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1) STOP THE PRESSES!!! – Sam Brownback has entered the presidential race. Bad news for you, Duncan Hunter. That ironclad lock you had on the least-plausible Republican candidacy has disappeared overnight.

But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. Brownback hasn’t actually entered the race. He has merely released the following statement:

“I have decided, after much prayerful consideration, to consider a bid for the Republican nomination for the presidency.”

Color me as unimpressed by that statement. At this critical point in history, can we really afford a leader so prone to vacillation that he requires “prayerful consideration” regarding whether he should even “consider” doing something. Is this how it will be if he’s in the White House? One can only shudder.

2) ALREADY TOO MANY PIXELS HAVE DIED in covering the JimWebb/George W. Bush dust-up, but I found this Daily Kos diary interesting. As even casual observers of the imbroglio know, Webb’s son was near an IED when it exploded a few days before his father’s and the president’s confrontation. The Kos Diarist reveals for the first time publicly that “Bush actually knew of Jim Webb's son's close brush with death shortly before their White House meeting.”

While the source for the Kos diarist’s knowledge is the not-particularly reliable or reputable Congressman Jim Moran, it adds an additional wrinkle to the story. To my mind, it makes the President’s inquiry a more caring rather than pro-forma gesture than it initially seemed. It also makes his response to Webb’s belligerent standoffishness small but understandable.

Of course, the Kossacks see it differently. The diarist delicately puts it:

“George W. Bush is now revealed to be the boorest of the boors, the lowest of the lows, the crudest of the crude. I hope he gets his due punishment in hell, or the International Court of Justice in The Hague, whichever comes first.”

The Kossacks’ unrelenting hatred for all things Bush reminds me of an old joke:

A guy walks into a psychiatrist’s office and the shrink begins showing him some Rorschach pictures. The first is of a squiggly blob – the guy says it looks like two people making love. The next is a series of geometric shapes – the guy says it looks like two people making love. The last is a series of straight and squiggly lines – the guy says it looks like two people making love.

The psychiatrist says, “I think I’ve diagnosed your problem. You’re obsessed with sex!”

The guy responds, “Me? You’re the guy making all the dirty pictures!”

3) WAKE ME IN ’08 – John Bolton has signaled his intention to resign from his post at the U.N. Doubtlessly the Democrat-controlled Senate will insist on sending a new emissary to Turtle Bay who will play better with the Syrians, Iranians, and Annans who populate the place. More depressing still, George Mitchell is rumored to be on the shortlist of replacement possibilities.

The link above goes to Allah’s place where he has Lou Dobbs’ video tribute to Bolton as well as one of Bolton’s greatest hits. Bolton was a voice of moral clarity at a time and place where there haven’t been many. It is a sad day when such a voice has been silenced.

4) VDH IN RARE FORM – Hugh already linked to VDH’s Friday piece, but if you haven’t read it yet, you really should. It’s an excellent summation of where the domestic intellectual battle regarding the war stands right now.

It calls to mind something from my childhood. I went to high school in the early 1980’s and the liberals of the time were convinced that nuclear weapons were evil. They thought a unilateral nuclear freeze would be neat. They were sure Ronald Reagan wanted to blow up the world. And when debating the topic, they would inevitable bray, “We already have enough nuclear weapons to blow up the world 30 times? Why do we need so many and why would we possibly need more?”

Of course, they asked theses questions only rhetorically, and had no appetite for a discussion regarding the necessary redundancy of systems because of the differing vulnerabilities and reliabilities between ICBM’s, sub-based missiles and bomber-based weapons. They were comfortable in their ignorance, and determined to remain so.

Rhetorically, when engaging such people, there were two possible tacks to take. One was to reflect their simplistic tone regarding Reagan and say in effect that they were bad people who wanted to blow up the world. The other was to give them the benefit of the doubt that they were arguing in good faith and then go about the hard task of convincing them they were wrong. The latter was the more difficult course; since many of these people were stubborn and stupid, convincing them of the folly of their ways was no mean feat. It was a lot more fun fighting fire with fire, but it wasn’t at all productive.

To get anywhere today, we’re going to have to awaken our country to the danger that the Islamists represent. If people understood the dangers, most of them would be a lot less forgiving of stunts like the one performed by the flying Imams. And most would be horrified that we’re slipping back into a mode of fighting terrorism merely by law enforcement techniques. But we’re going to have to win a lot of intellectual arguments to get our countrymen to where they need to be.

5) THE OTHER SON ALSO RISES (HT: Hugh) – Jeb Bush can’t run for president in ’08 because the country is Bushed out. But if his name were, say, Pataki, he’d be one of the front-runners for the nomination. As a hugely successful Governor of the country’s most important swing state, a Jeb Pataki would be tough to beat. Besides, Jeb Bush is I believe the only male member of his family who has mastered speaking English in complete sentences.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Jeb might be ready to endorse Mitt Romney soon, at least implicitly. One thing you’ll learn about Romney – there aren’t a lot of people who have a lot to do with him who emerge anything less than completely and entirely impressed. There’s also buzz that Jeb might join Mitt on the ticket as his number two.

6) FF THE WHO? - I received a note today that on Michael Medved’s show today it was being discussed that James Baker has adamantly denied ever saying that thing about the Jews and that the only source for the comment was Jack Kemp. Given my commentary last week, it was only fair that I report this.

That being said, my attitude towards his coming prescriptions for achieving Middle East peace in our time remains hostilely indifferent. At best.

Complaints? Compliments? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com.