Minor Thoughts from me to you

Pajamas Media: Mullahs vs. Mullahs (Part 1)

A power struggle is in progress in Iran. Is there anyone to root for or is the reform faction a myth? Banafsheh Zand-Bonnazi defines the players and their relationships - as complicated and bloody as the Medici - in a new series for Pajamas Media.

Never lose sight of the tireless battle necessary to protect out freedoms.

The National Anti- Quartering Association, America's foremost Third Amendment rights group, held its annual gala in Washington Monday to honor 191 consecutive years of advocating the protection of private homes and property against the unlawful boarding of military personnel.

The NAQA was created in 1816 in response to repeated violations of the Third Amendment during the War of 1812. The organization quickly grew in influence and cites its vigilance as the primary reason why the amendment has only been litigated once in a federal court since the Bill of Rights was ratified. The organization is also arguably the country's most powerful political lobby; every politician elected since 1866 has fully supported Third Amendment rights.

Jesus set us free from the Law, as any good Christian can tell you (and as any totally awful Christian will most certainly tell you).

So why do we keep making up new ones in its place?

This thought did not come to me because my contract prohibited me from sipping a spot of wine with my meal tonight. Really. I had the hankering for a Coke. But it reminded me anyhow of the basic trap that we as humans repeatedly fall into when given such an alien gift as spiritual freedom.

That is: we think to ourselves, "OK. I'm free! I don't want to sin anymore. So let's see... What's a sin? Well, the Bible says not to get drunk. So that's not right. Now, I know I'm a flawed man, so how am I going to insure that I don't screw up here? I know! I'll make it a rule that I can't even drink a sip of alcohol. After all, it's not like the stuff's essential to one's diet anyway, right? So there's no harm in drinking it... which means that if you want to drink any of it, in fact, you surely are in a manner sinning, because you are unnecessarily courting disaster! And when Jesus said to flee from Sin! Terrible drinkers of alcohol! Mired in their sinful lifestyles!"

Now, ya see? Badabing, badaboom - all of a sudden, the free Christian has created a brand-spankin'-new, iron law, and one preempting something which even Jesus Himself most certainly enjoyed now and then (unless you want to take the laughable position that Jesus and His disciples sipped Welch's).

Though the "free" Christian won't stop there, mind you, oh no; he or she will continue to draw the widest possible radius around every sin in The Book, and eventually term all that he or she has successfully included within the safety circumferences "sin", having of course eventually forgotten to distinguish between his or her safeguards against sin and the sin itself. Now anything which may or may not be unwise, according to one's conscience, is evil.

Smoking a cigarette? That's not just unhealthy and foolish, it's a sin.

Enjoying a waltz with a member of the opposite sex? Good Heavens, People, you're touching each other! Are you trying to tempt the sexual impulses?! Sinners!

Now you're married and having sex - with birth control?

Sinners! Sinners! Sinners!

And - well, I could go on, all the live-long day, but I sincerely doubt I have to. Odds are, you can think up a dozen examples of your own without me.

The Law returns from the grave into which Jesus tossed it when we create a system of draconian rules everyone must follow because, hey, after all, it does solve the problem of alcoholism if nobody is allowed to ever touch alcohol, right? And what about our weaker brothers? "It's only Christian to set a good example!"

As if anyone can seriously believe that's what Paul meant. If Paul truly believed one should exchange one's own entire lifestyle for his or her weaker brother's, He would have recommended Gentiles, in the name of their weaker brothers the Jews, adopt Judaic laws. But he didn't. QED.

Now, nobody is saying that rules do not have their place. Non-adults should be ruled by their parents, as non-adults by very definition lack the necessary discernment to be entrusted with their own spiritual health. Personal rules are certainly OK, too; if you have a strong history of alcoholism in your family, it is probably a very good idea that you steer clear of any fire water, and I'll abstain from drinking in your company to help you out. And authorities should certainly impose those rules necessary for order and safety, in the church and elsewhere. But all of this is a far cry from the rampant reinstatement of legalism we've been seeing for some time now from various parts of Jesus' Kingdom on Earth.

We need to care enough about our good Lord Jesus and ourselves to set boundaries against temptation, yes, but we also need to remember how the Law became so crushing a presence in the first place. The Pharisee law lovers of the New Testament were men and women devoted to the LORD; the mistakes for which Jesus put them on notice are not as alien to us as we'd like to pretend.

Trying to win our own salvation via Law is very tempting, even to those passionate for the Christ. How could it not be? Being free is such a truly strange, and perilous, state in which to find ourselves.

But we should safeguard it anyway, perhaps even as much as our own purity.

It is, after all, what Jesus paid for.

I know this entry's headline doesn't look promising, but stick with me. This is interesting.

In a column for FOX News' occasionally shameless entertainment section, Roger Friedman underscores the true challenge Britney Spears is currently facing in trying to save her career.

Summarily, Britney Spears has a new album out now, called "Gimme More", and she needs to promote it - 'cause those albums, y'know, they don't sell themselves. Since Britney long ago styled herself as a sex bomb, of course, promoting her new CD means doing her thing - making totally obscene music videos, holding totally obscene personal appearances, singing at totally obscene concerts, etc.

The problem with such promotional gimmicks, however, is that Britney Spears, who has just lost custody of her two small children due to her "glamorous" lifestyle, would look even less fit to be a mother if she engaged in them. And it doesn't matter whether Spears cares if she ever sees the children again. The public does. Almost nobody minds watching her play the part of America's Favorite Whore at her own expense, but even her die-hard fans will think her callous if she gives up the role of mother to her boys to do it.

Some fans, indeed, have already abandoned her; the administrator of her biggest fan site, the monolithic WorldofBritney.com,put in his resignation almost a year ago.

So has her latest manager.

But it gets worse. Suppose that she does become a role model of a mother. She would still be stuck between a rock and a hard place. That's because Motherhood is simply not, at least in the world of entertainment, considered sexy. Stories about how Spears can writhe well on a concert stage but always makes sure she's home to read at bedtime - those are stories swallowed up by the audience of Reader's Digest, not Rolling Stone.

What's a pop star to do?

It's not like her new album isn't going to sell, and at numbers many musicians will only ever dream about; it's already iTunes' most downloaded song and #3 on Billboard's Hot 100. But if the album fails to achieve the sort of marketplace dominance expected of a pro like Spears, the result could be her banishment to the mid-level range of musician, from which it is historically nearly impossible to immediately return.

Perhaps that shouldn't be looked upon as a badge of shame; I can't think of any musicians offhand who have kept the spotlight on themselves for too long, anyway. Invariably, they all fade into the background, remaining big names with tons of fans that don't buy tons of records. I know I'm not searching for Meat Loaf's "Bat Out of Hell V: Straddling the Border of Hell" or whatever he's doing now.

Still: one could reasonably object that Britney has been here before. Her third album didn't do very well, but her fourth brought her back to the charts. A good album (that is, what her fans would consider a good album) and buzz covers a multitude of sins. This album won't do well - but it may not end the Spears Saga, either.

Back to important political questions with Joe.

Earlier this year, James Dobson stated that he would never endorse Fred Thompson for President. (Not only that, Dobson decided to question Thompson's faith, without every actually meeting him.) I like the way Thompson recently responded.

A gentleman who has never met me, who has never talked to me, I've never talked to him on the phone. I did have one of his aides call me up and kind of apologize, the first time he attacked me and said I wasn't a Christian...

I don't know the gentleman. I do know that I have a lot of people who are of strong faith and are involved in the same organizations that he is in, that I've met with, Jeri and I both have met with, and I like to think that we have some strong friendships and support there...

I don't particularly care to have a conversation with him. If he wants to call up and apologize again, that's ok with me. But I'm not going to dance to anybody's tune.

I don't know if I'll vote for him. But I like him anyway.

The Capital Times is one of the local newspapers, here in Dane County, Wisconsin. I refuse to subscribe to it, as it's pretty much a mouthpiece for the local Democrat party and the "progressives" of Progressive Dane. My most frequent name for the Cap Times is "that liberal rag".

Ahem. I say all of that to set the stage for this article on the budget stalemate. For starters, it's titled "Republicans Face Tough Choices in Budget Battle". It start out like this:

As state budget talks drag on, Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem, faces a series of increasingly difficult choices.

He can give Senate Democrats and Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle some or all of the tax and spending increases they want -- a move that would cost him support within his own party and could force him to seek up to 25 Democratic votes to pass the budget in his house.

Or Huebsch can exercise the so-called "nuclear option" by refusing to give in to the Democrats on taxes and blocking adoption of a final budget -- a move that would blow up the entire budget process and throw the state into fiscal uncertainty.

All of which is true enough, but incredibly slanted. After all, Democrats "face tough choices in the budget battle". They could compromise too. But they won't. And the Cap Times is on their side, so it pretends that only the Republicans can (and should) compromise. Instead that liberal rag presents the entire battle as one Republican obstruction after another. Never mind that the Democrats have ignored every budget compromise that Speaker Huebsch has presented.

I think what I'm trying to say is, there's two sides to every story. It'd be nice of the local papers ever presented more than one side.

We'd all do well to occasionally remember what exactly we mean by the word "freedom".

I thought about that as I read through the Heritage Foundation's Freedom Index for 2007, a list which rates each of 161 countries in the world according to that country's level of economic freedom - that is, the level of control private citizens are given over their own earnings.

Now according to the Heritage Foundation's scale, the citizens of any country with less than a rating of 80% are not to be considered "free". Which is a fair enough suggestion, we Minor Thinkers will suggest; after all, who can really claim with pride, "I am master of 4/5's of my fate"? One might very forgivably consider the possession of 4/5's of freedom a good time to start planning a government overthrow.

Unfortunately, by that yardstick only seven countries in the world qualify as "free".

They are Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, the United States, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Ireland.

In the various separate categories of ratings ("Freedom from Govt.", "Monetary Freedom", "Investment Freedom", etc.), only Hong Kong is found completely acceptable, save in the field of "Freedom from Corruption" (the only field not directly tied to government policy); all other countries dip below the 80% level in one category or another and simply possess an average of at least 80%.

Hong Kong.

It's a single metropolis in a world of metropolises, and it's presently the only society on Earth wiithin which you are always more than 9/10ths your own master.

And back in 1997, I notice, Great Britain tossed it to China's Communists.

From a letter to the editor of The Economist, concerning congressional hearings in the U.S. on subprime mortgages:

"Taking up the reference to Oscar Wilde, an English man of letters, we could say that, in contemporary credit markets, the cynic knows the listed but not necessarily transactable price of everything but neither the probability of default not the loss given default coefficients of anything."

I'm having fun watching the budget stalemate, here in Wisconsin. In case you weren't aware, we're the only state in the nation without a finished budget. Right now, our Governor is a Democrat, our Senate is controlled by the Democrats, but our Assembly is controlled by the Republicans. The Governor and Senate are pushing for a budget that includes new taxes and new spending. The Assembly is pushing for a budget with limited new spending and no new taxes.

So far, the Assembly is winning -- by virtue of the fact that they've gone 13 weeks without caving to Democrat demands and giving away the house on taxes. Frankly, I'm stunned. I never thought the Assembly Republicans had that much collective spine in them.

I think the Democrats are growing desperate. Despite supposedly having a superior bargaining ability, they've been completely unable to push through their preferred version of the budget. Now, they're proposing that police offers "arrest" any lawmakers who don't show up for budget negotiations and force them to negotiate.

Their "Budget Deadline Enforcement Act" is cute, but it can't pass without Republican backing. I think that's hilarious. The Democrats have been reduced to making empty threats to try to hide their impotence.

Fortunately, last year's budget stays in effect until a new one is passed. That being the case: Go, Republicans, Go!

I think we're making progress in the War on Terror -- both in Iraq and in the rest of the world. Here is my evidence for tonight.

American Thinker: A Quiet Triumph May be Brewing

There are signs that the global Islamic jihad movement is splitting apart, in what would be a tremendous achievement for American strategy. The center of the action is in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the very territory which is thought to harbor Usama, and from which Al Qaeda was able to launch 9/11. Capitalizing on existing splits, a trap was set and closed, and the benefits have only begun to be evident.

There were already signs of a split, but recent events strengthen that trend. In March and again in May of this year I reviewed relevant South Asian media reporting to predict that the global Islamic jihad movement was cracking up. That theory focused on a split between the leadership of al Qaeda and the jihad groups that secure them in Pakistan such as the Taliban.

He is probably the most responsible for turning the Taliban -- which he had a significant hand in creating -- against al Qaeda. Which means, believe it or not, on some level he may be working with the Pakistani government and possibly the US government, since he is purely an opportunist. No doubt he will not advertise that fact to his jihadists buddies.

This cannot be overstated: it is the most crucial development since the capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Cutting al Qaeda's support in Pakistan has been a massive coup, of which our media has no clue of right now. It is the exact sort of thing that the Democrats and their media accomplices always complain that we are not doing and then completely ignore when we do it.

Check it out.

Next up, casualties in Iraq have been falling sharply lately -- both civilian and military. The media is doing their best to ignore it, Senator Clinton is doing her best to deny it, but it's happening.

Engram, at the Back Talk blog, has been crunching the numbers for the past week or more.

As you can see, deaths caused by Shiite militias in Baghdad dropped instantaneously when the troop surge began to unfold. This occurred because Muqtada al Sadr cooperated with US efforts by pulling his fighters off the streets as the new troops began to arrive. Up until that time, his Mahdi Army was eradicating Sunni males in an effort to quash al Qaeda suicide bombings against Shiite civilians. Note that there were other deaths occurring in Baghdad over this period, but this chart shows the number attributable just to Shiite death squads.

The next amazing chart shows the number of people killed by suicide bombers in Iraq. The IBC database has a field that describes "weapons," and the first word of the weapons description is almost always "suicide" when a suicide bomber is involved. I used that fact to identify casualties due to suicide bombers. If you don't know who the suicide bombers of Iraq are, then you don't much about this conflict (and you should not have strong opinions about the war). The suicide bombers are almost all foreigners that al Qaeda brings into Iraq (mostly through Syria) to indiscriminately slaughter Shiite civilians in an effort to incite civil war (read more about them here). They are not participants in that civil war, contrary to what clueless reporters would have you believe when they preposterously refer to these wretched terrorists as "insurgents."

As you can see from this chart, the suicide bombing campaign reached a peak in August, just before General Petraeus testified before Congress. It was a desperate ploy, and I say so because the victims were among the widely despised Yazidis. Killing 500 Yazidis did nothing to advance al Qaeda's goal of goading the Shiite militias back into the fight. All it did was provide fodder for the anti-Petraeus elements in America. They needed those casualties in order to have any hope of convincing Americans that the troop surge was a failure. But it did not work. And I know what this chart is going to look like when IBC updates its database to include results from September (because ICCC has recorded all known suicide bombings for that month already). It is going to look something like this:

Hit the link to view the astounding charts. I'm very much encouraged by this news.

Finally, we've been killing off a lot of the top leaders of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Some of our recent kills are shedding light on who, exactly, is leading the group.

In a press conference today, Major General Kevin Bergner, the spokesman for Multinational Forces Iraq, provided further evidence of al Qaeda in Iraq's foreign influence. Bergner highlighted the killing "Muthanna," al Qaeda's the emir of the Iraq/Syrian border. "During this operation, we also captured multiple documents and electronic files that provided insight into al Qaeda's foreign terrorist operations, not only in Iraq but throughout the region," Bergner said. "They detail the larger al-Qaeda effort to organize, coordinate, and transport foreign terrorists into Iraq and other places."

"Muthanna was the emir of Iraq and Syrian border area and he was a key facility of the movement of foreign terrorists once they crossed into Iraq from Syria," Bergner said. "He worked closely with Syrian-based al Qaeda foreign terrorist facilitators."

Bergner said several documents were found in Muthanna's custody, including a list of 500 al Qaeda fighters from "a range of foreign countries that included Libya, Morocco, Syria, Algeria, Oman, Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom."

Muthanna's capture in early September is but one of 29 al Qaeda high value targets killed or detained by Task Force 88, Multinational Forces Iraq's hunter-killer teams assigned to target senior al Qaeda leaders and operatives. Five al Qaeda operatives have been killed and 24 captured. * 5 Emirs at the city level or higher in the AQI leadership structure. * 9 geographical or functional cell leaders. * 11 facilitators who supported foreign terrorist and weapons movements.

Four of the senior al Qaeda leaders killed during the month of September include: * Abu Usama al Tunisi: The Tunisian born leader who is believed to be the successor to Abu Ayyub al Masri. * Yaqub al Masri: The Egyptian-born leader who was in the inner circle with Zarqawi and then also in the inner circle of Abu Ayyub al Masri. He was a close associate of Ayman al Zawahiri. * Muhammad al Afari: The Emir of Sinjar, who led the barbaric bombings of the Yazidis in northern Iraq. * Abu Taghrid: The Emir of the Rusafa car bomb network.

Have no doubt about it, we are making progress.

The Republican party thought it had the perfect issue to both rev up the base and angry blue collar Democrats -- attack immigration. After all, the Republican base supposedly hates the idea of people breaking the law and entering America without Uncle Sam's express written permission. And blue collar Democrats hate the idea of someone "stealing" their job by accepting lower wages.

All the Republicans needed to do was push for an "enforcement only" immigration bill. Refuse to do anything about our mess of immigration laws until the border had been locked down tight. "No changes without fences!" was their rallying cry. Republicans like John Kyle and John McCain, who tried to push for a comprehensive bill, were demonized and ostracized.

The strategy failed miserably. Instead of turning out the vote for the GOP, it destroyed whatever inroads the GOP had previously made with Latino voters. Richard Nadler, of America's Majority, recently completed an in-depth study of how the Republicans' position on immigration affected Latino voters. The results aren't pretty.

Nadler wrote about his results in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal.

Undocumented Latinos constitute 3.8% of the American work force. But these 5.6 million workers are a mere fraction of the 17.3 million Latino citizens 18 years or older. Of these, 4.4 million are themselves foreign born.

In my recent study for the Americas Majority Foundation entitled "Border Wars: The Impact of Immigration on the Latino Vote," I document not what Hispanics opined, but how they actually voted, given a clear choice between advocates of "enforcement first" and comprehensive immigration reform. The results, based on returns from 145 heavily Hispanic precincts and over 100,000 tabulated votes, indicate this: Immigration policies that induce mass fear among illegal residents will induce mass anger among the legal residents who share their heritage.

In these three races, Republicans' vote share in heavily Latino precincts dropped 22 percentage points.

What does this mean nationwide? Republicans' presidential Hispanic vote share increased to 40% in 2004 from 21% in 1996. In 2004, Latinos comprised 6% of the electorate, but 8.1% of the voter-qualified citizenry. With the partisan margin shrinking, the incentive for major Hispanic registration efforts by either party was scant.

That changed in 2006, when the GOP's Hispanic vote share declined by 10%. And, as we have seen, the drop was twice as precipitous where Republicans disavowed comprehensive immigration reform. With the huge wedge in vote share that "enforcement-only" opened, the cost-effectiveness of voter-registration efforts improved dramatically -- for Democrats.

Great work guys. Can we finally put to rest the idea that slamming shut the border and demonizing entire racial groups is a good way to win elections? Can we finally start working on a way to fix the entire immigration process rather than pretending that a border fence is the only thing missing?

Eduardo Gonzalez is a petty officer second class, in the U.S. Navy. He's a naturalized citizen. His wife, Mildred, is not. Eduardo is about to be deployed to overseas. His wife may not be in the States, by the time he gets back.

In Gonzalez's case, his wife, Mildred, came to the United States with her mother in 1989 when she was 5 years old. They were granted political asylum because of their status as war refugees from Guatemala.

In September 2000, Mildred's mother applied for legalization and included her daughter in that application. Her mother was granted legal status in July 2004, according to Gonzalez.

However, six weeks earlier, Gonzalez and Mildred got married, canceling Mildred's ability to apply for legal status through her mother because she was no longer an unmarried daughter under the age of 21. As a result, her legal status still remains in jeopardy.

A judge in June granted her a one-year extension to remain in the United States. If her legal status does not change by June 8, 2008, she will have 60 days to voluntarily leave the country or face deportation.

Why do we still have an immigration system that's more interested in kicking Mildred out of the country than in welcoming her into the country? Why did it take four years for her mother to be legalized? Will it take another four years for her to legalized?

Eduardo is serving this country, putting his life on the line. Are we really going to reward him by kicking his wife back to Guatemala -- a country she hasn't lived in for 17 years -- and making her go through "the line" for the next 4-10 years? Do we really want to send the world a message saying "Stay Out! America for Americans Only!"

It sure looks to me like that's what we're doing. And we don't have to. All we need to do is change immigration law. The law should treat relatives of the military as though we actually value the sacrifice that the military makes. That law should provide an easy, relatively painless process to enter the country -- not the labyrinthian mess that we have now. Why is doing the right thing so hard?

Finally, comments like this are hardly helpful.

That's just fine, according to Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which lobbies for tougher laws on illegal immigration.

"What you're talking about is amnesty for illegal immigrants who have a relative in the armed forces, and that's just outrageous," he said. "What we're talking about here is letting lawbreakers get away with their actions just because they have a relative in the military. ... There's no justification for that kind of policy."

Lawbreakers? Mildred isn't a lawbreaker. She immigrated and was granted asylum because her homeland was tearing itself apart. She spent her entire life her. She wants to spend the rest of her life her. And you're calling her a lawbreaker?

Give me a break.

Over at Winds of Change, the Armed Liberal posts some reflections on patriotism. What does it mean in a post-modern world? Is it worthwhile? Is it distinguishable from mere nationalism? What does American patriotism mean, in a nation that has been formed from one ethnicity after another (and continues to be reformed and remodeled each year)?

Now I've argued on and on that we need an anticosmopolitan liberalism, one rooted firmly in the American Founding if liberalism is going to get any traction here in US politics. I've slagged and been slagged by the usual cast of Netroots characters over this issue, and I'll point out that the Netroots liberalism for all the sound and fury hasn't signified much in the political scene except to - almost certainly - hand the nomination to the least liberal candidate running, Hillary Clinton.

The basis for much of my argument has been the work of John Schaar, a little-known political theorist who happened to be one of my professors. Who I admit I should have paid more attention to back then.

The work I keep pointing to is his work, 'The Case for Patriotism' (excerpted here).

Abraham Lincoln, the supreme authority on this subject, thought there was a patriotism unique to America. Americans, a motley gathering of various races and cultures, were bonded together not by blood or religion, not by tradition or territory, not by the calls and traditions of a city, but by a political idea. We are a nation formed by a covenant, by dedication to a set of principles, and by an exchange of promises to uphold and advance certain commitments among ourselves and throughout the world. Those principles and commitments are the core of American identity, the soul of the body politic. They make the American nation unique, and uniquely valuable among and to the other nations. But the other side of this conception contains a warning very like the warnings spoken by the prophets to Israel: if we fail in our promises to each other, and lose the principles of the covenant, then we lose everything, for they are we." [emphasis added]

This sounds right to me. It's the idea I struggled to articulate last summer, in my posts about immigration.

This, then, is the challenge for America. How do we change -- culturally, demographically, and ethnically -- while still retaining that political idea, that commitment to a set of principles that make America, America?

Furthermore, what, exactly, are those principles? What is that idea? What set of principles are we committed to? For that, I think we need to go back to principles set out in the Declaration of Independence and the framework established in the Constitution of the United States.

More on that, in the future.

The Progress magazine has a good summary of the situation in Iraq. The article is a little long, but it is well worth reading. Since it's too long -- and too complex -- for me to summarize, I'll just quote from their concluding paragraphs.

Understanding this expensive victory is a matter of understanding the remaining violence. Now that Iraq's big questions have been resolved--break-up? No. Shia victory? Yes. Will violence make the Americans go home? No. Do Iraqis like voting? Yes. Do they like Iraq? Yes -- Iraq's violence has largely become local and criminal. The biggest fact about Iraq today is that the violence, while tragic, has ceased being political, and is therefore no longer nearly as important as it was.

The argument of this article -- that with nothing more to resolve from political violence, Iraqis can now settle down to gorge themselves at the oil trough -- is based on two premises: Sunni acknowledgement of the failure of their insurgency and the need to reach an accommodation with the new Iraq, and a conjunction of interests between the coalition on one hand and the Kurds and Shias on the other.

We have become very familiar with General Petraeus and the disputed numbers of his surge. Does US strategy reflect the phenomena I have described? The Americans have never argued this way. But reading between the lines, American thinking does seem broadly to accord with the conclusions of this argument, if not its premises. Petraeus has already announced the first marine and army drawdowns for September and December respectively. His boss, defence secretary Robert Gates, is hoping publicly for a net withdrawal of 60,000 troops next year. Bush too is promising cuts. These plans are a recognition that the job in Iraq is moving rapidly towards something closer to Iraqi police work than American war.

To get to that point, the article discusses the sources of Iraqi violence, the status of the political situation, the role of al-Sadr in promoting peace (seriously!), the Sunni's desparate efforts to retain control after Saddam was killed, and the Shia's patience in not wiping out all of the Sunni's long ago.

So, really, go read it.

J. Peter Mulhern, at The American Thinker, is pretty convinced that we'll be talking about President Fred Thompson in a little over a year.

Conventional wisdom is hardening around the proposition that Fred Dalton Thompson is too lazy, ill-prepared, tired, old, lackluster, inexperienced, inconsistent and bald to make a successful run for President.

Of course, conventional wisdom rarely gets anything right. When it does, it's only by accident.

In this case conventional wisdom is not just wrong but comically so. Thompson will win the Republican nomination for two reasons. First, he's a very impressive candidate. Second, there's no realistic alternative. He will win the general election for the same two reasons.

He next runs down a list of reasons why all of the other Republican and Democrat candidates are unrealistic alternatives (Romney has the instincts of a used-car salesman, Giuliani is too far from the base, McCain and the base hate each other, etc). Then, he starts talking about what makes Fred a good candidate.

We have gotten so used to speaking of the President of the United States "running the country" that most of us no longer notice how unrealistic and unAmerican that expression is. The whole point of the American Revolution was to establish a country without anyone to run it. We don't want or need a president who is inclined to run things. We need a President who leads and inspires. Fred, with his non-managerial background, is the only candidate of either party who seems to get this.

Consider that Fred's calm, sensible demeanor permits him to say things that would terrify many ordinary voters coming from someone who seemed less steady. Thompson can say radical things and nobody turns a hair. If any other candidate talked about overhauling social security and the tax code while we fight a global war of which Iraq and Afghanistan are mere outcroppings, a substantial part of the electorate would faint dead away. Try to wrap your mind around the reality that coming off like an old coot having a conversation as he whittles next to the pot-bellied stove down at the country store is an excellent way to attract most American voters.

Frankly, that appeals to me. And that aspect of his personality comes through very clearly in some of his recent campaign videos. He's unassuming and laid back. But he possesses a razor sharp wit and a quick mind.

I need to know more than I do about Fred's positions on various issues. But he's impressed me with what I've seen so far.

Adam recommends that the religious conservatives split off and form their own party. He thinks that such a third-party might actually be able to attract -- and keep -- voters. That might provide a wedge for other alternate parties to emerge and gain support.

I'm afraid he might be right. Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see legitimate competitors to the Democrats and Republicans. Unfortunately, that would take an election cycle or two to fully emerge. Until then, the only thing a new party would do is pull votes away from Republicans and towards Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Normally, that wouldn't bother me too much.

But, as The Anchoress reminds us, the next election could have big consequences.

The third-party pipe-dreamers will once again make the Clinton tag team victorious. And with a Supreme Court likely to need three quick replacements in '09, the third party folks will watch as the court becomes a permanent 5-4 liberal majority activist court -- for decades. Decades, folks. The America you think you're going to "preserve" with your third party candidate may become unrecognizable in a very short time. The Roe v Wade you think you're going to reverse with your unelectable third candidate will seem almost quaint when compared with the "compassionate" euthanasia and the "practical, community-serving, environment saving" limitations on life you'll be watching get handed down as law by an activist court determined to see the Constitution as a "living" and flexible document.

She also provides an interesting perspective on the morality of presidential candidates.

It is always interesting to me to reflect that Jesus always went to the sinners to get his work done, to spread his message. He didn't go to the "pure" ones who thought they already knew everything they needed to know, and who would never dare to taint themselves by dealing with the lesser among them. He went to the guys who screwed up, made mistakes and understood that they were not worthy, who knew that they didn't know everything. The guys who would continue to make mistakes but who would grow and would -- most importantly -- never give up.

And all of this will come about because the only person seemingly capable of beating the Clinton's wasn't a good enough Christian for the Christian right. I think it's a mistake, folks. Create a third party in order to give yourselves a "good Christian" to vote for -- one who doesn't offend any of your principals -- and you lose. And life loses, too.

I want to support the "perfect" candidate. But right now, I'll take a candidate who merely promises to appoint originalist justices to the Supreme Court.

I spend a lot of time discussing Iraq with a friend. We both agree that the U.S. needs to stabilize Iraq, but we have occasional disagreements about what that will take and what the best plan is. We're both frustrated with the lock of political progress in Iraq. It's great that casualties are down, that civilian deaths are down, that terrorist deaths are up. But it feels like we're running in place without political progress to backup the military progress.

Well, today I read the first explanation that made any sense about why there has been no real political progress: several of the political parties involved in the national government are front groups for the terrorists themselves. Obviously, such parties would have every interest in tying the government up in knots and delaying progress.

So while it is true that Al Qaeda seeks to kill the Shiites, and the Mahdi Army seeks to kill the Sunnis, they need one another to block other political options from emerging from either side's adherence to Sharia.

On the Sunni side, the terror bloc is composed by most of the Tawafuq slate of three fundamentalist parties that include individuals like Khalaf al Ayan who plotted terror attacks from his office inside the green zone, including what Iraqis and Americans suspect was the April suicide bombing of the parliament cafeteria. Mr. al Ayan has denied his guilt. He has also gone on satellite television and declared himself the next Saddam.

On the Shiite side, the saboteurs include the politicians loyal still to Moqtada al Sadr, who remains popular in Iraq, though not as popular as he was in 2005, and whose deputies turned Iraq's health ministry and Baghdad's hospitals into an instrument of ethnic cleansing by refusing to treat the Sunnis freshly wounded by Mr. Sadr's militias.

While General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker did not say this directly last month, it is obvious that they too have given up hope of reaching a meaningful accord within the current government. Hence Mr. Crocker touted some of the de facto cooperation on oil profit sharing in the absence of a petroleum law.

A fruitful approach for now is to mold alternative local Shiite and Sunni parties through the tribal network that could challenge the confessional terror parties in the national elections at the end of 2009. Until those elections come, it would be wise for Mr. Graham to abandon his wish for national reconciliation and be content with the local variety.

Mitt Romney recently wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal comparing his own healthcare plan to Hillary Clinton's plan. He tried his best to present his plan as a small-government solution to the healthcare problem.

As governor of Massachusetts, I led the fight for reforms that used free markets and innovation, rather than big-government control, to lower health-care costs and cover the uninsured. I recently proposed a federalist reform plan that will use these principles to improve America's health-care system.

There's only one problem with his editorial. It's misleading. The Cato Institute explains why RomneyCare and HillaryCare are really two sides of the same (bad) coin.

The cost of healthcare goes up every year. Prescription drugs get more expensive too. But, even though they get more expensive, they're different from the rest of healthcare. While the rest of healthcare was increasing in cost by 6-7%, prescription drugs were only increasing in cost at the rate of 1%!

What caused this remarkably slow growth? Maybe it's because 25 cents out of every dollar spent on prescription drugs comes straight out of consumers' pockets. Maybe consumers really are more frugal when they're spending their own money.

According to a newly-published article:

"Some of the nation's most politically influential conservative Christians, alarmed by the prospect of a Republican presidential nominee who supports abortion rights, are considering backing a third-party candidate."

"Some" includes James Dobson, famous founder of Focus on the Family, and Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, both of whom attended a Las Vegas meeting with "more than 40 Christian conservatives" to discuss what to do about religious conservatives' "mistress" status in the Republican Party. It may have even included Tim LaHaye, author of the "Left Behind" books and now a mover-and-shaker himself as a founder of the shadowy Council for National Policy.

Should these names be lost on you, the AP's source concerning this event puts it plainly enough: President Bush "would not have been elected in '04 without the people in that room."

These are the people who have finally wizened up to the fact that religious fundamentalists are to Republicans what black people are to Democrats, and according to the source, they're ticked. So they're talking break-up.

Just maybe, that is. Perhaps, you understand.

Hopefully, you know - for oh so many reasons.

And I say that knowing I almost certainly wouldn't even vote for them.