Cujoronimo II: The Sequel

All the way back in July, we brought you the chilling tale of Oskar, the hurtling hound of hell and his rain of terror in Sosnowiec, Poland. We use the word "rain" advisedly. For Oskar, despite the attempt to blame the drunk guy, actually launched himself out the second floor window and rained down upon an innocent passerby. Now we have a report that the vicious aerial attacks have spread to New Hampshire! The animal uprising has paratroops.

Police were looking for a man who reportedly robbed a car driver at knifepoint Saturday night. Police say Michael Mount, 30, pulled a knife on the driver of a car in which he was a passenger, forced her off the road and stole her purse.

Police called in their dog, Agbar, to track Mount.

They say Agbar fell from a second-story window while on the hunt, but was not hurt, and led officers to Mount, who was arrested outside his apartment.

What they are obviously covering up here is that Agbar (which sort of looks like Oskar if you screw your eyes up just right) jumped on purpose and narrowly missed hitting a pedestrian! How do we know that? Because why else would the dog hurl itself from a second story window? Hah! Definitive proof, indeed! So, if you live in Gilford, New Hampshire, you had better get a very strong umbrella. For the rain of terror is just beginning!

“I Led With My Heart Instead Of My Head”

The words of Lynne Stewart on how badly she handled her dealings with her client the "Blind Sheik", Omar Abdel Rahman. Stewart was convicted of helping her client transmit messages from his prison cell despite a hard ban on communications which she agreed to uphold. Now Stewart is begging for mercy at her sentencing where she faces up to 30 years in prison.

Lynne F. Stewart, the firebrand lawyer known for defending unsavory criminals, now faces the possibility of living out her life like many of them, in maximum-security lockdown in a federal prison.

Today, 20 months after she was convicted on terror charges, Ms. Stewart and two co-defendants who were convicted of conspiring with her will be sentenced in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Prosecutors, arguing that Ms. Stewart repeatedly flouted the law to aid the violent designs of an imprisoned terrorist client, have asked Judge John G. Koeltl to condemn her to 30 years in prison.

That would be a life sentence for Ms. Stewart, who turned 67 last week. Long an abrasive advocate of anti-government causes, these days she is not defiant. She is mournful about what she said were her failures as a lawyer.

Her dread of prison deepened unexpectedly, Ms. Stewart said, during the long period after a jury found her guilty on Feb. 10, 2005, of providing material aid to terrorism. She has recently recovered from breast cancer, but fears it will return in prison.

And if the judge comes down hard, she could be held in solitary confinement with limited visits, the same conditions as Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the terrorist she was convicted of aiding.

All three defendants have had to wait for sentencing while Ms. Stewart was treated for cancer. She has finished radiation treatments, she said, and her doctors have declared that she is cancer-free. But she worries about the medical care in prison.

“I feel very threatened by it,” Ms. Stewart said. “I know too much about the way they deal with you in prison.”

Ms. Stewart’s sentencing will culminate a case the Bush administration cites as a major counter-terrorism achievement. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who brought the indictment, devoted a full chapter to the case in his new memoir.

Ms. Stewart still denies that she acted to further any violent goals of the sheik, a blind Islamic cleric from Egypt who is serving a life sentence for a thwarted 1993 plot to bomb New York City landmarks. Whatever the sentence, her lawyers have said they will appeal the case.

She actually agrees with the prosecutors in the case that she did a very bad job of some her duties as a lawyer and an officer of the court.

These days, Ms. Stewart says, what stings is that she agrees with some of prosecutors’ claims about her faulty legal work.

In her trial testimony, she said she believed that she could stretch the prison rules because she regarded them as unconstitutional. But the argument was weak because, as prosecutors noted, she never made a formal legal challenge.

She said that she completely misjudged how prosecutors viewed the sheik and the leeway she could take in defending him, as terrorism became an increasing threat to the United States. “To me, the sheik was part of the demonized other,” she said, “part of a continuum” with other violent radicals she had defended more successfully, including members of the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers.

She admits that she became too close to the sheik, insisting it was because of his deteriorating health and sanity after years in solitary confinement, not any affinity with his Islamic fundamentalism.

“I ignored any warning signs,” Ms. Stewart said. “I led with my heart instead of my head and thought it would be all right.”

In that one statement, she sums up a fundamental problem with the left in general. It is about feelings, not logic when it comes to many issues. Many people have pointed that fact out over the years, but this is one of the few times I have seen someone on the left actually acknowledge it. Regardless of what led to her decisions and actions, she needs to be held accountable for them. The article (you should read it) actually makes a much better argument why translator Mohamed Yousry should be shown some mercy in his sentence. But this article offers Ms. Stewart's feelings as mitigation, little else of import. One hopes the sentencing judge leads with his head and not his heart.

UPDATE: 28 months in prison is all the judge would give her. That's pretty sad.

Political Realignment?

There are some people advancing the theory that if the Democrats take control of one or both chambers of Congress it will mean a fundamental realignment of the political landscape in this country. (I took a look at some of this analysis here). Today, Michael Barone takes a look at the issue and points out that it is highly unlikely that there will be a fundamental change for a number of very good reasons.

What would a Democratic victory — likely now but not certain in the House races, possible if all the close ones go their way in the Senate races — mean? Would it mean that we are heading into a political realignment, to a time when Republican positions can no longer rally a majority?

Not really, I think. Right now, it doesn't look like Democrats will end up with the kind of popular vote percentage in House elections won by their party in 1974 (up from 46 percent to 58 percent in two years) or Republicans in 1994 (up from 46 percent to 52 percent).

They're more likely to prevail, if they do, by something like the narrow margins by which Republicans have prevailed in the five House elections from 1996 to 2004. By historical standards, there's been strikingly little variation in those five elections. A Democratic victory of this magnitude would represent the kind of small oscillation that was commonplace in eras when one party or the other was dominant. The difference is that, with the electorate so evenly divided, a small shift can produce changes in party control.

Political realignments occur because of events that have deep demographic impact and when one party stands for new ideas that command majority support. The Iraq war (2,500 deaths) and our current economy (4.6 percent unemployment) are not events of the magnitude of the Civil War (600,000 dead) or the Great Depression (25 percent unemployment).

Moreover, voters' complaints about George W. Bush and the Republican Congress are more about competence than ideology. Why is Bush's second-term job approval so much lower than Bill Clinton's even though the economy has been in similarly good shape during both periods? Iraq. Katrina.

In other words, absent a major event with deep impact of voters, there is little chance for a huge sea change in the electorate's orientation. Barone is quite right, I suspect. There are some competence issues that are troubling voters, not a wholesale abandonment of ideology. This is why some conservatives are upset with the president and the Republican party. But to believe that these conservative voters would defect en masse to the Democrats is completely irrational. Barone also points out that if a realignment was taking place, it should show up in the early national polling for 2008 presidential candidates. It does not, not even remotely.

The Democratic plea is that the Republicans should be punished for incompetence. But even with majorities in both houses of Congress, Democrats will be poorly positioned to offer competence itself. You can make a good case that the Republicans have run out of ideas — they've implemented most of Bush's 2000 platform (tax cuts, education accountability, Medicare changes, more defense spending) and have conclusively failed to implement others (Social Security individual accounts). But Democrats don't have much in the way of ideas to advance in their place.

If a Democratic victory presages realignment, we should see some evidence of that in the polling for 2008. But we don't. Which party has candidates that can poll above their party's 1996-2004 ceilings — 49 percent for Democrats (Clinton 1996), 51 percent for Republicans (Bush 2004)?

Republicans pretty clearly have two, Rudolph Giuliani and John McCain. Democrats can hope that Hillary Rodham Clinton, with her carefully calibrated stands on Iraq and foreign policy, and her bipartisan work on some domestic issues, could be another. So, if he decides to run, could Barack Obama. Another might have been Mark Warner, but he's not running.

I think Barone is spot on here. I've said before that I am of two minds about who should take control of the House or the Senate. If the Democrats do so, they will have to grow up and stop finger pointing. They'll actually have to solve something rather than simply criticize. But I do not see signs of a fundamental realignment. Neither does Barone.

Asia’s Crime Boss

Aaron L. Friedberg, writing in the Washington Post suggests how the rogue regime of Kim Jong Il might be convinced to give up nuclear ambitions. It would not be easy. Nor would it be by talking one-on-one with the mad midget. Instead, the money which props up the North Korean government must be choked off.

Despite what many have suggested, this cannot be achieved simply through face-to-face negotiations or by offering security guarantees and economic aid. Kim is a cynical realist and will not exchange his nuclear capabilities for empty acts of diplomatic deference or what he would doubtless regard as mere scraps of paper. The hope that he might be tempted to ease the suffering of his people is also sadly misplaced. Kim has been described by psychological profilers as a "malignant narcissist"; he cares only for himself and is indifferent to the pain of others.

Whatever his quirks, Kim is also a cunning and rational strategist with one overriding objective: ensuring his own survival by maintaining an absolute grip on power. The only way to move him is by confronting him with a stark choice — turn over existing nuclear weapons, dismantle production facilities and submit to rigorous international inspections, or face a steadily rising risk of overthrow and untimely death. This demand can be sweetened with promises of aid and peace pacts, but in the end Kim needs to be presented with an offer he cannot refuse.

North Korea is an impoverished nation with virtually no legitimate exports. Most of its citizens scratch out a meager subsistence. Yet Kim and those around him enjoy a life of comfort, driving powerful foreign cars, drinking expensive imported whiskey, watching bootlegged DVDs and treating their ailments with the best Western medicines.

The hard currency needed to pay for these luxuries, as well as imports essential to the North's programs for weapons of mass destruction, is generated through a variety of illicit activities: counterfeiting U.S. and other currencies, manufacturing and exporting narcotics and phony name-brand cigarettes, and selling weapons from small arms to ballistic missiles to any customer with cash.

Friedberg suggests a number of ways to choke off the supply of money. All will be hard to implement. Implementing a complete interdict and inspection program of all shipping will bring about a lot of difficulties. (But it could be that nations banning any ship from North Korea entering its ports could help. Japan has done so, so has Australia.) Putting pressure on the Chinese and South Korean governments to inspect in a meaningful way will also be very difficult. But it might be time to start examining ways to do so. Placing some trade penalties on those countries that continue to do business with North Korea may be the only way to force changes.

Is any of this going to make the US more popular? No. Would it have a chance of curbing North Korea? Yes. Read the whole thing, see what you think of Friedberg's ideas.

Chavez And The UN

(T)Hugo Chavez has his big moment at the UN today, notes Jackson Diehl from the Washington Post. He starts off by saying he doubts that Chavez will get enough votes to get the seat on the UN Security Council, and that that would be a good thing, and potentially bad for Chavez's chance at reelection as president of Venezuela. All good things, right? Well, until he gets around to throwing blame for the whole situation.

It's election day for Hugo Chávez — not in Venezuela but at the United Nations General Assembly. Today a vote is due on his government's bid for a nonpermanent seat on the Security Council. Chávez has spent most of this year campaigning for the job, traveling the world and promising tens of millions of dollars in aid to poor countries in Asia and Africa whose votes he's counting on. His ambition is a big one: to become the leader of global opposition to the United States, or, as he puts it, to "radically oppose the violent pressure that the empire exercises."

There's a fair chance he'll lose. Most vote counters at the United Nations think Venezuela will fall short of the 122 General Assembly votes it needs on the first ballot, as will its opponent for the seat, Guatemala. One of the two might win on subsequent ballots, but Latin American governments are already anticipating that a third candidate from the region — such as Uruguay or the Dominican Republic — will end up getting the job. If so it will be a wounding rebuff for Chávez following his Bush-as-devil tirade before the assembly last month, and one that could hurt him in another vote, if it is free and fair: his bid for reelection as president in December. His opponent in that race has been hammering home the point that Chávez is squandering the country's oil revenue on foolish foreign adventures.

A Chávez defeat would save the Bush administration from embarrassment and spare the Security Council a nuisance factor. Still, there won't be much to celebrate. The fact that a clownish populist who has eagerly embraced the presidents of Iran, Belarus, Zimbabwe and Libya could even come close to getting two-thirds of the votes of the 192 U.N. members is testimony to how low U.S. prestige has sunk around the world. More specifically, it's a measure of how twisted U.S. relations with Latin America have become — and also, how fragile the appeal of democratic values is in that region.

Diehl lays the blame at Washington's feet. More specifically at the administration. What he does not do - as is usual in these cases - is actually come up with anything the administration could have done differently. Chavez, as Diehl himself points out, has been trying to spread as much cash around to buy support all over the world. Might it not be a good idea to look to that as being a proximate cause rather than Washington? The fact that there has been a merciless assault on the US in the world press, regardless of what the US does or does not do, also has a lot to do with perceptions in Latin America, does it not?

That merciless assault has been going on for years upon years. Remember when Clinton was in office and the rioting was over "globalization"? Disapproval focused on the Kyoto silliness that Clinton never even presented to the Senate. Because he knew full well it would be voted down, promptly and across the board regardless of party. Years before that there have been repeated challenges to Latin American relations. Administration after administration has struggled with the same issues.

In other words, this has been going on just about forever. Frankly, if the Bush administration manages to head off Chavez's goal to become a member of the UNSC, it should be considered a success. Period. No qualifications. US  relations with Latin America have been twisted for generations now, it is not all the fault of Bush.