EVENING UPDATE,  FEBRUARY 12,  2008

•   Primary returns from Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia should be coming in fairly soon.  As usual, the expectations game is the only game in town.  Will Hillary upset Obama in Virginia, or get close enough to embarrass him?  Will Huck embarrass McCain by bringing in carloads of true believers? 

Sean Hannity was on the air an hour ago saying the Clinton campaign was starting to resemble the Guiliani campaign:  "Wait 'til next month."   True.  Someone has to light a fire under the senator from New York and tell her a day is a lifetime in a primary  She's got to be out making news every day.

No point in writing more about today's primaries until the results are in.  However, some parts of the affected states, and the District, have reported sharp spikes in voter registration.  I don't know who that favors, but I suspect it favors Obama. 

•   Silliness anew.  Now some Hispanics are upset because Hillary Clinton deposed her campaign manager, who happens to be Hispanic:

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - Two New York Hispanic leaders said they would be upset if Hillary Rodham Clinton's Hispanic campaign manager was replaced because of primary losses they believe should be blamed on former President Bill Clinton and others.

Patti Solis Doyle, whose parents were Mexican immigrants, stepped down as Clinton's campaign manager this weekend as Clinton was losing five Democratic contests to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. Clinton has said Doyle's decision was a personal response to a grueling campaign, not about job performance. She added that Solis Doyle would remain a senior adviser and that her campaign needed to add more staff.

In a letter to Clinton dated Monday and obtained by The Associated Press, State Sen. Ruben Diaz Jr. and Assemblyman Joseph Peralta, both New York City Democrats, wrote that they are inclined to believe the explanation, but `it will be very troubling to many if somehow we later find that she left her post under pressure because of the recent primary losses your campaign suffered."

Don't these clowns understand that every time they pull something like this it becomes harder for a member of their group to get a job?  I once knew a major editor who was reluctant to hire a black journalist because he was afraid he couldn't fire him if things went badly.  He feared the civil-rights groups.  That's the cost of identity politics.  A well-qualified minority didn't get the job because those "protecting his rights" were over the top. 

•   Reader Greg Koster has referred us to some excellent commentary by the brilliant Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic, who's on the Obama watch.  He observes:

The question of whether Barack Obama will make a fine commander-in chief finally depends on your view of the direction of history in the coming years. I cannot escape the foreboding that we are heading into an era of conflict, not an era of conciliation. I do not mean that there will be many wars, though I cannot imagine that the threat to American security from Al Qaeda and its many associates can be met without a massive and sustained military operation in western Pakistan, and I cannot imagine any Pakistani government ordering such an operation. It is not "the politics of fear" to remind Obama's legions of the blissful that, while they are watching Scarlett Johansson sway to the beat, somewhere deep inside a quasi independent territory we might call Islamistan people are making plans to blow them to bits. (Yes, they can.)

Questions from the press to Mr. Obama?  Anybody?

In another piece Wieseltier argues:

Yes, he made a "muscular" speech in Chicago last spring; but I have been pondering his remarks about foreign policy in the ensuing campaign and I do not detect the hardness I seek, the disabused tone that the present world warrants. My problem is not with "day one": nobody is perfectly prepared for the White House, though the memory of Bill Clinton's "learning curve" is still vivid, which in Bosnia and Rwanda cost more than a million lives. My problem is that Obama's declarations in matters of foreign policy and national security have a certain homeopathic quality. He seems averse to the hurtful, expensive, traditional, unedifying stuff.    

Still no questions?

•  Well of course there are no questions.  Why should there be questions when we're dealing with a...a rock star?  Consider this story about women doing the groupie thing for Obama:

College Park, Maryland - You can see it in their flushed-face smiles and hear it in their screams. They say the phenomenon is difficult to describe, but once they experience it they tell their friends, sisters, mothers and daughters, and they come back for more if they can.

"He's very charismatic. It was a 'you-had-to-be-there' kind of experience," said Lolita Breckenridge, 37, after hearing Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama address a packed rally at the University of Maryland on Monday.

A dedicated supporter, she brought two of her friends to hear the Illinois senator deliver one of his much-talked-about speeches.

"Not too much of the speech was new to me," she admitted. "But hearing him live..." she trailed off, shaking her head and grinning.

And this, believe it or not:

He did not flinch when women screamed as he was in mid-sentence, and even broke off once to answer a female's cry of "I love you Obama!" with a reassuring: "I love you back."

We are holding an election for the most powerful office in the world.  The result of that election may determine whether any of us live or die, or whether a young kid from Kansas will be sent to a desert battlefield.  And look what it's come to.

Wieseltier got it right.

(Thanks to W.B. Rogers for sending that story) 

•   The contrast with the adult world is remarkable.  Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff gave a stark interview, reminding us what's really out there:

WASHINGTON - Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff's eyes narrow and his voice develops a stern, urgent tone as he reveals America's biggest vulnerability to terrorism.

"The great weapon they have is persistence and patience, and the one weakness that we have is the tendency to lose patience and become complacent," Chertoff tells WTOP.

"It strikes me as hard to accept that anybody would believe the threat is over. There is nothing these terrorists are doing or saying that could lead a reasonable person to believe that they have somehow lost interest. Our biggest challenge is making sure we do not drop our guard because time passes."

Chertoff recognizes it has been more than six years since al Qaida launched the Sept. 11 attacks, but some experts say that's how long it took to plan them, suggesting the U.S. may close in on another spectacular attempt by Osama bin Laden to topple the U.S. economy.

Pay no attention to that man.  He's the old school.  There is no threat we cannot handle if we get beyond 1) the politics of fear, and 2) partisanship.

•   The authoritative British science magazine Nature reports the latest on the Iranian nuke front.  Apparently, the man in charge of preventing nuclear war is about to issue his report to the UN.  I've already lined up to get my copy.  Haven't you?  The facts:

The International Atomic Energy Agency is wrapping up its inquiry into Iran’s nuclear activities and is expected to report its findings on 20 February.

I'm sure we'll know everything then.  Just as we did when we issued our last National Intelligence Estimate on Iran.  But the author of the piece is a fine journalist, and does his own snooping.  HEU means highly enriched uranium:

Nature has seen preliminary results from the European Commission Joint Research Centre’s Theoretical Centrifuge and Cascade Simulator, a sophisticated model of the output of the current Natanz 3,000 centrifuge cascade under various configurations. One of the scenarios generated posits that if the cascade operated at full capacity, Iran could break out as early as July this year, with enough HEU for a bomb by the end of the year. Operating at only one-quarter of capacity, it would reach that point by 2010.

He is an alarmist.  Do not listen to him.  The Iranians are misunderstood.  If only we'd learn more about other cultures, we wouldn't have this confusion.

We don't see Barack complaining about the Iranians, do we?  You know why?  Because he lived in another country. 

•   Sometimes a story just grabs you because it so symbolizes the times.  It seems there's a little religious problem in The Netherlands, one of the European countries most likely to be taken over by militant Islam.  It's hard to believe:

Dutch Catholics have re-branded the Lent fast as the "Christian Ramadan" in an attempt to appeal to young people who are more likely to know about Islam than Christianity.

The Catholic charity Vastenaktie, which collects for the Third World across the Netherlands during the Lent period, is concerned that the Christian festival has become less important for the Dutch over the last generation.

"The image of the Catholic Lent must be polished. The fact that we use a Muslim term is related to the fact that Ramadan is a better-known concept among young people than Lent," said Vastenaktie Director, Martin Van der Kuil.

Think about that story next time you hear some European "intellectual" say that the world's greatest problem is the legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people.  At least the Palestinians will have a country.  I'm not sure about the Dutch.

•  Oh, but wait.  None of that is important.  This just in.  The Magna Carta is in danger.  Western freedom is under siege.  And it isn't even BUSH this time.  In Britain, there is a new civil liberties crisis, so immense, so large:

Calls to ban 'anti-teen' device

Campaigners are calling for a ban on a device that emits a high-pitched sound to disperse groups of teenagers, saying it is not a fair way to treat them.

There are estimated to be 3,500 of the devices, known as the Mosquito, in use in England, many at shopping centres.

Their sound causes discomfort to young ears - but their frequency is above the normal hearing range of people over 25.

England's children's commissioner backs a ban but stores say the devices can be useful against anti-social youths.

What Britain does to teenagers is unspeakable.  Send your letters to Amnesty International.

And we talk about North Korea.

Be back later.  I have to hug my kids and thank God they're not living under British fascism.

Posted on February 12, 2008.