Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Old story resurfaces

In the news today is the story about the fining of the Canadian Red Cross for having sold tainted blood. What is not told is that at least some of that blood came from the Arkansas prison system by way of Governor Bill Clinton. More people have died as a result of this tainted blood than died on 9/11/2001 in the attacks, yet little or no mention is made of this horrendous malfeasance.

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

What turnover reveals

Last night's so-called filibuster compromise reminds me of a phenomenon which is familiar to rural dwellers, pond turnover. And as with that, the ugly underbelly reveals itself. Now the power brokers are the feckless and the venal Byrd, Reid, McCain. If John McCain thinks that he has elevated himself, he needs to look around and see with whom he is standing.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Bruce Bartlett Dissects the Class Warfare Ploy

Ending a losing streak
Bruce Bartlett

May 17, 2005

I don't believe in coincidences in politics. When I see the Wall Street Journal and New York Times both running big front-page stories within two days of each other on a subject that isn't remotely time sensitive, I know that something is going on. More than likely, it signals the beginning of an organized campaign by the liberal media to gin up an issue for the Democrats.

When a team is on a losing streak, the best thing the coach can do is line up a game with a cream-puff opponent. Even if the victory doesn't mean much substantively, it can go a long way toward helping restore his players' confidence and, hopefully, lead to victories against tougher opponents.

When liberals are on a losing steak, two of the issues they come back to time and time again are racism and inequality. In the late 1980s, for example, they all ganged up on South Africa to make its system of Apartheid the No. 1 issue in American politics. It wasn't that Apartheid had gotten any worse or that we had anything to do with it. It was just an issue on which the left knew it couldn't lose because Apartheid was indefensible. In short, Apartheid was the cream-puff opponent that every coach wishes for in order to give his team that easy victory they so desperately need to turn themselves around.

The left is on another losing streak today, and so their intellectual leaders in the liberal media have gone back to the old playbook for an easy win that will get their team out of its slump. This time, it is the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, which has been working for them since the days of Karl Marx. But it's getting harder and harder to milk this cow.

On Friday, May 13, The Wall Street Journal began the first of a series on challenges to the American dream with a page-one piece entitled, "As Rich-Poor Gap Widens in the U.S., Class Mobility Stalls." The essence of this article was that few people rise above the economic class to which they were born. And compared to the socialist nations of Europe, class mobility is no greater here than there.

On Sunday, May 15, The New York Times began a series saying exactly the same thing, often quoting the same sources and citing the same data. What do you think the odds are of that happening independently? Zero, I think.

Here is what I believe is going on. Class warfare has been the main staple of leftist ideology for hundreds of years. Especially in the 1980s, we heard over and over again in the media about how the top fifth of households was increasing its share of aggregate income. The implication was that the pie was fixed, so that the gains of one group came at the expense of the rest. But conservatives effectively demolished this argument by showing that the pie was getting larger. The real income of all groups was increasing and everyone was better off, even if some were more better off than others.

The left then shifted its argument to imply that those in each income class were essentially the same people year after year. This justified a redistributionist tax policy even if the well being of every income class was rising. It didn't matter that the data used to justify this policy were before-tax incomes, meaning that even confiscatory tax rates would have no effect on the outcome, or that the data also omitted most welfare benefits, meaning that practically everything government does to equalize incomes was completely ignored.

But the strongest argument conservatives had was data showing significant fluidity of income. Those well-off today were often poor tomorrow, and those born poor were often able to lift themselves into higher income brackets. In short, the existence of income mobility utterly smashed the liberal premise and forced a withdrawal. In the Clinton years, the left simply ignored a continuation of the same trends that it found so objectionable in the 1980s.

Now the left is back flogging the same issue in hopes of getting itself back in the win column. But first it has to cope with the reality of mobility among income classes. Toward this end, it is trying to redefine it. Now it is no longer whether or not there is significant mobility -- the left concedes that point. The question instead is whether mobility today is greater than it was in the past. This shifts the focus away from the large level of mobility to its change over time, thus obscuring the issue.

In future columns, I will look at specific aspects of this new campaign and what the true facts are. For now, just be aware that the game is afoot.
Town Hall

Saturday, May 14, 2005

The Lethal Little House on the Prairie

Once again, Jack Cashill drops a giant bombshell.

http://www.ingramsonline.com/

The Lethal Little House on the Prairie

by Jack Cashill

Jack Cashill

On Saturday morning, April 2, in full Hardy Boys mode, I found myself sitting in front of 109 South Second Street, a cracker box of a house in a flyspeck of a town called Herington, Kansas.

That Herington once chose to divide itself into streets of “north” and “south” speaks of some sweeping vision sadly unfulfilled. And yet for all its modesty, this vacant little house in this weary little town sits at the nexus of the great, untold story in recent American history. A little background on how I came to be there.

March 1

Gregory Scarpa, Jr. calls Stephen Dresch and informs him that a jailmate at the Florence, Colorado, Super Max has made him aware of a cache of explosives possibly to be used in an act of domestic terrorism. Scarpa is a New York Mafiosi; Dresch is a high-level forensic economist. Dresch informs the FBI. He is worried. Terry Nichols is serving time in that same prison.

March 2

Dresch informs me of the terrorist threat. This was not necessarily welcome news. I was flying to LA that night. I had first talked to Dresch in researching my book on former Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. An insurance company had hired him to investigate the 1996 Croatia plane crash that killed Brown. He knows a lot.

March 3

The FBI comes to Colorado to interview Scarpa. Having been burned once before—and more on this later—Scarpa insists on a cooperation agreement in writing before he talks.

March 4

An FBI polygraph expert claims that Scarpa is lying.

March 5

I have my first ever “Hollywood lunch.” The subject is TWA Flight 800, which long has interested the producer who invited me. So “Hollywood” is this restaurant that the cheapest salad on the lunch menu is $24 and Brad Pitt dines at the next table. Yes, he looks just like he does in the movies. No, Angelina Jolie was not with him.

March 10

Dresch meets with Scarpa in Colorado at Scarpa’s request. Scarpa shows him Nichols’ notes, which provide a detailed description of the bomb material.

March 11

After working out an arrangement with a contact in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Dresch passes along an offer to Scarpa. Scarpa reveals the location of the cache.

March 12

Dresch drives to where Scarpa directed him—yes, Herington, Kansas—and sees that the house on South Second Street is vacant and for sale.

March 17

I receive an anonymous letter at the Ingram’s office, purportedly from an employee of the cryptic NSA. He relates that on July 18, 1996, the day after TWA Flight 800 crashed, the NSA received a tape from the FBI and was asked to translate it. The language proved to be Baluchi. The translation: “What had to be done has been done, TWA 800 (last two words unintelligible).”

March 18

I email the letter to Peter Lance, a former ABC cor-respondent and five-time Emmy winner, who has covered this story. As Lance reported, Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing, was on trial in New York the summer of 1996 for Operation Bojinka, a plan to use planes as bombs to attack America. How’s this for chutzpah: on the day after the destruction of TWA Flight 800, Yousef, representing himself, deman-ded a mistrial because of the now prejudicial environment against people who blow up airplanes. He was denied.

March 19

Lance calls. Yousef was a native Baluchi speaker, he reminds me. In 1996 the FBI had put a mob informant in the cell next to Yousef. The informant promised to use his mob connections to place Yousef’s calls to the Middle East and elsewhere. Yousef took him up on the offer. In fact, the calls were routed through the FBI. Alas, the FBI could not translate the calls quickly enough. Worse, some went to Yousef’s uncle, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the 9/11 mastermind. After TWA Flight 800 went down, the Justice Department had to wonder what unwitting role it played in the plane’s destruction. In any case, there was to be no reward for the informant. Au contraire. Justice buried him for a hard 40 in Florence, Colorado, on a non-lethal RICO charge. The informant’s name—Gregory Scarpa, Jr.

March 24

Concerned that the house in Herington still sits idle, Dresch notifies Congressman Dana Rohrabacher.

March 31

Terry Schiavo dies in the morning. The Pope hovers near death. With all media attention diverted, the Justice Department makes its move, as the FBI visits the little house on the prairie.

April 1

The FBI returns for another day of de-bombing the neighborhood with the Topeka bomb squad in tow. I call Jeff Lanza of the Kansas City FBI office, asking whether the Scarpa info led to the bust. He has yet to get back to me. Lanza tells the Junction City paper, as paraphrased, “the FBI received the information during an investigation.”

April 2

I visit the house, but there is no one to be seen, no media, no police, no one.

April 4

Dresch and Lance spend the day trying to interest the major media in the Scarpa story. The media can’t be bothered. I contact The Kansas City Star. Neither can they.

April 5

Dresch learns of a “continuing imminent threat” that involves Nichols’ connection with Abu Sayaff, the Philippine wing of Al Qaeda, whose master bomber is the now-incarcerated Ramzi Yousef. As Lance has reported, Terry Nichols took multiple trips to the Philippines, including a late 1994 sojourn in which he and Yousef were both staying in Cebu City, a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism, at the same time. “We do know that Nichols’ bombs did not work before his Philippine stay,” writes Richard Clarke in Against All Enemies, “and were deadly when he returned.” Dresch worries for Scarpa’s safety.

April 14

The AP “breaks” a story confirming the entire Scarpa-Nichols-Herington account that you just read. Says the AP’s Mark Sherman “The FBI refused to comment on the delay.” The General Counsel for the FBI is a multi-tasker by the name of Valerie Caproni. As a New York U.S. Attorney in the late 1990s, she managed the FBI’s eavesdropping on Yousef, prosecuted Scarpa and pulled the NTSB off the TWA 800 investigation. If I were a big-time re-porter, and not a mere conspiracy nut, my first call would go to Valerie Caproni.

And to answer your last question, it’s called “institutional stability,” and it ain’t good for the Republic, no matter who’s keeping the lid on.

Jack Cashill is Ingram’s Executive Editor and has affiliated with the magazine for 26 years. He can be reached at jackcashill@yahoo.com. The views expressed in this column are the writer’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Ingram’s Magazine.

Friday, May 13, 2005

Rudeness as a power ploy

We have all heard the lawyers' statement that when your argument lacks merit, pound the table. Increasingly, beginning with Lloyd Bentsen's insult of Dan Quayle, the slap to the cheek employed as a political tactic has been used with good effect by the Democrats in particular. For some reason it doesn't seem to be working quite as well of late. Perhaps it is the players themselves who are less persuasive, repellent as they are. Just in recent days Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has egregiously insulted President Bush, Allen Greenspan, and various Bush nominees including Judge Henry Saad as noted.
Reid lacks charisma or even charm. He appears meanspirited and small, and anything but senatorial.
It may also be that people are finding many sources for their information and opinions besides the mainstream media, and that they are making more informed judgments. I look forward to the complete disregard of hubris as a debating tool, and the need instead for substantiated facts when people's reputations are being discussed and their futures decided.

Captain Ed Shoots Down Harry Reid

May 13, 2005

Tail-Gunner Harry

Just when we thought the smears on judicial nominees from the Democrats could not get any worse, Harry Reid moved from mere bullying to full-blown McCarthyism last night during the Senate debate. In an impromptu remark made during a prepared speech on the floor, he flatly stated that Henry Saad represented a security risk to the United States according to Saad's confidential FBI files:

Minority Leader Harry Reid strayed from his prepared remarks on the Senate floor yesterday and promised to continue opposing one of President Bush's judicial nominees based on "a problem" he said is in the nominee's "confidential report from the FBI."

Those highly confidential reports are filed on all judicial nominees, and severe sanctions apply to anyone who discloses their contents. Less clear is whether a senator could face sanctions for characterizing the content of such files.

"Henry Saad would have been filibustered anyway," Mr. Reid said on the floor yesterday, about the Michigan Appeals Court judge who is nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.

"All you need to do is have a member go upstairs and look at his confidential report from the FBI, and I think we would all agree that there is a problem there," Mr. Reid continued.

This remark created a firestorm of outrage on the GOP side of aisle, and for good reason. None of the Senators have access to the file except those on the Senate Judiciary Committee or Saad's homestate senators (both Democrats) -- which excludes Harry Reid! Reid should never have been given access to that information, and if he has accessed the file, he would be guilty of a breach of Senate rules. Furthermore, by publicly characterizing the data in Saad's file, he has breached its confidentiality.

Worse than that, he has now floated a non-specific charge of malfeasance against Henry Saad against which Saad cannot defend. Saad himself cannot review his file, which contains anything anyone ever said about him to the FBI during his background check, regardless of whether it was true or not. Even those few Republicans who have defended judicial nominees against Reid's normal smears of "extremism" cannot offer defenses based on the FBI file, because to do so would be to break the same security clearance regulations Reid did in making this statement.

FBI clearance files contain raw data from every interview the agency conducts with people known to the person applying for the clearance. Anything said goes into the file. The FBI does not filter the information, and will usually investigate criminal activity suggested by the interview only if they find anything substantial. What this means, especially in political appointments, is that a fair amount of gossipy but usually exaggerated or false information gets entered into the file and later mentioned in the file's summary.

If the FBI finds anything worth investigating, they do so, and the investigation itself then becomes known to the target and -- unless national security is involved -- is declassified. If the FBI doesn't find a substantiated issue, it drops it when the clearance investigation is complete. Unless the FBI has an ongoing investigation on Saad that they haven't disclosed -- and note that Reid didn't mention one, even though Saad's clearance check was done two years ago -- it means that the FBI was satisfied with the results of the clearance check.

Reid just conducted nothing short of a Joe McCarthy-style character assassination, a tradition that Senate Democrats had come close to recreating on judicial nominations over the past few months anyway. Talking vaguely about information in secret files showing that Saad has some unnamed unfitness for office differs in no way from waving around a sheet of paper and claiming to possess a list of Communist sympathizers in the Army. He has now publicly smeared Saad in a manner that absolutely allows no public defense. No matter what happens, people will always wonder if Saad is hiding something, especially with an Arabic-sounding surname.

Reid may or may not have broken the law by his statement; my guess is he didn't, because I believe him to have lied in his characterization. I believe Harry Reid cowardly chose a way in which to smear Henry Saad that would not allow anyone to defend him. Reid should not just be censured by the Senate as a whole, but stripped of his leadership post and his committee assignments. Let him serve the rest of his term as a member at large, gathering dust on the back benches of the Senate, where he can live with his cowardice and his despicable acts.

ADDENDUM: The entire point of the FBI investigation is to determine whether a nominee can receive a security clearance in order to access the files a federal appellate-court justice might need to see. If he couldn't get that clearance, he wouldn't be up for confirmation, which should end speculation on the contents of Saad's file. Obviously the FBI has given the green light to Saad.

UPDATE: Bumping this to the top for the morning. Also, Jeralyn at TalkLeft argues that an inadvertent release of this information makes it public domain. She's incorrect. The status of the FBI file, or any other classified documents, can only be changed by the agency which issues the classification. Henry Saad can't change the status on the files, and in fact, Henry Saad can't even access the file himself, because the sources for the information are named in the file. Jeralyn either knows nothing about classifications or engages in sophistry on this point, and I think it's the former rather than the latter.

Inadvertent release does not mean anything legally or ethically, otherwise no one would ever be disciplined for security breaches, as a moment's thought and common sense would indicate.

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Lileks on Bumperstickers

http://www.lileks.com/bleats/index.html
I have no bumperstickers,
for the same reason I do not paste editorials with which I agree on the seat of my pants. I’m always fascinated by people who load up the bumper with so many stickers the tailpipe scrapes on the pavement, and – correct me if I’m wrong – the more stickers you see, the more to the left the sentiment. The other day I saw a car whose owner had, shall we say, Issues. Sticker #1: “If ignorance is bliss, you must be orgasmic.” This seems rather presumptuous, no? Taken by itself, it’s innocuous, but then you note its brethren: “Born OK the First Time.” So the owner doesn’t like Born-Agains, obviously – but the sentiment is still rather naïve. No one’s born OK the first time, inasmuch as we come howling out of the womb as selfish ethically blank bundles of appetite whose nascent sociopathic character has to be shaped to deal with the human community. Then there’s the third sticker: “It’s your hell. YOU burn in it.”

Gee. And you’d put this on your car . . . why? Because you think that someone behind you might note the absence of a chrome fish emblem and assume you’re some godless swine destined to tumble down to hideous ruin and perdition, of course. How angry do you have to be to flip off people in a way that not only presumes the worst about their opinions, but assigns them to the very fate you think they want for you? GO TO HELL YOU IGNORANT BORN AGAINER!

The car was in the parking lot where Gnat goes to school. I haven’t matched it with a parent yet, but if I do I’m tempted to say “God bless!” Just to piss her off. I’m no Churchy LaFemme, as Homer (and Walt) might say, and I have no problem with the unchurched who pursue the Divine outside the buttressed confines. But nothing makes me choose a side like people who believe that the entirety of the theistic perspective can be adequately refuted by self-congratulatory slogans on adhesive-backed plastic.

I have found this to be a truism. The people who affix these finger-in-the-eye messages do not appear to be relaxed and enjoying life. In these parts, they tend to be females. KC

Saturday, May 07, 2005


Wrinks on Fall walk Posted by Hello

Garden shed in winter Posted by Hello

Greenhouse in January Posted by Hello

White wood duck female Posted by Hello

Toucan azalea Posted by Hello

Picasso in rabbit May 2005 Posted by Hello

Orchid cactus May 2005 Posted by Hello