Internet Scofflaw

Zimbabwe on a knife edge as fears deepen that result is being rigged.  (Via Instapundit.)

Politico has the story:

During his first run for elected office, Barack Obama played a greater role than his aides now acknowledge in crafting liberal stands on gun control, the death penalty and abortion — positions that appear at odds with the more moderate image he has projected during his presidential campaign.

The evidence comes from an amended version of an Illinois voter group’s detailed questionnaire, filed under his name during his 1996 bid for a state Senate seat.

Obama gave his usual “it wasn’t me—I never saw it—I wasn’t there” response:

Late last year, in response to a Politico story about Obama’s answers to the original questionnaire, his aides said he “never saw or approved” the questionnaire.

They asserted the responses were filled out by a campaign aide who “unintentionally mischaracterize[d] his position.”

Politico, however, did the legwork, discovering:

But a Politico examination determined that Obama was actually interviewed about the issues on the questionnaire by the liberal Chicago nonprofit group that issued it. And it found that Obama — the day after sitting for the interview — filed an amended version of the questionnaire, which appears to contain Obama’s own handwritten notes added to one answer. . .

Through an aide, Obama . . . did not dispute that the handwriting was his. But he contended it doesn’t prove he completed, approved — or even read — the latter questionnaire.

An interview and his own handwriting. I’m not sure even Obama can get away with disavowing his own words and handwriting.

Oh, and what are those opinions that he says never held? Ed Morrissey summarizes:

Opposed to parental notification on abortions. He amended this to say that he might possibly support it for 12- or 13-year-olds, but no older.

Flatly opposed the death penalty, a position he denied ever having.

Supported bans on the sale, possession, and manufacture of guns, again a position he denied ever taking.

(Via Hot Air.)

Obama is looking more and more unprepared for national politics, where people sometimes follow up on what you say.

A diary at Daily Kos reports on the race for the Democratic credentials committee.  (Via TalkLeft, via Instapundit.)  He concludes that it is possible for Clinton to gain a majority of the credentials committee, and thereby seat the Michigan and Florida delegations.  I don’t know if any of this is accurate or not (he does list Texas for Obama — does the caucus trump the primary?), but it’s hugely entertaining.

The plan, announced by Secretary of State Rice, includes several Israeli concessions:

• removing 50 travel barriers in and around Jenin, Tulkarem, Qalqiliya and Ramallah,
• dismantling of one permanent roadblock,
• deploying 700 Jordanian-trained Palestinian police in Jenin and allowing them to take delivery of armored vehicles,
• raising the the number of Palestinian businessmen allowed into Israel to 1,500 from 1,000,
• increasing the number of work permits for Palestinian laborers by 5,000 from its current number of 18,500,
• building new housing for Palestinians in 25 villages,
• connecting Palestinian villages to the Israeli power grid, and
• Israeli support for large-scale economic development programs and encouragement of foreign investment.

In return, the Palestinians promised an immediate cessation of rocket attacks and suicide bombings.

Okay, I made that last one up.

He’s not going to mend any fences with the far left with this interview.

A Des Moines pizza deliveryman did his part to make the world a better place:

A pizza deliveryman told Des Moines police that he shot a man who robbed him at gunpoint when he delivered a pie late Thursday to a south-side address.

The alleged assailant, Kenneth Jimmerson, 19, was taken to Mercy Medical Center in serious condition. He was charged this morning with first-degree robbery and will be taken to Polk County Jail when released from the hospital, police said. 

Melanie Stout, 18, the woman who placed the order for the pizzas, was charged with conspiracy to commit robbery.

(Via Instapundit.) 

The story is not entirely cheery though.  In keeping with the “no good deed goes unpunished” principle:

Restaurant officials have suspended the Pizza Hut driver, James William Spiers, while the case is under investigation. . .  Vonnie Walbert, vice president of human resources at Pizza Hut, said:

“We have policy against carrying weapons. We prohibit employees from carrying guns because we believe that that is the safest for everybody.”

It’s exactly that sort of thinking that made this deliveryman look like an attractive target.

I have to blog this right away, since it won’t last long.  Sky News reports that the opposition is claiming victory based on unofficial results.  Then the rub:

The electoral body said it would start announcing early partial returns at some point today.

The official returns will probably be a bit different.  (Is Jimmy Carter there to give Mugabe cover?)

UPDATE: The NYT reminds us of the last Zimbabwean vote:

In 2002, reported results had challenger Morgan Tsvangirai piling up a big lead. Then, suddenly, the announcements stopped. When they resumed, hours later, Mr. Mugabe was well ahead.

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE and BUMP: The Telegraph reports: Robert Mugabe’s defeat cannot be covered up.  Here’s hoping.

The Guardian’s report is less promising:

Robert Mugabe was desperately trying to cling to power last night, despite his clear defeat in Zimbabwe’s presidential election, by blocking the electoral commission from releasing official results and threatening to treat an opposition claim of victory as a coup. . .

Tsvangirai [the apparent winner] made no public appearances, apparently out of concern for his safety.  Mugabe’s spokesman, George Charamba, warned Tsvangirai not to declare himself president because that “is called a coup d’etat and we all know how coups are handled”.

Yes, I suppose we do.

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: The election rigging proceeds in slow motion.  (Yet again via Instapundit.)

I’m not referring to Kwame Kilpatrick.  The entire U.S. Attorney’s office is entangled somehow with Saddam’s intelligence agency: 

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit confirmed Thursday the entire Detroit office has been recused from the Al-Hanooti case, but officials would not say why. The case is instead being handled by government lawyers from Washington, D.C.

(Via Instapundit.)

Edwards Praises Both Clinton, Obama.

You have to click through, just for the photo.

We’ve become sadly used to the passing of the word “terrorist” to describe actual terrorists (remember, those people who intentionally kill civilians as a means of political coercion), and also to its occasional misuse to describe anyone the speaker doesn’t like (typically Bush, Cheney, Blair, etc.).  Still, one might have hoped for better from our own government.

Michael Totten posts about the dismaying story of an actual freedom fighter who was denied a green card by the INS because of his history as a “terrorist”:

Saman Kareem Ahmad is an Iraqi Kurd who worked as a translator with the Marines in Iraq’s Anbar Province. He was one of the few selected translators who was granted asylum in the U.S. because he and his family were singled out for destruction by insurgents for “collaboration.” He wants to return to Iraq as an American citizen and a Marine, and has already been awarded the Navy-Marine Corps Achievement Medal and the War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal. Secretary of the Navy Donald C. Winter and General David Petraeus wrote notes for his file and recommended he be given a Green Card, but the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) declined his application and called him a “terrorist.” . . .

The Kurds in Iraq–unlike the Kurds in Turkey and the ever-popular Palestinians– did not use terrorism as a tactic in their struggle for liberation. They fought honorably against Saddam’s soldiers, not against Arab civilians in south and central Iraq.

(Via Instapundit.)

For the record, a terrorist is someone who intentionally attacks civilians in order to create terror as a means of coercion.  A soldier who attacks legitimate military targets is not a terrorist, even when the speaker disapproves of his cause.  Conversely, someone whose vocation is setting off car bombs in crowded marketplaces is a terrorist, and he doesn’t stop being so simply because he is currently fighting for his life against the US Marines or the IDF.

Ban Ki-moon cannot limit himself to a negative review:

I condemn, in the strongest terms, the airing of Geert Wilders’ offensively anti-Islamic film.  There is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence.  The right of free expression is not at stake here.  I acknowledge the efforts of the Government of the Netherlands to stop the broadcast of this film, and appeal for calm to those understandably offended by it.  Freedom must always be accompanied by social responsibility.

(Via LGF.) 

Oh, the right of free expression is not at stake here?  Never mind then.

The Washington Times publishes excerpts of an interview with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.  (Via Power Line.)  The article is headlined by her comments on race, and on that topic what she says sounds about right.  (ASIDE: One is struck by the fact that Rice, who (unlike Obama) actually grew up in the segregated South, managed to avoid forming ties with any racist nutcase ministers.)

However, I was troubled by this bit at the end:

Miss Rice cited resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ending North Korea’s nuclear programs, and securing Iraq and Afghanistan as the Bush administration’s main foreign-policy priorities for the rest of its term.

What about Iran?  Continuing the quixotic Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” is a higher priority than keeping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons?

The Clinton campaign turns up the heat on Obama:

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s most prominent African-American supporter in Pennsylvania [Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter] says that had he been a member of Sen. Barack Obama’s church, he would have left because of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s fiery and controversial sermons. . .

Nutter said, “I think there is a big difference between expressing the pain and anger that many African Americans and other people of color may feel versus language that I think now crosses the line and goes into hate.” . . .

“Somehow, someway, for some people there’s an automatic assumption that a mayor who is African-American or some other elected official has to support another African-American,” Nutter said.

“I thought that when Dr. King said that he wanted people to be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, I thought that’s what he was talking about,” Nutter added.

(Via Instapundit.)

Speaking in Greensburg, Pennsylvania (45 minutes from Pittsburgh), Obama said he would return America to the “traditional” foreign policy of Reagan and Bush 41.

The truth is that my foreign policy is actually a return to the traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush’s father, of John F. Kennedy, of, in some ways, Ronald Reagan.

(Emphasis mine.)  Got that?  The foreign policy of Reagan and Bush Sr. was “bipartisan.”  Obama must be working from a different dictionary than I, because I distinctly recall the Democrats vehemently opposing Bush and especially Reagan.  (I remember it very clearly because, sad to say, I was part of that Democratic consensus opposing Reagan.  But give me a break; when Reagan left office, I was 17 and still in the clutches of the Seattle Public Schools.)

I remember the Democratic opposition to Reagan’s military buildup, to SDI, to the liberation of Grenada.  I remember apoplectic reaction to Reagan’s evil empire speech, and the Boland Amendment cutting off the Nicaraguan Contras.  I remember the 1991 Gulf War resolution that Senate Democrats voted against 10-45 (and two of the ten are no longer Democrats) and House Democrats voted against 86-179.  Bipartisan indeed.

No matter how often the Democrats are wrong — against Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, Bush 41 — they’ve always joined the consensus in retrospect, and they’re always right today.

John McCain releases his first campaign ad since clinching the Republican nomination:

This looks like a front-runner’s ad: entirely positive and mostly non-specific.   (There’s perhaps a very subtle dig at Obama by asking “what must a President believe about us?”)  I hope he’s not buying the polls that show him as the front-runner; once the Democrats settle on a nominee, the media will do everything in their power to close that gap.

Zimbabwe (“get behind the fist”) and Zambia have thrown away thousands of tons of much needed corn, leaving people to starve rather than allow them to eat genetically modified foodstuffs.  (Via Instapundit.)

Robert Paarlberg explains:

The overregulation of this technology in Europe and the anxieties felt about it in the United States are not so much a reflection of risks, because there aren’t any documented risks from any GM crops on the market. I explain that reaction through the absence of direct benefit. The technology is directly beneficial to only a tiny number of citizens in rich countries—soybean farmers, corn farmers, a few seed companies, patent holders. Consumers don’t get a direct benefit at all, so it doesn’t cost them anything to drive it off the market with regulations. The problem comes when the regulatory systems created in rich countries are then exported to regions like Africa, where two thirds of the people are farmers, and where they would be the direct beneficiaries.

Duke University has asked a court to shut down a website critical of its handling of the lacrosse rape hoax case.

Robert Mugabe’s re-election slogan.  (No joke!)  (Via the Corner.)

Polls show that Zimbabwe is poised overwhelmingly to reject Mugabe, if given the chance, which seems unlikely to me.  Personally, I suspect he’ll be leaving office the way Nicolae Ceausescu did, and no sooner.

UPDATE: No surprise here; things look bad.

The battle over superdelegates continues.  Oddly enough, everyone argues — on high moral grounds — for the position that favors his preferred candidate.  I’m reminded of Michael Barone’s first rule of life: “All process arguments are insincere, including this one.”

Tom Maguire spots an interesting statement: Under continued fire for his membership in Rev. Wright’s congregation, Obama now says that he would have left the church, but didn’t need he needed to because Wright apologized.  (Via Instapundit.)  Maguire observes that Wright’s purported apology was not exactly well publicized, and has some thoughts on the value of a second-hand apology.

But why rely on our own recollection; let’s ask Google.  (I’m telling you, this Internet is going to catch on!)  As of 9:47am Eastern, there are no hits regarding a Jeremiah Wright apology on the first three pages.  However, there are plenty of hits regarding how Wright is owedan apology.  Geez.

This was making the rounds a few months ago.  I was reminded of it today by the state of rhetoric in the current campaign (great oratory really can have content!), but upon listening to it again, I was struck by how germane it is to today’s war.  Shall we defeat our enemies, or shall we try to accommodate them, and in so doing sentence countless human beings to slavery?

Stephen Spruiell notes an Obama ad blaming NAFTA for the downfall of a then-non-existent company bankrupted by domestic competition:

Obama’s presidential campaign aired a TV ad that featured a man named Steven Schuyler standing in front of a Delphi Packard Electric plant in Warren, Ohio. In the ad, Schuyler says he worked for Delphi, an automotive supplier, for 13 years until NAFTA enabled the company to ship his job to Mexico. “Barack Obama was against NAFTA,” Schuyler says, adding, “We need a president that will bring work into this country.”

The Delphi ad might qualify as the most deceptive of the 2008 race. First, Delphi did not exist as an independent company when Congress passed NAFTA in 1993. It was part of General Motors until it was spun off as an independent supplier in 1999. Second, foreign competition did not drive the company to eliminate American jobs. It declared bankruptcy in 2005 because the legacy labor costs it inherited from GM made it impossible to compete against other U.S.-based suppliers. Third, workers at the Warren, Ohio plant were offered generous buyouts and early-retirement packages. Its employees were not just kicked to the street.

There’s more.

UPDATE: Rephrased.

Apparently, McCain has declined Secret Service protection.  (Via Instapundit.)  I don’t approve.  I doubt that many people are impressed, and there’s more than his own life riding on his survival.

Gallup (via Instapundit):

A solid majority of the U.S. public, 73%, believes the Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the rights of Americans to own guns.

I’m tired of the defeat-in-Iraq crowd pretending that they have the moral high ground.  Of course we can and should make pragmatic arguments for finishing the job based on our own security, but there’s a moral argument we should make as well.  The pro-defeat crowd wants to abandon an entire people to the worst kind of tyranny in existence today, and all the while they’re patting themselves on the back.

I would like to see John McCain run an ad like this:

(Video shows a teenaged Iraqi girl.)  This is Amira.  She lives in Iraq.  She has had a difficult childhood: she saw her father and uncle carried away for speaking critically of Saddam Hussein.  [Adjust details as appropriate.]  But now Amira is free, and she has dreams for her life.  She wants to travel, to study and become an artist, or a doctor.

(Video shifts to Al Qaeda thugs.)  But there are some who don’t want Amira to realize her aspirations.   Men who subscribe to a perverted form of Islam and wish to impose it on her country, and indeed the world.  (Brief collage of Taliban and Iranian atrocities.)  These men come into her country and set off bombs, hoping to terrorize her people into obedience.  (Aftermath of a car bomb.)

(Screen splits, with Amira on one side and the U.S. Capitol on the other.)  Will America continue to stand with Amira, or will we abandon her to her enemies?  This November, you will help make that decision.

I’m John McCain, and I approved this message.

Baghdad Jim McDermott and his colleagues’ trip to Iraq in 2002 was paid for by Saddam.  (Via Instapundit.) 

To be fair, it is not alleged that they knew it.  I’m reminded of the Humbert Wolfe quote:

You cannot hope to bribe or twist (thank God!) the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there’s no occasion to.

Jim Lindgren, going through the Obamas’ tax returns, finds that Obama seems to have violated the Illinois Governmental Ethics Act by accepting honoraria.

Obama’s effort to sidestep his church’s bizarre teachings becomes more threadbare by the day.  It is now revealed that his church’s worship bulletin contained a racist rant (pdf) alleging, among other things, that Israel worked on “an ethnic bomb that kills Blacks and Arabs.”

In the worship bulletin.  And Obama can no more disown this guy than his own grandmother.

I can see why he thinks his best chance is convince people that it’s out-of-bounds even to mention this stuff.

Gallup reports that many Democratic voters will switch to McCain if their candidate doesn’t win:

Among people who identified themselves as Hillary Clinton supporters, 28 percent said they would vote for McCain if Obama is his opponent, the March 7-22 Gallup Poll Daily election tracking survey found.  The same poll found that 19 percent of Obama supporters would switch sides and cast ballots for McCain if Clinton is the Democratic candidate.

I’m not sure I buy it, but here’s hoping.  Also:

A recent Gallup survey found that 11 percent of Republican voters said they would vote for a different party or not at all if McCain doesn’t pick a running mate who is more conservative than he is.

That, er, shouldn’t be hard, should it?

Pittsburgh’s mayor and city council are fighting over the budget:

Cost-cutting ideas are coming quickly in Pittsburgh City Council, but some members are claiming that they’re being targeted for political revenge by Mayor Luke Ravenstahl in the latest proposal.

Over objections from the Ravenstahl administration, Council voted to cut half the number of taxpayer-funded take-home cars for city officials.

On the heels of that vote comes a call from an ally of the mayor to put the knife to City Council’s payroll for its staff. . .  [Councilman Ricky] Burgess led in making the charge that revenge by Ravenstahl is behind Councilman Jim Motznik’s bill to slash money for council’s staff.  Burgess said it’s payback for City Council voting on Tuesday to cut the number of take-home cars for city employees from 59 to 29.

As long as they’re squabbling by cutting the budget, let’s sit back and enjoy the show.

Obama military advisor and campaign co-chair Tony McPeak blames U.S. Jews for the lack of peace in the Middle East.  (Via Instapundit.)  Enough to get him fired?  It’s hard to say.  Stephanie Power (formerly Obama’s chief foreign policy advisor) lost her job not for advocating invading Israel, but for calling Hillary Clinton a monster.  On the other hand, people are paying more attention to this stuff now.

Why aren’t Tibetans entitled to at least as much sympathy as Palestinians?

Clinton attacks on Wright, Obama fires back on Bosnia:

Breaking her silence on the controversy surrounding Barack Obama’s long-time pastor, Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that she would have left the congregation if her pastor behaved like Obama’s. . . “You know, we don’t have a choice when it comes to our relatives. We have a choice when it comes to our pastors and the churches we attend,” she said. . .

The Obama campaign blasted back that Clinton only made the statement to distract from scrutiny about her own recollection of a March 1996 trip to Bosnia.  “After originally refusing to play politics with this issue, it’s disappointing to see Hillary Clinton’s campaign sink to this low in a transparent effort to distract attention away from the story she made up about dodging sniper fire in Bosnia,” Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said.

They’re both right. 

On Obama’s race speech, Christopher Hitchens has a way with words:

You often hear it said, of some political or other opportunist, that he would sell his own grandmother if it would suit his interests. But you seldom, if ever, see this notorious transaction actually being performed, which is why I am slightly surprised that Obama got away with it so easily. (Yet why do I say I am surprised? He still gets away with absolutely everything.)

(Via Instapundit.)

The Supreme Court issued an important opinion today.  The case involved a convicted murderer who is a Mexican national.  The police failed to notify him of his right to consult with the Mexican consulate, and his lawyer failed to raise the issue at trial.  The issue was raised on appeal, and after a convoluted path through state and federal courts, the conviction was upheld.

In the meantime, however, the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a ruling that required the United States:

to provide, by means of its own choosing, review and reconsideration of the convictions and sentences of the [affected] Mexican nationals.

In response, President Bush issued a memorandum ordering the Texas courts to review the case in line with the ICJ’s ruling.  The Texas courts declined to do so, and the Supreme Court took up the case.

At issue were two questions: (1) does the ICJ’s decision constitute enforceable domestic law, and (2) does the President have the power to issue orders to state courts in accordance with that decision?  The Supreme Court answered no to both.

For anyone concerned about our nation’s sovereignty, this was the preferred decision.  (Last October, Ramesh Ponnuru made a strong case for today’s outcome.)  However, legally it seems to have been a close call, hinging on whether the precise wording of the ICJ treaty made it “self-executing.”  There’s a limit, then, to how much solace we can take from this decision.  We need to stay vigilant.

UPDATE: The key bit seems to be on pages 8 and 9 of the decision.  There is a distinction dating back to the Marshall court between treaties that are self-executing, and ones that are merely commitments to act:

In sum, while treaties “may comprise international commitments . . . they are not domestic law unless Congress has either enacted implementing statutes or the treaty itself conveys an intention that it be ‘self-executing’ and is ratified on these terms.”

Lawyers probably knew all this already, but it was new to me.  (ASIDE: The decision cites The Federalist #33, which is very interesting in light of our government’s consideration of treaties that infringe our individual liberties.) 

The decision then goes on to consider whether or not the relevant treaties are self-executing.  It begins thus: “The interpretation of a treaty, like the interpretation of a statute, begins with its text.”  (I think I’m going to like the Roberts court.)  It continues:

The [Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention] provides: “Disputes arising out of the interpretation or application of the [Vienna] Convention shall lie within the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice.” . . .  Of course, submitting to jurisdiction and agreeing to be bound are two different things.

They go on to find that the text of the Protocol is more naturally read as “a bare grant of jurisdiction.”

With NAFTA and the International Court of Justice in the news, I’ve been reflecting on so-called globalization.  (ASIDE: Regarding the latter story, there are so many different issues muddling the case that I’ll need to read the decision to decide what I think.)  It strikes me that there’s really two different forms of globalization going on under one name.

One form seeks to make people more free, and is exemplified by free-trade agreements such as NAFTA, the WTO, and the failed Doha Round.  When two people who happen to reside in separate countries wish to make a consensual exchange of goods, very often their governments interfere, either by demanding a cut (as with tariffs), or by prohibiting the exchange altogether (as with quotas).  Free trade agreements make people more free by lessening governmental interference in their individual choices.

As implemented, these agreements sometimes work in peculiar and unfortunate ways.  For example, when the WTO tries to convince a recalcitrant government to lift a tariff, its tool of coercion is to license another government to impose new tariffs.  Thus, the WTO withdraws freedom from one set of people to try to gain it for another set.  But, when the mechanism works, both sets end up free.  On balance, the WTO seems to extend freedom much more than it curtails freedom.

In sharp contrast is the other form of globalization, which seeks to limit individual freedom by placing people under the authority of international organizations such as the UN or the EU.  In the United States, we can already recognize that our governments usually are not especially concerned with individual freedoms, but at least there are mechanisms by which we can hold them to account.  International organizations are much less accountable (or — as with the UN — not at all).  Moreover, such organizations have already established a reputation for bizarre and capricious behavior (or worse).

This is something to keep in mind when we read about people who support and oppose “globalization.”

James Robbins (at the Corner) observes that many detainees in US custody prefer not to be released, at least not until they finish their classes (!).

D.C. police are cracking down on guns:

Police are asking residents to submit to voluntary searches in exchange for amnesty under the District’s gun ban. The program is starting in the Washington Highlands neighborhood of southeast Washington on Monday and will later expand to other neighborhoods.  Officers will go door to door asking residents for permission to search their homes.

Obviously D.C. is responding to an expected loss in the Heller case, but what I want to know is, are people really giving the police permission to search their homes?!

UPDATE: Well, that’s a relief: The program has yet to start, and residents are upset about it.  (Via Instapundit.)

But there’s something odd in this article:

A police spokeswoman said that if evidence of other crimes is found during voluntary searches, amnesty will be granted for that crime as well.

“Chief Lanier has been clear,” Traci Hughes said. “Amnesty means amnesty.”

This can’t possibly be true.  If they find a dead body in your house, they’re going to give you amnesty?  In any case, I doubt the police chief’s proclamation is binding on the district attorney.

A well-known handicap of senators running for president is a lack of concrete accomplishments, and the problem is exacerbated for Obama and Clinton, who are both among the least-experienced members of the Senate.  The obvious response, to take credit for things you didn’t do, is starting to gall their Democratic colleagues.  (Via the Corner.)

There’s nothing here on McCain, and one feels safe in assuming that they would have included something on him if they could.  Of course, McCain’s problem is more the stuff he’s done, than the stuff he hasn’t.

Amazingly, she gets results.  (Via Instapundit.)  Positive spin: power to the people!  Negative spin: if one person can fix this in a matter of hours, what is the State Department doing with its time?

For my readers (ha!) looking for any difference in substance between Clinton and Obama to explain all the heat on the left, I recommend an insightful article by Ramesh Ponnuru from the March 10 issue of National Review.  (NR subscribers can find it online here.)  Ponnuru cites journalist Ron Brownstein’s observation of two factions within the Democratic party:

Brownstein wrote an article for the Los Angeles Times last spring on the tensions within the Democratic party: “Since the 1960s,” he said, “Democratic nominating contests regularly have come down to a struggle between a candidate who draws support primarily from upscale, economically comfortable voters liberal on social and foreign policy issues, and a rival who relies mostly on downscale, financially strained voters drawn to populist economics and somewhat more conservative views on cultural and national security issues.”

Democratic strategists, Brownstein noted, alluded to this division by referring to “wine track” and “beer track” candidates. One class of Democratic voters looks for a candidate who will be a “warrior” for their interests. Another class looks for a candidate who will serve as a kind of secular “priest” affirming their values.

Clinton, he says, is the “beer track” warrior, and Obama the “wine track” priest.  In the past, the priests (Gary Hart, Bill Bradley) have tended to lose the Democratic primary, but things look different in 2008, in part due to Obama’s unique abilities and in part due to improved economic circumstances:

We now have a mass upper class. Its material concerns largely met, it can vote for reasons that previous generations would have dismissed as hopelessly ethereal, such as the need to create a new style of politics that brings the country together. Its members have the luxury, that is, of voting for “hope.”

Interesting.  The analogy of Obama as priest is also somewhat more poignant given the strange videos being circulated by Obama supporters (for example).

My new voter registration card arrived in the mail yesterday.  I’m now a registered Democrat.  Pennsylvania is abuzz about the Presidential primary, which, against all expectation, has turned out to matter.  I’m part of the surge of Republicans that are changing their party registration to Democrat.  (Aside: the Pennsylvania Department of State says that Republican-to-Democrat switchers outnumber the other direction by a 3-to-1 margin.  Only 3-to-1?  Who’s going the other way?)

I will be voting for Clinton.  This is not because I think she’ll be the easier opponent to McCain to beat.  I think it’s a fools errand to try to predict now who will be the stronger opponent in November.  (Remember, the Democrats ended up with Kerry in 2004 because they thought he was the strongest candidate.  Oops.)   Neither is it because I want to see three more months of Democratic internecine warfare,  although I certainly don’t mind.

I will be voting for Clinton simply because she scares me less than Obama.  There’s no question her foreign policy would be a disaster, but she and her people don’t have the same predilection for jaw-droppingly bizarre foreign policy pronouncements.

Of course, this is all a matter of degree.  Both have pledged to abandon Iraq, and neither has any plan to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.  (It’s not clear that President Bush has a plan either, but at least he recognizes the danger.)  Nevertheless, on balance, Clinton seems to be less dangerous.