Does anyone seriously believe that promoting the ineffectual Office of Homeland Security to cabinet department-level status will make a difference? Cato’s Ivan Eland calmly and coolly obliterates the arguments for a Homeland Security Department in this Newsday op-ed. Eland concludes:

Consolidating even more numerous disparate and sometimes dysfunctional agencies into a new department is likely to result in the same problems and a burgeoning secretarial bureaucracy to attempt to control the whole unwieldy cacophony.

Uh-huh. Dubya just wants something done. It’s the story of his entire presidency — appearance over substance. But I suppose that should not come as a surprise, except to conservatives who actually thought it made a difference whether Gush or Bore was elected.

I forgot to mention that I also met Alex Singleton, who runs The Liberty Log. I
must confess to not having read it much before, as I’m not terribly interested in British politics. But now that I’ve met the guy, I guess I’ll have to make it a daily read.

Right?

Over at Keep and Bear Arms, Barbara Renner writes movingly of the case of Ronyale White, and how too often the options touted as superior to armed self-defense fail:

Women are repeatedly advised to obtain court orders to protect them from potentially violent former partners and others who may do them harm. But protective orders do not stop bullets, or knives, or clubs, or any other implement that can inflict bodily harm. Protective orders do not barricade windows and doors, nor do they prevent violent individuals from entering a home. They don’t shield women (or men) from physical attack. They are what they are — pieces of paper.

Likewise, women are told to dial 9-1-1 when danger is lurking. They are led to believe that authorities will arrive, take charge and diffuse the situation before any substantial harm is inflicted. It is shameful propaganda that costs innocent lives. Waiting on a response to a call for help can literally take the rest of your life — as it did for Ronyale.

White was the mother of three.

The Chicago Tribune’s Adam Kovac reports that Gov. George “Safe Highways” Ryan will ask for higher taxes on cigarettes and riverboat gambling on Monday.

I am shocked, shocked that the Gov wants to increase taxes. The GOP seems to think the stench from the governor’s licenses-for-bribes scandal will hurt Jim Ryan’s chances against Blagojevich. Let me tell you what. Raising taxes — actually seeking to raise taxes, will do much more harm.

The idea that Illinois Republicans actually oppose tax increases is a tragic joke. Most people don’t expect much from state government, and they certainly don’t expect that the budget will be so mismanaged shortly following a period of tremendous economic growth and skyrocketing revenues that a tax increase will be required.

Can moderate Democrat Rod Blagojevich capitalize on this budget mess?

I guess Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s announcement that Iraq won’t be attacked anytime soon is the best that could be expected from the Bush administration. Here are some scary figures reported in the Tribune story:

Military analysts say an invasion of Iraq could take more than 200,000 troops, involve risks of high casualties from possible biological and chemical attacks, and require a lengthy buildup in the region.

Yikes. Now, I don’t doubt that regime change in Iraq could eventually be accomplished, but the first question is whether it is necessary and the second question is what other anti-terrorist efforts would be sacrificed or put on hold in order to do it. This seems to be the concern of some top people in the military as well.

After all of the chatter, the fact is that Iraq and Saddam Hussein are not much of a threat to anyone but their own people, and they’re certainly not a threat to the United States. There’s still no link between Hussein and Al Qaeda or other anti-American terrorist groups, and there’s no reason to think that the United States’ overwhelming nuclear power isn’t enough to deter any hypothetical Iraqi deployment of weapons of mass destruction.

But Dubya will plunge ahead, anyhow. Unfortunately, it’s a matter of when, not if. Though I think the current hoopla over who knew what when regarding Sept. 11 is overblown and won’t in the end really do much to improve American intelligence operations, perhaps it will hurt Dubya enough to put a hold on his foolish plan to attack Iraq.

Brian Carnell asks, “Why do I pay taxes again?” He makes some good points.

I remember how much I enjoyed the Chandra Levy story last summer. It was a refreshing memory of the halcyon days of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. Sure, Gary Condit was a relatively unknown congressman and not the president, but he did have an extramarital affair, and those are always interesting.

Moreover, this was something I could stomach listening to on the news talk shows. Instead of watching politicians and pundits the dime’s worth of difference between the Democrat and Republican plans to run my life, I could watch all Chandra, all the time! And my view is that any time there is a focus in Washington, D.C., on something other than substantive policy, then the least harm is being done.

That’s not quite the case this time around. There is a war on terrorism that needs to, and should be, fought. Still, this ghastly little murder mystery is, in a way, a welcome respite from the war, the Middle East and Robert Blake. Mickey Kaus does a good job of putting together the latest clues to the puzzle.

Now, if I were editing a newspaper, I certainly wouldn’t put Chandra on page one, but I’m not going to get all pissy about the fact that this is a juicy story a good chunk of people find fascinating and want to know more about.

Wreckless and unnecessary foreign aid, writes James Bovard.

The Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence has fought for 27 years to restrict the rights of gun owners in a misguided attempt to reduce gun violence. So it came as a shock when ICHV released a media notice calling for more gun rights.

Ah, the vagaries of state law. The Illinois State Rifle Association snapped up ICHV’s name when the ICHV didn’t file its annual business report. My favorite part of the story is the following:

Alison Barkley, attorney for the new council, said the move was perfectly legal and the name accurately suits the mission of the new group to increase “accessibility of firearms for self-defense.”

“The new organization is not interested in the donors or the members of the old group. Just the name. The name represents it very well,” Barkley said.

Heh, heh, heh. Maybe what was ICHV will have to change its name to something more honest, like the Illinois Council Against Self-Defense. Kinda catchy, no?

Let’s give this embargo a chance! That seems to be Dubya’s attitude on the Cuban embargo. Yes, Castro is a brutal dictator and Cuba will benefit greatly once he’s dead or thrown off or whatever. But in the meantime, ordinary Cubans are suffering terribly and Castro is using the embargo as his last rhetorical cudgel.

Free Cuba, yes. Wouldn’t free trade with Cuba at least be a start?

Brian Carnell has a good post on the “What did Dubya know” furor. He, of course, makes a point very similar to one I made (why else would I be linking to him?):

The weird thing is that most of the people all over this are talking out of both sides of their mouths. On the one hand, they are excoriating the President for his failure to Do More (TM). On the other hand, the sort of things that the President could have done to prevent this are precisely the sorts of things that these selfsame critics oppose on civil liberties grounds.

He makes many other good points, and in the end agrees with Glenn Reynolds that the best way to fight terrorists is to wipe them out before they strike.

I don’t mean to suggest by my earlier post that there is no point in pursuing the whole story about exactly what Dubya knew and when he knew it, to put it in “gate” parlance. Clearly, all of this should have come out a lot earlier, and Dubya has been too reticent about sharing information with Congress and with the public, on everything from the war in Afghanistan to energy hearings to refusing to allow Tom Ridge to brief Congress.

On the other hand, the Democrats are rushing to use this information to try to get some political traction against the president, wrecklessly disregarding the fact that it was the intelligence agencies — not the president — who failed at their duties. Clearly, reform aimed at ensuring that there is a free flow of intelligence information between the FBI, CIA, State Department, the Department of Defense and whomever else is absolutely necessary.

But, as I said before, we should guard against allowing that real need to become an excuse for more pork-barrel spending unrelated to actually fighting domestic terrorist threats.

Apparently, those flashy anti-drug ads aimed at keeping kids off drugs have been a huge flop. They cost $929 million. New drug czar John P. Walters acknowledges this, but that doesn’t mean he won’t give up on alarmist anti-drug messages funded by taxpayers. Instead, he’ll focus-group the ads beforehand to measure their effectiveness.

Heck, some of the ads even made kids want to smoke pot! Why are kids so resistant to government propaganda nowadays? Won’t someone please think of the children?