SUPER TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5,  2008

•   We begin with an update to the story of the Berkeley City Council, which told the United States Marine Corps, in blunt terms, that it is unwelcome in their city.  Now, after national protests, several members of the Council are reconsidering.  Well, that's fine, but note the San Francisco Chronicle's opening paragraph:

A week after blasting the Marines as "unwelcome intruders" in Berkeley, two City Council members want the city to back off the declaration that ignited the wrath of the nation's right wing and inspired a Republican senator to try to sever Berkeley's federal funding.

The reporter, typically, assumes that the only people outraged by the Council's action are members of "the nation's right wing."  That is classic press bias.  I've e-mailed her, protesting her assumption.  If she writes back to explain herself, I'll report.

•   Another update, this time concerning the story, featured here, about British police bugging a Muslim member of Parliament as he spoke with a nasty chap suspected of planning nasty things:

The UK Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, told MPs today that the alleged bugging of a prominent Muslim MP's conversations with a constituent had not been authorised by the cabinet.

But Straw also said the alleged snooping would not have breached the Wilson doctrine banning the security services from bugging MPs, if it emerged any operation had been carried out by police.

So Britain is debating the same things we are.  You'll notice there's no talk over there of British liberty collapsing or fascism marching in.  That kind of rhetoric is reserved for people who send strange letters to the Marines.

•   Sober reminder, as we go to the polls today, that history doesn't stop just because we're having an election.  The chief of Israel's Mossad now estimates that Iran will have the bomb within three years.  He also points out Iran's progress in missile development.  Of course, these things are insignificant because Mr. Obama will just sit down with the Iranians, and peace will erupt.  Somehow, I don't think so.  The grim Israeli assessment:

Iran will attain offensive nuclear capabilities within three years and remains the central strategic threat to Israel not only because it is striving for the attainment of nuclear weapons but also because of its influence on more imminent threats, such as Hamas, Hizbullah and Syria, according to an assessment presented to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee by Mossad head Meir Dagan Monday.

Iran is also a strategic threat to the United States, but you'd never know it from the tone of the presidential campaign.  You'd think, in the year 2008, that we were protected by those really big oceans we've got out there.  A final thought from the head of Mossad:

According to Dagan, the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) made it harder to impose sanctions on Iran. It "pulls the ground out from under" diplomatic efforts to thwart the Iranian nuclear program, "leaving Israel to face the threat alone," he said.

It also left European nations abandoned.  Some of them are taking a harder line toward Iran than we are.  But, you know, once we have that international conference, and sit around drinking Diet Coke and watching old Super Bowl commercials...all will be serene.  What a concept.

•   Super Tuesday is here, and most of the analyses are pretty basic and routine.  Look, we'll know the story 24 hours from now, so predictions are silly.  But there is a superbly argued piece by Fred Siegel in City Journal, taking apart the Obama campaign and the candidate himself.  It's the kind of thing the establishment journalists can't bring themselves to do.  Note this:

Obama’s achievements in reaching out to moderate voters are largely proleptic: words aren’t deeds. And while he has few concrete achievements to his name, he does have a voting record that hardly suggests an ability to rise above Left and Right. In 2005, his first year in the Senate, the man who made a specialty of voting “present” in the Illinois State Senate refused—despite repeated entreaties—to join a bipartisan agreement among 14 senators not to filibuster President Bush’s judicial nominees. After his first two years in the Senate, National Journal’s analysis of roll call votes found that he was more liberal than 86 percent of his colleagues, and his voting record has only grown more liberal since then. The liberal Americans for Democratic Action now gives him a 97.5 percent rating, while National Journal ranks him the most liberal member of the Senate. By comparison, Hillary Clinton, who occasionally votes with the GOP, ranks 16th. Obama is such a down-the-line partisan that, according to Congressional Quarterly, he voted more often with the Democrats than did the party’s majority leader, Harry Reid.

Not something to ease our concerns.  Siegel ends this way:

In 1965, appalled by the unearned adulation for mayoral candidate John Lindsay (who was also considered a future president), Robert Moses warned: “If you elect a matinee idol mayor, you’re going to have a musical comedy administration.” And that’s just what New York got. Substitute “president” for “mayor,” and you can anticipate what might be coming.

Amazing what a little thought will do.

•   The New York Post, which is supporting Obama in the New York primary, examines the latest Hillary Clinton "eyes with tears" moment.  There is, of course, the belief that a few tears make the former first lady "human," and bring her sympathy votes. 

She didn't choke up - as she did at a similar event on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, a moment that Clinton now says may have helped her snag a critical victory last month by making her appear human and vulnerable.

But there were enough similarities between the two teary instances that skeptics wondered whether the whole thing was contrived.

I doubt it was contrived.  Even Hillary is entitled to have feelings.  And, if I were an opponent, I'd be careful about sneering at emotions.  Sympathy might flow toward Hillary, not because of the tears, but because of the attacks on her for having tears. 

•   And Barbra Streisand has swung into action.  Gee, it's good to know we have such a tigress in America.  This time she comes to the aid of those cursed by the law:

For lawmakers faced with mounting legal bills, it’s good to have friends in high places with deep pockets.

Members of the leadership on both sides of the aisle cut checks to legally embattled House colleagues, and even Barbra Streisand contributed $1,000 to Rep. Jim McDermott’s (D-Wash.) legal expense fund.

Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.), who will face trial late this month on an array of bribery and corruption charges, has collected a total of $166,550 since 2005 to help defray legal costs.

Next time I get a parking ticket I intend to write to Ms. Streisand, tell her that I, too, was born in Brooklyn, am a veteran, and bought her records when no one ever heard of her.  I will point out the cruelty of the meter maids and the fact that they wear uniforms, making them part of the great right-wing conspiracy.  Bet I get my ticket paid.

•   Finally, the excellent Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal takes a skeptical look at the trendy reports of America's decline.  Of course, we've been there before.  America, in some eyes, is always just a few months away from collapse, dictatorship, or electing the winner of American Idol to the presidency.  Stephens observes:

American "decline" is the foreign-policy equivalent of homelessness: The media only take note of it when a Republican is in the White House. Broadly speaking, declinists divide between those who merely accept America's supposed diminishment as a fact of life, and those who celebrate it as long overdue. As for the causes of decline, however, they tend to agree: declining (relative) economic muscle, due in large part to the rise of China; an overextended military bogged down needlessly in Iraq and endlessly in Afghanistan; the declining value of America's "brand" on account of Bush administration policies on detention, pre-emption, terrorism, global warming -- you name it.

Yet each of these assumptions collapses on a moment's inspection. In his 2006 book "Überpower," German writer Josef Joffe makes the following back-of-the-envelope calculation: "Assume that the Chinese economy keeps growing indefinitely at a rate of seven percent, the average of the past decade (for which history knows of no example). . . . At that rate, China's GDP would double every decade, reaching parity with today's United States ($12 trillion) in thirty years. But the U.S. economy is not frozen into immobility. By then, the United States, growing at its long-term rate of 2.5 percent, would stand at $25 trillion."

It's comforting to realize that we still have people who can count.  I'm sure our educators will do everything they can to snuff out that threatening trend.  Considering their record of the past thirty years, we know they'll succeed. 

Be back later.  We'll do our evening update, then blog as the returns come in.

Posted on February 5, 2008.