Petrified Truth

Turning down the heat, for a while

Peggy Noonan has thoughts about the start of the Tony Snow era in the White House press room.

As a public face of the White House, Tony Snow will likely get a good start. His remarks to the press yesterday--"Believe it or not, I want very much to work with you"--were gracious, and showed legitimate sympathy for the press corps. They have hard jobs and operate under many pressures, from uncomprehending editors in the bubble back in the newsroom to officials who try to jerk them around to executive producers in New York who don't like their hair. (One of the best White House correspondents I ever knew, a woman of seriousness and sophistication who threw the ball straight down the middle, was removed from her assignment, her career thwarted, because she'd committed the sin of not being considered pretty enough by her boss. Before she was removed she had to spend half her time getting new clothes and haircuts and makeup. This so she could do a serious job with expertise and spirit. TV is absurd.)

Mr. Snow's White House press briefings are going to be nice to watch. The press does not want to appear to be ungracious and oppositional. They have an investment in demonstrating that the tensions each day in Scott McClellan's press briefings, with David Gregory's rants and Helen Thomas's free-form animosities, were the fault of Mr. McClellan, not the press.

So they will start out gracious with Tony. Good. Everyone involved will benefit from turning the page.

Show yourself

CENTCOM Public Affairs writes to say that they have posted a full translation of the ravings of Al Qaeda in Iraq's loser/leader Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, along with some observations on responses within the Muslim world.

CENTCOM comments:

Arab media and on-line reaction notes that this is the first time Zarqawi has shown himself.... Interestingly, many said the video refutes the popular theory that Zarqawi is an imaginary bogeyman created by the Americans to justify US actions.

Dumb and dumber

Someone please remind me why conservatives and advocates of free markets & capitalism should vote Republican. It isn't for this kind of economically destructive posturing.

With the public clamor over high gasoline prices reaching deafening levels, Senate tax experts have decided to scrutinize the tax returns of the nation's largest oil companies.

The Senate Finance Committee announced late Wednesday it would ask the Internal Revenue Service to provide the corporate tax returns from the 15 largest oil and gas companies going back five years.

"We're seeing record profits and significant executive compensation in the oil and gas industry," Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement. "We all know there can be a slip between cup and lip on corporate profits made and taxes paid. I want to make sure the oil companies aren't taking a speed pass by the tax man."

Now there are ravings about a "windfall profits" tax on the oil industry, again (politicians never learn, and don't care to). Here's a bit of sanity about that , thanks to a pair of observers from the free-market Cato Institute.

THE recent spike in gasoline prices has set off a stampede of politicos demanding that hammer and tong be applied to that all-purpose bogeyman, "Big Oil." Egged on by the red-faced anger served up by rant-and-rave TV populists, Congress may prove unable to resist passing a windfall profit tax before voters go to the polls this fall. If so, we'll experience the full meaning of H.L. Mencken's adage that democracy is that form of government in which the people get exactly what they want — good and hard.

What they won't get, however, is nearly as much money out of such a tax as they probably think. A windfall profit tax targeted at earnings far beyond the U.S. industrial average would return zero revenue to the Treasury because windfall profits in the oil sector are figments of the imagination....

If investors are discouraged from putting their money into the oil sector, there will be less oil and gas on the market and, thus, higher prices than would have otherwise been the case.

Regardless, the United States already has a corporate income tax in place to harvest "windfall profits" regardless of which sector produces them. Taxing profits differently depending upon which sector of the economy coughs them up gets the government in the business of allocating capital across the economy as a whole. This would introduce politics into places where politics simply should not go.

This is not simply idle ideological speculation. We've actually been down this road before in the form of the Crude Oil Windfall Profit Tax of 1980. According to a study published by the Congressional Research Service, the tax discouraged investment in the domestic oil industry to such a degree that domestic oil production was 3 percent to 6 percent less as a result of that tax, and foreign oil imports grew accordingly by 8 percent to 16 percent. There isn't a single credentialed oil economist in the country who would argue that windfall profit taxes are good for consumers.

Tony Snow back inside

Tony Snow, the epitome of broadcasting reasonableness but also a thoughtful conservative, is going to be named White House press secretary. To the extent this is an honor, it's well-deserved; maybe a far better deal for President Bush than for Tony.

Tony Snow will be named new White House press secretary on Wednesday morning, FOX News has learned. Snow is expected to be at the White House for the announcement. He has been mulling the offer for the last several days.

The talk radio host was given a clean bill of health by his oncologist Tuesday, following a CAT scan and other tests that were undertaken last Thursday. Sources said Snow was President Bush's first choice, but he needed the all-clear from his doctors before he takes the job. Snow is recovering from colon cancer.

"He would like to do it. If he gets an OK from his doctor, I expect it will be Tony Snow and the press will welcome him with open arms," Time magazine columnist Margaret Carlson said during the day.

"He has a great common sense, a great understanding of the issue. He is able to do it with good humor. We see him handle cancer with good humor, I think he can handle (NBC's) David Gregory with that same great humor, but also be somebody who would really communicate to the American people in a good common sense way," said Barbara Comstock, a former director of research and planning at the Republican National Committee.

Snow told FOX News' Bill O'Reilly last week that he was considering the job, but realized that it would come with a lot of responsibility, time away from his family, a "massive cut" in pay and other demands.

"There's no guarantee after you get out of the White House whether there's any landing place," Snow told O'Reilly.

Howard Kurtz reports some unique aspects in the Washington Post. Tony is looking for some steak here, not just more sizzle.

Fox News commentator Tony Snow has decided to accept the White House press secretary's job after top officials assured him that he would be not just a spokesman but an active participant in administration policy debates, people familiar with the discussions said yesterday.

Brit Hume, Fox's Washington managing editor, said he was "a little surprised" that Snow would give up his new radio show to take one of the capital's most demanding jobs. "I think he's excited by the idea of being on the inside," Hume said. "He believes he will be at the table when decisions are made. For someone of his bent, that's too good to pass up."

Snow, 50, is particularly interested in economic and immigration issues. He intends to insist on greater access for White House reporters, said sources familiar with his plans. He has described the press corps as a beast that must be constantly fed. In a December 2000 column in the Washington Times, he referred to "Democrats and journalists (but I repeat myself)."

He has told associates he plans to function as an advocate for reporters, an approach that would run counter to the administration's previous philosophy about the position.

Chicken Littles

The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal understands the fundamentals of the energy price crisis pretty well: politics.

Oil prices hit $75 a barrel last week, while gas has reached a national average of about $2.85 a gallon. The Republican response has been to put on Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi fright wigs and shout about corporate greed and market manipulation....

The last time the U.S. had a gasoline panic, in the wake of Katrina, some quick Bush Administration action and private ingenuity eased the problem in record time. Gasoline prices that had climbed above $3 a gallon quickly settled back closer to $2. Markets will make the same adjustments today if they are allowed to send price signals without Congress getting in the way.

Republicans can blame business all they want for high prices, but sounding like liberal Democrats won't save them in November.

Somebody to love

This is exciting: Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler have recorded an album together, and it comes out tomorrow. The Telegraph has the news.

Befitting their ages (Harris is 59, Knopfler 56), it is an album for mature listeners, in the sense that it deals with genuinely adult subject matter, celebrating what Harris calls "ordinary extraordinary" lives: marriage, divorce, children, the little sacrifices we have to make to survive, and the small joys that make it worthwhile.

"We don't do great life affirmation, either of us, but we do pretty good misery," suggests Knopfler, but in fact there is something hugely life-affirming about an album so concerned with everyday realities.

"We've both been married, both been divorced. I hear that when Emmy sings. I hear the patience, the compassion, the experience."

"We're all sort of one paycheck away from a trailer park in our lives," says Harris. "We've all been there. People want the same things: somebody to love us and appreciate us for who we are. It's hard to find."

Related:

• Emmylou Harris - official site
• Mark Knopfler - official site

UPDATE: Mark and Emmylou appeared on the public radio program A Prairie Home Companion last Saturday, April 22.

Fortunately, the show's archives are available on-line. So you can both listen to them perform four duets AND completely skip over the peurile so-called "humor" of leftist gasbag Garrison Keillor.

Facing China

National security journalist Bill Gertz reports that the U.S. military is positioning itself for a possible military conflict with China.

The Pentagon is engaged in an extensive buildup of military forces in Asia as part of a covert strategy to strengthen and position U.S. and allied forces to deter -- or defeat -- China.

The buildup includes changes in deployments of aircraft-carrier battle groups, the conversion of nuclear-missile submarines and the regular dispatch of bombers to areas close to targets in China....

Other less-visible activities that are part of what is being called a "hedge" strategy include large-scale military maneuvers, increased military alliances and training with Asian allies, the transfer of special-operations commando forces to Asia and new requirements for military personnel to learn Chinese.

Officials said the objective of the Asian buildup is to dissuade China from becoming a hostile power and to have the military capability to swiftly defeat the communist nation in a conflict using military forces that are forward-deployed in Asia or are available to be moved on short notice from Alaska, Hawaii, California and elsewhere.

Related video: Bill Gertz discusses this story and more with Brian Lamb on C-SPAN (Real format).

Dissecting the myths

New book received: The Party of Death - The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life, by National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru. Looks provocative.

Here's the first paragraph:

The Party of Death started with abortion, but its sickle has gone from threatening the unborn, to the elderly, to the disabled; it has swept from the maternity ward to the cloning laboratory to a generalized disregard for "inconvenient" human life.

Posted by Alan at 05:29 PM

Russia moves in

Here's yet another example of how despotic states, not rapacious private companies, are increasingly the heavy hitters of the world energy marketplace.

Russia, which has demonstrated its willingness to use energy as a political weapon, is tightening its grip on supplies to Western Europe, with projections showing it will provide 70 percent of the region's natural gas by 2025.

Until recently, members of the European Union were split into two "zones" of dependence on Russian gas and oil. Russia has a virtual monopoly on supplying gas and oil to new EU members, mostly former Soviet satellites. Old Europe, on the other hand, is less dependent, but that dependence is growing.

"Old Europe's independence is rapidly deteriorating. The two de facto zones are being equalized in the worst possible way," said Vladimir Socor, a Munich-based energy analyst with the Jamestown Foundation.

Mr. Socor, in a telephone interview yesterday, said Europe's growing demand, the depletion of North Sea gas and oil fields and Russian moves to buy up infrastructure in Europe are leaving the Continent ever more dependent on Russian supplies.

Star Trek lives

This could be good news: like the Batman, Bond, and Superman franchises, Star Trek is going back to the origins of its iconic characters. Fresh starts can be very rewarding; genuine respect for the material and the fans is the key.

Paramount Pictures announced today that Lost creator J.J. Abrams will co-write, produce and direct the eleventh Star Trek film, set for release in 2008.

According to an article in the Daily Variety, the new film will be a prequel to the original Star Trek series, featuring younger versions of characters like James T. Kirk and Spock. The movie will chronicle events such as their first meeting at Starfleet Academy and their first mission into outer space.

Bend, don't break

Here goes Peggy Noonan, White House veteran and savvy observer, being smart again.

If this White House is all George Bush, nothing changes or shifts, nothing hits refresh unless he does. He is a tough and stubborn man, a brave one too, and he leads with his heart. These are virtues, or can be. The presidency can break you--we've seen it break presidents--and he does not intend to be broken. But one senses he fears to bend because if he bends, he breaks....

Sometimes Mr. Bush acts as if he doesn't know you don't have to look for trouble, it will find you. When you are the American president, it knows your address by heart.

I know that on some level he knows this. The president has taken, those around him say, great comfort in biographies of previous presidents. All presidents do this. They all take comfort in the fact that former presidents now seen as great were, in their time, derided, misunderstood, underestimated. No one took the measure of their greatness until later. This is all very moving, but: Message to all biography-reading presidents, past present and future: Just because they call you a jackass doesn't mean you're Lincoln.

Bad vs. much, much worse

Here's a clear-headed must-read from Mark Steyn. The topic? The deadly threat of Iran.

Our failure to understand Iran in the seventies foreshadowed our failure to understand the broader struggle today. As clashes of civilizations go, this one's between two extremes: on the one hand, a world that has everything it needs to wage decisive war--wealth, armies, industry, technology; on the other, a world that has nothing but pure ideology and plenty of believers. (Its sole resource, oil, would stay in the ground were it not for foreign technology, foreign manpower, and a Western fetishization of domestic environmental aesthetics.)

...

Nukes have gone freelance, and there's nothing much we can do about that, and sooner or later we'll see the consequences--in Vancouver or Rotterdam, Glasgow or Atlanta. But, that being so, we owe it to ourselves to take the minimal precautionary step of ending the one regime whose political establishment is explicitly pledged to the nuclear annihilation of neighboring states.

Once again, we face a choice between bad and worse options. There can be no "surgical" strike in any meaningful sense: Iran's clients on the ground will retaliate in Iraq, Lebanon, Israel and Europe. Nor should we put much stock in the country's allegedly "pro-American" youth. This shouldn't be a touchy-feely nation-building exercise: rehabilitation may be a bonus, but the primary objective should be punishment--and incarceration. It's up to the Iranian people how nutty a government they want to live with, but extraterritorial nuttiness has to be shown not to pay. That means swift, massive, devastating force that decapitates the regime--but no occupation.

The cost of de-nuking Iran will be high now but significantly higher with every year it's postponed. The lesson of the Danish cartoons is the clearest reminder that what is at stake here is the credibility of our civilization. Whether or not we end the nuclearization of the Islamic Republic will be an act that defines our time.

What really, really stinks is that the Iranians and their Islamist allies are buying their capability to destroy us with our own money: the petrodollars that pay for our "addiction" to oil.

Read the whole thing.

Foxy

Fox News is, well, in the news today. Tony Snow is apparently on the short list to replace White House press secretary Scott McClellan, who resigned today.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post offers a lengthy and mostly positive profile of Brit Hume.

As a senior Fox News executive and anchor who landed the only interview with Vice President Cheney after his hunting accident, Hume has traveled light-years since his early days as a dogged investigator. He has made the transition from newspaper reporter to television star, from outside critic to charter member of the Washington establishment, from garden-variety liberal to committed conservative. He has become an acerbic critic of his chosen profession. And he has endured a family tragedy that changed his outlook on life.

There is a formal bearing about Hume that transcends his suspenders and American flag lapel pin. He speaks deliberately, unhurriedly, making his points with logic rather than passion. On a network filled with flamboyant personalities, he gave his nightly program the bland title "Special Report."

"I was trying to develop a show that wasn't about me," says Hume, 62.

Open source intelligence

As noted earlier, the nation's spooks have established an Open Source Center to delve deeper into non-clandestine sources (e.g., blogs) of useful intelligence. Now they say the results are showing up on the President's desk.

President Bush and U.S. policy-makers are receiving more intelligence from open sources such as Internet blogs and foreign newspapers than they previously did, senior intelligence officials said.

The new Open Source Center (OSC) at CIA headquarters recently stepped up data collection and analysis based on bloggers worldwide and is developing new methods to gauge the reliability of the content, said OSC Director Douglas J. Naquin.

Eliot A. Jardines, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for open source, said the amount of unclassified intelligence reaching Mr. Bush and senior policy-makers has increased as a result of the center's creation in November.

"We're certainly scoring a number of wins with our ultimate customer," said Mr. Jardines, who became the first high-level official in charge of the government's nonsecret intelligence in December.

"I can't get into detail of what, but I'll just say the amount of open source reporting that goes into the president's daily brief has gone up rather significantly," Mr. Jardines said. "There has been a real interest at the highest levels of our government, and we've been able to consistently deliver products that are on par with the rest of the intelligence community."

Dark

We were among those in Texas who experienced a 15-minute electrical blackout yesterday.

Hundreds of thousands of Texans went without power for brief periods Monday afternoon as unseasonably warm weather and both planned and unplanned power plant outages led officials to call for rolling blackouts.

Shortly after 4 p.m. Monday, officials with the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas, the organization that monitors the power network for about 85 percent of the state, declared an emergency and asked power distributors to turn off about 1,000 megawatts of power.

The cuts were spread throughout the state, with Houston-based CenterPoint Energy cutting power for 15-minute intervals on the power lines it operates to as many as 78,000 customers, according to spokeswoman Leticia Lowe.

With more warm weather expected today there could be a repeat performance when power use peaks sometime between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.

It was hot Monday, but the need for blackouts in April is a big surprise. This could be an ugly precursor of the long summer that's about to really begin.

• ERCOT
• CenterPoint Energy

Assigning blame

The Wall Street Journal makes several pertinent observations about retired generals and their thoughtless hooting for SecDef Donald Rumsfeld to be sacked.

So when did Generals cease to be responsible for outcomes in war?

...

Mistakes are made in every war; there's a reason the word "snafu" began as a military acronym whose meaning we can't reprint in a family newspaper. But if we're going to start assigning blame, then the generals themselves are going to have to assume much of it....What matters now is doing what it takes to prevail in Iraq, setting up a new government and defeating the terrorists. How firing Mr. Rumsfeld will help in any of this, none of the critics say. They certainly aren't offering any better military strategy for victory.

Easter Day

"On Easter morning, we heard John's account of what happened on the first Easter morning. With the death of Jesus, everything had ended. The assembly of Thursday's table had scattered. Jesus had died the death of a criminal. But the love which had bound together those around that table the preceding Thursday night survived...

- Rev. David Elsenhohn, The Anglican Digest, vol. 48, no. 2.

Good Friday

Tired of the jive

NRO's Andy McCarthy pretty well sums up the current state of the raging argument about illegal immigration.

[S]lings and arrows like “interlopers” and “invaders” don’t turn the temperature down, but I’m not sure the temperature ought to be turned down. The people on the pro-side of the immigration question have not been engaging in rational argument. Their rhetoric is Orwellian. They rationalize illegality as if it were somehow a social good and rig the game in a way that brazenly screws the law-abiding -- and they put on airs that assume the rest of us are too stupid to see through it all.

Then, to add insult to injury, they are enabling these demonstrations in which people who came here understanding the deal was that their presence was unlawful now have the nerve, not to respectfully request, but to claim entitlement to be regularized. Meanwhile, the schmucks who try to do it the lawful way – much like the Americans who try to comply with the Byzantine rules for dealing with legal immigrants, and the Americans who have to pick up the tab for the exorbitant added welfare state subsidies for illegals – are left out in the cold, with the message that the only way to get America’s attention is to break her laws.

I’m a New Yorker with an immigrant heritage. I did not start out whipped up by this issue. But I’ve gotten angry listening to this jive, and I can understand why other people have, too. You can only have your intelligence insulted like this for so long -- and by your leaders, no less, telling you it's all for your own good.

From weasel to evil

We've been looking forward all week to tonight's episode of "24" to find out more about the newly-revealed treachery of President Logan, played with loathsome depth by actor Gregory Itzin. The cast and crew are enjoying the twists and turns.

Producers decided in October that Logan would be the villain, but Itzin was told much later. He played early scenes - accusing aide Walt Cummings of treason - with no knowledge of Logan's complicity. "When I found out, I'm sure it was psychological, but I got almost physically ill," he says. Yet "I had a sense that the string was running out; I couldn't continue to be the same guy and have it be as interesting."

Executive producer Evan Katz says the revelation was no Jekyll-and-Hyde moment for Logan, who had only been acting feeble. "It's not a ridiculous contrast; it's more a man hiding a secret and being a little smarter about how he projects himself than we thought."

"How many times have we been duped by someone we thought was stupid?" says star Kiefer Sutherland. "When people are underestimated, it becomes very dangerous; it gives them a sort of cover." He says the shock owes much to Itzin's layered, gear-shifting portrayal, and his story line "has really been, for me, the real great aspect of Season 5."

French sense

The E&P head honcho at France's Total has a practical take on an important issue of the global oil economy: productive capacity.

The world lacks the means to produce enough oil to meet rising projections of demand for fuel over the next decade, according to Christophe de Margerie, head of exploration for Total and heir presumptive to the leadership of the French energy multinational.

The world is mistakenly focusing on oil reserves when the problem is capacity to produce oil, M de Margerie said... Forecasters, such as the International Energy Agency (IEA), have failed to consider the speed at which new resources can be brought into production, he believes.

The IEA predicted in its World Energy Outlook that global demand for crude oil would reach 121 million barrels per day by 2030, of which more than half would be supplied by Opec. The agency predicted that more than $3 trillion (£1.72 trillion) of investment in wells, pipelines and refineries would be needed to raise output to such levels.

However, Total’s exploration chief reckons the output rise is impossible, given available resources and geopolitical constraints on gaining access to reserves in Opec countries.

The IEA was mistaken in using recovery factors that failed to consider the timing of new resources coming on stream. M De Margerie said. The world was confusing the issue of reserves with the scale of the problem in producing those reserves. He said: “The oil reserves are there, that is the good news, but what we can bring on today to meet demand is limited by factors other than what scientists see in a lab or think-tanks.”

Given the fact that an increasing percentage of world oil reserves are controlled by governments that are, at best, not fully open to the western E&P industry's vast technical capabilities, this production capacity gap is yet another structural factor leading to permanently higher prices for oil, gas, and refined products.

Stop the presses: Libraries rate with football

Well, Texas's own empty-headed governor Rick Perry and his kneejerk rightwing friends have been forced to back down on the single dumbest aspect of his so-called 65-percent solution for public education.

Librarians will be included in a proposed definition of classroom spending for the new 65 percent rule, removing one of the biggest criticisms of Gov. Rick Perry's initiative. Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley said Thursday that the inclusion "recognizes that librarians provide an important direct instructional service to students."

Last August, Perry ordered Neeley to create a new financial accountability system that included a requirement that 65 percent of a school district's budget be spent on classroom instruction. His executive order referred to the definition for classroom instruction that is used by the National Center for Education Statistics, the statistical arm of the U.S. Education Department.

Librarians and library costs are excluded under the NCES definition, while costs for football coaches and extracurricular activities are allowed. Houston Independent School District Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra was among many superintendents who criticized the definition as valuing football over libraries.

The proposed Texas rule counts teacher and teacher aide salaries, textbooks, computers and extracurricular activities as classroom spending. It excludes administration, maintenance and operating expenses, counselors, nurses, security and transportation.

Of course, remember it's all pointless as a way to improve education, and not intended as such. It's all about finding a way to claim that "classroom instruction" is getting more resources without a tax increase.

A study released in November found that the so-called "65 percent solution" is not likely to raise student achievement. Standard & Poor's analyzed data in Texas and eight other states considering a 65 percent classroom spending requirement. It found no significant positive correlation between the percent of funds that districts spend on instruction and the percentage of students who score proficient or higher on state reading and math tests.

Related:

• Revenge of the small-minded
• Tiny-brained in Austin

The unbearable lightness of Katie

Peggy Noonan, who last year had serious advice for CBS News, has some observations about this week's Big Story: the move of Katie Couric from NBC's lite-weight Today program to the pseudo-heavy chair of the CBS Evening News.

The rise of Katie Couric to the "Evening News," however, raises an interesting question, and may be suggestive of the media environment of the future. I am not referring to the fact that Katie's a woman and will be the first to "fly solo," as everyone is saying. It's not 1967, and she's not replacing Walter Cronkite, who counted. We're all happily used to women bringing us the news.

It's this. The evening news shows have traditionally had an air of greater formality than the morning news, where the parameters for comment and personal views were understood to be broader. They have two hours to fill, not 23 minutes, of course personal views emerge. Ms. Couric's on-air comments the past decade have led many people to understand that her political and cultural beliefs are pronounced, rigid, and part of her public presentation of herself. And that this is true in a way that does not apply to the beliefs, whatever they are, of Bob Schieffer, Brian Williams and Elizabeth Vargas. (Yes, Dan Rather also consistently signaled and declared his views, but in the end that contributed to his ouster.)

Is the appointment of Katie an acknowledgement by CBS that it doesn't feel it has to care anymore about political preferences, that the existence of Fox News Channel has in effect freed up the network broadcasts to be what you and I might call more politically tendentious and they might call edgy? In a fractured media environment where everyone can have a voice, why wouldn't the broadcast networks take the new freedom as new license? After all, if America is one big niche market, liberals make up a big niche.

I'm wondering how the network news divisions are viewing the lay of the land. The answer will tell us something about the future American media environment.

DeLay out?

Breaking news: MSNBC's Chris Matthews is reporting that Tom DeLay "will not run again" for Congress. Nothing substantial on their web site yet.

DeLay's district near Houston is solidly Republican, but this has to be good news for his Dem challenger Nick Lampson.

UPDATE: Here's their story now. Time has even more; they say DeLay will resign as well.

DeLay has outlived his usefulness in advancing the conservative cause, but I do hate to see moonbat Austin D.A. Ronnie Earle get even part of what he wanted.

Following the money

According to this report in Newsweek, we're making some real progress in shutting off the inflow of illicit cash that keeps the North Korean regime afloat. That's good news from a dark corner of the world.

Numerous U.S. government agencies, including the FBI, Treasury, State Department and CIA, have been working for three years to curtail Pyongyang's vast network of black-market activities—from the sale of missile technology to heroin trafficking to the manufacture of fake cigarettes and bogus Viagra—and to cut off the financial conduits by which the proceeds are laundered. David Asher, who ran the Bush administration's interagency effort, says that criminal North Korean businesses were targeted as part of "the largest undercover investigation against Asian organized crime in a decade." Washington has raised the possibility of sanctions against financial institutions that deal with Pyongyang, and has arrested or indicted dozens of figures linked to Chinese triads and the Irish Republican Army, among other groups.

Whether this effort to squeeze Kim will persuade him to abandon his nuclear arsenal remains to be seen. But Washington officials believe that this campaign of "targeted sanctions" is proving very effective. "From what we've seen, this has been affecting the North Korean elite in particular," says Peter Beck, a Seoul-based analyst with the International Crisis Group (ICG). Indeed, according to an unclassified U.S. government document obtained by NEWSWEEK, during Kim Jong Il's January trip to China, he reportedly told Chinese President Hu Jintao that "his regime might collapse under the weight of the U.S. crackdown on his financial dealings."

Secure Baghdad, now

Very savvy Reuel Marc Gerecht offers a shot of difficult truth about Iraq.

Contrary to what so many in the Bush administration hoped, Iraq's salvation still rides with the two forces that few had foreseen: the religious Shiites, who recognize Ayatollah Sistani as moral guide, not the secularists in whom U.S. officials placed such store; and the U.S. military, which remains the only effective counterinsurgency force capable of diminishing sectarian strife and staunching Sunni-led violence. Together, they can corner the militants in their midst; if either falters, Iraq will probably descend into hell....

We are now in the unenviable position of having to confront radicalized, murderous Shiite militias, who have gained broader Shiite support because of the Sunni-led violence and the lameness of U.S. counterinsurgency operations. The Bush administration would be wise not to postpone any longer what it should have already undertaken--securing Baghdad. This will be an enormously difficult task: Both Sunnis and Shiites will have to be confronted, but Sunni insurgents and brigands must be dealt with first to ensure America doesn't lose the Shiite majority and the government doesn't completely fall apart. Pacifying Baghdad will be politically convulsive and provide horrific film footage and skyrocketing body counts. But Iraq cannot heal itself so long as Baghdad remains a deadly place. And the U.S. media will never write many optimistic stories about Iraq if journalists fear going outside. To punt this undertaking down the road when the political dynamics might be better, and when the number of American soldiers in Iraq will surely be less, perhaps a lot less, is to invite disaster.

The Iraqis and the Americans will either save or damn Iraq in the coming months. Quite contrary to the purblind charges of Michigan's Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, the Iraqis really are doing their part--better than what anyone historically could have expected. The real question is, will Gen. Abizaid and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld do theirs?

Escaping the water tower

Here's some tremendous news: at long last, the entirely brilliant Animaniacs is coming to DVD. Can't wait until July 25!

Pessimism

Houston Chronicle columnist Rick Casey interprets the most recent edition of Rice University sociologist Stephen Klineberg's annual survey of Houston attitudes.

For the past five years, a steady 60 percent to 62 percent of Houstonians have said they personally expect to be better off in three to four years. This year it dropped moderately to 56 percent.

But when they were asked whether the United States was heading for better times or more difficult times, those expecting better times plummeted in the past year from 42 percent to 26 percent.

This is an astounding figure. And it comes at a time when most economists are not nearly so pessimistic. What it describes is a citizenship that has faith in itself but not in the competence of its leadership.

Why would that be the case?

Oh, I don't know. Maybe Katrina, Iraq, disclosures of FBI bumbling prior to 9/11, confusion in the Medicare drug benefit program, the mammoth deficit, school finance, the Children's Health Insurance Program.

And, of course, our inability to control our borders.

In addition to government functions that have been bungled, we are being told there are many things we can no longer afford to do.

We can't afford Social Security at its present level. We can't afford Medicaid. We need to privatize toll roads because we can't afford to build our own highways. We can't even afford to maintain our state parks.

Make your own list.

Houstonians are, at the moment, confident in themselves but not in their nation. And if the people of Houston — aptly described as a city only optimists could imagine and pull off — aren't confident about our nation's future, imagine how the rest of the country feels.

Casey doesn't address one important factor in the shaping of public attitudes: the relentless war on President Bush by a media class that despises him. That said, however, it's becoming hard to dispute that the Republicans haven't bungled their shot at both national and state leadership.

Immigration and irredentism

NR's David Frum makes an important point about Mexico and the debate over uncontrolled immigration.

Follow the money: In 2005, Mexicans in the United States remitted some $20 billion home. That's 3% of Mexico's entire national income. Remittances have surpassed tourism, oil, and the maquiladora assembly industry to emerge as the country's top single source of foreign exchange....

Remittances have cushioned Mexico's failure, but they cannot achieve Mexico's success. Only internal change in Mexico can do that. Mexico desperately needs foreign investment in its energy industry, a rationalization of its tax system, and free-market reform of its labor laws. Vicente Fox has done none of these things, and has in fact barely tried. He has instead pinned all his country's hopes on the export of its population to the United States.

Today, almost one-fifth of all living Mexican-born people now make their homes in the United States. You have to go back to the Irish potato famine to find a parallel. But Mexico is not suffering famine: It is suffering from a comprehensive failure of political and economic leadership.

Mexico's problems are also America's problems, no getting around that. But an American president cannot agree that Mexico's problems should be made only America's problems.

In the context of an immigration reform in the American interest - meaning a restrictive immigration reform - the US should of course help Mexico find substitutes for any reductions in remittance income. One good place to start would be the energy industry, which could contribute much more to Mexican wealth if Mexico abandoned its 75-year-old protectionist policies. Of course, Mexicans will say that such changes are politically impossible for them. Then they turn around and ask George Bush to lay waste to Republican political prospects to save them from a fate from which they will not save themselves.

It's frustrating. It's even frightening. But in the end, an American president must remember who he is ultimately working for.

It's been revealing to note the usually well-hidden mindset behind much of the pro-immigration demonstrations over the past week; e.g., that illegals are entitled to be in the U.S. and entitled to unrestricted public services.

Some also see the flood of immigrants from south of the border is part of a purposeful re-assimilation of U.S. territory back to the original, legitimate sovereignty of Mexico. Irredentism is not just reserved for the Balkans or the Third World -- it's right here.