I picked up the telegraphy on that a little earlier. I may have to change my email address to axisofevil@covad.net.

So I am reading an article on NRO by Jack Dunphy, the pen name of an LAPD cop, and it turns out that it is about Kevin Cooper, the California death penalty case that pittspilot brought to our attention a few days back. Cool - we're ahead of NRO on this score. But as I read it, I come across this paragraph:

Cooper's defense team is today led by Lanny Davis, best remembered as the shameless mouthpiece for an even more shameless former president. "We got ‘em!" exclaimed Davis when the Supreme Court refused to vacate the stay of execution. "The Supreme Court of the United States tonight ratified the fundamental concept of the American justice system, which is the truth must come out before we kill a man." Mr. Davis's commitment to the truth has not visibly advanced, it seems, since the days he spent shilling for Bill Clinton.

It doesn't get any better than this!

I will give Andrew this - he has been completely and totally intellectually consistent on the idea that Democrats' private affairs should not be in the news - Clinton, that guy who everyone who has forgotten now that was dating Chandra Levy when she was killed, and now Kerry.

But now he is saying that the story must not be true because Kerry denied it! He couldn't possibly be so stupid to deny it!

Of course, Clinton wasn't stupid, either. His denials of infidelity as a candidate in 1992 led to his election, and his denials in 1998 led to his continuing Presidency in spite of impeachment.

Plus, look at his "denial": "There is nothing to report, nothing to talk about, there's nothing there, there's no story." That seems a bit, well, Clintonian. Remember his denials of Gennifer Flowers' story? He never said that he didn't have an affair with Flowers, he said that her story was untrue - which he could say was technically accurate if any part of her story was not true.

Like I said, character in the executive is important.

I agree with pittspilot, below, mostly, on the issue of character. I think that character in the executive is one of the most important things in our government. I wouldn't go so far as to say, though, that someone unfaithful in his marriage will also be unfaithful to his duties, though it certainly shouldn't be any reason to believe that a person is more deserving of public trust.

I was talking to a friend at dinner the other night about Kerry before this came up, and I said that one problem with Kerry is that he is a ladies' man - sweet-talked a couple of heiresses into marrying him, and while single, he has a string of celebs that he has dated. I think that a truly successful ladies' man - with success measured in attracting multiple women, not one for life - is a talent for telling women whatever it is that they want to hear at that particular time to close the deal. I suppose one might call it "slipperiness." Kerry certainly embodies that as a politician, seeming to agree with all sides of any issue at one point or another. He shares that "talent" with President Clinton, another renowned ladies' man. He might be even better at it - Clinton didn't marry into hundreds of millions of dollars.

At any rate, it is that character trait that is troublesome to me, and while it doesn't prove that there is something to the story, it certainly doesn't make one trust him more, does it?

In the comments of the Intern thread, none other than Hesiod showed up and posted this:

You do know that Lanny Davis has been defending President Bush all over the place. Right?

ROTFLMAO!!!

Jinkies! Did I just get hoisted by my own petard?

Well, no, not exactly. The link in Hesiod's comment goes to a piece that appeared in the New York Daily News almost 4 years ago., Davis writes that he knew Bush at Yale, and that essentially all the people planning to run on "Bush is stupid" or "Bush is a meanie" are planning to fail. He was right.

It is questionable whether this is even defending George Bush - certainly it isn't defending President Bush because Davis makes it plain he doesn't want a President Bush. One column, prior to the election, saying Bush isn't stupid or mean equates to "defending President Bush all over the place."

So I sent Hesiod an email telling him simply that he was as disingenuous in commenting as he is on his blog. Now I'm ROTFLMAO!!!!!!

Once again, with the Kerry intern situation, we hear the various calls that there is a difference between "private" lives and "public" lives, and the mantra that Americans are uptight about "sex" and that we need to "loosen" up, and that what happen between two consenting people is none of our business. Basically the same crap that we heard throughout the Clinton debate.

Let me put this down for the record.

First my assumptions.

1) The oath to be faithful to one's spouse is one of the most solemn that any individual can make. That oath is at the very core of any "normal" relationship. Sexual relations complicate things, and can create problems for all involved which is why it is better that sexual relations remain within a committed relationship like marriage.

2) Violating that oath, and exposing that relationship to the corrosive effects of infidelity indicate either weakness on the part of the cheater, or a disregard for the Oath and the other party.

3) All people are weak to one degree or another. It is part of the human condition. That a person has a weak moment is not a disqualification from respect, especially if that person has a weak moment when relatively young. In fact, a leading indicator of character is the manner in which a person deals with slipping on a weak spot.

4) One of the most profound weaknesses in the human pysche is sexual desire. By weakness, I refer to the propensity of the sexual urge to be easily turned in unhealthly directions. Thus the urge can be healthy, or it can be unhealthy.

5) If the person violates the Oath of Faithfullness under the pretext of not caring about the oath, then that person's character is flawed. If someone could care less about the most solemn oath they have made then there can never be trust, in friendship, in work relationships, or in commercial relationships.

6) All relationships have trust at the core foundation. Whether this relationship is commercial, legal, political, or social.

From my assumptions I derive the following.

1) How someone treats their spouse matters. A spouse is supposed to be the most important person in that person's life. If that person treats their spouse badly, how will they treat the rest of society?

2) There is a private and a personal life, but to state that they are distinctly separate is absurd. If a person is unable to respect or maintain the trust of the people who are supposed to be the closest to him, then why would they give a flying crap about me?

3) Much of social fellowship is the ability to clamp down on anti-social urges. People are pre-disposed to be selfish, antagonistic, dishonest and rude. It takes work to think of others, and be polite. If you don't believe this, then you have not been required to teach these behaviors to children. With this in mind, the inability to control the basic sexual urge indicates to me that this persons ability to control his anti-social urges are suspect.

4) Thus, the private matters. And while no human is perfect, I expect a specific level of behavior. Cavorting with interns does not rise to that level, whether one is the President, a Senator, a Congressperson, a CEO, a teacher, or just a basic human being.

Why is that hard?

Apparently I am weird for believing this, but regardless I will stick with this framework.

Another soldier busted on espionage, this time a National Guardsman:

Spc. Ryan G. Anderson was being held pending charges of "aiding the enemy by wrongfully attempting to communicate and give intelligence to the al-Qaida terrorist network," said Lt. Col Stephen Barger, public information officer at Fort Lewis.

U.S. officials told NBC News that Anderson was caught up in a sting operation conducted jointly by the Army, the Justice Department and the FBI. Anderson, however, is being held only by the Army, which would bring the charges under consideration. Anderson is a Muslim, officials said.

What is going on with Muslims in the Great Northwest? The Beltway sniper, Mike Hawash and the Portland 6? Now this guy?

In the midst of an avalanche, Sitemeter still shows people searching for Janet Jackson at the Superbowl. Jeez, get over it!

When they make fun of you and all you can do is laugh!

Yeah, even funnier than you, Frank!

I first heard this on Rush when I got into the car to go to lunch today. My intent was to blog just this on the topic, at least until there is more to the story:

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

I was going to leave it right there, but then on the way home on the radio, I was listening to the Chris Core show, which is a local show, and Core is not Rush. At any rate, he had Lanny Davis (another local guy who you may remember as a constant TV presence during the Lewinsky days) on, and Davis said, and I'll try to quote as accurately as possible: "I want to make sure that you know that there is no story here. Nothing, no facts at all. Just something on Matt Drudge's website, and I think everyone knows that he is the least likely person to believe on a story like this."

I was flabbergasted. That was a balder lie than he had ever told in Clinton's employ. Drudge, least likely person to believe on a story like this?

Core, to his credit, responded that "Drudge broke the Lewinsky story, right?", to which Davis replied, "Yes, but there were no facts blah blah blah. He may have been right on that story, but that doesn't mean he is right about this one."

Wow. If you ask me, the least likely person to believe on a story like this would be Lanny Davis. He lied consistently on President Clinton's behalf. I suppose just because Davis was wrong on that one, it doesn't mean he is wrong on this one.

Davis tipped the scale for me - if Davis is telling your story, you have something to hide. No, I don't think that Davis was doing it on behalf of Kerry, but that doesn't matter.

Stranger still, the "regular Joe" caller who was on before was making a case that this was "old news," and had been previously investigated and laid to rest in 1998. So there must of been some sort of story there, even if the story is that the story isn't true (which was not the case Davis was making - he didn't say it wasn't true, he was saying Drudge was untrustworthy and there is no actual story).

Besides, as Instapundit (as always) points out, the blogosphere was on this a week ago.

Now I am sure there are people out there who would read this and say, well, isn't this the same thing as the Bush AWOL thing, except on pettier grounds, right? Well, no. Look at how the President has responded. Not by trying to smear his accusers, not by saying that it is old news, and not by saying there isn't a story. The President himself has answered that the accusations are simply untrue. He has provided documentary evidence that it is untrue. That is a much different approach than smearing one's accusers.

Apropos of my analysis of the Bush cycle, this represents a turn. I don't think that the Republicans are behind this, like Andrew Sullivan seems to. (BTW, doesn't that kind of baseless chargemaking look an awful lot like what Andrew is arguing against? My new fearless prediction - Andrew is going to flip on Bush before the election. Especially if Edwards is the beneficiary of newfound "electability" votes.)

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg notes that Watchblog, linked in the Instapundit piece linked above, is run by someone who works for Clark.

posted by blaster at 07:47 PM | Comments (23)

Second Vehicle Bomb Kills Dozens in Baghdad . I thought it was supposed to the US conducting a war on Islam.

A while back I predicted that Clark would not announce as a candidate for President. Well, obviously that was wrong, and I owned up to it. But if I wanted to play revisionist historian, I could claim that what I predicted was that he would not run for President. He was a candidate, but whatever he did, it wasn't running. And now he is out. By the way at this point in time, that article reads "Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who finished third in both Tennessee and Virginia, will announce his withdrawl on Wednesday in his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. " That would be even funnier it were Edwards!

In the top nav bar, I notice that the "Goldberg File" is no longer a top navbar item, and there is now one for "FRUM."

So, wow, Republicans are getting skittish on Bush, Rush launching on him, the full meal deal. Right on schedule. But, it also looks like the rest of the schedule is going right on plan, as they say. First, you have good news. Like the terrorists in Iraq know that we are winning and that democracy in Iraq is coming and that means that they are doomed. And that's in the New York Times! Andrew Sullivan says that maybe Bush hatred has peaked, but that makes him nervous, too. But I picked up the USA Today this morning and the front page says everything you need to know. I haven't figured out how to permanently link to the front page on the website so the best I can do are some pics from my Sidekick camera.

So what do I mean this is all you need to know? Well, this is "The Nation's Newspaper," and all of the front page articles are positive toward Bush in some way. The first article is about fallout from the Superbowl thing - it may creep out the more libertarian portion of the blogosphere, but this is red meat for the red states. It means that the great big Disney/Miramax/ABC conglomerate is not immune to what America really thinks, and that social conservatives have achieved in some small way a victory. Sure, the article provides an obligatory "chilling effect" quote, but not until the end. The headline is a Bush win, even if he ducked an opinion on it. The second article has a subhead of "Upbeat forecast is politically risky," but, that too is a good thing - Bush is not playing it safe here. Go big or go home. The third article is about an Iraqi police chiefin Fallujah - subhead, "Unsung heroes take extraordinary risks for their country's future." Message - we are winning, and we are not imposing our way of life on the Iraqis - they are fighting it for it themselves. And finally, the Burt Rutan article. While it has nothing to do with President Bush himself, and he plays no part, it shows that Americans are optimistic and achievers. And I think that the success of private space flight will accrue to President Bush because he has proposed an expansive vision of our future in space. Despite the fact that there were tons of cartoons ridiculing that, and even Jonah Goldberg, conservative geek said on CNN that we shouldn't be thinking about Mars while we are still fighting Al Qaida, the truth is, the American people are excited about space. I can't find it on his site, but I think it was Instapundit who had a piece on how many hits the NASA website got with the landing of the Mars rover, and how it was significantly larger than the hit count of all the Democrat presidential candidates combined.

So the cycle is cycling. I expect a few more of these before we are all done.

I agree with Michael Graham at NRO, and wish he had said this:

Since the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, America has been the front line of the fight against terror. The USS Cole, our army barracks abroad, New York and Washington, DC--our enemies were bring the fight to us.

After the attack on 9/11, I decided we were going to take the fight to the terrorists. Now the terrorists are dying in Afghanistan and Iraq, while our citizens go to work and school in safety. If the Democrats want to go back to the 1990s, where we're fighting the terrorists on our own airplanes in the skies over America, they'll have to get past me first."

We didn't see it on Russert, but maybe we'll see something like it later on...

Among the things that some people are saying about the current fall of President Bush in the polls is that his campaign has not yet started. That makes sense, but one serious difference from his predecessor - remember the "permanent campaign?"

I think that some of the criticism of today's Meet the Press appearance by the President is from those who wish that the President had come out swinging. At first I felt that way, too. But in truth, I think that we are better off with a President not constantly campaigning. (Yeah, I know, he has been raising money, but that is different.)