California's governator vetoed an absurd attempt by the California legislature to change rules relating to the sale of public property to disadvantage a religious broadcaster which had bid on the sale of a television license.  Not only was this special interest giveaway a blow to taxpayers, it was also rank anti-religious bigotry of the worst sort.

Now the trustees of the community college that owns the television station should get on with the obviously right thing and sell the station to the highest bidder --for cash.  The incompetence of all concerned at the district should also attract the attention of voters when these "trustees" next appear on a ballot, and the legal bills of whichever firm has been advising the district should be returned with the suggestion that fees forgone are preferable to malpractice complaints.

Democrat Bill Ritter is in serious trouble.  Even the Denver Post seems stunned (though its bulldog edition headline is "Ritter Helped Immigrants Stay" as opposed to, say, "Ritter Plea Bargins Illegals To Avoid Deportation.")  Read the whole thing, but look for the buired lede:

A 24-year-old man born in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, was charged in 2004 with theft and pleaded guilty to the farm charge, according to documents filed in the case by the district attorney's office. A note in the file said "refer to immigration."

That apparently didn't happen, because a few months later he was arrested in a gang-related drive-by shooting and charged with attempted murder. He remains in a Colorado prison with a parole hearing set for December.

Every plea bargained felon-alien who wasn't deported is Bill Ritter's responsibility.  There are at least 152 of them.  If the Colorado MSM pass this blockbuster by or refuse to follow the felons, that will be the last word on how deep the agenda journalism runs in the Rocky Mountain State.

Bob Beauprez deserves your support.  Dig deep. 

Colorado Congressman Bob Beauprez is running for governor against former Denver District Attorney Bill Ritter.  Today his campaign released the details of a plea bargain assembly line running through Ritter's shop that took suspected felons who were aliens --both legal and illegal-- and plea bargained them to "agricultural lands trespass," one of the very few "crimes" that does not carry with it a deportation order.  It will only be a matter of time until these individuals are identified and their subsequent conduct scrutinized.  From the press release:

Federal law mandates deportation for both legal and illegal aliens who have committed felonies, such as assault, burglary, weapons violations, menacing and drug crimes. Public records reveal that during his time as Denver District Attorney, Ritter consistently utilized an obscure plea bargain charge of trespassing on farmland in the City and County of Denver. As a result, criminals who should have been deported were let go.

“It’s an absolute outrage that Bill Ritter would take a criminal alien who committed a crime like assault in the first degree and plea bargain them down to this absurd charge of trespassing on farmland in Denver. The fact that Ritter would intentionally use a gross loophole to avoid enforcing the law is proof positive that he ignored his obligation to protect communities.”

A cursory review of public court documents provides irrefutable evidence that felonies committed by legal and illegal aliens were systematically plea bargained down to the non-deportable offense of trespassing on farmland.

“This could be just the tip of the iceberg,” said campaign manager John Marshall. “It’s unclear how many deportable criminals have been released back onto the streets because of Bill Ritter. We know of at least 192 felonies that were plea bargained to this non-deportable offense. But rest assured that our investigation into this very serious problem will continue.”

“As Governor, I will work with law enforcement to ensure we have the resources necessary to enforce the law, not take the easy way out at the expense of our safety,” concluded Beauprez.

A transcript of the Beauprez interview is here.  Watch the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News tomorrow to see if the press digs in.  If any of these plea bargains stayed in state and committed subsequent crimes, accountability for an incredible policy will catch up quickly to plea bargain Bill.

So what happens in Foley's district?

From Florida Code, Chapter 100.111, 4(a):

"(4)(a) In the event that death, resignation, withdrawal, removal, or any other cause or event should cause a party to have a vacancy in nomination which leaves no candidate for an office from such party, the Department of State shall notify the chair of the appropriate state, district, or county political party executive committee of such party; and, within 5 days, the chair shall call a meeting of his or her executive committee to consider designation of a nominee to fill the vacancy. The name of any person so designated shall be submitted to the Department of State within 7 days after notice to the chair in order that the person designated may have his or her name on the ballot of the ensuing general election. If the name of the new nominee is submitted after the certification of results of the preceding primary election, however, the ballots shall not be changed and the former party nominee's name will appear on the ballot. Any ballots cast for the former party nominee w ill be counted for the person designated by the political party to replace the former party nominee. If there is no opposition to the party nominee, the person designated by the political party to replace the former party nominee will be elected to office at the general election."

How about George P. Bush? Dan Marino?  Shaq?

President Bush was attacked by Zawahiri, Bob Woodward, Oliver Stone, Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean today., and this is exactly how it will be --and must be-- for the next forty days.

Contribute to the RNC and keep America's national security policy focused committed to victory, not retreat.

By the way, which party do you think Zawahiri hopes will be in control of Congress in January?.

Foley quits. Menedez stonewalls.

Headline in New Jersey Star Ledger:

Menendez denies role in alleged shakedownUnder the arrangement

Key graph:

Sandoval claims, one third of the money that Ruiz made for Sandoval's practice would go to Scarinci and Menendez.

The worst news of all for Menendez:

With the Democratic establishment standing firmly behind him...

The Torricelli Option?

This must be the weekend to drop the bombs on opponents' campaigns.  It used to be later, but absentees have to start going out soon, so maximum impact means new timing.

1) Let’s get right to it. Do you support torture?

Let me say what I do support: When it comes to high value targets in the war on terror, wannabe evil-doers who possess or might possess important information, I support any measures necessary to extract that information.

2) So you support torture! I am gobsmacked and filled with heartache.

There you go again, making erroneous conclusions without really knowing what you’re talking about. What is commonly considered torture – the rack, breaking kneecaps, bamboo under the finger-nails - is useless for extracting actionable information. Such techniques can get the victim to confess to anything under the sun but if it’s intelligence you seek, they’re not very helpful. And if you read a book like “Confessions of an Innocent Man” which details the hell a North American went through in a Saudi Arabian prison, you know these techniques spring from deeply sadistic souls, not committed professionals.

3) But I watch Jack Bauer on “24” and see him getting everything he needs by brandishing a pistol and with a judiciously placed blow. What gives?

It may have escaped you, but “24” is not a documentary, nor is it a scholarly inquiry on effective interrogation techniques.

4) So what does the actual scholarship say?

The key to gathering information is to disorient the subject. If you disorient the subject enough, he lets go of his secrets. Discomfort is actually much more useful than pain.

5) What’s the best way to get information?

Unquestionably water-boarding.

6) Gosh, I live in an intellectual broom closet and determinedly try to avoid any enlightenment on this subject. Please, please, please – don’t tell me what water-boarding is.

No dice. In water-boarding, the subject is strapped to a board with his feet above his head. A sheet of cellophane is placed over his face. Since the technique has existed and been used successfully for centuries, cellophane wasn’t always the face-covering tool of choice. It used to just be a cloth. The interrogator pours water over the cellophane. This triggers a gag reflex. The prisoner feels like he’s drowning. He feels that way because the combination of everything causes supreme disorientation. If one speaks with intelligence agents who openly used this technique like the French, Germans or Russians, they swear by it. It also works quickly. The rumor is that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad broke in under a minute.

7) But Amnesty International and the left say the information gleaned from this technique is unreliable. Is it?

Amnesty International is either confused, dishonest or both. Some people do say it’s unreliable. But the undeniable consensus is that water-boarding is an extremely productive interrogation tool.

8) That’s a very clinical way of putting it. Why don’t you go have yourself water- boarded and see how you like it.

No thanks. I’m sure I wouldn’t like it. I’m sure it’s extremely unpleasant. Does it rise to the level of “torture”? That’s for each individual to decide.

9) What do you think?

I don’t care. If some body of linguists or semanticists convened a weekend retreat in Cambridge, impartially studied the issue and labeled it torture, I still wouldn’t care. The welfare of terrorists is not my concern. Even if all the Jack Bauer-type crap you see on “24” was the best way to go, I’d still be okay with it.

10) But it’s not just terrorists. It’s suspected terrorists. Surely that bothers you.

It does. It’s inevitable that innocent people will be subjected to this kind of treatment. But this is war, and in war we make moral compromises. For example, normally we don’t like to kill people. In war, we try to kill people by the thousands. That Amnesty International guy that I was on TV with last night kept whining that we wouldn’t be having any of this if it weren’t for 9/11. Duh. If we weren’t at war, we could comfortably remain in the moral sphere that we aspire to. But right now, that’s not an option.

11) But we didn’t do stuff like this in World War II, did we?

I don’t know. But I do know we fire-bombed Dresden. I know we dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I know that in doing these things we knowingly engaged in actions that killed tens of thousands of innocents. When you’re at war, moral compromises are part of the deal.

12) But tell the truth – you and the others who support the measures we’re talking about, including the president, don’t seem particularly broken up about these so called “moral compromises.”

With you, I always tell the truth. Look, it’s a grim reality. It stinks that we have to do this. It would be nice if all those Jihadist lunatics would give up on their dreams of a global caliphate and leave us alone. I think what we have to do is clear, so I’m unbothered by the administration’s direction.

13) But wouldn’t you like to have a president who is more bothered by (or at least cognizant of) such things?

Definitely not. Bush 41 was so bothered by the ugliness of war that he enshrined the Powell Doctrine and refused to topple Saddam. People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men are ready to do violence on their behalf. I’d rather these rough men not be contemplating their navels and flagellating themselves over doing what needs to be done.

14) Now I know you’re on a little bit of a high because you debated this issue on TV last night. How’d it go?

The guy I was debating, the head of the local chapter of Amnesty International, had three points he kept raising. They were Abu Ghraib was bad, Bush is bad, and giving field-agents carte blanche to torture is bad. Since all three of these were irrelevant and just partisan talking points, I didn’t really address them.

15) How do you see the politics of this playing out?

The Democrats hate this issue. Abu Ghraib, which truly was a national disgrace, didn’t move public opinion because the public just doesn’t care about the welfare of these people. The fact that a guy like Sherrod Brown, one of the most liberal members of the House who’s running to become one of the most liberal members of the Senate, supported the bill tells you that the smart Democrats don’t like this issue one bit.

16) Smart Democrats? Heh.

Heh indeed.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com.

I have left most of the Allen-Webb blogging to Dean, but note that the polls have pciked up steady Allen momentum, and the general dismay at the left's tactics have probably crippled the Webb campaign beyond repair.

Allen's team has taken the opportunity to put their issue comparison front and center, and a press corps exhausted by and complicit in the most distasteful big campaign in recent memory will have to start paying attention at some point, which will extend Allen's lead..

Look at these ratings, especially the overall numbers.  And this is the high season for political news.

MSNBC: The Edsel of cable news.

Senator Conrad Burns (R-Montana): "He wants to weaken the Patriot Act. He wants to take the tools away from the people that work for us, or our protection, every day. He wants to weaken that. I do not want that to happen in this war on terror."

Democratic Nominee Jon Tester: "Let me be clear. I don't want to weaken the Patriot Act. I want to repeal it."

Any vote for any Congressional Democrat is a vote against victory and a vote for vulnerability.

George Allen, Conrad Burns, Mike DeWine, Rick Santorum, and Jim Talent deserve your support as they are serious about the war and have proven it over the past five years.

So skip dinner out this weekend and send some help their way.

I'd be remiss if I didn't report on this.

In the race to the bottom, the Jim Webb campaign has scored a stunning and decisive victory. It can now officially be said that the Webb campaign has become the most vicious and pathetically negative campaign in modern history.

Webb’s virtual surrogates have unearthed another scandal to tar Allen with. I’ll let the Daily Kos diarist take it from here:

I stepped near the governor and smiled, told him my name and that I wrote for the local newspaper. Then I asked him a softball question, what some reporters call a "set-up."

"Does Southwest Virginia need these jobs?" I asked.

He stopped and looked straight at me. He had to look down at me, because he stood so tall in those cowboy boots. I thought I spotted a twinkle in his eye, and for a moment, I suspected he might give a humorous, light-hearted answer. Then he leaned forward and looked all the way down at the pavement. I figured he was planning a perfectly crafted answer to my question. I put pen to paper, ready to take it down. His lips puckered as if he might speak.

Then, the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia gathered up a glob of tobacco-laced saliva. He used his lips to squirt it out, as if he had practiced. The spit landed just at the tip of my shoe. He grinned, but didn't say a word. Then he walked into the building.

In case you’re wondering, the alleged expectoration occurred ten years ago. And yet Markos has put this “scandal” on his front page, as have the nutty kids at Swing State Project.

Imagine what it’s like to be Jim Webb. You’ve spent six decades living an admirable and worthy life, and then in the course of a few weeks on the campaign trail, you piss it all away. The appeal of Jim Webb as a candidate is that he’s brave, a hero. Webb has had several opportunities to be brave and stand up to gutter politics the last few weeks. He has declined them all. Whatever courage Webb showed in past endeavors has obviously not carried over into the political arena.

Complaints? Compliments? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

Peggy Noonan is close to the target this morning:.

One can't exaggerate how large Fox looms in the liberal imagination. They see it as huge and mighty and credit it with almost mythical powers. It is a propaganda channel who's mission it is to destroy the Democratic Party. That's part of why Clintons' performance had such salience. Finally he was standing up to an evil empire.

It is odd that they are so spooked. In October America is set to become a nation of 300 million. What a big country. Fox News's average evening prime-time viewership is less than two million. Its average daytime is less than a million. And if my mail is an indication, they're already Republicans. Fox's power is that it is an alternative to the mainstream media. It did not take its shape by deeply inhaling liberalism and slowly breathing it out.

The left sees Fox as a symptom and promoter of anarchy. The old unity, the old essential unity one used to experience when one turned on the TV in 1950 or 1980, has been fractured, brokenup. We are becoming balkanized. Fox, blogs, talk radio, the Internet, citizen reporters--it's all producing cacophony, and heralds a future of No Compromise. No one trusts the information they're given anymore, as they trusted Uncle Walter. This is bad for the country.

It is an odd thing about modern liberals that they're made anxious by the unsanctioned. A conservative is more likely to see what's happening as freedom. It isn't that honest and impartial news lost its place of respect, it's that establishment liberalism lost its journalistic monopoly. And it was a monopoly.

The only significant aspect she misses in this must-read is that the old monopoly wasn't producing quality goods.  And as the monopoly got older, its production values fell steadily.  Thus Bill Moyers consumed hour after hour of airtime, Dan Rather was seen by the suits as credible, and John Chancellor delivered commentaries that were forgotten before they were spoken.  By the time Rush arrived to smash the monopoly, it was as weak as a two hundred year old castle's rotted doors.

Because the product wasn't any good.  And the producers were in-bred, myopic, and slow.  Very, very slow.

Now change has been thrust upon them, and that slowness produces, what?  Keith Olbermann?  The tenured elite in newsrooms keep on doing exactly what they have been doing for thirty years --but no one is reading/watching/listening.

And the new team, full of energy and innovation, keeps on getting better and better.

And the losers keep huddling together in seminars, asking themselves what went wrong, and tinkering with their web sites.

The day a network offers Rush a nightly commentary is the day I will believe "the old men on the train" and their successors get it. But that won't happen, because it would oblige them to admit their failure and confront their own relentless myopia.

Even as usually level-headed pundits like RealClearPolitics John McIntyre join with fever swamp vapors-inhaling agenda journalists and pundits in pushing the "Senate-in-play" meme, it is time for the clear-eyed to state the obvious:  Voters are smart, and they are concerned that the nation be defended.

Which means that they will not be voting Democrat.

Lieberman is crushing Lamont because Connecticut voters want a serious senator on issues of national security.  The same dynamic will help George Allen, Conrad Burns, Mike DeWine and Jim Talent.  Rick Santorum is the only GOP incumbent facing off against a Democratic nominee pretending not to be in favor of retreat in the face of the enemy, and thus his race is the toughest. (And he deserves your first contribution as a result.)

The Republican who will lose --please, God-- is Lincoln Chafee who is fecklessness defined when it comes to national security.

Anyone remotely aware of the rhetoric of the Democrats and of the positions of their supporters will shudder at the prospect of their ascending to the majority. That'sthe story of 2006.

It's the war, stupid.