John Yoo: 'KSM Trial Will Hurt US Intelligence, Be A 3-Ring Circus'

John Yoo worked in the Justice Department from 2001-2003 and is currently a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Now, however, KSM and his co-defendants will enjoy the benefits and rights that the Constitution accords to citizens and resident aliens—including the right to demand that the government produce in open court all of the information that it has on them, and how it got it.

Prosecutors will be forced to reveal U.S. intelligence on KSM, the methods and sources for acquiring its information, and his relationships to fellow al Qaeda operatives. The information will enable al Qaeda to drop plans and personnel whose cover is blown. It will enable it to detect our means of intelligence-gathering, and to push forward into areas we know nothing about.

President Obama is subordinating American security & intelligence to the demands of the extreme left wing of his party.

This is foolish & stupid in the extreme--just the latest example of President Obama putting politics before what's good for the country.

You might be saying to yourself, especially if you're a knee jerk Obama apologist like some of my friends, 'What's political about this move?'

I'm glad you asked. Here's Andrew McCarthy:

The continuing investigations of Bush-era counterterrorism policies coupled with the obsession to disclose classified national-defense information from that period, enable Holder to give the hard Left the 'reckoning' that he and Obama promised during the 2008 campaign. The defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and -- depending on what judge catches the case -- they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets.

The bloodlust of leftists afflicted with Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) will not be sated until Bushitler is put on trial for his crimes against humanity!!1!!!eleventy!!

Well, they'll get their wish and the rest of us will add this to the list (of examples where Obama put party politics before country).

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'Where The Hell Does Congress Get The Power To Do That?'

Last Weekend's Interview with Seth Lipsky in the WSJ, focuses on the powers of the Constitution:

Last year's District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own firearms, exemplifies Mr. Lipsky's point that the language of the Constitution retains its power even when long ignored. "We've had 200 years, and nothing's ever been done about this," he says. "For 50 of the 200 years, the New York Times has been sneering at the idea of an individual right, and everybody's been talking about how this right belongs to the 'militia.'"

Yet by carefully analyzing the language of the Second Amendment, the court cast aside that musty conventional wisdom. Mr. Lipsky, who describes himself as "a partisan of the plain-language school of the law," applauds not just the result but the method the justices, in an opinion by Antonin Scalia, employed to reach it: "They really get into the language. I mean, the actual grammar, the sentence structure, the subordinate and not-subordinate clauses, which—forgive me, but I've been arguing for a generation and a half as an editorial writer, the plain language of this thing is plain."

The Constitution provides that ordinary citizens can challenge legislation in court and overturn the law the of the land.

What a great document, that Constitution.

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Bjorn Lomborg: 'Focusing On Global Warming At The Expense Of Food Aid Is Immoral'

As my econ-savvy friends always tell me, in a world with limited resources, there are always going to be trade-offs.

With a chimeric threat like "global warming" on the policy agenda, everything loses to the productivity, quality of life, liberty-reducing measures proposed by people whose real goal is to remake civilization and society in an image they see fit.

Bjorn Lomborg:

Poor families in Ethiopia struggle to survive, and global warming will make it tougher for them. In some of the poorest areas on earth, global warming is expected to increase hunger in the future. Mr. Mekonen has heard talk of global warming but, he said, "it does not affect our lives."

What does affect his life is high food prices. His family can afford to eat meat just once a month. Global food aid is at a 20-year low. Prices soared in 2008, partly because rich countries' biofuel mandates—designed to fight global warming—have meant that land once used to grow crops to feed people is now being used to grow crops to feed cars.

Investing in malnutrition assistance helps countries like Ethiopia because it reduces the burden that malnourished people place on health systems. Spending money on HIV prevention and treatment is a highly effective use of aid money. In economic terms, these investments have benefits that far outstrip their costs.

Malnutrition should not be neglected as developed countries concentrate on global warming. Oxfam has warned that at least 4.5 million children could die and 8.6 million fewer people could have access to HIV/AIDS treatment if rich countries divert aid to help poor countries tackle climate change instead of malnutrition as part of an agreement to be negotiated in Copenhagen next month.

Oxfam argued that developed countries should both increase aid and spend more to pay off countries that will suffer the worst of global warming. But the harsh truth is that resources are limited. Money spent on global-warming policies is likely to reduce the funds available for food aid.

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Eric Holder's Ridiculous Decision To Try KSM In NY, &c.

The WSJ's Review & Outlook editorial for yesterday pretty well sums up all the legal, historical, practical, and terror-fighting implications of Holder's leftist-appeasing move to abolish the military commissions specifically designed to try KSM & others for whom normal evidentiary rules, among other things, would be difficult.

Please spare us talk of the "rule of law." If that was the primary consideration, the U.S. already has a judicial process in place. The current special military tribunals were created by the 2006 Military Commissions Act, which was adopted with bipartisan Congressional support after the Supreme Court's Hamdan decision obliged the executive and legislative branches to approve a detailed plan to prosecute the illegal "enemy combatants" captured since 9/11.

Contrary to liberal myth, military tribunals aren't a break with 200-plus years of American jurisprudence. Eight Nazis who snuck into the U.S. in June 1942 were tried by a similar court and most were hanged within two months. Before the Obama Administration stopped all proceedings earlier this year pending yesterday's decision, the tribunals at Gitmo had earned a reputation for fairness and independence.

No one doubts these men's guilt, but what if--what if--they receive reduced or no sentence because of some procedural rule that ought not apply to enemy combatants?

Then, there's the ridiculous leftists & media (but I repeat myself) response to the mass murder of US soldiers at Ft. Hood by Islamic terrorist-in-US-uniform, Nidal Hasan.

51 people were shot, of which, 13 eventually died, including one unborn child. But to hear the liberal take on things (& that idiot Gen. Casey), the biggest tragedy would be the loss of diversity.

Here's Charles Krauthammer:

One must not speak of such things. Not even now. Not even after we know that Hasan was in communication with a notorious Yemen-based jihad propagandist. As late as Tuesday, the New York Times was running a story on how returning soldiers at Fort Hood had a high level of violence.

What does such violence have to do with Hasan? He was not a returning soldier. And the soldiers who returned home and shot their wives or fellow soldiers didn’t cry “Allahu Akbar!” as they squeezed the trigger.

The delicacy about the religion in question — condescending, politically correct, and deadly — is nothing new. A week after the first (1993) World Trade Center attack, the same New York Times ran the following front-page headline about the arrest of one Mohammed Salameh: “Jersey City Man Is Charged in Bombing of Trade Center.”

Ah yes, those Jersey men — so resentful of New York, so prone to violence.

And Mark Steyn:

“Diversity” is one of those words designed to absolve you of the need to think. Likewise, a belief in “multiculturalism” doesn’t require you to know anything at all about other cultures, just to feel generally warm and fluffy about them. Heading out from my hotel room the other day, I caught a glimpse of that 7-Eleven video showing Major Hasan wearing “Muslim” garb to buy a coffee on the morning of his murderous rampage. And it wasn’t until I was in the taxi cab that something odd struck me: He was an American of Arab descent. But he was wearing Pakistani dress — that’s to say, a “Punjabi suit,” as they call it in Britain, or the shalwar kameez, to give it its South Asian name. For all the hundreds of talking heads droning on about “diversity” across the TV networks, it was only Tarek Fatah, writing in the Ottawa Citizen, who pointed out that no Arab males wear this get-up — with one exception: Those Arab men who got the jihad fever and went to Afghanistan to sign on with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. In other words, Major Hasan’s outfit symbolized the embrace of an explicit political identity entirely unconnected with his ethnic heritage.

Mr. Fatah would seem to be a genuine “multiculturalist”: That’s to say, he’s attuned to often very subtle “diversities” between cultures. Whereas the professional multiculturalist sees the 7-Eleven video and coos, “Aw, look. He’s wearing . . . well, something exotic and colorful, let’s not get hung up on details. Celebrate diversity, right? Can we get him in the front row for the group shot? We may be eligible for a grant.”

The brain-addled “diversity” of General Casey will get some of us killed, and keep all of us cowed. In the days since the killings, the news reports have seemed increasingly like a satirical novel the author’s not quite deft enough to pull off, with bizarre new Catch 22s multiplying like the windmills of your mind: If you’re openly in favor of pouring boiling oil down the throats of infidels, then the Pentagon will put down your e-mails to foreign jihadists as mere confirmation of your long established “research interests.” If you’re psychotic, the Army will make you a psychiatrist for fear of provoking you. If you gun down a bunch of people, within an hour the FBI will state clearly that we can all relax, there’s no terrorism angle, because, in our over-credentialized society, it doesn’t count unless you’re found to be carrying Permit #57982BQ3a from the relevant State Board of Jihadist Licensing.

Ezra Levant, my comrade in a long battle to restore freedom of speech to Canada, likes to say that the Danish cartoons crisis may one day be seen as a more critical event than 9/11. Not, obviously, in the comparative death tolls but in what each revealed about the state of Western civilization. After 9/11, we fought back, hit hard, rolled up the Afghan camps; after the cartoons, we weaseled and equivocated and appeased and signaled that we were willing to trade core Western values for a quiet life. Watching the decadence and denial on display this last week, I think in years to come Fort Hood will be seen in a similar light. What happened is not a “tragedy” but a national scandal, already fading from view.

It used to be that the pursuit of "diversity" in the form of affirmative action put some less qualified people in school or a job in place of a more qualified applicant. While stupid & unjust, such behavior rarely resulted in the deaths of 13 people and injury of dozens more.

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Leftists Say We're Crazy Lunatics For Thinking The Country Is Headed In A Socialist, Freedom Reducing Direction (UPDATED)

But then they write health care "reform" legislation that will throw people in jail for not purchasing insurance. Something that wasn't "illegal" behavior has suddenly become something punishable with prison time.

Stone: Do you think it’s fair to send people to jail who don’t buy health insurance?

Pelosi: … The legislation is very fair in this respect.

Look, folks, there are different paths to collectivist, socialist, repressive, Orwellian states, just because the United States isn't on the exact same one as, say, the former Soviet Union, doesn't mean that what the current group of leftists (including our President) is doing isn't of a piece with what was done elsewhere to limit the freedom of individual Americans.

This is how it's done in Nanny States. 20 years ago, the social democracies of Western Europe (including the UK) didn't look like they do now. Now, per the Telegraph, new environmental regulation could result in carbon rationing cards for subjects of the crown (remember, they're not citizens).

An Environment Agency spokesman said only those with "extravagant lifestyles" would be affected by the carbon allowances.

He said: "A lot of people who cycle will get money back. It will probably only be bankers and those with extravagant lifestyles who would lose out."

However, some have criticised the move as "Orwellian" and say it will have a detrimental impact on business.

Ruth Lea, an economist from Arbuthnot Banking Group, told the Daily Mail: "This is all about control of the individual and you begin to wonder whether this is what the green agenda has always been about. It's Orwellian. This will be an enormous tax on business."

Under the Climate Change Act, Britain is obliged to cut its emissions by 80 per cent on 1990 levels by 2050. This means annual CO2 emissions per person will have to fall from about 9 tonnes to only 2 tonnes.

Do you have an "extravagant lifestyle" as defined by the Holy Church of the Environment & Mother Gaia?

Prepare to have your unrighteous behavior curbed.

My friends here in the UK don't even know to be upset about most of these things. Like a frog in a pot of water, with the temperature slowly increasing, they're lives are managed and regulated to the Nth degree and they don't even know it.

President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid 2009 alone have shown their government control-loving, liberty-reducing in just the last 10 months. Card check to take away the secret ballot and sneak unionize wherever they can. Cap & trade to regulate 1/6th of the economy. Health "reform" to control another 1/5th or so. Takeover of domestic automakers. Takeover and regulation of the financial sector. Am I missing anything? I feel like I'm missing something.

The shocking thing about this is that I had no idea how wide reaching their grasp for power was until I started typing it all into this blog post.

My liberal-leftist friends are always convinced of the power of ever-greater reform and policy tweaking and technology and other knowledge advancement to bring efficiency to the inherently inefficient government bureaucracy.

But here's the thing, you cannot efficient-ize the government enough to make up for the concurrent loss of liberty.

UPDATE 14 November 6:17p BST: Ryan Decker's comment from the Facebook thread:

You could have ended the sentence thus: "you cannot efficient-ize the government." Even if the liberty/efficiency tradeoff did exist the point would be moot because government is not capable of increasing efficiency. Policymakers simply face the wrong incentives, lack the competence, and cannot process the information required to increase the efficiency of anything.

So there's no trade-off in which government policy could somehow increase efficiency at the cost of liberty. If they're taking your liberty, they're doing it inefficiently.

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In The Wake Of Ft. Hood, What Should President Obama Do?

Dan Henninger has the answer:

Everyone has seen the pictures of inconsolable grief amid the coffins of Fort Hood. Only one person can resolve the confusion that let this happen: the president.

This is the president who told his attorney general to decide if the CIA officers who water-boarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should be held criminally liable.

But two weeks ago, Mr. Obama met 18 coffins returned from Afghanistan. Whatever he decides about the Afghan troop deployment, what won't change is that over there or here at home, they will keep trying to kill us.

To give us better odds of protection than we had last week, President Obama should do two things: Call off the CIA investigation. Then call in the guys who didn't make the right call on Hasan and ask why not. Then, whatever set the bar too high, lower it. His "base" won't like it. So what? What he saw in Texas was worse.

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Want To Lower Healthcare Costs, Thereby Making Insurance More Affordable For Everyone? Try Tort Reform

From the WSJ:

Never mind that reducing medical lawsuits is a rare reform provision that really would reduce health-care costs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the savings at $54 billion over a decade. Consulting firm Tillinghast Towers-Perrin has suggested the direct cost of medical tort litigation is more like $30 billion annually. PriceWaterhouseCoopers estimates that last year $240 billion in health expenditures were the result of doctors ordering unnecessary procedures to protect against the risk of lawsuits.

This is another one of those things President Obama said he would do & didn't. As in, he said he would introduce tort reform as one piece of his overall healthcare reform, but the legislation leaving the House includes, per the article above, a proviso that will actually undermine existing state tort law.

I get it. I really do. Obama and his Democrat friends are just paying back one of their biggest campaign cash cows--trial lawyers.

Kind of like with Card Check and the Unions.

And cap & trade and the Climate-Industrial Complex.

And I don't even really blame my friends in the legal profession who are opposed to tort reform. I understand that by opposing any check on their ability to litigate, they are only acting in their self interest.

Don't blame Obama, Democrats, & trial lawyers, blame the system.

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The Pacific: 2 Trailers

First, the old one, you've probably already seen:

And the new one, you probably haven't:

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Holman Jenkins: 'Unable To Do Anything About Global Warming, Policy Defaults To Satisfying Demands Of Organized Interests For Climate Pork'

Compare and contrast the very able in-house editorial writers of the Wall Street Journal and any other given daily newspaper--take the New York Times if you like. I guarantee you any objective analysis of the writing, to say nothing of the actual merit of the ideas expressed, will come out in favor of the WSJ's Daniel Henninger, Holman Jenkins, Bret Stephens and the rest.

Here's Jenkins on Al Gore's for-profit climate change machine:

All policy salesmanship naturally defaults toward the proposition of huge benefits and negligible costs (i.e., free lunchism). Isn't that where Al Gore is today?

Mr. Gore notes that he has poured his own money into two climate action nonprofits, but, whatever his self-felt motives, aren't these nonprofits functionally propaganda arms (i.e., advertising) that benefit his for-profit investments?

The truth is, evidence of man's impact on climate remains maddeningly elusive, in part because man's impact on climate is so small as to be hard to disentangle from natural variability. This is not Mr. Gore's position, of course. If anything, however, the case for action has become less closed since he pronounced it closed in 1989, if only because of the huge sums and manpower poured into the subject to little avail.

In retrospect, a significant moment was the falling apart or debunking of two key attempts seemingly well-suited to clinch matters for a scientifically literate public. One, the famous hockey stick graph, which suggested the temperature rise of the past 100 years was unprecedentedly steep, was convincingly challenged. The other, a mining of the geological record to show past episodes of warming were sharply coupled with rising CO2 levels, fell victim to a closer look that revealed that past warmings had preceded rather than followed higher CO2 levels.

These episodes from a decade ago testified to one important thing: Even climate activists recognized a need for evidence from the real world. The endless invocation of computer models wasn't cutting it. Yet today the same circles are more dependent than ever on predictions made by models, whose forecasts lie far enough in the future that those who rely on them to make policy prescriptions are in no danger of being held accountable for their reliability.

For a while the media could patch over the scientific shortfall by reporting evidence of warming as if it were evidence of what causes warming. Inconveniently, however, just as temperature-measuring has become more standardized and disciplined and less reliant on flaky records from the past (massaged to the Nth degree), the warming trend seems to have faded from the recent record.

It seems to me that the climate of opinion surrounding climate change is beginning to change.

As in, people aren't willing to give up Western Civilization in the vague and vain hope that it may forestall some far off future, unproven, and ridiculous prophecy of doom.

(h/t Scott L.)

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Martin Feldstein: 'Obamacare Could Have Unintended Consequence Of Raising Premiums & Reducing Number Of Insured'

Ah, the perverse unintended consequences of government meddling in markets.

The Congressional Budget Office is required to estimate the cost of the law as it is written, not as it may evolve. But we as taxpayers will have to pay those future costs.

As with nearly every other government program, the cure is far, far worse than the disease.

(h/t Scott L.)

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Soldiers Of Ft. Hood, RIP

Casualties in the War on Terror.

Whether here or in Iraq or Afghanistan, these soldiers gave their lives for the same country.

I thank them for their service and their sacrifice.

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Thank Goodness For President Awesome's Stimulus That Saved Us From 10%+ Unemployment

Or not (via Greg Mankiw's Blog):

It's like someone said once, 'economics doesn't lie, but economists do.'

I'm sure the President's economic team--Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Christina Romer, Austan Goolsbee--are perfectly fantastic economists in their own right. But when they join a political team, they, like everyone else, cherry pick the results to fit their worldview.

And that's how you get ridiculous graphs like the one above.

Remind me: How many jobs has Obama saved or created?

Also, for the interested, the NYT has this interactive unemployment graph. (h/t Matt L.)

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You Know How Pres. Obama & The Liberal Propagandists Said Conservatives Were Deluded About Government Funding Of Abortion?

They lied to you.

President Obama and other "fact checking" groups explicitly stated that the President's plan (really, whatever Speaker Pelosi put forward) didn't and wouldn't fund abortions. They wrote long articles and gave speeches about how conservative, right-to-lifers were wild eyed and deluded--that abortion was one of the "myths" of the Obama plan that wasn't really true.

You know, that it was a myth just like the death panels were a myth.

Fortunately, there are some life-loving, honest Democrats in the House of Representatives--63 of them, to be exact.

For months, the Michigan Democrat has been threatening to bring down any health-care bill unless the House was given the opportunity to vote to extend the ban on taxpayer dollars for abortion to the new federal programs being created. On Saturday night, Mrs. Pelosi caved and Mr. Stupak prevailed.

The result is one of the few, real up-or-down votes we ever get on abortion—and the only part of the health-care mess that shows any bipartisan consensus. In the end, 63 Democrats and Mr. Stupak joined all but one Republican on an amendment that does two things: prohibits federal funds for an abortion or for abortion coverage; allows (notwithstanding pro-choice propaganda) private insurers to offer abortion coverage so long as tax dollars are not involved.

Not that the press ever noticed. Up until almost literally the 11th hour, Mr. Stupak's push for a vote was treated as a sideshow. Nor was President Barack Obama ever called to answer for his flatly contradictory public statements on the place of abortion (the preferred term is "reproductive health care") in any health-care reform.

Mr. Stupak has just changed all that. On Sunday, the president of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, sent out an action alert asking supporters to tell Mr. Obama to "make good" on his "promise to put reproductive health care at the center of [his] health care reform plan." She should know: She was standing next to Candidate Obama in 2007 when he declared that "reproductive care is essential care, it is basic care, so it is at the center and at the heart of the plan that I propose."

Unfortunately for Ms. Richards, during his recent appearance before a joint session of Congress, Mr. Obama promised something different: "no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions."

Notwithstanding the president's promise, page 110 of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's bill authorized the secretary of Health and Human Services to determine when abortion is allowed under the government-run plan. All Mrs. Pelosi's preferred "compromises" left this undisturbed, using what in effect would be a money-laundering scheme to cloak the reality of a federal agency paying for abortion.

But Mr. Stupak stood firm, and Mrs. Pelosi realized something would have to give if she wanted to get a health-care bill passed. So she gave Mr. Stupak his vote—and his victory.

Big ups to Bart Stupak and his 62 fellow, pro-life Democrats.

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Yes, Ronald Reagan Is One Of My Heroes

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Roger Kimball On The Fall Of The Berlin Wall

From The New Criterion:

Was there ever a more fitting monument to tyranny than the Berlin Wall? Conceived in desperation, this brutal barrier was erected in 1961 by the state not for the protection but for the incarceration of its citizens. . . . [It] was also an inescapable indictment, not just of a particular society but of an entire world view, the world view of Soviet Communism with its rhetoric of justice and class struggle in one hand and its reality of the Gulag and the systematic obliteration of human freedom in the other. . . .

What, finally, brought down the wall? The candidates for that honor are many, from the impersonal operation of History to the people-power of movements like Solidarity and the spiritual leadership of Pope John Paul II. Among Western academics, the role of Mikhail Gorbachev enjoys pride of place. His mantras of glasnost and perestroika ("openness" and "restructuring") became favored terms in English. In the late 1980s, Gorbachev, the true-believing Communist, was the hero. Never mind that he wished to salvage the Soviet empire: he spoke to the hearts and minds of the Western intelligentsia in a way Ronald Reagan never did. Reagan, after all, had the temerity early on in his tenure to describe the Soviet Union as an "evil empire." How the liberal establishment recoiled from, how it ridiculed that phrase. "The Western diplomatic firmament," William F. Buckley Jr. recalled in 1990, "shook with indignation." Then came "Star Wars" and Reagan's military buildup. How the Left scorned that. How the Soviets scrambled to keep up. After one of his chummy sight-seeing tours of Moscow in 1984, the Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote an article about his trip for The New Yorker. The Soviet's "great material progress" impressed him, as did the look of "solid well-being of the people on the streets."

Death to tyranny & tyrants wherever they may be found. And may their enablers, like John Kenneth Galbraith, hang their heads in shame.

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Angela Merkel On The Fall Of The Berlin Wall On 9 November 1989

Via the WSJ:

[F]or me America seemed completely out of reach . . . then on the 9th of November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell.

And this border which had divided a nation, for decades, keeping people in two different worlds, was now open. And this is why for me, today is first and foremost a time to say thank you.

I thank all those American and Allied pilots who heard and heeded the desperate appeal of then-Mayor of Berlin Ernst Reuter, in 1948, who said, you, the nations of this world, cast your eyes towards the city.

For months, these pilots flew food to Berlin for the airlift, saving the citizens from starvation. Many of these soldiers risked their lives. Dozens lost their lives. We shall remember and honor them forever . . .

I think of John F. Kennedy, who won the hearts of the Berliners, when, during his visit in 1961, after the wall had been built, he reached out to the desperate citizens of Berlin by saying, "Ich bin ein Berliner." I think of Ronald Reagan, who, far earlier than most, clearly saw the sign of the times and, standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate, already in 1987, called out, "Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." This appeal shall remain forever in my heart.

10 years ago Monday.

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Bret Stephens: 'When No Means No'

When will they learn?

In October 2003, the European diplomatic troika of France, Germany and Britain extracted a promise from Iran to suspend most of its nuclear work and promise "full transparency" in its dealings with the International Atomic Energy Agency. In exchange, the EU3 offered a menu of commercial and technological incentives. Then-French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin hailed the deal as "a promising start."

It soon became apparent that Iran had no intention of becoming transparent, as repeated IAEA reports made abundantly clear. As for the idea that Iran could be made to abandon its nuclear ambitions, then-Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi was unequivocal: "We won't accept any new obligations. Iran has a high technical capability and has to be recognized by the international community as a member of the nuclear club," he said. "This is an irreversible path."

So there was the first Iranian "No." In November 2004, however, Tehran made a second deal with the EU3, this time with an even sweeter package of incentives for Iran. The so-called Paris Agreement lasted a few months, until Iran again spurned the Europeans. "Definitely we can't stop our nuclear program and won't stop it," former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani said in March 2005—a second resounding "No."

Still, the wheels of diplomacy kept spinning, thanks to a Russian offer to enrich Iran's uranium for it. The Iranians "studied" the proposal and even reached what an Iranian diplomat called a "basic agreement" with Moscow. But again they turned it down, on the basis that it is "logical that every country be in charge of its own fate regarding energy and not put its future in the hands of another country." Call that the third "No."

Four months later, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Iran had successfully enriched uranium. Over the course of the next two years the Security Council approved four successive resolutions demanding that Iran cease enriching and imposing some mild sanctions. Ahmadinejad replied by insisting that all the Security Council resolutions in the world couldn't do a "damn thing" to stop Iran from developing its nuclear programs. That would be the fourth and clearest "No."

Yet even as Tehran's rejections piled up, a view developed that all would be well if only the U.S. would drop the harsh rhetoric and meet with the Iranians face-to-face. So President Obama began making one overture after another to Iran, including a videotaped message praising its "great civilization." Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei replied that Mr. Obama had "insulted the Islamic Republic of Iran from the first day."

I think Obama and his ilk believe that Iran is just like the former Soviet Union, that one can negotiate with them in good faith (though even that is debatable). I've learned a bit about the Cold War in the course of my studies. If Iran gets the bomb, there's a darn good chance they'll use it in downtown Jerusalem.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your line of thinking, Israel will do anything and everything it can to forestall Iran's planned judgement day.

Good thing the kewlest President ever decided to engage the Iranians directly. I'm sure this time they'll give up their nuke-producin', Israel-hatin' ways.

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Ian Fisher: Images Of A Young Soldier

Via Ace, the Denver Post followed Ian Fisher as he went from Army recruit, through basic training, to Iraq and home again.

Check it out.

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Traditional Marriage Wins Big In Maine

No blaming Mormons this time. (who supposedly burned a lot of political capital being on the wrong side of history and all h/t Morgan H.)

Or African Americans who voted "yes" for Hope & Change and "no" for Adam & Steve.

No one would accuse Maine of being a particularly conservative, redneck, backwater state. And yet against the odds--and the overwhelming funding of gay marriage advocates--traditional marriage won the day.

Congratulations to everyone who manned phones, donated what they could, knocked doors and voted to defend marriage.

Given events of a year ago, today is a good day.

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More Good News On Energy

Props to markets, again.

Much the same technology being used to get at shale oil is now being used to access natural gas. And the results are astonishing.

Equally dramatic is the effect on U.S. reserves. Proven reserves have risen to 245 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in 2008 from 177 Tcf in 2000, despite having produced nearly 165 Tcf during those years. The recent increase in estimated U.S. gas reserves by the Potential Gas Committee, representing both academic and industry experts, is in itself equivalent to more than half of the total proved reserves of Qatar, the new LNG powerhouse. With more drilling experience, U.S. estimates are likely to rise dramatically in the next few years. At current levels of demand, the U.S. has about 90 years of proven and potential supply—a number that is bound to go up as more and more shale gas is found.

To have the resource base suddenly expand by this much is a game changer. But what is getting changed?

It transforms the debate over generating electricity. The U.S. electric power industry faces very big questions about fuel choice and what kind of new generating capacity to build. In the face of new climate regulations, the increased availability of gas will likely lead to more natural gas consumption in electric power because of gas's relatively lower CO2 emissions. Natural gas power plants can also be built more quickly than coal-fired plants.

Some areas like Pennsylvania and New York, traditionally importers of the bulk of their energy from elsewhere, will instead become energy producers. It could also mean that more buses and truck fleets will be converted to natural gas. Energy-intensive manufacturing companies, which have been moving overseas in search of cheaper energy in order to remain globally competitive, may now stay home.

Along with shale oil and clean coal, natural gas is an energy game-changer.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.