Donald Meissner

There is an old adage that Democrats fall in love with their candidates, while Republicans fall in line.

It's true this year: Obama's campaign is inspirational; McCain's workmanlike. In his post-convention bounce, McCain seems to have found a chink in Obama's armor, with VP nominee Sarah Palin evoking the enthusiasm McCain has been struggling to create. The race is a dead heat, and rank-and-file Republicans who are emailing me say it's the most exciting in their lifetime.

John McCain, written off early as uninspiring and unappealing to the conservative base, surprised many Republicans when he upset the more flashy candidates to become the nominee. The 72-year-old McCain beat a television star, America's Mayor and a very successful businessman and former governor of Massachusetts. The determined tortoise most certainly beat the hares. Conservatives initially displayed consternation at his success, yet continue to fall in line as Obama faces a game-changing Gov. Sarah Palin and the home stretch.

Most Republicans consider the choice of Palin to be a masterstroke, as McCain defied conventional expectations and selected a complete Washington outsider.

Her conservative core values burnish McCain's credentials with the conservative party base; her attractiveness and verbal dexterity, using humor as a rhetorical weapon, thrilled Republicans being lulled to sleep by McCain's delivery.

The contrasting images of Biden and Palin are striking: the ultimate Washington insider versus a gun-toting frontierswoman, the Party conformist versus old-boy network buster. The synergy of McCain-Palin is that both candidates have willfully diverged from and made enemies within their own party.

Those who criticized McCain from the right were dismayed by his authorship of McCain-Kennedy, considered a soft immigration bill with amnesty; and McCain-Feingold, campaign finance reform viewed as abridging free speech. Doctrinaire conservatives and libertarians could not be more upset by the free-spending ways of the past eight years and remain uneasy about McCain's willingness to partner with Democrats and wander off the reservation.

Palin's Republican detractors come from (dare I say it) country-club Republicans, who may have been happier with a known centrist quantity, such as Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge. Two core and related issues -- abortion and religion -- are implicit in that dissension. Anyone involved in Republican politics in Missouri will inform you that reliable Republican voters are pro-life, and instruct you to get your ducks in a row on the issue. One cannot waffle, mince words, equivocate, or vote for it before you vote against it.

Palin's unwavering pro-life beliefs and much-publicized invocation of the G-word (God) make secular middle-roaders uneasy, delighting conservatives who tepidly supported McCain.

In the interest of full disclosure, I originally supported Giuliani, whose candidacy imploded after he lost the Florida primary. I suppose that pigeonholes me a non-doctrinaire pro-choice conservative, but there is more to it than that. I had first-hand experience with Giuliani in New York, and watched him take a city oft branded ungovernable and restore it to glory.

Ignoring catcalls from many powerful Democrats, Rudy demanded a modicum of decency from all New Yorkers, in every situation: no more windshield washers at busy intersections, the homeless population cannot sleep and beg anywhere they wish, graffiti will not be a ubiquitous art form, one may not smoke on the subway platform! I admit I got a ticket for smoking while waiting for the "A" Train. Most important: Giuliani's intrepid performance on 9/11.

"Country First" is the new motto for McCain-Palin, evoking a patriotic optimism likely considered jingoism by some who see America riddled with problems and guilty of creating problems for the world. Perhaps that is the bottom line for Republicans: Who will protect our country from all threats foreign and domestic? Who will maintain a hard line against radical Islam while simultaneously healing a wounded economy? Who has the stomach for battle on these and other fronts?

Republicans will continue to fall in line with the ticket; this election is one for the history books. I hope the kids are studying.

Originally Published in The St. Louis Beacon: StlBeacon.org 

You won't catch me saying anything provocative in an email, no ma'am.  Actually, that is not true, I routinely send missives that provoke and irritate half the recipients, simultaneously titillating the other half.  I do not use expletives, which garishly punctuate certain bloggers' tirades, and try not to embarrass my wife or my mom.  In other words, I will defend every last word I write -- with today's technology you might as well be skywriting.

Online diction becomes even more crucial when you work for Governor Blunt.  The recent email fracas has been nipping at the Governor's heels for several months, and contains all the elements of political intrigue: a young governor who inexplicably will not seek a second term, email records destroyed, innuendos about their content, a self-described whistle-blower fired and impugned, online porn, and, attempting to burn off the fog over the whole murky mess: Missouri's  Sunshine Law.

Aye, there's the rub: is there anything unethical about destroying emails, and what does Missouri's Sunshine Law actually say? Sunshine, of course, sounds great.  After all, who would support an Overcast Law, or a Downpour Law? It would not be popular.

We may all agree that we would like to know what our elected officials are emailing to each other on the taxpayers' dime, however the Attorney General's office details many exemptions to the strictures of the Sunshine Law: legal actions, real estate transactions, employee and personnel matters, welfare cases of identifiable individuals, security matters, and records protected by other laws.  The bottom line is that for every email that should be public, there may well be a record that should be kept private -- for honest reasons.

Let us briefly re-examine what happened to the Blunt administration when the "license fee office investigation" saw sunshine in 2006.  Article after article appeared in news sources throughout the state, alleging cronyism, FBI sleuthing, and friends of the young governor getting rich while we poor schlubs wait in line for license renewals.  Like the current brouhaha over email correspondence, mere innuendo was enough to convict the Governor in the press, requiring an unprecedented public exoneration from U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins:

"Earlier in the year, the existence of the investigation was disclosed to the media and has since become a topic of substantial public interest and discourse in the State of Missouri.  In light of that unfortunate disclosure and the publicity it spawned, it is appropriate to confirm certain facts. First, the matter has been closed with no indictments sought or returned. Second, at no time was Governor Blunt a target, subject, or witness in the investigation, nor was he implicated in any allegation being investigated. Any allegations or inferences to the contrary are uninformed and erroneous." Oct 4, 2006

There is only one way to make sure that our public officials are not tried, convicted and executed in the press based on incomplete, exaggerated or erroneous information, gleaned and culled with the Sunshine Law.  It's the Tony Soprano method: don't say nothin'...let's take a walk...the walls have ears.  It is ironic that high technology and political rancor has enfeebled us.

The Bushehr Nuclear Reactor in Iran 

Click here to see video about the new satellite from Jerusalem Online 

Scheuer missed bin Laden, and a lot more.

(Originally published in Frontpage Magazine.) 

The strength of Al-Qaeda remains very much in question as

Americans vacation in the summer heat. Contradictory

remarks from Homeland Defense Chief Michael Chertoff and

the White House leave the impression that counter-terrorism

is a very edgy and uncertain business. It is.

Intelligence insiders tell us terror cells exist in the

U.S., potentially dangerous at any time, but no one claims

to know their orders, scale, or level of cunning. A

healthy level of skepticism is warranted whenever a

terrorism "expert" pops onto the screen.

One such expert, Michael Scheuer, former director of the

CIA unit responsible to apprehend Osama Bin Laden, recently

stated to ABC News "We've tried to do Afghanistan on the

cheap, and it's going to cost us domestically in terms of

the next attack on the United States." Those foreboding

words, and additional comments over the last few years

contain some troubling assertions, which he delivers with

the characteristic style of a former Federal bureaucrat:

Scheuer appears to enjoy disparaging his former employer.

Scheuer's 2004 critique of US foreign policy "Imperial

Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror," indicts

neo-conservatism and implicates Israel:

"Surely there can be no other historical example of a

faraway, theocracy-in-all-but-name of only six million

people that ultimately controls the extent and even the

occurrence of an important portion of political discourse

and national security debate in a country of 270-plus

million people that prides itself on religious toleration,

separation of church and state, and freedom of speech."

Scheuer's characterization of Israel as a theocracy is

ludicrous--Israel is the only secular democracy in the

Middle East, with citizens free to practice any religion,

or none at all. At least Scheuer's predilection is

clear--he does not hide his antipathy for the secular

Jewish state.

On April 9th of this year, in a speech to the Center for

Naval Analysis, Scheuer said:

"By defining bin Laden and his ilk as would-be Islamist

Hitlers, the U.S. citizen Israel-firsters who dominate the

American governing elite ensure that those who question the

nature and benefit of current U.S.-Israel ties are

slandered as pro-Nazi, anti-Semites."

In this case Scheuer, citing no specific evidence, invents

a conspiracy to fulfill his ideological framework. In his

world the U.S. political, economic, and military alliance

with Israel is a reverse proof that U.S. policy is

"dominated" by that interest group. Who are these shadowy

dominators, and what is the source of their awesome power?

Scheuer has no answers, only insinuation and circular

logic.

Scheuer publicly defended the innuendo-ridden

Walt/Mearsheimer report, which he said "critiqued at length

the prolonged, deranging, and clearly negative impact the

Israeli lobby has had on the formulation and conduct of

U.S. foreign policy." The imprimatur of Harvard University

was rescinded from Walt/Mearsheimer. Numerous scholars,

including Alan Dershowitz, have documented the report's

errors of fact, omission, inaccurate citations, and lack of

adherence to basic scholarly standards regarding sources

and interpretation.

Also troubling, in 2005, Scheuer remarked to the Council on

Foreign Relations that Israel operates in America "probably

the most successful covert-action program in the history of

man." His lone example was the Holocaust Museum in

Washington, hardly a coup.

Now that you know the consipatorial musings of Scheuer's

imaginative mind, several questions arise: How does a top

CIA official develop and espouse views diametrically

opposed to U.S. foreign policy since 1948? Is he correct in

his assertions? Does it matter if he is wrong?

Like other analysts--Jimmy Carter, Pat Buchanan, Mel

Gibson, Norman Finkelstein, David Duke--who consider the

U.S.-Israel relationship a root cause of Muslim fury,

Scheuer is primed and ready to be called an anti-semite, so

don't go there. A greater rhetorical faux pas would be to

mention the Holocaust, or reference the Sudetenland (ceded

in 1938 to appease Hitler).

There is one sure way former staffers like Scheuer, a

self-described "life-long Republican," enter the limelight

and lecture circuit: vehemently criticize the Bush

administration, and blame the entire morass on Israel (the

Jews). That is truly what Scheuer and his ilk intend when

they conjure and decry a pro-Israel hegemon within the

United States.

Is it possible that a mere six-million beleaguered Jews in

Israel, many recent immigrants from the former Soviet

Union, Africa and elsewhere, could manipulate the world's

only superpower? How many "Elders of Zion" live among us

here in the United States? To paraphrase Natan Sharansky,

from his book The Case for Democracy: to demonize,

delegitimize, and hold Israel to a double-standard is

modern anti-semitism. To anyone who studies world history

and the Hebrew Bible, this prepossession and prejudice

remains as old as the Judean hills.

The Jews, slaughtered and exiled from their sole homeland

by the Romans, wandering the globe for 2000 years,

miraculously found their way back to their Biblical

homeland, a prophesied return for which the pious pray

three times a day. Repeatedly exiled from nations of their

Diaspora (dispersion), 21st century Jews are forced to

entertain the mortifying question of their "right to exist"

in their ancient sliver of a homeland. The conspiratorial

anti-Israelists profoundly misunderstand the meaning of

their one correct conclusion: Israel represents the essence

of the struggle. The Jews were participants in the Genesis

of western civilization, contribute fully to the blossoming

of our advanced culture, and will still exist when the

walls come tumbling down. Let's hope Scheuer and his

cohorts are unable to hasten its demise.

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.  The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property (either as a child, a wife, or a concubine) must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science (the science against which it had vainly struggled) the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome."

Churchill comment on that great religion we are now
fighting against, from The River War, first edition,
Vol. II, pages 248 50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co.,
1899).