For all of his talk of being a compassionate conservative, Dubya’s reaction to the Trent “All These Problems” Lott idiocy has been disappointing. Sure, he condemned his statement yesterday but seemed to let him off the hook for apologizing, “and rightly so.”

Trent Lott is not only a disgrace to the Senate but an albatross around the neck of the Republican Party and Dubya’s hopes for re-election. Why the soft touch? Have we heard any leaks about White House pressure on the Senate to censure Lott or vote him out of his leadership position? Nope. Porque no?

According to Bob Kemper’s story on the Sept. 11 commission in yesterday’s Tribune:

But the Sept. 11 families, as well as some lawmakers, are even more concerned over what they see as Lott’s all but certain decision to block [Warren] Rudman at the urging of the White House.
Rudman is viewed by the families as someone who would not shy away from taking on the intelligence, diplomatic and military establishments. He also might join up with the commission’s five Democrats to create a majority for authorizing subpoenas and taking other aggressive investigative actions.

Lott has until Sunday to appoint commission members. A Republican familiar with Lott’s plans said it is unlikely Rudman will be picked. Lott’s aides have told family members that Rudman is on their list of candidates for the job, but that they are looking for someone more qualified.

Dubya’s scared to death that a real, independent Sept. 11 commission — you know, one that’s not headed up by a war criminal — will find out something that could remove the post-9/11 gloss. Which, by the way, I think is ridiculous. Unless a commission unearths a memo to Dubya on Sept. 10 that says, “Al Qaeda terrorists will be hijacking four planes tomorrow and flying them into the World Trade Center Towers, the Pentagon and possibly the White House,” the public is unwilling to saddle the president with the blame.

It’s well understood by anyone who doesn’t have an axe to grind that Sept. 11 was an intelligence failure, an INS failure, an airport security failure, etc. It was not a presidential failure — but rigging a commission to achieve a fixed result would be a failure of monumentally stupid proportions. But that’s what Dubya’s willing to do. The one stumbling block to achieving that whitewash would be All These Problems Lott, fearing the loss of his leadership and much of his pork-barrel pull, turning tail on Dubya by appointing Rudman.

As bad as it is for Dubya’s image and for the GOP’s image to have a segregationist-sympathizer as Senate majority leader, it’s not as bad as somehow getting the blame pinned on him by a Sept. 11 commission. The president figures things will take of themselves. The ball is already rolling. Lott won’t be able to take the heat much longer. Why get his hands dirty? Why take a stand? Why take a risk?

How compassionate.

Cardinal Law has resigned. My question is, when does his trial begin?

Check out the Reason magsters’ new group blog, Hit & Run.

While it’s clear that Dubya & Co. are disingenuous about allowing the U.N. inspections process to work (“We’ve got evidence, you just can’t see it,” they say), we shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that a search that doesn’t turn up anything in Iraq will keep the dogs of war at bay.

Dubya never wanted inspections, doubts they’ll work, and claims to have evidence of at least attempts to accumulate or build weapons of mass destruction. That might be a bluff, but Dubya seems pretty damn convinced that Saddam’s up to no good. I doubt that’s all wishful thinking on his part. And it doesn’t matter, since it seems so many politicians, pundits and the public at large seems willing to accept Dubya’s word that he’s got the goods on Saddam.

In which case, the inspections process has been a waste of time. Yeah, if it turns out there’s no smoking gun it hurts Dubya’s cause a little bit, but all along the administration has asked Iraq to prove a negative. Just because we can’t find the weapons doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Which brings us full circle to the original question: Is Saddam a threat? Moreover, is he the primary threat to U.S. national security? The debate needs to be shifted away from this hocus-pocus inspections game to some contemplation over how well containment has worked, how well deterrence has worked, and perhaps most effective rhetorically, how much we are still at risk from Islamic extremist terrorists around the globe who are still hell-bent on killing as many Americans as they can.

The U.N. inspections are a sideshow. Nothing that results from them will keep us out of war. Also posted to Stand Down.

Reason’s Tim Cavanaugh has Dubya down cold.

Brutal.

Yes, it’s true!

According to an editorial in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, “Last year alone, of the 570 slayings in which police determined motives, 260 were tied to gangs, narcotics or narcotics turf disputes.” That’s almost half of the murders cops have pinned down a motive for.

These murders are a direct result of the illegal drug trade in Chicago. There might be a lot of ugly things about legally available hard drugs, but will there be anything as ugly as those 260 lives that were lost last year. Or that are lost every year, in every major metropolitan area in this country?

The answer, of course, is more vigorous prosecution of this war on drugs and gangs, says the Tribune editorial.

Hooray for stupidity!

Dubya & Co. think what the world needs now is a war, sweet war, but empires ain’t what they used to be, the Cato Institute’s Ivan Eland says. He writes:

The strategy of empire is likely to overstretch and bleed America’s economy and its military and federal budgets, and the overextension could hasten the decline of the United States as a superpower, as it did the Soviet Union and Great Britain. The strategy could also have the opposite effect from what its proponents claim it would have; that is, it would alarm other nations and peoples and thus provoke counter-balancing behavior and create incentives for other nations to acquire weapons of mass destruction as an insurance policy against American military might.

See his full analysis here. Also posted to Stand Down.

The new terrorism insurance bill Dubya signed will ensure that the feds take on the risks that insurance companies think are too high. Want to build a huge skyscraper that will prove a tempting target for terrorists? “Go for it,” says the new law.
By leaving this in private hands, real estate developers and insurers would have a profit incentive to be creative and design buildings that actually reduce the risk of terrorist attacks. So much for that. That “giant sucking sound” you hear, to quote Ross Perot, is your tax dollars going to pay off big insurance companies the next time there’s a major terrorist attack.

The Miss World riots are all the media’s fault, says Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Let me get this straight.

The INS can’t even get the FBI and the CIA to do background checks on people applying for immigrant status and who are coming from countries with known terrorist cells, and we’re supposed to expect that the behemoth, mammoth, gigantanormous Homeland Security Department is supposed to work? There are 22 different agencies being folded into this monster! Yet another layer of bureaucracy in the federal morass to help us all feel a little safer.

Way to go, Dubya. Don’t you have a pointless war to fight in Iraq?