Democrats announced that the fall elections will be fought over their collective commitment to retreat and defeat:

After months of struggling to forge a unified stance on the Iraq war, top congressional Democrats joined voices yesterday to call on President Bush to begin withdrawing U.S. troops by the end of the year and to "transition to a more limited mission" in the war-torn nation.

With the midterm elections three months away, and Democrats seeing public discontent over Iraq as their best chance for retaking the House or Senate, a dozen key lawmakers told Bush in a letter: "In the interests of American national security, our troops and our taxpayers, the open-ended commitment in Iraq that you have embraced cannot and should not be sustained. . . . We need to take a new direction."

The 12 Democrats, led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.), include liberals and centrists who have differed over Iraq in the past. The signers included the top Democrats on the House and Senate committees dealing with armed services, foreign relations, intelligence and military spending. Their action puts party leaders on the same page, and it helps clarify the Nov. 7 election as a choice between a party seeking a timeline for withdrawing troops from an unpopular war and a party resisting any such timetable.

Clarity is a very, very good thing.  Democratic majorities in either the House or the Senate will compel the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq whether or not the country's young government can survive such a withdrawal, whether or not such a withdrawal will be followed by a triumph of the Iranian surrogates or the entrenchment in Anbar Province of al Qaeda or both, whether or not confrontation with Iran over a nuclear program is imminent.

The Democrats would rather lose Iraq than lose an election; capitulate to Iranian ambitions than concede that George Bush's understanding of the evil we face is correct.

The stakes could not be higher.

DEAN BARNETT HERE, spanning the globe:

1)      A VICTORY LAP FOR ABE – Abe Foxman is the head of the Anti-Defamation League, a group dedicated to Jewish interests.  Over at Soxblog, I had some harsh words for Foxman as he squandered his organization’s once considerable prestige on things like protesting school bullies and vilifying Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”  I thought with Israel being surrounded by some pretty passionate folks dedicated to its annihilation, America’s ranking Jewish organization would have bigger fish to fry than schoolyard miscreants and a purportedly offensive movie (which I as a Jew didn’t find offensive).  When virtually the whole country went to see Gibson’s supposedly incendiary film and not a single pogrom ensued, I felt entitled to say I told you so and took a virtual victory lap at Abe’s expense.

Now that Mel Gibson has revealed himself as an anti-Semitic kook, it’s admittedly Abe’s turn to take a victory lap.  While Gibson’s DUI arrest and subsequent rantings don’t necessarily reflect on the films he made (any more than Woody Allen’s schtuping of his step-daughter makes “Annie Hall” any less brilliant), they certainly make me feel like a Grade A schmuck for defending him.

Gibson’s actions are indeed indefensible.  Thus, I won’t be taking a crack at defending them.

(Actually, it’s been a good week for Foxman all the way around.  His full-throated and unnuanced defense of Israel the past fortnight has also impressed.)

2)      DID SOMEBODY MENTION NUANCE?  - There can only be one reason why I have nuance on the noodle – the spectacularly nuanced mind of John Kerry was on display this morning in the Boston Globe making the case for universal health care coverage. 

Kerry’s op-ed consists of the typically soporific prose that we have come to expect from the Senator.   Take this bracing passage as indicative of the entire effort:  “Doctors follow the motto ‘First do no harm.’ So should Washington. We don’t want to reinvent the wheel on healthcare; we need to take what’s already working for those of us who are lucky and make it work for the millions of Americans being passed by. And we need to improve quality and lower costs for those with coverage today.”

I beseech you, do not follow the link to Kerry’s piece. If you disregard my advice on this matter, at the very least do not attempt to operate heavy machinery after having done so.

3)      THAT’S GOT TO STING – Far more amusing is the AP’s coverage of Kerry’s increasingly pathetic effort to stay in the public eye:

“Whatever his criticism, Kerry faces the reality that the governor of his home state Republican Mitt Romney, himself a potential 2008 presidential candidate has not only talked about but enacted a sweeping health care overhaul designed to bring universal coverage to Massachusetts. Last week, Michael Leavitt, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human services, called the program ‘a model’ for the nation.

“Romney negotiated the plan with a Democratic Legislature, and in cooperation with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., Kerry’s senior colleague.”

4)      JOHN EDWARDS, CALL YOUR OFFICE…  The New York Times has an interesting article on post-middle-aged men who have removed themselves from the workplace because they can’t find a job that is “neither demeaning nor underpaid.” 

53 year old Alan Beggerow is typical.  Rather than demean himself with a poorly paying job that lacks adequate prestige, Beggerow leads a quietly dignified life “writing unpublished Western potboilers in the Louis L’Amour style” and “stay(ing) up late and sleep(ing) until 11 a.m.”

The article is interesting reading.  On the one hand, you’d have to have a heart of stone to not feel sympathy for people whose lives have been upended by economic reversals.  On the other hand, you can’t help but think there’s a more admirable (and less French) way of handling such disappointments than spending the next few years sleeping almost until noon, curled up in your own sense of victim-hood.

Anyway, the piece is definitely worth checking out.

5)      THE VERSATILE LEFT WING BLOGGER/best selling author Glenn Greenwald doesn’t seem to like neo-cons like me:

“(They have a) thirst for endless war… The neoconservative extremists are ridiculed on an almost daily basis, because the extent of their ever-increasing lunacy is truly difficult to fathom. But that mindset is not merely some fringe radicalism but, instead, has been driving our foreign policy for the last five years. And it still is, because the individual who happens to be the President, along with the omnipotent Vice President, are full-fledged adherents to this approach, and while scores of people marvel at how increasingly deranged the Bill Kristols and Richard Perles of the world seem to be, those who occupy the White House believe they speak great wisdom and are listening intently to (and outright echoing) what they have to say.”

What I really admire about Greenwald is the way he wrestles with the views of others of a different ideological bent with such intellectual honesty and vigor while eschewing mindless name-calling.  May he long serve as a model for the left!!

6)      THE PERSONIFICATION OF ALL THINGS EVIL IN THE SPORTS WORLD, the New York Yankees, acquired two players who seem likely to help their quixotic quest to wrest the American League East from the iron-clad grip of the Boston Red Sox.  Title-less for six years and battling the Curse of A-Rod, the Yankees are obviously getting desperate.  Nonetheless, if you’re not a Red Sox fan you can’t imagine the panic that these Yankee machinations trigger in the Hub amongst a fandom still haunted by ghosts even though Boston is this decade’s City of Champions.

Fortunately, the Red Sox begin a series tonight against the overmatched Cleveland Indians, and all should soon be calm in Red Sox Nation.

7)      MOST IMPORTANTLY…Ehud Olmert committed his nation to victory today, and did so rightly promising that there would be hardships along the way. 

“The fighting continues. There is no ceasefire and there will not be any ceasefire in the coming days… We will stop the war when the [rocket] threat is removed...our captive soldiers return home in peace, and you are able to live in safety and security. We should be ready for pain, tears and blood. Missiles and rockets will still land in Israel in the coming days.”

Okay, the rhetoric isn’t quite Churchillian, but the sentiment definitely is.

8)      WAS OLMERT READING THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER?  - The Examiner had an editorial on the Israel-Hezbollah war today that was 100% spot-on:

“Editorial: How about ‘We win, they lose’ for U.S. strategy in the Middle East? Now there’s a strategic vision for the 21st century. It worked for President Reagan in winning the Cold War against the Soviet Union and it will work for President Bush and his successors in the White House in winning the war against terrorism.”

The Examiner’s editorial gets my first “read the whole thing” prize during my tenure at Hugh’s place.

(By the way, I can tell what you’re thinking: A lot of this “Spanning the Globe” exercise seems reminiscent of what James Taranto does at OpinionJournal.com and a “read the whole thing” prize certainly seems to be borrowed from Professor Reynolds.  I prefer to think of these things as homages rather than rip-offs, a case of me standing on the shoulders of giants if you will.

Besides when I did this at Soxblog, I illustrated these lists with funny pictures.  Those will be coming soon.)

Compliments or complaints?  Please contact me at Soxblog@aol.com.

The Israel-Hezbollah war has been occupying most of my blogging time, so I missed the kerfuffle over Patrick Hynes' posts about presidential politics and his relationship with the McCain folks.  Jim Geraghty did a fine job explaining it all, and Patrick posted on the controversy as well.

What I hadn't focused on is that before he disclosed the relationship with McCain, Patrick had written the following accusation:

If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would suspect Hugh of bashing McCain in the services of Mitt Romney, who Hugh, it has become increasingly obvious, supports along with Arlen Specter.

(emphasis mine.)

Now, I am not "in the services" of Mitt Romney, or George Allen, or Bill Frist, or Rudy Giuliani, all of whom are believed to be in the hunt for 2008.  I am an Al Davis Republican, a "just win baby" Republican. I believe in the big tent, and the only GOP senator I have ever urged be turned out of office is Lincoln Chafee. Though I am a strong supporter of Rick Santorum, I'm also a strong supporter of Tom Kean, Jr. and any other GOP nominee for a Senate seat who isn't Lincoln Chafee.

I am not a fan of John McCain for president, for a variety of reasons I have detailed and will detail again.

And when I speak about GOP presidential politics in front of groups, I take a straw poll of everyone present.  John McCain always finishes last.  Always.

But for Patrick --while already "in the services" of John McCain to suggest I was "in the services" of Mitt Romney is to my eyes a much worse offense than non-disclosure of a relationship which would have been disclosed eventually.  It was the pot calling a non-kettle black.

I am writing a book about Romney and the impact his LDS faith will have on the presidential campaign. The book will also touch on the others in the race, but I haven't endorsed or contributed to Romney or any of the other candidates.  When Senators Frist and Allen appear on my radio program as they frequently do, they are always received with the same degree of courtesy and curiosity as Governor Romney receives, which is the same degree of curiosity and courtesy that Senator McCain and Mayor Giuliani. will receive if and when they appear.  My assessments of politics and its ups and downs are not in any way dependent on the success or failure of any of these or any other candidate.

To my mind it is fine to blog on behalf of a candidate, and to get paid to do so.  I believe in disclosure. 

But I don't believe in making stuff up, especially charges/suggestions/rumors against other bloggers.

TruthLaidBear's map of the Middle East's blogs and news tracker just got even more amazing.

If you are a news junkie, I doubt very much if you have learnedof an important development in the Middle East from the old media.  Ask yourself where you are learning about crucial developments.

ACTUALLY BY DEAN BARNETT, THE NEW GUY

In his magnificent biography of Winston Churchill, “The Last Lion – Alone: 1932-1940,” William Manchester used the term “the catechism of appeasement” to describe the European powers’ irrational faith in their ability to appease Hitler.  In spite of Hitler’s belligerence and plainly evil objectives, the wise men of Europe labored at convincing themselves that their program of appeasing Hitler would be successful.

Regarding the Middle East right now, we have something similar – call it the catechism of a ceasefire.  There is nothing that suggests that Hezbollah or its state sponsors want any kind of lasting peace with either Israel or the United States.  But the cries for a ceasefire continue.  If only the bombs would stop falling, ceasefire proponents seem to argue, we could once again comfortably insert our heads into the sand and pretend all is well.

The fact that we would only defer the true day of reckoning to a later though likely bloodier date seems not to be a consideration.

IT WAS ACTUALLY TOUGHER for the Hitler than it is for the modern day Islamo-fascists.  Hitler had to occasionally offer some dishonest rhetoric suggesting that he was just attempting to restore a natural balance to things and really had no offensive designs on the rest of Europe.  Churchill understood Hitler’s half-hearted attempts to pose as a man of peace for what they were.  He famously referred to one of Hitler’s less bellicose speeches as “comfort for everyone on both sides of the Atlantic who wished to be humbugged.”

Alas, the Jihadists see no need to humbug us – we’re quite willing to humbug ourselves.  Blogger Atrios, a man at the intellectual vanguard of modern day liberalism (if such an intellectually exhausted movement can actually possess a phalanx worthy of the term “vanguard) wrote a revealing blog-post over the weekend.  Apparently provoked into silliness by a Glenn Reynolds post, Atrios declared, “I hope we’re never tested on what our actual response to nuclear terrorism is no matter who is to blame, both because I hope nuclear terrorism never happens to us and because I don’t really want to have to actually consider what the appropriate response to such an event would be.” 

(It’s not like Atrios didn’t get a good shot in at Reynolds.  Showing the sharp debating skills that can only be found at the highest levels of academia, Atrios slashed Reynolds with his rapier-like rhetoric, calling him the “Instawanker.”)

Far more important than Atrios’ chronic affection for juvenile insults is his intellectual cop-out.  It’s true that nuclear terrorism is a disquieting thing to contemplate.  But are we not better off contemplating such things ahead of time so we can act wisely if and when they do occur?  Perhaps Atrios is just copying a page out of some prominent Democrats’ playbook.  Maybe Ray Nagin once scribbled in his personal diary that he didn’t want to contemplate the horrors of the levies being breeched, let alone what he would do with all those school buses if such a thing occurred. 

And certainly the leaders of the Democratic Party have been mum on how to confront Radical Islam the past five years.  They seem to have reached a consensus on the fact that everything George W. Bush does, from the troop levels he fields in Iraq to how he parts his hair, is irretrievably mistaken.  And yet, similar to Atrios, they seem “reluctant to consider” how they would deal with this very real threat.  Or perhaps drunk on his own power as is the progressive blogger’s wont, Atrios feels that his refusal to consider nuclear terrorism will by some unidentified mechanism forestall the threat.

Atrios’ stand puts the Democratic Party and the left wing blogosphere (which still en masse refuses to even address Israel’s war) in stark relief.  They have become the party of
Scarlet O’Hara, twirling about their virtual Tara defiantly insisting that they will not contemplate the nation’s problems until some far-off tomorrow.

SUCH IS THE LOGIC THAT INSISTS ON AN IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE.  After all, it’s tough to bounce about saying “twiddle-dee-dee” and focusing exclusively on Ned Lamont while Katyushas are falling by the hundreds on Northern Israel and the United Nations has worked itself into a lather over Israel’s purportedly disproportionate response.

Besides, a serious intellectual engagement with the Israel-Hezbollah war requires the contemplation of a whole host of downright unpleasant issues.  After all, Hezbollah did not produce the Katyushas that rain down on Israel.  Without their state sponsors, Hezbollah would not have these weapons.  Equally unpleasant is the fact that neither Hezbollah nor its state sponsors seem to have any interest in peace. 

True, a ceasefire will be a break in the action, but a break in the action to what end and to the benefit of what parties?  Or is such a question too unpleasant to consider?

PS - Thanks to everyone, and especially Hugh for having me here.  I'll try be worthy.  And if I do some stupid things like post the same the essay four times because I'm unusually maladroit working with new software, try to remember what a wonderful virtue patience is.

To Soxblog readers who complained that I didn't post enough, hear me now and believe me later - that's about to dramatically change.  And thanks for following me over here.

Now that Mary Katharine Ham has moved her blogging to the big Townhall.com blog, I'd like to introduce HH.com readers to my new guest blogger, Dean Barnett.  Dean has been posting at Soxblog, and contributing to the Weekly Standard's online edition for more than a year now (his most recent piece at the DailyStandard is "Kos, Hezbollah and Israel" ), and is easily one of the best writing talents at work on the web as well as a keen observor of blogging trends. He is, unfortunately, a Red Sox fan, but I will overlook that in order to serve the audience. 

My point in having a guest blogger is twofold.  First, sometimes I cannot post as frequently as I want to, and as first vacation and then election season looms, I'll be out and about quite a bit.  Dean's contributions will mean that fewer things will get by that deserve some comment.

Secondly, by sharing the space I hope readers will get very accustomed to the guest blogger and follow him or her wherever they head after they depart.  Building audience for folks like Mary Katharine and Dean is a key mission of this blog and Townhall.com generally.

Take it away Dean...

UPDATE:

Glenn is off on vacation, and doesn't just get a guest blogger.  He imports the '27 Yankees.

I have written three previous posts on Jeff Crank's campaign for Congress in Colorado's 5th District.  It is a very tight race between Jeff and state senator named Doug Lamborn, with Colorado Springs mayor Lionel Rivera a fading third.

Post 1 is here; post 2 here; and post 3 here.

Now Colorado blogger Rossputin posts more on the race in a post titled "Doug Lamborn: the more you know the less you like."

Professor John Eastman and I have discussed the Wilson-Plame civil suite with Erwin Chemerinsky, co-copunsel to Wilson-Plame, on three occasions.

The transcript of the first conversation is here.  The second conversation is transcribed here (it befins after conversation on unrelated subjects), and the third is here.

Clarice Feldman reacts to Erwin's statements here, and Tom Maguire reacts here.

Jeff Crank's campaign in Colorado's 5th receives word that people are disgusted with the slanders directed at him, and they are blaming his opponent, Doug Lamborn. When your supporters denounce your tactics, it is news.  Read "Confession of a former Lamborn supporter."  The first and last graphs:

Based on a recent mailing from none other than the Christian Coalition of Colorado, which I was somewhat embarrassed to have my teenage son carry in from the mailbox, I feel I must make a public confession of a poor choice, a bad decision and yes, poor judgment. You see, for more than a decade I have supported and voted for Doug Lamborn, but as of this week all that will change.

While I would not presume to tell you who to vote for, I would ask you to not reward the gutter politics of the Lamborn campaign and vote for one of the other candidates in this race. As for me and my wife, we have chosen Jeff Crank, a man who is well qualified, highly experienced and we believe has the character and temperament to serve our community well in Congress. In addition to our vote, we have sent a donation to help him respond to the vile and unfounded accusations that have been leveled against him. Please pick a candidate that you can support and do the same.

Candidates can't get away with unfounded slimings of their opponents anymore thanks largely to the blogs.  Watch for more negative reactions to Lamborn and the "Christian Coalition of Colorado."

If you have a friend or a family member in or around Colorado Springs, give them a call and tell them to support Jeff Crank.  You can contribute to his campaign here.

The Washington Post's Peter Baker turns in a very fair and very balanced assessment of the assessments of the Israel-Hezbollah war.

There are two distinct American narratives about what is going on in the world right now.  Baker gives voice to them both, as a reporter should. 

My favorite graph:

All of this is far too gloomy for administration officials, who see such dire forecasts as the predictable reactions of a foreign policy establishment that has produced decades of meaningless talks, paper peace agreements and unenforced U.N. resolutions that have not solved underlying issues in the Middle East.

The most penetrating graph:

"It's really a proxy war between the United States and Iran," said David J. Rothkopf, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of "Running the World," a book on U.S. foreign policy. "When viewed in that context, it puts everything in a different light."

The tragedy of the deaths of children and adult civilians should not obscure that every day the Hezbollah terrorists send barrages of rockets into Israel, each one of which is intended to kill civilians and in far greater numbers than died in Qana. The incompetence of Hezbollah's munition makers is somehow obscuring the scale of its terrorism.  If the 9/11 attacks had only killed 300, would the U.S. not have invaded Afghanistan and later Iraq?  Hezbollah has tried for three weeks to inflict a 9/11 on Israel, but Israel is being damned because its defensive measures have led to civilians held hostage by terrorists. This is an insane inversion of the laws of war and customary international law as well as of common sense. Hezbollah began this war and is responsible for the deaths of everyone on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border.

Each day of the war Israel struggles to minimize harm to civilians. Each day Hezbollah tries to kill them and uses Lebanese civilians as hostages.

Yet Hezbollah's tactics are condemned in passing by Kofi Annan, and only Israel's mistakes summon the Security Council to its labors, which is why Kofi Annan is a joke, a cartoon of an international leader.  Annan and the UN are legitimizing a terrorist organization and its tactics.  They are demanding, in essence, that Israel accept a defeat.

While the world should be horrified that this war has claimed many more innocents, its diplomats and representatives ought to have been denouncing in a single voice the invasion of Israeli territory by Hezbollah and the murder and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers and the use of terror tactics against civilian populations as well as the use of civilian populations by Hezbollah as shields

The West must not acquiesce in the elevation of Hezbollah to the status of state actor, in the non-condemnation of its tactics, or in anything remotely like a return to the status quo which would allow Hezbollah to resupply and deepen its hold on south Lebanon.

Yoni is worried that the 48 hour pause in bombing is the beginning of the end of the Israeli attempt to destroy Hezbollah.  He also worries that The U.S. has delivered the message that the war must end.

I think he is wrong on both counts, and we will know in a relatively short period of time. The two day pause seems to me to be yet another attempt by Israel to save the civilian population that Hezbollah is so callously using.

Breaking off the war at this moment or anytime before Hezbollah is crippled beyond repair would be as though the U.S. had suddenly withdrawn from Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul but before the capture of Khandahar and the flight of the Taliban and al Qaeda into the wilds. (Civilian deaths in the Afghanistan campaign were at least 1,000.) The defeat of Israel in such a fashion would have consequences to the global war on terror almost too terrible to imagine. Hezbollah would become Lebanon. And it would do so under the protection of the UN.

The crucial distinction between Israel's strikes and Hezbollah's attacks:

Customary international law also prohibits the use of indiscriminate weapons. An indiscriminate weapon is one that cannot be directed at a legitimate military objective. The V-2 rockets used by Germany in World War II were indiscriminate weapons, in that they could not be directed at any target smaller than an entire city. After the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. Department of Defense reported to Congress that the SCUD missiles used by Iraq (which were not very much more accurate than the V-2) were indiscriminate, and that their use constituted a war crime. Similarly, the balloons carrying incendiary bombs, which the Japanese launched into the jet stream toward the United States in 1945, were indiscriminate weapons. The Japanese government hoped they would cause forest fires in the western United States, but the balloons could not be controlled enough to fulfill even this function.

A weapon is not indiscriminate merely because it is highly destructive. Nuclear weapons, for example, are not indiscriminate in this legal sense. They can be effectively directed against, and destroy, military objectives. The legal issues raised by nuclear weapons are whether they will cause civilian casualties and environmental damage disproportionate to the value of the military targets they destroy.

Whatever works is repeated.  Condemning Israel for the deaths of civilians living near terrorist missile launchers will only result in the placement of more terrorist missile launchers near civilians. If the world wants to end this war, the UN should join Israel is demanding the international community organize a fighting force to take over from Israel the necessary work of removing Hezbollah as a threat to the civilians on both sides of the border and should rush sanctions on Iran and Syria for their supply of indiscriminate weapons to non-state actors.

The longer the world delays in recognizing that terrorists and their state sponsors are leading us all to conflagrations on a scale far beyond 9/11, the greater the likelihood that we will awake not to the awful news of dozens of dead children but the news of hundreds of thousands of dead, or millions.

Look at the deaths of civilians in World War 2. No matter how you count, more than 30 million civilians died in that conflict. These deaths happened because Hitler and Imperial Japan were not stopped when the costs of doing so would have been far lower than they eventually became.

If someone can point me to a plausible projection of how allowing Hezbollah/Syria/Iran to win in Lebanon leads to a result other than far worse wars with far greater casualties, please post a link in the comments section. At least Hitler pretended from time to time to be satisfied before he launched another attack. The "leaders" of today have no such fig leaf. President Bush has shown zero inclination to switch to an appeasement policy. Nor do I believe a majority of Americans will vote for appeasement Democrats.

As appeasement reached its inevitable and disastrous conclusions in Europe in the late '30s, some its proponents recognized their folly and turned on it, most notably Anthony Eden, who resigned as Foreign Secretary in February of 1938. "Is the new policy to come to terms with the totalitarians Powers in the hope that by great and far-reaching acts of submission," Churchill asked the still adamant-for-appeasement government in Parliament days after Eden's action, "not merely by sentiments and pride, but in material Factors, peace may be preserved?"  He added:

I predict that the day will come when at some point or other, on some issue or other, you will have to make a stand, and I pray God that when that day comes we may not find that through an unwise policy we are left to make that stand alone.

Acquiescence in Hezbollah's terror tactics and condemnation of Israel's self-defense will hasten a day of widespread warfare and civilian casualties on a vast scale. Israel is an ally, and is fighting a just war and deserves support, not condemnation.

Instapundit brings to my attention this incredibly ignorant statement by lefty Kevin Drum:

The fight against Islamic jihadism is essentially a vast, global counterinsurgency, something that the United States is lousy at.

I think civilians like Kevin --and me-- ought to be very, very slow in making judgments on the competence of the American military.  I suggest Kevin get a copy of Imperial Grunts, and perhaps interview Robert Kaplan about the many dearly-won successes in the war that deliver all of us the protection we have enjoyed and continue to enjoy precisely because of the extraordinary competence of the American military in the fight against Islamic jihadism.

I attended Colorado Springs' Mountain Springs Church this morning with Jeff Crank and his family.  This a a great church, growing along with Colorado Springs at a very fast clip.

This morning Pastor Justin Alfred was the guest preacher.  Pastor Alfred's daughter is working on Jeff's campaign, and at the end of the service I asked the pastor son-in-law sitting on my left to convey my thanks for a powerful message on the centrality of forgiveness to Christ's teaching and scripture.  At 59, the former Mississippi State football player turned pastor/scholar/teacher has quite alot in his drawer of personal experiences to draw on to deliver this message, and his learning and competence in delivery would have made this a tremendous sermon on any day, but today it was particularly compelling for me, sitting next to Jeff and his wonderful wife.

As I noted below, Jeff just got slimed in a couple of direct mail hit pieces.  This is routine these days in politics, but these particular attacks did not come from the left, but from the "Christian Coalition of Colorado," the operator of which has a brother running the campaign of one of Jeff's competitors.

I saw the pieces this morning just before going into worship, and they made me as angry as anything I have seen in politics in a long time, and not just because they are slanders on Jeff, but also because they come from a group claiming to represent Christians.  It is the sort of hit piece that provides the critics of evangelicals in the public square all the ammunition they need to caricature people of faith who are active in politics.  The irony, of course, is that Jeff has been endorsed by the president of Focus on the Family and many leading figures in the protestant and Catholic communities of the district.  Jeff's got a deserved reputation for integrity and his conservative credentials are beyond challenge.  The unfairness of the attacks and their origin justify quite a lot of anger on Jeff's part.

The second irony was to have this very gifted preacher --connected to the campaign-- deliver a message prepared long before the attacks arrived on the centrality of genuine forgiveness of those who harm you.  I won't try to summarize a densely packed and closely argued 40 minutes of teaching, but will only note that Pastor Alfred extended his message far beyond the personal or the political to the national, and ended with quite an exhortation to pray for the nation's worst enemies, the terrorists whose hatred for Christians and Jews generally and the U.S. and Israel specifically is so intense and so often voiced. 

I wish that those who caricature Christians who are active politically could have heard Pastor Alfred's message.  Unfortunately, too often they only see the distortions that arrive in mailboxes from the self-interested.

"Politics ain't beanbag," as Mr. Dooley noted long ago.  And full-on hard knuckled campaigning that contrasts positions and doesn't spare fair criticism is part of the process.

But the danger of politics to faith, just as the danger of war to civilization, is the destruction it can bring to the souls of those who are involved.  Pastor Frank's reminder to always pray for opponents and enemies --even those who do great harm-- is a critical reminder that belongs in every church on a regular basis. Christians in politics, especially those who brand themselves as such, ought to be pursuing the highest standards and not the lowest road.

There's one silver lining to Jeff getting unfairly hammer in August.  The DailyKos folks seem to think they have a chance in this district in the fall, and Jeff will have the tough skin he's going to need and a campaign experienced and prepared to respond fairly and fully --as well as great pastor he can call to remind him of that great grace that obliges us all to forgive.

I spent most of Saturday campaigning with Jeff Crank, a candidate for Colorado's 5th Congressional District.  Jeff's been endorsed by the District's retiring incumbent, Congressman Joel Hefley, by House Armed Services Committee Chair Duncan Hunter, by Congressman Tom Tancredo, as well as the key members of the Colorado State Legislature, the president of Focus on the Family, the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce etc, and I was was happy to address groups on his behalf this afternoon beginning at the Rodeo Hall of Fame in the Springs and ending in Canyon City.  Jeff Crank is a very, very good man and will make a very good Congressman.

And his three year old insisted on wearing a Cinderalla gown to the first event!

Late in the day Jeff's campaign manager received word that the "Christian Coalition of Colorado" had attacked Jeff for the second time this week via "direct mail". This attack was another attempt to introduce misinformation into the campaign, and telegraphs desperation as well as a willingness to lie as a means to win.  Such tactics play into the hands of those who would discredit the efforts of people of faith to influence politics. Jeff deserved the vote of all GOPers before these attacks, but now they need to support him as proof that the party will not be swayed by dirty tricks. 

Will such tricks work?  No.  Jeff is a great candidate being attacked by the worst elements of the professional hit squads.  I don't believe that people of faith are easily fooled.  I hope they will not be swayed by the attempt to distort "faith" in the effort to win an election.