Politics Blog

The numbers are in and Fox News is the winner by a mile.

Claudia Rosett thinks that the only way to deal with North Korea is to rid the country of Kim Jong Il:

The truth is that there is no deal the U.S. or its friends can strike that Pyongyang can be trusted to honor. There is no aid we can offer North Korea’s famished people that Kim will not abuse. And there will be no decent peace until he and his regime are gone. The reason is simple. North Korea’s system needs enemies; take that away, and the entire ideological foundation of the Kim cult starts to crumble. There would be no one to blame for all the misery and militarization but the actual source: the Pyongyang regime itself.

As for the theory that with just a little more talk, aid and understanding, Kim would be so gullible as to try to truly reform his ways, well, forget about it. Unless Kim is willing to risk his own welfare for the greater good of his fellow citizens–and there is zero precedent for that–he cannot for one instant leave himself vulnerable to anything even approaching free choice among his subjects. Whatever the mythic status of the country’s 22 million or so brainwashed citizens accord the dead Kim Il Sung, too many North Koreans these past nine years have tried to survive under the younger Kim by eating rats and dirt; too many have seen their loved ones die under Kim’s guiding hand.

I couldn’t agree more.

More 2004 Arkansas Senate speculation today. The Hill says that Governor Mike Huckabee is waiting until the state budget battle ends to decide if he’ll run, while Roll Call says that the other dream candidate, Asa Hutchinson, has indicated that he isn’t averse to running.

Obviously, the two potential Republican candidates are trying to ensure that whoever gets into the race will have an uncontested primary. It’s wonderful to see GOPers training their sights squarely on vulnerable Senator Blanche Lincoln.

My full 2004 Senate analysis is here.

More indications that the House is out of reach for Democrats for a decade, barring a GOP catastrophe. The Hill reports that vulnerable Republican congressman have outraised vulnerable Democrats by 2-1. And there are many more vulnerable Democrats than Republicans, as you can see from this study, which has been very reliable in previous cycles.

A strange green object has been found in the Capitol.

Castro’s latest crackdown is our fault, of course.

The solution to Democratic filibusters of judicial nominees is recess appointments:

The main problem with a recess strategy is that it makes the GOP’s best nominees temporary second-class judges. Not only would this fail to realign the judiciary, but it would deter the most promising judicial candidates from accepting. For this reason, recess appointments, as currently conceived, are not a credible threat. Well, until you add a twist.

President Bush could threaten to line judicial openings with committed conservative and libertarian recess appointees, people who are too old, too young, too smart, too conservative, or too burned by previous failed nominations to ever be considered for ordinary judicial appointments. Unlike practitioners who cannot abandon their practice for a short stint on the bench, professors who can take a few semesters off and judges with no prospects of higher judicial office would be ideal. It would be like a judicial clerkship program for conservative and libertarian law professors that can continue as long as there is a Republican president.

If the Democrats don’t think they like “stealth” candidates like Miguel Estrada, just wait until they experience the delights of judges Richard Epstein, Lillian Bevier, Bernard Siegan, Lino Gragia, and dozens more like them on the Courts of Appeals. Or how about Morris Arnold, Alex Kozinski, Richard Posner, Frank Easterbrook, Edith Jones, or even Robert Bork as recess appointments to the Supreme Court? For the White House, the point of the exercise would be to propose a list of bright and articulate judges who are far more ideologically objectionable to the Democrats and their activist support groups than the president’s current nominees.

Of course, these recess judges and justices would serve only until the end of this session of Congress, but for an academic or near-retiring judge with no future judicial ambitions, this would not serve as too great a deterrent. Imagine the fascinating opinions we would get from these “untenured” judges before they exit the judicial stage.

While browsing C-SPAN’s web site I stumbled upon a video of that infamous interview Peter Arnett granted to Iraqi TV. I found Arnett’s words during the interview disgusting. You can judge for yourself by watching the video here.

Gregg Easterbrook notes the overwhelming superiority of US military hardware, while Christian Lowe notes the overwhelming superiority of US military command and control.

One consequence of this overwhelming US superiority in conventional warfare is that other countries seem to have stopped competing:

The runaway advantage has been called by some excessive, yet it yields a positive benefit. Annual global military spending, stated in current dollars, peaked in 1985, at $1.3 trillion, and has been declining since, to $840 billion in 2002. That’s a drop of almost half a trillion dollars in the amount the world spent each year on arms. Other nations accept that the arms race is over.

“Peace Through Strength” is not as silly as liberals make it out to be.

Lots of speculation today (but no real news) about 2004 Senate races in South Dakota, South Carolina and Florida. My full 2004 Senate analysis is here.