CLARKE ADMITS IRAQ-AL QAEDA LINK
Despite what he's been saying. Also, he thinks Al Qaeda was linked to the Oklahoma City bombing. This guy is interesting.

Thanks to Instapundit.

MORE TAXES, SAYS KERRY
Should the U.S. government be allowed to tax economic activity taking place solely in another country? John Kerry thinks so and he thinks it will help employ Americans in the United States. Actually, it will help employ lawyers who want to set up sister companies in other countries rather than comply with John Kerry's harebrained idea. And they call W "dumb"?

AN UTTER MORON
Allow me a moment free of the politically correct cuddliness you've come to expect from me. Here's a quote from a relative of a 9-11 victim: "It's the first time we have had a public apology by any of the officials that were in office on that terrible morning." Reality check, babe. Terrorists killed your husband and there's not a damn thing that President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, President Clinton or Sandy Berger could have done about it. You want an apology, talk to Osama.

Being a victim deserving of sympathy does not give you the free right to be a bloody fool and partisan hack, free from criticism.

And did you catch that AP headline: Clarke is a Hero. Good lord, he didn't stop it either, he just got all weepy and PC and emotional. Feelings=legitimacy. But, I wouldn't expect anything better from big, bad corporate media.

UPDATE: OK, I'm still a little cuddly and changed my title for this post.

FREE DRUGS! GET YOUR FREE DRUGS (AND VOTE FOR ME)
Some have complained that I never criticize President Bush. Well, his big, wasteful, prescription drug benefit was stupid. Not only will it cost a lot more than he said it would, it will also increase the cost of prescription drugs by increasing demand. George Will explains:

The key to cost containment is turning patients into cost-conscious health care shoppers, with a personal financial incentive to reduce the ``optional'' medical problems arising from known risky behavior (imprudent eating, drinking, smoking and driving, inadequate exercise, unsafe sex). Moving away from a third-party payer system means giving individuals ownership of personal health care resources -- those health savings accounts -- which they will have an incentive to husband.

Why has the cost of laser eye surgery fallen 22 percent in four years? For the same reason the cost of cosmetic surgery has been rising slower than the inflation rate. These elective procedures are generally paid for by individuals, from their own resources.

But, unfortunately, we're about to have a Presidential campaign where votes are for sale and the voters are price gouging.

WHAT DOES DICK MORRIS KNOW?
Well, he thinks the election will be a Bush blowout. I wonder what he predicted at this time in 2000? Dick Morris doesn't hedge his bets, and always offers his opinion as though we were reading from a history book. He pretends to hedge in this article, by saying saying that if Kerry doesn't change, he'll get blown out. But that's not a hedge because he says Kerry can't change.

I'll hedge. The election result will depend on events. Anyone disagree?

I HAVE THE CREEPING FEAR
That it will be the title. Ack.

UPDATE: Or maybe an April Fools' Joke?

A LITTLE INFORMATION ON PUBLISHING . . . AND CREDIBILITY
Federal Review regular Martin sends the following, via e-mail:

Let me clarify something on the publishing date. White house lawyers reviewed the book to make sure no classified data was included. I think you would agree that this should be done no matter who the author is or who is in the White House. The book was supposed to be released on April 27 and was moved up. See the following site.

I had an interesting conversation last night with an old girl friend who is Director of Publicity for a New York publisher. She has helped make two books #1 on the NY times best seller list this year. Earlier in her career she was Tom Clancy's publicist. By the way, she is a liberal democrat. I asked her if she thought the book release date was moved up, for marketing purposes, to coincide with the 911 commission hearings. She said "hell I don't think, I know it was." See , she used to work for Clarke's publicist and they talked about what a marketing coup it was.

Now, before your collective liberal knees jerk so hard they break your jaws, I have no problem with the release date being moved up. It makes good business sense. So relax. What I do have a problem with is that it appears to me, based on the accusations I've heard from the book, is that the content was fabricated to sell books. Who wants to read a book about anything good in D.C. be it during the Clinton or Bush administration? Scandal sells.

Will the real Dick Clarke please stand up. These comments are from Aug 2002, 5 months before Clarke resigned. Enjoy.

RICHARD CLARKE: Actually, I've got about seven points, let me just go through them quickly. Um, the first point, I think the overall point is, there was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration.

So, point five, that process which was initiated in the first week in February, uh, decided in principle, uh in the spring to add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, five-fold, to go after Al Qaeda.

Over the course of the summer, they developed implementation details, the principals met at the end of the summer, approved them in their first meeting, changed the strategy by authorizing the increase in funding five-fold, changing the policy on Pakistan, changing the policy on Uzbekistan, changing the policy on the Northern Alliance assistance

And then changed the strategy from one of rollback with Al Qaeda over the course of five years, which it had been, to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of Al Qaeda. That is in fact the timeline.

QUESTION: What is your response to the suggestion in the [Aug. 12, 2002] Time [magazine] article that the Bush administration was unwilling to take on board the suggestions made in the Clinton administration because of animus against the — general animus against the foreign policy?

CLARKE: I think if there was a general animus that clouded their vision, they might not have kept the same guy dealing with terrorism issue. This is the one issue where the National Security Council leadership decided continuity was important and kept the same guy around, the same team in place. That doesn't sound like animus against uh the previous team to me

JIM ANGLE: You're saying that the Bush administration did not stop anything that the Clinton administration was doing while it was making these decisions, and by the end of the summer had increased money for covert action five-fold. Is that correct?

CLARKE: All of that's correct.

ANGLE: So, just to finish up if we could then, so what you're saying is that there was no — one, there was no plan; two, there was no delay; and that actually the first changes since October of '98 were made in the spring months just after the administration came into office?

CLARKE: You got it. That's right

CLARKE: No, it came up in April and it was approved in principle and then went through the summer. And you know, the other thing to bear in mind is the shift from the rollback strategy to the elimination strategy. When President Bush told us in March to stop swatting at flies and just solve this problem, then that was the strategic direction that changed the NSPD from one of rollback to one of elimination.

QUESTION: Well can you clarify something? I've been told that he gave that direction at the end of May. Is that not correct?

CLARKE: No, it was March

I hope the commentors actually address the substantive points of this post. It's one thing to praise someone, like Zell Miller on Kerry, and then later deciding to support another candidate, it's something else entirely to completely reimagine events when it is time market your book.

CLINTON SPARED BIN LADEN

From today's New York Post:

President Clinton had at least three chances before 9/11 to try to kill Osama bin Laden - but never took his shot, a new congressional report revealed yesterday.

"We had a round in our chamber and we didn't use it. That's how I see it," snapped former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey (Neb.), a member of the Sept. 11 presidential commission.

A CIA official called [one] incident "a lost opportunity to kill bin Laden before 9/11.

So, Clinton had eight years and at least three chances to get Bin Laden and he didn't...but Bush is the one who could have prevented 9/11?

Yeah...riiiiight....

A MATTER OF TIME
Gay marriage opponents, beware. Spew all the vitriolic, fear/hate-based stuff you want. The public won't go for an amendment and young Americans favor the rights of gays as overwhelmingly as the sooner-to-die older population opposes it. Enlightenment works that way sometimes. There will be a backlash (it has already started) against the recognition of gay marriage. But it will not stand the test of time. In the end, America is about the rights of man (God Bless You, Thomas Paine) not the dogma of religious zealots.

AS STUPID AS HER FANS
When introduced to the Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton, Jessica Simpson reportedly (The Week magazine) said , "You've done a nice job decorating the White House". No wonder she's adored by the public - she's as smart as they are.

FINANCIAL DISASTER
The Medicare bill was budget-buster even if the costs estimated had been based on true numbers. Even if you believe that Scully alone suppressed the true numbers, isn't it fair to hold the guys in charge accountable? If not, what does "in charge" really count for? Bush and Thompson have to answer for this. Tommy's B-S about not being able to control Scully is an admission of his abdication of his responsibility to the taxpayers. Shame on the Dem's who voted for this, too. It doesn't matter whether you fed the deficit by over-spending or undertaxing. It's results that count and in fiscal terms that can be measured by the deficit. We can agree sometimes that a deficit is o.k. when we're talking about natural disasters, attacks on our homeland,etc. When it is tax policy and spending priorities, then disagreements are appropriate and debate is good. I just hate those who would SAY they are for deficit reduction but vote for this sort of bill or for tax cuts without off-sets. Unfortunately, the voters are just about as gullible (and at heart as hypocritical) as the representatives the elect. We get the government we (collectively) deserve.

9/11 COMMISSION CALLS FOR PREEMPTIVE ACTION, NOT INDICTMENTS
The Democrats are giddy over Dick Clarke's new book and his claims that the Bush Adminstration did not take him seriously and take immediate action against Al Qaeda (or is it now, "Qaida"?). The 9/11 Commission is reporting that the reason 9/11 happened is because of the "Clinton and Bush administrations' failure to pursue military action against al-Qaida operatives allowed the Sept. 11 terrorists to elude capture despite warning signs years before the attacks."

But there's more. One reason for the failure was the Clinton Administration's desire to pursue a law enforcement-like solution. The Commission complains that the Clinton Administration knew of the terrorist links between Osama bin Laden and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, but instead of taking preemptive military action, the administration "let years pass as it pursued criminal indictments and diplomatic solutions to subduing them abroad." The Bush Administration's failure was it's continuation of that same policy. And even today, the Democrats decry preemptive military action (while suggesting they should have taken such action on Dick Clarke's orders) and John Kerry even proposes a return to the failed policy that lead to 9/11, with a terrorism policyreliant on law enforcement. Kerry believes, in his words, that the fight against terrorism is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world."

I don't believe Kerry would follow the exact policy of the past. The world has changed and now that we know what the terrorists are capable of, even Kerry would probably be more likely to act militarily and even preemptively than Clinton . But his focus on law enforcement is troublesome. Waiting around for "better intelligence," indictment-sufficient evidence or diplomatic manuevering to get the French on board is dangerous. Right now, Kerry does not show that he fully understands this. But he still has time.

The focus of all partisans and patriots and the job of the 9/11 Commission should be on what we can do better, not on whether Clinton was wrong or if Bush should have changed course. We have hindsight now that renders objectivity with respect to what we'd have done in 1995 of 2001 impossible. Candidates when by focusing on the future, and only one is doing that now.

That's how it's done.

FEDERAL REVIEW COMPOSITE POLL™
We are pleased to announce the return of the FEDERAL REVIEW COMPOSITE POLL™. We'll have more details about the poll later, as well as it's own page. But in brief, it is an effort to make sense of the many polls and their often divergent results. You may see a CNN - USAToday - Gallup poll showing your guy up by 8, while Zogby has him down by 1. So, who's right? The FEDERAL REVIEW COMPOSITE POLL™ is a statistical effort to weight the polls based on various criteria, including margin of error and whether the poll includes all adults, registered voters or likely voters. If we are lucky, the FEDERAL REVIEW COMPOSITE POLL™ will have the effect of reducing that pesky margin of error.

Our initial effort includes polls from NBC/The Wall Street Journal, CNN-USAToday-Gallup, CBS-New York Times, FoxNews-Opinion Dynamics and ABC-Washington Post. We also factor in the recent closing price of shares traded on the Iowa Electronic Markets, where voters are speaking with real money.

For the week ended March 8, 2004 (the most recent date for which multiple polls are available), the The Federal Review Composite Poll™ shows a 1.0% lead for the Democrats.

FEDERAL REVIEW COMPOSITE POLL™
Week ended March 8, 2004. 3,889 Deemed Likely Voters.

Bush 45.5
Kerry 46.5
Other/Undec. 8.0

UPDATE: Revised since first posted to eliminate a more recent poll that should not have been included.

BUY MY BOOK
So, you're the counterterrorism expert when the biggest terrorist attack on U.S. soil occurs. You have several choices. Analyze your work for lessons learned, blame your failure on someone else or write a book and blame your failure on someone else. Unknown-until-yesterday Richard Clark did the latter. He's upset that the Bush Administration, immediately upon taking office, didn't set policy according to the recommendations of this staffer. Bush's economic and education proposals that Bush ran on certainly should have been put aside because Richard Clarke said it was time to act. Clinton can be forgiven for 8 years of doing nothing about Al Qaeda, after all, Clarke understands he was too busy perjuring himself and turning the Oval Office into Greg Brady's goovy bachelor pad. But in those 8 months, Bush should have heeded Clarke's genius insight into terrorist plans and bombed Afghanistan -- never mind that Bush wouldn't have had time to convince even Britain to get on board with that plan. And never mind that the first major foreign policy enunciation was the anti-Al Qaeda plan.

Then Clarke complains that Bush wanted to find a Saddam-connection to Al Qaeda. That Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld were focused on Iraq at the exclusion of the Al Qaeda threat. Never mind that one month after September 11 the invasion of Afghanistan began and it took a year and a half for the administration to apply the newly articulated Bush Doctrine - attack the terrorists and those harbor them - to Saddam's terror-supporting state.

File this under "20/20, hindsight," and cross-reference to "Fault, not mine". And also, "Book, increasing sales".