House Passes (Insert Misnomer Here) Bill

The House of Representatives has passed what the media continues to call a "warrantless wiretap" bill. It is not, of course. What the House passed is a bill allowing specific telephone calls to be listened to under specific circumstances. For example if you were to call a known of suspected terrorist outside of the US. Or if said known or suspected terrorist was to call you from outside the US.

That's all.

There are significant provisions for Congressional oversight. There are significant protections for Americans with no ties to terrorists. Yet the fight was fierce.

"The Democrats' irrational opposition to strong national security policies that help keep our nation secure should be of great concern to the American people," Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement after the bill passed 232-191.

"To always have reasons why you just can't vote 'yes,' I think speaks volumes when it comes to which party is better able and more willing to take on the terrorists and defeat them," Boehner said.

Democrats shot back that the war on terrorism shouldn't be fought at the expense of civil and human rights. The bill approved by the House, they argued, gives the president too much power and leaves the law vulnerable to being overturned by a court.

"It is ceding the president's argument that Congress doesn't matter in this area," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., that give legal status under certain conditions to Bush's warrantless wiretapping of calls and e-mails between people on U.S. soil making calls or sending e-mails and those in other countries.

Under the measure, the president would be authorized to conduct such wiretaps if he:

• Notifies the House and Senate intelligence committees and congressional leaders.

• Believes an attack is imminent and later explains the reason and names the individuals and groups involved.

• Renews his certification every 90 days.

We'll have to see what the Senate does here, but it appears unlikely this will get through before November.

Frist Wins Big - America Wins Bigger

Bill Frist ramrodded the "fence only" immigration bill through a cloture vote and it carried by 71-28. The fence only bill will be passed tomorrow with no way for opponents to kill it. There will be additional fence on the Mexican border.

While our borders are still inexcusably porous, we’ve made a great deal of progress in the last two years. With the passage of Defense and Homeland Security appropriations bills, we will have added 3,736 new Border Patrol agents … 9,150 new detention beds … and 1,373 detention personnel. We’ve more than quadrupled spending on border and immigration enforcement … increasing funding from $4 billion prior to 9/11 to over $16 billion today. We’ve seen apprehensions at the border increase by 45%. We’ve ended catch-and-release.

And, just moments ago, the Senate invoked cloture on the Secure Fence Act of 2006 by a vote of 71-28. Tomorrow the Senate will pass this legislation and send it to the President’s desk for his signature.

By requiring the construction of at least 700 miles of two-layered reinforced fencing along our southwest border and by mandating the use of cameras, ground sensors, UAVs and other forms of hi-tech surveillance, this legislation will help us gain control over every inch of our borders. The Homeland Security appropriations bill authorizes $1.8 billion in funding … so construction will proceed as quickly as possible. As the fence is erected, more funding in future budgets will be required, but I’m confident that the 71 Senators who proved themselves serious about border security today will support continued funding.

Nicely done. We have both increased security on the border and a way to handle terrorist detainees in one day. A significant day.

NOW We Know Why The Llama Got It

Earlier today we reported on the vicious gangland style murder of the llama found in Oakland, California. We knew it was the work of the dreaded animal mafia because the body was found with its legs tied together. Oddly enough, we have now found that the murder was probably a hit ordered by people trying to cover up a scandal involving alpacas. That's right, it's a sordid tale of alpaca paternity.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - A judge dismissed a lawsuit filed over the paternity of a baby alpaca, but the ruling might not mark the end of the barnyard soap opera. Cathy Crosson sued in Monroe Circuit Court to get the owners of an Illinois breeding farm to disclose which of its male alpacas sired the year-old offspring of her prized female, Peruvian Lily of the Incas.

She accused Likada Farms, of Wayne, Ill., of improperly breeding Peruvian Lily and then refusing to identify the offspring's father. Without the male's name, Crosson said she cannot register or sell the young alpaca.

But Monroe Circuit Judge E. Michael Hoff said this week that Crosson's case was filed in the wrong venue. He said the out-of-state farm does not do enough Indiana business for the suit to be valid in Monroe County.

That's right, our sources (who talked freely, if somewhat intelligibly, once we plied them with tequila) inform us that the llama was actually the father of the offspring of Peruvian Lily of the Incas. The breeding farm couldn't let that dirty little secret get out, so the llama got whacked.

Senate Passes Detainee Bill 65-34

The Senate has passed the bill governing detention and questioning of terrorists. The bill could reach the president for signature by tomorrow.

The 65-34 vote means the bill could reach the president's desk by week's end. The House passed nearly identical legislation on Wednesday and was expected to approve the Senate bill on Friday, sending it on to the White House.

The bill would create military commissions to prosecute terrorism suspects. It also would prohibit blatant abuses of detainees but grant the president flexibility to decide what interrogation techniques are legally permissible.

The White House and its supporters have called the measure crucial in the anti-terror fight, but some Democrats said it left the door open to abuse, violating the U.S. Constitution in the name of protecting Americans.

The uproar over this will, of course, continue.

UPDATE: NYT coverage, but it appears to be the same AP story.

UPDATE: Others: Political Pit Bull, Barone Blog, Decision '08, Volokh, Instapundit (READ THIS ONE), Powerline, Strata-Sphere,

I had to break this out. AJ Strata says this is an unmitigated disaster for the Democrats:

The ability to separate Iraq from the war on terror was critical to the dems succeeding, but they violated their own rule here. The Bill that is now passed passing in the Senate (65-34) as I write this (and run out the door) is one directed ONLY at terrorists. Americans are not effected by this bill. We will not see any of our rights impacted (unless one of us decides to join our enemy). So the idea this threatens us and not terrorists is laughable. But everytime this Bill is brought up the Dems are going to say we need to be out of Iraq - where we have killed 4,000 terrorists according to Al Qaeda. The Dems are going to say we need to back away, but not to worry, we opposed being too harsh on them if they come here and try and kill Americans.

The Dems will now have ads placed against them rightfully claiming they hesitated to call our enemies our enemies. They will have ads saying the Dems could not muster the will to aggressively question people attempting to kill us in suicide attacks (like someone on a suicide attack run cares about the Geneva Conventions??). The Dems will now face ads where they want Americans to pay for lawyering up the terrorists (”Bin Laden, you have a right to an attorney, if you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you”).

You really have to read the rest to see what is and is not acceptable to some politicians. Who's rights matter and who's do not. It is NOT pretty. AJ may well be right here.

More Imaginary Woodpeckers!

Actually, it's just another report on the same expedition where the searchers swear they saw the Ivory Billed Woodpeckers - honest - but never got a picture. But it finally gave our experts a handle on why they are failing to get that elusive photographic proof.

"The bird just flew over my head; I was in my kayak and it was just above me, going away," said Geoffrey Hill of Auburn University, whose team spied the bird in the flooded forests along the Choctawhatchee River in May 2005.

Hill said he was within 30 feet of the woodpecker at that sighting, but failed to get a photograph, a key piece of evidence to document the bird's comeback.

"It's a hard bird to get a photograph of," Hill said by telephone late on Wednesday. "My excuse, and we are making excuses because we had a chance last year to get a picture, is that we had insufficient personnel and insufficient equipment. We could have gotten lucky. It didn't happen."

….

John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, who has led the search for the woodpecker in Arkansas, hailed the Florida find as strong evidence.

"It's tantalizing, it's suggestive, it's not conclusive, but in the aggregate, evidence is strong that the bird is there," Fitzpatrick said in a telephone interview.

He was sympathetic to Hill's problems in getting a photograph, and acknowledged widespread doubts about the bird's existence.

"I've been accused of being a Bigfoot searcher," Fitzpatrick said, referring to the mythical beast of American folklore. "I just believe that it is a very important priority for us to search all of the places where this bird may be hanging on, and once and for all find out where they still exist, if they do."

That gave us the information we needed! We unleashed (literally) the photo experts from Magic 8-Ball Ornithology Consultants and Country Fried Chicken, Inc. armed with the knowledge Fitzpatrick supplied. Because the reason they couldn't get a picture was because they were going about it all wrong! Instead of looking for an Ivory Billed Woodpecker they should have been looking for a Sasquatch!

Damn, we're good. Excuse us, won't you? We have to go put Frank back on his leash.

US Freezes Military Aid To Thailand

The United States government has suspended about $24 million in military aid to the government of Thailand as a result of the military coup there.

The United States has imposed sanctions against Thailand in response to the military coup which ousted civilian Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

The move involves cutting off $24m (£12.8m) in military assistance, according to the US state department.

The US has urged the ruling generals to call elections as soon as possible.

Last week's coup has been widely welcomed in Thailand, but it has been condemned by most Western governments as a step backwards.

State department spokesman Sean McCormack said the aid cut involved military education and training, peacekeeping operations and counter-terrorism.

Funding for humanitarian purposes would however continue, he said.

The US is sending a message here that it disapproves of the coup. I suspect aid will be promptly restored once proper elections take place.

The Greatest People In American History

Blogger version at least. John Hawkins at Right Wing News asked 225 bloggers to pick who they considered to be the greatest Americans in history. I was one of the bloggers asked to participate. He has the list of Americans and the list of bloggers who helped choose the list.

25) Alexander Graham Bell (7)
23) Thomas Paine (8)
23) Frederick Douglass (8)
22) George W. Bush (9)
18) Wright Brothers (10)
18) Mark Twain (10)
18) Harry Truman (10)
18) Bill Gates (10)
17) Dwight D. Eisenhower (12)
15) George Patton (13)
15) Albert Einstein (13)
12) Teddy Roosevelt (14)
12) Franklin D. Roosevelt (14)
12) Ulysses S. Grant (14)
11) Alexander Hamilton (15)
10) Henry Ford (16)
9) John Adams (17)
Thomas Edison (21)
7) James Madison (22)
6) Thomas Jefferson (29)
5) Martin Luther King Jr. (30)
4) Ben Franklin (32)
3) George Washington (35)
2) Abraham Lincoln (37)
1) Ronald Reagan (39)

He's also got the honorable mentions listed.

UN Report Hints Al Qaeda Is Losing

Not that I am a big supporter of the UN in general, but taken together with the tape from the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq noted earlier, this report hints that al Qaeda is hurting.

As an indication of the close relationship between al-Qaida and the Taliban, the Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against the two groups said "new explosive devices are now used in Afghanistan within a month of their first appearing in Iraq."

"And while the Taliban have not been found fighting outside Afghanistan/Pakistan, there have been reports of them training in both Iraq and Somalia," the committee's terrorism experts said.

By contrast, it said, al-Qaida is not only operating in Iraq but there have been many attacks elsewhere that have promoted al-Qaida objectives, "even if mounted by unconnected groups or individuals with narrowed sectarian or political aims."

The new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq purportedly said in an audio message posted online Thursday that more than 4,000 foreign militants have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 — the first apparent acknowledgment from the insurgents about their losses.

….

On the down side for al-Qaida, the report noted that several intelligence and security agencies said fewer foreign fighters have been killed or captured in Iraq in the last few months, "suggesting that the flow has slackened." On returning home, they noted that some fighters had expressed dissatisfaction that they were asked to kill fellow Muslims rather than foreign soldiers and that the only role for them was to be suicide bombers.

"As Iraq continues to slide towards civil war, al-Qaida may paradoxically see more losses than gains," it said.

"It has gained by continuing to play a central role in the fighting and in encouraging the growth of sectarian violence; and Iraq has provided many recruits and an excellent training ground," the report said.

But it said "the prominent role of al-Qaida may diminish as the violence escalates between communities, and distinctions blur between sectarian attacks on markets and places of worship, or purely criminal kidnapping and protection rackets on the one hand, and the fight against Iraqi and non-Iraqi forces on the other."

An interesting thing about that last paragraph: effectively that means that the "insurgency" is degenerating into criminal activity rather than war. That may actually be a hopeful sign in the long run. The fact that al Qaeda is alienating would-be jihadis is also a good thing for the long term.

Could You Play A Few Bars?

Only if you want to be behind bars.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A burglar who broke into a house in the Dutch town of Tiel on Wednesday night could not resist playing the piano he found there after ransacking the living room, police said on Thursday.

Unfortunately for the 20-year-old thief, his music woke the owner of the house, who called the police.

I wonder if he knows Jailhouse Rock?

Data Point

Political polls should always be treated with a grain of salt. In general, it is better to watch the trends in these things over a period of time rather than treat each one as particularly meaningful revelation. That said there is an interesting trend in the Connecticut Senate race: Ned Lamont appears to be losing steam and is not closing the gap with Joe Lieberman.

HAMDEN, Conn. (AP) - Sen. Joe Lieberman has a 10-point advantage over Democrat Ned Lamont among likely Connecticut voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday.

Lieberman, a three-term Democrat running as an independent after losing the party nomination in a primary, is favored by 49 percent to 39 percent over Lamont in the three-way race. Republican Alan Schlesinger trails with 5 percent.

The race has tightened slightly since an Aug. 17 poll that showed Lieberman leading 53 percent to 41 percent.

"Ned Lamont has lost momentum," said poll director Douglas Schwartz said. "He's gained only two points in six weeks. He's going to have to do something different in the next six weeks or … Lieberman stays in for another six years."

Even worse news for Lamont is in the breakdown of numbers:

The Quinnipiac poll showed that Lieberman has higher favorability ratings among likely voters, 51 percent to Lamont's 31 percent. While Lamont has slightly higher favorability numbers among Democrats (47 percent to 43 percent), Lieberman far outdistances his challenger among likely Republican and unaffiliated voters. Seventy percent of Republicans view Lieberman favorably compared to 12 percent for Lamont, and 48 percent of independent voters view Lieberman favorably compared to 30 percent for Lamont.

Again, this is all not particularly meaningful as a single data point. But one thing is for sure. If Lamont loses and if the Democrats fail to take either house, the netroots will be effectively broken. Because you can absolutely bet the farm that their all out assault on a reliable Democrat and subsequent waste of resources WILL be blamed for the loss. I've been writing about this particular race for a long time now and have always warned this was a horrible strategic move.

Al Qaeda In Iraq Admits Heavy Casualties

This is extremely interesting. The leader of al Qaeda in Iraq has issued an audio tape that admits that more than 4,000 foreign fighters have died in Iraq. (Frankly, if they are admitting 4,000, the actual total is much higher). Then he calls for additional volunteers, especially explosive experts and "nuclear scientists".

"The blood has been spilled in Iraq of more than 4,000 foreigners who came to fight," said the man, who identified himself as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir — also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri — the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. The voice could not be independently identified.

The Arabic word he used indicated he was speaking about foreigners who joined the insurgency in Iraq, not coalition troops.

Al-Masri is believed to have succeeded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who died in a U.S. airstrike north of Baghdad in June.

In the message, the speaker also called for explosives experts and nuclear scientists to join his group's holy war against the West.

I read this as an act of desperation. Al Qaeda is losing, and losing badly. They know it even if some of our own politicians don't.

Ah Ha! The Truth Comes Out!

We reported a few days back that the Australian government had blocked a crocodile feeding program. Even though the plan was widely endorsed by crocodiles, the government would not let rank amatuers go into the saltwater marshes to "hunt" crocodiles. The crocs were disappointed. But now, at last, we know the real reason the plan was blocked! Because it interfered with the goverment's own feeding program!

They are feeding convicts to the Crocodiles!

Prisoners in the remote Northern Territory may be finding they've bitten off more than they can chew as they are trained as crocodile handlers under a programme aimed at encouraging them to turn over a new leaf.

"The course is the first of its kind in Australia and will give prisoners the real life skills that they can use back in their communities," Northern territories Justice Minister Syd Stirling said Thursday.

The programme is being run in conjunction with the Darwin Correctional Centre Darwin Crocodile Farm, Australia's largest crocodile farm which houses more than 36,000 of the deadly and prehistoric reptiles.

Oh sure. They pretend it's a job training program, but we know the truth. They say there are five prisoners in the pilot program. How many were there when they started? Note the name of the prison as well. Ever heard of the Darwin Awards?

Menendez Meltdown Marches On

More Menendez follies as he is forced to sever all ties to a long-time political adviser and fundraiser. Why? Because the adviser was taped trying to get a favor for Menendez.

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez's closest political adviser was secretly recorded seven years ago boasting of political power and urging a Hudson county contractor to hire somone (sic) as a favor to Menendez, according to a transcript obtained by The Star-Ledger.

Tonight Menendez's campaign says he has severed his ties with the adviser, Donald Scarinci, after learning of the taped conversation.

Menendez and Scarinci were childhood friends and Scarinci, a prominent attorney with extensive contracts in state and local governments, has been a key fundraiser for the senator throughout his long political career.

Scarinci was recorded in 1999 by Oscar Sandoval, a Union City psychatrist (sic) who had contracts with the county jail and hospital in Hudson County, according to two people familiar with the tapes who requested anonymity because the recordings are evidence in a pending lawsuit.

We're all just waiting for what we know the New Jersey Democrats are going to try to pull off: another Lautenberg moment. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard already leaked the exclusive news about who the party is planning to pull in as a replacement. Or is the correct term 'dig up'?

Empty Pot Speaks

The perennial empty pot is at it again, Jimmy Carter has the unmitigated gall to lecture about the US being in more danger because we "didn't stay in Afghanistan".

FALLON, Nev. — Former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday major policy changes are needed because the Iraq war has divided the nation "almost as much as Vietnam."

"So there's no doubt that our country is in much more danger now from terrorism than it would have been if we would have done what we should have done and stayed in Afghanistan," he said on the campaign trail with his son, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Jack Carter.

The former president said the Bush administration made a "terrible mistake" by invading Iraq and diverting troops from Afghanistan.

Yeah, Jimmy. We've been in more danger from terrorism alright. But you have the dates all mixed up. We have been in more danger since November 4, 1979. Thanks to you, Jimmy.

Iran Refuses To Halt Enrichment Activities

Anyone foolish enough to believe Iranian president Mad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would agree to any suspension of uranium enrichment under any circumstances, go have your head examined. Ahmadinejad has repudiated any "progress" EU negotiators say they have made by flatly refusing to halt the activities even for a single day.

Ahmadinejad spoke after top Iranian and European negotiators ended their latest round of talks in Berlin, saying they had "come to some positive conclusions" but failed to reach an agreement.

"They asked for a one-day halt (of uranium enrichment). We said we won't do it," Ahmadinejad told thousands of people in Karaj, west of the capital, Tehran.

The West dithers. Absent a unified front against Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions we are on a collision course.