The news about Nancy Pelosi passing over Alcee Hastings for the Chairmanship of the House Intel Committee came out last night, but in this morning's Washington Post Jonathan Weisman and Peter Slevin do a final smack down of Hastings' claims of innocence in much the same way Byron York did yesterday. Weisman and Slevin write:

He [Hastings] pointed repeatedly to his 1983 acquittal by a Miami jury and wrote that it is "amazing how little importance" his critics give that verdict. The events that followed that trial, he said, "are so convoluted, voluminous, complex and mundane that it would boggle the mind."

In fact, there is a certain simplicity in the conclusion drawn by an investigating committee of five eminent federal judges, each with strong civil rights credentials. Those judges, and later more than three dozen others, concluded that Hastings lied to the Miami jury as many as 15 times to win acquittal.

So who's it going to be? The three candidates being mentioned are Silvestre Reyes, Norm Dicks, and Sanford Bishop. Rush Holt is also in the mix.

Dicks says he hasn't talked to anyone about the Intel Chairmanship and he's not interested besides.

Reyes is the next most senior member on the committee after Hastings, but one can only imagine the anger directed at Pelosi by Congressional Black Caucus, first for ousting William Jefferson and now for passing on Hastings.That would seem to make Bishop a reasonable compromise, especially since he was orgininally bounced from the Intel Committee to seat Harman.

Starting Wednesday, President Bush will meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki in Jordan. The vast majority of the meeting will undoubtedly focus on the challenges of controlling the sectarian violence in Iraq and achieving national reconciliation, but the President should also get a thorough debriefing on Iraq's recent dealings with Iran and Syria.

Coming on the heels of Iraqi President Talabani's visit to Iran and Iraq's diplomatic normalization with Syria, President Bush has good reason to wary of these developments - and to hear what Maliki has to say about where these bilateral relationships are going.

It's clear that both Iran and Syria are trying to co-opt Iraq into their sphere on influence. Of course, the first thing Tehran and Damascus will try to get their new Iraqi friends to do is to pull the plug on the U.S. presence there. From Tehran's and Damascus' perspective, the fewer Americans in the region to check their plans for hegemony, the better.

But they also intend to use promises of peace and stability in Iraq as a bargaining chip in advancing other aspects of their agendas as well.

Iran wants to use Iraq as leverage to get the U.N. to back off pressuring Tehran over its nuclear (weapons) program. Tehran's message to the U.S. and other nuclear busybodies: If you want peace and stability in Iraq, don't push us on our nuclear program.

Syria will also try to leverage peace and stability in Iraq for an end to the U.N.'s investigation into the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Damascus would also like a green light to re-establish its influence in Lebanon, and, perhaps, even try to get the U.S. to pressure Israel to reopen negotiations over the Golan Heights.

The fact is that if Iran and Syria are really part of the solution to the violence in Iraq, it stands to reason that they must also currently be part of the problem. And considering the trouble Tehran and Damascus are already causing in the Middle East, you have to be very careful that giving Iran and Syria a say in Iraq doesn't create more problems than it solves.

Starting Wednesday, President Bush will meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki in Jordan. The vast majority of the meeting will undoubtedly focus on the challenges of controlling the sectarian violence in Iraq and achieving national reconciliation, but the President should also get a thorough debriefing on Iraq's recent dealings with Iran and Syria.

Coming on the heels of Iraqi President Talabani's visit to Iran and Iraq's diplomatic normalization with Syria, President Bush has good reason to wary of these developments - and to hear what Maliki has to say about where these bilateral relationships are going.

It's clear that both Iran and Syria are trying to co-opt Iraq into their sphere on influence. Of course, the first thing Tehran and Damascus will try to get their new Iraqi friends to do is to pull the plug on the U.S. presence there. From Tehran's and Damascus' perspective, the fewer Americans in the region to check their plans for hegemony, the better.

But they also intend to use promises of peace and stability in Iraq as a bargaining chip in advancing other aspects of their agendas as well.

Iran wants to use Iraq as leverage to get the U.N. to back off pressuring Tehran over its nuclear (weapons) program. Tehran's message to the U.S. and other nuclear busybodies: If you want peace and stability in Iraq, don't push us on our nuclear program.

Syria will also try to leverage peace and stability in Iraq for an end to the U.N.'s investigation into the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Damascus would also like a green light to re-establish its influence in Lebanon, and, perhaps, even try to get the U.S. to pressure Israel to reopen negotiations over the Golan Heights.

The fact is that if Iran and Syria are really part of the solution to the violence in Iraq, it stands to reason that they must also currently be part of the problem. And considering the trouble Tehran and Damascus are already causing in the Middle East, you have to be very careful that giving Iran and Syria a say in Iraq doesn't create more problems than it solves.

Yessterday Newt Gingrich floated the idea that freedom of speech may need to be curbed in certain circumstances to meet the threat of terrorism.

The newspaper article didn't give much context to Gingrich's remarks, but I suppose you can conjure up scenarios where the public good would be served by abridging some free speech rights in certain instances. Still, the libertarian in me recoils at talk of "re-examining" the boundaries of freedom of speech.

As questionable as Gingrich's remarks on free speech are, however, they pale in comparison to the views of Jesse Jackson, who wrote yesterday that it's time to outlaw the n-word and other "hate speech:"

Our forefathers created the First Amendment to ensure a robust public debate and to prohibit the government from making laws to squelch political speech, even speech critical of our leaders. But obscenity has never enjoyed that protection, nor should it. Yelling ''fire'' in a crowded theater does not have protection. Similarly, hate speech -- like that wielded by [Michael] Richards -- has and should be illegal.

Imagine the sight of someone dialing the cops that night at the Laugh Factory and the police hauling Richards off in handcuffs.

Now imagine what a thoroughly impossible task defining hate speech would be. Who get to decide which words are considered hateful? Jesse Jackson? A "bi-partisan, blue ribbon commission?"

Certainly the n-word would be on the list (though that alone would probably criminalize about half of the rap music sold in stores, and played on the radio and MTV). But what about words that could be considered hurtful to other groups? Could Jesse Jackson be locked up for, oh, I don't know, calling Jews "hymies" and New York "hymietown?"

Since free speech is what you write as well as what you say, would writers and/or bloggers be fined for using or reprinting certain words? And could you be prosecuted for, say, publishing material like Steve Gilliard's infamous depiction of Republican Michael Steele as "simple sambo" which many found racially offensive?

What about the Mohammed Cartoons? Would Jackson have classified the cartoons as "hate speech" toward Muslims, thereby making it a crime for newspapers to rerpint them?

Irrespective of whether Jackson's intentions are noble or not - and I have my doubts - the idea of categorizing and criminalizing "hate speech" is nuts. Our job as a society is to define and defend the limits of free speech by shaming and castigating those who go beyond what the majority finds acceptable. That's what happened in the case of Michael Richards, and it's exactly the way things are supposed to work.

Lots of people have commented on Audrey Hudson's report on how and why the flying imams were removed from the recent U.S. Airways flight. The one passage that caught my attention was this:

Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas Democrat, said the September 11 terrorist attacks "cannot be permitted to be used to justify racial profiling, harassment and discrimination of Muslim and Arab Americans.

"Understandably, the imams felt profiled, humiliated, and discriminated against by their treatment," she said.

Ms. Jackson-Lee is perfectly happy to force airline employees and passengers to disregard a group of Muslim men exhibiting conspicuously strange behavior and climb on board a jet, but I'd bet she wouldn't be willing to get on that plane herself. I'm speculating, of course, but it strikes me as another example of liberals demanding that others bear the sort of risk they'd be unwilling to bear themselves were they in similar circumstances.

There's a rich irony to the story as well, given that Ms. Jackson-Lee has her own history of "terrorizing" air travelers with outrageously rude behavior - so much so she was eventually banned from flying Continental Airlines:

But in February 1998, things finally came to a head. On a flight home to Houston, Jackson Lee became enraged when flight attendants failed to produce the seafood special she liked. "Don't you know who I am?" she reportedly thundered. "I'm Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. Where is my seafood meal? I know it was ordered!"

That outburst prompted a phone call to Jackson Lee from Rebecca Cox, vice president of Continental's government affairs office in Washington and the wife of California Republican Chris Cox. The message? Straighten up and fly right, or don't fly with us.

Cox did not return calls seeking comment, but a member of Jackson Lee's staff who fielded the call remembered Cox saying, "[Jackson Lee] screamed at the top of her lungs at least a minute. She embarrassed the flight attendants and the passengers in first class. And she embarrassed herself." Cox then joked, "We have already given her the Delta Airlines schedule."

Jackson Lee got back on board with Continental, but not for long. In May 1999, as Continental flight 1961 prepared to leave Reagan National Airport in Washington, Jackson Lee became flustered when she couldn't find her purse. Thinking she had left it in the boarding area, she went back to search for it. Meanwhile, the plane pulled away from the gate. Moments later, her purse was found onboard. According to aviation lobbyists at the time, Jackson Lee demanded that she be let back on the flight. Airline employees explained that FAA rules prohibit planes from returning to the gate once they've taxied away, but Jackson Lee was unconvinced. She accused the gate staff of racism and demanded to see their supervisor, who was a black woman. Her purse, meanwhile, was unceremoniously dropped out of the cockpit window and ferried back to her.

Ms. Jackson-Lee is often referred to as "Hurricane Sheila" because of her rudeness, temper, and the fact she made a big stink a few years ago that the names given to hurricanes by the National Weather Center were too "lily white" and not sufficiently ethnic sounding.

In The Washingtonian's most recent list of the "Best and Worst of Congress," Ms. Jackson-Lee finishes in second place as the House's "meanest" member, and she wins top honors as the chamber's "biggest windbag" and also "show horse" - meaning she can't get enough of seeing herself on TV.

In dishing out this last award, the editors of The Washingtonian quipped, "Staffers have proposed a drinking game to honor the Texan, who gets more than twice as many votes as others: 'Sheila Jackson-Lee is on C-Span. Do a shot.'"

Two interesting tidbits from this NYT profile of Chris Carney, the new Democrat representing Pennsylvania's 10th Congressional District. Carney worked for Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith in the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group at the Pentagon, searching for links between Iraq and al-Qaeda:

In the summer and fall of 2002, Mr. Carney was at the center of the storm, briefing George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, and Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, on the Feith unit's assessment of any links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. At the time, the unit was creating controversy within the government for arguing that there was significant evidence of ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda. [snip]

Today, Mr. Carney says he still believes there were links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, although he is careful not to overstate them.

"On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 was no connection and 10 was operational control, I would say it's about a 2½," he said in an interview. "It was a relationship of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer," he added. "Saddam was a savvy guy, and I think he wanted to make sure that if Al Qaeda someday became a force, that he wanted to keep his options open. I thought that there was a relationship. Whether it was strong enough to go to war, that's the president's decision."

Interesting that Carney admits what other Democrats have flatly denied in public for at least the last two years. And knowing human nature, I suspect Carney is retrospectively downgrading his assessement of Iraq-al Qaeda ties for a number of reasons. I'll bet if you asked him at the time, Carney would have rated the link between Iraq and al-Qaeda more in the 4-6 range, or perhaps even higher.

As with WMD intel, it's easy to sit back with the benefit of hindsight and say what dots we should or shouldn't have connected, and far more difficult to weigh the risks and make the hard choices.

There's also this:

But Mr. Carney is not enthusiastic about the possibility of a new Congressional investigation of prewar intelligence, which he said would be a major distraction.

Of course Carney doesn't want an investigation, since he was right in the thick of the intel operation which the Democrats have gone out of their way over the last few years to malign and exploit as incompetent and nefariously manipulative. Can you imagine the sight of Carney testifying before House Intelligence Committee and watching his fellow Democrats rake him and others over the coals for "lying" us into Iraq?

Yesterday USA Today carried a story titled "Democratic Gains in Suburbs Spell Trouble for GOP."

Democrats carried nearly 60% of the U.S. House vote in inner suburbs in the nation's 50 largest metropolitan areas, up from about 53% in 2002, according to the analysis by the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech.

This isn't surprising, and it comports with other data showing Republicans lost Independent voters. Over the next several months there will be considerable debate about whether the '06 mid-terms foreshadow the beginning of a more significant realignment away from the GOP towards the Democratic Party.

I think it is wise to be careful not to draw too many sweeping conclusions from the mid-term results, because of Iraq's dominating influence over the election. There is no doubt that Republicans lost Independent and moderate voters, and that they lost voters in the suburbs. The real question is whether this is a one-time event or the beginning of a trend. Was 2006 more of a vote of no-confidence on U.S. Iraq policy, or was it the early stages of a real and sustained move among swing voters to the Democrats?

Independent voters are becoming a more significant slice of the voting public, and to the degree these voters break solidly toward one party - as they did this year - they have the ability to produce dramatic swings in the final election results. However, both parties would be foolish to think that they have an easy "in" with this swing block. Democrats would be naive to think these voters are now solidly behind a Nancy Pelosi agenda and Republicans would be equally naive to assume recent Republican-leaning Independents who deserted them this year are going to automatically return to the fold in 2008.

After the 2000 election Michael Barone referred to America as "The 49% Nation" in the Almanac for American Politics:

In 1996 Bill Clinton was re-elected with 49.2% of the vote. That same year Republicans held the House when their candidates led Democrats by a 48.9% to 48.5% margin. In 1998 Republicans held onto the House when their candidates led in the popular vote by 48.9% to 47.8%. On November 7, 2000 George W. Bush won 47.9% of the vote and Al Gore 48.4%. The same day House Republican candidates led Democrats by a 49.2% to 47.9% margin. Round off these numbers and you have 49%, 49%, 49%, 49%, 48%, 48%, 48% 49%, 48% - essentially the same number over and over.

In the 2004 presidential election 47 out of 50 states voted exactly the same way they did in 2000, with Kerry coming within a tenth, 48.3% of Gore's 48.4%. The favorable political winds from 9/11 and the War allowed President Bush and House Republicans to break out of the 48/49 deadlock with Bush drawing 51% against Kerry, and House Republicans 51% in 2002 and 50% in 2004.

But this year the mess in Iraq and the lack of any clean solution to the conflict destroyed the GOP advantage on national security and provided the catalyst for the Democrats' 52%-53% victory in the House vote.

The size of the Democratic victory is significant, though I think it speaks more to an increase in election volatility rather than a longer-term directional move toward the Democratic Party.

Volatility is retuning to American politics. The "49% Nation" stasis of the last decade is poised to be cracked wide open. This means great opportunity and great risk for both parties. Real world events and the respective leadership we see from each side, along with the choice of nominees for 2008 and the platforms they run on will have massive influence over the voters in the middle who determine the majority.

Depending on the path the parties choose over the next two years, the potential for either an electoral blowout or a significant third party candidate in 2008 is very real.

Robert O'Neill is the former Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the former Chichele Professor of the History of War at Oxford, and Australia's preeminent scholar of international strategic studies. Last night at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, O'Neill gave a lecture titled "Prospects and Perspectives on International Security" (pdf) in which he discussed the situation in Iraq in some detail.

Here is how Professor O'Neill began his remarks:

We stand at a very testing time in terms of shaping our security environment. I do not want to be overly pessimistic. We and our forebears have come through worse situations and gone on to great periods of prosperity, relative peace and cultural achievement. But for us at this time, that happy end is by no means assured.

More importantly, here is how Profesor O'Neill described the stakes and the consequences in Iraq:

Given the result of the recent US elections, we need to think hard about the consequences of possible defeat in Iraq. To elaborate on what I said earlier, that conflict can be won only by a much more effective coalition effort, requiring a major increase in US and allied troop numbers in Iraq, substantial improvements in training and operational methods, and a much stronger civil reconstruction effort. This is not likely to happen. The probable outcomes are either a sudden descent into chaos as coalition forces are withdrawn, or a protracted civil war, overlain with an insurgency against remaining coalition forces.

In the event of chaos, effective government in Iraq will cease for at least some years, during which terrorist groups will be able to concentrate, rebuild, flourish and reach out to other targets outside Iraq. Enemy forces will be heartened; recruiting will rise; funds and weapons will pour in; pressure will be exerted on regional governments friendly to the West; more young men and women who are willing to commit suicide to harm Western and Israeli interests will become available; and the oil price will rise to new heights.

Defeat in Iraq will be a serious blow to the public standing of the US and will invite other challenges to its authority. US citizens will have to be more careful of their own security both outside and inside their own country. US business abroad will feel more under threat of terrorist action.

Iran will read a message of encouragement for its intransigence in dealing with the West. It will almost certainly go ahead to produce nuclear weapons. It will exercise an overshadowing influence in Iraq, Syria, the Arab Gulf states and Israel. The lesson of US failure in Iraq will be read (perhaps wrongly) as US unwillingness to attempt regime-change in Iran. The North Koreans will probably draw similar conclusions, although with less justification than in the case of Iran because North Korea is nowhere near as strong a state. Nuclear weapons proliferation will become more difficult to control with the threat of intervention against the proliferators dismissed.

As Fouad Ajami writes, America's involvement in Iraq is "has been unimaginably difficult, its heartbreak a grim daily affair." The Bush administration has been wrong about a number of things regarding Iraq, and it bears full responsibility for underestimating the difficulty we've encountered there. However, two things they've been right about for some time, as O'Neill and other experts continue to agree, are the stakes of the struggle and the consequences of defeat.

Ben Stein's latest tax the rich article in yesterday's New York Times is so tragic because Ben is such a good guy, such a smart guy, that it pains me to say he has the story totally wrong.

Warren Buffett's secretary may have a higher tax rate than Mr. Buffett himself, but that's because Buffett made all his money from the 15 percent marginal tax rate on dividends and capital gains. Very few Americans live and work like this.

And anyway, jacking up taxes on capital investment is a completely dumb idea. What the American middle class needs is more investment to create new companies, new jobs and new technologies--all of which raise our standard of living.

Alan Reynolds, who has a new book out called "Income and Wealth," reminds me of a key reason why the top 1 percent saw their income share double to 16 percent from 8 percent. (By the way, the top 1 percent's tax share burden over the past 20 some odd years has gone from about 17 percent to 35 percent.) That is, that until recently, S-corps and LLC small businesses exploded to capture a personal tax rate that was lower than the corporate rate.

S-corp type income was only 7.8 percent in 1982, but was up to 28.4 percent in 2004, according to IRS reports. So it's just a tax shift, that's all it really is--a tax shift that is mistaken for outsized income gains.

What's more, transfer payments like the earned income tax credit, FSA and other welfare payments, as well as social security income, are not counted as low income resources.

Additionally, at lower income tax rates over the past twenty some odd years, there's been a lot less income tax evasion and a lot more income declaration--all of which shows how sensitive folks are to lower marginal tax rates.

Ben Stein says we can't cut spending. But in fact, as a share of GDP, Ronald Reagan cut spending from about 23 percent down to 20 percent; Clinton and the Gingrich Congress lowered spending to 18 percent.

Only recently, under the Bush Republicans, has spending jumped back to slightly over 20 percent. So it can be done. This is why I recommend a spending cap-spending limitation approach for Republicans. (And by the way, while many believe that CEO pay is just a continuous vertical line upward, the reality is CEO pay actually fell three straight years in the early 2000s.)

In the end, class warfare and higher tax rates will make the U.S. more like France. I don't want to be like France. Neither does Ben Stein--if he would think things through.

For years the common refrain was that racism was rooted in ignorance and fear. In that frame, combating racism, whether individual or institutional, was always seen as a matter of enlightenment, not pathology. But Michael Richards' outburst seems to have changed nature of the discussion a bit.

Richards says he's not a racist and claimed that his outburst was a product of rage and a defensive reaction to being heckled:

"This rage has no color. I know that what I said hurt an African American. I will take full responsibility for this and promote apology and go for healing. I was in a place of humiliation, and I came out with uh, a tirade to humiliate. There's no justification for the things that I said."

Richards has said that he's seeing a pyschotherapist to deal with anger management, but the issue of his anger and the racist comments it inspired are so closely linked it's hard to separate the two.

Jesse Jackson clearly thinks Richards' racism is a sickness from which he needs to "get well", a point he made repeatedly on CNN yesterday after interviewing Richards earlier in the day on his radio program.

Is Richards "sick" because of a general deep-seated anger that caused him to snap on stage, or because his rage was directed at African-Americans, or a combination of the two?