I love this headline

From Sunday's Washington Post: Man Doomed by Fatally Flawed Assumptions

This just in...

'Nothing's Changed,' Bush Says of U.S. Iraq Policy. Is this news? Reuters apparently thinks so.

The road to hell is paved...

E.J. Dionne is upset about the lack of voter participation amongst young people.

One of the reasons turnout has declined over the years is that few people associate the words "politics" and "fun." It needn't be thus. Certain states -- my native Massachusetts is one, Louisiana is certainly another -- have long drawn people into politics not only as a civic enterprise but also as sport, amusement, diversion and distraction. Amusement should not be seen as the enemy of the civic.

He may be right about the "fun" thing. Though I suspect we'd disagree entirely on why that is. His solution? Parties, of course! Oh...and more school(read: teachers) involvement.

Imagine if the schools organized First Vote civics classes in the run-up to Election Day. Instead of being about abstract concepts, civics could be about the opportunity of each and every student to make a choice that matters.

Perish the thought! How old are you, E.J.? "Cool" and "school" haven't mixed since...well, they really never have. At least not at 17 or 18 years old. You want to get through to kids, the last thing to do is leave it to the schools. In fact, I'd argue that's been half the problem- young people have been hit over the head with a relentless stream of political bias by teachers and they are rejecting the notion that it's their problem to worry about. Perhaps if teachers would spend less time telling pupils what the right choice was, and more time teaching them to think for themselves, young people might actually take ownership in the process. Then again I could be wrong.

What's wrong with the legal profession

BoingBoing alerts us to the most recent example of lawyer depravity. The USAILC(USA Immigration Law Center) says on it's website that it...

expect[s] to be at the forefront of suits featuring the invention widely known as "It." For those unfamiliar with the subject, "It" is for all purposes an extremely expensive high-tech scooter. However, this contraption has been foolishly hyped as an all- purpose vehicle that will revolutionize global transportation. "It" is officially named the Segway HT and is being released by a privately-held company named DEKA. Get ready to Sue-It!

Less than ominous

Questions on Halliburton Deal Under Cheney. At least, that's the headline the NYT has chosen for the following bit of news:

At issue now is whether Halliburton under Mr. Cheney was aggressive enough in investigating the asbestos liabilities it was taking on in acquiring Dresser, and whether it adequately informed shareholders of the risks at the time they were asked to approve the deal.

No shady accounting practices uncovered. No under-the-table Enron deals to report. Cheney may have made a bad choice for a merger. Hardly earth-shattering.

The deal, which Mr. Cheney hailed as a "win-win" merger, ended up saddling the company with the growing costs of legal claims from people who say they were injured by or are at risk from asbestos in products made by Dresser and a former Dresser subsidiary that was spun off in 1992.

Oh, yeah. The claims all stem from a 1992 spin-off agreement between Dresser and it's one-time subsidiary. Halliburton and Cheney didn't come into the picture officially until 1998. Raines and crew would like nothing more than to foment popular outrage against this administration. Unfortunately for them the facts don't support their position.

Senatorial privilege

Roll Call is reporting that the Senate Ethics Committee is refusing to release transcripts or files from the Torricelli matter. Remember that the next time Congress pushes for more "disclosure" from business.

FBI Ineptitude

More evidence that the FBI leaks like a sieve. Sept. 11 Fake ID Suspect Flees U.S....five minutes before a planned raid.

The market's recent slide has made certain Democrats jollier than teenage girls at an N'Sync concert. Witness the Bush-blame-fest at Wednesday's meeting of the DLC(800 lb. gorilla not present). A slumping economy was savored; an illusory bubble revered. Self-congratulatory circle jerks like this rarely fail to get me steamed so, on principle, I permitted myself the guilty pleasure of reveling in another man's discomfort- in this case, that of Joseph I. Lieberman. See, Joe got cornered into addressing the "Rubin Situation". After repeated questioning over Robert Rubin and his ostensible testimony before "the Inquisition", Lieberman finally back-pedaled ...

"If Mr. Rubin would add something, I don't have any hesitation to call him."
"I really should have added [last week] that, if any point we feel Mr. Rubin would add something, I don't have any hesitation to call him,"
"We're into an investigation, two parts. If Rubin can add anything to either of those investigations, I'd call him in a minute."

Lieberman's anguish didn't last long, however. When pressed about what he was doing to determine if Rubin had anything to contribute, JL stepped back into character...

"Right now, I've been focused on homeland security."
You put your right foot in,
"My committee staff has really sort of set aside the Enron [investigation]."
You pull right foot out,
"My hope is that I'll come back into this over the recess."
You put your right foot in,
"And my plan is, as soon as we get homeland security adopted in the Senate, that we'll begin to schedule hearings in our Enron investigation in September or October."
And you shake it all about!

Not that Republicans have been covering themselves with glory in this political cat fight. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, lamely offers this...

"I've been looking at some of the documents we got from Citicorp to try to determine his involvement. There's some documents on which there's 'R. Rubin.' But I'm not sure it's the same Rubin. So we've still got some work to do on that."

As if the fact that the former SecTreas, now with Citigroup, personally reached out in an effort to keep Enron's credit rating from falling isn't reason enough. Color me unimpressed, Ms. Collins. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa, is left to call a spade a spade...

"It's outrageous that they go around beating up all of these corporate fat cats, and one of the biggest fat cats, Robert Rubin, is now clearly implicated, or Citibank is clearly implicated in some of the corporate accounting scandals when he was there. Not to have him come and account as they have made other folks come and account is purely political. If this was a former Republican secretary of the Treasury, I guarantee you that he would have been called up here a long time ago."

What's good for the goose...

Islamic impatience

STRATFOR, courtesy of WorldNetDaily, explains that Al Qaeda is under the gun to produce, and soon...

The foundation of al-Qaida's strategy is to demonstrate that the United States is vulnerable to attack despite its power and that al-Qaida can survive the inevitable American counterattack. For most of this year, the group has been relieved of the burden of carrying out operations to demonstrate its survival because the U.S. government has warned continually that the question of whether al-Qaida will attack is not if, but when. The American response surprised the network and allowed it to hold off on widely expected attacks.

Charles Johnson has the goods on another NYT debacle.

Courting insurrection

Amid leaks and rumors of US action against Iraq, the NYT has a few words for Colin Powell...

The administration, and the nation, would be better served if Mr. Powell's views prevailed more often. The time has come when he should not be so accommodating.

Taken by itself, the notion is debatable. Coupled with...

The sharks circling around Mr. Powell include Vice President Dick Cheney; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz; and the White House political director, Karl Rove. Mr. Rove is especially eager to bend policy to placate the Republican right.

...we start to see where this is really headed. The Times claims...

There have been a few important victories for Mr. Powell, too, including the decision to make this year's nuclear reduction agreement with Russia a formal international treaty and a muting of the administration's early belligerence toward China.

These are "important victories"? A treaty is only as strong as the convictions of the parties in agreement. Stamping one with the "formal international" tag hardly makes it more viable or likely to endure. Bush and Putin agreed to substantially pare down their countries' nuclear arsenals- the UN needn't recognize this fact for it to work.
As for China, lowering the rhetoric may pay short-term diplomatic dividends but it could also costs us on the larger issue of Taiwan. Where foreign states are concerned, China respects power and little else. Ambivalence for the sake of normal relations will send the wrong message to Beijing- that we will cave if things get dicey. A more practical approach would not ignore the threat China currently poses to the ROC nor the mainland's human rights abuses- it would address them explicitly. These "victories" are hardly "important."

Mr. Powell has some powerful advantages in internal debates that he ought not to be shy about using. The president needs him more than he needs the president.

Many(including myself) felt this was true of GWB back in 1999- it wasn't. Bush got elected without him on the ticket. In July of 2002, this statement strains credulity. Chalk it up to wishful thinking. Lastly...

The measure of success for secretaries of state is not whether they loyally follow the lead of the president, but whether they guide foreign policy in directions that advance American interests abroad.

Hogwash. Cabinet secretaries serve the Commander in Chief- no ifs ands or buts. The NYT would have us believe that "American interests" and following the "lead of the president" are mutually exclusive things. Powell, thus far, has been smart enough not to buy it.

Signs of desperation

Iran Court Bans Opposition Party. We may be closer to regime change than we thought.