The Republican nomination for US Senate in Virginia

From the Washington Times:

A sharply split Virginia Republican Convention nominated former Gov. Jim Gilmore to run for the seat of retiring Republican Senator John Warner.

Mr. Gilmore won 50.3 percent of the delegate votes today over conservative Bob Marshall, the Virginia General Assembly's most ardent foe of abortion and gay marriage.

The slim margin - about 65 votes, less than a percentage point - leaves Mr. Gilmore to face popular, well-funded Democrat Mark Warner in the fall election in a state where the GOP lost the past two gubernatorial races and the 2006 Senate election.

Mr. Gilmore assailed Mr. Warner in his speech as a tax-prone "limousine liberal" who will say anything to get elected. He ignored Mr. Marshall in his remarks to the approximately 3,500 delegates.

"He will go to the Senate and vote with the liberal Democrats who are out of touch with the nation," Mr. Gilmore said. "Mark Warner doesn't care what you have to pay for a tank of gas."

Virginia's US Senate race

Some polling data on a "Warner v. Gilmore" race, courtesy of Political Wire:

A new Virginia Commonwealth University poll finds many more Virginians have a favorable view of former Gov. Mark Warner (D) than former Gov. Jim Gilmore (R) as the two prepare to face off in a U.S. Senate race.

Warner's favorability is at 47%, while Gilmore's is only 23%.

Said pollster Cary Funk: "These results suggest that Jim Gilmore will need to re‐introduce himself to Virginia voters if he is the GOP candidate for the Senate. As the contest for the U.S. Senate seat begins in earnest, Mark Warner has a clear advantage in terms of name recognition. And, those with an opinion about Warner tend to think well of him by a margin of nearly 5 to 1. That compares with a positive to negative image of about 1.5 to 1 for Gilmore."

Senator McCain

Some interesting new articles about John McCain:
!) The NYTimes has an ongoing article series on the major candidates for president, called "The Long Run." The most recent article looks at McCain's work as Navy liaison to Congress, the senators who were influential to him and his decision to run for public office.
2) The New York Review of Books offers a negative critique of the Senator.
3) The AP has an article on McCain's father (a four star admiral).

Bush whacking

For presidential mouth piece Scott McClellan has a mouthful to say about his former boss. See Politico.

State Courts and Elections

Fascinating article about the election of state judges in America, as compared with France and other countries.
A blurb:

Last month, Wisconsin voters did something that is routine in the United States but virtually unknown in the rest of the world: They elected a judge.

The vote came after a bitter $5 million campaign in which a small-town trial judge with thin credentials ran a television advertisement falsely suggesting that the only black justice on the state Supreme Court had helped free a black rapist. The challenger unseated the justice with 51 percent of the vote, and will join the court in August.

The election was unusually hard-fought, with caustic advertisements on both sides, many from independent groups.

Contrast that distinctively American method of selecting judges with the path to the bench of Jean-Marc Baissus, a judge on the Tribunal de Grand Instance, a district court, in Toulouse, France. He still recalls the four-day written test he had to pass in 1984 to enter the 27-month training program at the École Nationale de la Magistrature, the elite academy in Bordeaux that trains judges in France.

“It gives you nightmares for years afterwards,” Judge Baissus said of the test, which is open to people who already have a law degree, and the oral examinations that followed it. In some years, as few as 5 percent of the applicants survive. “You come out of this completely shattered,” Judge Baissus said.

The question of how best to select judges has baffled lawyers and political scientists for centuries, but in the United States most states have made their choice in favor of popular election. The tradition goes back to Jacksonian populism, and supporters say it has the advantage of making judges accountable to the will of the people. A judge who makes a series of unpopular decisions can be challenged in an election and removed from the bench.

DNC

Maybe Obama is raking in the cash, but the Democratic National Committee is having problems. See the WaPo.

VA is in PLAY!

Game on! say the Washington Post.
It's ON in Virginia! Obama and McCain have both mentioned that their candidacies would change the electoral maps by putting different states in play. It's too soon to guess for sure who this change will benefit, but having VA in play is a definite benefit to Obama. Me thinks McCain will definitely benefit in other states, if not because of his own candidacy, then because people may not care for Obama. Time will tell.

President Jimmy Carter's go-to guy during his presidency was Hamilton Jordan, who just passed away. Jordan helped with elections and served as Carter's chief of staff, though they tried to avoid calling the job "chief of staff" during the Carter years (to appear different than the Haldeman/Haig bosses of the Nixon years). Anyway, Jordan wrote one of the most interesting and readable memoirs I have come across. Crisis: The Last Days of the Carter Presidency. More about Jordan from Politico.

The Virginia Trio

According to Politico, Virginia has three prominent Democrats who all get talked up as potential running mates for Sen. Obama. Governor Tim Kaine, US Senator Jim Webb, and former governor and US senate candidate Mark Warner.

About Kaine:

Kaine is thought to be the least likely of the three to end up as Obama’s running mate. He is not considered as able as Warner to deliver the state, and he doesn’t address Obama’s weaknesses on defense policy and national security. Another drawback is that Kaine’s departure would hand Republicans the governorship because Virginia’s lieutenant governor is a Republican, Bill Bolling.

About Warner:

Warner might be the best known of the trio after exploring his own presidential run this election cycle. Elected in 2001 with unusually high support for a Democrat in rural portions of the state, Warner left the governorship four years later with an 80 percent approval rating, making him one of the most popular governors in the commonwealth's history.

“If the goal is to carry Virginia, the best pick would be Mark Warner,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.

Warner’s moderate approach and unique entrepreneurial background — he earned tens of millions in the telecommunications industry — would likely appeal to swing voters and business-minded independents who have leaned Republican. And his NASCAR politics and proven ability to win rural votes could help offset Obama’s weaknesses among rural and small-town voters.

About Webb:

Webb is a former Marine and Ronald Reagan’s secretary of the Navy, and his military experience would compensate — as much as a vice president can — for Obama’s national security inexperience. Webb, a decorated Vietnam War veteran like John McCain, would also offer Democrats a clear and unified contrast to McCain in the debate over the war in Iraq. Both Obama and Webb were against it from the outset.

“Webb really fills Obama’s need for someone who has been around Washington for a long time, is a war hero, clearly understands foreign affairs,” Sabato said. “But I don’t think Webb would turn Virginia.

“It’s a miracle that Webb won at all, and 90 percent was George Allen falling apart,” Sabato added. Allen never recovered from his "macaca" remark about a young opposition campaign volunteer; Webb defeated him by 7,000 votes.

Trouble for McCain?

From the NYTimes:

Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign is in a troubled stretch, hindered by resignations of staff members, a lagging effort to build a national campaign organization and questions over whether he has taken full advantage of Democratic turmoil to present a case for his candidacy, Republicans say.

He was written off as over last summer and he is now the GOP nominee. Me thinks he will be much better off in a few months.

The MOB is out to get Franken, and others

Interesting article on the impact of blogs on Minnesota politics. The Minnesota Organization of Bloggers (MOB) can make it difficult for any politician to loosen up.
Against Dems:

On a laptop at a kitchen table in this cheery Twin Cities suburb, headlines ripping into Al Franken, the satirist whose campaign for the United States Senate is seen as one of the most competitive in the nation, are written up day after day for Minnesota Democrats Exposed, a political blog created by a former Republican Party researcher.

Michael B. Brodkorb, the blog’s creator, has worked on the campaigns of some of this state’s top Republicans. Mr. Brodkorb’s critics say the Web site’s claims, screamed in red uppercase letters, are often breathless, far-fetched and painfully partisan.

But Minnesota Democrats Exposed has dealt several blows to Mr. Franken’s campaign lately: revelations that he owed $25,000 to the State of New York for failing to pay workers’ compensation insurance and that his corporation was in forfeiture in California.

And against incumbent GOP Senator Coleman:

Eric Pusey’s liberal-leaning mnblue, for instance, tracks Mr. Coleman’s moves on a “Weasel Meter.” Some blog live from the smallest of political meetings and the forgotten campaign stops. Enough of these writers have cropped up here now to make a Minnesota Organization of Bloggers, better known here as the Mob. “We’ve kind of got a center of gravity going on up here,” said Mitch Berg, one in a group that started a True North Web site in 2007.

Govs don't have it easy

Here's a few governors who don't have it to easy at home, particularly the Nevada gov mentioned in the last paragraph (from Stateline.org):

Colorado knows how to party… its first family, anyway. When August Ritter III, the eldest son of Gov. Bill Ritter (D), turned 22 in April, he had a few friends over to the mansion. They marked the occasion by sucking beer from a pony keg, waving a ceremonial Colorado flag in the historic chambers and photographing the whole affair for friends on Facebook, The Denver Post reports. There were some limits. All were legally old enough to drink alcohol, they weren’t allowed to drive drunk, and the Ritters laid down some rules, their son said in an email invitation: “1. No throwing up. 2. No sexy time.”

Ronald Reagan was the last California governor to live on taxpayers’ property, but that doesn’t mean the home of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) is out of the public eye. The Sacramento Bee asked the celebrity governor why there were campaign signs supporting John McCain and Barack Obama, Republican and Democratic U.S. senators, respectively, for president. Schwarzenegger explained: “My wife (Maria Shriver) came out and endorsed Obama … and my daughter and her put the sign up in front of the gate. So I couldn’t have that sign alone, so I had to go and tell my guys, ‘Get me a McCain sign, we’ve got to put one right next to it.’ So we have both.”

In neighboring Nevada, Gov. Jim Gibbons (R) was forced out of the governor’s mansion by his wife, Dawn, while they go through a divorce. Now Dawn Gibbons is offering to let the governor come back, if she can stay in separate living quarters, writes the Reno Gazette Journal. Her attorney tried to alleviate concerns that the couple might be too close for comfort. “There’s staff and security that could referee any dispute,” he told the paper.

Supreme Court

Interesting article by Linda Greenhouse, the NYTimes's resident SCOTUS smarty. Apparently the Supreme Court has fewer 5-4 split decisions than it did last year. Here's a long excerpt:

It would be too simplistic an explanation to say that the liberal justices, at least some of them, have simply given up. Something deeper seems to be at work. Each of those three cases might have received a harder-edged, more conclusively conservative treatment at the hands of the same five-member majority that controlled the last term.

Instead, the lethal injection and voter ID decisions hewed closely to the facts of each case. Kentucky’s lethal injection protocol passed muster, but the court left open the possibility that another state’s practice might not. The voter ID challenge reached the court on a nonexistent record, so perhaps a stronger case could be made at a later time. Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion in the child pornography case construed the statute so narrowly as to allay the First Amendment concerns of Justices Stevens and Breyer and win their full concurrence.

So perhaps there was a bit of movement on both sides — not simple liberal capitulation, but liberals using their limited leverage to exact some modest concessions as the price of helping the conservatives avoid another parade of 5-to-4 decisions.

With the conservative bloc so clearly in control, what leverage could the liberals possibly have? Recall the pledge that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. made, both in his 2005 confirmation hearing and in the early months of his tenure, to seek consensus and to lead the court in speaking in a modest judicial voice. That was not how the last term looked, as the majority took aim at precedents and appeared to have in mind an agenda much more ambitious than simply calling balls and strikes.

Indeed, much of the commentary on the court’s performance during the last term was harsh, and it came not only from liberals. Judge Richard A. Posner, the conservative icon who sits on the federal appeals court in Chicago, offers some pointed and unusually personal criticism of Chief Justice Roberts in his new book, “How Judges Think,” published this year by Harvard University Press. The chief justice’s self-description during his confirmation hearing as a simple baseball umpire might have been a “tactical error” for one who evidently “aspires to remake significant areas of constitutional law,” Judge Posner writes, adding:

“The tension between what he said at his confirmation hearing and what he is doing as a justice is a blow to Roberts’s reputation for candor and a further debasement of the already debased currency of the testimony of nominees at judicial confirmation hearings.”

Such words from Richard Posner would cause any member of the court, let alone a relatively new and young chief justice who undoubtedly admires him, to swallow hard.

The court’s modulated tone may also stem from the fact that this is an election year. Lee Epstein, a political scientist and law professor at Northwestern University, said that political scientists had long observed an “election effect” on the court that results in more consensus and fewer 5-to-4 decisions during an election year than in the preceding term.

“Of course, lots of things could explain this, but the pattern is pretty interesting,” Ms. Epstein said in an e-mail exchange, adding that the justices “probably don’t want to provoke controversy, or become an issue, during the election — especially an election with a highly uncertain outcome.”

Data, data, data

The competition between both major political parties is - and almost always has been - intense. Now both parties are working hard to acquire tons of data on all Americans so that can better target specific households that they believe will support particular party candidates. It makes sense, even if it's a bit unnerving.
Read this fantastic article at Politico about how the Dems have caught up to the GOP in microtargeting.

A few blurbs:

After years of struggling to catch up to the Republican Party’s sophisticated microtargeting efforts, the Democratic National Committee appears to have come close to parity.

The DNC has now reorganized its data banks into one centralized file that goes a long way toward neutralizing the GOP’s advantage in drilling down and identifying crucial constituencies of voters.

In the past two presidential cycles, the Republican national voter file allowed the party to more efficiently locate, communicate with and galvanize voters. Democrats, by comparison, relied on a disjointed compilation of national and state party data files that varied widely in quality. To boot, said one DNC analyst, many of their files would vanish after each election year.

How it works:

In short, a volunteer signs up. The 25 nearest neighbors who pique the DNC’s interest are then mapped out for the volunteer. The DNC also offers a script to use during canvassing as volunteers go door to door, asking their neighbors the degree of their Democratic support or their support for John McCain. The volunteers asks about their neighbors' top issue interests. The aim is to return and later target each person with a specific script based on their previously identified concerns.

Volunteers are ranked locally for their effectiveness and rewarded with invitations to intraparty conference calls or meetings. They are also encouraged to forward invitations by e-mail to friends or family, mimicking the viral success of social networking websites.

The program, which debuted in Kansas in late April, was expanded to Virginia. The DNC plans to gradually roll out the program nationally by mid-summer.

GI Joes goes Green?

From the Wall Street Journal:

U.S. Military Launches Alternative-Fuel Push --- Dependence on Oil Seen as Too Risky; B-1 Takes Test Flight
By Yochi J. Dreazen
2335 words
21 May 2008
The Wall Street Journal
A1
English
(Copyright (c) 2008, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, N.M. -- With fuel prices soaring, the U.S. military, the country's largest single consumer of oil, is turning into an alternative-fuels pioneer.

In March, Air Force Capt. Rick Fournier flew a B-1 stealth bomber code-named Dark 33 across this sprawling proving ground, to confirm for the first time that a plane could break the sound barrier using synthetic jet fuel. A similar formula -- a blend of half-synthetic and half-conventional petroleum -- has been used in some South African commercial airliners for years, but never in a jet going so fast.

"The hope is that the plane will be blind to the gas," Capt. Fournier said as he gripped the handle controlling the plane's thrusters during the test flight. "But you won't know unless you try."

With oil's multiyear ascent showing no signs of stopping -- crude futures set another record Tuesday, closing at $129.07 a barrel in New York trading -- energy security has emerged as a major concern for the Pentagon.

The U.S. military consumes 340,000 barrels of oil a day, or 1.5% of all of the oil used in the country. The Defense Department's overall energy bill was $13.6 billion in 2006, the latest figure available -- almost 25% higher than the year before. The Air Force's bill for jet fuel alone has tripled in the past four years. When the White House submitted its latest budget request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it tacked on a $2 billion surcharge for rising fuel costs.

Synthetic fuel, which can be made from coal or natural gas, is expensive now, but could cost far less than the current price of oil if it's mass-produced.

Just as important, the military is increasingly concerned that its dependence on oil represents a strategic threat. U.S. forces in Iraq alone consume 40,000 barrels of oil a day trucked in from neighboring countries, and would be paralyzed without it. Energy-security advocates warn that terrorist attacks on oil refineries or tankers could cripple military operations around the world. "The endgame is to wean the dependence on foreign oil," says Air Force Assistant Secretary William Anderson.

Some Pentagon officers have embraced planning around the "peak oil" theory, which holds that the world's oil production is about to plateau due to shrinking resources and limited investment in many of the most oil-rich regions of the Middle East. Earlier this year, they brought Houston investment banker Matthew Simmons to the Pentagon for a presentation on peak oil; he warned that under the theory, "energy security becomes an oxymoron." House Democrats have proposed creating a new Defense Department position to manage the military's overall energy needs.

Alternative fuels are part of a broader -- and not so long ago unlikely -- conversion by the military to "green" initiatives. Producing synthetic fuel itself can cause more pollution than conventional fuel if the emissions aren't captured. But Army engineers also are pushing contractors to build armored vehicles with hybrid engines. The Air Force is experimenting with making engine parts out of lighter metals such as titanium to boost fuel efficiency.

In December, Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas opened one of the largest solar arrays in the U.S., a 140-acre field of 72,000 motorized panels that powers the base and sells energy to nearby communities. The Pentagon is soliciting bids for three similar arrays on other bases. The military even has begun looking into the possibility of building small nuclear-power plants on unused portions of its more remote bases, though it has no firm plans yet.

The Pentagon is hoping its push for alternative energy will feed civilian applications as well. For synthetic fuel, the Air Force is working with aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing Corp. and the Pratt & Whitney engine unit of United Technologies Corp. North American synthetic-fuel processors including Rentech Inc., Baard Energy and Syntroleum Corp. all operate or hope to build synthetic-fuel refineries to feed the military's growing thirst.

"Our goal is to drive the development of a market here in the U.S.," says Mr. Anderson.

Military use of synthetic fuel faces significant obstacles. The energy bill signed into law by President Bush last year included a clause preventing the government from buying the fuel if it emits more pollution than petroleum. Manufacturers have promised to meet that target by recapturing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses produced in refining. Without those efforts, synthetic fuel can emit up to twice as much pollution in refining as conventional petroleum.

Synthetic-fuel prices also need to fall: Formerly stratospheric, they're still about 50% above the soaring prices for petroleum. That should happen if companies can begin operating commercial-scale refineries, says David Berg, a policy analyst who studied the nascent synthetic-fuel market for the Energy Department in December. He estimated that commercial-scale synthetic-fuel refineries would be able to sell artificial fuel for approximately $55 a barrel, less than half the current cost of conventional crude oil.

But many in the field say they're unwilling to invest the necessary billions until they can sign long-term contracts with the government. Right now, the Air Force legally can sign deals only for five years. It has asked the White House's Office of Management and Budget to seek congressional approval for the rule change, but the Bush administration has yet to act on the request, Mr. Anderson says.

"These plants are not likely to get built without government help" such as guaranteed long-term contracts, says Mr. Berg, who recently retired. "And they may not get built even then."

The problems are particularly acute for the Air Force, which uses about 2.6 billion gallons of jet fuel a year, or 10% of the entire domestic market in aviation fuel. The Air Force's fuel costs neared $6 billion last year, up from $2 billion in 2003, even as its consumption fell by more than 10% over the same period because of energy-savings measures, including a campaign to shut off lights and lower thermostats at bases.

The Air Force wants to be able to purchase 400 million gallons of synthetic jet fuel a year by 2016, an amount equal to 25% of its total fuel needs for missions in the continental U.S. This year, it expects to buy slightly more than 300,000 gallons.

The Air Force launched its artificial-fuel initiative in the spring of 2006. Testifying before the Senate that March, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne told lawmakers that "we realize our reliance on petroleum-based fuels must be curtailed." The Air Force gave a small team at its Wright-Patterson base near Dayton, Ohio, the mission of finding a synthetic fuel capable of powering all of the service's fighters, bombers and other planes.

Despite its high-tech connotations, synthetic fuel -- often dubbed "synfuel" for short within the industry -- has been around for decades. The basic technology for transforming coal or natural gas into synthetic fuel was invented by a pair of German researchers, Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch, in the 1920s. The Nazis later used the Fischer-Tropsch process to mass-produce synthetic diesel fuel. During the apartheid-era embargo against South Africa, scientists there tweaked the technology so it could also produce synthetic jet fuel.

The Fischer-Tropsch process transforms a synthetic gas derived from coal or other material into liquid gas. The resulting synthetic fuel is different from biofuel, commonly produced from corn, sugar or other plants. Continental Airlines Inc. has announced plans for an experimental flight using biofuel this spring, which would be the first by a U.S. carrier; Virgin Atlantic also has done some testing.

The Wright-Patterson team oversaw experiments on a wide array of synthetic fuels, but quickly settled on a 50-50 blend of conventional jet fuel -- known as JP-8 -- and artificial fuel made using the Fischer-Tropsch process. That mixture is used in South Africa, where Johannesburg-based Sasol Ltd. is one of the world's biggest synthetic-fuel producers. Air Force officials decided it was the safest combination.

In June 2006, the Air Force agreed to buy 100,000 gallons of artificial fuel from U.S.-based Syntroleum to mix with petroleum for testing. The next month, military engineers bolted an engine from a B-52 bomber to a table at Tinker Air Force base in Oklahoma and ran it for 50 consecutive hours to see how it would perform on the synthetic blend. Engineers detected no differences from conventional fuel.

The Air Force began conducting test flights. In September 2006, a B-52 took off from Edwards Air Force Base in California with two of its eight engines burning the synthetic-fuel blend, the first time a military aircraft had flown on artificial fuel. The plane's performance was the same as if it had flown on conventional fuel, and the Air Force decided to push ahead.

As the Air Force's experimentation increased, so did the involvement of the private sector. Military and civilian aircraft share many parts and are often built by the same companies. The military's Boeing C-17 cargo jet, for instance, uses the same Pratt & Whitney engine as a Boeing 757 passenger plane. Pentagon officials are sharing their research into synthetic fuels with such firms to help civilian companies certify their equipment on the synthetic-fuel blend.

At the military's direction, Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce PLC, Honeywell International Inc. and General Electric Co. have agreed to work together to develop joint specifications for how their engines perform on artificial fuels. Last November, engineers from Pratt & Whitney mounted one of the company's C-17 engines in a high-tech pressure chamber at Arnold Air Force Base in Tennessee and simulated a variety of altitudes and weather conditions to gauge the engine's performance. The tests were "enormously uneventful," says Alan Epstein, the company's vice president of technology and environment -- an encouraging sign.

In late 2006, Baard Energy of Vancouver had said it would build the first commercial-scale synthetic-fuel refinery in the U.S., to be completed in 2012. Chief Executive John Baardson says he decided to roll the dice on the $6 billion plant because of the military's interest. "There isn't a market for this right now, so it takes a little bit of faith to get these plants going," he says. "Knowing the military was out there took one huge risk factor out of the decision-making process."

But other companies haven't followed suit. Syntroleum shut down the plant that produced the fuel used in the B-52 test flight; it had only been designed to produce small samples for experiments. Rentech is building a new refinery in Colorado, but its plant also is meant to only refine minute samples of synthetic fuel.

"It's a chicken and egg thing: We'll build a larger plant if we can get the money to finance it and find customers willing to buy what it produces," says Rick Penning, Rentech's executive vice president of commercial affairs.

The pure synthetic fuel Syntroleum sold the Air Force for the B-52 test flight in 2006 cost almost $20 a gallon. Its price since has come down sharply, but the synthetic product used in the B-1 supersonic test in March still cost $4.62 a gallon. It was mixed with petroleum fuel costing $3.04 a gallon, according to government officials.

The Air Force plans to finish testing all of its planes on the fuel blend by 2011. Last month, it was time to test artificial fuel on supersonic flights. Air Force officials decided to start with a B-1 bomber, a supersonic plane that has been in service since 1986.

The test flight was assigned to Capt. Fournier and a two-man crew from the 9th Bomber Squadron at Dyess Air Force Base, in Abilene, Texas. The unit's Latin motto, "Mors ab Alto," translates into "Death From Above."

On a clear day in March, the three men took off for New Mexico with a reporter aboard. When the B-1 crossed into the closed airspace above the White Sands Missile Range, Capt. Fournier yanked back his throttle and sent the plane climbing almost straight up, throwing the bomber's occupants back into their seats. He then pitched into a steep dive. Pens and other small objects hovered around the cabin, weightless, until the plane leveled off again.

Capt. Fournier fired the plane's afterburners and sent the bomber roaring over the range. A small dial in the cockpit showed that the bomber was flying faster than Mach 1.

Back at Dyess, the crew packed into a small conference room to analyze the flight with a crew of military and civilian officials, including a pair of engineers from GE, which makes the bomber's engines. Capt. Fournier said the plane handled normally at high speeds and on sharp turns. The only difference he noticed was that the synthetic fuel had a different smell than conventional jet fuel. "So it didn't give you the normal buzz?" one of the engineers joked.

With the B-1 certified to fly on the synthetic mix, Maj. Donald Rhymer, the deputy director of the Air Force's alternative-fuels certification office, said the Air Force would soon test fighters such as its workhorse F-16.

"Our biggest litmus test was Capt. Fournier coming out of the B-1 and saying that it was an unremarkable flight," Maj. Rhymer said as the meeting ended. "That's the subjective endorsement we're looking for with all of the planes."

Joe speaks

Sen. Lieberman had a lot to say against Sen. Obama and in favor of Sen. McCain:

Democrats and Our Enemies
By Joseph Lieberman
1202 words
21 May 2008
The Wall Street Journal
A19
English
(Copyright (c) 2008, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?

Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in -- a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom."

This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the Democratic Party. Rather than seeing the Cold War as an ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political philosophy saw America as the aggressor -- a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and "inordinate fear of communism" represented the real threat to world peace.

It argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global conquest. Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down and accord them the respect they deserved. In other words, the Cold War was mostly America's fault.

Of course that leftward lurch by the Democrats did not go unchallenged. Democratic Cold Warriors like Scoop Jackson fought against the tide. But despite their principled efforts, the Democratic Party through the 1970s and 1980s became prisoner to a foreign policy philosophy that was, in most respects, the antithesis of what Democrats had stood for under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy.

Then, beginning in the 1980s, a new effort began on the part of some of us in the Democratic Party to reverse these developments, and reclaim our party's lost tradition of principle and strength in the world. Our band of so-called New Democrats was successful sooner than we imagined possible when, in 1992, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected. In the Balkans, for example, as President Clinton and his advisers slowly but surely came to recognize that American intervention, and only American intervention, could stop Slobodan Milosevic and his campaign of ethnic slaughter, Democratic attitudes about the use of military force in pursuit of our values and our security began to change.

This happy development continued into the 2000 campaign, when the Democratic candidate -- Vice President Gore -- championed a freedom-focused foreign policy, confident of America's moral responsibilities in the world, and unafraid to use our military power. He pledged to increase the defense budget by $50 billion more than his Republican opponent -- and, to the dismay of the Democratic left, made sure that the party's platform endorsed a national missile defense.

By contrast, in 2000, Gov. George W. Bush promised a "humble foreign policy" and criticized our peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.

Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.

Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most Democratic leaders made. When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy -- not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush -- activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.

Far too many Democratic leaders have kowtowed to these opinions rather than challenging them. That unfortunately includes Barack Obama, who, contrary to his rhetorical invocations of bipartisan change, has not been willing to stand up to his party's left wing on a single significant national security or international economic issue in this campaign.

In this, Sen. Obama stands in stark contrast to John McCain, who has shown the political courage throughout his career to do what he thinks is right -- regardless of its popularity in his party or outside it.

John also understands something else that too many Democrats seem to have become confused about lately -- the difference between America's friends and America's enemies.

There are of course times when it makes sense to engage in tough diplomacy with hostile governments. Yet what Mr. Obama has proposed is not selective engagement, but a blanket policy of meeting personally as president, without preconditions, in his first year in office, with the leaders of the most vicious, anti-American regimes on the planet.

Mr. Obama has said that in proposing this, he is following in the footsteps of Reagan and JFK. But Kennedy never met with Castro, and Reagan never met with Khomeini. And can anyone imagine Presidents Kennedy or Reagan sitting down unconditionally with Ahmadinejad or Chavez? I certainly cannot.

If a president ever embraced our worst enemies in this way, he would strengthen them and undermine our most steadfast allies.

A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned "no people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies." This is a lesson that today's Democratic Party leaders need to relearn.

Farming

President Bush vetoes his 10th bill, but it looks like the veto will be overridden. From Reuters:

President George W. Bush vetoed the $289 billion U.S. farm bill on Wednesday despite the likelihood of a congressional override, saying the bill subsidizes multimillionaire farmers while Americans face higher grocery prices.

The bill would expand nutrition programs by $10.3 billion over 10 years, mostly to help poor Americans buy food. It encourages land stewardship and biofuels development.

Leaders of the House of Representatives and Senate Agriculture committees say they have the votes to override the veto, the 10th issued by Bush, yet this week. More than half of Republicans in the House and Senate voted for the farm bill last week.

A two-thirds majority of each chamber is needed in a vote to override a veto. A House vote was possible later on Wednesday, said staff workers. The House passed the farm bill by a 3-to-1 margin and the Senate by 4 to 1.

The MUST-READ article of the 2008 political season

George Packer, author of a great book on Iraq, Assassin's Gate, wrote a fantastically important article for the New Yorker magazine. Packer points out that the conservative movement is in disarray and facing a horrible electoral season. He also reviews a lot of the recent books written by conservatives. Amazingly, many on the right are not happy with President GW Bush and see that their cause is in real trouble. Packer also notes that Obama has some problems to deal with if he is going to capitalize on conservative problems, and McCain may be just the Republican to pull off the upset of a lifetime.

If McCain reigns Supreme (Court)

On potential McCain appointments, a . Toobin wrote a fantastic book about the Supreme Court in The Nine. http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Transportation and gas

Interesting op-ed by the NYTimes resident liberal, Paul Krugman:

Europeans who have achieved a high standard of living in spite of very high energy prices — gas in Germany costs more than $8 a gallon — have a lot to teach us about how to deal with that world.
If Europe’s example is any guide, here are the two secrets of coping with expensive oil: own fuel-efficient cars, and don’t drive them too much.

Of course, the "owning efficient cars" part will be easier: people will mostly take care of that themselves with future purchases. The second party will be far more difficult. Perhaps we can convince Americans that it is ultimately in our own national interests, and it promotes our security, to decrease our addiction to oil.

Doctors have long had an incentive to not be honest when they make mistakes in surgeries and diagnonses: they faced expensive lawsuits. However, the NYTimes reports (and I have seen a similar article in another paper months ago) that many doctors and hospitals are learning that they can avoid lawsuits by using a novel approach to address making mistakes. They can openly admit that mistakes were made to the patients! Research has found that people often wage expensive lawsuits because they are angry and feel mistreated, not because they see the promise of a big payday. One can hope that the medical industry came to the conclusion that it's better to be honest because it's the right thing to do, but even if they are changing because it saves them money, it's still a win-win for both sides. Two further points from the article:
1) The opening story regarding Dr. Das Gupta is particularly compelling and portrays a man who was honest because it was the right thing to do, damn the consequences.
2) This process MAY have been helped along in many states because the governments in those states already put in place caps on legal damages, so that doctors and hospitals could afford to be honest. The article barely touches on that point.
Further proof that regular folks are often not just chasing dollar signs:

Recent studies have found that one of every 100 hospital patients suffers negligent treatment, and that as many as 98,000 die each year as a result. But studies also show that as few as 30 percent of medical errors are disclosed to patients.

Only a small fraction of injured patients — perhaps 2 percent — press legal claims.

Two great articles on the two likely nominees from Sunday's NYTimes:

• Here's a real long piece in the NYTimes Magazine, by journalist Matt Bai. The article is focused on McCain's war stance. Well done article.
  
• Here's a long article on Obama and the two books he wrote. Interesting as well.
  

Black candidates and polling

Important article from Politico:

A phenomenon, known in the trade as 'social desirability bias,' draws its name from Tom Bradley, the former black mayor of Los Angeles who lost the 1982 California gubernatorial election despite leading in final day pre-election polls.

Further,

As the nation’s pollsters convene this weekend in New Orleans at the annual conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, one topic will be the subject of lively debate — the so-called “Bradley effect.”

The Bradley effect, which refers to the propensity of white poll respondents to overstate their support for a black candidate, isn’t the only issue that pollsters, statisticians and academics will discuss and dispute. But it may be one of the most consequential since it stands to significantly skew pre-election poll results in an election where it seems increasingly likely that Barack Obama will emerge as the Democratic party’s presidential nominee.

However,

In states with larger black populations, such as North Carolina and South Carolina — where polls had Obama leading by 9 points, when he actually won by 28 — there’s even been talk of a reverse-Bradley effect, whereby Obama’s support was underreported in pre-election polls.

Transportation in VA

Governor Kaine, to his credit, is not giving up on the issue. Unfortunately for him - and Northern Virginia - he probably will not be successful. WaPo.

California

California's state supreme court removed the ban on gay marriage. The ban was put in place by the voters of California. How will politicians and the public respond?
NYTimes.

Interesting analysis from Gallup on America's public opinion towards the issue:

Even as a majority of Americans believe homosexuality ought to be an "acceptable alternative lifestyle," only 40% currently say marriage between same-sex couples should be legal; 56% disagree.

Another important point to note in the article: Americans have become more accepting of gay lifestyles over the past couple decades.

Congress, Cole, and Conservatives

An interesting and important article in the Washington Post about the difficulties Republicans are having now, most notably obvious in Congress. If the Dems lose the presidential election in November, it will be the greatest lost opportunity perhaps in American political history. I'm not here to say that that is a good or a bad thing, just a real thing. Still, even if Sen. Obama blows his opportunity, it seems that Dems are solidifying their lead in Congress. Picking up three seats from conservative areas is a real sign of coming trouble for the GOP. Here's a few more gems from the WaPo article.

GOP leaders sought yesterday to "re-brand" the party with a new slogan and renewed pledges of fiscal rectitude and limited government. But the slogan -- "The Change You Deserve" -- came under mocking fire, because it parallels Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama's "Change We Can Believe In" motto and it mirrors the advertising slogan for the antidepressant Effexor.

I know this SEEMS bad, but those options are far better than their first choice: Coke is it!

MOST AMAZINGLY IS THIS QUOTE FROM REP. COLE (R-OK):

"I don't see it particularly as an advantage to be in a debate with our president," he said. "It's not for me to second-guess the president of the United States."

Um, isn't that EXACTLY what Congress is SUPPOSED to do? I think it's called CHECKS AND BALANCES. I think the problems of Iraq show that lots MORE second guessing is needed BY both parties, and OF both parties.

Wow!

This is a real change:

Sen. John McCain will pledge this morning that the Iraq war can be won and most American troops can come home by 2013 if he is elected president, a position that closely resembles those of his potential Democratic rivals.

From WaPo's blog, The Trail.

McCain

Here's what I'm sure is a thorough and interesting article on McCain, from the NYTimes Magazine. Bai is awesome!

Edwards speaks

Former Senator, Former Presidential candidate, Former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards endorses Obama. HERE.

It's getting cold in here.

From Reuters:

Polar bears listed as threatened species.

That DOESN'T mean you can pet them!

Take THAT President Bush!

The Democratic leadership is just not satisfied unless they surpass President Bush in every way. And they're succeeding! :

Approval of Congress has dipped below 20% for only the fourth time in the 34 years Gallup has asked Americans to rate the job Congress is doing. Today's 18% score, based on a May 8-11 Gallup Poll, matches the record lows Gallup recorded in August 2007 and March 1992.

Interesting tidbit:

One reason Congress is doing so poorly in the court of public opinion is that rank-and-file Democrats are providing no support cushion for the Democratic-controlled institution. In fact, Democrats are about as likely to approve of Congress as are Republicans: 20% of Republicans approve, versus 16% of Democrats.

Not only is that true today, but it has been the pattern in Gallup's monthly approval ratings of Congress since December 2007. Prior to that -- for thehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif first 10 months of the new Democratic majority in Congress -- Democrats tended to express slightly higher approval than Republicans, averaging seven points higher. However, by contrast, during most of the Republican-led Congress from 2000 to 2006, Republicans' approval of Congress was substantially higher than Democrats'.

Mississippi and the Mrs.

Hillary won HUGE in West Virginia. Is that good or bad for the Democrats' chances for the White House?

Regardless, the Dems got MUCH better news for their hopes of retaining - and solidifying - their control of Congress with this special election pick-up in Mississippi. From WaPo:

A Democrat won the race for a GOP-held congressional seat in northern Mississippi yesterday, leaving the once-dominant House Republicans reeling from their third special-election defeat of the spring.

Travis Childers, a conservative Democrat who serves as Prentiss County chancery clerk, defeated Southaven Mayor Greg Davis by 54 percent to 46 percent in the race to represent Mississippi's 1st Congressional District, which both parties considered a potential bellwether for the fall elections.

Democrats said the results prove that they are poised for another round of big gains in the November general elections, and they attacked the Republican strategy of tying Democrats to Sen. Barack Obama, the front-runner for the party's presidential nomination, saying it had failed for a second time in 10 days in the Deep South. Democrat Don Cazayoux won the special election for a GOP-held House seat in Louisiana on May 3.

"No one could have imagined the tsunami that just crashed on Republicans in Mississippi," Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in an interview after the victory. "There is no district that is safe for Republican candidates."

House Democrats now hold a 236 to 199 majority, up from 203 seats they controlled two years ago.

Gates gets it

From the LATimes:

In a pointed admonition to Pentagon planners, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today that the U.S. military was afflicted with "next-war-itis" and must concentrate more on winning in Iraq and less on future conflicts that might never happen.

Gates said that since he took office his priority had been to "concentrate the minds" of the defense establishment on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I have noticed too much of a tendency towards what might be called 'next-war-itis,' the propensity of much of the defense establishment to be in favor of what might be needed in future conflicts," Gates said.

Iraq Stuff

Sadr City is where it's all happening now, or will soon. IntelDump.

COIN isn't just for winning battles and working in cities. It's also for prisons.

Change, but what kind?

One thing is for certain: few people like the current leadership. Less certain? Who to take the nation in a different direction? WaPo has it.

Despite more than eight in 10 now saying the country is headed in the wrong direction and growing disaffection with the Republican Party, Sen. John McCain, the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee, remains competitive in a general election matchup with Sen. Barack Obama, the favorite for the Democratic nomination, and runs almost even with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Those findings indicate that McCain continues to elude some of the anger aimed at his party and at President Bush, whose own approval dipped to an all-time low in Post-ABC polling. Maintaining a separate identity will be a key to McCain's chances of winning the White House in November. Overall, Democrats enjoy a 21-point advantage over Republicans as the party best-equipped to handle the nation's problems.

As the Democratic race nears the end of its primary-caucus season, with the next round of voting set for Tuesday in West Virginia, this new national poll shows Obama with a 12-point advantage over Clinton as the preferred choice for the nomination.

More than six in 10 Democrats now say Obama is the one with the better shot at winning in November, and while Clinton retains her wide advantage as the better experienced, for the first time Obama has the edge on the question of who is the "stronger leader."

But there is no groundswell of public pressure for her to quit the race, despite trailing the Illinois senator in pledged delegates, popular vote and now superdelegates. Nearly two-thirds of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said Clinton should stay in the race.

One reason is that few Democrats appear concerned that the protracted nomination battle between Clinton and Obama will hurt the party's chances in November. Only 27 percent said they believed the lengthy battle had done the party long-term damage. Most said the long contest either has had no impact on the party's prospects (56 percent) or that it has been helpful (15 percent).

And most Democrats said they are confident the party would be able to rally around Obama should he end up as the party's nominee, although fewer than half said they are very confident. African Americans are somewhat more confident than are whites, and nearly a quarter of Clinton supporters expressed doubt that the party would find unity once the nomination fight is settled.

In hypothetical general election head-to-heads, Obama leads McCain by slim 51 to 44 percent margin, with the public split 49 percent for Clinton to McCain's 46 percent. Against McCain, Obama does better than Clinton with African Americans, those with college degrees or greater education and among younger voters. Clinton, however, draws more support than does Obama against McCain among older white voters, white women and whites with family incomes under $50,000 a year.

Brooks

Interesting piece from David Brooks, a conservative NYTimes columnist at the NYTimes(Yes, that's allowed!):

The British conservative renovation begins with this insight: The central political debate of the 20th century was over the role of government. The right stood for individual freedom while the left stood for extending the role of the state. But the central debate of the 21st century is over quality of life. In this new debate, it is necessary but insufficient to talk about individual freedom. Political leaders have to also talk about, as one Tory politician put it, “the whole way we live our lives.”

That means, first, moving beyond the Thatcherite tendency to put economics first. As Oliver Letwin, one of the leading Tory strategists put it: “Politics, once econo-centric, must now become socio-centric.” David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, makes it clear that his primary focus is sociological. Last year he declared: “The great challenge of the 1970s and 1980s was economic revival. The great challenge in this decade and the next is social revival.” In another speech, he argued: “We used to stand for the individual. We still do. But individual freedoms count for little if society is disintegrating. Now we stand for the family, for the neighborhood — in a word, for society.”

Rising property taxes

Just came across this from a Wall Street Journal article. NOVA folks can get the whole article for free through the library website. Otherwise, here's a blurb:

Faced with revenue shortfalls, local governments across the U.S. are raising property-tax rates, angering homeowners already hit by the housing slump and economic slowdown.

Spring Valley, N.Y., approved a 9.7% increase in the property-tax rate to balance its budget. A number of fast-growing suburbs around Washington, D.C., have raised rates, while Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton has proposed a 17% increase in the property-tax rate to close a budget gap.

He's an expert!

From Detroit Free Press:

Carter ... warned of a disaster if party insiders try to wrest the nomination from the candidate with the largest number of votes and state victories.
'It would be a catastrophe for the party,' Carter told Jay Leno.

No one can deny that Carter is intimately familiar with catastrophes.

Bob's blurbs

Right-winger Novak makes a few good points on the 2008 race:

Clinton cannot catch Obama, and the bottom line is race. Obama won over 90 percent of the African-American vote in both states Tuesday, and that made life difficult for Clinton. Super-delegates flinch at going for Clinton because it would be seen as intentionally blocking the first black candidate with a chance to be nominated for president-threatening to alienate the most loyal element in the Democratic Party's base.

McCain's "honeymoon"-the interval between his clinching the Republican nomination and Obama's clinching the Democratic honeymoon-has ended. McCain has largely solidified his Republican base but still has to worry about evangelical holdouts, such as Virginia home-school advocate Michael Farris. Reports of non-support from former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee are not true, however. He still needs to worry about the broad lack of enthusiasm for him among Republican voters.

With Clinton about to be out of the picture, look for a big Obama jump in the polls to take a lead-maybe a commanding lead-against McCain. The dreadful state of the GOP, as reflected in its recent loss of a Louisiana congressional seat (see below), was bound to catch up with the presidential race. McCain cannot win without sustained battering of Obama, a tactic that McCain deplores.

Obama = Kerry?

Interesting article from Gallup:

Barack Obama's current level of support among white voters in a head-to-head matchup against John McCain is no worse than John Kerry's margin of support among whites against George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election.

Polls and presidents

From Slate:

while Bush still hasn't reached Truman's low point in Gallup's approval ratings, he has earned the highest disapproval rating in the poll's history at 69 percent. (Truman's highest disapproval rating was 67 percent in January 1952.) According to Gallup pollsters, the difference can be explained by the fact that people were more likely in the 1940s and 1950s to give no answer when asked whether they disapproved of the president. Respondents may have been especially shy about criticizing the president in Gallup's face-to-face interviews—which have since been replaced with random calls to respondents' land lines and cell phones. On the other hand, Bush may just be a more polarizing president than Truman was—meaning that fewer people have no opinion about him.

The Bush Administration often refers to the Truman Administration as a model for low public approval at the time, yet with an improved historical stature. Time will tell.

McCain and the Supreme Court

Some of you will find the below information reassuring, some of you will not.

From CBS News:

John McCain said he would nominate Supreme Court justices in the mold of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. “My nominees will understand that there are clear limits to the scope of judicial power, and clear limits to the scope of federal power,” McCain said. “They will do their work with impartiality, honor, and humanity, with an alert conscience, immune to flattery and fashionable theory, and faithful in all things to the Constitution of the United States.”

McCain is speaking on the trail about his judicial philosophy, highlighting his participation in the “gang of 14,” where seven Democrats and seven Republicans got together and helped moved Justice Roberts through the nomination process. “Over the years, we have all seen the dreary rituals that now pass for advice and consent in the confirmation of nominees to our Supreme Court. We've seen and heard the shabby treatment accorded to nominees, the caricature and code words shouted or whispered, the twenty-minute questions and two-minute answers,” McCain said. “No tactic of abuse or delay is out of bounds, until the nominee is declared ‘in trouble’ and the spouse is in tears.”

McCain maintains that he will not nominate judges who legislate from the bench and uses this reasoning to go after Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. “Senators Obama and Clinton have very different ideas from my own,” McCain said. “They are both lawyers themselves, and don't seem to mind at all when fundamental questions of social policy are preemptively decided by judges instead of by the people and their elected representatives.”

He also accused Obama of choosing partisan politics over working together during nomination processes. “Senator Obama in particular likes to talk up his background as a lecturer on law, and also as someone who can work across the aisle to get things done. But when Judge Roberts was nominated, it seemed to bring out more the lecturer in Senator Obama than it did the guy who can get things done,” McCaid said. “He went right along with the partisan crowd, and was among the 22 senators to vote against this highly qualified nominee.”

From AP/Google:

Republican John McCain castigated Democrat Barack Obama for voting against John Roberts as Supreme Court chief justice in a speech about the kind of judges McCain would nominate.

McCain offered an olive branch to the Christian right in a speech planned for Tuesday at Wake Forest University. The far right has been deeply suspicious of McCain, the expected GOP presidential nominee, because he has clashed with its leaders and worked against them on issues like campaign finance reform.

McCain promised to appoint judges who, in the mold of Roberts and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, are likely to limit the reach of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

"They would serve as the model for my own nominees if that responsibility falls to me," McCain said in his prepared speech.

The numbers don't add up

Running out of troops for Iraq or Afghanistan? See Slate.

Mission Ongoing

Five years later: Mission Accomplished not the smartest move. Most folks realized that about 4.5 years ago. Better late than never.