William Kristol and other gems from the Dark Side.

My response:

Seriously, we can't worry about what the neocons might do. They are discredited, irrelevant, and nothing more than blowhards. We can't give into their scare tactics; we have to stick together and get behind our man. Even President Bush realizes that he has to have a semblance of legitimacy in order to invade Iran. He has to have UN approval and he has to have the support of at least one other major country. And he has to have all of his advisers on board, which Rice and Gates are not. And even the latest Iran resolution in Congress, while bad, cannot be construed as an authorization for the use of force against Iran. Given the latter fact, the pace is far too slow for Bush to attack Iran before the year is out.

The signs are there that Bush could be laying the groundwork for John McCain to attack Iran should he win. The current resolution before Congress specifically rules out the use of force, but it could be used to lead to another one. Freedom Watch is test-marketing language that could be used to justify an attack on Iran. Israel is blustering and threatening Iran and conducting military exercises. But the last thing that we should do is vote out of fear. That is what the Republicans want. We have to stick together. One of the main obstacles that Bush has is the lack of public support for an attack; there are only around 35% or so of people who would support such an attack.

Red State ridicules MoveOn over FISA:

For the This Primary Is Made Out Of Awesome files: via the Huffington Post we see that MoveOn.org is absolutely adamant that Senator Obama filibuster the FISA bill this week. How awesome is it?

It's awesome enough that I'm reprinting the whole post after the fold. That's how awesome it is. You see, I want progressives to email the Senator and demand that he filibuster: he'll either not do so, and thus betray them further; or he'll cave to them, which will embarrass the Democratic Party at the very moment that they need to show Unity.

This post shows that the Republicans have a fundamental misunderstanding of what we're about. Sure, we're for Obama. But the key difference between us and them is that we recognize that we can still support our guy even if we have differences with him, such as on this issue. We're not a lockstep party like the Republicans are. Part of the reason McCain is doing so horribly in the polls is because thanks to the immigration issue and other such issues, many Republicans are simply going to stay home and not vote. Unlike the Reagan Coalition, we realize that we can maintain a big tent and still consider each other Democrats. Obama can even reach across the aisle and work with Republicans on common interest. That is the main difference between us and them.

Red State has a Diamond Dallas Page moment:

Obama had his weakest fundraising month of the year, collecting $22 million and ending the month with $43 million cash on hand and $304,000 in debts. But $10 million of his available cash can only be spent in the fall after the party national conventions, leaving $33 million for the summer months. Obama's decision to bypass the general election's public finance system allows him to use left over primary money in the fall campaign.

Republican John McCain, who secured his party's nomination in March, raised $21 million in May and had $31.6 million in the bank. The figures place him virtually on same financial footing as Obama — a level of parity that would have been unimaginable just a few months ago.

John McCain can tout his recent numbers all he wants. But that belies the fact that he is losing in the polls. Some polls have him down by as much as 15 now. Barack Obama will beat John McCain in the same way that he beat Hillary Clinton -- the more people learned about her support of the war, her negative attacks, and her stubborn refusal to get out when it was over, the less likely they were to support her. And the more likely are to learn about McCain's support of Iran, support for occupying Iraq for another 100 years, support for the abolition of the Minimum Wage, and willingness to appoint radical right-wing judges to the bench, they will throw him under the bus as well. This battle will be fought on the issues, not on who outraises who.

But in their book, it's not a bad thing; it's a good thing!

Fred Thompson's weasel words on Due Process:

Last week, in a call with reporters and bloggers, I pointed out Obama’s folly. The Rahman case demonstrates some of the main reasons why we should not treat enemy combatants as ordinary criminal defendants. Such proceedings potentially compromise results, sources and methods of intelligence gathering. In the course of prosecuting Rahman, the government was compelled to turn over a list of un-indicted co-conspirators to the defendant. That list included the name of Osama bin Laden. We later learned that within ten days a copy of that list reached bin Laden in Khartoum, letting him know that his connection to that case had been discovered.

My comments apparently caused the DNC to send out an A.P.B. for anything that might help their candidate out of this problem. Their "Googling" efforts revealed the fact that last year I pointed out that bin Laden would have to be given due process when he is apprehended.

Given that our Democrat friends apparently don’t understand what "due process" means for enemy combatants, they probably thought they had found a silver bullet for their candidate. For them, my statement supports Obama’s argument for terrorist trials in United States courts.

Of course, it doesn’t. Under several centuries of British and U.S. law, enemy combatants, especially those who are foreign combatants, do not have the same rights as American citizens. This does not mean that they cannot be given certain rights. In 2005, under the Detainee Treatment Act, Congress provided enemy combatants arrested and held abroad with certain procedural rights, such as the right to detention hearings where they may call and cross examine witnesses, etc. It was the due process to which all such prisoners were entitled at the time of my statement last year.

What Grandpa Fred does not understand is that what they were doing was suspending Habeas Corpus and thus undoing hundreds of years of legal precedent and treating people under the notion of guilty until proven innocent. The Supreme Court, including Anthony Kennedy, stepped in and found that this was wrong; people have access to the courts no matter what. There is nothing whatsoever in the Constitution that says that what Thompson calls "enemy combatants" somehow have less rights than what we would if we were arrested.

As the courts have consistently held, the only time that the President can suspend Habeas Corpus is if the turmoil outlined in the Constitution has gotten to the point where the courts have ceased to function. And no reasonable person can argue that today. Thompson ranges into the realm of crackpot conspiracy theories when he claims that all that would do is aid and abet the enemy. This is the hue and cry of all dictators since the beginning of time.

John McCain continues to piss off base on immigration:

"He’s one John McCain in front of white Republicans. And he’s a different John McCain in front of Hispanics," complained Rosanna Pulido, a Hispanic and conservative Republican who attended the meeting.

Pulido, who heads the Illinois Minuteman Project, which advocates for restrictive immigration laws, said she thought McCain was "pandering to the crowd" by emphasizing immigration reform in his 15-minute speech.

[S]he went to the meeting, a room full of 150-200 people. "Sure enough," Pulido says, "his mantra at the meeting was comprehensive immigration reform.’ And there were cheers and applause whenever he mentioned comprehensive immigration reform."

"Then he said, ‘I bet some of you don’t know this — did you know Spanish was spoken in Arizona before English?’ And the crowd roared. I was appalled," Pulido said. "He was pandering to these people — that’s what they wanted to hear."...

"He was telling one group of people one thing and the Hispanics another," says Pulido. "I’m a conservative and I think he’s throwing conservatives under the bus."...

What she saw of John McCain Wednesday night ... makes her inclined right now to support Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin.

Republicans scaremongering over plug-in cars:

As U.S. gasoline prices hover above $4 per gallon and automakers race to make plug-in hybrids available in 2010, it’s no wonder that green-car enthusiasts have turned to after-market kits to convert their hybrids into plug-ins sooner.

The kits include additional batteries and plugs that allow drivers to replace some fuel with electricity from a standard wall outlet, getting more than 100 miles per gallon. It’s an alluring proposition.

But the road to plug-in hybrids hasn’t been easy, and now conversion companies may have run into another bump.

Hybrids Plus this week said a converted Toyota Prius had caught fire, causing no injuries, but "significant damage" to the car.

According to a Cooperative Research Network report, the fire – which happened June 7 – destroyed the car.

What they don't mention is that none of the fires have been traced to the batteries.

More childish behavior from Kristol:

The gathering of oh-so-sober pro-Obama foreign policy experts was drowning in solemnity and earnestness. Speaker after speaker had laboriously dilated on the important distinction--unappreciated by the oh-so-stupid-and-bad Bush administration--between soft power and hard power. And this is to say nothing of the synthesis of soft and hard in ... smart power!

Richard Danzig, the luncheon speaker, hoped to wake the slumberers from their torpor. So he took A.A. Milne rather than Joseph Nye as his fundamental text. As the basis of his criticism of the Bush administration, he read the famous opening sentences of Winnie-the-Pooh:

Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping a minute and think about it.

The earnest Washington foreign policy types were dazzled by Danzig's daringly outside-the-box citation. How clever! And how true! If only Bush had stopped to think that there was "another way" to pursue our national security goals, rather than staying the course in Iraq, or detaining terrorists without habeas corpus at home. Alas! And really, isn't Bush also "a Bear of Very Little Brain"?

Kristol goes on to support the McCain Doctrine of Perpetual Warfare even though it would entail staying in Iraq for the next 100 years. But, as Obama's foreign policy teams have consistently said, there are better ways of conducting foreign diplomacy. The policy that Presidents of both parties have followed is the same policy that Obama is returning to. Talk to people before starting wars. Avoid any misunderstandings. Marshall our system of international alliances that we ourselves created after World War II with overwhelming bipartisan support.

And our justice system has worked -- Bill Clinton was able to catch the Oklahoma City bombers, the Olympics bomber, and the World Trade Center bombers without a single shot being fired and without any violations of the Constitution. All of them were brought to justice, all without the illegal wiretap or Bush's massive human rights violations. Barack Obama would return to that as our next President.

Michael Barone supports the McCain Doctrine of Perpetual Warfare:

That stance proved to be a good move toward winning the presidential nomination — but it was poor prophecy. It is beyond doubt now that the surge has been hugely successful, beyond even the hopes of its strongest advocates, like Frederick and Kimberly Kagan. Violence is down enormously, Anbar and Basra and Sadr City have been pacified, Prime Minister Maliki has led successful attempts to pacify Shiites as well as Sunnis, and the Iraqi parliament has passed almost all of the "benchmark" legislation demanded by the Democratic Congress — all of which Barack Obama seems to have barely noticed or noticed not at all. He has not visited Iraq since January 2006 and did not seek a meeting with Gen. David Petraeus when he was in Washington.

I can remember how opponents of the Vietnam War simply tuned out news of American success when at Richard Nixon’s orders Gen. Creighton Abrams pursued a new strategy. Opponents of the Iraq war, including Obama, seem to have been doing the same.

That’s not true of all critics of the Bush administration and its military leaders. The editorial writers of the Washington Post have been paying close and careful attention. And even though they may be temperamentally more inclined to favor Obama’s candidacy over John McCain’s, they have not been unwilling to take Obama to task for his inattention to American success. Obama, the Post noted tartly on June 7, "has become unreasonably wedded to a year-old proposal to rapidly withdraw all U.S. combat forces from the country — a plan offered when he wrongly believed that the situation would only worsen as long as American troops remained."

The problem is that the Bush administration will not give the Iraqis the resources they need to build up their army so that we can leave. And violence is up sharply in Iraq, 51 people were killed the other day in one of the deadliest bombings in Baghdad in the last three months. Our troops are still losing lives at the same rate that they were before the McCain Doctrine took effect. Our plan is simple, and it is one that Barone and other right-wingers routinely mischaracterize -- set a date certain beyond which we will not be there anymore.  It doesn't matter whether it is one year, or three years from now; the facts on the ground may require that Obama adjust his 16-month plan between now and January. That will cut off the line of terrorist recruits, and that will give the Iraqi government time to adjust. It will also significantly reduce Iranian influence in Iraq and undermine their attempts to become a regional power.