Entries for September 2006

Is the Iraq war as disastrously unpopular as mainstream media assume? Not necessarily. Consider these results from the University of Cincinnati's most recent poll in Ohio. Ohio is a pretty good bellwether: It voted 51 to 49 percent Bush in 2004, while the country as a whole voted 51 to 48 percent. And if there is any Bush '04 state in which the Republicans are in trouble this year, it's Ohio. Republicans have controlled state government for 16 years–a long time in a state where since the 1840s control has switched between the parties at intervals of eight years or less. They've raised taxes and had corruption scandals. Gov. Bob Taft's job approval rating is under 20 percent (that's not a misprint). Democratic Rep. Ted Strickland has wide leads in the polls over Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell in the race for governor, and Republican Sen. Mike DeWine trails Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown in the race for senator. The University of Cincinnati poll shows Strickland leading Blackwell 50 to 38 percent and Brown leading DeWine 51 to 47 percent. Here are the Iraq questions, with my comments:

The House passed the military tribunals bill by a vote of 253 to 168. Republicans voted 219 to 7 in favor, Democrats 160 to 34 against. Here's the roll call. This makes this a pretty legitimate party-line issue for the fall campaign. A Democratic-controlled House might have gone the other way, because the leadership could frame the issue (using its 9-4 margin in the Rules Committee) in a way favoring its preferred outcome, as leaderships of both parties have done for many years.

Last night I was one of the participants in a Pajamas Media panel, at the National Press Club. The overall impresario was Roger Simon, and the moderator was none less than Glenn Reynolds. Other participants were Tom Bevan, Mark Blumenthal, Jane Hall, Cliff May, Paul Mirengoff, and Claudia Rosett. The stated subject was "How partisan is too partisan?" but much of the discussion was about the biases of the mainstream media.

On September 12, I was selected, much to my surprise, to be a member of a jury in the District of Columbia Superior Court. One of the liabilities of living in the District is the frequency with which you are summoned to jury duty, about once every two years. It's a peril of living in a jurisdiction with a high number of criminal cases and a low number of registered voters per capita.

I've criticized the Washington Post in the past for running lead stories on the front page that were not worthy of attention–particularly in the Monday paper, which is the recipient of a lot of stories that have been languishing on the in-type list for months. But today the Post led with a story that I think deserves the attention the paper has given it. "FBI Is Casting a Wider Net in Anthrax Attacks" is the headline. The story suggests that the FBI investigation of the anthrax attacks that occurred almost exactly five years ago–five years ago!–was pitifully incompetent. The first three paragraphs report that the initial laboratory tests of the anthrax were inaccurate. "Countless scientific tests at numerous laboratories" have shown that the anthrax was "far less sophisticated than originally believed" and undercut the FBI's theory that it must have come from a government scientist.

Here's the transcript of Chris Wallace's explosive interview with Bill Clinton on Fox News Sunday. It's worth watching the video to see the famous Clinton temper in action. Interestingly, Clinton relied heavily on the book by Richard Clarke, which was widely interpreted as supporting the claim that Clinton did more to get Osama bin Laden than George W. Bush did in his first years in office. But, as Byron York points out in nationalreview.com, Clarke's book does not support Clinton's claim.

I seem to notice a pattern emerging from poll results for Senate and House races. Republicans are doing better, in comparison with the Bush 2004 performance, in the Northeast and big metropolitan areas, than they are in states and districts with substantial rural and small-town populations. It looks as if the big margins Bush won in rural and small-town counties–margins that were essential to his wins in states like Ohio and Missouri–are not there, at least not yet, for Republican candidates with serious Democratic opponents. But Republicans in the Northeast and perhaps in other big metro areas (as in the two seriously contested House races in the Chicago suburbs) are running even with or ahead of Bush's showing.