If you’re reading this post from the Washington Monument, get your butt out of there.

UPDATED: Never mind, all clear.

James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute has a column out this week. In it, he attacks Tom DeLay for his non-support of the Palestinians:

It goes without saying that Arab Americans and those concerned with Middle East peace will shed no tears over DeLay’s fall from grace. The Congressman has long been a fierce opponent of all things Palestinian and Arab. In the 1990s he opposed President Clinton’s proposal to provide aid request to the West Bank and Gaza.

So far, so good. Back to Zogby, who just happens to be a member of the DNC Executive Committee:

When President Bush proposed $20 million to support Palestinians elections, DeLay reprogrammed the money to pay an Israeli utility bill. He even forced humiliating conditions on President Bush’s recent aid designed to strengthen Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Those humiliating conditions included completely unreasonable elements like "quit buying brand-new Audis while your people starve" and "stop blowing up buses." Let’s hear again from Zogby:

De Lay, who once called himself "an Israeli of the heart," also rejected President Bush’s support of a Palestinian state, calling it a "sovereign state of terrorists," and he even denied that there is any such thing as "occupied territory."

How dare Tom DeLay suggest that the Palestinians are not peace-loving people?

The outcry against Miers has me concerned that it is a herald of a future and coming schism in the Republican Party.

I understand that there are some legitimate RHINO’s that need to be hunted down and put out to pasture.  I’m with the rest of LST calling for their collective hide.

However, this howling of disrespect at Harriet Miers has me concerned. I hope I can articulate it, please be patient…..

As we all know, the Liberals could not pass their agenda legitimately through elections, discussion, voting and passing of laws. So they took over the Courts to systematically enact their agenda. The way they did it was subtle and sophisticated. I don’t think we have appreciated just how much we have bought it hook, line and sinker.  They did it this way:

We have person “X” here.  They are an outstanding legal scholar and pre-emanate in their field of law.  Just about anyone that is knowledgeable in this field, knows about this person and how really, really absurdly smart they are in the law. They write and lecture extensively about the law.  They eat and dream about the law. So given all of this ridiculous, obscenely huge knowledge base they posses, voting against them for Supreme Court Judge, or any Judge for that matter, just shows how stupid YOU really are, because after all, we all want the really, REALLY Best, of the Best, of the Best, on the bench.

What wasn’t said was how wacko Liberal person “X” was.  But, that was not the consideration; were they qualified was the question.  The answer was absolutely of course they were outrageously qualified; they were the very, very Best, of the Best. So they were voted in. 

Our problems with the Court System today, stem from this arrangement of picking Jurists.

Now Conservatives and Republican politicians have fallen into this trap.  No one likes to be outdone by the smart ass down the street. You can do one of two things to beat them: 1. you can beat them at their own game or 2. you can just beat them.

GWB took option 1 with Justice Roberts.  He is trying to take option 2 with Miers. 

As for how he was going to win with option 2 with Miers? I think Sun Tzu sums it up quite nicely in his millennium old book, The Art of War:

***To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence.

The problem with GWB is he did not know the true identity his “enemy” in this case and they (“true conservatives") wanted a fight. A bloody, no holds barred, thrilla in Manilla, fight. (They wanted Chuckie Schummer in a headlock begging "uncle" and Kennedy begging for his next martini as it was held over his head, just out of his reach..) Since they didn’t get one in the Senate floor, they are now going after the President.

They should be reserving this desire to fight, defeat, humiliate and give out “turbo wedgies” to the real enemy in all of this: John McCain and the rest of the gutless wonders in the Senate. You know, the “Heroic 14” that kept GWB from being able to count on his ground war in the Senate to bring him victory.

In the meantime, the National Review, Charles Krauthammer, and Bill Kristol have been unrelentingly, negative in their attacks on Meirs. Krauthammer and Kristol have even gone so far as to suggest that either Miers withdraws her own nomination or GWB admit his mistake and do it for her.

If the Miers nomination is withdrawn by GWB especially, you are not going to get anyone on the bench except for Souter’s clone. See my point about McCain above and add in the fact that the Democrats would smell severe weakness and pull themselves together long enough to capitalize on it.

The Miers nomination is not the end of the Conservative take back of the Court System.  Even if she were one of the favorites backed by National Review, Krauthammer or Kristol, that fact would remain the same. The take back of the Court System will not be completed with this nomination. Nor will it be completed with the next nomination. Or the next.  It will be completed when 80% or more of the judges in the entire Federal Court System, embrace the idea that they are not the law-makers; instead, they are a co-equal in the balance of power.

That will be a while from now.

In the meantime, we need to pull ourselves together, and start getting ready for the long-war. Just like in the fight against terrorism.

Or, we will fail as a movement.

If that happens, get ready for another Clinton in the Whitehouse.

***To learn more about his strategy, may I suggest this reading on MOOSEMUSS.

Remember little Elian Gonzalez? He was the young Cuban boy found floating off the Florida coast in an inner tube nearly six years ago. His mother and others had perished at sea in an attempt to reach the United States from Castro’s Cuba. The boy became the center of a struggle to return him to Cuba from the custody of relatives in Miami.

Elian is now 11 years old, and has begun appearing in the public eye. KPRC-TV’s Associated Press story calls Elian “Cuba’s youngest celebrity.” There are some hints as to what Elian’s life is now like:

Elian lives with his father, stepmother and younger half siblings in a home protected from the press by security guards.
Authorities also keep journalists from Elian’s classroom at his middle school, where children in mustard-colored uniforms walk between two-story, blue-and-white buildings on a cozy open-air campus.

Cozy?

But while Elian has been sheltered in Cardenas, with Cuban officials saying they want the boy to have as normal a life as possible, he has been paraded at official events, often sitting in the front row next to his father Juan Miguel, now a Cuban lawmaker.

They have lawmakers in Cuba?

[During a speech] Elian thanked Cubans and Americans for fighting for his return to the island at the televised event, which commemorated the fifth anniversary of his being snatched from his Miami relatives’ home by armed U.S. federal agents.

In August, Cuban television showed Elian under Castro’s arm as the Cuban leader celebrated his 79th birthday. On Sunday, the boy called the president a friend and father in an unprecedented one-on-one interview aired on CBS’s "60 Minutes." He also said he has a girlfriend and hopes to become a computer scientist.

They have computers in Cuba?

While the Left will no doubt gush about how little Elian is getting along, and how happy he is at being returned to Cuba, those who understand communism have a clearer view of what is going on:

"It’s propaganda, the same as everything else," said Ninoska Perez-Castellon, spokeswoman for the Miami-based Cuban Liberty Council. "He is a little pawn, a monkey on a chain every time Castro has some activity."

There are doubts about the long-term future of Elian’s use as a political tool, however:

[Damian] Fernandez, a Cuban-American, said he believes the island’s government will keep using Elian as a "symbol that can still rally Cuban nationalism." But the boy, Fernandez said, is also at the age when Cuban children start questioning the system.
"We’ll have to see Elian at 15," he said.

Those who opposed returning the boy to Cuba six years ago will not be surprised that Castro has seized the opportunity to use him for political purposes. One can only hope that the aged Castro’s blight will soon be removed from both boy and country.

Well, it’s official: the Nobel Peace Prize is completely meaningless. You see, those Norwegian geniuses have decided to award the Prize to Mohamad El-Baradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency:

In the nuclear non-proliferation regime, it is the IAEA which controls that nuclear energy is not misused for military purposes, and the Director General has stood out as an unafraid advocate of new measures to strengthen that regime.

Okay. Let’s see how ol’ Mohamed is doing. He assumed his post in 1997. Here are a few highlights during his tenure:

• May 1998: Pakistan and India each successfully test nuclear weapons.
• October 2002: North Korea acknowledges its nuclear program.
• December 2002: North Korea kicks out international inspectors.
• January 2003: North Korea withdraws from Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
• June 2003: El-Baradei declares that Iran has failed to report nuclear activities, but does not declare a breach of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
• August 2003: North Korea and Iran agree to jointly develop long-range ballistic missiles.
• June 2004: Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi says "Iran has a high technical capability and has to be recognised by the international community as a member of the nuclear club."
• July 2004: Iran breaks IAEA seals on uranium-enriching equipment and gets back to work.
• February 2005: North Korea announces it has the bomb.

Good work, Mohamed. I quote Gordon Gekko in Wall Street:

"If this guy owned a funeral parlor, no one would die!"

Dr. Krauthammer weighs in on the Miers nomination, concluding that …

By choosing a nominee suggested by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and well known only to himself, the president has ducked a fight on the most important domestic question dividing liberals from conservatives: the principles by which one should read and interpret the Constitution. For a presidency marked by a courageous willingness to think and do big things, this nomination is a sorry retreat into smallness.

Additional worthy insights provided along the way.

It must be nice to win a Pulitzer or Oscar or Emmy.

But I doubt that any of those professional awards could equal the thrill I got upon realizing just how badly LST, KSEV and you– our readers and listeners– have managed to piss-off the Texas Association of Counties in general, and their chief public relations flack Jim Lewis in particular.

All excerpted text courtesy the Sept/Oct ‘05 edition of TAC’s County Magazine, page 49 (pdf); emphasis in bold added by LST.

HEADLINE: "Wednesday Morning Showdown in Montgomery County", by Jim Lewis

On the surface, it appeared to be a political public relations disaster in the making.

In the backyard of the libertarian radio station that has harped for years on the need for lowered appraisal caps, a Saturday morning Houston Chronicle article laid out how Montgomery County Commissioners Court, flush with $10 million in increased revenues, was about to adopt the same tax rate as the year before. And, the paper noted, "With the tax rate remaining the same, a public hearing will not be necessary."

Although I’m guessing you meant it as a slur, it’s nice to have my strong libertarian streak finally recognized.

Also, I just love the use of the word "harped"– me detects an "edge" to this piece one does not typically find in trade-association publications.

In an area of the state hyper-sensitive about "appraisal creep," this scenario looked like red meat for the hungry anti-government dogs at KSEV radio in Houston, in particular talk show hosts Ed Hendee (mornings) and Dan Patrick (afternoons). Sure enough, the next day a Weblog "published" by Patrick posted a highly satiric criticism of County Judge Alan Sadler’s comments in the paper:

"Red Meat for the Hungry Anti-Government Dogs at KSEV Radio".

Dude– that is so going on our advertising solicitation materials.

A little lame not to specifically name LoneStarTimes.com as the "weblog", but I’ll let it slide this once.

(more…)

On April 12, 2005, a herd of 36 RINOs led by so-called Republican Fred Hill voted to kill a measure in the state house that would have capped property appraisal increases to 5% annually (half of the 10% now enjoyed by tax-and-spend bureaucrats).

Have at it.