A great speech, focused early on the crucial issues facing the world, combining an appeal to the Democrats to return to bipartisan support for national security with a message that even if that bipartisanship is not forthcoming, the president will not be turned from his understanding of the dangers the country faces and his strategy to meet and defeat those dangers.

The key paragraph:

It is said that prior to the attacks of September 11th, our government failed to connect the dots of the conspiracy. We now know that two of the hijackers in the United States placed telephone calls to al-Qaida operatives overseas. But we did not know about their plans until it was too late. So to prevent another attack – based on authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute – I have authorized a terrorist surveillance program to aggressively pursue the international communications of suspected al-Qaida operatives and affiliates to and from America. Previous presidents have used the same constitutional authority I have – and Federal courts have approved the use of that authority. Appropriate Members of Congress have been kept informed. This terrorist surveillance program has helped prevent terrorist attacks. It remains essential to the security of America. If there are people inside our country who are talking with al-Qaida, we want to know about it – because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again.

Unfortunately, as Republicans rose to applaud this resolve and the president’s defense of his NSA program, Democrats remained seated and did not applaud. Fox cut to Senator Clinton who shook her head slowly with a tight and disapproving smile.

Notice was served to Hamas and to Iran in unmistakable terms. The direct address to the Iranian people was a brilliant move, but an ominous one as it telegraphs that 2006 will be the year of confrontation that cannot be postponed, and that confrontation could come soon.

The Democrats were enthusiastic and on their feet alone only over the president’s acknowledgement of their successful obstruction of Social Security reform. It was a very interesting moment: They celebrated the failure to fix a growing problem. It was a revealing moment.

There was great urgency in the president’s speech tonight, and a recognition impossible to avoid that one party is serious about the national security and pressing domestic issues and the other is not.

California Congressman Lynn Woosley has invited Cindy Sheehan to sit in the gallery.

If Sheehan stands and screams at the president, what will the president do? What will the networks do?

Earlier today, David called, the father of Elizabeth Jacobson,Airman First Class, killed by an IED in Iraq on September 28, 2005. His anger at the statements of the media left, including CNN's Christiane Amanpour and ABC's David Westin, was white hot.

Blackfive has a tribute to Airman Jacobson, and I think the best response to the anti-war MSM crowd is to demand that the Davids of the country be allowed to speak.

Radioblogger has the audio of Dave's call. Please listen to it.

Played quite a lot of audio of Christiane Amanpour and Cindy Sheehan today, and their views are basically indistinguishable. Amanpour was on Larry King last night, and Sheehan was part of a panel televised by C-SPAN last night.

Most people understand that Sheehan is a lightweight radical, but so is Amanpour. Amanpour is protected by her "journalist" credentials, but her opinions are not supported by anyhing except frequent flier miles. She has a long history of anti-Bush outbursts, which has now metasticized into virulent anti-American rhetoric. She really got rolling last night:

Well, I have been with the Iraqi Army. I'm trying to visualize the kind of vehicle that they were in on Sunday. I've been with the Iraqi Army in a completely unarmored vehicle that looks more like a basic truck.

And, it's really tough when you go out and do that and for sure every time I go out with either the U.S. or the Iraqi Army I am very conscious that this is a potentially life-threatening exercise and, you know, you basically pray from the minute you go out to the minute you come back and you thank God when you've come back.

And, I cannot tell you how awful I feel for Bob and Doug and for their families, their wives, their children who have to put up with them going away and waiting for them just like our families do when we come back.

But, as Peter Arnett said, and I think that the others have said, that number one it's our responsibility. Number two, if we don't do it, who does it? We have had so -- we have to have an independent eye on these conflicts. The war in Iraq has basically turned out to be a disaster and journalists have paid for it, paid for the privilege of witnessing and reporting that and so have many, many other people who have been there.

And I think that's terribly, terribly difficult for us and unfortunately for some reason, which I can't fathom, the kind of awful thing that's going on there now on a daily basis has almost become humdrum. So, when something happens to people that we identify, like Bob and like Doug, we wake up again and realize that, no, this is not acceptable what's going on there and it's a terrible situation.

AMANPOUR: Well, you know, looking at that heartbreaking video tape of her, I mean, it's really heart wrenching. The first video tape was more composed as her friends have said.

And here in the second one, you know, after being held for weeks she is crying and she is desperate. And who can imagine what is going through her head. I mean, obviously it is the most awful situation for anybody to be in. I mean, the most awful.

And it is sad because she has devoted her life to understanding the Iraqis. She dresses a lot like them when she is there. She goes out and about. She is not one of these mega-closeted, mega-guarded, you know, network correspondents like we are. And she has tried to do her best to understand the situation.

So hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, she will be released. I mean, you know, what else can we hope for? And certainly her family are hoping for that as well. But I just think it is so sad. I mean, by an indicator Iraq is a black hole.

Yes, they have had elections. What kind of a government are they going to come up with. Will it be a national unity government? Or will it be the one that sows the seeds of civil war?

Yes, the U.S. has promise reconstruction, but the United States inspector general for reconstruction is about to come out with a report that is saying that it is just not going apace and that it is difficult to see, according to this report, how they are ever going to get what they promised done.

Which means, according to a new poll that is coming out today, that most of the Iraqi people are now losing hope that the promised reconstruction is going to happen and that the quality of their lives is going to increase. This is a big drama because hope is the only thing they have in the middle of this spiralling security disaster. And by any indication whether you take the number of journalists killed or wounded, whether you take the number of American soldiers killed or wounded, whether you take the number of Iraqi soldiers killed and wounded, contractors, people working there, it just gets worse and worse.

CALLER: Yes, my question is, why hasn't there been more outrage on the part of the American people and the U.S. media, government, on the recent bombing in Pakistan, killing all those women and children? Ignoring sovereignty and international law?

I mean, I haven't seen anything in the American media that has really claimed how awful it was and the anger, the legitimate anger on the part of the Pakistani people. It just floors me that there's no outrage.

KING: Christiane?

AMANPOUR: Larry?

KING: Go ahead. Do you want to take that?

AMANPOUR: You know, I think -- well, certainly there's been a lot of reporting about it. Perhaps not enough for that view of it. As you know, there's not enough international reporting on American television anyway.

But I think to the bigger point, why are we there? We're there because if we're not, whose word are we going to take for it? For instance, over the bombing in Pakistan, and for instance, over the constant atrocities in Iraq.

Are we going to take the Pentagon paid Lincoln Group who are paying positive stories to be written in the Iraqi press? Are we going to take what the administration tells us? Do you remember at the beginning of this war, Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense, told us that these insurgents were just a bunch of dead enders who amounted to absolutely nothing.

Well, that was three years ago. You remember on your own show, not so long ago, the vice president of the United States said that the insurgency was in its death throes, in its last throes.

Well, we're there to report what's actually going on and we pay a heavy price for trying to get to the truth. And the truth is what our business is all about. And that's why we're out there, despite the enormous, enormous personal cost to us, to our families, and to our networks.

CALLER: That's correct. It seems to me that the civilian media reporters are given more attention than the average, everyday American soldier.

KING: I'll have everybody answer it....

AMANPOUR: Well, I think it's an incredibly good question. The caller is absolutely right. And, as Bob Schieffer has just said, of course we focus on very well known people and members of our own community.

But the reason that the deaths and injuries of the American soldiers don't get as much publicity is because we are by and large banned from seeing it.

The United States government has made a decision that we are not allowed to see the coffins, that we're not allowed to see the burials, that we're generally not allowed to go to any of the areas where there are wounded, U.S. military hospitals.

Perhaps you can see a little bit more in Landstuhl in Germany. Perhaps when we go to the hospitals in the United States. But it's very, very difficult to get close to that kind of real tragedy that the American servicemen and women are going through as well.

What did Amanpour bring to her job at CNN? From her bio:

Before joining CNN, Amanpour worked at WJAR-TV, Providence, R.I., as an electronic graphics designer. From 1981 to 1982, she worked as a reporter, anchor and producer for WBRU-Radio, also in Providence.

Amanpour graduated summa cum laude from the University of Rhode Island with a bachelor of arts in journalism.

So, how did Amanpour come by her opinions? (Sheehan came to hers by tragedy, and must be given a great deal of understanding, but not the jet-setting Amanpour.) Here's a bit of biography from Amanpour's own mouth in a 2000 speech:

But 17 years ago, I arrived at CNN with a suitcase, with my bicycle, and with about 100 dollars. Indeed I came from one of the best local stations who took me in right after college and sort of had pity on me and gave me a job. And they encouraged me to try CNN because they knew somebody who worked there. And basically said, "You know, this is a great opportunity for somebody like yourself who's foreign, who has a foreign accent. We hear foreign accents on CNN. It's crazy, it's wild, who knows, maybe they'll take you because you certainly don't fit in, in the American spectrum of news.

Anyway, I got down there and it was really exciting. We were pioneers, we were proud to be a band of young college graduates thinking we'd get some practical experience on the job, and hoping that experience would be a steppingstone to the big leagues.

Little did we know then that CNN would become the big league

Because I am foreign I was assigned to the foreign desk. I kid you not, it's true. I was really just the tea boy to begin with, or the equivalent thereof, but I quickly announced, innocently but very ambitiously, that I wanted to be, I was going to be, a foreign correspondent.

And of course I started (we're talking) 17 years ago, when the trench-coated foreign correspondent was the job to strive for. When reputations in news could be made with a couple of well-reported foreign stories.

Amanpour's undeniable talent is for self-promotion backed up by fearlessness. She has been willing to go to dangerous places. This of course does require physical courage of which she has plenty.

But courage is not an indication of intelligence or depth of character. A thick passport and an accent may impress the Davos gang, but really, read her work or listen to her speeches. They are at a level of a college kid blissfully unaware of the world he or she has not personally seen.

Travel can blind and often does the traveller the key admonition to know what you don't know.

Glenn Reynolds' new book and certain best-seller is now available on Amazon.

I am honored to have read it prior to publication and to have blurbed the following:

"'Must read,' 'gotta have,' 'culture changing,' –I am suspicious of blurbs with such overused plugs.

But Glenn Reynolds' An Army of Davids is in fact a must read new book, that you gotta have if you are going to even glimpse the culture changing forces that are unleashed and at work across the globe.

And did I mention that it is the best title in a decade?" —HUGH HEWITT, syndicated talk show host and author of Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World.

Some will have to endure Virginia Governor Tim Kaine's response to the president's SOTU address tonight, made on behalf of the Democrats. I suggest this drinking game. Whatever your poison and whatever your portion, throw back when you hear:

"mainstream"
"culture of corruption"
"disappointment"
"working families"

It will be as though Tom Daschle never got smacked down for the same kind of small ball obstructionism.

Would-be Member of Congress Coleen Rowley admitted to the Star Tribune that she approved phot-shopping her opponent, 25 year veteran of the USMC and now sitting Congressman, Colonel John Kline, into a Nazi uniform:

Rowley had the photo removed from her website and took steps to apologize personally. She said an unpaid volunteer prepared the blog, and she approved it without making the Nazi connection.

Rather, she said she focused instead on the message that Kline, a retired Marine Corps colonel, was "incompetent" like Klink, a Nazi colonel easily fooled by his American prisoners in the TV series "Hogan's Heroes."

She goes with the "stupid" defense mixed in with the "just kidding" retreat. But like Dick Durbin and his analogizing the American military to Nazi, Soviet, and Khmer Rouge killers, the Democrats should simply embrace their inner anti-military impulse as Joel Stein did. (Perhaps can pick up some extra work ghosting for Rowley and the rest of the Defeatocrats, as his latest very lame column --with its buried refernce to his travails of the past week-- suggests that the attention he received may result in a focus on the fact that humorists are supposed to be at least mildly amusing.)

Both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have long pieces on the continuing legal harvest from the Reagan Justice Department and White House.

Among those who share in the credit for spotting and developing this team are the late William French Smith and Rex Lee, and the very much still inthe game Ken Starr and Fred Fielding.

There was never any "plan" to identify and credential the best young legal minds of the early '80s, but it turned out that way. There are many more such Reagan-era lawyers and judges on the lower federal courts, in law schools and in private practice, and three more years in which the Bush Administration will continue to use that talent bank to fill vacancies on the federal bench (including, hopefully, two more nominations to the D.C. Circuit in short order, to go along with the renomination of Brett Kavanaugh, already accomplished.)

Not being in D.C. it is hard to say whether the current set of Special Assistants to the AG, Assistant and Associate Counsels to the President, Deputy Assistant AG's and Deputy General Counsels scattered across the government have the same abilities as the young Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Alito did when they were toiling away in the Reagan-era '80s, but it will part of President Bush's legacy if the nominees of 2025 turned out to have begun their careers in the turbulent legal times of the Bush Adminsitration.

I hope the president and his senior staff are restocking the bench.

From the Wall Street Journal (subscription required):

House Republicans are leaning heavily toward using their lobbying-overhaul bill to impose limits on the flow of money to so-called 527 political groups, which sprang up in the last presidential election.

Factions in both parties employed 527s to get around campaign-finance rules and spend as much as $420 million, largely for advertising and grassroots get-out-the-vote efforts in 2004.

Compared to this:

A museum visitor shattered three Qing dynasty Chinese vases when he tripped on his shoelace, stumbled down a stairway and brought the vases crashing to the floor, officials said Monday.

The three vases, dating from the late 17th or early 18th century, had been donated to the Fitzwilliam Museum in the university city of Cambridge in 1948, and were among its best-known artifacts. They had been sitting proudly on the window sill beside the staircase for 40 years.

Powerline points us to a despicable statement by Democratic Congressional candidate Colleen Rowley comparing Congressman John Kline --and American hero and decorated Marine-- to a Nazi. Rowley, of course, was once a Time Magazine person of the year. Now she's part of the fever swamp.

Where are the Democrats who should be denouncing this? The ones who, rightly, slammed the comments directed at Congressman John Murtha's service?

A party in free fall cannot pause to summon the moral courage to denounce this repulsive comparison of Marines to Nazis? I guess Dick Durbin was just the first of many Democrats to come clean with their feelings.

Yesterday, in Colorado Springs, my wife and I attended First Presbyterian Church, and heard a recovering-from-the-flu Pastor Jim Singleton deliver what was a magnificent sermon, full of humor, illustration and powerful exegesis of the handful of verses describing Saul's Damascus Road experience from the Book of Acts.

Thanks to the wonders of podcasting and the internet, you can judge for yourself. The sermon is the "Four Discoveries on the Road to Damascus"

Why doesn't the Boston Globe's Marty Baron recognoize that the best columnist he could hire to attract readers to his online edition is Soxblog?

It is absolutely the case that every newspaper in the country ought to tab their best backyard blogger to join their online ranks. And the smart newspapers would allow readers to nominate and perhaps even select the bloggers to be added to the online paper.

Counterterrorism Blog has Walid Phares' analysis.

Once again, the American media gets suckered by evil.

conducted an interview with me earlier today in which he "categorically rejects" the implication in yesterday's New York Times' editorial that the NSA program has been aimed at antiwar protesters. He also confirmed that he is not aware of any surveillance of American media under the program. He also confirmed that he has been involved in some of the meetings in which members of Congress were briefed --from both parties-- and that no one he has briefed objected to the program during the briefing or after the briefing by letter or any other communication.

He also states in the interview that he is unaware of anyone who would have standing to challenge the program.

The interview will air at 3:06 PM Pacific, and a transcript will be up at Radioblogger.com later in the afternoon.

The Newshour interview I refer to in the opening of the interview is here.

The case the AG references is In re Sealed Case No. 02-001.

UPDATE: Austin Bay has some additional thoughts on the NSA program. (HT: Instapundit.)

That was the vote to end debate and move on to the confirmation of Justice Alito. I hope he's in the front row for the SOTU tomorrow night with his new colleagues for the next three decades.

The KosKids are very unhappy.

UPDATE: The top five KosKid comments ranked here.

The Democrats may have finally figured out that political advice from the fever swamp hasn't been working so well.