, you're 1-and-40 on this, you're not going to win this one.

They have no way they can claim partial credit for the victory, because they had us losing this two years ago.

On a side note, Republicans are seeking a retraction from the Democrats of a report on the hidden costs of the war. "Senior Republicans on Congress's Joint Economic Committee called Tuesday for the withdrawal of a report by the committee's Democratic staff that argues that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost more than $1.5 trillion. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, and Rep. James Saxton, R-N.J., attacked the report on 'hidden costs' of the wars, calling its methodology flawed and asserting factual errors. The report, issued Tuesday, November 13th, said the war has cost nearly double the $804 billion in appropriations and requests for war funding thus far. It estimated that the wars have cost the average American family of four more than $20,000." If this war had cost $1.5 trillion, that's half of the federal budget. But more importantly, every social program that the United States Congress has introduced has never met, never been constrained by its actual proposed cost. Social Security, Medicare, you name it, Medicaid, they all balloon beyond what we are told they are going to cost.

I'll tell you what this is. It's just more of the same, of the Democrats trying to sabotage victory here, because they can't afford it. They are so invested in defeat. The surge is working. Baghdad's calm. People are moving back to Iraq. Entrepreneurial capitalism is starting to break out in the place. This is the worst thing that could happen to these people, particularly going into a presidential election year. You know, you guys in the Democrat Party, we're going to win this! We are the United States of America. We're going to win it despite your attempts to secure defeat, and you haven't done anything that will allow you to lay claim to helping win this. They haven't done anything. The only way they could do that would be to come up and lie and obfuscate and say that their protests and their resolutions and their clamoring for change forced Bush into a policy that worked. But they can't even do that, and they've opted out of that. They are still trying to sabotage this, and the latest business here, Dingy Harry suggesting lying, that the Republicans had better understand where the American people are on this. The American people are nowhere near on the war in Iraq where they are on illegal immigration.

And Democrats, if you want I think a very good comparison for you to make would be, take all the pork-barrel spending from the beginning of the war and compare it with war costs, and I think it would be very interesting. But, here we have a war that is being fought in the interests of US national security. This is one of the legitimate responsibilities of government. If you start placing a cost on freedom, you're going to lose it. If you put a limit on how much you will spend on freedom, you are going to lose it. All you have to do is go find not just the pork, find the waste, the fraud, the multiple redundancies of programs in the federal government and point out positive people like Harry Reid, "Senator, how is it that you never complain about cost overruns on any other government program other than the war in Iraq?"

With that being said, I think even fighting this comparing dollars to dollars, accepts their (Democrats) premise, and I think that's where so many of us get wrong in arguing with these people is accepting their premise. When we accept the premise and argue on their terms, it's a waste of time. What we need to point out is why they're making the argument and what the purpose of it is. They are attempting to engage this country in defeat. They are trying to secure it. They're doing everything they can to turn public opinion against it because we're winning. The word "victory" is coming out of more and more mouths now about what's happening in Iraq, and that's the worst political outcome for the Democrats possible.

CNN Caves, But Clinton Will Still Struggle

Will Wolf get his testicles back now that he laid down?

Under Wolf Blitzer's gentle questioning, Hillary was able to avert another debate meltdown in the Nevada Democratic debate held last night, November 15. Asked about driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, a compliant, even subservient, Blitzer accepted Hillary's one word answer, "No," with no follow up. Had a better journalist been asking the questions -- like Tim Russert -- he would have followed up the bland negation with probing questions about why she is yet again flip flopping on the issue.
The Drudge Report today highlights that a "senior adviser to the Hillary campaign" said, earlier today, that Blitzer "was outstanding, and did not gang up like Russert did in Philadelphia. He avoided personal attacks, remained professional and ran the best debate so far." And Blitzer checked his journalistic instincts at the door.
The debate also had a pro-Hillary bias in the amount of time allocated to Bill Richardson -- who had the third longest face time in the debate. Since Richardson is auditioning for Vice President on Hillary's ticket, using his time to plead for unity among Democrats (i.e. don't bash Hillary), giving him the mike was the same as giving it to Hillary.
The audience booed when candidates knocked Hillary, likely also a part of her defensive debate strategy.
The net result was that CNN saved Hillary from yet another embarrassing debate performance.
Hillary's strategists had prepared the way for Blitzer's cave-in by pre-debate warnings against a repetition of Tim Russert's aggressive -- and appropriate -- questioning during the Philadelphia debate. Their loud criticisms of the bias of the "all boys club" paved the way for Blitzer's intimidated and pathetic performance during the Nevada debate.
And, of course, the reason Hillary could give a clipped one word answer to the question of driver's licenses for illegal immigrants was that New York's Governor Eliot Spitzer withdrew the proposal the day before the debate. Spitzer, who is not universally known for his weakness or even flexibility, likely pulled back the proposal to spare Hillary the embarrassment of having to defend it in the Nevada debate.
Hillary, for her part, couldn't oppose the license proposal as long as Spitzer was backing it. She could not risk a public split with the Democratic governor of her adopted home state. Spitzer takes no prisoners and would probably make Hillary pay dearly for any public criticism of his initiative. But once he pulled it back, the New York Senator was free to say her "no."
In the meantime, Hillary used the debate to spin her platitudes. One of them was a peon against unsafe toys. "We shouldn't permit the import of unsafe toys," she said in the debate. But her chief strategist, Mark Penn, is the CEO of Burson-Marsteller, the PR company that represents Aquadots, the company that makes the bead toys with an adhesive coating that turns into the date rape drug when children suck on it. Penn is paid by Burson based on a percentage of their profits, and Aquadots is an important contributor to their bottom line. But neither Blitzer nor any of Hillary's Democratic opponents were alert enough to call the conflict into question.
But the underlying inability of the New York Senator to take clear positions on issues has not been assuaged and will increasingly become apparent to the savvy voters of Iowa and New Hampshire. Her slide in Iowa has reached dangerous proportions. She now holds a bare two-point lead over Edwards and a three-point lead over Obama in that pivotal early state.
Despite Blitzer's and CNN's assistance, she might have trouble in Iowa.

Movin' On Up

A Treasury study refutes populist hokum about "income inequality."
If you've been listening to Mike Huckabee or John Edwards on the Presidential trail, you may have heard that the U.S. is becoming a nation of rising inequality and shrinking opportunity. We'd refer those campaigns to a new study of income mobility by the Treasury Department that exposes those claims as so much populist hokum.

OK, "hokum" is our word. The study, to be released today, is a careful, detailed piece of research by professional economists that avoids political judgments. But what it does do is show beyond doubt that the U.S. remains a dynamic society marked by rapid and mostly upward income mobility. Much as they always have, Americans on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder continue to climb into the middle and sometimes upper classes in remarkably short periods of time.

The Treasury study examined a huge sample of 96,700 income tax returns from 1996 and 2005 for Americans over the age of 25. The study tracks what happened to these tax filers over this 10-year period. One of the notable, and reassuring, findings is that nearly 58% of filers who were in the poorest income group in 1996 had moved into a higher income category by 2005. Nearly 25% jumped into the middle or upper-middle income groups, and 5.3% made it all the way to the highest quintile.

Of those in the second lowest income quintile, nearly 50% moved into the middle quintile or higher, and only 17% moved down. This is a stunning show of upward mobility, meaning that more than half of all lower-income Americans in 1996 had moved up the income scale in only 10 years.

Also encouraging is the fact that the after-inflation median income of all tax filers increased by an impressive 24% over the same period. Two of every three workers had a real income gain--which contradicts the Huckabee-Edwards-Lou Dobbs spin about stagnant incomes. This is even more impressive when you consider that "median" income and wage numbers are often skewed downward because the U.S. has had a huge influx of young workers and immigrants in the last 20 years. They start their work years with low wages, dragging down the averages.

Those who start at the bottom but hold full-time jobs nonetheless enjoyed steady income gains. The Treasury study found that those tax filers who were in the poorest income quintile in 1996 saw a near doubling of their incomes (90.5%) over the subsequent decade. Those in the highest quintile, on the other hand, saw only modest income gains (10%). The nearby table tells the story, which is that the poorer an individual or household was in 1996 the greater the percentage income gain after 10 years.

Only one income group experienced an absolute decline in real income--the richest 1% in 1996. Those households lost 25.8% of their income. Moreover, more than half (57.4%) of the richest 1% in 1996 had dropped to a lower income group by 2005. Some of these people might have been "rich" merely for one year, or perhaps for several, as they hit their peak earning years or had some capital gains windfall. Others may simply have not been able to keep up with new entrepreneurs and wealth creators.

The key point is that the study shows that income mobility in the U.S. works down as well as up--another sign that opportunity and merit continue to drive American success, not accidents of birth. The "rich" are not the same people over time.

The study is also valuable because it shows that income mobility remains little changed from what similar studies found in the 1970s and 1980s. Some journalists and academics have cited selective evidence to claim that income mobility has declined in recent years.

But the 58% of lowest-income earners who moved to a higher income quintile in this study is roughly comparable to the percentages that did so in several similar studies going back to the late 1960s. "The basic finding of this analysis," says the Treasury report, "is that relative income mobility is approximately the same in the last 10 years as it was in the previous decade."

All of this certainly helps to illuminate the current election-year debate about income "inequality" in the U.S. The political left and its media echoes are promoting the inequality story as a way to justify a huge tax increase. But inequality is only a problem if it reflects stagnant opportunity and a society stratified by more or less permanent income differences. That kind of society can breed class resentments and unrest. America isn't remotely such a society, thanks in large part to the incentives that exist for risk-taking and wealth creation.
The great irony is that, in the name of reducing inequality, some of our politicians want to raise taxes and other government obstacles to the kind of risk-taking and hard work that allow Americans to climb the income ladder so rapidly.

As the Treasury data show, we shouldn't worry about inequality. We should worry about the people who use inequality as a political club to promote policies that reduce opportunity.

Dems Tie Up Fiscal 2008 Appropriations Bill in PorkBy

November 12, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Despite the Democrats' pledge to get control of their addiction to wasteful spending, their mountain of pork-barrel provisions has prevented Congress from passing its appropriations bills for fiscal year 2008. Exhibit A is a Labor, Health and Human Services and Education bill taken up by the Senate last week that was filled to the brim with pork (also known as earmarks). This "minibus" bill was engineered by Democrats attempting to draw just enough votes to make it veto-proof.
Last week, Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., one of the stellar anti-pork warriors in Congress, said this about the bill: "The Democrats have made a joke of the ethics bill as they packed this 'minibus' with thousands of pet projects. They have shown their (so-called anti-pork) rules to be laughable and ineffective, as they continue to spend millions on secret earmarks and hide their pork from public scrutiny."
All told, this spending package contained at least 2,200 earmarks worth more than $1 billion. Among them, a $1 million earmark for the Thomas Daschle Center for Public Service and Representative Democracy at South Dakota State University, named for the former Senate Democratic leader.
Democrats often go to great lengths to disguise what their earmarks are actually for, making their intentions sound far more important than they are. A $300,000 item that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., inserted into the Labor-HHS-Education spending bill for a museum called Exploratorium, which promotes "teacher recruitment, retention, and improvement initiative" (http://www.exploratorium.edu/).
But the Exploratorium's Web site describes the museum as "a collage of hundreds of interactive exhibits in the areas of science, art, and human perception" Its mission is "to create a culture of learning through innovative environments, programs and tools that help people nurture their curiosity about the world around them."
Pelosi's pet project has been given more than $33 million in federal-funding earmarks and grants over the past six years. "Should federal taxpayers be subsidizing a wealthy city's museum during a time of deficit spending?" asked the Senate Republican Conference's Pork Report?
In addition to bogus descriptions of what your tax dollars are paying for, lawmakers are fond of sticking their earmarked projects into bills that have nothing to do with the bill's purposes. Here's a sampling of the kind of pork found in the Defense Appropriations Act that was uncovered by Citizens Against Government Waste:
-- $23 million for the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) added by Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa. It has received more than half a billion dollars since 1992, but the Justice Department, which administers the program, wants to shut it down, calling its work "duplicative."
-- $4.8 million for the Jamaica Bay Unit of Gateway National Recreation Area sought by Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., described as "a wealth of history, nature and recreation."
-- $3 million for "The First Tee," added by House Democratic Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina. The program's Web site says its mission is to "promote character development and life-enhancing values through the game of golf." -- $1.6 million for the Allen Telescope Array, inserted by Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., whose work is "dedicated to astronomical and simultaneous search for extra-terrestrial intelligence observations."
So far the Democrats' fiscal year 2008 appropriations bills would dish out a total of $24.7 billion for more than 12,000 earmarked expenditures like these.
"Democrats can't let go of their pork and keep inventing new ways to stop new earmark disclosure rules and bypass the old ones," DeMint said last week. "These shameful backroom deals are exactly why Congress continues to earn its lowest approval rating in history," he said. When will it stop? When the voters decide they have had enough.

THE TRUTH ON TRADE

PRESIDENT Bush urged Congress yesterday to pass four pending trade agreements, telling a White House audience that open markets boost economic growth, raise standards of living by creating higher-paying jobs and deliver more choice and better prices for consumers. Despite claims to the contrary by populist opponents of trade expansion, the president has the facts and decades of experience on his side.
Critics of trade counter that real wages have stagnated while the middle class has been squeezed by a loss of jobs to low-wage competitors such as China and Mexico. Democrats in Congress point to those anxieties to justify their opposition to any meaningful trade-expanding legislation - including pending free trade accords with South Korea and Colombia and renewal of presidential trade-promotion authority.
Like so many assumptions about trade, the belief that more global competition has somehow lowered the living standards of the average American worker and family is just a myth.
The critics have it all wrong: The middle class isn't disappearing - it's moving up.
The Census reports that the share of U.S. households earning $35,000 to $75,000 a year (in '06 dollars) - roughly, the middle class - has indeed shrunk slightly over the last decade, from 34 percent to 33 percent. But so, too, has the share earning less than $35,000 - from 40 percent to 37 percent.
It's the share of households earning more than $75,000 that's jumped - from 26 percent to 30 percent.
Trade has helped America transform itself into a middle-class service economy. Yes, the country's lost a net 3.3 million manufacturing jobs in the past decade - but it's added a net 11.6 million jobs in service and other sectors where average wages are higher than in manufacturing. Most of these new jobs are in better-paying categories, like professional and business services, finance and education and health services.
Trade and globalization have also helped bolster the balance sheets of American households by delivering higher incomes, lower interest rates and wider investment opportunities. From 1995 to 2004, the real median net worth of U.S. households jumped by 31 percent, boosted by rising home values and stock prices. (Even with the recent housing slump, average home values remain more than 2.5 times what they were a decade ago, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index.)
Despite frequently heard worries, American families are not "drowning in debt." Yes, total household debt has risen in the past decade - but total assets have risen in value even faster.
On average, U.S. households spent 14.4 percent of their income on debt payments in 2004, not much different from the 14.1 percent they spent in 1995. The bulk of what we've borrowed hasn't paid for groceries or big-screen TVs but for housing - which, again, has appreciated strongly in the last decade.
Like so many assumptions floating around about trade, the belief that more global competition has somehow lowered the living standards of the average worker and family is just a myth. In fact, trade has delivered lower prices, higher worker compensation and an upwardly mobile middle class.
Critics of trade repeat as a mantra that real wages have been stagnant since the 1970s. But the data on real wages exclude benefits - which have been rising as a share of worker compensation. Those data also rely on a cost-of-living index that has systematically overstated inflation and thus understated real income gains.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average real hourly compensation earned by Americans has actually grown by 22 percent during the past decade - even as trade and other measures of globalization have grown rapidly.
Trade has brought us lower prices on a broad range of goods - from fruits and vegetables to consumer electronics and automobiles - stretching the paychecks of U.S. workers.
Household incomes have also been rising. When they point to a small decline in median household income compared to 2000, opponents of trade are cherry-picking their numbers. That year was the frothy peak of a decade-long expansion. Use 1996 - the comparable point in the previous business cycle - as the baseline, and you see a 6 percent rise in median income.
Convincing Americans that we are worse off than we were in years past has become a popular line of attack against globalization and trade expansion. But trade has played an important part in the positive story of long-term gains in hourly compensation, household income and net wealth.
To promote further progress for U.S. workers and their families, Congress and the administration should work together to pursue policies that expand the freedom of Americans to participate in global markets.

A Failure to Lead

The Democratic Congress is more interested in acting out than in taking positive action.

This week is the one-year anniversary of Democrats winning Congress. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid probably aren't in a celebrating mood. The goodwill they enjoyed after their victory is gone. Their bright campaign promises are unfulfilled. Democratic leadership is in disarray. And Congress's approval rating has fallen to its lowest point in history.
The problems the Democrats are now experiencing begin with the federal budget. Or rather, the lack of one. In 2006, Democrats criticized Congress for dragging its feet on the budget and pledged that they would do better. Instead, they did worse. The new fiscal year started Oct. 1--five weeks ago--but Democrats have yet to send the president a single annual appropriations bill. It's been at least 20 years since Congress has gone this late in passing any appropriation bills, an indication of the mess the Pelosi-Reid Congress is now in.
Even worse, the Democrats have made clear all their talk about "fiscal discipline" is just that--talk. They're proposing to spend $205 billion more than the president has proposed over the next five years. And the opening wedge of this binge is $22 billion more in spending proposed for the coming year. Only in Washington could someone in public life be so clueless to say, as Sen. Reid and Rep. Pelosi have, that $22 billion is a "relatively small" difference.
Let's also be clear about what it means to roll back the president's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, as the Democrats want to do. Every income-tax payer will pay more as all tax rates rise. Families will pay $500 more per child as they lose the child tax credit. Taxes on small businesses would go up by an average of about $4,000. Retirees will pay higher taxes on investment retirement income. And now we have the $1 trillion tax increase proposed as "tax reform" by the Democrats' chief tax writer last month.
Failing to pass a budget, proposing a huge spike in federal spending and offering the biggest tax increase in history are not the only hallmarks of this Democratic Congress.
Beholden to MoveOn.org and other left-wing groups, Democratic leaders have ignored the progress made in Iraq by the surge, diminished the efforts of our military, and wasted precious time with failed attempts to force an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. They continue to try to implement this course, which would lead to chaos in the region, the creation of a possible terror state with the third largest oil reserves in the world, and a major propaganda victory for Osama bin Laden as well as for Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah.
After promising on the campaign trail to "support our troops," Democrats tried to cut off funding for our military while our soldiers and Marines are under fire from the enemy. For 19 Senate Democrats, this was simply a bridge too far, so they voted against their own leadership's proposal. Democrats also tried to stuff an emergency war-spending bill with billions of dollars of pork for individual members. Now the party's leaders are stalling an emergency supplemental bill with funding for body armor, bullets and mine-resistant vehicles.
After pledging a "Congress that strongly honors our responsibility to protect our people from terrorism," Democrats have refused to make permanent reforms of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that the Director of National Intelligence said were needed to close "critical gaps in our intelligence capability." Their presidential candidates fell all over each other in a recent debate to pledge an end to the Terrorist Surveillance Program. Then Senate Democratic leaders, thinking there was an opening for political advantage, slow-walked the confirmation of Judge Michael Mukasey to be the next attorney general. It's obvious that this is a man who knows the important role the Justice Department plays in the war on terror. Delaying his confirmation is only making it harder to prosecute the war.
Democrats promised "civility and bipartisanship." Instead, they stiff-armed their Republican colleagues, refused to include them in budget negotiations between the two houses, and have launched more than 400 investigations and made more than 675 requests for documents, interviews or testimony. They refused a bipartisan compromise on an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, instead wasting precious time sending the president a bill they knew he would veto. And they did this knowing that they wouldn't be able to override that veto. Why? Because their pollsters told them putting the children's health-care program at risk would score political points. Instead, it left them looking cynical.
The list of Congress's failures grows each month. No energy bill. No action on health care. No action on the mortgage crisis. No immigration reform. No progress on renewing No Child Left Behind. Precious little action on judges and not enough on reducing trade barriers. Congress has not done its work. And these failures will have consequences.
Democrats had a moment after the 2006 election, but now that moment has passed. They've squandered it. They have demonstrated both the inability and unwillingness to govern. Instead, after more than a decade in the congressional minority, they reflexively look for short-term partisan advantage and attempt to appease the party's most strident fringe. Now that Democrats have the reins of congressional power, their true colors are coming out and the public doesn't like what it sees.
The Democratic victory in 2006 was narrow. They won the House by 85,961 votes out of over 80 million cast and the Senate by a mere 3,562 out of over 62 million cast. A party that wins control by that narrow margin can quickly see its fortunes reversed when it fails to act responsibly, fails to fulfill its promises, and fails to lead.

Ted Kennedy: Expert on Drowning

KENNEDY: "My concerns began with Judge Mukasey's answers to our questions about waterboarding. Waterboarding is a barbaric practice in which water is poured down the mouth and nose of a detainee, to simulate drowning. It's an ancient technique of tyrants. The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in, and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to an almost instant plea to bring the treatment to a halt. If it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right, it is controlled death. "

You know, I think we're missing the whole point of all this anyway. We get focused on the details of waterboarding. Who the hell are we talking about here? We're talking about the type of lowlifes that behead people and plot things like 9/11, and not just in this country, but around the world. They are still doing it. It's time we stopped beating ourselves up. We are good people, folks. We are a fine nation. It's time we stopped beating ourselves up over the steps we take to protect ourselves.

Our Own Worst Enemy

As soon as Congress gets done torturing Michael Mukasey over waterboarding, perhaps they should turn their energies to the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin."

Here's an idea for the ivory-tower philosophers in Congress: As soon as they get done torturing Michael Mukasey over waterboarding, perhaps they should turn their energies to the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Or maybe they can figure out what happened to Judge Crater or who shot Liberty Valance. Solving any of those cases would be more entertaining and less harmful to national security.
Though late last week, key Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein announced their support for Mukasey, his confirmation is still uncertain — because he won't say clearly that waterboarding is both torture and illegal under American and international law. He should stick to his guns because his reasons are sound — he doesn't know exactly what techniques the classified interrogation programs use, and there may be legal jeopardy questions involved.
But there's an even better reason he shouldn't give the answer much of the Senate wants. The demand is nonsense of the highest order; one that can only undermine the national effort in a time of war. Why should we spell out for our enemies, on TV no less, exactly how far interrogators can go? Sometimes less is more, and this is one of those times. Leaving something to the imagination can be an effective tool in fighting a war in which the rules of civilization don't neatly apply.
Either that, or let's send a brigade of nitpicking lawyers to Iraq and Afghanistan and let them fight the terrorists with their legal briefs.
The seriousness of the attack on Mukasey reveals an utter lack of seriousness about the reality of the war. And it comes from the same place as the earlier attempts to set arbitrary deadlines for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and to de-fund the military. All are borne out of a childlike frustration at the inability to muster the votes to get Bush to change course. But with the surge working, levels of violence in Baghdad falling and our casualties declining, a new Democratic punching bag had to be found.
With Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales gone, it's Mukasey's turn. And so we have the threats to scuttle a perfectly fine candidate to replace Gonzales and put the Justice Department back on track. Bush met his critics more than halfway by naming someone Schumer suggested. For his efforts, he gets only obstruction. And for his efforts to serve his country in a time of need, Mukasey gets humiliated, his impeccable credentials trashed in another proxy fight over the war.
In a perfect world, the questions being put to Mukasey are reasonable. But in the real world of fighting Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists that routinely target civilians, the questions are not only unreasonable, they are the wrong questions entirely.
The ultimate issue for America is not whether we should use waterboarding on terror suspects. The issue is whether we should be publicly debating and explaining every jot and tittle of our interrogation tactics when the results could be the difference between life and death for thousands of Americans.
Osama Bin Laden must be laughing in his cave at us as we try to draw bright red lines in the shifting sands of clandestine operations. His theory that people always gravitate toward the strong horse perfectly fits this foolish fixation.
Don't get me wrong — I think waterboarding is torture — by the norms of life in peacetime and even civil confinement. And so are a number of other techniques that are routinely used by the CIA and special-operations groups in harm's way. Common sense tells us that.
Moreover, I wouldn't want any of our troops to be subject to these tactics, and I hope we don't have to use them, except in extraordinary situations like the ticking-bomb scenario.
But peacetime values are often the wrong measurement for wartime policy. It does not follow that, just because we find certain practices repugnant in our living rooms, we have to create a battlefield policy that satisfies our personal tastes or even our national ideals. War by definition is at odds with our ideals. Shooting people, blowing them up, bombing — there's nothing idealistic about it.
By all means, let's not descend into barbarism or become like the beasts we're fighting. But above all, let's not torture ourselves in ways that undercut our efforts in this life-and-death struggle.

The Petraeus Curve

Special Thanks to "The Times"

Serious success in Iraq is not being recognised as it should be.

Is no news good news or bad news? In Iraq, it seems good news is deemed no news. There has been striking success in the past few months in the attempt to improve security, defeat al-Qaeda sympathisers and create the political conditions in which a settlement between the Shia and the Sunni communities can be reached. This has not been an accident but the consequence of a strategy overseen by General David Petraeus in the past several months. While summarised by the single word “surge” his efforts have not just been about putting more troops on the ground but also employing them in a more sophisticated manner. This drive has effectively broken whatever alliances might have been struck in the past by terrorist factions and aggrieved Sunnis. Cities such as Fallujah, once notorious centres of slaughter, have been transformed in a remarkable time.

Indeed, on every relevant measure, the shape of the Petraeus curve is profoundly encouraging. It is not only the number of coalition deaths and injuries that has fallen sharply (October was the best month for 18 months and the second-best in almost four years), but the number of fatalities among Iraqi civilians has also tumbled similarly. This process started outside Baghdad but now even the capital itself has a sense of being much less violent and more viable. As we report today, something akin to a normal nightlife is beginning to re-emerge in the city. As the pace of reconstruction quickens, the prospects for economic recovery will be enhanced yet further. With oil at record high prices, Iraq should be an extremely prosperous nation and in a position to start planning for its future with confidence.

None of this means that all the past difficulties have become history. A weakened al-Qaeda will be tempted to attempt more spectacular attacks to inflict substantial loss of life in an effort to prove that it remains in business. Although the tally of car bombings and improvised explosive devices has fallen back sharply, it would only take one blast directed at an especially large crowd or a holy site of unusual reverence for the headlines about impending civil war to be allowed another outing. The Government headed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has become more proactive since the summer, but must immediately take advantage of these favourable conditions. The supposed representatives of the Iraqi people in Baghdad need to show both responsibility and creativity if the country's potential is to be realised.
The current achievements, and they are achievements, are being treated as almost an embarrassment in certain quarters. The entire context of the contest for the Democratic nomination for president has been based on the conclusion that Iraq is an absolute disaster and the first task of the next president is to extricate the United States at maximum speed. Democrats who voted for the war have either repudiated their past support completely (John Edwards) or engaged in a convoluted partial retraction (Hillary Clinton). Congressional Democrats have spent most of this year trying (and failing) to impose a timetable for an outright exit. In Britain, in a somewhat more subtle fashion admittedly, Gordon Brown assumed on becoming the Prime Minister that he should send signals to the voters that Iraq had been “Blair's War”, not one to which he or Britain were totally committed.
All of these attitudes have become outdated. There are many valid complaints about the manner in which the Bush Administration and Donald Rumsfeld, in particular, managed Iraq after the 2003 military victory. But not to recognise that matters have improved vastly in the year since Mr Rumsfeld's resignation from the Pentagon was announced and General Petraeus was liberated would be ridiculous. Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have to appreciate that Iraq is no longer, as they thought, an exercise in damage limitation but one of making the most of an opportunity. The instinct of too many people is that if Iraq is going badly we should get out because it is going badly and if it is getting better we should get out because it is getting better. This is a catastrophic miscalculation. Iraq is getting better. That is good, not bad, news.

Few Questions, Senator Clinton...

Finally, Hillary Clinton is getting some moderately tough questions. More important: People are finally noticing that when she answers these questions, she follows the example of Yogi Berra, who once said, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” At the recent Democratic debate in Philadelphia, she was asked whether she supports New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer’s plan to give illegal immigrants driver’s licenses. Her response can be summarized as: “Yes, no, maybe, sorta, kinda; Hey, look over there!”
Before the press corps relapses into its coma and Clinton’s competitors go back to hiding from her shadow, let’s see if she can answer a few more questions.
After the Philadelphia debate, your campaign tried to explain away your lackluster performance by implying your male competitors were unfairly “piling on” because you’re a woman. Do you really think sexism is an issue here? Which of your Democratic opponents are the most sexist? Will you play this card with foreign leaders if you run into trouble as commander in chief?
You keep saying that Social Security has lost 14 years of solvency on President Bush’s watch. In 2000, your husband’s last year in office, the program’s trustees said it would be solvent until 2037. Now they say it will be solvent until 2041. As the most serious female candidate for president we’ve ever had, aren’t you setting a bad example by not being able to do math?
In the 1990s, the Clinton administration furiously denied the suggestion you were a “co-president.” Now you routinely suggest your tenure as first lady was presidential experience. So which was it? And why should your tenure in the Clinton administration count when the one thing you ran — health care reform — failed miserably without a vote in Congress?
You’ve said this administration’s secrecy “on matters large and small is very disturbing.” In particular, you and other Democrats have criticized Dick Cheney’s refusal to be more open about his energy task force. Were you disturbed by your health care task force’s similar secrecy? How about your refusal to turn over subpoenaed documents for two years? Why do you tacitly support your husband’s refusal to release your White House correspondence from the National Archives? You’ve said the documents are being released on the Archives’ timetable, but your husband appointed his longtime henchman, Bruce Lindsey, to manage the release of such records. Why isn’t that disturbing?
In 1993, staffers on your secretive health care task force penned a memo in which they schemed to use state-run children’s health insurance — “Kids First” — as a first step toward the nationalization of health care. “Kids First is really a precursor to the new system,” they wrote. Do you still share that ambition? Is that why you support the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP?
In 1996, you said, “As adults we have to start thinking and believing that there isn’t really any such thing as someone else’s child.” Given that many people think their children do belong to them and not the government, does it surprise you they that they cherish their gun rights?
You’ve repeatedly denounced Halliburton’s “no-bid contracts.” Did you object when the Clinton administration awarded a similar non-competitive contract to Halliburton for reconstruction work in the former Yugoslavia? If not, why not? If so, why didn’t your husband listen?
Can you explain — without accusing anyone of anti-Asian bigotry — why so many Chinese criminals keep giving you and your husband piles of cash?
When promoting your autobiography, you gave interviews expanding on your personal feelings while insisting you’d rather talk about substance. And yet, you told the Washington Post that you wouldn’t discuss the political substance in your book. Why? Because playing the victim helps?
You’ve claimed that you are the Democrat best able to “deal” with the Republicans’ natural advantage if there is another terrorist attack. Why is it wrong for Republicans to say they’re tougher on terrorism than Democrats, but OK for you to say so?
Your husband granted clemency to 16 Puerto Rican terrorists linked to more than 100 bombings and several murders on the eve of your run for the Senate. You supported the decision. How does that square with your claim to be tough on terror? What did you think of the Palestinian Liberation Organization in the 1970s? Why did the New World Foundation approve a grant that ultimately went to PLO-affiliated groups when you chaired its board in the 1980s? Does your infamous decision as first lady to sit silently next to Suha Arafat as she viciously and deceitfully propagandized against Israel weigh against your tough-on-terror credentials? How about the $50,000 you took in 2000 from the anti-Semitic and pro-terror American Muslim Alliance, which you returned only after being criticized for it?
Do you think Republicans won’t ask these questions? Why? Because you’re a woman?

Drivers Licenses For Illegals???

If you show up and get a driver's license in New York, you automatically -- because of Motor Voter -- get a voter registration form. If you get a driver's license, well, you've got a photo ID and you've only got to come up with a fake Social Security number, It is estimated that there are 40 million bogus Social Security numbers in the system, the federal system, the federal ID system! Forty million bogus Social Security numbers!

Do you know that eight of the 19 hijackers who blew up the towers on 9/11 had driver's licenses?

Eight of them!

Can someone advise as to why Senator Hillary Clinton supports New York Governor Spitzer?

The Nobel Peace Prize for Gorebal Warming

From now on, Al Gore will no longer be best known as the man who lost the presidency because he couldn’t even carry his own home state. People may even begin overlooking the fact that the most fascinating thing about him is that his head is as large as the pumpkin that sits atop Barry Bonds’ neck. Those are just two of the reasons that Mr. Gore can be grateful that, along with his Oscar, he now has a Peace Prize on his mantel.
There is probably nothing that people would rather have mentioned in their obituaries than the fact that along life’s torturous path, they managed to snag a Nobel Prize. The reason for that isn’t just all the tax-free cash that accompanies the honor, but that forever after your words on any topic under the sun will be taken much too seriously by a very gullible public.
There’s no getting around the fact that some pretty impressive people have been Nobel laureates. Just a few of them were Ivan Pavlov, Sir Alexander Fleming, Marie and Pierre Curie, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi and Albert Einstein.
Personally, I have no problem when the award is made in recognition of scientific and technological advances. I mean, even though what I know about chemistry, medicine, physiology and physics, could be inscribed on the head of a pin, I am willing to accept that their accomplishments were remarkable. And if Alfred Nobel had left it at that, I’d be willing to live and let live.
But it does seem a little silly to hand out the Prizes to economists and, for that matter, to writers. If economics is a science, Charles Ponzi was a philosopher king. No matter how loopy a theory an economist comes up with, he stands a darn good chance of winning a cool million in the Swedish lottery. In fact, several years ago, one very savvy American woman, in her divorce settlement from a professor of economics, stipulated that she’d get half the loot if he copped a Prize within the following 10 years. Sure enough, nine years later, he did, and she was $500,000 richer. Frankly, for being that prescient, I think she should have won her own Nobel Prize for Economics! As for literature, what do the Swedes know about books and poetry written in Hungarian, Japanese and Hebrew? Who are we kidding? Besides, these are the same folks who kept snubbing Mark Twain while recognizing the likes of Sully Prudhomme, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Rudolf Eucken and Selma Lagerlof.
The Peace Prize, however, is the most questionable item of all. I mean, the money aside, who would really want to accept an award that has been bestowed on such ne’er-do-wells as Le Duc Tho, Kofi Annan, Yasir Arafat and Jimmy Carter? Well, Al Gore, for one.
As if it’s not bad enough that such unrepentant thugs and rascals as the aforementioned have copped the Peace Prize, it’s equally enlightening to consider the people who haven’t won it. Namely, those gallant souls who don’t back down when confronted by evil, but who, instead, take up arms and, on occasion, sacrifice their lives in the never ending battle. I mean, really, ask yourselves: who has done more to promote peace on earth -- Al Gore and Jimmy Carter or Winston Churchill and the American G.I.?

Taking the Easy Way Out on Torture

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., started something when he asked Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey whether he considers waterboarding to be torture. When the nominee declined to give a definitive answer, the matter cascaded into a confirmation-threatening imbroglio.
Within a day, all of the Judiciary Committee Democrats as well as Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., had signed a letter demanding clarification. Sens. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., and John McCain, R-Ariz., then further complicated Mukasey's position by denouncing waterboarding and calling upon the would-be attorney general to do the same.
The question of just what does and does not qualify as torture is a vexed one in American law. The U.S. is a signatory to the Geneva Convention, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment -- all of which forbid torture.
Under the U.S. Constitution, treaties are the supreme law of the land. But that hardly settles the matter. Defining torture requires teasing it out of court decisions and legal memoranda (like the so-called "torture memo" issued by the Justice Department in 2002 and later withdrawn), as well as statutory language. As Andrew McCarthy explained in National Review, torture has been variously described as "specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering" or "intense, lasting and heinous agony."
Waterboarding apparently involves placing a person on his back on a seesaw board, tilting him backward, covering his face with a cloth, and then pouring water into his mouth and nose so that he feels as if he is going to drown. It sounds pretty bad -- but is it torture? The military has required our pilots to undergo it to prepare them for interrogation upon capture. That says something. On the other hand, a pilot knows what an enemy combatant presumably does not: that he will live to tell the tale.
What does the law say about waterboarding? As McCarthy points out, Congress had the opportunity in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and again in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 to specifically forbid the practice but chose not to do so. McCarthy writes: "It is ironic . . . that the same elected officials now demanding a definitive answer from Judge Mukasey have failed to give us one themselves . . . "
By showboating their opposition to this technique, the senators are placing Mukasey in an impossible position. If he declares that the practice is torture then he may be putting the interrogators who used it (on advice from the Justice Department) in legal jeopardy. And in light of the confused and vague nature of the law, Mukasey would need access to classified information about exactly what was done in order to reach a judgment on its legality. It would be irresponsible of him to opine on the matter based only on rumors in the newspapers of what may have been done to specific detainees.
This is a deadly serious issue that demands thoughtful consideration from every American and particularly from elected officials. In a war not against massed armies or nations but against small cells of terrorists, interrogation is a key weapon. It's so easy to, in John McCain's words, "take the moral high ground" and denounce any sort of torture under all circumstances. But is it really the moral high ground?
We can all agree that under normal circumstances, harsh techniques are neither desirable nor necessary. But what about the ticking time bomb scenario? If we were to capture a key al Qaeda operative who we had strong reason to believe had knowledge of a dirty bomb buried under an American city, and we had only hours to get information out of him, would it be morally correct to waterboard and possibly save hundreds or thousands of lives, or to refrain? Anyone who claims that the answer is obvious hasn't really thought it through. And for those who object that a person under duress will say anything, the question is, won't that "anything" include the truth?
Nor is the argument that permitting waterboarding will "free up" our enemies to do the same to our people convincing. They tend to string up or behead the Americans they capture. Waterboarding would be an unqualified improvement.
Congress could have debated these matters but declined. Now senatorial moral preening may derail an excellent nominee. The country will be ill served if that happens.

Democratic Debate 10/30/07 - Senator Obama Comment

MR. RUSSERT: I want to see -- (laughter) -- I'm going to ask Senator Obama a question in the same line.
The three astronauts of Apollo 11 who went to the moon back in 1969 all said that they believe there is life beyond Earth. Do you agree?

SEN. OBAMA: You know, I don't know, and I don't presume to know. What I know is there is life here on Earth -- (laughter) -- and -- and that we're not attending to life here on Earth. We're not taking care of kids who are alive and, unfortunately, are not getting health care. We're not taking care of senior citizens who are alive and are seeing their heating prices go up. So as president, those are the people I will be attending to first. (Laughter.) There may be some other folks on their way. (Applause, laughs.)

One question that I have for you Senator Obama, "If you are so concerned about the life of our kids, why do you support abortion?"

LICENSE TO WAFFLE?

Oh, what a dilemma for Sen. Clinton.
On the one hand are those polls showing that even a majority of local Democrats - not to mention an overwhelming 72 percent of all New Yorkers - are dead-set against Gov. Spitzer's plan to hand out driver's licenses to illegal aliens.
On the other hand are all those Democratic special-interest groups she needs to court - the hard left, immigration activists, Hispanics - who think illegals are entitled to regular licenses, with no restrictions whatsoever.
And then there's her strongest White House rival, Barack Obama: He endorses the Spitzer plan wholeheartedly.
What's an overly cautious presidential candidate to do?
If you're Hillary Clinton, there's only one possible course of action: waffle, double-talk - and desperately try to change the subject.
Which is precisely what she did in Tuesday night's Democratic debate when pressed on the issue - as the other candidates were quick to gleefully point out.
And what one of her spokesmen did shortly afterward when he tried to explain her debate remarks.
And what Hillary herself did again yesterday, after nearly 24 hours of turmoil - when her campaign released a statement intended to "clarify" her position.
It read: "Sen. Clinton supports governors like Gov. Spitzer who believe they need such a measure to deal with the crisis caused by this administration's failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform."
Which means she stands - where, exactly?
Does she support the Spitzer plan?
Or does she oppose it?
Your guess is as good as anyone else's.
Most of the other Democratic candidates didn't have a problem taking sides: Obama is for it; Chris Dodd is against it.
But Hillary? She just won't say, one way or the other.
As Rudy Giuliani noted yesterday: "This is not one of those difficult issues of war and peace and diplomacy that she usually often hides behind to have two or three different positions. This one you either know the answer to this, it's yes or no, and then we can debate it."
No wonder the folks at 9/11 Families for a Secure America have publicly offered a $1,000 cash prize to "any American who can get a straight answer out of Sen. Hillary Clinton on whether or not she supports" driver's licenses for illegal aliens, as proposed by Gov. Spitzer.
They can rest easy: We suspect they won't have to pay out the money anytime soon.
If ever.

Ask Me After the Election Hillary's answer for everything.

SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON tried a new tactic at the Democratic presidential debate Tuesday evening. It amounted to this: a major event or policy breakthrough or something else must occur, she indicated, before she'd be ready to state her view on a number of touchy issues. In effect, she used this tactic to duck issues. And she ducked a lot of them.
She was asked, for example, if she favored raising the cap on income subject to Social Security taxation. Moderator Tim Russert noted she had both said the cap should remain at $97,500 and, privately at least, said she might favor lifting it to $200,000. In her answer, the New York senator declined to state her position.
Why not? "I have said consistently that my plan for Social Security is fiscal responsibility first, then to deal with any long-term challenges which I agree are ones that we are going to have to address," she responded. To put it mildly, this was a vague answer.
By fiscal responsibility, she said, "we have to move back toward a more fair and progressive tax system," which involves rolling back some of the Bush tax cuts. At that point, the president should create a bipartisan commission to recommend ways to reform Social Security, Clinton said.
Then--and seemingly only then--she might offer her opinion on raising the cap on Social Security taxes. The president, presumably with the commission's report in his hands, would have "the resources and the options to make decisions." For now, though, forget it. Clinton was equally resistant to giving her view of New York governor Eliot Spitzer's effort to allow illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses. She expressed sympathy with Spitzer, but followed that by saying, "I didn't say that it should be done." Instead, "we need to get back to comprehensive immigration reform," she said.
The reform effort, in which Clinton did not play a leadership role, failed in the Senate earlier this year and its future is unclear. Clinton said Spitzer's proposal was now trying to "fill the vacuum" on dealing with illegal immigrants. But "no state, no matter how well intentioned, can fill this gap," she said. So she declined to endorse Spitzer's proposal. "There needs to be federal action on immigration reform," she insisted.
Then there was her dodge on releasing the records of her advice to President Clinton when she was first lady for eight years. She had cited that period as an important part of the 35 years of experience in national affairs that makes her qualified to be president. Former president Clinton has written a letter asking the National Archives to keep these records secret until 2012. But Senator Clinton didn't comment on the letter, saying that releasing the papers is "not my decision to make." It's up to the National Archives. It's their slow "processes" that are holding things up, she suggested.
Finally there's the huge new tax bill proposed by Charles Rangel, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, that includes a 4 percent surtax on incomes over $200,000. Once again, she didn't state an opinion of the surtax or the tax bill, which would replace the alternative minimum tax (AMT).
This time, the impediment was timing. The Rangel bill "is not going to happen while George Bush is president . . . The AMT has to be part of what we try to change when I'm president." Until then? "I'm not going to be committed to a specific approach," Clinton said.
Let's summarize. Clinton couldn't talk about the Social Security cap because "fiscal responsibility" hasn't been achieved. She couldn't discuss driver's licenses for illegals because immigration reform was needed. She couldn't talk about releasing records in the Archives because the folks at the Archives handle that. And as for Rangel's bill, it won't come up any time soon, so she couldn't talk in any detail about it either.
As it turned out at the debate, broadcast on MSNBC, Clinton's new tactic didn't work. Her performance was her poorest in a debate in the campaign. Her tactic was transparent. The other candidates ganged up on her. But she gave them plenty to gang up about.

Democratic Debate Proves You Can Hit a Girl

The U.S. presidential debates have been largely a bust, unless you go in for stilted round-robin interviews that reward memorization and neatness over substance.
All those ``raise-your-hand-if-you-agree questions'' reduce the candidates to schoolchildren begging the teacher for a hall pass.
Given the setting, Hillary Clinton won every encounter, even though she has sounded like an operator droning that, due to an unusually high call volume, she will be unable to answer your question at the present time.
Thanks primarily to former Senator John Edwards, Tuesday night's Democratic debate was different. He was out to prove it's OK to hit a girl. He hit Clinton so many times that as the night wore on, she began to seem punch drunk, unsure of what was on or off the table and which tough issues needed yet another study by a fuzzy bipartisan commission tied up with a blue ribbon.
When Clinton again dodged specifics on Social Security, she was confronted with a private conversation she'd had with an Iowa voter, overheard by an Associated Press reporter, in which she said she might require the wealthy to pay more in payroll taxes.
Clinton snapped back that ``everybody knows'' that's one possibility, and ``I don't advocate it.''
Good or Bad Idea?
Clinton was caught again when she was asked whether it was a good idea for New York Governor Eliot Spitzer to offer driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. In the course of two minutes, she gave two different answers while trying to give none at all. Her reply was as dense as the heat in the room, saying Spitzer was trying to address a problem left to fester by President George W. Bush's failure to overhaul immigration.
When Senator Chris Dodd, who had his best night ever, jumped in, saying licenses are ``a privilege'' that ``ought not to be extended,'' she retorted that she'd never said ``it should be.''
Then NBC's Tim Russert came back with a hard fact check: an interview in a New Hampshire newspaper in which she'd said otherwise.
Rather than address immigration, about which there is no answer to please everybody, Clinton called a foul. ``You know, Tim,'' she scolded, ``this is where everybody plays `gotcha'.''
No More Cackling
A few weeks ago, Clinton was able to laugh at questions she didn't like, cackling as if interviewers like Bob Schieffer and Chris Wallace had lost their minds by trying to pin her down.
Before Tuesday, Clinton was protected by her own meticulous preparation. She was also helped by the fact that none of her male opponents wanted to be former Representative Rick Lazio of New York, who entered the 2000 Senate race after Rudy Giuliani got out after announcing he had prostate cancer and that he was separating from his second wife.
Lazio, with his boyish looks, seemed soft, playing into the label affixed to him by actor Ben Affleck at a campaign rally of ``running around the frat house in his underwear'' while ``Hillary was out fighting for working families.''
When Lazio decided to get aggressive by walking across the stage at a debate to wave a piece of paper practically under Clinton's nose, it backfired. The only thing worse than being too soft is being too hard if your opponent is a woman.
Lazioed Again
No one broke out from behind the podium to invade Clinton's space this week, but everyone verbally Lazioed her. When Giuliani was quoted as saying Clinton had never run anything in her life, she said the Republican's obsession with criticizing her was evidence she would make the best president. Edwards countered that it was evidence ``they may actually want to run against you.''
If history is any guide, Edwards may have fallen into the Dick Gephardt trap, in which the one (Gephardt) who decks the front-runner (Howard Dean) clears the way for the kinder, gentler candidate to win (Kerry). They don't like hand-to-hand combat in Iowa.
By that measure, Barack Obama won the night, gently saying he couldn't tell what she was for or against. Before the debate, he said of Clinton, ``You're not ready to lead if you can't tell us where you're going.''
Lasting Image
Too bad the debates are almost over now that some sand has been thrown in the gears of the genetically engineered candidate. Everyone is focusing on Clinton voting to label Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization, which proves she didn't learn her lesson over giving Bush a blank check on Iraq. Still, the more lasting image may be Clinton dissembling over who's keeping the Clinton administration's papers secret. She says it's the National Archives ``moving as rapidly as the Archives moves.''
Russert said it was because of a letter from her husband asking them not to release the documents until 2012.
This may put an end to Clinton bringing back those gauzy days of yesteryear, when a non-cookie baking first lady semi- presided over curing the deficit and reforming welfare.
No, what keeping her papers secret brings back is those impossible-to-find billing records, her inability to remember just how she made a killing in cattle futures, and her advice to stonewall on everything from the travel office to the composition of her health-care task force to Paula Jones.
What came across Tuesday is that Clinton is too clever by half. We've always known she was smart and often wondered if the person whose emotions run the gamut from A to B, to paraphrase Dorothy Parker, had a heart.
We know she has a thin skin. Hours after the debate, her campaign released a video called ``The Politics of Pile-on.''