The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.

The State Department published "Patterns of Global Terrorism" under a law that requires it to submit to the House of Representatives and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a country-by-country terrorism assessment by April 30 each year.

A declassified version of the report has been made public since 1986 in the form of a glossy booklet, even though there was no legal requirement to produce one.

The senior State Department official said a report on global terrorism would be sent this year to lawmakers and made available to the public in place of "Patterns of Global Terrorism," but that it wouldn't contain statistical data.

But the U.S. intelligence officials said Rice's office decided to eliminate "Patterns of Global Terrorism" when the counterterrorism center declined to use alternative methodology that would have reported fewer significant attacks.

The officials said they interpreted Rice's action as an attempt to avoid releasing statistics that would contradict the administration's claims that it's winning the war against terrorism.

I keep thinking that if the Democrats really did have some pull in the entertainment industry, they would see to it that the old film classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) would be on television, broadcast and cable, 24/7. 

As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush's nominees.

Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day "Justice Sunday" and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading "the filibuster against people of faith," it reads: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."

Organizers say they hope to reach more than a million people by distributing the telecast to churches around the country, over the Internet and over Christian television and radio networks and stations.

Some independent analysts say that Frist -- a comparative newcomer to politics who unexpectedly gained the majority leader's post in early 2003 -- has created his own dilemma, and his handling of it will be an sign of whether he has the skills to seriously vie for the White House.

"I think Senator Frist has backed himself into a corner where I don't see how he can avoid pulling the nuclear trigger," said Charlie Cook, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. In terms of a presidential race, Cook said, "it hurts if he doesn't come up with the votes. But it also hurts him if the Senate comes to a grinding halt and can't get anything done. I think the guy's in a real jam."

Conservative activists are giving Frist little wiggle room. "If Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist hopes to capture the Republican nomination for president in 2008, then he has to see to it that the Bush judicial nominees are confirmed," Richard Lessner, executive director of the American Conservative Union, wrote in a recent article. "If he fails, then he is dead as a presidential wannabe."

I'm reminded of a post Digby wrote last year for American Street. He predicted that any "conservative" coalition that includes the extreme "values voters" Right would eventually splinter, because the extreme righties ain't into coalitions. They're into "my way or the highway," also known as the "I’ll-Hold-My-Breath-Until-I-Turn-Blue" philosophy of politics. "If you give these wing-nuts an inch, they’ll take a mile," Digby wrote. "The more you move to the right, the more they move to the right. There is no meeting half way."

At Daily Kos, Armando writes about "the absolute necessity of drawing the proper contrasts between the moderate, rational and sensible policies of the Democratic Party with those of the Extreme Right Wing fringe-controlled Republican Party." Amen, Bro' Armando. The Democrats have got to find ways to reach out to people, now. Even if they win their fight to save the filibuster in Washington, they're still going to be playing defense until they can win the hearts and minds and empathy of moderate Americans.

But can the Democrats do that? Reaching out to ordinary people is not their strong suit. The systemic problem with the Democrats in Washington is that they seem so insular and out of touch with people outside the beltway. The Republicans didn't make that mistake, and I think that is the biggest reason Republicans control the federal government right now. If the GOP is guilty of over-pandering,  Democrats in Washington for years have been oblivious to what rank-and-file Democrats think. We ordinary liberal/progressive citizens are invisible to them until they want our votes and money.

Maybe we should be shipping DVDs of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to Senate Democrats.

Update: In the Great Minds Thinking Alike department, Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog writes,

Look, I think the fight against Bush's most extreme nominees has been remarkable. I admire the Democrats' success in blocking the worst of Bush's nominees and I support the fight to save the filibuster.

But at a certain point, shouldn't the Democrats go public with the actual case against these nominees?

I think this would be a good time to make a big public demonstration of what's wrong with these people -- do it at the exact time the broadcast is on the air. And since Frist, Perkins, and so on are arguing that the nominees are being "targeted ... for reasons of their faith or moral positions," maybe the Democrats should talk about some of those "moral positions."

Of course, that's exactly what the Dems should do. And of course, they won't do it. They'll stay locked up in Washington and maneuver out of public view, and maybe they'll win a [battlefield] victory. But it's the war that worries me.

Bobo the Cabbage explains today that "The Bolton controversy isn't about whether we believe in the U.N. mission. It's about which U.N. mission we believe in."

“I’m pro-American,” Bolton says, as if that required him to be anti-world. He dismisses the U.N.’s tools for promoting peace and security. International law? “It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so—because, over the long term, the goal of those who think that international law really means anything are those who want to constrict the United States.” (Never mind that such laws might have “constricted” the torture of detainees.) Humanitarian intervention? It’s “a right of intervention that is just a gleam in one beholder’s eye but looks like flat-out aggression to somebody else.” Negotiation as a way of dealing with rogue states? “I don’t do carrots,” Bolton says.

It is easy to catalogue the things that John Bolton doesn’t “do”—encourage payment of U.N. dues, support the International Criminal Court, strengthen international disarmament treaties. What he does do is less obvious. As Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, he has rightly been given credit for the Proliferation Security Initiative, which attempts to interdict shipments of fissile material and which is supported by sixty nations, including France and Germany. But on his watch North Korea, the chief target of his ire, reprocessed enough plutonium to make six new nuclear weapons. Bolton boasts of “taking a big bottle of Wite-Out” to President Clinton’s signature on the statute for the International Criminal Court (“a product of fuzzy-minded romanticism” that is “not just naïve but dangerous”). Yet the Administration’s assault on the I.C.C. has, in fact, bolstered the court’s legitimacy internationally. Powerful middle-tier countries (like Germany) have helped make up the loss of American funds and personnel, and the court is now deep into investigations of mass slaughter in Congo and Uganda.

Democrats out to create a dramatic confrontation at the Senate hearings into his confirmation should review in particular a small volume titled "Delusions of Grandeur," published by the Cato Institute think-tank in 1997, which contains a classic Bolton essay titled "The Creation, Fall, Rise and Fall of the United Nations."

"Let us be realistic about the U.N.," it asserts. "It has served our purposes from time to time; and it is worth keeping alive for future service. But it is not worth the sacrifice of American troops, American freedom of action, or American national interests."

"It can be a useful tool in the American foreign policy kit. The U.N. should be used when and where we choose to use it to advance American national interests. Not to validate academic theories and abstract models."

I worked with John Bolton in the first Bush administration. I know many people who have worked with him and for him in this administration. Carl Ford's characterization of Bolton as a "kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy" is disingenuous. No, let's call a spade a spade--it's dishonest.

I have until now withheld my first -- and only -- impression of John Bolton, probably destined to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations: He's nuts.

I recognize that, as a diagnosis, the word leaves something to be desired. But it is nevertheless the impression I took away back in June 2003 when Bolton went to Cernobbio, Italy, to talk to the Council for the United States and Italy. Afterward he took questions. Some of them were about weapons of mass destruction, which, you may remember, the Bush administration had claimed would be found in abundance in Iraq but which by then had not materialized.

The literal facts did not in the least give Bolton pause. Weapons of mass destruction would be found, he insisted. Where? When? How come they had not yet been discovered? The questions were insistent, but they were coming, please remember, from Italians, whose government was one of the few in the world to actively support the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Bolton bristled. I have never seen such a performance by an American diplomat. He was dismissive. He was angry. He clearly thought the questioners had no right, no standing, no justification and no earthly reason to question the United States of America. The Bush administration had said that Iraq was lousy with WMD and Iraq therefore was lousy with WMD. Just you wait.

This kind of ferocious certainty is commendable in pit bulls and other fighting animals, but it is something of a problem in a diplomat. We now have been told, though, that Bolton's Italian aria was not unique and that the anger I sensed in the man has been felt by others. (I went over to speak to him afterward, but he was such a mass of scowling anger that I beat a retreat.) Others have testified to how he berated subordinates and how, to quote Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), he "needs anger management." From what I saw, a bucket of cold water should always be kept at hand.

Hothouse flowers who never had to make their own way in the world, like Bill Kristol and George W. Bush, may admire the "tough guy" act and mistake it for inner strength. Most of us who've been among the berated subordinates of such bullies come to understand that the tough guy act is just overcompensation for deep and massive insecurity. Guys like Bolton may be hard on the outside, but they have a soft, chewy center.

People sometimes ask why George W. Bush makes these horrific Bernie Kerik-type appointments. I suspect there is no why. Bush is not a guy who thinks things through; he relies on what "feels" good. So, he appoints people he feels in sync with. And we see the result: Subconsciouly, Bush is re-creating his own dysfunctional family within the executive branch.

And from the far end of the idiot spectrum, we find Rich Lowry at Town Hall calling Bolton a "multilateralist." Yeah, and I'm the Virgin Mary.

Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., both mentioned a name, Fulton Armstrong, that had not previously come up in public accounts of the intelligence flap.

It is not clear whether Armstrong is the undercover officer, but an exchange between Kerry and Bolton suggests that he may be.

In questioning Bolton, Kerry read from a transcript of closed-door interviews that committee staffers conducted with State Department officials prior to Monday's hearing.

Oops! But tonight on MSNBC's Countdown (story not yet on the web page as of this writing), Keith Olbermann debunked this claim. Apparently Mr. Armstrong has been named as a former undercover operative many, many times, in major publications, and also by Mr. Armstrong's speaker's bureau. Mr. Armstrong's identity hasn't been a secret for a long time. 

I'll try to remember to post a link to the transcript when it's available. Hoot and a half.

While liberalism shares many beliefs with communist (i.e. hatred of free trade, free markets, more socialized policies), liberalism is a soft version of communism. But since Nazism rejects free markets, you liberals are closer to the National Socialists than any conservative who is (by definition) pro-capitalist, pro-free market. [Link]

 

... liberalism is the cancer of civilized and free society. [Link]

Liberalism is all about self and does not consider others except when it fits in with their agenda. It is the anti-Christian movement that goes against personal responsibility. It is for people that hate their life and will try to ruin yours too. [Link]

Update: This is 'xactly what I'm talking about! This is a Weekly Standard article defining liberal as something like the boogeyman. I like Daniel Drezner's comment:

About once a quarter I'll experience a conversation in which I feel like Inigo Montoya's character in The Princess Bride when he hears Vizzini repeatedly say the word "inconceivable!" after witnessing yet another heroic feat by the masked and dangerous Dread Pirate Roberts. After hearing Vizzini say that word several times, Montoya finally turns to him and says, "I don't think that word means what you think it means."

I'm having an Inigo Montoya moment after reading Joel Engel go all Vizzini on the word "liberal" in The Weekly Standard.

Update update: Although that may have been Andre the Giant's line. I'm not sure.