EVENING UPDATE,  FEBRUARY 26,  2008

TAKE THAT, MULLAHS!

Aren't you thrilled when Europeans talk tough?  Well, get this:

THE European Union has called on Iran to drop provisions in a draft penal code stipulating the death penalty for apostasy, heresy and witchcraft.

"These articles clearly violate the Islamic Republic of Iran's commitments under the international human rights conventions," the Slovenian EU Presidency said in a statement.

"The EU calls upon the Iranian authorities, both in government and parliament, to modify the draft penal code in order to respect the obligations."

The statement said the death penalty had been carried out in Iran for apostasy - rejection of religion - but it had never before been set down in law.

The EU, which opposes the death penalty as a matter of policy, viewed with "acute concern" news that the Iranian parliament was reviewing the draft penal code, it said.

Iran routinely dismisses Western criticism of its legal system, saying it is implementing Islamic law.

Aren't you excited?  Don't you think Western civilization is in good hands? 

And if Iran refuses, you know what comes after this statement saying the EU views with "acute concern" the draft penal code?  I understand from my private sources that the big guns come out.  The EU will issue a statement changing "acute" to "severe."

That'll show 'em.  Don't mess with European bureaucrats.  Remember that.

IRANIANS MIX IT UP

This is good, really good.  John Hinderaker at Power Line has a great video, courtesy of Pajamas Media, showing Iranians in the streets of Tehran resisting the cops, or whatever they call the Islamic police.  (I don't think it's the FBI.)  The crowds are chanting, "How many people do you think you can kill?"  You know, I just find that a bit more inspiring than a bunch of well-fed undergrads at an Obama rally shouting, "Yes we can!" 

John also refers to the essential Michael Ledeen, whose book, "The Iranian Time Bomb," is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the Iranian issue.

Isn't it remarkable that, in the midst of a presidential campaign, Iran has almost been forgotten?  Except by Iran, of course, and its nuclear scientists, who really are the ones who must be chanting, "Yes we can."  And they will. 

Full disclosure:  I write periodically for Power Line.

DON'T WORRY, EHUD

You know, I get so tired of politicians who are behind the times.  Here we have Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of Israel, visiting Japan.  And what is he telling the Japanese?  That North Korea and Iran are working together on long-range missiles:

North Korea and Iran are working together on the development of long-range missiles, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in Tokyo Tuesday, warning that the countries are threatening the stability of Asian and Middle Eastern countries.

During a meeting with Japanese Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Olmert said that Iran stood at the head of the axis of evil. Olmert presented to Ishiba intelligence information on North Korea's involvement with the Islamic Republic, specifically its distribution of its nuclear know-how and its expertise in the production of long-range missiles

Oh, come on.  You'd think with all the information given Olmert by the Mossad that he'd be up to date:  Doesn't he know that the New York Philharmonic is in North Korea, and is solving the problem?  Why, the violin section alone is so mellow that North Korean scientists stopped developing missiles just to listen. 

And the horn section blew away the nuclear program.

I knew they could do it.  Just wait 'til they play, "This Land is Your Land."  North and South Korea will unite in peace.

Yuch.

ON THE OBAMA WATCH

I sense a psychological change in news stories over the last 24 hours.  The conventional wisdom is that Hillary Clinton is sinking.  There are reports that her staff is now saying that "a close second" in Ohio and Pennsylvania next Tuesday would be enough to keep her in the race.  Sorry, that doesn't cut it.  If she doesn't win those states, she'll be selling autographed posters on e-bay.

Clinton debates Obama tonight, possibly for the last time.  Superb political reporter Dan Balz gives us his take:

Pre-debate talk has been consumed with the question of which Clinton will show up here in Cleveland -- the magnanimous candidate from last week's Texas debate or the angry Clinton who demanded on Saturday that Obama meet her to answer questions about his conduct during the primaries and caucuses.

Much, obviously, rides on her performance, but rarely has a debate truly changed the state of the race. The clear exception was the Philadelphia debate in late October, when Clinton stumbled over the issue of driver's licenses for illegal immigrants and opened herself up to attacks from her rivals that ultimately helped Obama. What Clinton needs may be less a stellar performance on her own part and more one by Obama that raises, in dramatic fashion, questions about his fitness to be president or his positions on important issues.

Yeah, that's solid.  Balz goes on to list serious questions about Obama.  It's good to see this, and I recommend you read what he says.  He concludes:

If President Bush failed to change the tone in Washington, in part because he sought to govern as a conservative, would a President Obama be prepared not to govern as the liberal he has been in the Illinois and U.S. senates in order to change politics in Washington, as he has promised?

Obama's success against Clinton to date speaks to his considerable gifts as a politician, but that success does not wash away hard questions that he, or anyone else who seeks to lead the country, should face at such a challenging time.

Right.  That's a good memo to a number of editors and news directors.  Will The New York Times get the memo?  Will CNN?

IN HIS OWN WORDS

Obama gets substantive, and I don't like what I'm hearing.  I don't think you will, either.  Readers Peter and Mary Jenks alerted me to this Obama statement on national defense, carried by YouTube.

Among other things, Obama talks about slowing development of "future combat systems."  That'll sure scare our enemies.  And he talks about cutting investment in "unproven" missile-defense weapons.  Hey, wait.  Didn't one of those "unproven" missiles shoot down a falling satellite just last week?  Unproven? 

This is bad.  I think this is the real Obama.  Jimmy Carter, your office is waiting.

BARACK'S POWER

Again at Power Line, Paul Mirengoff writes a sharp analysis of one of Obama's top foreign-policy advisers, Samantha Power.  Power wrote a Pulitzer-prize winning book on genocide, which is commendable, but often sounds like a teenager playing the exciting new video game, "I Run the World."  She'd better learn how before she tries.

Obama has an annoying tendency to distance himself from his advisers and associates whenever it's convenient.  A few days ago, in speaking to a group of Jewish leaders, he distanced himself from Zbig Brzezinski, the anti-Israel dizzyhead who was Carter's national-insecurity adviser.  He also distanced himself from his often anti-American pastor in Chicago.  He hasn't distanced himself from Power, but, maybe after he examines Paul's analysis, he should:

What does Power have to say about her proposal to invade Israel and the surrounding territories? She says it “makes no sense” to her and she describes it as “so weird.” Even under the special rules that apply to the Obama campaign, that’s not much of a defense.

Power also pleads that Israel is not her specialty; in real life she’s just the humble Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School. But Power doesn’t dispute that she hasn’t been bashful about opining on Israel or that she advises Obama on the subject. And by the way, Anna Lindh was Sweden’s notoriously anti-Israel foreign minister from 1998-2003. Lindh was a key proponent of the slander that Israel committed a massacre at Jenin, a slander that Power has been ambivalent at best about seeing punctured.

Power is even less persuasive in discussing her recent Time Magazine column on Iran. There, she complained that "the Bush Administration attempts to gin up international outrage by making a claim of imminent danger, only to be met with international eye rolling when the claim is disproved." Amazingly, Power denies that this comment means she believes the NIE assessment about Iran’s nuclear designs is correct. She claims instead to mean only that the international community is using the NIE to fend off Bush on the Iranian issue.

Power’s dishonesty here is breathtaking. Her article plainly states that the Bush administration’s claims about Iran were “disproved.” If words have meaning, Power is stating that she believes the key findings of the NIE, not merely that the international community believes them.

Barack Obama is playing a massive con game with the American public – he’s a hard leftist running as a post-partisan figure who can bring us together. Obama has shown that he has the oratorical skills, verbal facility, and personal charisma to make a good run at pulling this off. Plainly, none of that gift has rubbed off on Samantha Power.

No it hasn't.  She sometimes calls herself "the genocide chick."  Mature, very mature.

Question:  Given Obama's tendency to distance himself from advisers, or to say that he disagrees with an adviser, why did he ever hire these people in the first place?  Why do so many of them, like Samantha Power, have obnoxious views?  What does this say about Obama's ability to choose a Cabinet, to run an administration?

But does anyone care, in the face of that soaring rhetoric?  Scary, huh?

GREAT SPEAKER?  WHAT GREAT SPEAKER?

Well, here's a dissenter. Gideon Rachman, at Financial Times, doesn't think Obama makes it as a speaker at all.  Hear him out:

I have watched Mr Obama speak live; I have watched him speak on television; I have even watched his speeches set to music on a video made by celebrity supporters. But I find myself strangely unmoved – and this is disconcerting. It feels like admitting to falling asleep during Winston Churchill’s “fight them on the beaches” speech.

I will admit one thing. Mr Obama has a nice, gravelly voice – which is perhaps a legacy of his days as a heavy smoker. But his most famous phrases are vacuous. The “audacity of hope”? It would be genuinely audacious to run for the White House on a platform of despair. Promising hope is simply good sense. “The fierce urgency of now”? It is hard to see what Mr Obama means when he says this – other than that some inner voice has told him to run for president.

And then there is “Yes we can” – the phrase that was so inspirational that it inspired Will.i.am of hip-hop group the Black Eyed Peas to make his infamous video, backed up by film stars and musicians such as Scarlett Johansson and Herbie Hancock.

The strumming of guitars and crooning drowns out Mr Obama on the musical version. So I had to consult the text to find out what exactly it is that we can do. “Yes we can to justice and equality. Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity. Yes we can heal this nation. Yes we can repair this world. Yes we can.”

This sounds to me like a man doing an impression of what he thinks a great speech might be like. It is the kind of empty exhortation that usually gives politicians a bad name. Peter Sellers, a British comedian of the 1960s, caught the genre nicely in a parody speech: “Let us assume a bold thrust and go forward together. Let us carry the fight against ignorance to the four corners of the earth, because it is a fight that concerns us all.” Mr Obama might easily give a speech like that – although he would probably strip out some of the detail.

But Rachman, in an act of kindness, ends on a positive note.  Just because Obama gives empty speeches, he says, it doesn't mean he'll be a bad president.

I don't like the odds.

AH, THOSE WERE THE DAYS

Finally, the Fatherland's excellent adventure.  It seems there may be hidden treasure from swastika times:

GERMAN authorities began digging in a remote corner of southeast Germany for what they hope is a massive haul of treasure buried by the Nazis during World War II.

Excavators began work near the village of Deutschneudorf not far from the border with the Czech Republic where treasure-hunters said last week they had detected precious metals around 20 metres underground.

The search began after the notebook of a wartime Luftwaffe pilot was found after his death indicating that several tonnes of treasure were buried in the area, Deutschneudorf's mayor Heinz-Peter Haustein said.

"People are fascinated by this subject. These are objects from World War II," Mr Haustein said on television.

"It is good that we are talking about this because the war is not a closed chapter and this gives us the opportunity to evoke the past."

Evoke the past?  Did he really say that?

Look, Germany evokes the past every time it sells high-tech equipment to Iran.  Maybe the country needs a reminder of what the past was like.

And I'll be back tomorrow.

Posted on February 26, 2008.