Could’ve had this for a stump speech:

…What we are fighting for in Iraq and around the world is freedom. What we are fighting against is an Islamic terrorist totalitarian movement which is as dire a threat to individual liberty as the fascist and communist totalitarian threats we faced and defeated were in the last century.

What we are fighting for is an expanding worldwide community of democracies. What we are fighting against is the prospect of a new evil empire, a radical Islamic caliphate which would suppress the freedom of its people and threaten the security of every other nation’s citizens. …

It was the mortal and moral threats posed by Saddam Hussein that moved me to support his overthrow in 1991. And although many in my own party have disagreed, I am confident that support for the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein’s regime of terror from Iraq and now to defeat the terrorists who are fighting us there is true to a long and proud tradition within the Democratic Party. The ideals for which we fight in Iraq today are “Wilsonian.” And they were upheld and advanced by other Democratic leaders against freedom’s foes in their time, leaders like Franklin Roosevelt… Harry Truman… John F. Kennedy… Henry M. Jackson… Bill Clinton.

Democrats with a capital “D” have long been ready to stand up and fight for democracy with a small “d.” We must and will stand up and fight for democracy in Iraq today.

The connection between the Iraqi insurgency we are fighting today and Al Qaeda’s worldwide campaign of anti-democratic terror is now clear. Bin Laden’s henchmen are fighting side-by-side with Saddam loyalists on the streets of Baghdad, Fallujah, Najaf and across Iraq – killing Americans and killing Iraqis, striving to stop the onward march of Iraqi self-government, of democracy.

At least I’ll have a chance to vote for him in ’06.

Sorry I’m a couple days late on this, but Thursday’s testimony before the 9/11 commission was all ‘bout air defense in September 2001.

Now, it may be hard to imagine, but what would your reaction have been if instead of hearing Bob Edwards talking about planes flying into the WTC (The first one was initially blamed on pilot error, as I recall), the story had been that military jets had intercepted and shot down 4 civilian, US flagged, airliners that Tuesday morning, that had been “reported” hijacked. Especially since a couple of the flights had pretty well-connected folks on them.

Thought so. Just like me, the entire nation would have been screaming for GWB’s head on a platter.

A painstaking recreation of the faltering and confused response by military and aviation officials on Sept. 11 also shows that the fighter jets that were scrambled that day never had a chance to intercept any of the doomed airliners, Duh. There’s going to be browbeating because none of this was “anticipated by planners”, but, as the reaction to even contemplation of the legality of torture has shown, the revelation that the feds had plans to shoot down hijacked civilian airliners would have been met with howls of rage. After all, up until that time, hijackers have only been interested in getting safe passage and money for their causes. Why would we shoot them down when we could negotiate?

Today’s reason: hiding from the truth.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is doing it’s best to keep W and Ashcroft from facing public scrutiny over their acceptance of torture.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday defeated a Democratic-sponsored effort to subpoena documents on torture and interrogation practices from the Justice Department.

The 10 to 9 vote reflected the mounting partisan rancor over the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and whether U.S. officials condoned harsh interrogation practices on prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Orin Hatch makes a good guard dog.

SO we keep hearing how the jobs that are being created during the current recovery are “low wage”, blah, blah, blah…

Well, the LA Times has a bit about a Pew Study showing that 30% of new jobs were going to immigrants.

The study is likely to sharpen the debate about the role of immigrant workers in America, the quality of new jobs and the impact of globalization. Most economists have tended to minimize the impact of large numbers of immigrants entering the U.S. job market, but the Pew findings may bolster those who challenge that view.

The high proportion of new jobs going to immigrants may reflect the fact that the current recovery has thus far been different from most past upturns. In recent months, as overall job growth has begun to improve, most of the new jobs appear to have come in categories that require relatively low skills and pay relatively low wages — the kinds of jobs for which many immigrants are strong competitors.

What’s buried about 2/3 of the way down the article is “ The underlying data used in the report do not distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants.” Hmmmm.

So, let me get this straight: The low wages in new jobs are due to the nature of the job, not the nature of the employees? I’m sorry, but this fails the Econ 101 test. If we did not have a labor market artifically inflated by illegal immigration, wages, even for lower skilled jobs, would be higher.

Open borders: Bad for security, bad for Hispanic wages.

In an article for the Guardian, Terry Jones explains how Rummy reinforced his convictions that he wasn’t torturing his son. (Yes, that Terry Jones.)

For some time now, I’ve been trying to find out where my son goes after choir practice. He simply refuses to tell me. He says it’s no business of mine where he goes after choir practice and it’s a free country. Now it may be a free country, but if people start going just anywhere they like after choir practice, goodness knows whether we’ll have a country left to be free. I mean, he might be going to anarchist meetings or Islamic study groups. How do I know? … So I have been applying a certain amount of pressure on my son to tell me where he’s going. To begin with I simply put a bag over his head and chained him to a radiator. … My wife had the gall to suggest that I might be going a bit too far. So I put a bag over her head and chained her to the radiator. But I still couldn’t persuade my son to tell me where he goes after choir practice. … I hesitated to gravitate to harsher interrogation methods because, after all, he is my son. Then Donald Rumsfeld came to my rescue. … I read in the New York Times last week that a memo had been prepared for the defence secretary on March 6 2003.