JustOneMinute

John Edwards Is Ready To Tell Us His Secret

He hears dead people. Live ones, too, according to the NY Times:

In 1985, a 31-year-old North Carolina lawyer named John Edwards stood before a jury and channeled the words of an unborn baby girl.

Referring to an hour-by-hour record of a fetal heartbeat monitor, Mr. Edwards told the jury: "She said at 3, `I'm fine.' She said at 4, `I'm having a little trouble, but I'm doing O.K.' Five, she said, `I'm having problems.' At 5:30, she said, `I need out.' "

But the obstetrician, he argued in an artful blend of science and passion, failed to heed the call. By waiting 90 more minutes to perform a breech delivery, rather than immediately performing a Caesarean section, Mr. Edwards said, the doctor permanently damaged the girl's brain.

"She speaks to you through me," the lawyer went on in his closing argument. "And I have to tell you right now — I didn't plan to talk about this — right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She's inside me, and she's talking to you."

The jury came back with a $6.5 million verdict in the cerebral palsy case, and Mr. Edwards established his reputation as the state's most feared plaintiff's lawyer.

OK, John. That puts a whole new wrinkle on your attempts to appeal to crossover voters.

Now, the Edwards camp will consider this from the Times piece to be a cheap shot:

An examination of Mr. Edwards's legal career also opens a window onto the world of personal injury litigation. In building his career, Mr. Edwards underbid other lawyers to win promising clients, sifted through several dozen expert witnesses to find one who would attest to his claims, and opposed state legislation that would have helped all families with brain-damaged children and not just those few who win big malpractice awards.

His skill in finding friendly witnesses should help him in evaluating intel from the CIA (oops, that's why we have Dick Cheney!). But, although his opposition to state legislation to help all kids with cerebral palsy sounds very self-serving, without more details about the proposed program it is hard to know.

UPDATE: Andy Borowitz has a "strong on defense" nominee. Hat tip to Roger Simon and Glenn Reynolds.

An Emerging Success Story For Bush

Nick Kristof on sex slave trafficking:

...I traveled to Cambodia because I had been shocked by what I had seen there in the 1990's. I've covered wars, but nothing shook me more than interviews with 13-year-old girls who had been sold by their parents or kidnapped by neighbors.

These days the girls are 17 rather than 13, fewer are beaten or physically imprisoned, and Cambodia's success in fighting AIDS with condoms means that sexual slavery is not necessarily a death sentence.

The progress in Cambodia is mirrored by strides elsewhere, from South Korea to Romania and the Dominican Republic. And most of the credit goes to the Bush administration, particularly its State Department's trafficking office, which is shaming and threatening countries into confronting traffickers.

President Bush's policies toward women have often been callous — cutting off, for example, funds for safe childbirth programs in Africa because of ideological disputes with sponsoring groups. But on trafficking, this administration has led the way.

Sex trafficking has become a hot issue among conservative evangelical Christians, and they have successfully pushed Mr. Bush to embrace the issue. He gave a landmark speech to the U.N. in September, and Colin Powell is moving the issue forward in a commendably bipartisan way. The new director of the trafficking office, John Miller, has bludgeoned foreign governments, telling them to curb trafficking or face sanctions.

And on the domestic front, we see this in The Corner:

In light of your postings today regarding Bush's work on sex-slavery, here is a link to an AP article published at sfgate.com (the on-line site of the San Francisco Chronicle) about a succesful prosecution of a slavery ring in the US.

In particular, I was impressed by the end of the article: "Attorney General John Ashcroft said Thursday said busting this ring and a forced-labor ring in American Samoa showed prosecutors were making inroads against human trafficking...

The Corner gets results.

MORE: Rich Lowry from Oct. 2003. The key legislation, "Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000" was passed in, well, 2000. Rich Lowry credits Sen. Sam Brownback (R., Kan.) and Rep. Congressman Chris Smith of NJ. Pres. Clinton got on board, although Lowry says he was not driving the bus.

Here is the required annual report from the State Dept.; the recent NY Times magazine cover story by Peter Landesman; and links to Jack Shafer's skepticism about Landesman.

The House Of Smoke And Mirrors

To Cut Deficit, Bush Delays Tax Change, Iraq Funds

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush will leave out of his budget widely anticipated Iraq-related costs and an expensive tax system overhaul to meet his election-year goal of cutting the federal deficit, congressional aides and budget analysts said on Friday.

Bush must think we are as stupid as some of us think he is.

Jonathan Adler of NRO presents a brief list of disappointments. Add the SOTU, the major money for marriage counseling, and the teeth-pulling on the WMD intelligence problem, and you start to get a list. Andrew Sullivan had suggested that the Republicans campaign against Kerry as someone who is all over the map. Don't psychologists call this projection?

Here is the WSJ on the budget:

House Republicans are meeting today in Philadelphia for their annual retreat, and the news is that the leadership is facing a revolt from conservatives over runaway spending. Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader Tom DeLay would do well to listen lest they start losing votes, not to mention credibility with voters.

Elected as the party of limited government 10 years ago, the Republican imperium is starting to show signs of ideological dry rot. Creative gerrymandering, especially in Texas, has made it likely the GOP will keep control of the House for the rest of this decade. But the paradox of this political ascendancy is that it has encouraged too many Members to trade in the principles that propelled them to power for pork-barrel spending and poll-driven incumbent protection.

...What would certainly help is a President who chose to lead. The Bush Administration seems to think that voters care more about tax cuts than they do spending. This is true enough when times are good. But spending represents a claim on taxes, and Republicans will end up having to raise them down the road if they don't slow the growth of spending now.

Extensive fair-use excerpts follow. We will resume our regularly scheduled Kerry-bashing on Monday.

UPDATE: What a difference a day makes. Two headlines:

Bush OK's Independent Probe of Prewar Intelligence, Dana Milbank and Dana Priest of the WaPo;

Bush Seeks to Soothe Republican Worries on Budget, Reuters.

My worry lines are fading as if botoxed.

Sen. Kerry Faces His Detractors

The once-craggy Senator met his accusers head-on:

Democratic front-runner John Kerry denied yesterday he's had Botox injections or cosmetic work done on his increasingly taut face.

..."Do you categorically deny the reports that you have used Botox or other kind of cosmetic surgery or cosmetic enhancements to your appearance?" Kerry was asked on WRKO radio yesterday.

"Absolutely. I've never even heard of it," Kerry said. "I've never even heard of it."

Oh, please. Cherchez la femme:

Kerry's wife Teresa told Elle magazine last year that she gets regular Botox shots.

"In fact," she said, "I need another one. Soon."

Now, is this really news? YES! And not just because we delight in bashing Carefree Kerry.

The Senator orchestrated a photo-op hockey game last week. The intended message - he is youthful, vigorous, and (dare we say it?) Kennedyesque. As a hockey player in New England, he is also a man of the people.

Well, then. If Botox is part of the spin, reporters need (desperately!) to get behind the spin. Republicans are going to attack Kerry as a phony two-faced elitist poser. If the senator is hooked on botox, that would fit the story line quite nicely. The Senator is championing health care reform - will botox treatment be covered under his proposal? His elderly constituents may wonder.

Possible pitfalls for Reps on the attack: every newsie in television "journalism" has either had botox, or considered it. Beware a backlash. More frightening is the possibility that Sen. Kerry or one of his many supporters will launch into a lecture on "lookism" and "ageism" in America. The President will be challenged to define his position on hiring ugly people, the photos of every member of the cabinet will be placed on "HotOrNot", and our normally degraded political process will become completely degenerate.

And Kerry may counterattack vigorously! Well, as vigourously as an old geezer at death's door can manage, anyway. Possible riposte - "these botox rumors are coming from the same folks who told you about Saddam's WMDs!"

Let the battle be joined. The Reps win if they can coin a sufficiently clever nickname to hang on Botox John. "Carefree Kerry" may be too subtle. "Formerly Craggy Kerry" does not roll off the tongue. Help me!

MORE: Yes, I know that discussing botox is waaay outside of the Krugman Journalistic Restrictions. Better and better.

Mickey On The Ledge (Again)

Fresh from his triumph with the Kerry Withdrawal Contest, Mickey may be back on the window ledge with his "Krugman Gotcha Contest" from last November:

It finally looks as if the economy is recovering as opposed to spiraling into a Japan-style pit of deflation and permanent Bush-induced joblessness. That means the long-awaited Krugman Gotcha Contest can begin. A prize, to be announced, for the kf reader who comes up with the gloom-and-doom opinion from the fabled Princeton economist's recent writings that now looks the most embarrassingly wrong.

We are keeping hope alive, but the first projection for fourth quarter GDP came in at the low end of forecasts. Kerry resurgent, Krugman ascendant? The weekend cannot get here quickly enough.

MORE: Snow in Europe. No, not more global warming, our Treasury Secretary, forecasting 4% growth for 2004.

Josh Marshall, Psychic Pundit King

From the eerily prescient Talking Points Memo, Nov 8, 2001, describing the consulting firm made famous by Joe Trippi, formerly of the Dean campaign:

...it's not so much that Trippi, McMahon & Squier always rep Democrats. It's more like they just always rep losers.

I encourage all other pundits and pretenders to lay down their swords. Or pens. Keyboards. We have experienced shock and awe.

MORE: "We suck, but right now we're the greatest team in baseball."

The Spring Offensive

We will put Dr. Drezner up top for this, since he has all the links. From the Atlanta Journal Constitution, we find:

Determined to capture or kill Osama bin Laden after two years of fruitless searching, U.S. troops are mustering for a spring offensive along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, Defense Department and other officials said Wednesday. The new operation comes as the administration debates whether to press Pakistan harder to allow the United States to take the fight into its territory.

Defense officials said the offensive, first reported by the Chicago Tribune, will resemble military operations launched in spring 2003 and 2002 to capture or kill Taliban and al-Qaida fighters leaving winter bivouacs. The terrorist leader and some of his top aides are believed to be operating out of Pakistan's Waziristan area or nearby in the mountainous border region between the two nations with the assistance or protection of tribal leaders in areas that are essentially off-limits to Pakistani law enforcement officials.

Musharraf of Pakistan may not be fully on board as yet:

U.S. officials stressed Wednesday that no military operations would be carried out inside Pakistan without Musharraf's approval. At a news conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, the Pakistani president ruled out such operations.

"No sir, that is not a possibility at all. It's a very sensitive issue," Musharraf said, when asked if he would consider allowing U.S. troops to search for bin Laden in Pakistan. "There is no room for any foreign elements coming and assisting us, we don't need any assistance."

Uhh, what else can he say at this point?

We will all be delighted if this operation succeeds. Yes, the Presidential election may, at that point, be merely a formality, but it will be fun to get Howard Dean's reaction to the question of whther we are safer with Osama bin Laden in custody.

And, in the spirit of "something for everyone", we note this tidbit:

Officials said Thursday that the capture in December of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has freed resources to press the hunt for bin Laden and his fighters.

"There's an obvious ability now to refocus human assets on a far grander scale," the U.S. official said. "It's logical that the hunter-killer types would now be turned loose to deal with this more aggressively."

Yes, Iraq was a distraction from Al Qaeda. No, the "we are a superpower, we can pursue both goals at once" meme was never wholly accurate. That is separate, of course, from the question of whether Saddam was a worthy target in his own right, to which the editorial staff of JustOneMinute says, unanimously, yes.

File Under "No Kidding"

From USA Today:

...Republicans plan to charge that Kerry is too far to the left. Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie has attacked him as "out of sync" with most voters, and a strategy emerged to go after Kerry on what Democrats see as his strength: national security.

In a speech to the Republican winter meeting today, Gillespie plans to attack Kerry's past votes to cut intelligence budgets. The votes "do not support his assertion that his approach to national security will make us safer as a nation," Gillespie said in an interview.

Kerry's idea of cutting the CIA budget in 1997 is going to be painted as bone-headedly foolish. Which it was.

MORE: Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard, reprinted by CBS News:

On "Fox News Sunday," Kerry also was forced to explain his conflicting positions on gay marriage and the CIA.

...On the CIA, Kerry sponsored a bill to cut $1.5 billion from the budget for intelligence gathering. Then after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, he asked why America's intelligence wasn't better. His explanation: He wanted the CIA to devote more money to human intelligence and less to technical means. He sought, he explained, "to change the culture of our intelligence gathering." He didn't explain, however, how slashing the CIA budget would achieve that.

MORE: Sen. Kerry, May 1, 1997, introducing into the Congressional Record an article by Sen. Moynihan.

I hope Sen. Kerry is comfortable with having said "Our covert agencies have converted themselves to channels for drugs." This was back when the CIA was allegedly smuggling dope for the Contras.

Saddam Hussein And The "Oil For Friends" Bribery Case

The InstaPundit has noted this, and we will clip from the Boston Globe:

BAGHDAD -- Iraq's Governing Council ordered an investigation yesterday into charges former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein bought the support of foreign politicians and organizations with millions of barrels of oil.

...The independent Baghdad newspaper al-Mada earlier published a list it said was based on Oil Ministry documents showing 46 individuals, companies, and organizations inside and outside Iraq who were given millions of barrels of oil.

Chaderji said he believed the newspaper's list was genuine. An official assessment will be left to the minister of justice.

...The newspaper's list included members of Arab ruling families, religious organizations, politicians and parties from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Sudan, China, Austria, France, Italy, and other countries.

My advice is, let's be careful here. Arms inspector David Kay recently explained that a lot of Saddam's weapons programs were fantasies put together by corrupt scientists and generals to fleece Saddam. If that was the prevailing ethos, shouldn't we suspect the existence of a fantasy bribe scheme as well? Tell Saddam the oil has been diverted to Jacques Chirac, when in fact it was sent to your cousin. And how is Saddam going to verify the pay-off - call Jacques, who will of course deny it?

I presume some of the diversions, such as to the PLO, really happened. As to the rest, we will see.

UPDATE: I just heard Peter Jennings of ABC News do the 5 PM radio promo for the evening news. He led with this story, and the only indication of skepticism was a perfunctory denial from George Galloway of England. ABC News has apparently seen the documents, and I hope they are not embarassing themselves. Presumably the evening broadcast will have more; currently, I am only finding the Reuters story at their website.

MORE: Here is the story by Brian Ross which aired on Thursday night. Chirac fans will focus on this:

According to the document, France was the second-largest beneficiary, with tens of millions of barrels awarded to Patrick Maugein, a close political associate and financial backer of French President Jacques Chirac.

Maugein, individually and through companies connected to him, received contracts for some 36 million barrels. Chirac's office said it was unaware of Maugein's deals, which Maugein told ABCNEWS are perfectly legal.

Each contract was worth roughly $0.50 per barrel, so this is $18 Million. So, he told ABC News it was legal - that is a long way from denying that it happened. Wow.

The NY Post has this:

Patrick Maugein, head of the oil firm Soco International - and reputedly a confidant of French President Jacques Chirac - denied receiving 25 million barrels of Iraqi oil as a bribe.

"It is delirious and absolutely impossible," he said.

Emphasis added, since we love to parse these denials. Did he take the oil as a non-bribe?

CLIPS on Patrick Maugein:

INTELLIGENCE ONLINE: "FRANCE / Patrick Maugein / A lot of people in high places in France are curious about the influence that a 55-year-old businessman, Patrick Maugein, appears to wield with president Jacques Chirac. (...).

Africa Intelligence: "In presenting Soco International's financial results for 2001 on March 20, company chairman Patrick Maugein, who is close to French president Jacques Chirac, laid out the firm's Africa strategy. (...). [Total : 251 Words].

OK, "close to Chirac" seems to be generally accepted.

Developing...

Dean Was Robbed!

ABC News had a jaw-dropping story which I saw, as did a BuzzFlash contributor. The gist - in his famous "I Have A Scream" speech after the Iowa upset, Howard Dean was using a wireless microphone designed to filter out background crowd noises. The televised effect was the very un-Presidential image of a man screaming in an empty room.

However, ABC dug up tapes from amateurs on the scene. In this context, Howard Dean is virtually inaudible, and the scream sounds like someone yelling in Yankee Stadium after a Derek Jeter home run against the Red Sox. Sorry, for non-sports fans, it sounds like a man yelling on a runway while a jetliner takes off behind him - the whole audience was rocking (we saw that in New Hampshire, too) and Dr. Dean is inaudible.

Does it matter? His campaign seems to have collapsed. However, the ABC story may contribute to a sense of victomhood and oppression amongst the Deaniacs, motivating them to fight on.

MORE: CBS News had this in print, at least.