update: Speaking of grassroots terrorism, if the Seattle police are right, a man now in critical condition who was shot and arrested earlier today for the assassination-style killing of a Seattle police officer was waging a terrorist campaign of his own (with at least one accomplice) against the city’s police department.  According to police, Christopher Monfort, an Obama-lookalike with a similar biracial background, is also a suspect in an arson case involving the torching of several police vehicles at a motor pool. The arsonist left a note promising to kill police officers. Monfort was a UW graduate and sometime activist:

Monfort received a bachelor’s degree from the UW in March 2008, according to the university’s degree-validation Web site. His major was in Law, Societies and Justice.

Last year, Monfort belonged to the McNair Scholars Program, part of the university’s office of Minority Affairs and Diversity. The program aims to steep undergraduate students in sophisticated research, preparing them for graduate work.

Monfort provided this title for his project with the McNair program: “The Power of Citizenship Your Government Doesn’t Want You to Know About: How to Change the Inequity of the Criminal Justice System Immediately, Through Active Citizen Nullification of Laws, As a Juror.”

In an abstract of his project, Monfort said he planned to “illuminate and further” the scholarship of Paul Butler, a law professor at George Washington University. Butler is a proponent of jury nullification, a controversial principle whereby jurors feel free to disregard a judge’s instructions and acquit a defendant no matter the strength of the evidence.

Butler has argued that such nullification may be particularly appropriate in cases where black defendants are charged with nonviolent crimes.

“It is the moral responsibility of black jurors to emancipate some guilty black outlaws,” Butler wrote in a 1995 Yale Law Journal article, adding: “My goal is the subversion of American criminal justice, at least as it now exists.”

If you enjoy these reviews and the books issue, consider giving the gift of TAC this Christmas.

Virginia Republicans led by Robert McDonnell crushed the most conservative Democrat nominee in decades, rolling up a victory that rivaled Ronald Reagan’s rout of Walter Mondale.

New Jersey GOP nominee Chris Christie, whose campaign had been the despair of its backers, won a 5-point victory over Jon Corzine, despite huge Democratic advantages in money and voter registration, two visits by Barack Obama and the presence on the ballot of a third-party candidate who took votes away from Christie.

Maine has gone Democratic in five straight presidential elections. Yet voters overturned a gay-marriage state law, 53-47, the 31st straight victory for traditionalists. This replicates California’s rejection of gay marriage, 52-48, in a year Obama carried the state by 24 points and 3 million votes.

Democrats see green shoots in the capture of New York’s 23rd congressional district, which has been Republican since Ulysses Grant. Yet, even here, the conservative showing was impressive.

GOP candidate Dede Scozzafava is a fellow traveler of the Albany crowd of Gov. David Paterson. She is pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro “card-check” — a euphemism for eliminating the secret ballot for workers deciding on whether they want a union.

Disgusted with a choice between liberals, the Conservative Party put up Douglas Hoffman. While he did not live in the district, his views did reflect the district’s views.

Hoffman was going nowhere, however, until the Tea Party and town-hall activists and Club for Growth sent contributions and troops. Hoffman got ignition when Sarah Palin joined Fred Thompson in endorsing him. He began a rapid ascent from last to first, dumping Dede into third place. When Dede fell to 20 percent, the weekend before the election, she dropped out and endorsed Democrat Bill Owens, who won.

Nevertheless, Hoffman had come, in a month, from nowhere to knock a liberal Republican out of the lead and out of the race and out of the party, and closed to within two points of taking the seat.

The good news for the GOP is that, despite the unpopularity of their brand name — Republican identification is down to 20 percent — this is no longer the impediment it was in 2006 or 2008. The 40 percent who call themselves conservative will rally with energy and enthusiasm to Republicans willing to go to their capital, be it Trenton, Richmond or D.C., to battle Big Government.

As for the Democrats, their problems are not easily soluble, in the short term.

In 2006, the war in Iraq cost Republicans the Congress. Now, Iraq, like Afghanistan, is Obama’s war. In 2008, the financial collapse on George W. Bush’s watch enabled Obama to retake the lead that Sarah Palin’s nomination had given to John McCain. Now, the economy is Obama’s albatross and his party’s responsibility.

Going into 2008, 27 percent of Americans approved of Bush. Eighty percent thought the country was headed in the wrong direction. Over 90 percent thought the economy was bad or poor.

If we can’t win with those numbers, said James Carville, we ought to go into a new line of work.

Obama won, but only because of those appalling numbers. In every state except Missouri where Bush’s approval was above 35 percent, McCain carried the state.

In 2010, Obama will not have George W. Bush to kick around anymore and Republicans will not have “Bush’s war” or “the Bush economy” to defend.

If Americans think the country is still on the wrong course, as most now do, and the economy is still dismal, as most now do, the only way to protest will be to vote against the party that controls Congress and the White House.

Despite all the media mockery of the “Birthers,” “Truthers,” Tea Party and town-hall “Nazis,” it is the populist-conservative center-right that is not only on fire but came out to vote in 2009.

Young voters and African-Americans who came out in record number in 2008 stayed home in 2009. What will cause them to rally to endangered Democrats in 2010, after they have endured another year of what they are enduring now?

After Tuesday’s defeats, Obama flew to Madison, Wis., on the first anniversary of his victory, to remind Americans what a terrible hand he had been dealt. We had, said Obama, a “financial crisis that threatened to plunge our economy into a Great Depression. We had record deficits, two wars, frayed alliances around the world.”

Since then, the financial crisis has eased. But millions more are now unemployed. And deficits are now three times as large as Bush’s largest. And America’s prospects in those two wars are more grim than a year ago. And the Middle East peace process is moribund, and there is the threat of a new war with Iran. What has the outreach to Chavez, Castro and the Ayatollah produced?

President Obama is today the victim of a disillusionment caused by the excessive hopes and expectations that were raised by candidate Obama.

Patrick Buchanan is the author of the new book Churchill, Hitler, and ‘The Unnecessary War,’ now available in paperback.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM

At the same time, “media bias” has been a handy excuse for Republican failures. During the darkest days of the Iraq insurgency, many conservatives consoled themselves with the belief that the reality on the ground was far brighter than it was being reported by the MSM. “Fact finding” trips to Iraq involving conservative media figures and politicians were transparent charades and denials of basic reality. It was only when the evidence became overwhelming that the course was unsustainable that a reconsideration of Iraq policy became acceptable in conservative circles. (The long-term wisdom of the resulting surge strategy is a matter for another day).

It is interesting to note that many leftists talk about the mainstream media with the same disdain characteristic of right-wingers. They charge the media with carrying water for corporate interests and with dereliction of duty when the Bush administration was spinning the Iraq war. Is it possible for both right and left wing to be correct about the MSM? Some on the anti-war right (and left) would argue that indeed that is possible. In their minds, the media is a handmaiden of the bipartisan “Warfare State.”

What then should we take away from our consideration of the mainstream media? One salient fact to remember is that the journalism landscape is becoming more and more fractured every day. The rise of cable news, talk radio, and the Internet has undermined the hegemony of the Big Three networks and the major daily newspapers. We have all heard about the downward spiral of the newspaper industry, with venerable institutions filing bankruptcy or undergoing sizable layoffs. Soon enough, talking about the mainstream media as a recognizable entity will be anachronistic.

While conservatives might cheer this trend as liberal bias getting its just deserts, what will emerge to replace the reporting of the major newspaper bureaus is unsettling at best. The idea that bloggers working from home or taking the occasional trip will replace professionals on an assigned beat is laughable. God bless Joe the Plumber but casting him as a reporter on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict enters the realm of absurdity. The truth is that, even with the prejudices of most journalists, the conscientious citizen can, particularly with the help of the Internet and a healthy dose of variety, stay relatively well-informed. But the dark days that lie ahead for the whole profession may end not just with the welcome demise of MSM bias but with the rise of obscurantism emanating from our nation’s elite, whether they have a “D” or a “R” before their names.

Actually Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate, was a company man too, of Conservative Inc.  But he had the smart sense to take advantage of the outrage many local Republicans and rightists within district had when party bosses picked a company woman far more to the left than they were, thinking it was smart politics, and wound up driving them to Hoffman, who had the Conservative Party ballot line. Ultimately it wasn’t enough as Democrats plus what’s left the old institutional Republican base basically said what the election results of 2008 said, this has become a Democrat district.

My online collegue Matthew Roberts asked were the neocons trying to co-opt the “Tea Party” movement to which I replied: “Don’t they always?” Anyone who watched ”Nightline” on Monday and its profile of the NY-23 race also saw former House Minority Leader Dick Armey being interviewed in a Florida condo lent to him by a wealthy supporter of Freedom Works, the Beltway organization he leads. Freedom Works apparently has a lot of wealthy benefactors, especially corporate benefactors that Armey is loathe to name because of fears of “retaliation.” What they really fear is that they won’t be able to give to both sides so they can hedge their bets, as good men of business often do.  And having such benefactors allows Armey to rake in a cool half-mil for his services which I’m sure he believes he’s worth. If there’s any better example of what I speak of when I say “Conservative Inc.” I can’t think of any.

The establishment Republicans and establishment right know how to use the populism of Middle American Radicals for their own ends as they showed last night. They’ve also showed how they use their patriotism and their money as well over the years. Hopefully, before this new movement of MAR populism is turned into just another racket, or a failed party or an email list, such persons can figure out on their own how to use their populism and activism for their own interests instead of the powers that be.

One small ray hope was the fact such MARs were willing to buck the party establishment in NY-23 for a non-major party like the Conservatives. There hasn’t been much interest in non-major parties by MARs in a decade with everything being subordinated to the whims of the GOP (I remember old JimRob at Not-So-Free Republic basically calling anyone who voted for a non-major party instead of the GOP a traitor in the early part of the decade). What made the this by-election so interesting was the way so many GOP politicans ditched their own party as well to support Hoffman and the way the party establishment ditched their own candidate so fast in order to jump on his bandwagon. That was unheard of in a party that prized loyalty and unity so much one couldn’t help but compare it to the Bolsheviks. Now after Tuesday the politicians may be reluctant to do this again, and Conservative Inc. may just stick with party primaries, but at least that seed has been planted in the minds of MARs that there are alternatives one can use practically to alter the political landscape.

Of course such movements by their definition are leaderless and can veer off the road or follow pied pipers without directions from candidates and politicals figures with their best interests at heart. Thankfully there is one such candidate MARs can support and that’s Rand Paul and he’s showing himself to be quite capable of such leadership as he now leads in polls over Republican primary opponent Trey Grayson in Kentucky’s U.S. Senate seat.  If Rand Paul and or the Campaign for Liberty is successful in creating a political framework for MARs to use to deal with their greivences, then they can truly be independent.

Wrong, says Michael Ledeen, in blog post entitled, absurdly, “more from the appeaser-in-chief”:

Personally, I hope the demonstrations spread like wildfire until the regime burns and crashes.

Yeah, bring on the blood-spilling! And put it all on TV so we can watch. (Pay-per-view!)

PS: Actually, it appears a master satirist may have stolen Ledeen’s blog password today, and is now posting with furious comic energy under his name. Take this earlier snap pensée on the White House’s refusal to “interfere in Iran’s internal affairs”:

A sad day to be an American, don’t you think? As Churchill said of Chamberlain, we can say of Obama: You had a choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.

In fact, he’s already got it. It always happens when you become an accomplice to evil.

Hilarious. Keep it up, “Michael Ledeen.”

As my hosts stressed to me, the Swedish armed forces have a strong Third Generation heritage. Historically they had close ties with the German military. While Swedish armies often fought in Germany, Sweden never went to war against Germany. Kaiser Wilhelm II was an honorary admiral in the Royal Swedish Navy.

But Swedish officers also told me that their Third Generation heritage is under threat. In part the danger is inherent in any military. In peacetime, the drill field comes to predominate over the battlefield. Techniques, which are done by formula and can therefore seemingly be evaluated “objectively,” become the focus of training. Tactics, which should never be schematic and can only be analyzed subjectively, receive less and less training time until they are subsumed in techniques. In consequence, the Third Generation is reduced to maneuver warfare buzzwords while the culture is lost. This happened more than once even in the Prussian/German army. The best counter to it is lots of free-play training.

But the Swedish Third Generation heritage faces another threat: us. Sweden is working more with NATO and the U.S. than it did in the past, and in each combined operation the Swedes are forced to conform to the Second Generation American model (which is also the NATO model). Gradually, that model is taking over, because it is the standard expected of everyone who works with the Americans. That is true all over the world. The great sucking sound heard by anyone who cooperates with the Americans or NATO comes from the drain that leads ever downwards, back into the Second Generation.

It is easy to counsel, Beware! But what can Third Generation armed services actually do to avoid this Charybdis? My advice to the Swedes and others who face the same danger is to learn how to operate the way the Second Generation demands, but laugh at it while you do it.

There is precedent for this. The Germans knew they could not operate with many of their allies the way they did at home. General Liman von Sanders did not imagine the Ottoman army could employ Auftragstaktik, nor did von Manstein expect it from the Romanians (nor anyone from the Italians). They adapted locally, but among themselves they kept their own superior tradition.

This is made all the easier by the fact that it is mostly staffs that must adopt the Second Generation when operating with NATO or the Americans. Swedish combat units can continue to operate as the Third Generation suggests, both tactically and culturally, while the staffs run interference for them. Staff officers can know both generations, and understand that they are slumming when they have to work with people who cannot do maneuver warfare. Again, some humor helps; just think of the Americans as today’s Ottomans. You can work with them without becoming them.

It is of course a pity that the U.S. armed forces are the Typhoid Mary of military models. Like that deadly Irish girl, we present an attractive appearance. Our vast resources and fancy gear overawe other countries and lead them to want to copy us. Regrettably, like Typhoid fever, the Second Generation culture embodied in the U.S. military is a fatal disease. It leaves its victims helpless against Third or Fourth Generation opponents.

As Americans, our seemingly hopeless task remains dragging the U.S. military out of the Second Generation mire it finds so comfortable. Swedes and others who have moved beyond us have the easier job of avoiding retrogression. Just being aware of the danger does much to avoid it. What good sailor, knowing the location of a whirlpool, sails into it? From what I saw, the Royal Swedish Navy has very good sailors.

A personal note: I spent much of my youth building models of 18th century Swedish warships. The models were scratch-built, not from kits, and they sailed. My visit with the Royal Swedish Navy allowed me to close a circle that dates back 50 years. Thank you, Sweden!

How is it that a president who has taken on so many big issues, with very specific policies — and has even been awarded a Nobel Prize for all the hopes he has kindled — still has so many people asking what he really believes?

I don’t think that President Obama has a communications problem, per se. He has given many speeches and interviews broadly explaining his policies and justifying their necessity. Rather, he has a “narrative” problem. [...]

What is that narrative? Quite simply it is nation-building at home. It is nation-building in America. [...]

Wow. “Nation-building at home”? When do we send in the troops?

From Shachtman’s report:

…Sometimes, that will mean operating “in uncooperative countries.” In those cases, the teams must be prepared “to act unilaterally, with no support or coordination with local authorities, in a manner similar to that employed by Israel’s Avner team in response to the Munich Olympics massacre.” (That was the controversial unit, fictionalized in Steven Spielberg’s movie, that allegedly roamed the world, assassinating Palestinian militants in response to the 1972 Olympic attack.)

The hit squads would only be one part of the manhunting agency, according to the Joint Special Operations University monograph, uncovered by Inside Defense. “Dedicated teams must be assembled, able to respond ‘on-call’ in the event of a raid on a suspect site or to conduct independent ‘break-in and search’ operations without leaving evidence of their intrusion,” Crawford notes.

Manhunting will also “require personnel who are experts at conducting surveillance of particular facilities, personnel, or activities without arousing suspicion or being detected,” he adds. “Picture in your mind a typical city street scene, with a little old lady walking her dog, the phone repair crew descending into a manhole, two little old men playing an innocent game of checkers, or the homeless person sleeping on the park bench, and you are on the right track.”

Such a group wouldn’t just go after terrorists. “Human networks are behind narcotics trafficking, arms proliferation, piracy, hiding war criminals from authorities, human trafficking, or other smuggling activities,” Crawford writes. “Human networks also lie at the core of national governments, offering an increased potential to nonlethally influence state actors with precision. A robust manhunting capability would allow the United States to interdict these human networks.”

This is frightening on so many levels. I mean, slow down pal, we already have the most famous al Qaeda hunter, Gen. Stan McChrystal, running things in Afghanistan. Plus, there is no need to reinvent the wheel, Team America is already on the job:

“The only thing standing between order and chaos — is us”

It is astounding to see the western media treat Karzai like a legitimate winner and someone who has any credibility to fight corruption.

This is akin to how the Soviet media treated the election “victories” of Stalin’s puppets in East Europe.

At least we now have a better understanding of how Hillary Clinton, Obama, and the establishment media define political legitimacy.