Excerpt from an interview yesterday:

HH: Now let’s get to the first major issue of the day, which is Iran. Mr. Speaker, if the United Kingdom feels obliged to use force, if diplomacy fails to get their people back, will you applaud?

NG: I think there are two very simple steps that should be taken. The first is to use a covert operation, or a special forces operation to knock out the only gasoline producing refinery in Iran. There’s only one. And the second is to simply intercede by Naval force, and block any tankers from bringing gasoline to Iran…

HH: Would you do, would you urge them…

NG: And say to the Iranians, you know, you can keep the sailors as long as you want, but in about 30 days, everybody in your country will be walking.

HH: So how long would you give them, to give them that ultimatum, the Iranians?

NG: I would literally do that. I would say to them, I would right now say to them privately, within the next week, your refinery will no longer work. And within the following week, there will be no tankers arriving. Now if you would like to avoid being humiliated publicly, we recommend you calmly and quietly give them back now. But frankly, if you’d prefer to show the planet that you’re tiny and we’re not, we’re prepared to simply cut off your economy, and allow you to go back to walking and using oxen to pull carts, because you will have no gasoline left.

HH: I agree with that 100%. Would your recommendation to the United States President be the same if Iran seized our forces?

NG: Absolutely. I mean, the reason I say that, it is the least violent, least direct thing you can do. It uses our greatest strength…you know, the mismatch in Naval power is absolute. And so you don’t have to send troops into Iran. Everybody on the left is waiting for conservatives to say things that allow them to run amok and parade in San Francisco, and claim that we’re warmongers. I want to avoid war by intelligently using our power to eliminate the option of sustaining an economy, so that the Iranian dictatorship will be shown to be the hollow dictatorship it is, so the people of Iran decide they’d like to have a decent government with real electricity and real gasoline, so they overthrow it. And I want to do that without risking a single American life, or being engaged in a single direct confrontation. And Naval power lets you do that.

From today's online edition:

We do not need more evidence, however, to reach a conclusion about the suitability of Alberto Gonzales for the leadership of the Department of Justice. While we defended him from some of the outlandish charges made during his confirmation hearings, we have never seen evidence that he has a fine legal mind, good judgment, or managerial ability. Nor has his conduct at any stage of this controversy gained our confidence.

Every day Gonzales stays on needlessly hurts this administration further. By the time this weekend rolls around he should no longer be the Attorney General.

With the emergence of news reports as early as last Friday that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was apparently more involved in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys than his public statements have indicated, two unfortunate possibilities arise: Either the Attorney General is so incompetent that he did not remember the meeting (10 days prior to the firings) or he has been less than candid about his involvement.

In either case, the credibility of Alberto Gonzales is in freefall.
He cannot continue to competently function as Attorney General if those who must have confidence in him have little confidence in his credibility or integrity.

President Bush apparently will not even entertain the notion of asking Gonzales to resign. Republicans in Congress understandably have little incentive to rush to the assistance of Gonzales, after defending Donald Rumsfeld for so long, only to have the rug pulled out from under them when the President - similarly sticking with Rumsfeld for so long - abruptly fired Rumsfeld the day after the disastrous elections of last November. Congressional Republicans cannot put their own credibility on the line again for Gonzales, not knowing whether the President would again leave them out in the cold. But the main cause for a lack of congressional support is the incompetence, and the now apparent less than full candor of, Alberto Gonzales in creating this unnecessary fiasco. A more competent Attorney General would simply not have allowed the situation to develop into the scandal that it has.

If the President will not ask for the resignation of Alberto Gonzales then Gonzales should do the President a favor and submit his resignation without delay.

It was no mistake. Iran is deliberately holding 15 British servicemen.
It is an act of war. The United States should fully back Great Britain in any move that it may have to undertake if Iran decides to make this a hostage situation.

If the Iranians believe that seizing the British servicemen will give them leverage in the ongoing dispute with the West over their nuclear program then they are gravely mistaken. Indeed, if this situation escalates then it may very well give the West an opportunity to clean the clock - once and for all - of the Iranian nuclear enrichment sites.

He's not dropping out, despite the return of his wife's cancer.

Despite the statement by Edwards that the campaign will go on, Jay Carney writes that the announcement will have an effect.

The President finally got his fight up tonight, which will almost certainly now lead to a constitutional fight with Congress. The Democrats have been spoiling for a confrontation as they make unfair political hey over the fired U.S. attorneys, and now they are going to get one.

Come on George W, fight! If you won't then no one else is likely to do it for you.

Indeed, entrenched and tenured liberals in our public school system are primarily responsible - directly or indirectly - for the "blame America first" default assumption, as well as a rather pathetic education imparted to a great deal of young Americans. This is why I have long been in favor of a complete destruction of the public school system, and a rebuilding of the system from ground up - minus the National Education System of course. Almost anything would be better than the rather pathetic public education system that exists today, and has scandalously failed to transmit the most basic - and necessary - information to a generation that most needs that information to place in perspective America's role in the world, both past and present.

Agreed! I found the Gingrich confession to Dobson creepy as well when I saw it.

The President had the right, and was certainly within his bounds, to fire those U.S. attorneys, but the inept handling of the matter is incomprehensible:

What it failed to consider was the new political landscape. A White House and Justice Department on their game, scanning the Schumer-Feinstein battlefield ahead, would have sent Mr. McNulty to the Hill with a very different script. The deputy AG would have laid out the president's absolute right to hire and fire, and pleasantly noted that while the eight attorneys were all fine people, the chief was making a change. He would also have declined to serve up any gory specifics of the administration's personnel decisions. If details had later leaked, the administration would have at least staked out a principled position, and an honest one at that.

Instead, Mr. McNulty's "performance" line inspired the fired prosecutors to defend themselves, namely by dishing up nefarious reasons for their pink slips. Congressional Democrats were able to spin those accusations further after emails blew a hole through Mr. McNulty's testimony. Instead of standing on principle, the administration found itself defending against allegations it had canned attorneys to stop politically sensitive investigations, or to reward cronies with jobs. Mr. Gonzales also had to admit "incomplete information" had been relayed to Congress. That alone was enough to inspire Mr. Schumer and House Judiciary Committee pit bull John Conyers to demand the testimony of top officials, and to guarantee many more weeks--if not months--of a drubbing.

Bringing on an unnecessary drubbing seems to have become a talent of this administration. One would have hoped that this late in the game the administration would have learned how to avoid such an obviously avoidable unforced error.

Viacom doesn't get it. The good old days are gone, and they are not likely to return, regardless of whether Viacom's lawsuit against YouTube is successful.

John Podhoretz on a Thompson run:

It would be a terrific thing if Fred Thompson entered the race, because he's a big personality with a remarkable command of the issues and the kind of eloquence that we're only seeing right now from Barack Obama.

A Republican primary with Giuliani, McCain and Thompson duking it out would be a battle of titans - generating interest and enthusiasm that might provide a welcome contrast to the awkward conflicts among the Democrats.

The GOP doesn't have a strong hand to play in 2008, but a fascinating primary season will do wonders to bring the party's candidate into serious contention. Thompson can help that along, one way or another.

David Obey gets it right. And I'm not talking about his apology.

Liberals are having a great and painful hernia today over the striking down of the D.C. ban on handguns in homes. This tells you just how good this decision is for the city. Criminals thinking about breaking into a home will now have to add one additional factor into their calculation: The owner or renter of the home may indeed have a weapon with which to repel them.

It's a great decision by the court, one which should have come long ago. But better late than never. Law abiding citizens seeking to protect their homes will now have the ability to lawfully possess an equal amount of force to counter those seeking to do them physical harm.

On a related matter, this should be helpful to Rudy Giuliani. With the apparent lessening of the threat to law abiding gun owners (this decision, as well as no recent major Democrat efforts at punitive gun control as occurred in the 1990's), Rudy's past gun control efforts may not figure as prominently in many Republican primary voters' minds as had been originally thought.

That was a good laugh. Hagel has ZERO chance at getting the Republican nomination. It went from about 0.01 to zero percent when he spoke about a potential Bush impeachment.