The Washington Times Weekly 2011.01.10

MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011
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NATIONAL WEEKLY
The end of business as usual

Page 6
But Tea Party warns: We are watching

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Constitution read, debated on House oor

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Time Sensitive Publication: Mailed January 7, 2011
America going way of Greece, Persia, Rome / 31 Homosexuals in, values groups out at CPAC / 3 Deciding which True Grit was truer / 35
Politics / 3 National Scene/ 16 Geopolitics / 23 Culture / 29 Commentary / 31 Editorials / 38
http://hotnpapers.com
/ LETTERS / 2
Letters to the editor

Warning: If cornered, Happy they can be very whiny leveling
Fou nded 1982
Vanguard of decay
Democrats apparently view their losses in Novembers elections as a mandate to continue to corrupt the countrys morals. This helps illustrate just how much control wealthy Hollywood liberals, no strangers to immorality, have on the Democrat Party. Some relevant history about Hollywood to provide perspective: For decades Hollywood has been attracting people who sleep around (prostitute themselves) for parts in movies and TV shows. We also know drugs ow liberally in Hollywood (probably to numb the consciences of actors who lower themselves to the level of prostitutes). Decades ago lucrative careers were ruined when actors, actresses, and their agents were caught in various indiscretions. Of course they were not happy about this, and they had huge nancial incentives to corrupt the countrys morals so their own particular indiscretions werent as damaging to their incomes. Now, over the last few decades, Hollywood has used its movies and TV shows to desensitize the public rst to adult premarital sex, then to illegal drug use (e.g., Easy Rider), then to teenage pre-marital sex, then to homosexuality. And so many egotistic Hollywood players have bragged theyre on the cutting edge (leading rather than following public opinion). As Hollywood has corrupted societys morals, our divorce rate has soared as has the number of children from broken homes. As you might expect, the suicide rate of young people has also risen as has the number of sexually confused people. Now weve got Illinois Democrats okaying homosexual civil unions and congressional Democrats pushing for repeal of the militarys dont ask, dont tell policy. Both despite the fact that thinking people have known for centuries that homosexual activity is immoral and a bad legal precedent. The Tea Party revolution must continue. So many morally compromised Democrats (and some Republicans) deserve to be unelected. Wayne Lela
Woodridge, Illinois
NATIONAL WEEKLY
Volume 18, No. 3
JOE SCHAEFFER Managing Editor JAMES E. HOWELL Business Director BRETT M. DECKER Editorial Page Editor CHRIS RICCA National Advertising Manager
How To Spot A Liberal: A liberal uses hyperbole and superlatives to enhance his projects and people. A liberal is quick to impress with a recital of his degrees and accomplishments, real or imaginary. He feigns personal insult at the slightest provocation. He has an afnity for the F word. A liberal frequently reverts to name-calling. A liberal can keep a straight face when making outlandish claims. A liberal uses projection, judging others to be as underhanded as he is. He embellishes his points with Everyone knows or Experts agree or Surely, you cant deny, etc. A liberal tries to control the argument using political correctness and his
own unique vocabulary. When credit is warranted, a liberal uses the rst person singular. When blame is called for, the liberal slips into the passive voice. A liberal constantly interrupts or talks over people. He has a tendency to scratch his nose with his middle nger when angered. A liberal never commits a crime, only his opponents do. A liberal thinks others are laughing with him when they are laughing at him. A liberals gaffes are just misspeaks, others gaffes are horrifying. So now you have been warned. Be on the look out. Gene Baumgaertner
Florham Park, New Jersey
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Underreported suffering
Thank you, thank you for the acknowledgement of persecuted Christians in the Mallard Fillmore strip on page 39 of the December 27, 2010 issue. So many Americans are unaware that there are more than 30 countries in the world where it is illegal to be a Christian or own a Bible. Many dear Christians in those countries languish in prison for the crime of loving Christ. Others are killed, beaten, tortured, and burned out of their homes. Some are forced to live in crowded and poorly equipped refugee camps, and have to wonder whether they will survive until the next day. More than 74 million Christians have been martyred since the time of Christ, and over half of those (40 million) have been during the last century alone. Persecution of Christians has been steadily increasing not just by militant Muslims, but also by other hostile non-Christian sects and by atheistic governments. The cited source in the cartoon is www.persecution.com, the web site for the Voice of the Martyrs. This is an outstanding organization that I have supported for several years. I hope and pray that more people will become familiar with VOM and its work on behalf of those who suffer in silence. Carolyn Abell
Tifton, Georgia
Internet Web Site: http:/ /www.AmericasNewspaper.com
THE WASHINGTON TIMES / MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011 /
We welcome your opinions on any topic. Letters should be signed originals. Every letter will be considered for publication, but we prefer those of fewer than 250 words, typed double-spaced. All letters may be edited for clarity and length. Please include your name, address and daytime telephone number. Send your opinion to: Letters to the Editor TWT National Weekly 3600 New York Ave., NE Washington, D.C. 20002 E-mail: natweekly@ washingtontimes.com
How many politicians does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer: Nobody knows because they can only stumble in the dark. They plan to ban incandescent bulbs because seeing is overrated. Its ironic that it was mostly politicians who were responsible for dumbing down the population for easier control. Decades later, politicians with double digit I.Q.s are considered brilliant. Alas, they come from the general population. Politicians have declared war on grannies and ve-year-old girls at airports. These suspected terrorists can choose to be fondled or body scanned and appear naked before strangers. Internecine war is politically correct. Just ask the Fort Hood troops. We have met the enemy and he is us. We will defeat the terrorists but rst we must defeat ourselves. America, the Lilliputian giant, has been tied up by the pygmies of political correctness and can always be counted on to eschew moderation, reason and sensible solutions. We have feminized our military and made it a cauldron for insipid and idiotic social experiments. Remember, victory in war is no longer the objective. We have a higher objective and that is to make everyone happy. Isnt it strange how angry the happy people have become? Could political correctness be overrated? I remain optimistic because I can still discriminate against those with common sense. Besides, all they do is complain about the absurd. Bob Spradlin
Cathedral City, California
How many American jobs can corrupt pols destroy?

Re: How many lawmakers does it take to change a light bulb?, I am sorry to see that your Dec. 13 cover article on Rep. Fred Uptons reversal on incandescent light bulbs does not mention that his change of heart comes too late for the last U.S. factory to produce them. According to other news sources, the General Electric facility in Winchester, Va. was slated to close in September of this year, taking with it 200 U.S. jobs. Im glad to see the voice of the consumer heard; its a shame that it comes too late. Mike Wojciechowski
Faireld, Pennsylvania
MALLARD FILLMORE / Bruce Tinsley

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Politics
Homosexuals in, values groups out at CPAC
BY VALERIE RICHARDSON
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
/ 3 / POLITICS
Social and economic conservatives have worked together under the mantle of the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan made them the core of his 1980 coalition, but the alliance may now be fraying. Some of the nations most prominent social conservatives are sending a message to their economic brethren by dropping out of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in response to the decision to include GOProud, a homosexual conservative group, as a participating organization. The base-line reason is that homosexuality is not a conservative value, said Bryan Fischer, the American Family Associations director of issue analysis. Its the conservative PAC, not the libertarian PAC. Sponsored by the American Conservative Union (ACU), the CPAC gathering traditionally has been a marquee event on the conservative political calendar. This years conference is scheduled to run Feb. 10 to 12 in Washington and will feature leading Republican presidential contenders Haley Barbour, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and John Thune. Two CPAC board members contacted by The Washington Times said they were distressed by the departure of key social conservatives and considered it a high priority to have them participate in the 2012 conference. At the same time, they said, they knew of no plans to downgrade GOProuds status or otherwise modify the program. I dont think it would be appropriate for me to comment, but I just wish none of this had happened, said CPAC board member Cleta Mitchell. I hope we can have a good CPAC this year and resolve this so that we can bring everyone back into the fold next year. Other social-issues groups opting to avoid the conference include the Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Council, the Center for Military Readiness, the American Family Association, the American Principles Project, the Liberty Counsel and the National Organization for Marriage. Obviously, those are important groups and need to be part of CPAC in the future, said board member Al Cardenas. Its regretful having great groups pull out. Weve got to make sure we have the right steps in place so we can have everyone there next year. Conservative online media mogul Andrew Breitbart is supporting GOProuds foray into CPAC. Oh, by the way. Gonna have a
ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOGRAPHS
Message to social conservatives: Conservative online media mogul Andrew Breitbart is supporting GOProuds foray into CPAC. Oh, by the way. Gonna have a party welcoming Gay conservatives to CPAC. Deal with it, he said on his Twitter account.
party welcoming Gay conservatives to CPAC. Deal with it, he said on his Twitter account two weeks ago. Groups such as Citizen Link, the political-action arm of Focus on the Family, plan to attend this years CPAC, but say the conference is on a short leash. Its obvious the inuence of social conservatives has been missing and there needs to be more of it, said Tom Minnery, senior vice president of Citizen Link. If the ACU cant manage this problem that theyve brought upon themselves, well have to and right, said Mr. Weidman. And the bigger the tent, the bigger the tensions. I dont think its new, and I dont think its surprising. With the weak economy dominating the political scene, economic conservatism enjoyed the upper hand in the 2010 elections. Economic conservatives point to the rise of the tea party as evidence that the GOP needs to spend more time on reducing the size of government and less time on moral issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. Indiana GOP Gov. Mitch
The reply is goodbye: The base-line reason is that homosexuality is not a conservative value, said Bryan Fischer, the American Family Associations director of issue analysis. Its the conservative PAC, not the libertarian PAC.
thats for sure. Any truce would be a one-sided truce, and thats a surrender. Social conservatives argue that the party can successfully promote both economic- and values-oriented conservatism. They note that while the tea party leadership stresses small government, the overwhelming majority of the tea party rank and le are pro-life and opposed to same-sex marriage. We are economic conservatives, and we believe those issues go hand in hand with social issues, said Penny Nance, presiAndy Blom, executive director of the American Principles Project, called the move to marginalize values voters self-defeating. The rather arrogant treatment of social conservatives by libertarians is troubling, said Mr. Blom. Social conservatives are the foot soldiers of the movement. Marriage has never lost an election. Being pro-life does not lose elections. It wins elections. This is not only a serious principle mistake, its a serious political mistake. Colin Hanna, president of Let Freedom Ring, said the brouhaha could have been avoided by downgrading GOProud from a participating organization, which is essentially a co-sponsor and plays a role in planning the meetings, to a vendor that has no leadership role. The CPAC board reportedly took two votes on whether GOProud should be included as a participating organization. The rst vote reportedly ended in a tie, and the second must have favored GOProud because the group is now listed on the website as a participating organization. Economic and social conservatives can agree that the timing for such a family feud is unhelpful as the GOP celebrates major gains in Congress and the states after Novembers midterm elections. This is a time when the conservative movement is on the ascendant in American politics, and I think its very unfortunate this kind of internecine war should be breaking out, said Mr. Hanna. We would do well to focus on presenting a conservative agenda to the American public.
MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011 / THE WASHINGTON TIMES /
The rather arrogant treatment of social conservatives by libertarians is troubling, said Andy Blom, executive director of the American Principles Project.Social conservatives are the foot soldiers of the movement. Marriage has never lost an election. Being pro-life does not lose elections. It wins elections.This is not only a serious principle mistake, its a serious political mistake.
make another decision. The CPAC ap is emblematic of a larger rift between social and economic conservatives over the direction of the Republican Party in the wake of its 2010 electoral success. With many independents swinging Republican in November, the sheer increase in the number of GOP voters means that ssures within the party are bound to be heightened, said Jim Weidman, Heritage Foundation director of editorial services. Theres always been these tensions, and its true of the left Daniels articulated that position in June when he was quoted as saying that the next president would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues. What annoys social conservatives and values voters is the implication that such a truce would apply only to them, and that scal conservatives and tea party activists dont face similar pressures to compromise. When you do that, youre yielding the eld to the forces of homosexual extremism, said Mr. Fischer. Because [homosexual groups] arent declaring a truce, dent of the Concerned Women for America. Her organization has conrmed that it would pull out of CPAC. The Heritage Foundation will be absent from CPAC for the rst time in more than a decade. Weve obviously got a lot of concerns, said Mr. Weidman. Its unclear what direction CPAC is going, what philosophy theyre going to promote. It looks like its becoming more of a cacophony, and we want to focus on the three pillars of conservatism: social, economic and national defense.
/ POLITICS / 4
abes and bonhomie replaced bombast for a few minutes last week in Congress, striking dumb with delight the easily impressed folks who think that all it takes to solve the nations problems is an infusion of civility, making nice and what used to be called good manners. Joe Biden was on his best behavior, doing what he does best, charming the children and grandchildren of some of his old Senate colleagues. When one little boy told the veep that there ought to be a Lego store in Washington, good old Joe listened as if the lad were his economics guru, and applauded the boys suggestion as thinking about jobs. Over in the House, Nancy Pelosi made a production of handing over the symbol of speaker power to John A. Boehner (this is a bigger gavel than some around here), but only after a long valedictory about what a terric speaker she had been. Mr. Boehner was reduced to tears, which is not difcult, twice reaching into his pocket for a soggy handkerchief to wipe away a teardrop or two. Mr. Boehner is entitled to his emotions, and a manly speakers out-of-control waterworks only shows how dramatically the American culture is a-changing. Ed Muskie, the other half of the
The clatter of dirty dishes in the sink

sure, to cave Humphreyat the rst Muskie pressound of the idential popguns. ticket of The new 1968, blew Opinion by Wesley Pruden speaker is whatever saying all the chance he right things, warning of the hard had to win the Democratic presiwork and tough decisions ahead as dential nomination four years later the nation recovers in ts and when he cried on camera or appeared to cry or at least decried a spurts from the worst recession since the Great Depression ended newspapers criticism of his wife. with the outbreak of World War II. He insisted for the rest of his life No longer can we fall short, he that he was wiping snowakes, not said as he took possession of the teardrops, from his face, but a speakers gavel. No longer can we widely published photograph of the kick the can down the road. The incident spiked his front-running people voted to end business as campaign, and he was soon overusual, and today we begin carrying taken by George McGovern. out their instructions. The new speaker has become the But the unexpected intrudes. object, if not the butt, only of mild jokes, leaving him free to irrigate his Rep. Paul D. Ryan, Wisconsin Reeyes at will. But his job over the next publican, taking the lead on budget strategy, took a hearty kick at the two years is to make Democrats cry, can when he said the Republican and despite the bonhomie of the promise to cut $100 billion in opening day of the 112th Congress, spending this year might not be the lines are drawn for a rowdy possible after all. The promised showdown with Barack Obama and cuts have been compromised by his wounded Democrats. The government spending already in speakers tea party allies of Novemthe pipeline, and maybe cutting ber wont be impressed by Republispending by $50 billion is a more can tears and soft answers to turn realistic goal. Some of the tea party away Democratic wrath. They came outriders think this sounds like to town suspicious of Republican resolve, the tendency of the Grand Old somebody is already in the Republican kitchen, cooking up wafes, but Party to waver in the face of pres-
Pruden on Politics
the chefs say no, the noise from the kitchen is only the clatter of someone trying to deal with dirty dishes the Democrats left in the sink. Weve got this sort of gap period that were operating in now to take care of the next scal year, Rep. Eric Cantor, the new House majority leader, tells National Journal. So its just sort of a formulaic challenge. Mr. Ryan vows to get tough with the big spenders who want to raise the debt limit that never seems to limit the debt. Im not interested in raising the debt ceiling on the hope that a promise will be fullled at a later time. Im only interested in raising the debt ceiling if we get concessions on spending, on real controls to get our scal situation turned around and headed in the right direction. This is where the Democrats and Republicans will collide rst. The president, the author of the x, now invokes raising the debt limit as responsible and necessary to protect the full faith and credit of our government. Nothing about cutting the size of government, which is what that shellacking in November was all about. Bonhomie and good manners will have to wait. Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.
Archives exhibit to present glimpse into private Reagan

BY JOSEPH WEBER
With the 100th anniversary of his birth just a month away, admirers of former President Ronald Reagan will have a unique opportunity to see rarely displayed artifacts of the Reagan legacy, from a marked-up draft of his 1983 evil empire speech to keepsakes from the Gippers Santa Barbara, Calif., ranch. The National Archives on Jan. 5 offered a sneak peak at what will be a yearlong rotating exhibit of Reagan documents and memorabilia. The exhibit, which opened to the public Jan. 7, is part of a major celebration of Reagans life and presidency inspired by the centennial of his birth Feb. 6. Though much of the exhibit focuses on Reagans efforts to end the Cold War, curators also have attempted to show a more complete and vivid picture of the former Republican president and conservative icon. The exhibit will also highlight Reagans generous sense of humor and optimism, said Sharon Fawcett, the Archives presidential libraries director. He prided himself on fullling a full life, she said, and he also was a Western movie star
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Inside the Gipper: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library archivist Michael Duggan displays original documents and artifacts to be shown at the National Archives.
who could actually ride a horse. Reagan became known for his amiable disposition, humor and grace under pressure, even joking with doctors and wife Nancy Reagan after a failed 1981 assassination attempt. But the exhibit also shows the two-term presidents no-nonsense rhetoric in his efforts to end the Cold War. First, I am determined to do all I can to get our relationship on a more constructive course, Reagan wrote on a series of talking points cards before a
private meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in September 1985. Im still not sure we are communicating with each other effectively. The four-part exhibit draws from roughly 45 million pages of documents and other items from the extensive Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, Calif. Mr. Reagan, a Democratturned-Republican who also served two terms as governor of California, died in 1994 at 93. He was born Feb. 6, 1911, in Tampico, Ill. The rst part of the exhibit focuses on Reagans foreign policy and closes in April. The three other parts highlight his reputation as the Great Communicator, his presidential style and his relationship to the American West. Ms. Fawcett and Reagan library archivist Michael Duggan said the nal exhibit could include Reagans cowboy boots, a Western belt buckle, diary excerpts or perhaps riding gear. The exhibit is kind of small, so Im not real sure about a saddle, Ms. Fawcett said. Fragments of the last Soviet SS-20 missile are included in the exhibit, but visitors will likely consider the centerpiece to be several pages of the neatly typed
and double-spaced evil empire speech, delivered by Mr. Reagan in March 1983 before the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Fla. Using a black fine-point marker, Mr. Reagan edits the document in ways big and small from minor punctuation changes to crossing out entire paragraphs. So in your discussions of the nuclear-freeze proposals, I urge you to beware of the temptation [. . . ] to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding, Reagan wrote. Anthony Dolan, the speechwriter widely thought to have crafted that paragraph, said years later he merely created a draft copy from Reagans words and their impact came from the presidents powerful 32-minute speech. Mr. Duggan said he helped assemble the exhibit in part with the idea of trying to show visitors how Reagan moved from condemning the evil empire to negotiating with Soviet leaders to cut nuclear arsenals on the basis of trust but verify. But he also acknowledged thinking: What are the coolest things we have?
/ 5/
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Boehner takes reins in House

New GOP speaker promises end to business as usual
ASSOCIATED PRESS
House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio.
/ 7 / COVER STORY
BY STEPHEN DINAN
The 112th Congress gaveled open Jan. 5 with Republicans taking control of the House and immediately rewriting the chambers rules, making it easier to cut spending and taxes, harder to add new spending, and more open to voters who want to keep tabs on what lawmakers are doing. The rules changes, spearheaded by newly elected Speaker John A. Boehner, mark a sharp departure from recent years, and pave the way for the Republicans to pass bills that extend the Bush-era tax cuts, slash government spending and repeal Democrats health care law at least in the House. Hard work and tough decisions will be required of the 112th Congress. No longer can we fall short. No longer can we kick the can down the road. The people voted to end business as usual, and today we begin carrying out their instructions, said the Ohio Republican, who leads his partys biggest House majority in decades by a margin of 242to-193. He also acknowledged the great deal of scar tissue he said has built up over partisan fights, presaging the head-butting he and his House colleagues will likely do over the next two years with the Senate, which also convened Wednesday as Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. swore in 35 new and returning members, leaving Democrats in control, but with a much weaker 53-47 majority. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who survived his own tough re-election ght in Nevada to return to lead Senate Democrats, called on senators to see one another as teammates, not as opponents. Democrats are trying to write rules changes to curb abuses of Senate traditions he said have allowed Republicans to block parts of the Democrats agenda. They hope to hold a vote on those changes later this month. President Obama wasted no time in pressing for action, resubmitting a number of nominees Republicans had blocked in the waning days of the last Congress, which ended in December with a urry of activity. Mr. Obama also received calls from congressional leaders informing him Congress had convened. Both the House and Senate were packed for the ceremonial parts of the day, including the election of Mr.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Members of the House take the oath of ofce at the opening of the 112th Congress on Capitol Hill on Jan. 5.
Boehner as speaker, which saw each House member stand individually and announce his vote by name. But just hours later, the House viewing galleries were almost empty, and only a few members were on the oor as the debate began on the substantive agenda of the day, which included major rules changes that govern both spending and House operations. On Jan. 6, the House conducted a reading of the Constitution, which Republicans said was meant to underscore the limits the founding document placed on Congress. One of the new House rules requires that every bill lawmakers submit for consideration be accompanied by a statement in the Congressional Record pointing to a specic constitutional power that would justify the proposed law. Another new rule requires that bills be available online for 72 hours before lawmakers vote on them, which Republicans said will give voters the chance to read legislation and weigh in with their views. But the biggest changes may be on the budget side. Republicans have taken Democrats pay-as-you-go, or pay-go, rules and changed them into what the GOP calls cut-as-you-go. Under those changes, new spending would have to be paid for by other spending cuts, but tax cuts would not need to be offset. The new rules also would streamline the process for repealing the new health care law by exempting the repeal bill from budget requirements. Democrats said by carving tax cuts and health care out of the rules, Republicans arent serious about reducing the decit. The American people did not bargain for a plan in the rst 24 hours that would blow a hole in the decit and expand the debt, said Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee. Democrats also blasted Republicans for announcing that amendments will not be allowed to the rst major bill the House will debate, to repeal the health care law. Republicans had promised a more open process, but they said health care repeal was an exception, since the issue has already been repeatedly debated. The new rules also limit the voting rights of delegates to Congress, including the District of Columbias representative, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat. Under Democratic control during the past four years, delegates from the District and the territories were allowed to vote when the House resolved itself into the committee of the whole, which can vote to alter bills. They still could not vote during the regular House sessions needed to pass bills. Republicans revoked their ability to vote in the committee of the whole. It is one thing not to have the vote; it is another to be stripped, Mrs. Norton said. One key test for leaders in both chambers will be how well they are able to keep their troops in line. Mr. Boehner survived his rst test, winning support for speaker from all 241 Republicans who voted Wednesday. But former Speaker Nancy Pelosi didnt fare as well. Nineteen Democrats defected on the vote, with 18 voting for one of several other Democrats and one voting present. Its the worst showing for a party caucus nominee since 1923, and highlights simmering tensions after House Democrats disastrous showing in the November elections. A Democratic aide said the vote was only symbolic and said House Democrats have taken steps to make their caucus more open to dissenting views. Still, the aide said voting against Mrs. Pelosi could be seen as a blow against party unity that would not sit well with some groups central to the party, including unions and minority rights activists. Rep. Heath Shuler, a North Carolina Democrat who garnered 11 of the protest votes, said he presented a middle-ground alternative between Mr. Boehner and Mrs. Pelosi. We need more moderate voices in Congress on both sides of the political aisle that represent the majority of Americans, not just the fringes on the right and left. Thats what this campaign was about, he said.
MEDAL FOR METTLE

Maybe things havent spiraled out of control completely. The Boy Scouts of America, Boys Life magazine, the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation and the Society of Americas living Medal of Honor recipients have joined forces to recognize a Scout with the foundations American Spirit Award for extraordinary skill, professionalism and a spirit of excellence in a challenging situation an honor that previously went to airline pilot Chesley B. Sullenberger of Miracle on the Hudson fame, among others. A quartet of Scouts has been nominated for deeds that include some old-school virtue, heroism two have saved lives and hard work, like cleaning up Chaplains Hill at Arlington National Cemetery. You can learn more about these young men and vote for the winner at: http://boyslife.org/american spiritaward.
Beltway
By Jennifer Harper
Inside the
voters. Christies blunt talk about public employees and his aggressive actions on the New Jersey state budget have made him very popular both within the Republican Party and with independents. His style and appearance would present quite the contrast to that of the president, said pollster John Zogby. He adds not only an alternative governing philosophy, but also real efforts at cutting spending. If he decided to run, Christie could quickly oust Romney as the favorite of establishment Republicans, Mr. Zogby adds.
PROPERTY RITES
Big house, historic features, river view, home ofce, in-law apartment. Indeed, the White House has multiple appeals for the discerning homeowner, but escalating value isnt one of them. The big fat property at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. has lost almost a quarter of its value since President Obama took ofce, according to daring estimates by Zillow.com, an online real estate venture that is well attuned to pop culture and politics. The 132-room mansion on 18 acres was worth $331.5 million when the real estate market was ush with speculation four years ago; the price is now $253 million, Zillow says. The White House is not the only one to suffer; the nations real estate market lost an estimated $1.7 trillion in 2010. Like many of the countrys houses, its not worth what it was once. Over the last three years the presidents home has lost nearly a quarter of its value. In the last month alone the value dropped almost $4 million. Does any of that sound familiar? asks Lew Sichelman, a Los Angles Times real estate analyst. Zillow also determined that by popular vote, Sandra Bullock was rst on the list for most desirable celebrity neighbor for 2011, followed by Sarah Palin, Ellen DeGeneres and the Obamas. We are a conicted nation, though. The companys poll also found that the reality TV cast of Jersey Shore were the least desirable famous neighbors, followed by the Obamas, Mrs. Palin and Kanye West. Polarizing politicians make polarizing neighbors, reasons Zillow spokeswoman Amy Bohutinsky.
triots, fans of less taxes, smaller government. You now exist. You now have a name. So says the Associated Press, which formally has acknowledged an already familiar term and given its usage blessings via a style update. Finally. Along with 911 call, Post-it and eight other words or phrases, journalists are now cleared to use: Tea party: Populist movement in the United States that opposes the Washington political establishment and espouses conservative and libertarian philosophy, including reduced government spending, lower taxes and reduction of the national debt and the federal budget decit. Adherents are tea partyers. Formally named groups in the movement are capitalized: Tea Party Express.
/ POLITICS / 8
ON THE RADAR
Hes rated a snappy Newsweek prole, and noise in Politico and the Blaze: That would be U.S. Ambassador John Huntsman Jr. now rumored to be the avor of the month as a possible 2012 Republican presidential contender. The well-heeled Mr. Huntsman age 48 and a Mormon looks very presidential most days and has the gravitas of experience: He served as a diplomat for former President George H.W. Bush. The Republican heavyweight accepted his overseas post from President Obama two years ago, accompanied by offstage whispers that he was now safely out of the political picture. But some press observers claim Mr. Huntsman has heeded the siren call of the White House and is mulling a run; imagine a Mitt Romney/Huntsman ticket, vice versa. Tea party folks will have none of it, though. Mr. Huntsman is already receiving grumbles that he is Republican in name only, and heavens, an ole for the White House. More soon.
ONCOMING UNDECILLION
Safety in numbers? Certainly not. Multiple alarming headlines warn: National debt at $14 trillion. If cosmic astronomer Carl Sagan had ever been asked to note such a gure during his lifetime, he most likely would have used this more precise version describing that debt as of 11:59 p.m., Dec. 31, 2010, courtesy of the U.S. Treasury Department: $14,025,215,218,708.52. And, as a popular bumper sticker advises, Dont tell Obama what comes after a trillion. The bad news: Our language is prepared to assist President Obama to the nth degree, should the need arise. This is what comes after a trillion: quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion, septillion, octillion, nonillion, decillion and undecillion, which incidentally has 39 zeroes after it. And after that? Obamazillion, of course.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Could 2012 be his year? New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie

about his relationship with the presidents presumed parents have got to unnerve the president and his close advisors. Abercrombie is remembering a past that never happened. New Years Eve.
CHRISTENING CHRISTIE
His New Jersey style has resonated. Gov. Chris Christie now leads the pack of hypothetical contenders for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination and he is the only Republican who bests President Obama, according to a new Zogby Interactive poll of more than 2,000 likely voters, a group that included 746 Republicans. Mr. Christie garners 27 percent of Republican support, followed by Mitt Romney (17 percent), Sarah Palin (16 percent) and Mike Huckabee (14 percent). In an Obama vs. Christie match, the governor leads 43 percent to 40 percent among all
ALOHA
Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombies zeal to present nal proof to birthers that President Obama was born in that state 49 years ago has become a dramatic tableau in its own right. Mr. Abercrombies insistence that he is an old friend of the Obama family has inspired skeptics to parse the claim, checking public records and press accounts for evidence that Mr. Abercrombie was in the equation when that baby was born, as he once described. Other observers are vexed with the sparse press coverage regarding Mr. Obamas citizenship. They point out that news organizations were more than happy to endlessly examine former President George W. Bushs military service after then-CBS anchor Dan Rather used forged documents in 2004 to accuse Mr. Bush of compromising his Vietnam-era National Guard duty, aired in the pivotal weeks before the presidential election. Will Obama silence blundering Abercrombie? asks American Thinker correspondent Jack Cashill. Abercrombies boasts
SIGN OF THE TIMES

Public fury over pat downs? Here comes delay rage after thousands languished in airports during holiday weather delays. But wait. International airline passengers under the 1999 Montreal Convention ratied by the U.S. eight years ago, and which replaced the Warsaw Convention now have legal rights superior to the rights of passengers on U.S. domestic ights, reports Flyersrights.org, a consumer group. International air travel covered by this treaty includes any ticketed trip with stopping, departure or destination points in two or more countries. Airlines can be liable for delay damages up to $6,640, and $1,640 for damaged or delayed baggage. U.S. federal district courts could be involved; the group recommends some reading, as in the full text of the Montreal Convention, found here: w w w. j u s . u i o . n o / l m / a i r. carriage.unification. convention.montreal.1999/ doc.html Polite applause, doggerel to jharper@washington times.com.
CITIZENS CORNER
Its time to renew the pressure on Ofce of Personnel Management to pay attention to the backlog of retirement applications. I for one have been waiting for over seven months to have my retirement adjudicated. Outrageous. We were told 2-3 months. I retired in May of 2010. Take them to task, and the sooner and louder the better. The major function of OPM is in failure mode, declares a Beltway reader who tallied things up on
TEA PARTY TIME

Hear ye, hear ye. Traditional pa-
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Constitution read on House floor, and debated too

BY STEPHEN DINAN
More than 200 hundred years after the rst part was written, the Constitution produced standing ovations and strident but respectful debate as lawmakers from both parties read the governments founding document on the House oor in its entirety or nearly so. A snafu caused lawmakers initially to skip over 115 words in Articles IV and V, and lawmakers intentionally omitted parts of the Constitution they said had been repealed or amended and therefore were no longer relevant. That sparked a debate between Republicans and Democrats, who said the document is a product of history and should be read in its entirety. House Republicans, who pushed the exercise, said they hoped it would spark a sense of fealty to the document. But just hours after they concluded the reading, they found themselves grappling with a thorny constitutional problem two of their members missed taking the oath of ofce Jan. 5 but had been voting as if they were properly sworn in. Both parties said they will try to patch over the misstep, but not before Democrats blasted Republicans for sloppiness. Are we sure were through here? How many other people decided not to take the oath? asked Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, New York Democrat. Historians said Jan. 6 marked the rst time in the history of Congress that the Constitution was read in its entirety on the House oor, and Republicans said they hoped the reading sparked a renewed sense of the limits the Founders intended to place on government. I hope that not just the members of the House theres been
a tremendous interest in this nationwide I hope it leads to more Americans taking an interest and following what the Constitution does, vis-a-vis constitutional authority, said Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte, the Virginia Republican who suggested the reading to his partys leaders and led the effort. All told, 135 lawmakers read sections, alternating between Republicans and Democrats. They skipped over the Eighteenth Amendment on prohibition and the three-fths clause that declared for purposes of deciding representation that black slaves would be counted as threefths of free whites. Republicans said the docu-
sources, including the Government Printing Ofces version, say that ending has been amended, and so it shouldnt have been read. Matthew Spalding, director of the Heritage Foundations Center for American Studies, said the rst Congress debated exactly these issues of whether the Constitution should have redactions or additions. When the question rst came up about amending the Constitution, there was discussion about whether the changes should be in the document itself or added to the end of the document as amendments, and they decided to go with the amendments to
out of order several times to offer special honors, including letting Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, Texas Republican, read the opening of Article III, which constitutes the federal judiciary, and letting Rep. John Lewis, Georgia Democrat and a civil rights icon, read the 13th Amendment that ofcially ended slavery. Mr. Lewis drew a standing ovation from the chamber after he completed his reading. Mr. Goodlatte reserved for himself reading the 10th Amendment, which reserves to the states all powers not specifically given to the federal government an amendment that
What this episode shows the reading, but also the important debates were going to have over constitutional citation in legislating is that Congress constitutional muscles are extremely atrophied, and theyre going to have to learn to think again constitutionally, said Matthew Spalding, director of the Heritage Foundations Center for American Studies.
ment has been amended, so they left out obsolete parts. That drew criticism from Democrats, who said the entire document should be read because it is a matter of history and because its sometimes unclear exactly what has been changed. The amendments do not make specic deletions to specic language in the document, said Rep. Jay Inslee, Washington Democrat. It could be subject to some interpretation which language has really been moved and which has not. Indeed, the version the lawmakers read included a section at the end of Article III, Section 2, Clause 1. But several other leave the original text unchanged, he said. No amendment with the possible exception of the repeal of the prohibition amendment technically removes any words from the Constitution. They override but do not strike out the text. Its not like those words disappear. In another instance, a lawmaker appeared to have ipped too many pages at one time, causing the next reader to skip over the 115 words. Mr. Goodlatte later took to the House oor to read the omitted words into the Congressional Record. conservatives say has been ignored by Congress. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Arizona Democrat, read the First Amendment, and Rep. Frank Guinta, New Hampshire Republican, read the Second Amendments protection of the right to bear arms, earning the envy of his colleagues. You got to read the Second Amendment? Everybody wanted to read the Second Amendment, Rep. Charles Bass, his fellow New Hampshire Republican, told him later. One protester interrupted the reading during the part laying out the qualications for president, seeming to challenge whether
Bipartisan honors
During the reading, he went
President Obama met the birth requirements. Mr. Obama holds a Hawaiian birth certificate, though some of his critics have questioned its authenticity. Mr. Goodlatte said that despite the few hiccups, the exercise went well. He said he even sensed some converts who been wary of the reading. A lot of people reacted initially in ways that they didnt seem to adhere to, he said. One member who was very critical in the last couple of days came and read. One convert appeared to be Rep. Tim Walz, Minnesota Democrat, who just before the reading was on the oor chanting Jobs! Jobs! seemingly protesting the exercise. But he took a turn reading, and at the conclusion of the document he was the rst lawmaker to leap to his feet and applaud. His ofce didnt return a message seeking comment. The reading of the Constitution is just the rst step in the GOPs move to push the founding document to the forefront of political debates. House Republicans wrote a new rule this year that requires all House bills to state a constitutional basis for the proposed action. Mr. Spalding said the debate is welcome, but it also shows how much learning Congress has to do. The reading of the Constitution on the House oor is significant, and wonderfully sets the tone of the new Congress. What this episode shows the reading, but also the important debates were going to have over constitutional citation in legislating is that Congress constitutional muscles are extremely atrophied, and theyre going to have to learn to think again constitutionally, he said.
GOP faces spending test as debt nears $14.3 trillion ceiling

BY STEPHEN DINAN AND KARA ROWLAND
The Obama administration on Jan. 6 told Congress the government is about to hit the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling and will need authority to borrow more, kicking off the rst major test of spending restraint and the strength of Republicans new congressional power. Republicans said they wont agree to a higher debt limit unless Democrats agree to strict new spending controls. Democrats warned the GOP not to play chicken with the economy and said hitting the limit could be worse than the nancial collapse of 2008. Never in our history has Congress failed to increase the debt limit when necessary, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said in a letter to Congress. Fail-
ure to raise the limit would precipitate a default by the United States. Default would effectively impose a signicant and longlasting tax on all Americans and all American businesses and could lead to the loss of millions of American jobs. The GOP, though, which controls the House of Representatives and can block a debt-limit raise, said there must be giveand-take. The consensus is its got to be a tandem deal, said Rep. Jeff Flake, Arizona Republican. Weve got to have some serious, serious, serious spending cuts and caps enforceable, not just the gimmicks. The debt ceiling is akin to the countrys credit card limit. Once it hits that level, it cannot borrow any more money, and since the government is running a huge decit, it would have to shut down operations if it can no
longer borrow. By seeking a debtlimit increase, the White House is asking to be able to borrow more. Debt subject to the limit stood at $13.973 trillion on Jan. 5, almost $300 billion away from the ceiling, which is $14.294 trillion. Increasing the debt limit, which must be done by law, is typically one of the toughest votes for members of Congress and lends itself to brinksmanship. As a senator from Illinois, Barack Obama voted against a debt-limit increase in 2006. He argued that the country needed leadership, not more borrowing power. The fact that were here today to debate raising Americas debt is a sign of leadership failure. Leadership means the buck stops here, Mr. Obama said at the time. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad
choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. Asked last week about the perceived inconsistency, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said there was a difference and that Mr. Obama was able to vote against an increase because the outcome of the 2006 vote was not in question. The full faith and credit of our government and our economy was not in doubt, Mr. Gibbs said of the vote, which was nevertheless close at 52-48. The president used it to make a point about needing to get serious about scal responsibility. Thats just what many conservatives opposed to approving the increase are saying now, though, citing the hefty tab of government spending that Congress ran up in Mr. Obamas rst two years. But Mr. Gibbs suggested that the need to increase the debt is more a result of costly Bush-era poli-
cies than Mr. Obamas legislative initiatives. We [. . . ] are dealing with the legacy of decisions that have been made over the past many years not paying for a prescription drug benet, not paying for wars, not paying for tax cuts that changed our scal situation much more markedly than anything ever had, he said. In that 2006 debate, Mr. Obama and fellow Senate Democrats including their leader, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada voted no only after their effort to attach spending controls to the measure failed. Thats exactly what Republicans are threatening now. Clearly, no one wants America to default on their debt. But if were asked to pay someone elses bill, we need to cut up the credit cards, said Rep. Jeb Hen-
see DEBT,
page 12
/ 11 / POLITICS
Senators seek data on Gitmo detainee transfers

BY ELI LAKE
Senate Republicans are pressing the Obama administration for documents that outline procedures used in releasing terrorism-suspect detainees from the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, information the Justice Department and State Department have previously withheld. In an effort by the GOP to provide greater oversight of the administrations war on terrorism, seven members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, including the presumed next vice chairman, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, Georgia Republican, last month signed letters seeking the documents. The transfers of potentially dangerous detainees to countries with questionable capabilities to provide security and monitoring has been a matter of signicant concern for the committee, the senators stated in a Dec. 9 letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. These concerns are bolstered by comments from ofcials in the Department of Justice and the intelligence community that the only way to completely mitigate the threat posed by the remaining Guantanamo Bay detainees is to keep them in custody. Congressional aides said the Republicans on the Senate intelligence panel are working on a minority report to be issued this year on the handling of the 60 to 70 detainees from the prison at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who have been transferred to foreign countries since President Obama took ofce. A recent Defense Intelligence Agency study on the recidivism rate of detainees found that 150 of those released from the Guantanamo Bay prison are conrmed or suspected to have returned to terrorism. President George W. Bush released more than 500 suspected terrorists from the prison. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment Jan. 5, noting that The Washington Times was unable to provide the full letter for review. The Justice Department has provided classied briengs on the transfer process to members of the House and Senate. On Jan. 22, the Justice Department released an unclassied report from the task force detailing whether 240 detainees would face military trial or civilian trial, or be detained indenitely or transferred. Its important to nd out what criteria the task force used to evaluate the threat level posed by each individual detainee, said Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. It is also important to nd out whether or not President Obamas executive order led the task force to be more aggressive in approving transfers, said Mr. Joscelyn. The Republicans letter to Mr.
Holder specically asks for a 2009 memorandum on the detainee review and transfer processes. The senators wrote that they thought the memo recommended that Mr. Obamas Guantanamo Detainee Review Task Force apply a presumption in favor of transfer rather than continued detention. The letter also requests the unredacted recommendations
contained in the Guantanamo Detainee Review Task Force evaluation worksheets, or the reviews for each detainee on the risk he would pose if released. The senators also requested a list of the 92 detainees that the task force initially approved to transfer out of the prison. Although your Ofce of Legislative Affairs agreed to make this list available, requests for infor-
mation regarding when the list will be provided have gone unanswered, the letter stated. Mr. Obama, on his second day in ofce, pledged to close the prison by the end of his rst year in ofce a move designed to satisfy civil libertarians who oppose the terrorist detention center. Nearly two years into the Obama administration, the
prison a destination for detainees captured in Afghanistan and other fronts in the war on terrorism for Mr. Bush remains open. The 2011 defense-authorization bill that is awaiting Mr. Obamas signature or veto imposes new restrictions on funding the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the United States or a foreign country.
You deserve a factual look at . . .
Myths About Israel and the Middle East (2)

Should we re-examine endlessly repeated clichs?
In a previous installment in this series of clarifying messages about Israel and the Middle East, we examined certain myths which, by dint of constant repetition, had acquired currency and acceptance. We looked at the myth of Palestinian nationhood, the myth of Judea/Samaria (the West Bank) being occupied territory, the myth that Jewish settlements in these territories are the greatest obstacle to peace, and the myth that Israel is unwilling to yield land for peace. And we cleared up the greatest myth of all, namely that Israels administration of the territories, and not the unrelenting hatred of the Arabs against the Jews, is the root cause of the conflict between the Arabs and Israel. But those are not all the myths; there are more. Reality: There is no prospect at all that anything resembling a democratic state could be created in the territories. There is not a I Myth: The Arabs of Israel are a persecuted minority. single democratic Arab state all of them are tyrannies of varying Reality: The over one million non-Jews (mostly Arabs) who are degrees. Even today, under partial Israeli administration, Hamas citizens of Israel have the same civil rights that Jews have. They and other factions fight for supremacy and ruthlessly murder each vote, are members of the Knesset (parliament), and are part of other. Another Lebanon, with its incessant civil wars, is much more Israels civil and diplomatic service, just as their Jewish fellow likely. The lawlessness and chaos that citizens. Arabs have complete religious prevail in Gaza since Israels freedom and full access to the Israeli It is in our national interest that withdrawal is a good prospect of what legal, health and educational systems including Arabic and Muslim reality, not myths, govern our policy. would happen if Israel foolishly and under the pressure of world opinion universities. The only difference were to abandon this territory. As for between the rights of Arabs and Jews demilitarization, that is totally unlikely. Because with Syria, Iraq, is that Jewish young men must serve three years in the military and Jordan and Saudi Arabia, most of which are in a declared state of war at least one month a year until age 50. Young Jewish women serve with Israel, at its borders an irresistible power vacuum would be for two years. The Arabs have no such civic obligation. For them, created. Despite pious promises, the arms merchants of the world military service is voluntary. Not too surprisingly, except for the would find a great new market and the neighboring hostile Arab Druze, very few avail themselves of the privilege. countries would be happy to supply anything else that might be I Myth: Having (ill-advisedly) already given up control of the needed. Gaza Strip, Israel should also give up the administration of I Myth: Israel should make confidence-building gestures for Judea/Samaria (the West Bank) because strategic depth is the sake of peace. meaningless in this age of missiles. Reality: What really is it that the world expects Israel to do for the Reality: Israel is a mini-state about half the size of San sake of peace? Most of the 22 Arab countries consider themselves in Bernardino county in California. If another, even smaller mini-state a state of war with Israel and dont even recognize its existence. were carved out of it, Israel would be totally indefensible. That is the That has been going on for over sixty years. Isnt it about time that professional opinion of 100 retired U.S. generals and admirals. If the the Arabs made some kind of a gesture? Could they not for Arabs were to occupy whatever little strategic depth Israel has instance terminate the constant state of war? Could they not stop between the Jordan River and its populated coast, they would not launching rockets into Israel from areas that Israel has abandoned need any missiles. Artillery and mortars would suffice, since Israel for the sake of peace? Could they not stop the suicide bombings, would be only nine miles wide at its waist. Those who urge such a which have killed hundreds of Israelis and which have made extreme course either do not understand the situation or have a death wish security measures such as the defensive fence and convoluted for Israel. bypass roads necessary? Any of these would create a climate of I Myth: If Israel would allow a Palestinian state to arise in Judea peace and would indeed be the confidence-building gestures that and Samaria it would be a democratic state and would be totally the world hopes for. demilitarized. Countless peace conferences to settle this festering conflict have taken place. All have ended in failure because of the intransigence of the Arabs. President Clinton, toward the end of his presidency, convened a conference with the late unlamented Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak, the prime minister of Israel at that time. Mr. Barak offered virtually everything that Arafat had requested, except the partition of Jerusalem and the acceptance of the so-called refugees, their descendants having swollen from the 650,000 who fled the nascent state of Israel during the War of Liberation, to an incredible 5 million. Arafat left in a huff and started his infamous intifada instead, a bloody war that has cost thousands of Palestinian and Israeli lives. Israel is Americas staunchest ally and certainly its only true friend in that area of the world. It is in our national interest that reality, not myths, govern our policy.
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/ POLITICS / 12
Tea party organizers warn: We are watching

BY SETH MCLAUGHLIN
Eager to dispel the notion that their protest movement is a mere ash in the pan, the nations tea party activists are preparing to welcome the newest crop of lawmakers to Washington by reminding them of the consequences if they walk away from their campaign promises. One tea party group issued a call for supporters to greet new members of Congress as they were ofcially sworn in on Jan. 5, and similar scenarios are expected to play out in states across the nation. Tea party organizers say they plan to become watchdogs inside state capitals while continuing the grass-roots push to generate political support to cut spending and roll back federal overreach. We are watching, and we are going to hold them accountable, and it is not too early to start making our target list for 2012, said Amy Kremer, grass-roots director for Tea Party Express, which is focused on the federal government. People are denitely thinking long term, said Jamie Radtke, the head of the Virginia Federation of Tea Party Patriots, who has announced plans to run next year for the seat held by freshman Sen. Jim Webb, a Democrat. Tea party-backed candidates secured dozens of victories in the November elections, helping Republicans seize control of the House of Representatives and gain a half-dozen seats in the Senate. They also helped the GOP take the reins in at least 20 state legislatures, in many cases giving the party control of the redistricting process. But in recent weeks, as political focus has shifted from the rhetoric of the campaign trail to the realities of governing, some prognosticators have pondered whether the tea partys political passion will tail off. Tea partyers brush off the idea. They say the movements strength is growing, with their postelection power on display during the lame-duck session in the defeat of Senate Democrats proposed $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill. GOP leaders also got nearly every member of their party to agree to a temporary ban on congressional earmarks, a symbol of wasteful Washington spending and a major rallying cause for tea
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Your performance will be evaluated: House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio

party voters. The tea party inuence was clear last week as the ve candidates for chairman of the Republican National Committee appealed for the movements cant forget it, said Ann Wagner, a former ambassador to Luxembourg and former chairwoman of Missouri Republican Party. Now the tea partyers are Ms. Kremer said tea party supporters should do whatever they can to stop Congress from increasing the nations debt ceiling, which White House ofcials insist must happen for the gov-
This movement was never just an anti-establishment, antiincumbent movement. It was always about ideas, and that was a thing a lot of people failed to realize, especially the Democrats, said Brendan Steinhauser, director of federal and state campaigns for FreedomWorks.This movement was about limited government, scal responsibility. So, to the extent that these guys follow through on that basic promise, they will be rewarded.
support in a forum at the National Press Club. Let us not forget the tea party, patriot and grass-roots movement is why we had such victories in 2010. It absolutely is, ladies and gentlemen, and we pushing the people they propelled into ofce to ght for the repeal of President Obamas health care overhaul, to reduce federal spending and to cut the national debt, which just surpassed $14 trillion. ernment to avoid falling into default on its obligations. Other tea party leaders say theyre working to establish a stronger foothold at the state level by holding rallies and lobbying lawmakers to curb spending.
All West Virginia tea party groups will unite to greet newly elected ofcials and send a message to the legislators that the movement is here, is informed, and will hold them accountable for their words, their promises and their actions, said Dee Armstrong, a tea party activist in West Virginia who is helping to organize a rally to greet state lawmakers in Charleston on the Jan. 12 opening day of their legislative session. Ms. Armstrong said hundreds are expected to attend and that some will be adorned in winter scarves bearing the Dont Tread On Me tea party slogan. Not deterred by their failure in November to capture the seat of the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia tea party leaders say that at least one member from its various local branches will sit in the visitors gallery each day of the legislative session. We want to show that from all across the state of West Virginia there is somebody there, and they are listening and they are taking notes, Ms. Armstrong said. In Texas, Dick Armey, FreedomWorks co-founder and former House majority leader, has linked with local tea party groups to pressure state lawmakers in Austin to tap a conservative for speaker of the House. You name it, we are doing all the kind of grass-roots activity we can do, said Brendan Steinhauser, director of federal and state campaigns for FreedomWorks. There is a ton of activity in the states on taxes, spending, health care, property rights and school choice. This movement was never just an anti-establishment, antiincumbent movement. It was always about ideas, and that was a thing a lot of people failed to realize, especially the Democrats, Mr. Steinhauser said. This movement was about limited government, scal responsibility. So, to the extent that these guys follow through on that basic promise, they will be rewarded. Similar ideas are owing in Virginia, where supporters are calling on lawmakers to eliminate the state income tax and to adopt an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would hand states the power to repeal any federal law or regulation. Tea party supporters also started a political action committee ahead of state General Assembly elections later this year.
DEBT
From page 10
sarling of Texas, chairman of the House Republican Conference. In the budget Mr. Obama submitted in February, he acknowledged that deficits and debt were out of control, but passed on proposing a long-term solu-
tion. Instead, he formed a commission and asked it to make recommendations. The commission came up with a broad set of reforms, but members were unable to secure the supermajority needed to forward their report to Congress for action. The Treasury Department said the debt ceiling could be hit by the end of March, though ofcials can take several bookkeep-
ing steps to delay that by some weeks. Still, Democrats said acting soon is the best way to signal to the markets that the country is serious about protecting its credit. Rather than waiting until the last minute, we need to work together with our colleagues on both sides of the aisle in a bipartisan, responsible manner and
begin that discussion now, said Sen. Max Baucus, Montana Democrat. Republicans said there are a range of possible controls, but that they have not reached a consensus on which of those must be added. Both sides agree that $1 trillion decits the annual shortfall in government spending are unsustainable, but they dis-
agree over how to patch the hole. Democrats have proposed raising taxes on upper-income taxpayers and to spend money to boost the economy. Republicans say spending cuts and tax cuts would do more for the economy than government spending. In last months bipartisan deal, they agreed to more spending and more tax cuts, only deepening the projected decit.
/ 13 / POLITICS
Republicans to scrutinize Obamas feats

BY STEPHEN DINAN
With Congress split this year between Republicans and Democrats, the GOP may not be able to pass much of its repeal agenda, but it still expects to play a major role in shaping government through hearings and investigations into much of what the Obama administration has done. Republican committee chairmen say theyre eager to get to work on dissecting government operations and, as one incoming chairman said, pushing lawmakers to ask basic questions. I will ask our committee members to review the agencies from the top down. Literally, walk around agencies, such as [the Energy Department] and [Health and Human Services Department], and ask simple questions like, Why is the federal government doing this? said Rep. Fred Upton, Michigan Republican and incoming chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, whose broad jurisdiction makes it one of the most powerful spots for picking over government. We will be relentless in our efforts to expose and slash wasteful spending, he said. Mr. Upton said his committee will put a microscope on the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Communications Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, stimulus spending and the health care law in other words, just about every controversial pro-
gram the administration and the Democrat-led Congress pursued over the past two years. House Republican leaders are intent on scrutinizing the government and have even structured their floor voting schedule around giving committees time to work. The White House didnt return a message seeking comment, but Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who will be chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told CNN on Jan. 2 that he thinks the administration shares the GOPs goal of creating a leaner, more efcient government. As soon as I got this job, I got a call from Vice President [Joseph R.] Biden [Jr.]. We had a 45-minute-or-so meeting, and it was a wonderful meeting because he cares about the same things I care about. He cares about the dollar going further. He has a huge government that needs help, Mr. Issa said. Aides said his committee is likely to take a look at the broad operations of government, including regulations, the $814 billion stimulus and the Wall Street bailout packages and the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Other committees with specic jurisdiction will be more targeted. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and the Justice Department are likely to face close scrutiny. Rep. Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who will become chairman of the House Judiciary
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rep. Fred Upton, incoming chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said he will put a microscope on EPA, FCC and FDA.
Committee, said he will look into charges that the departments civil rights division failed to follow up on race-based complaints most notably in dropping the voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia. It is unacceptable for the Justice Department to determine whether to enforce a law based upon the race of a defendant or victim, Mr. Smith told The Times. Allegations that the Civil Rights Division has engaged in a practice of race-based nonenforcement of federal voting rights law are troubling. We need to make sure that our laws are
being equally enforced. A Justice Department spokesman didnt return a call Sunday afternoon, but Mr. Holder told the New York Times two weeks ago that there is no there there. The notion that this made-up controversy leads to a belief that this Justice Department is not colorblind in enforcement of civil rights laws is simply not supported by the facts, he said. All I have on my side with regard to that is the facts and the law. Mr. Smith also said the Judiciary Committee will take a close look at immigration enforcement and whether its doing enough to protect jobs for American workers. Aides said the Ways and Means Committee, with Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan as chairman, will take a look at the waivers the Obama administration has granted under its health care law and will examine the expansion of the Internal Revenue Service to force compliance. The Education and the Workforce Committee, under the leadership of Rep. John Kline, Minnesota Republican, will take a look at student loans, Mr. Obamas Race to the Top education program and the health care laws mandates on employers. Part of whats driving Republicans is the list of questions theyve drawn up over the past two years when they were in the minority and when the
White House felt less pressure to respond to their requests for information. Now, in control, they can call administration ofcials as witnesses, set the hearing agenda and demand that documents be turned over, with the threat of a subpoena if the administration doesnt comply. Because of that, which is the ultimate hammer, they will be more willing to release reports, said Rep. Rob Bishop, Utah Republican. Mr. Bishop, who has been tapped to be chairman of the public lands subcommittee of the Natural Resources Committee, said he wants to nd out more about administration plans to restrict use of federal property. Last year, his ofce released a Bureau of Land Management document showing preliminary discussions in the administration for moving tens of millions of acres into more protected status, but Mr. Bishop said he has been unable to see what other agencies have discussed. Meanwhile, Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte, Virginia Republican and a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, said he wants to see oversight hearings look at the constitutional backing for what agencies are doing. Its my hope that one of the premises on which these hearings are held is, OK, the federal government is acting in this area, were conducting oversight of that, the rst question is should the federal government be acting in that area at all? he said.
Gates proposes $78 billion in defense cuts over five years

BY ELI LAKE
The Pentagon on Jan. 6 announced a series of sharp cuts in defense spending over the next ve years that senior leaders say will improve efciencies but leave reduced numbers of Marines, soldiers and key defense systems. The cuts will pare the Army and Marine Corps by as many as 47,000 people, reversing a trend since the Sept. 11 attacks of increased budgets and more recruitment. The new cuts also will eliminate defense systems such as the Surface-Launched Advanced Medium-Range Air-toAir Missile and the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, an armored boat designed to move Marines ashore rapidly. The new series of spending cuts will reduce the Pentagons budget by $78 billion over the next ve years, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in announcing the reductions at the Pentagon. He also proposed raising the health insurance premiums of military retirees who still receive military health insurance. The premiums have not been raised since 1995.
This plan represents, in my view, the minimum level of defense spending that is necessary, given the complex and unpredictable array of security challenges the United States faces around the globe global terrorist networks, rising military powers, nuclear-armed rogue states and much, much more, Mr. Gates said. Mr. Gates said some money saved through more efcient spending will be reinvested into programs that reect the militarys new emphasis on counterinsurgency instead of preparing for war between nation-states. The defense secretary also said the cuts he is proposing are part of a review of unnecessary and wasteful Pentagon programs launched last year. The review followed an earlier round of cuts that capped procurement of the F-22 ghter program at 187 jets. It is imperative for this department to eliminate wasteful, excessive and unneeded spending, to do everything we can to make every defense dollar count, Mr. Gates said. The cuts are expected to hit the Marines hardest. The Marine Corps is expected to reduce its
numbers by around 20,000 from the current level of 200,000 in the next ve years, and the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV), under development since the Reagan administration, will be shelved. Mr. Gates also said an aircraft being built for the Marines that would require shorter runways was put on probation because the plane faced development problems. Mr. Gates acknowledged that his decision to cut the EFV will be controversial, but he said the cost to build the vehicle would be $12 billion, a gure that equaled the entire Marine Corps vehicle budget. This decision does not call into question the Marines amphibious assault mission, Mr. Gates said. We will budget the funds necessary to develop a more affordable and sustainable amphibious tractor to provide the Marines a ship-to-shore capability into the future. Thomas Donnelly, a defense affairs analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, disagreed with Mr. Gates. This really calls into question the future of the Marine Corps, whether the Marine
Corps can function as it has since World War II as a kickdown-the-door force, he said. The combined effect of the Marine Corps program cuts, weapons cuts and personnel cuts is to raise the question about whether the Marine Corps can continue this role. The proposed cuts in defense must be approved by Congress. In the House, the new Republican leadership has pledged to try to cut $100 billion from the federal budget for 2012. If Mr. Gates proposed cuts are enacted, they could achieve $20 billion in savings. But already the new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Howard P. Buck McKeon, California Republican, has expressed concern. Im not happy, Mr. McKeon said in statement after a meeting with Mr. Gates. We went into todays meeting trying to ensure the $100 billion in targeted savings were reinvested back into our national security priorities. We didnt expect to hear that before these efciencies can be realized, the White House and [Ofce of Management and Budget] have demanded that the Pentagon cut an additional $78 billion
from defense over the next ve years. Another possible roadblock for Mr. Gates on the defense budget will be the Virginia congressional delegation. The new cuts would end most Navy missions for the services Second Fleet, based in Norfolk, Va. Will Jenkins, a spokesman for Sen. Jim Webb, Virginia Democrat and the chairman of the Senate Armed Services personnel subcommittee, said: Sen. Webb holds strong views regarding our national security needs and the vital role Virginia plays in our nations defense. He intends to carefully review all the data and costsavings analysis regarding the latest efciency initiatives when that information is provided by the Department of Defense. While the Pentagon is tightening its belt, Mr. Gates said some of the proposed savings would be reinvested in new programs. Likely winners in the defense budget include new funding for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems, such as communications and drones. Mr. Gates also said the Pentagon would invest in modernizing the radar systems for the F-15 Hornet aircraft for the Navy.
/ POLITICS / 14
Reid unlikely to hold Internet gambling trump card

BY JOSEPH WEBER
Even with the backing of such political high rollers as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the push to expand legal Internet gambling in the United States looks to face much longer odds in the more heavily Republican Congress. Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat, came up short last month during the congressional lame-duck session in his bid to allow U.S. casino companies to establish Internet poker sites and give them a cut of the multibillion-dollar offshore industry. Mr. Reid is poised to try again this year, but his path may be blocked by Rep. Spencer Bachus, the Alabama Republican who has been named chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and other GOP lawmakers who appear steadfast about keeping online betting illegal in the U.S. This is a huge priority for Spencer, said a top House GOP staffer. In fact, if Mr. Bachus addresses Internet gambling in the 112th Congress, such action would focus on examining the effectiveness of existing laws and making them tougher, the staffer said. A wide range of U.S. business interests are scrambling to reboot in the face of the major power shift on Capitol Hill after the midterm elections. Mr. Reids re-election in No-
vember heartened the gambling industry, but the overall results presented a mixed bag, industry watchers say. If 2010 is any sign of whats to come in the future for online poker, the only thing that is really for certain is that the road is a long, bumpy one and the legalization of online poker will be very difcult to come by, reported PokerNews.com. The Off Shore Gaming Association, in its year-end policy roundup, noted, The results certainly werent ideal, but the fact that Mr. Reid has remained as Senate majority leader and the fact that the Republicans didnt win control of both houses lends some hope to gamblings future in the upcoming years. A 2006 law essentially banned banks from transmitting payments between bettors and gambling operations. The Democratcontrolled Congress helped delay full implementation of the law until last year. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat, pushed a bill during the summer that would have effectively overturned the law by legalizing online poker and other non-sports wagering. The measure never received a full House vote, and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has said he will not support efforts to legalize online gambling. The Obama administration has cited concerns of money laundering and underage betting. Mr. Bachus joined Rep.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Gamblings man? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

David Camp, Michigan Republican and the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Rep. Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who is poised to take over the House Judiciary Committee, in sending a strongly worded letter to Mr. Reid opposing his attempt during the lameduck session to license and tax Internet gambling and cautioning the majority leader about future negotiations. The Dec. 1 letter also said that interest groups were reportedly behind the draft legislation because they have calculated that a secretive, closed-door, undemocratic process represents their best opportunity to regain
access to U.S. markets. A Reid spokesman told The Washington Times that the majority leader still hopes to enact such a bill, and a leading gambling lobby group predicts legislation within the next few months. I fully expect something early next year, said John Pappas, executive director of the Washington-based Poker Players Alliance. Mr. Pappas said supporters of Internet gambling are working with Reid staffers to address concerns raised in the failed legislation. This is public policy that makes sense, he said. Nobody, Republicans or Democrats, can believe the status quo is acceptable playing [poker] overseas without protection and not realizing any of the revenue. Republicans scoff at the idea that legalizing online wagering could generate signicant revenue and point to fundraising records for Mr. Reids 2010 bruising, expensive re-election campaign as evidence of a possible payback. Offshore gambling is an estimated $6.2 billion industry. Mr. Reid wants to tax only online poker at roughly 20 percent, which would equal about $1.2 billion. Thats pretty poor compared to the $700 billion [bank bailout bill], said one GOP policy staffer. Supporters have estimated that revenue would amount to $10 billion to $40 billion over the
next 10 years. Industry watchers say Mr. Reid who once opposed Internet gambling hinted in August that he might change his mind, as tea party-backed GOP Senate candidate Sharon Angle appeared poised to keep him from serving a fth term. They also said his legislation would have granted the first licenses to Nevada and other casino states because they have established regulatory programs. By the time Mr. Reid eked out a win on Nov. 2, he had received at least $650,000 from several Las Vegas casino companies, including MGM Resorts International, which owns the Bellagio, and Harrahs Entertainment, whose holdings include Caesars Palace. MGM executives, employees and the companys political action committee collectively gave $192,450, making them Mr. Reids top campaign contributor. Executives and employees of Harrahs now known as Caesars Entertainment and the corporate political action committee gave $83,100 to Mr. Reid, making them collectively Mr. Reids fourth-largest donor, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. If it brings revenues and jobs into the United States, its the right thing to do, MGM spokesman Alan Feldman told NBC News in an interview. As a country, weve allowed jobs and tax revenues to be outsourced to Europe and parts of the Caribbean.
Starving for cash: RNC sees deep red for 2012 budget
BY RALPH Z. HALLOW
The next chairman of the Republican National Committee will face a money-raising challenge of historic proportions. The unreleased ofcial budget of the RNC reveals that the Republican Partys national governing body and premier fundraising apparatus begins the 2011-12 presidential election cycle more than $20 million in the hole. A record for any year in the past 30 years, Maria Cino, a candidate for the RNC chairmanship and a former deputy transportation secretary, told The Washington Times. The budget was approved by RNC Chairman Michael S. Steeles Budget Committee. The document also reveals that the RNC will enter the 2012 presidential election year at least $10 million in arrears. That is also unheard of in 30 years for a presidential year or for that matter, any congressional election year, Ms. Cino said. That gure also comes from the same budget approved by Maryland RNC member Louis Pope Mr. Steeles hand-picked Budget Committee chairman
and a supporter of Mr. Steeles Jan. 14 re-election bid. Weve never had a debt that big, ever, going into a presidential election cycle, former RNC General Counsel David Norcross told The Times. Federal Election Commission records show a dismal picture for the next chairman. As of Dec. 29, the RNC had $15,013,443.70 in debts and loans $12 million more than the deepest RNC nancial hole in at least 14 years. That $15 million in IOUs compares with the zero indebtedness in the comparable period before the 2007-08 presidential cycle, the insignicant $1,446 before the 2003-04 period, the $3 million going into the 1999-2000 cycle and the $2.5 million at the comparable point before the 1995-96 presidential election period. The contrast is even more startling in presidential election years, FEC data show. The RNC began 1996, 2004 and 2008 debtfree. Although the national committee began the 2000 presidential election year with $2 million in debt, it was $8 million less than the Steele budget says will be the case on Jan. 1, 2012. Senior Republican ofcials expressed astonishment at the extent of the debt.
Unable to raise money from major donors who said they did not trust the RNC to use the money wisely under Mr. Steeles stewardship, the national committee voted to borrow $15 million to help get it through the 2010 midterm election season. The Steele Budget document calls for $10 million of that debt to be carried forward into 2012 far more than the RNC has ever had to carry forward in my memory, Kentucky RNC member and former national committee Chairman Mike Duncan told The Times. Mr. Steele took six months to nd someone who would agree to serve as the RNCs nance chairman a role that requires widely acknowledged probity, the private cell phone numbers of other captains of industry and banking and the ability to recruit them to bundle maximum allowable contributions from other wealthy prospects. RNC Finance Committee Chairman Peter Terpeluk, chosen by Mr. Steele, proved to be not up to the task, especially given the public spanking that successful former RNC nance chairmen have handed Mr. Steele over the past two years.
Mr. Terpeluk resigned in midDecember without a formal announcement or explanation. Mr. Steele did not respond to a question e-mailed and telephoned to his press aide as to whether he would replace Mr. Terpeluk before the Jan. 14 election or wait until afterward, to ll the post if Mr. Steele wins reelection. If Mr. Steele is replaced, the appointment of a nance chairman is likely to be a top priority for the RNC boss. Gentry Collins, who quit last year as Mr. Steeles chief of staff and publicly blasted his leadership, said the RNCs base of major donors has withered with Mr. Steele at the helm. The choice of nance chairman is crucial any time, but especially with this unprecedented debt, and obviously Ive given a lot of thought to who would be ideal for the role, Mr. Collins, who is running to replace his former boss at the RNCs helm, told The Times. Mr. Collins, 35, has considerable experience in top staff positions for Republican committees and candidates, but has accumulated the fewest public commitments from RNC members. Michigan RNC member Saul
Anuzis is savvy with new media, is considered reliably conservative and is popular with many members. However, he lags league leader Reince Priebus when it comes to rst-round committed votes for the chairmanship. Mr. Anuzis, 51, said he has had his mind on things other than nance chairman. Im currently planning on cochairs with a team of regional cochairs as well, he told The Times. Its going to have to be a team approach to make this work. Besides, its too early to be talking to specic fundraisers, Mr. Anuzis said, That would be putting the cart before the horse. Mr. Priebus, 38, is a successful Wisconsin Republican chairman and was RNC general counsel and Steele chief adviser until he, too, resigned abruptly last month. Mr. Priebus wont divulge whom he is considering for the nance post but told The Times that naming a nance chairman and a top-notch chief of staff would be the very rst of priorities. Asked how long it would take him to name both, he said, Those activities would be immediate.
/ 15 /
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/ NATIONAL / 16
National
Pain at the pump
Dramatic spike in gas prices forecast
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Say so long to under $3: Gasoline prices are displayed on a sign at a station in Oakland, Calif. in March, 2010. The former head of Shell Oil has warned that gas prices could hit $5 a gallon by 2012 because of fast-growing demand in emerging countries such as China and India.
/ 17 / NATIONAL
BY PATRICE HILL
Oil and gasoline prices have risen to their highest levels in two years, and analysts say prices could shoot up dramatically this year as the thirst for fuel grows in the U.S. and around the world. The former head of Shell Oil has warned that gas prices could hit $5 a gallon by 2012 because of fast-growing demand in emerging countries such as China and India, where more and more people are buying cars, combined with restraints on drilling in the U.S. in the wake of last years disastrous Gulf oil spill. Less-worrisome forecasts are calling for a rise in gas prices to $3.75 a gallon by spring from todays $3.07 average level, with premium crude prices easily exceeding $100 a barrel this year as demand for oil around the world returns to pre-recession levels last seen in 2007. Well denitely see $100 oil, Carl Larry, president of Oil Outlook and Opinions, told Platts Energy Week TV. The way things are going the cold weather, supply issues $100 oil is inevitable and its on its way. Higher gas prices will follow the lead of oil, as they usually do, he said. Mr. Larry said the spike in energy prices is being driven by robust growth in oil consumption in Asia as well as steadily rising demand in the U.S., which remains the worlds largest consumer of oil. All signs point to an economic recovery, and thats going to increase demand, he said. Energy consultant Wood Mackenzie estimates that developing economies pushed world oil demand last year to 86.7 million barrels a day 100,000 barrels more than in 2007 and will feed further demand growth to 88 million barrels in 2011. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries was mistaken in blaming the uptick in prices on speculators rather than an unexpectedly strong increase in demand in the developing world last year, and that led the oil ministers to put off any increase in production at a meeting last month, Mr. Larry said. He said that was reminiscent of mistakes the oil cartel made in 2007 that led to a run-up in prices to $147 per barrel in mid2008 a record high that helped throw the world economy into recession. The return of developments similar to those that led to the surge in energy prices in 2008 is attracting investors and speculators into the oil market, where they see the chance to make money by further driving up prices, he said. Mr. Larry does not see as dire an outlook as does John Hoffmeister, former president
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Raymond Pereyra, of Attleboro, Mass., pumps gas in Boston.

of Shell Oil who now heads the activist group Citizens for Affordable Energy. He sees $5 gas by 2012 because politicking and gridlock over energy issues in Washington are jeopardizing access to U.S. energy supplies and have virtually shut down new production in the Gulf of Mexico. If we stay on our current course, within a decade were into energy shortages in this country big time, he said last week. Blackouts, brownouts, gas lines, rationing thats my projection based upon the current inability to make decisions. While the Obama administration lifted its moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf weeks ago, Mr. Hoffmeister said huge regulatory barriers to development remain, and will prevent more than one or two token wells from being drilled in the next two years. Analysts attribute the sudden jump in energy prices in the past month to several developments besides growing demand and restraints on supply. Because oil is priced in U.S. dollars, it tends to rise when the dollar falls. The dollar has been declining recently in response to moves by the Federal Reserve and Congress to further stimulate the U.S. economy in a way that generates enormous budget decits that the Fed is helping to nance by printing dollars and purchasing Treasury bonds. Investors also are starting to bid up the price of oil and other commodities such as gold and copper, as they did in 2007 and 2008, because those commodities hold their values when the dollar is falling and are seen as good hedges against ination. Speculators also are zeroing in on evidence that world oil production may not keep up with fast-rising demand, creating the potential for tight markets and oil shortages especially if the U.S. starts experiencing healthier economic growth. With global production nearly at at circa 86 million barrels a day since 2004, some analysts fear that the world may already have reached so-called peak oil output, thus may be unprepared for another big run-up in demand like that seen in the past decade. Tom Whipple, analyst at the Post Carbon Institute, said the International Energy Agency appeared to concede recently that the world reached peak production of 70 million barrels a day of conventional crude oil from underground wells in 2004. Still, the agency continues to predict that technology breakthroughs will produce new oil sources that will replace the worlds fast-declining major wells because it is under political pressure to do so from the United States and other developed nations, Mr. Whipple said. The worlds political leaders do not want to admit that the world economy cannot grow without oil and any absolute limit in supplies means the end of growth, he said. In the meantime, prices will escalate, he predicted. Oil prices are nearing the point that, based on what we saw in 2008, they will do serious to devastating economic damage to the global economy, he said. The idea that oil prices will remain below economically damaging levels for the next 25 years seems far-fetched. David Greenlaw, an economist at Morgan Stanley, does not see a cataclysmic scenario or energy price shock in coming years, but agrees that supplies remain tight as a result of fast-declining wells in Mexico, Alaska, the North Sea, Russia and other major producing regions. Nonconventional sources of oil like the Canadian oil sands and oil shale deposits in the United States will ease some of the strain, he said, but will not be able to make up for the falloff from conventional wells. Some fear that rising energy prices will be a chronic headwind for U.S. and global growth, he said. We recognize the hurdles, but we think such fears are overblown. A sudden and sustained surge of $30 in oil prices would threaten the U.S. consumer and the economy, he said. But Morgan Stanley expects to see only gradual price increases that will not be a major threat to the economy, he said.
/ NATIONAL / 18
Monument to heroic Marines in dire need of rescue

BY ANDREA BILLUPS
Time and weather have conspired to etch cracks in its structure. The bronze patina that once shone a proud Marine Corps green has dulled to a dingy brown. Water damage has pried loose polished granite panels, and puddles gather at the base. In all hardly the spit-and-polish shape one expects for a memorial to the most gung-ho branch of the military. Thats no way to treat a monument honoring the vaunted tradition of the few and the proud, say members of the Marine Corps War Memorial Foundation, who are marshaling supporters for a face-lift on the iconic Iwo Jima war memorial in Arlington, Va. A nonprot friends group has formed to work with the National Park Service and Marine Corps representatives to raise funds to improve the grounds and monument, which was dedicated in 1954 and pays tribute to U.S. Marines who have died in defense of the country since 1775. What we are hoping to do is work together to raise the funds and awareness of the memorial and its American history, said James Donovan, founder and executive director of the Marine Corps War Memorial Foundation, which is leading the preservation efforts. Those efforts include a $450,000 museum-grade cleaning and wax sealing of the 32-foot bronze statue, which is based on the famed Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima photo taken Feb. 23, 1945, by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal. As far as updates, we havent kept pace with the times and its
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROD LAMKEY JR./SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
WEATHER-BEATEN: The faces of the Marines on the Iwo Jima war memorial in Arlington, Va., show the problems that the elements have caused over the years. Funds are being raised to make improvements to the monument, including a museumgrade cleaning and wax sealing.
needs, said Mr. Donovan, a former Marine corporal who served at the monuments Silent Drill Platoon from 1964 to 1968. His organization also is seeking replacement of portable toilets on the grounds, work on interior roadways at its Arlington Ridge setting, a reception and visitors center and improved landscaping. Such a preservation effort could take up to 15 years to complete. The foundation has set up a
website (http://iwoags.org) outlining its work and how to contribute. The memorial was designed by sculptor Felix de Weldon and features the sailors and Marines who hoisted a second ag over Mount Suribachi on the Pacic Island of Iwo Jima, a pivotal victory and one of the bloodiest battles in the World War II campaign against Japan. About 27 Medals of Honor were awarded for heroism in the 36-day ght to capture the Japanese island. Adm. Chester W. Nimitz is quoted in an inscription at the memorial: Uncommon valor was a common virtue. The National Park Service is responsible for upkeep and hopes to work with the Marine memorial foundation on the fundraising project. Jon James, deputy superintendent of the George Washington Memorial Parkway and the National Park Service spokesman for the project, said efforts and an agreement on the deal are in early stages with a memorandum of intent signed for the partnership. Mr. Donovan said the government hopes to have a nal deal in place next month. Its in a very conceptual stage at this point, he said. National Park Service conservators have inspected the memorial and recommended procedures for upkeep, he said. About $60,000 is spent annually to maintain the entire area, including the grounds, statue and monument. Proposals include a agpole lift to assist the Marines who raise and take down the ag each day, as well as improving landscaping, replacing trees and renishing gold-leaf gilding on certain areas. Mr. James said he understood
the drive to improve the monument in a place full of marble memorials honoring history and major American gures. Its one of the most photographed vistas or scenic views in the U.S. period, he said. Marine Col. Roarke Anderson, commanding ofcer of Headquarters and Service Battalion, Headquarters Marine Corps at Henderson Hall, said: Its one of the most recognizable features in D.C. People look at the Jefferson Memorial and wonder about it, but they look at the Marine Corps memorial and say, Holy cow. Its do or die, one of the most inspiring symbols of what the Marines are, a feeling that Marines have. And it serves as an enduring tribute to the Marines in times of war and peace. Every Tuesday during the summer, visitors to the memorial park are treated to sunset military parades, offering a place to reect on the martial pomp and circumstance and the sacrices Marines make to defend American values and way of life. Its not just the drill team and drum and bugle corps. Just think about the view that you get, Col. Anderson said of the parks vista. Looking at that monument, looking out over D.C., its all right there. If you are patriotic at all, it will put pangs in your heart. He applauded Mr. Donovans restoration efforts, saying the former Marine wants repairs to be made the right way. Its not a memorial to glorify war. Its a memorial to glorify the sacrifices that Marines have made over the years, Col. Anderson said. Its a way to make sure that our history is going to continue for the next generation to see and be an inspiration for us as well.
San Diego memorial cross ruled to be unconstitutional

BY VALERIE RICHARDSON
A federal court ruled Jan. 4 that a cross perched atop San Diegos Mount Soledad for nearly a century violates the Constitution, but took no position on whether it should be removed. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments that the 43-foot cross should be preserved as a war memorial, ruling 3-0 that it violated the First Amendments establishment clause. The use of such a distinctively Christian symbol to honor all veterans sends a strong message of endorsement and exclusion, said Judge Margaret McKeown, who wrote the 50-page decision for the threejudge panel. It suggests that the government is so connected to a particular religion that it treats the religions symbolism as its own, as universal. To many non-Christian veterans, this claim of universality is
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Alienating modern America? Cross on Mount Soledad

alienating. At the same time, she said the decision did not mean that the cross must be removed. This result does not mean that the memorial could not be modied to pass constitutional muster, nor does it mean that no cross can be part of this veterans memorial, she said. The judge noted that the site had been used for purposes other than those of honoring fallen soldiers. For many years, Mount Soledad has been a destination for Easter services, and had been listed on maps until the late 1980s as the Mount
Soledad Easter Cross. The court said that the crosss designation as a war memorial came only after the legal controversy began in the late 1980s. The Alliance Defense Fund, which has defended the placement of crosses at war memorials, blasted the decision, insisting that the cross should remain to honor the sacrices made by American troops. War heroes have earned the right to be remembered, said ADF senior counsel Joe Infranco. The memory of those who sacriced their lives for freedom shouldnt be dishonored because the ACLU nds a small number of people who are merely offended. The monument has seen three versions of the Christian cross since 1913. The latest cross, erected in 1954 in honor of Korean War veterans, was challenged in 1989 by two Vietnam War veterans in a lawsuit against the city of San Diego.
/ 19 /
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He was born a British Subject. His father was a British Subject and never was a U.S. Citizen, nor even an immigrant to the USA. At age 5 or 6, he was a Citizen of Indonesia & living there as Barry Soetoro. He believes he is a Citizen of the world. He has never conclusively proven he was born in Hawaii by releasing his original contemporaneous 1961 birth registration documents and amendments of same to see who registered the birth, any later amendments, and what the records reveal. His paternal family in Kenya, Kenyan government ofcials, and newspapers in Kenya say he was born in Kenya. His maternal grandmother in Hawaii likely falsely registered him as born in Hawaii to get him, her new foreignborn grandson, U.S. Citizenship using lax Hawaii birth registration laws in 1961. Registrations of birth, real or falsied, automatically generated the listings in the local newspapers. Those birth listings were placed by the Bureau of Health.
Ineligible!
I tried and lied but it wont go away!

Obama is NOT a natural born Citizen to constitutional standards!
The President & Commander in Chief of the Military Must Be A natural born Citizen
U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1, Clause 5
Per the British Nationality Act of 1948, Obama when born in 1961 was a British Subject at birth.
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Ofce of President
The Law of Nations, Vattel, 1758. Used by Ben Franklin, John Jay, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other founders. Vol.1, Ch.19, Section 212:
natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens
Obamas Father was NOT a U.S. Citizen,

nor was he an Immigrant to the USA, nor was he even a Permanent Resident of the USA.
Obama, the Putative U.S. President, was Born a British Subject Governed by the British Nationality Act of 1948, and is Currently also a British Protected Person and/or a British Citizen to this Day.
How can a person who is born a British Subject be considered a Natural Born Citizen of the USA?
Obama is NOT a natural born Citizen to constitutional standards!

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/ 21 /
/ NATIONAL / 22
Resurgent Big Three look overseas to accelerate sales

BY PATRICE HILL
The U.S. auto industry staged a convincing recovery last year, rebounding by 11 percent from lows set during the recession with the sale of 11.5 million new cars and trucks in 2010. But now that Detroits automakers are back to nancial health, they increasingly are looking overseas for sales. China and India, where yearly auto sales of 13.2 million and 12.3 million surpassed the U.S. for the rst time during the recession, will continue to be the biggest growth markets as their middle class prospers. Opportunity also is burgeoning in other fast-growing countries including Russia and Brazil. In the U.S., Ford Motor Co. led the resurgence in sales, reporting a 19 percent jump over 2009 sales Tuesday and increased its U.S. market share for the second year in a row largely at the expense of second-ranked Toyota, which was hobbled by safety issues during the year. Chrysler, which went bankrupt along with General Motors in 2009 and survived thanks to a government bailout, also made a surprising comeback with a 17 percent gain in sales. GM, which started to sever its umbilical cord to the U.S. Treasury last fall with a much-heralded stock offering, clocked in with a 6.3 percent sales
gain. But GM still the largest of Detroits Big Three despite a massive bankruptcy-induced downsizing is enjoying robust sales in China and is well-positioned to take advantage of the surge in growth there. The U.S. auto industry is gradually recovering from its worst year since 1970, said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poors, noting that while U.S. sales rose solidly from 2009s depressed level of 10.3 million, they remain far below the average level of 16.7 million achieved between 1998 and 2007. U.S. sales picked up at the end of 2010 to a 13 million annual rate, leading some forecasters to say the U.S. market could recover more quickly to that level or higher as consumers gain condence in the economic recovery and see the need to replace aging vehicles. But the U.S. will be hardpressed to equal growth in China, where sales skyrocketed by 53 percent in 2009 with the help of government incentives and millions of middle-class consumers buying cars for the rst time, creating a bonanza for car companies worldwide. Chinas car market has grown rapidly to become the largest market for cars, said Sean Jutahkiti, an analyst with CreditSights. With growth consistently in the double digits, China has signi-
ASSOCIATED PRESS
George and Sheila Snyder, of Washington, Vt., take delivery of their 2011 Ford Escape in Montpelier. Ford Motor Co. led a resurgence in vehicle sales, reporting a 19 percent jump over 2009 sales Jan. 4 and increased its U.S. market share for the second straight year.
cantly outpaced other markets, both developing and developed. Even with its rapid growth recently, China still has only 42 passenger cars for every 1,000 people, compared with 800 in the U.S. Because most cars sold there are smaller than in the U.S., the average price of a new car in China is $16,000 compared with $28,000 in the U.S. For car companies, the low penetration rate in China, which has a population more than four times that of the U.S., means theres still huge opportunities for growth in future years. Many major automakers have established or are scrambling to establish plants and joint ventures in China, and some such as Nissan are tailoring cars specically for the Chinese market. John Paul MacDufe, a professor at Wharton Business School, said GM and its Chinese partner, Shanghais SAIC Motor, are poised to take advantage of Chinas growth. GM already has been competing globally with considerable success. In some ways, it has been more successful in recent years outside the U.S. than in the U.S., he told Knowledge@Wharton magazine.
In these emerging economies, like China and Brazil and Russia and India, theres a lot of growth. And GM is quite well-positioned in those markets, he said. In the U.S., its a recovery but to what will be a relatively low level of growth, he said, noting that the historic trend on replacement volume is about 13 million a year in the U.S. As sales return, 13 million seems likely to happen very soon. And then we may be back to 14, 15 million. Theres a lot of upside for GM, for Ford, for Chrysler, for all of the companies in the U.S. market, to be getting a part of those sales. But not all car companies are as well positioned as GM to take advantage of the even faster growth overseas, he said. For example, Ford traditionally has been stronger in the U.S. and in the 15.3-million-vehicle European market. It particularly beneted during GMs bankruptcy from perceptions in the U.S. that its Detroit rival had become tainted as a bureaucracyrun government motors. But with its traditional markets still hobbled by weak demand and a nancial crunch, Ford executives said they are looking to sell more in the global market, where they projected that auto sales will burgeon from 65 million in 2009 and 72 million in 2010 to as high as 85 million this year.
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Geopolitics
Russia
/ 23 / GEOPOLITICS
Pro-democracy activists arrested after reset

BY ELI LAKE
Russian authorities detained one of the countrys leading opposition gures less than two weeks after the U.S. Senate ratied a key arms-control treaty that the White House promised would help reset ties with Moscow. Over the Jan. 1-2 weekend, members of Russias FSB internal security service disrupted demonstrations in St. Petersburg and Moscow, arresting nearly 130 pro-democracy activists and reversing a policy of tolerating political protests once every 60 days by a coalition of democratic opposition gures in the country. Among those arrested was Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and the leader of the United Democratic Movement, a political party that favors Western political reforms. I understand that this is an attempt to frighten the opposition and frighten my family, Mr. Nemtsov said in a statement from jail. I understand that the authorities are enraged and nervous and dont know how to deal with the opposition. I also understand that we have no right to retreat. And we shall not retreat. These arrests followed the sentencing two weeks ago of Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a key political opponent of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The sentencing of Mr. Khodorkovsky to six more years in prison culminated a twoyear trial that observers criticized as politically motivated. Everyone, including the administration, saw this harsh sentence for Khodorkovsky coming from a mile away, said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Florida Republican and incoming chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. This is yet another reason why it is so perplexing that the administration insisted on ramming through New START during the lame-duck session of Congress and has also insisted on making concession after concession to Russia despite Russias obvious backslide in the direction of tyranny, she said. The reset has been a total one-way street of concessions from the U.S. to Russia with nothing to show for in return. Ms. Ros-Lehtinen was referring to the passage last month of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), an armscontrol agreement that President Obama said was critical to efforts to reduce tensions with Russia. The White House, in a statement, condemned the arrests and said it was surprising to see
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Riot police detain Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov during a rally in Moscow on Dec. 31.
Moscow reverse its policy on the political demonstrations. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said we were pleased that Moscow authorities had reversed their previous poltecting universal values, including freedom of expression and assembly theyre enshrined in the Russian Constitution as well as international agreements that Russia has signed. the sale of components of S-300 air-defense systems to Iran, despite signing a contract during the Bush administration to do so. Russia also supported the nal passage last year of sanctions
This is yet another reason why it is so perplexing that the administration insisted on ramming through New START during the lame-duck session of Congress and has also insisted on making concession after concession to Russia despite Russias obvious backslide in the direction of tyranny, said said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Florida Republican and incoming chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The reset has been a total one-way street of concessions from the U.S. to Russia with nothing to show for in return.
icy and decided to allow peaceful demonstrations. So we regret that these arrests have taken place, both in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Mr. Crowley noted the importance of embracing and proHowever, Mr. Crowley would not say whether Russias treatment of political opposition gures is part of the U.S. reset of relations. More tangible gains for the United States from the reset include Russias cancellation of against Iran at the U.N. Security Council. Mr. Nemtsov and nearly 130 other activists were sentenced to 14 days in jail, according to gures provided by Mr. Nemtsovs party and local media reports.
Other opposition gures who were arrested include Ilya Yashin, Kirill Manulin, Konstantin Kosyakin and Eduard Limonov. David Kramer, the executive director of Freedom House, said he thought some members of the Obama administration believed that human rights issues were a part of the reset policy with Russia. I dont think the Russian government views human rights issues as a part of the reset. We might; they dont, Mr. Kramer said. Mr. Kramer noted that Mr. Obama has not been vocal about supporting human rights in Russia. Since a very good trip in July of 2009 to Moscow, Obamas silence on human rights issues in Russia has been striking, Mr. Kramer said. In that July 2009 trip, Mr. Obama met with Mr. Nemtsov. What were trying to do is work with Russia on Iran and other key issues, but at the same time promote our values, rule of law and democracy in Russia, said an administration ofcial familiar with the White House view of the Russia reset. We think we can do both at the same time. The relationship has matured in such a way that overreaction and linkage across issues is less likely, especially between the two presidents, the ofcial said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Tom Malinowski, Washington director for Human Rights Watch, said if START had been voted down, the effect may have been worse for human rights in Russia. I do think a defeat of START under these circumstances would have made it easier for Putin and his faction to make the argument that satisfying U.S. concerns on human rights or anything for that matter was useless, he said. That said, the START agreement is not a human rights instrument and its not a substitute for a strong public and principled U.S. policy of opposing political repression. Recent disclosures of classied U.S. diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks suggest that the Bush and Obama administrations have been less than candid about the decay of freedoms in Russia under Mr. Putin. A cable dated Dec. 30, 2009, from the U.S. Embassy political counselor in Moscow stated that the trial of Mr. Khodorkovsky showed the great lengths that the [Russian government] is willing to go in order to place a rule of law gloss on a politically motivated trial.
/ GEOPOLITICS / 24
Army will evaluate suspect in WikiLeaks

BY ROWAN SCARBOROUGH
The Army is assembling a special board to evaluate the mental state of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is being held on charges that he illegally obtained thousands of classied documents and turned them over to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks in what might be the biggest security breach in U.S. history. Lt. Col. Robert Manning, an Army spokesman, said Jan. 3 that no further legal proceedings will happen until Pfc. Manning is evaluated by what is called a 706 board and a recommendation is made on his tness to stand trial. The Army charged the 23year-old private in May while he was assigned as an intelligence analyst with a combat brigade in Iraq. Since July, he has been held in solitary connement in the brig at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. Whats happening right now, they are convening a 706 board, which is a board to determine his mental tness, which was requested by the defense, Col. Manning said, who is not related to the prisoner. Because of the nature of the charges, that board is being screened. Once that board meets and determines Pfc. Mannings mental tness, then they will continue to move forward with the Uniform Code of Military Justice process. Thats the rst thing that needs to happen, this 706 board. [. . . ] I dont have a timeline on that. The 706 refers to a section of the Manual for Courts-Martial. The board must answer two questions: Was the accused suffering from a mental disease that made him unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of the conduct? Is the accused mentally competent to stand trial? Col. Manning is a spokesman for the U.S. Army Military District of Washington, whose commander, Maj. Gen. Karl R. Horst,
[Pfc. Bradley Mannings] cell is approximately six feet wide and twelve feet in length. The cell has a bed, a drinking fountain, and a toilet. [. . . ] At 5:00 a.m. he is woken up (on weekends, he is allowed to sleep until 7:00 a.m.). Under the rules for the connement facility, he is not allowed to sleep at anytime between 5:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. If he attempts to sleep during those hours, he will be made to sit up or stand by the guards.
engage in conversation with PFC Manning. At 5:00 a.m. he is woken up (on weekends, he is allowed to sleep until 7:00 a.m.). Under the rules for the connement facility, he is not allowed to sleep at anytime between 5:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. If he attempts to sleep during those hours, he will be made to sit up or stand by the guards. Mr. Coombs said the prisoner gets one hour of exercise a day, which consists of walking in a room. He is allowed a 15- to 20minute shower each night. The lawyer said he has raised Pfc. Mannings strict connement conditions with the chain of command. Our efforts, unfortunately, have not resulted any in positive results, he said. The law ofce also released a holiday statement from Pfc. Manning: I greatly appreciate everyones support and well wishes during this time. I am also thankful for everything that has been done to aid in my defense. I ask that everyone takes the time to remember those who are separated from their loved ones at this time due to deployment and important missions. Specically, I am thinking of those that I deployed with and have not seen for the last seven months, and of the staff here at the Quantico Connement Facility who will be spending their Christmas without their family. The Armys ofcial charging document accuses Pfc. Manning of accessing the militarys vast Secret Internet Protocol Router Network and downloading more than 150,000 State Department cables. WikiLeaks, the self-described whistleblower network, is releasing more than 250,000 secret cables, but has not acknowledged Pfc. Manning as its source. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has called Pfc. Manning a political prisoner. Various press reports have quoted Pfc. Manning as telling a hacker that he downloaded the les while pretending to listen to music at a computer station.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has called Army Pfc. Bradley Manning a political prisoner. The secrets-spilling website founded by Mr. Assange was used to leak more than 150,000 downloaded State Department cables.
is overseeing the case against Pfc. Manning. David E. Coombs, an Army Reserve ofcer who is Pfc. Mannings defense attorney, has chronicled his clients treatment at Quantico on his law rms website. The treatment includes denial of sheets and a pillow and constant observation by guards. Col. Manning said Pfc. Manning is not on a suicide watch. The classication is maximum custody detainee under constant observation, he said. But he has not been on suicide watch. Pfc. Mannings supporters have asserted that his treatment amounts to torture and want the United Nations to investigate. The Army says he is being treated humanely. In a Dec. 18 posting, Mr. Coombs described his clients living conditions: His cell is approximately six feet wide and twelve feet in length. The cell has a bed, a drinking fountain, and a toilet. The guards at the connement facility are professional. At no time have they tried to bully, harass, or embarrass PFC Manning. Given the nature of their job, however, they do not
Government computers hacked by fake Christmas e-mail

BY SHAUN WATERMAN
Malicious software disguised as an e-mailed White House Christmas greeting and sent to federal and state government ofcials netted its authors a huge haul of potentially sensitive data, including passwords and documents, according to computer security analysts. The malicious software, or malware, was designed to collect log-in and password data for banks, commercial services or nancial websites such as eBay and PayPal as well as other sites such as MySpace and Microsoft, according to Alex Cox of Netwitness, a computer forensics rm based in Herndon, Va. Mr. Cox said the malware also was designed to steal documents
stored on computer hard drives and upload them to a server in Belarus. Researchers were able to access the server, but what they found there likely was just a small fraction of the hackers haul, Mr. Cox told The Washington Times. They were clearing that stuff out every day and moving it to a more secure location, he said. Thats fairly standard. Mr. Cox said the attack employed a technique known as phishing, in which victims are sent an e-mail containing a link to a Web address. When they click it, their computers can become infected with malware, in this case a well-known program called Zeus. Such packages are known as Trojans because they effectively open the doors of the infected
computer from the inside, allowing hackers access. Zeus is designed to steal passwords and other log-in data. As you and your families gather to celebrate the holidays, we wanted to take a moment to send you our greetings reads the e-mail, which purports to come from the Executive Ofce of the President. Mr. Cox said clicking on the fake Christmas greeting downloads a second kind of Trojan, in addition to Zeus, that searches the infected hard drive for documents and uploads them to the server in Belarus. He cautioned that the attackers could be anywhere in the world. Just because the server is there, it doesnt really tell us anything about the [location of the] attackers, Mr. Cox said.
Another security specialist who accessed the server said he found several gigabytes of data there, including records of courtordered wiretaps, apparently from the computer of an intelligence analyst with the Massachusetts State Police, and hundreds of grant applications from the National Science Foundations Ofce of Cyber Infrastructure. This activity is unusual because most criminals using Zeus are interested in moneymaking activities such as swiping passwords and creating botnets rather than collecting government documents, wrote Brian Krebs on his blog Krebs on Security. Mr. Cox said he did not know who or how many had received the fake greeting. Mr. Krebs said he was reasonably condent
there were dozens of victims, including many working for U.S. or state governments. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said the department was aware of the attack and was monitoring this latest Zeus event as we do with all these crime-ware attacks. In reality, the White House does not send out e-cards or electronic Christmas greetings. Presidential holiday cards go out the old-fashioned way, by mail, and are sent by the Democratic National Committee. Last years card, according to to committee spokesman Hari Sevugan, bore a picture of the White House under a blanket of snow and read, May your holiday be lled with all the simple gifts of the season.
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/ NATIONAL SECURITY / 26
Chinas stealth jet

The Pentagon is scrambling to explain what appears to be an intelligence failure after Internet photos made public recently showed a faster-than-estimated advance of Chinas new fth-generation warplane. U.S. intelligence estimates previously concluded the jet, dubbed the J-20, will not be deployed until 2020. Vice Adm. David Dorsett, director of Naval Intelligence, told a group of defense reporters on Jan. 5 that the new Chinese ghter program was not a surprise, but the speed at which they are making progress [. . .] we underestimated. Across a broad array of weapons systems, they are making progress, the threestar admiral said. Progress on the J-20 is among several other Chinese military developments that U.S. intelligence agencies have been accused of missing over the past decade. Others include the failure to detect a new class of Chinese submarine called the Yuan and shortcomings related to Beijings long-range cruise missiles and a new anti-ship ballistic missile. Pentagon spokesman Marine Col. Dave Lapan conrmed to Inside the Ring that recent photos of a new Chinese jet show taxiing tests on a prototype aircraft apparently photographed by people who saw it pass by. This is evidence that a fthgeneration ghter program is proceeding, Col. Lapan said. However, progress appears to be uneven: Open-source reports show that China has been seeking jet engines for its fourthgeneration ghter from Russia, indicating that they are still encountering some difculties in working toward fth-generation capabilities, he said. The faster development of the J-20 was rst discussed by Chinese Gen. He Weirong, deputy commander of the Chinese air force last year. He predicted deployment as earlier as 2017. The jet is expected to rival the U.S. F-22 superghter whose production was canceled by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates after 187 jets were built. In scrapping the F-22, Mr. Gates stated publicly that one reason for his decision was that the Chinese would not deploy a comparable jet until 2020, thus more F35 jets would be built instead of the more capable F-22. Richard Fisher, a military analyst with the International Assessment and Strategy Center who was among the rst to spot the J-20 photos months ago, said the aircraft is manufactured by the Chengdu Aircraft Co. Chengdus goal is to beat the F-22 and then build their own F35 when the 18-ton thrust engine is ready. It is a full challenge to the U.S. strategy for air power, Mr. Fisher said. Both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations are to blame for not continuing production of the F-22, which is needed if there is ever a conict with China over Taiwan, he said. Absent a better combat aircraft, this constitutes one of the
Inside the Ring

Bill Gertz
Chinas Great Wall during his much-anticipated visit to the Middle Kingdom set to begin this week that pro-China ofcials in the Obama administration hope will jump-start stalled military exchanges. Trip planners in the Pentagon and Beijing are working on the itinerary for the visit, which is expected to be the rst clear reection of whether Chinas military, the bastion of anti-U.S. sen-
Hills near Beijing. Chinas military has prohibited all U.S. military personal from the site, although there have been reports that Russian military visitors have seen it.
Mysterious murder
The FBI has joined Newark, Del., police in probing the mysterious murder of John Jack Wheeler III, a former Pentagon official and West Point graduate who was among a group of advocates in Washington leading the ght in recent years over how the U.S. government should conduct computerbased cyberwarfare. Baltimore FBI spokesman Rich Wolf conrmed the bureaus assistance but declined to disclose details about the aid. Right now, were treating this as a homicide, Mr. Wolf said by telephone. Mr. Wheeler, 66, was found murdered Dec. 31 in a landll near Wilmington. Investigators said his body had been left in a trash bin in Newark, Del. Investigators are said to be looking into several theories for the motive behind the killing, including a legal dispute with a neighbor or a robbery. Mr. Wheeler held a security clearance and had worked as a contractor for the McLean, Va. ofce of the Mitre Corp., a defense contractor. Mitre spokeswoman Jennifer Shearman said Mr. Wheeler worked on outreach activities aimed at promoting discussions among government, industry, and academia on cyberdefense topics. Mr. Wheeler, who was known as a erce political inghter, in recent years helped set up a blueribbon panel of experts to study the issue of cyberwarfare. Mr. Wheeler sided with the U.S. military and defense advocates who want cyberwarfare to be dominated by military warriors rather than intelligence ofcials, who have sought to make cyberwarfare more oriented toward gathering intelligence and conducting espionage. The dispute over the militaryversus-intelligence orientation of cyberwarfare and the legal authorities for each currently has slowed the U.S. governments cyberwarfare efforts. Mr. Wheeler was an Army veteran of the Vietnam War and helped set up the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall. America was blessed to have a few great captains in the Army Air Corps who were visionaries on the use of air power before World War II, said Edward Timperlake, a technology security ofcial at the Pentagon during the George W. Bush administration and a friend of Mr. Wheelers. Jack Wheeler will go down as one of our great captains on ghting in cyberbattle space, he said. Jack knew the value of being prepared for offensive combat and he was driving home that lifetime lesson he learned over four decades ago at West Point. Bill Gertz can be reached at insidethering@washingtontimes.com.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
John Jack Wheeler III, here in 1994, nds the name of a friend engraved in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. Wheelers body was discovered Dec. 31. It had been left in a trash bin in Newark, Del. His death has been ruled a homicide.
most serious U.S. intelligence and leadership failures since the end of the Cold War, Mr. Fisher said. Mr. Fisher said the images of the jet reveal that China is advancing rapidly toward elding a credible and competitive fthgeneration ghter. The photos show a large ghter with radarevading stealth features, an advanced electronically scanned array (AESA) radar and supercruise the ability to y at supersonic speed for long distances using less fuel, he said. With refueling, this ghter can carry the ght out to Guam, Mr. Fisher said. As for the Pentagons claim that the Chinese are having problems developing an advanced engine for the jet, Mr. Fisher said China is ground-testing a new, more powerful jet engine and, as a result, could deploy the new jet by 2017. If the United States wishes to remain an Asian power capable of deterring Chinese aggression, or preventing future generations from becoming victims of Chinas dictates, it is essential that an improved version of the F-22 be put into crash development, as well as putting a sixthgeneration ghter into formal development, Mr. Fisher said. cording to Gen. Nikolai Makarov, chief of the Russian armed forces staff. Gen. Makarov was quoted in Russian news reports on Jan. 3 as saying the state will have an umbrella over it which will defend it against ballistic missile attacks, against medium-range missiles, air-based cruise missiles, sea-based cruise missiles, and ground-based cruise missiles, including missiles ying at extremely low altitudes, at any time and in any situation. Of course, this is a long process that requires a signicant nancial investment. But the foundation for this system will be established as early as 2011, he said. The generals statement raises questions about the testimony last year by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who told Congress while lobbying for the ratication of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that the Russians hate missile defenses, based on their constant opposition to U.S. defenses and efforts to limit U.S. defenses in the arms treaty. Based on Gen. Makarovs comments, what the Russians really hate are U.S. missile defenses because they could be expanded to counter Moscows missiles. timent within the communist leadership, is willing to sign on to U.S. efforts to build trust. The test will be whether the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) generals who have refused to allow U.S. leaders to visit sensitive military sites in the past will give Mr. Gates more access than past secretaries. In 2005, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was the rst to visit the headquarters building of the Second Artillery Corps, the strategic missile forces in 2005. That was hailed as a breakthrough, even though no missile sites or warhead storage facilities were included. If Mr. Gates goes to the Great Wall and is denied access to a never-before-seen PLA base, the visit will likely be dismissed by critics as an example of military tourism. Thats what happened back in the late 1990s, when then-Defense Secretary William S. Cohen was shown an aging missile defense facilities in what ofcials at the time said was a propaganda effort by the Chinese to show the United States how backward their military was all the better reason the United States should lift the embargo on military sales and loosen advanced technology controls. So far, no U.S. military or defense leader has been allowed to visit the real Chinese Pentagon a vast underground command center known as the Western
Russian missile defense

Russias military is working to deploy an impenetrable missile-defense shield by 2020, ac-
Gates quest
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is being offered a visit to
/ 27 / GEOPOLITICS
Obama weighs Netanyahu call for Pollard pardon

BY BILL GERTZ AND ELI LAKE
The White House is reviewing a new pardon request from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the case of former Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard, who is serving a life sentence for spying for Israel. The request came in a letter to President Obama from Mr. Netanyahu, who read it aloud during a session of the Israeli parliament on Jan. 4, noting that the case unites us all. We have received the letter and will review it, White House spokesman Thomas Vietor said, declining further comment. In the past when Israel requested a pardon for Pollard, a U.S. citizen who was convicted of espionage in 1986, U.S. intelligence community leaders privately opposed several clemency appeals. Last month, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said he was unaware of discussions between the president and Mr. Netanyahu on the issue and noted that he was not aware that thats something that the president is looking at doing. Joseph DiGenova, the former U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case, said Pollard was a spy who was paid and who tried to entice others to join his operation. Mr. DiGenova said Pollard received about $500,000 a year plus expenses for giving intelligence documents to Israeli agents. By the time he was caught, he caused enough damage to U.S. intelligence that, according to the Defense Department, it cost between $3 billion and $5 billion to x because of what he compromised, Mr. DiGenova said.
That the country he spied for is seeking clemency is not only unprecedented, it is a joke. According to court documents and former intelligence ofcials close to the case, Pollard was rejected for a post at the CIA in 1977 and two years later went to work as a civilian intelligence analyst for the Navy. He began spying for Israel in May 1984 and was arrested on Nov. 21, 1985, after he and his wife, Anne, were turned away by guards at the Israeli Embassy in Washington after they sought asylum. He pleaded guilty to spying in a plea bargain in June 1986 and
January 1993 and turned down a direct request from Mr. Netanyahu, during his rst term as Israeli prime minister, at a summit at Wye River, Md., in October 1998. Supporters of Pollard, including Reagan administration Pentagon ofcial Lawrence Korb, said the life sentence was unfair because Pollard agreed to cooperate with authorities in conducting a damage assessment. The life sentence was based on a still-secret letter to the court from then-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger outlining the damage. Mr. Korb said in an address to
But over time, Israeli leaders admitted that the case was ofcially sanctioned and pressed for his release. The rst to do so was Yitzhak Rabin, the rst Israeli prime minister to try to negotiate an independent Palestinian state. Mr. Netanyahu has been particularly persistent in seeking Pollards release. In 2007, the Israeli leader visited Pollard in prison, and during his most recent campaign for prime minister, he promised to secure Pollards release. Despite opposition from intelligence leaders, some U.S. politicians have expressed sym-
By the time he was caught, he caused enough damage to U.S. intelligence that, according to the Defense Department, it cost between $3 billion and $5 billion to x because of what he compromised, said Joseph DiGenova, the former U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case. That the country he spied for is seeking clemency is not only unprecedented, it is a joke.
was given a life prison term in March 1987. Pollard was able to walk out of his office with thousands of pages of classied intelligence documents because of poor security at the Naval Investigative Service headquarters in Suitland, Md. Ofcials said at the time that the documents revealed information about the identities of U.S. and allied agents and electronic eavesdropping programs, as well as data that compromised codes used in secret communications. President Clinton rejected a pardon appeal from Israel in the Israeli Knesset on Dec. 20 that the Weinberger memorandum exaggerated the damage from the case and that Pollard should be released after serving 25 years because he has paid his debt. A former intelligence ofcial close to the case, however, said the Weinberger statement identied 19 categories of damage and that Pollards prison time is not the issue. The real issue is the truth, not the claims of Pollard apologists, he said. The Israeli government said at the time of Pollards arrest that his spying activities were part of a rogue operation. pathy for Pollard. Mr. Clinton wrote in his memoir that for all the sympathy Pollard generated in Israel, he was a hard case to push in America; he had sold our countrys secrets for money, not conviction, and for years had not shown any remorse. When I talked to [National Security Adviser] Sandy Berger and [CIA Director] George Tenet, they were adamantly opposed to letting Pollard go, as was [Secretary of State] Madeleine Albright. Mr. Tenet at one point threatened to resign if Pollard was granted clemency, according to Mr. Tenets memoir.
In a 2000 debate during her U.S. Senate campaign in New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton said she had questions about due process in the handling of the Pollard case. The question for me is around the due process issues concerning the way that he was sentenced, she said. In 1999 in a letter organized by Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Alabama Republican, a bipartisan group of 58 senators wrote to Mr. Clinton opposing a pardon for Pollard. Mr. Shelby, at the time chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said of the case: It doesnt matter who you are working for. Its illegal. Espionage is espionage, whether for friend or foe. The spy case soured the close intelligence relationship between U.S. and Israeli spy agencies for many years. Israeli Mossad ofcer Rafael Eitan, whose career was cut short by the case, stated in 1997 that the case caused a big fuss, but that the risk was part of the espionage game. That is the lot of an intelligence ofcer who runs complex intelligence operations. When you work a lot and do a lot, especially in the intelligence eld, you win some and you lose some, Mr. Eitan told the newspaper Yediot Aharonot. Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said Pollard should be released because of the length of the term so far and Pollards repeated expressions of remorse. I think it is a matter of justice and compassion that he be released, he said. This does not dismiss what he did, but he has paid a disproportionate price for his crime.
Emirates asked U.S. to help find killers of Hamas weapons dealer

BY ELI LAKE
Documents made public recently show the United Arab Emirates sought U.S. government help in tracing prepaid credit cards used by those linked to the assassination of a Hamas arms dealer last year. A Feb. 24 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi and disclosed by WikiLeaks stated that Anwar Gargash, a senior Foreign Ministry ofcial, formally asked the U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Richard Olson, for U.S. assistance in tracking down the cards used by the assailants in the Jan. 20, 2010, killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. Al-Mabhouh, a senior operative in the Hamas terrorist group, was killed in a room at the Al Bustan Rotana Hotel as part of an apparent intelligence operation widely thought to be the work of Israels Mossad in-
telligence service. The assailants were videotaped by hotel cameras and later traced to false passports. On Feb. 23, Abdullah bin Zayed, foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, asked Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for assistance in the matter, according to the cable. The Abu Dubai police investigation said several plotters in the killing used prepaid cards from the Iowa-based MetaBank. U.S. companies often use the cards to pay employees overseas by placing salary and other expenses into the accounts through direct deposit. A statement from MetaBank provided to The Washington Times in March said the bank was investigating the allegations and the prospect of identity theft in this case. We have been informed by authorities that the suspects apparently used stolen identities,
including fake passports, to obtain employment/compensation from U.S. companies and acquire bank cards issued by Meta and other banks, said the March 2 statement. Standardized steps were taken in accordance with applicable regulations and industry standards to validate cardholder identities prior to card issuance. The disclosures could expose a rift between the United States and one of its closest allies in the Persian Gulf. The United States has had close counterterrorism cooperation with the federal United Arab Emirates government in Abu Dhabi, but not as much cooperation with local authorities for the emirate of Dubai. Dubai is the Switzerland of the Middle East, a neutral city where Western businesses and Iranian interests conduct banking. Any perception that the United States may have aided the Israelis in the killing of al-
Mabhouh could dampen the willingness of the Dubai emirate to provide nancial intelligence on Iran and al Qaeda. The killing of al-Mabhouh created a diplomatic stir for Israel. Nine days afterward, the Dubai police chief publicly accused the Mossad of killing the Hamas operative and released video taken from the hotel where he was slain showing one person putting on a disguise after exiting al-Mabhouhs hotel room. Dubai authorities also released what they said were forged passports used in the operation, leading the United Kingdom and the European Union to launch formal reviews of the incident. Hamas leaders have claimed credit for some of the bloodiest terrorism against Israeli civilians in the past 20 years, including a 1994 van bombing in Afula that killed nine people and wounded more than 50.
A former Mossad operations ofcer who goes by the pseudonym Michael Ross said the Mossad would never use an American bank for a sensitive operation without at least notifying the CIA. The fact that this team used cash cards from a bank in Iowa tells me that this was a joint operation, or the Dubai police are forging the evidence, he said. The statement from MetaBank said the individuals who used the prepaid cards did not appear on the Treasurys list of people who are barred from doing business with U.S. companies. No other readily apparent method existed for Meta to determine that identity theft had been perpetrated on valid governments and their citizens, the statement said. The United Arab Emirates Embassy in Washington declined to comment for this report.
/ GEOPOLITICS / 28
Taliban benefits as Afghans anti-drug efforts stall

BY ASHISH KUMAR SEN
Afghan efforts to eradicate opium-yielding poppy crops that fuel the Taliban-led insurgency have stalled as a result of a lack of incentives and adequate security for farmers who may be inclined to cut ties with the Taliban, according to Afghan and Western ofcials. Money from the illicit drug trade is used to nance insurgencies within and outside Afghanistan. Eradication has been stalled because of insecurity, a lack of alternative assistance and the fact that it is counterproductive, a senior Afghan ofcial told The Washington Times. If you have not delivered alternative assistance [. . . ] you are creating a situation which can be exploited by the Taliban, the ofcial said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. We should be careful not to eradicate in such a way that would create opportunities for the enemy. U.N. drug czar Antonio Maria Costa told NATO that militants in Afghanistan were storing thousands of tons of heroin and using the caches as savings accounts to nance the insurgency, according to a condential 2009 U.S. cable leaked by the WikiLeaks website. The cable said Mr. Costa thought the most powerful motivating factors driving farmers away from opium cultivation were effective law enforcement, NATO strikes, and measures by the Afghan government to destroy crops. Afghan and Western ofcials say the cultivation of opium across Afghanistan is linked to the presence of the insurgency. In Costas view, counternarcotics operations by NATO and Afghan forces alone or jointly [were] making an impact and causing farmers to think twice, the U.S. cable said. Mr. Costa is no longer serving as drug czar at the United Nations. A report by the U.S. Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control found that the Taliban is linked to the drug trade at every level: from the poppy elds to the heroin-processing laboratories to the transportation and distribution of the narcotic. The Taliban has become both a terrorist organization and a drug cartel, ideology and greed being their [principal] motivators, the report said, adding, United States policymakers need to recognize that the Taliban operates as a drug cartel. [. . . ] If the U.S. ignores the drug problem, we will fail in Afghanistan. The U.N. Ofce on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) concluded in its report that the lack of security in the southern and western parts of Afghanistan had compromised the rule of law and limited counternarcotics interventions, resulting in high opium-cultivation levels. According to the report, 82
ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOGRAPHS
U.S. troops patrol in a poppy eld in Marjah, Afghanistan, in March. When U.S., Afghan and NATO forces stormed Marjah in February, they were told to seize large opium stashes but leave farmers poppy elds alone.
percent of the opium cultivated in 2010 was concentrated in Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Day Kundi and Zabul provinces of the southern region and 16 percent was concentrated in Farah, Badghis and Nimroz provinces in the western region. Opium prices have risen sharply as production has declined because of a virulent plant disease that has stricken poppy plants. An average farm-gate price of dry opium at harvest time was $169 a kilogram (2.2. pounds), a 164 percent increase from 2009, according to the UNODC report. Ofcials are worried that the increased value of opium, combined with lower wheat prices, may prove to be a tempting incentive for farmers to cultivate poppies. A majority of the heroin produced in Afghanistan ends up in Russia. The steady ow of narcotics has fueled frustration in Moscow with what it perceives to be a reluctance on the part of NATO and the U.S.-led coalition to eradicate the drug menace. The Russians are highly frustrated with NATO and U.S. counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan or the lack thereof, said a Russian veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan who is familiar with ofcial Russian thinking on this matter. Like many other ofcials interviewed, he spoke on the condition of anonymity. Earlier this year, Dmitry Rogozin, Russias ambassador to NATO, said his country is losing 30,000 lives a year to the Afghan drug trade, and 1 million people are addicts. This is an undeclared war against our country, Mr. Rogozin said. The Afghan Constitution prohibits the growing of narcotics, and most Afghans do not grow poppies because it is considered haraam forbidden in Islam. The issue here is that [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai and his family presumably benet from the drug trade, and only 7 [percent] to 10 percent of the heroin goes from Afghanistan to the U.S., so for the U.S. this is not a priority, the Russian veteran said. Some Western ofcials claim that Mr. Karzais brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the top civilian ofcial in Kandahar, benets from his ties to the drug trade. Russian ofcials have been urging the U.S. and NATO to ramp up efforts to eradicate poppy elds in Afghanistan. This summer they provided their U.S. counterparts with coordinates pinpointing the locations of drug lords and 175 heroin labs in Afghanistan. The Russians also played what one State Department ofcial later described as a supporting role, along with the Drug Enforcement Administration and NATOs International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), in an October raid on heroin labs in Nangarhar province near the border with Pakistan. The operation was led by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Counter-Narcotics Police (CNPA) Sensitive Investigative Unit and National Interdiction Unit. Russias public declaration of its role in the operation prompted President Karzai to angrily accuse the Russians of violating Afghan sovereignty. Afghan ofcials later attributed the presidents outburst to a miscommunication. Karzai was really upset about the Russians in large part because he feels it makes him look weak in talks with the Taliban and other insurgent groups. I think hes right, said a Western ofcial based in Afghanistan. It was the Russians themselves who made a lot of it publicly, while we and the Afghans wanted their advisory role in counternarcotics stuff kept quiet, this ofcial said. Weve been pushing the Russians to get more involved regionally, and all they seem to care about are the narcotics coming up from Afghanistan into Russia, he added. The senior Afghan ofcial said the Afghan government is not opposed to joint counternarcotics operations with the Russians as long as we are made aware in advance and these are planned together and we operate together. Russia has been pushing for ISAFs mandate to be expanded to include the destruction of
poppy elds. The Russians also have been critical of a U.S. and NATO decision not to spray herbicide over poppy elds because of concerns that such action would alienate the local population. The U.S. focus in Afghanistan has shifted from eradication of poppy crops under the George W. Bush administration to interdiction under the Obama administration. The fact that the Americans are ignoring this problem is sending a bad signal to Afghan farmers who are growing fruits and vegetables, the Russian veteran said. U.S. ofcials refute accusations that they are not serious about dealing with the problem. The U.S. remains committed to counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan, said a State Department ofcial. We continue to work closely with the government of Afghanistan, our coalition partners, and other countries, like Russia, that share our commitment to addressing this transnational problem, he added. U.S. drug czar R. Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Ofce of National Drug Control Policy, said renewed efforts to support Afghan counternarcotics operations have enabled Afghan law enforcement and military forces, along with their allied partners, to make signicant drug seizures. The U.S.Russian Bilateral Presidential Commissions working group on drug trafcking established last year by Presidents Obama and [Dmitry] Medvedev supports this effort in part by increasing cooperation between DEA and [Russias Federal Drug Control Service] FSKN. Our partnership can help defeat transnational criminal networks and choke off the drug trade, which harms citizens of all countries, Mr. Kerlikowske said in an e-mail. In the past 11 months, more than 9,000 metric tons of heroin have been seized, a 600 percent increase over the previous year.
POPPING UP: Afghan police have helped cut down illegally grown poppies, but eradication efforts have been hindered by a lack of security.
Culture, etc.
/ 29 / CULTURE
ILLUSTRATION BY GREG GROESCH
Out-of-control labelers
Personal freedom a better alternative than government mandates

BY ANGELA LOGOMASINI
he National Consumers NCL says the absence of nutritional labeling on alcoholic beverages contributes to everything from alcohol abuse to obesity, and they want the Alcohol Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) to do something about it. But the regulations they are pushing are unlikely to solve the ills they describe. TTB had proposed nutritionallabeling mandates in 2007 when the NCL and the Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the agency. After receiving a large number of public comments, TTB chose not to nalize the rule. Now the NCL is renewing pressure for action by capitalizing on problems unrelated to alcohol labeling. For example, the NCL suggests that the abuse of caffeinated alcoholic beverages on college campuses is somehow re-
lated to labeling of those products. In a recent press release, the group exclaims: The nine college students who went to an emergency room for alcohol poisoning after drinking too much of a caffeinated alcoholic beverage earlier this year may not have realized just how much alcohol they were consuming . . . . Maybe if the standard drinks per container had been required to appear on the labels, they wouldnt have made that mistake. Does the NCL really think that college kids will moderate alcohol intake because of a government label? Its more likely that college students would use such labels to select drinks with the highest levels of caffeine and alcohol. After all, thats why some of them abuse these products: to get a caffeine or alcohol buzz. Back before these drinks were available, college kids used to drink cough medicine (apparently some still do) to get the
same effects. The problem here is not the lack of good labeling. Similarly, its highly unlikely that alcohol-labeling mandates will cure our obesity problems, as the NCL also suggests. Consumers already have sufcient access to caloric information online. And its also conveniently available on smart-phone applications that include calorie information on everything from alcohol to bread and butter. Putting this data on a bottle of wine wont suddenly make people do what they can easily do now: count alcohol-related and other calories. While benets are unclear, such mandates pose drawbacks for consumers both monetary and aesthetic. First, producers will incur costs for creating systems to precisely measure and document calorie content. While generic estimates online are sufcient for consumers to count calories, labeling mandates will require greater precision for
each specic product to prevent charges of fraudulent labeling. Producers will pass such costs onto consumers, particularly given existing tight prot margins for various segments within the alcohol industry. Some producers may decide to reduce other information on labels information consumers nd more valuable to make space for mandated data. In fact, if wine, beer and spirits buyers placed a higher value on nutritional data, producers would provide it. Instead they use that space to provide something consumers want: product information (tasting notes, food-pairing information) and attractive designs. Consumers conrm the value they place on this information in survey research, as does the success of Yellow Tail wines Kangaroo label. Common sense does as well. After all, who doesnt enjoy presenting an attractively pack-
aged wine at a party? If TTB issues any new labeling standards, it should expand what information producers are allowed to include. A decade ago, the Competitive Enterprise Institute led comments opposing federal regulations banning health-benet information on alcohol labels. That ban still stands, even though considerable data indicates health benets are associated with moderate alcohol consumption. Instead, the federal government forces producers to list only government warnings and negative claims about their products. Regulators should allow producers to provide any information that they want on their labels outside of fraudulent claims. Consumers can vote with their pocketbooks. Angela Logomasini is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
/ CULTURE / 30
Overtaxed and overregulated

FED UP! OUR FIGHT TO SAVE AMERICA FROM WASHINGTON By Rick Perry Little, Brown and Co., $21.99 220 pages REVIEWED BY JOHN R. COYNE JR.
exas Gov. Rick Perry, the longest-serving governor in state history, is a constitutional scholar, a defender of free enterprise, a champion of states rights and the 10th Amendment and a polemicist of the rst order all qualities evident in this strongly written and persuasively argued book. We are fed up with being overtaxed and overregulated. We are tired of being told how much salt we can put on our food, what windows we can buy for our house, what kind of cars we can drive, what kind of guns we can own, what kind of prayers we can say and where we can say them, what political speech we are allowed to use to elect candidates, what kind of energy we can use, what kind of food we can grow, what doctor we can see, and countless other restrictions on our right to live as we see t. What went wrong? Govern-
ment expansion, long running out of control, continues to gain momentum. When the great William F. Buckley founded the National Review, he said famously in the rst issue that the magazine stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so. The result? For all the great efforts of Buckley and those conservatives who followed in his footsteps, from Barry Goldwater to President Ronald Reagan, where do we stand today? Is government any smaller? Are markets freer? Are states more empowered . . . in actual terms the answer is a resounding no. Whos to blame? While the modern Democrat is unabashedly committed to expanding the federal government and willing to wake up every day ghting to do it, the average Republican too often shows up to the ght seeking something less bad than what the Democrat wants. Thats not a ght, its a concession. Mr. Perry pulls no punches.
He credits the Republican revolution of 1994, led by Newt Gingrich, who provides an eloquent foreword to this book, with changes to a few rules, welfare reform, and some slowdown in
the growth of spending. George W. Bush, a friend and a great American patriot . . . did not ght for scal conservatism with the same fervor with which he pursued the freedom agenda in his
foreign policy. In fact, writes Mr. Perry, the history of Republican opposition to encroaching federal government is the history of concession. Who, pray tell, is yelling Stop today? It sure isnt Washington Republicans. That may change. If the new Congress has a mandate, it can be summed up in that one word, Stop. And in attempting to carry out that mandate, Congress might well take a lesson from the state of Texas, where Mr. Perry has been conducting a laboratory in the efcacy of scal conservatism. Its low-tax and no-stateincome-tax environment has led to unprecedented prosperity during a period of national economic stress. The legislature meets for just 90 days a year, public employee unions exercise minimal inuence, education scores are high and superior services are consistently delivered. The Obama administration will soon accelerate new greenhouse gas regulation in Texas, in
pursuit of its eccentric climatechange agenda, to which Mr. Perry does not subscribe. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced that it intends to take over aspects of clean-air enforcement because of state ofcials unwillingness to work with EPA bureaucrats an unwillingness no doubt springing from the determination of ofcials like Mr. Perry to prevent their economically healthy state from turning into another California or Illinois. In todays politics, being blue means being broke. In Texas, the model red state, Mr. Perry is shouting Stop at those agencies armed with executive orders, intent on accelerating the drive toward total federal control. The new Congress would do well to emulate him. And a good place to start would be to begin again to exercise real oversight over agencies like EPA. One suspects Mr. Perry would be glad to show them how. John R. Coyne Jr., a former White House speechwriter, is co-author of Strictly Right: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Conservative Movement (Wiley, 2007).
How Paris survived Nazi occupation

AND THE SHOW WENT ON: CULTURAL LIFE IN NAZI-OCCUPIED PARIS By Alan Riding Knopf, $28.95, 399 pages REVIEWED BY JOHN M. TAYLOR governments. Even before Paris fell, leftist writer Jean-Paul Sartre asked rhetorically why France was ghting. To defend democracy? There is no such thing anymore. To preserve things as they were before the war? But it was the most complete disorder . . . social discontent everywhere. Notwithstanding their military might, the Nazis felt vaguely uneasy about their relationship with the city that epitomized European culture. Germanic culture had produced its share of great artists, writers, and, above all, musicians, Mr. Riding notes, yet it was Paris not London, not Rome, not Vienna and certainly not Berlin that dened style and taste for the region. There was soon a consensus for a revival of the citys cultural life. For musicians, dancers and actors, it was a matter of necessity. They needed to work and saw no reason not to. They bore no responsibility for the countrys disaster, and they had no power to redress the situation. The Germans were amenable. The collaborationist government they established in Vichy to administer Frances unoccupied south was eager to showcase French culture. But anti-Semitism, never far below the surface in France, would ourish during the occupation years. Since Hitlers rise to power, thousands of Jewish writers were eager to continue publishing, even though their work was subject to censorship. Most of the Paris press served as outlets for German propaganda in return for nancial support from the occupiers. Classical musicians were better off. Because music is the most abstract of the arts, there was no problem with censorship. In July 1940, composer Francis Poulenc wrote an exiled colleague, Musical life is intense, and everyone nds in it a way of forgetting the present sadness. When German bands or choirs performed outside the Paris Opera, crowds quickly gathered, drawn by the music. To some, such performances were dangerous, for they served to humanize the occupying army. Music halls and cabarets had to clear their lyrics with German censors, but the censors employed a light hand, and songs poking fun at the occupation were approved sometimes. Not every Frenchman could take the occupation in stride. Blue-collar workers, sometimes inuenced by the communists, had little truck with the occupiers, and in August 1944, they staged an armed uprising in Paris. There were acts of quiet resistance as well. Singer Edith Piaf was so popular that she was allowed to take her show into camps for Allied POWs. There she would persuade the com-
n June 13, 1940, following a series of stunning military defeats at the hands of Hitlers army, the government of France declared its capital an open city; German forces entered Paris the next day. The city had lost more than half of its prewar population, and the only vehicles on the road were German. The ve years of German occupation that followed are described in riveting detail by Alan Riding, a resident of Paris and a longtime correspondent for the New York Times. In the face of defeat and occupation, Mr. Riding observes, the French responded successively with anger, despair, resignation and accommodation. They also responded, on occasion, with resistance. It was a time for questioning. While Hitler rebuilt Germany, France had struggled with the effects of the Depression and had gone through no fewer than 34
intellectuals had relocated to Paris. Overall, Frances Jewish population had tripled in four decades to a total of 300,000. In October 1940, the Vichy government implemented a Statute on Jews, designed to exclude Jews from the government, the press and other professions. What interested Germans the most, however, was the great art collections in the hands of those Jewish collectors who had not already ed. To facilitate the pillaging of those collections, the Germans promulgated an order that all art was to be safeguarded pending a formal peace treaty. For whatever reason, the Parisian art market took off under the occupation. In the authors words, Parisians began selling off paintings and art objects as never before. With a few exceptions, French
mandant to allow her to be photographed with some of the prisoners. The resulting photos were then used to create false documents for escapees. After Germanys surrender, the government of Charles de Gaulle launched investigations into who had collaborated with the enemy. Dening who was a collaborator was not easy. The investigations led to a purging of books and to the jailing of many writers, one of whom complained of discrimination: The engineers, entrepreneurs, and masons who built the Atlantic Wall walk among us undisturbed. The trials of collaborators continued until 1951 and came to include upscale call girls who had profited from their German clients. Not all were repentant. A movie actress, Arletty, was tried for having had a very public affair with a German ofcer. In her defense, she testied, My heart is French but my [body] is international. In a footnote, Mr. Rider notes that between 100,000 and 200,000 Franco-German babies were born during the occupation. This ne book reminds the reader of the many shades of collaboration in an occupied country. Biographer and historian John M. Taylor lives in McLean, Va.
Commentary
JEFFREY T. KUHNER
/ 31 / COMMENTARY
America going the way of Greece, Persia, Rome
ith 2010 over, the American moment is ending not with a bang but a whimper. The 2000s will be remembered as the era of American decline. Instead of trying to reverse this, Washington is hastening it. The lame-duck Congress, with help from Republicans, passed President Obamas tax deal, which adds nearly another trillion to the debt. It is a massive stimulus in disguise with no offsetting spending cuts. Moreover, Mr. Obama again with GOP help succeeded in getting dont ask, dont tell (DADT) repealed, enabling homosexuals to serve openly in the military. This is one of the most revolutionary and damaging acts ever done to a core American institution. It will decimate the greatest ghting force on earth, undermining unit cohesion, morale and discipline the lifeblood of a successful military. It is an act of national suicide. This will add another layer of difculty to our already inconclusive wars. Consider that the last time the United States won a major war was 1945 Korea was a stalemate, Vietnam a defeat; the rst Gulf War failed to topple Saddam Hussein; Afghanistan and Iraq have be-
come prolonged quagmires. Total victory has become alien to us. A small example of how far we have fallen, how pampered and coddled we have become, was the decision by the NFL to postpone the game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Minnesota Vikings in Philadelphia. Football players are supposed to be the closest thing Americans have to modern Roman gladiators. The game exemplies the rugged individualism and grit at the heart of the American character. The reason for the delay: Philadelphia was expecting 11 inches of snow. By comparison with historical Northeast winters, this was a minor storm something previous generations simply shoveled and plowed through as they got on with their daily lives. If 11 inches of snow brings Americas gladiators to a halt, it is clear we have lost our resilience. This is evident, too, in the kinds of leaders we elect. Conventional wisdom holds that Mr. Obama is the antithesis of his predecessor, former President George W. Bush. Mr. Obama is a liberal Democrat. Mr. Bush was a conservative Republican. Mr. Obama is a cosmopolitan internationalist, while Mr. Bush
was a unilateralist cowboy. In fact, they have much more in common than either the left or the right would like to admit. Mr. Obama is simply continuing and intensifying many of the disastrous Bush policies. Runaway government spending, new entitlements (for example, the prescription drug benet), soaring decits, bailouts, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, expensive stimulus packages, a porous southern border and nation-building abroad all of this began under Mr. Bush. Mr. Obama is accelerating the big-government corporatism and socialengineering militarism that marked the Bush years. At its core, Mr. Obamas presidency is a culmination of not a break from Bushism. Economic stagnation has set in. Mr. Obamas trillion-dollar decits have pushed us to the brink of national bankruptcy. The greatest domestic threat to America is the skyrocketing national debt which is approaching Greece-like levels. Instead of slashing spending, Washington continues to party like its 1965. Moreover, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid combined account for more than $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities. The stark reality is that we
cannot afford these huge and popular entitlement programs. To restore scal sanity and prevent crushing taxation, these programs must be privatized or substantially scaled back. The public, however, has no appetite for these kinds of draconian measures. Like many Europeans, Americans have become addicted to la dolce vita the good life. Generous social programs combined with increasing consumerism and sexual hedonism characterize the modern West. It is the end result of a society stripped from its Christian moorings. The 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche claimed God is dead. Nietzsches point was that the loss of faith would constitute our civilizations seminal cultural reality. The passing of the Christian West signies the end not only of a worldview, but of a character type one based on honor, family, self-help, bloodand-soil patriotism, personal responsibility and a God-centered moral order. Self-indulgence and self-expression have lled the vacuum. Life is no longer about sacrice and duty; its about maximizing pleasure and self-fulllment. Most Americans can no longer endure pain. This is why
unemployment benets keep being extended. This is why nearly every industry is too big to fail. It is the inevitable consequence of statism: the transformation of freeborn and productive citizens into de facto serfs who look to Uncle Sam for handouts. Decades of liberalism have led to the servile state. In the 2000s, as we became soft, self-indulgent and mired in foreign interventions, a new great power emerged: an ultranationalist China. During the past decade, Beijing became the worlds No. 1 manufacturer and automaker, premier exporting nation and No. 2 economy. China is engaged in a massive military buildup and menaces its neighbors. It owns much of our public debt. It is to America what we once were to Great Britain: the rising force in the world. All civilizations rise and fall. Ancient Greece, Persia, Rome, medieval Europe, the great Italian city-states, the Ottoman Empire, the vast European empires the past is littered with the corpses of once unparalleled and dominant powers that are now a distant memory. So too has America passed its zenith. Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times.
Chicagoland on the Potomac
o matter how you rearrange President Obamas inner circle, it still looks, smells and tastes like a rotten Chicago deep-dish pizza. Ready for the latest topping on this moldy old pie? Its a chief of staff slot for Wall Street banker/lawyer/wheeler-dealer William Daley, brother of outgoing Chicago mayor/machine politics mastermind Richard M. Daley (also the former boss of White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and rst lady Michelle Obama), whose retirement paved the way for former Obama chief of staff and Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel. Phew. The White House is reportedly looking to manufacture a pro-business aura with Bill Daley, who holds a corporate responsibility executive ofce at J.P. Morgan and once headed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the latter, a left-wing hate object and Obama punching bag leading up to the midterms.
But the Beltwaybased Chamber of Commerce is too often a fairweather statist lobbying organization. It supported the TARP allMichelle purpose bailout, the Malkin auto bailout and the bottomless, pork-lled stimulus package, all of which have forcibly redistributed money from taxpayers and small businesses to politically connected special interests (including Daleys J.P. Morgan, which was most recently swept up in a massive pay-to-play bond scheme in Alabama). Daley has about as much real experience creating jobs as Da Boss now sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., which is to say, less than a thimble full. (Its a New Year. Im being generous.) In 2009, the head of Chicagos sanitation department implicated Daley in a hiring corruption scheme tied to his brothers
mayoral administration. The ofcial was convicted; Daley shrugged off the federal probe. Even if it happened, and Im not saying it did, things were different. There was nothing illegal about that stuff. Instead of distancing himself from the favor-trading Wall Street fat cats who have earned the ire of both anti-bailout tea party activists and anti-corporate liberals, Obama remains wedded, embedded and indebted to the worst kind. Daley has served on the board of government-sponsored nancial behemoth Fannie Mae since 1993. Like the Richard Daley machine in Chicago, Fannie Mae in Washington has served as an industrial-sized patronage factory, sharing prots with political allies, spreading taxpayer funds to ethnic groups, and doling out jobs to left-wing academics, Washington has-beens and back-scratching buddies. Like Daley. And close Obama adviser Jim Johnson, the Fannie Mae exec who got sweetheart loans from shady subprime lender Countrywide.
While they raked in six-gure salaries, Fannie Mae and government-sponsored sibling Freddie Mac engaged in Enronstyle accounting, plunged into debt and helped usher in the subprime housing meltdown through reckless lending practices. Bill Clinton, the man who appointed Daley to the Fannie Mae board, also appointed Emanuel to the Freddie Mac board of directors at a time when its oversight manager called the quasi-governmental agency so pliant that it enabled rampant book-cooking. Freddie Macs stock skyrocketed; its CEOs helped themselves to massive bonuses. Emanuels hometown paper, the Chicago Tribune, exposed how Emanuels protable stint during this corruption-plagued period entailed almost no work: The board met no more than six times a year. Unlike most fellow directors, Emanuel was not assigned to any of the boards working committees, according to company proxy statements. Immediately upon joining the board, Emanuel and other new
directors qualied for $380,000 in stock and options plus a $20,000 annual fee, records indicate. On Emanuels watch, executives told the board of a plan to use accounting tricks to mislead shareholders about outsize prots the government-chartered rm was then reaping from risky investments. The goal was to push earnings onto the books in future years, ensuring that Freddie Mac would appear protable on paper for years to come and helping maximize annual bonuses for company brass. And now the torch may be passed in an endless Windy City circle, from Daley to Emanuel, from Emanuel to Daley, with Obama. Round and round it goes in Chicago on the Potomac. Remember: When Crony State corruptocrats brag about job creation, the only jobs theyve ever created are each others. Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies.
/ COMMENTARY / 32
Needed: Louder public voices of private virtue

s we begin a new year, it may be useful to look back to one particular piece of advice that George Washington gave us in his Farewell Address: It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who, that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric? His point was that no matter how well-designed our constitutional mechanisms may be, the healthy future of our nation would depend upon the maintenance of private virtue, that self-government is only possible if our national character made up of each individuals character yet yearns and acts for a free country. Two centuries later, Martin Luther King Jr. observed a similar truth when he talked about the content of their character being essential to our enduring (and more complete) liberty. I raise this point because in the past few months, as I have written in this space about my
Tony Blankley
cannot know. But while we should admire our ancestors, we need to guard against a false nostalgia that imagines we were once a race predominately of moral giants. Any reading of history discloses every attribute amongst those who came before us including horse thieves, con artists, cowards and traitors. John Adams believed that barely a third of the American colonists supported our revolution for liberty and yet we won. Not everyone showed courage during our dark days. Many people gave up during the Depression. There were shirkers even during World War II. But on balance, when they
optimism for Americas future, I have received many e-mails from readers who have questioned whether we Americans are the equal of our ancestors. Whether we are or not, of course, one
have been needed, enough Americans have developed sufcient individual, private virtue to rise to the occasions history placed in the nations path. Thus, the basis of the optimism for our future that I have found in the past year despite the genuinely dark skies and violent storms that lash us has been precisely the response of individual Americans to the current crisis. This fact, I am sure, has been possible only because so many Americans have continued to strive to improve their moral virtue guided by both secular and religious principles. By the millions, Tea Partiers and many others responded to the crisis by standing up and beginning to take events into their own hands. In community after community, people have reached out to those who are suffering. And in the election, a majority spoke out for and voted for policies that would stop the theft of our grandchildrens prosperity and liberty. So I have been elevated in my hopes for our future. But now comes reality in the saddle. Congress reconvenes. Political calculations are being made from Capitol Hill to Penn-
sylvania Avenue to K Street, intended to perpetuate the destructive governmental trends of the past years. The world continues to menace. It will take more than a mere majority of Americans to be hoping for the best. We must somehow maintain and even enhance collective action for a return to constitutional government, scal balance and national security. In that context, I was struck recently by the words of the great Christian theorist and historian of the last century, Hilaire Belloc, that I read in his 1916 book The Elements of the Great War, the Second Phase. He observed that when the most profound issue may face a nation, there is the danger that the lesser should conquer the greater, the viler the more noble, the more changeable the more steadfast. . . . We know, upon the analogy of all historical things, small and great, that the less creative, the dullest and the worst elements may destroy, and [have] frequent-ly attempted to destroy, the vital, the more creative and the best. That is what America faces today. For too long, the decent American majority of citizens
who are productive and hardworking (and those many millions now sincerely, desperately looking for jobs) have sat by while others have tried to usurp our liberty to enhance the power of government, have taxed and borrowed from those who produce to transfer to those who neither work nor produce nor seek to produce nor maintain their private virtue. Now all these conicting interests and passions are funneling into Washington. These next 24 months beginning now are the decisive period. Can the rot that has begun to eat at the ship of state be cut out and replaced with solid timber? Can the will and impulse of the majority assert itself in its capital? Can the grounds for optimism be sustained? Louder and louder must the public voices of private virtue be heard in this Anno Domini 2011. Tony Blankley is the author of American Grit: What It Will Take to Survive and Win in the 21st Century (Regnery, 2009) and vice president of the Edelman public relations rm in Washington.
R. EMMETT TYRRELL JR.
Founders spirit returns with tea party movement
N
ew Years Day in Washington dawned gray, wet and cold. It was a perfect day for sightseeing, and so my wife and I decided to sightsee. We went to Mount Vernon, George Washingtons home, named, incidentally, after a British admiral, Edward Vernon, by Georges older half-brother. Upon inheriting the mansion, George never saw any reason to change the name, despite the British armys many acts of rudeness to him. George was a big enough guy not to bear a grudge. We arrived just as the estate opened, at 9 a.m., and we were about the only tourists in the place for the rst hour. The very agreeable lady who sold us our tickets, noting our enthusiasm, inquired as to where we came from. Twelve miles up the road, my wife said. We dont get out much. Actually we do, but not to sightsee. We have both been reading a lot about George Washington, and so we visited Mount Vernon for the rst time in years. Our reasoning is that with the Tea Partys arrival in Washington, we had best familiarize ourselves with the Founding Fathers, a goodly number of whom lived in Virginia. We started with George. Marx is out. George Washington was a man of immense proportions. He was a soldier while still in his teens. Then a planter, and a very successful planter at that. Then, in middle years, he was a soldier again, the commander in chief of the Continental Army, who set a tone for war and peace. He was courageous, occasionally brilliant, and endured setbacks and despair. He led the British on a wild chase, ending in their defeat at Yorktown. He believed in character and fair
play, and when he captured a Hessian army, he treated it humanely despite its barbaric treatment of his troops in New York. There, a ragtag assortment of patriot soldiers, mainly very young and the very old, were bayoneted by the Hessians, some impaled against tree trunks after surrendering. Washington would not stoop to such barbarism. He was a moral exemplar with a deep sense of the Almighty. He was famously tolerant, but he was a person of faith. When he went on to become our rst president, his example set the template for a republican presidency up
to the present moment, Bill Clinton and Warren G. Harding notwithstanding. His example and that of the other Founders is especially important at the present with the arrival in Washington of the Tea Party movement. There are 87 new Republican members of Congress, 75 of them endorsed by the Tea Partiers. All are alive to the principles of the Constitution, the bewildering debt laid on us by the outgoing Congress and the debt we are facing because of 40 years of paternalistic government programs that are about to bankrupt us. Their enthusiasm for the
Constitution and for getting limited government back on the national agenda is inspiring. Yet how successful can they be? The modern Tea Party movement has no leader. It has no organization. Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minnesota Republican, tells us that an organization is in place, but it had better be awfully good. I fear that an organization with no leaders is susceptible to having its members picked off, a little bridge to nowhere here, a little bridge there. There is no George Washington now. There are only Rep. Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, and a dozen or so forceful members. Well, there is the Speaker of the House, John A. Boehner. His career is noteworthy for steadiness, conservatism as a governing philosophy and a knack for being in the right place. He is, they say, humble. Of all the virtues, this is the one with which I have the most difculty. I mean, what is the point? So he is humble. He also is going to have to be vigilant and steely. His knowledge of government is going to have to be vast and his sense of which issues to take on, very clever. The problems facing the country are huge, but he has reinforcements, the Tea Party movement. It is the most salubrious addition to politics since the Reagan Revolution. Welcome to Washington, friends, and get down to Mount Vernon on a weekend. It is just 12 miles down the road. R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is the founder and editor in chief of the American Spectator and an adjunct scholar at the Hudson Institute. His new book is After the Hangover: The Conservatives Road to Recovery (Thomas Nelson, 2010).
/ 33 / COMMENTARY
THOMAS SOWELL
A tale of two Californias

r. Victor Davis Hansons quietly chilling article, Two Californias, in National Review Online, ought to be read by every American who is concerned about where this country is headed. California is leading the way, but what is happening in California is happening elsewhere, and is a slow poison that is being largely ignored. Professor Hanson grew up on a farm in Californias predominantly agricultural Central Valley. Now, as he tours that area, many years later, he nds a world as foreign to the world he knew as it is from the rest of California today, and very different from the rest of America, either past or present. In Hansons own words: Many of the rural trailer-house compounds I saw appear to the naked eye no different from what I have seen in the Third World. There is a Caribbean look to the junked cars, electric wires crossing between various outbuildings, plastic tarps substituting for replacement shingles, lean-tos cobbled together
as auxiliary housing, pit bulls unleashed, and geese, goats, and chickens roaming around the yards. This is a Third World culture, transplanted from Mexico, and living largely outside the scope of American law, state or federal. Ironically, this is happening in a state notorious for its pervasive and intrusive regulation of the minute details of peoples
authorities to replace the old food stamps. He noted that these people living on the taxpayers were driving late-model cars and had iPhones, BlackBerries and other parts of what he calls the technological veneer of the middle class. Sadly, and, in the long run, tragically, this is not unique to California, or to illegal immigrants from Mexico, or even to the United States. It is a pattern
of people largely abandoned to their own lawless and violent lives, their children warehoused in schools where they are allowed to run wild, with education being more or less optional. What is going on? These and other groups, here and abroad, are treated as mascots of the self-congratulatory elites. These elites are able to indulge themselves in non-judg-
These elites are able to indulge themselves in non-judgmental permissiveness toward those selected as mascots, while cracking down with heavy-handed, nanny-state control on others.
lives, homes, and businesses. But not out in the Third World enclaves in the Central Valley, where garbage is strewn with impunity and unlicensed swarms of peddlers come and go, selling for cash and with no sales tax. While waiting in line at two supermarkets, Victor Davis Hanson realized in both places that he was the only one in line who was not paying with the plastic cards issued by welfare to which the Western world has been slowly but steadily succumbing. In France, for example, there are enclaves of Third World Muslims, living by their own rules and festering with resentments of the society that is content to let them vegetate on handouts from the welfare state. The black ghettos of America, and especially their housing projects, are other enclaves mental permissiveness toward those selected as mascots, while cracking down with heavyhanded, nanny-state control on others. The effect of all this on the mascots themselves is not a big concern of the elites. Mascots symbolize something for others. The actual fate of the mascots themselves seldom matters much to their supposed benefactors.
So long as the elites have control of the public purse, they can subsidize self-destructive behavior on the part of the mascots. And so long as the elites can send their own children to private schools, they neednt worry about what happens to the children of the mascots in the public schools. Other people who cannot afford to send their children to private schools can simply be called racists for objecting to what the indulgence of the mascots is doing to the public schools or what the violence of the mascots is doing to other children trapped in the same schools with them. A hundred years ago, groups who are now indulged as mascots were targets and scapegoats of Progressive era elites, treated like dirt and targeted for eradication in the name of eugenics. There are no permanent mascots. As fashions change, the mascots of today can become the scapegoats and targets of tomorrow. But who thinks ahead any more? Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
DAVID LIMBAUGH
Mocking those who revere nations founding
he congressional Republicans decision to read the Constitution aloud on the oor of Congress has forced some Constitution-contemptuous liberals further out of the closet, which is an instructive development to behold. Blogger Ezra Klein of The Washington Post told MSNBCs Norah ODonnell that the constitutional reading is a gimmick, and the issue of the Constitution is not that people dont read the text and think theyre following; the issue with the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than 100 years ago and what people believe it says differs from person to person and differs depending on what they want to get done. Columnist E.J. Dionne, also with The Washington Post, expressed similar irreverence for our founding document. Dionne lamented that the tea party movement has treated the Constitution as the equivalent of sacred scripture. Yet as Gordon Wood, the widely admired historian of the Revolutionary era has noted, we can recognize the extraordinary character of the Founding Fathers while also knowing that those 18th-century political leaders were not outside history. . . . They were as enmeshed in historical cir-
cumstances as we are, they had no special divine insight into politics, and their thinking was certainly not free of passion, ignorance, and foolishness. Dionnes (and Woods) assessment is quite a far cry from that of former British Prime Minister William Gladstone, who observed: The American Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man. Though no one should argue that we should turn our respect for the Constitution into idolatry, there is every reason to believe that our Constitution is indeed unique, both in the brilliant structure of limited government it established and in its practical effect of creating the freest, strongest and most prosperous nation in history. One doesnt have to believe America was directly established by God to recognize that the Framers were largely animated by a Christian worldview and generally shared the biblical insight concerning mans fallen nature, an insight that contributed as much as anything else to their blueprint for government. As if choreographed to coincide with the liberals dissing of the Constitution, ex-boxer turned Senate majority leader Harry Reid has threatened to
amend long-established Senate Rule 22, which requires 60 votes to invoke cloture on a bill. Reids scheme is to pretend that the Senate is not a continuous body whose rules remain in force unless changed by a supermajority of senators, but a
Our Constitution is indeed unique, both in the brilliant structure of limited government it established and in its practical effect of creating the freest, strongest and most prosperous nation in history.
body that requires that rules be approved every two years when a new Congress convenes. Common sense alone exposes Reids malignant stunt for what it is, as incoming senators historically have not ratied Sen-
ate rules because it would have been a superuous act. As others have noted, the Senates ofcial website expressly afrms that the Senate is a continuous body: the business of the Senate would continue from Congress to Congress without interruption. Indeed, a Senate rule change as recently as 2007 followed the traditional Senate procedure. The practical effect of Reids cynical ploy would be that rules could be changed at the start of any session with a simple majority vote, which would be a convenient result for Senate Democrats, who are none too pleased with the shellacking their party received in the November congressional elections. But there is a method to the Democrats mad consistency. The relative disrespect liberals Klein and Dionne demonstrate follows from the liberal view of the Constitution as a living document, whose provisions the courts can rewrite at will. It is compatible with Barack Obamas obvious belief that the document is powerless to prevent the federal government from engaging in activities it prohibits, such as requiring people to purchase health insurance. It aligns with Obamas belief that the courts can manipulate the Constitution to adjudicate
economic justice, a euphemism for abject court-ordered income redistribution. It squares with Obamas systematic usurpation of congressional authority in his appointment of unaccountable czars, his executive order frenzy, his administrative law end runs, his de facto moratorium on offshore drilling, and his conspiracy with legislators to corrupt the legislative process (as he did with Obamacare). The common thread running through all of these examples is the liberals end-justies-themeans mentality, which, as we are witnessing, is a green light for tyranny and a smothering of liberty and democratic principles in the name of promoting them. Liberals will mock conservatives for their stodgy nationalism and their fealty to a document that is more than 200 years old. But their arrogance and mockery just serve to conrm their disrespect for our founding institutions. More importantly, they underscore the enormity of the stakes involved and strengthen our resolve to politically defeat liberals and crush their systematic assault on our liberties. David Limbaughs new book is Crimes Against Liberty.
/ COMMENTARY / 34
LAWRENCE KUDLOW
Supply-side Obama? Trust but verify
he past is not always a prologue to the future. But looking at some of the big winners and losers of 2010 does provide some strong hints of a positive 2011. The biggest winner last year was the tea party, which shellacked President Obama in the elections. Obama becomes the biggest loser. And the economy and stock market will be the beneciaries. The elections were the rst major step toward restoring free-market capitalism and rolling back big-government controls, planning and spending. This is a money-politics issue. Stocks roared 20 percent during the second half of last year, as markets sniffed out the huge political change. Postelection, stocks also had a big move, nishing the year at better than two-year highs, going all the way back to pre-Lehman Brothers. Sure, there were important economic factors involved. Europe didnt fall apart. The dollar
didnt collapse. And better U.S. economic numbers started coming in. (Double-dip bears also were big losers last year.) But rising political condence helped, too. The emergence of tea party free-market populism, what I call Reaganomics 2.0, is hugely bullish for stocks and the economy in 2011. Recall that in midDecember the Bush tax rates were extended and the earmarked omnibus-spending monstrosity was withdrawn. These were bullish events for producers and investors that may have pulled the curtain down on Obamanomics. And now its fascinating to watch the money-politics dynamic continue. On a recent Sunday talk show, top Obama economic advisor Austan Goolsbee sounded like a Ronald Reagan disciple. Youve got direct incentives for companies to invest in the country, he said. And he went on to describe a new Obama economic model that sounds suspiciously supply-side: The focus has got to
be on investment, on exports and on innovation. . . . The president is rmly in that, planted in that camp, and we are going to grow our way out of this. (Hat tip to economist Don Luskin.) As noted, Obama agreed to freezing top marginal tax rates on all personal incomes and on capital-gains and dividend investment. But now theres major talk that the Obama budget will include a sizable corporate tax cut in return for ending unnecessary loopholes and deductions. Business has been clamoring for this. Hopefully it will include a territorial tax provision to end the double tax on foreign earnings. Equally important, the100 percent business-expensing provision of the recent tax compromise might be made permanent. Reagan couldnt have said it any better. Surging business investment from a lower tax cost of capital and higher invest-
ment returns is a surere job creator. Of course, as the Gipper also would say, trust but verify: Well have to see the ne print of any such Obama proposal. Crucially, corporate tax reform must be revenue neutral, not a tax hike. But at this moment, I am willing to trust the U-turn of Team Obama toward an incentive model of growth. And there are plenty of stories coming out of Washington about Obama reading Reagan biographies, which presumably include the pro-growth tax reform of 1986 and surely mention that Reagan himself was a student of the John Kennedy tax reforms that slashed tax rates across-the-board. Congressional momentum is decidedly toward lower spending. Without question theres going to be a huge budget-cutting exercise led by Paul Ryan in the House and Jeff Sessions in the Senate. Sen. Jim DeMint wants a showdown over the debt ceiling in order to force some kind of balanced-budget
amendment. And Sen. Bob Corker has taken the bit in order to build a bipartisan group to make sure that Republicans get a spending cap in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. Keynesians do not understand the pro-growth benets of lower government spending. But anytime government resource absorption is reduced, potential investment for the private sector is unleashed. Yes, once again, we must trust but verify. And there are going to be huge battles ahead over Obamacare and EPA regulation, both of which are antigrowth. But for starters in the new year, carrying over from the November elections, at least scal policy appears to be moving in a positive pro-growth direction. No wonder stocks rallied almost 100 points in the rst 2011 trading day. The Gipper must be smiling about all this. Lawrence Kudlow is a nationally syndicated columnist.
DR. PAUL HSIEH
The best health care special interest groups can buy

hen President Obama signed his health care plan into law, he promised it would foster choice and competition. Nine months later, Americans can count this as another Big Lie. Obamacare has instead reduced competition in the marketplace for health services. The New York Times recently reported that Obamacare has spurred a wave of mergers among doctors, hospitals and other providers eager to share costs and savings, and cash in on the incentives. The Wall Street Journal noted a growing trend of hospitals merging into large regional networks and purchasing physician practices to lock up guaranteed sources of patients. Physicians are increasingly choosing to merge into large groups (or become salaried hospital employees) to lessen the costs of complying with the sweeping new law, such as requirements to adopt expensive electronic medicalrecord systems. As a result of Obamacare, fewer physicians will work in the familiar two- to ve-person small-group practices most Americans prefer. Instead, doctors will be increasingly driven into large, impersonal accountable care organizations not to take better care of their patients, but simply to
survive economically. This consolidation is not some unintended consequence, but rather an explicit goal, as White House health adviser NancyAnn DeParle acknowledged when praising Obamacare for encouraging vertical organization of providers and physician employment by hospitals and aggregation into larger physician groups. According to the New York Times, many consumer advocates thus fear Obamacare will have the perverse effect of reducing competition and driving up costs. Yet while Obamacare is suppressing genuine marketplace competition for medical services, it is also spurring a more sinister facsimile of competition for political favors. Employers and insurers with sufcient political clout can save money by obtaining a much-coveted waiver, exempting them from onerous new insurance regulations. The 222 current recipients of such waivers include popular employers such as McDonalds and Universal Orlando as well as the Service Employees Benet Fund, which
insures members of the Service Employees International Union (a major political supporter of the Obama administration). Because these waivers are granted at the discretion of the secre-
tary of health and human services, they create easy opportunities for political favoritism and corruption. Nor will the political favorseeking be limited to insurance
waivers. If the Obamacare individual insurance mandate survives current legal challenges, it will also spur a lobbying frenzy from special-interest groups seeking to include their pet benets in the mandatory insurance package Americans must purchase. Such lobbying has already occurred in Massachusetts, which imposed a similar insurance mandate in 2006. According to Cato Institute analyst Michael Cannon, Massachusetts providers have successfully lobbied to include 16 new benets in the mandatory package (including lay midwives, orthotics and drug-abuse treatment) and the state legislature is considering dozens more. Massachusetts residents must therefore purchase insurance on terms set by bureaucrats and lobbyists, rather than their actual individual needs. Obamacare would encourage special interests to similarly compete at the national level to force ordinary Americans to pay money they cannot afford for benets they do not need to subsidize those with the greatest political pull. Genuine market competition benets consumers by allowing
them to freely trade with producers according to their best judgment for their mutual benet. To promote such competition in health care, the government should not impose more regulations, but rather repeal existing regulations and free providers to compete to offer patients the best value for their money. In the freest (i.e., least regulated) sectors of medicine such as laser eye surgery and cosmetic surgery, practitioners succeed by competing in precisely this fashion. Over time, the result has been rising quality and falling prices something we take for granted with computers and cell phones. This can and should be the norm in all of health care. Fortunately, the newly elected Republican majority in the House of Representatives appears ready to challenge Obamacare. Americans should let Congress know what kind of health care competition we want. Do we want free-market reforms that will encourage providers to compete to offer better medical services at lower prices? Or do we want a system that encourages special-interest groups to compete for political favors at the expense of ordinary Americans? The choice is ours. Dr. Paul Hsieh is a member of the Colorado chapter of Docs4PatientCare and cofounder of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine.
/ 35 / COMMENTARY
BILL OREILLY
Deciding which T Grit was truer rue

n April 7, 1970, John Wayne received the Academy Award for best actor after wowing people in the movie True Grit. For Wayne, it was really a lifetime achievement recognition, as he beat out the likes of Richard Burton, Peter OToole, Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, all considered serious actors, unlike Wayne, who specialized in personality-driven performances. Waynes portrayal of harddrinking U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn was a classic. The actor totally blew away his costars Kim Darby and Glenn Campbell (yes, that Glenn Campbell). In one scene, the Duke is riding the range between Darby and Campbell, and they look like Lilliputians to Waynes Gulliver. Whatever else you might think about John Wayne, he dominated the screen whenever he appeared on it. Forty years later, there is a remake of True Grit, starring Jeff Bridges as Cogburn. Bridges is a serious actor and plays the part well. But he cant touch Wayne. By the way, another serious actor, Matt Damon, plays the Campbell part, and Bridges blows him away. Some advice for the younger leading man: Stay
John Wayne was Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. Jeff Bridges (right) plays the role in the remake.
away from the old pros; they know how to move the audience in ways you dont. The True Grit comparison also reects the times the lms were released. Back in 1969, the United States was in turmoil over Vietnam and the rise of the Woodstock generation. Revered traditions were breaking down fast, confusing and angering many Americans. John Wayne was a throwback to better times, a man respected by traditional folks. And it was Wayne they were watching on the screen, not Rooster Cogburn. It was Wayne who protected the young girl out to avenge her father, and it was Wayne who imposed justice on the brutal bad guys. The strongminded actor brought audiences comfort amid chaos both on the screen and in real life. Today we are a country once again experiencing turbulent
times. But Jeff Bridges offers no antidote to that; in fact, his portrayal disturbs rather than comforts. Bridges plays the awed marshal well and may very well be nominated as Wayne was, but he revels in Cogburns neurosis, whereas the Duke used it as a prop. John Wayne was accessible to the audience as basically a good guy. Jeff Bridges puts the troubled character he plays right in your face. And thats the difference in America over these 40 years. We once were a country with boundaries and rules of behavior. Now many of those boundaries are gone. We expect explicit violence and personal angst. Many of us relish seeing that. In 1969, when True Grit played in the theaters, Americans were looking for heroes like John Wayne to show them nobility. Today there are far fewer heroes, and we dont expect much nobility, even in the movies. I liked both True Grits. But for me, it is Wayne who still deserves most of the cheers. The man was larger than life, a symbol of the insurmountable American spirit. Boy, do we need that today. Bill OReilly is author of the book Whos Looking Out For You?
DENNIS PRAGER
From Y to the NFL: Are we still home of the brave? ale
he National Football League called off an NFL game because it was going to snow in Philadelphia. This has not happened before. American football is played under all weather conditions. That is part of its appeal. Snow, rain, freezing temperatures, nothing stops an NFL game. But the NFL and Philadelphia city ofcials called off the Eagles-Vikings game because of an imminent snowstorm, in order to protect fans from having to drive at that time. Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, wrote a scathing column for the Washington Times, indicting those who called off the game. He described it as an example of the wussication of America. He was right. Sadly, this risk-averse/avoidpain mindset is overtaking America. Anything that entails risk is to be avoided and, when possible, banned. The breast cancer drug Avastin has just been banned by the FDA because of side effect risk to some patients. Yet terminally ill breast cancer patients who understand the risks have begged to be allowed to take the drug
(even Europe allows it). pain- and risk-averse. That is make. Whenever I hear or sing Peanuts and peanut butter, parthe reason for speech codes on the national anthem, I no longer ticularly good sources of procampuses: No student should fully believe its ending, oer tein for kids (because kids actu- have his or her feelings hurt or the land of the free and the ally like and therefore eat ever feel offended. Likewise, home of the brave. We have peanuts and peanut butter), are no Christmas trees are allowed, many freedom-loving and brave banned in more and more lest a non-Christian student feel Americans, just think of those schools because of the risk not included. in the armed forces. But over(which is far less than being That is why Yale University all, risk has been banned as killed by lightning) that peanutPress last year decided at the Americans seek to be immuallergic students may die nized against pain. in schools that do not ban Needless to say, the libpeanuts. Desperately eral Philadelphia Inquirer needed nuclear power supported the decision to plants are shelved becancel the football game. cause of the innitesiAnd so did some of my mally small risk of nucallers who think of themclear waste radiation selves as conservative. But leakage. And now an all those self-identied conNFL game is canceled servative callers who supbecause of the risk that ported the decision were, I some fans might get into noted on air, under the age auto accidents in a snowof 40. storm. I explained to them that Most U.S. schools dropped dodgeball due to Americans are bethey have grown up in a risk of injury, or hurt feelings. coming increasingly different America than I risk-averse. did. The idea of telling an Though Rendell is a Democlast minute to cancel inclusion American that a pro football rat, this risk aversion comes of the Danish cartoons of game is canceled because he from the left, which has made it Muhammad in the very book it might drive in bad weather its mission to protect people was about to publish about the strikes a conservative over 40 from risk. Risk may lead to Danish Muhammad cartoons! as demeaning. pain, and the Left dreams of a Too risky. The liberal university But the young have been pain-free life. now stands for avoiding pain raised without monkey bars, The most left-wing institumuch more than for freedom of dodgeball or seesaws, lest they tions in America, our universispeech. fall and hurt themselves; withties, are therefore the most I have a sad confession to out Merry Christmas, lest it
offend; protected by parents and schools from experiencing the pain of a loss in sports; being told they are wonderful when they are not. A listener who disagreed with me sent me an e-mail asking me how I would feel if my father drove to that game and died in an accident because emergency vehicles could not reach him in time. I responded by giving my correspondent my fathers e-mail address. I told him that I suspected that my father, who is a healthy 92 and fought for three years in World War II, would probably respond that he doesnt recognize the America of today as the one he fought for 65 years ago. Thats why the cancellations by the NFL and Yale University are important. Once the home of the brave, America is becoming the home of the risk-averse and the painavoiders. And when you are riskaverse, you are not only less brave, you are less free. With freedom comes pain, a price more and more Americans dont want to pay. Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated columnist.
/ COMMENTARY / 36
AUSTIN BAY
Sudan divides: More bloodshed or pragmatism?
ast August, the government of Southern Sudan (GOSS), the semi-autonomous government administering Southern Sudan, asked a South Sudanese lyricists to write a national anthem. The anticipatory anthem was one of literally thousands of titfor-tat political exchanges between the GOSS and Sudans national government in Khartoum, as both governments maneuvered for advantage in the Jan. 9, 2011, referendum on southern independence. Diplomats and international aid workers in the region report that southerners will overwhelmingly choose independence. If they do, sometime in 2011 the GOSS will become the newly independent state of Southern Sudan, complete with new national anthem. Except the norths president, Omar al-Bashir, and his ruling National Congress Party insist on calling independence southern secession. This is the same northern government that directs the war in Sudans western Darfur region. This is the same Bashir indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Prosecutors also believe Bashir has embezzled billions of dollars in government oil revenues. North-South political wrangling is one thing; combat between their forces another, and on a few dangerous occasions ghting has occurred. The
GOSS also claims the north has stirred tribal violence in the south in order to weaken it. This is why Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Southern Sudans referendum a ticking time bomb of enormous consequence. Sudan, like many other African states wrapped in colonial-era borders, is a complicated time bomb. The north is predominantly Muslim and Arab or Arabized. The south is predominantly Christian and animist, and black African. The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended two
decades of civil war, stipulated that an independence referendum be held by 2011. The GOSS also retained its own security force, the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA). SPLA guerrillas became the conventional force of the semi-autonomous but effectively separate state. The north already had the national army. The CPA also stipulated that the north and south accurately demarcate their border. However, a number of border issues remain unsettled. Northern and southern soldiers and several tribal militia forces have clashed along the murky fron-
tier, despite the limited presence of a U.N. peacekeeping force deployed to monitor the CPA. Another ammable mixes in this ethnic, religious, tribal and geographic cauldron: petroleum. Sudans most productive oil elds lie in the south or in the border region. Before the ink began to dry on the 2005 peace treaty, diplomats worried that oil would ignite the cauldron if ethnic and religious strife did not. Oil has been contentious. The GOSS relies on oil royalties for over 90 percent of its budget and argues the north
cheated it of $300 million in 2009. Those elds are the source of Bashirs alleged stolen billions. The elds have also bought the northern government Chinas support in the United Nations. In the last two weeks, however, Bashir has visited the south and changed his tune. He told the GOSS that he preferred a unitary state but would support the south if it chose to secede. Bashir kept the term secession but conceded to the reality of separation. Bashirs numerous critics contend he is also capitulating to the economic reality of northern Sudans own oil revenue dependency. A big north-south war would shut down oil production and likely damage the elds. Better to separate peacefully and pump than to wage a war guaranteeing poverty. Will common economic interest (and perhaps Bashirs personal greed) secure peace between Sudan and Southern Sudan? At the moment, it is a fragile tie, but one that recognizes economic interdependency despite political differences. If this recognition of mutual payoff succeeds in avoiding renewed war, it would be a welcome example of political evolution in preference to another round of bloodletting. Austin Bay is a nationally syndicated columnist.
MONA CHAREN
Can there be good news from the Holy Land?

DF spokeswoman Avital Leibovich notes, referring to the hundreds of reporters, photographers, and producers from world press organizations stationed in Jerusalem, all of these correspondents are not here to report on Tel Avivs beaches or the wineries of Judea and Samaria. They are here to report the conict. True. And because conict equals news, lack of conict usually equals neglect. Things are far from peachy in this region, and yet, the quiet itself ought to be new, a welcome respite from the usual tension, fear, and grief. The year 2010 recorded the smallest number of Israelis killed by terror attacks (nine) in a decade, with 28 wounded. By contrast, between 2000 and 2006, during the Second Intifada, 1,100 Israelis were killed by suicide bombers and thousands more were wounded. With buses, pizzerias, and department stores exploding on an almost weekly basis, the entire nation
was weighted down with dread. Today, Jerusalems shops are bustling and its hotels and restaurants are full. Tourism is booming, a record 3.45 million visitors this past year, bringing $20 billion in revenue to Israel and the Palestinian Authority (some Christian holy sites, like Bethlehem and Nazareth, are in Palestinian territory). More surprising is the economic vitality of the West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had pledged during his election campaign to make Palestinian economic development a priority in hopes that an improved standard of living would conduce to peace. A permanent peace remains elusive, but living standards in the West Bank are dramatically improving. The PA reported a 9 percent growth rate for 2010. There is a functioning stock exchange in Nablus. Unemployment, which was 30 percent four years ago, has been reduced to 16 percent. Israel has removed more than 200 checkpoints to facilitate
economic activity, and installed expensive but fast scanners at other points to permit trucks carrying goods for export to pass quickly (about eight minutes per truck). Since July 2008, the 1 million Arab citizens of Israel can come and go freely from the West Bank. Jenin, the origin of so many suicide bombers during the Intifada, is now the site of a vestory shopping mall, a movie theater, and a number of cafes that operate well past sundown, something that would have been impossible a few years ago when armed teenage gangs ruled the streets. With training and equipment from the United States, the Palestinian Authoritys 28,000 police now provide security for the West Banks 2.4 million residents as well as reigning in terror (coordinating with Israel). West Bank residents can patronize casinos, shopping malls, and nightclubs. In contrast to the Hamascontrolled Gaza Strip, which imposes Islamist strictures
(e.g., men are barred from cutting womens hair, and girls were recently forbidden to participate in the United Nations summer camp program), women in the West Bank tend toward Western dress and behavior. Whether this economic boomlet will actually promote peace remains to be seen. Suicide bombers have been thwarted by a combination of the security fence Israel mostly completed in 2006 (for which it was widely reviled by international organizations and governments), and pinpoint targeting of would-be terrorists during nighttime raids into the West Bank. In this, Israel receives cooperation from the PA. We tell them where they (the terrorists) are, and they arrest them, explains Leibovich. This never happened in the past. And yet, as the Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman very undiplomatically blurted last week, the Palestin-
ian Authority government is illegitimate since it does not conduct elections. In a direct contradiction of the Netanyahu governments position, Lieberman declared, Even if we offer the Palestinians Tel Aviv and a retreat to 1947 borders, they will nd a reason not to sign a peace agreement with us . . . We cannot make peace with them. There is quiet on the streets on Israel and the West Bank. Business is pretty good. But the fundamentals remain: Even the moderate PA President Mahmoud Abbas refuses (he did so again in November) to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Hamas, dug in securely in Gaza, accumulates more accurate and longer-range missiles from Iran. And Hezbollah is part of the government in Lebanon. Those reporters waiting for conict to report will probably not be disappointed much longer. Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist.
ILAN BERMAN
/ 37 / COMMENTARY
Some reset: U.S. blinks as rule of law declines
he late-December sentence handed down by a Moscow court against Mikhail Khodorkovsky should have surprised no one. Ever since the Kremlin launched new legal proceedings against the former oil tycoon about three years ago, a guilty verdict was a foregone conclusion. Still, the repeat conviction of Khodorkovsky, already serving an eight-year term in a Siberian jail, to an additional six years in prison on fresh (and blatantly fabricated) charges speaks volumes about the receding rule of law in Russia. So, too, does Washingtons apparent ambivalence about it. Khodorkovsky has been a symbol of Russias rigged justice system for almost a decade. One of the countrys original oligarchs, he grew rich on the shady trades and murky acquisitions that characterized the no-holds-barred economic privatization that followed the Soviet collapse in the early 1990s. But his meteoric fall from grace a decade later had little to do with those dubious nancial dealings. Rather, Khodorkovsky found himself in the political cross hairs for supporting the liberal opposition to the government of then-President Vladimir Putin and for toying with the idea of eventually throwing his own hat into the presidential ring. By doing so, Khodorkovsky violated the quiet understanding under which the Russian government had al-
lowed the oligarchs to enrich This fall, as Khodorkovskys themselves, provided they second trial was concluding in stayed out of national politics. Moscow, his defense team made The Kremlins retaliation was the rounds in Washington, atimmediate and severe. Over the tempting to drum up interest in span of a few weeks in 2003, the looming miscarriage of jusKhodorkovsky and his former tice about to befall their client. business partner, Platon Lebedev, were detained on an array of charges. His Yukos oil company, then one of Russias biggest and most successful rms, was dismembered and largely nationalized. After a very public show trial, Khodorkovsky was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to serve eight years in a remote Siberian prison. But even behind bars, Khodorkovsky is still an irritant and a useful political prop. Accordingly, Russian ofcials have tried to enMikhail Khodorkovsky sure that the high costs of crossing the Kremlin remain Their arguments that fresh in the minds of most RusKhodorkovsky was a high-prosians, opening up new corruple pawn of Kremlin power poltion and fraud charges against itics and that his fate was a littheir countrys best-known pomus test of sorts for Russian litical prisoner in February democracy received atten2007. tive nods from observers con-
cerned with Russias accelerating authoritarian drift. But where it mattered among the shapers of ofcial policy toward Russia they fell on deaf ears. The White House, preoccupied with its reset of relations with Moscow and the most prominent showpiece of that policy the New START then being considered by Congress had little interest in picking a ght with the Kremlin over its human rights record. So Khodorkovskys verdict, handed down on Dec. 27, succeeded in generating a pointed admonition from the Obama administration, with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs warning that Russias failure to keep this commitment to universal values, including the rule of law, impedes its own modernization and ability to deepen its ties with the United States. Beyond that, however, the White House has given precious little indication that it is truly willing to make the Khodorkovsky case and similar ofcial abuses of power a serious bilateral issue in its dealings with
Russia. All of this could end up being a tragedy for the United States and for Russia. During the Cold War, successive U.S. administrations simultaneously focused on the nature of the Soviet regime and on its external conduct. And through a number of tangible economic and political initiatives, the United States managed to signicantly alter how the Soviet Union treated its own captive population, sowing the seeds for greater freedom behind the Iron Curtain in the process. The Obama administration, by contrast, has elevated process over substance. It has focused on the need for new bilateral reductions of strategic weaponry, working hard to secure the 11th-hour passage of New START by the outgoing lame-duck Congress. At the same time, it has taken a laissez-faire approach to issues of human rights and democracy in Russia, preferring to gloss over them in favor of areas of greater commonality. Yet, by granting Moscow a pass on its internal conduct, Washington runs the risk of strengthening the Kremlins rising authoritarian impulses and accelerating its drift away from democracy. That, in turn, will make a real reset in relations even harder to envision than it is at the moment. Ilan Berman is vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council.
The economy: Not out of the woods just yet
ith Christmas shoppers out in force and the stock market surging to a twoyear high, talk is spreading that the long-awaited recovery is at hand. Perhaps. But gleaning the news from Europe and Asia as U.S. cities, states and the federal government sink into debt, it is difcult to believe a worldwide nancial crisis that hammers governments, banks and bondholders alike can be long averted. Consider. Fitch and Moodys have just downgraded the debt of Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Hungary. In Budapest, the politicians talk of default. Spain has been warned its debt and banks could be downgraded. The European Central Bank is buying up this paper to prevent panic selling by investors. There is talk of forcing bondholders to take a haircut. They would trade their suspect bonds for new euro bonds whose face value would be appreciably less. In the Latin American debt crisis, the United States bailed
out its banks holding the bad paper by giving them U.S.-backed bonds, while forcing them to take a loss on their Latin bonds. Courtesy of Uncle Sam, Latin America Pat away Buchanan walkedhuge from a slice of its debt. The Japanese national debt is slated to pass 200 percent of gross domestic product this year, highest of any major economy on earth. Half of Japans spending is now nanced by bonds. Tax revenues do not even cover 50 percent. Nor is America out of the woods. Financial analyst Meredith Whitney told 60 minutes we can expect 50 to 100 cities and counties to default on their municipal bonds. Though derided as an alarmist, Whitney was among the few who warned that U.S. banks were in treacherous
waters before 2008. If anyone is an alarmist, it is The New York Times. In an editorial the day after Christmas, The Looming Crisis in the States, the Times writes, Illinois, California and several other states are at increasing risk of being the rst states to default since the 1930s. California and Illinois are to America what Germany and Spain are to the European Union, the rst and fth largest states. Illinois, writes the Times, is faced with $4 billion in overdue payments. The state has lacked the money to pay its bills. Some of its employees have been evicted from their ofces for nonpayment of rent, social service groups have laid off hundreds of workers while waiting for checks, pharmacies have closed for lack of Medicaid payments. Illinois is also still borrowing to nance half of its budget. By Sept. 30, the U.S. government will have run three straight decits of close to 10 percent of GDP. And Barack Obama and the GOP just
passed $858 billion in new and extended tax cuts and fresh spending. Yet many dismiss the threat of a series of defaults by European nations and U.S. states and cities leading to a nancial crisis that could eclipse the one we have just passed through. What is the basis of this condence? Germany dominates the European Central Bank and will not allow defaults by Ireland, Portugal, Greece or Spain. For that would imperil the One Europe project to which Germany has been dedicated since World War II. Berlin will do what is necessary to save the euro and prevent Europes monetary union from collapse. What is wrong with this thesis is that it is not Germany alone that decides on defaults. The weaker countries in the euro zone, like Greece, may decide they will not endure the agonies of austerity any longer. Street politics may force regimes to abandon the regimens imposed upon them as a condition of their bailouts. In America, it is the Fed that
is the last line of defense and has shown a disposition to act in a nancial crisis. Since 2008, it has doubled the money supply and taken a trillion dollars in bad debt off the books of U.S. banks. Secretly, it has lent trillions to banks and businesses all over the world and is now buying U.S. bonds to inject more dollars into the economy. But how does the Fed prevent a state like Illinois from failing to meet its debt obligations and defaulting? How does the Fed prevent a series of municipal bond defaults by cities and counties that lack the tax revenue to pay their bills and whose credit rating has reached a junk-bond status where they can no longer borrow? Congress would have to vote the bailout money. But will a House that owns its majority to the Tea Party approve half a trillion dollars to bail out Democratic-run cities or Obamas home state or Jerry Browns California? Patrick Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist.
/ EDITORIALS / 38
Editorials
Constitutional authority for Congress
he new Republican majority in the House of Representatives adopted new rules last week that will make Congress more transparent, more scally responsible and more procedurally fair to members and their constituents. Although changes to procedure wade deep into the legislative weeds, they signify a new reform ethic taking hold on Capitol Hill. Finally, a reading of the entire Constitution is required of each new Congress, and every bill must contain a section citing the constitutional provision that gives authority for whatever the bill does. Forcing politicians to cite the source of their authority makes them ac-
knowledge that their powers are limited to those enumerated in a document emanating from and ratied by the citizenry. A number of changes will make it easier for the public to track what the House is doing and, for that matter, for House members themselves to know whats going on. One new rule makes it harder for committee chairmen to blindside opponents by calling meetings without adequate notice. Other new policies require that all committee meetings be electronically recorded and that the text of all bills be posted electronically 24 hours before committee votes and 72 hours before nal passage on the House oor. No longer will members and the public need to pass the bills to nd out
whats in them, as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi so callously put it. Two new rules govern how taxpayer dollars are spent. One will require that new entitlement spending be offset by spending cuts. This could keep the national debt from growing faster than its already dangerous rate. Also, whenever the House adopts an amendment to an appropriations bill that eliminates an item of spending, that amount of money will have to be subtracted from the overall bill for the agency being funded, rather than merely being allocated elsewhere. This is a useful tool for decit reduction because it means cutting pork saves money, rather than merely redirecting it.
Congress has a bad habit of including criminal penalties with new regulations. Reagan-era Attorney General Edwin Meese III proposed that new provisions creating criminal penalties be reviewed by the Judiciary Committee to prevent overcriminalization. Although the new majority didnt include this restriction on overbearing federal police powers in the new rules package, nothing forbids reformers from implementing it in practice as Congress goes about its business. The same considerations that led Republicans to adopt the other new rules to limit governments reach should inspire them to adopt this extra safeguard against bureaucratic abuse.
Islams blasphemy murders
he Obama administration has declared a struggle against violent extremism, but it has little to say when it comes to extremism practiced by governments. Blasphemy laws in Pakistan and Afghanistan are being used to sanction judicial murder in the name of Islam. The United States refuses to condemn these practices, apparently believing this would amount to an unwarranted imposition of American values on foreign customs. Even in these backward countries, however, there are brave political leaders who are standing up to legal persecution. The point was illustrated vividly on Jan. 4 in Pakistan when Salman Taseer, governor of Punjab Province, was gunned down by a member of his own security detail. Taseer was an opponent of Pakistans blasphemy law and recently requested a pardon for Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of ve who was found guilty of blaspheming Islam and sen-
tenced to death. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned Taseers assassination but chose not to delve into the motive of his assassin or raise the blasphemy issue. Instead, Mrs. Clinton offered the bland assurance that the United States remains committed to helping the government and people of Pakistan as they persevere in their campaign to bring peace and stability to their country. Meanwhile, radical supporters of accused assassin Malik Mumtaz Qadri rallied at his arraignment on Jan. 5, showering him with rose petals and chanting death is acceptable in the service of the Prophet. The law under which Mrs. Bibi was condemned is conspicuously vague. It enjoins words, either spoken or written or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo or insinuation, directly or indirectly, [that] deles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Mohammed, which in practice could extend to anything. Taseer was an out-
spoken critic of the law as a relic that was preventing Pakistan from moving into the modern world. He lost his life because he wasnt afraid to stand up for religious freedom in a dark place. Afghanistans blasphemy laws also are deplorably strong. All Muslim converts and members of the Bahai faith are legally apostates. In 2008, Ghaws Zalmai was sentenced to 20 years in prison for creating an unauthorized translation of the Koran into Dari. Currently, 45-year-old Sayed Mossa languishes in prison without a lawyer, facing a capital charge of apostasy for converting from Islam to Christianity. International intervention in such cases can make a difference. Afghan college journalism student Sayed Pervez Kambaksh was arrested in 2007 for distributing the writings of Iranian Islamic dissident Arash Bikhoda, who criticized the status of women in Muslim societies.
Mr. Kambaksh was originally sentenced to death, which was reduced to 20 years on appeal. A concerted campaign was mounted on his behalf by foreign media and government representatives, including then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. President Hamid Karzai granted a pardon in 2008, and Mr. Kambaksh ed the country. America could stand up for Mrs. Bibi and Mr. Mossa and give meaning to Taseers sacrice, but the Obama White House apparently is more fearful of offending the chanting mobs than it is willing to inspire the secularists and others seeking progress in the Islamic world. The extremism that imposes the death penalty for purported affronts to Islam should be as offensive to the United States as the extremism that kills with suicide vests, and equally worthy of condemnation. Instead of pretending this evil doesnt exist, the Obama administration should openly side with opponents of this form of state terrorism.
Light-bulb banning begins
he cost of illuminating your home is about to go up signicantly. Most Americans take for granted that when they ip a switch, darkness immediately gives way to a warm, natural light. Thats no longer possible in California, where a regulation that took effect Jan. 1 only allows the sale of harsh, cold compact uorescents above a certain wattage. Unless the new Congress takes action, the same rules will apply to the rest of the country, beginning next year. The prohibition on buying real light bulbs follows from the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, signed into law by then-President George W. Bush. The measure gave bureaucratic zealots in the Golden State permission to embark on their conscatory policy a year early. Of course, in true Orwellian
fashion, the California Energy Commission strongly denies its doing anything to prohibit consumers from buying the type of bulbs they prefer. You can still buy any type of light bulb you like, the only difference is that the new bulbs will use less energy and cost less money to operate, the commissions website explains. Left unsaid is that its a crime to sell newly manufactured cheap bulbs that produce a pleasing, natural light of 100 watts or more. With more than a century to perfect Thomas Edisons great invention, manufacturers sell the brilliant 60-watt bulb for as little as 29 cents. The less-effective squiggly versions run $2 to $5 each, with prices for higher wattages and three-way congurations sometimes exceeding $10 each. Congressional busybodies dont care about the impact on consumers.
They want to be just like the Europeans who began bulb banning in 2009. The nal phase will be complete in September after the popular 60-watt incandescent is declared contraband. As Londons Daily Mail reported, this marketplace manipulation will bring a predictable outcome: The cost of government-mandated compact uorescent xtures is about to triple. Absent competition from traditional lighting, manufacturers wont need to discount the deadly, mercury-lled substitutes in order to attract buyers. Companies will no longer receive credit from Brussels for subsidizing the cost of the bulbs. As a result, their price will rise. The European carbon-dioxide offset rules are so absurd that many rms last year mailed uorescent light bulbs to customers who didnt necessarily want
them simply to meet energy saving targets. On Nov. 27, the energy company Npower dropped 12 million squiggly light bulbs in the post to British customers, saving the rm from a potential $62 million ne. It didnt matter that no proof existed that the bulbs were ever actually used. Turning on a dim, harsh uorescent light demonstrates concern for the environment. Forcing everyone to do the same shows an even higher degree of purported enlightenment on the part of lawmakers. Consumers are forced to pay this price as a carbon offering to Mother Earth in the hopes that she will favor us with colder weather. We can expect much of the absurdity across the Atlantic to happen here, unless this Congress returns to Americans the freedom to choose a real light bulb.
/ 39 / EDITORIALS
/ 40 /
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MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011

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