Ahmadinejad Promises Iran Is “Going Nuclear”

Maybe as soon as February.

Iran defied imminent United Nations sanctions over its nuclear programme yesterday and pledged that it would become a member of the nuclear club within weeks.

After weeks of haggling between major world powers, a resolution is expected to be approved by the UN Security Council before Christmas.

"The nature of this resolution is not capable of pressuring Iran, and Iran will give an appropriate response to it," said Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, and main negotiator on atomic issues. "This behaviour will just create more problems."

Following Iran's failure to halt sensitive nuclear fuel work, the resolution is expected to ban imports and exports of materials and technology relating to uranium enrichment, reprocessing and heavy-water reactors, as well as ballistic missile delivery systems.

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, yesterday reiterated a prediction that Iran will announce going nuclear in February during celebrations of the 1979 Islamic revolution against the Shah.

Anyone who seriously believes Iran is only doing this for power production purposes is ClueProof™.

The Richest Corporal In The World?

The British corporal who acted as a translator for the British NATO commander in Afghanistan and who was charged with espionage appears to be very well heeled. Very, very well heeled. Like to the tune of millions of dollars. On a corporal's salary of about £ 29,000 (plus allowances) per year. He also helped run a club with an interesting weekly recreational evening.

Corporal Daniel James also used to help run a nightclub owned by the son of the controversial property tycoon Nicholas Hoogstraten.

James is a fitness fanatic who has been a member of the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment Territorial Army unit for 17 years, friends have told The Daily Telegraph.

James, who is of Iranian descent, was recruited as a translator for Lt-Gen David Richards, commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, to act as a translator in the Dari dialect of Farsi, one of the main languages in the country.

The 44-year-old Shia Muslim, who changed his name 10 years ago, was charged this week with passing secrets to a foreign power under the 1911 Official Secrets Act.

He is thought to have arrived in Britain from Teheran aged 17 after the overthrow of the Shah. He married an English woman and had a son, but the couple divorced 16 years ago. His mother still lives in Iran.

He owns five houses, including an £800,000 property, which are converted into flats and rented. Yesterday his silver Lexus car was parked in the drive of one of them. James served in 6 Company, the Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment based at Quebec barracks in Brighton, not far from Club New York, which he helped to run……

…..The club, now known as The Church, features a bondage night with an improvised dungeon. The session in the former church is called Debauchery and is run by a group which says it is "a collective of creative professionals with a specific interest in fetish affiliated arts".

James was involved in running the nightclub and his name remains above the door although he resigned as a director of the company which runs it last year.

There may be family money involved here. What he did while running his club may or may not be of any real importance. But there are so many screaming red flags waving over this guy's head that it is incredible that the military allowed him into a sensitive position. James' history screams security risk. Just the amount of money he is worth should have set off every alarm bell in the bureaucracy. But the Telegraph reports that it is not at all clear that James was even vetted for his job.

Data Dump

Some people use every excuse to tell the world that the Bush administration is "the most secretive" ever to exist. Most of this stems from the fact that the administration has stopped governing by leak to a large (but not total) degree. So how do you explain this? The Bush administration has enforced an executive order by Bill Clinton that automatically declassifies any secret record after 25 years unless specific exemptions are claimed in advance. On January 1st, 2007 enormous numbers of secret records will become freely available.

At midnight on Dec. 31, hundreds of millions of pages of secret documents will be instantly declassified, including many F.B.I. cold war files on investigations of people suspected of being Communist sympathizers. After years of extensions sought by federal agencies behaving like college students facing a term paper, the end of 2006 means the government’s first automatic declassification of records.

Secret documents 25 years old or older will lose their classified status without so much as the stroke of a pen, unless agencies have sought exemptions on the ground that the material remains secret.

Historians say the deadline, created in the Clinton administration but enforced, to the surprise of some scholars, by the secrecy-prone Bush administration, has had huge effects on public access, despite the large numbers of intelligence documents that have been exempted.

And every year from now on, millions of additional documents will be automatically declassified as they reach the 25-year limit, reversing the traditional practice of releasing just what scholars request.

Many historians had expected President Bush to scrap the deadline. His administration has overseen the reclassification of many historical files and restricted access to presidential papers of past administrations, as well as contemporary records.

Bush allowed two extensions for agencies to figure out what couldn't be released, but told everyone three years ago that there would be no others.

Flaming Swedish Santas!

It seems that Santas in Sweden are extremely flammable. Who knew?

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - "Ho ho ho!" may become "ouch ouch ouch!" for Santa Claus impersonators seeking to wing it with a fake beard, Swedish experts warned.

Sweden's national testing institute tested six models of beard on sale in the Scandinavian country and found that two of them turned into a raging inferno when coming into contact with a naked flame.

"We placed the beards on a peg in a laboratory. We placed a small flame underneath for two seconds to simulate a situation where Father Christmas gets too near to a candle or match," fire expert Per Thureson said in a statement.

On the bright side, people who keep a bit of a fire burning in their fireplace on Christmas Eve should get a lovely fireworks display.

UPDATE: Joe Gandelman has the latest on the Red-Suited menace to society. It ain't pretty.

Crossin’ The Drive-Thru Late Last Night

Yeah you got yer dead cat and you got yer dead dog
On a moonlight night you got yer dead toad frog
Got yer dead rabbit and yer dead raccoon
The blood and the guts they're gonna make you swoon!
You got yer
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
You got yer dead skunk in the middle of the road
Stinkin' to high Heaven!
(Louden Wainwright III, Dead Skunk(In the Middle of the Road))

Apparently things get a bit slow in Cedar Rapids, Iowa every now and then. People have to make up their own excitement. This time of year, it can be difficult to find cows to tip, so what's a thrill-seeking Midwesterner to do?

Toss a dead cat through the window at a McDonald's drive-thru, obviously.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - An employee working the drive-through window at a McDonald's will have a tale to tell. When the worker went to the open window thinking the car pulling up had already ordered, the people in the car threw a dead cat through the window, police said.

Cedar Rapids Animal Control officer Matt McAtee said the black domestic shorthair appeared to have been dead for a while.

"It looked like somebody had picked it up off the road," McAtee said.

The excitement happened around 8:45pm. Police are investigating. I didn't know making a late delivery was illegal.

Three Marines Charged In Haditha Incident

A Marine squad leader and two other Marines have been charged in relation to the incident at Haditha in November of 2005.

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - A Marine Corps squad leader was charged Thursday with murdering 12 people and ordering Marines under his command to kill others during an incident that left 24 civilians dead in the Iraqi town of Haditha last year, his attorney said.

Two other Marines also have been charged, their attorneys said Thursday.

In all, eight Marines could face charges in the biggest U.S. criminal case involving killings to arise from the war in Iraq.

Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, the 26-year-old squad leader, was charged with fatally shooting 12 people while having "intent to kill or cause great bodily harm," according to charging sheets released by defense attorney Neal Puckett. Wuterich also was accused of telling Marines "to 'shoot first and ask questions later' or words to that effect," the charging sheet stated.

Wuterich, of Meriden, Conn., also was charged with soliciting a corporal to make false statements and making another staff sergeant make a false official statement.

Puckett said his client is not guilty and acted lawfully.

Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt, 22, of Carbondale, Penn., was accused of one charge of murder involving unpremeditated killings of three males in a house, said his attorney, Gary Myers.

"Our view has been and continues to be that these are combat-related deaths," Myers said.

Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum, 25, of Edmund, Okla., also was charged, but his attorney, Jack Zimmerman, declined to specify the allegations before the government's announcement.

These men have been charged but are still presumed innocent. They deserve a fair trial and not a trial by media circus. Which doesn't stop the AP from getting an a couple of quotes from Iraqis pronouncing them guilty and demanding a "minimum" of the death penalty.

UPDATE: Allah reports that eight Marines have now been charged.

Never Again

I make it a point to try to mention things like this when they happen. We need more of this. American Muslims gathered for a ceremony to commemorate Jews murdered in Nazi death camps at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. The remembrance was organized by the leader of a local mosque. The event was organized specifically in response to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's just completed Holocaust denial hate fest.

 Local Muslim leaders lit candles yesterday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to commemorate Jewish suffering under the Nazis, in a ceremony held just days after Iran had a conference denying the genocide.

American Muslims "believe we have to learn the lessons of history and commit ourselves: Never again," said Imam Mohamed Magid of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, standing before the eternal flame flickering from a black marble base that holds dirt from Nazi concentration camps.

Around the hexagonal room, candles glimmered under the engraved names of the death camps: Chelmno. Auschwitz-Birkenau. Majdanek.

"We stand here with three survivors of the Holocaust and my great Muslim friends to condemn this outrage in Iran," said Sara J. Bloomfield, the museum's director, addressing a bank of TV cameras in the room, known as the Hall of Remembrance.

The museum, she noted, holds "millions of pieces of evidence of this crime."

Kudos to Imam Mohamed Magid for doing this. The Imam actually delayed a pilgrimage to Mecca by a day to attend the ceremony.

UPDATE: Rather a lot of positive reaction to this story. Check out what a few others are saying: Wake up America, The Moderate Voice, The Debate Link, Liberty Street, Secular Blasphemy, Bring it On,

Enemy Within?

An interpreter for the top British commander in Afghanistan (who also commands NATO troops) has been arrested and charged with espionage. The Telegraph is reporting that corporal Daniel James, 44, is believed to have communicated with a "foreign government", Iran.

Cpl Daniel James, 44, is charged under the 1911 Official Secrets Act with "prejudicing the safety of the state" by passing information "calculated to be directly or indirectly useful to the enemy".

It was said he had communicated with a "foreign power" in the incident on Nov 2, believed to be Iran.

Most of the hearing at Westminster magistrates' court yesterday was held in secret and no mention was made of James's job or his address.

But The Daily Telegraph has learned that he acts as an interpreter for Gen David Richards, the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan and one of the most senior officers in the Army.

If this proves to be true, there is no telling how much damage James may have done. But here's Iran popping up again, this time in Afghanistan. And the Baker boys want to reward these guys with dialog? I've pointed out that Iran's hand is behind much of the unrest in the entire region. It really is time for the West to stop bumbling around and present a unified front against this rogue regime.

Hillary’s Problem

Jed Babbin takes a look at Hillary Clinton's biggest problem. Writing over at Real Clear Politics, Babbin points out that holding the center is the only possible way for Clinton to win the White House. And Nancy Pelosi may be the one to sink that possibility.

Hillary Clinton has a problem. Its name is Nancy Pelosi. Clinton's run for the White House is being built - as was her husband's - on the idea of a "new democrat" who accurately triangulated between liberal and conservative well enough to shroud liberal policy with a cloak of moderation. The cloak was so tightly-woven and the media so compliant that no matter what Clinton did - from his first presidential act ("don't ask, don't tell") to the "wag the dog" episode in the impeachment days - he escaped scrutiny. But no matter how hard Mrs. Clinton clings to the Clinton Cloak, Speaker-to-be Pelosi's Animal House will be sticking its head out from every fold.

The timing for Sen. Clinton couldn't be better, or worse. The country has just handed the Dems control of both houses of Congress, President Bush is swimming in circles on Iraq and for the next two years Clinton has the opportunity to win her spurs by accomplishing something substantive. If she is a leader, now is the time for her to show it. The pressure is on, because if she can't manage more than campaign fundraising between now and November 2008, she'll have a hard time getting to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. Clinton knows that the 2006 vote was against George Bush and his Iraq policy, not for liberal nostrums peddled by her House peers. The problem for Clinton is Pelosi and her committee chairmen who are some of the most out-of-the-mainstream libs in the land.

Polls such as CNN's (reported by CQ Politics) analyzing election results in six of the most hotly contested states - Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Virginia - show that self-described moderates voted for Democrats by margins from 52-65%. (CQ also reported that in nineteen of the twenty-eight House seats captured by the Dems, voters had favored Bush over Kerry in 2004). The new House Dems aren't a radical bunch. Among the Blue Dogs, "fighting Dems" and the rest, there are enough moderates that could form a core of rebels big enough to stall Pelosi's agenda. Pelosi has been dealing with this, so far, by threatening all sorts of horribles to be inflicted on those who don't toe her line, from rotten committee assignments to awful office space. The effect of that approach can only last a while longer.

Read the whole thing, it's worth it. Hillary will have to fight against the Congressional leadership's worst tendencies. Because if the centrist voters are alienated, she can't win. It really is that simple.

Sanctions? What Sanctions?

The Opinion Journal takes a look at what is happening in Iran right now and then compares it to the bumbling approach the West is taking toward imposing sanctions on Iran for its continued pursuit of nuclear weapons. The failure of the West to do anything of any real use in sending a signal to Tehran will, in the end, cause more problems.

Iranians made their feelings plain about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week by voting to reject his allies in municipal elections and in the Assembly of Experts, a clerical body that theoretically has authority over Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. That doesn't mean reformers now run Iran, but it does suggest that international pressure and a policy of democracy promotion may produce the kinds of changes in Iran that three years of Western diplomacy have failed to achieve.

So it's all the more puzzling that, even as Iranians try to apply some pressure on Mr. Ahmadinejad, the international community is about to prove his point that Iran will pay little price for its quest to develop an atomic bomb. Consider what's happening at the U.N., where the Security Council is expected to approve a sanctions resolution this week, nearly four months after its August 31 "deadline" for Tehran to stop enriching uranium.

We've seen the latest draft of the resolution, hashed out among the U.S., the Europeans and Russia. Iran will be forbidden from importing any items or technical assistance "which could contribute to [its] enrichment-related, reprocessing or heavy water related activities, or to the delivery of nuclear weapon delivery systems." The resolution also imposes travel restrictions, and it freezes the financial assets of certain individuals involved in Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

As detailed in the editorial, there are actually more exceptions to the sanctions than there are sanctions. In the end they come down to nothing. The labor of mountains has give birth to a mouse, all in the name of consensus. All the good intentions merrily paving the path. We all know where that path is leading. As the editorial points out, we should be actively trying to foment change inside Iran. Making Ahmadinejad pay for his behavior is one way to accelerate that change. Letting him off the hook accomplishes the opposite.

Tough Times At The North Pole

You know things are getting rough for the right jolly old elf who runs things at the North Pole when he has to turn to crime to make ends meet. He's taken to knocking over gas stations.

LISBON (AFP) - Police in northern Portugal are looking for a man who robbed a gas station at gunpoint dressed as Santa Claus.

The man walked into the 24-hour gas station near Guimares, some 350 kilometres (220 miles) north of Lisbon, on Tuesday night and threatened the only employee on duty with the weapon, police told daily newspaper Jornal de Noticias on Thursday.

There is no word on who was driving the getaway sleigh.

Above The Law

Ronald Rotunda, a professor of law at George Mason University, writes an op-ed in today's Washington Post in support of a bill currently in front of Congress, the Judicial Transparency and Ethics Enhancement Act of 2006. The bill would provide for an Inspector General for the Federal courts.

The Judicial Transparency and Ethics Enhancement Act of 2006, now before Congress, would create an inspector general for the courts. It offers modest reforms that would keep our judiciary independent (because no one favors a dependent judiciary) and help keep it accountable (because no one favors a judiciary that is above the law).

Nonetheless, there are those who greet it the way Dracula would greet a bouquet of garlic. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for example, has said of the proposal: "That's a really scary idea."

On the contrary, this bill would strengthen judicial independence because it would give people greater faith that if there were problems, the inspector general for the courts would deal with them and not sweep them under the rug. An inspector general would also protect judges from frivolous or false charges.

There are already 57 inspectors general for other organs of government — for the Justice Department, Iraq reconstruction and so forth. The House of Representatives has imposed an inspector general on itself. Indeed, one wonders why it has taken so long to create one for the courts.

What's troubling here is that it has taken this long to provide some sort of oversight for the courts. Rotunda details some of the problems that the bill would address with examples from real life. It's sad in many ways that it comes to this, but if the judges are not doing an effective job of policing themselves (and they are not), it is time to look at alternatives. Rotunda makes a strong case for the need for this bill. Judges are not, and should not be, above the law.

The Poor Family Farmer

The Washington Post points out that the massive amounts of Federal money being spent to subsidize the "family farmer" turn out to be going to larger and larger farm operations. Instead of protecting family-owned farms, the subsidies are effectively destroying that way of life. I suppose that comes as a surprise to people who live in cities. It has been a real fact of life in farm country for many years. Huge cash infusions to large farmers give them the ability to gather up even more land, getting bigger and bigger.

"In today's fast-paced, interconnected world, there are few industries where sons and daughters can work side-by-side with moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas," Rep. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) said last year. "But we still find that today in agriculture. . . . It is a celebration of what too many in our country have forgotten, an endangered way of life that we must work each and every day to preserve."

This imagery secures billions annually in what one grower called "empathy payments" for farmers. But it is misleading.

Today, most of the nation's food is produced by modern family farms that are large operations using state-of-the-art computers, marketing consultants and technologies that cut labor, time and costs. The owners are frequently college graduates who are as comfortable with a spreadsheet as with a tractor. They cover more acres and produce more crops with fewer workers than ever before.

The very policies touted by Congress as a way to save small family farms are instead helping to accelerate their demise, economists, analysts and farmers say. That's because owners of large farms receive the largest share of government subsidies. They often use the money to acquire more land, pushing aside small and medium-size farms as well as young farmers starting out.

"Historically, when you think of family farms, you think of Mom and Dad and three generations working a small or mid-sized farm. It gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling," said Alex White, a professor of agricultural economics at Virginia Tech. "In the real world, it might be a mid-sized farm. But it also might be a huge farm. It might be a corporation."

More than ten years ago, I bought a house from a man who was planning to move back to his native Minnesota. He actually was a small independent agricultural researcher and was heading back home to help with the family farm. He was telling me back then that there was a vicious bidding war going on for land, with the larger farmers using Federal money to fuel a sharp ramp up in land prices. He didn't think then that he'd ever be able to afford buying enough land for his own farm. It hasn't gotten any better.

If you read the article, the facts show that in areas with the largest Federal subsidy income, jobs and economic growth are actually in decline. One of the farmers they talk about i the story is embarrassed by the amount of money he receives, but also is a realist and knows he needs it to stay competitive with the other large farms. Not the family farms, those are pretty well gone now. They are really hobby operations, not a way to make a living. I know one guy who works as an engineer primarily to subsidize his hobby farm.